Vanity Googling Hits Pay Dirt

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Today I was poking around on that big ol’ Internet thing, and I decided to Google ‘gizo’. He is the Millennial Office Holder and all. It turns out that the top reference that refers to a human being is our gizo, but there are several links to an island in the Solomon chain that come in ahead of him. It’s not much, but I offer this link to gizo‘s home page to help boost his ratings, and to encourage folks here to drop by and say hello over there.

Yes, I know that gizo probably doesn’t care where he ranks on Google.

Then, of course, I searched my own name, and I was nineteen out of the top twenty matches. This is what happens when the spelling of your name is an unusual variant and you’ve been cluttering up the Web for a long time. Ancient threads about Java coding practices, links to this blog, imdb listings, my photo gallery, and so forth. One link caught my eye, though, that spurred me to write this episode. It is from the Web site of a major European university, giving course materials for a class on American literature and culture.

An excerpt:

John Updike, Rabbit, Run

Report 1: Give a brief presentation of 1950s conformity.
Suggested sources:
U.S. Department of State, “The Culture of the 1950s“
“1950s: Pop Culture Explodes in a Decade of Conformity“
“Social Trends of the 1950s“

Report 2: Comment briefly on the value placed on the open road in American culture.
Suggested source:
Jerry Seeger, “American Road Myth 01“

So the oldest University in the Nordic countries is using my writing as a source when discussing John Updike. I think that’s pretty darn cool. Makes me think maybe I should get around to writing more of that intended series. Purely coincidentally, the short story I’m noodling on right now is rooted firmly in that mythos.

Thanks!

Rhetoric and Fiction

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Somebody over in the Hut forums tossed out a link today. It was to a series of essays by Orson Scott Card about the art and the business of writing. Uncle Orson wrote some of my favorite ever stories. Although we have parted ways lately (I wonder if he misses me…?) I have a great deal of respect for the man both as a dude and a writer. My first exposure to his work was long, long, ago, when I read a novella of his in Analog. He later turned that into Ender’s Game, a novel that did pretty darn well and (I assume) laid the foundation for his career. I expect he cringes now when he reads it, seeing all the things he could have done better, and by now there is a large body of critics devoted to finding things Uncle Orson could have done better.

Anyway, today I was reading thoughts on writing from a man who is both a successful writer and a successful teacher of writing. The essays I read were on the issue of style. He was answering the question “How do I improve my style?” and his response was that you can’t improve your style, except you can stop yourself from thinking too much about your style and therefore making your style artificial and forced. That’s not earth-shattering news, but his solution was one I had not heard before. A rough paraphrase: Tell the story. Find the most effective words to convince people and make them care. That’s rhetoric. Hone your rhetoric and your style will shine free and unencumbered.

That’s a very rough paraphrase (the ‘free and unencumbered’ part is all me), but the message is there, one that I could really benefit from. Mr. Oxford says rhetoric is “the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, esp. the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.” Who doesn’t want to be good at that? Hell, it’s an art! I often describe my short stories as ‘atmospheric’, but I need to remember that the atmosphere must have rhetorical value; it must promote a story.

I’ll never give up atmosphere, though. I love it too much. Sometimes the mood is the reason.

Mr. Scott Card’s point is well-taken, however. His use of the word rhetoric in the realm of fiction caught me off-guard (although that may just reflect my less-than-literary educational background), but once I read it, it was obvious. Suddenly seslf-aware, I look back now at the last few paragraphs in this episode and chuckle at the briar patch of rhetorical devices.

It’s something I think I already knew, something I was already aware of at the functional level, but by stating the idea explicitly I have been granted a very powerful question to ask myself when evaluating my own work. Beauty doesn’t matter if the words don’t do their job.

Thanks!

Post-apocalyptic superheroes

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Leaping tall buildings isn’t so useful when there aren’t any. Invisible jets are cool and all, but when airports were taken out with the first strike and ‘jet fuel’ is a euphemism for home-distilled hooch that glows in the dark, jets just aren’t that practical. So what, then, are the abilities that will give the post-apocalyptic superhero the edge when fighting (or simply out-surviving) super-villians? Here is a short list of candidates.

Buzzard Man
Super-power: Born with the immune system of a buzzard, he is able to eat food that would kill anyone else. Carrion several days old, crawling with whatnot, is the mainstay of his diet.
Super-weakness: He still has the taste buds of a regular human.

