Are Saturday morning cartoons still a thing? Not having TV, I have no way of knowing. Even if they are, they can't be the same, mean the same, as when I was a kid. Back when, basically, with the exception of a couple of after school shows, cartoons were really only available on Saturday mornings. We'd wait all week for those few hours of cartoons on Saturday mornings.
I used to get up early for them, too. Looney Toons came on at, like, 6:30am, and I didn't want to miss any of it, so I'd get up to watch it. Unlike my friends. I'd spend the night at my best friend's house, and I would be the only one up on Saturday morning. The rest of his family (and it was a big family (Cory was the youngest of 8 kids) would start getting up around 8:30-9:00, and there I'd be sitting on the floor in the family room watching cartoons. Cory was always one of the last ones up, too.
One of my favorites was Thundarr the Barbarian. Thundarr was created by the same guy that came up with Space Ghost, which I also loved. These were the 'toons that were at the tail end of my Saturday morning addiction, though. My real childhood cartoons were shows like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Super Friends, and Tom & Jerry. The cartoons of my childhood, my actual childhood, were decidedly "old school."
I was 11 when The Smurfs came out. Still into Saturday morning cartoons but focused on super heroes and the like. I never really got into any of the cutesy cartoon series that so marred the Saturday mornings of the 80s. But I had a 5-year-old brother, and he loved The Smurfs. No, I mean he really loved them. Generally speaking, I ruled the television set, but I wasn't able to override the watching of The Smurfs every Saturday morning. I hated them.
In fact, it may have been my dislike of the Smurfs that caused my initial break from the cartoons I loved so much. At some point not long into the run of that show, it's air time marked the time that I would go outside. I just couldn't sit through it to wait for whatever came after. Not that the stuff that came on after The Smurfs was really any better. My brother watched all that 80s stuff including Jem and Strawberry Shortcake. Thankfully, the stuff I most wanted to watch came on early in the morning before my brother was even awake.
It was with some amount of dread that I greeted the first trailer for the Smurfs movie. And, then, horror as my kids announced that they really wanted to see it. They didn't understand my antipathy toward those little blue... things and that horrible "song" they sang.
I knew I couldn't deal with taking them to see it in the theater. There was just no way I was going to pay money for that. But they didn't know that. And I didn't tell them. Instead, I allowed the movie to come and go without ever bringing it up. It came out at the tail end of the summer movie season after we'd already seen all of the "necessary" movies like Thor and Captain America, so I managed to get away with it.
My daughter saw the dvd on the shelf at Target while we were out Christmas shopping. Despite having been forewarned about asking to buy things for herself, she asked for that. I told her I'd rent it for them, but I was in no way going to buy that movie, so I set it into our line up on Netflix, and it came last week. I had no intention of watching it.
But that's not the way my kids like to do things. They like for me to cuddle on the couch with them and watch movies together. But I had a plan!
See, everyone else is on vacation. That doesn't extend to me. Not really. If a vacation is where you take a break from your regular routine, I was certainly not on one. I still had writing that needed doing, including the blog, food that needed cooking, and a dog that still needed to go out at 6:00am every morning. Vacation, however, means that everyone stays up later and sleeps in longer. Except me. Well, except me on the sleeping in bit. I'm sort of obligated to stay up later, but I still have to crawl out of bed (more like fall out and, then, crawl across the floor) at the same time that I always do. So I've been a little more tired than normal since I've been going on about 3 hours less sleep every night than I usually get.
Do you see the plan? Do you? It was sheer elegance in its simplicity. [Bonus points for anyone that can name the source of that quote/paraphrase without looking it up. Hint: I've talked about the origin of it sometime or other on this blog.] I would just put the movie in, cuddle up on the couch with them, and go promptly to sleep.
It almost worked.
I was asleep before we'd finished getting through the opening credits, which included a couple of smurfs riding on the backs of some birds with loads of smurfberries. It felt sooo good.
And, then, something happened.
I don't even know what it was, but something woke me up. And not far enough into the movie to be able to excuse myself from it because I didn't know what was going on. No. I woke up just in time for the actual plot to get going. Gargamel was rampaging through the smurf village which lead to a group of the smurfs going through a portal into New York City with Gargamel hard on their heels.
I really didn't want to watch that movie, but I couldn't get up. I was preparing myself for an hour of torture. Not that I haven't subjected myself to that kind of thing in the past to appease my children (see Happy Feet, or, rather, don't. Horrible, rotten movie. (I'm glad the sequel did so pathetically poorly)).
Something amazing happened. I enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed The Smurfs! It made me laugh! A lot!
First, there was Neil Patrick Harris. I was never a watcher of Doogie Howser, so I have no nostalgic liking of NPH; however, I greatly appreciate his ability to not just allow but to participate in people laughing at him. But he really got me with his portrayal of Dr. Horrible. [I was going to give you a link to go watch it, but, evidently, it is no longer available to watch free online. If you haven't seen it, though, I would strongly encourage it.]
There was also Jayma Mays. To be honest, she didn't bring anything unique to her part other than being cute, and that's not really all that unique. Especially in Hollywood.
But! But!
There was Hank Azaria. OH MY GOSH! I love Hank Azaria. He's like the Alec Guiness of this generation, but the funny version of Alec Guiness. In fact, I bet Azaria could do Guiness. At any rate, he was so good as Gargamel that I couldn't figure out who was playing the part. I had to look it up (well, have my wife look it up, because, as I said, I was stuck under two kids and a dog on the couch). Azaria's been in some... let's just say "not good" movies, but Azaria is always good. And he was awesome as Gargamel.
And I sat there on the couch with my kids, and I loved that movie. Not as much as they did, but still... it was a huge step for me and a reminder of the lesson to not have preconceived notions about things. My daughter is still on me about buying it for them. I'm even considering it. After all, she does have a birthday in the not too distant future.
I'm not saying that everyone out there should run out to see The Smurfs. I have a much greater ability to appreciate kids' movies than the average adult. Especially the average adult without kids. And it did have a few problems. Like a completely dropped subplot that seemed a bit significant when it was introduced. However, you might just be surprised by it. If you can get over the fact that it's about litlle 6" tall blue people with tails.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Best Presents of 2011
Here we are at the last Tursday of the year. But it's still a Thursday, so that means the new Tib story is up. The last one introduced the Man with No Eyes; this one is titled "The Man with No Eyes." Go check out all the evilness he's up to. Oh, yeah, and Michael, too.
Which brings us back to the last Thursday of the year... It seems that there are a lot of "year in review" type posts going up, so I'm just going to skip that one. There's really nothing I can add to those lists. Well, except for one thing, I published a book. Go buy it.
Oh, well, okay, fine. I also bought a house and got a dog, but, really, I published a book, and you should go buy it. Then, you, too, can be a part of my year.
Everyone is on vacation this week, which hasn't left a lot of time for writing. If I hadn't started this week's Tib story last week, I wouldn't have finished it for today. All of that to say that I don't have time for normal verbose post today. However, I will leave you with some images of the best presents from Christmas.
It was a mixed blessing where my daugher is concerned. Her favorite present was a sock monkey hat. We've had to return my daughter because of it. Yes, we no longer have the sweet, little girl we used to have. Now, we have:
My oldest child is into all sorts of geekery. As he says, "I'm so glad I belong to a family of nerds." Here's his reaction to his favorite present (picked out by me):
And the present:
For those of you that don't know, that's a sonic screwdriver, Dr. Who's "weapon" of choice.
The middle child was in all kinds of paradise. He got enough Legos to occupy two entire days of building. This is the prize in his collection, though:
If you don't know what that is, there's no hope for you. Not even from Obi-Wan Kenobi. His little Lego people were so happy, they through a party:
Yes, that is Santa Yoda you're seeing in there. And a Christmas tree.
