Gravity: It's the Law or Is It?

Spencer Dryden

 

Fellow bloggers, this came out funny, but I was seething when I sat down to write it. I was disgusted with myself for my bad habits and angry with Dr. Oz as well. However, after it sat for a while, I sent it to The Good Men Project. They put a different title on it and wrapped it around some good graphics. I have subsequently joined LA Fitness, hired a personal trainer and downloaded a calorie counting program on my smart phone. Sometimes anger can be motivating.

 

Gravity: It's the Law. Or is it?  

For all the distress over global warming, the melting of the polar ice cap, the hole in the ozone, depleting of the oceans, the mass extinction of species, the pollution of our air and water , let me add one more to the litany of despair—gravitational flux. This phenomenon has not yet caught the fancy of the sky- is- falling media. I may be the only person who has noticed it, so let me bring it to your attention. There has been a slow marked change in the strength of the gradational force on earth.

Gravity is hard to measure directly, but I have found an indirect measuring tool, the common bathroom scale. Over the last two years every time I stand on it, the damn thing registers a higher number. I am not eating anymore than I did two years ago when the scale read 175. Two weeks ago it said 200. How is that remotely possible? Gravitational Flux —the force of gravity is not immutable or constant.

I checked the accuracy of my scale by placing objects of known weight on it. To my horror, the force of gravity had not changed for these objects, leading me to the astonishing deduction that the change in gravitational pull is not universal among all types of mass. This discovery of Gravitational Flux promises to launch me on to the path of the Nobel Prize in Science.

So many great scientific breakthroughs, like Viagra, for instance, are serendipitous. Viagra, in fact, selectively reduces the force of gravity on certain vital organs. The idea that Newtonian principals of gravity are not universal has my head spinning. I'm wondering if any of you have noticed this phenomenon on your own bathroom scales?

I can see myself now in Geneva, waddling down the isle to accept my reward when the slacks of my tuxedo fall down they way they do to poor old fat fools who are featured on America's Funnies Home Videos. I fall flat on my face, humiliated.  My only consolation is winning the $10,000 weekly prize for the most humiliating video— which of course will go viral— and finally bring my fifteen minutes of fame. It's all good and all in the name of drawing attention to a looming crisis.

I didn't recognize the phenomena a few years ago when I went on a strict vegan diet to improve my health. Even under this stringent diet, devoid of my beloved butter, eggs, cheese, and steak, the force of gravity increased. I ate raw spinach by the bale. I should have Popeye arms now. I consumed tofu by the brick load, gobbled blueberries, ate nuts—all the things Dr. Oz promised would lead me down the path to throwing away my blood pressure and cholesterol medications, as well as shedding unwanted pounds. Look at him, he's skinny as a rail. His hair keeps getting darker while my is turning whiter. How could he be wrong? He's a doctor, after all.

The results were stunning. After 18 months my blood lipids dipped about ten  percent, no where close to enough to remove statins. Not too long after, I had emergency surgery for a kidney stone too large to pass. At sixty-three I was too old to be a chronic stone thrower, so the wonderful folks at the Kidney Stone Clinic did a big work up on me to try to determine a cause. In addition to pissing into a bottle for an entire week, I had to keep track of my diet. Turns out all those healthy foods I was consuming are high in oxalates, the stuff of kidney stones. My doctor gave me a handout about oxalate content in foods. Yup, nearly everything I was eating was high in oxalates. I pleaded to the surgeon, "But Dr. Oz told me to eat this stuff." The surgeon smirked. "Then tell Dr. Oz to pass your next kidney stone."

I'm no longer vegan.

But the gravitational phenomenon that became apparent during my veganity has continued unabated. I have been at wits end trying to validate my theory among leading scientists. Like all men of vision, my theory has been utterly dismissed. Ha, they said the same thing to Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and even the dude who discovered Viagra. Look who's talking now?

Time is running out for me. My waist has expanded to 38". I had to buy new clothes. Plotting a simple line graph shows I'll be needing a crane to get me out of bed in the not too distant future.

We must act now my friends in bringing awareness to this frightening phenomenon. It could be the first signal that the long awaited reversal of the earth's magnetic poles is at hand. We need an awareness campaign, ribbons, slogans, media packages, spokespersons, local chapters, days weeks, even months dedicated to this noble cause. Following the awareness building paradigm so prominent in modern fundraising, we will be giving a dime from every dollar raised to sponsor research, with the other ninety cents going to build more awareness.

Please write me and let me know if you too have noticed this phenomena on your own bathroom scale. Together, we can raise our voices in a chorus of alarm. I think our slogan should be The Weight is Over.  To bad Save the Wails is already taken. How about: We Can't Weight Anymore?

Thank you and please pass the doughnuts.

 

 

Goal!

Spencer Dryden

A thirty-fifth anniversary looms ahead. Let me be the first one here to mention it. On February 22, 1980 one shot  from the stick of Mike Eruzione changed the course of USA Hockey. It was the deciding score in the defeat of the powerful Russian team —"The Miracle on Ice". It lifted the nation's spirits, which were sorely flagging due to prolonged recession and the helplessness we felt from the endless stalemate over the hostage situation in Iran. Other analysts have said that it rekindled a spirit of American Exceptionalism that ultimately elected Ronald Reagan. I don't know about that one. All I know was that it was played on a Friday afternoon. It was so unlikely that the USA would win that it wasn't broadcast live.

For all the accolades that flowed in the aftermath, fundamentally, it was a terrible shot, and therein lies the lesson. Eruzione was skating backward, his weight was on the wrong foot and he wasn't at a good shooter's angle. The shot itself was a tickler rather than a laser. Analyst Ken Dryden, called it "a good low shot", but the most one could hope for was a rebound from a kick save.  The miracle on ice was that the shot found the back of the net. It should have been a routine save. Eruzione got just enough of a screen from the Russian defenseman that the puck handcuffed the goalie Myshkin. It was behind him before he knew where it was.  And the rest is history.

The immediate lesson of the Eruzione goal is: shoot the puck. Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, the NHL's all time scoring leader, has said, "The scoring percentage on shots not taken is zero." That simple nostrum is as hard to follow on the ice as off. There's no rejection for a shot not taken.

One of my goals in 2014 has been to shoot the puck - in author's terms, make regular submissions. Throughout 2013 I had built a decent inventory of my male-centric brand of erotic fiction. But they were just sitting there as if awaiting some sort of anointing. I tweaked and tweaked, trying to imagine what I might be missing. I write to entertain myself, but that doesn't mean anyone else will be entertained.  I think I read close to one hundred stories of varying lengths, mostly shorter works, trying to get a feel for what worked. I thought my stuff was better than a lot of what I was reading. Still, I balked.  

My hesitancy was due in part to what I was seeing on the market. Actually it was what I wasn't seeing. Except for that cave place that claimed it was for men, there was no publishing house I could find that published male-centric erotic romance. Other male authors in the genre that I found are self-published. I didn't feel ready to go that route. There is a trope in erotic romance of employing a split POV. Part of the book is the man and his thoughts, part is the woman's. Often the only tension is their misunderstanding. I don't like those stories as a reader. My POV is strictly male. Female character's inner workings are revealed only through action and dialogue.

Then  fate intervened. In October of 2013. I had a emergency surgery for a kidney stone too large to pass. I learned what a ten was/is on the pain scale. Let me say in all humility that if men had babies we'd be extinct by now. In the aftermath, I mused that men my age can wake up feeling fine and by five PM they are on a slab at the funeral home or in the nursing home sitting in a wheel chair with a drool cup.

In January of 2014, I turned 64. It was time to jump over the boards and get in the game. I put my fear aside and starting shooting the puck. Three of them have found their way to the net. While Eruzione's little wobbler was a game winner, mine have been anything but. Still, I've learned more about the craft of writing since getting on the score board then I was learning on the bench. Critique groups are good, crit partners are essential, but the true measure of your work comes after it's out there with a cover and can't be hauled back to the bench.

I'm getting better. I'm not really a better writer, but I am becoming a better editor. My stories are often criticized for being too short. I told one commenter that if I knew what to add I would have done it. The stories were the perfect length for me, but not the perfect length for the reading audience who seem to be looking for an elongated emotional experience. I'm working on staying longer in the moment the way Lisabet and Giselle do so well. A few extra lines of dialogue, some additional back story carefully woven in, more descriptive material, drawing out pivotal scenes, adds depth rather than length.

It was only after being published the first time that this whole "author platform" came into my awareness. It's like I have to be the cheerleader, sell tickets, refreshments, clean the toilets, act as sports information director, and play-by-play announcer. I haven't been able to balance the creative and the promotional so I have taken time away from writing new material to build my platform. It's wobbly at this point, like a first time on skates.  I have one more work due out in February then I think I'm going to crawl back into my refrigerator box dwelling and start writing again.

I write stories about male fantasies for a straight male readership. My big challenge for 2015 is to find ways to reach directly to a male readership instead of trying to reach around female readers. I know it's not a big market now, at least for erotic romance, but it is a potential growth market.  Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Oh almost forgot. Mike Eruzione recently auctioned the jersey he wore at that game. The winning bid was $657,000. I wonder what the Russian goalie, Myshkin got for his jersey? ( Wait for it...) Not one red cent.