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National Parfait Day 2023
Today is National Parfait Day if you were looking for something creative to do with yogurt, fruit and granola.
Small Business Saturday
Small companies need capital to invest, expand, and create jobs. And the economy needs a healthy small business community to bolster and sustain its recovery. ~Sam Graves
While Black Friday focuses on mass market retail outlets like malls, big box stores and brand name retail chains, today is focused more on your local Mom & Pop shops.
Today is the day to visit our local businesses and help these entrepreneurs keep their doors open. My favorite small businesses are comic book stores.
If you want to get some awesome Christmas presents for your friends and relatives, please consider visiting local retailers who are passionate about their merchandise.
Parfait Is French For Perfect
Granola & Yogurt Fruit Parfaits Recipe – EASY, Make-Ahead Recipe! With Crushed Raspberries!
And what a perfectly lovely treat with healthy ingredients that even I can eat. They’re visually pleasing. They taste marvelous and they’re wonderfully nutritious.
You can replace the yogurt with cottage cheese or sugar-free whipped cream to get different textures and flavors in your parfaits.
If you’re looking for a safe, delicious treat, the combination of fruit, granola and a dairy product is the way to go.
The following video has nothing to do with fruit parfaits, but it does demonstrate perfect synchronization in dancing. It’s an impressive spectacle. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
The Chinese Put A Twist On Riverdance
What Would Become Of Beauty?
Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty? ~Paul Gauguin
Many famous authors are famous because they asked the big questions.
While I agree with Charles Dickens that exploitation of laborers is a bad thing, that children should be protected and that the French Revolution was a bloody shitshow, I don’t have his drive to be a social engineer.
For me, storytelling is no more profound than the answer to a fairly specific What If.
While others want to consider massive social trends or cultural issues, I’m more interested in taking something commonplace and turning it on its head.
For instance, in Carol’s Christmas I state a rule in passing conversation.
If you know anything about clearly stated rules in fiction, you know that they are inevitably broken. When these rules are broken, there are specific consequences.
One of the most conspicuous examples of this is the three rules established at the beginning of Gremlins.
Gremlins: The Rules
It’s a variation of the concept of Chekov’s Gun. If you put a gun on the mantelpiece, it’s going to get fired (or else, why even bring it up?).
If you state rules, they’re guaranteed to get broken. It’s a trope in storytelling, but it suits the concept of promises, progress and payoffs.
So, Megaman mentions that he mustn’t touch anyone while using his powers. Specifically, this means skin-to-skin contact.
His superhero costume has gloves built in to ensure he doesn’t have direct contact. As a superhero, he has grown while holding a bad guy but the glove protects the person from exposure to his use of his powers.
Without thinking (naturally), the rule is broken, and there are (naturally) consequences. The idea came to me while I was taking my nightly walk, so I rushed home and put it into the story.
I think you’ll be amused when you see the results of this rule being broken.
In my Sentinels stories, I intend to address some of the features of action/adventure stories from this What If perspective.
My superhero world is intended to be primarily “realistic”, with the noteworthy exception of the existence of superheroes.
In comic books, it’s a given that superheroes and supervillains will punch each other through walls, launch blaster bolts, flame bursts, magic hammers, pumpkin bombs or whatever with no apparent consequence other than what the comic writer chose to assign.
Seriously?
If you have some guy in a goblin costume flying around throwing pumpkin-shaped grenades in the real world, there are definitely consequences.
It’s awesome that Spider-Man has his Spidey-sense and can dodge these things (but can he dodge clouds of shrapnel? really?), but what happens when that pumpkin bomb misses Spider-Man?
It falls into a crowd, onto a roof, into someone’s car or what-have-you. Any of these things are catastrophically bad in a real world situation.
In the Sentinelsverse, these things will have actual collateral damage and will be a direct concern in my heroes’ minds.
I haven’t thought about how this features in the Tales Of Olde Auringia or in the Far-Flung Reaches.
I’m still subconsciously worldbuilding these IPs, so I’m not sure what my angle is in these settings.
Since they are not the “real world” per se, this sort of chaos amid normalcy doesn’t necessarily apply.
For these other genres, “normalcy” has to be contrived and derived. What’s “normal” in a high fantasy world or a space opera galaxy is quite abnormal for the reader today.
Perhaps that’s the angle. Whereas superheroes in an otherwise normal world is a question of chaos amid normalcy, the abnormality of a high fantasy or space opera setting needs to be counterpoised against some kind of imposed normalcy. Dunno. Needs more thought.
So, for now, I hope you enjoy Carol’s Christmas as the holiday season ticks away. We’re two episodes in and thirty-nine to go. The Outro on Epiphany will have all episodes and a link to the print on demand book as usual.
That’s it for today. If you’re going shopping, please consider giving your patronage to local, small businesses who love their chosen specialties and can steer you to the perfect products to suit your needs.