The Sky is Falling!!! Literally the Sky is Falling

A few weeks ago, sky watchers eagerly awaited the close approach of asteroid 2012 DA14, a 150-foot-wide chunk of rock that was lined up and ready to skim the Earth’s atmosphere. By skimming I mean it was not going to be as low as the International Space Station, but it was going to be lower than some of the weather satellites we have orbiting the planet. It was going to be low enough for some backyard telescopes to see it. What I’m trying to empress is that the object was going to be close, and we (all the space agencies around the world) new where it was going to be, where best to view and most importantly that it wasn’t going to hit the Earth.

I feel so much better knowing that NASA and all the other space agencies in different countries are diligently watching space for any potential threat.

Now let’s jump to the day of the event. A large portion of the Earth’s scientist and backyard enthusiast are looking forward to following the event by watching the sky or computer screens for updates. How surprising when it was when they turned on their computers or TVs for updates and saw that another meteor had exploded over Russia, causing much damage and several injuries. How surprising it is that the space agencies around the world didn’t even know about this meteor.

One of the things that bugs me about this whole big rock gonna hit the Earth talk is statements like this: “The odds of a near-Earth object strike causing massive causalities and destruction of infrastructure are very small,” John Holdren, science advisor to Obama. Is just absolutely crazy, all anyone needs to do is look at the moon, it is pock marked with a history of impacts and it’s a smaller target than Earth.

When the space agency chief Charles Bolden was asked by Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) what NASA would do if a large asteroid headed on a collision course with Earth was discovered today with only three weeks before impact. The response was simple “if it’s coming in three weeks, pray.” That kind of makes me happy the Catholic Church just elected a new Pope, Prayer and a new Pope gotta be a good thing.

But all kidding aside, asteroids and meteors are out there and some of them are bound to hit the Earth, some large enough to do damage, a lot of damage. And the way I see it, we can take heed of the space agency chief’s suggestion and pray, we can call on our congressmen and senators to put an emphasis on the space program, or we can prepare for a disaster.

How do you prepare for a large chunk of rock or ice slamming into the Earth at supersonic speeds? That is easy, because there are only three possible outcomes. One – The object does none to minimal damage like the explosion over Russia. Two – The object does complete destruction and wipes out the current crop of life forms to wander aimlessly on the surface of the Earth. Three – The object causes enough damage to wipe out the infrastructure, which would put us back to either a hunter-gatherer or agrarian lifestyle. Scenario three is the only one that you can possible be prepared for and that’s easy, learn how to live without having to rely on stores. That means gardening, farming, and bartering for those things you can’t produce yourself with those things you have in abundance.

I realize that many people cannot buy or build a farm where they are, but some things can be done. Some of the best books on the subject I’ve put in the scrolling bar below.

Life Work Balance

A few years ago I was working at a company when the expression Work Life balance became popular, all the managers and supervisors were promoting a work life balance approach. It was one of those buzz phrases that come out from time to time, that capture the imagination of managers into believing that all the workers woes will be set at ease with a catchy phrase, that somehow says “we care”. Well to tell you the truth, I never like the phrase. In fact I hated it I thought it was a belittling pieces of double speak aimed at making us work more and be damn happy we had a job.

What set me off was not the phrase so much, but the fact that the emphasis was placed on Work, not on Life. I remember bringing this up in a meeting once, when the supervisor was touting the importance of Work Life balance. I said, why don’t we start by changing it to Life Work balance and put the emphasis on Life. The response was subdued to say the least, not hostile, and for most of the workers in the meeting it was met with “hmm, interesting”. But sadly my revolutionary idea never caught on.

Currently I rarely hear Work Life balance, but occasionally it pops up when a manager or supervisor wants to sound as if they care. But the catch phrase now is, I hope I have a job or I hope I don’t get a pay cut. Work Life balance, let alone Life Work balance is no longer popular, people see that having any sort or a life outside of work is much better than having no work at all.

However, I still say that Life Work balance is the phrase that must be at our core. Remember it is work that we do to live, we don’t live to work. Guess I should write the book "Life Work Balance" because in all my searching I'm unable to find one with that title, but a whole lot to choose from with the "Work Life Balance" title.

