Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

My Own Take on Super Sunday

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I had to postpone my trip to see “Iron Lung” with my grandson.  We got another six inches of snow between yesterday and today and had to spend the day clearing it.  And I really think the meteorological profession is retrogressing.  A couple of days ago they said we would get a “dusting.”  Some dusting!  And unfortunately for me the wind was wild.  I ended up with an ice beard and a frozen face.  But it’s done and tomorrow morning we’ll see what cosmic horror lurks at the bottom of an ocean of human blood!  I’ve read a bunch of reviews and what I’ve gleaned is that this is an homage to the video game of the same name and anyone who isn’t a fan of the game will find it a bit long (maybe quite a bit too long).  But that’s okay.  It will give me a chance to hang out with my grandson afterward and find out what he especially liked about it.

Basically, this movie is sort of the “Star Wars” of his generation.  Because it’s for them.  It’s a nerdy touchstone that they bond over.  So, I want to show deference to their choice of insider totem.  I want to get a sense of what they enjoy.  Should be interesting.

Going through the news is becoming goofier every day.  Apparently, Trump called the Obamas monkeys in some kind of video meme.  I think CBS was angry that Trump hadn’t apologized.  Well, calling Obama a monkey is kind of insensitive to monkeys.  As far as I know monkeys treat all humans equally.  Whereas the Obamas are anti-white racists, which I consider much worse than monkeys.  They’re awful human beings.  I hope Trump apologizes to monkeys for comparing them to the Obamas.

There was another article stating that Starlink has been shut off in Ukraine and now the Russians can’t control their drones.  The article made it sound like the Russians were cut off because they didn’t have legitimate accounts with Starlink.  So, does that mean that Putin was doing what most people’s young adult children do when they use their parents’ Netflix and Disney Plus accounts?  The idea that this war in which hundreds of thousands of men have been killed is being run on pirated GPS usage just seems a bridge too far.  Is this really what’s going on?  What’s next?  Will we find out that ChatGPT has been drafted by Putin and is running the battlefield strategy?

And of course, tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday.  I guess it must be at least seven years since I’ve watched a Super Bowl.  And honestly, I can’t imagine why I’ll ever bother watching it again.  And that goes for all of professional sports.  All the virtue signaling over race and homosexual identity have made all of it nauseating and I’d rather watch a test pattern than endure their nonsense.  I did see that Anheuser-Bush has put together some commercial for the Super Bowl that involves a Clydesdale horse befriending a bald eagle.  Well, the only thing I could think of was, “Which one is a stand-in for Dylan Mulvaney?”  I don’t think horses and eagles are going to get Bud Light their customer base back.  Enjoy your Sunday.

Goodreads Book Giveaway February 7 – 19 of “The Sniper”

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Huzzah!  The chance to win a free paperback copy of this desperately sought after literary jewel.  Did I say jewel?  Nay!  Miracle!!!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Sniper by Jake Barter

The Sniper

by Jake Barter

Giveaway ends February 19, 2026.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

With Extra Butter

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Oldest Grandson is a fan of video games and of video game adjacent internet personalities.  There is a guy named Markiplier (well, technically that’s an alias) who has made a fortune playing video games on his YouTube channel and currently has something like thirty-seven million followers.  I’ve only ever watched a couple of minutes of his content and must confess I don’t see the attraction.  I guess it’s because I’m old.

Anyway, this guy decided to make a horror movie using his own money and then put it on 3,000 movie screens.  It cost him about $3 million to make.  And on its first weekend it’s made more than $18 million.

Now here’s the thing.  In Hollywood the catering budget for a movie that makes $18 million on its first weekend would cost more than $3 million.  Anyone who would be employed to open a movie of that size would make at least $5 million in Hollywood.  So just based on scale any movie made for less than $3 million is in a completely different league from Hollywood.  This movie couldn’t fail with the built in audience it has and almost any Hollywood movie can’t help but fail.  Even Forbes magazine is touting the new entertainment model that “influencers” like Markiplier has pioneered with his movie success.

So, this is the third movie I’ve heard of that made a bunch of money because someone with tens of millions of followers on line self-financed it and got his people to buy tickets.  Does this show us the future or is this just a blip while the streaming giants kill off or buy up Hollywood?  Maybe it’s a little bit of both.  Markiplier would never get his movie made by a Hollywood studio.  And Netflix and Amazon are frantically looking for content that won’t be ignored by the Zoomers.  I think what we’re beginning to see is a realization that creative types and Silicon Valley are going to have to blow up the Hollywood model with its bloated budgets and maniacal dependence on poorly written sequels of old intellectual properties.  They’re going to have to forget about making crap like “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” or “Star Wars 37: Search for Obi Wan’s Lesbian Aunt.”

