The Answer

The question I asked myself was: “Are women more romantic than men or are men more romantic than women?”
Of course thinking about the question I realize that romance in this digital age is nearly dead. The world has become too cynical to really believe in such notions as romance, so the question put forth may be pointless. There are few romantics left in the world, but many books present romantic notions and it still is the best selling genre which means that some romance still exists. If you take a walk in the bookstore the romantic books are written mainly by women and are mainly purchased by women. So if you are going to base the answer off that fact I would have to conclude that women are more romantic than men. And this on the surface seems to be the correct answer. But what is it that women dream of and fantasize through those books? They fantasize of a dashing handsome man to sweep them off their feet. They want a man to buy them candy, flowers, and to cuddle with them by the fireplace. And they want a man to talk about and understand things like the beauty of nature and the inner feelings of the heart. There seems to be an emerging pattern here. Women want to be romanced and they want men to do the romancing – the work. It is up to the man to be the romantic one and to provide the romance for the woman. Perhaps, that’s why women are the more romantic sex, for they are on the receiving end of romance. To a man romance means work and to a woman romance means attention and pleasure. Again this seems to point to the fact that women are the more romantic sex. But what of the man who is willing to do the work? The man that takes the time to tap into the hidden desires of a woman’s heart. He is the one that makes the romantic encounter happen. The main question is: why would a man put himself out? The cynic would answer in one word: sex. But since we are only concerned with those who are romantically inclined, we will ignore the cynic. The answer is they want to see their woman happy. It is for her happiness and pleasure that causes the man to produce a romantic encounter. So the question that answers the first question is this: Who is more romantic the one who provides the romance or the one whom the romance is provided for?

The Book

I had intended to answer the philosophical question that I had asked myself at the end of my last post, but yesterday’s events have changed that. The book that I have been waiting for has arrived. It’s called We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion. And was put together by Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris. Using software they crawled the web looking for emotions by recording all the blogposts that contained the words I feel or I am feeling. Then they compiled and analyzed the data to determine who felt what emotion, where, when, and how. They also put together the book that I have mentioned. And my picture and words appears within the book, which makes my blog a bigger success than I thought it would be. Anyone who follows my blog should check out the book, it is available at Amazon. Com and other finer bookstores. That’s all I have time for today, next time I’ll give my answer to the question: “Are women more romantic than men or are men more romantic than women?”

Winter Days

As I sat here nursing a cold and thinking about the short days of winter, wishing for summer again. I tried to make the summer days last longer, but the more things you seem to do just make the days go faster. I bought a few new movies to pass the winter season. She, which I already watched. I ordered Attack of Fifty Foot Woman and Cherry 2000. Those titles should go well in my cheesy movie collection. I did watch a bunch of movies about Queen Elizabeth: The Virgin Queen that few would call cheesy. I don’t think anybody has ever made a movie about her being the mother of Sir Francis Bacon, who supposedly wrote the Shakespeare plays and sonnets. I have started posting new chapters to my new series of wizard stories on fictionpress, so click the link My Short Stories, if you’re interested. This brings me to the last point of this post. I have proposed a new philosophical question for myself which is: “Are men more romantic than women or are women more romantic than men?”

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. I have deleted a bunch of old posts to make way for some fresh ones. I have deleted all the web links, save for those that I really like and the ones that are still active. If you look you will see that I have declared that the Mediaeval Baebes to be the greatest singers ever. While, it is hard to really say who the best singer is ever, I've decided to pick the group that I listen to everyday or nearly everyday. In my world then that makes the Mediaeval Baebes greatest singers ever.
All my short fiction stories will not appear again on this blog, as I already have all of them posted on fictionpress. It’s pretty easy to a make mess of stories on a blog, especially when they have more than one chapter. You would have to post the last chapter first and the first chapter last. Fictionpress puts them in proper reading order.
I will be updating this blog about once or twice a month.

Down In The Black Gang Book Review

Tonight, I have just finished reading a book called, Down In The Black Gang written by Philip Jose Farmer. I bought this book at a used book, as this book is out of print. Overall, I would give this book an A-. This book is a slim collection of science fiction short stories dealing with science, religion, philosophy, and sex. Of course, the sex scenes in these shorts are pretty tame by today's standards.
The name of the short stories are: Down In The Black Gang, The Shadow of Space, A Bowl Bigger Than Earth, Riverworld, A Few Miles, Prometheus, The Blasphemers, and How Deep The Groove.
Down in The Black Gang was about an android type creature that got humans to kill each other so the energy could fuel ships. It was a hard story to follow and was the weakest story out of the collection.
The Shadow of Space was about a spaceship named after the Norse god Odin's horse, Sleipnir. The spaceship actually leaves the universe and the story presents a theory of how Odin could have fashioned our universe.
A Bowl Bigger Than Earth was about a man whose soul is placed into a sexless hairless body; on the plus side this body is much stronger than his Earth's body. In this society, there is no individualism, everyone is equal, and there is no sex since no one has any sex organs. Since everyone looks the same and acts the same and can't screw, some find pleasure by hurting each other.
Riverworld is a short story from Mr. Farmer's famous series Riverworld where all of humanity at the end of time is resurrected on a mysterious world with a giant river at the heart of this planet. This story features the cowboy actor Tom Mix and Jesus Christ. The theme is basically that religious fanatics would burn at the stake the founder of their religion.
A Few Miles is about a thief who turns lay monk and has some funny misadventures on his way to the space station. The story ends with the monk being thrown into a cage at the zoo by a punk and a bird woman creature lays an egg on his chest that stays stuck there until it hatchets.
Prometheus is a sequel to the last story, only more serious in tone. The lay monk, John Carmody, goes to another planet to live among the bird people. He gives them their language, teaches them how to make fire, teaches them how to make weapons and tools, and at the end of the story gives them a basic system of religion. This is the most thought provoking and interesting story of the entire collection.
The Blasphemers is about a group of agnostic space explorers who goes to other planets and carves stone statues in the image of their gods as proof of their religious right to conquer a planet. They are bewildered when they land in Egypt and find the statues already there. This one allows the reader to ponder; just what was the culture like that carved the statues in ancient Egypt.
How Deep The Groove is about a scientist who builds a machine to control part of a person's free will. He intended it to make a person an agreeable slave to the state, but ended up proving that human beings’ have no free will and that everything is predestined or predetermined.