F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction Author

To Be Human

Again, With the Code Enforcer, Already?

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Class Clown Pictures © FOREVER
Class Clown Pictures © FOREVER

This is me pushing my brother’s current project.

Now, usually, by “pushing my brother” it’d mean something sophomoric, like, into a wall, down a flight of stairs, or into another in the checkout line, but since we’re theoretically older and wiser, it now means I’m “helping,” by pushing a project of his. And by “project,” I mean “a thing,” not to project…unless you mean, “projecting into the future (the near future…), which is where this project (“a thing”) is, and to which we are helping….

Geesh, writing is hard.

Okay, whatever, just click here: http://www.seedandspark.com/studio/code-enforcer

Since there’s no “share” for the above funny video, please to click and view. It’s, like, three minutes. You can do that standing at the toilet this morning (or sitting, as you prefer; I don’t judge). It is HOA Code Enforced approved (HOACEApvd, #HOACEApvd).

My brother, Greg Dorchak, Tim Cunningham, et al, are pushing their crowdfunding endeavor, “Code Enforcer,” a comedic independent film they’re looking to get financial backing for. For which they are looking to get financial backing. I’ve posted about this before, it’s been an ongoing project of his, and the teaser videos are über great (“funny,” not  “large”), so I hope you’ll take a couple minutes out of your day, whether or not you’re standing before a toilet, to check it out, and head over to Seed & Spark and also help them out (and also please check the “Follow,” which is like “Fellow,” but without the “e.” And has an extra “o.” But isn’t “extra” in that it isn’t needed, cause it really is, or you’d think the word was “fellow.” And it isn’t even associated wholly or in part with the whole Seed & Sparks thing, so I don’t know why I even bothered to mention the damned thing…). I did, parts of my family did (won’t tell you which parts), but we were heavily threatened and badgered into doing so. But, it’s all good, right?

Greg’s been in a variety of things, and by “variety,” I mean lots of different things. And here (love the Creativity Captured one the best). He’s been in a national Jimmy John’s commercial that played lots during baseball season, and has been in movies, like “Miss Congeniality” (he was one of several “FBI Man in Background,” though no credits were given for the extras).

(It’s not that all his other movies were like “Miss Congeniality,” i.e., “Miss Congeniality” 2 and 3, or that they all involved a hot female FBI agent who undercovers as a beauty contestant, but that he was in movies, as in [“e.g.,”] “a” movie, such as one “like” [“for example,” that’s what that “e.g.” means] one called “Miss Congeniality”….)

Are you as annoyed with me, right now, as much as I am with myself?

So, this is me pushing my brother’s current project.

This is me being a Tweet Whore (which is exhausting, see all my retweets this morning…).

And this is you, checking out Code Enforcer stuff.

Thanks for being you.

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It Happens To The Best of Us

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Once again, another writer friend of mine, Joe Ponepinto, received that worst-ever rejection letter we could receive. Worse than being told your writing sucks, go kill yourself.

This, however, has become the norm in the traditional publishing world. No longer is “good”  nor “great” good or great enough. It has become a world where “what does the publishing house think they can sell?”

And, no, your guess is not as good as mine. None of our guesses are. The only guesses that are allowed are those of the bean counters. Not the agents, not the editors. Bean counters. People who crunch numbers for a living, not read words. Manipulate them. I have nothing against bean counters…just the way they are being employed…by an industry (we’re talking upper-level executives, here, not the in-the-trenches managers, et cetera, so much) that doesn’t appear to really care about authors, no matter what great PR articles are written about how much they claim they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, stuff sells, they’re selling it…but so can other stuff. Stuff with more substance, intelligence, panache.

When you hear or read words like that, what are you supposed to think?

If Joe’s—or any of our—work wasn’t really good, they would have said it. But they didn’t. All “they” said was that they didn’t feel they could place his work. Even though it was “engaging,” “appealing,” and possessed “real energy and imagination.”

Really, traditional publishing, what are we supposed to think?

And you wonder why.

Sigh.

But, luckily for us, these days the traditional houses are not the only game in town.

Sorry to hear about that, Joe, but I think your current efforts are definitely headed in the correct direction. You’re a powerful writer, and I know you’ll come into your own!

Write on!

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The Global Consciousness Project

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This guy, “hardware hacker” Adam Michael Curry, has a dream. A global one.

To borrow a little from the article, and Gregory Weinkauf, Mr. Curry sees that the world reads news together…even listens to music together…now, he queries, can the world feel together? And furthermore, can this shared awareness, this collective consciousness, actually impact our physical world?

