44!

44!

It was fourty-four years ago today

Sergeant Pepper taught the kids to play

Watch this Space

The on-line submission system at ANALOG informs me that my sestina has been rejected. Evidently, poetry is not my metier. (Ho ho) I will await official notification, then figure out if I should just post it here for free.

Now, This is Funny

The Thomism Discussion Group in Facebook has a unique way of warning against topic drift or incivility:

Acta et Decreta Omnia
Reverendissimi Inquisitoris Generalis atque Illustrissimi
Colloquii Thomistici Gregis in Libro Facierum Statuti
XIMENÉS de CISNEROS

... In solicitude, therefore, for the continued purity of this forum, and for the exigencies of Our bounden duty, We enjoin this decree upon you, that you ensure that your prospective scriptions be more plainly conformed to the directives which are set forth for Our learned company. ...

Infodumps for Fun and Profit

One of the problems the Writer faces is the dreaded Infodump. This occurs when a writer drops a mass of information on the Reader's head as if the latter were a statue and the former a pigeon. This is especially acute when the story is set in unfamiliar terrain, such as the future, the past, or an exotic country like Iowa, because the reader really does need some info if the setting is not to degenerate into the equally dreaded White Room. 

You are here, or not

One hardly needs to describe the sunny clime of LA or the concrete canyons of NYC, the which are well covered on the screens of television. Nor need the Writer expend effort telling the Reader what subways are and how they work. "Bob, take the A train to Harlem..." is sufficient. One needn't add: "As you know Bob, subways are underground railroads that operate off a powerful electrical current carried in a "third rail" running beside the track. Of the many trains running through this maze of tunnels, one of them, designated "A," runs up the Eighth Avenue tunnel in Manhattan, and..."

...and so on into the background of the IRT, BMT, and how the IND differed from the others... etc. etc. Dig it.

Calvin and Hobbes on Art

The strip is long retired, but continues to speak to us:

Always beware of artists with manifestos. Indeed, of anyone with a manifesto.

Generations

Examining some scanned photographs supplied by Pere, TOF was struck by a thought. Therefore, he is reflexively striking back. The two photographs, plus one of TOF's own, document three generations of Flynn caught at approximately the same ages, to within, he suspects, five years. Here are the images:

Too Close for Comfort, part two

TOF's cousin, his milk-sister from days of yore, was over to the stronghold the other day and, as so often the case, talk turned to the recent murder spree that touched down tornado-like in the West Ward and blew lives apart. The friends of the murdered man, one of whom ran out of the house to comfort him as he lay dying, bore names familiar to TOF from his own schooldays -- Bader and Kutz. And Mariellen, the aforesaid cousin, recollected that she had taught the fellow in middle school. He was not an academic powerhouse, but had worked hard and dutifully and had achieved respectable grades.

Jeffrey S. Knoble Jr.

There had been another murder in Easton this past March 11.

Jeffrey S. Knoble Jr. texted Andrew "Beep" White trying to get a room for the night, and White, trying to be a good Samaritan, rented a room at the Quality Inn downtown, across the street from the McDonald's that the TOFian family sometimes use.