Epic Tales

Hi there,

I've not disappeared, in case you were wondering. However, I am trying to draft stuff on paper before typing up, too many thought bubbles sometimes and on other times not enough time. I got to draw up details for another one on the recent UK general election, maps in the media.


Epic Tales
So I was hoping to understand how to get my fictional story off the ground. It's of a guy who goes through lots of different little things in his day to day life, and finds himself surrounded by a conspiracy theory, which might actually turn out to be his paranoia kicking in too much because of what he does, but is it just what he see's and how he see's it or is everyone making the same connection?

The reason it's under Epic Tales is because I wanted to create that good feel factor on the way, heart warming, the one that you get from cinema visions and music videos. But how to write it?
 
For instance I've decided to go with Marlon Roudette's America above his "when the beats drop out", everyone hears the latter and I want the 'it'll be alright in the end, the happy factor tune' to come through with the bass, the lyrics compliment fully, (well to me at least).

Marlon Roudette, America
"Is a big town big enough,
For just a teenage crush? ...
Sun a little brighter...
Friends a little higher...
Life a little larger...
Does every(one) play a little harder?
Anybody tell you that you got it...?
Did you make it...?"

 For instance, the start of Untouchable 2011 when they've got the Maserati Quatroporte and bet each other they can escape the police, speeding on the highway for 100euro's, get pulled over, then bet each other 400euro's they can get out of it...and do! Not to mention the bigger true story in the first place.

Obviously, there are loads of these, the opening of Top Gun might just be a bit too OTT possibly but it has a bit of resonance, belief in escape to enjoy being here to know were in the right place with the right people, or at least making our path there, for the better.
Gran Torino 2008 ending anyone?



Life to the full conclusion of that immersed dream we always wished for.

Total Eclipse of the Sun

From thee Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to the Total Eclipse of the Sun.

Today if you were lucky, you would have seen the the sun blotted out by the Moon  around 0930-0940. Crossing the UK from Penzance up the west coast to the Isle of Lewis and heading on over to the Faroe Islands. Most of the UK got around 80-90% the island's and Svalbard got 100%. 

Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy. Oh Dam Clouds.

As it happens we also have the SuperMoon tonight and the spring Equinox.

The Supermoon is the nearest it'll be to the Earth for 18 years, and as we continue on BBC's Stargazing Live keep telling us to watch out for Comets coming and the four nearest moons of Jupiter.

I leave you with a thought...numerous people I have overheard, in shops, sat in barber chairs and me generally telling people to look up and watch it unfold, have shrugged their shoulders and said so what/who cares.

Does anyone think about the bigger meaning of life, that we are stood on a rock hurtling around the sun? We are just a small part of this galaxy, does anyone think about the power of the sun and moon over us. That something greater out there can define who we are.

We shouldn't dismiss our chances, although the way we think about what cause total eclipses across different faiths and over time has an incredible amount of resonance and myths. What if they are right and the superstitions and faith leaders turn out to be true? That three celestial occurrences could spell the end of us? 

On the other hand I thought this was cracking:

Dara O' Brien's descriptions of how each faith had the Sun eaten by Devils, Monsters and chased by Chariot's! (Fastforward to 26mins BBC Iplayer).



Solar Eclipse 2015, The Guardian

Time stagnates in one place. Why don't we watch more carefully?

What does it mean when we've come by this place?
To have been in this time, to have witnessed what we have seen.

What does it mean when we look back and find ourselves wondering what came before us,
to have found that it was all the same.

The sun rises and sets again and again, we watch the seasons pass us by, yet time is moving us forward, always showing us the next thing.

What does it mean when we wander through deep blue skies at night, watching stars move and shimmer, oh so bright? Did we once see what came before them?

The light they give us is from a distant past, what is hiding ahead of us to view, and yet already exists. If time stood still and let us see all at once, would we be so enamoured, beholden with ourselves, to have witnessed the greatness the universe can give. Our short time spans will be forgotten, only those Kings and Queens and rulers of the world will be recalled. Yet they are the victorious over us.

What does it mean to find the place at which we rest, to step across the spot which marks our grave, runs shivers down our backs. Do we not notice that we are already hollow on the inside, that from day one, we are mortal and time strikes against us. Who are we to question faith, whether it exists or not, it doesn't change the fact we won't be here in time to come.

The sun continues on for longer still, yet it's lifespan is chalked up already, it has an estimated end life just like anything else, and the ghosts which walk among us sees the changing landscape, the sun sees everything else around us.

Ideas for the Future of Time

This week has seen a number of ideas cross my path, for the first time I can think clearly logically about what it is, or so I think.

Firstly, I guide you towards the author of the infamous book Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay, from Australia. Who apparently had an a deep fascination with time. The book in its own right tells a time tale, but lately more recently I have noticed more time truths.

Moving swiftly into Weird Tales e.g. Lovecraft and Chambers, The King in Yellow pulls me through trying to ascertain whether time as told by the writers of the True Detective TV series really is like a flat circle. Where Death in all his power, looking over us can not see the 3D-ness which we can, and see's earth growing in all its wonders, yet nothing to kill, and so Death created time, so that he could kill the things which grew in the world.

This planet from the outside photographed by space satellites and astronomers, find a circle not a sphere. We all know it is a sphere, but if time is moving forwards it is held within that flat circle.

I have come across three other things: when looking into a mirror, do you see yourself, or Death staring back at you, or do you see your own morbidity? I recently saw a couple of TV programs envisioning some seeing there skeleton or at least a skeleton that was playing Death with a big Scythe coming for them-- JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy adapted for TV seemed to be a certain choice their.

Alas, time is also said to already be at an end, some say that what we remember fro our past was only a dream. Bringing to light the issue of what we are doing now...because in five years time or five minutes ago we will remember it as if it were a dream, something in our previous landscape. Nothing to tell us it was for real, but in memory only. So does that mean we are dreaming now? Are we locked in our own tomb already, and what does that mean for our future, will we be finding ourselves nearer to the end, or are we already at the end? Has Death caught up with us and eating away at us bit by bit? Our memories turned to ashes, dust to dust we must go devoured in time slowly.

The conspiracy only gets deeper, what if the monitoring of people really is deeply entwined in the bigger meaning? Forsake the argument we are in the Matrix... Knight Rider used to have a talking car that could drive itself and perform all sorts of other functions, not least talk to Michael through a watch.

Today Smart Watches and Google Glasses are coming to be, does that mean that the technology already exists for other more carefully designed plots set to in George Orwell's 1984? For instance, we all worry about how much data, privacy we all have, but we are all using a our smart phones to email,  text, Internet, check maps buy stuff etc. It only take the next step for someone to be within a certain distance and be able to read all those communications, maybe the Big Data the telephone companies hold on all of us, contains this material. Last I checked only records of communications, not what's in them could be held by the companies, but say a spool sat on your train carriage had  a mobile App/program they could run to pull all your communications, at the press of the button they could read every body's phone, take your pictures, messages, emails...all of your activities and search through to find out whether your are a good citizen or not.

It's only a matter of time before the system catches up, and if it doesn't Death soon will, if he hasn't already.

Countryside Markers

Today I hiked into the countryside to find a old site to take a water sample. Across the very warm January morning, bright sunshine strewn down on to me. Wearing a fleecy jacket as a layer more than a polo shirt, the first comfy warm air of after Christmas rained down.

Though I was very much alone, the narrowness of the path between the twiggy low branches prickling my legs made it clumsy and overbearing a route to cross. When I arrived at the waypoint the stream passed narrow and over crowded in broadleaf tree's empty of leaves, the grass just poking up amongst the roots. The stream crossed in front where I planned to take the sample, the foot path going over on a long narrow wooden bridge turning sharply right on the other side, disappearing as a narrow track amongst the tree's and grassy shrub.

I crossed and looked back down the stream. It was all of four foot across but deep enough to drown in and lose a bag or a body. Looking back out from the tree line to the other side the open field was established and disappeared long over the way to the next hedge row, a small house stood to the far side opposite to the corner from which I came and now stood. The barns from the track down.