Can we affect reality?

The basic idea is that there’s all this “new” research out there being done by laboratories, like Princeton University’s PEAR lab and the Institute of Noetic Sciences (among others) to investigate how deeply our collective consciousnesses are connected to “the fabric of physical reality.” It’s called The Global Consciousness Project (GCP; which is, curiously, like my Psychic novel’s, “Global Foundation for Peace,” or “GFP”…), employs random number generators spread around the world, global events that “polarize human attentions,” like 9/11, earthquakes, or Princess Diana’s death, and analyzes the results that manifest the “unexplained ordering affect on chaotic systems.” And, furthermore, this research suggests that the odds that “the combined GCP data” are “due to chance” is less than one in one hundred billion, which implies that there’s a “deep connection” between the mind and physical reality.

That’s one hundred billion.

Wow, lots of cool phrases. And “one hundred billion.”

Oh, and Mr. Curry is pushing a smartphone Consciousness app.

Okay, why does it always have to be about a smartphone?

I applaud Mr. Curry and the others in this area of exploration, but I have to inform them that this line of investigation is nothing new. Not at all. And it’s not even a question…but a fact. I also understand how science always lags in this department, the Department of Mind over Matter. At least in the public displays of research.

There have been many texts written over the history of Humankind about the association of the mind and matter, aka, “reality,” aka what we think affects reality, and it’s largely and roundly been poo-pooed and publically “discredited.” But one set of books have done an incredible job of discussing this reality and has been out since the sixties. This is the work of Jane Roberts and Rob Butts (both deceased). They did this by tapping into their own inner world, through one of Jane’s “entities,” called “Seth.”

Oh, now, see, I hear the eyes rolling!

I talk about it and the eyes roll, but science talks about it—and throws in a frigging smartphone—and you’re all over it.

The basic concept of the Jane, Rob, and Seth view is that we create our own reality. That’s it. No smartphone needed. Just intent and focus. You want a good life, focus on it. Believe in it. Live it. You want wars and poverty or peace and riches, then go ahead, focus on it.

You get what you focus upon, there is no other rule.

But Mr. Curry wants all of us to download an app where we apply our minds to random number generators during life’s great, polarizing events.

Fifty years, it was said, research has been going into all this (not Curry’s work, but others), and this is as far as they’ve come? Random number generators?

One the one hand, quite disappointing. Well, on both, really. What the heck have they been doing all this time, when all this corroborating material has been out there, like Jane, Rob, & Seth’s work? Has it even been looked at, or, again, dismissively poo-pooed? Essentially, what science seems to be doing, is reinventing the wheel. Oh, sure, you could say, they’re just applying the scientific method, and are just duplicating claims in scientific settings. Perhaps, but people are people wherever you go, no matter what they wear, what they do, or languages they speak. Prejudices come into play (yes, even in the scientific community). And, not the least of which, is science itself. Science measures the observable, which seems obvious, but what happens when what you want to observe isn’t, well, observable? What if the targets of your investigation can only be examined by the mind itself, and not under some electron microscope or injection into some CERN collider?

This is the problem with prejudices and attitudes with any so-called “psychic” disciplines, like remote viewing.

It’s not quantifiable.

Sure, we’ll be able to find all the physical links and manifestations, and the like we can using all of our best equipment, but we’ll also be missing out on the best parts that simply cannot be viewed using physical instruments. As much as I’m dismayed at the use of remote viewing for spy-type activities, these Hal Puthoffs, Dale Graffs, Russell Targs, et al (including Stanford Research Institute), made the leap into looking into the mind with the mind. The mind is a nonphysical entity, how the heck are you going to look at that with a microscope of any kind?

Quantum physics comes the closest with all it’s weird micro-behaviors, like entanglement and wave/particle theories, and this has given rise to some really earth-shattering theories…but nothing ever seems to “come of it.” It all just seems to stop short of “going there” by saying we all affect and effect our own realities by the thoughts we think.

But, really, all you only have to do is examine your own life and the lives of those you know. Look at how your beliefs color and mold and form your own life. Do you believe life is hard, unfair, and controlled by others? And has it been? Do you know others who are happy and carefree and seem to have a fun life—and has it been?

