Follow The Owl.

Gadding and Grandstanding

So this is what democracy comes to these days. This week, Senator John McCain piped in on an apparently good-natured exchange between Senators Leiberman and Franken. For all intents and purposes, it appeared Leiberman knew he'd be denied extra time when he asked for it on the floor of the senate.



Within 24 hours, Jon Stewart had found video of a young McCain sticking it to Senator Byrd in the same way. This in spite of McCain's insistence that it's "never happened before". Now, you wonder why so many young people don't take you seriously, Senator McCain. The gentlemen from Connecticut and Wisconsin seem to be more grown up than the crop coming out of Arizona.

Does anyone in the senate really get traction with this kind of blatant grandstanding? That's when I remember the tea party crowd and realize that they do, of course. Simply stated, there will always be an ignorant fringe in any group. But why the heck would you play to it? The broad message of the tea party groups is that they aren't their brother's keeper or his ATM. They don't want progress. They want to live in that wild-west mentality where it's every man for himself and the rule of law is the gun. Why on God's green Earth would you enlist their help or approval? The polls even show them as fringe elements of the Republican Party.

The answer I come away with, Senator, isn't pretty. You must be in agreement with them, and all these years of middle ground, maverick thinking and speaking were a sham. It's a shame really. The last, best hope for bipartisanship sinks into the ocean with all that damned tea.

I'm doing it! I'm doing it!

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Thank God! I found a free computer program to  help me storyboard my novels, and it's helping. Nothing takes up more time than looking for where I really am or what someone said or did that I can't remember from writing a week ago.

Writer's Cafe. You should google it. It works on most computer systems, and, though it isn't exactly low speed in the geek department, it's manageable. I'm off to work. No, the other job. The one where they pay me.

And now for a moment to laugh, just laugh

What to think? From Chakras to skeptism, one woman's journey.

In recent years, I've  been tremendously helped by a book called Your Aura and Your Chakras, The Owner's Manual by Karla McLaren. Do I cry "omm" at every opportunity? I don't, but the visualisation she espoused has been most helpful in clearing out my emotional "baggage", as it were. Having a child with autism and a failing marriage, etc. etc. made me a very anxious person. Anyway, I got a hankerin', a curiosity, to see what she was like today so I checked out her website. Everyone has one, you know. Lo and behold, I found a skeptic!

May 2010, she releases her next book.

The Language of Emotions:

What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You

by Karla McLaren

Okay, I thought. Let's see what's up, so I dig in to the book's blurb page to find out something startling to me and my little moderate soul. It's really the same book. Okay, the language is different. She expresses her thoughts not as a "new age theorist", but as a "now healthy sociologist". It's like watching Gone With the Wind in French subtitles. Nothing about the movie has changed, but it suddenly sounds more lofty, less base in it's slavery and dysfunction.

I'm not ridiculing her newfound skepticism. I just have a healthy skepticism of skeptics.  The very belief that nothing can be divine or metaphysical or whatever is at times with skeptics almost a religion. Perhaps, it's because I'm so comfortable with my belief that I don't and can't know everything, and that most of what I know is total crap. But reading her repudiation of her "new age" career struck me, and I'm still not sure how.

My background in paranormal studies isn't as lengthy as McLaren's. I haven't been in a cult, likewise I have not then left a cult to pursue a degree in analyzing things like cults. Psychologically speaking, that seems telling, but I don't have a degree in that either. Still, I've given it all some thought and decided that we, people, like to give names to the things we don't undertand. Energy Systems, for instance. I am one and so are you, even scientists can agree on that. Electrical whosits shoot through our brains to make them go, hence energy. Chakras, well, those may or may not exist, but how is it not helpful to allow people a means of organization for their various inner parts that they feel and experience but cannot explain? What's wrong with it?

Okay, so one possible thing is the belief that this is how it is and all you need do is meditate your problems away. I've never met one real person who really touted that philosophy outside of Oprah, and I know a few Wiccans, New Agers and Unitarians, oh my.  To me, healthy skepticism allows for the possibility of belief while searching for evidence of the facts. Okay, I'm the unitarian. Caught me!

All of this being said, I still swear by McLaren's book for meditation and visualization. It helps me focus all that energy so that I can search my life for the problems and go to work on them.  I don't think I'll buy the second edition in 2010, however, it will make me smile that all the skeptics out there will be reading up on "Energy" and "Chakras" under more acceptable names. It's all in the re-branding, I guess. Peace, man!

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Forays into Fan Fiction!

Image by Impala74 via Flickr

Now say that three times fast. Can't do it, can you? Well, here is my latest adventure published, such as it is, on Storywrite. This is my fan blog for core exiles.

My heroine is Captain Maeven Hall, an exile from the core. She landed there because she used her ship, the Siren's Song, to ferry people to safety. Once caught, her life as she knew it ended. Maeven found herself abandoned in unfamiliar territory and ripped from everything and everyone she loved only to be dropped into the world of alien threat and piracy.

In this episode, she's settling into her new ship and finding her way in a world she doesn't want to be in at all. Grimm is now her crewman on her two man tub, also named the Siren Song. We'll be exploring his character as we go. She's also going to get a bit of a surprise from her not-so-forgotten past.

The One That Got Away

In interesting form, I did a little research (unofficially) about whether men "pine". My experience has not included the pining sort of man apparently, so I expected something like the sighting of "Big Foot" to be reported. "Yeah, he's up there, I seen him", or something equally as believable. Amazingly, It was revealed to me that men pine for the one that got away on a nearly regular basis, according to some men.

This came as a shock. Really. I thought all these years that men like this were the romantic stock-in-trade of Harlequin or Silhouette, but it seems they really are out there. Romeos exist, if somewhat less dramatically than the Hollywood depiction.

Having proved the existence of the "pining" man, it's now possible to write one without feeling I am spreading propaganda for the romance machine. He doesn't have to be Prince Charming if he's real, right?

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Forums Expose Failure in Education System

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Oh, boy. I'm channeling my gramps here, but when did we lose our way? Every now and again, I take a stroll down a forum, just to take the pulse of the internet populous. It's always a mistake because it destroys my carefully and painfully maintained hope that "In spite of it all, people are really good at heart". Annie, my girl, we can only hope.

Flossophy, a truly great thinker, posted this to an article on the Shepard Hate Crime Bill being attached to a defense bill which had a significant number of GOP no votes. "I'm looking forward to a world of mixed r@ce people. It'll make these ha'te crimes laws seem silly." First, Mr. Flossophy ( if that is your real name), you are a "mixed race person" as am I. Science tells us so. Second, where is the eloquence?

The issue of hate crimes is a legal issue built around a real problem. It simply means that if your motive was an irrational hatred of another person, your crime just got "bumped up". It doesn't imply any value judgment of a person's race, creed, color or orientation. It simply ups the ante on the crime. In schools, it would be referred to as a "No Tolerance" policy.

I'm rambling. My point is that we as a people should know this. It's simple everyday common sense, like the location of Canada and the name of our first president. Thomas Jefferson (Not our first president, by the way!) once said, "To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education." Oh, ain't it the truth!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/35-gop-senators-vote-agai_n_330376.html



thinking that

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"Wimpy Kid" Fan Asks for Mom Bucks- Film at eleven!

Obviously, I don't spend a lot of my time reading juvenile literature, but I do spend quite a bit looking for it, buying it and hoping like heck my son will read it. There's the off chance that the bookworm gene skips a generation. However, this last development floored me.

My son who never cleans anything without 30 minutes of whine time, asked for Mom Bucks. "What are those?" I asked. Ten minutes later, he'd given me a detailed explanation complete with page excerpts.

Mom Bucks, it seems, are given for any praise-worthy action on the part of kids everywhere. Moms then cash those bucks in at a value of roughly a penny a piece. Well, I'm not going to discourage the pursuit of knowledge found in books, so I've made us MOM BUCKS which are here for others to use. We'll let everyone know how it goes, but one thing must be said: Yay, Books!

Fan fiction is my muse?

Image by NMCIL ortiz domney via Flickr

I think it worked. Not that I doubted my buddy, Charlotte, but I kind of doubted her. She suggested fan fiction as a way to break through the mire in my mind, so I took a stab at it.

However not needing to worry about the details, this makes the plot so much easier to write and allows you to focus on characters, dialogue and everything else.

Fan fiction belongs to the originator, so they can take your ideas and run with them, not that they usually need them. I went with a game I play online called Core Exiles. You can use any story line that you like with the understanding that your writing ultimately doesn't belong to you, and you can be asked to cease and desist.

A Dark Blog

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Okay, you're thinking Goth, right? Two slayers meet at midnight? That sort of thing? Wrong.

About the time I find one ( a blog) I like to read, it goes dark. When a blog goes dark, it crawls back into the underbelly of the internet and is never updated again. Poor blogs! Poor readers!

Where's the staying power? Where's the determination? I feel that good bloggers make a commitment. Whatever the subject, a nice snarky read can't be replaced overnight.

When I get the urge to read and don't have a book, the blog is meeting my need. I hate magazines. Not sure why. There's never been a mag to hold my attention. However, a delightful blog update completes a cup of coffee. As you can tell, I also have a problem with commitment. Then again, this isn't really a nice snarky blog . . . yet.

15 Minutes of Autism a Day: Here we go

15 Minutes of Autism a Day: Here we go

Playin' with Photobucket.

Words on Paper

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That has to be my goal right now. Get the words down on the paper, or screen as the case may be. Make something take form in order to have something to edit. One thousand words a day is about all I can swing.

It's the dialogue that eludes me this week. How do adults actually talk to each other? I've forgotten. It's been a while since I spoke at length with many of them.

The exercise I'm trying this week will be letter writing. It's a monologue, but perhaps it will get my conversational skills back up to speed.

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Belle McClaine

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The Rock Star's Retreat comes out on October 5th. The author is an acquaintance and newly published. Her writing style is continually snappy and fresh, and hard work should pay off. Take a run by and see if you like it.

Having read her draft, I highly recommend it, since it can only have gotten better. So, buy her book and curl up for a great romantic read!

Roadblocks to Romance

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My whole life is a roadblock. I have a son with autism, a financial situation and a marriage on the rocks. Where's the romance there?

You know what? I don't care. I want it back. The dream of romance is worth it. Who cares if it seldom comes true? I want to be the princess again, and so I'll write.

Of course, this is all said in the heat of the moment and after my Barack Obama dream last night where he held my hand and walked with me in the moonlight. How do I put all of that excitement and tenderness on paper when I've been so removed from it for so long? In the rush of my life, it would be difficult to have any romantic illusions at all. Unless I make it up!

And that was my therapeutic breakthrough. I'm not on the page. It's not me. It's pretend. I've been pretending since I was knee high to a grasshopper. So hello fantasy world! Goodbye, sleep!

So it begins. . .

Image by [ r ♥ c e y t ♥ y ] {I br♥ke for bokeh} via Flickr

I will begin with my homage to Karen Marie Moning and Jericho Barrens. Dreamfever was indeed the best yet.

Fanfiction, by myself, can be found here. I'm trying desperately to get back into the swing of writing, romance and imagination. It will be! Now I just have to convince this damn computer.