Temper Tantrum Tuesday: The Victim

Over the weekend Jon Stewart appeared on Fox for an interview with Chris Wallace. Even after heavy editing Wallace looked ridiculous in trying to say that Fox balances out the rest of the mainstream media's “liberal bias”. His claim was that conservative views automatically get attacked.

Echoing Wallace's theme that conservative views get attacked, Rick Santorum did an interview to explain his stance on same sex marriage and he talked about how horrible it was that people have labeled him a bigot. He looks forward to a time in America when someone can be free to compare two people in a loving relationship to bestiality and not be called prejudice. To prove that he is not a bigot Santorum mentioned he has had gay people under him, and he recently went out with a gay friend and you should see the things they did together.

I feel so bad now for all the conservatives I've talked about in the past, I didn't realize they were the victims.

Just as Santorum is a victim by being called a bigot for saying same sex marriage is the same as incest, many others are victims of liberal bias.

The poor hedge fund managers who say that teachers who work at 80% of what private sector employees with the same education level earn should take huge pay cuts, so they can keep their tax cuts that allow them to pay a smaller percentage in taxes than the teachers, are the true victims. For some reason people call them greedy.

Companies that lobby to keep tax breaks for shipping American jobs overseas are victims when they are called Unamerican for doing that.

The teabaggers are victims of being called racists just because they hold up signs calling Obama a n*gger.

And of course when the Gulf of Mexico ran into British Petroleum's oil slick they were the victims of that powerful liberal bias when people saying they should look into their safety procedures.

After hearing Chris Wallace and Rick Santorum talking about how they are standing up for the victims that are being called names just because they are greedy, homophobic, bigots who scapegoat minorities so they can plunder the wealth that the United States has accumulated over centuries of hard work, I feel so bad that I might have hurt their feelings by calling them a bad name or two.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Profit over safety

This is what happens when you put profit over safety. Just saying.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Alien Thoughts

Tuesday Temper Tantrum: Rational Debate

I was talking to a friend about the violent rhetoric that led to the shooting of Rep. Gifford, she said we all must be civil and work towards compromise. I disagreed with part of her statement, that does not mean I think she is Hitler.

The part about civil discussion is totally right, the part about compromise is not 100% correct. In a civil debate there has to be a time when compromise is impossible. If you are talking to someone who believes that the Earth is flat, and you believe that it is round a compromise saying that it is a semi-sphere isn't going to allow you to navigate around the world.

That being said there is no reason you can't be civil about it. One of the nicest videos I've seen was of a bunch of Atheists toured the Creationist Museum. Obviously compromise is out of the question between these two groups. In today's era of overheated rhetoric you would expect these groups to yell and scream at each other, but instead they calmly listened to each others points and agreed to disagree. They didn't mock each other as it was unnecessary, each group knew people of their own group would draw their own conclusions. It would be nice if differing groups showed the same respect towards each other as the creationists and the atheists in that video.

There are a few things that people can do to help create a civil discussion.

First: Remember that even if you disagree with someone they are probably not Hitler. I truly believe that only Hitler was Hitler.

Second: Online, let people know that you can understand them perfectly well in lower case and that Caps aren't necessary, unless they really like them in which case that's fine too.

Third: It is physically impossible to listen and talk at the same time. This is an area where multi-tasking is not a good idea.

Fourth: To err is human. Expertize is a funny thing, when you know a little about a subject you can talk about it confidently. After you've put in 10,000 hours on that subject you are actually less confident as you know how much you don't know. For example last year I was pretty confident in my ability as a writer, several magazines published my stories so I had some validation. Now I'm putting together those stories for an ebook and I have to rewrite all of them, just because they were good enough for an editor to pay me for them doesn't mean they are good enough for my book. It's the same with almost any field, so remember that when someone says, “In most cases” and “Usually” it doesn't mean they know less than the person who proclaims, “Every time” or “It always”. In fact the person who makes the small disclaimers probably knows more about the subject than the person who talks in absolutes.

Fifth: Remember that there are crazy people out their that take violent imagery seriously. So use this for entertainment. Tell people that Rush Limbaugh should be smacked with a pillow. If a nutjob takes you serious and goes on a pillow fighting spree it would be funny and no one would get hurt.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Alien Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Satan's PR firm

One of the revelations in the Wikileaks dump was that the Afgan government, complained to the assistant US Ambassador that a private security company DynCorp was doing something that could cause outrage with the citizens of Afghanistan. The Ambassador told him that the US has no authority over the private companies the US hires and that the media is so lame that it won't be a problem.

