Hmmmmmmm.....

As mentioned before I receive a bunch of these things. Walt sent me this one and it was the first time I saw it. So here it is. Just an expert note, clown usually use a car that is slightly bigger than the clown.

Playing with the Blog

Once again I have put some time into putting the Blog back together. I have not had time to really put this thing back together after I ungraded to the new blogger format. Yes that was a year ago and I should have dealt with it by now. Still, how fancy does this thing need to be to go through irrelevant stuff like this.

The most useful thing that I have fixed up is the time and place for the Monday Knitting group. As mentioned before the Monday knitting group is meeting in Homestead. Half the folks that attended were the clown brigade members.

Well as the story goes the young folks wanted to work in the knitting thing as well. Well now that we have the meeting time and place settled we are going to invide everyone.

So if you ever wanted to go to a knitting group with clowns this is your chance. Also if you have a kids that is knitting this is not a half bad place to take them. So join us in the Clown Cave if you have the Time.

There is of course the new mast. I have wanted something like that. I just had to take the time to put it together.

There is also the label cloud. I have not been able to get it just right. The kind that work of the labels in blogger do not work with the three column format. So this is the next best thing. I am not happy with it and will continue to tweak it. If anyone out there had a good self contained cloud widget that would be nice.

Well just want to check in. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Junior Clown Thurman

Another fun day was had a Brigade Practice. Since it was snowing we had reletively light attendance. Even so we had enough people to have a Board of Review for Sergeant Thurman. Sergeant Thurman is an Apprentice clown that has been working very hard on her Jr. Clown Rank.

Yesterday she passed the board of review with 34 out of fourty question correct. If you are into our system of clowning that is respectable. So congrat to Sergeant Thurman. She get a blue shirt and she does not have to wear the funny sun glasses anymore. Unless she wants to. Rank had it's privilages even in the clowning world.


Once again here is a song on the internet radio. This is a song by Nelly Futado. I can remeber the name.



Be safe out there and keep you name on the ice.

Still No Knitting

The only problem with working on the book so much is that there are no good pictures with it. Being that I type with two hands I rarely have the extra hand to take pictures of myself while writing. I suppose I could take pictures while I am writing the rough draft int he note books. Still, that would be incredibly boring. No one wants to see pictures of me sitting at a computer. And if you would then there is a pill out there for you.

On other writing Fronts The Writing Committee of the Clown Brigade is going swimmingly. We have started looking at other sections that need to be written. A great deal of what we have been doing has been going on my memory of what we did in other places. This as you can imagine, is not the greatest way to go about things. One of our goals is to create a body of work that another group of people can take and create a Clown Brigade.

We figure that we will need at least ten of the Proficiencies written out before this can happen. After that there are around forty or so that will have to be written out. So this is an incredibly complex task. We figure that it will take a several years to do this.

Walt and I have been the core of the Writing Committe for the better part of the last years. More recently my wife has been working on the spiritual Prf.

The Brigade just started working on the Prayer Prf. This is neat one that Carol wrote. The first level of this one is a great little primmer for starting off some one in prayer. With in the Brigade we find that the things we talk about most of discipleship. This is an interesting subject with the kids.

In many ways the kids are further along in this than the adults in the Corps.

Well along opn other random stuff I saw this reletively new Dido vid on the yahoo music type thing.



I knew an old timer that always said leave them with a song in your heart. He was also a firm beleived that you keep crackers in your pocket to keep the pigeons happy. So you can take or leave his advice. Still, he was popular with the pigeons.

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

Balloon Madness & The Radioactive Weasle

 

Sunday was yet another practice. And this practice we spent most of our time working on Balloon Animals.  This is Apprentice Brimage well one of them. This is a picture from our Balloon text books. Actually it is one of the pictures that we are not using. I told her to look like she was happy to be making the balloons for the handbook. She like most clowns and seven years olds can be a smart alec at times. Saracasim is one of the corner stones of our training programs.

 

 This is a bear on a heart sitting on my messy desk. I took the pictures from the practice so most of them are blurry. I should have let one of the young people take the pictures. You would be able to tell what they are. I am not sure who made this one. It was either me or Sergeant Thurman.

  

 This is Apprentice Wilson and Balloon Sergeant Arasin. Wilson is the one standing on the chair. They are showing off our new bulliten board. We decided to do all the board in the Brigade colors. The board behind them is the one we use for stats. It had the chart with all the earn Proficciencies, monthly stats and lists of the Prociencies requirements and such. It is exciting stuff if you are in the Brigade. Actually it is not that exciting even if you are in the Brigade.

