Saturday, February 07, 2004
BEST WAY
The very best way to waste time is to hurry!
I have written thousands of notes to myself which I could not read even half an hour later. I have, as you well know from reading these pages, lectured myself severely for this bad habit. .It has done little good, so I have had to abandon much of such scribblings written as intended self-starters for late use. I tried, for instance, to limit such notes; to make them as short as possible even cryptic in physical appearance, but that produced even more of the same type of mystery-making material.
Other steps I tried doing them as a separate note file on a floppy disk. That helped to some degree, and I found I found it good to designate them all as “n” or ”f” - for “notes, or “file only”, That, at least, made them stand out as be what they were intended to be - reminders concerned with longer versions to be done later, using that small spark to light the fire.
The idea was to put the former scrap materials on a floppy disc under “N” from which may develop as the file grows to usable proportions and fills out under the usual outline headings which have been so helpful to me over the years: “H, WBTU,, For Inst.- 1.2 & 3, and SW”.
The new system has worked wonderfully well for me, I feel but there has been a reaction I did not expect. - a sort of : burp” effect: I found, to my dismay, that I have been doing the same sort of half-way, costly planning on so much of my life style itself.
It has suddenly hit me as being woeful lacking in good common sense elements, that I should spend all my life - eighty years or so of it writing literally millions of words of commercial copy, new stories, editorials, essays, column and plays as well as s short stories - and never learned to type properly. What a waste of effort and hours! The only typing lesson I ever had were during the Depression years when a young girl in our group found she could get a WPA job teaching in Night School if she could could scare up twenty-five students. I was among the dozen or so who volunteer for typing and shorthand lessons. She got the job. I should have stuck with that opportunity but in my haste to get along with being a writer, I let it get by, Now, years later, I see what a hollow-headed decision I made at that time years ago ...aproverbial case of “haste” making “waste.”
What have I done about it?
Now, just a few weeks before my 88th birthday, I am learning to type properly.
A.L.M. February 6, 2004 [c474wds]
Friday, February 06, 2004
LITTLE DOUBTS
Most of us, as individuals, are beset with many little doubts about a host of things. There are circumstances which, while not vital to our overall belief, might well be cleared up if we just knew how to go about doing so.
In recent years, it appears that many American “citizens”; to be read simply as meaning those who happen to live here legally or illegally, have, I firmly believe, been forced to alter some of their estimates of what a federal government should be in recent years.
Some such individuals find their concept of proper leadership demands changes to be made.. In spite of scores of instances in our history which, if totally stripped of concealment, might well equal or surpass those in which modern modern leader may have been engaged.
I recall the precise time when I, as a child, came to doubt that the President of the United States was not always a perfect person. My distrust came about from reading my Uncle's copy of a popular magazine of that that time called “The Literary Digest”. The cartoon artwork in that magazine depicted our President as a funny little man opening the top of a giant teapot and pouring out dollar signs to a joyous mob of toughs. We did not have radio in those days, but from conversations of adults I came to know all about the “Teapot Dome Scandal' and hushed conversations mentioned President Harding as being “womanizer” Teen talk of that time filled me in on what that might mean.
Another little doubt which assails many of us has to do with patriotism. I grew up in Southwest Virginia which brands me as being a hillbilly of the Appalachian breed. People I knew and respect to this day, made a point of having as little as possible to do with any of “them givernment men.” Some expressed themselves as being “agin “ many things that others thought of a being progressive. The “Great Depression” brought them in contact with government often with results verging on disaster. The New Deal and FDR still hold varied meanings among those folks. Never question the the term “patriotism”, however. In our Revolution, other wars, and more recent conflicts, there have been no finer patriots. I remember, too, how they disdained the politician who, at election time, chooses to “wave the bloody shirt”. They saw it as a direct insult to those who died for our nation.
These and other doubts trickle through the news I hear and see on TV in this modern election time of 2004. It takes some effort to put some of the old dislikes .“small cares” and “little doubts”in proper perspective.
Our greatest danger right now, I think, is to be found in the fact that a so-called “peace” movement rooted in narrow political party bickering might transcend the many really serious issues facing us as a nation.
A.L.M. February 5, 2004 [c495wds]
Thursday, February 05, 2004
THIS, TOO.
Get ready for change. The ante is going up!
We are going to be asked to up our estimate of the amount of money we might expect from TV just for answering a few questions.
Regis Philbin did a good job in convincing people that a million dollars was not out of line at all.. Anyone can handle that amount as a prize. Regis did very well, but the ABC network did not know how to control their enthusiasm. They overdid it. The million dollar peak idea became tiresome to some especially when several lotteries started routinely
shoveling out ump-teen million totals. The desire to be a mere millionaire almost died a horrible death, until Meredith Vieira revived it; brought it back into view with a half-hour version which is now syndicated all over the overflowing channels both day and night.
Meanwhile, back at the mint, ABC has devised an enlarged format of the same general nature which will feature a ten million as a peak. Regis will be doing it, too, rumor hath it.
.
There were at least a score of imitations of the original British show last time. But ten million is quite a chunk and not too many trial balloons will be floated this time, I dare say/ Ten millions! Imagine!
“This too, shall pass.”
I don't remember who is generally not credited with having said that, but “Thank you, whoever”. You are right on the ole button again, there, Buster. But , when it does ...what next?
A.L.M. February 4, 2004 [c339wds]
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
BREAK UP!
It has different names among those broadcasters or actors who have experienced such a condition. It is not uncommon incident and performers all dread the moment when it might come to them.
I am speaking of that strange condition in which a normally calm and stable individual finds himself or herself overcome with with a mad tendency to giggle and to break out in nervous spasms of laughter totally beyond one's control It has happened to the very best of the performers. For a time everything is funny and one has no ability to control it. It interrupts and punctuates anything one can say or do.
I have heard it on network radio;, witnessed it on TV nationally and locally just as you have. I remember one TV news program years ago, when a fifteen minute newscast went haywire suddenly, seemingly haywire without reason. The final eight minutes of the program were dismal. One had the giggles, another was on the edge, it appeared, and a third, the weather man, was obviously embarrassed by the sudden lapse in sanity. It was he who wisely took over and closed the time slot with more weather from his somewhat withdraw weather board area aside from the main area of frivolity.
When I got to the copy office the next morning, there had all ready been a “front office” pow-wow. The verdict by management was, wisely, one of total absolution. The station manager had been through the same experience himself in his years in the control room. It was to go unpunished.
I found out later there was a key to it all in the fact that a floor manager, moving about the studio, had tripped over a pile of coiled wire and fallen flat on the floor in front of the news desk. He decided to lie still where he had fallen rather that create additional noise, and the silly grin on his fallen face tickled the news reader deep down behind his common sense bone.
I have been on the brink of the precipice myself. I was reading fifteen minutes of commodity and farm market reports when it suddenly hit me that every time the word “turkey” occurred it was spelled on the yellow teletype paper in front of me as “Gurkey” and “Gurkies”. I had genuine trouble not saying as I was seeing. The more I tried to ignore the change, the more it became a matter of interest. I know I sounded happier than unusual, but the area was the leading turkey raising section of the nation and the news about turkey markets that days was good.
I have often thought of those strange moment of being on the every edge of collapse. You never know what strange little thing might tickle your funny bone. Having been there, I view such a plight with special concern.
A.L.M. February 4, 2004 [c486wds]
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
YEAR OF THE BARE BOOB
What a way to remember a sports event?
Millions of TV viewers will recall, years from now, that the 2004 Super Bowl Sunday following Super Bowl Saturday and preceding Super Bowl Monday,-was different from what was expected. It became sort of Judgment Day for television and the entertainment world.
It had been determined well ahead of time that the large audience anticipated - about forty million - would consist of three groups: devout football fans, to whom the day originally belonged, plus a large group of usually younger viewers called, half-time watchers who had been baited for some weeks with promises of a talent circus, and a third rather strange group to which belong there to watch the commercials.
Super Bowl Sunday has become a testing area for TV commercials in recent years when those who do such things make all-new productions from scratch for this platinum-priced project. The spots sell for higher prices each year - this year around two-and-one-half millions of dollars for a thirty-second message. At that price, successful spots are expected to set the pace in the TV market or the year ahead..
I am not a dedicated commercial watcher so I got with the whole thing about twenty-eight minutes late I've been told by some who had who watched a scoreless game to that length. I still do not believe I saw some of the stuff set forth, but the main estimates of the values of the game have been almost entirely on the half-time show which went awry.
Michale Jackson's sister, Janet, has new album coming out this week end and her bro has been hogging the Jackson publicity recently with his childish doings out west, so and her co-singer Timberlake, or whatever his name was, helped her devise a strip for her bosom to be a breakaway when tugged. Today she is saying it was planned to leave a red net covering under the strip he ripped off while singing a song with lyrics reading” “I'll have you naked before this song is ended.” Real art all the way! When Timberhead, or whatever, tugged at the strip, to whole thing came off in his hot little hand and the well endowed girl stood there in all her domed glory. The fans loved it! At that moment, in their view, it might be said that Janet Jackson had been crowned as the titular head of the entire cast of the half-time show. Yesterday they claimed it was an accident. Today they admit it was set up. Some cheating was involved, too. She was wearing a decorative covering on the offending protudeance...some called it a pasty, others said it was a snap-on dome, or a Japanese toy which demands pierced nipples. Perhaps we had best leave this nipple notching business to historians to determine later on. Don't be at all surprised if you get a premium set of them when you buy Janet's new album next week.
CBS and a random collection of other initalized firms, are exuding apologies today to each other, and they have good reason to do so.. The Jackson exposure is the headline item but the commercials were not all purity and light, either. Not since the film ”Blazing Saddles” have I seen any attempt to merchandise the fart. The first commercial I saw Super Bowl Sunday was that of a horse one. More on that street sweeper's nightmare later - maybe.
There was a football game that Sunday,too. They were both in the thirties with New England ahead when they stopped and went home.
A.L.M. February 3, 2004 [c617wds]
Monday, February 02, 2004
HOW'D THAT HAPPEN?
I find it odd that the names of all continents on Earth begin and end with the same letters. Who let such a semblence of order get by?
You have a choice of either an "e" or and "a".
I wonder what the gambler's chance charts show about such a thing happening. - seven continents - and all with names beginning and ending with identical letters. A rare occurrance, indeed, I would guess.
I doubt that we have been as careful in naming the various divisions of terrain on the surface the Moon or of Mars.
That's on of the few things I can think of which has not changed since I was a kid, unless it be the fact that we did not, years ago, consider Antarctica to be a continent . Each and every one of them have, in truth, gone through extended eras of cataclysmic changes we are just beginning to understand. It is thought they were all one big chuck at one time and that they have split and slud as far as they can get from one another with deep oceans in between, It was that parting which has broughy aboput the gross divisions of humanity into segments ofte
atodd woithone another. We became Africans, Asians, Aussies, Europeans, Americans - with Antarcticians yet to be heard from.
Australia and New Zealand with island nearby comes closer to be in a political unit than any of them. If one think unity is a mark of unity is also a sign of maturity, however, we may have another then we have another long wait coming. One would think there might be more signs of political and social unity within continents than we can cite.
The existence of the Euro ,perhaps, can be seen as an indicator of a tendency to think of continental-nation arrangementi inthe future./ A United States of Europe would be a good step in the view of man people, toward peace in that section, but it is difficult to say when such situations may arise, among the seven continents. It has never been resolved exactly who "owns" Antarctica , for instance, and that could - with detailed scientific evaluation of its natural resources, become a prime problem at any time.
A.L.M. Feb ruary 2, 2004 [c492wds]
Sunday, February 01, 2004
LOOK AT THIS!
The other night we sat watching and listening to a group of NASA scientists tell us all about the landing and first movements of the second rover vehicle – "Opportunity" - successfully landed on the planet Mars. It was especially good to see the enthusiasm of these gifted people charged with such an important step in mankind's progress. They reminded me, and many others I am sure, of a bunch of inquisitive, energetic kids sprawled on the floor and proudly showing off their latest construction accomplishments with their "Erector Set" many years ago.
This cheerful optimism is a qood quality to keep in such projects. We can be sure of positive attainments when we see those people engaged in the actual work are, obviously, have so much fun doing it.
Challanging demands face each of them in their special niche in a massive set of problems many of which are unknown and exist primatialy in the theories. It is a good thing to see both men and women involved in this sort of work which they, so obviously enjoy doing, which spells out an open invitation to young people today. Wth proper studies and physical efforts they, too, may be able to bring about changes in our environment which are essential to our continuing. Work needs to be made interestiing. We are in grave danger it this country, of thinking that the only employment available to youth in the future will be taking orders, with or without, at the local faster food emrorium or baby sitting a group of computerized switches in an automnatied industrial process.Seeing space industry workers at work and enjoying every moment of it, can be an inspiring gateway for us to plan the future of our young generation of workers now seeking such
paths.
It is true that we cannot all scientists. We could not, years ago, afford to have extra Erector Sets. They were expensive. We had one small, basic set in our family. It was understood that every little nut and bolt of that set belonged to the oldest boy in the family. He was deemed to have full rights of possession and a new piece was added each Chistmas season. We respected that rule of ownership, too, and today our space scientiksts are in charge of those portion of our life. And should remain so with new peoples added as they develop. The challenge to eduational experts today is to find ways to imbue more occupational fields with such a sense of importance, destiny and boundless satisfaction as space-related work seems to offer young people today.
Think about it.
Can you honestly say you are excited and enthused about the type of work your are doing ?
A.L.M. February 1, 2004 [c520wds]
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