I put something together recently commenting on the Occupy movement. A somewhat different version of it was printed Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011, in the London (Ont.) Free Press. The following is my preferred version:

By Peter Riley

It seems as if every decade or so, a popular movement flickers to life and spreads like fire in dry grass. The cause may seem frivolous at first, and sometimes that may be exactly what it is. Or it may come to be seen by the majority of society as serious and worthwhile, and become public policy.

Let me glance over a few from my own lifetime. There was environmentalism, which seemed, when I was a kid, to consist almost entirely of a book by Rachel Carson called The Silent Spring, about the harm of pesticides. Environmentalism has a seat at the table now.

There was feminism, once usually referred to somewhat snidely as "women's lib." In the early '70s, when I was a young newspaper copy editor, I had to write a headline for a wire–service story about "himmicanes" and "herstory."

The story was intended to be sarcastically humorous – “Look what these crazy women are up to now." Write such a story today and you'd be out on your ear.

In the late '80s, glasnost and perestroika (please don't ask me to translate) led to the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union and, today, some sort of parody of democracy in Russia. There have been the Prague Spring, Tiananmen Square, and 2011's Arab Spring.

Health and safety concerns have changed attitudes about smoking and drunk driving. Legislation and behaviour have shifted accordingly. These things have happened in half a century – a blink of the historic eye.

So now we have the Occupy Autumn, that peculiar phenomenon that started with Occupy Wall Street, and has now spread around the world with all the rapidity of the Arab Spring.

What is it? What does it want? Will it emerge in time as a social cause with all the force of people's struggles for democracy around the world? Or will it just fade away? It's too soon to know.

The movement is hampered by lack of leadership and an apparent failure to enunciate clear goals. It's also being dogged by constitutionally dubious police raids.

And now, with winter soon upon us, Occupy may fade away, at least in northern climes; and we'll have to wait for spring to see if it revives.

The Occupiers have been well–behaved and nonviolent. They aren't rage–filled anarchists and the public doesn't read them that way. It would seem they deserve a fair hearing.

But do the Occupiers in fact have a common theme and purpose? What you hear about most often is "the 1%" and "the 99%." This sets bells clanging in my head. It brings to mind Leonard Cohen's poem/song Everybody Knows. This is how it begins:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows that the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows that the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

I've long felt that in free–market economies, big money uses its power trying to satisfy an insatiable greed, has great success, and the rest of us make do with scraps from the table. While I believe capitalism is the most workable economic engine we can choose, I feel it contains an inherent evil: wanton greed.

This can lead to a relatively tiny segment of people possessing inordinate wealth, and money is power. Politicians dance to its tune and the Occupiers see it.

In my belief, an informed public, through its elected representatives, has a democratic right to exert a steady counter–pressure to restrain the influence and, indeed, to check wealth, of the money elite.

The richest 1% of the world's population owns 40% of the total household wealth, while the bottom half of the world makes do with barely 1%, according to research by the Helsinki–based World Institute for Development Economics Research in 2006.

What's going on here?

A year ago, the left–leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives wrote, "The 246,000 privileged few who rank among the country's richest 1% took almost a third (32%) of all growth in incomes between 1997 and 2007."

The report also said that the last time Canada's economic elite took in a similarly large share of income was in the 1920s – just before the Crash.

The middle class are the people who spend the money that drives the economy, and the middle class is declining in North America and elsewhere. According to a recent Stanford University study, about 44% of U.S. families now live in middle–income neighbourhoods, down from 65% in 1970.

The middle class shrank in the 1920s too, helping spur the Great Depression. With all that's going on in world finance today, all this is rather ominous, isn't it?

The richest individual in the world, according to the March 2011 Forbes magazine list, is Bill Gates, with $56 billion. (Carlos Slim of Mexico and his family together topped the list with $74 billion.) I don't think Gates is "worth" $56 billion. I don't think he "earned" it. No one could. Einstein wasn't "worth" $56 billion. Neither was Galileo. Neither was Mozart.

It seems to me that $5.9 million would be a fair reward for a creative entrepreneur like Gates. But that would be one 10-thousandth of what he actually has.

I believe what we need to do is set a cap on the net worth anyone can possess. This could be done perfectly legally, through taxation. And perfectly morally as well, in my belief. Set the limit you like. I’ll name a figure: $10 million. Is there anyone who can`t scrape by on that?

