December
20, 2001—Re: Your Happy Holidays Card (click to open)
The
New York Times has an entire section every Thursday called "Circuits."
As you might guess, it’s devoted to mostly informative articles
about computers and other electronic gadgets. I don’t buy the
Times every day, but I always get it on Thursdays because I like that
kind of stuff.
Today’s
issue includes a front-page story about how this year so many people
are sending e-mail holiday cards. The article goes into detail about
how some folks are afraid of spreading anthrax though the mail. Others
don’t have the time to be writing, addressing and mailing all
those cards. And apparently some folks just can’t afford the
postage anymore.
I’ll
be the first to admit that the greeting card lobby has had the nation
hoodwinked for years now. There’s a card for virtually any occasion
you can think of, and that includes more or less one so-called “major
holiday” a month. We’ve especially been led to believe that
if you don’t send out cards at the end of the year—I don’t
dare say “Christmas” cards anymore—you are a social
pariah, or worse, politically incorrect.
How many times,
for example, have we sent a card to someone simply because we got
one from her? I’ve lost count. Like who IS this person anyway?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we’d better send her one, dear.
I think it’s
a riot the extremes to which some people will go in order not to offend
anyone with their cards. Like nope, can’t send them a Christmas
card, they’re Jewish. Whoops, this one says Happy Hahnukka. Don’t
send it to Mohammed. And what about this stamp? Is it bad manners
to put a stamp with Santa on a card going to a Buddhist?
And then there’s
the obligatory cards to clients and people that you work with. I may
not like the guy, but hey, he might be my boss one day. Better butter
him up. Be honest now, how many assholes do YOU send cards to every
year?
Be that as
it may, my wife and I love getting cards. As the cards arrive Pam
jokingly refers to them as our ROI—Return on Investment.
Unfortunately,
this is not turning out to be a good ROI year. For one thing, I don’t
work for corporate America anymore, so—except for a couple of
people I really liked at the old firm—that list got tossed out.
I guess I got scratched from those good folk’s lists as well,
seeing as how I never heard from most of them again, either.
And then we’ve
got this whole anthrax thing going. I haven’t figured out if
people really believe what they’re saying or not. But the excuse
going around—and mentioned in The New York Times article—is
that many are sending e-cards this year because they don’t want
to be responsible for giving someone anthrax. Can you see me rolling
my eyes? Listen gang, we’ve been through the anthrax thingie
here in New York. I’ll take my chances. You can send me a real
card.
But my favorite
rationalization given for using “e-cards” it that it is
more personal. One can attach his own picture, the argument goes,
or customize words and graphics to suit a particular occasion and/or
recipient. Proponents also claim the cards are more immediate and
intimate than conventional greeting cards.
Excuse me?
More personal? More intimate? Who is kidding who, here?
I can’t
touch an e-card. I can’t slip my letter opener under its flap
and give it that nice zip. I can’t admire an interesting stamp
on an e-card, especially one that has been cancelled in Bethlehem,
PA or Christmas, FL. I often don’t know who a card is from until
I open it or turn the envelope over. I like the mystery. None of that
with an e-card. You know who it’s from immediately.
With an e-card
you’ve got to futz around with it. You’ve got to wait for
it to load in, launch your web browser, scroll down, point and click,
make sure the sound is turned on. Be forewarned, friends. If you send
me an e-card and it doesn’t open and present itself immediately
with no hassles, it goes straight into the trash bin. I'm not going
to call the help desk so I can read your card. So much for the personal
touch.
But more to
the point, an e-card is a one-shot event. I can’t imagine anyone
saying, “Oh let me show you this nice card I got from Louis.
Just give me five minutes to start up the computer and another ten
minutes to search for it in the bowels of my hard drive.”
I like to
see my cards. They are displayed on our living room wall on ribbons
that reach from one side of the room to the other.
I like to
handle my cards. Some of the prettiest I save and put up each year
(I’m thinking now of one that was hand-painted by a friend).
I like to
read my cards. I read each one before it goes up on the wall and again
when I take it down.
I get the
feeling that a lot of folks who are sending e-cards this year are
missing the point. There’s something about the act of sitting
down and writing, addressing, stamping and mailing a card that forces
you— at least for a moment—to think about the person who
is going to receive it. (My wife would argue that I don’t do
that anyway, she does it. But that’s besides the point.) You
don’t do that when you click on a group of names on your computer’s
address book.
So keep those
cards coming, friends. I like ‘em. And besides, my ROI is down.
To
post a comment on this Ramblings and/or to read what others have said,
click here.
November
27, 2001—Waving the Flag
I can certainly
understand why many people feel a need to show their patriotism these
days. I don’t have anything against that. In fact, I think it’s
kind of nice, although I’m not a flag waver myself.
For one thing,
even if I had a flag I wouldn’t know where to fly it. I don’t
own a car so I can’t drive around Manhattan with my colors flapping
in the breeze from the antenna. I suppose I could put a star spangled
banner in my window, but that’s six stories high so who is going
to notice it from the ground? Of course, the neighbors on the sixth
floor right across the street might appreciate it, if they ever look
out their windows and over to mine. But that borders on Peeping Tom-ism,
so they probably won’t do that.
I thought
about putting a flag on my front door. But no one would see it except
my wife and me because we live at the end of the hall and there’s
not exactly a parade of patriots marching by my apartment every day.
No, it’s really not practical for me to get into flag waving.
So I’ve learned to content myself by watching the flag waving
of others.
And there
are plenty who are willing to accommodate me. From Day One—September
12—the flags popped up all over the city. The first, of course,
to raise Old Glory, were the Arab merchants. It was like spontaneous
combustion. Did they have the flags in storage all along just in case?
I really feel sorry for those folks. It seems so pathetic that they
would have to go to such extremes to prove their patriotism
The
flag thing is kind of old hat now. Everyone who’s going to do
it has been there and done it. The flag manufacturers and other purveyors
of patriotism have just about shot their wad. It’s no doubt back
to business as usual for them by now. It was great while it lasted.
Sort of like selling shovels to the miners at the gold rush of 1849.
But hold
on a minute! If patriotism has run it’s marketing course it appears
the God thing is just now getting cranked up. I’m amazed that
it took a couple of months for businesses to catch on to this, but
I’m pleased to report they are making up for lost time. From
Dub-ya’s God blessing America every time he opens his mouth,
to all those thoughts and prayers that everyone is sending to me,
I’m one hell of a blessed guy. Even my pizza place is praying
for me.
Yes, after
four days of non-stop turkey, we gave thanks last night that the turkey
was finally gone. We decided to order in a pizza. What I’m about
to tell you next is straight out of the I Can’t Make This Stuff
Up Department. Printed on the top of the pizza box—right under
the flag, of course—were the words, “Our prayers are with
you.”
I’m confused.
Who’s praying for me? Are the people who make the pizza praying
for me? “Okay, guys, this one’s going to the Bradleys. Let’s
say a little prayer for them before we send it out.”
Or is it the
delivery boy who’s praying for a bigger tip as he pedals down
Lexington Ave?
Or maybe it’s
the pizza itself that’s praying for me. No, that doesn’t
make sense. It said OUR prayers are with you. That’s plural.
More likely it’s the pepperonis that are united in prayer.
That’s
a switch. It used to be that we offered up prayers before eating our
food. Now our food is praying before it gets eaten.
God bless
America. Amen.
To
post a comment on this Ramblings and/or to read what others have said,
click here.
November
18, 2001—At the Movies
Yesterday
afternoon we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. Yawn. Snooze.
Sorry, that's just not my stuff—even though I had read the book.
Alright, okay, I only read HALF the book, because I got bored with
it. My wife, who loved both the book and the movie, says I don’t
have a child’s sense of wonder and awe. Well, she’s probably
right. I don’t like Ursula LeGuin or J.R.R. Tolkien, either.
So, as with
the book, I also got bored with the movie about half way through.
I mean, true, the photography is beautiful, the acting is competent
and the special effects are spectacular. But how much spinning, buzzing,
flying, jumping and crashing can a guy take in a two hours? I guess
they feel they have to keep the glitz moving because most kids—at
least the ones I see here in New York—have the attention span
of a gnat and wouldn’t know if they were having fun unless an
adult told them they were.
I felt like
that person in the Preparation H commercials. I kept squirming around
in my seat trying to find a comfortable way to rest my head on my
hand while balancing my elbow on the armrest. I wanted to leave. I
mean, what is the point of paying money to be tortured? I never could
understand the mentality of people who will continue to sit through
a movie they don’t like simply because they’ve already paid
for it. But of course, Pam would hear nothing of leaving.
Finally, I
made an excuse to go take a leak, something I never do in movies.
I mean, if I want to see a movie then I make damn sure I don’t
drink a gallon of Diet Pepsi before the opening credits have finished—like
some people I know. Then, while I was out, I decided to get myself
a hotdog and check out the arcade in the lobby. So I managed to kill
about twenty minutes before going back in to see what new predicament
Harry had gotten himself into.
But I’m
tired of going to movies, anyway. The last movie I saw—in a theater—was
Pearl Harbor. When was that, last summer sometime? Movies have gotten
to be almost as bad as computers. You know how every eighteen months
the new computers have doubled the power of last year’s model?
Well movies do the same thing. Every year the special effects get
more phantasmagoric and the sound gets louder. What is it with the
loud sound, anyway? Why does closing a briefcase have to sound like
the slamming of a car trunk lid? Why does pouring a glass of water
have to sound like a cow pissing on a flat rock?
What I really
hate about going to the movies are the previews. It’s bad enough
that you have to sit through twenty minutes of them before getting
to the show you actually came to see. But can’t they get someone
new to do the narration? Who IS that guy, anyway? Why does he always
speak in such a loud, gushing, HUSH? God, he makes me want to puke.
And now television is doing it too.
The whole
New York movie-going experience is so abusive. We spent six hours
seeing this stupid flick, counting all of our travel and waiting time
(the first two shows were sold out and it didn’t make sense to
go all the way home and then turn around and go back). Movie prices
in Manhattan are now $10. A bag of popcorn smaller than a woman’s
evening purse goes for $2.50.
And the crowds!
It’s wonderful to mingle with the Great Unwashed. After waiting
an hour in line, when they finally released the ropes to Screen Number
10, people actually started running! You would have thought they were
giving away $1000 bills or something.
Then there’s
cell phone crowd . . . “Yes, John, I got the tickets and I’m
standing in line on the third floor waiting to go in. Where the hell
are you? They’re starting to let us in now, John. John! Get up
here RIGHT NOW or we’re not going to get a good seat! Why do
you always do this to me, John?” Talk about the Great Unwashed
airing her dirty laundry!
I really see
little reason to actually go to a movie theatre anymore. With a decent
TV and digital technology, who needs the hassle? You can skip the
previews and that gushing idiot narrator. And don’t try to tell
me that it’s the “experience” of being with other people
that makes going to the movies fun. That may have been true twenty
years ago when movie theatres were single screen affairs and sometimes
the line went all the way around the block. At least those lines were
orderly and people talked to each other. Now you are just herded into
a designated waiting area where you can smell everyone’s armpits
and the Chinese take out food they brought in with them.
Hey, don't
forget to check out the new A Rock In My
Shoe Discussion Board. We're starting to get some activity
there. Click here
to go straight to it.
October
25, 2001—A New Reality: Washington Doesn't Get It Yet
Living
in Manhattan as I do, the sound of screaming police, fire truck and
ambulance sirens is something I hear at least three or four times
a day. It’s part of what gives New York City it’s cachet,
I suppose, although I could do without it. But yesterday, at about
4pm, the sirens were unusually loud and they were accompanied by blasting
horns that just wouldn’t let up. I cranked up the volume on CNN
in a feeble attempt to drown out the noise that was coming through
my sixth floor window.
After
ten minutes and still no let up in the cacophony, I looked out my
Lexington Avenue window and up to 23rd Street where I could see the
emergency vehicles rushing by. After another 40 minutes of this, my
mind was flashing back to September 11th. It was déjà
vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say.
It
turns out that scaffolding had collapsed at a building in my own neighborhood.
The intersection of 18th St. and Park Avenue South had become a miniature
version of Ground Zero. Five people died in the rubble. I had walked
right past the spot only ten minutes before it happened.
Ever
since September 11th our nation’s leaders have been telling us
that we have to get back to normal. Well, Ok, I can buy into that.
But my question is, what the hell is normal? Mental health professionals
and others who know about these things advise us that we can never
really get back to normal. What we have to do, they say, is to create
a “new normal.” I suspect that’s no doubt pretty good
advice, but I would like to suggest that, in light of the events of
September 11, 2001 and beyond, it doesn’t go far enough. What
we need to do is to get our heads around a new reality. And
quickly.
Creating
a new normal implies—to me, anyway—that you come to turns
with your shock, grief, guilt, anger, etc. and you learn a new way
of coping. Counseling can help in the process. With time, you come
to accept the idea that as a result of the loss you suffered many
things will never be the same again. And you move on with your life.
And
you know what? You can move on with your life because at least your
“personal infrastructure” is still in place. If you want
to travel from point A to point B, you can still get in your car or
on the subway and do that. The things around you are, in reality,
basically the same as they were before—minus, of course, what’s
missing as a result of your loss.
That
collapsing scaffolding yesterday could just as easily have been another
terrorist attack. Indeed, many people working in the building thought
that was exactly what was happening. Their instantaneous reaction
was to evacuate the building as quickly as possible. That was their
new reality.
I
took my dog, Darcy, to the dog run this afternoon, as I do most days.
