Anomalous Data - Writing

Note to Dunkin' Doughnuts:

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:52:02 GMT

You really DO think we're stupid, don't you?

Or did your high-priced marketing experts miss the fact that if you are selling over-sugared deep-fried confections as an actual meal...and you are featuring your coffee...

...just a thought here...

...maybe focusing an ad around the phrase "helping you clean up after an all-night blow-out" isn't the most savvy marketing decision ever.

Hint: I write good copy and I work cheap. Call me. And yes, my grammar and spelling ARE better when I am getting paid.

Served!

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:23:46 GMT

Aaaaarrrrrgh!

I've been developing detailed descriptions of how to do the Kung fu techniques that I teach my students. I write them down into study guides to help their parents double-check and be sure that they are doing it right.

I created two study guides this weekend while I was up visiting my folks, working in the car to use my time wisely.

Then I got home and Rocky found that the server had crashed. So he (being the efficient, hard-working guy that he is) restored from the last back-up.

And when I connected my computer to the network it auto-synced (Rocky is efficient and hard-working, did I mention that? And thoughtfully set my computer up to auto-sync everytime I connect and disconnect to the network. It has saved me numerous days worth of work over the years).

Naturally, when my computer synced THIS time...it found that the two study guides I created over the weekend had been "deleted" from the server...so...it "synced" that action on my computer.

grumble...

I would like to say, for the record, however, that I am NOT complaining about having a competent, hard-working, thoughtful computer genius who thinks ahead and takes great pains to set things up so that I can have all of my work backed up and updated continuously without having to lift an extra finger to do so.

That would be dumb. All of these things have added up to saving me many times more work than the few pages I lost.

Mostly, I'm grumpy because my dishwasher is broken, my car has been in the shop three times in the last week (to the tun of a couple of grand), my dog is obsessed with eating my headscarves, and now my computer ate my homework!

Oh, and I got a nose-bleed at kung Fu tonight.

blah.

Hump Day Opinion thread - personhood

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 09 May 2007 12:13:56 GMT

I'm going to try something new here, If you want to participate, there are a few rules. If you don't want to participate, you can just follow along. If nobody participates, I won't try this again.

I will ask a question. You get one chance to answer it on this thread. One. Nobody can argue with it on this thread. This thread is only for stating your thesis in answer to the question based on your experience, any research you do, and your personal thought process. Each comment is a sort of mini-post on the part of the person posting it. Do not respond to another person's comment. Just make your own. In one week, I will open up a discussion thread on this topic. Take your time. Make it your best effort you can put into it over the week. Then you can get your fight on if you would like, when I post the discussion thread.

Question: What definative measure should be used to determine "personhood" in society? By what measure(s) should personhood be legally acknowledged by society, and by what measure should it be removed? Do you have any theological, philosophical,historical, legal or medical support for your assertion? Does your definition necessitate any caveats, modifications or accomedations for certain states of being? You don't have to address them here, but simply identifying them will help for clarity.

Reminder: No multiple comments. No comments on other people's comments. No argueing. There will be time for that later. Stay focused. Don't get distracted. Bring your own personal knowledge, perspective and expertise to the table.I reserve the right to delete frivelous posts, multiple posts, posts that are obviously intended to disrupt or subvert the intent of the exercise, and also trolls and such. Not that I expect anything of the sort, but you know how it is. Other than that, only participate if you think this will be fun!

Can you write something for me?

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:23:53 GMT

I'm always happy to help out a friend when they ask that question...but I like it even better when they also offer $$$$. And when it puts me in touch with a business that might need to hire me in the future...it doesn't get any better than that. :-)

Don't wait. Go now, and check out this blog.

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:49:42 GMT

Ever get depressed about the future? Ever find yourself sighing and muttering dispiritedly about "kids these days?"

I've got the cure: Go here and read some of the entries at this blog.

http://frecklescassie.wordpress.com/

Ben at EclecticsAnonymous did a profile on this smart, thoughtful, tough-minded young lady. You can read that too.

Read "Say 'HI' to Freckles"

I'm adding her to my blogroll as well. Please go read. You will be glad you did.

