The SoapBoxers

Make sure to read part 1 of this story before reading the conclusion!

“What concert might that be?” asked Kristi, and she received a kick under the table from Mac.

“Kristi Smiley is in town,” replied the waitress. “What a great voice – and she also does a lot of charity work. Just a great person. I’d love to go the to the concert,” she said with a sigh.

“Why aren’t you going?” asked Kristi.

“I just can’t afford the tickets. Hey, enough about me. I’ll grab your drinks and give you a few moments to look over the menus.”

Kristi studied the menu intently. She was trying to remember the calories for each ingredient, in an effort to maximize the calories in her pizza. She put on a high energy show every night and burned calories at an incredible rate.

Sarah, the waitress, returned with their drinks, and Mac and Kristi were ready to order. Mac ordered some sort of abomination with all sorts of green crap on it. Kristi ordered a thin crust pizza with hamburger, Canadian bacon, sausage, and bacon.

“Geez, Kristi,” Mac exclaimed. “That stuff is going to kill you some day.”

“Take it easy, Mac. I’m getting a salad, so it basically cancels out.”

Mac rolled his eyes and sipped his pop.

Sarah was back in a few minutes, carrying their salads. Mac ate his salad dry, while Kristi smothered hers in a lake of French dressing. Mac gave her a dirty look, which Kristi pretended not to notice.

The pizza was extremely hot when it arrived, and Kristi singed the roof of her mouth when while trying to inhale the first piece.

“Slow down, girl,” Mac warned. “Protect those vocal cords.”

Kristi ignored him again and focused on enjoying the pizza. The meats and cheese blended together to produce a culinary symphony in her mouth. It was great to be in the midwest, where people really understood how to make a great pizza.

The ever-attentive waitress topped off their beverages as slow poke Mac was finishing up his veggie pizza.

“Can I get you folks anything else?” asked Sarah.

“Just the check,” replied Mac.

When they were ready to leave, Mac caught Sarah as she was passing the table.

“It looks like a couple people in our group aren’t going to be able to make it, so we have a couple extra tickets to the concert. We’d like you to have them,” he said, as he handed her an envelope along with the money for their meal.

Sarah was stunned speechless by the gift, and Kristi and Mac quickly left the restaurant to avoid attracting more attention.

Later that night, Kristi was preparing for the show back stage and saw Sarah being introduced to some of the other musicians. Kristi walked up to the group and introduced herself.

“Oh my God,” exclaimed Sarah. “It’s you – the girl from the restaurant. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize your voice at the time.”

“Mac,” said Kristi, “this poor girl has been on her feet all day. See if you can find her a chair.”

Mac managed to find a tall, three legged stool, which he set up on the side of the stage. This became the lofty perch from which the most popular waitress in town watched the first – and most memorable – concert of her life.

Kristi’s voice filled the empty bowl of the arena as she finished the last verse.

“That’s a wrap,” said Mac Radel, formally ending the walkthrough for tonight’s show.

Whistles erupted from the upper level, as two teenage boys indicated their approval of Kristi’s singing. Certainly, the boys had no legitimate reason to be in the arena, but Kristi always appreciated a fan.

“Howdy, boys,” she said, blowing a kiss in their direction.

“You certainly do have this country wrapped around your little finger, Kristi.”

“Aw, shucks, Mac. You know me. I’m just a girl who likes to sing.”

“Sure, and the gold records mean nothing.”

“They’re nice to have, Mac,” she grinned, “but I’d still be singing for free in the church choir if the record deal hadn’t come along. I’m famished. Let’s run into town and get something to eat.”

Mac laughed. “Hon, there is absolutely no way you can show your face in town – you’ll be mobbed by fans, and we need to get back here to tweak the details of the show. I’ll send a roadie into town to pick something up.”

“Aw, Mac,” she pouted. “You’re worse than a parent. Just once, I want to eat in a normal restaurant, where I can actually see some real live people instead of just music people. I’ll go incognito. Pleaaaaaaaaaaase?”

Mac sighed. “This is a bad idea, Kristi. You have one of the most recognizable faces in the country. Someone is bound to see through your disguise. I can see you’re going to be a grouch if you don’t get your way, though, so we’ll give it a shot.”

Kristi hugged Mac and raced into her motor coach. A few minutes late, she walked out wearing a baseball jersey, a well-worn baseball cap, and some dime store sun glasses.

Mac and Kristi picked out a pizza place near the town square. They had just settled into their booth when Mac nearly had a heart attack – someone looked at them with a flash of recognition.

“Hey, I know you,” said the slender man in the John Deere hat. “You’re Mac Radel! Could I possibly get your autograph?”

Mac sighed inwardly with relief and signed the man’s napkin.

“Hey, who’s the gal with you,” asked John Deere Hat. “I suppose she’s your daughter, learning the ropes of the industry from the master?”

“Er, yes,” replied Mac. “This is my daughter, Christine.”

“Glad to meet you, Christine. My name’s Dustin.” The man in the hat smiled broadly at Kristi before walking toward the door.

Kristi kicked Mac under the table.

“Christine? Very creative, Mac.”

“Sorry, Kristi. The guy really caught me by surprise. Why on earth would anyone recognize a manager?”

“He probably recognized you from your previous job.”

“Oh, yes,” Mac replied. “Songwriters routinely have their pictures on the covers of magazines.”

The teenage waitress took their drink order. Mac ordered a caffeine free diet soda, while Kristi ordered her drunk loaded up with lots of caffeine and sugar.

“Ya’ll aren’t from around here,” observed the waitress. “You in town for the concert?”

To be continued – come back tomorrow for the conclusion of “Superstar”

A few times I have noticed companies looking at the bad reviews they have received on The Soap Boxers.  I’ll be browsing through the server logs, and the company name will pop up.  In the case of HSBC, it popped up several times, the last time being a Google search on the term “… these folks were in training and dealing with human beings for the first time.”  Apparently the term struck enough of a chord that someone remembered it.

How many times have these companies emailed to  ask if they could fix the problem?  Yep – exactly zero times.  Too bad, because a satisfactory resolution would also be reported, as well as appended to the original article.

UPDATE: I have recently been contacted by someone from the HSBC executive office.  He is interested in taking a look at this situation and determining why these issued occurred.  I haven’t had a chance to respond to him yet.  I do appreciate the fact that HSBC is looking at this as a learning opportunity.  I will update this post with future developments.

SUBSEQUENT UPDATE: read the exciting conclusion to the saga.

(Note: I just look art the sever logs for general information about web traffic.  These logs do NOT contain any personal information about you – they just contain some generic information such as your internet service provider and operating system).

Our little Twitter account,which does little more than tweet blog updates (a “poor man’s” RSS, essentially) attracts pornographers as followers.  The Twitterati among you know what I’m talking about – “women” whose Twitter page links to a “dating” site.  I’m not even sure why I bother to filter them out, but I do.  Do people still fall for these scams?  Perhaps.

Cash for Clunkers has been a hot topic around the blogosphere.  I’m in the middle in my opinion – I don’t think it is as horrible as some people think, but I also don’t think it is as great as congress thought.

One thought I did have is that the program probably would have been much better if the lower phase of the program ($3500 for increase of 4 mpg) had not existed, forcing people to improve mileage by 10 mpg.  Not only would this have been better for the environment (pushing some borderline people to the 10 mpg improvement), but it would have also help the money stretch further.  In any case, a few billion dollars – while a lot of money to you or me – is unlikely to have a huge impact on the economy, aside from perhaps a positive mental effect.

This month I wanted to express my opinion on the investigations of the “war crimes” supposedly committed during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. A number of anonymous soldiers have testified to various news sources that during this latest military operation they felt that Israel had conducted itself unethically and attacked civilians as well as destroyed property in a style of “shoot first and ask questions later”.

As background I would like to point out a few things.

1. All Israelis are required to serve in the army which is significant as you will get a number of people that will never agree with any level of violence as it may not be in their nature to be troops.
2. The enemy in this scenario is not another army but a terrorist organization that makes use of suicide bombers and human shields making it very difficult to limit civilian casualties but under normal circumstances Israel is well documented to be better at limiting civilian casualties than any other army including the USA.
3. Israeli politics and culture allows for if not even encourages people to express their opinion so this kind of rhetoric by troops after a conflict is nothing new. In fact, it is welcomed for troops to report war crimes which are then heavily investigated and acted upon.
4. Finally, if you get 3 Jews in a room you end up with 4 opinions so complaints about any action taken by Israel even by Israelis is expected.

As to the allegations, my opinion is that it is very possible that this last military engagement may have had harsher rules of engagement then normal but this is really do to point 2 above. No organized military in the world is currently well equipped or trained to combat terrorist organizations using the methods that Middle East ones do in an urban setting without casualties. I believe that the Israeli army provides adequate warning to civilians prior to an attack but it has been well documented that the civilians often do not heed the warning or receive threats from the terrorist organizations not to heed them. These civilians are critical to a terrorist organization’s defense (human shields) and offense (media coverage of dead civilians) therefore the terrorist can’t afford these civilians to simply step aside and allow the conflict to occur between the two armed forces.

I will admit that recent failures in some of the Israeli conflicts may have prompted a harsher approach but I think based on the approach that organizations like Hamas take with Israel this is well warranted. In addition, based on the fact that most if not all of the complaints are coming from anonymous soldiers I have to question the validity. In closing I want to leave you with two thoughts.

One, if it was your son or daughter entering an urban setting with potential land mines, suicide bombers and civilian clothed militia, how many questions would you want them to ask before shooting?

Two, has anyone noticed that even some of the Arab leaders had compared the way Israel conducted itself to that of the terrorist groups? While I don’t ever want to see Israel sink to their level it is ironic to me that Israelis bulldoze a few buildings by mistake and they get this kind of negative coverage but Hamas shoots rockets at kindergartens and hospitals and nobody blinks.

In closing, I guess for those reading this that do not have any sons, daughters, cousins or friends serving in the Israeli army it will always be hard to understand why I support them being cautious in a way that may cause an accidental civilian death but keep the troops out of harm’s way. I think there is only so much precaution that is worth the death of an Israeli soldier and for people that really want to see an end to civilian casualties they should attack the heart of the problem – which is the way that terrorists situate themselves among these civilians.

Living in a rabid football state such as Nebraska, the beginning of August means the start of the college football season is almost upon us. Spring practice starts this weekend, and yours truly is very excited to take his son to his first “fan day” where he can meet behemoth linemen, shake hands, take a few photos, meet some coaches and have a few autographs signed….oh…and I will make sure to get Jr. a lemonade while we are all standing in line for some photo opportunities.

As the season draws nearer, Johnny G is excited with anticipation of the season tickets arriving in the mail, getting some of the ol’ tailgate gear dusted off, and waiting for those cooler afternoon days that signal the weekends of the fall.

This week I will do a breakdown of the Big XII. While the SEC may feel like they have the best conference in the college ranks, the folks here in the Midwest feel otherwise.

Texas and Oklahoma figure to be the cream of the crop in the south division. Much debate took place last year over these two teams. Who should have gotten into the BCS game, who was better….well I think one of these schools may win the South, but I have a feeling that the other one won’t be finishing in second. I pick Oklahoma State as my surprise team of the conference. The Cowboys start the year with a toughie against Georgia, but they return a lot of talent and I expect them to open some eyes, much like Texas Tech did last year.

Now before you go on saying I am the Husker fan homer (which coincidentally I am) I am going to pick the Huskers to win the North. I would not be surprised if they didn’t win because I am not a big believer in having first year quarterbacks leading their squad to titles. A second year coaching staff that seemed to find their groove in the second half last year, along with most of the defense coming back leads me to pick the Cornhuskers.

In the North, I think Kansas is the better team, and I even pick them to win at home against Nebraska this year. The Jayhawks have an awful lot back this year and have maybe the best receiver in the conference in Dezmon Briscoe. Still the Jayhawks have to play the south teams of Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech … brutal. This is enough to give the nod to the Huskers who should have an easier way of it in league play.

Goodman’s Picks

North Division

1. Nebraska
2. Kansas
3. Missouri – lost too much to be dangerous
4. Colorado – better than the others here
5. Iowa State – A long way to go but not as far as
6. Kansas State – could be as bad as when Snyder came the first time around

South Division

1. Texas – feel slighted from last year
2. Oklahoma State – My surprise team of the league this year
3. Oklahoma – Lost too many “O” lineman
4. Baylor – Will surprise some this year. Robert Griffith III. Remember that name
5. Texas Tech – Will show if Mad Bomber can get it done with less talent
6. Texas A&M. Money can’t buy you a good team..at least not yet.

There are plenty of great guides to fiction writing on the market. Many of them are written by authors who are much more accomplished than myself. However, my advice is free, and today I share it with you. Of course, this is not a comprehensive guide, but just a few tips.

• Write – This seems rather obvious, doesn’t it? However, it is easy for life to get in the way of your best intentions. Set aside some time to focus on writing, and try to write a specific number of times each week. For many people, finding time to write 365 days of the year is not realistic. However, perhaps you can try two or three times per week. It is not necessary to write a story from start to finish – feel free to skip around. I use [BREAK] to note points in the story that have not yet been written (so if you ever encounter this in one of my stories, you have found an “oops”). This helps reduce writer’s block, as you can just skipped to an unblocked portion and return to the blocked portion when the block has dissipated.

• Know your genre– Read several books (or stories) within your genre to get a good feel for concepts that work and don’t work. For example, novels tend to describe events more richly than short stories – short stories typically have to get to the point much more directly, simply because they have less words with which to work. Here is an example of a scene, with one version written for a short story and another written for a novel.

  Short story: Kirsten walked across the room and turned on the lamp.

  Novel: Kirsten’s scarlet stilettos drummed out a melodic series of clicks as she strode purposefully across the marble floor. When she arrived at the mahogany table in the corner, she flipped the switch on the ancient lamp. The compact fluorescent bulb fluttered for a short moment before realizing its full potential and bathing the room in light.

  Clearly, this is an overly dramatic example, but you should see the point. If you consistently use “short story” descriptions in a novel, you’ll have difficulty achieving much length – and your readers will find your work a bit boring. On the other hand, if you’re trying to write a 500 word short story and drop in lots of “novel” descriptions, you’re going to run out of words long before you reach the climax. You just took 11% of your alloted words just to have a girl turn on a lamp!

  Additionally, concepts that work in mysteries may fall flat on their face in a romance novel. In general, familiarity with the genre will help you improve your writing style.

• Work on the technical aspects– There are a lot of tricky aspects to writing. Dialogue is one of the more difficult. Until recently, I have always punctuated dialogue incorrectly – and even now, I wouldn’t be surprised if you find a lot of errors in how I handle dialogue. It’s also important to avoid becoming repetitive. Once again, our friend dialogue pops up as a potential problem area. Let’s review a couple of examples.

  Bad:

  “Hi, Ted,” said Fred.

  “Hey, Fred,” said Ted.

  “The weather sure is nice today,” said Fred.

  “Yes, it certainly is,” said Ted.

  “Great game yesterday,” said Fred.

  Better:

  “Howdy, Ted,” said Fred.

  “Hey, Fred – how are you doing?”

  “Not so bad. The weather sure is nice today.”

  “Yes, it certainly is,” replied Ted.

  “Did you see the game yesterday? What an exciting finish,” exclaimed Fred.

  The first conversation suffers from a couple of problems. First, it is too name heavy. When you have two characters speaking to each other, it is not necessary to identify them every single time they speak. It is, of course, a good idea to to identify them periodically over the course of a longer conversation, to avoid having the reader lose track of who is speaking. The conversation also suffers from excessive said-itis. There are a lot of ways to describe someone speaking. Exclaimed, replied, questioned, squeaked, whispered, and shouted are the tip of the iceberg.

  Paying close attention to the writing of others can assist you greatly in writing better dialogue and handling other technical issues. You can also check the self-help section of the book store for grammar, usage, and style guides.

• Names – It can be difficult for a lot of writers to generate names for their characters. For my short stories, I often grab the names of my friends. I am careful to not use a full name – only a first or last. This allows me a lot more flexibility with my characters – I can have a character go on a murderous rampage without causing my friend’s name to pop up on a Google search for serial killers. There are actually books on the market devoted to how to develop characters, and some of them include names for characters. A good book of baby names will also work quite nicely. If you want a really good free source, you can always utilize the census data, which lists first names (broken out by gender) and last names in order of popularity. You probably don’t want to print the entire list though – the last name list has nearly 90,000 names.

• Share – Share your writing with others. This might meant showing a couple of close friends, or it might mean broadcasting to a potential audience of millions via the internet. Not only will this give you a stronger feeling of accomplishment, but many people will offer constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is a great tool to indentify strengths and weaknesses in your writing.

• Have fun – The vast majority of you are not going to become world famous writers. I’m not trying to burst your bubble; this is an unfortunate statistical truth. (For those of you who do become world famous writers, could you signed me a signed first edition?) Thus, if your only goal is to make millions off your writing, you might want to shift your focus. The journey is more important than the destination.

I have to hold true to the word I gave the customer service rep from JCPenney and tell this story to the general public. I figure the bad press I can give counts for something.

My first impressions of JCPenney were very good. My mom in her travels to the States had decided to get a JCPenney credit card as she liked the things there, including the variety. Well I hadn’t really spent much time there myself, I decided to check it out when I went to Grand Forks last December for some Christmas shopping. Well, I was just about blown away. They had great sales, but even better, interesting gifts! I especially loved the thermos you could plug into your car to keep the contents extra hot (it also had a thermometer on the outside). On top of that, they had this massive kitchen set in a box for only 100$ which contained everything from cookie sheets to frying fans to a knife set. What a deal! I left there promising to be back next December to find more gifts to impress my Canadian family and friends. I will admit right now I will be breaking that promise.

My mom watches her finances closely. She isn’t someone who is short of money. So I knew when complained to me about JCPenney charging her a $35 late fee for the credit card we shared something was wrong. Well, she phoned and got it resolved…or did she? Turns out that once she received her bill, her payment was due the very next day. So she express posted a payment to them, incurring an extra $12 expense to try and get it there on time. Well the payment ended up being one day late, and she was met with this fee. So she phoned in, and JCPenney took it off. But the same issue was awaiting my mom the next month, and every month after. So what, she is stuck paying a total of an extra 47 dollars just to have this card? Well the CSRs for JCPenney weren’t so nice anymore. They told her it was as simple as a “mail issue” and there was nothing else they could do. Now I have worked as a CSR before (actually for Comcast) and I know that there is always something you can do.

So I finally had enough. Mom and I decided to cut up the cards, and she would mail one final payment. But this wasn’t enough for me. I decided it was time for me to phone and hear this for myself. To know me in person is to know I am not someone who flies off the handle at small things. I generally treat people with dignity and respect, and always make the extra effort with CSRs having done that job and knowing the crap they deal with. But in the end, I couldn’t take it with this woman. I let her have it, and went up and down a couple times. I appreciate she tried the famous “What would you like me to do to solve this for you” but when I told her, she said she couldn’t do it (Hint: don’t ask that kind of question if a reasonable answer is given but you still can’t/won’t do it). The obvious problem in the end here is that more time is needed between the billing date and the payment due date. But since that would break the contract we signed with them, that would not happen. I asked her “If the situation was reserved, what would you do”? She said “I’d re-think my usage of the card”. I told her we had re-thought our usage, and since this was the lame attempt to keep our business when there were so many other options out there, that our usage was done.

So word to the wise especially to all my fellow Canadians and international shoppers out there: Don’t get suckered into acquiring this card if you want to deal with all of these extra charges. And, when it comes to be December, go on strike against JCPenney with me.

Back On April 15, we launched a Stock Market contest (click link to see insights from the participants) in which a team of Goliaths (personal finance bloggers) were matched up against a team of Davids (people who were not personal finance bloggers). At the end of June, the Dow stood at 8447.00 and had gained average 6.84 points during the course of the contest, making the Davids the favorites.

The market had a very strong July, and ended the month at 9171.61, up 724.61 for the month.

At the end of the day on April 14th (the 104th day of the year), the Dow was at 7920.18.

At the end of the day on July 31 (the 212th day of the day), the Dow was at 9171.61.

This is a gain of 1251.43, or 11.59 points per day. If we assume that the market will contain to gain at exactly the same rate throughout the rest of the year (yes, a ridiculous assumption), the Dow will be at 10945.17 at the end of the year (+ 3024.99 from April 14).

How do our contestants stack up?

I also invited visitors to play along at home. Let’s see how they are doing.

At this point, team David is strongly in the lead. What sort of month will August be? I think it will be a strong one, as “cash for clunkers” cash makes it way into the system (and more importantly, the public perceives cash for clunkers as the government giving back to “main street”). If this happens, team David could pull away even further. However, there are certainly a lot of ups and downs yet to be experienced this year!