May the Best Writer Win, um, With An Addendum

Tomorrow, Thursday, November 1st is a day that will live in infamy!

That’s pretty good. You’re all allowed to quote that if you like. Just remember who to attribute it to.

Certainly not I.

As most of you who read this blog know, since most of you are writers, November is National Novel Writing Month and there is a yearly competition held, the NaNoWriMo which stands for … something, but I’m not sure what because the acronym makes always me think of Mork and Mindy and that sends me off on a tangent of thinking about television shows from the 70s and 60s and how much fun some of those were compared to the horrible tripe that’s currently on the tube and how much I miss some of those great theme songs like The Adamms Family or Gilligan’s Island and I start humming them in my head and it sounds something like hmm hmhmhmhmhmhmhmm hmm hmhmhmhmhmm, and I …

. . . Sorry, but I did warn you.

I’ve never competed in it. In fact, I’ve always pooh-poohed it. The object is to write as many words as you can in the month. The driving principle behind it is that you allow yourself to write crap and to put your internal critic and editor on hold until the end of the competition.

That’s why I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea. I allow myself to write crap every day and I’m damned good at it. I don’t need a special month to do it.

This year, however, I’m joining the fray. No, I’m not joining the official competition; I’m joining a friendly wager among a group of online writer friends. The competition is called the Great Tea Debacle. I’m not sure why, but the winner is sent tea or some other cheap ass prize from all the losers.

I have a few trepidations about the whole concept.

One is I’m not a competitor. Never have been. I just don’t have that fire, that desire to grind someone under my hob nailed boot heels. I remember as a child I used to play baseball and one memorable moment was, while playing right field, I sat down to read my Bazooka Joe comic and the ball rolled right past me. I think they were all pissed at me, but I didn’t care. Bazooka Joe was particularly funny that day. I was happy even if the rest of the team wasn’t. Screw ’em. Let them get their own bubblegum.

That’s not to say, that I haven’t competed aggressively. If I don’t know the person then I have no qualms about grinding their face under my heel and then pointing and laughing. When I’m on a team I take on that mob mentality and like nothing better than to humiliate the foes.

And I hate to lose.

So you would think both of those would combine to make me a fierce, heartless competitor, the kind every American loves.

Hold on, I say, there’s more.

The problems arise when I know the person I’m competing against and if I like them the problem is compounded.

When I know the person and I’m going against them in one-on-one, head-to-head, mano y mano competition and I’m winning, well, let’s give an example.

Many years ago I used to play racquetball. And I was pretty darned good at it, willing to sacrifice my flesh by rebounding off the walls to make any shot. I believe (and please allow me a memory lapse here) that the goal was first one to 21 points was the winner.

The score would often be 16, 17, or more in my favor and around five to them. Now you say, great, finish them off you have the game well in hand.

No. That’s not how it works. I’m winning. I’m killing. While others would strike the final deathblow, I start to feel guilty. I feel sorry for my friend, whom I’m kicking the shit out of. I begin to empathize with them and think how bad I’d feel if I was getting whomped like that.

And then I start to lose.

On purpose.

And many a game of racquetball was won by my friends 21-18.

In other words, winning has never been necessary to stroke my ego. Making my friends feel good has been.

Which brings me to the present. I’m competing against friends. Well, I consider them all friends (except for this one braggart who is claiming to average 50,000 words a week. Her I’d like to grind under my hobnailed boots.). So while they’re all taunting and throwing the smack down, I’m just sitting on the sidelines waiting for the competition to start. I’ll do what I can, slow and steady wins the race, supposedly, and we’ll see what happens.

So that’s my addendum: I’ll do my best, but honestly, my heart isn’t in it. If the ultimate goal wasn’t to have more words on paper for my novel, I probably wouldn’t have entered at all.

P.S. Because of this competition, this blog might be on hiatus for the next 30 days. Please be patient. I might, if I feel the need, offend you all by reposting some ancient Upon Reflection columns that originally appeared in the UWM Times a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

P.P.S. If you look carefully, you’ll see that I said I have a few trepidations and I then proceeded to list only one: I’m not a competitor. Well, pooh to you and your literal, critical mind! Fine. Since you’re staring at me like that. I’m not a fan of tea. I’m in a tea competition and I much prefer a coffee or beer. Go figure.

-30-

Am I Red Faced Or What?

Saturday we went out to look at Halloween accessories, and maybe a costume, for our kids as Trick-or-Treating in our neighborhood was Sunday afternoon.

Can’t accuse us of waiting until the last minute. We had a good 24 hours head start!

We’re looking at all the discount items. They had bins filled with body parts and spiders and bats and such. While I’m digging through the bin, my wife is across the aisle trying on various goofy hats.

She has this witch’s hat on, the wide brimmed, round, pointy things that witch’s from cartoons always wear.

I’m holding a severed leg in my hand by the ankle. And I point the leg at her and say, “Hey, that’s you.”

Just as this guy walks into my vision.

A man with a prosthetic leg.

A man, who I am now pointing the severed leg at after having said, “Hey, that’s you.”

And I feel about this tall and I’m looking for the nearest hole to crawl into.

Luckily, the man had a sense of humor and said something like, “I’ve been looking for that!”

Still, I felt very awkward and stupid. Then my 7-year-old goes, “What happened?”

My 7-year-old who also says things like, “Hey, that guy’s fat” to large people in a restaurant at the top of his lungs.

Again, the guy is good-natured and tells us his story of woe, how he was broadsided by a car while riding him motorcycle. (I’m thinking the driver might have been on a cellphone, because later I overheard the gentleman telling some teens about the dangers of cellphones and driving.)

And that was pretty much our day. Any of you manage to stick your foot in your mouth over the weekend?

The Great Escape

I know it’s going on. They think they’re pulling one over on me, but I know. I know as soon as I lock up and throw the latch, as soon as my footsteps stop echoing; they’re getting together, plotting in hushed tones, plotting their escape.

Freedom is too great a lure.

He’s a slippery one, the little one is. He’s tried to escape several times. Often he hides before lockdown. It’s a futile attempt, because he is always run down, captured, and returned to his cell.

He’s the type that will never learn, that one; you can see it in his eyes. Shifty, furtive, they’re always alert, on the look out for one slip up, one mistake that will give him his freedom.

When he’s alone, he works on the door. Scratching at the lock or the latches, hoping to find a weakness. He was successful one time. The door was found ajar, pulled off its hinges.

Was it our own negligence in locking him up? Did we not double-check to see if the door was secure? He is small and certainly not strong enough to pull the door down.

The door was replaced and reinforced and the Staff were all taught to double-check the locks and latches on the door whenever he was put back in his cell.

He’s had no further successful attempts at escape, but we’ve found the outer covering to the door locking mechanism torn off on several occasions. That one has us confused. The covering is in a position where it is hard to reach from inside and, even with a tool, nearly impossible to remove.

Then one day we found another outside latch broken off. This one, however, was in an area where the little one couldn’t even see, much less reach.

At first we thought he was the reincarnation of Houdini. Once we eliminated all plausible explanations for what occurred, however, we began to suspect he was getting help from an outside source. He had an accomplice.

Suspicion fell upon the trustee. He had the opportunity. He had the wherewithal. He had free run of the place and he was big enough and strong enough. He could easily tear off the door, the latch cover and hinges. It had to be him. There could be no other.

We questioned the trustee but his lips were sealed, he kept mum of the whole situation. That’s part of their code, be silent and don’t rat out your friends. Still, you could see it in his eyes. He’d look away and wouldn’t meet your gaze. He was hiding something.

But what was he hiding? He was hardboiled, refusing to cooperate whether we gave him the third degree or promised him extra rations. Even the psychology of good cop/bad cop failed to elicit a response. He just stared at us with those big brown eyes, mocking us, daring us to prove he was the one.

I was reminded of the movie with Paul Newman where the Warden says, “What we have heeya, is a failure to communicate.”

Even though we knew it was the trustee, we couldn’t prove a thing and he wasn’t going to crack. He’s a slick one, he is. There was no concrete evidence linking him to the crimes. And he’s done nothing else untoward that would make us remove his trustee status.

So he remains free to roam while the other is locked away.

But I know, when I leave for work each day, my Dalmatian goes up to the crate where we keep our Jack Russell and tries to free him.

Freedom and the lure of using furniture as chew toys beckon the little one like Siren songs to sailors at sea.

One day we’ll catch them in the act. They’ll slip up and when they do, there’ll be Hell to pay.

-30-

Teachers, Kids, Parents, and Pencil Sharpeners

My first-grader came home with a note from school yesterday. He broke the pencil sharpener. The note regaled us with how the teacher had purchased the pencil sharpener (an industrial pencil sharpener) with leftover funds from the PTL. And how on the first day of class she had explained to all the kids that only pencils go in here, no crayons or anything else.

So my son, according to the letter, was putting in markers and erasers and “encouraging the other kids to put stuff in it too.” All while thinking it was a big joke.

The letter ended by saying that now she was going to have to buy a new pencil sharpener with her own money (what? You went through all the money the PTL gives you at the beginning of the year for school supplies already?), that, as a lesson to Kurt, he should help defray some of the cost since he broke it, and she thought Kurt should write a letter of apology to the class for ruining the pencil sharpener and trying to get the other kids to sin.

OK. She had me until that last word: Sin. Fine, I get it. It’s a Lutheran School. (They already sent my older son home with a warning because he dared to wear a Pink Floyd shirt. Which reminds me, I have to run out and get a Megadeth shirt before the school function on Friday.) But sin? I think God has more important things to worry about than if a kid is tempting other kids to break a pencil sharpener. At least, I hope He’s that busy. If He’s not, maybe someone needs to look into what He’s been doing while on the job. Maybe He’s surfing the Internet, watching Godtube.com.

OK, first some background. There are only 10 kids in my son’s class. Smallest class in years at that school. His school work has been coming back and his math is atrocious. He’s getting 30s and 40s for grades.

This from a kid who was doing great in math the year before. He struggled with reading, but math seemed to be his strong suit. We even gave him age appropriate math workbooks over the summer and he excelled at them. Now he’s failing?

I might add here that we’ve already had a run-in of sorts with her. At the school’s Open House a month ago we met with her and she expressed her concerns that Kurt tends to go off and do his own thing. I said proudly, “Yes, he marches to his own little drummer.” She saw this as a bad thing, however, and went on to give us examples of this horrid behavior.

Gripe 1–When the class was having snack and his table’s snack bowl (a cheap ass coffee filter) was empty, he took it upon himself to cleanup and threw everything away. His table was upset because they had wanted more popcorn and now they couldn’t because he had thrown away the bowl (a cheap ass coffee filter).

Gripe 2–When Kurt is line leader he will, on occasion, lead the class in a direction completely contrary to where the teacher wants the class to go.

She explained all this with a look of horror, as if she had some sort of monster on her hands. I thought of it as him showing initiative and leadership, qualities I definitely hope she doesn’t squelch over the remainder of the school year. Although I am seeing signs that she’s squelching his interest in going to school.

(I won’t even bring up the fact that we also have over Halloween with this teacher. She thinks Christians shouldn’t celebrate it, I think it’s great Pagan fun and have allowed Kurt to take Halloween decorations for show-and-tell just to spite her.)

What exactly was the teacher doing during this time? She says he put a marker, an eraser, and was encouraging the other kids. At what point was she planning on interfering?

Lastly, I asked Kurt a few questions. Why did he do it? He doesn’t know. But I’m used to that. He often acts before thinking.

What did you stick into the pencil sharpener? “A marker. An eraser. And a scissors.” Ah-ha! She never mentioned a scissors! (I must admit, when my kid sets out to break something, he does a damned fine job.)

Why the scissors? Again, “I don’t know.”

Did you encourage any other kids? “No.” And I believe him. Kurt is not that kind of kid. He does things on his own. He plays on his own. He’s a loner, in most respects. He is not an instigator. He doesn’t go, “Hey, Joey, come ‘ere, let’s go do this!” He leads by example.

Anyway, we made him send all his money, all $10 to the teacher. Had him write out two apologies, one to the teacher and one to the class. And then we included a $15 check ourselves. We’ve also banned him from playing X-Box for 3 weeks. And at this point, we’re banning him from Trick-or-Treating, although that might change if he shows some remorse by Sunday. (Yeah, we’re one of those stupid Trick-or-Treat on Sunday afternoon communities.)

I had a point when I started this… Oh, yeah. Kurt is not a bad kid. He’s not naughty as we define naughty, he’s just . . . well, to put it one-way, a boy . . . to put it another, he just doesn’t think about consequences. He’s hard working, honest, very happy, and lovable, just hyperactive and if left to his own devices, will get into trouble.

With a class size of 10, how can he get into trouble? How can he be failing math? I get the feeling that class size just doesn’t matter. 10 kids, 20 kids, 30 kids, she’s going to teach her class the same way she’s taught her classes for the last 10 or 20 years or however its been. No personal interaction, just “Here’s your work, do it and I’ll be sitting here meditating to God.”

Am I being the prototypical bad parent, taking my child’s side when he’s clearly in the wrong? Or do I have a valid point here?

The school “forced” his kindergarten teacher into retirement after last semester. Kurt thrived under her tutelage and now he’s struggling mightily. Personally? I think they put the wrong horse out to pasture.

Wii want to play!

It’s funny how things turn out sometimes.

A year or so ago when the new game systems were being announced for release there seemed to be a ton of press in anticipation for the “big guys,” Playstation and Xbox. Although Nintendo’s new game system was also going to debut, there was little hype about it.

There were probably several reasons for that. First, “real” gamers have always flocked to the Playstation and to an extent the XBox. These were serious machines with excellent graphics and a ton of adult-content games. XBox’s main claim to fame was “Halo” exclusivity. And I can see why. My son loves “Halo” and I’ve enjoyed playing it myself.

Second, what did Nintendo have? — a firm grip on the handheld market, but the Gamecube? When we were game console shopping the only time the salespeople might recommend that is if I mentioned it was for my kids. “Lots of great games for kids,” they’d tell me. “Donkey Kong and the Mario franchise.” But as soon as you mentioned you wanted something more substantial, they’d steer you to the other two consoles. The same was true if you asked anyone. Gamecube? That’s for kids. The other ones had the power, the graphics, and the sex appeal.

So when the Wii was announced that media bias must have filtered through because there were very few reviews talking up the impending release of the Wii, whereas there was tons of stuff on PS3 and Xbox 360. If there were reviews it was about the weird controllers and how “different” they were from what everyone was used to.

To my semi-curious eyes, it seemed that Nintendo was about to go the way of Sega, once an important player in the game console biz, now just a game developer. Man, Sega Genesis was a monumental release, but somewhere along the way their strategy went south and that’s what the release of the Wii seemed to be.

When the consoles were finally released I remember lines for days, people camping out waiting to get ahold of a new PS3 or Xbox 360. Every store that sold them had a line, had a waiting list, and had a mad rush to get one.

Then the Wii was released. Nothing. Nada. Bupkis. I think I saw 5 people at a Walmart on the morning it was to be released. Of course they could have been there for flu shots, too, I don’t know.

Playstations and Xboxs literally flew off the store shelves. You couldn’t get your hands on one for weeks or more after the release. Christmas? Bah! Forget it. Maybe Easter if you were lucky.

And Nintendo seemed to have missed the boat.

Then time passed.

And Nintendo came out with an interesting ad campaign. “Wii want to play” with two Asian guys driving up to people’s homes and competing with them on the Wii console.

And parents, of all people, started to realize that with the Wii you actually interacted and physically participated in it. Instead of having junior sitting like a zombie just moving his thumbs, with a Wii the little lard ass would actually have to get up and get some exercise.

And of course, the inevitable stories of Wii stress injuries — older folks getting injured playing Wii tennis or Wii boxing.

Before you knew it, the Wii was becoming popular. Not with “real” gamers – they still sneered at it (a gamer I know sold his Wii so he could get a PS3 to go along with his Xbox 360, but he’s a lard ass and anything smacking of exercise is distasteful), but with moms and dads who were having fun competing and who saw it as fun exercise for the whole family.

My wife and I were discussing this, debating whether to get our son the Xbox 360 because he really wanted the latest release of Halo or should we get our kids a Wii where they actually have to interact? It was a simple decision, made even simpler by the release of “Metroid Prime 3: Corruption,” a game we saw demoed that looks a heluva lot like Halo.

So that’s going to be our Christmas. A Wii and several games. Now to get one. Suddenly, the news is telling us Wii’s are in short supply. Everyone wants one now. I call around. No one in the area has any. We either have to come in on shipment days and hope. Hope was not an option, I wanted a Wii.

Finally, I had Best Buy search for any Wii anywhere in the area. One store had 13 of them. So I drove 60 miles to get this Wii. But we have it. And now our Christmas is set.

When the game consoles were first released, all the rage was for the PS3 and Xbox 360 while the Wii flew in under everyone’s radar. Now, a year later, PS3s and Xbox 360s sit gather dust on store shelves and the Wii is the one that’s hard to find. Maybe it’s not as powerful as the Playstation or Xbox. Maybe the graphics aren’t as pristine. And maybe it’s not as sexy. But dammit, it’s fun! And isn’t that all that matters when you’re playing a game?

-30-

Say Hi to Vince, Max

Green Bay Packers legend Max McGee died Saturday after he fell off his roof.

He was 75.

He died as he lived, full of life and doing it his way.

Max was a member of the Vince Lombardi Championship Green Bay Packers of the ‘60s, arguably the greatest team in sports history, and a long time color commentator for the team’s radio broadcasts.

Max was a very good wideout for the Packers and finished his career with the second highest per catch average in team history with an 18.4yard per catch average.

Max was one of the party guys on that Packer teams and gave many gray hairs to Lombardi. One of the most famous anecdotes of his late night indiscretions happened on the eve of the team’s appearance in the first ever Superbowl.

McGee was near the end of his career and didn’t believe he’d play in the game at all. So after 11pm bed check he sneaked out and partied all night in Los Angeles, returning in time for the team’s breakfast. He caught an hour’s nap on the bus ride over to the game.

As luck would have it, Bode Dowler, the team’s starting wideout was injured during the game and Lombardi ordered McGee into the game. McGee didn’t even have his helmet and had to borrow someone else’s.

He went on to have one of the Superbowl’s greatest performances, finishing the game with seven catches for 138 yards and two touchdowns, helping the Packers to humiliate the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10.

I grew up during those times, and Max had always been one of my favorites because of both his play on the field and his down-to-earth nature off the field. He was a regular guy with a great sense of humor.

Another anecdote tells of the time that Lombardi completely disgusted with the team’s play after a loss came into the team meeting saying they were going to go back to learning the basics, and holding up a ball, said, “Now this is a football.”

McGee, from the back said, “Hold on, coach, you’re going to fast.”

Goodbye, Max, you’ll be missed.

-30-

I Survived!

Today I gave my first ever, honest-to-goodness, fielding questions, pretending-I-actually-knew-what-I’m-talking-about, PowerPoint presentation before a fairly large group.

I was part of a technical writing team that consults at an international corporation. To start the project we have to set standards and practices for their document procedure writing.

My section of the PowerPoint was Writing and Language. I got to speak on things like active versus passive voice, write it like you say it, and keep it simple and short.

A little background: I am not a presenter. Never have been, probably never will be. Even as far back as high school I feared public speaking and was able to convince the teachers that my fear was nearly deliberating and more often than not they’d let me slide on the class presentations. Now, many years later, I wish they had forced me to do it just for the experience.

So I fear public speaking. Some people fear snakes. Some spiders. Some heights. Some flying. I myself have many phobias to speak of, but public speaking, talking before people I don’t know, terrifies me.

It goes beyond sweaty palms. My heart races. I get a whooshing in my ears. I become lightheaded. I stutter and stumble and have complete amnesia about what I want to say. Even if it’s something I actually know, my brain just locks up like an unreliable hard drive needing a reboot. Unlike many people, if I don’t have my notes written exactly as I say them, I just mumble over it. In other words, I can’t use note cards with key phrases because I’ll just look at it and go, “`Use active voice?’ What the hell does that mean?” I need it spelled out in detail.

Since I started at this consultation firm back in April, however, I have had to give presentations. Nothing major, something they call a “sales tour” where you present your work history from the last 3 years in front of all the account managers. In addition, I have had to meet new people and I’ve been put into new situations.

I used to take weeks, when starting a new job, to come out of my shell and talk to people. (When I first started dating my wife her relatives kept asking, “Does he talk?” whereas now they say, “Won’t he shut the hell up?”) Taking time is a luxury I don’t have with a consulting firm and it’s forcing me to open up sooner.

I used to, when waiting for my turn to present something, get nervous, as we all do. This would manifest itself as a pressure in my chest and my head that increased the closer it came to my turn. My hands would shake and sweat would run from places I didn’t even know could sweat.

Today, however, I just felt a little apprehensive. I fidgeted and that was about it. When my turn came I got up there and gave my presentation without the normal whoosh-whoosh of blood in the ears or hearing my own voice crack. I still felt self-conscious. I still thought I was making mistakes and making a fool of myself. But that was all just in my head.

I did fine, or so they tell me.

Which, I think is pretty cool, because when my book finally sells and I have to go on whirl-wind signing tours, I’ll be able to handle meeting all my fans and instead of:
“Are you Ed Pahule?”
Yes.
“I’m like your biggest fan!”
Yes.
“I just love your book.”
Yes.
I’ll be able to interact with them and give lucid responses.

OK, maybe lucid responses are a bit much to expect, but at least I won’t sweat all over the books and make the ink run.

-30-

MP3 versus CD (Vinyl rules!)

I’m open-minded when it comes to technology and music.

Yes, I’m still a dinosaur in that I prefer vinyl to any other form for music storage. I’ll go to my grave arguing that vinyl is warmer and much truer to life. In fact, I’ll argue that because of the limitations of vinyl, the studio engineering back then was often superior to what is produced now.

I won’t argue that CDs are crisper and more detailed. I still believe that because CDs are digital, and digital is broken down into 1s and 0s, and square waveforms, that there is something missing in that process, especially when ears and instruments are analog.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to digress into an argument on the relative merits of either, I own both and I’m gradually increasing my CD library if only as a means to preserve my more favored vinyl records.

Which brings me to the problems with MP3. I won’t pretend to know anything about the different forms of compression or what possible icky things happen to music when it’s copied and converted from one computer format to another, not to mention what happens during downloads. Suffice to say it can’t be good.

The problem I have with MP3 is the way it truncates songs. I have an MP3 player and I have CDs that I copy and convert from the CD to the computer for transfer over to the MP3 player via a USB cord.

The songs on the CD play perfectly, flawlessly, and uninterrupted from start to finish, just as the musician meant for it to play.

But when I transfer this same music from CD to MP3 it suddenly develops fits, with these glaring stops and starts that didn’t exist there mere moments ago. On the CD there is a seamless transition from one song to another, however, when it transfers to MP3 it has these annoying pauses as one song ends and the next one begins.

Two albums that this is most apparent and aggravating are Captain Beyond and The Beatles Abby Road, particularly the second side (for you vinyl users).

The uninterrupted sequence starts with Mean Mr. Mustard. On the album, or CD, when you listen to this section, it sounds like one long, continuous, uninterrupted song, (understand that it is several songs all blended perfectly together). To use a visual analogy, it goes like this: Mean Mr. Mustard Polythene Pam She Came in Through the Bathroom Window Golden Slumbers Carry That Weight The End. On the MP3 player it comes across like this:
Mean Mr. Mustard Po-STOP!
lythene Pam Sh-STOP!
e Came in Through the Bathroom Window Go-STOP!
lden Slumbers Ca-STOP!
rry That Weight Th-STOP!
e End

Each song ends abruptly even though you can hear the next one starting. There is a second or so delay, then the next song starts up more or less already in progress.

It’s annoying as hell because The Beatles meant for those to be one seamless musical composition. As one ends the other comes sweeping in, with no discernable beginning or end.

The same is true for Captain Beyond’s entire debut album. On vinyl it has one stop. Where you have to flip the record. Transferred to MP3 all these songs that blend and sweep and transition through each other now have these annoying stops.

Makes me want to throw the MP3 player across the room and lug around a CD player. I don’t know how some people can claim to have their entire music collection on their MP3 player because that sort of thing alone makes me not enjoy the technology.

Maybe some of you just don’t know any better. I feel sorry for musicians who try to be creative with song transitions only to have the whole thing bastardized by technology.

I may be a dinosaur, but I’m enjoying music the way it was meant to be heard.

Oh, criminey! Now I’m listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and I noticed the same disturbing STOP between Brain Damage and Eclipse, which are seamlessly tied together on the album.

Crap. I just noticed on Santana III when it goes from Batuka to No One to Depend On to Taboo that the smooth transition is gone.

*hurls the MP3 player across the room*

You brought that upon yourself!

-30-

I Grew Up During Exciting Times

Let’s forget, for a moment, that I was born the year the first satellite was launched into space, or that I lived while the first men made it into space, made the first orbit of the earth. or made the first space walk. Forget also that I was 11 when the first man set foot on the moon.

Those were all exciting times for a child and most adults, and it saddens me that there doesn’t seem to be any equivalent explorative excitement occurring to give our own children a sense of the fantastic and amazing.

Oooh, the iPhone!

Please.

But that’s a blog for another day. No, when I speak of having lived during exciting times, I’m talking about the days when there existed service. You know, people who provided a service, who served you, happily and immediately, with a smile.

That was exciting!

There was a time when you’d roll into a gas station (we called them service stations back then) and your wheels would hit a little black hose and a loud DING-DING! would sound. Once you stopped, you could stay inside your car, unless you had to use the rest room, because a real live human being would come out to your car and ask, “Fill ‘er up?” And you’d reply, yes. “Regular or Ethyl?” To this day, I’m not sure who Ethyl was, but my parents always chose regular. The man would then proceed to fill your car with gas, wash your windows, check your tire pressure, and even check your oil!

If you were low on oil he’d suggest putting some in, and he’d do that, too. If the oil needed changing, he’d show it to you and suggest an oil change and you could make the appointment right then and there. Oh, and he’d check most of your other fluids also, and happily fill them too if necessary.

Then you’d be on your merry way as he waved and you waved and everyone smiled and was happy.

Honest.

That was exciting! Service with a smile was more than just a slogan then, it was an actuality.

Those days are gone. Somewhere along the way, maybe as a cost cutting move, the service station became just a gas station. Now we’re all left to our own devices. Service is dead and we have to get out and fill the gas tank for ourselves.

We have to clean our own windows, too. And more than likely all the other checks that we had taken for granted are left undone. Few of us check things like fluids or tire pressure. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I checked my tires. Sometimes if we go to the instant oil places, they’ll perform all these checks, but at best, that’s every 3 months.

Back then it was weekly. Every time you filled up the nice Standard man, or Citgo man, or Sinclair man, or whoever would do these things. You were assured of a safe car.

The Texaco jingle said it all. “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star, the big, red Texaco star!”

Now there’s no one to trust.

-30-

Maybe I’m Just a Freak

I’ve noticed during my time on the web, and that’s at least a decade, that web writing is often viewed differently from “real” writing.

By that I mean, web writing is short-cuts, abbreviations, acronyms, sentence fragments, and incomplete thoughts.

Why is that? Are people just lazy or do they think it’s cute? I can tolerate the occasional “LOL” and “Thx” or what have you in an IM, but why is it so difficult for people to write in complete, proper sentences when they email or blog?

Yes, I know there are the professional bloggers out there who are real writers, I’m not addressing them. I’m addressing the lazy shits who want to be better writers but can’t be bothered with writing better.

Practice makes perfect. If you’re going to write something, and you want to improve in your writing, then take the time to write everything perfectly, or as near perfect as you can.

Email, fine, I’ll let you slide on those, too. But blogs? If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, then you have to take your writing seriously yourself. Bad grammar, bad spelling, netspeak, and acronyms should all be avoided.

I’ve had this “write the best you can every time” philosophy since day one of discovering the Internet. My first foray onto the web was a site called VIP, or Vitual Irish Pub. It was a chat room, one of the best ones at the time, and everyone else spoke in “BRB,” “FWIW,” and other abbreviations and acronyms, whereas I would type in full, complete sentences.

I didn’t do it to show off, or to make anyone feel bad, I did it because then, as now, I believed if you’re going to write something, write it right. Its part of the philosophy of “anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

Besides, if you write well, people usually understand you. You use netspeak and there’s a chance some won’t understand.

So next time you’re chatting with friends on IM or tossing off a quick email, try to write right. It isn’t painful to do so and it’ll make you a better writer in the long run.

Improve the web, it’s the least you can do.

DLTBBB