According to this article:
Neal Stephenson, author of science fiction novels … has come up with a concept for a fantasy sword-fighting game called “Clang.”
… and he quickly funded the project with $500K through a Kickstarter campaign:
Looks very interesting, no?
I’ve got 11 more scenes left to write for my middle-grade fantasy novel. (Browsing the bookstore today, I concluded that my book is definitely more for the 7-13 year old audience than the teen audience. The main character is twelve years old, and I think the worst thing that happens to him is him getting kicked in the mouth in an early chapter. No violence any worse than that, and no real romance. No teen angst. (Well, Thravien has some angst, but I don’t think it’s exactly “teen” related.) So middle-grade it is.) I’m at about 60K, which might already be too long for a middle-grade fantasy, but I know I’ll be cutting stuff in my first revision, so I’ll worry about it then. Getting closer and closer… hope to finish the first draft in the next few weeks, or at least before the end of the month; there’s really no excuse for not finishing before then unless something really unexpected comes up.
Forgive me if this seems a preachy post. It is part confessional, as everything mentioned here are things I struggle with, so it’s not as if I am spouting some dark judgment upon the rest of the world from some lofty superior position of perfection. But we can’t get past our faults if we’re too afraid to even look them in the eye.
This is obviously not a conclusive list, but it’s what comes to mind at the moment. You’ll probably also notice that they’re all related to each other in some way.
Wanting stuff
Ah, the smell of a new book! A new blu-ray! Ah, too look upon my collection of books on the bookshelf! Perhaps small compared to many others, but much more than most people who’ve ever lived ever had. Oh, but I would like more! Yes, my Amazon wishlist is bountiful. And when I see pictures of laptops and gadgets and huge-screen TVs, how my mind doth dream. And, when I get really daydreamy, how attractive those mansion photos seem. Ah, to live in luxury!
But such desires can never be fulfilled. There will always be something else. And when I am lost in a daydream, a daydream of pure desire, I am gone from the moment. I cannot deal with what is now, and I paint it all black, as if the now is dreadful darkness undeserving of my mental presence. I ignore my present fortune, especially my very existence in the first place. I make them worthless to me.
Solution: I’m sure I’ll still buy stuff. And I’m sure daydreams will still creep into my mind when I’m not paying attention. But no more entertaining them. No more getting lost in them. It is rotten.
Caring too much about self-image and worldly success
I must be a better person. I must be successful. The world already told me that that is the best thing to be. “You’ll go far!” they told me. “You’re talented! You’ll be something! You’ve got gifts! You’ll be rich!” They told me I was creative! “Remember us when your famous!” they said with a smile.
What do they want me to do? Actually become famous? Make tons of money? Win a prestigious award? Were they just mocking me? If they don’t really want me to want that stuff, why do they glorify it? Why do they make me feel as if that’s what I must achieve to be “successful” to them?
Wikipedia doesn’t have a page on me yet. I guess I’m not successful. And if I’m not successful, I guess I’m not “worthy” yet. Worthy of what? The love of the world? The love and respect of even myself? I must do some specific something to be worth something to myself? I must have some great honor of wealth or fame bestowed upon me from smiling approving older people? I must have been places and have known famous people? I must have interesting things to say on social occasions?
I must achieve something, hurry! I must hurry up with writing that book! I must consume all books and media I see that look half-interesting! I must be an expert on something! I must have other people say about me, “Yes, that guy is smart!” Every moment I should be working on something, working towards some goal, and every moment that I’m not, I should be ashamed of myself for having wasted time! I must treat myself harshly, and stress myself out.
Solution: The world was wrong. They burdened me with their own daydreams, and I thought they were worth carrying. I thought if I could give them what they wanted, I’d become something greater in their eyes, as if they had something else to offer, a gift of some greater love they were holding back on until I proved myself worthy. I held it back from even myself. But they were wrong. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to be a millionaire, I don’t have to become famous, I don’t have to win some award. I don’t have to write a book, or direct a movie, or make some great discovery. I don’t need a Wikipedia page. All those things will turn to dust in the end. Why burden myself with building the perfect snowmen when they will melt away? The love that’s worth the most to me is the love that’s offered completely free. Unearned. Otherwise it’s not a gift, and cannot be love.
Being afraid
Sure, there are the natural fears, the stimuli that make the heart beat faster. Heights, fights, bees, and pain. Pointy things coming at me fast.
But more deadly are the mental anxieties. Will I ever “make it”? Will I have everything I need, and not have to work too hard for anything ever again? Will I have enough money? Will the ones I love keep loving me? How do I fare in God’s eyes?
And death! Oh, to wake up in the darkness of the night, to feel my chest rise with my breath and to know the clock is ticking. Someday this body will decay. How will I die? Where will I go? What will I be?
Solution: “Why worry if you can do something about it; and why worry if you cannot do anything about it?” There is no logical reason to be afraid of anything. It is a complete waste of energy. Nothing is gained. Like the wrong of wanting stuff, being afraid depends upon being lost in destructive daydreams that do little more than paint the present moment in shades of black. What do I want that I should be so afraid of not getting anyway? Unfortunately, I’m going to worry. But no more entertaining the worries. Pray them away. I’m not going to ignore potential problems, or stop planning ahead. But no more getting lost in worse-case-scenario daydreams. It is now, and there are much more interesting things to think about now.
This is, in part, a reply to this post made over on the Bad Catholic blog.
While I agree with the conclusion, that God exists and that our life in this world is not the sum of all our life will ever be, I must admit that I do not quite understand the argument. As atheists have asked in response to C. S. Lewis’s thoughts, how does a yearning for something imply the existence of something else? The statement that “I yearn for the eternal” implies no more to me than what it states. To make the argument valid, you’d first have to show how yearning for something implies anything else. And saying “well, people yearn for food, and food does exist” does not help. That’s just an example that fits the model. Hunger doesn’t itself imply the existence of food just because food actually does exist. (You could argue the matter on biological and evolutionary terms, but if you intend to then speak in terms of the spiritual, I’m not sure what the point would be.)
What, then, are we to make of the desire to be happy?
Isn’t that missing the point? Why do we have to make anything of it?
What are we to make of the existence of dirt?
The real question is: how do we find happiness?
When you’re hungry, you don’t sit there thinking: “Gee wiz, I’m sure hungry. Hey, wait! That means there must be food! Well, that’s comforting to know.”
No. Ya get up, ya find food, and ya eat it!
While eating, you don’t say: “Hey, wait. After eating this and getting full, I’m just going to be hungry again later. What’s the point of this? I guess I’ll just stop eating and never eat again.”
No. You eat until you’re not hungry anymore (hopefully not until you feel like barfing), and then you eat again later. Your stomach isn’t going to have an existential crises just because the cycles of digestion are never ending until you die.
(The atheist, on the other hand, says: “Gee wiz, I’m sure hungry. But that doesn’t imply there’s food. Or that the hunger is even real. In fact, I’m not even hungry anymore. Guess I’ll just sit here, the noble accepter of truth that I am.”)
I would also claim that we don’t want eternal happiness. We want present happiness. It’s not about what we’ll feel tomorrow versus today, as if our happiness is the sum of dots mapped out on some timetable. The now is all that matters to happiness. Reminding ourselves of yesterday’s sadness does not destroy a wonderful present, nor does reminding ourselves of yesterday’s fortune overturn a present despair. The experience of anything is always in the now. This is what wanting eternal happiness means; it means wanting happiness now, which exists eternally. (It is always now.)
So the question becomes: How can I be happy now?
“Well,” a faithful servant of the Lord might say, “you can’t be completely happy now. You will have to wait until you die and go to Heaven!”
OK. Thanks. Way to not answer the question. Let me rephrase: How can I be as happy as I possibly can right now?
“Um,” says the determinist, “you already are!”
Oh, you determinist, always making jokes!
“Oh, I just had to!” the determinist replies.
But seriously, what’s the answer?
I hope you will forgive me, but I will save an attempted answer for a later blog post, for it is late, and it would very much please me to go to bed now.
Donating stuff to the poor is not in and of itself a good deed. Caring about other people is the good deed, and so giving something to someone else because you care is a good deed. If you don’t have anything to donate, you can still care just as much. (Similarly, if you donate a billion dollars with contempt, you haven’t done anything good. Abu, the monkey in Disney’s Aladdin, gives a small loaf of bread to poor orphans out of shame. This is not a good deed. Of course, monkeys don’t have Free Will, so who cares.) You don’t need to be a billionaire to care, nor are billionaires capable of caring more just because they have more money.
So forcing other people to help each other, such as by taxing them and redistributing their money in the name of moral goodness, or just bothering them by showing them pictures of miserable poor people and asking for their money, does not equal a moral goodness in and of itself. In fact, you can never force someone else to do good. That misses the point of what it means to be good.
“A care with a prayer is worth more than a curse with a purse.”
As humans, we often do not judge things based on what they are. Instead, we judge them based on how they compare to other things. “How smart is this man? Well, let’s consider how he compares to other people.” “How special is this person’s talent? Well, let’s compare it to other people’s.” “How good was that movie? Eh, I’ve seen better. I’ve seen worse.”
Say there’s a business owner who hires people to package and ship books. He finds that an employee can, on average, package and ship 250 books a day. So he gathers the workers who consistently ship less than average and fires them, hiring faster workers in their place. But then the average obviously rises as the sample set changes; now the average is 270 books a day. The employer continues to go through the same process, firing the “below average” workers and hiring faster workers. From his point of view, he’s maximizing profits. The more books he can ship, the better, so what does he care? But the workers are the ones who will suffer; they will be forced to worry about not making ever increasing quotas.
The same principle goes with any system of judgment which measures “success” in numbers and values people by relating them to others.
There’s a moment in the Pixar film The Incredibles in which a mother with super powers tells her son with super powers: “Everyone’s special, Dash.” To which her son pouts: “Which is another way of saying no one is.” The movie leaves it there. Unfortunately many stories and movies glorify the “specialness” of the main characters, the talents and gifts they have that nobody else get to have as if that’s something to be celebrated in and of itself, inviting audiences to daydream the satisfaction of knowing they’re in some way better than everyone else.
That’s right, Dash, you’re not special, and how dare you base your self-worth on the worth you place on others!
Now, who else is looking forward to the Olympics 2012?! Yeah!!
I was on a train without a ceiling or walls, watching the vast beautiful landscapes pan by. Miraculously there was no wind. Sitting across from me was my good friend whom I had never met before. He invited me to play a card game to pass the time.
Each card was about the size of an index card, 3 inches by 5 inches. The man had a stack of what seemed to be hundreds of them. They were brown, faded with age and use, yet did not in any way seem fragile.
I already knew how to play. It wasn’t a game that you win or lose, it was just an activity game to help pass the time. On the front and back of each card was written some sort of suggestion, some sort of instruction on what to do, but they were simple things that you could do quickly and right away. For example, one said: “If you get a drink, your friend will probably want one too” – telling me to go get two drinks. One said: “Think about the ocean and smell the salty sea air. Draw a picture of it for your friend.” Those are the only two I quite remember, but they were all sort of silly and stupid like that, and most included doing something “nice” for the other person. (I suppose it might make a good “get-a-long” game for kids?)
Anyway, the game worked like this: you drew a card, read it, and then could either decide to do what was on it, or do what was on the back of the last card someone else drew (which was a mystery). Of course, they were all “nice” things. The cards never told you to do something embarrassing or cheesy or anything, like “smell your feet” or “slap yourself” or “say a nice thing about your friend.”
So that’s the strange card game my subconscious invented in my dream. Perhaps I’ll put it in one of my books.
How often have you been sitting there thinking: “Oh my gosh! I wish I had some new sea chantey melodies to play on an instrument and/or write lyrics to!” Probably more times than you care to count, eh?
Well, fear no more! The sea chantey melody generator is finally here! That’s right; in less than a second, the sea chantey melody generator will generate hundreds of sea chantey melodies for you, filled with those catchy memorable sea chantey melody patterns.
Here is a sample of 100 sea chantey melodies as generated by the generator. Feel free to write lyrics for them and add them to your collection of sea chantey goodness.
The sea chantey melody generator is available for just 5 easy payments of $50,000.
Seriously, though, I’ve been working on getting my melody generator to compose in “styles” and sea-chantey-style was my first experiment. I look forward to trying some other styles. As usual, the melody generator is restricted to 8-bar melodies in 4/4 time, a restriction I still haven’t programmed my way out of, but trying to get the generator to work with styles has been a more interesting endeavor recently.
Nothing new, but I just came across it recently and thought it was interesting. Works best on full screen. No doubt this gives us a glimpse into why T-Rex can’t see you if you don’t move.
You can get into a really weird hard-to-describe mental state by meditating on the nature of how you move a finger, how it starts as some subconscious thought and ends up as a physical motion. But since you can feel the finger move, since it is constantly providing sensory feedback on its state, it feels like the thought to move a finger lives inside the finger itself, doesn’t it?
If you look at your hand from an early age, you can also contemplate the slowness of aging. I look at the back of my hand and think, hmmm, someday it will be old and wrinkled. What will that be like? I cannot imagine it now, yet I know it will be. I don’t even remember how it used to look, even though I know I looked at it even when I was in preschool. So why can’t I remember how it looked in preschool? Because the change was too slow to see. (Like those face videos, someone should do a video like "Bob takes a picture of his hand everyday for 20 years.") Someday my hand will even completely decompose. I won’t be observing it then, but that will be it’s ultimate fate, which is an odd thought. Sorry hand.
If you look at the hand for too long, like thinking about the sound of a word for too long, it starts to seem really funny. It’s a square of meat with fleshy sticks coming out.
If I made myself blog everyday, this is probably the sort of stuff I’d write about.