The Day I Poisoned My Miniature Dachsund

Anyone that knows me would know that I do not like my dachshund very much. He has never really been a dog- more like a potted plant that moves to eat and crap. He is 11 years old now, stubborn, barks more than I'd like (but never at intruders, just things he shouldn't bark at), and when I try to pick him up he bites me. He is an AKC purebred, which means that he and his lineage have been inbred so much that he is a sickly little thing that has an autoimmune disease that requires him to have - no shit- human immunosuppressant HIV/AIDS meds daily (read "real expensive") or he starts itching and his hair falls out and he looks like he has mange. He has never fetched a ball, newspaper, or a slipper. He never seeks attention or greets us at the door after a long day. He never wants to be in our laps. He looks uncomfortable when I get the leash out and he hates walks, swimming and snow. See? A potted plant that craps. Since day 2, I have lost interest in him and simply done the right thing to support him until he goes onto potted plant heaven. I made the commitment when I bought hte purebred for large sums of money, and now I shall live with that commitment.

Things in the past regarding the dog that my wife has said to me include: "We do not bite the dogs" (when he bit me the first time many years ago, I bit him back). "We do not strangle our puppies" (when I attempted to keep him from biting me when I was trying to get him to go outside to do his business). "He's afraid of you, that is why he is cowering", and my favorite "we do not hit our dogs with sticks" (when I have repeatedly tried to get him to do his business in the area he has been trained to go in,  I guide him to the area with the poop scooper handle like a cattle rustler by tapping his sides to steer him in.) I have never abused this dog, but you'd sure think so by our relationship.

Well, I thought my prayers would be answered the other evening; I poisoned him.

Every summer, insects try to use our house for their homes because we back a nature preserve in a pretty serious hardwood forest. Every summer, I find natural ways to make them seek residence elsewhere (sometimes in insect heaven). Well this year was another carpenter ant year, and they are especially nasty when they set up shop in your house. I did not want that to happen and after a couple of more natural ways to make them move, I felt it prudent to go the unnatural chemical bait route. See where this is headed? I ordered the stuff from an exterminator supply house after researching its effectiveness. This was the big gun of carpenter ant extermination bait.

I was careful putting it out to keep it away from the kid and the pets - but I didn't count my best friend because he never gets out of his bed. I put a dish of carpenter ant bait within easy reach of him, and for some reason known only in the stars, he actually got out of bed, he walked up the stairs, entered the kitchen and smelled his way to the bait and cleaned it out, leaving foaming chunks of the stuff on his eyelids and jowls. He ate a double helping of an amount that should have taken out a couple hundred thousand of our 1/2 inch long ants.

It took a full minute of him standing in the kitchen licking his lips for me to realize what had happened. Then, despite three very stout Gin & Tonics, I made very sober calls to our vet, a transfer to the after hours emergency vet, then another transfer to the ASPCA where they coached me through making the dog vomit, but the dog never did. I think everyone in the house assumed that he was a goner. We waited, but no throw up came He digested vast doses of hydrogen peroxide along with the poison (Hydrogen Peroxide makes dogs throws up with the foamyness). No puking. Specialists with the ASPCA were called and the bottom line became that I would need to take him to the vet to have another chemical used that would make him throw up the poison. They said that the ant bait had immediate gastric and nervous system issues, including paralysis and stroke in small doses. Yet no vet in my area could get him in since it was now pretty late in the day. Even my own vet backed out, saying that there was probably no use - too much of the chemicals had already entered his blood. We waited for death to consume our dog.

Parked outside as the sun went down, my wife covered him, thinking that it would be the last time she ever gave him a blanket. In case he needed to throw up, or worse, we kept him on our deck until bedtime. We then sent him to do his business outside in the area, said our goodbyes and covered him for the night. I gave all I had to try and rescue the little guy, because my daughter loves the little thing, and I love my daughter. I would have spent any amount of money to fix the problem, driven anywhere, but it was no use. We all went to bed with heavy hearts (I only had a heavy heart for my daughter, let's make that abundantly clear.).

We wake every day at 6 am. The first thing that my daughter wants to do is to check on our dog. I have to admit that I am curious myself to see how much pain then thing went through in his final hours. Like always, the dog is in his dog bed, covered up completely just like we left him, and we have to dig to uncover him from under his blankets (potted plant). I tell my girl that I better check first, in case there are things too yucky for her 4 year old eyes.

I pull the covers back gingerly, searching for the body of the dog, and I feel what seems to be his tail and butt. The dog is perfectly fine and thinks I am there to bother him and he spins and latches his teeth into my hand. The little sonofabitch never showed any signs of poisoning, despite consuming 5 times the dosage used to decimate several colonies of ants, and he remains fine. The ant problem appears to have been solved, however.

