Do you have an available job? I have a master's degree in Analytical Chemistry. No one here around New Orleans is impressed, but I can do a mean chemical analysis. Really I can.
Rhoda 9-3-2003 11:21
I got these neighbors,
ya know?
They keep throwing this HTML bold OR italic stuff out there
that just doesn't end.
Ya know?
{sigh}Man.
Mark 9-3-2003 10:27
(this time)
I'm about to join the ranks of those changing ids.
Film at eleven...
howard 9-3-2003 10:17
I don't believe it, I'm actually growing fond of talcy Yang!!
Eddie French 9-3-2003 8:28
Mary 9-3-2003 0:16
Hey!
One of the oldest rituals I participate in is the annual Texas dove season opener. Dove season opened September 1 and our gang was out amongst ‘em. As was your field reporter "Old Randall Sure Shot." To get something out of the way really quick...it's not the killing of doves, but the fellowship of being with long time friends that I cherish. Oh, I killed a few, four, not even close to the bag limit which is 10 per day. Just getting outside with the "boys" is enough for me. And of course the food.
Standing at the edge of a 200-acre sunflower patch I applied a writers logic to what I was doing. The gift of life is the most sacred of all. A rough count of expended shotgun shells on the ground, versus the few doves that fell to my prowess with a shotgun (that refused to shoot straight) revealed a startling truth. I was giving more life than I was taking. Indeed it seemed more than a few fleeing dovies glanced over their shoulder after the barrage, and with a decidedly look of malice ... snickered evilly ... extended one small leg ... and gave ME the bird.
Riding a 20 to 30-mile an hour north wind, the doves came across our position with velocity and flight characteristics aerodynamically analogous to an F-16 Flying Falcon on a low-level bomb run over downtown Baghdad. Even an average Texas dove excels in mind numbing high speed pivots, increase and descent in altitude that would have a Top Gun jet jockey gasp in admiration. How any bird can come in at tree top level at speeds just below the speed of sound, stand on one wing and drop 10 feet in altitude in the space of .000009 seconds is beyond my comprehension!
Just after sunrise I managed to track one bird over the barrel of my trusty, but obviously defective shotgun, only to see it disappear. Coming in high and fast the wily feathered adventurer dropped 20 feet in less than a second. I could only stare dumfounded as the dove settled a few feet off the ground and disappeared into a mesquite thicket...birdie afterburner on combat setting and wing to the wing with fellow comrades of the feather.
However, sadly, the local wing and tail club are missing a few comrades. Turn their drinking glasses over. Yes, numerous birds gave their life, but their sacrifice was not in vain. Our crew stuffed themselves with the luckless few who zigged when they should have zagged, gained in altitude when they should have headed for the hard deck. Probably rookies. They always seem to bite the bullet first rattle out of the box ... no pun intended. My hat is off to the doves who fell...valiant is thy name...tasty is thy flesh...
Soooooo, our host's recipe for bar-b-que dove is this...remove the breast...slice the meat off the breast. This leaves two pieces of meat. Then...wrap the meat around a slice of hot pepper...wrap the meat and pepper with a slice of bacon...hold all of this together with a toothpick...and place on a wood fired pit. Cook until one degree from incineration, remove, and eat. Wash the whole mess down with a cold refresher. Ahem... soft drinks ARE frowned upon but permissible...
Side dishes are popular as well. Take a fresh Jalapeno pepper and remove the seeds. Stuff cream cheese inside, then wrap the pepper with bacon. Pin everything together with the ubiquitous toothpick and cook on the grill till one degree from incineration. Chicken was also on the menu for lunch. Take one chicken and pluck it. (Long pause...) Uh, buy a chicken from the store, (or use one of your neighbors) remove anything inside...enlarge the southern end...sit the chicken on an opened beer, ah, full beer. Place chicken on the grill in a sitting position, (extra kudos if you can cross it's legs) ignore gales of laughter from the less informed, cook on the grill until one degree from incineration and serve. As a backup a 20-pound beef brisket that has been cooking all night is also on the pit, just in case.
All in all a good time was had by everyone. Although the peppers I consumed are exacting a terrific toll on my stomach, intestines and parts farther south. This is a matter of great humor to my spouse, "Giggles" who stayed at home. But then ... what does she about hunting doves and eating peppers under the Texas sky?
Come on ice creme!!!!
Randall
Randall 9-2-2003 20:08
9-2-2003 16:48
I think it was in 'The Paris Option' and I think Robert Ludlum wrote it. The main theme of the story was the development of a super computer (On the molecular scale) that could break any dynamic encryption across the world. The first two strikes of the computer were somewhere in the USA and then London.
Sound familiar? The cyber terrorists targeted the power systems first as a warning to the respective governments. Blackouts in America and then London!
(You did hear about the big one in London last week didn't you?) I was imagining the secret service working behind the scenes while the world knew nothing except the fact of the blackouts. The main event was much more deadly!
But don't worry, it's just fiction..............
isn't it?
Ed
Eddie French 9-1-2003 16:47
ANDREW -- Workbook has not been abandoned. Just a bit slow of late. Most of the recent activity has been in shorties. It happens that way.
ALL -- Speaking of Shorties, we have been making a new forum for every topic. You'll notice a "Memories of Mom" forum, a "Disappointment" forum, an "Infatuation" forum, and the original "Shorty Thursday."
No shorties in Infatuation? I'm sure I've been infatuated in my shorties, but that's the whole story.
All the regulars here probably received an email that said "Congratulations, you've been added to Shorties ..." Making a usergroup was for my sake. Each new shorty forum requires that someone grant permission to each individual who will be allowed to read the forum. Uh, four fora and 22 people, that's 88 times to go through the process. Or, TADA, put all the individuals into a usergroup and simply allow the group entry. Now it's only one step to open a new forum for 'just family' and one step to add a new family member to the inside stuff.
Now -- Do you like the Individual Forum setup? or prefer the "Shorty Thursday" where everything lumps together?
AND - don't touch that dial - Should the Work In Progress section be broken into Prose and Poetry fora?
Personally, I'd vote for individual shorties because there's enough activity there that the page would get massive. WIP is a toss-up for me. There has been little poetry posted, and the activity level is low enough that page length is not an obvious concern.
Mark Homepage 9-1-2003 16:16
It is so reassuring to come back and find that all have been carrying on, inspired or not... and that not all messes are permanent.
Rhoda, congratulations! I know just what you mean about one more day that the ms hasn't been returned unwanted is a victory! Phantasium - still no word yet, but I see it as a good thing.
Of course, now that the first ms copy is out, I've been pouring over my printed copy and finding... oh yes! finding things I should have revised! Of course there are some things... LOL (Or I'd be a professional editor by now)
Mel's advice is sound - go ahead and give yourself permission to jump into the spy novel now - you have waited and deserve to have the fun and frenzy of a new project!
When you need a break from the new book, pull out the older ms and plump up the beginning. Sometimes it takes a while to see that your own characters are a bit flat - good for you that you can see it now, and that is all the weaponry you need to change them into full-bodied folks!
Best of luck with your new group - oh, how I want to do the same here in Guelph! But not yet - if I jump into organizing a writer's group too soon I'll be sacking myself with more work than I can handle at the moment. It would help inspire me to get back to 'Symphony'; yet that will happen of its own accord, and the time is nigh anyhow.
Ugh, I'm typing to loud music so my words are not carefully chosen, but the ideas are there. Better loud music to carry my mood than to sink into the one that threatened me earlier!
Good to see everyone here - intact and at peace....
Thank you Jerry, for those wise sayings - I found many of them to have that ring to them.... and now to go back and memorize a few, so I can let them fly when appropriate. Not to mention that they're good for a chuckle...
Here's one that a good friend said when we took my kids up to the studio rooftop, and they wanted to be a bit too daring: "Better to ride a bicycle than a wheelchair."
I had to laugh at the looks on their faces. Curbed the enthusiasm to lean over the railings too far, that is for certain!
Anyhow, before I impart too much personal confusion, time to be off.....
:o)
Heather 9-1-2003 15:42
Andrew 9-1-2003 15:30
As with Teekay, I'm going to have to give up one of my email addresses, thanks to the sobig virus. Sobigs are coming in at the rate of 360+ per day, it would be more but my inbox is showing full at least twice per day and bouncing some mail.
So, anyone using my litterali@onetel.net.uk address please cease and desist forthwith. In its stead, I will be using
* gkmcl 'at' onetel.net.uk *
– I think you know where the @ goes, but I don't want this address harvested so I've left the link cryptic.
Back later,
Litter
Litter 9-1-2003 15:16
Happy Labor Day. :-)
In answer to your question, Mel, I just finished with my book, and am waiting to get the cover design, hear the final pub date, etc. It's great to be done, but I've already started on the accompanying "workbook" because part of me doesn't want to stop writing! I'm not so crazy about the next phase - publicity. (I'd rather be sitting in my office in my pjs ;-)
I also started journaling again. I've haven't really written anything exploratory since my dad died, but I think I'm ready now. Also, I realize that I'm still making memories with my mom, and I don't want to forget any of them.
[Pamela, ask me about the reading I had done with medium Patrick Mathews. It was incredible.]
Hope you're all doing well, and enjoying your writing!
Sunny 9-1-2003 15:14
"Another interesting thing about the Feast of St. John: the Breviary's hymn for this day, Ut queant laxis, is the source of our names of musical notes -- Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do. The hymn, attributed to Paul the Deacon (ca. A.D. 720-799), was noted by a monk to rise one note in the diatonic C-Scale with each verse. The syllables sung at each rise in pitch give us the names of our notes (the "Ut" was later changed to "Do" for easier pronunciation):
Ut queant laxis
Resonare fibris
Mira gestorum
Famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti
Labii reatum, Sanc
Te Ioannes"
The feast itself is to celebrate the birthday of St. John the Baptist, and occurs on the summer solstice - June 24. It's amazing how much the Bible has influenced literature around the world! I may do my term paper on that subject.
howard 9-1-2003 14:26
It's also GREAT you've found a critique group to discuss writing! :-] I used to come here and find more of that... not sure what's happened here to lose that inspiring writers' talk... oh well, back to lurking and surfing other writing sites until more writerly stuff may turn up here...
ROSEMARY, you out there? I need farm animal visuals to inspire my writing!!!
PAMELA, you writing?
SUNNY, you writing?
EVERYBODY, you writing??? Well, for MEL's sake, please tell us about it!!!
Have a good day, all - may your keyboards click freely and your inkwells never run dry.
Mel 9-1-2003 14:11
Hi folks, how are you all, had a great holiday, family and friends, the love of a good woman, summer days, children, ice cream, what more could a man want? Well now you mention it…..no, no all is well.
Thanks Eddie for suggesting the link back to notebook, was gonna suggest it mesel but ya beated me to it.
Time for some more meanderings.
Being educated has very little to do with going to school.
The world is full of unbalanced people, it's no wonder they keep falling over.
Every where we have people going nowhere, getting there fast and not even knowing what to do when they get there.
We're victims of our past much more than we know.
Man doesn't understand others because he doesn't understand himself.
A man doesn’t want to change he wants to keep on complaining about things and go on blaming everyone and everything else but himself, for the misery that surrounds him.
We look for things outside of ourselves when in general we have all we need, we are all we need
We spend our time moaning about headaches while we watch people drowning.
Children have an instinct for life; unfortunately they often have it all but knocked out of them in the process of being ‘educated’ by adults.
Praying is like phoning a shop (Which may not exist) to ask for something that we should endeavour to make ourselves.
Look at man, the first mistake he makes he is not relaxed, he carries his history on his shoulders, and his pains in his pocket.
Politics is just the usual business of people doing things the wrong way, dividing themselves into parties, colours, philosophies, morals etc.
We suffocate and die under routine and comfort, we develop through adversity.
We are controlled by unconscious drives and compulsions, if we deny them we do not necessarily control them, they are transferable, they have energy and powers within mind and body they seek expression.
Justice.
Forever the tree
That stands in anger
Forever the leaf
That refuses to fall
Forever the branch
That toys with danger
Forever the root
That cracks the wall.
INSTINCT.
As the summers night, crosses into daybreak
Early birds make the most beautiful music
Having that instinct
Knowing
That it would be foolish
To wait....for the sun.
Th th th th that’s all folks love Pester.
Pester 8-31-2003 19:10
Don't name a pig you plan to eat.
Country fences need to be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong.
Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.
Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
Life is simpler when you plow around the stumps.
A bumble bee is faster than a John Deere tractor.
Trouble with a milk cow is she won't stay milked.
Don't skinny dip with snapping turtles.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.
Meanness don't happen overnight.
To know how country folks are doing, look at their barns, not their houses.
Never lay an angry hand on a kid or an animal, it just ain't helpful.
Teachers, bankers, and hoot owls sleep with one eye open.
Forgive your enemies. It messes with their heads.
Don't sell your mule to buy a plow.
Two can live as cheap as one if one don't eat.
Don't corner something meaner than you.
You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, assuming you want to catch flies.
Man is the only critter who feels the need to label things as flowers or weeds.
It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
Don't go huntin' with a fellow named Chug-A-Lug.
You can't unsay a cruel thing.
Every path has some puddles.
When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Most of the stuff people worry about never happens. .
Jerry 8-31-2003 12:29
Your post was just fine. I saw nothing the least bit sarcastic. I was sarcastic in my last post talking about the blackouts, because all these government officials are bending over backwards to tell the public that these incidents are not due to terrorists. Well, they might not, and yet they might. I just get irritated when the governmnet treats the people like a bunch of little children who have to be comforted lest they go out and take revenge on their Arab neighbors or lest they panic. Truth is that no one knows what caused the blackouts, but in this day and age and political climate, sabotage is as worthy theory as anything else.
As for life in general, it is much better since I finished my novel. The agent has had it a month. Everyday that I go out to my mailbox and see that it is not there is a victory. The longer he keeps it, the happier I am. Now I am doing yard work, studying for that test to get my teaching certificate, and trying to think about what I should write next.
I have some writing ideas. I have this old manuscript, VALERIE'S SONG, which I really like. The first three chapters are flat. Looking over it, the minor charaters are a bit paste-board. The book has some problems, but I believe it is a good story. Should I take the time and fix it up and try to market it again?
Or...should I go and write my Regency spy story that has been swimming around in my brain for three years? I think this story has excellent promise and also has better market appeal. Books like VALERIE'S SONG have only about three publishing houses. I have a choice of perhaps six or seven for the Regency Spy story. Any suggestions?
My children are adjusting well to school. Russell, my ADHD child, has responded very well to his medication and so far has turned in all of his school assignments. That is victory indeed.
One last thing is that I found two like-minded writers at my last SOLA meeting who wish to be in a critique group, so we got together and formed one. That is the most exciting thing that has happened to me in a long time. There is nothing better than getting together with fellow writers at a coffee shop and discussing writing.
Rhoda 8-31-2003 11:52
I never did memorize the chmod number system, I learned it by alphabet. So that was the fix. A user named Jack exists, so that much worked.
Ah, the value of testing over the net. Thanks again.
Mark 8-31-2003 7:40
Thanks for the linking back to the Notebook. Re the Chat. When I attempted to login as a new user and go to a chat I got the following error message:
An error has occured. Please login again
Bing File: /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/achat/Jack.html
Permission denied
On the assumption that Jack may have been used I tried a different more exotic login and got similar error message. However, the concept of a chat room is one I think is a good idea. So, see if you can make it work and I will link to it from here as well.
Jack Beslanwitch 8-31-2003 1:26
RANDALL -- figured you'd catch the twinkle in my eye.
ALL -- Link at the bottom of this message is to my homepage, which takes you familiar places. Feedback is welcome
Mark Mark's Homepage 8-30-2003 23:31
Evening...
Ah, Mark...sea stories. Right up my alley...(grin) I was aboard the USS Platte AO 24 from January 1967 to May 1970. The Platte was a fleet oiler in the Pacific, 7th Fleet, that is she carried oil, mail, movies, ammo and transferred them to other navy ships at sea. Once our ship was caught in the tail end of a typhoon in the Taiwan Strait. Basically empty of bulk fuel oil. That is we had transferred our cargo to other ships and were headed for Taiwan to reload. When loaded fleet oilers sit low, mostly 70% of the ship would be underwater. When empty or dry...they ride high and rough.
At that time I was mess decks master at arms...which meant I was boss of the "kitchen" and eating area. We had room for 50 sailors or so and with a crew of 300 eating demanded one eat and move on. No frills. Not Hollywood leisure dining. During the second or third day of rough weather it became apparent that most sailors were occupying one chair to eat and using a second chair for their "Mae West" life jackets. Sailor capacity was suffering as we moved through some very rough weather...high wind and high seas.
The Platte was riding high and with swells of 30 to 40 feet it made for an uncomfortable ride. Imagine a cork in the middle of a typhoon... The bow (GRIN ... front part, Mark) would ride the swell up and slide crashing down. Meanwhile the swell would lift the middle section of the ship up, then down, then the stern up, then down. Adding to the fun the entire ship would shake violently from side to side and loud banging noises come up through the hull. Anything not secured would slide, slither, crash, bang, spill, slop, fall, followed by wild cursing. In general, holy hell in a salt water environment was an ongoing process.
One afternoon on the mess decks, I watched a soft drink machine topple over and slide across the mess deck almost crushing a scrambling sailor valiantly trying to hold onto his meal tray. Only a super human effort on my part saved the white cow and brown cow from following its example. (White and chocolate milk dispenser.) Work topside was secured and the crew confined to quarters, except for chow. The braver ones, those with stout stomachs, stable inner ears, and agile footsies made their way back to the chow hall to eat. The remaining sailors, easily identified by a greenish facial tint, lay in their racks praying to die. In between dashes to the head, or shower stall, or mop bucket.
It was a fact that a sister ship of the Platte broke in half during rough weather. The Platte was commissioned in 1939 and no doubt had a lot of stress related steel just barely keeping the old girl afloat. Or so most on board thought. What was not a fact and yet to be proven was a rumor racing throughout the crew's quarters. Someone had received a letter from home that Jeanne Dixon (The seer who foresaw JFK's assassination) had foreseen that an American ship with the number 24 would be sunk... Presto, quicker than a sea bunny making love ... out came the life jackets. Sailors were having a difficult time eating as it was without competition from a life preserver! I finally posted a notice that yes chow was being served, but Mae West was not welcome.
True story...
Randall
Randall 8-30-2003 19:57
Just got back from the NY State Fair. Feet hurt from walking, neck/shoulders HURT from carrying Joel all afternoon, but it was worth it. Probably won't go back again this year...
Random thoughts that occurred this afternoon:
Never eat at a fish-fry whose manager is wearing a Jiffy-Lube hat.
Use the word "horticulture" in a sentence:
"You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."
I saw a booth (at the fair) with a sign that said "Hot Cinnamon Nuts" and all I could think was "I bet that hurts!"
Drugs --- I need more drugs!
howard 8-30-2003 18:02
Funny how that slow-motion thing happens. 1975 I was a deckhand on a coal freighter in the Great Lakes. We sailed right through a storm that kept bashing our starboard (that's the right side, RANDALL). I kinda knew that you shouldn't let a storm push your boat sideways, but figured this was a big boat with enough weight to keep it steady. I went through a good part of it in the galley.
As the new guy on board, and a first-time sailor, several of the other guys thought they should enlighten me on the dangers of being in a storm. A few decided to test my faith by deriding the competence of our captain. While that was going on, a few others sat quietly or actually enjoyed the boat's right-to-left rocking motion. I saw and heard every one of them.
"Six hours ago this storm was on Lake Michigan and it capsized a tanker. Poor bastards on Lake Michigan got no place to run when it hits. Damn! Here we got ports all up and down Michigan on one side and Canada on the other. Little spots to duck into and we just keep steaming. Crazy bastard captain don't know enough to sail INTO the wind."
My crew leader poured a couple ounces of milk onto the table in front of him. As the boat rocked slowly to his right, the milk ran downhill. I looked at him. He grinned and said, "It'll come back." he placed a napkin just to the left of the original spill. The boat came slowly upright and rolled left. His milk ran backwards and into the napkin.
The deck watch on my shift picked up the don't-sail-sideways thread. "Good thing we're not in Lake Superior. More ships lost there than in Bermuda. That tanker that went down in Michigan today was in a bad lake. No ports on that lake except all the way at the top and all the way at the bottom. Ontario's plenty deep, too. You go down there, they never gonna find you. Erie ain't so deep. If you're in a bad storm in Lake Erie all you gotta do is get out of the channel and sit on the bottom. Course, Erie's so shallow that a good wind'll lift a hell of a lot of it right off the bottom and slap you with it. We're in a good lake. Huron's got ports for ships our size all up and down both coasts. Don't know why we're sailing sideways to this thing. I don't believe I ever heard good news about this captain."
So it went. Cool heads and jokers. One guy may have been seriously concerned. I never got scared. Today I wonder if I was simply too stupid. You know what they say, "If you can keep your head while everyone else is losing theirs, maybe you don't understand the situation." I still remember the moments of calm, all-observing reserve that let me take everything in at once.
My time on that ship ended after a big Thanksgiving meal and a bottle of wine. My partner and I were both stuffed and a little drunk. I offered to take his side of the hold, even though I'd never worked it. I was 28 and he was 19. I figured I could handle the wine better than he.
His side of the hold was the top side. To get there we climbed down ladders until we reached the hold floor (about 60 feet). Plates on the floor opened to conveyor belts. Coal fell onto the belt and was conveyed out of the ship. Top guy had to climb the sloping floor and then all the way up to the top of the wall by way of chains. There he would dislodge lumps of coal that had frozen to the hull or had lodged in the ribs at the top of the boat. Bottom guy pulled, pushed, raked coal onto the conveyor belt when it didn't fall there by itself.
On my third chain, I was all the way to the top of the hold, the ceiling above me was simply the bottom of the ship's deck. Holding the chain in one hand, with the other I poked at a clump of coal that was as big as I was. It had gotten wet and frozen in place in the girder that the deck sat on. I couldn't hold the chain.
Fortunately I hit the floor where it sloped, so I didn't just hit and come to a sudden stop. Still, it was a 60 foot fall. Next day I couldn't walk. Torn achilles tendon. Pretty lucky really.
I thought about that fall when I took another one on the ice last March. In the boat I saw everything. I saw the floor coming at me. I knew it was sloped. I saw the chain I would have to grab. I knew if I missed I'd land on the conveyor and quickly be rolled under tons of coal going to the big belt to be massed on shore. I had all the time in the world.
On the ice I had no time. Pieces of the experience flashed like still photos. What was in between the photos is simply gone. Before I could get over seeing my foot in the air, my hip was on the ground.
I could credit a) the relaxing effect of the wine for my first vision. b)I could also note that I was 28 then, 56 now. c) To fall then and there was not so surprising as here and now in my own driveway. d) All of the above.
Whatever the storm you're in, whatever space you're falling through, I'd have to say you have a) something that helps you relax, b) youth, c) no real surprise there.
Mark 8-30-2003 15:13
Heather, I hope all is well! Hope you remain calm and centered through all the big decisions you're about to make. Sounds pretty serious. {{{{{HUGS}}}}} and love to you.
Christi 8-30-2003 12:01
Cecilia, I would not read your lenghty diatribe in a box, could not would not with a fox, not on a train, not if insane ...
What's with the load of stinking feces around here? Clean up on aisle 3!
Teekay, darlin, I did send you an email a few days ago, it's probably in your throwaway bin as usual. Need me to resend? Want me to give your box a smacking around? Mine's finally beginning to behave, only had four sobigs this morning.
Hey Taylor, enjoy LOTR! I've only made it halfway through, what with all manner of ding danged interruptions!
Hey Rhoda, you sound as if you're doing great, very at peace with yourself. Good stuff.
Later!
Christi 8-30-2003 11:53
Morning all...
Jerry...
I'm not sure what is happening to our nation. The old saying "As goes California, the rest of the nation soon follows..." quite frankly scares the crap out of me! And the debacle in Alabama decided not upon the Constitution, but the apparent inconsistency of whether the Ten Commandments should be displayed, despite the fact that it IS in numerous federal judicial offices is mystifying. (Gawd, what a sentence!)
California to give illegal immigrants state driver's licences? Why? By definition illegal is illegal! I've heard from friends that numerous small towns along the Texas/Mexico border, for all intents and purposes are more attune, legally, to the nation of Mexico than Texas. Children of illegal immigrants are schooled at Texas taxpayer expense!? Workers in Mexico, for all their good intentions send most of their American income back to Mexico. The government of Mexico would fail if this was prevented. That is exactly why Mexico complains loudly when Americans threaten to "crack down." The cash cow syndrome.
Illegal immigrants are just a trip wire for the aware. A friend of mine hunted mule deer in South Texas last year. He said the land manager told him to stay in the blind, not walk around, and beware of men moving north carrying backpacks. The old rancher said these Mexican nationals are carrying drugs (and Lord knows what else!) And are often protected by the MEXICAN ARMY! He also related not to be surprised when he saw turban headed men also headed north.
So...where is INS... They are stretched so thin that America is being successfully invaded. And assisted from within state and federal bureaucracy. The state of California is a great example of liberal policy run amok. State and federal handouts, inept officials, grab and get have bankrupt the state. That is, the 6th largest economy in the world is failing. Hear the alarm bells ringing? As goes California... America, the most powerful nation in the world will fall not to foreign armies, but from within. Tax and spend...
Randall
Randall 8-30-2003 11:17
Randall - just goes to show you what the old song said "all of the monkeys aren't in the zoo!"
That kook makes Yang look like an old pal. But then I guess there is something to be said about someone who is not afraid to show their idiocy in a public forum.
Everyone heard of the big to do about the ten commandments? Well not to be undone, another group of idiots (five in all) have filed suite against the City of Fargo to have their marble rendition of those self same commandments removed from City Hall.
Now I don't know about you, but when I read the Constitution, I read it to say that the Government is prohibited from establishing a state religion, much like the Church of England and that sort of thing. The learned idiots who now staff the Supreme Court have used that bit of the bill of rights to prevent the Public PRACTICE of religion, despite the fact that the Supreme Court begin their sessions with a prayer to God, the Congress begin their day with a Prayer to God, and prayers are regularly said in schools (especially around final times), as well in the military (again especially around foxhole time).
It's all a crock but they have to make their show.
Such is the price of freedom I guess, but you know there used to be a copy of those Ten Commandments hanging in the classroom where I attended School in North Dakota (a matter of public law back then they were REQUIRED to be posted in each classroom in the State.)
Sometimes I wonder what happened to our wonderful nation?
Jerry 8-30-2003 0:07
Hey!
Cecilia... Please! I would strongly urge you to immediately seek out and retain competent medical care. Soonest... I did not read your shrill tirade, merely skimmed through. What I saw was laughable at best. Such incompetent drivel would make wildly erratic fruitcakes like H. Himmler burst out in uncontrollable giggling and engage in frantic scratching of their lower extremities. Please stop drinking your bath water and have a CAT scan ASAP! Or else, observe the shirttail at my buttocks and stop insulting my intelligence...
It may come as a surprise to you my inept dorkweed, but most citizens of the world understand what is happening in the Middle East. The Jews have taken a raw ... waterless desert of rock and stone and made it bloom with hard work and ingenuity and technological management. (Ever hear of drip irrigation?) This is the same desert that countless Arab cultures were unable to move beyond the level of 7th century technology. The men sat on their ass in tents while the women did the work, and they ate dates and discussed the in and outs of breeding camels. ("Ahab the Arab, sheik of the burning sand...") Savvy cultures that strive to improve their environment ... progress ... move forward physically, mentally and religiously. That is ... develop their home for the common good and advancement of future generations. God (and/or other Deities) demand humans follow a time tested plan identified as CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT. (Arabs in Israel are teaching their children to hate, make bombs and kill innocent people. Which, BTW has never advanced ANY culture. For reference ... ask the Germans, North Koreans and more than a few African governments. Shedding blood WILL NOT get one an interview with any deity! Well, maybe Lucifer.)
Consequently, less motivated cultures like some Arab folks sit and wait for someone else to do the work. The blessed handout. Sit in the sand pit for an award in Heaven so to say. Down in Texas we call this behavior white trash welfare and BINGO many Arab's in Israel are nothing more than welfare trash on the dole from the UN that is supported by ... kind hearted Americans and JEWISH owned and operated industrial giants throughout the world. So there probably IS a Zionist movement and it exists to HELP inept cultures that seem to exist mainly in the Middle East. Self destruction is a well developed art form in most Arab cultures especially in Israel...
Amazed at the idiocy...
Randall
Randall 8-29-2003 23:39
I'm changing my email address, and I'm not giving it to anyone until either this virus disappears or the other person changes their address too.
I had 340 emails today and of those about 10 I wanted, and of those, none from any of my buddies here.
This probably sounds insane, but that's what sobigs done to me.
It's even swayed my views on the death penalty.
Thanks for the anniversary congratulations.
Hubby's juicier than ever, I think he could probably use some of that garlic of yours HOWARD.
going....
Teekay 8-29-2003 19:28
Go ahead, step forward and take your medicine!
Somebody did it, and we need to say THANKS.
Today's high was only 68 degrees F!!!!
First day since August 2nd that it wasn't over 90 degrees F!
Somebody had to throw that switch on the thermostat!!!
It feels SO good, well it feels SO COLD!!!
Guess that's part of life in the upper Midwest, a sudden change of climate, well change of season one day over a hundred degrees the next you're shivering and looking for that sweater, where did I put it back in May when I last needed it?
Hope that they fry that little nineteen year old nerd!!!!
They charged our former governor/congressman with second degree manslaughter, in case you haven't heard it on the news. Sad deal all around but the Highway Patrol is bravely doing what is right and it's great to see them take the bull by the horns and stick the horn where it belongs. Not that I dislike Bill Janklow, I've known him for years, though I doubt he would know me should we meet on the street, but he was the Attorney General for our state back when I graduated from the State Police Academy, and made a great speech for our ceremony, and I've met him several times at different functions, but damn it if you drive with your head up your ass, you deserve to get your knuckles slapped. Now if they just find a judge with the balls of the Highway Patrolman who investigated the accident, and the State's Attorney who drew up the charges... I don't really want to see him kicked out of congress as that would be a mess but I think that's what's going to happen. John Thune may be next in line should the current Governor be forced to appoint. Thune was our congressman (We only get one due to our sparse population) before Janklow ran. John stepped down to run against Senator Johnson (D), but lost the election by just a few votes (Big scandal but Thune refused to drop to the level of our former vice president when he lost the election by under a hundred votes and there was ample evidence of voter fraud!)
I liked Thune too, though I've never had the pleasure of shaking his hand. He did a great job when he was our congressman, and only ran against Johnson at President Bush's request (The same is true for Janklow too, he ran for congress at Bush's request, looks like Bush had a hand in our elections doesn't it?)
Jerry 8-29-2003 19:26
Well, let's just say that with the shit storm blowing as it is, I feel a bit paralyzed. Huge decisions I can't bring myself to make just yet, but I know they teeter not far in front of my path.
Gravity, thank you for existing; how else would my feet find floor?
Funny.... at the same time the shit storm rages, I can stand looking at it all, as if it were slow-motion, and am completely calm.
Hold my breath, it's 'back on my head' soon enough. LOL
Oh, and what the HELL is this huge load of crapola posted beneath me?
Cheri - please no disparaging 'I can't possibly be a writer' announcements... It's too late - you're already one. BWA HA HA HAH AHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Now, the real challenge is to not worry about whether you're a good writer or not as you dive into the work of it.
No need to worry until the writing's done.
...and then there is revision.
SIGH.
Heather 8-29-2003 14:32
Well, let's just say that with the shit storm blowing as it is, I feel a bit paralyzed. Huge decisions I can't bring myself to make just yet, but I know they teeter not far in front of my path.
Gravity, thank you for existing; how else would my feet find floor?
Funny.... at the same time the shit storm rages, I can stand looking at it all, as if it were slow-motion, and am completely calm.
Hold my breath, it's 'back on my head' soon enough. LOL
Oh, and what the HELL is this huge load of crapola posted beneath me?
Cheri - please no disparaging 'I can't possibly be a writer' announcements... It's too late - you're already one. BWA HA HA HAH AHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Now, the real challenge is to not worry about whether you're a good writer or not as you dive into the work of it.
No need to worry until the writing's done.
...and then there is revision.
SIGH.
Heather 8-29-2003 14:30
** - They began to play non-masked? What kind of play?
- It described by Jewish Propagand Newspaper DN correspondent on November 15,
1999 ? - It caricaturized an Fatty Imbecill Premier, looks like G.rån Petsion
and Zionist Capitalism forced him like a toy... - Chutzpach! Typical
Jewish fräckhet!... But there is reality or I see any true effects for instance
Zionist Capoitalism needs toys... - Example? - Expo!... Very
useful toy by the side of "Living History" propagand product Co.
- What is Expo?
- Exported Fascist Actors of Zionist World Congress... Exponent of Jewish
Fascism... Expo-members playing legal masked shows on the Swedish scenes...
Zionist imperialismhave a lot of instruments to manipulate the history; Expo is
a such instrument and manipuate all the available siócial issues...
- ?!
**
- Expo is supported by all major bourgeoisie parties. The members of Fasvcit
Provcation League Expo: Tobias Hübinette: Infiltratör proocatör a time by AFA
and the first editor of Expo propagand bulletins. He was a victim in the
Childhood, victim of South Korean Pedofila markets... Perhaps therefore, he
always hated human being and civilization adopted by Swedish boss' who
registrated as potential criminals as incest-suspicious machos ... Fascist
Hübinette convicted for sabotage, agitation, slander, molestation and
destruction(skadegörelse).
- Other Fascist freak bitch is Anders Carlqvist: Uses the pseudonym Peter
Karlsson. Co-worker at Expo. Former AFA leader and convicted for assault when he
beat up somebody who didn't agree with him, also convicted for violence against
an official (våld mot tjänsteman).
- Considering how protected Expo is by the government, do you really think most
voters really know what a bunch of anti-democratic bastards they are? The voters
also voted for a party in which Björn Fries is a member. A man who doesn't have
much respect for either freedom of speach or UN article nr 19: Article 19 of the
United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right
to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold
opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." - Are you N. Socialist?
- No!... I am typical ordinary Humanist!...Just because I criticise Fascists,
they call me N. Socialist as a classical tactic... But they know well, it was 75
years before the N. Socialist had power... It's ironical Expo-members father
chosse the N. Socialists to the democraical power... When they chosse like a
toy, so they call "It's democracy", when you began show their Fascist face, you
are "N. Socialsit"... Itis so simply silly by these freaks... - Other members
of this section? - Kurdo Baksi, a well-paid homosexual half-mongolian
attitude Kurdish traitor who been neo-Zionist... **
- I understand that Expo's dirtiness spreads to the other willing lobbytorpeds
i Scandinavia... A story of democrat-masked league, undermine democracy
instead... Step for step...
- Because it's Expo's mission in SvekJa Kingdom!.
**
- What have you say about Expo provocations? - It's a freak provocative
instrument... Sleazy smear magazine gains prominent support... Lies beginning at
the first sight, although it is a Fascist magazine, under the "banner" of
anti-Fascism a disgusting product of bad journalism has achieved considerable
success in the Swedish media during the past spring and summer. The magazine
"Expo" has been supported by several prominent Capitalist Jewish Swedes, but is
actually a sleazy product linked to militant Zionist extremists. The magazine
claims that it is owned by a certain "Hill Foundation". However no such
foundation has been registered with the appropriate authorities and either the
foundation does not exist or its representatives are breaking the law.
- What about the redacteurs? - There are several redacteurs; they are
working as military rules... It is certain that some of the contributors are
known as criminals. But the magazine prefers not to give any real names of its
contributors and editors (with the exception of the publisher responsible under
Swedish press law). The member of the editorial board Tobias Hübinette has at
least five sentences by Uppsala district court.. - Uppsala is the
fourth largest city in SvekJa? - Yes, it's!... Pedophile criminals
formerly toy-boy Hübinette (Hübsch und Nette, says die German Pedopfiles on his
DVDs) crimes includes illegal threats, sabotage and harassment. When he
destroyed the cable TV system in a student area in Uppsala he claimed that TV
was a tool of democratical system and that students should not look at TV at
all. He has participated in political burglary and attacked banks (guess how
they fixing money). He has also participated in illegal threats against
democratical opponents.
**
- I have a question: Zionism (Jewish Fascism) uses Imperialist Tyranny or
Imperialist Tyranny uses Zionism (Jewish Fascism)? - ...or both eachth
other!? This is my answer. Exact the similar question was on any Homepages, for
instance Antifa Hamm's pages... Plus page;
http://100777.com/nwo/
- ?!
**
- I wonder who rules Expo?
- If we do analysis about this fact so we see firstly the role of "Expo"..
Beyond the fascist role we detect the "Big Fascists" who rules the
marionettes...
- Explain, please!
- An important part in this context is played by a fairly small magazine called
"Expo".
When Expo started in 1995 it was inspired by the British "Searchlight". The idea
was - according to official declarations from the editor - to expose nazis and
fascists, enemies to democracy, people who were prepared to use threats,
intimidation and violence in their political struggle.
Two things, though, soon was evident:
1. The target for Expo was not only these groups. The target included Blågula
Frågor and everyone critical to the mass immigration and the multiculturalism
project.
2. Expo itself had close ties to groups, ready to use threats and violence. One
of their own editors, Tobias Hübinette, had been sentenced on those kinds of
charges.
So the real aim of Expo was something else than the proclaimed one. It was to
combat any opposition to the Project.
Why mention this small magazine?
This is not just any kind of magazine! It has been given a key position. When
the mass media - television, radio, nation-wide daily papers - write about these
matters, they quote Expo for the "truth". So whatever Expo writes may be given a
wide publicity.
Expo works not only through its articles but also by sending letters and acting
behind the scenes. For example, it was a letter from Expo that recently stopped
the organisation MSG from acquiring membership in "Open Channel" (a public
access channel) in Stockholm, for local TV-broadcasting.
The recently elected board of directors at Expo includes people high up in the
administration and with access to police files.
**
- What are you thinking on these incredible scenes? - We must know that
our weakness is Imperialism's strength, I understand here again... - I agree
with you, Comrade Jonas Hållén! - You are welcome, Comrade Lars Törnman!
**
- I think, democracy should work better!.. Criminals and collaborators should be
arrested!
- Should we arrest the criminals?!. Don't make me laugh! - Well, I see the
double roles and false rules of the juridical instruments... What a shame we
been forced to label it "democracy"... How thus majority of people, thus living
creators, stinky mass could be so incredible nonsense blind meanwhile all the
enormous fraudulent process?!.. Unbelieveable!... This is a glaring
injustice!.. I wonder, what goes wrong by the juridical instruments... How can I
say?! It is very strange!... You now, if you see all these incredible cases,
nonsense attitudes... - How? Do you explain? What is concrete that you
remember? - Yes, I remember that David Janzon, a redactional worker of Radio
Islam, was sentenced to 4 months' imprisonment in October 1992, for the
station's agitation "against an ethnic group". Are the provocators of Capitalist
Fascist lobbies are really a ethnical group?! - There is so specially
groups? Okay, Jews!... It's the overclass group, nobody can imitate such
shurks... - But when you been oppressed so your accusation can only
be refuseed... The shurks are the masters 'cause they experinced a lot of cruel
methodes since many years... You can only suffer like many freedom fighters...
- Concrete cases? - Very much!... The judges of system who play dirty
rolls... It is extra incredible on Swedish justice-scenes that many foolish
judges been corrupted by Jewish authorities and they play extra horrible rolls
as pycho-proff doctor magister at policlinics... I can not meet all the judges
nor observate all the cases but I met many high-staff at Golf Club Tenerrife,
they explained... Shameful!... I can not explain here what they say on the
corrpted colleges, so awfully shameful... ... Court material look likes
simetrical sences, reasons are too similarly... Many papers of court been
published by the Bonniers, Nordstedt... Same mechanism publish as basic Zionist
propagand material, too... EU-membership... After 1995 impressed it by the
democratical authorities of other countries? - Unfortunately, it's in all
frauds, much more dirty now... If any true jurist goes to United Nations related
commissions or the independent justice authorities, so we shall most interesting
scandals... - What kind of scandals? - For instance Osmo
Vallo&Tony Mutka and other members of the "assassination on the so called
Resande Folket" cases... Märta Pettersson and others who murdered by the
"imported criminals" like Bengalian Zionist Mafia moblized in the EU; similarly
recruitment cases... Remember; what the relatiives of Tony Deogan, Dagmar
Hagelin, Anders Gustavsson demand... - Don't make me worry with
examles, don't list please much more!.. - It's not me who create the
official shame lists!.. Did you hear Osmo Vallo's two brothers and all other
relatives are arrested, too... The victims and witness been arrested instead of
murderers... Otherway, many freedom fighters forced to be jobless and living
under minimal standards... Most famous concret case is Stefan Dimiter
Tcholakov who labelled as "laborious" and Work Rights fighters Jimmie
Östergren, delegated adviser (former grafiker) Bengt Pettersson and Ahmed Rami,
because of these bravehearts criticized the thieves by the Capitalist Jewish
lobbies... Laponians who fight for own mark and minority rights, therefore
prisoned their representative character Olof T. Johansson, the true Socialists
like Bengt Frejd, Sara Lidman, Staffan Ehnebom, so-called the "Free Speech
Fighters", anti-Capitalist demonstranter like Jan Hatto, Sten Arne-Zerpe,
Dietlieb Felderer, movements who struggle against the weapon-handlers like
Henrik Westander (before professur-chair gift) and by his side likely flexible
Calle Höglund, anti-Imperialists Hannes Westberg, Herman Schmid, journalists
Staffan Beckman, Stefan Hjertén, free-mind intellectuals like Rainer Holm, Linus
Brohult, honoured priest K. G. Hammar and hundreds of the anti-Imperialists who
been registrated by the lobbies... - What is common with them?
