Then there’s the ad for a negligence law firm that declares ‘if you or a loved one have been killed or injured as a result of someone else’s negligence, call….’ That makes me wonder how all the attorneys in this law firm managed to avoid Freshman English. Could no one figure out another way to say this? I’d like to think if I had been killed as a result of someone else’s negligence and was still able to call a lawyer, I would chose a firm whose ads were at least logical and grammatically correct!
Another Word on Commercials
And don’t you just love those pharmaceutical commercials? How about the one for Viagra? The warnings begin with the imperative to “Ask your Doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex.” Now can you imagine average Joe asking, “Doctor, can I have sex?” “Sure, just not with me,” might be the doctor’s first response! Then the warnings increase, “Don’t take Viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain because it can cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure.” (You might pass out) Now that sounds more than a bit scary, this poor guy’s really going to need a pill to get ready, because now he’s scared to death. Then in the interest of full disclosure the ad continues “side effects may include flushing, upset stomach or abnormal vision.” WOW that’ll put the happy couple in the mood while his stomach’s doing flip flops and he’s seeing double! He better keep that doctor’s phone number handy in case he goes blind and deaf while he’s having sex and the least of his problems is that his erection may last for four hours! With all this to look forward to he might just as well just watch a football game!
A Word About Commercials
In the market for a potency drug? Take a look at Cialis! Here we have a happy couple reclining in two separate, mind you separate, beautiful footed bathtubs on a mountain top in the wilderness. Their hands interlock in the space between their separate tubs and they are staring blissfully into the distant sunset. Now of course you might ask, how exactly did this naked couple manage to drag their bathtubs up there into the mountains? Or you might ask how was it they managed to get all that hot water they are so obviously soaking in up there into the mountains without it getting too cold for a bath? Or you might even ask exactly why did this adventurous couple go to all the trouble of dragging those heavy tubs and scalding water up to this mountain top? By now even if they wanted to make good use of their precious Cialis, they’d be too tired to bother.
You might also ask exactly how any of this demonstrates the effectiveness of this potency drug they seem so delighted with? Now if the couple was soaking in the same bathtub that might make it a bit more convincing. The ad does not show one of the naked couple standing and dripping with now freezing water cross over to the other bathtub. And one might ask why they can’t just sit on a blanket like a normal couple? The creativity of the company’s marketing team is to be commended however they do lose points when it comes to rationality.
A Word or Two About Television
If you were a visitor from another country, say a third world country, say one that has a repressed social system in which gender roles are explicitly specified and delineated, where gender equality is unheard of and personal modesty is of utmost importance, where women hide their hair, faces, arms, legs and feet and certain issues say of a highly personal nature are never discussed, mentioned or described in mixed company under threat of punishment or death. Say one such person has come to America for a visit or on a work visa and happens to turn on a TV? There in High definition brilliance half-dressed men and women prance across 50” flat screens openly displaying nearly every conceivable body part and talking brazenly, publicly about diarrhea, bad breath, body odor, rectal cleanliness, vaginal odor, douching, sex, orgasms, menstrual blood, herpes and impotence as they advertise products manufactured to address these problems. What would that individual think? How would they view the culture that created these sinful images?
And if said visitor from another culture managed to survive our commercials and watched a few of our favorite daytime soap operas they would see exquisitely dressed women doing ordinary things, obsessed with attracting, competing for and holding onto a mate, talking endlessly about sex, pregnancy, drugs, weight and money. What would that person think about us? How would they see the society that created these shows and displays them as if they actually reflect the everyday life of the average American?
And if that visitor were able to be revived from the shock of viewing our commercials and daytime TV and lived to see evening TV shows, what would that person think about our endless gun fights, gang violence, domestic violence, murder and our preoccupation with sexual abuse? Crime, police and detective shows are interspersed with reality TV wherein people are filmed competing and struggling to survive in jungles, deserts or islands perhaps environments that are similar to where the visitor lives. Then there are the irreverent late night talkers who mock and joke and smash every icon they can find in order to keep their laughing audience tuning in.
Of course, we try to soften all this bold nakedness by interspersing it with images of adorable puppies, kitties and babies, lizards selling insurance and bears selling toilet paper. The meta-message is, ‘Hey, we’re not so bad. Look we love our babies and our pets. We believe in cleanliness and being insured. How bad could we possibly be?
Perhaps we should try to see ourselves as others see us, to reverse roles long enough to gain some perspective on our own beliefs and values as we live and present them to others. Only then would we have a chance of understanding why certain other countries see the United States of America as a depraved society and we might from that point begin to discuss our differences.
