A Million Little Pieces

I haven't read the book by James Frey that has everyone in an uproar, but I did watch the Oprah show last week where she confronted him on his lies and kind of told the publisher she was stupid for endorsing the book as a memoir. Instead, she said they should have done research on his stories and realized that the author had made up several parts of the story.

More interesting was that Oprah and the publisher discussed the concept of a memoir. It was interesting in that I came away with the understanding that pretty much anyone can write their "memoir," which is how they remember events, and possibly have them published as non fiction. I'm thinking that memoirs must have a lot of "embellishments" because all of our memories tend to bend and fold over the years. We all know that teaching tactic of staging a crime, then having different people describe what happened. Inevitably, the "witnesses" will recount the facts of the crime differently. The lesson learned? That people interpret situations, dialog, and visuals differently. Add time to that and you have an even more variable recount. Anyway, I found the topic interesting.

Then, I thought about how my memoir would read. Hmmmmm...Would it be a good read? Haven't we all thought about writing our "memoirs?" I wonder if everyone thinks their life story would make a good book. What makes the memoir worthy? Is it the story's content or the fashion in which it is written? It seems "common people" memoirs have become more common these days. While in Barns & Noble I notice the memoirs of people I've never heard of and I wonder why it is interesting to read accounts of random people's lives. I understand the famous people's lives being interesting, but some farmer's daughter from Indiana? But, in the age of reality TV, it only makes sense that the new literary star should be the memoir.

Pudge aka Old Man River aka Francis aka Walter

I've been at home with the new baby. I haven't left the house. I haven't done anything "fun." My experiences for the last 2 1/2 weeks have all been "maternal." Basically, what I'm saying is that I've had nothing to blog here on the old website. I'm throwing up this picture of Roxy because, well, it is pretty fun when she walks around with the rawhide that looks like a stogie. So, bear with me during this time of no posts. I'll try to come up with something interesting or amusing soon.

The States I've Been To...

Got this link from Charlie. I need to fill all the states in, but I've got time on my side...time, time, time..is on my side-yes it is. Good song.

It hit me last night: Pudge's breath smells like a freshly opened bag of Funyuns. Remember Funyuns? Funyuns were the "cool" thing to eat in junior high. I'm going to say that I never liked them though. No wonder I wasn't cool. Now, the smell has come back to haunt me through Pudge's mouth. Blech.

We were at G & Rich's house last night for a birthday party for Nicholas (Dad Chris is shown here). I wanted to put this picture up because Roxy had her holiday cheer on...notice the scarf :) And, Wendy had her Christmas bandana on. Dogs like to be festive too.

It's All About Me

Little Charlie challenged me to do this "7 Things List"

7 things I plan to do before I die:
1) Buy an RV
2) Travel across America in an RV
3) Have a patio cover built
4) Buy a cabin in the mountains (or on a lake) for vacations
5) Hike some small mountains/canyons in northern Arizona--Havasupi Area
6) White water raft in Idaho
7) Work to help the homeless

7 things I can do:
1) Speak in public
2) Drive a stick shift
3) Swim the basic strokes: backstroke, sidestroke, breaststroke, and front crawl (freestyle)
4) touch my nose with my tounge
5) Hit a driver over 200 yards
6) cook
7) laugh at myself

7 things I cannot do:
1) cartwheel
2) chug anything or do a shot of anything
3) enjoy opera
4) speak another language
5) watch re-runs
6) ski (either)
7) a pull-up

7 things that attract me to another:
1) nice ears
2) red hair
3) respects women
4) "nice guy"
5) can beat me at sports
6) intelligent
7) puts the toilet seat down

7 things I say most often:
1) Wow (regarding shock and awe)
2) Wrong Answer (regarding a choice of clothing by a stranger)
3) Your Mom - or any derivitave, like - your mom's house (I mostly say this to scott when he asks me things like Who was that on the phone? Or, where are my shoes?)
4) Wheels Off (anything that is, well, wheels off)
5) Excuse me (regarding my large belly in the way, or my nisty gas that offends)
6) Thank you (self explanitory)
7) Oh No She Didn't (regarding anything stupid that has been said or done or worn)

Roxy!

Emmitt!

No Kidding...I Feel Like This Could Be An Open Letter To My Students

I got this old school rant in an email, and I thought it would make a good post, especially after my post about childhood games. There are so many more topics that could be added on here, but I'll just let it stand...author unknown:

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH ways .. yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But...now that I'm over thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter ... with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Bearshare! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

And talk of about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation 2 or XBox 360 video games with
high-resolution 3-D graphics! ! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! ... Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!
If you didn't have cable or a remote, you were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you
spoiled little rat-******s!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up . We had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire ... imagine that!
If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled.

You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!