Henry Ford

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.
--Henry Ford

Ford offered a car in the color of your choice: Any color, as long as it was black.

We talk about positive language. That's positive language. He didn't say, "you can only get it in black," or "you can't get it in any other color."

Ford knew about being positive. Though I abhor the car-centric world he contributed to building, I still think we can all learn from his experience and positive attitude.

And the walls came tumbling down upon our hearts and minds

I wasted some of my valuable time this morning, reading some peoples' "If I were President" emails on CNN.com. Wow, people can be so stupid.

I was particularly irked at the fantasy aspect of it all. "If I were President I would legalize marijuana, blah blah blah." If you were President, darling, you would not actually have the power to do such a thing, but ooookay, pretend the Prez gets a magic wand. While you're at it, how about world peace?

And then of course, I'm pretty close to going over the edge about this wall thing. "I would build a wall all around the United States, so we would be protected from evildoers and dirty Mexicans."

Is it my imagination, or didn't the United States used to be a land where people fought to bring walls down? Is it just me, or is this fervent desire to put up walls a fair demonstration of what has happened to something that once was great?

Someone, somewhere, is shouting back at my keystrokes. It's unintelligable, really, because his English ain't so good, but he's saying something about how the world has changed since 9-11.

Sadly, no. I think we were working on putting up walls before that. 9-11 just brought it out in the open. Strange that some angry, senseless, hurtful men with a couple of box cutters can shed such light. I don't like what I see.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.

--Robert Frost

An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls - even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls - without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell.

--Pearl Buck

Possessions are underrated

Money can't buy you love, and things can't make you happy.

That said, some things make me happy. I mean, I look at them, touch them, or play with-- uh, nevermind. The sentiment is true, nonetheless. It's the context that makes one happy.

I have a silver bracelet that is handmade. I don't know where it's from. I bought it from my friend/brother Roderick Zalameda, when he was working at a stand on Queen Street in Toronto. The link, the way the bracelet closes, is a screw. And the screw is handmade too, a silver strand wound around and around in a spiral. Not only is it handmade, it is backwards to the "standard." Lefty-tighty, righty-loosey.

I own many treasures. When someone asks, what are your favorite possessions, I'm at a loss, because I don't rank them. How can I rank them?

What are some of your treasures?

3em is even better than 3M

I found the code I was looking for, and I fixed it. How about that? Of course, I started the hunt in the first place because I wanted a black background, and a black background revealed the complete lack of a right margin in the sidebar content. Finally, I found the sidebar widget, whatever that is, and I changed one of the values to 3em, and wow, that's actually too much margin. I set it to 1em and moved on.

Only by this time, I'd stopped loving the black background.

For my next trick, I'll be trying to figure out how to put a gradient into the background, or maybe tile it with a texture. Because...

yeah, yeah. How hard can it be?

The "new look" is a considerably tweaked version of one of Blogger-beta's stock templates. I made the banner out of a kelp tattoo design I've been thinking of actually having tattooed on my own self, like the woman in the banner only... fatter. And then I made a new gif for one of the template's dividers, and I adjusted some colors. Not bad.

I'll be playing with it some more. Hey, I might even crack open that web design book, eh?

Play time

Obviously (I say, assuming I have "regular viewers"), I am playing with templates. I am frustrated beyond reason by the fact that I can't figure out this language on my own. I never had to open a text book for VB, dammit.

That said, let us be clear: I am not interested in this stuff. I have no desire to write my own "code." Don't even talk to me.

But if you can figure out how I can have a bigger margin in the right column, please let me know. Thx.

CNN's cry for help

Here is one possible explanation for the guy named Loveless who says happiness is overrated:

An evil alien dictator (or perhaps the U.S. government) has taken over CNN and is forcing its staff to slant the news -and through the news, our society- in a horrifyingly dangerous and destructive direction. Reporters are literally chained to their desks, cranking out these lies in mortal fear of torture and death.

But one brave soul is fighting back. He is seeding the news with stories carefully designed to set off our alarm bells. Loveless doesn't believe in happiness?! Come on, that's an obvious fabrication.

And now, stingrays are voluntarily jumping out of the water, into boats, in order to skewer unsuspecting old dudes in the heart. That can't be real.

We must save our intrepid reporter before the evil alien dictator (or U.S. government) discovers what he's been up to.

Love not what you can skip to your heart's content

Too, too funny. I'm going to be late for work, but I just have to post this:

In this morning's news on CNN, an article entitled,
Confident students do worse in math; bad news for U.S.

In essence, happiness is overrated, says study author Tom Loveless.

LOVELESS DON'T SHOW NO LOVE!

"If I'm a math student and I don't perceive myself as confident, you think I'm going to major in it? The answer is no," said Francis "Skip" Fennell

*snort* Shockingly, a guy named "Skip" argues that kids should have fun in math class.

This story has to have been made up, right?

Language arts

I just heard from my sister and my Dad in Toronto. My sister just had surgery on her foot. She said she'd taken a big risk: She failed to take a big black marker and write, "Not this foot! The OTHER ONE!" on the good foot before going to the hospital. But all is well, if broken and painful. The little pills should help.

My Aunt Nan, meanwhile, is suddenly due for a triple bypass. I'm thinking there're going to be a lot more little pills in the family.

In honor of the wounded and crippled of my clan, then, I give you... another rant among so, so many. This time, it's about language.

Today when I got home from workschool (the division blurs), Luther greeted me on my arrival with an observation about the poker game on TV, and the names by which the players were identified. "Jessica" was the female player at the table. The other players, all male, were referred to by their surnames.

Okay, so this is not a shocker. I could go off on a tangent, but I'll abstain this time. Instead, let me just provide my reasoning:

Women don't have their own names.

A woman has her father's name until she marries, when she takes her husband's name.

Understand, I don't think the woman at the poker table was the epitome of tradition. But it's a long tradition, and where once I would have blamed an issue of respect, or perhaps an issue of objectification (sexual, that is), I find today that the use of names at a poker table is in its own way accurate. A given name is just a convenient label; a surname is a property, and women don't own property, at least not if there is a man in the family.

Call Jessica "Smith," and one might be confused and look about the room for Smith, for surely this breasted person is not he.

Later, Luther and I talked again about the recent brawl in college football, Florida-style. Luther remarked on the fact that the reports refer to the "players" and the fair or unfair disciplines to "the players" for fighting. Rarely if ever does someone refer to these "players" as... "Students."

Oh, that's right! They're supposedly college students, yes? And every college has a code of conduct for its students, usually published in a fairly concrete form. I went to the University of Miami to look at their Student Code of Conduct but alas, the link seemed to be broken. I wonder why?

Language is everything. There is no equality for women until they own their own names. There is no point in pretending that football players are students until we refer to them as students and hold them to the same standards as the rest of the student body.

I think, until we start to consistently refer to the athletes as students, they will consistently fail to be so. And in the South, mecca of college football, they'll continue to just be poor, black gladiators for the rather limited white populace. How nice.

Meanwhile, I can't do anything about the women thing. I know that I chose to change my name because I wanted to show in a public way that I was making a family with Luther. I would have been happier if we could have had a name all our own, but he's the fourth of FIVE of his name. Hard to just break the mold mid-stream.

But I hate that anybody would ever think I wasn't a Slocombe.

I miss you both. Eat the pills. Love you.

Stupid human tricks

And now, for something completely time-wastingly fun: In the address bar of your browser, do you see a little green B-squared? And if not, refresh.

Ain't it cool?

It turns out to be pretty easy to do this. I made a little square image, and then I went to MyFavatar and uploaded the image.

I'm going to mess with this some more, I'm sure, but in the meantime, oooh, looky at that!

(Okay. That tears it. I am a geek.)

Post-posting notes: It won't show up in Internet Explorer 6.0, but word on the street is that it will show up in IE7. And I don't much care because I avoid IE like the plague. I use Firefox. Finally, I knew I had to delete my bookmark/favorite to my blog and then re-bookmark it, but still I get no little icon in my bookmarks list. Damn. I might have to do some more research...

Visibility is key

Not once has anybody told me that when one is transporting helium balloons in one's car, one should secure the balloons before starting to drive.

Picture: Less than or equal to 1000 words

The Master's I'm pursuing is in Information Design, which is the compact way of saying, "technical and professional communication, recognizing that this can no longer be limited to writing for print, and therefore encompassing the informed utilization of multimedia, including the Internet and World Wide Web." It's a mouthful, isn't it? You can see why we professional communicators prefer "Information Design."

What this actually means to my studies is that every time I turn around, somebody is talking to me about how writing for the web is different from writing for print.

For example, the first paragraph of this blog post is too long for online readers. Sorry. You gave up halfway through, and have already clicked elsewhere.

This morning, I was on my way to work, driving my little car and thinking about what a perfect day it is, crystal blue sky, crisply cool air, warming sunshine, low traffic during fall break for local schools; and I passed the scene of an accident, SUV and sedan, the sedan all spun around and facing the wrong way on the shoulder of the fast lane, ambulance in attendance, cop lights spinning. I thought about how easily someone can jerk a wheel, startled by another vehicle coming by too closely, dance a little too far into the next lane, and strike another car. At freeway speeds, no impact is small, and you're the best kind of driver and can see 360 degrees at all times, having had just enough coffee and not too much hangover, and you still can't guarantee yours won't be the car that's hit. You can't avoid every accident.

According to the CDC, "More than 41,000 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes each year, and crash injuries result in about 500,000 hospitalizations and four million emergency department visits annually" (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/duip/mvsafety.htm, accessed Oct. 12, 2006).

And yet, people drive longer and longer distances to work and home each day. People spend more and more time in their cars, in traffic, than ever before. And why? Mostly because it's cheaper for businesses and homebuilders to build on open, undeveloped land than to rebuild on developed land, and where your future boss puts his business doesn't relate in any concrete way to where your builder decides to offer your future home. It's all completely meaningless, except for the fact that you need a place to live, and you need money to pay for it. For that, you put your teensy little car on the road with giant tractor-trailers at 80 miles per hour each morning, and you swear to your heart's content at the people on cell phones with electric razors and makeup kits and bowls of cereal at the wheel, and you try to see 360 degrees around at all times, even through that B-pillar that blocks your view and makes you blind.

I tell myself it's worth it, and I get to work safely, and it's a gorgeous day, and I start thinking about writing a blog entry, but I can't decide which to write about: car accidents, my car, the beautiful day, the way I woke up this morning to the sound of a neighborhood-wide broadcast of a high-pitched tone and the electronically-spoken words, "FIRE! FIRE! LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!" And I think about the letters I used to write to my friend Luther.

In 1999, my friend Luther spent six months in Kuwait. I had only recently "met" him, playing an online game with him and several other people in various locations at odd ours of the day and night. He was a Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force, married, with two children he clearly adored. I didn't know how to spell "sergeant," and I didn't know where Georgia was.

Luther was smart, and he had very traditional manners of a type that seemed old-fashioned to me, but he was also coarse and flirtatious and funny, and just plain foreign to this Canadian hippy-raised forever-single forever-childless city girl. I liked him and decided we would always be friends. And when he was sent to Kuwait and asked for mail, I sent mail, about anything and everything. On the streetcar, at work in the middle of a long take of another boring shot of some show or another, at home waiting for the pizza and pasta delivery from Ciccio's, at Ted's Collision bar drinking with friends, I scribbled notes about my world onto scraps of paper, and then I'd put them together into long, rambling letters that wound up painting a picture that was far more of me than of the city I'd been trying to explain.

They were good letters. I enjoyed writing them. I saw more of my city and my life, in those six months, than I'd been seeing for a long while.

This blogging thing, this is a little attempt at that awareness. Of that joy in who I am and what I love (and hate) about the world around me. And most of the blogs I visit regularly are something of the same, whether the entries are short or long, business or personal.

It's like the whole blogging thing defies the conventions. This paragraph is too long. I've used too many descriptive words. Punctuation is harder to see on-screen. I need to use headings and subheadings. People find it too difficult to read long blocks of text off a computer monitor. The resolution is too low, and the light is harsh. I'm sure it's true: It says so, right here in all three text books for this semester's class. I know it's true.

But I found the car accident interesting. And it's a gorgeous day. I liked writing long letters to my friend Luther, and letting him decide whether or not to make the effort to read them.

Monday morning fallout shelter

So I browse to CNN because I'm stuck between audience analysis and content development plan and need a break.

North Korea claims it's done its wee nuclear test.

And "Foley fallout continues in capital."

Fallout.

It makes me snicker, it does.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yes, this is Thanksgiving weekend. Don't talk to me about American Shopping and Football Day, which is not for another month and a half.

I don't have much to say on the topic, mostly because I do not have the day off tomorrow, and I have homework due at noon, too. Still, for some reason I am thinking about food, and two dishes in particular come to mind, even though neither is a Thanksgiving food.

Butter tarts, as it turns out, are Canadian. I mean, if you're American, there's a good chance you've never heard of them. I can describe them as like little pecan tarts without the pecans, but it's not quite right because they can actually be made with pecans, and anyway they don't taste like pecan pie. They taste like... butter tarts.

You can read a little more about them here.

Web surfing the butter tart tends to call up articles about poutine. Poutine isn't related at all, of course, except that it's another Canadian treat. Poutine is another "what are you trying to do, actually induce a heart attack right here?" food, and even though I've only had it a few times, I dream about it often and wonder when and where I might get to enjoy it again.

I know poutine as fries, cheese curds, and gravy. When I tell people about this, I usually have to explain what cheese curds are, and the whole conversation gets off-track at that point. If you don't know what cheese curds are, you're sitting at a computer. Look it up!

Meanwhile, a quick web surf on poutine will show that there are lots of poutine recipes that call for "sauce" rather than gravy, and the type of cheese is a bit up in the air, too. The most shocking thing of all, however, is that there are "Canadian themed" restaurants outside of Canada. Not related to poutine, you point out? Oh yeah? Well, read about poutine on Wikipedia, and then come complain.

McDonald's poutine? Blech! Shouldn't that be illegal?

I'm in love

Some pictures just make me smile all the way from my toes through the top of my head.

I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

Homesickness

Two years ago, we went to Greece. Partway through the trip, we took a ferry to the island of Paros. In a little shop on Paros, Luther bought two photo prints, images from the 1950s, little scenes from the towns of Naoussa and Parikia. They were really terrific because they were pictures of Paros as it was back when Luther's Mom spent time there as a child.

Then we took the ferry back to Athens. The ferry ride is a couple of hours long, and Luther took half a dramamine, and I wandered around and watched for the dolphin I'd seen on the way over. And when the ferry docked, we left the ferry, and the photo prints stayed with the ferry, tucked between a seat and a wall where they wouldn't get damaged by passersby.

Occasionally I hunt for such pictures online. It's a fruitless pursuit. The Greece that is online is young and all about the new, not the old.

When I hunt, I get homesick. That's the best word to describe it. I remember the smell of exhaust from the scooters zipping dangerously by on the road between the little hotel and the little beach in Parikia. The Greek dust on the marble -was it marble? I remember it as marble- of my Mom-in-law's patio, where one can stand surrounded by miles and miles of city and see the Acropolis right there, like it's the most ordinary thing in the world. Riding the streetcar. Ice cream at the beach.

I found one photograph of the port of Piraeus in Athens, from the late 1800s, with three-masted ships. The beach with the ice cream is in the picture. My mind does a triple-track camera dolly move, with a focus pull from the Athens of my high school Ancient History class (the second time in summer school, because I failed it the first time) to the Athens of two years ago, with a bus ride, and branded umbrellas in a beach bar, and pretty sailboats, and a photograph that I use for my Blogger profile.

I say to Luther, "When are we going home?" and he doesn't even blink, because he knows which home I'm talking about, and he says, "Soon, baby."

Then today, Jimmy Buffet is playing in my head, and I'm thinking about bantam chickens standing on Volkswagon beetles. And I still have that dusty marble in my mind, but I'm picturing the fireworks of New Year's so far away they look like sparklers, and the black ocean is all around me, and it's quiet because the ship has a sail and isn't using its motor. Waking up in our tent, with the wind blowing, but we did a crazy thing and brought the futon from the couch, so we don't even need tent pegs because the futon keeps the tent on the ground. And we ride our bikes off the Navy base to the bar, where we eat oysters with friends.

Yesterday I was homesick for Greece, and I'm still homesick for Greece, but today I am also homesick for Key West.

I wonder how many places I'll be homesick for, by the time I'm done with this living thing and decide to go away?

Swamp snap cookies

Awhile back, I told my friend Danny Sadder (no relation to Daniel Sadler) that on some days I love the smell of the swamp. When the water level drops, the rotting vegetation is revealed, and the stench is rich and wild and alien and beautiful. Although it has aspects in common with a backed up toilet, the effect is decidedly different. Swamp smell, here in the middle of Georgia in late summer, is like the smell of ...danger.

Today on my way home, though, it smelled more like cookies.

Specifically, the swamp smelled like some kind of freakish gourmet ginger snap cookie just coming out of the oven. Allspice, fresh cardamum pods, and slightly fermented orange zest. The effect was particularly stunning because the air conditioning does not work in my little Honda del Sol, so as I rounded the curve of I-475 a few miles from rejoining I-75, the swamp cookies smell came at me through the window in a blast of hot air, quite like I had just opened the oven and leaned in to see if they were ready.

I'm not saying you should ever -ever- eat the cookies, mind you. Back away from the cookies.

But some days, the swamp smells really cool.

Orienting oneself

No, an inukshuk doesn't help me orient myself. It's just a pile of rocks, which inexplicably makes me happy, building something, setting my mark upon the world, and all that romantic stuff. I've built walls -a short wall out of stones, while camping, and a tall wall out of blocks of snow, while visiting a relative. It's always a rush. But an inukshuk has its own built-in romanticism.

Today, I rearanged our office. Luther had threatened to move to the bedroom, and I didn't like the idea not because our offices shouldn't be separate but because the bedroom should be! So I did what my Mom taught me many years ago: I mapped the room, and I cut out precise models of the furniture, and I worked the problem.

I've done this a few times in my life. It has always, without exception, been incredibly successful. This time, for the first time, I used Word.

I loathe Microsoft. That part put aside, Word is way more useful and flexible than one might imagine! I put up a grid on precise measurements, mapped out the room, and pasted objects of precise dimensions -then moved them and rotated them and placed them. It rocks, if you really know it.

The office is now back to the same cozy sensibility it had before we added the second desk. We can both look out the window, we can both move our chairs freely, and we can both look at each other and sigh, sickeningly. I added a cabinet (the "books" item in the diagram) and filled it with the books I had piled in various corners. And the lamp on the corner of my desk, plus a pile of blanket and cushions in the corner of the room (that big rectangle is a futon couch, by the way), makes a perfect reading corner.

In the process of putting those piles of books away, I discovered a little box. When I'd worked at Mag North for 5 years, I was given a silver coin. Those of you who admired my pile of rocks will find this amusing:



The accompanying card reads:

Lifelike figures of rock, erected by the Inuit, stand along Canada's most northern shores. They are Inukshuk (pronounced In-ook-shook) -an Inuit word meaning "in the image of man." One of their purposes was to serve as directional markers on the treeless horizons, to guide those who followed. As such, they stand as eternal symbols of the importance of friendship, and remind us of our dependence on one another.

So for those who wondered, while my little inukshuk on my lawn is by no means permanent, it's supposed to be... beautiful, in a way that garden gnomes are not.

Be excellent with one another. And enjoy the rest of the weekend, eh?

And thanks, Mom. Your system, whether by paper or by Microsoft Word, has rocked my world on numerous occasions. I owe you.

Stone cold birthday

It's my birthday today, and I got one of the best gifts ever!


I've wanted this for a long time, so I was pretty excited. I was so surprised! Then, when I decided to blog about it, I had all kinds of ambitious plans to provide essays and links about the whole thing, but... Well, screw it, it's my birthday. I'm going to go eat some of my very strange but yummy homemade orange liquor cream and chocolate cake...


...while looking outside at my first ever attempt at an inukshuk. Birthdays ROCK!


Thank you so much, Luther. I love you !

Brave new curriculum

A curriculum, says my trusty OED, is "a regular course of study or training, as at a school or university." At work in the past few years, however, I have been dealing with a curriculum that is anything but regular.

To the extent that it has been going through changes, this is fair. The degree program is in the field of Information Technology, which is a moving target for educators (and investors, for that matter). But it doesn't help that different people have different ideas of what "Information Technology" actually means. My own understanding is this: It's just plain not computer science. It's making stuff and doing things with computers, not actually building the computers themselves. The things that one can make and do with computers is constantly changing (consider that not long ago telephones and cameras were separate and not even related devices), and a college curriculum meant to educate students in how to make and do with computers has to constantly adjust in order to meet changing expectations.

"Regular" can also mean "normal," or "typical," and this is where things begin to go haywire. What's "normal" or "typical" in an Information Technology curriculum is pretty up in the air. There are lots of programs, but not a lot of commonalities. The Accrediting Body for Engineering and Technology (ABET) is working toward changing this by defining Information Technology-specific accreditation criteria for college programs. If your curriculum meets their standards, it will by definition meet certain minimum requirements that will be common to all accredited IT programs. Your graduating students will have mastered a certain level of math, a certain amount of programming, a certain understanding of human-computer interface issues, etc.

Last fall, I spent a great deal of time working with a new faculty member on devising curriculum changes that would edge us toward ABET accreditation. The changes were also supposed to solve some specific problems we'd been struggling with aside from accreditation: Our students were balking at our math requirements; they were flunking the second required programming course; and they were, if they graduated at all, graduating with no particular expertise in any area of IT. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of toes got stepped on, my faculty member partner threw her hands up and backed out of the project, and ultimately the ABET criteria were completely set aside in favor of... well, convenience, I think. So we proposed some dramatic changes, took them to Academic Council, and it was done.

This fall, when these curriculum changes took effect, the same faculty member suddenly became my boss. I'm very pleased, because I really like her. She's incredibly intelligent and experienced, and she knows how to analyze a problem and prioritize solutions. But the past four weeks have thrown us crisis after crisis. Sometimes it seemed like the administration was deliberately cooking up problems to send our way. And a few days ago, we got an email from one of our two-year "feeder" colleges... challenging our new curriculum. It doesn't meet the most basic standards set by the state of Georgia, let alone ABET accreditation criteria. Mostly, though, it doesn't play well with the other IT programs in the state, because... it's not "regular."

Now, some of us did already know this, but talking about it had a tendency to make us very unpopular, and there was a sense of hopelessness about it. We'd made the changes, the catalog had been published, and classes had started. When that email came in, I and my coworker brainstormed and came up with a fantasy curriculum that would fix everything, but it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. It was just an intellectual exercise, which I forwarded to my new boss.

Some of our ideas made it into the final draft of a curriculum change proposal, Friday morning. We're proposing a massive band-aid on the curriculum, mid-year. It's strong. It's quite possibly ABET-worthy. And now we wait, while the faculty consider what we've done and see all the ways in which it will challenge them, invade their little educational territories, and turn their worlds upside down. Wednesday, they vote.

It's going to be interesting.

Age before beauty

Awww, my little car went over 100,000 a few days ago and I failed to take note. I'm sorry, Rocinante! We can celebrate this weekend, okay?

And if anybody says, "she's got a lot of miles on 'er," I can pretend he's talking about the car. :-p

Studio 60 and personal audio transmitters

The premiere episode of Aaron Sorkin's new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, aired tonight. I've been looking forward to it all summer. I became a fan of Sorkin's when my sister introduced me to Sports Night, and I was nuts over his A Few Good Men during the opening scene of that movie, and then of course I laughed, cried, and generally was in love for a good couple of seasons of the West Wing (and stuck with it after Sorkin left because I just plain loved the characters). I wasn't enthralled with the premise of Studio 60, but it's Aaron Sorkin and I had to watch.

Interestingly, the promos didn't work for me. Especially, I thought the two main characters (played by Brad Whitford of West Wing and Revenge of the Nerds -yeah, he was in Revenge of the Nerds!- and Matthew Perry of Friends but let us not forget The Whole Nine Yards) lacked interest. They both have that craggy, haggared thing going on, lovely and all, but do I care that they're wired? I'd about had enough of Mr. Whitford's wired thing in the last season of the West Wing, so I wasn't sure about a whole show based on the same performance. And... they didn't have any chemistry.

Luckily, the guys who cut the promos were either A) idiots, or B) just teasing me. I'm actually thinking it was the latter in this case. The moment that Mr. Perry's character took off at a full, painkiller-protected sprint to kick some ass for his drug addict friend Whitford... I fell in love.

So it's another season of fun for me. Can somebody please call in a favor and have them move the show to an 8 p.m. slot? I should not be up this late.

Speaking of which, as the show ended, I crawled under the covers and Luther changed the channel to a football game. Why do people have to shout all the way through a football game? I don't care about some hoots and hollers, it's the strained volume of the announcers for three hours that drives me nuts. And I thought, hey, we need personal audio transmitters.

When you think of it, it's a natural thing for an "information designer" to think about, which is why I've already added features. A personal audio transmitter would be embedded in your head, of course. You can watch TV, and you alone would hear it, unless others in the household changed to the same channel. You'd be able to listen to whatever you want to hear, without headphones, without distortion, perfectly natural -AND hear the outside world if you chose. But the rest of the household and the neighborhood could enjoy some peace and quiet.

The thing about being an information designer, though, is that almost immediately I saw a flaw. You're listening to the game, and your crazy-assed wife who can't sleep starts talking to you. Sure, you can hear her, but goddamn, doesn't she know you're watching the game?

So the technology isn't ready, because I'm pretty sure we can embed the audio transmitter already, but I don't know about the little yellow hologram lightbulb that hovers over your head to show that you're currently listening elsewhere. That might take some time.

G'night.

An allergy to work

Every weekday afternoon, just before 3 p.m., I have an attack of the sneezes. It's taken me many weeks to determine that this does, in fact, occur every work day.

What is happening at 3 p.m. that causes me to sneeze?

Observations on a rainy day

One: I was never really afraid of storms in Toronto, but now I have to be afraid. We reviewed tornado procedures at work this afternoon, and then I drove home with clouds so low they looked like they were coming right at me as I crested each subtle hill on the freeway. Brooding, disturbed poltergeists formed and malformed and deformed all around me, and the rain, thankfully light, had me craning forward in my seat, as if that would somehow help me see better through the muddy wetness swiped by windshield wipers between me and the road. And I thought, what if a tornado happens now? I regularly come home clenched up from head to toe, shaking and stressed because a storm kept me from seeing where I was going (and made me invisible to others going the same way). How do I suppose I would respond to the sight of a tornado -not just a funnel, which I've already seen here, but a full-on furious freight-train devil? Driving in wind and rain and probably hail as well, there's no way I'd be able to tell if it was coming for me or running away, if it (or the inevitable flying cows) would cross my path or just pace me as I made my way home. I get nervous about pulling over to the side of the road. What would I do? Would I just drive my car into the whirlwind and hope the Wizard turns out to be sexy?

I should put it in a story. And since when was I putting things in stories, anyway?

Two: When considering the purchase of a residential property, confirm that high-speed internet is available. It is, here -but I've seen others less than fortunate on this issue. But equally important, perhaps, find out what kind of asshole trees are hanging over your driveway. Nuts are bad for windshields and dainty little paint jobs. Just fyi and all.

What do I believe?

I recently registered as a bright. A bright, says the organization's website, is "a person who has a naturalistic worldview." I don't normally think of myself as having a "naturalistic worldview," but I applaud this core ideal: Let's define ourselves by what we believe, rather than what we do not believe.

It's easy to talk about what I don't believe. Like most brights, I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in souls. I don't believe we have a purpose, other than what we ourselves decide to pursue in life and in death. I don't believe good and evil are absolutes. I don't believe in God.

But what do I actually believe? I can say with confidence that I believe there is no God, but if I let that belief define me, then I'm defining myself with a negative, or defining myself by what other people believe. The idea behind "the brights" is to try to form a community of atheists and agnostics who can speak positively about their worldviews, without speaking negatively about others' beliefs, and without defining themselves only by what they don't believe.

Curious about what the general public was saying about the brights movement, I did some poking around and immediately ran into harsh criticism. The biggest problem is the name, "bright." Nobody really believes that this name wasn't chosen as a less-than-subtle implication about the cognitive abilities of those who do believe in Gods and other invisible forces.

Only... right there, we again insist that somehow because I am an atheist, I must define myself in relation to theists. That in defining myself as bright, I must be comparing myself with those who are not so bright. Well, why? Why can't I just say what I am, however I see myself, and have it have nothing to do with you and your church and your prayers and your God?

In criticizing the brights movement, this creep here says, "If you sense a linguistic sleight-of-hand going on here, you're brighter than Brights give you credit for. Despite their clever rhetoric, a belief system that rejects the supernatural is one that inescapably rejects the existence of God. So regardless of what affiliation a Bright claims, by definition, he is an atheist."

No. By your definition, I am an atheist. Because you can't say anything without God in it. If I follow my own beliefs, however, I deserve the right to talk about myself without talking about God. God does not exist in my world, so why should I have to define myself in reference to God?

I'm not sure how I feel about the brights. It almost sounds like a cult, like... a religion, and I'm frankly used to being on my own with my beliefs. I also don't feel a warm and fuzzy about this thing having a lot of success, at least not in the United States. But I have to say, I think they're onto something, and I'm going to ride along and see if being a bright affords me the opportunity to see my own self more clearly.

I'd like to be able to refer to my beliefs without the negativity our language has previously required I employ. I'd like to be able to talk about what I do believe, instead of what I don't believe.

Still Pimpin' Pale Immortal!

There once was this Blogger in beta
That tended to block my guests' data!
Let your frowns all be gone
And the party rage on!
Your comments Anon're all the greata!

yikes, that's bad...

Blogger-n-beta seems to have some trouble with comments across different Blogger versions. Still, it'd be nice to know you visited! Leave an anonymous message with your own blog URL, and I'll buzz you back!

Pimp my Pale Immortal

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. Of ships and sails and sealing wax, and Anne Frasier, and Pale Immortal.

If you read (and if you don't, what the heck are you doing here?), you will be enthused to consider today's release of Anne Frasier's new novel, Pale Immortal. I blog it here because, well... let's leave that for a moment, shall we?

The USA Today bestselling author of Before I Wake, known for keeping readers on the edge of their seats, delivers a tale that will have them looking over their shoulders....

Okay, I have to interrupt already. This is obviously just a bit of marketing mumbo jumbo. I mean, "edge of their seats"? Come on! Nobody reads a book at the edge of a seat. Movie, yes. Book, no. And "looking over their shoulders" is so... eighties! But I digress...

The sleepy town of Tuonela, Wisconsin, is known for one thing: the killer who stalked its streets one hundred years ago, drinking the blood of his victims. And when the drained corpse of a young girl is found, the citizens fear their past has risen from the grave—and point their fingers at one man....

Evan Stroud can never see the light of day. The prisoner of a strange and terrible disease, he lives in tragic solitude, taunted for being a “vampire”—until the son he never knew he had shows up in Tuonela, and is drawn into its depraved, vampire-obsessed underworld. Then Evan must rely on coroner Rachel Burton, his childhood friend, for help. But the evil that they face is powerful and elusive—and about to take them to the very brink of madness (Penguin, 2006).

Here's something foolish: I've read this synopsis -or iterations thereof- several times, but it wasn't until recently I noticed this Rachel Burton character. Who is she? Oooh, a coroner?

For me, this makes the Evan character even more intriguing. How did this happen? Well, now we have Evan -a man- and Rachel -a woman. All of a sudden, there is... a relationship. This relationship is not necessarily romantic, I'll grant you, but the mere possibility makes Evan Stroud more attractive. Now, we have an intriguing Evan Stroud instead of a creepy Evan Stroud. We have a son that Evan Stroud never knew he had. And we have a woman, a professional, a woman with the kinds of skills one might use to solve a crime... Aha, says a bekbek's mind: This, here, is the start of an adventure!

So that's it, then. I'm hooked. How about you? Go out and buy this book! In addition to the thrill of a good novel, you get to be a part of a movement! Yes, it's true: This blog entry is part of a bonafied "blog crawl," as we trip and stumble and curse our way over the internet, crying, "hello! There's a new book out!" Cool, eh?

And while you're at it, stop by Anne Frasier's own blog, Static, and become a part of the phenomenon. This is a whole lot like going downtown to blow some bubbles, and gosh darn it, I am in the mood for some bubble blowing!

Finally, if the bubble-blowing mention doesn't convince you, here's a more effective teaser:


______________
Penguin Group (USA). (2006). Pale Immortal. Retrieved on September 4. 2006 from this site, here.

Local culture

This rings all too true:

Somebody likes me!

I am astonished to report that my little story, Runaway, somehow came in 4th in Jason Evans's Lonely Moon short fiction contest! I really wasn't expecting it and am truly honored.

The contest was a huge success, with exactly 100 entries, and I did my best to keep up and contribute with some comments and my votes for the Readers' Choice award. Around the time the winners were announced, I went online to find out how many of my Readers' Choice picks had placed among the overall contest winners. I wasn't looking for my own name and was about to click away when it finally dawned on me that I had somehow made the list! What the--!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jason and Anne both, for another terrific experience. I am not worthy.

Speaking of "not worthy," though, I have to wonder how this works. I was proud of my little story. I thought it was good. Still, I was surprised to see it win anything. Why's that? Common humility demands I mention there were so very many good stories, and there were indeed (I'll list some specifics shortly). But why wouldn't I have even entertained the possibility that mine might be judged "good enough"? I dunno. I shall have to think on this and get back to you.