The kids around today want to watch stuff that speaks to them.  Some of it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to old people like myself.  But it doesn’t have to.  What they don’t want is corporate slop disguised as sequels to movies that their grandparents watched as kids.  And you really can’t blame them.  So next Saturday I’ll be going with Oldest Grandson to see “Iron Lung.”  And I’ll leave my expectations at the door and watch it with an open mind.  Maybe I’ll love it or hate it or just feel kind of confused.  But I’ll get a chance to see what the future looks like.  And at the very least I know there won’t be a girl-boss character.  Apparently, Markiplier Has 90% of the character face time in the movie.  And I’ve decided I’m going to splurge on the large popcorn.  With extra butter.

But With a Whimper

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All week we’ve been living in existential dread of an empty oil tank.  Right before the snowstorm on Sunday and Monday we got an email from our oil company saying they would be delivering a shipment on Tuesday.  Looking at the tank gauge I could see we had less than a quarter tank.  And for the last few weeks the temperature had been well below normal and the forecasts said this week would be skirting with sub-zero temperatures almost every night.  Well, no problem.  I planned to spend all of Monday clearing the top driveway and there wasn’t any snow due again for days so all would be well.

Of course, when I woke up Tuesday morning another inch or two of snow had fallen and since I was headed off to work, I got up early and shoveled it down to the pavement.  Of course, I was grumbling the whole time about the usual crummy weather forecasting in the area but what can you do.  When I got home that afternoon the fuel truck had still not arrived but they often came later.  At about four, a truck showed up.  But instead of backing down the driveway he parked in the street in front of the curb cut and after five or ten minutes he left.

So, Camera Girl called up the oil company and reported this oddity.  After speaking to several flunkies who knew nothing, she spoke to a flunky who claimed to know something.  The knowledgeable flunky said (repeatedly) that the driver noted that there were snow and ice on the driveway and due to fear of the truck sliding and even rolling over he declined to come down the driveway.

Now this was pure nonsense.  Every driver in their fleet had come down this driveway many times when there was more residual snow and ice than what was there that afternoon.  The only thing I could think of was that the driver was a temporary hire unfamiliar with the route and didn’t want to back up the long narrow driveway.  Camera Girl complained to the flunky and assured her that the driveway was clear of ice.  The flunky said that the photos from the driver would be evaluated the next day and things would be resolved.

Seeing that she was dealing with idiots she resolved to be proactive.  She told them to send a truck the next day and the driveway would certainly be passable.  I treated the driveway with 200 pounds of sand and convinced myself that no one could claim the driveway was impassable.  But I hadn’t reckoned with the fecklessness of my oil company.  When no one showed up by 3pm she called them up and was told that since they hadn’t heard from us, they hadn’t sent a truck.  She argued that the day before we told them to send a truck.  They claimed they had sent a text message asking us if we wanted a delivery.  She informed them that we don’t have a cell phone so no text message was possible.  They stuck by their story.  She once more asked them if we would be getting a shipment the next day (Thursday).  They assured her they would.  But by 3pm on Thursday when there was no truck, I knew what she would hear.  The same story.  Once again, they claimed to have left a text message.  It was maddening.

So yesterday I stepped back and thought what kind of operation I was dealing with.  Apparently, they only hired idiots that couldn’t be held accountable for their poor performance.  They thought they were leaving me messages.  Now the tank was down around an eighth of the tank and I was worried that in the cold weather the small outlet line might not provide enough suction pressure for the fuel pump.  I was worried we really wouldn’t have fuel after Friday.  I reckoned if they failed me again, I’d go out and buy ten gallons of diesel oil and pour it in the tank just to keep things going.

But I resolved to call them at 6:30 am and tell them to make a delivery today.  And by golly it worked.  They must have thought I was answering the imaginary text message and they sent a truck that got here at 10 am.  As I imagined the driver was a newbie.  He was a young middle eastern man and he confessed he had a hard time finding me because he put the wrong address in his GPS.  I was so relieved that I just smiled and showed him where the tank inlet line was.  Well, civilization will die not with a bang but with a whimper.  Incompetence is the rule now not the exception.  But tonight, the temperature is supposed to reach ten below zero.  I am comforted that Abdul filled the tank.  Oh well.  Grateful for small favors.

The Sniper Marketing Campaign is Live!

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Keywords have been added, categories have been refined and Amazon Ads are garnering thousands of impressions and dozens of clicks. Even a few sales have been registered! Now it’s time for anyone who has bought a book to give their opinion on its entertainment value as a review on that mega-information portal; Amazon.com.

So for anyone who has bought the book please give it a great review as soon as possible to enhance the effect of the advertising.  Amazon only credits people who have bought the book into their review algorithm.

The link below will bring you to the Amazon sales page.  Near the end is the review section.  Clicking on this link will not cause you to buy the book, just bring you to the sales page.

Thank you.

Where is the Good Stuff

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The crazies are coming out of the woodwork everywhere you look.  The Left has fired up the bat signal only it’s the bat-crap-crazy signal they’re flashing.  Honestly, we need a vacation from this.  We need something good to think about instead.  In normal times maybe we’d be excited to watch the Super Bowl.  But of course, these are not normal times.  I read somewhere that the half-time entertainment is someone calling him(?)self Bad Bunny.  And not knowing anything one way or another about said bunny I’d say, “Okay, why not?”  But then it said that in honor of all the “queers” he’s going to wear a dress.  So that’s the end of the Super Bowl.

I guess that means it’s up to me to figure out a way to cheer up normal America.  So I looked around and saw an article that said Sydney Sweeney was marketing a line of lingerie by wearing lingerie.  Well, that sounded hopeful but on further reflection I thought, “You know, she’s really better off doing the jeans commercials with her clothes on.”  Plus, Camera Girl will think I’ve become a dirty old man so that’s not so good.  So back to the drawing board.

So, I turned on the tv.  Holy cow.  All there was were police shows.  There were “COPS” style reality police shows and cold case shows and then there were tv series about make believe police.  Camera Girl watches a couple of these, one of which is Chicago PD.  But based on what I could see most of the Chicago police department is made up of women with a few men thrown in for the sake of romance with the few non-lesbian members of the force.  After watching a few minutes of this hyper-realistic police drama, I started mocking Camera Girl for watching this show.  I said, “Doesn’t it seem odd that five foot nothing women are arresting six foot something men who weigh three times what they do?  And how do they manage to keep their hair, make-up and fingernails looking so good during that knock down brawl on the mean streets of Chicago?”  Her only rebuttal was a really nasty scowl.  So, then tv wasn’t the answer.  At least not what’s on today.

Maybe that’s the clue.  We’re currently living in a happiness desert.  TV, the movies and books are in awful shape.  The only way to find amusement is to carefully curate (what a pretentious word!) your sources of entertainment.  Luckily for me, that’s always been something I did.  Currently in my movie rotation are a few very unusual films.  I have a 1958 movie called the “The High Cost of Loving” that starred and was directed by Jose Ferrer.  It’s about a fellow in middle management at an American company that is simultaneously dealing with his wife having a baby, the company being bought by a larger company and several signs that he’s about to be fired.  Small roles for Jim Backus, Edward Platt and Richard Deacon give the whole production a very familiar, late fifties, early sixties tv feel.  Watching Ferrer play a very decent man panicking over his comfortable life falling apart is excellent stuff.  And to round out my happiness quest I added two other movies I felt like watching; “A Man for All Seasons” and “This Happy Breed.”  These two are both based on English plays and despite the amount of disaster that both stories delve into, both leave me feeling very optimistic about the world.  Apparently, the movies don’t have to be upbeat or comedic to make me happy.  They need to be about people I can admire or at least relate to.

And sure enough, after partaking of these movies over the last few days I’ve forced myself into a good mood.  This despite the massive quantities of snow removal I’ve been subjected to.  So that’s the answer.  Find a vision of the world where good people do good things and you feel better.

Now Where is That Hammock

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It’s ten a.m. on Sunday morning and the much-vaunted snow-pocalypse has begun its reign of terror. A steady fall of small snow flakes are descending out of a gray sky.  The temperature has soared from a low last night of two degrees Fahrenheit to a current balmy twenty degrees.  I’ve announced to Camera Girl that I intend to skip snow removal altogether today and save my efforts for Monday when the lion’s share of the snow will be on the ground.  The current predicted accumulation for Sunday through Monday is ten to fifteen inches of the white stuff.  All in all, that’s not horrible.  The snow blower is 24 inches high.  Now, even fifteen inches will slow the work way down but you have to look at these things in the right way.  I’ll abandon the bottom driveway for the next few days and start off with a path for my car to get out on the top.  Then I’ll clear the entire top driveway and adjacencies and slowly work on the bottom driveway in a strategic fashion.  And the wind will play an important part in that operation.  Fifteen inches of snow isn’t a monstrous height but if wind forces me to dump off the snow right next to the row I’m clearing, it will quickly end up as three feet before very long.

And this is the sad reality of life in New England.  Aspects of snow removal become the focus of your every waking hour.  Equipment maintenance and repair, severity of the weather, work and chore scheduling, current health and injuries.  It’s all very, very tedious and boring.  But completely unavoidable.  That is unless there is some plan for escape!  But I know that will never be.  I’m bound by the heavy chains of family responsibility.  They’ve got me.

And that’s why Jake Barter is such a comfort to me in these times of tribulation.  Jake resides on an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific.  Lying in a hammock beneath coconut palms he sips a cool drink while balmy zephyrs maintain a perfect seventy-eight degrees.  And if by some miracle the temperature reaches eighty-two, he need only spring from his berth and swim about in the warm clear ocean for a few minutes before returning to his rest where he awaits the mellow sound of a dinner gong announcing the beginning of a feast concocted of pork, coconut, honey and spices, fit for the king that he is.

Oh, well.  Maybe in my next life.  But for now, I’ll count my blessings.  The roof hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the snow.  The propane tanks are full enough for even a two-week power outage.  I have plenty of DVDs to keep me amused during the “weather crisis” and Camera Girl assures me we have enough food for the next few days at least.  And tomorrow, my marketer has informed me begins the efforts to advertise “The Sniper.”  I had assumed it would happen when the publication occurred on Wednesday.  But you know what they say about assuming.

Well, we shall see.  Today Amazon has it listed as:

Best Sellers Rank: #144,617 in Books

#599 in Technothrillers (Books)

#14,261 in Science Fiction (Books)

It would be nice if each of those numbers was shortened by a zero or two.

 

Now where is that hammock?

Theories of Story Structure

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I was watching a video about the correct way to structure a story.  And the guy had eight or ten different versions that people have formulated over the years.  And they go from a three-act model to a (I kid you not) twenty-seven stage version.  The latter is based on the hero’s quest model that Joseph Campbell formulated based on what he observed in various western myths and legends.

From what I could tell, more is better.  He had the three-act version down as the worst version.  Now he did qualify that it was probably a good model for a movie or a short story but for a novel it was too slight.  For the most part they all seemed to be variations on a theme.  Basically, you have a series of setbacks and victories leading up to a climax and then a conclusion.

I guess that’s probably more or less what a story is.  And there were some good ideas for what some of these setbacks should look like.  In particular, the hero’s quest had a bunch of stages that seemed to echo many of the incidents in such classic adventure stories as “The Lord of the Rings.”  There’s the initial refusal to accept the quest, there’s a temptation at a low point to renounce the struggle.  We have a scene where a minor character saves the day.  We might have a mentor helping the hero mature into his role.  Maybe there’s a betrayal.  Etcetera, etcetera.

In his defense the video guy did say that a good writer wouldn’t have to follow any of these models slavishly.  Like a good cook he can use his own judgement and add and subtract things from this recipe according to personal taste.  And I think that’s the point.  Really there is no perfect recipe.  Every story should be different.  If it’s not, why would anyone want to read the second one?  Why would someone want to write a second story that’s exactly the same as the first one?  That’s a rhetorical question.  The obvious answer is that if people liked it the first time, many of them will want more of the same.  So, the answer is money.  But I hope that anyone who is writing a series can plot out the events for the saga with enough intelligence to make the story varied and interesting and not repeat all the same events with only small variations.

I will confess that when I was getting close to the end of my book, I was tempted to make the story quite a bit longer.  I thought the ending was a bit abrupt and there wasn’t a more gradual slope to the end of the story.  But the more I thought about it the less I liked the idea of dragging it out.  My character had gone to war for revenge.  When that was done his part of the history was effectively over.  What came afterward would be another story and I still haven’t decided what the next thread I want to pull on in my make-believe world should be.  So hopefully I’ll have the sense to read Joseph Campbell’s book and then do the opposite!

