any sufficiently advanced blogging is indistinguishable from blather

My Great Aunt Frances

frances

Some random family trivia is that we are related to the famous children’s book author Frances Hodgson Burnett (author of The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy).  I was told she was my great great great great aunt.  But is this accurate?  If so, how?  How can it be so?  Is it a direct relation, or through marriage?  No one knew.  (Not that I really asked anyone.)  History became legend and legend became myth and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.  It was kind of like a secret… a secret garden…

So I registered for a free trial on ancestry.com to investigate the matter and after a few hours of researching and putting all the clues together, I can confirm that the family legends are true.  You see, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s older brother, John George Hodgson, was my great great great grandfather.  According to a biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett, John was a poor drunk, and when he died in 1904, it was my dear rich Aunt Fran who paid for his burial.

John had two children, Edith and Bert.  Interestingly, Bert was a songwriter, which explains why my grandparents had some obscure sheet music he had published in the 1920’s.  At some point, I’ll try orchestrating my great great great uncle’s work to see what it sounds like.  Edith married some guy named Alonzo Miller.  They had three daughters, Nellie, Lucile, and Bertie.  Lucile married John Ashe Hannifin and they had six children, one of whom was my grandfather.

So there you go, from Hodgson to Miller to Hannifin.  Not too complicated.  Also making the research easy was the fact that each generation between me and John Hodgson was born and lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the Hodgson family emigrated to from England in the 1860’s.

Unfortunately Frances Hodgson Burnett left no money or book dedications for her great great great great nieces and nephews.  I must confess, it is tough living under the shadow of my great great great great aunt.  There’s just so much pressure.

By S P Hannifin, ago

What I’m working on

If you’re wondering what I’ve been up to lately, I’ll tell you, right here, right now, today. I’m probably working on too much, which makes progress slow on all of them, but too bad. I’m interested in all of them.

Intellectual projects:

Book on melody and automatic music composition system

I’m still working on my book about my theory of melody, but I’m turning into a book on musical composition in general. Obviously that’s a huge subject, so the book really won’t even begin to cover music in all its vastness; it will focus mainly on how my theory of melody applies to music composition. Along with this, I am expanding my melody generator to be a symphony generator or song generator, a system that aids composers in composing entire pieces, whether they be short little songs or long Mozartean symphonies, with as much or as little creative input from the composer as desired. It’s very exciting, but obviously there is much work to be done.

Book on artificial intelligence

This is far more experimental, so I don’t know if this will happen or not, but I’ve been working on creating a program that will ideally teach itself to play chess, or any rule-based game, after being supplied only the rules of the game. It should teach itself in such a way that users can then look at its “discoveries” and use them to play chess themselves. That means no artificial neural networks, no genetic algorithms, no statistical analysis, no number crunching, etc. It should learn to play the game the way a human would: by recognizing concrete meaningful patterns. I have an algorithm written in a notebook that should do this, but it’s a bit complicated and I haven’t programmed it yet, so I don’t know if it will work or not. We’ll see. If it does, I’ll try the algorithm with a few more games besides chess and then write a short book about it.

Creative projects:

Middle grade and young adult fantasy books

My agent search for the middle grade fantasy novel I finished earlier this year is going nowhere. Of course, it’s my first novel, so I’m not holding my breath. While I continue to search for agents, I’ve started writing two more fantasy novels, one being another upper middle grade, the other being young adult (and a male-oriented young adult at that, not one of them paranormal girly romancy love triangle books). I’ve been looking into self-publishing on the Kindle, as it seems like a much more viable route than it did just a few years ago, but it still has many disadvantages.

Adult fantasy book

Working on another adult fantasy book, coauthoring it with a friend.

Computer game(s)

I rediscovered Game Maker a few weeks ago thanks to someone I know. I remember looking at it years ago and was not impressed with it, but they’ve made newer versions in the meantime and it looks like a fun toolkit to use for making 2D games. I haven’t started any official projects yet, but I’m brainstorming some ideas.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Following your selfish dreams

From this interesting article:

For all the chatter about the formulaic sameness of Hollywood movies, no genre in recent years has been more thematically rigid than the computer-animated children’s movie. These films have been infected with what might be called the magic-feather syndrome. As with the titular character in Walt Disney’s 1943 animated feature Dumbo, these movies revolve around anthropomorphized outcasts who must overcome the restrictions of their societies or even species to realize their impossible dreams.

…

It’s probably no coincidence that the supremacy of the magic-feather syndrome in children’s movies overlaps with the so-called “cult of self-esteem.” The restless protagonists of these films never have to wake up to the reality that crop-dusters simply can’t fly faster than sleek racing aircraft. Instead, it’s the naysaying authority figures who need to be enlightened about the importance of never giving up on your dreams, no matter how irrational, improbable, or disruptive to the larger community. As Jean Twenge, the controversial cultural critic of America’s supposed narcissism epidemic, argues in her bestselling book Generation Me, younger generations “simply take it for granted that we should all feel good about ourselves, we are all special, and we all deserve to follow our dreams.”

First, I will diverge into the idea of “comparative success”. That is, success as defined by comparing oneself to others.

I get annoyed with the Disney channel and some of Nickelodeon’s teen-oriented shows, in which being a famous pop-singer and/or trendy-dressing dancer is something that is idolized. I know they may seem like harmless frivolous silly entertainment on the surface, but I think they actually actively harm our culture (like much of television, for that matter) by glorifying, subtly or unsubtly, performance art talent and popularity. That is, the more talented and popular you are, the more you are worth as a person, so it is a good and worthy thing to dream of that sort of success, to dream of being not just a pop singer or a fashion designer, but of becoming a famous one.

The most famous antithesis to this teen-idol market is a cartoon show targeted at a younger crowd, but shares a large number of older fans as well. It is Spongebob Squarepants, an ever-ready nerdy optimist who takes insane amounts of pride in flipping burgers, blowing bubbles, and catching jellyfish, remaining blissfully oblivious to the ways in which he could never gain fame in his own society by just doing what he loves. And while his burger-flipping pride is something we have an easier time laughing at than relating to, it is not presented as something to be ridiculed in and of itself, but celebrated. That’s not only what makes it funny, that’s what makes it inviting to audiences. That is, if a viewer can even slightly relate to a bit of Spongebob’s over-passionate nerdiness for something ridiculous, he is welcomed to it in good company, not made to feel a clownish outcast. (Compare this to the nerdiness presented in The Big Bang Theory, in which audiences are called to laugh at references to nerdy things, but these nerdy things are never celebrated in their own right; audiences still need their trendy dirty humor.) I daresay grown men who go into cartoon production for a living have a much different outlook on their art than producers looking to profit from teenagers idolizing each other’s voices and looks and fame.

It equally annoys me when contestants on talent competition shows like American Idol or The Voice claim that they want to win so that they can be an inspiration for others. Oh, how noble of you! Oh, wait. You want to encourage other people to desire fame and money? Oh, thanks, that’s great, just what the world needs!

Of course, it’s not just pop culture in which this sort of comparative definition of success reigns. It’s just perhaps the most visible and the most obviously vain in pop culture. But it thrives in businesses, academics, politics, the arts, etc. It’s all over the place. You don’t know how well you’re doing what you’re doing, or how you should feel about it, until you compare yourself with others.

Anyway, the reason I diverge into comparative success is because that’s the sort of success these animated film characters dream about. The “Follow your dreams!” message isn’t bad in and of itself, it’s just vague, and allows for a variety of narcissistic interpretations, dreaming of being somehow quantifiably better than others, as in winning a race, and not allowing for the mere following of the dream to bring any joy.

That’s what equally bothers me about the Charlie Brown example given in the article. (I’ve never seen the Charlie Brown film mentioned, so I speak here only based on what I read about it in the article.) The entire point of Charlie Brown wanting to succeed at something is just as narcissistic as the modern-day dreaming characters. His tragic results provide a nice contrast to the modern characters’ easy success, but why couldn’t he learn to do something just for the sake of itself? His tragedy wasn’t that his success rate was more realistic, but that he took no pride or gratification in what he was capable of to begin with. The entire point of “trying again” is not to force yourself with gritted teeth through the frustration of the trial so that you can one day achieve your goal. Trying again is (at least ideally) a natural consequence of your love for something. It should be FUN to try again. And when it is, failure is only a minor disappointment.

On a side note, I like how the article points out the trope of having some supporting character be nonsupporting of the hero’s desires. I can understand the dramatic need for the hero’s desires to be rebuked at the beginning of a story, but I wish writers would come up with more creative ways of having characters do it, instead of just, “Oh, I just hate dreamers! Your desires are arbitrarily wrong! I pointlessly have no faith in you!” I’d love to see a supporting character offer a real argument, perhaps pointing out the hero’s selfishness.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Mr. Conductor

I recently watched the 2002 Russian film Russian Ark, a 90 minute film done entirely in one take. The premise was a bit bland, there’s not really a story in the traditional sense, it’s more like a romanticized time-traveling tour through a grand museum. (The Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg; looks like an awesome place to visit, even just for the beautiful grand palace architecture.) Anyway, near the end there’s this dance scene with an orchestra playing in this huge ballroom and the conductor looked really familiar. I was sure I had seen him in college.

In my college days, George Mason University offered students free concert tickets (if there were any left), which I took advantage of whenever I could. Usually free student tickets get placed in the way way back of the balcony, but one time I was seated in the front row, so close I could reach out grab the conductor’s ankle. OK, maybe not that close, I was a bit off to the side, but it was pretty close. I could definitely read the string musician’s score from my seat, so it was quite close. I had hardly any view of most of the orchestra, but I was up close and personal with the front row musicians and looking right up the right side of the conductor. And the conductor was hard to forget. He was really into the music, and was a bit distracting for someone in the front row, because I could hear him grunt throughout the music, and even see the sparkle of small bits of spittle that would fly out when things got particularly impassioned.

So I’m watching Russian Ark and the conductor looked familiar and I thought: “That’s the guy! Isn’t it?” So I had to look through my programs to confirm that, yes, it was the famous Russian conductor Valery Gergiev. You can see that he has a memorable face, and does indeed grunt and make noises while conducting. Below, for example (at 45:45). Fun stuff.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Some people don’t understand Snyder’s Save the Cat!

I love Blake Snyder’s storytelling book, Save the Cat!  I would say that it is a must-read for all storytellers, but I’m not sure every storyteller would necessarily understand it.  The patterns Snyder identifies are much more subtle than one may think when considering only the examples he provides.  A good reader would attempt to analyze films and stories on his own and look at how stories that are vastly different actually follow similar inherent structures.  That is, Snyder is not identifying arbitrary trends found in modern stories, he’s uncovering much deeper foundations that dwell naturally in the ways we humans process, relate to, and understand stories.  If you read his book as simply a how-to guide for writing a formulaic blockbuster, which you can, you’re completely missing the point.

This article says:

In Save the Cat!, [Snyder] stresses that his beat sheet is a structure, not a formula, one based in time-tested screen-story principles. It’s a way of making a product that’s likely to work—not a fill-in-the-blanks method of screenwriting.

Maybe that’s what Snyder intended. But that’s not how it turned out. In practice, Snyder’s beat sheet has taken over Hollywood screenwriting. Movies big and small stick closely to his beats and page counts. Intentionally or not, it’s become a formula—a formula that threatens the world of original screenwriting as we know it.

And whose fault is that?  It’s the fault of lazy screenwriters, uncaring directors, and cowardly producers.  It’s not Snyder’s fault that a lazy screenwriter takes his beat sheet as a formula and ignores the countless possibilities he has to express each beat in an infinite variety ways.  It’s not Snyder’s fault that directors accept the word of these lazy screenwriters.  It’s not Snyder’s fault that producers fund these projects, relying on a “formula” to generate a hit.

I don’t think this article is necessarily trying to blame Snyder; my point is simply that blaming Snyder is nonsense.

I found the above mentioned article on author Nathan Bransford’s blog, where he writes:

Save the Cat! doesn’t just offer suggestions on structure, it literally says what needs to happen on specific pages, from the opening image that sets up the protagonist’s problems to the false victory at 90 minutes to the closing image, which mirrors the opening image.

It sounds like Bransford is commenting on a book he either hasn’t read or hasn’t understood.  Snyder does not “literally say what needs to happen on specific pages.”  He gives guideline page numbers for a 110-page screenplay based on where a beat should hit within a film’s overall structure, the page numbers naturally correlating to the time at which a beat would appear in a film.  If any beat is out of place in this structure, the story will risk feeling slow or rushed or both.  Good screenwriters and directors should naturally be aware of how their creative decisions affect story pacing, so I fail to see how giving page numbers is some horrible sin that dares to stifle creativity.

Furthermore, the “opening image” beat has less to do with setting up the “protagonist’s problems” and more to do with setting up the story’s tone and mood.  Read the book, pages 72 to 73.  Most storytellers naturally understand that the opening of a story will set up audience expectations, so delivering an “opening image” that promises a different sort of story than the one planning to be told will naturally risk alienating readers.

That the opening image and closing image should reflect each other should also be understood naturally, as the end of story will relate to its beginning in some way, either providing a great contrast or a more literal reflection.  “And the story starts again…”

Lastly, Snyder’s beats have nothing at all to do with guaranteeing success.  It is very easy to follow the beats and still create garbage.  But just as the sound of a toilet flushing will never suddenly be considered a beautiful symphony, no purposeful shunning and avoidance of Snyder’s beats will result in a surprise success.  Snyder’s beats are not arbitrary; they are ingrained in human psychology.  That a “formula” becomes recognizable in some big-budget modern films is entirely the fault of the artists working in the industry.  It’s still an art after all.

———-

ETA: I think Steven Spielberg’s fears about the film industry imploding has less to do with big budget films becoming formulaic and more to do with the marketplace for big budget films becoming overly saturated.  But I don’t know how the money flow goes in such a big budget industry.

By S P Hannifin, ago

It’s so hard to be us

A famous man says, “There are very few African-American men in this country [the USA] who have not had the experience of being followed when they are shopping at a department store. That includes me. There are probably very few African-American men who have not had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me – at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who have not had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had the chance to get off. That happens often.”

What’s his point? What is he trying to say?

There are different experiences between all sorts of people. Men and women, rich men and poor men, black men and white men, old men and young men, men of this religion and that religion, men of this ancestry and that ancestry, men of this country and that country, men with medical conditions and men without, men who had this sort of childhood and that sort, etc.

But of what value is it to define yourself by those differences? Of what value is it to set yourself apart from others? Of what value is it to say only certain people can relate to your experiences or your suffering? Do you think they entitle you to something special?

We cannot end racism, sexism, classism, ageism, whatever, by looking for the differences we experience and clinging to them as if they define us and set us apart from others. This will only divide us and perpetuate the problems. (This is the problem with things like affirmative action and feminism and dedicating months to celebrating the history of some special group. They perpetuate the divisions they claim to want to close by putting differences on a pedestal as if they’re something to be celebrated for their own sake.)

This isn’t to say that differences don’t exist, that we don’t experience difference sorts of hardships. Of course we do. But these differences are completely meaningless. (For that matter, it is self-righteous snobbery, and self-torture, to believe it’s any easier to be someone else.)

We all love, we all laugh, we all cry, blah blah blah, cue heartfelt piano music. When you truly care about your neighbor, you don’t look for your differences.

By S P Hannifin, ago

The Nature of God

Here are some of my thoughts on the nature of God. Nothing new here in the Christian sense, certainly. The subject was on my mind due to a project I’m working on, but I thought I’d record my thoughts here. That said, I don’t claim these thoughts necessarily represent the “Christian view” of God in some sort of scholarly totality or summation, but they certainly don’t oppose it. These thoughts are short and quite basic. (And rather sloppily written. If one is interested in the subject, I’m sure plenty of philosophers have done a better job of writing about the subject than me, and certainly in more depth.)

Firstly, the nature of God is supreme goodness. As in, they are equal, they are the same thing. One does not exist independently of the other. God does not “decide” what is “good” as if God exists first, and then creates or decides what is good, or as if He defines what is good by doing arbitrary things that are then considered good just because He did them. Rather, they are the same thing. To believe that there is an absolute goodness against which anything else may be judged is to believe in God. Notice that you cannot judge goodness to be good or bad in and of itself. It is good by definition. You can’t say, “Ah, good is actually bad!” In this way, you cannot logically say that God is bad or does wrong things. Otherwise you are judging Him to a higher standard, and that higher standard would then be God, not the entity you’re blaming for doing wrong things.

God is also absolute truth. Again, the same thing. Not “God defines truth” or “creates truth” or something. They’re inherent in each other. To accept one is to accept the other.

God is also love. Once again, the same thing. Not “God loves” or “God decides what love is”. God and love are the same thing. When one experiences love (though its incomplete in this life), one experiences the actual God (or at least part of God, because our experience is currently imperfect).

In this way, we see these things — supreme goodness, absolute truth, and love — are all inherent in each other, and that is what we call God.

From this, one can see that the nature of God transcends human consciousness (and is “invisible” and “mysterious” in His totality in this way). That is, God is not a human-like consciousness with just a bunch of power, as a god like Zeus might be understood. He is not inherently separate from the physical world or a human consciousness in the manner that our minds are separate from each other’s minds and our physical bodies are separate from other objects in our environment. (I think this is usually the sort of God atheists reject, which I do too. The misunderstanding comes from thinking of God and absolute truth as separate sorts of things that can be compared to one another.)

Finally, and this is the most profound part and difficult to express, God and humans are part of each other. Not metaphorically, like in a story when some character says “I’ll be in your heart!” Literally. A human soul is made of God. God made you out of Himself, and you remain in Himself (whether or not you experience it). You and God are more intimately connected than you can understand in this world; seeing God allows you to know yourself completely. This is why God “knows you” better than you know yourself and why you can keep no secrets from Him. He is not “spying” on you from outside your consciousness with magical powers; you are part of His nature. This is also why He can hear all your prayers. This is not to say that you are God. Obviously you’re not. God is the totality of which you are a part; you are a part of God and God is present in your being. To do good deeds is to act in accordance with your nature, which is in accordance with God.

Furthermore, to “see” this connection, to see God through the self, or the self through God, is to experience the most comfort and joy and purity you can ever know. Of course, we are clouded from this connection in this current life, save for an intellectual or spiritual understanding, but it can be experienced before death. (I don’t know how. Wish I did! Certainly an honest prayer is probably where to begin.)

OK, I’m tired, so I’m not sure I’ve expressed my thoughts as well as I might have otherwise, but there it is. God bless!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Boycott The Hobbit films!

The second Hobbit film will be coming out soon, but you can count me out! Why? Well, it’s come to my attention that Mr. Tolkien, author of the book on which the film is based, is an evil bigot! Why? Well, just read what he wrote about sex!

This is a fallen world. The dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been ‘going to the bad’ all down the ages. The various social forms shift, and each new mode has its special dangers: but the ‘hard spirit of concupiscence’ has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house, since Adam fell. We will leave aside the ‘immoral’ results. These you desire not to be dragged into.

Clearly any person who still holds this ancient and unpopular view is a hateful bigot who just doesn’t want certain people to be happy by doing whatever they sexually please. So intolerant! These people must be punished with boycotting. We all know that it has recently been discovered that the only way to happiness for the human race is if we all embrace and celebrate sexual indulgence in all its beautiful forms. If you see The Hobbit film, you’re giving money to the estate of Tolkien, which might go to some people who believe what he believed! How awful is that?!

What you can do instead:

* Start a pledge and sign it and keep your hard earned dollars away from Tolkien’s estate and people who believe in certain sexual morals.

* Tell all your friends what Tolkien really believed. The ultimate plan is that people who believe in these sexual morals will run out of money and starve or will switch their opinion to celebrate our sexual choices.

* On whatever day the movie comes out, instead of going to the theater, attend a Skip Hobbit event with your wise and tolerant friends. We’ll be hosting events all over the place, because nothing says “tolerance!” like pre-organized events dedicated to keeping money away from one specific person who is famous and thinks we’re doing something that’s not good for us, like acting on our sexual desires, whatever they may be.

* Donate money or volunteer your time to organizations that support the celebration of sexual indulgence!

* If you have any control in the media, report this boycott! Pretend you’re being unbiased, of course, and are just reporting the news.

By doing this, we’ll send an ominous message to all those who do not bow to our sexual indulgences that they will be publically singled out, shamed, and financially punished for being honest about their evil beliefs.

We’re going to nobly and heroically change the world by singling out one oppressive bigot at a time! If sexual indulgence itself was enough to make us happy, we wouldn’t need everyone’s approval. But of course everyone’s approval is actually a big factor to our happiness, so we really need to fight for it! Equality!

———-

In the interest of letting all sides of this controversial issue express their views, here’s a letter from a reader:

Dear New Blather,

I agree that Tolkien is an evil bigot, but I sure don’t think a boycott is the way to go! Think of all the other people who worked on the movie! I mean, art and artists are two separate things. But, I must be clear, I agree with you about all the sexual indulgence stuff. I mean, Tolkien is just so bigoted in that area. I can’t argue with that. I want everyone to like me, so I really want to be clear about that. But, yeah, a boycott is going a little too far. I really want to see the movie, after all. So I think my opinion is a bit more mainstream than yours. But, again, I do agree that Tolkien sure is evil what with his religious views and all. I mean, we should be able to have some sexual indulgence without other people saying it’s wrong. To say it’s wrong is just evil. And to have what we think is wrong reflected in law is evil because separation of church and state and stuff and imposing religion is wrong. But a boycott? No.

———-

Finally, the movie studio has released a statement:

We here at the Hobbit movie studio just want to make it clear that Tolkien is dead and we really don’t care about his beliefs. We just want your money, so whatever your beliefs are, we think they’re OK. If you feel like you’re part of some sort of community, we just want you to know that we support you. We only made the movie based on Tolkien’s work because his book was popular, not because we agree with any of his old stupid sexual beliefs. Sex for everyone, that’s what we say!

By S P Hannifin, ago