The Color of Music (pictures I like)

 

I actually don't know what this is supposed to be or what it's called, but that's what it reminds me of.

Act 1 -- New Game (or) Music To Write By

A couple of months ago, I posted about a song my son composed. You can read about it here. And you should, too, because it's a really great song. A song he wrote and just sprang on us, as I sort of implied in the linked post. "Aurora Daedalus" is something I can write by, and I can't listen to much music when I'm writing. But I digress...

Over the next couple of days, he wrote a couple more songs:
"Eternal Voyage"
"Love Me and Despair"
And...
That's the last we heard of it.

He's kind of tight lipped about what he's working on so gentle probes didn't get any results. Then probes that were less gentle still didn't get any responses, so we quit asking.
I have to come clean at this point and say that he probably gets that from me. I'm not as bad as I used to be, but I tend to not want anyone to see my work until it's finished. Or even know that I'm working on something. So, yeah... It's familiar behavior.

Anyway...

Last week, he asked me for help with PayPal, which was kind of weird, especially when he went on to say that he needed a business account. Wait. What?
He's produced a whole album of music and had it all set on a hosting site and everything, but they require a PayPal account to deposit money into.
Fortunately, I have a PayPal business account.

Shameless boasting:
This is the part where I'm going to point out that this is the son I wrote the long education series about and further point out that he's only 16. Sure, it's not like he's Mozart or anything, but I think this is a lot of talent for 16.

ANYWAY...

His album, Act 1 -- New Game is available through bandcamp, and you should definitely go check it out. Seriously, give it a listen. And, then, give it a purchase. It's only $5.00, and, hey, it's music to write by. Or cook by. Or whatever. No, you can't sing to it (since there are no lyrics), but it's pretty nice background music.

Oh, also! He did all of the art. Here's the tricky part: You have to click the link for each song but, when you do, the page for that song will come up, and each song has its own piece of pixel art. Yeah, it's pixel art, but he likes it, and it's GOOD pixel art.

Look, as I tell me kids when it comes to tasting food, what have you got to lose? It's not going to kill you, and you might find something you like. Go. Now. Give it a listen and check out the art.

Aurora Daedalus (the continuing saga)

"It sounds spacey and stuff, I guess."

My son made a song. His words. That's what he said when he announced, unexpectedly, that he'd been... you know, I don't know the correct word to use here, because "making" probably is more correct than "writing" in this context, though I don't really know. Anyway, he announced, "Hey, I made a song. Do you want to hear it?"

The word "yes" got shoved around in my throat as I tried to figure out what he was talking about. What came out was more along the lines of, "Wait, what? You made a song?"
"Yeah, you want to hear it?"
That's when the "yes" made it out.

And I was impressed. You should take a listen:
Aurora Daedalus
I mean, I was impressed in that I really like it. Sometimes kids bring you things that you're impressed with because it was your kid that did it, but I think this is a great piece of music.
And he's written some more since then! Aurora is still my favorite, but they're all good.

And we didn't even know he was working on this stuff!

So, anyway, go check out my son's music.

How To Watch Opera

So... As you regular readers are well aware, I've been doing opera reviews for a while now. This is not something I'm doing to prove how cultured I am or anything like that. I review a lot of the entertainment I take in: most all movies I see at the theater, books that I read (though I skip some of the short stories), some of the TV shows I watch. Reviewing the operas we go to is a way to both cover something local (which is another thing I do lot of, talk about local events) and to share something that I'm doing. I don't actually look at going to the opera as being something highbrow.

Yes, I'm well aware that "people" tend to view opera as highbrow, but that's not because it is. Opera suffers from the same fate as lobster.
What?
Yeah, I'm not going to explain that right now, but opera, traditionally, was entertainment for the masses not the rich and elite, just like, during his day, Shakespeare was "popular media." My position is that it should, again, be entertainment for the masses.
Yes, I know there are barriers to that, barriers that will probably not be overcome, but that doesn't mean I can't hope and encourage you to check out some opera.

Here's how to go about doing that:

1. Go see Hamilton: An American Musical. Okay, so, sure, that's a bit impractical for most people including myself, even though it is coming to San Francisco. At least for the foreseeable future, it's way out of our price range (more on cost later). However, if you want to get into the technicalities of musical theater, Hamilton is an opera and, if nothing else, you should listen to it. And then again. And probably again. Trust me, we've been on about Hamilton in our house for well over a year (including having had custom Hamilton t-shirts made for 2/3 of our kids for Christmas last year (and I would show you a picture if those weren't in the pictures I lost in the great hard drive crash)).

The point? To show you the potential of opera. The medium itself is not confined to centuries old music and people in fancy clothes.

2. Watch some foreign movies with subtitles. This is the big roadblock for most people, and it's because most people don't read. People who don't read can't keep up with subtitles and also watch the movie. Not that it's not possible to develop the skill of watching something with subtitles without also being a reader, but people who only take in movies and TV are much less likely to move in the direction of shows with subtitles.

So, yeah, most (by far) operas are performed in languages other than English, mostly because they were written in other languages than English. However, some venues offer supertitles [Basically, a subtitle. No, I don't know why they're referred to as supertitles at the opera, but they are.], which I strongly recommend. If not, translations of the songs are available, so it's possible to follow along that way. [SFO always has nights with supertitles for each opera they're doing, and we always go to those shows, even when the opera is being performed in English. (Believe it or not, it helps.)]

3. Pick a genre you like. This is a bit more difficult to do, because it's not like opera contains all of the genres in modern pop culture. Or all of the sub-genres. In one sense, all of opera breaks down into two broad categories: tragedy and comedy, but, then, isn't that true of all fiction? (Or non-fiction, for that matter.) All I'm saying is do your research. Puccini is not like Mozart. Find a story category you tend to like, then...

4. Listen to some music! Don't worry about the words since it's most likely going to be in Italian or French or German, but you want to find music you feel like you can listen to, you know, since you'll have to spend a couple of hours listening to it.

5. Evaluate the cost. This can be a big one. I'm not going to try to tell you that going to the opera is like going to the movies, though movies are expensive enough! However, check out ways to make going cheaper. For instance, many venues offer staggered pricing on the seating, so, if you're like us, you're going to want to choose the cheap seats. Also, the San Francisco Opera offers package deals so, if you buy, say, tickets to three operas at once, you get them for significantly cheaper than if you bought tickets to three individual operas. For us, with what we do, the tickets end up being about $25 each. That's actually a pretty good value.

I'd also suggest getting some on disc to watch, but that's a lot more difficult than you'd think it would be.

Or you can skip all of that and do what I did, which was kind of just to jump in. Okay, so that's not precisely true but, effectively, it's true. When my wife finally agreed to let me take her to the opera (after years of refusing because she thought I wouldn't like it and didn't want to have a bad experience with it (because she loves it)), I let her pick the first operas we saw. That, admittedly, is an easy way of doing it. Basically, you should find something that works for you.

