Tag Archives: writing

April 22, 2013 · 7:22 pm

On further consideration

Just finished reading War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. Not the type of book that type of book that comes across my desk very often, actually has never really come across my desk. It the first book I’ve ever read in the “Urban Fantasy” genre. It’s also teh first time I’d ever heard of the “Urban Fantasy” genre. So BOOM there ya go, mind expanded.

I’m not really in tune with the fantasy and science fiction. I like them.. I’m just not in the loop for stuff like that. But I do read Scooter’s blog over at A Nod To Nothing, he reads a lot of stuff in this genre and he highly recommended this one. Sort of an interesting book, set in Minneapolis, got a goth thing going, music thing, Hiawatha Falls and First Avenue are featured. It was a decent enough book, not especially polished, it wasn’t high brow literature like say Sea of Poppies by Amitav Gosh.

But as I read it, I could help think that you know what, I could write something like this.

Ahh writing a book, a long unrealized goal. To be an author, something I’ve thought about for 25 years.

So, you say, do it.

Writing a book requires some stick-to-itivenes, something that Captain ADD would have trouble with. One the other hand some way, some how I’ve found a way to post 2300 posts on this blog. What if I’d focused that effort on writing a book?

I’da written about 7 by now. Crazy to think.

What about time? So far my net earnings from writing come to the grand total of $1500.00. And that sum, not exactly payment for what I’d written from a content perspective, rather it was because I wrote about something that sparked the interest of an attorney looking for a guy to represent a class in a law suit. And since my family has become to accustomed to a certain life style I’m tend to focus on the job, which like all jobs these days is a little encompassing, it leaves little time or mental bandwidth for other pursuits.

Need any more excuses, ’cause I have a lot of them if you want.

I even broke down this month and purchased a piece of software; Scrivener, to help with the construction of a book. Content BTW, not much of a problem, I’m long winded if nothing else.

So now I find myself starting to run out of excuses save one, this blog. There’s only so much time and writing energy in the day, updating this thing takes alot of that time.

No I’m not quitting this. But I ‘m thinking that it’s about time I get more serious about writing and try to make something out of nothing.

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March 15, 2013 · 5:00 am

Carnage and Paradise in 4 Bullets or less.

1) I have to write an outline for project at NamelessFaceless next week.

A)I love outlines.

B) I think in outlines.

Oh the humanity of it all. 14 March- Broken Bone Day in Minnesota.

The Cities were hit with a wintery mix of ice and snow overnight Wednesday. In that order, which makes a difference because.. the snow covered the ice, which resulted in people flying in all directions and not of their own accord:

-          Your favorite old fat ass fell on said ass not once, but twice on the ice. Twice in the same morning I made contact with the sidewalk in a way that I’m loathe to repeat.

Aside here- you know, I’ve lived here in the Great Del Norte Blanco for 18 years and in that time have actually never slipped on wild ice. Meaning ice that wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I have slipped on lake ice, but that’s kinda of expected. But on the street never. Twice in one morning.

Neither fall was particularly devastating.

The first one was one was a face plant where the feet went south whilst the head went north. I broke my fall with right hand, my left successfully hanging on to a cup of coffee that I’m proud to say, leaked not.
The second fall, that was more of a death spiral where the plant foot begins to rotate in a clockwise direction and, being unable to stop it, one attempts to mitigate the fall by sort of rolling to the ground in the same direction. The bad news on that kind of fall, more of my um, expansive shall we say, surface area came in contact with the street resulting in wet pants.
Wet dress pants. Which in the words of George Orwell is Doubleplusungood.
But I wasn’t alone

-          Friend of mine broke his leg falling yesterday. While he was in the emergency room his wife counted no less than 10 others in assorted arms, legs plus a couple hips for good measure.

-          Several people in my cube farm reported difficulties with traction and gravity. And these aren’t oldsters like me.

Still, it’s a small price to pay for the privilege of living in paradise. I have a rather narrow definition of paradise but it looks something like this (as long as I’m in the list making mode.)

“List making mode” you ask, “wtf is that?” Thanks for asking, it’s that thing where you lack the creativity and impetus to string more than two sentences together so you hit the “Bullet” button on your word processor and then you get a list of stuff that people mistake for coherent thoughts but really were just lazy drivel. Drivel BTW is the old English term for “blog”. You can use them interchangeably sayeth I. See what I did there? Old English, sayeth, clever eh?  

If anyone has gotten down this far, personally would have hit next on my Flipboard reader about three paragraphs ago, my definition of Paradise is a place with the following attributes:

  1. Comfortable shoes
  2. Interesting weather.
  3. Free Wifi.
  4. Warm place to shit.

Other than that I’m not sure what else you need. The Baseball package would be nice too.

So would a lake.

But that’s it.

Oh, add good coffee. What’s good coffee you ask?

  1. Dark roasted Arabica beans.
  2. Ground seconds before brewing.
  3. Made strong, like I like my women. And  my opinions.
  4. Made by someone else and brought to me.

Quiet would be nice too. No talking in Paradise. Well, no conversation anyway. I find conversation in my house to be really really difficult because everyone else won’t stop talking. F’n exhausting.

Maybe a conversation with some interesting folks. Hmm.. that would be cool for short periods of time.

As you can see Paradise is unattainable, at least in my current existence, but three out of four on these two lists ain’t bad. Notice what Paradise isn’t:

  1. Beaches and palm trees. I find beaches interesting only when storms are coming in or when cool dead things are washing up on shore. Other than that I get bored after a few nanoseconds. Palm trees BTW, dirty trees that drop things on you like coconuts and palm fronds, which in my experience can seriously kill you. Gimmie a pine tree. Looks nice and kills the grass under it. Call that “self-maintaining”.
  2. Swimsuit models at my beck and call. Unless they’re bringing me coffee I really have no use for a bunch of scantly clad babes. At some point they’re going to want to strike up a conversation with me and conversations.. this is my paradise, no talking. BTW just one reason why I’ve never embraced radical Islamic terrorism, the promise of 100 virgins to me sounds like spending eternity locked in a house with 100 teenage girls. I would seriously put that on a list with a different title if you know what I’m saying.
  3. Free Golf. Not even going to bother with that one.
  4. Bottomless glasses of 25 year old single malt.. Boy that’s a toughie but you know, but I certainly don’t to spend half my time in Paradise hung.

