Stuffed Orangutangs & Rearranged Joshua Trees

We got a kitten about 6 weeks ago (more or less). Shortly after we got her, I discovered that if you make a scratching noise on a worktop, sofa, table, carpet etc. she'll come running, looking for mice or sparrows or iguanas or something.
Yesterday, I found an old stuffed orangutang (not taxidermy, a toy). I started t̶e̶a̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ t̶a̶u̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶  playing with her using the artificial ape, in the hopes that she'd go for it. She did! Success. (By the way, she just knocked my coffee dregs onto the carpet while trying to kill the toy. Backfire.) Later on, I made a scratching noise on the sofa behind the orangutang a few times. I think, though I may be wrong, that she now associates the weeks of mysterious scratching with this orangutang that is rapidly becoming her nemesis.
I'm curious as to where this association will end up - if she hears a scratching in the future and it turns out to be a mouse, will she be disappointed by the lack of ape? ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

_________

Something's been annoying me for a while now. This irritation has been taking something I really rather love and tainting it. This annoyance is now here finally being adressed.

The running order of U2's brilliant album The Joshua Tree is absolutely appalling.
The way the band came to the order that we're familiar with was also appalling: they were stuck and gave it to a friend and just went with what the friend decided.
The method the friend used was appalling: they put the songs in order from most to least favourite.

Enough judging; onto solutions.^TM

OK so basically I was listening to Joshua Tree last night, and started with Bullet the Blue Sky for some mad reason. Hearing this song straight off the bat without my ears being first tempered by Streets, ISHFWILF, and With or Without You was amazing. As the album went on, I was astonished by how differently I was hearing the tracks having skipped the first three on the album. This reminded me of my running order annoyance, and I decided to get on the case.
My problem with the running order does mostly come from the first three tracks. These songs are all clearly single material, with a similar sound. It's never really made much sense to me at all that these three songs a) opened the album and b) were all lumped together. The current order, with these big songs all at the front, makes perfect sense for a concert set list, but I don't really like it as in an album.
OK enough blathering; here's my alternative thingummy. Forgive my arrogance.

1. Bullet the Blue Sky
2. Exit
3. Running to Stand Still
4. Red Hill Mining Town
5. With or Without You
6. Mothers of the Disappeared
7. In God's Country
8. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
9. One Tree Hill
10. Trip Through Your Wires
11. Where The Streets Have No Name

I really like the Bullet/Exit 1-2 opener. Rather than opening the album on a longing note, it opens on an angry one - I think albums should open with their crossest, biggest, silliest songs. The raw pity and sense of loss in Running is I think more effective following both these cross songs, as opposed to the already raw With or Without You followed by Bullet. That former track, however, makes a great paring with Mothers, which, with its gentle open and busy finish, serves as a stylistic bridge between With/Without and In God's Country. I put ISHF, Tree, and Wires together because of the gospel/blues flavour that they share (as an aside, I think that Tree would be very interesting as a partial instrumental - no lyrics until the final chorus and what follows it).
Streets is an interesting track, as, with the long opening synth, it can only really work as an album opener or closer - the slow intro would be a weird break mid-album. Even though I put it last out of necessity, Edge's jangly guitars do make for a great end to the album, and bookending the album with anger and optimism is quite effective, I think.

Try it! Listen to the album in that order, then thank or lambast me accordingly.

_________

Oh bugger, I arrogantly pretentious'd all over my blog again. At least the kitteh nonsense salvages it a bit. I think?


Sam D Grover

Stories & Lies

I think the key to being a good writer is to be a good liar. All stories are lies, some more convincing than others. 


The key to a good lie is balance.
    
     When telling a lie, detail is crucial - if your lie is vague and insubstantial, no-one will believe a word of it. Names, places, times - all of these must be established, else the lie falls apart. On the other hand, if you present a lie overburdened with detail - exact times, unimportant persons, and other minutiae - these irrelevances will sink the lie. Either the liar will come across as trying to hard, and so the spell shall be broken, or one of the multitude of facts will be contradicted or forgotten along the way, leaving a hole immediately filled with disbelief. Balance!
    
     People want the world to work a certain way. The best liars are the most effective at motivating this desire, but again there is a balance in this manipulation. If the lie is exactly what those being lied to want or expect to hear, They'll get suspicious at the way the liar's story is adhering so exactly to their expectation, at the fact that, even though this is what they wanted, it was not the lie they needed to hear for them to believe. A lie too far-removed from expectation, however, is also going to fail. The listener will meet a version of the world that contradicts with one inside their head - yes, reality does often contradict the world we hold in our heads, but not in overly dramatic way. When people in a lie act in a way that the listener believes that they do not, again suspicion is raised. Balance!

     Linked to the previous point, lies cannot be too like or unlike life. When a lie completely diverts from reality, the deception will be made obvious - if you say that a gorilla stole your car, then it's pretty clear that you're lying. Even if you're slightly more subtle, and  the lie merely departs completely from events as they were, without becoming ridiculous, the realism is lost and the absence of truth will be noted. However, a lie must never be completely devoid of the fantastic - a lie that is too close to the events as they happened will be seen as just slightly off by the listener, and so bee seen as an untruth. Balance and also balance, too.


Stories. Too much information, too many events, the reader is swamped. Too little, the story is hollow. Too run-of-the-mill, the reader is bored. Too trope-less, the reader is uneased and confused. Too removed from reality, the reader sees the fiction in the story. Too like-life and the suspension of disbelief is broken. Can you say, "balance?"

I swear I had a point in all of this, but it's now twenty-five past two in the morning and my brain is rebelling against consciousness.

Sorry I wrote this guff*

Sam D Grover

*Haha, jokes. I'm AMAZING, all I do is pure gold. No apologies, no prisoners, no surrender! 
GSF4LIFE