This is the old idea of redistribution of wealth through tax policy. The rich got too big a slice of the pie to begin with, so take some of it back. The list of good uses this wealth could be put to is legion.

The removal of wild excesses of wealth could do much to heal politics, as politicians came to be true servants of the public, not compromised by the sway of the rich.

 I know this idea sounds outlandish at first, but what`s wrong with it? I offer it to the Occupy movement as a main first objective.

I offer them a slogan too: “Tax it back.”

I must apologize for my long absence, a bit over five months. I have had a hell of a winter, due to depression and other problems. I am beginning to pull out of it. I’m in process of trying to get a round of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), also called shock treatment. This is the only treatment that has helped with my depression in the past. I have tried about two dozen antidepressants in prior years, and none has helped at all. I have a bit of a suspicion that antidepressants will be looked on in years to come as a multibillion-dollar scam perpetrated by the drug companies, but maybe it’s just that I personally don’t respond to these pills.

During my absence, the Reviews section became littered with spam. I deleted something over 1,000 of these vermin yesterday, and my web page designer has made changes requiring site visitors to log in before posting, so I’m in hopes this will eliminate the problem.

Going through the email program I use for this site, I noticed several new registrants, possibly 15 or so, in these last five months. I wasn’t here to welcome you at the time, so, welcome!

If you’re interested in the contest, please see the revised intro on the Contest Info page. Two questions are still open, at least till the end of this year, and you could win $1,000.

Last year I wrote that I had decided to revise the novel. I wrote copious notes, but then the depression struck. I’m still hoping to do the revision, but will have to see how things go. One problem is that ECT plays hell with the memory, but I do have those notes.

Please do post or send me a message if you’re visiting the site, just so I know someone’s out there.

Belated apologies again, and a happy summer to all.

Hi.

In the past month or so,  this site has been increasingly plagued by advertising for various products of doubtful medicinal value -- you know the stuff. It's become quite a nuisance deleting them, so in the next little while I may have to ask my website designer to change the site so you have to register each time you enter. I understand this is pretty commonplace now. I apologize for the inconvenience.

A bit over a week ago, I wrote in this space that I planned to start the novel revision a week ago Friday: that is, Aug. 6.

Since that time, I've been afflicted by an attack of acute insomnia that has kept me from coping with all but the bare essentials of life. I'm sick of this miserable lifestyle, and itching to start the revision, but my hands are tied for the time being.

I've experienced insomnia in the past from time to time, and normally it passes after a while. I think what brought it on was a state of hyperactivity: I was too excited and energized by the activities I was involved with. As a result, though I could get to sleep with no difficulty, I'd wake up after three or four hours and be unable to get back to sleep. Pills are of limited usefulness. I just have to wait, I guess, until it goes away.

The good news is that insomnia is a sure sign that I'm feeling good.  When I'm depressed, I sleep like a top -- or more like a zombie, I suppose.

Meanwhile, it's quarter to one in the morning and my sleep routine is so out of whack that I plan to watch Part 2 of the excellent PBS series "The Civil War" before hitting the hay. Cheers.

Dear Reader,

Please note that I say “Dear Reader,” in the singular, because the chances are good that if you are reading this blog entry on or about Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010, you’re in all probability the first and for the time being only person to read it. This website got a good boost in the initial month or two, due to some print media publicity as well as mention on a few Internet writing sites, all pegged to the contest gimmick. I was a newsman for a quarter-century, and the old guy with the unpublished novel willing to pay people to read his book does make for a good human-interest angle. But the initial swell of interest has subsided so much and I am fearful site activity may shrink badly enough to consign the site to Google’s Pit of Irremediable Obscurity.

Overall, since the site’s launch on May 3, hits have averaged above 60 per week. But in recent weeks (since I started tracking more closely), they seem to be running at something like 16 per week – two or three a day. No wonder nobody’s posting but me. Nobody’s out there. (Except you, dear friend, and I thank you for the compliment.)

entropi, the winner of $100 for Question 2, which was about Lucy’s career goal, has gotten in touch and his money order went out in the mail either yesterday or the day before, I forget which. His answer demonstrated that he had read with good comprehension, which really every winning answer should show. (Incidentally, entropi, like 10011, winner on Question 1, has a California address. In future, I’ll ask winners’ permission to mention their first name.) Further to the matter of reading comprehension, I wish to say that I won’t hesitate to reject all submissions to a given questions if none are good enough, pushing the prize money forward to another question or questions.

I’ve been itching to get started on revising my novel for a couple of weeks now, but there have been a lot of “housekeeping” tasks that required disposition first. Tomorrow, Friday – Hallelujah! – I get to begin. I am looking forward to it. I feel I know precisely what I want, what changes to make and in most cases, where to put them. It will be hard work, but I do love writing.

I make it a practice to avoid talking much about a work in progress, because I don’t want feedback, or even the thought of anybody looking over my shoulder as I work, because writing is, ultimately, just as private an activity as reading. As the old black grandma in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun” (later made into a terrific film), says, speaking of her old, bedraggled houseplant, “It expresses me.” So with my novel. (Hansberry, perhaps the greatest black American writer who ever lived, tragically did not live long enough to see her 35^th birthday, dying in January, 1965.)

But will say two things about this revision:

1. It will not affect a large quantity of text.
2. It will nonetheless utterly transform the import of the book in the reader’s mind.

After I have completed the initial revision, which I hope to take no more than a month or so, I plan a Phase 2 of revision. The latter will primarily involve fleshing out major characters by inserting additional back story. I was death on back story when I wrote the novel, feeling that it slowed down the pace. I think I overdid it. Also, well-written back story can be just as compelling and entertaining as the main action. Canadian novelist Barbara Gowdy is a master of this.

Incidentally, I haven’t been entirely idle with respect to the revision. I have notes totalling 41 separate files that add up to 723 kilobytes. (The kilobytes are inflated some by research materials that I have found online and saved to my files; but there’s a hell of a lot of my own writing, near-ready to be plunked into place, including long dialogue sequences.)

Let me tell you a little about my writing routine (not that it matters a jot to anyone but me).

Most writers prefer writing in the morning. But don’t let anyone tell you you have to write in the morning. And, if you’re an aspiring writer, don’t let anyone tell you one single solitary thing that a writer should observe. Every writer must find out how to write for himself; there is a right way to write, and it is his right way to write, which he must discover for himself. (Please excuse me for the moment for my exclusion of the feminine pronoun. I will blog about such indefinite pronouns in future, I suspect.)

I’m not a morning person. When I was writing this book in the ’90s, I usually started to write about 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and quit when I started to tire. I started a writing session by reading what I call my “Go note” (because “Go” is the name of the file). This is a note I write for myself at the close of each writing session. Ostensibly, it was meant to help me remember, at the start of the next writing session, what issues had been in my mind as I wrapped up the previous session. Really, though, it was a good way to wind down at the end of a writing session; and also, an easy chore, reading it at the start of the next session, that helped me ease into the flow of work. (I wish I had a dollar for every time, while writing the Go note, I thought to myself, “What I wrote today was good enough; uh, good enough – wasn’t it?” Sure as Schlitz sells beer, the moment that little half-doubt crept into my head, within half an hour I would decide, “Yeah, it was good, but not good enough. I’ll have to rewrite it tomorrow [or Monday, if it was a Friday].” I felt that I maintained a terrifically high standard; also, that I knew the difference between good, and good enough.

Normally, while sitting at my desk working at my computer, I wear slippers (as I am doing now). When I worked on my book, and when I do the coming revision, it has to be shoes. I have a pair of “writing shoes.” They’re old lace-up Hushpuppies, very comfortable. But I noticed recently that they must have gotten wet, because there’s mould or something on them. I’ll try brushing it off, but if that doesn’t work I may have to look for another old pair of comfortable shoes that would do.

Normally, at all times of the day that the television isn’t not on (and that’s most times of the day – my TV’s been on the blink for three weeks now, and I barely miss it), I have music on, either a classical radio station or my CD player playing a mixture of classical, pop and jazz. A fifth-part of my brain is constantly heeding  what I’m hearing. When I write, the rhythms of the music interfere with the rhythms of what I’m writing. Rather than silence, I put on a tape that consists of 30 minutes of birdsong, 30 minutes of distant thunder, and 30 minutes of something else, possibly rustling leaves. That helps.