- Also! When a Fascist accuse them so judges punish the reviewers,
immediately... But when the oppressed people leave any accusation acceptance,
can easily be refuseed ... The requests of them almost been absolutely
refuseed... - Why the DN, Expressen and other big papers awoid of to
publich these true stories?.. They awoid of to show the real discrimination?!
Schindler's List was only a filmatic illusion, actually the true boss never gave
a chance peace in communities... You know, Bonniers, Wallenberg,
Bilderberg-gangs and "Bulldogs" drive the Swindlers' lists, means all the
honoured intellectuals been registrated on their computers... Therefore
Stockholm-Canberra changed to be second plot area of Jew York-Tel Aviv's armed
Mafia... - Yes, it's!.. But what a lucky I have been warned before!.
- The authorities are blind on such actions.. Why? - Because every big
shurk drives by the big lobbies in this big SvekJa zionized Kingdom... - ?!
- How can we could informed and know the truth!?... - I can't reply all in
two minutes?! - Well!... I understand better... It's a modernised
version of enormous hypocrisy... And I understand why the worlkd couldn't react
when Jews slaughed people in Sabra, Shatila, Jenin... Everybody watched on tv
meanwhile druck Coca-Cola, chips, bonbons... - Like the film-druged idiots?..
- No, Sir!... We have incredible reactions and collaborated feelings too,
remember, we all cried when we watched on the Swindler's list, whole lies
master-piece on scenes... - Shame on double-moral masters!.. Where are the
all good peoples now?! - No way to Pessimism, please!.. Well, I see a
positive case here on the Scandinavian Jewish DN, Expressen, Menorah pages;
Maximum sentence for the desecration of cemeteries - an outrage which
traditionally targeted Jewish cemeteries - was raised from 6 months'
imprisonment to 2 years. Yes, the prisonment period raised in 1993, Spring.
Then... - It should not calls for case; it's provocation... There is no any
single case in SvekJa, means nobody sentenced, nobody improsined for
desecrations.. - Maximum sentence will be 2 years! Isn't good? - I
want not talk on the sentences good or not good... But I'm coming from Skaane
and I witnessed who targeted the cemeteries... - Who? -
Jews!... I saw them... They were there and porovoced very succesful so they
manipulated sitation... Therefore there is no prisoner after this pharagraph '
cause they aimed change the rules... - I remember a similarly case,
my mother witnessed and told us about the foxy Jews who played theatre at the
street on 30 November in Germania... It was before WW III, Jewish fanatics
crashed own glass and won enormous generous compensation by the reasurance
firms... But their media manipulated the world by the help of american
Imperialism so all the analphabets crying on every 30 September worldwide, every
year like a crying festival, meantime the Zionist boss' laughing behind the
windows...
**
- This is not the Cold War but a form of ongoing Cold War, what drives now by
the lobbies... This area demands the prejudiced scientists... - Why the
oppressed folk don't protest or discuss these problems... - Ever and never!
This is not the results of the football matches... People need knowledge on
biological developments... - Biological? Bur the lobotomies and
sterilization methodes were only in last century?! - System have now most
avanced methodes for instance isolation, registration and systematically
injustice... Only two tousand youngs become suicide in SvekJa Kingdom, two times
been a short news.. - Youngs?... But adults? - They never
counts by half officially pools.... Animal lover bourgeoisie have
sex-partner-dogs, counts for identification and health rights, but not the
discriminated persons... Never mind!... - There aren't really a single one
modernized democratical institution?
- ?! ** - I wonder why many
immigrants sets to work without language courses meanwhile many others been
discriminated because of their language is not "wonderful, brilliant"?.. - I
met many people too... For example after Warszawa pakt's collapse fleed
manybiologs to the occupied Middle East, Australia, SvekJa and specially the
laboratory workers sets on the jobs without any oppression... - Did you
found any explain about this subject?.. - Not directly... I met a family
in SvekJa, who calls for BOLDTs, escaped from Baltics by the way of so-called
"official Al Capone Raoul Wallenberg" Co's false Finnish pass and corrupted
authorities in Kingdom by the way of Jewish lobbies... A cunning mature, drives
"Invandrar Publications"... She explained that all these scientists had already
one or two international languages what been respected... - She lies!..
I know a writer, know six or seven language but SvekJa system set him too the
cleaner-catch boy courses... - Yes; I understand... Jolin replied this
case too; "maybe the writer criticised the oligarchical targets..." -
And she publish these subjects on the Invandrar Tidningen? Bravo!... - You
will be chocked; she help to the lobbies to registrate opposite... - Was she
biology-worker in Baltics... - No!... But system need such families to
follow the people and therefore she didn't go to the claenar courses and nor any
language course although her vocabulary is worst when I compare with other
immigrants... Nowadays fixed this family a credit possbility by the lobbies and
Swedish American authorities,looks like a support to publish weekly propagand
bulletin, called "Sesam"... - Is it a propagand bulletin which the
redacteurs in Jew York recommended? - Yes!... Worst and most dangerous in the
world... - Do you explain; what you discovered by Sesam or chief Jolin
Boldt or Jusek/jurists' judadominated syndical sect media runs by Göran Boldt
Co. although this zionist gang never had a single one scientist in the
family!.. - Yes, it's!.. But such chiefs are clever to use the regularly
credits of system... I am an ordinary people and regularly reading all the
issues of Sesam/Jusek falsification magazines and look at on these pages, what
these gangsters provoce: "Immigrants always have problems.. They must complete
their education and integrate to the democratical values..." Very
provocative...It means if you never been accepted as true citizen so you must
think that your education is low, complete it... If immigrated person is
non-judaic originated must complete cources to be disher, even if man is
professor.. But other immigrant who came from Warszawa and presented himself as
academician, accepted to be professor wit´hout a true diplom.. If you criticize
this dirty deal, riskable to be labelled that you collapsed on integration...
- A kind of tregistrated psycho? - Definitely!.. This is a nonsense
market... The masters of this neo-liberal "smiling fascist process" show no
pardon... Since many years the Swedish immigrant publications run by the fascist
zionist readcteurs, collaborators and inseminate false imagination... This is a
insemination what the Zionist Fascists do against thesecond class people in Tel
Aviv... In SvekJa Kingdom, by this shurk-coup drivessame project... Look at
these pages, even the Laponians counts like the second class people and never
discuss serious their minority rights, work rights by the industrial
investigations of Kingdom... They handled often like the Gypsies,more worst;
they handled like prisoners on its own marks like the Palestinians who prisoned
his own haoses there in the occupied Middle East... Do you discussuor rights
here on Immigrant pages? Never... Boldt have credit by Spaarbank and Nordea's
Jew chiefs... Why? Because, Boldt-gang is the best flexible which uses like a
condom against Human Rights...According of these shurks there is no any Zionist
Occupational Gang in the world, but Palestinians been counted as problematics...
Palestinians described like the immigrants there, what the oppressed people
behandles here in SvekJa Kingdom... Boldt and her lap-dogs manipulate the
questions of immigrants and never answer thequestions although there is two
pages for responses... - I know a Jewish paper in USA, redacteur send
letters himself and replies later instead of the true readers... -
Similar tactic!... What Big Brother do, Swedish hypocrites just imitate it...
Not only this fetty imbecill's Sesam, all other creit-addicted papers
administrations making copies of ordinary people's letters... mostly all these
half-officially "Invandrar" publication industry "brain washing instruments on
the immigrants" running on this line... what thelobbies, so-called
"registrationsnamnden" and the collaborators by the Swedish ministries like
much and therefore pumping money.. - Now I have a little question; is
Boldt-gangs are Jewish originated... - More dangereous... Members, so-called
"edsvurna" by the Zionist lobbies!...But how you guess about the origins of
these shurks?! - I am not so stupid although I like sometimes discuss
football, too... - ...and maybe a private question, too!.. How you can be so
close to Jolin!... - She like small and younger Africans like a tradition by
the bourgeoisise fetties nowadays and it was plus point when she discovered I am
from Ethiopia... - More question? - No more, 'cause I have
already all the answers on this area specially experiences by such kind of
chiefs who need my massage... This is biology, too; bio-physique... - But why
all these lobbies hate Rainer Holm?.. Rainer is not immigrant.. - He
registrated because of the critics againt the system and projects.. - What
kind of system? Whose projects, whose rules? - Kidding? - ?!
**
- Different faces but same play on the dirty scenes!..
- That is right!.. Unfortunately, a crow goes but another crow comes...
Betrayers love eacht other and they always have supporters by the financial
lobbies... For example Sparbank, Nordea, Associates thieves Co,
Citibank/CitiGroup, even CSN and other similarly ziondominated betrayers,
lean-mousetraps...
- More dangerous than all other classical mafia examples... Because all these
liberalized instruments have both legal and illegal leagues, different faces on
the different scenes...
- Flexible fascism!..
**
- Not only this case and such victims, all the anti-imperialists
are the potentially criminals, according to the registrators of lobbies...They
are suspicious in all cases, on all the connections... - They are
suspicious perhaps only on our duties... Otherways I met an interesting gay, he
talks perfect Persian like a true Iranian citizen, practiced around of Gulf...
- Dehdari? Kamali? Tagawi? - Bijan Fahimi!.. This gay, Persian Zionist
case enough to explain any connections between many Swedes... Such "imported
instruments" help to compare with the opprtunities and opportunists for example
these persons systematically been discrimined: Staffan Ehnebom, Jimmie
Östergren, Ahmed Rami, Ernst Rainer Holm (regime critic worker, disappeared in
Gaevle city just after May Day 2003), Henrik Westander, Osmo Vallo (murdered by
police torture in Malmuu-city) and his prisoned brothers, Tony Deogan and
Anders Gustavsson (both murdered by system supported violence leagues and
prosecutors didn't accuse anyone because these poor boys weren't from
bourgeoisie cathegories in the community and both criticized sytem by any
articles before), Bengt Frejd, Olof T. Johansson, Sara Lidman, Calle Höglund,
Belay Mekkonen, Hannes Westberg, Linus Brohult, Sven Wollter, Gunnar Thorell,
Murat Yildiz, Bodil Margret Lindqvist, Staffan Beckman, Ísmet Celepli, Juan
Fonseca (when he had not so intensive interesse on money), Ditlieb Felderer,
Stefan Hjertén, Stefan Dimiter Tcholakov...
- Is it dangerous to have same name? - Very riskable!.. Nephew Stefan
forced to be psyhico because one of the his relatives in Balkan were the
anti-Zionist guerilla leaders... One of the guerillas had same name forced for
Independent Makedonia and jailed by false accusations of two Jewish judges from
Bulgaria just after 1945. Guerilla leader had no possibility to defence himself,
Jewish judges published only the false accusations, including fictive movements
who leaned weapon from Germania under WW II. Although many corrupted judges and
prosecutors were the traitors, this power manipulated history; nobody succeed to
choose what is right what is wrong by medial campaigns... Guerillas, like
"Uncle Tcholakov" sentenced without any minimal evidence.. He died there... We
see another Tcholakov in Scandinavia, immgrated, but pursued and falled in
incredible troubles... This nephew Tcholakov, "immigrated heimatlos Stefan"
borned in 1944 as Dimiter, become a brilliant academical carrier in Sofia
university and fleed to SvekJa Kingdom, completed 180 university points but
prevented from work life, pursued, isolated, discriminated by the the Jewish
registrators, lobbies, specially the collaborators of Clas Lilja
"genetical-researcher Zionist clan" members in the Waexsjö city university...
I can add other figures, too; for example the victims from West Front like
Robert Malecki as true Vietnam deserter and as second category; Jan Myrdal,
Teddy John Frank, Frank Baude, Peter Bratt, (his cell-shared-comrade Jan
Guillou pissed off from lists because he is a multi-milliarder rich, reached to
be droged creatur at last), Dagmar Hagelin (been pursued by Zionist lobbies who
collaborated with dictators of South America and murdered there by fascist
military of Astiz.. Dagmar murdered because her father listed as Marxist and
very interesting now, his family affected by persecution, all the relatives
troubled similarly case and systematically hunting by the Zionist lobbies),
Torsten Leander (only this one pursued person compensed as symbolic maneouver),
Work Rights Fighters Jimmie Östergren from Högdalen and his ombudsman Bengt
Pettersson from Folks house Raagsved Ghetto district, Lilian Gustavsson who is
mother to Anders, 17, murdered by torture methodes of bulldog Anders Carlsberg's
fascist boys at Fyrshuset trainee center in Hammarby bourgeoisie area of
capitol. After that Anders Carlberg prized as Integration chief and poor mother
Lilian still betrays by the Jewish manipulation center Expo's "professional
liars"...
- It looks like a living history...
- That is right and tv redaction collected much more figures, the names of the
victims, all the almost anti-imperialists... - The "Human enemies"
will not like to talk on such cases.. They hate the truth... - It's true!...
The profiteers of system hate human being... We collected here hundreds of
names... Count please the victims of Estonia ferry, which used to transferring
the nuclear weapons to the West and sinked by an explosion; prosecutors hunted
the criticer intellectuals not the criminal propagandists of Jewish
DN-Expressen-Menorah falsificators nor the boss of weapon markets...... Why thus
people counts in two different categories and what is difference between two
oppressed or only been registrated followed people I don't understand... But you
can notice much more if you visit Veritas Co. Veritas fraud league is a computer
and distribution which serve the falsificators, Swedes call him "Jankele Pirat
kopiormästaren!", means "Bitch falsificator masters' bastard"... -
What is common with all these plays? What is the connection but with our
tennisplayer monkey? - That is the question... They don't know
anything and therefore we are on the duty, means their unknowledge is our
gain... - Game?! - You need go to the ear specialist, my
friend; Nordic climate is not fit to your upside... - ?!
**
- Please, my friend!... Take these coverages back to the archives!.. Explain
nothing there, outside;please! I'll do tanksgiving because I have only ond year
to be retired.. - Wait!.. Wait!.. My son and daughters already at AMS and
their fiancees fixed places at Länsarbetsnämnden, Migration teater's
integrationsverket.. It was difficult to be staff there, without any true exam,
nor really job interviews... We mustn't leave their situations on risk!.. - ?!
**
- I witnessed any related cases... But a woman who formated this explain she was
been guilt, instead of the suspected persons... Don't make laugh on such
stories, please!... One of these writers named Bodil Margret Lindqvist wrote a
saga/story and faced PUL when the Evangelist coup of Swedish church spioned
her... But folks insist to be solidarised with Bodil Margret Lindqvist... Dod
you know, why? Resistance against discrimination... Saga on Ulf BERG , for
instance, this saga is a strong file of Bodil's works... Saga-files are a kind
of action; yes, I should remember that Bodil Margret Lindqvist was VPK-follower
rebel... - VPK? - Vaensterpartiet kommunisterna.. Main European
leftist parties changed themselves but traditionally hate clans of zionist
imperialism didn'rt change the persecution process on the antiimperialists...
- They hate human being... - That's right!.. This is one of the
reasons; yes, she was a famous member by Communist Party... There are any
related explains on her own homepages what she been attacked and therefore
cleaned many pages..
An example about the first story pages of Bodil Margret Lindqvist:
http://home.bip.net/mors/saga.html
Bodil's ordinary corrected (nicked A. Maria Oilworkerson) short reserv page:
http://pub.alxnet.com/guestbook?id=1034058
Short story creations like Comrade Bodil's extra diary pages:
http://pub.alxnet.com/guestbook?id=2346394 There are many
solidaríty groups around such anti-imperialist figures for example, the readers'
notices to the story teller Bodil:
http://books.dreambook.com/boa100/boa102.html
http://books.dreambook.com/boa100/boa102.sign.html
Bodil's close friend Comrade Jörgen "Snegroy" (second nick: Kennedy Palme)
built a support page:
http://www.javascript.nu/cgi4free/guestbook/guestbook.pl?account=snegroj3&link
- ...so far you works on Internet, it's possible that anybody try to manipulate
it.....
- That is right!.. Tere are many fanatics like Livets ord and other fascist
lkeagues who attacking the anti-imperialists. - Definitely!.. Bodil's
works been attacked by Livets ord... There are many server, like Maccabi Jewish
staff and fake Anti-Fa homepages... They still contunie to manipulate... This
is the true terror, advanced by technical support lobbies...
- Sometimes we see good friends, who show very useful solidarity for instance
Jörgen K.; he is Bodil's close friend, struggles well. - This is the
"True Living history"... - If you have any question so I recommend
you'll call to this civil-courage symbol, "Story-teller".. Here is the directly
phone: Bodil Margret Lindqvist tel. 00.46.31.746 48 03 e-mail:
031.3310815@telia.com - 031? - Mölndal, Vetlanda...
- Wet? Land? - Yes, it's is a piece of SvekJa Kingdom!...
**
- Even it's not acceptable!.. My heart says; "No!.." - What is most
unfair? - To be handled like the animals in the farm of George
Orwell.. Looak at all these swindler masters who have two-legs only difference
between the other kind of piggs... - I understand your reactions!... But if
you insist to go on the last two legs, riskable that you can be sanctioned.. Did
you heard that many people gone suicide? - Media didn't explain......
- Whose media? Anyway there are many people, even an ordinary list can take
many pages of newspapers... Advertisements are important than suicide victims,
nowadays... - You mean that the system can piss off... - Legalized
cleansing by modernized methodes... Hundreds of people gone suicide only in last
year... - Human? - ?! **
- I wonder what is the reason this story-teller uses a strange grammar.. Bad
english, according to the web administrations.... Worst than my chief's school
english level...
- I understand you, too!.. But you know, I met this autor, a clever girl who can
talk wonderful.. I mean, she is a successful person when she talks plenty
fluently on other matters...
- But why this girl tells her story in so incredible strange english?
- I try to explain!... Yes, I asked her about this flat language... She replied;
"When I wrote in correct english, pissed off by the bourgeoisie dominated
media"... So, after this explain I checked it and witnessed that she has
right...
- I wonder the majority been masochists nowadays?!
- Ye', it is stranger than language!... ... Maybe we are living in a period
there bourgeoisie living a social sickness like mass masochistical delusion
system... We piss off the normally attitudes...
- Also, you mean the autor aims to write good tales in bed grammar to fix the
barries of establishment on this sick medial world...
- Approximately...
- But she make folks laugh!... Please, watch this clip, super irritable bad
english.. She makes me laugh, too!...
- Sure!.. Story teller aims it... Otherwise, you are a living evidence that she
succeed to make laugh you like any other pieces of this oligarchical system!..
- What!?..
- ...and at last this story teller added that she believe in "Mankind changed
so much, nowadays civilizated people mostly looks like a kind of animal who can
learn during laughing"...
- ?!
**
- This broadcasting clip remind me of "the Invisible Writers".
- What does "invisible writer" mean?
- Many years ago I knew a grizzled old playwright named Ray. He lived off state
disability checks, carried his manuscripts in brown paper bags, and drank cup
after cup of black coffee, which I poured for him from behind the counter of the
coffee shop where I worked. He had one piece of advice for me: "Read Othello.
If you want to be a writer you must first read Othello." Ray was a blue-collar
guy who had never gone to college, but he had read Shakespeare, checked out from
the public library near the furnished room where he lived. Ray understood plot
because he had lived and experienced it. He was a born writer. Over the years
I've met a diverse collection of writers who have never been published or earned
any academic credentials, yet whose claim to the title of artist is genuine.
These invisible writers are soldiers and bakers, convicts and salesmen, winos,
hairdressers, firefighters, farmers and waitresses. Their only qualifications to
literary authenticity are their writings and their desire to write. Often the
only time they have is stolen time, and their private scrawls end up on cocktail
napkins, penciled in the margins of receipts, on any piece of paper handy. I
got to know Tom Carson during the first Gulf War, shortly after his platoon had
been sent to Kuwait. We never met in person. He had written to a co-worker of
mine who had moved on, leaving no forwarding address. When I saw the U.S.
military return address on Tom's letter, I decided to answer it myself. We began
a correspondence that lasted through the war and after he returned to Fort
Benning, Georgia. During a hectic two months, Lt. Carson wrote 39 poems. His
themes were the regimented insanity of military life, isolation and loneliness,
the wind and rain of his soul. Carson wrote his lines in rare solitude, in a
barracks or a tent. During the day, he told me, the thoughts gathered in his
head; he censored them but the forbidden words found expression anyway, for even
the U.S. Army cannot discipline the imagination. People imprisoned in
stultifying, menial jobs can summon, with even a minimal command of language,
something entirely private, unfettered and incalculably powerful. Most
importantly, it is something of their own creation that cannot be taken away.
The sense of purpose and identity that comes with being a writer, creator of a
private world, can be life altering. I've known truck drivers who are
natural-born storytellers; fishermen who paint starkly beautiful word pictures
of life on a crab boat in the Bering Strait. I met a barely literate ex-convict
whose short story about losing his wife and child in a revenge killing for a
gang crime he'd committed was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever read. I met
a ex-alcoholic who wrote about being abandoned by her husband. In a few simple
paragraphs this uneducated woman in her mid-50s expressed a universal sense of
loss in an entirely unsentimental fashion; something that cannot be taught in
any MFA program. My own father, a novelist who was never published, once wrote
about being fired for writing on the job – a chronic problem in his lifetime. He
worked on an assembly line in a factory that manufactured radios, and the
foreman caught him writing one day while the neglected radio parts moved past
him on the belt. "I was only half a radioman," wrote my father. "In my heart, I
was a poet." As Chester Himes wrote in "The Quality of Hurt": "No matter what I
did or how I lived, I had considered myself a writer....It was my salvation. The
world can deny me all other employment, and stone me as an ex-convict...as a
disagreeable, unpleasant person. But as long as I write whether it's published
or not, I'm a writer." I met Celia at a roadside diner, where she cooked greasy
breakfasts for travelers whose faces she'd never again see. Writing, for Celia,
was a way of being elsewhere, of undoing, undreaming, her mundane daily life.
The monotony of her job and the deadening rituals she performed daily were the
inspirations for the poems she scribbled on used order tickets. To hate your job
and do nothing about it is a failure of imagination: a true life sentence. A
Frenchman I know who was a maitre d' at one of the Washington's finest
restaurants, possesses a novel he composed in the twilight time between the
lunch rush and the dinner hour. His joy on writing it was immeasurable. That it
may never be published did not faze him. The point is that he created it. He
finished it. It is his. "Fiction completes us, mutilated beings burdened with
the awful dichotomy of having only one life and the ability to desire a
thousand," Mario Vargas Llosa wrote. I've often looked for my old playwright
friend Ray's name in print, but have never seen it. I imagine him sitting in a
coffee shop somewhere, brow furrowed as he revises lines of his latest play,
completely absorbed in the world of his characters. I'm sure it frustrated Ray
at times, that his work went unrecognized, but it never occurred to him to quit;
just like it would never occur to him to stop breathing. It is not strictly a
tragedy that Ray's plays, the maitre'd's novel or Celia's poems remain
unpublished. Much of the work comes into being for private reasons of the heart.
If every sentence that was written was printed and bound we would drown in a sea
of words – as it is, thousands of books are hastily published, barely read and
forgotten. Writing itself is the aim, for it is writing, not publishing, that
transforms individual human experience. To write, even in obscurity is
worthwhile. As Samuel Becket put it, writing is a way of leaving "a stain upon
the silence."
- It's true!.. Wonderful described and we are listening a kind of the "stain
upon the silence", just here...
**
- Tv Independent Laponia got a short list on the fascist league eXpo and
collaborated zionist criminals...
- Let's watch it!..
- Welcome, Comrados!.. These main figures threat free speech...
Richard Slätt: Propaganda chief at the Zionist prop centre eXpo...
Stieg Larsson. Drivande bakom eXpo under många år. Blev under 70-talet
provokator medlem i socialistiska partiet som manipuleade de lättsinniga
bastarder omkriung den siondominerade svenska falska vänstern.
Mattias Våg. Ledande inom Afa, falska Antifa som bildades direkt af judiska
fascister. Nära samröre med eXpo-redaktörerna Hübinette och Flyckt...
Magnus Hörnqvist.Horny visst!... Ledande inom sionistiska Afa ligan. Nära
bekant med eXpo-journalisten Anders Carlqvist. Dömd för brott flera gånger,
bland annat olaga intrång.
Anders Carlqvist (alias Peter Karlsson): . Går under namnet Peter Karlsson.
Medarbetare på eXpo. Har varit ledare för Afa och är dömd för ofredande sedan
han sparkat ner en meningsmotståndare. Även dömd för våld mot tjänsteman.
Mattias Flykt. Aktiv i både AFA och eXpo. Dömd för brott.
David Lagerlöf. Ingår i eXpos styrelse sedan 1995. Medlem i judedominerade
syndikalistiska fascisthärvan.
Mikael Ekman. Drivande bakom eXpo. Tidigare medlem i UMR (Ungdom Mot
Rasism/täckmantel att stödja sionistisk rasism) som då leddes av homosexual
horan Michael Alonzo som importerade instument d.v.s "fake asylumseeker" , som
skrev texter med fraser som "död åt alla" som provokation att hets afolk
varandra...
Daniel Pohl. eXpo-medarbetare som försökte infiltrera National Socialist
organisationerna. Nära kopplaren till Mikael Ekman.
Tobias Hübinette. South Korean importerad apa och Afa-ledare och eXpos förste
redaktör. Dömd för sabotage, uppvigling, grov uppvigling, förtal, ofredande och
skadegörelse.
Kurdo Baksi: Murderer (assassinated two Iraqian revolutinaries).. Importerad
kriminell d.v.s. "fake asylumseeker". Utgivare av den manipulativa tidskriften
Svartvitt som finansieras av svenska skattebetalare och där även eXpo ingår.
Robert Aschberg: Ass berg.. Ingår i eXpos styrelse. Typical Zionist
propagandist...
- These criminals are the main threat against the human being!..
- Definitely!.. Because the Zionist Imperilaism is threat against the all
humanist values...
**
_________________________________
Today's most visited recommendde links:
Human Rights in the occupied Middle East:
http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/mena/iot.html Webmaster Debra GUZMAN;
DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.org, Mideast@derechos.net Human Rights
Center of Filistinia:
http://www.PchrGaza.org/ E-post: pchr@pchrgaza.org
IAP: http://www.iap.org/links.htm E-post:
iapinfo@iap.org, radiojerusalem@yahoo.com
Industrial Lie Mechanism&Traditional Fabrication and Holocaust Bluff of Jude
Psycopats:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/id44.htm E-post:
NormangF@hotmail.com Intifada Online:
http://www.IntifadaOnline.com/
Intifada Online forum:
http://www.soundofegypt.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=reply&f=5&t=000007
Indymedia - Belgium
http://belgium.indymedia.org/
International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism)
http://www.internationalanswer.org
International Action Center
http://www.iacenter.org/
IRA, Ir(a)landia's Liberation Army:
http://www.sinnfein.ie/index.html
The Jericho Movement: http://www.thejerichomovement.com/
Jewish-Zionist plots were been exposed by the Australian Freedom Fighters:
http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/Dissenters/dissenters.htm
Jihad for the liberation of Humanity:
http://www.e-jihad.net/ej/
Karutzar; Bulgarians against the Zionist Genocides:
http://user.domaindlx.com/karutzar/
Korean progressive network: http://english.jinbo.net/
Korean news-Democratic People's Republic of Korea:
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm E-post: eng-info@kcna.co.jp
KurdInfo, Antisemite revolutionary community in Scandinava:
http://www.Kurdinfo.com/ E-post: Platform@Kurdinfo.com
Solidarity regards fr Norrdal in the northern EU's occupied Palestine; colonized Laponia
Cecilia Bergqvist The Saga of Staffan BECKMAN; "Undermina...zional"... 8-29-2003 12:11
TEEKAY -- just so folks don't think I'm ignoring you, and in case you didn't get my email in all this sobig junk, my garden is doing well. thank you.
I'm already planning next year's garden, and should be planting the garlic in a couple of weeks. I dug about a bushel of potatoes from the one row I planted -- got a real nice return on it! We're getting lots of squash, and there are a lot of green tomatoes. The sweet corn is starting to show ears, and I have two nice melons starting to ripen. Beets didn't do well at all, nor did broccoli or cucumbers. The second planting of beans is about ready to be picked, and the basil is doing VERY well! I got several pounds of garlic, but some of it didn't turn out well, so I won't be replanting much of my homegrown stuff. I ordered some fresh stock (some different varieties) to plant this fall.
I did put in some more strawberries, and hope they don't get winter-killed again.
howard 8-29-2003 10:20
Just curious, but is the workbook shut down or somethng? I haven't seen any new posts on the new work section since the 21st. If so, please let me know.
On a brighter note, I have still avoided getting the virus so I am quite happy about that.
Watching Two Towers now, so I must go. Ta!
Andrew 8-29-2003 9:11
Girl's day out, woo hoo! Hi everybody! Great to see you Heather and Mary! Nice to see you too, Rachel, Jerry, Mark, Randall, Jack, Carol ... YANG! Weird, I'm not upset to see old Yang joining us once again. It almost feels like he belongs here, that he might amuse us once again with his idiocy. Yeah, I know he's not visiting personally, but I wish he would. Perhaps we should all email him daily?
Teekay, Hi you! Happy anniversary! My gosh, that's an incredible amount of time to have spent in the company of one person. I'm raising a glass to you and hubby. Cheers!
I AM back, as white as ever, but wearing a big grin; vacation was fab! I feel like I'm a real person again. Congrats on winning your auction, I'm so relieved for you. And your daughter is a true artiste! Impressive!
Sobigs have got my email bogged down too, though they only overflowed my box once so I'm not going to complain. I'd almost think it was a good gag if people weren't actually getting their systems infected. Now that's not funny 'tall.
Howard, Your goose joke cracked me up! I didn't get it until you said YOU didn't get it either, and so I looked at it with a different perspective and wham! It's so perfectly cheesy that I've got a new favorite joke. :D
Americo, Are you back from vacation yet? You know the funny thing is that I actually picture you on holiday with two cats, one named Jon and one named Pussy and no one else, sipping/lapping up drinks on the Riviera. It makes for an amusing holiday picture. You have imprinted those two characters so thoroughly in my mind that they truly exist for me. That's what writing is all about.
Now, I'm off to watch The Two Towers. I spent last night watching the documentaries and the trailor for Return of the King! How will I wait until December?
G'night!
Christi 8-28-2003 23:57
Happy day to yah girlie girl :o) Hope the hubby feels better soon.
Ciao for now.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-28-2003 22:20
Congratulations on your 19th Anniversary. Hope hubby gets over his sniffles sometime soon.
Power outage in London. Of course terrorists had nothing to do with it just like they had nothing to do with the one in the eastern United States. Funny how these coincidences happen. I cannot help thinking there is some connection, but then again I am a writer with an over-active imagination.
Rhoda 8-28-2003 15:47
Got to watch a 75 mile per hour wind blow through town today, it was a trip to say the least. The neighbors tree blew down, dang thing was nearly thirty five feet tall, must have been forty years old, at any rate took out our cable tv, ripped the cable right off the old house. Not much more damage though, just a ten foot branch fell from another tree across my pickup cab, just left a few scratches, I watched it fall and ran out (Well sort of hobbled out) and pulled it off the roof before it scratched too deep.
Me heart went out to the fire fighters here though our small volunteer department responded to three large grass fires just before the big blow, and a 75 mile per hour wind can make a fire travel twice as fast. They had their work cut out for them till the rain came and gave them some help. They are just now getting back into town, I can hear them on my police scanner they've been out there since a bit before five PM when the lightning started the fires before the big wind came.
We drove about town, there were trees down all over the place, but it looked like the good Lord was watching out for us as there didn't seem to be much damage to homes, a few broken windows and a storm door or two were gone, but some trees that looked as though they should have crushed the trailer homes that they hit, seemed to blow right over the top and landed on the opposite side. Wind does strange things sometimes.
Jerry 8-28-2003 0:11
It's just me doing the proud mum thing.
Teekay 8-27-2003 19:19
Hubby cleaned out the virus from my machine 2 days ago, but seems it's still alive and well.
HEATHER: Welcome back :-) You know I've missed you.
CHERI: What's a real writer? Buck up, Girly. You are mistress of your destiny.
Follow your passion and all else shall follow. (Just make sure it is your passion you're following.)
A bit of depression relief; go hire some Ab Fab videos, pop some corn, and chill out.
CHRISTI: Are you back? Did you have a ball? Did you get a tan?
I won the ebay bid!! The stress of it nearly killed me, but I won it!! Sweaty palms, palpitations - horrible! The DVD's are due to arrive today.
HOWARD: How does your garden grow, my prolific friend?
It's my and hubby's anniversary today. 19 years. I have now been married as long as I have been single. Funny, it seems longer.
He woke up with a runny nose and red eyes, so there won't be any of that mooshy stuff going on.
Okey dokey. I'm orf.
Teekay. 8-27-2003 19:00
Heather Honey!!!
Love ya and miss ya! I have sent you a couple emails but no replies. If you aren't in the mood for emails...don't be in a hurry, but if you just aren't getting them, let me know! I have been watching for you here; was getting worried that maybe a virus ate your hard drive, or you had problems with the reformat you were gonna do. Good to see you!!! And YES... please post a shortie this week. I would be very interested in a tale about you and your mother. Hugs!
8-27-2003 16:39
h 8-27-2003 16:18
Anyhow, I haven't been writing for a couple of months now. I think it is mostly due to depression. My job is over at the end of September, so I'll be looking for a new one soon. That coupled with lots of family obligations and an 'I don't think I'll ever be a real writer' complex is just about enough to keep anybody down. I decided to try, try again!
HEATHER: My son's birthday is July 21st! He's a happy six year old now. Congrats to your friend.
I know what you mean about failing to find the words to express what you feel. There are times when I feel such great love for my children and husband that the words 'I love you!' don't seem to do justice to those feelings.
ALL; RE: The sobig virus. I too have been inundated with emails. I did recognize Litter's email address, but no one else. I remember reading that the virus harvests from Outlook Express and that's what we use here at work. Don't know if that's connected in any way.
Well I hope to be writing more soon!
PS Where's that wonderful librarian been lately? Mel? Are you out there?
Cheri 8-27-2003 12:53
Mary find subject for a shorty, I've posted mine, well OK so it's Wednesday and not Thursday, I probably should have kept it a day and edited it, but then again if I did that it wouldn't really be a shorty would it?
Could SOBIG have stopped?? I hope so haven't had any this morning as of yet!
I see our oriental friend is back and posting again, wonder how many orders he gets from this post?
Jerry 8-27-2003 10:40
HEATER -- Welcome back!! And I just got one of those spoof mails from your id! Only 51 overnight.
Gee -- maybe it's the Martians! Mars is closer to Earth now than at any point history.
I just found that satellite photo showing the blackout is a hoax. Check http://www.snopes.com/photos/blackout.asp for the article, and for some real photos of it.
howard 8-27-2003 7:35
lianchun yang talc 8-27-2003 2:30
I could go straight from today into Saturday without noticing! :o}
Heather 8-26-2003 23:39
Groaning right along with you, Howard. I received the viral mail from a mountain of unfamiliar emails, and then several from Hallee, Litterali, and Carol!
Something strange is afoot, no?
Good to be back HOME in the virtual sense as well as the physical sense... it may still be some time before my heart makes it back from New Brunswick, however!
What an incredible trip. My best friend's first child was born July 21st, and what a perfect baby boy! His name is Griffin, and has the sweetest elfin ears I've seen. :oD
Has anyone else felt so awed by nature and life that to write of it is to fall desperately short of adequate words? I'm sure we all have, yet this experience feels as if I'm grappling for non-existent adjectives like no other before it.
I'm not certain whether this is good or not! I'm having a time painting anything else but the ocean - it has seeped into my brushes methinks. Funny thing is, there's a saying about the ocean - that we 'lose time by the sea'. Right it is, too. Gone for two weeks, but parts of me are still there; all sense of time was gone - now it has returned but I am still losing track of days... (well, forgive me, oh months of summer, for forgetting your potent magic!)
Hope all is well with everyone here - I missed all of you terribly!
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Heather 8-26-2003 23:38
Mary 8-26-2003 23:05
Several were dupes of other phoney Edresses, and probably 30 or more were returns saying that I had sent a virus or an illegal note.
I'll be glad when this is over.
School looks interesting! Except that one of the profs (both know me) announced to the class that "Howard could teach this course!" Heck of a way to start the year!
howard 8-26-2003 17:10
Jerry 8-26-2003 15:51
That post should say "Howard: I feel so dirty" Not Teekay.
D'Oh!!
I am gonna call it a night.
Mary 8-26-2003 0:45
Litter: OK, now I get it. I didn't really feel like you were 'blaming' me...I just couldn't figure out how I had (gasp)"THE WORM" without knowing it. I don't know how all this computer stuff works and I am a bit panicky at times.
I ran a full system scan this afternoon and everything. LOL. DORK.
Innyhoo...SHORTIE THEME for this week...drumroll please.....ummmm...no, not a poem, everybody hates me when I pick that one...ok...how 'bout:
A memory of your mother when you were a child.
Mary 8-26-2003 0:44
I hope.
for now, anyway.
And maybe for next thursday afternoon.
Had an interesting thingie this afternoon. Pulled into the conveniencs store in town, to replenish my supply of my favorite jalapeno-flavoured sunflower seeds (whole, not shelled) and saw a damsel in distress at one of the pumps (it's also a Mobil gas (petrol) station).
I use the term "damsel" a bit charitably, as she was probably very nearly my age.
Anyway, walked over to see if I could be of assistance, and she jokingly asked "How could you tell I was having trouble?"
I said "One -- your car has New Jersey plates (they can't pump their own gas in NJ). Two -- you do look rather flustered and confused (nothing personal, just an observation). And Three -- you're trying to pump diesel fuel into your gasoline tank. That's why the nozzle (luckily) won't fit."
We laughed off her embarrassment, and I got her some towels from the next pump to wipe the fuel off her hands, then went into the station with her to explain to the clerk what had happened. No problem -- she thanked me, and I went over to pick up my snacks. I paid for them, and went back out, only to see that she had pulled over to the next set of pumps, and was trying to get them to work.
"Your credit card goes in the other way -- you have it upside down and backwards."
She handed it to me with an incomprehensible gurmble. (For the uninitiated, that's a sort of a cross between a gurgle and a mumble), then a "Thank you again!"
"No problem -- regular gas?"
"Yes, please. Do you do this often? You're so nice. Most people would just laugh!"
"I think we're here for more than to laugh at someone's troubles. Fill it up?"
"Yes, thank you! Do you live around here? People are so nice here!"
And at that point I saw her looking intently at my left hand, and I could swear her smile dimmed a little.
howard 8-25-2003 22:24
What the hell maybe someone with that sort of background would be GOOD for California. Myself, I've been hoping it'll just fall off in the ocean before the election and settle the mess for once and for all.
Still getting sobig virus messages and have no idea where from, some of the returns do look sort of familiar things like @officemax.com and @whitehouse.gov maybe it's Bush, that's it!!!! Let's blame this on Bush too!!!! Might as well seems their trying to blame everything from the blackout to west Nile on him already. Incidently there have been two more deaths from West Nile here in South Dakota and a fellow just fifty miles south of here has come down with it, that's getting too close for comfort.
I have been thinking of converting to Linux again, I have the latest releases of both Red Hat and Mandrake, in fact I have Mandrake set up within Conectex's Virtual PC on this machine guess I could just use that to pick up my mail but it would be a pain just the same. For all I've been doing of late I could probably do with Linux since I stopped playing games and such a long time ago and I do have Star Office for Linux to use for writing. It's just making the switch and then there's all this software I have that I'd have to run on my server or something....
Jerry 8-25-2003 22:19
LITTER -- Ahh the price of fame! :-})
MARY -- Remember the old saying about "when you have sex with someone you're also boffing everyone that person has had sex with?" Likewise with Email, it seems.
Some people have their mail programs set to enter ino their address book everyone they reply to.
--- BAD IDEA!! ---
Then they're flabbergasted when they find out how many people -- people they don't even know -- are in there. Multiply that by the number of cute Email thingies forwarded, or replied to with "reply all." Throw in the number of rejection slips sent by the editor of Cosmopolitan on a bad hair day, and the number becomes astronomical!
And that's just for my cousin (the blonde) in Paducah!
Like Custer said -- "Holy mackerel, Batman! Lookit allothem damn Spam!" Or something like that...
I tried to post this earlier today -- now, 6 hours later, and after restoring my system back to a Saturday checkpoint (before a Norton Ghost install) I'm back up and running. I hope.
No, it wasn't the virus -- I ran all the checks for that. I think it was actually the Ghost install. Bummer! I was gonna use it for a system backup.
I should just switch over and run Linux, and throw windows oout the door!
Lessee if this will post now...
howard 8-25-2003 21:50
I got hit *sigh*. Such a pain!
Teekay 8-25-2003 17:11
Litter 8-25-2003 13:54
Mary 8-25-2003 13:14
8-25-2003 13:12
I read in the papers that some investigator has found that Arnold's father was a member of the Nazi SS troopers. Don't ever run for office unless you don't mind having your dirty laundry -- skidmarks and all -- exposed to public view.
Re: the virus -- less than 10% of the stuff I've received actually contains the virus. The rest of it is just scary spam. I think if they ever do find the instigator of this thing he/she is in for a long hard time. I hope they line his cell walls with screens that show constant popups, and beep and chirp all day (and night) long! And give him a radio that only plays the Microsoft logon/logoff chimes! And a dot-matrix printer (just out of reach) that is printing non-stop copies of obsolete IBM manuals! And a mouse that bites! And the one screen that works is off registration!
howard 8-25-2003 11:25
I've also been getting stuff from a couple of .indiana... ids -- I remember JERRY said he'd got stuff from a park in Indiana as well.
Lots of duplicates too -- so far today I've gotten over 100 again, with many of them being duplicates, and some looking like possible variations, like someone's second Edress, perhaps.
There's suspicion now that this might be a preliminary to a really bad attack on or shortly after 9/11/2003. It's possible, I guess. It's been reported that the cost of this thing to businesses has gone over $50 million, and some are saying that the blackout may have been caused or at least helped by the blaster worm/virus that preceded sobig.
I haven't heard from several E-respondents (including Teekay) since all this crap started flooding the net. Dunno if they got hit, or if they're just laying low.
I start school tomorrow -- two classes on Tues and Thur, one off campus and one regular class. They should be fun - one called "Story-telling and World Folktales" (Lit-264) and "Literature of the North American Wild" (Lit-272) They're both "Writing Emphasis" classes, so I'll get some practice. The second one is held off campus at one of our local senior centers -- should be a good place to swap tall tales! :-})
howard 8-25-2003 10:46
By the volume, I'd guess that someone with an address spider got hit. Someone like a marketer. The workbook gets hit every 20 minutes by someone with klez trying to access my MS scripts directory. Fortunately, I have no MS on this machine. I have been able to discover that the ip it says it comes from is spoofed. From here though, tracking it down is more trouble than my isp wants to handle right now.
HOWARD determined a month or so ago that his address was spidered up by a marketer from NB archives. If the jerk with that spider also got your edress, and got sobig, there you are.
So far only LITTER has reported getting addresses snatched from NB. I must be in someone else's circle of friends. I am active on the net, though, so I could get tagged from any of several places.
Removed about 100 yesterday. Had 47 this morning at 7:30. It's now almost 10:00 and I've removed another 14. I'm not counting any more.
Mark 8-25-2003 10:05
Litter 8-25-2003 5:23
I can't say that I recognize any of the address most appear to be spoofs such as dricspots@aol.com and such but they do get a bit annoying.
I've reverted to Norton and it's doing a bang up job of keeping the email free of viruses, it pops up about every ten minutes or so saying it's cleaned another, then a couple of mins later I get the mail notification of the arrival of a clean email. I've opened the properties but there isn't a clue there either the virus seems to cover it's tracks well like most of the idiot spams that come by.
Jerry 8-24-2003 23:33
sasquatch 8-24-2003 23:00
Gee -- maybe Neo is gonna run for governor in California!
:-})
howard 8-24-2003 17:17
I am getting stuff from municipalities, stores, a Bible salesman, hotels, and some other strange-looking ids.
This could get scary, when you stop to think of some of the businesses and banks that use the internet to conduct their business. Then there are the schools, with online classes and seminars, as well as other folks conduction non-trivial communications. The ripples could affect more than just our Email. Hospitals and doctors routinely send patient data -- some of it rather critical -- via the internet, and some of our emergency services use it as well.
Could get to be a lot bigger than we imagined!
howard 8-24-2003 17:13
Hey!
Well, it's a slow day...so file this under FYI. A big high five to the SLCT for rejecting an ad that insults millions of dead holocaust victims. Annnnnnnd a thumbs down for PETA who should have known better, but did and obviously didn't care.
UTAH TV STATIONS REJECT PETA AD
By Rhina Guidos
The Salt Lake Tribune
Local television stations in Salt Lake City told animal-rights activists this week that they won't air an ad comparing animals on the way to slaughterhouses to Holocaust victims on the way to concentration camps.
Matt Prescott, a representative for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in Norfolk, Va. said four Salt Lake City stations rejected the advertisement, which depicts an animal inside a truck on the way to a slaughterhouse. The ad was supposed to air in Utah on Thursday and Friday.
David Phillips, KUTV's general manager, said he saw the 30-second spot and made the decision not to air it.
"I thought it was inappropriate," Phillips said. "I think the PETA agenda of linking the Holocaust victims is not good. I just looked at the video and we went no further."
Prescott, who says members of his mother's family died in the Holocaust, traveled with the exhibit "Holocaust on a Plate" when it came to Salt Lake City earlier this month.
He defends the comparison, which has outraged Jews and others around the country.
A voice in the PETA ad says: "They came for us at night. Beat us. We cried out in the darkness. With no food or water, and barely air to breathe."
"It had dark imagery and a real negative, dark tone to it," said Dale Darling, local sales manager of KSL-TV. "It ended with a plea for everyone to be vegetarian."
Darling said he gave the ad a lot of thought but ultimately rejected it. The comparison to the Holocaust bothered him the most, but he also said it wouldn't be fair to advertisers running ads next to it.
"It seemed too depressing with a winter-type scene of trees with no foliage. It had a real heavy tone," Darling said. "It couldn't be next to an upbeat, bright, happy Old Navy spot."
PETA has a history of getting its ads rejected.
In November, two Canadian newspapers refused PETA ads comparing the slaughter of animals to a serial killing in Canada.
Prescott said stations in 15 cities nationwide are airing the ads. Many cities, such as Boston and now Salt Lake, have rejected them.
"I think it's a shame, because people need to understand where their food comes from," Prescott said.
Seems Mr. Prescott's elevator doesn't go all the way to the top. Most intelligent people know where there food comes from. It's all part of FREE CHOICE Americans enjoy. Like chosing to drive SUV's instead of tin cans from Korea that crumple when encountering anything bigger than a German Shepard... I don't know about you guys but I am able to process my own food, read meat and hope to fill my freezer this weekend with plump South Texas Doves...
Randall
Randall 8-24-2003 16:55
I'm alive and well. I've been keeping busy with kiddies and horses. One of the jobs I took is horse care. Dan and I were seeing to 22 horses. The owner has sent eight out of the 22 back to the track, which leaves us at 14, which is a nice number to work with. I hope all is well with you :o)
Ciao for now.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-24-2003 15:48
Way over 600 sobigs and rising. Seems that they are 90% repeats of addresses that have previously seen. As far as the harvested names of people I know on the Notebook is concerned, Howard's address is at 15, with Heather close behind on 13, then 10 for Hallee, 9 for Rhoda, and a late starter with a modest three, is Mary. Don't fret, I have apparently sent out lots to people as well, including Heather. I've blocked the names of all the apparent senders for the moment and I'll reinstate the addy's of Notebookers when this thing has run its course. Fortunately, only 1 of my email addresses is getting this crap. I'm also getting lots of sobigs from a county park in Indiana!
News here has it as a potential 'Organised Crime' scam, vandalism, or the possibility of 'e-terrorism' (not a favourite theory of mine as it is not nearly nasty enough) and a ploy to get all those infected to visit a porn site. (According to a Chicago Sun News.) The irony is that if enough infected machines are out there, the Porn server would be brought down. Shame. ….But the story is unfolding all the time.
Anyone alive out there?
Litter 8-24-2003 14:40
Hey!
Will this bug ever go away? I have opened my yahoo mail box twice today. Both times they say I am 125% over my alloted amount of space. Bulk mail is running 47 to 50 messages and one regular mail of 101KB with a notice of error in sent message. I delete EVERYTHING and open nothing... Hope the Good Lord doesn't notify me for any reason by e-mail, cause I'll sure miss it...
Night all,
Randall
Randall 8-23-2003 20:01
For Weatherbug alerts I have the "Could be worse -- could be raining" lines from "Young Frankenstein.
Anyway, MARK posted a great article on the WB re the virus/Email flood. Check it out!
Couldn't sleep last night -- dreamed (among other things) that there's another blackout scheduled for the evening of 8/26. All of us who have been waiting for the LOTR-Two Towers video will be frustrated yet again! :-}(
howard 8-23-2003 9:16
Hey! TGIF!
On a somber note the tales of wood splinters remind me of a sad incident many years ago... My wife and I were invited our friends house, Wayne and Suzy, for a small get together. Wayne told me a Vietnam friend was in town and wanted to meet some Texans and chat. We went to their home about sundown for a little beer and bar-b-que. Wayne's friend ... I'll call him Bob was there. He was very thin, pale faced and though friendly I sensed something amiss.
Anyway the night progressed and everyone had a good time. Wayne had a cherry 1957 Chevrolet two door sedan which I admired. Bob and I walked to the garage where it was housed. Bob and I were talking and somehow the talk turned to Vietnam. Bob related he was having trouble with the VA and in fact was in Texas to visit the VA hospital in Waco. I asked, and Lord knows I wished I hadn't, where he was wounded. He sat his beer down and opened the buttons on his shirt. It was all I could do to not gasp aloud. The scars on his chest were massive, extending down below his waist... Not just one scar, but a mass of interlocking scar tissue.
I guess my face revealed the horror I could not conceal. Bob buttoned his shirt. "It's okay Randall. It was the summer of 1969. They came over and through the wire just before sunrise," he said. "We had fought for the hill top all night, but they never stopped coming. There were hundreds of them, little brown men in black pajamas. Hundreds dead, hundreds coming through the wire. Our position was overrun. I was wounded when our squad tried to retreat."
"And you were shot?" I asked appalled at the conversation.
Bob was calm as he spoke, even smiling. "No, bamboo spear. Old Charlie VC looked right in my eyes, ran me through and disappeared. Of all things, a spear. The spear broke and left a foot sticking out the front and several inches out my back."
Bob and I walked back to the house. "Just below my sternum, and came out my back. The corpsman pulled it through and I was airlifted out at daylight. The spear was coated with excrement and I have been fighting infections for 20 years."
Well, the party broke up shortly and as we parted I hugged Bob. He patted me on the back and said he enjoyed meeting my wife and I and looked forward to another get together. I wished him luck with the VA. A few weeks later Wayne called me with the bad news that Bob was dead. I asked if it was the wound and he said no. Bob took his own life.
"Randall," Wayne said. "Bob told me he really enjoyed meeting you. Said you were a good guy and wished he lived closer."
"I'm sorry he died Wayne."
"Me too. But you must understand ... Bob died in 1969. He was just making the rounds of his buddies saying farewell."
True story.
Night all,
Randall
Randall 8-22-2003 22:10
Out of the 150 or so emails I've had in the last few days, I recognized only one sender address and it was spoofed.
I don't run Windows, so neither of these virii can attach to my system, but the email load is a pain.
If you use Outlook or Outlook Express for your email, do not use the Preview Pane and do not open any mail in html format, only open mail in text mode. Microsoft's mail programs are made for convenience and virus writers take advantage of that.
Mark 8-22-2003 22:00
Got this from a nephew, thought a little levity might be in order, that is if your machine doesn't shut down on it's own before you get it read.
Cows and Politics
DEMOCRAT:
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows,
forcing you to
sell one to raise money to pay the tax.The people you voted for
then take
the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor.
You feel righteous.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.
SOCIALIST:
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
REPUBLICAN:
You have two cows.
your neighbor has none.
So?
COMMUNIST:
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to
support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift
from your government.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the
other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the
drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You
force the 2 cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are
surprised when
one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you
have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch.
Life is good.
JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary
cow and
produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on
unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer,
give excellent
quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN CORPORATION:
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's
private parts.
POLISH CORPORATION:
You have two Bulls
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.
FLORIDA CORPORATION:
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black
one. Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how
to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best-looking one.
NEW YORK CORPORATION:
You have fifteen million cows.
You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick
some dumb cow from Arkansas
Jerry 8-22-2003 21:48
Up to 200+ of the nasty little $^&£!?* and rising rapidly. Fortunately only one of my addresses is being targeted, and having been dilatory in advising my publishers of my preferred email address I should still get the mustn't miss stuff. Another good point, albeit temporary, is that my spam has dropped dramatically. Presumably some spammers are being hammered as well? I think I shall take a leaf out of a friend's book (Not going to destroy my own :o) and use a newly registered domain addy for business only stuff.
RHODA – I didn't mean to imply that you were responsible for any breach in security – as others have already said, a great many 'from' addresses are being hijacked/forged and does not indicate the apparent sender is in any way at fault. I've also received a viral package from ROWHAD – sorry about that – and I have ostensibly been responsible for send many viral packages to lots of people I don't know. (And I know that my machine is clean.) I checked out the patch that I proved the address for and it worked fine for me, but if you felt something was wrong you were right not to risk it.
Seems this little bugger is still going to cause a lot of problems. My local newspaper was brought to a standstill just an hour before deadline, and there are lots of other reports from local businesses.
I rocketed into the top 10 (at number 3) of the bookstore where I did my signing. A brief ego trip before I rocket back out, but worth a smile nonetheless. Another tiny bit of ego enhancement is that JK Rowlings' latest backbreaker has already vacated the top 10. She got £30M – so what, I got a bottle of fizzy water and I didn't have to pay for it!
ROWHAD – Ouch! Oyah! Oyah! Ouch! As for the bug bugger, I rather see him wearing a matched set of organic earrings. (Doesn't work as well if he is a she.)
RANDALL -- Next thing you know, you'll be getting the pointy end (stern) mixed up with the blunt end (bow)… Tsk, Tsk…
Litter 8-22-2003 16:22
Jack Beslanwitch 8-22-2003 5:23
I looked at him like he was nuts and again he said "DROP YOUR DAM PANTS!" So I dropped my pants and the guy took a pair of pliers and pulled a half a foot splinter about a half inch around from my thigh. He put a band aid on both entrance and exit wounds and after pulling up my pants, I was back up the pole (sort of like getting back on that horse that threw you) the pole must have been clean as the wound healed just fine with no medical attention, just the memory remains.
Still getting those blasted viruses. Strange thing though, the wife hasn't gotten one. Could someone have harvested our email addresses from this site?
The names of the senders don't lend a clue, names like Dr.ICSPOTS@aol.com and such.
Jerry 8-22-2003 0:57
It's still not as bad as the time a few years back (15 or so) when I was cleaning out the barn, and found an old fibreglass fishing rod. I bent it to see if it still had any backbone, and the old resin was brittle, and the thing splintered and snapped, leaving sharp needles of fibreglass strands. Wouldn'tcha know, one of them entered the inside of my left thumb, right below the knuckle, ran up through the ball of the thumb, and exited straight out the end, under the nail! There I was, home alone, with about a foot of fibreglas sticking out the bottom of my thumb, and two or three inches out the end. I grabbed a pair of wirecutters and shortened the lower end so that I could drive to the ER (about 25 miles away).
Walked in to the ER, feeling a mite woozy, and told the triage nurse that I had a sliver in my thumb. She took a look, turned pale, and called a student tech nurse to help. He took a look and barfed! They called the hand surgeon, and he wasn't happy either, but he managed to clean it out pretty well. They kept giving me stuff for pain, and I was in and out for a while, but I did drive back home before I finally passed out. Lots of antibiotics and pain and swelling and drugs later, and it finally stopped bothering me. Really happened!
Dunno why I just typed all this in -- but maybe it's why the kids won't let me use my new table saw...
howard 8-21-2003 22:01
A quick note gang...
Howard... Thank you very much ... Annnnnnnnnd I don't spend a lot of time on the "Red" stories. An hour at most... I'll run spell check and grammer check and proofread a couple of times ... then post it. Grammer check usually lites up on language but I write as I talk... (Yes, that bad...)
The thing is...for some reason I could not sign on the net last night, so was unable to post the story. Around 3 this morning I awoke with a feeling that I had screwed up something in the story.
I brought up WP and reread the story. As plain as day there was a major "naval" gaff. I had confused port (left) and starboard (right), relative to the headings in degrees. I corrected the pertient parts and filed the story this morning.
(CHAGRIN)
Reading the story again this afternoon I detected that the port watch sailor had seen "something" on the starboard side of the ship! It is a small thing and the port side watch could have detected something on the starboard side ... Still there is no sub for proofreading ... proofreading ... proofreading.
Andrew...we have a saying in this part of Texas ... let sleeping dogs lie. I might suggest, in a friendly way, that you let the Mean Eddie thingee drop? What say ye?
Randall
Randall 8-21-2003 21:59
Thanks for enlightening us!
howard 8-21-2003 21:36
Haven't been writing, haven't been visiting. Could be writer's block, could be depression. Don't know.
One thing I know for sure, I have got to visit here more often and the workbook too. All of you always inspire me to try, try again!
Good to see you all. Now I must be going. I promise to stop in more often!
Take care.
Cheri 8-21-2003 16:46
Thank you for the links. I put the stinger application on, and I think it did the trick.
Rhoda 8-21-2003 11:48
Andrew 8-21-2003 10:23
I hope the virus beast will soon leave you all alone.
Eddie,
How do you find out all this stuff? Sept 10th? I wonder why the person would have selected that date for the thing to end? I wonder what sort of people send out virus bugs. It seems so unkind and needless. Is it that they want to upset the computer makers? I mean honstly, all they really do is make more money for those guys. They crash out a whap of computers, then it is Joe Q Public who is out cash and convenience, not the makers. Or is it more of an attack on consumerism? If that is the case, then are these people not aware that they also have computers? I wonder how they feel when they get a virus? I bet it bites their asses big time.
Jerry,
I hope that the law will deal with your past Gov as it would with any other man. I agree with you about the driving with ones head up ones ass. We have so many accidents on the road that I live on. In the summer time the kids like to race up the twists and turns that lead to the lake. It's like something out of a commercial. You know the kind where the sports car is being tested over the beautiful countryside roads? Only trouble is that, this is real life and when you press a car to its limits, sooner or later your luck will run out. They've needed to use the jaws three times that I know of this summer, and those are only the times that I bothered to ask about. The people, young and old alike, blast past my house at speeds that would blow your mind. They seem oblivious to the fact that this sleepy country road has a mass of hidden drives and that children live all up and down the street. I for one can't wait for the fall. When it comes to that time of year all the tourists go home and the townies stop rolling through in their never before seen dirt, jacked up, super lighted, high powered idiot mobiles. Yeah, I'll miss them... NOT!
Wow, am I ever a grump this morning. I think I better go before I start on any more rants and bag onings.
Ciao for now.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-21-2003 9:59
Good morning...
As you command Howard...
ACTION IN THE TONKIN GULF
By Randall Henderson
"And who is this Howard?" Red Britches asked, a worried look on his face.
"Ah ... Howard writes on the Writers Notebook Forum. It's a web site where we swap stories and such about writing. A cyber friend Red. A fellow writer. That's all."
Red stared at the paper in his hand. It was a copy from the WNF where Howard had mentioned UFO's. I had printed the section to remind myself to ask Red about UFO's. (Age you know!) Red came across the page in my pickup seat as I gave him a lift across town.
"Where is this guy from?"
"Ah ... upstate New York I believe."
"Pretty country there. So, Howard wishes to know if I ever saw a UFO?"
"Well ... sorta." I was embarrassed as I never intended for Red to see the dialogue from that day.
Red turned the page over as if to read the back. He swiveled in the seat. "From the comment it seems Howard is familiar with my name. How might that be Randy boy?"
"I have written some of your adventures Red..."
"Which ones?" He inquired rather brusquely.
"Well, my favorite is about you and George fishing for Old Muckers..."
"You mean when George fell in the creek that afternoon? Not much fun there! And, Muckers!? What the hell is a Muckers?"
"You know. Old Muckers, the yellow catfish that lives up the Jim Ned Creek."
Red sighed. "Fishing for catfish is not exciting." He paused. "Unless you embellished the tale. Did you?"
"Oh no!" I protested. "Strictly the facts Red. Truth is my grail!"
Red snickered ... "And dyed pigs fly in the sky." He stared at me, a wide grin on a whiskered face...
Now I was really embarrassed. "Well," perhaps a little." I hastened to move on. "Have you ever seen a UFO?"
Red was silent for a minute. "I saw a whale broaching one night."
He hesitated, deep in thought. "In August of 1967 I was executive officer aboard a DLG (Destroyer, Large, Guided missile) in the Tonkin Gulf just off of what was then North Vietnam. We were assigned to the carrier Coral Sea as part of her protective screen of four destroyers. It was a chaotic time for us. The Russians were operating submarines up there and tried to disrupt flight ops. Very busy. I was on the bridge for the midnight watch one August night, breaking in a new officer."
He paused. "You been there Randy. Up on Yankee Station, where the big carriers operated. The seas up there can be as still as a mill pond. This night was one the big cruise ships would pay for. The moon low on the horizon, as bright as anything you ever saw. No wind to speak of. Flat as water in granny's bath. Nothing but stars and distant lights from the Oriskany carrier group thirty miles away. Nothing going on in CIC, the watch was uneventful. The Boatswain Mate of the watch had just brought me a cup of coffee and a ham on rye sandwich. He was an old fleet sailor, salty they called ‘em. Served on the battleship Missouri. Claimed he stood close to General MacArthur in Tokyo Bay at the surrender in ‘45.
"About then the port side lookout reported. ‘Officer of the watch. 0200 hours ... Surface disturbance Starboard side, bearing 045 degrees sir! Estimate one-quarter mile sir!' "
"Boats and I went to the starboard side of the bridge. Sure enough, a massive swell of water and foam, had emerged from below. Then an object came straight out of the sea and was hanging there, suspended, just above the boiling water. If I was guessing, I'd say about a hundred feet long and sixty feet high. Micro organisms in the ocean glow when they are disturbed. An eerie sight. The ocean was greatly agitated, glowing yellow, black water streaming down the side of the thing with gold and silver threads mixed in. One of the prettiest displays I ever saw. In the moonlight I could tell the craft was silver, like stainless steel. When the water cleared there was a blue haze around it's edge. It was motionless, while wobbling slightly ... and seemed to be rotating rapidly.
"Boats leaned on the rail and laughed. "Would ya look at that Commander. Old King Neptune, straight from Davey Jones locker bringing green seaweeds and pretty shells to the shellbacks and pollywogs...
"The officer of the deck was a young ensign from back east... Didn't know an anchor from saltpeter. He wanted to sound general quarters but I said no. I assumed command and informed the captain with a messenger. We were making about 30 knots and I ordered the helmsman to come around from our course of 270 degrees to 030 degrees. This would bring us around, but not too close to it. The thing hadn't moved at all. Just sat there as pretty as you please. Captain Smith came on deck in a bathrobe and asked what the hell was going on.
Boats pointed to the port side and laughed, ‘Captain we got visitors!'
"Captain Smith took one look through his binoculars, assumed command of the bridge and countermanded my order. He ordered a turn to 130 degrees and increased to 40 knots ... nearly flank speed. This soon put the craft behind us and was out of sight in minutes. As far as I am concerned it never moved and may be there, spinning like a top to this day!"
"He didn't hang around? Why?"
Red paused. "Well, I asked him that after morning quarters."
" ‘Commander McBritches,' he said. ‘What we all saw last night never happened. There are Chinese Migs in the distance, Russian fishing trawlers harassing our carriers and unknown submarines on the prowl. I have enough problems with the damn Russians and the damn Chinese without engaging something that I don't know what the hell it was. Case closed.' "
Red chuckled. "Captain Smith was an old Alabama plowboy and no ones fool. He knew exactly how careers were made in the Navy. He winked at me and walked away. We were ordered disengaged the next day and put into Sasebo, Japan a few days later. You cannot imagine all the gold braid and suits and briefcases that came up the gangway. Restricted the crew, officers and enlisted, impounded the ships log and interviewed everyone who saw anything that night. A dozen times..."
"And?"
"A whale broaching..."
"What do you think it was Red?"
"Well, I signed a security oath that week Randy. But I can say this much. If you see something that looks like a duck ... walks like a duck ...quacks like a duck ... then it's not a darn broaching whale!"
Night all,
Randall
Randall 8-21-2003 8:03
it is:
If they ever catch the bozo(s) responsible for this (and any subsequent) virus attack, they should punish him'them by:
My suggestion is easy: Tattoo a red "V" on his forehead, plaster his picture all over the world, and turn him loose.
howard 8-21-2003 8:01
ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/tools/f-lovsan.zip
for a small virus removal program. It fits on a floppy disk, and doesn't take long to download.
There's also
http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
from the McAfee site
howard 8-21-2003 7:53
For the first time is six years I am unable to access it.
Don't you just hate it when your predictions begin to come true.
Ed
Eddie French 8-21-2003 4:44
jack Beslanwitch 8-21-2003 2:35
We in South Dakota had sad news today, our former governor, now congressman was involved in a traffic accident this morning, killing a motorcycle rider. Tonight's news explained that the former governor. blew through a stop sign at seventy-five miles per hour (in a 55 zone) and was struck by a Harley Davidson, the rider presumably on his way home from the Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis. He faces charges ranging from careless driving to manslaughter. It'll be interesting to see how far they press this, were I the prosecutor, I'd be pressing for manslaughter in the least knowing the facts as they exist. Were he just another Joe blow from the street, he'd surely be facing those charges. He was a wonderful governor, and a damn fine congressman, but anyone who drives with his head up his ass that far deserves to be come down on with both boots.
The news says he was noted for speeding and had MANY speeding tickets while serving as governor.
Jerry 8-21-2003 0:49
I followed your link and went to that utility web-site. A strang thing happens: when I get there there is text, but as I stay at the site, the text deteriates into little squares. I downloaded the utility, but I am afraid to apply it.
Does anyone have any suggestion where I might find another free patch.
I stopped getting McAfee updates long ago. The update files were large and my maximum baud speed is only 26,400. Not only is my connection slow, but because of our pathetic phone lines, it cuts off a lot, so downloads that take over half an hour are impractical. If I kept up with virus updates, I would be doing nothing but downloading them. So I let my subscription lapse and will not pay for anymore. Does anyone have any advice? With all the viruses and worms around, I am having a terrible time keeping my system free.
I went for years and never had a problem. I do not open unknown attachments, and I do not recall opening anything remotely resembling this virus. Perhaps I need to stop using the Netscape mail. I only used it because Outlook Express has been hard to set up and for awhile all the e-mail viruses specifically targeted that mail system. I have Eurdora, but it makes my computer crash about 50% of the time.
I really am a mess, am I not? I am about to throw this computer out the window.
Rhoda 8-21-2003 0:02
I'm getting fed up with the techno-wonk stuff anyway. As soon as I learn something new I find out that it's obsolete even before the "C" dries on my report card!
I mowed part of my garden this afternoon. It was so wet there for a while that the weeds got way ahead of me. That plus the fact that this weird weather has been not conducive to most of my garden led me to crank up the old rough mower and thin things out a bit. I did find a couple of nice Haogen Melons (a very tasty Israeli melon) and some ripe Black Russian tomatoes. And squash. Lots of summer squash. Way too much summer squash!
howard 8-20-2003 23:31
I've not had any virus issues. I get my usual e-mails and nothing much more. I mean, sure, I get the penis enlarger stuff, but haven't had any cause to check it out... I guess if I had a penis I might be interested, but then again, had I a penis, I'm sure I would have been hung like a horse (grins and merry laughter)! I now have three jobs. How is that for a change of pace? I don't know if I like it or not. Dan and I job share on the two new jobs. He and I had our 13th Anniversary the other day, and in Sept will have been a couple for 20 years. Yikes! The time goes quick.
Garries,
Hi you! It was so nice to see a post from you!
All again,
We have adopted a second cat. We now have Nekoe and Ekoe. They are brothers from the same litter. I also call them "the boys" We are having a trial evening with Ekoe to see how things go.
Take care all.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-20-2003 23:02
At any rate I made it virus free thanks to the anti virus (Ok Mark you talked me into going with McAfee again guess it works about as well as Norton and doesn't have all that Norton crap running all the time.)
Weird day today, just as the temps got up to HOT, and I turned on the air, a cold front moved through dropping the outdoor temps fifteen degrees in five minutes. Shut down the air and opened the house again to enjoy the coolness.
Damn fires are all around us now, it's so smoky outdoors now that even without clouds it seems overcast, you can smell the smoke from miles away, Montana, Wyoming, the Black Hills, and hundreds of prairie fires in the area are burning, the fire whistles are going so often it reminds one of those end-of-world atom bomb movies. Sure do wish it would rain, they had bits of it up north but all we got was enough to dirty the windshields and make the dust stick to the vehicles. Farmers are putting in insurance claims against their losses due to the drought, while just a few miles north some are having bumper crops. Strange days these.
Jerry 8-20-2003 21:32
Best not to forward anything -- copy/paste it into a new note and send it that way.
And the "returned mail" messages are phony -- just a way to get you to look at something you supposedly sent, and they want you to open an attachment for details. DON'T DO IT!
howard 8-20-2003 20:42
The worm is coded to stop replicating as of 10th September 2003.
Eddie French 8-20-2003 16:48
Sorry, I meant to say this in my last post.
This current plague did not originate from this site or any of it's members. It has been gathering momentum for a few days now. (And my web based email has no connection with this site or anybody who frequents it).
Ta
Ed
Eddie French 8-20-2003 16:39
Don't worry about those emails, they are designed purely as DOS attacks. (Denial of Service). They clog up internet traffic and use up bandwidth. They can't do any more if you don't run the attachment. It's just a really big inconvenience. It could however, bring the whole internet to a grinding halt (Worse case scenario).
Ed
Eddie French My Stuff 8-20-2003 16:36
This does not look good for internet traffic over the next few days. I can see this thing getting out of control.
Ed
Eddie French My Stuff 8-20-2003 16:33
Rhoda 8-20-2003 16:25
Apparently there is something here I must look into, for I did NOT send you an e-mail. I haven't sent any, so if anyone else gets an e-mail from me, get rid of it.
My computer is not acting weird or anything. I will have to investigate. My son downloads a lot from game sites, and my daughter gets a lot of e-mail from her friends on fanfiction.net. Thank you for letting me know.
Rhoda 8-20-2003 16:21
Subject lines:
That movie.
Wicked Screensaver
Your details
Etc etc.
Having just changed my pop3 email I was spared all of that but my web based email was saddled with 40 of them.
They all had attachments anyway so it wasn't anything to worry about. You have to be so NOT web wise to get caught out. Something really has to be done about spam and email attacks soon. Problem is, I haven't a clue just what!
Ed
Eddie French My Stuff 8-20-2003 16:17
This is a new one, people, found only 2 days ago. Update your AV files now!
I can do no more
Litter Again, Again 8-20-2003 14:16
LITTER, and all others,
I also received those e-mails. One of them said it was from MARY which didn't really mean anything to me as at least three of my friends have names with Mary in it. Not to mention my own.
I always immediately delete any message from an unknown person with or without an attachment. I did notice that the only text in the regular message was something about see the attachment for details. I'm not that curious!
My sister left for Buffalo, NY yesterday. Her son found he could not get a job he could live on up there with just an Associates degree in Computers. The longer he stayed, the more in debt he became and the thought of another winter up there just did him in. She flew up and they are driving back with his car and a U-Haul truck.
He already has a job interview with Computer Nerds set up for next week. I think he'll get on with his life a little easier here. Maybe he'll even extend his education.
I have been lurking as usual, and will continue.
Bye,
Rosemary 8-20-2003 14:06
Here are the details:
Virus Profile
Virus Information
Name: W32/Sobig.f@MM
Risk Assessment
- Home Users: High
- Corporate Users: Medium
Date Discovered: 8/18/2003
Date Added: 8/18/2003
Origin: Unknown
Length: approx 72,568 Bytes
Type: Virus
SubType: Internet Worm
DAT Required: 4287
Litter Again 8-20-2003 14:03
I've just downloaded 16 emails to find that there were 14 with viruses attached, one bona-fide email and one, seems to be a returned mail from an address that I apparently sent a copy of the virus to. (An address that is unknown to me and is not in my address book????) This virus is variously termed: Details; Your details; Wicked Screensaver; Application; Your Application; My Details; Approved; Thank you; That Movie. The virus comes in an email attachment.
Most worrying is that one of the virus carrying emails was from a name known to me – Sorry RHODA – seems that someone is purporting to be you, or you have been infected?
Anyone recognise the following email address or any part of it? (I've added several asterisks in place of the @ sign and the two dots in the '.vasser' and '.edu' to disable the link.
Ravalert*mail04*vassar*edu
Litter
Just checked my email before posting this – got another 4 of the same…
Litter 8-20-2003 13:44
Well, I've finally got time to come to the notebook again. Hubby managed to find a way to successfully ask for one more chance at working things out in our marriage. We both have a lot of "improving" to do. New "rules" have been made and so far things are going rather well. Now to find my way back to my little ole novel.
Litter - I wanted to throw a tidbit at you regarding your RA. I've also got "art" popping its aching head into my life when I least need it. I read a food related tidbit that I decided to experiment with for myself. Apparently nightshade plants can aggrevate arthritis - potatoes being the most common of these. I went six weeks without them (luckily I love pasta!) and when I ate them once again - bang! - the arthritis kicked in with a week's worth of pain. Don't know if you're the type willing to try something like this, but I thought I'd share it and give you the option at least. I'm thrilled to hear how well your novel is doing!
I haven't heard from Viv since her last message that they had turned back. Hopefully she made it stateside without any further problems and she will call me soon.
Well, enough for getting my feet wet in the notebook for today. I want to see all the work posted on the workbook yet. :) I'm really looking forward to that!
Take care everyone and write a word or ten thousand. :)
Carol 8-20-2003 13:38
howard 8-20-2003 7:39
A big hello to you all. I dropped in on the chance that I might commisserate with Americo on the loss of a great fellow Portuguese, today in Iraq. But, alas, Americo doesn’t seem to be around lately. I suppose I expect a lot for a guy who hasn’t showed his nose for ages. It is heartwarming to see how many of you are still around, however.
I have lost any patience with terrorists that I might ever have had. These religious totalitarianists are so out of step with the rest of the world that they can’t understand there is nothing for them to gain with their brainless killing and destruction. No one is going to give them one damn thing. They can’t get it into their addled heads that they are acting solely out of a desire for vengeance. It must make them feel good to kill everyone who is not "them." They certainly can’t expect to get anything else from it.
Saddam is in hiding. Although he was no terrorist, more of a brutal dictator. Bin Ladin has been in hiding for ages now. His jig is up. He can’t move about freely, and I doubt he is able to influence events in anything but the most poriferal way.
Still, there are the mischief makers. They can’t bring about social or political change, but they can committ small scale death and destruction on a limited basis to vent their spleens.
Well, that’s my rant for the moment. Nice to see you all.
gariess 8-20-2003 6:37
HentaiCartoons HentaiCartoons 8-20-2003 3:45
lianchun yang talc 8-20-2003 2:52
That should be worth several books a'la Orson Scott Card style.
When we were camping, we spent one day touring the North Dakota Heritage Center. It's a big museum tracing the roots of human and animal life on the great planes, and has lots of great stuff plus IT'S AIR CONDITIONED!!!
At any rate, I had somehow fell into the ENGLISH as a national language for the U.S. group of believers, after all if you come to this country, you should learn to speak the language right?
Well touring that museum I came across some newspapers from Bismarck, and other North Dakota towns from the early 1900's some were in English, others in German and Russian. There was even one in Swedish. Then I got to thinking, I have one of dad's old school books from his school days in grammar school. One of them is Andr Lassen Booken, a reader printed in his native Swedish language. Well I guess dad did learn English, but only after he spent his youth speaking Swedish, the language of his house, of his parents and the neighborhood. Maybe having multiple languages isn't such a bad thing after all. Maybe not but it got me to pondering things a bit and that must be a good thing right?
Jerry 8-20-2003 0:11
Shortie theme: Infatuation
Mary 8-19-2003 20:43
buddy, your pants are down!"
-- If you didn't get that one don't feel bad. Neither did I.
Punch line explanation later, if necessary.
howard 8-19-2003 19:05
You are right. The guys have taken over. We cannot allow that! Hang in there; sounds like you are having a time. I know how that "we might be moving soon," feeling is, and I hope you find out for sure ASAP.
My kids started school last Friday, and it is their dear mother who seems to be having the hardest time making the adjustment.
EDDIE,
Cass is a real cutie. Sol isn't so bad either. Thanks for sharing the pictures. I enjoyed them.
LITTER,
Congratulations on your success! Sounds like your book is doing great, and sounds like you are having a great time promoting it.
JACK,
Good to see you back.
Rhoda 8-19-2003 13:24
Hi, HOWARD, MARK, JERRY, JACK, LITTER, ANDREW, EDDIE FRENCH, and RANDALL! :-)
And HI to all the lurking females too!!!
I'm, uh, here, but I'm not exactly sure where "here" is these days... Hubby's job-hunting...we might be moving... school two weeks away... eldest son goes to college next Sunday... I'm way behind on laundry, ironing, other house chores... and Ms. Muse keeps darting in front of me, just out of reach, dangling my novel like some juicy carrot on a string. Just as I reach for it, she snatches it away with this most horrible laugh... sigh.
"Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant," somebody once said. I'm pretty wet here.
Hope you-all are writing STACKS of great stuff! :-]
Mel 8-19-2003 12:33
howard 8-19-2003 7:23
Jack 8-19-2003 4:52
howard 8-18-2003 23:56
By the way -- I'm still enjoying your book -- haven't had a chance to finish it yet. I think I am beginning to burn out. Sent a check (cheque) to the nursing home for Bryce's monthly bill, wrote one amount in the numeric field and another amount in the text field. Drove down there (20+ miles) today to write another check to correct it, realised as I was pulling into the parking lot that I'd forgot the chequebook. Of all the things I've misplaced I miss my mind the most. At least I think so -- maybe there's something I miss more, but can't remember what it is, let alone where I left it.
howard 8-18-2003 23:55
Mark 8-18-2003 22:21
I'm not sure if I come back into a surreally philosophical discussion or a philosophically surreal one??? ….Or maybe it is all a conspiracy and everyone is out to get me…
HOWARD – pace yourself. You don't want to burn out too quickly.
JERRY – Hope you liked the book. The sequel? Several possibilities –The 'Post Apocalyptic' one, the 'Escape to Beyond' one, or the 'Bobby was in the shower and it was only a dream' one… So many to choose from. I'll have to decide on one and run with it. Meanwhile, soak up the 'senior' insults, take the reduction, and eat them to a standstill!
Well, I had my book signing on Saturday, and it exceeded my expectations. (That of the book store manager as well, apparently.) I had a goodly number of sales and now have the support of the manager in stocking copies. Got good coverage from the local press, as well, and I'm now, (for one month only?) in the shop's top 10 sellers list. More of an ego-trip than anything else but another bite of the cherry, nonetheless. Got my first 'official' review from Stewart Henderson, (Poet and BBC TV and Radio presenter), and I couldn't have paid for a better review. Feeling more like a writer with each passing day… Sorry if his all sounds a little self-serving, but it's all new ground for me.
Now for a bit of sad but strangely satisfying irony – Upwards of 50million people in Northern India and Pakistan are in danger from arsenic poisoning from water provided by modern type 'tube wells'. The danger effects all the population except for 'The Untouchables' underclass, considered by everyone else in Indian/Pakistani communities as little more than vermin – vermin who are not allowed to drink from the wells in question and have to find water elsewhere. These 'Untouchables' show no indication of raised levels of arsenic in their bodies and appear totally free from this particular danger… Blessed are the meek, etc.
Nighty night,
Litter Stuff 8-18-2003 19:38
First was some chick from Toronto, asking if I'd be interested in lower-cost prescription drugs. I was so taken by surprise that I had no snappy comeback at all!
Then a "Laurel" called from some resort in the Poconos, asking if I'd be interested in a luxury vacation in one of the "nicest resorts in the Poconos."
I told her "Thanks for the offer, but I'm happily married."
The cheek of these chicks!
howard 8-18-2003 18:04
Re anime-girl below -- but not far enough --- I think we might just be seeing the ti
Opinions?
howard 8-18-2003 17:57
Mark 8-18-2003 17:39
Andrew 8-18-2003 16:48
Jerry 8-18-2003 12:02
howard 8-18-2003 8:20
anime-girl anime-girl 8-18-2003 4:29
We had a good time anyhow despite the triple didgit temps nearly every day.
Had my first SENIOR experience while paying for a buffet the kid behind the counter said "That would be one SENIOR and two adults" Thought about strangeling the little twirp but then his mom would have missed her baby soooo much.
Jerry Ericsson 8-17-2003 23:57
Rreally!
that's
http://www.jasperfforde.com
howard 8-17-2003 21:21
I didn't know how rewarding a thing this could be until people started to use it. Makes me proud to think that all those talented people put their work into space I put up as an experiment. You have a few years as Notebook, Workbook provider; there must be many instances where someone has posted a piece of writing and you simply took a deep breath and said, "Yes, that's why I do this." I have.
Mark 8-17-2003 21:18
I actually asked about parenthesis... which is either where the Greek tragedies were performed, or what you said...
howard 8-17-2003 21:16
Mark 8-17-2003 21:05
Hope all are having a great time. I also would like to thank Mark again for doing the journeyman duty of getting the Workbook up and running. One of the elements that I am gradually coming to enjoy is having a shared community that helps maintain the joys of exploring our muse at this site.
I am back and ready to have a lot of fun and be a lot more aware of what is important to me.
Take care.
Jack Beslanwitch http://www.forwriters.com 8-17-2003 20:33
Yes.
howard 8-17-2003 17:31
Which leads to a question -- which is the actual parenthesis -- the ( and ) or the expression contained betwixt the symbols?
And it also brings to mind a line from one of my favorite songs -- "Cowboy Buckaroo" by Mason Williams. To wit:
"Should we be the way we are, or the way that we could be?
Can illusion become reality?"
Now I think (at least I think I think) I'll pick up my flesh-colored Crayola and go back to my room.
:-})
howard 8-17-2003 17:29
Howard...I am infuriated at the vicious "critique" some of my fellow notebookers have offered on INVISIBLE ART... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I found your tale refreshing, yet tangy ... but just a little tart. (For a man of your age.) Speaking of tarts... no, better not go there.
This reminds me of the immortal words of Old Ernie Hemingway... "How the hell can I fish without my booze? Turn the boat around captain."
Anyway, write on my New York friend and don't let small minds drag you down....
Incensed in a friendly way
Randall
Randall 8-17-2003 15:38
I don't see Howards stance as post modernist. The realist influence of his work propels me into a pourri of conflicting wanderings which may never be resolved within.
I await the next disclosure before daring to commit.
Please Howard, enlighten!
Nice Eddie 8-17-2003 15:28
A deconstruction-style critic (whose name eludes me) asked, "There is nothing on my lawn. How did that nothing get there?" I believe he can go home now, gaze upon his grass and utter a heartfelt 'duh.'
