inFAQ's Answers

Retrospect

2012-02-29T10:04:00.001-05:00

Though I was born in the 1960s, my real cognizance of cultural, social and political trends didn't start until the 70s. Yeah, I lived through the buildup in Vietnam, Woodstock, the Kent State shootings, the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the first British invasion, the 1968 Democratic National Convention with the Chicago Seven, but I don't remember any of that. I was too busy with my Legos, GI Joe, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and so on.

I became a teenager in 1973. There was junior high, high school and the start of college. There was a driver's license. There were jobs. There were girls. I became aware.

So much of the 70s is looked upon with distate, scorn, derision. Because the 70s found its expression in disco, its fashion in bell bottoms, leisure suits and platform shoes, its leadership in Nixon, Ford and Carter, it is relegated to the status of kidney stones. Is this a fair judgment? Tough to say.

Much of the cultural malaise ascribed to the 70s was born from a 60s hangover, I think. Drab images from Vietnam, riots, and an overwhelming tide of negative energy generated by polarization of views and action found their response in the bright colors of polyester, spinning balls of mirrored light and LSD. A pendulum had swung.

I wasn't a big fan of the 70s. I didn't like junior high or high school, and that six years is a major chunk of the decade. The music of the time didn't generally impress me. The pain of first breakup was experienced, though that seems quite minor now.

I will say this - as blah as the mid-70s seemed, from 1977 on, it improved. I don't know if it was due to growing older, but I left for college in 1978 and that still remains one of my favorite eras in my life's history.

Time has tempered my view of the 70s. Now and then, I will hear a song that transports me back to that time, and I find myself stirring with positive feelings for that kidney stone of a decade. I'm not saying I'd like to go back and relive any of it.

But it's not the snark inducer it once was.

Except I still hate bell bottoms.

KDP Select Promotions Analysis

2012-02-26T17:07:00.002-05:00

In order to help promote indie and unknown writers, Amazon has allotted money toward the KDP Select program which allows the author to distribute e-books through the Kindle Owner's Lending Library and still receive a royalty. Additionally, authors are allowed to offer their e-books as free downloads for five days at a time in order to offer readers samples of works they would most likely not purchase.

I gave the free promotion a try with four different short stories I've published for Kindle. The following are my results of the promotion.

The four stories I offered for free were The Train, The Concourse, The Decision and A Forest in Forever. With the exception of The Decision, all the stories are from the compilation, Of Trains and Other Things. This promotion was available in the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

In the month of February - my promotion ran about 2 weeks - my stories were downloaded a total of 1291 times. Of that number, 1073 were downloaded in the US. UK came in second with 199 downloads, Germany third with 19 and France last with 1. There were no downloads in Spain or Italy.

Of those 1291 downloads, 1262 were free. 31 were paid downloads. In other words, there were 31 purchases of my e-books in that time period. One of those purchases was made by me as I wanted to see how the work displayed in Kindle. So there were actually 30 unique purchases of my e-books.

Total cost for download including both free and purchased books was $456.29. I use the word "cost" for analysis purposes - technically, it didn't cost me anything, at least not out of pocket - to give away e-books for free. However, those would still be considered a cost in accounting terms and I will do that here as well.

Total sales of purchased works came to $13.23 which includes the $2.07 royalty I received for buying my own book to check the formatting.

Conversion of free downloads to purchased downloads is 2%. In terms of response to direct mail or coupon advertising, this is not a good return on investment. Typical returns on direct mail pieces are expected to run 4%-5%.

Once the free promotion ran its course, there were a few purchased downloads, but those have come to a stop about a week after the last book stopped being free.

As a promotion, from my point of view, I'd say it was not successful - especially in the short term. Long term effects cannot be measured at this point.

Two people left a review from the free download. I am somewhat suspicious as to the origin of the reviewers because even though they had different identifying names, the reviews themselves were similar in wording.

There are some who would argue that the real value in offering freebies was the exposure received. That those who are willing to download something for free would not have bought it in the first place. There is merit to that argument, however, I am afraid that the existence of Kindle and e-book formats may actually be responsible for devaluing authors' works.

The reason I say this is because I have spent time on Amazon forums where I have read Kindle owners complaining about the cost of some e-books being similar to the cost of hard copies.

There seems to be a fallacy of thought that because the e-book is no more than electrons displaying on a screen, in other words, there's no physical substance, then it should not cost as much as a printed book. This mentality reduces an author's skill, creativity and long hours of writing to absurd levels of price expectation.

Unfortunately, there is a great evolution going on in publishing, and I can see both advantages and disadvantages in it. But that's really a blog for a different day.

I may toy around with offering up some more freebies.

But if my current results are accurate, I can't see a lot of benefit to it. Just 98% of the Kindle owners getting something for free.

Swimmer Adrift

2012-02-16T09:59:00.001-05:00

Sometimes we get too far away from things.

Everyone drifts. Some more than others. Then we find ourselves one day lookng back at what once was, and we wonder how we've come to our current place.
It's not a freak thing, nor is it planned.

It just happens.

For instance, I was thinking about something I used to do regularly about 10 years ago. The activity was rock hunting. To perform this exploration, I would walk a fair distance into abandoned quarries and spend several hours digging and washing rocks looking for nice collectibles.

Sometime in there, I stopped doing it.

It was never my intention to stop doing it. I just did. Probably other responsibilities or activities just replaced the time I used for rock hunting.

Whatever the reason, it's not something I can go back to now.

My terribly arthritic hip wouldn't allow it. I've gotten too far away from the activity to stay in shape for it.

Though I don't usually think about these things, they do pop into my head now and then. And I think about them with curiosity as to why I stopped. The answer isn't always available.

Sometimes we just stop.

And then we get too far away from them.

The same can happen with people.

I did an internet search of a good friend I had in the 90s. It turns out the she died in 2009. The obituary didn't say why, but she was only about 56 years old.

We parted ways after the company we worked at closed due to her husband's death in 1998. She and he owned the company. I think I saw her twice after the closure, but all contact ceased from that point.

We got too far away from each other.

The effort to decrease our distance would have been difficult even though she lived fairly close to the company where I have been working for the last 11 years. It would have been inconvenient and time consuming.

I'm sorry I didn't make the effort.

But I refuse to regret any of this.

Most of this.

Some of this?

Facebook Philippic

2012-02-09T13:43:00.005-05:00

I am tired of you talking about how tired you are.

How much you need coffee. Or anything to do with getting, stopping for, or drinking your morning coffee.

I am tired of you making a heart with your hands, or one of your hands combined with the hand of another to form a heart.

I don't want to know about your sleep patterns, the amount of work facing you or what you are doing to battle XYZ illness.

I am tired of hundreds of photos you have taken of yourself in the mirror. And I don't really want to see any more pictures of you with your face jammed up beside someone else's or with you holding a large plastic cup of beer beside several other people holding large plastic cups of beer.

You overrate your cleavage.

I am sick to death of the coercive statements you post that try to shame me into stating how much I love Jesus, or how I agree that cancer is terrible, or that I shouldn't mistreat animals because, you know, 95% will not repost it, so I must be part of that loser majority.

I don't care what level mobster boss you killed or that you need my help to perform a heist.

I'm not impressed by your sharing of pithy little sermons about how you were raised, how you are underestimated or what meaning daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, moms or dads bring to our lives.

I really don't want to see pictures of beaten dogs or photoshopped cats.

You really need to stop drooling over fake profile pictures of incredibly gorgeous women. They are most likely not the profile owner.

I don't want to see your items on Etsy, the portraits you use to promote your photography, your bad paintings or all those pictures of sleeping babies.

You are not near as clever as you think you are.

I confess to spending some time studying pictures you posted in order to find the hidden gotcha, but even those are becoming mundane and rather stupid.

Your links to videos of amazing musical virtuosos who are younger than ten years old aren't as interesting as you think. Nor are those inspirational posters as inspirational - I know I'm not inspired.

Don't tell me what you are having for dinner, where you are going clubbing, how you are trying to resist chocolate, that your car is broken, or that I should be the change I want to see.

There.

I'm done.

For now.

Here's to the Golden Moon

2012-01-25T09:51:00.007-05:00

Camden, Maine is a charming harbor town located on Route 1 in the mid-coast area just north of the city of Rockland. With the ocean on one side, and small mountains on another, it is nestled comfortably in downeast atmosphere.

It is a quintessential postcard Maine fishing village. As such it has attracted a lot of people with money causing land values to be fairly high. Tourism is a mainstay as evidenced by the numerous restaurants and gift shops. There is a lot of stuff packed into Camden's nooks and crannies.

My favorite eatery in Camden is the Village Restaurant. It has a dining room that overlooks the harbor and hosts a traditional seafood menu. The best fried scallops I have ever eaten come from the Village.

After eating, it is pleasurable to wander the streets looking in shops. There is a small park along Main Street that is next to the Megunticook River which flows through the middle of town and empties into the harbor.

When my wife and I moved to Maine from Georgia, Camden was one of the places where we considered settling. I had an interview with the Camden Herald for a reporter position and considered myself a strong candidate. However, I didn't get the job. We ended up settling elsewhere.

We have been to Camden a few times just for leisure sake. It's about a two hour drive from where we live, so we don't get there often. The last time we went my sons were much younger. The oldest may have been a teenager, but I don't think so.

We ate at the Village and wandered around the town a bit. It was a pleasant evening - probably summer as it wasn't quite dark yet. As we stood on the sidewalk over the river that flowed under Main Street, my wife (or one of the boys?) noticed bubbles floating above the water. She pointed it out, and we decided to explore it further.

Strolling down the narrow Tannery Lane which parallels the river, we quickly came to the Camden Riverhouse Hotel. Across from the hotel is a small parking lot edged with all sorts of greenery; bushes and trees. Lighting was strung through the trees giving the area a Christmasy effect. Next to the parking lot is a wooden foot bridge that spans the river. Someone had placed a bubble machine on a railing of the bridge, and it was blowing many bubbles which carried on air currents downstream.

I had two thoughts at that moment.

The first was, how odd. The second was, how delightful.

I'm not a bubble person. They are neither here nor there to me. But that evening, on a warm summer night after we had just enjoyed a seafood dinner overlooking a picturesque harbor, the bubbles added a magical capper to the experience.

Bubbles.

Who knew?

Your Changing Face

2012-01-23T14:09:00.003-05:00

There will come a time when you start to feel the dagger of age slipping under your skin.

Long expected, it is, in many ways, unexpected.

The dream of immortality is one inherent in all though most will never admit it.

You see, it is not a logical expectation of living forever but more of an unconscious assumption as life begins to unfold and present itself to you early on. It is so bright with color and full of possibility, yet sprinkled lightly with a tantalizing fear of the unknown. But you feel good and strong, imbued with the cosmic energy of youth, so that you are ready for risk.

This is a gift you won't realize as such for many years to come.

The first bite always tastes the best.

There is an explosion of flavor upon first bite or sip. The fullness, the richness and all the subtle nuances of flavor are released in that initial moment of ingestion. From that point on, there will be pleasantness, enjoyment. But first sensation is never quite matched as taste buds become accustomed to the flavors.

Much of life is like this.

The early excitement of youth is vibrant. Aging dulls this vibrancy gradually until the repetitions of activity by older folks seems flatter, less flavorful. Changing bodies, fading tones reduce experience to a hollow representation of what it once was. In exchange for this, the elderly are supposed to have gained wisdom.

Many do, many do.

Unfortunately, wisdom isn't necessarily the desired outcome. So it's no surprise that people try to prolong aging for as long as they can. Tummy tucks, facelifsts, chemical peels, hair dyes... all designed to mimic youth. Affairs with younger partners, new sports cars, hip clothing. These are frantic attempts to put off the alternative.

But the surface of aging can be forestalled for only so long. And even though the faces may imply 32, the bodies' cells say 67. Truth is found in the depths, not on the surface.

Elderly people don't want to be wrinkled. They don't want to be tired. They would love to have the energy of youth, the strength of a fresh body.

They would love to experience first bite again.

But they can't. Some become bitter because of it. Some are resigned to nostalgic journeys of the mind. Most just accept it, for there is no other choice.

Give the elderly some sympathy even if you don't understand why.

And give them an audience from time to time, for they are trying to express the significance they once felt when they were your age. After all, a life once filled with taste and texture is a fleeting experience. Then it becomes like drinking soda with no effervescence.

One day you will start bemoaning about where all the time went, how quickly it has all slipped away, and you will be yearning for what you cannot have any more.

Then you will know.

Judge Not Lest....

2012-01-20T11:21:00.003-05:00

I will be the first to state that I have no idea what poetry contests and magazines are looking for in submissions.

Yeah, they are looking for poetry, but exactly what kind is a mystery to me.

I used to enter the Margaret Reid Traditional Poetry Contest, and the first few submissions did okay. I received some highly commended and commended awards. They even included small cash prizes. The last time I won any sort of kudos from this contest was in 2009. By this time, there were no more cash awards at the level I achieved.

I have also entered several pieces in the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest and never received so much as a nod from them.

Additionally, I have submitted poetry to several literary magazines. I was published in one, the only compensation being a free copy of the publication. When I received it, it was apparent to me that it was a very low quality magazine in terms of design and materials. I'm certain the magazine is no longer published due to lack of subscription sales.

This morning, I received an email from my most recent submission. Here is what it said:

We regret to inform you that your poems have not been selected for inclusion in the winter 2012 issue of Off the Coast. Be assured that although over 1,500 poems were submitted, your poems were read by at least three members of our editorial board.

I actually only sent one poem. It was obviously a form email sent out to us losers.

Losers is such a negative term, right? I probably should have said nonpublishees.

None of this rejection hurts me. I don't feel like a knife has pierced my heart, that I want to wrap myself in black and spend my days weeping over dead flowers. There has been too much real hurt in life to get overly bothered by rejection from poetry judgers. It doesn't even prevent me from continuing to write.

I have been juried and judged in the past at art shows. It was back in those days that I realized there is no firm formula for what is going to be lauded by the judges. Oh, there has to be a certain level of competence displayed in the submission piece, whether it be writing or art. But beyond that, the judges' determinations are based solely on their subjective tastes.

In other words, their personal likes, dislikes and opinions decide who will win.

So the whole process becomes rather hit or miss when trying to figure out what to submit.

I try to be as objective with my own work as I can. Long ago, I categorized my own poetry as good/strong, passable and just not good. After some consideration, I placed about 10-15% of my poetry into the good/strong category, another 30-40% in the passable category with all the rest deemed as just not good. I understand that my rating of my own poetry may be unrealistically generous. Maybe only 5% of my work is only passable and all the rest is junk.

But, hey, others have already been judging my work. I may as well judge it myself.

The problem is that even if I consider it to be good/strong, no one else is. An English professor I had in college has pointed out some pieces I've written and told me they should be submitted for publication somewhere. I've tried that as well with no positive results. Maybe he doesn't know what judges want either.

If I was a disciple of Norman Vincent Peale, I would keep thinking positively about this as I forge ahead knowing that somewhere, someday I will break through and become a famou poet laureate. However, I keep poking at it rather lethargically and wonder why I'm wasting my time. It's a real lesson in behavioral psychology. Besides, there's still no guarantee that positivity on my part will affect the subjective opinions of those who hold the gavels.

It's all left me rather apathetic.

Yeah, That's the Ticket!

2012-01-16T06:13:00.004-05:00

The clash of the titans is over, and the dust has settled.

Tom Brady versus Tim Tebow.

Could there really have been any other outcome?

Sports pundits say that anything can happen in the NFL. Upsets along the road to the Super Bowl aren't uncommon. Just look at the recently played games between San Francisco and New Orleans, New York and Green Bay.

Popular consensus had New Orleans and Green Bay winning their respective games.

They didn't.

There were even those who argued for a Denver win over New England. They tried to make the case that New England's defense is too porous, wouldn't be able to stop the run or Tebow's long distance throwing.

Given the sporadic quality of play by the Patriots' defense throughout the season, it was hard to disagree with that thinking.

However, on Saturday night, they became beasts and thwarted the Bronco's running game. They also prevented Tebow from throwing more than 150 yards by putting enormous pressure on him. There were four or five sacks of the haloed one (I don't say this sarcastically - I have a lot of respect for Tim Tebow's fearlessness in expressing his beliefs. I'm just trying to avoid the redundancy of saying his name too often.), not to mention many tackles of ball carriers behind the line of scrimmage for a ton of negative yardage.

I think that a lot of people wanted to believe that the Broncos had a mandate from God himself to win this season's crown as a way to prove that miraculous events still take place.

In the end, though, it became obvious that God isn't a football fan. Or at least a Denver Broncos' fan.

He teaches through losing as well as winning.

Tim Tebow was a great story this year. I don't think he was nearly the polarizing figure that many made him out to be. There's always a vocal minority that sounds larger than it really is.

He was David to the Goliath known as Tom Brady. And without divine intervention, Goliath will nearly always defeat David.

Besides, I think God is really a baseball fan.

Let's Go Bowling

2012-01-11T05:58:00.004-05:00

I've never been a college sports enthusiast. I don't follow March Madness or the BCS. It's probably partly due to the fact that the college I attended was never in the national sports spotlight, so there's no particular loyalty to any school that is.

But I am cognizant enough to be able to sense the changes that have taken place over the decades with regard to college competition, especially football.

Back in the time when New Year's Day seemed a bit more of a celebration than it does now - my mother would always make pea soup, and my grandparents would always visit, plus the Tournament of Roses Parade - I recall college football bowl games as being part of the festivities. Now this is all by memory, so I can't make any statements of accuracy, but there used to be a few bowl games, maybe not all on New Year's Day. But I remember the Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and the biggest one of all, the Rose Bowl.

I believe my grandfather may have watched a bowl game or two, so I caught parts of them at least. I wasn't a college football fan then, and I'm still not one. But I sensed that these football games were pretty special events.

Now there are too many bowl games to remember.

This is what I found on the internet:

Gildan New Mexico Bowl
Famous Idaho Potato Bowl
R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl
Beef 'O' Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl
S.D. County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
MAACO Las Vegas Bowl
Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl
Little Caesars Bowl
Belk Bowl
Military Bowl
Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl
Champs Sports Bowl
Valero Alamo Bowl
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl
New Era Pinstripe Bowl
Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl
Insight Bowl
Meineke Car Care of Texas Bowl
Hyundai Sun Bowl
AutoZone Liberty Bowl
Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl
Chick-fil-A Bowl
TicketCity Bowl
Outback Bowl
Capital One Bowl
Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl
Rose Bowl
Tostitos Fiesta Bowl
Allstate Sugar Bowl
Discover Orange Bowl
AT&T Cotton Bowl
BBVA Compass Bowl
GoDaddy.com Bowl
Allstate BCS National Championship Game

They aren't held on New Year's Day this year; they are spread out over December and January.

Apparently, there's a lot of money in these bowl games if one can tell from all the corporate sponsorship in this list. I'm all for making money, but it seems to me that the hunt for the almighty dollar always sacrifices something. In this case, it has made the special very ordinary. Or so it seems to me.

I suppose I'm not really lamenting anything here as I don't follow any of this beyond the headlines. However, as a watcher of trends, I wanted to make note that I caught this particular one.

Sooner or Later

2011-12-31T09:35:00.004-05:00

There's something about Oklahoma that draws me.

I've never been there, only seen pictures of it. They have tornadoes there.

It seems like there are two mid-wests. The northern one and the southern one. Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska would be part of the northern one, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, the southern. I'm not sure where to put Wyoming. Or Colorado. Probably just plain west.

This is all just me talking. I have no idea the official definitions of what falls where.

But I see a different sort of sensibility between the two I have perceived.

There's also a northeast sensibility as well as a southeast one. I'm sure there's a southwest and perhaps northwest, too.

I don't think there's a California sensibility. At least not from what I've read.

Here's what I associate with those regions: Southwest - turquoise and rattlers, Northwest - dark roast and grunge, Southeast - grits and gators, Northeast - snow and seafood.

I see I haven't included the middle northern folks - Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas. Really just an oversight on my part as I don't spend much time thinking about them.

I don't include Texas in the mid-west. It seems like it is its own country to me.

Too far south, also.

I mean, it borders Mexico.

So, I guess that makes it part of the southwest?

Still, there's something about Oklahoma. I confess that most of my Oklahoman experience comes from entertainment.

You know, "Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain."

Or the move Twister.

Or even The Wizard of Oz. No wait, that's Kansas.

What the devil is a Sooner?

Oklahoma has a panhandle which makes it look something like a ladle. I wonder if that's where the term 'panhandler' came from.

Route 66 goes through Oklahoma, and isn't there quite a bit of the romance of travel associated with that famed highway?

As near as I can tell, a lot more songs have been written about Oklahoma than Kansas. Many of them are blues songs. I don't know any blues songs about Maine. It's just a different kind of soul.

I picture Oklahoma as being a big drive-in theater. Or drive-in restaurant with carhops on roller skates. Is it too much to wonder if most of the people still are driving Studebakers and DeSotos?

I know if I ever went to Oklahoma many of my notions would probably be dashed. Since we have no plans to travel there any time soon (or sooner), I'll just have to content myself with whatever delusions I create.

I can live with that.

Passing

2011-12-28T08:26:00.006-05:00

Twenty-five years ago yesterday, I said "I do" at the First Baptist Church of Spindale, North Carolina. Coincidentally, my wife did the same thing at the same place and same time.

A lot has happened since then.

My wife's mom, dad, grandmother, uncle and great uncle all passed away. My mother survived breast cancer, and my father survived prostate cancer. I had a spot with melanocytic cells removed from my back, though the doctor never came out and said I had melanoma. My wife had a brain tumor which was successfully removed. She had a uterus that was successfully removed as well. Long prior to her hysterectomy, I impregnated her four times. Two of those were miscarried. The other two are my sons.

I have held nine jobs that I can remember. My wife has held two jobs since her discharge from the Army. We attended four different churches as regulars. I can't even begin to count the number of cars we owned over that time. A quick count tells me it was at least fifteen.

We had a house built. Since then, floors have been torn up and replaced. The roof has been replaced. A lot of planting has taken place. A new room has been built. There's different furniture and fixtures, not to mention wall-covering.

Together, we have been to or through Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. But never Vermont, though I'd been there long before we were married. Guess it's too far out of the way.

We have purchased land in four other states besides where we live. And I still keep an eye out for other locations.

I have written ten books, a few songs. I displayed paintings in art shows for six years, won some awards in doing so. Made a few dollars. My wife must have made biscuits or corn bread about a million times. Her real craft, though, is playing piano. To that end, we bought a Yamaha full-size electronic keyboard for her to play. We have played and sang together in church many times with her on piano and me strumming guitar.

We attended numerous Little League, Junior League, Babe Ruth, Junior Legion baseball games. We also attended numerous Portland Sea Dogs games. They are the AA affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. We've been to one Red Sox game at Fenway Park and one Atlanta Braves game at Turner Field. There have been too many restaurants to remember and count.

We've seen many friends die. I know we've been to more funerals than weddings.

We've seen friends come and go. Some have returned via Facebook, and that is nice, though it's not quite the same as having them around. My oldest son has graduated high school, gotten his first job and completed his first semester in college. My youngest son has become a pretty proficient guitar player.

There have been five presidents, five governors of Maine and two wars in the Middle East.

Much has happened in the last twenty-five years.

The time has been full.

Gas? Gas? Gas??

2011-12-20T14:17:00.002-05:00

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 has passed the Senate with a 93-7 margin of victory. It hasn't been signed into law yet by the President. The NDAA has been enacted each of the last 48 years to specify the budgets for the Department of Defense.

NDAA 2012 has civil libertarians concerned.

Apparently, language has been inserted into the bill that allows for the use of US troops on American soil to search and detain American citizens suspected of terrorism or abetting terrorist acts. Further, the length of detainment is indefinite and the detention may be without explanation or trial.

Much like the Patriot Act of 2001, NDAA has had early decriers of the bill who fear that it supersedes the Constitution and abolishes fundamental rights of Americans. You can find videos on YouTube that craft comparisons between the passage of NDAA 2012 and what happened when HItler rose to power in the 1930s, partly by blaming the terrorists of that time - the Communists. These videos are chilling with their simple analogies and dramatic background music.

Should we be concerned? After all, it appears that suspicion of terrorist activities is sufficient cause to ignore the 4th & 5th Amendments of the Bill of Rights.

I think concern is warranted. Much like the Patriot Act, our federal government makes the case that it needs these powers to protect us against terrorism. Many citizens probably feel safer with such provisions in place. After all, it won't affect innocent people and how else can you constrain such activities in a free society?

The problem as I see it is not what is happening at this very moment. The problem comes some time down the road as those in power feel less restrained from exerting their power in the form of abuse leading to totalitarianism. As these bills become law, they erode the protections of freedom we once knew making the freedom we currently experience nothing more than a faint representation of what it used to be.

It's the old frog boiling adage.

Unfortunately, in a free society, bad elements can often scheme and move about with impugnity. So it's entirely reasonable to see how all this is coming about. However, I believe that throughout history there have been people who wanted to see the Constitution abolished and replaced with a collectivist system. And I believe that there are many who hold political office right now that embrace that very sentiment.

So, are NDAA and the Patriot Act merely symptoms of the times we live in? Or are they opportunistic efforts taken by those who have an agenda?

I can see how both questions would receive an affirmative answer.

Much of what made this country great was its integrity born out of Judeo-Christian principles. Even if folks didn't personally adhere to those principles, they still followed them to a great extent, working hard, keeping the order by obeying laws, respecting others. Bad behavior caused shame which was sufficient to prevent it from happening too much.

Now, bad behavior is embraced, encouraged and applauded.

The entropy of sin has eroded the United States of America to the point where an over-reaching government just doesn't seem all that strange any more. Given that we appear to be on the downward side of the great experiment, we would have gotten to this point sooner or later.

There is much to consider.

Hoarding

2011-12-20T11:11:00.004-05:00

Ideas and images fill my head regularly.

When I try to record them with words, I am usually unable to capture them with an accurate reflection of what they were doing in my head. I don't know why this is the case. But somewhere after jotting down the first words, the entire piece takes a turn into a realm that either trivializes what I was thinking or goes far afield from original intent.

Some of the threads I have followed have led to decent replacement pieces from the original. More likely, though, they become bland or silly and not worth mentioning in any form or forum. Yet, I still do, because they are all I have at the moment, and the readers of such don't necessarily realize what has happened from my perspective.

It seems that I have three major subjects about which I keep writing.

These are the three subjects with their subsets:

• Time (aging, the past, changes which occur with the passage of time)

• Relationships (love, sex, my wife, ex-girlfriends, good and bad aspects of relationships)

• Nature/Environment (the wind, seasons and the changing thereof, city environments, different locales, ie woods, ocean, mountains, etc.)

Most of these are to be found in poems. Some of my blog entries deal frequently with the first in the list. Short stories are a bit more difficult to categorize, though you can find elements of these subjects as well.

I guess that in the end there's only one thing I can take from all this. I have been writing first and foremost for myself since I started. Unlike commercial writers who produce for a broader audience with the expectation of making money (which wouldn't have bothered me in the least had it happened to me), my audience the entire time was one person.

I don't think of this as narcissism in the literal definition of the word, but maybe it colors the efforts. The greater motivator, I think, is fear. Fear that if I don't record these things, I will somehow lose them in the swirling mists of time. Even at the age of 51, I find my memory has become unreliable and more than a bit fuzzy.

But what is the value of these memories that has caused me to spend so much time composing the written items? It's not a matter of learning from the past. It's not a matter of recording great events with historical worth. And I think that in my last days on earth, I won't be trying to recall going fishing or riding a bicycle or playing a pickup game of baseball.

Yet, I'm compelled to keep doing it. Maybe some day, a valid reason will present itself.

Until then, I'll have to use the George Mallory reason.

Because it's there.

Rummage Sale

2011-12-16T14:05:00.001-05:00

We are formless, nameless.

We trudge through life looking for angels.

Looking for Eden.

Because neither are immediately available, we make up our own.

Initially, we think that Mom and Dad will provide us a paradise. But the truth is Mom and Dad are not equipped to do so. In fact, they, too, are looking for it. And often, they are searching through their own torments carried from childhood through teen years to adulthood until they unload them onto us. We become beasts of burden.

Then we think that education will give us the needed direction to gain paradise. Go to school. Learn all you can. Don't you know that the more education, for which you pay dearly, the better your economic status will be one day? Statistics say so.

Hooray for statistics!

Out of school and into the workforce, we ride the expectations of climbing the career ladder. Perhaps Eden lies at the top? It must! Look at all those smiling people driving their expensive cars, living in palatial homes, vacationing in the Caribbean for much of the year.

Yeah!

But, wait. There are long hours of unfulfilling work. There is numbing boredom found in repetitive tasks. There are stresses from unreasonable expectations, and, for the most part, we end up slaves to someone else's search for Eden.

So we try church. After all, that's where we first learned of Eden. The church must have the answers. It surely must know.

And we go to church. And the church gives us recipes. Add a pinch of prayer, a lot of love, stir in a tenth of your income, do this, don't do that, act like Jesus - what would He do? That's if the church actually believes in Jesus. Many don't.

Some churches say that it's not about the rules, but the relationship. Unfortunately, this creates a whole new set of rules and recipes. We take those recipes and try to bake our Eden cake.

Too bad, the cake fell flat.

Because we think that it takes a certain number of genuflects to achieve Eden, and because that number seems to be an ethereal secret known to no one, not even the Pope, we give it what we consider a fair shot. It's no wonder we fail.

Maybe we can find Eden if we only look inward.

Some things certainly feel like Eden for a while.

Sex, drugs, alcohol.

Fantasies in the dark.

Yet, with all their promise of enlightenment, of ecstasy, they don't remain in our systems. So, it's more and more and more and more and more and more and more... until

Crash, disease, obsession, insanity, destruction.

Death.

Or repentance.

To trudge back up that weary hill looking once again for Eden.

We are formless, nameless. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

They are living in a fantasy.

What'd You Say?

2011-12-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

I don't know if the internet has merely exposed poor English language skill/knowledge or actually encouraged it.

I know that in the heat of typing something quickly so as to be an early responder, mistakes get made. I know that because I make them. But I'm not talking about typos here.

I'm talking about a regular pattern of poor English.

Not everyone excels at language arts. I understand this. Some people are good at math. Others enjoy history or art. My own sister has a tendency to misspell the word "picture" as "pitcure." I've watched her do it several times.

However, I’ve seen an ongoing misuse of words and poor spelling that spans across many people.

For instance, the use of the word “of” in place of “have.” I can't say how many times I've read a Facebook post that said something like this, "I should of done something about it." I know that elided speech tends to make "have" sound like "of." But "have" here creates the past perfect tense of the verb "done" and "of' doesn't do a thing except take up space.

Another common - and I have no idea from where this came - mistake is the misspelling of "huge" as "hugh". The letters "e" and "h" aren't even near each other on the keyboard, so it can't be a mistype. I guess I am to understand that there are a lot of hugh things and events out there and we probably must be careful.

Compound words are not unusual. Nobody, somebody, someone, anybody, anyone. How about "noone?" I see it quite frequently and every time I do I want to say something about Peter Noone, former frontman for the Herman's Hermits. Turning "no one" into the compound "noone" is not accepted in traditional English rules. One of the problems with it is that it looks as if it should be pronounced much like "noon." In fact, I believe it is an archaic variant of the word.

But it seems people insist on using it in the manner described.

Of course, there's always the "its" and "it's" issue as well as "there", "their" and "they're." To be honest, sometimes I have to stop and think if I used the correct word and have caught myself having to change it.

It's a dicey move to try and correct someone on their English. I once made the comment that jewelry is not pronounced as joolery, and a fellow I knew from college became incensed. He didn't think it a good idea for me to offer up correction as it had the potential to hurt someone's feelings. If I read between the lines of what he wrote to me, I have to assume that perhaps he does, indeed, pronounce it as joolery. Yet he tried to make himself sound like the grand protector of all things ego.

I don't spend much time correcting people online - only in venues where I know it will be appreciated. I do wonder, though, what the language will look like ten, twenty years from now.

After all, without adherence to some sort of rules, order will be reduced to chaos.

How I Met Her

2011-12-13T08:22:00.004-05:00

You always notice the newbies.

Then they get absorbed into the unit, and they may or may not become significant to you. That's the way the social order in the Army evolves. With the observation, whether loosely or tightly, of non-fraternization rules, various levels of familiarization and friendship will be made.

I certainly noticed her when she arrived. She was taller than most I had known. Her lovely hair was brown and her blue eyes were inviting pools.

Somehow, someone else noticed her before I did, and she started seeing him.

No matter. I was sort of seeing someone at the time anyway, though I really shouldn't have been.

Even so, I kept an eye on the new woman. It sort of bothered me that she was seeing the fellow from Bravo Company. I always thought that she should be hanging around with her own, and by that I meant the members of Alpha Company. But attraction doesn't know boundaries like we do.

She was in third squad. I was in second squad. In every formation, I stood in front of her. Knowing she was behind me, I acted up a little - talk about regressing back to childhood. Of course, I couldn't act up too much. After all, it was the Army and we had to follow decorum.

So, until "attention" was called, I would boisterously joke and laugh with my squadmate and roommate, Jake, with the hope she would notice my social joviality skills.

I remember offering to shine her boots for an inspection, and she took me up on it. After all, I had a pretty good gloss on my own. I think she saw that. Or maybe she just hated shining boots.

Eventually, she started eating with us now and then in the mess hall. I can't recall any of the conversations, but I was delighted and a bit nervous. It was almost like dating.

