Category Archives: Memoirs

What’s Going on with Duane These Days? Could it be transmogrification?

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I realized just a little while ago that almost all of my posts have been about something, rather than about me. I know that sounds a little strange, but what that means is that I haven’t really updated what’s going on with me these days. So, I thought I would clear that up, even if I’m the only one who seems to be reading what I have to say anyway.

First off, I’m still at the hospital. My job hasn’t changed, even though I keep hearing that it might. That’s been one of those songs that’s been playing on repeat over and over again to the point where I’ll believe it when I see it.

My writing isn’t really moving all that forward these days, which does bother me. It’s not because I’m not interested in writing, but because I’ve gotten really frustrated with the whole writing business industry. I have written so much, but my writing career isn’t doing anything. Instead, I keep seeing really crappy books being published by celebrities and people who shouldn’t be writing. My writing is actually very good, and I just can’t seem to get an inroad into an actual career. So my career has kind of stalled, mainly because even though I believe in myself, I don’t believe in the publishing industry any more. I haven’t given up, but I’m not really actively seeking success either.

I may be taking the LSAT in June and then possibly enrolling in law school in September. It’s all kind of up in the air right now, but I’m really bored. And that causes me to either just jump ship and do something stupid, or to think about it and try to do something constructive. This time around, I’ll try something constructive. I’m trying to save up money so I can afford tuition, as I can’t really borrow any more money through the government, nor would I even if I could. I figure three or four years later, I’ll have a law degree. Not the quickest route, but hey, doing nothing doesn’t get me anywhere closer either.

I bought a keyboard (music kind) a few weeks ago, and I’ve been playing around with that lately. It complements my electric guitar, so even though I’m never going to be a great virtuoso or famous singer, at least I can play around with the instruments and explore my creativity. Like my writing, I don’t believe in any industry backing me up on anything I do, so I’ll be creating music for myself. Everyone else can really go screw themselves, for all I care.

Other than that, I’m working on teaching myself how to write a decent screenplay. I have a few movie project ideas in my head, including the one that Chris is working on, so once I get through this book, I’ll sit down and start constructing. We’ll see what happens from there. Like I said, I have a few projects right in front of me right now, so we’ll see what I can do with those. I know the movie industry really sucks for writers, so I’m not putting a lot of stock in any type of career there. I’m more about the creativity anyway.

Other than that, I’m teaching two classes at Grand Rapids Community College (political science and interpersonal communication). Nothing really all that brilliant there as both classes are introductory courses. Half the time, I’m convinced none of my students care one iota about what’s going on in those classes, so I show up each day and hope that something will rub off on them. One student told me she thought I was a great teacher, and I guess I’m so screwed up these days that I attribute it to brown-nosing rather than sincerity. Yeah, I see the whole negativity thing, too. That doesn’t make it go away. It’s like the old adage on paranoia (“just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean the world isn’t out to get me”).

That’s about it. I consider my current existence in life as an outsider watching a television show about a television show that’s about real people. Because I’m just an observer on the outside, I get the distinct impression that nothing I do makes a difference, and no one really cares what I do or don’t do, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their own agendas. I’ve stopped believing I’m significant or that I really have anything of importance to contribute to this world any more. I feel more like a shadow that sometimes gets noticed by others who tolerate me because they notice me there sometimes but wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t. Other times, I feel like a writing Van Gogh, scoffed at by the neighbors while trying to create masterpieces that aren’t recognized enough to get me a drink at the local bar in trade. I often wonder if that realization was what finally caused Van Gogh to commit suicide at the end there, convinced he was fooling himself into believing he had something significant to contribute but suspecting that he was only fooling himself.

Anyway, that’s my rambling for now. Nothing great. Nothing horrible. Just a blah existence leading into a blah circumspection. Oh, and I wanted to say transmogrification. I didn’t really have anything to say about the word, but it’s a really cool word that I’ve been itching to put into a sentence, so there it is, even if it really doesn’t have any signficant context. Cool words rarely need to. Transmogrification, I say, and thus I have.

Another Day, Another Birthday

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Tomorrow is my birthday. I turn 46, or 21, or the Letter J. I’ve kind of lost count and somehow think that if I just make up numbers (and letters), it will work itself out in the end.

I’m not happy that it’s my birthday because to be honest, I’ve done very little with my life that makes me overly proud of my accomplishments. I say this with a bit of trepidation because I don’t really feel there have been ANY accomplishments. I’ve basically spent four or so decades wasting time, and every time I have a birthday to remind me that another went by, I realize that I’ve wasted even more time that should have been spent doing something constructive, like producing world peace, a literary masterpiece, or eating some great meal in Paris while fighting off evil secret agents from Kaos. Or something like that.

In all, it’s been four or so decades of trying to figure it all out and realizing that I’m no further closer to that goal than when I first figured out I was old enough to start trying to figure it all out. I mean, I can take the first twelve or so years and say that “that’s figuring out how to tie your shoes time” but everything after that should have been a consistent journey to the solving of all of the world’s puzzles. My life should have been a Da Vinci Code of  discoveries, instead of a continuous attempt to get to the end of my Netflix queue. Yeah, I’ve written twelve or thirteen novels (the exact number always hangs at the back of my head like a metaphor of something that hangs a lot like something at the back of a head), but aside from a couple of them, they’ve mostly been adventures in how to and not write a novel. My last few novels are probably the few “important” ones even though not a single literary agent cares enough to want to look at it, and no publisher is savvy enough to realize one of them might just change the very course of history. They’re good, but is it really considered good if no one ever wants to read them?

Which leaves me back at “what have you done with your life?” And I can’t really say with a definitive tongue that I’ve accomplished anything substantial. My actions didn’t move mountains, didn’t cause rivers to change their normal flow, or even get someone to realize that he or she could make a difference in the world because Duane helped them figure something out. Yeah, I’m a teacher, but every semester I come out of class thinking I just sent a whole group of students further into the world just as clueless as the day they started in my class. Sure, I tried, prodding and trying to get them to care more about the subjects I teach, but it just never seems to be enough, and when I talk to colleagues who also teach, I get the impression that it’s more about the paycheck than the long-term implications of education. Not all of them, but you know how that works out.

Which brings me back to the point that I’m going to be one year older in one day, and I really don’t feel like I’ve done anything significant in my life. Sure, other people tell me they think I have, but that doesn’t mean much when one is self-reflecting on the bigger picture. It’s like Socrates who spent the latter part of his life trying to prove he wasn’t the smartest guy around, even though the Oracle said he was. It doesn’t mean much if you don’t believe in it yourself.

My only real regret is that I didn’t ask for the day off today. I mean, it’s a Friday, and tomorrow is a Saturday, so I don’t even get a real day off because of my birthday. That’s not that big a deal, but sometimes, it’s the little things that count most.

What it All Comes Down to

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I guess it’s time for another update on what’s going on, what’s on my mind, and where I think things are going.

1. My Readership. I suspect I really don’t have anyone reading this blog (my main one). It gets printed also on Open Salon, which might grant me a few readers there, but even there it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not anyone actually reads (or cares about) anything I have to say. I also import my blogs to my Facebook profile, and even though I have a bunch of “friends” there, I suspect practically no one reads anything I have to say there either.

