Grimace & Giggle – Page 11 – To Infinity & Beyond Forever

Brain Silence Over

Posted on May 6, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

As I mentioned in my February 29th post, my brain has been silent. Very silent. So, I went silent. It’s been months. Literally. It’s now May, so the silence lasted all March and April of 2016, a very long time in my brain’s measure of productive exploits. Never one for idleness, I set about some much neglected projects–all physical–and practiced my martial arts and my flute repertoire. …And I pretty much stayed off the Net. No point to participating when there’s nothing to contribute. And the brain remained…silent.

Not surprisingly, my book sales took a dive. But, then, all on their own, sales started to take off, again. I watched. Occasionally. Maybe once or twice a month. Did nothing.

Two months after the silence began, my brain finally came out of its self-imposed retreat. I’m not sure why. I just know when it happened. I was able to write, again. I was able to create art. I called Anita Lewis, a friend of mine, and warned her. Because I’m writing on the zentao books–DLKeur writing as DLKeur. And it ain’t fiction. And she’s my beta reader.

Here’s the kicker, though. My brain, which I cherish, has never gone silent for this long. Never. Now that it’s…now that I am done processing whatever it was that was being processed (and I still don’t know what that was or is), there’s a certain resolve there that I’ve not felt quite so completely and uniquely ever before.

It’s interesting, this feeling of resolve, this feeling of utter confidence in me, in my focus, in my ‘way’ of being-doing. It’s interesting because I live my life on the seamless seam, on The Edge, and that Edge now has a firmament that I’ve never experienced quite like this.

There’s this uncanny fearlessness–a surety–that boggles me. While nothing in the future is set, I know I’m set. For life. For all that Life may present.

It’s wonderful.

It’s eerie.

AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, My Thoughts

Posted on March 16, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

The world just changed.

I watched all five games of the DeepMind challenge match between AlphaGo and Go Grandmaster Lee Sedol. I started out neutral in Game 1, was pleased with AlphaGo’s performance–that it stood up to the task.

Game 2 had me firmly in AlphaGo’s camp. I wanted AlphaGo to win.

Then came Game 3 and I was again neutral. But, when AlphaGo won, something hit me: the world had just changed, and not just the world of Go. There was a sadness, but, then, a day later, there was joy. too, at what mankind had built. But the implications were and are huge. Still, I was pleased in Game 4 when Lee Sedol rallied and defeated AlphaGo.

But Game 5 had to go to AlphaGo. It had to.

Why?

Because, if AlphaGo hadn’t won, then the question would remain open–had the DeepMind team really succeeded, or was AlphaGo just another failed attempt.

That Lee Sedol failed to defeat AlphaGo in a heroic attempt to do so (that included using the flaw he discovered in its programming during Game 4) demonstrated that, yes, DeepMind had accomplished the breakthrough in AI that has been long sought. Bravo. And, while I feel for Lee Sedol, I think what will be the reality is that AI will, at Go, only be able to defeat top Go players 50% of the time, at least in the foreseeable future.

So, the game of Go will get even more interesting, the skills and understanding increasing because of AlphaGo, and mankind will benefit from technology’s advance, technology mankind developed to enhance and expand our own capabilities. How awesome is that?! Of course, meanwhile, we have political, economic, and environmental disasters teetering on the brink of damning all but those most well-insulated, if them.

What an interesting time we live in.

Brain Silence

Posted on February 29, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

“The brain never sleeps.” That’s what one neurologist said to me during a break at an event I attended several years ago. I listened, nodding and smiling when appropriate, but, all the while, I was thinking, “This is news?”

It’s too obvious to me that my brain never sleeps. But it does go silent on occasion. I’m having one of those ‘occasions’, right now–brain silence.

It may be because I finally am going to get a verdict on something that’s been hanging over my head since December, something that could completely change my life. It could be that it’s just a ‘time-out’ after months upon months of often frenetically-paced ‘doing’.

It could be that I’m fed up, too–fed up with fellow-citizens, national and global, who seem bent on self-destruction, a self-destruction that was completely foreseeable as a consequence since I was in high school.

I’m not sure why my brain has gone silent, but it’s an interesting experience. I’ve had this happen a few times, mostly just before I’ve had huge perception shifts, not when some life-changing event occurred. During those times in the past, I was more robot than human, I think…just doing by rote the day-to-day ‘have-to’s, not-thinking. And I’m good–very good–at not-thinking. But this feels different. Not ominous. Rather, it feels like what is to follow is inevitable…immutable.

It’s strange.

“A Great, Raging Bloodbath”

Posted on February 15, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

“…A great, raging bloodbath….”–that’s what a reader gloated about in a review they publicly posted. Those were the first words of their review.

I blinked, a crinkle furrowing my brow. My brain did a cross between a ? and an !, not so much in surprise at the fact of it, (I know graphically depicted sex and gore sell very well, thanks.), but because it was a gloat–an adamant one. And not just by one reader. Many readers of the same book and the same series of books expressed those exact sentiments…just not quite as concisely.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to that one review that brought me pause.

The reader/reviewer only gave the book four out of five stars. Why? Because of “unbelievable scenes” and “too convenient” plot answers. Plus, the reader admitted that the end was a “cheat.” In other words, the story was poorly written, but that didn’t matter much–one star subtracted–because of the visceral satisfaction the writing delivered to that reader.

Reading other reviews of this highly popular book, both the positive and the negative, I found similar sentiments among those ranking the book three stars and above. The positive reviews outweighed the negative by far, and all of the positive ones had one common thread: the one element that drove readers’ ecstasy was what that one reviewer succinctly summed up as one “great, raging bloodbath” of a book.

Checking the rest of the novels in the series, I discovered that, yes, that one element drove all the books in that series to crest the best sellers lists, and the reasons given were that the books all satisfied readers’ tastes for pain and misery vividly and viscerally portrayed, fulfilling their fascination with the depraved, their obsession, even craving, to witness hate mercilessly enacted in the worst kind of viciousness and violence, all very graphically rendered.

The genre was Science Fiction, a genre I like to read a lot, but now find myself either avoiding or, at least, exercising extreme caution and care when choosing a next novel for reading. …Because the genre is filled, first, with Sword & Sorcery dressed up like SF, and, second, because it is now laden with what I call ‘gruel’–gore and cruelty–and, of course, right with it, perverse sexual depredation.

These are not the kind of books I read. They are not the kind of books I write, either. But what makes my brow furrow isn’t that my preferred reading, that my own writing and published novels, can’t draw that same level of popularity among readers. (I’m not writing for those kind of readers.) No. What bothers me is what this signifies about where the prime time tastes of the culture of which I am a part has taken itself. I wonder about my fellow humans and my fellow citizens, a large majority of whom embrace this kind of ‘entertainment’ as preferred.

It’s the Possibilities

Posted on February 14, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

One of the questions I’ve asked most in my life, from the time I could first form the word, is ‘why’? Drove my mom nuts. Drove my bad teachers nuts. Gave my good teachers a thrill, and they delighted in spurring on my curiosity. I was reading adult newspapers at three years of age…and comprehending them. I was doing algebra before third grade, quadratic equations and calculus by fourth. I read the Encyclopedia Britannica from Vol 1 through the addenda the company sent each and every year. I explored…and I’m still exploring. I’m still asking ‘why’.

For me, it’s not the answer that’s most important. It’s the question and where that question leads…to other questions. It’s the potential possibilities inherent in those questions that most intrigue me.