Today she got into a fight over a ball. I told her three times to
drop the goddam ball, and three times she dropped it and then picked
it right back up again. Eventually this led to a fight with the ball’s
owner, a miniature poodle about one-fourth Darcy’s size. Not
a fair fight, and I had to intervene before the poor pooch got seriously
injured.
Well,
I had had it and I immediately took Darcy out of the dog run. She
wasn’t in there more than three minutes total. I scolded her
and told her what a bad dog she was and let her know that if that’s
the way she wants to play she will have to suffer the consequences.
Of course, she didn’t get it. She never does. She’s got
a brain the size of a walnut.
Darcy
and I have been down this road before. All the way home she was mocking
me with her stupid, shit-eating, grin while I continued to mumble
admonitions. She sees no need to change her behavior because she can’t
make the connection between her behavior and being removed from the
dog run. In fact, she knows damn well that I will take her back to
the dog run again tomorrow. That’s her reality. She just doesn’t
get it. But she does have one excuse. She’s a dog.
What’s
the excuse of our national leaders? Our new reality is that we are
going to be living with terrorism for a long, long, time to come.
Certainly I don’t expect it to be eradicated in my lifetime.
But I don’t think that reality has sunk in yet with the helmet-haired
idiots in Washington. They just don’t get it. I’m appalled
that they are still scratching their heads and grinning—just
like my dog.
I think Americans—for
sure I can say New Yorkers—are starting to adapt to the new reality
of terrorism. We know that a crashing scaffold could be caused by
a bomb. And right off the top of my head I can think of a dozen more
ways that a terrorist could take us out in a manner that we would
least expect. So
we know that we can never again go back to "business as usual."
I wish I could say as much for our so-called leaders.
“Yes,
we’re doing everything we can, folks. Trust us.”
Really?
If you still believe that, I’ve got a couple of tall office buildings
I’ll sell you.
Dear Friends:
When I’m in a business
meeting and am not too well informed on the topic being discussed,
I’ll usually just sit there and keep my mouth shut. My attitude
in such situations is, “It’s better to remain silent and
appear a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”
That’s sort of the
way I feel right now, a week after the terrorists attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. What can I possibly say that hasn’t
been said already by others who are much more informed, experienced,
articulate and eloquent?
But so many of you have
called or sent e-mails inquiring as to our well-being here in New
York City that I now must struggle to find my voice and send you this
heartfelt thank you. So please forgive me if this rambles on a bit.
But hey, that’s why I call this “Ramblings.”
By now you’ve seen
the pictures and heard many of the personal accounts. They are images
of horror and stories of unspeakable grief. Yet through the horror
and grief I have been constantly amazed at how hope shines through
it all. I live only four blocks away from the information center that
was set up for the families of the victims. I’m sure you’ve
seen them on television, taping pictures of their loved ones to the
walls of buildings, to phone booths and to shop windows.
And now, as the hope of
finding loved ones rapidly turns to despair and resignation, hope
itself is being redirected. Like a stream forced from its course by
a beaver dam, it is spilling over its banks and coming back on the
other side. It is coming back in the form of compassion, kindness
and caring. And resolve. Resolve to never let this happen again and
to rebuild the city. This city will not be dimmed by human tears.
There may be a light on Broadway for every broken stage-struck dream,
but there’s also a light of hope in the heart of every New Yorker.
God, I love this town!
On a more personal note,
my own little story started a few seconds before 8:48 when the first
plane plowed into the World Trade Center. I was sitting here at my
computer with the windows open when I heard it fly over. I recall
thinking to myself that the plane was way too close. (Planes don’t
as a rule fly over Manhattan. They fly up the Hudson River or over
Brooklyn and Queens to get to and from LaGuardia.) I waited to hear
a crash. But I didn’t hear one.
It was not until a half
hour later as I was going outside that I learned it did, indeed, crash.
I guess the wind was carrying the sound away from mid-town and that’s
why I didn’t hear it. I learned of the news from my doorman and
a group of people who had gathered in my building’s lobby and
were watching a small television.
My main concern was for
my wife, Pam, who works only a couple of blocks north of the WTC.
Here my memory gets blurry. There were some frantic phone calls, but
I think the first time we actually connected was when she called me
from the street. They had evacuated her building and were making their
way on foot as fast as possible. If you would like to read an account
of Pam’s evacuation in her own words, click
here.
A friend of one of my sisters
recently asked her if I was an unhappy person. The friend had just
learned about A Rock In My Shoe and I suppose inferred from the title
that anyone who could go to all that trouble to “complain”
about everything that bothers him must be a pretty miserable soul.
My sister quickly came to my defense by laughing and telling her that
her brother is a relatively normal, happy, fun-loving and well-adjusted
person. Thanks, Jane, for lying on my behalf.
Let me set the record straight.
What happened last week is not a rock in my shoe. It’s not even
a boulder in my shoe. It is too monumental. It is a mountain. Mountains
we can overcome.
August
17, 2001—Who Has a Hamburger?
One of the benefits
of owning a website like this is that you get to sound off anytime
something bothers you. It’s great therapy. For example, right
this very moment there must be another truck or bus that couldn’t
make the tight right turn where Lexington Ave. runs smack into Gramercy
Park. Happens about once a week. Some poor schmuck driving a Trailways
or an 18-wheeler thinks he can just fly down Lex all the way to The
Battery. He could, except for that damned little park that keeps getting
in the way.
The reason I know
this is what’s happening is because dozens of car drivers are
laying on their horns. Even six stories up the noise is so irritating
I want to open the window and shout out at the top of my lungs, “Shut
up, you idiots! Like honking your horns is going to really move things
along!”
Which brings me
to the point of this rambling. Sometimes you just want to screen at
the top of your lungs—like those folks in the movie, Network—
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Today is surely
headed to be one of those Network/Five Easy Pieces (if you
don’t know, you won’t appreciate it anyway) /Falling
Down kind of days.
In Falling
Down, if you’ll recall, Michael Douglas goes into a Whammyburger
and orders a ham and cheese omelet. He can’t have it because
they stopped serving breakfast at 11:30 (it’s 11:33). He asks
to speak with the manager and still gets no satisfaction. So he makes
a scene, and basically resolves the issue when he pulls out his AK-47.
10:20 a.m.
I’ve been running around Manhattan for an hour and have already
covered two miles on foot. I’m getting hungry. Not real hungry,
but I definitely need something to hold me over until lunch.
Down the home
stretch, coming across 23rd Street’s fast food row, I eyeball
the Dunkin’ Donuts joint just up ahead. Ah ha, that’s what
I need. A glazed donut and a cup of coffee! I quickly duck inside.
Well, I guess
the 5000 Metropolitan Life employees working across the street got
the same idea at the very same moment. The line inside is a mile long.
10:20 (&
30 seconds) a.m. I back out of DD’s and pop into the Mickey
D’s which is right next door. One of those little tiny hamburgers
would do almost as well as a donut. After all, I deserve a break today.
And besides, they’ll love seeing me smile.
There is only
one other customer in the shop. The girl at the counter is not leaning,
and she’s not cleaning either.* She’s not doing anything.
But at least she’s smiling. I tell her I want a hamburger. The
smile disappears. “You can’t have a hamburger until 11 o’clock.”
“You gotta
be kidding, right? I mean, this IS a hamburger place, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but
we don’t serve hamburgers until 11 o’clock.”
10:25 a.m.
I’m now in Burger King, a block away. There’s no one else
in the place. Same deal. No way were they going to serve me a hamburger
before 11 a.m. What the hell’s going on here? Whatever happened
to, “Have it your way”?
I said to the
girl, “I see. I guess I should go to a hamburger place, heh?”
She didn’t
get it—just screwed her face up and looked at me like I was stupid.
10:26 a.m.
I go into Taco Bell, which is right next door to Burger King. Again,
there were no other customers in the place. I nervously walk up to
the counter. I ask the guy if I could just get a taco—expecting,
of course, to have to order a breakfast burrito or some shit because
it’s not 11 o’clock yet.
Well, no problem.
I got a taco. It wasn’t my first choice. It wasn’t even
my second choice. But I got the taco.
I guess it’s
McDonald’s and Burger King’s business if they don’t
want to serve their signature food before 11 a.m. But at 10:20 they
sure as hell weren’t slinging the breakfast hash. So why not
sell a hamburger?
Well, this is
my rock for the day. When you go into a “fast” food joint,
they are either so crowded that it takes you forever to get your food.
OR, they are not crowded at all—practically begging for customers—AND
THEY WON’T SERVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT!
10:30 a.m.
I’m back at my apartment building and tell my story to the doorman,
Dowen, who enjoys it immensely and commiserates with me.
This one’s
for you, Dowen. Sorry I didn’t have my AK-47 with me to make
it more interesting.
*Ray
Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, used to tell his employees, “If
you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.”
Apparently that became something of a training mantra as the organization
grew.
August
1, 2001—Kicking It Up a Notch
Hello everyone!
In another month—Labor
Day weekend—it will be two years since we started A
Rock In My Shoe. I say “we” because it would have
never happened without your support and feedback. Therefore, I’d
like to use this Ramblings opportunity to tell you a little bit about
what’s been going on with the site and what I’d like to
do with it in the future, and to ask for your input as we approach
the two-year anniversary.
I feel like its almost
time to kick this thing to the next level, whatever that may be. I've
been accumulating a mailing list, but thus far have really done little
to grow that list—although the audience has, indeed, grown steadliy
(more about that in a moment). If you received my e-mail today announcing
the posting of “Who
Moved My Mind,” then you can consider yourself a “charter
member” of the A Rock In My Shoe
community.
The site’s been getting
a lot more traffic in recent months. One
of the reasons is because it is now being picked up by the search
engines like Google and Yahoo! I’ve spent a fair amount of time
registering the site with the major search engines and apparently
that is paying off. Also, the site is linked from a couple of other
sites that get a lot of traffic. That helps too. So what I need to
do now is to get other sites to put a link to A
Rock In My Shoe from their pages. If you know of sites
that you think might be interested, let me know and I will contact
them.
Next, I want to build up
that mailing list. I don’t want to buy lists and send
junk mail to just anyone in order to try to get them interested in
the site. Thus far, most of you who are on the list have some sort
of personal connection to me and only a couple of people have asked
to be removed. So if you think any of your friends would like to be
on the list I will keep the Charter Membership open until Labor Day.
Ha! Maybe someday you’ll all get an ARIMS tee shirt or an autographed
copy of the book. So what I’m going to do soon is put a place
on the site where you can “Tell a Friend” about it. Eventually
I will probably set up a way for people to subscribe to the mailing
list—or even a snail mail newsletter.
Speaking of newsletters,
how many of you would want to receive a quarterly newsletter? It’s
not that I need another project, but it might be fun to do—and
receive.
I’m thinking about
bringing the bulletin board back to the site. Some of you may
remember that we had this in the very beginning. Unfortunately, not
much got posted and it was at best an awkward board to navigate. Further,
there wasn’t much content on the site to spur discussions. But
recently I’ve exchanged some very interesting and spirited e-mails
with a number of you about some of the stuff I've written. It’s
occurred to me that those would be great discussions to open up to
everyone. So let me know if you think a bulletin board would be a
good idea and if you would participate. Right now, the only way to
express your thoughts is via the Guestbook.
If you haven’t looked at it lately you might want to check it
out again. People have posted some very interesting “rocks”
there.
Another way to post your
“rocks” is to write your own piece for Guest
Appearances. Obviously, that takes more time and commitment,
but I know many of you are great writers and you should try your hand
at it. It’s a way to get “published” for free and you
will get full credit and maintain the copyrights to anything you contribute.
So think about it, OK?
I also want to put a special
area on the ARIMS for links to sites that might be helpful or of interest
to people who have issues or complaints that they want to follow up
on. This would include “where to complain” sites
like government agencies, shows like 60 Minutes, consumer advocate
sites and human and animal rights sites, etc. So let me know what
you would like to find there, as well.
Finally, there’s the
issue of products. Not that I want the site to become commercial,
but the other day I almost had a A Rock In My
Shoe ballcap made up (see the previous Ramblings). It occurred
to me that others might want one too—or a tee shirt or house
slippers or something. So give me your thoughts on this as well.
I hope you all are enjoying
your summer. Let me hear from you.
rbradley@arockinmyshoe.com
July
12, 2001—Dorky Ball Caps
I understand from
the fashion police that ball caps are no longer in. Hell, I didn’t
know they ever were in. I thought a ball cap was something
you wore to keep the sun out of your eyes while playing baseball—or,
in my case, while trying to land a five-pound largemouth bass (I should
get so lucky).
Be that as it
may, I guess some ball caps hold a certain cachet, at least in the
minds of their wearers. My preference, for example, has always been
for caps with any kind of fishing boat manufacturer’s logo on
the front. You don’t see too many of those walking into the ATM
on Park Avenue South. So I suppose wearing my cap in town does make
something of a fashion statement. Reverse chic, I fancy myself.
Mostly what you
see here are the ubiquitous sports team logo caps—readily available
for $6 at any street fair—or the ball cap equivalent of fashion
designer billboard advertising. Why anyone would want to be a walking
commercial for Nike or Abercrombie & Fitch and pay $15 for the
privilege is beyond me. But that’s another Rambling.
Decades ago there
was something just a teensy bit uncool associated with wearing a ball
cap—unless it was a baseball cap and you were actually a home
run hero. But as kids we all knew men who worked outdoors and wore
a ball cap all day They were cursed with a farmer’s tan forehead.
Very uncool. The mere thought of developing a white forehead was enough
to convince me to keep on squinting in the sun.
And then, in 1951,
J. D. Salinger changed the ball cap stigma forever when he had Holden
Caulfield simply turn his cap around and wear it backwards. Suddenly,
with teenagers everywhere, uncool became cool.
Cool or uncool,
what I’ve become aware of recently is that ball caps are now
starting to look downright dorky. Somewhere along the way, cap designers
must have gotten the idea that they, too, could be au courant—which
makes them now feel justified to mess with the basic design of this
humble hat. Perhaps that’s why the hats are going out of fashion.
If so, I couldn’t be happier.
You see, for decades
the ball cap had a unique shape that distinquished it from, say, a
fedora or a Easter bonnet. If you wore a ball cap there was no mistake
about what was on your head or why it was there.
That shape is
reflected in a certain box-like design that sits comfortably ON the
wearer’s head—not AROUND it. The traditional profile is
this:
As you can see,
the crown of the cap sort of puffs up. The bill sticks straight out
and protects the eyes. The whole thing is usually perched on the top
of the wearer’s forehead and adjusted in the back to keep it
from sliding down to the ears and over the back of the head. This
has the added benefit of allowing a pocket of air to exist above the
wearer’s head—a cooling factor.
What we are seeing
now, however, is the proliferation of a new ball cap profile that
looks more like this:
This high fashion
“low crown” ball cap makes the wearer look like he’s
a duck, especially when viewed from the profile. The bill—or
beak—and the top of the cap form one continuous line. That’s
because the cap doesn’t sit properly on the head. Instead, it
wraps around it—like a clown’s bald-pate wig. What good
is that? There is certainly no room for a pocket of air. The bill
is worn pulled down so low over the face that, while it blocks the
sun, it blocks everything else in sight as well. And that sloping
forehead look! It may be cute on a duck or 17 year-old fashion model,
but it on most people it looks like they’re covering up a lobotomy.
And while I’m
at it, what happened to that strap on the back? Time was, the humble
strap was merely a utilitarian plastic snap. You pulled the little
nubs out of their holes and re-snapped them to adjust the ball cap
to fit your head. Very simple.
Now even the
poor strap has been gussied up. There are straps with buckles, straps
with adjustable slides, even straps with Velcro. But the worst is
the strap that is too long. Most are made too long to begin with.
So if you have a tiny head and must further tighten the strap you’re
left with a dangling piece of material hanging down the back of your
neck. Looks stupid. What’s going on here?
Here’s my
advice to anyone who should ever be put in charge of requisitioning
ball caps for his company and/or for it’s latest teambuilding
endeavor. If you’re going to put a logo on your company’s
promotional headwear don’t pussy-foot around with it. Be bold,
for chrissake! Recently my buddy and I tested some lures for a manufacturer
of upscale fishing tackle. As part of our expedition we were outfited
with caps emblazoned with the company’s logo on the crown.
Now this company’s
logo is unique and it represents the very essence of aggressiveness.
You would expect their logo to jump out at you—bright snappy
reds and yellows against a dark background, right? So how did they
design their cap? Beige. Boring beige with an equally boring and dull
colored logo. It was so boring I don’t even remember what color
it was.
If it looks like
a dork, walks like a dork . . .
June
3, 2001—My Standard Deviation
A couple of days ago when
I signed on to America On-Line I was offered the opportunity to take
an IQ test. I don’t usually indulge in the teasers that AOL puts
on their sign-on page—I’ve heard more about Britany Spears
than I ever wanted to without having to go dig for more information—but
this one caught my attention.
I guess I’ve always
been a little bit sensitive about my IQ. I mean, like, I was put in
the slow reader’s group in grade school and I still say the words
to myself when I read, although I don’t move my lips anymore.
They tell me people can actually read without hearing the words. I
can’t comprehend that. I love the sound of words, especially
those of someone like Edgar Allan Poe or Dillon Thomas. But I know
that intelligent people don’t read that way. They can zip right
through War and Peace in a week (I gave up after one month
and only 300 pages).
So it was with some trepidation
that I approached the IQ test. Here was my chance to find out once
and for all if I am as smart as my mother-in-law thinks I am. There
were only ten questions to the test. Admittedly, they said, it was
not a “real” IQ test, but it would give you an idea as to
how you stack up.
I got the first question
correct. Then I missed the next two, even though they didn’t
appear to be that difficult. Silly me. The remaining questions were
absolutely brutal. Remember those questions on your SATs that said
something like, “If a train is traveling at 70 mph and goes into
a tunnel 500 meters long and comes out the other end of the tunnel
30 seconds later, how many people are on the train?” Well, that’s
the kind of questions the last seven were.
Most of those questions
had something to do with numbers. Not math, mind you. Just numbers.
You had to figure out the pattern in a sequence of numbers and predict
what the next number would be. Where I come from they call that an
ESP test. Be that as it may, with the help of pencil and paper, a
calculator, counting on my fingers and three cups of coffee, I muddled
through it.
As it turned out, I answered
all the remaining questions correctly. This supposedly gave me an
IQ of 116 to 121. Not knowing if that was good or bad, I asked my
wife, who has degrees in psychology.
She said, “That’s
not bad. You’re in the first standard deviation.”
Whoa! I’ve been called
a lot of things, but never that.
“What’s a first
standard deviant?,” I asked.
“First standard deviation,”
she corrected me. “The first standard deviation from the mean.
Everyone knows what that is. Didn’t they teach you anything in
school?”
I guess I was absent that
day.
In fact, I was absent a
lot of days. One of the reasons I still count on my fingers occasionally
is because the last time I took a course in math was when I was in
the 10th grade. I know, it seems impossible that one could even get
into college without at least some familiarity with advanced algebra
or trigonometry. But there you have it. I suppose UMKC just figured
what the hell is a speech major going to do with math, anyway. So
to this day, about all I can do mathematically is add a short column
of numbers—sometimes.
When I was in the 9th grade
I took Algebra I. Actually, I did quite well in Mr. Krouskos’
class, getting all A’s and B’s. And perhaps because of that
I was one of a select group of students to be the first guinea pigs
with something that was being rolled out called “new math.”
This revolutionary approach to teaching math was so new that they
didn’t even have real textbooks for it. We were given these crappy
red paperback interim books that fell apart after a couple of weeks.
So I started 10th grade
Plane Geometry with the new math. It was awful. What’s “plain”
about this?, I wondered. We began every new lesson with endless discussions
of the Pythagorean Theorems, for example, before getting into any
practical learning exercises. I think the idea was that if you understood
the theorems the rest would just fall into place. No way. Certainly
not for me, anyway. By the time we’d finished with old Pythagoras
I was totally confused. I squeaked through Plane Geometry barely getting
a C.
When it came time to take
11th grade Algebra II, I begged my counselor to let me go back to
the old math. He promised, but he lied. By the time I could get a
hearing I was too far into Alg-II to get out of it. I had a new set
of paperbacks and some new Greeks to get acquainted with.
Of course I flunked out
of Algebra II in the first semester. I transferred to Music Appreciation.
There were only four of us in the music appreciation class—myself
and the three other guys who sang in my quartet. Guess what we did
for an hour every day.
Speaking of ancient Greeks,
I was reading about Archimedes the other day. Do you remember him?
I didn’t either. Well, Archie’s big claim to fame was that
he figured out that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume
of the smallest cylinder that can contain it. Wow, now there’s
an interesting concept. I’ll bet the whole town forum was buzzing
when he announced that one. I can just see all those boys in their
togas running around saying things like, “Look at this shitty
sphere I just bought. It only holds two-thirds as much wine as my
cylinder.”
Archimedes was also the
guy who said, “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
and I can move the earth.”
Now that’s a standard
deviant.
May
3, 2001—The Write Stuff
Remember when you were
a kid and you left home for the first time and your parents told you
to be sure to call or write? Maybe it was when you went away to college,
or went to summer camp, or got married, or simply got old enough to
leave home. For me, it was when I was twenty-two and went into the
army.
Writing home has always
been a big deal with my family, especially with my father, who is
a prolific letter writer. The
Bradleys aren't too big on phone calls. My wife finds it hard to understand.
Why don't you just call each other, she asks? My response to that
question is the same response my mother gave me years ago after I
had just called her on Mother's Day. As we were hanging up she reminded
me to be sure to write. But we just talked, I protested! Yes, but
a letter, she said, gave her something to refer back to. She liked
that.
I've thought about her
comment many times over the years. Something to refer back to. A letter,
if you want it to be, is forever. Unlike a phone call or even an e-mail,
it is tangible. Even before Mom made that comment to me I had already
started my own collection of letters. To this day, about once a year
or so I re-read them—even though some of them were written over
thirty years ago.
Memories. My collection
of old letters are much like the ticket stubs in a scrapbook or earnestly
written inscriptions
in a high school yearbook. OK, I'll not go down that path just now.
But hold that thought. It's a topic for another Ramblings.
What's on my mind today
is the question of why people put off writing to each other. There
must be a myriad of reasons, going all the way back to when you were
a kid and would put off composing that thank you note to your aunt
for the birthday present she sent you. "Yeah, I've been meaning
to write, Aunt Juanita, but I've had a lot of homework lately".
By the time you reach the business world, this excuse is well-ingrained.
"Yeah, I've been meaning to write that letter of recommendation,
Mort, but I've been really busy at work getting out our annual report."
Believe me, I'm no better
than anyone else about letter writing. Well, maybe just a smidgen,
because writing is something I do enjoy. But I sympathize with those
who feel overwhelmed with the thought of sitting down and writing.
I've come to the conclusion
that there are basically two reasons why people don't write. Both
have to do with the effort involved, but one is physical while the
other is mental.
Take the physical first.
With e-mail, letter writing is a piece of cake. My three sisters and
I write to each other weekly, if not daily. My father and my brother,
on the other hand, don't have e-mail and are often out of the loop.
That may be a sad commentary on today's computer age, but it's the
truth.
Granted, it takes me no
longer to compose a snail-mail letter in Microsoft Word than it does
to type an e-mail. But then a whole series of additional tasks are
set into motion. I must print out the letter. I must find an envelope
and address it—and I never can remember an address, so I have
to look that up as well. Then there's the stamp and, of course, the
licking of the envelope. Yuck! And finally I must make a trip to the
post office or corner mailbox. As when I was in grade school, I'm
much too busy a boy these days to have time to do all of that.
My father suggested a solution
a few months ago. "Why don't you buy a bunch of 20-cent postal
cards and jot down just a couple of lines once a week and mail them
to me?" That made sense, I thought. After all, a few short lines
is more or less the length of a typical e-mail. I'd
have to go and find a pen. And then there's the problem of getting
writer's cramp. But all-in-all, it sounded like a good idea and, besides,
the postage is already included on the card. I'd still have to make
a trip to the mailbox, but at least I thought it was worth giving
it a try.
The first thing I had to
do was stand in line at the post office for 20 minutes to buy the
damned cards. That was my first clue that this project might not work
out well. Be that as it may, I bought ten of them. Things went fine
for awhile. I diligently wrote out a card every Saturday morning and
dropped it in the corner mailbox as I walked the dog. Six months later,
however, I still have four cards left. Trying to replicate e-mail
with snail mail just didn't work for me.
But the mental effort
involved in letter writing is actually the reason I started this Rambling
in the first place. Lately I've been in touch with a number of people
with whom I went to high school. I had located these old friends on
the Classmates.com web site
and decided to send them a note to see if anyone remembered me. As
I had never even gone to a reunion, I was pleasantly surprised to
receive e-mails from about a dozen people from both high schools I
attended.
As none of us had seen
or talked to each other since school days, there was a lot of catching
up to do. And therein lies the great writing problem. How do you cover
thirty-plus years of living in an e-mail—or even in a letter?
Hell, the job requires writing an autobiography.
The answer is, you don't.
My first note to these people was tentative. "Hi gang. Anybody
remember me? If you do and you want to write to me here I am."
No attempt was made to explain what I had been up to since high school.
But as we started to individually
correspond, the e-mails got longer. Not only did they get longer but,
after an initial flurry of back and forth, the time elapsing between
e-mails got longer as well. And there I was again. I had come full
circle. I was right back into making the old, "I'm so busy"
excuses.
The problem is this. A
long letter or e-mail implies that the writer has devoted a significant
amount of time to thinking about the recipient. And then the poor
recipient gets to feeling guilty if he doesn't respond in kind. So
he puts off responding. He gets "busy". The longer he puts
it off the harder it gets. Guilt takes over. "I've put it off
so long now that I'm going to have to write a really long letter to
make up for my delay."
So what's the solution?
The answer lies, I think,
in my dad's postcard philosophy. Assuming one is going to write at
all, whether it's by snail mail or by e-mail, we need to get out of
the mindset that it is necessary to "tell all" everytime
we write. I think that's why I stopped sending those post cards. It
seemed so tacky to just send a two-liner to your own father, for godsake.
Like, "Dear Dad, The house burned down today. Hope all is well
with you. Take care. Your son, Richard."
But a short note like that
is OK, especially if you are doing it by e-mail. Because it takes
your recipient off the spot. He doesn't have to worry about sending
a long response. He can simply reply, "Wow, that's too bad. Where
are you living now?"
Now you've got a correspondence
going. If you keep it up, eventually you WILL know each other's life
stories.
So I'll leave you with
this thought. If there is someone you haven't been in touch with for
a long time, just send a quick note. Don't worry about justifying
your life's existence. Just
say," how's it going", and maybe mention something that
happened during the week—like that great tuna sandwich you ate
for lunch yesterday.
April
17, 2001—I Don't Believe It!
