Welcome to Heavily Salted Cheese, a blog about freeelance writing, especially RPG and wargames writing.
More lessons in ‘How to Be a Tyrant:’
- Pose as the only honest individual. Characterize politics as trivial and inherent corrupt.
- By labeling all politicians as corrupt, blame the people for voting for the corrupt. This provides legitimacy for repression of the people.
- Set unrealistic aspirations for ethnic minorities and then criticize them as lazy and corrupt when those aspirations of course are crushed.
- Call for an end to politics in the issue of national unity. That national unity is identical to the interests of the tyrants. The interests of any other people are just political and therefore corrupt and selfish.
There is and is not a great deal going on today, by which I mean that out on the mean streets of the City of Angels there are hard-faced men planning violence and mayhem and others hoping to exploit the chaos for their own ends. Shameless media hacks misrepresent the truth and slur the honest. All manners of things occur and what they are I do not know but they are the terrors of the earth. On the other hand, I am so busy with continuing commitments that I have little time to think of new ideas or projects. Hence, from a creative point of view, nothing much is happening.
What happened to Juice? Doppler works more or less OK but I would rather have my Juice back.
Banned from posting for 511,592 hr and 21 min. This is the message that greeted me when I visited the Wizards of the Coast website in search of inspiration. Is it just me? Is it intended for someone else? Should I take this as some sort of inspiration for a story or scenario? The Wrongly Received Message: JW is an innocent although fairly ineffectual individual hose life takes a dramatic change in direction after receiving a message that completely changes his understanding of the world and of his place therein.
Alternatively, perhaps some part of my psyche has been secretly logging on to the Wizards website, quite unbeknownst to my conscious self, and making salacious attacks on innocent D&D creator Dave Arnesen or issuing virus-laden threats to forum members who deserve, perhaps, better. What else might this Mr Hyde of the brain have been up to without my knowledge? Harassing people online? I noticed in my spam box this morning a message with the title “Did you try to hit me up on MSN this morning?” – which I thought unlikely because if I were to do such a thing then it would surely be in the evening after strong drink had been taken. Then, my evening is morning elsewhere – so I cannot discount this altogether. Dreaming and waking increasingly merge in perpetual nightmare and I do believe that is Bob the Zombie knocking on the door of my office.
It has been quite a slow start to the new working year, not least because the teaching has continued throughout the end of the year period and still takes up a lot of time, a touch of flu (I can handle it) and numerous commitments which I am struggling to fulfill. At least I got a rather nice cheque yesterday for some writing work now completed.
How to Become a Tyrant:
Rule 1: Blame the People
Rule 2: Pose as the only honourable and honest champion of the country.
Rule 3: Marginalise all other voices.
Rule 4: Infantilise discourse and potential dissent (control or at least intimidate the media!).
Contact me, should you so desire, at heavilysaltedcheese@yahoo.co.uk.
Back tomorrow.
It is the beginning of the year although, from where I sit in the City of
One thing I have concluded from listening to a number of different games blogs over the last week or so, and which should not come as much of a surprise to anyone, is that there is a wide range of different interests not just for types of game or types of support for a particular support but also for style for particular types of game support. Some people seem to enjoy modules with parts that can be cut out almost whole and transported to other games, while others have specific requirements for combat, railroading the players, monsters and guns and just about every other facet of the game-playing experience. Given this situation, what if anything should the freelance writer do? Well, the obvious thing to say is that while a particular style will not please everyone, it seems unlikely to be able to cobble together a portmanteau style which will please everyone. Consequently, rely upon editors to ask for what they want and, for self-motivated pieces, choose potential publishers with care and persistence for the long-term.
Back tomorrow.
The House of the Harping Monkey is hosting IntWoCreMo in January of the forthcoming year. It takes its inspiration from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and, in similar vein, challenges writers to create their own RPG world setting of 50,000 words in just the 31 days of the month. Online support and documentation is available to those who would like it and the basic information is here: http://harpingmonkey.com/intwocremo/?p=1.
Tempting though it would be to participate in this venture, I really have so many other commitments that it would be verging on the reckless even to think about trying it. For 2007, I really must concentrate on getting finished all of those 50-90% completed projects that I have lying about – it is such a pity that having done the hard work, the words are not getting published. This will really be my writing resolution for the New Year – 2006 has been quite good in terms of publications but next year must be better and will be better if the unpublished stuff makes it into the public arena in one form or another. I am also going to identify several magazines for short articles which I can write in off moments and which take comparatively little time to complete. I’ll push ahead with the fiction and try to get ‘several’ short stories published and, in the fullness of time, even Gilbert Games. Additionally, I will push on with articles for Slingshot and Strategy and Tactics. I started a piece about nomadic warfare on the Steppes last night (when I was supposed to be doing something else) and, although I can foresee having to change the shape and scope of it some time, it should be published around June or July. In the meantime, I plan to submit some shorter pieces – in my experience, editors often like to see shorter pieces to act as fillers when the larger ones leaves holes in publications or to fit in with some emergent theme. I shall be working on that basis anyway.