The person I was involved with was getting ready to move to California. It was a somewhat difficult time for me, but I hadn't been seeing her for long. The day she left, I went to see the newbie. By now, she wasn't a newbie any more, and we had become casual friends.

I knocked on her door. When she answered, I said, "Emily is gone. I need a hug."

She obliged.

Hugging her felt so right. I think I told her that.

I kissed her and she kissed back. It was sweet and wonderful.

We went out on a date shortly after. I found out she had a boyfriend stationed in Panama, but she wasn't particularly committed to him. He would come to visit her at some point during our dating which caused some issues. However, he left, and I remained.

That was over twenty-six years ago.

This December 27th, she and I celebrate our 25th anniversary.

Despite the graying hair, the bodies that aren't as firm and smooth as they once were, I still have a great desire for her. I once told her that I wanted to grow old with her.

In retrospect, my real wish would have been to remain young forever with her.

Reality has other plans.

Book 'im, Dano!

2011-12-09T06:13:00.000-05:00

The library always had a smell to it. A little woody in its olfactory texture, maybe some undertones of floor polish and leather, the predominant smell was of paper. Paper and silence. With the exception of the occasional sniff or turning of a page, both of which were quite subdued, silence ruled the large, book-laden room. At the librarian's desk in the hallway between the children's side of the building and the opposite adult side, talk was committed with a low voice.

The building itself is a modern structure of concrete, glass and stone. Two levels, an entrance at each level - the contours of the land on which it sat allowed for this - the lower of the two had an open staircase which led to the main level. Below the staircase was a sort of rock garden. As to what was on the lower level was something I never found out. It seemed like a forbidden zone, but it very well may not have been.

I say it is a modern structure, but the style was modern for the 70s. Modern like the Brady's house was modern. Still, it's a look that has worn well over the years.

When I first started going to this library, I was young enough to peruse the children's side. Of course, the desire was to go over to the adult side. I don't know of any prohibition against it, but it seemed as if one needed to be of a certain age before being able to do so.

The children's side was brighter in color, perhaps a little noisier. If one enjoyed reading, then it was much like entering a candy store. I still remember something of stories I read from there, though I don't recall their titles. The tables and chairs, of course, were smaller to accommodate smaller bodies. In thinking back, I can't recall how I got to the library at that age as it was over a mile from where I lived. I suppose it entirely possible that my friends and I rode our bikes there. We were pretty wide ranging on our bikes at fairly early ages. There just didn't seem to be much danger back then.

Eventually, however, I became a teenager and graduated to the adult side of the library. I remember Wally, a friend and classmate, trying to convince me that the library sold hamburgers. It wasn't a believable tale he told me, and I refused to approach the librarian to ask. But I did sort of cast a glance here and there while looking at books to see if there was actually a kitchen somewhere in the back. The thing is, were there hamburgers, I'm sure I would have smelled them cooking.

Instead, I just smelled paper.

The move to the adult side of the library, though anticipated, really meant work. Whereas I used to take out children's books for the enjoyment of reading, the adult side was required for research for school papers. Even so, I still managed to find books for recreation as well. I read a lot of Jacques Cousteau's books, being interested in scuba diving at the time.

Since then, I've been to small town libraries, university libraries, the large Portland Public Library, the huge Boston Public Library.

But none of those approach the memories I have of the South Portland Public Library.

It was my first library.

Of Guns and Power Tools

2011-12-05T11:46:00.003-05:00

I can't say with any surety that I know a woman who likes guns.

Most of those I know that have commented have expressed a dislike for them in their homes with some absolutely forbidding them.

Even my wife, who served in the US Army and has trained with machine guns, hand grenades, assault rifles and claymore mines, doesn't much care for them.

I find this attitude towards firearms to be interesting. It would seem that our culture has civilized the pioneering fortitude right out our women. Probably the men as well. And now what had been a perception that firearms were a useful tool for defense and sustaining life has evolved into fear.

I blame the media for generating this fear toward guns. Sensationalistic stories of family members - usually a husband or boyfriend - using a gun to kill a spouse, fiancee, children and/or relatives have created this notion that a weapon sitting in a closet, drawer or gun cabinet is just a timebomb ticking away, waiting for an occasion to explode.

What other reason for the fear?

Well, I know more people who have been harmed by power tools than I have by guns. In fact, I always approach my table saw with a bit of trepidation and suspicion that one day it will eat my fingers. That happened to my father.

My mother has never told him to get rid of his table saw, though.

Granted, potentially losing your life is more serious than losing a pinky. However, the chances of the latter happening are probably greater due to more frequent usage. How often do people get their guns out besides for hunting season or target shooting?

I think we should approach all tools with a measured amount of fear. This generates respect for the implement and, with it, a more careful approach when using.

Otherwise, our driving just might go all to hell.

The Unbearable Swiftness of Wane

2011-12-02T12:31:00.012-05:00

It's December 2011, the final month of the year.

It has been two years and a few months since my wife's mom died. It has been almost four years since her dad died.

They have disappeared.

Vanished out of sight.

For a time, they were there and now they're not.

It seems that the older I get, the more profound this all becomes. I don't know; maybe it's a perceptual thing.

When my grandparents passed on (the most recent being around twenty years ago), they all seemed to be matter-of-fact events. That may be partly due to not being particularly close to any of them. But none of their deaths led to any sort of contemplation on my part. It was really no different than reading about some stranger's death in the newspaper.

My wife's parents' leaving, however, has remained with me.

I still think about them; perhaps not as actively as I once did. Now and then, though, they will pop into my mind, and I will remember specific times with them.

My wife and I had been married twenty-one years when her dad left, closer to twenty-three at the time her mom passed on.

Two decades plus is a long time.

Yet...

It isn't.

We were already older when we married. I was 26 and she was 32. We put off having children for seven years. Because of our lack of immediate timing, my in-laws never got to see their grandsons graduate from high school. I think about this from time to time. They won't see either of my sons get married and have their own children.

It's too bad, really.

My parents are alive, so there are still grandparents available for my sons. They've been able to see the Little League games, the graduation and other important events in the boys' lives. Hopefully, this will last for a while. Both parents are approaching their 80s, but they are still in pretty good heatlh.

Thomas Hobbes wrote in 1651, "Life is nasty, brutish, and short." This is a paraphrase of the actual line which was longer by several words. He was speaking about his time, of course, when life was as described, especially without a sense of law and order. It is a sentiment often applied to current times as well when moroseness sets in. There appears to be a common feeling among my peers that time goes by so fast and kids grow up in a twinkling before our eyes. Before we can even blink, we have gotten old.

I have been trying over the last few years to enjoy moments as they come, to not get so wrapped up in doing stuff that I lose track of time's passage. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Live a day at a time. Take it as it comes. Seize the moment. And so on.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have had any real effect, for every time I turn around it seems like another month has passed, another year.

Like everyone else, I have no idea how to make it stop or, at least, slow it down.

So, I'll just think about my in-laws now and then. Maybe look at some pictures and video.

And cherish the people I still have with me.

Workplace Nannyism

2011-11-30T07:52:00.002-05:00

The firewall where I work is a shriveled old school marm.

I'm sure of it.

A local sporting goods retailer was advertising a drawing to give away a Ruger Hawkeye rifle. Having never heard of that particular model, I thought I'd look it up on the internet.

I typed "Ruger Hawkeye" into Google and a whole bunch of sites came up with the manufacturer leading the list. So I clicked on Ruger's website and this was the result:

SonicWALL Network Security Appliance

Alert

This site has been blocked by the network administrator.

URL: http://www.ruger.com/products/m77Hawkeye/index.htm...

Block reason: Forbidden Category "Weapons"

Trying other sites yielded the same result.

I understand blocking sites that encourage illicit and pornographic activities - people shouldn't be perusing those at work. But last time I checked, owning weapons is not illegal.

However, the firewall has deemed them as "forbidden."

I can imagine a prim school marm sitting in front of me shaking her head, saying, "You can't go to that site."

Then with a smug look on her face, she would lean forward and whisper in a conspiratorial tone, "They sell weapons."

I've talked with our network administrator about sites getting blocked. He's a friend of mine. He told me that he hasn't added any filters to the firewall, that what it's blocking is by factory default.

That school marm doesn't much care for games either, apparently.

It will block game sites, and I'm not referring to gaming/gambling sites. I mean sites that have online crossword puzzles, sudoku or the like.

I think she needs to get out of the closet and go find a life.

Take What You Can

2011-11-26T07:45:00.006-05:00

Life never happens the way I would like it to.

My wife never sidles up to me and whispers huskily in my ear, "I want you, you luscious hunk. Take me."

My sons never approach me saying, "Gee, Dad. That looks like hard work. Let me give you a hand."

Managers at work never ask me, "Jeff, how do you think this should be done?"

No one ever asks me how to purchase one of my books. Well, strike that. Some have asked.

But they never followed through after I gave them the information.

Somehow, in the writing of life's script, I seem to have fallen off the page somewhere. Now all these things apparently happen to other people if I read anecdotal stories correctly. You know, stories in magazines, on the internet. It seems that there are a plethora of articles out there about people with desirable lives, and I'm not talking Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, though I suppose I could be.

My wife is forever reading about power women who homeschool their children while managing a Fortune 500 company and doing sixty hours a week of charity work as they stay fit and trim so they will have explosive sex with their power husbands every night. These stories make my wife feel bad.

You know, that's the problem with reading these things. I guess they are meant to inspire, but they usually just make the reader draw comparisons instead. And the tendency is to generalize those super attributes out to a broader public which can lead to demoralization.

So, though life never happens the way I would like it to, at least my wife has never told me that the doctor says she has cancer and only three months to live.

At least my sons aren't strung out on crack and impregnating every teenage girl out there.

At least my bosses haven't handed me a pink slip.

The lack of negative is usually a positive. I'll leave the storybook stuff to the collection on my bookshelves.

That's What He Said

2011-11-25T08:33:00.007-05:00

Come, let's take a drive.

We'll start in northeastern Penn's woods, also known as Pennsylvania.

Lake Wallenpaupak. Lovely Lake Wallenpaupak. Approximately 13 miles long, it was created in 1926 by damming Wallenpaupak Creek for the purposes of generating hydroelectric power.

This is the lake where the Booze Cruise took place. You remember the Booze Cruise? That's where Roy and Pam finally set a date for their wedding after having been engaged for three years. That's where Michael constantly ran up against the captain of the boat they were on because he assumed his own captaincy in an attempt to draw parallels between The Office and a ship. He was eventually handcuffed to a deck rail because he yelled out the boat was sinking to illustrate a point. Unfortunately, other travelers not affiliated with Dunder Mifflin thought it a real warning and jumped overboard.

Oh yeah, and Dwight thought the fake steering wheel in the bow was real.

Let's drive on. Heading west on I-84 for about 30 miles, we eventually come into the city of Scranton.

Scranton was incorporated as a city in the 1800s. It was an anthracite coal mining community and, when combined with neighboring Wilkes-Barre, the sixth largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania. Coal mining no longer takes place in Scranton, so it has become a regular city but still reflecting its mining heritage.

Let's get on I-81 heading south and make our way to Route 307, Moosic Street heading east. Soon we will come to Lake Scranton. This is where Michael brought the office to play out a Survivor-type scenario so he could choose the next Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin as he believed he was getting a promotion to Jan's old job, Vice President of Sales. Several pointless competitions were staged including a hot dog eating contest, a sumo wrestling contest in fat suits, a fire-walking event - all designed by Michael to determine leadership capabilities. This was also where Pam had her moment of truth and spouted feelings for Jim in front of everyone, including his girlfriend, Karen.

Don't forget, Andy fell into the lake wearing his sumo suit and was ostensibly stuck floating there through the night because he couldn't extricate himself from it.

We'll turn around and head back into Scranton. First, we'll look for Chili's, the restaurant seen in a couple episodes, the first being The Dundies - Michael's attempt at an impromptu award dinner for his employees that was full of awkwardness. It was also the time that Pam got drunk and kissed Jim for the very first time. The second event at Chili's was a business lunch where Jan was going to try to pitch paper to Christian, a representative of Lackawanna County. In other words, a huge client. But where Jan is all about getting down to business, Michael takes over and builds a relationship with Christian, showing the skills he had which made him a top salesman for Dunder Mifflin before being promoted to Regional Manager. He gets the account, and this makes Jan pleased enough to sleep with him.

Unfortunately, we can't find the Chili's because there isn't one in Scranton. The closest is Wilkes-Barre. So let's move on.

There's Poor Richard's Pub, the favorite watering hole of The Office. It's located in South Side Bowl on Beecher Street. Then there is the Mall at Steamtown at 300 Lackawanna Avenue. This is where Michael took the ladies of the office supposedly to talk about women's issues, but he took over the conversation to discuss his relationship problems with Jan.

There's Cugino's, Cooper's Seafood, Alfredo's Pizza Cafe - all real locations mentioned at various times.

Then if we drive down Vine Street, we'll see the iconic Penn Paper and Supply building which is in every episode's opening credits.

But what we really want to see is located at 1725 Slough Avenue. It's the Scranton Business Park, home to Dunder Mifflin, Vance Refrigeration, Cress Tool and Dye, Disaster Kits Limited and a few other businesses.

However, if we look at a map, we will see that 1725 Slough Avenue doesn't exist. There is no Slough Avenue at all in Scranton. The address was a reference to the British version of The Office which is located in Slough, England.

A little online research tells us that both inside and outside scenes were filmed at Chandler Valley Center Studios in Van Nuys, California, a far distance from Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Forgive me, if you will, this little excursion I took you on. It was mostly a way for me to recall the glory days of the television show, The Office.

I say glory days because the current season of the show has not lived up to the previous seven seasons. It would appear that Michael Scott (Steve Carell) was really a driving force in the show, and though we probably understood that while he was with the series, it has become all the more apparent now that he's gone.

The Office has become a rather pointless parody of itself in Season 8. There have been a few funny moments, a few touching moments, but, for the most part, it is scrambling for a new identity since its former identity ended with Goodbye, Michael.

Where I always sensed that I was vicariously living the show, now I feel more like a simple observer of it. Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but to me it is a significant difference. I don't really care about the characters like I did before. I'm not sure why because the majority of the ensemble remained intact for this season. Perhaps, Steve Carell was the cog that made it all work together so well before.

Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) is a likable character. However, he was a terrible selection for Michael's replacement. His insecurities are obvious, and he freely admits them regularly. Michael was insecure as well, but he bluffed his way through his insecurities leading often to disastrously funny results. Andy is just painful to watch. Michael was both awkward and humorous. And therein lies a huge difference.

Some of the other cast members haven't received much face time this season as well. Creed, Toby, Meredith, Kelly, Oscar - all strong characters - have been relegated to the background for the most part.

In a previous blog entry, I stated that it's probably time to close down the franchise. It had a good run. But everything comes to a close sooner or later. How The Office digs itself out of its malaise is a mystery. Apparently the ratings are still good enough to warrant continuation, but I wonder if that's only because people are still tuning in more from curiosity that actual affection.

Maybe I'm wrong on that last point. Maybe The Office is still passable to most viewers.

But I still prefer to remember it as it once was. Its original dynamic is gone, and that is the dynamic I grew to appreciate.

It was my favorite show for a while.

Just Saying...

2011-11-21T12:14:00.008-05:00

It's always about sex.

It's why we marry a certain woman. We want a lifetime of sex with her and her promise that there will be no one else with whom she will share her body.

Sexual desire is an elemental force. It shapes and shades much of what we do and how we treat women. There's really no other reason to buy flowers, to shave and dress up to go out to dinner. We seek a connection that will eventually lead to sex. Those who would declare otherwise are only fooling themselves. Romance has always been about sex.

When women say they want romance, what they are really saying is that they want sex with a man who makes them feel a certain way. They want a man who will make them feel like a lovely queen, a desired wench, but the route to those feelings is lengthy and often convoluted. Men are simpler. They want sex with whoever turns them on. And that can happen with just a touch, a pose, a lack of clothing.

Men are hard-wired to respond sexually to visual stimuli. I find it very ironic that God created us this way and then said that lust is a sin. Women, on the other hand, are soft-wired to respond sexually to emotional stimuli which is why romance novels and movies are big business. The fantasy world is often so much more enticing and titillating than reality, and it's difficult for a regular fellow to compete with it. I mean, how much of real life has perfect abs, luscious hair, romantic lighting and a sexy musical background to enhance the situation?

You can probably make the same point about pornography. However, I've always thought that having real sex is far superior to watching others have it.

Sex is a renewable energy. The desire always returns, no matter how strongly it's quenched at any given time. Like an empty stomach that growls for a meal, the libido starts casting about for its own version of feasting. Then it will either be sated, or, more likely, frustrated. But it won't starve to death, though it may feel that way.

The practicality of all this is quite obvious in terms of species propagation. It's the impracticality of the process that drives men nuts. Say what you want about companionship, intimacy, soulmates and all that. They are marketing terms designed to appeal to the female of the human species.

Ultimately, it's always about sex.

Until it isn't.

Through Rose-Colored Glasses

2011-11-17T14:37:00.002-05:00

I know I remember everything as better than it actually was. It's like the default setting for my memories only enables those times that bring pleasant colors, aromas and experience. It usually takes an effort to pull up the experiences I'd probably rather forget.

I like the fact that a rosy glow has encompassed much of my past.

On the other hand, it’s a little concerning because I don’t want to adopt a “glory days” attitude, nor do I want to rewrite history to fill a particular desire or expectation.

Difficult times were just that – difficult. Yet, somehow, I, like everyone else, managed to get through them. And now they have little bite and even littler bark.

I think it’s because of the wonders of thought compartmentalization. The brain is an incredible machine. It will work hard to try to protect our psyches, and it is often successful.

That is until a certain stimulus brings it all back.

Even then, it is easier to be objective about it, though there may still be tugs of pain and displeasure.

As uncomfortable as the unpleasant times may be, they are still a spice for life. It may be a dark spice, a foul spice. But I wonder how flat, how drab life would be if it was all good times all the time.

And the beautiful thing about it all is this:

When looking back, I will remember everything as better than it actually was.

Hope From Above by Sacrecy

2011-11-16T21:03:00.001-05:00

Hope From Above

11-11-11

2011-11-11T08:31:00.000-05:00

It doesn't matter why they did it.

It may have been to get money for school, or, perhaps, to pay off loans from school. It may have been to learn a skill that could become a career. It may have simply been to do something different, something unexpected.

Patriotism or a desire to serve may not have been factors at all in the decision.

But still, they did it.

And they did it understanding that it could require the utmost sacrifice.

Their lives.

They did something that most people won't do. In so doing, they became the buffer zone between threat and those who chose different paths. Their service, in fact, made it possible for others to choose those different paths, to do so with freedom.

They were vigilant protectors of everything that is cherished in this country. Even if their motivations were less than selfless, they served with no fanfare, no sense that anybody owed them anything for their service.

When they were done, they resumed normal lives among those who would never know what it was like to do the things they did, see the things they saw. They often wondered how they made it through that time, but eventually concluded it was through the friendships they made.

These friendships will be remembered forever, for the bonds forged by such adversity are unbreakable.

Here's to those who did it.

It doesn't matter why they did it.

Just that they did.

Anchored There To It

2011-10-25T13:29:00.001-05:00

We have finally done it.

After five years of looking for property to purchase in Rutherford County, North Carolina, we've actually signed a contract to purchase two acres somewhere between Bostic and Ellenboro.

It's a two acre lot in a decent neighborhood, nothing ostentatious but neat and pleasant.

It is zoned as rural residential, however, for a rural neighborhood, there are a fair amount of homes around it.

The property wasn't my first choice, but it was financially the best choice, in my opinion.

We started looking in 2006, the year after my dad-in-law had a stroke that left him wheelchair-bound for the remaining two-and-a-half years of his life. I'm not sure why we started looking at that time. I suppose there were thoughts in the back of our heads that we might move there to help take care of my wife's parents.

That never happened.

My dad-in-law died in 2008 and my mom-in-law in 2009.

But still I looked. And my wife gamely went along with my search.

I suspect that part of the reason I kept looking was as a way to try and grab a part of the area for ourselves, maybe as a sort of token for the time we spent from traveling there annually. It may very well be my attempt to tangibly hold onto something familial beyond photographs and video.

I have a dream of retiring in the south. I'd like to get away from the harsh winters and short summers of Maine. I am absolutely ready not to have to shovel two feet of snow ever again.

When my sister-in-law's husband asked me why were looking for property there, I told him it was because we like the area. We know it quite well, so a move there would not require much acclimation.

Of course, now with most of my wife's family gone from the area (there's still an elderly aunt and uncle), the motivations are a bit more vague.

But, if nothing else, the seller agreed to sell it to us for an incredible price.

Maybe that's all that matters.

Here's to You, Terry Francona

2011-10-01T13:30:00.003-05:00

There was an opinion poll question on Boston.com the other day that asked if Terry Francona should stay with the Boston Red Sox or leave.

I clicked on the "leave" button and submitted my response. Then a results page popped up wth the majority of the responses indicating that he should stay.

I assume that a lot of the people who clicked "leave" were expressing their opinion that Terry was a major cause of the Red Sox doing so poorly in September with what is called a historical collapse because no team has ever coughed up a 9-game wildcard lead in the history of baseball. Given that the wildcard has existed for a little less than 20 years, that's really not much history. Whatever.

My response of "leave" had nothing to do with assigning blame. It was my desire to see Terry hightail it out of the pressure cooker known as Boston sports. It's not that I think he didn't deserve to stay, it's just that it seems he's done about all he can do with the Red Sox and to stay any longer would be stretching the envelope.

Weird metaphor there, eh?

Everything has a shelf life. We have to get to a pont of understanding when it's time to cut the strings on things. Terry Francona seems like too upstanding a fellow to remain in a situation where his effectiveness had been lost as the inmates started taking over the asylum.

That's it for bad cliches. Sorry.

I like Terry Francona. I think he presents himself well in the media. He seems sincere, yet somewhat cagey as he works hard not to throw anyone under the bus. That says a lot about a person in this day and age.

My well wishes go out to Terry. You've done what no manager has been able to do in decades - preside over a World Series championship team not once, but twice.

Kudos to you and good luck in your future.

I Dunno

2011-10-01T09:06:00.003-05:00

I don't know how to say this.

I start to think I do, but when I give it contemplation, it's all wrong.

It seems like there are things welling up from inside that I want to write down. It's not as if I don't have ideas.

But there's some sort of cold, large stone inside me that dashes those ideas to shards. They are too silly, too uninteresting for others to read, not compelling enough to exert the energy to compose and produce them.

There's a myriad of reasons. The only reason that's difficult to generate is the one that says I should be writing these things down.

I used to think I needed to record stuff for posterity. Maybe some of that still exists, but it's always accompanied by this question - what's the point? My history sans my wife and children isn't particularly relevant to them, nor is it to my parents or siblings with them not in the picture. Well, maybe my mother would be interested.

But there's a span of time in there when I was on my own trying to decide what paths to take.

I dunno. Does anybody really care that Mark, Doug, Ricky and I breathed helium at King's Dominion and tried to ask people directions in our squeaky voices? Or that we boogied through Yogi's Cave?

Does anybody really care that I took Lorenda out on a date to Boston and it failed miserably because it was unplanned, I was tired from work, and it was at night when everything except restaurants, theaters and bars had closed? And that because of it, she decided I wasn't worth seeing any more?

Does anybody really care that when we ran out of grounding rods in the desert, I suggested we pull them from the spare vehicle we had brought making my team leader happy and stating that he was going to write me a letter of commendation? He never did, of course.

There have been a lot of empty promises throughout life.
But that's not my point.

I guess the difficulty for me lies with the fact that I'm having a hard time discerning what self-expression should actually be expressed. I don't have a journal - tried it once and dropped it after about five entries.

All I have is a blog, my books and a poetry review site where I hang out occasionally. Yet, nothing of what occurs to me lately is appropriate for any of those venues.

Like this piece here that I"m writing.

I miss the scorching flame of purpose that led to ten books in five years.

And they could very well be the cause of my current malaise.

I dunno.

Let Sleeping Schools Lie

2011-09-29T10:36:00.000-05:00

I drove by my old high school the other day. I actually drive by it almost every time I go to my parents' house. They still live in the same home since about 1970.

As I drove by the school, I thought that maybe I should go in and take a look around, try to see if I can resurrect some of the old memories. I figure that if someone asks me who I am and what I'm doing there, I'll simply respond that I graduated from there in 1978.

I'm only 51, but it occurred to me that 1978 sounds like ancient history. I know it does to kids today, especially my own. It wasn't that long ago, though, relatively speaking - only 33 years. In that time period a lot has happened, which really isn't saying anything profound. A lot can happen in one day. I'm not so sure, however, that everything that's taken place since I graduated wholly contributes to the sense of antiquity here.

There are additions to the school, both in the front and back which has changed parking lot access. But the building's structure and overall look remain pretty close to the same as it was when I was there. Dow's Woods, across the street from the school where students used to go smoke pot, has had a fair amount of development take place. The small recreation building in an adjacent parking lot has been totally redone and expanded to now include a municipal swimming pool.

The tennis courts, football field, oval track and other sports venues around the school appear to be unchanged. The neighborhood surrounding the school is no different, really.

Of course, I've changed, no longer being a slim, energetic youth with hair.

None of this explains it all, though.

I have a tendency to believe that when the century turned the corner in 2001, it made everything prior to it slip back into a more historical dimension perceptually speaking. One day, on Facebook, I posted that I missed the 80s. Someone else agreed with me.

See, even saying the 80s seems like ancient history as well.

This is all really a non-issue and probably not even worth mentioning. But suffice to say, I didn't stop in and see the high school.

It just seemed too weird a thing to do. After all, that was a very long time ago, and the time for some things does eventually pass.

Elenin Watch

2011-09-26T06:38:00.002-05:00

Sept. 26, 2011.

The sun rose this morning as it normally does. It wasn't red, but bright yellow. There was even a bit of sunrise color in the sky.

Starting today, according to many websites, there is supposed to be a three-day period of darkness due to the Comet Elenin, which many are suggesting isn't really a comet at all, but a brown dwarf star about the size of Jupiter, passing between the earth and the sun. In addition to the darkness, there are supposed to be cataclysmic events.

I say it's all balderdash and won't happen.

One video I watched (the link to it was forwarded to me from a family member) stated that the devastating Chile and Japan earthquakes were the result of an alignment between this Comet Elenin, the sun and earth. So, then, what caused the Haiti earthquake? No mention of that one.

If this Comet Elenin or brown dwarf star or Nibiru, if you want to call it that were really that close to earth, don't you think that the gravitational effects would be noticeable - not for the comet, but if it was the brown dwarf.

There's a lot of people looking for omens and portents from the skies. Pagans, paranormal types, even Christians. One of the problems with this mentality is that there are enough signs on earth to get a sense of where we are. And usually people try to bend the portents to fit their own understanding of prophecy.

So, I'm going to carry on today expecting not to be plunged into darkness.

After all, apocalyptic predictions rarely come true.

TV, Thy Name is Waste

2011-09-23T14:21:00.003-05:00

I won't get cable TV.

Nope.

I already pay about $55 per month for broadband cable internet. TimeWarner won't come down on the price of cable, and I'm not spending $100 a month just to be able to watch TV and get on the internet.

We use an antenna to pull in a digital television signal. It limits us in the number of channels we get, but, hey, there's not a lot we're interested in watching anyway. My oldest son would like to get NESN (a cable channel), so he can watch Red Sox games. When he has his own apartment, he is free to spend his money on such things.

We can get CBS, Fox and CW without having to fiddle with the antenna much. If we want other channels, we have to go through all sorts of antenna gymnastics. It just isn't worth the effort.

Fox used to have a pretty good lineup.

Monday through Friday, starting at 5:00 PM, we could catch two episodes of Scrubs followed by two episodes of Seinfeld. At 7:00 PM, Two and a Half Men came on, and we don't watch that, so the TV goes off.

Then from 8:00 on to 10:00, there have been pretty good lineups over the years. They included 24, House, Bones, Fringe, Dollhouse, Human Target, American Idol, The Good Guys. I won't try to recap any of the nightly schedules here because Fox has a tendency to move them all around, and I don't remember much except that Dollhouse was on Fridays and 24, Mondays.

Some shows ended. Some have been cut due to poor ratings.

American Idol only runs from January to May.

They stopped running Scrubs, but we found it on the CW. Just recently, CW replaced it with Friends.

When Fox stopped running Scrubs, they moved Seinfeld into those two time slots and started airing The Office. At first, I wasn't overly impressed with that show, but it grew on me. Now, The Office has been replaced with The Big Bang Theory which is flat out stupid and not so good.

24 ended its run. Dollhouse, The Good Guys and Human Target were cut.

I caught the premiere of X-Factor recently, thinking I might enjoy a trip down karaoke lane with Simon and Paula again, but turned it off after about fifteen minutes.

Of course, there's always Glee, which I don't care for.

There's New Girl which isn't impressive. There's Raising Hope - I don't watch that. Fringe and House, and Bones haven't had their season premieres yet.

So what used to be a pretty good couch potato lineup has left me with not much to mindlessly occupy my time.

Maybe I can use it to finish the novel I started three years ago, eh?

I'm Gonna Keep on Loving You...

2011-09-19T10:51:00.007-05:00

I have often pondered the phenomenon of song associations.

I understand the potential power music has to influence human emotion from melancholy to joy, from energy to relaxation. But I can't quite get a handle on the association side of it.

There are many songs that I associate with many things. It may be a time period in my life; it may be a particular person, especially if that person is an ex-girlfriend. But why some songs and not others?

For instance, I hear Uptown Girl by Billy Joel, and I immediately think of Fort Stewart, Georgia where I was stationed from 1983 to 1986. In fact, other songs from that album, including For the Longest Time and An Innocent Man have the same effect. Yet, Leave a Tender Moment Alone and Keeping the Faith do not. They're all from the same album.

We used to listen to the Scorpions loudly in the barracks, but I hear Still Loving You today and it doesn't bring up any memory associations of having done so. Like I said, I can't figure out what creates a song association.

Between my sophomore and junior years in college, I went through a very painful breakup (which is described pretty closely in my short story, Waiting for Sherrie published in Of Trains and Other Things). To hear Lost in Love by Air Supply will bring back the memories and a subtle recollection of the hurt I bore that summer. Several other songs remind me of this ex-girlfriend as well. 99 by Toto, Ships by Ian Hunter, The Rose by Bette Midler. None of these songs, however, were shared by the two of us and wouldn't, in any way, be considered "our songs."

On the flip side of this, another ex-girlfriend used to leave me notes with song lyrics written in them. This has created an association to her when I hear Angel of the Morning by Juice Newton, Just Remember I Love You by Firefall or Somebody's Knocking by Terri Gibbs. Another song I associate with her, Same Old Lang Syne by Dan Fogelberg, has nothing to do with her besides a rather melancholy story it tells to which I can relate.

Even thirty years after the original association was made, I can still conjure up memories when I hear these songs.

I once tried to create a song association with another girl I liked quite a bit. I used to play Heart of the Night by Poco frequently while intensely thinking about her. The only association I ended up with, though, was of that particular time period of my life, and it's not an especially strong association.

My wife and I have been married for twenty-five years this coming December. There are no songs that I associate with her.

None.

Does any of this make sense?

This phenomenon has been somewhat useful to me when talking music with other people. A song gets mentioned, and often I can comment about when it came out based upon the time frame in which I recall it getting the most airplay.

Every Breath You Take by the Police - when I was stationed at Fort Devens in 1983.

Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen - when I was on temporary duty assignment to Fort Devens in 1984.

Philadelphia Freedom by Elton John - around 1975 when I was a teenager, close to high school age.

There are too many others to list here, and it would become boring anyway, if it already hasn't.

Now that I usually only listen to talk radio, song associations don't happen as much any more. But occasionally, I think they still creep in by osmosis or something else. Either way, it's interesting and probably something I'll never understand as long as I live.

So, I'll just go with the flow on it.

The Tuesday Shopper

2011-09-17T06:03:00.004-05:00

Here's what I remember.

Every Tuesday morning, we would load up the station wagon with everyone and drive on down to my grandparents' house. They lived about a mile from us. My grandmother (we kids called her Nina, my cousins called her Nana) would get into the car, and we'd be off to Portland.

Down Cottage Road, through Knightville on Ocean House Road and across the Fore River on the Million Dollar Bridge, which was replaced in 1997 with the higher, larger Casco Bay Bridge. Why it's called the Casco Bay Bridge is a bit of a mystery to me as it doesn't span Casco Bay.

When we hit the Portland side of the Fore River, we'd turn right to go down to Commercial Street where we'd take another right. This would take us along the industrialized banks of the Fore River where you could see large oil storage tanks in the distance and a lot of scrap metal behind rough fences.

Veer to the right, up a hill to a traffic rotary. A large ship's anchor decorated the small grassy area in the center of the rotary and was always an impressive sight to me. St. John's Street to Congress, take a left. This part of the route is difficult to remember exactly because much of that area has changed so much with the addition of roads, highways, on and off ramps and whatnot. But I do remember that there was an Arlan's Discount store in the plaza where Union Station used to reside on St. John Street. The Arlan's sticks in my mind as it had a basement level as well as main floor and I recall being fascinated by seeing stairs in a store.

Also, near the intersection of St. John Street and Congress Street, there was an S&H Green Stamp store. My mother used to bring her full books of stamps into the store and come out with some sort of item (a lamp comes to mind). It seemed quite magical to me.

