The Eldritch Cornflake Devolves

Painful Experience

2009-02-09T00:27:33Z

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I've started a sequel to my finished serial. I've been reading parts of the old one to refresh my memory as I write the new one. Talk about an appalling experience.

The last few chapters of the old one, Magician's Merger, don't strike me as that bad. They aren't high art, but they're readable. But then I looked at the first few chapters. Oh man! The passage of several months makes the mistakes really stand out. The first few chapters were utterly horrid. I'm surprised that anyone made it through them to read the rest of the serial.

So, rewriting the first three chapters of Magician's Merger plus giving the fourth a vicious editing are how I spent most of the weekend.

Writing something that's long--book length--finishing it, and then looking at it again several months later are all very educational experiences.

Sequel

2009-02-07T03:52:51Z

I've started a sequel to my Web serial. I don't claim that either one of them is any good, but writing keeps me away from low places and dangerous temptations.

Steve Martin: Marked for Death

2009-02-01T05:06:22Z

I'm not that much of a film buff, but why, why, why, why, why does Steve Martin feel the continuing need to defile good movies? Hasn't he made enough money from his disgusting twaddle? And if he does get some sick thrill from crapping all over them, why can't he at least change the name to cut down on the confusion?

Pulling My Hair Out

2009-01-25T23:49:56Z

To my regret, I am not a musician. I am, however, an occasional versifier. Every once in a while, I write some song lyrics in addition to my usual doggerel, and every once in a great while, those lyrics come with little tunes in my head.

Several months ago, the muse bit a chunk out of my fundament, and I wrote several sets of new lyrics. I have a tune to go with one of them, and I have been using this tool in an attempt to transcribe the tune.

It is hard. It seems that my ear skills are so bad that I can't even tell when the pitch I'm humming to myself is rising or falling. If anyone is interested, he or she can plug this

X:1
T:The Possum Song (Reminds Me of Someone I Know)
C:WSC
M:3/4
L:1/64
Q:133
K:C
z24 C16 B,8 | .D24 C16 D8 | .F24 E16 D8 | C24 D16 E8 | .G24 F12 (_E6 _D6) | B,24 C16 E8 | G24 F16 E8 | D48 |

into the editor to hear the first eight measures of the approximate melody by first clicking update and then clicking on the midi link. The first five listed are somewhat off; only the last three are close to what is in my head. I've tried to write down nine through sixteen, but so far they aren't close. Heck, I can't even tell if I've come up with the tune myself or if I've heard it somewhere.

Ah, well, I just wanted to vent a bit.

Huh.

2009-01-16T01:28:34Z

In 1967, apparently, More of the Monkees outsold Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heats Club Band in the United States.

PS: The Cash Box and Billboard lists differ. It's also a lot harder to find complete historical lists from Billboard on line. The Billboard site only freely yields the yearly top five lists. It's enough to see that Cash Box and Billboard differ significantly. I wonder how their respective methodologies vary, but I don't know if I wonder enough to do the necessary digging.

Random Thought

2009-01-06T00:04:48Z

The book and movie got it wrong. When you look behind the curtain, the wizard turns out to be one really scary SOB.

It keeps your head from sounding hollow.

2008-12-29T23:55:14Z

I quit taking Paxil Thursday. The results have been interesting. It seems that the Paxil was dampening a wide variety of emotions, perhaps even some patterns of thought.

Quasi-rational meat, indeed.

Sailboats

2008-12-13T20:16:02Z

I'm again feeling a moderate longing for a sailboat large enough to live aboard, a longing that I have had, off and on, since I was a teenager, but I've never been sailing in my life.

I suppose the desire comes from the idea of being able to haul anchor and split whenever one wants to while still keeping one's home--stability amongst change. Freedom and ultimate privacy when you want it, but you still get to keep your stuff.

Plus, they're pretty.

Deceptive Scoundrels

2008-12-09T06:53:53Z

Amazon, when I visited the site, put up an advertisement for Under Armour. I thought, Holy crap! Amazon really has my number. I clicked on the link, though, and found out it was only thermal underwear.

Books you hate meme

2008-12-07T01:37:34Z

via tinymammoth:

Here are the 200 most popular books on Library Thing. Bold the books you read and hated. Italicize the books you plan never to read. Underline books you think are overrated, but don't hate. Do nothing to express positive feelings, this is all about book hate.

