K is for Kurt

“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” Kurt Vonnegut

I am an author. My husband is an engineer. We are different. We see the world in different ways. We like different things.

See Jane watch “The Walking Dead.

See Dick watch “The Andy Griffith Show.”

See Spot run from a zombie Barney Fife.

We use a Roku for entertainment, news, education, and conspiracy updates. It’s one of those computery machines that allows you to watch your favorite television shows in an orgy of endless viewing: commercial free, interruptions low.

See Jane fall asleep to re-runs of “The Walking Dead.”

See Dick in the middle of the night flip the Roku machine over to re-runs of “The Andy Griffith Show.”

See Spot scratch.

While my husband and I are different in our viewing tastes in television, we are alike in age. We are old-ish. We are becoming acquainted with not sleeping and waking up at two in the morning for nightly wanderings. We have a lifetime of stupid and embarrassing memories that torment us as we try to fall asleep and/or stay asleep. 

Falling asleep to episodes of “The Walking Dead” distracts our bad memory brains. So it’s nothing to fall asleep to zombies eating the world and then wake up to Barney Fife and his one bullet. 

See Jane toss and turn.

See Dick stumble around, change the channel, and fall asleep just in time to start snoring.

See Spot twitch in her sleep and chase zombie bunnies in her dreams.

I love “The Walking Dead.” It’s about characters that the writers are constantly throwing into a pit of writhing, zombie snakes, only to dare them to find a way out. 

It’s Kurt Vonnegut’s writing advice on steroids. I appreciate that. 

Honestly, “The Andy Griffith’ Show” isn’t all that different. How will Andy and Barney ever tell Aunt Bee that her pickles are NEVER going to win a prize at the country fair because her pickles are absolutely vile? Same concept. “No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them.”

Hey! It’s practically the same show. Maybe my husband and I aren’t so different after all?

Linda (Dream Keeper) Zern

H is for Horn Tooting

 

H is for Horn Tooting 

How Can We Stay Humble But Still Brag? Or The Paradox Of Social Media

Boldly and with my heart in my throat or throat-heart, I said to a respected organizer of a respected author’s conference, “You WANT me on the agenda. I am an excellent speaker.”

She gave me the head to toe once over and said, “So you say.”

I began to stutter like a person who stutters and responded, “Nnnnoo . . . nnnooo . . . iiiittt’s . . . true.”

Her eyes narrowed. Her brain spun. A long, fat moment passed. Then she took a chance on me, and I will always be thankful.

But what a painful, impossible moment. I have been speaking in public to large crowds since I was nine. I am a homeschooler. I am a teacher of various and sundry subjects. I am Irish (partly) and I have inherited the gift of blarney (partly). 

The dilemma? It’s all horn tooting. If no one cares enough to toot your horn, how does the horn get tooted and would should toot it? 

Sigh.

I am a woman of a certain age, raised at a time when the right hand was not supposed to know what the left hand was doing. It was a day when hands were supposed to mind their own business, and not brag to each other. Bragging was considered tacky, almost sinful. 

Today, the right hand not only knows what the left hand is doing, but the hands are fighting over who will hold the horn for tooting because everyone toots their own horn, right-handed or left-handed.

Social media has re-written the rules of horn tooting: brag, brag loud, brag long, and toot as loud as you can by blowing your personal trumpet of fabulousness! 

A few random observations I have made over the dizzying revolution of social media and phones that are smart.

CONVENIENCE! NOT! Smarty pants phones are constantly getting left places: the barn, under dirty laundry, on fence posts where fat raindrops can butt dial my father-in-law. Er . . . um . . . I mean . . . that might have, sort of, could have happened once, not that it did happen. 

SELFIES: Look at me, looking at myself. I like to take selfies on Sunday when my hair is arranged, my teeth are brushed, and my pearls are draped elegantly around my neck. To be honest and fair, I should take selfies when I’m pressure washing the barn, and I’ve managed to splash animal poop water on myself, and there is poop water dripping from my glasses, hair, nose, and neck wrinkles. 

TRAVEL LOGS!  Look at me, looking at stuff. (Don’t get me wrong. I do it too.) 

RECORDING FOOD INTAKE: People love their food. By the number of food related photos, food might be more important than looking at travel stuff, selfie stuff, deciding which Smarty Pants Phone to buy next, or the magic mascara that can CHANGE MY LIFE.

INFLUENCING, WHICH WE USED TO CALL ADVERTISING: Buy this, sell that, and make sure you give them my name. Recently, one of my grandsons offered to help me post “short” videos on my Youtube channel so that I could get “followers.” The problem? I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be leading a mob of strangers. But if I do figure it out, I’ll be sure and post pics.

BUY THIS; SELL THAT: Folks, on their “personal” media pages, like to pretend that they don’t want you to buy whatever it is they are selling. I’m calling, “BUNK!”

TEENY, TINY HAND COMPUTERS: Anything I can do on my computer, I can do on my teeny, tiny smarty pants phone. Except that I can’t. Because my fingers are too fat to type on that teeny, tiny keyboard that the kids type on with their thumbs. THEIR THUMBS! When evolution kicks in, their fingers will drop off, and humans will become nothing, more or less, than two opposable thumbs and a single, huge eye in the middle of their foreheads. 

WHY THE SINGLE EYE IN THE MIDDLE OF THEIR FOREHEADS? Because the only thing humans will be looking at is themselves (i.e. selfie-eye).

Oh, and humans will have HUGE mouths for all the horn tooting, of course. 

By the way, if you get a smarty pants phone call from me today, it’s because I’ve left my phone on a fence post, and it’s raining. TOOT. TOOT. Ain’t I the smartest girl in the world?

Oh, and how did I do speaking at the conference? I was dazzling.

Linda (Poop Water) Zern

PS. Staying humble means posting all the pictures not just the Sunday selfies.