The Christmas Stuff Died

Maturity or apathy. I’m not sure which. Or perhaps satiation.

Nobody in our house want stuff this Christmas.

We’re toying with a vacation at Christmastime. Or saving for a vacation after Christmastime has passed. But aside from that, nobody really seems bothered.

Of course we have a house stuffed to the gills with stuff. Not bringing any more new stuff into the house would probably be a good thing.

I did get myself two new pairs of jeans after I ripped the seat out of an old pair putting insulation in the ceiling above the laundry room. And a few things have slipped into the house for us to give each other. But nobody seems to have the energy to shop, let alone come up with a list of desires.

So maybe we give stuff away this year. Or pay extra on a few bills. Money spent on Christmas could make a car payment or two. Or three. Or pay for four months’ worth of solar panels.

I’ve thought about it. The only thing I really hope I get is that candy cane filled with Sixlets. And I can buy my own Sixlets.

We’ll see how long it lasts. Maybe moods will shift. You never know.



Nobody wants a BB gun. Nobody wants a zeppelin. And nobody wants socks or a truck that raises. Or even a football.

Maybe that’s good. Maybe we should put stuff we no longer need under the tree, and give it away come Christmas morning. Our era of acquiring stuff for the sake of stuff might be over.

Which is good, considering the consignment-store look of the house.

Brainstorming vs. Writing in Chunks

NOTE: A post for my English 101 students. But I liked it so much I'm going to share it here too.

So this week we're using two terms that are often confused: Brainstorming and writing in chunks.

Most of us are probably more familiar with brainstorming: Sitting there quietly (or loudly, per your individual preference) coming up with quick bursts of ideas. Whether you type them out on a computer keyboard or scribble them on paper, your typical brainstorming session probably goes something like this, but maybe with less shouting and fewer sideburns:

Brainstorming is where you quickly throw out on paper or on your screen as many ideas as you can think of. They don't have to be fully developed, but they should be specific.

If I were brainstorming ideas for what I'd write my personal essay about, my brainstorming session might come up with the following ideas:

1. When I heard the spirit shout "stop" when I was in the crosswalk

2. What was going through my mind as I watched my first child be born

3. How I felt in those first few moments after my firs auto accident (I still remember that ugly, ugly shirt I was wearing)

4. That day I passed out in the temple parking lot

And so on. You can see I'm not really offering a lot of detail, but I am being as specific as I can. Why be specific? Because if I brainstormed like this:

1. A mission experience

2. My first year at the University of Idaho

3. Getting married

the topics I've picked are so general when I sit down to write the essay, I have no idea where to start, where to end, and will probably come up with a pretty watery essay at the end. The more specific you are, the easier this assignment will be.

Now, let's move on to writing in chunks. And who better to teach us what writing in chunks looks like than Chunk from "The Goonies"

Chunk starts out brainstorming, but brainstorming well. He lists off a rapid-fire list of things he's done (any of which might make a fun personal essay). But when he gets to that incident in the movie theater, he starts writing in chunks. He offers more detail on one idea. It's not a good idea, but he can see the guys are warming to it.

So if I were writing in chunks as I was working on ideas for my personal essay, it might look like this:

I was headed home from the LDS Institute on campus late one night and when I was in a crosswalk on campus, I heard a voice shout "stop!" I stopped and immediately felt something brush the front of my jacket -- it was a car that had been stopped on the side of the road as I entered the crosswalk, but was suddenly there, running the stop sign, as I crossed.

Or

When I got out of the car, I felt all the blood rushing from my head. I figured I'd be okay after a few steps, but blood pressure medicine works in mysterious ways. I took two steps, then told my son "get ready to catch." He didn't catch me.

As I write in chunks, I begin to flesh out ideas from that brainstorming session. As I write, I remember more details, and I jot them down.

Brainstorming is like the spark plug in your engine that gets things started.

Writing in chunks is like shifting through the gears, getting faster and faster as you accelerate up the freeway.

Please try both experiences this week. Brainstorming starts you on the road. Writing in chunks lets you see which of those brainstormed ideas has the most memories attached to it, the most vivid imagery, and helps you get down that road. Try them both and grow some ideas in the garden of your mind.

Obscure Fan Theory #428: Ernesto Lacuna and Oswaldo Twee

Just stumbled across an obscure fan theory regarding Cul de Sac, one of my favorite comic strips, today: The characters Oswaldo Twee and Ernesto Lacuna are father and son, or at least in some way closely related.

First, background.

Ernesto Lacuna is an elementary-aged wunderkind-in-his-own mind, and “imaginary” friend of Petey Otterloop, one of the strip’s main characters. He’s characterized as a proto-adult in waiting, anxious to shed the imbecility of youth and become a take-charge kind of guy. He’s a member of Future Adults of America – he may be its founder and only member – and often has delusions that he holds vast authority over his peers, particularly the hapless Petey.

Oswaldo Twee is a children’s book author that comic strip creator Richard Thompson says he modeled after Lemony Snicket. He, like Ernesto, has his own manias, including the theory that when Petey, inline for a Twee book signing, lost a baby tooth, he was “spontaneously disassembling,” something Ernesto is very likely to believe as well.

Then there’s appearance. Both Twee and Lacuna, despite their differing last names, look like older and younger versions of each other. Behold:

First, Ernesto. In rather a quiet and bland moment for him. But note the hair, the round head, the strange speechifying.

Now on to Mr. Twee. Also black of hair, round of head, and odd of speech.

Enlarged, for both.

Really, all Ernesto needs is that Oswaldian swoop to his hair.

Why does this matter? It doesn’t really. But it’s fun.

“Just Don’t Make Fred Into A Saint”

The quote in the headline is from Joanne Rogers, wife of Fred, who needs no introduction.

Maybe she doesn’t want him to be regarded as a saint. And that’s probably no danger, because most of the people using his words these days are using them as weapons against those they hate, which I’m sure Fred Rogers would fine abhorrent. The same has been done with the quiet, peaceful leaders of religion or politics or thought in the past. And it will continue, as long as we remember the words as sharpened swords and arrows, not in the intent they were given.

From the article (emphasis mine):

At the luncheon, [a fundraiser, actually, for George H.W. Bush] Fred stood at the lectern between Bush and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. He leaned in to the microphone.

He looked tiny.

“I know of a little girl who was drawing with crayons in school,” he said.

He kept looking tinier.

“The teachers asked her about her drawing,” he said. “And the little girl said, ‘Oh, I am making a picture of God.’ The teacher said, ‘But no one knows what God looks like.’ The little girl smiled and answered, ‘They will now.’ ”

With that he asked everyone to think of their own images of God, and he began praying. He talked about listening to the cries of despair in America and about turning those cries into rays of hope.

A hush fell over the room, and he wasn’t tiny anymore. He stepped away from the lectern and darted. He was always a darter, but this was extreme. “O.K., now where the hell is Fred?” Isler asked me. We darted. We combed the building and climbed stairs. The Secret Service guys had lost sight of him, too. “We’ve got to get out of here,” Newell said.

We found him outside, next to an oak tree, motionless and relaxed. “Fred!” Isler said, exasperated. Fred said he wanted to go back to the office.

“I wasn’t about to participate in any fund-raising or anything else,” he told me later. “But at the same time I don’t want to be an accuser. Other people may be accusers if they want to; that may be their job. I really want to be an advocate for whatever I find is healthy or good. I think people don’t change very much when all they have is a finger pointed at them. I think the only way people change is in relation to somebody who loves them.”

And they don’t change much when words are aimed at them as weapons. Even if they’re the words of Fred Rogers.


Those are Fred’s words too. Many of us sing them today. But many of us don’t mean it.

So You're A Hack Writer, Part 3

So what’s a hack writer to do?

I have to be clear.

Because it came to me Monday, November 18, 2019, during the second hour of a two-hour long technical writers’ meeting on end notes, that some aspects of my story aren’t clear at all. And without that clarity, the driving force of the story and its main character are a bit on the weak side.

Behold the notes I took on my story when I should have been thinking about end notes in technical documents (I’ve learned that when inspiration strikes you, you write it down. “Be a collector of good ideas, writes Jim Rohn, author and speaker, quoted at the blog Write Tribe. “Keep a journal. If you hear a good idea, capture it, write it down. Don’t trust your memory” (Write Tribe).

They appear simple. And they probably won’t result in much more writing, word-count wise, in my novel. But the ideas captured on this bit of paper will be essential – I hope – in fixing my story and getting it ready, once again, to send out to publishers.

Writing, I’ve learned, is a dangerous business, if I can paraphrase Bilbo Baggins. In fact, I’m going to quote him: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to” (Tolkien).

If I’m not clear in my storytelling, in establishing the motivation of my characters, the story wanders and much like the warning to Frodo, he who follows it will end up in places I as the author probably didn’t intend, because I was not clear enough.

And if I’m not clear enough, publishers may look at my muddled mess of a manuscript and pass on it, figuring it would be too much work to work with me to make it better.

Make it better now, and I’ve got a better chance.

Wish me luck.

Works cited (cumulative)

Benwitz, Lisa, personal interview by the author, October 2, 2019.

King, Stephen, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” Scribner, 2000.

Parker, Dorothy, “Inventory,” The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker, Penguin Classics, April 2010.

Rhodes, Richard, “How to Write: Advice and Reflections,” William and Morrow Company, Inc., New York, 1995.

Rodrigues, Corinne, “Capturing and Storing Ideas When Inspiration Strikes,” Write Tribe, Nov. 18, 2017; writetribe.com/capturing-and-storing-ideas-when-inspiration-strikes/ .

Schultz, Robert, personal interview by the author, September 30, 2019.

The Rescuers, directed by John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman, and Art Stevens; Buena Vista Distribution, 1977, flim.

Tolkein, J.R.R., “The Fellowship of the Ring,” Allen & Unwin, 1954.

Ignorance is Bliss. Especially About Epstein

“I am an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, and smothered in secret sauce.”

~ Jimmy James, NewsRadio

I have to grapple with one fact: Some of my Facebook associates could appear on Spot the Looney.

I have to be careful saying this, because they’re otherwise amiable people, easy to get along with and reasonably funny, intelligent people.

But let me also say this: Hoooooo baby.

I have friends of varying political stripes. Some whose only Facebook purpose, it seems is to berate others for not being as holy as they are. Others suddenly take dives into extremist territory (right and left) that make me want to press the buzzer, because, you know. . .

I am somewhat left of center. Getting moreso as I get older. Yet I also despair at the disrespect for the office of president when occupied by a person I didn’t elect and don’t think much of. I also despair at a do-nothing-but-politics legislative branch. And a politico-media complex that would give Dwight David Eisenhower a fit of the dry-heave heebie-jeebies.

It’s tempting at time to take the stand of one Homer J. Simpson when he’s busy drinking new Lemon-Time dish soap:



I’d like to see an end to the Jeffrey Epstein memes, is what I’m saying.

Yes, yes. Head in the sand as She Who Shall Not Be Named roams the countryside, killing opponents and other ne’er-do-wells with impunity. The memes seem to imply some magical power, that saying them will make She into a puppet, like Count Bloodcount, at the mercy of Bugs Bunny’s “magic woids and phrases.”



What matters most, of course, is not the truth. Because both extremes are acutely allergic to it. What matters is the dischord, the knowing that we may not necessarily be right but the others are CERTAINLY wrong.

I won’t engage in any popular Two Minute Hate unless it’s against slow drivers.

But that’s easy to say. Less easy to practice, as Orwell says:

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.”



Not that I think any of my Facebook associates are Nazis. Just that some tunes are pretty catchy.

What keeps me from joining in?

Blissful ignorance.

Don't Lie to Me [Politicians of Every Stripe Writhe in Pain]

Going to say two things here:

1. I’m in favor of nationalized health care, or Medicare for all, or whatever else you want to call it.
2. Anyone who believes this can be paid for without a middle-class tax hike that will exceed the amount the middle class is currently paying for private- or employer-supported health insurance is selling you something.

I’ve read the reports and studies, saying Medicare for all would cost this nation between $15 trillion to $40 trillion over the first ten years. I tend to believe the numbers will be on the higher end.

Those telling you otherwise are selling something.

Or they’re just bad at math.

By all means, the current medical system in this country is trash. But don’t try to fix it by telling lies. Or producing some kind of magical unicorn math that says I’m going to get a bigger something by paying less for it. Because when you tell lies you tell me you’re more worried about getting elected than fixing the problem. And if you’re more worried about getting elected than fixing the problem, when it comes time, after the election, that you get to fix the problem and have to backtrack on the lies you’ve told, well, you’re a lying liar whose lying pants are on fire.

And do not, for the love of Michael Scott, tell me I’m going to get “a raise” if your version of Medicare for all is approved. That’s a bigger whopper than telling me my taxes aren’t going to go up. Because some way or another, no matter how innocent or misdirected your motives are, taxing “other people” to pay for my healthcare just isn’t going to work.

Single-payer healthcare works in other countries. And their middle-class taxes are higher than our middle-class taxes. If your magical unicorn thinking worked, they’d be doing the same magical unicorn thinking elsewhere. They are not doing that.

What Would Mr. Rogers Do?

For a hard-bitten journalist like Junod to come out with a story like this speaks to the power of Fred Rogers. And it makes me weep to think as a nation we've looked at Fred Rogers' message, deified it, and put it on the shelf to be brought out as a cudgel rather than used in kindness.

From the article:

"It isn’t that [Fred Rogers] is revered but not followed so much as he is revered because he is not followed—because remembering him as a nice man is easier than thinking of him as a demanding one. He spoke most clearly through his example, but our culture consoles itself with the simple fact that he once existed. There is no use asking further questions of him, only of ourselves. We know what Mister Rogers would do, but even now we don’t know what to do with the lessons of Mister Rogers."