Tag Reading

Reading Isn’t Believing

Michael 2 Comments

And they say you can’t believe everything you read. (I say you even can’t believe everything you think but that’s a topic for a different post.) No, this is really about what you read, or don’t, or think you’ve read. Or maybe even for some people what you think you wanted to read. Rarely it might be what you read that you wanted to think.

Not only are 4 out every 5 calls I get enticements to either throw my money away on a non-existent extended warranty, or to have them syphon money out of my accounts if I do so much as to actually think to answer it with a phone that had once been near an ATM machine while I was making a withdrawal (I don’t really know about that but it seems like the scammers have to do less and less to get our money, and what could they do to me for presuming otherwise, sue me for libel?) (now where was I?) (oh yes, I remember), not only are there oodles more nuisance phone calls, nuisance emails – either spam or outright phishing schemes – have taken a dramatic upward arc on the occurrence scale. However…every now and then you come across a spammer who didn’t get the new spam scam users guide. These are the ones that have multiple fonts, bold, lots or asterisks and exclamation points, and refer to accounts at banks and retailers you’ve never used or refer to you as your email address.

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Yesterday I found a new one. Just in case you thought all the bold type, red bullet points, and mysterious name weren’t incentive enough to open the email, they included in the subject line, “This message is From a trusted sender.” I know that convinced me to open that missive right then and do whatever it said.  Hey, that Nigerian prince might still have some of his millions left to give away.

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Clearly that was something not to believe even if I did read it in black and white.

Some signs nobody ever reads. Not far from me there is a stretch of road where for about 30 yards the posted speed limit is 5mph. I’m not sure my car can go that slow. It seems to me nothing between stop and 15mph even exists. Another instance of not believing what I read, although with not quite the same conviction. Oh I’ll slow down as slow as I can get, but 5? Ehhhhhh, probably not.

There is a sign I take with great seriousness and wish everybody who read it would believe it. No, it’s not the “Masks Required” sign but it would be nice if more people believed that too. No, this is this sign.

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The rate of confiscated guns per million passengers doubled in 2020, a year when the number of people flying decreased by 60%. So far, with 2 whole months in for 2021, the rate is close to 4 times that of 2020. That puts the TSA on pace to confiscate close to 15,000 guns at security checkpoints. If that doesn’t worry you enough, over 12,000 of those guns will be loaded. Eighty-three percent of the handguns pulled out of pockets, purses, and carry-on bags are loaded.

The most common reason people give for attempting to enter an airport secure area with a concealed and loaded weapon is that they forgot they had it. Yeah right. Put that in writing and I won’t believe it then either. According to the Pew Research Center, 67% of gunowners say they purchased their guns for protection. If all those people getting on the planes are representative of gunowners, when the time comes to protect life or property I suppose they will have to convince the assailant to “hang on there a second, I want to shoot you which is my right, I just have to remember where I put that darn gun.”

Gun-Sign-Crop-1-768x377It would be nice if people who decide they don’t want to believe the part of the TSA sign that says firearms aren’t allowed through airport check points at least would believe the rest of the sign, the part in smaller print that says they can be fined up to $13,000 dollars for doing so. Then again, maybe that’s not a lot of money to them. In that case … I know this Nigerian prince who needs a little help.

You can believe me on this. I am a trusted sender.

Read All About It

Michael Leave a comment
Today is Read Across America Day, and to celebrate I’m going to write less and read more. So listen up! This will be short and hopefully sweet.
 
Read Across America Day was first celebrated in 1998 to call attention to … are you ready? maybe you should be sitting down … reading in America! It is to be celebrated on the school day closest to Dr. Seuss’s birthday (Theodor Geisel, March 2).
 
Here’s the thing about Read Across America Day. You don’t have to be in school, you don’t have to be American, you don’t even have to read in rhymes. I guess that’s three things. Well, here’s a fourth. You can keep reading even after today!
 
Read to your kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews, parents, pets, or even yourself. Reading is fun and educational, and books look good on the shelf. But they look better propped open, the words shared with a friend. So go read something now that this post’s reached its end.
 
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Not my library. Wish it was.

 
 

Next One Up

Michael Leave a comment

Sometime last week a friend mentioned she was going to pick up a copy of the new book by the the author of her favorite book. She was pretty sure of this favorite book because the memory cells in my brain perked up at the title and recognized it as one she has previously named as her favorite book. Of course in the conversation she had to ask what is my favorite book. Umm.

For as many books as I’ve read I couldn’t come up with a favorite then. I said I’d have to think about that. I’m still thinking about that. Can I single out a favorite or are books like children? All are my favorites. My own of course. Which is easy because I have only one. Children, that is. Err, child, that is. I really have given this some thought. Every time I think of one book that I like more than another, another comes to mind that I like more than that one.

I thought some more. Some books have a personal connection. I love Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods maybe because I’ve been on the Appalachian Trail. Not all if it though so maybe that’s why I like it because I can see the parts I’ve part and the parts I haven’t. Yet it doesn’t resonate with me as much as his Neither Here Nor There and I’ve never been to Europe. Any parts of it. I just finished Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With my Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant … and Save His Life by Daniel Asa Rose, a topic clearly near my heart (but lower and more toward the back and sides) and thought it was the most enjoyable memoir I ever read until I thought about Neil Simon’s Rewrites, and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, and Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, and Ernest Hemingway’s  A Move able Feast, and … you get the idea.

Then I said to myself I don’t know why I’m going nonfiction. Maybe because I just finished Larry’s Kidney I had life on my mind (in more ways than one), but I’m more apt to read fiction than anything else. That’s such a broad category. Not a category really. More a phylum. Maybe even a kingdom. And that shifted my thinking so fast I almost got mental whiplash. I’m not a liberal arts guy, I’m a scientist! Shouldn’t my favorite book be scientific? Can a scientific book even be read like a book or aren’t they all just references. I checked out my bookcase and found indeed lots of references. And among them a slim volume, Laughter: The Drug of Choice by Nicholas Hoesl, given and inscribed to me by the author. I hadn’t thought of that book in years and although seeing on the shelf didn’t jog many memories of the content it did of sitting with the author and trading manic medical memories. Does that make a favorite book, a personal copy being a very personal copy?

I thought of another slim volume, recently directly received from and inscribed by the author, The Woman in the Window by W D Fyfe. If that name is familiar you may have read his blog. You should also read his book. It’s a wonderful collection of short stories, none that end like you thought they would. And that set me off in another direction. Modern fiction.

LibraryTruth be told my most enjoyable reading comes from modern fiction. Not “literature.” Mystery, murder, intrigue, spying. My favorites authors are people like Sue Grafton, Lawrence Block, Lawrence Sanders, and Jonathan Kellerman who write books that never ended like you first (and sometimes second and third) thought they would. Could I find my favorite book amount those? Or do I go back a generation and consider a book famous for not ending as even the author thought, The Big Sleep? True. While working on the screenplay for the movie version, William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett couldn’t figure who murdered a particular character. They phoned Raymond Chandler, who said the answer was right there in his book. Later he returned their call to say he couldn’t figure out who killed that character either. Now there’s a whodunit!

Speaking of Faulkner, the Nobel, Pulitzer, and National Book Awards winner who I better know for his screenplays than his novels although his short story “A Rose for Emily” is a favorite. But is it the favorite?

Since we’re into more classics what about some of the classical classics? I have actually read the Divine Comedy (probably taking longer than Dante took to write it) and Don Quixote (definitely taking longer than Cervantes took to write it). I am glad I did but I wouldn’t go back and reread them. Still… Closer to our time I also can put Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in my “have read and enjoyed” list although I more enjoyed Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I suppose even in the 19th century my tastes run more to adventure. How adventurous does a favorite book have to be?

What about the works too long to be a short story but too short to be a novel. When I was working these were often my go to readers. A full shelf is devoted to the novella from Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Grisham’s Playing for Pizza. So is there a favorite among these? I really just don’t know.

What about the books I didn’t read but we’re read to me before I even knew that if enough words are put together in a particular order, they can hold such a power over me as to make me wonder some day what particular set of them might be my favorite. I’m sure I once counted Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt as my favorite book, way back before I could count. Should it not be at least a favorite now?

I just don’t think I can come up with a favorite book. If I did I’d just be in danger of having it replaced by a new favorite whenever I read, reread, or remember something at a newer given time. I think instead my favorite book might be whatever one I’m reading now. Or maybe the one I just finished. Or better still, the next one up.

 

 

Getting from There to Here

Michael 10 Comments

Last week I noticed I now have over 300 followers, assuming everyone who ever followed still is. A huge assumption that and all that goes with it. Three hundred might not seem like a lot to those who have followers reaching towards four digits. Or it might seem like a lot to those who published their first post sometime this weekend. I know that I’m happy that 300 people think enough of the stuff I push to the Internet to want to know when something new gets pushed there and to me that seems like an accomplishment all in itself.

I got to wondering how the first person who decided to follow my blog even found it. I’ve never published it on any social platform. It’s not linked to a Facebook or Twitter or any other account. I can count on one hand and have at least two fingers left over the number of people I’ve told that twice a week they could read questionably creative ramblings of mine if they so cared. So…how did you come about to be reading this? Inquiring minds and all that, you know.

I follow about a dozen blogs and about another dozen I have loaded onto my browser’s favorites list. I guess that’s not a really great quid pro quo ratio. I’d follow all three hundred of those who follow me but some of the notices I’ve received of a follower don’t include a blog for me to seek to see if I would like a steady dose of their offerings. And in fairness (real or imagined) of all those that I do follow, not all follow me in return. I’m fine with that. I can see myself more interested in someone’s writing and want to follow him or her more closely that that someone might be interested in mine and would prefer to only occasionally peek into my brain, psyche, or whatever corporal component is putting fingers to keyboard that week. You can’t like everything you find crossing your path in life.

Still I wonder why some do, some don’t, and would some others if they even knew that it is available. What makes us like one thing, not like another, and not care enough about some to form an opinion?

Now that I think about it, I should probably stop before I lose the few of you that are still out there. I don’t know if Word Press counts to negative numbers.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

 

The Best Best-Seller That I Never Read

Michael Leave a comment

The other day I was looking up the best selling books of all time – because I have that kind of time – and found some interesting stuff.  I think it started because I received a mailer from the city’s summer stock theater that the Man of La Mancha would be opening soon.  That sparked something in my head about Don Quixote being the best selling book ever.

Upon researching it, I found out that Don Quixote indeed is considered to be the best best-seller of ever. This classic was first published in the 1600s, the early 1600s, when there was no Internet to track sales so some of this might be conjecture on the part of whoever (whomever?) came up with the list. The estimate is that over 500 million (that’s half a billion!) copies have been sold. Since it occupies the Number One spot on several such lists, it must be a fairly reliable estimate.

There are some classics that take residence in the Top Ten of book selling lists. Titles everyone knows like A Tale of Two Cities, Lord of the Rings, and The Little Prince. And there are a couple that everyone knows but wouldn’t think they would be among the best selling of the best-sellers.  Agatha Christie is often mentioned as the world’s best selling author. She sold over two billion copies of her books but then she wrote 85 of them. One cracked the Top Ten and that was And Then There Were None selling about 100 million. An author just missing the top ten of authors coming in at number 11 and having published only 11 volumes is J. K. Rowling.  All seven of her Harry Potter installments meet in most lists’ top 25 best-selling books and they are still selling.  But the first of the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, hits most lists’ Top Five at 107 million copies sold.

It was fascinating to read about all of these most successful books and the authors who wrote them.  I spent hours reading the stories behind the stories. I had to pick a floor so I stopped when I saw books that sold less than 50 million copies. Excluding religious, text, and reference books there are thirty-five books that have sold at least that many.  There is no pattern, no magic formula. They are adventures, mysteries, romance, children’s, and fantasy. The only thing these books have in common is that they all hit a common chord in the world’s readers, some literally for centuries.

The other thing they have in common is I haven’t read many of them. Ok, of the 35 best-selling books of all time I haven’t read 33 of them.  And I thought I was a big reader.  I better go pick out another pair of reading glasses. I might be busy this summer.

Now, that’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

On Rode the 300

Michael Leave a comment

It’s milestone day!  Or should that be Milestone Day?  Subtle differences make differences.  Anyway…

It’s a milestone day – this is Post #300!  That means the next one starts counting all over again.  And it will, but the first 300 still hang out.  It’s also the start of a new year (or New Year if you prefer).  That means there should be some changes.  And there are but the old stays just as dear as always.

Like we did with the first and second hundred there are some favorites to call out.  It held to the original concept of the first post – this is real reality, not what some housewife, fisherman, storage locker junkie, dancer, prancer, or gator-bait would have you believe is.  What gets posted here really happened – unscripted, unplanned, sometimes unwanted, but always real.  Scary.

What were some of the best of the really real?  Well, best is in the eye of the beholder – or reader – not unlike an ugly Christmas sweater in one of the more recent and memorable posts “Being Beholden” (Dec. 11, 2014).  Another favorite on this side of the keyboard was “Good Things, Small Spaces” (Oct. 6, 2014), the real life adventures of a visit to a public restroom where everything was automatic and proved it!

Rarely was a post controversial other than if it actually fit in the selected category.  One that bucked that trend was “You Thought That Was Politically Incorrect” (Aug. 11, 2014) which was written after He completed several real surveys, each with remarkably different multiple choice answers to the same question – what race are you?  Seemed that someone said that shouldn’t be important yet it keeps getting asked.  Discrimination that made a difference was the subject of “Hair Today, Gone Yesterday” (Aug. 4, 2014), the true tale of a man getting a haircut in the twenty-first century.

There were lots of posts about spending money and buying stuff.  One of the more obtuse offerings was “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” (July 21, 2014).  The title notwithstanding it was about sales, Back to School sales specifically and a search for a new toaster.  Real, not necessary rational.   Shopping took a nasty turn at “Handicap Hate Crime” (June 19, 2014) another true story (they all are), this one of how one grocery store almost crippled the recovering He trying to negotiate his way to the handicapped parking slots.  Technology is not always wonderful.

With all this shopping there has to be somebody doing the selling.  Posts abounded about salespeople and clerks, with an emphasis on the occupant of the drive-thru window.  “If You Give a Teen a Penny” (April 7, 2014) detailed what was the first day behind the cash register for a high schooler whose parents you know told her to get a job.  Unfortunately, they didn’t tell her how to make change.

Fashion is always abuzz (not to be confused with a buzz).  The first post for this 100 posts hitting the fashion world was “Winter Rules” (Feb. 17, 2014).  It included the first two rules of winter fashion.  I’ll add Rule #3 here – It may be a new winter but use the old rules.

Almost a year ago we posted the recap of the second hundred posts with “Marching Onto the Third Hundred” (Jan. 2, 2014).  There we said “If we were going to pick a “best of” list we wouldn’t be able.  Yes, we liked them all but more than that, we liked what they all said about us.   What gets said in the third hundred might be completely different. But it will still say this is who we are and what we do.”

Well the third hundred has been different.  You might have noticed more of the posts were what He did rather than what We did.  She is still there in posts and in thoughts but sometime over the year the blog became more his chronicles.  And they will continue every Monday and Thursday as planned.  Or at least as anticipated.  About the only differences you might notice are more “I” and “me” than “he” and “we.”

And so the Real Reality Show Blog marches onto the four hundred however funny, thoughtful, observant, or a little off-kilter.   That’s the thing about blogs.  They are what you make of them.  And whether there are readers or not, there will always be writers.  And happy new year, too.

Now, that’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Hooked on Fonics

Michael Leave a comment

We were sitting at a bar nibbling on appetizers and reading the closed captioning on the television above it.  We’re not certain how many hearing challenged individuals use closed captions but it is a boon to the bar industry.  Anyway, we were watching the printout and wondering if they use real people with court reporter skills or computer voice recognition software.  Certainly if it is software the mistakes are understandable since English so rarely looks like it sounds.  But then again, it seems that lately it so rarely sounds like it sounds also.

It wasn’t too much before we were sitting at that particular bar on that particular day that we were sitting on He of We’s sofa watching the season’s long overdue first hockey game (we won, yippee!) and the post game show that followed.  It was during that particular post game show after that particular game on that particular day that we decided we will never ever watch that particular sports anchor again.  He couldn’t even get past the intro without stumbling over the words that marched across the teleprompter.  Remember, this was after a win.  The intro could have been, “The long awaited first game brings home a win.  Details after these messages.”  We could have come up with that!

He wasn’t one of the weekend fillers who might have been a little nervous over the extended exposure that post game anchor duty would bring to him or her.  No, here was the channel’s number one sports guy.  So we gave him the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps he hadn’t gotten his contact lenses in the correct eyes.  Perhaps the teleprompter went on the blink and translated everything into Latin.  So we waited until after these messages to hear the recap of the game we just spent three hours watching.  Three “ahs,” four “umms,” one complete stoppage in the middle of a sentence, and a feeling he was seeing the video clips for the first time were enough for us to change the channel, never to go back when he is in front of the camera. 

The only task this man had to do to perform his job, one for which he is quite handsomely recompensed, was read.  He didn’t have to write the copy, he even didn’t have to understand the copy.  He only had to read it.  And he couldn’t pull that off.  Was he blinded by new spotlights?  Were his contacts really not in correctly?  Was he as drunk as the post game interviewees appeared to be?  Was he completely clueless about hockey?  We’ll never know.  And now we don’t even care.  Although we do often wonder why the post any kind of game interviewees all seem to be drunk as lords.  But that’s a post for another day.

This whole event reminded She of We of a telephone solicitor who called her and then couldn’t get her name right.  She of We has a very simple name.  It has only six letters in the perfect ratio of vowels to consonants.  It is a classic English-speaking American name.  Yet not only did the solicitor not pronounce it correctly, when She of We brought this to the solicitor’s attention, she became arrogant and demanded to know why she was being disrespected when she was just trying to do her job.

There aren’t that many jobs where all you have to do to execute them successfully is to read out loud.  You’d think if you got one of them, you’d take a little time to, umm, practice.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?