Episode #328: It Certainly Isn't Christmas, But We Can Still Celebrate Them Movies

Say "Hi!" to the squirrel that we love to hate on. As I've previously stated we came to a non-peaceful resolution (like the US and the rest of the world), and so long as he stays in his lane, I'll stay in mine.

Like most of you, I grew up on the Christmas specials and movies that were part and parcel of our existence. And like some of you, my tastes changed as I grew older. For example, by the 2000s, the only Christmas specials I would watch would be the Charlie Brown Christmas movie and the annual 24 hour showing of A Christmas Story on TBS.

Fast forward to the mid 2010s, and the only Christmas movies I was watching were on Hallmark, which included a multitude of remakes of A Christmas Carol. Note: George C Scott and Harry Winkler had excellent versions, while Jack Palance made a truly bizarre one set in the west where the famous refrain of "Bah! Humbug!" was replaced with "Blah, blah, blah."

Fast forward to 2026.

I'm at the point in my life where I now enjoy an eclectic mix of Christmas movies that oddly enough, run the gamut of today's movie rating system (American style). So in this post, I would like to present three charming examples of the type of Christmas themed movies that I enjoy (and will try to buy copies of because physical media is cheap).

1} A Grandpa For Christmas (2007)

This charming movie features Ernest Borgnine as a divorced grandfather who is also a retired actor, is estranged from his daughter via parental alienation. One day he receives a phone call from a distant hospital telling him his daughter was badly injured in a care accident and that his granddaughter needs a temporary guardian.

It's one of those gradual family reconciliation movies, where the daughter finds out what her father was really doing for her behind the scenes. It's not quite maudlin or a tearjerker, and fortunately it's not one of those typical Hallmark-type of movies, but comes very close to it. It feels dated, in that everything is circa early 2000s (e.g. IPod) but it's an enjoyable movie.

2} Lost Christmas {2011}

I have mixed feelings about Eddie Izzard. Much like a few others who I can't tolerate as a person but their output is fantastic (e.g. Sean Penn, John Cusack, Kevin Spacey), he is a good actor (except at IMDb has him now listed as an actress) and this movie, that I found on cable, is no exception.

The very short non-Wikipedia synopsis: "As night falls on Christmas Eve, an enigmatic man named Anthony awakens on the streets of Manchester (UK) with no memories of the past and the unique ability to locate the lost."

To me, the underlying theme of the movie, which I only understood after watching it, was "What if?" What if one choice was made instead of the other, would the trajectory of a person's life change?

Actions have consequences, and the actions of one had a profound effect on the lives of others. This movie is particularly dark, but I believe it realistically portrays a slice of life that is often overlooked during the Christmas season.

This movie has a ranking of 7/10 on IMDb and 89% on Rotten Tomatoes.

3} Bad Santa (2003)

I like Billy Bob Thornton as an actor and as a person. His first one, which he wrote, directed and produced, Sling Blade, is a fantastic movie about a simple man trying to reintegrate back into society after a long stay in an asylum. Highly recommend.

But Bad Santa is an over the top film of crass mayhem. Billy Bob plays one of those mall Santas, who plans a dept store robbery with his "elf". Along the way, he comes an authority figure to a young tween who severely needs one, and brings his "girlfriend" into the mix (there is a memorable three word exclamation that I cannot say on this blog, but if you mention it, most people will automatically know what movie you're talking about).

It should come to nobody's surprise that I really enjoyed this movie, which also features Bernie Mac in one of his last movie roles and John Ritter, as it had reminded me a little of Animal House with its controlled chaos.

I think one of the reasons that I enjoy these three movies, is that Christmas isn't overwhelming the movie, but it's more like a good background noise that isn't too intrusive, but let's you know it's there. To me, these movies have good stories that are enhanced by the Christmas season, instead of being overwhelmed by the same, and that makes them enjoyable.

Thanks for stopping by for another round of what G.B. likes to watch in celluloid. Have a fantastic week.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #327: Building A Brand New (Fictional) Society Is Not For Weak

As you can see, the Peace Treaty of G.B. Squirrel is now in full effect. Squirrel has claimed the uncomfy chair under the unshady tree as his home away from home, and is no longer interested in hanging from the bird feeder; and I have no interest in chasing after him for munching out of his species class.

