1. I want to know how it ends. If it doesn’t have a palatable ending, I’m going to be very miffed
2. I’m really tired of saying I’m working on my first novel
3. If I don’t continue work on said novel, I’m just another dimeless shmuck with a rusty, ratty car. If I keep the work going, I’m a struggling writer
4. So the woman who dumped me in 1984 can kiss my ass
5. So I can brag about getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome on my book signing tour
6. So my Corporate Overlords who have provided me with writing projects can kiss my ass (Note: Dear Corporate Overlords, this is humor, okay? We’re still friends, right?).
7. So I can dedicate it to the friends who have helped and encouraged me. And pushed me. And nagged me. And psychologically threatened me. On second thought, fuck’em. Let them write their own novels and see what it’s like.
8. So I can buy cool clothes for my book cover jacket photo
9. So I’ll be able to trade quips and bon mots with Jon Stewart, not Oprah
10. I would be proud to have created a meaningful, significant contribution to the literary universe, with movie rights, baby!

Are you working on a creative project? How do you motivate yourself to keep going?

If, according to the Mayan calendar, the world is supposed to end on 12/21/2012 at 11:11 GMT, why GMT? Shouldn’t it be MMT (Mayan Mean Time)?

Why does white chocolate exist? Is white chocolate the anti-chocolate?

In a commercial for some air freshener, there’s an animated bee. Why does the bee speak with a French accent?

Why aren’t people who use Twitter called Twits?

What exactly is in the “butter” flavoring offered at movie theaters? Nobody seems to know. Do you?

Of all the Disney animals, why can’t Pluto ( a dog owned by a mouse) talk?

When things are good, we say they are peachy or ducky. Why peachy? Why ducky? Who decided this particular fruit and fowl should epitomize the height of goodness?

Are things really darkest just before the dawn? Have you ever compared that darkness with darkness at other times during the night?

Does an apple a day keep the doctor away? Does it matter how you throw it?

Apples have seeds. Oranges have seed. Both fruits grow in trees. Both are relatively round. Who says you can’t compare apples to oranges?

Why is it a landmark that this is my 10th post here?

If following Cartesian thinking means that there is an objective reality, and an opposing philosophy espouses that reality springs forth from shared discourse, then when a person who believes the objective reality espoused by Descartes, is that person putting Descartes before discourse?

What is that stuff under your feet in movie theaters?

Why do people compare the Marx Brothers to the Three Stooges?

Why aren’t we giving peace a chance?

What would it take to make Sarah Palin go away forever? Seriously.

If my male offspring finds both men and women attractive, does that make him a bison?

Has anyone ever seen Rush Limbaugh and Jabba the Hutt together at the same time?

Why are there so many more good questions than good answers?

Can you unravel a skein of events to find some sort of comforting cause and effect relationship; or, does the unraveled skein simply slip between your fingers, leaving nothing?

From how far back, what perspective would you have to take, to put events into focus so you could understand their relation to each other?

Consider this, for instance. I recently read that a Florida couple decided to drive across country to see the National Redwood Forest, the one where they keep the real big Sequoia trees. So first, you have to gaze into some sort of retro crystal ball to understand how these two people meet. This could go back generations. Who knows? You see what I’m saying?

Then you have to figure out which life decisions took shape and tantalized them into going to see these incredibly large trees, lots of them. Personally, I like a good skyscraper, but that’s me.

So anyway, these two compare calendars, decide which dates are best for them, pack up the SUV and hit the road.

They study maps and decide which route to take. Do they want to take the more southern route through Houston and San Antonio or do they want to head north a little bit on I-75, go through Memphis, see Santa Fe?

They choose the northern route, mainly because they want to avoid L.A.

Who knows where they stop, if they drive with white-knuckle, blinders-on purposefulness, or meander along, experiencing America from sea to not-so-shining sea?

Maybe they stop for a burger somewhere and the waitress is on the phone and it takes a little longer to get their food. Maybe one morning she sends her English muffin back because it’s a little too crisp or not crisp enough. Who knows?

My point is a nearly infinite number of individual decisions, events, and coincidences comprise any given event.

So anyway, they finally make it to California, to the promised land, where they drive to the Sequoia National Forest and they park.

You know the drill. They park the car. The engine quiets down. They sit for a moment and just take it all in. They’re there. They’ve made it. The sun is filtering through the trees as it heads Pacific-bound. The light is that golden, ethereal light that only other people capture in their photographs. The money shot, they call it

So they just have to get out of the car and stretch their legs because they hot-footed for the past few hours to make it here, to this point before dark today. It had become a mission.