I take one break in mid-session. As I recall, I would allow myself about 20 minutes, and play a computer game that took the mind into an area of spatial thinking, such as Tetris. (I recently ordered a new Tetris game.)

My mental approach while working, it seemed to me, was most analogous to the psychology of a baseball pitcher on the mound. He has absolute belief in himself and his ability and talent (confidence is a must for competitive athletes of all stripes, and for writers); yet, he knows a lot of things can happen, and a lot of them are bad. He’s in what I’ve heard described as “a state of relaxed tension,” which seems a contradiction in terms but I think it’s very apposite.

At the end of a writing session when I felt that I had written well, but not well enough, I felt disappointed, and deflated, but not awful. At least I’d been in there giving it the best shot I had in me on that day; and there’d be a tomorrow. At the end of a day, and these were much rarer, when I felt I’d really pulled it off, I was exhilarated, elated: I would chew a Nicorette (I was off cigarettes at the time), play something like Credence Clearwater Revival’s cover of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” and dance a little jig all by myself in the middle of my living room. One of the greatest, happiest experiences of my life. Of course, it was all predicated on how much I expected readers to appreciate what I had written. Oh well. That may come in time. It should.

Then, there was writer’s block. Writer’s block does not consist of sitting in front of the computer screen or typewriter and reaching for ideas but not finding any. It consists of loafing on the couch, unable to muster the mental fortitude to sit down and have a go at the writing. This can be occasioned by depression, self-doubt, current problems with the part of the text you are working on. Writer’s block is sheer hell. You condemn yourself to hell. You are worthless. You’ll never make it. You are the Ultimate, Worst, Most Unforgiveable Failure in the human race – in the universe. The blackness of the agonies I’ve suffered, playing Mega Man II and watching the little guy descending into a deep black pit of hopelessness, may seem ridiculous but they were torture at the time. On those days, I would have been overwhelmed if the Future had whispered in my ear, “You’re going to finish the book.”

So the above, minus the writer’s block I hope, is the mode of life I expect to find myself in over the next four months or so – I expect Phase 1 of the revision to take perhaps a month, and Phase 2 perhaps two or three months.

+    +    +

Aging comes as a shock to the being – at least it did for me. My age (65) appals me. I feel as if I’ve been cheated; duped. It’s almost as if I’d made a deal and said, “Okay, I’ll live a crappy, loveless non-life, so long as I get to be young forever.” Somebody obviously didn’t live up to his end of the bargain. I can remember, when much younger, a number of times lying in bed at my apartment in Windsor, Ontario, and thinking: “Forty-three! Christ! How can that be? It’s not fair. I’m going to die! I can’t stand being forty-three!” Didn’t change things, though. I just went on to being forty-four, and so on. You just wait, it’ll hit you too. Maybe if you have a spouse/partner and family, and a reasonably happy or at least okay life, it won’t seem so bad. My rotten childhood, brought to me by the two Creatures from the Black Lagoon – my god-awful, uncaring, neglectful, cruel, nearly insane parents – set me up for no wife, no kids, no love, no success, no nuttin. Around age forty, I looked at myself and my life and thought, “If only, on my deathbed, I don’t have to look back on a life that was so wasted, so useless. If I could just write my book. I know there’s one in me. I know I can make it good. That would be something – some solace there.”

I honestly thought that just writing the book to my own satisfaction would suffice. It does not. It has to be published, to satisfy me. Writing a book that no one reads is like performing a symphony on the moon. It’s like the tree falling in the forest and not making a sound, because there are no ears to hear it.

As for aging: I always thought of 65 as the great cutoff, the point at which meaningful life ends and one is thrown into a cauldron full of dangerous reptiles called cancer, heart attack, stroke, decrepitude, dementia. I remember the Beatles singing “When I’m Sixty-Four” when I was younger than the Beatles were when Macartney wrote it ... when the idea of oneself becoming as ancient as 64 seemed wildly, madly impossible. Now Macartney is older than his song, and so am I. I can’t get over it.

