Thursday, April 24, 2008

Random Stuff you learn at 7:00 AM

Long time reader will know that I am a fan of the science fiction. So much of a fan that I am writing my own science fiction.

Being that I could not sleep. You know me I only sleep five or six hours a day. I was playing around in my office. My office as you may or may know is a big pile of stuff in milk crates in the basement of my house. Anyway next week my pile of milk crates is going to be host to the Clown Brigade's Manual Writing Committee. So I figured that I should clean it up. There is even a small chance that I might post pictures of it if I get it looking presentable. Don't hold your breath though.

Anyway there is all sorts of foolishness that goes on in my office. First there are all of my books and a fair amount of yarn. Prized among my books is the beginning of my collection of Leather Bound Books. You know them they are the classic books sold at Boarders make to look old tyme. I firmly believe that you should have a good set of some important books. Spakespeare, Twain you know the books I am talking about. It is one of those things I can leave to my kids. Meaning they will sell them at a yard sale after I amdead.

My library such as it is does not have tenth of the books that I think it should. There are a ton of history books. These center on American, Scottish, English, Ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian. I have recently become enamored with Hawaiian history. So thee are a couple of those popin up.

Of course there are fair number of books on clowning. These cover all the major clowning subjects, magic, juggling, puppetry building funny stuff and oddly enough in my own mind several books on knitting.

There is also the stuff that helps me write the science fiction books (you thought I forgot about that). Dictionaries, Thesauruses, The Elements of Style, Jane's fighting ships and bunches of Legos. Legos you say how are they helpful. Well I do not have the budget of Star War or Star trek. So when I want to build a new ship of star base I can't farm it out to a model building company.

So all in all my office looks like that of an insanely brilliant five year old. Oddly when I started playing around with these stories in middle school I collected a lot of this stuff to help me back then. I still have my first Roget's Thesaurus which was a 1964 version I bought with my own allowance money. My old dictionary finally gave up the ghost. It was a gigantic Funk and Wagnals that was several decades out of date as well. I suppose modern writers use the Internet thing or have their dictionaries on a disk or something. Well I don't have that kind of time to be learning knew things like that.

I thought I was pretty out there as far as things go. I am after all a clown that is called to be a minister and feels he should be able to write books. And I suppose I am a guy who knits quite a bit. It strikes me that some might think I am fairly out there. This is something that I have grown accustom to. So I am really not that bothered by it any more.

I forgot to mention my two black cats that believe my office is their personal domain. I am reminded of this because Abigail is trying to help me type.

Retuning to the subject at hand which has me thinking this AM. And you may not have guessed what this is leading up to but here it is, Fan Fiction.

This has been the subject of some disturbing conversations I have had recently. I will not get into them, still, they were bad.

Well I was taking a break from figuring out why my Robert B. Parker Books are mixed in with juggling books and and books on growing bonsai trees. So I was tooling around the You Tube watching the decline of Western Civilization. I come across something called USS Farragut. I am nothing if not a big fan of our Navy. My Grand Father Stiles was in the Navy during WWII in the pacific. That was back when being in the Navy was really really hard. I am sure it is hard now. Back then we were fighting wars that looked like we were going to loose for a while. I am sure that added to the stress.

I also dislike mines. I don't even play mine sweeper because of my dislike of the mines. Admiral David Farrgut was the one that said, darn the torpedoes full speed ahead. Yes he used stronger language still those were times for stronger language. And the torpedoes he was talking about were actually mines.

So I click on this thing expecting to see a historic naval battle or maybe something on the new Burke Class Destroyer. Lo and behold what do I see but computer generated version of the the Star Trek Enterprise. Someone created a computer generated version of the Enterprise and called it the Farragut. As the clip played on it became apparent a bunch of people had gotten together written a script and made new episode of Star Trek on their own.

I was amazed by this. How can people do that? No what are they thinking. But how do you make up a computer generated star at home. They had sets and all the stuff actors have. How is that possible. It there a feature in media player that I missed? I was feeling proud of myself for throwing together the Yarn N'at Vidcast. Then I find out there are people that make up their own TV shows. I am just blown away. And if any wants to clue me in on how that stuff is done I would be happy.

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

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