Fanboy Mail

OK, people get peevish when I mention Mr. J.M. Greer, but such is life.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/04/refusing-call-tale-rewritten.html

is a nice piece of work.  I actually spent the time last night going over the map of Middle Earth and going over the route that our intrepid Took would take.  Fun as all get-out.

I am suggesting that someone turn this into a serial novel a la "Stars Reach" and write out the adventure of Silas Took (Note the pointed hint Mr. Greer).  It would be a joy to read.

The book would necessarily be a long one, full of the time compression used so judiciously by Mr. Greer in Stars Reach.  Because missing the initial opportunity usually end up in a harder row to hoe.  In the original Lord of the Rings, Gandalf reached the Shire on April 12, 3018 to tell Bilbo about the One Ring.   Bilbo and the Keepers left Middle Earth on September 29th 3021. (References:  Here)

This trip would be a lot longer.  The resources available would be less, the hardships greater, and there would be more losses in the fights.  The outcome would not be as rosy.  But the story would be better.  In my overactive imagination, Mr. Took would speak with Radagast on July 4, 3062 and die, with the ring, on the slopes of Mount Doom on November the 11th of 3075.

From Wikipedia

 In his Foreword to the Second Edition, Tolkien said that he "disliked allegory in all its forms" (using the word applicability instead), and told those claiming the story was a metaphor for World War II to remember that he had lost "all but one" of his close friends in World War I.

I don't think that this story would require any of the warnings in the forward about allegory.

Need some help

I submitted a post to Slashdot requesting some help with a story I am trying to write for the Archdruid

If you have the time and inclination, would you please got here and tell them what I good idea this is?

http://slashdot.org/submission/3499247/what-tech-will-be-available-in-an-energy-constrained-world

Hmm

I spent the morning trying to gaze into the future.  Spent the morning trying to find someone who had some well thought out plans for

Not one damn bit of luck.

All that came up were paeans to a great future or well-reasoned thoughts of impending doom. Not a damn thing that someone could lay their hands on and come up with a working plan for the next 10-15 years.

No one knows how the last years of this aging Boomer's life will play out.  All the certainties that I grew up believing in seem to be melting in front of my eyes, sort of like ice on a cool spring morning.

I think that I can get through this last little bit if I tighten my belt and be smart, but I have a couple of pretty damn good kids who will be entering the fire and I would like to help them get through.  Since I can't leave them the means to survive in the current system of have and have-nots, my only help will be in the form of not-too-incorrect advice and regular meals.

So what advice do I give them.  College seems to be becoming a means of entering into a debt-bond that cannot be dismissed.  Trades are good, but most of them are feeding into a system that is changing faster than they can keep up.  Plumbers and Electricians are dependent on the vagaries of an overbuilt and bubblicious housing market.

There are always morons who parrot out the "be an entrepreneur" and will gladly invite you to pay for a motivational speech about how, through a combination of a good line of bullshit and free access to venture capital, you too can be part of the upper-crust.  But I know full well just how often that doesn't play out.

I'm going to keep looking.

Maybe I'll come up with something.