The magnificent Sally Hanan and I led a creative writing workshop today through the School of Kreative Arts (Austin); it was a lot of fun. We had low turnout but high quality. Shared journeys and stories carried us along, the writing was free, and nary an apostrophe was misplaced. Assignments include haiku, a 50 word story, the same story in 25 words or less, and a seven minute story based on a color, two names, weather and a situation.
Big surprises included either how hard it is to tell a story in 50 words or how much you can say in so little (depending on who was being surprised) and how short a time seven minutes is (I was nowhere near done).
Here are the pieces I wrote, absent the seven minute challenge. I want to finish that one.
Caffeine Love
Drinking coffee is
one of life's simple pleasures.
Starbucks? Not so much.
Enamel Removal
My dentist wondered,
"What have you done to your teeth?"
Little totem poles...
Baylor Breeding
I loved my bear feet.
My girlfriend said it was odd;
they had fur and claws.
My 50 word story came in at exactly 50 words:
Pondering the last tomato, Jane pushed her salad away. With her husband dead, she could no longer write haiku. "Perhaps," she thought, "I could write limericks. Solemn limericks... grave limericks." A childlike smile drifted across her face. "For his headstone."
Looking for asparagus but finding none, she ate the tomato.
Cutting it exactly in half, I ended up with:
Sick of tomatoes, Jane pushed away her salad. With Gerald dead, she couldn't keep writing haiku. Perhaps grave limericks? She found she'd eaten the tomato.
I prefer the 50 word version. What do you think? And did any of the haiku strike your fancy?
By the way, the fact that the super shorts begin with eating salads is Sally's fault.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Facebook Bites Users Yet Again
Well, Facebook, you've done it again.
With every major face lift, you annoy more users. The comments on my wall (and I have a broad cross-section of friends) are always at least 10:1 against the changes. (This time they are at least 30:1, and people are more upset than I have seen before.) About the time everyone finally adapts, finally gets used to them (not likes them), you change it AGAIN. For the worse.
Over and over, claiming to give us more control and what we want, you give us LESS control, and take away the features that made Facebook first wonderful, then pretty cool, eventually down to bearable. I suppose next you will take away the features that make your product merely annoying.
Quite a few of us only want to see statuses most of the time. With each of the last iterations you made that more difficult, and now you have removed it entirely. Has it occurred to you that with more than a couple of hundred friends, it becomes impossible to keep up with everything? Most of my friends have from 500 to 1500 friends. It's almost impossible for someone with a life and job to keep up with even the statuses, never mind the links, photos, videos, games, apps, and whatever you decide comes next.
If you want to provide an OPTION to create new groups for me, fine. But just let me know it's there and decide whether I want to opt in.
If you want to provide an OPTION to run constant updates that eat my CPU and mean my screen never stops updating, fine. Let me know it's there and decide whether I want to opt in.
For that matter, when you provide options (like yesterday, when I could choose to see statuses only, LEAVE THEM WHERE I SET THEM. Don't reset them every time I turn around.
We get it. We are not your customers. We are the product you sell to your customers. But as it turns out, you are turning your "product" off more and more each day. I know people who have left Facebook because of past changes. I am actively looking for an alternative. I am really hoping google+ works out, because I will be GONE. And I will take everyone with me I can.
People were never meant to be products
With every major face lift, you annoy more users. The comments on my wall (and I have a broad cross-section of friends) are always at least 10:1 against the changes. (This time they are at least 30:1, and people are more upset than I have seen before.) About the time everyone finally adapts, finally gets used to them (not likes them), you change it AGAIN. For the worse.
Over and over, claiming to give us more control and what we want, you give us LESS control, and take away the features that made Facebook first wonderful, then pretty cool, eventually down to bearable. I suppose next you will take away the features that make your product merely annoying.
Quite a few of us only want to see statuses most of the time. With each of the last iterations you made that more difficult, and now you have removed it entirely. Has it occurred to you that with more than a couple of hundred friends, it becomes impossible to keep up with everything? Most of my friends have from 500 to 1500 friends. It's almost impossible for someone with a life and job to keep up with even the statuses, never mind the links, photos, videos, games, apps, and whatever you decide comes next.
If you want to provide an OPTION to create new groups for me, fine. But just let me know it's there and decide whether I want to opt in.
If you want to provide an OPTION to run constant updates that eat my CPU and mean my screen never stops updating, fine. Let me know it's there and decide whether I want to opt in.
For that matter, when you provide options (like yesterday, when I could choose to see statuses only, LEAVE THEM WHERE I SET THEM. Don't reset them every time I turn around.
We get it. We are not your customers. We are the product you sell to your customers. But as it turns out, you are turning your "product" off more and more each day. I know people who have left Facebook because of past changes. I am actively looking for an alternative. I am really hoping google+ works out, because I will be GONE. And I will take everyone with me I can.
People were never meant to be products
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Who are you? Who, who, who, who?
"Who are you? Who, who, who, who?
Who are you? Who, who, who, who?
Who are you? Who, who, who, who?
Who are you? Who, who, who, who?"
Who are you? Do you know? If not you probably you want to, and none of us know completely. Occasionally some of us are afraid to find out, but until we know who we are, we're essentially lost in the crowd. If we don't know who we are, there's always someone around us ready to tell us. They're usually wrong.
So, who defines us?
Sometimes, we define ourselves. This is natural and within boundaries OK, but (a) it's limiting and (b) can have negative results. Perhaps we observe ourselves, and declare, "OK, I see this, therefore this is who I am." Or maybe we just decide, "This is who and what I want to be, therefore, that's who I'll be." We can do worse, but we can do better as well. Since all of us are flawed, if we attempt to create our own reality of ourselves, or create us in our own image, the result will have flaws we can't even know, much less address. Even the most observant, brightest and honest person has a limited view; we can usually see part of the forest or some of the trees, but that's it.
Sometimes we let other people define us. This is also natural and within boundaries OK, but the same caveats apply. Others can see things we can't, but there are always things they will judge wrong, or can't even begin to know or guess at reasonably. And some of them just want to manipulate us for their own reasons. At best that makes us objects to be used, pawns in a game. At worst, it makes us slaves as we are trapped in our belief of who someone else said we are. To some extent, we will always get who we are from others-- our parents, our friends, our teachers, our mentors, even our enemies. Just make sure that before you embrace it or let it take root, that they're right.
Sometimes we let circumstances define us. This appears to be a mixture of the first two, but in reality it's just a passive or passive-aggressive version of defining ourselves. We simply react to what's going on around us, and let our emotions and instincts rule us. The result can be difficult to distinguish from an animal; at best it's merely pitiful. Do you know someone who's always angry, or always sad, or at least always emotional and incapable of doing much about it? Or someone who just drifts along? Or who at best is just never happy? Or mindlessly content? All of these people become ineffective in life, if not apparently useless. Who wants to live there? (I realize that sometimes these are symptomatic of deeper problems require counseling; that's another issue.)
We can let God define us. He made us and knows us inside and out, backward and forward, past present and future. He loves us, every last one of us, and wants the best for us. Who better to define us? Who better to tell us who we are, and how to become that person? It's not the easiest path. It's not always a fun path. But the result is infinitely better than the others, because it's the right path. We don't hit all those dead ends, sink in all those bogs, or end up as buzzard bait in the middle of the desert.
The title of this note (and opening lyrics) came from a song by the Who. A thorough band of heathens, they never the less came up with a profound image of the concept. Well into the song they say,
"God, there's got to be another way."
Presumably "God" in this context is just an exclamation of despair, an accidental prayer rather than an intentional one. But I love where they go with this.
"I know there's a place you walked
Where love falls from the trees
My heart is like a broken cup
I only feel right on my knees
"I spit out like a sewer hole
Yet still receive your kiss
How can I measure up to anyone now
After such a love as this?"
Wherever they were coming from, they summed it up nicely. So long as we try to define ourselves against the vast panorama of creation and God's glory, we can't measure up. But if we quit trying, and let the creator and the glorious one define us, then we recognize our place in that vast panorama, that glory, that kiss, "such a love as this". And we can not only be content with who we are, we can revel, rejoice, party in it-- and be right.
Not sure who holds the copyright to the lyrics, the Who, their record company, or... who.
Who are you? Who, who, who, who?
Who are you? Who, who, who, who?
Who are you? Who, who, who, who?"
Who are you? Do you know? If not you probably you want to, and none of us know completely. Occasionally some of us are afraid to find out, but until we know who we are, we're essentially lost in the crowd. If we don't know who we are, there's always someone around us ready to tell us. They're usually wrong.
So, who defines us?
Sometimes, we define ourselves. This is natural and within boundaries OK, but (a) it's limiting and (b) can have negative results. Perhaps we observe ourselves, and declare, "OK, I see this, therefore this is who I am." Or maybe we just decide, "This is who and what I want to be, therefore, that's who I'll be." We can do worse, but we can do better as well. Since all of us are flawed, if we attempt to create our own reality of ourselves, or create us in our own image, the result will have flaws we can't even know, much less address. Even the most observant, brightest and honest person has a limited view; we can usually see part of the forest or some of the trees, but that's it.
Sometimes we let other people define us. This is also natural and within boundaries OK, but the same caveats apply. Others can see things we can't, but there are always things they will judge wrong, or can't even begin to know or guess at reasonably. And some of them just want to manipulate us for their own reasons. At best that makes us objects to be used, pawns in a game. At worst, it makes us slaves as we are trapped in our belief of who someone else said we are. To some extent, we will always get who we are from others-- our parents, our friends, our teachers, our mentors, even our enemies. Just make sure that before you embrace it or let it take root, that they're right.
Sometimes we let circumstances define us. This appears to be a mixture of the first two, but in reality it's just a passive or passive-aggressive version of defining ourselves. We simply react to what's going on around us, and let our emotions and instincts rule us. The result can be difficult to distinguish from an animal; at best it's merely pitiful. Do you know someone who's always angry, or always sad, or at least always emotional and incapable of doing much about it? Or someone who just drifts along? Or who at best is just never happy? Or mindlessly content? All of these people become ineffective in life, if not apparently useless. Who wants to live there? (I realize that sometimes these are symptomatic of deeper problems require counseling; that's another issue.)
We can let God define us. He made us and knows us inside and out, backward and forward, past present and future. He loves us, every last one of us, and wants the best for us. Who better to define us? Who better to tell us who we are, and how to become that person? It's not the easiest path. It's not always a fun path. But the result is infinitely better than the others, because it's the right path. We don't hit all those dead ends, sink in all those bogs, or end up as buzzard bait in the middle of the desert.
The title of this note (and opening lyrics) came from a song by the Who. A thorough band of heathens, they never the less came up with a profound image of the concept. Well into the song they say,
"God, there's got to be another way."
Presumably "God" in this context is just an exclamation of despair, an accidental prayer rather than an intentional one. But I love where they go with this.
"I know there's a place you walked
Where love falls from the trees
My heart is like a broken cup
I only feel right on my knees
"I spit out like a sewer hole
Yet still receive your kiss
How can I measure up to anyone now
After such a love as this?"
Wherever they were coming from, they summed it up nicely. So long as we try to define ourselves against the vast panorama of creation and God's glory, we can't measure up. But if we quit trying, and let the creator and the glorious one define us, then we recognize our place in that vast panorama, that glory, that kiss, "such a love as this". And we can not only be content with who we are, we can revel, rejoice, party in it-- and be right.
Not sure who holds the copyright to the lyrics, the Who, their record company, or... who.
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