I think we may be having a rat problem soon, or a raccoon infestation...

Hands out for more handouts.

Richard Gerry Reporting from college:

I graduated with my undergrad degree from the University of Utah a million years ago. One year ago, I graduated from Cleveland State University with my Master's. That's right, I am awesome. But this post is not about that.

They keep hounding me for alumni money - both of them.

I went to the University of Utah for nearly 10 years and spent in the neighborhood of $40,000 to do so. I had no scholarships, grants or subsidies beyond what the state pays for all students (and that is sort of like a sale at a mall store - jacked up 50% so that a 50% sale seems like a lot of discount). I never really did well with grades until I found my major and did very well, but my GPA was so low from my younger years that I ended up with only a fair to good cumulative. Other graduates in the year I graduated could expect to earn around $20,000 a year in entry level jobs. No, I didn't get an engineering degree. That is why I can spell.

Cleveland State University cost $20,000 for a two-year degree ten years later. I also was given no financial support, despite applying for teaching stipends and research assistant positions. In this degree I was firmly at the top of my class. I graduated "high honors" with a 3.97 GPA (one A-....that bastard professor cheated me and if I ever see him again...Bam!!). Regardless, I was in the top 1% of my cohort and delivered a fucking stellar end project. At the defense I was asked to join the Urban PhD program and offered to work with the best and brightest that CSU had to offer (yea, it sounds wrong to me too, 'cause how bright are they?). I was at the top of the game. Still, No help; no free career placement services, no tuition kickbacks, no free books, key lanyards or a free pot of coffee in the hallway between classes. Nothing but opportunities to spend more of my money every time I turned around; Parking, bus/train passes, lab fees, field work fees, real-professor fees, computer fees, technology fees, recreation fees, student government fees, and $12 burritos in the food court...like money vacuums from all directions - and all sanctioned by the state legislatures, boards of regents, and the very student government that charge the fees.

It's not like this.

As soon as I graduated each, I started to get weekly glossy mailers, booklets and daily emails from the schools asking for alumni donations. The brochures show people proudly wearing knit sweaters in school hues, cheering on the team, smiling with friends, staring into the eyes of a romantic flame, or completely engaged in the professor's lecture (who rocks a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and sports a graying beard). This could not be further from the truth of what these colleges are like now days. Did alumnus that attended this school really have it like that? Did anyone at any time? If so, I would like to know where I went wrong. My college days were mostly disgusting as an undergrad.

It's like this.

Both the University of Utah and Cleveland State are filled with nineteen-year-olds that have no idea what life is like, and they're either blowing unconscionable amounts of easy student loan monies on Beats by Dre headphones and iPods/iPhones and liquor or they are working three jobs and look like they have not slept or eaten well in weeks. They all are having sex with each other. They do any drugs they can get. In short, they are figuring out how to be humans in the real world, which is a social function of college. A lecture by a real professor in undergrad classes is growing more and more rare as grad students take over teaching beginning courses to offset tuition expenses. None of the students could give two shits about the content of the lectures; they repeatedly ask "Is this on the test?" because that is all they know from attending public schools. They do not respect their teachers. If the professor dances around the question, you can see the student completely tune out and send a text message to whomever boffed them the night before (that are asking the same questions to their professors down the halls). The only bond the students have is similar to one that coworkers in the same company have. Because they all go there at the same time, they are on the same team. The team could be the Nevada Naked Nothings, and sure enough, they'd all be wearing N3 hoodies while they crowded around passing the pipe before a basketball game, getting their lungs full of school spirit. I hope that this is not the normal, but I have attended 6 colleges, observed classes in a few more and it was sadly the same in every one.

90% of the people around that desk are asking about extra credit because they were having sex instead of studying for  the test they just got back. The other 10 are trying to have sex with the 90% before the next test.

Our society in general has lost the ability to conserve, cut excess and restrict in lean times. We are used to things getting tacked on to our bills, and paying for things after we consume them on credit. This is why we as adults look at an alumni letter and consider it for a second, and think on those times when we were still drunk in our 9am class from the night before. We think of our youth, when we did not have responsibility and bills, slept around without consequence and lived life for real. We want that back and will pay now for what we spent before. We forget how shitty we usually felt, how socially awkward we were, how broke we were all the time and we forget that there is more to life than "what is on the test".

The alumni associations get from me what they gave to me when I was there. You can never go back.

Missing Muses and the Dandelion Dilemma

Jacked photo from Cleveland.com 

So April came. Spring came in the middle of it, but signs were pointing that way even at the beginning. A couple of days in the 70's, a light snowfall, the cycle continued all through April. As April left, so did the Winter of 2012-2013. Lows are in the mid 50's now, and spring has arrived. Bear with me, I have a point...

For years now, I have suspected that I am a seasonal writer, meaning that my writing content changes with the seasons. I have taken data over the last few years and that seems to indeed be the case. My content changes, with a transitional piece that I keep working on that falls at the change. Fall and Winter bring out the guns and bad people, Spring and Summer bring more kid-content and more shallow yet morally-challenging stuff; Desert dwelling kidnappers, boat stuff, etc.... Keep bearing with me, the moral dilemma is coming....

With each change comes with it the most frustrating part of writing: Being blocked. I usually spend from two weeks to two months blocked. Unless you write, I think that it is hard to understand; This is my "career" for now, and with it, like any job, I have goals and stepping stones to get to those goals.

Imagine if you went to your job and were unable to do it, completely out of the blue and no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't. Not until just as suddenly you could do it again. Herky-jerky, all over the place work completion. You would want to get as much done as you could because you know that there will be a window coming up where you can no longer do it for an indefinite amount of time. And to make matters worse, you could be in the middle of a project or completing a sale or order, or whatever it is that you do, and that is when you freeze up and lose it all, knowing that once you stop, you will be working on something else that got cut short from before, or worse, starting a new something completely out of the blue that you never though of before. I have a suspicion that a lot of short stories are a product of writers block; that is where every single one of mine have come from. In the more than 20 years that I've been writing, I've completed three full length novels, I am in the middle of two others, but I have more than 20 short stories of varying lengths that all come completely out of the blue and need to be completed before I can move on to the big projects that I actually want to work on. Few people like short stories (plus, mine average less than 10 pages apiece - pretty short short stories) so there is no real hope for them ever paying for themselves, so all in all, writer's block stinks on all fronts.

So needless to say that the entire month of April I was blocked, and the block continues. I have goals to complete a sequel and have it available by September but it is going nowhere fast, I also have grand dreams of two other projects that would go along just fine if I could talk the muses to sticking around for more than a couple of months. Currently they even found content difficult to put on this blog...It's been over a month and this is the best thing I could write? My muses are cruel bastards.

Muses in antiquity

My Muse - I call him Carl.

Secondly, whilst I am hopelessly blocked, I am always looking for content for when the writing flood gates open. If you've read my stuff, you know that I like endings that the reader needs to finish in their heads (it judges what they're like as humans compared to my characters), and I like to put my characters in moral dilemmas that they get themselves out of, or don't (depending on the reader, sometimes). Well I came by one today that it too weak for me to write even a nano-story about:

Spring brought with it over two weeks of serious Spring and sunshine; The dandelions had a heyday. I've controlled them decently in my yard through scheduled fertilizer with weed killer, but some skill exist because they grow here like everything else- uncontrollably wild and big. Well there were a few left, and they have now gone to seed.

My kid is in the yard today - a full-sunshine perfect afternoon before nap time - and she finds some dandelions and picks them. Before I can spit out a barking order "Little Child! Put down the dandelion gently! Slower, slower, now drop it and step away from the weed!" she fills her lungs full of air and blows that sucker all across the yard, then reaches for a second, giggling.

"Look what I can do, Daddy!" and she blows another one - the seeds drift into the largest, most prominent and visual area of the grass parts of the yard- a part that I've been able to keep relatively free of the weeds. You see the moral dilemma coming: Do I let the kid be a kid and enjoy nature's ready-made bubble wand, or do I stop her and try to protect the turf that I have been nurturing back to life since we moved to Camp Speer? We do not have time to travel elsewhere, and there is nowhere else to go. I reflect on the time, cost, and effort that I have put into the yard over the past few years, and how all of that may be at an end after three minutes of play, and then I reflect on my real job - not the job of writing; Writing is my hobby. My real job is to raise the kid until we put her in the school system. This is where I would stop writing if this were a short story (which at this point, this blog post may exceed most of my short stories!) What do I do, reader?

"That's great, sweetie! Good blowing! let's see you do some more!"

Not my kid...not my picture - but it was like that!

What's Your Favorite Animal?

Alright, so now that he can opener issue is history (until the current 'murica version meets the fate of all the other disposable metal junk). I am tackling another issue: My favorite animal. My kids are always asking what my favorite animal is.

Until this very night I did not know what my favorite animal was. None of them seemed to fit what I wanted in an animal; Beauty, easily underestimated, fierce predation, lives in water, uses finesse to kill, and almost having superpowers. It seemed that all water creatures were crude and ugly things. Then I found this:  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

Yes, my favorite animal is a shrimp.

-Richard

Eggs"hell"and?

Speer Here - So, reading Richard's post on can openers, I said to myself (after laughing hysterically at how mind-numbingly boring his was) "I can entertain better than that..." So, I give you:

Eggshelland. Have you heard of it?

For 55 years Ron Manolio has delicately cut the end off of eggs at a local diner to collect his shells while they serve the eggs in omelets, took them home, rinsed out the shells and painted them - rumored to be at a rate of 3 per minute - and then placed them in patterns in his yard for basically only 10 days before Easter every year, arranging them in impressive designs mounted on wooden pegs, based on popular images of the past year (Mario when Mario was popular, Fire/Police after September 11, Scooby Doo, etc..). Literally hundreds of thousands of eggs:

Impressive, eh?

If you know Cleveland, or received out latest Christmas card, you'll see that Easter in Cleveland is unpredictable at best, and typically is still firmly in the "Winter" category. Temperatures are still freezing even in the day and there is often snow on the ground. There are no fluffy chicks and flowery dresses at Easter Egg hunts here, full winter regalia is still required. A hard rain or hail can bust these eggs, requiring hours of work in repair, and Ron stored all of these eggs in his home year around for the 10 day spectacle. For 55 years!

Here is a short film (that I ripped off from YouTube) that shows the first year we visited Eggshellland. That year, the sign says that there were over 32,000 eggs in the display, and the theme was something about flying. Pretty cool. The cars line up for blocks, the streets are filled with groups of families. A line forms at one end of the circle that Ron lived on, and wound its way around, each person having a minute or two to snap photos, take movies of the kids by all the egg shells and see all of the creations. It got so busy that the police frequently needed to direct traffic in the neighborhood.

Ron Manolio

Ron died last August. The cause it not important. It was not egg related.

Ron Manolio was an artist, and I have no doubt that he lived and breathed this 10-day display every day, thinking of ways to design something different, a new display or a faster way to paint. It gets in your brain and you get obsessive about it, and it does not leave until you let it out into the world to fly.

The display became a family affair - the first design (I believe) was a cross and it ballooned from there; more and more people were needed to help pull it off as every year Ron became more and more notable locally, then eventually nationally and internationally when the 24 hour news networks needed ANYTHING to fill all 24 hours. There was even a full scale documentary movie filmed about Eggshelland. Pretty soon  it became so rooted in the traditions of local families and published in must-see attractions of the area that failing to provide Eggshelland would be devastating to everyone involved. Ron's wife computerized the designs, their children and grandchildren helped to set up and maintain the eggs (tree limbs have fallen on the display, hail has obliterated it, the heavy Cleveland rains have washed sections of the light, hollow shells away, etc...) and then Ron died unexpectedly.

The family decided that this year would be the last. The design is basically a portrait of Ron and a big Thanks and Goodbye kind of tribute. Clearly the annual display was a huge undertaking and nobody else in the family apparently had the passion to take up the challenge annually.

When I heard this I grew conflicted about going to see it one last time. It might be a local routine and a final huzzah to a man that dedicated his life to one thing, but it also a freeing time for his family. Despite all helping that they (probably) mostly did without complaining for 55 years, this was not their dream, and it can be seen in the final design. They were sucked into the vortex of a man that did something quirky and creative and it took off beyond any original intention. I am not implying that the family was dragged into this against their will, it was probably amazing to be part of such a spectacle, but it was not their dream or somebody would have grabbed the steering wheel of the project and kept their foot on the gas.

We decided that we witnessed a few years of Ron's best work, and it was right to respect the peace of both Ron and his family that have gone on with their lives.

!@#$&*! Can Openers and corporate greed!

Richard Gerry here:

So, what the hell is up with manufacturing today? Can't the executives of the mighty USA threaten and torture enough third-world children to get them make a quality can opener that will last longer then six cans?

I'm the cook of my house, and I pride myself on the use of most everything being made from scratch, so I use like ten cans a month with things like creamed soups and diced tomatoes and such -  Seriously, I've bought six can openers in the last two years! And every !@#$%&*! one I bought, every freaking time I stand in the store aisle, saying aloud :"Well this will be the last one I ever buy - It will be just like the Swing-A-Way that my mom used to have! Before you even say, it, no, I don't like electric anything; I'm pretty old-school and have limited counter top until more suckers buy my books. 

Farberware sucks, too!

Over the last two years I had two OXO's, A super-expensive Kuhn, A Farberware (the most recent, and fairly expensive - see photo) some brand called "Progressive", a Target-Branded version of the Swing-A-Way, and yes, even a real true-blue Swing-A-Way with  the rubberized grips and all metal features. 

Who makes this stuff?

It turns out Swing-A-Way must have sold out and started making stuff with bad metal overseas, because they were the worst of the lot; The metal was done in by the super-strong metal of the basic can - I mean, who the fuck designs these things! Wouldn't any kind of engineer, designer or common man anywhere say; "Well, the cutting wheel and gears should be made of a stronger metal than the god-damned cans they're opening". And plastic (What did in the most recent Farberware gem)- what brain trust thought "Well, we'll make steel chromed gears, a steel chromed cutting wheel, but make the crank that turns them out of basic gumball-machine-prize plastic...and make it the size of a baseball bat so lots of torque gets built up there between the metal and the plastic." Who okays this, and more importantly, why do we stand for things not lasting longer? I inherited my Mom's Swing A Way but eventually "upgraded" to a prettier one because the Swing A Way was old. It still worked fine after over twenty years! Wish I still had it...

There is one can opening winner in this mess, however; The backup. It is the can opener from all of our camping equipment. It has no brand name. It is at least 20 years old. It is all steel. It has no cutting wheel; It has a blade instead. In 1997 it cost $1.49 at an army/navy surplus store.  I have no doubt that it was made in   an Asian nation by cheap underage labor with cheap materials. But the design is easy, and timeless, and this thing has opened more cans than Ron Jeremy. If the handle were longer I would make it my every day, but with a handle the size of a quarter my hands are bleeding after more than one can. Thus the lesson of design trade offs - If it had a longer handle the torque would be to much for the crappy metal and it would fail.

The "Ron Jeremy"

"Why Is That Important?" Game Part 2

24 days are left to "Opening Day". The official beginning of the season for professional baseball. Leslie and I rarely miss a game. It gets tedious in August and begins to feel like work, especially when the Tribe are slipping after the annual June Swoon and the players are succumbing to injuries and their minor-league call ups are unknown. The starters feel like family by June. The call ups feel like your deranged uncle Leonard crashing your dinner party by July. Every year.

I was an Indians fan long before moving to Cleveland. In 1995 I remember watching the division series on the living room floor with my dad in Roy, Utah. Dad was a closet Red Sox fan (and an uncloseted Mariners fan) and so to make it fun, I became an Indians fan that year, just to screw with my dad. I was only into baseball when dad was around in those days, and the following year the Tribe made the division series again (and were dismantled by the Orioles and did not see the World Series again) I laid belly down on the floor with him while he read the paper, and watched the games with him. I knew dad loved baseball, and though I played little league I never watched it unless he had it on TV.

Going forward many years and here we are: Living in the city, able to watch every game (even some Cactus League games). But no Albert Belle hitting ( 8 seasons of 30+ home runs and 100+RBIs - only 5 others in history have done that), and thus no World Series. (A popular Cleveland joke is to say "There's always next year."). 

So in reading about spring training results, I see a sponsored article that talks about an old stadium that the Indians used to play at; It was called League Park. A group is trying to revive this old stadium and make it more of an attraction. So I Google it to find it on the map. It is in a less-than-savory part of the city and definitely not on the tourist circuit. One wall stands at the end of a city-owned beat down city park. So I ask myself "Why is That Important to these Clevelanders?" Here are then and now pics:

It doesn't take much digging beyond a Wikipedia page to find out why is should be a big deal to the locals and anyone else that likes baseball (This will probably mean more to ball fans, but the names will be certainly familiar):

* Cy Young delivered the first pitch in this park.

* Babe Ruth hit his 500th home run in this park.

* Joe DiMaggio hit the last of his 56 game hitting streak in this park in 1941.

* Jim Bagby hits the first home run by a pitcher in a World Series in this park.

* The first and only unassisted triple play in World Series history happened in this park.

* The first grand slam home run in the history of the World Series happened in this park.

* The site of the first World Series win by the Cleveland Indians.

* Alta Weiss, female pitching sensation (for a men's team) debuted at this park in 1907.

* Adie Joss pitched his perfect game in this stadium in 1908.

* Cleveland Buckeyes won the Negro League World Series in this park in 1945.

So, Why is that Important to Cleveland? If there is a recognizable name from old-school baseball, they passed through this park. I would have to say that it not only is important to Cleveland but to the world of baseball in general.

It was recently given a $5 million budget for restoration because word of mouth spread through the baseball community to the political community to keep it around. It's Important! 

 

The "Why Is That Important?" Game

Cleveland is home. 
We've lived here for going on three years now, we no longer need to use the GPS when we're going places most of the time because the coordinate systems here are pretty easy, even over long distances. 

We've been to most of the tourist places and always have fun telling other about them.

We feel the frustration every year when the Indians swoon in June and fall out of playoff contention. We get angry every year the Browns fumble on their quarterback free agency and draft choices (and coach....tight ends...receivers....) and the Cavaliers are coming back strong (but we hate basketball). 

The winters are six months long, but he payoff for that is a long autumn and lots of greenery that we love. The summers average 80ish degrees; perfect!

The Cleveland West Side Market

Now that the whole place is not new I find myself playing the game of "Why is that important?". Basically when there is news about something, I research it a little and find out why people that were born and raised in Cleveland care about whatever the subject is. I learn the history and it is nice to know for social situations when talking with the locals, plus I have a lot of time on my hands. Anyway...when I do the research, I always find offshoot things that catch my attention. Just like being on the internet, but this usually involves the awesome public library system more than the internet because 
Recently there was a fire in the Westside Market. We go there a few times a year. I could go on and on about the market itself. It is a foodies paradise, here are some key points:
 -The market has few peers in the US or elsewhere in the world, because of the Hungarian and Polish influences in the city- it still sells 900 pounds of head cheese a week - from a single meat vendor, and there are literally dozens of meat vendors alone.
- There are sausages that most people have never heard of, bakeries with new and exciting things (blood pastries, anyone?) rare cheese vendors and ethnic everything. 
-If a Food Network mecca. The editors of Bon Apetit, Gourmet and every other food mag have all made pilgrimages and visits to the place. Bourdain said it rivaled only Paris as far as outstanding markets go. 
-It has a gyro shop that has been ranked the best in the country- since the rankings have been given in 1986-by a Greek American magazine out of New York. 
-Stalls two blocks long of vegetables, much of it local in the late summer.
 And on and on. On any morning you will see executive chefs in their white coats there for the best restaurants in town choosing fresh ingredients for the day, right alongside a polish grandmother allowing the vendors to select the best they have to offer for them and their families.

So there was a fire there that shut that place down for a week or two. I walked by it going to drink beers with friends nearby, and it was sad to see it empty and a little sooty. Workers rushed in to clean it, but a lot of the inventories that were exposed to the (hazardous) electrical fire smoke had to be destroyed. 

Now it has opened again, and in an effort to help the vendors that may have lost not only sales for the time it was closed, but also lost a lot of inventory, the vendors and stall owners were greeted on opening day with several organized "cash mobs" of customers that helped to put them back on their feet. 

So, To answer "Why is that Important?" Well, the market is a national treasure, but the people were what was important.  

March back into Facebook!

Well, my February FaceBreak ends the day after tomorrow. Final data tallies are a little alarming – First off, the Chrome browser has a “most visited” list of 8 of the websites you visit most. I’ve used Chrome for about a year and a half, and Facebook has been consistently the top ranked site in that time. Like I said before, I logged onto Facebook 20+ times before ten a.m.! What was very surprising was that Facebook was finally overtaken as my most popular site on the 23^rd of February (by my email, which is logged 10+ times per day itself!) I’ll say that again: It took 23 days of NO ACCESS AT ALL to Facebook to level it out with my email that gets checked 10 times a day. I was astonished. Facebook never fell below 2nd.

As expected, Twitter climbed the “most” chart, all the way to #6 or so within a month, but I don’t get as much out of it for some reason. Side note: For some reason when I signed up to Twitter, I started following Paris Hilton, and over the month February I learned that I fucking hate her. Every post is like this: “Belief will get you down roads that stop the non-believers – by so and so” or “success comes to those that work when the others give up – by whomever” or some other spew like that. Paris apparently has forgotten that without her Grandpa’s money, even her family-money-teat-sucking father could not have gotten Paris to the point of being able to show her tits and get a reality show; she simply would have been the #227,345 nearly ignored slut on the internet. If I whipped out my junk and flashed it around I’d be ticketed or worse, but if I had a rich grandpa and thus dad, I’d get a TV show, more money, and apparently a new perfume line. But I’ve digressed...back to data now.

My writing production, the thing that prompted me to begin the FaceBreak in the first place to see if I could increase my pages per day, increased 228% over the month. I’m not attributing this purely to the absence of Facebook; I set new goals for myself as well, and I tried to develop a more solid daily writing routine. Whatever the antecedent was, I’ll take it.

Communication was a plus and a minus; I received more phone calls than I have in years, however, I abhor phone conversations so that was good and bad, and what I did learn was that people were reading my FB posts online and getting updates on my life, but they were not responding or posting online, emailing or calling me. My absence online made them call.

I feel that I learned less during my FaceBreak. Without all of the links to things that caught my attention on Facebook, and thus ate all of my time, wasting time on the web consisted mainly of Reddit and dumb videos on YouTube with the occasional link from the BBC or something.

My Spotify use increased, probably as a result of my writing. I did not keep data on this, but I know it rose because my ears are ringing.

Lastly, I read three books this month (Looking for Alaska deserves to be on the NYT bestseller list; it is a young adult book that is very readable by adults, and I cannot say enough about the quality of writing or the story line – well beyond my skills!). Two ebooks and a genuine book book that had paper and everything! That number is up from less than one book a month on average. I don’t have hard data because I always have two or three books that I am reading as well as a few I’m writing at any one time.

So, that is the summary. While I did miss it, I believe in data and decisions based on it, so on March 1, I’m sure I’ll go online to catch up, but I’m also sure that I don’t need it, and I am certainly not an “addict” because by the second week I had forgotten it existed (except when everything else on the planet links to it for some reason...then I caught glimpses of what is in store for me in a couple of days. See you there! (but, not as much...)

Casey's And The Meek project

There is a large population of middle-school aged kids that read lower than their peers, and as a result of the material available to them, many give up on reading between the ages of 11-15 and never fully catch up to their peers. Given the critical social development during these ages, and the peer pressure that is a rite of passage to endure (or for many, succumb) it is not acceptable for an almost-teen to carry around a "See Spot Run" book - so they carry none, and read none, because of that social pressure. Their older, more perceptibly "mature" peers will carry teen novels or even -gasp!- adult age novels (It is easy to imagine that many teachers have confiscated ragged copies of the Shades of Grey series lately, especially in Texas).

   

My And the Meek project has been a long time in the making, but the first rewritten installment is nearing rough completion. Much of it has undergone a large re-write to address the low-ability high interest pre-teen factor. The sample paragraphs below have existed largely unchanged since 1998. Its aim, and the challenge, were to create a shorter series that interest both boys and girls, develops characters that pre-teens can find things in common with, demonstrate a few issues for commonality and mostly entertain readers. The entire series will be written at or below a 5th grade reading level, (which is three grade levels below the level that most things (newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc..) are written, with directed areas that peak above that for a very short period of time in an effort to get struggling readers to reach a little for understanding key critical areas.

The rewrite was mainly to convert a single longer adult novel into easily digested (for frustrated readers) 100 or less page pieces, but it was apparent that the antagonist would also need to be re-engineered because the original simply caused too much raw violence. The biggest challenge in the last six months has been to shorten sentences and paragraphs and to reduce larger vocabulary words for understanding. The sample below is at or around a grade 5 level. To compare, the blog post you just read was at about a "grade 16". 

Here are the first few paragraphs of  the first installment of  "And the Meek":

Abby’s olive skin had a pale look like the skin of a pear. She first saw her arm and she didn’t recognize it as her own at first – until it moved when she willed it to. Her head hurt and her belly was swollen and on fire. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she was unable to make enough spit to free it. She pulled it off, making the only sound in the day – a quiet ripping noise. Old tears crusted her cheeks and her pants were stiff and a little wet, either something from down there, or heavy sweat. She couldn’t smell anything as her nose was caked closed with snot. Abby found it hard to move at all. She was weak like when her mother told her she had the flu, only it felt like she had the flu forever without knowing it. For half an hour she lay on her bed, almost lifeless but gaining what strength she had from the consumption of muscles that had been drawn of energy for nearly two weeks.

She remembered being sick. Her whole family was sick. They knew it was coming because the TV told them it was. They all had the flu at the same time. Everyone was itchy at first, and then they got the flu. There was nobody to take care of the sick ones, they just yelled down the hallway for each other and it was hard to tell if they were yelling at each other or just yelling in their dreams. Abby was one of the first to get it– her Mother thought she had caught it at school. Her mother cared for her for the first two days, feeding her and giving her glasses of water in the red cups. Those were Abby’s favorites, the red plastic cups like they had in the restaurant downtown. Abby’s sister was really sick the next day, so sick that even though her dad was starting to feel yucky, he needed to take her to the hospital but there were so many people there, they had to wait. He stayed with her there, calling the house and telling their mother how Lisa was doing. The day after that, Dad was in the hospital too. He was throwing up blood like Lisa. That was all Abby remembered about being sick. Her mom was starting to feel bad, but Abby was too tired to take care of her and drifted in and out of sleep.

She had slept so long, all her arms and legs were asleep and her eyes hurt too, from lack of liquids. She tried to shake out her arms, like she did when she fell asleep on her arm downstairs in front of the TV and they got tingly. After a while the buzzing lessened and she could move both arms in her bed enough to pull her small body up to sit with her head against the headboard. The wetness down below was easy to see under the covers then. It was brown like a dried scab and the color scared her.

“Mom!” she called. Her own voice startled her in the quiet and made her ears jump. Her mom didn’t answer. She looked around the room; saw the bowl of soup she remembered was left for her when she was feeling too sick to eat. A goldfish bowl rested where it had always been, her dolly sitting beside it staring at her.

Comments? Suggestions? Send 'em my way!

- Casey

Thug by Richard Gerry continues to do well and is increasing sales the most, strangely, in French-speaking Canada. Paper book (yes, they are still made!) sales have risen 18% in the last month and the book has several great reviews. Thank you, readers! 

