The blue van with the official markings of the city pulled up and parked. Two people climbed out, clad in the blue uniform of the municipal parking enforcement agency. They walked over to the nearest parking meter and attached a strange looking canister to it. One person was working, the other seemed to be observing…

And thus begins my entry for Nixy Valentine’s Writing Adventure Group challenge #10, “The Professional”. This time we were asked to observe and describe someone we see around us, someone performing an everyday job we know little about. As usual, my imagination got the better of me.

Please note that this is pure fiction, even though it was inspired by actual observations.For details about the WAG, as well as links to the other participants this week (as they become available), see below.

Metered professionals

The blue van with the official markings of the city pulled up and parked. Two people climbed out, clad in the blue uniform of the municipal parking enforcement agency. They walked over to the nearest parking meter and attached a strange looking canister to it. One person was working, the other seemed to be observing.

My eyes were on them, I couldn’t help it and I’m sure they felt it. There was a scandal a few years back, where employees of the agency embezzled money from parking meters, a lot of money. For some reason that scandal had the normally docile inhabitants of this little city up in arms. Perhaps it was because we hate parking meters so much.

The strange looking canister is supposed to prevent theft and I suppose always working in pairs is another countermeasure. They moved along the row of meters, emptying each. They didn’t talk, nor did they look at their surroundings.

I felt sorry for them. Imagine working in such an environment of distrust, of feeling like you’re being treated as a crook, even though you’ve done nothing wrong. Or maybe that was just me projecting, perhaps they didn’t talk simply because they had nothing to say? In fact, perhaps people like me, who can’t forget the scandal, are the only problem they face in their job, the only thing making it unpleasant?

The two men had reached the end of the row of meters. One of them detached the canister from the final meter and they started walking back towards their van. The street was quiet, except for a few pedestrians like myself and a lot of birds. The sun was just rising above one of the mountains surrounding the city.

By pure chance I passed the van just as they were loading the canisters through the open rear doors. I couldn’t help but notice an odd looking contraption in there, nor could I possibly miss the look the two uniformed officials sent each other as they realized I was right behind them.

They hurriedly closed the doors of the van, but it was too late, I knew what I’d seen. One of the canisters was connected to the contraption and there were some loose coins on the floor of the van. The men stood there, squarely and silently, staring at me.

I knew I should have crossed the street.

In the challenge, Nixy asked those of us who completed both #8, “Rose Colored Glasses”, and this one, to comment on which was the most difficult. Interesting question!

To me, logically, this one should have been easier. To take something nice and make it scary or repulsive ought to be fun, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t come up with anything.

So I feel that this week’s entry from me is a bit of a cheat. But I hope you enjoy it regardless. I’ve called it “Earthrise”.

For details about the WAG, as well as links to the other participants this week (as they become available), see below.

Earthrise

The Earth: Home. Blue planet hanging in space, covered in perfect white blankets of cloud, home to every human who ever lived, every person you know and love, every work of art ever conceived.

Imagine seeing it through the viewport of a spacecraft, like the astronauts of Apollo 8 did, the first humans ever to see an Earthrise above the horizon of the Moon.

Imagine it growing larger in the window, as Jim Lovell, played by Tom Hanks, put it in the movie Apollo 13. What was a blue marble you could cover with your thumb is now almost completely dominating your field of view, an achingly beautiful panorama of deep blue oceans, lush green land, ice and desert, mountains and canyons.

Now imagine that it’s going to kill you in the next 20 minutes and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Your spacecraft is damaged, or you’re coming in to steep, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you’re going to burn up in the atmosphere, you’re caught inside the gravitational well created by Earth’s huge mass and it is relentless.

Even Houston has finally fallen silent, they know only too well that you have a problem and they also know there’s nothing anyone can do. You’ve said your hurried goodbyes and you’ve gone through the checklists, even though there isn’t much point.

So you look out at the largest object your existence has encountered, much too large for your mind to comprehend, even though you’re one of the select few who’ve seen it from a distance. When you look towards the horizon you can see the thin band of the Earth’s atmosphere, impossibly tiny compared to the size of the planet. Everything, all life, exists inside that thin layer of air.

