If you're a writer, you've seen the writer's getaway cabin in the woods, tucked in the most romantic isolation. Or you've heard the story of J. K. Rowling writing Harry Potter in the coffee shop down the street. But the nuts and bolts of writing are FAR less romantic.
Most of us have a less than romantic space to write, maybe in bed with our laptop, at the kitchen table or on Notepad at work. We might spend years working on a manuscript, and in the end what counts the most isn't our lovely scenes, exciting characters or lofty plots.
Here's the dirty little secret few professional writers want to talk about: the most important thing a writer needs is a superior grasp of grammar and sentence structure.
Now, a whole lot of new writers are going to roll their eyes and spout a cliche right now: "That's what editors are for."
But can you afford to pay that editor?
That level of editing is very time consuming and expensive. Editing at that level can cost upwards of $5 per page (500 words). Even if you find an independent editor who will edit your grammar for $1 per page, it will take 2 or 3 passes to get all the corrections done.
Some editors charge $1 per error found.
At a certain skill level that's a bargain. Until then it's a nightmare.
A traditional publisher, or (perish the thought) an agent, will read your manuscript up to the first grammatical error and stop. If that's in the first sentence, all your work after that is for nothing. If your lucky, they won't tweet your name and some disparaging remark to their colleagues. (Yes, this has happened.)
"Well, I'll self-publish my book," a budding author might reply.
Most readers (I'm one) will sample an e-book and not buy it if there are grammatical errors in the sample. Readers with a trollish bent will leave you a nasty 1 star "OMG, this writer sucks!" review. (I know, I've got some.) Many a writer has been shocked to get so many 1 star reviews on sites like Amazon or Goodreads by reader-trolls that they've snapped and lashed out at their tormentors. Flame wars have resulted, people get their feelings deeply hurt, and sometimes things spill over into the real world. (This is a subject for another post.)
So it's in every writer's best interest to work on this skill set, until they have it honed as sharp as a razor. Until then, use your grammar checker until it becomes your best friend. It won't find all the errors in a manuscript, but I learned a heck of a lot from mine.
If nothing else it will keep you from getting remarks like I got from Amazon Vine Reviewers: "Unfortunately, there are several spelling errors and grammatical mistakes that detract from my enjoyment. It's just easier to read an error-free story - you don't get pulled out of the plot and back to reality if the writing is pristine."
Ouch!
No one is ever perfect, and as many times as I've revised this short post, I know there are still errors in it.
Warning: This blog (but not, I hope, this series of posts) contains subject matter that other's might find offensive as well as blog posts that have snarky language. Feel free to roll your eyes and click away from posts that offend you. The opinions expressed here were only valid on the day of posting, after that I've probably forgotten what I posted. I think the eye-roll emoji is either ::-( or 88-(, I no doubt deserve it if you leave one in the comments.
I often talk to Independent authors with newly-launched books. They all have the same questions, and I’m always glad to offer up my experience to help them on their way. I’ve been DIY publishing e-books and paperbacks since 2009 and I can tell you that this business changes every few months. I did well for a short time, a mere 10 weeks, but now I struggle like most other authors.
I’ve decided to put what I’ve learned into a short series of blog posts for my Kentuckiana Authors Association friends. I’ll try to keep these short, feel free to comment, by all means ask questions. I’ll put in links as I go. I might rearrange the links on my website to make it easier to find stuff.
I think it was in 2007 that I joined a local writer’s group called the Bard’s Corner. I learned how to outline, which made a big difference in my writing, but my work schedule kept me too busy to attend regularly. It was my first exposure to writing groups and peer review; it changed my paradigm on writing forever by opening my eyes to a larger world.
Once I learned to outline, I was able to finish my first novel “Let’s Do Lunch.” At that point (2008) I joined a couple of websites for writers so I could learn more. “Forward Motion” was the best of the writer’s websites – I don’t know if it is still around, I hope so, because it offered the first ever open peer review that I’d ever experienced. I got feedback by people who had skill-sets superior to mine and I learned a whole lot in a short period of time. I edited the manuscript using every bit of feedback that I could get.
