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Human relations

When you find yourself a human vending machine

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This is something that giving persons tend to see throughout their lives:  the toxic evolution into something not a friend, but a human vending machine.  When are you such a thing? When a person or person begins to take you for granted, make you their ‘easy way,’ expect some commodity of you on demand:  emotional support, information, some sort of effort on your part, whether you feel like it or not.  Those with specialized knowledge, especially in technology, particularly become the vending machine of choice because it’s ever so much easier to just impose on another than to use one’s mind and resolve it oneself.   Persons who do this are rarely emotionally stable, and tend to have significant issues.  I don’t know the official definition of co-dependency, but I suspect it plays in.

Such situations aren’t hard to identify.  The person involved rarely asks about your own life or needs; doesn’t really care, as machines don’t have needs.  He or she shows frequent signs of instability.  This person often praises you, perhaps to the skies, and why not? That’s supposed to be your payoff. That’s the unspoken deal, that you will be told regularly how wonderful you are.  A person constantly raging about his or her other vending machines, for example, doesn’t imagine you to be thinking:  and one day, it will be me.  And yet, if you are perceptive, that is what you are thinking. You as vending machine are being tapped for support because other vending machines have started eating this person’s quarters, perhaps.

To test this status is simple.  One day, simply eat the quarters.  Not angrily, not cruelly, simply don’t perform the expected behavior.  Most often that comes when you are at a limit, or at your lowest ebb in life, and simply can’t fulfill the demanded role–it’s not that you choose to eat the quarters, but that you lack the resources to process them.  In any case, the vending machine doesn’t operate as it always did.

If on that day, the individual simply kicks the vending machine and stomps off, yeah, that’s what it was.  Don’t feel too bad for the loss of a toxic situation.  On the phone, it usually takes the form of hanging up on you. In person, someone stomps off; on chat, someone fires a barb and logs off so as not to receive a rejoinder. I have a dear friend who moved away from a place she lived for decades, and most of her ‘friends’ reacted with shock and anger: the vending machine was not even going to eat their quarters, but was going to be removed from the vicinity. A few wanted to keep in touch, wished her well, and were happy for the improvement in her life, even if that meant less access to her.  Those few wanted her in their lives not for what she could do for them, but because they cared for her and believed, correctly, that she felt likewise. Everyone else gave the machine a vicious kick and stomped off, presumably to find another machine.

So on that day, when you eat the quarters, you’ll learn something about that person. If he or she now makes time to care for you, understand that you aren’t available in the normal way right now, and gives of him or herself, that was never a vending machine relationship–even if at times it looked like one.  In vending machine relationships, the machine isn’t allowed feelings.  If yours matter, then it’s not that sort of toxic dynamic.

If he or she kicks the machine and stomps off, my advice is to say nothing, turn, and walk away.  Don’t look back.  If that person shows contrition later, suspect it.  Rarely, it is a true epiphany; most often, it is sudden regret and realization that they may have permanently broken the machine, and a desire to get it back in working order.  You can accept the show of contrition, but it does not obligate you to resume vending machine status.  That’s the key. There need be no hard feelings, no animosity, but that does not imply that you must once again open yourself up to another kick. If you do, in my view, you are not showing much self-respect. If you do, you are partly the author of your own future misuse or abuse. How can it be otherwise? Let mistreatment sneak up on you once, well, anyone can get caught napping. Let it walk right up to you, say a few of the right words, and resume as before? Don’t allow that.  Respect yourself.

That person will need to find new vending machines (he or she has learned how to search for them over the years), and will do so.  Those situations will be toxic also.  However, you do not own that problem.  A very wise woman once taught me:  “Always ask yourself who owns the problem.  Whoever owns the problem needs to deal with the problem.  You can’t own anyone else’s problems.”

She was right.

Editing/writing life

Grammar trolls, bad grammar and spelling, and ye Impperfectiones of ye Englisch

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This blog’s basis is the life and situations of writing, professional and non-professional.  I find that area not well understood by most folks, but I can’t often put my finger on the right topic.  This is one.

Q: When I have bad grammar, do you look down your snout at me?

A: Mostly, no.

Why not?

Turn it around:  why? What can I gain from that? Maybe you’re brilliant but dyslexic.  Maybe you just suck at English. (If I can suck at math and be good at English, I’m sure others can arrange to suck at English and be good at other things.) Maybe you’re partly disabled and doing your damn best. I can’t know why you have bad grammar.  But the answer is the same:  why would I care? What can I gain from looking down my snout, picking on people for something they can’t help? That would benefit me how? Would I win friends and influence people? Would I effect change? Would it do any good, or would it just make me a snob? Surely there are enough literary snobs out there, and we don’t need another one in me?

When people deliberately or lazily use bad English, do you break into cold sweats of outrage? Start breaking stuff?

No.

But you should!  Why not?

For the same reason I don’t die of a massive stroke if they find a new source of spilled radioactive contamination at Hanford.  It already has so much mess that they can keep forever pretending to clean it up, a multi-generational non-work job they’ll assure that they never finish.  How does it matter if they find a little bit more? What will they do, get non-busy non-cleaning that up also? If your English isn’t good, oh, well; neither is most people’s.  Big deal; no one’s perfect.  Even if you hate smoking, does every discarded cigarette butt on the ground cause you to write indignantly to your Congressthief/MP/etc.? Do you accost every cigarette butt litterbug in anger? No? Why not? Is it because you have better things to do with your life?

Do you always strive for perfect grammar and spelling?

No.

But YOU’RE A WRITER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You noticed! (insert forty dippy emoticons and heart variations) Awesomecoolbeansaucelulzroflcopter!

Surely you want to sound as articulate as possible?

Why? This implies that I must care what someone thinks of my writing. Unless it’s an acquisitions editor in a position to hire/publish me, why? I take special care here, but not on a message board or in chat.

But it’s the principle! It’s your professional presentation, isn’t it?

Not always, it ain’t.  Sometimes I’m just being a person and don’t worry about it.  I live in the same world you do, with the same people and their (and my) English imperfections.  I do not work every hour of the day.  I sometimes sleep, watch TV, mow the yard, cuddle my wife, and at those times I do no work.  If you were an auto detailer, would you spend all your leisure time obsessively washing, waxing, vacuuming, q-tipping, armor-alling and spit-shining your car? What? Why not? Don’t you care what people think of your car? It’s your professional presentation! Surely you are too busy obsessing about its perfection to actually drive it anywhere?

But cars are for getting somewhere! Of course I would drive it!

And writing is for communicating.  Of course I would use it for a practical purpose.

You aren’t biologically compelled to proofread every word of English you see?

Evidently not.  Would anyone want to live that way? If you want me to proofread your English, please e-mail me and I’ll quote you my rates. (I am a really, really good proofreader.  Ask those who have worked with me.) Or, if you are a good friend, maybe I’ll give you a freebie. Some writers are not only not grammar and spelling snobs, but can be rather nice and helpful friends, just like your attorney friends will sometimes give you free guidance, or your computer nerd friends might help you figure out why your screen now looks all wrong. We might just be actual, average people.  Writing may just happen to be our line of work; we may be otherwise normal.

People often post deliberately contrived examples of English that is comically faulty.  Surely that, at least, must grate horribly on you?

No.

How can it not?

Because it’s generally lacking in comic merit, simple trolling. At what point in time has it ever made sense to encourage Internet trolls, especially when they don’t even amuse one?

Okay.  What DO you hate?

Stupid expressions and text-speak.  “Awesome sauce” inserted into decent English is like urine poured on otherwise good pizza.  And when you want to wish everyone a good night, ‘hagn e1’ is a lousy way to do it.

Sweet! I have found an area where I can taunt, tease, troll and provoke you over English!  Awesome sauce lol! Cool beans lol! R u mad @ me yet lol?

No.

But you have to be! You simply HAVE to be! I need a way to troll and annoy you!

Fortunately, you’re a good person in enough other ways and are allowed faults, just as I hope you’ll allow me my own (and they are plentiful).  As for this need to troll and provoke, that need is not my problem, so I should not take ownership of a problem I don’t own.  Do it deliberately once, I shrug my shoulders, hope it’s a flier.  Do it deliberately twice, the fuse’s wire burns through and I’m no longer paying attention to it.  Safety feature. Do it repeatedly, and I may wonder idly how this brings you joy, but I don’t wonder very hard, because wondering implies an interest in why you’d do that, and that wire burnt through.  If you want to sound that way on purpose just to try and make my day worse, do so.  When you stop, I’ll replace the fuse, and we’ll talk about something productive.

I simply don’t believe you.  Some aspect of all this must surely drive you insane.

If that were the case, I’d be insane by now: both passively from what people cannot help, and actively by both friends and enemies with a strange idea of fun.  If it drives you insane, well, I don’t blame you, but I suggest you refuse to allow that.  It worked for me.

It got you to write a long blog post on the subject. It did bother you! Neener, made you look!

No. It inspired me, made me want to write, explain, share. It motivated me to do some useful work, organize my thoughts a bit, think critically. It helped me realize that people can see why a mechanic doesn’t come home and immediately begin working on his or her own cars, but cannot see why a writer doesn’t necessarily critique everything he or she reads.

I think some writers do.

Then I’m sorry for them, but as I said before, we all have to own our own problems.  They’ll have to own that one.  I don’t want or need it–it would just be a hindrance to joy.

Editing/writing life

Old Hastings labels are the enemy, and Googone is my friend

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If you’re going to sell a lot of books–especially in Fine condition, as are many of mine–you want to be able to list as few defects as possible.  If you are a brick and mortar bookstore, you want to make it as annoying as you can to remove your price tags.

These interests conflict in many little puddles of Googone.

If you’ve never used it, Googone is an orange-smelling solvent that dissolves the gumming on labels.  It’s not harmful on your fingers, though I sure wouldn’t drink it, huff it like some kids do with airplane glue, or use it as a personal lubricant.  It is volatile, meaning that its will evaporate without a trace.

So what I do is this:  lay out a row of books, offending stickers up.  Drip Googone onto each sticker one drop at a time, being sure to soak it completely.  Some will often run down the spine or into the pages; don’t worry about that, as it won’t deform them like water would.  It works best on matte tags stuck to glossy dust jackets and covers, and worst/messiest on glossy tags adhering to matte dust jackets (they soak up the Googone and you must keep wetting the sticker down).  Let sit for about four minutes.

Start peeling up stickers, with great care.  In the best cases (B&N 30% discount stickers), a single peel, a wipe, a couple hours set out to dry fully, and you are done.  In the worst cases (small segmented Half Price Books tags, fossilized tags from the 1980s, and Hastings tags), you have to keep it soaked until the gum or fossilized gum finally starts to dissolve.  You could just keep doing that until it all dissolves, but that takes longer.

Once you have the paper up, you want to remove any gum residue.  If you were patient, or mopped behind the label with a Googone-wet finger, it’s moist and will wipe up.  If you were not, moisten it, give it a moment and then wipe.  Keep wiping with fresh Googone until all you can see is a light sheen of the stuff and all gumming is gone, clean up around the edges where it ran down, and set out to dry.

The biggest annoyance is the mess, that and the spreading stains which your instincts tell you have just made the book several times worse than if you’d left the tag in peace.  It evaporates (though I wouldn’t use any more than I needed).  Oh, and one more:  if your computer keys are marked with sticky labels rather than inset labels, you will very much wish to do a good job of washing your hands before you sit down at your machine.  I made that mistake once, and it’s a good thing I can remember which is N and which is M.

