Sunday, December 31, 2006
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Normally, I do predictions for the next year on the last day of the year. But first I review all the predictions I made last year. Unfortunately, thanks to my database being lost, I can’t review them. I know I was right on quite a few and wrong on one big time. That is that the Republicans would hold onto power. But then, tyhey dug their own grave. I predicted oil would drop below $2.00 a gallon. It got close, but they found a way to jack it back up. I also predicted the DOW would exceed 11,000. It went over 12,500.
I think I will wait till tomorrow for the predictions. In the meantime, I hope you all have a great night and a great 2007!
Permalink
Why the UN is Useless
Most of the world’s worst tyrants died peacefully at old age. For example.
Lenin - Dead of the complications of a stroke, perhaps assisted by poisoning, January 21, 1924.
Stalin - Dead of stroke aided by medical neglect at age 74 at his dacha outside Moscow, March 5, 1953.
Ho Chi Minh - Dead of heart failure at age 79 at his home in Hanoi, September 2, 1969.
Francisco Franco - Dead of old age at 82 on November 20, 1975.
Mao Tse Tung - Dead of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at age 82, on September 9, 1976.
Saddam Hussein is one of those extremely rare examples of a tyrant being brought to justice. And the UN tried to do everything they could to prevent us from toppling him. Those who look to the UN as some kind of answer to world peace need to rethink it. All those African wars, some of which have gone on for decades, were not effected one whit by the UN. Mass murdering leaders get away with it most of the time. Our intervention in Iraq gained us a lot of scorn. Look around on the web and you see lefties calling for the hanging of the President whil chiding the hanging of Saddam.
Obviously, their priorities are screwed up. Kind of like their worship of the UN.
Permalink
Starship Comparison Chart
How big is your favorite star ship compared to others? Nice work here.
Permalink
The Secrets of Writing: Heroes
Hero: Also known as the Protagonist. The hero is the center of good in the story. He is the person you root for. The Hero doesn’t need to be good in the purest sense. In fact, people nowadays relate better to characters like themselves, flawed individuals trying to do the right thing. People who try to do good.
The key word here is try. Most people have an idea what “good” is, but not everyone agrees on what that is. Most people think of themselves as basically good. Even the most sordid criminals don’t see themselves as bad. Defining who the hero is in a story is based on one or more of the following factors:
1. The consensus of positive characters in the story ultimately take the side of your hero.
2. The hero is a constructive force in the story, whereas the villain is destructive.
3. The hero, as champion of the premise, is vindicated when the premise is proven.
A good example of how a hero can be a villain or visa-versa, depending on the premise, can be demonstrated in Romanian Folk Tales about Vlad the Impaler, also known as Count Dracula.
In Romania, Vlad is a folk hero, despite the fact he butchered thousands of people. In neighboring countries, he is a monster. Even though both Romanians and their neighbors tell the same stories, Vlad changes from hero to villain depending on where the tale is told.
One story relates how some visiting dignitaries from Turkey came to visit Vlad at his castle. They didn’t take off their hats in his presence. When he asked them why, they said it was a custom in their country never to remove their fez except when sleeping. Vlad then ordered his soldiers to nail the men’s hats to their heads so they would never be tempted to disobey their custom.
In the Romanian version the story’s premise is “Foreigners should respect the customs of the land they visit.” The tale is used to show how Vlad taught those damn Turks a thing or two about manners. How dare they be so rude to a Romanian lord! Whereas in neighboring countries, the premise is: “Romanian lords are a bunch of psychotic despots.”
Or take the O.J. Simpson trial as an example. One section of the country felt he was an innocent black man unfairly persecuted for marrying a white woman. While another section thought he was a murderer who was treated with kid gloves because he was a rich, famous black man and the city of L.A. was afraid of another riot.
The people who thought he was innocent considered all the evidence against Simpson to be planted and made up. The people who felt he’s guilty thought the system was stacked in his favor because the defense could say whatever they wanted and didn’t have to prove it. Whereas the prosecution had to go through strenuous evidence hearings before they could present their data.
This is why the story of Simpson dominated the media so strongly during the time of the trial. The conflict between the premise and counter-premise was extremely hot. You could also choose your heroes and villains easily. The players looked bad or good depending on your side. Johnny Cochran was either a smart, honest lawyer out to save his friend from
the cruel jaws of society, or he was a sleazy con man out to free a rich pal he knew, in his heart-of-hearts, was guilty. Marcia Clark was either a sharp, determined, underpaid civil servant battling corrupt attorneys out to free their wealthy client, or she was a vicious, cold
bitch of a prosecutor, out to put away Simpson at any cost, just to advance her career.
In reality, it’s not so cut and dry. Cochran could have been sincere and still be wrong. Clark could been a bitch and still be right. In a good court room drama, these characters would be fleshed out so you’re never completely sure about them until the conclusion of the story. This way the counter premise is able to give the premise a tough battle, making the story strong.
