Bartender Geek

I just found a claim that the quote "Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today," from Alice's Adventures Through the Looking-Glass, is actually supposed to be a mnemonic to help remember the distinction between the Latin words "nunc" and "iam".

Can someone who actually KNOWS Latin sanity-check this claim for me?

It's true. When I want something, it is usually an intellectual want, or a mild, vague urge, but I rarely truly passionately desire something.

I'd like to claim that this is because of a careful Buddhist detachment, or training in Stoic philosophy, but, in reality, it's probably just a side effect of the type of depression I've had for years.

So it's kind of neat that I now really, really want something -- something I desire so much that my teeth hurt.

That's not a figure of speech, by the way -- I literally noticed that my back molars were somehow aching with desire for this. Dunno why that happens, but it did.

Bruce Galloway's Fantasy Wargaming generally considered to be a truly awful roleplaying system, and I don't disagree with this assessment. I attempted to play it once, in seventh grade, and couldn't make heads or tails of it -- and I later discovered that this was due to no fault in myself, but simply because it is just that poorly written and thought-out.

So I don't know why I desire the thing so much -- but I found a copy on AbeBooks, for $3.98 including shipping, and bought it. Other copies started at $1, but generally had shipping start at $3 -- there was one that was listed for $1 with $2.50 shipping, but it was listed as "Fair" condition, while the $3.98 with free shipping was listed as "Very Good" condition, so I decided to spend the extra 48 cents.

I don't suppose that the seller is going to make a great profit on this thing, but it gets it out of his or her stock anyway.

Yeah. I just spent nearly four bucks on a used copy of a game that everyone, including me, thinks sucks. And I can't wait for it to get here!!!

I mean, let's face it -- both of them are, well, mediocre story-crafters. And the universes they create don't REALLY hold together all that well -- their world-building is, y'know, okay. Their characters are fairly two-dimensional.

But, damn, there's something there. Something about what they create just sticks with you.

What is it?!

I can point to the weaknesses in Star Wars, and in Harry Potter. But that doesn't matter. There's SOMETHING in those that works.

Are there other fictional universes that just, y'know, get you that way? Even if the people who created them are fairly mediocre in their craft?

And what IS it? Can it be learned? I mean, all of you who write for a living -- you've probably asked yourself this question occasionally, too. . .

Is it the same thing for Star Wars and for Harry Potter?

Writer's Almanac today had stuff about Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason. I've been reading the Perry Mason books, because they're exactly the kind of thing I like to read while exercising or just killing time -- interesting and fun, without being heavy, and the good guys always win. And they're mostly reasonably Playfair, too.

• He was born in Malden, one town south of here. (But he went to high school in Palo Alto, so I don't know how long he was here.)
  
• He was kicked out of college, after one month, for brawling (he'd later claim that he'd slugged a professor), and and never went back to school. He ended up as a typist in a law firm.
  
• He figured that he was at least as smart as the guys for whom he was doing the typing, so he took the bar exam, having had only one month of higher education. He passed, and became a lawyer, focusing on defending indigent Chinese and Mexican workers.
  

I DID know that, after he became famous, he used all his contacts in the law and forensic fields to form a foundation to look into and overturn wrongful convictions.

From http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/gardner.html

In his pulp days, Gardner was notorious for killing off the final heavies with the last bullet in the hero's gun, which led to some editors teasing him about how all his good guys seemed to be such bad shots. Gardner's alleged explanation? "At three cents a word, every time I say 'Bang' in the story I get three cents. If you think I'm going to finish the gun battle while my hero still has fifteen cents worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you're nuts."

Oh, and having thought about it, I think I got the story of the four rabbis wrong: one died, one went insane, one became a heretic, and Akiva came out unscathed. Mier wasn't part of the project.

And I think I'm getting the details from a work of fiction: Milton Steinberg's amazingly mindblowingly brilliant book As a Driven Leaf. Which is a brilliant piece of historical fiction, in which Steinberg takes the, like, four pieces of information we know about ben Abuyah, and turns him into a fully-realized character.

Frankly, I think that future generations could do worse than to declare that a divinely-inspired work, and put it into the Bible. Various people tried to excommunicate Steinberg for writing the thing, which is always a good sign.

So, matociquala posted about how she flunked Creative Writing twice, once in high school and once in college. And papersky mentioned that she also did badly in her Creative Writing classes.

I think they ought to track down their Creative Writing teachers, wave their collective awards and book contracts at he teachers, and gloat shamelessly, but they both have too much class for that. Well, papersky has too much class for that, anyway.

Anyway, I was thinking about MY creative writing classes in high school, and how badly they let me down. See, my classes were good. And I did well in them. And they taught me useful things.

Clearly, that's why I'm not a professional writer.

I'm really embarrassed that I can't remember my creative writing teacher's name right now -- I remember her face and her personality perfectly well, and her name will come to me some time after I hit post. Hell, I remember her lessons. And use them. She was really, really good, and loved what she did. I do remember my other favorite English teacher's name: Arthur Foisy, who, I just discovered upon going to my high school's website, is now a house dean.

The Creative Writing class was offered to seniors, and was split fifty-fifty between students who were honors-track and looking for an interesting elective-type class, and seniors who had flunked English at least once and needed to pass an extra English class to graduate. You needed to pass four years of English to get your diploma. Most folks did this by taking the normal four years of English, but, if you flunked one, or, for that matter, wanted to graduate in three years instead of four, you needed to double up. Your two main choices for doubling up were Creative Writing and Journalism.

This split helped both the CW and the Journalism classes immensely. Frankly, there weren't that many classes where honors/AP students and folks who flunked English WOULD learn together, and the dichotomy helped.

If I write essays competently, it's her fault. Hers and Mr. Foisy's, really.

Lucile Burt -- that's her name.

They both love literature and poetry -- reading it and creating it -- although Mr. Foisy preferred reading and criticism, and Ms. Burt preferred creating it.

But, see, they believed that EVERYONE could write and create, and probably should. And you didn't have to write and create for publication. I mean, you COULD publish, and that was fantastic if you did. But even if you never had any intention to publish anything, you'd still benefit from learning how to put a story, an essay, and a poem together, and from learning how to take them apart again.

I never had any intention to publish anything. Still don't.

Lis, for that matter, majored in Creative Writing in college, and did well at it. And earned an "A" in her high school class.

And, after college, she didn't write a word of fiction for ten years. Now she's started writing fanfic, but, again, she has no intention of going pro.

So, clearly -- if you want to be a successful professional author, you have to flunk Creative Writing.

It's a sonnet.
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I mean, c'mon -- this isn't even SUBTEXT.

sokmunky pointed out that Ms. Jaqueline Steiner has an email address.

So I emailed the following:
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Today, on the 25th of October, 2005, a grim milestone was reached.

Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander Jr became the 2,000 American soldier to die in Iraq.

There's nothing particularly special about the number "2000". Sgt. Alexander's sacrifice was not different from anyone else's. Someone who dies tomorrow will not be mourned any less by his or her family. Those who died last week did not make any lesser sacrifice in the name of duty and patriotism.

But we humans look for milestones. And we look for numbers and patterns. And the Universe is always willing to provide them for us.

Today is, as the blind irony of random chance would have it, St. Crispin's Day.
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