How and Why to Blog (and Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn)
August 24th, 1:30-4:30 am @ Interact Studio
The world has changed. The way we communicate as organizations and individuals will never be the same. So what do you do about it?
You recognize that you have a tremendous power to create and distribute content. And that’s what this class is all about. Class topics will include:

• How to get started with social media.
• How to write effectively for the  online world.
• How to generate consistent content.
• How you can use new media tools to reach your real-world goals.

This is a hands-on, small format class. By the end of this three-hours, you’re going to have a working personal blog, integrated with Twitter and any other online presence you might have or want to set up.
Most importantly, this class includes two kinds of support and follow-up. First, Patrick will work with you to develop a content strategy and plan so you don’t run out of things to write about.

Class Requirements:
A laptop, an email account and an enthusiasm for new media.

Strip it all away for a moment. Superbowl ads, text messages, billboards, emails, tweets, FB posts and ransom notes — throw them all out and what is fundamental to communication remains. There is a sender, a recipient, and a message. Lose any one of these three things and communication does not take place. All media exist so that a person can communicate with another person. And the way that people attempt communicate is through story.

So, why don’t we all start with the story? Sure, you can use Powerpoint or Keynote to help you communicate, but if the story you are trying to tell isn’t very good then, no matter how many animations you add, your presentation is going to be crap.

This equally true for an ad, a book, a twitter stream, a conversation on Facebook or a phone call with your long-lost college friend. If you don’t have anything to say, technology can’t make it better. As Exhibit A, I cite the entire Internet.

If you work with me, we start with the story and find manifold ways to exploit your story to it’s maximum advantage.

And if you are not working with me, you should start with your story anyway. Because nobody cares about the bells and whistles. Nobody falls in love, goes to war, changes their mind or buys anything because of a medium. They do it because of a message.

1) Old projects have to end for new projects to begin.

2) A 10 minute funny/interesting little audio bit on the internet can’t really evolve. It will only ever be a 10 minute funny/interesting little audio bit.

3) The name was a problem, as so eloquently pointed out by Scott Sigler ==>Sigler

It’s called “Stories I Told Myself” and it features the best of my work on the Seanachai Podcast. It also includes two never before released stories. “Getting Shot” the story of me, well, getting shot when I lived in L.A. and “The Rhetoric of Audio” which sums up everything I learned about writing for audio while creating “The Seanachai.”

So go ahead and buy one… for everyone you know.

BOOK PROMO MP3 —> Stories I Told Myself Promo <---

http://tinyurl.com/DRSep121

Download promo
So, I’m driving home one night and I get shot. Twice with one bullet, actually. It’s not a joke, it’s a true story. And like all true stories that don’t end in death, it is ultimately a comedy.
On March 24th at 9 pm I am going to read this story live on Stickam.com and I hope you’ll join me. It’s the story I have been trying to tell every since I started the Seanachai. And now that I finally got it on the page, it seems only fitting that this is going to be the last Seanachai episode.
Yes, the Seanachai is ending. It’s not the end of me producing and releasing content on the internet for free, but it is time to bring thispodcast to a decent and honorable close. Send it off in style. Give the auld storyteller a proper wake.
P.G. Holyfield is going to help me. We’ll take questions and calls, reminisce about times and episodes past. I hope to have a few special guest appearances. And I promise that I will have a couple of exciting medium-sized announcements about the future and what’s next.

March 24th, 9pm until, well, until we’re done. I hope you’ll join us at Stickam.com for a “Wake for the Seanachai.”

I believe we just entered what I call the Third Wave of Literacy. It’s tough to pinpoint this occurrence exactly – it’s not like anybody blew a whistle – but as I look back from the dizzying technological height of 2010, here are the divisions I can see.

The First Wave

In the first wave, only a very few people could read and write. The ones who could were scholars, priests and magicians. I add Magicians because, if you are in a pre-literate culture, really, what’s the difference between a priest and a magician? (Okay, maybe Magicians get cooler hats.)

The Second Wave

Around the 14th and 15th century the masses started to read. Dante made the very unusual choice to compose the Divine Comedy in Italian rather than Latin. In 1382, John Wycliffe was heretical enough to translate the Holy Bible into English. And to cap it off, in the 15th century, Gutenberg cranked up his printing press.

The Third Wave

As dramatic and world changing as the Second Wave was, it was still limited. Sure, everyone could read, but only a few could publish. As much as communication media have multiplied throughout the 20th century, a few people were in charge of what got produced/published/broadcasted/distributed. Around 2002, that all changed.

We are living in a time when everyone can consume media and everyone can create and distribute media. In essence, a six year old kid is on the same footing as the Pope, the President of the United States and a book editor. The next email you send can be forwarded to everyone in the world in under a second for free.

The opportunities and the perils of communication have never been greater. Welcome to the communications tsunami that is, the Third Wave of Literacy.

It occurs to me, how much of my life I have spent in the practice of an art. As I write it, the word ‘art’ seems ladened with incorrect connotations. It seems more correct to describe the process as a craft. There is, to be certain, an art of writing. But to get to the art requires a tremendous amount of craft. So much craft that I find it misleading to talk about the ‘Art of Writing.’

As long as I have worked as a writer, I also have trained in the martial arts. When I set this fact into words, it seems such an odd contradiction to me that I have never been able to write about the martial arts. But the longer that I work in both arts, the more I come to believe they are the same. This may be an illusion of perspective. I may be making them the same through my work.

But whatever the reality may be, the question of why to practice any art remains. There is, I suppose a practical aspect to all things. One may build furniture because one needs a place to sit. One may also build furniture to sell because one needs money. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What compels someone to perfect the craft of building furniture? Another way to ask this question; why am I still trying to improve my writing?

For all practical purposes, my writing is good enough. And it’s been good enough, for practical purposes, for years. But still, I push to do new things. I explore new forms. I reach for longer and bigger stories. I try to convey ideas more simply and powerfully. At all times and in all ways I attempt to do more with less. This is difficult, uncomfortable and it doesn’t pay anything. Writing ads is easy and it pays well. Why don’t I just do the easy stuff?

I’m not sure I have a simple answer to this question. I don’t think that large questions, questions of the spirit, questions of deeper motivation have simple answers. There are no soundbites that can describe what drives us. I’m sure ego has something to do with it. I think greater things lie within me and I would let them out. But the ego-answer is the closest I can get to solving this riddle — the more I practice, the more I learn about myself.

In the end, I think that’s the only profound reason to do anything. Or as Edmund Hillary said of climbing mountains, “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

Fifteen Kinds of Snow that It Would Be Useful to Have Names for:

1. The damp, back-killing snow that’s a bitch to shovel.
2. The snow that increases your chances of getting laid while falling on you while you are in the hot tub.
3. The snow that falls in response to children’s prayers for school cancellation.
4. The heavily compacted snow of mall parking lot snowbergs that lasts well into the spring.
5. The snow that culls the weaker pine branches from the forest.
6. The cunning, kamikaze snow that finds a way past your scarf to die sizzling on the bare skin of your neck.
7. The snow that falls in Minnesota and is blown into Wisconsin.
8. The tough Manhattan snow that gets pushed around, driven over, stepped on, brushed off — but never gives up its dreams of a minor role in a Broadway production of A Christmas Carol.
9. The snow that thinks it’s special and unique when it’s falling, but realizes, when it hits the drift, that it’s just like everybody else.
10. The Mighty Snow of the Rockies — enough to close the pass, strand the travelers and convince families to make a holiday tradition of cannibalism.
11. The snow that covers the climber who failed to reach the summit.
12. The sudden snow that makes a fool of the weatherman.
13. The snow that falls on the just and the unjust alike.
14. The snow that the dog tracks into the house.
15. Snow cone snow.

Nowhere is this more evident in the use and abuse of language. Language of any kind is a slippery, imperfect instrument at best. And if we want to get good use out of the tool of language, we should take some pains to see that our language stays in good condition.

This is George Orwell’s first point in his wonderful essay “Politics and the English Language”

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

To be sure, this essay is a source of wonderful, practical advice for anyone who wants to use, as he puts it, ”language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.”

And to this end Orwell offers these six rules:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

But as you can see from the first quote, for George, the stakes are considerably higher than the marks on your next term paper. Or the stylistic considerations of your next memo. He points out that allowing this kind of sloppy language to advance unchecked also allows people to defend the most horrible of acts.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”

We can easily come up with additions to Orwell’s 1946 list of atrocities (to both persons and language). Most obviously, the President of the United States is to receive the Nobel Peace Prize while his country is engaged in two wars. One of which he has just escalated. More generally, the United States has a “defense” budget that is 48% or almost half of the world’s combined military expenditure. Observing that offense is more costly than defense, and that the United States spends 71% more than Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria combined, one is moved, at the very least, to begin the search for a different adjective to couple with that use of the word budget. More subtly, Social Security is bankrupt. Those who place their trust in it will find no security at all.

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

To appreciate the timeless insight of George Orwell, you only need to remember that in Saddam Hussein’s interview with Dan Rather,  Saddam claimed that he was the democratically elected leader of  Iraq. He proudly told Mr. Rather that he had received 100% of the vote. Dan was skeptical of the percentage. But what he couldn’t do was refute Saddam’s claim. For there is no agreed definition of the word democracy.

Ideas have consequences. And insofar as each of our words is an idea in a more crystalline form, we should take care with them. Orwell understood this and argued for it with brilliance and passion in his essay “Politics and Language.”

The complete text of “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell is available here: http://langs.eserver.org/politics-english-language.txt

The Toughest Trees ever is the latest Seanachai podcast. There was something about the tree saying, “Yeah, and your great-great-great-great granddaddy was punk too,” that I couldn’t resist. I just had to read it aloud.

All the rest of Seanachai here:
http://www.theseanachai.com

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

So I’ve been using something called the Pomodoro Technique to help me in my writing. It’s been nothing short of amazing. On the surface, it’s very simple. You block out 25 minutes to work, crank up a kitchen timer and only focus on that task until the timer rings. But I have found it to be Double-Plus-Advanced-Level-Zen-Productivity-Ninja-Superbest for writing. And here’s why — It defeats something psychologists call the Anxiety of Becoming.

Here’s what the creator of the Pomodoro Technique, Francisco Cirillo has to say on the subject:

For many people, time is an enemy. The anxiety triggered by “the ticking clock”, in particular  when a deadline is involved, leads to ineffective work and study behaviour which in turn elicits the tendency to procrastinate. The Pomodoro Technique was created with the aim of using time as a valuable ally to accomplish what we want to do the way we want to do it, and to empower us to continually improve our work or study processes.

That feeling of the ticking clock is the feeling that we should be further along in our writing. This anxiety has been very useful to me in my professional life. Writing ads or even brochures is like sprinting. Faster! Faster! Faster!

But a book is a marathon. Aserious article has to be a 5k. And for both, there is certainly something to be said for pacing. And limiting anxiety. For me, the anxiety gets in the way. All those thoughts of, I should be faster, I’ve got to hit this word goal,  I’ve got to make sure that these words are good enough to keep or I will fall behind and I really really suck at this are counter-productive.

As writers, I’m not sure any of those worries are within our control. Or any of a thousand other worries that beset us as we are trying to go about the business of getting words on a page. All we can really do is control our focus. And the Pomodoro technique helps me get better at that.

The Real Distractions

Sure, distraction is the enemy. Everybody knows that. Facebook, Twitter, googling random things — the productivity that a computer can grant us is easily counterbalanced by the interrupts that it offers. But the real interrupts aren’t digital. They are psychological. The thoughts that you have while trying to write that have nothing to do with writing. Here’s how the Pomodoro helped me with distraction:

Every time you have a thought about or desire to do something else, yI write it down and continue with my work.  At the end of the Pomodoro (25 minute interval) I would review the things that had attempted to derail me and see if any of them needed doing, or had merit.

For example, “take the dog for a walk” has merit. I should take both the dog (and my fat ass)  for a walk at some point during the day. But “need to look up commas because you are using them wrong” has no merit. Maybe, I, am, using, commas, wrong. Who cares. Fix it in the rewrite. No reason to let one misplaced comma get in the way of 500 good words.

There are a billion worries and criticisms that can get in the way of getting the first draft down on paper. If we are unaware of them, then were are powerless over them.

Quality versus Quantity versus Progress

There’s probably not much we can do about the quality of our writing in the first draft. It is what it is. If we write enough first drafts and then rewrite them, we will become better writers. The more you work at something, the better you get. But what the Pomodoro Technique has done for me is give me an atomic unit of effort. A first draft is a rough number of words. But to get there I will have to spend X amount of quality, focused time. Not X amount of anxiety. Not X amount of times putting it off. Nope, X amount of time actually at the keyboard (or pad, completely focused on what I’m trying to write)

So the measure of a draft becomes X Pomodoros. Not words. Not quality. The psychological relief of this is immense. It gives me a way to just show up and do my part of the job. I put in the hours, I get the result. But if I worry about the result while I’m trying to put in the hours the process becomes much, much harder.

Here’s an example. I now have a progress bar for a 50k(ish) word story that I’m working on called “Unkillable.” Each box is a pomodoro’s worth of effort.

The Illusions of Quality

I’m not sure anybody can judge what they are making while they are making it. At least, not in the first draft. If you’ve been at this game for a while you’ve been over the moon excited about something you’ve written, only to go back and discover that it’s not that good. Likewise, you’ve cranked on something you thought was total shit and when you’ve gone back to re-read it, you realize that it’s not that bad. While you are giving birth is not the time to critically evaluate your children.

Estimation

So give yourself over to your writing for 25 minutes. And then another 25 minutes. Do this for N trials. Say N > 30. And you’ve got a statistically valid sample of how fast you write. How fast YOU write. Not how fast you should. Not how fast someone else writes. But you. Average those suckers together. In the next 25 minutes you might write more or less. But now you are able to estimate your progress. Now you have a production process. The more I turn the lever, the more words come out. I have a measure of control over the creative act that I did not have before.

Sure, sure. Sometimes you get lost. Sometimes you get nowhere. But over time, that’s not the case. Otherwise writers would never finish anything.

Treating Yourself Like a Dog

Another interesting facet of the technique is the sound of a kitchen timer in the background. After a little while, it become a powerful reinforcing device. Just like Pavlov could ring a bell and get his dogs to drool, the sound of the kitchen timer now causes me to focus. It also reassures me that all is well. It’s an audible signal that I’m working and things are as they should be. This is not a feeling that many people encounter naturally while writing. Especially not while writing fiction at the limits of your ability.

And let me tell you, I’m not above treating myself like a dog (or marmot, or ibex or prairie dog) to get good work done. Really, whatever takes. And anything that can make the passage of time reassuring — sign me up.

Check It Out for Yourself

You can download Francisco’s excellent book and find out everything you want to know about the Pomodoro Technique (including why it’s called Pomodoro) here http://www.pomodorotechnique.com If you put the technique to use. Leave a comment to let me know about your results.

So this little guy is the original weeble-wobble. His name is Daruma and this is his home on my desk. There is a weight in his paper-mache base, so if you knock him over he stands back up again. He is modeled after a legendary monk named Bodhidarma. Like all legendary characters, there are a number of tall tales about him. (They’re has to be, right? He’s got his own action figure.) What is most consistent in the tales is that Bodhidarma was the man who brought the practice of Zen Buddhism to China from India.

It is said that because his students lacked the strength to withstand long hours of focused meditation, that he taught them martial arts. The story goes that he sat in meditation so long, his arms and legs fell off. But whattya gonna do? Lots of things are said. Few things are done.

So why is he winking?

The wink is about doing things rather than saying things. In Japan it is tradition to buy one of these doll at the start of any large endeavor. Like opening a business. When you get it, both the eyes are blank. So you take a pen and ‘open’ one of his eyes. When you reach your goal you open the other eye  and then burn him.

So, when I started working on How to Succeed in Evil, I got this intense-looking Japanese doll. And for nearly five years now this little red-robed bastard has been winking at me. Many times, he’s been unbearably cocky — seemingly secure in the knowledge that I had started a project that I would never finish.  But if you look very closely, you can see that he’s scared. That’s why he’s trying to look so tough with those angry eyebrows.

Daruma is scared, because I now have an agent for How to Succeed in Evil. Which means the book is going to publishers in a highly purchasable fashion. Which means, he’s that much closer to seeing the world in stereo. And, shortly after that, in sterno.

What you really need to write a book.

I believe that the Daruma doll is also  related to a Japanese proverb: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” For me, that captures  what you need most when creating something of scale, like a novel. There’s not a precise word for it in English, so I’ll call it a mix of endurance, perseverance, persistence and blind, mule-headed, stubbornliosity.

Daruma is a constant reminder of this. Any time I get frustrated, I can knock him over. And then watch as he rights himself. Might sound silly, but I assure you, anything that gets you through the day and keeps you on the path is nothing to scoff at.

So when I get a book deal, this little doll goes up in flames. And if I ever get a movie deal, what the hell, I’ll burn the Jade plant too.

]]> http://patrickemclean.com/?feed=rss2&p=1656 3 http://patrickemclean.com/?p=1656 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PatrickEMclean/~3/O1x6UMvCz3g/ http://patrickemclean.com/?p=850#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:11:38 +0000 Patrick E. McLean http://patrickemclean.com/?p=850

I’ve become fascinated by trees. I’ve always liked them. But David Allen Sibley’s “Guide to Trees” has really sparked my interest. If you see me out and about, and I’m staring at a tree, it’s not because I’ve gone any farther off the deep end. It’s my new curiosity.

So the other day, on my way to a meeting, I’m stopped dead in my tracks by a tree that has very distinctive leaves. They have to be distinctive for me to remember them. I’ve just  figured out how to tell the difference between an Oak and a Maple. So there I am,
late to a meeting, staring at this tree.

When I get home, I look it up. Turns out it’s a Ginkgo tree. They’re often used in cities because they are very ‘hardy’. And hardy is a horticultural term which mean ‘hard to kill.” But when it comes to the Ginkgo, it should mean, ‘damn nigh impossible to kill.’ Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a tree that was half a mile away from the atomic blast at Hiroshima.

This Ginkgo tree is called Hosen-Ji, because anything that lives through an atomic explosion gets a nickname in Japan. Hosen-Ji survived, but the temple it was planted next to didn’t make it. When the temple was rebuilt, it was suggested that the tree might be transplanted to make construction easier. This suggestion was quickly shot down. Instead of moving the tree, they designed the temple around it. This might be because they were Buddhists and revered life. Then again, it might be because anything that is tough enough to survive a nuclear explosion is something you don’t want to mess with. It’s been exposed to Gamma Rays. Who knows what happens when it gets angry?

But the weirdness of the Ginkgo tree does not end there. It’s a profoundly odd plant. So odd, in fact that it’s in it’s very own Division in the Plant Kingdom. And the Ginkgo Biloba is the only member of it’s of Division. So where the Willow Oak in my back yard is classified like this:

Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta (pop. = 230,000)
Order: Fagales
Genus: Quercus
Family: Fagaceae
Section: Lobatae
Species Phellos

The Ginkgo has this odd classification:

Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Ginkgophyta (pop. = 1)
Class: Ginkgoopsida
Order: Ginkgoales
Family: Ginkgoaceae
Genus: Ginkgo
Species: G. biloba

It’s as if the world Ginkgo meant “I dunno”, in Latin. Because botanists don’t have much of an idea of how this tree is related to other trees. They call the tree a living fossil, because it’s the only one left of it’s kind. Or rather, the only kind left of it’s kinds. It would be like jumping forward in time 270 million years and finding that all the cultures and nations we know now had been wiped out. Except for the Finn’s. And they’re weird to begin with. Oh sure, you’d find some records of the Swedes and the Danes and the Norse. But, for some reason, only the people from Finland would have survived.

And let’s consider what it means for these trees to be 270 million years old. Dinosaurs only appeared 230 million years ago. Which means, by the time the Dinosaurs did show up, the Gingko tree had 40 million years under it’s belt already. Not only are these the kind of trees that can survive an atomic blast, they are tough enough to look at a T-Rex and say, “You think you’re hot shit? We’ll see.”

160 million years later, a meteor slammed into the Earth. And the dinosaurs, and most everything else on the planet, died. But not the Gingko. Oh no. The Gingko tree lived on. In my head, the wise old Gingko Tree turns to the T-Rex and says, “Told you so.” And as the T-Rex looks up into the Gingko tree with wide, fearful eyes, seeking some kind of solace from a fellow land creature in the face of certain oblivion, the tree adds, “Yeah, and your great, great, great, great, great, great, Grandaddy was a punk, too.”

These trees aren’t nice. These trees are survivors

By scientist’s estimates, an impact big enough to create the layer of black ash found in the K-T barrier in the fossil record (and wipe out the dinosaurs) would have to have the energy of 100 trillion tons of TNT — that’s two million times greater than the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested. That means that the Gingko tree that got bombed at Hiroshima would have been legitimately entitled to say, “Is that all you got?” Oh, if these trees could talk, the smack they would talk.

Surely, the Gingko Biloba are the toughest trees ever. Maybe they had saber-toothed ancestors that were tougher? I’m not putting anything past a tree that can survive a meteor strike.  But those ancestors weren’t survivors. So, I feel that we must convey the Eye of the Tiger, tree-division, to the Gingko Biloba.

Not everyone feels this way. Wikipedia reports that the Ginkgo listed as an endangered species. Not critically endangered, just middle-of-the-road endangered. It may be true, but I find it hard to comprehend. When there’s ten or twenty of them planted as ornamental trees around an office park in Charlotte, NC, I figure they have to be doing okay.  That, and the next time I walk past one, I know I’m going to hear it say, “You think you’re hot shit? We’ll see. You punks haven’t even made it to your first million years yet.”

I have completed a massive rewrite of the book. I’m very happy with it. A pivotal event (to avoid spoiler) happens 2/3rds of the way through and Edwin spends the last 3rd of the book kicking ass. I cut about 20,000 words out and added 10,000 back in. So we’re at a much faster-paced 90,000.

As soon as I am done with this post I am calling an agent to finalize a contract. If that all goes well, I will have secured representation for the print version, and it’s off to the races. And by races, I mean publishers.

I’m the process of migrating all my work under one website, PatrickEMcLean.com, so that their will be a steady stream of updates and goodness and suchlike. (Don’t worry, this site will remain). Because if you just looked at the Seanachai over the last 6 months, it appeared that I was very lazy. This is not the case. I’ve got 71 chapters of written, recorded and produced non-lazy awesomeness right here.

Currently, I’m working on a novella/novel length project called Unkillable. For a number of reasons, it has been important for me to put How to Succeed in Evil down for a while. When Unkillable hits 50,000 words, I’m going to start Evil again. At the the very least there will be a 10,000 word short of How to Succeed in Evil in January. If you’ve been very, very good, maybe in time for Christmas.

Lastly, and more on this soon, I am self-publishing a collection of short stories entitled “Stories I Told Myself” They are taken mainly from the Seanachai. There will be several new pieces in this book. Including the story of how I was shot and almost killed when I lived in Los Angeles. (No punchline here. It’s a true story. Although it is fairly funny in places.)

That’s all the news I got. Hang on. There’s lots of great stuff in the pipeline.

Anyway, here I am bright and bleary:

http://succeedinevil.com/2009/07/27/htsietn-chapter-70the-only-sane-thing-to-do/#comments

Helpful, critical, smart feedback. And a crapload of encouragement. It’s just awesome.

Thanks for bearing with.

Well, that’s not completely true. The story has a great half an ending. See the story that really interests me is what would make a reasonable person decide that they need to take over the world? How does someone become an Evil Genius. Not in a “in the summer we made meathelmets” kind of way. But in a very real, step by step, that makes sense kind of way.

It’s Edwin’s internal story arc. And that’s a friggin tall order. And I pulled it off, so I am justly pleased.

But the problem is, the external story hasn’t been wrapped up very well. Let me use the example of Jaws to illustrate. Jaws is a movie about a shark. And when Chief Brody overcomes the shark, he’s won. Except it’s not. You can make a beautiful looking film, with far better special effects than Spielberg had available at the time, and it will still suck. Much like Jaws II.

See the inner story, the one that makes Jaws go, is about Chief Brody overcoming his fear of the water. I think that story arc is the difference between Jaws and Jaws I,II,III (oh my god please stop making sequels already)

So for people who were interested in the internal story, they are satisfied with the book as it ends now. Perhaps they feel something is missing (sound off in the comments folks) but they’re not emailing me. But you other people…

You other people are expressing your displeasure. Or at least, your confusion. And, you are right to do so. In fact, thank you for doing so. ‘Cause it will make the book stronger.

So I’m writing the rest of the book now. Actually, I’ve written most of it. Quick polish and it will be up shortly.

Thank you all very much for honest and insightful feedback. More ending is on it’s way.

(two parts)

I am feeling much better, but still sounding like an alligator gargling gravel and broken glass. My guess is I’ll be up and running again this weekend.

My plan is to get back on one a day as I finish the recording and editing of the book and then drop a the remaining chapters all at once in a kind of apology/victory dance.

Thanks for bearing with.

Anyway, I’ve put it online as a free, serialized audiobook. And I want you to listen to it. Because the more traffic I generate for the book, the better my real-world publishing chances become.  There’s was recently a great article in Time about this new path to breaking through. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1872381,00.html

So to help me out, just follow this link. It will pull open iTunes and subscribe you.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=309010761

Episode Script

Azizulluah’s Vault

INTRO:

The world is large. And it’s interconnected in ways we can’t even imagine. Ties of technology, community, culture — boggles the mind in this digital age.

And if there is one thing that has brought people together since the dawn of time, it’s commerce. trade. business. money.

It’s an odd thing to consider, but the Greeks learned geometry from the Egyptians. And they used it to keep track of who owned what land each year after the Nile flooded.

We’re connected through the centuries and across the globe in ways we can’t even imagine, and the Seanachai this week is a story about one of those connections.

It’s called. Azizullah’s vault. For the Seanachai, I’m Patrick McLean.

Somewhere North of Jalabad there is a town called Nangalam. In this town there is a banker. Not, however, the sort of banker you might be familiar with. But then Nangalam is probably not the kind of town you are familiar with. The streets are dirt, raw sewage drains on to the ground, yet this town is a hub of regional commerce.

And our banker is a young man named Azizulluah — we’ll call him Ziz. Ziz is not the bank president. Ziz is more like a clerk. A clerk in what might be the most secure bank in the world. You see the bank that Ziz works for has a vault, or more specifically, a cave high in the Hindu Kush. And to rob this vault, not only would you have to find it. You would have to convince every tribesman along the way that you belong there.

For, in this region of the world, they are not much enamored or impressed by invaders. In 1219 the Mongols laid waste to the entire region. And when compared to that, the Russians and the Americans, well, they just don’t measure up to the standards of Genghis Khan. And to take and hold the high passes and deep caves of these mountains, one would have to do substantially better than the troops of Genghis Khan. Even they stayed away. (from this part of town) These mountains have always remained closed to strangers. Or perhaps that’s not the right way to say it. They’ll let you in. You’ll just never make it out alive.

And that’s thing with robbing a bank. You’ve got to make it back out. Alive and with the money. And with this bank that’s just not going to happen.

Another interesting thing about Ziz is that where other clerks spend their time counting money and carefully rechecking the count, Ziz banks by weight. Ziz is simultaneously a clerk and a mule packer. He runs a Mule Train from Nangalam to his vault high in the mountains. At certain times of the year the mountains become impassible, and Ziz takes a vacation of sorts. But most of this young man’s life has been spent walking uphill or walking downhill.

Oh yes, and beating mules. He has 12 of them. To make this mundane workaday task more enjoyable he has given his mules special names. There are two mules named Bush, (George and George W) one named Brown, another named Blair, and a few of them have Russian names. Will he name his next mule Obama? Certainly, now that a fresh round of troops have been sent to Afghanistan. Not that it will make a difference. It will never makes a difference. There is simply nothing that Ziz can do to make a difference.

In fact, he couldn’t even kill George Bush when he had the chance.

To understand how this could be so, you must realize that the skill of Mule Packing is in fact a highly refined and technical art. It involves attaching regular parcels to an irregular animal in a balanced way. The better you are, the more you can fit on the mule, in a way that keeps the mule, well not happy, but at least less grumpy, and healthy.

But when you’re cold and tired — When a storm is coming in and you are in a hurry to get moving, well, Sometimes you cut corners. Sometimes you make mistakes. So on one trip, when Ziz realized that he was in danger of losing a bundle of money, he made his way back through the train, to adjust lashings. This no easy feat, because it meant he had to squeeze himself between the mules and a sheer rock face — a task made more difficult because on the other side of the mules was a 3,000 foot drop. It was also difficult because the mule with the loose pack was grumpy from carrying an uneven load. And as Ziz tried to fix the problem, the mule tried to stomp on his feet.

Ziz cursed and punched the mule. The mule spit and kicked. But eventually, Ziz got his hand on what he thought was the right knot.

But when he pulled on this knot. 160 pounds of twenty dollar bills landed on his feet and legs. This hurt Ziz, but it was nothing compared to what happened to the mule. With the sudden unbalancing of load, the mule named George Bush tipped violently to the left and went over the cliff.

What goes through George Bush’s mind when he faces certain death tumbling through the sky? To be sure, this has happened before, but below that George Bush there was ocean. Below this George Bush there was nothing sharp rock. And instead of a parachute strapped to his back there is a pack full of money, 1.48 million dollars that batters him each time he rolled and bounced down the 3000 foot rocky slope.

On the way down, George Bush brayed out in pain and fear to whatever stubborn God mules complain to. And halfway to the bottom the Mule God had slight mercy. The straps holding the remaining pack let go. And money was released from the mule and thrown into the air to rain down, gracefully, onto the ravine below. Far more gracefully than poor mule.

“Surely, George Bush is dead.” Ziz thought to himself. But in the same instant, he also calculated how much money had been lost.

—

On the return trip, Ziz had collected what dollars he could find. In the course of salvaging nearly a million dollars, he found George Bush, chewing on a bit of scrub grass. He was scratched in a few places, but otherwise, none the worse for wear. As it turns out, George Bush is hard to kill.

Ziz packed the salvaged money up the mountain. Leaving some half a million dollars of the great Satan’s filthy money scattered and decomposing in a hidden valley of the Hindu Kush. It was demoralizing trip, but ultimately necessary. You see, as surely as a flame needs fire, terrorism and the international narcotics trade needs ready, untraceable cash. And for the men who use Azizullah’s unique bank – it is always, always cash and carry.

—

On the other side of the world, wrapped in the concentric circles of bureaucracy known as Washington D.C., there is a wizard. He is not, however, the sort of wizard you might be familiar with. He does not work in a high tower. The air around him does not crackle with eldrich magic. It is, however, cooled or heated as the season requires. And raw sewage is whisked from the building through the marvel of indoor plumbing.

But make no mistake, this man is a true Thaumaturge. From his marble sepulcher that squats and broods in a fetid swamp alongside the Potomac (a swamp that has long since been drained and paved over, yes, but still a swamp in spirit) he manipulates his symbols and mystical formulae to affect change in the wider world. And all of his sinister devices are pieces of paper.

Now, gentle reader, it may be that you are stout of heart, or thick of thew and the kind of person who is not easily scared by pieces of paper. But let me assure you, fear is the only correct response here. Because the pieces of paper through which this Wizard will work his magic are the pieces of paper that you know as money.

You see this Wizard has the power to rob the safest bank in the world. To plunder Azizullah’s vault without ever leaving his office. Without even uttering the magic phrase, “Look Ma, no hands.”

All the wizard need do is wave his magic pen, [mutter a few arcane phrases,] and sign a few mystic slips of paper. And when he does this] and dollars will created. And these dollars will go out into the world to as faithfully as the broom in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And just like the broom in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, these dollars will multiply. As the banks lend and lend and lend these newborn dollars will increase 10 fold.

And when this happens, there will be no spell that can call the pieces of paper back.

So if the Wizard works his magic too vigorously and too often, we all be drowning in sea of rapidly devaluing dollars; The unhappy consequence of meddling with forces that no one man, or committee of men should attempt to wield.

But what of Azizullah, banker to terrorists and drug dealers, with his his train of mules and his mountain full of ready cash? What will happen to him? What will be the worth of all the steps he has taken, all the mules he has beaten and the storms he has braved? Will they all have been for nothing?

Will the dollars become so worthless, that they won’t even be worth the trouble it would take to haul them back down the mountain? Will they, at last, only be fit for use as fuel in sputtering dung fires in the thin air found high in the Hindu Kush?

Only time will tell.

But for now Azizullah trudges on. Beating George Bush with a stick he tore from an Apricot tree.

It’s not going to disrupt the logical flow of the story, but if you have missed chapter one please refresh your podcatcher, or go to the post and download manually.

Whee! There’s nothing like a rocky start!

Okay, so I missed Feb, but we’ve got a go live date on the novel of March 16th. And this lovely podcast, with promo, explaining what’s been going on with the book and what happens next.

EPISODE SCRIPT:

It’s 3 AM and I’m writing

I am so pregnant with ideas that I can no longer sleep through the night. This is awkward, painful and — given that I have no womb — kind of disgusting. Its also very, very good. Vampire in my Attic was written at 3am.

It takes a particular kind of courage (or lunacy) to get up at 3 am. While most sleep in their beds — wrapped in the cloak of safety and the ultra-high calorie diet that only Americans know — I slip from my bed, unsheath a metal pen a rotring 900 fountain point pen with which I do simply awful things to paper. Slash it until it’s blood runs black)

It’s not every night this happens. Only a few. And I’d like to say that every night that I get up, I manage to capture a wonderful idea — but the fact is, only a few of them are good. But here’s the thing, and it’s really the only thing, I can’t know which night is going to be THE night. The night in which I capture a turn of phrase who’s gossmer wings could never withstand the hot winds of a busy day.