  

 This is a Radio Active Weasel. This is an inside joke within the Brigade. When one is making a balloon animal and it goes terribly wrong we call it a radioactice weasel. For some reason when a ballloon goes wrong it often looks like a weasel that has been in a nuclear accident. This one was maded by Sergeant Thurman.

 

 I have made quite a few of these in my time.

Murdering Fake People & New Soldiers

I have never really wanted to do away with someone. Ever since I have been writing these books I have had the urge to wipe out entire civilizations. There is nothing more annoying that trying to get people that you created to try and something. It is like herding kittens.

The book is over three hundred pages and continues to grow. This craziness will have to stop at some point or I will have a one thousand page book. Well I figure I am going to keep writing and pick a place to end it.

On other fronts there are a couple pictures that I have not posted through sheer forgetfulness.

This is Walt and a couple other folks that have been enrolled as soldiers at our Corps. This is our divisional commander and officers. Yes we all dress alike. This is the fun part of being in an army.

This is a picture of the Children that were enrolled as Jr. Soldiers at the corps. This class of Soldier and Jr. Soldier is twice the size of the congregation when Carol and I first joined the Church. So this is very encouraging.

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

A New to You Lance Lawson

 

Just for Yucks I have a Lance Lawson for everyone to solve. The first one to Solves it get a mention on the blog. I know it is not much. Still, it isd not much of a challenge.

Lance Lawson for Christmas

I wanted to experiment with posting something and having it appear later. So this is the Christmas Entry for the Blog. So here it is Merry Christmas. Solve it yourself with Lance Lawson.

 

 

Sprucing up Stuff

With work on the books progressing i took a bit of time to try an fix a couple nagging things on the blogs. For some reason I could not get new gadets working on this blog. I do have to put up a link to the yarn man blog. I did find the other half of the first story. So I have both of those gizmos up on that blog. When I get a link it should be easier to find.

I did get a good deal of work done on the Clown Brigade's Blog. The calendar was not working on it and I didn't have a followers gadget up on it. So now all of that has been put right. We still don't have access to the internet in our offices. So that slows us up a bit on working on the blog. On the up side when we are on line everyone in the Brigade can blog.

I have to figure out where I put the camera. I have some pictures from our installation of new Soildiers. I am told Walt looks cute in his new uniform.

Any way I will check back when I have some pictures.

December 23rd Video Post

On another note for things that were not mentioned in the video thing. The majority of the text for Section 3 of the Clown Handbook has been finished. This means that a bit of editing and a couple pictures is all that is needed to finish it off.

Getting on with section 4 through six will be the next goal. Still, those section do not have to be done this minute. Actually they do not have to be done until the summer. So there is much more time to work on them. And now that we know how long it will take to do a whole section we know we have time.

Kettles Again

 

We were out on the Kettle again this week end. One again back to the Century III Mall. Here I am juggling on the kettle. One of the kids figured out how to get the samera to take action pictures. You will note that the picture is clear and crisp. That mean that someone who knows how to take pictures was using the Camera. It was Apprentice Brimage. She is Seven. 

  

Here is Walt. He was making inflatible wildlife. At least that is the politically correct way to refer to balloon animals these day. They got a lawyer and you know the rest of the story. 

Here was the rest of our crew thsi week end. Sergesnt Thurman is in the back. She is doing wicked stuff with scarves these days. She has only been at them a couple weeks and her routines are pretty impressive. In fron are Apprentice Brimage and Apprentice Brimage. They are sisters hence the same last name. Being that I don't like using you people first names on the old blog the five Aprentice Brimigaes that are in the Brigade is going to be confussing as time goes on. Actually now that I think of it one of them is still a Cadet.

This is Apprentice Brigade trying on a coat. We are starting to think about getting a real uniform for the Brigade. So we will need a coat. Being that we are supposed to be on a boat during out shows this may be the way that we go. By the way this is the Apprentice Brimage that knows how to use my camera better than I do.

And the cyber kettle is up to fourty bucks. That is fourty bucks more than I thought i was going to make the Corps on the Cyber Kettle. Cool Beans.

We will be out there this weekend if you still want to catch the dog and pony show. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

 

 The blogger this is acting odd tonight.I am having a hard time getting pictures to wrap around the words. Well all this stuff will hopefully show up on the blog thing. I will have to get Oliver working on it. 

Anyway I have found a new problem no one else on the planet is having. These binders I have been putting the book in keep breaking. I suppose I could be more gentle with them. But I hate the three binder which are strong enough to last a couple months before I break them.

