Month: December 2014

Fripp Island, SC 2014

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My wife and I vacation on a private island on the South Carolina coast named Fripp Island. For two weeks, there’s no commuting through D.C. traffic or hearing user complaints. It’s days filled with fresh sea air and nights under a clear, star-filled sky.

One evening, we watched the Orionid meteor showers from the beach access stairs. Another evening, we watched a spectacular lightning storm over the ocean.

Over the two weeks, I enjoy taking photographs. One of my favorite times is sunrise.

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The Universe 2014

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Every year, I decorate a metal ivy thing (It’s Kel’s.) with lights and ornaments, mostly from Hallmark. My parents started buying ornaments, mostly Star Trek, and I continued the practice.

For several years, the ornaments hung on the Christmas tree, but I have so many that I can’t hang them on the tree. In fact, I only hang a portion a year.

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Kill Gilligan! or Why Do Characters Do That?

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From 1964 through 1967, Gilligan’s Island was produced and broadcast. I saw the show in syndication when I was a kid.

Virtually every one of the 98 episodes involved the castaways attempting to get rescued with Gilligan screwing it up somehow. The question wasn’t if he’d screw it up but how.

Now, the show was a comedy, a farce really. It was mindless entertainment. It was absurd. Taken for that, the storytelling was fine.

However, if you’re writing this story and not doing it as a comedy, what would the characters really do? At a minimum, they’d tie Gilligan to a palm tree until they were rescued. Perhaps one of them would kill Gilligan. Does that sound harsh? How many attempts would the sanest person see fail because of one man’s idiocy until he helped that man meet with an accident?

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