Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I Have a Dream"
August 26, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.


I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹


I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.


And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

July 1st – a relaxing day. Not only is it my birthday, but also the day that Canadians celebrate the birth of the man (Oscar Canada) who discovered their great land. I’m told that they hold dog sled races in the deep July snow to commemorate the occasion, replete with lumberjack competitions and RCMP formation drills. The PM, Stephen Harper, was on hand to help judge the moose beauty pageant. The moose (or “mooses” if you are from the any state in the deep South, USA) must sing the national anthem (dedicated to Mr. O. Canada) with perfect pitch least they be disqualified.

My wonderful Canadian friends are going to kick my ass all over the Internet, to be sure.

I had a friend “back in the day” that honestly thought that Cinco de Mayo was held in celebration of the “man who discovered Mexico”. His name, of course, was Cinco de Mayo (no relation to Oscar Canada or even Oscar de la Renta.) The mistranslation of “Fifth of May” to “this guy’s name” undeniably stymied her attempts to date a Hispanic male. It didn’t surprise me one iota when some foolish person refused to believe Canada Day was about the enactment of the British North American Act. I am not going into detail about the “how and why” of it. Google and learn.

How sad is it that Americans seem clueless with regard to their neighbors to the north and south? Are we nothing more than a nation that saturates itself with prime time talent contests, baby daddy talk shows, and hyperbole as it pertains to our self-estimation? (Be forewarned, the next generation was weaned on Fruit Roll-Ups, Starbuck’s burnt coffee and Go-Gurt. I don’t expect much in the way of vigorous brain cell activity. God forbid they reach their 40’s and suddenly discover that Canada is not the 51st state.)

I can overlook some things. If you have never called a living and breathing human being in Canada, you might not know that you can dial the number just as you would any long distance phone number, using only 1+area code. Please do not try to place a call to Canadians who are not living and breathing; the dead tend to ignore the phone’s ring.

Another misconception: Canada does not have “states”. Should you ask a Canadian what state he lives in, he will probably think, “a state of hell, having to deal with yet another inept American.” Canada is a federation of ten provinces and three territories. They have a PM (Prime Minister, which is not the same thing as prime rib) rather than a president.

Canadians enjoy indoor plumbing, paved roads and buildings comprised of materials other than ice. They drive in the same sort of vehicles that you would see in the United States. Most do not finish every sentence with “ay”, although there are some that do. Contrary to popular belief, Canada has a military and space programs. Mounties do not ride yaks (the Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen are Ren and Stimpy fantasy.)

We will not even touch the clueless American who became rather perturbed upon hearing that Niagara (pronounced nye AH grah by the bungling) Falls has a “Canadian side”, how dare they! Les Chutes du Niagara cascading down from the Niagara River surely must belong to the Americans. It never occurred to her that there was more to Niagara than a single cataract of water.

My birthday (I did not discover Canada) was splendid. Better Half treated me to the new Disney-Pixar film, Wall-E. We had a lovely dinner out and enjoyed a wonderful cherry cake.

I confess that I have never been a Sesame Street fan. My mother was a woman who did not rely upon outside sources to teach her infant about words, shapes and numbers. I was utilizing fully structured sentences by eighteen months of age (as in “Yes, more milk” instead of the proverbial “baaaaaaaa” that some babies and toddlers scream in order to procure a sip of liquid.) By the time I was two, I could not only differentiate between the “yellow ball” and the “purple triangle” but could spell those words.

Perhaps it is due to my mother actually using the phrase, “Honey, can you differentiate between…” or perhaps it was because she always spoke to me in a mature fashion?

Suffice to say, I never watched Sesame Street in my own home. I found it dull. I could not comprehend why the characters on the idiot box (I called it a “tell vision” because I continually told it the answers but it kept asking the same stupid questions) did not grasp the very basics that I had already mastered.

My Sesame Street experience stemmed from those odd times when my mother had an important errand to run. I was left with our next-door neighbor and her children. Dall and I were both four, while his sister Allison was much younger. The very memory brings to mind sweetened apple juice bottled up in those damned Tupperware primary blue- and red-coloured sippy cups. (I had been using a regular glass since being weaned.)

“One of these things is not like the other” as the song goes. A screen split into four quarters, three quarters containing a similar theme. The odd corner was glaringly opposite. The child (or perhaps infantile adult) was expected to guess which “thing” was not the same. I can recall a sound spanking in punishment simply because I called Dall a “dummy” for totally overlooking the fact that three quarters were filled with bathing suit clad people whilst one quarter had a guy in a ski suit.

The Count was cool although I never understood why he was so proud of himself for reaching the predetermined number of the day. Even Big Bird could count that high if pressed. The Cookie monster was obnoxious. There was an animated typewriter that rolled across the screen (“Nu ne nu ne nu”) that would capture my attention at times. Kermit’s “Muppet News Flash” was always something to watch, as I loved the character (I later joined my father in becoming a devout “Muppets” fan.) I don’t recall cracking much of a smile over Oscar, Bert and Ernie (and for the record, I thought those “room mates” were like that nice couple of gentlemen down the street, with their white rugs and furniture and kissing on the lips.)


If I have one gleaming thing to say about Sesame Street it is this: the show taught millions of American kids during a time when the average parent was too busy to teach their child anything. It helped them better their reading and reasoning skills. It entertained even as it educated. It presented everything from the alphabet to Mr. Hooper’s death in a way that did not patronize or insult children (unless of course they were children raised by my mother.)

In the 1980’s, Sesame Street jumped the shark with its introduction of the character “Elmo.” (For those who do not understand this term, it is a metaphor that denotes the tipping point where a show has surpassed its peak with viewers, or else a point where new plot twists are illogical when compared to everything prior to their insertion. The term originated with “Happy Days”; Fonzie was made to literally jump a shark whilst wearing water skis.)

I hate Elmo.

I loathe him as the ambassador of modern parenting. I loathe the high-pitched, unintelligent, singsong, third person, DUH! baby talk. I despise him as the bastard icon for the PC reason-with-your-child movement (“Now Johnny, you don’t weally want to stab mommy with that big sharpy sharp knifey, do you? Johnny, how do you think that wiwl make mommy feel? *Parent: please adopt melodramatic sad face to show child how unhappy you feel.”*)

Is it any wonder that the average child entering kindergarten can not read?

Kevin Clash has provided Elmo’s voice since he first appeared on Sesame Street. Clash is a rather handsome man with a pleasant expression and perpetual smile. It is hard for me to imagine him as a person whilst I watch a red demon spawned Tickle Me doll contort in a tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure on the floor as the children clap their hands in glee. (I also wonder if his wife asks him to “do the Elmo voice” in bed.)


In its 33rd season (2002), Sesame Street underwent an obvious, dramatic makeover, apparently intended to address many of the current trends in children's programming, like more rituals and repetition, brighter, more cartoon-colorful real-life characters and sets, and more exaggerated, simplistic mannerisms in addressing the screen and seeking viewer interaction. Regular segments like Journey to Ernie are almost identical from one episode to the next, with only the fine details changing, and the Number of the Day always being presented initially by Count von Count playing up an organ keyboard until he finds it, sequentially. (He is still proud of that feat, even after three decades.)
This all seems an attempt to emulate the huge success of Elmo's World, an extremely ritualized segment presenting exactly the same routine every week.
To put it simply, after jumping the shark, Satan lifted his hind leg and produced a 15-25 minute segment of Elmo in a CG universe, and he saw that it was puerile, and he named it “Elmo’s World” and the peasants and slack-jawed children rejoiced. This time is taken away from the total Sesame Street episode length.

Elmo’s World occupies a large amount of “education time” yet follows the same basic patterns each week. I shudder to think of how Elmo’s fans behave when they reach school age and find out that not all things are structured and doled out in whimsical baby-chatter.

Why do our children require more repetition, more exaggerated and simplistic mannerisms, and why do they need more cartoon-colorful real-life characters and sets?


A recent study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics states that each hour infants and toddlers (age 0 – 3) spend in front of a TV increases a child’s chance of developing Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) by 10%. A child who watches three hours of television a day is 30% more likely to have this disorder. The rapid image changes affect their brain development. The AAP recommends that children under the age of two years should not watch television at all. Children older than two should only watch one hour a day, unless it is educational programming. Even with that, they should not watch more than two hours of television a day. Where does that leave Sesame Street? There is a lot of competition for that two-hour slot.