From the "I couldn't
make this stuff up if I tried" department, here's one that will
get a lot of your motors running.
Today I received an e-mail
from my governor, smilin' George Pataki. George wrote to inform me
of some of the details of the new "No Call" telemarketing
law that recently went into effect here in New York. For those of
you who don't live in New York, under this law you can register to
have your telephone number made off limits to telemarketers Once you've
registered and waited the requisite 30 days, telemarketers are forbidden
to call you. They can be fined up to $2000 per infraction. Great idea,
eh?
Well, now George tells
me that there are a few "exceptions" to this new law. Here
are the exceptions, lifted straight out of his e-mail. Like I said,
I can't make this stuff up:
Exceptions
Although
registration is designed to prevent most unwanted telemarketing calls,
it will not stop all sales calls. The law provides for some exceptions.
Once you are registered, you may still receive telephone calls from
certain groups, including:
Political
parties and committees
Companies
with which you have a prior business relationship, and
Telemarketers
who wish to arrange for a face-to-face meeting before concluding
a sales transaction.
Well, duh!
Duh, duh, duh, duh, DUH! And DOUBLE DUH!
Common,
George. Who else do you think is making all those obnoxious calls?
Fifty percent of the calls we get are from companies with which we
already have a "prior business relationship." And the rest
of telemarketers are just going to say they are trying to set an appointment.
Give me
a break. Thanks for nothing.
April
13 (Friday), 2001—Some More Rocks in My Own Shoes
It's
been a year since I last did my own complaining so who knows, maybe
this will become and annual thing. Hey, there's an idea. We should
have an annual Complain All You Want Day!
Here's some more
rocks that have gotten into my shoes this past year. Little things,
no big deals. But as one of my favorite poets, Robert Service (The
Men That Don't Fit In, The Ballad of Yukon Jake), once said, "It
isn't the mountain ahead that wears you down, it's the grain of sand
in your shoe."
One thing that's
really tired me out this year is being constantly asked—when
buying a tube of toothpaste, for example—if I have my drugstore
membership card. What have we come to, anyway? What kind of bullshit
is this? Everyone from the airlines to the corner video rental store
has got some kind of "membership" plan whereby you can accumulate
bennies such as frequent flyer miles, free video rentals, a free set
of photo prints, or a discount on Preparation H.
Who do these people
think they're kidding? There is no such thing as free. The cost of
that free item is more than adequately covered by the prices charged
for the other nine boxes of tissues you had to buy in order to get
the free one. So give me a break.
Further—and
this really gets me—if you don't have a membership card the sales
clerk treats you like you just got off the boat. "Don't you want
the discount, Mr.? All you have to do is fill out this form."
No, thank you,
I prefer to pay your regular high prices so that I don't have to tell
you where I live, give you my phone and social security numbers, or
disclose my mutt's preference in dog foods.
Here's another
one. Magazine subscriptions. And I have two sub-categories to this
particular rock.
My wife and I
subscribe to a lot of magazines—everything from TV Guide,
which I never read, to MacWorld, which Pam never reads. It
seems like every month I'm writing a check to renew a magazine subscription.
And there's the rub. It used to be that when your magazine subscription
was about to run out—say 60 days remaining—you would get
a notice asking you to "re-up." That was bad enough. My
feeling was that I have a one-year subscription so don't tell me it's
time to renew when I've only received 10 issues. Let me know about
two weeks before the damn subscription runs out and I'll send you
a check. Or better yet, why can't you just let me know with my next-to-last
issue?
But now, when
you subscribe to a magazine starting with, for example, the January
issue you are informed in April that you can lock in low rates by
renewing early. You know what I mean? You get these notices like,
"You only have 8 months remaining on your subscription. Don't
miss an issue. Renew now!"
But it gets worse.
Any of you subscribe to so-called "professional" magazines?
These are predominantly trade magazines that base their advertising
rates on their circulation. Since you usually can't buy a copy of
Dermatology Today (is there such a magazine?) at your local
newsstand, the only way DT can boost its circulation is to
give issues away. But that presents it's own set of problems. Clearasil
wants to know that they are reaching their target market—dermatologists—not
just your average guy in the hood who happens to have skin for a hobby.
So the trade magazines
make you answer dozens and dozens of questions to see if you "qualify"
to receive a "free" subscription to their magazine that
caters to a very "select" group of people.
But don't be intimidated
if you really want that subscription to Modern Printing Technology.
Just answer the questions. And lie! No one is going to check to see
if you are really the one responsible for your company's million dollar
a year budget for ink. It helps, however, if you play yourself up.
Say you manage hundreds of people and that your company does business
on all 20 continents.
Of course, once
you are granted admission to the exclusive world of "the trade,"
your name will go on a mailing list that will get sold to other companies
that offer products "of interest" to a discerning consumer
like yourself, including credit card companies.
So give yourself
some fancy credentials and make yourself president, or at least executive
vice president, of your company. That
way you can have fun tracing the sources of your junk mail. These
days I receive mail and giveaways to the "president" of
The Bradley Group, Bradley & Associates, MMR Bradley (don't ask)
and, of course, A Rock In My Shoe Productions. And
I have two Dr. Richard Bradley credit cards.
My final rock
for the day has to do with e-mail. Why does everyone feel they have
to send five pages of internet server routing information and tons
of > > > > > > > > > > 's everytime
they forward a joke, virus warning, inspirational poem, chain letter
or heart-rending sad story? First of all, I rarely read that stuff.
I get too much e-mail as it is and the "fwd" in the Subject
is a dead giveaway.
So if a joke
(or whatever) is interesting enough that you think I PERSONALLY will
enjoy it, then cut and paste the damn thing into a brand new e-mail
and send it to ME only (or a few select people), not to everyone in
your friggin' address book. I don't want to see half a page of names
of people I don't know—and who probably don't want to see mine
either. Like my Granny used to say, if it's not worth doing well it's
not worth doing. Hitting the Forward button is usually not doing it
well. It's too easy.
And while I'm
on it, here's a tip. You can try this at home. If you're going to
send something to a group of people that don't know each, there's
a good chance that no one wants their e-mail address spewn across
the internet to people they've never heard of. So put all of your
"group" addressees in the "Blind Carbon Copy"
(bcc) window instead of the "To" window. Then send your
e-mail to yourself. That way everyone will get the message but only
see their own name on the e-mail. Voila!
March
24, 2001—Nothing Much Happened Today
Hello
everyone. When I was about eleven years old I bought a diary in preparation
for a summer trip my family was planning to take from Missouri to
California. It was one of those diaries that had one page for each
day of the year. Since we were going to visit some of the haunts of
my childhood heroes like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson, I thought it
would be a grand idea to keep a record of all my experiences. Further,
there was little question in my mind but that I would continue to
keep up my "journal" after we returned from California.
