Joyce Melton

Toxic Mice

Well, I hadn't seen my friends Griff and Danny since November so when we got together we yakked for about 5 hours and talked about everything.

Then I went home and went to bed a bit early.

I had a very strange dream, a science fictiony one.

In it, Griff was the leader of the household troops of the king of some almost-medieval country and I was his science advisor because the science was all more than up to date.

The great powers had passed our little kingdom by and we had become sort of like England was durring the Cold War.

But the King's scientists had been working on a new secret weapon and Griff had asked me to find out what it was. My brother was one of the King's scientists and he wouldn't tell me though he hinted it was such an odd unconventional weapon that most people wouldn't fear it.

Finally, the King's head scientist, Steve Jobs, called all the science advisors in the kingdom in to give us the goods. You could tell we were science advisors, we all wore blue robes.

Toxic Mice.

I said, "Very good sir, that should solve the kingdom's problem with feral cats and dogs but how does that keep the kingdom safe from nuclear attack?"

Well the mice were bio-engineered (we were given models of their genes in clever little plastic cases that came apart to show all the relevant info and almost derailed the dream into one about tinkertoys). The mice had been designed to be toxic to other mice over time and half-breed mice were infertile but still toxic so pretty soon all the mice in an area would be toxic mice.

Then you send the messenger in the form of a virus and the mice become toxic to humans. It's not deadly, just debilitating. It doesn't have to be mice, it could be some other small common animal.

Next thing, all the mice in the palace are already infected and maybe most of them in the capital city.

Next, Griff (Lord Michael in the dream) is going to be in charge of the virus messenger stuff to keep it safe from being misused. He's going to be promoted to Lord Defender and will be the third highest noble office in the country. I'm getting a promotion to, all us science advisors who aren't noble are getting patents and titles and the noble ones will get land. Since I'm Lord Michael's science advisor, I get a double promotion, a patent, a title and a new piece of land in the city and the rents on some country estate.

Then Jobs calls me aside and says have I ever heard of Cromwell? That Lord Michael is going to be set up as leading a sort of palace coup so all outsiders will think Michael and I are the leaders of the country now but it will really still be the king, Steve Jobs and my brother.

And I say, so the Toxic Mice are fake? And he says, no, they're real and six months from now there will be enough of them in world capitals to bring every government in the world down if the messenger virus is released so we've got to keep it secret.

So the king is calling a council to tell all the nobles what is going on and I'm there whispering about toxic mice to Griff. I'm just telling him that this is so complicated something has to go wrong, like the mice have developed intelligence and are making plans of their own or something.

The king comes out and it's Danny, he's wearing a fake white beard over his real brown one because it's an official council and the king has to wear the Beard of Wisdom, it's part of the job. His real beard is longer and wider than the fake one. We're having a meal too so Danny has to keep lifting the beard to eat and finally hooks it on backward, saying he may have to wear it but he doesn't have to wear it on his face. And Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are arguing with him and he and Griff are playing kissy face and winkies across the table.

I look down and a mouse is tugging at my gown under the table, he has a list of demands he wants me to present to the council.

And I woke up. :)

Someone asked me, as a writer and editor, how long a chapter of a novel should be. My rule of thumb is a chapter or a short story should be about 3500 words, give or take a few thousand.

For me, a chapter is a conceptual unit -- I actually think of longer works in chapters. Well, there's the book or work itself, next smaller is the arc which may be one or several chapters but is usually 3 or 4, and chapters themselves are divided into scenes or vignettes.

An arc often has the structure of a story itself, but not always. Arcs take the action to major turning points in the stories, usually where the characters make some important decision or discovery. An arc can actually be longer than one book if you're writing a series of books.

A chapter holds the amount of information I want to group together in the reader's mind and usually ends with a pageturner and begins with a hook, it's analogous to a paragraph. A pageturner is a question or impetus that needs resolution. A hook is a very vivid scene that pulls the reader's consciousness into the story. A pageturner grabs the emotions of the reader, a hook grabs the senses.

A vignette is a mini-story within the story except a vignette is usually just a beginning or just a middle of a story. A scene is a sequence of story built around a particular locale or action.

Another unit is the view, which is used almost entirely in multi-viewpoint or omniscient viewpoint stories to mark changes in the viewpoint character (who the viewpoint character is). This can be used in first person narratives but it's tricky to do that and should not be attempted without a net; ask your editor if she has one. A view may be a part of a scene or vignette or may be as long as an arc; it's a contextual unit, not a structural unit.

Since I don't usually outline stories except in my head, these divisions are very fluid until I've got them down in black and white.

After I've written the story, I go back and see if any of the changes in direction the story takes are too abrupt or too slow and I adjust the pace by lengthening or shortening scenes or vignettes, usually by inserting or taking out description. I check for story logic and consistency and I make sure that my hooks and pageturners have the proper amount of grab.

These actions may make the chapters come out very different lengths than my "ideal" 3500 words which they actually usually are while I'm writing. I constantly highlight various sections of the story and check the word count of that section. I don't like an arc to be longer than about one third of the whole work or shorter than 10000 words, and scenes shorter than 300 words or so are going to feel like slamcuts in a movie. Sometimes I want a slamcut or even a series of them, short choppy scenes change the reader's perception of story time.

Changes of view are even more like slamcuts, so I check those to see if they are actually needed for story flow, dramatic intensity or plotting and if they aren't, I rewrite them. This can mean rewriting an entire arc which is a pain and I've usually fixed the problem before I get to rewrite. Either that or abandoned the story.

The things that cause me to abandon stories are usually plotting mistakes. I don't plot much ahead of time, it's my weak point. The three plotting mistakes I generally make I call, "plotting myself over a cliff," "plotting my way to China," and "plotting myself into a tuna can." I'll leave it to you to imagine what I mean by those. 

This is a big undertaking, like for a charity picnic breakfast, but it makes a memorable feast. You need a lot of cooks and helpers.

Fry several skillets of sliced spam until nicely browned. Save the grease. (For those who don't know, the Spam I am talking about is a brand of canned luncheon meat made of chopped and molded cured pork.)

In one of the skillets add enough grease (or veggie oil if you chicken out :)) to fry up diced potatoes, nice and golden. Use enough grease or oil to almost cover the potatoes and after you put them in, don't stir or turn them until they are nearly done. Take the potatoes out and put them in a bowl lined with papertowels to soak up excess grease.

In another skillet, with just a little grease, fry some sliced onions until they begin to get tender, (save a few of these grilled onions to add to the scrambled eggs), add diced potatoes. Before the potatoes are done, add sliced green and red bell peppers. You can stir this one as needed. It won't be as greasy and the onions would stick to the paper towels so don't use that trick when you serve them.

In a big bowl, beat some eggs with a little added water for fluffiness. Make some skillets of scrambled eggs. Add diced spam, grilled onions, or diced pepppers as you prefer. Make two or three versions of these scrambled eggs, someone is going to find a favorite.

Since everything is cooked in spam grease, don't touch the salt shaker.

You can use some of the grease to make gravy if you are feeding lumberjacks or fishermen. If you've fried some of the spam really thin, you can cut it into one inch pieces and make creamed spam on biscuits (or some other bread, toasted English muffins are good). A few people will put this concoction on their eggs for a real heartstopping breakfast entree. Ignore them.

Serve with fresh hot biscuits, butter, homemade jams, sliced tomatoes, orange juice, milk, coffee, hot tea or if you have enough Southerners, Coca Cola.

People may talk about this feed for years, which they probably wouldn't if you used ham or sausage. :) When everyone is too stuffed to get away, ask for donations for your charity.

There's something surreal about traveling at night on the freeway. The bubble of light around you, the white lights come toward you and red lights accompany you. The multicolor lights of cities and towns pass quickly with the hot yellow roadlights of exits and overpasses standing like sentries.

Away from the city it is only more intense. The desert night can be very black and the small hours of morning can bring fog so dense you're tempted to drive by Braille, hitting the raised dot lane markers you can't see anymore with a satisfying tunk-tunk-tunk.

Turn off the radio. Dial down the interior lights. Peer into the darkness. Somewhere, you see a white glow in the blanket of fog, a big rig approaching on the otherside of the median strip.

Pea soup fog in the Bay Area, tule fog in the Central Valley, peanut butter fog in the Mojave, thick as a Dagwood sandwich; why are you driving in it? If you pull over and turn off your lights, you'll be alone in a darkness so complete you'll feel like a cave fish. Pull over and leave the lights on and you take the risk of someone rear-ending you, thinking you're moving.

So you keep driving, slowing down, trying not to overdrive your lights. Then someone blows by you in a quad-cab doolie, doing at least sixty, seventy, maybe one hundred ten,you can't tell. Speed up again. If you hit the right speed, you won't see anyone at all. The fog is so thick, you don't even see the cotton candy lights of traffic on the other half of the road.

You roll down the windows. The fog is cold but it keeps you awake and you can hear the traffic on the other side of the road, when there is any. You can hear the dots on the pavement better, too.

Tunk-tunk-tunk.

At forty-five miles an hour, it will take you three hours to reach the towns along the Colorado. Three hours of cold desert wind coming in the window, wet with fog. Three hours of peering into the darkness, wondering if there's a car stopped in the road with its lights off, or a deer crossing the highway or someone trying to wave you down cause they have car trouble.

That was an exit. What did it say? Eagle Mountain. You've never heard of Eagle Mountain. There are no mountains here, just flat desert. Is it a town? Would they have coffee? Too late now, you've passed the exit. You make a mental list of who you would kill for a cup of coffee. The list gets longer.

Tumbleweeds appear out of the fog like golden chandelier-spiders in your headlights, scuttling across the road. Alien-looking, it's a Steven Spielberg sort of thought.

Tunk-tunk. Tunk. One of the dots must have been missing.

Lights up ahead. Is the fog lifting? You can't be coming to a town yet, there are no towns on this freeway for another fifty miles. Someone with road flares? An accident or just a breakdown. You slow down and steer off the dots, not wanting anyone to see you doing that.

The fog lifts suddenly, the immense desert opens up around you under hard bright diamonds in a jeweler's showcase black velvet sky. The tension flows out of your neck and wrists and the open window is suddenly much too cold. You roll it back up.

A road sign says, Blythe 70 miles. Less than an hour away and you won't have to kill anyone for coffee, there's a Denny's there. Talk about surreal.

When Bush vetoes any bill designed to cut short the US involvement in the conflict in Iraq, someone in the media needs to ask Bush a few questions.

1. Sir, are the Iraqi people better off now than they were four years ago?ÂÂÂ

Bush will likely say yes, because they are not living in a dictatorship run by Saddam Hussein. Opening the way for the next question:

2. Mr. President, do more Iraqi children today have the security to enjoy housing, food, clean water, medical care and live parents than four years ago?

He's not going to answer that one, not really, but someone needs to ask it. Whoever asks won't get to ask him the third question in person, so someone else will have to pick up the ball.

3. Sir, would America and the Iraqi people ben better off today had more than 3000 American and Allied soldiers, sailors, pilots and marines not died to save the Iraqis?

Here's one more someone can ask when Bush's people let them come back from Siberia (exile from being allowed to ask the president questions):

4. Mr. President, what specific, measurable and unequivocal goals do you hope to achieve in Iraq by spending more American lives fighting a war you have already lost by your mismanagement?

Can anyone in media ask such hard questions? I sure hope so.

- Joyce Melton

Here's a deal I'd go for:

Oil companies kick some of their profits into a fund, for every dollar they contribute they get to take that dollar and some percentage of another one off the tax rolls. The fund is administered by a board of university professors, chosen by the oil companies and approved by Congress and the president. The monies in the fund are to be used for funding productive (engineering, not pure science) research into energy replacement technologies.

Any patents developed by funded research belong to the inventors and the fund, 50/50 or whatever other deal is worked out. After ten years, evaluate the fund and decide whether to continue the program or cash it out and return the monies to the contributors with shares of the profits. At this point the money is again taxable.

- Joyce

All purpose, re-usable political message. One-size fits all!



- Joyce

Are any of these points in dispute by prominent climate scientists not in the pay of either fossil energy companies or governments influenced by profits made on the sale of fossil energy?

1) Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere continued for a significant period most probably will result in a net warming effect at or near the Earth's surface.

2) Humanity has been releasing higher and higher amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere over the last few centuries.

3) Processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere have not been shown to have increased significantly over any significant part of the last few centuries.

4) Changes in other sources of CO2 released into the atmosphere are not comparable in magnitude to the change in the human release of CO2 over the same period of the last few centuries.

5) CO2 levels in the atmosphere actually are increasing over whatever measurable interval of the last few centuries is available.

6) Temperatures at or near the surface of the earth during whatever measurable interval of the last few centuries is available actually are increasing.

The sign on the gate read, "Seventeen tigers live inside this enclosure. You may not see them but they are there. DO NOT leave your vehicle or open the doors and windows. The tigers are real and dangerous."

The drive-through zoo called Lion Country Safari had already shown us many wonders. Giraffes and rhinos close enough to touch, though we had obeyed the rules and kept our doors closed and windows rolled up. The tape deck commentary began talking about tigers as I drove through the automatic gates.

Tall green grass under shade trees, even taller yellow-brown grass on sunny hillocks, but we didn't see any tigers. The tape suggested we park and wait for the tigers to make themselves seen.

I stopped the car but left the engine running so the air conditioning would continue to keep us comfortable. We looked around. No tigers.

Suddenly, a black and orange ringed tail moved. A brilliantly striped tiger lay dozing in the tall grass. How could we have missed seeing him? In the shade of one of the trees, another invisible beast yawned--four hundred pounds of unseen predator revealed in a moment.

Our eyes adjusted to looking for tigers. They lay all around us, in plain view. Unseen until we had known how to see them. Seventeen--I counted--huge black-and-orange-marked cats with snowy white belly fur lounged at their ease in tall grass and dappled shade.

They looked bored but we weren't.

It happens every year, right about Memorial Day. :)



- Joyce

Everyone needs to ask themselves these questions:

1. Do you believe in your own right to marry for love?

2. Do you believe in the rights of your children, your siblings, to marry for love?

3. Do you believe in the right of every human being to marry for love?

If you don't, do you have a defensible reason not based in emotion for opposing such rights for other people?

Because I'm willing to bet you believe in number one.

Never look back, something might be gaining on you. - Satchel Paige.



- Joyce

Trust the farce! :)



- Joyce

Keep on trekkin'.



Joyce

Beware of large North American pungulates. :)



- Joyce

This actually happened to me during one commute on the 405. :)



- Joyce

Finally Did one in color I like. :)



- Joyce

No thumbnail this time, but even my Mom thought this was funny. :)

Click for latest Beastly Thinking.

- Joyce

The wonder of a singing duck is not how well he sings!



Joyce

Painfully obvious...



- Joyce