Me? I got a jacket. Which I desperately needed. I was very happy to receive it, and my kids loved giving it to me. But for cool factor? I got this:
That makes ice cubes or chocolate bars. I think I'm going to start with Han Solo peppermint bark (no peanut butter, because, for all of his talk, my son still hasn't tried that out).
My wife got earrings, but I have no picture (that I'm allowed to post).
So... I hope you all had a very wonderful holiday. Of whatever variation you observe. Or don't observe.
Have a Happy New Year!!!
Which brings us back to the last Thursday of the year... It seems that there are a lot of "year in review" type posts going up, so I'm just going to skip that one. There's really nothing I can add to those lists. Well, except for one thing, I published a book. Go buy it.
Oh, well, okay, fine. I also bought a house and got a dog, but, really, I published a book, and you should go buy it. Then, you, too, can be a part of my year.
Everyone is on vacation this week, which hasn't left a lot of time for writing. If I hadn't started this week's Tib story last week, I wouldn't have finished it for today. All of that to say that I don't have time for normal verbose post today. However, I will leave you with some images of the best presents from Christmas.
It was a mixed blessing where my daugher is concerned. Her favorite present was a sock monkey hat. We've had to return my daughter because of it. Yes, we no longer have the sweet, little girl we used to have. Now, we have:
Monkey-Head!
If you notice the shirt, she sort of had a sock monkey Christmas.
My oldest child is into all sorts of geekery. As he says, "I'm so glad I belong to a family of nerds." Here's his reaction to his favorite present (picked out by me):
The middle child was in all kinds of paradise. He got enough Legos to occupy two entire days of building. This is the prize in his collection, though:
Me? I got a jacket. Which I desperately needed. I was very happy to receive it, and my kids loved giving it to me. But for cool factor? I got this:
My wife got earrings, but I have no picture (that I'm allowed to post).
So... I hope you all had a very wonderful holiday. Of whatever variation you observe. Or don't observe.
Have a Happy New Year!!!
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Let's go for a walk... Part 1: The Turkey Tree (or Why Stories Matter)
One of the things that's changed in the household since getting the dog
is the need for walks. Walks are a good time for allowing the dog to do her business (no picture available), but they are not for that purpose. She has special "potty breaks" in the mornings and evenings that are just for the purpose of taking care of said business, but she needs some real outside time, too, so that means walks. Beside the quick trips outside at 6am and 7pm (15 minutes or so each), she also gets at least one walk of at least one hour every day (some days she gets two) and at least one other potty break.
As I may have mentioned, we have a park right next to our house. Through the park, there is an entrance to the path by the creek that runs through town. My wife and I like to bike together on the path on the weekends and have been doing that for a few years. Previously, though, we had to bike to the path before we could bike on the path. The path is really nice, and the city does a pretty decent job on the upkeep of it. Having the creek path right there is very (extremely) convenient. Of course, one of the criteria we had in looking for a house was that it had convenient access to the creek path, so it's not a coincidence that we're in the house we're in.
One of the things I've learned from these walks is that my family doesn't do walks in quite the same way as most people do them. Mostly, this is my fault (I think). However, this post isn't about any of that, but I felt it needed saying at the outset, since it's what made me think of doing this series of posts. Part 2 will probably be about the troll bridge and the dragon crossing; then, you'll understand.
But back to this post:
Raise your hand if you would believe me if I told you that turkeys roost in trees. Yeah, I know. Me, too. That's a crazy suggestion, and I wouldn't believe me, either. That has about the same level of believability as if I told you that dogs can climb 10' tall chain link fences. Okay, not all dogs, but one particular dog that I used to know. But that's a different story. At any rate, when presented with a blunt fact like that, it's often less than believable.
So let me tell you a story:
This happened back in the middle of November when it was still light enough when my wife got home from work to get the whole family out on the evening dog walk. Make a note of the fact that this was prior to Thanksgiving. Not that it's exactly important to the story, but it, in my mind, at least, it makes it more interesting.
Whoever has the dog goes first. Not because there's a rule or anything, but the dog sort of insists on being out in front. Generally, that person is me. [Especially back in the first weeks after we got her when she was still trying to eat every bike and jogger that passed us.] This actually results in a weird yo-yo effect, because she stops to smell things and dig and stuff, so the family group will pass the dog by while she's busy. Once they've reached whatever distance ahead of her that she deems is "too far," she makes a mad dash to catch up, so whoever is holding the dog (me) has to run (and I do mean run -- this is no jogging doggy) to catch up and, then, pass the family group by at least 20' to 30' before she can slow down again.
So, on the day of the walk, I was out in front with Tessa. We were rounding a curve in the trail. Off to the left, behind a fence, was a field area, and, in the distance, a great white bird rose up out of the nearly knee high grass and flew up into a tree on the other side of the curve. Tessa is kind of into chasing birds, so she started running to get to where the bird was. But, like I said, it wasn't a straight shot, because we were on the curve, and we had to go around to where the bird was, which meant losing sight of it.
We got around the bend, and Tessa began looking for the bird. She's not really very good at searching for things in trees (except squirrels), though, so she got busy sniffing the ground for it. However, I was curious as to what kind of bird we'd seen, so I was looking up in the trees while we waited for everyone to catch up. And, then, I saw it. It was a big, white turkey sitting on a branch up in the tree.
Just a word about turkeys: we have wild turkeys that roam around our city. Just last week, my wife and I saw a fairly large flock of them roaming around the train tracks just a few blocks from downtown. Wild turkeys are not at all like what Americans usually think of when we think of turkeys. We think of the grossly obese birds we eat for Thanksgiving. Wild turkeys are not these turkeys. So this turkey up in the tree wasn't some huge blob of meat waiting to be eaten. When I say it was big, I mean that it was big in that it was 3-4 times the size of a crow.
I stood there in a state of amazement. Not only had I never seen a turkey in a tree before, but I had never even entertained the thought of turkeys in trees. And it wasn't just the one turkey, either. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom of the gathering dusk, I saw that there were a couple of other, smaller, turkeys up in the branches, too. They were more typical adorned in grey and brown, so they were a lot harder to see than the white one. As I watched, another turkey flew up into the branches.
I ran back down the trail yelling for my family to hurry up and catch up to us. I had something amazing to show them. I turned back around and ran back to the tree. The dog was really confused by all this back-and-forthing. She knew there was something to be excited about, but she couldn't figure out what. After all, there were no squirrels that she could see. Right?
My family finally caught up to me. My daughter, first, because she's the most willing to run. We all gawked at the turkeys up in the tree... after I made the kids scoot back so that they weren't right under them. I figured no one needed a mouth full of turkey poop. We watched several more turkeys join the others until there were about eight turkeys roosting in the tree.
We eventually tore ourselves away from the weirdness of the flock of turkeys up in the tree, but I went back looking for them everyday for about a week. I really wanted a picture of them up in the branches, but we've never found them up there again, and I didn't have my camera with me that one time we saw them. Not that I would have been able to get anything usable; it was too dark.
That tree is a landmark on our walking path, now: the Turkey Tree. Here are some pictures of the bare branches. Bare of turkeys, that is.
Now, you probably all believe that turkeys roost in trees. Why? Because the story gives the statement validity. This is an example of a true story backing up a fact, but all of this holds for fiction, too. Our stories give validity to the fictions we write about. It's what allows people to get drawn in and become apart of our worlds. And it's what makes people from history real to us today. Or people from our lives have real pasts. Like my kids great-grandfather and how he once lost $50,000 in the ocean. That's one of those statements that makes you go, "No way. You're lying." But when you hear the story... well, another time, maybe.
As I may have mentioned, we have a park right next to our house. Through the park, there is an entrance to the path by the creek that runs through town. My wife and I like to bike together on the path on the weekends and have been doing that for a few years. Previously, though, we had to bike to the path before we could bike on the path. The path is really nice, and the city does a pretty decent job on the upkeep of it. Having the creek path right there is very (extremely) convenient. Of course, one of the criteria we had in looking for a house was that it had convenient access to the creek path, so it's not a coincidence that we're in the house we're in.
One of the things I've learned from these walks is that my family doesn't do walks in quite the same way as most people do them. Mostly, this is my fault (I think). However, this post isn't about any of that, but I felt it needed saying at the outset, since it's what made me think of doing this series of posts. Part 2 will probably be about the troll bridge and the dragon crossing; then, you'll understand.
But back to this post:
Raise your hand if you would believe me if I told you that turkeys roost in trees. Yeah, I know. Me, too. That's a crazy suggestion, and I wouldn't believe me, either. That has about the same level of believability as if I told you that dogs can climb 10' tall chain link fences. Okay, not all dogs, but one particular dog that I used to know. But that's a different story. At any rate, when presented with a blunt fact like that, it's often less than believable.
So let me tell you a story:
This happened back in the middle of November when it was still light enough when my wife got home from work to get the whole family out on the evening dog walk. Make a note of the fact that this was prior to Thanksgiving. Not that it's exactly important to the story, but it, in my mind, at least, it makes it more interesting.
Whoever has the dog goes first. Not because there's a rule or anything, but the dog sort of insists on being out in front. Generally, that person is me. [Especially back in the first weeks after we got her when she was still trying to eat every bike and jogger that passed us.] This actually results in a weird yo-yo effect, because she stops to smell things and dig and stuff, so the family group will pass the dog by while she's busy. Once they've reached whatever distance ahead of her that she deems is "too far," she makes a mad dash to catch up, so whoever is holding the dog (me) has to run (and I do mean run -- this is no jogging doggy) to catch up and, then, pass the family group by at least 20' to 30' before she can slow down again.
So, on the day of the walk, I was out in front with Tessa. We were rounding a curve in the trail. Off to the left, behind a fence, was a field area, and, in the distance, a great white bird rose up out of the nearly knee high grass and flew up into a tree on the other side of the curve. Tessa is kind of into chasing birds, so she started running to get to where the bird was. But, like I said, it wasn't a straight shot, because we were on the curve, and we had to go around to where the bird was, which meant losing sight of it.
We got around the bend, and Tessa began looking for the bird. She's not really very good at searching for things in trees (except squirrels), though, so she got busy sniffing the ground for it. However, I was curious as to what kind of bird we'd seen, so I was looking up in the trees while we waited for everyone to catch up. And, then, I saw it. It was a big, white turkey sitting on a branch up in the tree.
Just a word about turkeys: we have wild turkeys that roam around our city. Just last week, my wife and I saw a fairly large flock of them roaming around the train tracks just a few blocks from downtown. Wild turkeys are not at all like what Americans usually think of when we think of turkeys. We think of the grossly obese birds we eat for Thanksgiving. Wild turkeys are not these turkeys. So this turkey up in the tree wasn't some huge blob of meat waiting to be eaten. When I say it was big, I mean that it was big in that it was 3-4 times the size of a crow.
I stood there in a state of amazement. Not only had I never seen a turkey in a tree before, but I had never even entertained the thought of turkeys in trees. And it wasn't just the one turkey, either. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom of the gathering dusk, I saw that there were a couple of other, smaller, turkeys up in the branches, too. They were more typical adorned in grey and brown, so they were a lot harder to see than the white one. As I watched, another turkey flew up into the branches.
I ran back down the trail yelling for my family to hurry up and catch up to us. I had something amazing to show them. I turned back around and ran back to the tree. The dog was really confused by all this back-and-forthing. She knew there was something to be excited about, but she couldn't figure out what. After all, there were no squirrels that she could see. Right?
My family finally caught up to me. My daughter, first, because she's the most willing to run. We all gawked at the turkeys up in the tree... after I made the kids scoot back so that they weren't right under them. I figured no one needed a mouth full of turkey poop. We watched several more turkeys join the others until there were about eight turkeys roosting in the tree.
We eventually tore ourselves away from the weirdness of the flock of turkeys up in the tree, but I went back looking for them everyday for about a week. I really wanted a picture of them up in the branches, but we've never found them up there again, and I didn't have my camera with me that one time we saw them. Not that I would have been able to get anything usable; it was too dark.
That tree is a landmark on our walking path, now: the Turkey Tree. Here are some pictures of the bare branches. Bare of turkeys, that is.
Now, you probably all believe that turkeys roost in trees. Why? Because the story gives the statement validity. This is an example of a true story backing up a fact, but all of this holds for fiction, too. Our stories give validity to the fictions we write about. It's what allows people to get drawn in and become apart of our worlds. And it's what makes people from history real to us today. Or people from our lives have real pasts. Like my kids great-grandfather and how he once lost $50,000 in the ocean. That's one of those statements that makes you go, "No way. You're lying." But when you hear the story... well, another time, maybe.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Stealing Science
Another Thursday... and we all know what that means, right? Well, by this point, I hope so. Except not today. What? What am I even talking about at this point?
Well, unfortunately, there has just been no time to get the next Tib chapter written up this past week. I guess it's a good thing I'm not getting a grade on it. heh Except I don't have my creative writing kids today, anyway, because they're having a big Christmas party, so I'm not letting any of them down. Which is NOT why I didn't get it written up for this week. It is, after all, all in my head. I just didn't have time to write it down. So to speak. Since I wouldn't be doing any real writing.
Just know that, right now, Tib is sitting oblivious in class at school NOT waiting for Christmas break but waiting to see his friend Officer Williams after school at the diner. He's having a hard time focusing, because he's worried about his mother and what he's going to say to the cop. He'd have an even harder time if he knew that Fred Williams had encountered the Man With No Eyes.
In other news, we went to the California Academy of Science in San Francisco this past weekend. It's one of our favorite places to go. My kids love it, and there's always stuff to see. Even the stuff we've already seen. Really, we just can't spend enough time there to get to see everything as much as we want to see it. Right now, they have reindeer. Live reindeer. That was pretty cool, and I'd love to tell you all the things we learned about them, but that's not what this post is about. I will, however, show you a picture:
Anyway...
We took the kids to the gift shop this time, which is something we never do. I hate gift shops. They're full of (mostly) cheap crap that is way overpriced. Like movie theater concessions. Which I do love, but that's because the "butter" they put on the popcorn in movie theaters is addictive. It's so addictive that it can get you just be its scent, which is really not fair, since it's highly impractical to only go to the movies when you have a cold and can't smell the popcorn. Not that we ever buy popcorn at the movies, because it had to go at the same time we gave up sugar, but I still want to buy the popcorn at the movies. I suppose it's a good thing I don't actually get to go to more movies.
But I digress...
So we took the kids to the gift shop, because we never take them there except to look. And we'd prefer not to do that, because looking always leads to asking and asking leads to begging and begging leads to, well, unpleasantness and that leads to the dark side. If you have kids, you know what I'm talking about. But this time... this time we were prepared to buy them something. You can only put it off for so long, and, on our last trip to the Academy, we finally broke down and said "next time." This was "next time."
One of my issues with the Academy gift shops (they have 3 (no, don't ask me why they need to have 3 different gift shops in the same building, but they do)) is that they are full of rocks. Sure, they're pretty rocks, but they're still rocks, and my daughter always wants to buy them. I don't know why, but I have something against buying rocks. Maybe, it's because there are plenty just laying around outside. Sure, they're not as pretty as the ones in the gift shops, but, I'm sure, if she looked hard enough, she could find some good ones. And for free. Yes, my daughter chose to spend her money on rocks. But that's still not what this post is about.
