Episode #154: Let's Go Out With A Little Yip!

Our local mall helps a local organization do annual fundraising, although I'm not sure what the actual cause is though. This past spring they did it with bears, so this time around it's with the doggos stationed at high traffic spots in the mall. Isn't he purty?

Anyhow, there's but one more week left in the skewered year that is 2022, and being the highly motivated person that I am cough, cough!, what better time to take a mini vac from the cyber world by stepping out during Christmas week?

So, we're going to take the next week off to enjoy Christmas with family and friends. If you celebrate Christmas, I sincerely hope you have a very good holiday week. If you don't, I hope you have a very good holiday week just the same, and I'll see everyone either the first or second week of 2023.

In the meantime, please enjoy this very clean blast from the past video.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #153: Sports Are Where It's At!

It was a bright blustery day in downtown Newington this past Friday, and as you can see, all of the well oiled business geese were gathered at the first hole trying to decide who should go first.

There was a cacophony of shrill voices screaming that they should be the first ones on the tee.

"Mother! Mother! I'm the golden goose that laid the golden egg! I should be the first to go!"

"Not him mother, Henrietta should be the one to go first, as she's the one whose the dimmest bulb around, with her southern drawl of "yes" polluting the sky!"

"How dare you! How dare you! How dare you!" said Greta, who always wanted to be the center of attention, thus demanding that she go first, because she was the pluckiest duck that sailed the seas.

"But wait, if I don't go first, then the sky will fall without waiting for more!" cackled the twins Chicken and Billy, who never agreed on anything.

But Dudley Do-Goose was having none of it. He stepped on his pet feather named "Feather' and began screeching "Nell! Nell!"

"But Mother, Mother!" crooned a goose named Paulina, "They're just screeching some silly love songs, you should allow me to tee off first, because I'm the goose on the run!"

"Nonsense Mother, none of those others are worth it, because I can hit the ball like a walrus," said Johanna in a tone dripping with sour apples.

"Everybody, just stop being valley girls!" yelled Mother to all of her inventions. "I had enough of you all clicking those zircon encrusted tweezers, you're giving me a major league headache! Now sit back, stand in line and wait for your tune to come around. Do I make myself clearer than a country road deep in the heart of Texas?"

So, with great reluctance and malice of forethought, they all stood in line at the first tee to patiently wait for their turn to walk out of the green room and onto the green in order to act like the sultan of swing.

Ore, in this case, like the farmer who gleefully allows his cows to be used to play a rousing game of "pick the square that will be the winner winner poultry dinner!"

A good time was had by all....except the humans who had to play hopscotch while walking around the park that day.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #152: A Picture A Week Keeps The Blogging Blues Away

A brief writing update for all: I've just completed chapter 37 for my latest project. I'm looking at maybe three to four more chapters before I put the second part of this planned trilogy to rest. Current word count sits at a smidgen under 148k. I plan to take a break from writing it this coming January so I can concentrate on getting out a re-write to previously published book. Man, I am absolutely beat in writing this thing, but haven't had a story grab me like this in quite some time. Now, on to our free form post.

<ahem>

Our wonderful flag. Never has a symbol made out of cloth or some other fabric has caused so much consternation to those people with tiny toddler minds (my blog, my rules), as well as pride to those people sans tiny toddler minds. Personally, I'm in the camp of the latter and I do treat it with respect. The problem is that people with tiny toddler minds can't understand why people who aren't natives (legal or otherwise) would want to come to/reside in our country.

As some people from the toddler side of life often say with heaping gulps of smugness, the flag is a symbol of oppression and it needs to go away. Yet, it's also a symbol of hope to those who want it, who need it, who are desperate enough (legal or otherwise) to do whatever it takes to come here and experience all it has to give.

As for those from the toddler side of adult life, you can always move to those countries where your personal freedoms there are tampered down elsewhere, often based on the whims of the government. Think about it for a minute. Countries in all four major compass directions have curtailed the liberties you have here. Freedom of speech? Only if you're wealthy. The right to protest? Well, we saw the brutal result of that up north, while elsewhere it's severely curtailed, or downright illegal.

All symbols have faults to go along with their history. But keep this one thing in mind, that symbol that some of you love to hate, has allowed you the freedom, from cradle to grave, to spew whatever nonsense you believe in. Because, that is your right as a citizen/resident (legal or otherwise) of this country, and no one can ever take that away from you.

Thank you for spending your precious free time reading my post about the American flag. Have an enjoyable week.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #151: Granddad Ain't Sipping Old Granddad Today

"Christmas time is here by golly, disapproval would be folly. Deck the halls with hunk of holly, fill the cup and don't say when."

No, that ain't it. Please Mr Custer.

"Father Christmas, give us your money, we ain't time for your silly toys. We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over."

Certainly not! Oh Mr. Belpit, your legs are so swollen!

"On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two turtlenecks!

Take off, eh! To the Great White North!

"On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a Japanese transistor radio!"

Yeah...sometimes, it just doesn't pay to have a brain chock full of pop culture from music and television. Because you know it's just mule fritters trying to work it into something resembling a normal everyday conversation or a normal weekly blog post. I try and I twy and I twy, but my name is Elmer J Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.

But to cereal up for a memento, we have a star. A star, which is not born for a cheesy movie, but was created by someone (not me) with oodles of creativity but often no outlet to produce it for. We chose today to use the old fashioned white star, not because it looks good, and it does, but because this was the pick that I had chosen after ten turns on the mouse wheel and a click of the shiny black button.

Now I will admit that I do love artwork that is simply made and is something that I can understand. I can understand this. When a child can create something that is quite unique all on their own, it is something that a parent can really brag about. So, I done dude it, and I dude it well.

So with that in mind, or not, because frankly, flaking out is something that I don't do well, here lies yet another blog post that is chock full of pop culture references, ranging from the 1950's through the 1980's, spanning the globe to give you a constant variety of sports. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

With all that being said, I wish you a 'good day, eh' and spiffy the rest of the week. And remember, just because someone is quiet, it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll suddenly say, "Ya'll want fries with that?"

May you always have peaches, liquor and treacle as part of your weekly diet.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #150: Granddad Is Chillin' Too Illin'

Sometimes, the only way to spill the creativity juices is to randomly choose, with eyes closed, a picture from one of your many blogs to use. Wish me luck.

So here we is, at the intersection of Downtown and Nowheresville USA, one gloriously sunny autumnal day. Birds are kind of plummeting {oh the humanity!} from the sky, due to the cooler weather coagulating that avian blood, making them sluggish and prone to standing around the corner snapping their feathers saying 'cool man, cool"

As you can see, we gots lots of traffic zipping around, heading for destinations surely {Feeney} more exciting to visit than Nowheresville USA. But, be that as it may, this intersection can represent where you are on the long winding country back road {perhaps US 11?}. Do we take the road heavily traveled, going north to south, or do we take the road in more heavily traveled, going west to east? Or, do we just stay stuck in the middle in a crosswalk going both ways?

