Really Quick Now

A few things:

1) Uh, I think I swung and missed on trying to post yesterday. Well, actually, I probably just stood at the plate and watched three strikes go by. Just a lot going on. Sorry about that.

2) After last night, it sounds like the Dorkman release date is being moved up once again to early August. Since my b-day's in early August, I'll count it as a gift like no other. We should receive edits early in May, and then it should be a pretty whirlwind process. The earlier release date is good on a couple fronts. First, we might beat school openings, which is a good thing. Then, at this point, the sooner the better as to seeing the "Pearce & Story" moniker on a real, live book. Lastly, locally, there's some marketing reasons and potential signings by which we may benefit from with the book coming out at the first of August as opposed to the first of September. So, we're excited to say the very least.

3) I may not be the only person to put up a post today here in The Realm of Possibility. Not naming any names, but maybe we all have something to look forward to. Of course, I make no promises.

4) Penultimately (and I'll always love using that word), harkening back to the Golden Age of the Realm (or was it the Bronze? or was it the Quartz Age? or maybe the Talc Age - oh bother, who cares), I'll be putting out another Top Ten list in the next day or two that no one in the world could possibly care about, so we can all disregard that.

5) Lastly, I think I mentioned my oldest son's team (the Angels) got drilled 16-3 in their first machine pitch baseball game - blame the coaching (the other team's coaches did - nice to hear all their comments on how ridiculous our team was when I was coaching third base late in the game - grrrrrrr! it just makes it so easy to love others... UGH!!! Many thoughts that other historical Christians might have had go thru your head at a time like this, one such being, "I wish they were being fed to the lions." Of course I jest... mostly). Anyway, my younger son's team, the Devil Rays (Angels & Devils, we got it all covered in the Pearce household), have their first tee-ball game tonight, so hopefully we can get back on the winning track.

Okay. That's it. Nothing much else to say, and I've got to run. You're free to stop reading now. Seriously, you can. You don't have to keep reading this trivial nothingness. You aren't still reading are you? Please, your life is more valuable than this. Still reading? Be brave. Walk away. Sigh. One last chance. Sigh (again). Okay, since you can't help yourself, I guess I'll have to be strong for you. Have a great day.

Don't Lose Your Guns - SQOTW

Did I trick ya? With the last post, I mean. Did you think we weren't going to make it to even 251? Well, I told you I had a Bill Mallonee post coming, just like every Tuesday. And getting to that, here's a cool song he wrote early, early, early in his career with VOL about his kids.

tender young flower grown up in my garden
and i pray ever day that your heart will not harden
a cynic's song surrounding you on each and every street
at the altar in the bar in the faces you will greet

don't lose your guns, don't lose your guns, don't lose your guns

a gift of something so profound straining all these words
a gift of something so astounding dying to be heard
bone of my bone you are flesh of my flesh
blood of my blood you are breath of my breath

don't lose your guns, don't lose your guns, don't lose your guns

you are my pride child and yes you are my crown
how to keep the darkness from dragging you down
i feel the weight of what i am and what i am not yet
i'd like to pass on something besides all these deficits

don't lose your guns, don't lose your guns, don't lose your guns

-- Don't Lose Your Guns, Vigilantes of Love from the Driving the Nails CD

The bookends of this song are just so meaningful to me. I guess if you don't have kids, and this really sort of points to having boys more than girls with the "guns" association (although even with girls you get the idea), it may not speak to you, but it does to me.

Yesterday, I went to pick up my seven year old from Kid's Club (after-school care) to take him to his first baseball game. I was pretty excited and trying to get him pumped for the competition as we're walking out to the car. Let's win, win, win baby! We get to the door, and he looks up at me, smiles, and says, "Daddy, I've got three caterpillars in my pocket." I stopped for a moment and just reflected. There I was trying to grow him up, and there he was being that precious child that I love (and, for the most part, wish that he'd stay that way longer). "Can I keep them?" he asked. "We can keep them in a two liter bottle." At first I was going to try to think of a reason not to, but after reflecting, I said, "Why not. We'll find something to put them in." I doubt this gets across, but it was just one of those cool daddy/son moments that I'm not going to have with him much longer. We already are having and have had a lot of dad/son stuff, but the daddy/son times are going the way of the dodos.