Look, what I'm saying is this:
Give it a try. It's not like you can lose in that scenario. Sure, you might not like opera, but, then, you just might. And, really, I'd say try two or three different ones, because you might not get a good one the first time (like the first opera I saw when I was 20 was horrible, and I let that convince me for a long time that all of opera was bad, but I was a kid; what did I know?). And seriously, go check out Hamilton.

Parcivillian -- Part 2 (a local color post)

Elliot Behling, Delek Miller, and Stav Redlich

So... Parcivillian.

It's really difficult to do something like make introductions in the middle of any kind of live performance. After I asked the bassist, Delek Miller, about doing an interview, about which he was very excited, he rounded up the other guys so that we could figure out when. We did manage to do that, but I didn't really get their names at the time, except for Delek's, because he put it in my phone. All of that to say that proper introductions did not get made until the following Monday when we met for coffee at my favorite cafe, Flying Goat. [Seriously, I love Flying Goat and am thinking about doing a piece about them at some point. They have this spicy mocha thing which is the veritable bomb.]

The first thing to note, and this really surprised me, is that these guys are, and there's no other way to say it, young. Delek and Elliot just graduated from high school, are both 18, and are heading off to separate colleges. Stav, at 17, is still in high school. Based on the quality of their music and the fact that they were performing original material, I had expected them to be older. It makes them, as a group, all the more impressive. Also, I suppose technically, the band is actually only Delek and Stav. Elliot plays the violin in some of the songs, but he's not fully integrated as part of the band despite the fact that Delek and Elliot are best friends and have know each other for eight years or so. It's no coincidence that their friendship began with music and has been the center of it all along.

Actually, nearly everything about this group is surprising to me. Considering how young they are, you have to wonder (or, at least, I did) how long they've been "together." When did the band start? Now, see, considering how good they are, I expected the answer to be something like, "Oh, we've been doing this since we were freshmen," or something like that, but, no, they've only been playing together as a band (meaning the length of time since Stav and Delek started doing all of this) about a year. A year!

Which might not be so surprising just for the ability to play songs together, but they've been together for only a year, and they have all this original material. Good original material. Actually, good is an understatement. At any rate, I had to ask about that:

Me: How did y'all get started on doing original material so early? ...Y'all are right out the gate original stuff, and I'm really curious about that.

Stav: I started off in fifth grade kind of playing covers, doing the thing, all the pop kind of covers, and, then, comes about eighth grade and you hit puberty [everyone chimed in knowingly at this point and there were comments about girls (when I say "everyone," I include myself)], so I said I don't want to play just everyone else's stuff. I don't want to cover all the time, so I started to write songs. I had a bunch of ones I think now are just the cheesiest things ever [Me: It happens.], but you go through the cycle, and I started finding ones that I really liked. When we all started to play together I had two or three songs already written that we still play today. I brought them to the band and they liked them and, from then on, we started writing together. Delek would bring me a bass line, or a guitar line for that matter because he plays both, and I'd be, like, "cool," and then I'd come up with the melody, put some lyrics in there and, then, Elliot does his thing, so it all comes together.

Delek: For playing together and writing original stuff, we just started playing and, then, I knew that [Stav] wrote songs and he kind of was a little...

Stav: ...shy about it...

Delek: ...shy about just going for it, so I said, "Just do something." So we did one song just like that. I told him to just moan or just mumble, and it just happened. Personally, we've all just liked his original stuff. Covers are really fun, too, but I like doing the original thing. I like the creative process. And I think they share that, too.

The conversation moved from there to musical influences, which I would like to cover here, but I'm going to pass over as it would just end up being a list of bands and musicians that I mostly can't offer an commentary about. At some point, I might revisit the subject with them in a way that will allow me to turn it into a more interesting subject, because there are a people on the list that stand out even to me.

Eventually, we got to this:

Me: Where do you see yourselves going? Do you have any kind of concrete plans? Do you have any kind of vision? What do you want to see happen, both individually and as a group? Where do you see your music going? What do you want to do?

Stav: I want to play music for my career. I don't want to do anything else.

Me: Well, you've got a good start. Not many people your age are doing what you're doing.

Stav: As far as where I want to go, I am going to obviously have a plan B. Producing interests me. Psychology interests me. So I'm going to go to school. I'm going to get a major in something. But, as far as band and music goes, I'm just going to keep writing because I love to be able to express that part of myself and share it with whoever wants to listen. And just keep playing music until something happens or, if nothing happens, still keep playing music. That's my plan. I don't have an expectations. I'm not, like, "Oh, my God, if this doesn't work out, I'm going to kill myself." It's very much like "what happens happens," and if nothing happens, I'm going to keep playing music. As far as playing with these guys, it starts off with touring and playing live, recording when we can, spreading the word, letting as many people know as we can about our music, where we're playing, all that kind of stuff. As far as long term, I want to do this. I found a group. I've never played with anyone that, kind of, gets me as much musically as much as Delek does. We have a good sense of the genre we want to play and it fits and it works. We write really well together, and we play really well together. Same with Elliot. Elliot brings a whole, really cool, unique aspect to the group that I think is great to have. To be honest, some songs don't need violin, but a good chunk of them do, so it's good to have that option. [Delek and Elliot] just wrote a song together, recently, and brought it to me...

Delek: Instrumental...

Stav: Instrumental, verse, chorus kind of deal, but, like, immediately, I was able to find a melody and some lyrics...

Delek: And that's on the spot. Like five minutes.

Stav: That's the kind of stuff I want to be doing all the time. And I don't care if I'm in a studio from 5:00 in the morning to 10:00 at night. I want to do this... As far as I'm concerned, the music is all that matters. Bringing joy to other people. As long as other people like it and I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I'll never write or play music I don't enjoy. I'm solely in it for the music. That's what I've found about Delek, too; he's willing to make sacrifices for the sound, no matter if he has to step back a little bit, hold out boring notes on his bass, he knows when to bring stuff in and when to pull stuff out. It doesn't matter who is in the background or who is in the foreground; it's all about the music, and that's what I love about playing with these guys.

Delek: It's almost like the music is a separate... It's like we're a band, and there's the music. And we're playing the music, but it's a separate... It's its own entity the way we approach it.

Where I want to go? I want to keep playing with them. We've found something that not very many people get to find. It's one of those things to know when you've found something really good. Like someone who really gets what you're doing, and you really get what they're doing, and the approach is really harmonious. Also, I really like producing. I mean, I want to produce. Even if I'm in a band, I'll still produce on the side. If the band doesn't happen, then I want to produce as a career. But I want music... I need to be in music.

