My blog will be changing very soon

I've been kind of ignoring the little messages at the top of the screen for the last few weeks (could have been months, and I might not have even noticed), but Blogger, which is owned by Google, is removing ftp access for its blogger service. What this means might not make a lot of sense to people who aren't all into the hardware side of blogging, but for someone like me, it's HUGE. For the longest time, I've really enjoyed using Blogger to make my blog. I was able to configure it to be exactly what I wanted, which meant having to hack the code a bit (all legal, of course), but I got it to be exactly what I wanted. What was most important to me was that the blog was actually hosted on my own website's server. I learned a long time ago that when you don't do that, you are at the mercy of some other company and how good its service is. I used to use Xanga some years back, and they constantly had hardware problems, so Blogger was my solution.

Well, they're ending ftp service for Blogger, which means I have to look for a different service. Oh, I can stay with Blogger if I want, but basically what it wants me to do (in order to use littlesarbonn.com) is to do a DNS change to my system so that THEY host my blog, and that my web site is now completely pointing over to the service provided by Google. In other words, my web site will be completely hosted by Google, which means that at any moment, Google can completely cut me off if for some reason it doesn't like my content.

Unfortunately, Google has been known to do that. Oh, they don't advertise it, but I know a number of controversial people who have had their Google GMAIL accounts completely deleted on them for no reason they can fathom, other than someone didn't like who they were and what they were saying. Or it could be a technical glitch. Either way, that's not the kind of organization I want to entrust my daily writings to.

Unfortunately, this leaves me with two options. Go to another service, or pay more money to my own service provider to add a blogger service from it. Pair.com, which is my provider, uses Moveable Type, and I'm not really all that enamored with it. It has a bit of a learning curve I really don't want to try to figure out any time soon. I then looked at Word Press, but the only service they really offer that I would want is almost as bad as going to Moveable Type. So, I may end up just using their free service, which I've established already some months back at http://sarbonn.wordpress.com. It's not really a solution to my problem, but I don't really trust Google all that much, so I'm going to be moving my blog over to Word Press's free service and see if that works out for me.

I might change things as I look further at Moveable Type. I just don't feel like spending hours learning and configuring something that might just not be worth the expense.

For the most part, those who follow my blog on Facebook shouldn't see any difference. I'm pretty sure I can use the same linkage anyway. But for those who follow the site itself, it might be more difficult. The fortunate thing is that The Adventures of Stickman and the Legospaceman comic is hosted directly on my server, so it doesn't need a blog service in order to make it work.

Either way, I'll keep you informed.

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If You Want To Save Money, Don't Spend Money....

I was reading an article today on CNN Money's page about three ways you can save money. The link to the article was "Save Money Now! Three Great Deals!"

Let's examine the three deals first and then I'd like to make a small comment.

1. Fly At A Deep Discount
2. Get Cash For Appliance Clunkers
3. Tee Off For Less

Okay, the first one says that you can save money by using special promotion codes to book air travel. Um, okay. That's nothing new. And the deals aren't always THAT great, even though they want to hype the thought they might be BECAUSE PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO FLY ON LOUSY AIRLINES THAT ARE NOW CHARGING YOU FOR CHECKED LUGGAGE.

The second one says you can save money by using promotions for appliances to replace your older equipment. Now, this could be a good thing if the incentive was to get rid of resource using clunkers, but not everyone really has that need, and you kind of have to decide if the price you're going to be paying overall is really going to garner a savings down the line, or just make back the money you spent buying the new appliance.

The third one is to save money on golf courses by calling and asking if there are any discounts available. Duh. Okay.

Having read that article, I'll put forth three alternative ways to save money:

1. Don't fly anywhere. Don't travel unless you absolutely have to.
2. Use the mediocre appliances you already have if they're not consuming more energy than necessary.
3. Don't golf. It's a stupid sport anyway, kind of like NASCAR is a sport. Whenever a sport involves people who can perform it while drinking beer, it's not really a sport. It's a diversion.

