If everything I need is at the local WalMart, why do I always leave empty-handed? They didn’t have my driveway melter, my facial scrub, my favorite underwear or a box of oatmeal. I wasted ten good minutes of my one hour lunch break time, and the result was a big zero.
The writers have reached an agreement with the entertainment industry, thank goodness. I genuinely feel for those folks who try to make a living by wordcrafting. It’s not like the less-shaky ground of working in an office, where you have a place to go and a cubicle to sit in, and your presence is usually sufficient to guarantee you a paycheck as long as you’re productive and don’t commit any professional indiscretions. I’ve written gratis for years, probably because I have a fear of getting paid for writing and suddenly finding myself in an unknown income bracket, with tax collectors breathing down my neck or stalkers waiting around the corner ready to poke a quill in my ear (hey, I saw Misery too, you know).
Not that I haven’t gotten recognition for my writing from various small venues over the years. They just don’t have awards shows and red carpets for “little” writers. I did get a fan appreciation award once for contributing to a newsletter with regular articles about current events. Once, a celebrity even took the time to respond to an article I’d written, which was one of my top ten emotional highs of all time. I didn’t feel I needed a paycheck for those moments.
Writing for a living must be mentally trying. Days and months of effort can result in no pay at all, a promise of publication can go south if market conditions change, and only a handful of novelists get to be as big as Stephen King (and the peak of that roller coaster ride has just as precipitous a drop on the other side).
Sure, when a writer produces a work, they should be paid for it if that is what they are doing as a profession: it doesn’t matter if the work appears on a flatscreen television, the Internet or a Dick Tracy wristwatch. Musical artists are having similar problems with compensation (which is why I still shop carefully and stick with tangible media like CDs for my fave artists).
Now that the writers are back, I’m looking forward to some quality stuff to come out. It will take time, though, because they don’t just sit in cubicles thinking up professional indiscretions to commit, you know.
The road is becoming more bizarre all the time. Sure there are the prima donnas who apply makeup behind the wheel, the cell phone addicts who stare out the windshield with their eyes slanted vertically because they’re sandwiching the thing between their shoulder and ear, and the Indy 500 wannabes who just have to get one car length ahead (until they get to the next “one car” up ahead). Sometimes, though, people earn undue attention by the accessories they put on their vehicles.
I don’t get the meaning behind those. . . .putting this in somewhat medically proper terms (hide the kids’ eyes). . . .trailer hitch testicles. Maybe you’ve seen them: plastic reproductions of dangling male gonads in natural, blue or red (I don’t even want to entertain the question why somebody opted for red as a color choice) that some folks sling under the doohicky knob that hooks up the camper. It’s a head-scratcher to me, and even more so when I get the chance to see the driver.
If it’s a woman, I wonder if the setup is a reference to some guy who done her wrong. If a man, I’m not as sure what gives with slinging yarbles from the back bumper; do modern humans like to display body parts in this manner? Is the driver claiming he has testicular fortitude? Even stranger, is he saying he has no need for ’em ’cause he’s got his SUV and a full QWERTY keyboard and, by gosh, that’s manly enough for him?
Maybe it’s just a trailer hitch tool disguised as man-oysters. I don’t know. What I do wonder is how some poor church-going mother would explain the setup to her little daughter while waiting for the light to change. “Oh dear, I guess he had a piece of plastic melt all over his trailer hitch, honey.” Maybe a funeral pyre is just the thing needed for this accessory from “Carz R Us.”
 | Eden on Getting the Message |
| Eden on The Unasked Questions |
| Eden on And Her Shoes Were #9 |
| Eden on The Poison Field |
| Eden on Final Tally |
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 