Perceptions and Illusions

I'm confused.
I'm flabbergasted.
I'm, well...I'm puzzled, perplexed, mystified, befuddled, bewildered, and baffled.

I just don't understand what is happening on the air waves today (or now that so much is digital, I probably should say cable waves). First there was the normalizing of language that makes me blush. This language has never found a place in my mouth, yet I cannot stop it from bombarding my ears. And now...

Last night I heard the following sentence: "I need to make sure the bookcases are functionalability." 'Functionalability'? Why the 'ability'? Why not good old 'functional'?

I had heard this same man use 'functionalability' several times before, but each time I assumed I had heard wrong. Unfortunately, I had not.

What is happening? Is it bad education, bad memory, or, or, or...

Eeeeeek!
We're being attacked, I just know it! What better way to weaken a country than to break down communication. And what better way to break down communication than to create multiple subgroups with totally different vocabularies.

I can see it now. Within a few years, popular music afficionados will hold long conversations with each other that sound a little like: "Have you seen bleep bleep bleep bleep? Bleep ate all the Cheerios bleep bleep bleep. I need to go to the bleep store and bleep bleep bleep buy groceries." (excuse the bleeps, I don't say those kinds of words)

While those who take a more homey approach will say to each other: "I flipped it with functionalability and styleousness, so my houseability reached mountaineous proportions. I think it's because of the vertacalability of my clothes."

I cringe at the next step taken by the perpetrators of this dastardly deed. What will they do? What is in store for our national vocabulary, which is being disintegrated one misused word at a time.

We must save ourselves! Rise up citizens, protect your mouths and your minds!
Read a dictionary!

Labels: blogging, frivolity, life, myth or reality, world

Reality TV is great, isn't it.

It is especially great for enriching our vocabularies. Since I've begun to watch HGTV, TLC, BRAVO, and the Food Network, I've heard words the likes of which I never knew existed. Words that are so new the dictionaries don't even recognize them as words yet.

Take for example one of my favorites verticalability - which seems to apply to fabric that creates a long, lean look by making the eye move up and down rather than side to side.

So I'll keep watching the shows, and I'll keep adding to my list of new words, because hey, I want to have the best vocabulability I can possibly have!

Labels: blogging, life, myth or reality, world

Most people can’t hide their true characters for any extended length of time—Jason Mesnick certainly couldn’t.

Oh, I’ll admit that in the beginning, he had me fooled just like everyone else. I saw in him what so many others saw, a clean-cut, successful, fun-loving, eligible bachelor. I wondered how he was holding up after the heartbreak he endured when he was rejected by DeAnna. I pitied him, having to rear his poor, motherless three year old son by himself. I wanted him to find happiness.

Again and again, I thought, “Poor man! All he wants is to find a good woman to make his family whole again. A woman who will be a loving mother to his cute little son, Ty.”

By the third episode The Bachelor had become a family event. All activity halted as we watched Jason struggle to uncover the true personalities of each of the 25 bachelorettes while maintaining a decorous distance. It was a difficult task, to keep the girls from throwing themselves at his feet, but he handled himself very well as he pruned away those he knew had no chance of becoming his own true love.

Immediately after the end of the show the phone calls would begin. “Can you believe how that girl acted?” “How can those girls be so desperate, don’t they have any pride?” “Poor Jason, having to put up with that kind of behavior!”

Yes, all we could think about was poor Jason. He was a man in a million, a glowing example of how we women wanted the men in our lives to act.

But as I said before, a person’s character can only remain hidden for a limited amount of time. Jason’s true colors showed as soon as Molly, Melissa, and Jillian had been given their roses, and all the other bachelorettes had been booted from the building.

I don’t know what happened. Maybe a strange wind blew in from the wrong direction bringing with it pollen from the Nasty tree. Maybe there was a full moon, and Jason decided he needed to howl.

All I knew was that suddenly, I no longer felt sorry for Jason—my pity had transferred to the girls. Or maybe I was just embarrassed for them.

What kind of respectable man made out with multiple girls on national TV, one right after the other? He said that he wanted to marry one of these girls, yet he viewed each with equal lustfulness.

Had he no shame? Did he not know the meaning of respect?

I began to wonder about his ex-wife. What exactly had broken up their marriage? Was he really only concerned about his son, as he said?

By the last show, I really wasn’t surprised when Jason dumped Melissa for Molly. I now viewed Jason with disgust; and his actions validated my belief that he was the type of guy who would ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’.

I was, however, momentarily surprised that Molly would take him back. Until I remembered that this seemingly sweet, confident girl had subjected herself to the humiliation of dating on national television.

Come to think of it—they were the perfect couple. They deserved each other.

Labels: blogging, life, myth or reality, writing

As a librarian who teaches what to do and what not to do on the Internet, I often have the following conversation with my class:

Me: So you should never do that.
Class: Have you ever done it?
Me: No, I haven't.
Class: Then how do you really know you shouldn't do it?

Yes, I know I can give them very good arguments explaining how you can be sure that something is bad without trying it. For example, I know it would be very bad to be hit by a car, and it is not necessary for me to walk out onto a busy street to be sure.

Still, whenever I can safely give something a try, I do. I've edited Wikipedia articles, blogged, built websites, etc. But even for the sake of the students I refuse to forward forwarded emails, click on possibly bogus links, break copyright laws, plagairize, hack into someone else's account, or give out my passwords to anyone.

But I thought, I really thought, that signing up to do online surveys would be a harmless experiment.

Wow, was I wrong! Within an hour, my email inbox was innundated with junk mail, and not only from the survey group. I got email from:
• other survey groups, just in case the first company didn't give me enough surveys to satisfy my opinion-giving craving
• grant sites that promised money for free I could use for anything I wanted
• online colleges telling me I can get a better job if I just got a higher degree
• work from home sites in case I didn't want to leave my home to work
• coffee companies that wanted to jump start my day, whether I left my home or not
• insurance companies who wanted to assure me that if something happened to me they could make sure my family had all the money they needed
• debt relief sites that wanted to rescue me from all those nasty credit cards
• personal products like shoes, makeup, wrinkle-relief creams
• various things that make me blush, so I choose not to write about


Talk about an efficient group. They must have a very good system set up, to be able to share my personal email with such a diverse group so quickly. They have the skill of networking down pat.

I'll be cleaning this mess up for a while. But at least now I can truthfully say that I have first-hand experience that tells me it is unwise to give out my email to any site that I'm not 100% sure about.

And that you should not believe them when they say they won't share your information with anyone.

Labels: blogging, life, myth or reality, world

1. Buy the books for yourself (apparent, I know, but sometimes it really doesn't hurt to state the obvious. You would not believe the number of people who have asked me for a free copies of the Behold the Eye trilogy, even though I have to pay for the books just like everyone else)

2. Buy the books to give as gifts.

3. If you have ever purchased anything on Amazon.com, you can write a review. So go ahead--write one! (You could start with Braumaru) You don't have to use your real name, the author does not need to know that you are the reviewer. (I wouldn't, I promise!) The more reviews posted, the more popular the books seem, the more popular the books become! (People love to read what is popular, no one wants to feel left out of the know)

4. Make a list on Amazon.com that includes the books, and include other already popular books of a similar nature. You know the old saying, birds of a feather flock together!

5. Talk about the books to friends,acquaintances, and random people you meet on the street. (you might get the right person interested, and suddenly, the books are to be made into a movie. I can see it now, everyone will be talking about my trilogy. The bright lights of Hollywood, the...oh, sorry, I got a little carried away)

6. Teachers often read novels to their class. If the books are appropriate for school, like my Behold the Eye trilogy (5th grade and up), ask a teacher if he/she would read it to his/her class. Or, be still my heart, use it as a classroom novel!

7. Request the books at your library. Most public libraries welcome purchase suggestons, there is usually even a form online. (You do all have library cards, don't you?)

8. Ask bookstores if they carry the author...they probably don't now, but you never know, they might start.

9. If you come across a site that allows comments about books, don't be shy! Use every opportunity to get the word out about the books. There are a lot of people out there who would probably love the books (i.e. Behold the Eye trilogy) if they only knew about them. Spread the word! Spread the word! (You might even post a link to the author's site, which will also help.)

10. Books like the Behold the Eye trilogy are not backed by a big New York publishing budget. As a matter of fact, the small publisher who published the trilogy has an exceeding slim budget, one of those typically called shoestring. Since I want the books to do well, I have to do the marketing work myself. Alas I, like everyone else in the world who works fulltime and has a family, am very busy. So any and all support counts for a lot. If you want to help my books, it would be a very friendly gesture if you just let people know about them. Maybe we can find out if word-of-mouth advertising really works! (I struggled to come up with a really good metaphor about how knowledge of the trilogy could spread, but I somehow kept mixing growing flowers with exploding stars. It didn't work, so I'll just spare everyone and leave it out.)

Labels: Behold the Eye, blogging, Braumaru, Cerulea, family, librarian, life, publishing, Viridia, world, writing

In my youth, I had a theory that people could easily be placed in generations based on their place in a family. If you were a parent, you belonged in the parent group, you were the parent generation. All parents were the "parent age", and should willingly hang out with the other parents. It worked the same with grandparents, who enjoyed the company of others of "grandparent age".

But then, people started talking about Baby Boomers. I was shocked to learn the long span of years that were included in a "generation". Around 20!

Okay, so here's something to think about.

A generation is defined as approximately 20 years. If I was born at the beginning of my generation and I had a child at the age of 18, my child and I would be a part of the same generation.

Totally destroys my theory!

Labels: blogging, history, life, myth or reality

I will be so glad when Tuesday is done and gone. It's impossible to get away from all the political ads, and my mind needs a break from all the nastiness and confusion.

But I have a secret. It's not a big, humongous secret. It is a little, annoying secret, one that I've already shared with my family and close friends.

You see, there is a candidate for Congress that I know one tiny little thing about. A tiny thing that shows what her character is made of, and that she doesn't know the meaning of ethics.

You see, several years ago I was laid off from my job, and my family was struggling to make ends meet. Times were tough, and I was frantically trying to get myself re-employed so that my family's financial stability could be restored.

I was estatic to have the opportunity to interview at Microsoft, and I was fully confident that I was a good fit for the job.

I met with the hiring manager, and the interview began. She seemed to be a nice woman, she described to me exactly what the job entailed, and I explained how I could accomplish each task, and how I could add value.

She explained that in order for her to make a decision, she needed to know my working methods and ability. Therefore, she wanted me to tell her my ideas about how she could restructure her site to make the information flow more easily.

After I had completed the task, she suddenly jumped up and said she had to go check on something.

About 5-10 minutes later, a young woman came into the office, and said she had been sent to escort me out of the building. I asked if it would be possible to thank the hiring manager for her time, and the young woman said that the manager was unavailable. She said I shouldn't worry about the abrupt departure, that the manager was "just like that."

A couple weeks later I was chatting with a friend of mine about her job search, and was surprised to discover that we had both interviewed for the same position at Microsoft. (It was easy to remember the name of this hiring manager, because really, how many women at Microsoft have the first name Darcy?)

My friend had left her interview with the task of creating a mock-up of a redesign of the site, to make it more esthetically pleasing. She had done the requested work.

A month later, both of us consoled with each other that neither of us had heard back from the hiring manager, which must mean neither of us were going to get the job.

Out of curiosity, we visited the site I had been asked to restructure, and my friend to redesign.

Shock! Total shock! There, replacing the old site, was a combination of our work. She had interviewed each of us, requested work from us, and combined our work without any recompense, without a "thank you", and even without a polite "sorry, but you are not hired."

And this woman is running for Congress? She claims to be ethical, looking out for the interest for others?

Hardly!

Labels: blogging, family, history, life, world

It is time for me to do a little more work to integrate the blog more fully into my website. I don't think changing the background to black is enough.

So if you visit and things look odd, please have patience. I'll probably have to try several different versions before I get everything looking exactly how I want it.

Wish me luck!

Labels: blogging

Actually, this is only the beginning of the blog. The beginning of the book goes back to 2003 when I finally decided I had waited long enough to begin it, and the story itself, well, it has roots in my childhood.

Labels: blogging, history