Then, at the end, pick the book you hated most of all 200!

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling (37,423)

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling (34,779)

3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling (33,304)

4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling (32,604)

5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (32,362)

6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling (32,135)

7. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (26,865)

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (26,149)

9. The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkien (24,959)

10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (23,303)

11. 1984 by George Orwell (23,095)

12. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (22,000)

13. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (20,547)

14. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (18,795)

15. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (17,995)

16. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (17,609)

17. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (16,860)

18. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (16,050)

19. Animal Farm by George Orwell (15,390)

20. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (15,364)

21. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (15,188)

22. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (15,037)

23. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (15,037)

24. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (14,602)

25. The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien (14,169)

26. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (13,874)

27. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (13,784)

28. Odyssey by Homer (13,219)

29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (13,121)

30. The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien (13,095)

31. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (13,065)

32. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (12,982)

33. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (12,915)

34. The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien (12,615)

35. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (12,268)

36. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (12,236)

37. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (12,122)

38. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (12,066)

39. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (11,749)

40. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (11,712)

41. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (11,627)

42. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (11,431)

43. Emma by Jane Austen (11,274)

44. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (11,049)

45. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman (11,022)

46. Dune by Frank Herbert (11,003)

47. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (10,746)

48. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (10,680)

49. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (10,676)

50. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (10,659)

51. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (10,609)

52. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien (10,602)

53. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (10,576)

54. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (10,539)

55. Iliad by Homer (10,535)

56. The Stranger by Albert Camus (10,534)

57. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (10,382)

58. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (10,227)

59. Le petit prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (10,185)

60. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt (9,970)

61. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (9,925)

62. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (9,893)

63. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (9,635)

64. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (9,624)

65. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (9,602)

66. Moby Dick, or, The Whale by Herman Melville (9,451)

67. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (9,444)

68. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (9,413)

69. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (9,346)

70. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (9,324)

71. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (9,114)

72. Atonement by Ian McEwan (9,095)

73. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (9,089)

74. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (9,087)

75. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (9,072)

76. The Complete Works of Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (9,026)

77. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (9,025)

78. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (8,935)

79. Love in The Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (8,924)

80. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (8,863)

81. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (8,806)

82. Guns, Germs, and Steel (SparkNotes) by Jared Diamond (8,738)

83. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (8,715)

84. The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (8,687)

85. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (8,653)

86. Dracula by Bram Stoker (8,565)

87. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (8,532)

88. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (8,173)

89. (this one is mysteriously missing) (8,164)

90. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (8,131)

91. Persuasion by Jane Austen (8,099)

92. Eragon by Christopher Paolini (8,033)

93. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (8,006)

94. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (7,991)

95. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (7,959)

96. The Elements of Style by William Strunk (7,921)

97. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (7,902)

98. Neuromancer by William Gibson (7,868)

99. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (7,818)

100. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (7,749)

101. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (7,735)

102. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (7,681)

103. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (7,649)

104. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (7,631)

105. A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson (7,547)

106. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (7,503)

107. Watership Down by Richard Adams (7,486)

108. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (7,466)

109. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (7,440)

110. Ulysses by James Joyce (7,437)

111. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (7,426)

112. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (7,383)

113. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (7,365)

114. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (7,359)

115. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (7,353)

116. Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis (7,344)

117. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (7,316)

118. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (7,298)

119. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (7,274)

120. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (7,257)

121. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (7,245)

122. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (7,232)

123. The Giver by Lois Lowry (7,231)

124. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (7,191)

125. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (7,133)

126. Stardust by Neil Gaiman (7,086)

127. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (7,071)

128. Blink: the power of thinking without thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (7,050)

129. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (7,030)

130. Night by Elie Wiesel (7,018)

131. Inferno by Dante Alighieri (6,965)

132. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (6,965)

133. Beowulf by Seamus Heaney (6,957)

134. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (6,931)

135. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss (6,926)

136. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (6,827)

137. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (6,769)

138. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (6,756)

139. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (6,747)

140. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (6,741)

141. Beloved by Toni Morrison (6,731)

142. The Princess Bride: S Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman (6,730)

143. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (6,699)

144. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (6,683)

145. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett (6,681)

