The protagonist is a cop who was born at Woodstock, raised on a commune and home schooled for most of his life. In his rebellious teens, he enrolled in a nearby junior high to see how the "normals" lived and this is one little story from that time. (It is unproofed and rough, but WE. I've written hundreds of stories inside the main story and they span all ages.)

"Standing in that huge gym, waiting for the teacher to blow the whistle and the game to commence, I was reminded that even something as unimportant as a junior high school game of Capture The Flag can become a brief foray into the meaning of life. Because, at the very moment of the sound of the teacher’s shrieking blast, there was heard throughout that cavernous room a piercing scream, a wail so heartrending that we all stood absolutely motionless, thinking that the end must be near.

Instantly stopping our mad dash into the confusion of that most competitive of sports, indeed at our age it was more important than life or death, we looked in the direction of the sound and saw standing in the crowd of “Red” players, wearing a mesh shirt that, owing to his small size, fell down almost to his knees, the new kid in the school who had just come to our closed little warren only a few weeks before. He was shaking as he stood there hollering and waving his arms in what was a display of utter agony, his face torn in complete sadness as he yelled at all of us in absolute disgust.

“This isn’t how you play Capture The Flag! We didn’t play like this at my old school! Why does everything here have to be so different?”

As he became more and more agitated, he began wandering around the gym, bawling and gesturing, tears running down his face in an epic meltdown that can only come from a thirteen year old who has taken all he can take in life. He had reached the limit of his ability to endure and his anger at his lot in life could not be contained.

“This isn’t were you put the flags! Why can’t you people do anything right? I hate this place, everything is so different. I hate all of you!”

As we watched this wrenching scene, he had wandered screaming over to the yellow side and picked up their flag in order to move it to what he felt was the more appropriate place, yes, the location where they had placed the flag in his old school. The teacher just watched as this sad little guy, life having thrown him for the last and final loop, wandered around crying and sobbing, the end of his rope having come at this very moment in time.

“I hate this place! Why does everything have to be so weird? Why can’t anything be the same?”

He shouted and rushed about as if in a trance, words and tears spilling out in his ever increasing agitation, as every person in the giant room was transfixed by what we knew were feelings that we had all felt at one time. It was a meltdown that would follow him forever and we knew that he would never be able to live it down. He was breaking the code, the unwritten rule that you faked that all was well and each of us knew that he would never be viewed the same way again. He would be forever known as the outsider; the one who could not fit in.

But, it was at that moment, when we thought that we were witnessing a monumental fall from grace, that the miracle occurred, a rip in the fabric of the universe that might make even a twelve year old feel as if justice will prevail. Because all of a sudden, while wandering about the gym carrying the yellow flag, crying and screaming from the very depths of his soul, he stopped right next to the exact middle of the room and looked up at the ceiling, yelling as loud a he could one last time.

“And the main thing that we didn’t do when we played Capture The Flag in my old school, is that we didn’t let them just walk over to our side and take our flag!”

At that second, a sign of awareness crossing over their faces, a couple of the players from the yellow side made a last ditch effort to prevent the inevitable, but it was too little and too late. He deftly made one small step to the side and was safely standing by his team once again. The entire place became completely silent as what we had just witnessed began to sink in. Suddenly, the entire gym began to roar with applause, both sides equal in their cheering, while a huge smile swept over the new boy’s face.

And with that he lifted his prize toward the ceiling in triumph, then he tossed it on the floor and walked right out of the gym."

It's my blog and I'll cry if I want to!

After being held down and forced by constant spamming from the idiots at Google to "upgrade" my phone to lollipoop, I am officially thinking that they must be shorting the stock in an obvious attempt to drive the company into bankruptcy.

Having obviously locked a bunch of color blind morons in a room and told they wouldn't be set free until they designed the biggest joke that humanity has ever seen, they have arrived at a color scheme that uses twice the power to look as ugly as possible on the screen. These dumb as rocks lowlifes decided to make the icons smaller, the white blank space larger and then in a fit of complete stupidity, use colors that I am sure don't even have legitimate names due to their absolute ugliness!

And this is the most positive part of the "upgrade"!

Voice mail defaults to "visual", the screen goes automatically blank within one second, (Yes, I know that can be fixed, but why didn't they just leave it alone?) and everything is moved around in some sort of bizarre need to change what already worked in an attempt to abuse everyone that they used to call customers!

The forums are going wild in their derision of this stupidity, but like the proud senior I am, I called a real person at Verizon to explain my plight. Asking what group of five year old's thought that something called "lollipop" was the correct way to go, I was told that the old way was called "jellybean", an obviously ironic head game plied on the unsuspecting. How the mighty have fallen, when I am placed in the position that I am forced to beg for the return of something called "jellybean" trust me, the end can't be far behind...

To that mentally challenged group at Android that thought this was actually a good idea, do humanity a favor and jump, lemming like, off the nearest cliff. You, quite simply, are to stupid to continue...

tylertwo

In furtherance of my rant, I did not reach a human at Verizon by sheer luck alone. I have learned through an infinite amount of practice, that the AI at these gigantic companies is perfectly designed to discourage the weary by asking the same stupid questions over and over again, until one finally gives up.

This does not work on retired people! I have found that by constantly calling the computer at the other end of the line an idiot, is a highly effective method for eventually being assigned to a human being. The computer, having reached the end of it's cord by having it's intelligence questioned for exactly ten times very loudly, will finally, in exasperation, reluctantly turn over it's job to a person and my legitimate spiel can then begin.

This human, long aware of what it takes to finally reach them on the phone, is always attuned to dealing with the age enhanced, because we are the only ones seemingly able to keep up the effort to persevere. She was great! But, unable to help me, as she hated this new-fangled idiocy as much as I did! So, we merely complained to each other for ten minutes time, calling the workers at Android every name in the book.

She did make me promise to not smash my phone with a hammer before I went into the Verizon store and gave one of the young smiling people there (All of whom are bizarrely named Jennifer or Jack) a chance to try and make it more livable, knowing full well that it would never be anything more than that.

So, Monday morning, I will enter the store with my phone in one hand and a hammer in the other. I will let them attempt to fix the unfixable before I cross the parking lot and sell my soul to the Apple people and become one more of their minions lost in the cloud. (At least until they decide to follow the beige lord into the underworld and then I will happily toss it all away and go back to being free range once again.)

TR to follow...

I hate that when I unlock my phone I now have to swipe to get to the PIN screen. Google led me to 17000000000 other people with the same complaint, but no way to bypass this otiose swipe. Please smash a few phones for me while you're there.

The power of rant! RAW EMOTIONS! I feel ya.

I wish I could say that they solved all my problems at the Verizon store, but the young person "vetting" those entering said she hated it too (something about it messing up her Bluetooth), but I had to go to Best Buy to get it fixed. (And overnight, my phone went dead and won't hold a charge for more than a couple hours, this lolipoop is a laugh a minute..)

Online, Verizon is blaming Samsung and Samsung is blaming Verizon, even though many providers have been affected. The dance of the lemons continues as the prophecy of the stupid inheriting the Earth comes true. (I think I read that right...)

I didn't buy my phone at Best Buy, but today I will drive through the burbs to "fix" my problem, all the while wishing for a cataclysmic return to the days of sitting around a campfire, relating the day's events to the person sitting next to you.

Just do yourself a favor and buy yourself an iphone.

That's what my friend said and I think you are both right. I was kicking myself yesterday for not pulling a U turn, walking back into Verizon and saying, hey wait, you're the ones getting my money, why don't you have to fix it?

there are no woods by st mary glacier and it doesnt even exist anymore as a glacier

So, whats new?

Tyler man, I been refreshing and refreshing and refreshing this page, Still no updates or new posts by you, I feel little worried. wdtgerfgfgdgf

Yes, there are woods and the glacier's still there, lol.

A few weeks ago I finished the rough draft of the book. It came out to about eight hundred pages so far and spans most of the sixties, seventies and eighties in several characters. It's about a cold case investigation of a murder at Woodstock in 1969 by a detective who was born at the concert and given the case in the present day as a joke by his superiors.

There are hundreds of stories relating to the cop's hippie upbringing, his eventually becoming disenchanted and leaving the lifestyle, all wrapped around the tale of an old man reminiscing about the festival, a murder in a cornfield and the old days.

It has become deeply symbolic at times (I spent more than fifty pages on a single second in time, lol.), but it seems to be the book I always thought it would be. As I've said before, it's sort of a Moby Dick goes to Woodstock and encompasses my (somewhat clouded) memories with plenty of fiction revolving my own take on the current state of affairs in the world and how they relate to the past.

I thought the final draft would go much quicker, but I'm finding that it takes about the same amount of time as the initial writing. I've set up a special writing place in a different part of the house that I hope will enable me to put in more hours, but who knows? (And I may go back and visit the concert site just to give me added impetus!) It will be nice to finish, but it's gone well so far, so I want to continue doing what I've been doing and just enjoy the process.

I'm doing fine. Lifting, writing and going out to eat.

It's funny, because I always come up with stories that I want to put in this blog, but then I think I"d better just work on the book. (Of course, I take notes for later on...)

My goal is to finish the book before Spring, although I may travel to warmer climes for several months when it gets cold. It will be interesting to see if I can write while surrounded by palm trees, they tend to grab hold of my mind and not let go.

Do you have some sort of editor? I mean second pair of eyes, who go through the text in the process? A publisher?

And a completely unrelated question, I somehow wanted to ask you: How did you find 2+2? I mean you are so apparently not a gambler in any way. ^^

No, I don't have an editor, I'm not sure it would even be possible at this point, lol. I've had some interest, but my goal is just to finish the book as I have always envisioned it. I don't really need to care about the marketing or anything, I do everything I do simply because I feel like it. That's an absolute requirement of my life, because my mind struggles when I try to contain it.

The difficulty with having an outside person look at the unfinished writing can be summed up in this little paragraph I am working on. It's too personal to allow for input, lol.

"Each day became a lifetime of memories, with grand meaning in every step. Today’s world laughs, but at that point in history we were completely aware that we lived fully; perhaps the last generation to do so, we existed in a life completely open to the world outside of reality, easily able to leap tall buildings in a single bound at any time we chose."


I came to 2+2 when I was writing a whitepaper (research for politicians) on the legalization of online gaming. It seemed like a nice community, so when I finished and mailed it off, I joined. It's true, I don't like the feeling of either winning or losing at poker, but I do enjoy studying the game.

Subscribed.

a little late to the party :P

It's not really a party until Howard shows up.

Then count me in also.

A party! Hello everybody!

The last week and a half I've been upgrading technology, always a frightening occurrence. I just love the new word processors that have ten million more features that I don't need and barely mesh with the old one, but I suppose we must advance at all cost.

A huge 4K screen mounted to hover over my face as I write, I'm living the Orwellian dream!

To re-quote -

"Retrogression is oft times equated with progress." - Thoreau

I do believe that I am having trouble dealing with the fact that in few weeks I will be closer to my seventies than my fifties. Call it withdrawal if you will, lol, but I certainly never expected to live this long. (Rust never sleeps, What a long strange trip, etc.)

Tyler, I am so glad I asked to read your writing. I started at 499 as you suggested and I was instantly hooked. Post 583 was upsetting, I am glad you ended it the way it did.

I think you have amazing talent, when I have more time I am going to start at the beginning and read your whole blog.

Thank you so much! That story led me into finally writing the book after threatening to do so for the last forty years, lol. Coincidentally, I am finishing the second draft of the book tomorrow and will then be putting the pieces together and adding some more dialog, although I have absolutely no timeline in mind.

It's around 800 pages and as I think I mentioned in the blog, it's about a murder mystery set at Woodstock. (In the most open sense, perhaps Moby Dick does the sixties.) I work on it everyday and I'm starting to feel that I might be able to finish after all this time.

i want to u to continue...

Have you considered doing an episode of naked and afraid? It seems like you've been through a much more challenging version of it as they just camp by water.

Also, I still can't wrap my head around how you wouldn't wake up your fellow campers and get out of there - I would be terrified of the guy with a knife coming back. I think that's where the main skepticism comes from - you wake up to a knife on your throat and you scare the guy away and then just sit at the fireside muttering all night. I realize extreme situations cause unpredictable behavior so I can't say I wouldn't have done the same without being in the same light but I find it odd you didn't also reflect more on that as it was such an odd decision and doesn't seem to make any sense. I can only see two real viable options at that point, wake everyone up and get the hell out of there (or stand guard until it's light enough to get out) or wake everyone up and look for the guy - which is a far less desirable option - after all it's a crazed guy that came at you with a knife in the middle of the night. Just going back to the campfire doesn't even seem like it would be even available for consideration. I would assume you'd be more likely to self immolate then do that. I wish you went into this stuff in more detail. Like someone mentioned earlier, if that were a film it'd be considered a major plot hole.

Furthermore, absolutely zero chance I'd believe my friend if he waited until morning to tell me that story. I just don't see you skipping over that part as if it wasn't something worth mentioning - like how your friends were skeptical or because you were so visibly shaken they believed you immediately. It doesn't make any sense, you just wouldn't believe it waking up around a campfire with your friends and one of them happens to mention, "Hey guys, by the way a crazed mad man held a knife to my throat last night until he saw I wasn't a women and then let me go - no biggie I had it under control so let you guys catch your Zs." I mean why wouldn't you have woken them up for something like this? Baring video or photographic evidence I don't think my friends would ever believe me if I told them this - let alone decide to go find the guy.

Congrats on the book by the way.

I just saw your post. If I ever get around to it, I'll write an alternate, clearly labeled, fake ending to that story, because it has upset so many people, lol. It's funny, because a young relative was out hiking right around that area and I told her the story at dinner when she got back into town. She wondered about why I didn't wake my friends too, oh well.

(I have no idea what my friends really thought, we probably just shared a joint and went on with life.)

I'm on a final revision campaign with the book and I'm going through about a chapter every two days, mixing together the odd and even ones. (When I'm done I will have only odd numbered chapters!) Heck, I might even finish someday.!

saw this:



thought of you