Month: November 2024

Orange Man Good

photog Current Events, OCF, Trump

Even here in accursed Dunwich, Donald Trump’s victory has reverberated through the ether and shaken the very foundations of reality.  The First Selectman paused while gulping down a bus full of convention-bound orthodontists and was heard to say, “I like the cut of that orange-man’s jib!”

No fooling.  Regardless of political stripe, every non-leftist has been knocked for a loop by the enormity of Trump’s victory.  Even dyed in the wool voting deriders like the ZMan have acclaimed the power of Trump’s hold on more than half the country.  And even as the dissident right reasserts their conviction that “we can’t vote our way out of this,” nevertheless, they applaud his fearless crusade to wreak a terrible vengeance against his Deep State enemies and drive official Washington insane with fear and trepidation.

And my hat is off to him.  It’s not that I now believe he’ll be able to vanquish the managerial state, but I honor the courage of his attempt.  And the idealist side of me is galvanized by the prospect of Donald Trump firing the entire executive layers of the FBI, State Department and DOJ.  I’d give a whole lot to see all of those tin-pot Stalins crying on the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post about how unjustly they’ve been treated.  And I’d love to see Comey brought up on charges in front of a real grand jury from outside of DC.

But the realist side of me doesn’t think it’s going to happen.  I think Trump will make things somewhat better.  I don’t think he’ll drain the swamp.  What I hope he’ll do is pardon all the people who were persecuted during Biden’s term, deport the illegal immigrants and use executive orders to give the red states the breathing room they’ll need over the course of the next four years to start the difficult process of inoculating their states and citizens, as much as it is possible, from the non-constitutional interference of the federal government.

What would be fortuitous is if the Supreme Court strikes down the rest of the unconstitutional “rights” that the liberal majority discovered; homosexuality, gay marriage and affirmative action.  With those issues back in the purview of the states we would see conservative states restoring normalcy to their people while places like California and New York could enjoy all the incredible benefits of Kindergarten Drag Queen story hour, transgender girls’ sports supremacy and pediatric trans-affirming surgeries to their hearts’ content.

So, I’ll finish by saluting the Orange Man for being a phenomenon that has transformed conservative politics definitively.  His exposure of the phoniness of all the establishment Republicans opened millions of people’s eyes to reality and banished those craven losers to the ash heap of history.  The Bushes, Cheneys, Romneys and all their ilk.  And all the “conservative” journalist grifters whom he relegated to cesspools like the Bulwark.  He has done a tremendous service for this country.  And I believe we are responsible for using the knowledge he gave us wisely.  Never allow yourself to be frightened into thinking you have to say things you don’t believe in.  Never try to convince yourself that something that is nonsense should be accepted because otherwise someone’s feelings might be hurt.  Never entertain the idea that there might be a conservative case for castrating children.  Use the knowledge he has given us as a tool for navigating the dangerous waters we find ourselves in.

All That Jazz

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So, it turns out I should be a plotter.  Looking at my story from the point of view of character arcs it became obvious that I haven’t even decided on several characters’ outcomes that are pivotal to a satisfying resolution to the plot.  Put succinctly, somebody’s got to die.  And maybe that’s part of the reason why I haven’t moved those character arcs along.  I’ve grown fond of all my main characters and deciding which of them has to die and then writing that outcome is disturbing.  But I do see it has to be done and I’ve begun working out the scenario.

So now I understand why just drifting along on plot can be very problematic for anything more complicated than a short story.  If you have six or eight main characters and another dozen secondary characters, not mapping out what ends up happening to them risks all kinds of conflicts or worse; wasted opportunities for adding interesting content to the story.

I said that writing a death scene was disturbing.  And it is but at the same time it’s interesting to plan how this event will impact each of the adjacent characters.  For instance, it’s not too challenging to have associates and even friends react to a death.  But one of the most likely “victims” has a parent/child relationship with one of the other characters.  That will have to be a developed carefully to produce a satisfactory effect.  So now all of a sudden, my simple dystopian sci-fi book has emotional states like bereavement and anguish.  Who knew?

And a much bigger consideration for being a plotter versus a pantser is how much more important it is if your story is part of a larger series of stories.  If the story doesn’t end with the end of a stand-alone book, then things like killing off characters, even killing off antagonists is much more serious.  If you invest an enormous amount of effort into building up a really wonderful villain then you’d be crazy to kill him off in book one.  Sure, kill off his henchmen; Helmuth and the Tyrant of Thrale by all means.  But Gharlane of Eddore has to last through six or seven books.

And that’s just one aspect of what needs to be coordinated between a series of stories.  Doing that without a map would be very difficult.  And I see that now.  So, I’ll be heading down the path of plotting an outline for the whole story first and then a detailed outline for the first book.  It’ll take a little longer but in the long run it’ll save me a lot of time and it’ll make for better stories.