Eschew Obscurantism

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 16:41:24 GMT

Conrad Zero has had some guff from Beta readers of his book. Evidently, they find his sentance structure too complex and wordy. His sentences are too long, and contain too many subordinate clauses.

While I agree that sometimes overly complex sentence structure can lose a reader unessecarily, some writing is complex simply because it deals with complex subjects in complex ways. There is a balance to be struck, to be sure.

My sister-in-law recently glanced at the cover of the book I was reading, and saw that I was STILL reading the complete works of Thomas Paine (it's been nearly a year. It's not the only thing I'm reading, after all).

SIL: "You're STILL reading that?"

Me: "Well, you have to understand that Thomas Paine takes some digesting, there's just so much packed into the text. It's a very rich experience."

SIL: "Yeah, those old guys just go on and on and used fifty words where ten would do the job."

Me: "Uh..."

SIL: "Why can't they just say what they are going to say and get it done with?"

I dropped the subject. I couldn't imagine how to explain to her that actually Paine's writing is elegant in it's simplicity. It's clean, lucid, rational, meticulously precise and yet artful, graceful and refined. No matter how many commas or semi-colons his writing has, you can clearly follow the line of the thought throughout.

There's no intellectual onanism, no wanking, no self-amusement to his writing. There's no indulgence in cumbersome jargon to make his reader feel inferior, and yet it is a joy to read because it IS artfully written with clever turns of phrase that are so clever you feel as though you stumbled upon them rather than being dragged to them in a kind of literary shaggy dog story just so the writer can show you how clever he is.

It doesn't take a long time to read the great minds of the Enlightenment because they are difficult to read. It takes a long time because you are enjoying the time spent. Sometimes the ideas just won't fit into simple sentences, but though the sentences are sometimes as complex as the ideas they convey, the clarity of thought is never obscured.

Think of the best wedge of cheesecake you've ever had. It's seems as though it should be simple, it's got what, three or four ingredients? But it is not. Difficult to make properly, the result of a well-made cheesecake is dense flavor with light texture, a delicate balance between satisfying richness, and not-quite-overpowering sweetness. You don't just wolf that dessert down the way you would a Hostess fruit pie.

Just because it might take you twenty minutes to consume a small wedge of cheesecake, is no reason for an onlooker to assume that the process is tedious.

So Conrad, make your writing as dense and rich and complex as you need to. Just avoid confusion, self-amusement, and arrogance and everything will turn out just fine.

Cult of the Red Lobster

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 03:03:33 GMT

One of the things I do - One of the things that makes me, “me” - is that I tend to bring people together who would more than likely never really bump into each other and make a connection.

Today’s connection is a little fun for me.

Paula, meet Tony.

You have very little in common. But one thing has brought you together in my mind. You have both written about lobsters.

Paula wrote about Happy Lobsters. I like Paula’s writing a lot, because it is like a vacation. Not one of those all-inclusive cruise vacations with a schedule and shuffle-board, and all-you-can-eat menus and long hours of sitting on your butt doing nothing.

It’s more like the vacations I spent as a kid following deer paths through the woods, or hiking to the top of Scalplock mountain in Glacier, watching Mountain Goats frolic on sheer cliffs.

Her writing is at once sweet, pensive, vulnerable and adventurous. With a touch of bookish charm that avoids pretension, and the occasional thrust of the well-placed jab of wit that avoids self-amusement. (Yes, I know. I’m taking notes. I’ll be better – really)

Tony wrote about Parachuting Lobsters. I like Tony’s writing a lot because it is direct and snappy. He turns phrases like flapjacks, spitting out such snappy gems as “my PC is about as stable as Lindsay Lohan at a Spring Break kegger”. Tony’s writing is direct, conversational, and more than merely being unpretentious, it frequently reaches out and skewers pretension.

Anyway, enjoy.

Vanity searching my friends

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:01:49 GMT

Vanity searchs on my friends in Google occasionally yeild gold.

Here's a link to a cartoon that my friend and fellow Green Monkey Damian Sheridan did in a 48-hour cartoon marathon.