Elliot: I've wanted to play violin since I was two years old, and I don't mean that at all as something to brag about. I started at five so, basically, it's just always been a part of me. That will never stop; I will always continue playing.

I'm going to cut this post off at this point, mostly, because it's long enough. Next post will deal with the name of the band and how it relates to the other big question I asked them. And, just to be clear, Elliot did talk during the interview, but, since I'm not just transcribing it, I've cut out most of the side comments to keep the essential information concise. Which sounds like he didn't say anything essential, but that's not true, either. Often his comments were agreeing with someone else or expanding on something someone else said, but I can't include everything. That's why there will be another post. And, actually, another one after that.

For now, I'm going to leave you with one of their songs. This one is probably my favorite one. Just follow the link: "Left Behind"

Parcivillian -- Part 1 (a local color post)

Recently, my wife and I went to an open mic night at a local-ish tavern-ish place. This is not a thing that is part of our normal routine. It is so far outside of our normal routine, in fact, that it isn't something we'd ever done before. But it had been a rough week, and I was looking for something fun we could do for dinner that night, something cheap we could do for dinner that night, and a free open mic night seemed like a good option. I mean, the worst that could happen would be that all the participants would suck, but even that can be entertaining (like the ukulele who sang an original song that heavily featured pickles and olives), and, you know, there was always the possibility of some real gems.

We were late.

We had some business to take care of before we could head to the place, business that took longer than we'd anticipated. So, rather than get there early enough to eat before the open mic event started, we got there in time for the event to start, but we were both pretty ravenous by that point, so we got a table rather than going into the venue. Fortunately, it wasn't far from the big open doors to the building the event was in, so we could hear what was going on. And, well, they started late, too.

Eventually, we finished eating, and went down to the open mic thing. Except that I had to take our left over food out to the car, so she went on in without me. (Where, amusingly, she immediately began to get hit on by an older gentleman who kept flirting with her even after I got back, almost as if I wasn't even standing there. (Yes, my wife is a "hottie."))

At this point, I need to explain something:
My wife and I have very different approaches to music. Very frequently, songs will grab me the first time I hear them. For instance, "With Or Without Me" was instantaneous. I didn't even hear the whole song or hear it well. It came on the radio that was playing in the background, and it caught my ear, and I did that whole shushing thing to everyone around me so that I could hear the song. It was, at the time, the best song I'd ever heard. I knew it right away.

My wife never has that reaction to music. She's someone who has to grow into loving a song. Usually, it takes her four or five times of hearing something before she even begins to like it. And she's the musical one! It can be disappointing for me when I bring her some new song I've just heard that I think is great and she gives it a shrug and a "It's okay." Which is what I expect, but, still.

So... I had to take food out to the car. When I got back, the band that was playing was in the middle of their final song and, as soon as I walked up to my wife, she grabbed my arm and said, "I really like this song." That got my attention. Of course, my first thought was that she must have heard it somewhere before, because, you know, she wouldn't like it if it was the first time she'd heard it. But we didn't know what song it was.

After the band was finished, I sort of snuck up on one of them, the bass player, and asked him about it. Guess what. It was an original song! So, yeah, it grabbed my wife the first time she heard it (and I liked what I heard of it, too, even if I didn't hear the whole thing), and I was even more impressed.

Which brings me to the punch line, so to speak:
I tracked the bass player down again and asked him if they'd, Parcivillian, would like to get featured on my blog. It was an enthusiastic "yes!" This is not that feature. This is just the story leading to the feature. In the mean time, though, please hop over to their facebook page. Right there at the top is a video of the song my wife likes so much. It's called "One Kiss."

Next week, I'll be back with more about this new band.

Old White Dudes and Why I Don't Want To Be One

Last week, I talked about the Cotati Accordion Festival, which is a great event, and I enjoy going to it. Generally, speaking, there's great music, good food, and lots of incredible accordions to look at (because they always have booths where they're being sold), and The Great Morgani and his crazy costumes.

One of last year's costumes.

There were a couple of drawbacks this year, though; one of which was that the music wasn't quite as good as it normally is. The other was that there seemed to be a prevalence of OWDS among  the crowd.

Here's what happened (not in chronological order):

First incident:
There was an old dude that kept taking his clothes off. Now, if it had been like crazy person taking his clothes off, that would have been one thing, but this guy wasn't crazy. He just seemed to think that it was okay for him to change clothes wherever he wanted to. I mean, maybe he thought he was at Burning Man or something, but I really don't think so. He just seemed to think it was okay... for him. Seriously, at one point he just stripped down to his "shorts," pulled new clothes out of his backpack, and put them on. And it wasn't like he went off somewhere to do that. He was right up at the stage while someone was playing. Evidently, he just wanted something more comfortable to dance around in. Another time, he went over and bought a t-shirt, so he just disrobed right there at the booth after buying the shirt so that he could change into it. The guy had a flaming case of entitlement.

Second incident:
They had a tent set up with a dance floor in it and zydeco music going on. My wife, her sister, and my daughter went in to dance. Also, the Great Morgani was in there dancing in his old lady costume (so hilarious!). I was standing at the edge of the tent with my left hand on one of the ropes watching them dance (but mostly watching Morgani (because, again, hilarious!)). Someone bumped my left shoulder. I let go of the rope and turned to see who it was, some dude (older than me) with a beer in his hand. Now, the act of turning caused an opening (of sorts) between myself and the rope, and the dude put his left shoulder into the opening so I couldn't turn back to where I had been. Slightly annoyed, I moved over a bit. A moment later, he bumped me again, and, again, I turned to see what was up, and he did the same thing, edging more into the opening I'd made. So I moved again. A moment late, he did it AGAIN, and, instead of just turning to look at him again, I stepped to the side and turned just in time to see him switch his beer to his right hand and grab the rope with his left effectively taking the spot I had been standing in when he first came up. He ignored the fact that I was staring aghast at him and just started bouncing with the music and sipping his beer.

Basically, he had just wanted my spot and proceeded to bump me out of it. If I hadn't known that it would be greatly upsetting to my wife, I would have told him exactly what I thought of his entitlement issues and rude behavior, neither of which he could see. To him, that spot deserved to be his, and he hadn't done anything wrong. But I did know that my wife wouldn't want me to cause a scene, so I moved away from the gashole (that's a new word in our house; it's that thing on your car where you put the gas in), fuming all the while.

Third incident:
The worst one, though, was this dude that was probably actually around my age, so not all that old. Seriously entitled, though. He kept wandering and dancing through the crowd and putting his hands and arms on people and trying to dance them around. By people, I mean women. He was acting all cheerful and cherubic, but it was clearly not welcome attention by many people, including my wife. Now, we'd already been observing his behavior, so when he walked past us and moved toward my wife, she backed away; some women, though, were not that lucky, and, whenever someone brushed him off or pushed him away, he would shrug like it was their problem, not his. He didn't leave the men completely alone, because he would give husbands and boyfriends or whomevers back pats and half hugs to let them know it was okay that he had just molested their women.

When he wasn't doing that stuff, he was walking around like he was the godfather of the festival bestowing blessings on people. And if you're wondering if this was some important dude, don't. It was just some old white dude exercising his entitlement. He had no problems. Any problems were with the other people. After all, he was just having a good time.

So I've used this one event to spotlight these issues, but this is only one example. There was also the recent thing with SFWA and a bunch of old white dudes saying how women shouldn't even be writing science fiction. And there was the deal with the white dudes harassing women at SDCC about how they weren't worthy fans and only wanted to play dress up or some such. And don't even get me started on how white dudes think they ought to get to drive.

In short, we here in the US are suffering from a horrible case of OWDS. Even people who don't have it are being affected by it, probably on a daily basis, much like non-smokers are affected by second-hand smoke. And, like second-hand smoke, being affected by it is worse than actually having it. In fact, people with it probably don't know they have it, wouldn't care if they did know, and would probably think it was a good thing anyway. It's particularly rampant among baby boomers, but there are plenty of signs of the early stages in younger generations.

What is it, exactly, that I'm talking about? Old White Dude Syndrome. It's a horrible disease and usually incurable; however, with proper education and preventative measures most of the symptoms can be minimized. As with any disease, the best prevention is early detection.

Most commonly, this affliction is seen among those we would consider the 1%. At least, that's where we see the symptoms most out-of-hand, especially among politicians. Some current examples:

• Donald Trump and his unwillingness to shake hands with the disease-ridden poor.
• Anthony Weiner and his weiner.
• Romney and his seeming belief (yes, I'm being generous) that half of American citizens want to do nothing more than live off of government handouts. Because they're not rich, see. If only they weren't so lazy, they would be rich, too.

Whereas those are some examples of out-of-control symptoms, we can see the beginnings of OWDS in the entitlement issues that white dudes everywhere have. I mean, come on, since when has it ever been okay to just walk through a crowd groping on women and dancing them around? And that shrug the guy gave was almost as if to say, "It's okay; I'm white."

It's getting to be a thing between me and my wife whenever we see some old white dude acting in one of these entitled ways that I will turn to her and say something like, "Don't ever let me act like that. Just slap me or something, and, if that doesn't work, shoot me." I don't want to be one of those old white dudes. At all. Hopefully, I'm taking the correct kinds of measures to make sure OWDS doesn't take root in me, but, you know, feel free to let me know if you ever see any signs of it coming out. Hopefully, this small bit of educational information will help others onto the path of avoidance and prevention.

My Relationship with Death (part 4)

And so we arrive at it, the reason for all of these thoughts about death.

Several weeks ago as I was sitting down to write, well, I was just getting started for the morning, I "got a call" (it wasn't really a call, but that's a close enough equivalent). A friend of mine from high school, one of my best friends from high school, was dead. He had taken his own life (that's how I was told to say it). The call came from the actual scene of the event.

That's rough.

I was asked to deliver the news to our group of friends from back then because I still have minimal contact with most of them and because it's not the kind of thing that gets reported in a way where people are likely to find out.

That was more rough.

Some background might be good at this point.

(I'm changing his name in this post.)

Bob is someone I knew from church. I'm gonna guess I knew him from about 2nd grade on up. I know I knew him by 4th grade, though, because we were in Mrs. Stroud's Sunday school class together. And, then, a bunch of other stuff happened that has nothing to do with this, so we'll jump ahead to the end of my freshmen year of high school when I got involved in the youth group at my church.

There was going to be this thing, this big event, in Washington D.C. the summer between our freshmen and sophomore years, the summer of '85, called Youth Congress '85 (appropriate, no?), and we wanted to go. It was expensive, though, and neither of us had rich families. It was so expensive that everyone else in the youth group immediately discounted going at all. But Bob and I wanted to go, so we set about doing that. Our youth pastor found us another group to travel with, and Bob and I worked our butts off that summer to raise the money for the trip. Actually, we had about three weeks to do it. $2000 a piece. And find a chaperon that could go with us, because we wouldn't be allowed to go without one.

That was a major bonding experience. We did all sorts of things, and our church helped us to find jobs to do. Some of them were pretty good, but they also included grooming this old lady's yard for $5.00. The woman was ancient, and she said she'd pay well to have someone come mow her yard. No big, right? But we got there, and she kept having us do more and more stuff. Trim the hedges. Trim the sidewalks. I don't even remember what all we did, but it took us an entire morning to do it. Three hours. At the end of it, she gave us $5.00. Not $5.00 each, she gave us $5.00 and said that that was the most she'd ever paid for yard work and wasn't about to start paying more now. So, yeah, we did a lot of stuff like that to earn the money we needed, but we managed to pull it off (and find a chaperon) and went to the conference. It was great!

That's kind of what our high school church experience was like.

I worked in the gym at church doing recreation stuff. It was a job I ended up earning in part due to that trip. I worked in the after school programs and I worked in the summer programs and I worked all the time. I was at church a lot. Bob didn't live that far away and, especially during the summers, he'd come up and hang out in the rec office with me. A lot of the teenagers came up, but Bob was there the most. He'd play DJ while I worked; we sort of collaborated together on music a lot and were always on the leading edge of what was new in Christian music to the point of being told some of the Christian music we brought in wasn't Christian enough. Like, we could get away with White Heart (barely), but Petra was a battle for a while. A lot of the music we discovered had its roots in that conference we went to.

Worth mentioning: One day while he was getting the music stuff set up  in the office, he went to plug in the tape deck and got blasted across the office into the opposite wall. I was standing about three feet away from him; there was a blast of blue light and a tiny sound of thunder, and he just slammed into the opposite wall. Yeah, that's the kind of events we had together.
Yes, I do have stories about D.C.

We grew up. I went off to college, and he got a job. About the time I moved back to Shreveport, he joined the Air Force. By the time he was back, I'd moved to California. Eventually, we reconnected on Facebook. Of all of my friends from my teen years and, even, my college years, he was the one I stayed most in touch with. He bought a signed copy of The House on the Corner for his daughter. He said he loved it and that he especially loved it because it had so much of Shreveport in it, especially Barksdale AFB, where he worked.

Back when I was overly addicted to Facebook games, we talked a lot. He'd IM me to chat when he saw me online. We did some of the games together and stuff. Eventually, though, the FB games were being too much of a distraction to me, and I started cutting them out. The cutting kept going until I'd cut all of them out. The last time we talked, which was over a year ago, he IM'd me to see if I wanted to play some new game, a game which looked like something I would like but which I knew I didn't have time for, so I kind of hedged and told him I'd take a look at it but I didn't think I'd have any time to play. In fact, I knew I wouldn't have time to play, because I was taking a stance against anything that distracted me from writing, but I didn't have it in me to just say "no, I'm not gonna play that."

I hate, now, that that was the last conversation we had. I was busy. And I was. So much so that I hardly ever even logged onto FB. And, so, I missed that he was having some kind of health issues. Not that he posted a lot about it, but I didn't even know that there was an issue. I wasn't around for him to talk to. It had been over a year since we'd talked at all when I got the message that he was dead.

And here's the thing: I don't understand. I mean, you can kind of understand when a teenager commits suicide, because, in a certain sense, they don't know any better. They don't yet know that things will get better, that things won't always be bad, so, when a teenager takes his/her own life, it's not necessarily something that is the teenager's fault. It's why we have a juvenile system. They're not old enough, yet, to "get" it. But an adult... And, AND! an adult with kids, three of them, like me. I just don't understand.

How do you get to that place? Not just a place where things seem so bad that you don't think you can go on, but a place that's so bad that you're willing to be entirely selfish and not think about what it is you're going to do will do to your children. I do not understand.

But I'd really like to understand. I want to know what he was going through. I do know bits and pieces, but I've only found those things out after the fact. I didn't know them when I might have been able to do something, to step in. I want to know what it was in his life that he thought was so bad that he would leave his kids, kids he loved, and I know he did, because he bragged about them all the time. To me, he especially talked about how much his oldest daughter liked to read.

This is the kind of thing that both baffles and scares me. I knew him. I would never have thought he would have done anything like this. Never. So I want to know what it is that could have brought him to a place where he would take his own life. What could have been that bad? Because I can't imagine anything that would take me to that place other than actually losing my children. But he hadn't lost his, and, now, they have to figure out how to go on living knowing that their father left them behind.

And there's nothing I can say to them. I don't even know them, but, if I did, there would be nothing I could say to explain what happened or make it better.

All I have is this:
I know that life can get bad. It can be dark. It can be horrible. It can seem as if all the light in your world is gone, and, maybe, it is all gone, BUT! But it won't stay gone. Life is change. Things will get better again. Ride it out. Hold steady in the storm. Don't give in to despair and give up before you know the outcome. Get help. GET HELP! Don't keep the darkness locked inside.

I have other friends doing their own battles with darkness. Some of them only talked about what they were going through because of Bob. All I know is that I don't want to hear about more friends doing what Bob did. I don't want more friends ending their lives without me ever getting to see them again. Not that I know if I will ever see any of my old friends again, but I know I will never see Bob again, and that fills me with an abiding sadness.

So, if there are any of you out there that need someone to talk to, need someone to reach out a hand, need someone to help you shine light into the darkness, find someone. If you don't think there is anyone else, you can email me. I'll do my best to connect you with someone that can help if I can't. Just don't let it pull you down until you can't find your way back out. Just don't.

On the, comma (or Don't Tell Me When To Breathe)

Oh, the comma, that bane of punctuation. But, first, a story:

A woman, a blond, if you must know, needed to have her hair done. She called around to find out if there was anywhere that would do her hair while she was wearing headphones. Finally, after calling a dozen or so places, she found one, and she went in. However, the hair stylist was surprised to find the woman wearing  actual headphones rather than earbuds, which is what she had expected. Who still wore actual headphones?

She said to the woman, "I can't do your hair while you're wearing those."

"You said on the phone that you could."

"Yes, but I thought you meant earbuds."

"What's an earbud?"

The hair stylist just blinked at the blond woman with the headphones on. They stared at each other for several awkward moments until the stylist said, "Look, can't you just take those off long enough for me to do your hair?"

The blond woman became instantly irate, "No! I can never take them off! Never!"

They stared at each other some more.

Finally, the blond said, "Can't you just work around them?"

Shrugging, the stylist said, "I can try."

The blond took her seat in the chair, and the hair stylist went to work. But it was more difficult than she thought it would be, and the piece of metal going across the woman's head was in the way, and the large pads on the woman's ears were in the way, and the stylist kept wondering what could be so important that the woman needed to leave the headphones on for. When she'd had about as much "working around them" as she could take, and the blond woman looked rather like she'd dozed off, the stylist thought, "Surely, I can move them just for a moment to get this last bit and put them back on before the woman even knows I've moved them." So she pulled the headphones back from the woman's ears.

Immediately, the woman began gasping and clawing at her throat and she fell to the floor and resembled nothing more than a fish that had been spilled from a fish bowl.

In a panic, the stylist called 9-1-1, and the ambulance came, but it was too late, and the blond woman was dead. The ambulance took the woman away after asking many questions about what had happened. The police came and asked more questions about what had happened, then they went away, too. After everyone was gone and just the poor hair stylist was left alone, she saw the headphones lying on the floor up under the chair where they had been forgotten by everyone. She picked them up, finding that they were still attached to the old fashioned walkman with an actual cassette tape in it.

Overcome by curiosity, she put the headphones on and pressed the "play" button. This is what she heard:

"Breathe in... Breathe out... Breathe in... Breathe out... Breathe in..."

At this point, you might be wondering what that has to do with commas, and you'd probably be correct to wonder that, but it does relate, so just give me a moment. (Mostly, though, I just think it's funny.)

Commas! Why are commas so difficult? Really, why are they? There's one fundamental reason that they've become such a difficult piece of punctuation to figure out. People are confused by what they do and what they're for. Those are two completely separate things, but, because they do this one thing, people have come to think that's also what they're for when it's not at all what they're for. What they do is merely a byproduct of what they're for.

Have I confused everyone yet?

Before I go on, let's talk about what a comma does, because this is what causes all the problems, especially the problem that I hate so much, the comma after the conjunction. See, what a comma does is to tell people where to pause in their reading. Or, as everyone likes to call it, where to take a breath (as if people mostly read out loud, when, in truth, people hardly ever read out loud). What happens, then, is that writers start throwing in commas where they would pause if they were saying their sentences out loud. This leads to commas in places where they don't belong as in the sentence, "But, he went home." That sentence shouldn't have any comma, but, for some reason, people want there to be a pause there, so they throw that comma in to indicate the pause.

So here's the thing: don't tell me when to breathe! No, really, don't do it. For one thing, the vast, VAST majority of my reading happens in my head, so I don't need any help with breathing when I'm doing that. For another thing, I, um, know how to breathe. Really, I don't need your help, and, if I did, I'd probably have a larger problem than what a comma could fix.

Also, don't try to tell me how to read. If your writing is good enough, you don't need to tell me how to read your sentences, the sentences will lead me in the reading. So don't try to tell me how I should go about reading the sentences you write. If I can't figure it out, there's either something wrong with my reading ability (and there's not) or you need to work on your writing some more. Or you're just being totally anal about the whole thing and want people to only read the same way you do, and that's just not okay.

And that takes us to what a comma is for. A comma is meant to convey meaning. As it is with adverbs, the comma is to provide clarity, or, in the words of wikipedia: "...the comma is used where ambiguity might otherwise arise..." See, this has nothing to do with telling the reader where s/he should take a breath. That kind of advice is just for music and swimming as far as I know (because, well, it's not good when you take a breath when your face is in the water).

Now, I'm not going to go through all the specific uses of the comma, because, frankly, there are just too many, and most of you are probably loosely acquainted with them, anyway. And some of them are optional and use the word "may" (as in "you may use a comma with a long prepositional phrase"), and that can lead to all sorts of confusion, because how do you know when you should or not? What I will say is this: if your comma doesn't add to the meaning of the sentence, you probably don't need it. By that I mean, if there could be confusion without the comma, you should have one. Unless you need a semicolon instead, but that's another issue, and I'm not going into that, right now (just know that almost all of you (and I don't mean you you, I mean people you, because people hardly even know what that little guy is called anymore) out there need to learn how to use the semicolon. He is your friend and should not be so overlooked).

However, I will mention one comma usage rule that everyone should go learn, because this is the most common error I see. Yes, even more than that stinking comma after a conjunction, and I think this is the one that causes that particular confusion anyway. Adverbial phrases should always be set apart by commas. Um, did I say always? Because I mean always. If you've written your sentence, which contains an adverbial phrase, correctly, you can pull that phrase (or dependent clause) right out of the sentence and still have a sentence remaining. It shouldn't mean the same thing without the phrase (because, if it does, you don't need that phrase to begin with), but you should have an intact sentence (you know, with a subject and a predicate (a verb)) remaining. This is the important thing, so pay attention:
Adverbial phrases, without the commas to set them apart from the rest of your sentence, can easily become entangled in your sentences and cause confusion. That's why adverbial phrases need a comma on both sides.
[One other note: there are some adverbs that always require commas, but it's really because they act as adverbial phrases all by themselves. You should learn these words. There really aren't that many of them.]

Here are some examples of correct ways of punctuating adverbial phrases:

• <adverbial phrase>,<independent clause>, <conjunction> <independent clause>. OR <adverbial phrase>, <independent clause> <conjunction> <dependent clause>.
• <independent clause>, <adverbial phrase>, <conjunction> <dependent or independent clause>.
• <independent clause>, <conjunction>, <adverbial phrase>, <independent clause>. OR <independent clause> <conjunction>, <adverbial phrase>, <dependent clause>.
• <independent clause>, <conjunction> <independent clause>, <adverbial phrase> OR <independent clause> <conjunction> <dependent clause>, <adverbial phrase>.

As you can see, I could go on with those for... well, quite a while. But that should give you an idea of the basics. Of course, you have to know the difference between an independent and a dependent clause, which I'll have to talk about at some point, but, really, that's a basic thing, and, if you don't know, you should go back and chastise every English teacher you ever had for not drilling that into your head. Or flog yourself for not paying enough attention in class.

It all looks and seems so much more complicated than it actually is; that's all I can really say about it. But, if you look at the above sentence structures, you may be able to see what causes these common mistakes:
<independent clause>, <conjunction> <adverbial phrase>, <some clause or other> -- The conjunction is NOT part of the adverbial phrase, so there NEEDS to be a comma between the conjunction and the phrase so that the phrase can be "lifted out."
<independent clause> <conjunction>, <some clause or other> -- This one is just wrong. That comma ALWAYS comes after the independent clause and you shouldn't have one after the conjunction unless there is an adverbial phrase (or a long prepositional phrase). [If you have a word like "however," there should be a semicolon involved, but we're not getting into that, right now.]

But let's make it even easier, because easier is better, right? Do this:
Write without any commas. After you've finished your section or whatever or waited a few days, gotten some distance from what you've written, or, even better, get someone else, go back and read through it and look for places where the writing is confusing. If it's confusing, there's a good chance you need a comma. Or commas. Look for places where the comma dispels ambiguity, not places where you want your reader to breathe.

As one final note, I will say this:
The Internet and texting are in the process of changing comma rules once again. We use them less, mostly, because we write shorter, less complex sentences. Personally, I use more commas than I specifically need to when I write, because I tend to put them in everywhere they're "supposed" to go. You know, by following all of the comma rules. However, I would say that the only real rule you need to know is "Commas are for meaning not for breathing." If you get that down, you should be okay. If the comma doesn't add to the clarity of the sentence, take it out. If not having one causes confusion, put one in. And watch your adverbial phrases, because they run into your clauses and cause confusion. You might know what you mean, but there's a good chance your reader will get confused.
In the end, too many commas are better than not enough as far as meaning goes, so, if you're not sure, put that comma in there. As long as you're not telling me to breathe!

Morality Police

So... this is going to be kind of a different post for me. Only kind of, though. My wife thinks I should leave the topic alone since this really isn't what my blog is about, but I will relate it to what my blog is about at the end so as to take care of that issue as much as I can. I want to state that I am not making a statement about any group in particular, so this is not a religious attack or a political attack or anything like that. It's about certain kinds of people, and they cover the spectrum of groups. This is a behavior, though, that infuriates me wherever I see it, and, since I see a lot of it in the publishing industry, I'm going to go ahead and talk about it.

A couple of months ago, I was listening to the radio. I'll point out here that I generally listen to the local Christian radio station; I just can't deal with secular radio in large doses, because it's all the same superficial crap, and, even though I like songs here and there, overall, it kind of turns my stomach. I just don't need that many songs about sex. At least not in the way pop music talks about it. Sure, some of the Christian stuff is superficial, too, but at least it's superficial in a way that's trying to say something more than "I want your sex."

Anyway...

It was a Sunday night, and I was heading to the grocery store. Sunday night is a non-music time on the station, but the grocery store isn't very far, so I didn't feel like trying to find something else to listen to or digging out a CD because I'd be there by  the time I found something else. They were having a special broadcast about the growing issue of human trafficking. Don't get me wrong, I'm against human trafficking. Owning people is not okay, and requiring of people to do things against their will is even worse (no, I'm not talking about your job, because you do have your job because you are choosing to have your job). But the guy said two things that really pissed me off:

1. The number of people in slavery today is the highest it's ever been in history.
Okay, this may be true, and I haven't tried to look this up, but I would bet the percentage of people in slavery is, if not the lowest, close to the lowest it's ever been. This is taking a fact and twisting it to say something that doesn't really reflect the truth, and that always bothers me. It's just not okay to misrepresent facts to make your point. I don't care who you are or how worthy your cause. Just don't do it!


2. "Jesus wouldn't stand for this" (if he was here today).
I don't care how bad human trafficking is, this is just a false statement, and it's this guy projecting what he believes into some inaccurate view of who Jesus was and is. Historically, whether you accept the Bible as historical fact or not, you can see that Jesus did, in fact, stand for human trafficking. Slavery was a norm in his day, and he never took a stance against it. In fact, he said of the slave "obey your master." If Jesus didn't take a stance against human trafficking while he was on the Earth previously, why would he take a stance against it today? The statement this guy made is blatantly false and meant to cause an emotional reaction in his audience to achieve his own goals. And I don't care, at that point, if his goals are good because what he's doing is wrong.

And this kind of crap is all over the place these days in all kinds of forms, and it just makes me sick.

First of all, although I believe all people should be free, not all people believe that all people should be free including some people who are slaves. It is still common practice in many parts of the world for people to sell themselves into slavery of their own free will. How can I come in and tell a guy, just because I believe it's wrong, that he shouldn't sell himself into slavery. He shouldn't sell someone else into slavery (unless that person is voluntarily submitting), but me trying to tell him he's wrong in his own choice is as bad as selling someone into slavery against his will. My job is not be the morality policeman.

In fact, it is no one's job to be the morality police, and I'm tired of people trying to take that upon themselves. I'm tired of it from politicians, and I'm especially tired of it from various religious quarters (not just in the USA) but most especially from people that call themselves Christians. To Christians, I can only say  go read your Bible and show me where Jesus said for his followers to be the Morality Police for the world. Really, if you think it's your job to tell me how I should be living my life, go look. Do it now. While you're doing it, I'll go about living my life, because you're going to be gone a long, long time, because it's NOT in there!


Jesus said three things that are important. Okay, wait, he said a lot more than three things that are important, but he said three things that have direct bearing on this and are probably the most important things he said. First, when asked by the Pharisees (the religious legalists of the day) what was the most important of the commandments, He answered with something that's not quite one of the commandments (not that it's not, but it's not stated as explicitly anywhere else as the way Jesus states it):
1. Love God with your whole being. [This is not the quote. This is a simpler paraphrase of the quote.]
This is thing that Jesus is saying is the most important thing that we humans can do. Nowhere in that statement does it say to go out and tell other people how they ought to be behaving and what they should be doing or how they ought to be loving God.
Then he said the second thing following right on the heels of the first thing:
2. Love your neighbor [love your fellow man] as yourself.
And here is where the Golden Rule comes from: treat other people the way you yourself want to be treated. Now, I'm just saying here, but most people don't like to be beaten over the head all the time and told how they should act. That means don't try to make it illegal for me to eat yams just because you don't like them. Also, don't try to legislate that I need to eat lobster just because you do like it. Leave me to not eat any lobster. More for you.
The third thing he said later:
3. People will know who my followers (Christians, hypothetically) are by their love.
By their LOVE. And I just don't see a whole lot of love coming from the Right these days. Or from the Left for that matter. Treating people with love does not include calling them names on television or taking them out back and beating them near to death or any number of other things that happen on a regular basis these days. STOP doing that crap!

I want to be clear, here, that I am not aiming what I'm saying here just at Christians (I am one); these problems are fairly endemic; however, I hold Christians to a higher standard because, supposedly, they have someone that left them pretty explicit instructions on how to live and how to behave, and if they would just read the book they say they follow they might learn a few things. People who are not Christians did not have someone leave them a book of instructions on how to behave, and, yet, somehow, they often behave better than Christians do. What was it Gandhi said, "I would be a Christian except for Christians"? That is one of the saddest things I've ever heard in my life. I bet he'd read the book!

Jesus set us to be EXAMPLES, not enforcers. It's not our job, it's not anyone's job, to make people behave in a certain way. It is only our job to live in such a way as to be an example to other people as to what might be a better way to live. The government and the law have the responsibility to enforce behavior, and that should be limited to keeping us from doing things to other people against their will. Things like:
Don't speed, because you might have an accident and kill someone.
Don't kill someone.
Don't take other people's stuff.
Really, the law is here to reinforce that whole "treat other people the way you want to be treated."
Yes, I know I said "Jesus" set us to be examples, because that part was aimed at Christians that think they should be out enforcing their own personal version of the truth, but, really, that's how we should all live. Set an example by living a life that other people can admire, not going around whacking people with sticks when we think they've crossed some line they don't see or believe exists.

The only time we have the right to get involved in how someone else is living their life is if that person is inflicting his/her will on someone else against that person's will. In those cases, it's not even that we have the right to get involved, but we should get involved. So, if you see someone beating the crap out of someone else, you should have the moral imperative to get involved. Then you have the right to tell someone to stop behaving in a particular manner. If there's a question as to whether whatever is happening is happening voluntarily, find out, but, generally speaking, I think it's pretty easy to tell when someone needs to be stopped from doing something to someone else. Don't stand by and let the old pervert take the little boy into the shower (I'm sorry, but  the more that comes out about that man and how many people didn't say anything...).

But I said all of this relates to publishing, and you're probably wondering, at this point, how in the world could any of this relate to publishing and writing and, yes, even reading, but it does! Because traditional publishers and agents and all of those people spend their time treating writers just like all of these religious people and politicians trying to force us to live by some code that we don't necessarily buy into.
1. Don't use adverbs.
2. Don't use prologues.
3. Don't write more than 80,000 words.
4. Don't self-publish!
5. E-books are bad! (Unless they're from us and we're charging you more for them than physical books. And, while you're at it, why don't you just give us some more free money.)
They, the traditional publishers, are the same kind of bullies as all these politicians on TV calling people names for believing something that doesn't feed into what they want you to believe. For believing something that gives you the power instead of them. Because, yes, telling me, as a writer, that I shouldn't have the freedom to self-publish my book or that I am "bad" for doing so is just like telling a woman that she is wrong for wanting to use birth control. I don't need some rich publisher somewhere telling me that I shouldn't have the freedom to make my own choices, especially when what they want is to make me a slave against my will.

But, you know, for those of you out there that want and are choosing to sell yourself and your book into slavery to a big publisher, that is your right and choice to do so. I hope it works out for you.

All of this comes down to freedom. People in power don't really like "regular" people to be free. Politicians don't like it. Religious leaders don't like it. Big publishing houses don't like it. They want us all lined up submitting to slavery, and they most often don't really care if it's voluntary or not. But, you know, the Declaration of Independence has that great statement in it that liberty, that freedom, is a Right. Within that, I suppose, is the freedom to submit to chains from other people or to elect people that will bring out more and more chains for all of us, but, really, growing up in a land where freedom is held in such esteem, I can't understand why anyone would want to go back to being a slave. Be free! And, what's more, allow other people to be free, too!

No more Morality Police.

Random Rant

I'm going to let you all in on a little secret. I can be obnoxious. I mean really obnoxious. And I don't mean the kind of fun obnoxious; I mean the kind of obnoxious that makes you want to hit said obnoxious person. Mostly, these days, I have that under control. It's taken a long time, though.

For instance, when I "discovered" music when I was in high school, I dominated music everywhere I went. Except, you know, that crap they play in elevators and department stores, and the only reason I didn't was because I didn't know how to go about changing it. I carried a tape deck with me all the time, rarely using headphones. I sang along with the radio when I was on the phone pretty much throughout high school. I took control of radios and tape decks in my friends' cars without regard to what anyone else might want to hear. I'd even make people sit in their cars long enough to finish whatever song was on, even if it was on a tape.

No one ever (and has never) said anything to me about my behavior. In fact, I kind of became the music guy, and people just let me do that. They knew I'd have music to listen to when, generally, they'd forgotten to bring anything. It was years before I realized that there was anything wrong with the way I behaved. It makes me wish someone had said something to me about it back then, especially about the singing on the phone. It's more than a little bit embarrassing at this point in my life.

So... not obnoxious because I was trying to be or trying to be funny, just obnoxious because I was obnoxious. The other really obnoxious behavior I had back then (in high school) was correcting people when they were wrong. Especially with grammar. And I don't mean when I was in a conversation, because that's somewhat acceptable, but I would pop into conversations completely independent of myself and correct people. Ob. Nox. Ious.
But, again, just trying to be helpful. And I didn't realize, at the time, that people didn't really appreciate that sort of thing. See, I was kind of under the impression that people would be grateful for being corrected. I mean, I don't like being wrong, so, if I say something that's wrong, and you point it out to me, I tend to be more like, "oh, I didn't know that. Thanks!" Other people... not so much. Not a way to win friends and influence people.

Fortunately, I did wise up (mostly) by the time I was out of high school.

I did say mostly. Because I'm about to unleash a little bit of obnoxious.

I hate (HATE) the way people misuse the word "random." HATE IT! Did I mention that I hate it?

There are these constant posts titled things like "5 Random things on a Friday" or those blog awards that say to list "7 Random Facts" about yourself. Oh! My! Gosh! These things are NOT random! NOT NOT NOT!

Maybe I wouldn't be so sensitive to this if I didn't live with a teenager who fancies himself to be random. And he's totally not. I can see it in his face when he's trying to be random. We'll be talking about something, and he will pause, thinking, and, then, pop out with something about a completely different topic. But, you see, he stopped to think about it. Weighed it. Made a judgement about what would seem the most random thing he could say and, then and only then, said it. That whole process takes all the random out of it. I lost track of the number of conversations we had with him over a couple of years explaining all this to him. He's finally stopped doing that. Just in time for his younger brother to begin fancying it. >sigh<

I really don't understand the worship of "random" currently running through our culture. It's as if something is made inherently better by being random. The problem being that none of these things are, actually, random. But why do we even want them to be?

I have quit following more than a few blogs due to the overuse of these "5 Random Things" posts. Things that were clearly related to each other, immediately cancelling any randomness. Or introduced by "here are some thoughts I was having." Again, NOT random! Or "here's what I did last night." NOT RANDOM!!! If it's not going to be random, don't call it random!

I think, though, my favorite are the awards that say to list some "random" things about yourself. How many people do that? My guess: none. Because, before anyone lists anything on those things, they decide what they want people to know and list only those things. Nothing listed is random. In fact, other than Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, not a lot in life is random. Even things that may seem upon casual inspection to be random. But that gets a little metaphysical, and I don't want to go there. The thing is, if you really want to list random things about yourself, you'd have to make out a list of all the things about yourself (or a gosh darn lot of them) and then choose randomly (and blindly) from the list and print whatever came up. The good and the bad. Not really sure we have a lot of people willing to do that.

Maybe the problem is that people don't know what random means? So... here I am, breaking in on conversations all over the blogosphere, correcting everyone, releasing the obnoxious inside. Here is what random means:

random: proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern

I just want to point out the word "reason" in the above definition. Seriously, how much do you do without reason being involved in some way? Well, okay, maybe that is valid for teenagers, especially the ones in middle school, but still... It certainly doesn't apply to anyone sitting down to write a blog post. Reason immediately begins its work to help you formulate your thoughts and get them down on paper, so to speak. So, for the LOVE OF GOD, stop using the word "random" just to make it sound like you didn't put any thought into your post! This isn't college where the freshman girls are showing up to class completely made up while trying to look like they just woke up that way. No! This is junior year where everyone (everyone!) rolls out of bed 5 minutes before class and drags themselves across campus in sweats or whatever they could conveniently get into and not get kicked out of class for indecent exposure. Stop TRYING to be random! The fact that you're TRYING negates the whole thing!

Okay, rant over. I guess. Man, it feels good to get that off of my chest. I'll put the obnoxious back in the box, now.

And, now, for something completely random...
Oh, wait... I mean "and, now, it's time for something completely different." But that's a topic for another conversation.

If you're still here after all of that, I've been interviewed over at Cally Jackson Writes. Yes, she has put me in her hot seat. You should hop over there and check it out!

Before I go, I do want to remind everyone about the Pay It Forward Blogfest. There's still time to get signed up for it if you click the linky I left. I'll be posting my three picks on Friday... once I figure out what they are. It's the whole "under the radar" part that makes this difficult for me, so I'll be hopping around to the blogs I follow over the next couple of days trying to determine which ones I think fit the description the best.

Those darn tabs!

I finally sat down this past weekend and figured out how to add additional pages to my blog, and, let me just tell you, it's completely non-intuitive! To make it worse, blogspot has undergone some changes since their help pages were created, and they've never been updated. It's so totally not helpful to get a screenshot of a page with options that don't exist anymore! However, I muddled through it, and I've added my very first additional page! Yea!

Not to cover what's on  that page, but... One of the things I've been missing about my blog page is my list of favorites. But, although I love looking at people's lists, I kind of hate those lists, too. I mean, it's like having someone ask you what's your favorite ice cream and just listing off all the flavors at Baskin Robbins. I wanted to make mine different. I tried, before, with that list gadget. I was trying to make my list but add something short about why that particular thing was on the list, but, well, that didn't really work, so I scrapped that idea.

Then, I was going to do a post about it, but that doesn't work, either, because, you know, you want that to be the kind of thing that people can access whenever they want, but, if it's a post, it becomes old and gets buried. So making it a separate page was really the only way I could see of doing it.

It just took a while to figure out.

But, now that I have, I have to figure out what to do with all of these pages I have available! Actually, it's not really all that many, so, although I originally planned for each topic: books, movies, television shows, music to have its own page, I decided it would be best if all of those things shared a page, instead. A really long page.

Anyway... I hope you find it interesting. Feel free to leave me comments here (on this post) if you have any about any  of the things I talk about over there in my "Of Significance..." tab.