So, as if to drive home the new realm of aging and decline that I find myself in, I am scheduled for a barium enema on Aug. 16. Oh joy. Whatever will be next? The purpose is to check for colon cancer. The reasons are the risk factors: my age, belly fat, smoking, and a family history of colon polyps, which are pre-cancerous and routinely removed during colonoscopies. A few weeks ago, for various reasons having to do with a diet I’ve been on (I’ve lost 30 pounds in the past five months and weigh 177 pounds on a five-foot-nine medium frame), because I felt I was dropping pounds so fast that my diet might be masking a serious underlying medical condition, as well as some bowel events that I won’t go into, I read up on polyps and colon cancer in the “Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide” and diagnosed myself with colon cancer, America’s second-biggest killer. I’m more optimistic now. (My first, perverse thought was, “Great, if I’ve got colon cancer, I’ll get onto my media contacts and they’ll put out an even better human-interest story on my novel and website, and I’ll get another zing of free publicity for the site.”)

Also speaking of aging, be advised that anyone who calls me a “senior citizen” or a “senior” will be shot at dawn. I’m old enough to remember when these disgusting, patronizing terms came into vogue. Alexander King, a well-known and very likeable talk-show regular forty-some years ago, spoke on the Tonight Show of the faddish new, cutely alliterative term, “senior citizen.” He said, “I’m 65 years old. I’m entitled to be called an old man.”

(The rapidity with which “senior citizen” became standard reminds me of the alacrity with which the equally, or more,  euphemistic “challenged,” as in “developmentally challenged,” came into general use. It took no more than two years. “Developmentally challenged” is a fake; it is also an insult, because its use implies that the correct term is something shameful. “Developmentally challenged” is a euphemism of “mentally disabled.” There is no shame in being mentally disabled. It is, perhaps, unfortunate. It is real. It does not inherently lessen the worth or dignity of any mentally disabled person: many of whom are fine and excellent, sweet-dispositioned human beings.)

I am old. There is nothing quaint, or cutesy, or venerable or anything about it. Spare me the sweet talk. Grant me the dignity of calling me “old” – it means I am subject to a host of sudden and agonizing diseases; it means my body is in decline, and my brain too, no doubt; it gives new fuel two my twin banes of depression and alcoholism; it means that I am going to die, and no amount of squirming will get me out of it. Don’t patronize me. Don’t euphemize me. I’m old. I’m mortal. I’m going to die. In Canada, God bless them, when you get to be 65 you start getting a pension called “Old Age Security.” How is that for a non-euphemism, an anti-euphemism? Doubtless some brilliant politician will come along and change it to “Seniors Security,” as they changed “unemployment  insurance” to “employment insurance.” I am old: as venerable as yesterday’s used coffee grounds.

See ya around. You should read what I have to say when I’m not feeling great – as I am, oddly enough.

Hello friends,

A good life should have some balance: Work, play, love, sex, entertainment, aesthetic pleasure, reading, sociability. For leisure activities, besides reading (which has an element of work in it, much of the time), I like computer games and video games. I play an old program called Hoyle Poker pretty well daily on an ancient computer, and quite a lot of Risk II, another antique. (The poker is strictly with virtual money: a good thing, since I’m about $1.8 million in the red at the moment. I don’t believe in serious gambling.)

The biggest kick I’ve ever gotten from computerized games started in around 1989 when I bought a Nintendo system (now called NES, for Nintendo Entertainment System, to distinguish it from Nintendo’s newer products). I went hog-wild for Super Mario Bros., a brilliant breakthrough at the time and a classic. Huge money, abetted by very talented, savvy Japanese people, must have gone into its development. It was introduced in Japan in 1982, I believe, and abroad in 1985.

I dedicated almost all of my leisure time over the next decade to NES games. Besides Mario, I got great pleasure from Mega Man II, Rollerball, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (a slightly Risk-like strategy game that had me so much in its thrall that I bought a laptop just to keep notes to prepare me for the next battle), Tetris, Bubble Bobble (yes – great game!), and some others. I bought about two dozen games, and found about a third of them to be duds as far as I was concerned, another third amusing enough to have been worth the purchase price, and the remaining third so richly rewarding that they more than justified the cost of the whole shebang.

During that decade, I doubt that I read a single book. I’m rather glad to be back to reading now. But I missed the video games. NES, like everything, became passé in time, and when my 15-year-old TV died, the replacement TV had different connections that would not accommodate NES.

