From Charley’s “Courage:”

You Are 56% Cynical

Yes, you are cynical, but more than anything, you’re a realist.You see what’s screwed up in the world,
but you also take time to remember what’s right.

How Cynical Are You?

Yes, I’m a cynic by nature. I’m a little surprised that I only scored as 56%. But there is a nice thing about being cynical: if you make a concerted effort to remain open-minded, expecting the worst in people makes it that much easier to recognize and appreciate the best in people when it surfaces.

I tried to watch an HBO documentary, Baghdad ER, last night. I tried. If you have a weak stomach or have trouble dealing with the sight of blood, you’ll want to skip that program…and the rest of this entry.

The program takes viewers inside the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, where wounded soldiers are treated. Remember M*A*S*H? As much as I’d love to tell you that early on, there’s a Hawkeye playing practical jokes and the worst we see is an occasional surgical gown splattered with red food coloring worn by someone delivering the next punchline, this is not prime time television. There is no effort made to hide the reality the soldiers and the doctors who treat them deal with. Viewers are only eight shots into the documentary when they see a severed arm being deposited into a medical waste bag.

We see soldiers dealing with the loss of comrades while they themselves are being treated for their own injuries. We see chaplains trying to comfort the wounded. We see doctors trying to work off a little of the pressure on the basketball court. We see hope as some recover, and we see hope dashed every time one doesn’t. And at the end of the program, when we learn from short paragraphs displayed next to photos of patients we’ve just seen that some of them have actually gone back to the battlefield, we wonder how they can ever have summoned enough courage to risk all of that again.

I turned away from the program about four times during the hour. There are times when it’s just too much to take in, although there’s that underlying feeling one has while watching it that those of us who aren’t in the war zone, those of us who go on with our lives and worry about petty things like parking places and minor skirmishes at the office, somehow owe our soldiers the experience of seeing what it’s “really” like.

The program remains politically neutral, which is a good thing, because there’s enough to take in as it is and political bickering would only distract the audience from the real purpose: to show the real, human impact of conflict.

I recommend it if you feel you can stand it. It’s a reality check many people need to see.

“They summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and virtue.”

- General James A. Garfield,
at the first national Memorial Day Observance, 1866.

We can’t even agree on Memorial Day.

When the holiday was officially introduced in 1866,¹ it was created as a way to honor Union soldiers in a way similar to observances that already existed in the former Confederate states. By 1868, it moved to a set date of May 30. And so it continued, until 1968’s Uniform Holidays Bill, 100 years later, which moved four holidays — Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Columbus Day and Veterans Day — to specific Mondays in order to create convenient three-day weekends.

But some veterans groups do not appreciate the long weekends because they feel that it’s too easy to forget the sacrifices. In 2002, the Veterans of Foreign Wars took exception to the long weekends:

“Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.”

Since 1999, legislation has been introduced, and defeated, to move Memorial Day back to its traditional day of May 30th, so that Americans would have a more meaningful reminder of the day’s purpose.

Somehow, I think that no matter what date you insert the holiday, whether in the middle of the week or at the beginning or end of a weekend, there are always going to be those who take no interest in the day’s true meaning. To some, it is just a holiday; the reason for their day off isn’t remotely important to them, so long as they get their day.

At the very least, the long weekend gives those who genuinely do care about the day’s real meaning the opportunity to travel to local observances or to visit their ancestors’ final resting places. No matter how wrong it is to forget why Memorial Day was created, you cannot force people to celebrate with genuine interest if they just don’t have it.

More than 2,400 hundred Americans have died in the current war. Some of them believed genuinely in the work they gave their lives to complete. Others did not. But they all share the same tragic outcome, and they are all deserving of our respect…at least one day’s worth.

The photo above is from the Fredricksburg Battlefield cemetary, in which thousands of Union soldiers who died there are interred. I have also posted a photo of the Civil War Memorial built to honor Confederate soldiers at Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetary over at “Patrick’s Portfolio.”

¹ The first unofficial Memorial Day celebration is believed to have occurred in 1865, held in Charleston, South Carolina, by freed slaves who wanted to commemorate the Union soldiers who died there.

This is the memorial erected in memory of Civil War soldiers at Hollywood Cemetary in Richmond. It stands 90 feet high and was build in 1869 to honor more than 18,000 Confederate soldiers who were lost. Union soldiers are also buried here.

Engraved in a stone on the side pictured are the words, “Numini et Patriae Asto,” which, translated, means “They stood for God and their country,” a poignant postscript to the defeat they gave their lives to prevent.

Most Sunday newspapers contain a large real estate listing. You might want to have this close by when you tackle this week’s question.

But first, Antonette, of “Jottings From Jersey,” was first to answer last week’s question about blogging pet peeves. Congratulations, Antonette!

On to the newest challenge!

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
Consider your “Dream House.” Now name seven features, either of the house or the lot itself, that would be required for it to really be your “Dream House.”

Either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.)

My answers:
1. Writing Office
2. Mini Theater/Screening Room
3. Big Backyard Deck
4. Fenced Yard (Preferably Privacy Wall)
5. Two-Car Garage
6. Guest Cottage
7. Turret (I love Victorian homes)

I’ve been tagged by Carly of “Ellipsis…Suddenly Carly” to list “Ten Things that Make Me Say, ‘Life is Good.’”

Here goes.

1. Autumn - I love the colors and the mood of fall.

2. Completing a Piece of Writing - But only if I’m happy with the end result. Otherwise, I go back and rewrite until I am.

3. Getting a Compliment on My Writing - Believe it not, it sometimes happens. This also includes my “real world” writing as well.

4. Common Courtesy - Little things, like when you greet someone by saying, “Hi, how are you?” and they say, “Fine, how are you?” in return rather than just saying, “Fine” and walking away.

5. A Culinary Success - I’m no great chef, but sometimes I have my moments in the kitchen.

• Continue Reading….6. Spending Quality Time with a Good Friend - Sounds corny, but for a loner like me, spending time with someone else takes some effort.

7. Sleeping Late - I’m lazy. Give me that “snooze” button.

8. Pancakes and Syrup - Haven’t had them in a long time, but they remind me of my childhood. We’d have them many Saturday mornings and I could usually eat them in the living room while I was watching the “Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Show.” Isn’t it silly, the things we remember so fondly?

9. Surviving a Panic Attack or Episode of Depression - If you haven’t experienced them, you really wouldn’t understand.

10. Cuddling with the Dogs - Sometimes, there’s nothing better than sitting in the big chair in my living room with Zack sprawled across the back of the chair behind me and Zoey in my lap. Dogs don’t hold grudges, and they like you even when no one else does.

According to a post over at the Shocklines forum, Stephen King has named his pick for best outright Horror Novelist: Bentley Little. According to the post, King mentions Little’s The Store and Dispatch as novels not to be missed in a column in the current edition of Entertainment Weekly.

I’ve read The Store and I enjoyed it. Anyone who hates those mega-retailers probably would get a kick out of it as well. I haven’t read Dispatch, yet, but it’s in the book pile.

I’m not sure I’d call Little the best, but there are worst choices for King could have made. Have you read Little? If so, what’s your favorite of his books?

Andrea of “Unhinged” wrote a post about the pitfalls waiting for those who complain about their job and co-workers online. We’ve all been tempted to name names as we complain about the place we work at one point. Doing so can land you in a world of trouble, and most of the people who make the biggest point about not giving a damn about the potential dangers only do so until they fall victim to those dangers; then those same people shout to the heavens about how unfair it is to be held accountable to activities done outside of work.

(And of course, there are times when it is 100% unfair to be so treated.)

Shouldn’t we be allowed to write about whatever we want to in our blogs? Maybe, but as I’ve said before, when you go on the attack against people you feel have wronged you, you open yourself up to reaction that might exceed what is reasonable. In the workplace, this could include alienation from your co-workers, even those not directly involved in your rants, and thereby, loss of ability to get things done where you work. It could also result in your termination. Say the wrong thing about your boss, and let a co-worker you’ve had problems with stumble upon your blog, and you might just hear the sonic boom as that co-worker breaks the sound barrier racing to your boss’s office with a printout of your post!

Most of us, when we start a job, agree to some basic things. One of the most common is that we will not release trade or proprietary secrets about the business to the “outside” world. Sometimes, there’s no formal written agreement, but this is one of those things that’s so obvious, most employers wouldn’t hesitate to dismiss an employee who does so.

When you have a private conversation with close friends who don’t work with you, you sometimes let such information slip. But in that situation, you’re in control of who you trust with that information. Once you post it online, you lose all control, unless you have some kind of password protection on your site. In either case, someone you trusted could still copy and paste what you’ve said and send it elsewhere.

Andrea asks an interesting question in her post:

“…what would a co-worker think if I wrote that I thought more than one of them were backstabbers, thieves, liars, children to be managed, or psychotic?

“They would probably think I was referring to them. Wouldn’t you?”

If I found the blog of a co-worker who’d had disparaging things to say about the company or the people he or she worked with, I might take it personally. I’d probably think less of the person to a degree, particularly if I thought that the writer’s account of a situation was unfair or inaccurate. If I’d seen things the way the writer had, I might agree. But naming names of people close to you, especially if you don’t give them the courtesy of advance warning, isn’t the kindest way to conduct yourself.

And if the writer didn’t name names, but complained about co-workers in general terms, I’d probably be more likely to take it personally. There’s the potential to do far more harm in the workplace than good.

As for me, you already know that I work in television. I make it a point not to reveal what stations I’ve worked for, or what tempermental talent I’ve had to endure, or what producers I think are incapable of stacking a reasonable newscast. In the grand scheme of things, my opinion is just mine. I can think the worst of a person you love, and if I do, that isn’t likely to change your opinion of that person, unless you happen to value my opinion over your image of the person you hold in high regard. And unless you know me personally, why should you take my view about someone so seriously, especially when you can’t be sure whether I’m stretching the truth just to make my side look better?

I also try to make it a point not to attack specific people (unless I feel that they’ve attacked me first). Instead, I try to go after ideas or attitudes. When you make things too personal, you don’t get a point across; you only come off sounding childish. That’s the number one problem with politics today: too many things fall through the cracks because people are more interested in personal attacks than cooperation.

There are things some of my co-workers do that get on my nerves. There are things I do that get on their nerves. That’s not unique to my job: that’s common to everyone. But I can’t fault them for feeling the way they feel about me, because part of how they feel is a result of my interaction with them.

On the other hand, I do have things to say, from time to time, about the media in general. There are times when I’ll complain about things I see on TV, or about new shows or trends I hear about, but I do so as a viewer more than one who works in the medium. Sometimes, I debate criticisms of the media, and sometimes there are those who aren’t surprised to hear that I tend to think the seemingly-universal distrust of an “evil” media are at least partially unreasonable. Just recently, I suggested that it’s illogical to argue that bias in the media is bad if the person speaking out against bias is simultaneously seeking out biased media that happen to lean their way.

That’s not to say that I think there is no bias in the media. We make mistakes just like every other industry. I just don’t tend to see everything as a grand conspiracy theory.

Giving “inside information” about specific situations within my company would be crossing a line that could cause big problems.

It may seem contrary to what I do for a living to attempt complete neutrality about broadcasting. After all, it’s my job to try to make people watch only the station I work for. Then again, this is a very different kind of forum, and since probably 99% of my visitors aren’t in my market, it doesn’t matter to me what shows they watch. And frankly, if I told you I worked for one specific affiliate, you might begin to suspect that every time I was talking about that one network, I would be giving a view obtained through rose-colored glasses. I watch shows on all four of the major networks and some of the “minor” ones as well. I’d prefer to be able to talk about topics related to TV without worrying about trying to make any specific media outlet look better than all of the others. Again, there is good and bad with everything.

As for specific co-workers with whom I have a problem (and I’m lucky enough to work with very few who ever fit into that category), complaining about them on here seems to me to be a waste of time. It doesn’t solve the conflict, it doesn’t make me look professional, and it doesn’t make my workplace seem all that idyllic, either. If I have a problem that’s tough enough that I’d want to write about it here, I’d be much better served by talking to my boss about it. That’s how problems are supposed to be handled.

If you feel strongly enough about a workplace conflict that you need someone else’s input, it’s better — not to mention, safer — to approach a friend or advisor personally, state your case, and get their opinion. It’ll remove the dirty laundry element that the rest of the world has no business reading, and it’ll give you a much better chance for interaction that might help you deal with the conflict when more traditional channels fail.

Lulu.com, a web-based print-on-demand publisher, has a system designed to determine whether the title of your novel will score with readers.

I’ll give you a moment to let this oddball idea sink in.

The Titlescorer was designed, according to the Lulu site, after the study of more than 700 novels over a 50-year span. It reportedly could predict success of a book based on title alone about 70% of the time. Fortunately, for the more inexperienced writers out there who might be tempted to take the test’s findings to heart, it notes that one shouldn’t take the outcome all that seriously and offers its results as part of an interesting game:

“…for all the work that went it, the Lulu Titlescorer is capable of giving high scores to titles that most of us would rate as weird, if not terrible. Meanwhile, of course, it also gives low scores to the titles of novels (e.g. The Da Vinci Code) which, in fact, topped the New York Times bestseller list for long periods.

“So, as well as using the Titlescorer to test the merits of your own title, you can also play around with it to see what is the worst or downright weirdest title you can come up with that still earns a high score.”

As you enter the title, it automatically keeps count of the letters and the number of words, based on the number of spaces. But you have to explain the rest: it asks you what the title is, (a gramatically-complete phrase, an adjective and noun, a verb phrase, etc.), and then what each individual word is. My title was an adjective and noun. When I labelled the first of the two words as an adjective, it wasn’t smart enough to figure out that the second word had to be the noun without my pointing this out.

The title I am considering for my novel, which I’m not going to reveal just yet because it likely will change, anyway, earns a 41% success score. Guessing that the words of the title didn’t matter so much as what grammar labels were placed upon them, I re-enetered the same two words, but reversed the spelling in each. I selected everything else as the same, and I got the same result: a 41% success potential for two unpronouncable words that are part of no known language.

Their results, undoubtedly, rely on the relationship of the words to each other, not to what the words are. Give it a try…if you dare.

So I had my calendar a bit off last week. Though Sweeps did, in fact, end this past Wednesday, Katie Couric’s departure from “Today” happens this coming Wednesday. Will you be watching? (No, that’s not one of the six questions!)

But before the questions, it’s time to recognize last week’s “first to play,” who turned out to be Cat of “Sweet Memes! Congratulations, Cat!

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. Enjoy!

1. What is the last museum you visited? What single item there most impressed you?

2. What piece of computer equipment that you currently don’t own would you most like to have?

3. Coca Cola has recently released a new drink called Coca Cola Blak, which is a mix of Coke and coffee. Have you tried it? Would you try it? What flavor of soda would you most like to see someone create?

4. Take the quiz: Which flavor of tea are you? (Thanks to Charley.)

5. How do you like your tea? Iced or hot? Sweet or unsweetened? With cream or without?

6. You see someone run out of a store with a wad of bills. Shortly afterwards, a store employee runs out of the store after him, but stops just outside the door when it appears that the person has run down the street towards a seedy-looking motel. If you assumed you had just witnessed the getaway in an armed robbery, would you drive into the motel parking lot in an attempt to find out what room number or what vehicle the person got into, or would you pay it no more attention?

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), click the e-mail link in the Blogger profile and send it to me.

MY ANSWERS:

1. A Civil War Memorial museum in Fredricksburg. I guess what impressed me most there wasn’t in the museum itself but rather in the neighboring graveyard…all of those hundreds of tombstones where thousands of soldiers were laid to rest.

2. Probably a laser printer. I have no plans to buy one any time soon, but it would be nice for printing long documents…like my soon-to-be-finished manuscript.

3. Wouldn’t touch it. The idea of Coke and Coffee together does nothing for me. I don’t really have any preference for something that hasn’t already been tried: I had a nice creme soda today and for “specialty” sodas, that’s about my favorite.

4.
You are Peppermint tea! Lots of people like peppermint tea, it’s always sold out in the market. Not quite run of the mill with your unique zingy mintiness, you are still in a group of large people. Not boring…yet not over ecstatic.
Take this quiz!

5. Iced and sweetened, no lemon. Or hot and sweetened, no cream.

6. If it looked as if there were an easy way through the property, I might drive through and have a quick look, provided it was well-lit enough that I could see. I wouldn’t get out of the car under any circumstances.

I had lunch with a friend of mine, after which I walked down to a Starbucks for a cup of coffee. If you’ve never been to Starbucks, you might be unaware that printed on the cups is a quotation by someone who may or may not be famous. This feature is called, “The Way I See It.”

On my cup is #92, a quotation by Dr. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life. The first few lines:

You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose.

I’m sure all of us have, at one point or another, wondered why we’re here. This is an interesting thought, because it leads to many more interesting questions.

Any time a child is born, the more religious among us claim that it is because it’s God’s will. Every time someone dies, particularly if that someone was of an age that made the death seem untimely, we say that this is also God’s will. I once heard of a couple who had tried unsuccessfully to have a child for some time who’d been told by a friend that it was God’s will that they wait. And on the other end of the spectrum, if a couple takes every reasonable precaution against having a child and they still end up pregnant, people will say that this was God’s will.

I’ve had friends who are firefighters, police officers and paramedics. One of the most painful part of the job for some of them has been losing a patient, after which well-meaning people pat them on the shoulder and say, “Well, it just wasn’t God’s will.”

Put yourself in their place for a second: can you imagine any statement that would dismiss as futile the work to which you’ve dedicated your life any more clearly than that? No matter what you do, if God means for the patient to die, you can’t save him, according to that logic. On the other hand, if the patient is meant to recover, wouldn’t it mean that there’s nothing you can do to keep the patient from recovering? In any case, God’s will is really the only thing that matters, and the only factor that will have any impact on the outcome.

How far does God’s will really go?

Does God already know every decision we’ll make, along with their consequences? Or does God’s plan consist of more abstract points, such as only certain critical decisions we’ll make, thereby allowing for change as humanity progresses? If you believe God is perfect and never makes a mistake, mustn’t you also believe that God has already made all of the right decisions, and since the decisions are right, if God were to change His mind, it would mean that he made a mistake the first time?

I’m not sure about that. I think there is often more than one correct answer to a problem. Maybe God’s will doesn’t include a page for every hour of my lifetime, but rather some notes about key decisions I’ll make, and the impact they’ll have. And maybe God takes those pages and keeps track of the impact others will have based on what I’ve done.

Maybe God’s will is like the plot of a novel: as the characters do things the writer didn’t imagine at first, the plot becomes fluid and adjusts as the story advances. Maybe God doesn’t concern Himself with every individual word that comes out of our mouths, but instead focuses on the major chapters of our lives and how they fit alongside other chapters from other lives.

I think our decisions do have an impact on the future. I think we do have a purpose, but I think that it’s entirely possible that many of us will never find it, and never live up to God’s will. I also think that we do have the ability to go against God’s will, even unknowingly.

I don’t think any of us could handle the task of rolling with the punches of an infinite number of people exercising their individual free will. But I do think God can.

ThrillerFest, a convention created by the International Thriller Writers, Inc., is coming to Phoenix in late June. Click the link for specific details.

Yes, I’d love to attend. No, I can’t make it this year. If it were closer, maybe.

But I definitely like the idea of a convention that focuses specifically on thrillers. One problem with the “horror” genre is that horror always ends up grouped under the umbrella title “speculative fiction,” which, of course, it is. But there are horror writers who don’t write fantasy or science fiction, which also fall into speculative fiction, and yet it’s fantasy and sci-fi that tend to get the most attention.

Years ago — it’s rapidly approaching “more years than I care to remember” — when I attended college as a broadcasting major, my journalism school seemed to operate under the assumption that everyone who was in “J-school” wanted to be a newspaper reporter. Sure, there are elements of journalism that apply to all forms, but there was a definite preponderance of newspaper writing, which is quite different than writing geared for broadcast.

When I attended Ravencon last month, I was surprised to find that there were specific sessions about horror and horror alone. I did attend a couple of science fiction sessions, because the individual topics were of interest. I didn’t attend any of the sessions devoted exclusively to fantasy, because they tended to coincide with horror-oriented sessions I wanted to attend, and because I can’t imagine myself trying to write a fantasy story: I think I’d need to “nail down” so much of the “rules” of the world I had created for my characters that I’d never get the story started. Some say mysteries are the hardest genre to write. I think fantasy would be a lot tougher, but maybe that’s just me.

My current work in progress is a horror tale that involves a vampire. But I don’t intend to write about vampires at all in the next novel I’m planning. In any case, though Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a horror novel, it could also be viewed as a supernatural thriller. If I had to choose a one-word description of the kind of stories I want to write, it would be “thriller,” not “horror.” But some book stores don’t have

I would love to see a thriller-oriented convention much closer to my neck of the woods.

Sad news about the local missing teen I mentioned in Thursday’s post about the discovery of a missing teen’s car. Police have now confirmed that a body found in the car does belong to the missing teen. More details can be found at the Times-Dispatch.

Now that silver-haired Taylor Hicks has won American Idol, I heard a report today that hairstylists are suddenly receiving requests to make their clients’ gray hair stand out even more! And in some cases, people without gray are asking for some to be added.

Who’d have thought?

I guess that for those of us who are beginning to see gray appear atop our heads, Hicks’s win is good timing. On the other hand, I’ve always said that I wouldn’t consider hair dye: so long as my hair actually stayed in place, it could go purple if it wanted to. (Yes, that’s a bit of a stretch. Purple would definitely send me to the Clairol aisle.)

I’m not going to ask that my gray be enhanced. TV is doing that quite well without my help.

The “Absolute Write” message board, a forum that I had found to be a great resource for writers, has vanished. At the main Absolute Write webpage, the only mention of the missing message board is a request for patience while the board is moved to its new server.

But unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve no doubt read somewhere in the blogosphere of the controversy concerning a literary agent whose name appeared on a list of the 20 Worst Agents, and who is accused of getting the entire message board shut down over a complaint that her name had been mentioned there. Teresa Nielsen Hayden goes into more detail about the controversy at her blog, “Making Light.”

Literary agent Miss Snark says she’s “damn mad” and also weighs in on the controversy.

With more than 300 comments between those two posts, you’ll find more than enough other blogs dealing with the issue, so there’s no point listing them here.

I do hope that Absolute Write returns, as it was, at a new home. If it returns as anything less, there are enough genuinely angry writers out there, bewildered by the sudden and unexplained shutdown, that a substitute may not recover.