That’ll be all for me this year. Let those celebrating enjoy themselves and I hope to be back next Tuesday.
Spells beginning with the letter ‘D’ seem to offer few meaningful ways to assist the revolution. Dominate animal might be useful in convincing some four-legged thing to run harder and win a race and so might be useful for scamming bookies; detect lies might be useful in determining veracity (He’s lying – his lips are moving); dream could also be used creatively to help persuade various influential people to change their minds in constructive fashion. Casting ‘Doom’ on someone sounds like fun but is likely to be too noticeable. Why are there no spells such as: ‘Distribute Wealth’ or ‘Democratise Institutions’ or ‘Discriminate Positively’? Here is a game waiting to be written – players take the role of party members or unattached independent thinkers and use their magical powers to try to bring about a popular revolution. The GM, meanwhile, will challenge them with smears in the right wing media, abuse of national institutions and secret black-clad vampire assassins. Not sure what kind of name to give it.
The Insomnium Games website has been updated and it is noted that the module competition has been extended until February – which rather suggests that not enough or possibly no acceptable submissions have so far been received, including of course my own. The question I face, therefore, is whether to consider submitting another entry – I feel at the moment probably not because of the continuing overhang of existing writing commitment and the lack of opportunity for becoming more familiar with the Abeo setting.
My review of Goh Sin Tub’s The Angel of Changi and Other Stories has now been published at Bookideas (http://www.bookideas.com/reviews/index.cfm?fuseaction=displayReview&id=3512).
Numerous network problems today further reduce productivity, already severely impeded by ongoing festivities. Be like the salmon, swimming against the tide, swimming against the tide of life!
Back tomorrow.
I will use my magical powers for good – although this must be achieved by stealth, or else I fear I will be removed by the black helicopters and transported to some kind of secure scientific location in which I will be expected to live out the rest of my life. Of course, creating food and water can help out some of the poor and needy in the immediate vicinity, although for more long-term assistance they will need money in their pockets and better career choices – well, alchemical skills can turn lead into gold so no problem with the first part but, for the second, it may be necessary to do some beguiling of leading political elites to cause them to change their policies. Polymorph self and speak other languages will be necessary to gain access to those who make the decisions. Additionally, clairaudience and clairvoyance will be used to ensure that those decisions are being conducted in the appropriate way and in due time.
It seems hardly feasible to cure all the sick people of the world but some pains can be removed. Removing curses might help a small number of people with mental health problems but more intensive magical research will be required to tackle the major issues involved. It is unfortunate that so much effort has been devoted to finding ways in which magic can be used to hurt and kill people and destroy objects and so little to improve the lot of humanity. Perhaps the gods have been involved in this because they fear the loss of their baleful influence if humanity is able to escape from its servitude and live freely and with plenty.
As for global warming, well, transmuting enormous quantities of greenhouse gases into less dangerous substances will be an exhausting and probably impossible task. Cleaning up dangerous pollutants from even one large coal plant of the many thousands in
A final area of research for today will be to consider whether magical spells can be used to target specific viruses. If they could be destroyed selectively, then perhaps people could recover from HIV infection. But the magical technology necessary to identify different types of virus and only attack those identified as undesirable remains unproven. Pity that we cannot use tiny fireballs on them.
Back next Wednesday.
Today’s useful spells begin with the letter C. The first is Comprehend Languages – clearly of terrific use to me in understanding what people are saying here (assuming, of course, that I am interested in what they say). This would provide great opportunities in my career by bringing into reliable English some of the many so far untranslated texts of the world – I doubt there would be much money in it but fame could be built that way. Contact Other Plane, on the other hand, could perhaps be used to demonstrate to the Skeptics that there are many gods in the multiverse and that they should pay me the one million dollar prize for proving their existence – it would be necessary to be clever in doing this as there may need to be some kind of Turing Test for Divinities. All kinds of Cure spells could be used to make money – people will pay cold cash to feel well again and perhaps it would be possible to use them for some sort of cosmetic surgery or gender reassignment. This kind of business would probably work best dressed up as a kind of Christian fundamentalist scam – but one which actually did work. Call Lightning could be used to win money via gambling – bet that a football match will end goalless, for example, and then bring out the lightning to smash up the ground and force the abandonment of the game at the desired score. Some years ago, it was said with I think some proof that gambling rings had done something similar by blowing up the lights at some Premier League grounds.