Well so I did what i always do when something is not going my way. I head to the hardware store. So to fix my binder thing I had a couple pieces of plastic cut and get some chain.

 

I tried the metal ring things and I broke them so I moved onto the chain thing. If I had my way I would keep the book in a box and take it out a page at a time as I need it.  This is fairly close to that.

I suppose I could go paperless. It would save tree if I didn;t use all the composition books. And I wouldn't need to wrestle with the printer and such. That would involve me changing the way I do things. I don't have the attention span required to do that.

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

400 or So

While I was figuring our how fast the various ships in my story can go I have come to a depressing conclusion. The first book is going to have to be around 400 pages long. In order to set up the plot for the next book

Anyway it takes a US Navy Carrier group two months from the Solar System to the Wolf 359 System. This is pretty fast if I say so myself.

Incidentally Wolf 359 is the star New Columbia orbits around. That is important to the story.

Well just checking in and being cranky

Make Up

Someone emailed me asking how you learn to put on clown makeup.

Ummm someone teaches you.

Anyway the first layer is usually a thin coat petrolum jelly. This makes it easy take off later. If you are using a gluer on nose you do not put it on you nose where your nose will go.

In the picture we see Apprentice Wilson having her make up put on. In our Brigade most folks do a couple shows before they learn how to put their make up. For this reason someone has to help them the first few times.

You will not that her hair is pink. She like me colors her hair in clown face. This is done first. That way you can wipe off excess paint with a wet rag. We use a temporary hair color called Color Bomb to do out hair.

Any way you then put on the color in this case white. When you put on the white you leave the spaces for the mouth and anything large. After the white is on you powder. This can be done with a sock full of baby powder or a powder puff.

After that you put on the color. In her case she had a red mouth and large outline of blue star around her one eye. After that we lightly powder the colored bits. At this point you spread around spirit gum on the inside of the nose. You then place the nose on the face and then take it off. You then take off the nose. You let the glue dry in the nose and on the nose. after it is dry you put the nose back on. The stuff is like a kind of contact cement I guess.

If you are using a wig you put it on at this point. You will also note the Apprentice Wilson was not in her costume. We tend to like to put out make up on while wearing a tee shirt. That way the costume goes on over and you don't get make up on it.

We I hope that is helpful. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Savage Chickens

Clown Handbook

The Clown Brigade's Writhing Committee has finished up another meeting. Tonight we were working on Section 3 - Basic Clowning. My wife was working on putting together the various spiritual proficiencies.

In our next couple meeting we will have other member of the Brigade try out the new material. This is a big step for us. One of our biggest problems is that there is not enough material on this subject. So much of what the Circus taught was passed down from one person to another. So this does us little good in starting a new program.

We spent the better part of the last six months mapping out what needed to be done. We have to divide up everything into areas of study. Now is the hard part writing all those areas.

I am up to 20 bucks on the old kettle thing. Thank you nice person. That leaves a hundred bucks or so to go.

Just checking in trying to be a good blogger. Be safe out there everyone and keep your stick on the ice.

Some Random Pictures

Well as promised I said I would post some pictures when I remembered to put my camera in a place that I could do that. Like before I am still crazy busy with the book and all sorts of other things. If I ever make money on the book I am going to hire someone to spell for me. They will follow me around and type things into a computer that are spelled correctly and has all of those punctuation things everyone goes on about. Well any way here are some pictures I pulled off the camera.
First up this is Apprentice Wilson. This was at out Christmas party and she had just made a giraffe. She tied it to a helium balloon and wanted me to take a picture of it floating. All of those pictures were blurry. Still, this one is cure.


This is an actual knitting picture on the blog. Yes i know I am using a machine. That is the difference between clown knitting and the rest of the world. WE need to get stuff done. I suppose you could say that it is goal oriented. Anyway this was the trim for a scarf that Walt has been working on for a while. Actualy he finished it a long time ago. He has been waiting for my to do the trim on the machine for a while. Well with the knitting in Homestead I left a machine in Homestead. Hopefully I will get these things done quicker that I have in the past


This is Apprentice Wilson on Stilts. This is first time on stilts and she is doing it on her own.
And yes she does look impressed with herself as she should be.
This is a picture from today. This is another long neglected project that we just had to get out of the way. This is the Clown Brigade's library. Well it is the start of it anyway. These books are some of the books that I clown will need to study while they are in training. Today we put card in them so that they can be checked out and we can keep track of them.

This is the front door of our officer, meeting and storage space. It is the old Quarters in the Corps. Walt made the sign. We think it is terribly funny.