Now here they were.

So they get out of the car, arch their backs, smile at each other and start to stroll down one of the paths because they want to walk among the presence of some of the oldest living things on the planet. They want to be awed by the sheer majesty and beauty of it all because TV just ain’t making it anymore.

So they walk for awhile in the cathedral-like quiet and hushed semi-darkness. Who knows why they pick this path over that path? Who knows why they say, “Let’s just walk over there before we go back to the car so we can sign in at the lodge, unpack, and get something to eat?”

But that’s what they do.

At some point, through some unspoken, mutual agreement, they’re aware that weariness has set in and it’s time to go. So they turn around and head back to the car, in awe of these trees that have stood for more than 3,000 years; before Christ, when people were still experimenting with flint and stone as fire-building tools.

They try to figure out which one is the famous Boole tree, the largest standing living tree and the seventh largest of all living trees, ever.

They can’t decide. They can’t see the trees for the forest. What they really want is a hot shower, a good meal, and to fall into bed, so they start back to their car for the final last little leg to the lodge where they’re staying.

As they head back to their SUV, they hear, in the cathedral-like quiet, a low rumble that’s almost not quite there. It grows in intensity until it’s a tsunami of a rumble that crashes over them like a cacophonous, crashing, sonic wave.

As much as they crane their necks, they can’t tell the direction from which the sound came. They heard it. The earth shook under their feet.

He says to her, “California. Maybe that’s our first earthquake.”

She shrugs and they continue back to their car.

More accurately, they return to what used to be their car because now a several thousand year old Sequoia had chosen that moment to shuffle off its mortal coil and take a swan dive.

This tree, which had withstood lightning strikes, forest fires, rapacious loggers, everything that nature and man could throw at it, picked this moment to topple.

All of history, all of nature’s physical, and metaphysical laws conspired to guide this tree in its descent, so it would land squarely on their SUV, converting it and all their belongings in it into a flattened, twisted mass of something unrecognizable. On the bright side, the car’s intruder alert system was blaring a warning that someone or something had jostled the vehicle, possibly attempting an entry. No other vehicle was scratched.

Some have commented on the irony of a giant Sequoia squashing one of the least environment-friendly vehicles made today, but that would be editorializing, something I choose not to do.

However, a complete stranger, one Michelle Russell has motivated me to try and write “The Most Horrible Blog Ever.“

While having been a professional writer since the early ’80s (1980s), and having the ability to jump on an assignment like a kangaroo on steroids, I constantly amaze myself by drawing a blank when it comes to giving myself an assignment.

I tend to not take my assignments as seriously as those handed to me by an editor, account manager, or project manager.

I think, perhaps, that even when I am not serving my Corporate Overlords, I’m still in  deadline mode. The first draft has to come quickly enough.

Allowing myself to actually ponder and stare at a blank screen/page is something I’ve become quite uncomfortable with.

Thus, the thanks to, and appreciation of Ms. Russell’s reminder to me that the definition of a writer is this: A writer writes. That’s it. That’s all.

I thank Ms. Russell for providing one more useful way of circumventing the demons that plague me to get something written daily.

However, Ms. Russell, I’d better be seeing some improvement at some point, otherwise after several years of this, I may grow discouraged.

Thanks for the inspiration. Keep fighting the good fight.

According to Reuters, via Yahoo News, the world is ready for Al Nassma, the first premium chocolate to be made from camel’s milk.

In my mind, this falls under the “just because they can do it. . . ” heading.

But, I have eaten, and favored, goat’s milk products and sheep’s milk products. So, why not camel milk products?

I may have to face the fact that I could be an anti-camelite.

According to an October, 2008 press release announcing the product’s launch in Dubai:

Al Nassma’s product line consists of 5 different flavored 70gr bars, including Arabia, delicately flavored with local spices; Dates, Macadamia Nut – Orange, 70% Cocoa and Whole Milk. The pralines range is delicately filled with pistachio, nougat and coffee cream. However, the jewel in the crown is the gold wrapped chocolate camel embodying the source of Al nassma, the camel and its milk. The hollow chocolate camels are available in 2 sizes, 130 and 730 gr.

However, despite my reservations (nobody asks, nobody listens), Martin Van Almsick, the company’s general manager plans to launch the product first in the UAE, then on to America, specifically San Francisco.

Also targeted as a market is Japan where, for reasons unknown, “the demand for the product is high.”

Besides the chocolate’s high quality, supposedly in the Godiva Chocolate area, Van Almsick says that, “Camel milk contains five times more vitamin C than cow milk, less fat, less lactose and more insulin, making it a good option for diabetics and the lactose intolerant.”

Many people also believe that camel milk has some healing powers. Who knew?

So keep your eyes open for that first piece of Al Nassma camel milk chocolate.

If anybody’s tried it, I’d love to know.

I’m willing to give up my anti-camelite attitudes if the chocolate is good enough. I’ll just have to wait and see.

One other thing we learn is that it’s generally a bad idea to perform surgery on ourselves. I think most people would classify this as a “Bad Idea.”

So what does it say about us when a woman can’t afford a dermatologist to perform plastic surgery and opts for the do-it yourself silicone method.

Mary (a pseudonym) decided that’s exactly what she needed to do because she wanted to erase a small facial scar, and while she was at it, pump up her lips a little bit.

In her taped “Good Morning America” interview, Mary seems like a relatively rational woman and reasonably intelligent.

She just wanted to look “better” at a price she could afford.

How important must it have been to risk do-it-yourself surgery.

Furthermore, while I don’t even play a doctor on TV, I would consider obtaining the right type of silicone, which if I understand it correctly, is Gore-Tex.

Mary found out the hard way that a ten buck silicone bargain might be cheap, but its value could be, well, questionable. Rather than using surgical silicone, she used a personal lubricant type of silicone. This is one of the reasons she found herself in dire circumstances.

Myself, I’m in the “don’t go on the operating table unless it’s necessary” camp.

But according to Plastic Surgery Research.info, a lip enhancement procedure can cost from $300 to $5,000.

And, according to The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery statistics:

Women had over 9.3 million cosmetic procedures, almost 92% percent of the total. The number of cosmetic procedures for women decreased over 11 percent from 2007.

How desperate must we be, how lacking in self esteem, to perform surgery on ourselves?

While this is a visible and obvious example of what can go wrong when we cleave to an unrealistic standard of beauty, how else have people dealt with their feelings of physical inadequacy?

Poor Mary. While ignorant and buffoonish on the face of it, I believe she personifies a worship of superficial aesthetics that we need to move beyond in order to learn what true happiness can be, not just its surgically altered face.

However, one can eat only so many apples. Do you know anyone who actually eats, or wants to eat, an apple a day? Do you wake up anticipating the appley orb of health? Feel better, do you, after eating one than before eating it?

Well, according to The Sunday Times, a British National Health Service pamphlet has an alternative daily activity for promoting health. Geared towards young adults, the pamphlet’s slogan is, “An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away.”

Hmmm. Let me think about that. Apple? Orgasm? Tough choice there. Of course, many young adults might come close to orgasm just thinking about an apple or virtually anything else.

As opposed to the mysterious and alleged benefits of an apple a day, the NHS Sheffield leaflet, entitled “Pleasure” advises “school pupils that they have a ‘right’ to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse can be good for their cardiovascular health.”

Some UK citizens have seen the brochure as encouraging young adults to engage in sexual behavior, but according to the Timesonline, Steve Slack,  the NHS Sheffield Centre for HIV and Sexual Health director, and one of the leaflet’s authors, says that instead of promoting teenage sex, it could encourage young people to delay losing their virginity until they are certain they will enjoy the experience.

Jolly good!

By the way, I guess eating an apple a day couldn’t hurt.

What do you think of such advice? Do you think that the moral taboos surrounding sex make it more of a forbidden fruit for youngsters?

If you’re a young adult, how do you deal with the confusing universe of sexuality? As a parent, how do you guide your children regarding their sexuality?

Coincidentally, one or all of these is supposed to occur on December 21st, 2012 at 11:11 a.m., Greenwich Mean Time according to ancient Mayan calendars. Why these would happen at 11:11 Greenwich Mean Time and not Mayan Central Time eludes me, but that’s not the point.

The point is that human civilization may be doomed not by any of the above mentioned catastrophes, but by South American ants, helped by, well, us.

Yes, we humans have once again hoisted ourselves up on our own ecological petard.

According to BBC Earth News, “billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.”

We are unintentionally responsible for the transport of these insects as we traverse the globe and, in some way, transport these Argentine ants.

It is possible that we humans will be fighting for resources with this uber-colony that apparently now exists on every continent except Antartica.

According to the doomsayers who predict the end of the world, the end of civilization, or the end of bad movie sequels on December 21, 2012, these ants could provide the predicted apocalypse. Perhaps the colony will reach critical mass on that date. Perhaps the colony will develop a highly evolved hive consciousness on that date.

All we know for sure is that if the asteroid doesn’t get us, we find a cure for the pandemic, and the earth’s crust maintains its tenuous grip, look groundward for another potential source of The End of Days–the Argentine ant.

Free vs. 1.49. Is it worth it. This is my experience. Keep in mind that ymmv.

After dialing “1800free411,” which is exhausting by itself, an annoying recording read an annoying commercial. Perhaps I gave the system too difficult a challenge, but it soon drove me to downtown Frustrationville.

One of the reasons, I suppose, that the service is free is that it’s all automated.

The user responds to menus via speaking into the phone, a haphazard system at best, but add in traffic noise, construction noise, various fauna, and it might become a nightmare.

I tried this in my living room. My test search was for the AMC Gratiot (grash-ut) in Clinton Township, MI, an 800 number as I was soon to remember.

So. after first enduring the annoying commercial, and being led to the menu, the robot lady stated the category choices to which you could respond.

I said, “business.”

The robot lady then asked for city and state. Apparently Clinton Township was too much for Alice Algorithm because the system wouldn’t recognize the place.

I tried Mount Clemens, the nearest large city. The system recognized the city the time, but started offering a bizarre array of listings.

I should note that unlike the exorbitantly priced 411, this system does not dial the number, but rather offers the choice of listening to the number or getting a text message.

Either one is a treat as you’re looking for the bloody theater.

Finally, I had enough with the service  leading me astray and tried to get back to the main menu. There’s only one way to accomplish this. Hang up and start over. No going back to previous menus here.

Remembering that the number was toll free (1800amcforfun), I called the service again, endured the shrill commercial again and let the main menu run through until it offered “free call.” I responded appropriately, but the free call thing had something to do with making free international calls. Not interested. No way to back up through menu. Hung up.

Called again. Chose “business,” then chose “800 numbers” as an option.

Finally, I thought, I’d broken the code and chosen the correct option.

Nada. Bupkis. The service still didn’t recognize an variation of “AMC Star Gratiot 21 Movie Theater.”

I tried quite a variety. Trust me.

At this point I would have driven into an abutment to stop the madness, were I in a vehicle.

I then tried my landline phone. To the service’s credit, it seemed to work just fine, but once again, lots of shrill commercials, and no dialing of the number, just the option to write down the number.

So, back to the original question. Is this service worth saving $1.49 at the cost of losing your mind. If you need the 411, call 411.

For myself, getting an actual person who can connect you with an actual phone number and then dial that number for you is worth the dough.

Has anybody had better experiences with this free service, or does anybody know of any other free 411 phone numbers?

Thank you for your time.

But, these cinematic elements only underscore the profound wisdom contained in these films.

Whether by deed or by word, “The Godfather” has important life lessons for us all.

• Eat your full servings of fruits and vegetables–just make sure someone has your back while shopping
• “No Sicilian can refuse any favor on his daughter’s wedding,” Tom Hagen–This is very important and useful. If you need a favor, check the newspapers. Find a Sicilian whose daughter is getting married. Go to the wedding. Ask for a favor. Just be careful whose wedding you crash
• If you’re going to smash a photographer’s camera, leave enough dough to pay for the camera. The press can be very vindictive
• “A man who doesn’t spend time with is family can never be a real man,” Vito Corleone–Those golden years can go by oh so quickly. Be a real man. Spend time with your family while you can
• “Leave the gun. Take the cannolli,” Peter Clemenza–More than a simple command. This haikulike statement on the relative importance of things stresses an anti-violence ambivalence. Make cannolli, not war.
• “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business,” Michael Corleone–A reminder that business is business, and relationships are relationships. Sun Tzu would approve
• “Y’gotta go; y’gotta go,” Captain McCluskey–This koanlike statement, encapsules a profound statement on life, death, and mortality; also the lavatory
• “Don’t interfere,” Mama Corleone–A woman of few words, this admonition to Sonny illuminates the fact that none of us really knows what goes on in the home of another
• Your bodyguards. Don’t leave home without them
• “Don’t ever take sides with anybody against the family again, ever,” Michael Corleone–Unity in the face of adversity makes a family like a bundle of sticks, blah, blah, blah.
• “Women and children can be careless, but not men,” Vito Corleone–Tell that to an insurance agent.