There you have it..

But Sank, this makes no sense whatsoever, what’s this drivel blog about? Fact is I’ve spent the last several weeks spending much of my waking hours in PowerPoint. 4 bullet point lists are the backbone of American business these days. I remember when a “deck” was something you stood on when you walked out your back window. Now it’s a way for Business Folks to measure accomplishments. The bigger the deck the more accomplished you are.

I, want to be accomplished. Four lists which are only slightly connected. I might have earned an MBA.

Now, you have it.

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December 5, 2012 · 7:30 pm

Exactly 1000 words on 1000 words

I like pithy little maxims, particularly ones that have been around forever. I suppose there’s a school of thought that would say that all the good things to say, have probably already been said and so quoting a proverb or saying is really just an exercise in reuse. What I like about them, makes me sound literary and smart, a nice ruse. One of my prouder moments; when I was about 15 or 16 years old I had a crush on a girl who had just moved into the neighborhood, I think her name was Dana but I might be wrong. She had this gorgeous mane of long jet black soft curls, piercing blue eye and few other attributes which proper decorum prohibits my mentioning. Just say’n, I was 16 after all. Not that at 50 I would feel all that different but I probably wouldn’t mention it.. or wait I just did. Shameful.

Anyway.. I put a decent amount of time and effort into trying to foster a little relationship with Dana, to no avail. To put it bluntly she was not a fan. But, she was nice enough one fine afternoon to let me know all the reasons she was not a fan, something I would later learn is called feedback, and would learn even later than that,should be considered a gift. BTW, this feedback is a gift thing.. good gifts come with gift receipts and can be returned if you don’t like them. This has not proven to be true in the case of feedback.

ANYWAY- I hit on her for a couple months, until she sat down one day and said something to the effect of “I’d like to present you with a list of reasons that me, and every other girl in high school I’ve talked too, find you undesirable.”

Cool. Bring it.

“Reason number one- you use big words.”

I remember that comment like it was yesterday. And I seriously can’t remember another thing she said, despite her rambling on for another couple hundred reasons. I couldn’t get past the “use big words” comment because in my mind this little dish was now in the category of imbecile, which if you are also uncomfy with big words is a an archaic word which was used to describe people with IQ’s in the >;50 range. Amazingly enough she became considerably less attractive at that point, I moved on and started dating a girl in the school choir who was also attractive, but more importantly, brilliant.

Words matter. Numbers.. .

Numbers matter too, but I’ve never been comfortable in the world of numbers. To the contrary I’ve always relished in language, I love navigating complicated conversation, my head seems to have a handy thesaurus at the ready, not a dictionary mind you, spelling remains an issue. I’m almost always able to insert just the right word to evoke just the right nuance to a conversation. My children however are far more comfortable in the quantitative world, the exactness found in the realm of mathematics is their preferred space. For them, diving into a complicated formula and solving an equation brings a closure that they just can’t find in literary pursuits. When I see a perfectly good sentence corrupted with numbers and odd symbols I find myself beyond intimidated, and maybe even a little sick to my stomach. It’s like it’s a secret code and I have no decoder ring.

My kids… the only time I’ve ever heard any frustration about their college work came when papers were due. The oldest kid at Michigan Tech has even gone so far as to proclaim his humanities coursework, which frankly was about three classes, all which were for engineers and as such only required the bare minimum of any sort of writing, as “lame”. Why lame? Because he had to write not one, not two, but three, count’um three papers in these classes and these papers had the unreasonable requirement of having to be at least 1,000 words long.

A THOUSAND words.. “Do you know how long a THOUSAND WORDS is” my son would complain over Skype. From his expression and tone, this was insurmountable, it was an injustice, it was a distraction from real work, important work, work in laboratories and computers, it infringed on his analytics courses, which were much easier because at least in math, there’s a correct answer, you either have it or you don’t. This writing BS is all subjective and therefore a waste of time.

And therein is the paradigm between literary thinkers and the analytical thinkers. I look at mathematicians and scientists with sense of awe and wonderment. They’re doing magnificent work, complicated mind bending work in a space I can’t even imagine. I work with some PhD’s with degrees in quantitative analysis who can develop algorithms which will predict my behaviors on a given day better than I can. I’m in awe of the calculus which can put a plane in the air or calculate age of some Neolithic ancestors missing molar based on radio carbon decay. I have trouble balancing my checkbook, so much so that I haven’t done it since Quicken was installed on my homemade 286 computer in 1989.

The analytical folks, at least in my family, in contrast tend to look at us literary types as cloud chasing dreamers, quaint and fun to talk too, but not really adding a ton of value to the betterment of humanity. A generalization I realize, but one based on solid field research, I’m on to something. It’s hard to make the argument that literature can advance the human condition and help explain our world to a group of people who are quite proud to boast that they never cracked a book that wasn’t a technical manual.

Whiners. A thousand word essay. I apparently don’t appreciate how long 1000 words are. Really? I respond, it’s exactly the length of this post, or about 15 minutes or work. Get over it

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November 27, 2012 · 10:01 pm

I write a lot. And it shows.

Man this blogging thing can be a challenge. Write write write.. I did a little work to see just how much I’ve been able put out there on the internets, part of the 2000 posts celebration deal.

So just how much have I written over the years. And before I lay out the statistics let me point out a few facts-

 

  1. All content is original, I haven’t copied anything, stolen anything, blah blah blah, it’s from my head to your screen.
  2. I’ve been at this for a long time, almost 10 years now. Writing about 5X a week, more sometimes, less sometimes.
  3. I don’t pretend to be a good writer, especially if the definition of good has anything to do with spelling. I think faster than I type, and then, subconsciously, I skip words to catch up. At least that’s what I think I’m doing, I suppose I’d need a psychologist to tell me why I do it. Then again I could apply Occam’s Razor and deduce that I’m lame. We do have to keep all options on the table. BTW, if you send me little nasty grams to tell me that my writing sucks and implore me to proof read and try to do better because I’m hard to read as is, my suggestion to you stop reading the blog. Better for everyone.

 

WIth that out of the way, I’m estimating that I’ve written about 8M words, given the average length of my posts, that converts to about 8,000 pages or 28 300 page books. That’s a lot of writing.

No wonder I occasionally run out of things to say.

Or why friends who read this space, don’t have anything to ask us when they see us. Its all been said. The funny thing is I never seem to have writers block for more than a day or so. My mind seems to be constantly working, I find myself constantly in “content acquisition” mode, hunting for things to talk about, ruminating over issues in my head, or seeing absurd humor in every day occurrences. Or, one of my favorite topics, exposing the hypocrisy or self righteousness of others. There’s nothing more satisfying to me than hearing about some anti-gay politician getting busted with a male prostitute in their car, or a gentle environmentalist song writer an poet who runs a dog fighting kennel as a hobby.

 

So enough self indulgence. Cutting to the chase, I write alot, once in awhile it’s good, often it isn’t, but this is a blog, not a book. Read the blog, buy the book. When it ever goes for sale.

 

Hah.

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June 9, 2012 · 6:26 am

Internship Opportunity- Apply Within

I’m looking for an intern.

I hadn’t thought of this before but one of my super media savvy colleagues, and new member of the OITW Editorial Board has hired one for her site. This made me think I may have been missing out on one of the greatest free labor scams since my people were employed by the Egyptians 4000 years ago.

So here’s the deal. You college kids out there looking for a career in writing especially those of you who have exhausted all other options, consider an internship at Old And In The Way. This is an unpaid position, but if I like you and you do a good job for us, a $19.95 gift certificate at the Old and in the Way online Shoppe. You’d be awfully cool walking around on campus with the latest piece of OITW gear. Not to mention our world famous line of intimate apparel. Stuff is blowing off the shelves.

What do you have to do?

I have a list of stuff I’ve wanted to do here on Old and in the Way for like three years, but time, motivation and the distraction of great television have conspired to keep me from making this site the greatest blog in the universe.

By the way, as I’ve perused that ole’ internets I’ve realized content is not all that important. The damn net thing is chock a bloc full of some of the worst written and composed shyte you’d ever imagine. And most of those sites have 100X the exposure I do. Seriously. There’s a couple that I track out there that are so pathetic, it’s like a train wreck, I can’t look away, everyday I want to see what new low these self proclaimed authors will come up with, crappy content and poor spelling and grammar.

I know I should talk, but even in my darkest self-deprecating days, which in case you were wondering are usually Tuesday and occasionally Sundays, especially later in the day, I still recognize that this site is a far better read than a lot of stuff out there.. so you know they’re bad.

Off track again.. where was I… O yeah Interns.

I know this is probably a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act but I’m going to have to insist that people with ADD, even if you’re bloodstream is saturated with Ritalin, will not be considered for this space. We can’t go having the entire staff getting distracted every time a bird flies into a window or someone somewhere pulls the tab on a beer can. Someone hasta get shit done around here and our newsroom down on the first floor is already choc a bloc (twice in one blog- I’m sure in a great mood, I uh woke up to Coleman Hawkins playing “Ruby My Dear” on the radio and found myself strangely happy this am. And since Coleman Hawkins has been dead for almost as long as I’ve been alive I thought it would be neat to drop a couple mid century terms into the dialogue. ) Speaking of beer… oh yeah interns.

One more note, please read the above paragraph to yourself several times over. Applicants, that’s pretty much how every conversation with me goes.. we switch topics at such a dizzying pace that even I, the conversation leader, gets confused as to what it was we were actually talking about. If you can deal with that, read on, the rewards are great!

The SELL- or Why you should be interested in being an Old and in the Way intern given that it doesn’t pay a dime, or do much for padding up your resume.

  • A chance to work with one of the most original thinkers I know. (small bow) Strategic planning, concept development, all skills I can pass on.
  • Work from home. I don’t have to see you, you can be virtual.This is a change BTW, when I started imaging an intern in my mind I was kinda imagining a certain gender and well, I was imaging the au pair I always wanted.I actually wanted to hire an au pair for our kids at one time. I thought that it would free up Mrs S from having to worry about whatever it is that she worries about.. no I can’t even fake it. Cousin had a series of au pairs, almost every summer. Nice 20 something girls from Sweden who would come over, live with the family and watch the kids. Cousin had a pool and the kids and the au pairs would hang out there in the afternoon. And.. I swear to you every father on the street would somehow find an excuse to be in my cousins kitchen promptly at 3:11 bumming butter, a beer, parsley, you name it.

    I like the idea but we don’t have a pool and my little goldfish pond out back ain’t gonna get the same kinda attention given that we have too many trees for tanning .. that and Mrs S said no. No, with extreme prejudice mind you.. Which reminds me, I’m out of blue cheese stuffed olives.. I think Curt had some when I was over there last.. back in August I think.. May hafta drop over. So Intern job one- I need a round trip ticket to NYC and a cab to Long Island to see if they have any olives. F’n martini ain’t gonna make itself dude.. get on it. And yes. I am a pig. Just know that upfront and we’ll get along fine.