My younger son is really into building things. And robots. He hasn't started building robots, yet, but we're waiting for that to happen. If only we could afford to get him the Lego Mindstorm set, we'd have little Lego robots all over the house, so, maybe, actually, that's a good thing. He found this robot kit that was within the budget we allowed him, and I really wanted him to get it. However, that was not to be. Because the gift shop had Hex Bugs. Or, more specifically, Hex Bug Nanos. In the end, he and his brother pooled their money to buy a glow-in-the-dark Nano habitat. My issue with that was that he could have gotten that at Target, and I would rather have had him buy something that he couldn't get at Target. Like the robot kit. But that's still not what this post is about.
[And with that, I have to go pick up my kids from school, so you'll just have to hold your breath until I get back. Don't worry; if you pass out, you'll start breathing again on your own. I have it on good authority, at any rate. I've never tried that myself. Why flirt with death, you know? I've heard he doesn't take to that very well.]
Okay... and... we're back! Or, at least, I am. I'm just assuming you guys are still out there. Hopefully, still conscious.
So... stealing science... that's where all of this is going. Of course, it's not real science. It's just gift shop stuff. And there's a lesson to be learned here.
While at the gift shop, my younger son was playing with a butterfly finger puppet. We were there for a while, because my daughter doesn't make her shopping decisions as quickly as the boys do. So he has this big box of Nano habitat and a finger puppet. He thought he put the finger puppet back. And I never knew I had it. At some point, while still waiting for my daughter to make her decisions, we sent the boys off to use the restroom, since we were heading back home as soon as we were finished in the gift shop. They passed their loot to me, and I carried it around with me along with a few things for my niece and nephew. Once my daughter finally had her rocks picked out (because she would not be dissuaded), I took her stuff and sent her off to go to the bathroom, too. Along with my wife. I went to pay. I placed all of the items up on the counter, and the cashier rang them all up. I never saw a butterfly finger puppet anywhere in there. Neither did the cashier.
However, when we got home and were unloading everything from the bag, there was a butterfly finger puppet in the bottom of it. Presumably, the same one that my son had been playing with. He felt horrible. I did not. I figure it was like one of the real butterflies in the rain forest there in the Academy. They can, sometimes, try to hitchhiker out of the biome on the backs of the guests, and they have people at the exist to make sure you aren't carrying any tiny passengers. None of us know how the butterfly got in the bag. Maybe it wasn't even the same butterfly my son had been playing with. But he handed the stuff off to me, and I handed all of the stuff off to the cashier. I watched her ring it all up, and I watched her put it all into a bag, and I never saw a butterfly. The main thing is that it wasn't the fault of my son.
The butterfly now lives on our Christmas tree.
And, now, the real point to all of this:
As writers, sometimes, ideas, other people's ideas, work their way into our writing without us knowing about it. And, you know what, that's completely okay. A million different stories can be written about the same idea. I'm sure it's a million, because I'm sure that there are at least a million stories out there about little orphan boys. Or orphan girls. Orphans. They're really popular. Just ask Disney about it. Sometime, we get really hung up about discovering that someone else has used the same idea we've used, and our impulse to trash our idea and go look for a new one. Sort of like my son getting upset about the butterfly. Because he thought he stole it. Yes, we didn't pay for it, but stealing takes intent, and there was no intent on the part of anyone to take away anything that didn't belong to us. But, sometimes, these things happen. Like ideas working their ways through our thoughts and minds.
And, then, they come out when we don't expect them to. Like the butterfly.
But, you know, it's okay to use the same ideas as other people. No, you don't want to take their stories, but it's hard to get away from ideas. Especially when ideas sort of permeate society and people will often have the same ideas even though they live thousands of miles apart and have never met. Like the Professor in that Giligan's Island movie where they finally return to civilization and he's found that all the things he invented while on the island have already been invented. Fortunately, books are more complex than just things, so it's really unlikely that more than one person is going to come up with the exact same story.
So... don't be afraid to embrace the butterflies that hitch a ride in your thoughts. Make them parts of the stories in your head, and don't be ashamed of it. If you ever think you ought to be, just look out there at all of the stories about orphan boys. Or orphan boys with an unknown heritage. Just to give a brief example of how that one small idea can be turned into stories that are vastly different, I'll give you some names: Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Garion.
And, as an added bonus, just to show Briane Pagel that he's not the only one to ever think that having dinosaurs on your Christmas tree is a good idea:
There are more, but I've certainly gone way over my picture allotment for this post (since that's, well, zero), so I'll stop here and wish you all a Merry Christmas.
Well, unfortunately, there has just been no time to get the next Tib chapter written up this past week. I guess it's a good thing I'm not getting a grade on it. heh Except I don't have my creative writing kids today, anyway, because they're having a big Christmas party, so I'm not letting any of them down. Which is NOT why I didn't get it written up for this week. It is, after all, all in my head. I just didn't have time to write it down. So to speak. Since I wouldn't be doing any real writing.
Just know that, right now, Tib is sitting oblivious in class at school NOT waiting for Christmas break but waiting to see his friend Officer Williams after school at the diner. He's having a hard time focusing, because he's worried about his mother and what he's going to say to the cop. He'd have an even harder time if he knew that Fred Williams had encountered the Man With No Eyes.
In other news, we went to the California Academy of Science in San Francisco this past weekend. It's one of our favorite places to go. My kids love it, and there's always stuff to see. Even the stuff we've already seen. Really, we just can't spend enough time there to get to see everything as much as we want to see it. Right now, they have reindeer. Live reindeer. That was pretty cool, and I'd love to tell you all the things we learned about them, but that's not what this post is about. I will, however, show you a picture:
Anyway...
We took the kids to the gift shop this time, which is something we never do. I hate gift shops. They're full of (mostly) cheap crap that is way overpriced. Like movie theater concessions. Which I do love, but that's because the "butter" they put on the popcorn in movie theaters is addictive. It's so addictive that it can get you just be its scent, which is really not fair, since it's highly impractical to only go to the movies when you have a cold and can't smell the popcorn. Not that we ever buy popcorn at the movies, because it had to go at the same time we gave up sugar, but I still want to buy the popcorn at the movies. I suppose it's a good thing I don't actually get to go to more movies.
But I digress...
So we took the kids to the gift shop, because we never take them there except to look. And we'd prefer not to do that, because looking always leads to asking and asking leads to begging and begging leads to, well, unpleasantness and that leads to the dark side. If you have kids, you know what I'm talking about. But this time... this time we were prepared to buy them something. You can only put it off for so long, and, on our last trip to the Academy, we finally broke down and said "next time." This was "next time."
One of my issues with the Academy gift shops (they have 3 (no, don't ask me why they need to have 3 different gift shops in the same building, but they do)) is that they are full of rocks. Sure, they're pretty rocks, but they're still rocks, and my daughter always wants to buy them. I don't know why, but I have something against buying rocks. Maybe, it's because there are plenty just laying around outside. Sure, they're not as pretty as the ones in the gift shops, but, I'm sure, if she looked hard enough, she could find some good ones. And for free. Yes, my daughter chose to spend her money on rocks. But that's still not what this post is about.
My younger son is really into building things. And robots. He hasn't started building robots, yet, but we're waiting for that to happen. If only we could afford to get him the Lego Mindstorm set, we'd have little Lego robots all over the house, so, maybe, actually, that's a good thing. He found this robot kit that was within the budget we allowed him, and I really wanted him to get it. However, that was not to be. Because the gift shop had Hex Bugs. Or, more specifically, Hex Bug Nanos. In the end, he and his brother pooled their money to buy a glow-in-the-dark Nano habitat. My issue with that was that he could have gotten that at Target, and I would rather have had him buy something that he couldn't get at Target. Like the robot kit. But that's still not what this post is about.
