The Raisin Chronicles

Fiction Friday: A Look at Twilight's Plot a la Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet

2012-02-10T07:30:00.001-05:00

There are many ways to analyze plot structure in novels, plays and movies. The one I'm most familiar with are the Act/Scene/Beat breakdown taught by Robert McKee in his book Story and in his seminars.

Another, one that's probably a little easier for the neophyte, is the beat sheet shared by the late screenwriter Blake Snyder in his book, Save the Cat.

If you're interested in learning to plot better, you can't find a better place to start than with Snyder's book.

The table below represents Snyder's Beat Sheet, which assumes a 110-page script. I was looking at the trade paperback version of Twilight, which ran 498 pages. Because Snyder recommended that certain things happen at specific intervals in a movie script, I've listed the appropriate page numbers from the script and applied a multiplier of 4.54 to calculate a similar spot in the book.

Where Twilight varies from Snyder's recommended placement of a beat, I've indicated the suggested spot with a strike-through, followed by the actual page number(s). As you can see, up to about the midpoint, Meyer sticks pretty close to Snyder's beats, then blazes her own trail. Which is interesting, because it's that last quarter of the book that has all the action. It's relatively cerebral up to that point.

Also, Twilight doesn't really have much of a B story. For lack of anything better, I treated the "Bella settles in at a new high school" as the B story, but it doesn't get much page time.

Note: In a normal book/movie the A and B stories get switched when you move from the printed page to the screen. This is because the A story in a novel tends to occur too much inside the protagonist's head to translate well to the screen. The B story tends to be more action-oriented, which works a lot better for film.

Script Page	Twilight Page	Beat	What Should Be Happening
1	5	Opening Image	Foreshadowing of James attacking Bella
15	68	Theme Stated	"That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen."
12	55	Catalyst	Edward risks exposing himself as a vampire when he saves Bella from being crushed by Eric's van
12-25	55-114	Debate	Bella tries to figure out how she feels about Edward Cullen
25	114	Break into Two	Jacob tells Bella about "the cold ones" and Bella realizes Edward is a vampire.
30	136	B Story	Bella goes to Port Angeles with Jessica and Angela
30-55	136-250	Fun and Games	Edward rescues Bella from the rapists; he and Bella spend the day alone in the meadow
55	~~250~~ 286	Midpoint	Edward finally commits to not kill Bella (a high point in any relationship)
55-75	250-~~341~~ 427	Bad Guys Close In	Rosalie doesn't like Bella; James catches a whiff of Bella and begins to hunt her
75	~~341~~ 427	All is Lost	James claims to have Bella's Mom hostage
85	~~386~~ 440	Dark Night of the Soul/td>	Bella thinks about all the stuff she's losing as deliberately walks into James' trap
85	~~386~~ 452	Break into Three	Edward arrives to save Bella
85-110	~~386~~ 452-500	Finale	Bella and Edward go to the Prom
110	500	Final Image	"...and he leanded down to press his cold lips once more to my throat."

Next week: Acts/Scenes/Beats (different kind) value changes and rising action.

I Kissed a Vampire

2012-02-08T05:18:00.004-05:00

(Credit to ftwapples, who's got an amazing singing voice and several other parodies on YouTube.)

So, if you've been hanging around the Raisin Chronicles at all lately, you know I'm currently obsessed with Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. One thing I don't get, though, is how hot Bella finds it that Edward is so cold. She goes on and on about the excitement of kissing his "cool marble lips."

As a woman who once slept on a waterbed after the heater went out, I can tell you that sleeping with/on something that's a steady room temperature and never warms up is a bone-chilling proposition. And that the flimsy comforter Edward thoughtfully places between them is not going to fix that.

Still, I'm kind of fascinated by the concept of the cool marble lips.

It's been exceptionally warm and sunny here in southern Ohio for the past couple of weeks. Temperatures running above average--60 degrees a couple of days--and, even more shocking, it's been sunny. Generally, it clouds up here sometime in early November and just stays that way until May. In the winter, the Pacific Northwest has nothing on us for gloom.

In fact, it's been so nice that Old Dog was able to get his bike out after work one day last week. What he failed to take into account was how fast the temperature would drop once the sun started to go down. By the time he got home, he was pretty much a dogsicle. As soon as he walked in the door, he kissed me with his ice cold lips.

A light bulb went on over my head. I gave him my most enticing smile.

"Wanna play Edward-and-Bella?"

He turned me down like a duvet cover.

"I don't do my best work when I'm cold." And off he went, in search of a hot shower.

I haven't given up hope, though.

After all, spring riding season is just around the corner.

Fiction Friday: Love Stories and Lumpy Goods

2012-02-03T06:27:00.001-05:00

Still Twilit here....

In the world of negotiation/gamesmanship, a "lumpy good" is something over which people are unwilling/unable to compromise.

One example we're all familiar with is Palestine. Neither side is willing to share the city. Each feels that if they don't win complete control of the geography, they've lost.

Another is Solomon's Baby. Well, not actually Solomon's baby, although, with 700 wives and 300 concubines, he must have had enough of them. This was the baby brought to him by two women, each claiming to be the child's mother. When each refused to give up her claim, Solomon proposed to slice the child down the middle and give each woman half. Upon which, the child's mother offered to renounce her claim for the good of the baby, thus identifying herself as the true mom.

As we discussed last week, the more intense the differences between our two lovers, the more tension/conflict/interest resides in the plot.

So I'm thinking, what could create more tension than a lumpy good?

From our examples last Friday, Dr. Abortion and Ms. Right-to-Life clash over a lumpy good, human life. There is no compromise position here. Either you ban abortion and let the fetuses live or you prioritize a woman's right to choose. No middle ground.

Likewise Bella and Edward clash over a lumpy good--her life or, arguably, her immortal soul.

What other lumpy goods can you think of in this context?

Next week: an analysis of the plotting in Twilight.

My Little Town Tuesday: Heads Will Roll

2012-01-31T17:26:00.001-05:00

Last week in the Dayton Daily News, my old company announced another round of layoffs--75 people of the remaining 612.

Sometimes it's nice to have already gotten the ax.

(Pictorial beheading courtesy of Dave Wells, GIMPer extraordinaire.)

Fiction Friday: What Makes a Great Love Story?

2012-01-27T07:18:00.001-05:00

As warned, I'm going to spend a few weeks deconstructing the Twilight saga and trying to understand what made it so compelling.

In all the really great love stories I've ever read, the hero had the following characteristics:
o Rich
o Attractive to women (in the same way that cocaine is attractive to addicts)
o Is prepared to make her the center of his universe forever (It's fiction, people.)

That about sums up our Edward, doesn't it?

Compelling heroines are more of a mixed bag, I think.
o Bella is altruistic (to a fault)
o Scarlett O'Hara is stunningly selfish
o Clare Abshire (The Time Traveler's Wife) is unshakably faithful from the first minute she meets Henry
o Elizabeth Bennett instantly forms a prejudice against Mr. Darcy

Next, the hero and heroine are in some way opposites:

o Edward is a vampire, Bella is a human
o Scarlett wants acceptance/admiration from her society, Rhett could give a rip
o Clare is temporally sequential, Henry is a time traveler
o Elizabeth is lower middle class, Mr. Darcy is wealthy

So, if I wanted to create a compelling love story, I would start with people who are opposites:

o He's Wall Street. She's Occupy Wall Street.
o He's an atheist. She's a missionary.
o He's a prosecutor. She's a criminal.
o He's a soldier. She's an anti-war activist.
o She's Doctors Without Borders. He's a revolutionary.
o He's an abortionist. She's a right-to-lifer.

The more fundamental their differences, the more compelling the story. While Mr. Wall Street/Ms. Occupy Wall Street make a romantic comedy, Dr. Abortionist and Ms. Right-to-Life are not kidding around.

And if there is something about those fundamental differences that makes them dangerous to each other, the tension ratchets up another notch.

o If Elizabeth falls in love with Mr. Darcy, she has to admit she was wrong about him and that she's not as smart as she thinks she is.
o If Scarlett marries Rhett, she loses the acceptance of her society.
o If desperately-wants-to-be-a-Mom Clare marries Henry, she miscarries all those time-traveling little fetuses.
o If Bella spends too much time with Edward, he may lose it and suck her dry.

Which is why Twilight works so well.

Next week: Love stories and lumpy goods.

Third Annual Toddler New Year's Eve Party

2012-01-24T07:00:00.001-05:00

(Better late than never....)

The plan was for the boys to sleep upstairs under Old Dog's supervision while the girls bedded down on the first floor, with me on the couch.

After yelling at the boys to settle down and go to sleep, Old Dog dozed off, only to awaken to the following whispered conversation:

Robbie: It's a monster!

Sam: There's no such thing as monsters.

Robbie: Yes, there is, and it sounds like this (makes a very loud snoring sound).

I hear you, kid. Grandma sleeps with that monster every night.

So we threw down another air mattress and the boys came downstairs and we all (except Harper, who conked out at 11:45 and Old Dog, who was upstairs sawing logs) watched the ball drop over Time Square.

Fiction Friday: The Twilight Zone

2012-01-20T06:28:00.008-05:00

When Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, became a bestseller back in 2005, I had no real desire to read it. I didn't care for Young Adult fiction even when I was a Young Adult, and a love affair between a human girl and an ageless vampire struck me as a particularly silly concept. Beyond that, I'd heard that Ms. Meyer's prose style was not good. (Which made it particularly humiliating when iwritelike.com classified my own fiction-writing as being most like hers, but that's another post.)

Then, a few months ago, I heard a book reviewer on NPR talking about his--his, mind you--guilty reading pleasures. He was embarrassed to admit it, but he just loved Twilight.

My interest piqued, I picked it up from my local library and zipped through it.

And realized Ms. Meyer's critics were right: her prose style is not strong. I don't believe I ran across a single metaphor in Twilight that wasn't a well-worn cliche. She felt the need to tell us, not only what people said, but how they said it. (I suggested. He agreed. Mike muttered.) Even the grammar wasn't always correct. (The past tense of "kneel" is "knelt," not "kneeled.")

On the other hand, Ms. Meyer is a kick-ass story-teller.

As someone who struggles to create sympathetic characters, I was fascinated by how Ms. Meyer made Bella Swan so appealing. (According to my critique partners, my own characters tend to be too blunt in their communication and too analytical. They suffer, I'm afraid, from Just-Like-My-Creator syndrome.)

As Twilight begins, 17-year-old Bella is moving from warm, sunny Phoenix, AZ to always-raining Forks, WA to live with her dad. Her mother has recently remarried and young Bella wants to give Mom a shot at happiness with her new husband. Our girl is not a particularly good sport about it--she's as sulky as your average teenager--but she does make a voluntary choice for her mother's happiness over her own.

Altruism is very attractive.

I was interested, too, in Edward Cullen, Meyer's brooding hero. What makes a compelling hero? Chiseled good looks? Intelligence? Cash? All those things, plus a willingness to make the heroine the center of his universe. (Which is what makes the courtship phase of relationships such a drug, but, again, that's another post.)

Then, in my quest to analyze Meyer's characters, I picked up the second book in the series, New Moon.

This is where it got crazy.

New Moon is 563 pages.

Eclipse, the third book, is 629 pages.

Breaking Dawn (which, by the way, reads like Meyer had to turn it in to her publisher, ready-or-not and they published it as-is) is 754 pages.

I read those nearly 2000 pages this week. While working full-time. Finishing at 10 p.m. Thursday. (Okay, I had Monday off for MLK Day, but still.) After reading New Moon I was obsessed. Old Dog fell asleep every night this week with the light on my side of the bed shining in his eyes as I assured him that I'd turn it out "in just another minute."

Even when I wasn't reading, I was in a supernatural fog.

Now that the mist has (mostly) lifted, I'm going to go back and tear these things apart and see what makes them tick. Over the next few weeks we'll look at characterization and plotting, refererencing Bob McKee, Blake Snyder, Syd Field and Christopher Vogler and Joseph W. Campbell as I try to figure out what made the Twilight books so hypnotic.

Because, while I have no desire to write a vampire book, I would give all four bicuspids to write something that mesmerizing.

Sponge Brain SAS Pants

2011-12-27T08:36:00.017-05:00

I only had to get 46 questions right.

Out of 70.

In 2 hours.

That doesn't sound too hard, does it?

The thing is, when I was younger, I was pretty spongey. Learning new stuff came easily to me. I'd read through the material a couple of times, maybe copy it out once, and remember enough to ace the test the next day.

Not anymore.

My theory is, when you're young, your brain is empty. But as you grow older, it fills up. These days, in the attic that is my brain is crammed to the rafters with books I've read, movies I've seen and transcripts of conversations I had 40 years ago.

It's the job of your hippocampus, when you're asleep, to sort through the day's events and file stuff away for future reference. I picture my hippocampus as a guy working at a recycling center, watching all this stuff come past on a conveyor belt and picking out, with rubber gloves, the stuff he figures can be used later. Only, once he selects something, he has find someplace to put it. Which, for the reasons I've explained, gets harder and harder. Sometimes, to make room for something new, he has to discard something old. Which is just that much more work.

I picture him as underpaid, burnt out, possibly drug-impaired. When it's too much trouble finding space, he just ditches the item he was supposed to put away.

This process is further complicated by the fact that all this data has to be cross-referenced, so that I can access it from other, related thoughts. For example, when I think about the play, Hamlet, I also think, Romeo and Juliet (because it's also by Shakespeare), The Turn of the Screw (because it's also a ghost story, Oedipus Rex (because he also had mother issues) and Green Eggs and Ham.

The chick who does my indexing also parties hearty.

Anyway, I managed to get 48 answers right, so I'm officially certified as a SAS programmer.

And I finally managed to dump that whole debate about the White Album.

A Birthday and a Funeral

2011-12-19T08:44:00.013-05:00

She was my mother's younger sister.

Born just 18 months apart in the early 1920's, in the steep hills of Eastern Kentucky coal mining country, they were best friends as well as sisters. On their front porch they cut out paper dolls from old newspapers and whisked "cherries from the basket" in games of jacks.

As they grew older, Aunt Dortha learned to play guitar, and she'd play while Mom sang. They'd sit around for hours on that front porch, performing duets of "Blue Heaven," "Corrine, Corrina" and "No Letter Today."

One day, their love of music led them to bring home the hit song of the day, the Andrews Sisters singing, "Queenie, the Cutie of the Burlesque Show."

Grandma Robertson promptly threw it away.

But all too soon their childhoods ended.

In 1943, my grandfather was killed when the brakes on his coal truck went out on Big Hill and Grandma moved her family to Dayton, Ohio, a major manufacturing center for the war effort. There, the girls got jobs to help support their two younger brothers and sister.

Mom was 21, Aunt Dortha, 19, when they began waiting tables at The Green Mill restaurant on West Third Street. They'd work their shift, flirting with the soldiers home on leave, and then walk home together, arm in arm. It was at the Green Mill that Aunt Dortha met Ed Williams, the man who would be her husband for over 50 years.

From that long marriage, she culled many life lessons that she passed on to me and my sisters.

When my younger sister, Robin, got married, Dortha offered this counsel: "When you disagree with your husband, always give in 75% of the time. Because if you think you're giving in 75% of the time, you're probably really giving in half the time."

With my sister, Lelane, she shared this sage advice, "Never throw hot spaghetti sauce when you're angry. It's really hard to clean off the wall."

And to me, "When your husband wants to go somewhere or do something, you go with him. Because if you won't, some other woman will."

But the words of wisdom we heard most often from Aunt Dortha while we were growing up were these: "You have to suffer to be beautiful." Over the years, these words have sustained us through acne treatments, fad diets, pilates classes and sleeping on brush rollers.

Although Mom passed away nearly 38 years ago, today is her 89th birthday. Tomorrow, we'll say goodbye Aunt Dortha.

Happy birthday, Mom. You have your duet partner back again.

Raisin Rules: Facebook Rule #2

2011-12-11T17:10:00.005-05:00

As with the rest of life, you can't just "Like" everything on Facebook.

Some discrimination is called for.

The other day, I saw a post saying a woman's grandfather had died and someone, I kid you not, had clicked Like.

A couple of posts later, I read where a ton of granite fell on a man's son, severely injuring him, and there it was again: Like.

Seriously?

If you're not sure what to say when something bad happens, "I'm sorry to hear that," or "My thoughts are with you," work just fine.

And if you can't drum up the energy to press that many keys, just keep on scrolling.

A Lovely Story

2011-12-05T19:21:00.005-05:00

Lovely Abraham Powell, along with being my great-great-great grandfather, was reputed to be the meanest man who ever lived.

One day a deputy named Moody rode out to Lovely's cabin in Big Hill, KY, to arrest him for moonshining and tax evasion. Lovely came out of his cabin just as the deputy rode up.

"My wife is ill," said Lovely. "One of the neighbors is on the way. As soon as she gets here to care for my wife and children, I'll come with you peacefully."

But Deputy Moody was the kind of man who gets drunker on a little bit of power than Lovely's customers ever did on 'shine. He refused to wait.

"I'm the law," he said, "You'll come, and you'll come now." And he made to slide down from his horse.

Lovely put up a warning hand.

"You get down off that horse," he said, "and you're a dead man."

Moody didn't listen. He slid down from his horse and no sooner had his feet touched the ground than Lovely shot him through the heart.

Grandpa Lovely never served a day in prison for that shooting, though. The judge ruled Moody's death a suicide.

"Everyone around here knows that Lovely Powell is the meanest man who ever lived," he said. "He told Moody that if the got down off his horse he was a dead man. When Moody decided to get down anyway, he killed hisself."

The less interesting explanation for why Grandpa Lovely never went to prison for his crime is that his wife's brother was the Governor of North Carolina, who interceded.

Lovely with his wife and children.

(Thanks to my cousin, Sue, who reminded me of this story. She prefers the factual version, but I tend toward the better story.)

Baptism by Fire

2011-11-29T18:59:00.010-05:00

This is the baptismal font at my church.

The stained glass window doubles as a door. When it's open, you can see little steps leading from the water to a staging room that lies behind.

What you can't see is that the overhead light in that staging room is set pretty far back. Far enough, in fact, that if someone stands at the top of those stairs, that person will be backlit. So that if the window is closed, the congregation will see that person in stained glass silhouette.

And if, after dunking his sheep, that young pastor is impatient to get out of his wet clothes, that congregation will see the stained glass shadow of their spiritual leader shuck off his drawers and briskly towel off before donning a pair of dry pants.

Best baptism, ever.

Toddler Transsexualism

2011-11-22T07:26:00.004-05:00

(Figure that title will get me a hit or two....)

Last week, my daughter-out-law was bathing her three-year-old daughter.

"When I grow up," said Harper, "I'm going to be a boy, like Phinn."

"No, you're not," said Mom. "You're a girl."

Harper considered this.

"Phinn has a penis," she announced. (According to my daughter, this is a favorite topic of conversation at their house.)

"Yes, he does," agreed Mom.

"And I have a vagina."

"True."

"But when I get big, I'm going to have a penis, like Phinn's."

(Somewhere, Sigmund Freud is rubbing his hands together in glee.)

"No," said Mom. "You're a girl. Boys have penises and girls have vaginas. You'll always have a vagina."

Harper was outraged.

"I will not! It will grow!"

You see, Harper's best friend at pre-school is a little boy named Vince. And when Vince plays with the other little boys, they have a rule: "No girls."

It kind of reminds me of that episode from the Little Rascals where the boys formed the He-Man Woman Haters' Club.

Except I don't remember Darla threatening to grow a penis....

Occupy Woodstock

2011-11-14T07:07:00.000-05:00

I took this picture a few weeks ago, when I was in downtown Dayton at the theater. Since then, this trio has grown into a larger group that is currently battling with the city council, who wants them to leave Courthouse Square before the tree-lighting ceremony the day after Thanksgiving.

As you can tell from the title of this post, my sympathies are with the kids hanging out in various city centers around the country. They remind me a lot of my generation when we were youngsters, back when we were still had ideals and weren't forced, by our desire for a comfortable old age, to ignore inconvenient truths.

The Fox News crowd, of course, is screaming bloody murder about them. Even the people who are on their side complain about the lack of a unified message. I, on the other hand, can't help noticing that, cohesive message or no, they got the big banks to roll back a planned $5/month charge for using your debit card. (Thanks, OWS!)

I'm kind of happy that the X-ers, who were content to wait for the world to change, have been succeeded by a more activist bunch. And I'm a little worried, as I watch the clashes with the cops around the country escalate, that they will learn, as we learned, that peaceful activism is no match for an Establishment that is willing to kill to maintain the status quo.

Godspeed, Occupiers.

The Grocery Getter

2011-11-08T06:50:00.000-05:00

Old Dog and I have a system worked out for buying groceries.

Each Saturday, I record everything we need for the week on a pre-printed form that lists, in order, the aisles at our local supermarket. I write down, very specifically, the brands, flavors, sizes, etc. Then he takes the list and, with the blood of the ancient mammoth hunters flowing through his veins, tracks down the items on that list.

We don't do this, as you might think, because I'm a control freak. We do it because Old Dog prefers it that way. (The satisfaction of my inner dominatrix is a byproduct).

And, lest you think that, at our house, it's all about me, Old Dog has the right, and the privilege, of choosing pretty much all the snack foods. I am on a mission to maintain, my weight, so I try to ignore the snack food aisles on the list.

He generally keeps us supplied with lots of things that, due to my allergies, I can't eat, so it works out pretty well.

Except at Halloween. This time of year, I'm forced to provide a little helpful input about the importance of good nutrition.

Grandma Fagin and the Artful Harper

2011-10-31T17:03:00.000-04:00

One of the greatest joys of being a grandmother is having, once again, an opportunity to teach small children useful skills.

So I was pretty tickled the last time I visited my grandkids to help them learn a little something about money.

We were at a Mexican restaurant when the kids spied a gumball machine and immediately clamored for quarters. (That's right--25 cents for a gumball--it's 2011. Suck it up.) I only had one quarter, but I did have two dimes and a nickel. I gave Phinn, who's a bit shy, the quarter. Harper's only three, but she's fearless, so I handed her the remaining change.

Pointing to the cashier, I said, "Take these over to that lady and ask her for a quarter."

Clutching the money in her left fist, Harper marched up to the register. She looked up, up, up at the young woman standing behind the register. Some children have voices like the lilting of a flute or fife. Harper's is more like an oboe. Thrusting out her empty right palm, she growled, "I need a quarter."

The cashier looked down at the little sprite frowning up from beneath her blond bob. The child's eyes didn't waver. Her hand remained upthrust in silent demand. Bemused, the cashier opened the drawer and handed her a quarter. Grabbing it, Harper wheeled and headed for the gumball machine.

Which was when I realized I'd just abetted my granddaughter in her first robbery.

Next time Grandma visits, maybe she'll teach you how to knock over a liquor store.

The High Cost of Regulation

2011-10-24T07:03:00.001-04:00

I keep hearing how the high cost of government regulation is destroying American businesses.

Only, sometimes the number I hear is HUGE ($1.75 trillion) and other times it actually seems pretty reasonable ($73 billion).

So, which is it? And why the discrepancy?

Let's talk about the smaller number first.

For 2008, the annual figure released by the Office of Budget and Management was $73 billion (give or take a few billion, adjusted for inflation, blah, blah, blah). Which, compared against a gross domestic product of $14.64 trillion, didn't seem too outrageous considering what it buys us: clean water, breathable air and no lead in our toothpaste.

The problem with this number is that it includes only major regulations and it excludes any regulations enacted more than 10 years previously. Which lets out the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1985 and means that our $73 billion is NOT buying us clean air and water and low-lead dentifrices.

Now let's talk about the other number, the big, scary one.

$1.75 trillion dollars.

That's $15,586 for each and every one of us.

Which is, by anyone's accounting, a shitload of money.

But where did this number, which represents the full price of having clean water, see-thru air (unlike the kind we saw over Beijing during the Olympics) and lead-free toothpaste, come from?

In 2010, the Small Business Administration commissioned a study to come up with a complete estimate based on the regulations in place in 2008.

This is where it gets interesting.

This number was calculated by taking the regulations and then using polling data from the World Bank to calculate a cost for those regulations. Unfortunately, the World Bank itself said this data was not valid for statistical analysis.

It's kind of like your mortgage company calculating the balance of your loan by asking a bunch of people, "Hey, what do you think this guy owes?"

God knows I'm not a statistician, but that seems like an iffy methodology.

What do their reviewers think?

Don't know. Their contract that says the researchers don't have to share their raw data, only their conclusions, which means their results cannot be peer reviewed, can't be challenged, can't be substantiated.

So the next time you hear Fox News screeching about the high cost of regulation, take it with a grain of salt.

But do it quick, before the FDA starts regulating it.

Web Wednesday: Mr. Rivet

2011-10-19T05:40:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend I was cruising the Web, doing a little research for a short story, when I came across a link to a site called Mr. Rivet. After invoking my usual pre-Internet linking prayer (please, God, don't let this be a porn site), I found this.

It's a really terrific cartoon by a guy named Luc Chamberland. Take a couple of minutes and go watch.

My Little Town Tuesday: Shoot 'Em Up

2011-10-11T06:42:00.000-04:00

Last week an insurance adjuster was out to check out some hail damage to our roof.

He didn't find any significant haiil damage, but in the course of his investigations, he did find this little beauty embedded in our shingles.

In case you can't tell, it's a .30 millimeter bullet.

Why did I have a bullet in my roof?

In My Little Town, we have this charming custom: on New Year's Eve, everyone shoots off their guns into the night sky to welcome in the coming year.

And, since what goes up must come down, these missiles eventually make their way back to earth. Unless, of course, they're stopped by something like a roof.

Or someone's head.

Riverside. Gotta love it.

For more tales of charming Riverside, OH (like the one about the S.W.A.T. team and the parrot) go here.

Thought Food Thursday: Dorothy Neville

2011-10-06T06:21:00.002-04:00

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave usnaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

You said it, sister.

Dale Jr.'s Picks

2011-10-02T18:09:00.000-04:00

As I was making up a bowl of my delicious chicken salad from the leftover scraps of the chicken I roasted last Sunday, I noticed a folded love note on top of the mayonnaise jar.

"Look inside for Dale Jr. Family Favorites," it said.

So I peeled it from the lid and checked out what Old Dog's favorite driver loves to eat.

"Chicken Macaroni Casserole"--featuring 1 cup of Hellman's Real Mayonnaise.

"Aunt Cathy's Potato Salad"--also calls for a cup of mayo.

"Mom's Mac & Cheese"--again with the mayonnaise.

"Start Your Appetite Artichoke Dip"--this one's health food--only 3/4 cup of mayo.

At least, it would be health food if it didn't also call for 1 cup of Parmesan cheese (350 calories) and 3 oz. of cream cheese (300 calories), plus a couple of jars of artichoke hearts (420 calories). If you add all that to the mayo, that's a grand total of 2150 calories in this dip.

Maybe, instead of "Start Your Appetite Artichoke Dip," they should call it "Stop Your Heartichoke Dip."

So here's my question for Mr. Earnhart: Do you really eat all that stuff?

And, if so, how do you squeeze your ass through the window to get into your car?

Maybe car racing should be like horse racing, with checks to ensure everyone's evenly weighted....

Web Wednesday: (Literally)

2011-09-28T05:59:00.016-04:00

On Saturdays, I often hike with my friend, Pauline, and my dogs at Charleston Falls. It's an ever-changing landscape, and never more interesting than on foggy days, when the beauty and complexity of the spiders' webs becomes visible.

Some are like cups

The spider who spun this one was a real dare-devil. I can just picture him, swooping out over the water, wiping his brow with one of his eight legs every time he came safely to rest on the wooden deck.

Some aren't much more than a few strands of gossamer, connecting leaf to twig.

This one looked like a bow-tie.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

(Note: Just realized that today marks the three-year anniversary of The Raisin Chronicles. This is my 417th post. Some people just don't know when to shut up, do they?)

Please, Mr. Postman

2011-09-20T12:08:00.007-04:00

On Sunday I realized my my daughter-out-law's (she'd be my daughter-in-law, but in Ohio we don't allow that) birthday is Thursday. None of the cards in my current inventory were appropriate (because she wants to be neither a pirate nor a princess, for some reason), so I picked one up at the college bookstore on Monday and brought it home for Old Dog to sign.