  • Objective and pithy observations about the world around you. I can teach you how to see the little things in life that make things so interesting. You too will be able to write 500 words on a trip to Taco Bell for example.
  • Lunch, once a week, made by me. If you’re local that is.
  • Life lessons from 49 long assed years of living transferred to you a digestible manageable form.
  • Amazing insight into marriage and how to stay that way. Lesson 1- drop the au pair conversation quickly. BTW.. and sorry to digress again. More than one of the cousin’s neighbors had the same deal and a certain percentage of them wound up divorcing and marrying, yeah the au pair. I can not report on how that’s worked out. Intern candidates need not worry, I’m happily married to a woman who scares the shit out of me, that and practically speaking, an action like that would be, shall we say, prohibitively expensive. For me anyway.
  • Outstanding parenting skills. I’ll teach you how to be an effective parent while not getting up off the sofa.

What I expect:

  • Tech savvy aptitude. I’m a moron at many things. My 18 year old has been helping me navigate the confusing world of remote controls, DVR’s, iPods, pads and phones, Xboxes, Netflix, sprinkler timers, coffee timers, pill reminders, carbon monoxide monitors and rechargeable batteries since he was about 5. He’s going to college this summer and I’m going to need some new to help.
  • If you are local it sure wouldn’t hurt if you knew how to make good coffee.
  • Attention to detail which you can demonstrate by detailing my little eco friendly Scion, a couple times this summer. it’s the one with the rust on the door and the missing tail light. If you can get that weird funky stale corn chip/rotten milk/dead squirrel smell that I can’t explain out of the car, I may actually double your gift certificate. And no there is no bag of human heads in the trunk, people have asked and I’ve looked. Several times. Might be a body wrapped in the axels I don’t know about, it’s hard to drive, shift, text and drink coffee some mornings, I might’a hit something. I’ll check when I get home.. but I think it’s something my kids dropped somewhere in the car.
  • Menu planning would be a HUGE leg up. Maybe the deal winner to be honest. You provide me with a good menu every week I may marry you despite the actual cost. You go to the store and shop the groceries.. your OITW Gift Certificate just tripled baby, look’n at $59.85 in gear now- Shirt, thong and mouse pad.
  • I expect you to follow my only house rule- don’t pet the dog. Never works out so well when people want to pet my dog.
  • I don’t care if you’re looking at certain exotic websites during the day. You could make a case that your researching pop culture, as long as you follow my guidelines
    • Remember the rules of Spunk Shui, as explained by my hero Adam Carolla- keep your screen between you and any door my wife might come into, or any windows which are visible from the street.
    • If you find sites that are particularly interesting or valuable please log them on a piece of paper so our editorial staff can audit your work later.
    • Please clear you cookiecachehistory deal when you’re done researching. And uh, show me how to do that too in case I need to do some research.
  • Join me at my happy hour brainstorms. There’s probably more than few happy hours in it for you over the course of the summer. We have a certain casual approach gleaned from Mad Men around the Old and in the in Way offices that you might just appreciate. 3:00, reach down in the drawer and break out the Dewers and some glasses, its brainstorm time!
  • I’m especially interested in students who are the future B10ers. That would be Jack Welch’s Bottom 10%. For this project I don’t want to have to worry about having my job usurped by some upstart intern with actual writing talent. Please don’t be intimidated from applying just because you’ve been identified as “stupid”. I kinda like stupid. Stupid.

So what d’ya say kids. This is an amazing opportunity to learn some serious life lessons from a guy who’s lived it honestly, lesson you will carry with you through marriage and family. You’ll get a chance to update and fix-up an up and coming website. What better things do you have to do this summer?

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August 25, 2011 · 9:57 pm

Offline and Off Center Let Downs

I’ve been offline for a few days. Lost time I guess. Oh, just to clarify, offline means the brain was disconnected and was not able to generate prose for this space of the quality that I like to provide.

I’m not going to write it off to “writers block”, that’s to easy, I’m going to suggest that I simply got derailed for a few days. Priorities at work, home et al have sort of taken up my attention. Doesn’t help that there just hasn’t been a lot going to write about.

You’d think there would be with the return of Mrs S from 3 weeks in California. The news from Cali continues to get better and better, a huge sigh of relief for the family and yet another example of the my father-in-laws fighting spirit and, in some ways, stubbornness.

If I had half of his get’r done approach I’d never miss a day on this site. Matter of fact I’d make my living writing in some capacity. But alas, I prefer to keep the bill collectors far away rather than take a risk at something as uh.. well as risky as actually trying make a go on my own talents in the creative space.

This week summer starts realize it’s own mortality as the weeks and weeks of happy go lucky carefree living are starting to come to a quick end.The kids are out getting fitted with their school bits, which by next week will have the reigns of academic achievement attached to them. In a couple weeks from now it’s goign to get really quiet around here.

This morning Mrs S accompanied our eldest back to the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where on Monday he starts his junior year and at Michigan Technological University.  Even harder for me get my head around for some reason, middle kid starting his senior year in High School. Poor middle kid. I have to go out and take some pictures of him for his Senior Picture. We Sank’s are bad. When the eldest achieved seniorhood, a good friend of mine met us at the MPLS sculpture gardens and shot some stills of the lad. We picked one and sent it in for his picture.

We never printed another one. Listening to other parents talk about spending a couple G’s on photogs and outfits and settings and all that crap, I feel kinda bad that we didn’t spend a nickel. Or frankly, have any plans to spend more than a nickel on the middle kid. Matter of fact, since he’s the middle kid and we’ve been through this already, maybe we’ll just send off his eight grade picture, the last time he sat for a photo. Or send in his brothers picture and change the name.

Remember who you’re dealing with here, we are didn’t have a photographer capture any of the kids Bar/Bat Mitzvahs or anything else, and our only family portrait, only has two kids in it, because that’s all we had in 1995 when we had it taken.

Where was I going with this?