It’s a real problem for a writer who wants to be taken seriously when no one reads anything he has to say. It gets really frustrating. I mean, Snooki can write a book and it becomes a bestseller based on her outrageous behavior alone, but a consistent writer generally has to kill someone in order to get anyone to read his stuff. And they wonder why so many literary types kill themselves before they ever become famous, often discovered after they blew their brains out over the frustration of trying to actually make it as a writer or an artist.

This means when I post my blog, I get tons of traffic, but I suspect it’s a bunch of bots that are trying to get people to buy their shit rather than actual people reading my blog. My spam filter logs dozens of spam messages a day, which are all the type that say something like: “Read your posting, and I completely agree with you. You should try out this new version of sex medication which can be found at….” Yeah, it gets really annoying and frustrating.

But just because I suspect one of my stuffed animals might be reading this by tapping into my wifi at home, I’ll continue….

2. Snow. I really hate it. I do. I’m not from Michigan, even though I live here. I’m from California, and if I could afford to live there or could have ever found a job there, I would be there right now. I hate the snow. I hate the cold. I turned on my heater two nights ago for the first time (been using an electrical set of heaters all Winter long), and it was so much nicer than just being able to heat up one small room, and not very well either. Even though my electrical heater could get the room up to about 70 or so, it felt like it was 45. I’m now using my real heater, even though it’s expensive as hell. But I can’t take the cold any more. I really hate it here.

3. The Whole Nook vs. Kindle Debate. I’ve written a few articles on this because I bought both a Nook Color and the $189 Kindle 3G + Wifi. I’ve completely given up on the Nook. I had two subscriptions to magazines with the Nook Color (Consumer Reports and the New York Times Book Review). I gave up trying to get the Nook to download Consumer Reports. It would start to download and then just stop. I would check the wifi signal, and it would register as fine. After three days of trying to download a magazine I already paid for, I gave up, cancelled my subscriptions and I will never use the Nook again. Contest over. The Kindle wins. It might not look as nice, but at least I can actually get content onto it. The Nook Color is a piece of shit that should never have been sold to people. I will never recommend it to anyone ever again.

4. Egypt. Things are probably going to get really interesting now that Mubarak went on the air and basically told the protesters: “I hear you, but I just wanted to say go fuck yourselves. Have a nice day.” He’s decided that even though people are out in the streets risking their lives, he’s not leaving. The Army has now backed him, which means that one of two things are probably going to happen. They’ll crack down on the protesters, and this will be one of those sorry moments in human history that people try to forget when talking about how great a people we are, or the people are going to end up going the way of the French Revolution, overthrowing the government and killing Mubarak if he doesn’t escape out of the country first. If you’re a dictator, and you pretty much give the finger to your people when they demand you step down, you really don’t have a lot of options that can play out from that moment on. I mean, all sorts of things can happen, but right now, it’s going to be a slaughter of people unless a whole lot of people back down, and when people are backed into a corner, they usually strike back instead of back down. Unless they’re Americans. Then they either sue you or back down and say that they want to spend more time with their families.

5. Relationships. I don’t know anything about this subject. I’m not in one. I don’t recognize one when I am in one. I don’t even know what women are, although I see movies with them in it, so I do believe they might exist, although I can’t verify it in person.

6. Politics in the USA. We’re going to be heading towards another presidential election with no electable people in the Republican Party, a current president who has done nothing to be reelected, other than make arousing speeches that don’t translate to actual action, and a whole lot of self-important politicians who think they deserve to be the next leaders of the free (in theory, at least) world. Right now, the front runners for the Republican Party seem to be Sarah Palin (the joke that keeps giving), Newt Gingrich (a pompous airbag that comes installed as standard equipment), a just-announced “I’m seriously considering it” Donald Trump (another rich buffoon who thinks that being rich translates to leadership potential), and a bunch of other people no one knows, has ever heard of, or cares one iota about whatsoever. So, right now, I’m calling it a boring presidential election where we reelect Jimmy Carter, um, Obama.

7. The Academy Awards. A bunch of movies I didn’t see, don’t want to see, and don’t care about, are competing for the top honors this year. As you can guess, I’m holding my breath in anticipation.

8. SyFy Becomes Shark Attack Channel. I don’t know when this happened, but my favorite channel (I remember actually asking a television station provider if they carried the SyFy Channel and not caring about any others) went from being a station with original science fiction programming with shows like Stargate SG1. Atlantis, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Battlestar Galactica (then Caprica), some variation of Star Trek, and lots of that sort of stuff. Now, it’s Man-Killing Shark and really bizarre movie of the week crap that stars Erik Estrada as a small town sheriff who is fighting a shark that has grown feet and chases people on the beach, but Estrada, who plays Skip William, is afraid of sharks because a shark killed his family in a drive-by shooting in Compton. Okay, that’s not a real show, but it should be. Who stole my SyFy Channel?

9. The Federal Budget is Out of Control. Um, when has it ever not been? We’re approaching the debt ceiling in February, when they told us that if we didn’t do things right, we’d be hitting that debt ceiling by September. Um, it’s FEBRUARY and we’re already arguing for having to increase the limit. And this is the government that’s trying to FIX the economy? Really?

10. Facebook Went Public. I laughed my ass off when I heard it was going to happen. If ever there was a bubble corporation that has absolutely no value whatsoever being sold for so many billions, I couldn’t find one. At least GM makes cars. At least Microsoft puts out a browser or operating system every now and then. But what does Facebook actually produce? Your content. Your friends. Your information. In other words, not a damn thing. Yet, they’re bad boy of leadership is now a multi-billionaire, and they’ve been launched as a fake IPO (a real one wasn’t done because the SEC would have hit them with all sorts of legal injunctions, which should automatically tell everyone something’s not on the up and up, but even that doesn’t cause people to take notice). Yeah, I use Facebook, but it’s such a non-entity in the grand scheme of things and is really only as important as it is at any one moment, knowing that it can go the way of Myspace in a second. Or like AOL, which still tries to regain some importance. Or sadly, like Blockbuster, that sad commentary of a video rental store that hasn’t realized it was obsolete ten years ago.

11. Verizon’s iPhone. Finally. Not that I want an iPhone on Verizon, but now I don’t have to read 10,000 stories manufactured by CNN about how great it would be to have the iPhone on Verizon. It’s there now. Leave me alone and stop hyping the stupid thing on your news site. Nobody really cares, as we discovered when no one lined up at the early Verizon Store openings that day, letting the event come and go without much fanfare. Nobody really cared.

12. Groupon’s Super Bowl Ad. All of the people who are upset about this incident don’t want to even deal with the ramifications of what really happened. First off, they all got upset at the ad where Groupon poked fun at itself by using the controversy of China and Tibet as its canvas. Well, here’s what they’re not getting, won’t get, and especially won’t ever own up to. The humor went over their heads. Not that they didn’t get it. It went OVER their heads, meaning they had to be smart enough to realize what was going on. Consider the source. It came from the direction of Christopher Guest, who is well known for creating comedy that not everyone gets, mainly because it pokes fun at people who are on stage and represents entire groups of people who when they watch it don’t always realize they’re being seen as the morons they really are because they’re so locked into their own little worlds that they are incapable of realizing the rest of the world sees them as ridiculous. It was the exact same humor used with Groupon, and of course, the people watching it were not Christopher Guest fans. They were Super Bowl fans, which I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we’re talking about two completely different intellectual mindsets here. Fill in the blanks to figure out which one I’m probably insulting here. I don’t really care. I’m not selling ads. Those people just didn’t get it and went nuts against Groupon. Why am I not surprised? I’m also not surprised that no one else is either.

