Godzilla

To Sergeant Arasin this is the link for Godzilla Final Wars. If you are into Godzilla this is a must. It has one of the best Godzilla suits and the most random plot any of the movies. Cracle will not let me imbed it so here if the link enjoy.

http://www.crackle.com/c/Godzilla_Final_Wars/Godzilla_Final_Wars/2448577/

Theme Song Evangeline Booth

The young daughter of the Both family also has a song that jumped out at me.

Theme Songs Yamato Yukawa - JS YAMATO

As a random excise I have been thinking about what type of music best represents a character that I am working on. This is Japanese song that I think fits the Chracter Yamato Yukawa very well.

Randomness Part 5,692

My various adventures in this and that continue.

We had a fairly good practice yesterday. Our juggler are still moving along. Much Sergeant Thurman's chagrin she was teaching people to juggle. For someone that pretends to be so grumpy much of the time she is fairly good at giving people instruction. So that is promising as always.

The drawing cartooon thing is coming along a great deal better than I thought it would. Frankly I though I would be incredibly bad at it. So it is nice that something nice is happening in that way. I will stick up some more pictures when I scan them in.

I have been having a very hard time With Katherine Mason. I suppose she is the character that I have worked on the most. Perhapse I have such an image of her in my mind that I cannot place it on paper in a way that satisfies me. Well I will have to keep at it.

This was also the last sign language class in this section. Well I was just checking in. I think I need to hit the hay.

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

Commodore Yamato Yukawa

I have really noticed that coloring these things with pencils is not the way to go. Granted I am using a childcare's set of colored pencils. they are not professional style ones. I did break down and a couple of good pens to do the black lines with. Still I am doing stuff with childcare's implements. Even so it does reflect where I am in this process.

Well anyway this is Commodore Yamto Yukawa. She is of course Japanese and not exactly Humans. She is the Android Avatar for the battle ship Yamato. Being that she is self awware she has been adopted by Dr. Yukawa.

She is fun character because she chooses to stay in a child like body. There are several reasons for this including the fact that you don't think she is threat until she wants you to think that she is a threat. She is a character that I have been playing around with for years. I am not sure how many of the short stories about her and plot outlines are actually going to part of who she is in these stories. Of all the character she is the one that has the least set about her. I know what is going to happen to everyone else. Her I am not sure yet.

She an Evangeline have a very special relationship in this series. Because the Yamato chooses to stay at this age physically she has more in common with Evangeline. Her past times are solitary and in some ways a bit juvenile. She likes to draw and prefers to read. She also like her father has to come to term with her abilities that are far more than the average Humans.

Well just checking in. Have a good morning everyone. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Evangeline Booth

This is the first picture that I have attempted. It is Evangeline Booth who is one of the main characters. As it goes I am not entirely sure what it should look like. Well i suppose I know what Evangeline should look like.

Well it is the first attempt at a picture from the Pennsylvania Faction

If any one has suggestions I am open to them

A Strange Adventure

One of thing that I have always been convinced that i cannot do is draw. I never had much luck in art classes so I just figured that it was not one of my talents.

For some strange reason I got it in my head that I should have the first set of short stories turned into some kind of Anime. They have a bizzar enemy and the entire thing is stuck in a world caused by a horrible temporal shift. So it is the kind of thing that would make a great cartoon type thing if you are into it.

Actually the idea came from a couple of the Elves. I will get back to the Elves later.

It was also a series that I have thought was a bit silly. So I never did anything with it. It was just the back story to the more important Salvation Navy and Ignored Calling arc of stories.

Anyway, the elves are a group of people who have read part or heard of the various plot lines. Some of the Elves are people that I know in the real world. Other elves are people that I know on line and i have never met in real life. In the last year or so there have been several people from Japan who have been commenting on the various things that I have been rambling about. A couple of these elves have read chunks of Ballington Booth's Legacy. They noted that the Character Major General James Booth had time traveled before but there is no mention of details in the story. There was someone with a rather bigoted view of the world. Booth commented that he had faught and defeated people like them before.

The Japanese Elves asked who Booth had faught. I replied in an email to an Elf that he had faught the NAzis when an alien race helped them win the second world war. Since the entire plot was preposterous I never really did much with it other than write the short stories in high school and throw them in a drawer. This particular elf continued to ask questions and I sent them the only chucnk of the story that was typed into an electronic media. they thought it was wonderful and would make a terrific anime type comic thing.

I floated the idea of illustrating the sory with a couple folk who do the drawing kind of thing and they thought it was neat but were too busy to do it themselves. The Elf then suggested that i attempt to do it referring the the picture of ships that I have drawn that occasionally appear on this blog type thing that i ramble through from time to time. I told them I couldn't and they suggested that i give it a shot. So i bought a book and followed the directions.

In a strange sort of thing it was not entirely bad. I am not sure if this is something that I can practice and do or not. So I suppose I am going to give this foolishness a shot. Perhpse I might even finish something for a change.

Scribling Stuff Here There and on the Internet

Still trying to get back into the swing of blogging. When I started this thing I was adding a post everyday. Now I am luck if I do it once a week.