[And with that, I have to go pick up my kids from school, so you'll just have to hold your breath until I get back. Don't worry; if you pass out, you'll start breathing again on your own. I have it on good authority, at any rate. I've never tried that myself. Why flirt with death, you know? I've heard he doesn't take to that very well.]
Okay... and... we're back! Or, at least, I am. I'm just assuming you guys are still out there. Hopefully, still conscious.
So... stealing science... that's where all of this is going. Of course, it's not real science. It's just gift shop stuff. And there's a lesson to be learned here.
While at the gift shop, my younger son was playing with a butterfly finger puppet. We were there for a while, because my daughter doesn't make her shopping decisions as quickly as the boys do. So he has this big box of Nano habitat and a finger puppet. He thought he put the finger puppet back. And I never knew I had it. At some point, while still waiting for my daughter to make her decisions, we sent the boys off to use the restroom, since we were heading back home as soon as we were finished in the gift shop. They passed their loot to me, and I carried it around with me along with a few things for my niece and nephew. Once my daughter finally had her rocks picked out (because she would not be dissuaded), I took her stuff and sent her off to go to the bathroom, too. Along with my wife. I went to pay. I placed all of the items up on the counter, and the cashier rang them all up. I never saw a butterfly finger puppet anywhere in there. Neither did the cashier.
However, when we got home and were unloading everything from the bag, there was a butterfly finger puppet in the bottom of it. Presumably, the same one that my son had been playing with. He felt horrible. I did not. I figure it was like one of the real butterflies in the rain forest there in the Academy. They can, sometimes, try to hitchhiker out of the biome on the backs of the guests, and they have people at the exist to make sure you aren't carrying any tiny passengers. None of us know how the butterfly got in the bag. Maybe it wasn't even the same butterfly my son had been playing with. But he handed the stuff off to me, and I handed all of the stuff off to the cashier. I watched her ring it all up, and I watched her put it all into a bag, and I never saw a butterfly. The main thing is that it wasn't the fault of my son.
The butterfly now lives on our Christmas tree.
And, now, the real point to all of this:
As writers, sometimes, ideas, other people's ideas, work their way into our writing without us knowing about it. And, you know what, that's completely okay. A million different stories can be written about the same idea. I'm sure it's a million, because I'm sure that there are at least a million stories out there about little orphan boys. Or orphan girls. Orphans. They're really popular. Just ask Disney about it. Sometime, we get really hung up about discovering that someone else has used the same idea we've used, and our impulse to trash our idea and go look for a new one. Sort of like my son getting upset about the butterfly. Because he thought he stole it. Yes, we didn't pay for it, but stealing takes intent, and there was no intent on the part of anyone to take away anything that didn't belong to us. But, sometimes, these things happen. Like ideas working their ways through our thoughts and minds.
And, then, they come out when we don't expect them to. Like the butterfly.
But, you know, it's okay to use the same ideas as other people. No, you don't want to take their stories, but it's hard to get away from ideas. Especially when ideas sort of permeate society and people will often have the same ideas even though they live thousands of miles apart and have never met. Like the Professor in that Giligan's Island movie where they finally return to civilization and he's found that all the things he invented while on the island have already been invented. Fortunately, books are more complex than just things, so it's really unlikely that more than one person is going to come up with the exact same story.
So... don't be afraid to embrace the butterflies that hitch a ride in your thoughts. Make them parts of the stories in your head, and don't be ashamed of it. If you ever think you ought to be, just look out there at all of the stories about orphan boys. Or orphan boys with an unknown heritage. Just to give a brief example of how that one small idea can be turned into stories that are vastly different, I'll give you some names: Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Garion.
And, as an added bonus, just to show Briane Pagel that he's not the only one to ever think that having dinosaurs on your Christmas tree is a good idea:
and
Merry Christmas!!!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Unexpected Applause: The Fourth Wish
My latest Unexpected Applause piece is The Fourth Wish by Elizabeth Varadan. Along with my own views on the book, I am going to add in my younger son's (middle child), since he fits the target audience. And he's having a different experience with the book than I did, so I think it will provide a more rounded picture. Just a note about my son (for those of you that may have missed me talking about this stuff previously): he's the most well-read 10-year-old I've ever known (or heard of). It's not just that he reads a lot (he does), but he's very eclectic in his reading choices. He's read Kafka (how many adults can say that?), Dumas, and RL Stevenson (more Stevenson than me, actually). He's also read Eddings, Douglas Adams, and (currently) Zahn. All of that to say that his view is worthwhile not just because he's in the target audience but because he has a good spread of prior reading material to base it on.
Let's deal with the technical stuff first. Grammar and editing. Fun. But it wasn't too bad. Especially for a piece that wasn't done professionally. The biggest (real) issue is that there are places where there's a word missing here and there. Those always throw me. [I can't complain about this too much, though, as I know of at least one spot in The House on the Corner where I have a missing word (actually, it's just a missing letter, but it changes the word. So far, no one else seems to have noticed).] It can be a hard job to catch all of those things in your own work, and, overall, it's not too bad. There are some comma errors, especially when the author chose to begin a sentence with a conjunction and follow it immediately with a comma when there wasn't a dependent clause present, i.e. "But, I wanted to." When there is just the one independent clause following a conjunction, a comma should not be there. This is one of those pet peeves I have, so I found those annoying. Still, as the only real (consistent) grammar error in the book, I can't complain about that one, either (I mean, more than I am). The only other issue is the author's use of question marks in many places when the sentence is not interrogative. I actually asked her about these, and she said they were purposeful, to show the inflection of the speaker, but I found them more confusing than anything. [I'm waiting to see how my son reacts to them as they are more prominent toward the end of the book, and he is still shy of half.] If I was grading the book (which I sort of am), I'd give it a B on its technical merits, which is pretty good, I'd say.
The story is where I ran into some problems. But, then, it may just be a function of being about 30 years past the target audience. I was unable to engage with the story and the characters. My son, however, is fully engaged. This is one of those stories where the status quo becomes disturbed, and the characters spend the rest of the story trying to put things back the way they were. Possibly, while learning a lesson or two along the way. Mostly about appreciating what you have or being satisfied with your circumstances because they're not as bad as they could be. The vehicle for this is wishes...
I'll make an example of the magic show at the beginning of the book. Once the first wish is made, I found the magic show to be predictable and cliche, but my son loved it. And I don't really want to give any of it away, so I'll leave it at that.
I suppose I'll just say what didn't work for me:
The second wish seemed to just arbitrarily fail. Yes, the wish was supposed to fail so that things good get more messed up, but, really, it wasn't significantly different from wish that fixed everything, so that bothered me.
Daisy's Doughnuts. The whole place just seemed to be yanked out of the 50s, so it just didn't seem right to me. Plus, the kids, inexplicably, bring Christmas gifts to "Daisy;" although, they don't seem to have any special relationship with her that would warrant that.
Speaking of Christmas, the revelation that it is Christmas comes quite a bit farther into the book than I was comfortable with. It took me by surprise, and I had to readjust my view of what was going on in the story.
There's no real motivation for several of the primary characters. At least, none that I could fathom. Especially for Mrs. Seraphina.
And what did work for me:
The relationship between Arthur and Cory and the way they interact with Melanie (even if there wasn't a reason behind the whole "Scorpion Queen" thing (sorry, but that's the kind of nickname you want to know where it came from)).
Melanie's diary and her collection of postcards from her dad.