Camel Woman
Super-power: Able to store large amounts of water in her impressive, uh… humps. She can make it from oasis to oasis across the shifting desert sand, and will never be driven by thirst to drink from contaminated sources.
Super-weakness: chronic back pain and constantly pestered by men offering her glasses of water.

Radiation Boy
Super-power: Not only is Radiation Boy able to withstand nuclear fallout, he thrives on it. Cesium isotopes are his favorite. He can go where no others can, and there’s no worry about finding his way in the dark.
Super-weakness: Loneliness. Since he is, himself, radioactive, he has a bad habit of giving his friends cancer.

Orbital Girl
Super-power: Actually a holographic projection generated by the AI of an orbiting weapons platform, she is quite literally untouchable. Plenty of backstory potential when it comes time to explain why an orbital weapons platform would choose the guise of a teenage girl (unless the satellite is Japanese, in which case it goes without saying).
Super-weakness: While seemingly invulnerable, she is also unable to directly influence events — except with high-power lasers and a few remaining nuclear warheads. She is hot-tempered and you wouldn’t like her when she’s angry. She can never go indoors and can only appear when the satellite is overhead, and is only bright enough to be seen at night. She’s also not that bright in the mental sense.

The Mysterious Person from a Faraway Land
Super-power: Weaves spell-binding stories of a place far away where life doesn’t suck so bad. People will follow the Mysterious Person anywhere and defend Mysterious person to the death.
Super-weakness: Mysterious Person is a complete fraud. (What part of global thermonuclear war did you not understand?) If anyone finds out the truth, Mysterious Person is toast.

Mole Man
Super-power: forget the ozone layer, forget all the troubles on the surface. Mole Man can tunnel deep into the earth — so deep that mankind has not yet found a way to screw it up.
Super-weakness: There’s no food down there. Mole Man must on occasion creep back to the surface. Even a bright moon is blinding to him.

Ozona
Super-power: I have no idea. I just like the name.
Super-weakness: See above.

In the next day or two I will mount a new poll, asking you all who you think is the most awesome of post-apocalyptic superheroes. In the meantime, you can choose a favorite and start campaigning, or you can suggest others as well.

Thanks!

Itchy!

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File this one under ‘more things you really didn’t need to know’…

It started a few days ago. I started feeling itchy all over. Then the bumps started showing up. I am now covered with itchy red bumps. Writing about it makes me think about it even more. Itchy, itchy itchy.

You’d never know by looking, however, and when I figured that out I had the likely cause of my malaise. I only have bumps where my clothes touch me. Two weeks ago I bought a new batch of laundry detergent. I have heard the complaints of others (some who read this, in fact) and I have always counted myself as fortunate that such afflictions do not affect me. Until now. I can’t imagine what would happen to someone who actually had sensitive skin if they used this stuff.

Of course, after I bought the detergent I washed all my clothes (had a bit of a backlog waiting for the detergent) so suddenly I was left with practically nothing to wear that wouldn’t make things worse. My hawaiian shirts escaped, but the weather isn’t really favorable for those. The worst, of course, is the underwear. Once I figured out the problem I put the remainder of my clothes that were still clean through another wash cycle with no detergent, hoping for some intensive rinsing action, but I’m still itchy and bumpy. I’m not sure what it’s going to take to fully expunge whatever chemical it was that I reacted to. Whatever it was, it was nasty.

Hopefully it’s just that the irritation is slow to fade and its not that the problem is actually something else entirely.

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Thanks!

The Transitional Seasons

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Piker Press just published a story of mine, a decidedly springtime one. It didn’t feel at all strange to have it come out as the days are getting shorter, however; spring has more in common with autumn than with her neighbors. Lazy, shimmering, devil-may-care summer is too self-absorbed, while brooding, fierce winter will not contemplate another’s voice.

Spring and autumn are the seasons of change, when we feel the passing of time. It makes perfect sense to me that spring and autumn are the times when new fashion lines are revealed, summer and winter are when one coasts along, enjoying or enduring according to personal preference. Excitement comes with uncertainty and change, with the realization that today will not be a repeat of yesterday.

Spring is often compared to birth, and of course Halloween could not come at any other time of year. Autumn is spookier than winter, even though winter is darker. There is a restlessness to the season; leaves skitter and twirl aimlessly on city sidewalks and in fields harvested and prepared against the coming cold. There is anticipation in the air, the certaintly that something is coming, but there’s no telling when it will arrive. It’s the same feeling that horror films so often fail to achieve.

