Squirrels

This entry is titled squirrels.

When I came home to Corning, New York in 2009, I find myself out of work, unemployed, no vehicle, and with a lot of time on my hands.

During the Summer of 2010 I found work only occasionally. With some of the money I had on hand I would go buy large bags of peanuts and then walk down to Denison Park, one of the local city parks here in town.

And I started to feed the squirrels.

It didn't take too long to gather a group of squirrels. I was after all giving away free food.

It was interesting to see them "adjust" their normal foraging behavior to the new behavior I was presenting, which included handouts of free peanuts.

It started innocently enough but as more squirrels came around, and I started tossing more here and there I began to notice a change in behavior.

There were squirrels that would fight off the other squirrels. As if staking their claim to this free food.

It happened over and over again.

It made me think about social situations with human beings. Here in the United States we have a similar system of giving away sustenance. It is called the unemployment system, and for those apparently unable to help themselves at all we have a system called Welfare.

I am not going to enter into a discussion on whether or not it is right to have such systems. It is beyond my knowledge and teaching to know positively what the correct thing to do is.

And now, just today, I have decided to publish the blog pages of one of my sceine fiction stories as a Kindle eBook. It was originally posted on Blogger free for all to read.

It takes me back to an all important question, how do you make money on something you are giving away for free?

The question applies to my old website, videofeedback dot com, where I used to post videos for free. At one point in time I discussed it with my college professor of Radio and Television, and his reply was how do you monetize it? How do you make money from it?

What I am leading to is that converting my online story to an electronic eBook for sale is probably not going to work out. At least it isn't going to provide a decent income at this point in time.

People will not pay for what they have become accustom to getting for free. Not until they become very hungry for it. And since my book is not food, the need for it is not very great.

My story is presently receiving about 1000 hits per month. What I have noticed is readership drops off quickly if 
I don't post another entry soon after the last one. What this implies is that my story doesn't hold a great deal of interest for my net readers, and thus when I go to convert it to an eBook, I suspect readership will drop off entirely.

What I can hope for, is that somehow something else besides a modicum of interest will manifest itself in some unknown fashion I have yet to see, or understand.

I will let you know.

-CRB

My online story.

As some of you may know I am writing an online science fiction (speculative fiction) story via my blogs.

What has been interesting to watch are how the stats report activity. I have only been able to use Google stats, which I am afraid aren't very accurate. There are reports about Google stats that indicate it is accurate, and others stating it is in-accurate, and for various reasons in both directions.

As I write this I have just had lunch and during lunch had a discussion with some people  who I am a great deal older than, but the comment was made that one person thought he was speaking to someone his own age about email.

We somewhat concluded that there is a trend away from email. Smart phone technology allows for texting, so why bother opening an email client anyway?

Which is counter to a recent marketing report I read about a month ago indicating that advertising via email is becoming, once again, a viable method.

I mention this as I am getting ready to conclude the 2nd part of my online story called Spark Gap.

And what I am noticing is that my stats are now starting to go down on this storyline, but up on the storyline that is the third part called The Battles.

I am not sure what to make of this. My thoughts go around the idea that everyone has figured out how SPARK GAP is going to end, and are either losing interest and moving on to the third part, The Battles, or the story is altogether boring and readers are simply becoming disinterested, so they are stopping reading.

And I have asked for feedback, but I am not getting any.

And I can't help wondering if the "mystique" and interest of the internet is beginning to ebb, and so telling a story online is a moot endeavor.

Oh yes, one more thing. As I look onto the world stage at the moment and see the turmoil around the world, from the Middle East to our own borders here in the US, the thought strikes me that we love to hate.

We hate each other for our differences, we hate each other for having what others don't and wanting it for ourselves, we hate each other and go to battle over it.

I watched the Enders Game movie this summer. An interesting story that essentially concludes with the defeat of the enemy aliens. And then hypothesizes, or correctly states that, once you defeat your enemy you love them. The hero goes to the leader of the enemy and makes a commitment to continue their race after having defeated them. It didn't do very well at the box office as I recall, not great but not bad either.

The idea though seems to hold true. From boys getting into fights on playgrounds, and then walking away friends, to unjust bosses in the work place.

I think I made a mistake earlier this year when my boss and I locked horns. This is taken out of context so the framework of why what happened is missing. From a psychological standpoint I am making an effort to reward via the concept of positive re-enforcement, as opposed to negative re-enforcement.

My boss and I got into argument after argument. In the end he left the company (not because of me but because a kobayashi maru situation was created, for those of you that don't know what the kobayashi maru is, it is reference to a Star Trek concept, that of the no win situation, Captain Kirk didn't believe in it), and a few months later I was asked to resign because of other issues at hand. In hindsight I probably should have seen the writing on the wall at that point and vacated the company as well. I had never been in that situation, so I didn't see it.

The psychology seems to hold though, get into a fight, and then you both walk away as friends.

After numerous conflicts with my boss, I ended up buying him one of these small remote control helicopters. After I had given it to him, I realized I had done exactly what I didn't want to do, I had rewarded negative re-enforcement. In hindsight that really bothers me.

I have been purposefully trying to not write into my online story conflict in such a way as to create a fight. Time and again critics of story telling talk about the glorification of war.

In my cinema studies class the conclusion was drawn at one point that if you don't have conflict, you don't have a story. And that war is the ultimate drama and story line.

I find then the Japanese outlook on telling stories worth a look. For a long time when the internet was getting started and the early efforts to put video onto the net were occurring, I watched AZN TV streaming internet video, AZN TV broadcast Japanese and Chinese storylines. The Japanese storyline quite often had endings I thought were unusual. No victor, Or perhaps the bad guys won. Or no conclusion, the story simply stops. Anything but the morality plays we entertain here in the US, and anyone subscribing to western style entertainment.

And recently I read about how Norway and the Netherlands in general, will watch hours long broadcasts of real video of barges moving up and down waterways, or something being built. In real time, not the typical US condensed version of time we are so readily used to.

When I started on the net it was clear to me that most, if not all, video will end up on the net. So I started my own streaming video site in 1996. And I concluded we have before us a whole new medium, we can do it in any way we want. And I started to post video that was uninterupted by commercial advertising, and was anything but the 23 minute (half hour broadcast), 54 minute (1 hour broadcast), etc..., that is typical for American broadcasting.