This is the pipe tone organ half taken apart. I am still working on it. I am very hopeful that I will be able to stick it back togather.

Well I don;t know how many pictures the blogger thing will let me post. So I will not push my luck. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Pipe Tone Organ - Ballington Booth

I forgot my camera at the Corps so there will be no pictures in this post. This is especially sad because I have been taking pictures recently.

The book continues to dominate my time. I think I have found a solution to one of the problem that has been nagging me about the entire thing. The book has a fair amount of time traveling in it. Because of the way the series is there are multiple overlapping story arcs that take place over centuries. These arcs intersect the main story at various places. Some of them last the entire series while other only a couple books or one book.

It is a bit like watching Hill Street Blues. The only difference is there are no cops lot of aliens, time travelers and some of the story lines take place out of sequence or backwards. Well, really it is not much like Hill Street Blues. When I am working on the book I often watch shows on the Hulu. And I went through all of Hill Street Blues again. That was a really cool show.

Anyway, the over lapping story problem that I was talking about. I have figured that each book has a single even that all of the other arcs are trying to effect one way or another. At first I was putting down the dates and times as part of the chapter title. This did nothing to show the relationship of what has happening. So I will label the chapter that contains the main event as such I will then list all of the other chapters as before or after that single event.

So I chapter would have the chapter title and then how many days or years before the main event they take place. And when it get closer to the main even they will be listed in hours or minutes. I am not sure if I should call this the main event. I really need to come up with a good name for the Ground Zero event of each book.

On the up side the book kind of makes seance when you read it cover to cover. That is if you can understand my misspellings and such. In another couple weeks I might even be able to let someone read it without being horribly embarrassed by my errors.

On a random bit of something I have been watching some of the anime shows on the Hulu. Some of these are twisted. There is one with a fourteen year old vampire that wants to enslave an adult through the whole blood sucking thing. This guy is impervious to her charms and so she is in love with him and they are fated to be together. I may have missed something, still, that makes my plot look strait forward. Not to metion the whole underage thing. Maybee I missing something and she is really three hundred and just is traped in a 14 year olds body. I don't know if that makes it any better. Perhapse one of my readers can explain it to me. I suppose vampire things have never been my thing

We found a piano looking thing long forgotten in a storage space of our corps. Much like the accordions that we are trying to make a band out of. It turn out that it is something called a pipe tone organ. It does not actually have pipes. It has metal reads just like an accordion. The ruberised cotton that make up the bellow is shot. So I am replacing it with vynal. It is not going terrible well. still I think i can get it working. If that pan out we will have a period instrument that will go along with out stage show. We will see if our music sergeant can strangle a tune out of it when I get it in one peice. The mechanics of the instrument appear intact. This is since it was built around the turn of the last century.

It looks as if it was well used when it was in service. So I have had vission of bonnet clad Salvationist standing on a corner in Homesetead trying to save souls sing about Christ and preaching a little fire and brim stone. Well it look as if we will be able to revive that just a bit. We don't have bonnets. Ummmmm....... and we will be clowns who are soilders pretending to be soilders who are clowns. Hmmmmmm....... I suppose we will at least have the Jesus stuff and the instrument. I really should try and time up some sort of normal hobby.

Wait I have the knitting. By the by I also have some pictures of recent knitting on the camera. And my knitting is clown stuff. And my knitting group had an average age of 11. So apparently I can take the most conventional thing on the planet and turn it into something weird.

On the up side we did gat a computer for the clown room. So if we can get on line there might be live bloggin from our knitting group. That could be cool.

Well it is time to get back to Brigadier Mason and Fleet Lord Jefferson. Be saf eout there and keep your stick on the ice.

If you can read this you are not the President

As we count down the day to our new President is inaugurated it does make me a bit sad. It was a bit fun having a President that cannot pronounce words and said silly things. Obama is many and unfortunately comic relief is not one of them.

The last President that I remember taking seriously was hmmmmmmmmm.........

I have not been alive for a President that I could take seriously. How has this country survived these last three decades? How did we defeat the Soviet Union? I America so awsome it does not need a serious leader.

I suppose Reagan was fairly serious. Still, there were those television shows with the monkey. And first Bush let's not go there. And at least Kennedy was chasing Marlin Monroe around the Oval Office.

President Elect please don't boink your interns. I am not sure what it will be like to have a President that will be loved by the world and respected by a bunch of people. I mean I have seen movies of FDR and Truman. I listened to Tony Blair so I can imagine what an articulate leader might be like.

Still it looks as if all the funny buttons and tee shirts have to be put away. Leno and Letterman will have to make due with making fun of Britney Spears. Oh well the party could not last forever.

