Episode #178: A Little Of This Is A Lot Of That?

Flashback work photo from 2008. Pic taken from the first of four work cubicles that I had occupied from my last state agency that I had subsequently retired from in 2020.

While I was desperately trying to think of something to blog about, because again, I was more preoccupied with the real world than the digital world this weekend {spent a lovely Saturday evening with the 22 year old daughter, going to dinner, visiting her BF, doing Cabela's and talking politics}, when it suddenly dawned on me that my blog anniversary had casually strolled by without so much as a second glance my way.

On May 28, 2008, I officially started blogging at the founding blog that begat six more blogs {not counting the disaster at Tumblr}, Cedar's Mountain. I won't bore you with the excruciating minutia of the past 15 years, but I will state that not only did I subsequently create a total of seven blogs, but also created 1,850 blog posts. Yes, you read that correctly. The yearly output started at 208 posts, which was roughly three posts per week on average, which then dropped to a peak of 153 then to 104 posts at my second mainline blog, Father Nature's Corner, which then subsequently dropped to roughly 52 per year, which is what my third mainline blog, the one you're currently perusing.

Now, lest you think that the overall total is composed of all three mainline blogs, I beg to differ. I also created a book blog, a picture blog, a 21+ blog (no, naughty pics, just adult oriented blog posts that required me to put in one of those "are you over 18" pages) that contains the best header quote you've ever read:

"Where patience is a sin, bad language is the norm, and having a bald moment is a thing of beauty."

And a now defunct/closed short story blog, in which a few good writer friends of mine earnestly warned me about publishing some of my original work on, which I eventually took their advice on.

Thinking about my blogging life, I come to the stark realization that I have outlived the original toxic chat room forum that ultimately pushed me to start blogging in the first place. I have also outlived, or rather, outlasted roughly 96% of the other bloggers that used to grace my blog(s) with their presence in the past 15 years or so.

Originally I started blogging to share work stories and to practice/polish up my writing skills, as well as field comments/critiques of my writing up until the first year or so of being over-lorded by a mad power hungry political party that had no qualms in not following the rules they set forth for us peons.

I still enjoy blogging, and being the odd elder chameleon that I am, have zipped around the proverbial archives of my memories to create (mostly) original content, which in turn has allowed me to often take the path less traveled by smarter folks. And that's okay. Creativity is action almost always stems from a desire to be occupied in doing something with our time on this planet besides just existing.

And with that being said, I end this post with a brief writing update of sorts. I have put away the story that I had rewrote in the first person because to be quite frank, it was a major cluster of a very naughty word that nowadays you can say on television and people would go, "oh?", before yawning. I then took out another story that I had re-written with the intended goal of publishing it sometime this year.

As with my current mega project {aka The Hot Mess} I'm slowly coming around to the probability of having to put a small trigger warming on the book when the time comes to publish, simply because it contains themes that, realistically, a segment of the reading public would find offensive, even though none of it is gratuitous in its application. Having said that, I am now up to creating chapters 58 & 59 and I'm getting ready to implement a fourth three ring binder for this bad boy. Yay me.

As this is the beginning of the week for the majority of my readers, I wish you a relatively quite Monday in your part of the world, and remember, 1984 is actually being performed in some of the countries that we consider to be "progressive".

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #177: The Simplest Word Is Often The Most Succinct

Summer in Connecticut. A man made fountain in the middle of a non-man made pond, which eventually empties out into a non-man made waterfall.

When we last left our madcap business duo of Ted and Bob, Ted was recovering from being thrashed about the office by Bob. Bob was taken by some men in dark suits, starched white shirts and loud ugly ties to a place where tired minds gather to spend money and devise speeches in which they keep crossed fingers behind their backs while pontificating.

While Bob was busy learning new life skills, Ted was busy trying to find ways to stand up to his megalomaniacal boss. Of which one was researching the world's shortest sentence that consists of one word containing the 14th and 15th letter of the alphabet: 'no'.

What his research found was that this simple sentence was, beyond a hint of a shadow of a doubt, the hardest sentence for any person to accept at face value. Now, let's disregard the pop culture version of the word that even I, your lowly blog writer, remembers quite well:

James Bond: Do you expect me to confess?

Dr. No: No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.

The simple act of saying 'no' to someone can often drive a typical person mad, and a mentally unhinged person completely unglued. It's such an eloquent word, modest in its formation, but packs a loaded iron-ore ship ton of power in its wake. I mean, who wants to be on the receiving end of an eloquent word that is specifically designed to either hurt a person's feelings, or in the hands of a parent, good parenting or bad parenting.

The word 'no' packs such a powerful punch that it can leave people whose tiny bit of power that went to their heads, frothing at the mouth in frustration.

"I just love doing research in my down time," says Ted to a co-worker. The co-worker nods in agreement before suddenly going wide-eyed in fear and immediately cowering in his seat. Ted sighs, because he knew that his boss was standing behind him somewhere.

Ted spins his chair around and speaks with as much genuinely fake sincerity that he can muster up, "Bob, you're back from DC! We thought you must've gotten waylaid by those millennial protesters sipping on their Starbucks and screaming about how bad capitalism is. How is everything?"

"Everything is fine," Bob says with a sneer. "Tell me, are you doing anything that is against policy?"

"No," says Ted facetiously.

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean? This isn't some kind of silly sketch you know. It shouldn't be that hard for you to understand, right?"

Bob starts getting cherry red in the face. "Look. If I want backtalk, I'll talk to my wife. She wears the pants in the family. Here, I do, so I need you to elaborate."

"No."

"WHAT?" Bob is now sputtering spittle all over the place as he starts having a major meltdown in the middle of the office.

Ted watches this meltdown with a sense of deja vu, but then realizes that he has the upper hand, so he turns his back on Bob and peers through the fourth wall yet again. "Well, it does look like that in fact, Bob picked up an infamous DC illness called, "Adult Toddlerism. It usually strikes both sexes, and usually the direct cause of the illness is the adult's inability to accept the word 'no' when they demand something that is usually given to them, no questions asked.

"So, if you want to be like the smart people in your sphere of influence who absolutely love going scorched earth on those with IQs of their shoe size, do what they do and weaponize that special magical word. Because as the old cartoon character from the 80's used to say, 'I have the power!' So be merciless with your power and make sure that your coffee is always fresh and your pastry is always warm as you go about your day-to-day activities."

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #176: I Learned Something New

The greatly missed family dog Lucky, who passed away a few years ago from a variety of ailments plus old age. Fondest memory I have was when he would launch himself off the porch deck to the backyard, and inevitably face plant the concrete landing more often than not. Very cringey and the whole house would try to stop him from doing it. The only time we didn't was during the winter, when the snow would cushion the blow.

"Hey Ted! What are you doing, and who are you talking to?"

"Bob, I'm talking to my friends out there in the blog world. Why?"

Bob squints in the direction of the wall that Ted is talking at and says, "Ted, you're talking to a wall. You better go back to your desk and take a chill pill of some kind. You need it."

A bit annoyed, he says, "Is there something that you puffed up your ego with that you now want to bother me with?"

"Excuse me? I'll have you know that my ego doesn't need to be puffed, thank you very much. And since when do I 'bother' you with my pearls of wisdom?"

"Like, every single hour of every single day, you poor excuse for an ineffectual middle management suck up. So what do you want to bother me with now?"

Bob frowns for a moment, before grabbing Ted's ear and dragging him back to his desk ala Curly Howard. He throws him into his chair, and says, "Listen here, you pencil neck geek, I have learned something new today and I expect you to sit there and listen to me explaining it to you. Got me?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm your boss and you're just a toady, so if you want to keep your job, you have to sit there and listen to me."

"Fine," says Ted, who instantly forms a plan for malicious compliance.

Bob pulls up a seat, points a finger in Ted's face and says, "I was on You'reATuba the other day, I learned something incredibly fascinating. Listen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...."

Ted is already tuning him out, but Bob is too arrogant to notice him. He points up to the ceiling and suddenly one of those cartoon thought balloons pops up above his head, and begins to fill up with words. Words like, "I actually learned something new today too, but it's basically a fun factoid that you can work into a conversation about movies. Google 'how many swear words are in the South Park movie?' and you'll get my answer."

