Miscellany

Just a number of different things I want to write about.  They don't go under any heading, except that they're all thoughts I happened to have today!

Caitlin C.

I finally saw a video of her playing basketball.  It was a sort of highlights reel, so it looked like she did nothing but sink baskets!  Later on she talked to reporters, and I could tell that she was sort of wiped out. Boy, does she ever talk fast. 

[Added later]  OK, this popped up on my Facebook feed:

Caitlin looks adorable, and slightly weird at the same time!  It's impossible to say, but the media types could be leaning on her to wear this thing for the sake of publicity!  Who knows?

Josh Johnon.

This guy appears on Fb; I don't know whether he's a comedian on Comedy Central, or whether he has something to do with Fb, but he's funny.  And good- looking, too. 

Dogs.

One thing about dogs is that funny stuff happens with them.  With a cat, there's no jokes; they take everything literally.  Actually you can't talk to a cat; you're just talking to yourself, the cat just does what she wants.  With dogs, they're trying hard to figure what you want, so there's lots of opportunity for misunderstandings, and therefore, laughter!

Sales.

Nothing is selling, as I knew would happen; but you guys are off the hook, because I assume you people have read everything already. 

Well, goodnight to all, and hope you guys are not starving, because, you know, inflation. 

Kay

 

Blush

I'm not sure Caitlin Clark is blushing, but it is adorable!

Well.  An opposing team (LA?)—one of them knocked into Caitlin really hard.  Well, this sort of thing is SOP in games like Football, or Soccer; if you have a star player on the opposing team, you sort of bang them up.  You make them feel that they should give up the game!  I don't think that's the way it's going to happen with Caitlin.  Well, the officials penalized the offending player, or her team.  But I guess CC has been given a warning (by the opposing players). 

The Irritating Gentleman

The commentary suggests that the young woman is a working-class girl, either on her way to (or on her way back from) a funeral.  Note the handkerchief; she's been crying.  From her dress and hairstyle, it concluded that she's a teenager.  Put it all together, and it's clear the man is being a pest.  Artist is Berthold Wolste.

Fiction, Its Canvas, and A Writer's Palette

I've heard the words 'Canvas' and 'Palette' used about authors, when someone is trying to describe an author's style or technique.  (I earlier spelled this word "pallette"; I've repaired that.)

Think about Tolkien.  His world, where his fantasy takes place is essentially Middle Earth.  (It's not a planet, it's essentially an enormous flat world, consisting of a single great continent, and some islands far away, to the 'west', the Grey Havens.  You can't go around Middle Earth and come back to where you were; and nobody really tries.)

This is Tolkien's canvas.  His whole story lives on this canvas, and in a sense he manages to convey the greatness, the dimensions of it, and we never feel cramped in it. 

But recall that his action takes place on this canvas, this stage, over several generations.  There are the elder gods, and they have their adventures, which have consequences centuries later.  So his canvas extends N, S, E and W, but also back in time.  If his stories extend over many eons, his Canvas would be considered to be proportionately larger.  So the concept of a canvas is a necessary tool when talking about epic fiction.  I don't know much about these matters; I'm just guessing. 

Another word they use about an author is his (or her) palette.  The palette an artist (a painter, to be precise) uses, is the set of colors he uses.  Some artists use all the colors they need, mixing and blending and shading until they get the exact hue they require.   Other artists, intentionally restrict themselves to a very few colors, though they do mix those colors among themselves.  In modern art, I think I see this trend towards a minimalist palette. 

The word palette is used in a different sense to 'Canvas'; it is talking about the tools the author uses, the shades of meaning she uses, the particular brush-strokes she uses, whether—and how—she mobilizes the experiences of her audience, the stories in the news, the mythology that we see in the Bible, all as the raw material of her story and her character drawing.

I don't mean to imply that an enormous canvas, and a huge palette make an author effective.  I myself use a modest (read small) canvas; my stories are not at all epic; they're little intimate things.  Even Galactic Voyager has a small canvas, because of the very few people involved.  Alexandra has a bigger canvas, but not much bigger.  And I have to admit that my palette is small, because (despite being a 'published' author,) I have little or no training.

But my modesty is enormous, as anyone can see! 

Kay

This silly cat ...

Well, my little feline friend seems to like to lick my potato chips!  Not the whole lot, but just a couple.  My friend (the owner of the cat) says she's just licking the salt off the chips.  One time she just licked my skin, and apparently it's the same principle: I had been perspiring, and she was enjoying the salt on my skin!  Man, it was the strangest sensation; her tongue was like sandpaper—which I was actually expecting—and it felt like she'd scrape my skin right off!

I never expected a cat to be so interesting!

Kay

I'm Reluctant

Poor Caitlin Clarke.  She takes all this madness so calmly, (and they have her meeting Billie Jean King, and have lots of interesting encounters like that) and it's featured ón Fb.  But I'm determined not to respond positively, or I'll never hear the end of it.  The Fb algorithms don't know the meaning of the word moderation.  As it is, without my responding to these advertisements at all, they're showing me so many of them, i'm beginning to suspect that they're stalking me here, too. 

Oh, CC, I wish you all success; just wait out all this maniacal attention, and hopefully things will get back to normal.  Unfortunately, the more hype the media generates around Caitlin, the more money the Indiana Fever will make, and they keep switching the games to be played in larger venues ...

Next, they'll get CC to meet Taylor Swift.  Then they'll send her to Russia, or North Korea, and it'll be Brittney Griner all over again.  OMG, I have too much of a dangerous imagination. 

An Elf Called Dani?

One of the most entertaining features of DA used to be their captions, or whatever remark accompanied the artwork. 

It used to be that if someone posted a picture of an elf, say, and the caption was 'Dani', well it could be:

(1) An elf called Dani.  This is the least likely possibility!

(2) It was a cosplay.  Someone called Dani had dressed up as an elf. 

I can't think of anything else it could be!  A friend of the artist's, who looked a lot like an elf?  A character from popular culture—a TV show or Anime, or a game, called Dani?

Why is (1) so unlikely?  Because Dani is the root of a Biblical name, Daniel (and it's feminine form,  Danielle or Daniela), and I've seldom—never, actually—seen stories featuring the fae, with Judaeo-Christian given names!  It's not a law, but there are traditions; the stories have to be plausible, after all. 

(2) is unlikely as well, simply because AI has made cosplay very uncommon.  Or maybe I'm just not being shown any cosplay on DA.

I'm At It Again: 'Jane' This Time

I tend to forget my characters after a year or so, and how much I love them!  I remembered some incident from the Jane stories, and started reading Jane—the second book—again. 

It was startling to see how much better my dialog had been back in the early 'aughts', as they call them; I think Jane was written around 2003.  I think I had visited England around then, and it was still fresh in my mind.  (Helen visited England in Westfield, around that time, for much the same reason.)

Jane—the character—and the Twins were deeply involved in a sort of three-way love affair.  Not a love triangle, as I understand it, but they were in a 3-way stable relationship that was very loving.  Today, I might try to depict something like that, but I think I'm a little too experienced to make it convincing.  So I have lost some of the writing skills I have taken for granted. 

Kay

Kittycat Duty

Well, I'm on critter duty again!

Mostly it's the cat, who gets on me, and shows me how much she enjoys my visit.  The other animals—two dogs, at the moment—just do run-by tail-wags—which I do appreciate—but don't climb all over me.  I also get free lunch, in exchange for the babysitting, and sometimes (most times, actually) it's a lot better than what I would make for myself!

And I get to watch TV!  I do have TV at home, but it's a tiny screen, and it takes some work to get a good program up on the screen.  I have a good collection of DVDs, which I should watch more often.  Which reminds me: I enjoyed the live action version of Aladdin, but that's one DVD I do not have. 

Kay, a cat lady-in-training

Jane, the Early Years

I poured a lot of myself into this 'prequel.'  Actually,  Jane, the Early Years, and Jane, were a single story, of which the second part just happened to be published first.  Possibly precisely because I was a little embarrassed with how emotional the first part was. 

Jane unexpectedly meets her (younger) brother, Arthur—in Early Years—and Jane breaks off her connections to her ex, whose name I forget, and the activities of Jane and her friends begin to center around the Internet, when they discover that Jane's brother Arthur knew his way around the Web.  Scorpia is invented about halfway through, and remains a major feature of the story for a long time.  Scorpia rides again in the second part, and Gillian and Angela are discovered to have been Scorpia fans before Gillian even comes to the US.

There are several pairings that happen in this pair of books.  Firstly, Jane and Deanna; then Jane and Heather; then Jane and Maria; then Jane and Mary-Ellen.  In the second book, it's mostly Jane and Gillian (and Angie, I suppose), and at the end ... well, you'll have to read it to find out. 