I have 5 months now to talk the kid out of a grad party and I’m doing my very best. With the oldest this wasn’t even an issue. He didn’t want one. This kid however, a bit more social than his older introverted brother. He might actually request one so the offer had better be a good one if I have any chance of turning his head. (BTW, daughter no f’n chance at all, she might even break the family streak and go to prom damn it)

Here it is- “If you agree to not having a social observance of your High School Graduation, I will take you to two Premier League games in the UK. (double end a weekend or do a Saturday/Sunday thing) If you agree to be nice, I’ll make sure we the Mighty Wolves. And, if you agree, NOT TO GO TO PROM, I’ll make it a week when the Champions League is playing in England and we can slip in one of those games on a Wednesday night.”

I would jump all over that. Seriously. It’s such a win win, he wins, I win (trip to England after all) who wouldn’t jump all over that, especially a big soccer head like he his.

Turns out, he isn’t exactly jumping on the bait. I can see the offer is causing serious dissidence in his head, he wants to say “yes” or “no”, can’t quite figure out which one but he wants to do one. Even when Mrs S go wind of the Prom bribe, for which I earned a serious rebuke (she really wants to stand outside the venue with all the other parents when the little couples go walking past, throwing confetti or what ever, an activity I can even imagine as being anything but completely and utterly LAME. Buy that’s just me) even when she pulled that bribe off the table and said no, he still couldn’t answer.

This will be a developing story I’m afraid.

 

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April 7, 2011 · 6:18 pm

Back to the 7th grade

This has been a [2#$]ing week, actually two weeks. I’m hit with the double whammy, boredom at home, as in nothing all that hilarious is going on, coupled with a rich and varied personal life that leaves me with little time to write.

I promised Mrs S that this space would not be come a source of personal stress for me. Last year, it was.. I was making it my goal to blog 6 days a week. This year I’ve attempted to keep up the pace, this blogging thing is not for the weak I assure you. Unless you’ve got a Mommy blog where you post pictures of your kids and write three lines about that day’s developmental milestones, it’s tough and you have some stick to it itvneness to do it. Two superstars in whose glory I bask, Bill Roehl and Mark Pakulak over at Lazylightning.org and redriverpack.com respectively. Mark in particular, content flows and it’s all good. Bill, researches, writes, researches some more and doesn’t even leave a spelling errors.
I love/hate them both.

So I missed two Eatn wit da fat man’s in a row, mostly because I’ve been too busy Monday nights to write. This week I’ve been especially busy writing non-blog related material. I’ve been writing my daughters seventh grade paper for some bullshit class that requires a tri-fold card thing with illustrations and timelines and transitional sentences.

The paper needs to be about 1000 words or less. I’ve written 18 version of the paper and submitted them to the Editor in Chief, only to get them rejected. Over and over again. Main problemo.. I don’t write like a 7th grader. And, I didn’t include enough transitional sentences. “What’s a transitional sentence?” I asked. “it should start with “and a another thing”..

I’m just staying quiet about the rich irony that the best example of a transitional sentence my wife could come up with was uh.. well that.

“I have transitional sentences.. look”.

She looked. “You daughter is incapable of writing ‘Clearly the most critical aspect of …’ dumb it down.” “dummy”. Heh. Apparently they’re looking for that stuff, and she’d be busted. Oh,. And “intricate” is not a 7th grade word either, nor “idiosyncrasy” or “paradigm” stick to 4 letters where possible.

I got a four letter word. Couple of ‘um.  BTW, I know 4th graders who use words like that. I have a reader on this very site, a brilliant jurist with two brilliant boys who wouldn’t think twice about dropping a 10 cent word like “consequently” into a paper. Then again, kids like that don’t take 45 minute showers and spend hours painting their nails and watching Taylor Swift Youtube videos.

Now one or two of you might just take this chance to ask the question, “why, Mr. Sank, are YOU writing a 7th grade paper.” That’s an excellent question and one I brought up to my editor this weekend. I even pointed out that I had successfully (mostly) completed the 7th grade and didn’t think I’d ever have to revisit it, especially the crummy parts like writing and such. I’d rather revisit my first cig or lighting firecrakers and shooting bb guns, good memories. Writing reminds of Mrs Sagitarious and Capricorn or something like that.  She was my 7th grade English teacher who had 6 chins and looked like Jabba the Hut and had the temperament of a woman who spent one decade to many teaching pubescent kids in the public school system, and this was before Scott Walker.

Apparently we’re helping because 1) Chick has not a clue about what the instructor is asking for in this exercise, which in Mrs S’s mind, makes it a project in the category of bullshit, which when she says it, sounds like  busy work, I prefer bullshit. 2) Chick is hard at work on Bat Mitzvah preparations. Weak excuse, but I’ll let get my attention. 3) She/we waited until the last week to get serious about this.. again I’ve already been through the 7th grade so any guilt I feel about being late on 7th grade stuff just isn’t there.. 4) She picked a crappy topic. Saturday Night Live. Write a paper and do a presentation about Saturday Night Live..

“here’s the package on how to write the report” Mrs S said, as she handed it to me. OK, for the 3rd time, I’ve been to the 7th grade. Granted,  it’s been 8 presidents since I was there but uh with the exception of emotional development, as evidenced by my continuing love affair with good fart jokes, I’m  waaay past 7th grade.  However, and know that in my job I read a lot of stuff that’s specifically designed to confuse and bewilder, I could not make heads or tails out this assignment. Seriously, I have no idea what they (I) are supposed to do for this.

I mentioned that to my bride, who is also way past the 7th grade.. waaaay past, distant past, dinosaur past, never mind. She doesn’t like fart jokes either, she is, in our home, what we like to call.. the “adult”. Adult or not she had no clue either. Which means, she thinks it’s even more of a bullshit exercise than I do and she knows how to call teachers on it.

Which she did.

