“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” 
― George Orwell, 1984

Conspiracy Theory wrote:

I've always been curious about Orwell's outlook.

Was he writing about the things he did because he believed it would change anything or did he do it because it's just the darkest of humor (that being something everyone created but no one controls)?

Interesting question. I just read the quickie biography on wikipedia, and thought that the matter could go either way. Orwell led a dark life, being widowed, and dying himself at the age of 46 from TB.
He fought in the Spanish civil war, on the losing side and was grievously wounded.
He experienced the bleak post war situation of privation in England post WWII.
So, perhaps he believed that the dystopian world of 1984 was inevitable.

However, Orwell was politically active all his life and was known- while alive - for political essays. He was a staunch democratic socialist, and warned incessantly about the dangers of totalitarianism.
So, maybe he thought that he could change the world.
I'd like to think so. It's the romantic in me.

But, hey, Orwell is on my list of historical figures that I fantasize about inviting to a dinner party. If that should ever happen, count on me asking him! 

Last edited by Goose (12/31/2017 3:20 pm)

Goose wrote:

Conspiracy Theory wrote:

I've always been curious about Orwell's outlook.

Was he writing about the things he did because he believed it would change anything or did he do it because it's just the darkest of humor (that being something everyone created but no one controls)?

Interesting question. I just read the quickie biography on wikipedia, and thought that the matter could go either way. Orwell led a dark life, being widowed, and dying himself at the age of 46 from TB.
He fought in the Spanish civil war, on the losing side and was grievously wounded.
He experienced the bleak post war situation of privation in England post WWII.
So, perhaps he believed that the dystopian world of 1984 was inevitable.

However, Orwell was politically active all his life and was known- while alive - for political essays. He was a staunch democratic socialist, and warned incessantly about the dangers of totalitarianism.
So, maybe he thought that he could change the world.
I'd like to think so. It's the romantic in me.

But, hey, Orwell is on my list of historical figures that I fantasize about inviting to a dinner party. If that should ever happen, count on me asking him! 

I just could never get a good rede on his personality.  He did seem rather bleak, stories without heros and without happy endings. 

He had a sadness in him writ large.
 

Last edited by Conspiracy Theory (1/05/2018 12:57 pm)

01/06/2018

 The mood is even.

 I find myself thinking about my friend Billy a great deal.

 It's sort of a sad, nostalgic feeling. Not bad really, it's just that I frequently think about the things he left behind in this world that no one knows he created.

 I met William Arthur McAdams Jr in the fall of 1976.

 My mom had finally married someone who was actually responsible and we moved from our row home in the city to a huge house in the suburbs. We literally moved on up.

 The neighborhood was an upper middle class planned community still in the process of development so there were lots and lots of things for brand-new teenagers to get into trouble over.

 There were three distinct groups in that neighborhood. There were the teenagers at least sixteen that had cars. There were the teenagers between thirteen and sixteen who didn't have cars, and then the kids between six and eleven or so.

 All of the people I was friends with fell into that second group.

 We were the ones who weren't kids anymore but weren't quite teenagers either. We were in that dopey, uneven-growing, voice-cracking time of our lives that we spent endless hours needling each-other over.

 I can still name everyone in the group. It was large but it was not always all of us together at the same time. There were sub-groups and pairs that spent significant amounts of time together.

 Billy was unusually tall for his age. Painfully think, knobbly-kneed, all joints and limbs flailing about. He had a long neck, a little acne, dark hair always cut short, really a good looking chap later in life but at this stage he was one of those stereotypical dorky-looking teens.

 Billy was into punk rock and new wave. Not just the music but the lifestyle. The idea of rebelling against authority really resonated with him. The idea of dressing in outlandish clothing, having his ear pierced, dying his hair, whatever caught his mood.

 Billy was an artist, first and always.

 He created canvas paintings, murals on buildings and sidewalks, sculpture, photography, any kind of artistic expression he could imagine, he tried them all.

 In June of 1996 Billy created his master work.

 My parents had moved into a house in the city. The back yard was one of those city yards that is about fifty yards long but only twenty yards wide. It was suffering from neglect. It was not possible to go all the way through the yard to the alley due to a overgrowth of brush, tree roots, dead animals...etc.

 Billy rented a Bobcat. For those of you who've never encountered one, a Bobcat is a small, four wheeled vehicle with an engine, a phone-booth sized cockpit, and a hydraulic lift that can be fitted with various pieces of construction equipment.

 Billy bulldozed the entire yard all the way down to the dirt.