However we ended up on Congress Street, at Westgate we'd take a right onto Stevens Avenue. Then a left onto Capisic Street. All the way to Brighton Avenue where we would finally reach our destination - Pine Tree Shopping Center.

Pine Tree Shopping Center was an L-shaped plaza with its anchor stores at both tips of the L.

We always started the shopping day at Sampson's grocery store. It was part of a chain that was eventually bought out by Hannaford's. The most memorable thing about the store was the conveyor belt that carried grocery bags along the inside front of the store, then did a u-turn through the glass to the outside front. You would pull your car up to the curb. Then an employee would take the bags from the conveyor belt and load them into your car for you.

After this was done, my father would drive the car over to the section of parking lot in front of the other anchor store, Zayre's department store. The rest of us would walk to Zayre's on the wide, covered sidewalk that connected all the stores in the plaza. My mother would sometimes stop in Jo-Ann Fabrics which was pure tedium for me as she wanted to look at fabric and patterns.

Eventually, we would make it to Zayre's though, and I always wanted to look at the toys, of course.

When we were finished with shopping at Pine Tree Shopping Center, we'd get in the car and go further down Brighton Avenue to another shopping center. This one had a Martin's grocery store and Bradlee's department store.

Both stores shared a wide common entrance. Shopping carts waited near the door. Bradlee's was on the left and Martin's on the right. My father often took us kids to an upstairs cafeteria located straight ahead where we could eat english muffins with grape jelly and watch the activity in both stores. I always thought that pushing the trays along the smooth steel rails was the coolest thing. And then to be able to sit in a booth and observe the shoppers below us from our dimly lit perch, well this was perhaps the best part of the whole Tuesday shopping experience.

Bradlee's also had, at the back of their store, a pet shop that we had to go upstairs to reach as well. It was mostly filled with fish tanks, and my mother would often pick up a couple fish to bring home for our own tank. I also recall my parents purchasing me items from Bradlee's that could be used at the beach. What they were, specifically, escapes my mind, but the memory persists.

Shopping once a week was a four-hour event. We'd make it home around lunch time after dropping Nina off at her house with her purchases.

I wrote all this down, not so much to tell a story, but as a way to not forget some of those things that have stayed with me from childhood.

Would You Be Interested in Making a Few Bucks?

2011-09-12T14:11:00.004-05:00

In early August of this year, I received a phone call from a fellow who lives in my town. I've known this guy and two of his kids for about five years now through Little League. I coached his sons (along with my own) for three of those years. And this year, my son played again on the same team as one of them. The father who called me is a cordial person, and I've always gotten along with him just fine. We'd chat at games, pass by each other in town with a wave.

He called me because he and his wife wanted to get together with my wife and I and talk about a business opportunity. Having been involved with the King Daddy of multi-level marketing businesses - Amway - back in the early 90s, I immediately recognized the modus operandus of this phone call. I talked with him about it for a while and told him of my experiences.

As I like this guy, I said we'd get together. But it would have to be later in the month as we were going away for a couple weeks. He agreed to get back to me.

End of August I received another call from him. I told him to give me a call in a week and we'd set up the meeting around Labor Day. He said that would be good.

Prior to his next call, I started thinking about this situation. I was only willing to meet with him and his wife because of goodwill. I had no intentions of getting back into multi-level marketing. There are a lot of people who consider it a scam, and I can see how they'd come to that conclusion. Our experience in Amway, while not unpleasant, was not particularly beneficial. And it definitely wasn't prosperous for us in those two years.

Then the thought came to me that this guy had never once called me in the five years I'd known him to establish any sort of a relationship outside baseball. And it was this thought that led me to tell him when he called again that we would not be getting involved with what he was trying to sell. I couched it in very certain terms, so he would understand that my will was firm on this.

I know this is how network marketing works. Over the years, though, I've developed a rather dim view of the whole process. Maybe it makes me a loser in their eyes. That's usually the implied status when one doesn't eagerly glom onto their system. But at least I don't have to try to fit my round body into their square hole and become something I'm not in order to succeed.

I can fail on my own without their help.

Another One Bites the Dust

2011-09-04T06:01:00.004-05:00

The Spindale Restaurant is closed now, and I shan't cry for the loss of its cuisine. A rather pedestrian menu with mediocre dishes, the Spindale Restaurant was not a hot destination spot for even the basest of gourmands.

An unassuming place, the Spindale Restaurant would never be confused for a bistro, cafe, brasserie, coffeehouse, grill or brew pub. It was what its name said it was. A restaurant in the town of Spindale.

Its location was interesting to me. Set back from Main Street in a small plaza that housed a few businesses, it was a throwback to a different time when all the well-known restaurant chains hadn't yet populated the sides of the four-lane highway just down below town. Spindale Restaurant wasn't a large eatery, but it wasn't a hole in the wall either. It could seat probably 30-50 people.

It seemed particularly popular with diners beyond fifty years of age. I assume that its better days were when the textile mills across the street were running at capacity.

Everything has its time. And with its time comes its eventual end.

I should be used to that by now.

I guess I am because the news of something closing or someone passing doesn't shock me like it used to. The older one gets, the more commonplace this sort of news becomes. We are, after all, creatures of adaptation.

My wife and I never ate at the Spindale Restaurant by ourselves. No, the events that led us there always included some sort of family gathering. The last time was in 2009 when we had assembled for my mother-in-law's funeral. The Spindale Restaurant was where we congregated for a meal, and I have pictures of it.

And that's the crux of this message.

Little by little, the past is getting wiped out as if some sort of dream from which I am awakening.

I suppose I would like everything I once knew to become static, to morph into a museum piece that I can always go back and look at for a while. The fluidity of life won't allow that, though, and knowing this doesn't change anything.

Acceptance is a long time coming.

But it's coming.

On Negative Reviews

2011-09-03T07:08:00.005-05:00

You put forth an incredible amount of effort and time. You poured your heart, mind and energy into the completion of this project. You agonized over various cover concepts and finally chose one that you feel best represents your message.

Then that day comes.

Your book finally arrives in an Amazon listing.

What a proud moment!

You send a link to everyone you know as much to share the moment as anything. Of course, you also hope that someone may actually buy the book. But even if they don't, a hearty "well done" or "congratulations" in response is a welcome reception.

Then, one day, the unthinkable happens.

Someone leaves a negative review of your book.

The warm bask of accomplishment is replaced by a cold shower of reality.

Someone didn't like that which represents hours of torment as you left pieces of yourself on the printed page. Someone didn't appreciate everything you had to do to get this creation birthed.

It can be shattering to receive a negative review. After all, the book is an extension of the writer, and if a reader doesn't like the book, he/she must not, by inference, like the writer. Right? It's all so very personal.

Anyone who puts their own creation out for sale in any venue has something of an ego. This isn't to say that they are egotistical, necessarily. But to think it important enough to record poems, thoughts or stories and make them available for others to read - well, let's just say that most people would not do that.

This isn't a bad thing, of course. Without ego, it would be a fairly bland world after all, wouldn't it. However, the ego of the creator can be a fragile thing. A negative review can cause a writer to wonder about his/her ability to write, to create a strong, compelling message, especially if the writer is trying to make a living from books.

There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a negative review.

Oscar Wilde once said the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. A negative review, however unpleasant, is still a response. It was inspired by the material being reviewed. Given that the majority of readers would never post a review about anything they read, the fact that someone took the time to do so means something. It may not mean what the writer wants, but it's a direct response.

If the review is a well-written, reasonable analysis, then the writer may actually learn something from it. Differing perspectives can give the writer a better understanding of the myriad ways his/her work may be interpreted.

On the other hand, the review may not be so well organized or rational. It could be vitriolic and insulting. It may actually be from someone who hasn't even read the book, but just enjoys doing such a thing. The internet has really spawned a lot of uncivil online behavior. A shame, but that's the world we live in. The writer has to really develop a skin of armor, a sense of apathy to situations like this, for the only recourse is to write a response to the trash review.

Know this, however, in the long term it won't mean anything. Really, it won't. Though the writer may fear for diminishing sales due to the negativity of a bad review, there's so much more to the story. If the writer relies on only Amazon reviews to sell his own work, then chances are he won't be seeing much in the way of sales anyway.

So take it for what it's worth. All the great writers of history had critics who excoriated their work in print. It's part of the ambiance of being a writer.

The flip side of this coin may be that the writer's work really is not so good, and all the praise they've received to date came from well-meaning family and friends. This can be as much a disservice as negativity because it creates as false an expectation.

The market should be able to sort it all out eventually.

The Seemliness of Seeming

2011-08-31T19:52:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I've typed anything into wordpad for the purpose of posting to this blog.

Almost two months.

I've pulled several blog entries off the web to put into my last book, so there probably were some that are no longer here. No matter. Even if it hasn't been a long time, it SEEMS like it to me.

My last book, Echoes from the Antechamber, was a work to get out. Overall, though, I'm fairly satisfied with it. There are probably a few places it could be upgraded, but it achieves much of what I was attempting to achieve.

I feel sort of like I'm done with writing. Maybe I just need a break. Ten books in the last five years - I don't have any benchmark with which to measure that, but it seems like a fair amount of work.

We traveled to North Carolina a couple weeks ago for the first time in two years. Actually, we started in Georgia the first week and ended in North Carolina the second week. My wife suggested we start in NC and then go to Georgia, but I really wanted to save NC for last. There are traditions involved, and I know they are fading away now that my in-laws have been deceased since 2008-2009. They seem important to me, however, to observe for a while longer.

We've never, in the last 23 years, returned home from Georgia. It's always been North Carolina.

Georgia is where my wife's two sisters and their families live. Wonderful people, it's always a pleasure to spend time with them. But the craziness that is known as the Atlanta highway system is no place to relax, and we spent a fair amount of time on it shuttling between the two locations.

North Carolina is more laid back.

Given the stresses I face at work, I saw our NC visit as the place to kick off the shoes and move a bit more slowly.

Had we spent two weeks there, like we used to, it probably would have worked. Unfortunately, we were there only about six days. Those days were spent doing much doing. We were doing. Going places, seeing people, seeing places, doing stuff. It was all good. Good to see people we don't see often. Good to reconnect with family and friends growing elderly.

Many are gone now, but there are still some left.

It doesn't seem the same since my in-laws passed away. I guess that's not such a profound statement. And though I still like that area, it isn't as clear to me now that I should be looking for property there. My mind tells me the old adage, "you can never go home again" over and over. A little nut deep inside keeps a fire of interest lit, though. to where I have to wonder what full-time residency would mean, practically speaking. I once asked my wife if we should just consider Rutherford County as a sort of shrine to be kept in fond memory perpetuity. You know that once you move to a place, it becomes common, even boring after a while.

That's sort of how I view Maine. Even in all its downeast beauty, it has become common, boring. Of course, the hardships of life will color one's perceptions of where they reside. The only problem is hardships exist everywhere.

So, this recent trip to North Carolina did nothing to settle any questions I've had.

When we returned home, it was as if we hadn't gone anywhere.

And, if I didn't have the videos and few pictures I took while there, it would probably all seem like nothing more than a dream.

In a way, I still wonder if it might have been.

New Book Coming!

2011-07-02T05:02:00.003-05:00

I have a new book coming out soon. It is currently in the proofing process. Don't know how long that will take.

But I'm excited about all this.

This excitement is a little strange to me. My last two books did not create the anticipation I'm experiencing with this new book. I'm not sure why. It should always be a grand moment when one's book is published. In a way, it's almost like giving birth, but without the physical pain (though there's often pain of other sorts).

I think part of the reason is that the book drove me for a while until it ran out of steam. Then I had to take over driving it to the finish line. There was some agony in that.

But I also think that it seems like this will be my penultimate book.

There's one more I want to finish that's been in the works for a few years. After that, I have no plans for any more books. Not sure what to think about that at this point.

Anyway, here's the front cover.

Echoes from the Antechamber is a similar format to Hallucination of Majestic Elephants which I published in 2010. It starts off with short stories, goes into poetry and finishes with essays. I like that format - it gives me the freedom to write in any manner I feel like.

This probably isn't a formula for success in the mass market. I gave up thinking about the mass market a long time ago. Seems all it wants are stories about vampires and erotica. Or motivational/kiss-and-tell/political/DIY-type books. Or cheap 99¢ e-books. The thirst for sensationalism, sex and fantasy has supplanted literary quality for quite a while in our culture. That's why Harry Potter and the Twilight series outsell more thoughtful works on a regular basis.

What we consume is a reflection of our mindset. I guess those who are smart write to satisfy that mindset and make a living doing so.

The rest of us just wanted to write books until we were done saying whatever it was that caused us to write in the first place.

Maybe we should have just started diaries instead.

Mishmash

2011-03-10T20:33:00.002-05:00

Well, it's March and the weather outside is frightful. I'd say the fire is so delightful, but we don't have a fireplace.

It's actually warmed up quite a bit from where we were two months ago. To be expected, I guess... after all, we are heading toward longer days and Spring. The northern hemisphere should be tilting just a tad closer to old Sol, so, yeah, thirty degrees is much better than eight degrees.

However, we still have a fair amount of snow, and it just seems to keep raining now and then with the odd mix of freezing rain and snow.

Seems like everyone is getting chickens these days. Just saw a friend of mine post on Facebook that he's ordered a chicken coop. I'm guessing he's not making his kids sleep in it. Probably looking to get eggs regularly from them, and he's headed toward farming over the last several years with tractor purchases and two large gardens. Natural progression in his progression.

There's probably a bit of coming hard times preparation in there as well.

American Idol is on right now. I used to watch it somewhat regularly, but not so much any more. I don't think Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez are particularly good judges, and Randy Jackson is Randy Jackson, yo dawg. The ratings seems to have picked up with the changes, though, so I suppose that's good for the show.

If you don't follow the contestants from early on, it's difficult to get into them in the finals. It's like learning something new. Who has the energy for that these days?

Well, that's about all I got to say right now. Words aren't as plentiful as they used to be. Hope you are doing better.

Guirar Makeover, pt. 5 and end.

2011-02-21T07:36:00.006-05:00

Here's the guitar in before and after poses:

It's mostly finished.

I have to reset the neck to adjust the action from the 12th fret up. I guess I'll just try to force a shim under it with the screws loosened. That way, I can actually observe the strings as the adjustment is made.

The veneer on the headstock started lifting from the wood, so I had my son just remove it, and I painted it with the same color as the body. A quick coat of polyurethane for shine and it turned out pretty well.

I ended up taking it to a luthier to do the wiring for me which really cut into the savings I was attempting to achieve. But when I wired it myself, it didn't turn out so good. So, for the time being, guess I'll just stick to simple wiring situations before trying to take on the whole taco.

It has been an interesting experience, and the 'new' guitar sounds really hot. Especially when played through my new Vox Valvetronix amplifier.

This was a great project to do this winter, and maybe I'll try it again in the future.

Guitar Makeover, pt. 4

2011-02-08T07:32:00.003-05:00

I have everything in now, and I'm just doing some research to try and figure out how to wire the components. There are a lot of sites that show wiring diagrams, but I usually still have questions that none of them seem to answer. For instance, I have discovered that a capacitor is necessary for the tone pot. However, I can't find 1. if there is such thing as a pot with a built-in capacitor or 2. how to wire in a capacitor which sort of looks like wiry tweezers.

This is the neck I got through Ebay:

It's a lovely neck with the exception of the ding in the headstock. From the picture, I thought I could just fudge a paint job to fill it in, but now that I have the neck, I've discovered that the finish is a veneer. So just brushing some black paint into the chipped area won't look right. My son says to leave it as is, that it gives the neck some character. He may be right. The finish on the body isn't going to be professional looking, so the chip in the headstock will match the overall tone.

So this is where the project is at so far. I probably should get together with someone who has knowledge and experience in this sort of thing, and maybe I will at some point. But I'll try to figure it all out for now.

Guitar Makeover, pt. 3

2011-01-26T20:33:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since my last post on this, but I've been busy gathering parts for the guitar and am still waiting for some.

Removing the humbucker bridge pickup, I found out that the replacement for it won't fit the ring that came with the guitar, so I ordered one that would. The volume and tone pots are in, but I've decided to replace the three-way switch as well.

And, I purchased a neck on Ebay.

I will be removing all the wiring in the body and replacing it.

But I still have to get the parts in to proceed.

Later.

Guitar Makeover, pt. 2

2011-01-10T12:31:00.004-05:00

Finally, after going about a week and a half, I won an Ebay auction for a Dimarzio D Activator bridge pickup.

Here it is:

Had I not won that, I would have used the Buy it Now feature for this pickup which is a Bill Lawrence USA L500XL Humbucker Dimebag pickup.

The second pickup would have been less expensive by about $7, and I believe it is new, whereas the Dimarzio is used.

Anyway, once it comes in, I can then get it installed. But I still need a neck and two pots for the guitar, so I'm nowhere near being finished.

Guitar Makeover

2011-01-05T19:44:00.003-05:00

As a way to while away the dark January hours, I decided to try my hand at taking a junk electric guitar and refurbishing it into something more respectable. I have sort of done something similar, yet on a much simpler scale before by purchasing an Epiphone Special 2 at a pawn shop and replacing the bridge pickup with a Seymour Duncan Invader. That particular exercise worked well, so I thought I'd try it again, only this time, I would redo most of the guitar.

So, on New Year's Eve, my son and I went around to three different pawn shops in Brunswick, Lisbon Falls and Lewiston. It was at the last stop, in Lewiston, that I found the guitar I wanted to makeover. It was a Shane, and the following picture pretty well approximates it. (I neglected to take a picture of it before taking it apart)

The guitar cost $59 plus tax. The first thing I did, when I got it home, was have my son, Ryan, a pretty good guitarist, play it for a bit. We determined that the single coil neck pickup would remain, but the humbucker bridge pickup had to be replaced. I also noted that the neck was not part of the original guitar as it didn't fit snugly in the body as it should AND it was actually a neck from a left-handed guitar instead. Probably the biggest clue there was that the writing on the headstock was upside down.

So the neck and a pickup will be replaced. I will also replace the tone and volume pots as one of them is broken anyway. Haven't decided if I want to use 250K or 500K for replacements yet. The switch can stay.

I've taken the guitar apart, but left the electronics in for the time being. The reason is that I don't know what the wiring schematics are, so keeping everything intact for now will be helpful.

The bridge is a floating tremolo style bridge. The spot where a tremolo bar would be screwed in is cracked though, so it won't be able to be used as such unless I replace it with a new one, or a good used one.

I'm am bidding on a Dimarzio D Activator bridge pickup on Ebay as well as Grover tuners. If I find a neck that has decent tuners, I can always use the Grovers in the Epiphone which need an upgrade there.

The paint on the body was an off-white color. I have scraped the majority of it off and, in the course of doing so, dinged the wood a bit. It will take some sanding to smooth it out. You can see the stripped body in this picture:

The color in the neck recess is what the whole body was. The wood is a laminated hardwood. Don't know what kind, but early indications reveal a nice grain. It should stain well if I go that route.

That's where the project is at right now. Waiting on auctions to finish and parts to come in. Working on the wood on the body and thinking I may go pawn shopping again to find a suitable neck replacement guitar.

I will update the progress on this as it becomes apparent that it's time to do so.

Myspace is a Headcase.

2010-11-15T19:34:00.004-05:00

I surfed over to myspace tonight.

Can a website get any more irrelevant than myspace?

I have over 660 friends there and a few of them are actual friends, people I knew before joining myspace. Of the over 660 friends, it said only one was logged in to myspace. I know there are people who use the site because my news feed is full of useless detritus.

However, they have redesigned the site and it's now sort of a headache to navigate it. I swear that Syd Barrett had a hand in the redesign - at least the Syd Barrett who was so wasted on LSD that he could only stand staring into nothingness during a concert.

I have to assume that Facebook has really taken a huge chunk of usership out of myspace. Even though they have done several site makeovers since I first joined it a couple years ago, it hasn't been as painful to make the change to the new look and functionality there. Not so with myspace.

Myspace used to be THE social networking site. Now it just seems to be a caricature of itself. You know, simplicity is a fine philosophy by which to design. Maybe they should try it. It used to be more pleasant when it was.

This is Too Funny

2010-10-09T09:56:00.000-05:00

The comments I saw that went along with the video are hysterical as well, but that was on a different website, not YouTube.

Timestamp

2010-09-15T06:20:00.002-05:00

Poets are alchemists,
Trying to turn lead into gold
But only getting pyrite.

A Question

2010-08-16T10:20:00.001-05:00

Do you ever just throw your hands up in the air in disgust?

Question: How do you catch them?

The Nerve of Them....

2010-07-14T07:26:00.003-05:00

So I received an email from PublishAmerica recently. They were the folks who did my first book, From Here to Never; Time Travels from Maine. I wasn't impressed with their layout of the pages. I liked the cover, but I did that myself.

The email I received from them said that since my book hasn't sold for over a year, they are willing to return the rights to the book back to me.

And it will only cost $99.

I'd do it in a heartbeat if it was free. There's still about 3 years left on the contract I signed with them, and I want to totally redo the book.

However, I'm not willing to pay the fee.

PA has been on an email blitz for the last year or two, trying to get us to buy many copies of our books. They have couched it from many different angles, including much lower pricing, hardcover versions, placement of the book in prestigious places. It was all in response to pressure from Amazon to take over printing of any POD books sold through their site which, of course, takes money out of the POD publisher's pockets.

PA didn't agree to the demand and all their books were removed from the Amazon online purchase process. So they tried to push their loss of business onto the backs of the authors they represent.

With a $20 price tag, substandard book design, I just never felt like trying to sell the book. I didn't see any value in it, so I moved on to other books I have since completed and continue to try to market.

I can wait three years to save $99.

There's always more books.

It's My Birthday, and I'll Rain if I Want To

2010-06-23T06:46:00.002-05:00

Hello.

Here's a mishmash of stuff.

I wish people would stop asking to borrow a pen and just come out and say, "I wish to have one of your pens. Do you have a pen you will give me to keep forever?"

My son is playing Junior Legion baseball this summer. He made the team, and it wasn't really expected because I found out that they use Junior Legion in this area as a sort of extended baseball season for the high school team.

My son doesn't play on the high school team - he is homeschooled. That's not to say that he can't try out for the high school team; it just hasn't happened.

What is driving me nuts is that my son only played in 2 out of the 7 innings last night. There are about 17 kids on the team, so some will have to rotate in and out. But only 2 innings? That was one at bat and two innings of standing in left field waiting for something to happen.

Of course, the high school team kids get to play much more than that. I wonder if I can complain to the American Legion, which is the founder of Legion baseball. After all, I am a member.

Here's a poem I wrote for today:

Just Another Day

It rained on my birthday,
My fiftieth birthday.

I didn't expect the heavens to open
And angels to descend singing,

"Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace,
Good will toward men."

But rain?

Then I remembered
I told my wife
Fifty is no big deal,
Just another day.

Now I have to go cram more stuff into a teeny tiny ad because that's what the manager wants. Can anyone say 6 point type or smaller? Should be illegal. Wait, I think it is.

Happy Birthday to me.

This is Only a Test

2010-06-16T09:55:00.002-05:00

I've uploaded a new short story to Amazon for distribution through its Kindle store. This is something of an experiment to see if I can sell a 99¢ short story. I've seen people complain about that price in the forums, but it's really the lowest you can go.

Here is a link to the story: The Decision

It's a Wrap

2010-05-27T08:45:00.002-05:00

With the closeout of American Idol, Season 9, last night, there are a few things on which to comment, I think.

Season 9, by most reports, was rather underwhelming in its totality, and it's difficult to see any of this year's contestants going on to have a career like Carrie Underwood or Chris Daughtry. I know the producers look for certain "packages" that seem to fit a particular mold that they think makes good television, but they are supposed to make for good recording artists after the show is finished, as well. I'm not so sure AI has been as successful at that part of it.

Lee DeWyze was this year's winner, beating out a better, more complete musician and performer in Crystal Bowersox. How many times have we seen this happen throughout the years? Yet, those who ultimately win the competition riding the waves of millions of votes usually seem to flop in the marketplace after they cut their first albums. How is this possible? What happened to all those fans who swept them into prominence?

The finale results show was filled with musical stars from the baby boom generation, Hall & Oats, Joe Cocker, Barry Gibb & Robin Gibb (the remnants of the Bee Gees), Alice Cooper, Chicago, and I'm thinking that the nod to those watchers who are older is nice, but these folks really need to retire. They just don't have it vocally any more.

I seem to have a thing for Siobhan Magnus.

With the leaving of Paula Abdul after last season, and the departure of Simon Cowell after this season, one wonders what will happen to the Idol franchise. It's true that the format is quite easy to replicate, but the personalities usually aren't. With a slow drop in ratings over the last couple years, I think that will be accelerating.

I really can't see attending the Idols on tour concert coming to our local civic center this year. Unless it's to see Siobhan.

Out.

Season with Prudence

2010-04-17T06:45:00.004-05:00

Some armchair poets of today like to toss in a "doth" or "thee" into their verse here and there. I guess they think it seasons their poem, gives it an aura of something classic. The problem is that the rest of the poem doesn't use the older language patterns, so the occasional "doth", "thee", or "thou" really sticks out like a canker sore on the lower lip.

The best thing that these poets could do, if they want to impart a characteristic to their poem, is study the works of John Milton, John Donne or many of the other medieval era poets to see how they used the language. After all, they wrote in the language of their time, and that, frankly, is what most poets should stick with - the language of their time.

I Told You So

2010-04-08T06:52:00.001-05:00

Here we are, three games into the 2010 Major League Baseball season. The Boston Red Sox just wrapped up their opening three-game series against the New York Yankees.

They won only one of the three games.

During the offseason, the Red Sox did not sign power hitter, Jason Bay. Instead they signed Marco Scutaro (SS), Mike Cameron (CF), Adrian Beltre (3B), and John Lackey (P). Given the people the new fielders were replacing hit about the same or better than their replacements, the offensive capability appears to have been downgraded somewhat. However, defensively, the team has improved. With the addition of another top-of-the-rotation pitcher in John Lackey, the Red Sox moved in the direction of strong pitching and strong defense to win games. GM Theo Epstein even stated that was their goal as they salivate over new defensive stats like UZR.

It's not working so far.

The Red Sox won the first game with offense, 9-7 - it certainly wasn't pitching holding the Yankees' run count down.

Pitching and defense lost the next two games.

At their current trend, the Red Sox will win only 54 games this year. Yes, I know it's a small sample size from which nothing of significance can be derived. If they win their next game against the Royals, then the trend changes to the Sox winning 81 games this year. That's the skewing of statistics with too small sample sizes. However, one can still make that statement with accuracy at this time.

So even though the season willl eventually even out the stats, probably in ways that show the Red Sox heading to 90+ wins for the season, I'm going to use the small sample size to say one thing:

I told you so!

Hallucination of Majestic Elephants

2010-04-03T05:48:00.006-05:00

COMING SOON

Hallucination of Majestic Elephants
Literary Buzz:

“Along the way many great writers have begun with poetry and Jeff Howe’s five books of poetry published to date are diverse, enjoyable and very collectable, he writes with soul, ‘....Majestic Elephants’ will stamp him as another one on his way.” A. Myrtle. Poetsview.com

"From what I've seen of the previews, this will be a humdinger!" ReviwerGuy

"Jeff Who?" New York Times

Can We Just Stop it Now?

2010-03-22T14:44:00.003-05:00

Probably think I'm talking about the railroading of government-run healthcare over the country, don't ya?

Actually, what I would like to see stopped is anything that is "From the Heart."

Follow me on this.

There are a lot of non-professionals, who by dint of the internet, home computers and home studios that are creating their own masterpieces of literature and music without the aid of a publisher. I'm okay with that. Quite okay, in fact. The market will still determine what it wants (and what it wants can get pretty weird).

Still, people need to come up with better titles for their works - and I'm seeing too much of what I referenced earlier.

There's

Poetry from the Heart,
Poems from the Heart,
Stories from the Heart,
From the Heart Productions,
Tales from the Heart,

and I just saw Music from the Heart.

How freakin' unoriginal can you be even if you "feel" like it's the perfect title?

Oh yeah, we also need to do something about this runaway train called the Federal Government, too.

Called the Best 5 Second Video on YouTube

2010-03-12T12:41:00.003-05:00

This one makes me laugh every time.

I Guess It's Supposed to be Cute, but...

2010-03-04T12:01:00.007-05:00

FairPoint Communications has decided to "bundle" its internet message with a cute, gremlin-like creature called a bundle. Most people probably find it cute. I find it a tad disturbing. See for yourselves:

Super Bowl XLIV

2010-01-22T07:52:00.001-05:00

Who I would like to see:

New Orleans Saints vs. New York Jets

Who we will probably see:

Minnesota Vikings vs. Indianapolis Colts

Happy New Year

2010-01-11T14:21:00.002-05:00

Hey, I know it's the 11th of January, but I'd forgotten all about this blog site, the busyness of the season I suppose.

There's not much new to report on this end.

The New England Patriots went down in the first round of the playoffs against the Baltimore Ravens. It was eerily similar to the Red Sox demise in the ALDS last year. There were pundits choosing the New England teams to win using all sorts of seemingly reasoned rationale, but their opponents were just too much for them.

We are stuck in the middle of frigid January, which is perhaps the worst month to live through in these parts. This is the utter dungeon of winter, and there's not a whole lot to look forward to, except for spring in a couple of months, of course.

Well, at least pitchers and catchers will be reporting in a little over a month.

Until then, stay warm.

Jason Bay to sign with Mets

2009-12-29T14:45:00.003-05:00

WFAN of New York is reporting that Jason Bay, former left fielder for the Boston Red Sox will sign with the New York Mets. Bay rejected the 4 year/$60 million offer made by the Sox during the season with interest in exploring the free agent market.

Unfortunately for Bay, a hot market never really developed in the off-season and latest reports were that the Mets had offered him 4 years/$65 million. The Red Sox, unable to wait for Bay to decide, had already signed Mike Cameron leaving Bay few options.

Jason Bay was a well-liked and respected player in Boston. He was a power hitter who had a tendency to strike out frequently. Even so, he still hammered over 30 home runs and over 110 RBIs last year. More importantly, perhaps, was that he seamlessly moved into the position left vacant by the departure of Manny Ramirez in 2008.

I wish Bay well in New York. He seemed a decent fellow, very professional in his ethic and demeanor. Good luck, Jason Bay. You'll need it at CitiField.

For what it's worth....

2009-12-22T21:42:00.002-05:00

Throughout the day, I get these great ideas for blog entries. Or at least I think they are great. They seem great to me, but I suppose they wouldn't necessarily appeal to everyone.

Unfortunately, when I get the time to sit down and focus on making a blog entry, either the idea has flown away or the steam necessary to run the writing engine has cooled down.

Sometimes I think I overthink what I want to write which leads to the paralysis of analysis (which is a phrase I picked up from my days in Amway over 15 years ago). And sometimes I only have a shred of an idea which I don't take time to think out at all.

The upside to all this is this: without an idea to develop, my blog entries can be shorter.

Much shorter.

And they won't take as much time, effort or discipline to carry out.

My definition of Chicago-style politics

2009-12-16T12:01:00.001-05:00

If you can't persuade, then "persuade."

Spam

2009-12-08T08:01:00.001-05:00

Please note that if you plan on leaving spam messages on my blog, they will be deleted. I receive emails whenever a comment is left, so I know when it happens.

So, really, don't waste your time.

Scutaro Signing

2009-12-04T04:35:00.001-05:00

I found this post on Boston.com and thought it funny. So I'm reposting it here:

redroverredrover wrote: Yikes. The guy had one good year and now he's our starting SS? Sounds like the next Julio Lugo to me. However, I'm glad we've got another player to add to the list of silliest Red Sox names, joining the likes of:

Heathcliff Slocumb
Arquimedez Pozo
Coco Crisp
Izzy Alcantara
Nomar Garciaparra
Gar Finnvold

Please add to this list. I know I'm missing some gems.

Can we get some clarity?

2009-11-13T08:22:00.002-05:00

There's a common thought in the world of sports news pundits.

It is this: Defense wins games.

I beg to differ.

Defense, technically, prevents the other team from winning the game. If there's good defense, but little to no offense, then there's often no win for that team.

Occasionally, the defense will score points. Take, for instance, an intercepted pass in the NFL which is then run for a touchdown. But in this case, the defense has become offense because defense, by its very nature, does not score points. It tries to prevent the other team from scoring points.

'Nuff said.

Bah

2009-11-05T05:56:00.002-05:00

So the Yankees won #27.

Good for them. Lousy for everyone else.

I don't care for the Yankees. I think it's genetic. I don't hate the players - I don't even know them. You should never hate someone you don't know due to lack of justifiable cause. But I don't like them, will always root against them.

I tend to think their fans are obnoxious. And, yes, they probably say the same thing about Red Sox fans. Their gloating makes me want to block their news feeds on Facebook. I am not a fan of gloating.

So the Yankees won #27.

From what everyone is saying, it sounds like they think that the team as it is currently comprised won all 27 World Series. But that can't be right.

It has been 9 years since their last WS victory. Back then, their starting roster looked like this:

Lineup
Jorge Posada*
Tino Martinez
Chuck Knoblauch
Scott Brosius
Derek Jeter*
Ricky Ledee
Bernie Williams
Paul O'Neill
Shane Spencer

Starting Pitchers
Roger Clemens
David Cone
Orlando Hernandez
Denny Neagle
Andy Pettitte*

Bullpen
Randy Choate
Jason Grimsley
Jeff Nelson
Mike Stanton
Mariano Rivera*

Joe Torre was managing and George Steinbrenner was micromanaging.

So, while the Yankees NAME has won 27 championships, the current Yankees TEAM has only won one. I wouldn't call the current team a dynasty. Nope, not at all.

The General Manager Meetings start Monday in Chicago.

Predictions

2009-10-07T06:53:00.001-05:00

Angels over Red Sox in 4.
Yankees over Twins in 4.
Cardinals over Dodgers in 5.
Phillies over Rockies in 3.

Yankees/Cardinals World Series.

Cardinals win WS.

Say What?

2009-09-23T06:38:00.002-05:00

During one of the morning sports flashes on our local sports news/talk radio stations, the announcer for national news said that Tom & Gisele Brady (Bundchen) have been served a lawsuit for $1 million for "negligently hiring" a security team for their wedding. Apparently, and allegedly, one or more of the security team fired at paparazzi during a post-wedding party in Costa Rica.

None of the soul-stealing sleeze weasels were hit, but it was, of course, a very traumatic experience for them which caused "mental harm."

Now, please look at the basis of the lawsuit in the first paragraph.

Negligently hiring.

Think about that for a minute.

Negligently hiring.

So, according to the lawsuit, Tom & Gisele Brady (Bundchen) were negligent when they hired a security team to make their nuptials and post-nuptial celebration as private as possible.

In a perfect world, a judge would look at this for one second and toss it out with some sort of reprimand for the "injurees" seeking a nice pay day.

But given some of the decisions handed down by those who wear the robe over the last fifty or so years, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see this go through.

What a country!

Beware Clampi.. the new Trojan

2009-09-21T10:55:00.003-05:00

Cyber criminals have created a highly sophisticated Trojan virus that steals online banking log-in details from infected computers.

The Clampi virus, which is spreading rapidly across hundreds of thousands of computers in Britain and the United States, infects computers when users visit websites that host a malicious code.

More here:

Click this link for article

A Blog Entry Just to Blog

2009-09-15T08:06:00.002-05:00

The time between entries is growing longer and longer.

That's OK. I don't make money from this blog. I don't have any regular followes of it.

All the same, I still feel a little guilty when I ignore or forget about it.

Don't know why.

It's mid-September. Red Sox are looking to clinch the wild card spot in the American League. The Patriots played their first game with Brady back in as quarterback for the first time in a year. They squeaked by in a heartbreaker for their opponents, the Buffalo Bills.

School has started. It's time for apple picking again.

My kids have birthdays coming up - both boys were born in September. Hey, talk about efficient, eh?

Besides the normal changing of seasons, there's not much different going on.

But at least it's a blog entry.

More Hypocrisy

2009-08-14T07:02:00.000-05:00

Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid is a hypocrite.

He calls the people protesting against the socialistic healthcare bill as evil-mongers.

He said nothing, in the past, about all the protesters against the Iraq war, against G7, against anything that differed from his political point of view.

Here is the article:

Reid: Protesters are 'evil-mongers'

@ 1:19 pm by Eric Zimmermann

Town hall protesters are "evil-mongers," says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

Reid coined the term in a speech to an energy conference in Las Vegas this week and repeated it in an interview with Politics Daily.

Such "evil-mongers" are using "lies, innuendo and rumor," to drown out rational debate, Reid said.

"It was an original with me," Reid said of the term. "I maybe could have been less descriptive," he said, adding that "I doubt you'll hear it from me again."

Nevertheless, Reid worked in the word one more time during the interview.

"I feel I haven't done anything to embarrass [my children]," Reid joked. "Except maybe call somebody an evil-monger."

Harry Reid is despicable.

Road User Study

2009-07-28T12:22:00.003-05:00

The US Government, heretofore known as 'gummint' wants to tax you on the amount of miles you drive in the course of a year.

As the gummint has been pushing and pushing for more fuel efficient vehicles, ostensibly to solve that unproven bugaboo known as global warming, it has found its coffers depleted due to dwindling gasoline taxes. You see, people are spending less on a tank of gas when they switch from their 3/4-ton Ford pickup to a Honda Civic. It doesn't take as much fuel to fill up the smaller car, so fewer gallons equals less tax revenue for the tax-and-spend whores in the gummint.

So now, they are advertising a road user study on the radio with the promise to pay over $800 to each person who takes part in the study. For more information, go here: roaduserstudy.org.

They will install a computer - most likely a GPS system - onto the subject's car and then track how many miles the person drives in a given time period.

You shouldn't allow this to happen. Here's why.

When the gummint finally decides to tax you by the mile, they will most likely require that you have a tracking device installed on your vehicle. If they can track your mileage, they can also track where you go.

This should be especially loathsome to all those folks who complained about invasion of privacy with the Patriot Act. But somehow, I don't think we'll get any complaints from them.

I just don't.

Is it Me? Or is it Them?

2009-06-18T19:56:00.003-05:00

Having been on poetry sites for most of about three years now, I have read a lot of verse written by armchair scrawlers, some of it good, some of it quite bad. It has gotten to the point, though, where it's all starting to read the same to me.

I'm not sure why this is. Maybe there's a certain homogenizing that takes place as everyone tries to describe how sad they feel from lost love in free verse. Maybe it's because the topics all seem to distill down to about five common themes with most everyone.

All I know is that my mind and eyes are tired from either trying to make sense of what's been written or trying to find some particular verse that really stirs something deep inside.

The odd thing about it all is there are so many people on these sites that continuously praise (with high praise, I must say) these same folks I am reading. It's as if they all see something I can't seem to see, or feel something I can't seem to feel. So it makes me wonder if I've just gotten a bit too jaded to be able to experience the same things they do when reading these pieces.

Is it all really that good? What am I missing?

You see, there is poetry that does to me what I described earlier. It touches something inside me, makes me think or experience it in ways that have a deeper meaning. Some examples I have pulled from poems include:

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

**************************
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

**************************
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

**************************
they speak whatever's on their mind
they do whatever's in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance

**************************
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;

Of course, these were written a long time ago by some well known names in the world of poetic literature. So I guess there's a good reason why they stand out. But you would think that with everyone being a poet these days, someone would rise above the ground-level clutter with something that soars free from the shackles of cliche, doggerel and just plain dull poetry.

Some have.

Blaze by Carol Brandt
Winter in Waiting by Emil Donatello
Nightscapes by Keith Bickerstaffe

These are a few that stand out in my mind. You won't find any of these people on the pages of any books on the shelves of Borders, but they have produced fine work. There are others as well, but they are too few and far between to remember.

Maybe that's the way it's always been. Only a small percentage of the whole will have any real merit.

If that's the case, then, once again, why are all these people being praised by others on the sites?

It's gotta be me. I guess I'm just too dense to "get it."

Yes, But Does it Rhyme?

2009-06-15T06:13:00.002-05:00

One of the more irritating things about poetry review sites is the number of people who absolutely have to have perfect rhymes in the poems they review, if they rhyme at all. These people are ignoring a whole different aspect of rhyme that has been used by famous poets who write far better than they do. Here is some information that I copied from another website with regard to rhyme.

(From Wikipedia, but only because they have the most complete information that I've found on it)

The word "Rhyme" can be used in a specific and a general sense. In the specific sense, two words rhyme if their final stressed vowel and all following sounds are identical; two lines of poetry rhyme if their final strong positions are filled with rhyming words. A rhyme in the strict sense is also called a perfect rhyme. Examples are sight and flight, deign and gain, madness and sadness.

Perfect rhymes can be classified according to the number of syllables included in the rhyme

masculine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words. (rhyme, sublime)
feminine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the penultimate (second from last) syllable of the words. (picky, tricky)
dactylic: a rhyme in which the stress is on the antepenultimate (third from last) syllable ('cacophonies", "Aristophanes")

In the general sense, "rhyme" can refer to various kinds of phonetic similarity between words, and to the use of such similar-sounding words in organizing verse. Rhymes in this general sense are classified according to the degree and manner of the phonetic similarity:

syllabic: a rhyme in which the last syllable of each word sounds the same but does not necessarily contain vowels. (cleaver, silver, or pitter, patter)
imperfect: a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. (wing, caring)
semirhyme: a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word. (bend, ending)
oblique (or slant/forced): a rhyme with an imperfect match in sound. (green, fiend; one, thumb)
assonance: matching vowels. (shake, hate) Assonance is sometimes used to refer to slant rhymes.
consonance: matching consonants. (rabies, robbers)
half rhyme (or sprung rhyme): matching final consonants. (bent, ant)
alliteration (or head rhyme): matching initial consonants. (short,ship)

It has already been remarked that in a perfect rhyme the last stressed vowel and all following sounds are identical in both words. If this identity of sound extends further to the left, the rhyme becomes more than perfect. An example of such a "super-rhyme" is the "identical rhyme", in which not only the vowels but also the onsets of the rhyming syllables are identical, as in gun and begun. Punning rhymes such are "bare" and "bear" are also identical rhymes. The rhyme may of course extend even further to the left than the last stressed vowel. If it extends all the way to the beginning of the line, so that we have two lines that sound identical, then it is called "holorhyme" ("For I scream/For ice cream").

The last type of rhyme is the sight (or eye), or similarity in spelling but not in sound, as with cough, bough, or love, move. These are not rhymes in the strict sense, but often were formerly. For example, "sea" and "grey" rhymed in the early eighteenth century, though now they would make at best an eye rhyme.

The preceding classification has been based on the nature of the rhyme; but we may also classify rhymes according to their position in the verse:

tail rhyme (also called end rhyme or rime couée): a rhyme in the final syllable(s) of a verse (the most common kind)
When a word at the end of the line rhymes with a word in the interior of the line, it is called an internal rhyme.
Holorhyme has already been mentioned, by which not just two individual words, but two entire lines rhyme.

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem. Internal rhyme is rhyme which occurs within a single line of verse.

In the scope of the poetic word, there is a lot of room for play and nuance. I usually ignore those who insist that it has to be just one way, and one way only to be right. Once someone starts harping on rhyme in this manner, I see them as, oh, perhaps, less than competent with verse. And I really don' t want their opinion.

Rambling

2009-06-12T07:12:00.003-05:00

Lakers are up 3 to 1 against the Magic in the championship series. When I heard that this morning on the radio sports news, I just said to myself, "I don't care if LA wins it." Back in the 80s, I would have hated to see the Lakers on top. But then again, the 70s and 80s Celtics were my team. I haven't really followed professional basketball since 1988.

Which got me thinking about Major League Baseball. I loved the Red Sox in the 70s. I like them now and feel somewhat disappointed when they don't make it all the way. But I'm not devastated. I don't know... I just have a hard time getting to wrapped up in fandom of any sports team these days. They are fun to watch now and then, fun to talk about. I just can't get to the level of worship of these overpaid game players that some people do, though.

It's unfortunate, but the skyrocketing payrolls of professional sports teams have made the sports inaccessible to me. I can't afford to take the family to Fenway Park to catch a game, though my son keeps bugging me to. Back in the 70s, a box seat went for $5. Even in the 80s when I was in college in the greater Boston area, seating was affordable. Now, they start at $125 - if you can get them.

We don't have cable TV, so we can't watch any of the games as almost all of them are broadcast on NESN. I tried a month of MLB-TV which is streamed over the internet, but all live Red Sox games are blacked out.

I don't mean to sound like I'm living in the past, but I miss those days when you could catch a game on network television or just go to the ticket counter at Fenway Park and buy tickets the day of the game.

Speaking of the past, whatever happened to curb feelers? You know, those springy metal things people clipped to their car bodies to warn them when they got to close to the curb when parking? I wonder how the curb feeler industry ended up going out of business - lack of interest?

I see Obama wants to drive this country into the ground with his seemingly popular brand of fascism. I think it's getting time to hunker in the bunker.

Later.

How Time Slips by Unnoticed

2009-06-06T17:21:00.000-05:00

Been almost a month since the last entry. Too busy here, with work and other things - not a satisfying labor, but a kind of crazy work demanded by others.

No idea when the next blog entry will be.

Say What?

2009-05-11T05:00:00.000-05:00

I used to think writing was a good thing - you know, a way to express some creativity. But now I wonder. It has stirred up some sort of pot which was bubbling away in the background. Or I think it has. Maybe that pot would have stirred on its own with the passage of time.

I am 48, going on 49. For the last three years, or so, I have experienced middle age. Some would call it a crisis. I wouldn't go that far, for there is no real danger of anything beyond losing my mind. An argument can be made that that happened a long time ago (yes, self-deprecating sarcasm, sorry about that).

Despite there being no danger, there has been a hammering realization that aging is a reality. That the past is the past, separate from us, yet still attached. The future is no comfort because we now actually get a feeling of what it may be like with the degradation of certain bodily functions. The present is no friend as we use that time to consider both the future and the past. Middle age is a vortex, a desperate grab to hold on to what was and a furtive attempt to avoid heading down the dreaded hill.

I thought writing would benefit my attempts to record the past, to somehow rebreathe life back into it. I don't want to live in the past; just simply experience it again from time to time. Unfortunately, it's left me frustrated more than anything. It seems that I can't capture any of it in a manner which is realistic and fulfilling. I've tried with poetry. I've tried with fiction. I get glimpses of it now and then, but the sum totality of it all is missing.

I keep thinking that I just need the right combination of words to act as a key to unlock the chambers that hold the essence of what I seek. The search for the right combination has been fruitless, though, to a large extent. Additionally, there seems to be an attention deficit disorder lurking in the shadows that robs me of my will to keep searching. It's as if I sense a futility in the trying. It's also as if the task seems so daunting that I just can't see the point of attempting it.

Maybe there's a spot of laziness as well.

Now, I look back over what I have written here, and I see the ADD has taken over again. This has missed the mark of what I was attempting to do, and I have lost that thread already.

Just a part of getting older, I guess.

New Email Scam

2009-05-08T09:07:00.002-05:00

Received this email today. It is obviously a phishing scam, but oh, so clever.

Hello.

My name is Dennis Platt I am the representative of Internet Fidelity Bureau. We were based in 2001 and have a seven year experience fighting against internet criminals. The main aim of our activity is to help victims of a scam. If you`ve become a victim of internet scam, let us know immediately and we will help you to get your money back. If you or your friend have got scammed of a home based job, were a money mule, cashed out fake checks, transferred the funds overseas, sent parcels and were cheated or just suspect your company a fraud - let us know urgently! We will make our best to get your money back and solveyour doubts about your strange employer. We cooperate with the biggest National Safety agencies, fraud departments of Western Union and MoneyGram and internet providers from US,Africa and Europe.

Contact me today.

Regards,
Dennis Platt, IFB Team..

Given how poorly this email was written (I've made some corrections), it smacks of scam. Still, it's a clever approach.

Watch yourselves out there.

Manny Happy Returns (in 50 games)

2009-05-08T07:12:00.000-05:00

So Manny Ramirez has tested positive for a banned substance, and Major League Baseball has suspended him for 50 games.

He stated that the drug was presribed for a medical condition. Unofficial reports are saying that the drug was Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG).

Wikipedia has this to say about HCG:

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is a glycoprotein hormone produced in pregnancy that is made by the developing embryo soon after conception and later by the syncytiotrophoblast (part of the placenta). Its role is to prevent the disintegration of the corpus luteum of the ovary and thereby maintain progesterone production that is critical for a pregnancy in humans. hCG may have additional functions; for instance, it is thought that hCG affects the immune tolerance of the pregnancy.

Assuming Manny isn't pregnant, then why would he take HCG, a female hormone?

I knew someone many years ago who had to take HCG. His testacles didn't descend, and he had to receive HCG injections, I believe, to stimulate the production of testosterone.

And there lies a possible clue. Steroid users apparently take HCG after going through the steroid cycle to restimulate the production of testosterone which is apparently suppressed by steroid usage.

There are people who have stated that HCG can have a performance-enhancing affect as it does increase testosterone production. But I have to wonder if Ramirez took steroids some time in 2008, for his numbers shot into the stratosphere during the second half of the season after being sent to the Dodgers.

I don't know that there is much anecdotal evidence for steroid usage beyond that and the HCG. However, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Manny thought he could get away with using steroids in this day and age.

There seems to be a serious disconnect between common sense and Manny Ramirez.

Of Trains and Other Things, Kindle Edition

2009-04-30T12:37:00.001-05:00

Of Trains and Other Things, Kindle Edition,
is now available.

You can find it here: Amazon.com

Get yours now!

24 is 22 too much?

2009-04-21T06:32:00.002-05:00

So, I've been watching the television show 24 this year for the first time from beginning to end.

Having watched the '18th hour' of the show last night, I have a few thoughts.

First, I have to say that the concept of the show is brilliant, and the writing ensures that each episode of the serial is filled with tension, action, and all sorts of twists and turns. It makes it difficult to quit watching the show because you have to see how the latest unforeseen twist plays out the following week. Kudos to the writers and actors for this effect.

On the other hand, I told my son last night that I just wanted to flip ahead to the end now and see how it all turns out. You see, as a 24-episode serial, it is really a movie marathon. And as movies are wrapped up in 2 to 3 hours, 24 feels overly long to me.

Earlier in ths season, it seemed that the episodes all had some sort of resolution that answered questions raised by the previous episode. That was good.

But lately, it seems like the resolutions have grown rather thin, and actually nonexistent, and I find I really don't want to continue to invest the time in the show.

I'm not sure if I'm tired of the show or what. It feels like it has been on too long now, and the amount of action that takes place in a 24 hour period is starting to seem silly.

I will, of course, watch it to its conclusion. After all, what would be the point of quitting now?

2 Wins, 4 Losses

2009-04-13T06:26:00.002-05:00

OK, so it's only 6 games into a 162-game season. That's fewer than 5% of the games played. It is a marathon as opposed to a sprint....

However!

The Boston Red Sox have not looked good at the start of the 2009 season.

Beckett pitched really well in the opener, but didn't seem as sharp in his game against the Angels. Lester and Dice-K were nothing to brag about, both having a lapse of acumen during an inning which cost them the game.
Brad Penny was OK. Tim Wakefield was standard Wakefield - he kept his outing to three runs.

From the bullpen, Okajima is off to a rough start. Masterson, who was terrific last year, is showing some cracks. Papelbon had a 37-pitch outing the other day, loading up the bases, but managing to get out of it.

On the offensive side, Ellsbury is still doing his darndest to prove he shouldn't lead off. Pedroia has been cold at the plate. Big Papi has turned into Big Floppy, and I wonder if we'll ever see the Manny-era Ortiz. I tend to think not. I think he got a lot of protection from Manny and now pitchers aren't as concerned about him any more.

Youkilis has been THE bright spot. He's hot hitting right now. J Bay has included a couple home runs to the mix. Lowell and JD Drew have had some contact, and Varitek has surprised with a couple long balls of his own.

Lowrie is continuing his non-hitting streak from last year.

While it's too early to make pronouncements on this team, I have to say that when Plan A failed in the off-season (acquiring Texiera), one could conceivably say that there's reason to be concerned. It remains to be seen if Plan B (loading up on pitching) will carry the team in ways that offense was supposed to. But if the first six games are any indicator, it looks to be a long season.

Early prognostications - Red Sox end up third in their division.

Subject to change, if they change.

Lies Lies and Damn Lies

2009-04-09T06:56:00.007-05:00

The White House recently denied that the President of the United States bowed to the King of Saudi Arabai.

Here is the denial from an article:

The White House is denying that the president bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at a G-20 meeting in London, a scene that drew criticism on the right and praise from some Arab outlets.

"It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah," said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The White House is lying through its collective teeth. If you watch the video and pause it, you will see that Obama DID NOT grasp Abdullah's hand with both hands. And there was no reason to bend over due to height. You will also note that Obama added a second hand to the shake AFTER he stood back upright. It was obviously a bow.

Watch the video for yourself here:

White House: No bow to Saudi

AI Observation

2009-02-26T11:07:00.002-05:00

I told myself I would not comment on American Idol at all this year. And I haven't.

But after watching two of the top 36 elimination rounds, I have to say something.

I can't, for the time I've watched American Idol, remember a time when there were as many people who flat out stunk, especially at this level. Some of it appears to be nerves. I understand what nerves do to your voice, to your presentation. I've sung in front of people before - it's not easy.

Several of the singers have been off key. Not just pitchy, not just hitting a note sharp or flat here and there. I mean totally out of key. And some have been out of rhythm as well.

It's almost as if they can't hear the background music really well.

HERE'S A TOTALLY RANDOM THOUGHT

Why do car dealers say that some of the vehicles they advertise are "Priced to Sell?"

Does that mean that the other cars in the ad are overpriced? That they couldn't be bothered to price them to sell as well?

Oh well, that's all.

Oh This is Just Too Funny

2009-02-24T19:10:00.005-05:00

The email scammers have changed their stripes again. First it was the Nigerian-gotta-get-millions-out-of-country scam. Then it was massaged to make it look affiliated with Ocean Bank. Then the UK Lottery winning email, not to mention other forms of lottery announcements. Now it's the Hyundai Automobile International Promotion Program. Here is the one I received:

Edgware Road,
105 West Hendon Broadway,
London NW9 7BN.

24th February 2009,

REF No.: DF-100511

Dear Distinguished Winner,

It is with utmost regard to inform you of our official proclamations made today. You are among the winners of the HYUNDAI AUTOMOBILE INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION PROGRAM. You may have incidentally visited one of our affiliated websites,for you to have received this official notification.

This International Promo Program is to mark the 40 years Anniversary of HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY. You have therefore by this notice, been approved for the payment of the sum of GBP 450,000 (Four Hundred And Fifty Thousand Great Britain Pounds)

Please be informed that your WINNING CHEQUE of the sum of GBP 450,000 is now with the Payee Center. Do proceed by sending the below detailed informations and your Winning Identification #:HYU3114/504660 to our claims representatives

Hyundai Anniversary Promotion Team

Edward Phil

Tel: +447031972981
E-mail: hyundaiagent09@googlemail.com

HYUNDAI PROMO WINNERS BIODATAS

1. Full Names: …………………………
2. Gender:……………………………..
3. Age:………………………………..
4. Contact Address: …………………….
5. Country of Residence:…………………
6. Nationality:…………………………
7. Occupation:………………………….
8.Telephone Mobile #:…………………..

Choose your mode of payment

1. Courier Delivery

2. Bank transfer

Congratulations!!! for this rare and wealthy opportunity.

Sincerely,
Mr. Wilford C. Grant
Officer of Operations
Division of Informations

Remember - there's no such thing as a free lunch and you don't get rich by doing nothing. Stay e-safe out there.

Look One Last

2009-02-18T19:24:00.002-05:00

It is finished.

And it is available.

For more information, click here.

This is my last poetry book. Done with it unless there's a mighty compelling reason to do it again.

Headlines that Make you Go Hmmmm

2009-02-17T07:19:00.001-05:00

Kansas suspending Income Tax Refunds

Will Russian Kremlin bailout Oregon steel plant?

CALIFORNIA ON THE BRINK

Chávez to speed up his Bolivarian Revolution

State Department Congratulates Vote (Chavez winning "vote" in Venezuela)

Indonesian women protest Clinton visit

Households to be charged tax for each flush of toilet in Australia...

NY GOV OFFICE STAFFERS GET SECRET RAISES AMID 'FREEZE'

1900% Beer Tax Hike Proposed in Oregon

A letter to my Senators

2009-02-09T09:55:00.001-05:00

This letter was sent to both Senators Snowe and Collins separately.

Dear Senator Snowe,

There was no "March to Socialism" in your topic list, so I chose "Budget" instead.

Our Federal government HAS to stop this unfettered spending now. The 'stimulus' package currently before the Senate continues to pile burden upon burden on the citizens of Maine, the USA and our children. I disagreed with President Bush's push to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, ostensibly to thaw the credit freeze all while nationalizing segments of our financial system, and I disagree with President Obama's continuation of same. We must let economic Darwinism, ie the markets, to resume their normal workings to weed out those who took unnecessary, greedwagon jumping risk to the detriment of their bottom lines.

Failure has always been a part of the strength of the United States, for it is failure where the greatest lessons are learned. Unfortunately, the mindset of those who administer power in this country is that failure is intolerable and unacceptable. This disturbing paternalism is leading us down roads we have no business traversing.

I fear for the direction we are going, and I must rely on my elected representatives to bring some Maine common sense back to the process. Please stand strong against the astronomical amounts of money being proposed in the name of "economic stimulus." It's all a trillion dollar lie.

Thank you,

Jeff Howe

Today's Comedian

2009-02-06T07:25:00.001-05:00

They say things that aren't funny
Yet everyone laughs
They do things that aren't funny
Yet everyone laughs
They take pains to be offensive
And everyone laughs

I don't know if the problem is with them
Or everyone who is laughing

Nancy Pelosi said it...

2009-02-04T11:35:00.001-05:00

... in a press conference:

"Every month we don't have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs."

500 million Americans. lol

New Poetry Book

2009-01-30T08:57:00.002-05:00

I am working on my latest and probably last poetry book. All the reasons for having done them in the past have been satisfied, and it doesn't seem like there are any compelling reasons to continue to make them.

This one is titled Look One Last.

Here is its cover:

It's currently being reviewed by CreateSpace. Then it will go into the proofing process. When that is settled, the book will be live on Amazon and my CreateSpace e-store.

More of the Same Old, Same Old

2009-01-23T14:01:00.002-05:00

Congress is working on an $825 billion "stimulus" package to be voted on sometime this year, probably February. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has said it could get larger.

Apparently, it's chock full of .... what we used to call pork, now they call earmarks.

As House Minority Leader, John Boehner, said of the bill, "“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?”

For a guy espousing "change", it certainly sounds like business as usual to me.

C'mon America, wake up! Flush Washington clean and start over again.

Everyone Should Read This

2009-01-19T11:42:00.007-05:00

It's time to pray for global warming, by John Tomlinson, Flint Journal Columnist

by John Foren | Flint Journal Editor
Monday January 19, 2009, 4:20 AM

Flint Journal's
John Tomlinson

If you're wondering why North America is starting to resemble nuclear winter, then you missed the news.

At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"

I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right.

The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.

Meanwhile, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center released conclusive satellite photos showing that Arctic ice is back to 1979 levels. What's more, measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up 5 percent since 1980.

In other words, during what was supposed to be massive global warming, the biggest chunks of ice on earth grew larger. Just as an aside, do you remember when the hole in the ozone layer was going to melt Antarctica? But don't worry, we're safe now, that was the nineties.

Dr. Kunihiko, Chancellor of Japan's Institute of Science and Technology said this: "CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or the other ... every scientist knows this, but it doesn't pay to say so." Now why would a learned man say such a crazy thing?

This is where the looney left gets lost. Their mantra is atmospheric CO2 levels are escalating and this is unquestionably causing earth's temperature rise. But ask yourself -- if global temperatures are experiencing the biggest sustained drop in decades, while CO2 levels continue to rise -- how can it be true?

Ironically, in spite of being shown false, we must now pray for it. Because a massive study, just released by the Russian Government, contains overwhelming evidence that earth is on the verge of another Ice Age.

Based on core samples from Russia's Vostok Station in Antarctica, we now know earth's atmosphere and temperature for the last 420,000 years. This evidence suggests that the 12,000 years of warmth we call the Holocene period is over.

Apparently, we're headed into an ice age of about 100,000 years -- give or take. As for CO2 levels, core samples show conclusively they follow the earth's temperature rise, not lead it.

It turns out CO2 fluctuations follow the change in sea temperature. As water temperatures rise, oceans release additional dissolved CO2 -- like opening a warm brewsky.

To think, early last year, liberals suggested we spend 45 trillion dollars and give up five million jobs to fix global warming. But there is good news: now that we don't have to spend any of that money, we can give it all to the banks.

John Tomlinson is a local conservative columnist for The Flint Journal. He lives in the Genesee County area. You can e-mail him. Read more columns by John Tomlinson.

This is Interesting, pt. 2

2009-01-15T11:33:00.002-05:00

Beam me up: Scientists left baffled as mysterious columns of coloured light appear in the night skies

By Mail Foreign ServiceLast updated at 11:29 AM on 15th January 2009

These stunning images show mysterious columns of light streaming into the sky above the town of Sigulda in Latvia at the end of last month.

Taken by designer Aigar Truhins with a standard digital camera, the photographs have prompted excited online discussions among amateur astronomists all over the internet.

'My son exclaimed, 'The aliens are coming!'' Truhins was quoted as saying.

Enlarge

Beam me up: Mysterious columns of light stream into the air above the town of Sigulda

The mysterious lights prompted excited discussion on the internet

'It certainly looked that way,' he added.

But experts are agreed there may be a more prosaic explanation - ice crystals in the air.

The air above the town was notably cold and filled with suspended ice crystals.

It is believed that the columns were formed by those reflecting light from the bright streetlamps and other lights on the ground - beaming it back downwards again.

Skies all over Europe have been filled with such natural phenomena during the cold snap of recent weeks.

But finally the experts agreed on one explanation...

The lights were said to be a reflection caused by the light from streetlamps on the ground hitting ice crystals suspended in the cold air

Scientists at the website spaceweather.com said: 'Truhin’s pillars are not the ordinary kind. Even eading experts in atmospheric optics can’t quite figure them out

'These pillars are mysterious. They have unexplained curved tops and even curved arcs coming from their base.

'Arcs in rare displays like these could be from column crystals to give parts of tangent arcs, others could be the enigmatic Moilanan arc or even the recently discovered reflected Parry arc.

'We do not know – so take more photos on cold nights!'

This is Interesting

2009-01-08T14:14:00.002-05:00

Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected
By Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer
posted: 07 January 2009
04:43 pm ET

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.

Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can.

Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum.

Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss.

But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.

There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission).

In July 2006, the instrument was launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and reached an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,500 meters), where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.

ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe.

"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise – there just aren't enough of them.

"You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."

The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.

For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

"We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

And not only has it presented astronomers with a new puzzle, it is obscuring the sought-for signal from the earliest stars. But the cosmic static may itself provide important clues to the development of galaxies when the universe was much younger, less than half its present age. Because the radio waves come from far away, traveling at the speed of light, they therefore represent an earlier time in the universe.

"This is what makes science so exciting," Seiffert said. "You start out on a path to measure something – in this case, the heat from the very first stars – but run into something else entirely, some unexplained."

From: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090107-aas-loud-cosmic-noise.html

As the Leadership Turns....

2009-01-07T06:01:00.002-05:00

From an article:

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama is set to speak about deficit-control measures he plans to include in his first budget, due next month, an Obama aide said. The aide stressed that the president-elect is inheriting a fiscal disaster not of his making.

I'd like to repeat part of this paragraph for effect.

The aide stressed that the president-elect is inheriting a fiscal disaster not of his making.

Again:

The aide stressed that the president-elect is inheriting a fiscal disaster not of his making.

And again:

a fiscal disaster not of his making.

I beg to differ.

Mr. Obama and his colleagues in the Congress are primarily responsible for this fiscal mess we are currently in. It's been documented time and again. They did it for political and financial gain.

It's not all on him, of course. But he was one of the leading recipients of donations from Franklin Raines and Fannie Mae.

Unfortunately, half of this country will refuse to see it or believe it.

Willful ignorance is not pretty.

Hot Stove

2008-12-30T08:17:00.002-05:00

Well, the Yankees have dominated the Hot Stove this year by snatching up Sabathia, Burnett and Texiera (Texiera from right under the noses of Boston). There is moaning in Red Sox Nation over that. There is also a sort of forced apathy or cheer from some.

It's the emotionalism of the response to moves like this which keep the game at the forefront. People like to paint Scott Boras (Texiera's agent, as well as the agent for many players) as the devil incarnate. Sites like bostondirtdogs.com help to reinforce that image with photoshopped graphics.

Hey, it's all fun.

But it's all business, too.

What player isn't going to look for the deal that benefits them them most?? The same holds true for management of professional sports teams. Everyone in the business is about bottom line.

Sports is sort of like politics. Spectators (citizens) pay the ticket prices (taxes) to watch the teams and team owners (politicians) do their things. And the spectators are often upset or irritated by it. Then they go home and look to the next game.

The teams (politicians) make promises to the spectators (citizens) throughout the season and the off-season that they are working to get better, often wtih no discernible results.

So, by this line of thinking, it appears that politics is really a spectator sport.

That's too bad. .

A Poem

2008-12-04T08:35:00.001-05:00

The Warning

I walked along the beach
One cloudy afternoon.
There were no waves awash
The shore, smooth as a spoon.
I made my way inland
To sit upon a dune.

There were no seabirds crying.
The air was heavy, still.
Were it not for one dog's bark,
There'd be no sound to fill
My ears with reassurance
That I had not grown ill.

A gentle breeze blew fresh.
My face was damp with sweat,
But drier now from easy winds
Which still blew harder yet.
They left me feeling pensive,
As if some kind of threat.

Suddenly, from out to sea
There came an unearthly screech
Bigger than the sky, it seemed
(As I sat there on the beach)
To pulse in pitch and deepen
In its dreadful tone and reach

Til sound was all around me
And I fell down in the sand.
I thought my breath would leave me.
I could not seem to stand.
The noise composed my terror
Turned to an icy hand

That threatened now, my heart to squeeze
To wring it dry of blood.
This thrumming drumming pulsing
Washed over me like a flood
The ground was shaking wildly
And I knew this meant no good.

The sky, it turned a ruby red,
Which purpled the oily sea.
The thrumming sound became more loud
Increasingly battering me.
I thought this was the end of all
The time I had to see.

Then as quickly as it started
It stopped, and silence fell like rain
Upon the land, upon the sea.
The thrumming drumming on my brain
Let go its force, released me
But left an echo, soft refrain
Which simply said, "Be ready."