Makes me bloody sick

One of those things floating around Facebook that gets 967 "likes" and all sorts of squeals of hilarity and
delight. Makes me bloody sick. I'm not even going to illustrate this crap. WHY does anyone think there is anything positive in this swill? I would have hated it when I was 20 years old. There's a name for it -
ageism/misogyny - and it's worst when we're being fired on by our own troops.


Older Ladies by Donnalou Stevens

Well, I ain’t 16, not a beauty queen.

My eyes are baggin’ and my skin is saggin’,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


Well I ain’t 20 either and I don’t care neither.

My hair is gray and I like it that way.

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


If you don’t think I rock, well we ain’t gonna roll.

If you don’t think I hung the moon, my hot just turned to cold.

If you want a younger model, I wish you well, sweet pea.

‘cause if you can’t see what it is you have,

Then you ain’t having me.


I got cellulite and achin’ feet,

And my thighs kinda jiggle when I giggle or wiggle,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


My tummy ain’t tucked or liposucked.

It’s a little poochy, but I still Hoochy Koochy,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


See, I’m no longer desperate. I’ll only have a man,

If he has the smarts to see how hot that I still am.

If you want a younger model, I wish you well, sweet pea.

If you can’t see what it is you have,

Then you ain’t having me.


Older ladies, older ladies, older ladies… are DIVINE!


Well I gotta chicken neck and I love it, by heck,

It makes a double chin whenever I grin,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


I got saggy breasts that droop from my chest,

Pert near down all the way to my nest,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


If you don’t think I rock, well we ain’t gonna roll.

If you don’t think I hung the moon, my hot just turned to cold.

If you want a younger model, I wish you well, sweet pea.

’cause if you can’t see what it is you’ve got,

You ain’t getting me.


Older ladies, older ladies, older ladies… are DIVINE!

Older ladies, older ladies, older ladies… what are we ladies? We’re DIVINE!


Make sure you share this with all the beautiful ladies in your life!


Share this with your friends and family by clicking the button below.

Harold Lloyd: somebody up there likes me

Blogger's Note. The long drought is over! Finally, a review - and not only that, the kind most authors would kill for. And the fact that it's by  Matt Paust (posted on his Mutable Blog as well as Facebook) just makes it better, in my eyes, and more worthy of posting here. It's my novel and I'll brag if I want to.

The Mutable Blog

it can change on a whim

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Carpet Ride to Magicland

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, he's the guy with the straw hat and Woody Allen glasses, in the suit, dangling from a clock on the side of a building so far above a busy avenue the cars below look like ladybugs on wheels.

 Harold Lloyd.

Movie comedian of the silent 1920s. Called himself the “Glass Character” because his trademark glasses were fake. No glass in them. The guy was a nut. Blew one of his hands to Kingdom Come fiddling with what he thought was a stage prop bomb. It was real. Deliberately gave himself powerful electric shocks to get his hair to stand straight up. Did his own stunts—the clock dangle, the shocked hair, pretending to trip and stagger on building ledges up in the sky, netless—a brave, some would say foolhardy, genius. Nut.

Knowing this and being acrophobic, I can't watch his movies anymore. It even scares me to look at the photos. I'll let Margaret Gunning watch the movies and look at the photos, and I'll read her reports. Well, then again, I don't have to anymore. I've read her book, The GlassCharacter. It's all in there.

Margaret, poor girl, is in love with Harold Lloyd. It started out as just a fascination with soundless images. Love snuck up and struck her dumb somewhere amid the exhaustive research she was conducting for a book about what was then still just a fascination. Love. Alas. Margaret is happily married and has two lovely daughters and four darling grandchildren, yet is far too young to leap the gap into the day when her beloved Harold held sway with the girls of a baby Hollywood. Fortunately, for her and for us, she's a novelist. She has the skill to weave the magic carpet to carry her backward in time to those days of yore, those Harold heyday days, and set her gently down along the path the love of her dreams must follow should he wish a rebirth in the imaginations and hearts of admirers forevermore. She's woven that carpet. It's large enough to take us with her on that long strange trip. I rode along on a test flight. We made it back, and I'm still agog.

When we stepped off the carpet in la la land I saw that Margaret had changed. No longer the familiar author of two of my favorite novels—Better than Life, and Mallory—she'd become sixteen-year-old Jane Chorney, a virgin and erstwhile soda jerk in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a terrible crush on movie idol Harold Lloyd. Soon after we landed, Margaret /Jane (and later “Muriel”, as you will learn) decided to pack up her meager belongings, cash in her chips (two cents shy of fifty bucks) and head to Hollywood and into the arms of her eternal love. I might have tried to instill sense in her were I anything more than invisible eyes and ears. Unfortunately I had lost my voice and corporeal substance upon alighting in the Santa Fe dust.

So it was off to Hollywood via a wearying, bumpy bus ride, Margaret/Jane/Muriel full of glitzy dreams and innocence, and me hunkered weightless, mute and unseen on her delicate shoulder.

I won't say more. I took no notes and had to avert my gaze any number of times during moments that really were none of my personal concern.

The Glass Character is Margaret/Jane/Muriel's story, not mine. What I did see and hear, 

and learn during our holiday in history is captured with such lucid, insightful poignancy I 

can't help but wonder if Margaret didn't in fact remain there, dictating her journal to a 

holographic image of herself in the distant future tapping on a keyboard somewhere in a 

place called Coquitlam, B.C.

Dirtbags: go look in the mirror!

DIRTBAG LITTLE WOMEN


MEG: Jo

what are you doing in Father’s office

all the time?

[JO kicks her steel-toed boots

onto the desk]

JO: writin smut

wanna read it

MEG: …yes



MEG: all right

we’re off to the play with

Laurie

JO: don’t wait up

AMY: can I come too?

JO: don’t be ridiculous

AMY [whispering]: I’m going to burn what you

love and marry your boyfriend

JO: what

AMY: have such a fun time

at the play



[MEG runs into the room]

MEG: I’m getting married!

BETH: Congratulations!

AMY: Congratulations!

(JO is idly poking at the ashes in the

fireplace]

MEG: Jo, did you hear me? Mr. Brooke

proposed to me and I accepted him!

[JO draws a dick in the ashes]

JO: I heard you

JO: has anyone seen

my manuscript

MEG: no

BETH: no

AMY: no

saw a fire that looked an awful

lot like your manuscript though


[The girls are ice skating on

the pond]

AMY: i’m tired

i’m tired and this sucks

winter sucks

take me home

[Amy falls through the ice]

AMY: HELP ME

JO: sorry

cant hear you

AMY: CHRIST I’M DROWNING

JO: let me know if you see my manuscript

down there

[JO skateboards over LAURIE's head]

JO: I got your note

you’re not my boyfriend



JO: I got a haircut

what do you think

AMY: oh, Jo!

how could you

your one beauty



[JO climbs into AMY's room late one night

and begins to shave her head]

JO [whispering]: Oh, no, Amy

how could you?

your one beauty

[JO draws a mustache under AMY's nose]



AMY: who did this

JO: who did what

AMY: THIS

JO: you dont look any different to me

LAURIE: oh, Jo

please marry me

JO: no

LAURIE: but why

[JO strikes a match on LAURIE's chin and

lights her cigar with it]

JO: because that’s exactly what they’ll be

expecting

LAURIE: who is ‘they’?

[JO slowly rollerblades offscreen without

replying]



MEG: Beth is dead!

JO: Oh, my God.

MARMEE: No, no –

AMY: can I have her room

MEG: Oh, my God.

AMY: sorry

may I have her room

I want to tell you exactly why I find this so sickening.


I found it, of course, on Facebook. All the comments

were screamingly positive. Everyone found it hilariously

funny, irreverant, etc. etc.The implication was, if you don't

find it funny you're un-hip,probably old, and don't

understand contemporary satire.


When it comes to satire, I've seen piles of horseshit

that are funnier and wittier than this. This thing sends up one

of my favorite books from girlhood, a book that has been

made into a movie at least three times (most recently with

Winona Ryder as Jo, an unlikely choice - but hey,

we also have the very dishy Gabriel Byrne as her love

interest, Professor Bhaer).


Aside from my horse stories, this was my favorite

book in childhood. Like Anne of Green Gables, Little

Women was set in another time, an era when people made

their own entertainment and pleasures were simpler.

While waiting for their sainted father to return from the Civil

War, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy took part in boisterous yet

highly literate activities such as the Pickwick

Club, which implied they all knew how to read. (The

screamers here probably don't get much farther than

Cosmopolitan.) The characters were well-developed, and in spite

of the quaint setting and manners, all believably human. How do I

know this? After seeing the June Allyson version on TCM, I recently

downloaded the manuscript from Gutenberg and read it again.

This is a very well-written book, with shades and

nuances beyond anything you see in children's literature

today. In a way, it's far too good for girls. The people making

these vulgar comments (yes, vulgar, though I could use a worse

term) probably have not read Little Women at all, but have

only seen the latest movie version. Even in the 1960s, which

seem like a great literary flowering compared to the scorched

earth of today, there were many references that sailed over my

head, such as Apollyon and Vanity Fair (NOT the magazine!).

These were references to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress:

not a jolly book by our standards, but a classic with great literary

depth. Meaning: intellectual depth, which seems to have

virtually vanished in today's shallow and virtually illiterate world.



Much is made of the feminist nature of Jo March's matriarchal

household (which is loosely based on Louisa May Alcott's

unconventional upbringing),

and while Marmee does insist her girls be educated

(apparently, by an early form of home-schooling, or they surely

would not be reading John Bunyan), she also tutors them on the

value of never speaking when angry. In fact, when very angry,

women were expected to leave the room, a baffling instruction

in a day when everyone speaks their mind even if they don't

have one.

Though I can see where it's coming from - I'm not THAT much

of a fossil - Dirtbag Little Women is not a funny piece. It is lousy

satire, without even a glimmer of originality or wit.We won't

even get into the implied lesbian stereotypes embodied by the

butch-ish Jo.True satire has an underlying respect for its

"target", which adds an extra dimension, somehow makes

it funnier. It isn't just primitive spitting, mocking and throwing

mud and shit at a classic that millions of people once cherished,

loved and learned from.


In short, this is a cheap shot.


I don't even know if girls read Little Women any more.

They are much more likely to read the scummyand unfunny

Dirtbag version, which is both sad and shocking.

I'm not saying we should adhere to the quaint morals of the

Civil War era, in which even the most liberated family adhered

to a strict moral code we can never understand. But can't we

keep a modicum of respect for writing of this depth, writing

that until recently has stood the test of time? Is it all getting lost?


What is wrong with these people? Why do I feel so alone in this,

why does everyone shriek and guffaw their approval in the

comments? "OMG, ROTFL, I HATED this book and I'm so

glad you fucking trashed it." Some of us aren't so glad.

It dismays me, not so much

that someone would rip this thing into bleeding pieces but that

the jackals of conformity would so quickly swarm the carcass,

eager to display their hipness with their shrieking

and jeering.

I used to think human beings were herd animals,

but now I realize they flock like chickens or even run in packs,

as surely as jackals or wolves.Almost no one has any individual

courage any more. It makes me sick and fills me with despair.

Sure, go ahead and eviscerate a classic, make it "hip" and "funny"

and distance yourself in the most cowardly manner possible.

That way, you won't even have to form a real opinion.

Pack animals don't have to think: in fact, in the

grand scheme of things, it's better if they don't. It's

one of the immutable facts of nature. Don't think for yourself.

Don't even THINK of thinking for yourself. Just follow the leader.

Writers you want to punch in the face

http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/writers-you-want-to-punch-in-the-facebook/

OK then, here is a link to something I particularly liked on FB. I don't like much on FB, and every time I (compulsively) go on it, I see a lot of things that are not nearly as good, or see something that makes me mad and feel I can't say anything because most comments begin with the word, "Awesome!!!!!" If you say anything else, you're a party pooper and "negative", which is the worst thing you can be.

Social media hasn't done me a whole heck of a lot of good. It has distracted me from real writing, which is what I need to be doing, always. Right now I am stymied as to how I am supposed to use it to sell my book. I seem to be nowhere with it. I know I'm not supposed to admit this, in case the unusual happens and somebody reads this. It has been known to happen, but a large number of views is rare on this blog because I write it mostly to please myself.