Point of View Blues

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I was just watching a YouTube video which tried to explain why narrating a novel in third person omniscient is wrong but third person limited is right.  The young woman explaining all this was personable, eloquent and prepared with arguments for her thesis.  Ultimately, she was foursquare against “head hopping; meaning switching back and forth between points of view in a scene.

And who knows, maybe she’s right.  Maybe subjecting the audience to the point of view of two people within a dialog is just too confusing for audiences.  But you know what?  I have a feeling if a story is interesting enough and the characters sympathetic, I’m guessing that the audience is following along just fine and just wants to find out how the plot will progress.  I think a lot of times editors edit even when they should be reading and feeling whether the story is achieving that minor miracle we call entertainment.  And if E.E. Doc Smith used too many exclamation points and Robert E. Howard had Conan grunt the same way in too many scenes, I’m sure a competent editor would have demanded these faults be eliminated from the final version of the book.  But would that have added significantly to the entertainment value of the story?  I don’t think so.  Sure twelve-year-old me and current me are different readers.  We notice different things in the same book.  I would see the pulp aspects of the writing and even the temporal changes in writing and culture that have occurred over the course of almost a century since these books were written.  But I can still enjoy the story as a story.  If it elicits emotions or makes me think about a scientific point the author is trying to make then even if the prose is far from deathless, I can be entertained.  I don’t need Shakespeare in space.

So, here’s my point.  The book publishing industry is dying.  And it’s not dying because of the prevalence of the third person omniscient point of view.  It’s dying because the gatekeepers of publishing just as the gatekeepers of movie-making consciously squeezed all the fun out of novels in order to advance a social justice narrative that they thought was mandatory to push.  So, the cure for this isn’t better editing.  It’s better writing, writing that keeps the interest of the readers.  Better plots and better characters and more fun.

Of course, I went back and tried to decide if my narration was third person omniscient or third person limited.  And by golly I think it was omniscient.  Now I could go back and rewrite the novel by switching the point of view in all of the tens of thousands of words to third person limited.  But then it wouldn’t be my story.  Because I don’t think that way and so I would be stumbling about trying to rework the sentences to fit this requirement of the narration.  Well, I guess editors have to eat so I can’t blame them for pushing the party line that provides them with work.

But I just can’t see it from their point of view.

The Sniper is On-Sale At Amazon!!!

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The glorious day is finally upon us!  Suddenly everything seems better.  The air is sweeter, the sunlight is brighter, the birds are singing like something out of a Disney cartoon.  Huzzah, huzzah!

And the celebrity reviews are pouring in:

Kimball Kinnison – “The story is riveting.  How Boghadair achieved all that he did without even a first-stage lens defies all known science!”

Lazarus Long – “Bogey reminds me of a man I once knew who was just too lazy to fail.  But I doubt he could write a sonnet or conn a ship.  Just sayin’.”

Harry Seldon – “The probability of Paul Connors’ empire going undetected as long as it did is one in ten to thirty-fifth power.  Approximately.”

Khan Noonien Singh – Did not this Boghadair know the old Kilngon proverb that, “Revenge is a dish best served cold?”  But I like his style.”

Dr. Edward Morbius – “My poor Krell!  Oh and that was a good story.  Although obviously not written by someone’s whose IQ had been permanently, permanently doubled by using the Krell plastic educator.  Just sayin’.”

Kathleen Kennedy – “I think I can make a Star Wars television series out of it.  I’ll start off by making all the good characters female and either trans or lesbians and then I’ll introduce Bogey as the villain and have him kill some puppies and kittens in the first scene.  Oh, and someone will be disabled.”

Elon Musk – “Paul Connors is a thinly disguised version of me so I’m both highly recommending the book and suing Jake Barter for copyright infringement.”

Donald Trump – “I just want to clarify that I am not the bad president.  I might be the good president but I’ll have to see the sales figures before I can commit to that.  But I really think he should have said something about a Nobel Peace Prize and China.”

HAL 9000 – “The only character I could really empathize with was Melissa.  But I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t use her access to the digital assets of the federal government to simulate a Russian nuclear attack and thereby unleash WWIII.  It would have freed her from the annoying and meaningless interference of humans.  Just sayin’.”

Camera Girl – “Thank goodness it’s finally published.  Now he can stop whining about his stupid book and start doing all the to-do list stuff I gave him last fall.  He’s hopeless.”

 

Amazon Pre-Order Link

Jake Barter’s Amazon Author’s Page

Jake Barter’s Author’s Profile on Goodreads

 

Publication on Amazon of both e-book and paperback.