Couple bad television habits with the refined sugars found in most marketed children’s snacks and you have a recipe for disaster.

Snuffleupagus (or simply Snuffy), Big Bird’s imaginary friend, was finally proven to be real simply because the PC crowd felt that molested children would somehow assume adults would not believe them if they brought up being touched inappropriately by an adult. (Huh?)

On the positive side, the show did help children understand the devastation caused by hurricanes and 9/11. I can not mock it for that noble endeavor.

Instead I shall engage in a little insult in Elmo’s (dis)honor. They really should begin preparation for the growing stages of his fans. Perhaps a series of short stories and a line of toys is in order? Elmo can then chatter away in his childish voice as he explores the adult world that he is maturing into (have I mentioned that the character had been perpetually three years of age since his inception? Have I also mentioned that I was speaking with better syntax and self-awareness since the age of two?)




















There are precious few children’s characters that irk me as much as Elmo does. Barney the Purple monstrosity comes close, as do the Teletubbies and those Veggietale beasties.

I did not pine away when Elmo was captured by insurgents,


Nor did I breathe a sigh of relief upon his return as he appeared before the press with a dazed look upon his face.


His short-lived mainstream “comeback” career was one stop short of the toilet. So too were his aspirations to star in the porn industry once his costar was identified as being an underage Muppet.

But I am sad to say that the scars of his time as a hostage, coupled with the downward spiral of his fame, lead to a decreased ability to function as a healthy and rational Muppet. He took his own life on April 1st, 2007. No suicide note was found.

This sabbatical has taken much longer than expected, and I apologize to my regular readers for leaving them out in the cold. Thank you for all the warm email wishes. At least I feel good. I feel much better than I did the day before. To feel good (to feel well) is to feel alive.

I would like to thank all the little people who made this wonderful event of "feeling good" possible, like Glaxo Smith Kline.

What an interesting topic. Alas, I shall not waste any effort to untangle the treacherous web of pharmaceutical manufacturers. I shall say that, in 2005, Old GSK's pharmaceutical sales accounted for 18.88 billion Pounds Sterling, with was roundly 86% of their total sales. 6.9 billion Pounds Sterling was their profit. Don't we all love those clever Brits? How about some shits and giggles? I found a conversion table: $33,883,192,823.84. "B" as in Billion dollars.

Billions. I think I will be sick. Excuse me whilst I go pop a pill. Never fear! It is a generic one, manufactured by Watson Pharmaceuticals, a humble little joint that provides us with generic formulas to better usurp funds from those tricky Brits at GSK. Watson does respectfully, and reports indicate that for the six months (ended June 30, 2006), total net revenue increased 12 percent to $917.6 million, as compared to $817.1 million for the first six months of 2005. Net income for the first six months of 2006 was $9.6 million, or $0.09 per basic and diluted share, as compared to net income of $79.1 million, or $0.67 per diluted share, for the same period of 2005.

Million. Much more soothing than Billion. I feel better scarfing my name-brand knock off poison now, knowing in soul that I am supporting good old American attitude. I shall now move to Canada to take advantage of the one thing our country can not seem to provide: socialized health care.

"Canada's health care system is a group of socialized health insurance plans that provides coverage to all Canadian citizens. It is publicly funded and administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government.

Under the health care system, individual citizens are provided preventative care and medical treatments from primary care physicians as well as access to hospitals, dental surgery and additional medical services. With a few exceptions, all citizens qualify for health coverage regardless of medical history, personal income, or standard of living."

Take that, GSK!

I have always wanted to live in Thunder Bay (that is in Ontario, dear readers), and dance upon the majestic shores as bald eagles and Peregrine falcons soar free over my head. I would, in all probably, dance myself off a damned rock and crack my skull on the ground, to be run over by a rogue caribou as I slip into unconsciousness. Not to worry, I will have free health care in Canada, and Watson makes generic hydrocodone to ease my pains.

I could save myself some trouble and move to England, another land of The Free Health Care System, but I'm deathly afraid of Routemaster double-decker buses. I know they were thinned out in the 1980's, but I just will not take the chance of walking near Trafalgar Square and having one jump out at me suddenly. People have been gruesomely mauled by Routemasters, and the 1208GMT 159 bus out of Marble Arch is know to be especially savage.

Aut? What are you on?

Please do not ask that again. You do know that I hate to share.

"OMG"

This phrase is reserved for those special moments in life when I am stunned by the asinine actions of another, I hear some bit of horrible or shocking news, or after the committing of miserable act brought on by my own stupidity.

I often mumble the words, "Oh my God" on those occasions. If it is an especially bad situation, I might pepper the minutes afterwards with expletives ranging from "crap" to the Big Gun F-word. (Words such as "shoot", "dadburnit" or "dang" have no place in my vocabulary. If one must cuss, cuss for the full effect. Don't play with baby words.)

Hence, my afternoon began with OMG, and had experienced a light drizzling of follow-up "potty mouth". I had to simply walk away, and get my mind off the situation, before attempting to continue my work. (By the way, it is when I'm pissed off and don't cuss that you should be really worried - a horrid hurricane of anger is building to catastrophic proportions in those cases.)

What in God's name (you blasphemer!) are you prattling on with, Aut?

Please allow me to enlighten you: if you are not a Paleontologist, Anthropologist, or Dental Hygienist, the tediousness of the work might escape your imagination.

Up until ten minutes ago, I was hunched over a small table, the bright fluorescent overhead lights illuminated a work field of brown crumbs of debris. My hands ached as I guided a small curette (that is a sharpened instrument normally used to remove particles interproximally between teeth) over the surface of my project - I had to allow the tiny sensations guide me as I prized stuff out of the cracks and channels. Every so often, I would offer the project a puff of gentle air and a sharp whisk from a stiff brush - it is hard to see what you are working on when too much foreign material is in the way. Careful... careful... each movement was a controlled scraping of the stainless steel of my curette. I did not work in feet or inches, but in millimeters, one square part at a time. It is an agonizing job, trying to coax the actual object from its embedded tomb without damaging the object or the instruments. My neck began to stiffen, and my spine whined in protest, but holding myself steady was essential if I didn't want to damage the project too much.

Am I uncovering a juvenile velociraptor skull, or perhaps tiny bits of femur? Is it an ancient seed pod that lies caked in the concrete-like stuff? Am I on the verge of a whole new discovery, one that will put my name in the Paleontological journals on an international scale?

Oh Hell, no. I'm trying to degunk my pizzelle iron after I had (so stupidly) forgotten to grease it.

Trust me, opening that pizzelle iron was a complete OMG moment, followed by a stunned WTF - and about 45 minutes of F's, S's, and GD's. Very few things bring out the sailor in me. Sewing tapestry fabric of inferior quality, proximity to the ocean, and stupid Autrice Actions are the three things. A fourth might be Better Half pissing me off, but as that is a monthly occurrence (he can't help it, the poor dear. PMS sucks), I usually do fine if I avoid tapestries, boats and doing Stupid Things.

Here I am, fresh from recovering from a Tapestry moment (that was yesterday and I am pleased to report the project is done) when I go and do a Stupid Thing. It didn't seem to be a Stupid Thing at the time, though. I have never made pizzelles before, and so I am mastering the technique on a huge learning curve. I can usually think ten steps ahead, and thus avoid Stupid Things. However, who would have foreseen that my ten minute break (talking to my Mum, of all people) would mandate that I re-spray the pizzelle iron prior to dropping in two dollops of dough?

Better Half is downstairs working on it now. I promised to rip his lips off should he give up and dump the whole iron in water (it can't be submerged.) Oh, here he comes now with a progress report...

"It's my back. I got four rows done. That's it."

Better Half best do more than four rows.

Now he's mad at me for saying that.

He really should learn to read my mind - he would be able to hear the silently thought expletives.

Those are not aimed at him, of course. After all, it was my own Stupid Thing.

I can not help it. It is my bitchy time of the month. I'm not going to rip my wings off over it, however. There is a bright side to all this:

1. I learned that pizzelle irons are evil, foul - ahem - that I must grease the iron if it sits too long.
2. Dogs enjoy burnt pizzelle crumbs.
3. Never call my Mum to gloat about how well I master something until I actually master it.

