in the street
small wide-eyed cat
sees nothing
Month: September 2011
OT: Bad Planning, Bad Government, and the TSA
I would like very much to direct your attention to two posts in particular at meteorologist Mike Smith’s blog. Mr. Smith points to various naked emperors with multi-billion-dollar clothing allowances.
There are real concerns about the American way of life that are not being properly addressed while security theater provides no security, makes puppets of the masses, and enriches parasites. I don’t know about you, of course, but this annoys me (in the same sense – and for some of the same reasons – that the villagers were annoyed by Herr Doktor Frankenstein’s little experiment).
Pen to Paper: Advice For Younger Writers
With school well underway across the land, here’s something for Catsignal’s younger readers and writers.
John Scalzi tweeted yesterday: “Just found a bunch of short stories I wrote when I was a teenager. Oh my. They are NOT good.”
This comment is virtually a follow-up to an essay he wrote in 2006 giving advice to teenage writers. While much writing advice is good for novice writers of any age, this piece is directed straight at the 13- to 19-year-old crowd. Keep reading past Number 1, no matter badly it annoys you. Scalzi hits various nails squarely atop their heads, and this is advice you can bank on.
Follow that up with wisdom from John Steinbeck and a variety of useful things from Ralph Fletcher. That’s enough for now; I don’t want to keep you from your homework.
Fiction: One More Orbit
Carey gave his fuel gauge a concerned glance. It was showing low, and he hadn’t yet collected the crucial information he needed.
“Low isn’t done, though,” he said quietly to himself.
Quotable 68
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.
– Alice Walker
haiku 179
brightly, briefly
space station soars
above glacial hills
OT: Labor Day
The official unemployment number came out Friday: 9.1 percent. That’s 14 million Americans without work. Not counted are the underemployed who can’t make ends meet or the people labeled as discouraged workers, more than 200,000 unemployed people who have tried so hard and for so long to find a job that they’ve given up, at least for now. The Congressional Budget Office does not expect the unemployment rate to fall below 8 percent for two more years and says we won’t see 5 percent unemployment until 2017. Further, mass layoffs – when 50 or more workers lose their livelihoods at once – rose 3 percent in August.
Fiction: Bad Brake
Maureen’s fear of driving had never abated, and her foot constantly rode the brake of her two-year-old ’62 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. She had had the brake lights replaced twice. The mechanic didn’t know about Maureen’s bad habit and chalked it up to bad bulbs, missing an opportunity to warn her about the impending consequences of her actions.
Inevitably the day came when it did not matter how hard Maureen pushed the brake pedal or how near to the floor it came: the car would not stop. She was too flustered to think to use the parking brake or to shut the car off. Death and property destruction ensued, but Maureen survived and was released from the hospital after two weeks.
Maureen finally embraced the bitter truth: even when using the brake full time, driving was – for her – unsafe. From now on, she vowed, on those occasions when she had to go beyond walking distance, she would rely on her lucky friends and on taxi drivers.
Some people just seemed to float through traffic, leading charmed lives, never suffering the problems of ordinary folks. It wasn’t fair, she muttered, but that was life.