Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Author Archives: kayewer

• Do Away With Convention

  Posted at 2:28 am by kayewer, on September 2, 2012

  Our two major political parties sure know how to live it up.  A hurricane blew in to put a wet blanket over the Republicans in Florida, and they hardly missed a beat.  I wonder if the Democrats will at least get a good thunderstorm?

  Political parties supposedly hold conventions for one thing: to affirm the identity of the candidates for the presidency and vice presidency of this country.  The votes were cast in the primary elections, so really if each state held a news conference and announced that they recognized the candidates their people voted for, the overall announcement could take place in less than one hour using a live newsfeed from some strategic location for each party.  If they wanted to hold a debate afterward, that would be okay, too.

  Instead, we get entertained (or disturbed) by guest speakers and events like Clint Eastwood–whom I admire anytime he isn’t talking about volatile subjects like religion, politics or the Great Pumpkin (excuse me, Linus)–addressing an empty chair standing in for the incumbent.  Again, I like Mr. Eastwood, but we didn’t need that.

  I’m sure the Democrats will come up with some interesting ways to waste time in a crowded auditorium as well.  Sure, attendees gather and touch base and chat up a storm during these things, but it really doesn’t do anything to help the nation’s conscious decision about who should be in charge of our nation come January 2013.  I wish they would do away with such nonsense.

  But then I also wish one of the candidates would promise to do away with Daylight Saving Time.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged democratic national convention, republican national convention

• Writer’s Block and Tackle

  Posted at 3:01 am by kayewer, on August 26, 2012

  When you’re a writer, feedback can be mind-boggling.  I’m at work on a short story which will soon be published in an anthology. Another contributor, who has experience in editing, is helping me out in her spare time by giving some hints along the way.

  It has been awhile since any of my writing has gotten such thorough scrutiny where a college final grade wasn’t involved.  Writing assignments for college is no less difficult than putting this short story together because, even though I won’t have to worry about getting credits for a degree, it’s important for the story to be an effective part of the rest of the collection.

  Yeah, I’ve got work to do, and my editor let me know it.

  The stumbling block for me now is the viewpoint in which the story takes place.  It has been the topic of two writing group meetings I’ve facilitated, and even I can’t get a handle on it.  The story started with a third person viewpoint (“The man came into the house.”)  The suggestion was to do first person (“I went into the house.”)  This involves cleaning up the story to adjust all the nouns and verbs, zapping any passive phrases with the writer’s equivalent of bug spray (the delete button) and making sure the characters all have names and purposes.

  When I delivered the story in third person, one character was simply “the guard captain.”  Now that the story is in first person, I realize that no idiot keeps calling somebody by their occupation, so I had to come up with a name for him.  I wasn’t ready to name the guard captain.  I had spent considerable time in the office deciding on a new system password (we update them every 90 days or when somebody thinks it’s a good idea after drinking too much energy boost).  After so many years at a company, one runs out of family birth dates, pet names and car models to use for passwords, especially when there is a list of a dozen or more for every program in use.  What I won’t do is use my character names as passwords.  Since I wasn’t thinking about character names, I wasn’t prepared to give the guard captain a name, but I did, and I like it.  Now I have to search for and replace all references with the new name and make sure the story doesn’t suffer for it.

  When I sent a revision of my new viewpoint story  in progress, my friendly editor reminded me of the rules of writing and where I had broken them.  Right she was; they were incorrect because I am still revising them.  It will make sense soon, but I had been staring at the story through about a jillion revisions in third person, and after revision one in first person it looks like a jillion more are coming my way before it will be ready.

  So with crossed eyes, headache, swollen feet and parched throat, but still with the burning ember of hope for success keeping my body temperature at 98.6 degrees, the lonely author will approach the story again and attempt to successfully tackle point of view.  When I get it right, I’ll let you know, too.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged critique groups, short story, writers groups, writing a novel

• Made in China Why?

  Posted at 2:08 am by kayewer, on August 19, 2012

  

  Whoever made this might have been taking a cat nap.

  What you see here is one of a pack of two catnip mice I bought for the cats at the cyber cafe where I post each week.  This low-cost dual pack of mice, intended to provide brief but fun enjoyment for cats in the United States, was assembled in China.  Whoever put this one together was negligent with sewing the end shut and failed to knot the plastic whiskers, which promptly pulled out.  Sure catnip mice are a cheap toy, but shouldn’t be low quality.

  Why do we settle for substandard junk?  We are worth some care and quality in our purchases.  Whoever authorized the manufacture of this item should be ashamed.  Next time I’ll make my own.

  I’m not against international trade, but I’m tired of everything coming from someplace else and being designated as being worth only minimal effort for the cost.  Possibly I’m in a snit because I am reading a book called “Overdressed:  The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion” by Elizabeth Cline.  The author bought out several pairs of what she thought was a bargain in some shoes she liked on sale, and soon realized that her shopping standards (and those of most of us) had deteriorated at the hands of an industry out of control.  The American garment industry has nearly tanked, and the throwaway clothing culture we have become addicted to is killing the economy and the workers in overseas sweatshops where they are made.

  Fortunately I don’t go for shoe fads:  I’ve worn American-made shoes for decades and stick to manufacturers I know, like SAS. 

  Clothes from here are harder to come by, but at least some products, like cups and cookware (like Anchor) still are made here.  Lately I’ve become an unpaid spokesperson for the Tervis company, which makes drinkware here at home and has a wonderful selection of sturdy and personality-amped items.  A co-worker got one as a gift after  I told him about them and he mentioned them to his family.  It got left on his fender by mistake and dropped to the ground, but still had barely a scratch.  His hot drinks stay hot, and cold drinks don’t sweat inside the double insulation.  They are not $5 versions that will crack or degrade, but real keepers that will pay for themselves forever.  I’ve seen them in Hallmark and Bed, Bath & Beyond stores and they’re online.

  So now I’m on a campaign to find more American-made stuff. Plenty of resources are out there, so it’s just a matter of seeking and shopping.  We can bring jobs and happiness back to our part of the world by adding some domestic stuff to our shopping habits.  Heck, there is still Chinese food.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged Anchor glassware, made in china, SAS shoes, tervis

• Not A Moose (Bullwinkle Joke)*

  Posted at 2:03 am by kayewer, on August 12, 2012

  I killed a squirrel this morning.  I didn’t mean to.  The little guys just seem to zig when they should zag, and that is how they fall out of trees and, as in my case, get hit by my car.

  I was headed to an important (recreational, too) early morning meeting, and took the main interstate to get there.  As I got into the area where the speed limit went up and I was accelerating, a squirrel appeared from the median to my left and started to cross despite the lack of trees.  As squirrels are wont to do, he doubled back toward the median.  Then he tripled back into me.  I heard the small thump and spotted the body in my wake.

  I did feel terrible.  Never happened before in my life.

  “Oh forgive me God,” I said, looking heavenward.

  I never did understand the sport of hunting.   I even avoid stepping on ants.  Look out for and be looked out for is my motto.

  I’m sure there are a jillion squirrels in the great beyond, all of whom have fallen out of trees, got zapped from chewing on live wires or trying to play chicken with vehicles.  If they have peanuts in Heaven, I’ll cop a bag from Saint Peter on the way in.  If I wind up in the other place, I guess they’ll be roasted nuts and cost my soul, but either way it’ll be worth it if I meet up with that unfortunate creature and can make amends. 

   

  *(As in, “Boris darling, we’ll get moose and squirrel.”)

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• The Best Boring Olympics Stuff

  Posted at 2:03 am by kayewer, on August 5, 2012

  While looking through the jillion media guides to Olympic event scheduling and not finding accurate broadcast times, I found myself watching table tennis.  Sure, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump gave the sport some street cred, and I would sure like to see competitions with five or six of those little ping pong balls in play at one time, but it’s not really a sport that Americans seem to want to build stadiums for.

  The back-and-forth of the game didn’t excite me, but watching the ritualistic serving techniques was amazing.  The players would dribble the ball, then balance it in the palm of the empty hand before serving.  I guess it’s a requirement.  Everybody did it.  See, in my hand I’ve got a ball!

  From the camera angle provided by the NBC Sports Network, I was almost certain the players were serving the balls off their foreheads, but I know I’m mistaken.  Overall, the event is quick and a bit intense; watching the ball fly across the table was a little like watching a pissed-off bee in a closed candy jar.

  I did manage to see some of the main events, such as gymnastics and swimming, but I also caught a few nanoseconds of equestrian dressage competition last Sunday, and that’s quality sportsmanship.  A co-worker who owns horses and participates in a few related events, admitted that people either find horse events intriguing or equate them to watching paint dry.  What a shame, when the horses were so magnificent.  Some folks just don’t understand the broad scope of sport.

  There is room in the Olympics for events with discipline and style that do not involve pike positions or nanosecond finish line stretches.  Some of the best stuff, like archery and judo, have been played and broadcast when nobody was looking.  Fortunately, we still find out when the United States wins gold while the paint dries.

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• From Behind the Counter

  Posted at 1:56 am by kayewer, on July 29, 2012

  I’ve had enough bad experiences with cashiers and sales clerks to know that, as a country, we are going to heck in a handcart when it comes to face-to-face customer service.

  Recently I was shopping at a Rite-Aid and encountered a malcontent clerk who likes to gripe about his job in rapid-fire speech that fueled my inner thoughts about whether or not I actually did hear him correctly?  I don’t think he said anything fireable, but why should I listen to him complaining about his job?  At least he has a job.  He ought to shut up and ring up my purchase.

  The other day I was snookered into taking a mall survey.  At the local mall sits a senior citizen hunched over a clipboard; she tries to solicit participants from a table at the head of the food court, and my friend and I have seen her for quite some time and felt for her situation.  We sat down and took her survey.  It turned out my friend was allergic to the food item she was touting, so I wound up participating alone.  You know how these things go:  we had to walk down a back entrance corridor lined with unlit cinder block walls, to a dimly lit office manned by a pleasant enough clerk who welcomed us to her little survey haven as if we had come to Shangri-La.

  Her assistant, however, was not of the same ilk.  He was a disinterested young fellow probably on the demographic fence between 18 and a basket-weaving Associate’s degree, whose tone of voice and behavior did not spur our interest in the product at all.  He even commented that he needed to double-check the entries the lady had written on her clipboard because he had trouble reading it.  I was tempted to remind him that, someday, he would probably have arthritis so bad he wouldn’t be able to text anymore, but I kept that to myself.

  It seemed I would have to take a product home and test it (that is eat it and survive), so he went to the back room to fetch it.  The product had two or three varieties, but the one he told me I would try didn’t match the one he brought out; he seemlessly took it away and came back with another one without batting an eye or betraying his mistake, but I was dumbfounded.  The fellow couldn’t read the difference in the labels on three products?

  I’m sitting here now to tell you that I survived eating the product, which I managed to get home from the mall in nothing more than a plastic bag and a salvaged freezer tote in my friend’s car.  It made it through a half hour of shopping in the mall and another half hour or so at Target, then the trip home.  I just wish the follow-up survey would include a part on how the survey staff treated us.

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• On Vacation This Week

  Posted at 2:13 am by kayewer, on July 22, 2012

  I’m taking a day off.  See you next week in time for the end of July and the start of the Olympics.

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• In a Fog

  Posted at 1:44 am by kayewer, on July 15, 2012

  I was walking through the mall with a friend the other day, and I was amazed at how little attention people paid to where they were walking.  We were cut off at the entrances to three stores by shoppers who couldn’t wait a second to blow their money inside until we passed by, several groups blocked the walkways, parents let their kids run amok, and some moron left a  full cup of soda by a store entrance, risking a kick-over and a slip-and-fall lawsuit.

  The issue of when a food container becomes trash has been a bone I have picked for years.  My mother has told me that, back in the good old days before fast food, people were at a loss when disposable cups and plates were introduced.  Back then, everything was a permanent wash and reuse item.  Now, people can’t get rid of empty cups or plates fast enough.  In fact, it seems there is an unwritten rule that states any empty carrier of food or drink, upon becoming empty, must leave the hands at once.  This means that there are not enough trash containers in the world to meet the need for instant relief from that–wait for it–empty food wrapper.  Oh my!  One more second in your hand and you could lose your street cred for life!  Public shunning!  The ducking stool or the stocks, or flaming remarks on Facebook!  Board a spaceship and hope you can land on Mars and stay there until the shame goes away!

  Of course, we’ve all seen footage of distracted tablet users walking into open manhole covers or mall fountains, but these people didn’t appear to be texting or using Bluetooth devices.  They were just ignorant zombies.  Worse, they weren’t getting paid to shamble onto the set of The Walking Dead.  What is with people?  I sure hope they don’t drive cars like that.

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• The Star Mangled Banner

  Posted at 1:49 am by kayewer, on July 8, 2012

  The national anthem of the United States doesn’t get any respect.  I don’t think it would be right to launch into a spleen-venting rant about the status of our patriotism (though a survey might reveal much disappointment).  But I think that, in light of the fact that it is summer, we just celebrated Independence Day (in which the anthem is sung most often), and folks are confused about it, it might be worthwhile to take a look at the song we love to botch.  Sure there is a high note passage that stumps singers (“rockets red glare”), but even the most appalling warbler on a baseball field in Podunk should at least know what they are singing about, and that is probably the main reason for singers of the anthem forgetting where they are in the song.

  Think of it as a very long question.  That might help.  The poet/narrator is asking if, as the sun rises, the flag of our country was still flying over Fort McHenry.  Maybe a more “street” translation may help:

  Hey, the sun is coming up.
  Do you still see it?
  At sunset last night, we were proud to see the flag.
  Those stars and stripes really stood out over the fort wall, didn’t they?
  With all the light from the guns and cannon fire, they lit up the flag all night,
  But is it still there to prove we are a free country?

  At a recent July 4th Minnesota Twins/Detroit Tigers game,the singer of “God Bless America” really cracked his voice when he tried to go for the upscale note on “my home sweet home.”    ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l34dTL3Xik).  At least he was going for a straight run-through, and that song seems to get more respect than “Star Spangled Banner.”  I never did forgive then top celebrity Rosanne for a rendition that mixed Michael Jackson style crotch grabbing with a smart aleck style that just didn’t seem like she tried to sing at all.  Who thought up that idea?  The late Whitney Houston gave one of the most honorable performances I’ve witnessed in years.  Proof through night or day that our flag is still here.  I just wish more folks would try to understand it and sing it properly.

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• Don’t Sugar Coat the Diet

  Posted at 3:07 am by kayewer, on July 1, 2012

  I saw a blurb recently, featuring one of the two most famous television doctors–Dr. Oz  was the speaker in this case (Dr. Phil is the other one whom we see quite a bit)–who mentioned that the liver takes sugar and just converts it into fat.  I stopped to think about the amount of sugar in the average daily diet, and I realized that I’m a big offender.  It also validated something I’ve suspected for a long time.

  Maybe you are a reader old enough to remember a time before artificial sweeteners hit the market.  I seem to remember when a sample pink packet arrived in the mail inviting my family to try saccharin.  Eventually we moved on to Nutrasweet (R).  Now there is sucralose and stevia and enough other types of sweetener to stock a new store chain.  Sodas started using artificial sweeteners in sodas, cereals, and even our ketchup.  Didn’t the obesity epidemic start just about the time we began consuming these products?

  Not only do we use one type of fake yummy stuff at home:  we likely use two or more versions in various foods daily.  HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) in ketchup, Splenda(R) (sucralose) in the fruit drinks, and aspartame (marketed under Equal(R) and other names) in the diet something else.  Boy are we confusing our livers.

  This morning at breakfast, I tried putting just one Equal(R) into my tea.  I didn’t taste any sweetness at all.  That can’t be good.  If it takes two or three servings to taste it, the taster has to be kind of numb, don’t you think?

  I managed to cut out my salt intake a long time ago by going cold turkey; it took a day or two before food started tasting salty without my breaking out the salt shaker.  I wonder how hard it might be to curtail sugar consumption?  We’ll see.  I’ll follow-up as I find out.

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