The Product of The Week
I’m back. More computer problems, but I think everything’s under control, now. Maybe. For awhile.
Let’s see. What’s on the agenda for today?
How about the first ever Odd Still Life “Product of the Week”.
What could it be? The envelope, please.
And the award goes to:
Kellogg’s Brand “Yogos” . This is a brand new snack from the people that brought you Corn Flakes. They are a tasty, fruity, slightly yogurty snack. Kids love them and so do parents. I myself could eat a box and a half of the “Crazy Berries” flavor. They have vitamin C and a fair amount of calcium. The only problem I see is that they don’t put enough in a box. They need to put at least 12 packs in a box.
(Aha -- the spell check went off -- I knew yogurty wasn’t a real word. )
So, enough advertising. Except for me. I have a brand new section ready to go up on the web site. It’s called “First Lines”. I’m going to search out first lines of books, internet, newspaper and magazine articles and post them on a page. The names of the source will be somewhere else on the website, behind a link somewhere. It’s just a little something I’m planning. The first installment should be ready to go up tomorrow at the latest. (Maybe.)
Seriously Thinking
I'm sitting here at 6:10 in the morning thinking serious thoughts. I have to decide what's important to me. I haven't slept. I need to work this out in my mind. I keep trying to weigh the pros and cons of the situation and I'm not sure that I can see them clearly. It might be the lack of sleep or it might be the confused muddle my life has been for so many years now. The only sure thing in my life is my child. Nothing else is permanent. Not in my soul. I need more than that. I need more of my life to be real and permanent. I need to know that I can make it through my life forever without feeling too much regret.
I have the feeling I'm rambling. I can't think very straight and I keep making silly spelling mistakes. My hands are hurting from typing and knitting today. I think I feel like trying to sleep. I'll try to save this post first, I might just have the strength left.
Music Today Part 1
Listening to some music on an old mix CD I have, I heard "Roses for Mama" start. It was the C.W. McCall version and not my favorite, but had to listen anyway. Those of you who don't know the song it's about a man driving to Florida from somewhere up north. He calls his mother and she asks him if he's going to stop by on his way south. He tells her he's in a hurry. On his way south he realizes its his mother's birthday. He stops in a little town to wire some roses to his mother. While he's in the flower shop he sees a little boy who's trying to buy roses for his mother ( with just a dime ). He want's five because that's how old he is. ( By this time, I'm blubbering like a baby. You understand I've heard this song before and I know how it ends.) So, the man, being the nice guy that he is ( sending flowers to his mom instead of stopping on his trip to visit her ) buys the five roses for the kid and the little boy rushes off. Comes back in a second later to say thanks. Nice kid. Really nice, as it turns out.
So, the man finishes up his business at the flowershop and heads out of town, feeling pretty good about himself. Suddenly he looks out the window of his truck and sees the little boy, kneeling in a graveyard. (Geesh. I'm crying just thinking about it.) "This is where my momma stays now. She sure likes the roses." The man rushes back to the flowershop and tells the lady not to send those roses he'll be taking them with him.
Anyone who can listen to that song and not cry is missing something on the inside.
Alright! Now I’m Really Mad!
I just spent the last hour writing a long, sort of rambling post and I saved it twice. Then I hit publish and the whole thing disappeared. Forever, apparently. I'm now not inclined to write another. It might reappear later. I've seen it happen. So, for now I'll just say good night and reiterate my objections to trusting technology.
(Nevermind. When this gets published tomorrow night all will realize that I changed the timestamp to twenty four hours from when I was actually writing. Another reason they should allow us to set the timestamp for our own time.)
Woah! Something Is Terribly Wrong!
What the heck is going on with my computer?! It should be running like new, right? Wrong. I'm hoping its some kind of software glitch and not a hardware problem. Software I can fix, for the most part. Hardware has to be sent out. The symptoms are this : I can't use the right click function after I've visited E-bay. It isn't my mouse, because I can right click on every file I have as long as I'm not on the internet. I don't use the right click function much, but I do use it to read and edit my own stuff. It's aggravating not to be able to use it. I hope it's not something we've picked up from E-bay. If anyone else is having this problem maybe somebody should do something about it. ( If it's a virus it's not showing up on either of my top of the line virus scanners. )
Anyway. So, what have I been doing the last few days, besides running diagnostic programs on my computer. Well, for one I've written about thirty pages of novel. I really am going to get it done this year. I get between five and ten pages finished per day. I figure it'll have about 200 pages more or less when its all said and done. So, I should definitely be done by my birthday in early December. I've promised myself that I'll just print it out, box it up and send it to the places where you send such things and wait. It's sort of a speculative fiction thing, an inspired little tome that I started working on -- hold on to your socks -- in 2001. It's been through a couple of incarnations, its been down a few side roads, but I've finally settled on how I want the thing to end and I'll have it finished this year and be done with it. ( Except for signing autographs and doing book tours and such things. Heh, heh, heh. Ehem.)
So, you see I have been writing. I've also been listening to music. Yesterday, in fact, I listened to the new Neil Diamond album "Twelve Songs" in its entirety. I had been avoiding it for some time. I had heard a few of the songs and just didn't like the sound of them. I still don't think any of them take advantage of his true sound, but yesterday I listened really well, to the sound and the lyrics and I have to say, it's pretty good. I love his writing and his voice and a few of the cuts really show both to good advantage. I don't love the album, but it grows on you and I can live with it. I'm hoping for better from the next album. I want to love everything he does, not just live with it. (To tell you the truth, I enjoyed "Stages" but didn't love it either. It was too . . . I don't know, something. I can never really put my finger on something I don't like about his albums especially since I've been listening to them and loving them since I was five and memorized the lyrics to "Shiloh" and "Cherry, Cherry". When you love everything about something it's hard to explain why you occasionally can't even like something.)
My mother wonders why I'm so "in" to Neil Diamond music, since I'm from a generation that normally didn't listen to him. ( I'm in what I think of as the half generation before X. Basically those who grew up in the empty eighties and got stuck with the music of the early nineties. ) I listened though. I always listened. I destroyed a brand new eight-track of Hot August Night by listening to it over and over again. (There's a secret to that show that just basically makes it magical or maybe mystical. ) I was maybe four or five. There was a whole period of time in the late '70s and/or early '80s when I couldn't listen to the radio half the time. ( I despised 'Heartlight'. It just didn't click with me at all. Then there was 'September Morn'. I wept every time I heard it. I had a different connotation to that song than just about anybody I guess. ) Then there was 'The Jazz Singer', an adorable movie with a perfect soundtrack. Seriously, look up the word perfect in the dictionary and it says see 1980 (or '81 --- I can never remember ) soundtrack to 'The Jazz Singer'. Perfect voice, perfect style. I was going through a special kind of hell in my life at that time and I destroyed that record a while later, listening to it non-stop on my old stereo. [Oh yes, a long while later, like six years later.]
Well, I can't explain much about how my life has turned out to this point, but I know that I got through the worst part of the early twenty-first century by listening to the best of Neil Diamond. In mid 2001 I bought three brand new albums. I bought 'The Classics', the brand new CD set of 'Hot August Night' (which I had not heard in its entirety since 1973 or '74 ) and 'Three Chord Opera'. I was inspired by these albums and I was knocked out by his appearance on A&E. It reminded me just how incredible he was and is.
Why this Neil Diamond love fest, you may ask. I've been going through my CD collection lately and my old tapes and some records that I bought last year for my new record turntable. Most of it is Neil and I just thought I might listen to it and write out my impressions. I have a little spot on my regular site called 'Small Music' but I use that for impressions about any music that I hear. I've decided to start a new section about just Neil. There are kids out there who've never even heard of him (even 'kids' my age). There are others who swear they'd never listen to Neil Diamond or don't like him because they think his style is too over the top or whatever. I want the people that I know that don't care for him or the music ---and they know who they are --- to see what I see and hear what I hear. If anybody else out there in Cyberland ever reads this stuff then maybe it can change their minds, too. So, the new section will start sometime around the weekend or the first of the week. [Or next week, being the second week in February, 2009!]
O.K.. That was a wrist breaker. I haven't written so much in weeks (except on the novel.) I think I'm caught up for the day, now and I'll try and get back tomorrow. (If the heavens are willing and the creek don't rise.)
Excuses Are Like What?
I am not even going to give another excuse for being a week late with this post. I have no excuse . . . except the car broke down, the house was a wreck, I had to get a new ID card, I haven't slept more than three or four hours a night in the last couple of weeks and I got 25 pages of a new novel written.
Anyway, I haven't been up to updating. I've got my mind on a ton of other things. A dream I've had forever is going on the back burner again because of our car problems. I can't help thinking I should go back to work temporarily, but I can't stand the thoughts of leaving the kid just yet. (Oh, yes! I'm one of those mothers.)
Well, I've got a few ideas that I'm working on today. Unfortunately, I can hear the, not very distant, rumble of thunder and I don't dare have the computer on during a storm. (If I see one drop of rain, i'm switching off.) I have a new idea for a seperate section of this blog that I'll definately get to today (if I can beat the storm) otherwise I'll be sure and have it up sometime the beginning of the week.
I'll say goodbye until later then and hope I won't have to make anymore excuses for awhile.
O. K.. It’s Not My Fault!
My computer went (KAPUT!) a little over a week ago and I've just now got it up and running again with all my passwords replaced and everything.
Seriously, it was a complete computer disaster. My harddrive wound up getting formatted (which means I lost EVERYTHING), my rescue disks were almost unreadable ( I will not mention the main problem by name but it rhymes with Lewlitt Snackard ).
Thankfully, (plug coming up) we found a decent repair place -- The Computer Guys -- (I actually think it might be just the one Guy. If you live in southern Kentucky you can probably find them in your local phone book. Or look 'em up on a secondary computer on switchboard.com). The Guy fixed us right up and didn't charge us an arm and a leg. (Although our arms and legs don't cost all that much.) It was quick and almost painless. (I cried for three days because I was in the midst of putting some old photos on disk when it happened. Please, people, whatever you do, don't leave your photos and videos on the harddrive of your computer. At least make immediate copies. Then you won't have to weep and weep and feel horribly guilty. But seriously, I'm over it now and I do have many, many photos and a couple of good videos of the kid on disc and tape. So I'm better, now. Really. ---SOB!!--)
Well, anyway, I've scrapped the whole idea of a picture a day (an hour) kind of thingy. I just don't have that much faith in this frickin' computer. I will put up some photos that I took on Sunday. It was my kids birthday. I took some pretty good pics of the garden, too. Problem is I've misplaced my camera. (Geesh, when it rains it pours. It's probably outside somewhere, getting ruined as we speak.) My mother brought over one of those little disposables but being that I took most of the photos, they probably won't come out. So, forget what I said about photos. I will try to do a tiny post a day. ( Matt over at the great www.x-entertainment.com just finished a post a day in August, and he's my idol. I must make the attempt to immulate him. ---Must be like Matt! Must be like Matt.--) But I promise nothing above five or ten lines per day.
Anyway. Pretend it's the first of September. (It is only the 5th.) This is my first post of the month. ( I might post again later today. Maybe who knows.) I'll post again tomorrow, for sure. So, 'til whenever, have fun and be good ( and don't trust technology overmuch). Thank you and farewell.
