Writer Types

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There are so many types of writers. As a writer, you try to persuade others. In every case I can imagine, the writer’s goal is to persuade.

A skywriter’s goal is to let everyone know that Harold loves Ingrid.

The poet tries to elicit an emotion.

The spin doctor tries to confound.

The philosopher aims to awe.

The preacher tries to convert.

The scientist tries to teach, and the teacher tries to grow new scientists.

The biographer wants to define a personality, and generate love or hate for that personality.

The autobiographer wants to leave a legend.

The lyricist wants to make the song memorable.

The student essayist wants to be passing and forgettable.

The trendy essayist wants to generate a buzz.

One hundred million tweeters want to be controversial.

A graffiti artist tries to be more street-owner than the real street owners; a graffiti artist wants to be known, but never seen; a graffiti artist tries to be a terrorist with a spray paint can.

The pooch writes his name on a tree using only urine. His goal: to show the other dogs where he’s been. Few animals can write—even fewer persuade me. They might persuade each other though. (So much like the graffiti artist.)

A skywriter’s goal is to sell seats at the circus.

How many more are there?

Any tech that requires CUTTING yourself to remove it is NO BUENO.

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Remember when phones were huge? We laughed at how huge they were. The oldest satellite phones looked like an Army issue two-way radio. Of course the satellite phone was pretty neat in the right hands. People who wanted to show off. Soon after though, phones were getting smaller. It was good. You could fit a phone in your pocket, and that was definitely an advancement over having to be home to answer the phone attached to the wall. Crazy! The new small phones were amazing. If you went to the beach you could stick the phone in your shoe. It had really tiny numbers on it so a lot of people would use a pen or pencil to type on it. A finger might be too big and you’d hit three or four numbers at the same time. Then phones got even smaller and you had to have the option of the touch screen so the buttons were the right size for human fingers. And not long after that phones started getting bigger, tablets came out–and tablets started getting better. Even though the same companies making phones also make tablets, there seemed to be this competition thing going on, so phones started doing things that tablets did and tablets started doing things phones did. Then they started to look and act like each other. Gone are the days when you could fit a phone in your pocket. They’re just too big now. And now companies are trying to convince us that we’ll have tablet-phones embedded in our palms?! Ouch! I’m kidding of course. They’re actually talking about embedding chips in our hands. Forget about it! The “next great idea”? I don’t think so. I say, unless I have a cybernetic limb, or something, with hydraulic action so I can leap really high, or crush heavy metallic things, then I don’t need any internal microchips. I’ll keep the microchips external, thank you. Do I really need a chip that goes with me? No, not really. Anything that requires CUTTING yourself to remove it is obviously a bad idea.

Tell me an escalator doesn’t look like a playground and I’ll tell you how boring you are.

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How to ride an escalator:

  • Approach confidently, do not hesitate.
  • Step onto the first available tread.
  • Grasp the handrail firmly.
  • If you’re escorting children, lift them and place them squarely behind your belt or suspenders, or store them in your purse. Children have been known to slip between the treads of escalators. Children who get caught there are never the same. They’re scarred for life. Some have limbs severed. Others, the ones who see the formless, shapeless, transcosmic abyss on the other side of the escalator, always turn out bad. They get wicked ideas in their heads and start right away on acting out their criminal impulses. Soon they’ll be trading bras from the women’s clothing section with boxers in the men’s. They’ll spray paint the lenses of security cameras. They’ll write obscene things on every poster and advertisement everywhere. They’ll find an animal somewhere and try to mutilate it. They may even try to mutilate themselves. It’s really quite hopeless. The best solution is to put these escalator-crack-babies down. The lame horse method is considered the most humane.
  • Do not run.
  • Do not allow loose strings on clothing to become entangled in the handrail or the treads.
  • Do not leap from the down-escalator to the up-escalator. Leaping from up to down is okay though.
  • Never, ever, ever grab the handrail with both hands and pull it in the opposite direction of travel with all your might to see if people on the other end of the escalator get discombobulated and fall over.
  • Running in place is a weird thing to do on an escalator. It’s not a treadmill. But then again, who am I to stop you?
  • Wearing a swimsuit on an escalator is also weird, but who am I to stop you?
  • Walking like an Egyptian? I can’t comment on that.
  • Pets should never be taken on escalators.
  • Senior citizens should locate the elevator.
  • Introverts should also locate the elevator.
  • Robots and personal cybernetic assistants should stay behind and monitor a person’s behavior for documentation purposes only.
  • When you see the transition platform at the end of the escalator, don’t get off, see how long you can stay on without touching the platform. If you touch it, you’re out of the game.
  • Walking the opposite way on a moving walkway may be prohibited, but on an escalator it’s encouraged.
  • “Surfing” on the handrail is prohibited. Don’t even think about it.
  • Sliding on the divider between an up- and down-escalator could be fun. Watch out for nasty obstructions that uncaring maintenance persons have put in the middle of the slide. A collision will ruin your day.
  • Lastly, remember that if the power is somehow interrupted to the escalator, it can still be used like a normal, non-electric set of stairs. (You’re not stuck.)

Milk the Research Funds

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I don’t want to give you any ideas, but there’s probably some money in this idea. Not necessarily good money either. It’s more like the stinky, dirty government grants for scientific inquiries that don’t play a tune in a logical mind. You know what I’m talking about, we hear about them all of the time, like when we heard about the non-scientist who won a government grant so he could test to find out if subway stair rails carry germs. Did he actually do the research, or did he just cotton swab the bottom of his shoe and submit the sample he found there? Or how about the other non-scientist who supposedly did a study on whether homelessness was healthy or not? (Turns out it’s not as healthy as we all thought. ) Or what about the study that discovered laughing can make a person with an illness feel better? A lot of these, you hear them, and you immediately realize that the joke IS the punch line.

Seriously though, I don’t know if any of these studies were conducted using government funds (which is another way of saying “money out of YOUR pocket”). When you hear about studies like these, do you even care where the money came from to make it happen? The money was wasted, no matter where it came from.

Sarcasm aside, this idea of mine, or rather, this question of mine, is not nearly as silly as some of the examples above. At least not to me.

What I really want to know is: why does milk taste better out of a glass than out of, say, a plastic cup?

And that brings to mind another question: can you see how I got here? I was wondering why milk tastes better out of a glass, and then I thought about how I would figure that out, and I imagined pouring milk into several different types of materials like plastic, or wood, or metal. I thought about measuring the amount of material that leaks in to the milk from the container, or the amount of good tasting probiotics versus bad tasting ones. I considered how to do any of that on my milk-drinking budget, and I realized I needed the government to intervene, to supply the resource of cash. I needed to do some serious research, and I would need…

“Nah!” I told myself. “Just enjoy the moo, and if you’re feeling festive, add chocolate.”

No Food is Limited to a Day

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It’s worth admitting that I was sucked in to the whole Taco Tuesday idea. It seemed like tacos were already on my menu, so why not set aside one day a week for the fabulous food.

Then I missed a Tuesday.

It wasn’t a horrific, life-altering experience or anything (though I’m sure some would love to hear that), but it was definitely an eye-opener. There was that hole in my belly, waiting for tacos to fill it, and what did it get? A ham sandwich. Nothing wrong with ham, either. It just wasn’t the taco that I had built my schedule around for several weeks running.

A little twist in the habits and we feel all out of place, don’t we?

Like eating a taco with your left hand, when you usually eat one with your right. If you did that, you’d have to tilt your head the opposite direction, lean over the plate a different way, and even pour the hot sauce with your other hand. It’s as awkward thinking about it as it is doing it.

It’s all so goofy, isn’t it? Despite that, I figured it was my brain that was having the most trouble.

Why did my habit make me feel so out of sync with the world? Because I let it.

I had to ask myself if tacos were only lawfully consumed on Tuesday. And then I laughed at myself. Of course tacos are one of those any-day, any-time meals. Do they have to be confined to dinner on Tuesday? Even though the sing-song nature of the alliterative phrase Taco Tuesday is fun to say, the answer is definitely no.

Sure there are those other days that are fun to say, and that limit our food choices as little, such as: Finger-Food Friday, Seafood Saturday, and Moon Pie Monday. Sure there are benefits to scheduling your food for certain days, for example, it sure makes shopping easier. And sure there is that Lego movie, with its funny happenings on Tuesday. However, there’s no logical reason behind force-feeding a day of the week. If Wednesday wants a taco, let it have a taco. And if the hole in your belly wants one at four in the morning—well—you better hope you can hunt down that taco truck.