The Setting for Trouble in Paradise

This is the most notable landmark of the setting for the story - soon to be posted - "Trouble in Paradise." The structure will probably figure prominently in many stories I write.

It used to have rich lush grass around it. The area is however quite arid and without care -- well.

It doesn't respond well to harsh treatment. Prairie out west is surprisingly tender. Buffalo really grazed in one place for one day and moved on. The area didn't have to be tolerant of heavy traffic.

Here it is : The post rock water tower of Paradise, Kansas. In the old days, there were not enough trees to serve as fence posts and thus rock was used. The term "post rock" describes the stone and its use.

Last Legion

Editing is taking a bit longer than we'd like do to the pressures for production from the mad scientist.

However, the next work has been cast as "Last Legion" following the transformational story line. The characters are put in an exceptional situation and are changed by it: some for better and some for the worse.

It's a story I've wanted to write for a long time and this one "feels" right.

"The End of Paradise" should be ready in a few days.

Schroedinger's Cat

I think perhaps a nice murder mystery is in order. Always good, those.

So I'll leave you with the germ of the idea : Who Killed Schroedinger's Cat ?

I love a good mystery.

Saturday night in the Free World

Subversion of the youth.

If we could just bottle the essence, we'd be unstoppable.

Bikini Girls with Machine Guns (the Cramps).

A hero WE can endorse

M.Scientists hates heroes. Superman is the worst. It probably has something to do with heroes' delight and glee when always getting the freshly-scrubbed good girls.

M.Scientist despises delight and glee.

Perhaps it is related to that unfortunate incident in cub scouts when M.Scientist was working on his "death ray" merit badge.

M.Scientist only likes the well-scrubbed good girls when they are fleeing down city streets from one of M.Scientist's infernal creations. We prefer the bad girls.

Nevertheless, there is a hero we an get behind. Magnus, robot fighter.

Notice his associate in the final panel is NOT a typical well-scrubbed good girl. She does however look like pure trouble.

The creative impulse : it's origins.

While evaluating the myriad of possible concepts for our efforts, we find the irresistible urge to draw upon the skew and twisted events of our life. We look to those unusual encounters that have meaning because of context in which they occurred rather than because of the mundane nature of the events themselves.

What we mean here is of course not Aunt Marge dropping the potato salad at the family reunion. What is meaningful is that she dropped the potato salad out of fright when we discovered she has a deathly allergy to sheep and cousin Barry was just showing her the new pet he "found."

The potato salad and the sheep. What strikes me is the fear of harm causing such material damage. Yes, potato salad is deadly serious in the M.S. family.

Now, the story revolving around the deployment of a fear weapon that relied on the metabolized compounds distributed in genetically engineered potatoes ...that has real merit. Coupled with a maniacal central government that will stop at nothing to keep its citizen's mandate by invoking televised orchestration of fear impulses ...ah.

Of course, the idea is not new. The trick is to merely execute it well so that its relevance is inherent in the fine writing of the story. The M.S. factor increases when it is the mundane potato which is the focus of enormous government effort. Yes, the federal potato force mandated to ensure that the food supply composed of select root vegetables meets the highest government standards.

Now we tell the story from one of the mid-level government drones employed in the potato police.

We're beginning to get somewhere.

Deep in Process

The resident mad scientist is deep in the progress of creation. The latest opus is entering the preliminary edit phase having been transferred from longhand to typewritten version just last night.

It's about fifty pages at current count. There is editing, tuning, and preliminary re-write to do. I'd expect a release this weekend.

We'll post the alpha version of the story.

Required Reading

Required Reading at Mayhem U.

Saturday Date

In celebration of Saturday, It seemed appropriate to post an idea companion : leggy, blond, and of the nuclear persuasion.

Ah, the heady days of the Cold War when a mad scientist could be a mad scientist and government stipends for WMD research was never ending. Alas, I miss it so.

Of course, such distractions only served to whet our appetite for our own plans of world conquest.

One has to have dreams.

Miss Atom Bomb 1957 certainly appears in our dreams. Our thanks to the Las Vegas News Bureau ( photograph by Donald English at the Sands Hotel, May 24, 1957). Good work all.

Just to get things off to the right start:

Castle Bravo


I love the smell of fallout in the morning. It smells like ... world conquest.

Ah, the Secret Lair

It is here I will spin the yarns of animated toasters and slimeless aliens with tentacled arms. (I prefer my aliens without slime, thank you).

This is the scratch book for the various stories of the scifi ilk I might post for my friends. These are the useless diversions that keep me sane when other more considered works fall upon hard times.

There will also be contests. What is a serial posting without contests ...such as "guess what comes next?" Always one of my favorite "complete the story" exercises.

Back to the salt mine ...pondering the consequences of time travel. Is one ever quite done pondering over that one ? Hmm....