The Alphabet of Politics (this week)

Writing the April poem was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Not because it was poetry and poetry is not my strength (I took that difficulty into account before I began and sought assistance from my wife, the Queen of Rhythm (credit where credit is more than due)) but because writing anything about politics right now is... is...
Writing politics right now is like trying to juggle eggs during a major earthquake while more eggs are falling from the sky. You can only deal with the egg in your hand and you can't make any plans about future eggs and you can't figure out why eggs are falling from the sky.

To put it another way: It's chaos.
Needless to say, many things in the poem changed during the month due to changing circumstances.
Like chickenshit Paul Ryan effectively resigning. He wants to run for President, I'm sure, and that will never happen unless he manages to climb out of the shithole he helped create.
Well, I'm not going to go through all the things that manipulated the end result. It is what it is at the moment.

Here's the whole thing all in one place with only a few minor edits here and there; however, there is an alternate version below reflecting things that had been planned then scrapped due to the aforementioned chaos.


Abortion is A, a right fundamental,
the Constitution says it's her choice.

B for the boomers, they've gone fully mental,
only heeding their own selfish voice.

C is for Congress and its very brown thumb
shoved eagerly up its own ass.

D is for data; Facebook plays dumb
while selling you out for hard cash.

E for the Earth, if we don't keep it cool,
we'll sink in a watery grave.

F is for fake news. Your feed is a tool
for Russia to make you its slave.

G are the guns that we buy without limit,
no matter the state of your mind,

and H, the health care and need of a clinic
you'll find you're already denied.

I is for I.C.E. on which they want to put you,
cold storage without any rights

or the J that is justice, which they eschew,
unless, of course, you're skin is all white.

K is for Kushner who doesn't have clearance,
but no one's crying you lost it.

L is the Left and its public adherence.
Be aware, we're not gonna quit.

M is for mass shootings and the Right's lack of care
about our kids dying in their schools,

which is why we have N for #neveragain
and why the Right will all look like fools.

O for Obama whom we'd like to have back.
He was never a laughing stock.

P is for porn star and her breathtaking rack
and Cohen behind a padlock.

Q is for quiet for which I long and pine.
If only they'd learn how to behave.

R is for racists and lyin' Paul Ryan.
Turns out he's like Robin the Brave.

S is for schools where we ought to have guns,
says DeVos, to keep out the bears.

T is for Trump; he believes he's "the one,"
but, really, he's just putting on airs.

U is for under, the water I mean;
Now is your time to go to the coast.

V is for violence which cops seem so keen
to use against black folks the most.

W is for "wag the dog" or maybe for war
all to keep you from looking at

X-rated tapes, but not the ones in your drawer,
the ones with Russian "pussycats."

Y is for you and how you need to go vote;
it's time to get out and fight

for Z, zero tolerance, not just a note
that we're through with this shit from the Right.

copyright Andrew and Sarah Leon 2017

Also this:

Abortion is A, a right fundamental,
the Constitution says it's her choice.

B for the boomers, they've gone fully mental,
only heeding their own selfish voice.

C is for Congress and its very brown thumb
shoved eagerly up its own ass.

D is for Dreamers and how we've left them the crumbs.
It's time to give them a pass.

E for the Earth, if we don't keep it cool,
we'll sink in a watery grave.

F is for fake news. Your feed is a tool
for Russia to make you its slave.

G are the guns that we buy without limit,
no matter the state of your mind,

and H, the health care and need of a clinic
you'll find you're already denied.

I is for I.C.E. on which they want to put you,
cold storage without any rights

or the J that is justice, which they eschew,
unless, of course, you're skin is all white.

K is for Kushner who doesn't have clearance,
but no one's crying you lost it.

L is the Left and its public adherence.
Be aware, we're not gonna quit.

M is for mass shootings and the Right's lack of care
about our kids dying in their schools,

which is why we have N for #neveragain
and why the Right will all look like fools.

Oh Shit! We're all gonna die in nuclear fire!
How are we back in the 80s?!

P is for porn star and her breathtaking rack
and Cohen behind a padlock.

Q is for quiet for which I long and pine.
If only they'd learn how to behave.

R is for racists and lyin' Paul Ryan.
Turns out he's like Robin the Brave.

S is for schools where we ought to have guns,
says DeVos, to keep out the bears.

T is for Trump; he believes he's "the one,"
but, really, he's just putting on airs.

U is for under, the water I mean;
Now is your time to go to the coast.

V is for violence which cops seem so keen
to use against black folks the most.

W is for women and it's certainly time
for #metoo and all their voices heard.

Enough x-rated plant sex from Harvey Weinstein.
C'mon, you know he's a fat turd.

Y is for you and how you need to go vote;
it's time to get out and fight

for Z, zero tolerance, not just a note
that we're through with this shit from the Right.

copyright Andrew and Sarah Leon 2017

Schools

S is for schools where we ought to have guns,
says DeVos, to keep out the bears.

#neveragain

which is why we have N for #neveragain
and why the Right will all look like fools.

Mass Shootings

M is for mass shootings and the Right's lack of care
about our kids dying in their schools,

Guns

G are the guns that we buy without limit,
no matter the state of your mind.

Day 28 (a future history)

Friday, February 16, 2018

I hate school. I mean, I’ve always hated school, but I hate it even more now. Caleb was right about that stupid student patrol thing. Of course, it’s all boys, the worst boys, and Caleb is in charge of it. I think I hate boys, too. They all suck. And they all think they can do whatever they want now. All the time. Even come into the girls’ bathroom.

We got our ID cards on Wednesday, the same day they announced the Trump Youth Brigade. It’s all so shitty I don’t even know what to write about it all.

They gave us our ID cards in first period. And all the rules that go with them. Pages and pages of rules. We have to use them to get into school and to get out of school. We have to use them to get into the fucking bathroom, and we can only go to the bathroom twice a day. The doors won’t unlock for us if we try to use them more than that. We have to use them to ride the bus, the school bus or the city bus, and we have to use them to buy things. Even a candy bar! We have to use them to check into every single class we have. It’s how they’re going to take roll from now on.

They’re going to keep track of every place we go, because we can’t do anything without using these stupid cards! We can even add money to them so that we can buy stuff directly with our ID cards, and I think mom said that all of their credit cards and bank cards are being converted into something like the ID cards, with an extra chip that does all of the same stuff so that all of the information goes directly to the ID center. Or whatever they’re calling it.

It's got some long stupid name that I refuse to use. We’re all just calling it the ID Center. Or the Nazi Center when we can say that without getting tagged by one of the stupid Hitler Youths. I mean Trump Youth Bastards.

The problem is that I don’t really know anything about Nazis or Hitler or World War II or anything. I just know everyone started talking about Nazis and fascists and white supremacists last summer when all of the protests started. At first, it was all funny and stuff because there was that crying Nazi guy who went to jail and a bunch of those guys always whining about stuff, and that’s all I thought it was: funny.

Until Trump pardoned him and gave him a job. “Because he’s a good guy, a really good guy, and the media really really treated him unfairly. Very unfairly.” That wasn’t funny.

Then people started getting killed and it wasn’t funny anymore. Then, I just started trying to ignore it, because it was horrible. Too many fucking guns and people driving through black neighborhoods and shooting them up. And riots with people shooting each other up and police shooting everyone. And I didn’t want to know about it.

But I also feel like I’m only in middle school and shouldn’t have to know about shit like that.

But now I wish I had been paying attention and that I knew what everyone was talking about when all of that started happening. I just thought it would all pass and nothing bad could happen here. Everyone said nothing bad could ever happen in America. Or to America. I don’t know why I believed that. I knew that Trump was shit and that he was already something bad happening to America.

I wish I could remember all of those cheetos jokes about him. Those were funny. And they’re all gone now because of the internet. I bet Trump is happy about that.

So we went from riots with guns to some kind of war that they won’t tell us anything about. And I wish I lived somewhere I could find out what is going on, but I’m also happy that there isn’t any fighting happening here.

Except there was those tanks. And the attack on the air force base.

And Caleb keeps bragging that his dad is saying they’re going to let the youth brigade have guns and that they’re going to get special training and all sorts of things. I want to believe that he’s just bragging and lying, but I thought that last time.

I need to figure out how to get more money for my California box.

Deliberate vs...: A Post About Thinking (Part One)

Before I start, I just want to say that I'm not talking about anyone in particular in this post (and the next). In all actuality, I have no way of knowing what sort of thought processes any of you have. I'm speaking in generalities based on studies of people and how people tend to be. If you feel personally offended by anything I say here, I just want to point out that it's not me pointing that finger at you; it's you. I can't do anything about that.

This post is not about gun control or about guns at all other than that it is a response to a comment from my Freedom Line post, so I don't want any comments about guns or civil rights or anything else even if I mention that conversation, which I will. If you want to comment about guns, go read that other post and the comment thread there and make your comment on that thread. This is not a conversation about guns.

However, during that conversation, I was told that I was having a knee-jerk reaction to the recent child massacre and that if I would only apply reason to what I was saying I would see that I am wrong. If only I could approach the subject intellectually rather than emotionally, I would find a different answer to that question. The problem, then, is that my post was not based off of any kind of emotional reaction at all. Beside the fact that the views expressed in that post were not new to me, I waited weeks to make that post so that I would have time to get my thoughts in order (rather than the next day (or the same day) as many other bloggers did), just as it has taken me two weeks since that comment was made for me to get my thoughts in order to make this post. I just don't make rash comments.

Let me add here that this is something about me that often creates... issues... between my wife and me. She will ask me something and want a response right then, but I just don't have one for her. I have to think about almost everything before I respond to it. This goes for movies and books and, well, everything. On top of that, I can almost always separate my emotional response from my actual views about an individual topic (you can see my recent review of An Unexpected Journey for an example of that). Most people respond like this:
"I don't like this thing; therefore, it is bad," or
"I do like this thing; therefore it is good."
I talked about that stuff here and also in some other post that I'm not going to keep looking for right now. At any rate, those things are not necessarily the truth. 2/3 of my kids don't like broccoli, but I'm, like, 99.7% sure that broccoli is not just good but very good. Whether they like it or not.

Having said all of that, there are two basic ways that people "think" about things, two ways that people arrive at conclusions and decisions: one is what we would call decisive, but that is more because of an incorrect perception that decisive also means "quick," which it does not; and deliberate, which involves more time and actual thought before coming to a conclusion. In all actuality, what we call "decisive decision making" involves almost no thought at all. It's all emotion and "gut" instinct.

Guess which one is the most prevalent. And guess which one we, as a culture, hail as superior. Yeah, "decisiveness". Culturally, we are ALL over that shhhtuff, like a fly on it. How prevalent? Oh, probably something like 80% of people arrive at what they believe about a subject based on this model of "thinking." Or maybe I should say non-thinking. 80% (It might be as low as 70%, but many studies indicate a number higher than 80%, possibly as high as 90%)! That means that most people just respond to things without ever bothering to actually think about the outcome.

So, yeah, most people that responded to the child massacre in Newtown by yelling "No more guns!" did so as an emotional response to the situation. However, most people that have responded to that by yelling "You can't have our guns!" have responded in the same way. Neither side has invested much thought into the issue. From that standpoint, both sides are wrong. [I am personally horrified (emotional response) that gun stores are now complaining that they can't keep supplied, right now, due to the rush of people to buy more guns and that the specific weapon used to murder those children is the item in the greatest demand. Not that I don't understand the compulsion, but you can't tell me those people are acting rationally.]

I should also add that virtually all of the decisions that lead to the housing bubble and the economic collapse of 2008 were made by these 80% of people [this is not my opinion; there have been many studies on the causes of the economic collapse and every single one of them points to bad, "positive" decisions]. In many cases, the people actually evaluating what was going on and saying things like "this is a bad idea" or "we need to slow down," the people waving the red flags back in '06 and '07, were fired outright. Well, let go. They were told they were no longer needed and to take their "negativity" elsewhere. Why? Because we love people that will quickly arrive at a decision and act on it right then at that very moment. Don't stop to think! Just do it! We call those people decisive and hold them up as the epitome of how to be. Don't show doubt. Don't evaluate. Just react.

