For a few years now, I've wanted to submit Traveling Light to this theatre company: 


LOOK how CUTE it is! Don't you just want to hug it?

It even has a pub!

Here's their script criteria:

We encourage script submissions on all subjects and themes, but we are particularly interested in:
• New writing by writers of all ages.
• Plays that are politically and socially engaged.
• Works for music theatre.
• Plays about the Kensington and Chelsea area, local history and personalities.
• Adaptations of obscure books written after 1800.
• Plays that are artistically ambitious and thematically expansive.
• Plays with large casts.
• We welcome scripts from international writers, but can only accept plays written in English, Scots or Scots Gaelic.

They want me! They don't even know it! Okay, except for the "music theatre," "obscure books written after 1800," "large casts" and "Scots or Scots Gaelic" business. Brian Epstein lived (and died) two miles from their building! It's a perfect fit. 

And, finally, after years of dithering, I sat down in the back yard with my laptop, some bug spray, and a six-pack of Strongbow, and I re-formatted the script, made it look super purty, wrote them a nice cover letter and sent it. 

The last line of my cover letter, I hope, was not too purple. 

"The summer of 2017 would mark the 50th anniversary of the deaths of Joe Orton and Brian Epstein, as well as the day homosexuality was decriminalized in England. Let's use this play as a way to explore, celebrate and memorialize."

Oh, how my fingers hovered over the "send" button. I took a huge deep breath, looked up into the indigo sky, breathed into the Universe, and clicked. 

Here's hoping.

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6/4 '16 4 Comments
I'm feeling reeeeeeeeaally good about this one! And your final statement there is PERFECT. Slam dunk!!
Thank you! I hope it's turning a key in a lock, not banging my head against a brick wall.
Oh lordy yes. Submit. Because you shall not submit.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!
 

I did not get into a physical fight with the lady at the burger place who said that 

A) the problem with Wildwood is "the blacks, Mexicans and Chinese"

B) Trump is Great

C) ARGH I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER I'M SO PISSED OFF. 

I did tell her she was wrong, but I'm so angry that I can't remember what I said. 

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6/1 '16 3 Comments
You get all the gold stars.
Thank you. I needed that.
APPLAUSE.
 
 
 
 
 

You'll get that awful pun in just a second...

I'm working on (yet another) new illustration project. Or rather, I'm picking up work on an idea I had a while back.

I've been looking at Patreon for a while. I would LOVE to do something that allowed me to make some decent money on illustration stuff.

Here are the problems with that concept:

  • I'm not that good. That's not an attempt at some kind of false humility. It's not an attempt to seek praise. It's fact. If you're feeling like jumping to my defense, please don't. Trust that this is an area where I am likely better versed than you. You'll note that I don't tell musicians whether they're good or not. I tell them whether I enjoy what they did. I'm certainly not qualified to say whether or not they're good at what they do. Same concept applies here.
  • I'm driven to distraction. I don't know if things would be different if there would be a bajillion dollars on the line. So far, no one has offered me that much. In fact, I've pretty much only ever made $4 per drawing with exceptionally rare exceptions to that rule. Anyway - it's hard for me to stay motivated for anything more than 'quick hit' projects. One or two single character illustrations for a small gaming manual? No problem. The dozens and dozens of drawings for my own card game? Well, how long have I been working on them and they're not done yet?
  • I like simple illustration work. This is significantly tied to that last item, but it also deserves its own point. I don't have any great desire to do uber in depth, full colored, fully rendered illustrations with complete backgrounds. The amount of hours required versus the reward (up to this point, we're talking purely personal here - see aforemented low paying gigs) has just not been in my favor.

With all of this in mind, I had a recommendation from someone on Google Plus: Paper Minis.

For those who might not be familiar: Paper minis are kinda what they sound like. You've likely seen the small lead miniatures that some gamers painstakingly paint and use to lay out their table top gaming sessions (think Dungeons and Dragons). Well, you can now buy plastic covers which allow you to take a small drawing (printout) and use that as your character, or in the case of the game master - the NPCs / monsters.

You put the paper minis into a stand - something like this.

Anyway, I thought I might give it a shot. It seems like the kind of thing that works on Patreon: give even a small amount and you get access to all the paper minis that I create (they will come out in sheets (PDFs) that you can print at home). Give a little more, and you'll be entered into monthly(?) drawings to get a free custom drawing. Give a lot? You'll get a custom drawing from me each month.

Dunno. There are probably bugs to be worked out, but I need to start to find them.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I really am ridiculously verbose sometimes.

This guy Bruce Gulke created a program called Tablesmith a long time ago. It allows you to create your own tables (think 'recipe') and randomly generate results from that table.

I love the program and paid for the 'registration key'. Something I very rarely do in this world of exceedingly functional freeware. I think it has uses far outside gaming for folks like writers and concept artists.

I created one to give me some quick descriptions to use for a starting set of characters to be used as the initial set of minis to describe the project to potential Patrons.

Below is a quick screen grab of some of my initial results.

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5/9 '16 2 Comments
1) Then keep doing it until you are good. Copy the greats (privately), try different techniques, try the opposite of your usual style, try different tools, draw for an hour every day until you like what you see.
2) Distraction and reward are different things. How many stories are there out there of illustrators who were given 50% of a sizable paycheck up front, who blew deadlines or handed in shitty work at the last minute? If you want to write for compensation, that's a separate topic, and I'm the wrong person to answer that question. If you have trouble with distraction, SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP AND GET IT.
ADD is a harsh mistress.

3) you like simple illustration work. Your style is your style and there is nothing wrong with that. Charles Schulz built an empire based on pen and ink drawings of a round headed kid and a floppy eared dog. Just keep drawing.

I asked Ed, my former advisor, once, about how to write the kind of play people want to see and theaters want to produce. He said that kowtowing to trends and chasing what it seems like people want is not going to result in an honest product. If you create what's true, honest and real for you, it's going to resonate with people who are waiting for it.
So, I wrote Wreck of the Alberta.
First and foremost: thank you for the well thought out response! I'll take each of these one at a time:

"1) Then keep doing it until you are good... draw for an hour every day until you like what you see."

You're right, of course. I should point out here that I don't say "I don't like what I do." I actually do (most of the time). When I said that I'm not that good, I should have completed the thought by adding "...in comparison to those who sell a lot of illustrations." Much of the problem is in marketing. Some of it is not. I was accounting for the parts that are not.

"2) ...If you have trouble with distraction, SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP AND GET IT. ADD is a harsh mistress."

Again, I agree. I DID go and talk to a psychologist many years back now. He gave me a referral to a psychiatrist after re-testing me for ADD. While he said I don't have an extreme case or anything, I'm *cough,cough* years old, and I know the 'coping techniques' and they haven't worked thus far. I, of course, proceeded to fail to stay focused long enough to set an appointment with the psychiatrist. Which would be funny, if it wasn't also frustrating and sad.

"3) ...I asked Ed, my former advisor, once, about how to write the kind of play people want to see and theaters want to produce. He said that kowtowing to trends and chasing what it seems like people want is not going to result in an honest product... ...I wrote Wreck of the Alberta."

In my 'perfect world' scenario, I do some writing and some illustrating - for the variety of things. The two seem to activate different parts of my brain meats. Writing is very focused - logical (even when it's pure fantasy I'm writing) and illustration is almost entirely... I don't know... mindless? Kinda a zen thing? I'm not at all shocked by the current popularity of adult coloring books purely because of how I feel when I'm drawing.

Anyway - on the thoughts of your former adviser: This is going to seem like extreme hubris coming from me (vs. your adviser, who, you know, gets paid to advise...) but I don't agree. Or rather - I think it's a kind of scale.

On one end of the scale, you have what I'll call Pure Art. That's without compromise exactly what one wants to write/draw/paint/whatev. On the other end of the scale, you have Pure Sellout. I think of the guy who likely wrote the most recent 8 Steven Seagal films, for example. (Yes, perhaps it's a matter of love for him. I wouldn't bank on it.)

Why does it matter? Well, I've been listening to MANY hours of audio book and podcasts that focus on self publishing. The topic of Writing to Market comes up often, and is hotly debated. You have proponents on both ends of the spectrum. As with most things in life, I find myself thinking that there's a balance to be struck somewhere in the middle(ish) for me personally.

tl;dr version: Don't let the Perfect be the enemy of the Good.

(Said the guy who's making Jack and shit from his creative endeavors.)
 

I whipped up a Thai pizza tonight.

Ingredients:

1 large pizza dough ball. (Walk into a pizzeria and ask for a "dough ball." They will sell you one for around $3. Offer void at major national chains.)

1 red bell pepper
1 large onion
4-5 leaves of broccoli rabe
Olive oil
1/8 cup coconut milk
1 clove garlic

Preheat oven to 550 degrees. Seriously. Don't mess around, this is pizza.

Meanwhile, sautee onions in 2 tablespoons olive oil and a little salt until starting to brown.

Coarsely chop bell pepper, broccoli rabe and garlic. Toss in food processor and add coconut milk. Process briefly; don't let it completely homogenize.

Roll out dough ball. Stretch out onto pizza pan dusted with cornmeal to prevent sticking. 

Pour contents of food processor onto dough and spread around well.

Top with the onions. Bake for around 14 minutes or until allllmost blackening at the edges. (If your oven can't get to 550 degrees you may need to bake a little longer.)

Don't drown the pizza. This is the most common mistake and the reason you have to go easy on the coconut milk.

"Hey, don't you add any spices to this?" I find it's quite flavorful as-is, but sure, knock yourself out.

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5/6 '16 5 Comments
I would eat that.
I wonder if our pizzerias would sell balls of dough? I never thought to ask before...
I didn't know dough was vegan. Cool!
Thai Pizza should be shaped like a ball with two hexagons on the sides. What you've got there is a Star Destroyer Pizza.
http://daiyafoods.com/our-foods/pizza/cheeze-lovers/

This vegan pizza has caused fights at our house when a slice stolen. It's likely not as good as your pizza recipe but sometimes you need the convenience.
 
What's the difference in OPW between being friends with someone, following someone, and giving someone keys?
I have the feeling some folks have deemed me a friend (which I think is the same thing as following me) in OPW but haven't given me keys, which means I still can't read their locked posts.
Do I have that right?
Thxbye.



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5/4 '16 6 Comments
OH. DUH.
This is good because now I can see exactly what the deal was. I went to your profile, and saw that I follow you, and two buttons were fully-colored for different filters (I only have 3) but "Friends" was grayed out. So that shows me the actual answer to your questions, which is yes, Person A can follow Person B, and give Person B keys to filters 1, 2 and 3, then follow Person C and give them a key to filter 1 and 3 but not 2, and so on.

So, in my case, you could read some but not all of my posts, but I changed it.
Ah! I look forward to seeing your stuff! I miss my Daily (or whenever) Dose of LindsayLou.

I have the feeling Houser has me in a similar bucket.
I'm also available in HD!
I believe you have that right.
Hi Jill!

Following someone, or "following someone back," gives them... exactly jack shit.

The only way anybody gets to see a locked post is if you give them the corresponding key.

And "friend" ain't nothin' but a key that exists to start with, as a convenience.

However, in an attempt to cut down on the confusion (and the radio silence and sadness) that all this awesome privacy might otherwise generate, when you follow someone, you are asked if you also want to give them some keys.

However, if someone follows *you*, there's less "glue" to help you through the interaction. You do get a notification. But you don't get a special prompt to consider following them back or giving them any keys.

That is something I should think about changing, because all this privacy is only helpful if it fosters rather than killing conversation in a reasonably frictionless manner.

However I would never change it so that you *automatically* follow them back or given them any keys, because that would not be the safe space I promised.

Does that make sense? This is that rare moment where I get to hear how someone is honestly reacting to the system we built.
It makes perfect sense, and I +love+ and value that permission is never automagically granted. If it means an extra click, so be it! (Eat a weenie, Zuckerberg!)

I think my confusion (and perhaps that of others?) is that we all still have LJ on the brain, so when we see the word "friend" we think of it in LJ terms and not so much in OPW terms.

Is there an OPW Announcements account that everyone sees? If so, it might be a good idea to post a refresher for folks, because I'm sure I can't be the only one who has made this mistake.
 

I'm seeing a lot of big-shot scientist talk about the probability that we live inside a simulation. I'm just a guy on the Internet who writes too much code, but... that's actually very relevant. So hear me out.

With all due respect... just as any computer can emulate any other computer, you can simulate a universe in a universe. But the performance hit is huge!

Yes, you can simulate certain physical processes in better than real time, but that's because you're taking liberties with stuff that doesn't matter to the highly specific question you're asking. When you simulate the stability of a bridge, you don't need to know if over a million years, a new species of slug would evolve to feed on the particular variety of bird poop that lands on that bridge.

But for the kind of open-ended simulation we imagine the aliens running, one in which we might emerge to wonder if we live inside it... shortcuts won't do.

Emulating, say, the Atari 2600 video game console is a much better analogy than simulating a bridge. For all of the games to work in your emulator, you must simulate every last wacky quirk of the original hardware, right down to the precise timing, because the people who wrote those games exploited every inch of that. And so does natural selection. If physics has a quirk that makes something just a little easier, evolution has probably exploited it, somewhere, sometime.

So if you want to simulate a universe that contains human brains, or something equally complex, in real time then you'll need hardware that beats the daylights out of the original hardware. That works for emulating video game consoles because modern computers are vastly faster. But all the aliens have to work with is a universe like the one they want to simulate.

So the beings running the simulation would have to wait, oh, let's say 100 years to see the results of one year, and that's optimistic. And the simulation would consume far more resources than the real thing.

You can trade off the latter for the former somewhat by running the simulation in parallel, because things can't interact with each other instantaneously at a vast distance. But you're definitely going to pay a huge price in terms of time, resources or both. 

Yes, they could be immortal and have the ability to slow their own perceptions of time. But it would still be much less of a hassle to set up the conditions that interest them on a real planet and just watch.

One problem with my "just use a control Earth and an experimental Earth" option is that it wouldn't allow you to experiment with different physical laws. I suppose it's conceivable that our hella-powerful aliens really, really want to know what evolves when the speed of light is, for instance, 299,792,459 meters per second.

But do they want to know that badly enough to tie up the resources of an entire galactic spiral arm in order to simulate one solar system? I doubt it. I think they want to ask more interesting questions.

And if they do ask more interesting questions... and if we're living in their simulation... that means the aliens live in a universe with significantly different physical laws than ours. And yes, that means it could be a universe where simulating things is easy — for some reason that seems absurd to me but makes sense given their totally different physics.

But that effectively puts us in the realm of metaphysics. How is running on a simulation inside a computer in an unrecognizable, unknowable universe different, from our standpoint, from the universe being the product of an unfathomable supreme being or natural process?

Fear is one answer. Science fiction authors speculate about the aliens getting bored and pulling the plug on the simulation, the aliens running out of funding and pulling the plug, or the simulation being inaccurate and one day calling an undefined function and shutting itself down. 

But if their fundamental physical laws are unknowably different than ours, then the usual scary speculations are not relevant because we don't know if people and programs in their universe actually have such tendencies, or completely different tendencies, such as just getting more awesome over time. Loosely speaking, we don't know if the laws of thermodynamics apply, or apply backwards, or emit golf-club particles on alternate Thursdays. Maybe the computer and the program both arose spontaneously because their native universe is like that. Who knows?

This throws a monkey wrench in the already sketchy machinery of trying to estimate the odds we live in a simulation in a way that has meaningful implications for us. Either the "host universe" simulating us is similar to ours, which makes it extremely difficult and expensive to simulate us, to the point where they would almost certainly just set aside some planets to watch instead... or it is dissimilar from ours, in which case there is no way of guessing at the future of the simulation because none of our assumptions hold. 

So I think Neil deGrasse Tyson is wrong. Sort of.

But hey, I'm prepared to be corrected.

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4/24 '16