13. Lindsay Lohan’s Theft Charge. Okay, I’ll admit it. I enjoy reading about the many demises of Lindsay Lohan. I don’t know her, I’m not a fan, and I probably shouldn’t care. But it’s like watching a train wreck happen in front of me. I probably should call 911 for help, but I can’t stop watching. I don’t get the same trill out of Charlie Sheen. Nothing about him fascinates me, nor does his drama. Lohan’s, on the other hand, completely fascinates me because I keep thinking that ir probably won’t get any worse, and then it does. I don’t even think she stole the thing, but that’s not even what keeps me interested. What keeps me interested is how someone can take her fame and continue to destroy her career, her future and any support from the community that she might ever have. Just the other day, her legal team says that it’s not going to deal with the allegations in public; they’ll deal with it in court. Then the first day of the trial, Lohan tweets her whole ordeal to the public, trying it out in the public again, even though that’s exactly what they said they wouldn’t do.

I can’t stop watching.

14. Writing. I’m taking a break from my current novel and working on a screenplay. Then I’ll be working on a word text game app that I’m designing for the android platform. I realized recently that there aren’t a whole lot of word text games out there any more, and I think it would be fun to create a new one. I remember how fun they were to create back when we were first designing computer games for the early systems, before graphics took over the industry.

That’s really it for now. If you’re actually reading this, let me know. I’d really like to know that there are people actually reading the blog.

More Common Comments on the Day’s Events

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Just thought I would mention that most of my new posts tend to go on Open Salon these days. If you’re following me, that’s probably the best place. Some of my more original stuff appears on my main blog site, and I apologize if some of that doesn’t make it over to Open Salon. I’m discriminatory on where some stuff goes and others does not. Anyhoo. On to the day’s comments….

1. Egypt. There’s really no way to avoid this story right now, nor should we, yet it’s amazing how many attempts are conducted to do just that. In case people don’t realize it, Egypt (or more likely Tunisia) has opened the door to a post-Huntington fourth wave of democratization in the world. For those wondering what I’m talking about, Samuel Huntington’s The Third Wave postulated that democratization occurred in three huge waves over history, starting with the US revolution being the first wave, the period after World War II being the second wave, and the eventual fall of communism (predicted in his book, even though we’re past that period of time now and he was right) was the third wave. I’m anticipating a fourth wave, which was touched off with the collapse of Tunisia, and now with Egypt, there’s every indication that it might create a wave of further democratization in the Middle East.

But there are some important points to consider. Just because an Islamic-based nation (or influenced nation) moves towards democratization does not mean it moves towards more positive relations with the United States. Unfortunately, we’ve been seriously influenced by a lot of statistical inferences over time, like the infamous duality of “no two nations in a democracy have ever gone to war” and “no two nations with a McDonalds have ever gone to war.” Political scientists and media hounds have been repeating those lines for decades, even though neither one of them is completely accurate. They just sound good and make people think that as long as other nations move towards democracy that everything is going to be all right.

Well, the simple fact of the matter is that the United States has a long history of backing some pretty evil people, and it’s in a lot of those places where this fourth wave of democratization is taking place. Just because two nations are democracies does not mean they will be friends. And another misstep of information: Being a democracy does not necessarily mean a system that exists under the economic policies of capitalism. Sure, they can go well together, but it doesn’t mean they have to. We’re just so used to it being that way because that’s what we grew up with. Athens wasn’t really a capitalistic society, and it had the first accepted democracy. So we need to be really careful when we throw around terms, because they bog us down with tiny details that tie our hands when we need to be very flexible.

For those who eschew democracy, or even anarchy, this is an interesting period of time, but we need to realize that just because a people demand democracy doesn’t mean they’re going to get it. The US revolution brought about our democratic republic. But the French Revolution, while it brought about a short period of democracy, also brought about Napoleon and years of dictatorship and warfare. We need to be really careful about these things.

But we should support democracy wherever it appears, even if it doesn’t benefit us personally. I doubt the democracy of Egypt is probably going to be the greatest thing for the United States in the beginning, because we stood by the evil dictators through thick and thin. But after years of supporting their freedom (in the future, not in our past), we might develop a friendship with an emerging democracy. And if we ever want to have good relations with Muslim and Islamic countries, this might be the way to start, because after time a democracy might build a friendship with another democracy once it is discovered that neither harbors any ill will towards the other. But right now, we’re so bogged down in our war on terror, that I don’t see that happening any time soon. There’s too much noise taking place for a truly beautiful song to be heard.

2. The Storm That’s About to Come. Supposedly, there’s a huge storm about to hit the area where I live. I’ve heard predictions of 18-20 inches of snow, winds that will increase the wind chill geometrically and all sorts of weather evil that precede total Armageddon, the Rapture and Elvis Sightings. Fortunately, every storm this season has completely missed us. I don’t know how, but we’ve been really lucky. But they say that by 6pm tonight, Zeus himself will be throwing lightning bolts at stuck cars on the side of the road and Loki will be out doing all sorts of mischief like he normally does in periods like this.

Okay, there’s going to be a bad storm. I’m not looking forward to it. But it’s Michigan. Sometimes, it gets bad. Hopefully, people will be safe and the government will perform as it is supposed to do, and in a few days we’ll all get back to normal again. Then we can all sacrifice a cock to Asclepius, or Xena, or whatever deity or hot chick is appropriate.

3. Charlie Sheen’s Melt Down. Um, supposedly Charlie Sheen went into some drug-induced moment where he asked some porn star actresses he was partying with to move in with him and babysit his kids. Why don’t I ever have weekends like this? I mean, last weekend I was at Costco trying to decide between Honey Nut Cheerio’s and Frosted Cheerio’s. That was the extent of my drama. Not once did “porn star moving in with me to babysit my kids that I don’t have” EVER appear in that dilemma. My life is so boring. This week, he’ll be in rehab with seriously overqualified therapists asking him if he made the right choice, and I have no one to help me figure out if choosing Honey Nut Cheerio’s was really the right choice I should have made. Not that an expensive rehab therapist would know better, but I can’t see the harm in asking a porn star actress for her opinion. I just don’t have any on speed dial like Charlie does.

4. Kim Kardashian is supposedly upset that she posed nude for a magazine. Um, I’m upset I bought Honey Nut Cheerio’s at Costco instead of Frosted Cheerio’s. Sadly, both were consequences of choices we made. I’m just not going to suffer as much due to the results of my decision. Although those frosted cheerio’s sure looked good on that box cover. But at least I didn’t pose nude for a magazine, which means so many more people won’t need therapy next week.

5. I forgot to make my speech about how I don’t care about my students’ grandmothers. What am I talking about? Well, every semester when I go over the syllabus, I usually make a spiel about how I don’t care one iota about the health of any of my students’ grandmothers, meaning that if your grandmother dies during the semester, tough luck. You’re not getting any extra breaks, like taking a week off from school because of poor old grandma’s ailing health. I know it sounds callous, but I don’t really care. My first semester of teaching, it was the number one excuse from students as to “why you need to let me take the exam late”. It then became a part of my syllabus reading where I indicated that if your grandmother was dying, ailing, dead, in jail for robbing a 7-11, accepting an Oscar/Nobel Prize/therapy…I didn’t care. Exams were on a certain date and you needed to show up on those dates or it was YOUR fault for not being there. I forgot to give that spiel this semester, and already I have one dying grandmother and a funeral for a great grandmother that has made it “why you need to let me take the exam late.” Students need to be more original with these things.