The point is: If you really are trying to save money, don't spend more money than you have to spend on entertainment. If you really like golfing, then make sure you allocate a certain amount of money to golf, and all will be fine. It's a luxury, so treat it as such. If you're having trouble paying the rent, golf needs to take a backburner to paying the rent, the car payment, the loan shark or whatever Maslowian need that needs to be fulfilled.

This goes back to one of my biggest pet peeves, and that's department stores where a clerk will ring me up and automatically say: "You saved $50 today by buying this coat" right after I just handed her $150 for a coat that was originally marked up for $200. No, I did NOT save $50; I lost $150 in the transaction. A savings means that I GAINED money, not spent it. Whenever I hear that statement, I want to pull out my glock (which I should point out that I saved $33 on by buying it on sale at Walmart) and open fire on every cash register in the joint. But instead, I smile, thank her, and go dump my head into a barrel of water.

Anyway, just saying....

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Pirates Hijack Duane's Novel off Somali Coast

Today, the writing of Duane Gundrum was hijacked by pirates in international waters near Somalia, the European Naval Force reported this morning.

Somali pirates attacked Duane’s latest novel approximately 600 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia. He was completing an intense scene involving a complicated, triangular romance between his protagonist, a nice Southern girl, and a mysterious woman known only as the Klaw. Complete details on their complicated relationship is unknown at this time, as the author was deep in the middle of a plot variation that could have resulted in either a twisted relationship, involving a previous lover or some kind of plot twist that might have introduced yet another character who has not yet been identified.

Why Duane and his writing was traveling so close to the Somali border is unknown at this time, although it is believed that his journey may have been influenced by the concept known in certain circles as Writer’s Block.

The Somali pirates are believed to have kidnapped numerous passengers on Duane’s cruiser, although sources have yet to reveal any names. However, a recent communiqué from the Somali pirates indicates that they are holding a plot point prisoner and are demanding $13 million dollars (US) in ransom. They threaten to “delete the hard drive” if they are not paid off as demanded.

European Naval Force commanders have indicated that they have no intentions of launching a rescue attempt at this time. Admiral Franz Heckler of the British Command Vessel Trinity stated, “We do not know anything at this time, and to be honest, Duane is kind of an unknown writer pretty much everywhere, so I’m really not sure anyone cares.”

An image of the pirate leader who Duane would REALLY like to find


Duane was contacted by email, to which he responded, “How did you get this email? Did my girlfriend put you up to this?” There is no indication at this time if his response was sincere, or if it was, in fact, some type of code that really means, “I can’t talk right now because Somali pirates have kidnapped my hard drive with my latest novel on it, but I really like your news program and recommend everyone watch it every hour that it airs.”

The US Navy responded to our request for information with a simple dispatch: “If we see pirates, we blow them out of the water. What was the question again?”

Former literary victim of Somali pirates, Elric Longfellow commented on this story with the following: “If only these pirates would target one of those stupid vampire novels. Just once….”

We will continue to report on this story as more information develops.

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Caring about Acedia

As a writer, I would have to say that words are my bread and nuance is my butter, or is it nuance is my bread and words are my butter, or is it butter is my bread and....

Okay, I stole a bit of a joke from Woody Allen, but the point still sticks. As a writer, I love words, especially really poignant ones that have very unusual, nuanced meanings. The words "acedia" is one, in particular. It means to be extremely apathetic, to not care about anything to the point of not even caring about not caring. It was used in older days, but was eventually replaced when it was collapsed into "sloth" which took over as one of the deadly sins.

But we don't think about acedia that much these days, and it's not just because we don't know the word. We don't know the sense of its perspective.

I discovered this when I was teaching college students in the introductory class of political science. I used to assign a daily newspaper culling assignment where students were required to bring in one story from the news. What I discovered is how many lazy college students there are. They just don't seem to have the ability to do it. Of the ones that did actually do the assignment (which came after many days of prodding), I started to realize that very few of the students really cared what was going on in the world around them. I mean, they really didn't care.

And that seems to be the case in most circles. On some subjects, we tend to pay attention, but mostly we just don't care that much. International subjects are ignored, mainly because they involve people we don't know or ever intend to know. This is why when atrocities take place in some foreign land, there is a sense of "that's really sad" but very rarely does anyone want to get involved. The subject usually falls really fast on the interest level of most people.

Then we come to more local issues. A fire might cause someone to watch for the visual effect, but rarely because of concern. If you know someone in that fire, or close to it, then you might pay closer attention, but even that is on a case by case basis. Generally, we don't even care that much unless it seems exciting in some way.

Look at the news that gets played every day. I was watching responses to specific stories some time ago, and I noticed that people were concerned when the story involved celebrities they would never meet, but if some homeless person was killed in their area, the interest would be very lacking. In other words, if some movie star in Hollywood was going through a relationship crisis, people in Michigan might care, but if some vagrant was stabbed down the street from where they live, then the concern really wouldn't arise all that much.

I think this is why we can have a war go on for nearly a decade now, and no one really seems to care. Even though Americans have been dying, and many other people from those countries have been dying nonstop, we don't have much of a concern. Its a sidebar story that gets played right before the local weather and sports.

It also has to do with how the media covers the story as well. If I showed a personal interest story of someone suffering, people are going to pay attention. If I show you the same situation but explode it so that thousands are affected, and I use statistics to explain it, generally people aren't going to care. People can't wrap their emotions around statistics, which is why a lot of our national stories are so hard for us to wrap our heads around. We just don't care.

Which brings me back to my word of the day: Acedia. We just don't seem to care, but even worse, we don't care that we don't seem to care. Instead, we focus on minor, unimportant things while others are dealing with mortality issues on a daily basis.

Words can be interesting sometimes.

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Your Friends May Not Be Your Friends: The Dark Side of Recent Trends in Facebook

This has been bugging me for awhile now. I wasn't really sure how to word it, or even if anyone else was noticing it, but I was certain there was something bad going on. Turns out, I was right.

For the last while, I was getting numerous Facebook friend requests from people I'd never heard of before. I'd look at their included profile (or what little of it I could see) and there would be even less information included. In other words, I was getting friend invites from people who I didn't know, and I suspect that none of their other "friends" knew them either.

Turns out, these aren't just lonely people trying to make friends. They're spammers who realize that they can no longer get through your spam filters, so they are now trying to friend you and then open a new door to send you lots of information about products you don't want to hear about. Whatever other motives they might have, like trying to get personal information about you so they can use it to steal your identity and make your life a living hell, well, I'm sure no one would ever do that. Especially some anonymous stranger who has sent you an invite and "wants" to be your friend.

Technology Review has an article about this. Which means, if you've seen the article in the trade press, then the issue is already HUGE, which also means that you're probably already a victim. When CNN picks up the story, which is probably tomorrow or the day after, then you can be assured that if you weren't already informed, you will be informed by your bank when they ask you what all these charges in Arumba are for.

Spammers are getting very good at what they're doing, and they have to be, because there are too many programs designed to circumvent their attempts. I have a friend request I put on hold last week from a very attractive young woman who wants to be my friend. She lives in Georgia, and she has about forty other friends, none of whom I know. Her profile picture shows her with half of her shirt missing (on purpose), which I'm sure is quite useful in getting your average male to think to himself, "hey, she wants to be my friend, so maybe I have a shot at that hot chick" or some other stupid thought process. And that's how someone who is a spammer is going to get onto someone's friends list.

But then it gets even more interesting. Because I'm some horny guy that wants to make it with some hot girl half my age who lives on the other side of the continent, I'll probably be stupid enough to accept her friend request. I mean, what can I lost? Well, then she decides she wants to be friends with a lot of my other friends, which she now does by sending out a mass request to everyone on my friends' list. Then they look at it, realize that she's a friend of a friend, so they click yes when they get her request. They figure that by association (she's "my" friend), she must be safe and quite possibly a forgotten friend of theirs. So, she uses this to continue to break her way into the associations that we have amongst our friend networks, until she has managed to exhaust all avenues of connections. But now she has a huge list of people to spam for her products.

Let's now revisit "her", because odds are pretty good that she's not really a she, nor is she actually a person, but a spammer network that is interested in exploiting connective networks. Without any work at all, they let the previous connections of networks do the work for them, and next thing you know, we're all starting to receive strange correspondences. What you will also NOT notice is that her connection to you seems to disappear, going underground. Oh, she's still your friend, but she doesn't make status updates, so you don't remember she's your friend. She's like a sleeper agent waiting for the right moment to strike. And when she does, you'll never even know she did.

This is the type of thing that will probably bring down the usefulness of a site like Facebook because once people realize they're being scammed and targeted by people in their own networks, they'll do what comes natural: Leave. Why stick around an invite future attacks and continued exploitation?

There is much more to this than these basic points, but I'll leave it at that so people can get back to informing me of how many sheep they've found on their farms.

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Stickman Will Be Returning Soon!

My comic strip, The Adventures of Stickman and the Unemployed Lego Spaceman, will be returning soon. I just finished the conception story and art for the first few new entries. As soon as I can hook up a scanner, I will be producing these and adding them to the site. The new stories will begin with the introduction of Stickman's new pets, and then I'll be slowly integrating the introduction of the third main character, the lego spaceman.

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People Are Still Not Clear on How to Do an April Fool's Joke

I've talked about humor here before, and unfortunately I'm revisiting the concept because people still don't get it. Not that they read my blog anyway, but they still don't get it. I'll say it again: A joke is not funny if people end up pissed off after you tell the joke. If they're hurt in the process of telling the joke, you really need to relearn the concept of humor.

An example is the Republican Party. Just because you insulted the Democratic president on April 1st does NOT make it an April Fool's joke. It just means you chose an appropriate day to be inappropriate. Here's what they did: Obama Insult. Basically, for those not going to the article's site, the Republicans thought it would be a hoot to pretend to like Obama's ideas, and then they end their spot by talking about how they're joking and Obama is still essentially the anti-Christ (or something like that). Their actual joke is that they liked Obama's plan to cure global warming by:

"by replacing cars with low-emission unicorns” and achieving an unemployment rate of "negative 39 percent," among other “accomplishments."

I'm sorry, but insulting the person you're trying to punk doesn't come off as humorous. It comes off as insulting.

Google thought it was being clever this morning by changing its name to Topeka. On the surface, it might be kind of funny that Google decided to change its name to a town, but there's a darker joke being played here, and that's a direct slap at Topeka, which is trying very hard to become a site for a Google project (which playfully changed its name to Google for the chance of being recognized by Google). Well, here's where that joke turns really sour: If Topeka doesn't get the project it's vying for, then Google's little April Fool's joke goes from being playful to being straight out insulting, because it shows that it used Topeka as a brunt of its humor and had no intentions of actually awarding Topeka for actually going out of its way to honor Google in the first place. Instead, they would have made a grandiose gesure for nothing and got punk'd instead by Google.

That's not to say that some companies haven't got into the spirit of the day with just straight out fun. A couple of good examples are Starbucks and Blizzard.

Starbucks announced that it has two new coffee sizes: Plenta and Micra. Plenta is so big that it can be used as a rain hat or a lampshade, while Micra is only two ounces big. Fun all around cause it's a quick, one shot joke.

Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, had two announcements on its main page. The first is somewhat cruel, but playful, because it pokes fun at players who are obsessed with equipment in the game (often referred to as Gearscore, from the site that tracks this in game). They announced a new tracking system that will be part of the game that is essentially a vertical line that continues to grow larger as your "e.p.e.e.n." continues to increase in the game. It plays on the Internet term "e-peen", which is kind of risque to explain otherwise. The verbage used to explain the article is filled with euphemisms and double entendres that are all sexually related, and it reads more like a Viagra commercial.

Their second ad was just fun. It advertises a new virtual reality visor you can buy that can be used to totally immerse yourself into the game. When it comes to ordering it, it retails for $14,999.00, and takes you directly to their store site, where it lists the product as "Sold Out". There appears to now be a new message on their site that indicates they are now advertising a new World of Warcraft "matchmaking service", which gives me the impression their Devs are going to be playing at this joke all day long.

Well, that's all for now. Nothing impacting, but just something to share for the day.

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The Solution to School Bullies: People Who Actually Care

We've been hearing a lot about the events in January that led to 15 year old Phoebe Prince committing suicide because of school bullying. Not surprising is the people coming out of the woodwork, convinced they have the answers, some of whom hope to sell you a book or have you pay money to attend their conference to show you what they know. CNN has been going nuts at the end of March, three months after it happened, to indicate how much they care about what happened, including this article on how parents should handle their kids being bullied. What often isn't covered is those parents of bullies, who are quite often ignored until the bully does something criminal, and then everyone goes nuts, talking about how the parents are responsible for such atrocities. I'd show you a link to that kind of story, but I'm a few days ahead of that (those should start up in a few days from now).

But what isn't really discussed, or at least not at the length it should be, is the responsibility the rest of us have for making this kind of activity stop. Let's not pretend that bullying is a new crisis. It's been going on as long as a bunch of cave man kids figured out that if you hit Grokk over the head with a club, it would cause Grokk to feel bad and be laughed at by the other cave kids. And the cave kid who hit Grokk over the head would become really popular.

It was no different in my day (a few years after Grokk graduated and went to MIT, or the Paleolithic Era equivalent of MIT). Tougher kids targeted weaker kids. Popular girls shunned less popular girls. The "in" kids treated the "out" kids like crap. The "out" kids grew up to make web browsers and sell their companies for billions of dollars, often putting the former "in" kids out of work, forcing them to move out of their trailer park homes. Or something like that.

So, yes, at one point, I was a young kid at school, and there were bullies all around me as well. Some bullied me, some left me alone, and others continued on their self-directed tours of social environments that inhabit such worlds. But I'm thinking of one kid named Roger (for lack of any other name and not to embarrass anyone who might actually be this person). He was kind of insane. Everyone shunned him and stayed away from him because he was generally perceived to be nuts.

Unlike others, I actually found his strange antics to be somewhat fascinating. He used to have laser battles in his head, and he would act them out in public, with everyone just shaking their heads at him and looking around at everyone else to make sure they all realized they were in on the joke, and Roger was just being Roger.

At one point, I actually found myself in a situation where I was having a general conversation with Roger. I should point out that it was very difficult to speak to him because he suffered from all sorts of deficiencies, including an early form of ADHD, and he would just yell out random things at times. But every now and then, you could get him to stop, calm down and actually hold a normal conversation.

And he was brilliant. I was working on a prototype model of a water run, hydrogen enhanced engine at the time (it was the early years of high school, so I was aiming high). He took a look at my crude drawing, sketched over it and showed me exactly where it needed to be fixed in order to work. He then drew in an oxygen to hydrogen consumption matrix that took me several months to eventually figure out was meant to compensate for the loss of thermal energy. He was brilliant at ideas; he wasn't always that great at explaining them.

So, in coherent moments, Roger and I would have long conversations about really fascinating subjects. I then found out about his home life as well, which was one of the more dysfunctional family environments I'd ever heard about, causing me to wonder if it was as imagined as most of his out loud ramblings. And then, one day, he and I discovered we walked the same area going home, so he invited me over for no apparent reason, other than it was just something to do.

I met his family, and it was both very normal, and really bizarre. The father was somewhat insane as well, and the mother was someone who would just ramble on and on with incoherent sentences, before switching to normal "mom" mode and ask if everyone wanted lemonaide. His sister seemed the most normal, right up until the point she started talking about her future as a high class call girl in Beverly Hills. I had numerous conversations with her (she was in junior high school at the time), and I could never get over the feeling that I think she was just putting me on the entire time, not wanting to be outdone by her strange family, almost as if she was being crazy in hopes of fitting in, but was secretly sane and just taking notes for her future tell-all book.

At school, I'd run across Roger all of the time, and he was slowly moving from "out there" to outright, no turning back, insane. He was constantly picked on by other kids, because he was such an easy target, and all I kept noticing was that no one ever bothered to hold a conversation with him longer than an insult session, because they were missing what appeared to be a really interesting guy. But they were never interested in a conversation to begin with; they were looking for a victim, and what better victim can be found than someone who really has little grasp of reality and little ability to interact in that environment?

All I remember is that Roger was so much more interesting to talk to than 90 percent of the rest of those students in that environment. He really had something to say, but he just had little way of communicating it. But all it really took was a desire to listen, and a whole world of fascinating information was available to a potential listener.

When I think about this whole episode with Phoebe Prince, I think about the so many victims who have been targeted by stupid bullies, and it's painful. I think many of us have been victims of such Neanderthals in that past, but we all managed to make it (better or worse). I wonder how many others didn't make it because no one cared enough to step in and realize there was an actual person being targeted, not a punch line to someone's joke.

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Why I Write

I know some of those who read my stuff aren't real science fiction fans, so hang in there with me for a second cause I have to go all geek like to make this point. There's a scene in Star Trek: First Contact where Picard is having a conversation with the actress Alfre Woodard (a stellar actress in her own right), right before he goes into one of the greatest monologues of all Star Trek history, and he starts it off by stating: "I have a certain perspective when it comes to the Borg." And those who were fans of the show know that he was once kidnapped, turned into one of them, forced to destroy many of his friends and comrades while helpless to do anything to stop himself from doing so. Yes, a certain "perspective". So whenever I'm asked why I write, I think back at that moment, and I say that I have a certain perspective when it comes to writing.

What that means is that I've lived a life that's very different than most others. That doesn't mean it was better, more introspective or whatever. It just means that my whole life seems to have been designed around giving me a different perspective on the way of seeing life and the world around me. So, when I write, I like to think that my third eye, as some writers, specifically Stephen King, have pointed out, sees things differently than most other people. And as a result, I like to share that perspective with others, because I often fear that no one else will ever have that perspective to share with the rest of the world, because my perspective is strange, and thus, I think needed.

But I'm sure most people feel that way about themselves, so I don't purport to be superior to others, or to be more significant in my knowledge. I just happen to be a certain kind of information sponge who grabs many things, puts it through a really bizarre blender and then spits it back out as "perspective".

And I've always felt that way, even though my background hasn't always been so varied. I felt this way before I went to West Point. I thought I had a pretty strong handle on the world back then. I hadn't experienced ANYTHING, but I sure felt I had. Then there was West Point. Then there was my time in the service, which has given me a seriously distorted background that has added all sorts of nuance to that perspective. There were things you do in the military that automatically give you a different sense. There were things people don't normally do in the military that I did in the military that add to that sense. Then there were the places I went, and the experiences I had with the many people of those places. It seemed like most of my life was designed around exposing me to things other people don't see. Things from burnt out villages, abandoned ghost towns, roming Roma families, shysters, scammers, brilliant scientists, murderers, treasonous villains who would sell out their mothers (some who did), people who would look me in the eye and lie to me even as I knew they were lying to me, world-traveling doogooders who no one would ever know because they never sought out notoriety for what they were doing, crazy nutcases that had more power and responsibility than anyone should ever have, mysterious strangers who would fade in and out of my life at times (sometimes reappearing at odd times, and other times never being seen again), and all sorts of others that I can honestly say have helped me to see the world as such a different place with so many different perspectives.

And when I was a kid, living a very unimportant life, realizing that I was probably never going to do anything to make a difference anywhere or to anyone, teachers started to tell me that I had a gift of writing, that it was something I should pursue and continue to do. And then people kept telling me this, until I realized that it wasn't just something people say to kids, but they were serious about it. And then I started to sell my writing, and I realized that I loved to communicate with people. That sort of put me on a path that I've been traveling ever since.

What I discovered with writing is that I began to love the process as much as the communicating. There are all sorts of nuances that make it so much more interesting and fascinating as a process. In the beginning, I was writing just to communicate a message, but these days I explore each new story with the perspective of challenging myself to write differently to provide the story that needs to be provided in whatever fashion that best fits the process. And while it may not seem that way, it opens up a whole world of possibilities when it comes to writing. Even the name of a character can have massive symbolic, intuitive value. Sometimes, you can even create a sense of writing that hides a whole fabric of writing within its world, so that someone would have to actually be very introspective and careful to make sure that he or she found exactly what was really being written. I got to do that with a humorous novel I wrote, and it was so much fun because I was challenged the entire time I was writing it, and at the same time I got to really stretch the limits of what I was capable of, realizing that I couldn't have written that same book ten years ago. Which puts forth the possibility that there are novels waiting to be written by me that I'm not even capable of writing today, just because I haen't learned what is necessary to bring the writing to that level yet.

That is why I write. It is for me both a process and an ultimate challenge. It's the only challenge that I am capable of putting forth for myself, completely aware that any laziness on my part leads to complete failure, but complete effort leads to results I can't even yet begin to imagine. Again, that is why I write.

I guess you could say it gives me a certain perspective when it comes to the activity. Picard would be so proud.

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The Art of Nuanced Titles

This is another writing topic, for those who are keeping track. But I seem to be on a roll these days.

My topic today is nuanced titles and the art of creating them. What I mean by this is best explained by a series of plays I wrote as Nigel Cross (written with Allen Amundsen...who at one time actually was reading my blog, so who knows, maybe I'll get a shout out from him). One of the titles we created was called Without A Net, a play about two guys who meet on the Golden Gate Bridge while one is contemplating "hurling himself into a watery death". The title was nuanced because as the story goes on, the character who wants to jump keeps saying, "I'm jumping because I'm without a net." You find out later that what he is really saying is "I'm jumping because I realize I'm without Annette." Annette was the woman who dumped him, causing him to finally decide to end his life.

We revisited the nuanced title thing again and again, like our story "Be the Monkey", which is about two actors putting on a play called Monkey Boy. The nuance is a little more subtle this time around, but I won't go into the particulars, other than to say that it works out that the name is important to the story. Later on, we wrote "Splitting Adam", which is about two brothers who haven't spoken in years. I based the title off of the nuclear family, which then leads to the thought of "Splitting Atom(s)", which leads to the nuance I'm talking about.

Later titles I played around with came in other plays, like "Hostage Play", where a group of previous characters take over the play until the playwright decides to "end" the stories they were in previously, thus taking the play hostage. It seems that I've had a lot of fun with titles over the years because nuance really seems to be almost as important as the story itself. My latest short story that was published was titled "Buried Memories", and it had as much to do with memories as a tree that was planted that contained the memories of an important event shared between the two main characters of the story.

Recently, I've been updating a story I wrote years ago called "Killing Robert Shaw", which is probably one of the most powerful stories I've ever written about a doctor who administers the final lethal injections on death row and sees the actor Robert Shaw each time he kills a patient (because you later find out the actor looked identical to the man who killed his wife and daughter and got away with it).

I don't think a lot of people think enough about nuanced titles anymore, but sometimes they can be really powerful. I've seen it used recently in some great movies, such as Babel. After you watch the movie, you can probably sit for about an hour and ruminate on the title alone.

Anyway, my latest novel is called Plato's Perspective, and I'm sure you can imagine it is filled with all sorts of nuance in the title alone. I'll pretty much leave it at that for now.

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