Greetings. My name is Karen, and I am a novelist. This week Gigi is taking a break from her usual storytelling and instead will be musing over some general thoughts about life and the universe. Gigi will begin a new story next week which will be a little different than the first four she penned. So, without further ado, here is Gigi.

Good evening. Gigi the parti poodle here to let you know I am taking this Thursday off and will be starting a new story next week. Most of the tales I have penned so far have been relatively light-hearted. This next one, however, will be a bit heavier. I have mulled over the concept for a while now and have begun to make headway on it.

This week my Kindle permanently ceased to function. It was most distressing, and I’ve found myself having to go back to reading paper books until my novelist allows me to purchase a new one. However, after digging through my novelist’s modest book collection I found a good solid handful of novels and short stories I have not yet read. One is apparently being made into a movie on Netflix called All the Light We Cannot See. It is scheduled to be released in November of this year. Here is the trailer. My novelist acquired it through a trade at one of those little libraries, the ones that look like large birdhouses with a front door and are affixed to a post. We pass some occasionally on our walks. They are rather nifty and fun to peruse.

Even though I seem to be getting by with reading paper books, I must say I believe I have become overly enamored with computer solitaire. When I cannot think of something to write I find myself playing it to try and relax my mind. I was on level one a few weeks ago and now I find myself on level thirty. This cannot be good. I must find better ways of facing the blank page as it were. Otherwise, I may end up living underground, fighting cyborgs, and traveling through time naked and hairless.  

I was contemplating Price’s Law today. Price’s Law says that the square root of the number of people in a domain or say a company do 50% of the work. Upon mulling this over I thought about the number of US citizens eighteen years or older. The total of these people in the United States is 258.3 million. If we subtract 50 million from that number for senior citizens, we get 208.3 million. The square root of 208.3 million is 14,432.602. So, if we were to think of the United States as a company, out of all the adults who are over the age of 18 and younger than a senior citizen only 14,432.602 are working. I have no idea what to think about that. I am glad to be a poodle. It doesn’t matter if I work.

I have come to realize that people leave an inordinate number of pencils lying around. I have accumulated many now and have pencil holders full of them. I am not sure why there has been a great pencil chucking movement. Pencils are a rather wonderful invention and have been around for centuries. They only require to be sharpened and they will never cease to function like my Kindle unless paper becomes extinct. And even then, one can use a pencil on many surfaces such as rocks, walls, and wooden floors. My novelist is not fond of these alternate methods, but she must admit they do work.  

The Maltese has been getting more and more privileges lately and I’m rather miffed about it. He has a perfectly good bed on the floor, but my novelist has been allowing him to sleep on her bed when he wakes up in the middle of the night and barks. He has one of those relentless barks. Not a shrill or ear-splitting bark but one that goes on and on and on until he gets what he wants. He has also been getting extra morning office time while I sleep. I’ll wake up after a peaceful slumber and find he’s sharing computer time with my novelist. Something must be done about this unacceptable behavior. He needs to understand it’s my office and not his and I will do the morning, noon, and night occupancy of it.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say this week. Next week I will return with chapter one of my new story.

MY BOOKS

You can check out my books Chicane and all five installments of the Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: DOUBLE FEATURE: THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT (2015)-Pluto Tv & Tubi and EXPERIMENTER (2015)-HBO Max

2015 boasted two fascinating true-life stories about historically important and highly controversial psychological experiments.

The first one, one of my absolute favorite movies of the 2010’s is The Stanford Prison Experiment. I could watch this one over and over. It is about a strange little examination done on Stanford’s campus in August of 1971. Twenty-four male Stanford University students were hired for a lucrative temporary job that was supposed to last two weeks. At random Dr. Philip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) and his team of grad students picked out and with the flip of a coin separated the young men into two groups of twelve. One group was assigned to be prisoners and the other prison guards. Zimbardo brings in a former prisoner Jesse Fletcher (Nelsan Ellis) to make sure there is legitimacy in the way the “prison” set up and run in rooms in the psychology building. But Zimbardo and his team learn quickly that the experiment is a recipe for disaster as within one day chaos quickly takes hold creating a tense and harrowing downward spiral.

The movie boasts an excellent cast of young actors including Tye Sheridan as Peter Mitchell, Ezra Miller as Daniel Culp, and Nicholas Braun as Karl Vandy. But the real standout here is Michael Anarano as Christopher Archer who is chosen to be a prison guard and takes his job very seriously.  

The second movie is about the famous Milgram Experiments where social psychologist Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) conducted an experiment where two people entered his office and met with a psychologist which he chose to dress in a grey lab coat. One of the subjects was to sit at a table with a device designed to administer electric shocks. The other person was sent off into a separate room. The first person asked the second person questions through an intercom system and if the second person got one wrong, the first person was to administer a shock, turning up the voltage a little more each time the second person failed to answer the question correctly.

The experiment became controversial not because of the person being shocked but the one giving the shocks, possibly being psychologically traumatized to find out how they responded to authority. Winona Rider turns in a wonderful performance as Milgram’s wife Sasha.