Arianna Huffington

She is on the Daily Show talking about how people should be blogging. So here I am blogging. She was promoting a book that the staff of her blog wrote. My blog does not have a staff. It would be spelled better or have commas if it did. I suppose I have Oliver. Still, Oliver is part of my computer's staff.

I would blog everyday if I had a staff. Any way she said blogging should be spontaneous and off the cuff. So they wrote a book about with a staff of fifty people.

Well i suppose I should not complain about it. I have stack of book as tall as me that I have not read. The chances I will purchase this book are slim to none. Still, I bloogged about it quickly and off the cuff. There you go.

Oh an put something in my kettle PLease Please Please, Thank you Be safe out there and keep you stick on the ice.

A New Doctor

I am not ready for a new Doctor. I have been so engrossed in the book that I have not noticed that there was going to be a new Doctor. I was just getting up to the fact that we are loosing Donna as a companion. Sure she went out in a way that no one else had. Still, I think she was my favorite and to loos her only after one series is sad.

Tenant has been a good Doctor. Personally I always liked the older cranky doctors. I am not sure I am the one to guess about the next Doctor. I know that among most sci fi people this is some kind of sport.

The thing that has gone partly unnoticed is Russell Davies leaving the show. If something is going to change the character of the show it will be the producer.

Anyway it will be interesting to see what happens next year.

Moving on I have gotten through another round of editing the book. I have found just over seven hundred things that need changed. Most of these things are missing comas and little stuff. There were a couple continuity things and a couple things that really need rewritten. And yes i counted all the errors. That may sound weird or strange.

Also I have found 154 things that now need to be an entry in the Lexicon of this series. By the way the Lexicon thing is an encyclopedia for this series. Their is a nine foot long flow chart with the time line of the stories {I think that is really cool}. Of course it has the names of each character and their relevance to the story. I am about half way through adding all the new entries to the Lexicon. Which by the way, who even edits that thing will be clincally insain by the time they finish.

This is crazyness. I suppose I should have been a poet. Their stuff is really short. Well usually

A good time was had ketteling this week end. We went out Black Friday and Saturday. The Brigade did a great job. I continue to impressed by how well the young ones do at this. We are going to having our Christmas party this Sunday. We are going to an all you can eat pizza buffet. That should be fun.

Be safe out there and put something in the cyber kettle. Thank you and good night

Woo Hoo

Happy day someone put something my on line kettle. I was begining to think the think did not work., Or that I had done something wrong. Just looking at the bit of red at the bottom of the screen thing makes my heart all warm and fuzzy.

I am not sure what the etiquette is in a situation like this. I am not sure the person would want thanked publicly. If my gizmo took an email I will send a reply that way. Anyway the goal is 120 and this person gave ten.

Speaking of Kettle standing I was doing some real Kettle Standing in addition to cyber kettleing. Sergeant Thurman and I we standing Kettle in the Food Court of Century Three Mall.

A Great time was had by all. Our Capitana was playing the horn. Not being a horn type musical person I did not know what kind it was. Needless to say her horn playing is better than my accoridon.

Well be safe out there I have to get some sleep for more kettle in the morning.

Walt is no Lady

At practice today we were tumbling. this is when we throw ourselves on the ground. Since it is not funny for an adult to punch a kid we do it the other way around. So the kids were pushing me over for a good por5tion of the evening. The young folks find this to a very cathartic time.

Anyway during this time one of the young Apprentices said this sentance. "Walt is not a Lady." It was entirely out of left field and I had to menion it here.

But the way I am sorry to suggest that Walt is unlady like. Still, this was the funniest thing I have heard all month. And when I asked the kid why she said this she simply shrugged as if it was obvious. Well I had to bring this to you for no good reason.

Oh an my Kettle is still empty, please fill. My Captain hits me with a switch every time I walk past him because my kettle is empty. I am getting chaffed.

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

To Name or Not to Name

I decided to take a break from trying to edit the first book. I turned my attention to the chapters of the book. The book was written in multiple chucks. So it was not neatly carved up into chapters. This has me confused.

I cannot decide if I should name the chapters or not. Many of the Chapter named themselves. Now that I am past easy names life has gotten more complicated. There are 56 chapters at this point. It took me forever to name the silly book. It could take me a couple years to name all the chapters.

I suppose this is a small problem. I should be grateful that I got through the first book. AS for getting the thing close to being finished. I figure it will take me a month to edit it into some semblance of readable. At that point I think I will have to find some one to do some real editing. I wonder is Oliver is up to it.