The struggle of a single mom trying to raise her kids while she's off working all the time and the pressure that puts on the oldest child.
Mostly, though, the story just never came together for me. Not that it was a struggle to read (I mean, there were no feelings of dread any time I stepped near the book like there was with that Turtledove novel I talked about a while back); it wasn't. I just felt like I was back where I started from when I finished and that nothing significant had happened. Now, that may not actually be true if there is to be a sequel, but, as it is, nothing significant happened.
But! See, my son, he likes the book. When I gave it to him, I just told him to read the first few chapters to see what he thought about it. I sort of expected him to give the book back to me and tell me he didn't like it. But, instead, when I asked him about it, he said, "I like it. You're not... you're not going to take it back, are you?" Because it's my book, and he thought I was only letting him read three chapters. It made me laugh. But the book is laying next to his bed, and, I'm sure he'd be finished with it already if he wasn't reading two other books when I gave it to him.
All of that to get to the point:
I think this is probably an above average middle grade book as long as you're one of those middle graders. From an adult perspective, I see it as a pretty typical story, and it didn't thrill me, but my son thinks it's a lot of fun. I'd certainly recommend it for anyone in the 8-12 range. As far as I can tell, it ought to appeal fairly equally to boys and girls. It has a female lead, but my son is enjoying it just fine, so I don't think the central female character is too off-putting for boys.
For a comprehensive grade, I'd give it a C+ to a B-. Currently, I'm leaning toward the C+, but that could change based on my son's final evaluation. Heck, if my daughter likes it, it could go up to a B. At any rate, if you have or know kids that like to read and are in the age range, it's a book worth checking out. If nothing else, it should be fun for them.
And then you can listen to them go on about how to go about getting 5 ka-billion doughnuts for themselves!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Blahgfest Humbug!
So... today is the day of the infamous
being hosted by the Grumpy Bulldog himself.Today being Thursday, December 15. At least it is as I write this; although, I can't say with any certainty that this will get posted on Thursday. I suppose we'll see. It's just been one of those weeks where I haven't had time to get everything accomplished, so this may well bleed over into Friday.
Anyway...
I really love Christmas. It was a magical time when I was a kid and one of only two times in the year when I was pretty certain that I would get to see all of my cousins and family. That being as it is, the task of coming up with 12 things I don't like about the holidays seemed a pretty daunting task. If my wife hadn't started throwing out ideas, I may not have been able to do it. By the way, she says that she gets credit for at least half of this post.
heh
12. The United States Postal Service: I had to go to the post office this morning on business unrelated to shipping anything. But I had to wait in line anyway. There were about two dozen people in line when I got there. One postal worker. Yes, one postal worker. I was there early (not by choice), and they are always busiest right after they open, so you'd think they'd plan ahead about things like that, but, no, it's the post office. People can wait in line. We should be glad to wait in line, in fact. This is why the post office isn't going to make it. It's not just the internet; it's because no one, and I mean no one, wants to go to the post office. The only place that might by worse is the DMV. Oh, gee, both government agencies...
Anyway... about halfway through the line, a woman got to the window with a big bag of parcels she needed to mail. At that point, they finally brought out a second postal worker. Not that that sped anything up, because the second person almost immediately got bogged down with some issue with a customer and was still with that same customer when I finally left. The post office is no one's idea of fun, but at Christmas, it's a very special kind of Hell. In fact, I think that is one of the levels of Hell.
The only reason that the Post Office is not higher on the list is that I pretty much avoid it. Today was one of those rare exceptions.
11. Wrapping: I do... I hate wrapping presents. Ever. Christmas just compounds the issue. The main reason is the waste. I understand that children love to open presents (it's part of the Magic), which is why I'm willing to do it. But I wish that presents for adults could just go unwrapped. They can be in the shopping bags. It serves sort of the same purpose. My wife tells me I'm just wrong.
Then there's the part of it where I'm spending a lot of time and effort on something that's just going to get ripped off in a matter of seconds. It's like making the bed. Why even bother? My wife tells me I'm just wrong about that, too.
Plus, I suck at wrapping.
10. Making room for the Christmas tree: I hate rearranging furniture. Part of that goes back to my childhood when my mom would decide every couple of months that the furniture needed to be rearranged for no good reason. This included moving the piano upstairs once. And another time moving the washer and dryer upstairs (so that they would be closer to my parents' bedroom). And all sorts of other things. At any rate, I hate the whole process of making room to bring the tree in which is just going to be undone when the tree goes back out.
9. Food: Not that I hate food, it's just that there's so much more of all the stuff you shouldn't eat being provided pretty much everywhere. It's like everyone becomes secret food agents: XX7 -- license to eat.
8. Time: This one is related to the food in concept. Time is finite. Stop trying to cram so many activities into the few weeks leading up to Christmas. It's not like time gets fatter at Christmas, unlike people (who gain up to 10 lbs the last 6 weeks of the year); there's not any extra to go around, so stop trying to cram so much into it. The events are just an excuse to offer up more food that no one needs, anyway.
7. Music: I hate to list this one, because so many other people did, but there's way too much bad Christmas music. And why do they play the same stupid songs over and over again. Does anyone over the age of eight like "Run, Run Rudolph"? Seriously. Stop playing all this crap. And, with a few exceptions, you can skip any artist's Christmas album. Mostly, these don't have anything to do with the artist; it's just the music industry moguls squeezing more bucks out of people while someone (>cough< Bieber) is popular. Compilations tend to be a bit better, because the artist picks a song s/he/they really like, and do just the one. You may get a few bad songs on a compilation, but you tend to get a few real jewels, too.
6. Money: There's not enough of it, and it becomes really apparent in the month of December. Let me give you an example of what December is like:
Back in the early 90s, the (then) owner of Marvel Comics tried to bankrupt the company. And he almost succeeded. It went like this:
Ghost Rider was an incredibly popular series, so he thought he could make more money if Marvel produced another six series just like it.
The Punisher was an incredibly popular series, so he thought he could make more money if Marvel produced another three or four Punisher titles.
The Uncanny X-Men was immensely popular, so he thought he could make more money by throwing an X into the title of anything and everything that wasn't Ghost Rider, The Punisher, or Spider-Man.
The problem was (and is) that the pie was only so big. Increasing the number of titles Marvel produced, especially all at once, didn't increase the size of the pie, it just meant that people had to start buying different pieces. It didn't make people happy, and Marvel imploded, along with the rest of the comic market, in the mid-90s.
Christmas is like that. The pie, like time, doesn't get fatter just because it's Christmas. We budget for presents all year to make sure we have those covered, so it's not the presents I'm talking about. It's all those other things that people want to convince you to spend your money on just because it's Christmas. Just stop. I don't want jingle bell earrings nor do I know anyone I want to buy them for. Maybe once my daughter has her ears pierced that will change, but, then, we'll have that budgeted into presents.
5. Telemarketers and charities: Stop calling my house! See the previous entry. Not only do I not have extra Christmas money laying around; in fact, I have less. Because of all the other extra expenses that pop up this time of year. Like the heating bill.
4. Controversy: I'm not coming down on one side or the other on the whole "is Christmas a religious or a pagan holiday" thing. The truth is it doesn't matter. I'm just tired of people arguing over it. This is supposed to be the season of goodwill toward men no matter from what angle you come at it, so everyone should just act like that and let other people celebrate the way they want to. Personally, I don't put an X in my mas (I wouldn't want Marvel coming after me), but if other people want to, for whatever reason, go ahead. This country is supposed to be about freedom and freedom of expression, but, most of the time, everyone spends their time acting worse than my kids. (Yes, I'm looking at you democrats and republicans.)
3. People: They're everywhere. Here's the thing about people, and this has been proven, meaning there have been actual studies done around this phenomenon, and it has been shown to be real, is that the more of them you put together in one place, the lower the collective IQ goes. People are stupid enough as it is; we don't really need large gatherings to bring down the intelligence even more. And this includes the roads. I hate driving anywhere during December, because driving also does something to intelligence. Or entitlement. Or something.
2. Commercialization: Really, it's getting to the point where the only way my family can celebrate the holiday the way we want to celebrate it is to avoid it. Or, at least, the way it's presented out there in the world. Whatever happened to the season of giving? Oh, yeah, that's right; we've turned it into the season of buying. That's all it's about anymore. Buy BUY BUY! And then go out and but some more. And take your family out to eat a few times while you're busy buying. See how all of this stuff flows together. But the pie still isn't any bigger.
1. Length: When I was a kid, Christmas started the day after Thanksgiving. It was like a law. Like the blue law. It restricted when Christmas stuff could be sold. Not the blue law, that just meant you couldn't buy stuff on Sunday, but the Thanksgiving/Christmas law was like that. You could go into a store the day before Thanksgiving, and it would be just like any other day of the year. The day after Thanksgiving, it was transformed into a Christmas wonderland. Like Magic. It was wonderful.
Now? I hate (HATE) seeing Christmas decorations out on the shelf with all the Halloween stuff. It's just wrong. And there's no magical transformation of, well, anything anymore. It's all just this long process from the beginning of October through the end of November until it's all there in December. No magic for the kids. No anticipation. No waiting to go look at all the wondrous Christmas displays. It makes me sad.
The thing is, it's really just this one thing that I hate about the holidays. Except that this has happened because of the whole commercialization thing. I could drop numbers 3-12 completely off the list, in all reality, because, although annoyances, I can deal with them. But these last two... they kill my spirit. Christmas should be a time of joy and generosity and MAGIC. And we've taken that all away.
So... there's my list. I haven't made it through all of the others, yet, but I will try to get to them all over the next couple of days.
Merry Christmas!
being hosted by the Grumpy Bulldog himself.Anyway...
I really love Christmas. It was a magical time when I was a kid and one of only two times in the year when I was pretty certain that I would get to see all of my cousins and family. That being as it is, the task of coming up with 12 things I don't like about the holidays seemed a pretty daunting task. If my wife hadn't started throwing out ideas, I may not have been able to do it. By the way, she says that she gets credit for at least half of this post.
heh
12. The United States Postal Service: I had to go to the post office this morning on business unrelated to shipping anything. But I had to wait in line anyway. There were about two dozen people in line when I got there. One postal worker. Yes, one postal worker. I was there early (not by choice), and they are always busiest right after they open, so you'd think they'd plan ahead about things like that, but, no, it's the post office. People can wait in line. We should be glad to wait in line, in fact. This is why the post office isn't going to make it. It's not just the internet; it's because no one, and I mean no one, wants to go to the post office. The only place that might by worse is the DMV. Oh, gee, both government agencies...
Anyway... about halfway through the line, a woman got to the window with a big bag of parcels she needed to mail. At that point, they finally brought out a second postal worker. Not that that sped anything up, because the second person almost immediately got bogged down with some issue with a customer and was still with that same customer when I finally left. The post office is no one's idea of fun, but at Christmas, it's a very special kind of Hell. In fact, I think that is one of the levels of Hell.
The only reason that the Post Office is not higher on the list is that I pretty much avoid it. Today was one of those rare exceptions.
11. Wrapping: I do... I hate wrapping presents. Ever. Christmas just compounds the issue. The main reason is the waste. I understand that children love to open presents (it's part of the Magic), which is why I'm willing to do it. But I wish that presents for adults could just go unwrapped. They can be in the shopping bags. It serves sort of the same purpose. My wife tells me I'm just wrong.
Then there's the part of it where I'm spending a lot of time and effort on something that's just going to get ripped off in a matter of seconds. It's like making the bed. Why even bother? My wife tells me I'm just wrong about that, too.
Plus, I suck at wrapping.
10. Making room for the Christmas tree: I hate rearranging furniture. Part of that goes back to my childhood when my mom would decide every couple of months that the furniture needed to be rearranged for no good reason. This included moving the piano upstairs once. And another time moving the washer and dryer upstairs (so that they would be closer to my parents' bedroom). And all sorts of other things. At any rate, I hate the whole process of making room to bring the tree in which is just going to be undone when the tree goes back out.
9. Food: Not that I hate food, it's just that there's so much more of all the stuff you shouldn't eat being provided pretty much everywhere. It's like everyone becomes secret food agents: XX7 -- license to eat.
8. Time: This one is related to the food in concept. Time is finite. Stop trying to cram so many activities into the few weeks leading up to Christmas. It's not like time gets fatter at Christmas, unlike people (who gain up to 10 lbs the last 6 weeks of the year); there's not any extra to go around, so stop trying to cram so much into it. The events are just an excuse to offer up more food that no one needs, anyway.
7. Music: I hate to list this one, because so many other people did, but there's way too much bad Christmas music. And why do they play the same stupid songs over and over again. Does anyone over the age of eight like "Run, Run Rudolph"? Seriously. Stop playing all this crap. And, with a few exceptions, you can skip any artist's Christmas album. Mostly, these don't have anything to do with the artist; it's just the music industry moguls squeezing more bucks out of people while someone (>cough< Bieber) is popular. Compilations tend to be a bit better, because the artist picks a song s/he/they really like, and do just the one. You may get a few bad songs on a compilation, but you tend to get a few real jewels, too.
6. Money: There's not enough of it, and it becomes really apparent in the month of December. Let me give you an example of what December is like:
Back in the early 90s, the (then) owner of Marvel Comics tried to bankrupt the company. And he almost succeeded. It went like this:
Ghost Rider was an incredibly popular series, so he thought he could make more money if Marvel produced another six series just like it.
The Punisher was an incredibly popular series, so he thought he could make more money if Marvel produced another three or four Punisher titles.
The Uncanny X-Men was immensely popular, so he thought he could make more money by throwing an X into the title of anything and everything that wasn't Ghost Rider, The Punisher, or Spider-Man.
The problem was (and is) that the pie was only so big. Increasing the number of titles Marvel produced, especially all at once, didn't increase the size of the pie, it just meant that people had to start buying different pieces. It didn't make people happy, and Marvel imploded, along with the rest of the comic market, in the mid-90s.
Christmas is like that. The pie, like time, doesn't get fatter just because it's Christmas. We budget for presents all year to make sure we have those covered, so it's not the presents I'm talking about. It's all those other things that people want to convince you to spend your money on just because it's Christmas. Just stop. I don't want jingle bell earrings nor do I know anyone I want to buy them for. Maybe once my daughter has her ears pierced that will change, but, then, we'll have that budgeted into presents.
5. Telemarketers and charities: Stop calling my house! See the previous entry. Not only do I not have extra Christmas money laying around; in fact, I have less. Because of all the other extra expenses that pop up this time of year. Like the heating bill.
4. Controversy: I'm not coming down on one side or the other on the whole "is Christmas a religious or a pagan holiday" thing. The truth is it doesn't matter. I'm just tired of people arguing over it. This is supposed to be the season of goodwill toward men no matter from what angle you come at it, so everyone should just act like that and let other people celebrate the way they want to. Personally, I don't put an X in my mas (I wouldn't want Marvel coming after me), but if other people want to, for whatever reason, go ahead. This country is supposed to be about freedom and freedom of expression, but, most of the time, everyone spends their time acting worse than my kids. (Yes, I'm looking at you democrats and republicans.)