146. Dubliners by James Joyce (6,669)

147. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (6,638)

148. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (6,619)

149. Deception Point by Dan Brown (6,608)

150. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (6,594)

151. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (6,567)

152. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (6,562)

153. A Brief History of Time by Stephen W. Hawking (6,541)

154. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (6,541)

155. The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis (6,492)

156. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (6,474)

157. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (6,450)

158. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (6,440)

159. Macbeth by William Shakespeare (6,436)

160. Running With Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs (6,431)

161. Fight Club: A Novel by Chuck Palahniuk (6,397)

162. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White (6,380)

163. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (6,352)

164. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (6,334)

165. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (6,297)

166. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (6,284)

167. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (6,283)

168. The Aeneid by Virgil (6,268)

169. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (6,245)

170. A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin (6,236)

171. Candide by Voltaire (6,220)

172. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (6,211)

173. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (6,190)

174. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (6,164)

175. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (6,162)

176. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (6,156)

177. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (6,133)

178. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (6,120)

179. The Republic by Plato (6,078)

180. Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom (6,072)

181. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (6,046)

182. The World According to Garp by John Irving (6,037)

183. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (6,019)

184. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (6,017)

185. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (5,996)

186. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (5,923)

187. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (5,909)

188. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (5,876)

189. The Trial by Franz Kafka (5,861)

190. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson (5,860)

191. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger (5,843)

192. Naked by David Sedaris (5,834)

193. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom (5,828)

194. The Pillars of The Earth by Ken Follett (5,819)

195. Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis (5,797)

196. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman (5,776)

197. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery (5,763)

198. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (5,757)

199. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut (5,748)

200. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (5,723)

There also were a few books on the list that I started but didn't finish:

The Great Gatsby
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
On the Road
Moby Dick
Don Quixote
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Heart of Darkness

I guess the book from the list I hate most of all is Charlotte's Web, but Heart of Darkness is unreadable.

That's Our George

2008-12-04T09:56:01Z

I had a freaky dream. I don't remember all of the details, but I had George W. Bush's dismembered body stored in a cooler (ice chest) in a cabin in the woods. I remember worrying about the best way to dispose of the corpse, including feeding it to dogs.

(No, I'm not making a veiled threat about the soon-to-be-ex-president of the USA. I really had that dream.)

Idle Thought

2008-12-01T23:15:22Z

low-fat bacon == ham

I Think Not

2008-11-29T02:44:50Z

Typealyzer

I put through everything of mine that conceivably could be called a blog, including my serial. With five things tested, it gave me four different answers, all of which are different from the written tests I've taken. It said the serial is ESFP.

To be fair, the site claims to be typing the blog, not the person. On the other hand, I'm not sure that claim makes any sense.

USA Civics Quiz

2008-11-25T00:38:18Z

here

Prophecy

2008-11-15T01:17:02Z

My record as a prophet is not good. Unfortunately, it's not bad enough to use as a reverse indicator.

It Makes Me Feel a Little Sick When I Think About It

2008-11-05T13:21:19Z

We live in interesting times. The election came down to a choice between the leftist and the nut, and the American people chose the leftist.

Our means of selecting leaders is broken.

Stumble Upon

2008-11-03T17:39:37Z

About a year ago, I lost access to my Stumble Upon account. I didn't have the password. They had no email address of record to which to send the password. In short, the account was doomed. This caused me not a small amount of aggravation.

Anyway, I have now broken down and created a new account. If any of you use or still use SU and want me to friend you, reply here with the URL.

My SU URL is here.

Pointless Rambling

2008-10-23T04:24:25Z

I haven't used this site in too long. Part of it is that I don't have much to say a lot of the time. Another part of it is that when I do have something to say, I suspect that it's nothing anyone wants to hear. Anyway, I think I'm going to just ramble a bit and see what comes out of my fingers, kind of like free association. Feel free to ignore it.

1. Sometimes I feel a longing for some type of spiritual connection, but I more-or-less believe that spiritual is a meaningless word. I haven't experienced anything that makes me believe that there is more to this universe than mass-energy, that there is a "greater power," or that there are any untapped human abilities.

I don't know where the universe came from, but I don't believe anyone else does either. I'm hoping that I live long enough to learn more. Maybe we will one day know why the Big Bang happened.