She admitted to the teacher that we were helping a little bit. (In the same way a heart donor helps a “little bit”) According to my wife, the instructor admitted that only about 3 kids in the class were “clued in” to what was required, and more than a couple parents had contacted her about it.

So, we “help”.  Since I never did well at cutting and pasting, Mrs S is doing the heavy lifting on this, assembly. I’m just writing a few things.

There’s a rumor is that one of the teachers at the school was a Playboy Playmate.

I’ve never ever expressed any interest in going to conferences until 10 minutes after I learned that little piece of information. Turns out, it’s my son’s former math teacher.

“Seriously, you have a teacher who was in Playboy?” Son looks at me with a big question mark, “yeah”.

I screamed for Mrs S “Did you know that the kids have a teacher at the school that was in Playboy?” “Yeah Mrs Marsten”. “You kept this information from me? How could you, I wanna go to conferences”

She looks cross eyed at me. I’ve been banned from teacher conferences since my second offense of “being a smart ass to a person in charge of our kids development” at the daughters Kindergarten conference. First one was a the oldest. I’ve not been asked back.

“OK, you wanna come see the playmate you can come.”

A week later we were at a middle school play. After the lights went out and I put my iPod headphones in, I was sitting there in the dark, listening to Adam Carolla while the kids did something that looked like a play on the stage, Mrs S whacked me on the arm. “There she is dude” “who” “the playmate.”

WHoah.. I turned off the iPod and strained to look in the darkness “where?” “there” Couldn’t see.. “which row?” “The front row, third seat” “the kid next to the old lady?”

“No dear.. the old lady”. Confused.. “Sank, she was the a Playmate in like 1969, she’s over 60 now.”

Hmm.

“well if they keep the lights off maybe..”

WHACK

Back to the uninvited list for me. Which is probably as it should be.

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December 16, 2010 · 7:29 pm

Writers Block

Writing Sucks-

You heard it here… well other people’s writing sucks. I should qualify that, other peoples writing sucks worse than mine does, but since I write a boatload more than any of my housemates, and I mistakenly suggested that I like to write, all writing chores for the family, come my way, one way or another.

Holiday letter- This is the time of year when candy cane striped stationary arrives in the mail with updates on what all the friends and family have been up to over the last year. This means that, like clockwork, Mrs S will suggest that “we should do that”.

*sigh*

The suggestion that we should publish a holiday letter has been a topic of conversation in our house since 1991, when the oldest was born. Back then I think we even sent out cards, I’m not sure we even do that anymore, as they say Not My Area Of Responsibility. One of the great things about being male, the ability to compartmentalize things, if I’m not responsible for it, I purge it from my thoughts.

So, once again Mrs S has suggested that we write up the letter and update everyone on what clan Sankary is up too. And uh.. “you should write it.” Typically I would pretend not to hear her and after a while she’d give up, the amount of time between her asking and giving up getting shorter and shorter over the years. This year I had a different approach. “Can you write a letter for the cards?” “Done”

She stared at me. “really?” “Really dear; finis, complete, done, over.” “Can I read it?” “sure”. I grabbed a card and wrote on the bottom, under the greeting:

www.sank63.wordpress.com

“We’re not doing that”. Actually we are dear, most of your family, it turns out, already read the blog and there is no better chronicle of this families existence than Old and In The Way. If she wasn’t depressed about the holidays already, that pushed her over the edge. “Do you still use the “F” word on your blog?” “do I use it in casual conversation?” ‘OMG”.

 

Middle Kid- the concussion survivor. One of the things we got from the brain injury clinic was a note to send to schools about his recovery. The note explicitly says he was to miss a week of school, after which he could return to normal activities, but slowly, a few hours at a time and with limited work. “Makeup assignments should be limited to only those that are absolutely necessary.” Absolutely necessary.

Phy Ed.

Kid can’t really participate in Phy Ed for about 4 weeks and even then can do nothing that could result in any kind of head injury. Phy Ed teacher, apparently not clear on the concept of “absolutely necessary”, or perhaps has an over-inflated sense of importance, has assigned the kid six 500 word essays on the role of sport in society. Seriously.

Mrs S, blew a gasket. She called the school and was painted as a hovering parent by someone over there trying the defend the moron Phy Ed teacher. This, made her even happier. “SANK” she yelled when she got off the phone with the administration, “you have papers to write.” I looked up from what I was doing; scooping the caramel out a carton of pralines and cream ice cream on the couch while watching TV and looking at the computer at the same time, all in my beater t-shirt and boxers. “huh?”

“Eric is being assigned busy work by the school and you’re going to do it you hafta blah blah blah..” I already went to school, why me?. “Do I have to cite references?” “no”.. K.. and I went back to what I was doing. But still, I’ve been to high school, I’m not sure why I have to write this stuff.  Later on, Mrs S mentioned this turn of events to the physician at the clinic, which happened to be at the Hennipen County Medical Center, our local Trauma 1 facility. The physician there went ballistic at this news. Because it’s HCMC and because they’re used to dealing with the community, the kid was instructed “not to worry about it, ‘we’ll take care of it’”. Chilling statement. About a week later Mrs S got an apology from the school and the assignment was excused.

Turns out they were visited by a state social worker who wanted to understand who the “physician” in the Phy Ed Department was and why the would counter indicate medical orders. Better yet, since the school obviously didn’t understand concussions and brain injury treatment, an assessment of their athletic programs was probably needed to see where else there might be issues.

Of course I have 5 essays written now, maybe I could turn them into blog posts. Look for the first one, “Which sport has the dumbest athletes” coming soon.

 

The Tuesday night I had a thing. Being the dutiful husband and family cook, I did the following. I took the bus home, whipped up a quick dinner, got back in the car, drove to St. Paul, only to find that no one was where I expected, quick call and I learned that the meeting was actually in Minneapolis, drove to the new meeting site, ½ mile from my office. BIGG Circle. Fun.

During the time I was home making dinner I was approached by the daughter.

“I haf’ta write a summary of my Torah portion, can you help me?” The Bat Mizvah is on the way.

“Sure.. when’s it due?”

“Tomorrow”.

She [-] it.. I sort went after her on this… Opened Sanks’ Guide to Parenting, Vol 3 page 145- Last Minute Help Requests. There are several appropriate responses-

“Your crisis is not my problem”? Didn’t quite capture my feelings..

“What the HELL”.. Closer

“You wanted my help and I’m just finding out about this NOW?” Perfect.

That’s the one I went with.  I had a thing that night. “I do NOT have time to look at this”.

“Bud DAAAD. I DIDN’T HAVE TIME.”

Ooooo She’s still young and I’ve been hardened by 25 years of marriage to a woman who I have still to best in any argument, but I’m getting better. “are you going with that?” She looked at me, all doey eyed, “what?”

“Is that your answer, ‘didn’t have time’.” She sort of teared up a wee bit” clearly she knew that there was no good answer. Mrs S even had no pity for her. She came back with a meek “yes”.  Hanging curve, easy one. “WE WERE SNOWED IN ALL DAMNED WEEKEND YOU 48 HOURS OF SHEER BOREDOM”.

She looked at Mrs S for a life line. “He’s right”.

Whoah.. stop back up the truck a minute. I asked my wife, “What did you say?” The girl looked at me,  I looked at my wife, my wife looked at both of us, “what did you say?” The girl asked again “what” Three people asking each other what the other had said when in my mind, there was but one question on the table now, “Did you say I was right?”

The girl looked at me “who was right”. The wife, realizing she’s made a slight error, looked back at me, “you were accurate in your assessment” could that be the smell of victory? “but as we’ve discussed, you being right is irrelevant”. Big exhale. awwwww..

Still, in her case “I need help” is her way of saying “can you do this for me”.

I went to the meeting, came home and sat with her. “Crack open Bamidbar (Numbers in English) and lets take a look. I dragged an ancient copy of Rashi I have and a modern Hebrew translation and we dug in. As I was explaining some of the themes she kept reminding me, “Dad, it has to be two pages”. More analysis on my part, “Double spaced Dad”. K. “DAD.. To much”

“Dad, it feels like you are doing the work not me”.

Not only is it faster that way, it’s less frustrating for me.

Confused I sat with her and, in complete surprise watched as she actually scratched out a couple of decent pages about her portion, including the rather bizarre citation about a magic ceremony a man can have his wife endure should he suspect that she’s been cheating on him. I wasn’t sure she’d get that, apparently not a problem.

So in her case, actually being a writer wasn’t the problem, she just needed to be in the presence of one who writes. That, I can do.

 

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July 29, 2010 · 7:35 pm

Blogging- Read this first

I’ve been contacted recently my any number of folks who have asked my advice about starting a blog. How do you do it? Why do you do it? How can I do it? I’d love to do that.

How hard can it be?

As a public service to everyone I’m going to spill my secrets. Let me preface by just how improbable it is that this space even exists after 6 years of plugging away. I don’t stick to anything, except for my marriage, this blog, fishing and hypochondria. But other that I rarely keep to a hobby or pastime more than a few minutes.

Here’s the bottom line for wannabe bloggers.

CONTENT.

Seems simple enough. The more content you create the more people will find and read your site. Which leads to this law of nature that many wannabe bloggers seem to ignore;

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH

 I had a professor in college tell me that this one statement, this one rule, is in fact the single most important philosophic statement ever uttered. The older I get, the more I realize how right he was. It governs everything, from offshore drilling to poor eating habits to gerbil husbandry. In the blogging world I would interpret this to mean “content don’t write it’s self.”  Amen brother.

It’s work to write. REAL WORK. One of the smartest men that I know, a brilliant research analyst with a high powered consultancy, a fellow with deep industry knowledge who people pay vast sums of money to have access too (which he doesn’t see all that much off mind you) hates to write. He’s got more content in his head than I’ll ever have but it’s not coming out on paper, except in short bits which are pried out of there by threats or coercion. My point being, before you go down this path, ask yourself, do I love writing? Do I REALLY LOVE writing? Not like, LOVE. Do I love it enough that I can sit down in my free time and pick up a computer and crank out 10 paragraphs about something? Can I do it every day? Every other day?  Once a week? You have to be honest with yourself here. There are more abandoned blogs than there are active ones in the world. Have a great idea today, ask yourself,  “what will I be writing about a year from now?”  If you don’t love to write, this isn’t for you.

This where you might want to consider what the purpose of your blog will be. “Update my family” is a perfectly legitimate goal, but don’t expect to see your blog on the 100 most read sites in the United States. Unless you can expand that to entertain people.. Want to write a political blog? Again, what’s your point, why is anyone going to be interested in reading what you have to say about anything? Here’s a quick way to determine how interested folks might be in your thoughts, after all we all know folks who are sadly mistaken in the belief that they’re interesting.

If you often find yourself at the center of conversations, if you seem to know a lot about certain subjects and people like to hear what you have to say, your thoughts will translate well to the blogsphere. As long as you adhere to the last Golden Rule. Be yourself. Personally, I write as I think.. an ADD influenced stream of consciousness. One of the best compliments that I get, and I get it a lot is, “reading your blog is like sitting across from you at the coffee shop. You’re exactly the same on the blog as you are in person”. If you want write from a perspective other than your own, it’s going to get messy, and at some point will not sound sincere to your readers, and they will bail on you.

So uh, why do YOU do this Sank?

#1 reason- I LOVE to write. I legitimately love writing. I would do it 12 hours a day if I could. I’m passionate about it, I find it energizing, enjoyable, it fills my batteries if you will. When I’m not doing it, I think about doing it. And, I’ve been doing at it, one way or another for decades.

The other reasons are more narcissistic. I like the community that I’ve developed on Old and in the Way. I’ve made many connections over the years, lots of other bloggers around the world. Most whom have since given up on their blogs, but the contacts remain. Some have become as important to me as friends who I see everyday even though I ‘ve never actually met them in person. The reward for this is comments. At least for me, made more acute because I don’t have any other more tangible rewards.

Every blogger has experienced this, “Oh love your blog”, well I would sincerely hope that all of you who are doing this blogging thing have experienced this.  That being said, it comes with a caveat, a couple times a week I get a nice note about how great my blog is from someone who really just wants me review their restaurant, listen to their new CD, turn my readers on to some great site that sells stuff. I don’t do a lot of promoting or reviews but I do reach enough people now that I’m a target for this social networking stuff. I don’t want to expound too much more on this since Ed over at The Deets has covered this already this week and I certainly don’t want to steal his thunder, I consider it flattery until I realize every other blogger I know recieved the same message. Not unlike the birthday card I get from my broker that says “Happy Birthday Gary H. Sankary” from your friends at Edward Jones. Well, it’s more than I get from my family so maybe I should just take shut up and be happy.  

Some other thoughts on blogging-

The “lurker” community.  You know who you are; readers, subscribers, folks that surf the site but never make a comment. I’m guess the ratio of lurkers to participants is getting to be almost 100:1. Not that I mind, until someone penetrates my veil of anonymity, people who live near me, work with or otherwise know in me “real” life who somehow have found the site and tell me they read it regularly.  Now, it’s not like I’ve gone to great lengths to hide out, but for some reason I’m still surprised by these announcements.

Adam Carolla made a comment on his podcast that I think is 100% true. Success does not randomly strike people out of thin air. Those kids on American Idol who win the competition and go on to recording careers, they did not just walk into the audition and pick up a mic for the first time and BOOM. Contrary to the myth , to a person they’ve had years of voice lessons, coaching, practice.

Blogging is going to be like that for the newbie. You’re not going to get that WordPress account, open the blank page and get a 1000 readers a day. I would guess the first day, first week, you’ll be cranking content. Talk to me after 1500 posts and see if you’ve hung in there.

You’re going to have to write, and write, and write and post  and post and post and keep coming up with great content, keep promoting yourself. Once you’ve made it a habit and you have people who are reading and interacting with your site, that’s when you can call yourself a blogger.

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January 21, 2010 · 4:49 pm

Thank YOU who ever you are-

I’m a little stunned these days.. Old And In The Way is in fuego.. at least for Old And In The Way. Hit count- 5X what it was before the MinnPost article. THAT means there’s a lot of new readers here.. Welcome to each and every one of you. Last night I even started to get a few comments from the new folks.. since comments are the only pay I get for this, they’re golden.. thank you.

Funny how this writing thing has developed. Last night I sat down and started dribbling away and just like that.. 3,000 words, not that I count. Reminds me of high school for some reason.

Freshmen year, would have been back in 1978.. long assed time ago. Mrs Wattel, she taught Freshmen English and, for upper classmen, Shakespeare. Mrs Wattel had a reputation around Lincoln High for being one tough lady, who ran a hard program. Even back then I loved writing, and I sucked at it then too. My big problem? The same that vexes me today, spelling and proofing. I leave out words, misspell others, nothing that anybody who reads this would be surprised to hear.

OK, heres my excuse, I can’t spell because.. because I was raised in a house where English was the third language, Ma spoke, in this order of proficiency, Arabic, French and, way down there, English. Pop? Arabic and Texan, and he never learned English, substituting Texan for the Queens Language. In a nutshell, NO ONE spoke normally, meaning without some goofy accent and as such, I couldn’t pronounce shit. It’s my reason and I’m going with it.

Mrs Wattel left an impression on me

The reason I remember her so well, I was scared shitless of her.. She was on tough broad. BUT she was an excellent teacher who got the best out of her students, although you hated it the whole time. Shakespeare was THE toughest humanities class in Stockton, bar none. One of the things that made it so tough, Mrs Wattel, in a effort to train our soft minds for college used the same format for everyone of her tests, and there were many. A 500 word extemporaneous essay.

She drilled into us how to do a 500 word instant composition.. 5 paragraphs, one introduction, three sentences introducing your point, three body paragraphs and a conclusion. G-d did we sweat those things. Back then essays were written in a little blue book that was stapled together and done by hand. For you youngsters that were you get a pencil, preferably a trusty Ticonderoga that you had to sharpen from time to time and held it in your hand and wrote out the essay. You could try to use a pen, but that required a small bottle of white out correction fluid that the typists used.

Oh, a typewriter was a sort of word processor that printed automatically as you wrote, and had no backspace key, or cut and copy function. Mistakes were corrected with white out or later, with little pieces of white tape that would insert into the printer and then re-type your mistake, rewind and correct. Neat times.

Well, I couldn’t spell for shit, even then, but I had some techniques for getting around that. Obviously we had dictionaries, and they were helpful.. we had “spelling dictionaries” neat little books that had the words spelled in alphabetical order, but didn’t waste time with definitions. My problem, (which continues today) some words I’m so far off that I’m not even in the phonetic ball park. For those words.. I would sort of smear my handwriting a bit, hoping she couldn’t tell. Like that fucking worked.

I also remember thinking that 500 words was longer than the Bible. HOLY COW. And look at me know, I can’t even get a thought out in under 300 words. Arlene Wattel, you’d be so proud.

Oh, and for you new readers, we shut down here at Old In The Way from about Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday.. no blogging, and almost no Computer, if I can pull that off. Sometimes forbidden fruit tastes pretty good however. But definitely no porn on Saturday.

BTW.. to this day, I LOVE Shakespeare. Mrs Wattel would be very proud.

I kidding Peeps

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