He had 48 hours to go from first pencil brush to finished product. Apparently, things can get a little wacky when you combine sleeplessness with stress and the time-pressure of a deadline in the head of a man who is tenacioulsy upbeat and forward-thinking even in the depths of depression.

The chemicals in his brain say one thing, but his youthful entheusiasm and expectation that change is just around the corner say something else. Out of the confusion of conflicting signal comes...this.

The line between creativity and psychosis is thin indeed.

Enjoy.

Why I write.

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 17:43:59 GMT

Rocky just e-mailed me a link for an on-line writing tutorial. I'm working through it right now. If I benefit from it, I will post it here. I just finished the first activity, and thought I would post it here. I was supposed to write down three reasons why I want to write.

I did that.

(Dear diary, working through tutorial. The hobbits keep nibbling on my pencils. I think they have an oral fixation...still not brilliant and successful...think 38 might be too old to become a prodigy.)

Anyway, here it is:

Three things that make me want to write.

1) Every once in a while I get this big, tight, feeling in my chest. It’s like a wall of emotion, or feeling. It is so powerful that it makes my hands tingle and my brain feels full, but I can’t put it into words. It’s even hard to describe. I sit down and just start typing whatever words come to mind. By the time the feeling passes, I usually have a completed poem or a story or something. These are usually really short, powerful, tight pieces. There is no need to re-write. I usually don’t share them. They are too personal. This once happened to me in the shower. While I was writing the story, my hair dried with shampoo still in it. That was weird.

2) Sometimes something happens that makes me wonder why, how, who caused it, and to what end. Even if I am able to investigate it in real life, answers are rarely forthcoming. My brain just sits and picks at it. I find that the best way to forget about it and move on is to make something up that would explain my experience.

3) There are people that pop into my head and start telling me bout themselves through scenes, images, dialogues. I write their stories to get them out of my head. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I have to finish the story…sometimes I don’t.

Swamp Thing

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 20:27:40 GMT

Was it just the day before yesterday that I made a comment about what happens to my brain when I don’t get enough exercise? Was it just yesterday I was bitching a little about being cranky from not enough activity?

Well, last night I was stiff and sore, seemingly permanently chilled, and had quite a lot of chest congestion…but I felt like I had DONE something. The downside is the my Kung Fu work-out was then not quite up to par…but we can’t have everything, can we?

But let’s start at the beginning of the story.

This story starts, as many stories like it do, with a phone call from Sue. She may be my best girlfriend, but I think she secretly wishes me harm.

“Hey, I’m cutting out of work early, and going on a swamp walk. Wanna come?”

“Um. What’s a swamp walk?”

“It’s fun. You get cold and wet and muddy and miserable.”

“I have to teach tonight.”

“Tammy specifically asked me to invite you.”

“Really?”

I never thought Tammy liked me very much, and as she is pretty much Sue’s other best friend and housemate…I figured it was a big gesture on her part and should be accepted.

“Well, in that case, I’d better go, as long as I’m back by five o’clock.”

“Easily.”

“OK then.”

So we set out. I borrowed Adventure Boy’s duck hunting boots, which went to nearly knee height and were water resistant. Sue thought that was over-kill, but I didn’t have any shoes I felt like getting swampy.

It sprinkled a little as we drove south on 169 to the Louisville Swamp . It’s a Minnesota State Park that encompasses a large expanse of Minnesota River Backwater. We arrived, and I was introduced to Don, our fearless leader. He and Tammy have been doing this as a yearly tradition for a very long time. I reacquainted myself with Mayann (“Mare” to the group).

We took the Manozumi trail for quite a ways into the backwater. It was dry. Bone dry. Which you would not have expected given the immense volume of rain that we had over the past few days.

Then we discovered the bad. The trail ended in a huge puddle. To the right of the puddle was…more puddle. To the left of the puddle was still more puddle with fairly swiftly-moving current.

People started taking off their shoes.

“You’re going into that water barefoot?” I asked casually. (At least, I think it was casual. I was going for casual. From the chuckles, I would guess I didn’t quite make it.)

“I want something dry to put on my feet afterwards” Tammy said.

MaryAnn poked me in the shoulder, “I’ll give you fifty dollars for your boots”, she said.