 He began by building a sidewalk. He laid dozens of four-inch thick concrete slabs, each decorated with things he found in the yard; strange-looking leafs and old metal gears a century old and coins and polished quartz.

 Each slab was different and the path wound through the yard in a sinuous path.

 Then he seeded one side of the yard with grass. On the other, he built three mounds. On the first, he planted two-dozen sunflowers. On the middle one, he planted wildflowers. And on the mound closest to the alley, he planted a tree.

 I remember him bringing that tree home in the trunk of his Toyota MR-2. If you've never see one, it's basically two seats and an engine with a trunk added as an afterthought.

 I lived in the third-floor apartment next to my parents house so I had a bird's eye view of Billy's masterwork coming to life.

 The first things to grow were the grass and the sunflowers. I remember the stark, yellow color so brilliant against the green background. I'd stand on my back porch and watch the sunflowers track the sun across the sky.

 Then the wildflowers began to bloom.

 A riot of color in every spectrum erupted covering the mound. I could smell them from where I was. They'd ripple in the breeze creating colorful waves that were just fascinating to watch.

 I remember spending hours looking at each square of pavement.

 There were twenty or so, each different. Each pressed with something or with something visible embedded. His tag, BAM, is on one of the stones nearest the driveway.

 I'd driven by that house on occasion. I only ever catch a glimpse of the yard. I can't tell if it's been changed at all and I'm not sure if I really want to know.

 That yard was Billy's greatest work. But his masterwork, the work that I got to see, was that first spring.

 It was art at it's highest. Its pinnacle of expression.

 Not art imitating life, it was art made of life.

 This is how I want my friend remembered.

 He was an artist. First, last, and always.

 Thanks for listening.

01/09/2018

 The mood is nervous.

 It's not a bad kind of nervous. It's more of a mixture of anticipation and that feeling of dread I get when encountering groups of strangers.

 I'm trying something new today.

 I recently discovered Meet Up. Meet Up provides a website for people to organize meetings—just like the title says. I never gave it a great deal of thought but I found out there are gaming groups on Meet Up.

 So I'm going to a Meet Up at a comic book store in York for Table Top Tuesday. It's a BYO game night. I'm taking Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, Mancala, backgammon, and Pass The Pigs.

 If you want to know about the Discworld game Google Terry Pratchett. The world is much reduced by his passing.

 Pass The Pigs consists of two small plastic/rubber pigs, one of which has a spot on it. The pigs are thrown like dice then the position in which they land is compared to a chart.

 The chart consists of colorful names like Joweler (pig tipped on its nose, 1 point), a leaning double Jowler (both pigs tipped on its nose and cheek, 2 points)...etc. The highest number of points possible in one throw is called Makin Bacon (ten points).

 I'll leave it up to you to visualize what position the pigs have to land in for that.

 The feeling of excitement has been building since I woke up. I'm having difficulty sitting still.

 Once upon a time, a genius names Gary Gygax came up with a way to make a fantasy novel fully interactive.

 At a guess, I'm thinking Gary loved fantasy novels as much as I do and really wanted to find a way to participate in the plot. He did so by breaking people, places, and things, down into numeric values and introduced random values using dice.

 Interaction between players and characters in the game or between players and other players is governed by a set of rules and limitations which are also assigned numeric values with a random element.

 The end result is someone playing can alter the plot line at any time in any way. There was no other game like it. Nothing even came close. As a seventeen year old social misfit thousands of miles from home, immersing myself in a story really was a wonderful way to escape for a while.

 Every air base I was assigned to had recreation centers and every rec center had large rooms separate from the main section with lots of tables and chairs available. Every base, bar none, had at least one D&D group.

 In fact, most dorms had groups that played in their day-rooms.

 I was a player for almost ten years.

 I quit doing it when I got married because my spouse had little interest in role playing games. After we separated it just never occurred to me to get back into it.

 So that's what I'm going to do today. I'm going to this tabletop game night and I've RSVP'd for two other game nights this week.

 I have no idea if I even have dice anymore and I certainly have no books so tonight's mission is both to find a new gaming group and to get information about what one needs to play these days. I'm not foolish enough to believe I can just dive right back in after twenty-five years.

 There's a good chance things might have changed since then.

 So I'm putting up with a lot of nervous energy, basic twitchiness, and the day-to-day random thoughts.

 But I'm not fearful of going. And I'm not feeling like I just can't bring myself to do this. And if I look back at myself a year ago there's no way in hell I would have been able to go alone.

 I would have needed at least one Wendy with me.

 And now I'm feeling like I can pull this off.

 Thanks for listening.