Random Stuff

Blog Spam

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Sometimes the spam posts I get on this blog seem more interesting than my own posts.  In a ridiculous sort of way.  Check this out:

“Pleasant becoming visiting your website yet again, it has been weeks in my opinion. Nicely this written content that will i have been recently continued to wait intended for too long. I need this piece of writing in order to in depth my mission on the inside university, and it has similar subject matter jointly with your article. Cheers, beneficial share.”

I particularly like the second sentence.  It’s almost as hard as reading Middle English, don’t you think?  I want to know what software creates this nonsense – it would be fun to take something I’ve written and run it through this word shredder to see what comes out the other side.  Maybe that’s what happened to my blog title.  It ran away to join the word shredder circus and came slinking home just a mess of characters that no longer make sense.

UPDATE:  I just realized that my messed up blog title doesn’t display as messed up in all browsers, so I thought I’d share a picture of it here.  It’s quite hilarious, when you consider the tagline beneath the title.

Hmmm…

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Seems weird that my site title has morphed into a bunch of nonsensical and overlapped characters.  Maybe that is a sign.  It isn’t far off the mark if I’m trying to describe how I feel after my first week back at work.  Things went surprisingly well, though I’m still mourning the loss of all the time I had to read and write.  It’s a struggle now, but what isn’t?  I am off to celebrate the end of my first week with some drinks and a friend at my favorite dive karaoke bar in the strip mall near my house.  Sounds like the perfect ending to a chaotic but successful week.  More to come this weekend!

UPDATE:  I just realized that my messed up blog title doesn’t display as messed up in all browsers, so I thought I’d share a picture of it here.  It’s quite hilarious, when you consider the tagline beneath the title.

King of the Mountain

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I’m wondering how many of you played King of the Mountain at recess in grade school.  It was one of my favorite things to do – until I got to Junior High and it was just kid stuff, of course.  The second the bell rang for recess, I sprinted to the massive mountain of snow in the corner of the playground as fast as my moon boots would take me.  If I didn’t make it to the top first, I wasn’t worried for a minute – I was damn good at picking off whoever did make it ahead of me, and I felt proudest when I took down some boy in my class – any boy.  Thinking about the world today, I don’t imagine kids are allowed to play rough games like King of the Mountain anymore.  My partner’s son laughs hysterically when I describe it to him, though, so I’m sure today’s kids would love it as much as I did.  I have vivid images of off-balance somersaults, kids jumping out of the way of someone tumbling right at them, hats and mittens flying through the air, bright red cheeks, and so much frozen breath it looked a little foggy.  I remember lots of scraped faces from kids that went head first down the icy snow pile, and even the occasional broken arm or collar bone, and, of course, some tears – but every one of those kids that got knocked around and scraped up were back in the battle for the King’s spot as soon as their doctor’s notes expired.  Ah, to have reached the age where my stories start with, “Well, back when I was a kid…”

More great reading

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For those of you that play or have ever played RPG’s the good old-fashioned way, this post is a must-read.  For those of you that haven’t, this piece may tell you why we geeks were so addicted to D&D.  Chuck at terribleminds does a brilliant job capturing the story-telling nature of a game-master’s role, and he made me long for those days when I was 9 years old, mesmerized by my 12-year old step-brother’s masterful creation of a fantasy world I wished to live in myself.  A world full of pick-pocketing, treasure hunting, deciphering of codes, lock-picking, monster fighting, keep visiting, dungeon exploring adventure.

Kurt’s post, Violence Against Words, is a thought-provoking account of how he reads – or doesn’t read.  Jump on over – it’ll give you pause about how you read whatever it is you’re reading.  I don’t know about you, but Kurt’s post makes me realize this is a subject  I should give more thought to.

This post made me a tad jealous when I read it – but in a good way.  It will remind you why you blog and how to do it well.  Kudos to Lindsay for a job well done!

Chuck at terribleminds (can you tell I like his writing?) shared some risque recipes that I am dying to try.  He has no idea that he has created the perfect meal for me – I could eat corn every day of my life and never get tired of it, and meat?  Who can turn down a good hunk of pork butt?  I love the way Chuck turns good recipes into good writing that will then become good eating, and since he created this meal just for me, I may well have to send him a gift basket as he suggests.