Nothing much seems to be happening today – the western world is closing down for end of year celebrations and while we continue as normal here, the work I do that is locally-based is not of interest in this blog.
Quote of the day from Blake’s Four Zoas:
“Why wilt thou Examine every little fibre of my soul
Spreading them out before the Sun like Stalks of flax to dry
The infant joy is beautiful but its anatomy
Horrible Ghast & Deadly nought shalt thou find in it
But Death Despair & Everlasting brooding Melancholy
Thou wilt go mad with horror if thou dost Examine thus
Every moment of my secret hours.”
The complete works are online at: http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/erdman.html.
Back tomorrow. Contact me, if you wish, at heavilysaltedcheese@yahoo.co.uk.
Were I a younger man, I would wish to use my magical powers to bring me those things my heart desired – sex, power and money notable amongst them. However, as I grow older, I find the most useful spells to be the mundane (Mend, Create Food and Water, Summoning Water and Air Elementals to do the cleaning) or else help to mitigate the daily tribulations of life: Timestop, for example, enables me to have an extra hour or two in bed to catch up with some sleep while the world is paused, Clone means I can do something productive while my double goes to work in my place. Various illusions help me to sound better when I sing and short-term attribute improvements mean I can periodically play the guitar quite well. I have little desire these days to strike down my enemies with Fireballs and Lightning Bolts – apart from one or two that is – or indeed to do anything that would be construed as illegal. Conjuring up the spirits of the dead to learn the secrets of the past is not, for example, strictly speaking illegal, although it is best done confidentially. Inflicting minor curses on troublesome individuals is a minor misdemeanour at best. Sadly, there is nothing which so motivates me these days that I would go forth to seek out a mighty Wish.
My review of Philip Longworth’s Russia’s Empires: Their Rise and Fall has been published now at Bookpleasures (http://www.bookpleasures.com/Lore2/idx/0/2417/article/Russias_Empires_Their_Rise_and_Fall_From_Prehistory_to_Putin.html), as has the review of Keith A Ayers’ Engagement Is Not Enough (http://www.bookpleasures.com/Lore2/idx/0/2416/article/Engagement_Is_Not_Enough.html). Meanwhile, the Asian Review of Books has published my review of Charles Allen’s God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad (http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/arb/article.php?article=748). A couple more reviews are due at Bookideas and I have just had chance to request half a dozen or so splendid more choices thanks to Norm Goldman’s success in persuading some university presses to offer titles for review.
I was also invited yesterday to submit a paper for a conference to be held in India at the end of January – just when I was thinking that I had done just about enough conferences for a while. Well, I will probably submit in any case – it won’t be until next year anyway.
Back tomorrow.
I have to confess to feeling overwhelmed still by the sheer volume of work that I have to do – and some dismay at how other people are adding to it. This is crushing my creativity at the moment to the extent that I am really finding it difficult to find anything interesting or even amusing to write here. Not only that, but casting around the usual suspects on the internet does not provide any immediate inspiration. Perhaps other people are closing down business for the various end-of-year festivities. Well, I’m going to pop out for a couple of hours of Christmas shopping and hopefully being away from the mountain of emails and other communications that have enfolded me like an octopus will help to wake up my brain.
My review of C.K. Prahalad’s excellent The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid has now been published at Bookpleasures (http://www.bookpleasures.com/Lore2/idx/0/2412/article/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Pyramid.html), as has also the review of Mathias Broeckers’ Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories, and the Secrets of 9/11 (http://www.bookpleasures.com/Lore2/idx/0/2411/article/Conspiracies_Conspiracy_Theories_and_the_Secrets_of_911.html).
Back tomorrow.
This is a brief catch-up note as I have been working o much recently that I am incapable of any kind of creative thought. Friday was too busy to post.
I have now bought a new laptop computer and that should at least help future productivity – however, the enforced slowdown resulting from the various conferences and the problems with my previous computer have meant that my hope of finishing everything that I am committed to doing by the end of the month has been reduced to dust and ashes. Well, I will try to pick up the word count over the last couple of weeks of the year, although of course the seasonal festivities will also require lengthy attention. At least the weekend teaching has now finished for the year.
With the new computer, I have switched from using Juice (which seems to have stopped working altogether) to using Doppler to find and download podcasts. It seems to be doing the job very nicely and, based on the two days for which I have been using it, I can certainly recommend it.
Back tomorrow. Really, this time.
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