Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
Long ago and far away I presented my company’s research at conferences far and wide.
One such presentation (from 2007, so dated, I’m sure) dealt with marketing to men and women, and specifically the differences necessary to get the attention of one, the other, and both.
Here’s a podcast of that presentation, ressurected because it’s mentioned in “Sex on the Beach” chapter of That Think You do.
Enjoy!
For those who didn’t know, I’ve signed with a new publisher and my first book out with them, That Think You Do, should be available late Oct-Nov ’22.
That Think You Do is my first non-fiction title since 2016 and is based on a series of blog posts I wrote from 2008-16 for a California-based company. The blog posts were based on my company’s research and covered neuroscience, anthropology, linguistics, sociology, … My goal was (and is) to present useful pieces of information to readers, and evidently I did because my new publisher wants to publish them as a book (and possibly some of my other non-fiction blogs and books. Yeeha!).
So, until it’s available for purchase (I’ll post a pre-order link as soon as one’s available) and for your reading pleasure, That Think You Do.
I can save you from reading this chapter by directing you to The Dancing Forest or The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine. Why did I entitle this “Manly Men…” then direct you to a movie about a women’s agricultural collective and a book written by a woman about women’s brain functions?
Because it’s a real quick way to show that men think differently from women (for those who didn’t know).
Perhaps the movie trailer for The Dancing Forest will help.
What follows is a shameless and I hope brief quote of some previous research we did on how women and men think differently in basic social situations, and how knowing this can benefit you the next time you’re out and wanting to make an impression.
I wrote in The NextStage Irregular #2 (the above mentioned company’s newsletter) that, as population ratios go, females tend to be the more…umm…inventive in the information they provide during social discourse, men tend to be more…umm…direct. Women (shown by pink in the chart) fabricate more (left) and tell direct truths (right) less often than men (blue) according to the chart here.
Quick and careful readers will note that being “inventive” and being “direct” are different metrics. And before I go further, let me clarify.
This chart shows that women (right), when fabricating, aren’t doing it maliciously. At least not any more than men (left) are.
Continue reading “That Think You Do Chapter 1 – Manly Men Thinking Manly Thoughts Manickly (and Women Putting Up With Them)”
Tim Curry invited me to take part in a Hallowe’en podcast with several other authors, each of us reading something we felt fit the season.
Hallowe’en is celebratory to me and mine, and I didn’t think that’s what Tim had in mind.
I have written horror, though.
No, not written horribly (okay, maybe, and I’m getting better (I hope)), and not quite of horrible things (although some of my work is dark, I’ll grant you), so that set me off on a search.
I came up with two things. The first, shared last week, is a concatenation of two chapters in The Shaman, each of which deals with a succubatic kind of creature, Ellewomen. That post is, strangely enough, entitled “The Ellewomen.”
This one, Them Doore Girls, is from a horror story first published in Haunts 1992 and again in my self-published Tales Told Round Celestial Campfires 2016.
FYI, the sound quality is wanting. I find it best through headphones.
Enjoy!
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This is the final installment of a relatively new piece, Meteor Man. First written in July ’94, I was never satisfied with it until my last rewrite this past September.
It’s a longish piece at 11,300 words, so I’ve broken it into five sections. I hope it’s worth it.
Enjoy.
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Read Meteor Man (part 1).
Read Meteor Man (part 2).
Read Meteor Man (part 3).
Read Meteor Man (part 4).
Ellis could not be quieted. “You lost an asherteam? How the hell can you lose an asherteam? Two men, maybe, but two men and thirty cubic meters of state-of-the-art digrig? Where’s Singer? It’s about time somebody took hold of this thing.”
“He was piloting the asher.”
She stared at him then laughed. “Let’s say he’s already taken charge. Let’s say he’s already gone after Geertz. Let’s say if you don’t hear from him in three days you call me.”
“Singer sent you a message before we lost contact.”
“Yup, and it’s shit. Something walked all over it. Can’t make a thing out of it.” Her face drew close to his. “Are you sweating, Mr. Meninquez?”
Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!
This is the fourth installment of a relatively new piece, Meteor Man. First written in July ’94, I was never satisfied with it until my last rewrite this past September.
It’s a longish piece at 11,300 words, so I’ve broken it into five sections. I hope it’s worth it.