The route that I had taken reminded me of sampling nears back, hiking way across the Peak District. Past the bridge a low barbed wire snare was dangling across the stream. This instantly gave me a strange feeling that I had walked back in time to when their was the old Vietcong, setting up booby traps amongst the tracks.

The knowing watch amongst the tree's, the paranoid aspect of troops hiding, dug in waiting for someone to trip up into it, as someone moved down the stream, or was it there for an incredibly small boat?

---

Later on in the day, I saw a tractor making its way down the road, it was returning back up the road as I pulled in to my next stop. I left wondering if he took the tractor to the shop as the driver had a pre-packed sandwich, promptly opening it, partially leaning on the steering wheel to keep 'control' over the tractor. Only in the sunny January warmth would you have seen that happen, it was something out the peak of the summer holiday madness. He had no care, and believed his sandwich could drive him down the road. This was very funny at first glance, why would a tractor driver have a packed sandwich to hand? As it bumbled up the road so the driver took a bite.

Darth Vader the Internet and Apple's i-egg Collection: From Google by Amazon through Facebook

The opening lines of War of Worlds is very useful in the understanding of what is slowly but surely taking over the world...Google has now started collecting it's employee's eggs. Yes, Google is going to store our internet history, Facebook is going to store our lives, and Amazon is going to sell us everything we want. From StreetView, Streetshop, to Google Glass and 'Minority Report' style advertising. A new twist in this long running saga begins: Silicon Egg Valley Freezing


Apple and Facebook are now going to store it's employee's eggs to help keep staff on board and enable a better work environment. But my cynicism suggests that it's not a far cry for the largest of providers to our daily needs, to not only collect our everyday conversations, most of our internet history, to sell us stuff (probably through Amazon) and enable governments who deny they watch us when they can generate reports fairly quickly from internet providers said be holding our details...can now assess our every move from Google's advancing state of centralised searching.

Our lives are now beyond government organisations, private companies in line with the secret world of government spies and listening posts are inspired to now collect our DNA. It's not a far cry to suggest that sperm will also be collected and the likes of Google, Facebook and Apple can create it's own people for it's own workforce, Google staff creating Google Humans for Google Jobs. They could even have a go at some genetically modified variations, stem cell research pushes on, the private industries could manipulate, test and grow it's own advanced elite staff.

Utopia (Channel 4) may unfortunately be closer to the truth than we'd all like to believe...they know we're short of resources and with so many people around, at what point does a government or a private company with all our details suddenly become our worst enemy? Generating it's own people removing the rest of society from the loop or just removing the one's it doesn't want, by setting off a viral pandemic...an Ebola outbreak may well be an advantage to these companies.

May I remind you of the start of War of Worlds by HG Wells, (many variations on the quote exist)

"No one would have believed, in the early years of the 21st century, that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes...and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us."

As google collects our everyday data and facebook collects our lives, soon google humans will do google jobs... and Darth Vader won't need to vote in Ukraine, representing his Internet Party of Ukraine. His suggestion to remove MP's from government by replacing them with computers.

Darth Vader the Internet and Apple's i-egg Collection
From Google by Amazon through Facebook...
and maybe a flu pandemic to help.

It speaks the truth in too many ways when you think about it

True Detective turns out to have a lot of catchy phrases, one liners and questions your thoughts long after.

Marty: Do you wonder, ever, if you're a bad man?
Rust: World needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.

Marty: Well, you don't pick your parents...and you don't pick your partner.
A smart guy who's steady is hard to find...
You know, I was steady...
Rust was smart.

Rust: This is a world where nothing is solved...There are broader ideas at work.

Sargeant: You ever seen something like this?
Marty: No, sir.

Rust: Someone once told me that all your love, your hate...was all the same thing, that it was all a dream. And like a lot of dreams...there's a monster at the end of it.

Detective: Just what is it you found?
Rust: Something deep and dark.