So I got away from gaming for the most part, except for the poker. I got a yen a few months ago to get back into video games, but was conflicted because I am repulsed by the ultra-violent action games that are now so popular. It’s not that I’m moralistic about it – I just don’t like the business of “blood and gore and veins in my teeth,” in Arlo Guthrie’s apt phrase (from “Alice’s Restaurant”). Stumbling around on the Internet, I discovered to my surprise that NES consoles and games were being sold by an outfit called DKOldies. After mulling it over for a while, I ordered a system, with Super Mario and also Mega Man II. Most days, I’ve had some very agreeable, relaxing/exciting leisure time with the NES system. A few days ago, I ordered about $70 worth of other games.

When I placed the initial order, I was told that if I posted a review with an organization called RatePoint, which published consumer reviews online, I’d be eligible for, I believe, a 10-percent discount on a future DKOldies order of $50 or more. I wrote a review and filed it. RatePoint sent back a link that would have enabled the review, which was quite favorable, giving the system four out of a possible five stars as a rating. Initially misreading this enabling link, I simply filed it away without activating the review.

In the following weeks, I ran into some pretty serious problems with my purchases. I made inquiries of DKOldies, and they helped me get the problems straightened out, and also gave me a $20 gift certificate toward any future purchases. I felt satisfied that DKOldies had done all it reasonably could to satisfy me, under the circumstances.

However, those circumstances were that four of the five games I had purchased were unplayable because their connections were dirty. DKOldies told me how to fix this through a somewhat elaborate cleaning process involving rubbing alcohol and Q-Tips. After a 45-minute cleaning session, the games were playable.

But I still felt that DKOldies had shipped me products that were not in saleable condition, and that were unacceptably substandard. For this reason, I rewrote my RatePoint review and resubmitted it, in the process changing my four-star rating to two stars. RatePoint responded by more or less ordering me to enter into a “dispute resolution” process with DKOldies, and it was plain enough that RatePoint wouldn’t put my new review online until I had done this – and presumably also upgraded my review. For a week, RatePoint sent me daily reminders to enter “dispute resolution.” When this business had started out, I had emailed RatePoint explaining that there was no dispute to resolve. I also felt, and probably said, that given the poor condition of these items as shipped, I could see no way of upgrading the rating from two stars.

RatePoint sent me a message that “When a dispute is resolved the initial review that was created which started the dispute IS NOT made available for public viewing.” In other words, since I hadn’t written a favorable enough review, RatePoint would not publish online the review I had settled on.

If anyone at RatePoint ever read my review, as opposed to software simply bouncing it because of the low rating, I received no indication of this; nor did I receive any indication that they had read the email I had written about why I was unwilling to take part in “dispute resolution.”

The point of all this is to say that anyone who goes to RatePoint thinking he or she will be able to get buying advice based on consumers’ experiences is being duped. RatePoint weeds out the negative ones. If RatePoint styles itself as a fair-dealing provider of consumer reviews (as opposed to a purveyor of disguised advertising), it is a dishonest and unprincipled organization.

In case anyone’s interested, the following is the review (I have trimmed it for space reasons) that got bounced:

 +    +    +

I ordered merchandise from DKOldies perhaps a month ago. My comments should be taken in perspective, given that I can tell you only what happened to occur in my particular situation. The most vexing problems, according to DKOldies, were “unusual.” Your experience might be better.

My final recommendation is that if you are a dyed-in-the-wool original Nintendo NES addict, as I am, the products sold by DKOldies are a bonanza and will give you many hours of pleasure. If you are lukewarm about NES, or unfamiliar with it, based on my experience alone, it would be best to stay clear.

I found the online descriptions of the game products were not very clear, and as a result (while trying to ensure that I would get the necessary adapters to fit today’s TV sets, as the original NES connections would not), I ordered two separate consoles. (One I plan to give as a gift.)

.... 

The consoles and games I bought came with no instructions. As to connecting the game console to the TV, I was able to do this fairly intuitively and the connections work. I think, though I would not swear to it, that the cable connecting the controller is two to three feet shorter than on the original controllers....

The lack of game instructions could be a bigger problem, if you buy a game you have not played before....

The biggest problem I had turned out to be dirty connections on the game cartridges. I had bought five games, and learned that only one of them played. When I tried the others, the red light on the console blinked and no game screen appeared, and they were unusable. I emailed DKOldies, thinking the cartridges were defective and inquiring about how I could exchange them or get a refund. DKOldies replied politely that the cartridges probably had dirty connections, and sent detailed instructions for a somewhat elaborate cleaning process involving Q-tips, rubbing alcohol and patient persistence. I spent 45 minutes cleaning the cartridges as instructed, after which all of them worked (although one, Super Mario Bros. 2, still has horizontal streaks – another cleaning might clear this up).