Mark 8-17-2003 10:52
I do agree with your assessment of
and I'll try for a rewrite soonest.
Thanks!
howard 8-17-2003 8:05
I couldn't just let that invisible art goby without my sincere crit on it's validity in the mainstream art arena.
I hope you take this crit in the spirit that it is written and bear no ill toward the 'Critter'
Critique; 17 August 2003
End
I hope that wasn't too long.
Ed
Eddie French 8-17-2003 4:37
Hey!
Can't sleep gang. So I decided to poke around the cyber world to see what's what. You know Howard...that is amazing insight on your part. Seems like Red told me a tale about little green men many years ago. I'll have to sit down and put pen to paper. (Grin)
UFO's are in short supply it seems these days. Must be all the weather and traffic cams scaring them away.
Randall
Randall 8-17-2003 2:12
Mary 8-16-2003 20:06
howard 8-16-2003 18:40
Now they'll have a brand-new excuse for boosting the rates and the taxes, as if they needed a new excuse.
That call for essays was interesting!
"Invisible Art?" what's that all about?
Here's my essay (from the layman's point of view):
INVISIBLE ART
by Howard T. (C)2003
the end
howard 8-16-2003 17:52
Mark 8-16-2003 16:35
Hey!
Hi gang....
How about that power blackout, huh? Howard, that get you? There are all kinds of media theories in play by now ... about the why and why for. Around these parts we call this process ... WAG ... wild ass guess. It also seems American and Canadian electrical company executives are indulged in pass the hot potato or a little CYA. "Your fault Yankee!" "No, your fault Canuck!" Personally I believe a wandering UFO drew a little too much power from a substation and crashed the whole kit and kibbodle. Darn things are always in the hunt for free electrical power. Incorrigible little snits, flying around spooking the livestock... draining ponds, dumping waste, sucking up free electricity, always on the hunt for statuesque blondes or wild hairy beasts. (Sasquatch! LOOK OUT!)There must be a neon sign floating in space just beyond the moon ... FREE POWER BRO AND BLONDE EARTH WOMEN AHEAD. NEXT WATER HOLE ... 1,000,000,000 LIGHT YEARS AHEAD.
I visualize a small green alien intently studying a mercury filled gauge as a malfuncting space ship wobbles over an eastern power grid substation... "Let's see, that page out of the manual is stained with coffee. I wonder, should that read half-full or half empty? Hey Al, drop the girlie magazine and gimme some tendrils here will ya?"
Probably the reason my electrical bill is SO high. Alien freeloaders. I also have problems with non alien freeloaders. Apparently California also has problems with alien freeloaders. But never fear the Terminator is coming!
Of course, it could be that someone forgot to pay the electrical bill. "No honey, I haven't paid it yet. They'll wait. Now leave me alone. The Yankees are playing!" Always seek the simple answer I say.
Easterners and I have similar problems. Along about this time of the summer I too suffer from power shortages. My wife says I'm just lazy. Nope, I don't buy it. I KNOW that a high pressure area, furnace like temperatures in excess of 100 F when added to the wobble of the planet directly affect my inability to move off the couch. The only thing that cuts through this self-imposed conversation of power and energy is news that my daughter and grandson are coming through the front door. The dreaded Fruit of the Loom summer life style I so embrace.
From left field...I have been reading of the Mothman encounters in 1966 and 1967 in West Virginia. WOW! Now that is freaky!
Viv, don't you know that if God had intended for us to fly He would have given us wings...and a stick and rudder...and a set of wheels? (GRIN)
Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb... No, but I wish you luck. As a rule of thumb I never submit anything to a person whose name I cannot pronounce. And you're formatting needs a little editing as well. I might suggest an entry level course into creative writing...to smooth out the rough spots. Pal, I have no problem with being hip ... but "Jaisini Gleitzeit Supermodernity?" Is this a Polish underground super model thingee?
See ya
Randall
Randall 8-16-2003 15:58
WRITER'S GUIDELINES
L.C.McCreshly Publications is seeking submissions for their upcoming book entitled: Jaisini Gleitzeit Supermodernity: New age American art.
What is accepted for submission to be included in the book:
Literary essays (1,000-3,000 words) for associative writing on invisible paintings.
The best art is art of fantasy; literary exploration of visual dimension is a new a vehicle but expresses so much more, contemporary directions of aesthetic development in art and art receptors, viewers who belong to the art tradition and never before had a chance to express their opinion on art. This is your opportunity to be a part of a new art and express your understanding of future of fine art.
You can also submit controversial views and any argument to the leading idea of non-visibility of new art.
HOW to submit:
In the body of an e-mail. No attachments.
Send submissions to gttlieb@aol.com, with “Submission” in the subject line. Please include your name, pen name if you use one, and author's bio if desired. Your work will be judged on merit of originality and degree of interest in the subject (you are advised to read essays, but the style of writing is not mandated to be professional art-speak and can be free versed.
RIGHTS AND COPYRIGHT
We ask for reproduction and archival rights. Author retains all other rights.
DEADLINE
Closing date for entries will depend on quantity and quality of submissions. We expect to include as many authors who submitted original opinions also depending on length of selected works.
CONTACT
Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb
gttlieb@aol.com
http://jaisini.artbabyart.net/
yustas jaisini 8-16-2003 0:19
And no, I haven't given up on the other one...
howard 8-15-2003 23:21
howard 8-15-2003 21:28
Mark 8-15-2003 17:23
8-15-2003 15:41
Two really cute pictures.
I thought Cas looked the image og Huck Finn :¬)
Ed
Eddie French Pics 8-15-2003 15:40
I'll let Carol know you said hi. I'm going to call her IF and WHEN I get to the states. I noticed the theme this week is disappointment. Anyone ever tried MAC? I'm talking flying military air style. It's free if you can get off the ground. It's an experience. I've already been up and off the ground in a C5A. The seal on a door blew sometime when we hit the coast of Japan. When the great pilot flying this piece of junk noticed he turned around. Now the plane and 50 people sit on the ground waiting for it to get fixed. It's not pouring rain so chances are they'll get it fixed today. I'll get all of 5 days in America before I have to head back to Japan. Started with plenty of time and now to get to Colorado I'll have to do a couple days non-stop driving. Lucky thing my husband is good at rotating the chore of driving all night, sleeping while I drive and then driving while I sleep. Ever notice how easy it is to talk in situations like these? This is why our marriage stays strong. Many travel disasters make for good marriages.WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? School interview for daughter on Tuesday. Get there or bust. Hope we are coherent when we bust through those school doors.
Mary, great theme this week. Howard, I'm going to try to access that workbook and take a quick look. Will let you know what I think (and it'll probably be WOW, amazing. Wish I could've written that.)
Back as soon as I get a computer. Hopefully will bring Carol with me.
Viv 8-15-2003 13:52
Back down again.
Mark 8-15-2003 11:42
Workbook may be offline until tomorrow
Mark 8-14-2003 18:06
Mark 8-14-2003 17:06
howard 8-14-2003 15:51
8-14-2003 14:53
You could try right clicking and selecting 'Save Target as'
It's worth a go.
Ed
Eddie French 8-14-2003 8:59
anime anime 8-14-2003 2:40
I'm Writing again!!!
... but the dreams are back...
howard 8-13-2003 23:39
Mark 8-13-2003 16:49
Where is the specific one you want to save? I can try that one to see if there's anything different about it.
Respond to my Edress...
howard 8-13-2003 10:47
Thanks if you can help me.
:-)
Mary 8-12-2003 23:44
linda linda 8-12-2003 22:44
Sgrìob -- there it is! Copied directly from your post!
Can I do it again? -- Sgrìob!!!
What a word!
Do you think we're makìng them curì(thìs ìs fun!)ous?
Why would LITTER (and perhaps RHODA, from her research) recognise this strange looking word?
howard 8-12-2003 21:56
:-})
howard 8-12-2003 21:51
Howard...I'm here (grin) and you are there. The dog days of August have laid me out actually, so I'm lazy. Still I would like to contribute some humor to the site.....
Lawyers, huh?
http://www.laughzone.com/jokeview.php?id=001955
"Lawyers typically aren't funny -- unless by accident"
Case in point: The following questions from lawyers were taken from official court records nationwide...
1) Was that the same nose you broke as a child?
2) Now, doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, in most cases he just passes quietly away and doesn't know anything about it until the next morning?
3) Q: What happened then?
A: He told me, he says, 'I have to kill you because you can identify me.'
Q: Did he kill you?
4) Was it you or your brother that was killed in the war?
5) The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?
6) Were you alone or by yourself?
7) How long have you been a French Canadian?
8) Do you have any children or anything of that kind?
9) Q: I show you exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture.
A: That's me.
Q: Were you present when that picture was taken?
10) Were you present in court this morning when you were sworn in?
11) Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
12) Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are now?
A: I'll be three months on November 8.
Q: Apparently, then, the date of conception was August 8?
A: Yes.
Q: What were you doing at that time?
13) Q: Mrs. Jones, do you believe you are emotionally stable?
A: I used to be.
Q: How many times have you committed suicide?
14) So you were gone until you returned?
15) Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q: Were there girls?
16) You don't know what it was, and you didn't know what it looked like, but can you describe it?
17) Q: You say that the stairs went down to the basement?
A: Yes.
Q: And these stairs, did they go up also?
18) Q: Have you lived in this town all your life?
A: Not yet.
19) A Texas attorney, realizing he was on the verge of unleashing a stupid question, interrupted himself and said, "Your Honor, I'd like to strike the next question".
20) Q: Do you recall approximately the time that you examined the body of Mr. Edington at the rose Chapel?
A: It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Edington was dead at the time, is that correct?
A: No, you stupid ______, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy!
Love that one!!!
Randall
Randall 8-12-2003 20:58
PAMELA – Howard is correct, I suffer from RA. Makes my life (and the planning thereof), shall we say, interesting. The interview was a great experience, and as it happened I expressed my appreciation as he and I dined with 6 others. Actually I told him (and 6 sundry diners) that I wanted to have his baby… He is a man of metaphor, and I trust he understood mine :o) (And the coffee he choked on only made a little stain.) I have some glucosamine in the house, but it is really hard to gauge its efficacy when the condition swings between mild and acute without apparent rhyme or reason – when I feel okay, I might just be having a good day…
TEEKAY – I didn't realise there was a 'writing community' until I started thinking of myself as a writer (about12 days ago). Now, it seems, they are multiplying before my eyes. Although I feel, perhaps, they should be writing instead? I'm surprised, though, your 'writers' comment didn't get much reaction.
EDDIE – Thanks. I wish it would be that easy, but I have a feeling that my work is just beginning. But there is always that long-odds chance that catastrophe theory is correct, so I work and I wait. (Not chaos theory, something a tad different.)
HOWADR – 'sgriob' – a word I know well. (Even with the missing accent over the 'i'. But, so as not to make you fell bad, I've left it out as well :o)
ì – Oops, there it is… Now we have the Gaelic version, the Laland Scot's, and the English, all on the same page. Swahili/Urdu/Navaho/… anyone?
Now then, PESTER, a good west-of-Scotland word. Harbinger, raison d'être, or irony – I cannot decide?
All Good Things
Litter 8-12-2003 19:35
Helloooo there, ghosttown notebook, Howard, Rhoda, I think we’re alone.
Two letters for you.
Dear Sirp.
I just felt that I had to write to your good notebook about the igorance of people on Philosophosical matters. I noticed, about a quarter past four this morning, that people were grossly igorant on said Philosophosical matters. So here are a few facts for the igorant.
God exists; he lives in a small cottage in Hampshire near Scotland. His mother, lives in London near the Queen, in fact she may even be the queen. His father, owns America. We are here on this Earth to make sure that the Ants don’t take over it. The most intelligent animal on Earth is the common turtle; from whom we can learn many things. So, there you have it. I may write to you in a few weeks to put you right on a few more matters.
Yours tastefully.
John Baloney. (Part time turtle for the R.S.P.C.A.)
Dear Bluebottle.
I would very much be appreciated if you would let me say to complain of the stones in my Barney rubble garden. The Wellingtons have them all the time and the dogs lay them by their waysides of a Saturday morning. No stone by bone the zone is infested and prone to clones. If I’ve never put it better myself, bananas don’t look like cherries wearing yellow thongs.
Very worldly people like me must always be wary of herding sheep sleeping while they’re weeping, of course I’ve heard of sheep, though I’ve never heard of sheep asleep in the late afternoon I know that they’re quite mad in the early mornings unlike myself I don’t usually go mad ‘till ate afternoon. Thank you for being a patient with me and I do hope your boils ease off soon.
Yours fruitfully .
A.Nkumpenstein.
If you do something bad or something bad happens to you, it's very important not to dwell upon or in the feeling that follows, as this only links up with similar events in the past and these other feeling so combined can produce an unnaturally depressed or affected state, which can be very difficult to get out of.
If you've never had a low feeling you'll be much more resistant to having one. E.g low feelings rest upon and reengage previous low feelings in a similar way that injuries, improperly treated, predispose us to more injuries.
Had a real good chinwag with a Krisna monk called Barnaby. Talked about consciousness, higher functions, God, the eternal soul, Jesus etc. He was very communicative and amiable, then he said, that God had no purpose, when I suggested that by inference, this meant that we also had no purpose, he changed it to, ‘God had no duty and Gods’ purpose was happiness’. Hmm.
Teiser was a character out of a book by Hernmann Hesse, he was a man who remained very much a child, this inspired me to write this song, which I recorded a few years ago with a band called Simon Says.
A CHILD LIKE TEISER.
Over the happy fields of joy
Summer days a fresh faced boy
Running free and seeing clear
All to feel and all to hear
Jumping rivers climbing trees
Rolling hills a gentle breeze
Somersaulting from great heights
Turning stomachs warm day nights
I don’t want to be
Tired old and none the wiser
Crippled torn a joyless miser
I just want to be
A child, like Teiser
Dirty fingers hungry faces
Visiting forbidden places
Fearless joyful no ones’ fool
Free of adults over-rule
Rambling pastures fields of corn
Penniless with trousers torn
Careless aimless having fun
Free to walk and free to run
I don’t want to be
Weary bored and none the wiser
Stressed out fed up life’s own miser
I just want to be
A child like Teiser.
Time to go to the dreaming sponge bath, see you folks Love Pester.
Pester 8-12-2003 19:09
howard 8-12-2003 16:04
howard 8-12-2003 16:04
Something strange has happened to my Microsoft Explorer. It does not open picture files.
I am about to throw up my hands and get rid of the Internet.
Rhoda 8-12-2003 15:37
8-11-2003 23:20
howard 8-11-2003 23:02
http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/russell/russell24.html
howard 8-11-2003 23:01
howard 8-11-2003 8:04
I was referring to the post about what your Father taught you.
It was that beautiful one;
he taught me the making sure and he taught me to cry.
And that's what's important.
So, it matters not that I know nought, so long as I know what I ought.
:-)
Now I have to go and see about making something for dinner.
Teekay 8-11-2003 3:55
howard 8-10-2003 22:05
But, I know how to make sure, and I know how to cry, and that's all I need.
I'll never forget that one. Thanks :-)
Teekay 8-10-2003 19:22
PESTER: So there you go PESTER. See what you have revealed already?
And you weren't even trying :-D
Trying in the 'make and effort sense', I mean.
Teekay 8-10-2003 19:19
It can be mind-boggling to stop and think just how many familiar phrases find their origins in Scripture alone! Or Shakespeare, or the "classics."
Somebody oughtta write a book...
howard 8-10-2003 19:17
PESTER -- I believe you're well on your way to proving 1 Corinthians 3:19...
Wrong word game -- in today's supplement to our local newspaper there's an article about one of Hollywood's latest heart-throbs (can't remember his name) who is best known for playing someone's "elicit" lover.
The list grows longer...
howard 8-10-2003 19:08
Boy, you sure can kill what otherwise might be a good joke with all yer fancy book learnin':-D
As you've probably gathered I know bugger all about Greek mythology and muses.
No, really, I kid you not.
My muse didn't come from Greek mythology, I found him hanging around outside a pub.
Hey, wait a gol durn minute.....
You don't suppose he could be a fake do you?
Teekay 8-10-2003 18:31
Hi folks!
It’s a beautiful day
yes a beautiful day
Such a beautiful day
Just a beautiful day
And I’m happy today
Yes I’m happy today
Oh I’m happy today
Yes I’m happy today.
I could tell you everything about myself and still you wouldn’t know me.
I meander, I live to meander I must meander I must be what I am.
The children who are naughty and receive punishment, generally, continue to be naughty and receive punishment.
We have ‘apartheid’ but the division, instead of colour, is money.
Everything must be paid for and money will get you nowhere.
A person may waste their youth wishing they were older, the same person, may waste their maturity wishing they were younger.
Society ‘gives’ you a mask: you do not have to wear this mask, though even if you do not want to wear it, it will be very difficult to pull it off and if you succeed in this, you may not be able to stop yourself from putting it back on from time to time.
Hypnotism shows one thing; that we may be controlled to a greater or lesser extent by unconscious drives and desires: i.e. that we are not ‘masters’ of our own house, something the mystics have said for thousands of years.
Mans’ lazy, fearful mind invents Jehovas’ paradise but heaven is for fools. Reality can be harsh, but it is far better than dreaming of Utopia, for what is a cold harsh world to a warm heart, the all conquering heart of a true human.
Sometimes I feel like a stranger to myself.
MOODS AND MOMENTS.
Part IV
(FANTASY OF REALITY.)
To break the mood of indolence, I'd brave the strong forbidding wind, run a mile or ten around the house, and scare the neighbours with the sound of heavy breathing.
Then to strike a chord upon an old guitar, I'd stare the portrait of a pretty girl who’s name I do not know and play a tune in my mind, not whistling not humming, thus I could compose without restrictions, descending fast into a netherworld of dreams, I deprive myself of senses quickly lost to the outside world.
Even men of two dimensions have to learn
the basic games of elementary society, so we sat
in a small cafe, drinking lukewarm tea
and munching last years biscuits
with a morsel of personal fancy close at hand
(To some it is a cream cake pressed to mouth
with slithering cream, to another it's a smooth skin,
cold shower, rough towel, or the secret
of a breath that's held within.)
Sitting proud in selfish decadence, churning trivial dialogues with skill over violence and other objects which "disgust", then to scrape the barrel of hypocrisy, shaking hands with a man who's joined the fellowship of God.
Like an ache in the body resides
gone tomorrow here today
a burden few people know
will whisk the years away
Droplets of Blackcurrant blood
rivers of Strawberry wine
these are the things I remember
of things that could not be mine.
Now you choose your favourite topic to consume the time and take you from the comfortable room of misplaced apathy (Which belongs in a cosy chair.)
Suddenly a vague aroma, a silken blouse
upon a frail and fragile beauty, the world is turned so sweet
heartbeats and emotions play allegro, shifting with
each delicate movement of the eye,
a voluptuous curve of the lips,
the sight of gliding tongue upon white teeth,
now you'd sell your soul for a taste of high desire
and wax delirious on a fertile bed of words
so long as they're not blighted with uncertainty.
After the cries of hollow ecstasy diminish
performance hanging heavy in the minds' eye
heartbeats and emotions play adagio, and pathetic
is the only word that fits,
you take your shrivelled ego home
place it near your personal bible, hoping it will grow again
so you can face the shrinking womb of time
with a little sanguine expectation.
In a moment of past memory, you hear the prelude
of an old bohemian, but still it's meaning eludes the brain.
Thus incarcerated by a team of fixed commands
you play laconic episodes, which never seem to follow
in transparent ways (Though appear so to others)
and your soul aches slowly
through the dyspepsia of unsettled verities,
Still you hope to live.
Hope everyone is well, see you, Love Pester.
Pester 8-10-2003 18:30
Mark 8-10-2003 11:42
In classic Greek Mythology Hermaphrodite was the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, not of Zeus, so he could not have been one of the muses.
howard 8-10-2003 10:01
MARK!! Your html is showing!
Oh my...blushing and running away. Ok, more like kinda tittering away.
Sorry...please forgive me.
Mary 8-10-2003 1:04
Slow?
I am not slow.
Teekay 8-9-2003 21:22
(Marge Simpson laughter)
PAMELA: You didn't go and confuse me for PESTER, did you? DID YOU????!!?!!? :-D
I ws asking after HEATHER - she should be back now.
It's Phantasium - and she sent it off near on 2 months ago I think - unless you know something I don't know - which is hugely likely when you consider the things I don't know.
ANDREW: Are you sure you mean that, hmmmmm, are you really really sure?
I can't believe it. 5 new posts since sleepy time. I hope you haven't all forsaken the notebook to go type out best sellers or something.
Where are your priorities????
Teekay 8-9-2003 21:15
howard 8-9-2003 21:01
Teekay, thanks for your help and the laughs.
Pester, Heather has been working long and hard on a compilation of writings from members here called "Phantasma..." help me out, guys. She just got the editing done and ready to send out. Started before my relatively recent arrival, so I look forward to seeing the fruits of everyone's labors.
Hi Viv, how are things in Japan? What's the latest on your return to Over Here? Say hi to Carol.
Sure, muses can be male, heck, they don't even have to be human, how about an alien?
pamela 8-9-2003 13:59
TEEKAY -- My pleasure.
Mark 8-9-2003 12:08
Andrew 8-9-2003 0:09
howard 8-8-2003 22:34
And that bit about the BC guy - that's pretty cool too.
I didn't know you could access the workbook through here. Now I don't have to hunt for it on my desktop.
HEATHER: Come out come out wherever you are. Probably in bed.
Teekay 8-8-2003 22:16
I could go on an ego trip right now and declaim the befittingness of all your posts being subordinated to mine. But I won't. Is someone out there trying on a sheet right now? One that only goes halfway acr ... Oh nevermind. I'm missing Stargate. Following that is Monk. Following that is sleepytime.
Later
Mark 8-8-2003 21:06
Not all the Greeks thought the Muses were flat, either. I spent some time a while ago bemusing myself finding pictorial and statuary representations of the gang. Several are portrayed with the sheet you speak of amusingly draped from one shoulder to the opposite hip. Some things are not wholly covered. Quite titillating.
PESTER --
- After you log in to the Workbook, you'll see three sections. Each section has a main forum: "Work In Progress," "Shorty Thursday," and "Test Forum 1."
- Click on a forum title and it will take you into the entries for that forum.
- Once in the entries you'll see a button labeled "new topic." Click that to add a new entry.
- If you click the title of someone else's post and bring it up, you will then also get a button "post reply." Click that to add a comment at the bottom of the page.
Mark 8-8-2003 20:56
I had an imp,
I changed his name
I called him life and looked at him with new eyes
I guess Shakespeare was wrong
Or maybe just misguided
About that rose.
Teekay 8-8-2003 20:24
Hi folks! All is well and all manner of things shall be well. (T.S. Eliot.)
Been trimming the bush in the front garden, sweating like a miser in a taxi, hotter than a camels’ crotch but hey rather that, than cold and rain.
Anyway I have some questions, how do you input to and or read from the work book? How do you send an e-mail to an individual?
Jack, I was browsing the archives the other day thinking that there’s some really good stuff in there, then I thought wouldn’t it be a good idea to make a book out of selected contributions, huh, what do notebookers think?
Some more questions.
Do insects have heart attacks?
Do birds sneeze?
Do dogs believe in Gods?
Do butteflys fart?
Do bears get headaches?
Do money spiders shop?
Do sheep worry?
Do amoebas sleep?
Do flies go to the toilet and eat?
Do insects have dreams?
Do cats go through the menopaws?
MOODS AND MOMENTS.
Part III.
(A CONVERATION IN ABSENCE.)
I have listened to voices who said they knew
and so thought I knew
‘till I began to live,
now it's obvious no one knows
though there are men,
who think they know, or pretend
The enemy is within
whichever side of the fence you stand.
I should like to recite to you
McBeths' soliloquy of the dagger in french,
but I know neither of the two
so that's out of the question
like so many other things,
things I would've done and would still do
if only if...
but I'm sure you know what I mean.
Do you know the imp in your head
he sits with you always
makes those small decisions
that build into episodes,
before you know it (He's so subtle)
you've watched so many scenes (touching nothing)
you're left picking up the pieces,
and when you put them together
they do not fit
is it you
do they fit for others
or do they pretend
"What a perfect being I am
see how snugly I fit together."
I recognise this situation
know what comes next, what will be said
though it can be changed, still nothing happens
distinct from dream or vision
a snippet of a possible future
is the answer here, or am I cold as ever.
From a cell I came
to a dead cell I will go,
though I breath still
I do not think I live
ever a stranger in the mirror
a smiling madman
who thinks, knowing it does no good.
I must go, my imp will wake soon
he doesn't like me acting in his absence
when we meet later on, all will be well
the day will look good
and people will think they know me,
perhaps we'll think we know each other
if you know the imp who sits with you,
seal your lips, we never met at this time.
See you folks Love Pester.
Pester 8-8-2003 19:00
It was all that poncing around in sheets that led to the misunderstanding re: muses. :-D
going...
Teekay. 8-8-2003 18:56
I'm going to get some free time, not much, but it's so nice to see the notebook is still here.
As for Carol's address, I'll stay in touch with both the notebook and Carol. I think she's going to be back in the notebook sooner rather than later.
Viv 8-8-2003 18:51
howard 8-8-2003 15:56
Now the Furies -- definitely all female! :-})
howard 8-8-2003 15:54
Teekay, I don't think Rachel and I thought we were fighting, but other people seemed to think we were. I like your inspirational saying, pretty good for such low caffiene content. I agree that plot and characters are fundamental rather than restrictive, but more power to those who want to try something different, especially if they're writing for fun rather than publication.
Howard, that video looks like fun, I'll check it out later (and BTW, I don't think you pontificate). Were you perhaps suggesting putting John's cellphone up his boomff?
Right back atcha, Rolls With Horses.
Randall, glad you've gotten your bite back again (and hey, we women can't help it that we're always--okay, usually--right). Jerry, I hope you don't have to spend your camping trip in air conditioning, that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?
Visual pun: if you wrote out the Gettysburg address on a sheet of paper within the shape of a person, it would be a figure of speech.
I've always thought of muses as females but Eddie opened my eyes by saying that his is male, causing me to find out that mine is too (though I think he might be gay, he's lanquid and oh, so blase).
pamela 8-8-2003 14:16
You sounded a bit peeved actually. Sort of like you'd opened it.
Well, I'm glad. I didn't think it was like you to go opening things willy-nilly like that.
I'm proud of you and ashamed at my lack of faith in your oop, gotta go, ads finished and Oprah's back on.
Teekay 8-8-2003 0:55
Dang, I like yah gal. I'll write more at yah later. Right now it is time for "Agent Cody Banks" or something like that. The kids are excited and I imagine I'll be entertained.
Write at yah later.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-8-2003 0:09
look for "The Mootrix"
it's a hoot!
howard 8-7-2003 22:32
@@@!($**#)!@@@ ???
:-})
howard 8-7-2003 22:24
Hey!
Been down with an infected tooth gang. Hot dog, that is more fun than being caught in a goat stampede! My cheek was swollen to match my nose . . . Made me look like W.C. Fields on Sunday morning after nickel a beer night. More pain than paying taxes . . . During all of this gaiety, I was taking an antibiotic I obtained through the good old boy, barter and trade network. Generic penicillin.
"Randy, it will kill or cure what ails ye!"
To my chagrin it was no match for the infection, about like taking a sugar cube for the Black Death. After a couple of days of grousing about the house, ("For the last time, tell Suzi Cat to quit stomping around!!!") ice packs and #%$@&%# ineffective pills, I went to my MD and asked for a tougher antibiotic. It was either that, divorce or homicide my harried wife informed me. The doc looked mildly perplexed and asked why I was coming to him for a dental problem? I told him seeing an MD was cheaper. And it is. I must be an eye-opener from him. He is a big Indian dude. Uhhhh no . . . not a Native American.
He did his internship in New York. It was worse when he arrived in Texas. One Saturday night in the local ER a cowboy pretty well sloshed, who knew a little about caste, and nothing about class called him Dr. Red Dot. Dealing with Texans is surely an enlightenment for him. Not to be outdone it is said he asked his nurse for the dreaded "square needle" for the man's injection! Soooooo leaving you with that mental picture . . . I told him all I wanted was the infection killed and would worry about the tooth on another day.
I believe when Rhett left Scarlet that is really what she meant. There's always tomorrow for the dental. The doc sighed and gave me a handful of office samples. 1000 mgs a day for seven days. I dropped one on the way out the clinic door. Now 24 hours later I may survive . . . but I have had to eat a lot of crow from my wife. She told me on that first day I should go see the doctor. The cat? Well Suzi Cat is still sulking around after having numerous pillows hurled her way. But she will come around I suppose. He who controls the can opener controls the cat.
Women. The only thing worse is a woman who is a spouse who is a know it all. They think they're so smart! A real man should be able to handle a little pain now and then. Right guys? No pain no gain!? Huh???? Am I out of line here or what?
(BIG GRIN)
Oh, that "Cat stomping . . . " line is from a Three Stooges shortie. Uh, Moe is having a set of nerves . . .
Pain Free Randall
Randall 8-7-2003 21:25
Teekay. 8-7-2003 19:48
Actually, it might just be wiser to skip over my last few posts.
Teekay 8-7-2003 19:34
Teekay 8-7-2003 19:31
&@&&^@&*&*^@$&*@_*()*( &*^$@*$@&*) &*(&*#@$@*@ &&^^%$@@!#@@ (((*&^$% !!!!!!!
there, now don't you feel better.
I can't believe you opened an attachment file from Allein.
tsk tsk.
Teekay 8-7-2003 19:19
--
And JOHN -- I could give you a hint as to what to do with $400 cellphone thingie, but I won't.
yes I will
hint: it's normally very dark up there.
howard 8-7-2003 18:50
:-})
howard 8-7-2003 18:46
I suspect she didn't send it, or maybe her machine is infected.
Be careful opening stuff!
howard 8-7-2003 18:44
And yes, or no, or whatever I mean, I don't think anybody could write a book formula style.
Well, not one that anybody would buy anyway.
My brother-in-law, for instance, can barely write his own name.
I guess it all boils down to why one writes.
If it is 'Art', and by this I mean the pus and angst, working it's way up from your psyche to give voice on a pieace of paper, and you want to make any money from it, then you want to hope that there are a lot of people sharing the same subconscious emotions, because, otherwise no one's going to want it.
However, if you just love words, and you love a jolly good story and you write cos it's fun (usually) and there's no way in the world you want to work a day job, then I think 'formula' is what one has more chance with.
Plot character and all the rest of it are the walls in which we come to play. They are the dimensions we build upon - and I've always said that the he who laughs la...oh no, not that one, I've always said that the more senses you can touch upon with a reader, the more involved they will be.
So, with story writing, formula didn't come first. When the very first successful neanderthal story was broken down, it was found that plot character etc, were the elements which made it successful.
ooh ooh just had an inspiration.
To write Art, one must delve into the psyche,
To write Amazingly, one must reach to the stars.
It's probably sounds like crap, but hey, this is only my second coffee.
Going...
Teekay 8-7-2003 18:33
Teekay 8-7-2003 18:01
A debate however is a stretching of the brain.
I like str-e-e-e-tching my brain it feels niyce.
Now, I'm going to go read what AMERICO said so I can work out what formulas style is and isn't, so, just give me 45 minutes and I'll be back.
RACHEL: I think when they say everyone has one good book in them, I've always taken it to mean that their life-story might make interesting reading, but not necessarily that they could write it.
JERRY: Happy camping you lucky *&*&*^* thing.
Back soon.
Teekay 8-7-2003 17:56
My cellphone are brand new unlocked
I sell
Motorola
Nokia
Siemens
Panasonic
Ericsson
Etc.
My latest cell phone that I have is a
sony Ericsson P800 for low price
$400.00USD
If you buy more then one I give discount
If you want to buy any cellphone tell me the model you want
Reply to chini2003@hotmail.com
John 8-7-2003 15:22
Jerry 8-7-2003 14:38
- The word "dead." Melville uses it in multiple innocuous ways, including "the dead wall" Bartleby faces. Architecturally, a 'dead wall' is (I believe) unvarying, unbroken in symmetry or pattern ... much like this amazingly symmetrical story. And at the end Bartleby ends up where? Dead, at a wall.
- Puzzles. Where Bartleby came from and how he arrived at the office door is somewhat of a puzzle. Once in the office, how to get TO Bartleby is another puzzle, both emotional and physical. Draw a diagram of the office on a piece of paper. Plot the path necessary to get from the front door to Bartleby's desk in the inner office. That path has a maze-like quality. And where does Bartleby end up?
Mark 8-7-2003 14:08
Hey, Rolls With Horses, you may curb your horses (when you ride to town) but please, never curb yourself! I don't think your critique was nasty at all, I sent you a personal message back, and appreciate all comments and suggestions. Also good to know my email isn't working, my brother did something to hook up with his in Alaska and I think he messed up mine, I'll check it out.
Teekay, Rachel and I were talking about a statement Americo made regarding the use of plot and characters versus doing something different; she included the whole quote a few days ago if you want to check it out. We disagree on some points but we certainly aren't fighting. She did say that anyone could write a book formula style, which I disagreed with, what do you think? And yeah, since when do you need to know what anyone is talking about to jump right in there, anyway? You and Rachel both keep things nice and sparky around here.
Thanks Howard, I knew it was Arte something. The movie I saw was a contemporary take on the Bartleby story (did he keep saying he would prefer not to?), now I'll have to read the original. Also interesting stuff in male/female writing styles.
Carol/Hazel, I wish you well in finding the strength within yourself.
Sasquatch, you are such a kidder.
Jerry, you're repeating a common mistake in your grammar that I thought you might want to know about, but it's no big deal.
Eddie, good to see you back around the place.
pamela 8-7-2003 12:32
Jerry 8-7-2003 10:55
Pam 8-7-2003 10:54
GirlsGoingOut.Com and WO! Magazine are seeking strong, passionate writers to contribute to online columns and in depth articles. GirlsGoingOut.Com is the first national interactive website dedicated to organizing events for women ages 18 to 60 with the sole purpose of bringing women together for deeper connections. It is your best resource for getting movie, music and book reviews, as well as a great place to get tips on anything from finance to love. We are seeking top-notch writers to contribute to our monthly columns as well as individual freelance pieces. With over 500,000 monthly website hits, your writing will be recognized by a large audience of professional women and men who are looking for great stories and helpful tips. Please check out GirlsGoingOut.Com to view a full list of our current feature columns.
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N Link 8-7-2003 10:23
Best way, though, is as soon as you can afford an LCD monitor, get one! My eyes started bothering mewhen using a CRT screen, and I switched to LCD, and it made a world of difference!
howard 8-7-2003 7:15
I've tried to send that off again. It wasn't as nasty as I thought. I changed only one word :o)
RDRKO
Rachel 8-7-2003 0:23
Teekay 8-6-2003 23:26
Just have to rant a bit: I hate windows XP!!!!!!
And my 17" monitor is killing my eyes. It constantly looks like it is pulsing in amounts that should not be detectable by the human eye, but that are driving me insane. Like it is threatening to start blinking or something. Thought I would get used to it, but it sucks!!
OK, I feel better now!
Mary 8-6-2003 23:18
I did e-mail you a crit, along with some wonderings, askings and the like about your text. I’ve sent you two e-mails. I guess they went to the dead address. The new address that you sent to me isn’t working properly. If you will post your address here, then I could send this on to you. I could also post it onto the WB if you would like. It’s your call. It really isn’t nasty. At least I don’t think it is. Uh, it’s not the NB talk I was worried you would hate me for. I do a fair bit of nit and pick at your text. It isn’t with unkind intent. I just don’t know how you feel about people actually picking at your work. I got at stuff that I wonder about, suggestions and the like. I think will change one thing I said. It isn’t often that you get a second chance to say something differently. Kind of cool really. So, if you don’t have this yet, and it was lost in the server move, then all the better. I can say it in a less abrasive way. No need to run the cheese grater over your flesh (winks).
Teekay,
Hey girlie girl :o) Yah wana play do yah (wicked grins/winks).
Pester,
All is well here. The lot of us may not agree at all times. But honestly, would this be an interesting place if we did all agree? I’ve been feeling sort of playful and wicked these past few days. I will behave and curb myself. At least I will try (grins).
RDRKO
Rachel 8-6-2003 22:17
Bartleby the Scrivener is one of my favorite short stories. Have you ever seen the website www.bartleby.com ?
It's full of all sorts of stories -- well worth a visit!
howard 8-6-2003 22:11
---
There's arthritis (it hurts) then there's Arthritis (hurts a lot), then there's Rheumatoid Arthritis. We can live with the first two, but the third is agonizing. That's what Litter has.
howard 8-6-2003 21:43
Teekay 8-6-2003 19:07
I am pleased for you.
As Homer Simpson once said:
'Now all we have to do is sit back and wait for the money to come Rolllling in'
Hope you get more than he got.
Perhaps some extra money would ease the suffering that your condition puts you through.
Well...it might!
You never know!
I suppose it has become quite obvious to most here that I have recently re-entered the land of the living.
My life will never be the same again of course, but I do feel the need to interact with the people I have known in this forum for so long.
I'm glad that you are all here.
Later,
Ed
Eddie French 8-6-2003 18:57
LITTER: You have a writing community??? That is so cool.
I haven't even come across another writer here.
I think it's something we keep hidden.
For good reason,
If you tell someone you're a writer over this way the response is much the same as if you told them you were a fundmentalist, knife wielding, sociopath.
PESTER: I took your advice and locked up the knife drawer, but lucky for me I found a nail file near by.
I wonder why you don't let us know you, but come forth sprouting all these really mundane sayings that everybody with an ounce of grey matter knows anyway (except maybe the stuff you make up)
Maybe its a poet thing you've got going on. That seclusion from the world, because no one will understand the true you.
Well let me tell you, we're all fundamentalist knife (or nail file, or sharp tongue in a pinch) wielding sociopaths here, man, you don't need to be worried about us.
CAROL: Good luck and all the best to you, and don't be too upset that TAYLOR called you a really freaky name like HAZEL.
HAZEL: Only joking. I really love that name, it's...original.
Going....
Teekay 8-6-2003 18:37
Pam 8-6-2003 18:27
Litter, I'm glad you had such a great time at the festival and that your book sales are zooming upward, good show! That interview sounds fantastic, it seems like he really gave you a lot of time, you'll have to take him out for a nice (free) lunch when you get your first royalty check. Do you have arthritis? Have you tried glucosomine? There's a new product here called Flexium which combines that and Sam-e and has helped me with the pain caused by my highly physical work (my knees and hips hurt so badly it keeps me awake at night even when I'm dead tired). Sam-e also naturally increases serotonin, so that's a nice side benefit too.
Teekay and Eddie, thanks for the helpful suggestions for my prologue, I will definitely heed your advice (Teekay, that one stupid sentence has been giving me fits, I appreciate knowing that it still needs work).
Here's an interesting bit of literary history that relates to the current debate: I just watched a movie based on Hermann Melville's short story "Bartleby." A brief bio of Melville told how he was raised in New York, went to sea at a young age and achieved much success with his tales of adventures there. He then started writing darker, more philosophical works such as "Moby Dick" and "Bartleby" and his fame rapidly declined, he had to take a menial job and he died virtually unknown. Verrrry in-ter-est-ing (remember that little guy on "Laugh-In?).
pamela 8-6-2003 18:20
Thanks for welcomes and comments, guys love you all.
Didn’t see the stag Howard but the whole place had the beauty and charm of a place immune to the pace of the ‘normal’ world.
Rachel, Pamela I’m experiencing dissonance.
Now Teekay before you read this please make sure you lock all your knives away.
If your happiness rests upon your job, it is thus fragile and likely to be easily broken, similarly if it rests upon your car, your house, your clothes, how much money you have etc, then it is also fragile and subject to the whims of life.
On meeting something new, an idea or school of thought, being tired with the way life is at the moment for you, there’s a tendency to jump right in saying “ Yes this is what I want, this is what I’ve been looking for.” Only to find a few months later that you’ve given it up for something else and seem back in the same routine feeling that nothing’s changed.
Prayer for the self.
‘I’m in prison and I want to escape. I realise fully that I do not have control and that I am full of, useless phrases, commands, rules, negative emotions, identifications, different mini-personalities, that the I, that is really me, is so swamped in imagination and false beliefs that in any one day it does not survive for very long. I want to awake, I want and desire consciousness with all my being.’
What you see of a person, is the least important part.
You risk ending up becoming, that which you fight against.
Words are only as powerful as we make them.
If you take offence remember to put it back and repair any damage.
We make judgements about people, without realising that we are influenced by a multitude of things, which should have no bearing on our judgements, but nevertheless affect them very strongly.
MOODS AND MOMENTS.
Part II.
(INCIDENTAL TRIVIA.)
A chart's spread out before you
like a carpet wearing thin in places
blocks of fixed eternal things
amidst the stains and debris of past happenings
a few patches here and there untouched
since the beginning, some with skin obscuring
even function
farmer of the mind tells you now
of crop rotation, too late for parts left dry.
When illusions from neglect of sleep, cause you to fear
the beauty of your judgement, in all forms of minor acts
nothing is ever right, nothing was ever right,
the ineptitude of plastic flowers on the bookcase
stir memories of the patches left untouched.
You saw her with another, dancing a waltz of ecstasy,
(too distasteful when with you) locked in a gaze so deep
all else was lost, still you couldn't hate,
her face glowing bright in sensual effervescence,
staring at your traitor friend, who stands shameless
casting walls of marbled teeth about the room.
A gentleman sits next preaching personal sermon
"I know you as I know myself, all that I have done
you have done or will do, at least in thought if not in deed,
so we must share our plight, breath shame of dishonesty
with the same vanity that sits admiring conquests,"
You sent him off in search of fellow souls, then slipped quietly to another place of neon lights and pulsing rhythms,
(to see a different herd of cattle.)
Here you meet another splendid specimen (of inebriated intellectual)
propounding theories of social etiquette,
you knew he'd argue
that the snow was red to pass the small hours in conversation.
It's time to go but you're soldered
to your seat in times inaction.
“I shall rise in a minute,
in a minute I shall rise…….. I shall rise”
You've found a minute is a long or short time
depending on how you'd like it passed.
Before you leave, there's a place that you must visit,
a place for blowing into white cloth and dirtying hands
"You see a man will blow his trumpet
then inspect the catch, in case of haemorrhage perhaps?"
There's something humorous about passing in a public place
where all men swords undressed, whistling banal tunes
stare into a plain tiled wall, as if it were interesting
and read like a good book.
Then in the vulgar morning you emerge
(with a pumping brain) bedraggled like a snake shedding skin
Ignorant of the year’s events, you regard familiar face
and hate his hands,
“Clock don't tell me what you tell me, as I know,
and I don't want to know.”
Bye for now folks, see you soon Love Pester.
Pester 8-6-2003 17:44
Even if you were talking about my work it wouldn’t matter. It kind of cracked me up to think that you were. I get the feeling that maybe you didn’t like my crit. Hum... I wasn’t trying to be nasty. I disagree with you. I do believe that anyone can write formula style. I happen to believe that everyone has one good novel in them. It is simply the matter of not having the time or initiative/sticktoitiveness to do it. I’m not saying that they have a work of art that will have perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation, but that they have a good novel in them.
Hey girl, I can’t help what you feel. It is a reflection of the soul that you’re looking at, not anything that I said. You said “ I feel that your statement was demeaning to my own work and my efforts to write an entertaining book” You can step on up and take ownership of that little ditty. Don’t go trying to lay that pile at my feet. Own it.
I like your style. I told you as much in the crit that I offered. I think that your story has a whap of potential and told you so. I however mentioned some things that I think could use your attention. If you don’t like what I had to say, I will quote myself “Do yah hate me? Tis okay if you do” however, don’t dance around the issue. Get to the point gal.
Formula style would be that thing that everyone works there ass off to produce. That tried and true, plot, character, outline, twist, message to share, but not too boldly, not too much lest I shock the reader sort of thing. The stuff that they teach you in school. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The learn to write books, and classes. I’ve got four and more of those novels gathering dust and waiting for final edits. Don’t ever think I look down on that writing. I love that writing. I just think it is good for a person to challenge themselves, not be afraid, never be afraid to work your craft.
Know what I think? I think if you are really interested in what Americo and I are saying that you can seek it out on your own. That is the only way you will appreciate it. Heck, half the fun of anything is the seeking.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-6-2003 13:41
Back from Carberry Festival, wobbling like jelly and walking like Quasimodo… Tremendous first week of the festival, of which, this year, I was officially a part. One of the chosen few who planned and coordinated the day-to-day activities, for which pleasure I was given free lunches and an on-suite room. (And they say there is no such thing as a free lunch…) OK so I did have to work a bit… a fair amount… okay, a lot. (Maybe they were right about the free lunch…)
Needless to say, I did far more than I should have, and my joints just about held on until I was in the car home – an hour later I had to be levered out of the car and up to bed for three days of confinement. I'm up and about, loping more like an ape than a gnarled fictional character, but getting straighter with each day.
I had a great time. Sold more books than I'd expected, largely due to an interview I had with a BBC (television and radio) Broadcaster and my most favourite Christian Poet, Stewart Henderson. (I think I've mentioned him here before?) Stewart read 'The Watchers' and then interviewed me in a late night show at the festival. (Letterman/Parkinson type show) He gave me a rave review and interviewed me for about 15mins, feeding me questions that allowed me to say far more than I would have expected. I'm still riding the adrenalin surge 6 days later.
Up until then, people had be a tad cautious. After the interview, my credibility (and sales) soared. But it was the credibility and acceptance among my peers at the festival that was the biggest bonus. The change in how they related to me was subtle to those around, but obvious to me, and for the first time I really felt like 'one of the 'writing community', and not just a hanger-on. Wonderful feeling and, if there is any justice, one I hope many of you will feel for yourselves.
Glad you're enjoying the book, Jerry.
Seems there has been a bit of a ruckus during my time away. Seems to be abating now, though.
Back to bed for me.
Litter Stuff 8-6-2003 13:32
Rachel, I wasn't talking about your work personally but the general concept of writing without plot and characters. Whether something like that would entertain the reader or not is open to question, I'd like to see some of Americo's work along that line. I disagree that anyone can write formula style because not just anyone can write at all, or is even crazy enough to attempt it. How many people do you meet who say they could write a better book than that or that their lives would make interesting stories, but never actually sit down to try to do it? I feel that your statement was demeaning to my own work and my efforts to write an entertaining book which also seeks to stimulate the reader to consider spiritual questions. Not just anyone could come up with the plot I have and write it the way I am, one of my readers told me she jumped up off the couch and went ohmygod when she got to the main twist. I am unclear as to what you mean by formula: do you mean the romances and cozy mysteries that follow a fairly set progression of events or do you mean anything with a plot and characters? Even Hemingway and Fitzgerald, whom Americo seems to approve of, used those. Anyway, everyone has their own ideas and opinions about writing; you write one way, I write another, and I don't think one is any better then the other, just different.
pamela 8-6-2003 12:45
Taylor 8-6-2003 11:19
I have a questioin regarding publishers here in Canada. I looked one up on a websight and they say that I should turn in my first 3 chapters, a cover letter and detailed synopsis page. How detailed do they generally mean? Publishers that is. Chapter by chapter or just a general overview? Thanks guys..and gals too!
Jake 8-6-2003 11:17
Found the post, read the post and it looks like a bore from the start.
One should never make apologies for their writing. I didn't suggest that you should. Your post is kind of cute. It almost reads like you are suggesting that my writing wouldn't entertain the reader. Me thinks you are being a cheeky girl (I quirk a brow). Anyway, what I'm at here is that anyone can write formula style, and there is nothing wrong with that. There are countless books selling off the shelf that will hold up the fact that formula works. At the same time there are books that break new ground and are still highly readable ;o)
RDRKO
Rachel 8-6-2003 10:56
sasquatch 8-6-2003 9:14
Pam 8-6-2003 1:55
Rachel, the Mean Eddie post is in the Notebook, not the Workbook, but I think the whole thing is getting to be a bore.
Interesting comments by Americo but I make no apologies for wanting to write fiction that entertains the reader.
Howard, yes, I file away (mentally) little snippets of character traits, as well as funny incidents and situations, to use in my writing.
Sasquatch, I'm terribly curious now, does that word with one "f" (I don't know if I should use it in mixed company) refer to a male or a female body?
Pester, I would comment on your work but Pam won't let me.
pamela 8-6-2003 1:46
I wish you well and look forward to reading your posts when you are back on line. Hugs to you.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-6-2003 0:36
Figured it was about time I got on here and revealed why I haven't been present lately. In fact, I'll be disappearing for a while. Reason - divorce and moving back "home". I don't know how long it will be until I can get online again but I've got the notebook's exact address written down so I won't lose it. Viv will know at all times where and how to contact me (Heather, please make note of that in case "P" gets picked up!
So, until we meet again dear friends, the best of luck in your writing. I will be back. :D
Carol 8-6-2003 0:25
howard 8-5-2003 23:22
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/
Lots of great info there!
howard 8-5-2003 23:21
Jerry Linux Users face Lawsuit 8-5-2003 23:13
howard 8-5-2003 22:39
Does everyone here file away bits of character traits, etc, and use them in stories? It's one way to make things a bit more real.
howard 8-5-2003 22:27
Thought about it and yup, I love yah :o)
RDRKO
Rachel 8-5-2003 19:18
Adversity builds character;
Controversy reveals it.
PESTER: I gotta tell you, some of your meanderings just make me want to stick a knife in my eye
and twist it.
Lucky I'm a touch masochistic.
Where do you get this stuff from?
I think your poem is FANTASTIC!!
Welcome back!
Going....
Teekay 8-5-2003 19:01
I think I love you! Great poem. It brought to mind the writings in "Gitanjali" by Rabindranath Tagore. He wrote about some similar topics. I love this sort of honesty, humanity. I think that was beautiful. Gezz guy, I'm all soft and mushy towards yah ;o)
RDRKO
Rachel 8-5-2003 18:51
Hi folks, back from me hols, Black Forest Germany, excellent, feeling refweshed and invogorwated, onward, back to life and all things human.
I see the notebook’s been busy over the last week or so, this is good, upsets, humour, good news, bad news, tolerance, intolerance, anger, serenity, love, misunderstanding, and TALC, this is where we are, enjoy.
Pamela re Autism : Yes they do have difficulty in forming and understanding emotional attachments but this doesn’t stop them getting married, either to each other, like to like, or Autistic to Non-Autistic and yes this does cause problems of understanding form both sides, with a distinct inability to read each other, but don’t we all lie somewhere along those lines in our relationships.
Some more meanderings and if you’re really unlucky I may inflict upon you some of my poetry, ooohh dare I?
If a man plays a game and becomes involved and identified with such a game, he may lose himself in that game, he then fails to see either himself or the game and as a result he fails to play the game, he has to detach himself from the game while remaining in the game before he can see his relationship to the game itself.
For example a man may be playing the game of football and he fixes on the aim of the game, which is to win. He then prioritises his actions towards this aim, he begins to foul and ignore the rules he fails to observe his own actions loses sight of the whole game and becomes as a result a lone player, who is now only playing for himself, this situation will worsen if he is not stopped and particularly, if he wins despite his actions.
So it is with life, a man can lose himself in life and fail to see that he has become blind to the whole picture. In particular if he produces results, which support his blinding aim, he will then fail to see the need for change. He has his own universe and does not see his connection with other people until it's too late, then he may find himself alone in his own universe with no one to play with or relate to.
You’re sitting on a train and a person sits next to you and starts talking to you, what do we think? We think, what does this person want from us, is he\she a danger, a threat to our possessions, our bodies, we look at them for clues as to what sort of characters they are or what they may want, we make judgements about them from their appearance, their voice, accent, use of language etc.
We’re not at ease, we’re on the defensive, thinking of what we may lose rather than what we may gain.
One of the worst situations for a person is when they have nowhere to go, and no one to be with, even the destitute drunk will seek out others of his kind and meet at a set place in order to give some structure or purpose to life. A man is nothing without other men, people need people the surest way to kill someone is to ignore them. And yet we ignore people all the time and are encouraged to do so. It's as if we cannot overrule that old maxim " Don't talk to strangers." when we are old enough to do so. So, we're perpetually scared of strangers and find it difficult to trust each other.
Pain is a warning that there’s something amiss with the body, what we are encouraged to do is to take something that stops us from feeling the pain, then we continue to use the body, no doubt causing further damage, we are too busy too rest or to investigate possible causes, we just want a quick fix, sooner or later we pay the price for ignoring the signs.
If we have a splinter in the foot producing pain, we may try to ignore it, the more we ignore it and continue to walk upon it, it will begin to affect the muscles of the lower leg, which will in turn affect the muscles and nerves of the upper leg and so on until the whole body may be crippled by the pain from the foot.
So it is with society, we often cure the symptom without getting to the root cause, we carry on with a sore foot since that is heaven compared to walking around with a bad back.
Every power has its' opposite, a man can survive the fire when he knows about water, a man does not fear that which he understands. Love promotes, hate destroys, Love is an unconditional state, if you’re using your judgement as to who and when, then this is not love just favouritism or prejudice. This is the hardest thing to love without selection or judgement since from a very early age we are taught differences and elitism, we generally do not consider ourselves one being, connected to a larger being, we are like a cell within a body but we do not see it, we do not see that our acts for self often destroy the greater self which in turn is bad for all. If a man is tall he enjoys his tallness and is reluctant to encourage others to be as tall as he is since then he would loose some of his pleasure in being tall, this kind of pleasure is cheap and all too common, it is unworthy of us. If we do not encourage people to grow as we do, then we are like the King who is strong only by virtue of the weakness of his people. A true King is a man of all men, a man who has no level, a man who leads his people to the truth, the beauty, and the joy about themselves.
‘You are a human being, you can make your own decisions, obey or break your own rules, take control of your life, value yourself, believe in yourself and know what's right for you.’
I dare!
MOODS AND MOMENTS.
Part I.
(Guilt)
If you would latch upon these dying words
and see not one you recognised, would they be un-read
and howl upon the pages of a closed book.
The gems are there as all experience is a spice
when taken with a pinch of mock acceptance
moments make up years right to the end
Here lies a fallen angel, she is weeping at the price of fate
never knew that she would slide upon a path of rotted leaves
and rainwashed soil, and only now is she so sorry,
sorry for the times she spent in agony of decision
and the times spent on the fruits of instant action
In the error of crazed delight when the blood of fear has
congealed, and the pungent smell disturbs the family peace,
you remember (when young)
that you had waited ‘til the cloth was soiled
before you took the cloth away,
trembling hard you stood before the scolding giant
dancing purple faced and blowing heated breath so loud
you wondered if your ears would last until the end,
you'd cry,
‘til the smarting pain was soaked up by the bed,
Then you'd sleep and soon forget
taking the next day bold and strong
for now you knew, that pain didn't mean the end
and if it should call again,
though not immune you knew its' limitations.
Soon time will race your searching mind
take you here and there, leave you on the verge,
resting high, looking down at what you hate
or crouching low, looking up at what you believe is good
either way you feel outside and your repeated questions
suffocate every meaning, 'till even the sweet woman of hope
lies strained and tarnished by the crushing weight of agnostic despair.
But still you journey through the tangled streets
of untamed cities tasting different circumstance
and smelling scents of gentle flowers, young and old
you stare across the once yellow fields now brown
and feel the wind upon your face, that had been scorched
by the demon fires of tools in bomb ridden barren lands,
where no one knows so much as simple words upon a stone,
We pretend to know these men as brothers, yet still ignore
when times are hard, we'll sort it out we say,
when we know, we'11 do nothing of the sort.
And so to end in soft reality, a tale that brings
the great man down to earth, for we all excrete.
Naked and unclean he trod the cold and laughing stairway to fetch the paper soft, that he had stretched for finding none his only thought "If they could see me now blushing crimson, and wrapped half only in embarrassment."
Bye folks see you soon Love Pester.
Pester 8-5-2003 17:38
Speaking of other languages, I'm currently reading The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. In it he mentions several very strange words in other languages, like the Scottish Gaelic word sgriob. Recognise it, Litter?
anfscd:
A friend just sent me this interesting tidbit:
COMPUTER PROGRAM DETECTS AUTHOR GENDER
Simple algorithm suggests words and syntax bear sex and genre stamp.
18 July 2003
The program's success seems to confirm the stereotypical perception of
differences in male and female language use. Crudely put, men talk more about
objects, and women more about relationships.
Female writers use more pronouns (I, you, she, their, myself), say the
program's developers, Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, and
colleagues. Males prefer words that identify or determine nouns (a, the, that)
and words that quantify them (one, two, more).
...
more at:
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/eBJP0CguLG0C30Clg0Av
howard 8-5-2003 16:22
Sounds like you've got the right take on things. Yezzz, yezzz, we all know how important what I think is (grins and merry laughter)!
RDRKO
Rachel 8-5-2003 15:04
You're welcome :o)
RDRKO
Rachel 8-5-2003 14:48
sasquatch 8-5-2003 14:05
There once was a man, he lived and he died. The end.
How's that?
Sorry folks, I'm on a sarcastic wave right now and I just washed up here.
Andrew 8-5-2003 14:01
Andrew 8-5-2003 13:53
Thanks to everyone for jumping to my story's defense, though! Makes me feel and bright and sunshiny inside...(OMG, I never thought I'd use those words in the same setence!)
:)
Take care all and Mean Eddie......HAVE A NICE DAY!!!! hehehehehehehehehehehhehehehehehehe!!!!!!!!!!!
Andrew 8-5-2003 13:53
Mean Eddy - You said all of Andrew's work was reworked sci-fi movies, and you may have a point, however it has been said that "there are no new stories, just new writers who take a different perspective on the same stories." Read the Writers Journey (Mythic Structure for Writers) by Christopher Vogler, where the author explains it quite well that most of the stories we love (Star Wars for example) follow an exact pattern known as Hero's Journey, read "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" Another book that explainers the pattern.
It is not the fact that you criticized Andrew's writing, simply the spirit of the post that upset many here. At least that's my take on it.
Those who criticize file swapping - your probably right there too, in fact it is a crime to copy and redistribute music, computer software and of course writing. The fact that it is so very prevalent now days does nothing to lessen the fact that it is against the law, and such excuses as "the charge way too much for the CD's" and "I wouldn't have bought the software anyhow" have no merit what so ever. Should the recording industry charge everyone involved in such practices nearly a quarter of the folks who own computers would be in jail, or facing millions of dollars worth of fines.
Like I said, I have un-installed all my file sharing software, but I am not going to throw away all the stuff I gained that way. First off, I do own most of the movies on VHS (yes I bought and paid for them), and most of the music on either records (you remember those old round things with grooves) 8 tracks or cassettes, downloading them simply saves me the effort of hooking those devices to my computer and copying them onto CD's.
I do think if you read the copy write case law you would find that the end user does have a right to copy music or movies that they indeed own for backup purposes or to use on different devices. This case law came from the recording industry attempts to sue the VHS manufactures for copy write violation.
Jerry 8-5-2003 13:17
On the orignality thread again. I've got another quote from the Amercio Archives (grins). When I first heard about this plot/character thing I was pretty ticked off. I was rolling along, being my nice little functionally literate self and feeling quite pleased with myself and my writing. Then comes this fellow with his strange ideas and ways. I was convinced that he was a convict or something (grins and laughter). Who else would have the time to read the classics? At least that was what I thought at the time. I am posting this because I don't think that I could argue the point so well as he did then. The points made are as valid today as they were when he made them.
agsousa http://www.webwitch.com/notebook/Tue Feb 2 15:00:52 PST 1999
Thanks to those of you who have answered my posts of January 26 and 27. I'm usually away from the Internet on weekends. My ISP does not keep the archives of this page, whose letters last only a day or two, and I don't know whether RACHEL has answered or is still preparing her hot response. It will be welcome, whatever its contents. I have also an inflammable temper and maybe we could light a beautiful fire of intelligent discussion to warm up this forum of nice but it seems to me, I may correct this impression on further evidence rather conservative 'literati'.
For those who have not followed or haven't understood my two posts, here's their gist and some attachments to it: American literature (I added English literature to avoid transcontinental patriotism but it is true that an awful number of English contemporary writers also suffer from some American evils), has become rather boring because it doesn't show signs of innovation, repeating old formulas, such as excessive preoccupation with character and plot development, useless dialogue and the wornout cliches of description-dialogue-description-end of chapter on the next day the weather was too hot and this is a symbol like in Hartley's 'The Go-Between'...Old hat, indeed. Story-tellers of this kind should try writing screenplays for Hollywood or Brazilian soap operas which invariably end in all nice people getting married and every villon going to hell in a basket. Despite some intelligent observations of my correspondents, none of them has changed my impression that the ultimate aim of would-be American writers is to take a course on creative writing, learn the basics of weaving the complications of a clever plot and there you are ready to earn millions by conquering the hearts of semi-illiterate readers who never heard about Kafka, Joyce, Céline, Musil, Broch, etc.
Evidence to that? After Scott Fitzgerald may I recommend this one to those who only aspire to a well told story in the old fashion? for a better teacher, try Katherine Mansfield, though , Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, no-one , on this side of the Atlantic, seems to care about NorthAmerican novelists any more. At least no one seeks their guidance or their example, not a single soul to say: I read something extraordinary by a chap from the States. Here in Portugal we admire Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Anthony Burgess (an Englishman!) but we are very puzzled with the success of Tom Wolfe, for example. I decided to give names not as examples of the very best for me but of those who have brought something new to Literature and WERE SUCCESSFUL, success being, I sadly infer, a sine qua non of American taste.
One of my kind respondants ascribes this lack of innovation to 'demand' business explains the standardization (I've deleted 'bastardization') of contemporary North-American literature. If that's so, it's a shame. Shouldn't an artist worry only about the excellence of his art? If he needs to earn a living, try cleaning the streets or teaching (more or less the same job nowadays, isn't it, HOWARD?) but should be faithful to his artistic integrity, keeping for himself the humane hope that one day his effort will be recompensed even financially.
Those who are inclined to think that this is a naif proposition should perhaps consider the case of the 1998 Nobel Prize José Saramago. His novels are original in content and form, and however, after many years of obscurity, he emerged in the eighties as a best-seller, his books being sold in hundreds of thousands of copies even in a small market as Portugal, and translated into most languages. If mundane success is very important to you, learn with this example, and see that excellence is not necessarily synonymous to repetition and imitation.
I have nothing against fair market. But I believe that each novelist must create his own market, not by imitating other successful writers of the present or the past but by being true and honest towards himself. It's essential that he finds his own voice, his own style, his own way of revealing his own vision to his readers. Each man and woman has a unique secret and a unique way to express it. Genuiness is the key to that secret it's necessary to work very hard to reach the true essence of our self and even harder to be able to express it adequately.
The 'classics' didn't do otherwise. Faulkner is very different from Melville and Hemingway from Faulkner or Hawthorn, and even Fizgerald (a very American writer in the sense that he loved money) didn't copy Henry James, though each of the mentioned writers certainly learned something with their predecessors... in their classes at school, the write place for the classics, as the word itself says, not at the cost of the poor reader.
I think it's important that the younger writers of this forum shouldn't listen to those who sacrifice originality and *real* quality to the false laws of the market. The bee´s knees doesn't really mean or derive from business. Not necessarily, no.
End quote of agsousa.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-5-2003 13:06
SASQUATCH -- thanks for the vocabulay lesson. It reminded me of a surgical procedure offered to managers where I used to work. In that procedure a plexiglas window or porthole was inserted in the navel, so that they could see where they were going, with their heads up their boomfs!
howard 8-5-2003 12:58
I've looked all around the WB and I must be missing something. I didn't find any place where any one called any work rubbish. It all seemed very nice.
Howard,
I liked that poem you left on the WB. The second version is better.
Pam again,
I must have missed something, because if what I read, the comments about the Space Opera thing is what all the fuss is about then, well, I am speechless. I didn't find anything posted by Eddie, Mean or Nice on 07/29. I think that perhaps I'm not very good at working my way around this site *sighs*
Any way you slice it, crits are like praise, you need to know when to let them roll off of you, which is about all of the time. A writer can't count on other people to make them feel good, or let other people make them feel bad about their writing. I think that a writer can seek support, but need to acknowledge that all the world is not full of peace, beauty and love all of the time. A person needs to be ready for the fact that there are some people who are abrasive in nature and have no inclination to spare a person anything. Maybe this person thinks that they are doing you a great service. I for one don't think that having my work called rubbish is the end of the world. I for one would look to see what had so provoked a reader to feel the need to spill the nasties on me, but would also consider the fact that maybe the person was just pissy by nature and looking for a punching bag when my text happened along. I think that about the hardest thing to find in a crit is candor and sincerity.
Andrew,
Do you really give a flying rats ass what one Eddie or another has to say? You have been walking around a living long enough to know that the world is full all sorts of people. People only ever have power over you if you give it to them. If you care about that sort of thing you should go out and get yourself and your work very well verbally abused, till you come to to the point that you just don't give a crap. Know yourself man! (Yes, I am up on a soap box) Know your heart and know when it is in your writing. If you write with heart, honesty, candor and sincerity you will hit the mark. At that point you will not need anyone to tell you anything, other than if they do or do not accept your manuscript. I like you guy. I'm not really sure why that is, but I'm fond of yah. Hang in there!
RDRKO
Rachel 8-5-2003 12:18
Pam 8-5-2003 11:06
pamela 8-5-2003 11:03
sasquatch 8-5-2003 10:57
Eddie the Second: I don't think you criticising was wrong. However I think you could have worded it a little different without being so harsh.
It is true that anybody who submits their work on this site is inviting criticism and praise. But they are also looking for encouragement I believe.
Taylor 8-5-2003 9:50
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lianchun yang talc 8-5-2003 3:51
I have not read what you had to say to Andrew. I have however been accused of being mean/unkind/thoughtless/inconsiderate/etc when I have given feedback to other writers. If you've ever read my posts you'll likely find that a little hard to believe (still it is true). Your most recent post reflects a thing that can happen on the NB. There can be a bit of a pack attack mentality. People get pretty fond of each other and this can lead to the odd white knight episodes. These being when we all leap up to defend each other and posture and blow about what we feel is right/wrong/kind/thoughtless/etc. I don't think that crit is bad. I think it is a good thing, so long as it is given without malice. I know that people don't always have the time to be all nice, nice, but unless you know a person very well, you ought not to comment if you don't have the time to be just that. You can give constructive crit, without malice, it just takes more time. Ahhh, the cry of all writers. "I need more time." Anyway, if yah can't give the gift of time, along with the thoughtful gift of reading and feedback, then you shouldn't bother. (I am not being sarcastic). I do wish you welcome.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-5-2003 0:54
Mean Eddie 8-4-2003 23:12
Yeah, that is a fact ;o) You'll soon have an e-mail from my blessed box to yours. Hum... That almost sounds naught (GrIn).
RDRKO
Rachel 8-4-2003 21:12
It would be a shame to confuse the two.
Teekay 8-4-2003 19:59
Well done on the novel!!!!
SCARY PAM: I don't think MEAN EDDIE's been back since his defense comment has he?
I think that pretty well counts for shutting up.
Felt a bit sorry for him actually
As for putting up his own work - he isn't obliged to, but those who do put their work up risk it being read by some people who might genuinely think it's complete crap.
As he stated, it was his opinion, and as such he was entitled to voice it, or have we started censoring all that freedom of speech sort of thing and are just going to sit in a big circle, sing Kumba-Ya and tell each other nice things that won't rub the wrong way.
How dull!
ANDREW: I personally found your writing style confident and flowing. You obviously know how to use words, and have been writing for a while.
Am going to go and put this in it's correct place now before the lynch mob get me too.
Listed today the latest medical tribunal results in the most debilitating mental disorders:
obsessive compulsive disorder.
schizophrenia.
multiple personality disorder.
sociopathy.
psychopathy.
writerism.
Going to make a coffee.
Teekay 8-4-2003 18:25
Good to read that you are truckin on :o) You’ll get to start a new project soon enough, and then you’ll be missing this sweet child of yours. Mark my words ;o) This I know.
Pamela,
So, Pam were on a rant, were she? You know, I’ve been a giver for a long time. I’ve been working on not being so much of a giver. I think that there are times when giver types create half of their issues. Know what I mean? Not that there is anything wrong with being a giver, and in truth I feel like a shit heel when I self focus. Yeah, I’ve got issues ;o) The movie you mention sounds cool. It is neat that you are thinking about the whole plot/character thing. It isn’t as hard as you think to write that way. It’s just getting used to doing something different. Then again, I don’t know how well I’m doing at it and don’t plan to share my most recent efforts till they have some level of polish to them (grins).
Howard,
You are a total sweet heart.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-4-2003 15:01
It's been awhile, but I'm still truckin'.
I'm almost through with the original revision suggestions from my editor and it wasn't bad. Still, it's like someone taking your baby and telling you that the legs are too long, and the arms are too short. Hopefully the publisher can get it out around the first of the year. I'm getting tired of this one, and am ready to start the next!
I'm eagerly awaiting word on the progress of everyone's novels! You all work so hard, and it's important to feel good about what you do.
I'll try to jump in a little more now that I can see that proverbial tunnel light. I actually do have opinions on things! ;-)
Take care, and have a great day!
Sunny
Sunny 8-4-2003 12:19
pamela 8-4-2003 12:16
JERRY, pamela forgot to mention that those "Recording Industry whatever the hell their name is" are organizations to protect the rights of writers and others from having their work pirated (stolen) without proper remuneration. BMI and ASCAP (no, not a Greek diaphragm) collect and distritute royalties due to songwriters, and I'm sure there are similar agencies for movies. Pirating is a multi-million dollar industry and there has been much discussion of the copyright infringement running rampant on the net. That poor old grandfather was probably fined so much because he was redistributing the products. Enjoy your free movies.
And I have something to say about the superior attitude of those who claim they don't care about being published or making money. Safe as houses, isn't it? If you never submit anything, you never have to worry about being rejected or finding out if you're any good or not. It takes guts to send your work to an agent or publisher and I admire anyone who does it, whatever the result. And I'll buy it that someone might write poetry or amusing little stories for family and friends but no one is going to go to all the time and effort to write a novel without some hope of having it published, and anyone who claims otherwise is full of gr**p.
And people who want comments on their work without ever returning the favor are just takers, but not givers. Howard is unfailing in his kindness and helpful suggestions, yet the response to his own request for feedback was nothing short of pitiful. Some people need to get their heads out of their (what's the right word, Sasquatch?) and show some common consideration for those around them.
Pam 8-4-2003 11:58
Sasquatch,
It is so good to see you again. I've missed your posts. I don't think you are anything other than what you say you are (hugs). I don't think that it matters if the words on the page lay hold to the physical form of a cat, dog, yeti, alien or monster. I'm easy with it. It's the voice, thoughts and intent behind the words that matter.
Pamela,
You are most welcome for and to the Ben discript that I gave ;o)
Ben,
Yeah, I am a doll, ain't I. Or am I an old boot??? (grin/wink/snort).
Mary,
I recently wrote to Pamela to give her some feedback on a piece that she wrote. Turns out that I was feeding back on a piece that you wrote. Talk about feeling a little thick in the head (grins). I will forward my comments and questons on to yah.
Pamela,
I've printed off your text from the WB and plan to get back to you on it.
As SKS would have said...
Live well and be well.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-4-2003 11:58
Teekay, that IS encouraging that your novel is holding your daughter's interest: tough audience. Pam is a Libra too and so won't be too terribly nasty but she'll tell people to get over themselves, call Eddie L. Mean Eddie and tell him to put up or shut up.
Jerry, when people ask for feedback, they just want another opinion, not necessarily professional-quality editing or help with their work. I enlist my friends who actually read on a regular basis to check out my stuff and let me know if anything is unclear, boring or draggy, etc. I value their opinions as readers who can let me know if the story gets and holds their attention.
Rhoda, nice to hear from you up there in the land of the big lakes, hope you are having fun. Well put on the difference between critiquing and trashing, although I think Mean Eddie is old enough to know better and that is why he hid behind a pseudonym.
pamela 8-4-2003 11:16
Mary again 8-4-2003 9:58
This is a drive-by posting!
Shortie theme for this week:
Time Warp. If you usually write pieces set in the 17th century, then write something futuristic. And vice versa. If you try to stick to current times, then you could go either way. Good luck stepping out of your comfort zone.
Write-on!
Mary 8-4-2003 9:51
Jack Beslanwitch 8-4-2003 3:49
Thanks for the hope's I have the exact same hopes, as does the wife since next week we're slatted for another family camping and celebration of our, what is it thirty-forth wedding anniversary. We have celebrate our anniversary by camping for many years and I would hate to end that tradition this year. Well there was one anniversary, our first that we celebrated long (read very long) distance since I was in Oakland California preparing to fly to Vietnam, and called collect from the air base where I waited to board the 707 that flew us away from "the world". Then there was our second, which I again called VERY long distance from the switchboard or our unit (being in commo has it's benefits, we whistled down the ringers all the way through several board to Saigon Overseas, then through San Francisco and on to home.) (I had to extend my tour in Vietnam to be able to fly home when our son was born so served an additional two months there, and an additional 11 months in service just to get the damn leave, but it was worth it.)
It's a hot and dry day here again too. The radar shows some showers heading this way but the weatherman said the rain would probably evaporate long before it hit the ground. I sure hope he's wrong.
Can someone explain this to me. When we lived in New Rockford ND we had this nice little house and in the kitchen the cupboard were painted brown and white. All while we lived there my wife constantly complained that she wanted to strip that paint off and allow the wood to show through.
SO when I looked for a house here (the wife had to stay back and work) one of the things I put on my MUST HAVE list were unpainted wood finished cupboards. This house had very nice ones until today when the wife and daughter painted them blue and white!
Maybe it's an estrogen thing or something I don't know but it seems one just can't satisfy a woman's wishes when it comes to her kitchen.
Jerry 8-4-2003 0:38
Sorry SASQUATCH -- I guess I just let the heat get to me.
It's been beastly hot today, then rained a little. Bambi has been raiding my garden, and munching on my cucumber plants. I like pickles better than venison spedies, but I'll settle for the spedies if I have to.
howard 8-3-2003 22:50
Sounds like a postcard, doesn't it?
EDDIE L.,
I appreciate your opinion and your willingness to express it; however, I think you wasted your time. How is all that going to help ANDREW or anyone else? There was nothing instructive about it. As for stealing plots, there are only a handful that have been around since the beginning of fiction.
I have to conclude by reading your post that you are quite young in years, because you really do not seem to have a clue as to why people have a problem with your feed-back. You did not criticize, you trashed ANDREW's work. There is a big difference.
Speaking of swamps, they are horrible. We live in one, really. We live in a swamp on top of about four feet of fill, but when God made this little piece of property on which my house sits, He made it a swamp, and to swamp it will someday return. I just hope we still have insurance when it happens.
I had the privledge of hiking through Barataria Swamp last summer. It is a National Monument and has about two miles of boardwalk trail. It was really boring and unpleasant, because it was so humid and monotonous. People get lost in swamps because they are so monotonous. I love Louisiana with its interesting people, history and culture, but I really look forward to the day when I am above sea level again and on solid ground. The continential shelf does not even begin until just north of Lake Ponchetrain. I live on fill created by the Mississippi River. Now that the Mississippi River is no longer allowed to flood, there is no more silt being laid down, and Southern Louisiana is disappearing at an alarming rate.
Rhoda 8-3-2003 20:41
BEN: HI!!!!! (waving madly from the back of the room.)
PAMELA: You're very welcome :-)
About my story - I found this to be quite inspiring:
Last night I was lying in bed reading, when my eldest daughter came in and asked me to read her some more chapters.
She says the old people make her claustrophobic, but at the end of every chapter (so far anyway) she wants me to continue with the next.
I'm taking this as a good sign.
PAM: Welcome.
Looking forward to seeing some really nasty stuff from you. Something to get the pulse beating and the brain fired up.
HOWARD: Umm, I don't quite know how to say this, but...well... I hope you don't get to thinking you're smarter than SASQY.
And please, don't ever infer that he makes bigoted comments ever again, please.
SASQY: Forgive him. Sometimes he runs away with himself.
:-D
Going.........
Teekay 8-3-2003 18:21
But Howard, have you ever stepped in a pile of literary-device gr***? (Oh, gosh, that's a whole new subject!)
Teekay, forgot to thank you for comment on my (and others') shorties. I've decided (or maybe it's Pam) not to comment on writing by those who don't take the time or show the courtesy to do the same for other members.
Ben, I'll check out that site, thanks. It didn't show up as a link, I just switched to Netzero from MSN and was unable to connect to something else, too. It said to let Jack know about it, so hopefully he'll see this, don't know if the problem is the new ISP, my computer or me (probably the latter).
Jerry, hope the back pain is just a temporary setback (no pun intended) and you can soon return to your newfound freedom. You're welcome to some of our rain, we're being inundated this year.
pamela 8-3-2003 14:36
Besides, a pseudonym can be a name for anything -- even a yeti! And like malaphors, pseudonyms are mere literary devices used to meed a specific purpose in writing or communications.
howard 8-3-2003 10:21
Thanks Rachel, you're a doll.
As for the THREE DAY NOVEL contest, I was thinking about reworking a story I'd written some time ago, and just didn't know where to go with it anymore. I figure, with another POV, maybe it'll work out...or maybe not. But the kids aren't in school until after the weekend. I need them to understand that I need my space, man. Last year when I tried it, I screwed up big time by opening a page up three days before just to get it ready. But I forgot to save it properly. A transformer blew up down the road, and we lost our power for about an hour. I lost fifteen pages, and had to start over again. I thought about giving it up for a moment, but decided the second rewrite would be better, no matter what. I think I finished printing the last page out at about 11:30 the last night. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. I just didn't have enough prep time with it. With this one, I'm looking at framing a story within another one...reminiscent nostalgia through the eyes of an old man, or something like that.
If you wanna check it out: bluelakebooks.com/3day/sponsors.html
It's a challenge I gave myself for the first time last year, just for the helluvit--but since it took me so long to enter it the first time, wanting to try it a second time is building up inside of me. So yeah, I'm thinkin' I'll be able to come up with somethin'. Take a look at it, take a stab at it...
ben 8-3-2003 4:28
Couple of days ago I complained that I hadn't been reading, well that has changed. Yesterday I had a bit of back pain, took it easy and expected it to be all better in the AM. Well when I got up I felt great till my feet hit the floor, and the damn back pain was back in spades. Spent the day in my recliner with the heat pad on as well as the TENS unit and popping little white pills the Doc gave me should this happen again.Probably just a muscle spasm. At any rate I finished the Gordon Kahl book then took a reading break and watched Harry Potter's first movie, it'd been awhile since I went to that movie and watching it from my recliner on my computer monitor was real neat, I saw many things I missed in the original viewing.
Got a sad Email from the Other Jerry Ericsson, he lost his wife to heart attack a couple of days ago. No hint of problem, just bang, she was hospitalized and underwent an unsuccessful triple bypass, then died a few days later. Makes one think....
The wife and daughter spent the day scrubbing then painting our kitchen, looks much better now but the smell is overwhelming.
Jerry 8-3-2003 0:31
Teekay, congrats on progress with novel and for having the guts to send it out there into the world.
Rachel, thanks for description of gentle Ben bear. Hi, Ben, nice to see you back from your vacation. That three day novel thing sounds fun, do you have an idea mapped out? Will the kids be back in school by then? Does the wife have her own tool kit?
And about an hour after the fat psychic ate beans, there was a large medium smell....
pamela 8-2-2003 23:38
I can vouch for Ben being a nice guy. He looks like a teddy bear or something. Not the mean type at all. Had a few chats with him on the phone, listened to the guy interact in a public setting, and gotta say, he isn't the mean type. The teddy bear thing isn't to say that he is a frump or fat, or anything like that. He is tall, slenderish build, nice looking, sunglass wearin, big smilin kinda guy. He doesn't strike me as the sort who would bother to hide behind a false name, or, if he did, he would let you know who it was. The name would only be to accent the point being made, certainly not to hide his identity. Least that is my take on it.
RDRKO
Rachel 8-2-2003 18:56
sasquatch 8-2-2003 17:54
sasquatch 8-2-2003 16:54
I see some new faces and a lot of old faces! What a hectic time since I last typed! I got this metal thing in my mouth that's supposed to spread apart my mouth. I'm going to have oral surgery in about 5-6 days and about two weeks after that, I'm getting braces on. (Shudder) Well, it'll all be over in about, 2-3 years. So how are the rest of you? I hope that writing has been successful for all of you. I've written more poems (big surprise there) and I've been working on my novel (or is it a novelet). One way or another that's growing satisfactorly. We've had rain for about five days in a row, including flash floods all over the area. Well my parents are making me get off line so, gotta go, I'm going to beg them to go on tomorrow.
Till Niagara Falls!
Elaine 8-2-2003 16:47
I do know that the local ranchers have noticed a nice increase in the price they get at the sales barns since the ban on import of Canadian beef has been imposed.
You may not be aware of it, but our former governor put a ban on the transport of Canadian grain and livestock across South Dakota a couple of years ago, at the urging of our local farmers and ranchers. It was a very popular ban, cheered on by nearly everyone in the State. He actually had Highway Patrolmen stationed at strategic points who ordered such transportation to turn around and find a way South other then on the Highways that cross our farm and ranch lands.
Alas that governor has fallen victim to the term limit laws here and has left the State House finding a new home in the U.S. House of Representatives in D.C. Where as a freshman congressman, he has worked wonders for South Dakota, despite the shortcomings of our Senator (LAST TERM!!!) Dashall who stopped representing the desires of his constituents and became the ultimate liberal laky in the Senate, and is an embarrassment to the people of his home state. He showed his true colors as he went to Florida and followed ALGORE so closely that we in South Dakota often talked of the possession of his head deeply embedded in the former Vice President's Rectum.
Jerry 8-2-2003 15:07
The fact that you, Jerry, think of me as being Mean Eddy, well, that hurts me...hurts me to the core, I say. I've thought about using a different name at times--I say that 'cause I can't spell psuedonym most times--but I just can't be bothered. I don't post stories here, because I write them on another computer--where the B drive still doesn't work and I don't seem to care--but I'm too lazy to spend endless hours copying it out on this one. So I just don't bother.
As for this Mean Eddy guy...amusing. As for everyone's reactions to him...he doesn't bother me. Criticize me, or my work, I don't care. I laugh it off, really. I'm happy go lucky and carefree. Jack's met me, and so has Rachel. The problem with me is that a black sense of humor doesn't transpose as well to page as it does in person. I laugh at life most times, but I do want people to like me...there's a contradiction for you. So I have a hard time criticizing anyone for anything. I can take most anything you dish out at me, but I don't like to throw it back at others as much as you might think. I'm what you call, a nice guy. I've just been busy this summer. Working and working on the house, doing all those little projects the wife has in mind...(but if she has them in mind, shouldn't she be doing them, I mean if they're her ideas? Oh, wait, don't go there...)
The kids are out of school, so they're on here more than I am. I'm trying to think of something for the THREE DAY NOVEL contest which is coming up this Labour Day weekend (September 1st), wondering if I should throw my hat in the ring and go for it, or sit it out. The thing about it is that you have to have everyone's co-operation in the house. It's three days of intense writing, forgetting about food and drinks, just stopping long enough to go to the bathroom, stretch, have a shower once in a while...it's work. But it's satisfying, and something everyone should try at least once in their lives. I think it'd be a great challenge for Randall and his Red Britches stories...string them all together and see what you can come up with.
So, now, I have a daughter's birthday to get ready for, a blow out Bar-b-que for all our friends, a room to paint, a closet to organize, flooring to do, and a wife who seems to be having different physical ailments at the most imoportune moments--can we say sciatica? And how the hell did that pop up? I'm the one who doesn't take care of himself, and she's the health nut...go figger.
Anyways, I gotta run. But thanks for thinking of me Jerry, and sorry to disappoint you. Oh yeah, and don't travel to far North, 'cause the country's burning up out here. All those forests burning down should be great for the Lumber Dispute the Yanks said no to. (Just had to throw that in there at you, even though I know most of you don't have a clue what it's about.)
ANd should I check this for spelling? Naww...
ben 8-2-2003 12:31
For information, if you are interested that is, you can either visit www.bluelotusclub.com/competition or send an email with your questions at bluelotus_contest@msn.com
Best regards
Andreas + elisa
andreas The Blue Lotus Club 8-2-2003 12:16
Another pseudonym? Jeez, you guys need to get over yourselves, who do you think you are, Evan Hunter? Is this one in Portugal?
Sasquatch, comforting to know you're around.
Even if you are an alter ego/pseudonym.
Heck, I think I'll use one too,
Pam 8-2-2003 3:19
the writer who lost the plot.
(I hope you guys have the lose your plot thing over there where the toilets flush the wrong way and you're a day behind.)
TAYLOR: I so agree with you on the music thing. Listening to Cat Stevens just makes me want to write write write, but about what is poignant and elusive and I haven't caught hold of it yet.
I can't listen to music while I write though. Not even to have it playing in the background, it distracts the flow.
When there is a 'flow' that is.
I'm up to typing out chapter 15. When I think on my story it sounds terribly peurile.
Has anybody watched the movie 'the truth about cats and dogs'?
Well, it's a bit like if you had to explain the plot of that to someone in words, it just sounds sooo dumb.
But reading through it again, which I have been doing in order to get it on the computer, there's a slight bit of hope for it.
Now that I have actually gotten it together enough to make some progress (?) with it I'm feeling much lighter - it's a wonderful feeling.
Who would have thought unfinished business could weigh so heavily.
MEAN EDDIE: I didn't think you were terribly mean. Gosh, I've had heaps worse than that said to me, I guess I'm of the school; what doesn't kill you will make you stronger, and everyone's entitled to their own opinion etc. I do balk and your not having the courage to use your own name though.
Going......
Teekay 8-1-2003 18:58
A small medium at large
Mark 8-1-2003 17:48
sasquatch 8-1-2003 15:11
The Old Man?
Is that really you?
Who are you anyway. Is it just the A E who has been away?
Yes, that has to be it! All this talk of psu.... pseu... ALTER EGO's has had a funny effect around here.
Here pussy pussy..........
P Cushing.........
Any more?
Later
Ed
Nice Eddie 8-1-2003 15:00
pamela 8-1-2003 11:21
T.O.M. (pseudonym) 8-1-2003 10:47
Did you hear about the unpredictable seamstress who was guilty of mayhem?
howard 8-1-2003 10:30
For those who might have seen the movie, "Shine" I heard that David Heathcott (or however you spell it) will be playing in Country West Australia.
I'm going to hopefully go and see him play if he plays in Kalgoorlie.
I find it funny how certain music can open the creative mind to different ideas. Well just thought I would go see him if possible. Should be an interesting experience.
Taylor 8-1-2003 2:25
For those who might have seen the movie, "Shine" I heard that David Heathcott (or however you spell it) will be playing in Country West Australia.
I'm going to hopefully go and see him play if he plays in Kalgoorlie.
I find it funny how certain music can open the creative mind to different ideas. Well just thought I would go see him if possible. Should be an interesting experience.
Taylor 8-1-2003 2:25
I broke down and turned on CNN a couple of days ago, you see I was putting a VERY old TV card in an old pentium computer and tried it out, we get CNN on channel 2 which, of course is the first place the old TV card tuned in. At any rate they were interviewing this 56 year old grandfather who had been caught using Kazaa to exchange music file on the internet. The Recording Industry what ever the hell their name is sued the poor guy for a the sum of 10 grand per file, he had over three hundred files, bringing his total to around 43 million bucks.
I went to my computer and un-installed Kazaa.
I will miss the wonder of turning on my monitor every morning and seeing which movie I managed to snag overnight, but I guess I have collected enough to watch at any rate. I have an old motherboard that I plan on installing under a bed on the camper, out of the way and all so I can put an old external SCSI cd player, and hook the video card to a little 13 inch TV we have in the camper so I can watch my movies while we're camping.
The wife isn't all that hep about the whole idea but there are times when I am forced to lay down, even while camping and having a good movie to watch will cut down on the boredom of the whole affair.
We will be leaving on the 10th for Fort Abraham Lincoln near Bismarck where we will be camping till after our thirty fourth wedding anniversary. Our kids will be joining us, as will my sister, her boys and their families, my other sister and her daughter, and mom. Well mom will only be up there for an afternoon, she isn't much on camping even if we are willing to play pinochle with her while she's there. She lives and breaths cards, and plays either whist or pinochle every day, or nearly every day if she can find others to play with. She belongs to the Senior Citizens club and has been urging us to join, not my idea of fun but we may go for a day or so just to see what goes on there. Guess we're both over 50 now, and that's the bottom age for joining, yet somehow I don't see myself, or the wife for that matter as a senior citizen.
As far as writing goes, I write for my friends, most of who are right here on the notebook. I guess I have dreamed from time to time of writing the great American Novel, and making enough money to buy maybe a new camper or something like that, but I know that the chances of that happening are slim, to none, especially since I haven't been writing since the temperatures have risen over thirty degrees. It's just so nice to be able to get out and about without a lot of pain, that I haven't sat down to the keyboard and written. In fact I haven't even been reading as much as I like to, I have Litter's book about half done, and I am rereading Bitter Harvest (the Gordon Kahl Story), as well as several books on computer rehab and such, but even those are taking way to long to read, I should have been done with Litter's book long ago, as well as Bitter Harvest, yet I simply don't sit down and finish either of them, maybe I'll get back to normal soon, I sure do hope so, but I am enjoying LIFE again.
Maybe I don't want to get back to normal, or for that matter, maybe I've forgotten exactly what normal is.
They buried the hero who died in Iraq today in Dickenson, the press was there, as they have been since the family heard of his death. I still think they are intruding on the families grief, I know I'd be damn pissed if it happened to my son and the press were that sticky over the whole thing.
The news reports that the soldiers in Iraq are complaining about not being able to come home. In Vietnam the tour of duty was one year. It's not been one year since the war in Iraq began. Well I guess we bitched about not being able to go home sooner, but I doubt the press told anyone about it. I am happy that the soldiers are getting the recognition that they are, yet somehow I keep thinking of what happened when we were at war in Vietnam....
Jerry 7-31-2003 21:54
Don't hide behind the name of another, such acts are indeed acts of a coward who would criticize others yet not disclose his true name so one can compare his writing to that which he criticizes.
Jerry 7-31-2003 20:54
HAHAHAHAHHA just read your bit about HOWARD'S swamp rules - well bring it on, foxy!! Guess we'll take the good with the not-so-good. We can use it for comparison effect.
Read this inspiring thing from an inspirational email thingy I subscribe to and it inspired me enough to stop stuffing around and just GET ON WITH IT.
Soooooo, hopefully soon I can kiss my baby bye bye and send it out into the wide ol' world.
This must be what an elephant's pregnancy feels like, but I'm betting their birthing pains are far easier.
Teekay 7-31-2003 18:34
Comments like "Nice shorty!" and "I saw your new article on the WB" would be okay, as they tend to steer people over there to see the new stuff.
howard 7-31-2003 15:01
pamela 7-31-2003 14:40
Why I write? I always tell people, I write because I enjoy it. And my dream is to one day be published. If I make any money of it, that's an added extra. But that's not why I want to do it.
Taylor 7-31-2003 12:34
I have entered, "The Internal Reunion" for shorty night. I welcome criticisms but must say this. I chose this type of reunion for two reasons:
1: The muse and I agreed on this
2: Thought people would be writing about family reunions, school reunions or War Veterens Reunions. So I wanted to write one that was different.
Well I hope you enjoy the glimpse. I also want to say this to... I'm not use to writing short stories anymore, any advice on this would be most welcomed.
Eddie Fench:(Is that right)I would like to comment on your workbook story... I did find the passage a little choppy and hard to fluently read.
Taylor 7-31-2003 12:31
If you are one of our regulars, then you should know what a sensitive thing criticism can be, and you should also know that your opinion carries just as much weight as any of the rest of us.
There are some thin skins here occasionally, but we tend to get over it.
And while you had some valid points, they might have been stated a bit more tactfully.
Email me if you disagree and we can talk about it -- I won't bite! I promise!
howard 7-31-2003 12:02
Jack and Randall, of course I have an irresistable urge to write, why would anyone choose it as a money-making venture otherwise? I have been writing since I was a child, stories and a play performed by my 4th-grade class, none of which were saved by my self-centered parents, unfortunately, I'd be interested in reading them now. Anyway, I'll make a confession about why I'm trying to make this book as commercial as possible. Yes, I would like to live comfortably but modestly and not have to worry about the bills but my real dream is to start a foundation for kids. I would start with providing housing for families living on the streets or in their cars and I have ideas about turning old schools into group homes for children. I once wrote a long story, then met a writer who introduced me to his agent, who sent the story to Bantam Books, who bought it right off. My editor told me I was a natural writer and it was a thrill to have discovered me. These events make me think that I am fortunate enough to have been given a gift or ability and I feel that I should use that talent to help other people. It's a spiritual thing with me, I feel driven to do it and I think about babies being born now who may be helped by my foundation in a few years. Okay, call me hokey, but that's my dream.
I'd also like to say that I think the idea of writing something one hopes to sell has gotten a bad rap here lately. Sure it's great to be overpowered by the muse and write just for fun, and I don't think publication has anything to do with quality, in fact, there is probably more good writing unpublished than published. But I don't think it is a bad thing to write for publication and attempt to make the move from amateur (someone who does something for the love of it) to professional. If writing is something you love anyway, why not try to make some money from it? And what's wrong with wanting to have your work read by more than a few people? How do you think those comments about commercialism make Sunny feel (I hope I'm correct that it's she who writes how-to books)? Please don't put us down for selling our work just because you don't want to.
Mary, thanks for taking the time to comment on my shorty. "Vituperative" does sound snakey, doesn't it?
Howard, thanks for funny titles, you always brighten up my day.
Mel, your muse's keening has awakened my own and I've oiled her rusty vocal chords with honey so she now whispers in my ear......
pamela 7-31-2003 12:02
Enough is enough people. When I wrote that post, it was simply to give my opinion on someone's work. If that person and others are going to whine about it because I was telling the truth, IN MY OPINION, then that is truly pathetic. Yes, I know the entire plot is not known, but from what I have seen, it appears like it was STOLEN from other movies, TV shows, etc. The character development is weak. He gives basic descriptions only, i.e. "He had Dark hair and was tall" kind of thing. That doesn't tell me much, now does it? As for how I read it on the workbook, well, that is apparent, isn't it? I simply use this name because I didn't want people trashing me the way they have for stating my opinion on his work. I think it is constructive criticism because if he is going to take every negative comment about his work to heart, then he is in the wrong business. There is always going to be someone who doesn't like what you've written. I happen to state this and I'm talked about like I just said dirty words in church or said an off colour joke. Give me a break.
Eddie L.
EDDIE L. 7-31-2003 11:28
Here's the original list:
Herman's Hermits - "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Walker"
The Bee Gees - "How Can You Mend A Broken Hip"
The Temptations - "Papa's Got A Kidney Stone"
Ringo Starr - "I Get By With A Little Help From Depends"
Marvin Gaye - "I Heard It Through The Grape Nuts"
Procol Harem - "A Whiter Shade Of Hair"
Johnny Nash - "I Can't See Clearly Now"
Leo Sayer - "You Make Me Feel Like Napping"
ABBA - "Denture Queen"
Paul Simon - "Fifty Ways To Lose Your Liver"
Roberta Flack - The First Time I Ever Forgot Your Face"
Commodores - "Once, Twice, Three Times To The Bathroom"
Rolling Stones - "You Can't Always Pee When You Want"
Bobby Darin - "Splish, Splash, I Was Havin' A Flash
---
then I added a few -- okay more than a few -- and here's a few of those. Some of you "mouldy oldies" may relate...
Brenda Lee -- "I'm Senile, So Senile"
Gogi Grant -- "The Y Ward Wind"
The Turtles -- "So Gimpy Together"
Connie Frances -- "Where Are the Boys?"
Frank Sinatra "I Did It Finally"
Lonnie Donnegan "Do Your Dentures Lose Their Tightness On The Bedstand Overnight?"
Peter, Paul and Mary -- "Puff the Magic O2 Tank"
Tony Bennett -- "I Left My Teeth In San Francisco"
Perry Como -- "Find a Wheel, and Put It On My Chair"
Dean Martin -- "When The Moon Hits Your Eye Like A Big Pizza Pie, Past My Bedtime"
Booker T and the MGs - "Green Onions Give Me Gas"
Brook Benton - "It's Just A Matter Of Time"
Ben E King - "Stand By Me ('cause he's got gas)"
Ray Price - "Ahab the Arab (is my new cardiologist)"
Brenda Lee - "I'm Sorry, So Sorry, (but I can't find your pulse)"
The Ventures - "Walk, Can't Run"
Helen Reddy - "I Am Still Woman"
Duke Ellington -- "Take The 'A' Gurney"
Ray Charles - "It's Cryin' Time Again, You're Gonna Move Me"
The Platters - "Only Soup"
Fats Domino - "I Found My Thrill, Just After My Pill"
there's more... too many more!
But it gets the thinker going
howard 7-31-2003 9:10
Hey, hey, hey! Some great things happened on April 1st, like my birthday. :-) I'm honored to share the day with the Writer's Notebook!!!
TEEKAY, thanks but I'm more concerned with that great blank gap you offered here after you turned your thoughts to your own novel - how bad can it be? You must be using a S-L-O-W pen like I've got. You have to squeeze 'em extra tight to get anything out of them... Maybe we need to make a new trip to the NEW PEN store...
HOWARD, thanks for kind words but it was your "swamp" that inspired me. :-) so, thank YOU! Now how about a poem from you?
PAMELA, gawrsh! (Face red) I've never been called a foxfire before! Just be prepared for the rest of what comes with it, according to HOWARD's swamp rules. ;-]
ALL: Write some GREAT stuff today and report back here - I need more inspiration to further polish my new-and-improved novel almost-reborn.
Mel 7-31-2003 8:10
Well said, indeed. The barriers between making a living as a paid writer and being one who is driven by his or her muse and the desperate need to apply words to paper or screen is a sometimes dautning one, but remember that success on a personal level as a writer is not really measured in the paycheck, but instead perhaps in one part luck, perseverence beyond sanity, the mad joy of the enterprise itself and the fire and zeal that the writing engenders in each of us. In the end, if all there is is a desire to be a financially successful writer, you miss the point. At the very least, many many other enterprises hold greater promise for those kinds of rewards. The words are the meaning in and of themself much as the journey is more the answer than the destination. Yes, we aspire to be published and succesful authors, but first and foremost are the joy we take in the words, the characters that walk stealthily up from behind virtually and bludgeon us over the head with their need to have their say, the excitement that comes of a new idea and the exploration of that idea and so much more that I cannot even articulate. It is for this and so much more than I began the Notebook seven years and four months ago. My one regret is that I started it on April 1st and not the 2nd :-) The highs, lows and epiphanies that have come and gone in those seven years have more than justified the process of beginning it. Take care everyone.
Jack Beslanwitch 7-31-2003 4:39
Evening all...
Andrew....on the mean Eddie comments. You only have to please one person with your writing ...and that is you! For my two cents writing is the greatest joy, publication is secondary. But that is just me. We are all different. And I heard once that you can count on the fingers of both hands successful writers who make a living writing. (GRIN) So the question is...Should you quit your day job? Let me answer that this way. Stephen King once answered a media type on a radio interview..."I have been writing for 20 years. Doing anything that long leads to proficiency." Mr. King should know. (The quotation may not be exact... so Stephen excuse me.)
Andrew, you, my friend, write for you. If you like it...that is all that counts. Detractors who comment but are unable to furnish their work for public viewing should heed a bit of bathroom graffiti. "SHORT HORNS, STEP UP!"
Viv once commented to me that she would recgonize my writing style if one of her Japanese students used one of my stories. And that is right on. We all have a style of writing that goes beyond a word. One may read the line and between the lines... So mean Eddie look out... Someone is no doubt studying your post. And I'll tell you one thing for sure, fooling Howard or Mark is darn hard to do!!!
Randall
Randall 7-30-2003 21:21
LOL
Sounds 'snakey', doesn't it??
Mary 7-30-2003 16:45
It is a shame that someone had to bash on Andrew in such a cowardly manner.
Andrew: Follow your dreams or you will lose them.
Mary 7-30-2003 16:41
Mark, yes, after reading the memberlist, I realized that Mean Eddie must be one of us. That is disturbing and sad. Alter egos like Jon and Sasquatch are fun but but making up a name to make vituperative comments is cowardly. He (or perhaps she) must not be much of a writer himself if he couldn't even come up with a name that didn't already belong to a member.
Eddie French, I don't think Mark meant he cared about every misspelled word, grammar slip or typo, but was referring to regular misuse of proper english. If I was mixing up "their" and "there" or "your" (possesive pronoun) and "you're" (contraction of "you are"), I would like someone to let me know. But in general, I think this forum is more like conversation and we don't have to be perfect, like sometimes we may not be when talking :).
pamela 7-30-2003 11:48
Thanks Mark for giving us back the notebook we so dearly missed. The Poll thing could be fun, I tried it out with this post, feel free to comment on that too should the urge strike you.
Jerry 7-30-2003 11:41
Wow...I feel so abashed now about that spelling mistake in my post about my CRITICISM of Andrews Work on the workbook!
Sheeesh
later
Nice Eddie
Eddie French 7-30-2003 10:55
Back to pseudonyms ... I don't remember the name I used, but I focused on a couple of regulars here who have systematic errors; i.e., their spelling and grammar problems follow a system and can generally be predicted. That being the case, my perfectionist-self flared up and said, "If you are going to call yourself a writer then learn these predictable things and fix them. Make a professional presentation."
However, the Notebook is not usually a place for finished work and not a place for feedback. In about a week I 'fessed up to being the sniper. I hope Mean Eddie also comes clean.
ANDREW and MEAN EDDIE -- The place for Workbook feedback is the Workbook. I wanted to establish a policy for myself of 'No Comments.' I will maintain the policy of "All posts welcome; all discussion, too."
Except for HOWARD. He's a Workbook Administrator. I can say anything I want about his work and he can go in and edit all my comments.
Mark 7-30-2003 10:04
Mark 7-30-2003 9:12
Andrew 7-30-2003 6:44
My pacifist is faring well... His motto has become: Keep yourself busy and you don't tend to worry about the dangers.
However, when he came home that's when he started to think about all he's done over there.
Taylor 7-30-2003 3:35
pamela 7-30-2003 2:46
Mel! You are the foxfire! I'm not a big poetry fan but you gave me goosebumps, you and your muse ROCK!
Eddie French, my apologies, I now notice that the Mean Eddie (as opposed to Nice Eddie, you) has a different last initial.
To Mean Eddie: Who the hell are you and how about showing us a sample of your own writing? Surely you must be published since you Know It All. Come on, man, put up or shut up!
Howard, some erudite observations there. How to write something of quality in a low-quality world? I have known some brilliant songwriters who never made it big and some who have copied them and did. Sad. I do think we can inject some meaningful thinking into the framework of entertaining fiction. My thriller has some supernatural aspects and I will have characters discussing spiritual topics and will hopefully get the reader to think about these things too. Not necessarily agree with me, but at least think.
Taylor, I like to put my characters into uncommon situations too, often the poor things don't fare too well!
Rachel, thanks for including the Americo quote. I see what you are trying to do with your work and can also see it working. I think we're getting into semantics regarding what "formula" is. I think that some romance and mystery novels follow a pretty set formula with fairly interchangeable characters and plots. But I don't think that having a plot and characters per se is formula writing, I think those are basic fundamentals of fiction, and that they certainly do not preclude the use of magic and wonder.
pamela 7-30-2003 2:35
Also in writing I enjoy throwing characters into awkward situations such as having a devoted husband and father get into a situation where he has to concentrate on something that he considers far greater.
A kind of pacifist whos heart leads him into combat. A man with alot of friends has to go somewhere where he doesn't know anybody and tries to make a new circle of friends.
Taylor 7-30-2003 0:09
I'm not worried in the least :o) I think that this is an interesting topic. I think that giving the public what they want is art and that answering an internal challenge is also art. I don't feel that one is greater or lesser than the other. We all write for different reasons. If the writing that we do, meets our drive as a writer, then that is what it should have done, no more, no less. There are those who write for their bread and butter. Some of those people will never get to write a work of "art" Some of those people will write up tech reports, or academic papers, but I suppose that is, in its own way, an expression of art.
What I think is important, is not to be so taken up the formula writing, that you let something that could be magical slip through your finger tips and vanish.
I doubt that what I am writing will ever be a "great work of art" I however do intend to give it a whirl. I've got lots of "commercial" writing. For me this is having fun ;o) I love to play with words, to make them dance, see what I can do with sequence, punctuation, or a lack there of. If I can make each voice speak and move without the use of true character or plot, just have you know the voice on sight, as you would a friend. More of a physical visual connection, than a mental visual. What I've begun is going to take a whap of work and I'll need to re-construct, or de-construct some of what I've done. It could take years, but like I said, It's my idea of fun, sooooooo, I'm to it ;o)
Ciao for now.
RDRKO
PS - The quote you are looking for is: "I wonder why American writers concern themselves so much with characters and plot -- the traditional stuff. Aren't those elements nineteenth century things? Isn't contemporary literature about language, only about language? The Irish James Joyce never existed? I believe that a good book must be something new, something never seen before. And style is all there is to it. Most American novels are boring because they smell to old hat. They smell to business and craftmanship but not art."
It was followed up with some debate, to which Americo responded... "If you can't find fault with the classics, you will never be a classic yourself. The classics are for students, not for artists. As a teacher I may love the classics; as a writer I must not plagiarize them--their meathods, their themes, their ways. The classics are those venerable figures that managed to give order to a chaotic world. Today is a different world, a different chaos. It must be recreated with new words, organized in a different way. Which way? This is the only question a true writer must be concerned with. God rest you merry, gentlemen and lady."
Rachel 7-29-2003 23:42
Thanks!
howard 7-29-2003 21:38
WOW!
PAMELA: Oh, how nice, thanks.
About the writing thing
going..........
Teekay 7-29-2003 19:30
I did not critisize Andrews' work in such a crude manner.
Critisism should ALWAYS be constructive.
I did however, crit Andrews' work on the workbook, in a constructive manner.
Later,
Ed
Eddie French 7-29-2003 17:59
Amid the grievous strains
of Life as black as night,
I nailed my muse, by hand and foot,
in Agony's foul plight.
I racked her in the desert;
I whipped her bones till raw;
I stoned her with live coals, and then,
I cried for what she saw.
I looked through mirrored glass
And found her on my shoulder;
What should have been a twisted muse
was just me, getting older.
She feeds me with her blood,
her sweat, her tears, her spirit;
She coaxes me with sweet reveries,
My novel, brings me near it.
Drop
by drop,
I squeeze words
from my pen and
mold them together
to create silhouettes
of the story that is meant
to be
mine.
Make it shine...
And now, back to Howard's swamp...
Mel 7-29-2003 14:49
Form Follows Function (more alliteration)
and
Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder.
But remember that the beholder in many cases has devolved to a philosophy that demands "instant gratification" (funny how that somehow seems like an oxymoron when applied to sex) in everything we do, see, and experience.
Our kids have been raised (razed?) with the "Sesame Street syndrome" -- little bites of sound and action that are completed and over in a few seconds or a few minutes at most. This becomes a pattern, ingrained in our group psyche, and is enforced by the less-than-mediocre pap served up on the idiot-box/altar we know as TeeVee.
"The State" doesn't help at all, with its formed-and-processed curriculum (rather like Spam, no?) force-fed in the indoctrination centers we refer to as "schools," where our kids are learning less and less how to think, and more and more what to think.
Throw into that mix the various agendas in the marketplace today -- minimalism, post-modernism, environmentalism, pro-choice, pro-life, the various "rights" groups (homosexual, animal, etc), differing political stands, and that good old-fashioned "bottom line" that trumps them all.
Now try to write something meaningful in that environment!
Not that it cannot be done -- J.K. Rowling comes to mind recently -- but it's becoming exceedingly difficult to do so. And I can't look at today's literary supply and demand without recalling the law of entropy -- everything's running down.
Have you ever watched the still, calm surface of a swamp/bog/marshland? Not much feature there, except for the occasional gas bubble that breaks the surface, sometimes with an evil smell, sometimes with a rude noise. But sometimes that gas ignites and flashed and glows in the dark, and you have the fascinating effect called "foxfire" that attracts attention and stimulates imagination.
I guess the writing market can be like that, too.
howard 7-29-2003 14:22
Eddie, I don't think you're political (at least not here)either, hope your friends are okay in Bosnia. I disagree on Andrew's writing, though, the excerpts he has shown are so small we really haven't seen the whole plot or the entire characters, they may be much more fully developed. His action and dialogue are engaging enough, and I think we should keep in mind that some people (myself included) are trying to write commerical books, not necessarily the Great American (or wherever) Novel. Annnnd, unfortunately, mediocrotity sells. Not to say Andrew's writing (or mine) is mediocre, but when aiming for commerciality, one might follow certain formulas that appeal to the general masses, such as the use of plot, character development, action and dialogue. Rachel and I have been talking about that via email and she told me something Americo had said that I'd be interested in discussing here (I don't have it in front of me so I'm paraphrasing): that American writers depend too much on formulas like plot and dialogue and that no one does anything different. Well, I have to disagree with that statement somewhat because many great books written by people in all countries have certain common elements. Since the purpose of a fiction book is to entertain the reader, I see nothing wrong with providing what the reader wants. Most people want a main character they can identify with and for something to happen to him or her. Higher quality books may be more thought-provoking and educational but the readership will be smaller. Right now I'm tired of being poor and want to make some money; I thought of a good twist for a thriller and I'm deliberately aiming for a certain demographic (I'm just developing the FBI agent who comes to work with the locals and she is a strong, independent woman, like many readers are or wish they were, and possibly like the publisher considering the manuscript).
Rachel, please know that I'm not referring to your work, but asking the question in general in response to Americo's statement: should we write something a reader won't necessarily enjoy just for the sake of being different? Or in visual arts; paintings are meant so make one's surroundings more attractive, be something pleasant or stimulating to look at, but would you want something gross on your wall just to be different? Wallpaper with bleeding wounds, perhaps? At what point do artists sacrifice function (to entertain or enhance) for form (something boring or ugly just for the sake of being different)? Great fiction can impart wisdom within the stories of their protagonists, the trick is to engage the reader at the same time. I guess that's just my opinion as one who has read voraciously since I was a child (and I had some pretty bad things to escape from): that reading is meant to entertain, but I'm sure there are those who would disagree.
Anyway, Andrew, good luck on your submission..
Howard, great definition of reality.
Litter, I'm glad things are better with Catriona (that's a beautiful name).
And where's Mel? Has she finally caught up with her muse?
Teekay, you crazy Aussie, it's so good to have you back around!
pamela 7-29-2003 11:49
Had one of those moments? As a mother of an 8,7,3,2,and 1 year old, I feel your pain. My goal is to create, with my sisters in motherhood, a gift quality book that can be given to any mom and help her realize she’s not alone. We’re all constantly laughing (or crying) at our situations, but often have no other adult to share our stories with. Reading Misadventures of Moms (M.o.M.) will give moms an opportunity to reflect on the events of any day.
Re-live your funniest mom misadventure in descriptive and emotional words. As in, been there, felt that crazy!. Stories should be between 400 and 2,500 words in length. All stories must be true, but also hard to believe!
Misadventures of Moms chapter outline:
1. M.o.M. in the delivery room
2. M.o.M. with diapers
3. M.o.M. in the kitchen
4. M.o.M. during birthday parties
5. M.o.M. caring for sick kids
6. M.o.M. in stores
7. M.o.M. at holidays
8. M.o.M. in the laundry room
9. M.o.M in classrooms
Please email your submissions in the body of an email to:
Kerri.charette@comcast.net
Thanks ladies!
Kerri
Writers agree to allow Kerri Charette to use their work in an anthology after signing agreement form if their piece is selected for M.o.M. Of course contributors selected will get two copies of the book and bragging rights! Also, portion of any profit will be donated to Susan B. Komen Fund (I’ve done some work, but who am I to profit from my sisters’ writing?) FYI: I already have more than a few published authors on board, and just a few well-known parenting authors who are willing to review the work when complete! Yay! Deadline: Nov. 30, 2003
whatupmomma 7-29-2003 10:48
If your work on the Workbook is any indication of your talents, I find it quite incredible that anyone would want to publish such a thing. Your attention to detail leaves much to be desired, your characters are paper-thin and from what I've deduced about the plot, it seems to have been taken from several science fiction movies and spun into this final result. Myself, I would never publish such rubbish.
But that is just IMHO.
Eddie L.
Eddie 7-29-2003 8:33
But now he has joined George Burns, Milton Berle, Andy Kaufman and many other great entertainers... Too many to mention... It seems a few great entertainers are leaving us lately.
Here's a great Bob Hope tribute page if you want to view it:
http://www.justsaywow.com/pages/flash/bob_hope.cfm
Taylor 7-29-2003 6:04
Sure wish I was that young again, but then again, if I were, I'd missed all that I lived through, oh what the hell, SURE WISH I WAS THAT YOUNG AGAIN!
Jerry 7-29-2003 0:09
It's very quiet here.
Yesterday I was typing my longhanded version of the best seeling novel - HA! onto the computer and I just happened to glance at the date I did the first chapter and it is 2 years ago by the month.
2years!!!!
And to think I used to wonder how some people took 20 years to write a book.
going...........
Teekay 7-28-2003 18:20
Andrew 7-28-2003 17:03
Any type of reunion
Mary 7-28-2003 13:20
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
--Philip K. Dick
howard 7-28-2003 12:05
7-28-2003 5:04
You owe it to the reading world.
Teekay 7-27-2003 19:24
Teekay...that might be Patrick F. McManus. One of his books, a collection of short stories is, "THEY SHOOT CANOES DON'T THEY?"
Randall
Randall 7-27-2003 19:00
Hey!
Andre LS ... I wait further updates with pounding heart. But please use spell check and grammar check on additional updates. Makes the "Party" ... "Master not the Slave" appear as professional contenders, not dorky, immature ding-dongs...
Howard...Great joke! I'll have to try that some time. My wife and I were in a pawn shop recently. My wife called me over (away from the gun selections) to look at a large display of wedding bands. The counter person was glibly explaining what was what. I commented. "Darling, we've had three children and been together nearly 25 years. Why spoil that by getting married."
It can get awful cold in Texas on some July days.
Randall
Randall 7-27-2003 18:54
I'm not real sure, but I think I got the name from you and that's why I borrowed the tape in the first place.
Anyway, see if you can find out who published this guy, then send them a query letter on your 'Red' stories, because I reckon your stories are better than those anyway.
Going.........
Teekay. 7-27-2003 18:46
Went grocery shopping last night, and pulled my favorite trick. I head down the pet food aisle and stop at the cat food. If there's anyone nearby I'll pick up a can and call back to my wife "Which one had that great casserole recipe on it?" You should see some of the looks we get! Haven't had anyone offer to pay for our groceries yet, though.
:-})
howard 7-27-2003 13:08
howard 7-27-2003 13:04
howard 7-27-2003 9:48
Andre Le Storm 7-27-2003 4:02
Andre Le Storm 7-27-2003 4:01
Good evening all...
Howard ... sadly ... not likely on the book. Although publication of Heathers collection of short stories, which includes one of mine, might open a door. And that is what it takes, an open door. Well, maybe just a crack so I could slither in. I have posted numerous stories on the WN and have yet to hear a knock on my e-mail door. (Grin)
But I enjoy writing for you guys and hope at least a few chuckle at the nonsense. That in itself is a reward. I keep the tales on a disc for my kids if nothing else. Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd that is what matters to me. Passing along a little bit of me.
Something funny happeded at work this morning. Brownwood is having it's annual rodeo. About 8 AM a clown walked in the front door of NAPA. Orange hair, baggy britches, face paint... the works. Larin, 20 year old son of our manager TOOK OFF. He raced behind a display and warily peeked at the clown. The clown walked to him and the expression on his face was something to see. He thought some ex-girl friend was playing a joke on him! Turns out it was HIS MOTHER! I didn't know who it was till she said something. She works for a bank and was the clown on their float. Hysterical!
She then walked to the back where Larin's friend was working freight. From the expression on his face, I thought for sure he was going to break and run too! She put her arm around him and said, "How a little kiss sweetie." I've never seen two boys so at a loss for words!
Rodeo is great for most folks I guess. But it's way too hot outside for me. I have to work in the heat, so when home the AC is always close by...
Night all
Randall
Randall 7-26-2003 23:50
Jerry Guttenberg Project FPT stie 7-26-2003 23:20
1. A bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired.
2. What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway).
3. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
4. A backward poet writes inverse.
5. In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes.
6. She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
7. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
8. If you don't pay your exorcist you get repossessed.
9. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
10. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat minor.
11. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
12. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
13. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in linoleum Blownapart.
14. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
15. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
16. He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
17. Every calendar's days are numbered.
18. A lot of money is tainted. 'Taint yours and 'taint mine.
19. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
20. He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
21. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
22. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
23. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
24. When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
25. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.
26. When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye..
27. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
28. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
29. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
30. Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.
7-26-2003 21:10
www.writersdigest.com
...and welcome! Stop by and learn (and teach!) what makes us all tick! (as opposed to "tic" -- that nervous twitch that develops when we start thinking about submitting something to a publisher, then worsens three seconds after we hit send, or post the envelope, as you begin to wonder how many faux pas I didn't catch in the copy (they're rather like the piece of spinach you notice on your front teeth as you're looking in the mirror wondering why your date didn't seem to be interested in a good-night kiss, or why the interviewer at your last job application kept staring strangely at you just before he told you that he'd call you "in a few days" but you knew deep down that he said that to everyone, and he never would) and you have to resist the urge to run back out to the mailbox and rip open that envelope with the $2.80(US) postage just to make sure before the postman got there to pick it up, only to realize that he just had, and it was too late now, and you probably had left in one of those horrendous run-on sentences that every editor hates with a passion, and you can't possibly hope that she'll recognise it as a tupograficla error (which you've probably also left plenty of (not to mention ending with a preposition)), or even worse yet, they've changed the point of view in mid-sentence, so noone will know who's doing what to whom (assuming you have the correct usage of who and whom down pat) and who's just an innocent bystander, and the tic worsens...)
But anyway, welcome!
:-})
howard 7-26-2003 15:02
Teekay 7-26-2003 3:46
I have used an outdoor hole in the ground when I was a little wee one, but ours had nothing near as fancy as stalagmites, and I can't remember it being that full - it was a fair drop, and I've got to say thank goodness it's never gotten that cold any place I've been. :-D
You are soooo cute. I want some of your pills.
Teekay 7-26-2003 3:44
Jerry 7-26-2003 0:14
howard 7-26-2003 0:12
Isn't it fun to get old.
Jerry 7-26-2003 0:12
howard 7-26-2003 0:10
It's another blasted day of heat, it was so bad that I shaved off by beard, an unusual cooling action I know but it seems to make the heat a bit more bearable. We turned on the two window air conditioners today again, it only got up to 101 today but that's still damn hot, and the dew point was over 65, making things much worse. I went outside yesterday for a few moments when it was up to 106 and it was like walking into a blast furnace.
Trying to sell off some of my computer junk on EBAY again, need the room as my little back room workshop is getting so crowded that it's hard to get anything done.
TEEKAY - no the piles I was speaking of were those frozen piles of shit that poke you in the rear should you sag a bit through the hole, as children do on occasion when your bottom is a bit smaller then the hole. Like getting a prostate exam with an ice cicle. You know like you said the two by four was there to prevent.
Even after we moved to town we had to use the dang things, the first house we lived in was civilized, had all the facilities indoors, and we were very happy there, but the $45.00 per month rent was more then the folks could make, so Dad finally found a house for sale for twenty five hundred bucks north of the tracks, in North Dakota. He bought it with the down payment he received on the farm and we moved yet again to North Lemmon, where the running water of the city was forbidden to go, kept back by politics and the Milwaukee Road Rail Road, so it was back to shared bath water in the kitchen and an outdoor privy. The house he bought once had running water by using the water caught from the roof from rain runoff into a cistern, then pumped through the house by a self contained pump system and a cess pool, but the house had been empty so long that the cess pool had sealed itself and was unusable, so was the indoor plumbing since there was no place for the waste water to go, that and the fact that rats had fallen into the cistern and polluted the water.
Used to really anger us to have to use a chamber pot that sat right next to the toilet stool in the bathroom which was located in the unheated part of the house. One has to wonder who thought that one up.
Jerry 7-25-2003 22:40
TGIF!!!!!
Believe it or not friends. I dreamed 90% of this story last night.
THE JAPANESE AND TORNADO WATCH TOWER
By Randall Henderson
"That's old man Euwell Sturgis's daughter." Red said. "Had more money than Caesar's wife I expect."
"You know her?" I asked.
"Shore did. Was old man Sturgis's only daughter. Richer than nine feet up a bull's butt."
Red Britches, George Grayson Matthews (GGM-God God All Mighty!) and I were standing outside George's Auto Repair Emporium as a funeral slowly passed along the highway. We stood facing a late afternoon sun with our hats off in respect. Except Red who never wore a hat.
"I'm buying." George said, walking to an oil stained icebox. "Funerals give me the creeps."
Shortly afterward the three of us were settled in old metal lawn chairs that had been welded and rewelded to the point where they weighed just slightly less than a 1948 Hudson. George had finally given up welding and resorted to duct tape and electrical tape for foundation and arm repairs. Still, sitting in one was a gamble akin to hide and seek with a Unicorn. (One day you're gonna get the horn!) George had an overhead door open in the back of his shop. A futile attempt to tempt a breeze to pass through. We each had a brewski in hand.
"Who was old man Sturgis?" I asked.
Red leaned forward. "Euwell Sturgis was what folks called a tinkerer. When I was just a boy, he run the post office in McBritches part time. Sturgis could never leave well enough alone. If it was mechanical, he would look for ways to improve or alter either performance or capability. He once showed up at Dad's mechanic shop in an old 1947 Dodge sedan. I remember the day well. That old Dodge was smoking from one end to the other. Smoke was pouring from under the hood, out the tailpipe, thick black oil smoke. Smelled to high Heaven!"
Ever the mechanic George offered. "Blown head gasket?"
"Nope. That morning Sturgis burst a radiator hose and all the water in the motor drained out. He repaired the hose with an old inner tube and baling wire. Hell, that was okay. Them days, with the war over folks were just getting out from under constraints on rubber products. Old man Sturgis had an oil well or three on his property and decided if water would work for cooling, why not oil."
"Oh no!" George exclaimed.
"Oh yes. He filled the radiator with oil. When dad finally got the hood up that old motor was red hot, dripping with oil. The viscosity of water is a lot less than oil and the water pump not designed to pump oil ... which it did very well all things considered. The pressure on the internal parts was terrific. Every connection in the motor cooling system was blown, every motor gasket, there was even oil dripping out the tailpipe. Took dad a week to sort through the mess."
We chuckled and fell silent.
"But I remember old man Sturgis for one very good reason. His tornado and Japanese attack look out station he built atop Shields Hill."
"Attack look out station?" George mumbled. "Here we go again."
"Shut up George." Red said as he grinned at me. "Tornado came through McBritches back in the spring of 1942. Old man Sturgis was worried about the Jap bombers long about then. Said if they could bomb Pearl Harbor, McBritches was just as open. So he ordered in a truckload of lumber and built a lookout tower on the highest hill around. It took a dozen men and eight mules a week to clear out the brush. Old Sturgis was a mule-man. Guess that went along with acting peculiar."
George suffered a bit of coughing about then. Red glared as he cleared his throat. "Choked on something. Hard to swallow."
"Must have been that Mexican dinner you stuffed yourself with a while ago." Red commented icily.
"Mule man?" I asked, hoping to water down George's comment.
"Yes," Red continued, ignoring George's indiscretion. "Had two sets of mules, four in each team. Plowed his cotton with them every year. Was a sight to see them mules plowing. Anyway he used them hooked to a grader to carve a road around Shields Hill. Problem was the soil was mostly rock and getting up and down in his vehicle was a real chore. Then a rain storm come through one night and washed what road there was away."
"What did he do then?" George asked, his voice dripping boredom.
"I'm glad you asked George. It was too hard to climb every day. Sturgis had a twisted leg from an encounter with a wild hog and walking on level ground was bad enough. Up hill nigh on impossible. He brought back the work crew and they built a tramway up one side of the hill and down the other. Old man Sturgis made a buggy out of a small steel oil tank. He put axles under it and filled the tires with cement. He had the crew clear a path up one side of the hill...."
"Wasn't this a whole lot of trouble?" I asked.
"Not if you're old man Sturgis. He had a very good income from the oil and his wife's family had hundreds of acres in cotton, corn and black-eyed peas. Ann Sturgis was big in society, such as it was in them parts back then. She was really uppity like too. Always paraded around like she was the queen or something. We called her front row Annie cause she was real big in the local Baptist church. Just the opposite was old man Sturgis. A salty dog, he once sailed around the world on a tramp steamer. And ... like I said," Red glanced at George. "He were a little peculiar."