3. People: They're everywhere. Here's the thing about people, and this has been proven, meaning there have been actual studies done around this phenomenon, and it has been shown to be real, is that the more of them you put together in one place, the lower the collective IQ goes. People are stupid enough as it is; we don't really need large gatherings to bring down the intelligence even more. And this includes the roads. I hate driving anywhere during December, because driving also does something to intelligence. Or entitlement. Or something.
2. Commercialization: Really, it's getting to the point where the only way my family can celebrate the holiday the way we want to celebrate it is to avoid it. Or, at least, the way it's presented out there in the world. Whatever happened to the season of giving? Oh, yeah, that's right; we've turned it into the season of buying. That's all it's about anymore. Buy BUY BUY! And then go out and but some more. And take your family out to eat a few times while you're busy buying. See how all of this stuff flows together. But the pie still isn't any bigger.
1. Length: When I was a kid, Christmas started the day after Thanksgiving. It was like a law. Like the blue law. It restricted when Christmas stuff could be sold. Not the blue law, that just meant you couldn't buy stuff on Sunday, but the Thanksgiving/Christmas law was like that. You could go into a store the day before Thanksgiving, and it would be just like any other day of the year. The day after Thanksgiving, it was transformed into a Christmas wonderland. Like Magic. It was wonderful.
Now? I hate (HATE) seeing Christmas decorations out on the shelf with all the Halloween stuff. It's just wrong. And there's no magical transformation of, well, anything anymore. It's all just this long process from the beginning of October through the end of November until it's all there in December. No magic for the kids. No anticipation. No waiting to go look at all the wondrous Christmas displays. It makes me sad.
The thing is, it's really just this one thing that I hate about the holidays. Except that this has happened because of the whole commercialization thing. I could drop numbers 3-12 completely off the list, in all reality, because, although annoyances, I can deal with them. But these last two... they kill my spirit. Christmas should be a time of joy and generosity and MAGIC. And we've taken that all away.
So... there's my list. I haven't made it through all of the others, yet, but I will try to get to them all over the next couple of days.
Merry Christmas!
1/2 A Beer for the Shower
[This has been one of those weeks... you know the ones, where all of your time just sort of gets sucked away into a deep, dark abyss, swirling away into nothingness. Okay, well, it might not have been quite that bad, but it sure has felt like it. Today is the day of the Bah Humbug Blahgfest over at Grumpy Bulldog's, but my entry into that will be one day late, so make sure you come back tomorrow to find it. Also, being Thursday, today is the day for the new Tiberius chapter; it's the introduction of the man with no eyes. My wife says it's freaky, so make sure you click that little Tiberius tab up there and give it a read (and let me know what you think).
However, the big news today is that I have 1/2 of the A Beer for the Shower team over here for a guest post. We've been doing some chatting about writing and discovered that we have similar views about agents. His story is one of the reasons I have the views I do. Yes, I know this is not a representative sampling of agents, but it is a good example of why I don't like to have to put myself in a position of being dependent upon someone else. At any rate, Beer is one of those blogs of which I make sure I read every post. They're funny, irreverent, and offer a unique look at the world around us. Plus, they use pictures. Pretty colors. Oh, and they're totally not PC, which is kind of nice. If you don't already follow them, drop by and check them out. I'll see you in a few days... you know, once you've managed to drag yourself away from their archives of comics. And, with that, I'll turn you all over to Bryan (I do want them back in one piece, though, please :).]
Hi all, I’m Bryan, one half of A Beer for the Shower, and, in a recent post I put up, I mentioned how I got royally screwed over by an agent. The comics showed a brief, joking glimpse, but our friend Andrew wanted me to come here to tell the full story… so here I am.
Before I do, though, let me introduce myself. I’m a full time writer, in which I mean that I’m unemployed. In my free time, I draw crappy MSPaint comics in my “unemployment uniform” (aka my underwear) and post them up on Blogger for laughs.
I do all of this on a $200 netbook that’s way too slow for its own good. I like to call it my “Jewish laptop” because it’s so Jewish with its resources.
So now that you know a little bit about me, let’s begin. About 3 years ago, I had just finished my first novel, Demetri and the Banana Flavored Rocketship, a dark but funny comedy/drama (dramedy?) about a frugal slacker taking care of his autistic sister in a yuppie neighborhood where everyone hates his guts. I brought it with me to a writer’s conference, and got it in the hands of a prominent agent from a very prestigious literary agency. The agent, who I’ll call Bob, told me that my book was amazing; it made him laugh, it made him smile, and the ending even moved him to tears. He wanted to represent me, and he wanted to make sure that I never had to work at a regular job again. “You are a writer,” he told me, “and I’m going to make sure you do what you were put on this earth to do.”
These were heavy words from a well-respected man, and it lifted me to a high I’d never imagined; I was sold. I had achieved the most difficult part of writing, which was to find an agent. From then on, all that was left was for him to sell my book and me to start thinking about book tours, right…?
Not quite.
He flew back to New York and told me he’d start pushing out my book immediately. Months flew by, and I heard nothing from him. Something started feeling wrong, so I dropped him a quick e-mail just to ask what was going on.
He replied—one month later. He had pushed my novel out to only one small publishing house, and they said that they loved the novel, and were huge fans of the unique style of writing, but weren’t looking to buy anything at the moment. He said we’d keep trying, and he’d push out more submissions this time.
More time went by. One month became four, then five, then six. I began to e-mail him again, but got no response. I tried to call his office, and even his cellphone—numbers he gave me personally and said to use at any time—but he was always away at lunch (no matter what time of day I called). I had all but given up.
And then, after not hearing from him for 8 and a half months (and 1 year after he’d initially promised to sell my book), I magically got an e-mail from Bob the agent. It was a huge apology. “I’m sorry,” he wrote. “The past year has been so chaotic, and I’ve had a lot of personal problems. My father suffered a stroke and I went to be with him. I truly believe in your novel, and I want to get it out there, which I plan to do immediately.”
I wrote back and told him that I accepted his apology, and that I was happy to hear he was ready to pitch the novel. I told him to keep me updated of his progress. I was uplifted again, and in high spirits that I was going to finally get published…
That was a year and a half ago. I haven’t heard from him since. Believe me, I’ve e-mailed. I’ve called. I’ve left voice messages. …I’ve given up.
In the end, this agent’s empty promises have wasted almost 3 years of my time that I could have spent shopping my novel around somewhere else. What’s more, he screwed me over because no one knows who he actually submitted it to. Because of this, agents are afraid to touch my book, because let's say, for example, Bob sent it to Random House under his name. If another agent sends Random House that same book, then the new agent looks like a jackass. "Why are you sending me the same book twice, but from a different agent?" I can't win.
About 6 months ago I Googled Bob’s name to see what I could find, and sure enough, in the last year, a slew of people complained about him promising them publication, getting their hopes up, and then completely falling off the face of the earth. He is a flake, through and through, with a short attention span and a penchant for laziness; in the past 6 months the only thing he’s sold was that twat Bristol Palin’s ex-boyfriend’s tell-all-book, which, let’s face it, was already a guaranteed sell since everyone was all fighting over it anyway.
So what should you take away from this? For starters, I’m not saying to avoid agents all together. What I’m saying is that before you invest your time, and more importantly, your faith in an agent, research them heavily. Make sure they’re the right agent for you. Make sure they have a clean track record with clients; make sure they have open communication. Because just like there are bad writers out there, there are also plenty of bad agents who will ignore you, or forget about you, or jerk you around.
As for me, hope is not lost. Sometime soon I want to release Demetri and the Banana Flavored Rocketship as an ebook, and hey, even if it only sells 10 copies, at least it’ll get a chance to be read by someone that’ll enjoy it. That’s more than I can say about the promises I got from Bob the flaky agent.
Cheers, friends,
Bryan
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