Mistake #1: Because Old Dog hates writing checks to the kids (because they hang onto them for months before cashing them) I put cash in the card.

So now it's Tuesday morning and the card still has to travel to another city and get delivered on Thursday. Knowing that on-time delivery was a long shot, I stopped by the main Post Office and dropped it in the mailbox there.

Mistake #2: As the card was leaving my fingers, some reptilian portion of my brain registered that while the middle of the envelope bore a neatly printed address and the upper left corner of the envelope had a return address label (because everyone who wants a donation sends us labels and it's just wasteful to throw them away), but the upper right hand corner of the envelope was pure white.

As in, no postage stamp.

I'd just dropped an unstamped card with fifty bucks in it into the mail. I've seen sitcoms where people tried to retrieve letters from the Post Office mailbox (was that Lucy? Brady Bunch? anyone remember?) and it never worked. And even if it had, I wasn't going to try it right there in their parking lot.

So, I went inside and threw myself on the mercy of the postal clerk. Who took my contact info and money for a first class stamp and promised to retrieve it, stamp it and send it on.

Seriously, where else can you get that kind of service for 44 cents?

In Honor of My New Grand-Nephews

2011-09-14T05:36:00.006-04:00

Aiden

and Spenser

who were born yesterday, I'd like to offer this guest post on sign language for babies, provided by Mey Lau.

BSL translates baby talk and bridges generational gaps

The benefits of baby sign language may start with baby, but they reach to all the extended family! Learning to communicate with a child, grandchild, niece or nephew delivers all the language development perks to baby, while building relationships and bonds outside of just mommy and daddy.

Children can be difficult to understand when their verbal vocabulary is just developing, but even verbal communications that are easily understood by parents may prove difficult for a less familiar family member to decipher. Does ba mean bottle, bear, bye-bye? And if it is bottle, is baby requesting milk, water, juice?

Signing with a grandchild, niece or nephew allows for quick connections, communications and builds confidence for baby and adult. Imagine not feeling left out or left behind by having to turn to a parent to ask for an interpretation - “what is she saying?”... “what does he want?”. Sign language for babies allows the flow of interaction to remain focused between baby and adult rather than being dependent on parental translations or requests to repeat something.

Then, there is the common complaint that grandparents are missing out on interactions with their grandkids because they can’t hear what is being said in that soft child voice. Teaching signing to extended family members - - as well as teaching baby to sign - - can clarify the words that are heard while also substituting for words that are missed. Signing for babies is a fun way to build bonds and break down the generational and communication gaps.

Grandparents, aunts and uncles often time receive the honor of teaching the fun life lessons. How to make one giant chocolate chip cookie by using an extra large pan and an entire roll of cookie dough, for example. How to jump on the bed. And who can forget the relaxed bedtime during the week at grandma’s house. With all the fun things grandparents have to teach, why not start as soon as possible by learning to communicate earlier and easier with the little ones in your family.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles and many other family, friends and caregivers can study and learn baby sign language through books and online avenues in preparation for all the baby talk (signs) that await them. With free online video dictionaries and printable baby sign language flash cards, the information is more accessible than ever.

Outings with grandchildren can be a wonderful opportunity to practice signs - - a trip to the zoo to learn animals, the botanical gardens to practice colors, and so on. Another great option is to play the role of student; let the toddler in your life be your teacher and guide. Maybe the tot can even take control of the flashcards and really quiz grandpa!

This article was created with tons of love for The Raisin Chronicles by the team at www.babysignlanguage.com in celebration of upcoming twins. Congratulations Carla. You are so lucky to have an awesome sister and so very blessed to have double-grand-joy on the way!

On Privacy and the Public Employee

2011-09-05T13:19:00.008-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, my local paper, the Dayton Daily News, did a story on what area college presidents earn. As an adjunct to the story, they published a link to an earnings search website.

On this site, you can enter part or all of someone's name, their position and the college they work at and the site will return their earnings last year.

In case your curiosity was sufficient to make you track down the website and look me up, I should note that I started mid-year, so the figure listed is not an accurate reflection of my salary. Likewise, a couple of guys I work with teach one or two classes each quarter, so their numbers would be inflated.

But this story wasn't about providing accurate information. It was about pandering to the current sense of public outrage over how our tax money is spent. It was about emphasizing that, as a public employee, I am accountable to every Tom, Dick and Harry who pays taxes. (Especially the Dicks.) It was about reminding me that one of the things I give up to be a public employee and work for what I believe to be the greater good is the privacy taken for granted by people who work for the private sector.

I feel a little like a policeman must when he pulls someone over for speeding only to be read a lecture on how the driver pays his salary.

And it fascinates me that the very same people who are screaming to reduce the size of government are simultaneously screeching about how unemployment is growing.

What did they think would happen?

I don't mind being a public employee. I'm even willing to put up with the lack of privacy that's part of working for the public.

But I'm not crazy about having so many bosses.

Sleeveless in Seattle

2011-08-27T11:12:00.011-04:00

(Okay, so we don't live in Seattle, but "De-Sleeved in Dayton" just doesn't have the same ring.)

Since Old Dog bought his Harley this spring, he's changed. He's tanner than he's ever been before, he's become a total freak about keeping the garage locked and he's bossy and protective about anyone touching his precious Sportster.

And all of his sleeves are disappearing.

(I especially like that last one that still has the little buttons you can use to hold down the collar. Except, of course, that it no longer has a collar.)

On top of all this, I've started hearing about the things a man expects from his "old lady." Apparently the better class of old ladies will clean chrome with a toothbrush.

I'm starting to understand where the term "Wild Hogs" comes from.

(This post won a Post of the Week award from Everyday Goddess. If you don't know her, go visit!)

That Bitch, Karma, Part 2

2011-08-23T18:29:00.005-04:00

Ooh, ooh, ooh, lookin' out my back door....

One of my favorite things about the neighborhood where I live now is that it's been around awhile. When you drive down my street you pass under a canopy of mature trees. The color and texture of the canopy changes with the seasons, from chartreuse in early spring to deep green in summer to multi-colored in the fall to spindly twigs against achingly blue skies in the winter.

Old Dog and I have cut down a few trees since we moved here--a black cherry and a pine to make room for the new garage, a huge old maple whose roots were insinuating themselves into our foundation--but we still have five big trees, including an absolutely gorgeous tulip poplar that gets these crazy orange blossoms in the spring.

While I've never actually hugged my trees, I'm pretty fond of them.

Last fall we got new neighbors to our west. I'm not sure we ever formally met them, and we rarely see them outside. Some kid comes by to cut their grass once a week and occasionally we see their tail-lights disappearing beneath their descending garage door.

Two weekends ago, they had someone come in and take down every single tree on their property. Every. single. one. The trees were nothing special--just a bunch of elms and maples--but they were thirty foot tall and at least that old and, like all ancient things, they were worthy of respect.

It looks like a desert over there now.

Even worse, our house seems to be about ten degrees hotter in the afternoon than it used to be. Even when I drench my wave petunias just before work, they're wilted by the time I get home. The ornamental metal fence we put up a few years ago gets too hot to touch in the afternoon sun.

I've seen a lot of the neighbors clustering in little groups, shooting poisonous looks at the tree-free property and muttering to each other and only one thing keeps me from joining the mob.

I'm not willing to become Crazy Neighbor Lady.

That Bitch, Karma, Part 1

2011-08-20T07:22:00.007-04:00

The last house that Old Dog and I owned sat on one of those wedge-shaped "makeup lots" that abound in housing developments with winding streets. The front yard was tiny, but the back fanned out into a huge area.

We bought it from an old guy who had done nothing with the yard for the previous fifteen years except maybe cut the grass. By the time we moved in, it was a jungle back there. Old Dog claimed he heard monkeys and macaws screeching from the overgrowth when he mowed. In fact, he couldn't get within five feet of the back fence with the lawnmower because it was just too dense.

As you may have realized by now, Old Dog is not a fan of clutter, and overgrown brush falls squarely into his definition of clutter. I kind of liked the privacy of fourteen-foot high bushes, but on the other hand, I wasn't the one being attacked by jungle vines. So, when he wanted to chop it all down, I agreed.

After we ripped out all that vegetation, all that was left was a rusty chain-link fence. To be honest, I've seen 1930's Dust Bowl pictures that were more attractive than our back yard once those bushes were gone. (Over the next few months, we had all the stumps ground up and planted grass, but that came later.)

To make matters worse, unbeknownst to us, on the other side of the fence, the three neighbors whose yards backed up to ours (see mention of "winding streets" in first paragraph) had kept their side neatly trimmed. And, like me, they really liked the feeling of wooded privacy afforded by those bushes.

I mean, really liked it.

I remember one particularly painful conversation with the woman who lived directly behind us. As she surveyed the wreckage of all her shade plantings, which survived their first taste of direct sunlight for about two days before shriveling up like tiny vegetative vampires, she called us every ugly name we'd ever heard. And a couple that were brand-new.

Every time we stepped out the back door, we could feel the laser eyes of hatred trained on us.

One of the neighbors told me she actually called the police to file a complaint about our vandalism and apparently cussed them out, too, when she learned she had no say-so over what we did with our yard. Two weeks later, using whatever mismatched posts and boards she could lay her hands on, she put up a privacy fence. Needless to say, she put the ugly-side-out.

The next spring we sold that house and moved here and one of the best things about that was getting away from the crazy lady on the other side of the fence.

Tomorrow: Karma Bites Back

Photo by Dan Zen

Barack and the Beanstalk

2011-08-11T15:47:00.009-04:00

Once upon a time, there was a family who fell upon hard times. They'd been on a spending spree for eleven years, buying wars and banks and a couple of car companies. Then their income dried up and they realized they'd spent not only all their money, but all their children's money, and even their grandchildren's money.

All they had left was a cow.

This had happened once before, and that time they bred the cow and turned it into a whole herd of cows and they were able to use the herd to work their way out of debt.

This time, though, no one wanted to spend money on all that bull.

So, even though they knew that their cow was their only hope for the future, they decided to sell it.

So they sent young Barack, who was charming and smart (though not much of a scrapper) off to the big city to make the best deal he could in exchange for the cow.

"Trade it for food," his mother said, because she was soft-hearted, and worried about people having enough to eat.

"Sell it for money," said his father, who like to think of himself as fiscally conservative, even though he was the one who'd done most of the spending over the past eleven years.

But when young Barack got to the city, he fell among slick-talking businessmen who talked him out of trading the cow for food OR money. Instead, they convinced him to trade Bessie for a handful of magic beans.

They told him if he planted the magic beans a beanstalk would grow right through the ceiling, and he wouldn't have to worry about it again until 2013.

And that's just what he did.

Drivers, Stop Farding!

2011-08-06T21:17:00.008-04:00

So I'm waiting at a red light on Friday morning and I notice that next to me, in the turn lane, all the traffic has gone, except for this solitary black Nissan.

I glance over to see what gives and realize the driver is talking on her cell phone. Ahead, the light turns yellow, but, absorbed in conversation, she doesn't notice.

Then I see, in addition to a cell phone, this chick has a makeup brush in her hand. So she's not only talking on the phone while she's driving, she's also applying cosmetics.

The upshot of this extreme multi-tasking is when she finally looks up, the light is turning red. She guns it and zooms through the intersection under the crimson beam, making everyone else wait on her.

Naturally, I'm still bitching about this when I get to work and Dave-Who-Knows-All across the aisle says, "Oh, she was farding."

"No idea," I say. "Both of our windows were up."

"No," he says, "farding. It means applying make-up."

So I pulled it up on dictionary.com and sure enough, it does.

So, to drivers (male or female) who insist on applying their make-up behind the wheel, I say this, "NO FARDING BEHIND THE WHEEL!"

(Photo by Xavi Talleda.)

Fiction...Monday!

2011-07-31T18:29:00.007-04:00

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Midwest Writers' Workshop, in Muncie, Indiana. It was a great conference and I learned a lot of cool new things, including some great tips on ways to improve my blog that I'll be incorporating over the coming weeks.

I also met bunches of new people (bear in mind that I'm kind of an introvert, so my idea of "bunches" and yours may differ) and was invited to join a cyber-critique group.

While I was there, I pitched my recently completed manuscript to Jessica Sinsheimer of the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency and she asked me to submit my first hundred pages!

Family and friends, please note: for the next 96 hours I will be polishing prose like a madwoman. If you don't hear from me, it doesn't mean I don't love you anymore. It just means I'm in hot pursuit of a dream.

Two Grandmothers

2011-07-22T21:42:00.010-04:00

The grandmother I want to be doesn't get all hung up about nutrition, feeding the kids whatever they want.

The grandmother I am makes deals--one piece of candy, and only after you eat some real food.

The grandmother I want to be plays Candyland and Mousetrap and Hungry, Hungry Hippos for hours.

The grandmother I am talks the kids into watching Despicable Me instead.

The grandmother I want to be is laid-back about bed-time.

The grandmother I am threatens to call your parents if you kids do not settle down right now.

The grandmother I want to be is even-handed, lavishing on each of her grandchildren the same amount of attention.

The grandmother I am connects more tightly with the child who needs it the most.

The grandmother I want to be is always up for an impromptu overnight.

The grandmother I am needs time to mentally prepare.

The grandmother I want to be has a lovely wooden toy box full of carefully selected educational toys.

The grandmother I am has a Rubbermaid tub filled with cast off junk and things she found at the thrift store.

The grandmother I want to be has grandkids who squeal with joy when she walks in the door.

The grandmother I am lucked out: she got that, too.

Bringing Good Things to Light

2011-07-16T10:48:00.005-04:00

General Electric just signed a deal with my hometown to open a research facility here on the grounds of the University of Dayton. The lab, dedicated to electric power research for the aviation industry, will create 30 to 40 jobs in its first year of operation, eventually leading to as many as 200 jobs.

Which is great, right?

Except that, to get GE to agree to locate the lab here, the City of Dayton had to agree to forego property taxes for 30 years.

That's right--30.fucking.years.

Here's my question to GE: who do you think is going to pay for the road maintenance and the street lights and the cops and the firemen that will service and protect your facility? Not to mention the schools that will churn out your future workers?

When you add to this the fact that GE paid no federal income taxes in 2010, it starts to be clear that this fairy godfather bringing the gift of good jobs is really a giant mooch who just plopped his fat ass on our couch and snapped his fingers for someone to bring him a beer.

I can already hear my pro-business friends arguing that GE has an obligation to their shareholders to keep their tax bill as low as possible.

To which I say, "Maybe they do, but I don't."

So start paying your own way, GE, and stop asking me to pick up your tab.

Note to Old Dog: Do not buy so much as another light bulb from those freeloaders.

Scaling Mt. Debtverest

2011-07-11T17:44:00.007-04:00

The above graphs represent our national debt in dollars, and as a percent of GDP. See how the lines are climbing? They look like the East Anglia version of the climate change chart. And the scary thing is, it's growing like that despite historically low interest rates. What happens when rates go up again?

Old Dog and I successfully used the following recipe to get our own financial house in order and while it may seem simplistic, I think it would work for the federal government, too:

1) Stop spending so much money. Separate the "must haves" from the "nice to haves" and only buy the "must haves."

I know cutting entitlements seems like breaking promises, but the fact is, we've promised more than we can deliver. At some point, we're going to have to admit that we over-promised and square accounts. And the sooner we do it, the less painful it will be.

2) Stop buying on credit. I'm not advocating a 100% balanced budget. We (almost) all buy big-ticket items like houses on credit, but long-term money should be used for long-term investments. I'm okay with deficit spending and accruing debt if we're buying infrastructure that will benefit the coming generations who'll have to pay it off. I'm not okay with sticking them with our dinner tab.

3) Make more than the minimum payment. At the federal level, this means (choke) raising taxes. Because if you only make the minimum payment, you're never going to get out of debt.

4) Stop building budgets that are sprinkled with fairy dust. When Old Dog and I budget, we don't include his potential overtime. Set up best, worst and middle-of-the-road scenario and figure out, realistically, what kind of revenue stream you can expect. You'll still get blindsided the next time the "we don't need no stinkin' regulation" banks figure out a new way to lie about their balance sheets, but most of the time it will work.

5) Make everyone pay their share. General Electric paid NO taxes last year (but that's a separate rant). When did Americans lose sight of the fact that paying your taxes is a form of patriotism?

Because anybody can stand around and jaw about how much they love America, but real patriots put their money where their mouth is.

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

2011-07-04T17:46:00.018-04:00

Over the long weekend, Old Dog and I cleaned out the basement, along with some other storage areas around the house. (I know what you're thinking: "If only I could party with the Raisin-Dogs." Alas, such is the nature of Blogworld that it cannot be.)

The plan was to get rid of excess/duplicate/no longer needed items, taking them to our daughter to put in her garage sale next month.

Unfortunately, excess/duplicate/no longer needed turns out to be in the eye of the beholder.

Example: this is my idea of a nice coaster:

While this is Old Dog's idea of a nice coaster:

I'm all about "form follows function" while Old Dog's aesthetic sensibilities run more along the lines of "Screw form; as long as it functions, who gives a shit what it looks like?"

I predict that it's going to be a long and painful de-cluttering process....

Thursday Thought Food: Ingrid Bergman

2011-06-30T04:36:00.001-04:00

Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.

Today's post is dedicated to my sister, Carla, who celebrates two momentous occasions today: her 66th birthday AND her final day in the world of work.

She's a mom, a grandma of five (with a pair of twin grandkids on the way), a sometime gardener, an active participant in the democratic process and, until tomorrow, a ferocious bargainer for medical supplies and equipment.

Happy birthday, Big Sister. Looking forward to seeing what's next.

On Spontaneity

2011-06-27T18:29:00.009-04:00

One morning after pre-school, as a surprise, my daughter drove my 4-year-old grandson to the gym for open play-time.

But when she went to get him out of his car-seat, instead of bopping into the gym for some happy tumbling around on the mats, he burst into tears.

"What's wrong, Phinn?" she said, totally caught off guard by his reaction. "You love tumbling."

He raised his tear-streaked face to her.

"But I wasn't thinking about this," he wailed.

Which leaves me with a couple of questions about how such a trait manifests itself in someone so young:

1) Is it genetic?

2) If so, how did he inherit it from his Step-Grandpa?

Happy Anniversary, Old Dog o' My Heart. Fourteen years of marriage and I've never (seriously) thought about divorcing you (although there were a couple of occasions where I wouldn't have ruled out homicide).

Old Joke #46

2011-06-20T19:04:00.004-04:00

This one came from Chef E, over at TMI:

A Texas trooper pulls over a Texan for a weapons check because of multiple NRA bumper stickers on his pickup.

As the officer approaches the vehicle, the man behind the wheel hands the officer his driver's license, insurance card and concealed carry permit.

The officer takes all the documents, looks them over and says "Sir, I see you have a CCP. Do you have any weapons with you?"

The driver replies, "Yes, I do, Officer. I have a 357 handgun in a hip holster, a .45 in the glove box and a .22 derringer in my boot."

The officer looks at him and asks, "Anything else?"

"Yes. I have a Mossberg 500 12 gauge and an AR-15 in the back."

"Were you driving to or from a shooting range?" the office asks.

"No, I was not," says the driver.

Looking into the driver's face, the officer says, "Sir, you're carrying quite a few guns. May I ask what you are afraid of?"

The driver locks eyes with the officer and calmly replies, "Not a damn thing."

5 Things I Hate about Facebook

2011-06-18T09:03:00.005-04:00

1) The way the page reformats itself, so that the words you're reading suddenly whisk themselves off the page and you have to go searching for them.

2) The way the security rules change without warning whenever Mark Zuckerberg or his minions get a wild hair AND the way they default the new settings to whatever benefits the Facebook empire.

A guy at work wrote an app on Friday to go out to the College's Facebook page and gather all the comments into a file so we would write software to look for keywords that would allow us to quickly respond to students having problems. He's a smart guy, and he got it working pretty quickly. He came back in Monday to find that, over the weekend, Facebook had completely redone the security rules around the API (application program interface) and it didn't work anymore. He spent 4 days getting it to function again.

3) The way the comment box squats on top of stuff I'M TRYING TO READ, DAMMIT!

4) The way the message page now keeps a full freaking history of every word I've ever exchanged with anyone. Some things in life are trivial. Do we have to track them FOREVER???

5) In general, the way the interface changes without warning. Today, you make a new paragraph by pressing "Enter." Tomorrow, pressing "Enter" publishes your comment whether you were ready or not. And the next, it's back the way it was.

Here's a novel idea: how about treating Facebook like it's a real piece of software in the real world instead of something college kids are playing with in their dorm room? If you're interested, Mark, there are published best practices for supporting software that will tell you how to do that.

(BTW--sorry for being such an ungrateful bitch and thanks for letting me use your software for free.)

Much Ado about Weiners

2011-06-11T10:57:00.007-04:00

The whole Anthony Weiner drama over the past few weeks brought up some interesting recollections for me.

Once, at a bar in Minnesota, a biker who (reportedly) had his guy-stuff pierced in various fascinating ways, with little gold chains running hither, thither and yon, offered to display said jewelry (or would that be jewels?) to all the ladies present.

Another time, a drunken bowler made an elephant by turning the pockets of his jeans inside out to make ears, and making a trunk from...well, you get the picture.

And who can forget the guy I worked with who brought in the Polaroids of his botched vasectomy?

All of this has left me with the impression that men believe that women get the same thrill from looking at men's genitals that men receive from viewing women's.

To this may I say, "Non, non, mon cher."

(At this point, I'd like to offer a disclaimer: I have worked with a lot of wonderful men over the years who showed no signs of sharing this peculiar belief.)

To those that do, however, I would like to offer this suggestion. If exhibiting your junk seems like something you need to do, how about getting ID badges made up? Instead of having a picture of your face, it could display your penis. We could create a template for this ID that includes a ruler along one side (in inches or centimeters, your choice) that would allow the ladies to readily perceive what value, if any, you have to offer along those lines.

Or does that feel a little icky?

Like, maybe, you're being judged on the size of one of your body parts? In a way that totally discounts your heart, brains, character and soul, and ignores whatever else you might bring to a relationship?

Well, from the bottom of the heart that beats inside my 36-not-quite-a-B chest, let me just say: Yeah, it does.

Fiction Friday: I Finished It!

2011-06-09T19:39:00.006-04:00

On Tuesday evening I turned my novel over to my writing group for review.

This is the fifth novel I've attempted, the third to make it to completion. It's far better than anything I've written before and represents the culmination of:
1) Three college writing classes
2) Fourteen writers' workshop, ranging from ones lasting a single afternoon to one that ran for a full week.
3) A million words written
4) 10,000 hours invested
5) Dozens of writer's group meetings
6) God only knows how many book on writing I've read and digested (and, often, read again)

I'm hoping to find an agent and a publisher, but if not, I'll publish it myself (either digitally or print-on-demand). Because this one's going to see the light of day.

This means I'll actually visit other people's blogs and catch up with everyone again.

At least, until it's time to start the next one.

The Pam Syndrome

2011-06-07T08:23:00.000-04:00

Back in the Bad Old Days, before Old Dog began doing the grocery shopping, we used to have a problem I called the Pam Syndrome.

Every Saturday morning would find us in the Baking Needs aisle, having this conversation:

Old Dog: Are we out of cooking spray?

Me: I think so.

Old Dog: It's not on the list.

Me: Yeah, but I remember noticing we were running low.

What I didn't remember, nor did Old Dog, was having this exact same conversation the week before.

It was like we were starring in our own version of Groundhog Day, but instead of having epiphanies and practicing at life until we finally evolved into good people, we just built up an inventory of cooking spray.

One memorable (or, you know, not) spring, we amassed 8 cans of the stuff before we managed to stop the madness.

Sometimes, instead of cooking spray, it was paper towels, or toilet paper. We once bought so much laundry detergent I had to donate it to the Food Bank (who, for your information, does not want laundry detergent, just food).

These days we get up on Saturday morning and I devise a menu plan for the week (which usually turns out to be a lot more ambitious than I actually feel when it's time to cook, but that's a whole separate issue) and then create a grocery list to ensure we have the stuff to make said menu. Then Old Dog heads for the grocery, a man with a mission, while I go hiking with my friend, Pauline.

So now that we've got the Pam issue under control, maybe it's time to work on Old Dog's sock collection.

Old Joke #44

2011-06-02T05:13:00.003-04:00

A man and his wife are sitting around the breakfast table one lazy Sunday morning.

Says the man, "If I were to die suddenly, I want you to immediately sell all my stuff."

"Now why would you want me to do something like that?" she asks.

"I figure that you would eventually remarry and I don't want some other asshole using my stuff.."

She looks at him and says, "What makes you think I'd marry another asshole?"

Old Dog's New Toy

2011-05-28T06:16:00.007-04:00

Old Dog had one of these back when he was a Young Dog.

He rode it a lot with what we'll call "a group of friends," but at some point he had to sell it to provide for his growing family.

So that's his history with motorcycles.

Mine is that, two weeks before I graduated from high school, two boys in my class lost their left legs to a drunk driver, one at the knee, the other at the hip. They came to Commencement on crutches, only one shoe showing beneath each robe.

Since then I've been petrified of motorcycles. Marry that up with the fact that I'm just the teensiest bit controlling and you have the world's worst passenger. No matter how hard I try to be accommodating, I find myself leaning against the turns.

When previous drivers have complained, claiming it makes it hard to turn the bike, my response has been: "Just be glad I didn't make your seat soggy."

Since Old Dog's mental image of riding has been with a biker mama on the back, we've been at détente on the whole motorcycle issue.

Then our neighbor decided to sell this pretty baby.

We took our first ride on Saturday afternoon. Old Dog enjoyed the wind blowing through what's left of his hair, while I passed the time imagining death by fruit salad--smashed melon and full-body strawberry.

This morning he's out toodling around by himself and I'm at home, wishing I wasn't such a fruitaphobe. We ordered helmets online, and I've promised I'll ride with him once they come in.

I must be bananas.

Impression: Sunrise

2011-05-25T18:16:00.003-04:00

This is the sunrise my wonderful friend, Jen, painted in my spare room.

Now to haul all the books back from the bathroom....

4 Things that Really Cheese Me Off (and 1 that Doesn't)

2011-05-20T18:04:00.010-04:00

1) Those vertical half pages in the newspaper that advertise furniture, or tires, or what the hell ever. Come on, business that wants my business--splurge and buy a full sheet of paper.

2) Subscription postcards that cannot be removed from the fold of the magazine without compromising the structural integrity of said magazine. By the time you've yanked it out of there (and you can't leave it in, because it makes the magazine stubbornly open to the same spot, over and over, regardless of what article you're trying to read), the staples are unstapled and the whole periodical is in disarray.

3) Conversely, subscription postcards that just fall out on the floor as you're carrying your magazine to a comfortable chair for perusal.

Okay, I get that the publishers need more subscriptions, but how many opportunities do they think they can wring from a single issue? The New Yorker is like a freaking snow storm.

4) Magazines that, as soon as you subscribe, start bugging you to re-up. For cryin' out loud--my subscription isn't out until October. Why are you soliciting me in February? I understand that cash flow is an issue for you, but it's an issue here, too, buddy.

(In case you're wondering about today's photo, it is NOT a picture of the bathroom of the world's most constipated man. It is my upstairs bath, in preparation for painting of the spare/guest/grandkids/library room next door. With the help of my friend, Jen, (the very Jen who saw Lady Gaga with me, and a lot of little cans of paint, the room will soon resemble a sunrise. At least, that's the plan. If it turns out okay, I'll post pictures.)

The Carry-In Effect

2011-05-16T19:23:00.001-04:00

The Carry-In Effect is a scientific principle that explains why office people will eat anything that is carried into the workplace by another employee.

Stale donuts, leftover birthday cake, petrified Halloween candy--once it hits the break room table, your average team of middle-class white collar workers will morph into a mob of homeless people scoring their once-a-day at the soup kitchen.

(Lest you think I'm being snarky about my office mates, let me say right here that I am usually first in line.)

I got a chance to witness the Carry-In effect in action last week when one of my co-workers brought in something he said was "Chinese candy."

Apparently, the Chinese notion of what constitutes candy is very different from the American view. There were no Snickers, no Reese's Cups, no Hershey bars. There wasn't even yucky candy like Sweet Tarts, Mary Janes and the fruitcake of Halloween candy, Sixlets. Instead, the assortment included dried octopus, fish jerky, a preserved plum (which looked like a mummified, candied prune) and several things we couldn't identify.

Despite this, and despite knowing there are lead-contamination problems with Chinese foodstuffs, and even despite knowing we're computer programmers who need all of our brain cells to earn a living, we eventually sampled everything. (Except the prune. Go figure.)

In the gleeful free-for-all atmosphere that is part and parcel with the Carry-In Effect, it was only after I chomped the octopus down to a swallowable cud that I thought to check the expiration date.

September, 2010.

Maybe it should be called the Carrion Effect.

Fiction Friday: If I Didn't Write

2011-05-04T19:57:00.009-04:00

If I didn't write:

I'd have the nicest flowers on the block.

I'd exercise enough to offset all the time I spend sitting in front of computer screens.

We'd eat real food at our house, instead of whatever's easy.

I'd stop yelling, "Don't answer that!" whenever the phone rings.

I'd have an actual balance in my savings account, instead of a pile of receipts from writing workshops.

The bathrooms would be a lot cleaner.

I'd walk my dogs for a half-hour morning and evening, like their vet recommends.

I'd shave the full length of my legs, instead of just whatever shows.

I'd use my lunch hours at work to take classes.

I'd spend more time with real people, instead of ones I've created.

This post would have gone up Friday morning, instead of Monday night.

But, really, what fun would that be?

Flamingo Tales

2011-05-01T20:45:00.008-04:00

I spent the past week in sunny Florida (as opposed to really rainy Ohio) with my daughter, her wife and their kids, staying with one of my sisters in Vero Beach. Got back Friday night, but between cleaning house, doing laundry and getting ready to wade back into the world of work, I came up a little short on blogging time, so today you get a visual recap of How I Spent My Spring Vacation.

Easter Sunday: I went out and hid eggs before the kids got up. In one of those heaven-sent coincidences, a bunny hopped into my sister's back yard just as the kids were eating breakfast.

The Easter Bunny!

Any skepticism they might have felt about whether the little brown rabbit they saw hopping around was really the E.B. were dispelled when they saw Eggs, Grandma! Eggs! nestled in the shrubbery.

On Monday night, their (second) Cousin Eoin (pronounced Owen) came to visit. It turns out the iPad2 has terrific games for kids, if you're into spending $500 on a toy for your toddlers.

Actual conversation:

Phinn: You're really good at that! Can I try?
Eoin: Sure. (shoves iPad over to Phinn)

Which is so sweet it's just spooky.

The next day was spent at Disneyworld, where the unnaturally good behavior continued. Not even your normal two-against-one dynamic, just sweet cooperation.

My favorite moment at Mousetown was seeing a little girl in a stroller who'd apparently just visited the princess factory. All dressed up like Cinderella, hair piled on top of her head and sprinkled with fairy dust, glittery makeup all over her face, she was shrieking her head off. Arms and legs flailing. Total meltdown.

Ah, the joys of The Happiest Place on Earth.

5 Things I Don't Get

2011-04-25T07:36:00.000-04:00

1) Why you always find reams of toilet paper lying on the floor in public restrooms. How much skill does it take to pull out just the amount you need?

2) Why, when blue jeans fade out, they always leave one dark spot.

3) Why that spot is always right at your crotch, so you walk around looking like you have a continence issue.

4) Why they make clothes from soft fabrics like cotton and silk and linen and then destroy all that comfort by sewing in tags that feel like they're constructed from a pineapple rind.

5) Boredom. Back in high school, Ben Campbell, my journalism and English teacher, used to say, "Only boring people get bored. Interesting people do interesting things and keep themselves entertained."

I must have really taken this maxim to heart, because I don't recall the last time I was bored. My usual state is more like a breathless feeling of being behind on twenty-seven different projects and wishing I could find time to take on a twenty-eighth.

How about you?

Fiction Friday: Subplots, Part 1

2011-04-21T13:31:00.012-04:00

Whoa! Fiction Friday!? Haven't seen one of these in a while....

That's because I've been living Fiction Friday, rather than writing about it.

One of the things I've been struggling with is subplots. Guidelines for novels and screenplays recommend no more than three subplots. I have four, and at some point I'm going to have to axe one.

Why? Because there's not time, in a 90,000 word novel or a 90-minute screenplay, to really develop more than that.

Why have any at all? you ask.

Because your main plotline, no matter how riveting, is going to get really tedious if it's all we hear about for that many pages.

Here's how it goes: your main character encounters an obstacle. She figures out a way to deal with it, only to discover her approach yields unforseen consequences and she now must deal with them, too. Meanwhile....

Ah, the all-important meanwhile.

Without that meanwhile, it would read like this: your main character encounters an obstacle. She figures out a way to deal with it, only to discover her approach yields unforseen consequences and she now must deal with them, too. So she figures out a way to deal with that, too, only to discover her approach yields unforseen consequences and she now must deal with them, too. So then she figures out a way to deal with those, too, only to discover her approach yields unforseen consequences and she now must deal with them, too. She figures that out and we're done.

As you can see, without subplots it will be tough to build intensity, and your reader will have problems sustaining interest.

So how do you choose subplots?

In well-written novels, subplots are thematically related to the main plot.

For example, in Harlan Coben's Hold Tight, the theme is how technology has changed our lives. The main plot dealt with parents of a troubled son trying to decide how closely to monitor his online activities. There is a subplot around another set of parents whose son had texted his friend a cryptic message just before leaping off a building. There's a second subplot involving a serial killer going after women for a reason that turns out to be related to sexting. And there's a third subplot involving the daughter of the first set of parents and some email messages. Coben's a brilliant plotter, so these subplots intersect at a lot of points, but it's the theme, what Robert McKee calls the "controlling idea" that really holds them together.

Sometimes subplots restate and emphasize the main plot and other times they contrast with it.

In Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, the main plotline and all the subplots revolve around Jacob's desire to rescue people and/or animals: Marlena, the sadistic animal trainer's wife, Rosie-the-elephant, Walter-the-clown, Camel-the-roustabout. In the bookended plot about 93-year-old Jacob, he must rescue himself from the nursing home.

Without spoiling it for those who haven't read it (or seen the movie that comes out today), I will tell you he's only successful part of the time. His failed attempts deepen the emotional impact of his successes, and vice versa.

If you're paying attention, you may have noticed that even though I started out by saying novels should have no more than three subplots, Sara Gruen manages to pull off that fourth, bookended subplot.

Well, for one thing, she's Sara Gruen. And, for another, she doesn't do that last one very well. (My opinion.)

Next week: Subplots, Part 2

C-PAP--Part 2: The Answer

2011-04-17T17:35:00.011-04:00

I hate throwing away food. I'll do it, but it needs to be for a good reason, like being past its expiration date, or visible mold. And the container of asparagus soup in the freezer wasn't bad. In fact, on the Saturday I made it, it was delicious.

Just a little hard to digest.

By which I mean, both Old Dog and I wound up with, um, disturbances, that were, fortunately, gone by the time we returned to work on Monday.

I knew I should throw the leftovers away, that the Rubbermaid bowl in the freezer would be a constant temptation, but because I grew when children in Bangladesh were starving, I couldn't make myself do it.

"Take me!" the soup would whisper each time I opened the freezer door in search of something to take for lunch. "I'm delicious."

But I live in cubicle village at work, and, fearing what might happen, I resisted.

Right up until the Friday when the cafeteria was closed for spring break and all the other leftovers were gone.

We've all seen the footage from Japan, so I don't need to go into detail about what happens when a toxic substance breaches its containment device.

I will, however, tell you about the woman at work who wears scarves as an accessory. She doesn't fiddle with them, she just wears them. But that afternoon when she came to help me with a technical issue, she began to toy with the ends, and by the time she left my cube, she had the scarf wrapped across her nose.

I'm pretty sure she wanted to stuff then tassels up her nostrils, but was just too polite.

When I got home things were no better and that night, for the first time, Old Dog kept the C-PAP mask on all night.

Because it's all about motivation.

CPAP, Part 1--The Challenge

2011-04-17T17:04:00.010-04:00

A couple of months ago, Old Dog's snoring reached a volume that left him three options:
1) Get tested for a sleep disorder
2) Sleep in a separate bedroom
3) Risk being suffocated by a spouse driven over the edge by lack of sleep.

The testing revealed sleep apnea, a condition under which a person will stop breathing until lack of oxygen forces them awake. This pattern repeats many times a night, causing the sufferer to skip the most valuable stages of sleep, those that allow the mind and body to renew themselves. Possible side effects of this sleep shortage include weight gain, diabetes, inability to concentrate and propensity to nap when watching NASCAR on TV.

The treatment is something called a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, the device pictured above. The face mask fits over the nose and mouth with a tube leading back to a machine that forces continuous air into the lungs, keeping the bronchioles and alveoli expanded, which makes it easier to keep breathing.

The first night Old Dog got the mask, I took one look at him and said, in my best Jeff Goldblum imitation, "Help me! Help me!"

Old Dog flipped me the bird.

He only made it through about two hours in the mask that night. Miserable as it was, though, when he had it on it kept him from snoring, which meant I slept a lot better.

So we were at least 50% better off.

The second night, I intoned, "Luke, I AM your father."

He flipped me off again, but that night he managed to wear it for four hours.

Night number three: "Doctor," I sobbed, "don't pull the plug. I'm not ready to lose him so soon!"

Can people get carpal tunnel from overusing their middle fingers?

But he was back to two hours that night, and the next morning, he grumbled about having to wear the mask.

"I can't tell that it's making any difference," he said.

But as soon as he removed the mask, he was snoring again, in that stop-start, no-breath-at-all-for-an-agonizingly-long-time way that makes it hard for me to sleep.

How to keep him motivated to wear the mask?

Tomorrow: CPAP, Part 2--The Answer

Thought Food: John F. Kennedy

2011-04-15T08:32:00.001-04:00

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Gaga for Gaga

2011-04-11T07:30:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Lady Gaga in concert.

Those of you who have been away from this planet for the past few years can check her out here.

My going to the concert was the subject of much discussion at work, where the argument fell into two camps:

Camp A: That is the LAST thing I'd ever imagine staid, professional, and, let's face it, OLD, Jeanne doing.

Camp B: That is exactly the kind of weirdo thing I'd expect Jeanne to do.

If you only watch, listen to and read things with which you're 100% comfortable, you live only half a life.

The Yellow Kid

2011-04-04T06:00:00.000-04:00

James O'Keefe, the conservative political activist who's much-edited film was responsible for destroying Acorn, who, in the proud tradition of Watergate, was convicted of attempting to bug the office of Louisiana Sentaor Mary Landrieu, who tried to film himself seducing CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau (and if the thought of catching a glimpse of that little worm's worm doesn't make you want to toss your cookies, I don't know what would), has once again trained his camera on the liberal left.

This time, he filmed NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller making racist statements to two supposedly Muslim potential donors. As a result, Schiller and his boss, NPR's CEO, both lost their jobs.

Now it turns out O'Keefe's sting film is, how can I put this delicately? a big fat bunch of bullshit.

To wit:

1) He edited out Schiller's careful, and repeated, explanations that NPR donors have no input into the news process.

2) He removed Schiller's more balanced descriptions of the Tea Party, leaving only the parts where he called them racists. (By the way, if you don't want to be called a racist, don't hang out with guys whose other suit is a sheet.)

2) He altered the video so that answers Schiller gave to one question appear to answer a completely different question.

In the world of evasions, distortions and pants-on-fire horseshit, I will argue that, while the first two bits of editing may fall under "evasions and distortions" that last one, where he actually changed which questions went with which answers, is a flat-out lie.

O'Keefe admits to being "yellow" and says his work is in the proud tradition of muckraking. But muckraking has no proud tradition. A hundred years ago it was garbage and it's still garbage today.

And, just in case you're wondering why I'm so torqued about this, it's because I initially bought this load of crap. Which means I'm as gullible as he is yellow.

(Note: The Yellow Kid was the first newspaper cartoon. Drawn by Richard Occault, it emerged at the turn of the last century, as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer battled for the title of king of the New York newspaper market. They are famous, not for setting any sort of bar for journalistic integrity, but for catching the public's attention. Sound familiar?)

Thought Food: Tom Stoppard

2011-04-01T07:00:00.001-04:00

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

A Grain of Salt

2011-03-28T06:00:00.000-04:00

According to Paul Krugman, Nobel prizewinning economist and columnist for the New York Times, there is a divide among the nation's economists.

The economists who reside in the center of the country, known as the freshwater economists, firmly believe in the "invisible hand of the market," the ability of the market to self-regulate. They believe that goods and services will always find their correct price. They are against government regulation and have limited tolerance even for using monetary policy (like when the Fed decreases interest rates, or increases the money supply) to address contractions in the economy.

Economists who reside along the coasts, the saltwater economists, believe that while this is generally true, sometimes people are irrational, and because of that, things (like, say, houses, or internet companies) achieve prices that don't have actual value to back them up. And that, when the emperor notices that his glass house doesn't actually have any walls, there'd better be something (like, say, monetary policy or even (horrors!) government spending) to smooth things out while we're waiting for the market to stabilize itself.

There have been two bubbles in the past ten years, bubbles that apparently occurred while the invisible hand of the market was busy doing something else (possibly playing with the invisible penis of the market).

I don't know much about economics. I studied it for three quarters at a community college thirty years ago, and even then I kept confusing elasticity (which is an economics term) with flexibility (which is more about yoga), but any school of thought that simply ignores the bubbles that put me out of work, consumed a healthy bite of my retirement savings and flooded the streets of Madison, Wisconsin with protesters for longer than it took to effect regime-change in Egypt seems to be overlooking something pretty important.

I think I'll take my macro-economics like I take my Margaritas: with a grain of salt.

My Little Town Tuesday, Only on Saturday. And in Canada.

2011-03-26T06:25:00.004-04:00

The amazing Georgina Dollface graciously allowed me to do a post for her. If you don't know Georgina, she's well worth the trip!

How Much is Enough?

2011-03-20T02:00:00.001-04:00

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil's Dictionary, defined enough as "too much."

And it's true. We tend to measure "enough" at the upper boundary, rather than the lower.

Apparently, this is also true for the very wealthy. In the April edition of The Atlantic, a survey of households with more than twenty-five million dollars (that's right, $25,000,000) revealed that most don't feel financially secure.

In fact, the cutoff for fiscal confidence appears to be a cool billion dollars.

As I read through the article, which focused on the many ways that vast wealth fails to make people happy, it occurred to me how fortunate I am.

I have a job.

Old Dog has a job.

We're both healthy.

Our mortgage pays off in a few years.

We've got a little tucked away for retirement.

All of that could change tomorrow. One (or both) of us could get sick, we could lose our jobs, and God knows the retirement account has been a real roller coaster ride over the past few years.

But, for today, we're okay. Although we'll never see even one million dollars, we have enough.

Which makes us richer than most of the 115,000 wealthiest households in America.

How about you? Do you have enough?

Thought Food: F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-03-18T05:00:00.000-04:00

"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look, at forty-five, they are caves in which we hide."

What the Earthquake in Japan Tells Us

2011-03-14T19:51:00.006-04:00

That we're on a planet that was once a ball of molten rock and is still cooling.

I heard on the radio today that the governor of the Tokyo prefecture (or some such thing) says the quake and tsunami are divine retribution because people in Japan are so selfish and materialistic.

But that can't be true, because, if it were, Wall Street would be a freaking crater by now.

The Pig in the Python, Part 2: Do-It Yourself Death Panel

2011-03-13T05:00:00.001-04:00

My Grandmother Robertson was widowed when she was in her forties, left with five children. She relocated from eastern Kentucky to Dayton, Ohio, where she opened a boarding house, cooking and cleaning for half a dozen strangers so she could feed and shelter her kids.

She was a skinny little woman, fiercely independent, who was still climbing up and down ladders painting ceilings (and doing her own housework, and cooking, and cleaning, and gardening) into her eighties. But when she was eighty-three a series of temporary ischemic attacks, small strokes known as TIA's, shorted out enough of her wiring that she was forced to move to a nursing home.

Over the next few years, recurring TIA's robbed her of her ability to read, to speak and eventually even to recognize anyone.

One night when she was in her early nineties, her heart stopped. By chance an aide found her almost immediately, and resuscitated her. My aunt called me the next day.

"Thank goodness that aide came by," she said, in the tone of one reporting a miracle, "or we would have lost Mom."

But, for me, my feisty grandma had ceased to exist long before.

By the time this brush with death occurred, she spent her days tied into a wheelchair, wearing diapers and eating pre-mushed food because she couldn't remember to chew. She cradled a plastic doll she believed was my Aunt Lorena, the infant she'd lost to whooping cough.

Grandma lived five more years after that, and if she'd been capable of lucid thought, I'm convinced she would have been disgusted that her escape had been foiled.

So what does this have to do with the pig in the python?

Our society is unprepared to deal with the mass of Baby Boomers who will require long-term care. And, although we can't avoid growing old, we can take steps to limit how long we linger, drooling and building up bedsores even as we soak up every available dime from American taxpayers.

After watching what happened with my grandmother, I am determined to avoid sharing her fate. And I'm not asking my daughter to make this decision, because, after seeing my aunt's reaction, I know it's not a fair thing to ask.

Instead, Old Dog and I have set up Living Wills that specify that, in the event something bad happens, no extraordinary means will be taken to keep us alive.

Because I, for one, am not waiting for the Death Panels.

The Red Pump Project

2011-03-07T05:00:00.002-05:00

Every 35 minutes, a woman tests positive for HIV in the United States.

My daughter, who works for the Columbus AIDS Task Force, asked me to write this post. She is concerned that the continued growth of AIDS among women is under-recognized, under-funded and under-treated.

To show you just how serious I am about this, I actually wore red pumps to work today.

In case you don't understand the significance of that, one of the reasons I married Old Dog is because he's precisely my height and I knew if I married a man no taller than myself that I'd never be pestered into wearing high heels. Well, that plus he's totally adorable.

So here I am, posting their badge on my blog AND tromping my little-old-lady feet all over campus in my red pumps to make a statement.

So please check it out.

The Pig in the Python

2011-03-03T05:37:00.015-05:00

Last Sunday, our minister (who's in his early 50's) stated that we Baby Boomers are the most selfish generation to ever grace this planet.

As a card-carrying Boomer myself, I wondered: is this a general perception? So, I Googled "boomer selfish"...

...and found a post by a Samuel J. Scott, a Gen-Y member. His gripe: we're working too long, hogging all the good jobs, so that his generation has to stay in school running up student loans or live in their parents' basements.

Then I found a post by Debbie Schlussel that says we're as selfish in near-death as we were in life. Her beef? That many of us plan to spend all of our wealth before we die, rather than passing it on to our kids.

And then, on a site called Die, Boomer, Die (I've realized at this point that we're about as popular as Stephen Colbert at an RNC meeting) I read complaints that we're retiring too early, eating up all the Social Security and Medicare money.

By now I'm starting to feel like the grandparents in Willie Wonka, the ones who'd been bedridden for twenty years while Charlie and his mom slaved to feed them (not to mention changing out four bedpans, which must have been truly disgusting.) And on top of that, it turned out Grandpa Joe was sandbagging the whole time, because as soon as the golden ticket showed up he started leaping around like a grasshopper on a griddle.

I'm not denying that we're selfish. The ability of my generation to ignore facts, reinterpret history and even reconfigure reality to justify doing whatever we want is more mind-blowing than the drugs we experimented with in the 60's.

But, folks, we only have three options:
1) Work longer (retaining all the good jobs)
2) Retire early (sopping up all the Social Security and Medicare money) or
3) Use our savings to fund our retirements (leaving nothing for our kids).

Okay, I guess there is a fourth one, scheduled suicide, but I'm not willing to entertain that, even if it would make me popular among the younger set.

If you wanna be pissed, though, be pissed at medical research, which has extended the average length of retirement from 18 months (back when Social Security was first put in place) to 20 years (as of 2007). It's only when you take the massive size of my generation and multiply it by how long we live in retirement that the problem reaches truly epic proportions.

Next week: some options for addressing this issue.

Life in Nine Dimensions

2011-02-26T07:01:00.014-05:00

I took a SAS programming class last week. SAS was invented in 1966 for the purpose of analyzing the data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The language developed proved to be so well suited for statistical processing that it's now used at 50,000 sites worldwide.

During the class, we covered the topic of arrays. Arrays, for those of you who are neither geeks nor mathematicians, are used for processing blocks of related data. For example, if you have sales figures by date and you want to calculate net profit for each quarter, you could write a program that says something like:

Quarter1_Net_Profit = Quarter1_Gross_Sales - Quarter1_Costs
Quarter2_Net_Profit = Quarter2_Gross_Sales - Quarter2_Costs
Quarter3_Net_Profit = Quarter3_Gross-Sales - Quarter3_Costs
Quarter4_Net_Profit = Quarter4_Gross_Sales - Quarter4_Costs

or you could put the data into an array and process it by performing this calculation 4 times, incrementing the value of the subscript (q) with each iteration:

Quarter_Net_Profit(q) = Quarter_Gross_Sales(q)- Quarter_Costs(q)

If you wanted to tally your profits by month within each quarter, you could set up a two-dimensional array:

Quarter_Net_Profit(q,m) = Quarter_Gross_Sales(q,m)- Quarter_Costs(q,m)

The way I've always pictured arrays in my head is like this:

A one-dimensional array is a list of things, like a single column in an Excel spreadsheet.

A two-dimensional array is rows and columns, like the periodic table.

A three-dimensional array is more like library stacks, with rows, columns and depth.

I suppose you could argue that the fourth dimension, which is time, would be that same set of stacks today versus tomorrow versus the day after.

Once you get to a fifth dimension, you're up, up and away from a stoned soul picnic, which, of course, is something else again.

And beyond that, you're into string theory.

Anyway, the class reminded me that I once worked with a woman who wrote a program that contained a nine-dimensional array.

She was building a report on student demographics: how many were freshmen vs. sophomores, male vs. female, black/white/Hispanic/Native American/ Asian/etc. and some other stuff I no longer recall. In total, the info fell into 9 categories.

So she set up an array that looked like this:

Demographics_Count(a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i)

where "a" was either a 1 (freshman) or 2 (sophomore),
and "b" was either a 1 (male) or 2 (female),
and "c" was 1-6, for whatever race,
and you get the picture.

And while it makes perfect sense to me that if you set all the subscripts to the appropriate values and increment the Demographics_Count by 1, you'll wind up with exactly what you need, my brain cramps when I try to picture it.

Apparently it did the same thing to her, because soon after she left programming to become a meter-reader for the local electric company. There, she had all kinds of interesting adventures like:
a) Getting locked in the basement by four guys playing poker (scary, but they did let her out when she yelled)
b) Happening on a naked woman tied to a bed (yeah, it takes all kinds)
c) Having her calf ripped open by a German Shepherd

The last time I ran into her, she was working as a waitress in a steakhouse.

I'd love to know where she is and what she's doing today, because this was a woman who lived life in many dimensions.

How about you? How many dimensions are there to your life?

Thought Food: Carol Matthau

2011-02-25T06:39:00.003-05:00

"There is no old age. There is, as there always was, just you."

Carol Matthau was the real-life model for Holly Golightly, the main character in Truman Capote's novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's, later made into a movie with Audrey Hepburn.

Something WICked This Way Comes

2011-02-21T06:06:00.006-05:00

So, after spending like a Disneyland tourist with a shiny new credit card for the past ten years, Congress finally thinks it's time to put the plastic back in its pocket.

And where would the GOP, who now control the House, like to make billions of dollars in cuts?

a) In Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, which is ~45% of the budget and growing like kudzu?

b) In Defense, which is ~30% of the budget and, oh by the way, contains a boatload of pork, including several projects the Defense Department says it doesn't want or need?

or

c) In domestic discretionary, which is ~12% of the budget?

If you guessed C, you win.

Here is the list of proposed cuts, in millions, compared to President Obama’s FY11 budget request which was never enacted (source: NationalJournal.com, groupings are mine):
Arts and Humanities $12
· National Endowment for the Arts $6
· National Endowment for the Humanities $6
Energy $3,749
· Clean Coal Technology $18
· DOE Loan Guarantee Authority $1,400
· Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability $49
· Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy $899
· Energy Information Administration $34
· Fossil Energy Research $31
· Nuclear Energy $169
· Office of Science under the Energy and water spending bill - $1,100
· Power Marketing Administrations - $52
· Strategic Petroleum Reserve - $15
Agriculture $684
· Agriculture University Research - $246
· Farm Service Agency - $201
· Rural Development Programs $237
Health $3,661
· CDC - $755
· Community Health Centers - $1,300
· FDA - $220
· Food Safety and Inspection Services - (FY10) $53
· Maternal and Child Health Block Grants - $210
· NIH - $1,000
· Poison Control Centers - $27
· Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services - $96
Law Enforcement $1,149
· COPS - $600
· FBI - $74
· Juvenile Justice - $2.30
· Law Enforcement Wireless Communications - $52
· Legal Services Corporation - $75
· National Drug Intelligence Center - $11
· Office of National Drug Control Policy - $69
· State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance - $256
· US Marshals Service - $10
Revenue & Treasury $1,606
· Department of Treasury - $675
· Internal Revenue Service - $593
· Treasury Forfeiture Fund - $338
Environment & Natural Resources $2,612
. Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies - $30
· Clean Water State Revolving Fund - $700
· Drinking Water State Revolving Fund - $250
· EPA - $1,600
· EPA Brownfields - $48
· EPA Cap and Trade Technical Assistance - $5
· EPA ENERGY STAR - $7.40
· EPA GHG Reporting Registry - $9
· EPA State and Local Air Quality anagement - $25
· Fish and Wildlife Service - $72
· Forest Service - $38
· Land and Water Conservation Fund - $348
· National Ocean and Atmospheric Association - $336
· National Park Service - $51
· Natural Resource Conservation Service - $46
· US Geological Survey - $27
Social Services $1,982
· Community Services Block Grant - $405
· Economic Development Assistance - $16
· Family Planning - $327
· HUD Community Development Fund - $530
· International Food Aid grants - $544
· Job Training Programs - $2,000
· LIHEAP Contingency fund - $400
· Minority Business Development Agency - $2
· WIC - $758
Transportation $1,837
· Amtrak - $224
· FAA Next Gen - $234
· High Speed Rail - $1,000
· NASA - $379
Miscellaneous $2,145
· International Trade Administration - $93
· National Archives and Record Service - $20
· National Institute of Standards and Technology - $186
· NSF - $139
· Smithsonian - $7.30
· GSA Federal Buildings Fund - $1,700

Paul Krugman, Nobel prize-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times, described the above as eating the future, but I'll go him one better.

The decision to de-fund WIC, the program that pays for infant formula and nutritious food to pregnant women, nursing mothers, infants and small children is more like eating our young.

Democracy, American Style

2011-02-12T08:33:00.007-05:00

Every once in a while, something happens to remind me why America, as screwed up as we are politically, is fundamentally a cool place. Watching Egypt fight, over the past few weeks, to obtain the democracy we take for granted was one of them.

Two hundred and thirty-five years ago, we fought that same battle. It took us, not eighteen days, but six years to accomplish the goal. Perhaps it was because we had to work so hard to earn our democracy that we esteem it so highly.

To my mind, though, the thing that sets America apart from a lot of other attempts at democracy didn't occur until 1792. That was when George Washington, who could have hung onto power with the same python grip Hosni Mubarak has exerted over the past thirty years, chose to walk away, to return to being a farmer, to let someone else have a turn.

It is when I see the evil men do to gain and hold power that I'm truly awed at what the founders of the country managed to accomplish. Think about some of the dictators we've seen:

Fidel Castro, Cuba, death toll: 15,000 to 17,000

Edi Amin, Uganda, death toll: 100,000 to 500,000

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe, death toll: 20,000+

Teodoro Obiang, Equatorial Guinea, death toll: unknown, bank account: $600MM

The reason I chose these four, out of the dozens from the last century, is that each of them took over from another dictator, took power swearing they would not repeat the mistakes of the last ruler, that they would institute democracy and let their people have a choice.

And each was, inevitably, seduced by power (or lying their asses off in the first place, but that's a whole different post).

By contrast, we have a government that, every four to eight years, without revolution, without bloodshed, without riots in the streets, transitions from where-we-are-today to where-we-want-to-be-tomorrow.

So check us out, Egypt.

Cause you could do worse.

No, It's NOT the Truth

2011-02-07T04:57:00.004-05:00

I received this email the other day and decided to respond to it here.

Ain't it the truth...

HIGH SCHOOL
1957

vs.

2010

Scenario 1: Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck's gun rack.

1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack. They head back into the school, leaving the gun completely unattended. It may or may not be there when Jack returns, because people stole stuff, even in the 1950's.

2010 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario 2: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.

1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies, at least for the time being. Over the years, though, their enmity simmers and eventually Johnny boinks Mark’s wife (who was the subject of the fight in the first place) and destroys his family in revenge.

2010 - Police called and SWAT team arrives -- they arrest both Johnny and Mark. They are both charged with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario 3: Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.
1957 - Jeffrey sent to the Principal's office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again. However, his underlying attention-deficit problems remain unresolved and he doesn’t master the material and grows up semi-literate.

2010 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The family gets extra money (SSI) from the government because Jeffrey has a disability. The good news: he at least learned to freaking read.

Scenario 4:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman who derives intense pleasure from beating his own children. The cycle is repeated through the next four or five generations.
2010 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist.

Scenario 5: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock. Many years later, they meet up again in the cancer ward, still sharing the same drugs.
2010 - The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario 6: Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college, but still winds up cutting grass because he’s a spic and who’s going to hire a spic for a real job?
2010 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario 7: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed.
1957 - Ants die. Johnny finds this so enjoyable he next shoves a firecracker up a cat’s ass. To this day, it's not safe to leave your pets unattended in Johnny's neighborhood.
2010 - ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents -- and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny's dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario 8: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing. The next time he falls down, it’s on a basketball court. The basketball coach comforts him with a blow job.
2010 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

This should hit every email inbox to show how stupid we have become if we really believe things were better in 1957!!

The Age of Athena

2011-02-06T06:55:00.005-05:00

On Friday night, when I washed my face and put on moisturizer just before I went to bed, everything looked much as it had for the past few years. Same 237 wrinkles, 15 freckles and 6 white eyebrow hairs.

Jeanne's Face: Population 258.

The next morning when I repeated the process, in preparation for putting on makeup, there was a new girl in town.

An age spot.

At the corner of my lip.

I have named her "Athena," because like the goddess, she sprang from my head, fully formed.

It's right at the location where Cindy Crawford sports that little beauty mark that looks so sexy.

This little spot is anything but.

I have long believed that people who drop bundles on Botox injections and chemical peels would be better off spending their money on therapy (Raisin Rule #12), to get used to the fact that they're going to get old.

But, looking in the mirror this morning, I may have to rethink my position.

Old Joke #43: Negative People

2011-01-30T12:06:00.004-05:00

A woman was at her hairdresser's getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser.

"Rome?" said the hairdresser. "I've never understood why would anyone want to go to such a crowded, dirty place. How are you getting there?"

"We're taking Continental," said the woman. "We got a great rate!"

"Continental?" said the hairdresser. "That's a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they're always late." She shakes her head. "Where are you staying in Rome?"

"We'll be at this exclusive little place on the Tiber River called Teste."

"I know that place," said the hairdresser. "Everybody thinks it’s gonna be something special, but it's a dump."

"Anyway, we're going to go to see the Vatican. Maybe we'll get to see the Pope."

"That's rich," said the hairdresser. “You and a million other people. He'll look the size of an ant." As she removed the cape from the customer, she added, "Good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You're going to need it."

A month later, the customer returned and the hairdresser asked her about her trip.

"It was wonderful!" said the woman. "Not only were we in one of Continental's brand new planes, but it was overbooked. They bumped us up to first class and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot.

And the hotel was great! They'd just finished a $5 million remodeling job, and now it's a jewel. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner's suite at no extra charge!"

"Well," muttered the hairdresser, "that's all well and good, but I know you didn't get to see the Pope."

"Actually, we were quite lucky. As we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and said that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I'd be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me.

And sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me."

"Oh, really! What'd he say?"

"He said, 'Who fucked up your hair?'"

Raisin Rule #1: Finders Keepers

2011-01-27T19:53:00.005-05:00

Finders keepers/Losers weepers is only valid until you turn five.

After that, it's stealing.

(Written by a woman pissed off that someone found her $10 flash drive in a computer at school and took it--with the latest version of her novel, and all her rewrite notes, not to mention all her homework--on it. And yes, I had a fairly recent backup, at least of the book.)

Find this, asswipe.

Driving Miss Raisy

2011-01-23T19:42:00.000-05:00

According to s study I read, 65% of people surveyed believe they're in the top half of the world's best drivers.

This means 15% of people are not only sucky drivers, they're sucky drivers who think they're Jimmie Johnson.

I don't have that problem: I know I'm a lousy driver.

Okay, lousy might be an overstatement (or not, I'll let you judge), but I'm definitely in the bottom 50%.

Why, you ask, do I say that?

1) As you might have already inferred if you're a regular reader, my mind wanders a lot, and never more than when I'm behind the wheel. People who are in a fog do NOT make the most with-it drivers.

2) And I'm worse when I have other people in the car. Because I may be absent as a driver, but I'm very present as a conversationalist.

3) I have, ahem, challenges, in the arena of spatial concepts. I have a lot of trouble figuring out where things are in relation to each other. For example, I can't stand in my basement and tell you what room is overhead. It's not that I can't reason it out. I can look out the window and say, "Oh, there's the driveway, and the dining room window looks out on the driveway, so I must be under the dining room," but to just stand there and somehow know? Not happening.

4) This means that I occasionally run into things. Like posts. And garage door frames. And card-swipe gizmos.

Anyway, told you all that to tell you this: I'm looking for folks to form a carpool from Riverside to downtown Dayton.

Anybody in?

Winning the Cold Medal

2011-01-17T05:00:00.001-05:00

Really old (and somewhat disgusting) joke: What's green and figure skates?

Peggy Phelgm.

I missed two days of work last week due to the cold I caught from my two-year-old granddaughter, aka Patient Zero.

I might have survived contact with this one-child plague zone, but I happened to bring with me her favorite blanket, which she'd left behind on her last visit, so she kept running up and kissing me. Mostly on the side of the knee, which, of course, is lip (and snotty upper lip) height for her.

Since I'm equipped with monkey arms that hang to my knees (apparently God decided to use the bone that could have gone into making me an actual chin on longer arms instead), this means my fingers kept brushing the site of the contagion.

The days I missed were Wednesday and (most of) Friday. On Thursday, due mainly to scheduled meetings, I dragged myself into the office and did okay. When, on Friday, I tried to repeat that trick, I wasn't as lucky. By 10 a.m. the cheery "bless you's" that reverberate in my office when someone sneezes had degenerated into sullen silence, marred only by the sound of people pulling garlic and silver crucifixes from their lap drawers.

I chose to leave before the lynch mob could form.

Because of my allergies, any sort of respiratory issues inevitably turns into a sinus infection, so on Friday afternoon I visited my family doctor, who prescribed an antibiotic.

Only I HATE taking antibiotics (which breed supergerms) so I put off taking it until the next day, by which time I had morphed into a giant snot-ball.

Just call me Peggy.

Random Acts of Grouchiness

2011-01-09T14:47:00.008-05:00

As I pulled into the gas station Sunday, a rusted, beat-up truck came in from the other direction. For some reason, I expected him to allow me--older, female--to go first, but he wasn't that kind of guy. After a moment of fuel-station chicken, I eased back and waved him on.

I'm not sure why he was in such a hurry, because as I got out of my car, a young woman in gray sweats exited the passenger side of the truck and approached me.

"Would you have five dollars?" she said. "I have my one-year-old son in the car and we don't have any gas."

Then why are you out driving around? Despite my uncharitable thought, I reached for my wallet, only to remember I didn't have it with me.

"Sorry," I said. "I don't have any cash."

She approached a couple of other people with similar results before returning to the truck, where Mr. Lemme-Go-First was waiting, nozzle already in hand. I'm not sure what for, since he had no money. She shook her head and he looked pissed.

I crossed the asphalt, inserted my credit card into the slot and said, without making eye contact, "Go ahead and fill it up." Then I crossed back and began filling my own car.

When his tank was full, he hopped in his truck and peeled out of there like he thought I was going to flag him down and repossess his gasoline.

Jerkwad.

People will now leave me flattering comments, saying how nice I was, but I wasn't. Not really. The truth is, I'm better at "random" than I am at "kind." I couldn't tell you why I even did that, other than I've been that broke, and I've been with that guy, and even though I know that fifty bucks worth of gas is a drop in the bucket of what that girl needs to turn her life around and prevent that little boy from growing up to be just like his douchebag dad, I figure a bellyful of gasoline in her truck means one thing she doesn't have to worry about for a couple of weeks one Ohio winter.

And that's what I can do.

What's My Profession?

2011-01-08T07:10:00.002-05:00

I happened to follow this guy into a restaurant parking lot the other night, so I got a chance to snap his license plate.

So what do you figure? An x-ray tech?

Or a TSA Agent?

The Keys to Success

2011-01-02T16:07:00.008-05:00

When I started my new (and wonderful) job last summer, one of my first stops was the key shop, where I was given keys to the two office doors.

I blinked when I read the ID letters on the keys, but decided the configuration of letters must be purely random.

Until, back in the office, the Database Administrator reminisced about getting his keys.

"They said 'DBA,'" he said.

Here are mine:

Do you think they're trying to tell me something?

New Year's Eve 2010 by the Numbers

2011-01-01T09:28:00.005-05:00

Number of children in attendance: 8

Number of noise-makers available: 8

Number of noise-makers that actually made noise: 5

Number of issues that created: 4006

Percentage of non-potty-trained children invited: 0%

Number of wet pants laundered because it's really hard to remember to head for the bathroom in time when you've got cousins to play with: 2

Latest hour a pre-school aged child went to sleep: 12:30 a.m.

Earliest hour a pre-school aged child was once again awake: 7:30 a.m.

Minimum number of miles to the home of the two-year-old who managed to leave here this morning without her beloved blanket: 70

Hope your New's Year's was a statistical success!

Fashion Makes the Man

2010-12-27T05:00:00.000-05:00

Last weekend Kylie was busily coloring when Old Dog came through the kitchen. She looked him over thoughtfully.

"Grandpa, why do you always wear the same clothes?"

He doesn't really.

It just looks that way to the untrained eye.

The True Meaning of Christmas

2010-12-24T07:03:00.004-05:00

Last weekend, Kylie (age 6) and her little brother came to visit while Mom went to look for a car. I put them to work helping me decorate our Christmas tree.

As we hung ornaments, Kylie told me stories about various friends at school and I soon noticed a theme. Whenever someone had misbehaved she would say, virtuously, "They don't know the true meaning of Christmas."

After about the third iteration, I said, "What is the true meaning of Christmas?"

Her face took on a trapped look and her eyes darted around the room. It was clear she hadn't expected a quiz.

"Being good on Christmas Eve, so you'll get your presents," she blurted out.

Hmm.

We may need to work on that.

High Five!

2010-12-20T06:30:00.003-05:00

Celebrating a few good things here at the Chronicles:

1) Congress (finally) repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell.

As of today, we're officially willing to let gays die for their country. You kids go take a few bullets for us and who knows? someday we may even let you get married.

2) Tomorrow is the winter solstice. Those of you who live closer to the equator probably don't understand what the big deal is, but we who dwell in the not-so-much-daylight-at-this-time-of-year latitudes will be happy to see the days starting to lengthen again.

By the way, I totally buy into the story of Demeter and Persephone. It's the only explanation that really makes sense. I used to sing "You Are My Sunshine" to my daughter when she was little. If someone had taken her away for six months at a time, my sunlight would have gone with her.

3) Tomorrow is also my mother's birthday. Were she still alive, she would have been 88 years old. She was a great believer in self-reliance ("'I am the captain of my ship, the master of my destiny,'" she'd quote to us.), a great disbeliever in whining ("I'd feel sorry for you, but you seem to be doing an adequate job of that on your own.") and a thorough pragmatist ("If there's something you have to do, and there's no way to get out of it, do it gracefully.")

I'm trying, Mama.

5 Things I'm Over

2010-12-13T05:00:00.003-05:00

On Friday, Stacy over at Anymommy posted a list of things she's over. She asked readers to post their own lists in her comments, but I decided to put mine here, instead. If you have a list you'd like to share, post it in the comments or provide a link to your blog.

(Nothing like a little pre-Christmas rant to get you in the holiday spirit.)

1) Political systems that reward decisions that help representatives get re-elected, as opposed to decisions that move the country forward.

2) Rich people who believe they should carry a lighter share of the tax burden because, if they wanted to, they could take that extra money and create jobs with it.

3) Poor people who believe they should be able to live middle-class lifestyles without going to work every day.

4) Workers who believe they should be able to work for 30 years, then sit on their butts for another 30. (Unless they manage to save up enough money to be self-supporting for 15 or 20 of that. Which is nearly impossible to do on the average salary, which, in turn, is why neither the government nor individual employers can afford to subsidize that option.)

5) People, in general, who believe you can make selfish, self-indulgent choices forever and never pay the piper. And if you think that's not happening, I refer you to item 1.

(I'm a tiny bit peeved over what's going on in Washington. Can you tell?)

And a happy Monday morning to you!

Happy is the Man

2010-12-05T05:00:00.002-05:00

As I approach the final pages of my new novel, it's gotten me to thinking about marriage and how, here in the U.S. anyway, the marriages we generally view as "happy" are the ones where the man publicly claims to be henpecked. He indulges and caters to his wife, and mock-complains (or claims to be too terrified to protest) his fate.

In the world outside his home, he may command dozens of people, but inside he's not even allowed to pick out wallpaper.

On the other hand, if the situation is reversed, if the wife complains how the man wears the pants and makes all the decisions, we view it as a less happy marriage.

I wonder why that is?

I think it has to do with power. Because men typically have both the financial power and the physical power in a relationship, there's a gentle majesty in allowing the smaller, weaker party to make binding decisions, kind of like those trainers who lead huge bears around on little chains. We know the bear could, with one swipe of his paw, end the tyranny, and we view it as a measure of the strength of the connection between the two that he doesn't do that.

I wonder if there's any correlation between the longevity of a marriage (which, of course, doesn't actually measure marital happiness, but it's the closest measure I can think of) and who makes the domestic decisions?

What do you think?

And, for those of you who come from other cultures, how do things work in your world?

The Month of Living Dangerously

2010-11-29T05:00:00.001-05:00

As you may know, November is National Novel Writing Month, the annual event where writers around the world attempt to pen a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. (For those of you who are mathematically challenged, that comes out to 1667 words per day.)

I attempted to do this last year and wound up adding a mere 13,000 words to my novel-in-progress. This year, with that same novel still under construction, I decided to do a slightly different take on NaNo, committing only to finishing this first draft, an effort I estimated at about 20,000 words.

And, to give myself a fighting chance, I decided to clear my calendar of everything but work, school and unavoidable chores--laundry, nuking food and running the dishwasher.

It's now the last weekend of the month and this is where I am:

1) Old Dog has washed 9 loads of his own laundry.
2) We've eaten through 90% of the leftovers in the freezer, including two containers of Mystery Meals (that remain mysteries to this day).
3) I've turned down:
o 2 requests for babysitting.
o 2 grandkids' birthday parties.
o A plea to help out my sister (yeah, that one's totally coming back to haunt me)
4) The bathrooms are gross.
5) The dust is so thick you could write a NaNo novel in it.
6) Wads of dog hair the size of tumbleweeds roll across the floors.

Balanced against all that is the fact that I've penned 11,000 words and I'm down to the last three scenes of the book.

So I'm ahead of the game.

Two Unnecessary Innovations

2010-11-22T05:00:00.001-05:00

#1 Recloseable packaging for men's underwear.

May I just say, "Eww?"

#2: Airport scanning devices that actually do what the old X-ray glasses advertised in the back of comic books did not: let people see through your clothes.

When we reach the point where someone has to either see me naked or cop a feel before I can safely get on an airplane, the terrorists have won.

Wherein a Computer Program Causes Me to Attend Church with Bed-head

2010-11-15T05:00:00.002-05:00

On Sunday morning, I decided to finish up my homework as soon as I got up so I wouldn't have to deal with it after church.

The assignment was to setup a space scene with a lunar lander, a spider robot, a space alien and some rocks and to program the following scenario: The spider robot walks over to the rocks. When he gets there, the space alien pops up. The spider robot whirls around and runs back to the lander.

(Yes, the spider robot is kind of a chicken-shit. What can I say? He's not my protagonist.)

Anyway, simple program, right?

I was almost done when I decided I had too many rocks. Since I couldn't remember how to delete an object, I just resized one till it was too small to see. Only then, when I pressed the "play" button, the spider robot would just kind of spin in place with his legs hopping up and down like he was standing on a hotplate.

Hmmm.

After a while, I figured out that the robot was trying to walk over to a rock that was too small to see. That was, apparently, right under his feet. I spent the next half hour trying to locate this rock molecule so that I could make it big again.

Turns out it's impossible to resize a rock you can't see.

I had to start all over.

Which is how I wound up at church on Sunday with bed-head and no make-up.

Old Joke #45

2010-11-08T05:01:00.000-05:00

Jack wakes up in the hospital bandaged from head to foot.

"I see you've regained consciousness," the doctor says. "You probably don't remember, but you were in a huge pile-up on the highway. You're going to be okay, you'll walk again and everything, but your penis was severed in the accident and we were unable to find it."

As Jack groans, the doctor goes on, "You've got $ 9,000 in insurance compensation coming and we now have the technology to build a new penis. They work great but they don't come cheap. They're, roughly, $1,000 an inch."

Jack immediately perks up.

"You'll have to decide how many inches you want. Now, I know that you've been married for over thirty years, so this is something you should discuss with your wife. If you had a five incher before and get a nine incher now, she might be uncomfortable with the change. Or, if you had a nine incher before and you decide to only invest in a five incher now, she might be disappointed. So it's important that she plays a role in helping you make your decision."

Jack agrees to talk it over with his wife.

The next day, doctor comes back. "So, have you spoken with your wife?"

"Yes I have," Jack says.

"And has she helped you come to a decision?"

"Yes, she had," Jack replies.

"And what did you decide?" asks the doctor.

"We're getting granite counter tops."

5 Things I'm Glad I Won't Witness

2010-11-01T05:00:00.003-04:00

Sometimes it's a drag to realize I won't be around for certain future occurrences, like the next visit from Hailey's Comet and what my grandkids' kids will be like. With other things, though, I'm actually pretty happy to think I'll be dead when they happen.

Like:

1) Gen-Xers trying to retire on what's left of Social Security by that point. Can anyone say, "Cat food meatloaf?"

2) Today's tattooed kids when they're 50. I once had a grape tattooed on my ass. It's now a raisin. (Okay, that's not really true, but it's not a pretty image, is it?)

3) The attention span of the next generation of kids.

4) The U.S. paying off our debt to China. Like that will happen. Seriously, China: take a lesson from what's going on with all the upside-down mortgages here, and with the pensions GM (stupidly) committed to paying. When the going gets tough here, we default. You've got about as much chance of getting your money back as Buffalo has of making it into the Superbowl.

5) The obesity stats in 2060. At the rate we're going, they won't fit on the page.

You always hear, "Getting old stinks, but think about the alternative."

To which I would reply, "Dying sucks, but would you really want to be around to deal with all this shit?"

Open Letter to My Teachers

2010-10-25T05:00:00.002-04:00

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

Is are was were am be been
Has have had
Do does did
May might must can could
Will would shall should

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

I before E except after C

8 x 6 = 48
8 x 7 = 56
8 x 8 = 64
8 x 9 = 72

A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y

Dear Teachers:

Now that you've used up all the memory registers in my brain with this trivia, I have just one question:

Where the hell are my car keys?

Respectfully,
Jeanne

That Time of Year

2010-10-18T05:00:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, a notation on the grocery list reminded me that it's that time of year again: the Great American Blubberbutt Fest.

GABF, for those of you unfamiliar with this holiday, begins in October with Halloween candy and doesn't finally wind down until the last New Year's Eve cocktails--and cocktail weenies--are tossed back.

Think of it as a kind of reverse-Ramadan, only twice as long and twenty times as fattening.

During this time, people will carry in to their place of work foods that they'd never make for their families, because they're just too unhealthy. And their co-workers will eat every bite and wash it all down with hot cocoa, or punch, or eggnog, which is whole milk to which has been added ten pounds of sugar, the yolks of a dozen eggs and some nutmeg.

Because nutmeg is famed for its ability to reverse heart disease.

At our house the pre-season warmup has already begun. The note on the grocery list was Old Dog's reminder to himself to stock up on Halloween candy. Beggar's Night, aka Trick or Treat, is still two weeks away, but we now have a supply of Reese's peanut butter cups, Fast Break bars and Butterfinger Miniatures on the kitchen counter. (At least, we did. We now have half a supply.)

In case you're not festive enough on your own, GABF always runs in parallel to school fundraisers, where adorable little boys in Cub Scout uniforms show up on your porch with kegs of popcorn (buttered popcorn, cheese popcorn, caramel popcorn, chocolate popcorn...) and adorable little girls call on the phone to ask how many Mint Moneypits and Caramel Cashsuckers Grandma and Grandpa are willing to spring for. Because if she sells $20,000 worth, she'll receive a stuffed animal worth $4.99.

(And don't bother to offer to simply buy her said toy--it has a paper tag hanging from its paw that makes it magical and special, and it can only be won by selling a gazillion Peppermint Pocket-Pickers)

Hmm.

I may need to work on my holiday spirit.

The Homework Ate My Blog

2010-10-11T17:59:00.002-04:00

I'm taking a class (Intro to Object-Oriented Programming, if you're interested) and I had to prioritize doing homework over blogging this week.

Another Rule

2010-10-06T20:50:00.002-04:00

Leaving negative comments about people on Facebook is like picking your nose while you're driving.

It may feel private, but people can see you.

Worst Ad Copy EVER

2010-10-04T05:00:00.001-04:00

My friend, Nicole, who, in addition to being one of the world's best critique partners, has a marketing and copywriting business called Keylocke Services (www.keylocke.com) sent me this ad copy (NOT her copy, mind you) she saw for a groupon:

Like a potato, if the human body is not properly mashed and moisturized, it will never be used for anything more than a science- project battery. Make sure your body is fluffed and buttered with today's soothing Groupon: for $20, you get a one-hour massage (up to a $65 value) at (company name deleted to protect the innocent).

(Company) offers soothing massage therapy within a calm and comfortable environment. Each hour-long massage ($65 value, $50 for anyone under 18 years old) utilizes the steady-handed skills of a talented staff of certified muscle molders. A variety of techniques are melded together to provide a mélange of optimal relaxation. Customers may delineate their desired pressure or area of focus, and the massage will be customized to suit their individual needs. Massage therapy helps the overworked masses shed their stress like a snake shedding an unfashionable judge's wig. Let firm arm paddles and a skillful touch provide a proper stress-blasting session with today’s Groupon to (company).

As Nicole's friend, Amy, said, "Wrap me in tin foil and bake me! Why would I want to go to a spa to be treated like a potato?"

All I can say is: I didn't even know snakes wore wigs.

Happy Anniversary to Me and a Way Cool Announcement

2010-09-27T05:00:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of The Raisin Chronicles, and what better way to celebrate than by sharing that a major obstacle to one of my life-long dreams has just been removed?

I've wanted to study writing in a structured way for...well, for most of my life, really, but there were three barriers:

1) Money
2) Getting into a program (they're really competitive, especially for a degree that confers not one ounce more ability to earn a living on the recipient).
3) Time

I recently learned that my employer, an institution of higher education whose mission statement begins "We help individuals turn dreams into achievable goals..." (and who, by the way, won praise from the New York Times for its focus on helping people prepare for good careers) will assist in paying for a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

So now I'm ready to tackle the second barrier. I've been looking at low-residency programs (that is, programs where you do most of the work via the internet, attending on-campus workshops a couple of times a year for around 10 days each), and I've compiled a short list of favorites:

1) Bennington College in Vermont
2) Antioch Los Angeles in California
3) Hamline University in Minnesota
4) Seton Hill in Pennsylvania

Bennington sums up their program in six words: Read one hundred books. Write one. Can you imagine how much you'd know about writing after reading and analyzing a book a week for two years?

Antioch is considered one of the best low-residency programs in the country if you're interested in topics of social justice, like say, gay marriage.

Hamline offers a specialization in writing for young adults and seems like a perfect fit for my first novel, about a young woman coming of age in Minnesota in 1894--the year a massive forest fire wiped out the town of Hinckley, MN.

Seton Hill offers the only degree in the country tailored to writing popular (as opposed to literary) fiction. With what I could learn there, maybe I'd be able to finally finish my suspense thriller about the woman on the run from her porno director hubby who uses his skills to concoct a video that has everyone in the country looking for her.

My top choice has varied over time, based on what kind of story I was working on. In the end, I suspect the choice will be driven by which one (if any) will let me in. (Did I mention that it's really competitive?)

So, this fall, I will be applying to each of these programs, with the intention of starting next fall/winter. (I hope.)

I'll let you know how it goes....

Fiction Friday: What I'd Do For Love

2010-09-24T16:00:00.001-04:00

Love of writing, that is.

I once spent a Sunday afternoon in my driveway handcuffed to the steering wheel of my Saturn, trying to figure out how my protagonist could get herself out of that situation.

I have no idea what the neighbors thought, but I'd swear I saw them giving Old Dog some very odd looks afterwards.

(By the way: from the front seat of a '94 Saturn SL1 it's possible to pull down the backseat and access the trunk. So if you happen to have a crowbar in there....)

Note: This post was awarded a Post of the Week medal by The Comedy Goddess.

Icarus Falling

2010-09-20T05:00:00.000-04:00

If you're not familiar with it, the painting is Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Brueghel. I just discovered it recently and it really captured my imagination.

If you click on it, you'll be able to see the detail.

Go ahead. Click it. I'll wait.

Did you notice the legs in the lower right hand corner? Sticking up out of the water?

Those legs are Icarus, plunging to his death. You remember Icarus? He and his father, Daedalus, needed to escape from the island of Crete, so Daedalus built wings from wax and feathers, so they could fly away. But despite warning from his father, headstrong young Icarus flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted.

Now look at the rest of the painting. Everyone is going about his daily life, unaware of the boy's destruction.

The shepherd is looking up, like maybe he heard something, but it's clear Icarus will disappear beneath the surface without the shepherd ever seeing him.

Sometimes I think this blindness to surrounding tragedy is all that makes life bearable.

Fiction Friday: Jane Austen Fight Club

2010-09-17T05:02:00.000-04:00

On Procrastination

2010-09-13T05:00:00.001-04:00

I once attended a class at church called, "Cooperating with God for a Change." During the class, the teacher said, "How many of you think procrastination is a bad thing?"

Everyone raised their hand.

"Not at all," he said. "Procrastination is the thing that lets us delay starting things until the right time. Without procrastination, if you woke up at 2 a.m. and realized your grass needed cutting, you'd have to get up right then and mow it."

Which pretty much describes my life.

You see, I was born without a procrastination gene.

Many of you will reading that will say, "How lucky! Think of all she must get done!"

But it's more like, "Think of all the things she gets started!" Finishing stuff requires discipline, which is a whole separate chromosomal sequence.

Old Dog, on the other hand, was born with two procrastination genes.

In fact, the only thing that gets him started on a project is when I initiate one and then abandon it.

So, all in all, it works out.

Fiction Friday: Homage to Ray Bradbury

2010-09-10T05:00:00.002-04:00

Note: If the "f" word, or, for that matter, nubile young schoolgirls lusting after really old men, offends you, don't watch this.

On the other hand, if your perspective is a little wider, watch it and laugh your ass off.

I did.