But in the middle of the night, a moth may well be drawn to my gleaming white sheet. It may even land on it. And if I’m skillful enough — If I draw a net of black lines around it before it thinks to fly away, and without destroying it [SFX scribbling] Then I can capture some of the magic. That magic buried in the debris of modern ideas. Or the magic that we overlook in our mad rush from one mute, unimaginative task to another.

The ancient greeks had a way of describing this mad 3 o’clock in the morning behavior. They would speak of the muse descending upon a person. Or one’s genius taking over. And the word in Greek is a little disturbing to me. Daimon. Overtone of possession there. An idea seizing a person. I don’t believe that this happens — I understand that it happens. Sometimes it inconvenient sometimes frightening, but it a state much to be desired.

It’s not like this has to happen at 3 am — muses are far too fickle to keep office hours — but in the dead of the night — when courage flags and the hope of mortals is at it’s ebb tide — a person still struggling with words and ideas must shine forth to the muses like a beacon.

The idea that greatness comes easily to some is a myth. The only prescription for success or excellence or greatness that I am aware of, is to chase greatness down, trip it and stomp on it’s guts until it begs for mercy.

And it’s not just for writing. And it’s not just for me. It’s for you and everybody else. So the next time you wake up full in the middle of the night
Take a moment to plan it. To write it down. To sketch it out or up. Even if it’s just one note on a 3×5 card — make it.

Because when you awake in the morning — when you find the talisman you wrested from the night, it will remind you that the limitations of the day are not the limits of life. Place this talisman on the altar of the muses — show them how bad you want it– and they will love you more.

Episode Script

So, I have a nephew. And since I did such a wonderful birth announcement for my niece, it seems only fair that I do the same for little Henry. And, as the second child, I know he’s not going to be happy to hear it, but Henry, go and listen to what I wrote for your big sister. It goes double for you.

And even though the most important things to say at this time are. you are born, you are welcome and you are loved, I feel that there’s something more to say. You see, you’re a boy. And some day, you will be a man. Which means that you’re playing for my team. And that’s no small thing.

And since, despite what the world might have us believe, manhood is not a function of size or age or what kind of car you drive ñ I thought I might share a few things that might help little Henry out on his journey to manhood. Please Henry, go to school on my mistakes. I paid for them in full.

First, life is not fair. Life is beautiful. life is full of mystery and wonder, but life is not fair. And when people try to make it fair, it just makes it worse. I took me at least 30 years to understand this, so give it a little time to settle in. Also someone uses the word fair, especially in public discourse, they’re probably just trying to sell you something that is unfair in their favor.

Learn how to fix things. You know, they used to say that what separated man from the animals was that man used tools. Which was a little stupid when I first heard it. I mean, a beaver’s teeth might not be tools, but a dam damn sure is. But when scientists discovered that certain kinds of apes used twigs to catch ants, then people fell back on the idea that man was the only creature that uses language. But dolphins and whales seem to but dent in that idea. To say nothing of the fact that somebody went discovered that bees tell other bee’s where the honey is by using a 6 dimensional dance. It’s all very confusing. Can I tell you that an animal that uses tools is not a man. Nope. But I can tell you one thing. A man who doesn’t know how to use tools is animal.

Besides, there is a satisfaction that comes from taking something that is broken and restoring it to good working order. It is as sure an antidote to the soul draining parts of our disposable, post modern society as I know. And while we’re on the subject, I’m sorry we couldn’t pass you down a less wacky world. It is perfect in it’s way. And it’s challenges are nothing but tests to make you stronger. I know that’s pretty thin advice when you’re in it. See rule 1. Life ain’t fair.

Gamesmanship. To be a man, you’ve got to play games well. Not all games. But you need to know how to clinch a win. Come from behind. Win and lose graciously. It could be football. It could be poker. It could be badminton. It could be chess. Doesn’t matter what the game is. learn to play games well with all the skill you can muster. And remember, in the final analysis, a game is just a game. And so is life.

And while we’re talking about gamesmanship and life ñ learn to play hurt. I’m not saying play some stupid football game with a hairline fracture in your neck because a winning season is on the line. That’s just stupid. No, what I’m saying is, play when you don’t feel good. Play through some pain. And learn that it get in the way of you enjoying life. Because most amazing experiences in life generally happen when you’re tired and don’t feel so hot. Don’t let a little discomfort get in the way of bliss.

As a side note, watch out for the first time you strain a muscle. Shockingly painful the first time that happens let me tell you.

Learn to handle a car in a skid. Not only is this cool. It can save your life. Your dad will show you. He’s good at it. Just don’t tell mom.

Learn to cook. You are what you eat. You are also how you eat. Americans have a tough time with this one right now, but it is true. To say nothing of the fact that it’s fun, not that hard and impresses the hell out of people. Especially women. And, although you might not believe it for years yet, there are many fringe benefits to impressing women.

And while we’re on the subject of women ñ and this is hard, because men are pretty much idiots about women and women are pretty much idiots about men — There is a difference between men and women. And this difference is one of the greatest things in the world. It’s also a source of a great many evils and frustrations. (see rule number one — it’s just not fair around here.)

Appreciate the qualities of both sexes. In more ways than one, this intermingling is what keeps the species going. Men have the ability to not only justify doing something dangerous and stupid, but to revel in it. It is your birthright. Wear it like a badge of honor as you put a bucket on our head ram into a wall. All progress depends upon this inspired lunacy ñ but someday, you know, recognize it for the stupidity it is.

Also recognize that not to approach things only as just a man or just a woman is the beginning of something much, much grander. Its called being fully human. I’m still working this one out myself but drop a footnote. It’s worth coming back to again and again.

Learn to throw a punch. A good, compact, powerful shot. None of those looping redneck roundhouse punches. With any luck, you’ll go your whole life without having to use this skill. But having it will give you confidence. And strangely enough, the confidence is often more important than the ability.

Be polite. There’s never a reason not to be polite. And the hidden lesson of good manners is that it’s one way you demonstrate self-control. And no matter how tough or cool somebody acts, the truth is, there are very few things in this world as scary as someone in complete control of themselves.

Now it might seem that learning how to throw a punch and always being polite are contradictory. They are not. On very rare occasions throwing a punch is polite and standing inactive is the rudest thing you can do. but before we get too far down this road, let’s jump to the next one which will make it all clear.

Do the right thing. always, everywhere, without exceptions. It seems like a very simple rule, but the tricky part is that the rules ( and if you haven’t encountered the rules don’t worry you will and they suck. ) the tricky part is that the rules aren’t always the right thing. This can be awkward, painful, or downright dangerous. Sometimes the rules are in direct opposition to what is right. But the way I explain it to myself is the rules aren’t what’s right. The rules are what we have to deal with to get the right thing done. This is one of the reasons it helps to be creative.

And while we’re on that subject, they’re going to tell you that your uncle is creative — and sure, it’s true — but being creative is like being a piece of yeast. Sure you’re magic, but without flour. (Or mashed corn or potatoes or even apple mash) you’re good for exactly nothing. And the flour is hard work.

The harder I work, the more creative I become. In fact, we could pretty much call that the secret to everything. It’s just hard work. Probably not as hard as you think at the start, but anybody who’s good at anything has worked hard at it. The good news is that work sucks way less than the rules.

Listen carefully to people, but don’t put much too store in what they say. Watch what they do. Watch what they do when it matters, and then you’ll see what they are made of. Men who sound brave often run. People who seem like cowards often aren’t. And once again those who talk about making things fair are usually cheating.

And lastly, be the kind of person who holds doors open for people — even strangers. In a small way it makes the world a better place. And even though it’s a small thing — every little bit helps

Welcome to the world little man. That’s about all I know. And some of might be on shaky ground. But welcome to the world. Now it’s yours.

Episode Script
sabotage |?sab??tä zh |
verb [ trans. ]
to deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct

There is a story about this word, that it came to be used in conjunction with labor disputes. It seems the striking workers would damage machinery by throwing old shoes into it. And, as sabot is a 13th word for wooden shoe, the story seems to fit.

But I am most fascinated with self-sabotage. Those times at which we deliberately destroy, damage or obstruct our own progress. Sometimes one goal gets in the way of another. At one time in my life I played quite a bit of cards. But as I grew older and little more stable,  my goal of getting a good night’s sleep and being coherent the next day sabotaged my world-series of poker dreams.

But there is another form of self-sabotage. Much more subtle and insidious. It’s the strange subconscious kind. Where you set out to do something, but realize that you are actually getting in your own way.

For example, I put a tremendous amount of effort into the podcast, yet I put almost no effort into promoting the podcast. I haven’t done a new promo in 2 years. This has to be self-sabotaging. To say nothing of pretty stupid.

Perhaps I will never fathom my inner workings. And I’m not sure I want to,  But I can fix this promo problem. And I can do it right now. I’ve done a new promo and reworked the old ones. And here they are. Please spread them far and wide by any means at your disposal.

Please Sabotage my self-sabotaging tendencies.

PROMOS:

Rusty Bender
I Died
Zombie Spelling
Brains

When she asked me to help her write her book, I jumped at the chance. And I wound up coaching the coach.  I helped her outline her material, edited and rewrote chapters and generally stayed in the trenches with her. She was a little shy and timid about writing at first. But soon came out of her shell. Now you can’t keep the woman away from the keyboard. She’s even writing a weekly column for the Charlotte Business Journal.

I didn’t really expect her to put my name on the cover, but she felt like it was appropriate. So here we are, the first published work with my name on it.

I’ve encouraged her to make the full text of the book available in pdf. I will make it available as soon as she does. I’m also advising her on her website http://www.interactskills.com She’s got great, real human content, and her website can do a much better job of reflecting that. It’s time for an update. But, for my new media friends, don’t let the website wrapper fool you, the content that Lou has is GOLD.

So, in the interest of making sure everybody gets all the Seanachai they can, I thought I would make an announcement. Shooting an Elephant is one of my favorite essays. And, truly, one of the inspirations for the Seanachai. But if you’ve missed the one before that, Floor Pirhana, you should give that a listen as well. I can say it is as good as Orwell, but it’s a fine, light diversion, that may make you snicker.

January 09:

Home Theater is a mess. It’s hard to fathom another industry in which a person can spend tens of thousands of dollars on a product that they can only get to work part of the time. Seriously, if you spent $25,000 on a car and every once and a while, it wouldn’t start — you’d be pissed.

And, when it comes to home theater, it’s clearly the technology’s fault. It’s just too damn confusing. To say nothing of the impossibility of friendly, knowledgeable people who can help you.

Experience Home Entertainment means to change that. They’ve set out to be the Apple Store of Home Theater. A place where you can go and buy what you really want. Not the blinky lights and features you can’t understand, but the wonderful entertainment experience can give you. With none of the hassle.

TV – Answer the Phone

TV- Tell The Truth

:60 Fix It [audio:http://www.patrickemclean.com/book/EHE/fixit.mp3]

:60 Promise [audio:http://patrickemclean.com/book/EHE/promise.mp3]

:60 Turn Signal [audio:http://patrickemclean.com/book/EHE/turnsignal.mp3]

:60 Integra  [audio:http://patrickemclean.com/book/EHE/integra.mp3]

EPISODE SCRIPT

Shooting an Elephant

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people ñ the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically ñ and secretly, of course ñ I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos ñ all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism ñ the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone “must.” It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of “must” is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.

The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of “Go away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast’s foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.

The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant ñ I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary ñ and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd’s approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.

I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant ñ it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery ñ and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd ñ seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing ñ no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast’s owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick ñ one never does when a shot goes home ñ but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time ñ it might have been five seconds, I dare say ñ he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open ñ I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.

In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dash and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.

Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

Episode Script

PATRICK– Cryptozoologist. If you’re like me, that sounds like somebody who uses animals to transmit coded messages. The kind of a guy who hides the UPC code for the atomic bomb in a herd of zebra.

But as cool as that may be – it’s not actually what a cryptozooligst does. A cryptozoologist specializes in the study and discovery of hidden animals. This includes a lot of animals that probably don’t exist. Like Bigfoot and the Chupacabra.

But in spite of all those crappy Discovery Channel specials with cheesy recreations and blurry footage looped over and over again — there turns out to be a real field of study here. A number of animals thought to be extinct or mythical have been discovered. Like the Coelacanth (see – lo – can-th) the Hoan kiem turtle and the megamouth shark.

And I recently met a Cryptozoologist and he was such a wonderful and interesting character, I thought I would interview him for the show. Not only is Nigel highly qualified (I think even the dust on his elbow patches comes from the British Museum) but he is a lot of fun to talk to. So Nigel, would you care to introduce yourself to the listeners?”

NIGEL — I am Nigel Carruthers, PhD, adjuncunt curator of the British Musem of Natural History, temporarily seconded to the Colonial Museum of — that is to say, the American Museum of Natural History.

PATRICK — Okay, first off, do you teach Pileated woodpeckers to tap out messages in morse code.”

NIGEL — Oh Good Lord no.(laughter) Although one imagines that that would be quite a skill. No, I am a cryptozoologist. And I have come to these United States in search of the hitherto undocumented North American Floor Pirhana.”

PATRICK — “Floor pirhana?”

NIGEL — Oh yes, quite. Pilemongrulus Chompifcamprerius.”

P– Pile whosit?

N– Pilemongrulus Chompifcampferus — I named the phlyum myself.

P — So how come I’ve never heard of this animal?

N — Well it is well hidden and highly dangerous. In fact a small school of these creatures say no more than a score, can bring down a a full-flesh-ed American Female in under 10 seconds. And I am not talking about the rapidly vanishing, average weight American, oh no. I mean the big ones. Mallstropicus Americanus in all it’s glory

P — Mallstropicus?

N — For a long time the floor pirhana was thought to be only inhabit the realm of myth and nightmare. Something your nanny might scare you with. But recent developments have been quite exciting. We know now that the savage and dangerous floor piranha can indeed be found throughout the living rooms, the sitting rooms, even the bedrooms of North America.

P — so you’ve caught one.

N — well, not yet.

P — So you have pictures.

N — sadly, no.

P — then how do you know…

N — That they exist at all? I’m glad you asked my boy. Strikes right to the heart of the exciting field of Cryptozoology. You we have scads of ancedotal evidence of these creatures.

P — Stories, eyewitness reports?

N — Yes, exactly. You see these speedy, sharp toothed creatures have a long and storied history. The u-ma-pahai tribe of upstate Ohio worshiped them as Gods. While we have records of the British colonists using them to intimidate the French during the French and Indian war — and in one remarkable case, there is record of floor pirhanas being used to induce confession during your Salem Witch trials.

P — I’m not sure I remember that from my American history class.

N — Well, the church records are quite clear. They record that these beasts were loosed on a loosed on a Goody Smith who then confessed to meeting with a dark man of the wood and listening to scratchy Black Sabbath records with him.

P — Which Sabbath record?

N — Master of reality I think it was.

P — that was released in 1971?

N — Ah, a hah hah hah. YOu see my droll British wit has played merry hod with your interview.

P — Yeah, uh, obviously. So the “Floor Pirhana.”

N — Yes, quite. You have questions.

P — How goes the search?

N — Very well I think. Still plenty of grant money left.

P — Not quite what I meant.

N — Of course, well I thought I caught a glimpse of one last week. Terrifying experience.

P — but no evidence.

N — A bit of hair, some inconclusive bite castings, But I have gathered some wonderful ancedotal evidence. Would you like to hear a few of my interviews.

P — Sure, this should be good.

N — Here’s are a few of the juicier bits from a collection of interviews, in which I discussed folk remedies for floor pirhana attacks.

REDNECK — “Yeah” I seen one. Had one in my house. Thought to make it a pet — it were real cute like — then one day it turned on me, sank them little teeth right in my calf. YEEEEEowch.

Grandma told me the best way to get one of them little suckers to unlock is to beat at ‘em with a deflated football that’s been soaked in garlic. It works good.

MIDWEST GUY — “well everybody knows you hide in bathtubs — they hate the water.”

NORTHEAST GUY — you know, ya just take one of them uh, them, them dem dere and a just shoot ‘em. Shoot ‘em right in the neck. O course the jaws stay clamped on after death. So’s you still got to deal with that. But at least they stop gnawing.

P — I’m not sure I know what to say to any of that.

N — Stupendous isn’t it.

P — Well, there certainly must be some kind of adjective to describe it lying around here somewhere.

N — Can I make an appeal to your listeners? To aid me in my search.

P — knock yourself out.

N — Good subjects – ahem, Citizens I implore you, if you have any knowlege of these furry and elusive creatures, if you or someone that you love has felt the prick of their tiny teeth upon your flesh, please, please contact us.

P — Yeah, if anybody has any idea at all, what this clown is talking about, throw up a comment or send an email, please.

N — Clown, I say, did you call me a clown. I will have you know that I  am a charter member of the royal society for the advancement of scientific largess, and further more, sargent at arms of my local…..

Yeah, that’s my dog.

EPISODE SCRIPT: 

A defense (defence) of writing longhand

I like technology. A lot. But I’m not too sure how technology feels about me. It may be my faithful friend and boon companion — then again, it may just be pretending to be my friend so it can date my sister. Especially when it comes to writing. 

I’m writing a book. And for all the romance and immensity that phrase can contain, writing a book is also, simply a production process. I am in the process of assembling 75,000 to 100,000 words. And, after writing 50,000 of them, I’ve become convinced that the first draft is the hardest part. Hemingway famously said that the first draft of everything is shit. For what it’s worth, I agree. So, my question, becomes, what’s the easiest way to get through the hardest part.

And to my surprise, the easiest way, turns out to be writing longhand. Not printing mind you, but composing with a long, flowing, and delightfully irregular script that fills the page like a river of words. I sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and a thousand words roll out in a flash. And not only does it often take less time than typing, I think I write better longhand.

Now realize, I am not a hunt and peck typist. I type very fast. And when I type on one of those thin little laptop keyboards that have about 3 millimeters of travel, my typing speed approaches the absurd. Like Glenn Gould, the wonderfully talented and eccentric pianist, who remanufactured his piano, shortening the action on his keys  so that he could play Bach faster. Beautiful, yet a little insane. 

But there is obviously more to writing than typing. What I’m really doing is composing.  Composition requires focus. It is, like most acts of creation monotasking. And as much as I love technology, it drives us to distraction. 

A pen and paper has but one functionality. It captures the marks I make so that they can be referred to at a later time. It doesn’t ring, it doesn’t bother me with an incoming chat or IM. It never asks me to plug it in so it can get more power. It doesn’t crash, it never needs an upgrade and it is unlikely that someone will snatch my pad and bolt from a coffee shop with it when I turn my back. 

Sure paper is perishable. But it is predictably perishable. Data turns to noise in all kinds of unpredictable ways. Like hard drive crashes. And if an IT person tells you that there is a way to archive a file, not touch it for 500 years, and guarantee that it will be useable – they are lying to you. If you think I’m wrong, I’ll email you some WordStar and AppleWorks documents just as soon as I can figure out how to get them off my five and a quarter inch floppies. 

But I can go the national archives right now and read a copy of the Magna Carta that was handwritten 793 years ago. No format or version issues here. It is fitting for this essay that, Magna Carta literally means “Great Paper” 

But, to paraphrase Emerson, all of this is small account compared to what lies within us. And that is the struggle to organize and communicate our thoughts clearly with the beautiful, yet horribly imprecise instrument of language. And it is in this struggle, I believe that the beauty and power of writing longhand is discovered. 

In a way, the problem with writing is, the same problem of hitting a golf ball. Both the page and the ball just sit there. And when you write you have (theoretically) a lifetime to rewrite it until you get it right.

But all that time is simply a field day for the critical part of your brain. Just the time it needs to jump in and muck everything up. This part of the brain needs something to critize. After all, that’s it’s job. But the critical function is not creative. You be critical about anything. And no matter how absurd you are being, you will find ammo to support you. Try running Hamlet through a Microsoft Grammar check.Try running Hamlet and leaving all the scenes in. 

But the point is, there’s no possible way to get it right, if you don’t first get it down. And as much as I know this — I mean know it in my bones, as carpenter knows his measuring tape — it still doesn’t help.

The critical part of my brain is telling me, right now, that this sentence is horrible. That the entire device of anthropormophizing the critcal side of my nature in this essay is a bad idea. And that I just mispelled critical. And I shouldn’t have started two sentences in a row with “and”.

But when I write longhand, the experience is different. I think it is because that critical part of my brain is busy picking apart my handwriting (which truly is horrible) instead of my prose. It tells me that my handwriting is atrocious. And it gets the satisfaction of being right. But who cares? While it’s busy the words are just rushing out. And they’re not henpecked or second-guessed before they’ve had time to cool. They exist in a flawed, but pure state. This kind of prose has a feral power that seems to be lacking from the things I type. Maybe that’s not it, maybe it’s just harder to get my head in that effortless writing space when I use a keyboard. But whatever the case is, writing longhand makes it easier for me to reach a writer’s high.  

And if you’re still not sold on the idea that writing longhand might help you write better, consider this. Until the 20th century, books were written by hand. I would argue that the best writing in history was composed by hand. The entire process is much easier now. But, would you like to argue that the increase in the power of our technology has led to a corresponding increase in the quality of our writing? 

Not me. I’m too busy scribing away.

The Crash Course by Chris Martenson http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

EPISODE SCRIPT:

Pinball is a great game. There’s something about playing a game where the operating system is the same as the visible universe. Dress it up as much as you like, add all the animatronic figures, blinky lights ramps and rabbit holes, but at the heart of it, pinball remains the ultimate physics-based game engine.

Because when you get down to it, it’s just a ball bearing and gravity. From there you get acceleration, momentum, spin — a percussive and ballistic drama trapped safely under glass for your amusement.

Which makes pinball seem like a very honest game. It’s easier to suspect that the complicated mechanism of a computer could tip things one way or another. And, if you’ve played a first person shooter online, then you’ve yelled at the screen because you know you got cheated.

Pinball can’t do this. We know the game can’t change the laws of physics for it’s convenience.

So it seems honest, until you start looking at the score. Or, more precisely, the way pinball is scored over time.

1964 – Majorettes, produced by Gottlieb — capitalized on a new feature. (add a ball) if you scored 2000 points, you got an extra ball. You got another one at 5000. The score only went up to 9999, so if you managed to roll it, I’m sure the free balls would kick in again.

1976’s Disturbingly named Capt’n fantastic and the Dirt Brown Cowboy ( which was featured in the episode “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” )  also had a top score of 9,999.

In 1983 Gottlieb Amazon Hunt, which marketing copy cleverly described as a Jungle of Fun – had a top score of 999 million points. What the hell call it a billion And to be sure, Amazon’s are big game. But you have to admit that’s quite a jump in points. 20 years, 100,000 % inflation.

Now, part of the explanation is that pinball games moved from electro-mechanical ( that is, dials in the scoring mechanisms that physically rolled over like an odometer ) to Solid State. Which meant that pinball companies could inexpensively add another decimal place to the score. Or as many as they wanted.

Which brings us to 2003 and the Lord of the Rings pinball game. Which features the highest ever score multiplier of any pinball game. Through an interlocking complexity of modes and objectives that defy comprehension, a player can get whopping 84x score multiplyer. Which helps, because the maximum score is theoretically infinite.

At the time of this article, the current high score reported for Lord of the Rings on Pinballhighscores.com was 4.2 billion. But don’t expect it to last. I have it on good authority that underfunded colleges in India are starting to use refurbished Lord of the Rings Machines to help them in their search for large prime numbers.

So my question is. What happened? Why did the scores of pinball games inflate to the point where you get a couple million points just for successfully finding and pressing the start button. And also closely linked question: why has this phenomenon not attracted more attention? Sure it’s not AIDS or the unrest in the Middle East, crushing sub-saharan poverty, but isn’t it a little odd how normal, how matter of course this tremendous inflation has been?

I mean, basketball hasn’t gone from 2 points a basket to 200? It’s not like touchdowns are somehow cheapened by only being 6 points. And one point, one simple point in soccer is enough to incite riots.

I think that part of the answer is that it’s difficult for people to comprehend inflation of any kind. But with pinball, it’s easy to see that the bumper hit that got you 5 points in Majorette, is physically the same action as the Balrog hit in Lord of the Rings that awards you more points than the gross domestic product of Micronesia.

Points are cheap in Lord of the Rings. And points have become worth less and less over the history of pinball.

And this is point inflation.

So what about currency inflation?

It’s a terribly important question. And as I have spent more time reading and thinking about our current financial troubles, I have come to believe that they are fundamentally and inexorably linked to systematic currency inflation.

That is to say, the appearence of higher prices, when in fact, the dollar is just worth less. It’s how the 5 and dime store becomes the dollar store. How a game of pinball goes from costing a nickel to costing a dollar.

One of the reasons I’m interested in this is that I come from a family of economists. And if you think being a writer in family of jocks would be difficult, consider what it would be like to be an artist among the utlitarians. It’s kind of like being a boy being raised by wolves.

But it’s okay. They are very loving according to their savage customs and I would not trade my family for anything. And it has given me an insight into things economic that most writers just don’t have. On long nights when the moon is full, I know what causes packs of economists to howl, and what their strange music means. And, every once and a while, I can translate their savage language into English. I can read the signs that the econ tribe leaves in the wild.

And if I were to pick a subject to write about that had the highest degree of difficulty, it would be economics. History, mathematics, physics, almost every other subject  has had great popularists. People who have written interestingly and intelligibly about their subject matter. Not so with economcs.

Don’t get me wrong. Freakonomics is a plesant diversion. I’m sure there are few other works out there that I’m missing. But Economics has no Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawkings.

Which, in and of itself is fascinating to me. Black holes are interesting. No two ways about it. Where the universe came from and how it was formed, there’s some deep magic there. But a black hole isn’t going to eat your house. And an economic downturn just might.

So I thought I would write a little bit about things economic.

And right now I’m fascinated, or terrified, by inflation.

And the entire point of this wandering little essay is to point out that number of points in a pinball game and the number of dollars in a economy are set by the same rules. They only go up. And when released, the game designer pretty much loses control over them.

You see dollars can’t be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold at Fort Knox, or anywhere else. The only reason dollars have value to you or me or anybody else is that  people will take them in exchange for, well, a game of pinball or a cup of coffee.

Now difference between pinball inflation and money inflation is that money inflation has some pretty serious and unpleasant consequences for all of us. And, in the last three months, the federal reserve has practically doubled the monetary base. That’s kind of like the pre-multiplier points in Lord of the Rings. You can find a link in the show notes to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis website that will show one hell of a hockey stick curve.

Now to attempt to explain the full ramifications of this monetary expansion would take a lot. Pictures would help. So would a PhD. And I have neither. But I know a guy who has both.

In the three years this podcast has been running, I don’t think I’ve recommended another podcast or blog or bit of online media. And not because they’re not out there and not because they’re not good. But because plugs and promos just didn’t seem to fit into the format. And, quite honestly, I was living in my own frantic little world.

But I’m going to recommend one now. It’s a series of short videos by a man named Chris Martensen. It’s called the “Crash Course”.  And he does a brilliant job of explaining all the stuff that every citizen should know about the economy, in terms that every citizen can understand. My admiration for the job he has done cannot be understated.

You can find the course at http://www.chrismartenson.com/crash-course

These are scary times we live in. The kind of times that no one has ever seen before. And, if you’re like me, ignorance of a subject makes it 10 times scarier. I don’t know why it is so, but if I were being by a pack of lions, I would find some comfort in being able to identify the different kinds of cat teeth.

What I’m suggesting to you with the pinball analogy is the very tip of a nuanced argument about the nature of money, currency manipulation and the business cycle. But my point is very simple.

(pinball sound effects)

When the way we manage our currency like our economy is a game of pinball, should anyone really be surprised if one day it goes on tilt?

Inexplicably, 2008 was a very busy year for paying work. I think that makes me one of 3 people in North America who’s not experiencing a recession (yet), but it was kind of bad for the other writing. Until now, because that means that I’ve got a fat cushion of time on my hands to chunk out a lot of pages.

And that’s just what I’m doing. It’s just slow, gradual work.

In the meantime, I’ve restarted the Seanachai. And it’s going strong. So if you haven’t checked it out, stop by.

My current plan is to have new installments of ‘Evil going live in February.

with PG Holyfield and Tee Morris

EPISODE SCRIPT

So we were trapped inside a Mexican restaurant, held captive by a vengeful Mayan God of Truck (truck horn playing La Cucaracha) or Thunder (booming thunder) depending on how you care to look at it. 

PG — And you’ve sure got a lot of those. [NOTE: ? what does that mean?]  Me, I’m a simple man. I tried to call the cops. 

Not very sporting. 

PG — Nope. But it is easy. Or at least I thought it was. Cellphones didn’t work. No bars. And the restaurant line.

(this phone has been disconnected message) 

So we planned and plotted and generally put up with Finchy. Who was an idiot. 

FINCHY — Maybe we could light the restaurant on fire! Then the fire department could come and rescue us.” 

The bartender, up to this point our firmest friend and staunchest ally. “Miguel, mas por favor. Mas”(Blender noise) Gave Finchy a hard look and reached under the bar for something. I quickly reassured Miguel that Finchy was an idiot and we would allow no harm to come to the restaurant — or more importantly, the bar. 

Finchy — “Well we can’t just wait here until the end of time.”

PG — Why not? It’s only 2012? I spent longer than that in college. 

Patrick — Shut up Finchy, we’ve got to think.

And then the fates forced our hand. Miguel came over, and very politely told us that it was last call. Ultimo and that he must close in 20 minutes.

PG and I locked eyes. We knew what had to be done. There was no other way. We were outmatched by bloodthirsty mystic forces beyond our control. Maybe there was no honor here. After all, only survivors can wear medals.

PG — Yeah, and I never liked the guy. He cheated at golf. 

But that’s not a sin is it?

PG — Yes. Yes it is. 

Finchy, Finchy I said, we’ve taken a vote. And we’ve decided it’s time for you to go out there. 

FINCHY – But, but that’s not fair, there’s two of you and only one of me!

Patrick — Well, it’s not a perfect system, but I think we’ve got a pretty good democracy.

PG — Works for me. 

Patrick — so bottoms up, brave Finchy and out the door. 

I’d like to say he agreed and faced his end like a hero. 

(Sounds of us beating Finchy. Him sobbing and screaming like a little girl.) 

But eventually, we dragged his unconscious body out into the parking lot. 

PG — It was such a struggle, we didn’t notice that the Truck was no longer there. 

Patrick — How stupid did we look? Standing in the middle of an empty Mexican Restaurant parking lot, with our friend bound in duct tape and gagged with a bar towel. 

PG — I was beginning to think that we had made a mistake. 

(Finchy wakes up and starts screaming through the gag.)

(Thunder) 

Patrick — And then the lightning flashed. And we saw the truck at the far end of the parking lot. 

(Truck starts up. Shrieking of tires.)

PG — I ran.

Patrick — I fled in mortal terror. I was so afraid, I’m still not sure why I didn’t soil myself. In fact, I was so scared I’m not sure why my entrails weren’t trailing behind me like weather balloons. 

PG — I just ran. 

Patrick — but when we made it to the front door of the restaurant, it was locked. The bartender had turned on us. 

PG — I usually takes until the morning after to realize the bartender isn’t your friend. 

Patrick — In terror I turned back to the the truck. It accelerated towards Finchy without even a thought of slowing. I winced in anticipation of the crunching noise as the truck drove over him. But instead there was silence.

PG — Even though we didn’t hear it, the truck stopped. 

Against our better judgment we walked over to see what had happened to Finchy. 

PG — Flinchy

Flinchy. [realizes he has been fooled] What? 

PG — Gotcha.

Finchy wasn’t on the ground any longer.

PG — But then we saw him.

PG — We see Finchy being carried up the steps of the temple. 

Patrick — the airbrushed temple on the side of the truck. He was in the mural. What a brush with eldrich magic. 

PG — Eldrich? This had nothing to do with Fey magic.

It was a metaphor. 

PG — it was weird. 

Patrick — and then the truck was gone. 

PG — The one in the mural?

Both. 

PG — Yeah. 

And the thunderstorm had vanished. 

PG — It was over. We got in the car and went home. 

Patrick — We thought it was over. But the guilt of what we had done was just starting to take root in the bitter place of our souls. 

PG — Not really.

Patrick — You don’t feel bad. 

PG — Nope.

Patrick — Well, I don’t feel that bad. I mean, it was us or him right? Forces beyond our control and everything, right? 

PG — Yeah, maybe. I just didn’t like him. 

Patrick — And that’s the story. 

PG — yup. All true. 

Patrick — And the truck is still out there somewhere. The Mexican Show truck of doom. Haunting the highways of the night. 

PG — whatever. 

( Theme music )

(Truck rumbling)

End.

So you’ve got a pub in the back of a strip mall that pours more Guinness per square foot than any place else in North and South Carolina. You need to boost your summer sales. So you build a patio. Then you let everybody know about it with rather outrageous communications.

Bison :60

[audio:http://www.patrickemclean.com/book/SirEds/bison.mp3]

Eating Gravel :60

[audio:http://www.patrickemclean.com/book/SirEds/eatinggravel.mp3]

There are a few, ever so few, magic projects in one’s life. This was one of those. When it started it was once of those horrible, nebulously defined “branding” projects. Adams wanted to be a ‘cool’ company. They said that they wanted to be like Apple or Nike. But they were a friggin’ outdoor company for crying out loud. And the language they used to describe what they did — and what they wanted to be was terrible. 

I butted heads with them. In particular, I butted heads with the President Kevin Gleason. And as we went round and round, I came to understand that they really were trying to do something great. They just didn’t know how to articulate it. And neither did anybody else. In fact, three “branding” firms had tried and failed to complete this project. 

So instead of a mission statement and a values statement and a vision statement, I wrote an them  entire book. A book that took all the empty terms of business and gave them precise definitions. And gave the company a voice and attitude all it’s own. And it started with this bit:

Honesty: How many cubic hectares of bullshit have been spread around in the name of honesty? It’s really very simple: We tell the truth. The less convenient it is to tell the truth, the more important it is to tell the truth.

The change was revolutionary. And no one was more surprised than I. I knew I had done a good job, but I did not expect that I would have people grabbing me in the hallway saying, “Are you the guy who wrote our book!” and then regaled with some tale about how it had had an impact on them. Words matter. So do ideas. 

MVV Book

Adams Outdoor Advertising Website

A very aspirational campaign for SouthPark. These ads ran back when they still had a Morrision’ Cafeteria and a crappy movie theater. But the goal was established; To be the premiere retail destination in the Carolinas. And that’s exactly what SouthPark has become

The ads were part of the package that attracted Nordstrom’s. Unfortunately, they also attracted Simon Malls who franchises packages of ads across the many malls they own. I’m not a fan of their ads. Largely because they could be SOOOOO much better. But judge for yourself. http://www.simon.com/about_simon/branding/default.aspx Leave comments that says who’s work you like better and why. I no scared.

South Park TV – Good Things

SouthPark – Owning Men

There’s not much to say about these particular apartments, except that they won’t blow your rent budget. Made for a surprisingly nice little campaign. It’s also the only time I’ve used a puppy in an advertisement of my own free will.

:60 Men Weren’t Made for Hollidays
[audio:http://www.patrickemclean.com/book/CQC/christmas.mp3]

:60 Men Weren’t Made for Company Christmas Parties
[audio:http://www.patrickemclean.com/book/CQC/christmasoffice.mp3]

:60 What you really wanted was a WARHAMMER!
[audio:http://www.patrickemclean.com/book/CQC/sweatervest.mp3]

:60 Men Weren’t Made for Decorative Hand Towels
[audio:http://www.patrickemclean.com/book/CQC/handtowels.mp3]

Ad agencies, design firms and marketing communications firms uniformly do a crappy job of talking about what they do. (Yes, I did say that marcomm firms aren’t very good at communications) Specifically, they can never seem to explain why and how they approach the business differently than anyone else.

Axiom was firm that I did a tremendous amount of work with. And, in addition to the raw power of talent, the Axiom difference really was that they really, really, REALLY gave a shit. Beyond the bounds of all rationality. They lived design. They died design.

So why hide it? Why not absolutely flaunt it?

Much of my work with Red Bull was below the line, non-traditional advertising. But I did launch Flugtag into North America with these radio spots.

AAA has a uniquely trusted brand. Especially when you compare AAA to the other entities in the automotive space (Car Salesmen, Mechanics, Tow Truck Drivers) Because they are so different, I was able to do some very simple, powerful spots for them.

As time passes, the memory of 9/11 fades. And it’s good that time takes the edge of that scary, heroic and wounded moment in history. Because it was intense. So when I was asked to do a series of ads to promote a memorial ride from the Pentagon to Ground Zero it was intimidating to say the least.

If I mis-stepped in tone or content, it would have been horrible. This is hardest assignment I’ve ever had. Advertising is slimy and stupid. So when any of us see an ad, our heads go right to “are these slimy bastards trying to profit off a tragedy?” And then I found out that at least one was going to run in Time Magazine.

I don’t think I screwed it up.

Literally around the corner from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, The Heroes of Baseball Wax Museum had all the traffic they ever wanted. The only problem was, it was two doors over. So I did a campaign of posters for them to make sure that anybody who came through Cooperstown would know they were there.

The first piece was a poster with perforated, limited edition baseball cards across the top.

So, once upon a time there was a wonderful company called Patterson Pope. And they did, well, friggin’ everything. They did so much, so frantically that they couldn’t even explain it. Even customers who loved them dearly would buy a product or service from other suppliers.

So the project was first and foremost branding. Enter Space Made Simple. It was more than a tagline, it was a rallying cry.

Here’s the first paragraph from their capabilities brochure:

In the beginning, the world was without form and void. Then came stuff. After that, it got confusing. Files, supplies, inventory – whatever it may be, it takes up space and gets disorganized. That’s where we come in. We’re Patterson Pope. And we take space and materials and make them simple, elegant and efficient.

And this branding worked so well that members of the saleforce memorized this and started every presentation with a recitation. How’s that for owning a positioning?

After the brochure, tagline and website redesign came a series of web videos, sent to existing and potential customers. These were designed to make sure everyone knew everything that Patterson Pope did. They were also supposed inject a little levity into what was a very dull category. Website traffic jumped over 60% each time a new video went out.

Patterson Pope – Shredder

Patterson Pope – Rotary

Patterson Pope – Museum Case

Patterson Pope – Moveable Shelving

Patterson Pope – Aftermath

Patterson Pope – Weapons Racks

Patterson Pope – Shelving

Patterson Pope – Hallway

Patterson Pope – Casework

…then came stuff

Since the original web videos, the campaign has evolved under the heading the Laws of Stuff. The orange cube was developed as a symbol for whatever kind of stuff an organization has to deal with.

From there, we created the Laws of Stuff (as inexorable as gravity they are) and lawsofstuff.com

Patterson Pope – Laws of Stuff – Pens

Patterson Pope – Laws of Stuff – Socks

Patterson Pope – Laws of Stuff – Pocket

I’ve been doing work with the Charlotte Checkers since 2004 and I’ve loved every minute of it. They don’t have huge budgets, but they have what every minor league hockey team needs — heart.

In the course of our work together, the Checkers have set attendance records, won two league marketing awards and in 2005 these television spots won Best in Show at the Charlotte Addys.

2005 Television Campaign

The infamous urinal campaign

So, as the Checkers had recently moved Uptown, we thought it would be a good idea to reinforce their presence in sports bars. Turns out that you can buy ad space above the urinals. Perfect. A captive audience with a bit of time on their hands. I came up with a poster campaign that would play off the fact that we had replaced the urinal cake with a hockey puck.

In a preliminary meeting, someone raised the question, “What if somebody takes the puck.” To which we all agreed, “no one would steal a urine soaked hockey puck.”

We were wrong.

Disgusting as it may be, all the pucks were stolen. And each week, we sent fresh pucks around. But we managed to turn lemons into lemonade (or urine in to urinade?) when we turned the incident to our favor. We created a false public service radio campaign that began, “And now, Jeff Longo, president of the Charlotte Checkers with an important service announcement.” And Jeff came on and said, “Don’t touch things people have peed on.” And then he went on to offer free Hockey Pucks to anybody who wanted one.

You simply can’t buy that kind of publicity.

Featuring P.G. Holyfield and Tee Morris

EPISODE SCRIPT: 

SFX: Truck circling, deGuello playing. 

So we were in a bad spot. We were trapped in Mexican restuarant. Outside, forces, sinister and unknown. With bloodthirsty taste in music. Forces ancient and mystical, as we were soon to find out. 

PG — So I convinced my wife, Liza, to go. 

I think she thought it was a joke. 

PG — Yeah, well, when she hears the rest of this story, she’s not going to think it was so funny.

I was a little surprised at how quickly she left. 

PG — Well you ruined our night out so she wanted to save money on a sitter. 
 
I ruined your night out?

PG — That’s what she’s going to think when she hears this story.

Hey man, it’s not my fault. 

PG — Who invited the guy to play golf? 

Hey, I didn’t hit the ball into the truck, okay.

PG — I’m just telling it like it is. 

Whatever. So, we did what men do in difficult and dangerous times. We drank.

Patrick — Dos Margaritas por favor.

PG — Two.

Patrick — That’s what I said, dos.

PG — I know and I said two. 

Patrick — No, two means Dos. 

PG — I know. I want two Margaritas. 

SFX: Truck revving

PG — And you want Dos. 

Patrick — Yes I do. Make that Quatro, por favor. 

Finchy — What about me?

Patrick — buy your own drinks.

PG — See, that’s not sarcasm. Because he’s serious. 

We moved to the bar, and watched the truck circle endlessly. 

Bartender — Another round senor?

Patrick — Keep ‘em coming. It’s a shame you know. I always thought I’d die drinking Guiness. 

PG — did you think you’d die a coward?

Patrick — nope, I never thought that either. And come to think of it, I don’t think I will. What do you want to do.

PG — Do? I’m going to sit right here until that truck goes away. 

Finchy — I’m going to the bathroom. 

Patrick — (to finchy) good luck with that — (to PG) what do you mean, you can’t just sit here. 

PG — Look I’ve got a wife. I’ve got a family. And, and this is the important part, I’ve got a clue. 

Patrick — Well I don’t. Have a family that is. I’m going to go out there and see what they want. 

PG — If you don’t come back, I’m finishing your margarita. 

So, holding a cocktail napkin as an improvised flag of truce, I went outside to parley with the truck. Really. This was all some kind of misunderstanding. Had to be. After all,  It was just a windshield. And as the truck turned to face me, I could see that it had already been repaired. 

The truck pulled up alongside me. I expected it to stop at the driver’s window. But it kept going until the airbrushed mural was beside me. I thought it was some kind of mistake. Until I realized, the mural was moving. 

A slight breeze blew through the trees of the rainforest. Was that a monkey? And I could see figures descending the steps of the Mayan temple. 

As they drew closer, they appeared to be priests. They spoke in unison echoing across space and time. 

PRIESTS — bbbrrring usss.

Patrick — what?

PRIESTS — Bring usssss the short one.

Patrick — Can you be more specific, we’re all kind of short in there. 

PRIESTS — Appease Ah Peku.

Patrick — Right, the windshield. Look, Finchy’s happy to pay for that. Hell, I’ll even pay for it. We’ll both pay for it. How much do you want?

PREISTS — Bloood.

Patrick — Okay, is this one of those things where you say Blood and I say 100 bucks and we wind up meeting in the middle at like, what call it 500?

PRIESTS — Bloood.

Patrick — Guess not.  

PRIESTS — Sacrifice.

Patrick — Right. So how long are you prepared to wait anyway?
  
PRIESTS — End time. 

When I got back inside PG was frantically working his Blackberry. 

Patrick — Tell me you saw that?

PG — Yeah, I saw it. 

Patrick — What the hell was that?

PG — Just a minute. 

Patrick — What are you doing. Are you twittering this?

PG — No, Google.

Patrick — What’s it say?

PG — Well I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. 

Patrick — Give me the bad news.

PG — The good news is Ah Peku isn’t a curse.

Patrick — Oh, that means the bad news is really bad. When people don’t tell you the bad news, that means it’s really bad. What’s the bad news. 

PG — Mayan god of thunder. 

Patrick — What’s the Mayan God of Thunder doing on the side of a Chevvy?

PG — Well, it’s not that cut and dried. You see the Mayan gods all sort of blend together. They’re just different names for different faces of God.

Patrick — So, Ah Peku is.

PG — the God of Thunder and 

Patrick — Mexican Show Trucks

PG — Yup
 

Patrick — That’s just great. So what you’re saying is, Finchy has pissed off an ancient Mayan thunder god so bad that the Thunder God wants his still beating heart ripped from his body as part of bizzare and cruel Mayan ritual designed to bring about the end of days or something like that? 

PG — Nah, I think he’s just pissed about his windshield.

Patrick — Sounds a bit materialistic for an ancient Mayan god.

PG — Angry and vengeful. 

Patrick — Oh yeah, that will work. Still, I like it better the way I said it.  

PG — But the Mayans didn’t believe that the end of the world that was brought about. They had a fixed calendar. Says here that they believed that the world is going to end in 2012.

Patrick — 2012, that’s when all my credit cards expire. That’s kind of creepy. 

Just then Finchy came back from the bathroom. (crashing thunder) 

Finchy — what, what happened? what is it? 

(crashing thunder) 

Patrick — Uh, there’s a couple of gentlemen outside, wearing feathers and bronze. They’d like a word with you.

MUSIC

EPISODE SCRIPT:

Today is the winter solstice. That means, in this hemisphere, it’s the day we get the fewest hours of sunlight. It’s the darkest day of the year.

It’s an observation that fits the times doesn’t it?

Every day since September 22nd, the days have been getting shorter. Or darker, depending on how you want to look at it.

This is an interesting astronomical phenomenon and you can find all kinds of descriptions and diagrams of about the equinoxes and the solsti. Precise, geometric things they are. Explaining how the axial tilt of the earth gives rise to the seasons themselves as we complete a year-long orbit around the firey ball of hydrogen we call the sun.

But I don’t really care about any of that. You see that’s the easy stuff to know. What’s out there. What I’m interested in is what’s in us. And how what’s out there makes us who we are.

Every culture in the Northern Hemisphere celebrates this time of year. Yule comes from Pagan Scandinavians. The early church paved over the Roman festival of a God called Mithras and the Saturnalia, to provide the foundation of the celebration we know as Christmas.

Temple geometry of every kind, From the pyramids, to Stonehenge to chichen izta to St. Peter’s to the Washington memorial indicates the passage of the seasons. It allows us to tell one day from the next and mark the passage of time with precision

So when you get right down to it, stonehenge is a very, very, very heavy device for determining, among other things, the solstice.

Why?

Well, agriculture depends on knowing the best time to plant. It’s a crapshoot anyway, what with freak cold snaps, Indian summers, floods, fires, locusts — nature can fake you out and break your heart at every turn. But your best shot comes around the same time every year. And regardless of how good or bad a particular year might be, the earth keeps spinning and things keeping growing.

So fine, wake me when spring gets here. But why mark the darkest day of the year? You see, from a natural perspective, most everything around us has been dying since September 22nd. A tree loses it’s leaves in the fall. A tree also loses it’s leaves when it dies.

So if you’re very primitive, and you don’t have a stonehenge. And you don’t have any other way of recording and transmitting knowledge except through the elders of the tribe — The madmen and the mystics, who are cool and everything — fun at parties, but not the most accurate or meticulous source of information. Well, then this time of year looks like the end of the world.

Fenray the wolf eats the sun. It’s all Ragnarock and roll from here on in.

And we know it’s not because we have science and history and writing and numbers to keep track of it all. Hell, we’ve got spreadsheet’s and pivot tables. We’re far too smart to be fooled by nature. I mean, it’s not like we rush around frantically to be with loved ones, huddle around fires, light candles and displaying the few plants that remain green as a symbol of growth and hope and things eternal.

It’s not like we make phone calls and send out messages to distant friends and relatives letting everybody know that we’re okay — and seeking that same message in return.

It not like it’s a time of year that we lay out a feast, and throw parties to try and convince ourselves and others how good we’ve got it, and how everything’s going to be okay.

It’s not like it’s a time of the year when people turn to religion.

How scared and frantic we all act around the solstice. How frightened.

It’s the darkest day of the year. And, for all our intelligence and achievements and self-congratulations, on some animal level, we still freak out about it. Even though we know better.

But there’s another thing I’ve noticed. Christmas doesn’t fall on the solstice. Neither does New Year’s.

So if you were watching the sun, and you didn’t have a Stonehenge, how long would it take you to confirm that the days were indeed getting longer. That things were getting brighter. That the darkest day of the year was behind you. 4 days? 12 days?

Something like that.

It’s the darkest day of the year. But it’s not the end. Tomorrow will be brighter. And the day after that, and the day after that — all the way until June.

It’s an inarguable physical fact. But, as I said, I’m not all that interested in facts. I’m interested in a higher order of ideas. What we do with the facts. How we use the facts to tell ourselves stories that create meaning.

So you know what I make of this fact? I think this is how nature teaches us hope. Because sometimes the days are dark and then they get darker. But that’s okay. It goes the other way too.

As sure as the turning of the earth.

My favorite comes from Hannah.

hi ppl santa is real we havent got a chimney but santa has this special key so he can get into our and your house so haha

I think we should all chip in and get Hannah a chimney for Christmas. Check out the rest of the comments.

http://www.theseanachai.com/2006/01/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-santa/

Gracious guest appearance by Liza Holyfield.

EPISODE SCRIPT:

So, where were we?

PG — 2nd hole. And you were racing down the fairway with a fugitive from a Mexican show truck on your way to score a 4 over par.

Hey, you were right behind me.

PG — Right behind you in the fairway.

Yeah, well

PG — and up to this point, it was pretty funny. Until the Mexican show truck drove out onto the golf course.

(Horn, acceleration noises)

Yeah that was nuts. Nemesis, the forces of Retribution, were coming for Finchy. Decked out in all their aftermarket parts glory.

PG — And the truck would have gotten us right there and then. Except for the bridge.

Yeah, there was a stream cutting across the golf course. And the bridge for the golf carts was too small for the Mexican for the Mexican show truck to go over.

PG — and the gulley was too deep for it to go through.

Thankfully it wasn’t a Mexican Jumping Show Truck.

PG — oh, I can’t believe you just made that joke.

What, it wasn’t that bad.

PG — Seanachai my ass.

Anyway, Finchy is white as a sheet. And all the while, there’s the truck, on the other site of this little creek (SFX: Engine revving )

Finchy turns around and yells. “Well I’m sorry!”

And the truck drives away. But not back to the road, it idles off down the first fairway. Which was disconcerting, to say the least, most of all to Finchy.

PG — He had the nerve to ask me where he should take his drop.

I don’t see PG get angry very often. He’s a professional on the golf course.

PG — I am not.

Dude, you’ve got your name stitched into your bag.

PG — So,

Anyway, when you hit a ball out of bounds,

PG — And oncoming traffic is always out of bounds.

You have to take stroke and distance.

PG — which means that Flinchy has to go all the way back to the tee and hit again.

It’s a cruel game.

PG — but there’s no way he’s crossing that stream

There be monsters ( SFX: Truck rumble ) But I wasn’t afraid.

PG — You ran into the woods!

I was looking for my ball.

PG — un-hunh

I thought we were playing ready golf. So we finished out the hole.

PG — Par

Nine

PG — And Flinchy called out

Finchy — “bogey”

PG — There’s no way he had a bogey. First of all, he should have taken an x with his illegal drop drop, but with the out of bounds,

On the next tee, I could see that Finchy was rattled. So I tried to comfort him as best I could. “Hey, Finchy, you want to get a bet going? You know, liven up the round a little bit.”

He went white as a sheet. I thought he was terrified of my golfing prowess.

PG — snort

(SFX: golf cart)

But it was two pro’s from the club house. With a distraught hispanic woman.

( SFX : Distraught hispanic woman ranting )

PG — And, the pro’s did a pretty good job of handling it.

I thought so too. They explained that, whoever hit the ball, it was covered by auto insurance. And your insurance company and the woman’s insurance company would work it out. No big deal. Happened more than you thought.

PG — But Flinchy wouldn’t own up to it. And it was none of my business. He was Patrick’s friend and I was in the other cart.

Yeah, well, golf is a funny game. It’s the only game where a player is required to call penalties on themselves. Which means, unless you’re in a tournament, or there’s a bet, you pretty much let the other guy go his own way. Everybody’s got to play their own bad shots. In volleyball, you can bail your buddy out. But golf is existential in it’s despair.

PG — What does that even mean.

It means, the responsiblity lay with Finchy. It was his ball, he had to play it.

PG — but he took his time.

It was awkward. He tried lying about it.

PG — He already lied about his score.

But eventually, he owned up to it. They exchanged information. Although I’m not too sure the woman fully understood what was going on.

PG — I think she wanted cash.

Hey, who doesn’t. But my cash was all tied up in investment gambling.

PG — and as the pro’s guided her back to the cart. She looked at all of us and said

“ah peku, ah peku, ah peku”

It must have been some ancient Mayan Curse.

PG — ah come off it. She was probably just telling us to go to hell.

Which is a curse.

PG — Whatever.

Well it would explain a lot about what happened next.

A few weeks pass, as they do, in a blur. The rains have come, and we haven’t had a chance to play much golf.

PG — So you’re saying that what happened next was nothing.

It’s a suspensful pause in the action.

PG — ‘Nothing happened’ real tension-builder there

And then, one night, after a round of golf, we decided to go out to dinner.

PG — My wife met us for dinner.

Wonderful woman. One wonders how she ever became burdened with the scintillating PG Holyfield.

PG — I tell it like it is.

You write fiction!

PG — So what? I tell it like it is

So where’d we go for dinner Mr. Tell it like it is?

PG — a restaurant

What kind of restaurant?

PG — We went to a Mexican restaurant.

And what was the name of this restaurant.

PG — Azteca.

And why, so soon after our brush with the Mayan show truck of certain and inalterable doom did we go to a Mexican retaurant?

PG — My wife wanted Mexican food. Look, it was just a coincidence.

Coincidence, I think not.

PG — It was a total coincidence. And so was running into your friend, Flinchy.

Finchy.

PG — Whatever, that nickname never made sense to me. But why was he there? Total coincidence.

Not coincidence. Fate.

PG — Well fate is pretty obnoxious. And so’s your friend Flinchy.

SFX : Restaurant ambience.

FINCHY: Hey guys what’s going on? Feista time! Hunh.

PATRICK: Hey, Finchy. It’s (?)good(?) to see you?

PG — Hello.

FINCHY: Aren’t you going to introduce me to your special lady friend.

PG — Hello.

FINCHY: Come on man, that’s just rude.

PG — Okay, Liza, this is Flinchy.

FINCHY — Finchy.

PG — (aside) Does it really matter?

LIZA — Hello.

PATRICK — So Finchy, you been playing any golf?

FINCHY — No, not since that thing with the truck.

PATRICK — Oh yeah, what happened with that?

FINCHY — Oh man, you’ll never believe it. I totally got away with it.

PG — Got away with it?

FINCHY — Yeah, I mean, I gave her my insurance information. And she scrawled something on a piece of paper. Turns out it was bogus. She didn’t have insurance at all! Serves her right.

PATRICK — Serves her right for what?

PG — ( aside ) He lied about his score.

FINCHY — For driving without insurance.

PATRICK — Yeah, but you hit a golf ball into her windshield.

FINCHY — Serves her right.

LIZA — Well it was nice to meet you.

FINCHY — (confused) It was nice to meet you too.

PG — She’s asking you to leave, Flinchy.

And with that, Finchy slunk back to the bar. And we told the whole story to Liza. And she got all of it. The bit about the way a person plays golf being a good indicator of their character.

PG — She understood, instinctively, that you’re not a very good golfer.

Better golfer than Finchy.

PG — Well, yeah.

The only part she had trouble with was the idea of the Mexican Show Truck.

LIZA — I don’t get it. What makes it a show truck?

PG — It’s showy.

LIZA — How?

PATRICK — Well, you know how you trick out a, it’s kind a like show dogs. People love them, go crazy over them

SFX: truck engine creeping closer and closer.

LIZA — oh, you mean like that truck? Is that a Mexican show truck?

PATRICK — Except that it wasn’t a, it was the. Capital THE. Fate. Nemesis. Finchy’s black destiny come for him at –

PG — (interrupting) It was the same truck from the golf course. And it was yellow.

PATRICK – Yeah, but it’s a symbol. A menacing symbol.

PG — If it was a story, it would be a symbol. But this really happened, so it’s a truck. A menacing truck. A menacing yellow truck.

Just then Finchy came over and said.

FINCHY — Oh my god, it’s them. You gotta help me.

(SFX: music creeps in from underneath.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbtKClGm1l8&feature=related)

PATRICK — Oh ho ho, look at the time. We’ve got to go. Looks like you’re buying a windshield buddy. Check please.

PG — That was sarcasm.

FLINCHY — Please, hide me, help me.

PG — See he’s really not your buddy.

FLINCHY — What about you?

PG — Oh, sorry pal.

LIZA — It was nice to meet you.

Patrick — Hey. What’s that song? I’ve heard it somewhere before.

It was De Guello. The cutthroat song. The same song that Santa Ana played for the men in the Alamo. It meant, “no quarter.” And just as I realized this, just as we were about to step out the door Finchy said, “You know, they know what you look like. They probably think you’re in on it.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbtKClGm1l8

[*PG -- I always wanted to be in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

No, this is De Guello. The cutthroat song.

P.G. -- first 3rd would be enough

The same song that Santa Ana played for the men in the Alamo.

P.G. -- Flinchy could come in towards the end

It meant, "no quarter."

PG -- you're really not listening to me at all are you?

What?

PG -- Oh, nothing.*]

PG — I didn’t like Flinchy, but he was right. So then.

Ahh, no.

PG — What? No. You can’t

Patrick — Yes I can.

PG — You ARE a cliffhangering bastard.

Patrick — Guilty as charged.

MUSIC

–

featuring the dead-pan artistry of P. G. Holyfield of Murder at Avedon Hill

EPISODE SCRIPT

So, I’ve playing golf with PG Holyfield. A few rounds here and there, we even played in a tournament. It’s been great fun.

PG – It’s okay. At least it’s hasn’t rained on us.

And there’s a couple of things you might not know about P.G. Holyfield. 1) his first name isn’t really PG

PG – That would be weird.

It’s Patrick. And 2, he’s an excellent golfer

PG – I’m okay.

No really, his scores generally have names and everything. You know Par, Birdie — I’ve even seen him get an Eagle.

PG — and double bogey.

But still, they have names. The only name the number 9 has on a golf course is shame.

PG — (little laugh)

So the other day we set out with a friend of mine. And we’ll…

PG — it was an adventure

Yeah, it was… uh.

PG — Yeah.

The point is that we can’t sum it up in a single sentence. So we’re going to tell you the story.

PG — And I’m going to make sure he tells you the truth.

Truth? Nobody wants the truth. They want a good story.

PG — Not for non-fiction.

Okay, George Washington, take it away with the truthlesiosity parade.

PG — What?

You start.

PG — So Patrick brings this friend of his along, can we say his real name.

Let’s use a nickname. Let’s call him Finchy.

PG — Flinchy?

No, Finchy, like the bird. What.

PG — It doesn’t make any sense.

It doesn’t have to, it’s a nickname.

PG — but

Nom du plume. Nom du guerre. Nom du histroie.

PG — whatever. We’re playing golf and Patrick brings a friend. We play the first hole. And he seems to play okay. But when we get to the second hole — things fall apart a little.

What are you talking about, you cranked one. Mr. “real deal” holyfield

PG — I was talking about you. And your friend flinchy.

Finchy, Finchy. But I will grant you he was kind of a scared little guy. Anyway my drive wasn’t that bad. I pounded one down the right side.

PG — and then over the right side, into the woods.

Oh, that. That’s not a problem. That’s merely an opportunity for glory.

PG — Glory?

Oh yeah, glory. And you see, if I had gotten it out of there on the green and sank the putt for there for birdie or par

PG — birdie?

or par, think about how demoralized you would have been. I would have won the round right there. Sure it’s a risky play. But think of the reward. Think of the glory.

PG — yeah, but you didn’t make a par.

Well, I — I was a little distracted by events.

PG — yeah. me too.

Because Finchy steps up to the tee. And does something I’ve never seen him do. He swings, and duck hooks one, right onto the road. I mean I couldn’t have been more surprised if his head had fallen off his neck and pez had gone flying everywhere.

PG — that would have surprise me more.

Yeah, but you know what I’m saying. It was unexpected.

PG — not the way you play.

And time went all weird, you know. You know, that moment when the brakes lock in the accident and everything sloooows down.

PG — he hit a truck.

Why do you do that?

PG — he did.

Yeah, but the suspense, the poetry of the moment.

PG — if you keep it up, we’re never going to get through this story.

Yeah, but if I don’t describe it properly, people won’t get it.

PG — He hit a truck in the windshield.

Finchy didn’t hit just any truck. He hit a Mexican show truck. This thing was magnificent. Bright yellow. And exhaust conversion kit that created semi-style smokestack pipey things on a crew-cab. And it was airbrushed all over. Along the side was a lush jungle scene with a Mayan temple, a beautiful native woman and, so help me God, a painting of the truck itself. Clearly, someone loved this this truck.

PG — Don’t forget the golf ball sized crater in the windshield.

Oh and the windshield – it was so tinted, the only thing it reflected was the blackness of men’s souls. You see that?

PG — No, I didn’t see any souls.

No, the foreshadowing. That was foreshadowing.

PG — Un-hunh. So I’d never seen this either. But then something really odd happened. Flinchy jumped into the cart and started screaming at Patrick, “Drive, drive.” and Patrick takes off.

Well, what did I care. I mean that was between Finchy (empahsis) and the driver of the truck. I had a ball in play. In play for glory.

PG — You were an idiot.

Oh come on, how was I supposed to know what was going to happen?

PG — Foreshadowing

Ah, there’s really not any foreshadowing in real life.

PG — tell them what happened next.

What, I got a nine on the hole.

PG — No, with the truck.

I think we’re out of time. It will have to be the next episode.

PG — cliffhangering bastard.

It’s not my fault you talk so much.

PG — me?

MUSIC

The post presents a bit of work in progress. It’s a draft of a screenplay from 1999 called 86 Nickels. It was the start of what originally became Death of a Dishwasher. From a movie standpoint, it’s not really very good. Screenwriting is a pretty intricate, structural art. And the more TV spots I’ve done, the more I realize how different (and constrained) visual storytelling is. Audio is wide open because you can use the tricks of visual storytelling, but still dip into all the cool stuff that prose can do that film, just can’t

Anyway, there are some great scenes and lines in the script and it’s well worth a peruse if you liked Death of a Dishwasher (here’s a link to that Parsec Award-winning series) or you are interested in process at all.

A tip of the hat goes to John August for developing the Scrippet plug-in that I used to display this page of the script. He’s an awesome screenwriter (Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and his blog (www.johnaugust.com) is tremendous. He really goes out of his way to answer questions and help people understand his craft. In an industry known for the freaky and the mean, he’s a class act. So if you have screenwriting questions, check out his blog.

And check out this badass little formatting plug-in.

[scrippet]

INT. APARTMENT KITCHEN
The dishwasher struggles with a child-proof cap. After a valiant fight he opens the bottle,
pours the entire thing in his mouth and chokes it down with a glass of water.
A long beat. He is at a loss for what to do next. This was not in the original suicide plan. He checks his pulse.
And then the phone rings.
DISHWASHER
Hello?

GEORGE
(through the phone)
Hey man, I’m glad I caught you. Cisco just called me from jail. So he can’t work. Can you make it to wash dishes?
The dishwasher struggles to get a hold on the moment.

GEORGE (CONT’D)
I know you’ve got plans, but I’m in a real bind here. I’ll give you time and a half? Can you help me out?
DISHWASHER
Uh, sure.

[/scrippet]

86-nickels-11_23_99

EPISODE SCRIPT:

It should be obvious to anyone who’s listen to this podcast that books have an effect on me. I’m very sensitive to words — and more importantly. To the spaces between words. You see there are thousands of syntatic and lexical choices that I could made with just this sentence. And I believe that the choices a writer makes, and by extension, the choices they don’t make, grants one a window into their inner workings as a person.

This makes writing a very personal and revealing act. But it also makes reading a source of much more than information.

you see charles darwin is extremely dead. So I can’t ask him questions. But the way he thought is preserved in what and how he wrote. Something of the utterly unique way Whitman approached live is locked into his lines. And Emerson, whoo, at times Emerson must have been taking dictation from the mind God. Or notating the music of the sphere’s if that sits better new age -ed contingent out there.

And, since Thanksgiving is upon us. I’d like to share some well-written words about food. I like cooking. I generally like making stuff. And cooking is a subset therof.

I’m the one who cooks Thanksgiving dinner for the family. And during the rest of the year, my mom and sister regularly call me for cooking advice. I’ve always enjoyed cooking. But what really set me off with cooking was Mark Bittman’s magnificently and accurately titled How to Cook Everything.

Whitman said, “I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil.”

In a similar fashion I had been simmering, sauteing even flambeing, but Mark Bittman got me to do it more often, with better result and with much more gusto.

And my hope is that these words from the introduction to his best-selling cookbook will inspire you on what is really our only food-focused holiday. Inspire you to cook if you do not. And to enjoy it more if you do.

Happy Thanksgiving, have fun with the bird.

Some things to know:

1) if you’ve donated, and you are registered on the site, you should have member status. We’ve migrated all the donations we’ve received to the new membership system. Members should see, in the right-hand-side of the header graphic, text that reads “Thanks for donating! Your membership expires on…”; if you’ve donated and don’t see this text, post a comment and we’ll figure out what went wrong.

2) Members hath their privileges. Now that we have the model and the technology all figured out, there will be member-only content and episodes; there will also be time-delayed content. That is to say, a multi-part series might only come out once a month, but if you are a member, you’ll get all the episodes much, much faster (probably all at once).

So a great big “Thank you!” to all our members current and future! If you’re not yet a member and would like to become one, first register on the site using the links at the top of the page; once you’re registered and logged in you should see a “Become a Member” button appear on the top-right of the header graphic. Click it to become a member!

EPISODE SCRIPT

I am not a current events kind of guy. Cause When you get right down to it the news cycle is filled with nonsense and noise.

For example, a recent item of note in the news cycle was a statement made by Lindsay Lohan. Quote – It’s an amazing feeling. It’s our first colored president, so I’m thrilled to be a part of the country while that’s going on.

Of course, there was a stir about her use of the word colored. But the upshot of this story is that Lindsay Lohan isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. And that’s not surprising. ThatÕs not news. ThatÕs olds. Linsday Lohan solves differential equation — Now that would be news.

So why did this even make the radar?

Well, race is weird. And to illustrate how weird, I have a story.

Once upon a time, I was driving home. Driving on one of those crisp fall days where it’s just a pleasure to drive with the windows down. And on my way home — to my happily ever after, if you will –  I made a right-hand turn. And crossing the intersection was a woman, perhaps 40 – 50 in one of those little motorized scooters. You know, those things that fat people ride around the supermarket.

Except this woman is not fat. In fact, she looks pretty healthy.

She’s easing her rig out into the cross-walk. Or cross-roll as the case may be. I give her a wide berth. About a lane and a half. So there’s no chance of me hitting this woman.

For some reason, this upsets her. And she gives voice to her displeasure. Now she doesn’t really have time to give me an earful — I’m driving by — So she pares her anger down to one word — and one word only.

“CRACKA!”