Inquiring minds do want to know what your decision gonna be? Well actually, we really don't want to know, because in the end it's you doing you, and you are the one that has to live with your decision. But, do you make that decision, or do you decide to kick the Crocs down the road where it slides off into the not-so-great narrow open? Here, the only inquiring mind that wants to know is you. Only you know where you want to go and what road you need to travel in order to get there.

Which brings us back to the futon circle of laziness: Where do you want to go on your journey of life, Downtown or Nowheresville? The Highway or Byway? The Hamster Wheel or the overrated Mall of America? The choice is entirely up to you, and remember, there are always enough exits available should you ever want to change your mind for something else.

Have a fantastic Monday and the rest of your week, because only you, know what you really want to do in a given moment of time.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #149: Granddad Is Chillin'

I be chillin' like Oreo the Chihuahua here, without a care in the world and sunshine on my tummy, giving me good old Vitamin D topside and grass stains bottom side.

Some times, ya know, it ain't easy being a blogger, especially when you've been doing it continuously for the better part of 14 1/2 years. Yup, 14 1/2 years, spread out over 9 different blogs (7 on Blogger platform and 2 that were nuked on Tumblr. Anyone here remember Tumblr?), producing around 1,600 posts, give or take.

I can tell you that about 5, including this one, were created because of the burnout factor I was periodically experiencing. I originally started with 2, then created two more for my pictures and my wildly inappropriate short stories. I then created a short story blog, then two more elsewhere, then finally two more, including this one here. So I was a busy little doggo, just yipping and yapping all over the place, much like Oreo and his mama, Tina.

Eventually though, I did manage to settle down and in the process develop a more chilled attitude about things in general. I decided to take an early retirement in 2020, decided to concentrate on my writing in 2021 and decided to crack down on being a more consistent blogger.

For the most part, that chilled attitude has served me well. I've managed to reconnect with a better attitude towards my children and my wife. I am now a grandfather, and overall, I'm just in a better place mentally. 

Which brings us to now.

If you think this is a "I've come to say that I must be going" post, well, you would be 100% incorrect. In fact, I are not going. This post is more of a self-reflection of where I've been and where I'm going in the future. I haven't really riffed on a blog post in quite a spell, and with my perpetual self-imposed deadline fast approaching, I need to come up with something that would satisfy my high personal standards when it comes to writing. Although I will admit that my high standards are definitely head and shoulders above what Oreo's high standards are, which according to that picture is a sunny day in a very green backyard.

I think going forward for this blog, my high standard should be whatever the perceived high standard would be for the pic that will accompany the blog post and just go from there. Because, if your high standard is the equivalent of a Chihuahua rolling around on a sunny day in a backyard, then you is just doing fine.

With that being said, here's to a very spiffy Monday through Friday to each and everyone of you, because gosh darn it, you deserve it, especially after the 2022 mid-terms.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #148: We Are Amused About Minutia

Days of yore, days of simplicity, days of elasticity, days of genteelness, days of bygone.

Sometimes, when you least expect, you find yourself lost in the wind turbines of your mind, thinking about the past and the future left behind, when you suddenly realize, going forwards is actually going backwards at the speed of slow, and that the space-time continuum is just a fictional device that has made it into the daily lexicon of people who lack originality in their ordinary lives.

Good morning/afternoon/evening and welcome to the wide, wide, wide world of professional cornhole, where cheating is encouraged and no really cares if you're caught doing so, because hey, it's expected. I am your lovely host G.B. Miller, and today's myopic topic is minutia. Why minutia, you may ask? Well, back in the day, minutia was my game. Minutia is what kept me gainfully employed at a job where I was slowly being made redundant (hey, my post, my world) at quite a few agencies.

The writing minutia of the day comes courtesy of my latest writing project, called appropriately enough, Hot Mess. Because, you know, it's a hot mess. After all, how many people do you know, besides me, who are writing a three volume novel by hand, like John Boy Walton did prior to acquiring one of those newfangled typewriters? That's right. Nada. Zip. Zilch. The sum of subtracting a number from itself. The number 8 on its side. The average amount of electoral votes a Libertarian receives in a given election year. An exciting game of football. Etc, etc, etc.

So, I thought for today, I would throw out some minutia about the life of this writer with his current project. For starters, we have 33 chapters written, with a smidgen over 126k words. All 277 pages originally written by hand. Printed that is, before transcribing the end result to a computer. 

Now you must be saying to yourself, "meh, no big thing, you wrote 277 pages with pen and paper." Well my good friend, let me correct you on the following little processed chicken nuggets:

1} I used roughly 554 pages of notebook filler paper. Yes, you read that correctly. That breaks down to roughly 3 packages, with each package containing between 100 and 125 sheets of paper (high end count is when you buy at a reputable place, low end at places like Dollar Tree). Still think it isn't much? On to point #2.

2} Approximately 2 pages of notebook paper are required to create roughly 1 page of computer text. I say 'approximately' because back at one of my day jobs in the 90's I perfected the art of squeezing twenty words into a tiny space designed for eight at the most. So sometimes, I had a ratio of 1 1/2 to 1, because I could squeeze up to twenty-five words on a single line of paper AND I would use the entire side of the paper. Seriously. Still think this isn't much? On to point #3.

3} I now have a rotating set of four pens, two black and two blue, that are currently in use. I recently bought a cheap pack of ten black because I have 35 blue pens. Yes, don't judge me and my color preference. I have currently, to use YouTube's replacement word to the now very verboten word that gets your video de-monetized, unalived 6 pens (so far) over the course of this novel. By the flip side of the Sacajawea dollar coin, I have used only three black toner cartridges for those 277 pages. So are you convinced yet? Not quite? On to point #4.

4} Because I churn out, on average, one chapter per week, which is down from the initial three to four that I was churning out (all were re-writes from original material, so yeah) when I had started this project back in mid-May '22, the pinched nerve that I had started to develop in the base of my right thumb a few months ago has now completely engulfed the entire thumb. So now I have to modify the way I hold a pen so as to not aggravate so much. Not to worry, lots of YT breaks on my phone to help with the thumb. Are we finally convinced? A smidgen more needed? Okay, onto our final point, which is number 5 if you've been keeping track.

5} As I mentioned at the close of the first point, I have printed every blessed word out by hand. Printing is the only legitimate way I have to read my own handwriting. Currently, the only decipherable part of my handwriting is my signature. Everything else is sloppy enough to put a doctor to shame. Yes, it's just that illegible. So I print out everything, which in turn makes it all the more remarkable that I managed to write so many words/chapters. I've done it for so long in my life (about 16 years now, every since I had to teach myself how to write again once my hands began biting the dust) that I've developed into quite the speed demon, in that I can crank out, on average, about 2 1/2 pages per hour.

So are we now convinced that my exploits are the exception to the rule and that I'm actually doing an outstanding job with this novel, considering that I had started working on it in earnest back in May of this year? We are? Awesomesauce! I am so glad that my persuasion skills have done the work in convincing you that I am a very small somebody in your world of writers. And now for something completely different, Mrs. Miller.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #147: I Are Not Smart!

This is my punishment for what I had inflicted onto my family this week and the main reason for the extreme lateness of this post.

