rlfj: Blog

I was surprised by the number of people who wrote me and offered different versions of the cigarette tar collection system used in the Science Fair project. It was interesting to read them and remember back to those dinosaur days. That project was actually run in my school (no, not by me) and the system discussed will work. Suck a few cartons through it and you get a measurable mass of tar in the cotton balls, and it looks just god-awful! The guy who did it even took some of the tar and rubbed it on a lab mouse, which a few days later developed cancer and died. Pretty damn gruesome! On the other hand, he pretty much dorked around with it, collecting the tar in the cotton filter, but not weighing it or analyzing it. Any of the systems mentioned to me, such as water traps and more efficient cooling mechanisms, would work. I spent the better part of ten years as an industrial chemist, and I still find it interesting.

The other thing that is starting now is that Carl is getting frisky. Sex will never be the prime focus of the story, but it is an element, and it was written for an adult site. This is one of the big differences between the StoriesOnline version and the StoryRoom version. This version is the PG-13 version.

There were a number of interesting comments on this chapter, specifically the exercise involved in predicting the next Arab-Israeli war using probability theory. The complaint was that this is an example of a problem called the Gambler’s Fallacy, and also that simply because events happen every ten years, it does not mean that there is a one-in-ten chance of them happening every year. That means that I obviously don’t know anything about probability or statistics.

Well, actually I do. Remember, the reason for this entire exercise is for Carl to gain control of his money in a brokerage account in order to actively trade stocks and commodities to get returns far higher than possible otherwise. He knows the future! A passbook account would be insane. Better to come up with a slick line of horseshit and predict a war in 1973, than try and beg for a chance to play with the money Mom wants to hold for him.

Another group of people commented that the investment strategy suggested by the first broker was the best one for the average investor. It may well have been. The thing to remember is that, because of his knowledge of the future - which he can’t tell anyone - Carl is not an average investor. For him, an active strategy in specific equities and commodities will work the best. What can’t be questioned is the first broker is making more than the investors, by churning accounts and keeping the investors in high priced proprietary funds.

There were some interesting comments about Carl and his plans to become a mathematician this time around. Some were of the view that he should be going crazy from boredom trying to go through school all over again, yet others seemed to feel he was moving too rapidly. I am not at all sure how to answer either of these complaints. The big thing is to try and blend in enough without going crazy. He looks like a very young thirteen-year-old, despite being sixty-seven-plus on the inside. He is trying to push those boundaries, but the boundaries, especially in the ‘60s, were very real. The public school system doesn’t handle geniuses well, let alone geniuses from the future. More will come in future chapters on pushing these boundaries.

One of the more interesting things has been to hear from readers from Baltimore County in Maryland. The places mentioned either do or did exist, and I tried to remain accurate and historical. On the other hand, if somebody thinks there is an error or anachronism, I am not going back and rewriting a fifteen-year-old story. We’ll just have to live with it.

Welcome to a new story – of sorts. I wrote A Fresh Start beginning in 2010 and began publishing it in 2011. The original I published on StoriesOnline as a ‘much sex’ version; this is the PG-13 version. Writing it was one of the most amazing things I have ever undertaken. It’s a genre I had never tackled before, and it’s always a favorite - the classic “what if” story. What if I knew then what I know now? What if I could do it all over again? This story generated reader emails at a level easily ten times what I had previously received. There is something about the topic or the characters that seems to strike a chord (or in some cases, a nerve) with people. I had never seen anything like it before!

It is critical to realize that this story was written at a time when the Tea Party was the dominant political movement. You can read that in the Prologue, where Carl Buckman describes the Great Recession and the plans the Tea Party espoused to cure all our problems.

How did the future I describe come about? I simply listened to the Tea Party! I don’t care what your beliefs are; if you listened to their speakers and read their plans, the America of the future would be very, very different. They didn’t want to just ‘shrink’ the government. The true believers wanted to eliminate the Federal government! No taxes and no cabinet departments other than the ones listed in the Constitution. Give power back to the states. End all government programs and handouts. Corporations and businesses were all good. I never thought I would live to see the day when nurses and teachers would be pelted with garbage because of their jobs. I am not making this stuff up. It was a race to the bottom!

That being said, this is not a story about politics! I can’t repeat that enough! This is a story about going back to the 1960s and 1970s. Yes, there will be some political commentary, but it will be much later in the story. The important thing to remember about politicians is that they are all lying sacks of shit. If you’re a Republican, it’s not just the Democrats that are lying sacks of shit, so are your guys. And for the Democrats, just remember, your guys are lying sacks of shit too, just like the evil ones on the other side. I am an equal opportunity abuser.

Also, always remember that this story was written years and years before Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and got into politics. Before that, I was a card-carrying Republican myself, since the days of Tricky Dick. That being said, there is nobody knowledgeable about American politics that can sit there with a straight face and say that the Republican Party of the 1960s and 1970s is the same as the Republican Party now. Things have changed, and to deny this is self-delusion. As Carl Buckman states in the Prologue, “My father was part of the ‘Greatest Generation’, and I am glad he never lived to see the mess us Baby Boomers made of things.”

As for Chapter 1, the biggest complaint anybody had was about Carl taking on the three older boys, and whether this was realistic. While I haven’t been in a fight since my own schoolboy days, the one thing I know is the line about, ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog!’ This is totally true. Likewise, I know that the best way to deal with adversaries, in any arena or format, is one at a time, and not all at once. I’ll stand by the realism in the story.

Enjoy!