Today's post is a deeper dive into a concept that I had first touched upon nearly two years ago, which is prominently featured in my fantasy series: sentient beings.

~~~~~

I had first became enamored with the concept of sentients while watching Star Trek: DS9, when one of the primary characters was a host to an internal being, aka a symbiont/sentient. I had originally seen that concept first applied by Star Trek: TNG, when other beings were often, albeit temporarily, take over another person in order to properly communicate with the outside world.

Fast forward several years to the mid 200s. We had decided to buckle down and get serious with our writing, and so I started searching around for ways to make my storytelling stand out. One way was writing in that vast genre called "fantasy". Another way was to write half of my characters as hybrids (which gradually changed over the years to around 90%); and yet another way was to liberally use the concepts of sentient beings and hosts.

With my first major novel: Line 21 (trad)/The Inner Sibling (indie after rights reversion), I applied all of those concepts mentioned above. I was very happy with the end result, and while it did do much of anything for sales (a mixture of my naivete and the publisher's marketing philosophy), it was a great way to see if that genre was one that worked for me.

I subsequently spent the next decade or so tweaking and fiddling with my usage of sentients in my stories. I eventually published a novella that featured a moderate reliance on having a sentient character.

We now fast forward to the spring of 2022. I started working on the last of four writing projects that I had saved from a minor basement flood in 2021. By the time I wrote the proverbial "the end" in 2025, I had created a brand new society/culture of sentient beings.

Now I went pretty deep with this entire concept, which included such concepts as a Almighty Sentient Deity; a very strict code of ethics and behaviors for both the sentient and the host to follow; guides that would help them in times of crisis; I even included rules where they were allowed to reside on their host's body.

Even though death was a prerequisite for becoming a sentient being, how one came about to be dead was an essential component too: by violence, legal or otherwise.

To me, I equate becoming a sentient being to the concept of reincarnation. So to that end, I wanted to make this particular concept available to only three who had passed away to violence, legal or otherwise. My definition of legal is crimes against the state. In this aspect, they're giving the choice of death or reincarnation as a sentient being, with the option of choosing a host.

I have two examples of this philosophy: one of my sentients was giving a snap choice of being a sentient or experiencing an infinite loop of death for the crime of killing another; the second is of a sentient being who was convicted of terrible crime and not only was turned into a sentient being, but was turned into what 1984 would call an 'unperson'.

The otherwise option is basically this: death that isn't sanctioned by the state; or to put it bluntly for the purpose of this series, military-style raids/battles.

I have three such examples of this particular philosophy: one who was killed during the initial raid that started the series, and returned as a translucent semi-solid; one who was kill during the first attempt at capture; and finally, one who was killed during the second attempt at recapture.

The last one mentioned is the one where I decided to showcase how one became a sentient, from the initial death all the way through to when they find their host. It does make an interesting read about death and reincarnation.

In conclusion, I'm not sure if doing two kinds of world building is something I would want to pursue again. While it was definitely an interesting learning experience, doing world building can be exhausting, if only for the amount of detail that is required to make everything as realistic as possible.

I sincerely hope everyone has a fantastic sunshiny week.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #326: The Family Bookcase {6}: Dictionaries

I caught my parakeet in an unguarded moment the other day. I usually see them using their swing at night when I'm about to cover them up, so when I was going about making my lunch and saw them, I took a few pics. The clipped curtain is so that they can peek through the window to see the outside word.

Way back in the day, when computers were either a nifty concept or something reserved for the academic word and the Internet existed in the windmills of the minds of those same academics, we had these various times called "dictionaries" and "thesauruses", that we would use when we were doing various projects that required a degree of brain cells usage that simply isn't done today.

These times often came in various sizes and lengths, depending on your personal situation. You had bulky desk top sizes that naturally stayed on your desk, small pocket sizes that you could take with you or throw into your desk, and finally, you had mid-size versions that you could either throw in your desk or stand on your desk.

For some bizarre reason, our family bookcase has between one-half and one dozen types of dictionaries (usually Websters) from various decades. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. I know a couple of them were mine: a pocket version and a regular version of Webster dictionaries. I think I even had a pocket version of Rogets at one point.

Anyways, both items were great to have back in the day. Just like the Yellow Pages, you would let your fingers do the walking, especially if you were hard at work writing a letter or some business correspondence, or even if you were playing a board game or a crossword puzzle.

(pauses for a very long moment as something in his brain loudly snaps, crackles and pops into the forefront of his cranial cavity)

~~~~~~

(and now, he's back, just like a tired rock band from the 80s who doesn't know when to retire)

You know when you get that feeling about a particular idea, and you become excited and gung-ho and you're just itching to act on it, and you dive in head first with gusto? And you frenetically pound away on your keyboard with enough energy to wake up an elderly senator from a blue state?

And suddenly, you crash and burn like someone who's been up for 36 hours straight, as that idea says, "nope, I am out of here, good luck to you," and you're left wondering how did I get here?

Well,. how did we get here?

We got here, as I had eloquently explained in a 93 word word salad that starts with "you know..." and ends with "get here?", or for those who have a terminal case of short attention span, we can sum it up in four distinct part harmonies. Quotated.

