Untamed Journeys in Writing

Not sure of the origin, But I like the metaphor...

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:14:48 GMT

Recently large demonstrations have taken place
across the country protesting the fact that Congress
is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration.

Certain people are angry that
the US might protect its own
borders, might make it harder
to sneak into this countr y and,
once here, to stay indefinitely.

Let me see if I correctly understand
the thinking behind these protests.
Let's say I break into your house.
Let's say that when you discover
me in your house, you insist that I leave.
But I say, "I've made all
the beds and washed the
dishes and did the laundry
and swept the floors. I've
done all the things you don't
like to do. I'm hard-working
and honest
(except for when I broke into your house) .

According to the protesters:

You are Required to let me stay in your house
You are Required to add me to your family's insurance plan
You are Required to Educate my kids
You are Required to Provide other benefits to me & to my family

(my husband will do all of your yard work because
he is also hard-working and honest, except for that
breaking in part).

If you try to call the police or force me out,
I will call my friends who will picket your
house carrying signs that proclaim my
RIGHT to be there.

It's only fair, after all, because you have
a nicer house than I do, and I'm just
trying to better myself. I'm a hard-working
and honest, person, except for well,
you know, I did break into your house

And what a deal it is for me!!!

I live in your house, contributing only a
fraction of the cost of my keep, and
there is nothing you can do about it
without being accused of cold,
uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and
bigoted behavior.

Oh yeah, I DEMAND that you learn
MY LANGUAGE!!! so you can
communicate with me.

Why can't people see how ridiculous
this is?! Only in America .
if you agree, pass it on ( in English ).
Share it if you see the value of it.

If not blow it off.........
along with your future Social Security
funds, and a lot of other things

A HGTG Quote

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 10:22:15 GMT

by Douglas Adams - author extrordanaire of several books on the topic of space travel within (and without) stolen Intergalactic Starships and Zaphod Beeblebrox...
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Chapter 19
One of the major selling points of that wholly remarkable travel book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, apart from its relative cheapness and the fact that it has the words DON’T PANIC written in large friendly letters on its cover, is its compendious and occasionally accurate glossary. The statistics relating to the geo-social nature of the Universe, for instance, are deftly set out between pages nine hundred and thirty-eight thousand three hundred and twenty-four and nine hundred and thirty eight thousand three hundred and twenty-six; and the simplistic style in which they are written is partly explained by the fact that the editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the insomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws.
It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backward in time through a temporal warp, and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws.
Here is a sample:

The Universe – some information to help you live in it.
1 AREA: Infinite.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word “Infinite.”
Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real “wow, that’s big,” time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we’re trying to get across here.
2 IMPORTS: None.
It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things from.
3 EXPORTS: None.
See Imports.
4 POPULATION: None.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
5 MONETARY UNITS: None.
In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altairian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flainian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.
6 ART: None.
The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn’t a mirror big enough – see point one.
7 SEX: None.
Well, in fact there is an awful lot of this, largely because of the total lack of money, trade, banks, art or anything else that might keep all the nonexistent people of the Universe occupied.
However, it is not worth embarking on a long. Discussion of it now because it really is terribly complicated. For further information see Guide Chapters seven, nine, ten, eleven, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one to eighty-four inclusive, and in fact most of the rest of the Guide.

MBA Jargon

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 10:16:51 GMT

MBA Jargon: A Glossary of Insider Lingo
You've probably already noticed this, but business school students, graduates, and professors - like most close-knit, somewhat solipsistic groups - seem to speak their own weird language. With that in mind, here's one last set of tools that will help you on your way through this material and into the business world: a list of MBA jargon (with English translations):

Air Hogs: students who monopolize classroom discussion and love to hear themselves speak.
Air Time: a precious opportunity-speaking or making comments in class.
Analysis Paralysis: not being able to make a decision because you've gotten lost in the thicket of your own analysis.
Back of the Envelope: an abbreviated analysis of the numbers.
Barriers to Entry: conditions that prevent entry into a particular market.
Beta of a Stock: the inherent volatility of a stock.
Bottleneck: the point in a plant or process that determines or blocks the pace.
Burn Rate: amount of cash a company consumes each day.
Case Cracker: a comment in class that gets to the essence of case.
Case Study Method: popular teaching method that uses real-life business cases for analysis.
Chip Shots: unenlightening comments made during class discussion for the sole purpose of getting credit.
Cold Call: unexpected, often dreaded request by the professor to open a case.
Core Courses: courses in the basic disciplines of business, usually mandatory.
Corner Office: office location that all MBAs aspire to and the exclusive province of partners, managing directors and senior executives.
Cost Benefit Analysis: calculating whether something is worth doing on the basis of the real dollar cost versus real dollar benefit. This is often used as a shortcut in analyzing the numbers.
Cycle Time: how fast you can turn something around.
Deliverable: what your end product is.
Finheads: finance heads. See also sharks.
Four P's: elements of a marketing strategy-Price, Promotion, Place, Product.
Fume Date: date the company will run out of cash reserves.
Functional Areas: the basic disciplines of business.
Globalization: trend of the '80s and '90s; expanding the definition of your market to include the challenges of operating in a multicountry, multiconsumer market.
Hard Courses: anything with numbers.
HP12-C: the calculator of choice for number crunching.
I-Bankers: investment banking analysts coming out of the two-year training programs and into B-school.
Incentivize: a bastardized version of the word incentive, used as a verb.
MBA Weenies: students who believe that once they get their MBAs they'll be masters of the universe.
Net Net: End result.
OOC: out of cash.
Opportunity Costs: the cost of pursuing an opportunity, i.e., for B-school, tuition and loss of income for two years.
Poets: students with little quantitative skills or experience (numerically challenged).
Power Naps: quick, intense in-class recharge for the continually sleep deprived.
Power Tool: someone who does all the work and sits in the front row of the class with his hand up.
Pre-enrollment Courses: commonly known as MBA summer camp-quantitative courses, generally offered in the summer before the first year to get the numerically challenged up to speed.
Pro Forma: financial presentation of hypothetical events; for example, how much new debt would a company require if it grows ten percent a year?
Quant Jock: a numerical athlete who is happiest crunching numbers.
Quick and Dirty: an abbreviated analysis, often involving numbers.
Run the Numbers: analyze quantitatively.
Sharks: aggressive students who smell blood and move in for the kill.
Shark Comment: comment meant to gore a fellow student in class discussion.
Soft Courses: touchy-feely courses such as human resources and organizational behavior.
Soft Skills: conflict resolution, teamwork, negotiation, oral and written communication.
Slice and Dice: running all kinds of quantitative analysis on a set of numbers.
The Five Forces: Michael Porter's model for analyzing the strategic attractiveness of an industry.
Three C's: the primary forces-Customer, Competition, Company.
Total Quality Management: the Edward Demming method of management that caught on with the Japanese and is now "hot" in American business-managing the quality of products, service, work, process, people and objectives.
Valuation: adds up projected future cash flows into current dollars.
Value-Based Decision Making: values and ethics as part of the practice of business.

Killing Me Microsoftly

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 09:37:54 GMT

ALMOST NOBODY SPEAKS IN PUBLIC ANYMORE WITHOUT USING POWERPOINT. BUT SOME LIKEN THE PROGRAM TO A COGNITIVE VEG-O-MATIC THAT SLICES AND DICES HUMAN THOUGHT.
Halftime.
Your football team is behind--way, way behind--and there's a feeling in the locker room of heavy, clotted gloom. Everyone slouches on the floor against lockers and benches. Doom-induced lethargy pervades the place. Even the towels are too limp to swat at a teammate's derriere.
And then the coach appears. Moving purposefully to the center of the room, he eyes the despairing players. He rubs his hands together as if they were kindling for inspiration.
At this point, the coach can:
- Deliver a rousing, emotion-laced speech exhorting the players to press on in the face of tremendous adversity and daunting odds, or
- Cue up a PowerPoint presentation on the six keys to victory, including bulleted items such as "Proper blocking and tackling," "Exhibiting a winning attitude," "Turning weaknesses into strengths" and "Don't focus on the scoreboard," along with a multi-media photo montage of memorable game-winning plays set to the soundtrack of "Rudy."
Which approach is more likely to send the team back onto the field poised for a comeback? Your answer instantly drop-kicks you into one of two camps:
- Those who believe in the power of a freewheeling address, full of digressions and personal chemistry, to change hearts and minds most effectively.
- Those who believe in PowerPoint.
And while the cultural scoreboard may be invisible, this much is indisputable: The PowerPoint people are winning.
Actually, it's not even close. PowerPoint, the public-speaking application included in the Microsoft Office software package, is one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous technological tools ever concocted. In less than a decade, it has revolutionized the worlds of business, education, science and communications, swiftly becoming the standard for just about anybody who wants to explain just about anything to just about anybody else. From corporate middle managers reporting on production goals to 4th-graders fashioning a show-and-tell on the French and Indian War to church pastors explicating the seven deadly sins--although seven is a trifle too many bullet points for an audience to absorb comfortably, as any veteran PowerPoint user will tell you--the software seems to be everywhere.
The phenomenon parallels the rise of the presentation as the basic unit of group communication. To be sure, there have always been presentations--although Martin Luther managed to get his 95 theses across just by nailing them to a church door--but they used to be low-key affairs accompanied by chalkboards or large pads of paper on easels. A great deal of interpersonal communication got done simply by means of that reviled but effective tool known as the memo. Then> came the 1970s, the era that brought us role-playing games, bonding and the sharing of feelings, soon to be followed by the 1980s, an epoch of networking, business retreats and mission statements.
Communal settings began to be seen as the ideal venue for the transfer of information, not only because of various economies of scale but because the shoulder-to-shoulder atmosphere seemed to add validation to the material and a general bonhomie that helped cement the organization. Suddenly, like oaks toppling unheard in the forest, ideas seemed to lack existence if they weren't first trotted out in front of a large group of colleagues by a presenter armed with "visual aids"--overhead transparencies or photographic slides.
But slides and transparencies are often difficult to create. Moreover, the thought of presenting was enough to paralyze many people trying to make their way unobtrusively through the shoals of large organizations and research establishments. Nobody could possibly have enough slides to fill an entire presentation without verbal content. Sooner or later the speaker would have to . . . talk! . . . doing so from either a dry, prepared text or, God help them, from memory or even off the cuff.
It was into this breach that PowerPoint leaped. With PowerPoint, you could fit your entire presentation onto a computer disk and use a laptop to project it, in sequential order, onto a screen that the audience could watch. All your information and visuals could be arranged on discrete "pages" or "slides" full of headings and bulleted points that broke your talk down into coherent bits, similar to the outlines that your elementary school teacher tried vainly to teach you in the days when the only networking you wanted to do was watch "Scooby-Doo" and "The Munsters."
All at once, no more slides, no more overheads. Visuals could be scanned directly into the computer and inserted at appropriate places in your program. If you wished, PowerPoint had a variety of graphics you could also nab. Best of all, while you couldn't put all of your spoken text onto the screen, you could get enough up there to quell your fears of public speaking. At best, you could embellish upon the bullet points, confident that nerves wouldn't cause you to lose your place as your talk proceeded. At worst, you could stand up there and just recite the bullets as your entire speech, reading them aloud off the screen as if your audience were a tribe of illiterate backwoodsmen who had somehow wandered into a presentation on "A Stochastic Approach to Inelastic Demand for Durable Goods Using a Multifarious Economic Model."
But PowerPoint has a dark side. It squeezes ideas into a preconceived format, organizing and condensing not only your material but --inevitably, it seems--your way of thinking about and looking at that material. A complicated, nuanced issue invariably is reduced to headings and bullets. And if that doesn't stultify your thinking about the subject, it may have that effect on your audience--which is at the mercy of your presentation.
Eerily, PowerPoint was invented in 1984, that iconic year of Orwellian mind control. That was when Bob Gaskins and Dennis Austin of the Silicon Valley software company Forethought created a PowerPoint precursor called Presenter, which soon was renamed PowerPoint. Forethought and its promising software brainchild were acquired in 1987 by Microsoft, and a Macintosh version of PowerPoint went on sale that year. A Windows version was added in 1990.
PowerPoint has been the subject of a jauntily amusing New Yorker profile, a distinction generally reserved for heads of state, notorious criminals or controversial entertainers. The program is so widely used that it needs no introduction, no surrounding nest of associative explanation. Nobody tells the audio-visual guy at the university that has booked him or her to speak, "I'm going to use PowerPoint--you know, that software application that lets you use your computer to put cool stuff up on a screen with neat graphics and even a soundtrack if you want." And the software says something about you. Just to show up for a talk toting an old-fashioned carousel of slides is to label yourself the kind of individual who still has a bag telephone.>
PowerPoint is way beyond branding. It left branding in the dust long ago. With more than 300 million users worldwide, according to a Microsoft spokesperson, with a share of the presentation software market that is said to top 95 percent and with an increasing number of grade school students indoctrinated every day into the PowerPoint way--chopping up complex ideas and information into bite-sized nuggets of a few words, and then further pureeing those nuggets into bullet items of even fewer words--PowerPoint seems poised for world domination.
Its astonishing popularity, the way it has spread exponentially through the culture, seems analogous, in a way, to drugs. Think of it as technological cocaine--so effortless to embrace initially, so difficult to relinquish after that. People who once use PowerPoint generally don't stop using it.
People who don't use it can't quite understand what all the fuss is about. And then they use it. And neither they nor their relationship to information is ever quite the same again.
Those who harbor reservations about PowerPoint, the iconoclasts who dare to question whether technology is always an unalloyed good, are difficult to coax into the open, so powerful is technology's grip on the human imagination in the 21st Century. Anyone who asks, "Yes, we can--but should we?" about any technology risks being branded an antediluvian.
Author Lewis Mumford neatly captured this prejudice in a 1970 essay in which he lamented a widespread "technological compulsiveness." Western culture, he said, "has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely [is it] the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences."
PowerPoint may be an easier, spiffier way to present information, but is it a better way? As the software spreads into more schools, as an increasing number of teachers employ it in their lectures and require students to use it in their class presentations, certain questions hover persistently just to one side of the glowing screen:
Is PowerPoint changing not only the way we do business and educate our young, but also the way we think?
"I hate PowerPoint," says Jay Phelan, an evolutionary biologist who teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles and is co-author of "Mean Genes" (2000), a study of how brain structure affects behavior. "I'm one of the few," he adds ruefully.
Most of Phelan's colleagues use PowerPoint in their lectures and his students often request such presentations from him. But he resists distilling the contents of his lectures--the creative interplay of a teacher's knowledge and the students' hunger for ideas, as manifested in rhetorical display--into a series of bullet items.
"I spend a lot of time identifying what works in lectures," says Phelan. "It's not about a content transfer from the teacher to the other person. The students have the information. It's something else that gets conveyed in a good lecture. That gets lost when you use PowerPoint."
Is it changing our brains, though? Hard to say, Phelan replies, since evolutionary changes occur over millennia, not decades. Yet it is certainly affecting our creativity, he believes.
The point of PowerPoint--making presentations simple to prepare, so simple that a 2nd-grader can do it during commercial breaks of "SpongeBob SquarePants"--is what makes it dangerous to our imaginations, Phelan warns. "In their [Microsoft's] attempts to make PowerPoint easier to use, they have all these templates. They totally limit your ability to express yourself. Everybody's using the same color palette. It's one more way to choke the life out of creativity."
Indeed, the program helpfully provides something called AutoContent Wizard, which all but writes the presentation for you. From a hefty list of potential speech topics, you click on the one you want, say, "Project Overview," "Selling Your Ideas" or "Managing HR's Changing Role," and the software burps out some 10 to 12 slides with prompts and even some virtual text.
Such principled contrariness as Phelan's may be fine for a high-minded professor trailing an Ivy League PhD--Phelan studied under renowned Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson--but for businesswomen and men, resistance to PowerPoint is futile, says Clarke L. Caywood, associate professor of integrated marketing at Northwestern University. "No one in business today could pretend to be facile in business communications without PowerPoint," he declares. "It's like being able to read."
Caywood, an early fan of the software whose passion has remained strong, says his own lectures and speeches are all done on PowerPoint, and soon the whole world may be doling out information in bullet items with diverting graphics thrown in. "I don't see anything on the horizon that's going to bump it," he says. "This [PowerPoint] is really smoking."
More than 80 percent of the presentations given by business school students rely on PowerPoint rather than the old-fashioned flowing narrative, Caywood says. And that's fortuitous, because once in the business world, those students will be employing PowerPoint on a regular basis, he adds. Indeed, a Microsoft spokesman once estimated that some 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made daily by business professionals around the world.
"I'm not guilty of any crime in asking my students to develop this expertise," Caywood says. "Every business requires it now." But what's fine for a business professional might not be so fine for a child just learning how to think, how to connect ideas, says Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of MIT's Initiative on Technology and Self.
"These technologies are changing the way we think," says Turkle. "They change how our kids grow up and how they process information. They're not passive." Software such as PowerPoint tends to prize "binary assumptions," Turkle notes, by jamming complex thoughts into brief snippets. "We have a technology that is encouraging us to see things in black and white--but is this a time when we need to see things in black and white? Good and bad? This kind of 'three bullets up and down' isn't helping us come up with the right kinds of arguments. It's not particularly what 3rd-graders need."
Turkle's reservations are not about PowerPoint per se--she uses it all the time, she admits--but with the increasing cultural mandate to have grade-school children become proficient in its use. "It's one of the most popular software in elementary and secondary schools," she says. "But PowerPoint doesn't teach children to make an argument. It teaches them to make a point, which is quite a different thing. It encourages presentation, not conversation. Students grow accustomed to not being challenged. A strong presentation is designed to close down debate, rather than open it up."
Turkle, author of seminal books on the cultural consequences of technology such as "The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit" (1984) and "Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet" (1995), adds, "I don't want to make PowerPoint the motor for an apocalyptic future. But it's part of a general trend. It's one element among others that keep us from complexity. We face a very complex world. History is quite complex. Current events and literature are complex. Students are thinking and doing presentations on complicated things, and we need them to be able to think about them in complicated ways.
"PowerPoint is not a step in the right direction. It's an exemplar of a technology we should be quite skeptical about as a pedagogical tool."
How pervasive is PowerPoint among grade-school children? Exact numbers of PowerPoint users among the LePage's-and-Crayola set are hard to come by because, explains Eric Herzog, a product manager at Microsoft, individual school districts and sometimes even individual schools within those districts make their own decisions about technology use in the classroom.
"Overseas, we see more top-level decision-making. But in the United States, all states and all districts do it differently," says Herzog, who works in the company's Education Solutions division. Microsoft supplies PowerPoint and other applications to schools at a substantial discount, Herzog says. Although the software originally was intended for the business market, by 1998 "teachers had discovered it," he says. They used it to present lessons and, more recently, to help students hone their proficiency with computers. "Teachers like it because it's a content-empty tool," Herzog continues. "It's an open-ended tool. All the ideas, all the creativity, comes from the kids. PowerPoint is a tool they can use to express their creative ideas."
But what about the charges that PowerPoint slices and dices complexity and ambiguity? That it changes kids' thinking from a flowering tree of associative learning and rapturous discovery to the grim lockstep of an outline with one-size-fits-all clip art? That its fancy graphics can mask a lack of actual content? "It's important to make sure it's used in the proper way," Herzog states. "It's certainly not a replacement for other tools in the classroom."
Elizabeth Cochran, of the Chicago Public Schools, makes a similar point--a verbal point, that is, not a PowerPoint point: Technology is not inherently good or bad. Only its usage can be labeled that way. "A PowerPoint presentation is not going to replace a long-term research paper," insists Cochran, an instructional technology coordinator. Technology is now part of the curriculum as early as pre-kindergarten classes, she says. "It supports engaged learning. The research does show that when teaching is used in ways that make students participants in their own learning experience, it enhances the educational experience. It's a way of capitalizing on student interest."
No one doubts that kids love gadgets and gizmos, but, critics ask, since when do we let students decide what's good for them? Isn't that like replacing spinach on the school lunch menu with Oreos?
At any rate, Cochran notes, "We live in the digital age. It's important to incorporate it. Regardless of what career a student goes into, be it a restaurateur or the president of IBM, there will be a level of technology they'll need.
"As I said, PowerPoint will not replace a research paper," she adds, "but if a student writes a paper, PowerPoint might be a way to deliver that paper in front of a group of people. It can always be used in a way that's not effective. But a chalkboard can be used in a way that's not effective, too."
The world of cultural observers, then, is large enough to contain both those enthralled by PowerPoint and those appalled by it, those who readily welcome new technologies and those who believe that all technologies need to be interrogated as relentlessly as murder suspects.
"I'm surprised at how resistant I've become to PowerPoint and such classroom technologies," muses Todd Parker, an English professor at DePaul University. "When they were first introduced, I thought I'd be happy to use such aids, but after trying several of them, especially PowerPoint, I've come to loathe them all with a passion--in particular because they easily become a crutch for the poor student and a stumbling block to students already too disengaged from the act of learning.
"My biggest complaint," Parker says, "is that they come between the teacher and his or her students. The danger is that class tends to devolve into a slide show from which students too often retreat to that room behind their eyeballs. My seven years at DePaul have taught me that the most valuable relationship between teacher and student is charismatic and immediate, one in which the teacher actively engages the students personally. This is hard to do when you turn the effort of instruction over to a machine.
"I even think that it's less important what I teach my students than how I challenge them morally and intellectually." Hard to imagine a PowerPoint presentation doing that.
Yet Roger Graves, Parker's colleague in the DePaul English department, is a PowerPoint enthusiast. "The educational evidence in support of the use of this Technology is too strong," says Graves, who routinely posts his PowerPoint-fueled lectures on the Internet for students to peruse at their leisure. "Used properly, this technology changes what goes on in classrooms . . . The core teaching skill is not lecturing or even orchestrating class discussion, but instead creating a learning environment and motivating students. The focus becomes more on learning and less on teaching."
Howard Gardner, the well-known developmental psychologist who has written extensively about children's creativity and pioneered the concept of multiple intelligences, might seem like a perfect candidate to lead the anti-PowerPoint charge, especially in public schools, where rote use of the software might channel kids' minds into preordained pathways. But he's a PowerPoint man to the bone.
"I certainly don't see it as bad for students and learners," declares Gardner, who uses PowerPoint regularly in his public lectures. "I certainly don't think that it stifles creativity, and might even stimulate it if the technology is used imaginatively and synergistically with other paraphernalia.
"Like any other technology, it can be overused and distorted," cautions Gardner, the John H. and Elizabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. "[But] PowerPoint is itself quite flexible and so there is no need for it to simplify or oversimplify students' presentations. If a student falls into a bad habit or uses it in a rigid fashion, teachers should give helpful feedback, just as if a student always wrote a paper in exactly the same way."
Others, however, bristle at the fact that PowerPoint presentations can be stamped out like machine parts. An essay by Thomas A. Stewart in an issue of Fortune last year was titled, "Ban It Now! Friends Don't Let Friends Use PowerPoint." Stewart argued that the software was turning business presentations into boring assembly-line products. "Why in the world would you want a uniform look?" Stewart asked, adding theatrically: "Never put more than three bullet points in a PowerPoint show, experts say. It confuses people. Keep it simple." Then with rich sarcasm: "You know that life is." The Wall Street Journal reported last month on PowerPoint's relentless march into grade-school classrooms, raising a few mild concerns among educators that the software's bells and whistles, its dazzling doodads, could transform mediocre student work into triumphs--at least on a superficial level.
And it's the superficiality, not the fact that PowerPoint may dumb down complex ideas, that bothers Larry Nighswander.
"People get overwhelmed with what they can do and forget that moderation is an important part," says Nighswander, director of the School of Visual Communications at Ohio University and a former National Geographic photographer.
PowerPoint is now the preferred software of photographers making presentations of their work to professors or prospective employers, Nighswander says. "But it can become visual noise. Nobody sees the content anymore. They're thinking, 'I wonder if this screen is going to blast out of the corner or break into little pieces?' When you're first shown what sophisticated software can do, you think, 'Oh, wow, I'll be able to do this or that.' It takes time to figure out if that can make a better presentation or if it's all just decoration.
"There's the old axiom in design that says, 'Less is more.' They should have that printed on the outside of the PowerPoint box. It needs a warning label."
So should all technologies, even the most benign-seeming ones, Neil Postman would say. Postman is the New York University professor who has turned out book after book asking us to stop and reflect before rushing headlong into technology's chilly embrace.
"Technology is ideology," he writes in his most famous polemic, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" (1985). "To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidly plain and simple."
What sort of world is reflected in PowerPoint? A world stripped down to briefly summarized essences, a world snipped clean of the annoying underbrush of ambiguity and complication. But is that the world in which we want to live? And are the values prized by businesses--succinctness, directness, manipulation of symbols--also the values we want running our schools and nurturing our children?
On the other hand, don't computers help everyone to work smarter and faster, and aren't students immeasurably enriched by an easy familiarity with technologies such as PowerPoint?
What do you think?--assuming that you still can, that is, after prolonged exposure to PowerPoint.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
A PowerPoint presentation by Robert Frost
PROJECT GOALS:
- To watch woods fill up with snow.
- To do so without being observed.
- To steal some time from other projects.
- To stay mindful of other projects, however.
RISKS OF PROJECT:
- Could get caught by owner of woods.
- Could cause disorientation in horse.
PROBABILITY OF DISCOVERY:
- Identity of owner not 100 percent sure.
- Likeliest candidate lives in village.
- Cannot rule out other owner or owners, or recent real estate sale.
- Would be wise to be ready to start up sleigh.
STATUS OF HORSE:
- Likely disoriented by unplanned stoppage.
- Additional reasons for disorientation:
-- No farmhouse near
-- Only woods and frozen lake nearby
-- Darkest evening of the year
- Horse shows uneasiness by shaking bells.
STATUS OF WOODS:
- Lovely; dark; deep
- Largely silent, though wind and snow flurries are slightly audible
LIMITATIONS ON PROJECT:
- Strictly short-term
- Other commitments have priority
- Also need to sleep
- Commitments involve miles of travel.
- Travel has precedence over sleep.
Close of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's 'I Have a Dream' speech:
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low . . . and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. . . .This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope . . . we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood . . . we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire . . . the mighty mountains of New York . . . the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania . . . the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado . . . the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia . . . from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee . . . from every hill . . . of Mississippi! From every mountainside, let freedom ring! When we let freedom ring . . . from every village and every hamlet . . . every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at Last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
I HAVE A DREAM
A PowerPoint presentation by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
SOME OF MY DREAMS:
- We achieve a level playing field.
- The glory of the Lord becomes visible.
STRATEGY FOR REALIZING DREAMS:
- Must rely on faith.
- Must stick together.
- Need to pray a lot.
- May have to go to jail.
- Must use catch phrase, "Let Freedom Ring."
(Cut to MP3 track of "My Country 'Tis of Thee")
EXPECTATIONS:
- Freedom rings in a broad range of places.
- Will speed day of racial and religious harmony.
- Day will include a sing-a-long.
- Singers: Black men, white men, Jews, Gentiles, Protestants, Catholics.
- Song of choice: old Negro spiritual.
- Song's inspirational tagline:
-- "Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

The Sexual Adventures of the Smurfs

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 09:35:06 GMT

Originally posted in alt.sex.stories Thu, 6 Apr 1995 19:37:26 -0400
It’s time to tell the truth about Smurfs. You see, Smurfs are a lot like other folks; they have dreams and ambitions, deep, thoughtful conversations with each other, and good and bad times.
“But,” people ask, “do Smurfs have... you know... sex?”
The answer is an emphatic and resounding yes! And why shouldn’t they? They’re people, too. What most people don’t know is why Smurfs are blue. Well, the reason is because Smurfs only have sex once a year. Face it: if you had sex only once a year, you’d be blue, too. Once a year, in the Smurf village, flags and banners fly happily in the breeze, proclaiming that the day of the annual Smuckfest has arrived. Birds sing and the Sun comes out to watch, despite the weather-Smurf’s direst predictions. I guess good ol’ Mr. Sun is a voyeur. In the middle of town, Papa Smurf gives a brief speech explaining the origin of the Smuckfest; how Dr. C. Everett Koop came to the village and warned all the Smurfs about AIDS.
Papa Smurf knew that no one made condoms small enough for a Smurf (even though everyone knows that all male Smurfs are uniformly well-hung, for their size), so he decreed that all Smurfs would only smuck one day a year.
“Smucking one day a year will help us identify any diseases we may transmit to one another, and keep them from spreading to the animals in the forest,” declaimed Papa Smurf. “Besides, it will give Smurfette a chance to rest.”
Yes! Smurfette must rest. For, as everyone knows, Smurfette is the only female Smurf in the village, and after a full day of having vigorous, rabid sex with two hundred cunt-crazed little blue men, she needs a break.
So, on the appointed day, Papa Smurf bids everyone throw their inhibitions to the wind and immerse themselves in debauchery. And, as is his privilege, Papa Smurf throws out the first throe. At his signal, Smurfette unties the skintight blue band she must use to suppress her natural bustiness, and her astounding tits spring forth into the daylight. The Sun gleams lecherously on the smooth, blue flesh, nipples crinkling in the light of day from her soon-to-be-unbridled lust. Then Smurfette shimmies out of her skirt and stands before the crowd, naked as the day she was born, save the spike-heeled white boots she has donned just for the occasion. Her long, blonde hair cascades down her back and lasciviously outlines her buttocks, clinging like a dirty old man’s gaze to each curve and dimple. Her cunt winks lewdly from behind the golden shield of pubic glory, already glistening in mad anticipation of each and every raging rod it would receive that day.
And receive them gladly it would, for hers is the indefatigable furburger, and she hungered for the sauce blended in the heat of passion.
Smurfette turns to Papa Smurf and lifts her stupendous breasts with their turgid nipples to his lips. He takes each one, in turn, into his mouth, where his tongue dances the Fabulous Fandango around the areolae, as Smurfette moans like a cat in heat. Then, when poor Smurfette can take no more, Papa Smurf drops to his bony little knees and sprinkles his magic deSmurfilating dust on Smurfette’s engorged cunt lips. Presto! The lovely blonde braiding material falls from her, leaving her shaved smooth as a hard-boiled egg.
“Oh, Papa Smurf!” she cries. “Encore!! Encore!!” as she writhes in anticipation of the Fabulous Furless Fandango danced ’round her pulsating pussy.
Papa Smurf does not disappoint the damsel in distress; he slides his hands under her tight little blue ass and parts her moistness with his thumbs. As the hot, funky juices begin to run down his arms, he plunges tongue-first and tonsil-deep into her wiggling womanhood. Smurfette gasps as the talented tongue begins to do its magic, and her cunt clutches at it like a baby bird after a worm. Cradling his head to her crotch, Smurfette’s hips begin to slowly grind and twitch, for Papa Smurf’s tongue has unerringly found her S-spot, and Smurfette begins the slow, hot, agonizing rise to ecstasy.
“Oh, make me smurf, baby, make me smurf!” she pants, each stroke of his tongue causing her to throb and clutch.
As Smurfette’s moans and cries rise in pitch higher and higher, the crowd gazes in amazement at the mighty mound of meat struggling to escape from Papa Smurf’s pants. This, then, is the legendary Trouser Titan, bulging forth in a determined attempt to split the barrier. Just when Smurfette is certain that she will die from sheer sensory overload, Papa Smurf flings off his Levis and frees the Magnificent Heat-Seeking Moisture Missile from its cradle. Maddened with blind lust, Smurfette hurls Papa Smurf to the platform and leaps shrieking into the air, landing unerringly on his Titanic Totem. Suddenly filled, Smurfette’s cunt explodes in a monster orgasm, the force of which propels her screaming into the air again and again, each time plummeting her onto the Potent Purple Pecker and triggering another climax.
Before Smurfette can achieve orbit, Papa Smurf grabs her legs and pulls her to the ground. Swiftly, he stands, pulling her to her knees. Gasping in awe, Smurfette gets a head-on view of his hard-on, glistening in the light like a war staff. The sight of this shining stud is too much for Smurfette, who immediately grabs both of Papa Smurf’s bulging balls in her hands and pulls him to her waiting mouth. With preternatural skill and primeval hunger, Smurfette devours the monster cock, licking and sucking like a starving child with an ice cream cone. His ass knotting like a sailor’s anchor rope, Papa Smurf pounds into Smurfette’s mouth with furious strokes. As he reaches his blazing climax, he forces Smurfette to take all thirteen and 7/8ths inches of blue tube steak and fires round after pulsing round of blue goo down her ravenous throat.
“Hurray!!” shouts the crowd. “Now it’s our turn!!”
Suddenly the town square erupts with scenes of azure carnality, as two hundred tiny blue asses appear in the sunlight. Two hundred raging cocks swarm toward Smurfette’s waiting and ever-willing cunt, ready to make her scream for mercy as they scream for more. Four hundred bouncing balls follow each other toward the nearest available orifice, making Smurfette wish there were more of her.
Those lucky enough to find access to Smurfette’s fabulous form begin their crazed humping, as others find their schlongs being stroked as fast as she can grab. Those whose time will come later are coming now, as their friends clutch lustily at their forbidden fruits, flinging frothy fuck-foam far and wide.
Up the ass! Down the throat! Backhand, forehand, underhand, in the armpit or behind the knee, the Smurfs erupt in a display of orgasmic prowess to shame the most devoted student of the Kama Sutra. Soon the street becomes hazardous to navigate (and navigate one must), as the square gets deeper and deeper in the collective come. Hour after hour, the orgy rampages on.
Gradually, as night falls, the screams of orgasmic ecstasy turn to the moans and sighs of deep contentment, with the occasional whimper from an over-enthusiastic sodomite.
Soon all is quiet, as Smurf helps Smurf back to Home and Preparation H. Tubes of Chap-Stick are quickly distributed to soothe aching lips, and aloe gel is applied (as are lips, if it is too stimulating) to the citizen’s members to ease the burning. As the exhausted (and completely sated) Smurfs lie in sexual stupor, gentle rains come (not them, too!) to wash away all traces of the fleshfest that was. And you wondered why Smurfs are always in such a good mood...

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:16:27 GMT

Complete Courses and

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SELF IMPROVEMENT		HEALTH AND FITNESS

1100 Creative Suffering		M202 Creative Tooth Decay
1101 Overcoming Peace of Mind		M203 Exorcism and Acne
1102 You and Your Birthmark		M204 The Joys of Hypochondria
1103 Guilt Without Sex		M205 High Fiber Sex
1104 The Primal Shrug		M206 Suicide and Your Health
1105 Ego Gratification Through Violence		M207 Biofeedback and How to Stop It
1106 Molding Your Child's Behavior Through Guilt and Fear		M208 Skate Yourself to Regularity
1107 Dealing with Post-Realization Depression		M209 Understanding Nudity
1108 Whine Your Way to Alienation		M210 Tap Dance Your Way to Social Ridicule
1109 How to Overcome Self-Doubt Through Pretense and Ostentation		M211 Optional Body Functions

BUSINESS AND CAREER		CRAFTS

1110 "I made $l.98 in Real Estate"		Cl0l Baskets and Basket Cases
1111 Money Can Make You Rich		C102 How to Draw Genitalia
1112 Packaging and Selling Your Child		C103 Needle Craft for Junkies
1113 Career Opportunities in El Salvador		C104 Cuticle Crafts
1114 How to Profit From Your Own Body		C105 Gifts for the Senile
1115 The Underachiever's Guide to Very Small Business Opportunities		C106 Psychoceramics
1116 Tax Shelters for the Homeless		C107 How to Make Nothing From Practically Something
1117 Looter's Guide to American Cities		C108 Bonsai Your Pet

HOME ECONOMICS

1118 How to Convert Your Family Room into a Garage
1119 Cultivating Viruses in Your Refrigerator
1120 Sinus Drainage at Home
1121 Basic Kitchen Taxidermy
1121 1001 Other Ways to Use Your Vacuum Cleaner
1123 The Repair And Maintenance of Your virginity

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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indicate which subjects you would be interested in and return this form to one of our

Staff Development Representatives.

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 05:24:30 GMT

I have decided to post a little comedy on this journal... for lack of any other activity.

I will eventually get back to writing, but in the mean time, have a few laughs! I didn't write most of it, hence the "disclaimer" icon, but it's mostly from some word documents full of things that I have collected over the years. Here is as good a place as any to share them!

You May Have Seen It Before....

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 05:20:04 GMT

Bullshit Bingo

Do you keep falling asleep in meetings and seminars? What about those long and boring conference calls? Here is a way to change all of that!

How to play: Check off each block when you hear these words during a meeting, or seminar,. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout BULLSHIT!!

Synergy	Strategic Fit	Gap Analysis	Best Practice	Bottom Line
Revisit	Bandwidth	Hardball	Out of the Loop	Benchmark
Value-Added	Proactive	Win-Win	Think Outside the Box	Fast Track
Result-Driven	Empower [or] Empowerment	Knowledge Base	Quality Driven	IN PUT
Mindset	Client Focus[ed]	Ball Park	Game Plan	Leverage

Testimonials from satisfied players:

"I had only been in the meeting for five minutes when I won." -Jack W. - Boston

"My attention span at meetings has improved dramatically." -David D. - Florida

"What a gas. Meetings will never be the same for me after my first win." -Bill R - New York City

"The atmosphere was tense in the last process meeting as 14 of us waited for the 5^th box." -Ben G. - Denver

"The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed 'Bullshit' for the third time in 2 hours." - Kathleen L. - Atlanta

A Compilation

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 02:00:42 GMT

Here's a little something funny I wrote when I was bored one day:

So, this is the paper you've been waiting on. You've been pestering me for a month to get this fucking paper and i guess you wanted it bad. Well, it is extremely late, and it is definitely bad. This paper sucks so bad, you better be fucking happy. This is the worst paper you've ever read. So read on, you ass-wipe.
This is a story 'bout a man named Fuck, and his poor family sucked and fucked to keep the family fed. Then one day, they fuckin' up a pole, when Fuck found a riddle that messed his brain up bad. His friends told him "Fuck, you should sell this thing like drugs; you'll make so much money, you'll head up the fuckin' mob." They said, "Fuckin' Brooklyn is the place that you should sell, 'cause that is the place that shit like that goes well." So they packed up their shit and they flew their stolen jet, and they landed with a crash as the sisters farted gas.
Now if you read it all, you're fucked up in the mind, and here's the real story:

In a day of gallivanting, and a day of discovery, I came upon a computer program full of nothing but Zen bullshit. I read it all and my mind collapsed from exhaustion and confusion. The next thing I knew, I was floating on thin air. I didn't know why I was floating or even why I was alive, but the thing that got me most was the fact that I couldn't see a thing. I couldn't even see my own hands in back of my face, or was it the front? I really don't know what happened next, but the people who were there told me later that I quoted Benjamin Franklin and Einstein for hours before I freaked out screaming that Satan was out to get me and the demons were in my mind, and then I woke up yelling about the fuckin' whores on the corners telling me I was in their place and to get out. But the oddest thing was that there was no one there, so who was it telling me these things? So, if you're confused by now, then you know what kind of state of mind I am in, or was in, or will be, or whatever, 'cause I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
The next day, I learned some more about life from a book called "Things You Should Know About Life." The question was, what did it say, I sure don't remember. If you could tell me, I sure would be grateful to you forever and would be willing to give you all kinds of shit for the rest of your fuckin' life. The thing is, the only thing I remember about the whole week was that I not know nothing but that I am going insane and the feeling of insanity and of blissful confusion is not only wonderful, but it's not even understandable. So here I sit typing up this stupid paper because you wanted it so bad, and it's definitely bad. If you are happy now, I'll get onto next month's assignment. By the way, the fee for this paper is about three million dollars per word, so if you want to know any more about the week I was telling you about, you have to pay it all now. So go fuck yourself you mother fucking, jack rabbit, ass-o-holic, whorish, horseradish eating, onion faced, butt fucking, garlic sniffing, t0shirt wearing, jean rippin', jack ass of a fucking jerk-off, who eats nothing but your own shit for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and snacks, and you're about the ugliest ass-hole who ever wanted something so bad that you're willing to pay three million dollars a word for pure bullshit.

A Beaver Built a Dam

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 22:55:33 GMT

This was an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, State of Michigan.
***************************

Mr. Ryan DeVries
2088 Dagget Pierson, MI 49339 SUBJECT: DEQ File No. 97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Montcalm County Dear Mr. DeVries:

It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property. You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who did the following unauthorized activity:
Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond. A permit must be issued prior to the start of this type of activity. A review of the Department's files shows that no permits have been issued. Therefore, the Department has determined that this activity is in violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Michigan Compiled Laws, annotated.
The Department has been informed that one or both of the dams partially failed during a recent rain event, causing debris and flooding at downstream locations. We find that dams of this nature are inherently hazardous and cannot be permitted. The Department therefore orders you to cease and desist all activities at this location, and to restore the stream to a free-flow condition by removing all wood and brush forming the dams from the stream channel. All restoration work shall be completed no later than January 31, 2002.
Please notify this office when the restoration has been completed so that a follow-up site inspection may be scheduled by our staff. Failure to comply with this request or any further unauthorized activity on the site may result in this case being referred for elevated enforcement action.
We anticipate and would appreciate your full cooperation in this matter. Please feel free to contact me at this office if you have any questions.

Sincerely, David L. Price District Representative Land and Water Management Division
*******************
This is the actual response sent back........

Dear Mr. Price, Re: DEQ File No. 97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20;
Montcalm County.

Your certified letter dated 12/17/01 has been handed to me to respond to.
First of all, Mr. Ryan DeVries is not the legal Landowner and/or Contractor at 2088 Dagget, Pierson, Michigan. I am the legal owner and a couple of beavers are in the (State unauthorized) process of constructing and maintaining two wood "debris" dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond.
While I did not pay for, authorize, nor supervise their dam project, I think they would be highly offended that you call their skillful use of natures building materials "debris."
I would like to challenge your department to attempt to emulate their dam project any time and/or any place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic.
As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity.
My first dam question to you is: (1) Are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond Beavers or (2) do you require all beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request?
If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, through the Freedom of Information Act, I request completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits that have been issued. Perhaps we will see if there really is a dam violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Michigan Compiled Laws, annotated.
I have several concerns. My first concern is - aren't the beavers entitled to legal representation? The Spring Pond Beavers are financially destitute and are unable to pay for said representation - so the State will have to provide them with a dam lawyer. The Department's dam concern that either one or both of the dams failed during a recent rain event causing flooding is proof that this is a natural occurrence, which the Department is required to protect.
In other words, we should leave the Spring Pond Beavers alone rather than harassing them and calling their dam names. If you want the stream "restored" to a dam free-flow condition please contact the beavers - but if you are going to arrest them, they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter, they being unable to read English.
In my humble opinion, the Spring Pond Beavers have a right to build their unauthorized dams as long as the sky is blue, the grass is green and water flows downstream. They have more dam rights than I do to live and enjoy Spring Pond. If the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection lives up to its name, it should protect the natural resources (Beavers) and the environment (Beavers' Dams.).
So, as far as the beavers and I are concerned, this dam case can be referred for more elevated enforcement action right now. Why wait until 1/31/2002? The Spring Pond Beavers may be under the dam ice then and there will be no way for you or your dam staff to contact/harass them then.
In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention to a real environmental quality (health) problem in the area. It is the bears! Bears are actually defecating in our woods. I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the beavers alone. If you are going to investigate the beaver dam, watch your step! (The bears are not careful where they dump!)
Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office.

Sincerely, Stephen L. Tvedten

The Masquerade

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:35:29 GMT

She pulled off the masque. The masquerade party had been an experience no one could ever forget. Certainly not Ciria. Ciria had played an ugly stepsister for the day, but the day was now over, and she had to play herself now. Not that she minded any more, but it was odd. Before the party, it had excited her to get to be someone else for however long she could. But now, she looked in the mirror, happy to see her own face.
Ciria pondered why it was so exciting. Could it have been the masquerading Superman who had guessed her identity in the final contest? Or was it the prospect that being the ugly stepsister was losing her friends?
Unsure of why she was suddenly so happy with herself, she sat down to ponder the previous day. Time would go on, and soon she’d know.

Mid-life Philosophy

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 16:55:46 GMT

Just last week Oprah had a whole show on how great menopause will be... Puhleeeeeeeze! I've had a few thoughts of my own and would like to share them with you. Whether you are pushing 40, 50, 60 (or maybe even just pushing your luck) you'll probably relate.
Mid-life is when the growth of hair on our legs slows down. This gives us plenty of time to care for our newly acquired mustache.
In mid-life women no longer have upper arms, we have wing spans. We are no longer women in sleeveless shirts, we are flying squirrels in drag.
Mid-life is when you can stand naked in front of a mirror and you can see your rear without turning around.
Mid-life is when you go for a mammogram and you realize that this is the only time someone will ask you to appear topless.
Mid-life is when you want to grab every firm young lovely in a tube top and scream, "Listen honey, even the Roman empire fell and those will too."
Mid-life brings wisdom to know that life throws us curves and we're sitting on our biggest ones.
Mid-life is when you look at your-know-it-all, beeper-wearing teenager and think: "For this I have stretch marks?"
In mid-life your memory starts to go. In fact the only thing we can retain is water.
Mid-life means that your Body By Jake now includes Legs By Rand McNally -- more red and blue lines than an accurately scaled map of Wisconsin .
Mid-life means that you become more reflective...You start pondering the "big" questions. What is life? Why am I here? How much Healthy choice ice cream can I eat before it's no longer a healthy choice?
But mid-life also brings with it an appreciation for what is important. We realize that breasts sag, hips expand and chins double, but our loved ones make the journey worthwhile. Would any of you trade the knowledge that you have now, for the body you had way back when? Maybe our bodies simply have to expand to hold all the wisdom and love we've acquired. That's my philosophy and I'm sticking to it!

A Future Story

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:55:05 GMT

The globe over the huge city begins to dim. Alleys grow dark. The busy hustle and bustle of the day’s work grows quiet. Electric lights in office buildings go out, and store doors are locked. The only people still at work are in a small room atop the central control tower. The room is filled with clicks, as switches are thrown by mute hands. Curfew is set in motion.
“Ten minutes to curfew.” A dry voice, almost inhuman, cracks through the night. The inhabitants of the city begin to take warning. The last trip of the city’s only subway is getting underway. Above ground, those fortunate enough to own vehicles insert their passcards. The sounds of quietly humming engines fill the night.
Those who dare to stay where they are another minute do so in silence. It’s an eerie quiet they feel. The mass movement to the residential areas of the city leaves the streets empty.
“Nine minutes to curfew.” Law abiding citizens everywhere shiver at the sound of the city’s only source of broadcast. There are no TVs or radios, and even newspapers are rare. When that voice is heard, it can only mean one thing. Somebody, somewhere, daring enough to desire free will, is going to receive the ultimate punishment.
“Eight minutes to curfew.” The voice drones on. No one who cares about their own well-being would dare still be out, and by now, the voice is only vaguely heard through thick home walls.
Or so they think. In an alley, which has long since been too dark to travel safely, a candle is lit. If anyone had dared be around, they would have seen nothing but a candle, standing free on the alley floor, take light, sending shadows dancing across the walls. And, if they had looked very hard, they might have seen the silhouette of a man. A form very unmistakable, but not very easy to find. It was a man bent on purpose.
“Seven minutes to curfew.” The man in the alley ignored the warning again, and bent to pick up the seemingly ordinary candle. Tonight would be the ultimate test. Before now, no one in known history had ever survived a night outdoors. Those caught were questioned, tortured, starved, and then punished. It was completely unthinkable.
“Six minutes to curfew.” Doors in the inner walls of the city fly open, revealing their inhuman occupants. The city’s android law enforcement would take over where no human was allowed.
“Five minutes to curfew.” The androids spring to life. The sweeping movement from the walls to the central control tower would include several hundreds of these well programmed, heartless instruments of the law. No man had ever escaped them.
“Four minutes to curfew.” A lonely lady, rushing in from the night’s bitter cold, feels chills run down her spine as she recalls the last six minutes. She and her three co-workers having switched on the final stages of the curfew system, had walked calmly and quietly to their respective vehicles. It was only a two minute trip home, and her co-workers were probably settled into their own routines by now. But she had made a side trip.
“Three minutes to curfew.” Looking out a window, an adventuring young boy watches as the nearby androids begin to leave their nests. It had become a ritual for him. His eyes, alight with the excitement of an active imagination, watched as they took up sentry inside the walls.
“Two minutes to curfew.” The doors in the inner walls close. The watchful eyes of the small child take in every detail. The gleaming black of the android uniforms, dull in the almost pitch blackness of the night. The almost human features of the android faces. The twitching of the almost life-like hands.
“One minute to curfew.” The boy jumps. His own mind had taken him away from the real, to the imaginative. One day, he thinks to himself, One day, I’ll get ‘em. His eyes wander to an ancient collection of comic books. Heroes so old they’ve been forgotten. Materials so inspiring they’d be illegal – if anyone knew they existed.
“Curfew will now take affect.” The androids begin to move. The tired young mind watches as they walk slowly away. Twice he drifts to sleep, only to be awakened by the dry voice, which drones out every five minutes.
“Warning. Curfew is in effect. Any one caught outside of their homes for any reason is subject to ultimate punishment.”
And again, the lonely lady feels a chill run down her spine. Unable to sleep, she is the only one awake when a scream breaks out in the silence of the night. Tears run down her face, and she begins the solitary mourning of a man no one thought could exist.

Chapter 2: The Road to Nowhere

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 00:41:07 GMT

The night was getting darker, and the road was getting longer when Zack pulled off the freeway. He stopped at a local WalMart, and found a spot to park his bike on the sidewalk by the front doors.

Getting lithely off the bike, Sarah didn't bother to ask why they were stopping. After they had put their helmets on the seat, Zack grabbed her hand and led her into the store, which was largely abandoned at this time of the evening.

They quickly found themselves enjoying conversation among the many different departments, looking at everything, but for nothing. They chased one another around the toy department with water guns, and admired various items in sporting goods.

"Look at this one!" Sarah exclaimed, pointing to a three room tent that was displayed in the center aisle.

"Nice," Zack said, "but a little big for a bike." At that, Sarah grinned, turning down a nearby aisle labeled "camping equipment."

"What about this one?" she asked, picking up a small two man tent.

"Great!" Zack said, taking it out of her hands. "Now to find a couple of sleeping bags or something." He started looking down one side, picking up random items, and putting them down again.

When they finally made it up to the registers, they had all the necessary equipment that they could fit on the back of his bike.

"So, where are we headed?" Sarah finally asked, as they finished strapping everything down. "You have any idea?"

"Well," he replied, "I was thinking that we might just go, you know. Wherever we want. You up for that?"

"Hell, yeah!" She put on her helmet, and climbed on the back of the bike. Off they went, in search of nothing more than the next place they would stop.

Chapter 1: Sarah

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:36:51 GMT

She held Zack's waist with a secret smile on her face, hoping that he was too busy driving to notice. It had been a long time since she had gotten to ride. Maybe he would think she was just happy to be out on the open road.

The truth, in fact, was something much different. She hadn't been riding since her roommate moved to New York. That much was true, but the reason she was smiling was much more personal than that. As a point of fact, it was Zack himself that caused her to smile so. He didn't know this, of course.

Happily, she sat astride the magnificent machine, watching the beautiful country side pass them by, and holding on to this man whom she had admired from afar for so long. It seemed like they had been riding forever, and she never wanted it to end. Of course it would, and they would have to go home eventually. But in the mean time, she was just going to enjoy herself, holding on to this man.

Neither of them knew where they were headed when they had taken off earlier that day. It had just been a whim that has caused him to say that he was going to go for a ride. In the excitement of the prospect, he had offered to let her ride along. She never thought he was being serious... just something that he was saying to be polite. Only because she happened to be there when he had come up with the idea. She had non-committally said she would love to go, expecting that he would drag around for a little while longer, then decide to go home instead.

It hadn't ended up that way, and Sarah couldn't help but feel the greatest of happiness about it. No matter that he didn't have the foggiest notion about how she really felt, she was getting to spend some time alone with him, and that was all that really mattered.

He turned his head and she saw that he was saying something. She leaned in to listen, and only barely caught him saying "something to eat?"

"Sure," she said into his ear.

There was a sign just there that pointed to a small town to the south, and he tokk the next turn toward that little town. It was only a matter of seconds, in her estimation, before they were stopping and she was climbing off the bike in the lot of a small restaraunt. She was reluctant to let go of the moment, but hunger was more important after the long drive.

"I think we have gone through about two counties at this point," Zack said. "If we keep going, we should be able to hit the state line in about an hour."

"Wow," she replied, "I hadn't realized we'd gone that far!"

They walked in total silence to the door, and he held it open for her. She thanked him, and they went inside to find a quaint little place. It was obviously family run. The plates of nearby patrons didn't match, and the coffee cups were all a little different. They were told to seat themselves, and they both stepped forward in the direction of the smoking section in back, where there were fewer people. Sarah looked around nervously, found the ladies room, and excused herself to wash her hands.

It wasn't that she was entirely nervous to be around him, after all they had hung out many times in the past. It was just that usually she had several other people there with her. She was afraid that something would show, that he would feel uncomfortable if he saw even a hint of how she felt. So far, she had managed to hide it. What would she do if he guessed?

She left the ladies room, still wiping her hands on her jeans.

"Out of paper towels. Oh, well, guess that's what jeans are for, huh?" She giggled as she sat down across from him.

**********

They spent the next hour at that table, talking about nothing at all. Topics from the state of economics in the country to the placement of exit ramps ran fleetingly around their table. Sarah noted that he seemed just as happy to sit there and talk as to get up and get back on the bike.

At some point, he started talking about her old roommate. Sarah wasn't clear where it had come from, but she was enjoying herself, and not about to let it deter her from that.

"Well, you know, we started off roommates, and we ended friends. It wasn't really a bad thing, you know?" She had dated the man for a few months prior to his move, but it had never become serious. They had their own rooms, and that line was never crossed. But she didn't understand why it would mean anything to Zack.

"You guys were good friends. I was just surprised that he up and left like that." Zack took a slow sip of his water, watching her as she formulated her response.

"Well, he had always wanted to go. He just felt that it was time." He had felt that she was in love with someone else, and didn't want to stand in her way. That was the truth. He left her as a friend, to move along with his life, and leave her to hers. She has thanked him for that.

"I just thought you guys were getting serious, is all." Zack was still watching her closely. It made her a little nervous, really. Her hands began to sweat, and she had the sudden urge to go wash them.

"Well, we just never had that much emotion invested in it," she said instead. Just sit here,she told herself. You'll give yourself away. "He and I knew both knew it. It was more like a convenience to hang out together, and that was really all there ever was to it."

"Now the way he looked at you, I would have thought different," Zack said, finally turning his head to look out the window at his bike.

"Well, if he harbored any feelings, he never told me," Sarah said, a bit on the startled side. Was he going to tell her that her old roommate was in love with her, and she should go to him? She didn't want to hear that, but she braced herself for it anyway.

"Okay, I'm sorry if I mistook it. I just wanted to know."

"Why?" she asked, before she could catch herself. Now, that was awefully sillly, Sarah, she chastised herself.

"Well, the truth is..." Zach said, after a long pause, "That I was kinda hoping you would say that. It's just that.... well, I was hoping that you would be interested in... " He paused again. He looked her right in eye this time, and the moment went on forever. Neither of them really noticed that he hadn't actually finished the statement. He had leaned in a little, and she leaned in as he spoke. The next thing she knew, she was living in a dream.

His lips were soft and gentle, and she felt that she could just fall into his arms, if it weren't for the table between them. He slowly reached his hand across the table and grasped her hand gently in his.

It seemed like mere seconds later that they were back on his bike again, driving toward the small downtown area that they had spied from the parking lot. Sarah was on cloud nine, and she felt that she would never come down again. They drove slowly through town, admiring the local architecture, talking again about nothing at all. It was so natural, she forgot all about how nervous she had been before.

Before they knew it, it was starting to get darker. They would have to head back soon, if they were going to be able to find their way home in the dark. But neither of them dared to mention it as they found a small country road that headed off to nowhere at all.

A few miles up that little country road, Zack slowed down a bit, turned his head, and said soemthing to her that made her smile all over again.

"I don't feel like going home yet. You?"

"No," she replied. And just like that, they were on the freeway, heading to who knew where.