I did good on
the trip. I made entries every day—or at the very least every
other day, in which case I would "back fill" entries while
the memories were still relatively fresh in my mind. And even after
we returned home I continued to make entries in the diary. Well, for
a week, perhaps.
Then, upon seeing
ten or twelve blank pages for which a corresponding period of time
had elapsed, I would write across the top of each page, "Nothing
much happened today. Nothing much happened today, etc." and quickly
bring my diary up to date.
Well, that's pretty
much the way I feel today. Nothing much happened. Indeed, nothing
much has happened all week.
One of the most
interesting autobiographies I ever read was Carl Jung's Memories,
Dreams and Reflections. I guess old Carl didn't feel that much
happened in his days, either, so he wrote his entire life story about
what was going on inside his head. Next to Freud, perhaps, I guess
he had a lot of rocks in his shoes, too.
I acquired a new
rock about two weeks ago and by last Monday it had turned into a boulder.
So I started writing about it, thinking I would post it here in the
Ramblings. But the thing took on a life of its own again, so now it
is another "chapter," and I uploaded it to the web site
a few minutes ago. It's called "Lights,
Camera, Process!" But now, of course, I have nothing to go
here on the Ramblings.
Be that as it
may, I thought I'd better put something here because I know some of
you will read it in the next few days and then jump over to these
Ramblings to see what's really been going on.
Sorry to disappoint
you. I'm all spent. But I hope you enjoyed "Process." If
you've ever been involved with TQM or any of the other so-called quality
processes, I'm sure you'll appreciate it. I'm glad I finally that
one off my chest!
March
16, 2001—Beating the Rap
Thank
God, we can all rest easy now. "Puffy" was acquitted today.
I was really worried about that, weren't you?
January
28, 2001—A Few Words on These Words
Recently
my wife and I were talking about my writing. Pam wanted to know how
I got my ideas, how long I thought about a piece before writing it,
and in general my "process," such as it is. It was a stimulating discussion
because Pam is a literate person who reads 100 books a year compared
to my piddly 25 or so. She is also my editor. So I thought I'd take
a moment to say a few words about writing.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
said, "I hate writing, but I love having written."
I couldn't agree
more. I can find a hundred things to do before I'm ready to sit down
at the computer and tap out a few words. I'll make coffee, check my
e-mails, straighten my desk, rebuild my Mac's desktop, go pee, clean
the dog's ears, cut my fingernails, and maybe just take a peek at
The New York Times. While I have all the best intentions, I'll
do almost anything to put off getting to work.
I admire writers
who can just get up and write for several hours at the same time every
day. I know that's the way it's supposed to be done, and if I followed
that procedure I'd no doubt be a lot further along with this project.
But dammit, how CAN you write with long fingernails? And how CAN you
write without knowing what's going on in the world? I mean, right
this very moment in my peripheral vision I can see the newspaper headlines
that says thousands of people have died in that earthquake in India.
Isn't that a little more important than my self-indulgent ramblings?
Having said all
that, there is a pattern to my madness, if not an actual method. To
begin with, I write whenever I feel like it. Usually, an idea has
been on my mind for a while and it just percolates until it's ready.
That's when I sit down and write about it. It's like doing spring
cleaning. At some point the thoughts start to take up too much space.
But I never know what's going to come out until I actually start writing.
That part is actually fun. Sometimes I'm really delighted by what
comes out. It's like, Wow, where did that come from?
The ideas themselves
come from my everyday experience. I just take whatever happens—like
being put on hold on the telephone—and think about it a lot.
I do not do research. If I don't have enough personal experience to
write about something, I don't do it. That's not to suggest I have
anything against a well-researched piece of writing. I just haven't
gotten that far along yet and, besides, I hated doing research in
college. So for now anyway, everything you read here comes straight
out of my head.
I tend to get
caught up in process a lot. I've always been that way. To me the road
is often more interesting than the destination. When I go fishing,
for example, it's not important to me at all how many fish I catch.
It's the total experience that matters—the water rocking the
boat, the burning sun, the wildlife, the sound and smell of the boat's
engine and it's gasoline, those expensive yet beautiful lures. It's
the same way with writing. I can't be concerned about how many words
or pages I write per day—i.e., fish caught. I may force myself
to write (as I am now because I haven't posted anything here for a
while), but, trust me, I never quantitate it.
This process in
which I get caught up includes things like constantly reading what
I've written before I've even finished a first draft. Like Fitzgerald
(I'm not trying to draw a comparison, really) I love having written.
So when I've written a few sentences I tend to go back and read them
before writing any more. And reading them leads to revisions right
then and there. The computer makes that easy to do. The only way I
can avoid doing it is to write in longhand. I do that occasionally
in a spiral notebook. I've found that that way I can get the rough
thoughts down without the process getting in the way.
Another way I
get caught up in process is with making the pages look pretty. This
especially applies to the website. I'll start fiddling around with
different fonts and colors and find myself being overly concerned
if The New York Times is in italics, for instance.
In business writing
I'm a stickler for clarity and proper grammar and syntax. It drives
me nuts to read a sentence like, "He noticed a large stain on the
rug that was right in the center." And the passive voice. Jeeze. Can't
anyone write an inter-office memo that says, "We advise all employees..."
instead of, "All employees are advised..."?
But outside of
business, my feeling is that anything goes. I try to write more like
the way people speak. If that means starting a sentence with "And"
or "But," and ending it with a preposition, I'll do it. If slang or
cuss words seem appropriate, I'll use them.
In writing—mine
or anyone else's—my preference is for the short. Short words,
short sentences, short paragraphs, short chapters, short books. That's
why I never could get into the writings of Thomas Wolfe or James Joyce,
no matter how many times I tried (and I am still trying). And I could
only finish a third of War and Peace. I have no doubt that
these authors had brilliant minds and were interesting people. I would
love to have hung out with Thomas Wolfe. But the fact that Tom, Jim
and Leo couldn't get their acts together and simply write more—but
shorter—books is a testament to the fact that they really didn't
think much of their readers, IMHO
And those stream-of-consciousness
run-on sentence writers drive me right up the wall. Please, guys,
give me a break. The person who writes your Cliff Notes version has
got a lot more on the ball than you do. At least he/she can keep things
simple, even if he/she doesn't possess all of your intellectual brilliance.
Now did you notice
I used "he/she" in the above paragraph? That's another one of my pet
peeves in writing. It is so politically correct. I hate political
correctness. When applied to writing, political correctness becomes
downright silly. Who wants to read "he/she" every time the author
is referring to someone who could be either male or female? So I don't
do it. I alternate between genders.
I'm going to conclude
this little rambling right now because, quite frankly, I'm getting
tired. Maybe I'll pick it up again next time. These ramblings are
supposed to be one-sitting writings. Almost all of them have been.
If it takes more than one sitting to write it is no longer a rambling,
it's a "rock." And it's true, a couple of "The Rocks" started out
as "Ramblings."
Enjoy the Super
Bowl.
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