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…”

The History of Love

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In a recent “First Lines” post, I shared the opening lines of Nicole Krauss’s History of Love.  If you haven’t read this book yet, go get it now.  You don’t know it yet, but your life will not be complete with out it.  That said, I wanted to share a little more from the book.  At first I thought I’d post the first few paragraphs here, but then I read a bit further, and wanted to include those, then a bit further, and I wanted to include those, too.  It’s that kind of book.  Every new sentence draws you in further.  It’s a brilliant tale of humor, love, tragedy, loneliness, and trying to find meaning in life.  Enjoy!

“When they write my obituary.  Tomorrow.  Or the next day.  It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT.  I’m surprised I haven’t been buried alive.  The place isn’t big.  I have to struggle to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen table, kitchen table and front door.  If I want to get from teh toilet to the front door, impossible, I have to go by way of the kitchen table.  I like to imagine the bed as home plate, the toilet as first, the kitchen table as second, the front door as third: should the doorbell ring while I am lying in bed, I have to round the toilet and kitchen table in order to arrive at the door.  If it happens to be Bruno, I let him in without a word and then jog back to the bed, the roar of the invisible crowd ringing in my ears.

I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive.  If I had to bet, I’d bet on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out.  I order in four nights out of seven.  Whenever he comes I make a big production of finding my wallet.  He stands in the door holding the greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I’ll finish my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack in my sleep.

I try to make a point of being seen.  Sometimes when I’m out, I’ll buy a juice even though I’m not thirsty.  If the store is crowded I’ll even go so far as dropping my change all over the floor, the nickels and dimes skidding in every direction.  I’ll get down on my knees.  It’s a big effort for me to get down on my knees, and an even bigger effort to get up.  And yet.  Maybe I look like a fool.  I’ll go into Athlete’s Foot and say, What do you have in sneakers?  The clerk will look me over like the poor schmuck that I am and direct me over to the one pair of Rockports they carry, something in spanking white.  Nah, I’ll say, I have those already, and then I’ll make my way over to the Reeboks and pick something out that doesn’t even resemble a shoe, a waterproof bootie, maybe, and ask for it in size 9.  The kid will look again, more carefully.  He’ll look at me long and hard.  Size 9, I’ll repeat while I clutch the webbed shoe.  He’ll shake his head and go to the back for them, and by the time he returns I’m peeling off my socks.  I’ll roll my pants leg up and look down at those decrepit things, my feet, and an awkward minute will pass until it becomes clear that I’m waiting for him to slip the booties onto them.  I never actually buy.  All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.

A few months ago I saw an ad in the paper.  It said, NEEDED: NUDE MODEL FOR DRAWING CLASS. $15/HOUR.  It seemed to good to be true.  To have so much looked at.  By so many.  I called the number.  A woman told me to come the following Tuesday.  I tried to describe myself, but she wasn’t interested.  Anything will do, she said.

The days passed slowly.  I told Bruno about it, but he misunderstood and thought I was signing up for a drawing class in order to see nude girls.  He didn’t want to be corrected.  They show their boobs? he asked.  I shrugged.  And down there?

After Mrs. Freid on the fourth floor died, and it took three days before anyone found her, Bruno and I got into the habit of checking on each other.  We’d make little excuses – I ran out of toilet paper, I’d say when Bruno opened the door.  A day would pass.  There would be a knock on my door.  I lost my TV Guide, he’d explain, and I’d go and find him mine, even though I knew his was right there where it always was on his couch.  Once he came down on a Sunday afternoon.  I need a cup of flour, he said.  It was clumsy, but I couldn’t help myself.  You don’t know how to cook.  There was a moment of silence.  Bruno looked me in the eye.  What do you know, he said, I’m baking a cake.

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.

Trying to trigger my “right-brain”

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I got back yesterday from my trip to Spokane for the Leadership and Imagination course I mentioned a few days ago.  Our first session, and Art scared the hell out of everyone in the course right from the start.  Apparently, we are all left-brain thinkers, relying on logic, checklists, organization, language, and structure to make our respective ways through life.  Our instructor, though, was determined to show us how to trigger our right-brain, the artistically creative hemisphere of our brains, into action.  We began by viewing a line drawing upside down, and attempting to replicate the drawing in 25 minutes.  
My first thought was, “OK.  No big deal.  I can certainly copy a drawing, even if I can’t draw anything from my imagination worth a damn.”  How wrong I was!  Viewing the image upside down shattered our ability to make sense of the lines.  I started at the bottom, because the lines there seemed much less daunting than those that made up this odd-looking man’s head.  Here is what I ended up with after 25 minutes of painstaking sketching (couldn’t turn off my perfectionist drive).

Upside Down Man

My attempt at copying Upside Down Man

While I think I was on my way to a passable copy, the most interesting part of the exercise is how difficult it was to make any progress quickly simply because the image was upside down, and our brains couldn’t “name” the parts of the picture instantly, like they would if the picture were right-side up.

The next exercise we did was to draw an image of our non-writing hands, curled up in some fashion, so it didn’t look like a kindergarten turkey.  To do this, we had to turn our bodies completely away from the table, hold our hands in the air in front of us, and write, almost behind us, so our left-brains would be a bit less tempted to cheat and look at the drawing.  I expected to see a mess of scribbles that looked like the wires behind so many people’s computer desks.  Imagine how shocked I was to see this!

Blind sketch of my hand

I may always view myself as the worst possible visual artist that walked the earth, but these exercises were interesting, in that, they force your brain to respond differently, and can serve to “prime the pump,” as our instructor said, when it comes to helping push people into a more creative space.  Unfortunately, I did not think to take a picture of the clay sculpture I made of Gollum (which was supposed to be my adorable cat).

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.

Update from Spokane

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Just a quick post tonight – I’m in Spokane, WA for a 3-day intensive residency program that’s part of my Master’s degree, my schedule is packed, and I’m also preoccupied with emailing back and forth with my new found sister in England.  The residency courses seem  interesting, though.  The course is called Leadership & Imagination, and we started with a 4-hour session tonight on Art and Imagination.  Anyone that knows me knows I am the least artistic or creative person on the planet – perhaps with the exception of writing, but even that seems a stretch for me to say with confidence.  We had to do a few drawing exercises which were interesting – one was to look at a printed sketch upside down and try to draw it.  It was impossible.

Apparently, for logical, organized, left-brain thinkers like myself, this is supposed to help you trigger your right-brain.  Almost like a warm-up exercise to get you to be creative.  The other exercise was to draw our own hands without looking at the paper or picking up our pens.  It was also impossible, but I was shocked that you can actually make out that my sketch is a hand, even if some of it is deformed.  I’ll scan these when I get home.  We also had to work with clay.  We had to keep our eyes closed, picture an animal, and just try to form that animal from the clay.  The only animal I could think of was my very fat and fussy cat.  I thought I was making some progress, but then the professor called time, and instead of my cat, I saw Gollum with one arm and one leg (which was meant to be the cat’s tail), while everyone at my table had cute puppies and turtles.  Tomorrow is Imagination and History for 4 hours, then Architecture and Imagination for another 4 hours.  Saturday is Imagination and Drama, then Imagination and Film.  So, for now, I’m off to get some sleep.  Hopefully I’ll fare better in the morning.

Mr. Faucet says, “Please be gentle.”

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This is the phrase on the handmade water-splotched bled-ink piece of paper taped to the wall above the sink in the kitchen at my new job.  What is it about working in an office that turns otherwise normal people into cheesy caricatures of themselves, creating signs that are only appropriate for a four year old?  I only wish the maker of the Mr. Faucet sign at least included a little cartoon picture of a faucet with arms and legs and a smiley face somewhere.

And what about this picture?  I snapped it from inside the bathroom stall with my iPhone.  Should I be worried about the fact that someone feels the need to decorate the insides of the bathroom stalls with calming images?  

When I used to work at the marketing agency, I managed a forty-something Office Manager that would ask me if she could go to the bathroom.  What do you mean, can you go to the bathroom?  Of course you can go to the bathroom.  We’re not in third grade here!  If that alone weren’t enough, the actual words she used were, “I need to go tee-tee.  Is that OK?”  TEE-TEE.  TEE-TEE!  I kid you not.

I once had to referee a difficult discussion between two other employees.  A newbie that had just joined the team asked grass-phobia girl to go out to lunch one day.  Not realizing she was committing herself to become a stalking victim, she agreed to go.  It was an awkward lunch, and grass-phobia girl tried extra hard to avoid one-on-one situations with the newbie from that point forward.  The newbie, however, believed that their single lunch meant they must now be BFF’s.  She stalked grass-phobia girl over instant messenger, tried to corner her for conversations at lunch, hung around after work waiting for everyone else to leave so they could talk.  She did not understand how one day they were BFF’s and the next, she was being blown off.  Eventually, grass-phobia girl confided in me because she just couldn’t take it anymore.  I had to sit them both down and explain to the crazy new girl that not everyone at work becomes best friends, and she needed to respect grass-phobia girl’s wishes to focus on work, not lurid boy and fashion gossip.

I just don’t get it.  Is there something in the air as soon as the corporate door swings shut behind us that taints our ability to act like adults?