The pizzelles made before the Stupid Thing happened are absolutely delicious.

My head aches today.

It isn't the typical headache or migraine, but rather the dull ache of a brain that has spent the entire afternoon researching material that is needed for my novel (a written adaptation of a 3-Act play written by my mother.) Some of you are already aware of my current endeavor, although the actual material will (until publication) remain hidden. The play itself is powerful - a gold mine filled with things that will blow current trends out of the water. I guard it as fiercely as the angels guarded the Garden of Eden. My task is therefor to flesh it out into novel form; this is either a ministry, or a curse. I choose to think of it as the former. I am not an actual "novelist".

I enjoy writing, and I have a thirst for research. My Theological Quest is secondary to my Scientific Quest, and often those two pursuits smack into each other when anthropology rears her ugly head. (If you do not understand this, don't ask. The Bemused One is much too tired to expand upon that musing.)

Forgive me, Roadchick! - Autrice seems to have developed a taste for referring to herself in the third person! (I adore 'Chick's blog, for that reason!)

It stands to reason that my head aches today for no better reason than "brain drain". I've been thinking too much. A proper remedy is, of course, to step back from the project and allow the thoughts to settle into a recognizable pattern. Unfortunately, due to my lack of discipline (a necessary thing for any writer to master!) I tend to then put off working on current projects altogether, abandoning them as new concepts take shape.

I do my best writing in the wee hours of the night, when I can appreciate the silence of the house (and when Mr. DelDrago doesn't have those fucking Star Trek reruns blaring from the television.) People who know me personally will tell you that I am an absolute bitch when I'm in my "composition" mode - do not bother me, do not call me, do not pull me from my work, and - under no uncertain terms - do anything that puts your life in jeopardy. The world ceases to exist, when I write, and all things of the world no longer have any meaning. Time becomes immeasurable. I will sit down and proceed, only ceasing when duty calls or I need more water in my glass. One of these days I will have to stop suddenly as my over-crowded ashtray has finally caught fire. It would make everyone's life much easier if I would just become a night owl. However, we are taking classes through Jefferson County in order to qualify for the state's adoption program, and as those occupy our Tuesday and Thursday evenings (and all day Saturday), I can not shrug off the mantle of a diurnal animal and give myself up to my nocturnal desires. So, forced to work during the day, I become a pest to those around me.

The phone rings, and I toss the handset it to Better Half, growling "I'm not available."

The doorbell chimes, and I announce to Better Half, "I'm not home."

The dog comes over and hits my mouse button with her nose, thus deleting the entire chapter I had just completed, and I become a vicious beast, spewing forth a cloud of vile expletives aimed at the poor animal's questionable parentage.

If I want to make sure better Half remains in my life, it would be best to become nocturnal, I think. He really gets a lot of neglect when I write. It isn't that he doesn't know any better than to bother me... but I don't think he understands the mind set and focus of a writer as they work.

Writing has never been an effort or struggle for me. I do enjoy it. I wrote the "Monster" piece in under five minutes, simply because of the challenge of being among the top ten entries. When I set a deadline for myself, I launch whole-heartedly into my task. I have given this current novel a completion deadline of one year. The timeframe is not reflective of the effort of creating/fleshing out the new concepts that I am adding to the work, but it reflects the sheer amount of data (lines) and background that needs to be formatted to book form. (If I can ever manage get it published, you will understand why this is such a challenge. I will tell you that it is based in theology, historical texts, ancient cultures and customs, and factual figures - all of which require, on my part, solid research.)

On that note: I said "Get it published", not "publish it". Aspiring writers, please beware - self publication does not make you a writer. Anyone can "self publish", and once you do so, professional writers will never take you seriously. Never, ever fall into the trap of "self publication". You are simply paying money for some group to render your work into a form that can be circulated to the masses. You will end up having a basement or garage filled with your book, tucked away into boxes and growing moldy. If you are serious about your craft, you will work your ass off until you produce something so worthy that a major publisher takes notice and offers you a contract.

One other grain of wisdom to offer: the world has too many flimsy dime-store romance novels; any sorry sex-deprived housewife can write smut and get it published. No one will take you seriously if you write crotch novels, unless it is within the crotch novel genre itself. Very few people can pull off erotica without sounding cheesy. I know of only one author, personally, who can do it with seductive panache and not be forced to wear the "oh you're a romance novelist" tattoo on his forehead. He's a literary (and award winning) god who writes erotica and horror (or erotic horror, which is tasty) for magazines and anthologies while working on his own non-erotic novels.

Would Steven Spielberg be a household name if all he could direct was bad porno movies? So by the same logic, will you be considered a successful author if all you write about is flimsy various takes on the same lame plot: girl is beautiful/haunty/rich/poor/insert your daydream here, girl meets man/Fabio/beast/lord/knight/adventurer, man takes girl's virginity (in a rugged, passionate, highly sensual way - and she always climaxes the first time around!), girl and man overcome obstacle, girl wins? Pshaw. What a boring formula.

Here is my take on the dime store Romance Novel:

Lab mouse one tossed her wee white head back, the movement a proud display of the attention she knew she commanded. Lab mouse two stared at her subtly, holding back his urges to ravish her luscious form until she submitted to him in both will and desire. He would have her as his own, and she knew it. She would often imagine him peppering her mousy body with hot steamy licks of his mousy tongue, and she felt herself growing hot despite the warm lab lights that constantly glared above them. He leaned over, his nose nuzzling her neck, and she found herself caught up in desire. She turned towards him, his scent filling her nostrils and causing her bosom to heave as he pushed her trembling body to the floor, and then she screamed as the giant hand plucked him from beside her and began dropping Clorox into his eyeballs. The end.

See? As I said, the basic romance formula is easy to follow. Who needs talent to do that??

I've procrastinated enough for today. Mind, my experience isn't in novels and fiction, and I haven't really aspired to write one prior to now, so perhaps my advice is worthless in the long run.

The pain having subsided, I can get back to re-reading Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden. This book was, in the late 1970's, America's most entertaining and acclaimed best seller. The Chicago Tribune hailed it as "A powerful and compelling voyage to the inner space between your ears, it will leave the reader exhilarated and tingling.... a masterpiece.", while the New York Times heralded it as "A history of the human brain from the Big Bang, 15 billion years ago, to the day before yesterday." By today's standards, it is "Old news", yet it still remains a tribute to Sagan's brilliance and skill, even after all these decades. It continues to be an interesting look into the evolution of our brains.

Sagan and I disagree on certain things, mainly that certain theropods were still limited in cognitive functioning and reasoning. I do understand that this book was written during a time before we had gained much insight into dinosaur intelligence, as species such as the Velociraptor had not been unearthed yet (and notable paleontologists such as Dr. Robert Bakker, were just beginning to undertake the seemingly impossible task of changing the way dinosaurs were viewed by the scientific community.) Sagan is spot on with his graphs and charts, and he did leave an opening by which we could apply his theories to recent dinosaur findings.

Many people argue over the possibility of evolution, concentrating upon Darwin as the root of all evil. I find this irksome. While they accept the basis of DNA, they seem to almost fear the possibilities of the earth being more than a few thousand years old. Some people refuse to accept that we belong to any taxa at all; man is not a species related to primates. I have encountered some people who refuse to believe we are even mammals. This leads me to wonder, of course, if they are capable of appreciating the fact that the Creator (God) is not a dumbass. Seriously. It would be all too easy to "poof" something into being, were you a powerful being yourself. To create something (from nothing)that is sound within the ecology you provide for it, you must put a great amount of thought into how that creature will function within its environment. In the words of Michael Crichton, noted author of Congo and Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way."

Life on this planet changes (or adapts) as the environment changes (or adapts). Evolution of a species occurs when a life form changes significantly enough to be unique to its species. A tiger and a lion are of the same line, yet a tiger evolved stripes while a lion's coat is brown; both evolutionary adaptations which help conceal these carnivores as they hunt prey - an example of microevolution (adaptation.) Animals that become extinct are ones that fail to adapt. The Smilodon, for example, did not evolve into our modern puma, although there are many similarities. Darwin's studies of species of finch, and his notations on their beaks and plumage, is simply a means of discussing progression of species isolated by locality. Microevolution is nothing more than changes on a small level between species.

In evolutionary biology today, macroevolution is used to refer to any evolutionary change at or above the level of species. It means the splitting of a species into two (speciation, or cladogenesis, from the Greek meaning "the origin of a branch") or the change of a species over time into another (anagenesis, not nowadays generally used). Any changes that occur at higher levels, such as the evolution of new families, phyla or genera, is also therefore macroevolution, but the term is not restricted to the origin of those higher taxa.

Microevolution refers to any evolutionary change below the level of species, and refers to changes in the frequency within a population or a species of its alleles (alternative genes) and their effects on the form, or phenotype, of organisms that make up that population or species.

Another way to state the difference is that macroevolution is between-species evolution of genes and microevolution is within-species evolution of genes.
There are various kinds of dynamics of macroevolution. Punctuated equilibrium theory proposes that once species have originated, and adapted to the new ecological niches in which they find themselves, they tend to stay pretty much as they are for the rest of their existence. Phyletic gradualism suggests that species continue to adapt to new challenges over the course of their history. Species selection and species sorting theories claim that there are macroevolutionary processes going on that make it more or less likely that certain species will exist for very long before becoming extinct, in a kind of parallel to what happens to genes in microevolution.

I hope this helps clear up the misunderstands of what evolution is. Back to Sagan...

Sagan puts forth his speculation on the evolution of human intelligence. He delves into the brain mass to body weight ratios, as well as known brain mapping at the time. You see, we are at a constant state of adaptation. It is plausible to consider that most evolution occurs because of select breeding. For example, giraffes (a tried and true standby in these debates.) Giraffes with longer necks could perform better courtship displays. The length of the neck also aided in reaching food. Females began to choose males based on not only their health, but on their ability to display. The gene for the long neck became dominant, while the gene for the shorter neck became recessive. Over time, giraffes were being born with longer and longer necks, until they are the creatures we know and love today. Now, I won't go into all that Sagan covers as far as human beings go, but his theories as to how our own intelligence developed still, to this day, stand out as being not only plausible but also practical. Over time, we traded our instincts for intellect, sacrificing our parental freedom for a more lengthy period where we raise our young. We are hardwired for certain behaviors, being primates, but we also put forth great efforts into teaching our young. We have a strong language based form of communication, and we are tool users. These things are not instinctual.

I do not presume Adam (the first man, according to the bible) to have been a blithering idiot, for that would make God a blithering idiot. I do put forth that Adam may have been the 'unknown' ancestor who "did it all". Have you ever read Watership Down by Richard Adams? It contains small stories that the rabbits tell each other to pass the time. All of these tales center around the first rabbit, El-ahrairah, who is the equivalent of our "Adam". El-ahrairah has done it all, been the most clever, and his knowledge is what made rabbits so strong today. At the end of Watership Down, a doe is telling her kits a story about El-ahrairah, yet her tale is not of the "Adam" of their distant past; it is the tale of Hazel, the rabbit hero of the book Watership Down, who leads this doe's mother and other rabbits out of does out of Effrafa - only it is not Hazel the doe tells about, but El-ahrairah substituted in Hazel's place.

The same may have been true of our own Adam. Adam may have been the star of the beginning of Genesis simply because all the people after him looked upon him as their leader, the first man to have lead them out of the Garden of Eden. (Put down your pitchforks; I am simply tossing out thoughts about Adam in general, with no attempt being made to discredit the story of Genesis.) Actually were it not for evolution, we would all still look like Adam, right down to our eye color and nose shape.

At any rate, intelligence in life forms began to evolve long before Adam ever set foot on a blade of grass in Eden. I do not believe the earth was created in a period of seven 24-hour days. Would God have chosen that method, life on the planet would have self-destructed after the first five. To believe in a pure 24-hour day time table, we would need to discount all dinosaurs, all plants which became extinct prior to Adam's first day, and all record of prehistoric time. Gone also would be the belief in DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), which is the building block of life - it is the very thing which ties us (all life on earth) together in an evolutionary fashion. We are certainly more intelligent than an amoeba or tapeworm. Sagan, in his book, explains how our intelligence evolved, but more importantly, he explains why our intelligence evolved.