“Ha ha.” I quipped cleverly. At least, I was going for clever. I was still trying to sort out why we weren’t turning around and heading back to the car, our hike being foiled and all…

We started into the water. Don probing the ground before him to keep track of the trail. We could see a bridge up ahead, which spanned the fastest-moving portion of the current. I decided that they must know what they are doing, and kept going.

The water kept getting deeper. I kept thinking, I’ve still got some play with my boots. I’m OK. Then, one step went down way too far, and icy cold water filled my boot. Well, crap. Here I was, boot filled with water and I thought “I can keep walking and probably stay relatively warm…or I can go back to the car and sit there for hours with a wet foot.”

No contest.

Each step got rapidly deeper after that. About the time the water got to my hips, I realized I’d have to revisit my paradigm. I could no longer afford to think of this as a “hike”. If I was going to continue this experience (and there was little choice as everyone else seemed determined to continue) I was going to have to think of it as “Research”.

If I ever have to write a story about how it feels to slog through hip-deep swampwater for miles in the Minnesota River backwater in early October…I will be able to do it with verve, precision and bone-numbing accuracy.

First, there is the cold (about 40 degrees F). No doubt about it, it’s cold. But if you persist in being in the water, your body eventually stops complaining about it, and it’s not really that bad. Then, there is the slippery feeling of the sludge under your boots and the uncertainty of every step. The next step might be a log, or a hole, or something alive (we’ll get to that). There’s the grainy green floaty things intermixed with slimy-looking half-rotted wood bits.

But there’s also the cool quality of the light in the swamp. It’s like nothing you’ll ever really see anywhere else, and it gives a sort of unearthly feel to the experience. There’s the swamp sounds and the sense of really becoming part of your environment. On a hike, you’re passing through the environment. When you’re hip deep in it, the relationship changes irrevocably and strangely, for the better. You become part of it, it becomes part of you.

“I wonder if we’ll run into any of those huge bullsnakes that live down here?” I mused.

“Snakes?” piped Maryann. She didn’t sound comfortable with the idea.

“Ah, that’s a bunch of bullshit.” Grumbled Don, giving me a little shake of his head when I opened my mouth to assert that there are, indeed massively huge bullsnakes that populate the Mississippi river valley.

I shut up. Right. Maryann didn’t like snakes. So it would be better to wait, and if she sees a bullsnake and has an aneurism, deal with it then. Probably not smart to give her one now…when there is a good chance that the snakes are getting ready to hibernate, and we won’t see any at all.

So we’re working toward the bridge, and the water is up to my unmentionables. I’ve only a couple of times lamented the fact that area has so many nerve endings. Most of the time, I think it was a pretty good idea to have them there. This was not one of those times.

As we approach the bridge, we realize that part of the bridge…specifically, the part we should be climbing onto in order to cross, is missing. Yep. The bridge is partially washed out. So there is current we have to cross. Not a lot, not very fast…but still, current. Not something to undertake lightly and without experience.

I spent a number of formative years hiking in the mountains and having various outdoor adventures with my family. I carried a snake-bite kit and knew how to use it. I’d been given instruction on how to splint a broken bone and other basic emergency first-aid procedures at age seven. No stranger to the out-of-doors and a certain amount of risk. We had to cross mountain streams from time-to-time, and it was drilled into me just how very careful one has to be when crossing water with a current. Currents can be deceptive. Cold water can cause muscle cramps or spasms, and hypothermia can come on without you realizing it, and impair your judgment. My dad impressed upon me the importance of respecting moving water. World class swimmers can drown in rivers, you know.

The difference is, my dad was always there, and he could lift me with one arm. Dad wasn’t here to grab me if something went wrong like a flood surge or something…but his voice was there, telling me everything that could go wrong, and everything I should do about it if it did.

You could definately feel the current, but as long as you kept your footing, you’d be fine. Not a problem for healthy, fit, active people. The edge of the bridge is at about hip height as well. We crawled onto it, glad to be out of the water.

What followed was roughly three-and-a-half miles of alternately climbing up and down perfectly dry hills, and slogging through icy cold water. As we tramped through one particularly long stretch of mid-thigh-deep water, I felt something large and heavy bump up against my boot…about mid-calf. There is a wriggling sensation against my leg, and something pushed off of it.