George looked as innocent as the Virgin Mary. "Well, I'll be..." was his only comment.
Red continued, ignoring George. "When Sturgis wanted to go up the hill, his wife would hook the mules to a cable that ran over the hill to the buggy. Then she would lead the mules away and the cable would pull Sturgis up the other side. It worked okay, but timing was everything."
George cleared his throat. "How did he get down?"
"This was no slipshod operation. Sturgis had a hand brake on the buggy. He could descend at any speed, pulling the cable behind. Slow..."
George's restraint slipped. "But if the Japanese air force were attacking ... real fast!"
Red held up a hand. "Despite the extraneousness comments, may I be allowed to continue? Sturgis was up in the tower a lot. His wife finally gave out. Handling a team of mules was below her. She returned to church work and tea parties and quilting bees and pea shucking. Sturgis then had a Mexican man help him up the hill with the mules. But he came down alone. His hours varied and he spent many a night up there watching for tornados and attack airplanes."
George mumbled something.
"What was that?" Red inquired.
"I was wondering where this was going?"
Red sipped a beer. "I was just a boy then. One day Sturgis asked me to handle the mules. I pretty much knew the routine and soon Sturgis was atop the hill. I then scrambled up to look from the tower. It was a hell of a view! You could see hundreds of miles either direction. He had a couple sets of binoculars, a lot of books and magazines and an old WW I musket of some sort. Told me it was named Pearl Harbor Revenge. It was really interesting up there. The roof was removable or could be bolted down in case it rained. Had a potty, a wood burning stove and a water tank with fresh water. I spent the day but at sundown had to go home. Sturgis said he reckoned the Japanese planes weren't coming and the sky was clear, so we got in the buggy for the ride down.
"Just after we started down something happened. The buggy lurched and increased in speed. Sturgis had the hand brake pulled all the way back into WHOA! It was a heavy lever that dragged in the dirt under the buggy. The attachment hinge assembly broke off in his hand. He grinned at me and told me to hold on real tight. Shields Hill wasn't all that high as Texas hills go but it seemed a lot farther down than up. We bounded down the hill, the buggy swaying and jolting. It was airborne a lot and a lot smoother ride then. Unless you were worried how it was going to come down.
"I peered over the edge of the buggy and saw a pair of headlights on the road that ran around the hill. It occurred to me that at our present speed and course we would ram either the first or second vehicles. As it was, we raced between them and piled up on a stock tank dam just across the road. Seemed like I went a mile high then came down in the water. Seconds later, cussing like a sailor, old man Sturgis came down in a Mesquite tree nearby. The buggy rebounded back into the road and took out the Reverend Jones brand new Ford sedan. Creamed it good. The good news ... nobody hurt. The bad ... Reverend Jones and wife were on their way to dinner at the Sturgis home. And much worse ... the lead car belonged to a visiting minister and his wife from down town Boston. Wouldn't you know?
"The Reverend Jones's wife had her Pekinese dogs with her and they wailed out of there for parts unknown. Although they showed up the next day, we didn't know that then. The couple from Boston, Reverend Jones, his wife and I found old man Sturgis hanging upside down from a Mesquite limb by his belt. He didn't know who was helping him in the dark. Must have been knocked a bit crazy cause of what he said..."
"Said..." George asked.
"Yeah. He said ‘God damn boy! That ride would cause all the saints in Heaven to shit all over them f*#@!%* gold bricks!' "
Red grinned...
Thank you Jon and give my regards to Americo. I miss him...
Randall
Randall 7-25-2003 22:39
remove the word 'Carberry' from line three in my previous message
Litter Again 7-25-2003 21:45
Tomorrow morning I'm off to a week at the Carberry Festival again. Going on my own, this time, as Liz is working and the kids are doing their own thing. I'm doing some stuff at the Festival (which makes it tax deductible). Carberry, and hope to make some book sales and connections, so I'm looking forward to it. After the problems of the last three weeks, I need a break. Liz is going on a Reiki course when I come back from Carberry, (tax deductible also), so she's happy(?)
Things with my daughter Catriona are settling down a bit. Now the matter has gone to the lawyers (shriek!) so that the ownership of the flat (apartment) she owns jointly with her ex-partner can be settled. (Probably by it being sold....) She is now looking for other accommodation but is currently being spoiled by her Grandmother, so she's basking in the attention. We should know lots more by the time I get back from Carberry. Will write more then. (Hopefully refreshed and relaxed!!!!!) Might even get some writing done???
Back when me head is together
Ciao for now
Litter 7-25-2003 21:43
In my last post I want to make it perfectly and utterly clear that the idiot posting stupid things was (is) me.
Just in case there are other idiots around wanting to take the credit.
:-D
RACHEL: Got your email, will read it later. Niggling feeling I have read it before.
PESTER: Haven't gotten to your story yet either.
Teekay 7-25-2003 20:17
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I cried in my head, but it was
too
late.
The moral to this story: 'there will always be idiots who post stupid things, but you won't realise it till you've spent those wasted minutes of you life reading it which you will never get back.'
Teekay 7-25-2003 19:39
Oooooooh......
PESTER: Well you and your ego have a nice fine holiday and don't be lettin' it say anything til it runs it by you first.
It's a shocker getting blamed for all that tripe ego spouts.
I watched Tiatanic on TV last night and it went for about 100 hours. I'm feeling a bit dazed and awed and sad and glad.
What an amazing story.
Teekay 7-25-2003 19:34
Good to see you out and about.
I thought I was the apolitical member. (To the public perception)
I really don't remember stating an opinion either way.............
No really.
I did once ask some to look at my old regimental web site..(They are serving in Basra right now)
Errrr...............
No, that doesn't count as politics.
Anyway, again, good to see you about.
Ed
Eddie 7-25-2003 16:20
Funny how little things like that weigh on one's subconscious mind.
TEEKAY - I do recall those frozen piles poking at one's rear on a cold winters day. The second farm we moved to had electricity but no running water, like you we had a pump beside the house that one could pump ice cold pure water from, but the outhouse remained. That was the haunted house but that again is another story completely.
Jerry 7-25-2003 13:51
Thanks.
George 7-25-2003 12:52
Pamela: I’m not sure that the increase in Autism is purely due to environmental factors, I believe a large factor is just the fact that people are more aware of it and are managing to diagnose it earlier and easier.
Some believe that it is a spectrum disorder, and that it exists in all of us to some degree, I personally would go along with that, often I see features in Autism that correlate with features in myself and other people, the difference is usually one of strength or degree rather than category.
Microwaves affecting the developing foetus, it’s certainly a possibility, though there are quite a few ideas on that score looking at anything from infantile immunisations, the ‘e’s’ and additives in food, fertilizers, birth trauma, early separation etc. From my limited experience there appears to be a strong basis for a genetic connection, i.e. if one or both parents are Autistic then there is a greater likelihood that they will have an Autistic child, this is not to say that there aren’t other causes, just that predisposition may be a large factor.
TEEKAY: I’m neither stoned, world wise nor weary. I can’t understand my thoughts being half-baked, I always put them in the oven for at least forty minutes.
Yes I have an ego it’s huge, but I keep it locked away in a cupboard and only allow it out about once a month.
Here’s an excerpt from something I wrote called Untypical, comments gratefully received.
“If it doesn’t kill me, it makes me stronger.” (F. Nietzche)
Simon had had first hand experience of electricity, once when he was about seven, he was climbing on the pipes in the toilet, swinging and balancing as he was won’t to do. He swung at one point, too near the light bulb (Which incidentally was on) and it smashed on his head, broke and fell out. This was a let’s go die moment that I guess most children have at least once in their lives, he was curious. It seemed as if there was something left in the light socket, perhaps forgetting that the light was on he foolishly wriggled his thumb around in the socket, trying to have a look at what was stuck in there.
Suddenly it felt as if his thumb had been sucked into the socket and something started pumping into him, it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling but Simon nevertheless felt that he’d better pull it out before he started smoking, or worse. So he yanked his thumb out, and thought to himself. “ That was strange, I think I’ve just had an electric shock, isn’t that supposed to kill me?” As far as he can remember he felt no ill effects whatsoever, in fact he felt almost invigorated, ‘charged’ even.
Staying on the subject, though much later in Simons’ life, aged about 27, he was out with his younger brother Tony and a friend on the way to a Pitch and Putt, No, scratch that, reverse it, they weren’t on the way, they were on the way back, waiting at a small, unpopular train station. Tony, who would’ve been about 16-17 at the time, was playing with a new golf ball and of course it bounced off the platform and landed on the track, it settled between the second track and the live rail.
Tony asked Simon to get it back for him. Well Simon felt kind of obliged, as over the years he’d been sort of preaching the ‘Gospel’ of mind over matter, confidence, mastering fears, facing reality and all that semi-mystical business. A friend, who was an electrician had once told him that you had to touch any two rails or the live one and ground\earth to get electrocuted. It was a dry day, Simon was up for it and like a true, crazy, fearless, let’s go die madman, he actually went for it.
There seemed to be no one about, no other passengers or guards etc, he looked up and down the line, nothing coming, he then jumped down onto the track, slowly and deliberately moving towards where the golf ball had landed. He had about six inches play either way, so, he again looked up and down the line to make sure nothing was coming, crouched down, took a deep breath and told himself that everything was going to go smoothly.
He slowly reached his hand between the second line and the live rail, favouring the second line but still not touching it. (His friend may have been wrong) Cue friend dialogue afterwards. ‘No, actually I meant any line and earth.’ With his heart in his mouth and a very dry tongue he grabbed the ball and slowly pulled his arm out.
He’d done it. Success. Wow! Failure would’ve almost certainly meant death, why did he do it? To prove a point, he could’ve died, but he didn’t, he was in control, he was fine, he felt good, powerful he’d mastered the demon of fear.” This was a taste of his internal dialogue at the time. Yes, he’d got a strange buzz out of it a feeling of self-confidence much higher than normal, never at any time did he think he was going to die or have an accident.
He climbed up onto the platform, gave the ball to his brother and told him to put it away. Later, on reflection he said to his brother
“ I don’t believe you actually asked me to do that, I can hardly believe I went and did it.” His brother said nothing, probably a little bit in disbelief himself, his brothers’ friend didn’t say a word throughout.
Obviously, Simon had been caught up in the moment, carried away by the power of the idea and the situation, influenced by the past, his very character to do something he wouldn’t normally do, for that moment and the moments surrounding it, he lived.
Anyway, I digress or is it digest the meal of words, better take care not to make myself sick, save room for dessert so long as it’s not full of sand, where do I go, where have I been, what have I heard, what have I seen. I see what you see, I feel what you feel, but that which I understand is maybe more, maybe less. I meander, I move freely, I speak what I speak, I transcend the normal mind, experience a part of myself that I know exists but of which I know very little, the part that sometimes takes over me and acts for me when I’m absent, takes over vast parts of my life, runs in certain directions without my permission or knowledge. Like a subtle and clever friend who leads you into things without telling you anything about what’s actually happening. Do you know this ‘friend’ does he sit with you sometimes, guide you, trick you, mislead you, perhaps not? Maybe it’s just me, fragmented me.
So, where were we, back to reality, whatever that is?
By folks Love Pester.
(Going on hols for a while so may not 'hear' from me for a while, give you all break from the human nature stuff especialy TEEKAY sorry)
Pester 7-25-2003 12:41
JERRY -- We moved up to a 67 acre farm on Bunn Hill when I was seven years old. We did have running water, pumped from a driven well, and also a 28 foot dug well next to the house, with a pitcher pump to bring up the cold, sweet water.
The "little house" was out back, and I well remember that mad dash at 2AM on a cold winter's night! We kept a fly swatter for summer use, and a length of 2x4 handy for the wintertime. Anybody care to guess what the 2x4 was for? (Hint: think stalagmite)
Then things got better when my dad put in a septic tank and drain field so that we could put in a real indoor toilet and tub. Had to use dynamite to blast through the hardpan so we could dig for the tank. That was exciting.
The old house was never built for a bathroom, so we converted the big back storeroom. This left plenty of wasted space, but Dad used it for lots of things. Like an incubator that held 100 baby chicks. Imagine taking a nice quiet bath with all that peeping going on!
howard 7-25-2003 7:50
I'm going to chew off my arm.
Teekay 7-25-2003 5:48
RACHEL: I've attached the email address for you.
JERRY: Methinks you protest too much :-D
You know I think you're wonderful and that my life would be ever poorer without your presence, and I guess if you really want you guys can invade Australia, though there's not much point because it's slowly going to the doghouse due to salinity.
Now, back in your slot :-D
Hmmmm, so now JON has 8 lives left - interesting.
Now, I'm off to not write.
Again.
*sigh*
*SIGH*
Teekay 7-25-2003 5:44
Teekay, "cute and cheeky?" Aw, pshucks, that's the nicest thing anyone has said about me for a long time. I'm glad I got re-slotted into my former slot and didn't have to be moved (made sense to me too).
Jerry, glad you were just kidding, you had me scared there for a minute.
Hello to Jon the Portugese pussy, thanks for the prize. I look forward to getting to know you and your human better when he returns from his trip.
Pester, autism is a very fascinating disease (condition?), your job must be interesting. Why do you think it is increasing so much in recent years? Here's a thought: cell phones. I know it sounds silly at first, but 50 years ago we didn't think that using hairspray would deplete the ozone, did we? I really wonder what all of those unprotected microwaves floating around among us might be doing, how do you think they might affect a fetus? It was just an idea that popped into my admittedly quirky brain when I heard that autism was increasing and thought about what was different lately.
pamela 7-25-2003 3:28
I love AMERICO too, and I love you.
I did it!!! I finished that manuscript, changed the synopsis and wrote the cover letter to the agent. It took me three months to whip the book into something resembling a novel. It turned out to be 514 pages, and I hate it! There were times when I went back and revised that I felt that I wrote some really good scenes, but it is hard to maintain that sort of quality throughout a whole book. The hardest part was the ending. I changed it twice. Finally I have something I can in good conscience put my name to. But really, guys, I do not think I am ready to be the next Nora Roberts just yet.
The package is all ready to go, and I will take it to the post office tomorrow. This agent will hate this manuscript; I just know it. But then maybe I will be surprised. I have completed three 500 page novels, and this one was the hardest. Could that be because it was really hard, or after all these years have I set a higher standard for myself? I really do not know, because I have no perspective where my work is concerned.
We are going on our yearly pilgramage to Michigan tomorrow. It will be great to see family again and to spend some time in the mid-west. I look forward to hanging out by the swimming pool and taking hikes through the woods. I want to visit my favorite Polish restaurant, and I want to read silly, meaningless books. I want to hang out with my husband and children and get to know them again, for after all this writing, I feel a bit cut off from them.
I will probably find an opportunity to check in. I always do, but I will not be back for about 10 or 12 days.
Take care, all.
Rhoda 7-25-2003 1:57
Dad went out back to the outhouse and knocked on the door, but there was no answer (must have retired to bed he thought) then he knocked louder just to be sure, and called out "BINIK, are you there?" again there was no answer, so dad opened the door. There sat old Binik, his pants around his ankles, his pipe laying smoking between his legs near the hole, and he was quite dead.
The next hour or so, they say was quite active, mom had to take the slop pail to the "cold" room and use it in lue of the outhouse, Dad had to jump into the old jalopy and drive seven miles to the neighbor's to call the undertaker (since we couldn't afford such luxuries as a telephone or electricity), then the family had to sit and wait till the undertaker/coroner came to remove old Binik from the toilet. Dad said when they picked him up and put him in the body bag, his jaws jerked open and closed like he was searching for his favorite pipe. At any rate, they hauled old Binik away, and a trip to the outhouse was never quite the same.
Like I say, this was a year or two before I came into the world, but nearly every time one of us took that long trip in the dark (like I said, there was no electricity thus NO light outdoors that wasn't furnished by the moon and the stars) as we left the door, dad would say "Make sure you shake hands with Binik while your in there!"
Nobody lingered long in the outhouse when it was dark out and all we had was a flashlight with it's always weak batteries (DON'T WASTE BATTERIES Dad always instructed in a threatening manner that we all listened very closely to).
The story of Binik is still brought up once in awhile when we all get together at the campgrounds, sitting around the campfire when the coyote's are howling in the distant and the only other light besides the campfire is furnished by God.
Jerry 7-25-2003 1:08
Jerry 7-25-2003 0:02
Jon, thanks for the notice, but you'll have to talk to the NBers in general about WB security. One concern here was that anything published there and open to the world would be considered 'published material' and, as such, not eligible for places that seek only 'previously unpublished work.' Someone else wanted to know that only 'family' here would have eyes on work placed there. The consensus here was "close the WB." I did.
To all -- on the old WB, you sent an email to Jack and he replied with a userid and a password that gave you access to WB material. On this one, I let you sign up with the Userid and Password of your choice. All I ask is that you let me know when you have signed up and then I will give full WB access to your login ID.
Mark 7-24-2003 22:55
We're thinking of rolling out the old sleeper sofa bed and sleeping in the living room tonight as that's where the window air conditioner is, and I doubt we'll do much sleeping in the bedroom unless it cools off a lot.
I'm getting a bit pissed off at the press of late, that kid that was killed in Iraq from near here's parents have been called by endless members of the press asking such idiotic questions like "how did your son's death in this war make you feel about President Bush?" They've taken refuge behind a lawyer now, and that's probably the worst place to take refuge, but I guess any port in a storm I hope they sue the bastards back to am radio status!!
Jon good to see you again, I'd feared you had left for good after the big blow up over the little action in the middle east. Just proves, it's hard to keep a good cat down.
Jerry 7-24-2003 21:45
Jerry 7-24-2003 21:41
Jerry 7-24-2003 21:41
It is so good to see your purrrrrrfect words in print. Thanks for the prize puss-n-boots. I'll look forward to that letter from Americo.
Teekay,
Ahhhhh, another vic for me (Bwah, ha, ha, ha)! Oh yeah, oh yeah, feelin evil ;o) Now I just need to find your e-mail address.
Ciao for now.
RDRKO
Rachel 7-24-2003 20:43
Ego is the measurable quantity. It is also base and selfish and as such dull and lacking creativity and inspiration.
I think I've exhautsed myself on this topic.
I'm movin' on.
Teekay 7-24-2003 19:15
I just got a bit startled is all.
Teekay 7-24-2003 18:40
Send it on, Baby!
PAMELA: I'm not laughing cos I'm relieved we won't be invaded. I'm laughing because you is so cute and cheeky. Koochy koochy koo.
Nah, I just slotted you back into the section of my brain you were inhabiting right before I thought I was going to have to move you to a different part :-D
Yeesh, makes sense to me.
I think if I'm attracted to babies it's because they're cute. I'm not all that attracted to them when they cry, or need nappy changing or anything.
Puppies are good.
I don't think I've ever considered any mystery about babies.
Nope, still no mystery.
RANDALL: That Wilson is a real smart talker. And I can see some truths in his argument.
It's not democracy and freedom that brings the world to it's knees it's ignorance.
I agree that people need boundaries and I think that's where religion comes into it, and law, but to be thwarted in the freedom a democracy gives is nothing short of...of.....barbaric (for want of a better word.)
Oh no!!! Does that mean PESTER is AMERICO??? I miss PESTER.
Teekay 7-24-2003 18:33
Hi all, thanks for welcomes, much appreciated.
I am deeply grateful to whoever or whatever for the life that I have, I find it so full of wonder and amazement I cannot describe how it makes me feel, yes I am curious about everything, why things are the way things are, what makes us do what we do, what we don’t do.
Where I am is indeed, a fine place, I try to make the best of what I have, I would hope that that would be true for me, wherever I was or in whatever circumstances I happened to find myself in, but I do not know that, I can only surmise.
Much of what I have posted, is stuff written, at least twenty years ago, I thank you for the chance to air it and have some evaluations, discussions etc.
I work in a school for children with special needs, specifically Autism, I love my job and find that the children often educate me more than I do them.
I love people, music, writing, reading, philosophy, running, playing, photography, honesty, laughter if there’s one criticism people often aim at me, it is that I am still very much a child, though I myself take it as a compliment.
Anyway more meanderings.
A man may be unable to stand keeping his hand in freezing water for very long, but by gradual exposure his body will adapt ‘till eventually well below zero liquids will not bother him. A man may build his resistance in this way to many other things, extremes of heat, pain, poison, lack of oxygen, noise, light, electric shock etc. The earlier in his life a man starts the better he adapts in later life.
A normal man, is many men.
A man is stronger than a germ but is weaker than his greatest fear, if he fears germs excessively, he will succumb to them, for he gives them the energy to kill him.
Lost meets the Guru for the first time.
Lost “You’re not what I expected.”
Guru “ That’s probably just as well, when we get what we expect, we do not learn because we know what to expect.”
Of the drug addicts it may be said that it is very easy to look upon them and see how much they depend upon their crutches as well as how their crutches destroy their lives, and yet not see your own less obvious crutches and bask in the illusion that they’re the ones who have lost control, whereas ‘We’ know exactly what we’re doing.
Man is like a large spot, if you put him under enough pressure (Squeeze him hard enough) he will explode scattering his poison everywhere. You can squeeze him quickly, gradually, directly, in subtle ways, hypnotically, he may explode violently or he may have small, frequent eruptions, he may bleed\seep slowly under varying types of pressure, if he doesn’t release the poison, or it can find no way out, it may spread and build to a fatal explosion.
One mans’ wrong, doesn’t wrong his rights.
Some people say, some people do, some people do as some people say, some people don’t.
Love is like a hammer made out of cotton wool, no matter how hard and how many times you hit your head with it, it would never hurt, unless you would put a stone in it.
We’re all hypocrites and criminals in our little ways.
Forcing of people to do things is a very common fault in our society, it invades our educational practices, our social practices, it is all pervasive and it smacks of insecure ‘right’ people bullying other people into doing things their way because it makes them feel powerful. Think of any discipline or system of beliefs, Religion, Science, Politics, they all involve pushing ideas onto people, there is nearly always an air of ‘ We know the truth, follow us we will reward you for it.’ And they seem to thrive on the power of being thought right by other people.
In all of us there seems to be a desire for other people to see things our way, this desire can possess us, until it becomes a necessity for people to see as we do, feel as we do, or we feel that we cannot deal with them or consider them to be with us, on our side. Of course like any obsessive behaviour this can then alienate us from the people around us, and we then, may be in danger of becoming sad, lonely fanatics who’ll bend anybodys’ ear for a killing, trying to bully people into our way of seeing things. So if you want to avoid the norm, don’t expect people to believe you on demand and similarly don’t believe people just for an easy life, you have a choice to accept or question, no matter who is delivering the information, they may object to this particularly if they feel that they are important people, since they invariably need you to help them feel important, that’s o.k. people don’t have to like you and you don’t have to like them.
Why indeed should you accept this, of course you don’t have to it really is up to you, I will be happy just for you to read and perhaps chew things over in order to come to your own truth, but of course you don’t have to even do that it’s fine by me, my feeling of self does not depend upon it I shall survive and prosper.
‘Go friend protect yourself from the persuasions of the wise men and the bites of the small men, all who would eat away at your very soul, they cannot overcome you if you are steeled and wise against it, hold to the image of a free man and live by that image, with the real you, no one can touch.’
By folks, love Pester.
Pester 7-24-2003 18:29
To Randall, for his generosity in letting the world read his complete shortstories. Some of them are good enough for a book.
To Rachel, the best friend in the gallaxy. Americo promised me that he will write a pretty letter to her when he comes back from the Benelux, sometime in August.
To Howard, the most consistent Notebooker ever. Also the only American who can spell.
To Rhoda and Christie, who Americo loves regardless of agreeing or not agreeing with them. I also love them (and agree with Christie all the time).
To Mark, whose Workbook could be interesting if not so bloody complicated and typically Bushian, that's to say, distrustful of the human race. Also because, next to Howard, but not so close to Rhoda, he is one of the few Americans with an idea of what the passive voice is.
To Eddie, the only European who seems to support the incredible foreign policy of Bush&Blair.
To Litter, for having published his novel.
To Jerry and Pamela, for sharing so many interesting ideas with us, namely that America is "the land of the brave and the free" (Jerry) and that America can hardly be called a democracy (Pamela). I think that the truth is somewhere in between, whatever that means.
To Heather, for having gotten rid of the ghostie thingie. Now it's time for her to start her writing career at last.
To Teekay, for having not been invaded by the Usians yet.
To Jack, for keeping this page alive and running in times so cruel as these ones.
To Allein, the most missed Notebooker of all times.
I'll go on holidays to central Europe the day after tomorrow. Have a good time, all.
Good night, Randall.
Jon 7-24-2003 15:01
Teekay, I'm glad you can sleep better at night now :). I remember that Heather said she was taking a road trip with a friend and hoped that it wasn't as adventurous as Thelma and Louise. Hope she is having fun and enjoys seeing a new baby coming into this old world, a wonderful event. Do you think we are drawn so much to babies because they sort of represent the mysteries of life, that unknown place we yearn for, that maybe they have just come from there?
Jerry, sorry I said I disagreed with absolutely everything you said politically, I should have left out "absolutely", ha, ha. You're actually getting mellower lately, have said that there's a lot of crap coming out of Washington and joined the Independent party (??), keep taking those drugs!
Depressed writers? It seems that artists of all types see the world in an unusual, perhaps aberrant (?) way, probably more right-brain activity than "normal" people, and it's always difficult to be different from most of those around you. So there may be a preponderance of problems among them, depression, substance abuse, mental problems, etc. It's like that old saying about there being a fine line between creativity and insanity, we joke about having to be crazy to want to write, but there's an element of truth there, although obviously everyone isn't certifiable and many function in society just fine (see what I mean about long sentences?).
Randall, yes, mankind as a whole may suck, but that does not prevent us as individuals from trying to spread positivity and love.
Been forgetting to say hi to Christi, good to see ya back again!
Rachel and Howard, I'll check out your stuff in the Workbook. Howard, thanks for the funny link, I read about 25 of them, will go back for more (as a mystery fan, I really liked some of those entries).
Love,
pamela 7-24-2003 13:31
Thanks again, Mark, for the leg (and head) work on the notebook!
howard 7-24-2003 8:52
I tried to drop the work onto the N.B. That didn't work out. I could slip in about ten pages, then it started to ding away at me. I think it was a signal that I was trying to put too much in one place. I'm not really sure. If you want to read it, I can e-mail it off to you :o) Heeeee, heeeeee, heeeeeeeeeeeee (wild eyed, slightly frightening laughter).
Good to hear that your environ is warming up. Here in B.C. it is kickin hot! At least for B.C. it is (grins).
RDRKO
Rachel 7-23-2003 23:21
Mark 7-23-2003 23:06
Hello there :o) I guess I could post it on the W.B. Seems that is as good a place as any. I wrote this part a couple of years ago. I intended to move forward with it, but got distracted by about 40 new projects. I am brutal for starting novels and leaving them hanging around. I guess I'm trying to decide if this is something that I want to continue with. I came across it this morning while I was sorting through some of my mainstream writing. I could use some feedback. I don't think I've aired this out around here before. I can only think of one person who I had read this and he thought it had potential. It's quite a female hunk of writing, at least I think it is. I don't really know.
Pamela,
I certainly do appreciate your offer to read it and will take you up on that :o) I expect to drop it onto the W.B. this evening. Tis no prob to let yah know about Americo ;o)
Teekay,
I am pretty sure that you will need to contact Mark to get set up for hands on with the story section of the W.B.
Now I am off to see if I can drop this little hunk of text onto the NB or not.
RDRKO
Rachel 7-23-2003 22:58
Hey...
Jerry, I want to expand on what I wrote last night. And a passage from W. A. Harbinson's novel GENESIS reflects the why and why for of my "racism" against the human race.
While GENESIS is very much a work of fiction, it touches on current issues. Wilson a person of staggering intellect was (in the novel) the person who developed an invincible, highly technical air ship known as UFO in present day parlance...while working for the Nazi's in Germany. Stanford has at last tracked him down to a vast underground base in Antarctica where Wilson and members of the German SS fled after the war. Wilson gained control of the colony by killing or implanting the Germans. He controls the colony of 1,000 by brain implants, manipulation and euthanasia. Stanford is seeking a fellow scientist who was kidnaped by one of Wilsons airships. These are Wilsons comments to that end...
GENESIS
By W. A. Harbinson
Published by Dell Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright 1980, 1982
He (Wilson) stared steadily at Stanford. His eyes radiated no feeling. He displayed neither malice nor warmth, his soul destroyed by intelligence.
"Man is simply a tool," he said. "He is the seed of evolution. He exists to explore and create, and has no other value. But men alone are self-destructive. Without discipline, they rot. Take the history of man and examine it and you come up with lunacy: wasted time and opportunity, self-indulgence and corruption, material greed and self-pity and vanity: all negative impulses. The will to freedom has never worked; every success has been matched with failure; we step forward and then we step back and wallow blindly in pettiness. Our superiority is in thinking. Only the mind has no value. But our animal needs, our appetites and fears, keep us chained to the floor. We must leave the cave behind us. We must reach for the stars. We can't do that while Democracy persists and lets freedom destroy us.
(Stanford) "Freedom leads to creativity."
"No it doesn't," Wilson said. "Freedom leads to boredom and conflict and waste--and perpetuates stagnancy."
"The world hasn't stagnated."
"It hasn't advanced much," Wilson said. "Or at least, it's only advanced on one level and is now dangerously imbalanced. We have advanced scientifically, have made extraordinary leaps forward, and now we stand on the brink of the miraculous and can reshape mans future. But that advance was intellectual. We are still emotionally retarded. The other face of man is still as primitive as it was in the cave. That face remains unchanged. It masks the dire results of freedom. It disguises mindless greed, political suspicion and social fear, pointless hatred and the boredom and resentment that lead to destruction. The world is wallowing in bloodshed, the seas are being polluted, we're gradually gobbling up our natural resources and inviting a barren earth. We do this because of greed, because of politics and war, and these things are the consequences of so-called freedom, the fruits of Democracy. Man must have a purpose. He must be disciplined and driven. Only then will the world become sane and save itself from destruction."
Good night Americo...
Randall
Randall 7-23-2003 21:33
HEATHER has gone some place to be with a friend while giving birth (friend - not HEATHER) and will be back around the 30th.
Teekay 7-23-2003 19:18
Rachel, I'd be happy to check out your chunk of work, I'll email you with my email address and we can talk about how you want to do it. You could try the Workbook but people seem to read without commenting there. Thanks for setting me straight on Americo's origins, I only knew him briefly before he went away, my apologies to him if he is lurking.
Yeah, where is Heather, anyway? And Hallee? And Ramon?
pamela 7-23-2003 18:50
It looks like anyone can become a member so is that why people aren't posting?
Or am I not looking in the right place?
Found where HEATHER is.
Teekay 7-23-2003 18:40
CHRISTI: Geddoutta the city!!!! 3 emails??? Please resend. Every time I open my email yours is one of the first I scroll for. Thought you'd gone AWOL.
MARK: I think maybe a depressive nature makes for some writers. I think it's sort of like a mixture of what PAMELA said. That reaching in our natures for something ethereal that we desperately wish to touch upon.
HOWARD: That is one really good bad beginning.
PAMELA & JERRY: Methinks you guys don't know nuthin' about Australia.
Or maybe you have a big boogeyman picture of how America is coming across to the rest of the world. I dunno?
RACHEL: Why don't you post it on the wb? I'm going to have to scroll down and find the link for it, and then possibly wait for membership approval.
HEATHER of the misty moors: Where art thou?
Going.
Teekay 7-23-2003 18:26
''They had but one last remaining night together, so they
embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string
cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably
being a bland Cheddar and the white ... Mozzarella, although it
could possibly be provolone or just plain American, as it really
doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they
would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.''
- Mariann Simms of Wetumpka, Ala., whose entry won $250 in the
22nd Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a parody honoring the writer
of the worst beginning to an imaginary novel
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2003.htm
howard 7-23-2003 15:00
It is so nice that you noticed I haven't been around. I love to be missed (hugs to you). It's good to read you as well.
RDRKO
Rachel 7-23-2003 13:03
Holy crap! Americo is not a Spanish, he is a Portuguese. Call him Spanish a few more times and he just might make an showing, though it may not be a pleasant one ;o) I am sure that he loves his Spanish neighbours, he however is what he is, and that is not what he is. I hope that in time Grace will be well and feel well. It's funny how we can make assupmtions about how people are doing and believe our little realities that we make up for them. Those realities, however, don't often match up with the reality being lived by the person in question. I think that as a writer it is not easy to find cits for our work. I have a large hunk of text that I could use a review on and am not sure who I should put in on.
Any takers? It's 14,000 words and covers one day. That is after editing... This could turn into quite a long work (grins and laughter)!
Ciao for now.
RDRKO
Rachel 7-23-2003 13:02
I think we are spiritual beings having a bodily experience, which is why the death wish is so common, it is a simple desire to return home. I'm not talking about being depressed or suicidal per se, but I think we have a yearning in us for something better that we can almost remember, but not quite. I once read a book about subliminal advertising and it was interesting that negative images sold products more than positive ones; I remember the word "cancer" being hidden in a cigarette ad as the name on a sneaker (trainer to you Brits) in a roomful of people. This yearning for what we can't remember is probably also why we ask those age-old questions that Pester brings up now, because we know that what we see in our society doesn't make sense and we wonder why. Overall, humanity seems to be a brutal bunch, perhaps our quest is to remain (or become) spiritual in the midst of it all. On racism, children will be influenced by their parents, which is unfortunate in the cases where hatred is what is taught; not many people have it in them to question authority, which is why they are called radicals. Personally, I feel that what a person looks like is the least important thing about them, which is one reason internet conversation is interesting, there are no physical stereotypes to overcome. I don't think we have any of our darker-skinned brothers and sisters here but I wish we did.
Jake, on your writing: what Teekay said. Yes, you can write it, but whether or not you do it well is up for grabs. They say that there are no new ideas and that may be true (what do you guys think about that?), but what makes a work original is how the writer interprets that idea, brings the characters to life, engages the reader. Same with visual arts, nudes and landscapes are painted ad infinitum, yet no two are exactly alike.
Rachel, you're welcome for comments on writing, the workbook response (or lack thereof) is discouraging, isn't it? My thoughts and love go out to your neice, I know she has a tough way to go in coming back from something like this.
Teekay, aren't you glad that Jerry hopes we won't have to invade Austrailia (but I guess we would if we had to)? Thank goodness we are busy interfering with too many other countries right now. Sorry we can't do anything about our lousy American hours (are you sure it's not yours that are bass-ackward?). Your parents gave good advice, especially about the knickers. What about those people who wear none? Their clothes must get pretty yucky.
My brother Jed arrived safely from Alaska and we are having a great time hanging out together. Alaska still has much outhouse usage, I sort of rated them when I spent a summer up there. My favorite was at the log cabin a woman he knew had built herself (with help, of course, but cut the trees on-site, let them lay a year to season, then built very nifty place). Hers had a nice plate-glass window to look out of, in the woods there was no one to see her except for the occasional bear.
Hi, Taylor, long time no see. I wonder how Ramon is doing with his mystery. And no, I don't think Pester is Americo, although I wouldn't mind seeing that crazy Spaniard again.
Love and peas,
pamela 7-23-2003 12:20
Things are nice and introspective around here, just the way I like it!
Teekay darlin, I'm having a hell of a time getting you mail. I've sent three since your last and you keep not responding, so I'm going to remain unruffled and assume that your box is pulling the vortex bit again. Write me, chickee! (And get that man of yours to fix your email!)
It's great to see you here in top form.
Pester, I'm sorry for so quickly writing you off before as a jokester. I'm interested in some of the points you make, although as many others have pointed out, you do tend to the negative. Then again, as Mark has intimated, most writers are a depressive bunch and things have seemed to have progressed all right thus far. Myself, I find I write the best when I'm balanced, with maybe a smidge more of either at any given time for inspiration. Positivity does seem to be as contagious as the negative, maybe moreso. Annnd, I'm rambling mindlessly, so ... add my welcome to Rachel's.
Mark, I too have asked myself that question, does writing depress me or do I write depressively? :P I've come to the conclusion that I'd be a wacko with or without the pen, but the pen seems to take the edge off. Hi, you! And bless you for filling the WB void with something constuctive.
Rache! So glad you're back.
Mary! Holy cow, it's awesome to see you. Loved your pix and your pixies! Your newbie is darling.
Jerry, Howard, and Randall, I get much from your conversation/writing--keep it up.
Missed you all. Hope this isn't a flyby--my writing seems to have gobbled me up. I hope it doesn't get tired of the taste of me.
Gobble, gobble, gobble,
Christi 7-23-2003 12:08
S. Louise Underdahl takes the reader on an adventure into the world of work. It is an activity which all of us participate in. How we react to the kind of work we do varies from individuals and the workplace.
In the world of today the education of new starters is well rounded. This presents to management a new challenge that must be resolved. Workers now have a broader expectation of what a job must consist of.
The nineteenth century saw workers as tools to serve the needs of industry. This attitude came across in the literature of the time, such as the Charles Dickens novel “Hard Times”. One of the characters in the book is a teacher at a London school with an autocratic outlook.
Mr Gradrind believed his students to be like a jug. Open the top of their head and pour in the facts. Close the lid and then push them out into the world as a complete human being, ready to fulfill the needs of industry.
This attitude that people need only to work to meet the needs of industry is gradually changing. More and more employees want to have an increased ownership in the work process than ever before. Transcendent work is a system that the author believes is the solution to this demand.
To achieve a workplace that is transcendent the mix of attitude and content needs to be right. This is where the worker feels that they have input and control over the work process. Therefore they are going to have their intellectual needs satisfied, which will bring joy to their work experience.
“Soul of Work” is a well-researched exposure on the true meaning of work. The author has thrown new light onto a topic thought to be dull and mundane. Work can and should be a joyful experience.
I would recommend this book to all workers and managers seeking to achieve the most out of life and themselves.
Review by Warren Thurston – Owner of Boggle Books
“The home of Quality eBook Reviews”
http://www.bogglebooks.com
Warren Thurston Boggle Books 7-23-2003 8:11
JERRY: I don't mean to brag, but I'm no innocent when it comes to using an outhouse and old magazines :-D
I just wouldn't have wanted to do it as an ongoing way of life, but then I guess I wouldn't have known any better.
Well, it's almost time to retire so you guys get busy posting if'n you don't mind.
Teekay 7-23-2003 4:14
Okay, said I didn't wish you welcome, then didn't welcome you. An individual could take that the wrong way (smiles to you). Welcome!
RDRKO
Rachel 7-23-2003 2:13
I have not wished you welcome. You seem to have brought much introspection and opinion to this site. You speak of topics of passion and are not afraid to poke and prick at areas that many shy away from. I love to see people defend their inside self. It is only when we speak for what is near and dear that we spout with passion and zeal. Cool stuff. I don't wish to get heated just right now, so I've been breezin the posts ;o) It is plenty hot in my neck of the woods without me adding to the fires ;o) Hope you stick around buddy roe.
Ciao for now.
RDRKO
Rachel 7-23-2003 2:11
Jerry: I can't really imagine what it'd be like to have to go and use an Outhouse in the middle of the night... I've heard stories from Older Aussies about having to worry about the Redback spiders hiding in the corners.
Sometimes I marvel at how people lived in the old days... Since I can't see myself doing without some of my creature comforts
Taylor 7-23-2003 0:30
I had a great afternoon, about a year ago I sold an old 266 Gateway 2000 to a poor family on the other side of town. Well now they have this young fellow who is trying to become a computer nerd, and today he brought the machine back to have me fix the modem as he messed it up one day when he was trying to get one of those dang porn popup bars off his browser. (I've been servicing that old machine for free for those folks since they bought it, just one of my services I guess.) At any rate he wanted to know if he could watch, so I spent the rest of this afternoon showing him how to remove, and install a new modem, then how to fix things like those stupid porn bar things.
By the end of the afternoon, he talked me out of two more computers (he insisted on paying me 25 bucks for them so I told him I'd take payments, he works part time at a local store for his spending money and complained that while he got paid yesterday, he went and put fifteen of the twenty dollars in savings (I think this kid has plans of college!)
Anyhow at seven thirty I gave him a ride home to his old beat up trailer house, and met his mom (not the brightest bulb in the carton but nice none-the-less).
Once in awhile it's nice visit folks like that, it sure put's one's life in perspective.
I think the kid will do good with computers and hope the old one's I sold him today will get him working on the insides as well as the software, it's a good thing to understand what's under the hood of these dang machines, leads to a better understanding of what the software has to put up with. The kid has to be the best manored kid I've met in years, and seems to have his head on straight.
Jerry 7-23-2003 0:19
The two voices are completely different. PESTER is very serious, and AMERICO is more urbane, and has a peculiar sense of humor. He was also very cutting and not very nice to those who disagreed with him. PESTER has shown none of these characteristics.
PESTER,
Forgive me for talking about you as if you are not here with us. You do not need any of us to speak for you. I am sure you do a great job defining yourself. If you are curious about who Americo is, go back a year or more into the archives.
Rhoda 7-23-2003 0:09
Man, oh man. The shop-worn questions raise their two-horned heads again. Well, here's my $.02
I have believed for a long time that language influences the way we think. I can just as easily believe other environmental factors play a role. I also believe in karma and 'you reap what you sow.' Language and environment are influences, not determinants.
Pester, if you spend your time pointing out life's fecal excess then you've spent your time with life's fecal excess by choice.
Someone did a study of Creative Writing majors in the 1980's and put focus on one famous group at Iowa (I think), both undergrad and grad students. It seems that college level writing students are more depressed than other students and more likely to think suicidily. Naturally the question arises, "Are depressed people drawn to writing, or does the practice of writing depress people?"
I don't know for sure. I think depressed people are drawn to writing. Take a look at the Western Canon. How many of the great books are about joyous subjects? None that I can name right off. Some of Shakespeare's comedies? Comedy always has a victim.
A thousand years of literature, a thousand years of examining life's pain. I have trouble maintaining my literary level of discomfort when I know that it no longer matches my grasp of life's truth.
We enjoy examining our troubles. We take them in, describe them in detail, pour them out for an astonished world and think that somehow we have taken things into our own hands and solved our problems all alone. Really, we have just gotten accustomed to rolling in the neighborhood garbage. The astonished world praises our honesty while the neighbors threaten to lynch us for telling tales on them.
Calvin Coolidge said something like: you can look down the road and see ten troubles headed in your direction, but by the time you get down the road far enough to meet them, nine of those troubles will have fallen off and into the ditch. What's interesting about that proposition? You sound like you'd choose looking down the road at all those troubles. I look at the rest of it. I believe some other adults here do also.
Mark 7-22-2003 23:58
I intended to say on the W.B.
Rachel 7-22-2003 23:44
Carol & Pamela,
Thanks for the good words about my writing on the NB. Life once again is hitting high gear. I got to see my niece the other day. It was nice and a comfort to see that she was in good health and spirits. I don't know that my neice has ever really had an easy life. She isn't a North American born gal. Her mother came to Canada to make a new life, she left her daughter in the care of her own mother till such time as she was able to save enough to sponsor both of them to come to Canada. That took many years. I'm not saying that she hasn't had a good life, or that she has been unhappy. She just ins't the sterotypical North American girl. We all hope that the damage done to her liver by the O.D. will not be lasting. There will be tests over the next weeks and months that will tell us more of that. For the time being she seems to have decided that being with the man who abuses her is not a good idea. Who knows how she will feel in the future.
Teekay,
I also don't think that Pester is Americo. Americo, if I am not mistaken is currently puttering about different parts of Europe visiting friends and getting some much deserved R&R. He has been a busy boy ;o) It sure is nice to see yah around girlie girl. I've been thinking of you. Wondering how you are doing with the winter, all that sort of stuff.
Well, I should get going. I'm sooooooo tired. I've spent the day helping a friend load and unload a whap of hay.
Nite all.
RDRKO
Rachel 7-22-2003 23:43
RANDALL: I used to romanticise the 18th century like you seem to the past lifestyle of the Indians. And then I remembered that few children reached the age of 5, women were the possessions of their husbands, and you had to go outside to use the loo.
Teekay 7-22-2003 23:25
I guess it didn't make much of an impact on me since there were no black or Mexicans, or oriental's (well there was Sammy Wong who cooked at the truck stop), Oh and there was Andy Garcia (Andy Didit) who painted the fancy script on all the store windows in town and signed the bottom with "Andy Didit" Everyone in town seemed to love both men very much, a love that they returned to the community. In fact when they passed, they had to hold their funerals in the armory since none of the churches would hold the mourners.
I guess I saw racism in the Army, in fact I felt a bit of it myself when I saw some soldiers taking advantage of the new "enlightenment" of the 70's Army and cried racism anytime a sergeant told them to mop a floor, or wash a jeep. Usually to avoid the trouble of an investigation the sergeant would simply assign a white guy to do the chore and allow the minority to do what ever the hell he wanted to do. In fact I had a black guy assigned to my commo section in Charlie Guard of the Old Guard out in Washington DC. He would report for duty then retire to his room and not show till the next morning. When I went to my Lt, and complained, he simply assigned the fellow as the XO's Driver. Then the fellow had to stay in his room till the XO called for a driver, and the XO never called.
You can see where some folks would get a bit upset over such things, I guess it didn't bother me all that much since I was rid of the problem and the fellow who replaced him was an excellent worker (incidentally he was of Jewish persuasion).
But then again up here it doesn't make much differences, since 99.9% of the folks here in town are of Scandinavian decent, the minorities here are considered unique indeed.
There has never been that political correctness here, and you can be talking with the older folks who regularly use such terms as nigger and spic when referring to the other races. I don't think they mean it in a mean way, really I think that's just what they grew up calling those folks and never saw a need to change their speech patterns. I know I was shocked the first time I heard someone say those words, having lived out in the "real" world where such words are indeed fighting words, or more realistically words of the ignorant, of the racists, of the politically incorrect.
But I do sort of agree with those who say "I am not responsible for the acts of those who kept slaves, my ancestors never even came to America till long after the slaves were freed." Or "It wasn't me who took the land from the Indians, hell Dad bought his land from the Railroad!"
I guess it's sort of not my problem because I didn't make it happen and neither did dad.
That's the way it is here in the Midwest.
Taylor - Long about the mid 60's till the Mid 70's there was a sort of invasion of Australia by the US Soldiers on R and R down there. I still regret not taking mine there when I was in Nam in the early 70's.
Sad day here in the Dakota's - last week two of our local boys were hospitalized when a mine blew up their Humve, then today a ND boy was killed in Iraq.
War is not healthy for children and other living things.
Jerry 7-22-2003 23:02
howard 7-22-2003 22:03
Howard...
Very well said Howard. (Sigh) I know we can't go back. There are darn few solutions to the Native American's (or Australians Abos) with problems cropping up ten to one. It's just that I WISH something positive could alter their existence. Sometimes late at night I awake...and fantasy creeps in between awake and asleep. I imagine my novel about the Navajo is widely successful and the money flows forth like a mountain stream in flood. I wish to help the ones who I write about. So I try to come up with a plan that might involve a factory in the "Rez" something that offers them assistance, a job, income self-respect...
But I don't believe such a plan is feasible. They are too close to what once was. Total freedom of movement and a law unto themselves. Caught between the Anglo society and 10,000 years of evolution in North America. Sadly, it is possible that a large portion of the most distressed NA's are and will be simply, wrote off.
Howard ... speaking of racism. I am a racist. A racist against the human race. Neither nationality nor ethic origin is important to me. Quite simply, in a broad spectrum, humans blunder from crisis to crisis. War to famine, to pestilence, to destruction, no controlling influence to advance forward as one. From Wounded Knee to gas crematoriums to ethical cleansing to religious violence in the name of God it goes on. Religion you say? Has history recorded anything that indicates religion moves culture/people forward? Religion teaches us ways to live. To achieve perfection. Hey! That's great! But it does not compute. Religion promises an afterlife for good behavior, read faith. But the fastest growing religion in the world says, not love your neighbor but kill your neighbor if his or her beliefs are different. This is the old "KILL ‘EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT IT OUT" adage. In the years 1000 AD to 1100 AD ask an Arab about the racial goodness of Christians. They might point out that when the Crusaders captured Jerusalem the streets ran rivers of blood. Guess who's? When Arabs retook the holiest of all cities, the policy was reversed. Guess who died then. Religious devotees have happily slaughtered each other for thousands of years. Stop and look around ... it is on going.
So...okay Randall you are a racist against humanity. What then? Frankly, I don't know. Religion does not seem to be the answer. Government is sure as hell not the answer. The answer lies within each person on the earth. It is above religion and transcends national origin. Until humans learn to relate to each other, to care, to understand, to look beyond "me" we will mistreat Native Americans, Australian Abos, wage war with teenage gunman carrying AK-47's, invest money in technological processes to defend, but kill nevertheless, fellow humans. It is probable a dreadful future awaits my friends.
BTW... a thought ... is Pester ... Americo? Or Jon? Maybe Pussy? If not ... Americo come back!!!! We need balance!!!!
Randall
Randall 7-22-2003 21:33
The trouble with America, and let it be said, is that you guys keep really horrible hours.
Teekay 7-22-2003 20:49
And that, I think, is the part we all need to learn.
HOWARD: That is just beautiful!
Teekay 7-22-2003 20:47
Granted we live in a society which has an amazing amount of flaws and there are still numerous problems that need attending to, but I for one give thanks everyday that I live in the country I do.
I have read that there is no good or bad there simply is and as I feel we are spiritual bodies having a human experience I can see how that may be the case.
As such perhaps these societal flaws you speak of are merely our lessons we must learn or overcome in this lifetime.
You are vocal concerning that which is wrong with the world. Do you feed the hungry? Do you care for the ill? Do you lend a hand without thought of repatriation? Are you kind?
Or do you kick dogs, snarl at small children, skimp with tips and not recycle?
Gestures do not have to be grand to change the world.
You say how we are brainwashed as children. I've thought about that myself, but apart from a few subtle influences from my parents like not licking my plate and wearing clean knickers (in case of an accident) I have not been able to place anything detrimental. No behaviour that I am carrying out that will make any body suffer - except perhaps my cooking.
Now, there are cultures that are brainwashed to hate others from the day they are born - not half as helpful as the clean undies advice.
Citizens in this country can be sued for making any kind of racial statement.
I imagine you, just waking at the bottom of the pit and looking around you and seeing all the dregs and scum and possibly a white rabbit and a rabid queen.
You can't see much from down there, yet that is your world. You can stay there or you can climb out of it and then you will be able to see the crap and the good stuff too, and from that view point you will be able to see what best you can do to help.
Of course, I'm willing to consider that I could be the one at the bottom of the pit, in which case I think I'll stay here because the view seems prettier than the one you're experiencing.
There are people who would listen without debate to what you say. They are the people who sue MacDonalds for making them fat, they are the ones who climb into people's houses and sue cos the dog bit them, they are the people who kill people and blame it on their rotten childhood.
Tell it to these people and they will rally together and vent their anger at the injustices because now they are justified because the world just stinks and don't they have a right?!?!
Your opinions thus far are half baked. You've only gotten half way through the reasoning, keep thinking and discussing and you'll probably come out the other side.
And, I said the only thing we have control over is our own thoughts. Not even our actions are fully under our control.
All this is written with love and an open mind and the niggling need to go make a coffee, so off I go.
Teekay 7-22-2003 19:49
RE: States and other properties being returned to NAs -- what would I do with New York? Or Arizona? Would it do any good if we could dig up either of my great-great-grandmothers and restore to them the lands (and names) that were taken from them?
Can the Cherokee return to, and restore, the farms they once were so proud of, that made the white settlers so jealous that they disposessed, murdered, and relocated them?
Can the Iroquois -- that fierce, proud, racist (yes, I said racist) people regain the superiority they once knew? Can the Souix? The Commanche? I've spoken with some of the Navajo, and they want to live now. Some of them maintain the old cultures and customs, but they know they can't live that way now -- it's too late.
I guess the bottom line is: We can't go back. Pandora's Box has been opened, and the demons are free. For now. And we are not the ones who can, or will, rechain them.
Reparations? They don't last.
Recognition and Respect do. And to work at all, they must work both ways.
My grandfather talked racism. He hated. But he hated himself for hating. He didn't like Jews, but hated the Germans for the Holocaust. He didn't like or trust Italians (or any Europeans), but wept bitterly when his neighbor Iggy died, and made sure that Mrs. Varieka always had food on her table.
And he taught me the weeping and making sure part.
And that, I think, is the part we all need to learn.
howard 7-22-2003 14:35
I accept that sometimes my focus is on ‘that which is shitty’ but feel that it is best to point the shit out before someone stands in it, and to make people aware of where the smell is coming form, so they can avoid it, is it ‘being’ negative to point out something that is?
Yes we have made great advances in human rights and yet advances in other ways such that vast numbers of people can be blown away at the touch of a button plus their human rights can be ignored by one or two people on the strength of the power we’ve allowed them to have.
You say that we have absolutely no control over anything, this may or not be true but certainly if it is then I or anyone else cannot use their own personal powers to improve said world.
How much of a persons’ choices are made in full knowledge of the facts, from the time we are born we are bombarded with what to think, what to like, who to like, what to read, what to listen to, what to eat, wear etc if you’re not aware that you’re being influenced you tend to accept what’s before you, we do not see the indoctrination it happens subtly, slowly. If we do become aware somehow, much of our time is spent un-learning or re-evaluating what we have ‘learned’.
Howard: I did not advocate blaming ‘The State’ for all the evils.. I just said that many crutches are ‘weapons of the state’ and help to support the imbalance…
Yes ‘The State’ is us but isn’t it also true that somehow the population believes, in general that it’s out of their hands? The state is supposed to be by the people for the people, it would perhaps be more accurate to describe it as through profit and for profit.
On what grounds, were my questions invalid?
I have been stung many times before and have always felt stronger for it in the long run.
Anyway, how are you all? Great to be here!
What you have to do
Nothing
What you have to be
Nothing
What you have to learn
Nothing
Are we humans having a spiritual experience or spirits having a bodily experience?
When two or more people join together to achieve a common aim or aims, we can then say whether something is good or bad in reference to the said aim, even then, it is an agreement only, rather than a statement of fact. I.e. if something is good then it is conducive to a certain aim, if something is said to be bad then it is considered detrimental to a certain aim. Thus it can be seen that an object or idea can be both, good or bad depending on the aim in consideration.
Whereas it's true that we struggle to define our own aims, it is doubly true that as a society we do not seem to have defined what we are aiming for, hence in the same way that we often do not know or do what's good for ourselves we end up not knowing or doing what's best for the society. No one tells you at any stage of your life what the aim of your family is, or the aim of your community, or the country, or the human race. Yet we all have rules and presumably these rules were set out to achieve a certain aim, it seems that we have lost sight of our purpose, so en-masse we would appear to be, a population without direction.
I want to know everything like the King and I and his son Tuna and sweetcorn.
To be, is to do: Socrates.
To do, is to be: Plato.
Do be do be do: Sinatra.
By folks Love Pester.
Pester Smemb 7-22-2003 13:43
Howdy all... Would you believe I have an urge to take part in Shortie night? That doesn't happen often.
Would kind of love US to invade Australia. Will love to meet those US troops... Kidding about invasion part.
I too dislike segregation. Everyone should be treated equally. A friend's mother and her boyfriend, boyfriend asked if I welcomed them as Mexicans... And I was like huh? I told him I welcomed them as people.
My brother has come back from China a month ago... Where he did some training with the Shaolin Monks over there. He runs his own kickboxing school and has been looking through different cultures for training techniques.
So a bit of culture interaction there.
Taylor 7-22-2003 2:39
Just kidding, I don't think we'd ever have to invade your fine continent, or at least I surely hope not, we've got way too many swords in the fire right now, probably about ten more then we should have...
Jerry 7-22-2003 0:42
On a bit of a different subject I do think we should make a devils island. Just for the worst of the worst. It'd be a bunch cheaper to care for those sentenced to life to simply put them on a desolate island with a few elite guards and a patrol boat or two, then let them fend for themselves. If they want to fight and kill each other, then more power to them and less scum for us to feed.
Getting back to the NA question though, I guess it's a fact of life that the conquer always subjugate the conquered. It's been that way for centuries, and probably will continue long after we've left this little blue marble. Without it we wouldn't have the Anglo-Saxons, or for that matter the USA. If you go giving the NA back their lands, then what of the Hispanic's in the SW, should we give them back Texas and New Mexico, oh and California? Well OK giving them California wouldn't take all that much I guess, and would loosing California really be a loss to the U.S.?
Just joking....
Write about it
Write on...
Jerry 7-22-2003 0:32
Thanks for the good thoughts about my stupid dog. Chicky seems to be just fine. When he is asleep, I poke him to be sure he's alive--When he makes a strange sound--Cough, snuffle or whine,--I check him over. Other than him getting really irritated by me, I can't see anything wrong with him. He says "Hi yall!" (A Poodle from South France?)
Sunday my sister had laser surgery on her eyes. She has been needing glasses more and more the last few years and she hates them. I went with her to drive her home and was a bit worried when I realized the Dr's clinic was in an Eighteen Wheeler with pop out rooms on the sides. My first thought was "Fly by Night." Scary thing to trust your eyes with. She seems to be ok now. She has to wear goggles they gave her to prevent damage to the eyes until they heal up. And she has two types of eye drops to be used 4 times a day. She said she felt fine and has gone to work tonight. Will be driving an Eighteen Wheeler to Dallas and back tonight. Just crossing my fingers. Ruin her eyes and her profession will be a goner.
Thanks for the thoughts about Chicky.
Bye
Rosemary 7-21-2003 21:33
Teekay 7-21-2003 20:22
HAHAHHAHAHHA I know!!!!!!
But you know what I'm trying to say.
Teekay 7-21-2003 19:12
MARY: Gorgeous photos. That last one's a trick, right? Right? I tell you, it had me looking twice.
RANDALL: We have the same type of thing happening with aboriginal people. They have been given lands back, but it only benefits some of the people.
The last full blood aboriginal died a few years back and so we have a mixed culture who seem to be trapped in a no man's land.
The govt. tries to fix the problem with money and other benefits, but until they reach the root of the problem they aren't going to fix anything.
I think the media could go a great way to helping, by including aboriginal people in everyday ads, thus giving them a sense of place and inclusion.
We have 2 prominent aboriginal actors that are seen almost daily on TV and they are fantastic, but only 2.
I think the majority of this minority of people have a sense of wounded pride, holding onto the idea of a way of life they will probably never see again, and probably have only known through word of mouth, and some don't even think about it, they're just wrapped in a fug of ignorance. Until they let that go they will remain where they are and they will continue the cycle of bringing their children into a society which they will need to be super amazing to pull themselves up through the bog of their peers to become a success in today's society, for isn't it far more comfortable to be a misery with those you know best, rather than accepted in the eyes of those you probably bear a life long animosity toward?
People are people are people. I hate when they are segregated into colour or race, because underneath that superficialness we are all the same. There are white people who are guilty of rearing their children the same way, it just stands out more with aboriginals as there are fewer.
I pray the day may come where people will see a different culture from their own as interesting, but looking about me it seems to close doors between people.
But really, what is culture anyway? It's an outside way of life. It's those little things we do in our everyday life that distinguishes from other cultures. It's baubles and trinkets.
Anyway, if I were invaded I would hope it were by a country that allowed women the vote, children's rights, equality for all, freedom of speech and all the wonderful things I currently enjoy - bit of an oxymoron really.
The history of the world has been about invasion. The best we can do is learn from our mistakes and move on.
JAKE: Welcome. The answer is yes you can do it, wether you can do it well is the trick.
Going.............
Teekay 7-21-2003 18:50
howard 7-21-2003 15:13
howard 7-21-2003 15:11
Thaks,
Jake
Jake 7-21-2003 9:30
All of that said, there is among some a revival of Native American and Polynesian (ala Hawaii) culture as a basis for counter acting the devastating impact of their treatment via subjegation and economic submission. Of course, there is also the interest that many had for Indian Culture in the 60s. Being a native of Montana I was interested in many of the stories that were maintained, especially about Wakon Tonka and now that I am in the northwest, additional interest in the stories about Raven and other accounts.
Of course, perhaps the biggest example of the creation of the Nunavut Province in Canada for the Inuit. If you are interested take a look at http://www.gov.nu.ca/ and note the use of Inuktitut language for the primary web page. It should be noted that they have the advantage of having a much more receptive government than our own in the US. Also, the isolation of the Inuit and control of their own destinies is somewhat better than many NA's in the lower 48. Of course, there is always the approach that Alaska took, but we can save that discussion for another day. All of that above, however, is better than what was visited upon the Aboriginal cultures and race in Australia until as recently as the 1967 when they finally were given full citizenship rights.
All of this is fertile ground for many different forms of literary mining to come up with powerful stories. It is with some trepidation that one might approach such powerful subject matter and do so when looking from the outside in. However, much as when I visited Uluru (better known as Ayers Rock) and decided to not climb it given the negative feelings related to me about this issue re local Aboriginal peoples. When it was later explained to me that when there was a death it made a location that was sacred not sacred or less sacred, this made even more sense. This seemed to be particularly galling when it was related by some that some of those killed trying to climb Uluru did so when they lost their hats and instinctively raced after them only to go tumbling down the steep incline when they lost hold of the rope. I would call this evolution in action, but that's just me. Personally, however, when at Chichen Itza, I happily raced up the narrow steps of the pyramid there and back down without using the rope supplied.
Well, I seemed to have rambled on a little long. Take care all.
Jack Beslanwitch 7-21-2003 2:37
Jerry...
I believe that at least one, maybe two western states be returned to Native American control. Lock stock and barrel. It would not be an overnight thing. This would lead to the Wounded Knee scenario you mentioned. Land that was taken with or without treaty would be returned when all living members of current land ownership died. When grandpa and son and grandson (or the maternity side) were dead the NA's assume control. Yes, it would be a long term transfer of land but it took 200 years to get in this mess to start with. It would be a goal all parties white and red would work for.
The slow destruction of NA culture is as big a blotch on America as black slavery. The above scenario could prove to be a nightmare. But on the other hand the NA's are in a nightmare now. After all...it was their land to start with. But, can I see Texas as a Comanche state? Or South Dakota as Sioux? Or Arizona as Navajo? How about the eastern states? Would New York be ruled by NA's who trace their ancestry back hundreds of years? Conside this ... Navajo and Sioux are the two largest NA tribes and should be offered something. Otherwise, all of us are participants in the destruction of a viable culture.
The Anglo-Saxon race, for all it's good brings as much evil forward. How would the Swedes feel if their land was overtaken by a technological superior red culture and they were forced to live on inferior land? How about the English? The Germans?
Anyway...it's food for thought....
Randall
Randall 7-20-2003 11:44
One wants to say "DO SOMETHING" to the government, but then look at what they've done to the Native Americans thus far, and after a quick glance one wants to say "DON'T DO ANY MORE!"
We had great hopes when the casino's opened, after all gambling on the reservation is giving the proud native's their money right? Wrong, the tribe only gets a small cut of the proceeds, most are siphoned off by the "gambling companies" who set up the reservation casino's (read the mob) and they aren't about to share.
The tribe recently sued for possession of Shadehill dam, a huge lake just south of here, where we enjoy camping so much based on a treaty that gave the Sioux possession of all the land that borders the Grand River. That treaty has long since been broken like nearly 98% of all treaty's, and the courts have ruled that there is no legal claim on the lake. What the law suite did, however was to piss off most of the white's here about, and put a terrible strain on the casino's in the area. Since the land that the tribe wanted is now occupied by local ranches, and fishermen who have no pity on the "damn drunken Indians!"
When I worked on the PD up north, our county was half on and half off the reservation. It made law enforcement almost impossible for the local Sheriff since the tribe held that local law enforcement has no jurisdiction on Indian country. This is in fact true, as held by the federal courts, Indian reservations are indeed sovrign nations and not subject to the laws of the State and County. As you saw on the documentary, this leaves the reservations wide open to the no good criminals who are on the run from the law. The status of tribal police has gone back and forth like a damn ping pong ball, at one time the Federal Government required white supervision of the tribal police, then the whole force was changed to white officers, and latter all whites were fired and the tribe had to furnish their own police, as well as their own police training and equipment. This was the case when I left law enforcement, and I don't know if it still is, but I think so. There was a lot of confusion, and still is as to the status of non-Indians on Indian land, they can be arrested by the tribe, but not brought before the tribal court, and must appear before the Federal Court of the jurisdiction. The same goes for Criminal investigations, the tribal police can arrest another Indian for most anything but criminal investigations fall not under the purview of the tribal police, but the FBI.
The whole thing is a total mess, and extradition from a reservation is nearly impossible. Now the tribes are also issuing license plates, and drivers licenses, without the requirement of tests or insurance, thus if an Indian is involved in an accident off the reservation, they are subject to arrest for not having insurance, but the state must honor the drivers license and license plates on the vehicle. Once arrested, the Indian usually makes a b line to the reservation as soon as getting out an bail and rarely if ever returns for court.
Again this pisses off the locals since your car is wrecked and there is no insurance to fix it up.
The whole thing is a total mess, and I don't have the slightest inkling that it will ever be different, unless, of course some liberal judge somewhere rules that the Black Hills do indeed belong to the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes as it once did in the treaties of 1875, then I think we would see a general uprising of the white land owners that would make the slaughter at Wounded Knee look like a picnic.
Jerry 7-19-2003 23:56
Hi...
Rosemary, hope the poodle is okay. Bet he'll be sore for a few days! As a fellow Texan I heartily agree on the spare AC units. We have four window units in the house, but only use three. The other unit is a "standby." I also have a ten foot, pickup bed camper in which I recently installed a 5,000 BTU unit. It runs off a 5,000 watt auxiliary power unit I carry in my pickup.(The camper is on a trailer that I pull with the pickup.) Incidentally the camper is fully self-contained. If we had to we could gather the dogs and cats and head out... I have two solar panels which maintain the nine, 12 volt marine deep cycle and gel batteries for 12 volt power. It holds 40 gallons of water dispersed by a 12 volt water pump. There are four, five gallon propane bottles as well and an outlet for 115 volt power. And four kersone lanterns for use at night. The camper might get a little cramped if my wife and daughter and I had to move in...but as they say, shelter is shelter is shelter.
My wife thought at one time I was getting the camper ready to leave her. HA! Ridiculous I said. Leave hot and sunny Texas for the cool Rocky Mountains? How could Montana or Wyoming mountains compare with the scrub oak and plains of Texas? Absurd! Although I do have a few clothes aboard, a towel or two, a week's supply of MRE's, a few cooking pans and dishes and toilet paper and fishing poles and a wood saw and an ax and a 22 rifle ... a small library of wilderness living how to books. I mean where did she get that idea? (GRIN)
Oh and thanks for the compliments on my stories. I live to write for you guys...
Randall
Randall 7-19-2003 23:03
Mary 7-19-2003 22:52
Click the link below to see my family trip to Six Flags Worlds of Adventure yesterday. (Image intense)
Also, Shortie night theme for this week:
Mistaken Identity
I love reading the shorties in the workbook, even though I haven't commented on any yet, I really do enjoy reading them! Keep posting!
Mary Six Flags Trip Yesterday 7-19-2003 22:51
Personally, my take on the situation is that each and every person is an individual, capable of making their own choices good or bad and certainly responsible for the outcome of those choices. Wether they put the blame elsewhere, they still have to live with whatever it is that displeases them, and until they wake up to that fact they will forever be going around in a viscious circle.
I agree that there are behaviours that get ridiculously out of hand. Society allows some people to get away with the most preposterous things, anywhere from murder to sueing fast food companies for making individuals overweight.
I like to think this is not the norm. I like to focus on what advances society has made toward human rights and such.
Due to a minority there will always be those who abuse any situation.
As far as humans being mechanical, I thoroughly disagree. To say that ignores our true natures and sets us up for nothing better.
But, and I find this a very encouraging thing, we have absolutely no control over anything, but our own thoughts, and as such we are free to set our own personal standard be it good or bad. My advice and of course you need not take it, is to stop focusing on that which is shitty with the world and manking, but use your own personal power to improve it. Negative attracts negative, thus positive attracts positive, to use your own words : Human behaviour is contagious.
Teekay 7-19-2003 22:32
Lots of people ask questions such as the ones you pose -- sometimes I think there's a common set of questions floating about, all composed and ready to be asked by the next thoughtful person. How do you know that set of questions was not compiled by "the state?"
It's all a ruse -- the questions are really a smokescreen to conceal the fact that "the state" is really us! It's "we the people" -- the man on the street. There is no "the state" at all!
If you really want to generate thought, and instigate change, come up with a new set of (valid) questions!
But don't be shocked if the answers sting a bit...
howard 7-19-2003 21:33
RANDALL,
I know I absolutely love your Red Britches stories and am positive most, if not all of the rest of us do too. I have logged in on the outside part of Mark's site, but I'm not really writing much lately so haven't tried to get inside to the writing part. I would really miss your stories if you put them in there.
Yesterday, my air conditioner flipped its lid and the fan quit working. Why do machines only do this when the temp. is 100 and humidity around 89%? I guess I was lucky, it only took overnight and $359 to fix it. Meanwhile, my Poodle, Chickie, went out to the road for his first time and got hit by a car. I was writing out a check to pay the service man when I heard him crying. That's the first time I ever threw my billfold on the ground. I ran out there hoping another car wouldn't come along and hit him again and grabbed him up. The ungrateful mutt growled at me.
It turns out, he must have been just clipped and it knocked him out--kind of. He was all stiff and his eyes were open but not moving. I thought he was a gonner.
I laid him on the tailgait of my truck, poked and prodded some but couldn't find anything but a scratch next to his right eye and a skinned place on his right front leg.
The knock on the head must have sent him into shock or something because by the time I had paid the Air conditioner man and was deciding if he was alive enough to take to the vet, he got up and looked around. I put him on the ground, figuring a fall off the truck wouldn't be a good thing just now. He staggered around a little then followed me into the house. I was using a window unit in the bedroom, (In south Texas, you keep emergency cooling units on hand.) and he jumped up on the bed in the cool spot and went to sleep. I kept poking him every now and then to see if he was still alive until he got tired of it. He jumped down, went to his bowl and had supper. Then back to bed.
He seems just fine now but I'll tell you---he scared the begeebers out of me.
Hi to everyone, glad to see you back Teekay. Hope Tina and Hallie show up soon.
Got geese hollering for their supper at the back door. Got to go.
bye
Rosemary 7-19-2003 21:00
Human behaviour is contagious. Good and bad it will spread if given time and attention.
A man can think himself sick so successfully, his body will become sick and show all the manifestations and symptoms of sickness. (Without him actually being, inherently sick)
'Man' is essentially, a machine, operating largely on unconscious drives, ‘Society’ as a result is also a machine, a man made machine, growing increasingly out of control.
What do you want, why do you want it, how much do you want it, when do you want it, what are you prepared to do to get it, what are you not prepared to do, what will you do when you do get it, what will you do if you don’t get it, what will you do after you get it, will you know when you’ve got it, will you change your mind, decide you no longer want it?
A man explodes into an uncontrolled fit of anger, then he feels better and doesn’t see the damage he’s done, to himself and others.
We are pampered in society, things are taken out of our hands, we have no need to jump, run, swim, climb, as we have machines to do these things for us. So our bodies become soft and unfit. Even our thinking is done for us, we are actively encouraged not to think for ourselves, to watch not to do, to vegetate in inaction. The ‘System’ doesn’t want us to think, to educate, to love, for these activities help to bring about it’s destruction.
When you are awake you are largely on automatic, you miss things and repeat the same mistakes, you find yourself getting angry at the things that you look for or bring towards you. You judge people before you know them and you justify your faults. You also tend to drift through life aimlessly. One day you may awaken and see things clearly but then you fall asleep again. This, is the human condition.
What is the aim? How are we going to achieve it? Are we working towards the aim? What do we do if we’re not? Does everyone know the aim? Is everyone agreed upon the aim? Are we all working towards the same aim, in consistent ways? Is it a realistic aim? What happens if someone no longer wants or believes in the aim? Are we in harmony or at odds with other groups?
A crutch is anything in life that people lean on (And in particular become accustomed to leaning on) that they don’t actually need. The use of the crutch makes the person lazy and more and more dependent upon the crutch ‘till eventually the person believes\thinks that they cannot survive or function without it.
Many crutches are ‘weapons of the state’, that is, they help to maintain and support the imbalance of wealth and power inherent in the system. A crutch can be anything from a drug, an education, a T.V., a radio, music, food, fashion, jewellery, ideas, beliefs, religion, possession, drink, sex, luxuries, power, etc.
All crutches eat away at a persons’ freedom of spirit, they lead the person towards the herd mentality, they stifle creativity and individualism.
Some people may have, predominantly one crutch, others may hop from one to another (This may give support to the illusion that they are without crutches).
I’d just like to say and I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, as a thing’s best said than left unsaid and I’m jolly glad it was me who said it. So there you have it in a nutshell, or an eggshell whichever you prefer.
Pester 7-19-2003 19:18
Jerry...
I am a salvage/dumpster diver. I hate waste and while drawing the line at food everything else is fair game. The reason is this...there is a LOT of waste in our society. I recently spotted 2 sections of indoor/outdoor carpet protuding from a dumpster. A quick look see revealed brand new carpet. A nearby store was laying new carpet and tossed the excess. Both sections are now in my home. The larger section is 12' by 12' the second a little smaller. As a one time state employee I have seen thousands of dollars of usable items tossed away. Enought that someone should have had to answer to Texas taxpayers. Employees were threatened with dismissal if the items were lifted. But what was the greater crime, discarding usable items or taking them home? Prospective dumpster divers should consider major retail outlets. Many usable items are discarded because of cosmetic flaws. Getting something usable for free is a turn-on for me.
BTW Jerry...I just watched a show about Pine Ridge Reservation tribal police. The Sioux. It related that 90% of police work on the reservation was alcohol and drug related. What will happen to the Native Americans if this continues?
Randall
Randall 7-19-2003 18:48
I had just separated from the U.S. Army as a Sgt, and the pay cut to work for the PD was frightening. Many a night (and all I ever had was night shifts.) I cruised by the two grocery store's and checked out their dumpsters. One can find great things there, while it's not all that fresh, the stuff is still quite good if prepared properly, and the wife was great at hiding the little flaws in the vegi's and the discoloration of the ever so slightly old pork and beef.
Sure glad those days are over but at the time it was all we could do to feed the family and pay the damn bills.
Jerry 7-19-2003 17:30
Hey...
Peaches, the Ranch Foreman
By Randall Henderson
As a delivery driver I know about shortcuts. A couple of days ago I was racing down an alley behind a grocery store and spotted a well-known figure. It was my friend. Committed grape aficionado, Red Britches, was standing in the store dumpster looking down at an apron clad man. Below Red, hand on hip was the store manager. They were having a heated argument. Red seeks nourishment everywhere and grocery dumpsters are prime targets. Store managers, a narrow-minded bunch, feel that food thrown away is, well, food thrown away. That Red periodically raids for left over veggies and cans without labels seems to greatly upset most store managers.
Red flagged me down as the manager stalked away. "Hey Randy boy! Pull a little closer."
Telling Red no is a little like holding up a fan to stop a tornado. Not usually done. I halted the pickup and wasn't surprised when numerous loud thumps in the bed told me Red had found a bonanza.
He fell into the pickup seat smelling like someone who had been digging in a food dumpster. I kicked the AC in max and rolled down the window. "Found a real bonanza Randy. Sacks of potatoes, cabbage and carrots. Please drop me off at Loaves and Fishes. And roll up that window, it's hot outside."
Loaves and Fishes, a Christian organization feeds the poor in town. Red is it's primary financial supporter and chief scout for voluntary and involuntary donated food. You might say he operates at both ends of the organization. A unique combination of giver and taker. The only retired millionaire naval officer who lives like a bum. But then, that's just Red.
With waves of olfactory distress washing over me, we pulled up to L&F. Red supervised the unloading then leaned in the window. "Heard about Slim?"
"No." I gasped. "What about him?"
Red winked. "Next time you see Slim call him Peaches."
Slim Lee is Ms Shari's foreman. He is actually part of a unique triangle, Ms Shari, owner of the largest cattle producing ranch in central Texas, Catalina the Longhorn and Slim, ranch foreman. Slim is an old time cowhand who found a home on Ms Shari's ranch when he left the massive King Ranch in South Texas for greener pastures. Catalina was purchased from the King Ranch and has been Slim's bane ever since.
"I pulled her into the world on a cold winter night and she's been a horn in my side ever since!" Slim is want to say.
Now ... around here nicknames are big. Good nicknames are often plastered across the back windshield and not so good nicknames known to cause a real ruckus. Calling anyone "Peaches" in the cowboy culture could result in a can of whoop ass being opened on the unwary. (The worst fight I ever saw started when one cowboy told his friend he had "dainty" eating habits. Whatta brawl!) Somewhat wary I agreed and in a couple of days happened to walk out of the Industrial Cafe behind Slim Lee.
"Hey Peaches, what's happening?"
In the early morning dawn Slim froze in mid-step. Normally slouched in stride, (in the saddle at prayer or asleep) he slowly straightened and turned. "Randy that won't get you an invite to hunt deer this season."
I smiled. "Sorry Slim. I ran across Red and he said to ask you about the name."
Which he hadn't but how embarrassing would it be to have a seventy something year old cowboy with riding heeled boots chase a tennis shoed delivery driver around a parking lot. Discretion IS the better part of valor. Especially when dealing with the great-grandson of a man who was a prime shooter in the infamous Mason County War many years ago.
Slim grinned, ice green eyes twinkling in a leather textured face. He laughed, "Peaches! Well I've been called worse." He walked to a battered duelie pickup and dropped the tailgate, brushed a half-bale of hay aside and plopped it down.
"Shorty and me were at the gate to Ms Shari's peach orchard. Ms Shari likes peach ice creme so she has a hundred trees in peaches. Every now and then I gather a bushel basket from different trees. Ms Shari has a Texas A & M grant to genetically implant and she is homing in on just the right taste. So knowing which tree is which is important to her.
"Well Shorty is a Border Collie and smart as all hell but I can't get him to open the gate. I don't think it's a matter of intelligence he just don't want too. So I let the truck idle and opened the gate. When I turned to walk back, guess who was between me and the pickup?"
"Catalina?"
"You know it. I would rather face a grizzly in a locked room than Catalina in the open. We were eyeball to eyeball. You know the area around that gate is mostly flat, buffalo grass about two feet tall. Where she came from is beyond me. Be just like the old bitch to have laid flat down when she saw me a'coming. Hiding in the grass. Sneaky like! That she was even there was no accident. No sir. We had her in the Kiser pasture with the rest of the herd only a couple of days ago. But she left, jumped several fences, crossed a highway, forded the Colorado River to come here."
"For the peaches?" I asked.
"There are two females on this here place who know when the peaches are ripe. Ms. Shari and Catalina. Catalina does love them peaches."
I laughed. "What do you do with a 2000 pound Longhorn, a seven-foot horn spread who likes peaches?"
"Get out of her way! Going forward was out of the question for damn sure. I looked for Shorty just in time to see him duck down into the floorboard! No Catalina for him! I stepped back and Catalina stepped forward. Me back, her forward. I came back against the gate and it swung open. I just followed it around and stood very still. Randy, I swear I had to look up to watch her walk by. My Lord that old bitch is big! Old Catalina went to the first tree and grabbed a peach. She ate half, dropped it and went to the next tree. Ate a couple there, then walked down the rows smelling, eating! I heard a pickup drive up and turned. It was Ms Shari driving her grandpa's old 1951 Ford F 100 pickup. She walked to me, then glanced down as Catalina made her way down the rows, smelling and tasting."
"Slim Lee," Ms Shari asked after a minute. "Why is Catalina eating my peaches?"
"Ms Shari. It just seemed the natural thing to do. Her being as big as a barn door and all."
"Ms Shari is small like, a little younger than me but a lot of grit flows through that woman. She went back to her pickup, grabbed her sun bonnet and a bushel basket full of empty quart sized coffee cans. Then we walked behind Catalina with me picking up the half-eaten peaches. I had to label each bucket from a tag on the tree."
"You picked up after Catalina?"
"Yes sir I did. Ms Shari told me she believes Catalina has a better taste than all the Aggies in the world. And you know what Randy? I wouldn't be a bit surprised if in the end Ms Shari and Catalina share the same taste. Along towards the back of the orchard Catalina settled in and was devouring one tree in particular. Ms Shari walked forward, reached up, grabbed Catalina's ear and pulled her away from the peaches! She pulled out a piece of twine from her apron, for crying out loud and led, LED I say, Catalina back to the orchard gate!"
"With you following along carrying the peaches?"
Slim nodded glumly. "I couldn't have drug Catalina away from that tree with a logging chain and a D9 bulldozer. But all 100 pounds of Ms Shari and a length of twine did. There ain't no accounting for peach eating Longhorns, hard headed ranch women and confiding in Red. I tell you one thing Randy boy. Im going to have a talk with Mr. Red Britches real soon.
Slim stood and shut the pickup tailgate. "Seen Red today?"
"Uh, no."
"I need to have a little talk with Red. This peaches thing could get out of hand."
About that time a group of men walked by. "Morning Peaches." "Howdy Peaches." "How's it hanging Peaches?" "Any fruit to sell Peaches?"
Without another word Slim drove away. I sure wouldn't want to be in Red's shoes that day ... for sure ... and amen sister!
BTW...I risk Jack and Marks ire by not posting this on the notebook. Because...I write stories for my friends on the WN. I view Mark's notebook for writers working for publication. I'm not, these tales are for you, my friends.
Randall
Randall 7-19-2003 15:13
Think about it, who better then the cop on the street to decide that so and so should have been an abortion? I mean really, the guys who keep doing the crimes and getting off because of who they are, or who they know?
Ok ok, so it was just a suggestion and nobody ever thought it a great idea. Several, well hundreds of cops thought it a wonderful idea but then they don't give awards do they?
Jerry 7-19-2003 0:39
Jack Beslanwitch 7-18-2003 23:47
Teekay 7-18-2003 19:22
RANDALL and JERRY: What a wonderful welcome. I think I'll go away and come back again just for the warm fuzzies your welcome gave me :-D
MARK: Truth is eternal, reality is personal. Ain't that the truth!
CAROL: What a bummer. I hope thay work it all out soon.
PAMELA: I know, it's one of those age old questions and if they'd simply asked me to begin with, things wouldn't have gotten so out of hand :-D
The answer to the tree falling question is: When the tree falls the movement and landing creates an energy. Those with ears will distinguish that energy as sound, those without ears will receive the vibrational energy, deaf people standing beneath the tree will feel a type of impact energy,(there may also be other ways to feel that energy, but I don't know what they are)
Ergo, if there was nobody to hear it, the falling tree would not make a sound.
PESTER: Very wise indeed methinks :-D
I'm sorry if I unintentionally dropped a stone in the mud, I hereby remove it by pointing out that I posed a question rather than passing a judgement :-)
TAYLOR: Are you sure the word abuse would not be a more appropriate word that discipline?
The falling tree question was far easier :-D
HOWARD: There are no words, just a sad leaden feeling.
RHODA: Thanks :-). And yes, it is so tempting when you see something that looks like a piece of gold, to bite it and make sure it is.
HEATHER: I see him, over there by blackberry bush. Looks like the bugger's stolen somebody's watch.
Ooh, he's disappeared down a hole.
Cover me
I'm going i
............i <