Wren Andre features a quick interview with Laura Shumaker, and you must check it out.  The essay is great reading, and I am looking forward to reading her book, thanks to this great intro from Wren.

Thanks, Amy

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Amy at Tilden Bar None Ranch sent me two blogger awards a few days ago!  I was pleasantly surprised to be recognized by her, and am more appreciative than you know that even one person finds my writing interesting.  The awards she bestowed on my humble attempts at writing are ‘The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award,’ and the ‘Versatile Blogger.’ What I appreciated most, though, was her description of my blog:

If you like to read about real life, follow this link to a down to earth, well rounded blog. It’s well written and one of my favorites.

Wow, who could ask for a better sound bite than that?  I certainly aim to be down to earth, and I’m glad that’s coming through in my writing. Now, for the obligatory seven random facts about myself…

1 – No one that knows me would ever choose the phrase “irresistibly sweet” to describe me (though I’m grateful for the shout-out from Amy!).  People tend to see me as nice, fairly generous, supportive – plenty of positive things – but I’m more introvert than extrovert, more serious than playful, more straight-faced than expressive, thus sweet is generally left off of the list of adjectives used to describe me.

2 – I won a women’s state championship in high school for trap shooting.  Have I mentioned I grew up in the Midwest?  Also in high school, I entered a competition with my mother called the ‘Annual Father/Son Trap Shoot,’ and they graciously changed the name of the event to the ‘Annual Parent/Child Trap Shoot.’  We won.  Not just the name change, but the event.

3 – I am fairly obsessive about a number of things, like keeping my house really clean, multi-tasking to the degree that I stop and think what I might be able to carry with me if I move from one room to another so I can make that walk more productive, writing lists multiple times because I need all like items to be grouped together and that almost never works out perfectly the first time I make a list.  Speaking of categories, I’ve been thinking of using my own post categories as writing prompts because I keep creating new ones and the list grows and grows, but too many categories have only one entry in them.  It’s just a little OCD, not a lot.

4 – I get bored very easily, which is maybe why I’m more of a generalist than a specialist at anything.  You’ll have noticed if you visit my blog directly that I’ve changed the design twice in the past six weeks.  I’m just glad there are more themes created all the time, so I have choices when I do get bored.

5 – My favorite place to hang out, when I bother to get out of the house, is a ridiculous dive karaoke bar called “Mel-O-Dee,” which is located in a strip mall.  They have red velvet wallpaper, cheap and strong drinks, and even lasers and a fog machine on the dance floor.  You hear everything from truly horrific singing to some singing that is quite good – but the place is friendly to those horrid singers and everyone always seems to be having a lot of fun.  In keeping with my introvert nature, I’m one of those annoying people who will only sing after plenty of drinks, and I am told that even then, no one can actually hear my voice.

6 – Sometimes when I decide to try a new hobby, I convince myself that if I spend a lot of money on it, I will be more likely to stick with it.  It rarely works.  For instance, I decided 5 or 6 years ago to take guitar lessons.  I bought two guitars (couldn’t decide between electric and acoustic, so I got one of each), much more expensive guitars than made sense for a beginner, and some fancy electronic equipment that would have allowed me to play the electric guitar as though it were plugged into one of a million different amps.  I think I tried it out once.  I bought the complete original scores to all Beatles music – it’s a huge book that looks beautiful, but I never used it.  Luckily, I have a friend who plays guitar, so after I gave up the charade, I have been able to give some of these things to someone who loves them and actually uses them.

7 – I am dying for DirecTV and Tivo to get their act together and release a new Satellite Tivo HD DVR.  It broke my heart when they stopped working together and I was forced to buy a DirecTV branded HD DVR.  I live with it because I have to, but I long for the Tivo interface.  They announced a new partnership 3 years ago, and still have yet to release the product!

Next, here are some blogs I thing are very worthy of recognition, awards, highlights, shout-outs – whatever you feel like calling them…

Flight Platform Living – A mother’s journey with precious souls and Smith Magenis Syndrome is one woman’s uplifting tribute to the trials, tribulations, triumphs, and gifts she encounters on her journey with her family.  This is reading that will put you in a good mood whenever you need it.