On other front I had some time to catch up on some clown sewing today. I had a couple apprentice bags that needed finished. Also I made seven balloon pump holsters. I just need to pick up some snaps to finish those up. I will take some pictures of them when I figure out where I set the camera. It is probably on the dinning room table. It is simply too late to go looking for it.

Well I have places to be early in the morning so I should be going to get some sleep.

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

Corps Knitting

We had our third Knitting Night at the Corps yesterday. I think at this point every young person in the Brigade is knitting except for one. At this point I believe half our congregation is knitting. It is odd how something that is some times scorned can be used for good. Those who know the road the Brigade and our ministry has taken personally will know what that means.

Onto other items having to do with the Corps the Brigade will be standing Kettle at Century III Mall this Friday and Saturday. We will not being face still we will be there juggling and doing balloon animals. It you happen to be out and about stop by and see us.

If you cannot get to the mall there is also the handy kettle on my blog here. I suppose dropping change in a bucket is easier than what ever you have to do to put money in a cyber kettle. Never the less it is all going to the same place.

For some reason blogger is not letting me up load pictures today. It does that from time to time. I have been working on some drawing of the ships in the books. I also have watched the first couple season of Space Battle Ship Yamato. My story does not take place in a time when Humanity is as technologically advanced as they are in Yamato. Still, the Navy in my book has ships that are more like ocean going vessels.

None of the ships are resurrected World War II ships. Still, they do have hulls fit the types that one might find in the Navy today. Poking around on the internet there are all kinds of sci fi stories about ocean going ships that can go into space.

My idea started as what i thought would be a natural progression. The Navy has ships so they would be the ones with ships in space. Also it would be easier for something the size of an air craft carrier to land on Water.

Savage Chickens

Fun with a Tank

Here we see a picture of a knitted clown hat in action. This is kiddo after a show we had in Tarentum a month or so ago. I was busy with the book so I did not post it.

Also it is not a hat a made. Walt made this one as part of his work on the knitting Proficiency. I do believe that this hat is made out of Comfort yarn. If it is not Walt will correct me in the comments.

He made the pom pom on the clover pom pom makers. They are a great little gizmo.

This hat is also an example of how artificial yarn is superior to natural yarns. You folks may have though I had forgotten about the war against natural fibers. No not me I still have the fight for a acrylic in my heart.

Also on the clowning from from that day is us visiting a part in Tarentum. It had this nice tank. So we thought we should climb on it and take a picture. Well that is what we think you should do when there is a tank sitting in your park.

They even had ropes set up around the tank. They kept everyone else off the tank so that it would be empty when we arrived. That was very considerate of them.

I have also noted that my on line kettle is not full. When I am standing kettle I usually juggle, do balloon animals or sing. This is hard to on the blog. I will take some vids of us standing kettle so you get the same experience. Normally my kettle is full in six or eight hours. It has been a day and there is nothing in my kettle. This makes me sad.

I have also noted that if I sing enough people fill my kettle faster. Well we will see. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Savage Chickens

Kettles and Sprucing of the Blog

As you may have noticed there is a big huge add above the center column of this thing. This is the add for the blog kettle. My Corps needs money to keep doing to stuff we normally do. As you may or may not know it is getting harder and harder to make money standing out side of store. There are fewer store that are letting us stand. We also have competition from kids with cookies and various other groups. Mmmmmmm..... Tagalongs and thin Mints

Anyway if you can find it in your heart donate something to the Steel Valley Corps of The Salvation Army. Besides the Clown Brigade we have many other interesting and needed ministries. At some point I will ramble on about some of the ministries I am not involved in that we do.

Onto rampling about this blog. When i changed over to the layout thing I never did replace all the stuff that was on the old blog. I added the glossary of abbreviations on the mid right column. I also started adding Army terms. This has made Oliver terribly happy because he made the list. After many years and a dozen computers he feels like he is getting the recognistion he deserves. Apparently running the spell check for me is a terribly taxing thing. Unfortunately Squirells do not have a very good grasp of Grammer. So my comas and periods continue to go stray.

At the moment I am watching the Catherine Tate Show on BBC. America really needs to find a show for her over here. Perhapse something where she is a lawyer. This is a bit she did for Comic Relief with Daniel Craig.



They are running Catherine Tate's Dr. Who episode on BBC America now. So if you have not seen them you should take a look.

Well be safe out there and fill my Kettle.

Labels????

Do people use the label things?

When i started this blog the label thing was hard to use so I never used it. Do people realy use them. I have been going back to old posts and adding labels. I would just like to know if my efforts are silly.