“Something just hit my leg.” I say, startled.

“Probably just a log.” Says Don.

“It didn’t feel like a log.” I reply.

On the other hand, it’s moved on, and it is not currently chewing on me, and even if it was, I’ve got these great boots. So. No problem. Don points out that it’s probably a carp, and he’s probably right…although my vote would be for muskrat or nutria…as it felt like it pushed off from my leg, rather than simply flopping against it. Snakes, turtles (both snapping and non-snapping), nutria, muskrats, carp, other kinds of fish…all of them live in the backwaters. None of them are particularly dangerous. I would be most worried about a snapping turtle, to tell the truth.

A little while later, something jumps near us. Nobody is startled. It was far enough away, and clearly a fish. A little bit later, what appears to be a huge carp gets pushed into a tree by the current, and starts flopping rather violently near us. That’s a bit of a jumper, but it’s clear that it is a large carp within seconds.

At one point we crossed a rapids that went up to about mid-calf. I would say that was the most dangerous part of the trip that we undertook. Still, not dangerous if you knew what you were doing…but probably more danger than was completely intelligent to undertake for mere recreation. If you lost your footing at that point, you would get very wet, and might get pretty banged up…but you would most assuredly be able to grab something and regain your footing before anything serious happened.

We tramped through fairly dry territory after the rapids. I don’t recall any big water. There was a meadow with a huge rock outcropping in the middle of it…some bit of pre-ice-age mountain the glacier left laying around. It’s really cool and looked fun to climb…but our legs and hands were too stiff and unlimber. Apparently, it is a tradition to climb this rock on the great annual swamp walk. Not this year, however.

The final leg of the journey, as in, the remaining ten to twenty minutes should have begun at the shelter…which is a small building with a small woodstove and a pile of firewood. Had we had time (and matches and kindling) we could have started a fire to get warm and dry.

But that would have been silly…because stretched before us…just past the sign that said “Caution, do not attempt to cross in high water”. Was a vast expanse of swiftly moving water.

Don and Tammy assured us that somewhere beneath all of that swamp water was a stone-work break-water with a small flood-gate in the middle of it. It was about six feet wide. It had no hand rails or purchase of any kind. The stone work was uneven and treacherous. Tammy went off by herself for a bathroom break. Everyone else went into the shelter. I went down to the bank, and looked at the yellow-and-black hazard marker in the middle of the water.

Normally, I mused, such signs are on metal poles and extend roughly five feet above whatever they are sunk into, whether that be the ground or what-not. The water was up to the bottom of the hazard marker. As I was musing on what it would like to be neck-deep in icy swamp water…and was wondering how I would cope with being completely soaked, a small log floated by.

Actually, it didn’t so much float by, as speed by. Much faster than the water had appeared to be going up to that point, and I realized that if the water was indeed neck deep, the speed of that current was probably much more than I would ever be able to handle even without the treacherous footing and lack of hand-holds. Even if I and Don and Tammy might have had a chance at making it, I didn’t see how Sue and MaryAnn (who are strong and fit…but tiny) would fare. I imagined the rolling turbulence on the upstream side of the submerged wall (as described by Bernoulli’s Principle), and the possible downward suction caused by the open floodgate underneath (also Bernoulli…what a downer HE turned out to be). I decided that the only conditions under which I would attempt that crossing was if I were being chased by saber-toothed tigers.

But I didn’t want to be the one to say it, as my previous nattering about currents and unpredictable waters and dangers thereof had proven less than prophetic.

I went into the building, and Tammy joined us. We drank our bottled water and munched on trail mix. It was kind of nice. Tammy and Don seemed determined to try the water outside. I shook my head internally, and hoped it would all work out somehow. I mentioned that the water looked deep, and the current stronger than anything we had come up against so far.

Tammy said “Just make sure, if you DO get swept off the wall, float feet first, not head first.”

I’ve always kind of thought that safety rules like this, while useful if you end up in a bad situation, sometimes give people a false sense of security. For instance, floating feet-first has several advantages over floating head first. The main three are:

1) It is the position that does the best job of keeping your face above water.

2) It makes it less likely that you feet or legs will get entangled in anything below the water that can drag you under (or, if they DO get tangled in anything, it gives you a better chance of untangling them)

3) If you are going to slam into any submerged hazards (like, for instance, submerged stonework walls), it is preferable that you slam into them feet first, thereby breaking your legs and feet rather than your head or neck.

It seemed strange to me that I, of all people, might be called upon to be the voice of reason. (i.e. The one who was going to chicken out.) I had finally found a group of people crazier than me. It was an unexpected sensation, and now I get why I actually have so few friends.

Don went in first, followed by Tammy. I insisted that Sue and MaryAnn go next, as I wanted to be able to make a grab for anyone who might get knocked off their feet…rather than having them grab me. I’m more than happy to try to help someone out, but if you grab onto me in the water, I’m kicking you loose. I was nearly drowned by someone I was trying to save once, and didn’t care for it.

Don and Tammy got about crotch deep in the water, and it wasn’t getting shallower. I don’t know if they felt the current so close to the edge…but they both decided unanimously that we were most certainly not crossing the big water today…which meant retracing our steps back…the whole previous 3.5 miles we had just covered.

It was 4:45PM and I needed to get back to help teach the kids’ class at 5:45PM. Clearly, I was going to be late. Very Late. Sue’s cell phone had a strong signal, so I called Rocky and asked him to please call ShiFu and let him know that I would not be able to make it to teach the kid’s class, because I was stranded hip-deep in swamp water miles from the nearest car, and would have to retrace my steps to get out.

“You waded through hip-deep water?” Rocky asked.

“Yes.” I said, matter-of-factly.

“OK. I’ll call him…be careful.”

We retraced our steps, moving more quickly over the now-familiar ground. As we were going through the stretch where the thing had bumped my leg, I spoke.

“Sue, have I told you recently how much I love you?”

“No.” Sue replied.

“Good. Because I’d hate to have to take it back.”

When we got to the washed-out bridge, we paused before plunging into the water.

“Look!” said MaryAnn, pointing to a huge bald eagle perched on a tree branch about fifty feet away.

We stared in wonder. The whole trip was worth that moment. As cool as it is to see the Eagle at the Minnesota Zoo, right up there by the glass a few feet away, and as cool as it is to see one that close in the wild…it is cooler yet to see one that close when you have spent the afternoon being so completely part of it’s environment.

When we got back to the cars, we stood around in our soaking clothing, staring at the map and exclaiming about how close we’d gotten to walking the whole trail. Jenny called, and expressed her regret at missing it. She was supposed to be taking an exam. Turns out, the exam was cancelled. She was livid.

Tammy got into her car, and re-emerged with a handful of homemade chocolate truffles. They were the biggest chocolate truffles I had ever seen. They were exquisite. Soooo good. Sue had a change of clothes in her car. Tammy had several, as she was packed for a business trip, and so MaryAnn could borrow some of her clothes. I took off my zippered sweatshirt and put it around my waist, zipping it up as high as it would go, and tying the sleeves around my waist to make a “dress”. All the wet clothing came off. I was there in my tee-shirt, improvised sweatshirt dress that reached just past my knees, and my bare feet.

It didn’t take long for Sue to change. As we drove home, Sue called Rocky and said;

“I have your wife here. She’s cold, wet, half-naked and starving. You don’t get her back unless I have a small vegetarian pizza and a beer waiting for me when we get there.”

Ah, pizza. Pizza is good. Pizza and fireplace and warm husband and hot shower and dry clothes. Very very good.

Tony Hits one out of the park

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 03:43:10 GMT

Tony talks about pretention and self-absorption, and how the impetus to create is hollow and void without the ablility to listen and learn and feel...or think about anything outside yourself for a second...

...but he says it in a way that doesn't sound so much like Parachuting Lobsters.

Go read this now.

"Nobody here but us Green Monkeys"

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 18:05:45 GMT

OK, today I was going to finish my post about my wonderful writer’s group. Yesterday, I told you how I came to accidentally found a Writer’s Group.

Well, first Bob joined, then I think Damian was next. Or was it Chris? Anyway, Damian brought Riowa and here we are.