6. The Oscars/SAG Awards. I don’t care. Really. I saw one movie out of all of the movies that are up for awards. It was Inception. And I didn’t like it because the blue ray I watched it on was defective to the point of where I couldn’t hear what was going on with 30 percent of the dialogue. It could have been a good movie, but I’ll never know. Didn’t watch a single one of the other movies. Wasn’t interested. So I’m not on the edge of my seat waiting to see if Colin Frith (or whatever his name is) wins for a movie about some stuttering English guy’s speech he gave. Nor do I care if the Dude gets an award for a remake of a John Wayne movie. Or if the chick from the really bad Star Wars movies (the prequels) gets the award for some ballet movie she made. I’ve heard the movie was really good. Okay. Big deal.

And that’s my problem right there. The awards aren’t for us. It’s for them. It’s a big ceremony they put on where THEY dress up, THEY present a bunch of awards, and THEY receive a bunch of awards for things THEY did that helped THEM profit greatly. It would be like going to work tomorrow and receiving awards on television for correcting memos that I do each and every day. So a person made a movie and then got filthy rich off of it. I don’t care. Yet, they feel they need to flaunt it in front of the rest of us. They built a whole industry around a gimmick where a guy used a camera to show trains coming into train stations (where the whole thing started). Some of them are really good. Others, not so much. But with so many important REAL things going on, a yearly event honoring these things seems gratuitious at best. Perhaps they should change the Oscars to present awards ONLY when something so groundbreaking occurs that we all should take notice. Awarding them every year means we award a whole bunch of crappy things because it happened to be the one year when all the great visionaries decided to make a rom-com instead of the Godfather. I’m just saying.

7. Android vs. iPhone. They’re just cell phones. Not artificial hearts. I had an iPhone and now I have an Android phone from Samsung. My reason for switching was because of Apple’s walled garden. But personally I was happier with my iPhone and if they would have fixed it so I could have done something about spam phone calls, I would have remained with them. But in the end, both are just phones. That’s it. You can call them smartphones, but who cares? They’re just phones. People call me on them, sometimes. Other people I call. If they disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. Stop acting like they’re curing cancer. They’re just freaking phones.

8. Eva Longoria and Tony Parker divorced. So what? Why do we even care what celebrities do with their personal lives? This reminds me of when Melissa Etheridge came out as a lesbian. One of my friends chided me because I was a fan of her at the time, saying: “Now what are you going to do now that she’s come out as a lesbian?” I stared at him as the moron he was because he somehow felt that information was relevant. It didn’t make her music any less enjoyable. I wasn’t ever expecting Melissa Etheridge to show up at my house and want to have sex with me in the past, so how exactly did this change anything? Now, Shania Twain getting remarried was different. I mean, she’s the foundation of my religion, even if she doesn’t know it, so that was much different.

9. Certain News Sites will ignore Sarah Palin for some announced length of time to prove how irrelevant she is. I’m sorry. Who is she?

10. Stephen King’s The Stand is to be made into a major motion picture. I’m interested, even though I was very pleased with the television miniseries they did of the book. The Stand is definitely one of my favorite books of all time. I liked both the old version and the newer one he released later (some people are very definitive in which one they prefer).

That’s all for now. Wish I had more to say, but my life is really boring.

Time for Another Round of Current Events and Happenings

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1. The Assassination Attempt in Arizona. Okay, there’s really no way of walking around this topic without having to address it head-on. It’s pretty much the main story of what’s going on in the country, and like most current events, it’s yet another one of those that seems to be so out of context practically everywhere it gets reported. What everyone can agree on is that it was a tragic event, and most of us wish such a thing had never happened. However, I suspect that it’s only been a matter of time because there are a lot of crazy people out there, and if John Lennon’s death wasn’t a warning decades ago, we really should have been paying a lot more attention.

You see, there are a lot of people who are not playing with a full deck out there. We run across them each and every day. If you live in a big city, you can’t step over enough of them without running into another. Some are homeless, who stand on the street corners and do all sorts of bizarre behavioral activities, like yell at you, try to pee on you, beg from you, and pretty much anything else you can and cannot imagine. We had to be nuts ourselves if we honestly thought that they’d stick to their little corners and not start to bother the rest of us. I teach at a community college, and in the years that I’ve been teaching, you run across a lot of people who sometimes don’t seem like they’re all there. And you get really worried and concerned. But for the most part, no one really cares, because as long as it doesn’t affect them, why should they care?

The event turned into a bit of a surreal experience when suddenly people thought it was supposed to be a wake-up moment for the problems that have been occurring in our society. There’s a lot of anger and hate speech going back and forth between the different sides of the political spectrum, and for some bizarre reason people actually thought that this event might lead people to talk about these problems and do something about it. Not going to happen because no one wants to admit there’s anything wrong. Well, at least not with themselves. They’ll point fingers and say something’s wrong with YOU or someone else, but never with themselves. But that’s been the problem from the start, and as long as we’re never going to engage that, we’re never going to change the hostile discourse happening in this country.

Sure, it’s easy to blame Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or (pick any politician or pundit), but the odds of actually opening up a real dialogue so that people actually listen to each other is practically impossible. It’s a nice pipe dream, but pipe dreams are just that. Dreams.

2. Verizon is Getting an Iphone. Good for them. I had one with AT&T and I’ve been very upset with AT&T and Apple for awhile now because of the fact that I can’t stop people from calling me, especially when they’re people I don’t want calling me. Neither Apple nor AT&T were very helpful here. So I left and joined Sprint, adding on a Samsung Epic phone instead. Pretty happy with it. Be happier if it had a battery life like the iPhone, but you take what you can get. Now that Verizon has an iPhone, I don’t really care. It’s still a phone from Apple, and Apple requires that it maintain control over its walled garden. Not a selling point for me.

3. Golden voice Ted Williams. I saw this coming a million miles away. The media jumped on this rags to riches to rags to riches story and thought he was the next best thing to sliced butter. Well, I kept wondering, “when is the other shoe going to drop” meaning when is the media going to turn against him? Well, now he’s kind of gone of the deep end because of personal problems, which no one could have ever expected would happen with a guy who has been living on the streets after throwing away his previous life. I mean, who would have thought something like that could happen? Anyway, sarcasm aside, he’s now heading to rehab and was arrested in Los Angeles. We’ll see how this story plays out, but I’m not expecting a lot of happy endings.

4. Unemployment has gone up again. Of course it has. And last month, it went down. The month before, I think it went up. We need to stop reporting these numbers and then providing commentary after it. Each time they do it, some pundit makes an argument that fits his world view of what he thinks should happen, rather than what is really happening. We’re in a recession right now. The market is going to be flying all over the place on a month to month basis. Stop trying to figure out long term strategies based off of short term notifications. It never works. Which brings me to my next one:

5. The Stock Market Fluxuates. Yes, it does. But one thing that needs to be constantly brought up, and it never is, is that the stock market really has very little connection to what’s really going on. It’s the Las Vegas for rich people. People buy based on speculation, and they think they have an idea of how the market is going to change in the short term. NONE OF THESE FIGURES has anything to do with what’s really going on. Companies are selling products, people are working for these companies and get paid whatever wage they normally get paid, and then some people buy some of these products. But because the stock market price of a company went up or down does not always reflect what’s going on in the real world of that particular company. Quite often, these fluxuations come because some executive did something stupid, like embezzled money, or had dinner with a celebrity. If the stock market goes south over the span of a week, it may not really mean anything to the real world as an implication. It may just mean a whole bunch of people panicked because they stopped living in the real world and see the market as the real world. Man, I hate the stock market.

