Tip: let a member of the opposite sex help you fill out your online dating service profile.

Based on a true story (for real):

“It wants a profile picture.”

“Use the same one as your Facebook profile, as you look cool with the camera in your hand and the way it covers half your face makes you look mysterious.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah!”

“What should I put in the ‘I’m really good at’ section?”

“Put the video of you juggling in different places around the world. Girls will love that!”

“Really? I thought it was a bit nerdy.”

“You have no idea, do you?”

“Hmmm, okay. Six things I can’t live without? Well, my laptop, obviously…”

“Don’t say your laptop!”

“Why not? It’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought, and without it I wouldn’t be filling out this stupid OkCupid profile… How about ‘I can’t live without hugs’?”

“Perfect.”

“I was joking.”

“Hugs is cute.”

“You should message me if… You want an interesting adventure.”

“I’d message you.”

“The truth is I’m looking for sex.”

“If the girl is also looking for sex, she’ll interpret that as interesting and adventurous sex.”

Posted in Advice, Life, Random | Leave a comment

Pirahna Fishing on the Amazon, Santarem, Brazil – January 2011.

I visited Santarem, a town on the Amazon river. The Amazon is famous for being very big. And it’s famous for being full of piranhas. As a crew tour, we went piranha fishing. Most of the 30 people on the boat caught no fish. Three people caught one piranha each. I caught two. And then one guy caught something like seven. There must have been some kind of technique that he knew, and I hit on randomly.

Santarem is at the joining of two rivers, the Amazon and… um… another river. A blue river. The blue and brown water doesn’t mix right away, and the two different colours flow along for many kilometers. The same thing happens further upstream too, at Manaus, which is the better known Meeting of the Waters.

As for photo quality, I notice that when I’m doing things with other people while traveling, I take way more photos. And those photos are just more vibrant and interesting. Empty photos with buildings in them? Yeah, any one can snap those. But to capture the expressions and laughs and experience of other people enjoying themselves? It makes me try harder to do them justice.

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I love to read comments and feedback about my blog posts. Please email me, I reply to every message: luke@juggler.net

Exit status: 0

Posted in LATW, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Idea: every story is based on a true story.

I recently read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and I noticed that so many of these fantastical stories from the 19th Century are frame stories. I love the idea that the author didn’t make up these stories, but received a manuscript and was just passing it along (Connecticut Yankee), or it happened to their uncle (A Princess of Mars (admittedly not 19th Century)), or they are a reporter just passing on the story of another person (The Time Machine).

Each one of them has some telling detail that convinced the author that the “person” they received the “true story” from was not lying. It could be a bit of technology, or something they noticed, or a fact that they otherwise couldn’t have known.

Any, my simple observation is that any story could, in theory, be given the movie tag line “Based on a True Story” or even “A True Story”.

It works like this:
1. Begin each story with someone sitting down to write or read a story.
2. Then tell the story that they wrote or read.
3. End with a scene showing the person finishing the story.

That’s it! The “Based on a true story” claim is only about the frame story of someone sitting down to either read or write the story within the story. As long as that frame character makes no claims to the verifiable truth of the framed story, you’re good to go.

Of course, they can claim they believe the framed story, but that just means that at some point the reader/writer must claim that, and so it is true, and you’re still good to go.

I might write a script that adds a scene of someone sitting down to read an ebook to the beginning of every novel in public domain, and then publish them all here on my blog.

“”The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells” by Luke Burrage – A True Story!”

Again, maybe this idea should just stay in my head.


I love to read comments and feedback about my blog posts. Please email me, I reply to every message: luke@juggler.net

Posted in Idea, Writing | Leave a comment

Caribbean islands, December 2010.

I spent the week around New Years 2010 to 2011 on the Prinsendam, cruising around the Caribbean. And because it is the Prinsendam, and the Prinsednam specializes in visiting ports that other cruise ships are either to big or not adventurous enough to visit. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a Prinsendam cruise where I haven’t visited a port I’ve never been to before.

So these are photos from Port of Spain, Trinidad; Port Elizabeth, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; St George’s, Grenada; Mayaguez, Puerto Rico; Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos; Bridgetown, Barbados.

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I love to read comments and feedback about my blog posts. Please email me, I reply to every message: luke@juggler.net

Posted in LATW, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Top 40 Jugglers of 2011 – Results Video

For the 9th year running I ran the poll, counted the votes, and presented the results in a fashion that I find entertaining and interesting. After the critical and popular success of the 2010 results video, I wanted to take an entirely new approach. I’m not going to go into all the reasons I made such an unapologetically inaccessible video, but here are some results a month or so later:

* 7,400 views
* 161 comments
* 75 likes
* 177 dislikes
* 6 accounts unsubscribed from my video updates
* 5 new people subscribed

Personally I found it to be a great success. All the jugglers who I really respect who watched the video told me it was hilarious, as did most of my friends. All the negative comments seemed to come from people who are only interested in consuming, and spending as little effort in that consumption as possible, and I don’t remember seeing any names of the negative commenters who have any kind of creative output that I enjoyed or consumed myself.

Or maybe I just enjoy trolling my own audience. That might be it.

Posted in Juggling, Videos | Leave a comment