They are the seasons of scent. In autumn there is the smell of decay in the air, leaves piling up, but it is not death, it is autumn passing a note to spring, right under winter’s nose, the down-payment on spring’s vitality. In return spring fills the air with the scent of flowers and the songs of birds — dialogues of reproduction, as spring creates sprawling vibrant life poised and ready to take all the energy it can from summer’s plenty, the return message to her friend on the other side of the sun. They are in cahoots, spring and autumn, giddy seasons sharing the joke that is life, while summer and winter are none the wiser.

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On the cover at Piker Press

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If the top story in this week’s Piker Press seems familiar to you, that’s because it is an improved version of a story that appeared here first. It was, in fact, the favorable response from readers here that encouraged me to fix it up a bit and give it a life beyond the blog. The story takes place on the first warm day of spring, so in a sense it is antiseasonal. Yesterday I enjoyed tea on a bench outside a coffee shop on a chilly day that left no doubt that winter is fast approaching.

If you want to leave a comment about the story, you have to go to its dedicated, photoless page. You can see a list of everything of mine that has appeared in the press here.

The accompanying photo is also by me (though enhanced by the Piker editorial staff), snapped from a location near the beer window mentioned in the story.

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A Nation Comes Together

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The TV is not on here at the Little Café Near Home very often, but sometimes there is an event that draws people here to watch as a group. the most obvious example of this is for major sporting events, but there are other programs that draw in the crowds as well. One of those shows is on right now. I’d consider going somewhere else, but any other place with a TV will have the same show on.

What is this event that draws the nation together? I’ve mentioned it before, but the current season of Česko hleda Superstar is getting down to the finals. The good news is that means the contestants who really, really, suck have all been eliminated. Now we have a homogeneous batch of people who fit the formula. They all sound pretty much the same, craftsmen rather than artists, singing safe tunes written by other people. One of these will be labeled ‘Superstar’, a large fish in a small pond, and will then try to turn that into a career, just like the other winners of the other Superstar contests all over the world.

I’m not sure you can pin all the blame for the superstar formula on the U.S., but as the worlds largest producer of pop clones I think it’s fair to guess that the recipe for the McPopstar was perfected there.

As I was watching the show (I have no resistance to the box of moving lights) I started to wonder: what’s so damn special about singing that these guys are the superstars, while artists in other disciplines toil in relative obscurity? Technology is part of the answer, certainly; electricity has made it possible for there to be a music industry. People are listening to music all the time, where for most other art forms they have to dedicate time to appreciating it. Technology has changed both the product and the distribution.

A hundred years ago there were certainly celebrated musicians and entertainers, but back then there were people in other art forms that were just as celebrated. Maybe more so. I think for a while the writers had the edge — between the invention of the printing press and the invention of radio they had the best mass-market potential. Ah, if only I was born a hundred years earlier! Before that, I’m not sure. Whatever the talented person in each village did, perhaps.

The Buggles claim that video killed the radio star. That may well be true, but the singers are still hanging in there, as long as they are attractive enough. You can’t be a superstar if you can’t carry a tune. Well, let’s just say you can’t be a superstar without singing. With Internet getting steadily faster video will become more and more influential, but the difference is that people will be able to watch anything, whenever they want. By putting distribution squarely in the hands of consumers, we might (fingers crossed) see the last of the manufactured pop star. There will always be those who have big promotional budgets, flashier videos, and whatnot, but already I only buy music from independent labels (not out of any sort of protest, their terms and pricing on downloaded music are better), and I don’t think I’m missing out on much. Honestly, I have no idea who’s popular right now anyway, and I can always find something I enjoy on an indie Web site.

I am told there are even people who use the Web to read what other people write.

The next few years will be interesting. Big extravaganzas like the one I witnessed tonight will work to make the next superstar, while beneath the stage the termites are gnawing on the supports.

Thanks!

A brief political announcement

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Please note that this episode has been edited to fix a few major factual difficulties. I haven’t gone back to find the source of the errors, but I suspect it was my head. Just to make things clear, to the best of my knowledge (obviously my best is none to good), Major Jim Bibb is not running for the governorship of anything. Since it’s only a matter of time before someone reads this and mistakenly thinks I care, or that I matter, I have updated the episode. In the great plastic press that is the Internet, it’s very easy to go back and change what you said.

Apparently there’s an election or something going on back in the Land of Enchantment, and up for grabs is the Attorney General’s seat. Attorney General is a politician in charge of honesty, which is especially oxymoronic in New Mexico. Insiders report that as of a couple of days ago the campaigns were clean and issues-oriented. [Apparently, as of this edit, that is no longer the case, and my man was the first one spotted by the elite muddled team of political trackers with his paw in the mud pot.] For all of you who worked on Pirates of the White Sand, here are a few things you need to know:

FACT: When we asked some menial flunky of governor Bill Richardson for jets to fly over, we got squat.

FACT: When we asked Major Jim Bibb for helicopters, he personally represented us to his C.O., and we got a helicopter.

FACT: Major Jim Bibb is running for Attorney General of New Mexico.

FACT: Bill Richardson is running for governor — or so he claims. Rumor has it that he and Hillary have scheduled an arm-wrasslin match to see who gets to run for president. Prognosticators give Richardson the nod based on his larger biceps, but there’s no denying that Clinton has leverage.

FACT: While Sikorsky gets all the glory, Piaseki broke the ground (or at least, that what his grandson told me).

INDISPUTABLE FACT: Major Jim Bibb is a good guy.

DISPUTABLE FACT: Major Jim Bibb would be a good attorney general. No one seems to expect the head lawyer of the land to have a legal background, but does that make him overly dependent on the entrenched bureaucracy?

COMPLETE ABSENCE OF FACT: I have no knowledge of the other guy, except that politically his father was (is?) a big ol’ wheel in those parts.

I was surprised to hear that Major Jim Bibb (You can’t edit that name. ‘Major Jim Bibb’ has a cadence to it that cannot be ignored.) was running for the hot seat in New Mexico. He struck me as an easy-going guy who saw the humor in life, although as a guy in charge of helicopters with big red crosses on the side, I expect he’s seen a lot of things that weren’t so funny. He didn’t have the ‘flyboy’ swagger or strut about him, just a love of life and the desire to make every day a good one. Not that I really got to know him that well; I am probably reading too much into his easygoing smile and willingness to help me get what I asked for. Nevertheless, I like Major Jim Bibb.

Thanks!

The Great Gatsby

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Some time ago I read The Great Gatsby. I remember that I liked it, but it has been a long time, and I’ve learned a lot since then. I’ve also pretty much forgotten Mr. Gatsby, except for his yearning posture as he reached out across the water to the beacon on the other side. Recently the book was mentioned in the comments here, and I was thinking about that pose, about the hopelessness of it but also the sureness of it, the purity of the ambition it embodied.

Or was I just making that up? I was in the bookstore the other day and there was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, and when I saw the price, I was decided.

My impression after the first page: somewhere between Somewhere between D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (completed in 1917) and The Great Gatsby (published in 1925), the twentieth century began. It’s not right, I guess, to expect literary trends to follow the Julian calendar, and I expect someone else has already identified this moment in artistic history and come up with a name for it (modern?), but I am no art historian and I have no intention of expanding what is probably already a body of criticism so vast as to border on useless. No, I will just say this. Fitzgerald retains an elegance to his writing that I can only envy, descriptions that are organic and evolutionary, yet thrifty. In the end, however, he speaks my language.

Near the start, Nick meets two women. They are in a mansion by the sea, resting on a mighty divan in a hall with windows open at each end. The paragraph is about the wind, how it moves the curtains, the ladies’ white dresses, the nap of the carpet. The women are part of that wind, idle, undirected and free in a somehow useless way, aloof and self-contained, and the description ends with a bang when Tom slams the windows shut, and a place that had been alive dies.

I haven’t finished the book, but I think he told the whole story right there, somewhere around page five.

I know I’m not going out on a limb to say this is a pretty dang good book; many others have done so in the past. But hey, every once in a while the general consensus is right. And for all the beauty and grace of the prose, it still reads easy. It’s a well-crafted story on top of everything else. Boy am I glad I decided to give this one another go. (Except that now I have a new yardstick to measure myself against, and this one seems forty-two miles long from where I sit.) If you’ve got that old high school copy you were forced to read lying around, pick it up and chew on a few pages.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

Embassy closed in observance of Embassy Closed Day

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The time has come for me to renew my passport. It’s past time, according to the immigration people the last time I visited the US. My passport has seen better days. Fortunately, I’m told the process for renewal at the embassy is swift and painless.

If you can catch them open, that is. My first trip I arrived at the front door at 12:15, only to discover that the hours for routine services are 8 – 12. No problem, I had accomplished something, even if it wasn’t much. While I was there I checked over the rest of the posted information, and noticed that they close for both Czech and American holidays. Nice job if you can get it.

A couple of days later I got up bright and early and set out for another assault on the citadel. Is was a promising day, and I took my time getting there, enjoying the peaceful morning, the deserted streets… the closed shops… The little light bulb over my head blinked on. It was a Czech holiday. I had known that. I had even asked a few locals what the holiday was to commemorate, but no one knew. The calendar just says “Czech Holiday.”

Well then, the next day was most certainly not a holiday, and I made my way through a morning much cloudier and chillier than the day before had been. There was a long line outside the door. I joined the queue and opened my book. I was prepared for the hurry-up-and-wait routine that I assumed would accompany any visit to an official building of any government. In fact I was too prepared. I was deep enough in my book that I didn’t notice others walking up and waving their U.S. passports to be allowed right in.

After going through security I made my way upstairs to a waiting room packed with people. There was a sign directing Americans in need of passport stuff to a side room, which was also filled with people doing nothing except waiting. I looked around for a number to take or any other imposition of order, but could find none. Finally, self-consciously, I approached a window, fully expecting the woman behind the glass to berate me to wait my turn. Again, I was incorrect. She cheerfully gave me the needed paperwork and instructions on where to get a photo and I was on my way.

Of course, another trip was required once I completed the paperwork. I’ve been procrastinating a bit, using a minor head cold as an excuse, but today I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the last clinging remains of the illness gone in the night. It is bright this morning, but there is a crispness to the air that is invigorating and refreshing, even while it is foreboding. I considered walking the few miles to the embassy, but in the end I decided to get there as early as possible, take care of business, and then enjoy the rest of the day. With my previous embassy visit under my belt, I felt confident that I would not be there long. To simplify getting through security I left most of my electronics at home, and foolishly did not bring a book with me.

There was no line of people outside the embassy. The door was closed up tight, and a sign said the embassy was closed in observance of an unspecified US holiday. Today’s a holiday? Now I’m going to have to find some Americans and ask them what the holiday is in observance of. I’m sitting in a café now, greatly regretting not having a book, as I scratch this episode out on napkins. It is, by any measure, a beautiful day, and it would be a shame to go all the way home to get a book when there are so many nice places to sit and read nearby.

Addendum: I ran into an American friend in the bookstore, and he was equally baffled by what today’s holiday might be. I bought four books, and this afternoon read Bukowski’s Post Office from cover to cover. It was pretty good, but not great. Engaging, quite funny at times, and it’s nice to know what people are talking about when they refer to him. I also bought some F. Scott Fitzgerald based on some comments in a previous episode (and the price of the book), a collection of letters by a Czech writer while he was imprisoned by the Communists, and a book called The Bookseller of Kabul, also about survival and art keeping one’s humanity in a totalitarian culture, and about surviving in the aftermath of a destructive war. It sounds interesting, anyway.

Overall, a nice way to spend a holiday, whatever it was. Tomorrow, I think I’ll pop by the embassy.

Thanks!

The Little Café… is out of beer!

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Three taps may not sound like a lot to those on the other side of the pond, but this is a land of specialization. Three taps is about the maximum, except in tourist places. You choose your pub based on the beer you want to drink. One thing you always know is that the beer you drink will be fresh, because everyone in the bar will be drinking the same beer. A bar with many taps is met with suspicion. How long has that keg of Olde Snake Bite been tapped?

Which is all well and good, as long as there’s another keg waiting when the first runs out.

I asked for a Stella, and Wendy shook her head. “We have no beer,” she said in English. It took me a moment to digest that. “All three,” she said. “None.”

“Are the taps broken?” I asked.

“No, they’ve all been… I don’t know how to say…”

“Drunk,” I said. It’s not surprising she had a hard time with that word, as she knows it as an adjective that is applied to people. “Drunk up,” I added, not helpfully.

Little Café Near Home has been popular, lately. It’s been filled with a younger crowd, so when school starts to exert its fearsome grip on the souls of the nation’s youth, things might quiet down a bit here. While I wish the owner of this place all the success in the world, I’m kind of hoping the chain-smoking children who are noisily drinking the place dry get distracted by other pursuits.

The bar is out of beer. This is the Czech Republic. This should, quite simply, not be possible. In this country I imagine there is a room with rows of people staring into glowing monitors. At the front of the room is the Big Board, which shows the flow of beer throughout the nation. Right now there should be a giant red X flashing over this neighborhood while a klaxon sounds. People are screaming into their phones, and the army is mobilizing. A pub without beer. This is a national crisis.

I will keep one ear cocked for the sound of the helicopters making the emergency delivery, but in the meantime I’ll go next door and have some Budvar.

Thanks!

Disdeclined

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In Czech, there are seven forms for every noun and pronoun. These different forms provide important information about the relationships between the elements of the sentence. In English, most of those forms have been weeded out over the centuries, replaced by helper words and word order conventions. We still have the possessive form and the plural, but that’s it.

Except in pronouns. Now I call the English-speaking world to action, to hasten the inevitable and beat down those who would hold our language in stasis. You don’t have to thank me, it’s what I do. Let’s put the wooden stake through the heart of ‘whom’. No ambiguity is introduced when you use ‘who’ instead, English has developed all the mechanisms to keep the sentence clear without declining the pronoun. We just don’t need whom.

While we’re at it, let’s not stop there. I, me, my — it’s time to straighten all this out. We only need one pronoun to express the first person singular. All we need is ‘me’. “Me Tarzan, you Jane” is not at all ambiguous, and even introduces an implied ‘to be’ which can come in handy. “All for me grog” is not open to alternate interpretations. All these extra pronouns running about are causing more harm than good.

Granted, getting rid of ‘my’ may be pushing things a bit much, as English still uses the possessive form. If we really want to disdecline the language, we would have to resort to using ‘of’ a lot: “the pants of Jerry”, rather than “Jerry’s pants” (in the phrase “Jerry pants” mine name comes out as an adjective). Me not quite ready for that. Before you know it people would be writing “pants o’Jerry”, and the possessive would be back, only this time an o’ prefix rather than an ‘s at the end. Even so, ‘my’ and ‘mine’ could be consolidated without any loss. It’s already happened for nouns and most other pronouns. Kiss ‘my’ goodbye, and flush ‘yours’ down the drain.

These silly pronouns are holding us back. They remain mired in days gone by, the subjects of rules that are based simply on properness, not effectiveness — all they do is prove you paid attention in school. (Ironically, one pronoun we already have shed, ‘thee’, would still be useful to reduce ambiguity. Me therefore also call for the recognition of y’all to be what ‘you’ once was.)

Me not ready to embrace this principle in me everyday writing, as, alas, there are many who would judge me based on outdated ideas of correctness. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? If me were to go it alone, me would be quickly written off as an ignorant buffoon, not a force committed to making the English language better. What can me do?

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Thanks!

Five stars, baby!

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Ah, what’s Saturday morning for if not tooting one’s own horn?

There are several sites on the Web specializing in finding all the bazillions of little applications out there to make it easier for the rest of us to find the tool we need. I use these services all the time, whether it’s to find an open-source audio editing program or a GUI interface for CVS. Most of these places allow users to rate the software and comment on it, but a few provide other enhancements, including, in the case of Softpedia, certifications that applications are without malicious code, spyware, and adware. Softpedia also will sometimes write in-depth reviews of programs. Which, of course, is where I come in.

I got a message from them a couple of days ago saying that I had been given the 100% clean award. That was nice and all, but I already knew there was no hidden evil in my program. Not long after that I got the message that the software had been reviewed. The reviewer really, really, liked what he saw. He also articulated something better than I’ve managed to do when explaining JersNW. Most of the features in business-oriented word processors are focussed on what happens to the words after you write them. Few of the features are oriented to helping you get the words written in the first place.

If you really care that much, you can read the review here. My favorite part was the summary:

The Good

Made for writing, with all those options and features that are actually useful to the writing process.

The Bad

The only bad thing about this program is that I haven’t been using it for many years already. The only thing that it is missing is support for multiple versions of a part of the text so that you can rewrite and keep the originals.

You have to like when the “bad” part is a compliment. Five stars out of five. I have no idea how common that rating is at Softpedia, but I’ll take it.

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Thanks!

Man’s best friend

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One of the canine regulars at the Little Café Near Nome is a friend of mine. When she first comes in she rushes about, greeting everyone — except me. Without fail I feel mildly hurt as this pup with whom I’ve shared many an evening rushes about looking for quick handouts. Eventually, after working all the other guests and carefully scanning the floor, she will come over and sit by me, and bonk her head against my leg. After a nice ear rub (she really likes ear rubs) she will curl up at my feet, until someone new arrives. Then she’s off again, checking out the possibilities.

I think human females regard me in much the same way. That’s not a bad thing, overall. I can handle being home base.

Thanks!

You may not be able to read this.

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I just got word from my service provider that something went wrong when processing my payment for this site. My current payment expires today, and if I don’t get it resolved in time there will be a blackout in the Media Empire. So if you don’t see this message, that’s why.

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Thanks!