Thursday, August 20, 2009

Bob's Head, episode 4

OK, one of the reasons updates are so infrequent is that I get my ideas at REALLY odd times and have no way to record them. I'm starting to take notepad notes on the computer when I'm there, and putting them in my actual phyiscal notepad when I'm not.

Some of them may be short (like this one) but another thing I'm doing is jotting down starter bits of all of them any time I post, so I'll be able to come on here and start up without trying to remember 'what was that cool idea again?'.

That's the idea anyhow. I need to start practicing my wind sprints. NaNo is coming up, and my personal goal is a 100KWord complete modern / urban fantasy. I might even try to make it YA, but I kinda doubt it will get there.

The ideas at the moment in the bullpen are as follows:

Lobbying, and why the arguments for allowing it are Not Very Convincing.
Salary / Wage caps, with a side order of Risk vs. Reward.
Juxtaposition of Pournelle's Political Axes, Spolsky's Leaky Abstractions, and Boyd's OODA Loop.
Inspiration vs. The Need to Write
and what will likely be a multi-parter (if the Juxtaposition above isn't, I'll be surprised),
Crime, Theft of Time, Theft of Free Will, Liberal societies, defining workable optimal societal states (& Laws), Ivory Tower vs. Crapsack World.

Regarding NaNo this year, I'm trying to put together a playlist. Looking for two things. First, any Guitar Rock which brings to mind (even a little) Arthurian / Celtic legend. More looking for tone and music than lyrics, but those are good too. I know, I'm already going to check Queen and Iron Maiden. Any others? Also, any songs where there are at least two covers after the initial recording, wherein the covers are both distinctive from the original and objectively Do Not Suck (meaning they're technically minimally proficient). One example would be Personal Jesus. Another would be Tide Is High.

Reason being I've got three characters who trade the spotlight for much of the story, and I'm trying to stay coherent (hence the same titles) while still making each section distinctive.

Also, if anyone wants to be Tuckerized, I'm populating a High School in this one. I need teachers, students, maybe even janitors. Coaches and security are already taken care of though. Also, I need a name for the school. I'm looking for something something academy. The school is a very exclusive private high school / prep school, so names might be appropriate. If anyone can suggest anything, thanks will be offered.

OK, that's enough for now. Off I go. More soon (tomorrow, maybe Saturday).

4 comments:

  1. Ever heard Shipping up to Boston by Dropkick Murphy?

    How about the Newton Leibniz Academy? Because Newton created calculus, and later on Leibniz just thought he created it.

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  2. OK, listened to Shipping up to Boston - has the Celtic feel, but not really guitar rock - more Celtic Punk... Still, might be useful. Thanks!

    Also, Newton Leibniz sounds good, but... Hmmm... Brain juices flowing.

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  3. That's why I threw the school name out there. It's hard to come up with an idea from scratch. But if you start throwing out bad ideas (yes, from XKCD) then it might trigger some inspiration.

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