2009 I entered Amazon’s Breakout Novel Award – I uploaded the manuscript during a horrendous ice storm via dial up because we had no electricity here at the house, but the phone still worked. My novel made two of three cuts, and garnered some feedback that has me rolling my eyes to this day. It was during that contest that I learned of a website run by Harper-Collins called Authonomy. I spent the next 4 years on that site, learning a lot, but none of my books ever got any traction on the contest to the Editor’s Desk.
I spent 2009 and most of 2010 watching the phenomena of the Amazon Kindle shake up the publishing industry and allow authors to upload their books to the new e-book format and get some readers, and get paid. I uploaded my e-books to Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press platform, Kobo Writing Life and Smashwords as well.
Those were heady days indeed.
My brief appearance on the Amazon best sellers list was 10 glorious weeks on the romantic suspense chart in the UK where Let’s Do Lunch hit #3 for a few hours and settled to #8 for several days. It then slid off the Top ten list into the top 25, then the Top 100 and then down into the mulch layer with about 50 million other e-books.
After that the sales trickled in, a handful a quarter but not enough to pay for the endless hours I spent marketing my e-books. I was obsessed, always a bad sign, and getting nowhere but discouraged. When ’50 Shades of Gray’ came out, my sales evaporated completely and I’ve struggled just to stay somewhat in the game ever since.
I hope this series of blogs will serve to open a dialog with my fellow writers.
Warning: This blog contains subject matter that other's might find offensive as well as blog posts that have snarky language. Feel free to roll you eyes and click away from posts that offend you. The opinions expressed here were only valid on the day of posting, after that I've probably forgotten what I posted. I think the eye-roll emoji is either ::-( or 88-(, I no doubt deserve it.
Well, there's been a goodly amount of progress on the new book. The Fourth of July holiday falling on a Tuesday this year made things a bit hectic on the farm.
The horses HATE fireworks. I have a redneck neighbor who goes completely crazy on the fireworks every year. Sparks and other debris fall into my pastures and scare my horses nearly to death every year.
The first year we lived at the house we had sparks land on the roof. (We now have a metal roof. I sleep better.) My neighbor is a 'great guy' when it comes to just about everything else -- it's just the typical redneck desire to blow things up.
This year, the fireworks started on June 30th and ran every freaking night until the 4th. I had to go outside with a flashlight and call for the old black gelding. He's the only one who will come to me during the fireworks. And for some reason, I didn't find them even after 2 rounds of the fields.
I think they were avoiding me, they were that spooked. The last time I went out with grain an a bucket.
I even got the alpacas that time!
By the time Tuesday rolled around, the horses and the alpacas knew to come to the barn when the fireworks started. The alpacas refused to come in early, but they were waiting at the barn door when I got home from work.
I'm hoping this weekend we don't have any more fireworks. I want to write and I can't when I know my animals are in distress.
So I'll get back to the adventures of Leo and Wendy next week. I've got at least another 25k words to hit the target, it's wrapping up fast.
Well, it was Republicans who got shot so no big deal, right? We will continue to say terrible things until the mobs on both the left and right act out . And nobody on cable news (Chris Matthews said of Ted Cruz "He's sub-human.") will hold themselves accountable. Neither will any congress man.
For some reason we have gotten to the place where political disagreement is grounds for hatred, where it is acceptable to call names and accuse one opponents of the most despicable crimes and to do so without accepting any responsibility for one's own actions.
It started before Trump and before Obama. It started with Clinton. When fellatio becomes fodder for public discourse the angle of the slope increases. The O.J. trial and the Clinton Impeachment did an awful lot of damage to the public life of this country: it got cable news off the ground. They made it possible to accuse your opponent of ANYTHING. And they began referring to the political opposition as "The Enemy". That means I am justified in any attack on them, right?
The tow truck driver in North Carolina who refused to tow a woman with Bernie Sanders stickers on her car did not break the law. At all. He did nothing illegal. But if we are going to use legal standards as a guide line, we will have a difficult time having a society. We now have politics as a religion: the other side is an arm of the Satanic Church and kills babies.
I watched Rachel Maddow and she acted like the shooting was a mere unfortunate circumstance. Chris Matthews acted like it did not happen. Well, no surprise there. I am certain the Republicans will milk the shootings for their own political purposes.
As far as the wealthy in this country are concerned, they own the government. They own the congress, senate, courts, Wall Street (Barak Obama, champion of the little guy just got paid $400,000 for a speech so you tell me it isn't for the money.) owns both parties. The fix is in. The last real man to sit in the White House was Harry Truman. He drove himself back to Missouri. In his own car. The sign on his desk said "The Buck Stops Here." There is nobody remotely like him in D. C. today. Bad news, Kat. The contributors own the political class.
None of what is going on now with Trump has anything to do with the well being of the country. There are going to be states with no insurance companies participating in the exchanges. And the Democrats will blame the Republicans who will reply, "Well you guys passed this without a single Republican vote. This is all your fault."
What you detailed about the rust belt is what got Trump elected. When he said that area of the country had been neglected, he was correct. No argument. What he didn't say was he was from Queens and had no idea how to fix the problem. I am not certain the vote was for Trump. I think it was a vote against the snotty, arrogant superior attitude of the media in New York and California. I think it was a giant finger to cable news.
Part of what is happening now is a result of the public being misled about the election. It was in the bag. Hillary was destined to be president. The Gods had anointed her. Every single significant media organization endorsed Hillary. ALL of them with the exception of Fox and they are the most successful cable broadcast operation in history. They are about profits and nothing gets in the way. Not that the others are paragons of virtue. They are just not as good at generating profits as Fox. So Trump got elected. The media got the finger and there was nothing they could do about it.
The people you talked about only have one thing left.
Their vote. That is the one thing that cannot be taken from them. When they go into that booth they answer to nobody. Not Wall Street, the congress, the senate, the supreme court, their family, their friends, nobody. It is the last thing they have. They are no longer middle class and they see the $250K speeches, the homes, the security, the life time pensions and they think (rightly so) that Carlin was right. "It's a big club, folks! And you and I ain't in it!"
We now have an oligarchy. You and I and others of our ilk survive. We will get enough table scraps to keep us from really going off the rails, but just barely.
Another reason for the election of Trump is the education system which has succumbed to the nonsense that school should not be difficult and that we will NOT teach critical thinking skills. No authority figure wants citizens capable of critical thought. They want loyalty. They specifically do not want "principles before personalities."
Trump wants personal loyalty before law. We've been a country of laws and not leaders. The constitution comes first. I think Barack dislike the constitution but was willing to tolerate it. Trump dislikes it but is willing to ignore it. But they both have massive egos and nobody will make me change my mind. "My mind is made up, don't try to confuse me with the facts."
Have a good day. Say yer prayers. And bless yer little red head.
Arlo C. Hipps.
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worry about things which are beyond the power of our will. Epictetus.
What frustrates me the most about the country right now is the mental gymnastics The Far Right media has trained Citizens into performing whenever certain words or phrases are spoken or seen.
The original word has been hijacked -- to the point where people automatically start foaming at the mouth when that word is used. It's called Dog-Whistle propaganda. A word or phrase is used, creating a Dog-Whistle Word. Say the word and the human blanks out everything but the propaganda about that word.
I'm gonna hit the edge of this with the phrase 'Vanishing Middle Class' because The Far Right has really done a number on us.
I grew up in a middle class community, all my friends and family were dyed-in-the-wool Middle Class. Then the economic woes of the Nixon years, hit and all the jobs dried up and blew away in about 10 years time. By 1979, when I graduated, the economy of our small town had tanked and about 20k families left town in search of jobs.
We, the children of the Middle Class and our parents, didn't "vanish" we didn't fade away like ghosts. We struggled with increasing and ever more crushing poverty, unable to get jobs that paid Middle Class wages, unless we had family connections that could get us one of the few 'good' jobs in town.
Many of us fled -- some more than once -- heading south or west until we found someplace where we could settle. But thousands didn't have the means to flee, or their family ties were too strong, so they stayed and suffered the long agonizing slide into soul-crushing poverty and despair.
Women struggled the most, because one of the first things that happens when the local economy tanks is that couples stop getting married -- a girl gets pregnant and the father, (aka the Baby Daddy), bolts like horse in a thunderstorm. Any support from the government, no matter how badly needed puts them at risk of being labeled with a Dog-Whistle Word, so many women don't dare apply, unless they work for Wal-mar; there it's company police to Fleece The Beast and sign their workers up for government benefits in lue of wages.
Wal-mart replaced GM as the #1 employer in the USA decades ago. That company is owned by the richest family in America, a family that pays less taxes than any other in the 1% richest in America. Their company also pay wages well below the poverty line -- but no one calls the Waltons Welfare Queens -- that Dog-Whistle Word is for the single mothers who work for them.
This is where Generational Poverty moves in and takes over Fly Over America. Just as predicted in the 1970's, when the economy tanked the first time, the wages of the Service Economy couldn't sustain Middle Class, so an entire social class slid down the economic razor blade into the burning vat of poverty.
So here we are, 40 years later and once bustling small towns are now Fly Over Zones, or The Rust Belt, and the people scraping a living in these places are Red Necks, Hillbillies, and Pillbillies; frightening degenerates who are Dog-Whistled by The Far Right like attack trained pit bulls.
And the attack word is 'Liberal'.
The rage that helped put a completely inappropriate human in the White House stems from the fact that these Pillbillies were raised in Middle Class families, without Middle Class jobs. Their TV networks are filled with propaganda that enrages them. They KNOW they've been shafted, over and over again, by the same asshats who programmed them to respond to Dog-Whistles.
Everybody knows that Washington kisses the asses of the 400 richest families in the USA, like the Waltons, and pees on fallen middle class families, as well as the veterans leaving the military.
Education, health care and jobs (i.e. Hope) have been stripped from most Fly Over Zone communities and everybody is expendable as soon as they are injured or get sick. Big Pharma moves in with pain-pills and people who's souls are wounded by poverty and inflamed by propaganda eat opiods by the handful and wash it down with cheap booze.
Meanwhile, the GOP answer to Health Care is still: Die Faster Dammit!
So why is Congress so stunned that somebody went hunting Republicans on their home turf?
After all -- school shootings didn't effect Congress, their kids go to private schools. Church shootings don't effect them either because Congress is full of fake-Christians and outright Anti-Christians. (Somebody once said "You know the tree by it's fruit" so yes, they are Anti-Christians.)
Nothing is going to change -- the Anti-Christians in Congress will continue to kiss the asses of The 400 Families who donate while killing Social Security, Medicare, Health Care, VA Benefits, Education and Science because those all benefit the impoverished former Middle Class and Veterans.
The best that Fly Over America could do was send a mad pseudo-Billionaire to the White House and hope that 'shaking things up' would get them a break of some kind.
Too few people voted in 2016 and we all got the shaft as the result.
There is more reason to vote now than ever.
More need for voters and fresh faces running for local offices, because parts of the system are rigged and we need to tend our backyards while Congress and the White House thrash like a giant beheaded snake.
We need to get rid of Zombie Senators and Congressmen who have grown old and senile during their decades in office. We need to un-do the Gerrymandering that returns these zombies to office when they haven't had a pulse in decades.
The 1% families, like the Waltons, need to start paying 20% of their income in taxes, just like the rest of us. That money needs to go to Healthcare, Education and VA Benefits because working class America pays for their own Social Security and Medicare.
It might be late in the game, but it's not too late. We must tend our back yards in the next four years, to make sure we don't get fooled again.
The old bull has been ridden to a standstill by the sheer
bloated weight of Uncle Sam, broken to harness and hitched to the huge wagon
that is Congress. I’ve allowed myself to be distracted by the shrill voices of
the political Henny Penny types cackling “The Sky Is Falling!” long enough.
The world is not a China Shop, Skylab fell decades ago. Kentucky
is just as safe as it has always been. If I don’t stop looking at the sky for
falling debris, I’m never going to get anything finished in time for the next
Reading Season.
The Hoard is gone. My parent’s little farm was sold on last
August. I took time to mourn for those I loved and lost. For the first time in
years, I can take care of my farm without feeling pulled in a dozen different
directions.
The porch is breezy, the trees have leafed out, and the lawn
is mowed by a lawn service. It’s time I got back to the business of writing.
So, here’s what’s been going on with my books:
I goofed up and lost the URLs of KAJordan.net and
IcyRoadPublishing.com. The Chinese have squatted on the two names and it would
cost me $3k to get either one back. So I’ve dropped those names and will get
back to that silliness later.
There are 18 I. C. Talbot short stories published. After
over two years of zero sales on the other vendor sites, I started moving all
the Talbot short stories into Kindle Unlimited.
They got a just few pages read, mostly for “Turned Out”until March when I released “The Hide Out” which got picked up and reviewed on
Goodreads. That started a surprising burst of interest in I. C. Talbot short
stories that has lasted all of March and April. Today on May 1st, “The
Hide Out” was read again, kicking off the month on a positive note.
The halo sales and reads increased as I set up free dates
for the other short stories. In March there were a couple thousand pages read
and hundreds of e-books given away for free. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Amazon pays less per page read this
year than last year. More like $0.004 per page instead of $0.005. So a couple
thousand pages read is less than $20. Since I have to pay for the pictures that
make up the covers and I have someone else run an editing pass, I’m still in
the hole for the short stories published before “The Hide Out” and “Ill Wind.”
This doesn’t count my own e-books, with 3 brand new covers, which
were lackluster as freebies. “Let’s Do Lunch” has caught on, with respectable freebie
numbers and almost $2 in pages read. I hope
It’s a good thing that I didn’t get into this to get rich,
isn’t it?
There is something that I’d like to point out – I published
the first of the I. C. Talbot short stories in 2009, when I published my own.
We had respectable runs which peaked 2011 and fell off to nothing thereafter. The
market changed then and apparently it has changed again.
Not long ago, I was utterly sick of cooking and equally sick of eating fast food. Cookbooks don't work for me, and I can't find a cooking class.
So I found a meal kit system to try. After all, I do know a little bit about cooking, but it's all foods from the previous century. I figured right - hand me the recipe and the directions and I can figure it out.
This is what I observed after about four weeks.
The meal kit had me pan frying a lot of meat, something I've never done before, and don't like doing as a rule. I've found stainless steel pans didn't do all that well with it either. I didn't like the way the food burned on the outside and stayed raw in the middle. Now there are ways around that, but they don't work with meal kits. The rest of the food gets cold while you wait for the meat to cook.
It was frustrating. I guessed it was because the copper bottom wasn't really doing it's job - which is to distribute heat and hold it. So it takes a lot longer to fry meat, because it has to be done at a lower temperature.
Also, my stainless steel cookware, with plastic handles, isn't up for going in the oven. And many of the recipes call for putting the food in the oven and under the broiler.
So we needed to get a pan that would survive the broiler, and was heavy enough to pan fry meat faster without burning the heck out of it.
We looked around in the stores, and frankly the price of iodized aluminum cookware is crazy. The cheaper stuff is garbage and the expensive stuff is insane for what you get.
Plus I've been hearing for years that Alzheimer's is caused by aluminum - so why spend big bucks on something that might just rot your brain? So as an experiment, we bought a 10" Lodge cast iron skillet, for $20 at Walmart.
Holy cow! I had no idea what a difference it would make. I could get the meat fried with very little oil, on time. Yes, cast iron is tricky to live with. No dishwasher for that pan! It's hand wash and oven dry. Can't leave tomatoes in the pan, they have to come out before the acid eats the coating.
What I never counted on was the difference in flavor.
The more I cook with it, we are talking just two weeks, the better the food tastes. Part of that is the oil coating - it holds flavors like salt and sweet. So once we cooked a sweetened sauce with thyme, I can still taste the sweet and the thyme. Salt and seasoning seems to linger as well. So there's a complexity of flavor in the pan itself that goes into the meat or sauce, or whatever.
It's weird and it takes some getting used to. But I've talked to someone who's used cast iron cookware for years and that's normal.
So if you decide to go with the meal kit service, consider getting a cast iron pan. Just remember, these puppies are HEAVY and require hand washing.
Just heard Senator Maxine Waters blow the whistle on the Great Shell Game that is now taking place in our White House.
She says it's obvious to her what's going on with the Kremlin Klan and 'those scumbags from the oil and gas industry'.
"They're going get the sanctions lifted so they can get the oil in Russia."
Billions and billions of dollars in oil and gas money - enough money to explain the need to get Trump in the White House at any cost. The reason he says "Wouldn't it be nice to get along with Russia?" The reason Tillerson. CEO of Exon, is in the State Department. The reason Trump won't put his assets in a blind trust. The reason he's installed so many billionaires in his cabinet who appear to be there because they want to destroy the agency they've been put in charge.
This is even the reason for going after immigrants, closing the borders and building that damn wall, though not directly. They need a smoke screen - something to distract the voters while this shell game goes on.
As more immigrants are rounded up and deported, there will be low-level jobs open as well as high-level jobs. Without changing a thing there will be a labor shortage of staggering proportions. Everything will be disrupted. There will be protests, reactions and terror.
And the resulting chaos will prove to be the perfect smoke screen. The immigration drama will be enough to enthrall the entire country. This will keep the media busy covering the deportations and protests - while the sanctions go away and the oil companies pay massive bribes - and certain people swoop up the money and get filthy rich - the 1% of the 1% who will rule the USA and the reborn USSR.
We are still in the first 100 days...wasn't it just a month yesterday? How time flies. The press conference was interesting to say the least. It's not the kind of thing you want to see alone, don't let the kids watch it. It does answer one important question: How much manure can one bull sling?
Quite a bit.
But it appears the old bull has lost some of his momentum . He's been spinning in circles for a month and getting bogged deeper and deeper in the -- mud -- he's churned up. But the old bull is spinning himself into a corner, and Uncle Sam might be in trouble.
Count on the folks from the alphabet soup agencies to continue to investigate just how deep the ties are between our old bull and Mother Russia. Think of them as the rodeo clowns - who are also know as bullfighters. These are the guys who jump in when the bull-rider is thrown and is about to get two feet of horn where the sun never shines.
This is just the first month of a four year ride. Luckily, Congress has yet to lose it's lethargy and make any moves - they've been bingeing on hate for so long they can barely twitch a limb. It must be like one long Thanksgiving for the GOP -- feasting on the carcass of their victory only to find they can't stand up any more.
Lazy vultures.
Without a Democrat to kick around, the bloated GOP is unable to function. They've been the opposition for so long that now their collective spine has become (cranberry) jelly.
Of course there is an exception - John McCain - pickup rider for this long rodeo event. He's back in the saddle and is swinging a catch rope to throw a loop over the old bull if need be. He can afford to make himself a target as long as the bullfighters are doing the close work. His job is to scoop up Uncle Sam if he stays on until the buzzer.
If the old saying is true - 'Every cloud has a silver lining' then Our Glorious Orange Leader has done something that never could have been predicted.
He brought politics alive in America again.
Not since the 1960's have I seen this many people look into getting involved in the political arena. Then it was the Boomers protesting the war in Vietnam. But they seemed to have gone to sleep in the 1970's when I came of age.
Then in the 1980's and 1990's nobody gave a fig about what happened. Things just slid along a greased track.
Now -- well this is beyond exciting!
Of course this is one heck of a bumpy road that we are about to embark upon. We're up against the GREAT BULL after all. But I couldn't be more cheerful.
Politics as usual is GONE. Instead we've got people waking up to the fact that they have a voice and they have power.
And the Senators are running for the freaking hills!
This is a guest post from my best buddy Butch McKinley.
The alarm just went off for the 12 year old living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A court just said "Why don't you just shove it up your ass, Buddy!!!??? This is 'Murica! Land of the free and home of the brave. Yer about to fuck up the computer industry, the IT business, kill off engineering and in general make trouble for large numbers of businesses! So just fold your executive order up carefully with no sharp edges sticking out to cut your sphincter and park it in your ascending Colon!"
Best ruling I've ever read!
And now you know how I got bandicated (another word for 86'd) off FB.
Yer Pal,
Butch McKinley
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worry about things which are beyond the power of our will. Epictetus.
The American Economy operates on a specific type of smoke and mirrors known as Consumer Confidence. If Joe or Jane Average feels that the world is a stable place, they are going to spend a little extra. Maybe buy a car, or a bigger house, or have another child.
con·sum·er con·fi·dence (noun) a statistical measure of consumers' feelings about current and future economic conditions, used as an indicator of the overall state of the economy. "a survey of consumer confidence showed households had suddenly turned negative about buying “big ticket” items."
The perception of the safety of the future is under siege. Our Jane Average has already put a run on the longest lasting birth control she can her hands on - the IUD implant. Four million of those devices went into action in December of 2016 and are expected to last for the next 10 years. That's four million babies that won't be born for sure, maybe twice that over the next 8 years.
Computer sales in general are stagnant and so are iPad sales as consumers have decided to keep what they have over the Christmas shopping season. Car sales are down, too.
We're still here - the End of the World hasn't come yet. But Jane Average is getting more and more uneasy with the Big Bull rampaging through the world.
But at the National Prayer Breakfast - the old bull had to take a swipe at his old TV show. He asked everyone to pray for higher ratings. Arnold Schwarzenegger had one of his best lines ever "How about we trade jobs...so we can finally sleep comfortably again at night, eh?"
Those of us who thought we had the election in the bag now have to take off the sack-cloth and wash off the ashes. We've wailed and pointed our fingers, some have taken to the streets and others watch from the sidelines and swear a lot. The TV talking heads on the Right are sounding more like Henny Penny all the time.
But, as stated in a previous post our big bull of a President is out of the chute. We know he can't buck off Uncle Sam (Congress) for the next four years. He can buck, spin and fish tail all he wants. You can be sure we will get an ear-full of his antics every day.
Frankly, it's starting to sound like 'The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight'. They are poorly prepared to fill those 600 odd jobs that are critical to the running of the country, and require only a simple vetting to fill. Plus all the fussing over divesting when everyone knows it's going to have to happen or the Ethics Committee is gonna be on him like white on rice. Then there is his Cabinet nominees - the Democrats have broken out the pitch forks and torches, and rightly so.
Or it could be terrified Millennial news reporters are simply nit-picking and shrieking in hysteria. We survived two terms of Bush/Chaney after all.
No one doubts that Trump is already in charge of an extensive empire of his own. We're just totally creeped-out by the bromance between Trump and Putin.
I watched the new President and his lovely bride dance to 'I Did It My Way' and felt an unaccustomed emotion for him.
I felt sorry for him.
He might have gotten into office by doing it his way, but he's all ready racking up a back log on his To-Do list. It will take months, if not years, to clear the table. He might never get anything else done his first term at this rate.
While Obama came in and went out with stellar approval ratings, President Trump doesn't have the approval of the people, or Congress. He's never held political office and is an outsider in the political machine. His new job has one of the steepest learning curves on the planet, and many suspect he hasn't been doing his homework.
His every move is under a microscope that would make an atomic particle nervous.
Will he deliver on all those lavish and perhaps misguided promises? Just for example - Health Care - will he 'fix it' or will he kill three times as many people annually as died in the Wars?
If somebody (Ivanka?) cribbed the notes from a country that has a Universal Health Care systems that works, he might pull that little miracle off. Since nearly every other civilized nation in the world has one, even Russia, it can't be that hard to get a copy. He's not getting any help from McConnell - that's for damn sure.
Can his performance silence the critics (doubt it - they never shut up for the last 4 Presidents, why would he be any different?)
IMHO - our new President is going to be SWAMPED by Monday morning and DRAINED by Friday. We might not see or hear much from him for the next few months, or even his first year, as he bawls, bucks, spins and fish-tails his way around the Oval Office.
But I've failed to stock up on popcorn. No, really, I don't want to watch this play out. I watched Obama go from 'Lamb to Slaughter' to 'Scapegoat' (it was so bad my dad called him "Bambi") vilified on Faux News almost as bad as Hilary (Lucifer Incarnated) Clinton. While I'm sure that both the Obamas and their daughters will remain activists, they will have to take a break and rest up.
I hope that Bill and Hilary Clinton will take some much needed personal time. They are entitled to enjoy their grandchild, just like anybody else.
My uncle Howard served an Ohio Senator back in the 1950's - he used to say that you know a person's power by their enemies. So Hilary will always in my mind be measured by fact that Vlad Putin had to sic the KGB on her to stop her from becoming President. WOW! that's some enemy!
I'm cancelling my DVR recordings of MSNBC, The Daily Show and The Late Show - because I can't imagine 4 more years of their coverage of the Trump Presidency. I'm burned out. Let the old bull rip.
An estimated 20 to 30 million people will be kicked off their medical insurance with no hope of getting insurance again. Rural hospitals will lose financial support. Sick children and adults with 'existing conditions' will die.
I'll repeat that: Sick children and adults with 'existing conditions' will die.
Bernie Sanders was quoted as saying "36,000 people will died every year." Think about that. In ten years of the Iraq war we lost 123,000 people. That's over 12,000 per year. So we are going to lose 3 times that many people, per year, because they need insurance and can't get it, as we did in the Iraq war.
I have a dozen friends and family members who got Life Saving Medical Care because of the Affordable Care Act.
These people will lose access to health care - they are likely to become sicker and sicker until something fatal happens.
Then there's this cute little factoid: Women are scrambling to get IUD's because they know that birth control will be more expensive, and they may lose access to it all together now that ACA is history.
It has never ceased to amaze me that the very people who cut benefits to single women with kids are also cutting their access to birth control. Anti-abortion, anti-birth-control AND against benefits for poor mothers and education. That's the GOP for you.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Foggy on Christmas morning - 2016
We're expecting snow tomorrow.
The wind is bitter and it finds it's way inside my hood and trickles down my neck.
I bought a bale of straw to cover the strawberries, that just took a couple sections. The rest went into Chicken World to get them out of the mud. (Chickens get frost bite.) I left the open bale, thinking they would scatter it. But as of evening stables, the bale is intact, sitting in the middle of the pen.
The horses were waiting at the door for me as usual. No silly antics tonight, they were serious about getting inside. The geese, Jamie and Cerise were in the alpaca stall with the baby chickens. The alpacas came in on their own, so the geese decided to come out. The baby chickens have their own corner, so they stay in with the alpacas at night.
The horses and the alpacas ate an entire round bale in under a week. I guess there's not much grass, alive or dead, in the pastures. So we'll need to get another round bale before Saturday. Most afternoons, I'll step outside to find all three horses laying down, sleeping in the sun, sometimes the alpacas will be there, two sleeping and one standing watch for the entire mixed herd.
Modify message
« Last Edit: Today at 22:33:32 by K. A. Jordan »
Report to moderator 21