Flashback to Wednesday, October 26, 2022. It was a sunny day in suburbia and I was sitting in my basement jamming to some tunes on my phone when all of a sudden I lost my WiFi. I said to myself, no biggie, I'll just reboot the modem. So I did. Nothing. Did it again. Nothing. Did a few more times. Nothing.

Call our ISP and they try to fix it via the phone. Nothing. Said the earliest appointment they had was Monday, October 31st. Fantastic.

We spent the next five days eating our phone data like it was a Monster Energy drink. We even learned how to hotspot our phone for about 1 1/2 hours of daily computer use. We spent that week writing a particularly difficult chapter, helping my daughter just a tiny bit for her Halloween party (she and bf dressed as Cheech & Chong. Yes, you read correctly) and being an all-around mega grump.

Fast forward to today. Technician comes out, spends exactly thirty seconds checking things out, comes back upstairs from the basement and says it's fixed. We ask what was wrong. He says it was off. He asked if I had seen any of the lights on the front of the modem on. I say, with the way it was situated, I had to climb on the washer to reset it, so no I didn't see the front of the modem.

We now present the lamest excuse ever, right up there with anything that a Democratic politician has uttered with a complete straight face. At the time the modem hiccuped, there was no ready access to the modem as there were two doors in the way, so the only way to get to the modem was to climb on top of the washing machine. Thus, I was unable to see whether or not the lights were on.

So basically, while trying to reset the modem by turning it on and off, the last time I pressed the button was to turn off the modem. I will note that my daughter's bf was able to move the other door out of the way after they took the first door upstairs to use for beer pong. Doors were down because the new dryer was too wide with the doors attached.

So, to quote a certain political spokesmen, let's circle back to the title of the post and confirm that salient point: for five days, I made my entire family suffer with no WiFi and with no landline (connected to the WiFi so no great loss with that one). All because I didn't press the shiny red button one last time that would've turned on the modem, bathing the house in the rapturous spirit of WiFi, and making the family's inner chi balanced once again. 

We are not smart. We do not want fries with that level of smartness. Instead, we deserve candy-corn flavored PEEPS for our transgression. And maybe pineapple on our pizza.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #146: Let's Get Commercialized!

Back in the day, I used to be a devotee of t.v. and radio commercials. Mostly because the shows sandwiched around the commercials were crap, but partially because I liked to see if I could recognize any of the voice actors who did radio.

But this isn't about that, although that would make a very cool post someday. This is about the migration of annoying commercials from radio and t.v. land to You Tube.

You Tube carries a variety of both regular commercials and infomercials that they are more than happy to annoyingly insert into the videos that you're watching unless you deem yourself to be Mr/Mrs Moneybags and how no problem paying a hefty monthly fee to have them removed. But this isn't about the semantics of making money hand over fist either. This is about the time of bizarre commercials being shown.

I will touch upon briefly the various commercial lengths, which go from 6 seconds to bother skippable and unskippable 15 seconds to 15 minutes and beyond, and all lengths in between. Now that's out of the way, onto more annoying things.

Anyways, most of those late night commercials touting almost every conceivable medical/doomsday/clothing/everything you can possibly think of have migrated to YouTube to annoy you.

Want to listen to crappy political PSA's from politicians bragging about solving a budget deficit that their own party helped create previously? You got it here. You want to watch ads touting men's personal grooming products*? You got it here, among other places. Want to watch ads touting all kinds of insurance companies, including one where a guy snorts his beard*? You got it here. You want ads touting all kinds of weight loss products (you, yes you! have toxic poop!*)? You got it here. Want to advertise your "medicinal" marijuana mail order dispensary*? You got it here.

Almost every single product you can possibly think of, can be found on YouTube. Why? Because it's cheaper to shoot a few commercials and have them inserted into various videos to hit your target audience than it is to advertise on television. Both well known companies and smaller niche companies will advertise on YouTube because it's easier and cheaper to do. Plus, you can do commercials as short as 6 seconds to get your point across, as opposed to doing a fifteen to thirty second advert on television, and become more memorable in the process.

The asterisk. Two paragraphs back I noted some of the more memorable commercials I've seen with an asterisk. That was so I could elaborate more fully later. This is later. In order noted, a short description of the product is as follows:

1} Political PSA's. 'Nuff said, although the Dems are doing better than the GOP with socialized media.

2} Men's personal grooming. The biggie here is a company called Manscape. They make male grooming products for below the waist. Not only have I seen ads on YT for them, but I've seen other YT channels pimp them, as well as podcasts pimping them. I have also seen ads for manly soap and butt deodorant, so yeah.

3} Stare Farms has a series of vignettes for their product line, including one featuring a man who likes to sniff his beard after a meal. That one is skippable after 6 seconds.

4} Yes, there is a cleansing product that promises to help you get rid of your 20 pounds of toxic poop.

5} The medical Mary Jane mail order dispensary bugs me the most, because the company hired, at least to me, very old dedicated potheads who did absolutely nothing with their lives in the last 40 years. 

These are just small select sample of ads you can involuntarily watch on YouTube that have managed to stand out to me over the past few years of watching videos on everyone's favorite mindless platform. Have you seen any that have sadly stuck out to you over the preceding weeks/months that you're willing to share? Inquiring minds want to know.

Oh and, Grammarly is big on YT as well. And liquor, yuppie hard seltzer and bra ads for those of you who are either top heavy or...the first letter of the alphabet.

Note: I can 100% verify that every type of commercial just mentioned I have personally seen on YouTube, especially in the last paragraph. I give major props to the women who participated in those types of commercials.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #145: Granddad Finds Things In The Mountain

I've often found/seen unusual things over the many years of hiking around Cedar Mountain. Kind of amazes me over the fact on how determined the younger generation, for they are the only ones that can really accomplish these feats of daring do, is when it comes to doing stupid things.

Prime example is this liberated stop sign staring out at you. Obviously it came from a street somewhere, but there it is, leaning against a concrete bunker imploring the vegetation to stop growing.

I have seen the remnants of a television that somehow got tossed/brought into one of the street entrances about a dozen or so feet. Also, roughly a hundred feet or so from this picture are the remains of what used to be an appliance of some kind. Now, we're not talking about something tiny, we're talking about something like a stove or something similar that someone had lugged deep into the mountain.

If I continue down then up on one of the trails, I'll come across a very old 1970's style one piece rear seat that someone lugged up and wedged against a tree. Still usable, but very unsafe just the same.

And you can't forget about the fire pits that are scattered all over the mountain. Now these aren't dormant, but are very active in the summer time, as you can see them being used as you're driving down one of the side streets towards the mountains. Now these for the most part are somewhat accessible in the day time, but quite dangerous to seek out at night, even with flashlights, as the footing to the pathways are very treacherous to begin with. 

Another odd thing I've seen in the past few years are the end results when chainsaws are used on the trees. Now it's not sure much as people are illegally cutting lumber and hauling it away, but more like some necessary clearing of the landscape. To elaborate, we've had some nasty rain/wind storms in the mountain, which has allowed Mother and Father Nature pursue a prudent campaign of selective clearing out the old and dangerous trees, in order to make room for new growth.

Most of the time, these trees fall in areas where there are no trails or so far away from a trail, that there's no real danger to people walking on the trails. However, there have been times when some rather large old growth trees have fallen across the hiking trails, which in turn makes it a tad hazardous/difficult to walk around them. So what some people have down, either private folks or town employees, have taken chainsaws to those trees and removed just enough of the tree(s) to make the trail passable again.

They have also taken out some dead/dying/rotted trees down so that they don't have the potential to injure folks walking/hiking the trails. So for 2022, the trails have been remarkably, save for one, user friendly due to the selective dead tree removal.

Overall, this year the mountain has been remarkably stress free to partake in, in that there's no stray trees to really worry about hiking over or around. Walking and hiking is always good, especially when you can go on trails and not worry about major obstacles impeding your way. Just the occasional animal.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #144: Granddad Is Enjoying Life

This fascinating picture was taken by me from my car while I was driving home from grocery shopping. I happened to see the mountain's resident deer foraging in the front yard of our local group residential home yesterday. So I carefully came to a stop and gently reversed under engine power, then whipped out the smart phone and took several zoomed in pictures from my car. Then, with great reluctance, I carefully put the car in 'drive' and drove the twenty or so yards home.

So this is basically the highlight of a very young week so far. Last week was pretty good, as we managed to take a few short afternoon trips into the mountain, and boy was it worth it.

Right now, the mountain hasn't really start to turn to fall yet, so everything is cheerfully lean, mean and green, although, the birds have begun to get the message about the weather, as it's been abnormally quiet in those trees. But, it's still good just the same, as I actually love the peace and quiet while walking and hiking. Fortunately for me, the northern end of town where I live is basically dead between the hours of 9a and 4p daily. My end of town is simply a drive-thru to the more populous southern end of town.

So the quiet time has been doing me a world of good, especially with my writing. My current story with the placeholder title of Hot Mess is sitting at 107k+ words, with one three ring binder completely filled and a second one a fifth of the way there. Scary part is that if I get this one filled up, that'll put me over 400 pages written and that will simply blow my tiny little brain. Why? Because I didn't actively plan to write a multi-volume series, unlike the last time (yes, I have a trilogy that is one third published and two thirds completed) when I did actually plan to write a multi-volume series. So there's that.

Overall though, I've been simply enjoying my retirement, going on two years now. I have the almost empty nest, a grandson and my mental well-being has been soooo good that I kick myself for not doing my retirement earlier. But, rules are rules and I didn't have the numbers until I had turned 55 in 2020, with more than 20 years in.

All in all, this post is the best I could do for a Monday, because you know, we're simply enjoying life too much to worry about a blogging deadline. But I promise, with the weather starting to change, I will start hitting my deadline earlier. 

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #143: Granddad Is Iffy About Cadillac Products

There are times where I want this dog's life. This, is one of those times.

Yes, the title of the blog post accurately reflects a proper change in parental status. Young Master Colton made his entrance into the world back in mid-September 2022.

As I'm want to do from time to time while perusing social media, my mind has a tendency to wander. Occasionally it'll latch onto a certain idea, which in turn makes me pause and squee in delight because it means I have something to blog about.

Today's idea is what I like to call, "Cadillac products". No, I'm not talking about the car, but instead I'm talking about the various products that set the gold standard for their line and make everyone else in that product line pale by comparison. Let me share with you a few examples and you can let me know if you agree or disagree with my examples.

Cable t.v., specifically, HBO. Now, most of you know that I'm the original MTV generation, that channel started when I was a junior in high school {1981}, but you can call me an HBO Boomer as well, as the channel was founded in 1972. Now, I consider HBO to be the gold standard for pay t.v. channels, simply because of the high cost of adding/maintaining it to your cable subscription

Note, the quality of the content HBO presented coupled with being the originator of the premium cable channel, made it on one hand, the channel to have when you were getting your cable t.v. subscription set up (this was waaaaay before streaming, etc.), while on the other, it often became the first casualty of your subscription when you were looking for cut costs to your subscription, simply because on how expensive it was (in the late 80s/early 90s, it was about $20 per month with about 2% increases every couple of years with our subscription). Ultimately, it became the channel that everyone wanted to aspire to be like.

Commercial coffee stores. Now granted, my opinion is regional, but I find that both Starbucks and D&D have set the gold standard for commercial coffee product. I give them a tie only because each one has a particular customer base that is often hard to float between. A close third would be those solid mom & pop stores that sadly I don't have in my local town.

Coffee brands: again, this one is personal preference, but this is based on instant coffee, as I do not do K-cups. I think I've consumed only 48 K-cups during the entire existence of the K-cup, and those were in the 4 months preceding and 3 months during the pandemic when I was still employed. I've tried about a half dozen brands, so I have a strange three way tie for the top: Nescafe, a niche brand called Juan Valdez and single serve Tasters Choice. Everything else for instant pales by comparison. Those three mentioned are actually worth the high price you pay for them.

And finally, just to throw everyone a slurve, computer OS. Again, this is a personal preference. I have never used a Mac, nor any Apple product for that matter, in my entire adult existence. I neither like nor hate Apple computer products, they're just not my thang. But, having used Windows 6.0; XP, 7 and 10 (all four work related, with the middle two personal), and ultimately detesting all Window OS, my personal preference has been, since 2019, Chrome OS. I found that OS very easy to use, and their various office suite programs equal to, if not slightly better, than the Windows office suite programs. And most importantly, quite convertible going both directions. Overall, I find Chrome way less aggravating than Windows to use.

So, my fellow readers, what products do you feel are the gold standard for that particular product line?

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #142: Dad's Muse Has Taken A Brief Siesta!

Coming soon to a house near you, Autumn!

Flexi, the muse that makes everyone's life utterly unique and stylistic, has decided to take a short siesta to recharge her batteries, her imagination and her clothing options. Stepping in to be her erstwhile substitute is yours truly, the copyright holder to whatever word salad she chooses to share with us, which as of late was a Cobb salad. Possibly in the future it will be a Waldorf salad.

So for the past three weeks, Flexi has been acting out a few of the main characters from my latest story entitled Hot Mess. To refresh your memory, Hot Mess was the last of four partially/completed manuscripts that I had dug out from my tote bin of slushies in 2021 that had survived damage from burst water pipes that I had decided to work on. Note, over one dozen manuscripts in total were saved from that disaster.

While the first three were easy enough for me to blast through (all 1st or 2nd drafts were done by February 2022, so roughly seven months total), the fourth has basically blown up in my face. I had about eight original chapters of utter gar-bage, which is the cleanest way I can put this, so it was quite obvious to me that something needed to be done.

Well, at the beginning of June, we did start to do just that. We blew up the original plot line of something (yes, this is a reoccurring theme for me, in which I have issues in trying to remember basic plot lines from stories written, in this case twelve, years ago), reconfigured what the new plot line was to be, and off to the races we went.

Fast forward to now: we just finished transcribing chapter 28 and our word count stands at 103,610. No, we're not finished as we just reached the apex of part the first of the overall plot. And what is that overall plot you may ask? To simplify: Mercenary {F} is assigned to kidnap/retrieve the husband of a former classmate/enemy and bring him back to a pod Queen. That's the legendary T.L.;D.R. version of the plot.

So while the plot is basically a solid universal trope (person is kidnapped for possible nefarious means), the gender roles were tweaked (kidnapper is female, victim is male) and a lot of strange things were thrown into the mix to make it anything but stale, we hope.

1} For starters, it's a bit of a low fantasy style story, with a mixture of real world and off-world(?) settings, specifically, an unidentified part of earth and a planet simply known as The Pod.

2} The characters themselves are pretty much hybrid humans with dormant cannibalistic tendencies.

3} One character has, from a still partially hidden background, styles herself a reluctant leader with two ladies-in-waiting at her back and call; while her husband, who is 100% human, worked for the Aztec Empire back in the day.

4} His ex-wife also worked for the Aztecs, having been taken as a possible Incan prisoner previously, and who also lives within him.

5} Another character has an adult foster son who is her equal in some aspects.

6} There are two groups of skeletal peeps. One is a pair that were previously consumed as a meal, but promised to be made whole at a later date, while the others are reproductions who can only speak in ASL.

7} Finally, there will be some old fashioned royal political intrigue, since The Pod is ruled by a Queen with insane protocol requirements and a power hungry of courtiers called The Royal Entourage.

8} And because I'm a bit strange when it comes to using information that I have absorbed through a lifetime of reading, I have tried my best to work those concepts in to my story: Greek/Roman mythology; turning very bad things into large conglomerates (e.g. human sacrifices and debt collection); using languages of all kinds for communicating (e.g. foreign and ASL); a modern form of technology (tablet); a fantasy world communication (telepathy); traditional forms of transportation (horses and travoises); new species (e.g. skeletal people); and finally, old fashioned intrigue and revenge.

If you stir all of these things together in a big old mixing bowl, what you get afterwards is a manuscript that has blown up like mentos and coke, and quite possibly turn into a two to three volume set of a humdinger of a story.

Least I forget, this is what happens when you decided to slow down your perpetually overactive brain just enough for it to actually think crystal clear on all kinds of thngs...by handwriting the entire story out before sticking it onto a computer.

Slowing down by being old fashioned is not something I would wholeheartedly endorse to anyone who enjoys writing, but it works for me. 

Happy Monday!

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #141: Dad's Muse Has Come Back! {3}

No vegans around here! Only natural bovine by-product!

Part 1, Part 2

"Why me?"

"Why not you? After all, you is the creator and I is just the interpreter of your output. So what do you think, am I good or am I good?"

The tired writer continued to stare hard into her hazel eyes until his bottom lip began to quiver until it was sneering like that boxer from Philadelphia. Or the singer from the U.K., it was so hard to figure out who was who these days.

Nevertheless, he broke eye contact and face-planted his tired face into the tired table and wept.

Concerned for about a nano-second that she had done something wrong, Flexi quickly dismissed that responsible thought out of her head. Instead, she decided on a new approach. She slowly sat up and kissed her little man with the super big platinum crown jewels on the forehead, before sliding her voluptuous body to the ground. She stood up, performed a breathtaking hair flip that bordered on the obscene and quietly (for her) snapping her fingers. And just like before, she was surrounded by a daffodil scented smoke screen.

The tired man sat there with his mouth agape and drool running down his neck. "What in the wide, wide world of retro sports am I going to do with Flexi? Seriously, that...that...that birthing person (a hand quickly appeared from the smoke screen and unleashed a slap that spun him around in his seat so fast that his brain became unscrambled), I mean, that woman (he quickly flinched after speaking the word that no Democrat would dare utter) is going to get me into soooooo much trouble with my blog and--"

His thought was interrupted again when the smoke-screen cleared out, leaving yet another version of Flexi behind. As like last time, the tired man's jaw dropped, but not to the ground, but more down to his waist, after seeing that once again, she was dressed like one his characters from his story: tight fitting blue jeans, western style shirt, vest, long flowing hair, wraparound sunglasses...and an enhancement that somehow started with the numeral 4.

Flexi strolled over to the tired man with a movement that in his tween years would make his mother cover his eyes in fear. She slowly leaned over the table, taking care to make sure that her little man was getting a very unwanted eyeful of her anatomy, and purred, "Is this a better visual aid to help you with your creativity?"

The tired man went wide-eyed in shock and amazement, which was quickly followed by lust and a deep yearning for something beyond his means. And then....

Tune in next week for part the fourth of "Dad's Muse Has Come Back!"

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #140: Dad Is Having A Moment Of?

Okay, I actually had an entire post all written out and ready to publish, but after re-reading it numerous times, I came to the realization that I had sounded 1000% like a bitter unbalanced and extremely pompous newbie writer.

Now, while I may be bitter at times, I am not anything else previously mentioned. Because I'm not the kind of person to go off on a juvenile rant, that leaves me to fall back on what I call "shooting from the lip", in that we're gonna blog about whatever happens to pop up in my mind so that I can create a passable blog post.

So, first things first, a writing update. I'm currently in the process of transcribing chapter 26 of the story with the placeholder title of Hot Mess. For a word count, it currently stands at 92,030 words. Yeah, you read that correctly. I figure that I'm about at the halfway point of the story, and if I keep up with this current pace, that means I'll finish with about 52+ chapters totaling 189k words. Yeah, again you read that correctly. The average word count for each chapter is about 3,681. Oh and another reminder: that entire word count was originally handwritten, or rather, printed out.

Now, second things second. A little background info on the story itself. For those of you who aren't long time readers, whenever I write a story about myself, I have a tendency to portray myself a bit like Walter Mitty, in that I have feats of daring do when I'm alone, but quickly go spinless when a strong woman walks into the room. A bit submissive one might say.

And because I'm like some writers who have trouble in properly explaining what their story is about etc., I have decided to inform people of the particular points of a given story in a way I'm most comfortable with, which is writing a fiction based narrative for it.

So far, I have shown in the story that my spine is soggy linguini so to speak, and I have also shown that my muse has taken on some of the characteristics of one of the story's cast members. Like, being a bit voluptuous and having facial tattoos. This is how I'll be introducing the rest of the pertinent cast members as well as the main plot of the story. I figure I can maim lots of birds with nerf pellets as I go about the process of trying to explain my slowly growing epic low fantasy story.

To sum it up, my Hot Mess of a manuscript is literally a hot mess that is rapidly expanding to encompass all aspects of my writing life. Which at this point, has forced me to set something of a deadline to finish this story: January 2023.

I set this as as deadline, mostly because at my current age (57) I''m not quite able to concentrate of two different projects at the same time, and I would really like to get back into the swing of publishing what I already have prepped waiting for me to complete, which in this case is a partial re-write/tidying up of a previously published book.

So...yay me.

Tune in next week, where we continue with the public humiliation of a tired writer trying, without much success, to rein in his hyperactive muse.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #139: Dad's Muse Has Come Back! {2}

Remember kids, even wimpy men eat fresh bovine!

Part 1

After screaming Flexi's name multiple times and receiving no response, the tired man, being no longer tired, springs into action. He dashes around the table, battling his way through the remnants of the daffodil soaked misty cloud in order to search for Flexi's legendary boudoir.

In spite of the fact that he's never seen her boudoir in all of the years they've been together, he's feeling pretty confident, perhaps overly so, about finding it. After all, how hard could it be to find a door handle that would lead to the legendary boudoir?

Apparently, very hard, as for the next fifteen minutes he scoured his office with an actual magnifying glass looking for anything, and we mean anything, that remotely resembled a door handle, but came up emptier than the platitudes offered by an anti-law enforcement Democrat.

"Good Lord, what am I gonna do? If she comes out wearing something that will make me go mad with lust, or even worse, make my readers go mad with lust, it will be the end of me! I'm too old to be writing erotica!"

The man sat back down at his desk and began to weep in despair. Not so much for the fact that Flexi might embarrass him with her choice of clothing, for that was something he was long used to, but for the fact that he just complained about writing in a particular genre that he spent years denying what the bulk of his stories were.

His pity weeping was rudely interrupted by another blast of daffodil scented smoke erupting from the floor.

"Of course it would be from the floor," he said while inserting a Tom Swifty adverb.

When the smoke cleared enough for him to see, his jaw dropped remarkably very little to the ground. Flexi was dressed like one of his characters from his current story: half army fatigues, a belt created from insects, a red cherry tube top that accentuated.....everything and her hair done up in a whip braid. With certain old fashioned toiletries items inserted.

Upon closer examination, he noticed a few unusual...designs drawn on her face.

"Good Lord Flexi, you cannot wear such revealing and dangerous clothing around here. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that my little man with the big cajones needed some visual...aids to help his creativity in action, so what better way to inspire my little man," she paused to pinch his chubby little cheeks. "writing juices. Besides, what's there not to like about what you see?"

The tired man suddenly felt very tired again, and sat back down on his tired table. He moved his tired paper to the side, took a tired sip from his water and performed a not-so-tired face-plant to the table. And kept it there.

Flexi, deciding to have just a little bit of fun with her little man, laid her voluptuous body across the table and started to purr seductively in his ear. The tired man raised his head, stared hard into her lusciously deep hazel eyes, and said....

Tune in next week for part the third of "Dad's Muse Has Come Back".

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #138: Dad's Muse Has Come Back! {1}

Remember kids! Cow flatulence is harmful to the climate!

Scene: A tired looking man, with tired features resting on a tired body, holding a tired pen, sitting in front of a tired table, writing on multiple pieces of tired paper, tiredly sipping on a glass of tired water.

Annnnnnd....ACTION!

Hellloooo? Is anybody there? Hello?

The tired man suddenly comes to life. He bolts upright, cleans out an ear with his pen before cupping it with his hand. "I could've sworn that I heard that voice. But...how?"

I know you're in there, and you know that I know you're in there. So 'fess up and show yourself!

"There it is again! But, it simply can't be....Flexi?"

Suddenly a loud clap of thunder crashes into his den, as a deluge of sulfuric smoke envelopes the den. Coughing and hacking, he quickly reaches for his handheld portable fan, flips the switch and starts blowing away the smoke. Roughly thirty seconds later, sitting on his tired table, with svelte legs crossed and waist length hair cascading down her chest, is his long thought missing in action muse, Flexi.

"Flexi?"

"In the flesh!" she answers in her perpetually perky voice.

"Good Lord, you're not actually in the...flesh are you?"

Flashing an evil smile, she quickly removes her hair from her chest, which causes the man to wince in embarrassment. When he opens his eyes, he sees not the actual voluptuousness that drove stronger men than himself to drop to their knees in sinful lust, but the perceived voluptuousness tastefully hidden by the clothes that attracted him to her in the first place. 

"Flexi, what on are earth are you doing here? I thought you were on an extended vacation in the Caribbean or some such place?"

"Caribbean, Macao, St. Martinique, Hawaii, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on. Anyways, I heard that my tiny little man with ginormous gonads has started doing some original writing."

"Really."

"Really, so I said to myself that I needed to see for myself if this was actually true, and not just some bad millennial with a pointless MFA in something called un-creative fiction trying to impress your personal assistant with vapid language skills. So, are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Being freshly creative, silly."

"I suppose so."

"Great! I'll be right back!"

The tired man simply stares at the daffodil scented misty cloud that Flexi had left behind, before sadly shaking his head and turning his attention back to his tired paper on his tired desk. Exactly thirty seconds later, he suddenly bolts upright and goes rigid in fear. With eyes growing bigger than his proverbial gonads, he screams at the top of his lungs, "FLEXI!!!!!!"

Tune in next week for part 2 of Dad's Muse Has Come Back!

 

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #137: Grandpa Is Officially In The Driver's Seat

Yesterday, I was at a baby shower for my son and his wife. This photo was taken some 20 1/2 years ago at his sister's baptism. So yeah, I are old. Oh and, he is completely bald just like his old man.

Nonetheless, in about a month and a quarter, I will be a grandfather. There are some days that I feel really, really old. At the ripe old age of 57, this is one of those days.

Because I spent my Sunday prepping and attending a baby shower (never really experienced the phenomenon that is weekend golfing until I went to a country club), blogging was the very low on the list of things that I needed to get done.

Nonetheless (hey, I'm getting good at working on archaic words into my writings) here I am writing this somewhat informative blog post.

In regards to my current writing project, Hot Mess, while I'm making steady progress with it (up to 80k+ words), it seems to have spun a little bit out of control. To whit, while I have 21 chapters written, I'm somewhere between one-third and halfway through the story. I'm at the point where the first part of the story plateaus/climaxes, which will be followed by the immediate valley/peak of the second part, which of course is followed by the third part doing a partial repeat of the second, except the story ends.

I'm finding it quite enlightening to discover and apply a few of the basics concepts learned from reading other books/writers, with the most notable being that to properly bring certain characters thought to be done with after a period time forward to further along/fill out the story. I think it's making this story more fulfilling and meatier. I'm also getting better at rounding out the various sub-plots so that they better compliment the main story plot.

Having said all of that, I'm now reevaluating what the final word count will be. Based on doing some research to figure out what kind of fantasy story I'm writing (low fantasy), I can say with confidence that the final word count should be either slightly south or slightly north of 130k words.

So...yeah. This will be a hefty novel for sure, as I'm already starting on a second three ring binder for this story, and while I have roughly ninety percent of the plotline endings reasonably figured out, I still have that remaining ten percent to figure out.

And a gentle reminder to everyone, I'm writing this entire story out by hand. Which means that I used approximately 220 sheets of paper (roughly ten sheets per chapter) to write this bad boy out, as well as two pens. As the bulk of the advice given to newbie writers these days is minimize/eliminate outside distractions, writing by hand allows me to not only eliminate about ninety-five percent of my various Internet distractions, but allows me to enhance my concentration to a level rarely seen these days. 

And that is very acceptable in my life these days.

Have a happy Monday and a mellow Tuesday through Sunday.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #136: Dad Says The Only People Worth Your Attention Are Little Childrens...

...because they're the only ones uncorrupted by the stank that we adults are currently giving to the world.

So earlier in the week, while I was out on one of my morning walks to nowhere, I found myself in the home stretch of my walk, in that I was on my home street some sixtyish yards away from my house.

So of course, being a late sunny morning {this past week the temps did not drop under 85 in the morning nor under 94 in the afternoon}, a few of the neighborhood children were out. When I say "few", I mean about four, since my neighborhood has pretty much turned over because the only ones that are left are now Class of 2022 graduates.

So....yeah.

Anyways, my street, for better or worse, has virtually no car/pedestrian traffic during the day M-F. In fact, for the morning thru early afternoon, you can count on one hand the amount of cars that come through. So I'm within actual sight of my house, when I hear the quadraphonic sound of four young voices calling out, 'LEMONADE!! FRESH LEMONADE!!" 

Now normally, I simply smile/wave in acknowledgement whenever I come across a lemonade stand. However, there was no possible way I could blow this one off, because living on the same street some six houses down gaurenteed that I would probably hear about for quite a while. So I sucked it up, went over to the tent and yes, I will have one. Financially, that one third of a cup cost me but a fifty cent piece.

Health-wise, I paid a hefty price for the rest of the day. As most everyone here is aware of, I are a diabetic. Which means I have to severely deaden my sugar intake. But, because this was my good deed for the day, I couldn't simply not drink the lemonade, nor could I pitch it within any kind of view. So I took a couple of noticeable sips in front of them, spoke to the mother who was feeding her very newborn baby for a few minutes, then made my way home with the cup of lemonade in my hand.

Now once I got inside the house, the lemonade got tossed. And my sugars stayed somewhat elevated for the rest of the day. Would I do this good deed again in the future on my street? If I was caught walking, you betcha I would. Would it be worth getting sick again? Yes and no. Yes to bring a little happiness to young children's faces, but no, getting sick to make children happy really wasn't a good thing. But you have to remember, children like to see/hear honesty in an adult, so I just simply couldn't walk away w/o drinking any of it.

So ultimately, my good deed made some children happy but made me sick for the rest of the day. So in this particular instance, a win-lose was actually the best outcome I could actually expect.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #135: Dad's Stomach Is A-Growlin'

Not even remotely sure where I'd originally dug this up from all those years ago, but hey, maybe it's a new version of Don Quixote.

So Dad, or perhaps I should start calling myself Old Grandad, eh (note, to go further on the website, you have to verify your age), is feeling a bit peckish at the moment.

Before we delve any further in today's beefy topic, we must give a minor writing update on Hot Mess. Currently we're in the process of writing chapter 19, which I'm deducing is possibly the midway point of the novel. The present word count stands at 69.7k words, so I'm quite happy about that. At my current pace it looks like I should finish either slightly south of 100k or slightly north of 100k. I'm personally guessing slightly north, judging by the amount of words written so far.

Now, with the update out of the way, today's beefy topic is lunch. I had originally visited this topic, along with breakfast and dinner, in November 2012 (yeah, I've been blogging that long), and I strongly suggest you clink on the link for some good old fashioned humor about the that particular meal of the day.

Lunch has radically changed for me in the preceding 10 years, in that what I eat is a little more healthier and a lot more routine. Being retired going on two years has allowed me, for better or worse, to badly tweak my lunch routine.

One thing that has remained disgustingly the same is that I go in long stretches of eating the same thing Mon thru Fri. Seriously. Because a lot of what I eat is directly tied to my diabetes, there is a tendency to stick with the same thing repeatedly.

To whit: we did PB&J (natural and sugar free respectively); when we got tired of that, we switched to tuna salad sandwiches, complete with a plethora of hot sauces; then we changed to chicken salad sandwiches; after getting tired of sandwiches, we switched to lunchables (both Oscar Meyer and Armout).

Then to start saving some money, we started doing our own version of lunchables, using tuna salad, then switching to PB&J, then to buying packages of bite sized salami and bar cheese, and finally, we're now using the Armour version of Spam called Treet., along with hot sauce and salsa.

Keep in mind that these were like month-long stretches in eating each particular type. And of course, you can't forget the other parts of lunch. Like pickles, which we started with gherkins, then switched to spears, then to hamburger dill chips, then finally bread and butter (not sugar-free which is gross) chips. 

Then we switch over to chips. First we went with the snack size of Lay's chips varieties, then we switched to store brand corn chips (saving money here), then we switched to Capp Fries, and finally, oyster crackers (again, saving money).

Can't forget about the liquid refreshments. For an extended period we did Cape Cod soda cans, then switched to teas, crystal light drinks, then finally bottled water. Btw, water is bland, so at one point we used those single serve powder mixers, but switched off due to chemical warfare, so bland water it is.

Finally, we get to dessert. Almost 97% of the time, it's been fruit. Plums, nectarines, apples (red, golden, granny) and bananas. The other 3% were things like sugar free cookies.

On the weekends it changes only slightly, in that about 97% of the time, we do Banquet chicken nugget dinners for lunch. Yes, very cheap and it fills a necessary need. The only 3% is covered by fast food, usually dictated by abnormal events of the given day.

So, that is the annoying sameness that is my Sunday thru Saturday lunch. The joys of having a long term medical issue dictates what you eat for lunch is just so....peachy keen fine wonderful goodness. As SpongeBob would say, "JOY!!!!"

There is no joy in Hooterville today, for Arnold The Pig has become beefy pork chops and picked pig knuckles for the community picnic.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #134: Dad Is In Fine Fettle Today

I was ganged up on by these guys this past Friday in the drive thru. Man, if you thought ravens have attitude issues, Canadian geese are 100 times worse.

Dear old Dad had nothing on tap for a topic to write about this week, as life got in the way of writing and blogging.

So today's blog post is gonna be a deep dive of the archives from my first blog, Cedar's Mountain. I do hope that you'll enjoy these classic posts from yesteryear.

The first in question features some very old e-mail humor from 2000, about various products with stupendously stupid label instructions, called Humor Circa The 20th Century.

Next up, a sample of some free form fiction and a humor filled e-mail from somewhere long ago. The fiction is moi, and the poem is entitled, "Frenemy". Overall, the post is called Fluffernutter

Number three on our hit parade is Coffee!!! Specifically, a cartoon featuring Grimm & Mother Goose, with links to Dave Grohl and Squeeze (links are still good).

Number four with a bullet is one about feeling really, really old. For proper context, i'm 57. Which means stuff from when I was growing up would make people in their mid 20's squeal like a pig about retro vintage stuff. Either way, if you're under the age of 40, you're probably not gonna appreciate what your elders went through. This one is simply called, So You Feel Old, Eh?

And finally, number five is actually from another one of my olden blogs called Father Nature's Corner. This one was around from 2013-2017, which was during one of my down cycles and after I had spend some time blogging on Tumblr (nuked that blog). 

Unfortunately, this blog's archive was a cringe-worthy trek of posts featuring broken links and YouTube purged videos. It took me quite awhile to find something, and it happens to be an old YT video featuring a Rube Goldberg machine. Simply called Still The Untitled Post.

I sincerely hope you've enjoyed this tiny trip down memory lane and hopefully by next Monday, I'll have a proper post for everyone to enjoy. Happy Star Trek!

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #133: Dad Thinks Reading Should Fill The Emptiness Of One's Mind

In a bit of a floral mood these past few weeks, since the bulk of my photos have been procured via pounding the pavement and not the mountain. The heat of late has been absolutely BRUTAL, thus the need to simply pound payment in the early morning when it's cooler and shadier, and either the mall or the upper end of my favorite closed off street in the afternoon.

Back in those bad old pre-pre pandemic days, where only a small percentage of the population, including MSM, was suffering very badly from Trump Derangement Syndrome, I was doing my usual schtick of going full immersion into the tsunami that was my book reading.

In fact, my immersion was so complete that in 2018 I decided to keep a quarterly track of what I was reading in my down time. At this point I was reading both fiction and non-fiction, so I was going to the library about once every two weeks or so. For non-fiction, I was reading whatever struck my fancy at that given moment at the library.

For example, the various books included such "scintillating" topics as: a baseball front office, the t.v. show In Living Colour, a serial killer and a memoir about a ye olden tennis player, among others.

For fiction, it was a completely different animal, as instead of reading stand alone volumes, which was never really my thing then or even now, I decided to jump into reading book series. Specifically, murder mysteries.l

So I dove into three different murder mystery series, of which one I do plan on picking up again this year. My public library only had two partials to work with, much to my disappointment as I made my way through. Partial series #1 was a series called Gil Cunningham Murder Mysteries, all which were set in the late Middle Ages, specifically at the very end of the 15th century. Partial series #2 was called Jack Haldean Murder Mysteries, which took place directly after WWI in the UK.

The only long series that I started and want to pick back up and finish to the almost end, is Sue Grafton's Alphabet Mysteries. I got as far as the letter "R" before giving up on my reading experiment. So I only have 7 more volumes to read through. For those of you who think my addition is wrong, Sue Grafton passed away in 2017, and because she was adamant in not using a ghost writer (like Robert Jordan's estate did for his Wheel of Time series), the series ends at the letter "Y".

Like I hinted at, by the time I got out of the summer of 2018, I was becoming a little burned out with my reading. Which is really nothing new with me as I go through cycles with my reading. I don't really remember how much reading I did for 2019, if at all. Anyways, after reading 30 books in the 1Q of 2018, I dropped down to about half in the 2Q 2018, then dropped down to 1/3 in 3Q 2018. And then, nothing.

I do remember the last book read from the public library was in February 2020, and the topic was the entire Last Crusades, so between then and the 2Q 2022, I only cracked open like three books. One was a non-fiction about a 40 year period in the late Middle Ages, and the other two were a few paranormal romance novellas/novels, which I may return to later this year.

I started back up in earnest this year when my public library finally reopened to the general public, and so far the books in question that I had cracked open were on: Nicholas Cage, Dave Grohl's memoir (highly recommend), The Original Sheik (pro wrestling), Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), lawyer/YouTuber Steve Lehto (true crime), and currently reading the forensic sciences of Agatha Christie. No fiction yet, but I hope to fix that once I stop finding good non-fiction to read.

And now, a short update on the Hot Mess manuscript. I have 16 chapters completely transcribed and totaling almost 62k words, with chapter 17 waiting to be transcribed. Plot-wise, I'm closer to halfway than one-third completed, and fast approaching the first of three plateaus/climaxes, so I'm pretty happy about that. And like normal, I've written everything out pen and paper, which helps me to better concentrate on the story with fewer distractions and even fewer chances to just phone it in.

And thus, having completed yet another blog post on time, our anti-hero exits through the side door, stage right.

 

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #132: Dad Is Drawing A Blank, But Is A Blank Drawing Him?

Sometimes for me, writing a story is pretty much like the picture to your right: a frustrated parent trying to keep their kiddies under control. Or, in my case, trying to keep all of my brilliant plot points under control and on track.

The other day I wrote for an FB post, this following tidbit:

The beauty of a story expertly planned completely out from beginning to end is ugly upped in a mud bath of peat moss by the reality of actually having to write it.

In other words, going from point A to points B, C, D, etc. etc. etc. should be a linear concept, but sometimes it just ain't.

With my latest story, dubbed the Hot Mess, once I was able to get beyond the point of rewriting the previous 90+ pages and creating 13 chapters out of it, I was able to do two things right off the bat. One, I was able to come up with a very coherent plan of attack for the rest of the story. All the components were at my disposal to use, so creating the next three to four remaining scenes would be a piece of sugar-free cake.

Two, once I had finished the rewrites, I was able to really free myself with my writing. From years of observing writers I respected worked magic with their craft along with the smattering (overall, I'm usually a non-fiction ind of guy) of fiction read, I knew that what I needed to create was some old fashioned meaty goodness to add to my story, and not just some cheap low quality filler for padding purposes.

So, this is where the planned linear points started going slightly askew, like a shopping cart/trolley with a wheel bent just enough to annoy you for the entire time you're doing your shopping. In order to not make my stuff sound like the proverbial Mary Sue/Gary Stu, I needed to add some "oomph" to the mix. You know, realistic quirks/issues that cannot be easily solved, if at all. So we did.

A semi-language barrier here, a possible reappearance under another guise there, maybe a slow poisoning for thrills, chills and spills (note: Google is the wunderkind when it comes to researching random nouns to use in nefarious ways).

Oh but wait, we have a battle scene to write, which is key pivotal point number one in the story. Should I make a tension filled angst ridden battle, complete with a travel to, the arrival, and the withdrawal? Or, should I just muck it about and just cover the entire concept in one chapter?

Oh, but wait, there's more (to paraphrase the late great Billy Mays)!

We still have to write the chase after the tactical withdrawal. But will that run off the rails too? Or will we be namby-pamby about it that too? And then, while Jones didn't come along (pop music lyric from the 50's), but the final confrontation at the end needs to be written. Will we write that completely scattershot with enough twists and turns to make it like you're jumping a crooked river, only to land on the side you've started from?

A multitude of sub-plots that simply were not there originally, but cropped up when we started getting a bit deeper into the story. Finally, the very, very final non-eco friendly straw is this: will this entire story be contained to one novel, or will we split it into two smaller pieces?

Right now, we have 15 chapters totaling 53k+ words written, which is roughly somewhere between one-third and one-half of the book. I was always of the mind that my word cap shouldn't go any higher than 70k words for a novel, but I'm 110% sure I will blow by that word cap, hence the dilemma.

Do I write just one book, or do I write two? I don't know. I just don't know. I really just don't know. While inquiring minds don'r really want to know, except maybe mine, I do have to make a decision about that. Which, if I was a normal person instead of Abie Normal, I would choose to make it now. But as Abie Normal, I will choose at the very end, because like most Abie Normals, I need to have the proper info, aka final word count, at my disposal.

So with all of that being said, I think I'm gonna take a lovely peat moss mud bath to cleanse my palate, and leave you with a challenge for your Monday: how many pop culture snippets can you pick out of this blog post? Depending on your age, you might get a lot, you might get a few, but either way, it'll be a fun way to start your week.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved