Update

(Picture is one I took this year near Howarth)

My latest Triond Traffic Geo Distribution Pie-Chart reads as follows:

USA 42%, UK 39, Australia 6, Philippines 4, Canada 4, Romania 3, India 2.

UK has now closed the gap again on the US. It is only in recent weeks that the US has become my main source. Most of the year the UK has been my main source. Before Google PANDA (search algorithm change) the USA was always my main source of readers.

Poemhunter - Been talking to one of the UK's top viewed poets, Dave Walker, who happens to live in Bramley or Pudsey - my old home. In fact he's just told me he went to Crawshaw School! Small world!

PS I'm currently ranked 41 in the UK on Poemhunter, 265 in the world on 23 Views. Posted about a handful of new poems there the other day.

Latest publications:

http://computersight.com/programming/tamara-ecclestone-billion-dollar-babe/

http://sportales.com/soccer/manchester-united-to-sell-wayne-rooney/

24\11 - UK 42, US 41 now! Those last two blogs seem to have swung it!

More:

http://authspot.com/poetry/move-on-17/

http://webupon.com/social-networks/gary-speed-dies-at-42/

http://authspot.com/poetry/mother-nature-20/

http://socyberty.com/history/oldies-on-gays-race-and-religion/

This edit facility is acting weirdly this week. All this code stuff. Anyway, on Triond UK is now 50%, USA 29! Viewers from within Triond are falling but from Google they are rising! (Now that forum has gone). Well it works!

Let's try a new paragraph. Yep, okay. No more code now. Will go with the flow.

Latest:

http://socyberty.com/holidays/my-thoughts-on-the-shortest-day-christmas-smith-family-tragedy-barcelona-and-uk-x-factor/

http://sportales.com/rugby/about-racism/

Damn! Just realised! Been on Edit Html by mistake!!! Why this article is under "rugby", well, God Knows!

27\12 - On Triond: 50% UK and 30% USA now! About half my views are from Google!!! Since The Forum went, my views have "switched" from Triond internal to Google! Does this mean The Forum was damaging Triond's Google Ranking?

More:

http://authspot.com/short-stories/campus/

30\12 - This week I can check my Google Adsense on Triond. This after Another invitation to sign up! Have I gone all these years Not linked with Adsense when I thought I was? Let's hope all is well now. As it is, I've made £1.90 on Adsense to press! Must have done Something, if not a lot.

More:

http://authspot.com/short-stories/awakening-23/

http://sportales.com/sports/grimsby-table-tennis-latest-2011-2012/

http://authspot.com/poetry/clouds-51/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/mind-games-association-football-city-versus-united-one/

http://bizcovering.com/business/association-football-mind-games-2-ringer/

6th February: Triond: USA 51%, UK 39! The pendulum has swung back to the US these past few weeks!

More:

http://paulb.quazen.com/shopping/exercise-revolution-hit-it-and-be-neat-intensive-and-always-off-your-bottom/

http://healthmad.com/health/2b-or-not-2b-beware-alcohol-addiction/

http://trifter.com/practical-travel/paul-butters/

Incidentally I notice most of my Triond Views are from Google now! The Views direct from Triond are only 2\3 those from Google. During the days of "The Triond Forum" it was the other way round! Well, writers say it's healthier to get Views from the wider web, so I'm fairly happy now.

BTW - US 47%, UK 38%, and some Views from Hungary and Turkey!

More: http://authspot.com/short-stories/humanity-earth-britain-a-view-from-space/

5\4\12: Today my Triond View level from Triond dot com is IDENTICAL to that from Google dot com. Not so long ago it was over twice as many. More:

http://authspot.com/short-stories/please-give-me-a-job/

19\4\12: I NB that my pal Craig Kendall now has nearly 42,000 followers on Twitter whereas I have a grand total of 42. This from him writing a blog about Swindon Town on a football site. Okay so he writes quite well, but he must have sussed out this web writing business far better than me. He keeps asking people to retweet, but I don't know the value of that. My trouble is, I'm still in the nineteenth century I'm afraid. Nuff Said.

More:

http://socyberty.com/psychology/lifism-a-philosophy-for-life/

21\4 - Have amended the title of this as I was the only viewer on Triond! Yet overall my Triond viewers on Triond have been about double those of my Google viewers just recently. I expect my Google figure to improve again soon. My UK viewership has been roughly the same as the USA. More:

 http://authspot.com/poetry/voice-14/

http://socyberty.com/society/football-surprises-and-shocks-chelsea-manchester-city-and-roy-hodgson/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/strike/

Our Universe

The Universe began with the “Big Bang” 14 billion years ago. It is believed to be the sum total of all Existence.

I have a problem. The “observable universe” does indeed indicate that there is an enormous “globe” of expanding matter out there, consisting of countless super-clusters of galaxies. Okay. But is that really Everything?

Let’s call our “universe” a “flowering”. The big question is, are there other flowerings beyond the one we have observed? I suspect that there are. A whole Multiverse of them. Our “universe” could even be an electron in some Macro Universe!

Besides which, there may be an infinite number of “dimensions” lying parallel to ours, each with its own multiverse. In short, we are truly lost!

Paul Butters

Latest story based on this:

http://authspot.com/short-stories/the-universe-is-about-to-end-part-two/

More new pieces:

http://writinghood.com/writing/end-of-an-era-triond-forum-closed/

http://sportales.com/soccer/no-poppies-allowed-on-england-football-shirts-what-a-disgrace/

http://authspot.com/poetry/inspiration-58/

http://paulb.quazen.com/shopping/towards-a-better-lifestyle/

http://trifter.com/europe/united-kingdom/dickie-rees-another-one-bites-the-dust/

Yorkshire: God's Own County

Have just sent a blog about Yorkshire to Triond. Better not leave a sample yet but will when it's published.

It's published.

Yorkshire: The Truth

The stereotypical Yorkshireman is a big fat beer swilling bloke who eats Yorkshire Puddings, tripe, black pudding and dripping and bread. He keeps whippets, pigeons and ferrets tha knows. Yorkshire is a backward rural county where everyone plays cricket. However, this stereotype could not be further from the truth...

The Yorkshire stereotype lingers on. A backward, rustic county where we wear flat caps and carry ferrets in our pockets. We are Tykes who speak our own language, sithee. This Monty Python sketch shows this well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Enough of that!

The Truth

Sure, somewhere in the backwaters of The Pennines or somewhere there are still folk who race pigeons and so forth, bless em. But modern Yorkshire is about vibrant cities like Leeds, Sheffield , Bradford and Hull. I Googled the good things of Yorkshire:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1066&bih=590&q=good+things+in+yorkshire&oq=good+things+in+york&aq=0j&aqi=g-j1&aql=&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=2192l12281l0l14552l19l

Over a million pages, and that BBC article was a good starting point:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5234444.stm

and:

http://www.dayoutwiththekids.co.uk/search.php?county=West%20Yorkshire

Actually the larger conurbation around Leeds and Bradford could easily become “Pennine City” through the course of time. Someone once called this area “HuddersCleckHaliWakeFord or something in recognition of this fact. What a city “Pennine” could be! I was brought up in West Leeds by the way, a couple of miles or so from Pudsey.

What Yorkshire can be Proud of

Yorkshire has a great industrial heritage: woollen mills, engineering, steel (Sheffield) and so on. Culture is everywhere. Leeds has its Playhouse and Grand Theatre. Roundhay Park, famous for its “Children’s Day” and Tropical Gardens. There is Headingley: home of the County Cricket Club, former Rugby League World Champions The Rhinos, and Leeds Carnegie Rugby Union club. Elland Road houses one of the greatest football teams ever. Nearby Huddersfield Town won three league titles in a row once.

For more go to:

http://socyberty.com/history/yorkshire-the-truth/

My latest story:

http://authspot.com/short-stories/long-sleep/

More pieces:

http://authspot.com/poetry/afterlife-4/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/deceived-part-three/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/galaxy-glory/

http://authspot.com/poetry/cyberspace/

http://authspot.com/poetry/internet-spammers-and-trolls/

http://writinghood.com/writing/triond-report-the-truth-blogging-plagiarism-the-forum/

http://authspot.com/poetry/do-not-ask/

17\9\2011: Am currently 303\500 on the Poemhunter World List with just 17 Recent Views. That league has got easier. lol.

More publications:

http://authspot.com/short-stories/elvis-lives-on-x-factor/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/the-universe-is-about-to-end/

Not forgetting: http://www.authonomy.com/books/8719/completely-lost-/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/champ/

http://webupon.com/social-networks/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-facebook-twitter-youtube-yahoo-triond-nerd/

What If

(As posted on Triond yesterday)

I was dreaming I’d returned to teaching after a long sickness break. Or had I returned to helping out in class? Whatever. I woke and went to the loo. I emptied my bowels and returned to bed. Glanced at my watch. Six fifteen in the morning. And got to thinking... About the nature of Life...

What if Life is but a Dream, as others have suggested. What if my sleeping dreams are created by my subconscious mind. By my “Id” if you will. But my waking dreams are created by some “SuperId”. An even deeper part of my “brain” which forges “Superdreams”: Waking Dreams!

What if those “others” exist only as part of my superdream? What if all people, even my relatives, are but creations of my SuperId? And the whole universe and all history is part of the Superdream.

Where is my SuperId? Where is my Id even? My brain. My mind. Where are they? Really? They are supposed to be in my head. But is my head part of the Superdream?

Is the stark Truth that I am all alone? Am I the only one? A loneliness far greater than any I have experienced, in The Superdream. Am I “The One” as in “The Matrix”? Not a “God” though because I have so little power in the Superdream. Perhaps there are no gods. Just little me. Alone. At the mercy of my SuperId. So what exactly is my SuperId? I don’t know.

Or maybe there is a group of us. Our SuperIds connected in some way. Perhaps we share one SuperId. Who knows.

When I die I expect to become nothing. An emptiness in which I cannot even acknowledge I’m not there. Rather like that gap in living that you get during an operation or having a tooth out under general anaesthetic. It saddens me that every living thing eventually dies in this way. Not a single one escapes this fate. So I am told. There are some water creatures that are biologically “immortal”, I read, but I hold out little hope there.

Yet rather than becoming nothing when I die, I hope to awaken from this “Superdream” and enter some “Super Reality”. Perhaps that Super Reality is but a “Super-Super Dream”, and that a “Super-Super-Super Dream”... ad infinitum. Now Infinity, that’s a scary thing.

How many times will I “Supersleep”? Just the once, or countless times? Is there reincarnation after all? Will I re-appear in other places, other times? Or does my consciousness continue, somehow, after my physical death? Will I join some Spiritual World?

Regular reader LewSethics reminded me recently of a possible scenario: that there is just one being reincarnating continuously so as to live the life of every one of us. Others have suggested such an individual might be God. There are countless possible scenarios. What concerns me, however, is my own personal destiny. The next major milestone for me is Death.

Whatever happens: from my perspective this world of ours will cease to exist once I am “gone”. It might just as well have never existed in the first instance. What a waste. I do Hope there is more than this.

Who cares whether there is a God, or race of Gods? What counts is whether there is Life. What matters is Existence. The Quality of that Existence too. I hope this Superdream is but an “Education”. That I am learning lessons for my “Afterlife”. I am a “Lifist” indeed. “Life” is Everything. If that has to be a “Spiritual” Life, eventually, then so be it. Better than nothing.

Let’s face it: on the cosmic scale of things the human race knows next to nothing. For me, nobody has really explained gravity, electricity or any of the major forces which make existence possible. Nobody has even told us where The Big Bang came from. The Universe seems to be some colossal Accident, which has spawned a multitude of mortals. Yet no-one can really explain it all.

Maybe there is indeed a universal “Force” behind all this. Could “Star Wars” be right after all? May the Force be with us indeed. May our Hopes be realised. May there be an “our”, a “we”! To the Spiritual. To Everlasting Life. To Immortality. To Eternity. Throughout Infinity. Let there be Life.

Paul Butters

See also: http://authspot.com/poetry/aire-valley/

Dream

Early this morning I had a strange dream. In the “beginning” I was back teaching in the 1970s. For some reason I decided to go round the class and take a look at each group of pupils. It turned out that a girl was ill and needed to be carried out.

I continued my tour: most of them were whiling away their time doing next to nothing. One of them requested my help and I duly obliged. Oddly the “classroom” was now located in an open, grassy field with brick walls but no roof.

Presently I found myself in the staffroom, and a tannoy message blared out. Apparently a policeman was here to see me about his son! A (false) memory crossed my mind of me hitting a lad for misbehaving. I dashed down the corridor.

Suddenly I was outside the massive concrete and glass school campus. Ahead of me was a “Spaghetti Junction” of criss-crossing motorways. I turned to face the school. A secretary ran out. “You’ve just missed him! Ah, no, he’s waiting for you down there.” She pointed to my left, down a dark pedestrian subway.

Without hesitation (silly me) I marched into that morbid alleyway. There was graffiti and rubbish everywhere. Yet there to greet me, and shake my hand, was a middle aged policeman in rather a modern, American style uniform. He gave me his name and I tried to make a note of it. Somehow I was now carrying an assortment of diaries and notebooks, but somehow I could not find a blank page.

The policeman told me not to worry. He thanked me for helping his son all those years ago. That was real teaching, he said. Now he was a young policeman who offered his support, put his arm around me and gave me a big hug!

“I’m lucky, I have my whole department to back me up. You are on your own. Come and see us solve some murders. Then you can go back to class and really impress those young punks with your knowledge.”

At this point I woke up. What a dream! Okay, so I have been watching a DVD of Waterloo Road, Series One. And Waterloo Road on Wednesday of this week. I can see how such viewing might make me dream about teaching.

Yet how can my own Subconscious, Unconscious, Id or whatever come up with such a surprise? I really was expecting to encounter an irate parent there. Yet I was offered lots of support instead! How can my own brain keep things from me like this then spring something new on me like that?

My Id shocks and surprises me an awful lot. They say your subconscious remembers every detail of everything that you experience. It is a wonderful thing. My “mind” gives me false memories and story lines, to completely dupe me into God knows what. I’m just glad my Id was in a very kindly mood this morning.

Lucid dreams? Very rare for me. I seldom realise I am dreaming, until it is too late! And What Dreams. As I keep saying. I hope I am making progress in my head there.

Paul Butters

Latest:

http://authspot.com/poetry/out-of-africa-2/

Booming Business

My views on Triond are at a higher level this month. Must be doing something right. My recent article on "Anger" went down very well. My stories are going okay too, though difficult for anyone to comment on. They are very reflective stories really.

Anyway today I wrote a solid football article:

http://sportales.com/soccer/how-to-build-a-great-association-football-team/

Here's more stuff hot from the press:

http://sportales.com/sports/all-about-the-greatest-table-tennis-players-of-great-grimsby-part-one/

http://sportales.com/sports/allabout-the-greatest-table-tennis-players-of-great-grimsby-part-two/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/dream-marines-part-four/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/dream-marines-part-five/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/dream-marines-part-six/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/dream-marines-part-seven/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/dream-marines-part-eight/

Barcelona!

My Triond blog, "Are Barcelona the Best Team Ever?" currently has 77 Views - making it one of my top pieces. "Sexy Writing" did best I believe, with at least 120. Popular topics indeed. I am typing this live by the way. Have just posted a piece on my "three favourite talking therapies" onto Triond and await publication (they are a bit slow on this one). Steady business. Would go much quicker if I could keep off the Triond Forum.

Latest:

http://healthmad.com/mental-health/my-favourite-talking-therapies-client-centred-cbt-and-solution-focused/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/last-day-5/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/stream-3/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/reflections-50/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/dream-marines-part-one/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/dream-marines-part-two/

http://healthmad.com/addiction/anger-an-addiction-like-nicotine-coke-alcohol-and-gambling/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/dream-marines-part-three/