The problem with that is that in almost every study done, these people are shown to be wrong something like 70-80% of the time. Because they don't bother to stop and engage their brains, they come to the wrong decision. Do the wrong thing. And they take everyone else with them. And, yet, we continue to hail these people as heroes and follow them blindly in almost all circumstances. It's like... it's like deciding that the person you're going to cheat off of in math class is the kid scoring 30% on his tests because he's failing in such a self-assured manner.

This phenomenon baffles me to no end, and I'm sure it's what leads to mobs. No one wants to listen to the guy saying, "Hey, this is a bad idea!" And no one, and I mean no one, wants to be that guy. It sucks to be that guy. I know, because I grew up being that guy. You end up being the guy standing alone while everyone else goes off to do something stupid. Sure, later, they come back and say, "Man, you were right. We shouldn't have done that." But it doesn't keep you from being alone.

Maybe it all has to do with patience; I don't know. Most people don't have any, and that leads to bad and wrong decisions. Maybe it's just that most people aren't that smart. That sounds bad, because, by definition, most people are of average intelligence. I'm not one of those people (which is not me being arrogant, it's me stating an objective truth based upon actual data (which I will not go into right now)). Unfortunately, it sometimes (sometimes more than sometimes) causes me to look down on people of average intelligence as being less intelligent than they actually are, if that makes any sense. I do try to control that, though, and I'm much better than I was when I was in high school.

At any rate, I'm not one for jumping to conclusions, because I just don't jump. I have to gather evidence and look at all sides of a situation, and, sometimes, I'm never ready to come down conclusively on an issue. This is usually because I don't feel that the evidence from any side is conclusive enough. In that respect, I'm not the best at giving a definitive answer about things, contrary to how it might be seen on here at times, because I want room to accept new information and modify what I think about a subject based on new information. This, also, is contrary to how most people are. Post-high school (and certainly post-college), most people (much greater than 80%) will completely dismiss new information about a subject they have previously arrived at a conclusion about. It makes me sad, because it's the thing that has caused the huge political and religious divide in our country. It's also why, generation after generation, you typically have the young pitted against the old, because the old just will not accept that there could be anything new to add to what they know.

All of that to say that if more people would just slow down and actually look at the evidence, both sides of the evidence, or, maybe, all sides of the evidence, we might not have such a huge gap in our world. I don't see that happening any time soon, though.
Next time, the three types of decision making processes.

My Relationship with Death (part 3)

Have you ever had one of those situations where someone considers you his (her) best friend, but you didn't feel that way back? Sure, that person was a friend, just not your best friend. Kind of like the whole thing with Barney in How I Met Your Mother. Ted and Marshall are best friends, but Ted is also Barney's best friend; it's just not reciprocated, because Marshall is Ted's best friend. Yeah, those things can be awkward.

In the early 90s, I had my own comic book business. This came about in part, as I mentioned here, because of the death of the owner of the used book store I worked at. This was one of those sudden deaths that you don't see coming.

I was leaving work one day, and he was out working on his junk heap of a van, a not uncommon occurrence. He kept a handkerchief in his pocket for dealing with his nose and sinus issues, and, when he worked on his van, he'd get oily gunk all over it but would continue to stick the thing up his nose anyway. It was a habit of his that really grossed me out, and I'd asked him several times whether he was worried about catching something from doing that. He really wasn't. I suppose when it's a habit you've had for 40-odd years, you really aren't worried about it. So I told him I'd see him tomorrow and headed back to school.

The next day, I came into work and the girl that (mostly) ran the register told me that he was dead. I thought she was pulling my leg and went about my business with a "yeah, right" or some such. She again told me he was dead, and I still didn't believe her and continued to get out the stuff I was working on. I mean, I had just seen him the previous day, and he'd been fine, right? But she told me he'd had to be rushed to the hospital the night before and had just died.