I noticed that most or all of the products appeared to have been made in China, which does not now have a strong record for quality control. I told DKOldies I suspected its game cartridges were being manufactured in a chicken coop. They replied that my experience had been unusual, and that they would be more attentive to cleaning issues. They also gave me a $20 gift certificate to compensate me for the frustrations I had experienced.

Most of the current game systems, Xbox and the rest, seem to be mostly ultra-violent action games for those with testosterone overload, and sports. These do not appeal to me. I had great fun with NES in the 1990s, and have been experiencing hours of pleasant entertainment lately with Super Mario Bros. 1 (a classic) and Mega Man II. I will probably be back to DKOldies fairly soon ordering more games. My shopping list includes Tetris, Bubble Bobble, Romance of the Three Kingdoms [it turned out to be unavailable, to my chagrin] and Rollerball. I do not know which, if any, of these titles are available. I would recommend them highly, except that the lack of game instructions might be a problem with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a strategy game – the others you should be able to learn by playing.... I do not know if I will risk buying games I have never played before, for fear I will be unable to figure them out without instructions, but I suspect I will chance it.

So at the end of the day: Based on my experience, DKOldies games are not in saleable condition, but if you loved the old Nintendo NES, you will probably find you still do. DKOldies tried its best to cure me of my addiction, but you cannot reform a true junkie like me. Vive Mario!

Hello friends,

I have had no luck getting in touch with 10011, the winner of the $50 prize for the answer to Question 1 about the allusion in Ozzie’s name. I thought I had written 10011 on the day the winner was announced, but couldn’t find any record of my email. I emailed 10011 again today, and gave him until Aug. 29 to get in touch, after which I will consider his $50 prize forfeit and make other arrangements with the money. In future, all winning contestants will have to provide me with name and address within 30 days of the announcement of the winner or the prize will be forfeited and the prize money will go to another part of the contest.

(Since writing this blog post, I’m very happy to say that 10011 has replied and provided name and address, so that matter is resolved, to my great pleasure. I really ought to rewrite this entry, but it's near my quitting time so I'll just handle this parenthetically here. Congratulations, 10011. I think it's okay to reveal that 10011 lives  in California.)

I should have thought of the following earlier, but I didn’t: In order to protect myself from some dingbat who might for who knows what reason try to claim that my contest was a sham, I plan to retain a copy of the money orders I will send out, and the real names and addresses of the winners, for six months after the contest closes. After the six months are up, I will destroy this material.

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I have so many odds and sods to deal with that I haven’t started regular work on the contest revision yet. I should get started next week. There will be a two-phase revision. The first phase I hope to be able to do in about a month, and have online by September. The second phase will take longer, but ought to be done by year-end. I am eager to get going, and know exactly where I am going. The first revision concerns clarifying the book’s meaning. The second will concentrate on fleshing out characters, primarily by adding back story. (While writing the novel, I was death on back story, feeling it slowed down the pace. It does, but interesting back story is worth reading too. And at 42,000 pages, the book is just barely long enough to rate as a novel, and I wouldn’t mind adding a few thousand words to it.)

The contest won’t be affected. The questions have been written in advance, and only the answers to questions 5 and 12 might be affected by Revision 1. When this revision appears, I will explain what, if anything, contestants should reread in order to produce the best answer. Chances are Question 5 will be unaffected, but Question 12 will entail some new reading you hadn’t counted on. I’m sorry about this. I find it exciting to be revising a novel shortly after its website launch and in the midst of a contest. I hope you find it somewhat interesting.

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This site’s hit counter has gone on Prozac lately. Twice in the last week, not one hit has registered. I’ve done a lousy job of promoting the site, other than in the print media, where I met with unexpected good fortune. At least nine or ten websites carried a matching item to the printed stories. Bu time passes, and people move on. I hope to do a little site promotion in the next couple of days, but not too much at this point so as not to delay the revision much longer. The places where I plan to try to get in plugs might surprise you. They will not be science fiction sites.

I have read very little science fiction in my life. I don’t know, or care about, the conventions of the genre. I’m not a manufacturer. I’ve greatly enjoyed a few science fiction films, most notably “Blade Runner.” I’ve read one book, “Starship Troopers,” by Robert Heinlein, who I believe has iconic status as a science fiction writer. I hated the book. In contrast, I loved “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It was top-drawer pulp fiction, a fun, easy read.

I’ve read almost all the works of Kurt Vonnegut. He was terrific. Was he a science fiction writer? Undeniably. But he used science fiction as a launching point into different terrain. Take “Slaughterhouse-5,” which was really about World War II and the controversial 1945 fire-bombing of Dresden, as well us philosophical issues including free will. It was a superb achievement, a powerful anti-war book in its own, idiosyncratic way. It is a book that transcends all labelling.

 “Universes” is a literary novel of ideas. It also happens to be science fiction. Full stop.

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I am old enough to remember Joan Baez when she was a sprat of 19 or so. As I write I’m playing a tape made off vinyl of her earliest record, and next will hear a tape of an early two-record concert recording. She wasn’t thought of as a protest singer then (not that there is anything wrong with protest – especially against that misbegotten monstrosity of evil, the Vietnam War, responsibility for which still drips from the red hands of dead Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon).

 Instead, she dredged up old, forgotten folk tunes from England, Appalachia I suppose, wherever ... at this moment, I’m hearing something fantastic in Spanish. She injected a youthful vitality into them, and a transcendent artistry, now forgotten, largely, I suspect, because the early records were monaural, and mono is dead. Check out Matty Groves, if you can find it. Marvellous stuff.

 Her voice had a timbre, when she was young, that it lost later on. I recall that some college kids my age back then criticized her for being “too pure.” How does that work?

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I lost my job as a part-time copy editor at the London (Ontario) Free Press in October, 2006. I was one of 14 axed in a round of staff-cost cuts. In the 3¾ years that followed, I mostly floundered. I had periods of depression, periods of excessive drinking, made half-hearted efforts to find work (just do have something to do). At one point I underwent electroconvulsive therapy (shock treatment) for major depression. (It worked, but only for a limited time.) At another I attended a local community college in a law clerk diploma program; this was a made-up objective. The schoolwork kept me hopping, and held the depression far at bay, but I really didn’t want to be a law clerk in my late 60s. I also tried being a hobby student at the university based here in London, but that didn’t work out either. All along, it kept nagging at me that I ought to be doing something I really wanted to do – which was trying, for the third time (three strikes and you’re out!) to get my book into print. At present I’m engaged in this process, and I find there’s not enough time in the day. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good in my adult life. The planned revision – I’m not clear in my own head how this project took hold of me – is an unhoped-for bonus. I think it will make the book a great deal better, while either shrinking its potential readership considerably, or expanding it, I don’t know which. I’ve had a tendency to go into overdrive, and am still being troubled by resultant insomnia, but my improved mood easily compensates for this. Relearning a bit of Bach on an electronic was also part of my new life plan, and it troubles me that so many of my days recently have been so packed that I’ve either shortened my practice session or scrapped it altogether. However, it achieves nothing to find fault with myself; I have a compulsion for self-criticism that is not wholesome. I’m currently seeing a woman with a PhD in social work, and she has me reading a book called “Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life,” by Susan Forward. I would recommend it to anyone who had parents as awful as mine were, or who has doubts on this question. If you are troubled by depression, anxiety, self-hate, as I am, there’s a reason for it, and the reason is you were brought up badly.

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I’ve given up speculating about what’s happened to the Reviews section (other than that it became primarily a blog, which was not the plan). No one’s posted a review since May 30, about two months. If you’re having technical problems posting, or have other thoughts on why the reviewing is down, feel free to write to me, either using “Contact me” on the main page or by writing me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . (Same difference.)

By the way, after I’ve posted this, I’ll email my website designers asking them to set it up so you can respond to blog postings, either on the blog proper or on “Other Writings.” I had thought this had all been arranged.

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It’s been quite warm here, occasionally hot, but I’ve been enjoying the weather so far this summer. Wish I had a place in the country, that connection with nature is so vital to all of us, I feel, that it is a great loss to be distanced from the earth around us by living in cities. Huge forces have subtle and far-reaching effects on our lives, and often there isn’t much we can do about it.

“Follow your bliss” – Joseph Campbell