Negative advertising

Build.com has an ad running on TV just now that is truly disturbing.

Okay, so I find most current advertising campaigns disturbing for a range of reasons but this one really promotes a negative approach to life.

This guy is seen in a series of homeowner fix-it situations. First he has a wobbly ceiling fan and when he contemplates fixing it, his wife says he should just chuck it and buy a new fan at Build.com. So, then he’s working on a leaky faucet and again she suggests replacement over repair. The theme continues, including the stinger at the end in which the now-savvy homeowner sees a neighbor repairing a path light and suggests – you guessed it – tossing it in favor of  buying a new lamp from our favorite distributor.

The explicit message is that it’s easier and faster to just throw away any household item that needs repair.

Forget that this speaks to the worst (largely accurate) image of Americans as wasteful, lazy over-consumers. Or that the commercials promote tossing easily repaired items. Forget that many Dads in many corners of the globe would gladly repair any of those items in exchange for enough food to feed their kids for just one day.

These are really disgusting ads. Please do not patronize Build.com. They deserve our censure and in the commercial world, censure means silent phones and empty in- boxes.

(By the bye, if you want to know how to fix any of these items, call me. Build.com is not only socially irresponsible, they’re basic premise is just plain dumb. In every case, fixing the existing item is orders of magnitude simpler than removing the old and installing the new. If you want ‘faster’ or ‘easier,’ and certainly cheaper, fix the old one.)

Book thievery

I saw the movie version of The Book Thief on a flight from somewhere to somewhere else and thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so that I decided to read the book upon which it was loosely based. I say loosely because so much was cut out to make the story movie length that they really aren’t the same story at all.

I don’t like spoilers so I won’t do anything remotely resembling a review here. I’ll just say that they each deserve to be considered separately.

Watch the movie first. Then when you read the book, the added characters, plotline and theme will make the story new for you. Reading the book first might make the movie pale in comparison and that would be a shame, because the script, direction and acting are all fabulous.

But do get around to reading the book. Marcus Zusak makes me just want to give up writing – that is, assuming I could spend the time thus saved reading books this good.

List for contract law

Things I noticed from the back of the room (during a two-day course on contract law)

1)      That guy up there has really planar ear lobes

2)      Not all bald spots are created equal.

3)      At least three people think you can’t see them texting if they do it under the table.

4)      I am the first person to know when they bring in the afternoon cookies.

5)      Several people took an extra big cookie for later.

6)      The guy with the muscle shirt isn’t really using the fitness center across the hall; he’s just going in and out over and over to see and be seen.

7)      Plumbers aren’t the only people with unfortunate southern exposures.

8)      The instructor knows who’s nodding off long about 2:30pm.

9)      One woman has what I believe is a hairpin hanging from her hair.

10)   And one man has a badly frayed collar.

I am not entirely consumed by contract law.

Constitution unconventional

My brother and I have had some interesting conversations these last few years (okay, decades) regarding politics. ‘Interesting’ being quite a mild modifier, considering the volume and passion attached to some of our discussions.

Sooner or later, if you love your bro, you make a decision: either stop talking politics or find a way to talk politics without polemics. And after a few false starts, we’ve decided to take the latter tack. In service of which, we intend to hold our own constitutional convention. Only two delegates will be in attendance, representing only ourselves. Oh, and the unnamed but real (in our minds, anyway) throngs whose fundamental beliefs and best interests we represent.

Instead of arguing about this candidate or that Supreme Court decision, we’re going back to core values. If it was up to us to frame a constitution, what would we include? And this will not be merely a collection of idle musings.

We’re going to actually write the thing.

And I’m excited about this project.

Damn, I’m a nerd!

Friends in pain

I’ve never been particularly affected by my own pain. Not emotionally, anyway. But it’s difficult for me to watch someone I care about hurting.

I don’t mean this in an altruistic sense. It’s just the way I am. I can be a major pain in the ass when I’m hurting and I have to suppose that’s driven in some way by subliminal worry. But I don’t really feel afraid so much. I don’t think about the what-ifs except in the sense of planning for family.

I guess I’m helped by having something I can do. I can consult with doctors, plan for my own course of treatment, talk to Mary about where stuff is located (again, just in case). But I don’t know how to handle a friend’s pain. Or a child’s.

When Two shattered her elbow, there were things I could do. Be there. Care. Get her things. But I couldn’t do a damn thing about the most important part – her pain. Her worry.

Our friend (Mary’s bro-in-law) Joe is going through chemo / radiation for tongue cancer. As did our friend Larry. Can’t imagine what that’s like and for this reason, I am scared for him. Not for the possibility of mortality. The biggest ass who ever lived was able to pull off dying. That we can all do.

But what Joe’s going through and what Larry went through earlier is NOT something we all do. It’s a particular bit of nastiness that reached out to them. And I’m scared for them. Make that, relieved for Larry and scared shitless for Joe.

I wish I could do the Green Mile thing for him. Be his sin eater and make it all better.

I can’t. But I wish I could.

List for a temporary bachelor

Things I can do while my wife is out of town:

·         Eat until I explode

·         Mostly chocolate

·         Hang with my buds

·         Drink beer

·         Watch inappropriate movies

·         Let the dishes pile up

·         And the dirty clothes

·         And the dog hair

·         Make rude comments on Facebook

Things I actually will do while my wife is out of town:

·         None of the above

·         Except maybe the Facebook thing

·         Oh, and a bunch of honey-do stuff.

Conclusions we might draw from the above:

·         I am a woosie boy

·         Amen

Lessons from Fred

I keep a cardigan sweater in my office at work and usually carry one when I travel. There are two from among my collection of a dozen or more that seem to find their way to this duty. One is grey and one is green, if you want to know.

 Upon arrival in my office this morning, before I started planning training for our new admin person, before I checked e-mail or even sat down, I changed from the coat I wore on the bus to the sweater that I retrieved from the padded hanger a friend’s wife knitted for me years ago.

 As you may have surmised, I find myself thinking of Fred Rogers just now, hence this missive.

 I didn’t watch him that many times although our daughters liked his show.  But whenever I did watch him, I felt a sort of kinship to him. I didn’t watch the whole show more than once or twice during our daughters’ career as children, but I watched the opening bit maybe a hundred times. I loved it.

 I loved that in changing to his cardigan and pulling on his slippers, he was metaphorically leaving the outside outside, settling into his own comfortable world, and tacitly recognizing the difference. It took a long time for me to start emulating him but now I’ve been doing so for years. It’s part of my morning routine.

In a couple hours, once the office has come up to temperature for the day, I’ll remove and rehang the sweater in preparation for tomorrow. And every now and again, I think of Fred Rogers while I do so.

 Where are the new Fred Rogers’? I hope they’re out there. Mr. Green Jeans, Wanda Wanda, Captain Puget, etc. were all good entertainers and even role models. I’m sure you had similar kid show hosts where you grew up.  They entertained the millions of us who grew up with TV after school and even taught us something about being polite, making friends, paying fair. They all did that.

 But Fred was special. No matter how many millions tuned in, he was there just for the one kid on the other side of the magic glass. He invited that kid into his home and it was a place of welcome and safety and shared discovery.

 Fred was cool.

How I spend my life

I’m reading the book on which the movie people based Monuments Men  just now and it seems a number of thoughts from this book have found their way into my short term memory (that would be the little notebook that I carry around in my breast pocket – I’m both a writing nerd and forgetful).

One of the ways the author shows us these folks who risked their lives to preserve the many works of art that were damaged, misplaced or outright stolen during the Second World War is through samples of their contemporaneous writing, particularly letters to friends, colleagues and loved ones. In a letter to his wife Margie, George Stout wrote, “…I begin to remember that I am myself and not merely a set of functions.” I wrote that down without thinking much about why I was writing it down.

Another quote that recently found its way into my STM is by Annie Dillard in The Writing Life: “How we spend our days, of course, is how we spend our lives.” Seems like I used this one in an earlier post but if so, that’s okay – it bears repeating.

I couldn’t say why these two quotes have come to mind in the same blog-post-writing session except that they seem to sort of go together.

Today I worked on homeowner chores and of course I’m writing this post and afterward will work on a presentation for a conference next month in Rapid City. And I’ll read some and watch a favorite show on the tube with Mary. Perhaps call my brother.

I spent some mental energy this morning on my current major writing project and I took a pickup load to the dump. Checked with Bjorn to make sure he wants the small branches before I bother to cut them into lengths the right size for his woodstove so that Susan, who is blind, can load them without getting one stuck and perhaps burning herself.

I scratchy-scratched one or the other of our dogs maybe two dozen times and watched a bunch of those itty-bitty- mosquitoes that always seem to swarm in early evening – this while I was contemplating that last sentence. I hugged Mary and we shared pride at a long-put-off chore finally started. 

I devoted odd moments here and there to wondering how the day goes for Daughters One and also Two and for Sherree with her life transitions and Joe with his cancer and just now – between that ‘and’ and this next word – I caught myself looking at the clouds and the trees and just sort of taking it all in. I tend to do a lot of looking at stuff while writing and waiting for the next word, sentence, thought.

I suppose I could have been more productive today but that would have required both the desire to be more productive and the discipline to, you know, actually act on it.

This is how I spend this day and if it turns out this is how I spend my life, I think I’m okay with that. I am myself, functions and all.

There’s a Great Dane asleep behind me and an infinite array of possible word choices in front of me. This is my life.

Things that are lame

Sherree and I are texting while watching Survivor and ONE OF US is not even typing the text, but rather using a microphone.

Daughter Two posted about having her glasses fogged while using a lathe and doesn’t understand the cool part is that she’s using a lathe. Lame that more girls aren’t doing this.

Daughter One is apparently still mad about an incident with frozen shoes that I insist never actually happened and anyway, it was about six or seven years ago! (And IF it happened, which it didn’t, I was provoked.)

Writing on the butts of girls’ shorts. Especially “Juicy.” Who the hell thought that was anything but disturbing?

A new show for which we just watched the first few minutes of the first episode, called Friends With Better Lives. Advice to writers, producers, etc.: Crudeness for the sake of crudeness has sort of run its course, methinks. Mehopes. If you can’t be funny without crotch humor, you’re not a comedy writer.

Fighting over whether to provide universal health care when we should really be calmly discussing how to make it happen, effectively and efficiently is lame.

As is my abject failure regarding the winning of lotteries.

Dogs that emit foul odours in my sleep chamber.

 inBloom putting students records in the cloud for use by commercial ventures, including information on learning disabilities (Can you say HPPA violation?).

Hay fever that messes with Daughter One and also with Susan’s new guide dog.