Heat Warning
An email came in from my Village Association with a ‘heat warning.’ Temperatures will be dangerously high today and children and pets should be kept out of the mid-day heat. Several places, like the public libraries have been designated as cooling off centers and people were urged to look in on their neighbors and offer help if needed. That got me wondering what people do in places where there is no air conditioning. What do people do who live in Jungles or deserts? Do people acclimate to such heat and humidity? Can people learn to live and function when the thermometer climbs to a heat index of 105°? http://www.weather.com says ‘limit outdoor exposure, heat index is dangerously high.’ I believe them! It is beastly out there, like walking into a cheese soufflé. Not that I’ve ever actually walked into one, but I imagine it’s like inching through the thick oppressive air outside my door.
I wonder where else in the world these conditions exist and how those people cope with it? Do they sleep through the worst of it? Have a siesta to stay out of the heat and then stay up late when it’s cooler? The bigger question for me is the way weather conditions affect society. Influence the way people work and play; raise and socialize their children, the homes they build, the celebrations they enjoy even the foods they cultivate and prepare. All these things and more are affected by the weather conditions under which people live and.
And, not the least of my thoughts, why is our weather so extreme? It seems more extreme than it used to be. Were conditions in this area always like they are now, or is this the result of ‘global warming’, something we have brought on ourselves with our pollution and selfish disregard for environmental consequences? The experts would have something to say about all this, unfortunately however their differences of opinion have been sufficient to stultify the political/legislative process and prevent our government from enacting comprehensive regulations that might be able to reverse these conditions.
Perhaps things will improve when our lawmakers get hot enough to ask some of these questions themselves and be motivated to seek effective solutions to the problems.
The Next Steven King?
I went to a Maryland Writers Association meeting and heard Vonnie Winslow Crist, a poet, illustrator and fantasy book writer talk about her many experiences, adventures and struggles with the publishing world. She was full of suggestions, funny stories and good advice all of which led me to think about my own goals as a writer. ‘If you think you’ve written the next Steven King best seller,” she said “wait to connect with one of the big New York publishing houses.” If not, you can go with a smaller publisher. Well, I asked myself, have I written a best seller? Am I the next Steven King or maybe James Patterson?? Maybe, I answered. Maybe Dancing on the Razor’s Edge is headed for the New York Times Best Seller list. Maybe I do want to connect with a big publishing company, but how?? Vonnie urged getting ‘yourself out there’ because you never know what exactly will attract attention. Work and write and get your work published wherever and however you can, was her thought. And have several pieces of work ready so that when opportunity knocks, you are ready to answer.
Good advice. So here I am, on the computer writing my blog and thinking about all the places I can publish or get my work out there. Enter contests, she suggested, look into anthologies and see if your work can be included in a collection of similar work. Now I feel energized and determined, ideas are being generated.
So thank you, Vonnie for your inspiration I’m off to get the next ‘Steven King best seller’ published!
Coincidences
I am often struck by what appear to be coincidences between what I’m writing and what is actual and real. For example in Razor’s Edge I was writing about a place where a certain object was manufactured without knowing a) if such an object even existed and b) where in the US it might be manufactured. As I was writing fiction, I described the object and randomly selected a city where that object was manufactured. Several days later I was ‘Googling’ and decided to see if this object indeed existed and lo and behold it does exist and it is indeed manufactured in the exact city I had selected! In writing Seeing Double, I had a similar instance where in I randomly described a doomsday scenario, its location and specific locations in different countries that were involved. About a week later I ran across a CNN piece paralleling what I had described in my novel, including international responses that paralleled the novel. Scary?
While it can be thrilling when these coincidences occur it is also a bit weird. It feels a bit ‘para-psychological,’ a bit ‘whooo-whoo,’ but those feelings don’t make the fact of these experiences any less real. Sure there could be other explanations like ‘I read something about it somewhere’ but that’s not the reality. The best I can come up with is coincidence, luck or fluke but none of these words quite capture the experience. It’s more like ‘a gypsy fortune teller’ saying ‘you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger,’ and you run into Ian Somerhalder at Starbucks and you’re the fortune teller! Perhaps it’s telepathy though I don’t consider myself to be telepathic and yet those who are might say that we all have the inherent capacity to be telepathic but are socialized to spurn those ideas/abilities. We are trained as children to be more reality and fact-oriented, to develop practical skills. Children are naturally more fantasy-oriented, their unformed minds are imaginative and creative. Perhaps the coincidences that I’m describing occur when my mind is in that free flowing state. When I’m typing without regard for hard core facts; I’m just ‘in the moment’ with my fingers on the keyboard. It occurs at those times when the words just flow and ideas accumulate forming and reforming like so many clouds moving with the wind.
Express Yourself!
Years ago I went through a Hugh Prather phase. If you know any of his work it reads like something between blogging and free associating. His work was thought provoking and interesting sometimes tangential sometimes personal but always consistent in its overall pattern. I am using what I think his method must have been here. It’s like ‘dear diary’ but it’s open to the public! With my early psychotherapy training in psychoanalytic methods ‘free association’ comes naturally to me. I have a deep appreciation for how it can lead to deeper thought processes, conflicts, attachments and well you know…‘issues’ as we like to say today. Prather introduced me to the idea that one can start anywhere with a thought and just follow it to see where it goes. It can start with a butterfly on a flower and argument with your spouse or a paragraph in a novel. The point is to observe, conceptualize, articulate and express yourself! I like it! It reminds me of the Windows 8 commercial by Labyrinth “Express Yourself!”
So given that I’m ‘new to blogging’ I hope those more intimately familiar with its process will forgive me my assumptions and errors as I figure this out. ‘New to blogging’ is in fact something of an overstatement. I mean brand new…like these are my first entries, so if you have any suggestions or directions please by all means ‘sock it to me!’ (remember Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In?? )
Reflection on time and the meaning of change
OK so you’ve all heard about New Years Resolutions, right? Well no doubt, there are biblical origins for them. Every major religion celebrates the New Year in some way that reflects its own customs and traditions. Different New Years begin and end at different times of the year or even according to different calendars but New Year celebrations are universally welcomed with some type of gathering ranging from family dinners to expansive carnivals. Some involve serious religious services others are more secular, marked by food and drink, either or both may consumed in excess!
The Jewish New Year is approaching and I am moved to comment on the deeper meaning of this Holiday (Holy Day). Like other New Year celebrations this day marks the end of the previous year and the beginning of a new year and with it new opportunities for reflection and change. Rosh Hashanah signals us to push the ‘pause button’, to stop our whirlwind life styles and think about ourselves and the lives we are leading. There’s nothing magic or mystical about it, though some of the prayers and religious practices may involve mysticism, simply put it means stop doing what you are doing and think about it. Think about yourself and the kind of person you are, does it match with the you that you want to be? Think about the people in your life and ask if you have the kind of relationships you want to have? Are you living the life you want to be living? Are you struggling with issues that need to be resolved? How are you when you are driving? How are you when you are going to school or working? How do you respond to challenging or frustrating situations? Are you acting in accord with your basic beliefs and values or are do your principles live only in your mind and are not reflected in your actions?
Perhaps that is the basic message of any New Year. One year has ended. How did that year go for you? Are there things that didn’t go well and if so what can you do to change them? If everyone took the time to reflect on themselves, really be honest that alone could change the world. For some it may be a ‘resolution’ to stop smoking, for some it may to be kinder to people, for others it may be to work toward religious purity. We all have the opportunity to use this time to reflect, refresh, possibly redirect ourselves and resolve to change the things we want to change. So, push that ‘pause button’, stop and think and maybe something different will happen in your life.
L’Shanah Tovah Best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year!
Adopt a Cat Month Musings
Glancing at my Humane Society calendar I was pleased to see that June was “Adopt a Shelter Cat Month.” The picture is of a little orange tabby kitten chewing on a blanket and looking adorable. This kitty looks ‘for all the world’ like one of those kitties who makes you laugh, gets into everything and ends the day napping on your lap. What could be better?
As we know, homeless animals are a tragic reality throughout the world as are homeless people. As a volunteer with Golden Retriever Rescue I have housed and cared for dozens of homeless dogs and have seen first-hand the kind of problems that result. Food aggression, separation anxiety and resource guarding are just a few of the problems homeless abused or neglected dogs can present. As a social worker I have seen the result of homelessness, poverty and financial insecurity with people as well as animals and its impact is devastating. Physical and emotional problems abound resulting in increased social problems like communicable disease, crime, child abuse, domestic violence and teen pregnancy to name just a few.
Fortunately most of us have never had to face being homeless but think just for a minute how it would feel not to have a home. What would that be like? There would be no place to go where you can close the door on the outside world, where you can keep your things and eat and sleep and feel safe. Just think for a moment how that would feel. Don’t go to what you would do to avoid it or how you would get out of it but just what it would feel like. Now let those feelings guide your actions in whatever way you think is right. Homelessness for people and animals is a crisis in this country with no easy social, political or financial solutions.
If you were a raccoon in the forest, a lizard in the desert or a beaver in lake you would make or find a home for yourself. Home is just that basic. Whether it’s a hole in a tree, a den. a cave. a nest or a dam it would be what you think of as home. Homeless domesticated animals don’t have those options; they don’t have that instinctive drive to hunt and nest and do all the things wild animals do to survive. To a large extent that’s because we humans bred it out of them. We domesticated them, made them depend on us for food and shelter and then we abandoned them.
Somewhere along the line, if you look at homeless people, much of the time you will see that something similar occurred. Through no fault of their own, as a result of mental illness, addiction, immigration or social misfortune, these people became unable to care for themselves, live with a family, remain gainfully employed.
Abandonment is not the answer in any case, so getting back to kitties and calendars… if there’s room in your home and your heart for a homeless animal, why not go get one?
And if we’re talking about homeless people and the broader social issues that confront us as a country, the first step would be to learn more about the problem and the second step would be to find a way to get constructively involved. The more we get involved the more likely these problems will begin to be resolved.