A Fair Assessment

Most stereotypes are not without a foundation in truth. A lot of people assume that the people who work at carnivals and fairs ("Carneys" as they are sometimes called) are from the dregs of society. That is absolutely untrue, society doesn't have dregs, they are from the "creepy" class of society.
Something scary about putting your safety into the hands of a high school dropout who has devolved to the point of no longer using speech, but communicating with a series of grunts and pointing. The ones who retained opposable thumbs don't like it when you catch them sleeping at the switch and start laughing at them. Free safety tip: if you just laughed at the guy sleeping at the safety switch, and he saw you laughing at him, don't get on the ride he is working on.

A Day in Haiku

Being home again
Doing some work in the yard
Getting a sunburn

Spinning shopping carts
Walking around home depot
Making the kids laugh

Wear safety goggles
To keep the blood from shooting
And hitting your eyes

Typing one handed
Hoping that thumb will grow back
No more power tools

Good English

It's amazing what we can get away with in spoken language. Little indiscretions that are easily forgiven as part of slang, accent, or just speaking quickly. We've pretty much dropped "whom" from everyday speech, and if you end a sentence with a preposition you will probably not be made fun of by your peers (unless you are an English teacher who hangs out with other English teachers in which case you probably deserve it.) In most circles you can even get away with saying "I seen the bridge was out. If I was you I'd go where the new bridge is at." For extra points on your SAT find at least three errors in that quote.
Written language is where things start to get tricky. Effect and affect sound almost the same when spoken, but unfortunately cannot be used interchangeably. The various forms of there, their, and they're require no thought when spoken, but when written tend to show a lack of concern by the author for the actual meaning of words. Plural word's that are neither possessive in nature nor contraction's don't require apostrophe's, and yet they're so often present in an otherwise correct piece of prose.
But how often are we writing anything where we don't have red squiggly lines that appear to show a misspelling, or green squiggly lines to show a grammar violation? Have you even been asked to help someone with the formatting of their word processor because they can't get rid of all the red and green lines that appear seemingly randomly throughout their document?
It's in our rare adventures into public writing that we need to be most careful. Business signs, marquees, and billboards with obvious mistakes give doubt to the quality of the product or service being advertised. Misspelling words in Christmas lights is just funny. Writing out slogans on your car window with white shoe polish makes you a traveling example of why kids should pay attention in school.
Today, as I was walking my son to school, I saw in a car window "Billy (names have not been changed), go higher then B4." I assume Billy is competing in some sport like pole vaulting or high jumping that requires him to go higher in order to do better, and that the driver of the minivan in question was not encouraging Billy to push the limits of his illegal drug use in order to "go higher." I'm still wondering what Billy is supposed to do after going higher. First he must go higher, then he must B4. No one could be so careless as to confuse the comparative "than" with the word "then," at least not in such a public medium as shoe polish on your car window. Poor Billy, I sure hope he studies hard in school, then goes on to higher levels of education than his mother did.


Obviously I've opened up the door on this one. Feel free to peruse my past posts looking for grammatical errors and point them out to me. Please don't mention the unnecessary apostrophes in the last line of the second paragraph; they're there for their own irony.

Minimum and Maximum

There are many important differences between a minimum security prison and a maximum security prison. The largest is the effort they go to to keep you from getting out. Having recently spent some time as a guest of our government in a minimum security prison I learned that they don't really care if you get out or not, so long as you filled out the proper paperwork and are back before lights out. They know that the hassle of additional paperwork is enough motivation to keep all the well behaved and non-violent criminals in line. Security guards are there to help you get into the right line at the library and to make sure the pool doesn't run out of towels.
Maximum security prisons exist because the people inside them want to get out. It's bad enough on the inside that people are constantly running for the fences, digging holes through floors, and getting cakes with files inside them. Apparently enough people get out of the maximum security prisons that they need to put up signs advising motorists not to pick up hitch hikers, and that is good advice.
In a minimum security prison you tend to get bored because you are not constantly thinking up new escape plans, trying to avoid getting beaten up, and worrying about what to order for your last meal. Boredom is the prime reason why bored games were invented. Not to be confused with board games, bored games are a breed of their own. Candyland and Sorry are board games. Risk and Monopoly are bored games. Bored games are designed to fill time. They may involve some strategic thinking or planning, but the overall objective is to burn a few hours between sleep periods. You know you've crossed the boundary into bored games when you start making up rules to make the games last longer and be harder to win.
Maximum security prisons have their bored games as well, but shiv throwing and making explosives from household chemicals are not as popular at dinner parties.

Reading

I learned to read in college. I had heard that there would be a test before diplomas were handed out, so I decided to cram in some phonics and basic skills in order to pass. Having been a Political Science/International Relations major there was no reading required, it was all hearsay and making up opinions to support. My opinion was usually "bomb them all into submission and take their lands and riches." It's a sad commentary on society that many people thought I was being serious, and whole heartedly agreed with me.
But back to reading...
I enjoy reading books. I usually have two or three novels in progress at any given time. I don't think I've ever read non-fiction on purpose. Sure, maybe one or two slipped in by mistake, but I'd rather be inspired by someone's sense of creativity for mythical creatures, far off planets, and futuristic hypothetical philosophical ideas, or at least get a good laugh. I blame the sci-fi fascination on my Dad, he was my supplier early on and got me hooked.
While serving time in a minimum security prison recently I found a lot of time to read. I started with some authors I knew, branched out to some that I'd heard of, then jumped feet first into some new genres I would have never touched before. It would be fair to say that I judged every book by it's cover, but I didn't judge them too harshly. I also read a few female authors. Not that I have anything against female authors, but there are not a lot of them who write like Orson Scott Card, Pat McManus, Douglas Adams, Micheal Crichton, John Grisham, Isaac Asimov, Dean Koontz, Tom Clancy, or J.R.R. Tolkien.
I read a few books by Janet Evanovich. They were sort of interesting in a "this isn't science fiction but let's go ahead and put reality on hold for a while" sort of way. I started reading a Danielle Steele novel that someone had given to me as a gag gift. I pride myself on finishing every book that I start, but a few pages into it I tossed it aside with a "who the crap cares?" She is better left to the middle school aged girl crowd I guess.
Currently I'm reading "Timeline" by Michael Crichton. A few chapters into it promises to be interesting. I just hope he doesn't do his standard act of wrapping everything up a little too nicely right at the end. For example:
Jurassic Park - Don't worry, all the dinos will die off because of an L-lysine deficiency that we bred into them but haven't mentioned until just now. Whew, that was lucky.
Andromeda Strain - This virus that is killing everyone and we don't even know what it is yet just mutated to a perfectly harmless strain. Whew, that was lucky.
The Sphere - Let's use the power that this mysterious sphere gave us to all just forget about that sphere. What sphere? Hey it worked. Whew, that was lucky.
Congo - We came to get these diamonds but these highly trained assassin gorillas have us surrounded and are about to smash our heads in. Wait, the volcano just erupted and killed them all. Whew, that was lucky.
So, it's a good thing I learned how to read finally, now I can finally read the instructions on the package of toothpicks.