One Foot in Front of the Other

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Camera Girl is fiendishly clever.  She cooks for hours in her kitchen of death.  And she sets a table with millions of calories of food on it in front of me.  The result is obvious.  She’s trying to commit murder by cocoanut custard pie.  It’s ice cream assisted suicide.  Well, it’s almost midnight and I can still breath so she’s failed again.  I live, but barely.  But Christmas is on the horizon.   Oh, the humanity!  But let’s move on.  Thanksgiving was a great success.  Mass quantities were ingested and turned into warm feelings and tightened waist bands.  Mission accomplished.

So, we will enjoy the long weekend and then get on with the business at hand.  We wake up, eat breakfast and try to accomplish the things we’ve decided need doing.  In the immortal words of the Duke of Despair, “And when the morning light comes streaming in, we get up and do it again, amen.  Say it again.  Amen.”

And that’s no different from how it was yesterday or a month ago.  The only time when this reality was upended was when the powers that be imposed the COVID lockdowns on us.  That was an existential threat to our livelihoods and even our lives.  The disruption that rolled out at us was a disaster of such monumental proportions that the reverberations caused the results of the 2020 elections and four years later it doomed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

And now the powers that be may be thinking they need to up the ante.  I think they want to get the Russians to start WW III.  It seems inconceivable that they would do such a thing.  But maybe they would.  Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland only have fifty-two days until Donald Trump fires them.  They can do an awful lot of damage before then.  And apparently, they intend to do it.

Well, we’ll all have a ringside seat for this Dr. Strangelove reboot.  The next seven weeks will be filled with drama and unintentional comedy; pathos and bathos.  But we’ll just have to be patient and let it all play out.  I intend to move forward with my priorities and deal with Armageddon on a day-by-day basis.  Living in a town that exists in a Lovecraftian quagmire of unspeakable eldritch horror I’m more or less acclimated to soul-crushing despair.  I won’t caterwaul about a few nukes lobbed into my neighborhood.  These things have to be taken in stride.  My only hope is that divine retribution will be visited on Blinken and Nuland first.  And if possible, maybe the hosts of MSNBC too.  But I digress.

So, let’s gather up our sense of humor and our much-maligned sense of reality and put the election behind us and push the inauguration into the future and just put one foot in front of the other until Donald Trump like a modern-day Moses leads us out of the desert and into the promised land where milk and honey flows endlessly and Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are fitted with strait jackets and locked in rubber rooms, forever and ever amen.  Pass the pumpkin pie.

29NOV2024 – Quote of the Day

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I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.

Isaac Newton

Happy Thanksgiving – 2024

photog Current Events, Reclaiming the Family, Trump , ,

I feel virtuous tonight.  I got up early, worked on the novel, did my exercise, got outside with my camera to get some shots of ice crystals on the grass and leaves and even spent some time today with Princess Sack of Potatoes going over the facts on the planets of the solar system.  I told her about the deeply anti-American decision to strip Pluto of its status as the 9th planet and the very questionable nature surrounding ideas about a manned voyage to Mars.  But I said it was still a wonderful idea to dream about.  And she drew her versions of what the planets look like.  I told her to add the Great Red Spot to Jupiter and pointed out the Polar Ice Cap on Mars as a feature.

So, in many ways this was a model of what a productive day should look like.  I did go on line from time to time and even checked up on Ukraine (things look even more dire than they were).  But I skipped the crying Leftists videos and even passed over the “Trump’s Cabinet Picks Explained” category too.  So, all in all, I’m a model elections-anonymous twelve stepper.

And here we are the night before Thanksgiving and really all I’m thinking about is where we can fit everybody in the dining room.  I wanted to adjourn to the living room.  I like elbow room, lots of elbow room.  But Camera Girl, like all women thinks it’s a big deal to have to break down some folding tables after dinner.  I told her that is silly.  I’d mobilize the men and boys and it would be done in a minute and a half and it’s good to move around a little after eating all that food.  But blah. blah, blah.  So okay, we’ll be squeezed together like sardines.

Alright, for Thanksgiving we have to be thankful.  And even before Trump won, I was thinking I’ve got lots to be grateful for.  Everybody is healthy including my many siblings and their families.  Camera Girl hasn’t come to her senses and decided to murder or divorce me.  The kids and grandkids are apparently flourishing and a few days of rain has prevented New England from burning to the ground.

And alright, I’m grateful that God allowed Trump to win and thus permitted me to indulge my baser instincts with an orgy of schadenfreude that I have now ended in a sensible way.  And also, I am grateful that it is possible that Americans may be blessed with a second chance to claw back some of our freedoms from the Deep State in 2025.  But if it doesn’t happen, I am grateful for all the other things listed above that make life a remarkable experience.

So, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.  Whatever I may think about the inauthenticity and self-serving nature of the propaganda that the ruling class has passed off as patriotism, I’ve always believed that Thanksgiving and Christmas are an amazing gift that families get to spend together.  The happiness and good feelings are a tonic for the soul.  Enjoy.

28NOV2024 – Quote of the Day

photog Quote of the Day ,

I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to that or some truer method of philosophy.

Isaac Newton

Tom’s World – 27NOV2024 – The Sailing Ship Juan Sebastian De Alcano

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

 

The Sailing Ship Juan Sebastian De Alcano

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This ship, the JS De Alcano, is owned and operated by the Escuela De Guardias Marinas, the Spanish equivalent of the US Naval Academy. Each summer, the ship makes what is essentially a world tour stopping at various ports, using the Midshipmen from the Academy as the sailors. Florida, including Pensacola, was a Spanish possession until 1822. Pensacola reflects the Spanish influence in a number of ways including some of the major street names, like Palafox, Cervantes, Cordova, Texar and a bunch of others.

The ship is one of the largest remaining sailing vessels in existence. It was built in Britain (some irony there) in the early 1920’s and has been in continuous operation since. It docks in Pensacola every 5 years or so for a several day stay. It was last here in May 2023 though, several of these pictures were taken in 2009

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I think the subject of each shot is obvious and doesn’t need individual descriptions. Though I was amused at the labeling on the engine control.

The Spanish obviously have a loooong history of Maritime Tradition.

 

TomD

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Here’s a shot of a much smaller sailing vessel, a replica of a Spanish Galleon. I’m convinced that a true sailing master of a large sailing vessel needed to be a genuine genius.

There also had to be a designer.

Also, the sailors in the rigging had to be mentally quite a bit above the near retarded levels pictured in historical descriptions of the ships crew. Actually, that’s depressing. We like/need to think of the people subjected to such horrific circumstances/privations/dangers as brutes.

I just noticed two very unusual elements of this galleon design: the sail and an observation platform on the bow sprint. I’ve not seen that before and definitely not on Dutch, British or French designs of the time.

Stop the World and Let Me Off

photog Current Events, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy, Trump , , ,

Okay, it’s enough.  I’ve watched my last screaming progressive video.  It’s not fun anymore.  And I’m good with the Trump cabinet picks and his agenda.  Honestly, that’s his problem.  He’s responsible for avoiding weasels and psychopaths.  That’s what we hired him to do.  Every once in a while it will be interesting to note how that’s all going.

I will admit I’m watching very intently the madness in Ukraine.  Apparently, the neo-cons running the war have decided to start WW III before they are physically dragged out of office.  And, I assume this is also the case for the Pentagon.  So, I can’t say I’m done with Ukraine because it’s not done with us yet.  But I restrict my attention to a few daily checks on some YouTube channels that cover the war.  So, until the mushroom clouds blossom over Dunwich I’ll take a watch and wait approach.  Which is about as much as I can logically hope to do.

So, what does that leave for me?  Well, as I’ve been reminded, I’m supposed to finish up that book.  And, lo and behold, I have been doing some work.  I put together a list of changes and additions to round it up and I’m rereading it to find any weaknesses or mistakes in the story.  And I’ve recognized a few.  Connors’ role in Iraq needs to be clarified and justified.  After all mega-billionaires aren’t usually strolling around forward operating bases of a war zone as if it were Silicon Valley.

And I have to inject more personality into my main characters.  This means I have to invent scenarios where they interact beyond strategizing how to pick off evil intelligence officers and their goons.  And, heaven help me, I might even have a relationship break out between Connors and Grace.  It would tie up some loose ends and add to the emotional interest in the story.  And so, I’m looking at those things.  But what I’ve noticed is that when you start a story by the braille method (that is, without a somewhat detailed outline) it’s hard to tack an outline onto it once it’s gotten beyond a certain point.  It’s like an off-the-rack suit that doesn’t quite fit in a bunch of places.  Trying to make it fit requires a lot of alterations.  And some of these alterations feel awkward or rub the author the wrong way because they seem antithetical to the way you originally saw a character or an event.  It’s a very uncomfortable activity.

What it’s made me aware of is that starting a story with a good road map ahead of time is an invaluable asset to finishing the story.  So, the lazy lout in me says, “Well, put this story aside and start another one from scratch with a good outline.  But I know myself too well.  That’s terrible advice.  What needs to be done is to bite the bullet and put in the work and wrestle with the problems until they’re resolved in a creatively satisfying way.  So that’s what I’m going to try to do.

What it will require me to do is put a few hours in every morning to get it done.  And that’s few hours every morning that won’t be devoted to reading the news and political stuff.  Well, I guess the world will survive with me at half strength.  You folks may notice a certain slackness on the site but I guess it can’t be helped.

Anyway, let’s give it a try.