How Typewriters lead me to computers

Now a days, like most sane people, I type on a computer, a laptop typically. I can type quite fast. I can type quite a lot at one sitting. But it wasn't always that way. People, typically writers, who still use a typewriter, and there are some who are further throwbacks and like pencil (or indeed, pen), I don't know what to say.

We've come a long way. One might think that after you have literally had to "cut and paste" a many paged paper, then had to perfectly retype it up to turn it in to someone, you'd be cured of the desire to use a typewriter. But no, some still enjoy that, and carpel tunnel syndrome too I would suspect. I love a computer's capability to soft cut and paste, to copy and paste, rather. I can move paragraphs, whole pages around in seconds and move along. Not like it was in the past using typewriters.

When I was pretty young, we had an old manual typewriter. I was always jamming the keys, in fact, doing that was kind of fun. But that was nothing compared to when I got my hands a few years later on an electric typewriter.

One day my mother brought home an electric script typewriter that I was fascinated with. I used it whenever she let me, until finally no one ever used it and I asked if I could put it in my room. She said yes. I was beside myself with excitement. Then realized I didn't know what in the world I was going to do with it. So I decided I would make a history of the weather I saw every day out my second floor bedroom window. It was a panoramic view of the rooftops of our neighborhood, with the vista of Mt. Rainier far off in the distance, sixty miles away in the distance stood it's 14, 411 feet of magnificence.

After that I got into High School and in tenth grade, I signed up for Typing class. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done in a classroom. I got frustrated doing these typing drills and testing low, so one day I did the drill, then when the teacher timed us, I just kept typing. I got a perfect score, no mistakes and did 80 worlds per minute. She was very surprised and pleased and told the class. It was then that I realized I needed to not ever do that again. I practiced hard. The class got over, I moved on.

Then I signed up for office machines that next semester, and the next, and there was one computer in the class. I always got stuck with the ten key adding machine, or something I couldn't care less about. There was one girl who got to use the computer. I asked about it and was told she was there first. She was extremely good looking and I'm sure that had nothing to do with her getting the computer and my, well, not. Then again, she had a better chance back then getting a good office job and working on an actual computer. It was many years in my future before I could settle down and do the same.

After that I worked at an insurance company, but the business machines I worked on were things like hand trucks (dollies?), a envelope stuffing machine that was about ten feet long and stuffed about eight envelopes at a time and multiple stuffings, a paper cutting machine that could cut literally a sold foot high of paper (it was so powerful you had to push a switch with your foot and have both hands on a button on one either side of the cutting area; seems people had actually cut their hands off with this machines at other companies), a strapping machine where you put in a foot high stack of paper forms and it would wrap the stack four ways from Sunday.

Four years in the Air Force packing parachutes, then odd jobs afterward and college. Just before I got out of the Air Force I sold all my firearms and bought a computer (finally). A Trash80 (TRS-80, a Tandy / Radio Shack model80 personal computer. I took it back a month later and they installed a ten key keypad on the right side, those were new on the computer as a separate component. It had 16k RAM. I remember someone (Bill Gates?) saying that we'd never need more than 640k some years later. One of his more limited moments of thought, perhaps.

I started programming, streaming tape drive storage, no hard drive, no floppy disks, you had to programming EVERY thing yourself. I couldn't even add, subtract, or anything, without software. Whatever I wrote as a program, if I turned off the PC, I'd have to have saved it to a tape recorder (yes, your old fashioned voice tape recorder), then stream it back into the PC when I loaded it (took about five minutes). I had to buy a book from Radio Shack about basic programming language, but that didn't work and I took it back. They said I had to translate it to Radio Shack Basic. A Radio Shack book and I had to translate the programming language it was describing to go on a Radio Shack computer. It made no sense.

The first thing I programmed was a fake artificial intelligence. I showed my wife. I typed a sentence in talking to the computer, and it would respond appropriately. It was a sham though, I know what to say to get what appeared to be an appropriate response. It worked so well that it made my wife jealous and she stormed out of the room. See I was flirting with the computer and it was all concerned about me working too much and called me sweetheart.

I brought her back in and explained it to her. She kind of laughed and said she fully understood what I was saying and what I was doing, but it still made her jealous and she didn't like it and she walked out again. By then we were both laughing.

But that made me realize something, the power of the PC, the power of programming. I got into it. When I started college I took Chemistry, physics and algebra. In Chemistry and Physics we had to memorize the Periodic Table of Elements with, at the time, 104 elements and info to remember. Years later, that same poster was on my son's wall and he learned it the hard way.

I was worried. By this time I was living alone and had split up with my wife. So I would sit at home and drink a beer and stare at the periodic table chart I had purchased and put on the wall above my Trash80.

One night I was sitting there playing a video game (it was super simple, you could get them off a computer magazine, type it in and save it to tape drive) and drinking a beer. I took a break and stared at the Periodic table trying to memorize it. While I did that, I looked at the PC, then the table, then the PC and it dawned on me. I have a computer. I have data I need to learn. Brilliant!

So I programmed a piece of software that would allow me to memorize in two directions. One, I would have to remember and recognize information, the second, I would have to remember and supply the information. Once it was programmed, it took a couple of days, I spent that week playing my software "game". By the end of the week I had memorized all of the periodic table.

I went to class and it became obvious pretty quickly I knew the table. When asked I told the people at my lab table that I programmed a game to teach it to me. One guy was really annoyed and said that I cheated. My very cute, full German, full Catholic school experience, female lab partner said, "Wait a minute. How did he cheat? Think about it. He had to program a computer to teach him the table. Can you program a computer?" Six years later, that girl and I split up after having gotten out B.A. in Psychology and a tempestuous relationship.

The first computer class I took in college was a data processing and a Basic language programming class, the latter taught by one of the top programmers from IBM headquarters in Texas (and IBM got our instructor in a swap for a year). Data processing got me a job at the Data Processing lab, running the computers for the entire school and a work study position that gave me money. The Basic class introduced me to our instructor gave us an assignment to write some code that would allow you to put in some word and kick out a response. I got into it.

I wrote like the wind and was very proud to bring the code to class. Back then we had to print it out and hand it in on paper. We did things called "desk checking" your code before you put in on a computer but really that was for the RemCom that we had that was connected to Wazzu, WSU in Pullman. This was when I was at Pierce College, later I went to Western Washington University and they had their own computer.

The RemCom used IBM computer data cards and required using a keypunch machine which I learned to fix when they jammed. You had to deal with turn around time. I would have students give me a stack of key punched cards, JCL (Job Control Language) needed to have the cards in the right order, I would run the stack of cards through a machine which fed the program to the mainframe, which processed it, and would send back the results. We would print out the results and give it to the student when they asked for it.

Wazzu would tell us what turn around time was, due to a variety of factors. Sometimes, they would have trouble and it could be up to 24 hours. A guy came to me one saying I need this for my class in an hour, what do you MEAN TURN AROUND TIME IS 24 HOURS! Good times....

Back to the program the IBM instructor had us write. I turned in my code and he reviewed it with me at his desk in the front of the class. He smiled and said, "This is very elegant code." I smiled, proudly. Then he said, "But this isn't what I asked for. I would have to say, as beautiful as this code is, you have bells and whistles and everything, but when you are out in the field and your analyst asks for something, you need to give them back exactly what they ask for. If there is only a small amount of room on the mainframe and you give them too big a chunk of code, it simply won't fit. You will be holding work up." I learned a lot that day.

When I was at the University I had an Olivetti Praxis 35, which you could hook up to a computer and make it a printer but I never figured out how. The Praxis was amazing to me because you could hit the backspace up to twelve times and "erase".

