Better Than Dead

Random quote of the day:

“Humor is reason gone mad.”

—attributed to Groucho Marx

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Why is it always 3 a.m. when the smoke detector starts beeping for a battery change?

And it’s not like you can ignore it. The sound isn’t as skull-numbing as the actual alarm, but it’s shrill and persistent. It keeps going and going and going…like the battery bunny, only it wants its fix, damn it. You better give it to me or else.

Min goes under the bed to hide and I stumble into the hall where it’s shree-peeping. I lumber out to where the batteries are kept, rummage until I find the right ones, then shuffle over to the step ladder. If I’d been fully cognizant, I would have gone for the step ladder first and just pulled the old battery out to shut it up, but my mind isn’t really functioning. I climb up, yank the old battery out, put the new one in and the damned thing still peeps several more times, as if giving me one last neener-neener-neener before I can go back to bed.

I fall back into bed, Min comes out of hiding, and we drift off again, feeling virtuous for accomplishing a mission even in 3 a.m. sleep-bedraggled state.

Until 4:35 a.m. When the @##$$%^&&&^!! thing starts peeping again. Min goes back under the bed.

Okay, this time I’m just mad. I am not a pleasant person when sleep deprived. I get the step ladder, I crawl up it and yank that wanker right off the wall. I’m standing in the hall and I’ve got it in my hand and I’m thinking of chucking it out the front door onto the lawn when I hear the peeping again.

From overhead.

It’s the carbon monoxide monitor which resides about five feet away from the smoke detector. I stumble back to the battery stash, get another battery, get back on the step ladder and, see, this is where things go seriously into the hash. I’ve got enough brain cells firing that I remember there’s a certain trickiness to changing the battery on the carbon monoxide monitor. The smoke detectors are easy. You just click the door open and the battery is right there, but pull and prod and poke as much as I can, the CM monitor will not open.

It does not cease from peeping though. Fool, I’ve beaten you. Hahahaha. And, btw, neener-neener-neener.

So I rip it off the wall. This time I seriously am going to throw it onto the lawn because I know I haven’t got the brain power to deal with the bastard. A tiny bit of adultness still left in the raging plain of blankness that is my mind persuades me to unlock the garage side door and place it on the workbench where I won’t have to listen to it. I go back to bed. When my alarm goes off at 5:45 I hit it several times before I manage to get out of bed. In the shower, when sufficient quantities of water have revived at least some of my higher cognitive abilities, I remember that you don’t open the CM monitor. You slide it up off its track to take it off the wall, flip it over, slide the panel off the back to reveal the battery compartment, and uh…

In the sitting room, the closest room in the house to the garage, I can still hear that piercing peep, and when I open the front door it’s screaming like some demon bird to be fed. Min has gone back under the bed. I go outside, make my apologies to the monitor, and change its battery. The peeping ceases. I now have two monitors which will have to be reattached to the wall, and while I’m at it, I think I’ll change the batteries in the other smoke detectors. Just in case.

You know, they encourage us to use the battery operated detectors rather than the hardwired ones because if there’s a fire in your electrical system, they’ll never go off and you’ll die a horrible death. So batteries are the logical way to go. But at 3 a.m. in a sleep-bedraggled state, that logic is a very hard sell indeed.

Pain will be yours this week when that Man from Nantucket finally hears all the terrible things you’ve been writing about him.

That Nantucket guy is so unforgiving.

1. All writing lists are highly subjective. Including this one.

They tell you more about what the writer of the list has found useful than about what will be effective in your own process. This is true even of professionals with a long track record. There are exceptions to this as in all things, and humor is always an exception, but many top ten lists are about speaking forcefully and eschewing all counter-argument. The absolute and incontrovertible fact is, there is no right way to do the process of writing, there is only what is effective for the individual; i.e., that which helps you put words on paper/screen on a regular and ongoing basis.

2. Many people can teach you to be a better writer.

Proper use of grammar, the basics of classic story structure, putting of sentences together in a fashion which is less clunky can even be taught by some top ten lists. Some, in fact, are brilliant. However, only you can hone your craft, and no one can teach you how to find your own individual style. Once you have received the basics from others, you’re going to have to do most of the heavy lifting yourself, and that means writing and purging and purging and writing and writing and purging…

3. Top ten lists are a quick and easy way to fill up a blog post or otherwise make a deadline.

Sometimes they mean no more than that.

4. Even people with little to no publishing record, or a sketchy one at best, feel no compunction about taking off into the countryside with top ten lists.

The Top Ten Things Every Writer Should Know, The Top Ten Writing Myths, The Top Ten Things I’ve Learned About Top Ten Writing Advice Lists. I rest my case.

5. Many outliners—those who outline all stories before writing them—will tell you it’s the only way to be an effective and successful writer.

Pantsers—those who make their stories up as they go—will point to a long list of successful writers who are pantsers. Some outliners will say those successful writers who call themselves pantsers are lying. Believe whichever side pleases you. It doesn’t matter as long as your method helps you put words on paper/screen on a regular and ongoing basis.

6. Pantsers will sometimes tell you that the only way to be a true artiste is to be an organic writer; i.e., make your stories up as you go along.

Outliners will point to a long list of successful writers who are outliners. Don’t believe either side. Or, rather, believe both. Artistry is in the eye of the beholder, and more importantly, in the heart of the writer.

7. Writing a top ten list is a great way of procrastinating in other areas.

It’s about this point in every list that the compilers begin to realize that coming up with one of these things is not quite as easy as they thought. They begin padding the content and reaching hard for bullet points. Sometimes they list the entries in opposite order, with the top and strongest reason being last, in hopes of hiding the padding from the reader.

8. Some list makers like to speak in self-congratulatory absolutes.

But no one, no one does absolutism better than me. Never forget that. And never begin sentences with But or And.

9. Top ten lists like to bandy the word “pro” around quite a bit.

The implication being that if you can’t see the absolute wisdom being promulgated by the list it’s because you’re a rank amateur.

10. As a writing instructor of mine once said, “Avoid clichés like the plague.”

Top ten lists are a blogging and workshop cliché. They’ve been so overused that each new one adds to the overall ineffectiveness of the whole species. The best of them don’t try to overreach and may actually do some good. The worst spread more confusion in new writers as they are often contradictory and dismissive of Anything Not Me. You know that grain of salt people are always talking about? Take it whenever you see a top ten list on the horizon.

If I was giving serious advice here, I’d say something like, “Make a sincere and concerted effort to learn the basics of story structure and grammar, get yourself some good critiquing partners or join a writers group, listen to and selectively take the advice they give you, and keep writing. That’s the only list you really need to know.”

Of course, that’s a self-serving and absolutist statement, too, so…

Critics will call your first poetry collection a “stirring work of utmost courage and beauty,” which just goes to show how much mileage that man from Nantucket has.

1. Don’t tweet your weinie and
2. Don’t text in the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater.

If you follow these two simple rules, your life will run much more smoothly.

Thank you,
The Management

To read the full article, go here.

Warning: objectionable language NSFW but otherwise hilarious.

Eat Brain Love

The story of a privileged white zombie who travels the world seeking enlightenment, especially from those cute ethnic types who have centuries of wisdom she can gobble right up.

The first time I encountered this guy, I thought he must be some comedian playing some deep, deep, DEEP role-playing act.  I’m still not entirely convinced that’s not the case, but whether he is or not, he does seem to prove the point that you don’t have to offer folks much in the way of actual…um…psychic content to gather a following.

For the full Gary Spivey experience, check this one out (embedding disabled).