What was DynCorp doing? Here's how the Guardian covered it:

A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try and "quash" the story, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.

In a meeting with the assistant US ambassador, a panicked Hanif Atmar, the interior minister at the time of the episode last June, warned that the story would "endanger lives" and was particularly concerned that a video of the incident might be made public.

The episode helped to fuel Afghan demands that contractors and private security companies be brought under much tighter government control. However, the US embassy was legally incapable of honouring a request by Atmar that the US military should assume authority over training centres managed by DynCorp, the US company whose employees were involved in the incident in the northern province of Kunduz.

There is a long tradition of young boys dressing up as girls and dancing for men in Afghanistan, an activity that sometimes crosses the line into child abuse with Afghans keeping boys as possessions.

The Guardian

The US Ambassador was right that the Western Media was so lame that it wouldn't be a problem.

As they reported it the story sounds a little strange but not something that would get an entire nation of stoners up in arms, well they already are up in arms as they consider AK-47's fashion accessories but you know what I mean.

What the Guardian, and US newspapers, didn't say was that the long tradition of that one tribe (not a tradition in most of Afghanistan) was for the men of village to have sex with the boys after they danced and then auction them off as possessions.

Our Ambassador to Afghanistan has said that the US has no authority to stop US companies, that are hired and paid by us, from pimping out little boys as sex toys and that the corporate owned media in this country won't report on these abuses.

At one time I called the reporters of the US Corporate owned media, “Corporate Whores” but I stopped when I realized that was demeaning to Whores.

If the reporters in the mainstream media were to do some soul searching they would be gone for six months and still come back without finding one.

At one time being a reporter meant trying to find and expose the truth, today what being a reporter means is that you are member of Satan's Personal Public Relations Firm.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Alien Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Kids and Guns in the Global Economy

My wife and I thought about having a kid recently but here in America the costs of medical care through pregnancy is between $25,000 and $30,000. I didn’t care as that would just be added to my debts just like the yearly interest of roughly the same amount. But my wife didn’t want that extra debt added on.

So I found this article very interesting, “Giving Birth outsourced to India” It turns out that for between $7,000 and $20,000 you can go over to India and a surrogate mother will have the pregnancy for you. This is cheaper than doing it the natural way over here in the US.

So for anywhere between one quarter and four-fifths of the cost of giving birth in the US you can have a mother in India do it for you. Not only are the cost savings significant but it also very labor saving. Instead of nine months of pregnancy it’s just a plane trip to India to drop off the sperm and eggs a nine-month wait and then a plane trip to pick up the kid. It’s about as easy a way to give birth as you can imagine.

There are a couple of little problems with this right now. First, the companies in India are voluntarily restricting this program to actual infertile couples. They don’t except couples that want to do it for economic reasons or just for the convenience. But it is unregulated so I’m sure they’ll loosen up and start having baby mills that will advertise the cost savings and convenience of doing it this way.

The second problem is they will probably want actual cash, not just do it and hope the person will pay. That’s where another news item caught my eye.

90% of the guns used in Mexico for the drug wars come from the US this has jacked up the prices of guns. Guns smuggled into Mexico have a profit of $250 to $350 per gun. Source. In Arizona a person can buy 15 guns without question, it’s only when you buy 16 or more that they ask if you plan to do more than hunt desert rats. So a middle-aged couple could stop by a gun shop, buy 30 guns, 15 each, and drive across the border and make a $7,500 profit. No one is going to question a middle-aged couple with no priors.

That’s enough to fund having a kid.

Thanks to the new global economy it is possible to get around the high cost of giving birth in the US. You just need to have no morals. Of course, none of this would be necessary if our healthcare costs were in line with the rest of the world.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Alien Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Formatting E-Books

I decided to take the plunge into ebooks and publish ALIEN THOUGHTS that way. The thing I really like about ebooks is that the reader can preview the book before buying it. That means I know that the reader won’t be parting with their hard-earned $2.99 only to not read the book.

ALIEN THOUGHTS is the type of book that this is really an issue because if you read the first 30,000 words you’re going to spend the $3 to continue. But if it isn’t your thing you’ll never make it through the first 30,000 and stop before paying any money. So no one can feel ripped off.

The formatting is a process in itself. I went through two processes. Kindle and Smashwords both have different ways of handling the publishing process.

Kindle is harder to format for, and doesn’t offer as much help but they do have one huge advantage. They have a preview feature, it is crude and the advanced Kindle features are deactivated in the preview but it is a preview. This means you can look over your work before it is published and find errors in the formatting that are impossible to spot otherwise.

Smashwords offers much better support and instructions and has error checking software to find problems. Unfortunately it doesn’t offer a preview at all. As soon as you load up your book it is live and people start downloading it. So you can’t visually see the problem until after people start downloading your book.

I’m sure these problems will be resolved in the future but it is a pain right now.

So to all the people who downloaded samples of my book from Smashwords and found the Table of Contents broke and a few extra tabs in the body, just download the sample again after 4pm Eastern today and you’ll find it fixed. Unfortunately the early downloaders got to see my practice formatting and I hope those errors aren’t too distracting.

If you want to read the first 30,000 words of my book it is available at Smashwords: ALIEN THOUGHTS


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Alien Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Robbing the Wrong People

In the last 30 years the financial world has become a global entity of its own, separate from individual nations. I’m not going into vast conspiracy and New World Order territory here, just stating facts.

In the last decades they were allowed to run amuck and no government had the power to regulate them. It all crashed in 2008 and they are robbing the “little people” to continue their unsustainable ways. In America the fed has given them 3.3 Trillion Dollars to gamble with in the hope that they won’t blow it like they did with their money before. A few (very few) reporters have asked Economists, “What happens if they do lose that money?” the answer: “Hell if I know.”

Basically the bankers have robbed the American people of 3.3 Trillion Dollars and there is no plan to get it back.

In Ireland the banks have gone to the next step of robbing the “little people” after using up Ireland’s imaginary money, they have given them the Irish Pension Fund, the equivalent to the American Social Security Trust Fund. They feel confident in stealing this as there has been no uproar in the US over the banks stealing our money and the Irish are gentle people just like Americans.

There is one slight problem with that thinking; the economies of The Republic of Ireland and the British State of Northern Ireland are intertwined. The British attacked Ireland in the 15th century and the Irish fought the occupation until reaching a peace accord in 1998. Basically the longest damn war in history.

Although the Irish Republican Army officially disbanded 4 years ago, there are still quite a few members that did take part in the conflict. They remember the tactics and organizational methods to inflict terror on the government. The bankers are softer targets than the English Soldiers that they used to target.

The Irish people have been fighting unjust rule for over 500 years and the bankers have decided these are the people that they are going to rob.

The Irish Republican Army and the American version the Molly Maguires aren’t known for playing nice. The Molly Maguires used to strike back at Industrialists who took advantage of the Irish by kidnapping their entire families. The IRA had no problems targeting the children of English Leaders who were Anti-Irish.

I don’t wish violence on anyone, I truly don’t. But at some point there has to be a toll paid for banks that act stupidly, and robbing the people of Ireland is about as stupid as you can get. The people of America might allow the bankers to rob us blind, but I really don’t see the people of Ireland rolling over and excepting this without some backlash.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Compromise

The remaining Blue Dog Democrats in congress, my own congressman Ben Chandler included, have been doing interviews saying that the Democrats need to turn away from Progressives like me, and start compromising with the GOP/ Teabaggers. My question is how can you compromise on the GOP / Teabagger “issues”?

How is President Obama supposed to compromise on his position that he was born in Hawaii? Ben Chandler might not like it but on this issue Obama has no choice but to stick to his guns.

How are thinking people supposed compromise on the fact that 97% of climate scientists agree that Global Warming is real and manmade? Unicorn power isn’t going to solve this.

How is anyone with a brain supposed to compromise that over 150 years of scientific study shows that evolution is real and ongoing? Replacing Creationism, which has the scientific virtue of being falsifiable (and has been proved false) with Intelligent Design, which merely takes the one scientific virtue out of Creationism, is not a compromise.

How is someone who has studied even the most elementary teachings in biology supposed to compromise with someone who insists that legal protections be given to a person before pregnancy, at a time before pregnancy can be determined?

How can someone who believes that all Americans deserve to have the same rights compromise with people who believe that some Americans should be treated as second class citizens?

These are not even, or shouldn’t be, Progressive vs. Conservative issues. These are issues of reality vs. fantasy.

There can be no compromise on these issues because on one side there are facts and on the other side there is complete and total fantasy and fantasy based policies cannot work in the real world.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Tuesday Temper Tantrum: Fair Use

17 U.S.C. § 107
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.[1]


Recently Gawker had a run in with Sarah Palin over the Fair Use of 21 pages of her new book. Palin feels that by using her actual words and putting them in their correct context, Gawker made Sarah Palin look like an idiot.

Here is how she won this battle in court.

Gawker used the leaked pages to comment on her book, fulfilling the 1st part of fair use. The book was intended for a general audience, fulfilling #2. Gawker exposed her work to an audience that the publisher wasn’t targeting so if anything it might lead to a few more book sales, fulfilling #4.

That leaves #3: the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.

The amount and substantiality of the portion used is in no way a set thing. Like revealing that at the end of Titanic the ship sank is more substantial than the stupid scene with Leo and Kate on the front of the ship.

So the only case Sarah Palin has for it not to be fair use is that the 21 pages of racist, idiotic ranting covered everything that a reader is expected to learn in the entire book.

So her lawyers must have convinced the judge that the 21 pages that Gawker posted, which made Sarah Palin look like an idiot, would leave the same impression on the reader as if they had read the whole book. That Sarah Palin is an idiot.

Based on this ruling I can safely put out a spoiler for the book: Sarah Palin is an idiot.

(I can’t wait to see how many people will find this site by googling, “Sarah Palin is an idiot”)


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Kicking Women in the Head

As you’ve probably heard Tim Profitt (pictured above) a county coordinator and $2,500 donor to the Rand Paul campaign stomped on a Conway supporter’s head before the Conway-Paul debate, Paul has said it is okay as no property was damaged.

To follow this up Rand Paul has launched a new radio ad that says if you don’t vote for him you’re unpatriotic.

I wonder if his next act to try and get my vote is to pour sugar in my gas tank while anally raping my grandmother.

Look Rand I had always just figured you were a kook, and Kentucky does tend to elect kooks just to get them to leave the damn state. But you are going to far, with taking money from neo-nazi groups, name-calling, palling around with people that call the President a terrorist, you are actively inciting people whose grasp on reality isn’t too tight to begin with.

So Rand be a man and condemn your followers who turn to violence whenever they disagree with someone. Sure you may lose the election because the unhinged are your base but you might sleep better at night.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Rand Paul and Aqua Buddha

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t talk about the Aqua Buddha story. But Rand Paul brought it up so now it is fair game. Basically in college Rand and another male student kidnapped a girl tied her up, forced her to do bong hits and in order to be untied she had to worship the Aqua Buddha. She says she never felt threatened at any time she just found the whole thing strange.

I haven’t talked about it because I’ve done similar things when I was in college. I didn’t make any girls worship Aqua Buddha but I can see myself going along with that if someone brought that idea up.

In the recent debate between Jack Conway and Rand Paul, Rand had a hissy fit over Jack bringing up the subject refusing to shake Jack’s hand because he, “refuses to associate with someone who attacks my faith.”

Really Rand? You won’t associate with someone known for attacking someone else’s Christian faith? How many times have you gone on Glenn Beck’s show? How many times have you appeared on Hannity’s show? Both of those men are famous for calling Obama a Muslim and saying he’s not a Christian.

In your rallies I don’t remember you addressing your supporters that carry signs saying, “Obama is Muslim” and telling them you won’t associate with someone who attacks another persons Christian faith.

You gladly shook Mitch McConnell’s hand after he said, “Obama says he’s a Christian and I take him at his word.” And you stood on stage with Sarah Palin after she said something similar.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here and say maybe you are blind to things that don’t affect you personally, not a great quality for a Senator, and now you see what it is like to have your faith attacked. If that is the case, now that your eyes have been opened, will you follow a path and refuse to associate with anyone who attacks Obama’s faith?

If you do that I will believe your outrage, otherwise I’ll have to conclude that yes you are a Christian, whenever it happens to be convenient for you.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Evolution

“You ever noticed how people who believe in Creationism look really unevolved?” Bill Hicks.

This year every single Republican running for Senate has come out saying they don’t believe in evolution, I haven’t gotten any media reports on how many believe in gravity.

It is not biased to say that a candidate not believing in evolution or gravity is a deal breaker for me. These two theories are simple and observable, so if a candidate doesn’t believe in them you have to assume they are going to ignore everything else that is simple and observable that doesn’t conform to what they would like the universe to be like.

The Republican’s running for Senate can complain about the liberal bias of reality and refuse to go on any news shows where the reporter will ask questions, and not just let them talk about their own little fantasy world all they like. But if they get elected they will have to actually make policies that affect the people who live in the real world and not their little fantasyland.

This is 2010 and the world has real problems that need to be addressed, so the Republicans this year have decided the best way to deal with these problems is to put their fingers in their ears and yell, “La-la-la-la I can’t hear you.”

So when you vote this year remember this little fun fact, Evolution is a more reviewed and confirmed theory than relativity, the theory that lets us understand gravity. Would you vote for someone who came out and said they don’t believe in gravity?


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Iraqi oil

All over the news there is talk of a huge find of oil reserves in Iraq.

Here is the way oil exploration works.

Geologist are hired by oil companies to give convincing news of the chances of hitting oil, the companies pay them extra for getting good news.

The oil companies sell shares in oil drilling, the more favorable the report the more they make.

The Iraqi government can take loans off oil reserves.

Everyone in the chain makes more money if they can say they found more reserves.

In reality, Iraqi has been upping its claims of oil reserves since the 1980s but the most they have ever produced was 3 million barrels a day just before the war and historically they’ve only produced 2 million barrels a day.

I’m not saying the news of new reserves is total bull, but it has been false before and everyone involved in reporting larger reserves makes money from the reports even if they turn out to be false.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Economic Reality

George W Bush once commented, “We make our own reality!”

Well I just read this article over at Tax.com that examined how that reality played out.

If you cherry-pick the numbers going through 2003 to 2007 the “best” years of the Bush Administration you find out that Bush’s tax policy cost the government $951 Billion and average incomes dropped $3,512. That is ignoring the worst years of the Bush Administration.

I’m not posting this just to beat up on George W Bush, I think everyone can agree that his stewardship over the economy was a disaster. I’m post this because GOP’s “Plague on America” promises the same policies that led to the “best” years costing the government billions and making average incomes drop by thousands of dollars.

I totally understand the frustration that people are feeling by the fact that this country is effectively being run by a hand full of Blue Dog Democrats who are basically the diet version of Republicans. I understand how people would want the government to go one way or another and stop with the half measures that these Blue Dogs have made sure are the only things that can get through the congress. But the Republican answer of doing the same thing that made the “best” years of the last administration be down right horrible is not the answer.

My congressman Ben Chandler used to be a decent slightly conservative democrat who shifted after the last election to be a full fledged Blue Dog Democrat. I would do almost anything to get rid of him, anything but vote for someone who promises to return us to the “best” years of the Bush Administration.

A decent Eisenhower Republican could sweep him out of office in a second, but instead I’m left with the choice of one candidate that will pursue half measures that guarantee that the economy will only slowly improve and take a decade to recover from the Great Recession or a candidate that will pursue bad economic policies that guarantee that, at best, average wages will continue to drop and the Federal Government will have to make huge cuts in services over the next decade.

I guess I have to look at the graph above to make my choice.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Green Jobs

The New York Times is reporting that the Senate’s inaction on the climate change bill has cost the US roughly 2 million jobs. Clean Energy Trade Dispute

The reason the GOP Senators give for denying 2 million Americans jobs is that adding 2 million jobs will cost jobs. I think those Senators missed the episode of Sesame Street where they covered Adding and Subtracting.

Here is a message to GOP Senators, when you add 2 million jobs it is called gaining jobs not losing them.

The money is available for investing in clean energy and it will go to the countries that offer incentives to invest in it. Since it is an infant industry as it grows up it will generate far more money than is put into research, which will be taxed, lowering the deficit. Clean energy needs to be produced locally freeing us from dependence on imports from terrorist sponsoring countries making our country safer.

Even if you do not agree with the 97% of scientists who say that man-made climate change is real the Climate Change bill is good for our country so learn the difference between gaining and losing and vote for the damn bill.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: A funny thing happened in the Polls

The GOP has started their election push and pulled out all the stops, Glenn Beck held a rally in Washington DC to defend intolerance. Sarah Palin has been doing a tour and was even interviewed on Fox to show her great intellectual powers. Newt Gingrich has been hitting the air talking about how Obama is anti-colonial unlike the Founding Fathers who loved colonialism. Mitch McConnell has been on the air constantly to make the case why billionaires should pay a lower percentage in taxes than the middle class.

Now the polls have come out showing the result, the Dems gained 10%. The talking heads in the media can’t figure out how the Dems got such a great boost when the GOP has dominated the media over the last week and are doing a great job of getting their message out. Naturally they can’t believe those two things are related.

On Sunday I told the bigots who are shouting about getting rid of anyone in this country who isn’t just like them to shut up. I’m going to issue a rare retraction. I want all the bigots and intolerant people to keep shouting at the top of their lungs.

The Tea Party has spoken and the media has broadcast their message and it is leading to an increase in the Democrats popularity.

The Democrats could win big this year if they were to buy airtime for the GOP. The more the GOP spread their message of hate and class entitlement the better the Democrats do. So GOP keep up your media campaign, it is giving a great boost to the Democrats.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Terrific Tuesday: Ending my Summer

Labor Day marks the end of Summer, to signal the return of fall the evil minions came back. The extreme heat and humidity forced them into the line of trees behind my house and they only ventured out at night. With the cooler temperatures, only mid 80s instead of high 90s, they’ve returned.

Besides the cooler temperatures I’ve had some good luck in writing recently. I finally identified the huge structural weakness in my book THE PIZZA DIARIES and was able to get the done so it flows nicely now, I’ve just got to work on the first 500 words to set the new tone of the book and its finished for now. I’ll, hopefully, talk about that a little more tomorrow.

In the new book that I’m writing, MIND THIEF, I was struggling with a character so I tortured her quite brutally and she revealed her true self. Now I just have to go back and put that into her character in the first two thirds of the book.

An added benefit of the cooler weather, I was able to get some work done on the kitchen. It was a project I’ve put off for a few years but it should be finished this week. I’ll have pictures of it soon.

I should be able to work on some of my fall projects soon. I’ve got the plans laid out for a better version of the solar powered evil minion trap I made last year and plan on building it this month it should trap the evil minions even more effectively.

All and all my summer is ending on a high note.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Tuesday Temper Tantrum: Annoying Characters

On great moment in writing a book is when the characters spring to life and start acting on their own. When that happens it’s a joy to sit down at the keyboard as you are hooked on the scene and you want to find out what your characters are going to do and how they will handle the situation you’ve set up.

When you start writing with these characters you sit down at your keyboard until you notice that your lower body is protesting and then notice you’ve written 5,000 words in one sitting.

The flip side is when you have a character that you’ve formed a complete backstory for, have their motivations down and even some of their little quirks mapped out and when they enter the scene they draw all the life out of it, the writing equivalent to watching a movie starring Ben Affleck.

I somehow managed to get one of these characters in my latest book and she is killing me. Every piece of dialog has to be written three times and still comes out flat. So I might write 3,000 words but what finally makes it on the page is under a thousand and I know I’m going to have to go back and rewrite it.

So my progress is jerky, I’ll zoom through 3,000 to 5,000 words a day with my strong characters that have come alive and then hit a scene with her and it will take a week to get the 1,500 word scene out.

The only good part about the fact that I really hate this character is that I had to have the heroes question her for information, and they were probably a bit rougher on her than if she had really come alive in the book before then.

It made for a good scene but if I can’t go back and get some life into her character it will be meaningless as the reader will just be totally indifferent to her and not care.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Jobs

I’m getting really mad at hearing the conservative argument over and over again on creating jobs.
Step 1: Give money to the wealthiest top 1%
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Jobs

We’ve tried that and found that just like every economist, outside the Chicago School, has said before it was tried this doesn’t work. We just went through a decade of giving huge hand outs to the wealthy and every year between 2001 and 2010 the number of private sector jobs created lagged the increase in workforce. The only reason we weren’t seeing the unemployment figures going up dramatically instead of slowly was the Federal Government expanded rapidly in that time.

There are two ways jobs are created. Either there is an increase in the demand for an existing product or service, or a new product or service is created.

As far as demand for existing products or service there is only so much the government can do. If demand for a product is steady the number of jobs created from demand for that product will grow smaller as the people in that industry get more productive from advances in efficiency.

As far as creating new products the government can do a lot. Almost any research into science creates totally unexpected products.

I read an article on Cracked today “5 Inventions You Won’t Believe Came From War” and two of those items really struck this point home.

Tampons- Tampons were invented because Governments like to send their citizens places to shoot other Governments citizens. Some people like to see this as the primary role of Government.

When someone gets shot they tend to have a hole in them that gushes out blood, so the Army spent some research money on how to stop this. They researched super absorbent bandages that were given to the Army nurses to use on the heavily bleeding GI’s and of course the nurses quickly found other uses for it and a huge new market was invented.

Silly Putty – No one would spend millions of dollars to make a product that permanently has the consistency of freshly chewed gum, but Silly Putty was still made. It discovered as the US was trying to make synthetic rubber to react to the embargo they knew Japan was going to enact. One attempt was Silly Putty after a quick round of testing they figured out it didn’t make terribly useful tires, but it was sure fun to play with and a new market was born.

So in order to make more jobs and put America back to work the solution is simple. Put a huge amount of money into researching Green Technology. Not only will it keep money here in the US from energy savings, but it is bound to create totally new and unexpected products that will create more jobs.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Too much Stupid

I wasn’t able to write my Shut-up Stupid Sunday last week because I was overwhelmed by the shear amount of stupidity in the news, so I will use today to have a stupidity round up.

THE GROUND ZERO MOSQUE.

Apparently New York City Muslims are planning on converting an old Burlington Coat Factory outlet into a community center just across the street from NEW YORK DOLLS strip club in Manhattan. Republicans say this is hollowed ground and it is a grave insult to workers at Male Striper Directory that is just three blocks away.

Correction: The Republicans say they are upset that is being built two blocks away from World Trade Center crater, an area that for the last 9 years has only been useful to New Yorkers as the best place to get the falafels in the city as there are two competing falafel stands next to the crater.

This outrage is stupid on so many levels I don’t know where to start. I’ll start with the idea expressed by Rand Paul the crazy teabagger running for Senate in my state, he commented that we don’t want people from New York City getting involved in zoning issues in Kentucky, so people from Kentucky shouldn’t get involved in zoning issues in Manhattan. He might be crazy but it’s a crazy issue so that makes him an expert.

The second part of this is more fundamental, The First Amendment states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The only government power that can dictate where a church can or cannot be built is the local zoning board, period.

On a philosophical ground, the US is the most religious industrialized country in the world not because the government forces its citizens to be religious but because it keeps itself at an arms length away from religion.

ANCHOR BABIES

Another thing the Republicans are up in arms over is that it turns out that anyone born on US soil is an American Citizen.

They think illegal aliens will have a child in the US making it a citizen. Then when that child is 21 it can sponsor the government to allow its parents to immigrate a process that takes 10 years. This loophole allows illegal aliens to come to our country in a mere 31 years as opposed to just buying a fake ID and living here, or getting their Green Card and working in the US for ten years while they apply for citizenship.

Everyone knows that Mexicans are hard workers so they will naturally take the hardest most convoluted way of becoming a citizen possible, so we should change our constitution to stop that.

BUSH TAX CUTS VS SOCIAL SECURITY

The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5% of the nation are set to expire, this will lower the budget deficit dramatically. The Republicans have a way to save this tax break for people who have so much money they can destroy an entire god damn ocean and then just write a check to cover the damage and write, “oops” in the memo line. They can grab the money from the old people who have put into Social Security all their lives.

According to Paul Ryan (R-WI) we have two choices, raise the income tax on the top 5% of wage earners by a whopping 3%, an amount that would have them paying almost the same percentage in taxes (not counting deductions) as someone making $95,000 a year. Or, grab the money from Social Security and let two-thirds of the seniors in this country live on catfood instead of living high on the hog with their $14,000 a year Social Security benefits.

How is this even a choice?

ALIENS

Looking at the news this last week I am reminded of Sigourney Weaver’s line in the beginning of ALIENS, “Did IQ’s drop dramatically while I was asleep?”

By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts