A matter of life and death!

Posted in Books, History, Humor, Science, Space, writing by Shelley Sackier

Kill your Darlings.

This is probably one of the most wretched phrases a writer ever has to grapple with. I’m guessing it settles itself just beneath Thank you, but no thank you, we’re going to pass.

Maybe it ties with Well, I’ve read some of your writing … You sure you want to be a writer? How about farming—what do you think of farming? Or trucking. Can you drive a big rig?

I say let’s find the old curmudgeon who came up with the satanic slogan and string him up by his toes. I could use some practice with dismemberment before I start hacking away at my manuscript. That’s what it’s about essentially: the death of all you love.

For those of you who’ve never come across this sinful suggestion in your line of work, you may consider yourselves lucky. You also may consider yourselves confused as to what I’m going on about.

A quick catchup: a long dead author—accurately identifying the name of said author can lather up writers into an unholy fractious state, so apart from classifying him as an English killjoy, we shall leave his name out of this—mistakenly believed the best way to win friends and influence people in the writing world was to inform them that the bits they loved most about their text were ALL GARBAGE and to basically take a hatchet to it.

Okay, maybe I’m a little uptight at the moment and I’m unfairly criticizing what has become a sage rule of thumb to most authors, but only because it’s such a gleeful phrase for any editor to write. Take out all the fluff. Get rid of your purple prose. Find a sentence and ask yourself, Do I like this? If the answer is yes, then slash it. Delete it. Dump it. Kill your darlings.

Yes. I’m in the middle of editing right now, but perhaps you guessed that from my cheerful tone.

This dreadful phrase is nothing more than a literary expression. Fairly innocuous to express. But putting it into action is akin to stripping away a layer of skin that you actually found attractive, warm, and cushioning. It also keeps several quarts of blood from oozing out of your flesh, but editors aren’t fussed about that. It’s the bare bones of beauty that we’re after, they say. We want only what’s relevant, only what moves the story forward, no frilly ornamentation.

I think my skin is fairly relevant.

And it allows me to move forward, as without my ‘ornamental’ skin I’d certainly never leave the house.

Putting oneself in a murderous state of mind seems easy at first. You read the advice from your agent or your editor or your critique group to simply “cut out about thirty pages.”

Thirty pages? At about 275 words per page? We’re talking more than 8000 words! That’s a huge amount of work. I don’t even say 8000 words in one week, so imagine how long it takes me to think up 8000 acceptable words to place in the manuscript?

I pace a lot during this process. I slide down a lot of walls. I drape myself across the dog for comfort. I cry. I bargain. I bake cookies. I eat cookies.

Occasionally I find a word to delete.

It’s usually because I’ve combined two words into a contraction.

It is a miserable process.

I have just finished weeks of working—rewriting a 400 page manuscript that needed thirty pages sliced. I only sawed off twenty. I must begin the entire process again. And then again if needed. I’m thinking about removing one entire page for every forty that I read. Fingers crossed nothing dramatic happens on each of those pages, but perhaps I could sell them separately. We could offer the Editor’s Edition (370 pages), or the Author’s Edition (380 pages) and see which one shows better sales from the marketing department. Clearly we’d have to label the Editor’s Edition as a mystery because the reader will have to fill in the missing bits of nearly three percent of the book.

And don’t forget, publishers always add those extra blank pages at the front and back of every book. Surely that should count for something, right?

(One can clearly see I’ve morphed back into the bargaining phase.)

(And now I’ve just fired up the oven.)

Regardless of how many cookies I shove into my gob, the work must happen. As long as I’m in my kitchen I shall sharpen my knives, hone their edges, make them gleam.

And now I am prepared. Prepared to continue killing my darlings.

As scared to death of this contemptible process as I am, I shall knock on death’s door, dance with death, deal a death blow, fight to the death and sound the death knell.

Egads, this murdering business will surely be the death of me.

~Shelley

BONUS MATERIAL!