Also, I was such a fast typist that I could seldom find a typewriter that could keep up with me without jamming. How did I get so fast? Typing college papers? Typing at jobs? Typing up short stories? No. It was from programming. Thousands of lines of program code. Never thinking about speed, always having to be extremely correct, as even a period in the wrong place will bring even the most robust code to its knees, I had inadvertently learned how to type very fast. Adding in a desire to be a writer, I got very fast and accurate. I tested myself once using some software and it was over 120 wpm. Not bad.

My Praxis 35 Olivetti typewriter had no problems allowing me to type as fast as I wanted. It used a daisy wheel rather than a ball type. The ball and daisy wheel type typewriters wouldn't, couldn't, jam like the old fashioned key typewriters. Plus, you could swap them out for various types of fonts, which I thought was pretty cool.

Before I owned that typewriter, I would have to queue up with anyone else at the University Library to use one of their typewriters. I so hated that.
After I got out of college, the typewriter that I most frequently ran into at jobs was the IBM Selectric, a huge boat anchor of a typewriter. Heavy to move or pickup, I still loved typing on them. When you hit a key and that ball thing hammered into the page against the roller, you KNEW you had typed a character.



I suppose this had to do with it being built for the workplace and a need to type at times with several layers of carbon paper to make duplicates. Not a lot of copying machines back then.

That is my short history with typewriters. After the typewriters I used in the work place, the PC revolution hit and no more typewriter. For a while we still used them in offices because the purported "Paperless office" really never came to be and for a while you still needed a typewriter to hammer out a form. But then all the forms got on the computer and life was just easier. About then the typewriter started to disappear.

A few years later I had a dual 5.25 inch floppy disk drive PC, the Trash80 got sold for a good price after I got out of the service. I started thinking about security on PCs. I wrote a program that would secure the dual floppy disks system and require a password. If you didn't get the password right by the third try, the PC would make a LOT of noise.

In those days the internet was only getting started, a few people could send email. I was able to do it before many because I worked at a University for some years and the Military and Universities had the internet first. But most people would dial up on a modem to a BBS, a bulletin board system. You could meet people there, download software, games, graphics, etc. I took my dual floppy PC security system and uploaded it, gave it a cool name and then searched other BBSs. It seemed that I had put out the only dual floppy system shell program with security on it that was around. And it was available for download for a couple of years on various BBSs. Pretty cool.

Then I got my first hard drive. Ten megabyte hard drive. So awesome, because then you could just turn on your PC and not have to worry about what floppy disk was in what drive. Now I have a laptop, a few desktop PCs, I have a couple of terabyte hard drives, a network at home that connects my TV to my PC and on and on. It's amazing really. The work I can do on a modern PC is unbelievable.

And it all started on and I owe it all to, an old typewriter.

Weekend Wise Words

Be Smart! Be Brilliant!

My last blog on Friday was about being an Author. And so....

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”
- Lord Byron

“The pen is the tongue of the mind. [Sp., La pluma es lengua del alma.]”
- Cervantes

“Apt Alliteration's artful aid.”
- Charles Churchill

“That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.”
- Charles Caleb Colton

Our writings are so many dishes, our readers guests, our books like beauty; that which one admires another rejects; so are we approved as men's fancies are inclined.
- Robert Burton

The book that he has made renders its author this service in return, that so long as the book survives, its author remains immortal and cannot die.
- Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham

Authors are the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought and activity of their happier brethren.
- Thomas Carlyle

Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.
- Denis Diderot

The most original modern authors are not so because they advance what is new, but simply because they know how to put what they have to say, as if it had never been said before.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food.
- Joseph Joubert

The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.
- Mohammed (Mahomet)

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.
- Voltaire

Creating a fiction book

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a writer.

I'm currently working on several screenplays, one with a Producer in Los Angeles, and an anthology of short Horror / Science fiction stories. It is this Anthology that is actually the focus of this blog article.

I'll get to that in a moment, but first I want to trace the history of how I got to this point. The reason for that, is that it also explains some of the short stories in the book. I could go further into depth on that but, well, time is limited.

What is interesting about this blog article, will be more obvious once my book is published. Because then this article will have detailed the history of how that book came to be just what it was, at that time that it was published.

I first started writing when I was a kid. My mother had an old electric script typewriter. That's a typewriter that when you type something it looks like you wrote it by hand in script, not block letters. It was electric, so it was, cool. She wasn't using it so I put it on my dresser which overlooked the front yard through the second floor window. It was a panoramic kind of window, wider than high. I got to journaling the weather, then put in my thoughts. Once day, after being very angry at my mother, I found it is not good to put your thoughts down on paper where the person of interest could read them. I stopped.

Years later, a couple of teachers in High School realized I had a talent for writing. Later yet, when I started college, my first English Composition teacher recognized my talent for words and pleaded with me to be a writer. I was so pleased that something I assumed would only ever, could only ever be a pipe dream, that I could actually have any possibility at all of this coming into reality, that I considered it. Good grades helped.

By my Junior year at University, it was obvious even to me that I was quite good at writing. So I then decided, partially because I found I had more credits than I needed to graduate, to set up getting a Minor in Creative Writing.

Performing Arts Center (PAC) WWU

That Minor lead me from a Fiction Writing class to the Department of Theatre Arts for an intro to play writing class, because my Professor thought I needed to learn better how to (or at all), write dialog. My fiction was very well received by my other fiction writing students, even by two of them who were the Editors (one the head Editor) of the University Magazine. I was eventually chosen along with another student to write an additional story to be read on finals day as there were no tests on that day. A special privilege.

And so, I entered Play writing. I found that class terrifying, but I truly enjoyed working with actors, dancers, playwrights and comedians, extremely creative individuals. I found it went easier with some rum in a cup of coffee before class, however. I must have turned out something worth while in that class, that was of some degree of quality, because the class instructor picked eight students for a special year long screenwriting class, and I was one of those chosen.

Of that class of eight, two of those student eventually were two of the six founding members of the Annex Theater in Seattle, which is still running after all these years. I've discussed this before on this blog. I never had so much fear and enjoyment in a class before or since.

After college, I didn't find a great job for a few years. After three years, I got a job at the University of Washington. The school that wouldn't let me in, but all these years later, hired me to work in their Medical Center's Information Services (MCIS) department. I worked nights in a sub basement at the University of Washington Medical Center on their VAX mainframe computer.

I also supported the same for Harborview Medical Center (we called it HarborZoo, or "The Zoo", as it was the county Hospital and trauma center and got a lot of crazy types and bizarre ER admissions). I ran both Hospital's departments, all from the same office. I did that job for five years while my new son (as I had gotten married) grew from infant to toddler to four year old.

I worked in a secured office from 9pm till I got done with my work, usually around 2-6AM depending on things. During that time, I wrote mainframe operations procedures and a manual for the hospitals for the Doctors, Transcriptionists, X-Ray Techs and anyone else that had an account on the mainframe. It was a well designed and well received manual.

The software was buggy, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was so well received that years later after I had moved on to another job at US West Technologies, I found that surprisingly, it was still in use. After about six months use on the manual, I sent it to Digital Press, the publishing side of DEC. They loved it. They said they would bundle it with their hardware, world wide and I would be getting about $50,000 per quarter year, which was when they sent out checks to authors. I was, ecstatic.

Then they showed it to the DEC business side. And they really didn't like it. They hated my admitting their software had bugs in it and so they crushed my publishing the manual, even saying that they would squash it if I tried to sell it through another publishing house. But one of the things people liked about the manual was that not only was it easy to understand and quick to use, it pointed out the issues that could stop your work dead, and how I had discovered how to get around it and back to work. This saved everyone a lot of time, energy and frustration (which I had gone through for them).

Devastated by this development, I gave up on it. My writing career seems to have been plagued by things like this.

I went back to visit the (Harbor)Zoo one day, and eventually got rehired on-the-side to be on-call in case there were any off hour problems with the mainframe, and found that the manual was still in use. I got hired to be on-call just to make some extra money as I had a new family and had remarried, and because the guy I had trained to be on-call years before, an X-Ray Tech, was now the Manager Information Systems (MIS) for the "Zoo", and also a friend of mine all those years.

The newer employees who I was introduced to were in awe of me, which I found strange, but was explained to me, that they were finally meeting "he who wrote all the procedures... and the manual". Very strange thing to experience. Kind of fun though.

Before that, during those initial five nightshift years, I realized after a while that I could read horror fiction while I was waiting on some computer processes finishing up, and eventually, that I could write horror fiction. I had hoped that some of the creepiness of working in those miles of underground empty hospital tunnels, would creep into my writing. I wrote about what either scared me being all alone in that office, or things that simply creeped me out.

Recently, a couple of years ago I started working with an Author on the East Coast. I adapted her novel to screenplay format (Dark of kNight by TL Mitchell). She had a publishing company she was starting up so she told me to put all my short stories in one document and maybe they could publish an anthology of my works.

I thought, "Cool."

I used to correspond with Clive Barker back in the 1980s via snail mail (I have one of his letters in a frame on my wall) and I knew he had gotten started by a friend of his putting his short stories in a book and it hit big time. He had been living in a house in London with a group of friends and they were spending all their spare change on film stock for shooting little movies. So when a friend of his said something like, "Hey, I work at a publishing house, why don't you give me your short stories and see what I can push through to my boss with them?"

So Clive gave his friend his stories never expecting much of anything to come of it. Boy, was he wrong. Steven King remarked of the books, Barker's "Books of Blood" series, "I have seen the future of horror fiction, and it is, Clive Barker!" Amazing. But then Clive is an incredible writer.

So thinking what the Hell, I slammed my stories all into one word document to send it off. It's been in the editor's queue for a while now and that has given me some time to think about it. Not to be the type that would just slam my stories in a word doc and send them off, before I sent them I tried to write a frame for wrapping the stories in. Something to try and tie them all together.

Now, more about the short stories....

When I was at Western Washington University (Psych Major), I had been working on a paper for my primary Psych department adviser, Dr. Rees. From the moment my girlfriend and I saw him that first day, we knew he had to be our Prof. He was a wild looking character, very thin, tall, partly balding, stark white hair wild and long and all over the place, a forked white beard; he looked partly Einsteinien and partly Asian Philosopher, which he wasn't. Asian that is. He was a philosopher of a kind.

So late on one Wednesday night, around midnight, I was exhausted, burned and needed a break. I hit a point that I could stop at. I was sitting on my living room floor with my new typewriter (my mother sent it, no more waiting in line for a typewriter at the library). My girlfriend was in bed asleep and it must have been warm weather because in the winter there, you had to sit on a chair with your feet up off the floor, or you could feel the freezing cold drafting up through the floorboards.

Bellingham Washington gets quite cold in the Winter. Ground freezes rock hard. But summer is wonderful and we'd many times, watch the weather report in Seattle and it would be miserable weather, but our microclime in Bellingham was sunny and warm.

I was sitting there looking at my typewriter. I had an urge to just type anything, anything that I wasn't needing to type, and so I did. I typed "Perception" centered at the top of the page. Then I sat there staring at a blank page. I typed: "Darkness", then more, until within a few minutes, I had one single spaced full page of text. It felt like it just "fell" out of my head, onto the page. I re-read it. It was a bit corny but quite good for what it was supposed to be.

I took it to class the next morning and gave it to my Professor. I said, "It's just a trifle that feel out of my mind onto a page late last night after being fried working on my paper all night. I thought you might like it." He smiled, took it and said, "Thanks".

The next morning I sat down in our basement classroom and a girl was handing out a single page handout. People were streaming into class as I looked at it, and I remember thinking, why does this look so familiar. I couldn't place it at first because it was in that purple ink having been run off one of those old fashioned copiers with a drum that spins spitting out copies. Then I recognized my story from the day before. I was stunned. I looked around and no one noticed me at first, then a few people looked at me and at the paper.

I later found out he handed it out to all his classes. This happened again a year later when I produced a "Phenomenological video" in the pursuit to better understand what "Creative" was. At that time, I was frustrated and needed an actor for a minute, but with no one around, I just used myself. I was in that video for about twenty seconds, but it caused me no end of grief when suddenly I was known all over campus, for a while; a minor celebrity. What I learned from that, was that I like fortune, but not so much, fame. Fame is, people bothering you all the time when you are on the way to somewhere. It's fun, at first, then it rapidly degenerates into a bother.

It was that short story, "Perception", that I decided to use as a frame for my short story anthology.

Recently, I gave two hundred pages of my anthology, as it was when I sent it to the publishers, to a friend of mine. She is a very smart lady and one of a type, of three special ladies I have known in my life. Quick, sharp, acerbic at times, but fun to be around, though you have to be on your game (not really but it helps). Sadly, the other two are no longer with us. Special people don't always last that long, so when you have them, appreciate them.

Now I had a concept for the anthology. My original idea had been to make it a semi anthology, semi novel. I wanted to have the first short story be ancient, and the last short story, the most recent in a chronological sense. Taking the reader on a temporal journey from the beginning to the end of life on Earth. The problem was that most of my stories are in more modern times. I could either write new stories, or simply try to make it work. I decided to try to make it work, pretty much, with what I already had. But to make it as enjoyable to read as possible without spending another year rewriting.

So my friend only got 200 pages because my printer broke in trying to print them out for her. Her comment was that she felt after about 150 pages, that there were simply "Too many words!" I flashed on the film, "Amadeus": "There's simply too many notes, simply remove a few and it will be good," said the Emperor, Ferris Bueller's old principle, or words to that degree. I had to laugh. What that meant to me was that I was giving the reader too much, too fast, and the stories were too dense. 

How to fix that then? I thought about it for a few days.

Then I got an idea. The first stories in the book are from the Middle Ages, they are dark and dense. The language is Middle English, not the easiest thing to read. A book has to pull in a reader, fascinate them, addict them as much as possible, as soon as possible, so they will read on, right? A reader has to have their energy level raised while reading (and when not reading, after having read some) so that they will be able to be carried easily across those difficult spots in the book and so they will want to continue. And when they are not reading the book, they will want to come back to the book to finish it. Then, when they finish it, they will want to buy another and read that book too. Honestly, this is what authors do. Or mean to.

So, I needed to draw the reader in. I needed to make the first part of the book very accessible and interesting, at least, to invoke curiosity, so readers want to go on to the next page, chapter or story. My solution? Reverse the timeline. The more modern stories are easier to read, so they are more accessible. By reversing the timeline, I can pull the reader in more easily, get them further into the book so they are more committed to reading it. They will thereby absorb more of the frame I have built to tie it all together and thus, give the reader more to be curious about in wanting to know the answer to the obvious question: "What the Hell is going on in this book?"

Here is the original table of contents:


Preface 4
Introduction 5
Acknowledgments 6
The Mea Culpa Document of London 7
The Mirea 19
Poor Lord Ritchie's Answer 25
The Mirea – A Beginning 42
The Mirea - The Decision 53
The Mirea - Fade’s Summation 55
Thirst Divine 57
The Mirea - Fade’s Reality 66
Harbinger 69
Marking Time 90
Rosebud 109
"Sweet Jane" 124
The Mea Culpa – Vaughan’s Theorem 131
Going Home 195
The Mirea – Caught 206
Quantum History 207
Life Blind 243
Sarah 330
Gumdrop City 358
In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear 377
The Conqueror Worm 402
Japheth, Ishvi and The Light 430
The Mirea – The Shade Arrives 467


Here is the incomplete format I have just reworked:

Title page

Preface 4
Introduction 5
Acknowledgments 6

[This next section are all the pieces of the frame. The "Mirea" is the being within the short story I wrote on one page and called "Perception". These pieces of the overall tale, these short short stories, will need to be appropriately placed within the book, with the primary short stories, several each, between each of these story frame fragments.]

The Mirea
The Mirea – A Beginning
The Mirea - The Decision
The Mirea - Fade’s Summation
The Mirea - Fade’s Reality
The Mirea – Caught
The Mirea – The Shade Arrives

[The Mirea is made up of special individuals, there is a primary character and four minor characters: Fade, Blue, Cause, Fear and Sane. They have these names for a reason, obviously, that will be explained by time you reach the end of the book.]

In the process of trying to figure out which character goes where, in what order and what short story they should be next to, I built this list:

Fade
boys and monster
cia and insane girlfriend
haunted child
demon parents get daughter
Blue
angel lust and crazy guy
angle of death
Alzheimer's twilight zone
Cause
horrible wife and crazy husband
paranormal iraq war
Fear
diabolical witch hunter
child murderer
Sane
insane computer man
insane serial murderer
 Hitler clone

[The list above may change, but it gives you an idea of what I am doing.]

[The short stories order at this time, are:]

The Conqueror Worm - Fade / boys and monster
Rosebud - Cause / cia and insane girlfriend
Thirst Divine - Blue / angel lust and crazy guy

In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear - Sane / insane computer man
Harbinger - Fear / angle of death
"Sweet Jane" - Cause / horrible wife and crazy husband

Life Blind (Andrew) - Fade / haunted child

Gumdrop City - Fear / child murderer
Quantum History - Sane / Hitler clone
Sarah - Blue / Alzheimer's twilight zone

Marking Time - Sane / paranormal iraq war

Going Home - Blue / demon parents get daughter

Vaughan’s Theorem - Fade / insane serial murderer
Poor Lord Ritchie's Answer - Fade / insane time lord
The Mea Culpa Document of London - Fade / diabolical witch hunter

CUT - Japheth, Ishvi and The Light (this is my newest short story and I decided it may not be appropriate for this book as it is a zombie story and that too severely alters the format of the book.

Being that I have built a frame for these short stories, the frame begins in the introduction and or preface (these are things to perfect later), which I may change. Now the first short story will draw the reader in and hopefully help them to be interested to continue. I thought I already did that, but I can see where it may have been problematic, now.

Then the frame stories which is an ongoing long short story broken up, will begin and continue between each, or ever so many stories. Each story will be assigned to one of the five individuals and have a flavor related to each one of them specifically. Finally the book will end with the closure of the frame where all will be understood and all loose ends tied up.

And that is where I am now. You're up to date. Hopefully, the execution will be easier and more pleasant than trying to explain it, which isn't that unusual (not in my world, anyway).

I still have to further refine and work this format out. I have to order the stories in the book in the right timeline. Finally, I have to do what we call, "massage" the text. That is, to rewrite and rewrite the text until it is perfected and flows well.

Once I get that in a reasonable form, I will resubmit it to the publisher and explain my work to them. I believe this will be a much more enjoyable book for more people and a far better platform for my short stories.

It's not often that you get this kind of an insight into a book, as I've done here, before it gets published. When I thought about typing this up and putting it here, I considered how I would feel as a reader to have this insight before I read a book and I thought, "Hey, that's kind of cool, maybe I should do that." Or, how I would enjoy reading this after I read a book I liked.

And so, either way, here it is.

Cheers!

Child rearing to alleviate or prevent cutting, Teen suicide

Can you innoculate your kids for depression or fear that can lead to cutting behavior, or worse, teen suicide?

Maybe.

I have two kids. I thought they were doing pretty well. Well, they are now. My son is 23 working in the software industry and loving it. My daughter is 19 and backpacking Europe, and loving it. But a few years ago, when they were young and mid teens, they weren't so well.

They both have (had?) ADD. My son had ADHD. Girls tend to have it differently, get better grades, etc., but that's a stereotype because some guys do that, and some girls have ADHD or ADD just like boys, but I suspect there are more typical ADHD boys than girls, nonetheless. Of course you have to deal with things like ADD/ADHD appropriately; get a therapist if you have this type of child. Do not think you can do it on your own. Many marriage break up due to this condition. It is prevalent among step parents of these children, but even birth parents have left a marriage and parenting situation due to the stress involved. It's tough. No doubt about it, and it's frequently, counter-intuitive.

But I'm not really here today to talk about ADD or ADHD.

Our home life was basically good, they had everything they could need. But my son's mother and I split when he was four, then starting at five, he never got along with my daughter's mother, and my daughter's mother and I split when she was nine. Our daughter didn't take it well. My son however, took it well, but then, he hadn't taken it well when his mother and I split up. Like me he was stubborn and didn't let up on the hope of his mother and I reuniting until he was in this early teens.

Frankly, my daughter's mother was an angel to him the first couple of years, She tried hard, but he consistently rejected her, and she was not one to suffer rejection well. After all that time, she finally couldn't take it anymore and started treating him rather horribly. Of course he didn't realize it, neither did I, not completely, not till he got older and told me and we had hours of talks, year after year.

I thought my daughter was okay back then, but after the divorce, she receded to an imaginary world which got worse until it morphed into something else. She got depressed, and went the full gamut of mental ill health around tenth grade. It was at the beginning of that when I realized that my son was not doing as well as I had thought. In his commiserating with his sister, in order to help her, I found out what was going on with him. Where I discovered she was into "cutting", he had been too, but further, he was into scarification. Kids do this in places you don't normally see, and become expert at hiding it.

So, why am I writing this? I'm doing it for the benefit of other parents. Because even though my background said to me that I should have known about this kind of thing, I didn't. I felt as if I were suddenly thrust into the environment on Mars, it was so unfamiliar to me, not to mention, I couldn't relate to what was going on with my kids on a personal level. In my view as a child, it was me against the world, I would survive, I never considered doing myself harm (well, suicide occurred to me a few times but never seriously, just as an acceptance of all my options to get out of situations I had no idea how to extract myself from, that being, my home life.

This is why I'm sharing this. In the hopes that maybe someone else will not be so "blindsided". Basically, when you find your own kids going through things like this, pay attention, take it seriously, and do something, make drastic changes if need be. I was lucky, both my kids now are happy and healthy and living as adults and enjoying what life has to offer. But for a while there, I wasn't too sure I would one day be in this situation. And I'm grateful.

You see, I have a degree in Psychology from a University with a great Psych program. That being said, I didn't go into counseling, I studied ironically, in the division of "Awareness and Reasoning" and I focused on Phenomenology. I have an above average IQ, for what that's worth. I'm a good person, I like to think, and so I've been told, and as well that I'm a good parent, told that by friends, friends of my kids and my kids (as adults).

I always tried to be involved in my kids' lives. Far more than many parent's from what I've heard. And in ways where other parents are intrusive to the kids' lives, I wasn't. I watched my kids carefully, or so I thought. When they rode around the block, I was there watching them. They thought they were on a grand adventure, but I was trailing them covertly. If someone had stopped to drag them into a car, there would have been yet another damaged pedophile laid up in the hospital under arrest, I assure you. And that was how I went about raising them. I tried to be intrusive into their lives, unobtrusively.

I thought I was doing everything, well, fairly correctly.

Then I found out about "cutting" behavior. If you don't know about this, kids cut their skin with sharp objects in order to "feel" something, or release endorphins to ease the pain of, "reality"? Or, for whatever reason. When I found this out, I couldn't understand this. I couldn't understand how my kids could have all these problems, when their home life really wasn't that bad. Yes, there was mental duress that I would have preferred they didn't have to go through, life situations that kids never should have to experience (divorce), but most kids have to learn to persevere through various types of mental duress, otherwise, we aren't raising them to deal with the real world as adults. Someone once said, that child-rearing is "creative phobia building". So true.

When I was four we moved to Spain. After a huge fight, my parents broke up and we moved to the East Coast. My mother met a guy, married him, had a kid (rather quickly) and when I was five, we moved back to Tacoma.

I knew, at four years old, that I didn't like my new step father to be. He was scary, odd, and simply wasn't my dad. I can understand some of what my son went through with my daughter's mother. She was the sweetest most beautiful girl, but he saw that dark spot waiting to come out from inside her. And it was there, and it came out.

Through the years after my mother married my step-father, from time to time he would terrorize me. He yelled at me constantly, I always felt I was in his way, and I was always in fear of pissing him off (again, probably similar to what my son went through with my daughter's mom). My mother used to tell me that he was that way because he was jealous of me. I never understood why, I was a kid, he was her husband. He didn't treat my sister that way. He didn't treat his own flesh and blood son that way. So I was under a lot of stress growing up. Add to that, ADHD which developed into ADD over time.

We moved every year. I never had friends for more than a year. Most the times wherever we moved to had friends my older sister's age, or my younger brother's age, but never my age. I was lonely. I was alone among my family. I was always in trouble and could never figure out why. I was horrible in school, it was misery. If something interested me, I got good grades, but little interested me. Life outside the window at school interested me. But they would have these experimental educational programs that fascinated me and were my saving grace, like the SRA Reading Laboratory (Scientific Research Associates, Inc.).

In seventh grade I left public school to join my little brother in his Catholic school experience. It was a nightmare for me. I'd never been picked on to that degree. For example, one day the boys in the last, graduating eighth grade class, surrounded me in a circle with a basketball and proceeded to throw the ball at my head, repeatedly, until my head hurt so badly I walked off the school grounds and headed home. I told my mother, she told the school.

Yet, nothing happened about that incident. And that was only one of many, albeit, the worst example, possibly vying for equal status with at least one other incident that involved my family and was the final straw and lead me to literally beating the hell out of one kid who attacked me in front of my mother and little brother.

My experience at a school where I was required to be a "good student" because they only had good students there, was so bad, that I decided to go back to public school. I had gotten into so many fights in Catholic school that for the rest of my K-12 career (9th-12th), I had a reputation that helped protect me, because of the other kids at that school who also didn't go to the next step, that being, Bellermine Catholic Preparatory School.

And yet, I survived it. With no thoughts of doing harm to myself, after all, myself, was the one I was trying to get through this nightmare called childhood.

Anything new and different, I volunteered for it.

Still, Life for me was stress. Too much stress for any kid. At school were bullies, I was smaller than normal until about tenth grade when I shot up a few inches, lost some weight and suddenly, girls were very interested after a lifetime of being ignored or annoying. I had to take most classes that I knew I wouldn't understand. Home life was a step-parent who hated me and I would have to hide from.

By the time I hit twelfth grade, I had a nervous breakdown in the form of a migraine that put me in the hospital. Three neuro surgeons on consult said I either needed to move out, or deal with it, or take drugs (this was subtext). They gave me a prescription to Valiums and sent me home. A few months later I graduated, I had a job set up, and I moved out. Life was good.

Why do I bring this up? Because, I never cut myself. I thought about blowing my brains out a couple of times, but really, I didn't think of suicide. I was too busy being "Me against the World" (or my parents). I had a loving mother, but she was kind of wacko. I figured (after I grew up) that if you have one bastard of a parent, it's very important that the other parent be as caring and loving as possible, so I always tried to fulfill that role. Research I read as a parent indicated that if you have a father who is involved with the child, especially a boy, you have a good chance at turning around even a kid who is seriously headed for the judicial system.

My point?

My home life was worse than my kids' home life in so many ways, and fractured in so many others. So, how come my kids turned self destructive and I wasn't?

Why, has been bugging me for years now. I've been through all this with psychiatrists, mental health care workers, suicide watch counselors and so on. But it wasn't until just now that I had an epiphany. I was watching a movie, a comedy (a ComDram really) "It's Kind of a Funny Story" with Zack Galifianakis about a kid (Keir Gilchrist) who admits himself to a hospital fearing suicide and it all takes place in 3 North of the Hospital. "3 North", I remember that kind of designation from my daughter being in the hospital for similar reasons, fear of wanting to kill herself.

Fear. So much of what my kids had was fear based. Sounds stupid, right? Like, how'd you NOT know that? Well, I knew they were afraid of something but couldn't figure out why. I couldn't figure out where fear came into play. Anger, sure. Bitterness, maybe. But, fear? We worked hard to keep fear out of their life. But when one of the parents is either bi polar or has a multiple personality disorder, no matter how professionally they have learned how to manage it (though have hid it so well, know one knows about it), the kids are going to have fear, if not about their parent, then about the fear of inconsistency, a real child killer.

Then it hit me. My kids had been protected. They really had nothing to physically fear. Mental abuse, maybe. My son got "brow beat" by my daughter's mother all the time. There were a few instances of her physically accosting him, a few of which I had to step and stop (you had to be there to understand), which may have been worse, as I understand it now, when I wasn't around. But then, my son has exaggerated his memories at times. He has claimed things that didn't happen, or weren't as bad at all as how he describes them, which I know because I was there.

But that doesn't explain our daughter, right? She got the mental side (after her and her mother moved out and we divorced), but not until Junior High. I do well in dealing with older kids, like 7th grade on; her mother was a wizard with younger kids, where I was helpless (useless?). It seems to me that once a kid hits 4th or 5th grade, she doesn't much want anything to do with them.

So, it was like my daughter, after being a "beautiful baby" since birth and getting constantly showered with attention from friends, family and strangers, once she hit late grade school and into Junior High, did not get as much attention anymore. Her mother and I split up when she was in 6th grade and so I didn't see her on a daily basis. I wanted to see her more, or have her full time, but her mother didn't want that to be (or at all if she'd had her way), and my job had a four hour a day commute, which kept me from having her full time.

But then her mother didn't have the time for her either really. Feeling that she wasn't a baby anymore, I suppose, she gave her less attention than she was ever used to; but you can't do that, and I warned her about that, considering our daughter's history. You see, that is how you create "beautiful baby syndrome".

I saw my little brother go through the same kind of thing and then, though I doubt it was related, he died of liver cancer at fifteen. So when my daughter hit High School, it was almost like something in her brain said, "I have to get attention to make up for all that I should have, and haven't, gotten." She deserved it and she got it, on 24 hour suicide watch one week until I could (I could) get her into a Youth Inpatient Facility and then visiting her every day in another town, until she got let out. I stopped seeing her every day at her request as she progressed and though I felt disconnected from her, I knew it meant she was doing better.

Our brains have a way of trying to fix what's wrong, when they deem there is an imbalance. You have to understand that. The "Cowboy Up" attitude her mother had, is completely dysfunctional with children at some point, and you have to recognize that. On the day we interred her, I watched her mother push her into a catatonic, nearly suicidal state, in harassing her at a time when you simply shouldn't do that. She couldn't see what she was doing and that, was the problem in how we had gotten here, if you ask me. It seemed obvious to me, I know it was to our daughter, and it eventually was to the staff there.

Okay, so here's the deal. My kids always had us around. Everything they did was carefully supervised either by their us, other parents,  Aunts, Uncles, or Grandparents. They were controlled, protected, watched over. Perhaps, too much?

I on the other hand... well, I started Karate in late grade school, I fought in Karate tournaments, in fact the first two ever International Open Karate Tournaments in the Pacific NorthWest, in Seattle in 1967 and 68. Fighting a tournament, is fear invoking. Trust me. Then I got into search and rescue with the Civil Air Patrol. I flew in small planes. I landed my first plane in 8th grade.

I was crazy about guns. So my mother called the Police and they suggested a local kid's rifle club. As a kid in Junior High, I got to do things that only adults usually got to do. If my mother had known the kind of training I was getting up in the mountains with the C.A.P. (a great organization and an Auxiliary of the US Air Force), for a weekend or a week at a time, she'd have had a heart attack. In tenth grade at 15, I got my SCUBA diving license. I took myself sky diving at 17 when I found out I could go without my parent's permission; my mother had previously said, "NO."

Okay, here's my point. I did things as a kid that taught me how to deal with my fears. I was put in situations where it was me against things trying to kill me (like gravity, ignorance, darkness and remoteness of the Cascade Mountains). My kids didn't have that. My daughter has her mother's "fear nothing" and "balls to the wall" genetics and attitude from working with horses all their lives. Her mother is a tough individual and I've seen her throw around a 1500 pound horse that was being snippy, and not taking any crap off of it whatsoever. Our daughter is her mother's child. My son has my genetics of perseverance, stubbornness and  toughness. Both kids are highly intelligent. That's not just my opinion, it's a matter of official documentation.

But both of them have trouble with emotional issues. The kind of strength of character and courage it takes in facing down a horse, they can both do; that's one thing. Facing down social and unknown fear invoking situations, however, was an entirely different kind of thing (they have since grown through that).

But that, was my epiphany. I had been trained, in one way or another how to deal with fear. I always thought I was a rather fearful individual. I was fearful of going into my parent's dark quarter basement, into young adulthood. But someone had told me as a kid that when you are afraid, you always have to face your fear down or it will take control of you. I took that to heart and I told my kids about that. It didn't hit them quite as hard as it had me.

So I spent most of the first part of my life in fear. But while I was in that fear, I was either shooting a gun (safely), hanging from a rope off of a cliff, stunt jumping my bike; or later backpacking in the Cascade or Olympics alone, SCUBA diving alone (don't do this at home, kids), jumping out of a plane, racing a car (in high school), or something dangerous, taking it to the edge (why I pursued adrenalin oriented, death defying activities, is another issue not for here). What I didn't realize then was the fear I was feeling, was being managed. It was just that I felt like a coward all the time, because I was experiencing fear a lot. But while I was doing this, I was achieving things, I was winning over those fears.

They say that courage is being afraid, yet doing what you need to do, anyway.

It wasn't until years later when I told people things I had done that I realized it wasn't normal and that people were fearful of things I had done to the point that they wouldn't do them; yet I would do them and do them again, fearful, or not.

The two fears I've never really won over, were a fear of heights and fear of women in certain areas. I know a number of women who would find that hard to believe; but it's not once you have the green light from a girl that I've had issues with, it's getting past that initial point to get that green light. Dancing, I've never been good with, though I have gotten praise for when I had danced. I just never liked being watched and when I danced I felt like everyone was watching my every move. I think that tends to happen to kids with ADHD. As a child you consistently embarrassed your parents, and so they cracked down on you for your behavior. You either fight that being disciplined (as my cousin Jeff did and was in trouble all through school) and have massive trouble growing up, or you try to blend in and you acquire a lot of smaller fears (as I did).

But this is about my kids and my epiphany about their situation. So now that we know this, what good is it? How does this help, you?

For one thing, have your kids doing things to help them manage their fears, to educate them on how to deal with and get around fear. Not yelling at your son who's afraid of playing football and getting creamed, but teaching him how to do it, to understand it, to know what to do, when and why to do it, building him (or her) up to it and most importantly, to have fun.

So, it seems to me it is all about fear because of a lack of doing things, due to being overly protected. America has become so damn Politically Correct, it's obnoxious. In doing this, we have made our youth weak. They need to fall off their bike, have someone call them names and bear with it and progress forward, not hide and shrivel beneath the weight of outside attacks. The real world is harsh, childhood, has to have some of that, but in the right ways to give them the tools they need, not take those tools away or hide them completely from them.

We have over protected our kids today so that they don't get a chance to do some of the stuff American kids have been doing for a couple of hundred years. Consider that you are not really protecting your kids sometimes, you are protecting them against getting hurt physically to be sure, but not emotionally. Kids need muscle, not fat. Look around, how many fat kids are there? Physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually?

It's looking to me like we need to protect them against emotional harm even more than the physical. And giving everyone a trophy in T ball, simply isn't it. I'm not a fan of competition as I've been destroyed by  it (another story, another time). But kids have to fail, we learn so much from failure. But as a parent you have to teach them how to learn from it, and not be destroyed by it.

So, think about it. If your kid is cutting, or a similar behavior, ask yourself, "how did you train them into that behavior?" Don't feel guilty, don't feel overly responsible because none of us know what we're doing raising kids. Because remember, if you do what is right for one kid, and apply that to another kid, you may make them completely out of control. Raising kids is a dance, it's all about reacting to that specific child. There is no cookie cutter method. Child-rearing too, is a fearful thing to do. Luckily, we can make a lot of mistakes and still turn out good kids; but there is a line and that line shifts with each child and each situation, home life, parents, siblings, friends, family, location, culture, etc.

But parents don't grow up wanting to commit suicide by raising their kids wrong. Kids however, do.

This has all been kind of heavy. We do the best we can in life, for our kids. It's hard to know what to do all of the time. None of us are perfect though some of us like to act like we are, or that we know everything. Let your kids see you don't have all the answers in life, and how you go about dealing with that. Let them see you make the occasional mistakes, and how you go on from there.

My ex thought you never let kids see those things and once my kids grew up, they thanked me for that, because it gave them hope to realize, though they weren't perfect, neither were we as parents, and yet, life goes on.

To help put it in perspective, allow me to give an example through an anecdote someone gave me (and I don't know its origin) and that I've altered....

A Nun was seated next to a little girl about twelve years old, who was reading a very old book on animals and History. They were on an airplane about to take off. The Nun turned to girl and said,
"Wouldn't you like to have a conversation with me? Flights do go so much quicker if you strike up a conversation with another passenger."

The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total stranger,
"What would you want to talk about?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the Nun smiling,"maybe we could talk about God's Divine plan for us; or what Heaven might be like since we are after all, flying up into the skies; or perhaps, about life after death?"

"Kind of heavy for talking to a kid about, don't you think, Lady? But okay," she said, "those could be interesting topics, but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff, grass. Yet a deer secretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, a "cow pie", but a horse produces droppings in clumps. Why do you suppose that is?"

Amused, the Nun visibly impressed by the little girl's intelligence. she thinks about it and responds with,
"Hmmm, I really have no idea, my dear."

To which the little girl replied,
"Then do you really feel qualified to discuss God, Heaven, or life after death, when you obviously don't know crap?" And went back to reading her book, "On the Origin of the Species".

1978 - Black Sabbath / Van Halen Tour

In 1978 I was stationed in Spokane, Washington, the "Inland Empire". We'll skip that for now....

My wife at the time, my two best friends and I got tickets for the Black Sabbath tour. Rock on! Some band called Van Halen were opening for them. Okay, I think I heard a single they had on the radio. Sounded pretty good, but BLACK SABBATH was coming to the fieldhouse! I didn't care who was opening for them. So, we were going. I'll get back to this in a moment.

I was just sitting here watching That Metal Show on VH1. Yes. I was. I listen to a diverse selection of music. Up until recently, I had one of the most diverse and extended music catalogs of anyone I knew, or had met. What now with the Internet, everyone seems to know everything (okay, not really), but people are far more diverse now and with all the bands and nationalities available at your fingertips, everyone can at least sound like they have a huge musical vocabulary.

Oh, and about VH1. I remember when cable first started and there was MTV. Then VH1. I HATED coming into someone's house who were playing VH1. Boring. Kill me, then throw me in the alley but don't make me listen to VH1. Doesn't Lawrence Welk listen to that channel? Well, VH1 for old people now, is kind of my cohort. What a drag....

Chris Cornel was sitting in the audience on this episode (from Soundgarden). He used to come into Tower Video Mercer store in Seattle back in the late 80s. We had a few bands like that who hung around between video and records, Metal Church, Green River (of course, Jeff Ament now of Pearl Jam, worked in Tower Video as media buyer, eventually training me and turning his work over to me; btw, Green River didn't hang out, per se, but sometimes the band members showed up to see Jeff), Mudhoney, and others.

One of those bands, Metal Church maybe, I had to come out and ask the lead singer to get off the counter in the video store because he was freaking out the employees. I came out and he got down smiling, and looked at me waiting for my reaction, which was, "Oh, hey! How you doing?" He just waved and I told the employee don't worry about it, he's the lead singer in a rock back and they are a rock band. I told her who, but she didn't know them.

I was in Mudhoney's house one day when the band was on tour. I had given one of the band's girlfriends a ride home and she showed me all the photography she was doing of the band. I would have loved to have stayed as we were getting along incredibly well, but she worked for my friend John and he almost literally drug me away from her and her tongue stud. She worked for him at the time and it would have caused him problems, or so he thought (probably correctly).

John was running Champ Arcade on First Avenue at Pike Place Market and she was one of the "dancers" there. John is gay and I had been the one to help him move up from Tacoma (any idea what it was like back then to be gay in Tacoma, Washington?). Actually, my apartment mate and manager of Tower Video at the time. I was picking up John to go do something that night and one of his dancers asked for a ride home. I was inclined to acquiesce. But he knew my history with women and besides I had picked him up to go do something, not start dating someone that could get me killed by an entire band.

So anyway, I'm watching TMS and they have on Tony Iommi! If you don't know him, think Black Sabbath. If you don't know Black Sabbath, well, read a book. So I'm thinking, Awesome (yes, capital "A"). My first big interest in a band would have to have been Black Sabbath (okay, you could argue Three Dog Night and I did see them in concert, and oh my God, what a night that was and no, I'll never forget it, something about driving down Alaska Way in Seattle, and a cop in a patrol car on my left, watching me closely about midnight on a Saturday night, and a very hot, naked nubile hiding in my passenger side footwell. And yes, if you are reading this, which you probably are, that was you, and you know who you are.

It was cool enough when Ozzie went on TV with his family, but then Gene Simmons' show kind of blew them away, but it was never their families I wanted to hear about anyway, it was the music, the music history, and their mental processes. Okay, I like Gene's family a lot, I like Ozzie's too, but let's face it, Gene's family was built for a show like Simmons Family Jewels.

So they ask Tony, on TMS, about the "myth" that in the New York Black Sabbath / Van Halen tour in 1978, if it was true that Van Halen blew them off the stage. That got me because I was at a stage in that tour, only in Spokane (and yes, I lived in New York and I know the difference and sure I'd rather have been in New York, but the US Air Force wanted me in Spokane and Leavenworth Prison said, I would follow their lead on this one).

Tony's response was, "Well, I'm friends with Eddie and I don't want to say, but they had a lot of energy and I think we put together a good show." Or something like that, I paraphrase a bit there, but you get the gist. This was on the Season Eight Premiere of the show on August 20, 2011, by the way.

Well, all this hit me when I realized that hey, I had been to that tour. My friends told me, that next day, that they too thought that Van Halen blew Black Sabbath off the stage. So it got me thinking about all this. I think, perhaps, if I could go back to that show, I could now, and perhaps I could have back then, seen what was happening. Because of Van Halen's style, it could easily seem like they "blew Black Sabbath off the stage".

And I'd have to, because, although I was at that concert, I didn't get to see the show. What I remember, what I saw of the show was it was festival seating. Everyone was sitting on the floor. The four of us were sitting on the floor. Suddenly, the lights went out. I think someone said something on a loudspeaker, then we all stood up. The lights all came on, the curtain opened, some guy leaped out center stage front and WHAM! A chord rang out and I could tell, just from that, this was about to be something special!

There was some more chords, then some very fast playing, but I was too busy observing the ceiling crashing down in my face. Then, blackness.

Now we considered ourselves professional partiers. But part of that professionalism is in lasting to the end of whatever event you are partying at. I was told later that, one of my friends turned around to look at me, as if, wow this guy's good, just in time to see my eyes rolling up in my head. He hit my other friend who saw it, then my head started to go back, and they both caught me just as my knees buckled and I started to go down. Before I could hit the floor they lowered me. My wife was trying to figure out what was going on, checking me out and the guys decided taking me to the side of the main area was a good idea.

I remember coming too as they were holding me up, one on each side, and the double doors opened leading out to the wings, the hallways lining either side of the main floor. As I came too, I saw one of those guys doing Security in the black shirts that work for the people putting on the concert. He was walking up and asked, what are you doing? It was obvious, my head was rolling around on my neck, but then I started to get to my senses again.

Was it the Evil Satan Music of a Black Sabbath Concert? Hmmm... probably not. The Security guy, understanding fully what was going on (had he seen this kind of thing before?), as if he were a professional in this kind of business, says, "Take him to the OTHER side, not this side, you don't want to bring him into this side!"

My friends are getting pissed, I need what I need and they're going to see that I get it. Hey, what can I say, we were tight, I would have died for these guys, I would have gone to jail for these guys, I would have stolen one of their cars off of a Nuclear Air Base risking five years in Federal prison so they didn't get caught for whatever might have been in that car, while they were on vacation and under arrest in absentia... I mean, if that had ever happened...

My friends said they just wanted to get me some air, or a drink of water. The Security guy says, "But the Police are on this side, take him to the other side, otherwise...." Just then a cop walks up. My friends straighten up. I shake them off as I've regained my senses again and with a cop there, trying to regain my composure. They talk to the cop, what's going on, yadda yadda yadda... while I try to get to a drinking fountain because I KNOW I need a drink of water. And honestly, I think had I been able to get a big glass of water, I might HAVE been better, I was probably concurrently dehydrated a bit making whatever was going on, worse.

As I lean over the typical white ceramic and metal drinking fountain, the cop yells, "Don't do that. Don't let him do THAT!" I hesitate, glance at them, I feel fine, I turn my head, look at the fawcett, and begin to lean into it to get a drink, thinking, I'm fine and I'll prove it!

Luckily, I had intelligent friends. They both went for me and just as I passed out a second time, they got to my arms and pulled me back, saving me from smashing my face into the drinking fountain. At that point, all I know is there was yelling, and someone was lifting, someone or some people, and then I was on a flat white plane. I felt it was white, it just seemed like I was lying on something, white. It was a gurney. I was being wheeled to the other end of the fieldhouse, where you come in the front door.

I looked up, I saw a few people, I saw a cop, I knew the cop was bad, the Security warned me against being on that side, because of THE COPS. So, I figured I needed to do the one sane thing left for me to do. I would punch the cop out and make a run for it, maybe get back inside and hide among the many people watching the concert, and that would be that. I started to ball up my right fist, I started to lift my right arm to prep it, then full out take a swing at the cop's head, and I realized, no, my arm isn't moving, I can't do a thing, in fact, now that I'm starting to think more about it and the night air is hitting me, I'm thinking that perhaps, hitting a cop at a rock concert, just might be the wrong path to choose, especially, if I wanted to either, 1) see the concert at all, or 2) go home to my own bed tonight, or perhaps even tomorrow night for that matter.

They wheeled the gurney to an ambulance. I'm now fully accepting that I'm fully out of it. There is a bunch of levitating and bumping and sliding and suddenly, I'm inside an ambulance. Their are questions and answers going about. What's wrong with him. What happened, etc., etc., but not a lot of answers from my friends or wife about why I was in that condition. So the cop says, check his wallet for any medical information. My wife says she is my wife and I don't have any kind of medical situation.

One of the medics is looking through my wallet and the first thing he says is, "I want him out of my ambulance" and he hands my wallet to the other medic who is saying, "What? Why?"

The first medic replies, "Because his wallet says he has a Secret Nuclear Clearance. I'm not sitting up all night filling out paperwork for this guy. I had one of these guys in my ambulance a while back, another guy from the Air Base, if they have a Secret clearance or nuclear weapons stamped on their ID, you have to fill out so much paperwork, so many times, to so many people, if he doesn't absolutely have to be in my ambulance, and have to go to the hospital, I want him out."

I'm hearing all this. But I still can't move. He looks at me and asks if I have to go to the hospital. I say, no. He says, Then get out. I said, can I just lie here for a few minutes? He said, "Fine, two minutes, then I want you out of my ambulance. If we need this for someone really in trouble, I don't want you here slowing us down."

And so, I didn't see the Black Sabbath / Van Halen concert in 1978, that I was at. But I heard it was still pretty good. Black Sabbath got their due even if my friends liked Van Halen better. Now let me mention, I was older than my friends and Van Halen was the new, and Black Sabbath the old. I was a Black Sabbath fan, as were my friends, but they were younger and didn't have the awe I did for a band that changed things so much for us.

My wife pulled the car around that night and after I threw up green in the gutter right in front of a cop, we said, yes, we'd go to the hospital, but I said, take me home. I got into bed and we had an incredible night of lovemaking and giggling and listening to music that I knew, wasn't the concert. I was regretting every minute of missing my number one band at that time (Jethro Tull strangely enough running a close second and they even changed positions at times), but the music we were making at home, really did a lot to make up for it.

As for my friends the next day, they felt bad for me, knew I was sad I had missed my favorite band and were just trying to make me feel better.

Two bands I'd have loved to have seen that night, a concert lost to me forever.

So do I think Van Halen blew Black Sabbath off the stage than night? My friends said they seemed like maybe they were tired or not really into playing that night and Van Halen was nuts, young, dumb, and full of well, energy, let's say. But I would have loved to see my band in their heyday, albeit a year before Ozzie quit. And seeing Van Halen at the beginning would have been pretty awesome.

Oh, why did I get sick? Before we left for the concert, and in timing it as best we could, my wife made some brownies. But she didn't stir it up very well and whatever was added to the recipe to enhance our musical experience that night, all ended up in my quarter of that small pan of baked goods. When we were sitting in front of the stage, just before the band came on, I was offered a pipe and I refused it, because something told me I was done. They said, but you have to, you're here! I allowed myself to be buffaloed and took one small drag and that was all it took to put me right over the edge.

What did I learn from that? Make your own brownies.

What is change? Occupy... Some Thing!

Occupy Your World! It's Yours, take it back.

What do Governments most fear? Their people. Why? Because a government's people are their graders. The trouble is that most governments think they are the teachers in the school of life, when really the people are. They try to force feed people to believe that and they succeed many times. It is when people discover they are the Teachers and the government are the servants, that those in charge fear for their jobs.

The dangerous part of governments is their entrenchment. Elected officials last too long in office. They pay either too much attention to their voters so they can keep their jobs, or the pay no attention; they pay too much attention to the majority or they pay too little attention to what they should do, rather than the popular and sometimes incorrect polling data.

We have to do what is right, sometimes we have to sacrifice for that, sometimes we have to upset people, sometimes we have to lose our job to do what is right. How many officials are willing to do what is right and lose their job? I've heard some say that is not true. But I know I don't want to lose my job, I have bills, until recently I had a family, kids to take care of and prepare for entering the world as adults.

I don't have an answer for this, but it has gotten really bad. We need officials to govern who will have decency in their powers, not just self serving orientation. Maybe we need to hire people, then pay for them the rest of their lives? If we voted in a president that had one, six year term, maybe he would do what is right. I get the feeling that too many presidents get into office for their first four year term and immediately begin running for their second term.

They don't want to do anything to screw up a chance at that second term, then in their second term they are worried about their legacy. I would much rather they only worry about their legacy, hopefully what we voted them in for, than that they don't want to do anything to lose their second term  of office.

Having Congresspeople and Representatives able to return to office after their first term means we have veteran government officials that have relationships and know how things work. Having only Freshman officials who have to first learn everything, is a hindrance, but that brings a freshness (Freshmen and woman?) to things. When they repeatedly return to office, lobbyists have relationships with them that go on year after year. Lobbyists start out as supercitizens over that of normal average citizens like you and me, because they are backed by big money, and a relationship with that official who is on a serial office, many being voted in for decades.

That is good in a way, but it is bad in a way. Again, I don't have the answer, but we shouldn't ignore these things just because we don't know what to do about it now. We find out how to fix things by talking about it. Sometimes, simply by making changes and then working it out. But doing nothing, merely propagates the situation, exacerbates it.

We need right now to start with our kids. Educate them more about government so they grow up smarter about it. Teach them critical thinking, hone their skills. We educate kids to keep them quiet, to give them a basic education, not an education to excel. We don't educate them to have jobs, or we educate them to work in corporations. They need to think outside the box, to be irritating sometimes in their views, to spark thought, controversy (productively, not just annoyingly). We need to make debate a foreground thing, not miles behind things like playing football, or baseball or whatever.

Why are we in this situation? Because we have been lax for far too long. You don't achieve greatness by sitting on your ass, you push for change, for better situations. New, novel ones, unique abilities, situation, positions, products. We've done well on some of those things, but not the invisible ones, like education. We pay and treat our teachers like garbage when they are heroes, or should be.

Most of what is needed to be done to fix things, are invisible and seem to most people as counter-intuitive. And so we sit, whine, lose tempo in life and watch as things crumble around us.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Think about it. Talk about it. Go out into the streets like the people are now in New York, Seattle, Portland, Washington DC, and in other countries. There is a ground swelling of people pissed off and demanding change. But they are demanding it of those in charge and all they will want to do is maintain the status quo, keep their jobs, look good, and in the end, WILL anything get done?

Only if people continue to push and push, and make noise, and push more until something breaks, and change is inevitable. Because, something has to change. And change, is not status quo, but our change, when we push for it, always turns out to be the same old thing. We think change happens, but in hindsight we can look back and see, nothing really changes.

Unless we make it happen. I liked President Obama, we needed him when he rose to well, not power, but position. I'm not seeing him wield power, but he has invoked some new and good things. I'd just like to see him kick ass like Bush and Chaney did, who said, they didn't care what people thought, they were going to do what was right. And that is what Pres. Obama needs to do. Shove some reality done some throats in Congress, in the House, in the all powerful multi national corporations who, let's face it, are the root of so many of our problems.

It's easy to just say that, to lay blame at the door of one house (that of corporations) but truthfully, they and what they represent are greatly to blame. Once you move to a certain size in business, you lost sight of those that make up what your company is. We need to pull that back. Make sure that the people who make corporations what they are, are compensated, and not just those at the top and the share holders. We need to reorient how things are done, what is done, the orientation of those who run things and how they do business.

And this has to be world wide with the US leading the way. We don't just need innovation in product, we need more so, innovation in process.

There is hope. But only if we keep pressing the lazy bastards at the top and don't let them continuously trick and deceive us as they have ever always done in the past.

Change is a happening, don't let it stop.