How can it be both ways? Either it’s one way or the other. Sure, one can definitely get into circumstances and privileged lives, and whatnot, all kinds of other variables, and, yes, all of this knowledge from entities like Seth come from the “nether regions” of life, the nonphysical, the spiritual, where we mortals wrapped in corporeal form cannot really venture (though we’re told we can…), and what of all the other religions, etc., and yes, it does get rather sticky, here. Billions of rabbit holes. But what I did was look for explanations that didn’t matter what the belief was…just the mechanics that are behind all beliefs. And it is up to each of us to do this. It is part of our growth. But my point to all this is not to preach, but to show that others have already gone there with the whole “our thoughts affect reality” thing, investigations have been ongoing for fifty frigging years, and all we have to show for it is a smartphone app? I really don’t want to slight and dismiss Mr. Curry’s investigations into the mind/matter arena, but, come on, people, so much has already been done on the topic, don’t keep reinventing the damned wheel! Don’t keep starting over from scratch by ignoring already existing work! Build on it! Take it, take its tenants and expand upon them.

Sigh.

Yes, I may have been a bit smug and smarmy over this post, but overall…I am enjoying the scientific entrance (however late) into all this, because it does show a broadening of consciousness on other levels…i.e., that of hard-nosed science. Where this goes will be interesting, but it’s up to each of us to employ this in our everyday lives, like I’ve discussed before. We create our own lives…how we look at life is how we live our lives. It’s that simple. And if you want to change something, you have to begin inside your own head—how else can you effect change? If you don’t believe in the change you seek, then you’re not gonna give it any thought, not gonna write it down, not gonna further “transmit” its concept into the world or tell someone about it, or write that book or movie, not create that patent, not gonna discover that new theory.

It all starts in our minds…and before that damned smartphone…was the concept of that damned smartphone in someone’s mind.

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Inspiration

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A friend of mine and I were discussing writerly inspiration, when I got inspired to “pen” this post.

What is it and where does it come from?

Can you force it?

Hey, maaan, got any techniques to maximize its potential?

I may be a bit too hardline in my way of thinking, but I really feel that each of us are built to do certain things. Sure, we can change our direction[s], and that can get heavy into metaphysics (which I do get into, below), but as to “teaching” others how to be inspired…well, all I got is that you “simply” need to allow yourself to be aware of your own, unique, whispers.

That’s it. No secret handshakes, no intricate nor arcane protocols.

Tell yourself you allow yourself to be inspired. Go on, do it now. Out loud. Mean it.

People—it seems to me—are always looking outside themselves to find themselves. Trying to unnecessarily complicate matters.

All we are is within us.

All you need to know is already within you and me. We simply have to become aware of who we are, and to do that we need to listen to our inner voices (my standard disclaimer of mental aberrations and crazed ax-murderer inclinations NOTwithstanding…).

You already know who you are.

You do, I bet you do.

You may be afraid to admit it, you may be obfuscating it with other issues, but deep down, it’s all there. Sometimes we have to dig through all kinds of other “stuff” first, and that is something some need to do. There’s a reason for that, and you have to find it, discover your own answers—no one else can do that for you. Techniques for that are abundant, but it again comes down to listening to yourself, your thoughts, your dreams, how you deal with the world…ask yourself questions and allow the answers to come in whatever form they choose to reveal themselves to you in. A TV show, a dream, a phrase on a roadside sign.

Now, the flipside to that—for creative types—is, well, okay, I know who I am, yeah, I’m cool with that, but I seem to have issues expressing it. Please, to help me, Kind Sir!

See above there are no secret handshakes, no intricate nor arcane protocols.

We all have daily inspiration. It’s unavoidable. The problem might appear to be that you are not experiencing what you feel inspiration should be.

The problem may be that you got inspired to write a book, paint an acrylic, and now, nothing else is coming forthwith.

This is what I have to say, and you may not like it, and where my hardcore view comes into play.

You may not a writer nor a painter be.

You may have experienced a bout of said, you may have been inspired to do a single or handful of singular creative acts, for whatever reason your inner self needed that expression, but you may not be a writer. May not be a painter.

And there’s nothing wrong with that!

You may be a reader…may be a viewer…an illustrator, a coder, a cover artist. A cop.

And—getting totally metaphysical on your collective asses—I feel this is the case because you may be very well already be said writer or painter in another life…another existence…but in this existence, you’re experiencing the other side of the coin.

Life is far too complex, too rich to be limited to one single, expendable existence. It’s far too limiting a concept, so I believe we have to live other, simultaneous existences…where all our other existences interact…bleeding through talents, and, yes, inspiration…to all of our other existences.