Vets Say Definition of Combat is Outdated

A few years ago I posted this on another blog after reading the article about changing the definition of Combat http://www.reporternews.com/news/2009/mar/25/vet-groups-definition-of-combat-is-outdated I am reposting it here on my blog. And have new comments following the post.

In an article veterans groups testified that the law is outdated, and veterans are not receiving the medical benefits that they should. Most of the cases that are rejected concern Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or PTSD, and they are turned down because the veteran cannot prove they were involved in combat based on the classic definition.

Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs subcommittee is asking to change the definition of a combat veteran, as any veteran who served in a combat theater of operations or in combat against a hostile force.

Fist off let me state that I am a veteran of Iraq, and would easily fall under the proposed new definition of combat veteran. But, I do not agree with the change in definition for combat veteran. I do agree that you do not need to be a combat veteran to suffer from PTSD. But changing the definition of combat veteran will not magically allow everyone suffering from PTSD access to the care they need, in fact it will still exclude suffers, that never set foot in Iraq but may have been stationed in Qatar, or Kuwait. Both of those places were relatively safe, but if you think that serving in either one of those places inoculated you from PTSD, then you are very wrong.

Defining combat as serving in a combat theater of operations or in combat against a hostile force, would allow thousands more veterans the opportunity to seek disability compensation for PTSD, which could potentially costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually. I could care less about the millions of dollars the government has to spend on veterans to get them the care they need, what I do care about are the thousands of claims that are not truly combat related that would slip though under the change in the definition.

But what I am most worried about, with a change in definition is that the real combat veteran, the Soldier that was sleeping in old Iraqi bunkers, dealing with mortars dropping at their feet and not exploding, setting a charge on a door of a suspected terrorists house, etc. These are the Soldiers that deserve the term combat veteran, and changing the definition belittles what they did.

Increase PTSD benefits to all military personnel, but leave the definition of combat veteran to those that truly deserve it.

When I wrote this piece I was worried that the definition of a combat veteran would change and lead to a diluted definition of combat veteran. This is something I don’t want to see, the combat veterans that have earned that distinction are an honored group and must remain so. The problem is tying benefits to the definition of combat veteran. Benefits need to be available across the board to all of our Military Personnel for injuries incurred in the line of duty, whether that was in a combat action or during battle drills, and particularly medical benefits.
This issue came up recently because of the sequestration by the government. The effects are already trickling through the military. For myself in the Army Reserves I have seen an increase in soldiers being kicked out of the reserves because they don’t meet the standards. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, but it is the beginning stages of shrinking the force. First get rid of the low hanging fruit, and then work your way up, until your numbers are small enough and you are left with nothing but the best. All that may be well-good. But what worries me are what cuts will they make to the benefits?

Tips for choreographing a fight scene inside the ring or octagon

For those of you that might want to try your hand at writing a fight story that takes place in a boxing ring or an MMA octagon, here are some tips that I learned and the education I went through while going round after round through this pugilistic world of fight fiction.

When I first stepped in the field of modern pulp fiction, and took a shot at writing an MMA short story. I quickly got lost in what fighter was doing what to who, and at the end of the scene I was looking over my text and going, the wrong guy won! After I fixed that punch drunken mistake, my editor looked it over went “I know what an arm bar is, but most of the audience won’t have a clue, so take out the entire fancy lingo that goes along with MMA, and take out the fluff.”

I was crushed I liked putting my characters in “arm bars”, or “guillotine chokes”, and fluff what fluff was he talking about, this was fight story. The lingo sounded cool, and all my friends new what I was talking about. But in order to write a better story, I used his suggestion and eliminated all the fancy talk, examined the scenes in a different context and set out to write a better fight scene with more punch and less fluff.

Before I tell you how I went about this task, I need to tell a little history about myself as a writer. I started writing Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. In those stories a lot of the conflict was between large groups, and in the case when it was between two individuals, the fight scene ran along the theme of; wham…bam…pull out a ray gun and blow the looser away. I’m being a little bit glib, but for the most part so many other things are available to the combatants that it’s not like two individuals going at one another with just muscle, training, and guts to determine the outcome. Fights in other stories that take place outside the ring or octagon, are usually life and death situations, so you want to finish them fairly quickly. And to be honest most science fiction fight scenes are not going to have it end with one of the combatants in an arm bar.

What I needed to learn was the difference between writing fight scenes for an MMA or boxing story and writing a fight scene for almost any other genre. I needed to learn to stop writing like a Ramones song; fast, loud, and over in one and a half minutes, and start writing well-orchestrated symphonies full of subtle dynamics, fantastic changes and a complete resolutions stretching over fifteen minutes or more. But keeping the audience interested in a fight that goes on for two or three pages can be difficult. It can be made worse when the fight doesn’t follow any plan or in my case the wrong fighter wins.

For many of you, and maybe your different, that’s ok but for most of us we can see a fight scene fairly clearly and it lasts for about five to seven exchanges between the fighters, then one of them wins. Easy enough but add that when you first imagined that scene you already know who was going to win before you even put pen to paper. Now the other guy really has the cards stacked against him, you imagined this scene with him losing and everything you write will be towards that end. Ufortunately what you end up with is a fight that looks heavily favored towards one individual. How can you break out of this choke hold? Put the other guy at and advantage, well then you can run into two problems; once again the wrong fighter wins or the advantage is such that the victory is not believable.

Here is what I did.

Read - And I don’t mean reading other fight stories, I mean reading the play by play action of an MMA or boxing event. It’s dull and dry and it tells you what one opponent did to the other, how they countered and who won or what the decision was. I read a lot of them; I looked up classic fights and read them. In doing this you get a feel for how a fight goes, how one opponent can be winning, and then a slip on the canvas and the other opponent has the advantage and wins. How a lucky punch comes out of nowhere to knock someone out. After reading several of these, particular ones of fighters you have never heard of or fights you’ve never seen, you as a writer can identify and internalize the ebb and flow of a fight. These are real fights, but I must admit to read them is pretty boring you need something else, you need to punch them up, but before you can do that you have to write through the drudgery.

Write - The next thing I did was to write a fight as if it were an MMA bout. Making it as technically accurate as the numerous ones I’d read before. But I wanted it to be believable so I put some well-known names in as the fighters, I used match ups that never occurred, and I gave them to my MMA friends. I usually set it up; by saying did you ever see this fight between so and so. The reactions were everything from, I know that fight never occurred to I wish I would have seen that fight. After that I told them what was up and asked if they thought the fight was believable. Everyone agreed the fight sounded believable. But this only proved one thing that I could detail a fight over three paragraphs and make it believable, which is huge, but it didn’t breathe life into the fight or the characters.

Re-Write History – This is where I had the most fun in learning how to write a fight scene. I started with a fight that occurred read the play by play account and then set out to write it as if for a book. This part was fun but it was harder than I thought. How do you take three paragraphs of technical and tactical text and turn them into prose that the girlfriend to the MMA fan would want to read? Get in the fighters heads, try to internalize what their game plan was, and what they were thinking when they were going toe to toe, or on the mat. Here is where you earn your marks as a writer. This is where we separate the technical pros of a journalist and the story telling of a writer. But before you can do that, you need to know how to choreograph a fight.

The piece below is taken from my novelette “Golden Gate Gloves,” written under the pen name Jack Tunney. In it the main character Conall O’Quinn is going against his hated enemy Barry, the son of a union boss, in the final fight scene. The history between Conall and Barry is developed over the course of the story, so some of the context doesn’t make sense.


The bell opened the ninth. Barry came in tentative with his glove out; the corner must have doused him again. I batted them away and wouldn't let him get inside. I went to work on his body, and he covered up. I drove a hard pile driver of a punch up town, and landed on the button. Blood sprayed, and the crunch of broken bone echoed well into the audience. Barry stumbled back and hunched over, blood pouring from his ruined schnozz. I came in fast to take advantage, when the punch landed in my crotch. White pain blinded me, and I went down in a heap on the canvas my stomach rolling, and threatening to puke up my guts. The ref admonished Barry, as I crawled to my knees amid a torrent of boos from the crowd....




In a future post I’ll talk more about adding flavor and color to your fight scenes, how to add that story telling flavor to your fights. But until then keep reading writing and laying out those fight scenes, one punch at a time.