We had a couple of members that didn’t work out. One guy actually never even showed up for a meeting…he just hung out on the e-mail list, annoyed Bob and I and then went off in a huff when we called him on it.

One guy was brilliant and random and…weird…even by our standards. He moved away, and I was a little relieved, as I was beginning to find some of the e-mails he sent me disturbing in a vague and sad sort of way.

One guy was quiet and sweet and did some pretty good writing, but he just faded away as well.

We started meeting at a coffee shop called Pandora’s in Minneapolis , but that place got crowded, and was full of trendy, unfriendly twenty-somethings. After a couple of near incidences with hostile people and unsupportive staff, we changed our venue to the Dunn Bros coffee shop, but that place eventually became somewhat difficult and unreliable to get space in for meetings…

So now we alternate meetings between Damian’s place and my house.

Since then, my friend Falina has joined the group, and possibley my fellow Kung Fu-er Maggie …who’s mom assures me that nothing we write will warp her any more than she already is. We shall see.

Anyway, the name of our intrepid band of scribblers is “The Green Monkeys”. Why? Because of an anecdote related by one of the group on a day that I missed.

Evidently, there is a story about a bunch of researchers, or explorers or whatever who come across a band of monkeys in a jungle somewhere.

I know, this has urban legend written all over it…but like most urban legends, it contains a certain ring of truth that can sometimes transcend mere fact…

…..anyway, the guys see these happy, peaceful monkeys jumping around and they manage to trap one of them.

They take the happy, well-adjusted, socially integrated monkey, and spray-paint him green, presumably just to see what happens.

They re-introduce the hapless simian to his extended family, and watch in horror as the previously well-accepted and loved monkey is torn to pieces and eaten by his own band.

I have no sympathy for the horror and guilt of the researchers. What sort of sicko spray-paints a monkey? I mean really, on what planet, in what universe would anyone be able to think that’s an OK thing to do?

As for the monkeys, well…they’re just doing what monkeys do.

They are social creatures. They come together in groups, regulate their environment, and enforce a certain equilibrium that maintains an optimal status quo for the well-being of the group as a whole.

They have a certain set of normal standards that they know are “good”, and anything that falls outside of that is “bad”. And to maintain the “good”, “bad” must be destroyed.

I’m sure you see where this is going.

I don’t want to speak for the rest of the group, but I for one voted for the name The Green Monkeys because that story, whether factual or not, had that ring of truth to it. It might seem maybe a little, oh I don’t know, self-indulgent to think of ourselves as Green Monkeys…but that’s what we are.

For me, the Green Monkey moniker was more than an acknowledgement that I am a Green Monkey. It was a realization that people at large are normal monkeys.

They aren’t mean, or cruel, or bad…most of them…they’re just people doing what people do…trying to maintain the status quo, sticking to what is familiar and recognizable as “good”, and trying to do away with anything that doesn’t fit their concept of “good”.

They want to avoid and minimize suffering on their own behalf, and on behalf of society at large. They want things to stay predictable, controllable, normal…safe. They don’t want to have to deal with someone who wears all black all the time, or someone who thinks hot-gluing sea glass to a VW bug is “art”, or someone who writes stories about creatures with six arms who fly spaceships…or any other sort of weirdness.

The problem is, that random, weird, and unpredictable stuff happens. Big hairless monkeys can show up and turn one of your kind green.

You can’t just ignore that. It has to be dealt with. There might be some who have seen the big, hairless moneys, and their magic silver cylinder putting green marks on trees, but they aren’t going to say anything. They remember what happened to Frank when he came back with the story of the little grey monkeys with the huge black eyes and their magic silver flying machine...

…uh-uh…green monkey boy is on his own. It’s every monkey for himself. Those that can blend in and keep their weird stuff to themselves do, and those who can’t…get torn apart and eaten alive.

But one wonders, what would have happened had the researchers instead grabbed a half-dozen little monkeys and painted them all green? I’m not suggesting that they do, of course, being adamantly anti-monkey painting myself.

Anyway, there’s more of them now. They know they’re green, but they also know that they are not bad. They’re just…green. They see that color alone is not a trait that makes them good or bad. It’s the quality of their monkieness that counts.