In any case, I was pretty much the picture of "tickled pink," and sort of hooted and hollered into the main office area at work, boasting and blushing. Very cool. There really were so many stories among the entries that I consider marvelous. Not to take anything away from any of the others, but I'd like to point you toward a few I think are very special:

Hardway, Jack, Man In The Moon (#100)
Fringes, Two Months at the Lake with Strangers and Old Friends (#38)
Flood, Robbed (#44)

Many of the participants agreed with me about that third one. Flood won the Reader's Choice award! Congratulations to you and to all the writers.

I think I might like to do a little more of this creative stuff after all...

The morning commute

I drive just over 21 miles to work in the morning, in 25 to 35 minutes depending on traffic and other stupidities. During the drive, I do some thinking, and sometimes I talk my thoughts out to an empty vehicle. Lately, I've reviewed four or five different topics that have been on my mind, over and over again, usually with the idea of posting them here.

Then I get to work.

Then I go home. The drive home is always considerably more aggravating. It takes 40 to 50 minutes. It's hot, and I'm tired. When I arrive at the house, Wil is either doing homework or watching television. Luther is eager to chat about his day. The cat is often under my feet, waiting for me to give her a snack. And blogging is the last thing on my mind.

Maybe tonight I will finally write something down.

Don't hold your breath.

My contest entry, "Runaway"

This morning, I finished my entry for the Lonely Moon contest. You can read it here. As with my first contest (the Midnight Road short fiction contest), I was energized by the desire to just write something, and then surprised myself by writing something I actually quite liked.

The story this time took a while to come to me. The contest creator, Jason Evans, provided a beautiful photograph as inspiration, and it did inspire a mood, but then the visuals that came to mind conflicted with the original. Especially, I kept drifting into imaginary snowstorms for some reason. I suppose snow and lonliness go together for me.

Thank you for another wonderfully creative opportunity, Jason.

The next blog

There's a little button on the Blogger bar a the top of my blog. Do you see it, too? "Next blog."

So one day, I clicked the button.

Now I'm a little bit hooked.

It turns out a lot of bloggers on Blogger are writing in a language not of the English variety. I hit the back button and try again. It's not that I mind the foreign-language blogs. It's just that I can't read them.

So I click back and then I click Next Blog, and I do this nice back-and-forth thing until I get something in English. It's often pretty broken English, but really, aren't we all broken in some way or another?

Just now, I read about an elementary school teacher's first few days of class this year. She was witty. She's just started blogging, though, so I ran out of posts almost immediately. I bookmarked her blog and will check back later to see how she's doing.

I looked at a lot of naked man pictures on a blog self-described as a "gay blog." I didn't see much gayness going on, just a lot of naked men and penises.

I read a recipe for curried prawns. I ate too much tonight, however, so it didn't sound as appealing as it ought to.

And I discovered that what appears to be broken English in some cases is some newfangled kind of texting thing going on, which I'm probably supposed to be able to read, but I can't. I mean, I can dish out the LOLs and TMIs like the best of them, but what's up with

gah, I can't even hold this stuff in my head long enough to transcribe it.

When whole blogs are written in this shorthand, post after post, I gotta wonder: Is it me, or are cell phones even more evil than previously imagined?

Blogs gone wild!

I migrated my blog over to the "new" Blogger in beta. There are a few unexpected little glitches... like the fact that I can't edit the raw html of my template. But I'm having fun playing with the new controls.

What's new for you is the "labels" function. I can now label my blog entries for different types of content. For instance, this entry will be labeled as part of my "blogosphere" adventure, since it's all about blogging and not at all about my day to day life. Those posts, you'll find in the "what's up with bekbek" section.

As I write this, my blog is black. I'll be playing with the templates, so there's no knowing what the blog will look like when you get here. I think the black is too hard on the eyes, but it sure is dramatic!

Writing by the light of a Lonely Moon

Contest alert! On August 22, Jason Evans announced the "Lonely Moon" Short Fiction Contest. Readers may recall I actually entered the previous contest, quite a new experience for me. This time, the contest will be co-hosted by the incredible Anne Frasier, and autographed copies of her September release Pale Immortal are among the prizes. Why don't you join us?

Gravity

The topic of death has been circling, lately, like a vulture. There’s no sense of malice in it. Rather, it’s like a disinterested, lazy fact. Like a rock dropping, it doesn’t require effort, nor is there much to stop it. Death and gravity are both just facts of life.

This circling of death started with a friend’s blog. Anne Frasier wrote about experiences of death and questioned how these experiences might play a role in deciding what she and other writers choose as subjects. In the many comments her post received, I read story after story about very personal losses –and was reminded in a powerful way of how little of real grief has touched my own 38 years of existence. Anne mentioned something about a “charmed life” and I wondered, am I living one of those? It sure doesn’t feel charmed, but...

With this whole question fresh in my mind, I heard that another online friend had suffered a terrible blow. Eighteen and in his first week of college, he’d been called home because his father, in the hospital due to a stroke, was not going to make it. With the family depending on this one young man’s strength and decisiveness, I could imagine the stress and the grief was overwhelming. I gave what condolences I could, but that’s just the thing: I could only imagine.

Now, I’ve got a good imagination. I found myself several times in tears about a person I’ve never met outside the virtual confines of an online message board. But isn’t this reaction on par with the tears I shed over a good movie, and the loss experienced by a heroic but nevertheless fictional figure onscreen? How valuable can my little bits of wisdom and empathy be, when they are based on such a lack of personal experience?

Then I found something I’d written after a visit to a hospital.

I felt that my body was burning itself up. My head was just one tremendous pain, that didn’t allow much in the way of thought or control. On the way to Emergency, I started thinking about the man I love, but my brain couldn’t seem to focus on the things I wanted it to. All the lovely moments, all the beautiful imagined futures with him eluded me, and I started silently chanting his name over and over. I wasn’t going to lose the one connection I could still manage. I lay there chanting “Luther, Luther, Luther” while the nice vampire nurse took my blood, and then I sat up to take some pills one by one, calmly saying it would be a shame after all this to choke to death on too many pills.

I’d been freezing for a few days, bundled in layers of sweat-soaked clothing under a down duvet, literally dripping with sweat, but so cold that it actually seemed painful. At the hospital, the nurse made me get out of my bundle of nightgown and housecoat and towel wrapped around my shoulders, because I needed to cool down, and I lay on the bed shivering until they started wheeling me down the hall to the x-ray room. In motion with just a thin sheet on my overheated body, the coolness of the air moving over my damp face suddenly felt lovely, and I know I smiled at that moment. It was possible to feel better. I would live.

I remember being sure that I was going to die. I gave messages to my mother, to take to my friends. But I couldn’t think of any words to give her for Luther. I asked her to call him, but he didn’t answer the phone, and then I was frantic, thinking he should be home and if he wasn’t, something bad had happened. Was he okay? How could I die without being sure?

I realized that I live in fear of losing the people I love. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m just afraid of never seeing Luther again, never hearing his voice, never holding his hand. I don’t believe in souls and afterlifes, so death is truly final. I can’t pretend I’ll still somehow see him and know he’s okay.

My friend James recently lost a family friend. He wrote about the many questions that arise on such occasions. People do struggle to understand the meaning behind death, the impossibility of life and death being so interconnected. When I first read his blog entry, I thought I disagreed. There are no questions, for me. Death is a natural part of life.

But the more I think of it, the more of a crock that proves to be. I question death daily. I cannot accept that I could have Luther taken away from me, whether through his death or through my own. There has to be another answer, a different answer, a solution to the problem. How could I possibly turn a corner one day and not be able to reach out and touch him?

Gods, spirits, souls, meaning, purpose. I think of these concepts as barriers to accepting the finality of death. But even though I don’t believe in any of them, I sit here frowning at the puzzle, thinking in one moment that death is natural and completes us... and in the next moment that there must be another answer. I could die, sure, fine. But stop loving?

I don’t see how that’s right.

GED update

In addition to my fantastically slow work on the comic strip (see next), I have been taking my time with this GED thing. On discovering I could very likely pass all the tests without studying, I decided to at least review all the available study materials. I bought a GED study book a couple of years ago, so I've been doing those practice tests. And I have been going through some online stuff available at www.LiteracyLink.org.

Here's a cool thing that came up. I was reading about the gold rush in California. You know, it's not like these things are foreign to Canadians, but this is what was available, and I'm trying to prepare for the possibility that I might not know all there is to know about American history.

Anyway, here's the concept: Some guys find some gold, just sitting there. Big chunks of gold for the taking. And another guy says, "hey, cool!" and buys up all the pick axes and shovels and so forth that can be found. And then he makes sure that the entire world learns that there's gold just lying around in California.

First, I have to wonder, is it "pick axes" or some kind of "pickaxe" type of thing? Enquiring minds want to know about the spelling.

