I was in the city the other day, in the course of my monthly pilgrimage to the temples of moneys (banks) to render obeisance (debts) as befits a humble servant of The System.

But in the bank precisely, there was a vicious little argument. The details are not relevant other than one party felt slurred by the other: it was a matter of who was superior Not race on this occasion - though God knows that issue has caused enough grief - they were merely from different countries, perhaps even different parts of the same country. A policeman stopped the matter with quiet efficiency and that was the end of it. But the queue was long and there was much time for thought, and here was was food for it as well.

What an unfortunate word. A superior wine: that I can understand. A superior strategy even when it isn’t. “Superior”" is working as an adjective. Superior, by itself as a noun, is wobbly. And it’s almost invariably a “first person” noun, plural or singular. A lousy noun too.

“I am superior“. So are “we”. “You” manage pretty well. But “them“? “They” do the best they can, poor things; not much going for them.

At what? It has to be qualified.

My dog is a superior tracker with his superior sense of smell and a fish is superior to me at living under water.

Superior by itself, without qualification, is usually nonsense. I’ll be picking on a few more of these words from time to time. I thought this one was a good one to start with.

-*-

Todays quote: “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing”. — Kingsely Amis

Venezuela’s Mr Chavez ’s administration floats off political reefs that would tear the bottom out of much tougher and more serious governments (ships of state? ) Cristina Fernandez, Argentina’s President - the wife of her predecessor Nestor Kirchner - has a comfortable draft of agricultural produce between her policies and danger, with ample space to try out even the wackiest policies. Or not?

This report, from “The Economist”:

“Cristina in the Land of Make Believe”

Maybe there’s a tidy connection between Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez all from this part of the world and classed in the “Magical Realism” school of writing, and South American political culture with strong ingredients of Magic “Reality”. Room for at least one MFA thesis there.

They are favoured by their lands’ bounty and to a great extent, coincidence: they happen to have just the commodities (in large quantities, fuel and food) that the World needs most desperately - during their time in office. They can get away with a great deal of blunders and will try to do so for as long as they can.

Q

With computer problems, not much done, most immediate on the agenda:

• To Jean Lauzier and the Book Tour next month, this week should get the material together, more I hope.
• Back to WVU: and the MFA Short Story, specially to Grumps, Raven and Susan F of the Sisu
• Tales of Chestamovarado : A collection of my short stories; I’ve postponed this far too long. Begun ten years ago - ten? Good Grief !. I wanted to develop the first of them with WVU/MFA classrooms… They must be at week sixteen there by now, or more.

The little e-book, on mistakes writers make about firearms is only sixty pages is hardly a book, but I’m pushing it for several reasons:

• I think it is genuinely useful and has actually turned out better than I thought, for it’s purpose: a quick reference to guns and their working specially suited for writers that are not gun enthusiasts (and even anti-gun). I daresay that I’ve often found among my fellow gunslingers that many are not very well versed outside their particular area.
• The ‘marketing’ experience is brand new to me. Much of it goes against the grain and I suspect most writers feel the same. Peddling one’s wares like groceries. It distracts time from creative work (although there are many I know that can think of marketing as creative work and it well maybe, as in advertising). Somehow I think we have to come to terms with it. Staying honest. Telling it on the mountain is fine if there’s really something to tell - and there is someone listening!
• The marketplace has always been there. Writers used to be shielded from it by agents and publishers, but not for beginners, not nowadays and perhaps never. But being forced to look at it I’ve found many feature of it interesting and intriguing. Nowadays is the key word: At this time when Amazon, Penguin and other big publishers and retailers are going digital: we “live in interesting times”. More about that later.
• I do miss the company of that wonderful group at Writers Village U. and often feel that the time hassling with this computer and software crashes could be spent better there.

At least the ‘Image’ inserting thingum is working on this WordPress installation: It hadn’t been and with great trepidation I reinstalled WP 2.5 - apparently without dropping anything on the way - and picking up whatever had to be. .

Windows XP Pro SP2 Bless Bill and Company (Praise Gates! no blasphemy intended, just sarcasm): This Windows had to be re installed from scratch (see post below) When I get Ubuntu I’ll be throwing it out of the window.

Now someday, I’ll have to learn formatting. And the original web page, BYKNIGHT.COM: I’ve yet to work on that (Komposer or Dreamweaver, that is the question - any answers?)

Your comments are welcome

Q

For reasons unknown, with about 50 GB of files. So while it runs self checks, reloads and re installs, I’m on an ancient laptop left thinking about the immortality of the crab - means … just that, but may be found on Wikipedia with this Illustration y Greg Williams and generously licensed under the Creative Commons “Share Alike” attribution.

First (well for a long time now MS Word wasn’t loading properly, it would attempt to install itself on opening (a fragment of a previous installation, which in turn was provided by the machine’s vendors, turned out to be pirated and these good people went out of business before I could claim). Then Images stopped loading, this WordPress setup began crumbling on (on that computer, so it was OK on the server), and it began burbling like a coffee percolator. Backed up what I could ( a lot of stuff, with AutoCad drawings and pictures too). Now reinstalling as I test this old backup with something better than Lorem impsum or ‘ thinking about the immortality of the crab, a Spanish idiom for day dreaming and blank mindedness in general. Surprisingly, the expression is commemorated by Spanish Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno but expresses the state of mind one is in when watching Windows load. Next stop: Linux and Ubuntu, Open Office now: With writing assignments pending and no word processor program other than notepad.txt.  Handrwiting of course, i do most outlining and brainstorming on large spiral notebooks. The archive of those is two pillars on the floor, at teetering height. So OK, back on the main computer now,  back to work. Tomorrow i guess, it’s late now.

Q