1. We have idea. We must act on idea.
2. We are acting on idea. We are smart.
3. Idea suddenly runs to the hills like a coward.
4. Words dry up.

Basically, what I thought was a good idea at the beginning, like I wrote it on a blog post to-do list good idea, turned out to be what Daffy Duck would often brag about, mediocre.

So we wound up using memorable snippets from the following people/items to save the post, in no particular order of importance.

1. Senators from a majority of Blue states (like mine) qualified for social security some twenty years ago.
2. A popular meme/GIF of someone exponentially destroying their keyboard.
3. King of the Hill.
4. Talking Heads.
5. Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant"-1st version.
6. Star Trek: TNG.
7. Daffy Duck cartoons.

Okay, the last one everyone could figure out because I stated directly where I was quoting from. In any event, we managed to complete a Tiny Tim dash to the end zone with this blog post. It certainly wasn't pretty, it certainly wasn't neat, but it got the job done.

A Happy Monday to one and all, and remember, The Happy Monday's was a popular true alternative music rock band.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #325: "Sister vs Sister"--- Where Are We? Now!

I finally bit the bullet a few weeks ago (late April) and purchased a couple of shepherds hooks and planted them in the side yard where squirrels cannot reasonably jump to and on. Oddly enough, I seem to be getting a different variety of birds with the bird feeders being so close to the mountain.

By the time you're reading this post, I am now working on book #4 of the "Sister vs Sister" fantasy series. I recently completed the first round of editing book #3, and I decided to celebrate my singular achievement by providing the odd statistical* writing update.

*I've always had a thing about finding oddball stats on whatever project that I happen to be performing at the time when the bug bites. And no, this is not a recent phenomenon, as I've been doing it all of my life.

I really do enjoy coming up with oddball stats for my projects and unlike the last one I had done a few years ago that had an emphasis on the actually for this series, this one will not be as labor intensive.

Starting with book #1: the actual editing time frame was January 13th through February 4, 2026, a span of about three and a half weeks. Now there were quite a few things that I did prior to that original start date that would allow me to utilize a new game plan that I had decided on way back in 2022.

Like supplies. Because I wanted to do the entire process correctly, I had purchased 5 1 1/2" D-style three ring binders (with a 375 page capacity based on the same science that says you can get 115 loads of laundry out of 1.17 gallon jug of liquid detergent), and a brand new storage container to hold the original 1st draft, warts and all; I created nearly 1 1/2 dozen initial posts for my FB author's page, as I wanted to turn it into a mini blog by chronicling this journey; and most importantly, an actual title for the book.

Now three and a half weeks to edit a one hundred ninety page novel does sound like an excessive amount of time, but if you factor in things like: living in the real world, and juggling two other writing projects (blog posts and Facebook posts) on top of the editing and the editing process itself, then that three and a half weeks looks a little different.

Between book #1 and book #2, I had a three day grace period, which was unevenly divided between needing time to recalibrate, choosing a title for the and reconfirming that #2 was going to be a slog, as I had some continuity issues that needed to be fixed.

Oh and, unless you're on a deadline because this is your 24/7/365 job, being methodical absolutely does with the race.

Book #2 definitely lived up to initial declaration of being a slog, as this two hundred forty-nine page tome toke me from February 7th through March 5, 2026 to complete. Nearly a month was spent methodically picking through line-by-line-by-paragraph tightening and fixing continuity issues, some of which were quite glaring.

I will not that the amount of words excised were more than doubled from book #1, and I believe that was due to the fact that my prose was becoming a little more purplish.

The break time between #23 and #3 increased to four days, which was mostly spent trying to come up with a title, with the remaining in time spent preparing myself to tackle a book that was at least 41% longer than the previous volume. The primary reason for this was that everything was about to come to head, when the multiple storylines were going to converge before heading back out on a parallel journey to the end.

Book #3 exceeded the limits that book #2 had previously established. The nearly three hundred forty-five page monstrosity took me from March 9th to April 23, 2026. Nearly a month and a half of not only y picking through line-by-line and paragraph-by-paragraph, but also making sure that the decision I made earlier by the killing off of two main characters and the subsequent aftermath unfolded in the way that I had intended. 

Oh and, what I had stated previously that manufacturer's are overly optimistic about their claims for capacity absolutely came true, as I had to purchase a 1" D-style three ring binder to fit the last 9 chapters of book #3.

In general, this volume was a tough edit, as it left me a little drained and a little sad. When you spend nearly two years that spans three volumes (so far), heavily invested in your characters, there's a certain level of pain when you have to remove a few of them.

I'm not quite sure how long the break will be between book #4 and book #5, but I'm pretty sure I'll be spending the bulk of that time coming up with a title for book #5 that will accurately hint or imply what the final volume is all about.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved