Fact(mostly), Fiction and Opinion

Opinion:

Were this fiction, I’d start somewhere in the middle, but, as this is an opinion piece, I’ll start more akin to the beginning.

I am a bit of a cliché. I am one of those people who sit at Starbucks absorbed in their computers. Most of the time, I play internet backgammon. I need the distraction, and unlikely, unbelievable and unfair opponent dice rolls both help me focus my thoughts (anger, emotions, sense of justice, oh, damn whatever!) and motivate me back to writing.

I finished editing my friend’s screenplay last night. His raging rebuttals to my notes should arrive late this week. He’s pretty fast. Perhaps this weekend, perhaps next, we’ll sit down over lunch and go through my most egregious notes about some of the weaker parts of the script and start refining the movie. Such is the process of editing.

This left me time to solve another problem. I want to put the text of my last novel online here on my site so that it can be read as intended. I tried a lot of text formatting to represent transcripts (depositions and TV Shows). Out of habit, I used html tables to line things up. Unfortunately, Kindles azw format adds a table control bar at the bottom of each table. Since I used tables interspersed with narrative text and dialog, this didn’t work. It looked horrible. I tried other html ways to line up the transcripts only to find out Kindle didn’t support them. The book looks good in epub, awful in Kindle. So, for the dozens of people interested in the book, I’d like to put it up in the html that formats nicely.

I thought South Pasadena would be a good place to work this out. Here’s where the universe comes into play.

Oh, one more thing. I am experimenting with, for lack of better terminology, the I-Ching lifestyle. The basic concept is to make decisions based on uncontrolled events. So far, those events are, primarily, bus arrivals. There many bus stops served by multiple bus routes. Each one will take you to different destinations. Assign which destination you would go based on the bus. Go with the flow, and hop on the first bus to arrive. Even with scheduled buses, the actual arrival time can vary a few minutes either way, so actual arrival times, while not random, are sufficiently unpredictable to represent the universes ebb and flow. In theory, flowing with the universe is better than fighting against it.

To get to South Pas this morning, the corner of Fremont and Commonwealth offers two possibilities. Line 258 which would take me to Fair Oaks and Rollin where I could indulge in one of my favorite breakfasts at Hi-Life burgers and from there a twenty minute walk to The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf where I would investigate how to get my novel onto this Word Press site. Alternately, at the corner of Fremont and Commonwealth, either of the ACT lines take me to Atlantic from where Line 260 takes me to Starbucks on Fair Oaks and Mound. I would grab breakfast there and set up cyber camp.

I actually timed things for Line 258, but somehow, the bus crossed in front of me while waiting to cross Fremont. Okay, I thought, plan B. I crossed Commonwealth. Little did I know that the bus, to get back on schedule would wait at the bus stop for minutes. It took me awhile and a traffic light cycle to realize this. By the time I approached the bus, a mere fifty feet in front of me, it took off. Oh well, back to plan B. It’s just the universe guiding me.

Not long after setting up at Starbucks, a jackhammer’s noise interrupted concentration. Oh well, another of the universe’s messages. Stop writing and read some until the jackhammer is done. I had to use the restroom, so I figured I’d switch tasks when I returned. No. Didn’t think things through. The jackhammer was there for good reason, to gain access to external pipes. The restrooms were “Out of Order.”

Okay, another redirection. Go with the flow. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf usually has open tables. What’s another Chai Latte? Five bucks? No. Didn’t think things through. All the tables were occupied. Of course. Starbucks patrons escaping jackhammer interruptions and needing to use the restroom, also occupied.

Analysis: So what went wrong. I went with the flow. My college degrees are in Philosophy and Film.

Philosophy is of no help. No amount of inductive or deductive reasoning would have anything to do with interpreting the universe’s intent mostly because there is no rational reason to assume the universe has an intent. The problem might lie in my intent. By choosing to go to South Pas I might have been choosing to swim against natural currents. There were many other options, destinations and activities. I could have chosen to celebrate finishing a task and taken in a movie. So much for philosophy.

In film terms, this story can be seen as comedy or drama. As a drama, my headstrong decision to go to South Pas was a fatal flaw. No, that’s wrong. Nothing fatal about it. Such picayune consequences indicate a comedy where a comic figure keeps making small mistakes which seem, temporarily, important but add up to almost nothing. It makes me wonder. If a car hit me while trying to catch up with the 258 bus, would that elevate the story to a drama? Can I ever be considered a hero, or just a fool who should have waited on the traffic light? It doesn’t feel like a comedy, but I doubt it would rise to drama. It seems a film degree is little help as well. So much for a college education.

All the same, I think the universe seemed to be against me today. It doesn’t exist to make my life happier. I should learn to read its currents, ebbs and flows and make better decisions. As I said, I am still learning. I am experimenting with the I-Ching lifestyle. Not every experiment needs to be a success.

Damn, this is going to be a boring post. My fault for starting a blog after dinner. It’s too late too come up with something interesting.

I’m too old for this. I retired last June. I finished the first draft of my last novel last October. It is off to the editor now. I planned to start a blog then, but my friend wanted me to edit his latest screenplay. I finished that ten minutes ago. I’d like to say that’s why I decided to blog tonight, but no.

I decided to start a blog back in March when ex-President Trump announced his 2024 run. I wanted to write about it. The title would have been, “A Run for President Should Not be a Run from Justice.” Perhaps the time has past for that post. All the same, it would be weird if one of the first things a newly elected POTUS does is pardon himself from a jail cell. We live in historic times.

To the introduction part. I am an amateur author. I write under the pseudonym Karl Fandkin, NMRN, and I’d like to preserve some of my anonymity. No great reveals in this introduction. I confess to being a retiree, an Angelino and an unpublished author.

Now that I’m no longer grabbing at literature’s brass ring of publishing novels, I’d like to write my opinions, observations (facts) and stories I may come up with (fiction). I’ll try to label each appropriately.

In the future, I plan to get some assistance from AI. I hear RITR is good. Everything posted, however, will be reviewed and fact checked by me. No blaming AI. I will, of course, blame my pseudonym. That’s part of what they are there for.

This is my first, and, hopefully, most boring post. I am trying to see how things work here at WordPress. I do apologize if you read all the way here.