Cheap Books

If you like to read as much as I do, you probably find yourself with shelves full of books. You may also find yourself spending a lot of time at the bookstore searching for books that might be out of print. Your shelves fill-up fast, your mind expands but your wallet keeps getting lighter and lighter. It's a vicious cycle but here is a great way to curb that cycle by recycling your books. Here's how...

Miracle Laptop

I learned something very interesting the other day... sadly out of necessity. I left my laptop in sleep mode while my husband and I went to the movies (by the way Frozen is wonderful! I highly suggest taking the little ones to see it). When we returned home, about 4 hours later, both out computers somehow were jostled out of sleep mode, possibly from a power jolt, but mine never “woke-up”.  All I had was a bunch of flashing lights, taunting me with their agonizing rhythm, but the computer itself wouldn’t load past the point to access the hard drive.

Vampires

What doesn't belong in the sentence: cannibalism, midnight, heartbreaking love, or undead? If you said midnight... well sorry you didn't win the gold star. But if heartbreaking love caught your eye as being a little sordid along side cannibalism and the undead then you are among one of the top percentage of sane people in the US right now. For some unknown, or perhaps undead, reason people are flocking to bookstores to read the newest and greatest blood-sucking adventures. And it isn't just localized to books. More and more movies are filmed to coincide with the money-making marvel that this new craze of Vampire-isms is creating.

Techno-Zombies

On a recent trip to the mall I came across a rather peculiar oddity that I could only describe as techno-zombies. These aren’t the regular kind of zombies depicted in horror movies running after hot women with large breasts and tasty brain matter. These were the kind of zombies whose brains have been, quite literally, replaced by their cell-phones, and their fingers permanently affixed to the keypad. They are so completely oblivious to the world around them that simple tasks, such as walking, cause them great trauma and bewilderment.

Ghosts

It was a dark and stormy night – The rafters rattled and the storm windows shook as if mindless toys to the mighty wind blowing throughout the countryside. A bitter chill surrounds your new/old Victorian while the distinctive smell of rose peddle perfume wafts through the halls. The light flash – DARKNESS! You dash under the kitchen table, your eyes wide with panic; it's happening... again.

Evil Plot of Crows

I woke this morning at 4 a.m. to the sound of an obnoxious crow calling from the top of a tree in my back yard. As I lay there in bed listening to the taunting, irritating crowing I felt as if the damnable feathered creation was in fact raging war on my poor, defenseless ears and drilling with its shrilling laughter at the soft, sleep deprived tissue I once called a brain. In a deranged state I began to wonder; are crows so intelligent that they have devised a way to rage war on humans in such a manner that we can’t realize that we are at war?

2B or Not 2B?

We’ve all heard this question before. It’s a question regarding living or dying. Or is it to s eliminate cheese from your serving platter? Oh wait that’s brie, not be. Regardless, it’s a good question. Who among the living haven’t asked ourselves this very question one time in our lives? A bad break-up, the loose of a job, a bad grade on an exam, we’ve all had thoughts of this statement at least once. Thankfully the majority of us move past this melancholy statement to sometime more joyful… like “how can I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Phishing for Relatives

This morning I learned that my dear uncle Mortimer J. Hudson died yesterday of a rare illness in New Uganda. I learned of this because his grieving widow, Mille Hudson, sent me an email in duress. She also mentioned that upon his death I inherited twenty-million Euros.

Ugly Baby Photos

<a href="http://savethewriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ugly_baby.jpg"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-49 alignleft" alt="ugly_baby" src="http://savethewriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ugly_baby-150x150.jpg" width="150" height="150" /></a>I’m sure many of you have been faced with this dilemma – being cornered by someone you mildly tolerate and faced with “cute baby” pictures. Okay, five minutes of looking at baby pictures, it’s a worthwhile expense to make someone happy --  only to find you’re looking at pictures of the ugliest baby ever to enter our world!

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You’re stuck; you can’t allow your face to contort into anything that may resemble terror or horror. All you can do is pray that there’s only one – and that’s when the new mom, grandma, auntie and/or the occasional father (thank you men for not inflicting strangers with baby pictures)  brings out the entire three-hundred page photo album they miraculously stuffed inside their purse. That’s when I usually find any reason, root canal, hemorrhoid surgery, tax audit –(the more personal and horrific the better so it sounds convincing)  just to get out of there.

What do you say to a parent whose new infant is so ugly that he/she makes the wallpaper fester? Or even if the baby is somewhat attractive? It’s just a baby. Face it, human infants aren’t cute. They don’t reach cuteness for another nine months or so. Before that time their basically just squishy prunes that eat, sleep, cry and poop. You can’t even really tell what they look like except skin color, everything else usually changes – hair color, eyes, features. You can’t say, “oh he looks just like you,” unless the parent actually looks like a California Raisin.

“Yeah, your kid’s adorable – now can I have my dinner, please?”

All of which leads me to this: apparently there’s a fad that encompasses making our infants “talk” about subjects involving adult matters before they can eat solid food -- the borderline prune -  to - cute phase. (See e*trade’s YouTube clip below)  I’m curious why this fad came about and why it’s actually making companies money. It’s exploitation of our infants – slave… no strike that – drool labor! If we heard about this in other countries we’d be outraged but for some reason here, in the USA, we find it adorable.

Hum… why babies? Kittens, puppies, even wombats are cuter when they’re infants, but I guess they couldn’t “talk” about serious life-long decisions regarding investing and mutual funds. (Yet – somehow Geico managed to use a gecko to sell their products.)  Would any of us take investing advice from a 6 month old? If you would, well then please come on over and let’s chat about a beautiful piece of property on a  fault line I’ll be happy to sell you … and I’m sure it would be a great investment for the future... wonderful expansion opportunities.

But the talking baby fad doesn’t end there. Look at the “Family Guy” TV series. Yes, granted, it is a cartoon so the drool labor isn’t as big an issue, but we still find it entertaining to watch an infant be diabolical. The “Look Who’s Talking’ movies of the late 80’s early 90’s certainly must have been an instigator of this fad but why do we find it so appealing? Are we so conditioned to believe that talking infants are adorable from all those “cute baby” photos we’re forced to be nice about?  Or is it that we all secretly wish that we were slobbering, drooling, and pooping ourselves and still have a voice to talk back with? Whatever the reason is I’m avoiding investment advice from anyone under the age of nine… ten year olds though seem to have a better grip on the stock-market.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50pWjhHv5EQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50pWjhHv5EQ</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vW9gUmooFg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vW9gUmooFg</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acCfnwTpdxU">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acCfnwTpdxU</a>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVkmr8wk9N8&amp;feature=related

Beating around the Bush

Today, I’ve decided to test the waters and talk about Clichés. Clichés, they’re everywhere you go - like verbal cash-cows chewing cud. No one can conduct a casual conversation without a slip of the tongue, using clichés at a drop of a hat to demonstrate what they want to get across. Problem is we really did reinvent the wheel by using clichés, most of which were born yesterday. We have added our two cents to make sense of our daily language, using clichés commonly whenever the cat has gotten our tongues.  Bluntly  writing, unless we are speaking to other Americans, or very knowledgeable other-landers, clichés are about as useless as a lead balloon and in most cases no one has a ghost of a chance (or chance in hell) of understanding  their true nature.