And what is inspiration?

From Merriam-Webster, it’s “something that makes someone want to do something or that gives someone an idea about what to do or create: a force or influence that inspires someone.”

Where does it come from?

It comes from the nonphysical realms of which the mind is a part. And that gets into individual beliefs. But, for me it comes from the playgrounds of the soul. I look at the brain as the medium, the means of intersection between the physical body and the nonphysical mind. I do not see the mind so much as resident within the brain, but Venn diagrammed with it. Accessed through the brain. And as such, our mind has access to a wondrous and neverending array of concepts we simply cannot even begin to imagine…but try to! We have such wondrous access. And since our beliefs drive our lives, and since beliefs are nonphysical, part of our mind, if we don’t believe we can do something or don’t believe we have access to something, anything nonphysical will be so hindered. Our beliefs are the keys to our lives…our thoughts.

So, “forcing” inspiration? See above.

Additionally, what if some inspiration is a thought or a feeling from one of your other selves? One of your other selves’s actual experiences?

Inspiration.

Now, for just a minute, play a little gedankenexperiment. Try to imaging that the life you’re living now is not the prime, only life…but that this life is a probable life to another you, somewhere else…bemoaning their existence and wondering what the hell you’re doing…that they could actually be you.

Wicked freaky, huh?

And, admit it, as belief systems go, wouldn’t you rather that kind of universe exist over one that says you have but one—and only one—life to live? Wouldn’t it take the pressure off having to do one and only one thing? Doesn’t it leave a bit of breathing room, my friends?

Doesn’t it put an entirely different spin on a lot of questions? A lot of angst?

People may use Tarot cards, chicken bones, scrying, handheld pendulums, or whatever to “deliver” inspiration, and that’s fine, it’s okay, it’s part of who they are…and you can go ahead and try them. But, I say, and truly mean this, because I really do care about people, listen to yourselves. Discover what makes you tick and just be yourself. As for writer’s block, that is usually not so much a lack of inspiration, but (in my humble opinion) an obfuscation of inspiration. Something is blocking your methods and I feel it’s usually stress or some other issue that needs resolution before you can move forward. Sometimes you just need to stop and take stock, but I feel the correction to “writer’s block” is as varied as—and directly related to—the causes, rather than just listing out a series of “steps” to follow. Again, listening to your inner self can only help.

And if you’re not a writer, have no more writerly inspiration in you, that’s okay. Write out your one or two books and be good with it, if no more ever comes to you…or doesn’t manifest itself for years to come. Enjoy your life and who you are. Move on.

We need readers, too.

The Invaders

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http://youtu.be/xiFHaKj_-HM

I remember watching this show as a kid, but honestly don’t recall if I’d seen it when it first aired, back in 1967, or later, but I do remember watching the show. The Invaders was/is (like every alien show is) about aliens from another planet coming to ours. To take us over. They take on human form and disappear in a blaze of red when killed. Same old, same old…but I liked Roy Thinnes (as “David Vincent,” an architect) and the really cool UFO the aliens flew in! As a kid I was all about spacecraft and aircraft models (okay, and monsters, too…). As I was creating the first draft of Psychic, back in 1994/2000, and was writing about Travis Norton, one of my remote viewer characters, the model just came to mind when I started going down that “what’s happened to my life” reminiscing with Travis. I started thinking about “being a kid,” and the loss of that naïveté…one thing led to another…and I dug out that model I had stuffed away in a closet. Next thing you know, it’s been nicely incorporated into the story, inner “compartmentalized” UFO sections (and inch-tall “space babe”) and all.

It’s kinda like the “where do your ideas come from?” question.

Everywhere.

When you’re writing, you’re not always (at least for me) consciously thinking I should incorporate “this” or “that.” The stuff just flows out your fingertips and onto the page. Sometimes even genuinely surprises you. Sure, there are times I consciously want and need to add something, but for all the minutiae of the story it all just genuinely flows out “organically.”

The alien invaders UFO model I have is one of several variants created over the years, some made as recent as 2003. I believe mine must be the 1975, Aurora #256, version, given the time I was actively buying and making models…and that that box seems the closest to what I remember having had…color scheme and intensity and all. If I’m wrong, it would most likely be the 1979 version, but I doubt this; I was pretty much done with model building by that time….

The Invaders (A Quinn Martin Production, 1967) Ship, c. 1975
The Invaders (A Quinn Martin Production, 1967) Ship, c. 1975
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