Saturday, July 24, 2010

A New Raisin Chronicles Feature: Is This Mean?

At dinner the other night, my friend, Teri, said, "By the way....

"By the way..." by the way, is how Old Dog introduces the topic of any mistake I may have made in the past 24 hours. Examples: "By the way, you forgot to lock the back door when you went to work this morning" and "By the way, those theater tickets you bought took our savings account down to $X." (Where $X is $Y less than we've agreed to keep in savings.)

Needless to say, the sound of those three words, in and of themselves, are enough to make me cringe.

Then Teri said, "Don't take this the wrong way...."

"Don't take this the wrong way" is a lot like, "I don't want to hurt you." You can bet your bippy you are not going to enjoy whatever comes next.

It turns out she's recently gotten hooked on Glee and has decided that the show's resident villain, Sue Sylvester, reminds her of yours truly. She claims Sue's snotty comments are reminiscent of things I say and even more reminiscent of things she suspects that I think, but manage to keep to myself.



Okay, I can own that.

Told you that to tell you this: I am introducing a new feature on The Raisin Chronicles, wherein I will share something I've said and let you be the judge.

Is This Mean? #1

Old Dog came home from the grocery today grinning from ear to ear. He saw a middle-aged woman with a hairstyle that was combination crew cut/mullet striding into the store. Later, when she came back out, he realized her car was parked next to his truck.

Just so you know, every time I buy a car, within six months that model is named the lesbian vehicle of choice. Every. Single. Time.

So you can guess what the lady was driving -- a Subaru Outback, just like mine.

"Same model," Old Dog reported gleefully.

I shrugged.

"It was even the same color," he prodded.

"You should be more worried about that than I am," I said.

"After all, I know what I'm thinking about when we make love, but you don't. For all you know, I could be thinking about her."

Was that mean?

Monday, July 19, 2010

Lost in Translation: 葡萄乾編年史*


While few Americans speak a foreign language, people from other countries do, and often that language is English.

And one of the things these polyglots enjoy doing with their English skills (apparently) is reading blogs.

Unfortunately, either through shyness, or because English is easier to read than to write, they leave their comments in their native language. Insatiably curious woman that I am, I run these comments through Babel fish.

Here's Babel Fish's interpretation of a comment on my Glad(well) You Asked post:

Good likes your tribe standard, just got off work, must go to rest!!! Breaking off

Thanks for stopping by, try to get some sleep....

On When a Man's Home Really Is His Castle:

Certainly must maintain the full fine yo, refuels!!! Anticipated you publish new article!

Thanks--stop by anytime!

AND

The knowledge may teach, the wisdom is not actually good. Each person must become him.

Everyone has a right to his own opinion....


And to Fiction Friday's excursion into computer analysis of writing style:

Love is one kind of invention, needs to improve unceasingly. Is only, this kind of invention and other inventions are dissimilar, it does not have the patent, momentarily will be robbed by the human.

If there were only a Metaphor Fish....

*This is what comes back if you run "Raisin Chronicles" through Babel Fish (into traditional Chinese). If you then translate it into English again, it comes out "Raisin Annals."

That works.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Fiction Friday: I Write Like....


Stephanie Meyer.

That's what it said: Stephanie Meyer.

If you have zero idea what I'm talking about, check out the NPR story here.

To find out who you write like, submit a writing sample here.

Update: I just submitted another sample (the Gladwell post below) and now it says Ray Bradbury.



This may sound strange, but I'd much rather be like Ray Bradbury than Stephanie Meyers.


Update #2: Using the zucchini post (below the Gladwell post), it now says Margaret Atwood!

Yay!

Hmm. Is it possible I have a consistency issue in my writing?

Monday, July 12, 2010

Glad(well) You Asked

I'm currently obsessed with Malcolm Gladwell. His first book, The Tipping Point, is about how certain factors aggregate to cause things (epidemics, fashion trends, things) to spread like wildfire. Blink is about how we think in those nanoseconds before we begin consciously thinking about something. Outliers is about why some people succeed far beyond others. What the Dog Saw is about, well, all kinds of stuff, actually. Since you may not want to compulsively read a single author until you've chewed up and shit out everything he's written, let me give you the Cliff Notes. 1) Never, and I mean NEVER, make the cops chase you. The action of chasing someone elevates their pulse to 175 beats per minute, at which point they're no longer physiologically capable of rational thought and if you go to scratch your balls, their instincts will scream, "He's got a gun!!!" If you're lucky, they'll just beat the living daylights out of you. If you're unlucky, they will turn you into a human swiss cheese. 2) Heinz ketchup is a perfectly balanced food. (Taste-wise. Nutrition-wise, despite the Reagan administration's beliefs to the contrary, not so much.) Apparently it manages to not only romance the sweet/sour/salty/bitter sensing areas of our tongues, but also to woo our sense of umami, the perception of "heft" that we need for a complete taste experience. 3) If you want your baby to become a professional athlete, plan his/her birth early in the year. Kids who are at the upper end of the age range for sports leagues far outperform kids at the lower end. Consequently, they are chosen for the All Star teams and get more practice, better coaching and more game-time than younger kids. Something like 75% of all professional hockey players in Canada were born in January, February, and March. 4) If you want to market a product via word of mouth, you need to know Connectors, people who have gift for acquaintanceship. Gladwell provides a list of 250 surnames and says the average middle-aged person knows about 40 people with one of those names and Connectors know double or triple that amount. (I knew about 30.) But, given the fact that The Tipping Point was published in 2000, today you can probably skip the test and go straight to Facebook. I have a paltry 77 Facebook friends, while a friend from high school, who worked as a TV news anchor in Indianapolis for many years, has a whopping 2,360. Crap. If I'd known how things were going to turn out, I would have kissed her ass more when we were in high school.

Monday, July 5, 2010

The Vegetative State


A Plea to My Neighbors, In-Laws and Co-Workers: STOP GIVING ME VEGETABLES!!! I know you're really proud of these wonderful vegetables that you've grown from the soil of your own yard with the back-breaking labor of your own two hands (not to mention your own back), but for pity's sake, NO MORE PRODUCE! You see, I am a child of 60's, when a combination of terrible weather conditions and totalitarian policies created widespread famine. When I was a kid, I couldn't flip on the television without some huge-eyed child staring longingly through the screen at my TV dinner. "Here," I would say, holding out a forkful of green beans to the skeletal figure on the screen, "take them! I don't like them anyway." From across the room, my mother would eye me reproachfully. "Children in China would be glad to have those vegetables," she said. And guilt would force me to choke down those stringy, nasty green beans, but the experience scarred me. Here's how badly: A few years ago, I made a bowl of Kix for breakfast, only to realize the milk was sour But instead of tossing it into the garbage, I dumped it into a colander and rinsed it under the tap. Then I put the Kix back in the bowl, poured on fresh milk and ate them. I cannot throw food away. So if you give me a zucchini, I must make zucchini bread. And if you give me 20 cucumbers, I will make an industrial vat of cucumber salad. And if you give me two dozen tomatoes, I'll be up half the night, peeling and freezing the damned things. This summer, thanks to a spring of consistent rain and perfect temperatures, local gardens are yielding bumper crops and inspiring their owners to spectacular acts of generosity. And all this, mind you, to a woman who DOES NOT COOK. But, they say if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. To which I would reply: what the hell else am I going to do? It's not like I can throw them away.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails