The SoapBoxers

I Just Can’t Do It

Sorry Nike, but I just can’t do it. Support Gingrich that is. Can I support Pawlenty? Sure. Can I support Palin? Yes. Can I even support Herman Cain? Why not? But Gingrich? No.

Being smarter than my age, in 7th grade we had a science project where we fed pop and junk food to newts. My newt was the control newt and he survived the experiment. So at the end of the project (against my mother’s wishes) I got to take him home. And being more in the news loop than your typical 7th grade girl, I had named him Mr. Gingrich. Yes, without even knowing it, I was a political nerd. At the ripe young age of 12.

I loved Mr. Gingrich (the newt). I had to put a piece of plastic wrap over the top of the fishbowl with a rubber band holding it on (with holes poked in the top) after Mr. Gingrich figured out how to crawl out of the bowl. One day I heard my mom screaming bloody murder and she was on a chair in the kitchen with a tiny little newt crawling on the floor.

I was a newt hunter at the age of 12. Now I’m a RINO hunter. For those of you who don’t know, RINO stands for Republican In Name Only.

Gingrich has been in the race for one week and he’s already had to apologize to someone. Not the best start. His website says, “Together we will Win The Future.” I think Obama tried to use that phrase. And I chuckle. Together we will WTF. I’m tuned in enough to social media to know what that means. Any time someone uses that it makes me SMH. Look it up.

Being a 30 something female in the Republican party, I’m trying to fight the stereotype. What do people think of when they say Republican? Old white males with white hair. And that describes Newt to a T. Let’s get away from the stereotype.

Not to mention the revolving charge account that he and the Mrs. had at Tiffany’s. I like bling and sparkly things as much as the next girl. But the liability was reported in the range of $250,001 to $500,000. Fiscal Conservative? People are usually more conservative with their OWN money. If he spends his own cash like this, how will he spend our tax dollars? Once a Grassley staffer, always a Grassley staffer I guess. I prefer my fiscal Conservatives to be Grassley-esque.

Now, if he does end up becoming the 2012 GOP candidate, I will vote for him, reluctantly. Obama’s got to go. But with the field being as saturated with “better” Conservatives, I don’t see Newt getting the nomination.

I just need a good fiscal Conservative who is pro-life, pro-family, pro-military, pro-business, small Government and says what he/she means. Is that too much to ask?

I had a roadtrip for work today, nothing major – a co-worker and I drove in our official state motorpool SUV with a new UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply – I.E. a battery backup) for a server in a local office about 2 hours away. About the biggest pain was the fact that this particular local office feels the need to make their server room double as a storage room, so maneuvering a 70 lb UPS through crates of sodas, stacks of folding chairs, and janitorial buckets was more of a challenge than actually installing it. I shouldn’t complain – it was a nice day for a drive. We weren’t in any particular hurry, and everything seemed just fine when the server came back up and we left, so I was rather surprise when 3 or so hours later we arrived back in the central office to find a trouble ticket for a printer outage there. I promptly remote controlled into the server to see that the particular printer listed on the trouble ticket had already printed 24 jobs just since the server came back up, about 3 and 1/2 hours prior. I went into a detailed inspection of said printer and immediately saw the problem:

toner low

I get this image of your average worker clicking print, pausing for a moment to listen for the sound of a laser printer spitting out a page, not hearing that sound … and clicking print again. Said worker might actually pause whatever else they’re doing the 2nd time they click print to listen for the printer noise, and not hearing it will click print a 3rd time, and then actually do the bare minimum to lean out of their cubical and look in the direction of the printer. Upon staring at the printer output tray for 10 seconds they’ll click print a 4th time, then get up to go look at the empty output tray, completely missing the flashing status light, and then go right for the phone to call the helpdesk to report a printer outage; nevermind that the level 1 helpdesk rep failed to do their job by simply creating a ticket and passing it on to level 2 support rather than going over the troubleshooting basics of “did you power cycle it? did you check the toner? is it plugged in?”

I won’t be mean to the helpdesk people, though, I managed a helpdesk for a while and they can get insanely busy at times. Heck, even I’m guilty of not following procedure and just taking someone at their word when they call in with a problem.

While I’m on the subject of printers, I’ll take a moment to ponder why with a 100 megabit network and a gigabit fiber backbone the half dozen or so network, high-speed, expensive printers in each local office are not enough for the 2 or 3 dozen people they serve. That’s right, probably 75% of the people in my organization have local, directly-attached printers. I suppose this might have changed at some point in the past decade, but when I was originally in the thick of things in IT the whole point of a networked printer was so people could share it and reduce costs; I.E. one big networked printer was less expensive to both purchase and maintain than 5 or more smaller direct-attached printers.

Of course the proliferation of printers leads to another interesting scenario that’s happened at least 7 or 8 times that I’m aware of …

Being a government agency, there’s an annual budget. If you don’t use up your budget one year the people that decide your budget will notice and think “oh, they didn’t use up their budget this year so I won’t give them as much for next year.” (try not to laugh, that’s really how it works) When the fiscal year is coming to an end around the middle of June a lot of local office managers will get new printers to “use up” their budget. We’ll get a lot of job requests to ensure the new printer will work on the existing print queue, tie into the mainframe, be automatically pushed out to the end user’s desk, etc, etc. Well, those old printers don’t magically just sprout wings and fly away to printer Valhalla (I know, I was surprised to find out they didn’t either). They’re usually put in storage, or under a desk somewhere, or even just left turned off in their original spots. Invariably someone – usually someone low on the totem pole – decides they want a printer at their desk that they can share with their immediate cubical mates, and they pick up the old, turned-off printer and plop it on their desk. They then plug it in, click print a few dozen times, and proceed to wonder why it’s not working and call the helpdesk as if it’s worked all along.

For once I’m not even exaggerating, that really happens. I suppose it’s a side-effect of how well computer hardware is engineered these days – it’s nice that people can think the mere act of plugging something in will magically make it work.

Ahhh it is that time of year again when there is drama in the Bronx Zoo. The Evil Empire also known as the New York Yankees seem to hum along magically when all is going well. They are winning games, they are enjoying the YES network, they are getting up the ire of Baaaahston fans….but this year has been different. The Pinstripers are struggling, They have not enjoyed their normal success of recent years early on in the 2011 season. Now this past week they have one of the biggest on the field and off the field distractions in the Majors involving their long time catcher Jorge Posada.

Now on any other team this may not be a big deal. But we are talking about the New York Yankees here folks. The geographic center of the Universe. Remember the Sun itself orbits around New York City.

This past week Jorge bailed out of the lineup on his own accord. He is only hitting .165 this year and has yet to get a hit all year off of a left handed pitcher. Manager Joe Girardi had dropped him to dead last in the batting order. Jorge was so angry at being demoted to ninth in the order Saturday that he not only said he wanted out of the lineup, also indicated he might want off of the team. Allegedly a heated discussion took place before the game between manage Joe Girardi, a former catcher himself, and Posada. These two have had some issues over the years that seem to stem back to their playing days when Girardi was still in the league as an active player.

Yesterday Derek Jeter the modern day version of Joe DiMaggio in the eyes of Yanks fans stepped to the defense of his comrade in arms, essentially condoning Posada’s behavior indicating he had nothing to apologize for, he obviously was struggling and he was caught off guard with this and had a bad day.

The New York front office brass did not seem too impressed with their team captain taking this stance and called for an internal meeting to discuss the entire situation.

It appears all is well on the Eastern Front now and the over-reacting drama surrounding this incident is over. But it does bring up a valid question. When a great player become average, or gets to the point when their skills have deteriorated significantly, whose responsibility is it to call it a day, sit down for the betterment of the team, or even hang up the cleats for good?

Too many players have held on way past the point of no return. Some retirements seem to come suddenly such as Barry Sanders or Ken Griffey Jr. Others seems to go on like the end of a bad movie (Brett Favre)

By their nature professional athletes are confident, bordering on cocky, and have achieved the successes they have endured in their sport because they are better than most, even at the heightened level of competition. It must be very difficult to make that decision on your own as an athlete.

Here is hoping that Posada won’t have to stare his .165 batting average in the face to accept that maybe the end is near, and can make a decision on his own before the team is forced to make it for him.

The following is a work of fiction.

Jonathan heard the blue bird long before he saw it. There it was, to the left in that old pear tree, or maybe it was a plum tree. It was hard to tell from this distance. There were so few leaves left on the branches. He turned slowly to get a better look. He did not want to frighten the bird away. The song was so beautiful and peaceful. It was a song that brought joy back to life.

Jonathan looked up into the sky. The blue as almost the same color as the bird’s fine plumage. High thin clouds were a bright white contrast to the strong blue. His eyes dropped back to the bird. It seemed nervous, like it wanted to fly away but did not know what direction was safe.

Jonathan scanned the wheat field. It should have been ripe enough to harvest, but no one was working on the field. It was just a beautiful day in France. Jonathan had never dreamed he would ever be in France. Not in a million years. Heck leaving Nebraska had never even entered his mind, except those fantasies of space flight, but that was only in comic books. But here he was laying in a wheat field, in France, in September, listening to a blue bird sing.

He tried to remember the songs the blue bird songs from back home. They seemed warmer, friendly back home. This bird seemed lonely. There also seemed to be so many more birds back home, all competing to see who had the best song. Then there were the crickets. Jonathan had not heard a cricket since he had arrived. Did they even have crickets in France? Fireflies were missing, too. He remembered lazy September evenings with the fireflies and crickets and the distant call of an owl just waking up. Now those were the days.

The ground rumbled, then again but stronger. They were getting closer. “B Company, keep your heads down,” hollered the sergeant. Jonathan stole a look at the blue bird. It was still clinging to the burned branch. “Fly away. Get out of here,” Jonathan whispered. “Save yourself. Men are here and they will hurt you. Please go away.” He wanted to run over and shoo the bird away, but the artillery was getting too close. Soon, they could see the clouds of smoke, then the actual explosions with dirt flying high. “God save us,” Jonathan prayed as the shells marched closer.

He ducked his head even lower into his fox hole. The world exploded in noise and dirt. He was pushed left then right as the earth crushed against him. Clods of dirt hit his helmet. The noise was behind him now. He wanted to get out and run. “Stay, stay until sergeant tells you what to do,” Jonathan repeated the mantra to himself. It was how he had stayed alive. Sergeant would keep you alive if you listened to him, did exactly what he said. One more shell hit near by, but all the rest were far behind them.

“B Company, UP!!!” came the order from sergeant. Jonathan pulled himself up and out of his hole. He looked around. Where 50 men should have been forming up, only 20 were standing. The wheat in the field was flattened. He started running around a massive crater where he knew Jethro had been dug in. Jethro was from Oklahoma. He had a fiancé. His daddy had a thousand acres of land to raise cattle on. Jonathan hesitated just a second, then saw sergeant waving to him. Before joining the rest in the mad charge forward, he looked back to see the bird. It was gone … so were the remains of the tree.

 

 

We’re nearly at the quarter pole of the baseball season. What has happened so far?

The Phillies should be scaring the hell out of everyone.  They have the best record in baseball despite not having star second baseman Chase Utley in the lineup.  I hesitate to call a division race this early, but the other NL East teams really needed the Phillies to struggle out of the gate to have a chance.

The Cardinals lost co-ace Adam Wainwright for the season, Matt Holliday had an appendectomy early in the season, and Albert Pujols has been less than Pujolsian so far.  While Pujols has an OK, albeit low for him, homerun total (7), the rest of his numbers are well below his career numbers.  His .273 batting average is well below his career mark of .330 and he has just 3 doubles on the year.  He’s not walking very much, and he’s hitting into double plays at an alarming rate.  Whether it’s the pressure of his looming free agency, or something else, this is a very bad time for him to have the worst season of his career.  On the other hand, Holliday is batting .398 for the season and  free agent acquisition Lance Berkman is hitting .351 with 10 homers – and the Cardinals are in first place.

The Cleveland Indians have shocked everyone by recording the best record in the American League, and have a 4 game lead over the Tigers.  Bringing up the rear in the division are the White Sox and Twins.  Who could have predicted that?  The division also features the two hurlers to record no-hitters this year – Justin Verlander of the Tigers and Francisco Liriano of the Twins.

The Pirates and Red Sox have the same record.  If you predicted that at the beginning of the season, raise your hand, Mr. Liar.  The Pirates haven’t had a winning season since 1992 (sadly, that is NOT a typo).  Can Clint Hurdle push the team to 82 wins?  I really hope so.  In spite of the fact that the Rockies pushed out Hurdle in 2009, I still wish the guy the best.

My Rockies bolted out to an 11-2 record, but have faded lately and enter play on Saturday with a record of 20-16.  Still, that’s good enough for first place, in spite of the fact that we haven’t had many contributions from ace Ubaldo Jimenez, 2010 MVP runner-up Carlos Gonzalez, or third base.  Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki has alternated between red hot and ice cold.  Hopefully his 3 for 5 with homer on Friday is the sign of good things to come.  Catcher Chris Iannetta has been deceptively productive.  His batting average is just .224, but his on base percentage has been near .400 recently, and his OPS has been near .900.  Ten of his 19 hits have gone for extra bases, and he has 21 walks on the year.  Overall, I’m happy to see the Rockies in first place – but I thin they’ll need more hands on deck to hold off the hated Giants.

And speaking of hated players … I’m not at all surprised to see Derek Jeter struggling this year.  He was hitting .268 after Friday’s game, but it’s a very soft .268.  He has only two homers on the year (in the same game) and only five total extra base hits.  Jeter put up the worst numbers of his career last year, and his slow start this year has many wondering if his stats are indicative of a decline rather than a mere slump.  Jeter is a shortstop who will soon turn 37, and Father Time is generally not kind to middle infielders.  Jeter, on the other hand, can laugh all the way to the bank after signing a new contract in the off-season what is paying him roughly double what he was likely to have made as a free agent (remember, he would have been a type A free agent, meaning that the signing team would have had to sacrifice a draft pick).

The game was released in October of 2010, so I’m “late” with this review, but don’t let that fool you. This is the best basketball game I have played for any console. Typically with any sports game I’m a fan of the “franchise” mode…it’s sometimes called something different with each game, but it’s the same thing. You pick a team and “run” that team as the GM from season to season.

When I picked up a copy of NBA 2K11, I decided to branch out and try the My Player mode. You create your player’s characteristics and then go through the draft. My overall rating was fairly bad, in the 50’s, but I was still drafted in the early 2nd round by the Miami Heat. I started the season as the 7th guy … basically the 2nd guy coming off the bench.

The game itself is very easy to play. You receive directions offensive plays with arrows on the screen to show you where you should be and what plays you need to run. Feel free to shoot whenever you want, but you do gain skill points based on the “good” things that you do … make a shot, set a screen, get an assists, etc. Take a bad shot, turn the ball over, or do anything else that it not good for the team, and your teammate grade will take a hit.

The skill points you gain from each game can be used to increase your player’s attributes, which in turn obviously makes your player better overall. It didn’t take long to become a starter, and my overall player rating is already above 80. I’ve played just around 50 games, and I’m averaging just under 30 points a game. I’m a lock for the Rookie of the Year Award, if you ask me.

Once you become a key player on the team, management will start asking you for opinions on the direction of the team. Have players that you want the team to trade or try to trade for? All you gotta do is let them know. You can also do various drills throughout the season to make your player better as well, but I’ve been focusing mainly on the games. That’s the most fun, and the best way to gain the most skill points.

If you haven’t played it, and you’re a sports game fan, you gotta give it a shot. You WILL NOT be disappointed!

Before I jump into this month’s article, I just want to talk about an interesting comment I heard on the radio the other day regarding President Obama ordering the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden.  In certain right-wing circles people are criticizing both the media and president himself;  the media for giving Obama too much credit and Obama himself for taking too much credit.  We all know about this, there are plenty of conservatives out there that will never, ever give a Democrat credit for anything.  Well, the radio commentator threw a little devil’s advocate out there – what if the raid was a failure, both helicopters crashed, a few dozen Americans got killed and Bin Laden got away, who would get the blame?  No doubt in my mind that every last Republican out there would be calling for impeachment for such a bad decision by Obama if that had happened.

One way or the other, people.  You can’t have it both ways.  “The buck stops here” also means that the person at the top gets some credit when things go right, not just gets the blame when things go wrong.

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Ok, on to your regularly scheduled dose of liberal-leaning anti-corporatist hate…

I want to set up a little imaginary scenario for you.  Picture your child, in 4th grade.  I know not all of you have kids, but try to play along.  Well your child’s school is having elections for class representative to the student committee.  It’s a pretty big deal to the kids and each class ends up with two children who run off against each other election style for who gets voted representative.  Your child is one of the two, and part of their “campaign” is making some election posters to put up around the school.  You spend a lot of time helping your kid on the computer making up a few really nice posters and researching an issue or two that they can run on.  You go in to school to help your child put up the posters and watch the debate against the other candidate and the first thing you notice … the other candidate has some amazingly high-quality posters!  They’re glossy, full of color.  Clearly professionally done, and probably very expensive.  There’s a tiny disclaimer in one bottom corner of each poster:  “This poster was paid for by the 5th grade volleyball team.”

You’re stunned.  These posters are up all over the place, dozens of them.  You wonder just how something like this can happen, and make your way to your child’s classroom to watch the debate.  The debate is more or less a tie, but your school lets other kids speak on behalf of whoever they want.  Dozens of other children get up and spread blatant lies about your kid;  “I saw Chris kick a dog.”   “I saw Chris cheat on a test!”  Your child tries denounce these lies, but is told by the teacher that they had their time to speak.  Of course, after all that, your kid loses the election and doesn’t get to be class representative.

That sounds … wrong.  Far-fetched.  Un-American.  You try to argue, but you’re told that everything went according to the rules.

It’s also pretty close to what can happen here in the USA, thanks to the way elections work and 2 key rulings, one of them by the Supreme Court.

Back in January of 2010 the Supreme Court decided in “Citizens United v Federal Election Commission” that there can be no caps on the amount of corporate money spent on political advertising.  That means if Rupert Murdoch or Michael Moore wanted to go and spent millions against their obvious targets, they could.  Heck, if they had the money to blow they could spend billions, and none of it would be subject to campaign finance rules.  The only provision?  There has to be a disclaimer.  Of course, you could get the fast-talk guy from the Micro Machines commercials to read a paragraph of disclaimer in 2 seconds at the end of the commercial so the average Joe doesn’t even process it.

There was another, lesser-known court case in the Florida Court of Appeals back in 2003 that can directly affect the political atmosphere in this country.  News organizations don’t have to tell the truth.  In fact, in that case the Florida Court of Appeals said that, specifically, Fox News (and by extension all news organizations) has a first amendment right to lie.  Yup, that bastion of “fair and balanced” actually fought a case to appeals court saying they can lie if they want.  As the article says, I don’t know of any other news organization that has done this so matter-of-factly.

No combine those two things … you have a first amendment right to lie, even if you’re a news organization, and corporations can spend as much money as they want as long as there is a tiny disclaimer.  We’ve already seen something similar – remember the 2004 presidential campaign “swiftboating“?  Essentially a group of Viet Nam war vets, some who never even served with John Kerry, said he was a horrible commander, his military honors were vastly overstate, and a few even went as far as saying the Navy’s records didn’t tell the truth.  There was a lot of media attention on that, but the ads still ran.  Remember how close that election was?  The Supreme Court decided it, and literally a few thousand votes could have made John Kerry president.  What if it was a few thousand people who voted for Dubya who saw those ads but didn’t see any media coverage of how they were practically lies?  That’s right, a group of corporate funded people -most of whom barely knew John Kerry and some of whom lied- decided a US election.

It’s time we take our politics back.  Every citizen has a vote already, why do giant corporations making billions in profit and sometimes not paying back any in taxes get such a strong voice?  According to US law now the Russian megacorp Gazprom or some Dubai casino could spend a billion dollars on a series of political television commercials and not even tell the truth.  Do we really want the USA standing for corporate control over the individual voice?

Recently, I was watching the video of Brad Paisley’s new song, “Old Alabama”. I like Brad Paisley, but I’m a huge Alabama fan. I ran a successful Alabama website for a number of years beginning in 1994, and it’s common for me to sing “My Home’s in Alabama”, “The Cheap Seats”, and “Hollywood: to my one year old to get him to sleep (mixing in more common lullabies such as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”)

What really caught me off guard was the title “Old Alabama.” Then I realized that “My Home’s In Alabama” hit the charts in 1980 – 31 years ago. I’ve always considered “The Cheap Seats” (a baseball themed song) to be a newer Alabama song, but even this song will turn 18 years old this year.

It’s not just Alabama, either. I follow a lot of older musicians or groups, including Bob Dylan, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffet, and The Beatles.

I read a lot of fiction, and I’m beginning to see some of my authors die. OK. Stieg Larsson and John D. MacDonald were dead before I started reading their stuff, so you can’t blame me. But then came Ed McBain (a/k/a Evan Hunter) and Michael Crichton. Many other writers I follow are at an age where they qualify for discounts at restaurants.

In June, I will mark 14 years of employment at the same company. (It’s a great company to work for, and I’d say this even if I didn’t think company spies were reading this site. Just for the record). It’s a conservative industry, and I support a system that is used by tens of thousands of users within the company and untold more outside corporate walls. Very much a “grown-up” career.

So I’m getting old, right?

 

But on the other hand … there are a lot of youthful things in my life. I enjoy Phineas and Ferb when I get a chance to see it (“Mom! Phineas and Ferb and making a title sequence!” is my all-time favorite Candace line), and I don’t really mind watching Max and Ruby with the kids.

I have a t-shirt featuring Winnie The Pooh and another featuring a penguin covering his ears with the caption “not listening.” Several shirts in my collection are worn to elicit smiles from passers-by.

If you visit my grand office (er, grand cubicle), the first thing that will jump out at you are the animals. Lions, tigers, and bear – oh my! Not to mention a kangaroo, squirrel, elephant, and of course, dinosaurs. My dinosaur wall calendar is yet another reminder of the fascination with the great creatures I have had since childhood.

High atop a cabinet is Snoopy piloting a life sized version of a Sopwith camel. (OK, maybe it’s a cheap plastic thing that was once filled with candy … same difference).

The final paradox in my office? Bean bag versions of Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore contemplating the book “Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos.” I’ll get around to reading the book soon, but for now, I can amuse myself with the thought that the two friends are building up their knowledge of statistics.

So, what’s my point? No matter how old you are in chronological years, you’re as young as you think you are. That’s good news for me, as my stated goal is to live to be 105.

Johnny missed his normal Tuesday article last week as he was vacationing with Mrs. Goodman in the lovely town of Las Vegas Nevada. As surprising as it may be, yours truly ran into none other than Peter Edward Rose at the sports book at the Mirage Hotel and Casino.

Pete was making an appearance somewhere at the Hotel or a nearby hotel doing an autograph session, as I saw a number of folks walking around later that day wearing autographed jerseys and hats or carrying photos. I for one did not bother asking for an autograph from Pete Rose, as I have heard countless stories about him charging for his signature no matter what the venue or occasion, however I did break the ice with him by offering him one of the multitude of my free drink tickets, which he accepted.

We spoke about baseball for a few short minutes – he even mentioned that one of his favorite hitters in the game today is Troy Tulowitzki, and then I was rudely interrupted by an East Coaster who just barged into the conversation like he had known Pete Rose since he was three years old (shocking I know).

Many thoughts crossed my mind in this short time speaking casually to the all-time hit leader of major league baseball. Are you pissed off that you are banned for life? Do you wish you would have admitted you gambled on baseball right out of the gate instead of admitting it years later? Do you miss the limelight that you could have gotten if you would be able to display your Hall of Fame ring wherever you go?

I am sure Pete as some regrets. The saga around his banishment from baseball basically became a grudge match between the Commissioner Bart Giamatti, and Rose when the details of his gambling came out. I still feel strongly that if Pete would have admitted to all his indiscretions right away that the result today would be different. There is no doubt that his credentials or the way he played the game (he is known as Charlie Hustle for cryin’ out loud!) would have been more than enough to get him a guaranteed first ballot vote into the Hall. Some argue that once Pete is gone from the earth, the Commissioner at that time may elect to remove his ban, as it is doubtful that no one has been more hotly debated about getting into Cooperstown, with the possible exception of Shoeless Joe Jackson.

As we move away from the so called “ Steroid Era “ in baseball it will be interesting to see how the likes of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and others are viewed. Baseball writers are a fickle bunch, many having a holier than thou attitude and the thought that they are the gatekeepers of the National Pastime.

This I know for certain, all the baseball issues for Pete Rose are in his past, he still is a person that likes to gamble, and I hope he enjoyed the free drink from Johnny Goodman.

What do you think, readers?  Should Pete be in the Hall of Fame?  What about the guys from the steroid era?

Until next time, Stay classy Cincinnati!

Last week, I wrote about keeping your story going even with external distractions. I used the Royal Wedding as an example with a follow up comment on the death of Osama bin Laden. I used that posting and comment to point out that such interruptions provide plenty of opportunities hone your writing skills, even if the events are not associated with your current project.

In review of the happenings of last week, we had enormous opportunities. We had a royal wedding, the president of the United States released his birth certificate, and the notorious terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was killed. The only negative to these events is that they tend to push other great stories into the back ground.

How many of us remember the marksmanship of a Navy SEAL taking out a Somali Pirate to save the captured crewmen of a ship? What about those minors who were trapped in Chile? Has anyone thought about Representative Giffords recently? For a while raising the national debt limit was the only thing worth reporting in the United States. Where are the reports on the final space shuttle flight (temporarily brought back into the lime light because the commander is married to Representative Giffords).

There are many more events that can be the basis of stories and they keep coming every day. What if the NFL doesn’t figure out a labor agreement? What if baseball players have been having electrodes installed in their major muscles to improve reaction time and strength? No such thing has been suggested, nor do I have any idea how it would work, but fifty years ago, no one even knew what Human Growth Hormone was much less that it could be take as a performance enhancement for baseball.

One of the great advantages of writing is that you can make it all up. There have been plenty of alternate history stories; Hitler won, the south won, Julius Caesar was not assassinated. Make up your own; bin Laden escaped and successful targeted a dozen world leaders making him the de-facto world dictator, the President turned out to have been born on Mars or a scientist figures out how to make unlimited power by mixing used water bottles and cow manure.

If you have been concentrating on a serious subject and come to a dead end, write something silly. If you have been trying humor and just can’t get it write, comment on something in current affairs that just pushes your buttons. If you are constantly making political commentary, step back and actually think about what the world would be like if all of your ideas were implanted just as you wanted (be realistic, there are always consequences). There are always opportunities to write, not all of them planned. Take was is provided and let you imagination thrive.