I couldn't figure out what was going on. Why was the store even open at all? Why was she at work at all? Why was I at work? Of course, I was at work because I hadn't known, but that didn't answer the other questions.

This was a death that made me mad. You see, as it turned out, he died of a staph infection that originated in his nose that was almost certainly contracted from that damned handkerchief. The staph infection made it into his brain within hours and killed him almost before he knew what had happened. I was so mad at him, I didn't even go to the funeral. It's such a horrible thing for someone to die from something stupid like that. I wanted to shake him and yell, "What did you think you were doing? What did I tell you?" But, then, it was too late for that.

I went on to have my own comic business after that. This is another one of those stories that's much longer but the longer doesn't pertain, so let's just cut to the part where I ended up not back in school the next year and running the comic business out of my bedroom at my parents' house. Yeah, it wasn't the best of things, but, just so you know, I did make it back to school later.

Anyway, all of that is how I met Matt. I was on my way back into town from picking up my weekly comic book shipment, and I stopped at the Circle K near my house for a Big Gulp or something. Now, this was actually a pattern I had, so I kind of knew who Matt was. I mean, I knew he was an Asian "kid" a couple or few years younger than me. He worked the night shift. On this particular night, though, comic books came up. I think he asked me what I was up to or something and I said I was on my way home with my weekly shipment of comics. He got all excited and wanted to see them, so, when there was a break in the customer flow, we went out to my car, and I popped the trunk and showed my boxes of comics. It was like a gun deal or something with the way were at the back of my car.

He started buying comics from me, after that. On "comic book day," I'd swing by and pick up a soda and head home and sort out the comics and, then, head back up to the Circle K and take him his comics and hang out for a couple or few hours. Yeah, I had an exciting life hanging out at the Circle K. Actually, it wasn't too bad, because I wasn't hanging out at the K to hang out at the K but to hang out with Matt, and we'd talk comics and all kinds of other stuff. I'd also stop by and hang out some nights on my way home from my gaming group, so we'd spend a few nights a week with me hanging out there with him.

I was his best friend. Other than his girlfriend, I was about the only non-work friend he had. Oh, work... he also worked at this place called Garfield's as a server and a bar tender, which is where he had friends, because he didn't have work friends at the Circle K since he worked alone. But I was his only friend that wasn't connected to him by work, and I was the person that did non-work related things, like go to movies, with him. But he wasn't my best friend. My best friends were in my gaming group.

Matt wasn't from Shreveport. In fact, he was adopted, and his parents lived in Indiana or some place like that. I don't actually remember how it was that he'd ended up in Shreveport, because he wasn't going to school, although I think that had had something to do with it. But he'd gotten to Shreveport, against his parents' wishes, and they'd sort of cut him off (evidently, they were wealthy). So he was working two jobs to make ends meet, and he was addicted to those pre-Internet poker video game things. Except he actually won more than he lost at those. A lot more. That's also a story in-and-of itself, because he used to always try to get me to play them. I'll just say I'm not a gambler in that I'm just no good at it.

He had a black belt in some martial art or other and would, sometimes, go out in the parking lot of the Circle K and demonstrate stuff, especially if/when my brother came up, because that's all my brother would bug him about. "Show me..." "Show me..." He could do a complete flip, front or back, from standing.

And he was into guns. In fact, he loved The Punisher and all things Punisher.

In fact, at some point, he bought one. For protection, you know. He would take it to the K with him and leave on the counter under the register. Let me point out one other thing. Cops, lots of cops, would come in and hang out there, also. I suppose that was a normal thing. They'd stop in to get coffee and hangout, so there was a steady string of them through there. They knew about the gun, and it didn't bother them at all. It bothered me, though, and I didn't refrain from telling him that it was going to get him into trouble.

I'm telling you all of this so that you will understand what happened next...

It was comic book day, and I was coming back into Shreveport. I was a little earlier than Matt's shift, and I was really tired, so I didn't stop for a soda the way I normally would have. I just went home and, instead of unpacking the comics as per my usual, laid down to take a nap. I must have been really tired, because I was out for hours. In fact, I was woken up around 10:00 p.m. by the phone. It was Matt's girlfriend. Matt was dead.

A guy had tried to shoplift some beer and had shot Matt three times in the chest when Matt called 911. The guy was already under the influence of... something. He'd come in and stuck some individual bottles of beer, three, in his pockets and had tried to walk out. Matt told him to stop, and the guy just kept going. Matt picked up the phone and called 911. He did not at any point go for his gun. While he was on the phone, the guy pulled a gun and shot Matt. They got it all on the security camera and a lot of the audio from the 911 call. Matt didn't do anything to provoke the guy other than make that call. And he shot him. Matt was already dead when the ambulance arrived. The police picked the guy up a few blocks away with the gun in his hand and the beer in his pocket.

I should have been there. It was the only time I hadn't been there on that night. Literally, since Matt had started buying comics from me (and it had been a couple of years, at that point), there had not been a comic day that I hadn't been there hanging out after I'd done the whole sorting thing. I was wracked by guilt and remorse. Why hadn't I been there? If I'd been there, maybe he wouldn't have been shot. Of course, his girlfriend just kept telling me that if I'd been there I'd be dead, too, but I couldn't buy that then and still don't buy it now. All I know is that I wasn't there, I was supposed to be there, and things would be different if I had been there.

No, I don't have any particular belief about what things would have been different; I just know that they would be different. It's one of those situations that leaves you wondering what happened and why. Was it fate or God? Did God make me so tired that I wouldn't be there? Did the universe conspire to make things happen they way they did? Why? Why? Why? Was it just happenstance? I have a hard time with "just happenstance." What is the meaning, the purpose, behind what happened? It's one of those things that has been there in my brain for the last (almost) 20 years. Why?

To go with the guilt of having not been there, there was also the guilt of his not having been my best friend. It was something that always made me feel bad anyway, because, when he would introduce me to people (that he worked with, mostly), he would always introduce me as his best friend. He never seemed bothered that I didn't introduce him that way, but it always bothered me. When he died, his girlfriend was notified, because they lived together. I was the person that she called. The first person. The only person. Everyone else waited till the next day. Well, in Shreveport, at any rate. She dealt with his parents the rest of the night.

There was no service in Shreveport for Matt. Like I mentioned, his parents were rich, so they had his body flown home. His girlfriend went to stay with Matt's parents for a while for the funeral, but I only ever saw her one other time after all of it. She called me and asked me to come over and had some things she thought Matt would have wanted me to have. I don't really think Matt would have wanted me to have the things she gave me; I think she just needed to get rid of his things because of all the pain they brought and handed out stuff at random. I mean, one of the things she gave me was his expensive remote controlled car, which I had no interest in and held no meaning at all between Matt and me. But how do you say "no" in that kind of situation. I just took the stuff. I gave the car to my brother, but I don't think he ever used it.

You know, I understand accidental deaths and deaths from natural disasters and death from illness. Well, maybe understand is not quite the correct word, but, still, I understand that "things happen" and, sometimes, they lead to death. I do not, however, understand death due to violence. Not this kind of violence. I can not understand how it is that people decide to take someone else's life. I just don't get it. And for some beer? Seriously? The guy didn't even rob the register. He just shot Matt and walked out of the store. What compels someone to do something like that? And, yeah, I know, he was "acting under the influence," but he'd still felt compelled to have the gun in the first place, and it was just for "protection."

More than any other throughout my life, until just recently, this is the death that I have most struggled with. Asked the most questions about in my head. The thing with my boss was just stupidity, and it still, even now, makes me mad when I think about it. Mad at him. But it was just stupidity. An accident. It was avoidable, sure, but there was no malicious intent. But I struggle with Matt's death and with the fact that it didn't just end his life, because the guy that shot him is still sitting in prison in Louisiana on a life sentence with no chance of parole. Why do people treat each other this way? I just don't get it. I mean, we like to think of ourselves as so civilized or whatever now as opposed to how we used to be, but I don't think, really, that we've made any progress as a species. Not when things like this are still happening. And not just on an individual level but whole groups of people doing this kind of thing to each other.

As it turns out, my biggest questions about death aren't actually about death at all. Intellectually, I understand death and why it happens. The necessity of it. Even when I don't like it, I get it. But the impulse to cause death, that I do not understand.

I hope I never do.

Guns and Adverbs: Part 2

What is the big deal with adverbs, anyway? I mean, they teach kids in elementary school to use adverbs liberally, to spice up their writing. If they teach kids they should be using adverbs, why do we, as writers, take the stance of "No Adverbs!"?

In a lot of ways, using adverbs can be like taking a shotgun and shooting your manuscript with it at point-blank range. And that's why everyone goes around saying, "Don't use adverbs!"

Everyone would be wrong.

There's nothing actually wrong with the adverb. If you learn how to use them effectively.

However, I'll give you the top three ways people like to use adverbs, and, maybe, you can see why there is the temptation to banish them:

1. in dialogue tags
The problem with using adverbs in dialogue tags is that they frequently become a way to tell the audience what is happening rather than to show the audience. For instance, you might use, "he said quietly," when "whispered" would be better. Or you might say, "he leaned close and said into my ear," which would be even better. Or you might say, "she said excitedly," which is just telling me that she was excited, but "she squealed and jumped up and down before saying" shows me that she is excited, which is far more, well, exciting. Basically, adding those adverbs to dialogue tags can be a lazy way of getting around showing what's going on.
And, of course, using descriptive dialogue tags distracts from the actual dialogue, which you don't want to do. The dialogue tag should fade into the background as much as possible, which is why we don't want to draw attention to them by tacking adverbs on. There are few "rules" of writing I believe should be followed unilaterally, but the one about keeping dialogue tags to a simple "said" is probably the one I believe in most. Heck, I think if I could get away with not using them, I would (which is kind of odd considering how much I dislike Hemingway for that very reason).

2. to create redundancies
Unfortunately, the other way we want to use adverbs is to reinforce verbs that don't need reinforcing. In effect, we make a redundant word combination. We like to say things like "he ran quickly" or "she screamed loudly" or "he whispered quietly." We don't need adverbs in any of those circumstances. If he's running, we know that he's doing it quickly, and, if she's screaming, we assume it's loud. In most cases, there are better verbs to replace those combinations anyway, like "he sprinted" or "she shrieked" or "he murmured."

3. really and very
Yeah, people really, really like to use these adverbs very, very much. Frequently, these cause writing to become boring due to word repetition, and, as with any word, you don't want to use them too much. Usually, there are better words.

With all of this going against the adverb, it can be difficult to see legitimate uses for them. It's rather like taking out a sub-machine gun to hunt a deer. The only good reason for that is if you want to save some time in making venison burgers. The trick is knowing when to use the adverb gun and which adverb gun works best.

Personally, I like the adverb as an adverbial phrase. See what I did there? "Personally" is an adverb. In point 3, so are "frequently" and "usually." In point 2, I have "unfortunately." Adverbs in those positions are useful and give a clearer meaning to the sentences. And that's the catch, when we're going to use adverbs, they should provide a clearer meaning; they should provide more focus. Not the same focus. You don't want them to just re-say what you're already saying.

Another good use of the adverb, which provides a greater meaning to the sentence but is not as an adverbial phrase, is to contrast the word you're modifying. Going back to the examples I used earlier, you could have "he ran haltingly," which provides a completely new dynamic to that sentence. You could also say "she screamed hoarsely" or "he whispered loudly." Those adverbs are useful and good and provide new depth to what is being said.

All of this to say that, although I understand the temptation to tell people "don't use adverbs," it's a better solution for people to learn how to use them effectively. There's no real reason to deprive authors of the adverb tool just because some people use them incorrectly. It's not the same as when I was a kid and was given a tool kit one year and proceeded to use the hand drill

something like this

to woodpecker the furniture. Needless to say, it got taken away. However, it would have been better if my parents had taken the time to teach me what to use it on.

Damn It, Jim...

