Intro – Words and Cave Paintings

Since the first neanderthal painted water buffalos on his cave walls with their little stick-figure hunters wielding long spears, we’ve been using symbols to convey ideas to others.  Sure, we came up with auditory symbols to do the same, but written symbols transfer information over thousands of years.  We knew cavemen hunted buffalo long before someone did an autopsy on an iceman to see what might be in his stomach.  When aliens finally find our civilization long after we’re gone, they’ll know a lot about us from our written records.  Some of it…a lot of it will be quite embarrassing in my opinion.  Except we’ll be too extinct to be embarrassed. 

When I was little, I read little Disney fairytale books my grandmother bought for me.  She was an avid reader and crossword puzzler and valued anything that exercised the noggin.  I guess I wound up the same way.  I never really cared for the assigned readings in English class, but then I discovered Stephen King in high school and read his novels, novellas, and short stories through college and beyond.  I loved the way he invested you in his characters.  Even when the story is not so appealing, his characters are.  You either love them or hate the hell out of them and can’t wait to see them get what’s coming.  Then there were several others…Thomas Harris, Anne Rice, Crichton.  And Tolkien certainly captured my attention over and over…I read the LOTR three or four times, and I wouldn’t mind reading it again.  Jean Auel wrote one of my long-time favorites, Clan of the Cave Bear.  Then about ten years ago I rediscovered Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.  As much as I love horror and fantasy, Mockingbird is top of the overall list. I don’t read nearly as much as I once did because of the GD internet and its many distractions…gotta do something about that.

Anyone who knows me well knows I’ve been an aspiring writer for many years.  Kind of sad, that phrase, “aspiring writer.”  I wrote a few stories back in college, but never submitted any except one which didn’t amount to anything.  I’ve had a few stories in my head for several years.  Every once in a while, I write a little, but after a couple thousand words I get lazy or lost and give up.  If a story stays in your head, it’s a pretty piss-poor story.  Sure, you can tell a story.  You can make it better the more you tell it.  You can give it details that make it seem real…suspending disbelief.  But unless you’re one hell of an orator (and I’m not even close), its still not nearly as good as it would be in writing.  How many times have you heard someone talk about a movie saying, “The book was better.”  Its become an unnecessary cliche…books are almost always better.  There’s so much a book can give you that a movie can’t. 

So, I need to get back to writing.  I need to type some words, delete them, type them again in a different order.  I need to think about the words I’m writing.  Use some of my big (large, enormous, colossal, etc.) vocabulary.  If only to get some creative inspiration and hopefully renew the muscle-memory in the ol’ cerebral cortex.  I’ve always heard a writer should keep a journal just to put some words on a page regardless what those words are. Its just practice…exercise to get the blood moving. This is reason number one for the blog.

Number two.  I’ve always been a bit introverted (is that an understatement?).  When I was little, I was called “shy.”  When you get older, you’re “introverted.”  In any case, I’ve always been afraid of saying something which will put people off, or piss someone off.  Or just cause a scene.  Social catastrophe, global thermonuclear embarrassment.  Anything that might draw attention to my faults or failures.  Terrible, I know.  I think I’ve gotten better.  The job has helped. It helps when you’re an expert at something.  I still typically keep my mouth shut unless I have something important (or funny, which is more importanter) to say. So now we have the interwebs.  Farcebook, Instagrab, Snap-whatever.  I see it every day and I read so many people saying so many stupid things.  Some will post something they know will infuriate someone else, but they don’t care about anyone’s feelings.  I think I need some of that.  I don’t want to go full-asshole, but I need to put some stuff out there that might offend someone.  Just a hint of dill pickle to go with a tub of vanilla.  This blog is where I’ll practice pissing people off.

Third, I need to be entertaining. Whether I’m writing something serious, or funny, or interesting…people have to want to read it.  Topics will cover a wide variety of things I find interesting, or irritating, or humorous.  Things like covid and mitigation, pet peeves, health, social media, society in general, and (everyone’s favorite) politics…something for everyone.  And if folks want to respond, great!  Tell me how wrong I am, tell me I’m right, at least it lets me know you’re reading, and you’ve been entertained enough to waste a few minutes of your day on me and my words. 

That said, I’m not looking to get into a war of words with any of this.  I tend to believe an internet argument is not something which can be won.  Real arguments need to be face to face…with the possibility of a punch in one or both of those faces.  The threat of pummeled flesh tends to keep most people from regressing to infantile behavior.  Most…not all.  But please leave some comments if you disagree with anything I write. There’s a very real possibility you could change my mind on any subject.  It may be rare, but it is possible.  In which case, I will readily admit to a philosophical one-eighty.  Maybe some of you will, as well, but I’d be surprised frankly…people rarely change…least of all, their minds.  (There’s got to be something wrong with this many commas) No matter…I’m not actually attempting to evoke any epiphanies among you folks.

If you read it, I predict you’ll see way too many ellipses, parenthetical comments, and hyphens…I’m quite a hyphen-lover (and somewhat fond of side notes). I’m hoping to learn to use less of these distractions as I improve. Hopefully, I’ll learn to plot a story like I was taught once upon a time in a creative writing class sometime in the late 90’s. I might even learn proper grammar. Mostly, I hope to entertain folks enough to justify a story or two…even finish some of my stalled works. Eh, we’ll see.

So that’s the gist.  I’ll be posting links on THE Facebook and I suppose I have a Tweeter account I’ve never used…maybe there too.  Read it if you’d like to see my cave paintings and leave a comment whether you like it or not. And if you’d rather not read a collection of my somewhat random thoughts, however eloquently phrased, then scroll along…these aren’t the words you’re looking for. 

-Big Steve