Thug is available on all E-reader platforms through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, SmashWords and Kobo. Paper versions are available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and most anywhere they sell books. 

Casey's Big FaceBreak February!

So, I'm into day 11 of my Facebook Free February (note - chose the shortest month...) and while day one and two were difficult and I had to fight the habit of pushing that Favorite on the task bar, I no longer notice that I even had it. I'm fine, really, please do not send any more "Get Well" cards.

My reason for taking a break -which coincided nicely with two recent studies that show most people 1) Do take a break from it occasionally, and 2) That Facebook makes you sad (or sadder...). I did not see these before I had decided to take a break, but they were actually noticed BECAUSE I was taking a break and was surfing other waves of the InterWeb. Ironic, I know. But I digress, as I was saying, my reason was to find out what I would do if I were not logging onto Facebook some 40+ times per day (I took data before the break, data of 40+ led to decision to take a break :) Like the two studies show: Facebook is a lifestyle choice, like wearing Crocs or raping sheep; it is nice to have contact with people that I consider family, old friends from high school, undergrad and grad school and the neighborhoods that I/We have lived in. It is cool to see what people are up to - but then the sadness part; I've done a lot of things in my life;  I've run retail stores, cleaned floors and picked up mail for Post Offices, Owned a business, been a property manager, a district teaching coach, a warehouse manager, a tea buyer, a writer, as well as other jobs. I've had a pretty full social life, had all the material things I've ever wanted and traveled most of the US and some of the rest of the world. I have a perfect home life with a terrific wife and wonderful kid. I've never wanted for much and never truly suffered. What I'm saying is, that Wow, do I ever have it good!

But then Facebook: I have a High School friend that has accomplished so much since high school that his professional life is so astoundingly adventurous that it would make most anybody feel inadequate and ineffective at this thing called life. He lives a civilized life in the UK, works all over the world  for NATO and fights crime at all levels for a living. I think he may really be a "spy". He is muscular and fit, has a beautiful, exotic wife and good looking kids and travels the world knocking out the bad guys and doing the wet work. Really, he does! He has a PhD. He is an executive officer in the armed forces - sometimes - and he has pictures of himself with Congressmen, Presidents and foreign diplomats. He has photo proof that he is changing the world and being appreciated for it. He is like Jason Bourne of the Roy High Class of 1989. And I... am not.

I have another friend that in the last 5 years kind of cast off everything in her life and became a nomad of sorts, she travels the world surfing, skiing and studying the sustainability of food sources all over the world. Winters skiing in Alaska, Summers in Fiji or Mexico. No home, no cell phone, and updates her Facebook page from Internet cafes in third world countries. The inner seeker. Wanderer and experiencer of all walks of life both inside and out.
And I...am not.

I pick these two for a reason- I have about 250 "friends" on Facebook, but I think that these twp represent my overall point; I think that is where the truth in the "Facebook makes you sad" study is- Before Facebook, a person only had to compare themselves to their friends and past friends at occasional get togethers and class reunions. Now, with social networking, every day is a class reunion, in my case, more than 40 times a day!
It is not only difficult to measure our lives to our friends and almost-friends, it is impossible to measure to all of them in every aspect. I bet that my international man of mystery Facebook friend has friends that make him conscious of the fact that he is not a wanderer and anonymous hippie sometimes going where life takes him, and I bet that my wayfaring female Facebook friend has an occasional daydream where she wants to climb another rung on the career ladder and make more of an impact on the world.
It is human nature, and we are all doing okay, as long as we recognize that.  Taking a FaceBreak was one way to remind myself of that fact.    
  

The results by Day 11: First, that I've probably logged on to the Book of Faces 5 or more times. This is not because I missed it so, It is because there are a dozenteen sites that just take it upon themselves to just whisk you off and there you are - Facebooking! I never noticed this before. And I didn't even hit the "like" button on any of them, I just suddenly found myself on Facebook. Odd. The first time it happened, I just started absently scrolling through posts like I never tried to quit until my conscious kicked in.

Next, I do miss the FB as a springboard - all of those posts, pics and memes that come from places that I used to jump to in order to amuse myself all day; while I learned a lot, it was a tremendous waste of time. Now when I have extra time - I have nothing to do so I miss those humorous/political/amusing places you all used to direct me to. At least I still have Reddit.

Finally for now, productivity; While I am trying out this writing career thing, as expected, I find that my creative output have increased a lot as far as pages written per day. I think that the quality is better, too. I have no idea what is going on in the world beyond what CNN.com tells me, but that, too seemed to be interference to what a bored and unoccupied brain can come up with.

I like it here, but stay tuned if I think that my brain wants to live in this state, or not.