So they do not flee from their fellow weirdos. Instead, they band together, defend and support one another…form their own community where being green is an element of “good”.

And so it is with our half-dozen or so green monkeys, and so it will be with any green monkey that will join us.

"How to accidently found a Writer's Group"

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:36:05 GMT

Some of you know, I’m in a writer’s group. I sort of accidentally founded it.

OK, detour to explain how you accidentally found a writer’s group:

I had this friend. He seemed like a normal person when I got to know him…he was a very large man. Not particularly attractive, not particularly unattractive. He would have been somewhat better than average looking except for his exceptional size…which I wasn’t about to judge anyone for, being somewhere north of 200 lbs at the time myself.

He lived with his parents, but hey, it was the 90’s and a LOT of 20-somethings had to live with their parents to get by.

He didn’t get along with his parents. His mother was a loony and his father was sort of spineless and let the mother push him around. Well, hey, that’s common enough to be a recognizable character archetype.

He had a lot of ex-friends, and when he talked about them (which he did increasingly over time), his reasons for “exing” them seemed a little….petty. Eventually, they seemed nonsensical.

It took about four years for me to realize that this guy was having a slow-motion melt-down. He was going in tighter and tighter circles of helplessness, hopelessness, and feelings of persecution and betrayal.

Right around year three-and-a-half, he told me he wanted to start a writer’s group, and asked me to help (I had started one before). I said sure…just let me know what I can do. After all, he said that HE wanted to start it, right?

A couple of weeks later, he called me up and said “We need to get started on this writer’s group. We need a meeting place. Could we have it at your house?” (No these aren’t direct quotes…I don’t remember his exact words…I’m paraphrasing what he said as I understand it.)

I said “sure”. Then, he said that maybe we should have a flyer, and put it up on bulletin boards around the cities to get people to join.

I thought that sounded like a grand idea.

So a couple of weeks passed, and he asked me about the flyer. Was it done yet?

I hadn’t realized that I was supposed to create the flyer, but OK…I created a flyer. I put his contact information on it.

Well, that wasn’t OK, because his mom didn’t like people calling the house for him. So I put my contact information on the flyer…and did the initial contact interview with people, then passed their contact information on to him so he could interview them.

The first guy who called was a man who has since become a dear good friend of mine. I thought he sounded a bit wild on the phone…but hey, science fiction writers are not the most normal people, are they? He sounded intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working and just weird enough to be interesting. My kind of people.

My co-founder thought he sounded deeply disturbed and disturbing. He was probably a psychopath. We didn’t need this guy.

I urged him to meet with him in person and find out more…give him a try. After all, this was our only bite so far, and he was rejecting him based on one interview.

He agreed to give it one more try with this guy…but that never happened.

A little while later, in an unrelated phone conversation, I joked that conservatives were shooting themselves in the foot by calling liberals “the intellectual elite”, and I couldn’t believe that liberals were fighting that label. I said something along the lines of “If they want to call me a member of the intellectual elite, that’s OK with me. I’ll accept that. I don’t see it as a bad thing to be one of the intellectual elite.”

He said something along the lines of “You think you’re one of the intellectual elite?”

I said, still joking, “Yeah, whatever that means.”

He hurriedly ended the phone conversation, and the next one we had was him telling me that I should just run the writer’s group, because I had basically taken it over from him anyway, and if I wanted to be in charge that badly, he would let me have this one, and just start one of his own.

He went on to suggest that he stop by my place and pick up the books he has loaned me, and return the books I had loaned him.

We haven’t spoken since. I’ve seen him at Convergence a couple of times, but he pretends that he doesn’t see me. It’s like I’m a blank spot in the air that he is looking through.

It’s weird. It's a “huh?“ moment that will most likely stand as such forever. I wish I could make sense of it beyond just “he’s a loony”, but I’m afraid that’s about the sum of it. Oh well, obviously no great loss, and I got this nifty writer’s group out of the deal.

This detour got a little long, so I’ll tell you about my nifty Writer’s Group tomorrow…one of the luckiest accidents I’ve had in a long time.