Chronos Sity

One of the fun things about working on The Final Voyage of the USS The Sullivans is Chronos City. This is the city the James Booth and his daughter Evangeline run their temporal operations from. The city is an unfinished alien city made of a living metal that was never activated or brought to life. They found the city and brought it to life along with a powerful war ship.

This city was mentioned a couple times in the novels and other short stories. In theory this city should show up when everything goes south in a couple of the books. For most of the series it is simply a ghost that most people do not know it’s true origins.

So it will be nice to work on this setting.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

A New Session

There is new life for the Garabedian Academy. At the moment it looks like we are going to have a session the second Saturday in March. This session is going to concentrate on the Order of St. Pickled Herring. We will be having three sessions in one day. This will include the core disciplines, balloons, ledgermaine and juggling. The nice thing about doing it this time around is that we have a couple more experience clowns now.

If we do one session at a time we will have three clowns to help. A couple of our Jr. Clowns are also coming alone very nicely. At the moment we also have a new batch of Cadets and Apprentices. If they can attend I think a couple of the Apprentices will finish off a proficiency or two. One is very close to being ready to test for Jr. Clown.

There are still many details that have to be put together. The nice thing is that there has been a lot of prep on Section 1. The time we spent working on the prospects of doing this in the past will also be helpful.

Well I will keep you posted. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Section 1

For the last couple days i have been working on Section 1 yet again. After a couple years of edits and experimenting with the training regiment we have come to a viable thing. This section is the guide that goes with the lectures and practices for The Order of Pickled Herring. For those just tuning in this is the basic proficiency for clowning in our Bridge.

This is something similar to what circus once used to train their people in apprenticeships. To the best of knowlege most clown clown in North America have been shut down. Ringling Brother shut their down several years ago. As i recall there was one in California that I have heard nothing about for the last several years. I can only assume it is gone as well. It appears reasonable that there are not enough people training to be clowns to support this type of training.

For this reason it appears that the only way that clowns are going to be trained is through an apprenticeship. This was the way that the early performing guilds trained people in the middle ages. It appear that most circus that are left want a fully formed clown to show up at their door and apply for the job. This may work while the number of circus is shrinking. This will not work in the long run though. There will be a time when all the old masters and experienced clowns will gone.

This training program is a small hope in reversing this trend. Personally I would like to beleive that there is a future for clowning in the circus. I must admit that this looks dimmer and dimmer with every passing year. The circus is simply not as profitable as it once was Perhaps the only hope for this craft is the nonprofessional. If there is no profit than it leaves this to the volunteer.

Humor Therapy continues to gain ground. I remeber when a clown had to twist someones arm to get into a hospital to perform for free. Now they are welcomed with open arms. In some places there are a couple clown that are being pair for their Humor Thearapy skills. Perhaps this is the hope for the next evolution of Professional clowning.

In the days before TV the only hope for entertainment was having a group of people show up and put on a show. Now the shows can be had on the internet or anywhere. Norman Cousins attested to the healing properties of Humor. this is some the mass media will never be able to replicate. There may be one days when every hospital will have a team of clowns. This will not rival the number that once existed in the circus. Still the craft will continue.

Cold Reading Fun

This is one of those cold reading thing. In the same way that palm readers tell you want to hear people are doing this with computer quizes. Still it is an entertaining diversion. I put my name into this address and this is what i got


http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyournameshiddenmeaningquiz/


You Are Brilliant and Stubborn You are incredibly wise and perceptive. You have a lot of life experience.You are a natural peacemaker, and you are especially good at helping others get along.But keeping the peace in your own life is not easy. You see things very differently, and it's hard to get you to budge.

You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone.
You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together.
At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together.

You are influential and persuasive. You tend to have a lot of power over people.
Generally, you use your powers for good. You excel at solving other people's problems.
Occasionally, you do get a little selfish and persuade people to do things that are only in your interest.

You are well rounded, with a complete perspective on life.
You are solid and dependable. You are loyal, and people can count on you.
At times, you can be a bit too serious. You tend to put too much pressure on yourself.

I Forgot

I forgot that i have a Myspace page. It has been more than a year since I logged in and apparently I did not do much with it. From what I have been reading apparently most people have forgotten about the myspace. Well I have ti open now and no one has visited probably because I have not updated anything in a year.

I am debating if I should get rid of it or connect it to something else. If I could find some way to have my blogger entries go to myspace that would be nice. It would look like I was active there and I would not have to do anything else.

It has these ap gizmo that you stick onto the profile i guess. I tried to add a couple and nothing happened. I suppose I will have to try and figure it out.

The myspace was apparently very popular at one time. Friends of mine tell me that it is coming back. Well i suppose I will see. I wonder if I can link it to this page. That would kind of neat if my posts from there showed up there. Well we will see how it goes.

Something else that I have been noting is Gabreil Iglesias. He is a comic that has been around for a bit. I watched one of his specials on comedy central and i do not recall there being any swearing. I figured that was just the way comedy central does things. Well I heard some of his stuff on the youtube. Once again there was no swearing. i have to have respect for a comic that can be funny without the shock value of profanity. It is not that i find the profanity incredibly offensive. Sure there are places that it should not be. Still I feel that many comic use it as a crutch. I have managed to be funny some of the time without the f bomb. Although if I ever dropped it into a show I think it would cause heart attacks rather than the funny that many comics get from it.

Well that is it for the moment. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

The Scourge of Our Times

AS we practiced juggling this week my thought driffted to ebing hit in the head with stuff. For some reason when juggling it is always the juggling teacher that gets hit with stuff. Someday I home that one of the clowns in the Brigade get really good at juggling. That way new apprentices can hit them with stuff.

Well when bouncing about on the Hulu this morning I found this bit. I think it sums up nicely my fears. Enjoy

Not much Going on

There is not much going on here. There is a ton of snow on the the ground and some more coming. I have been playing around with my play lists on this site and working on the books. The play list thing is still not working right for me. Still it has improved from when it did not work at all. As stated before I am sure that a site of this complexity takes some time to get just right. Especially since it appears that who ever is doing it on their own.

The short story that proceeds the book is doing much better than the book itself. Still I suppose that goes without saying. The shorter something is the easier it is. The first chunk of the short story is around sixty pages. I thing the dialogue in it the first chunk is just right for one of those magna novel type thing. I am still not sure of the terminology for it. Still I think that I can make the magna book in the Microsoft publisher if I give it enough time and have a decent artist.

I have drawn out profiles of the star ships on the book. I am working on a chart that will show their relative size. Once I get that finished I think i will be ready for the artist to start work on the book.

On some level I am very nervous about it. On the word filled page i have complete control over the thing. When someone else it going to illustrate it I have no control at all. I have an idea in my mind what everything should look like. The sad thing is that I do not have artistic talent to transfer it to pictures. I can paint a half way decent picture. Still for some reason I can not really make a passable line drawing. I really do not get it. Well if I want to to go forward in any way I will have tog et over it.

Well just checking in. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

More Randomness

I have bee working on the newsletter for the Brigade. I have been at it for a week and am not really happy with it. Well I suppose I can work on it some more until it is the way that I want to it to be.

On other front I am looking into Sign Language Classes. I am not sure which ones to take. One will involve us change the Brigade's schedule yet again. So I hope that the other place that offers them has them at a time that will work out better for us. It looks as if Walt and my wife will be taking them as well. So at least the Brigade will have a decent showing at this thing.

Well I was just checking in. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.