Helen Writes – An interesting mix of tips on writing short stories, fiction, and crime, book reviews, and odes to Agatha Christie have repeatedly brought me back to Helen’s blog.  I happen to be a big fan of crime stories, both written and in film/television, but this blog is a good read for anyone, regardless of genre preferences.

Michael Haynes – A Writing Blog is full of interesting story dissections, updates on Michael’s writing, and regular links to other great content.  He has published both fiction and non-fiction, and I love the effort he makes to dissect and understand how other authors accomplish what they do in their writing.

The Voice of Stobby is wonderful.  Stobby is the imaginary friend/inner voice of writer, N. Scott.  The concept is great, and the writing very entertaining.  Make sure to read ‘Who’s Stobby?’ when you visit.

Stories Connect Love Heals is a brilliant blog written by Charlie Hale.  He tells stories that  take you on journeys, and writes of songs, history, and genealogy.  I’m sure Charlie has many followers, but his is one of my favorites, so I wanted to share it here.

750 Words

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I recently found this site, and have been using it for a couple weeks now.  I love it for helping me write daily.  It’s a very clean and simple site that provides a place for daily writing, counts your words, and gives you points for achieving 750 words a day.  For those of you that like to have a way to track what you’re doing, and get reminders by email that make you feel guilty if you skip a day of writing, this might just be the place for you.  There is also this interesting analysis of your writing, and while the site owner provides a little disclaimer about how the analysis is performed, I love this aspect of it, whether it’s entirely accurate or not.  So, if you want a place to dump your thoughts daily, try this out.  You can export everything you’ve written so you can use it in other formats, and I think the site’s brilliance is in its simplicity.  My longest streak is 5 days, and often my writing is meaningless, but it is one form of writing I’m able to do easily without expectations for myself other than to crank out words.  I have had a few good chunks come out of it that I’ve used in other places later, too.  Hope you like it.  I’ll be back from Spokane tomorrow, and should be back to posting regularly again after that.

More posts from around the blogosphere

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Just a few links this week.  Enjoy!

Michael Haynes wrote a great post reminding us to use our everyday life experiences in our writing. Read his example here.

Christine Zilka’s U is for Urgency is a compelling short memoir piece that blends humor with the reality that we never know when our time will be up.

This short piece, a written observation of a small corner of nature on a college campus, left me feeling relaxed. Thanks, Hayley!

This beginning to a series about Amy Elizabeth’s observations of a homeless man is fascinating. It reminded me of an evening I once spent with a homeless man in San Francisco. Check it out!

Inspiration in odd places

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I used to frequent a website for entertainment when I had a few minutes to spare at work, and needed a mental break. Odd News always gave me something to laugh or puzzle about, and I was truly shocked at the number of odd news stories that originated in or around my home town, like this story about a man urinating on a police officer. Wouldn’t you know, this guy was in my high school graduating class!

I saw this headline (Arrest in mass tire slashings) on the SF Chronicle home page yesterday, and it reminded me that these ridiculous news stories can be great inspiration for developing quirky characters, or exposing some hidden neurotic desires that a character might never share openly, but secretly wishes he or she could act upon.

What might possess someone to become a serial tire-slasher? Did you have any idea that a person could be charged with “felony discharging bodily fluids at a public safety worker?” Digging into these and other odd news stories could yield some really fascinating and hilarious character content.

Great posts from around the blogosphere

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Below are links to some of the posts I most enjoyed reading in the past week.  Check them out!

Charlie Hale has such a graceful style about his writing.  This post, Friends and Lovers: In Passing Years, is particularly eloquent, though that can be said about everything he writes. Charlie has a way of reaching right into your soul with his words.

Julie Farrar wrote a post about road trips that will get you reflecting on your favorite car travel memories.

Check out this Star War’s fan’s well-written take on changes to a classic and who really “owns” art, anyway. I spent some time reading through other posts Graham has made, and his writing is insightful and thought-provoking. Don’t miss it!

I can’t resist another homage to the 80s, this one on favorite songs.

I’ve read a few of The Wandering Atavist’s posts about his horrible luck with women, and this one is hilarious, as are the others.

Enjoy!

Diversity or lack thereof

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I grew up in an area of the Midwest that had little diversity in its population. I don’t think there were any non-white residents of Sheboygan Falls when I lived there. There is a concentrated community of Asians in Sheboygan, though. When the United States fought in Vietnam, our government recruited many Hmong natives from neighboring Laos to assist in a secret part of the war being waged there. Various historical accounts debate what promises were made to the Hmong, but the general consensus was that we would assist these people at the end of the war. When we left, however, we abandoned the Hmong, who were then persecuted, victims of intended genocide by the Vietnamese and Thai. Eventually, we granted many Hmong refugee status in the United States in a feeble attempt to make up for our misdeeds.

This was a people from southeastern Asia, though, and why our government chose to settle them primarily in Wisconsin and Minnesota is absolutely beyond me. Their adjustment to life in the United States would be hard enough – why place them in a harsh and bitterly cold climate that couldn’t be more different than the tropics they came from? Large communities of Hmong were settled in cities like Sheboygan and Kenosha, but they were persecuted for their different cultural beliefs, and viewed as incapable people that were only here to live off of welfare. They were ridiculed openly, and still face discrimination today. I never personally knew any Hmong people, but they do reflect one of my earliest senses of cultural difference living in an area full of white people of mostly European descent.

The only other cultural subgroup I knew of while growing up was the Indian. There is a rich history of Native Americans in Wisconsin, and many of the towns and cities carry Native American names, such as Menominee, Winnebago, Waukesha, Kewaunee, Waupaca, Manitowoc, Ozaukee, and Oconomowoc. There are two rivers with the name Kinnickinnic, which referred to a blend of tobacco and other plants, or literally, “what is mixed” in Ojibwa. Sheboygan has Native American origins as well, though many scholars debate the correct translation of the name. These names roll off my tongue with ease, but whenever I speak them aloud to others that are unfamiliar with them, I often have to repeat myself and even spell the words for people to make sense of the sounds.

I learned at a young age I wasn’t supposed to talk about Indians. I didn’t understand why it might offend someone. There are eleven federally recognized Native American tribes still in Wisconsin, but unfortunately, people like my grandparents and great-grandparents were not far enough removed from their ancestors that they had forgotten the clashes between the white man and the Indian. Still, there has been some effort to preserve sacred burial grounds, and there have been some significant archaeological finds, too. There’s a park on the south side of Sheboygan called Indian Mound Park. It contains effigy mounds created by the Native Americans. They were burial sites, and mounds of earth were built over graves in the shapes of animals the Native Americans held sacred – deer, turtles, panthers. Effigy mounds can be found outside of Wisconsin, but the largest concentration of them is in Southern Wisconsin.

There’s also an old family homestead, owned by the Henschels, which operates a small Indian museum. Their property near the Sheboygan Marsh, once a glacial lake, is the site of Wisconsin’s oldest red ochre burial ground, and dates somewhere between 600 and 800 B.C. The ancient burial site was accidentally discovered when a farmer was plowing and his horses fell through the ground into a big hole. A number of Native Americans were positioned, seated in a circle, and buried together in what was surely an ancient ritual practice. I found I am related to the Henchels by marriage in my genealogy research. The farmer whose horses fell through the hole is the uncle of the husband of my second great-grand aunt. This family is said to have co-existed with the Indians in the mid-1850s, and their museum is full of artifacts found on their property.

Many of the people I knew in Wisconsin took all this rich history for granted. I didn’t begin to appreciate it until I had been away for more than a decade, myself. I never understood all the prejudice against anyone that wasn’t white and German or maybe Nordic, but we were never confronted with much difference, either, so like many people, I didn’t give it a lot of thought until I got older. I realized at a young age that I had a real interest in other cultures. I’d always wanted to travel, but never thought it would be possible. Almost no one I knew of in my family had ever travelled far. It was a big deal to go to out of state – most people rarely leave the immediate area, let alone travel outside the Midwest.

I did eventually figure out how to get out of the Midwest, and I’ve traveled internationally some, though not as much as I’d like.  I’ve been to Thailand, Costa Rica, London, and Amsterdam.  My genealogy research has set my sights on Eastern Europe.  I have had a hard time digging up information on my father’s grandfather, the stowaway from Romania, before his life in the states, so I hope one day to go to the village he came from to see what I can uncover about his family. Of course, living in the Bay Area, I’m surrounded by diversity now, and that’s a good thing.

What were some of your early lessons about diversity? International travel experiences?