1984 Is Here

I have a confession.

I watch Big Brother.

Yes, I know it's a show about screaming, deceiving, people with IQ's of 30. I tell myself it's like I'm a sociologist watching how people behave when you put a bunch of strangers together in a house without any privacy, family, or freedom.

I know it takes away brain cells. I know there are better things to do. I know that being a voyeur waiting for someone to finally get a knife and kill someone is not healthy. I just can't help myself.

I figure it's good research on how people behave that I can use in my writing.

Now, first off, this part will shock you, I don't see anything wrong with lying or breaking promises when you play this game. I think it's like Balderdash. Anyone ever play that? You have to make up meanings for words and convince people you're telling the truth, or if you have the real meaning, you have to make it sound like you don't. It's a lying game. You can't play if you don't lie. Well, Big Brother is like that. It's a lying game.

Sure there have been some who have gone in claiming they will never lie and never sacrifice their integrity, forgetting that this is not personal and it's just a game.

And those who are in the house will accuse others of lying and get all upset about people lying, while they lie and scheme themselves. And they get upset when people try to win instead of letting them win.

It's bizarre is what it is. Here's the thought process of almost everyone who goes into that house: "I am going to win. I will do whatever I have to do to win. If i have to lie, I will. If I have to break promises, I will, or scheme behind other people's backs, I will. It's just a game. But...no one should ever lie to me or break promises with me or scheme behind my back or do anything that prevents me from winning. Those people are there to help me win and do what I say."

I know it sounds unreasonable, but I've been watching this show every season since it began in 2000 and that is the way it goes. Yes, there was the odd player who didn't think this way. Will from season 3 for instance, told everyone he was lying to them, expected everyone to lie to him, and had a great time while he was there. He also won. I liked Will. He was so honest about his lying, and he was funny too.

But most of them go on crying jags, and screaming matches and threats of revenge when people don't do what they want them to do. "It's not fair" they wail while they plot and lie and scheme to get them voted off the island...I mean out of the house.

This last bunch of melt down cases includes a 75 year old Marine who drools over the young women (while his sick wife watches at home), calls people names, participates wholeheartedly in the screaming matches and has labeled one young man "Judas" because he's Catholic and didn't vote the way he was told to. Does that mean that the Jerry the Marine thinks he's Jesus? I guess it does because he's already judged that Dan the Catholic is going to hell and I think only Heavenly Father and Jesus can do that.

Then there's Michelle, who's furious because in one of the competition games a mother got a trip to Hawaii while Michelle got stuck wearing the red unitard. She doesn't think mothers should be on the show. Frankly I would have rather seen Jerry the Marine have to wear the unitard, it would have been funnier and make him look as ridiculous as he sounds.

One of the people who I thought had a screw loose in the beginning of the game, is now looking like the sanest person there.

And thankfully the guy with muscles who walked around talking like he was doing commercials for Charles Atlas (if you work out like I do you can have big strong muscles and a teeny tiny head like me) is gone. Voted out. Which caused everyone who wanted to keep him to turn on one guy who they blame for booting him out, as if he had the sole vote. Which he didn't. There were several others who voted too.

The scary thing isn't really what's happening with these people. The scary thing is that I enjoy watching this. What does that say about me.

Let the Kid Do It

I remember as a kid I would enter contests that required some amount of effort on my part. There was the crazy hat contest where you had to design a hat. I can't remember what I did, but I recall there were paper plates involved. There was a box garden contest where you had to create a garden in a 12" by 12" inch box. I raided my mother's plants, put a small mirror in the middle to make a pond. I built a bridge and had a tiny doll take a walk along the paths. There were other contests I'm sure.

I always lost. The other kids entries were far more elaborate than mine, in fact, the other entries were in kids names only, their parents did them. My parents wouldn't have anything to do with our entries other than to provide the materials (which we basically had to choose from what we already had in the house) and drive us to the contest. Okay, I think my dad actually built the wood box for my garden. But aside from that, they were strictly hands off. They didn't think we would learn anything if they did the work.

I'm grateful for that. My entries were my ideas, my work, and so it was my satisfaction of a job accomplished even if I didn't win. A win would have been hollow if I hadn't done it.

I do the same thing with my kids. I don't help with science projects, contests, essays or anything else. It's their project.

Some would call me a bad mother for not being involved.

If being involved means that I'm the one with the ideas, the one who does the work while my kid looks on, the one who spends a fortune to get their kid a blue ribbon, then I'm guilty of being uninvolved.

I don't see how my kid will learn by having me do it. Nor do I see how it helps their self-esteem by having me give them the message that they need me to do it.

I suspect that there are a lot more "involved" parents out there than there was when I was a kid.

The result? I saw a news report on helicopter parents. These parents were hovering over their college age kids. Kids who were unable to make decisions regarding what classes to take, what homework to do and what their essays should be on. These parents talked to their kids on the phone several times a day.

I think they've missed the point of being parents and that parenting is an ever evolving role. You can't treat an 18 year old the same way you would treat a 2 year old. Hovering over a 2 year old is expected and required. Hovering over an 18 year old means you haven't done your job in raising him to be an independent person capable of making his own decisions. It doesn't mean your role of a parent no longer exists, it just means that it takes on different tasks.

Do I think parents should do things with their kids? You bet I do. But not when it takes away their ability to succeed or to develop other positive relationships. They can't succeed if Dad does the work. The ribbon or the A isn't earned by the kid, it's earned by the Dad. They can't make friends on the playground with other kids, if Mom insists on being best friends on the playground with them all the time. Sure there are times to swing on the swings together, and there are other times when Mom should sit on the park bench and let their kid interact with other kids.

So what brought this on? Yesterday I was shopping with my Mom and I asked her if she still liked cactus plants. She got all upset and said "the last time I had cactus plants I let you use them for a garden contest and other kids won because their mom's did the garden for them."

"What has that got to do with liking them now? There's no one to take your plants now."

"Those parents should have let their kids do it."

To this day, 35 years later it still bothers her that we didn't have a chance because we followed the rules. I'm sure it wouldn't have bothered her for us to lose to other kids, it was losing to adults that drove her nuts.

Beedle the Bard

A while ago, Amazon purchased a copy of J.K. Rowlings original "Tales of Beedle the Bard" for 1,950,000 pounds, which translates into like a billion dollars. You can see pictures of this book here.

Now they're offering copies of the book for $7.59.

Definitely a reasonable price for a hardcover. But it was the other offer that caught my eye.

Lovely isn't it? It's also a copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard, but this one is a little more fancy and closer in likeness to the original

Excitedly I clicked on the image to find out how much it was.

Ready for this?

$100.00! Yep, that's right. 100 smakaroos for this book.

Now, that's a lot cheaper than the billions that Amazon originally paid. But still.

Yes, I'm drooling over it, but I will satisfy myself with the $8.00 version.

Not that I want to dissuade anyone from purchasing it. Especially if you do it by clicking on the links just as you would with any other Amazon product I have on my blogs.

So here they are.

No they're not! They haven't got it listed yet as an associate thing. GRRR.

Anyway, they're out there.

Wow! Is That a ShamWow?

Another story about the Calgary Stampede.

My daughter and I went to the trade show. You know, you wander around, you see a lot of junk, you see some cool stuff that you want to buy (like that Miche bag), you may enter a draw for an RV.

And then there's the demonstrations. You know, the knife that cuts through rock and then slices a tomato, the blender that makes omelettes, cookie dough and a milkshake all in under five minutes, the robot that does the laundry, the dishes, and cleans up after your kid got sick (okay, I haven't seen that yet but if someone comes up with it, I'm first in line.)

So we saw a demonstration of the "ShamWow". I don't know if that's how it spells, but that's how you pronounce it. It's this miracle cloth that cleans up spills instantly, even the coke that you spilled on the rug which has seeped down to the floorboards and is attracting termites at this moment which will cause your husband to fall through the floor and into the basement where he will break his back and force you to give up your two years in Europe so you can take care of him. Yes, the ShawWow picks up all that, even the stuff under the carpet.

"We have to watch this," my daughter insisted. "My room mate and I spent an hour watching this demo on tv last week and we vowed that the first person to find one picks it up."

So we watch the demo. It was impressive and my daughter talked me into going halvsies on the two packages of ShamWows for the price of one deal. He rolls it up and we're told to tuck it under our arms as advertizement for him. I'm thinking "yeah, I'm sure we'll have people flocking to us over this."
(I'm being sarcastic).

Sure enough, I had people coming up to me "Where did you get that!" So I told them.

On the train ride to our car there was some young guys who took one look at what I was carrying under my arm. "Is that a ShamWow?" One of them asked excitedly.

"Uh, yeah," I answered.

"That's cool. I want one of those."

By the time we were at our stop, we knew this guy and all of his friends and all their names and their history and the fact that their job was to sit several hours in a teepee at the Stampede.

Gee, if I had known that all it takes is a ShamWow to get young men to talk to me, I would have started carrying one long ago.

Between the Miche bag and the ShamWow I can look gorgeous.

Miche Is So Chichi

I know most of you Utahns have see this, because it originated in Salt Lake, so it's probably old news to you.

But it was new to me.

I went with one of my adult daughters to the Calgary Stampede. In the trade show building we came across the most amazing, stupendous, brilliant thing I've seen in a while.

It was "The Miche Bag."

All right, quit laughing. It was new to us.

Here's the Canadian link. The Miche Bag Canada

And the American Link. The Miche Bag US

For those of you like me who have never seen it before, the concept is a simple bag with outer shells that you can change, so you can have one bag with hundreds (okay, not hundreds - yet, but over 60 different looks.) And you don't have to transfer your stuff from one bag to the next, you just put a new shell on the bag.

Sure each shell is the cost of an inexpensive bag, that's not the point.

The point is that I'm sure with this bag, I would look thinner.

It's just that kind of bag. It's the kind of bag that people who actually dress with the concept of co-ordination would carry.

So what if I haven't been that person since seven kids, twenty five years and a thousand pounds ago.

And yes, the bag is expensive. They offered it to us for 100 bucks which included the main bag and three shells. But if you divide that by three, that's 33 bucks - which is still more than the 14.99 I paid for my last bag. The one that holds my sunglasses, my wallet, and enough changes of clothes for a runway fashion show.

But who says you have to carry a suitcase around with you all the time.

My other bag that I carry is a little wallet size purse. I've managed to fit a first aid kit, emergency toiletries, and a paperback book in there.

So this one falls in the middle. I don't have a middle size bag.

And like I said. It would make me look thinner.

I noticed too, that they don't have all their shells on their website, because one I drooled over and which would have been part of my introductory package isn't there.

I didn't buy it. I couldn't justify it. There's something about upcoming school supplies and rent and other boring stuff that was bugging me.

So I walked away. We both did, although my daughter planned on going back another day.

The shells look much better in person than in their pictures.

I know if I walked around with this purse people wouldn't notice my weight, they would just notice these beautiful shells. I would get whistled at again. People would stop and look with the awe of admiration, not the awe of how brave I am for going out in public.

Does anyone have this bag?

Do you think if I posted this the Miche people would see it and say, Hey, Anna, here's a bag and an assortment of shells for free?

I know. I'm going to hell.

Reading Devices

Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

I'm really torn in two about this. Okay, it's not keeping me awake at night. However do I jump on the bandwagon, or do I get left behind?

Right now the decision is easy. I'm broke. So that decides it.

On one hand the thought that I could carry 200 books around with me on a device the size of a paperback is really inviting. It sure would make travel easy. You'd never get bored with what you're reading. You won't have to wonder what to do with the book when you're done. You'll have something else to read right away. I would love to have one of these things for traveling.

For many people the idea that they can have their entire book collection on something so small is appealing for those who hate clutter and have little space.

And you can download current newspapers and magazines. No inky fingers.

But I love books. I love the look of them on bookshelves, I love the smell (yes even the musty ones) I love the feeling of opening a brand new book or discovering the insciption on a used book, the magic of finding a gem in a used book store, the thrill of finding a great deal. I love the whole thing.

I wonder how an author is supposed to do a book signing if we go to e-books?

I wonder if people will just send out free books so that no one will have to buy - oh yeah, libraries already do that, and I can't tell you how many friends have said that they'll just borrow the book I wrote from a friend. So I guess that point is moot. Authors aren't getting all their royalties anyway.

And is storytime going to be the same with a reader as it is with a book with real pages? They're not in color yet, so I doubt there's children's books available, but that can't be far in the future.

Still, it would make carrying my scriptures easier - especially if I can mark them too, imagine, you can mark them and then change the markings later.

What I'm hoping, is that books will not be completely gone. That instead of replacing we'll have as well as. I'm sure one day I'll carry one of these around with my laptop and my yet unbought phone/mp3/gps/camera/etc. device.

But I still want my bookshelves of books.

Even Death Doesn't Stop Me

Rejection, rejection, rejection.

Getting a book published is not the entry gate to eternal writer happy land. Not unless your name is Stephanie Myer or JK Rolling or Stephen King.

But I don't have any of those names.

The latest came many several months later. It had been misaddressed and so did several circles around the globe on the back of a donkey before making it back to the magazine to be readdressed. It happens.

When I finally got it, there was a note attached informing me that the editor who had rejected it had suddenly passed away.

This was the same editor who had called me several months ago to tell me she had some of my stories but some had been mislaid and to send them out again. She seemed really kind and caring and gave me suggestions as to what they wanted and how they liked to recieve it.

On my rejected story was a lovely handwritten note from the late editor telling me that she liked the story but she wanted me to work on a few things and then send it back to her (with the tag that there would be no publishing promises, just that she wanted to see it again.)

In the world of rejection letters, this is a good thing.

Except the editor is dead.

And you know, that seems to be the story of my life. I'm always one step behind, someone else beats me to the punch, publishes the same idea that I had, the editor who makes the writers successful quits or is fired as soon as I'm on board, or they just die.

So I'll be rewriting that story and sending it back to a dead editor.

Hey, I take their suggestions seriously.