Why posts are so few and far between

I am six weeks away from a book deadline, the memoirs of a past World Series of Poker champion, and poker is only one very small part of his story. My daughters enjoy this time in my life which they affectionately refer to as "deadline dad." Deadline dad alternates between zany and cranky. Deadline dad also has very little time to do much writing beyond the book whose timeline is rapidly counting down. That's why there hasn't been a blog post in a while, and probably won't be another until sometime after September 1. In the meantime, shameless plug ahead, read "How Can A Good God Let Bad Things Happen."

The price of fame

Another celebrity couple broke up this week, which shocked absolutely no one. Celebrity couples break up at an alarming rate, and they have since the day Cleopatra dumped Julius Caesar for Mark Anthony. Cleo and Jules didn't have a house full of children, which makes the latest case of celebrity divorce more tragic than the one immortalized by Hollywood a generation ago. Ironically, the latest and greatest couple to call it quits actually achieved fame because of their family life. Neither can act or sing or possesses any of the requisite skills earlier generations demanded before bestowing stardom. These people became famous by being themselves as the television cameras rolled, or more to the point, by being a couple joined together in the trials and travails of surviving parenthood. Now they've split up for the sake of the children. As a child of divorce I can honestly say that most children would prefer their parents learn to get along for their sake. Instead the celebs say they are going to go their separate ways, which, of course, is a nonsensical statement when you share eight children. Whether they like it or not, those eight little faces will keep the warring parents' lives intertwined for the rest of their lives.

As the news of this latest celebrity divorce takes its turn as the lead story in all the news outlets this morning, I can't help but wonder why the couple allows the television cameras to continue to invade their lives. They announced their split on their television show last night, with new episodes planned for the remainder of the summer season. "The show must go on," they said, as if the show really had to go on. At the risk of stating the obvious, couldn't they have pulled the plug a long time ago right around the moment they noticed their relationship had started to go south? What makes fame so alluring, so addictive, that they would rather cancel their marriage than their television contract? One of the two stated that their marriage would have ended whether they were on television or not. Perhaps. Yet I can't help but wonder why, if one's marriage is that shaky, you would willingly add the weight of celebrity on top of an already poor foundation. For that matter, I have trouble understanding why anyone would want the headaches and hassles of fame. I know a few famous people. They all say the same thing: being famous is a royal pain in the backside. It always has been, and always will be. Yet people will pay any price, make any sacrifice, to place themselves in the middle of the public eye. We want to be known. We want people to care about the most insignificant details of our lives. I don't understand why. Throwing away ten years of marriage and forcing eight children to become statistics seems an awfully high price to pay for celebrity. But then again, their show's ratings have never been higher. The custody fight episodes should prove to be quite the encore.

I thought this only happened to old people

Later today I will drive north one hour, fill the car with part of my daughter's possessions that fill her college apartment, then drive back home to store them in the garage. It's an annual dance we do, but this is my daughter and my last whirl around the dance floor. Four years at Taylor University end Saturday when she walks across the stage and receives her degree. Two weeks later we will stand together on another stage where I will pronounce her the wife of a man I did not know twelve months ago. Eventually the two of them may move into a place large enough to hold the odd boxes of her possessions stacked in my garage. Until then they will sit and gather dust, a reminder of how quickly these years shot by. I thought this only happened to old people.

I am trying not to get caught up in the emotions of the weekend. I am doing my best to remember that this is exactly what my wife and I raised our daughters to do, beginning with the moment the doctor handed each one to us and said, "It's a girl." My mind wants to run back to dances with my daughter in a living room converted into a ball room, where a high pitched little voice would say, "Spin me, daddy," only to erupt into laughter when I did. I'm trying to keep the memories at bay, but I find it is a losing battle. Only old people live in the past, yet I find the past is trying to suck me in as I face a quickly transforming present. I don't begrudge the changes sweeping over me. I don't want to live in the land of what once was because that which is now holds too much promise. Yet I find myself on the edge of something that feels almost like grief. I do not mind the passing of time, I only wish it had not passed so quickly.

The Bad Review

One of my favorite books received a bad review at Amazon. Not just a bad review. A scathing review. A review that included the words, "I'm sorry I wasted my time and money on it." Like I said, it was a bad review. I've had bad reviews before. A few people have dissed my book "Living with Less," one because it had too much God in it (which I took as a compliment) and another because the book did not give you Dave Ramsey type details for how to downsize but instead spent most of its time telling you why to downsize (which was exactly my point). I can brush aside those kinds of bad reviews because the reader actually got my point. They just didn't happen to like it. The writer of the bad review that prompted this blog entry didn't care what my point may or may not have been. He simply hated my book. He hated the way I wrote it. He hated the content. He just hated my book. And this particular book happens to be one of my personal favorites. And this bad review also happens to be the only one posted for the book at Amazon. The sales numbers are so bad that this may be the only person who has ever ordered the book online. 

I guess by now I should start trying to wrap this little entry up and move toward some semblance of a point. I don't know that there is one. I've had bad reviews before, and I know I will get them again. In fact, I recently read the first few pages of one of my most recent releases and I put the book down in disgust. I guess I just gave myself a very bad review. Bad reviews, scathing reviews, reviews that use the words "a waste of time and money" are a part of the writing life. And the worst part of all of this is not the fact that someone posted a bad review to one of my books, but the knowledge that I've posted a few of my own in the past. 

State of fear

I last heard of swine flu back in the 70's when Jimmy Carter spent a ton of money to stockpile enough swine flu vaccine for every man, woman, and swine in the US of A. At least it seemed like a ton of money before Bush and Obama showed us what real spending looks like. Now, out of nowhere, the swine flu is back with a vengeance, and it's a good thing, too. More and more people have grown so numb to the constant drumbeat of fear about the economy that we no longer run around like our hair is on fire when Wolf Blitzer comes on the air and tells us how the next six months will make October, 1929 seem like a vacation in Maui. Thank God we can panic again. Health officials say we may be on the brink of the first global pandemic in a generation. As of today 20 cases of the flu had been reported in the US. 20! And this out of a population of 300,000,000! 

This may well become the feared pandemic Jimmy Carter warned us about thirty years ago. I pray it does not. My guess is that the swine flu will be this year's equivalent of the bird flu, that is, something the prophets of doom in the sensationalist news media tell us will be a dire threat to the survival of the species that turns out to be nothing of the sort. Therefore, in honor of the well coifed doomsday prophets of cable news, I now present my five favorite ways in which life on earth will be wiped out.

5. The Atlantic Ocean current will stop flowing due to the influx of too much fresh water into the ocean, therefore triggering a new ice age in which we all die.

4. An unknown comet comes hurtling toward earth, and our best efforts to stop it only split it in half. When it hits, we all die.

3. An asteroid the size of Texas comes hurtling toward earth, and since we do not have a team of Texas oil drillers to send up to stop it, it hits the earth, and we all die.

2. The core of the earth stops spinning, thus causing the earth's electromagnetic field to fail. Without this field, solar radiation cooks the earth, and we all die.

1. Grave robbers from  outer space invade the earth two at a time. The bring an army of the recent dead back to life, and when the leaders of the earth refuse to listen to their warnings, we go ahead and develop solaranite, which, when ignited, blows up the earth and the sun and we all die. 

The death of free speech

I'm not exactly sure what date needs to be placed on the tombstone. April 19, 2009 is not that date. No, it was merely the latest evidence that free speech is dead and buried in the United States. In case you missed it, Miss California lost the Miss USA contest after answering a question regarding gay marriage. Rather than pander to the judges, and rather than fill the next two minutes with meaningless fluff that would offend no one (and not answer the question), she spoke her mind. Believe it or not, she answered the question. She exercised free speech. The openly gay judge who had asked the question was aghast. He later said that if she had won the title, he would have run up on the stage and ripped the crown off of her head. Later, on the Tuesday, April 21 edition of the Today show, he explained his outrage. In short, he said she should have answered her question in a way that would not offend anyone, except, of course, Miss California's own conscience. He basically told Matt Lauer, how dare she speak her mind! How dare she actually answer the question! How dare she speak freely!

The Miss USA controversy is only the latest round of criticism leveled at one who dares to go against the rising tide of accepted belief. We expect such dissent only from those on the far right fringe, from the Limbaughs and Becks of the world. Not from real people. I'm told that a law against "hate speech" is winding its way through the Congress. The law will bring into the legal code that which is already the prevailing sentiment. If and when the law passes, it will merely be the final nail on the coffin of free speech.

As I ponder the question of what killed the first amendment, I find only one logical answer. Political correctness did not kill it. Nor did politicians. And neither did bloviating social commentators on the left or the right. No, I think something far more insidious, something far more difficult to root out of the culture dealt the final blow to what was, in truth, a rather fragile right. I believe the collective immaturity of the American culture and people killed free speech. Tolerating dissent, engaging in an intelligent conversation with those who see the world in a completely different way, and allowing those with whom we disagree to speak freely and openly, all require a level of maturity America has not seen in nearly a generation. Instead we puff up like a toddler whose favorite toy was taken away whenever anyone disagrees with us. We shout and try to drown out dissenting opinion rather than enter into genuine debate. Worse yet, we feel personally attacked whenever anyone thinks in a way that forces us to rethink our own positions. 

I have long believed that independent thought is the most dangerous thing in the world. The angry reaction to one lone beauty pageant expressing something other than the company line shows how true this is. Since independent thought can only be expressed through free speech, we must eliminate the latter to protect ourselves against the former. The fatal blow was dealt long ago. Today we are merely free to say that which will offend no one, no one that is, except ourselves.

The week after

Two weeks ago I finished the first draft of my latest book. Unfortunately, that meant I hadn't actually finished anything. Finishing the draft is like the seventh inning stretch of a ball game. You stand up, stretch, sing a few bars of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," then you sit down and get back to work. I always watch "The Matrix" when I finish the first draft. I don't know why. I did it once, and now it is my personal tradition. I took a couple of days off after my Matrix viewing. Since it was the weekend, that only seemed like the thing to do. I also went to an actual ball game, a Thursday afternoon Reds game during the first week of the season. That too is a tradition. Then it was back to work, back to page one of the manuscript, time to rewrite, revise, re-evaluate what it is I love about writing. I love to write. I'm not so wild about rewriting.

A couple of days ago, in between creating this blog and tweeting on Twitter about how much I do not like rewriting, I finished the final draft. The book, a collaborative work called, "Don't Just Survive It - Sing!" comes out some time next year. The person for whom I wrote it loved it, which makes me very, very happy. And the publisher loved it, and since the woman for whom I wrote it owns the publishing company, I had a pretty good idea they would. Now I can finally relax. The book is done. The deadline was stretched, but I delivered. Book twenty-three now moves from my "works in progress" to the "finished books" file folder on my MacBook's hard drive.

Now it is Monday. No deadline. No stress. And I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. I have a new book on which I will start working as soon as my partner signs his contract. In the meantime I am going through deadline withdrawal. I have this nagging sense that I need to rush to my office and buckle down, only to remember the book is finished. I think I will spend this week reading. Writers love to read. Then again, I may choose to sit on the couch, a little dog at my side, and do nothing at all. It is, after all, the week after a deadline. I always enter such weeks with high hopes of accomplishing so much, only to discover my brain has rebeled after being squeezed a little too hard for a little too long. My dog is about to fall asleep. I think I will join him.

Mark