And on a completely unrelated topic, today I reduced the number of videos I watched of Kamala voters barking at the moon to three.  Well, everything’s relative and I think that’s pretty good progress in kicking the habit.  I remember in 2016 I watched the Hilary shriekers all the way through December and still couldn’t get enough of it.  Now it’s starting to get boring.  Maybe with Trump in the White House we’re all ready to move on from all of this jazz.

Plotter and Pantsers

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Here on the other side of the bright line of demarcation that is the post-2024 election decision I selected outlining the plot of my poor neglected novel “Sniper” as this morning’s project.  Last night was a long planned and greatly enjoyed family party celebrating Princess Sack of Potatoes’ sixth birthday.  It was a good-sized gathering of about thirty people and featured the Princess’s food of choice; multiple versions of pizza.  Now I personally do not believe that something called “mac and cheese” pizza could actually be considered pizza.  It is an abomination in the same league as anything called pizza that contains pineapple.  But I am a tolerant man.  If the children demand mac and cheese pizza then so be it.  I found a giant box that contained something that was garnished with sausage and pepperoni on it and so I was content.  And I even managed to introduce the grandchildren to a small snippet of the classic W.C. Fields movie “It’s a Gift” before it was drowned out by the torrent of talking that erupted when their parents followed us upstairs after the majority of the guests left.  Well, I’ll just have to wait for an opportunity during the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays to screen that cinematic gem for their viewing pleasure.

And because that gathering ended late, I had no time to look around for a theme for last night’s post.  And honestly, I was exhausted.  And if I had tried to post something in that state it would have been stale and derivative and a waste of everybody’s time.  And in this new regimen of mine that is anathema.  I’ll write when I have something I want to say.  And when I don’t, I’ll work on my projects.

And getting back to the theme of this post, my project for today is to review “The Sniper” holistically and identify plot line and character development and quality issues that need to be worked on.  And come up with an outline for the whole story and an outline for the series of stories in this “universe” and then a plan for completing this novel this winter. And then scheduling this work to be finished by some reasonable date.

And this is exciting for me.  It’s an intellectually interesting process that I’ve never tried before.  Up until now I’ve been what’s called a discovery writer or more colloquially a “seat of the pantser” or just a pantser.   This is the opposite of an “outliner” or a plotter.  A discovery writer just sits down and starts writing based on some idea or even just a gestalt of a story and keeps writing and let’s the story write itself without any direction from the author’s conscious mind.  I’ve always done this.  The positive side of this process is that the author’s natural creative instincts are in control and many exciting characters and plot events bubble up.  It is the natural method for producing realistic dialog and emotional insight into the characters.  The negative side is that the story direction is kind of random and you very easily can paint your story into a corner that can only be fixed by a massive re-write which is lethal for story-telling and for the morale of the writer.

And as someone who has run up against this dead-end scenario several times, I have decided to make the effort to do a formal outline and learn the skills it takes to plan my story in a disciplined way so that it won’t fly off the rails at the end and cause me massive mental anguish and confusion.  If I find that working on this outline is interesting, I’ll probably write more about and might even consult some of the sci-fi fans in the audience for their opinions on some of my story choices.

So here I go.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 09NOV2024 – Soyboy Replacement

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war pig

 

The only way to survive is to breed better people. The child they refuse to birth may, Indeed, turn out to be a tyrant or a murderer. But then, it could also turn out to be the next Edison or Carver or Turing or Salk or Florence Nightingale. Odds are better they will grow up to be average people and live a good life with children of their own. People went on having children during WWII when things were one hell of a lot worse than they are now. They even had children during the Great Depression. You can’t change the world unless you breed.

I interacted with one of the zero population idiots. He said we should stop breeding. I asked him what human population he thought was sustainable. He said zero. So I drew my 1911A1, took out the mag, loaded it with one round and handed it to him. “Why don’t you start with yourself, then. The safety is off, just put it to your temple and pull the trigger. You won’t even feel it. Show me you mean what you say.” Of course he declined and ran off, more or less. This was about 40 years ago, in Del Rio, Texas.

Without children there is no future, good or bad. But I bet Asian couples won’t play the stupid zero population game. As a result, we will be invaded and the invaders will breed plenty of children to replace stupid Caucasians.

At my age, I can go to the Philippines, find a cute, fecund woman half my age and bring forth three or four kids before I die or finally become infertile. She would be happy with the widow’s pension from the VA and social security when I’ve gone. We don’t need the weepy, sub-beta fools who won’t have children. Bringing children forth and raising them is not for sissies. Not if done right. Our forefathers and foremothers tamed a continent and created the greatest nation. We need those people, not soyboys and soygirls.

Trump will hopefully end the department of education. That is the first step. Since it’s inception, educational standards have only gone down. Local people pay the taxes so they should determine what their schools teach, NOT the feds, or even the state. In fact, I’d prefer home schooling as the norm.