It might have something to do with the amount of writing that I am doing on other fronts. I am still slugging away at the science fiction series. I am very please with how that is going. Chopping up the first round of stories into short stories has been an interesting thing. It will not work for the later stoies. They ar simply too complicated. Still it is an interesting thing.

Of course I am still slowly chipping away at the clown ubertext. i do think that I am going to die with that unfinished. I suppose that is why I am training new clowns. i will need a new master to take my place when i shuffle off this mortal coil.

The Clown brigade has decided to put together an entirely new show. This show will be based on the parable of the rich man. This is fun scripture that has all kinds of stuff that clowns can do with it. I am frankly surprised that we had not used it yet.

One of the more interesting things with this show if that we are going to write some of the music that is going into the show. The truely rough part is trying to write church music on an accordion. I think that there is a special place in Hell for people that perform the kind of music we are doing on the accordion.

Also two of the younger clowns are writing bits for the show. One of the young ladies that is writing stuff for the show is dangerously close to getting a writing proficiency. I think that will put her within one proficiency of getting the Standard Clown Rank. It will be like the old times. Someone that is not even a teenager earning such a lofty clown rank. Good Times

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

Juggling Progress

Two of our Jr Clowns and an Apprentice are working on rings and scarves. With out my asking them they have begun team juggling. This is great. We have been having issued with juggling. Frankly I can understand why someone would hate juggling. I was not very good at it while I was learning. And even though i can do it now I am still not that good at it. I suppose I am better than some still, there are a slew of people that are better than me.

Anyway today i am heading out to pick up a new batch of juggling equipment. It does a heart good to see progress in such things.

Out ad in the paper started yesterday looking for new clowns. This add will also help us figure out where our advertising dollars should best be spent for a Clown for Hire type business.

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

Radio 1

I has been a kind of Radio 1 day.It is odd because yesterday was definitely a radio 6 day.

Anyway I have been working on this and that today nothing terribly focused. Anyway I have been listening to the punk show on Radio 1. it is the sort of music that you cannot get on the radio around this.

Yester was waiting for the new Who to appear on the web. So of course the was the Craig Charles Funk Show on BBC 6. Perhpase I have a Brittish reader or two that will relate to some of this.

Anyway I am really behind on my knitting. i did not even finish my winter knitting for this year and Easter has come and gone. I suppose that doing a bunch of sewing has killed by knitting. Still you cannot take the machine on the bus so that has been some knitting getting done just not much.

Well I am just checkin in for some random sillyness. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

There are Days

There are days when i know that I am a huge nerd. This happens to be one of those days.

Today was the premire of the fifth Dr. Who of the reincarnation with Matt Smith as the Doctor. Like everyone with a new Dr. you wonder if he is going to be good. I remeber when Colin Baker back the Dr. i was not impressed. Sylvester McCoy was better but he was no Tom Baker.

No matter how you cut it was a great episode. I will not go into detail because it has not aired in the states. Still great on multiple levels. I will say that he did not work with the Tardis and he did everything with out his normal tech. It was wonderful.

Also I found a store in the Strip that sells the economy size Pocky. There are ni9ne packets for four dollars. That is awesome on multiple levels. The Brigade is going to be seriously happy with my new find. There is Pocky for everyone just in time for Easter. And frankly i was willing to blow 20 bucks to get Pocky for everyone. Nice to know that I do not have to.

Gozilla

I have been scouring the internet looking for information on the new Godzilla Movie. All I have found thus far is several refferences to something the Legendary Pictures is going to do. There are no detail just that they have aquired the right from Toho. Which of course the last American version was terrible. I suppose the effect were alright but I personally did not like the monster nor was it very well written.

Well I suppose I still like the whole idea of a man in a suit terrorssing a tiny little Tokyo. There are a couple youtube video of something that they claim is a new trailer for the next Godzilla movie. The moster is different but still not the igona looking thing that Mathew Broderick has to fight. If I am not mistaken the monster is gray instead of it greenish. Still it lookes much like Godzilla should look.

The only thing I am worried about is anAmerican company making a bad Godzilla movie with the real monster. That might really hurt their comeback. Still the Zilla monster did get Toho to make a new batch. So maybe American failure will be Japanese success.

Well be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Musical Stuff

Long time readers of this blog will know that I do not have much of an attention span. I tend to bounce around from subject to subject. That sad thing is that this tends to be how things go in my life

The things that I have been rattling around with for the last couple month is music. Everything from Jpop to bagpise music are on my MP3 player. Recently I have been adding gospel music to the mix. I have my player plugged into the computer and on the random setting these are the songs that it has played

Flower of Scotland on the bagpipes
Battlefield by Norman Hutchins
Wo Wa by Namie Amuro
Barney Miller Theme Song
Spring by Vivaldi
Go Down Moses by George Shaw
Llevame by Soroya
Bloody Sunday by U2
All About the Girls by MiChi
Kiko by Los Lobos

I am not sure what this has to do with anything. I knew and old man that said that one could judge someone by the kind of music that they listen. I do wonder what kind of opinion one would draw from this kind of musical selections.

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

Summer Time Shows

When we first started to Clown brigade we never thought that we would be doing birthday parties. Our goal in life was to visit people in hospitals and do church shows. Over the last couple months more and more people ave been asking us to do their kids birthday party. I am not exactly sure why this is.

Perhaps since we have left the Army we have been wearing our own uniform and shirts and it is more apparent that we are clowns. Maybe the community that surrounds Second baptist Church is more supportive of their members than the Army was. What ever the reason the Brigade is talking about doing shows for profit.

The general consensus appears to be that a portion of what ever we make should go into the Brigade to fund our nonprofit work. At this moment it is still in debate. So we will see how it goes.

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

Musical Randomness

I have been watching a lot of Godzilla recently. As of now I have officially watched every Godzilla movie at least three times except for the American one. I saw that American one in the theaters and was not impressed. i mean enough stuff blew up. It was just not the real Godzilla.

Anyway, I still think the good people at TOHO should attack an American City. A man in a Suit going through LA would entertain me to no end. Granted LA is not as entertaining at New York being destroyed.

Anyway the one thing that i have been looking for is a good version of the Gozilla March. i have not been able to find it. there are a couple version on the youtube. Still I have not found the song itself anywhere. i wonder if there is music to it out there. I am not sure why it is important to me.

Actually music has been a preoccupation of mine for some time. Granted there are few people out that that should probably stay away from music more than me. There are just so many horrible things that I have done to music. Frankly my accodion playing is unforgivable. Perhapse if i could find someone to teach me I would be better. Unfortunately there is no one in the city of Pittsburgh that is giving accordion lessons. It is really a shame. So I have been trying to learn that on my own.

The other unspeakable thing that i am doing to music at the moment is singing in the church Choir. Extemporaneous music is something that i am truly not prepared for. Our Choir Director has been very patient with me. Sadly i do not appear to be getting it. I suppose more practive is order.

As usual this has been pointless and has been brought to you by the letter W for Waste of time. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

A while Away

It has been a while. The last couple week we have had internet issues around here. And when the internet was working I used the time to do research for what ever I was working on at that moment.

So with everything working I have more time to spend on the things that do not really accomplish that much. Long time readers of this blog will have to admit that very little is acomplished in these pages.

Well onto other things. There is something rather strange about the stories that I have been working on that I have not dealt with over the last few years. There is some kind of horrible secret that bonds the Booth Family to the Jefferson Family. Evangeline Booth/Jefferson has a strange relationship with her husband where the two of them have been visiting each other over the entirety of their lives.

Well frankly I have never really bothered to come up with what that secret is. It is just something that is always there. It is the five hundred pound elephant in the room. I figured out what would bind them all together.

Granted I am not going to say what it is. I will have to write it in at some point. Still this is something that I have been considering for a very long time. It is also something that gives the character James Booth the perfect exit. I am looking forward to playing around with this.


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

Meatloaf Does Funk

I just heard this meatloaf track from the early seventies. He apparently did Who is the Leader of the People. If is awesome. It was released ten years after he recorded it because he had some kind of argument with mo town records. Meatloaf and mo town records wow those words in the same sentence. I suppose there has always been something just a bit funky about Meatloaf.


Well this is another song that i owe to Craig Charles and his Funk show on BBC 6. It just does not get better than this. If you have not listened to this show is is better than a bucket of cotton candy with a cherry cola. That is good by the way.

I do think my tastes are beging to shift again. Once upon a time I would listen to BBC 2 almost all the time. The BBC 1 started creeping in there. Then there was the jpop thing. Now I am onto BBC 1 and BBC 6 this is crazy stuff folks. I imagine the Brits that read this might understand why that is strange. Still it is a shift none the less.

Something that i have always thought about is a soundtrack for various things. My own personal sound track is messed up to say the least.

With the Brigade now on it's own I have been thinking about what kind of soundtrack they should have. We are going to have to retool the show. I must say my time at second Baptist has given me a new love of Gospel. Even so I am not sure Gospel is quite right for the way that things are with the show. I am thinking about writing a new show. That would leave it open for what ever kind of music we want to do. Still it is something that we really need to think about. With the Army there was a certain type of music. It felt right and it was always there. If anyone has some ideas I am open to them.

Something else that I am wondering about is the soundtrack of the various character in my books. Various Character already have a soundtrack.

Brigadier Mason is mix Speed Metal and British Rock. Even thogh she is one of the good guys you get the feeling that she is capible of unspeakable evil if the situation requires it.

The newer Character Yamato Yukawa is easy she is jpop and jrock. She is a Versailles and Gackt fan with some Morning Musume and Namie Amuro thrown in there. She is adorable but also you get the feeling that she does not understand the necessity for morality.

This has led me to ponder some characters that I had not thought about.

There is Evangeline Jefferson. Now she is a time traveler who is a baseball fan. She is a huge Roberto Clemente Fan. the time that she specialised in was the late 20th century. So she is an eighties pop fan. There is a point in the story when she is listening to Curel Summer from bannanaramma.

There is her father James Booth. I am all over the place on him. I have his character wlell defined. I am just having some trouble where he should be. At the moment I have him listening to Jazz. He is also a time traveler that one used hi abilities to see BB King in a crummy hole in the wall club before he was BB King. So I know there is Jazz.

He is an uncomprimising man that has unblemished character. he and Mason are often going round and round about tactics. He is the jimminy cricket of the book on occasion. So there is that one that end. I would like to fill out his musical background. Also being a Salvation Army Officer he must play and instrument. I have established that he cannot sing. i am not sure what he should play,

The takes me to John Jefferson. I have not a clue on him. He is a black man that was raised in the US Navy by a father that was into mo town. i do have him liking Ray Charles. Still there is something wrong with you if you do not like at leaste three Ray Charles Songs. i am serious if you do not like that many Ray Charles Songs you have a character defect. By the way Mason only like two Ray Charles Songs.

He has lost his faith in the church but not God. I am thinking that he likes funk and maybe some rock and roll. I am not sure about him. In most of the stories I have been working on he is a background character. In the current story he is a young man of nineteen and and older man.

Well if you have any ideas I am up for them. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Scottish People Can Cook

I am not much of a cook. I am certainly not trained in any way. i have never even taken a class at a community center for fun. There is a certain cultural bias that states that Scottish People cannot cook. Well It is a nation that has spend a great deal of it's history on the verge of starvation. that sort of heritage does not lend itself to being wonderful with food.

Something else that i do not get is cooking shows. My wife loves them. I have watched a couple of them if I know they are making something that I might want to make. I have had an interest in Asian food recently. So I have been watch clips from Yang can Cook on the youtube. I think I watched Jeff Smith make shepard's pie before he was pulled off the air. That is about the extent of it.

My wife can watch these shows all day. i cannot get it. It is like she is watching Law & Order.

Anyway i was watching BBC America while typing on the computer. I was not paying very much attention when the show went off. I heard that there was a guy named Gordon Ramsey that was going to tell people how to run a resteraunt. It sounded like Ghingus Kahn was going to give therapeutic advice to Sigmund Freud. So I watch the first few minutes of the show expecting some kind of train wreck. And certainly there was a train wreck.

The thing that i was not exspecting was that I was going to find the show interesting. i mean I have no desire or care about cooking in the way these people appear to. Still there is a fascinating amount of drama and passion that goes into.

i suppose I always had the idea it was some kind of art. Certainly i can tell that a steak is better from a five star resteraunt than from a Waffle house. The things you learn when you are stumbling through.

Be safe out there and keep your stick onthe ice.

There are Days

I sepnt a couple hour working on section 1 of the clown handbook. being that it is the basic clowning section i think i am obsessing over it. it is also the material we will be teaching in the march training session. So I would really like to have it perfect. In going through it today i found a couple picture in the balloon portion of the text that i do not like. I mean for crimeny sake I thought I was done with them. You just want to cry sometimes.

Anyway I hope that Walt and I will have some time to take some pictures on tuesday. It would really be nice to make some progress on this bad boy at some point.

that leads us to some confusion on the juggling section tough. We are debating to some extent what should be the first thing that is juggled. My opinion is that it should always be balls. Sadly I think this opinion may be overshadowing what other people's ideas might be. a couple of the young sergeant have made a case for scarves. When they first suggested it I thought they were wrong. Still the more that i talk to other people there are many out there that like scarves. And to make it even more confusing there are those that say it should be rings.

To experiment with the ring thing I have tried team juggling rings with Sergeant Thurman. even though she had never team juggled before she almost has ring. Number one this completely shakes my faith in starting team juggling with clubs. It also give a strong argument for learning on rings. Yep I suppose this will have to seriously examined.

Well If anyone jugglers out there want to weigh in I am listening.

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

Snow

A couple of feet of snow fell on the city of Pittsburgh today. Today was mostly occupied with shoveling snow. The way that my yard is set up caused the snow to drift. So in my yard the snow was nearly waist deep. This was great fun for Sally who had never seen that much snow before.

The fall out from this much snow is that church has been consoled and the buses were not really running today. Also I lost power at my house. Well there is not much more to say about snow.

So be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

The New Flying Apparatus Bag

The Flying Apparatus bag continues to be the center of aggravation for my Universe. Sgt. Arrasin has an incredibly great idea for the Apparatus bag. Instead of having three seperate club pouches there should be one large single one. This of course required the complete redesign of the bag. It also meant that the handle had to connect with the bag at a place not on the outside edge of the bag.

On the old bag the bit of webbing that held the handle in place was simply sewn into the outside seam of the bag. This made it very strong. In the new design the handle is attached to the side wall of the interior ball pouch. With out going into diagrams in the old design all this part has to do was to keep the balls from getting into the main pocket. In the new design it has to hold half the weight of a rather heavy bag. So to make sure this worked out i doubled up the material on this price. If figured that would be enough. As you might imagine since I am writing about it I was wrong.


One bag has been made thus far to test the design. The new doubled up piece has held together alright. Sadly it is tearing away from the front and back of the bag. On the prototype bag this means that it had to be dramatically reinforced. currently I have attached a two inch ring of material around the outside of the ball pouch and another around the inside of the ball pouch. In the production models a piece of webbing will have to be sewn around this area to have the same effect without the less than elegant repair that i have made.

Well that is all the sewing related rambling that I have for the moment

On the knitting front I have been playing around with cables. Cables are something that I enjoy doing some of the time. If i have to do them for a project I find that i loose interest. I am making a green scarf for one of the church ladies. I will post a pciture when I am finished.

Well be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Demise of the Music

The Yahoo music people have been bought or taken over by someone else. In doing this they destroyed the personal radio stations that a person could set up. This has saddened my greatly.

For anyone that listened to my radio station they may have noted that I have very strange musical tastes. Actually my musical tastes are all over the place. Everything from bag rock to jpop to classica and American Rock and Roll. Heck I even like Grand Master Flash and Norman de la Joya. I bet you never thought you would see those two names in the same sentence.

And I am with the Israel Symphony in the belief that Wagner has no place in music. I mean good greif the ring operas are seventeen hour or something like that. In addition to that he kills all the characters in the first hour and they have to come back as ghosts to haunt a new batch of character. I think it was symbolic of his audiences that off themselves before the first intermission.

Well anyway I am looking for a place when I can select songs and create a new personal radio station. If anyone know of such a place please let me know. Perhaps that is something that i need to set up. If I had a mission dollars I would set up such a web site for myself. Actually I should probably buy a building for the Church that the Clown Brigade is starting. Well anyway that is another subject.

Anywho to fill the gap at the loss of my radio station I am listening to half a dozen or so other radio stations. Replacing the link to my radio station are the links to the radio stations and shows that i am listening to at the moment. I do apologies a couple of them are a bit on the glitchy side.

One of the Links is to the Charles Graig Radio show on BBC Radio. this is a great little radio show. For the sci fi junkies out there Charles Craig was Dave Lister on Red Dwarf. In his character he is a no talent hack that has no taste in music. On the BBC he has great taste in music. The other great think about his show is that he is ahead of the curve on much of the music that he plays. Some of the music that he plays never even gets a listen in the US. Well it is wonderful stuff.

Speaking of wonderful stuff there is of course BBC 1 the perennial pop music favorite. A I recall they were among the first to have online radio service. As with Charles Craig they are ahead of the curve in the new music area. Of course they also have the inside track on British rock and roll.

I have had less luck finding jpop and jrock radio stations. There was a hardcore jrock radio station that i used to listen to. They are now J1 which claims to be pure jpop music, what ever that is. Well I added them and will be giving them a listen in the next couple weeks. I have the on at the moment and I like what I am hearing thus far. If anyone know of a real jrock station let me know.

Well if anyone knows of a place that i can start a radio station like they used to had on the Yahoo Music let me know. In the mean time I will continued my search for the perfect online radio station for me.

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.

JS Yamato

Well after a time working on The Sullivans short story I have added the Yamato to the story. In the original there was a time traveler who I only identified as the Japanese Girl. I left it open that it might be Katherine Mason or someone else. For the purpose of the original short story it did not make much difference. Still it will give the story more depth if the Yamato ties in with the books.

By the way for those that like pictures this is a line drawing of the Yamato. She is an advanced battle ship built by the nation of Japan. She is of course named for the Yamato that was sunk by United States Forces during the Second World War. The name Yamato also mean spirit of Japan or something to that effect. Her computer is highly advanced and self aware. She is program to approximate the behavior or a Japanese woman. She chooses to remain as a child in her avatar for for various reasons. Adding her to the first story give some interesting perspective on some of the other Character. The story centers in two character for the most part James and Evangeline Booth.

James is Evangeline's father and after many years is still mourning the death of his wife. James has an obsession with the origins of the Saucer People. He discovers on of their battle cruisers and secretly rebuilds it. His daughter is along for the ride. In this short story she is almost ten. At some point before the story Booth and his daughter went off to try and find the origens of the saucer people in their rebuilt battle cruiser they named the Sarah. The Booth discover that the Saucer People never went anyway. They were escaped slaves who created the facade of the Saucer People to wadge a war against their oppressors. The war was still going on and Booth could not talk about his finding.

James Booth was an officer in The Salvation Army who discovered that many of the Saucer People were Christian who felt they were members of The Salvation Army. For some reason this gets him in trouble with his superiors. Booth ends up as a Chaplain in The United States Navy.

The nice thing about adding the Yamato is that Evangeline is no ordinary child. She know that there is war coming between time travelers. This war will be fought around the physical and spiritual fate of the Saucer People. Evangeline can related to the Yamato because of the form that she takes. The hard part with the original story is that you have this kid, Evangeline, on a navy ship getting under foot. With another kid running around that is a star ship it give some extra inroads for Evangeline. Well I am still playing around with it.

The nice thing as that it will be finished sooner than a book would be. Good times

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

New first couple pages

Well I am experimenting with a new begining to the short sotry. tell me what you thinl

“Dad, I think we found them.” stated a young girl operating a computer station in a vast round command center.

“Are you sure?” asked her father who was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt. He was a good looking man of a certain age. He was also laboring over a computer station.

“I am picking up the Dreadnaught Fleet and Saucer City. I cannot tell anything else until we are out of the Quantum flux field.”

The father looked over her readings. He checked them again and looked to his daughter.

“Alright Honey,” stated the man.

He hit a couple buttons and the dome they were under turned white. The young lady walked into the center that was dominated by a large table that looked as if it’s top was made of glass.

On the outskirts of the Wolf 359 System a blue ball of electricity formed a grew.

“We are near something?” stated the young girl as she watched a projection of the electric blue cloud appeared as a three dimensional hologram in the center of the table.

Their saucer emerged from the cloud and was greeted by weapons fire from the ship they disturbed. In the command center the weapon’s impact registered as little more than an alarm from the ship’s computer.

“They are using Liposean Disruptors.” stated the little girl.

“Raising the shields.” stated the man behind the first ring of computer stations.

Over the table a fleet of a couple hundred ships appeared. The man exhaled and the young lady whistled.

“That is a lot of ships Dad.” stated the young lady as weapons continued to impact harmlessly on their hull.

“Computer, make a note.” began the father. “The accepted date for the Third Battle of Saucer City is incorrect.” stated the man as he began to maneuver his ship away from a large red brown starship that was closing on their position.

“Eva, warm up the jump engines.” stated the man.

The young lady hit a button on the table and the dome that enclosed them appeared to become transparent. A large dirty ship made an attack run over their dorsal section. The blasts of yellow energy impacted their shields and dissipated without rattling the ship.

“I did not need to see that, Eva.” stated the man.

Young Evangeline made her way to a computer station across the holotable from her father.

“This is a rare opportunity to study the battle tactics of the twenty third Vral Dynasty.” she piped up unapologetically.

As Evangeline defended herself an attractive woman appeared in the center of the Bridge. Her dark ebony skin was young and supple over a muscular but gaunt frame. Her bleach white hair was braided with braids that terminated in a bun at the back of her head. Her ice blue eyes were startling to say the least.

“Can I be of some assistance?” she asked calmly as if they had not appeared in the middle of a belligerent fleet.

“You can tell me why Fleet Lord Stone gave us the wrong date.” stated the man dodging his saucer through a formation of Vral Cruisers.

“On this date the Fleet Lord knew there would be an invincible ship that would pass thought the Vral Fleet. He gave you a date and time that would facilitate that scenario.”

“I wish you people would leave Eva and I would of your war.”

As he spoke the saucer passed close enough to a ship above them to brush shields. The energy discharge fed back on the less sophisticated Vral ship. A geyser of fire briefly erupted from where their shield generator exploded.

“Your contribution to this battle is invaluable. Their attack on you gives away the Vral position. It is one of the first uses of a cloaking field on their part.”

“Dad one of the smaller cruisers.”

“I see it.” stated her father as he violently altered the ship’s course.

“The cruiser barely missed as the saucer twisted and dodged between two large cruisers. As they emerged from between the cruisers another ploughed into their starboard side. The saucer rocked gently as the forward compartments of the Vral Warrior collapsed against their shields. The saucer turned out of the impact heading for a gap in the fleet.

“Did they ram us” asked the man.

“Yes Captain Booth. Since their weapons cannot penetrate your shields they are ramming you.” stated the gaunt woman.

“Evangeline, shield strength.” asked Booth.

“Ninety nine percent, they barely scratched us.” she stated with a bit of excitement.

Booth watched the blue disk among the red ships on the holographic display. As he watched another cruiser rammed into them devastating their bow as their ship crumpled against the saucer’s shields.

“It didn’t work with the first one. Why are they still doing it” asked Booth looking for some advice from his cryptic advisor.

“That one was defending their Flag Ship.” stated the woman.

“What Flag …..” before he could finish his sentence the ship was engulfed in a fire ball. The bow of a massive ship appeared from invisibility almost as if it was trying to escape the first storm.

As their saucer emerged the alien bow was consumed by a brief fire ball as it claimed the rest of the ship.

“That Flag Ship.” stated the woman answering Booth’s question before he could finish it. While she turned toward Booth their saucer passed through another large ship destroying it as they went.

Booth violently turned his ship away from the void in the center of the fleet.

“Why didn’t you tell me that area was full of cloaked ships?” asked Booth choosing the targets he could dodge.

“You did not ask.” replied the helpful woman as they took out another invisible warrior.

Captain Booth managed to pilot his ship out of the fleet and jump back into the void of hyperspace.

“What was that about?” demanded Booth.

“Oracle, why did you let us destroy those ships?” demanded the Captain.

The attractive alien looked up at the dome that was now showing the electric blue space scape that was hyper space.

“We will now go into the past before the battle. Fleet Lord Jal will have proof that you are a time traveler.” Oracle turned to Booth and gave him a weak smile. She then turned back to the void.

“That is unacceptable. We killed thousands of Liposeans by accident.” protested Booth getting up from his station.

“It was thousands of them or tens of thousands on both sides. Even with the cloaking technology they would not have taken Oahu Minor. Half the attackers would have been lost. Oahu Minor would have been damaged. A couple hundred thousand Oahuans would have been killed. And if Fleet Lord Jal’s Fleet had been weakened it could have led to them losing the First Battle for Planet Five. Your actions were already part of the time line. They simply had not happened for you.”

“You can stop the prophecy baloney. I know that you are a time traveler Oracle.” stated Booth. He was now standing on a couple feet from her.

“Then my knowledge should be more invaluable since you know the means by which it was obtained. Your actions today will one day convince Jal that you are the General of the Lost Line.” the Oracle turn from the serenity of Hyperspace to the more annoyed Booth.

“My daughter and I will not play a part in this deranged game.”

“Daddy, they were going to kill and enslave our friends. They were bad people.” defended Evangeline.

“Honey, this is between me and Orry.” protested Booth trying to keep his daughter out of it.

“No Daddy, Oracle is right. They are evil they cannot win this war.” continued the young girl.

“That is it.” stated Booth putting his foot down without a firm reason.

“We are spending the night here. We will discuss if we are still going to interview Jal in the morning. I am going to bed before Oracle finds a new way to make us unwilling dupes in this crusade.” grumped Booth as he turned and walked off the Bridge.

“He will be alright in the morning.” stated his daughter.

The Oracle looked over to her as she still sat at her station. She smiled and gently nodded to the young Booth ad turned her attention back to the blue void of Hyperspace.

A post from jpop Asia

[color=limegreen]Something that I have been playing with is Asian Food. I have been working disastrously on Sushi. I have had the worst time with the rice. It is simply not been anything close to what I think that it should be. One of the bright spots of this exploration has been Chinese Food. I have the soba noodles and have been grilling stuff and vegetable with garlic sauce. This has been fairly good. It may not be the perfect representation of Chinese or Japanese Food. Still it is something more Asian than I am used to making and it is starting to come out right. The next Chinese food that I think I am going after if General Tso's chicken. That is one of my favorites int he shops. So I think it is something that I need to make at home.

Tonight I have made some chicken fried rice. It is cooling off a bit before I eat it. Still it tastes pretty good.

I will let you know how the Asian Food thing is working.
[/color]

[color=darkmagenta]
There is nothing on the Pa-paru Panda front. Still I will let you know if anything is happening. [/color]

[color=crimson]
Something else on the radar is The Final Voyage of the USS The Sullivans. This is really shaping up. Like I may have mention an artist it turn it into some kind of graphic novel magna type thing. I am not sure which it is. Still there you go. I am editing and reediting the short story that the thing will come from. I will be finished with the part that is going into the first one by the end of the week. I may even post it on line here. So that will be exciting.[/color]

Something else to mention is the fact that I have now added Lime Green to my color thing on the gizmo here. So there is some fine color coding for you all. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

A post from jpop Asia

[color=limegreen]Something that I have been playing with is Asian Food. I have been working disastrously on Sushi. I have had the worst time with the rice. It is simply not been anything close to what I think that it should be. One of the bright spots of this exploration has been Chinese Food. I have the soba noodles and have been grilling stuff and vegetable with garlic sauce. This has been fairly good. It may not be the perfect representation of Chinese or Japanese Food. Still it is something more Asian than I am used to making and it is starting to come out right. The next Chinese food that I think I am going after if General Tso's chicken. That is one of my favorites int he shops. So I think it is something that I need to make at home.

Tonight I have made some chicken fried rice. It is cooling off a bit before I eat it. Still it tastes pretty good.

I will let you know how the Asian Food thing is working.
[/color]

[color=darkmagenta]
There is nothing on the Pa-paru Panda front. Still I will let you know if anything is happening. [/color]

[color=crimson]
Something else on the radar is The Final Voyage of the USS The Sullivans. This is really shaping up. Like I may have mention an artist it turn it into some kind of graphic novel magna type thing. I am not sure which it is. Still there you go. I am editing and reediting the short story that the thing will come from. I will be finished with the part that is going into the first one by the end of the week. I may even post it on line here. So that will be exciting.[/color]

Something else to mention is the fact that I have now added Lime Green to my color thing on the gizmo here. So there is some fine color coding for you all. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Random Things

Something very interesting has been happening with my books. Long time readers will recall me rambling on about this and that. Most recently I have been rampling on about the first series of books. Currently there are four outlined series of books in the same fictional universe.

The first series is The Salvation Navy. This is about the war to try and liberate a group of slaves and the skisim in The Salvation Army brought about by ethnic intolerance.

The Second Series is the Ignored Calling. This deals with the destruction of the slave network and the near destruction of The Salvation Army.

The third series centers on the Solar Fleet of The Salvation Army. This series happens hundred of years after the first two. It deal with the fall out of those wars. It also shows a strong Salvation Army. Humanity is a super power in the war against the Taterin Empire.

The Fourth Series deal with the religious intolerance in the Taterin Empire.

Before all of these is a series of short stories. These short stories are fragments of plot outline, a chapter here and there and actual complete short stories. These fragments are the thing that the rest of the series are based on. In trying to get the first Series together I have revisited these stories.

I am thirty pages into the rewrite on the chronologically first story in this series. It cover the childhood of John and Evangeline Jefferson who are two of the main character in the first and second series of stories.

These strange thing is that this short story may be the first thing of this mass of stuff to get in some kind of print. A young artist in our Clown Brigade is rather good at drawing stuff. One of the things that she is interested in doing is do a magna series. The thing that she is missing is a story line. So it is odd that this has come together in this way.

As soon as I have more on this I am sure I will ramble on about it. Thank for tuning in.

New Meeting Times

I finished the first Apparatus Bag today. The newer shoulder strap is very nice. I will put up pictures of it after I take them.

We had a really great Brigade Meeting this evening. We have two new candidates. So that is always a really nice thing. Tonight we did some Christmas carols and had a bit of a sing song in addition to the stuff we normally do. We also got a chance for some of our folks to work on a dance routine. I have never really thought of clowns as dancers. So this is a new thing for me. Still a hundred years ago clowns did not really do balloon animals. So it is something that is always evolving. So maybe some day clowns will be dancing. That is something that is a bit odd to me still. I also have a young person that wants to do skate boarding. So things are changing.

I also had a chance to visit the local Clown of America International meeting yesterday. This was a really neat little meeting. They were very friendly and even invited us to their Christmas Party. I have never been invited to a Christmas Party at my first meeting with a group.

On the up side moving the meeting to Tuesday appears to have gotten a couple of people that have not been to Wednesdays for a while to the meeting. So that was a bonus as well. So just a note for any of the Brigade members reading this. The Brigade Practice will be on Tuesday from 5:30 to 8:00 PM at Second Baptist The Knitting and Production Practice will be on Wednesday at the same time at the Barnes and Nobles at the Waterfront. Church is still at Second Baptist at 11:00 AM.

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

The End of an Old Freind

This is going to sound rather strange. My old Apparatus Bag is at the end of the line. On Thursday the clasp on the handle broke. One of the club pouches is about to fall off and the zipper barely works. In addition to that it is not the colors of the Clown Brigade anymore.

So after nine years this bag is not going to be of much use anymore. hing like this go. I have carried this bag almost daily for all of that time.

Well I finished a new apparatus bag. It is black white and red the Color of the Steel City Clown Brigade. It is currently in the wash setting the black of the bag. So I should have a new bag.

In a strange way it also symbolizes our break with the Army. For so many years it was a good thing. Now it is worn out and can not serve it's purpose any longer.

Well it was a good bag and perhaps I will frame it. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Clown Associations

Now that the Brigade is off on it's own we are going to have to form partnerships with other organization. This is one thing that we were not supposed to do when we were within The Salvation Army. We were never told that we were not allowed to. It was simply never done. And when we asked if we could it was always we will get back to you. And then we never heard from anyone.

Well now we are off on our own. So we make our own decisions. Well there are three choices to choose from as far as clown association go. Actually there are many more. There are just the three that cover our area.

Well the three that cover this area have the own virtues and strengths. From what I recall no organization is perfect. The local clown ally is a member of all three if I recall correctly. I suppose that is one way to deal with the strength and weaknesses of the three.

The first is the oldest of the three. The Clown of America International. I do believe they are also the largest. I was a member of this group once upon a time. It is a nice little group. They have a fairly decent conference. Their only draw back is that they minimum membership age it to high for some of the Brigade's members.

The Second Group is the World Clown Association. They appear more interested in humor therapy than the COAI. So this might be a plus for us. It also appear that Dr. Richard Snowberg is their current President. From what I know of Humor Therapy within clown he is doing a great deal.

The third group is the Mid-Atlantic Clown Association. They are a regional group that covers the region around us. I was never a member of this group. Still I have heard only good things about them. I do not know where they stand on Humor Therapy. Still, they have the advantage of being local. So we would be able to attend their conference more easily than the others.

Well I know that out board will vote on all of this so it is not entirely my decision. Still it is interesting looking into their things.

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

Dive Bombing Cat

I have an office in the basement of my house. It is the place that i work on my books and various other writing projects. Occasionally it the place that I knit or do something else along those lines. It is a comfortable place with a big comfy couch a television and a refrigerator.

The only thing that is a bit annoying as that my cat thinks that she can type. Perhaps she like the keyboard or the sound it makes. Either way when I am not here she lays on it or sits next to it and punches keys with her little paw. If I am not in the office she will be in her typing away at something that she is working on. She never saves so I do not know what she is writing. Perhaps she has her own little kitty cat flash drive that she saves her work on. I wonder if her flash drive is a Hello Kitty Flash Drive. I would find that very entertaining if that were the case. I have not seen one of those before. Still I am sure there is such a thing as the hello kitty flash drive.

The thing that bothers me in all of this is that I do not know how she get into the basement. At one point she was crawling through the wall and jumping out between two beams over me desk. This was very annoying because she would land right in my keyboard sometimes while I was typing on it. Needless to say I sealed up that hole. Then I found another hole she was something through and sealed that one up. I still have not been able to prevent her from getting into my basement office. Well at least she is not dive bombing my desk anymore. I suppose that is a good thing.

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

Book Randomness

There was not much happening today. I spent a good chunck of the day on the bus roaming from place to place. SO I did some work done on new parts of the book. For those that do not know I always write what ever I am doing out long hand. Well I am switching to short hand. The thing I spent the most time on is the rewrite of the first short story.

One of the interesting things that I have noted is that the first short story ended right after the Pirate Base was destroyed. There was this build up about a prophecy that involves James Booth and his daughter Evangeline. Still it never played out. It was so long ago that I cannot remember what I intended all of this for. There is so much more that can be added. I am wondering if it is not a short story at all. I am beginning to think that it may have been a book that I never finished. That would be very strange.

There are some character from the first short story that are in Jefferson Fleet during the war with China during the series of short stories that take place ten years after the first short story. I am wondering if there was supposed to be a series of a couple small books that I simply forgot about. That would mean that the first series of books is actually the second. At this rate I am never going to finish these books.

Well that is all I have to ramble about the books for the moment. I am going to take the first book and beat myself with it until I am unconscious. It has been a long day and I do not feel tired. I am not sure why my body works like that.

Well be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.