Time For Another Update!

This is long overdue, and I swear I’m starting to feel like Oliver on Arrow with his “It’s Complicated” line regarding my absences, LOL.

Sorry Ollie, the truth hurts, LOL.

Long story short, I was hammering the job hunt like Thor entering Wakanda, LOL. Lots of applications every day, phone and video interviews, occasional in-person interviews, etc… As it happens, I even ended up with 4 job offers. I took one that was an entry level management position. No, it’s not fast food either. 😝 That’s all I’ll say since even here I’ve had a couple of stalker incidents. The pay is so-so but the company seems to have a good culture and I’m hoping this will lead places. At the very least, it helps me rebuild an employment history and get some management experience on the books.

I did my best to at least like or reply to others’ posts while not writing here. The need to do something to change our financial situation just wouldn’t allow more time spent here though. The nice part is there’s light at the end of the tunnel now, AND it doesn’t seem to be THIS situation:

Overall, my stress level has dropped tremendously, and that should be a great thing for my writing. Stress created mental blocks have always been a far bigger issue than time itself.

What I see going on politically drives me nuts, but I want to avoid that rant. Likewise I could go on for 20 pages about what a nuclear disaster the job market AND LinkedIn are right now. THAT will be coming soon in another post however. Anybody contemplating looking for another job needs to know what they’re in for.

And the Blogs Themselves…

My collection of blogs has become an unruly mess at this point. This one has turned from writing into social commentary and personal updates, the spiritual one has been inactive for… maybe 4 years? Maybe more. I only leave it up for proof that I authored content at the date posted.

I moved the erotica to a separate blog so as to avoid offending any of my more religious followers, and ultimately they all left anyway, LOL. I tried to move that blog to a self hosted site so I could be a little more naughty than WordPress allows, but then the new laws hit regarding “adult” content on websites and age verification. Everything was reported vaguely and that put the brakes on things as I waited for the dust to settle.

As best I can tell, the laws apply to sites that display actual sexual content (ie porn) as opposed to erotica or simple nudity. Essentially the same rules that WordPress has.

With that in mind, I’m trying to work out a plan to merge all the blogs into one. Erotica would be posted as new pages instead of blog posts, so that wouldn’t show up in anyone’s email, thus preventing NSFW issues. It and the spiritual stuff would effectively be compartmentalized, leaving the main body of the blog for commentary, personal updates, standard fiction / creative writing, etc…

I’ve had a few followers threaten to bale on me if I had any sort of adult content on the blog. Ironically, I think they’re all gone at this point. Either way, over the past… several months I’ve realized I’ve spent far too much time trying to accommodate everyone instead of being true to what I wanted to produce here. It’s caused me no end of stress, esp when it seemed unappreciated, and more importantly it impacted the quality of my writing. There isn’t a single post or story on my blogs that I’m not capable of doing 10x better. My goal moving forward will be to show what I’m truly capable of.

A Few Prompt Answers:

Daily writing prompt

Who is the most famous or infamous person you have ever met?

View all responses

For this one, it might depend on who was asking. In most cases, it’d be Carl Weathers. My Ex and I ran into him at the Conyers, GA Kroger store back when he was part of the cast of “In the Heat of the Night” (filmed next door in Covington GA). The town was small enough back then that his Mustang convertible stood out in the parking lot. We wondered who it belonged to as we walked in. Once we hit the checkout line, there he was in the Quick Check line with the standard celebrity disguise; baseball hat and shades, lol. Quite a few people said hi or nodded and smiled, but everybody respected his desire for privacy and left him alone otherwise. He seemed pretty cool also. He wanted to get in and out of there like a normal person but wasn’t stand offish at all… Smiled and waved back at anyone who did notice him.

If you’re in Japan and / or a huge wrestling fan, my ex and I trained at the same dojo in Atlanta as Yuji Nagata, who would go on to become NJPW Champion (among other titles). The dojo taught Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Aikido and Kenpo. Sent a few fighters to MMA events too (all of them small fish in the MMA picture). The dojo was good enough that a handful of WCW wrestlers came there to improve on their grappling skills though. Yuji was the one that was there the most. We were studying Kenpo while Yuji was working BJJ. We all saw enough of each other that we’d wave and say hi, make brief small talk… but we didn’t really become more than acquaintances. Yuji was a jobber close to making the break into the mid-card then. I didn’t imagine he’d hit the big time years later. 🙂 I should have though. The guy had a serious work ethic.

And if you were a Wing Chun practitioner… Francis Fong was my Sifu for a while. One of the most famous and well regarded instructors outside of Asia.

Oddly enough, the time I had the best chance to meet somebody famous was a complete wash. I was a night security guard with Pinkerton at a set for the 1996 movie Fled:

The set location was the upper floor of an Atlanta office building that they used for the police station and the girlfriend’s apartment. Never saw a single celebrity the whole couple of weeks that assignment ran though. Not even a producer or director.

Most Infamous:

I almost forgot about this, but our archvillain deserves a special spot on the Walk of Infamy. That would be everyone’s favorite financial guy: Dave Ramsey.

Picture via the NY Post – Yes, I deliberately chose an unflattering one.

We used to be huge fans of his. Met him twice, once on a tour of the old studio, and once at a seminar at his new headquarters. Still think his basic advice (ie “the baby steps”) is good too. HOWEVER… Dave goes on and on about how his ‘Endorsed Local Providers’ are carefully screened by him to make sure they have the highest ethics and follow his financial beliefs.

That turned out to be a total load of shit. We used a referral from Dave Ramsey to choose our realtor for buying the Georgia house. Said realtor masterminded screwing us on the whole transaction, right down to pushing a home inspector that she paid off to lie his ass off about the condition of the house. We put down over 20% on the house following Dave’s advice to avoid PMI also.

Once it became clear how badly we’d gotten screwed, we called up Ramsey Solutions to report the Realtor. We figured the Realtor would get booted from the referral program at the very least, MAYBE strong armed into returning their commission. What did we get though? “Too bad, so sad. We make money from them though, so go away.”

So every night I go to bed praying that there’s a special place in hell for Dave Ramsey and his crooked local providers. Being Stoic and Zen-like doesn’t mean evil shouldn’t be punished.

Favorite School Subject:

That would be history. I realized early on there were life lessons there.

If you pay attention, there are elements of human behavior to be gleaned as well. History itself is moderately interesting. It’s when you see the social and economic pressures that shape it that history really becomes interesting. It makes the present and near future somewhat predictable also. Trump is one of a long line of leaders who came to power (again) as a result of a major economic downturn and the fear it caused, as one example. I suppose that whole undercurrents idea is what prompted this quote:

Anyway, it was also the subject I was best at. Since my Junior year teacher also graded on a curve across his classes and I got the high score on all but two tests, it also made me pretty hated, lol. That teacher ended up having to take the top 5 of us out of the curve or we’d have sunk everyone else.

The Coolest Thing I’ve Ever Found and Kept (after buying it)

My answer (just like my Dave Ramsey comments) will show I’ve got a little ways to go yet on the Stoic ideals, lol. That would be a copy of Barrett’s “The Magus”:

It’s not so much the book’s teachings that made it so cool to me though. There are multiple adages in the metaphysics community that “real” books with authentic information have a certain energy to them. It was definitely true with this book. I felt it from half way across the bookstore before I even knew what it was or found it.

The cool factor relates to my ex though. The ex was jealous that I have real gifts, and kept insisting on trying to get into the book. Every time the book was touched, immediate shock, enough to yell “Ow!” and eventually want nothing to do with the book, LOL. Just shows what happens when you don’t respect the craft.

Despite all the adages I mentioned, I’d never seen that happen with any book before. I have a pretty big library too. It’s not Alexandria by any means but it’s still big.

Pretty impressive for a book that some critics label a stolen and watered down version of the Golden Dawn’s teachings. If anyone is curious, here’s a quick YouTube video:

I would have to tentatively dispute the video’s claim that the book had any influence on Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism). Despite having some definite but casually hidden ties to the Masons, Mormonism is just as anti-magic as any mainstream Christian church.

That’s All Folks

I’ve rambled enough, I suppose. At least I got some writing practice in and hopefully highlighted that I’m a fairly multifaceted person.

Fan Fiction Page Restored!

Yes, I’m bringing sexy back! 😁

I closed down the fan fiction page ages ago when I thought I’d be moving exclusively to my self-hosted blog. I’ve decided it’s high time to start rebuilding it.

Everything on the Fan Fiction page will be completely safe for work. PG-13 at the worst.

I started with a special treat also; a story that up till now, I’d only released the first two chapters of because I’d planned on making it a legitimate “for sale” ebook. 74 pages in M$ Word and 30,241 words!

The story is called “Liberty Gold of Three Worlds and the Dark Prophecy”. It’s set in the Champions 5th Edition / Champions Online game world. Teen superhero Jennifer Saunders, AKA Liberty Gold, has recently found out that her mother is actually a titan from Greek myth, and has been hiding out from Zeus on Earth. Her exact heritage makes Jennifer a target of Zeus’s wrath as well. Can she stave off his wrath and avoid an apocalyptic prophecy that’s tied to Zeus’s paranoia?

The story was originally written back around 2015 or so as part of a guild writing contest for Halloween, and quickly turned into a major event for the guild as everyone wanted to act out the events. I’ve been told it’s an epic story. Judge for yourselves:

Liberty Gold of Three Worlds and the Dark Prophecy

Chapters 1 and 2 of the story with a little starter info to ease readers into it’s world.

The story is divided up into 4 blocks of 2 chapters each. That should make it manageable for readers. I’ve also added links in the story to the Champions wiki for anything that’s official game content (characters, organizations, etc…). I couldn’t do so for characters belonging to other players though. The links should help those who are curious or feeling a little lost.

Oh and YES… ALL rights reserved on this story!

Aside from that story, I have two stories set in the “City of Heroes” universe, one featuring another young heroine, and the others story featuring a ruthless villain trying to worm his way back into his boss’s good graces.

My Jedi Leia story will be going up there next, so that people don’t have to hunt to find the various chapters. From there, I’ll see what I can find that’s Safe for Work and add to the page. I certainly have a TON of City of Heroes stories I could re-post here IF there’s any interest and feedback on the existing two.

Were Old Timers So Wrong After All?

I’ll get my Thursday Neuro-Linguistic Programming post done later today. Lots of chores. I did want to get something posted before it got much later though. I stumbled across yet another Cracked.com article on the MSN home page. This time making fun of historical over-reactions. Looking it over though, time has only proven half of the tidbits to be correct in my opinion.

This one is the most iffy one on my list. While it wouldn’t be too hard to make a psychological connection between social drinking of soda pop and it normalizing the behavior of socialized drinking of alcohol, let’s look at the bigger picture.

We now know that soda pop is extremely heavy in sugar and complex carbs. We also know that both sugar and caffeine are extremely addictive as well. I’d make the case that with Americans at least, (I can’t speak on other countries’ consumption) it’s a major contributor to the epidemics of diabetes and morbid obesity.

The one evangelical may have gone off the deep end overstating it’s “corrupting influence”, but can anybody deny that soft drinks are BAD news?

I remember those days. We’ve been conditioned now to think of automation as convenient, etc… If you think of it though, ATMs were the first large step in replacing human workers with machines. Robots and A.I. had their beginning with the ATM’s eventual success.

That was one of several reasons cars were hated at first. Ironically though, this one was correct. In my college history class, we discussed the automobile’s role in the sexual revolution and how it enabled younger people to much more easily find privacy to do the dirty deed. 😯😯😯

Anybody reading this NOT had sex in a car at least once?

On the surface, this WILL appear as blasphemy to my fellow writers. Hear me out though. MY argument is simply that the prediction was early. Publishing houses and other aspects of the book industry used to mean that books were fact checked to some degree at the very least. I am talking strictly about non-fiction by the way.

With the advent of social media and self-publishing via sites like Amazon, now anybody can claim anything with no regard to the truth. The better the spin, the more it will sell also.

So no, books themselves will not ruin civilization, but the effortless mass dissemination of misleading half truths and outright blatant misinformation very likely could be the end of civilization.

You have to get to the bottom of the picture to see the real issue: Candles. If you think this is blown out of proportion, first think about how many times you may have fallen asleep while reading.

Beyond that, unattended candles are a HUGE fire risk. Up until around 1980 when he retired, my grandfather had worked his way up a lifetime career as a firefighter to Chief of two different cities and eventually deputy state fire marshal (#2 firefighter in California), and he HATED candles with a burning (pun intended as always) passion due to all the fires he’s seen them start.

Even today, with new apartments having mandatory sprinkler systems, and other safety advances for homes, offices and apartments, candles still start 20 house fires in the U.S. every single day. They’re the 9th most common cause of house fires also.

Lesson for the day: Fire is like every other dangerous tool; it has to be respected and used carefully. 😉

And last but FAR from least…

Cracked actually makes it sound like this is a good thing. bankers profit off of human need, and allow big businesses to charge even higher prices for good and services due to banks giving people credit. Banks also fund big corporations and are partially responsible for their growth and eating of other businesses. Let’s not even get into the banking industry’s role in the housing bubble of 2008 OR how the big five banks had their lawyers write the Dodd-Frank Act’s “reforms” to give themselves a much greater share of the banking market.

I could argue that the creation of banks MAY have been the beginning of the end for society.

The Woes of Writing

My previously voiced frustration from Monday continues. It feels like an onion, with layer after layer of baggage being peeled away and revealing more. There was some weirdness Monday night when we went out shopping also that I’m pretty sure contributed to the dark malaise hanging over me, but that’s another story. My spiritual posts seem to chase away more readers than they attract anyway.

So, with that said, let’s focus on the issue of writing specifically:

Analysis Paralysis

This has been my biggest roadblock with multiple projects lately. I have several ideas (stories) that I’ve been mulling over but I can’t decide which path I want them all to take. I feel as stuck as Cicero in Skyrim if the player meets him early… and nearly as crazed anymore, LOL.

Skyrim’s Own Version of the Joker.

Coincidentally one of them was an adult themed recounting of Skyrim. There’s a few other erotica ideas as well, and the whole “Jedi Leia” story, which got a whole 14 views for it’s last chapter. 🫤 Maybe I need to make it adult to get any attention. 😯

From Pinterest; Original Source Unknown

Yes, I’m frustrated. Everybody wants their stuff read, but nobody wants to read anybody else’s material.

Regardless, I doubt I’m going to get another chapter out today. I went hunting for inspiration on YouTube and got multiple similar stories told there. Many of them revolve around the next scene with Leia and Vader in the detention block and what happens there. Does Vader recognize Leia as his daughter? He should have, based on the expanded understanding of the Force. Does Vader turn at that point? Does Vader instead try to turn Leia to the Dark Side like he did Luke?

The story could go 100 different directions from there based on that one pivotal interaction.

Since I don’t want to turn the story into something that is completely unrecognizable as the original trilogy, I don’t want to veer too far off course… Or do I? There are still many twists I could add while still keeping close to the original trilogy.

Witchfire’s Someday Return

My own Creation

This is a project I’ve been planning a reboot of forever. I’m starting to feel like Bethesda Software with delivering Elder Scrolls 6. The original intent was to do a series of superheroine peril themed erotica and do it classier than the website I was using as inspiration.

Everything went wrong there, including my falling into the traps that I had been complaining about other writers falling victim to. Hence a long delayed reboot.

One good thing has come out of the wait; I finally found something closer to an ideal costume:

Those taken from Baldur’s Gate 3 (heavily modded). It’s much closer to what I originally envisioned than the other software produced, but still only 90% of the way there. I do particularly like the staff though.

Well, long story short, I’m still debating myself silly over the details of how I want the reboot to go. Being as that is adult content, it’ll only be on my NSFW blog when I do start writing it again.

Blog Drama…

Last but not least, I have the issue of ongoing blog frustrations. I’ve complained about the one-sided relationships most bloggers think are normal and proper anymore. A growing portion of bloggers don’t even put in the effort of the whole transactional likes nonsense. “I followed you, now give me likes and comments while I ignore you”.

Yeah, yeah… Nobody’s obligated to follow and comment, etc… THIS is taking things to the whole other toxic end of the stream though.

Aside from dealing with the above nonsense, what really opened this sore again was the fact that I started dropping claps (Likes) and comments at Medium.com and without publishing anything of my own, I’ve already gotten likes and about a dozen followers. People there seem to want genuine interaction.

So yes, it’s left me frustrated again with the quality of the overall community here at WordPress. Every time I think I’ve let it go and gotten used to the low standards here, they go and lower the bar again, LOL. I have it rough enough as it is. I’m part Scot, Part Irish, Part German AND a redhead. The only thing keeping me remotely sane is the Welsh quarter of my ancestry. 🤣🤣🤣

It’s the handful of awesome people here that keep me staying around at all.

The EVIL That Is A.I.

I could go on quite a rant here… Make it my longest “Tuesday Trash” yet. Truth is nobody seems to care that they’re training computers to take over everything. Half of them admit they know that’s what’s taking place too.

I understand why Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are doing it. They think they’re going to be able to control what they unleash and become masters of humanity. Everybody else helping them do it though… WHY?

What’s that got to do with writing and blogging? Just look at all the A.I. generated content here. Most of it is pictures / artwork as opposed to writing. Is it really “democratizing” art when artists who have taken years to learn their craft are being put out of work by everyone typing a few sentences into an A.I.?

There’s the Grand Admiral Thrawn angle to consider with the art creation also. Timothy Zahn did a great job in his books of showing how Thrawn was able to profile entire civilizations based simply on the nature of their artwork. I don’t think it’s too far fetched to imagine that A.I. is learning the same processes as part of it’s ever increasing development. The tech elites operate and have grown obscenely wealthy on one key premise: knowledge is power.

And yet… Here I sit wondering if I have to give in and resort to A.I. generated pretty pictures to get anyone to pay attention to what I write. It’s depressing.