How does the mind of a writer work? Part 4.

And the writing continues. Yesterday I crossed the 12,000 word mark in the new story. I opted to change the way that Myrtle gets injured from stubbing her toe, to getting a sore elbow from helping Gayle and Pearl enclose their front porch. This change was done to make it clear that Myrtle is still physically strong and capable. I think it works. I could change it back later though.

So, what am I thinking now? I'm worried that I may be making Myrtle too mean to her son and daughter-in-law, so I'm working now to try and give her justification for how she feels. To some extent I'm doing this by telling more of the backstory of her relationship with her son and his relationship with Natalie (his wife.) In yesterday's writing I told how Natalie was ten years younger and lived a party girl lifestyle before dating James. They then moved in together six months into the relationship and Natalie got pregnant a few months later and her son had rushed into marriage with her. To Myrtle, Natalie is a gold digger who staked out her son and is milking him for his money. She thinks her son is being fooled by a pretty girl who doesn't really love him, but is using him. She's tried to open her son's eyes, but he refuses to believe it. That helps to explain the coolness in their relationship. Natalie also got an expensive gold necklace and bracelet from James for Mothers' Day, while Myrtle got a coffee maker, clock and smoke detector (all with hidden cameras.) I'm also showing more of the sweet, loving Myrtle that her neighbors know to try and balance her out better emotionally.

In today's writing I'm planning to build on where we ended yesterday. Yesterday we ended with James letting it slip that Natalie saw Myrtle with a sore elbow and looking a bit disheveled and thought she'd fallen. Myrtle then finds the hidden cameras with the help of Augie, Gayle and Pearl. Today we'll start seeing the plan to use those cameras to Myrtle's advantage. If you know someone is watching and listening to you and you have some general idea of when they're watching and listening, then you can use that to your advantage. Myrtle teams up with her neighbors in this effort and the group starts their campaign of shock and awe.

With the construction still under way at the girls' house, Myrtle invites them to have their weekly Saturday night poker party at her house (on camera) instead. She recruits Mrs. Buckley to join them and more or less drags her over. (Mrs. Buckley is a bit agoraphobic and a cat lady who almost never leaves her house.) There's a lot of drinking and pot smoking that goes on during these parties along with a lot of nudity, all of which shocks James and Natalie as they watch in awe.

Myrtle takes advantage of the cameras to leak secrets about both James and Natalie to the other one during their respective lunch hours which leads to some tension in their relationship that causes trouble for both of them.

I'm walking a bit of a tightrope in making Myrtle mean to her daughter-in-law, but not too mean. But, what is too mean? Her daughter-in-law was at least part of the decision to plant hidden cameras in Myrtle's house to spy on her and the two have a very frosty relationship before that. Do I make the daughter-in-law just a witch and a vile person, or do I keep her more human? Do I make her into the gold digger Myrtle thinks she is? I'll figure that out more and more as I write.

How does the mind of a writer work? Part Three.

The story is continuing to come into better and better focus each day. I've now crossed the six thousand word mark in the writing process and I'm pretty happy with those first six thousand words. I may do a few tweaks here and there, but overall I'm pretty happy with those first six thousand plus words.

The story is still more or less on the same track it was on. Myrtle is getting her spy cameras disguised as Mother's Day gifts. She'll still get the coffee maker and a clock for her living room, but I've moved away from the clock radio and more to a smoke alarm for the third hidden camera to be placed in her bedroom.

In the writing so far, we've had Myrtle head to the hospital and now discharged and sent back home where hr family is worried about her being alone and refusing to use any assistance. Shortly after getting back home her family can't contact her for several hours so her son rushes over only to find her coming out of a neighbor's house where she'd been visiting. Myrtle has her first visit from the visiting nurse and physical therapist who she largely dismisses.

So, now we've largely set the stage. The main characters have been introduced, their quirks and foibles have been hinted at and introduced. So the plan is to write the part today where the idea of planting hidden cameras in Myrtle's house comes up as a way to keep an eye on her and save James (her son) from having to run back and forth each time they can't make contact with her. In today's writing we'll have Natalie (James' wife) suggest using a nanny/granny cam to save them all stress and James ultimately agrees. He knows however that his mother will never agree to being on camera, so they decide to use hidden cameras without her knowledge.

I'll have James acquiring the cameras in today's writing, setting them up to work on Myrtle's wireless network, and positioning them so he can see her in her kitchen, bedroom, and living room. Depending on how the writing goes we may explore the first few issues James/Natalie see with Myrtle. They won't approve of the way she eats, they'll worry if she's drinking enough, they'll see her leave a pan on the stove and walk off without watching it and watch as the pan starts to smoke and call to prod her to go back into the kitchen to see the pan and take it off the burner before it catches fire. They'll watch her taking her pills and getting worried about how she takes them.

Their Myrtle TV channel will become a bit addictive to them as they spy on her whenever they get the chance. They'll be watching her in the morning as they get ready for work, then during their lunch breaks, then after they get home until Myrtle goes to bed. Now they've got to keep the cameras secret in order to know what Myrtle is doing, but she starts to get suspicious after stubbing her toe while fixing lunch for herself one day. The call from her daughter-in-law (who she's not overly fond of) asking if she's okay and getting very specific about her limping has Myrtle thinking that maybe, just maybe she's being spied on.

I'm now starting to work on tentative titles for the story. "Granny Cam" is one option. "The Granny Cam Saga" is another. "Spying on Granny" is another option. I'll likely go through a thousand options before I'm done. So that's it for today. It's time to get back to the writing. I'll be crossing the ten thousand word mark sometime this week, possibly today if the words flow easily.

How does the mind of a writer work? Part two.

Yesterday, I walked you through the stream of consciousness behind a new idea for a story as the idea formed and took shape in my head. If you haven't read that, then hop back and give it a read. It'll set up what I'm talking about in today's post. Then after posting yesterday's blog I put the first words on paper and put down a tick over two thousand words (2295 to be precise.) Today I'll give you a look at the first two pages of the story (533 words) and explain why I started the book there, and chat a bit more about the process. So, here are the first two pages of the new story as they were written yesterday. (I haven't edited them yet, so excuse any miscues. This was copied and pasted as it was written.)

Chapter One

Pearl Hatcher heard the siren of the ambulance approaching and raced to the front door to see where it would stop.

Her partner Gayle was right behind her.

“Where’s it stopping?” asked Gayle.

“I don’t know, it’s not here yet. Mrs. Harvey’s son’s car is in her driveway, so maybe there? Maybe she’s having some trouble?”

“Oh, I hope not. She’s a very nice lady.”

Pearl nodded her head in agreement.

Pearl and Gayle were the ‘new neighbors’ in this neighborhood despite moving in nearly thirty years ago after retiring from teaching. The rest of the residents had lived there fifty years or longer. There had been some initial confusion over a pair of somewhat flamboyant lesbians moving into this quiet neighborhood, but that initial confusion had given way to acceptance and a live and let live attitude.

The fact that Gayle was a very handy person who could fix just about anything helped smooth the transition. Pearl was an avid gardener with a huge vegetable garden and she freely distributed surplus crops to the neighbors which also helped smooth the transition.

“What’s her son’s name?” asked Pearl who always had a hard time with names.

“James. He’s named after his father who was also James, but everyone called him Hank.”

“He’s just come out and is waving his arms. The ambulance must be going there.”

“Oh, dear. I hope it isn’t anything too serious.”

The ambulance pulled to a stop in front of Myrtle Harvey’s house and the crew quickly emerged and grabbed their bags before disappearing into the house.

“How old is she now?” asked Pearl.

“I think she just turned eighty one.”

“Oh, so she’s not that old. That’s just a few years older than us.”

“We’re not exactly spring chickens any more. I hope she’s okay. Has her son been there long?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him arrive.”

There were four small houses in this little neighborhood and the residents of three of them were now glued to the front windows and doors watching the ambulance that had pulled up and that signaled trouble for one of their own.

Inside the house at ten Garden Drive the ambulance crew was meeting some resistance from Myrtle Harvey.

“I’m fine, I tell you,” said Myrtle defiantly as the medic took her blood pressure one more time.

“Mom,” said her son. “You’re not fine. I came in and found you unconscious at the table. Your pulse and blood pressure are way too low. We’ve got to get you checked out at the hospital to figure out what’s going wrong.”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital. I’ll be fine if you’d all just leave me alone.”

Her son looked to the medic and asked, “Any idea what it could be?”

“I don’t think it’s anything too serious. Her EKG looks pretty good. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it was medication related. She’s taking some pretty strong blood pressure medicine and it’s possible she took too strong of a dose. She might have taken two pills instead of one, or something along those lines. It’s pretty easy for people to get confused on medications.”

Okay, so that's how I've tentatively started the book. Bear in mind everything can and likely will change over time. If you were reading the book in the standard (for me anyway) six inch by nine inch paperback format that I use, you'd now have read the first two pages.

Why did I start the book there? I needed to introduce the characters and the setting while hopefully engaging the reader early. For those living in a major city hearing a siren is nothing. It's rare when you don't hear one, but for those who live in the country, or more rural areas, hearing a siren approach gets your attention. It means someone around you is in trouble and there aren't that many people around you, so it's a bit scarier. It's not the best hook I've ever used, but getting the reader wondering who the ambulance is for isn't a horrible way to start a story. (My personal favorite hook is the opening to my novel "Sara X.")

I want to show how close knit this little group of residents are and how they care for one another despite all being quite unique and different characters. In the other fifteen hundred plus words I wrote yesterday we meet the other two neighbors to give you a feel for them. I'll flesh them all out a bit more as I go on, but in those first two pages you've learned that there's a pair of older lesbians who are the new neighbors despite having now lived there thirty years. That tells you that the old neighbors lived there longer. This is a close knit, interconnected group.

And then we meet Mrytle. Mrytle (tentatively named after my grandmother Mrytle but names are easily changed later in the process) who is annoyed at all the fuss being made over her and just wants everyone to go away and leave her be. She could have early onset dementia of some sort, but it's very early on and most of the time she'll be sharp as a tack. She knows she gets a bit forgetful from time to time and that scares her, but she won't admit it. She loves her home and refuses to move out. She and her husband, now departed, moved in there over fifty years ago, they raised a family there, they've seen births, deaths, and the house is just filled with memories. She'd rather die there than move out. She's scared of losing control and will fight to the death to keep control.

Why didn't I start with Myrtle? It's hard to say really. I just didn't feel that starting with Myrtle was ideal. While this story does revolve around her, it also revolves around that small community of neighbors, so starting with a neighbor (or two) worried about their neighbors just felt right to me. I could have started anywhere, Myrtle could have been in the ambulance, in the ER, at home before the incident, or anywhere else, but this just felt like the right place to start. 

Right up front we meet the "new neighbors" who have lived there thirty years now. We learn they're a pair of lesbians and one of them is very handy and can fix anything (which makes her very popular in a neighborhood) and the other one is an avid gardener who shares her surplus with the neighbors. We feel their compassion and warmth towards Myrtle as they worry about her and hope she's okay.

A little farther on in the story they see Myrtle being loaded into the ambulance and are relieved that she looks fairly good. Gayle races out to talk to Myrtle's son as he prepares to follow the ambulance to the hospital and learns what she can from him. Then she gets hailed by Augie, their often nude, older male neighbor who's always lived alone in a very small house just filled with electronics and dominated by a huge Ham radio antenna. 

After Gayle tells him what she's learned she's flagged down by Mrs. Buckley who lives next door to Myrtle. Mrs. Buckley is a widow who largely replaced her departed husband with cats. She lives in an old mobile home with thirty or so cats and more coming all the time. When I finished writing yesterday Myrtle was being discharged from the hospital and was heading back home with her son and his wife. They were trying to convince her to accept their help in handling her medications and adapting to the aging process,but she's not overly receptive to the idea.

So, today I'll continue to flesh out the characters and the story. I'll have Mrytle return home and her neighbors stop by to check up on her and offer her assistance if she needs anything. She'll thank them but insist she's fine. She'll head next door to help me develop Mrs. Buckley's character a bit more. I'm going to have Mrs. Buckley suffering from a bit of agoraphobia. She hates to leave her little trailer and the cats and won't even go out for her mail. She's a very sweet, loving older woman, but life has been a bit harsh to her and largely broken her. Myrtle and the other neighbors look out for her and support her. (Later in the story Myrtle invites Gayle and Pearl to have one of their weekend parties at her house and she manages to drag Mrs. Buckley from her house to join them where some recreational marijuana combined with wine has a very interesting effect on both Myrtle and Mrs. Buckley. I'm not sure how I'll set that all up yet, but the scene lives in my head and if I can get what I'm seeing there down on paper it should be quite entertaining.

Before I start writing each day I read what I wrote the day before. I do whatever editing jumps off the page at me and then I start on the new day's writing. This 'edit as I go' approach works well for me. It helps me keep my characters consistent and by editing as I go I tend to avoid the big goofs. (Or so I like to tell myself.) And that's what I'm off to do now. It's be around 8:40 AM locally as I get started today and I'll write up to around eleven or eleven thirty, then quit for lunch, if not the day and let the ideas percolate in the old head a bit more. I should get another two to three thousand words down today, maybe more. The story is now largely formed in my head and simply needs to be fleshed out and put on paper.

How does the mind of a writer work?

People who know I write often ask me, "Where do you get your ideas?" And the truth of the matter is they just pop up. Over the next few days, weeks, months, years I will be describing in this blog an idea I just came up with this morning, how I got the idea, and my thought process as I write the story for however long it takes me to write the story.

How does the mind of a writer work? Well, if we assume it works at all, which may be generous in my case, it starts with something out of the blue. Earlier this morning for example I was reading an e-mail from an Aunt of mine (Hi, Aunt Barbara!) in which she related a story about her family being in a panic when they couldn't get in touch with her and thought something must have happened to her. (She keeps her cell phone turned off much of the time and was away from her landline, so they largely assumed the worst, despite her being quite fit and healthy.) In my reply to her I warned her to be careful of any gifts she gets from her children as the old nanny cams and doggy cams are now transitioning more and more to granny cams to keep an eye on older relatives, often without them knowing they're being watched. These cameras can be tied into a home's WiFi network and allow anyone with the password to monitor what's going on at the house.

Ding! That was the inspiration for the story I'll be writing over the next few days, weeks, months, whatever. I'm a big fan of the British comedies featuring a somewhat eccentric older woman. ("Keeping Mum" and "Saving Grace" being two of my favorites.) In my mind I could immediately see an older woman, living alone in her old house being spied on by her nervous children who think she should have someone keeping tabs on her. I'll have to set things up by having her getting into some sort of trouble first, forgetting to take her medications, getting confused about her medicines when a new pill is colored differently, or something along those lines. My main character (MC) will be an older woman, slightly on the ditzy/very early Alzheimer's side, but not too bad. She'll be living in an older neighborhood surrounded by older, somewhat eccentric neighbors. There will be an older man who forgets to wear clothes quite routinely and can often be found out mowing the grass naked. He's oddly enough a bit of an electronics buff however. (For those who know me from the QVC forums, think of him as an older, somewhat less sane hckynut.) A pair of older lesbians who have some fairly wild parties. And perhaps an older neighbor with thirty or more cats.

At the moment I'm writing this I'm about one hour from getting the initial germ of the idea so things aren't fleshed out terribly well. Our MC will have had an incident of some sort that scares her children (likely a son in the tech industry and his wife) and they beg her to give up her home and move to a safer place. (Senior center/nursing home.) She will absolutely refuse to do so. The family will be worried and unsure of what they can do. They beg her to get an emergency Life Alert type transmitter or keep her cell phone on her, but she refuses. She never needed any of that when she was younger and she's not about to use one now.  She loves her house, has something of a love/hate relationship with her neighbors, but generally loves them, and won't budge.

Her son then decides they need to be able to keep tabs on her somehow so he gives her some new appliances, a coffee maker, a clock radio, and a new clock, all of which have a hidden camera built-in. He's already wired her house for WiFi as she loves to read and uses an e-reader. So with these hidden cameras in place he's able to watch her in her bedroom (clock radio,) living room (clock,) and kitchen (coffee maker) without her being away she's being watched. It's a smallish house, so that lets him keep an eye on her pretty much wherever she goes. (Maybe he just hides the cameras in existing appliances instead of buying her new stuff? That might be a better way to go. Hmm. I'll have to think about that.)

Anyway, she returns home from the hospital for whatever reason she was in there (wrong medicines, a fall, whatever) and is unaware that she's now being monitored. She has a visiting nurse/home care nurse checking in on her every few days after her hospitalization which has her bristling at that intrusion, but she barely tolerates it. Then she stubs her toe and is limping around with a possibly broken toe and almost immediately afterwards gets a call from her daughter-in-law who'd been watching her on one of the hidden cameras. The daughter-in-law immediately asks if she's okay. Not wanting to go back into the hospital or admit to any trouble she assures her daughter-in-law that she's fine. The daughter-in-law asks if she's limping which she denies. The daughter-in-law then asks again if she isn't limping. "Why do you keep asking me that?" "I don't know, you just sound like you're limping" lies the daughter-in-law badly. The daughter-in-law knows immediately how stupid that lie sounds and tries to cover up, but the conversation soon ends and the MC is confused about that. How did her daughter-in-law know she was limping? The blinds were all closed, so none of her neighbors saw her.

She sees her older (often naked) male neighbor outside and goes to consult with him. He then tells her how nanny cams have now evolved into being granny cams and chances are her family has one or more of them in her house without her knowing it. He tells her it's likely plugged into her wireless network and that he'll help her find it, but first they have to disable her network. He disconnects her cable lead in wire from the grounding block so there's no signal going back and forth and then the pair go into the house. He asks her if they gave her anything new recently and she either tells him no, or points out the new items. (Probably the new items, it makes the story easier, finding a truly hidden hidden camera is pretty tough.) He takes the items down and examines them and finds the hidden cameras in them and shows them to her.

We're now about an hour and a half into the time from the first germ of this idea flashed into my head, so that gives you some idea of how my mind is working. As they're talking her phone rings and it's her son asking if everything is okay. (He's tried to check on her using the cameras and found the network down.) She assures him that everything is fine but that her cable is out and she's called the cable company and they're on their way to fix it. She then hangs up and knows what she wants to do. If they want to spy on her, then fine. Let them. She'll give them a show. She has her neighbor reconnect her cable line and she carries on as if the cameras aren't there, only now she decides to invent an imaginary friend to chat with and says some things to her son and daughter-in-law through the cameras that she'd never say directly to their face about how they're raising their own kids and their lifestyle. Perhaps musing to her imaginary friend (maybe a cat?) if she should tell her daughter-in-law about the time her son had that fling with another boy who's now a drag queen, and perhaps on another day musing whether she should tell her son how his wife flirts with a clerk in a local store whenever they shop there.

She then invites her lesbian neighbors, who hold a fairly wild strip poker part at their house most weekends to hold the party at her house this week as she'd love to partake. The son and daughter-in-law tune in to see what dear old mum is up to and find a group of sixty, seventy, eighty year old semi-clothed women playing poker and doing a wild striptease by the losers of each hand. One day she notices her sometimes naked neighbor out mowing his grass and invites him in and parks him in front of the coffee maker in his full nude grandeur as she makes him a nice lunch. (Does she plant a camera in their house to know when they're watching her and scheme accordingly? That could be interesting, but tricky. No, probably not since they could also monitor her on their smartphones. Perhaps she figures out the time they'll be watching, or sets them up to watch at certain times?) Her older cat lady neighbor  may be a medicinal marijuana user and the two get together to smoke a few joints from time to time, further shocking her children.

Now, how does the story end? Does something happen to her and the cameras save the day? Does she come clean on knowing the cameras were there and she was putting on an act? Do the children go to court using the granny cam footage to try and have her declared incompetent? (That could be good if one of her witnesses is her often nude neighbor who shows up for the hearing nude.) In fact I kind of like that approach the best. Not just him, but all of the neighbors show up for her defense. That could be the best ending.

Now, what will this story be? A novel? Novella? Short story? Perhaps a script for a movie or a play? I don't know. I'll have to find out how it develops as the writing goes on. It could evolve into any of them over time. But there you have it. It's been about two hours now since the very first germ of the idea formed and this is where things now stand. Soon I'll open up a blank page in my word processor and figure out where to start, likely setting the scene first. Perhaps an ambulance pulling up to the small house and the crew rushing inside to find the unconscious main character and her family who found her and called the ambulance? Of course, then comes the hard part, naming the characters. I'm kind of basing this in my mind on  my grandmothers old neighborhood with her neighbor Pearl, an odd older guy who would occasionally be outside naked named Augie. (I have no idea what Augie was short for.) That type of setting is pretty good for this story. A quiet little neighborhood on the outskirts of small town America.

So, you now know where I got this idea. How it's evolved in the first two hours of it's formation. What inspired it (the British comedies I love.) And some idea for how it will all play out. This is how the mind of a writer works. I may go days, weeks, months without an idea popping in, but then one does and bang! It's off to the races with it. In my head I can see the characters, I can see the settings, I can see the scenes. It's all there. Now comes the hard part, putting it on paper without losing too much of what I see, feel, hear, know. There's a good, funny, sweet, possibly heart warming story in there. There are no real villains or heroes, just a eccentric cast of characters who are all living their lives. All I've got to do now is capture them and get them down on paper.

Russia stole the election!

Seriously? 

I  know this is the hot and trending topic right now about the mean old Russians tampering with our election process, but let's sit back and analyze this possibility. As a writer of fiction, this just doesn't pass the smell test to me. Think about it for a minute, which e-mails derailed her campaign? Which was the smoking gun that ended her chance at success?

Having a hard time coming up with one? There's a reason for that. There isn't one. The e-mails that were leaked weren't especially flattering, but none was a smoking gun to destroy her campaign. Now imagine you're the head of the Russian intelligence services and Vladimir Putin calls you in and says he wants you to destroy Hillary Clinton's campaign. You know there are 30,000 (or so) e-mails that were presumed lost forever when her server got hit with Bleach Bit. That gives you 30,000 (or so)  opportunities to create a forged e-mail that no one can prove isn't real.

You could create anything and all she could do is deny ever sending it, but with her server wiped clean, she couldn't prove she never sent it. The Russian intelligence services could create whatever type of e-mail chain they wished and it would be impossible for Hillary to prove it was faked. They have tens of thousands of her real e-mails to use as a baseline, so it would be easy to forge a creatively written series of e-mails that could destroy her. Imagine the reaction if an e-mail or two from those 30,000 thought lost forever emerged in which she angrily referred to President Obama as the "N" word? What if e-mails emerged that referred to her Hollywood supporters as easily conned morons? What if e-mails emerged in which she referred to the LGBT community in an insulting fashion?

When you think about it, there are dozens of possibilities that the Russian intelligence services could have used to create fake e-mails that would have completely derailed Hillary Clinton's campaign. It would have been almost too easy to do so if they'd really tried to do so. What did we get instead? Nothing all that impressive.

Was Russia hacking our computers? Certainly! We're hacking theirs too. It's what countries do. Did Russia feed the information they hacked to Wikileaks to destroy Hillary Clinton's campaign? Not likely. If they wanted to destroy her campaign they could have done so in a much more impressive fashion. So, who did leaked the e-mails then? Most likely a Bernie Sanders backer within the DNC who wasn't happy with how Bernie had been treated. Seth Rich is the obvious suspect as he reportedly had access to the information and Julian Assange (founder of Wikileaks) posted a reward for information leading to those who killed Seth Rich. Assange has said Russia did not supply the material he leaked and I'm inclined to believe him.

But how did Hillary lose if Russia didn't steal the election from her? She lost the old fashioned way, she earned it. Hillary Clinton pretty much disappeared from the campaign trail for much of September, popping up only at the occasional fundraiser, but largely ignoring the general public. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was holding rally after rally and getting good crowds of people energized about his campaign. Trump simply ran the better campaign. He put in more appearances, before more people, in the weeks/months leading up to the election. He energized his supporters while Hillary failed to do so. Remember her "Why aren't I ahead by fifty points" comment? She thought she had the election won and put it on cruise control. Trump never stopped campaigning.

But the polls all said Hillary would win! Not all of the polls agreed on that. The LA Times/USC poll had Trump winning pretty much the whole election season. Now, LA isn't generally viewed as being a Republican stronghold and I'm pretty sure the newspaper readers in LA would have preferred the LA Times to say Hillary would win, but the LA Times/USC stood firm in their numbers and ended up being right.

So, Trump won fair and square? Sad to say, it looks that way. The leaked e-mails certainly didn't help her campaign, but find me someone who said they didn't vote for her solely because of the leaked e-mails. It may take you a while to find anyone. The truth of the matter is, Trump ran a better campaign. He focused like a laser on winning the states needed for the Electoral College votes and he pulled it off. Hillary largely assumed she'd win Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin, or some combination that would give her the votes needed. She was wrong. Russia likely played little to no role in the outcome of this election. Think about what they could have done if they'd truly wanted to influence the election? They could have created/released e-mails that would have made it impossible to Hillary to win and it wouldn't have been hard. 

Sometimes the best evidence for what happened is the evidence that's missing. If Russia had truly wanted to influence this election, we likely would have seen them take a far more aggressive approach in doing so. There is no evidence to suggest that Russia fabricated an e-mail that doomed Hillary Clinton's campaign. If they'd wished to do so, it would have been ridiculously easy for them to have done so. Not having a smoking gun e-mail that sank Hillary's campaign is likely all the proof we need that Russia was not actively involved. Were they hacking the computers? Certainly. Did they actively try to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign? Not likely. It would have been so easy for them to have done so in a much more effective manner, that lacking that, one must assume Russia didn't participate. The Hillary Clinton loss is on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump simply beat her where it mattered the most.

Is it time for a third party?

The most recent presidential election is now a month behind us and the choices this year were not great. The Democrats largely imposed a candidate on us in Hillary Clinton who came with more baggage than the average 747 full of vacationers. On the Republican side we had Donald Trump emerge from a crowded field of contenders to get the nomination and ultimately the presidency. The typical third party candidates were nothing to write home about and fell far short of unseating either of the two mainstream options.

We'll be hearing a lot of chatter about term limits over the coming months, but realistically the odds of any elected official voluntarily voting for term limits is very slim. I have a crazy idea for a way to solve both the third party and the term limit issues in one fell swoop. 

I like the idea of making every elected official lose their party membership when elected. At that point they become a default third party we'll call the Incumbent Party. They're supposed to represent everyone regardless of their party, so why not take away their party membership once elected? 

They can no longer raise money for their former party, accept money from their former party, or campaign for their former party. Their re-election campaign would be funded by the government from taxpayer dollars but limited to a percentage of the amount their opponents spend (somewhere between 50% and 90%.) Without having to raise re-election funding we'd largely eliminate the pay to play issues and limit the ability of our elected officials to be bought/rented.

Let's presume this to be in effect and say Joe Smith, a Democrat from New Jersey was elected to the Senate. When he takes that oath of office he forswears his allegiance to the Democratic Party and becomes an Incumbent. He's representing everyone in NJ and not just the Democratic Party any longer. There is no Senate majority or minority any longer. They're all Incumbents. There's no majority leader or minority leader as there is no majority or minority. Everyone in the Senate is free to do what they feel is best for those they represent with no pressure other than to make sure they're doing what's in the best interests of those they represent.

As his term is winding down opponents to Joe Smith start to line up on both the Republican and Democratic side and one emerges from each side in the primary election as a challenger. The purely reflexive voters ("I've always voted for no one but a Democrat/Republican/Green Party/ etc.") will still vote reflexively meaning that if it's a strongly Democratic area, they'll likely support the "official" Democratic candidate over the Incumbent. That could be bad for Joe Smith. They're splitting the very vote that got him elected. But, if he's done a good enough job as an Incumbent he could steal enough votes from both party's candidates to keep the job.

Democracy only works when elected officials are held accountable for their actions. In far too much of the country there is little to no accountability. If you're a Republican or Democrat in a strongly blue or red state, you'll likely get re-elected regardless of how incompetent an idiot you are, simply because the reflexive voters will still vote for you.

Give the voters a legitimate third option, someone with a track record they can look at and evaluate. Someone they may or may not have voted for previously. Someone who can make the voters stop voting reflexively. Give them an Incumbent Party.

Would elected officials vote for such an absurd idea? Talk to any elected official and they'll likely tell you the thing they hate the most is fund-raising. It consumes their lives once elected. Voting for this type of proposal would eliminate that hassle from their daily lives. They're also freed from the peer pressure of having to vote along party lines as they're no longer a member of their previous party. They can, and should, truly vote for the best interests of those they represent.

What are the negatives? There would be a strong tendency for the two parties to not challenge one of "their" people who was an Incumbent. Sure they'd forswear their party loyalty, but deep down the parties would know they'd stick to the party line. Of course, if they didn't mount a serious challenge to the Incumbent they could have the other party sneak in and grab the seat. I suspect this three party system would lead to more rapid turnover without imposing artificial time limits on careers. By forcing a split of the majority reflexive vote it would open up the races into more of a free for all.

I think there's some potential in the idea of a third party composed entirely of incumbent candidates that's publicly financed, and independent of either mainstream party. It would likely lead to more efficient government, more care about the best interests of the voters, and fewer long term elected officials unless they were really good at what they did. The cost would be fairly minimal. By taking the established politicians out of the party you eliminate the party's big name fundraisers. That would limit the amount of money they could raise to spend on their campaigns which would limit the matching contributions for the Incumbent Party. 

It's time voters had more real choices. It's time we had a government that represented the voters more than the party. We need to limit the influence of campaign donations on our elected officials. I think this type of plan would achieve all of that.

Oh, Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree. . .

This is my first ever Christmas being more or less alone. I've somehow managed to outlive my immediate family which is quite an accomplishment since I nearly died four or five times in the eighties and nineties. I seriously considered not even putting up a tree this year. Why do it for just myself? It's a lot of work and with no one else around to see it, why waste the time?

Then on the Black Friday I finally decided to go ahead and put it up. It took maybe ten trips up and down the stairs to get everything down and collected in the living room. Then came the more tedious part of the project. I use a rotating tree stand that has a base with a lip around it. The first year I got it I put nothing under the stand and as the tree rotated that lip would sink through the carpet and padding until it made solid contact with the floor and this would result in the top of the tree moving in a wide circle and give the appearance the tree would topple at any time. (It never did, but it was unnerving to watch.) The very next year I invested in a large concrete paver to put under the stand and that solved the wobble problem but you still have to get the paver level and flat.

The tree we'd bought three years ago is all prelit and comes in three easy pieces, so putting it up is a snap. It lit up and was fine within minutes of getting the base level and true. Then came the branch fine tuning. Many had gotten compacted a bit in storage. A bit of fluffing and they were good to go. With the tree now up, lit and fluffed, it was time to start decorating. I tend to decorate my trees from the inside out using silver and highly reflective ornaments placed deep in the tree to catch the light and reflect it back out. These are some of my least impressive ornaments being little more than silver balls, or icicles.

Next came the glass beads and the first wave of memories. It's been a joke in our family pretty much forever that a very old string of glass beads we have ages a generation or two each time my dad would tell us how old they were. They started out as his parents beads, then a few years later they'd become his grandparents' beads, then a few years later his great grandparents beads. The joke in the family was that if he'd lived a few more years they'd have been the beads leftover from the purchase of Manhattan many centuries ago. Those beads, being the oldest and truthfully among the shorter strands get a placement of priority near the top of the tree. Then string of beads after string of beads went on until I was satisfied with the look.

Now came the fun part, the fancy ornaments. My Mom and I had both always stalked the ornament aisles from the time the first decorations went on sale until the clearance sales ended. Along the way we've acquired some very impressive ornaments. There were the beaded ornaments we got at a Tuesday Morning store when they had them on sale many years ago. We have the bird cage ornaments with the rotating reflector in the middle that my parents bought shortly after they got married at a Woolworths, in Woodbury. One of my Mom's favorite set of ornaments was a group of four individual cherubs that she bought at  Marshalls and loved. We always gave a place of prominence to them. I almost didn't bother putting on a glass clown she'd bought many years ago at our local True Value Hardware store. Even though she loved it, I'd always found it a bit garish and inappropriate, but knowing it was a favorite of hers, I put it on anyway. Spot, the dalmation ornament we'd gotten at Longwood Gardens assumed his spot atop the tree guarding it.

As the ornaments took their place on the tree the memories of when we'd gotten them and how we felt about them all came back. More than a few tears were shed as the tree took form and then finally, it was done. I sat back and watched it slowly rotate, seeing the ornaments and memories rotating past my eyes as I watched and knew it was the right decision. I may be alone these days, but the memories live on with me, and that tree with its ornaments helps to keep those memories alive. Putting up a Christmas tree is as much an act of love and remembrance as it is an act of decoration. It can move you in ways that little else can. I'm now very happy I put it up. In fact, I may not take it down!

Big Brother Over The top Live Feed Spoilers and Updates for Thursday 12/01/2016

And the BB season finally winds down tonight! From it's start in June to now, this has been the longest season of BB in US history. We had a one week break between seasons, but then we were right back at it again. Now it all ends for at least a month. Alison Grodner, the producer of BB talks about having a month to relax in an interview, so the rumor of a January BBOTT could be right, but we'll likely learn more at tonight's finale.

Yesterday saw the house guests wandering the house practicing what they wanted to say in their speeches in preparation of their live speeches to America. You didn't miss a lot if you missed the speeches. Kryssie's was basically, I'm loyal, I helped get Jason to the end as we had a final two deal, etc. (Jason had final two deals with half the house by the end of the first week though.) Jason pretty much said he came in handicapped being a vet and had to struggle and win POV's to survive. He took a few digs at Morgan and Kryssie too. Morgan basically said she was the sole survivor of her side of the house, Nobody really made a great case for themselves and with voting already open for eight hours by the time they'd spoken, few cared what they said.

After the speeches the house guests could finally relax for the first time all season. Everything they had to do was done. There were no more comps, ceremonies, or events other than the finale where all they have to do is look nice. BB annoyed them in the morning after waking them up by playing a saying yet again which had Morgan screaming, "Really, Big Brother? Why are you torturing us?" They've all spent hours memorizing all of those sayings for nothing. I suspect they'll still be able to recite those sayings a year from now, they all rehearsed them so much.

Today Morgan will put her makeup skills to the test on Kryssie, Jason and herself. After remaking all of them, the final three will gather together for the naming of the third place finisher who will then walk out and be interviewed by Julie. (We think. Julie is said to be there along with a live audience and all of the former house guests. We'll have to see what happens.) The third place finisher, barring  a massive miscalculation by the polls will be Kryssie. She's been nailing roughly two percent of the vote in most of the polls. The winner will be either Morgan or Jason who have been neck and neck in the polling. I expect Jason to win, but you never know. A Morgan win would make me very happy. 

They're planning for the finale to take an hour. I'm guessing it'll start with the typical season long recap showing each house guest getting the boot. Then we'll likely see the round table discussion of the evicted house guests each getting a question or two with Julie. Then Kryssie will get the boot. Then the winner will be announced and emerge triumphant. There will likely be a brief interview with the runner up and winner, then the show and season will end.

The unknown for fans right now is the question of "was BBOTT successful for CBS?" We don't know what their goal was going in. Was it to keep 50% of the BB live fed watchers? 70%? 90%? 10%? Did they want the audience to grow? Did they accomplish what they wanted to accomplish? Unlike a regular season where you can watch the ratings and get some idea of how successful the show is, we have no ratings here. CBS has all of the data and so far anyway, they haven't shared any of it. The fact that they didn't cancel it a few weeks in was a good sign. The amount of Twitter traffic BBOTT generated was impressive which implies a lot of people were watching. It also got good coverage in more mainstream publications with TVGuide online and The Hollywood Reporter covering it largely like the summer series. Will there be another BBOTT? If yes, when? The tea leaves indicate mid-January would likely be the earliest we'd see a new BBOTT, if we even see another one.

So this pretty much wraps up this year. Have a happy and safe holiday season and God willing, we'll be back whenever the next season of BB/BBOTT starts up again.