Editing/writing life

How not to get a book review

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First, allow me to direct you to a very good article by Jon at Crimespree magazine.  I’m not much into Jon’s genre, but I’ve been a reviewer at Amazon for quite some time.

Before Amazon changed its ranking system, I was high enough on their rankings that I took some pains to keep my local media from finding out (lest they bother me).  The majority of my review solicitations were quite faulty.  To wit:

  • Many wanted me to review galleys.  Uh, no.  If my only compensation is the actual book, you expect me to forego that?
  • One spammed me weekly about her children’s fantasy until I finally reported her to her provider when “no” and “get lost” did not suffice.
  • Lots paid no attention to the sorts of things I had reviewed in the past.  Does my body of work look like I read a lot of Christian-themed murder mysteries?
  • Some wrote so badly they unsold themselves.  If this is how you write when you are trying to get my attention, what kind of book did you commit?
  • A number wanted to send me e-copies.  While I can accept offering me the option, what that essentially says is that I wasn’t carefully selected–I was spammed, along with many others, as there is no cost to sending e-copies, thus no reason not to mailbomb the entire Amazon reviewer base.
  • Few sent me anything with even a hint of personal touch.  I wasn’t looking for flattery (and in fact was turned off by it), but some sincere reason:  why me, and not someone else?

Most radiated one of the greatest turnoffs about authors (and you’d be surprised about some well-known names who resemble this remark):  dividing the world into two groupings, a) those prepared to buy/promote/fanboy their work, and b) useless individuals.  I don’t go to writers’ retreats and after several tries, I’m not interested in local writers’ groups.  There is just too much of this, and the pain is not worth the gain to me.

So how do you get reviews for your published work? Realize:  you’re asking someone to commit to a thorough read of a book that 80% of the time will be mediocre (that’s just the average).  See it through his or her eyes, spending several hours of life in what the odds say will be suffering.  Explain why s/he should believe that it will not be suffering–not everyone, just that person in particular.  Not with flattery but with examples of your book’s merits germane to what the reviewer seems prone to review.  Do it professionally yet personally, conveying the message that you will gladly accept even a criticism-filled review.  Act like a credible professional contacting another credible professional.

Book reviews, Social comment

Tom Sawyer

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I just finished re-reading this eternal classic, and I hope some of you will do the same.  As a child, I had no idea of Clemens’ social commentary, which I can now appreciate a little more.

Then again, as a child of five, living in Kansas, I read it and immediately began to talk like a Missouri 1840s hillbilly kid.  What you may not know about Kansas is that while there is definitely a fair bit of Cletusism in the state, the population is rather divided about it.  As in:  there is one segment that embraces country everything, speaks with a rural drawl and makes no apologies for it.  My father comes from that stock, but more or less abandoned it to get an engineering degree.  My mother doesn’t, despite her ranching upbringing, and always wanted not to be identified with backwoods habits.  Not one bit.

Back home, this is somewhat accentuated by stereotypes and prejudices specific to Kansas and our Missourian neighbors, in which the perception is that Missouri has only one tooth and shares it out without even washing it.  Of course, it’s not true; it’s mostly good-natured joshing but underneath it lie some authentic prejudices with deep roots more terrible than the rest of the nation understands.  One of these days I’ll write about it.  Suffice it to say that the folk memory runs deep on both sides, and neither side was a wagonload of saints.  It’s a miracle we get along as well as we do now, probably because most sensible people realize the two states are not as different as the more prejudiced citizens of either would like to imagine.

So, along comes their son, a fairly precious little fellow whose idea of fun is to read through the whole encyclopedia, and he begins to talk like Tom Sawyer.  As you may know, erudition ain’t a feature of Tom’s character.

It did not go over well at all.  “But we wanted him to have access to great reading!”  Oops.

Fortunately, I got over it.  I still say ‘ain’t’ sometimes just to annoy her, or in cercles litteraires.  I’m at ease with both.  I like the down-to-earth rural life and basic practical wisdom of it all, and I like Brie.  Zero reason one can’t have both, as I see it.  If that doesn’t fit someone’s mailbox, they can refuse delivery and send it back.

This is the part where it’s about time to explain to why Tom Sawyer would be a good re-read.  Where Clemens shines for me is in his cynicism about mob mentality, stuffiness, pretense and the fickle nature of mass opinion.  The reader cannot miss it.  Clemens is laughing at his characters, which seems to be his literary wheelhouse.  In a lesser author, his laughter would come off mean-spirited and snooty; that’s probably how I’d ring if I set myself to the same storytelling task, which is why I don’t.  Clemens laughs at people without malice, and has you laughing at them too.  He ranks among our great.

Definitely a happy reunion.

Adventures

The abrupt truncation

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I apologize for the lack of further galleries.  Here’s what happened.  I tried to post a third, but WordPress barfed it.  Unfortunately, I learned that if that occurs, the only ways to get it are 1) start playing with a bunch of HTML code (which I simply am not going to do), or 2) re-upload the whole batch of pics.  Which takes about an hour including ordering, captioning and so on.  WordPress’s blithe expectation is that one shouldn’t mind doing either, as a tech support answer told me after about three days.  It is not my doing that the software barfs, and if there is one area in which I am impatient, it is in doing a lot of drudgery twice for no good reason other than ‘our software is faulty, sorry’.  It is very difficult to force myself to do an exacting task all over again, with no guarantee it won’t all throw up a second time.  How many times might it take?

What will probably happen, therefore, is that I will either load smaller galleries here (so that when WordPress barfs and I am handed a lame solution, I will lose less work), or I will just load the rest of the photos to Faceplant and caption them there.  If you have a preference please comment.  Mainly, I wanted the kind and faithful readership here to enjoy them first, in something of an intimate setting not dependent upon being my FB friend, and for the pics of the animals at least, we got there.

Adventures

Alaskan images #2

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We continued through the Alaska zoo, and it got special.  Here is the blog post that went with these.

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Adventures

Alaskan images #1

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I promised.  This first post is a bit of  test post.  I’ll eventually load them all to Facebook, but I prefer to share first with you all.

Adventures

All that said about Alaska…

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…there are a few other key caveats to offer you here, dear readers who have come north with me, and whose readership and interest and wishes for our health warm the soul.

Alaskans joke (some are dead serious) that the great benefit of Anchorage is its proximity to Alaska.  In other words, compared to much of the state, this is coddled luxury.

These conditions are not particularly snowy or harsh for an Anchorage December.  As I type, it is 12 F (about -10 C) outside.  It can be better but it can be far worse.  No one here is walking around like a Michelin (wo)man.  No one is refraining from living life.

Winters in Glenallen are far harsher, as are those in Fairbanks–where they are also darker.  We have some five hours of dim daylight now.  Fairbanks has less.  Barrow has two months with no sunrise.

Eight days of this was a vacation.  Six months of it, as normal life, is no vacation.  They get real sick of it by February.  In short, we have had a great time, but all it proves about me is I’m okay with a week of sustained cold and snow.  Anyone who knows me already knew that.  I am not at all sure I could handle a full calendar year here.  It’s not easy in this Alaska–it’s tougher in the rest of it.

I didn’t bring a USB cable (stupidity), but when we get back, I’ll have some images for you.  While they’ll be on Faceplant at some point, I want to caption and share them with you all specifically.  I’m looking forward.

Adventures, Married life

“There are some popsicles out on the grill.”

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Yet another on the List Of Statements Made Mainly In Alaska.  I just made it, and I was not wisecracking.  I brought my wife home the fruit popsicles she enjoys, but there was no room in our hosts’ freezer, so I stuck both boxes in the snow piled atop the grill on the back porch.  They’re still out there.

In a normal place, the response might have been:  “Honey, have you been drinking?”

In Alaska:  “Great, dear, will you please bring me one?”