Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
(for reg’lar TToT Readers or, as we call them back in the lunchroom when we’re on break, ‘those listaphilic, seek-the-higher-path, goodness-sharing, wacko bloggers’, a little update on the numbering of this and subsequent TToT posts for the month of September. I’ve fallen victim to the siren call of the 30 Day Blog Challenge.* So if you see a number in the title, you’re reading a 30DC post)
1) Grateful for L.‘s ** Post this week. She writes about one of the most commonly-shared-among-clarks-(and-certain-scotts-and-rogers) dreams, ‘the Victorian English library’. Replete with walls of books (and those very cool ladders on wheels in tracks), leather furniture, leaded glass doors overlooking a garden. Who would not enjoy such accommodations? Trouble is (warning: hypo-gratitudiness item), as we would detect (were we to time travel back to such a place), the Owner would be a roger (unless he were a scott, in which case he would only be in the library between trips abroad, and then, only to stalk one of the domestics or perhaps to entertain the daughter of an influential Dowager), the Lady of the house would be a roger (unless she was a scott, in which case…damn! I am there!). Where are the clarks, you ask? see that silver bell on the side table? …lol (now, lets name names, i.e. authors who wrote this kind of story? You simply have to go to Michael Moorcock. Especially enjoyable series: ‘The Dancers at the End of Time’. )
2) cars. …and the roads that support their travel through space. What’s not to be grateful for when you have a car that’s comfortable and a job that requires traveling distances? I was thinking about that just the other day, how much of a difference ‘speedy travel’ makes. I was driving from a property in CT, back to my office and I stopped the car on a little-traveled rural road, turned off the engine and thought about what would happen if my car disappeared. I pictured the walk back to the office (clarks have an impressive ability to visualize). Then, (in my head), I got rid of the paved road. Holy shit! Even allowing for a path through the woods and over the fields, my walk would’ve taken at least a couple of days. It then came home to me, how when you read how people lived their entire lives in their villages, that it was because they sort of had to… then I thought ( I am a clark, ya know)… time itself must have been quite a different experience back then (yeah…all the time…and all that time.)
3) damn! time for another hypo-G item: I just spent 45 minutes on 2 items!! Not that you, my dear and desirable Readers, are not deserving of every word, but I have to go to work sometime today and besides, it just occurred to me, ‘Here I am at 536 words, I’m at Item 3 and on Post #6′ I really need to do a better job pacing myself.’
4) I am grateful for Dyanne’s Comments this week requesting a joke. I thought I made it clear, scotts are the joke tellers, clarks have only the ability to present the components of a joke, not perform it. It is not uncommon to be at a party and come upon a scott regaling the crowd with joke after side-splitting joke. (and…and! if you’re very observant, you might notice one, rather quiet person, who seems to say things that only the scott appears to hear. that’s the clark prompting the scott.) ‘Hey, Dyanne! tell ’em the one about the old bull and the young bull that were standing on the hill looking at the herd down in the valley.’
5) I am I’m grateful that I seem to be learning. Way slower than I would like, but learning nonetheless, to be less….stilted and rigid and such with my prose.
6) Grateful I am, for ‘First Person detective stories’. damn! how cool must it be to have such skill and talent as to be able to write in such a pre-defined style (or is that genre…whatever). Much like country music or even 12 bar blues: the challenge to make it fresh and enjoyable even though (your story) starts with ‘…there was a knock on my office door as I was finishing a game of un-paid bill solitaire.’
7) Lets talk about the Secret Book of Rules (aka the Book of Secret Rules). It’s available to anyone who wishes to use it. There are well known, often used Rules, and there are lesser known Rules (such as 4.8.9 which states, in part: if you attempt to invoke a Rule that most Readers do not agree with, you have the right to invoke SR 5.3.25 (which states, in part): ‘if you are comfortable enough to ignore your critics then you certainly don’t need SR 4.8.9, now do you?’
8) thanks to zoe for standing by the phones yesterday. I thought to try for a ‘non-weekend Call in’ seeing how I have my camera back. The way that works: I open the call-in number (which is one of those conference call services), you call in, enter the conference code and we talk while I drive my car! What could be more fun than that?
9) Una and work and such… will try to have a vid for tomorrow’s Post.
10) Hey! here I am at number 10! I now have to get in the car and get to work. If I were a colonialist (or Victorian) clark, that would mean heading out to the fields (over 500!! yards!!! over that hill yonder!) and working until dusk, hoping to not die of an annoying rash or a toothache. All while the womenfolk tend to the Family, (they do have such needs, but they are very, very kind to the help and the livestock).
Join the Ten Things of Thankful Facebook Group
* yes, that 30 Challenge. It’s like I’ve been possessed by the spirit of Jenny Lawson and Mark Gurman’s lovechild
** doesn’t this use of a single initial, when referring to Lizzi Rogers, add certain Brontë-sauric air to this Item?
About clarkscottroger
Always good to learn new things (#5). I have noticed it takes a bit longer for me than it used to. Natural progression and all that. Enjoy the writing challenge. Not sure I would have the time or the stamina, but it a seed which may just germinate one day.
Val
yeah, sometimes I wonder about myself (what with these challenges and such) lol
Great one!! Pushing you on as you blog everyday!
Thank you Michelle… next week will be very telling
Very enlightening. I do believe you have helped me get in touch with my inner Clark today.
nice! anything you wish to share, we would be grateful to hear ( yet another cool thing about the Doctrine, it is always possible to learn things about ourselves from other people’s experiences)
Good luck with your 30 days of blogging challenge!
Hey get to work, Man… I hear the bell ringing upstairs… oh no wait… time travel …. never mind….
so you decided that Dyanne WAS talking to you after all huh?
How long does a little contemplative rural side stop take? just wondering… I think I need to do more of those. Missing Una today…
well… just enough to stop the sound, so much of my world is supported by sound (music and car engines and phones), ya know?
…actually I can see how you see that, but I don’t ‘feel’ the connection (why thank you, I do believe I still have the instinct to try and (indirectly) manipulate people and events_
lol
Ohhh, I’m dreaming of walls full of books and ladders, but actually could do without leather chairs (too sticky) and lead glass windows (regular windows provide better light for reading). Practical as usual :-/
leather is good as long as you are sitting upright with long pants and sleeves… and not so good for napping (but then, I suspect most of us visiting Lizzi’s fantasy Library, would not be putting ‘nap’ high on the list of activities.
There MUST be some clarks above stairs! Not usually the girls perhaps but NO, wait, Lizzie Bennett was most DEFINITELY a clark. Definitely. So there.
But yeah.
Hyper xtraness then – you gonna tell the joke tomorrow in the vid?
Lizzie Bennet? I must confess ignorance of the name (I will claim culture and gender as possible exculpating circumstances).
not sure what tomorrow will bring, postistically-speaking…. I have been have verbal rhetoric block, of late. might need to get to the crazy(er) side…. trying to get my pace as I enter the first full week of this thing
Thought I’d drop in and see what’s going on these days. I noticed in this post the reference to scotts being the joke tellers.
Here’s one for you as it relates to the Doctrine: (Figured I’d keep it clean… lol)
What do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?
… ok, I give
‘What do you call a person who keeps talking when people are no longer interested?’
A roger…
lol
hey! long time no vidi! good to see you (funny thing, Denise at work is a scott and she was going to her class reunion last night… we talked about how clarks-who-are-now-old remember scotts)
oops.. left reply in the wrong part of thread… lol see below…
Wait a minute! Denise going to a reunion??? Good one. You got me Mr. Jokester…
no, ‘Denise at work’…. a friend at work, who is a scott, went to her reunion on Saturday night. lol
Ahh…. Now that makes more sense lol
lol
A clark perhaps (your head might explode)
(All in fun…)
So, the library thing is that common, is it? I had no idea, but my secondary clark shines through loud and clear on that!
Kristi
… as (other) rogers might confirm, there is an equally strong, albeit of a different nature*, affinity for libraries. In fact, this is a great example of the everyone (well, in this case, nearly everyone…lol) does everything at one time or another’ principle. I mean… seriously… who but a roger could have created the Dewey Decimal System? (hey! it’s got everything… decimals, numbers and it works!)
*that ‘library’ will manifest differently for all three… still a building full of books, but it is also, (for a clark) a building full of knowledge (for a roger) a building full of passed on knowledge and validation of learning and discovery (properly organized) and (for a scott)…. er…. a building full of rogers and clarks!!
lol
OK, both the roger and clark libraries appeal to me. :-)
Oh I can’t wait to hear about the reunion! Wonder if she’ll throw her scottian aspect out there.
I have not yet read all of your posts from your everyday challenge, but I’m working on it. Have to say I may be coming to grips with my “figuring myself out” quest. But honestly? I knew from the first time I read here what I thought was most likely me…just had to take forever to overthink the whole thing because that’s just what I do. The library thing may have been the final clincher.
You are unfamiliar with Lizzie Bennett??? Clark, you must hit that library and seek said knowledge. Although, as an English major/teacher, you being of the male half of the species does sort of imply that you will have no knowledge of said Miss Bennett. Call it a stereotypical assumption, but if the shoe fits…
I hardly recognize you anymore, Clark. You are becoming a bona-fide list-maker!
I’m grateful that there are non-scotts in the world who are willing to listen when I am telling one joke after another. :)
Christine
…I hope to hear more (in the future) about your joke telling. I have, from Glenn, an example of scottian joke-telling, but there’s both )a_ gender and the age difference. The innate (and underpinning of) aggressiveness (to) the act of ‘performing’ would be an interesting discussion.
…so tell us, your last class reunion. Did you attend? I have made passing reference to a scottian female friend from work going to her reunion this weekend, specifically interesting is how she was surprised by the clarks she met… more, the fact that they (the clarks) described memories of experiences decidedly different from what she remembers.
I remember that challenge everyone was doing back in April…the A-Z, I think and how it wore on everyone-writers and readers alike. I’ll be anxious to see how you do. Have I ever heard of this call in thing you speak of?? I don’t think so. What an interesting idea.
Sandy
(in a way) a precursor to the vidchats that Lizzi and Michelle and I started, the Wakefield Doctrine Saturday Night Drive Call-in has been around for a few years. Sort of radio to TV (comparison to vidchats). I have one of those conference call services, and I have an ‘open line’ on Saturday Nights (8 to 8:45 pm) and people call in… fun. Call in next Saturday! The number is here somewhere, be happy to post it as well.
#27!
I can never remember an entire joke, even if it’s only two lines, but I can tell a story! Remind me to tell you the one about the bat cage….
totally concur… it’s the ‘performance’ element to joke telling where scotts excel.