Today, I am guest posting over on Still Writing...
You should drop by to see what the title of this post is all about.

"Part Three: The Bedroom" is still available for FREE! through the end of today. So far, it has peaked at #37 on the contemporary fantasy list and is currently at #38.
Interestingly enough, "Part Two: The Kitchen Table" made it back up to #73 on that list yesterday while it was also free.

That's all for today. Come back tomorrow for "Guns and Adverbs Part 2."

Guns and Adverbs: Part 1

I'm not a big fan of guns. I never have been. Well, that may not exactly be true. I suppose, when I was a kid, I liked guns. I do know that I wanted to go hunting. Everyone in my family hunted. Well, all the men did, at any rate (along with one aunt), which included my cousin who was three years older than me and my childhood idol. As far as I can remember, he always hunted, and, for all I know, that may have been true (knowing my uncle (because it was his wife that was the hunting aunt)). What I do know is that my cousin was hunting by the age of seven, because he got a deer that year. So I wanted to hunt, too.

For whatever reason, my mom really just blocked the whole thing, like she did with me playing any kind of sports when I was a kid (my brother both hunted and played sports). I got this whole thing about how I couldn't hunt until I had my own gun, but I couldn't have a gun until I learned how to handle one, but I didn't have a gun, so I couldn't learn how to handle one. It was all very frustrating to me as a kid. By the time my grandfather decided to just take me out hunting despite the fact that I had never held anything more powerful than a BB gun, I had really lost interest. That was middle school, probably 8th grade, in fact. I took a comic book with me, an edition of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe

which was nice and thick so that it would keep me busy for a while, and we sat in the deer stand. We didn't see anything. I sat and read until it got too dark to see, then we walked back to the farm. I never went hunting again. I never learned how to use a gun.

Because I don't know how to use a gun, I don't own one. Of course, I have no intention of using one, so it would be rather superfluous to bother to have one in my house. That would just be asking for trouble.

I'm pretty sure most people don't approach the whole gun thing that way, though. After all, they look pretty simple to use, right? TV and movies make them look easy to use. Just point and shoot. Of course, the truth is  they are not easy to use, and they are certainly not easy to use responsibly. This leads to all sorts of problems too numerous to mention, but, if you're reading this, you're probably aware of gun issues whether you approve of them or not.

And that's the catch, because there are so many issues with guns, people are tempted to call the gun itself bad or wrong. The gun, though, is just a thing. As long as no one's holding it, it just sits on the table doing nothing.

But! But, to keep people from using them inappropriately, what we want to do is to say "no one should use guns." Forget being educated on proper usage and safety, just don't do it! And you know what, I get it. I understand that temptation. It's oh so much easier to prohibit than to teach.

Of course, there are legitimate uses for guns, not the least of which is protection against other people misusing them, not that I'm advocating owning a gun "for protection;" I'm just saying. The truth is that if I ever needed to use a gun, I mean needed to use one, I would be unprepared, and that would not be a good thing. That makes me think that gun safety courses should possibly be mandatory just like drivers education is mandatory.

Of course, it might not do much good; look at the number of automobile accidents we have every year.

At any rate, the point is that a gun is a tool. It's the user that determines what happens with it, which is the same for any tool. The problem with guns is that they are so powerful. Like pit bulls. [Pit bulls have not been shown to be any more violent than other breeds of dogs; however, when there is an incident with a pit bull, the victim tends to fare much worse than in other dog attacks because the jaws of a pit bull are so much more powerful than those of other dogs.] Because gun usage can end up being an all or nothing affair, people tend to react with an all or nothing attitude.

What we end up with is a bunch of people running around saying, "Don't use guns! Don't use adverbs!"

"Guns are bad! Adverbs are bad!"

Yeah, I just threw adverbs into the mix, because adverbs are just like that gun lying on the table. A thing. Neither bad nor good but very effective when used properly and very damaging when used improperly. But adverbs are so very easy to misuse and can destroy a manuscript, so what you get are people saying, "Don't use adverbs! Bad! Wrong! No!"

However, the correct position on adverbs is not abstinence but education.