6. Middle East Talks Aren’t Going Well. They never are. The two sides of that conflict are probably NEVER going to get along. Each new administration comes to the table convinced it’s going to make a difference but rarely ever does. That’s because the two sides hate each other. They have no incentive to be friendly to each other. Each side wants the other dead. That’s their international policy towards the other side. And it’s been that way for so long now that generations of their people grow up hating people they may never have met. If you want to fix the problems there, you have to do it generationally, and you have to do it by a completely different set of characteristics than our current process of diplomacy allows. Tit for tat and carrot diplomacy does not work on countries that live their entire lives to kill each other as their one foundational value. I could go at length on what would work, but NO ONE CARES OR LISTENS, so I’m going to stop caring, too.

7. Tablets Are the New In Thing. I’ve said this before, but it requires repeating. Tablets aren’t new. When the iPad was announced, suddenly a whole bunch of people who never wanted a tablet suddenly thought they needed one. We were like Eskimos being told we needed freezers and refrigerators by Don Draper and whatever fictional agency he might be working at. But shortly before this announcement, tablets were already out there trying to get us to buy them. And we didn’t. Why not? Because we didn’t need them, and they seemed kind of stupid to have. Well, now we all need them because Don Draper Steve Jobs told us we needed one. So now every other company under the sun is now releasing their tablet computer to compete with the Ipad. And I won’t be surprised if we start buying them this time around. We’re such sheep.

8. Myspace laid off half its staff. So what? Myspace has been irrelevant for years now. It used to be the “in” thing, and then Facebook came along and turned Myspace into an ugly sister of the hot cheerleader. Ever since Facebook, Myspace has been struggling to appear relevant. But its not. There’s nothing about Myspace that causes people to care. When it was told to sit at the kiddie table of technology, they tried to appear relevant again by pretending that it was the place to go for music. But Facebook was already there doing that, so Myspace continued to become even more irrelevant. At one point, I thought I might use it to hype my writing, but then realized that they were really only interested in doing so if I was already big time famous, which I wasn’t. So it wasn’t useful to me. And then I figured that if I was already big time famous, I probably wouldn’t need them. I’d just have a million facebook friends instead. Then, add to the mix that no one seems to be using Myspace anymore, and you realize why it’s probably going to be sold one of these days to someone like Murdoch who keeps buying up properties that are already irrelvant and trying to somehow make it seem like he bought a very relevant purchase.

9. Seth Rogen is Upset About the Hate Towards his Green Hornet Movie. So what? It’s a movie, not anything relevant. Make a really good movie that causes people to take notice, and maybe it won’t get the hate. Just saying. Then again, no one’s actually seen the movie, so perhaps the condemnations are a bit early.

10. Two of my novels are now on Kindle and the Nook. Innocent Until Proven Guilty, my first novel, is available on the Kindle.  Thompson’s Bounty, which is a science fiction, time-travel novel I wrote involving pirates, is available on the Barnes and Noble Nook, and it is available on the Kindle as well. I would not be very upset if you chose to read my novels. Really.

11. The people of Haiti still seem to be suffering, even though most of the world has left this area because it’s not a photo op any more. Just saying. Some people gave up on it because they don’t like how the Haitians are continuing to follow corrupt leaders who continue to cheat them out of international aid. Some people gave up on it because they only have the capacity to handle concern for a certain amount of time (usually the time between football season and American Idol finalist run-offs). And then some people just don’t care.

That’s all I have for today. My stuffed animal Brucoe thinks people should do more to care about other people, but he’s just a stuffed animal, and what does he know?

The Act of Searching for a Literary Agent

Memoirs, Social Networking, Writing, , ,
Decisions...decisions....

There are few activities that make me want to claw my eyes out with a spork, but a couple immediately come to mind:

1. Having to explain the special theory of relativity to Sarah Palin.

2. Having Sarah Palin explain the special theory of relativity to me.

3. The natural desire that most people have to claw their eyes out with a spork that comes naturally any way.

4. Having to search for a literary agent to represent my novels.

As much fun as the first three might be to explore, I’m going to talk about number 4 right now because, well, that’s really the one I wanted to talk about when I started writing this post. Now, that can be a problem for me whenever I start a post, because I might start with a desire to talk about literary agents, and next thing you know, I’m discussing cute fuzzy bunnies. You know, the cute little ones that are always jumping around, stealing your wallet and…wait, I wanted to talk about literary agents. That’s right. Back to my original subject.

You see, I’ve been looking for a literary agent for about as long as I’ve been able to write. I’ve had one of those weird writing careers that most other writers can’t relate to because they’ve either a) Already got a successful writing career and really don’t care one iota what I have to say about anything, or b) they just don’t seem to understand how everything went so bad.

Years ago, and I’m talking back in the prehistoric days, when you had to actually use your telephone to connect to the Internet. No, let’s go all out on this one. I’m talking about the days when you hooked up your modem to your telephone and there was no Internet because Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet. Yes, that long ago. Anyway, back then, when we were still using stone tools to build Deloreans that would travel back in time, I had a somewhat growing writing career where I wrote lots of interesting stuff and these strange people called “editors” would accidentally mail me checks after publishing those stories in their magazines. Some of my stories actually became series of short stories where people would get out pen and paper, write me nice little letters about how my character was obviously being handled incorrectly because in Issue #17, the hero had used the Quantum Destabilizer Unit on him, which meant that in Issue #43, there was no way that he could have phased into the neutramatter universe to chase after the Viscuous Ant Man, one of his mortal enemies. And then they would put a stamp on that letter and go back to reading their next issue of Peter Parker the Spectactular Spiderman, which was “so much more superior than that crappy story you keep publishing in that magazine that must be run by some deranged lunatic.”

Anyway, my point is, at one point I had a bit of a writing career. And then I contacted an agent, who read one of my science fiction novels and LOVED IT, saying she wanted to represent me and was planning to use my writing to make herself us rich. And then she got into some kind of accident involving a head injury (this isn’t a joke here), disappeared for a couple of years, and then came back and no longer recognized my name. So when I contacted her, after realizing she was looking for clients again, she asked me to send her a current copy of whatever I had recently written. So I did. And then she contacted me again, asking me to send her a copy of whatever I had recently written. So I wrote her and told her I already did. So she contacted me again, asking me to send her a copy of whatever I had recently written. After about the fourth time, I got the hint. I probably wasn’t going to be represented by her because I was in some kind of Twilight Zone of continuous emails about sending a manuscript that was getting tired of being sent through the ether.

So, I’ve been looking for an agent ever since. And for some reason, even though I’ve written 12 or 13 novels (depends on if we count the erotic novel, involving the midget, the monkey and the same sex trees that were in love with each other), I can’t seem to get past the query letter stage with any of these agents. It’s like the whole world moved on without me, and I don’t seem to live in it any more. I send out my stuff, but it’s not even making a dent these days. Some of my latest writing is phenomenal (just ask my mommy), but I can’t even get an agent to read any of it.

So, Oprah, please tell me what to do? Oh wait, this isn’t that show, is it? So, um, imaginary reader who I keep writing these blog posts imagining you exist, please tell me what to do? Should I give up writing? Join the Army? Marry Peggy Sue? Return all of those diet Dr Pepper cans to the supermarket for their redeemable values?