Second, what makes a guy's brain do this? I mean, he became the wealthiest man, and he never, ever had to pick up an actual chunk o' gold.

Yeah, yeah, you think it makes perfect sense. Okay, picture this:

The tall trees in your neighborhood start sprouting... ten-dollar bills. The damned money is growing on trees. And you? You don't get a ladder and start picking bills off the trees. Not even the one right there in your own front yard. Nope, you go to Lowe's Hardware and Home Depot and buy up all the ladders. Heck, you borrow money and buy up all the cherry pickers.

I mean, the money is growing on the tree in your yard, and you're not picking it.

I have to say, this story really impressed me.

Simplicity update

The development of the Simplicity comic strip is going slowly, but well. You might think, from my previous post on this topic, that the main character is a cat.

This other character here will argue that it has made more of a sacrifice for the art, and therefore should get top billing:



It doesn't have a name. I guess it can be female.

Paper

Received yesterday, about two months after finishing the semester. I gather they had some difficulties...

GED practice continues

Over the weekend, I completed the Reading and Science sets of my online GED practice tests. The reading went as expected -clearly, I know how to read. The science tests threw me several surprises, but I managed to struggle through. I need to study up on proteins and gene pairs and some other "stuff." I had some trouble with black rats and white offspring.

Still, the practice tests are bolstering my confidence in a big way. No matter how lost I felt, I managed to make a minimum of 60% on each subtest, usually more like 70-80%, with three to six subtests in each GED subject area. To earn my GED, I'll need at least 65% total in each of those subject areas: Writing, Reading, Science, Social Studies, and Math.

That last area, Math, is the one that I expect to be weakest in. I loved algebra back in high school, and I don't recall having trouble with math in general, but let's face it: I haven't had to take a math class since then, and other than some basic arithmetic it just hasn't come up much. I might read about and discuss science topics, history, geography. I certainly use reading and writing. But math?

So this weekend, I got through the Reading and the Science, and then I decided to do the Math... and the very first question that popped up had me staring blankly at the screen. "Duh... What's that supposed to mean?" Quickly, I closed the browser window.

What is it about math, I wonder, that scares some of us? This morning I went back to the math topics and worked my way through them, and I did fine. Not great, but certainly passing. In the process, I learned some key concepts, and on a fresh set of questions I'd be willing to bet my score will improve. But that first time I brought the test up onscreen, the vocabularly looked unfamiliar, and where in other subject areas I would try to work out the meaning, with math I said, "yikes, I don't know this, I can't do this."

Is it because I've heard so many people say, "math is hard"? Is it because in math, I expect there to be finite answers, so I expect my own knowledge to be cut and dried? Know/not know?

In the end, these GED tests are not really about knowledge. They're about logic, combined with experience. Sure, some of the questions would be impossible to answer without some of those aforementioned "key concepts." But enough -certainly enough to pass- can be deciphered with plain old "reading comprehension."

If the GED is a good representation of the abilities we expect our high school grads to possess (not by any means guaranteed), then two skills are crucial: Reading, and a willingness to create or discover an answer, versus simply regurgitating one. What are our schools doing to address that second requirement?

Simplicity, the series

In addition to getting my GED, this summer I also want to launch a comic strip. Right now, I'm in the process of developing the characters. It's an interesting process, because I have to think about what I can actually do consistently, so I can't just make one nice drawing and consider the character designed.

The central story of the strip is the relationship between a cat and a flightless baby bird. It's based on a time when our own cat, Simplicity Simone, brought a baby bird home for dinner. You can kinda see where this is going.

I started with the cat. I got a book about drawing cats ("Draw 50 Cats: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Domestic Breeds, Wild Cats, Cuddly Kittens, and Famous Felines Like Morris the 9 Lives Cat") and have been using this as a starting point for practicing poses and attitudes. Next, I'll have to develop the bird. I wonder if there is a book I can use? Draw 50 Naked Baby Birds: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Completely Helpless, Sightless Animals That Cannot Possibly Survive...

GED Day 1

I have piddled away most of this summer on inconsequential things like earning money and improving my health, but there is still time to accomplish something meaningful. One thing I'd like to do is take the GED exam.

According to the Southern Regional Education Board, GED stands for "General Educational Development." Often, however, people replace "Development" with "Diploma" or "Degree." This is because the "GED" is something you can get in lieu of a high school diploma. Well, it just so happens I never finished high school!

I dropped out. I got a job. I got an apartment. I worked. I traveled. And then when I decided I wanted to go to film school, Ryerson provided a "mature student" option. I met the requirements, and ultimately I earned a Bachelor's degree.

Now that I'm halfway to my Master's degree, I think it might be time to do something about that missing piece of paper. Sure, some friends suggested I could wait until after my doctorate. But since I am not taking a class this summer, this is as good a time as any. Step 1, I figure, is to figure out exactly where I stand. Do I need to study, or can I "wing it"?

To that end, I located some online practice tests. Today, I took my first set. The Southern Regional Education Board breaks this section of the GED down as follows:

Writing Skills, Part I (50 questions, 75 minutes)
15% Organization
30% Sentence Structure
30% Usage
25% Mechanics

I spent about 30 minutes on the four tests. I got 10 out of 10 on Sentence Structure, no surprises there, but I ran into a few problems with the others. One careless mistake in Usage, no big deal because I will pay more attention in the real exam. In Mechanics and Organization, I dropped three more questions on pretty subjective issues, so I spent some quality time rereading the tests and arguing with my computer screen. My final grade in Writing Skills Part I: 91.5%. I think I can safely "wing" this first section of the GED.

If you like, you can follow along with your own attempts on this site:
GEDPractice.com

The Reading tests are next! Oh boy!

Blogs and bubbles

It's funny that I'm such a johnny-come-lately with this blog thing. I've had an email address for about 25 years. I chatted on newsgroups via the usenet over 20 years ago. I was always the roommate with the PC. I was online with a Mac laptop when they didn't come with color screens. I met my husband online, for crying out loud. I thought I was a technogeek. But at some point the world caught up and passed me, and now there're all these blogs and flickrs and mp3s and I'm just lost in the wilderness, enjoying a look around, but not sensing a path.

My friend James has always understood that I'm not all that. He laughs at me. It turns out this is simply because he's brilliant, and I am one of those poor ignoramuses wandering helplessly at his feet. Luckily, he blogs! So when I have a moment of clarity and a good cup of coffee, I remember to visit his world and attempt to understand it all. This morning, I find that he has been talking about bubbles.

Someone recently suggested that Luther was too old for nipple rings. This will seem very much off-topic, but bear with me. Bubbles? It seems that on July 2, a whole lot of adults with or without kids trekked down to Old City Hall in Toronto to blow bubbles. There are even pictures to prove it, James reports.

This is the kind of gathering that makes me really miss "my old life." Outside Toronto (and New York and London), I have not met many adults that spontaneously gather to blow bubbles just for fun. This is whimsical. This is youthful, even. And outside a place like Toronto, Luther and I are told we are much, much too old to do such a thing. It's for "young people," or it's for "children."

So I've been wondering why people are so old outside the city? Why do they just stop playing? And once again, I find myself blaming the automobile. Picture this same event, for a moment, taking place in your average new-city sprawl. Everybody drives to the location. Everybody has to park. This alone rules out most locations where people would mingle with the wider world. The whole charm is lost, the whole silliness factor. A bunch of adults, some with children, standing around in a parking lot blowing bubbles. Uh huh. Fun. Okay, bye. Everybody walks back to their vehicles. The doors shut, and they are disconnected again. No more bubbles.

Everybody knows I miss the city. What I love is that I'm starting to understand why, and it's beautiful. People should live in cities and towns or be farmers. I think the two extremes are the only way to keep living. You should always know some guy who got his nipples pierced when his kid was in High School. You should always see people of all ages enjoying the world, making friends, sharing new experiences. And blowing bubbles.

And then they should blog about it all, so that everybody gets to be there with them.

Sex education

Remember, kids. There are only a few 100% methods of avoiding pregnancy:

1. Abstinence. I don't like that there's no real sex education in the schools, but I gotta say the abstinence option should always be at least pointed out. It is an option. You will not make a baby through abstinence.
   
2. Homosexual sex. We should promote this more. And educate people on how to have safe homosexual sex. Homosexual sex produces fewer unwanted pregnancies than heterosexual sex BY FAR. Just look at the statistics. Homosexual sex pregnancies: 0% in 2005. Let's have more homosexual sex, people!
   
3. Above all else, keep your distance from test tubes. If you must go near them, watch them very carefully. These are tricky bastards. Test tubes will get you pregnant before homosexual sex will. Watch yourself.

That is all. Next week we will talk about the good diseases versus the bad diseases. See you then.

A sip becomes a glug (and a burp)

I did something foolish last night, but I'm not sorry.

I read about a short fiction contest on Jason Evans's blog. (Strunk & White say it is "Evans's," not "Evans'," believe it or not.) The deadline for submissions was Wednesday at midnight. I thought it would be fun to write something, but with so little time?

A few hours later, I inexplicably found myself sending a precisely 250-word story to Jason Evans. I can only say the timing was right. I'd had a brief conversation about luthiery, a new word for me. And I'd admired and considered the haunting photograph Jason had posted as inspiration. But most importantly, perhaps, the quite immediate deadline prompted me to sit down and write, instead of pondering, procrastinating, and ultimately passing on the whole thing. Timing, it is said, is everything.

Also, calendars are useful. The deadline for the stories is Wednesday, midnight, June 28. A week later.

So I did something a little foolish. I wrote a 250-word piece of fiction for possibly the first time in my life, and I submitted it without giving it time to breathe. Uncorked, it does have character. Some interesting flavors. But it's a little undefined, a little murky. I should have decanted... instead of drinking straight from the bottle, glug, glug!

The thing, in short, needs some serious editing. But I'm not sorry. I like it. I'll edit it...

...sometime...



luthier: A lute-maker (OED Online)
luthier: One who makes stringed instruments (Merriam-Webster Online)

I don't get it

What's so hot about a "melting pot" anyway? I just don't get it.

Consider sushi. Consider a nice piece of mackerel on rice. The rice appears white, pure, but is actually delicately flavored with vinegar and sugar. The mackerel is oily and lightly pickled, rich with the taste and smell of the sea. A smudge of hot, green wasabi paste between fish and rice surprises the palate and the brain, making you a tiny bit light-headed. A sprinkling of chopped, young green onions and yellow mustard paste on top adds a fresh note, like you have only just stopped for a picnic on the side of a sunlit country road.

Ocean and earth, meat and grain, taste and feel. Each different flavor and each different texture adds to the sensation.

Can you imagine the same ingredients all melted together? Blech.

My cadillac conversion

Yawning, I stepped on the accelerator, hit my turn signal, passed the annoying white F-150 with the oblivious driver on my left, popped into the fast lane, and passed the smoke-yellow Cadillac with the peeling tint windows and the dangling driver-side mirror on my right. Finally out of that clump of stupidity, I sped off toward work and suddenly thought, When did this become a normal part of my life?

My old friends know that I don't drive. I grew up in downtown Toronto. I know the transit like the back of my hand. I have a very nice Brody mountain bike. I have at least two taxi cab telephone numbers memorized. And, after all, I rent, and parking spaces are expensive.

Evening driver's ed lessons were offered through my High School, before I dropped out. There was a small fee, quite a manageable amount, but I lived with my father, who had neither a car nor a license. I knew I wouldn't be using a license if I got one. And if I ever actually left Toronto, I'd only be moving to New York, or London, or perhaps Vancouver. City people don't leave the city. That's ridiculous. Small town people move to the city, and sometimes they don't like it and they leave again. City people are city people forever. What did I need a driver's license for?

Then I made friends with a military guy in the U.S. He knew cars. He apparently knew everything there was to know about cars. He actually owned more than one car! I'd shake my head and smile. What a quirky, funny interest to have. How frivolous. How exotic.

In January 2000, this same friend drove his Mustang convertible up to Toronto to fetch me for our third date. I tucked my trusty VCR, blue-glass wine glasses, and oriental rug into the small back seat, and put my Brody on a rack on the back. We drove South through snow. Partway to our destination, I helped replace a thermostat. And he did something with a whole lot of pepper. We arrived at what was instantly, patently my new home, and I unloaded my bicycle and started my new adventure.

And learned, very quickly, that one cannot live in middle Georgia without a car.

I fought this reality, I really did. I love my bike. And I was scared of driving. In the end, though, I wanted that driver's license as a kind of declaration. I've moved. I'm not going back.

Now I am a driver. And about 50 pounds overweight, because like everybody else here, I drive from point A to point B, and "exercise" is that effort of getting out of the car... and getting back in again. I miss the city more and more these days, the walking, the hailing of cabs, the way my sister and I could stand in the Subway without holding onto anything, and know which side's doors would open at any given station on the map. I miss riding my bike.

But I can't go back, you see. Because I also love my car!

Vroooom!





Vehicle profile:

Name: Rocinante

Specs: 1994 Honda del Sol Si, manual, red, with ABS, CC, A/C, some kind of exhaust modification so it buzzes rather than growls, and a truly crappy little stereo (but no antenna)

Purchase date: August 2005

Repairs: In March 2006, the clutch self-destructed while I was on my way to work. In May 2006, we took the car back off the jack stands and I drove it with a new clutch. Very nice! Three days later, on my way home, the brakes failed. A week after that, Luther installed a new brake master cylinder. The next day, I drove to work and back again, and the car was better than ever (well, except for the CC, A/C, and stereo, but whatever). Really great brakes, really great shifting, all beautiful. I took the top off. Life was good. The day after that, we decided to take this little hotrod to the base for some shopping, and it wouldn't crank. Windows go up and down, fuel pump makes that fuel pump sound... but I can't actually drive the car.

For some reason, I still love my Rocinante. Go figure.

The edge of the world

I just woke up from a dream.

I was trying to tell a student about a town he should visit. It's like Savannah, except it's smaller and better. It's the northernmost point of the United States. There's a little town, and waterfront. The main streets of the town come to a point, where there're a few entertainment businesses and nightspots and restaurants on the water. One of the businesses is built up on pilings, so that you can walk down from the road, underneath the business and out again, to the cold beach, rich with wildlife, and look out toward the edge of the world.

I couldn't remember the name of the town. It was making me batty. I made him get up from the computer, and I sat down and googled. I googled images, I google-mapped, I googled... and Google failed me. Despite the lovely head-and-shoulders massage the student was giving me, the frustration of being unable to find this place finally got to me, and I woke up.

After waking, I lay in bed frowning, trying to remember the name of the town. I'm awake now, so why can't I remember it? I went over some of the points of the dream in my mind... and the word "Savannah" stopped me. Savannah? In the dream, Savannah was the bigger, better-known destination near the town I tried to locate. But Savannah is in Georgia. It's nowhere near the northernmost point of the country. And when I'd said this place was like Savannah, I'd meant Key West, of course, the southernmost point of the United States, with two streets that end at that point, at the water, where many people each day have their pictures taken.

Listening to Luther's puttering sounds (oh goodie, he went downstairs and turned the coffee pot on!), I slowly realized that the northernmost town with the name I can't remember... only exists in my dreams. But the frustration is very real because I have indeed been there before. Several times.

Do you revisit places in your dreams?

The northernmost point has appeared in my dreams often. There is something like a river that comes up along the northwestern shore, with wilderness along the other side. Sometimes, in my dreams, I come up this waterway in a canoe, a kayak, a steamboat, a motorboat. Sometimes it's almost tropical, with alligators. I am sure to land at the town, because here is where the water is becoming dangerous, although sometimes I see whales and seals. The river opens onto some kind of bay (I'd have the correct terms if I'd paid more attention in Geography class, I'm sure), and sometimes there is an island in the center of it, and sometimes there is just water and a giant whirlpool, so coming in to the town is risky as you skirt the influence at the edges. But it is the point beyond the island/whirlpool that my heart always goes to in the dream. The beyond. The unknown, untraveled, silent emptiness of the North, on the icy water.

It's magnetic. Cheesy, I know.

I don't remember when I have visited before, or what happened in the dreams. Sometimes I get there by car, over hilly islands like the Eastern provinces of Canada. I don't think I've recognized it as recurring, before, but I know it now.This hasn't been my only recurring dream space. The last one I remember was a glass house. I came down to it from a cliff, down hiking trails marked by the Bureau of Parks or whatever, in the gathering darkness of evening. Sometimes I was pursued by mountain lions. Sometimes I died. But usually I came to the house at last, not intentionally, finding a glass house in the middle of a meadow, and feeling drawn in. I'd go to the house and step inside. And there was a dead man, a skeleton, a ghost in a chair. And I knew, I think, that I was also dead.

What amazes me is the landscape of it all. What if I could pull out all these parts of my dream world and establish them together in a shifting landscape that I could actually navigate? When I was small, I learned how to force myself awake from a nightmare, by opening my dream eyes wider and wider until my real eyes responded. Given the superimposed real world on my dream, I could choose the real and go to it. If I could now map out my wider dream landscape, what more could I control, I wonder?

Life support

Luther got some life insurance recently. I'd been bugging him about it. I worry that if some accident were to suddenly take him from me, I'd have to give up all of the plans we have together, and I'd have to run back to the safety net of Toronto, instead of pursuing what I think of as our dreams, if that makes sense. So I want some insurance, that I would be able to stay here (well, not here, per se) and do at least a few of the things that we would have done together.

But there's a reality, too, that I never did plan for a retirement or even a future before meeting him. And now that I can envision a future and have some expectation about it, I want to take what Luther can give me: Some security. With both of us here, his retirement is hugely important. If I lost him, on top of the wrenching grief, there would be the reality that I'd have just my lame-assed income. So that, too, is a part of why I asked that he get some life insurance.

Speaking of reality, however... the day he set something up, I got home from work, and there I was sitting on the couch when he reassured me by explaining what he'd done and what the particulars of the plan would be. And tears started slipping down my cheeks. And finally I asked that he stop explaining.

As a financial plan, life insurance is a good idea. It's a very wise idea in our particular case with our particular risks and needs. As a reality, it's hard to even think about. I know I have to know. But I don't want to know. I am not losing Luther. What is the point of having a money cushion, if I can't snuggle against it with my Luther in my arms?

All mothers, all the time

I hate Mother's Day. Even more, I hate Mother's Day weekend, Mother's Day month, and the advertising that leads up to it all. I hate the overblown miracle of it all.Making babies is a common occurrence. So common, in fact, that practically 50 per cent of the population at any given time can make a baby. Yes, in all liklihood, you too can make a baby.

Can you raise a baby to be a fully functioning, independent, adult human being? Maybe. Maybe not. But this requirement is not addressed on Mother's Day. No. Mother's Day proclaims that all mothers shall henceforth be idolized for their giving, nurturing, self-sacrificing beauty, with no actual proof of giving, nurturing, or self-sacrificing activities required.

Any stupid, selfish bitch, who does nothing at all to ensure that her children grow up into viable human beings, can glory in this day because it is, after all, Her Day. We must shower her in gifts. We must purchase meaningless platitudes printed on overripe greeting cards in freshly butchered flesh tones. We must take Mother out to eat, because of course the Kitchen is Her Domain so we couldn't possibly stay home and fix a meal for her.

Finally, we must take a moment or two to ponder the uselessness of fathers. Fathers, of course, can never rise to the holiness of mothers. They can only stand helplessly by, wringing their hands, alternately adoring and beating the mothers of their children. Fathers certainly do not do for children what Mothers do. Fathers don't nurture. Fathers are not "always there for me." Fathers get a day in the summer, not sanctified by the hand-made card industry known as public school. On Father's Day it is appropriate to give gifts of singing fish and bad ties, in a vain attempt to apologize for the fact that a father, through no fault of his own, can't possibly be as amazing, giving, self-sacrificing, and beautiful as a Mother, no matter how much he loves his children, teaches them, cries for them, and feels lost without them. He's no Mother, that's for sure.

Poor, poor Dad. Please take this crappy tool kit I bought off the Father's Day table next to the cash register as I was heading out of the grocery store, and don't forget to buy a diamond for the Mother of your child next May. After all, it was your seed that made her make the baby. You useless man, you.

Update 2: All school, all the time

This morning, I am waiting for my grades, due out later today. I know what they’ll be, but I don’t feel like the semester is really over until I can print out a grade report.

Bizarrely, I am a student all over again. I dropped out of High School because I hated school. I barely kept my head above beer in University. And here I am now, working in an office at a college. This was the place that would hire me, so far from my home town and the industry I knew best at the time, so this is where I’ve stayed.

Here at the college, one of the benefits available to me is that I can arrange to take classes for free, providing they are offered at one of the state schools, and providing they don’t interfere with my job. Having finally taken that last class to receive my Bachelor’s back in 2001, I decided that getting another piece of paper might be fun, so I searched for a degree program that would suit me.

Georgia doesn't seem to be really big on liberal arts, however. Here in middle Georgia, it seems clear the only reason you go to school is to get a job, and the jobs are in nursing, childhood education, and information technology. A business degree is almost frivolous. Fine arts, which is what I first looked at... is out of the question in most parts of the state.

Finally, I found a likely-looking program sitting squarely on the fence between the creative and the practical, managed by a state university in Marietta, about a 2.5 hour drive from where I currently live, straight through the traffic hell that is Atlanta. The Master of Science degree in Technical and Professional Communication sounded like it might indeed be up my alley, but could I actually get to an evening class and home again without killing myself? Could I, more to the point, actually pass the entrance exam?

Luckily, I eluded both the exam and the traffic. Southern Polytechnic State University was also offering a Graduate Certificate in Technical Communication as a fully online program. Admission required a couple of essays and some recommendations, but no exam.

Seven classes later, I am halfway to a Master’s degree. SPSU has graciously decided to extend an offer of a second online Certificate, an opportunity obviously created for the sole purpose of holding onto one of their star pupils, me. Yes, me. Why are you looking so shocked?

I will receive my new piece of paper in the mail in the coming weeks, but it looks like I am not finished after all. I will be back in class this fall. The former Becky Slocombe of Toronto, Canada, who never could stand school... works at a college; is in graduate school; does her best to support her gorgeous husband Luther, who is now a full time college student; and shares a home and her questionable wisdom and sense of humor with the teenaged Wil, who is a full time high school student. It’s all school all the time at the Hendricks household.

Update 1: Nine lives is too many

A few months ago, a skeletal mommy-kitten appeared, suddenly, outside our back door. I'd been in the middle of saying something to Luther and Wil, and I saw her through the glass. She stood, alarmed and ready to bolt, on the big, orange, riding lawn mower parked outside the door, black kitty on black plastic seat. She couldn't decide between hissing and meowing, so she did both, a sadly comical mix of fright and hunger.

There wasn't any stopping me. I guess there never is. I slid the door open a little. I called to her and held my fingers out. She approached, she hissed, she meowed, she hissed. And I reached over her and closed my fingers on the skin behind her head and pulled her inside.

I was so angry about that cat. The more she adored me, the more angry I became. We are not having a pet. We're going to travel the world and live on a sailboat and not know and not care where we'll stop for the night, and we are not going to stop and say, "oh, we can't go away for the weekend. Who will take care of the cat?"

Do you remember George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life? He told Mary he didn't want to get married. He was so angry, because he was already trapped. Just like me with the cat.

Sometimes I feel quite trapped by my job, by this town, by a promise I've made and some others' goals that I want and need to support. So when the cat gets up onto my lap and curls up and purrs, I give her a dirty look and think nasty thoughts. You're on notice, cat. The minute we're free to go, we are outta here, and no cute, purring, clever, drinking-water-from-her-paw "Simplicity Simone" cat is going to get in our way.

Keanu Reeves is my neighbor

Last night I dreamt that Keanu Reeves was my neighbor. Actually, Keanu was only a small part of a more complex landscape, but not surprisingly, he's the part I remember. In real, waking life, Mr. Reeves did appear a number of times on a streetcar in my youth, before he was famous. He was striking, as he is now, so that I noticed him and recognized him when I saw him a second time. When he began to turn up onscreen, I remembered seeing him on the streetcar. Many years later, I now remember that striking young man as like an apparition, with a dreamlike quality, which is why it never seems strange when he shows up in my dreams. Last night, he lived two doors away and came over when my house was in an uproar over something, and we hung out for a quiet moment, like having a cup of tea, in the doorway.

Stopping for a cup of tea in a doorway is something I miss. The form it actually used to take was more like a glass of wine from a carafe on a patio with a friend, but the feeling was the same. There is that long sigh, that dust-speckled ray of sunshine, that you can enjoy with a friend on a warm afternoon, when the reason you've met at this cafe is not to catch up, not to make plans, and not to meet in preparation for some other event, but just because it's a warm afternoon and a glass of wine would be nice.

Now, my best friend lives here with me, and the closest we get to tea is when I go down to the cafeteria at lunchtime, and he closes the book he was studying, and we open our little plastic containers and eat lunch together. It's nice, but because our life is one ever-evolving project, we meet for tea between tasks, always on our way to something else. The exception is when we travel, not to visit family or friends, but just to go. Then, every moment is a cup of tea or a glass of wine, and I am in heaven.

I miss my Toronto friends. I miss the way my life used to be about catching one of them on the phone, and stopping somewhere on the way home and then just not moving on until hours later. That's not gone --but those warm afternoons have been transformed into long weekends that are far too few and far between, when my best friend and I get into a car, and turn onto a freeway, and just don't think about turning back.