2. One of my problems is that I'm philosophically a do-as-thou-wilt free thinker, but I'm temperamentally rather conservative. I'm not a person who is willing to try anything once. I could list many things I never want to try, including skydiving, auto racing, and hunting. Mind-altering drugs, including alcohol, frighten me. Yes, I'm a stick in the mud.

My favorite things to do are to read and think, preferably in a quite place with no distractions. I used to be ashamed about my relative lack of aspirations, but I've finally made peace with myself. I'm somewhat strange, but I'm harmless.

3. I'm trying to develop at least the rough outline of a plot for another web serial. After I finished the first one, I went into a spell where I felt tired all of the time for several months. I think I'm starting to come out of it, I hope.

I learned that writing a serial without any prior planning tends to leave a lot of loose plot threads. Nevertheless, some people actually liked my first serial. That was gratifying. Fiction writing is a scary process, at least for me it is. I found that in order to write something that felt true, I had to reveal facets of my emotions that I normally keep to myself, and the fear of writing something bad enough to be embarrassing doesn't go away.

Distant Drums

2007-08-12T09:11:34Z

So, I'm awake at 4:30am. The cat is also awake, and wants out. It's nice out. I figure, why not?, and let him outside. Because it is usually cloudy, most nights in Michigan are lousy for looking at the stars. I decide to step out and see if tonight is any better than normal.

It's not, but I hear in the distance what sounds like someone beating drums, bongo type: bump, bump, bumpity, bump, bump, bumpity. Along with the rather loud singing of the tree frogs and bugs, it was making a compelling tune, and I'm getting into it. Add in a couple of distant trains for punctuation.

Whoever it was has stopped now, and the local roosters--there are at least three--are getting into their morning crowing contest, and the eastern sky is turning pink. What I want to know is who was up at 4:30 having what sounded like a drum circle?

(written ~5am)

I Preferred the Trees

2007-04-30T01:51:47Z

I've noticed around here that some of the farmers are plowing up land that, judging by the size of the trees that were on it, has lain fallow for decades. I suspect ethanol subsidies are the culprit.

Weird Thought of the Day

2007-04-04T15:59:00Z

The Perry Bible Fellowship and the Westboro Baptist Church ought to have a war.

Just Wrong

2007-03-30T10:29:07Z

Neil Gaiman is straight.

Deal Breaker

2007-03-18T22:59:22Z

I've looked into it. As far as I can figure, because my parents were Canadian, I have Canadian citizenship if I want to claim it. I have been there often, and I like Canada just fine. The main reason I would have trouble moving there, though, is that the Mountain Dew isn't caffeinated.

Link to an Essay I Wrote

2007-03-15T00:14:29Z

The other day I was more in the mood for mockery than for reasoned discourse. I made a crack at The Pen about feeding environmentalists to polar bears. As I should have predicted, that stirred up the usual suspects, and I found myself in an argument I was in no mood to have. I fear I did not take it too seriously. Nevertheless, it inspired an essay, which I completed a few minutes ago, Environmentalism Considered as a Death Cult. I have posted it to a different weblog. (Cedric Morrison is a pen name of mine. I no longer remember my reasoning when I adopted it.)

Anyone reading this is invited to go read it or ignore it as their whims take them. I hope it doesn't lose me any friends. If someone feels the need to upbraid me, please be aware that I am currently tired and generally somewhat bored with the subject. It actually is something that I hashed out in my own mind a long time ago.

Increasingly Eccentric

2007-02-11T06:23:40Z

I must have been letting myself get run down. I took a nap about 2 pm, and I just woke up about a half-hour ago. This is liable to do some strange things to my internal clock for the next few days.

I had a weird dream. jimbojones and raineesue were both in it. I can't really remember what it was about, but the three of us were in opposition to someone. Our opponent happened to be living in my aunt's old house, and on some pretext I went in to scout the place. He had installed bookshelves all over, and every book was protected by homemade covers made from paper bags. The title and author of each book was neatly written along the spine, and the subjects turned out to be physics and electronics and such.

I remember warning Rainee that based on that evidence our opponent was obviously a formidable fanatic. Rainee was living on a tent pitched on the University of Michigan's diag.

I had the solar-powered bicycle I had been writing about on The Pen Forum.

(Also, several days ago I dreamed I was Buffy, the vampire slayer. Shut up.)