Unfortunately, the end of the trial did not answer anything for either side. No one’s opinions were changed. Life and fiction are not the same. As we said before, fiction is our way of making sense of the senseless.
In fiction, you need to decide who the hero is and work from there. The hero must be the underdog in every story. If the hero isn’t battling insurmountable odds, they don’t have a real conflict. No conflict, no story.
When the hero has too easy a time winning the Grail, the story has no punch. It’s flat and anti-climactic. Nobody is interested in reading a story where there are no stakes. And nobody is interested in a hero who doesn’t do anything special. The conflict is what makes the hero interesting. The way the hero deals with it, and their ability to overcome the conflict, is critical. So you have to make the stakes high or the story and your hero are going to be awfully boring.
Empathy, not Sympathy
The Hero must be empathetic to the audience, not sympathetic. We must feel for him as an equal, even if we disagree with him. Empathy makes you feel for someone in a way you can relate to. Empathy is something you feel for an equal. For someone you see parts of yourself in.
Sympathy is a more distant emotion. It’s what you feel for someone you feel sorry for. You don’t really see him as an equal. You don’t see yourself in that person, but you feel bad for them anyway. You may feel sympathy for a wino begging for change, but you don’t feel empathy for him. Not unless you see him as a peer.
Empathy is created when we see the hero of a story as the center of good. We know that, of the characters in the story, he is the one who is trying to make things right. He is trying to create order out of chaos. If the story is constructed properly, the audience will root for him as he journeys on his quest.
People, by nature, want to find the good in others. You create empathy by revealing a character’s positive sides. Even when you’re dealing with anti-heroes.
Anti-hero stories work when we feel empathy for the main character, despite the fact that he’s a rotten bastard. Your Hero doesn’t have to be Joe Perfect. He can be a crook. But we must feel empathy for him or you’ve lost.
REMEMBER: Empathy, not sympathy!
Choosing the hero
In some stories, we don’t know who the Hero is at first. Sometimes we’re given multiple protagonists to root for. By the end, one of them is the survivor, or is proven to be the winner of the Grail.
This technique is often used when you need to kill a protagonist to make the point of the premise stronger. A good example is in the musical SOUTH PACIFIC. The story starts when a young navy lieutenant, Joe Cable, arrives on a south seas island during World War II. Cable’s reporting for a secret mission. He needs to convince an expatriate Frenchman, named Emile De Becque, to help him sneak onto another island De Becque knows well. The island is held by the Japanese and Lt. Cable’s mission is to spy on them.
De Becque doesn’t want to do help Cable. He’s middle-aged, successful, and in love with a young American nurse named Nellie Forbush.
It seems clear right away that the Lt. Cable is the hero of the story. But we discover later he really isn’t. The true hero is the Nellie Forbush. The Lieutenant only serves as a device to validate the premise of the story. The Villain is preventing the Nellie from marrying De Becque. The same villain prevents Lt. Cable from marrying an island girl he falls in love with. Because both De Becque and Cable are losing to the Villain, they decide to go off to do the mission against the Japanese. Cable gets killed. This event helps Nellie defeat the Villain and marry De Becque in the end. Who is the Villain? More on that later.
Every story can have multiple protagonists, but usually, there is only one character who is the real hero of the story. They are the Grail winner. They will be the one to walk away with the glory at the end. But that doesn’t mean they have to survive. As we’ll discuss later, there are three possible endings to a story. And you decide which one makes the point better. The hero can win the Grail in a whole lot of ways. Not just by victory.
REMEMBER: The hero is the champion of the premise, whether they like it or not.
Permalink
Quote of the Day
Permalink“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” -Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha), 563-483 B.C.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Top Geek Quotes1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
- tee shirt
It’s sad, but I read this just fine. Yikes.
See the rest at Board of Wisdom. Some are hysterical, especially if you are a g33k. One of my faves for its sheer geekness.
Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
Are belong to you- someone at slashdot
Lots of anti-Microsoft quotes. Here’s a fave:
PermalinkPeople say that if you play Microsoft CD’s backwards, you hear satanic things, but that’s nothing, because if you play them forwards, they install Windows.
- Unknown
Dr. Phil vs Scientology
Smeone does a prank call to a Scientology center using a Dr. Phil sound board. Hilarious.
Permalink
Secrets of Writing: Characterization pt 2
Contradictions
As we’ve discussed, choices help define a character. But so do their contradictions.
None of us are one dimensional beings. Even the most boring people you know are multi-dimensional personalities. We all have secrets, fetishes, fears, hatreds, illusions, beliefs, dreams, nightmares, needs and desires. Sometimes our traits don’t quite seem to match. But that’s normal. Human beings don’t make sense. If they did, the world would be a much better place.
When you look at the contradictions that exist in a person, you get a sense of their inner conflicts. From their contradictions you see their true dimensions. And thus you see the complexity of their persona.
In a story, you need to show only that which is relevant to your tale. It’s not a good idea to make your characters too convoluted unless it serves a purpose. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the title character is one complicated dude. But that’s exactly what he needs to be for the purposes of the story.
You don’t want to write one dimensional heroes and villains, even two dimensional, but make sure you stick to the relevant issues that bolster your premise. It’ll make for a stronger story.
Relational Characterization
Aside from the choices a character makes, and their contradictions, we have a third technique for defining them. I call it Relational Characterization.
Characters are also defined by the people they associate with. Who they choose as friends and lovers, who they make their enemies, can tell you a lot about a person. But more importantly, the manner in which people inter-relate defines their relationships with each other and reveals some of their sides.
We all react to different people in a different way. Some people turn us on. Some annoy us. Some make us mad. Some make us crazy. Some make us laugh. But not all the time. You may love your mom, but she may also drive you nuts. You may hate your boss, but you had a great time with him at the company picnic. There is a standard mode we have when dealing with certain people and there are other modes depending on our mood, the nature of the conversation, and the situation.
When you ask a friend for a loan, you probably use a different manner than when you are talking to him about a movie or asking him what you want to do for the evening. When using relational characterization it’s important to stay aware of the context.
We also use different voices with different people. We might put on our sexy voice for our lover, a high-pitched cutsy voice for our pet or children. We may use a tense, guarded voice for people we don’t trust. And this defines not only our relationships with those people, but the way we feel about them.
The way certain people effect us can create impulsive emotional responses that we later regret. If someone hurt our feelings in the past, something may remind us of that in a conversation and all of a sudden we start saying mean things. These kind of responses are useful to be aware of. Such reactions can clue the Audience to important back story elements that are revealed later.
Like I said, choice is a powerful indicator. In most cases we choose who we love and hate. And the reasons for this can speak volumes.
REMEMBER: A character is defined by their contradictions, choices, and relationships.
Symbolic Characterization
In addition to the above, there’s a little technique you can use called Symbolic Characterization. This is mainly reserved for supporting characters. But it can be used for the Hero or the Villain, if done carefully.
Symbolic characterization is used when characters appearance and lifestyles are metaphors to enhance the premise, to set mood, or establish a theme. This is usually done through the use of archetypes in archetypal settings.
Comics love to use symbolic characterization because it’s a medium of extremes. It started out showing people as exaggerated caricatures and it never quite lost that tendency.
Batman is a symbolic character. He dresses like a bat, lives (for all intents and purposes) in a cave, and only comes out at night. The Human Torch is a hot headed young man who turns into a living firebrand. Shakespeare made Richard III a ugly hunchbacked character, despite the fact that he was nothing of the kind in real life. He’s visually symbolic of his persona.
But, it’s dangerous to do this sort of thing without first making sure your character is well rounded. Otherwise they can become cartoony and unbelievable.
This hasn’t stopped a lot of comic book writers from creating characters who looked like their personas. They are exactly what the seem. If you do this, don’t expect too many readers to be impressed. It’s been done to death.
You can also use symbolic characterization in contrast to the premise. Or to enhance some theme you’re playing with in the story. There are a lot of ways to use it beyond the obvious.
REMEMBER: Characters need to be believable, even if they look strange.
Permalink
Friday, December 29, 2006
Ouch of the DayPermalinkThe most popular Britney Spears fan Web site WorldOfBritney.com is closing after its owner declared the controversial pop star is “done.”
Ruben Garay, who has hosted WorldOfBritney.com since October 2000, yesterday announced the site will no longer exist after January 31 because the singer is “losing her identity and credibility with fans and industry people.”
Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at an unspecified location in Baghdad.
Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT).
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November after a year-long trial over the 1982 killings of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail.
Two co-defendants, Saddam Hussein’s half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former Iraqi chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar, were also executed.
“Criminal Saddam was hanged to death,” state-run Iraqiya television announced, as patriotic music and images of national monuments were broadcast.
A scrolling headline read: “Saddam’s execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq’s history.”
Not all mass murderers meet justice. Most, like Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Amin die of old age or by their own hands. Kim Jong Il and Fidel Castro will probably die in their beds.
It was America who gave the Iraqi people the chance to see their tyrant fall. For this we have received all kinds of scorn and recriminations. So it is important to remember what it is that Saddam did.
He invaded Iran
He invaded Kuwait
He killed thousands of Kurds.
He murdered thousands of Iraqis
He tortured many more.
He stole billions from his people and built palaces.
He financed Palestinian terrorists, including Hamas and the families of Suicide Bombers
Hanging was too good for him.
Permalink
