Category Archives: the mindlab

Forest Walk, 3 of 3

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Once we stepped into the trees enough to not be spotted on the road, I lit the torch. It burned amazingly well and bright, but here’s the shocker: You can’t see much with a torch in the woods. First of all, you have to hold the torch well away from your vision or it’s too bright for your eyes. Also, you can’t see but a few trees ahead of yourself. I noticed the wood underneath the torch head started to catch fire so I spread mud over that part.

We walked and managed well. There’s a problem with many forests on Delmarva; they are mainly made up one tree type, since the forests have all been logged and these are new trees. This tree, the loblolly, is has roots that are poisonous to many other plants and make the ground unfit for many other plants, except briars. This is why it’s so hard to navagate through Delmarvan woods, with such dense thorns. And, for us, we had to be sure not to light any tall or hanging briars on fire.

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Forest Walk, 2 of 3

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On the Friday of the predetermined weekend, I drove Joe Galetti, Buff and myself to the predetermined starting point. We reached it around midnight. The nigth was cool, calm and clear, just as it was supposed to be. We somehow convinced Buff (cute girl from Pocomoke City with an unfortunate nickname, also one of Doc Grogan’s research students) to come along with us. Joe’s girlfriend opted out, stating that she was sure something bad would happen.

The plan was to park my car in front of one of these state forest entrances, just off of a dirt road, and then walk west/south-west until we hit this one creek (labeled as a “river” on the map), where we would rest for a little while and consume our comestables before crossing back. Below is that same map with better markings. The black shows the roads, the east road being the one dirt road, the red being where I parked the car, the blue being the creek and the yellow being the general direction of intended travel. The dotted line also shows a road, Heather Rd., marked on a state map, but of which we couldn’t find any sign during a couple laps in my car in the daytime a few days before.

map w/ lines

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Forest Walk, 1 of 3

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Bear introduced me to a video game back in the early 90s which sparked my imagination. This is Ultima 7, a classic role-playing game that features an expansive map and the ability to wander it where ever you please, doing whatever you please. I found it difficult to stay focused on any storyline when it was just as fun to get lost in the game’s forests until finding the occasional random encounter. Of course, as a 12 year old, I felt compelled to bring that fantasy world to life by grabbing a walking staff and a medieval light source, such as a taper, donning a cloak and losing myself at night in the woods near my home.

woods
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Ameviathan Update: Storyboards Draw to a Close

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The premiliminary stage of storyboarding Ameviathan: The Green Machine is over. I finished the last frame Thursday afternoon. I have to redo a couple scenes, notably the opening, one scene in the middle and another near the end. Once this is done, I’ll scan the pictures and put together some sort of digital format of a storyboard/script combination. This will coincide with the final drafting of the screenplay, which I’ll say more about in a moment. My timeframe in which to complete the digital script/storyboard along with the final draft of the script is by New Year. After the new year, prop construction will begin.

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Frank Perdue

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Death is another oil change
hatched in my day's way.
Stupid death and stupid dying.
Who made it anyway?

The old hen pecking God?
Well, I'll cock and sock his nose,
make him roost the golden egg
chooking as I hearsing go.

For from the shells I sell to L-OC-als
I'll build feather couping waves,
Buy up Death's garage and scythe,
chicken farming from the grave.

The Alpha-eps

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Occasionally I get these urges to see some little corner of the universe fall before my concept of fasciest perfection. Usually these things ferment (or foment) upstairs for quite awhile, eventually falling on She Dragon’s patient ears but rarely traveling further. But now that The Mindlab is my podium to the world everyone can know the narrowly focused brilliance of my visions.

So far though there are only two real world-changing visions I can remember having and deigning to share here, the first being The Ideal Pants. But my more recent, further reaching ideal, fresh off the drawing board is sure to revolutionize not only this website, nor just the internet. Nay it will impact the very structure of the English language itself.

Ladies and gentelemen I bring you (crudely rendered with in the modern alphabet): The Alpha-eps!

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“Self-Reliance” from Essays: First Series (1841) by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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   "Ne te quaesiveris extra."

    "Man is his own star; and the soul that can
    Render an honest and a perfect man,
    Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
    Nothing to him falls early or too late.
    Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
    Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
               Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune

    Cast the bantling on the rocks,
    Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;
    Wintered with the hawk and fox,
    Power and speed be hands and feet.

ESSAY II Self-Reliance

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

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