I’m so confused and unsure of where to turn….

"Did somebody call for a cute, fuzzy bunny?"

Grandpa Alex and “The Bologna Song”

Memoirs, Music, , , , , , , , , ,

My grandfather was a brilliant musician. While he couldn’t handle his liquor, he lived one step below a state of perpetual poverty, and he died way too early for someone of his passion and age, he had a gift for music like no other I’ve met in my limited lifetime. His instrument of favor was the mandolin, but he was the kind of man who could pick up a musical instrument, turn it over in his hands a few times, blow into it (or run his fingers against the strings, or bang on its surface) and he would have that device mastered in minutes. I’m not kidding about this. I handed him my violin as a child, watched him look at the bow curiously, pluck a few notes on the strings, run the bow across its surface a few times and then managed to actually start playing a novice tune. In an hour, he was composing music on it. After a few hours, you would have sworn he studied under several master violinists for years.

That gift was supposed to pass down to me. My mom was his only child, which meant she was supposed to inherit the talent, but she suffered a little too much in life to ever have the time or discipline to master a musical instrument. She died early, after a life of pain and suffering. Therefore, it was left to me to somehow be the prodigy that should have followed her musical genius of a father.

So I ended up learning how to play the violin. It was never my favorite instrument, and I was always looking for ways to take short cuts with it. My passion was the drums, but in my upbringing, you didn’t really get a choice of what you wanted to learn; you were given a musical instrument and then told “that’s the one you’re learning.”

I was never really good at the violin. I kept breaking from the music sheets and performing what I wanted to perform instead of what was on the paper. The director really didn’t like that. He never liked hearing something that wasn’t what he was expecting from the band. After a number of years of never really making him comfortable with my musical discipline, I sort of fell off the band wagon, for lack of better words, and I lost my interest.

Instead, I managed to end up in a choir instead. At six years old, my mom snuck me into the Santa Monica Boys’ Club (you had to be seven), mainly because she needed some kind of day care so she could work full time, and she couldn’t afford anything other than letting me run free until she returned home from work. The Boys’ Club was her answer. And within my first few days, I found a niche I didn’t realize I was seeking.

It happened on one of my first days when I was playing table soccer in the main room of the place with one of my friends from the place. One of the managers of the place announced that try outs were now being held for the Boys Choir. Not really interested in something like that, I found myself interested when that manager grabbed me and practically dragged me screaming up the stairs to where try outs were taking place. It turned out that they were “recruiting” everyone that was there at the time.

The director of the boys choir was a well known music industry man named David Forrester who was volunteering his time to create this new “event” at the Boys Club. Each one of the kids was required to sing a quick part of a song as part of the try out, and when it came time for me to do so, I wasn’t really expecting much, but as I blurt out the words to whatever song it was they had us singing, Forrester stopped the piano player and had me repeat what I had just sung. So I did. Then there was a bit of a commotion, and Mr. Forrester pulled me aside into another room and had me run through a scale of notes (although I didn’t know that’s what he was doing at the time). He then spoke to one of the managers, and I was allowed to go back downstairs and play table soccer some more.

I figured I had failed the try out, and that was that.

A few days later, my mom took me to a place in Culver City where this guy’s office was.  His office was extremely intimidating as he had pictures of himself with extremely famous music and movie stars, like Elvis, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Martin Dean. At the time, I had no idea who any of these people were, but my mom was extremely impressed as she walked around the room.

When he entered the room, he spent some time trying to convince my mom to allow me to take private lessons with him to develop my voice. I remember my mom turning him down, explaining that we just didn’t have that kind of money. He told her it wouldn’t cost us anything, that he really wanted to do this because he had heard something he hadn’t heard in a long time. After some time, she relented.

For the next few weeks, I attended singing lessons with him, and I was, as would happen with any six year old, convinced that this was some kind of punishment. I wanted to be in the regular choir with the rest of the kids, and he was telling me that I wasn’t ready yet. I wondered how come all of those other kids were able to get to start without having to take singing lessons.

When the training was over, I started up in the choir, and soon after that I ended up becoming the soloist for the group. And it was a thrilling experience that continued until we made a few records, and let’s just say that it was a life-changing set of events.

But I had been talking about my grandfather, because during this time, he was really the one encouraging me to embrace this part of my education. All of this time, I kept thinking that I wasn’t a real musician because I hadn’t been actually playing an instrument. I was just singing. And even though I was getting a lot of attention, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t really doing what was possible, considering my heritage.

So, during these years, my grandfather bought me a really cheap guitar, and I started playing with him while he would sit in the park, entertaining everyone who walked by. Unlike other park musicians, he never had an open case to ask for money; he played just because he liked to entertain people. And at the age of about seven and eight, I played right along side him with my little guitar, even though to this day I’m not sure I was playing it correctly.

One of the songs he used to play was an old classical tune from Chopin that he added lyrics to and called “My Bologna Song.” For years, I thought he invented that song all by himself, and then I was at a fancy shindig while at West Point, and the classical version of the song started playing on cello and violin. And all I could think to myself was, Grandpa’s version was so much better. Why did that Chopin guy have to steal his song?

Remembered lyrics to Grandpa Alex Romanuk’s “The Bologna Song”:

Just because you think I’m bologna

I’ll always be with you

Just because you think I’m bologna

I’m still in love with you

Everybody thinks I’m bologna

You know it’s all for you

Everybody thinks I’m bologna

As long as I have you

That’s all I remember of the song, but every time I hear the music play on a radio or in some movie, it’s always The Bologna Song to me.

My Take on the Really Important News Stories Currently Happening

Economics, Memoirs, Social Networking, Stickman, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The post isn't about the movie, but the picture definitely works

As I know I’m the one everyone turns to for on topic news reporting, I thought I’d give some opinions on what’s currently happening. Okay, no one reads me, so I’m ranting to the wind, but it’s my blog, so I’m going to do it anyway.

1. Obama Takes Credit for Lame Duck Victories. Um, okay. It seems that our current president seems to think that he has done great things by using the lame duck Congress to get a lot of legislation pushed forward before the end of the year. A couple of thoughts: First, Obama didn’t really do anything. The lame duck members of Congress did. So it was really them that succeeded in doing what they did. Second, while it’s wonderful that a lot of gridlocked legislation got pushed through (DADT, Bush Tax Cuts, START treaty, Adoption of Stickman as Ambassador to Iceland [okay, the last one didn’t happen, but it really should have]), when the new year starts up, we’re back to where we were before, except now we’re going to have a lot of pissed off Republicans who still think they have some kind of mandate to provide gridlock to the presidential agenda. Basically, the Democrats rammed through a whole bunch of legislation that required them to use their majority that is going to disappear at the start of the new year. That can’t lead to positive relations in Congress for the next year. Expect a lot of political partisanship to get much worse in the very near future, all of it blamed on the lame duck stuff. Lesson: You really don’t get a free ride when the odds are stacked against you for the future. Even the Bush Tax Cuts, which the Republicans are all happy about being passed, are going to be seen as Obama’s lame duck stuff that will cause immediately cause Republicans to blame Obama and the Democrats for anything that comes out negative, even as Republicans use the money to fuel their own desires.

2. Rahm Emanuel is Cleared to Run for Emperor of Chicago. Or Mayor, or whatever it is he’s running for. Basically, an Obama Administration guy is running on that name connection alone, even though everyone who had anything to do with Obama was thrown out of office during the last election. Supposedly, this might work in Chicago, which is Obama’s former backyard. But how does this affect the rest of us? It doesn’t. It means absolutely nothing to us. For all I know, he’s probably going to lose because he’s not actually Obama. The people of Chicago aren’t voting for Obama; they’re voting for some guy who once worked for Obama. He has to run on that. No one outside of people who might gain from any connections to this guy really cares in any way, shape or form. So, everytime I see an article about this, which is practically every day even though I don’t subscribe to any papers that have anything to do with Chicago, I want to claw out my eyes with a rusty spork. Please make him and his personal desire to be god of Chicago go away. Please, even if it’s just for the children.

3. Steven Spielberg is not going to advise Democrats on how to win over the voters. Thank God. It’s not that I don’t like Steven Spieldberg. His movies are great. But they’re movies. And as we learned from World War II, when a movie director like Kapra is making movies for the country, they’re not movies; they’re propaganda. Having a famous filmmaker try to change the perception of Americans about the Democrat Party is a disaster just waiting to happen. What’s wrong with the Democrats right now is that they’re constantly running on a platform of being for the people when they’ve been so out of touch of what the people want and need that they need education, not propaganda. But they’re not going to get that education because they don’t seem to realize what’s wrong. People are pissed at the Democrats right now because they came in with a plan to give the people what they wanted and then and went and did things that politicians have been doing for decades (filling their own pockets). We saw Rangel and Conyers and all sorts of shenanigans that benefited none of the people, but only the people in power. THAT is what they need to fix, and trying to get a famous movie director to advise them to change their public image is never going to work because it’s not their public image that needs fixing. It’s their actions they conduct in the name of the public interest. But I doubt they’re going to figure that out because the people who advise them are the same people who have been advising them while they were holding $1000 a plate fund-raisers to get elected.

4. Facebook is a networking program, not a lifestyle. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg was voted as Time’s person of the year. I really don’t care. He’s a rich, elitist, misogynist who happened to be at the right place at the right time to steal the right idea at the right time. Ever since then, he’s been trying to become important, but he heralded the creation of a platform for people to find their old friends and keep touch with their current friends in ways bordering on stalking, but only if the victim was sending texts to her stalker to announce where she’d be going next. Yes, I have a Facebook account. But it’s not my only means of oxygen or survival. It’s an interesting tool. And that’s it. For me, the person of the year would have been Julian whatever his name is who was running Wikileaks. That person really made an impact last year. Facebook didn’t. Neither did that rich billionaire, irrelevant sack of shit owner of Facebook either. It’s almost as if Time went out of their way to create the easiest winner of the award, realizing that if they chose the guy who should have got it, the government would have actually shut down Time Magazine as a threat to the country. I honestly don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to realize that this had to have been part of their discussion the night before they made their decision.

5. 2010 Kindle Sales will reach 8 billion. So what? Oh wait, I mean 8 million. Whatever. I mean, it’s kind of cool that Kindle will sell that many, but as expected, this kind of announcement fails to mention what’s really important: How many books are being sold, and how many are available? You see, it’s one thing to sell a bunch of devices, like Barnes & Noble is doing with the Nook Color, but when they don’t tell you how much information is available for the device, it’s really doing a disservice to the buying public. An example: I bought a Color Nook from B&N, and I’ve been nothing but pissed about my purchase ever since. I bought it, expecting the market to be represented in books, magazines and newspapers, but so far the selection has been abysmal at best. I have yet to see a justification for the color device because the magazine selection for the device is horrid. I have yet to see any new magazines sign up, other than really crappy ones that I would never flip through at the bookstore for free. When they start getting the marketplace to respond to their product, I’ll be happy. And don’t get me started on prices. The price for practically every book I’ve seen with the Nook has been either exactly the same price as the Kindle or much higher. Computer books are ridiculous in that they’re sometimes more expensive for the Nook version than they would be if I bought it in a physical copy. Not a good sign if they’re trying to capture a market. Or even tap into one.

This is the same problem, I have with the Kindle. The prices for books just don’t seem to justify the device itself. When books are $9.99, it might be worth it, but there’s a mindgame being played here that they don’t want to own up to. A lot of these books are now out in paperback and available from some retailers for much cheaper than $9.99. Yet, the price for these books doesn’t go down. They remain at $9.99 or recently, $12.99, which seems to be some bizarre sweet spot the book companies think they can get. In other words, they’re making the market reliant on the hardbook, brand new price model when most people haven’t even really been reliant on that model in the real bookstore of the past. I bought a few books that were “discounted” at the $7.00 range, and I realized while buying them that I could probably get these books for less than $5.00 because they’ve been out in paperback forever. Kindle is trying to take the Apple approach of “people are suckers who will pay anything for something digital, and if we capture that market, they’ll always pay us full price”. Kindle started out well with their price model, but then they caved in against the book publishers, and that bit of working together has managed to screw the average customer who is now faced with paying stupid prices or going back to the old model of waiting for physical books to go down in price. Without even trying, the e-reader market is doing a good job of killing its own future marketplace.

6. The iPad. The hype over this product has completely overwhelmed me. Not enough to buy one, but enough to cause me to wonder if people really are that daft. I mean, it’s not like the technology was really all that new. We’ve had tablets on the market for a few years now, but they never sold because people didn’t see a need for them. And then Steve Jobs announced the iPad during his yearly announcement meeting, and suddenly everyone had to have one. I’ve looked at it, and almost even bought one, because I’m a stupid Internet geek who buys stupid things like the Nook Color. But I waited a day and then realized I didn’t want OR NEED one. It didn’t do anything I couldn’t already do with devices I already had. I mean, it’s got a bookstore so I can read e-books. They’re more expensive than any other store, because it’s Apple, and I already have a Kindle and an Amazon Nook. Not worth it. It does some word processing. So does my laptop. Much better, too. It looks like a Star Trek datapad. That’s cool. But that’s about as useful as it gets. It doesn’t actually do anything my iPhone doesn’t do. It’s just that my iPhone is smaller.

7. Which brings me to my iPhone. I bought an iPhone when they were first released. And it rocked. Back then, I had a crappy cell phone that was not very smart, and the move to a phone that did everything was great. But it’s been some years since I first bought that phone, and the marketplace has finally caught up to it. You see, there are some things that the iPhone won’t do, mainly because of Apple and because of AT&T. I have been getting a lot of phone calls from telemarketers lately, including one that calls me every day. I can’t block their calls because AT&T won’t let me do it without paying for a special service that does just that. Apple won’t let me get an App to block calls because for some reason Apple just doesn’t seem to think that’s a good App. So I’m left having to be innovative and work around my phone in order to get my phone to do what I want it to do. So a few days ago, I bought an Android phone that lets me do all of the things an Apple phone won’t let me do. And I’ve been really happy with it since. I had to move to Sprint PCS instead, and well, it’s working out like a first date with a supermodel who only orders off the children’s menu to watch her weight. Apple managed to push itself out of my market when I used to say nothing but wonderful things about them and their phone.

8. The Spiderman Musical. Now, as much as I love a train wreck like everyone else, I’ve kind of hit my saturation point with this story. Okay, they tried to make a musical that was too innovative to actually be done successfully. Fix it or move on. It doesn’t really matter to me.

9. Sony launched a model to compete with iTunes. Yeah, good luck on that one. You’re a day too late with a model that’s not innovative. Sprechen Blockbuster versus Netflix?

10. South Korea is trying to rile up North Korea with live fire exercises. Um, poking a tiger is not always the best way to entertain the kids. But what do I know?

That’s all for now. Have fun and avoid eating the yellow snow. Just cause it looks like lemon flavoring doesn’t mean it’s going to work out that way.

A Few Comments That Need To Be Said

Economics, Memoirs, Politics, Uncategorized, Writing, , , , , , ,

I thought I would take a moment and just make a few comments that need to be said. Unfortunately, only my stuffed animals read my blog. Well, my stuffed animals and my imaginary girlfriend…from Canada…and maybe that mysterious group of government assassins who have been trying to replace my nonfat milk with soy products, but you probably get the point.

1. If a news article is ever written about me that includes the phrase, “and police searched the wood chipper for signs of the body” then let’s just say that I’ve probably reached a saturation point of relevance and should immediately be put to sleep. Or if police were searching the wood chipper for signs of ME, then let’s just say that I’ve probably got worse problems than anything I might complain about on my blog.

2. I’m convinced Craigslist has no further relevance or importance now that they have removed the adult ads. I’m sorry, but it has no purpose any more. I attempted to put up a personal ad the other day, and it never showed up. The system said I did everything right, but it just never made it to the production side of the house. This has convinced me that all the site was ever really good for was advertising fake personal ads that were really a cover for underage girls selling sex to dirty old men and local law enforcement. Or it was local law enforcement trying to pretend to sell potential sex to dirty old men to put them in jail for wanting sex with underage girls. Or it was NBC trying to snare dirty old men trying to find sex with underage law enforcement officers, or something like that. Either way, underage girls were involved and so were dirty old men, so do the math, and you can probably figure it out. Let’s just shut down Craigslist for good. It doesn’t make sense any more.

3. No politicians are honest. At all. Oh, they talk a good game, but they’re really only interested in pretending to be something they’re not so they can get a job they probably don’t deserve. We should force them to create Craigslist ads instead, and then we can hire the underage girls to run our government. I’m just saying….

4. The “check engine soon” light on your car is a boldface liar. It doesn’t want you to check your engine. It wants you to bring your car back to the dealer so they can charge you $99 to tell you that they need to charge you $299 to replace a sensor that tells you to check your engine soon. What they’re really doing is replacing the light in the sensor so that it will go off two days after you leave the dealer’s shop. Mine did. And now it goes off for a week, goes on for a week, and then repeats the cycle. There’s nothing wrong with the engine, other than it has a faulty sensor that keeps telling me to check the engine soon. Or perhaps my engine is just lonely and wants friends. Maybe I should get a sensor that goes off whenever I’m in public that says “check duane soon…he needs friends”. And then people can pay me $99 for me to tell them they need to pay me $299 so that I’ll tell them to pay me $99 very soon.” I’m just saying….

5. The lives of celebrities aren’t important to the rest of us. It’s one thing to follow the news and be interested in celebrities. It’s another to have it thrown in our faces nonstop as if it’s important. I was tuning into the news the other day, and the point-counterpoint was all about Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. I’m sorry, but there’s the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the election around the corner, and all sorts of actual news stories that are really news. We really don’t need too political partisans going back and forth about what kind of role model Lindsay Lohan is presenting for young girls who don’t even know who she is because she hasn’t been relevant in about a decade now. Same with Paris Hilton. Since her last actual television reality show, she hasn’t been relevant, significant or even interesting in a very long time now. The people who remember her are no longer capable of being influenced. The ones who are capable of being influenced really have never heard of her and probably think she’s some old woman who their parents might have found interesting. It’s amazing how socially irrelevant celebrities become in a few years.

6. The publishing industry sucks. No two ways about it. I get so discouraged trying to make it as a published novelist, only to find out that Snooki or Tyra Banks is being given a huge publishing contract to churn out drivel that my pack of monkeys (who write Shakespearean sonnets…remember them? The ones who if they write enough gibberish will eventually duplicate a Shakespearean sonnet) could have written just as well. Bah, I get so upset at this sort of thing.

My Adventures of Gardening in the Concete City

Memoirs, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

 

One day in the Spring, I sat in the garden and looked at a wilting plant that was supposed to be a thriving abundance of vegetables I had planted earlier in the season. But there was no life, just a drooping, dying plant that had been picked clean by aphids and predatory insects. My months of nurturing this garden amounted to a complete and dismal failure. On this day, I sat down next to this dying plant and pretty much gave up. Not just on gardening, but on pretty much everything.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

Those were her last words to me. Not good-bye, not a fight, and not anything of any substance. Just an apology and then she cut the string on the two cans we used to communicate between us.

You see, this garden was to be my refuge from a life that wasn’t going as I had planned. I had such high ideals and plans for myself that should have put me in a much different place than where I ended up. My bestselling novels didn’t amount to the selling of any books, my occupation had stalled and sort of retreated because my desires were loftier than my accomplishments, and the relationship I had cultivated with the girl of my dreams had failed, miserably. The only thing that could have made this moment worse was rain.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

And then it rained. And then it poured. And then it thundered and lightning’d all over the place, as if to not only remind me that sometimes life sucks, but that sometimes life sucks times a million. Then the storm destroyed what was left of my garden. And all metaphors for a sucky life just sort of laughed at me. And I sat in the rain and got drenched.

The garden was supposed to be my way to forget about it all. Things hadn’t been working out (see above), so I lived in this house that had a really nice area for a garden. There wasn’t one there before, so I thought what a cool idea it would be to expend all of my energy trying to breathe life into some plants. I went to the store, bought a bunch of vegetables I thought might be tasty to munch on one day, and I toiled the soil, or so they say, or at least I think that’s what farmers say. I mean, I had no experience in farming. None. I might have watched Little House on the Prairie once, but that was about as close as it came. And I didn’t really pay all that much attention to the farming on that show when I did watch it, so I didn’t really have a lot of usable experience here. But I was going to garden.

And garden I did.

I hoed and hoed and planted and planted and watered and talked to the plants, and then I waited. Meanwhile, I hoed some more and watered and talked and all that sort of stuff.

You see, I didn’t want to deal with my life. I fell into a depression that was just getting worse each day. The logical thing would have been to get back out there and start regaining back some of what I had lost, but I sort of gave up. All that I really had was my gardening. And I figured if that was all I could do, then that was all I was going to do.

But it never grew. The garden died almost as soon as it started to grow. It was like nature was waiting for it to sprout and then pounced on it almost immediately. It didn’t stand a chance.

I was never going to be a gardener.

During that storm, I sat in the rain and just let the world pound down on me. I figured it was doing what the universe wanted to do to me any way. At some point, I went back into the house, tossed the gardening stuff I had with me into the trash and then went to bed. That night, I figured I had nothing left worth working for, and probably nothing left worth living for. The storm had washed away anything worth continuing.

The next morning, I puttered around the kitchen for a bit and then wandered out into the backyard to see what damage the storm had done to my obliterated garden. Hopping through the defunct garden was a little brown bunny, sniffing away, looking for something to eat.

“You’re too late,” I said. “The storm already killed it.”

The bunny just stared at me for a second, probably wondering if I was a threat, and then it hopped away, never to be seen again.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

I went back into the house and made some breakfast for myself. Somehow, it didn’t seem as bad right then as it did the night before.