I swear to God  my first thought was, “Why thanks, A cracker would be delicious.”

And then I realized that I had been insulted. The woman had hurled a racist insult at me. And I couldn’t care less. In fact, I cared so little, I very nearly became spontaneously British.

“I say, did you call me a cracker? A crack-ah? That’s delightful. Please, tell me about yourself. Where do you come from.

Yes, yes, nevermind all the screaming, can I perhaps buy you lunch? Yes, let us dine and converse strange creature. Just allow me a moment to retrieve my new-fangled sterophonic magnetic tape recorder.”

CRACKA

Oh yeah, the insult. It was out there it was. I had been called a cracker. And I wasn’t even sure what it meant. So I looked it up.

The origin of the word is the middle English word Craic which meant “Entertaining conversation.”

Damn you, you, you, you, you, entertaining conversationalist!

It’s also the root of the phrase to Crack a Joke. So, in that sense, the shoe fits.

In Elizabethan times, the term Cracker came to mean braggart . In King John, Shakespeare wrote this line. “What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?”

But by the 1760s, this term was in use by the English in the British North American colonies to refer to Scots-Irish settlers in the south.

There is also a story that says the origin of the word comes from slavers cracking whips, hence they became known as crackers.

Cracker.

ItÕs been ringing  in my ears for weeks. Not from the insult of it. From the oddity. And as a guy who is fascinated by words and their meanings, I began to wonder about words and racism. Not in an intense. Malcolm X reading the dictionary in jail kind of way. But in a more entertaining way. In a way that befits the Seanachai. And the weirdest stuff of all was the stuff that sounded like it should be racist, but really wasn’t.

Like Cracker Barrel.

For example. Cracker Barrel. If Cracker is an insult, should I be offended by this. I was mildly indifferent to Cracker Barrel before — but now I suppose I’ll have to move up the scale to totally indifferent.

These racist-sounding, non racist terms are all around us. Like Chiggers, or Colored Markers. Even the completely inoffensive pastime of gardening offers the possibility of this phrase

“Oh no darlin’, let the spade do the work.”

Cracka!

Anyway, the experience has stuck with me. It’s still with me. It was one of those moments, after which it’s impossible to see the world in the same way. It was a damnably odd experience.

But then racism has always struck me as odd. At best a little silly, and at worst, well lynchings and pogroms aren’t silly.

And last night, while I was bending the wrist in the local bar — a guy from the neighborhood made a mildly racist comment. And the assumption that I was in his ignorant little club, bothered me to no end. Sure I could have cut him off with an abrupt, I don’t appreciate that kind of talk, but that would have left zero chance that he would buy the next round.

Besides, there are funnier things to say for example,

“You know Earl, I have friends who are black. I have friends who are Jewish. Hell, I even like Sammy Davis Junior. So knock it off would you?”

And if that doesn’t work, I keep what I think is the ultimate racist counterpunch joke in a custom-made velvet case. It goes like this –

What do you call a black man flying a plane? A pilot you fucking racist.

And I love that joke. It does everything a great joke should. Which is mostly head in one direction and wind up someplace completely different.

But you know, my joke and my velvet case are all for naught. They’ve been outdone by reality. I realized that I didnÕt even have to tell a joke anymore. So I said.

Hey Earl, what do you call a black man in the White House?

Everybody within earshot got a little nervous.

Mr. President.

Earl laughed uncomfortably and changed the subject. Which just goes to show you  that the woman in the powerchair was right. CRACKA. I am a cracker after all.

What’s lacking, of course, is fiction. And I’ve got lots of that coming. I’ve been working on something with PG Holyfield (of Murder at Avedon Hill) and I’m really happy with it. It’s a multipart series that’s got everything really. Golf, Death, Honor, friendship, betrayal,  the Mayan Apocalypse and a vengeful god disguised as a pickup truck. Scott Sigler’s even helping us out with one of the voices.

It’s called Flinchy and the Mexican Show Truck.

I’m also working on something called Unkillable. It’s a tale of revenge told from the perspective of a guy who is killed and turned into well, basically a Zombie. I’m really happy with it as well.

So, friends of the Seanachai, here’s the question — how do I roll these multipart series out? All at once, or do I alternate episodes between a little one-off or essay and an episodic piece?

What about making them available for purchase before they’ve all gone out on the feed? That is to say, if you listen and you just can’t wait until next week (or next month) you can buy the rest of the episodes right then and there.

EPISODE SCRIPT:

So I’m walking down the street. Enjoying the ambiance of the world’s greatest city – New York. Listening to the things that you can only hear while walking down a sidewalk in the big apple.

“Yeah, I had sex with a goose once. In Paris. It was a dead goose. You think I’d bang a live goose. Whattya think I’m some kind of sicko?”

Drone. Drone. Drone. Pilotless drone. A drone is by definition a pilotless aircraft. Drone, drone. (yeah, but who’s flying the plane there guy.)

“These aren’t my pants. These aren’t my pants. Someone shit in these pants.”

Ah New York. It doesn’t get any weirder than this. Or so I thought. Because just then a man walked up to me and said.

Uh, like essentially, to the extent that it absolutely…

He was obviously in distress.

You see, on the one hand, at the end of the day, it actually, essentially

And to tell you the truth, i’m not sure why I didn’t just keep walking.

You see with me personally,the net of it all is bascially, well actually

But it the guy was in real pain, and I could see it in his eyes. He’s was trying to communicate something pretty important

Vis – a – vis the appropriate and essential.

Stop talking.

But essentially

Just stop. Stop. Back ‘er down there your just not making any sense.

“Actually I’m absolutely not making any sense.” And then with a supreme effort of will, one that required him to grind his teeth together (teeth grinding sound) with such savage intensity that a crown flew off, at last he uttered a simple, clear coherent sentence.

“ahhhhhhhhhghg, help me.”

And then it all fell into place. This poor bastard had been overrun by gibberish.

Personally, it’s absolutely (shh shh shh, there there)

——

Actually, absolutely, personally, the fact of the matter is, Truly, Basically, essentially, ultimately

To the extent that. Honestly.

Truly, basically, deeply madly

There are a lot of scary things going on in the world right now. And, to me, gibberish is one of them. No, I’m not talking about buzzwords — although buzzword bingo is a fine way to pass the time in dull meetings, people can use buzzwords and actually mean something.

No, I’m talking about words far more hollow and insidious. Basically …
No, that wasn’t the the start of a sentence, that was the first culprit. “Basically” is a word that should be taken out back and shot. For it means, basically, nothing. You basically can put basically anywhere in a sentence and basically it means nothing. And people do it all the time. And they seem to do it more when then are trying to sound important. But Gravitas and Authority are something you, basically, can’t fake.
Even the highly overworked “like” is not as bad as basically. Like, although it is kind of barbarous, is a workable aloha word. So is went. It’s imprecise, but, it does some actual work.

And was like, “You’ve got tickets to the Miley Cyrus concert” and she was like “Ahhh” and I was like “ahhh!” And I’m like, shoot me. Actually, I’m not like shoot me. I’m exactly, shoot them. Shoot them both.

If the use of the word basically (or it’s unholy cousins who we will get to in a moment) was just a fad, then it would be harmless. But it’s not. These kind of empty words are the order of the day. Ugly, inaccurate and foolish. And it’s not just what I think — here’s how Orwell described it in his essay, Politics and the English language. Where he said the language –

“becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. ”

Its a vicious circle. Orwell wrote his essay as a kind of a last stand. He thought that people had given up hope, but if they were to take up the cause again, that a positive reform could be made. Actually,

Yeah, it’s that same pain in the ass rhetorical trick again. Actually is the next adverb up on our chopping block. But do not fear that the spectacle of us beheading these words will be to gruesome for a younger audience. Adverbs are uniformly bloodless things devoid of meaning. It’s not like killing a real word. It’s actually more like killing a stuffed replica of a word. It’s more like killing a stuffed replica of a word.
See how both those sentences say exactly the same thing. It’s actually quite surprising how temping it actually is to actually misuse this word. Actually, it’s basically effortless.

However,

No, no, no however is okay word. He’s with us. He’s conjunction. Sure, however is a little old fashioned in his tweed suit with elbow patches. Sure, however can be used for evil, however, it can also perform a vital function in a sentence.

Actually, Essentially, is basically your worst offender. Because if something is truly essential, it captures the essence of the matter. And the essential, the fundamental, the most basic and integral never involves that which is extra or unneeded.

Here’s Orwell again.

English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers

It’s an interesting phrase he uses there. “Politcal regeneration” I have no direct experience of this “politcal regeneration”, but is sure does sound like something we could use a truckloads of. And step one, from presidential candidates down to the local manager, would be to stop using the language as a tool of obsfucation. Words are designed to carry meaning. And any language is, nessicarily, an imperfect instrument, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t even try.

The scary thing is not that people are so full of shit. Shit would be something. The scary thing is that they are full of nothing. And the scariest thing of all is people who are struggling to convey something, trying to wrestle with a thought or an idea, but just can’t because they have no words to describe it. And it could be because they never learned them, but it could also be that they had the words, but let them be washed away in the general wash of gibberish.

Which brings us back to that poor bastard on the NYC sidewalk.

“Personally?”

Yes, you. You poor lost soul.

“Essentially, to the extent that the case is,”

I’d like to tell you that I reached out to this man.

“yu, yu, yu, yu, actually, it’s absolutely”

That I used what gifts and powers I had to soothe his fevered brain,

“Essential that, you absolutely”

calm his damaged language centers,

“It’s actually totally essential…”

But I did not.

(footsteps running away)

Tiny sfx: absolutely?

I ran. Maybe it makes me a bad person. But if this is the black death that rides the in plague ships of culture, if this disease is in any way catching. Well, personally, I want absolutely no part of it.

Ahhh! No, no, no essentially no! AHHHHHH!

So if I’ve left out a favorite, or you think something else should be included, please mention it in the comments.

STORIES

The Vampire in My Attic — It’s the first and still one of the best. Very short.
Candy — but then, there’s Candy.
A Wolf in the Park — A good tale and some of the best sound design and music.

ESSAYS

Blame Abraham — because there’s only so much insanity you can watch without trying to understand it.
A Change in Orbit — I cried when I wrote it. I cried when I read it. It’s good.
The Han Solo Theory — a big light bulb went on when I figured this out.
St. Patrick’s Day

SERIES

In many ways, I feel like I failed the original purpose of the Seanachai by doing series. It was originally supposed to be all short stories. But, as it turns out, short stories are murderously hard. Which is okay, these turned out to be really good. 

The War with Santa — I still laugh when I listen to this, and I made it!
Death of a Dishwasher – Won a Parsec. Pure Restaurant Worker Catharsis.
How to Succeed in Evil — It has to be on the list, even though it’s got it’s own website now. Start at the beginning.

SATIRE

Outsourcing A Chicken — Because you just can’t have too many reasons to dislike chain restaurants.
The Redneck Expeditionary Force — People seriously thought they could find this game online. I wish.

JUST NUTS

Sometimes, you just gotta blow the bugs out of the engine.

A Scary Story — The best cautionary tale told by a “sailor” since the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Rock, Paper, Scissors — This one also cracks me up every time I listen to it. Best voicing I’ve done.
Truth is — who doesn’t like a good Zombie love story.

EPISODE SCRIPT:

SFX: Guy going crazy

Do those crazy guy who walk down the street cursing to themselves — yelling and scaring everybody — do they think they’re the voice of reason? That they’re the reasonable people and it’s the rest of the world that’s insane.

I think they probably do.

And every time I put out a podcast, that thought is in the back of my mind.

SFX: Guy going crazy

Am I just a crazy guy yelling at myself in my closet?

And how would I know if I was? I mean seriously, would you tell me?

This is one of the many reasons why I rarely touch on politics. Another reason is that people don’t seem to talk about politics — they just yell slogans at each other until one somebody’s feelings get so hurt that they go home.

And this behavior is fueled by a host of pundits and spin masters soulless ghouls and other political operatives.

I’m sick to death of the general election and it seems to me that the everybody has gone a little crazy.

But then again, maybe it’s just me on my own personal sidewalk. Yelling in my personal closet.

SFX: Guy going crazy

But as I look at this mess, I am amazed at what a fetish we have made the presidency. And how very primitive and tribal this way of thinking really is. C’mon it’s not like we’re electing an Emperor. And even if we were, even the most powerful emperor is really only semi-potentiary.

So in an effort to walk down my own little street bellowing whatever sanity I can muster, and to put the grueling madness of an election year and a half behind me, I’m repodcasting one of the earliest episodes of the Seanachai which seems very appropriate on this election day.

It’s called the King of the Lendu.

<rebroadcast Lendu>

EPISODE SCRIPT

INTRO: You’re listening to a special Halloween Episode of Patrick McLean’s the Seanachai

So it’s Halloween. All Saint’s Day. Samhain.

(Spelled Sow an. Thankfully I don’t mispronounce every odd word that crosses my tongue. Apologies to Goethe — pronounced Gerta)

And this year, well, Halloween hasn’t had much of an effect on me. Ghouls or zombies or a guy with a sawblade sticking out of his head — even Vincent Price and a room full of clowns on an angry Golschlager drunk — aren’t as scary as what I’ve been seeing on the news.

The financial system is melting down, we’re facing a great crises (plural) and times of tremendous change and I’m not convinced that either of our presidential candiates has a plan –really. But for that matter, neither does anybody else.

All of this has given me pause. You see Halloween started as, Samhain, a Celtic holiday. The day marked the end of summer, end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter. November 1st was the Celtic New Year. And they believed that on the night before New Year’s the the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became a little blurry.

that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids to make predictions about the future.

And any predictions we might make about the future on this halloween, would only be made grimmer by the ghosts of the great depression.

But ghosts and divination is not that Halloween is about. In fact, Halloween has proved to be a pretty malleable and transmittable holiday. The roman’s co-opted it, and later so did the Catholic Church. Halloween didn’t exist in the United States until it was was brought here by the Irish fleeing from a Potato Famine.

Which is a fact that helps me put things into perspective. A housing crisis is scary, but can it old a candle to a famine so bad that most of a country’s population decided to flee?

At it’s core, Halloween is about coming to grips with your fear. Something I’m not sure we’re doing such a great job right now. Even the wearing of costumes is based on fear. Originally people would disguise themselves as what they feared so that what they feared would not be able find them as it roamed the earth on Halloween night.

This halloween there are no shortages of doomsday predictions. And this remarkable intersection of holiday and zeitgeist has really made me reconsider fear. What am I afraid of. What should I be afraid of. How much fear is healthy? How much is too much?

I think the real thing to be afraid of is death.

Sure the economy might be a scary. But death, death is terrifying. And death, as they say, is no respecter of persons. No matter how much money is in your pocket (or 401k) death is coming for you.

And when I look at it that way, the volume knob on everything else gets turned down a little. You see I once had a friend who was flat broke and had just gotten fired from his job. He didn’t have money for bills. He didn’t have money for rent. And he was okay about it. I was actually more worked up about it than he was. And when I asked him what he was going to do — how he could just sit there so calmly smoking a cigarette that he had bummed from me — he said the greatest thing –

Hey said hey, it’s not like they can take my birthday.

So on this scary, commercialized day, I’m taking a deep breath. Because, no matter what happens, it’s not like they can take my birthday. or yours. And I also think it’s unlikely that we’re going to run out of potatoes.

So for Halloween, I’ll leave you with a poem by Edgar Allen Poe.

The conqueror worm

LO! ‘t is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years.
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre to see 5
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low, 10
And hither and thither fly;
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their condor wings 15
Invisible Woe.

That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not, 20
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot;
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see amid the mimic rout 25
A crawling shape intrude:
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food, 30
And over each quivering form
In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And over each quivering form
The curtain, a funeral pall, 35
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

OUTRO: If you enjoyed this episode of the Seanachai and you haven’t already registered and donated, please visit theseanachai.com and help out a little bit.

You know, with all the visions and version of distopian, statist, cybepunk fantasies that I have dancing around in my head, I have to admit, I’m the first guy who’s a little reluctant to stand up and be counted.

But the simple fact of the matter is, sometimes it has to happen. And this is one of those times. It’s time for you fine people to make yourselves known and knowable. I promise I won’t spam you. And I promise it will make it worth your while.

And hey, it’s not like I’m asking you to get a barcode tattoo. Click the picture or this sentence to make yourself known.

EPISODE SCRIPT:

My new filing cabinet is laughing at me.

No kidding, Every time I touch it, it makes this sound.

Sure, it’s quiet — but it’s there. And it’s mocking me.

It’s a large, five drawer filing cabinet that I purchased for $20 at a secondhand store. It dates from a time when dinosaurs roamed the American business landscape, which explains why it’s made of deck plate from a decommissioned battleship. Seriously, three more pounds and it’s the immovable object.

But hey it was $20 bucks. Coat of spray paint. Good as new.

I bought this filing cabinet because, my other filing cabinet is full. Which means that this one is empty. I’ve got like four files in it. And I think that’s why it’s laughing at me. Because it thinks I will never fill it.

SFX: Cabinet

But it is wrong. It is sooooo very wrong.

SFX : Cab

“Oh yeah, keep laughing. ”

You see the filing cabinet doesn’t know that I’m crazy — and not the cute kind of crazy, like that crazy great uncle of yours with the shaggy eyebrows who drinks gin rickey’s and puts a lampshade on his head to liven up family gatherings “look at me, whooo!”

No, all the way crazy. The crazy like the kid who punches himself in the face before the fight crazy. Crazy like Evil Dead cutting your own hand off because it’s possessed crazy. We’re talking way past the outskirts of loco esse crazy here.

SFX : Cab

Oh yeah cabinet, yuk it up. YOu keep laughing. I’m Crazier than an old lady living in the middle of Kansas with 63 cats in a house built to mimic the hull shape of a New England whaler. And I’m going to choke you with pages.

Typed, handwritten, mimeographed, carved on paving stones — the more you laugh, the more I’m going to write. And you’re going to ingest every last one of them. I’m going to see to that personally.

And then you’ll be too full to move. You’ll sit quietly in the corner — bloated and bustin’ the seams.

And I’ll go get another filing cabinet. And put it where it can get a really good look at you. And see what happens to filing cabinets that laugh at me.

Whattya got to say about that? Hunh? Hunh

SFX : Cab

Just keep laughing. Just keep laughing.

103 Subscribers

Podpress : 1914 downloads of the Relaunch Episode 

9026 unique visitors 

$193.42 in donations

October 2006 reported 16054 visitors, but I no scared. It’s a rebuilding year.

If you’re interested in getting involved, here’s 60 minutes of our musings. Give a listen and post your reactions and suggestions.

Brandon’s blog is http://www.webbusinessfreedom.com. And don’t let his self-deprecating manner fool you, his blog is awesome. Go have a look.

EPISODE SCRIPT:

So I’ve wrestled with the best way to relaunch the Seanachai. Because I’m in a very different place with this than I was the first time around. The first time around it was an act of desperation. I was terribly, terribly frustrated. I felt like I had a lot of talent and exactly zero outlets. So I said, screw it. I’m going to do one of these audio pieces a week. And I didn’t care if anybody listens. And then I realized there was a name for it — podcasting.

And, surprisingly (to me at least), people tuned in. Way in. But that really wasn’t my purpose. The Seanachai was a contract between me and my muse. I was going to show up week in, week out. Discipline. Devotion. And if you listen very carefully, you can hear it.

“It’s January 1 and your listening to the Vampire in My Attic.”

When I hear that, just that bit, I tear up. Some might hear pride. And it’s in there. But I hear power, the ability to take action. I hear a complete lack of fear. Right from the start. And it might just make sense to me — because I know exactly how low I was when I recorded it. How afraid and how powerless. I wasn’t living on the streets. But, I was dissipated, wasted, fairly broke, and desperately blocked. And, for a number of self-sabotaging reasons, nothing I was doing was working. I hated, hated the way I made a living. Hated advertising with a passion. And after finding a thousand ways of not doing the real work of writing, I finally found a gap in the fence. That gap was the Seanachai. And I went through it at a dead sprint, with all the will of a recently captured zoo animal.

And what’s more — I was good at it. My instincts were right. For a guy who doesn’t really fit all that well in the world, this was the most remarkable thing of all. I found a game that I had the moves for. And it’s not exaggeration to say that doing the Seanachai has made me better at everything else in my life. I’m at least twice the writer I was when I started.

And I lost that chip on my shoulder about creative work. It’s that chip that that majority of advertising creatives have. At least the ones who aren’t hacks. I stopped identifying with the work. I just did the best I could and went home at the end of the day. Because I could recognize that my ad work wasn’t who I was. Some call this being a hack. I think being a hack is very different. But, whatever. I had more fun. Everyone I worked with had more fun. And my work got better.

This is because I was finally doing what I was meant to do. What I was meant to do, yet had run from my entire life. It’s a strange paradox, no less true for it’s oddity. Steven Pressfield wrote an entire book about it called the War of Art. It’s pretty brilliant. he writes that for every work of art, for every innate talent, there’s forces trying to stop it. Pressfield writes, “There’s a secret that I know that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and that secret is this: It’s not the writing part that is hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.What keeps us from sitting down is resistance.”

Amen.

Another way to say it might be

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

It’s new-agey. It’s cheesy, but, unfortunately for my inner tough guy, it’s true. This quote is sometimes attributed to Nelson Mandela. It was, in fact, written in 1992 by Marianne Williams. Nelson Mandela quoted the last line in his inaugural address. Probably because it bears repeating.

“As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Mandela

But it’s not all that new of a thought really. Sometime in the 11th century St. Francis of Assisi wrote,

“There are beautiful, wild forces within us. Let them turn the mills inside and fill sacks that feed even heaven.”

Look, whatever this talent is — wherever these stories and insights come from, it’s what I got. It’s what I have to give. I am better at writing than anything else I will ever do in my life. And doing anything else is just playing it small. This realization scares me more than I can explain.

I need your help. You see most of the time, people ( and I am included in that people ) look outward. If only I could get them to … If only they would… Publish my book. If they would buy my screenplay. If only they. But as I whisper in your ear through this miracle of technology, I tell you — there is no they. They’re long gone. All that remains are standing suits of armor filled with skeletons. From a distance they look threatening, but I tell you, as one who has scouted the ground, the ramparts are unguarded. The moat is dry. The Portcullis has fallen to dust.

There is no they. There’s just us. Just you and me. And if what I do has power for you, as it has power for me — If in any small way I am able to help you expand your experience of being alive — then their is no limit to how far we can take this.

And that’s what relaunching the Seanachai is all about. Yeah, there’s a Succeed in Evil novel coming. (And yes, there will be more Succeed in Evil episodes very soon) But evil’s not all I got. Not topically. Not stylistically. I have a filing cabinet drawer five feet long and it’s packed. Packed to the point of not being able to fit another piece of paper in it — and it’s filled with unfinished ideas. And I’ll grant you that a full four feet of that drawer sucks. But in that last 12 inches is filled with diamonds.

So I’m turning pro. And that’s going to change a number of things. But it also means, in some form or fashion, my activity has to generate cash. Not much, but some. I can live on crumbs. But I can’t live on dust.

When I look at this with my financial hat on — it’s a dollar a month from everyone who listens. A dollar an episode would be nuts. Grow the audience a bit. That would do it. And when I say it out loud, it sounds easy. And the only reason I am concerned about this, is that, for all our technology and our smarts, we don’t really have the cultural infrastructure to make it happen. But it’s not impossible. Because we already have the essential thing — the hard part is done — a creator and an audience.

You see if I was doing this on a street corner — if I had a tip jar in the corner coffee shop — this problem would have already solved itself. It’s not much change — but my coffee shop is limitless.

So I’m going to try to crack this problem. And, as I do, I’m as asking advice from just about everybody. I’ve put an audio file up on theSeanachai.com of a conversation that I had with a good friend of mine named Brandon. He’s a sharp guy. Who just walked away from a company that’s probably going to do the website for every major arena in the US within the next 5 years. Because, churning through templates isn’t what he wanted to do. He had more to give. He just launched his site, aptly enough, called webbusinessfreedom.com. And, as a savvy guy in the new media space, I though he’d make an ideal co conspirator. But I need more. I want your feedback and insight on this whole process. Because, I’ve come to realize, the creme de la creme, of podcasting and new media listen to this podcast. You guys comprise one hell of an advisory board.

It didn’t seem right to put my 45 minute meandering conversation out on the feed, but here’s one of the more important bits.

(Don’t be a dick Clip)

I’m going to try a lot stuff. And if I mis-step, you let me know. Because everyone who’s getting this episode. Everyone who’s listening right now. You are the faithful. If I do wrong by you guys, it’s nothing but a mistake and I’ll fix as quickly as possible

So first thing, I’d like everybody to register on theseanachai.com. Names and emails. Very shortly, I’m going to start selling stuff. Not like t-shirts. The comic is coming back. A CD’s and DVD’s with episodes plus commentary. Premium content. And if you are registered, I can give you discounts. I can make free stuff available to you. How about the original movie script that Death of a Dishwasher came from? Your welcome to it. But I’m not letting a stranger into my files.

Second, this is now a shareware podcast. If you listen. It’s a dollar a month. If you listen and laugh, it’s two dollars a month. If the idea of a shareware podcast is conceptually awkward, just think of it as National Podcast Radio. Donate up. Don’t worry, just like NPR, I won’t let you forget about that part.

So this the beginning. Or, if you like to do violence to the English language and common sense, a re-beginning.

and as Goethe said,

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’

And it starts now.

It’s not that it wasn’t great, but if you have a little time to think about a subject, say, volleyball, you realize that there are better ways to play than with your face. But in on the day, in the moment, there’s no time for that kind of thought. You just do what you have to.

(I may have lost control of that analogy in mid-sentence.)

Anyway, I’m opening the question up. What would you like the Seanachai to be like? More is the obvious answer. But what else? And don’t be afraid to  think wildly. Changes to the site are fine. But what would take the Seanachai to the next level?

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” — Goethe

Comment away. Be bold.

So please bare with us and pardon our dust while we work; we promise that the new site is going to be awesome.

Things have been a little hairy over the last year. And now (just as the rest of the world seems to be going to hell) my life is settling down. I’ve been busting my hump doing ad work and I’ve got a small amount of cash set aside. And money equals time to pour into truly creative projects, like The Seanachai.

This time around I’m approaching the podcast in a much more deliberate manner. In other words, I’ve got a plan. I’m still hammering out the details, but I’ll roll the whole thing out for you on the 15th October. And I hope you are/will be excited, because I sure am.

In the immortal words of Raoul Duke, Hunter S. Thompson, the great Gonzo himself,

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Also, the Creamer of the Beast is real. There’s a website for it and everything. There’s even an adorably ominous (or ominously adorable) logo. Join the hunt. Cause I’m in. It’s kind of like searching for a perverse four-leaf clover.

It’s a paraphrase from one of my favorite parts of Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman. And even though I haven’t been podcasting, I have not abandoned well, the faith, let us say.

The book proceeds. Such arrogance to attempt such a long work, but it goes well. I can’t say that knowing what I know right this minute that I would attempt it again, but I will finish the thing if’n it kills me. Surely, the next one will be easier.

But mostly, what’s been keeping me hopping is paying work. Too much of it in fact. I outsold my ability to do work. And I didn’t have the structure in place to make me more efficient. It is very much a transitional time for me professionally and creatively. And, as exciting as it is, it’s not too conducive to podcasting. What can I say? A couple of things really.

1) Sorry, a man’s gotta eat. And given the current economic climate, this squirrel is going to store as many nuts as possible whilst he can.

2) All this work now, means money hoarded (like nuts, man this analogy just won’t quit) for more writing later.

So, for everybody who’s hanging in there, thanks. For those who aren’t, well, you’re not reading this post now are you?

Here’s the Whitman. I’m knuckling tight.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times;
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm;
How he knuckled tight, and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,
And chalk’d in large letters, on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you:
How he follow’d with them, and tack’d with them—and would not give it up;
How he saved the drifting company at last:
How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of their prepared graves;
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men:
All this I swallow—it tastes good—I like it well—it becomes mine;
I am the man—I suffer’d—I was there.

It’s a paraphrase from one of my favorite parts of Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman. And even though I haven’t been podcasting, I have not abandoned well, the faith, let us say.

The book proceeds. Such arrogance to attempt such a long work, but it goes well. I can’t say that knowing what I know right this minute that I would attempt it again, but I will finish the thing if’n it kills me. Surely, the next one will be easier.

But mostly, what’s been keeping me hopping is paying work. Too much of it in fact. I outsold my ability to do work. And I didn’t have the structure in place to make me more efficient. It is very much a transitional time for me professionally and creatively. And, as exciting as it is, it’s not too conducive to podcasting. What can I say? A couple of things really.

1) Sorry, a man’s gotta eat. And given the current economic climate, this squirrel is going to store as many nuts as possible whilst he can.

2) All this work now, means money hoarded (like nuts, man this analogy just won’t quit) for more writing later.

So, for everybody who’s hanging in there, thanks. For those who aren’t, well, you’re not reading this post now are you?

Here’s the Whitman. I’m knuckling tight.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times;
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm;
How he knuckled tight, and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,
And chalk’d in large letters, on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you:
How he follow’d with them, and tack’d with them—and would not give it up;
How he saved the drifting company at last:
How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of their prepared graves;
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men:
All this I swallow—it tastes good—I like it well—it becomes mine;
I am the man—I suffer’d—I was there.

So somebody once said, that authors only really write about themselves. And maybe that’s true. Consider Ian Fleming.

Fleming had a good war but fought it all from behind his desk in Whitehall.

Peter Smithers, a colleague in naval intelligence, said: “Ian constantly longed to be personally engaged in the excitement. He was of an essentially aggressive nature. It was the repression of all these desires by authority, quite rightly, which in my opinion fired the imagination engaged in his books.”

After the war Fleming became a journalist again and then a writer, dashing off “Casino Royale” in 1952 and 11 further Bond novels before his death in 1964, at the age of 56.

Pretty stupid to want to be personally engaged in the excitement of war. Because the punchline to all that excitement is invariably death. But you can pretty clearly see how he acted out a latent fantasy with the character of Bond.

So what about me? Well, it’s frighteningly simple. On many occasions I’ve given people advice as a consultant and they didn’t listen. Many, many people have these experiences. Waiters, IT professionals, tour guides, car salesmen, managers, really just about everybody. And it’s tremendously frustrating.

It would be an oversimplification to say that Edwin is how only I took out my frustration. There’s a bunch of satire working in How to Succeed in Evil. And, I hope, a critique of the ways people take themselves too seriously. But if you were to look a link between Edwin and I (or Edwin and any reader) it would be that frustration with people you are trying to help who insist on doing stupid things.

So I have a t-shirt somewhere that says “Evo is my God” — he was giving them out at DragonCon a couple of years ago. He’s a magnificent bastard, not self-effacing, but.. Anyway, I think Evo’s spot on. I think I’ll start doing podcasts of the process. You will NEED to tell me if it becomes boring and self-indulgent.

Yes, there will be a few spoilers. But really, who cares? Spoilers only ruin the most venial kind of storytelling. Take, for example, good old William Shakespeare. He had a habit of giving away the whole story in the first minute of the play.

1 Two households, both alike in dignity,
2 In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
3 From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
4 Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
5 From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
6 A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
7 Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
8 Do with their death bury their parents’ strife,
9 The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
10 And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
11 Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
12 Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
13 The which if you with patient ears attend,
14 What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Sometimes it’s tricky to see things clearly through the Elizabethan English. Two families hate each other. Their kids fall in love and then commit suicide. That’s the whole story. But Swounds Man! It doesn’t take one whit away from the play. Because the question of all great imaginative fiction is not how or what but why? Crappy Sci-Fi cares about how the teleporter works. Great Sci-Fi cares about why, when the teleporter can only save your wife or your son, you choose who you do. In fact, that’s all of great writing.

As another example, here’s a bit of scene where Topper convinces Edwin to sue Excelsior (basically Superman). That completely spoils the piece, but, even knowing that, I’ll wager you enjoy it thoroughly.

“You really think we can sue him?”, asked Edwin

“I know we can. It’s called the law. And if anybody can twist it to work in your favor, it’s me. But more importantly than that, we’ll have public opinion on our side. It will be fun, easy and profitable. And I know how you like profit.”

“But he’s a costumed hero. Beloved by the masses he protects.”

“Beloved? No, he’s famous. He famous because he can fly and bullets bounce off his chest. He’s not famous because he’s a talented guy. He’s not famous because he’s a nice guy. People like the show, the don’t give a shit about the person. In fact, they secretly dislike him.”

“You mean you secretly dislike him.”

“You’re goddamned right I dislike him. I actually have a secret grudge against everybody who’s taller than I am. Excepting you big fella. You’re so freakishly tall, it wraps around, I actually feel a little kinship. The world wasn’t made to fit either of us. Anyway,” Topper shook off this line of thinking like a dog shaking off water, “my point is, how do you like a guy who constantly reminds you that you’re inferior? You might kiss his ass in case you need him. You might put him on the Christmas card list for getting little fluffy out of that Elm tree,”

Now that Topper was all revved up, Edwin couldn’t resist, “Elm?”

“Maple, pine, spruce, it can be a friggin Juniper bush for all I care. Point is, he’s arrogant. Prideful. And what does pride goeth before?” The pause became so long it was no longer rhetorical.

Reluctantly Edwin said, “A fall?”

“Not anymore my lanky friend. These days, pride goeth before settling out of court for a big fat wad of sweaty cash.”

“Would that be the proverbial wad of sweaty cash?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you like. Let’s just get this asshole.”

“Is this personal for you?”

“Yeah it’s personal. It’s always personal with me. That’s why I’m so good. come on Ed, this is a guy, you tell him to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, he can actually take a flying fuck at a rolling donut? Who likes that guy? Wait, don’t answer that. I’m your laywer I’ll answer for you. Nobody. Nobody likes that guy.”