Metacognition and Jim Kelly

Who is the voice in your head?
I mean the one heard while reading a book or a blogpost to yourself.
Is it mine? If you know my voice, do you hear it

or your concept of it
or your own voice?
Are you even 'hearing'?

It is a question which comes up in Lit class. Usually framed as,
'What does the reader bring to the meaning of a story?'
Author Jim Kelly adds to the issue by reading his own stories aloud for us.

I like the one about the proof of God.
Click the link and scroll down to 5JUNE2006.

Metacognition and Justine Larbalestier

I found a metacognitive blogger who has been
thinking about thinking
about the same ideas I ponder.
The same genre, even the same era.
I imagine her sitting in the last outpost, beyond the frontier town furthest out in the direction I want to travel, at the bar. She's returned from another trip not so much tired as revisiting. Just to report back and remind herself why she does what she does. Take a look at her blog http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/
and she's down there in the blogs I follow.

Flip

Lazy.
I am in the throes of a summertime lull.
The spin-down and freedom has become a quiet drift.
I would pick a direction but for one consideration: is anyone else going with me?
So it is more like a contemplation of the kind of future I want to see. I will finish my M.A. if just for the money. I will write more for myself. I will continue to work hard if only to firm up. I will hit the campus running and ready to motivate 13 year-olds.

There, that feels better. Those all have attainability...
...and anybody may join in.

Escape Pod

I have been diagnosed with an auditory processing deficiency.
By my wife.
So it is serious.
I am a visually stimulated person, usually.
So when my favorite brother -in-law once told me about Esacpe Pod--I did not hear him.
Until he told me once more.
A site where they read SF stories... why not read them yourself?
I need the words of a story to go in to my eyes more than my ears.
But now I hear very nice stuff while I drive to work. Very cool.

All their stuff is produced professionally. You download it all for free.
Honestly, some are better than others, but I have never abandoned one midway.
They offer famous and first-time authors. Steve Eley reads a lot of them and others appear from time to time. Some very unique voices.
If you are not an SF person then use their links to other stuff.
Horror, fantasy, weird, I am sure you will find something to download. Get started by clicking Escape Pod above.

Music Explosions

So what is more Metacognitive than music?
May one quantify Metacognition?
New music mushrooms my mind.
Here is a list:
Daikaiju
Johnathan Coulton
Fluke
Muse
Delerium

Inspirations

So I found this odd survey thing.
Just click a few answers and your underlying proclivities pop right out.
Yeah...
I got Vonnegut first. I thought of skewing the answers to get Lem specifically but simply answered them the first time. I got Lem on purpose the second time.
How fun!
I will try for others next. Drop by Peromyscus too. She has a take.

I am: Stanislav Lem This pessimistic Pole has spent a whole career telling ironic stories of futility and frustration. Yet he is also a master of wordplay so witty that it sparkles even when translated into English.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Choose the Best Answer

When you seem to have only bad choices, you still need to pick the best answer.

True during the state's testing;

true throughout life.

As you look at choices A,B,C & D it is helpful to realize that all of them could be right. Your work, as given by the state, is to select the one that is more right than all the others.

Metacognition

rules the processes of building standardized test as much as taking them.

Don't Ask Don't Tell

Why would anyone use this protocol for maintaining a personal relationship?

You Crazy People

All my friends are crazy. Every single person I know is a total lunatic. This means you. This means you even if I don't know you. Yeah, YOU.

YOU are CRAZY!

What? That offends you? Are you really objecting to what you're reading here?
Why - is the tone too rude? Too blunt? Too abrupt?
It is all your fault you know. The voice you hear is you. Sure these words have connotations but I am not saying them to you in a mean way. No one is talking here. You're hearing voices in your head right now. Because you are crazy.
Not the wild sexy things you do. Not the little illegalities you commit at the liquor store. Not the way you drive. Not what you belive about your parents, or God, or your pets. None of that makes you crazy. You just are.

A Gift, a Poem

Got this in an otherwise painful email the other day:

{ Here's a poem
I Am a Strange Loop
Chasing the Sun
Looking for Peace on Earth
and a Future Perfect
Eureka! I say
Who Can Save Us Now?
1001 Ways to Be Romantic
What If?

Marie }

One of those personal little gems which shine with meaning.
You should know they are titles of books I have on the shelf. The poet was using them to give me comfort and it did much to soften a hard day.

Wow

I wrote a few lines a while ago (below) and then I blinked.
I am a few weeks past half-time now and can't believe all the 'life' I have experienced just since then. Take a step back in time to 2008, before the holidays:

{ My job is officially one-fourth of the way to completion. The hectic get everything up and running craziness is over. Now there are twenty weeks of maintainance and routine. Then the spin-down. Shifting into "cruise mode" makes me nervous. }

I never published this. It was too much journal and not enough point. Sure, I realize I am the only reader of this so far but it isn't a journal. Metacognition has a point. I am possesed of enough ego to want to share my pointed observations.

With anyone.

And me.

I guess I'm in "cruise mode" now and it seems fine. Job-wise, not home-wise.
At home things went "red-alert" and "shields up" if the analogy holds.

So, that's the point of this. Analogies can be used to think about thinking.

Surfacing

Read a cool book.

Surfacing by Andrew Scott Turner.

The setting is an underground civilization about two hundred years from now. The people retreated from America as the self-destruct commenced. As the decades passed, they went deeper until the time when our story takes place.
I loved the young female protagonist. She's as fiery as I hope I'm raising mine to be. She's a swimmer, like I was at her age. (Undefeated! Go Marlins!)
Really, it deserves a good critique. It harks back to the Hollow Earth stories of a century ago. It inverts the post-colonial thrust because the protagonist is driven to ascend for her encounter with the society her people left behind.
Stay tuned.

Forget It!

I built it. I tore it down.
I know where it hurts. I make it better.
I know where it is weakened.
I make it stronger.
I know what I can not do. I try.
I find new ways.
I am building it.