Enjoy.
Co-Author and higher level subscribers (10$US/month or more) can download a complete PDF version of Meteor Man for offline reading. Login or Join Us to continue.
Read Meteor Man (part 1).
Read Meteor Man (part 2).
Read Meteor Man (part 3).
Geertz and Meninquez stood on opposite sides of the five man digteam. All of them were huddled around a hole in the lower right corner of The Wall barely large enough for a surgical needle to move through. Behind them Singer and La Velle’s asher held racks of floodlights in its mormons so they could see. Behind their asher sat the second asher placed for ascent.
Geertz kept his reader at The Wall, constantly checking for any anomalies in the glyphs. “Go ahead.”
A minute later the cutter had opened a probe-sized hole on the inner surface of The Wall. He glanced at the cutter’s progress on another reader. “Stop.”
Meninquez came over to the reader. “What is it?”
“I didn’t want the cutter to enter the inner world. I just wanted it to make a hole. Now we’re going to send the probe through. It’ll be more able to tell us if there’s something over there.”
One of the team members opened his pack and placed a surgical-sized, gray missile on the ground. Where there should have been a warhead was a black diamond structure. Each third of the missile’s length was demarcated by a ruby ring. The man handed the guidebox to Geertz who fitted it to his reader.
He tapped the reader’s plate and a deep red aura surrounded the needle, lifting it in its own repeller matrix as it crawled along the ground to The Wall. There it rose vertically until the black diamond and the rest of the needle behind it were even with the hole.
Geertz guided it as everyone watched its progress on the reader. The needle had moved through The Wall. The black diamond, ever so slowly, poked its head through to see what was inside.
Meninquez came up beside him. “Turn on the viewer. Let’s see what’s in there.”
Geertz tabbed the viewer on.
The Wall dissolved without a trace. Before the team could pull back, before Meninquez could order them out or to cover or throw down a guard, before Geertz could summon his surrogate eyes back through The Wall, the entire structure gone in a burst of silence, as if it had never been.
Only the glyphs remained.
They hung in space in the position they had while buried within. The needle, not having any commands coming in, automatically turned to inspect the energy source which were the glyphs themselves and showed them still there, now blazing inside a small black sun.
Only Geertz moved. Meninquez and his team were frozen, holding their hands over their faceplates, guarding against an avenging angel.
There was a pull which Geertz sensed more than felt and the light from Singer and La Velle’s asher bent until it became a funnel feeding into the glyphs in the center of that sun. One by one the asher’s floods winked out and the cavern was in darkness.
Meninquez commed, “What just happened?”
Geertz’s reader illuminated his face. “Whatever’s inside is powered by an energy selective gravity source. It pulled in non-living EM, but not us, not living EM.”
Meninquez nodded. “Advanced.”
“Or it knows we’re here.” Geertz moved through. “Rolfson?”
She appeared beside him and became the only light in there, her human face smiling in the mask of the virtual suit she wore. “I’m here, Donald.”
“Can you determine which wavelength this was designed for?”
“The creatures who built this,” she paused. Her hands lifted from her sides and she circled the black glyphic sun, a moth in a universe of flame. “They had only one sense and used it for all things.” She paused and spun as the glyphic sun engulfed her. Her image dissolved then reconstituted as the sun melted away. “That which attracts, that which keeps away.”
“What?”
She said nothing.
“I don’t understand what you mean, ‘that which attracts, that which keeps away.’”
Again she dissolved. The sun reappeared between him and the rest of the team. Her voice came into his helmet. “This one can exist only so long as somewhere the other exists.” She reconstituted but further in.
He shrugged, attributing her behavior to interference, perhaps from The Wall itself. “Magnetism? Monopoles?”
She nodded.
“Then how can you stay here?”
“I can’t.” She lifted her right arm and pointed to her left. He hadn’t noticed, but her left side slowly dissolved. In the complete blackness of the glyphic sun he could see individual photons of her image pull away and, like meteors in a dense atmosphere, blaze bright then fade away.
“What is this place?”
“A remembrance, I think.”
“Of what? I can’t see.”
“Come.” Without waiting for a reply, her image swirled as if sucked into some vortex and fled down a rhombic passageway.
Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!