Caitlin Clark

I don't want to give the impression that I'm obsessed with this girl, Caitlin Clark.  I haven't watched her doing anything; I haven't seen her being interviewed, haven't seen her playing basketball (should that be one word?)

But I see occasional—no; not occasional.  I see posts about her all the time!  I'm just afraid that they'll ruin her.  I want her to be a glorious success!  Oh ... I'll stop now, or I'll be blamed for whatever bad thing happens to her.  Wait, I did see her talking to Che and Jost on SNL.

Kay.

I Should Have Warned You

Just yesterday, I raised the purchase price of almost all of my stories on Smashwords, and I anticipate that the volume at which they're downloaded will be down to a trickle.  Well, I figure, those who have already acquired these stories are probably holding off (or giving up the idea of) downloading a second copy, maybe because they've forgotten where they put the first one!  New readers, not knowing that the books used to be given away free, will probably buy them.  The new price is $2.99.  This way, if Smashwords puts on a sale, I can really lower the price a little.

Love to all, despite the price increases,

Kay

Deviant Art ...

I have a lot of problems with DA; that's no secret.  But recently, there was an image of a buxom elf, oozing pulchritude, and the caption was: Qualified Elf Looking for a Party.

Qualified Elf?  It was forcefully brought home to me that these people are not native English speakers.  They're not English speakers of any sort; they manage to communicate in English solely for the purpose of promoting their artwork!  (And from an awakening desire to connect with other artists, I believe; perhaps they don't quite realize this could be interesting.   Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.)

Just as musicians get fixated on the music they're creating, and writers get tunnel vision about their ẅriting projects (and create Blogs to talk about them (ahem)), so graphic artists are fixated on their creations, and the image in their minds, which they want to make visible.  And being foreign (I shouldn't say that, but from my point of view, that's what they are, and it's amazing that their communication skills are this good, honestly) they have to strain to even have a reasonable shot at getting their caption moderately close to what they had in mind. 

I had commented on the original post ("Qualified Elf" etc) saying:  "Qualified!  That's a whole different approach!"

Soon the artist came back with: Sometimes I think make the wrong word choice.  I mean competent. 

I replied:  Skilled, perhaps?

Within a few hours, the caption read: Skilled Elf, Looking for a Party.

I'm both pleased, and alarmed.  Why would a Skilled Elf be looking for a Party?  What horrible ideas are lurking in the subconscious of this crazy artist?  When he says Elf, does he mean prostitute?  Entertainer?  Party girl?

Scarlett Johanson

I feel pity for this attractive woman. 

She's quite attractive despite her large breasts, though some of the Fb advertisers—or, anyway, the people who place ads on Fb, who I assume are guys—approach the task of publicizing Scarlett as if she has absolutely nothing else going for her!  She's a good actress, and a fair mimic, and a good comedienne as well, something that can't be said of a lot of female actors.  I do think she's to blame for some of it; she seems to encourage the media focusing attention on her chest. 

Kay

The Story of Emily

Just last night I was reading an unfinished story of mine, which I had written when I was feeling much more grown up and sober.  (I mean, I am naturally a very sober person, who just gets popped into a zany mood occasionally.)

Sometimes I get into a state where I regard all my surroundings, and the whole world, really,  with rather distant benevolence, and look upon it with a mixture of amazed approval and sad disappointment.  It was on one of these occasions that I wrote the Emily story.  It isn't first person—I hadn't yet got comfortable with that style—but it follows Emily rather closely, and is most definitely from her point of view.

Emily is a college professor.  She lives with her former husband, who is sick.  He dies, early in the story, and she heads out West by herself.  Soon she finds herself rescuing a mother and daughter duo. 

Emily is, sort of, in the same mode of universal benevolence that I'm getting into—or rather, she's approaching that state.  A lot of the story is the attitude of all three people to kids; the little girl meets kids at various campgrounds; the mother observes the daughter's interaction with her little friends; and Emily watches all of this.  Emily is childless, BTW.

Well, I'll either have to put in a massive piece of labor to complete the story properly, or just finish it any old how and upload it. 

K

Trains!

I wish I had more money to splurge!  I would so love to travel by train!  I've traveled by train in Britain, and short distances in the US, but I'd like to travel trans-continental.  But I know few people in California, and I'd hate to be a nuisance to them.  If I had money to splurge, I'd stay in a hotel, book tours, visit Disneyland ...

I visited Disneyland when I was little.   It was cute, and nostalgic.  I may not like what it has become.  I just say that only because I don't know in what direction it has gone. 

Kay