You feel sadness, loss, incomprehension. Your mind wanders to the first day of spring, the sound of laughter, the feeling of waves lapping at your feet. Your heart bursts with love, more intense and more laden with sorrow than anything you’ve ever felt. You stare at the blue oasis in the empty blackness and feel lonely beyond what anyone can bear.

Suddenly you’re pulled back in your seat, as you hit the top of the atmosphere and it starts to slow you down. You know this is it, once you fall a little deeper the friction of the storm of rushing air will unleash a fury that your ship cannot withstand. You bargain, you plead, you howl in rage as the Gs build up, rapidly now.

The windows are covered in flickering gold, the soothing blue of home replaced by an eerie glow of angry ions building up towards a crescendo. Everything falls quiet inside you and you start to black out as the Gs mount beyond what your body can stand. You never feel the sudden stab of searing hot gas that penetrates you, moments before everything breaks apart.

Minutes later the firestorm has abated and a few remaining parts of your spacecraft are tumbling through the air, towards the sea below. There are no traces of you, ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust.

Welcome home.

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The Writing Adventure Group is on Facebook.  Join us there too, and get weekly reminders so you never miss an adventure.

How to Join the Writing Adventure Group

Pallavi Agarwal (On Facebook)

Iain Martin

Peter Spalton

Nancy Parra

Nixy Valentine

Christine Segina (New WAG Member!)

J. M. Strother – Mad Utopia

Christine Kirchoff

Sharon Donovan

Marsha

Next week’s Writing Adventure:

“WAG #10: The Professional” As we go through our days, we’re surrounded by people doing everyday jobs: the guy that reads the gas meter, cashiers, bank tellers, security guards, doctors, circus clowns… This week, your assignment is to observe someone doing a job (their profession should be one you don’t know that much about). Describe him/her and also what they’re doing, why they’re doing it (as best you can tell), and how. Feel free to use your imagination, but don’t forget the concrete observation! Special thanks to Lulu for this week’s topic idea!

Post the results on your blog, and read this post about the group for information on how to notify Nixy so your post will be properly included in next week’s list.  (Note, please include WAG #10 in the subject heading and tell her how you want your name to appear please!) Deadline: next Tuesday, May 5th.

A turd, a poop, a big no. 2, solid bodily waste, droppings, feces, manure. Presumably of canine origin. And just where I wanted to lie down in the grass to catch some rays.

As Mary Douglas once famously stated, “Waste is matter out of place.”

That’s what the droppings in the picture represented to me. An annoyance, a disgusting intrusion into my sunny Saturday.

But what about to everyone else involved?

This is for Nixy Valentine’s Writing Adventure Group #8. The task was to go out and find something repulsive or annoying and paint it in Rose Colored Glasses, really sell it.

Waste is life

Dog went from frustrated to happy in one tenth of a second, flat. Master was opening a can of food and Dog was beside himself, salivating with anticipation. His tail was wagging furiously and his attention wandered back and forth between the affection and loyalty he felt for Master, and the wanton desire he felt for the food.

Two hours later Dog was completely happy once more, this time because Master was taking him for their walk. His attention was focused on all the exciting smells along their usual route, his muzzle in constant motion, sweeping the olfactory landscape.

When they got to the park, he had to go. He sniffed the bushes and the grass and turned in little circles, going round himself. Master stood next to him, keeping watch, but Dog could sense his impatience. He didn’t understand it but there was nothing he could do about it, because he had to go. Now.

He squatted with his hind legs and his body became rigid as he felt the bowel movement commencing. Dog didn’t assign any value to it, negative or positive, it was just something that needed to happen right then and there. But when it was over, he felt immense satisfaction, so much so that he temporarily forgot Master’s impatience.

He was about to circle his accomplishment when Master yanked his leash and started walking again. Dog felt a slight disappointment, he’d wanted to inspect his business, to sniff it before Master bent down and picked it up. Surely he was going to pick it up, like he always did?

Dog soon forgot his disappointment and confusion, instead he beamed contentment to the world. His belly was full, his bowels empty and the night was beautiful. Cold, but so very clear, covered in stars. He looked up at them, the business in the park already forgotten.

It was the middle of the day, and Fly was following a trail of scent, shared with him by two other flies. They were closing in on their target, Fly could see it now, a huge dropping. This would be a feast for them all.

He alighted on it and immediately set to work. He spat digestive juices onto the parts that were rich in food, ceaselessly wandering back and forth between the good spots, and looking for new ones.

Fly soon had to jockey for space, other flies were arriving every minute, each one searching for the most nutritious bits, all of them frenzied by the lovely odors emanating from their windfall. It was a free-for-all, getting more aggressive by the hour.

The next day the scene repeated itself, and the next, until a week had passed and several rains had fallen. There were almost no more scents now and most of the once magnificent and seemingly endless meal had been washed into the ground. Fly was long gone, hunting elsewhere for other prizes.

The tiny shrub broke through the surface of the Earth and into the sunlight. Its roots were already deep in the soil, which was rich in nutrients. It sensed Light coming from one particular direction of the sky and started aligning its single twig above ground to it.

Four days later the twig had branches and little shoots of green. Tree was growing exceptionally fast, it had almost limitless resources available to it, more than enough water and nutrients. It fed off of the nitrogen compounds that were so abundant in this spot.

Tree had competition, but fought it ferociously. It spread more branches, with more shoots, as wide and as fast as it could. It was still the tallest growth in this spot, it literally had the upper hand: It could block the sunlight from all of its shorter competitors.

Two weeks on the little patch of grass was unrecognizable. Tree had grown to dominate it completely, with deep roots spreading far and wide. It still got most of its nutrients close to home though, but the roots also gave it access to large amounts of water. The competition was decimated, Tree controlled the Light.

One year later Tree bore flowers. Insects landed on them, seeking the rich nectar. One night a man and a dog came by, pausing as the dog peed on Tree. It sensed the drops soaking into the ground, a rich infusion of nutrients.

Tree longed for daybreak and Light, when it would put those nutrients to good use, in the endless and merciless battle against its enemies, parasites all.

It could feel the weeds pushing against the earth around its trunk, it could sense the fungi trying to smother its roots and it knew that there would come a day when an enemy would outgrow it and block its light.

Dog was happy, his bladder empty. Tree didn’t feel anything, but it radiated unyielding menace to those able to sense it.

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The other participants in this week’s WAG:

How to Join the Writing Adventure Group

Cora Zane

Nancy Parra

Peter Spalton

Christine Kirchoff

Pallavi Agarwal (On Facebook)

DMW Carol

Marsha

Iain Martin

Lulu

Melanie Trevelyan

Sharon Donovan

Next week’s Writing Adventure:

“WAG #9: Warning!” Last week the topic was to make something ugly sound beautiful, so this time let’s do the opposite! Choose an unfamiliar object (in other words, one you have no history with) that strikes you as beautiful, appealing, or somehow desirable etc… some ideas might be: a child, a sunset, an attractive shop window, a scenic view, a piece of art, an appetising meal in a restaurant… and write about it in such as way as to make it unappealing or even disgusting, frightening or repulsive to your reader. If you did last week’s topic as well (Rose Colored Glasses) I’d be very interested to know which of these was harder for you!

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
– Blaise Pascal

I’m calling it the Blogger’s Curse: An endless supply of electrons, a limited amount of time and no editor.

Almost no matter what you have to say, and how you say it, there is a shorter way. The trick is to find it and use it, without losing any of the semantic payload. If you’re good, you’ll make your message more elegant in the process, and increase its punch.

Now to live by it.

And that’s it, end of post. QED.

I’m writing a series of articles on how I lost 53 kg (117 lb) in 18 months and managed to keep the weight off.

I’m trying very hard not to preach or assume to have all the answers, I’m just telling my story, what happened to me and how I dealt with it.

This is the second installment, dealing with motivation and how it all started.

Please make sure you read the first part of the series, including the disclaimer.

Part 2, Motivation

I was very lucky; I had my true motivation handed to me on a silver platter. It was so blindingly obvious I couldn’t help but see it.

My family has a history of heart problems. My dad died when he was only 48 years old, of a massive heart attack. His father died of the same reason at the age of 66 and as if that wasn’t enough, one of my best friends died of a heart attack when he was only 37.

When I was 41, one morning as I was climbing the stairs to my office, I felt very weak, I broke into a cold sweat and my heart was pounding. I had to sit down, put my feet up, and rest for a while until I got my strength back and my heartbeat under control.

The next day the exact same thing happened again, only much worse this time. One of my colleagues used to be a paramedic, so I told him what happened and asked him for his advice. He told me what I already knew, to go see a doctor right this minute!

Back then I was like a machine, burying myself in work, not taking care of myself, making all the wrong things the important things in my life. Of course I was overweight, and on top of everything I was under-sunned and looking back, not at all very happy. I had loved, lost, and lost again, by giving up on myself, without even knowing it.

We all go through life taking it for granted, and we all know that we do. That’s why we read books on personal growth and attend seminars, so someone can tell us, warn us, put us on notice. We breathe a sigh of relief that we’ve been made aware of the error of our ways and determine that we’re going to change it all. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

For years I’d been thinking that I should go see a cardiologist, just to get a checkup and make sure I wasn’t heading for the same fate as my father. But I’d always put it off for later. Every time I felt the slightest pain in my chest I would get afraid, worried that my lifestyle was catching up with me.

Only this time, I really went. The doctor was a mild mannered man, he listened to my family history, drew blood, put me on a treadmill and probed my heart in all sorts of doctorly ways. At one point he was looking at it with ultrasound, using much the same type of machine that’s used to look at babies inside their mothers’ bellies.

Before

He turned the monitor over so I could see. I was lying there, looking at the screen, feeling like I was face to face with my longtime nemesis. I could see my heart beating, even hear it, and the only emotion I felt was fear.

A few minutes later the doctor gave me the all clear. He told me that I was in good health, that I should consider losing some weight, but that my heart was just fine.

That day I tipped the scales at 137.4 kg (302 lb). I’m 186 cm (6’1”) tall.

When I stepped out onto the sidewalk from his office, I felt an enormous sense of relief, like my life was being handed back to me, along with a warning to use it better. In an instant I saw how I’d given up on myself, on my life, fully expecting to die at any time. I’d been afraid to love, to have a family, because I didn’t think I’d be around to take care of them.

After

After that everything happened really fast. I had long hair in a ponytail back then, another thing I had long wanted to do something about, but not really dared. Change was scary to me. That day I went straight from the doctor’s office to a barbershop, didn’t even pause to think about it.

Well, that’s one way to lose weight, I guess. As I left the barbershop half an hour later I had a firm resolve in my gut: I would lose 40 kg (88 lb), and I would do it in no more than two years. And I would never, ever, allow myself to go back to that place of fear.

The only thing was that I knew how difficult it is to lose weight, not to mention how difficult it is to keep it off once lost. I realized I needed a plan, and in order to come up with one I would have to do some serious soul searching.

More on that, and how all this can apply to you, in the next installment.

Fiction

This is a little piece of fiction I just wrote for Nixy Valentine’s Writing Adventure Group. I was going to follow the guidelines, honest, but once I started things just flowed and this was the result.

The assignment for this WAG was to observe someone, imagine their background, and come up with a secret for them. I really did observe the boy in my story, the rest is pure imagination.

This is my first ever attempt at writing fiction that I’ve showed to anyone outside my closest circle of family and friends, I hope you like it.

I’ve decided to call it “One down“.

For details about WAG #7, and the other participants’ entries (as they become available), please see the end of this post.

One down

The boy opened the passenger side door of his father’s car and started to get out. Cerebral Palsy made his movements clumsy and jerky, but as usual he declined help.

With his father and brother in tow he started walking, his knees scissoring for each step. It was almost painful to watch, his progress slow and his birdlike arms extended out in front of him, wrists limp. Even his head was birdlike, small and tilted to one side.

The most remarkable thing about him though, was his smile. People around him responded to it, smiled back, overcoming their feelings of awkwardness in the face of his handicap. With each genuine smile from a stranger, the boy’s own beamed even brighter.

St John had seen it before. Every week it was the same routine, the boy and his family entered the little antiques shop across the street from the coffeehouse, where he was always in place, observing them.

The handicapped boy had a passion for old religious artifacts and was already a seasoned collector. St John had followed him online for months, learning as much as he could once he discovered the boy’s true identity, his dark secret.

He looked around, casually. The little café was filled with weekend shoppers, loud and happy people who didn’t notice the beautiful wooden floors beneath their feet or the ornate chandelier hanging above the counter. Nor did they consciously notice the noise level inside the small room, incredibly loud considering it was all created by voices.

St John did, he felt separated from the other patrons by the wall of sound they created, and by the fact that he noticed so much about them and their surroundings, but they didn’t seem to notice him at all. Which was perfect.

He finished his coffee and looked at his watch. He allowed 12 minutes to pass, then got up, paid and left. He started walking towards the intersection at the end of the street, before crossing over. He glanced at his watch again, 17 minutes.

He knew what he had to do, it was necessary, vital. Besides, he didn’t have a choice. He put on a pair of gloves and felt the cold, hard metal in his pocket. Reassuring. Ready. With his eyes fixed on the door of the antiques shop he continued towards it, waiting for it to open any second.

When it did, and the dad peered out, St John was ready. His mind altered state, he acquired tunnel vision, his hearing dropped away and his muscles tensed. When the boy appeared in the door, St John was only 10 steps away and closing rapidly.

He pulled the gun from his pocket, aimed it at the boy’s chest and fired. Three shots in a tight grouping, near the heart. The boy looked surprised for an instant, then his face crumpled and he fell to the pavement. St John stood over him, and feeling nothing, delivered the kill shot to the head.

Time stretched. The voices inside his head fell silent. For an eternity he stood and watched, trying to reconcile the sight of the dead handicapped boy with the demon he knew him to have been. St John knew himself to be an angel, a soldier, and it was his unpleasant job to kill demons.

Suddenly his hearing returned, his ears were ringing and people were screaming all around him. He could smell the blood pooling rapidly at his feet. Without looking up he dropped the gun and headed for the corner, and into the side street. He got on the stolen scooter he had parked there, put on the helmet and sped away.

Two hours later he was by himself, anxious to complete the final step of his task. He was enclosed from the world in his dark apartment, sitting in front of his computer. He went online, logged on to Twitter and updated his status with just five words: “It has begun. One down.”

No one among his followers believed him. Yet.

Here are Nixy’s instructions for this WAG:

“WAG #7: Imaginings” This one is people-watching with a twist.  Observe a stranger and sketch a brief background for them, including a secret. Then describe why they are in that particular place at that particular time (where you ran into them) and how it will affect their future. Feel free to be creative, but don’t forget to describe the concrete reality that made you pick them in the first place! (Thank you to Christine Kirchoff for this week’s WAG topic!)

The other participants in this week’s WAG:

How to Join the Writing Adventure Group

Nancy Parra

Iain Martin

Cora Zane

Sue O’Shields

Mickey Hoffman

J.M. Strother – Mad Utopia

Sharon Donovan

Nixy Valentine

DMW Carol

Next week’s Writing Adventure:

“WAG #8: Rose Colored Glasses” Go out and choose an unfamiliar object (in other words, one you have no history with) that strikes you as ugly, repulsive, annoying, etc… some ideas might be: a wad of squashed gum on the pavement, a dead squirrel on the side of the road, an ugly sign, a loud construction site, a tacky sculpture in a charity shop… and write about it in such as way as to make it appealing to your reader. Really sell it! Use whatever words you want and cheat as much as you want, but do your best!

I lost 53 kg (117 lb) in 18 months and I’ve kept the weight off for two years now and counting.

There were no particular diet involved, no counting of calories or carbs, no magic bullet. Just some careful thought and a decision after life happened to give me a kick in the behind.

This is what happened to me, what I chose to do about it and how I turned my life around. It’s not a 12-step program, it’s not expert advice, I’m not trying to sell you anything or sell you on anything.

It’s simply a story, my story. Enjoy.

Part 1, Introduction

First of all, I feel the need for a disclaimer:

Please understand that I have no medical training, I’m not an expert on nutrition, nor do I have any training in physiology or psychology. This is simply a collection of notes about what worked for me. Use the information in these blog posts at your own risk and always use your best judgement. Remember that no one knows your body like you do.

Important note: You should always consult a physician before starting an exercise regimen and before embarking on any kind of diet!

I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret. We all know how to lose weight, we just don’t want to face up to it: Eat less and be more physically active. It’s both that easy and that impossibly hard and you already knew that before you started reading this story.

I knew it too, I’ve known it all my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that losing weight is easy or simple to do, just that it isn’t complicated. There’s a huge difference.

The question isn’t what to do in order to lose weight, but how to keep doing it without losing faith in yourself and giving up. In other words, losing weight is all about motivation. This may sound a little strange to you, as I’m sure you’ve been highly motivated to lose weight for a long time.

What I’m saying is that it’s not just a question of how much you want to lose weight; it’s also very much a question of you understanding exactly why you want to lose weight. Once you know and understand what drives you, you can make some very important decisions about the rest of your life and what’s most important to you.

We all want to fit in, we want to look beautiful through other people’s eyes, we want to be able to shop for clothes in regular sizes, we want a new boyfriend or girlfriend, we want to believe that other people might find us desirable. Never mind that maybe they already do, the problem is that we just can’t believe in it and we sorely need to.

So we decide to lose weight. We already know how to, but we’re accustomed to seeing ourselves as failures, so deep down we don’t think we can do it. We give up without really trying, or we do what’s even worse, we start looking for that magical quick fix and easy diet we think even we can follow. Above all, we don’t start exercising, at least not much or in earnest.

In my case I had been overweight ever since I was a child, but when I was about 16 years old I became an athlete. I started crewing (rowing) competitively and enjoyed it immensely. Of course, all this hard physical activity meant that I lost a lot of weight. Even after I gave up the rowing I kept working out, I took up running and managed to keep the weight off for a few more years.

However, after my running buddy moved away I stopped running and you can pretty much guess the rest. For all the years since I kept thinking that I would take it up again, I really enjoyed being fit and felt so much better about myself, and my health in general.

I never did, and the reason why was simple enough: I knew how hard it is to start exercising when you’re completely out of shape, and in particular when you’re also overweight. It’s not just hard, it’s painful and if you’re not careful you can even hurt yourself.

More on that, and how I got my motivation to change my life handed to me on a silver platter, in the next installment. But first, some “before and after” pictures:

The author, before and after. Credit: Gunnar Helliesen

There’s about 18 months between the two pictures. In the picture on the left I weighed a little over 137 kg (302 lb) and in the picture on the right I weighed 84 kg (185 lb). The purpose of posting these pictures is just to tell you that if I can, you can too. I’m not special, I don’t have secret powers or a magic recipe. In fact, I am you.

Feedback or questions? Please post below! If you want to contact the author directly, please see the “About” page.

The 2010 Prius. Credit: Toyota

The thing about the Prius is that you know it’s going to be a high volume car (yes, even in this economy, car sales will pick up again eventually).

So, given that we’re going to see a lot of them on our roads, why couldn’t Toyota make them look cool too?

I mean, the technology is great, but the car looks like someone took a particularly uninspired brick, tried unsuccessfully to streamline it a little so they could toss it further, and then called it a day when they got to the rear doors.

I’m not asking for Italian sportscar styling here, just a little inspiration, like the good people at Toyota actually care about the product they put out.

Because now the car looks like they really couldn’t care less about it.

Styling is of course a matter of taste. I’m sure there are people out there who actually like the way the Prius looks, but they have to be few and far between.

Design has never been Toyota’s strong suit, but the Prius has to be their worst looking model ever. Still, you can’t argue with success, and they do sell a lot of cars.

Strange old world.

2010 Prius. Credit: Toyota

Spinning a good yarn

Writing is pretty scary business. There is absolutely no way you can string more than two sentences together without revealing something about yourself.

Writing in public is like inviting a bunch of strangers to come hang out in your head. Sort of like having them over to your place to watch TV, except once there you can’t get rid of them. They’re on your couch, in your fridge and on your case.

So you might as well come on in and make yourself at home. Don’t mind the mess, I haven’t had a chance to clean up. Actually, I’ve given up. You would too, if you lived inside my skull.

On top of everything, writing is incredibly hard work. It looks easy enough, you just sit in front of a computer and hack on the keyboard all day and call that work, right?

In reality it’s exhausting. For every word that gets put down on paper, tens have been considered, tried out and discarded. Then you second guess yourself, you go back over what you wrote and see if it can be improved upon, again and again. Or is that just me?

Why then, do we do it? I don’t know about you, but I write because I have something to say and I want to be heard. I’m not in it just for the money or the glory (yeah, right), I want readership.

In addition to blogging about whatever current events grab my attention, I’m also writing little snippets of fiction and non-fiction, some finished and some unfinished sketches of stories that I’d like to test out on you, my dear readers.

If you read one or more of the stories, I’d appreciate it if you leave me a comment, letting me know what you think. I have an idea of where I want to go with this and I need your feedback to help me gauge my progress.

I happen to believe that stories are the main building blocks of all human communication. When we’re trying to get something across to another person, be it to criticize or to inspire them, or even to try to sell them something, we’re telling a story.

If the story is compelling, and we’re good at conveying it, we achieve what we want. This must have been going on since we first huddled around fires in caves, tens of thousands of years ago.

Language can be fascinating, but most of the time we put far too much emphasis on it and far too little on what we’re using it for. Why do we deconstruct language and get lost in logic if what we really want is to make someone understand or feel something?

Yes, the tool we use is important, but let’s not lose sight of the means we use it for, the good story.

So what makes a fine tale? How long or short must a story be to get its ideas and suggestions across? What do we want with our stories, why do we feel so driven to tell them?

Let’s try to find out. I’m posting the first story here very shortly, I hope you’ll like it. It’s not fiction, it’s the story about how I lost a lot of weight and kept it off.

Some day I may even work up the courage to post a piece of fiction.

The Tesla Model S. Credit: Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors introduced the new Model S sedan this week. This new EV (electric vehicle) will most likely be built in Southern California, not San Jose as previously announced.

The good news: It can be charged in 45 minutes, can drive up to 480 km (300 miles) on one charge, will do 0-96 kph (0-60 mph) in under 6 seconds, it seats 7 and will cost under $50,000 in the US after tax credits.

The bad news: That 480 km range won’t be available at introduction, production won’t start until late 2011 and the company needs almost $400 million in federal loans to even get started.

Still, it’s a beautiful and very capable car, if it were in showrooms right now with the above specs it would be downright revolutionary.

The Tesla Model S, front three quarters view. Credit: Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors plan to produce 20,000 cars per year once production starts. The powertrain could still be produced in San Jose, while the rest of the car will most likely be manufactured in some abandoned aircraft hangar in the Los Angeles area.

In order to get those federal loans Tesla will have to move into an existing and empty structure. They claim there are no suitable buildings in the Bay Area but plenty of old and abandoned aerospace facilities in SoCal that fit the bill.

The Tesla Model S, rear three quarters view. Credit: Tesla Motors

The platform is Tesla’s own and the car will be manufactured more or less from the ground up by Tesla in California. It will be very interesting indeed to see if Elon Musk and his merry men and women can pull it off.

Anecdote: I saw a Tesla Roadster outside my favorite Peet’s Coffee in Los Gatos not long ago. As it pulled up and parked just next to where I was sitting, I didn’t hear a thing. I wanted to hear that lack of sound again, so I stuck around until it was time for the driver to leave.

Of course, just as the Tesla started to pull away, the to my plans very inconsiderate driver of the SUV next to it fired up his dino incinerator. Still, seeing that little black “Lotus” pull away from the light a minute later in almost total silence was very cool.