As for you, my friends and friendly acquaintances, I hope you all have exactly the Thanksgiving you want. That the food is great (no strange new ingredients that Aunt Matilda stuck in); the company, warm and loving (hopefully, cousin Fritz and Uncle Fred can set aside their political differences and not smack the crap out of each other, and Grampa can stay at least semi-sober); and the trip home, safe. Happy Thanksgiving!
Traditions. Thanksgiving brings them out more than any other holiday, I think. Cranberries: whole, or jellied in the shape of the can? Take turns telling everyone what we're thankful for, or not? Kids seated at the little table, or with the adults? Almost all of us celebrate it, but it only has a few elements: visiting family, cooking and enjoying dinner, watching parades and football on TV. Some may get all Kennedyesque and toss a football around on the front lawn. Not much else to do, though, really. Unlike Xmas, with its gift buying/wrapping/giving/receiving/opening/gushing over/privately thinking WTF?! about. And in November in most locations, it's not cold enough for snowman-building, sledding, ice skating, hot chocolate and marshmallows and carol singing in the snow and watching plumes of your breath in the cold night air as you walk through the neighborhood looking at beautiful light displays ... Wow, Thanksgiving is kind of boring by comparison, isn't it? Yet, I love it. Fond childhood memories, mainly. And then I grew up. And got cable. And discovered marathons. For TV addicts such as myself, there is an embarrassment of riches on holidays such as this -- NCIS and HOUSE and I LOVE LUCY and LOCKUP: RAW (hardened criminals and candied yams, what could be more fun) and THE CLOSER and PLASTIC SURGERY: BEFORE AND AFTER (think I'll pass on that one) and many, many others. I wonder if other TV addicts visiting relatives sneak into dens or bedrooms or basements and watch a little of this and that. As for me, I'll be home, cooking, eating, tweeting, and watching my favorite shows, with a little football and giant parade balloons thrown in.
As for you, my friends and friendly acquaintances, I hope you all have exactly the Thanksgiving you want. That the food is great (no strange new ingredients that Aunt Matilda stuck in); the company, warm and loving (hopefully, cousin Fritz and Uncle Fred can set aside their political differences and not smack the crap out of each other, and Grampa can stay at least semi-sober); and the trip home, safe. Happy Thanksgiving!
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It was nice of Twitter's CEO Evan Williams to post an explanation re: the new Retweet button, but I disagree with so much of it. Oh hell, pretty much all of it.
Here's my response: The new, amazingly impersonal Twitter Retweet button has all the personality of the Borg, and no, I will not assimilate. To merely pass along info links without ever adding our own comments misses the point of, well, Twitter. It's called SOCIAL media for a reason. You know ... socializing. Sharing our thoughts ... our dreams ... our, yes, personalities. An opinion here, a word of encouragement there, a "This is so COOL!" is what we do. Wouldn't you think the people who invented Twitter would be aware of that? No, we don't find it necessary to comment on every RT, but we do more often than not, and personally, I don't want to RECEIVE only RT's with no comments attached to them, either. While it is true that RTing gets to be a problem as the message gets longer when names are added to it ... how about giving us 160 characters to play around with, then? Even without RTing, that would make a lot of Tweeters happy. A major worry is "attribution"? That someone might misunderstand who originated a tweet? Do people need validation that badly? That someone might not realize YOU were the first one to send out the link to the new "Me lovzzzzz Chizbergerz" doggie photos? Besides, most people can figure it out. It's not rocket science. Apparently the folks at Twitter also think RTing looks "messy" with names other than the original senders on them. Hey, life is messy. Get over it. One nice thing about RTing is that people other than your own followers can see your name, possibly be intrigued by your comment, click to see who you are, maybe like what they see and follow you. Cool. Social media at its best. The idea that this new RT method will help us get retweets only about the kind of subjects we're interested in means we will all live on Twitter in our own insulated little worlds. But there's a big, beautiful planet out there, and most of us want to expand our minds with new ideas and unique stories and TwitterFriends who may be completely different from us. Social media is the great equalizer. People become friends here who would never have met out in the real world. From different parts of the country/world, different cultures, different tax brackets. Let's not "fix" that. "Information" is not the only reason we're here on Twitter. For a lot of us, it's not even a major reason. Come for the info. Stay for the people. Did you ever write a really rockin' blog post in your head while you were in the shower or feeding the dog or out shopping, or whatever?
Did you ever forget every frakkin' word of that post, even the theme, by the time you finished/got home? Oh, good. I wouldn't want to be the only one. Consequently, you won't be getting that fantabulistic post I wrote on the way over to my brother's house. You'll be getting this one. Hey, these things happen. Such is Life. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. There are other l'il bloggy fishies in the sea. Ask not what your blogger can do for you, ask what you can do for ... Sigh ... I'm wandering again. I wonder how many bloggers write down those little blog gems when they spring to mind; maybe even carry around a little spiral notebook and pen? I saw someone on Twitter suggest it a short while ago and thought, well, that's kind of silly. Now I'm thinking, hey, that guy was brilliant. In other news ... As I write at this moment, I have Twitter on, but minimized, and at the bottom of the computer screen it says, "(47) Twitter/Home..." Thus I have 47 tweets to catch up on. Oops, 49. Damn, 53. Whose brilliant idea was this, I wonder, to bombard us with numbers? Do we need this pressure? Couldn't they have just left it the way it was, with us blissfully unaware? Let us scroll down and be pleasantly surprised by the amount of new and no doubt fascinating little 140 character bon mots that await us? The term "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind. Oh, crap. 59 now ... 61... 68. AGGGHHHH! Bye for now. Gotta get scrollin'. I've seen writers on Twitter agonizing over the writer's block that's gripped them -- been there, done that, myself -- and it occurred to me that maybe the method I used in writing the first half of my novel might help. Or not. But here it is anyway ...
A long time ago, in a galaxy ... er, bedroom ... far, far away, before I had even started the novel I plan on POD publishing, I blew out both knees. Messed up the MCLs (medial collateral ligaments) severely. I was housebound. Bedbound. Screwed. This went on for a long time while I waited to heal, and it could have become a serious depression problem, but I managed to immerse myself in music, among other things, to help pass the time. I had already written a science fiction novel, so of course I had that to work on. Then another story began to form in my head -- a crime/thriller. But instead of putting it on paper or my word processor (yes, this was so long ago, it was before I got a computer), I tried a new method. Hell, why not? I had all the time in the world. Each day I would put my headphones on, blast music I loved (it varied with my mood) nonstop, close my eyes, and picture the story as a movie, starting with the opening scene. I've always been visually-oriented anyway. I was lying down in bed due to the circumstances, the music was soothing in its own raucous way (you didn't think I was listening to elevator music did you?), and sometimes I would even fall asleep. But eventually, it began to become a very cool thing. I did it for maybe an hour at a time, once or twice a day, and each time, I would start from the very beginning -- the opening scene. As time went on, I got further and further in the story. And because I started at the beginning every single time, the more times I did it, the more details my mind filled in, all on its own, in those early scenes that I "watched" so many times. Basically, the story wrote itself, and presented itself to me as entertainment to help the weeks go by. Ok, months. Did I mention I really messed up my MCL's? I didn't finish the entire book this way. Maybe half. But when I finally felt ready to take off the headphones and start typing instead, I had a story that fascinated me, one that could go in any direction, because I still didn't know "who dunnit" even though several of the characters made great suspects. They all seemed very real to me, because I'd been watching them go through their lives for months. I find that writing works best for me when I have at least one character I know well, and here was a whole collection of them. No wonder the rest of the book flew by. I wouldn't say the rest of the story wrote itself, but I was on a roll. I wish the rewrites I'm doing right now -- yes, the FINAL draft -- were going as fast. But rewrites never do, do they? Anyway, I thought maybe someone out there having trouble with the dreaded B word (writer's BLOCK!) might want to try this method ... even if they have two perfectly good knees :-} |
Author_East-coaster, writer of horror, sci-fi, and other genres. I knew that creepy childhood would come in handy someday. These days, life is covered in cat fur. Contact me at: [email protected] Re: Header...
Zombie photo in header is by Randy Salgado. Check out his flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/randychico/ Also, here is the Flickr license page. Archives
September 2018
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