Both my boys have such tender hearts. As a parent, I have a chance to try to let them live in their innocence or help grow them out of it. Sure, I'm supposed to teach them as they grow to become fine lads, then teens, then hopefully usher them into adulthood with a love for Christ and others, but sometimes I'm rushing things. Meanwhile, the world around them ain't helping me out any either. Some of the terms they've learned at school and the ideas that have been conveyed to them from other boys aren't so innocent. And that's only gonna get worse. BUt like the song says, I'll pray for their hearts to stay soft... to not harden.

Then, that ending says so much as to what our job is as parents. Trying to pass along the good and teach them to forsake the bad. The bad that I am. The bad that I do and have done. There's a whole pile of "Rich"ness I hope neither of my boys have to lug through life with. Because they're human too, they'll have enough to struggle with on their own. If only I could pass on the good. So that's what I set my heart on, and I'll see what happens.

And speaking of kids, it's time to go pick one up! I'll talk to all of you later.

1/2 Way to Party-time

This post represents our 250th. Way back at Post # 100, I said:

And what would a 100th Post celebration without a gala to back it up? Party at Ken's place Friday night everybody: 7:00 p.m. and we'll go for 100 hours without sleeping. Get in on the action now cuz there ain't gonna be another celebration until Number 500!

If you don't mind a small wager, what are the odds that we'll make that?

Not sure how many of you guys, and especially any of you girls, I saw at Ken's that Friday. Well, to be more specific, I can't even really remember seeing Ken... or his house... that Friday, but I'm sure it was because I was so dazed and amazed by the end of the bash. But there'll be a bigger and even better one at 500 posts, and you're all invited -- if we make it.

Which brings me to that last question. Now, that Ken has decided to be a troll instead of a poster and contributor here at The Realm, what really are the odds we'll make 500 posts? They can't be good, what with all my excuses for time crunches. Anyone besides Trollmeister Ken want to hazard a guess as to what those odds are? Or better yet, how 'bout just a "Yes" or "No." Will The Realm make it to 500 posts? 1000? How about 251? Or, better, how 'bout 252 because there's another Bill Mallonee post coming tomorrow, and I don't miss those, no matter how much fun Ken makes of me.

Postcards to Ken

I think you can all now see that I wasn't too far from the truth in this post and in my rebuttal to this awful and inflammatory post. What was the last thing I said to Ken in my Dear, Dear You post? Oh yes:

I guess I'll see you in a couple of weeks or a month from now when you post again.

Very prophetic if nothing else, don't you think? Anyway, what I thought we could do in the comments is all write something down to say how much we miss Ken here in The Realm of Possibility and how much we'd like him back. Well, to be quite precise, you can tell him anything you want (within reason). I mean, if you don't actually miss him, but you do think he's an egg-head, feel free to tell him that. I will. Just nothing over-doing it - you guys know what I mean.

Now, this is one of those feel-good posts that has, sadly, an off-chance to be a feel-bad post. If no one comments to Ken, I'm sure his feelings will be quite hurt, and then, one wonders, how long he might stay away from The Realm after that.

So let's hear it for Ken!!!

Holy Week

Just wanted to ask if anyone does anything during Holy Week to make it a little more special than the other 51 weeks of the year. I figure different denominations do different things, and those would be good to hear, but also on a personal level, do you do anything? The word "holy" means "to set apart."

I'm looking forward to Easter, but I love, each day of the week, reading through all the Gospels starting with Palm Sunday on what happened during that particular day of the week. Also, I'm bad at memorizing hymns, but I'd like to memorize the classic hymn "Old Rugged Cross" this year. We sang that in church yesterday, and it hit me like it hadn't before.

Anyway, have a great Easter week. Christ is Risen!

Weatherin'

Last night was rough 'round these parts. We had tornadoes hit down here in the city limits of Huntsville not too far from where I live - a couple miles or so. Apparently, it hit worse in Tennessee where at least eleven people died.

Whenever the weather gets rough, I can always count on calls from my sister-in-law. She's a beautiful and neat person, and although she freaks about the weather, at least she's concerned. She was here in 1989 when tornadoes leveled -- and I do mean leveled -- a part of Huntville right where her in-laws were living. I was dating my not-yet-but-one-day-to-be-wife back then, and we came up from Auburn to Huntsville. Man, the damage was like nothing I'd ever seen. Apartments, grocery stores, houses, shopping centers... all wreckage and ruin. I remember helping a little getting fallen oaks out of people's backyards. The damage then was a lot like the picture I attached, which is of Tennessee yesterday, only worse.

A lot of us make fun of the weathermen here, and sometimes rightly so, I suppose. But mostly not so much. I've been guilty of it, I know. The hysteria that comes because we might see a half inch of snow (here in the South where the city just shuts down except for the run on milk and bread in the grocery stores) or the break-ins to television shows (or worse... football games - can you imagine?) to announce we might be seeing some bad weather that never pans out. However, after times like these or in 1989, I see why a lot of folks are so concerned.

There's a lot of people hurting today simply because a couple hours of weather came through their city or town last night. I need to remember that next time I hear a wisecrack about the weathermen (or weather persons, I should say) or the next time my sister-in-law calls at 1:00 a.m. to make sure we're huddled in the bathtub with blankets and flashlights. For the most part, they do it because they care about other people's welfare.

I should be so caring.

Loved This Quote... (And Then an Aside)

...from the imonk at the BHT today.

Let me be clear: As a Christian, I'm interested in moral values, but I am more interested in the Good News of Jesus for sinners. I want my children to be moral, but I want them to know they are sinners more. I want my children and my students to be good examples and good people. But without the Gospel of Jesus at the core of whatever they are, all the morality in the world is useless.

The context was in that he gave a sermon at the school where he works based on this imonk post, and one of the teachers made it clear that she was offended.
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I always enjoyed Sunday School as I grew up. The older I grew, the more we learned to say thank you, say nice things to one another, and the youth leaders clapped me on the back, because they were nice and awesome guys, and made me feel good about myself. We learned that it was wrong to drink and take drugs and smoke and watch dirty movies and have sex with the girls, all of which made me look with extreme skepticism on the people who did such things. Those were the freaks, sleaze-bags, and rockers, and they were all going to Hell. I stayed away from them and strangers just like I was supposed to. I was taught a few manners and etiquette, and the good people appreciated my usage of all things polite. And since I became a member of the church because I consented to be baptized, I had made it with the in-club. I was a good person, thank God, and I was going to Heaven. Since I loved to hear good things about myself, it made me feel good that people nodded in approval when I said or did all the nice things. Mostly, it was always nice that no one told me how much I sucked as a person when what I really needed to hear was how much I sucked as a person.

Oh, regretfully but needfully, I figured it out for myself along the way. Or, it might be better to say that God held out a mirror and what I saw...

I should add that The Church was a part of that, and Godly people helped me start and continue on a journey toward real life, a road that I'm still wandering on and most of the time hardly know where I'm going. I fall more than I walk, and I'm not sure at all how many people see me and think they might want to come along. It's probably more important, though, for me to see them and look for their needs, and then relate Christ to them by administering to those needs. But I'm awful at it, mainly because I'm still so self-involved. Not to mention all the times I'm climbing off the path and leaving bread crumbs in my wake to find my way back to it.

God, save me from myself.

Thank Him, He did. At the Cross. I've got a long way to go, but I'm pressing on until I get there.

Done Too Soon

Looks like I posted Around the Horn about a week too early. Take a look:

Doug hadn't posted in a month, and now he's posted School Days and The Las! in the matter of a couple of days. Both are really good and help you to get to know about the Doug behind the dug-a-lug mask that he wears.

Then there's b. Her family's been moving. She's pregnant. But she's still a-postin'. Her two newest are about Baptists and units. Actually, one's about a TV show and the other is about a Christian denomination, but I won't tell which is which. You'll have to go read them for yourself.

codepoke. Whew. The guy's been a posting madman. Here's his site because he's posted too many times since a week ago for me to say here and here and here and here and here. The last "here" is one of codepoke's tennis posts, and if you like the sport at all, you ought to read some of his tennis writings. The man knows of what he speaks like I know about... well, there's not much I know that well. Since the blog isn't about tennis, those posts come infrequently, but whenever they do, codepoke's serving up aces, I assure you.

Ken may as well go ahead and link Todd R.'s Beauty Out of Ugly Things site, because there's hardly a blog I go to hoping for another post more than his. His two newest since his Lent post, are Snobbery and SCC and Words. Every one of his posts seems to detail his human journey, and they reflect into our own. Seriously good stuff there.

Certainly there's other great stuff out there, but besides Thinklings, BHT, and imonk, these are the ones I go to most often because I like them (and of course the people that write them).

So catch 'em if you can.

The Business Side of Writing

A couple of posts ago, I joked about looking forward to doing taxes. Truth is, I hate it as I'm sure you're all aware. Not only that, but the whole financial side of living -- keeping the checkbook, where to invest, monthly budgeting, saving, how much to put in the 401K -- well, if someone would offer to do that for me in exchange for the joy of pulling all my teeth out, I'd gladly take the deal. My wife, on the other hand, is much more focused in that area and, in fact, in all the PRACTICAL areas of living. Unfortunately, her bandwidth can only take so much of the things you HAVE TO DO to function in this American world, so the finances have fallen to me. Oh joy. But that's not what this post is about.

Getting to it: it's not tough to extrapolate my "love" for the practical, or business, side of life to the practical, or business, side of writing. I derive all kinds of pleasure from making up stories, writing my way out of troublesome spots (when I have the talent to do so - when I don't, well, I have Ken), tossing ideas back and forth, brainstorming new ideas, and even, to a certain extent, the re-writing of parts of stories that need to be strengthened or cut down for the benefit of the novel or short story. However, when it comes to the business side of it to try to get yourself published (i.e. the query letters, synopses, cover letters, but most of all the actual sending them out and keeping track of the documents), it's like dragging my chin over asphault to try to get myself to want to do it. Of course, it has to be done, or else your work just sits in a drawer never to see the light of day. But boy do I despise it. Why? Because it takes away from the part of writing that gets my juices flowing (just like working on finances at home takes away time you could be spending with your children, etc.). Ten times out of ten, and a thousand times out of a thousand, I'd rather be working on a story than trying to compose a professional-sounding query letter -- a letter that many editors and agents will use to judge your writing right off the bat and if it ain't up to snuff, then they toss you out with no more than a brief rejection letter where they probably spell your name wrong - oh the irony. (Digressing) It's so important, yet I have so much trouble with the want-to. And whereas when in novel-writing when I work myself into a difficult spot, where Ken and I can bounce ideas off each other, Ken's love is also for the story-telling and not for the business side. Now, he's more knowledgeable about that side than I am, but he's no more apt to work that side of our writing than me.

Often, I joke with Ken that we need a Pearce & Story secretary who will work for free and handle the business side for us. Well, we'd still have to do the actual writing of the story content part of the query and cover letters, and also we'd have to write the synopses, but in a perfect world, if we had someone who could just take these and alter them for the different requirements of each publishing house/editor/agent, what a lifted burden that would be. All that said, why joke about it anymore?

Soooooooo... if any of you guys/gals know of a person who loves working lots and lots of hours for free for a couple of hard-arsed guys who give no benefits and only require a ton of work, we're certainly taking applications. Just think, you could get in on the ground level of something that's going to be big... REAL BIG... someday. Special consideration goes to prospective employees who can read minds. Extra special consideration goes to prospects that never make mechanical writing mistakes and can type 120,000,000 words a minute. And think of it, if we did ever get really, really, really big, we might even give a raise up to minimum wage.

Ask yourselves, what other writers out there are offering such an opportunity? That's right. No one but Pearce & Story. That's why we're the best going today.

[Update to that last sentence: Well, it's one of the multitude of reasons, let's just say. But any way you slice it, we're still the best. And working on becoming LEGENDARY. So sign up now!!!]

Because Something As Important As This Needs to Be Discussed in The Realm of Possibility

I'm sure most of you know that Joss Whedon is writing the script for Wonder Woman. In the link, you'll find several of the actresses rumored to be playing the lovely Amazon Princess Diana.

So, if your job was Casting Director, and you had your pic of any actress in Hollywood, who do you think would or could do the best job of pulling off the Wonder Woman character so that the picture could be taken seriously?

I'm not looking for the "sexiest" Wonder Woman or, necessarily, the young up-and-comer that might make the movie a hit, unless you really think that person could do the job. We all saw how bad having the "sexiest" Catwoman could be -- er, I take that back, almost none of us saw... Of course, a lot of it will be in the story, but you have to have the right actress to play WW.

Who is she?

[Side Note: I don't know why, but it seems like it's harder to do this than to choose a male lead to play, say, Bats or Supes. Of course, they've had a bad Bruce Wayne or two before so nothing's that easy. I still think a lead WW is a harder pick to make. Don't you?]