2:00 AM

Well another evening turn early morning has been spent with the crew of the Tojo Maru. It is odd working on a book like this. Every character has an entry in a lexicon that says where and when they were born and what they should look like. The most important character have a complete biography. Where they went to school who their family is. In a lot of ways I know them better than most of the people in my life.

I know that the church in my story will eventually do the right thing. I know that the people in the books will reach the detonations and achieve the goals that they should. Oddly the same cannot be said for the people in my own corps or church.

For so many years The Steel Valley Corps, my church, has been a neglected part of The Army. The Army in the Eastern Territory has a nasty habit of moving around their officers too much. I am certain there are good reasons for it. Falling church attendance a limited soldiery to get new officer from. It is a terrible cycle that appears next to impossible to break.

In the books it is broken by a group of people that say that it is not good enough. They simply decide that things should be a different way and they make it that way. It is odd how we in the real world choose to complicate things. We say to ourselves there is just one little compromise and then everything will be alright.

I sometimes think that is how the Devil works. Oh the old guy with horns is an easy scape goat. It may even be romantic to think their are demons fighting over us. Much like CS Lewis wrote in the Screwtape Letters. I am begining to think that old Satan does not have to interfear nearly as much as we would like to beleive he does.

We as Humans appear so able to latch onto the smallest detail of religion, nationhood or some other obscure beleif. Then before we know it we are ready to murder or kill for something abstract.

I suppose that is one of the things that has made writting these books so enjoyable. None of the characters are truely heros in white. They are simply people trying to do the best they can in uncertain times.

What brings this on is the character Mason. All of the other character appear so simple to me. If I want Fleet Lord Jefferson to do something I know what his character should do. I know what he as man is capible of. Mason I am never so sure. To clarify her character in this book I had to write a meeting between her and her adopted father. I had a clear goal explain her past enough to make her character understandable.

As I wrote about her I realised she had always been conflicted by her duty and doing the right thing. She is not able to do everything that she wants to. She knows terrible secrets that must remain secret. It is a taxing burden on her and she has no one to share the load with. I found myself thinking it druel that I had painted a character into such a corner. I suppose in many ways she is the savior character in the book. And like Christ she only has her faith to get her through.

I get the feeling that the more she goes through the less faith she has. At this point she is simply doing it because it was she is supposed to do. Even if that is her motivation it cannot be any other way. A character tragic in her solitude.

Well that is enough rambling for now. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Some Thoughts on Kettles

We have not completely given up on the Video thing. This is some stuff we shot on Kettle.

Knitting Stuff

The last couple weeks out Monday Knitting Group has been at our Corps in Homestead. The apprentices in the Brigade want to learn to knit. The group has become where we teach the Clown of The Brigade to knit. Now that there are a bunch of young folks in the Brigade it is easier to move the meeting than move the Brigade.

By the way that is Apprentices Thurman, Wilson and Brimage. Aren't they cute this is their first knitting group. Walt is in the fore ground working on some socks I think.

This is my and another Apprentice Brimage. She is the youngest Apprentice in the Brigade. I think she likes the idea of knitting. The practice of knitting is another thing.

By the way this took place in the Clown Room at our Corps. WE are still working on putting the room together. At the moment it dose not have an overhead light. So we are using the old makeshift lighting that the Knitting group used at the Bee Hive. It is not so good for photography.

My wife was around there somewhere trying not to be associated with me. That is a common thing for her when we are out in public. Still, I don;t mind eating with a ski mask on while at restaurants. Although it is much harder to go into airports that way these days.

Well look at that I actually had some knitting news. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Yamato

I am really getting sick of having ships in my books that people have already done stories about.

In the second book the Japanese Navy gets involved. In doing my research on what I should name ships in the Japanese Fleet I cam across the Yamato. Well actually I had heard of it before being interested in the second world war. Any way Yamato is one of those supper cool names that you just have to use. Not only that but in the lore of the Japanese Navy it holds a similar place to the USS Constitution or WWII USS Enterprise.

So how could I not use it. So in the second book when Japan send a fleet to fight in the five planet's war the Yamato is the flag ship of this force. Besides simply being an old ship that name also implied the spirit of the Japanese people. Their willingness to help the former Crel slaves is one of the thing that legitimises their position. And sending such an important fleet only adds to the weight they feel the situation deserves.

Oh by the way this is one of those entries I am am going to babel about stuff no one cares about. There is some knitting news. Still, that will be in another entry.

Anyway so the real Yamato was sunk by American Forces. Apparently there was a cartoon in the seventies in Japan about this ship resurrected.

Humanity is being wiped out by bad guy from another planet. The Earth has been burnt to a crisp. They are secretly building a star ship inside the wreck of the Yamato that is now exposed on the ocean floor because the water is gone.

Humanity get a message from an advanced race that give them that ability to build a faster than light ship with wicked weapons. So they convert the Yamato back into a war ship this time a space battle ship. Incidentally that hole in her bow is capable is firring a blast that can destroy a whole fleet of ship. They use to to destroy a planet, star and countless ships.

further research on the You tube showed that I have actually seen this already. Apparently when it was dubbed into English they renamed the ship the Argo. How can you have the Pride of Japan named after something Greek?

Disney, by the way please save us from Disney, wanted to make an American version of this. They were going to use the Arizona instead of the Yamato. Wow that would have truly offensive. Taking a ship that people can walk up to and look at as a memorial and change it into a cartoon. By the way this is why someone need to save us from Disney.

Also on the Book front I have decide to number the Series. It should have made sense to me early on. Although what is the third Series I started first. So it would not have work out chronologically. Still, you can't have everything. Moving along the book I was rambling on about is Book 2 of Series 1. I have a working title for it, still, I am not sure so i don't want to use it here.

I can imagine what would happen if they actually become popular and sci fi nerd try and pick them apart using stray comment from my knitting blog.

Oh well be safe out there and keep you stick on the ice.

Been a While

I have been working on the book with every spare moment. When I have time that I am not working on the Book I am Practicing with the the Brigade or working on the Brigade handbooks.

The book has gone a bit crazy. It is over three hundred pages and I am still writing chapters to insert to explain what is happening. I am beginning to think that it is too complicated. So for the moment I am not writing anything new for the book. For the last week I have been editing a print out of the book. There are few things that I am worse at than trying to edit something. Besides my usual spelling and grammar short coming it is boring.

On the up side writing the clown handbook is going like gang busters. The first section is mostly done and the second is very close. The third section is the largest and most complex of the first six sections. It is about half way done. Walt and I figure that we can have it done by the end of this month. There are a ton of pictures that have to go into this section. Fortunately we have a bunch of photogenic apprentice clowns. So working on the pictures should not be a big deal. JC Prelue did the pictures for seven balloon animal in less than a couple hours. So in reality we probably have ten or so hours of taking pictures for the section.

Incidentally I should probably explain what I am rambling on about. In order to clone our clown Brigade in other Division of The Salvation Army we are going to need instructional materials. Each section concentrates on an area of clown study. So when it is finished there will be a modular handbook that new clowns can learn from. At first we wanted to form a library of all the books that one would need. When we started working on the list we gave up after fourty books.

Also there is not definitive work on clown ministry and humor therapy. So it is up to us to come up with something. The first section is basic information on the Brigade, ranks, The eleven Doctrine of The Salvation Army, Equipment that sort of thing.

The Second section is all of the rules and polity of the organization. The last couple years there has been a great deal of experimentation in this area. There is a very definite way that a circus clown troupe is set up. There is a deffinite way that a church groups are set up. There is not a great deal of over lap between the two. Ironically The Salvation Army military structure is fairly compadible with the Circus. Actually there are a great many similarities between clown and circus history and The Salvation Army, but I digress.

Nine months ago we put together a Brigade Council. This is similar to the Clown or Troupe Council that would rule a clown Troupe or one of the old performing guilds. In the last few months some of the problems with running the Brigade have started to right themselves.


Anyway back to the handbook. The third section is the first Proficiency. From this point on each section is a Proficiency or a sort of clown merit badge. This one is the basic clowning. There is the different type of clowns. The first Fifteen Balloon animals, first ten ledgermain tricks, basic juggling and the performing rules for a clown. We have half the balloon animals done and the juggling stuff done. WE also have the types of clown stuff done as well.

The other three section that have to with Ledgermain {Magic}, Ballon Animals and Juggling. Each of these section has to do with each of these skills in a more compelte way. These sections are for clowns that are going to specialise in that area. By the way there are currently 28 proficiencies we have with another ten or so we will have in the next year. So each of these sections needs a section written for it. And some like balloon need a section for every fourty or fifty balloons. So that one will have four or five sections.

We want to have the first six sections done for our training retreat in the spring.

Anyway I have no idea why any of this would be any interest to anyone but my clowns. And come to think of it I think Walk is the only one of these that reads this blog. And since he is at all the meeting this was even more pointless than usual. In addition to that it was probably hard to read. I usually make some attempt to edit this thing, believe it or not. Any way I phones that in this time.

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