The Beaver

Are you intrigued by the title of this post? If so, then you might be interested in Mel Gibson's new movie. I honestly can't imagine myself interested in anything Mel Gibson does ever again, and considering I once loved Lethal Weapon and Braveheart Mel, that's kinda sad. In spite of my disgust, the trailer for his upcoming movie made me do a spit take.

Context first: Bruce and I saw Jake Gyllenhal's Source Code this past weekend. Big action flick...some plot holes, but not so big they detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. Overall...entertaining.

Also entertaining...the previews before the movie. You get a pretty good feel for the kind of movie you're about to see from the trailers at the beginning. We saw five trailers before Source Code started, and the experience was a blog post in the making. I actually pulled out my phone after Mel's trailer and made notes. I need to tell you a little about each one to give you some sense of how Mel's fit in. Or didn't.

Thor -- The Norse god of thunder is bringing his big ole hammer to earth, falling in love with a puny earth woman, defying his fellow gods, and blowing some really scary-looking monsters all to hell. The guy playing Thor is cute and all, but unless I'm looking to spend time with my boys, I don't imagine I'll race out to see this one.

Conan -- Oh yeah! He's back and he's bigger than ever! (Seriously, this guy looks like he's done some heavy duty steroids.) Conan beats some really scary-looking barbarians all to hell. His sword is almost as massive as his muscles. The production values appear much better than the original. In fact, it looks like they've eschewed the camp altogether and made an earnest action movie, and that's a shame. I suppose it doesn't really matter. Without Ah-nold, how good can it be anyway? This will also be a pass for me.

X-Men -- There was probably a subtitle on this one since it's the fourth or fifth in the series, but I didn't write it down. This installment takes the audience back to Professor X's and Magneto's beginnings. They used to be friends, but Magneto became bitter when the world rejected him. He acts on his hurt feelings by blowing some not-particularly-scary-looking ships and airplanes all to hell. Meh...the X-Men never were my favorite superheroes.

Mel's Movie -- Do you remember this from your childhood?



I love Cookie monster! And yeah, Mel's movie doesn't have the right number of cookies. I'm pretty sure Mel doesn't have the right number of cookies, but I digress.

His trailer was wildly out of place after the previous three. The only things that get blown all to hell are his relationships and whatever was left of his acting career. Every scene in the trailer is an intense relationship scene. His character is a screw-up (a real stretch for him), and his wife, played by Jodie Foster, and children have walked away. He's apparently hit rock bottom. Then, he finds redemption in a hand puppet, (I swear I'm not making this up) and it's not just any ole hand puppet.

It's a beaver!

He quits talking to people except through the beaver who explains that it creates emotional distance.

Okaaaaaay.

Several gut-wrenching scenes ensue after which Mel is finally able to talk without the beaver on his hand. The title scrolls across the screen while the deep voiced announcer says, The Beaver.

Very dramatic, right?

Yeah, not so much. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the theater laughed. A few snickers turned into guffaws, and then we belly laughed like Mel had mined comedy gold. I'm thinking this wasn't the emotional reaction Mel was going for, but it should have been because, oh holy cow, the beaver jokes I heard all around. I can't even begin to imagine what the late nite comics will do with Mel's hand inside a beaver puppet.

And not only no, but Oh Hell No, I will not be paying 8 bucks to see this mess.

The Three Musketeers -- I have no idea what's going on in this movie besides the obvious, and neither does anyone else who was in the theater. This trailer had the misfortune of coming after The Beaver. I am pretty sure people got beat all to hell, but I was too busy exchanging ribald remarks about The Beaver. I like Dumas, so this one has the best chance of getting my summer movie dollar even though I missed the preview.

So, let's recap...and a pictorial recap might be useful here. One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just isn't the same.

Never, Ever Piss Off a Writer

I texted the title of this post to my friend, Pam, just last week. I was being facetious at the time, but the story I just stumbled across via Liana Brooks' blog is proof positive that it's true.

Cooks Source Magazine, a for-profit publication, lifted a post from this writer's blog and printed it without her knowledge or permission. She contacted the magazine and got this response from the editor:

But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it!

Wrong answer. Aside from the fact that lifting someone's writing and putting your name on it is plagiarism, my blog and everyone's blog is protected under copyright law. While most folks don't mind being quoted or linked...we do want readers...you may not take my writing and print it for profit without my permission.

Writers on the web are an interconnected bunch, and this gem of a response from Cooks Source bounced around from blog to blog, including John Scalzi's blog (one of my personal favs) which gets approximately 10,000 hits per day. Blog readers reported it to several watchdog organizations, and then it blew up on twitter.

@neilhimself (Neil Gaiman) retweeted it. He has 1.5 million followers.

People found the Cooks Source Facebook page and flamed it mercilessly. I'm sure they'll be taking that page down any moment now, but check it out if it's still there. Wow...just wow...

Edward Champion did some investigating and discovered that Cooks Source has made a fine living reprinting content from the Internet without permission.

Any money Cooks Source might have saved by stealing from mostly unknown writers will probably now be paid ten thousand times over to lawyers. Honestly, after following this thread from link to link, I'll be surprised if they're still in business this time next month.

Never, ever piss off a writer.

Lies, Damn Lies, and well, you know the rest...

I hated my statistics class in college with a blue passion. The words "standard deviation" still make me shudder. Ironically, though, I find reading statistics someone else has generated endlessly interesting.

For instance:

• E-book sales comprise 9% of all trade book sales year-to-date in 2010, up from 3.3% in the same period in 2009.


• Between 2000 and 2009, four-year institutions of higher learning raised tuition an average of 46%.


• By the end of the day tomorrow, $3.7 billion will have been spent on campaign ads, up 75% from 2008.


• Almost 85% of people who snore exceed 38 decibels of sound, the equivalent of light highway traffic.


• The average American eats 10-12 pounds of chocolate per year.

Lord knows, I'm doing my part on that last one.

Recently, I've become fascinated with the statistics for my blog. Blogger tracks your page views by blog post, time of day, geographic place, referring URL's, and the search terms that got people there. Some of the statistics are illuminating, but most leave me bemused.

The United States is naturally the country in which most people view my blog, but just this week alone I had 19 views from the Netherlands and 14 views from Russia. Really? What am I saying that interests the Dutch? Or the Russians? I even had four views from Slovenia. Wow...

I normally have the biggest viewing spikes when I put up a new post which makes sense, right? But occasionally, I get these crazy spikes on old posts. My post on Self Doubt contains a Diana Ross video. 457 people viewed that one in one day, a month after the original post. My readership is modest, so I'm attributing that spike to Diana and not my own words of wisdom.

Posts which share titles with something more famous get lots of views as well. My Invictus post has been very popular, although I suspect some folks are disappointed when they find me instead of Matt Damon. Expectation is the Root of all Heartache has also gotten mad hits. Again, some poor high school student looking for help with his English homework is probably frustrated when he finds me.

Embedded pictures lead people to me. Twice, I have included pictures of buffalo in my posts. (Here and here.) Both have brought people my way. I wonder if any of them stayed after looking at my buffalo?

The most entertaining statistic is the list of most popular search terms which connected people with my blog. My name is at the top of that list...no big surprise...but once you get past the obvious, I find myself in WTF country. Just this week, people found me by googling "he makes my cherry pop" and "Jazzercise with colostomy." Last month, someone used "I never sit on a toilet." Granted, I have actually used the words "he makes my cherry pop" and "I never sit on a toilet," but why would you google those phrases? I've used "Jazzercise" multiple times, but this is the first time the word "colostomy" has graced my blog.

The big dumb eighth grader inside of me wants to let loose a string of random, unrelated words just to see what kind of bizarre Slovenian (no disrespect to Slovenians intended, it's just...Slovenia?) traffic I get. So here goes...

I would expect Dutch apple pie and Russian dressing to make my cherry pop, but expectation is the root of all heartache. Mark Twain knows I don't wear a colostomy bag, even if I never sit on a toilet. It's all lies, damn lies, and well, you know the rest...

I am the master of my fate, Diana Ross, I am the captain of my soul.

Horses, International Guests, and....Buffalo?

My part of Kentucky is all aflutter. The World Equestrian Games start today. The opening ceremonies are tonight, and according to the local hype, promise to be pretty amazing. While not as well known in the U.S., the games are a big deal in other parts of the world that revere the horse. It's fitting that Kentucky welcome the first ever U.S.-hosted Games. No one reveres the horse more than we do.

But this is not a blog post about the glory of the horse, or the pageantry and history of the Games, or even the new international flavor of my small town (Team Belgium was in WalMart the other day.) No. This post is about a different kind of glory, a strange pageantry all its own, and the flavor...Wild West meets small town USA.

Important, prestigious events like the WEG attract important, prestigious people. They also attract less important, less prestigious hangers-on, much like barnacles on the underside of a majestic ocean liner.

While the finishing touches were being put on all the shiny, new venues at the Kentucky Horse Park, my local outlet mall was preparing for a very special guest as well. Unlike the guests down the road at the Horse Park, this guest was neither equine nor international.

Enter Henry the Buffalo. Yes...a buffalo.

The buffalo (actually the American bison) once roamed the open plains, and according to the National Park Service numbered 60 millon when Columbus landed. They were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century. Now only 15,000 live free in the wild. Another 350,000 are held in herds by private farmers. And, of course, Henry, now in residence at my local outlet mall.

Georgetown is home to a small outlet mall whose fortunes have declined in recent years. Most of the good outlets have closed, and only a few thriving businesses remain. Jazzercise is among those thriving businesses, and so I have been privy to the preparations for Henry.

Grandstands and stalls line the small grassy area between the parking lot and I-75. Actually, after a long, hot, dry summer, the grassy area is more of a dirt lot. A large section of the parking lot has been painted green. I wonder if it's supposed to represent grass. I wonder if it has been so long since Henry has seen grass that he wouldn't know the difference.

Large, wedding-style tents have been erected in the parking lot as well. I have no idea what's inside, but the "Fat Man's Barbeque" booth between the tents leads me to believe it involves fat men and barbecue.

Henry arrived yesterday. One of my fellow Jazzercisers said he was accompanied by what looked like a SWAT team. Really. Visitors from all over the world, and the buffalo gets a SWAT team escort.

Our instructor, Leanne, was invited to a meeting of outlet mall business owners to let them know about the disruption to parking and such. It was from her that I learned why a buffalo is taking up residence in the parking lot of a struggling outlet mall.

Henry is going to jump through a ring of fire every night for the duration of the World Equestrian Games.

Buffalo are shaggy, and in my mind, more flammable than your average mammal. I said as much when Leanne was telling us about it. I just felt sorry for Henry. Imagine tying several large mops to your head and then being forced to jump through a ring of fire.

In an attempt to make us all feel better about it, Leanne said, "Oh no! It's okay. Henry's trained. Apparently, he was in Dances with Wolves or something."

Dances with Wolves??? Really? Do you know how old that movie is? I do. I was seven months pregnant with my oldest son when that movie hit the theaters, and he'll be 19 in two weeks. (Funny story about a crazy, hormonal, pregnant me and that movie that I'll save for another day.)

Doing the math, Henry would have to be more than 20 years old. What the heck is the life span of a buffalo anyway? I looked it up, and the sources vary, but it's anywhere from 15-20 years in the wild, and 25-30 years in captivity. Either way, Henry is freakin' old.

So...They are not just making a ponderous, more-than-normally flammable beast jump through a ring of fire....they are making an old, ponderous, more-than-normally flammable beast jump through a ring of fire.

Oh, the glory and pageantry of sport! Let the Games begin!

Raised Eyebrows

Overheard in the teacher workroom this morning:

Colleague 1: They’re paying him 10 million dollars to suck.

Colleague 2: I’d suck for 10 million dollars.

A momentary pause as we all digested that statement followed by uproarious laughter.

Colleague 2: I guess I could have worded that better.

We’ve all made an innocent statement that would raise an eyebrow when taken out of context. But how many of us are throwing out intentional eyebrow raisers everyday in professional situations? As I’ve sifted through parent information in the last several days to set up distribution lists, I’ve spent a lot of time with my eyebrows raised.

Yes people…I’m talking about your email addresses.

Most folks have a fairly innocuous email address consisting of some version of their name. I’d say this group accounts for 75% or so of all the emails I entered. I'm in this group. Both my work and my personal email are my name with punctuation thrown in the middle to make it unique.

Some people need something snazzier than punctuation to make them unique, so they create clever “handles.” Their appellations fall on a continuum moving from silly to ridiculous to Oh My God. As I entered the addresses into my distribution lists, I discerned a pattern.

If you’re using something other than your name, your email address generally says one of three things. “I think I’m cute,” “I think I’m a badass,” or “I’m trolling the Internet for sex.” I came across one or two outliers that don’t fall into an obvious category, and there might be a fourth category called “I’m really serious about my religion,” but mostly it’s those three.

Note: I have enough sense not to post someone’s actual email address, so none of the examples I’m using are real. But they do retain the spirit of the actual names.

The “I think I’m cute” category includes handles like fuzzywuzzy, whatsupdoc, and any derivation of the word angel. Really, lots of people think they are angels. (Some people think they're devils, but they don’t fall into this category.) Mostly, these addresses just make me roll my eyes.

The "I think I'm a badass" email addresses make me laugh which I'm pretty sure is not what the authors of these handles were going for. Not to stereotype, but more men than women have "I think I'm a badass" names. Some brag about their car...ferrari_man, myrimsarehuge, monster.truckin. Others, their military career...sniper007...although, maybe the guy just plays a lot of video games. Some are reliving the glory days of their athletic careers...linebacker1985. One creative fellow had a reference to a bodily function combined with a military term I can't even begin to mimic. I stared at it for a full minute before typing it into my list. I was convinced I had read it wrong.

Blowing all of the previous email addresses out of the water are the "I'm trolling the Internet for sex" handles, and I hate to say it, but these are all women. It boggles the mind that mothers actually wrote these names down on a form for their child's teacher. Names like hotchick4U and sexy_secretary. Seriously, the actual names really are this bad. I feel sorry for the kids who had to hand the forms to me. They had to be embarrassed.

The lesson my friends is that you should all have at least one reasonably professional sounding email address. If you want to troll the Internet for sex, have at it. I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own home, but for Pete's sake, don't make that the email address you give to people who actually know you and have to look you in the face. Your nifty email handle puts a visual in my imaginative writer's brain that I can't unsee.

My Really Awesome Concert Tour

News of the weird: Justin Bieber has a deal with HarperCollins to publish his memoir. When I heard this from a friend, I had to shake my head. For those of you who don't know (and if you don't know, my respect for you has skyrocketed), Justin Bieber is the 16 year old singer who makes 12 year old girls swoon and who dominates the trending topics on Twitter (although strangely, none of the people I follow ever mention him).

I cannot be counted among the legion of Justin's fans. I'm not 12, and it kind of squicks me out when I hear him talking to his "baby." When the 19 year old daughter of a friend told me she liked Justin, she lost all her cool points with me. (Seriously, Steph, just say no.) I heard Justin do a radio interview, and he was so precious it made my teeth hurt.

I'm not hatin' on boy singers (okay, maybe a little). I have a son Justin's age. I teach kids who are Justin's age. Nothing makes me happier than seeing teenagers excel at what they love...especially artistic endeavors...especially writing endeavors. I have to be honest, though, after hearing Justin's interview, I have doubts about his ability to pen an entire memoir.

I have some experience with teenagers and memoirs. Part of my core content is personal expressive writing. Every year, I read between 120-150 personal narratives written by teenagers.

It's painful, people. Really, really painful. Ask any English teacher.

The pain starts when a student has to decide what moments in their short lives are meaningful enough to share with someone else. Many of them swear they have experienced no such moments, and sometimes, I'm inclined to believe them.

I get vacation stories which are kind of like looking at your friend's vacation slide show, and that's if you're lucky because sometimes, they're about a whole day at King's Island. Kids frequently fall off of things...bikes, horses, ATV's, motorcycles, fences, rooftops, skateboards, tree limbs, someone's shoulders, and so on and so on. There's always a coming of age moment in the woods with a gun and some poor dead animal, usually Bambi.

Worse than the mundane, cliched stories, are the death stories. Death is by far the most frequent topic, and these stories are the hardest to read. Even when the writing is not great, you feel the child's pain. The loss of grandparents, parents, siblings, best friends, and even beloved pets have made me cry. It can be emotionally exhausting. These stories force me to put the stack of papers down and walk away for a bit. These stories also make the teaching of personal narratives worthwhile. When a student finds an outlet for their pain through the writing of it, then I feel like I've made a difference.

A few glorious exceptions to the painful personal narrative stand out in my mind. The young lady who wrote about her dad stopping on a Himalayan road in the middle of the night just to show her the mountains in the moonlight was so good it made the hair on my arms stand up. Another student wrote an almost Hemingway-esque piece on the unbearable ennui of writing a personal narrative. Brilliant. Then, there was the story of a hiccup during a trombone audition that had me laughing from beginning to end. Unfortunately, those memorable pieces are few and far between.

All of which brings me back to Justin's memoir. I realize what I heard on the radio might not be indicative of the real Justin, but he doesn't seem to have the emotional or intellectual heft to write a publishable piece at this stage in the game. I envisioned an endless version of the vacation story..."My Really Awesome Concert Tour."

I did some more investigating, and my unpublished writer's envy is assuaged (because honestly, isn't that what this is really about?). As it turns out, Justin is publishing a "photographic memoir." It's a picture book...and he didn't even take the pictures.

Justin is in all the pictures, so I'm sure his "memoir" will sell like hotcakes. They should call it "My Really Awesome Concert Tour" and give me royalties on the title.

Apocalyptic Headlines and Beach Reading

News of the weird...Anyone who has travelled on I-75 north of Cincinnati has seen what is affectionately known as Big Butter Jesus, a large pale yellow sculpture rising out of a pond and reaching its arms toward heaven. Last night, lightning struck Big Butter Jesus and burnt it to the ground. What does that mean? I don't know, but if you google "Big Butter Jesus," you can see the headline writers are having a field day. Here's a real news link. And here's a link to Heywood Banks' tribute. I warn you, though, if you click on it, you won't be able to get the song out of your head.

On a news video, a distraught bystander called the destruction of Big Butter Jesus a sign the end is near. I had to shake my head. The Gulf is being choked by raw crude, wiping out ecosystems and economies, and she thinks Big Butter Jesus is apocalyptic.

If you're looking for something to get your mind off of apocalyptic headlines, I recommend getting lost in a good book. Before graduation last Saturday, as the faculty waited in the wings, we talked about plans for the summer. One of my colleagues in the English department said, "I'm going to read trashy books with absolutely no literary value."

She said it belligerently with an "I-dare-you-to say-something" edge. I just laughed. Lots of people treat genre fiction as a guilty pleasure. English teachers are particularly secretive about non-literary reading habits. We are the keepers of the flame. We introduce young minds to Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bronte, Twain, and all the other great authors of The Canon. God forbid we read *gasp* commercial fiction.

The irony of that ivory tower attitude is that Homer, Shakespeare, and Twain all told stories for the masses. To the extent that commercial fiction existed in their day, they were it. I think they would hate the idea of being considered stuffy, literary geniuses read only in the hallowed halls of schools and universities.

It's summer, so let's get out of the hallowed halls and onto the beach. Here's to reading romance and fantasy, murder mysteries and sci-fi, political thrillers and horror without guilt. Since I read genre fiction year-round and completely guilt free, I have some recommendations. All of these books are either paranormal romance or urban fantasy...my genres of choice.

• The fabulous J. R. Ward released the latest installment in her Black Dagger Brotherhood series this past spring. Lover Mine is John Matthew's story. Loved it.


• Charlaine Harris' Dead in the Family is the newest Sookie Stackhouse book. Eric's dad and psycho little brother show up in this installment. If you're a True Blood fan and haven't read the books, you should.


• Laurell K. Hamilton keeps pushing the envelope in her Anita Blake series. If you haven't read any of the other books, don't start with Bullet. It'll freak you out. You need to work up to this one. Jean-Claude...Asher...whoa.


• Keri Arthur wrapped up her Riley Jenson series with Moon Sworn. Riley has to come to terms with Kye's death, her estranged family, and her relationship with Quinn. I hate that the series is over, but the last book was satisfying.


• Gail Carriger is a new addition to my must-read list. I reviewed Soulless on the blog a while back. Soulless left me wanting more. Be careful what you wish for because Changeless, the sequel, was crazy-frustrating. The story was fun, but the middle book in a trilogy is always the most frustrating because typically it ends in the most annoying possible point in the story arc, and you have to wait for resolution. Blameless comes out September 1.


• Karen Marie Moning just rocks. I read Beyond the Highland Mist recently. It's the first book in her Highlander series. Reading this series all out of order didn't interfere with my enjoyment at all. Her Faefever series is to die for.

I have a stack of paperbacks in my to be read pile. When I'm not writing genre fiction, I will have my nose in one of them. I suggest you do the same.

After I posted my Starbucks story, I saw this pic of my friend in Iraq. Yes, they do have Starbucks in Iraq. I wonder if the music is as weird and inaccessible there as it is here. Would it be weird by American or Iraqi standards?