HI MOM’S CULT BLOGOSPHERE AUDIENCE! I’m Chloe, her daughter, I guest-blogged here once. You might know me from all the complaining she regularly does about my high school life. ANYWAY. I am attempting to launch a weather balloon with cool science on it for the fun of it/to learn stuff/to save the world from its inevitable demise at the hands of muons. If you like science/space/me/my mom/being a generally cool person, please check out my fundraising campaign on Indiegogo!
I’d greatly appreciate any support, as my parents are pretty sick and tired of my failed bottle rocket experiments and have refused to fund any more adventures into the great beyond.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

May Gotta Have a Gott winner

In January, Rob and I announced that his sketches will be available toward the end of the year in the form of a 2015 calendar! And our readers would get to be the judges and voters for which doodles they’d like to see selected for each month. We’ll reveal the winners one by one, and come November, If you’ve Gotta have a GOTT, you can place your order. Jump on over to see the cartoon winner for May!

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all talked about down in the pub. Plus, you can see more of Robin Gott‘s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone.

26Apr2014

How bout them apples?

Posted in Folklore, Health, Humor, Medicine by Shelley Sackier

The dog and I both adore apples. We eat one nearly every day—usually slathered in peanut butter at the dog’s request. At one point I was young and naïve and easily convinced of the old aphorism that An apple a day …

Now that I am older and … older, I now know that statement to be pure bunk. An apple a day does nothing more than deplete the jar of peanut butter in the fridge. It also creates an incredibly distracting background track of canine lip smacking for about ten minutes after breakfast while I attempt to focus on writing, but as he is a living example of ‘good to the last drop,’ I try not to find fault with him and get on with the business of work.

Regardless, I have found the apple myth a frustrating one, as with each year that passes, I find myself in more waiting rooms, examining rooms and pharmacy lines than the collective number of hanging fruit in an entire orchard. And I know I have eaten the suggested serving—and then some.

The dentist–after his five second, “Let’s have a look-see,”–says to me, “Looks great! See you in six months!” And then whispers to the nurse on his way out something unintelligible. She then informs me that, “Dr. Q says things look lovely apart from the two antique fillings that need replacing and that itsy bitsy root canal that needs to be done. So as you’re paying up front, make sure you get on the appointment calendar ASAP. Have a good one and don’t forget to floss!”

Of course those appointments can’t be done in one fell swoop. They must be broken down into three 75 minute procedures. And by then it’s time for my next cleaning.

The ophthalmologist I see once a year, but I see the members of his staff in charge of handing out supplies–every three months. Somebody in my family wears contacts and rarely remembers to pick up her stockpile. After the third *ahem* polite reminder phone call, I go get them.

My OBGYN and I are pretty tight, as anyone you give permission to poke and prod all your bits and pieces should be with you, but I’d have to say I’m even closer with the nurse practitioner who apologizes profusely just before she stretches some of those bits and pieces halfway across the room prior to slamming them between two encyclopedias. She cries a little at this, and I feel bad at the weekly therapy she likely pays for—an expensive repercussion of her concern for women’s health.

My General Practitioner likes to see me every year to do four things.

1. Make eye contact with me in order to have legal permission to continue calling in another year’s worth of all the prescriptions she’s written into my chart as “age appropriate” and “preventative.”

2. Have me pee in a cup. *shiver*

3. Draw a gallon or two of blood. I’m serious. I have a lot of blood in my veins just waiting for the chance to pop right out of my skin. No nurse practitioner ever takes me or the note in my chart seriously when hearing or reading the words Careful. She’s a gusher. People have to go home and change uniforms after lab work with me.

4. Prescribe one more thing that either the medical profession or Prevention magazine has universally recognized as the next “age appropriate” and “preventative” wonder drug.

Which then brings me to the pharmacy line and my friendly neighborhood pharmacist, who at this point can barely keep up with my weekly order. We’re thinking about putting some of my meds on tap for easy access and refill.

But it’s not just me and my appointments that fill up my calendar, there’s also all the physicians who care for the kids, the dog and cat, and my car. They’ve all got nose to tailpipe care that must be scheduled as well.

Skimming through a journal whilst waiting for somebody to walk back through a door marked “Patient Care,” I came across an article that discusses the latest finding about apples and lung health. Apparently, according to the study, eating four or five apples a week is linked to slightly better lung function. I rolled my eyes and threw the periodical across the waiting room.

The next day I was folding laundry and heard the hound begin to bark. I guessed someone had pulled up to the house. He and I both abhor visitors so I let him go to town with his efforts at raising the alarm. The doorbell rang and the dog ratcheted up his labors to a fevered pitch. By the time I rounded the corner and reached the door, whomever it was had decided to split.

“Well done, bud,” I said to him. “You’ve driven away another unwanted caller.” I walked past the fruit bowl and tossed him an apple. “That was some impressive lung function.”

I’m not fussed because I finally found some truth to that tired saying: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. And you can bet it was a doctor, as they’re basically the only people I know.

~Shelley

**Gotta Have a Gott**

In January, Rob and I announced that his sketches will be available toward the end of the year in the form of a 2015 calendar! And our readers would get to be the judges and voters for which doodles they’d like to see selected for each month. We’ll reveal the winners one by one, and come November, If you’ve Gotta have a GOTT, you can place your order. Click here to see the cartoons in competition and to cast your vote.

19Apr2014

Real rabbit rotten luck

Posted in Gardening, Health, Holidays, Humor, mothers by Shelley Sackier

There were plenty of lessons my mother taught me as I was growing up. Some of the most important were:

Be kind. (check)

Be clean. (check)

Be prepared. (double check)

Be on time. (screeeech … okay, this one was put in purely for the enjoyment of anyone who knows my mother so we could all have a hearty belly laugh and exercise our eyes skyward.)

Let’s just cross off that last one and get one with it.

My son showed me a diagram a couple of days ago where he made a triangle and inserted three words—one by each point. The topic was food and his first word said CHEAP, the second one written said HEALTHY and the final one was DELICIOUS. His argument was that you could currently have two, but never three of each word working in harmony and available altogether.

Well I disagreed, and wrote the word GARDEN in the middle of his triangle—which did nothing to further the precarious goodwill I occasionally see from my fifteen-year old. Ah well.

But it got me thinking about that list of things my mother taught me. And although I have spent a lifetime striving to showcase the first three learned behaviors in concert with one another, there was one time where attempting to do so probably left an indelible scar upon my soul. For to this day, I have regrets as to how I acted.

I was five—or six. Old enough to remember, but young enough to now find the memory foggy. It was Easter morning and I was in bed. The doorbell rang, and as my room was located directly above the front door, the chimes were crystal clear, as was the boisterous greeting to follow. Knowing what day it was, I sprung out of bed as only a six-year old with shiny, new and undamaged joints can. In front of me though was my brother, whose reflexes were a year fresher than mine, so he zipped out the door first. And that tiny delay was enough to see the blurred reflection of myself in the mirror as I lurched for the door.

All I really cared about was an Easter basket full of unnaturally colored, sugar-laden, cavity causing oral amusements. This was one of the greatest feast days of the year on the calendar of all things sacred to children. But at precisely the same time that I saw my mirrored likeness, I also heard my dad’s voice raised to an abnormally loud pitch … GREETING THE EASTER BUNNY!

As I was already marinating in the female messages surreptitiously sent by my girl gang of Barbies, there was no way in hell the Easter Bunny was going to see me with bed head.

One hundred strokes—and hurry!

I heard the eager footfalls of my siblings racing down the steps. I heard the squeals of delight below me. I heard my Dad speaking to a creature standing at the entrance to my house that I could only envision through Beatrix Potter illustrations and elementary school coloring books.

There was a talking animal at my front door!

One last pull of my pink, bristly brush through my toe head-colored hair and I was off.

I flew down the steps—clean and prepared—ready to kindly greet the bringer of bountiful baskets, a Disney cartoon come alive, the stuff of afternoon matinees and bedtime tales.

Except just as I skidded to a halt in the foyer, my dad shouted through the crack of the front door, “Okay, thanks buddy. Buh bye!”

The devastation produced by a somewhat overly dramatic six-year old can, if gone unchecked, reach unprecedented proportions. It might be noted here that allowing the all-consuming anguish to flow freely and expire of its own accord might have saved the now fully grown woman years of psychotherapy. But emotion was stifled in lieu of acting “kindly” by accepting the bunny’s hand-delivered tokens of affection.

To this day I suffer.

To this day, the years of grief, outrage and bitter displeasure at missing out have festered away in the back of my mind and the pit of my belly.

To this day I seek revenge.

And since spring is busting out all over in my neck of the woods, and since the garden is blooming beautifully, I shall use my cheap, healthy and delicious veggie patch as my tasty trap.

I shall be KIND—and offer the most flavorsome of micro greens. I shall be CLEAN—with a quick aim and one sharp shot between the eyes. And I shall be PREPARED—with the stewpot eager and ready.

Finally, the trio works en masse. Thank you, Mom.

Eegads! Sorry ‘bout that. No worries. I’ve got it all under control. I’ve found my medication.

Jellybean, anybody?

~Shelley

12Apr2014

Open Sesame. Pretty please?

Posted in History, Humor, security, Technology by Shelley Sackier

Like millions of people living today who are semi-computer capable and who have a love/hate, “but mostly hate” relationship with technology simply because it moves at precisely the same speed as the tip of a bullwhip, I have one overwhelming pain-in-the-backside problem that grows monumentally larger every single day:

PASSWORDS.

In early history, Roman soldiers used watchwords. These secret keywords were inscribed on wooden tablets and given out when the troops made camp at night. Passed from one guard to the next, and returned to the equivalent of their commander in chief in the morning, it was pretty easy to determine who was going to get a lickin based on the handwriting of all the tic tac toe games on the reverse side. But who could blame them, right? Angry Birds, Flappy Bird and Candy Crush were a few years off.

Skip and jump forward a few wars and the military decides to up the ante in their “anti-theft” division. Now you not only have to remember the day’s password, but you have to come up with the day’s counterpassword as well. So he says, “Potato,” and you say, “Potahto.” Capish? It’s the old call and response routine, and it worked well enough until everyone repeatedly forgot where they were and took to belting out Broadway tunes for the rest of the night. It made them an easy target for any folks on the enemy side who hadn’t already developed a taste for Liza Minnelli.

Let’s time travel all the way up to the mid 1960s and walk through the hallowed halls of MIT, into the overly warm, clamorous, wall to wall stuffed room where researchers housed their newly built contraption—a time-sharing computer called CTSS. Supposedly it was an acronym for Compatible Time-Sharing System, but it could easily have been dubbed Create Trouble & Steal Security. The folks who worked on this computer are in many circles given credit for being the first to see the necessity and employ the use of passwords. They were also the first group of young adults to coin the term hacker and make a profitable practice developing the art.

Yep. It’s like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.

The rules for keeping your data safe on the internet today have grown from Think up a word and you can sleep at night knowing your emails are private, to Yeah, buddy, even if you come up with a brand new language using only tab keys, your door bell and the scroll lock switch, we’ll find out how many pennies you’ve got stored in your piggy bank in the time it takes for you to brush only half your teeth. So there. Nighty night.

It seems impossible to conform to all the dished out sage advice that counsels you to use different passwords for every site where you need to leave behind some of your personal identity.

There’s got to be a better way.

Let me blow in a tube that can code my breath, lick a saliva indentifying patch on my monitor, or bite down on a dental impression fitted to my keyboard. Surely the millions of kids with stupefying techy talent out there can whip up some solution to this world-wide conundrum we repeatedly face multiple times an hour, yes?

I’m told not to create a password that would be easily guessed, not to make it personal, not to repeat characters, not to use too few, but not to use too many. Have some letters, throw in a number, squeeze in a character, and do the hokey pokey.

Now … do not, even under threat of torture, write it down.

But don’t forget it.

Now rinse and repeat for the next fifty web sites you do business with.

My brain is exploding.

Can’t I get a chip implanted in my wrist? How about a fingertip recognition keyboard? I would even go so far as to willingly give a small blood sample in place of recalling absurd, brain-blunting codes that a computer could crack in the blink of an eye.

Apparently organizing and overseeing passwords has a hefty price tag attached to it—somewhere in the region of billions of dollars in productivity losses every year. The extra time snatched away from me has surely affected my day negatively. I write less, bathe less, and have had to forgo putting parsley on my family’s dinner plates. Every second counts in my day, and instead of carving tomato flowers, I am desperately trying to protect my social security number from computer criminals who would one day like to have my checks sent to their mailboxes and not mine. No matter that by the time I qualify, social security numbers will be as financially valuable as an avocado-colored bar blender, but I’m sure some of their efforts are paying off now.

I know there’s no quick fix on the horizon, but I think I’ve come up with a few pretty good ideas.

If none of the above are worthy of consideration, I might even be willing to go back to showing my computer my daily wooden tablet to gain access.

It’ll probably only bring me to a site where I can play tic tac toe.

~Shelley

5Apr2014

Making your mark with indelible stink.

Posted in Humor, Mountain life, Pets, Sense of smell by Shelley Sackier

It all began with Brussels sprouts. As some adventures do.

This one though, took an unexpected turn, a pungent hard left.

It was dinner time. I’d fed the hair-covered creatures and gleefully realized I had the house to myself for the evening. I’d been fighting a hankering for Brussels sprouts the whole week long and finally found an opportunity to indulge with abandon. One whole pounds worth if I found myself determined.

And I was.

The prepared bowlful in my lap, I surfed with the remote to find something mindless and mind-numbing to watch for an hour before heading back to work at my desk. It didn’t matter what: Modern Family, Outdated Family, All in the Family—anything that allowed somebody else to do the thinking for a few minutes. At that point, the Weather Channel would have sufficed.

The cat leapt up onto the couch and put a paw on my arm. “Sorry, sweets, you’re an obligate carnivore and tonight is ‘Veg Nite.’ I popped her down onto the floor.

She leapt back up and re-positioned her paw, this time with newly sharpened claws getting a firm grip. “Ahem.” She glared at me.

“Hey, a little dining courtesy would be appreciated—and oh my godfathers, what is that smell?”

That cat rolled her eyes.

“Wait a second. It isn’t me. I haven’t even eaten any of these yet.” But within two seconds of saying that, there was no need to ask for further clarification. The smell was unmistakable, and it wasn’t Eau de Brussels sprouts.

I narrowed my eyes and looked at the cat. “Where is he?”

“I imagine he is stupidly attempting to run from the odor.” She began cleaning one of her mitts.

I put down my bowl and got up to search for the hound. With every step I took, no matter the direction, the pungent odor increased tenfold. I opened the kitchen door to the back porch and whistled into the blackened night. Nothing. I went to the front door and did the same. Nothing. I crossed the house to the laundry room, the room he’s been given access to with his own private entrance. I stepped outside, reeled back from the landslide of reeking air, and blew a piercing whistle.

“Right here.”

I turned to see the dog in the corner of the porch, doing his utmost to disappear in the shadows.

“What have you done?” This was a stupid question which we both knew the answer to. My eyes were beginning to water.

“I was trying to make friends.”

“With whom?” I demanded.

“It looked like the cat.”

“But it wasn’t the cat, was it? Wasn’t even close to the cat.”

“Uh … yep.”

“Were you not given any warning?”

“It was dark.”

“Go sit in the shower. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Pepé Le Pew slunk off toward my bathroom and I ran to my computer, hoping I had whatever household ingredients necessary to create a deskunkifying poultice. And at that moment, fortune shined upon me.

It may be true that I have a teenage son who can bring me to my knees on a daily basis due to his typical teenage boy curiosities, but he has one particular saving grace which repeatedly saves his tuchus from being thrown into the giant abyss of THOU SHALT NOT COME OUT OF YOUR BEDROOM UNTIL YOU ARE TWENTY-FIVE AND RELIABLY PAYING TAXES:

He is kind.

And I don’t mean, “Hey mom, thanks for buying chocolate milk,” kind. I mean help the elderly cross the street, fold someone else’s laundry and asks how was your day every day kind of kind.

And just when I needed an act of kindness, he walked through the door.

There are not a lot of people who will be willing jump in the shower with an animal who can make your nose turn inside out from the stench, and show uncommon compassion for what that animal is going through by ignoring their own discomfort, but this fellah is to be counted among that lot.

I owe him my thanks, and try to remember to say it in between the variety of vehement and vociferous tongue lashings he regularly receives.

Once the lengthy shower had finished—one that included more baking soda than a kindergarten room’s art cupboards full of Play-Doh—I thanked my son and turned to the dog who sat looking quite miserable, dripping on the bathroom mat.

“And now we raid my cologne closet, to see what miracles my friends Chanel, Christian and Calvin can do with your … situation.”

I made a perfume soup and then threw in a dollop of two floral and one pine scented room sprays. It was an aroma nightmare, but slightly better than the assault we’d been experiencing pre-evening-ablutions.

The dog looked at me sourly, “This is awful.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said, wagging a finger.

“Okay, but can beggars have some Brussels sprouts if you’re not going to finish them?”

I suddenly felt really bad for the poor fellah. “You bet, buddy. Tonight of all nights, I don’t think anyone is going to notice.”

~Shelley

April Gotta Have a Gott winner