I really don’t have much to add to that. But didn’t want you to think I was dead. I’m in a lull until next week. Too much going on around here, and I’ll catch you up after the upcoming week of Halloween posts.
But I am still at it!
That’s how many words the finished COVID Quarantine Cantina work contains. All of our COVID stories, and a couple more. The audio book is done, final touches and we’ll be publishing the whole collection.
Now, why are we doing this? Because blogs don’t last forever, and ten years from now your kids will be asking why did the whole world lose its mind in 2020?
Also, I’m willing to bet most of you didn’t read every story. Now you can. Or listen. I’m thinking we’ll have it in your hands by Halloween. So you can buy lots of copies for friends for Christmas.
The final draft is being circulated for approval to all who comprise this collection: Paul Bennett, Robert Cely, Derek Elkins, Jamie D. Greening, Kathy Kexel, and Joe Shaw. Our book is almost ready to publish, and the audio book is 99.999 percent complete (actual number, less than 50 words left to record – the credits.)
So, keep your eyes peeled.
Now, on to business.
First, a Public Service Announcement:
Any of you who train in the theatre arts, please reach out to Senator Cory Booker. He is quite possibly the worst actor ever. He will work for attention and pay with promises.
Second item: Columbus didn’t cause the death of 100 million North American indigenous people. The number is about 3% of that number if he’d managed to get every single one, but since he missed a bunch, it’s like you’re using CDC COVID-19 math for everything. Seriously, you lose all credibility if you throw nonsense numbers around. Bad things happened 500 years ago. Let’s just try not to do them again.
Third item: Santa Joe is taking 2020 off. If you go to his page, www.santajoe.com, he tells the tale of COVID paranoia taking the fun out of the season. I endorse his words that you should enjoy your family, worship God, and skip the fat guy in the red suit this year.
Fourth item: There should be rule that any Senator who says “In my (any number over 12) years in the Senate…” is immediately dragged from the room and put out on the street, along with all of their aides and other minions. We need term limits. Both sides. These aging plutocrats are ruining our republic. That and they’re so pompous that it makes me ill. They have contenders for that in the younger herd of life-time politicians. But spare me the fossils who’ve been in politics since I was in high school.
The pork loin in the crock pot smells great. Dinner should be wonderful. (See how I went from pork barrel to barrel of pork?)
Be well.
Sorry I was AWOL last week. I was finishing the Covid audio book. More to come on that very shortly. It sounds great, and we anticipate having a finished Kindle, paperback, and Audible version by Halloween. Thanks for your patience.
During the recent decade I’ve had a chance to watch quite a few British and Irish television shows on NETFLIX & AMAZON PRIME. It has become abundantly clear to me that to make a modern police drama in Great Britain you really only need to follow a mold and add a few variables.
At the risk of ruining all of your television watching for the rest of your life, and that’s quite a threat to some of you, I will set out the formula in the paragraphs below. You have been warned.
First, your hero, or heroine, will need to be deeply flawed, conflicted, and hopefully bisexual at a minimum. Broken marriages are a key component. You can substitute the bisexual/gay/lesbian trait with rampant drug abuse, or strong suicidal tendencies. It is strongly recommended that regardless of the above, they have a serious substance abuse problem, and a violent temper.
Second, the reason for the above noted situation will have to be kept secret until the third episode. You are allowed to have them longingly stare at those they are attracted to, but make sure you throw in some random leering at other people with different orientations. In the event of their family being shattered (which is a huge plus) you can have them stare at their voice mail indicator, pictures of small children, or repeatedly rub their ring finger as though it is on fire.
It is vital that they were a member of the Metropolitan London Police (Or in the case of the Irish, Dublin) and have been exiled to an outer ring of hell. This will likely be the middle of nowhere in Wales, on an island off the coast of Scotland, or in some dump of a police station that even zombies will ignore come the apocalypse. They are paying penance, and there is always the hint that they might be allowed back into the big city if they pay enough in the way of dues.
In regard to the paragraph above, they will continue to screw up just like they did in London on a regular basis. But, and this is always fun, their enigmatic boss will let them get away with murder and redeem them because the rest of the local force are such a troop of baboons that it’s only by accident that they solve any crimes.
There will be a lot of hurtful shouting between cast members, and they all know each other’s darkest secrets. You will slowly get the backstory over the first season, and most likely one of the supporting characters will die needlessly because it helps the plot. Also, they will lie and lie and lie, and the tangle of lies will be their downfall. And, if you’re an actor with any kind of talent, you don’t want to be known as the ‘scouse from that telly’ for the rest of your days.
Speaking of supporting characters, there will be one immediate subordinate who should have had your job, you filthy interloper, but they can’t quite make the grade. They will be the opposite sex of the main character, and while makeup and wardrobe will work very hard to make them dumpy/bland, they are hotter than the core of a reactor, and will eventually give you a shot of bum or leg that will send a thrill up the spine. You will only realize their hidden secret in episode 4 or 5. But then you will know there’s even more to uncover, so you will wait until the second season to find out. Unless they get snuffed/pregnant/in rehab and can’t make it back for a couple of seasons. They will only return at that time to be killed off in the third episode, because it was just too good to be true that they were back.
The locale. If the show is set in London, you will get a lot of pretty sets. If it is true to this form, and set outside London, you will only see walls painted in the early 20th century or later every 4 weeks. In general, homeless people live better than the locals as they are portrayed. There will be dead animals all over the set, left there by the landowner because they’re so hungry they have to trap/hunt their food. Most homes are filthy, and always have a junk-filled room in an outbuilding that the hero wades through to find the case-breaking clue. For Irish television, most of the time is spent in a pub or the police station. Evidently Dublin cops only shoot billiards, drink tea, eat cookies and pizza, and read papers in the station break room. No point in being on the street if you can avoid it. There will be limited sets otherwise, and all will be either glamorous or dowdy. No in between.
Vehicles are also important. There is some poor slob with the production company who was given this edict: “John, be a good lad and round up vehicles for the next 14 episodes. We will need vehicles never seen before for every episode. We will require 6 that look like they were attacked by Godzilla, and covered in mud and bird shite, but they must run enough to go on and off the set. We will need 12 cars that just sit in barns/yards and are covered in filth/tarps and/or have bushes growing out the windows. The hero’s car is to be spotless and shined each morning, no matter its vintage. The police vehicles must all be brand new and looking good. Oh, and you can never repeat the background vehicles during the season. Ever. If you do, we’ll get rid of you faster than a shagged out hooker in Piccadilly. Clear?”
Side kicks. There will be at least two. One will be a socially awkward nerd. Hopefully with some hidden emotional problem. But vital to the team, and a counterbalance to the main character who’s a lunatic. Steady nerd (beautiful under the glasses if it’s a woman) will be pivotal in solving things and never get credit.
The other nerd will be there to say stupid things to advance the plot. Male, or female, they will be good to look at, and easy to kill if they need some blood. Totally pointless in the overall scheme. Possible dalliance for one of the two main characters, but perhaps not. May have a fetish we don’t want to know about – at least not openly.
The main character will have sex with several people they should not. Usually suspects, but often a despairing loved one involved in the case. The kind of crap that gets you gone in real police work. Everyone will know about it.
Closely linked to the bad-judgement-sex, you will have deaths through empathy. The main character will be the direct cause of a needless death on a regular basis because they “care too much.” Get used to it. Normally, a cop would be put on the rubber gun squad for the stuff they pull, but on British television the angst is a delicious sauce they flavor the plot with on a weekly basis.
Finally, they film chunks of the next season before they wrap the current one. There are very few cliff-hangers, but the return to the next season always implies that the main character has imploded along the way. All of the unused scenes from the previous season can be cobbled together to kill off a character who doesn’t want to come back for the next season. It doesn’t have to make sense.
IN the upper end shows, there will be a large number of forensic technicians in “Bunny suits” at every crime scene. Yet the main character will steal something, or dip their finger in blood, handle a whiskey bottle, or violate some other evidence rule within moments of arriving on scene.
Oh, and look for McGuffins. There will be some thing that shows up at every crime scene. It’s not really a McGuffin, but an annoyance set dressers thrive on. Often a picture of someone, or a work of art that everyone in Wales/Yorkshire/Scotland evidently has in their home. Hummel figurines are also acceptable, but they must be so hideous as to cause eye pain.
This would be incomplete if I did not point out that every scene must be under lit. Dark, gloomy, dingy is good. It is a big problem when the sun shines. I wonder how the crops grow with the total lack of sunlight in these places. The main character almost always squints outdoors, so I have to wonder if they’ve put a filter on the production print to make it look cloudy, or if they only hire actors who squint. Either way, it will only be a sunny day if the main character has a huge personal break through. This will be once a season at the most.
Glad to have helped you with your viewing. Now you can concentrate on something useful. Me? I have to go have a cup of tea. These damned shows always do that to me.
Cheers.
.
Now, take that how you want. If it made you flinch, get mad at me, or roil your conscience, you need to read this and then change your ways.
Let’s start with those of you who hate people because of their race. In this category I include those of you who post memes on social media stereotyping “others” and that glorify violence against people who don’t look like you.
Yes, you. The person who’s squirming right now. You have let evil into your heart. You relish the thought of an old man, or an old woman, who doesn’t look like you getting knocked in the head with a rock thrown/held by someone that looks like you.
You also condemn people in legal cases where you quite literally know nothing beyond the skin color of the people involved. If that is how you evaluate justice, just grab a flatbed truck, build a mobile execution platform, round up a couple of hundred followers, and start hanging everyone who doesn’t look like you. Maybe make everyone wear color coded cloth patches on their lapels so we know what kind of justice they are to be accorded. Saves a lot of time. Perhaps, and I know this will save money, just round them up and put them in camps to be dealt with later. Sounds extreme, eh? Some of you are already truck shopping as I write this post.
If someone disagrees with your political views, storm their house at night, terrorize them in restaurants, and make them think like you do. Burn their business because it’s nearby when your temper boils over. It works every time. If they resist, burn them out and kill them in the street – or send them to that camp we discussed above.
Cops. All of them, including the black ones, Asian ones, and any other variety, are evil racists who do nothing but oppress people based on their skin color. As one genius put it, “They might be skinfolk, but they aren’t kinfolk.” But let’s do away with them. Perhaps just give ANTIFA the weapons and radios – I’m sure they’ll be fair. Who needs all that training?
The point, if you’ve made it this far, is that you are a total loser if you base your decisions on social media and the popular press. Lies abound. Read some other sources, watch some other videos, and for the love of man, think independently.
The old saying that there are two sides to every story is wrong as well. There are an almost infinite number of sides. But you have to weigh them all out, take the evidence – not the rumors you saw on Facebook – and render judgment. That’s what the courts are for. Not your mob of dismayed friends and angry neighbors.
Protest is fine. It’s good. I’m even cool with protests where people legally carry firearms. But the minute you pick up a rock, or a Molotov cocktail, or aim that weapon at someone, you cease to protest and begin to riot. The old saying “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” applies from that moment forward.
Start applying common sense today. If you see something that looks like an outrage in “the news”, check the date. This gets tedious for me, but it’s almost always already too late when I see it. Before you post something, check the facts and the date. I’ve gone ballistic over stuff that I was wrong on, but I then remove the item and post an apology – had to do it twice in the last ten years. Not bad given the time constraints. Now I just don’t post that stuff until I’m totally sure of the truth as it is available.
But if you insist on posting the picture of the 93 year old woman who was shot at 36 times by the police, at least have the decency to include the fact that it happened in 2006, and all the police involved went to prison. Or that the hotel that refused to serve military and veterans found the employee, fired them, retrained their staff, and apologized years ago.
Try some of that Bible stuff so many of you espouse. Love your fellow man like yourself. Quit trash-talking people over small things. Find the truth before you take up a banner. Actually read the case files. Don’t trust the press to think for you. Do believe your own eyes when you do the research. Most of all, don’t stand in front of someone and scream at them through a bullhorn. Try talking calmly and rationally. It’s an awesome thing to actually work out communications and come to an agreement.
And, finally, pray. Stop and pray before you open your mouth. It’s amazing how little escapes mine after I pray. I need to do it more. This post is an example: I will read it again, and then pray before posting it.
Now, go out there and be decent. Pray for law enforcement. Even if you don’t like them, pray for them to do their jobs well: it benefits us all.
To my brothers and sisters in blue, I am praying for you and wish you well. I know you are not what the media portrays you to be.
Be nice to each other.
And all the hard work paid off massively.
As some of you know, I’ve been doing audio books for years. First as a volunteer for the blind, and then commercially.
If you didn’t know that, no fault but my own: I need to talk about it more.
I’m currently working on the audio book of the COVID flash fiction we did over the first three months of the lockdown. I’m doing total production work on it for only the second time, and have put all of my lessons learned to very good use. The sound quality is silky, the acting my best yet, and since the stories are really good, it’s going to be a great audio book to accompany the Kindle and paperback versions. I hope you will strongly consider giving it as a Christmas present to at least five different people.
At any who, while I’ve been working on it, I was contacted by an organization I volunteer with, and the woman who runs the outfit. Mind you, she’s got a great voice and could do her own book, but she asked me to do the audio book version of a series of training manuals they are putting out starting in December. It will be about 7 different books. And the audience is out there for these manuals. I can’t disclose the details, but the audience is likely to want audio versions to listen to while they work.
I’m very proud of being asked to do this series. It not only means a solid income stream for some time to come, but I get to help people by presenting the material in a coherent manner. I get to do what I love, and do it for people I love.
Now, why me would be the question. The answer is that when you put in hundreds of hours in the work of perfecting a craft, and do things the right way, you go from unknown to sought. And having paid the dues, it’s awfully nice to get asked.
More details to come when it’s officially okay to disclose the project. But in the meantime, I have a lot of books to record.
Hope your day is going great. Mine certainly is.
