Unfinished Beginnings: Introduction

It being my birthday and all I feel like I ought to post something deep and reflective and... birthday-ish. But I'm not even here, this is an automatically scheduled post that I wrote a good two weeks ago.  Right now I'm somewhere in the city of Chattanooga doing any number of things with any number of people, and completely ignoring the fact that it's my birthday. I'm celebrating next week with two of my siblings. So instead I thought I'd introduce a new series to you.

I have a notebook full of stories that never made it past page two. Some are good ideas, some are lame ideas, some I simply don't have time to mess with, some are too underdeveloped to be useful, and some I'm just clueless where they came from or how they ended up in my notebook.

It's a green notebook, it's labeled "June, 2008" but I  call it the notebook of Unfinished Beginnings. Rather than let those beginnings moulder forever at the bottom of my priority list from which they shall never rise I present them to you, to read and ridicule, steal or borrow, or generally draw inspiration from.

Parallel Episodes: Introduction

About a year ago, when my brother was just getting into Stargate I sat down to watch an episode with him. Ten minutes in I had the unsettling feeling that I recognized it. That wasn't possible; the only times I'd watched Stargate was with him, and he didn't watch them twice, and besides, there were parts I knew were new. So what was it? Ten minutes later I figured it out and almost quit watching the episode because I knew exactly what was going to happen, the entire plot of the episode and the ending. I had seen it before, but not on Stargate. It was a Star Trek episode.

Sure enough, the entire plot played out as I predicted, to my brother's annoyance. Suddenly I began to see resemblances in other episodes from other things, and I realized that storylines could be duplicated... and I call them parallel episodes.

Every good science fiction geek knows that every time you make a decision a parallel world is created. Well, here's a new one for you to remember; every time you create a Science Fiction show a parallel episode is created, and that's what this series is here to prove.

101 Things I've learned: Introduction

This is the beginning of a new series I'm writing called 101 Things I've Learned from Movies, Books, and Television (in no particular order), also known as Common Mistakes Made by Villains, Monsters, and Main Characters.

I've put off making this list for a very long time because I wanted to number all these things in some kind of logical form of importance. But to do that I must make the list first, and I really want to just start listing them, so I'll start wherever I feel like and continue in a random fashion and number them in no particular order.

So why 101 things? Because it's a catchy number, and when I've finally come up with that many I can just start over with 101 More Things I've Learned, at which point I can take the first 101 things and publish a book. When I've filled up that quota I can publish another book and start over again, and so on and so forth.

Thus begins my endeavor to list all the things I will never do because I've seen too many fictional characters do them.

Reviews

It was recently suggested to me that I should post reviews on this blog. My first thought was "Why on earth would I do that?" but almost immediately afterwards I thought, "Well why not?"

I never read reviews. Well, I almost never read reviews. Well, I never read reviews for things I haven't seen. Or I try not to. Sometimes I don't succeed. The reason why is thusly: I see a new movie coming out. I don't care. I won't even remember the title, unless it gets mentioned to me multiple times. But if I let myself read a review... or two... or listen to friends talking about it, or get sucked into a discussion, I get curious. "Is it really as good as they say? Could it possibly be that lame? And what's it really about?" Before I know it... I'm watching a movie I never had any, any interest in the world in seeing!

But, that's the point of reviews, isn't it? So the question I have to ask is: do reviews meet the vision and purpose of the Idea Factory? The answer is yes. Many Ideas come from movies and films, both good and bad ones. Not everyone can watch everything, so there needs to be some guide of what to watch. Reviews help provide this, and spread awareness about worthwhile ones. On top of that it gives me a chance to carry on about what I love and hate in what I read and write, and everyone always wants to do that.

And that is why I'm going to start writing Reviews. (With a capital R. Because everything important is capitalized in the world of Ideas.)

Welcome to the (Original) Idea Factory!

Welcome to the Idea Factory!
My brain is a deep and mysterious place, filled with an astonishing conjunction of things. The weather is often stormy; energy impulses flash and battle with each other, and the view is obscured. But these storms are followed by peaceful serenity, when the newly seeded plants can germinate and grow in rich soil, with plenty of sun and water. Given enough time they will grow up and blossom into brilliant ideas.

Some of the ideas are large, beautiful, and tall of stature. They are majestic, sensible, and logical.
Some ideas are quirky and mischievous. They bend in directions they shouldn't go, and wink at you in ways that aren't possible.
Some ideas are puzzles; mysterious and enigmatic, waiting for someone to divine their purpose.
Some ideas are hybrids, borrowing off of and even stealing from other ideas.

My mind is like a great idea factory, and I'm never sure what will sprout up next, or what I will do with it when it grows to maturity. This is a place for my ideas to lurk once they're grown, socializing and ideaing with their own. There are no rules to what might sprout up here, and no guarantee that everything makes sense. if you're not afraid of the insanely brilliant than grab your idea harvester and come along, but make sure you watch out for those brainstorms!

Welcome to the Idea Factory (Again)

An odd thing happened to me today.

Well, to be fair, I have no assurance that it was today that it happened, I only know that it is today I found out about it. Last week (Wednesday night, to be precise) I finally acted on an Idea I've had for some time, and I started a new blog. I called it the Idea Factory. I was very happy with it, and sent the link to all of my friends, so they'd be sure to follow it. Then, of course, life kicked in, and I forgot all about it until the weekend.

So this morning I have a message from one of my friends that says "Vanya," (in some parts of the world my friends call me Vanya), "Vanya, that link doesn't work."
"Well, that's odd," I say to myself and go to investigate.

The link doesn't work. It doesn't work for a very good reason, there's nothing there. None of the links work. No errors, no warnings, and no e-mails, the blog just walked off a disappeared from the world of blogspot. Very disturbing, if you ask me.

Why? My brain wonders. I had three followers, a full fledged design, and my first post was up and two more were being drafted, and now it is all gone. Perhaps it is a conspiracy. Perhaps the people who run Blogger like to delete blogs at random. That might be unfair, maybe they know no more about it than I do. Maybe it's the goblins who run my computer, the same ones who know exactly what you need next in a game and make sure you get the opposite. Maybe they deleted my blog.

Or maybe I have mortal enemies and this is some kind of warning note that I have to decipher if I wish to save my life. Or perhaps I know pranksters who pretend to be my friends and this is their idea of a practical joke. Or, maybe, perhaps, and possibly it's some totally random and indecipherable technical glitch...

But whichever it is, do you think this new version will disappear as mysteriously as it's predecessor?