I finally have a book in hand, but feel a little lost. The things that helped me stay afloat and promote and get out there with my last two novels are mostly gone. The independent bookstores have been driven out of business, and Big Booky isn't too friendly these days. It's not the way I thought it would be, at all, and all too often I feel like a dinosaur.

That said, several times a day I look at the published version of The Glass Character and just shimmer all over. As it turns out, the cover has a high shine that resembles that antique turquoise glass, and it's effective, as if Harold is looking through a windowpane. It was a long, long haul writing this, and twice as long selling it, and now, though I don't know exactly where I am going with it, it has been externalized, it's no longer just a story or a thought in my head or a hope or a dream: it's a BOOK, and always will be, even if it goes out of print. As an ebook, I suppose it will always be around in some form or another.

I've written about Rich Correll, and I did ask my publisher to send him an advance copy, but I haven't heard anything back. Rich Correll knew Harold, even touched his films and became his unofficial filmographer. What he thinks of  The Glass Character matters. But I have had almost no feedback, and it's kind of like waiting for a medical test to come back. You tell yourself, it's just a precaution, I'm sure everythng's fine. . . but you know that the possibility of "not fine" exists. You tell yourself, for sure, this is your last book. Has to be.

I remember a time when Rich Correll was just some far-flung possibility. I opened a file last night in Word, my first letter to him, dated 2010. I had no idea what his mailing address was, could only find vague references to talent agencies and taxi companies. I even sent a letter to his lawyer. I gave up some time in 2012, and he phoned me in 2013. I could not believe how long ago: last summer. I thought it was maybe two months ago.

I think a lot of what I am doing now is distraction. I should be working feverishly on Facebook and Twitter (though I loathe the thought and would rather be hung upside-down by my toenails than open a Twitter account) to "try to get the word out". What word? My book is out.  Buy it, it's swell. End of message.

I suppose if I don't promote my face off, I won't be eligible for the awards that can propel a writer out of the Paperback Writer zone ("Dear sir or madam, would you read my book, it took me years to write, would you take a look"). I don't know quite how that works. Do I sound super-confident here? I doubt it.

I do feel good about the book. It's not that. Or, I don't think so. It's everything else, what goes with it. Writers are jerked back and forth: stop being so sickeningly self-congratulatory! Get out there and be a shameless self-promoter! Go away, come back.

And then there is Cinderella Syndrome, the great lottery win, with some obscure or completely unknown author catapulting to the top of the New York Times bestseller list (Nirvana for every writer, supposedly). I should have called my novel 50 Shades of Harold.

It's a weird place to be in. I wouldn't want to go back. All of it has been hard. The writing was the best part, as always. I'll never forget it. And a few people have commented on it. Even my daughter liked it! She's the toughest critic I know, one of the few people who actually speaks her mind when you ask her about something, so her opinion matters to me.

All I want to do is make Blingees, right now, to take my mind off things. I have had no reviews at all so far, and there may not be any (not that they lead to sales). One would be nice. And hearing back from Rich Correll. Now THAT would be nice. An invite to read somewhere, so I don't have to phone an organizer and say, "Please, sir. . . "

But I remember the day the idea fell on me to write this book - just fell on me like an anvil out of nowhere, and my first reaction was, "Nooooooooooooo." Somehow, that led to this. The strange "this" I'm in now, which is a long way from the initial assault. 

People you know very well

(From the Gospel According to Facebook, chapter 946, verse 22:)

Adding Friends/Friend Requests

Adding Friends

How do I add a friend?

A quick way to add your friends is to import your contacts. You can also add friends from their Timelines:

1. Search for the person you'd like to friend using the search bar at the top of any Facebook page.
2. Click on their name to go to their Timeline.
3. Click the Add Friend button next to their name. You might not see this button on some people's Timelines, depending on their privacy settings.

Once this person accepts your request, they'll show up in your Facebook friends list.

Note: If you've been temporarily blocked from adding new friends, you'll need to wait until the block is finished. Learn more.

You're reading the Desktop Help answer. Learn more in our other Help Centers.

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Who should I send friend requests to?

You should send friend requests to people you have a real-life connection to, like your friends, family, coworkers or classmates.

If you're interested in receiving updates from people you find interesting, but don't know personally (ex: journalists, celebrities, political figures), try following them instead of sending them friend requests.

(Emphasis mine.)

OK, so this is the official word.

Then why do I know so many people who have literally THOUSANDS of Facebook friends?

If I ask anyone about this, they quickly look away and change the subject. Myself, I've received stern warnings  about "friending" people I don't "have a real-life connection to", and have even been threatened I'll be cut off Facebook forever if I even think of approaching someone in my field whom I merely admire. The shaming and even mildly threatening tone of these warnings is really something else. 

So how do these people make over a thousand (or two, or three, up to FIVE thousand) close, personal friends without being cut off like I almost was?

Inquiring minds want to know.

But no one, NOT ONE person, not even Google will tell me what is going on here. I've tried and tried, but apparently it doesn't happen.  Did each of those, say, 3000 people receive a friend request from someone they have a real-life connection with? A close friend or at least a colleague? I've never met that many people in my entire life. Not only that, carefully friending people one by one would be a mighty slow process, unless you're so gol-dern popular that friend requests just come flooding in every day.

The message seems to be: OK, Margaret, once again, you have no friends because nobody likes you. If they liked you, thousands of friends would be magnetically attracted to you with no effort on your part at all. In fact, the entire world would decide in unison that it liked you. But no, Margaret. It's not like that. Not for you.

You DON'T have 3000 or 4000 Facebook "friends" and you never will. Even if you approach someone you DO know well, and for some reason they don't respond right away (i. e. they almost never check their Facebook page), it will appear on a list that will some day flash in your face: all those requests you sent that were "refused". This is seen as a security issue and leads to stern warnings that you are about to be thrown out of Facebook.

The real reason being, not that you have TOO MANY friends, but that you have NOT ENOUGH friends and aren't cool enough, not knowing enough to stay on-board. It's the bloody schoolyard all over again.

So most people just sit there while wave upon wave of closepersonalfriend requests billow in daily. That doesn't happen to me.

I am also on LinkedIn, and joined in an attempt to find a person I needed to talk to. This time, surprisingly, I wasn't punished, but I don't know WHY I wasn't. I get "link requests", or whatever they are called, at least every week, if not every day. In most cases I have never even heard of these people, and I have no idea where and how they found my name.

I've tried this myself, and it never works. I get another stern finger-shaking warning. To "link" with someone, you have to know them well and have their email address. That's the rule. In other words, to be in touch with them, you already have to be in touch with them. It's a security thing, see.

Is this hypocrisy, or what? Why am I the ONLY person I have ever known who even talks about all this? If I had someone's email, I would never bother to "link" with them because I AM ALREADY LINKED WITH THEM! It's kind of like Facebook, you see, a hopeless Catch-22 that nobody else ever mentions because they are comfortably "in", and don't want to do anything to threaten that position (i. e. consort with someone who is hopelessly "out").

I had the thought, once, upon seeing someone on my page with something like 3,120 "friends", that there must be a whole lotta cheatin' going on. Bribes, maybe? The person never strikes me as a celebrity, in fact many of them look like ordinary schlubs. Like me. So there must be a way around the stern, quasi-legal warnings about "security", the implication that you might only have "one more chance" to make good before you are drummed out of the club forever.

I am a hopeless dinosaur, I know it, and any attempt to join in will be seen as a pathetic effort to be "cool" when it is patently obvious I don't belong here and never will. The harder I try, the more pathetic I look.

And that's just the way it is.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Writers Today: the futility of Fakebook

I decided to cut-and-paste this piece rather than publish a link, because YOU HAVE GOT TO SEE IT if you are a serious writer, especially if you are a serious writer in Canada (though I believe it applies in other countries more than we know). It's a harsh truth, but a truth nonetheless, that the onus for being in the "first tier"  has fallen back on the writer, creating a whole new set of expectations/pressures:  "Hey look, you have social media now, you should do GREAT!", and, "Hey, Fifty Shades of Grey was self-published!" The money is just not there any more, anywhere, and this speaks volumes about the "global economic changes" that have marginalized literature as never before.

What's the solution? I can only think of one thing. Keep on writing, troops. Don't let the bastards get you down.

Artists struggle to survive in age of the blockbuster

RUSSELL SMITH

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Nov. 28 2013, 5:00 PM EST
Last updated Thursday, Nov. 28 2013, 5:00 PM EST

In the artistic economy, the Internet has not lived up to its hype. For years, the cybergurus liked to tell us about the “long tail” – the rise of niches, “unlimited variety for unique tastes” – that would give equal opportunities to tiny indie bands and Hollywood movies. People selling products of any kind would, in the new connected world, be able to sell small amounts to lots of small groups. Implicit in the idea was the promise that since niche tastes would form online communities not limited by national boundaries, a niche product might find a large international audience without traditional kinds of promotion in its home country. People in publishing bought this, too. The end result, we were told, would be an extremely diverse cultural world in which the lesbian vampire novel would be just as widely discussed as the Prairie short story and the memoir in tweets.

In fact, the blockbuster artistic product is dominating cultural consumption as at no other time in history. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on each successive Hunger Games, and the rep cinemas have closed. A few sports stars are paid more individually than entire publishing houses or record labels earn in a year.

A couple of prominent commentators have made this argument recently about American culture at large. The musician David Byrne lamented, in a book of essays, that his recent albums would once have been considered modest successes but now no longer earn him enough to sustain his musical project. That’s David Byrne – he’s a great and famous artist. Just no Lady Gaga. The book Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment, by business writer Anita Elberse, argues that the days of the long tail are over in the United States. It makes more sense, she claims, for entertainment giants to plow as much money as they can into guaranteed hits than to cultivate new talent. “Because people are inherently social,” she writes cheerily, “they generally find value in reading the same books and watching the same television shows and movies that others do.”

Well, the same appears to be true of publishing, even in this country. There are big winners and there are losers – the middle ground is eroding. Publishers are publishing less, not more. Everybody awaits the fall’s big literary-prize nominations with a make-us-or-break-us terror. Every second-tier author spends an hour every day in the dismal abjection of self-promotion – on Facebook, to an audience of 50 fellow authors who couldn’t care less who just got a nice review in the Raccoonville Sentinel. This practice sells absolutely no books; increases one’s “profile” by not one centimetre; and serves only to increase one’s humiliation at not being in the first tier, where one doesn’t have to do that.

Novelists have been complaining, privately at least, about the new castes in the literary hierarchy. This happens every year now, in the fall, the uneasiness – after the brief spurt of media attention that goes to the nominees and winners of the three major Canadian literary prizes, the Scotiabank Giller, the Governor-General’s, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust. The argument is that the prizes enable the media to single out a few books for promotion, and no other books get to cross the divide into public consciousness. And, say the spurned writers, this fact guides the publishers in their acquisitions. Editors stand accused of seeking out possible prize-winners (i.e. “big books”) rather than indulging their own tastes. This leads, it is said, to a homogenized literary landscape and no place at all for the weird and uncategorizable.

But even if this is true, what can one possibly do about it? Abolish the prizes? No one would suggest this – and even the critics of prize culture understand that the prizes were created by genuine lovers of literature with nothing but the best intentions, and that rewarding good writers financially is good, even necessary, in a small country without a huge market.

It’s not, I think, the fault of the literary prizes that the caste system exists. Nor of the vilified “media” who must cover these major events. It’s the lack of other venues for the discussion and promotion of books that closes down the options. There were, in the nineties, several Canadian television programs on the arts. There were even whole TV shows about books alone. Not one of these remains. There were radio shows that novel-readers listened to. There were budgets for book tours; there were hotel rooms in Waterloo and Moncton. In every year that I myself have published a book there have been fewer invitations and less travel. Now, winning a prize is really one’s only shot at reaching a national level of awareness.

So again, what is to be done? What does any artist do in the age of the blockbuster? Nothing, absolutely nothing, except keep on doing what you like to do. Global economic changes are not your problem (and are nothing you can change with a despairing tweet). Think instead, as you always have, about whether or not you like semicolons and how to describe the black winter sky. There is something romantic about being underground, no?

Look on the bright side: Poverty can be good for art. At least it won’t inspire you to write Fifty Shades of Grey.

 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm 

By Jiminy - it's a fake!

Y'know, it strikes me, when it strikes me at all, that Dorothy Parker was right when she wrote,  "this living, this living, this living/was never a project of mine", but let's put that aside for a moment.

I had a Facebook page for almost a year before I did anything with it. For the most part, it struck me as idiotic. The posts had about as much content and meaning as texting (and what DO people text about anyway: "I'm going to the bathroom now. . . grunt. . . grunt. . ."). It was one big bulletin board of meaningless gossip, interspersed with sappy personal philosophy along the lines of  "Let a smile be your umbrella" and "Always be nice, and others will be nice to you."

But the links are the best, or the worst.

EVERYONE takes the links at face value. No one realizes that many of the pages are satirical, because they don't know what satire is. Or irony. Plus if it's on Facebook, it MUST be true, hey?

The crickets are a case in point. God's Cricket Chorus is a mysterious recording that everyone is raving about, playing it in the basement while stoned, sniffling over it while remembering Rover who died seven years ago, etc. It's transcendent. It's amazing. It's CRICKETS, by Jiminy, slowed way, way down, and it sounds just like a chorus of angels! Here's the ad:

"Want to hear something magical?
Experimental director and playwright, Robert Wilson, caught a hauntingly beautiful piece of music one night, a recording of crickets.
That part is common enough, but then he stretched out the sound as much as one would have to stretch the life of a cricket to equal that of a human, and the result is truly wonderful.”

Clicking that website’s link takes you to Acornavi – Robert-wilson-crickets-audio

No one stopped to ask why, when the cricket sounds were slowed down so much, the pitch was actually higher than the gritchy sound crickets actually make. These were high floating harmonics, likely made with a synthesized choir. BUT HEY. What's the matter with you, anyway, to piss on our party like this? What's the matter that you doubt such beauty, such magical spirituality (because we're spiritual, not religious)? 

To put the cherry on the sundae, gravel-voiced blues singer Tom Waits (referred to below as "Tom Waite") endorsed the cricket oratorio as a "swaying choral panorama" that he shared with his dope buddy, Charlie Musselwhite. This was good enough for Baptist churches to begin to use it in their weekly prayer services.

When something is that wildly, stampedingly popular, it's a pretty safe bet that it's bogus. So somebody had to do it: test the method of recording and prove or disprove its authenticity. It wasn't that difficult: the technology is actually there. Just take a recording of crickets, then play it at slower and slower speeds, trying to reproduce the original, magical, spiritual-but-not-religious sounds that had everyone bawling into their cornflakes.

Want to hear it?

https://soundcloud.com/darangatang/dawkins_chorus_of_crickets

It turns out we don't really need that angel chorus to make our hair stand on end. The recording of real crickets is actually pretty freaky in itself, getting stranger and stranger as it is gradually elongated, almost disappearing as it drops below the threshhold of human hearing (though perhaps a whale could hear it). 

To quote Dave D'aranjo, cricket-chorus-buster extraordinaire:

Look, Mr. Wilson’s original is no doubt relaxing and sounds pretty and I used it to help me sleep once. But it is undoubtedly a human singing, or perhaps a manipulated choir loop. It’s not cool to spread around incorrect info and then call it some miraculous evidence of divine intervention in nature. To me, the sound of the crickets are wondrous enough! C’mon folks, let’s try and be less gullible!

But who wants to hear this? It's no fun. It doesn't emanate the secrets of the cosmos (and what a mystery, that a mere cricket could "know" like that? But aren't we all one, and aren't crickets just as enlightened as the typical stoner on a Saturday night?) People prefer the hoax to the real thing, and pledge themselves to it as solemnly as if they're joining eHarmony. In the face of scientific fact, how could anyone think - ? But they DON'T think, and that's the point.

If something like God's Cricket Chorus gets around, if it goes viral or gets on YouTube or the "What's Trending" part of the news (which used to be called the Lighter Side), a zillion people not only watch it/listen to it, they accept it at face value and without question. If YOU don't believe it, you get that turned-off face, that "I smell garbage" or "I see a homeless person and want to get away" face.  You're refusing to join the Holy Church of Oh Wow!

I don't know if you've heard the original, but it's nothing like this. In fact, I think this is infinitely more mysteriously, and genuine into the bargain. You could still smoke up and cry over the dog here, it wouldn't make a big difference, but I guarantee you'll get a big kick out of the very last track.

(P. S. As awareness of this "alternate" recording spreads, many have gone on record to say things like, "OK, so the God version isn't really crickets, but that doesn't take anything away from how beautiful and transcendent it is." Some doubt has also arisen as to whether Tom Waite (sic) was clean and sober when he made that claim about a pulling a leprechaun out of his pocket.  As P. T. Barnum liked to say, there's one born every minute.)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Four-figure Facebook: the ultimate load of crap

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  Four more friends and I hit 1,000-- will there be falling balloons, kazoos, confetti and champagne?

  
  

  This is an actual Facebook post from today. I've removed the name, but it's a writer with a book out. 

  
  

  OK, my issue is this: TWICE Facebook sent me a stern notice that nobody was accepting my FB friend requests. Then they told me I was friending too many people, and insisted (demanded) I know all the people I friended personally, intimately, face-to-face. They then cut me off from sending any more friend requests for two weeks, ominously warning me that if I didn't toe the line, I might be "out" (no doubt for good). 
  
  Everyone I sent a request to was, at very least, a friend of a friend, with in many cases over 100 friends in common. But somehow I had still stepped on the big guy's toes.

  
  

  I'm on a Facebook tightrope, folks. Once more, I've inadvertently blundered. Unlike others, I can't seem to capture that misty unicorn of social networking, the number 1000 (which I don't really want anyway and will never attain). What am I doing wrong? Are my school records out there or something?
  
  
  
  

  

  
  

  
  

  I have asked many, many people what the hell is going on here, and I get turned backs and a sense that they are embarrassed, if not downright offended. You mean you don't KNOW how this works? Why, as soon as you set up a new FB account, fifty people a day swarm to your page and beg you to friend them. All because they are close, personal friends, face-to-face buddies you meet and have coffee with all the time.

  
  

  I guess if THEY come to YOU, it's OK because it's a sort of checkmark on your popularity scale. If you have to go begging and actually ask people, that's another matter entirely.

  
  
  
  

  

  
  

  
  It's parroted time and time again that FB is NOT for personal advertising or bragging about your new book. We all understand that, yes, then violate this rule constantly, often coyly, as in "well, I just hate to bring this up, but. . . " or "I hope this doesn't look like shameless self-promotion, but. . . " This is followed by a flood of likes and congratulations, sycophantic gushing over so-and-so's good fortune, masking a bitter, teeth-clenching jealously, a sense of "yes, I'll praise him now because I want to cultivate his contacts, but sooner or later I'm gonna get that bastard."

  
  

  The puffery, narcissism and blatant verbal sandwich-board/billboard advertising on FB makes me queasy, but if you even suggest it is actually going on, the result is indignation, even disbelief. I've even been told "I'm speechless" (which, believe me, I wish most of them actually were). We know the real dynamics, sure, but we're not going to admit it. 
  
  
  
  

  

  
  
  Because, for God's sake, don't you know already? And if not, why not? And if you don't know, isn't THAT why no one wants to be your friend? Isn't THAT why you don't have a golden key to that exclusive club, Four-Figure Facebook, complete with pole dancers and your very own highly-prized, high-maintenance Park Avenue escort/mistress, the same one who got Edward Snowden's rocks off before he retreated to Russia or wherever-the-fuck-he-is?
  
  
  
  
  

  

  
  

  
  

  I know people in the Four Figure Club who have a thousand, two thousand, even three or four thousand, and a few have even maxed out at the ultimate five thousand upper limit that FB imposes on your very best, exclusive, heart-to-heart, have-coffee-with-every-day "friends". Since FB always prominently displays lists of "people you may know" who are in fact friends of your friends, I thought it was allowed to contact some of them, to invite them to be your friends. Apparently not, or at least not for me. One must attract friends with an invisible force, something you are born with, a giant magnet implanted in your solar plexus.
  
  
  

  

  
  

  
  

  Then there are those of us who have nothing but a big hole in our solar plexus, but don't we deserve it? Why aren't we one of the quadruple-digit crowd? Aren't we blue chip, aren't we Facebook Fortune 5000? If not, don't we deserve obscurity in the grubby, sad realms of the terminally unpopular?

  
  

  I'm just askin'.

  
  

  http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

  
  

  http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm