Posted in Society, Tech

Insanity or Bluetooth?

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

I wonder what someone unfamiliar with modern technology would think when looking at us. I’m not talking about cavemen—maybe just someone from the 80s.

Hey! Stop rolling your eyes. This isn’t one of those look at how far we’ve come articles.

But sometimes it just hits you in the face that we’re so hooked on the latest and greatest technology, that we don’t stop to consider how it will affect us. And by us I mean either our society, or just us lowly peons.

Specifically I’m wondering if the helpful souls that invented the Bluetooth headset, ever stopped to think about what a bunch of idiots we look like when we’re walking around yelling to ourselves.

I have a Bluetooth. I use it while driving, and at the office so I can keep working when I take a call. I remove it during lunch, meetings, personal conversations, and even during long stretches at my desk. But like most people I often forget to remove it, and as soon as I see the eyes of someone I’m talking to darting back and forth from my eyes to the blinking blue light by my right ear, I take it off.

But many—MANY—Bluetooth users never take them off. Frankly, I wonder if they sleep with it on. And most people just haven’t developed the body language to convey that they are talking on the cell phone.

Here’s a tip. If you’re talking to someone on the phone, and not to me, don’t make eye contact with me.

My favorite thing about the headsets is that they make us look like a bunch of nutcases wandering the streets. Most people make a point not to talk to themselves around other people—lest we look insane. But that little earpiece really gets rid of a lot of social awkwardness. The hallway outside my department is routinely littered with people having arguments, personal conversations, and business meetings with…the wall, the door to the breakroom, a person facing them who happens to be in a completely different conversation.

But by far the oddest thing—in fact, what inspired me to write this post—were the two people in the lobby having a meeting over their headsets who didn’t even realize they were in the same room.

We really are a bunch of loonies.

Posted in Tech, Writing

Writing v. Technology

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

Generally when you hear about writing and technology you hear how they can compliment each other. But today’s tale involves how they can sometimes be at cross purposes. Today because of the fact that I am a writer I have hit a tech wall.

You all know people like this. People who swear it’s easier to spend seven hours typing and retyping a letter on an electric typewriter because they refuse to learn how to use email. Or who refuse to get a cell phone even thought they desperately need one. You can find them easily enough by seeing who’s explaining to younger generations about how tough they had it.

Well today I have had to admit one of my technical limitations. I will never be good at texting.

In recent months I’ve been texting a lot more. Not “a lot” by the standards of anyone under the age of 30, but it’s more than I’ve done in the past. I have a moderately good phone for it. It’s a Palm with a full, if cramped, keyboard. And for someone who generally uses two fingers to type, being limited to one isn’t much of a handicap.

No, what is stopping me is my inability to use TXT Shorthand. Yes, I’m referring to the LOLs of the modern world.

I’m never ROFL. I will never BRB. I don’t VEG, but smile. And I couldn’t care less about your A/S/L. Y2K was a hysteria, not an “Aw, shucks.” And even if I do KWYM, I won’t admit it.

It’s not just an unfamiliarity with this terms that get’s in the way. Like anything else, I know I could learn it. It’s just that taking the time to learn them seems about as much fun as learning to play fingernails on a chalkboard and calling it music.

In fact when I text I seem to purposely distance myself from these abominations by testing in complete sentences and proper punctuation. I’ve even been teased for sending texts with compound sentences complete with semi-colons.

Maybe this all is the technological equivalent of complaining about walking 10 miles through the snow to school, through the snow, uphill, both ways. But if hating TXT is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

This post was originally posted on Write Anything—
where six writers talk about the trials and
tribulations of their writing lives. And each
Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

Posted in Politics

A Small Dose of Political Reality

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

I rarely talk politics. Anywhere. Not on this blog, not at work, and generally not even with friends. The reason is that most people don’t want to discuss politics, they want to lecture, and then get angry that you don’t agree with them. And I learned a long time ago, that I don’t agree with anyone on politics even half of the time. I’m not a liberal, I’m not a conservative. I used to be a Libertarian, but it didn’t take.

Politically, I consider myself a patriot. And I doubt that means the same thing to me as it does the majority of the population. I have voted in every national or state level election I have been eligible for and have never voted for the winning candidate for President, Governor, Senator, Representative or Mayor.

I relate all this as prologue, so you can take what follows with the appropriate grain of salt.

Can we all please calm down about Obama?

I’m not for one second suggesting that his election is anything but historic. And although his election may signal a change in the ugly racial history of our country, I can also accept that it may be an aberration.

But I also understand that Obama has more weight on his shoulders than any other president in recent memory. And not just the political and economic tumult he must wade into, but he also carries 400 years of racial turbulence along for the ride.

I heard a poll a few days ago that said that an international poll found Obama to be the most respected president in over 50 years. Until earlier today he wasn’t even president, and upon the writing of this post the only decisions he has made as president are how many appetizers are too many at your own inauguration ball. How can he possibly be the most respected president when he’s done nothing?

Please don’t get me wrong. I hope Obama is the best president we’ve ever had. No, I didn’t vote for him, but wishing him ill is tantamount wishing further hardships on our country. I didn’t vote for Bush either, but he was my president, and I would have felt a traitor to not support him.

Barack Obama has a hard road ahead of him, and he’s saddled with some staggering baggage. Historically, a executive and legislative branch of the same party is not a blessing—there’s something to be said for the benefit of a Devil’s Advocate. He’s also got frightening expectations to live up to.

Additionally, I’m terrified what would happen to this country if some racist nut-job happens to get off a lucky shot.

I hope he’s a great president. I hope we have turned a page in our racial history. I hope in four years that I’m ashamed that I didn’t vote for him. I hope he can repair our image and relations with our overseas allies.

And I don’t fault others for their hope.

But the history of the office is that few men can live up to their own hype. And it’s Obama’s job to earn his place in history, not for anyone to anoint him.

He should have our support, but not our blind obedience.

Posted in Health

Lost in Time

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

I feel lost.

Like it or not, we’re creatures of habit. The details day-to-day details may change a bit, but in general our days, weeks, months and years follow a loose pattern. Upsetting this pattern can make us feel lost in our own lives.

Since Thursday night my life has been off kilter. Friday, Saturday & Sunday were lost to a combination of violent headaches and the haze of medication. Monday I took off work to recover from the hangover of the weekend. Then today we had an unexpected snow day.

I know for those of you who live with snow on a regular basis, 6 inches of fluff is no big deal, but for a city with only and handful of plows, and no snow tires anywhere, it doesn’t take much to shut a city down for a day.

All of this has amounted to 5 days—so far—completely out of my routine.

And it’s got me feeling a bit…off.

Posted in Health

Can’t Enjoy the Cold Weather

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

Tonight promises to be the coldest night of the season so far—10°, and 0° with the wind chill. That may not seem like much to you northerners, but it’s fairly cold for Raleigh.

I love the cold weather. I grew up in Miami, where winter consisted of one cold night, where everyone broke out the sweaters and parkas they’d been given as gifts. Then by noon the next day it was back to 70°. So once I left Miami, I was happy to have actual seasons.

So normally the coming sub-freezing weekend would have me jazzed. But right now I’m a prisoner in my own skin. Two days ago I started a cycle of cluster headaches. And for anywhere from a few days to a couple of months I can expect a series of crippling headaches each day.

Even if we get snow Sunday night, as they’re predicting, I won’t get to enjoy it.

Posted in General Silliness

Muse Flash: I Collect…

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

What do you collect, just for yourself? We all collect things. Many of these collections are common—coins, stamps, shot glasses—proudly displayed to show our membership in an unofficial fraternity of enthusiasts. Others are more private. Not secret, mind you—just a collection that’s a more organic collection, growing by chance and happenstance, without the support of a group of enthusiasts to learn from. Maybe it’s the corks from the bottles of champagne you’ve had in celebration, or the license plates from every car you’ve gotten rid of. Often this casual collection says much more about us than the collections we cultivate.

Answer this question on your own blog, then leave a comment with your answer and a link to your post.

I collect spam subject lines. You’ve all gotten spam in your inbox where the subject or the text is just a random string of words, or a snippet of words taken from some larger text. Nearly all of the time, they’re nonsense, sometimes they’re offensive or suggestive, but once in a while there’s something worth keeping. Not for their own merit, but sometimes they are great fodder for brainstorming.

Some examples:

Winter is surrounded by icy women

cough syrup requires assistance

the alchemist procrastinates

marvelous machinery, and quiet vassily

I have found that my almost unused Gmail account produces far more spam, and hence more keepers, than does my primary Yahoo! account.

In some ways this is the internet equivalent of browsing garage sales looking for hidden treasures, but I prefer to think of it as a manifestation of the “a million monkeys at a million typewriters” adage. With all the trash these leeches put out it’s funny that by sheer accident they have produced something of worth.

There are websites devoted to Spam Poetry, where artists write poems of the flotsam skimmed from subject lines, but to me this is a perversion of the purer form of keeping each line in its original state.

Now it’s your turn. Answer this question on your own blog, then leave a comment with your answer and a link to your post.

Muse Flash is a new feature, where I’ll give you a topic for your own blog. I’m going to try it for a few posts and see if it has legs.

Posted in Brats, Family

My Kids Will Never Leave Home

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

How does a parent teach common sense? This is not a rhetorical question. I need to know the answer. Or my kids will never leave home.

This has been on my mind of late, as my oldest has wandered aimlessly into her teen years.

I listen to a radio talk show on the way into work, and yesterday one of the hosts related a story about his kid who just went away to college. For his mother’s birthday he sent home a card. It arrived with a 1¢ stamp and 41¢ postage due. When he asked his son why he bought only a 1¢ stamp he replied that he thought it made sense to buy the cheapest one they sold.

After some well-deserved teasing of his son, the host asked if this indicated a fundamental lapse in his parenting. His co-host responded, correctly in my opinion, that eventually people have to take the responsibility to ask questions, and that it’s not possible for a parent to know everything his child still needs to learn.

This anecdote gives me some comfort that my kids are not unique in their inability to question and learn from everyday life. But it does little for my hope that they will one day evolve to the point where they can safely leave home.

I mean, at 13, Claudia should understand why it’s important to take the pots and pans out of the oven before preheating it. And if she forgets to do it, she understand the reason she should use a potholder to correct the problem.

At 11, Gabe should understand that he should close the door before letting the dog off the leash.

They should know this, right?

I remember asking questions when I was young. And not just the why is the sky blue variety. Why do we pay sales tax? Why do we need immunizations? How do you mail a letter?

Sure my kids ask why, but it’s more a way to question authority than in a quest for understanding. Why do I have to clear the dishes. Why do I have to go to bed now?

All this makes me wonder if—both in our own home, and in society as a whole—we are nurturing a generation of people who desperately want control, but who are wildly unprepared to get that control.

Posted in Brats, Family, Holidays

Post-Holiday Malaise

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

I’m not the biggest fan of the holidays. Not a Scrooge mind you—I probably fall right in the middle of the bell-curve. But the time of the year right after the holidays always seems to bring with it a downswing in my mood. And I’m not sure I ever really understood it until now.

When I was a kid, I always thought it was the normal back-to-school lethargy. Then in high school and college I reasoned that the abrupt change in schedule just meant I was tired. As I moved into adulthood I attributed it to the annual belt-tightening that naturally follows a period of financial excess. And then as a parent I thought it was just the post-Christmas poverty.

But now I think I just miss the lights.

I’ve never been a big one for going off the deep end with decorations, but during the holidays our house would probably best be compared to a low-rent casino trying to advertise some new promotion. There are mismatched strands of lights, three different inflatables all dressed as Santa—as if Snoopy, Pooh and Tigger are about to rumble for the right to deliver presents (my money’s on Tigger), trees festooned with unbreakable ornaments—half of which were already broken (which I suppose makes them unbreakable in the same way shattered glass is)—and walkways lined with lighted canes and snowflakes.

I know it sounds like a lot, but I’ve got 4 kids. You try telling one that they can’t have their favorite inflatable in the front yard when the other got their snowman decoration staked out in the front yard. I know I could pull rank, but then we’d just be laying down the law for the entire four-week break. And what fun would that be. Parents don’t get the luxury of good taste.

And out house wasn’t even the brightest on the block. The house down the street had a nativity set that not only lit up, but he blanketed the front yard with net lights. The resulting lawn grid made the whole thing look like a manger scene from The Matrix.

Yes it’s all gaudy, and tacky, loud and obnoxious. But now that it’s all gone, the street is just so plain. On a street where all the houses look pretty much the same, mime is no longer distinguished as the one that most interferes with star-watching. Instead it’s the one with the arch in the garden, that you really can’t see because it’s too dark. What fun is that?

It’s all rather like being in Disney World long enough to see them power down the rides for the night.

Posted in Writing

How Do You Read?

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

It’s a misconception that the creative process is actually creative. It is, rather, a process of reorganization and performance. The input comes from everything around us—our home, our family, our friends, our neuroses, our parent’s habits, our friend’s foibles, the bedroom from our childhood, the odd accent of our 3rd grade teacher…you get the picture.

The creative process is really just the way our minds (or souls…or what have you) filter, combine, splice, recombine, marinade, and ferment the various inputs, in the attempt to create something interesting. And while we do control the output to some degree, it’s also directly affected by what we choose to put into ourselves.

By design, this blog tends to focus on the output of the creative process; nurturing the fragile writer’s ego, to help us output something we will be happy with. But we shouldn’t neglect the input side of the equation. As writers the easiest way for us to influence the input into the creative process is by choosing what we read.

How do you choose what you read? Are you one of those who carefully choose the next few books? Or do you zip off in new directions on a whim? Is your reading list guided by the random fluctuations of the local library? Do you stick to one genre, or move freely between the sections of the bookstore?

There is a idiom in writing that you should read what you want to write, so it follows that if you want to write something particular, you should read books that will nudge you in that direction.

I tend to read in mad bursts. I’ve always been a heavy reader. Several years back—out of college, but before I had a family—I kept track of my reading for one year, and it amounted to 276 books. But from the time I arrived in Raleigh until April of last year I read almost nothing. Right now I’m on a tear, averaging about a book a day. If I find an author I like, I’ll probably read everything at the bookstore by them before moving on. Often, browsing the citations of an author will send me off a wild chase through a less-traveled area of the bookstore.

This leads to a rather disorganized bookshelf. My to read shelf is crammed with wildly disparate titles. And some books that I very much want to read, will sit untouched for months as my subconscious chases down one elusive idea or another. I just counted my to read shelf—72 books.

This all leads to a wild streak in my own writing—one I have yet to tame (and truthfully, I’m not sure I want to). I will simultaneously work of a humorous sword and sorcery story, a hard sci-fi, a psychedelic story about insomnia, and a character-driven non-genre short.

So, how do you read? And how does it affect your creative output?

This post was originally posted on Write Anything—
where six writers talk about the trials and
tribulations of their writing lives. And each
Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

Posted in Anti-Resolutions, General Silliness, Writing

2009 New Year’s Anti-Resolutions

Posted on by Dale Challener Roe

I know it’s not quite the new year yet, but as it’s my last post of 2008 I thought it a good time for my annual New Year’s Anti-Resolutions.

These are really more of a writing exercise than real resolutions—a way to get the new year off to a creative start. Although, if you do it right, these resolutions should be a breeze to keep.

The rules are simple:

  • List ten things you resolve not to do in the upcoming year.
  • Be as creative as possible.
  • Post them on your blog and leave a link in your comment below.

To get thing rolling, here are…

My 2009 New Year’s Anti-Resolutions

  1. I will not get my kids hooked on coffee in an attempt to keep them little by stunting their growth.
  2. I will not post my daughter in a fake auction on eBay, just to see how much I could get for her.
  3. I will not go to the library and put misleading, handwritten notes in the margins of books to throw off other researchers.
  4. I will not propagate an internet hoax alleging that our new president’s speeches contain secret advertising messages sold to US companies as a way to help fight the recession.
  5. I will not try to convince my kids to punch up their essays for school through liberal use of the elusive seventh vowel.
  6. I will not advocate the use of disposable batteries to create home electroshock therapy kits.
  7. I will not subject the world to the recipe for tofu chip cookies.
  8. I will not preach belief in the ancient Norse Gods as a way to return to Family Values.
  9. I will not teach my six-year-old how to play craps so that he can hustle his classmates to supplement his lunch allowance.
  10. I will not fake disturbing conversations over my Bluetooth headset in public, as a way of determining who is eavesdropping.

This post was originally posted on Write Anything—
where six writers talk about the trials and
tribulations of their writing lives. And each
Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.