Contact Uno

At the Keller house we are huge gamers. That doesn’t mean quite what you think. We are nerdy Luddite gamers. So it doesn’t involve computers. We play games: board games and card games. Everything from Settlers of Catan to Power Grid to Bang to Louis XIV to Killer Bunnies. Yes, Killer Bunnies is a real game. The cards include “cyber bunny,” “nuclear warhead,” “miniature black hole,” and “fluorine gas.” Yes, the game is very popular with teenage boys.

But we have normal games too, like Uno. However, we don’t play by the regular rules, which are too tedious for words. We play a version called “Speed Uno” that was invented by a friend of ours. As you can imagine “Speed Uno” is much faster (duh) and players interrupt each other’s play all the time. However, even Speed Uno was still a bit boring. So we came up with a couple more rules to ensure only barely managed chaos. Players are moving so fast that some bumping of arms and shoving of shoulders occurs. We call it “Contact Uno.” You’re welcome to join us, but you might want to bring your fencing masks and some shoulder pads—that way you can get your cards down before Luke wins by playing four cards in a row without even having time to yell “Uno!”

Literary Litmus Tests

I’m easily romanced by the cover art of a book. Yes, I judge a book by the cover. If I’m in the library and they have two copies of the same book, I always chose the one with the prettier cover. Next, I’m influenced by dust jacket copy—you know, the blurbs on the inside front cover of the book. Assuming both are good and I don’t know anything bad about the author, I am tempted.

My daughter on the other hand is much more prosaic. (It must be the math major in her.) She has an uncanny ability to pick up a book and open to the worse page/scene in the entire novel. Imagine: I’m drooling over cover art that looks like it belongs in a museum, and I’ve pointed out to Ariel the lifting melody of the words on the dust cover.

Ariel takes the book, opens it, and says, “Are you sure you want to read this book?”

I nod, eagerly.

She says, “In this chapter a character named Todd strangles the family dogs in his neighborhood.”

“What?!” I grab the book. “But he seemed like a nice boy.”

Sure enough, Todd is a dog strangler. Okay, this didn’t really happen—usually the scenes she finds are worse. When I flip through a book, I never find the weird/perverse scenes. Ariel says they are almost always 2/3s of the way through the book. Hmm, this must be some odd literary rule that no one ever told me. I wondered if there were more such rules.

This morning I read a friend’s blog. She talked about the “Page 99 litmus test” (Thanks, Rowena. Here’s a link if you’d like to read her original post: http://hyalineprosaic.blogspot.com/ ). She quoted Ford Maddox Ford who said, “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."

As a writer, I got a little nervous. What was on page 99 of the novel I was currently querying? I opened my document and scrolled to page 99. On that page, the main character Henry finds out that his grandfather tried to kill him when he was a little boy. Whew, that works—totally non-boring scene. Now all I have to do is find an agent, a publisher, and great cover art. Yep, should be easy...not.

Note: I really wanted to title this post "Literary Litmi," but "litmus" is Scandinavian in original not Latin. bummer.

Differential Equations

When you attend a major university with over 10,000 students enrolled and only 40 of them are majoring in math, you have to ask yourself why. Is it the inability of secondary schools to prepare students for college level math? Maybe. Is it students’ paranoid fear of math? Could be. But since Ariel’s a math major, I’ve discovered the real reason.

She has a professor whose name shall not be used in this blog because Ariel fears retribution—I told her that my blog isn’t that popular, but...his name shall be Dr. Immigrant. Dr. Im is, according to Ariel, a very good differential equations professor. However, there’s more to being a good professor than teaching. Getting homework graded on time so that students can use it to study, actually being at your office hours, writing exams that can actually be finished in the allotted time—these are all important skills that Dr. Im seems to be lacking. But the worst is that his exams have very little to do with what he teaches in class. The students in Ariel’s class have responded in various ways. The engineering students swear at Dr. Im like drunken sailors, before he shows up for class. The math majors cope with the stress by letting their already marginal personal hygiene slip a couple of notches—Ariel excepted. The students who sit in the back and who are clearly thinking of changing their major spend the class time texting all their friends on the utter lameness of DE (differential equations).

Given past history, Dr. Im copes with students' test grades by threatening to fail the entire class and telling them they are probably all D students whose previous professors gave them mercy grades and that they should drop his class and changes majors. Okay, right. In the words of the inimitable Bertie Wooster, “He is foreign, and therefore, excitable.” I would think (note: I’ve a degree in English—and thus have no authority to comment on math) that perhaps the exams and the class materials should have something in common. But that’s just me.

Zombies

Most of Chattanooga has recovered from the ice and snow. We stayed snug and had power, though Cal and I did find a downed power line in our neighborhood. Matt and Jake went sledding, and Ariel and Matt built a snowman in the front yard. Of course, we took Jezebel out in the snow. She seemed to enjoy the snow, especially the snowballs. I think she should get a tryout as an outfielder for the Yankees. But we discovered that Jez is afraid of snowmen. Every time she got near one, she shied away.

I guess I can understand it. Snowmen are sort of like zombies, and I suspect that Jez may have read Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. We think she spends the day sleeping in the sun, but instead she smuggles books under Cal’s desk and reads them—it’s what I would do if I were her.

Note: For those of you who are writers, I recently participated in a dialogue on “place” with short story writer and novelist Adele Annesi. If you’d like to “listen in,” click the following link: http://wordforwords.blogspot.com/

The Effects of Global Warming

My yard and garden are very concerned about the effects of global warming. Unfortunately, they misunderstand the issue. They’re concerned it’s not warm enough. They don’t rely on falsified climatology reports. They rely on snow. Snow like they haven’t seen in years. Here are some photos.

The following pictures are from our neighborhood. Notice the very cute houses—they are up the street a few doors from where we live. We live in the ugly step-child area of an artsy, hip neighborhood.

See, I told you it was a hip neighborhood.

I'm not sure I get the head-on-a-pedestal thing, but then again I'm not artsy.

I'm a Princess in Disguise

I have sensitive skin. This means that I can’t use soap, not Ivory, not Dove, nothing soap-ish or it burns my skin. Yes, burns. Instead, I have to use Cetaphil for sensitive skin. It means I can’t dry my face with a towel. I have to pat it dry or it stays red and I look like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer—not an attractive look in a woman.

It means I have to put uber-sensitive skin lotion on my face or my skin hurts. And worst of all, if my skin gets really upset I get little water blisters, not pimples, blisters. (Yes, I know this means that I probably have rosacea—but I can’t have it, because that would make my health insurance company extremely unhappy. Just for the record, I have never been diagnosed with rosacea.)

So I researched products for people with “skin like rose petals.” According to various websites, I needed a moisturizing product that would form a barrier to protect my fragile skin from the perils of modern life. Every site recommended a cream from Dermatologica. But it was expensive. I decided I didn’t need it. And then, I broke out in multiple little blisters just above my lip. I ordered the product.

It arrived yesterday. At this point, I’m hoping it’s not snake oil. I did wash and pat dry my face. I put a small amount of the precious ointment on my skin. Ah, the burning was gone almost immediately. It lasted for about 8 hours. At the very least, it makes my skin feel better—and I don’t have any new blisters. Not yet, anyway.

Then the truth about my skin hit me. I’m sure you remember the story of the Princess and the Pea. In order to discover if she was a real princess, her fiancé’s mother made her sleep on top of a stack of mattresses underneath of which was a pea. A true princess is so sensitive that she’d be unable to sleep. I think I have a version of this. My skin is so rarified that the “common” stresses of modern life are too much for it. So, I’m really a princess in disguise. I wish I’d known before, this would totally give me a leg up in getting my novel published.

Criminals Don't Have to Be Geniuses

I’m sure you've heard the saying, “Criminals don’t have to be geniuses.” And that’s true. But if they’re too dumb...they get caught.

The other day I was driving Ariel to her violin lesson (Luke had the van and Ariel doesn’t know how to drive a stick-shift). We turned left at an intersection next to a private school. While waiting to make my turn, I noticed that a house across the street from the school had an EPB (electric and cable company) truck and a police car in the driveway. Hmmm. That’s odd.

I put it out of my mind and went to violin lessons. After the lessons, we retraced our route home. As we neared the intersection, I noticed a policeman was directing the traffic. Even odder...

I looked over at the house. Now a police car was pulled diagonally across the lawn. In the driveway was a big vehicle. Plastered on the side was the logo: Anti-meth enforcement. Right. It was a meth house.

A meth house across the street from a school—how stupid is that? Doesn’t that up the felony status and jail time? Hello!? Couldn’t they find a “safer” place?

And even stupider still, the meth house was only two doors down from the house where the local police officer of the K-9 unit lives—his dog lives with him! Can you say “uber-stupid?” One walk past that meth house and the dog would have had a conniption.

Nope, criminal don’t have to be geniuses. But it sure helps us if they’re idiots.