Bob is still rambling on, only now he's frothing at the mouth as he starts becoming one with whatever verbal excess that is pouting out his mouth. He starts jumping up and down like a manic primate as he speaks. In the meanwhile, Ted is taking this all in with a major poker face, which seems to directly feed into Bob's little tantrum of verbal abuse and spittle. Because Bob is such an oblivious boob, Ted has no problem in once again pointing above his head, and again producing a thought bubble.

"I have a writing update that my close friend G.B. Miller wanted me to pass along to all of you good people. He's still making solid progress with his trilogy (over 230k words written), although he's hit a very tiny road block in the form of the dreaded middle of the first part of the overall final confrontation (he says there's at least two, maybe three) where he's having a tiny issue getting everyone to like, actually travel towards that first part. But he assures me that it's just the tiniest of road blocks that he has to go around. Once done, he'll be good to go. Maybe. Hopefully."

Ted returns to his regular scheduled program that's already in progress, and is alarmed to find that Bob has now channeled his inner primate, so in addition to frothing at the mouth, he's also beating his chest and grunting quite loudly. He waves his hand to get Bob's attention, and after about twenty seconds, does.

"Say Bob, need a banana?" Ted asks all innocent like.

Bob turns red in the face and explodes. He immediately grabs Ted and starts thrashing him all over the office like a piece of American Tourister luggage. Ted eventually winds up on the floor quite the battered specimen of humanity. But he's a battered specimen of humanity with a trick up his sleeve: a drugged banana.

He hands the banana to Bob, who immediately takes it and swallows it whole. Exactly ten seconds later, Bob collapses to the ground in a heap, snoozing away in his own private Ohio. Ted eventually peels himself off the floor, finds a telephone still in working order, and calls for animal control. Animal control arrives, sedates Bob even more, before taking him away to a place for people with very tired minds and over-active imaginations: Washington DC.

Tune in next week, when we hear Ted say to Bob, "You know Bob, the shortest complete sentence in any language today, is 'no'.", and hilarity ensues.

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #174: My Alternate Universe Is Good

I went shopping at WalMart a couple of weeks ago because I was out of sugar free syrup. Didn't find any, but I found this instead. All the realism but none of it real.

You may have noticed that I started using a couple of oddball characters in a few recent blog posts, named Bob & Ted. To no-one's real surprise, Bob & Ted are simply a vehicle, much like my muse, to showcase my latent quirkiness that has a tendency to pop up on the page, whether digital or print.

I have a rather dark imagination that pops up with an increasing degree of frequency in my writings. Unlike my muse, who has become my.....stern counselor....Bob & Ted have become my outlet for the darkly quirky side of my imagination, for my blog posts. 

I always wanted to eventually write my blog posts in the same vein as my stories, but I realized that to do so would require me to slap an "18+" warning before one could read it, and you know, while that would work for the content I usually write elsewhere, it won't fly on this blog. So that meant that I had to tweak it to make it acceptable here, which is what I did with the Bob & Ted Abnormal Review stories.

I actually do like writing pseudo horror stuff, because I can't write full blown horror stuff at all. Just not my cup of tea, as they say. I give props to those that do. But Bob & Ted are my delightful little plebeians that allow me the honor of writing them like Kenny, but without the unmitigated violence, only the gross factor. So rest assured, you will see more Bob & Ted Abnormal Review stories popping in in the future, as we'll expand from reviewing products bought to reviewing places shopped/ate at {I have some Google Map reviews for my immediate area that have somehow garnered over 1k views. Go figure}

Now, onto a brief writing update, courtesy of my muse: "Our friendly G.B. is now getting ready to transcribe chapter 55 in his current trilogy and is having a grand old time being stunningly brave in exploring new writing worlds. The kind of worlds he enjoyed as a reader but never explored as a writer. Because if he doesn't, well, all eight protagonists that I bring to life in this trilogy will be very, very, very disappointed, and he may have to see his...counselor....for a stern talking to."

With that being said, have an above average Monday, and remember, let's strive to be the first in reverse at least once this week.

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved