Lubrican: Blog

This might seem like a long, rambling kind of entry, but there's a point to it. Fair warning. When I get to the part about smoking dope, you'll probably think I got wasted before writing this.

I was, as the British would say, "mucking about" in some of the folders on my memory box (computer) the other day, and found something interesting.

I should give you the background on my memory boxes. I prefer PCs, because my fingers are large and don't work very well, and when I try to type on a laptop it looks like this: Ihgq[ig lotgw of wong =kleys.

A full size keyboard cuts down on the gobbledy gook.

So every once in a while, the PC either dies, or (more usually) the benevolent overlord Microsoft comes up with a new operating system.

This means I get a new PC, and that means I have to to copy 200+ books and stories, and the 250+ ideas in my project folder, and all my half finished projects onto a flash drive and move them onto my new hard drive.

Then I store the old computer (if it still works) because that's my ultimate backup. I still have my original PC, which booted with a floppy disk that has DOS 3 on it, I think.

Anyway, the easiest way to do all this copying and pasting is to copy whole directories (folders, to you wet behind the ears types) at once. Then I dump them into a directory I call "Old machine", from which I can pull things out to establish new working folders. This lets me clean house, so to speak. There's lots of stuff I started, but which died a deserved death. I won't throw it away completely, but I can relegate it to "old machine" status.

Now, if you ever smoked weed, you might be familiar with the term "second generation joint". I only know about this because my friends smoked weed in college. I experimented with it, but like Bill Clinton, never inhaled.

What I have, though, are second (and third and fourth and fifth) generation folders in the cobwebby "old machine" folder on my computer. I mean there are files in there that have dates in the 1999 time frame. They survived Y2K.

And once in a blue moon, there will be a pearl lying within the mud. It may be a stinker in and of itself, or as written, but the idea is a great one. And something I wasn't skilled enough to write in 2001 might be within my talents, now.

What I found, the other day, was a story I think I originally wrote to enter into a Valentines Day contest of some sort. I think that's what it was, because it was in a folder called "contests and unpublished".

But I don't think I ever entered it into a contest. That's probably because it's 6 chapters long, and most contests won't accept anything that long. But it couldn't be any shorter without gutting it. Imagine Beauty and the Beast with just Beauty in it.

So I rewrote it and, since there is no contest to enter it into, I'm just going to post it this year as my Valentine to all my readers.

It's what I'd call a reflective story, looking back on what might have been your life, if you were a boy raised in say, the fifties, sixties or seventies. If you're younger than that, then it might have been your father's story. There's more innocence in it than there would be in today's youth.

I often get mail from people who tell me a story of mine dredged up a (happy) memory from their youth. The memory I hope this one dredges up is pinning a corsage on a girl's dress, and in the process sliding your fingers between her dress and breast in the process - right in front of her parents.

That part of this story is definitely autobiographical.

So, two chapters a day should get the whole thing up before the big day.

Happy Valentine's Day to everybody.

Bob

I finished a story and started posting it this week. It's called Helping Sis Pick A Dress. It's pretty routine for my kind of story. I think it's eight chapters long and it will be completely posted by the end of the week.

While I'm here, my thanks go out to all who nominated some of my work for Clitoride awards. I really appreciate that. I do this primarily for fun, and when my readers have a good time, that's frosting on the cake. Clitoride nominations are even beyond that.

Sprinkles, maybe?

I'm not making light of it. Thank you. I mean that. I just have a hard time taking myself that seriously.

As always, thanks for reading.
Bob

I got hired at Walmart one year as temporary holiday help, and during orientation I learned that wishing non Christians "Merry Christmas" was apparently hurtful and horrifying to them. Apparently a generic greeting that everybody (with a brain) understands means "Hi, I'm happy at this time of year and hope you are, too!" can be weaponized in the minds of those who don't believe in the Yahweh stream of things.

I'm not referring to Jews, who figured it out a long time ago and just smile and nod as we Christians flout our belief all over the place, obviously attempting to convert everybody in sight.

So, since we were forbidden to say "Merry Christmas" to customers, I cobbled together a generic greeting, which is the title to this blog entry.

I confess I couldn't figure out a way to get the Hindus in there, or the Buddhists, but then they're all pretty zen about things and have never shown any indication they care.

What I found out, when I greeted people with "Merry Ramahannaquansmas!" was that they were curious, which allowed me to inform them of Walmart's Scrooge-ness, and I found out almost nobody gets offended when you wish them Merry Christmas, even if they're Satanists.

Regardless of your personal beliefs, this time of year carries with it a measure of hope, and expectation, and joy. And even if all you want to do is get gifts, there are people out there who have a great time getting them for you.

Imagine if, instead of just a couple of months per year, strangers smiled at you and wished you well all year long.

You don't have to believe in Heaven to know that would make this a better place to pass the time.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good read.

Bob

It's been a while, but I'm back with a new story. It's called Dad's Dating Advice. The foreword to that story should alert you that it's not my "normal" story. Fact is, it is my normal story. It's just presented with some twists and turns.

It's a long one (my opinion) with 24 chapters and an epilogue, so if I stick to my normal posting behavior, it will take a couple of weeks to post it.

For those of you who have, again, been inquiring if I'm still alive, I am. I get it. You know I'm a geezer and might pop off any day now. My doctor says that's not likely and thinks I'm in pretty good health.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again,. because it explains why I disappear a lot.

The way I write, I work on two or three (or even four) projects at the same time, drifting back and forth between them as my muse dictates. Eventually I get fired up about one of them enough to finish it. Occasionally, I finish two at roughly the same time.

This is the long-winded way of saying Andy, my editor, has another book he's working on, while I post this one, which he recently finished working on.

So there's this one, and maybe another one after the new year.

Thanks for your concern, and interest, and good wishes.

I treasure them all.
Bob

Something happened that I fixed in a routine kind of way, but which caused problems for at least one reader. I thought an explanation might be in order.

SOL has a limit to the size of a chapter, in terms of how much will fit on one page. I'm sure most of you have read chapters that have a page two or three or even four. I don't personally like that, so I make all my chapters fit on one page.

The way I do that is to write the whole story (or book) and then break it into chapters. I know roughly what size to make each chapter file.

On my most recent post, Life Isn't Fair, I somehow forgot to split the last chapter, which got posted as chapter seven. I didn't realize it was a multi-page chapter until it was already posted. When I found out, I investigated, to find out why, and found that chapter seven was as long as two of my normal chapters.

So I split it and re-posted chapter seven, adding chapter eight, which had not existed when the story was listed as "final".

I didn't think that would matter to anybody, because if you downloaded the story when it was final, you got the whole thing in seven chapters. If you download it now, you get the whole thing in eight chapters.

But one reader went back to what he thought was the last chapter (chapter seven) and looked for something he didn't find. He wrote to me asking where it was.

And this blog entry is the result of that.

So now you know.

Assuming you were even interested (grin).

So why would am I interested?

Well, this isn't the first "mistake" I made, posting this story. At one point, when I tried to post the original chapter seven, my mouse landed on "Foreword" instead. I had completely forgotten I'd prepared a foreword, and it never got posted, until it was mistakenly sent in as chapter seven. I got no less than sixty messages about that. Five of those said that they scored the story low because of it.

Now I've said it before, and I'll say it again now. Scores don't mean that much to me. I get pretty good ones in most cases, and I do see that as validation of a sort, but what tells me how I'm really doing is feedback that's detailed. It can detail why someone liked something, or why they didn't. Either way, it helps.

But people who say "You made a mistake so I'm deducting points" don't tell me anything that helps. And people who tell me proudly "I never give a 10" don't help me (or anybody else, for that matter,) either.

So I really don't worry too much about the scores that those people give me.

Want to know what does worry me?

With all the scores I have that are in the eight range, and with all the nice things reviewers say, I haven't gotten much in the way of nominations for Golden Clitorides in years. That worries me.

I'm not complaining, mind you. If people don't think my stuff is good enough, then they don't. And that means I'm not doing a very good job. That's the worrying part.

On the other hand, I still write because it's fun.

And having fun is better than any score or accolade.

It also means I don't get all freaked out when I make a mistake.

Thanks for reading,
Bob