Today I did something I haven't done in a few years.
I cleaned out and organized my new garage.
I know that there are some of you out there which are green with envy, and some want me to stop by and do the same to their garage.
Fat Chance...
When I thought about it, I was surprised to realize how long it had been. I've been living in condos and on boats for most of the past 13 years, so the best I've usually had is a carport to shield my four wheeled conveyances from the elements.
Now once again I have a room with a giant overhead door full of washers, dryers, freezers, air compressors, boxes full of tools and construction supplies, and the obligatory garage "stuff."
Everything but an actual Automobile is in my garage as I write, and that is because I don't think that there is room because of all of the other stuff we have crammed in there.
That's OK...I feel so totally suburban and complete now.
Any way...I admit that my writing has been totally sucking the past few months with virtually nothing happening here on the blogs (other than keeping some sort of public diary,) and both books are at a total standstill.
I tripped over a two inch thick draft copy of the cookbook while unpacking during the move and it made me feel guilty. It has also forced me to start posting a few new recipes over at The Redneck Gourmet.
I guess that I have a hard time partitioning up my days to include physical labor like working on the duplex and then have the mental stamina to write intelligent or glib or humorous rants like I have done some of the time in the past.
Maybe I should just go back to being a virtual homeless unemployed slob and drag my computer around with me to places like Starbucks and other Internet hotspots and see if I can get some quality writing done. Even McDonalds has free Internet here on our little Island.
I had a publisher interested in the cookbook back a couple of years ago, but he's probably died or started selling real estate while waiting for me to submit a couple of chapters of edited manuscript.
He also told me that I should plan on getting some fantastic pictures of my food because pictures sell cookbooks, especially "coffee table" type cookbooks that people that never actually cook will drop $25 on at Barns & Noble. The only problem is that my cookbook is written with slobby middle aged divorced men in mind--guys that would starve to death eating Spam and Cheetos and would never get a second date with a decent woman if they tried to cook on their first date.
Instead of hiring a professional food photographer, I got a nice expensive camera and began a two year diversion fooling around with photography and entering photo contests rather than writing about cooking.
Now I've realized that taking publication quality pictures of food found sitting on your kitchen cabinet, dining room table, or on your stovetop with crappy fluorescent lighting or a single 100 watt bulb is next to impossible.
It was still a fun diversion in the end, and I do have some lovely pictures of my dog and my foot and some sunrises here on the Georgia Coast.
Over the years I've written some pretty serious stuff here on this blog, particularly back just before and right after the 2004 election. I like to think of myself as something other than a partisan hack, although I tend to vote with the Republicans most of the time because the Libertarians can't seem to field any serious candidates on the national political stage.
Writing about politics tends to either bore people to death else make them to try to find out where you live and come to your house to smear you with animal blood or stomp around on your car hood.
Thus I try to pick my topics carefully and then do a good deal of research before I place the first finger on the keyboard.
Still, I always love to pick on the "professional media", and a commenter who calls hinself/herself "Sommelier" and who is apparently a long term reader called me out this past week about something I wrote without knowing the real detailed facts.
Here's what they said:
I don't know where you get your statistics on media professionals, but I'm certain they are not even remotely accurate. You continually bash the "professional" media, yet you previously stated a "personal" dream that entailed working at a newspaper as a "professional" journalist. Sorry, pal, all your ranting appears nothing more than sour grapes.
And here's the passage I wrote that my reader is referencing from last Friday's posting:
As usual, the "professional" media is freaking out about the usual stupid things.
Things like hurricanes, the stock market, the housing bubble, and trapped coal miners.
I have to admit that I'm having a good deal of trouble lifting a finger and pointing it toward a keyboard to even offer an intelligent rebuttal. What can I say anyway?
The media is populated largely by the bottom 25% of each class of high school graduates and college freshmen that ended up in Journalism by default after they flunked out of the Music department because they couldn't play an instrument or carry a tune in a bucket singing.
On second thought, that assessment was probably unfair AND inaccurate, but in my defense it was written somewhat tongue in cheek if you followed the entire context of what I was saying.
Still, I offer my apology to anyone who is a journalist, is in Journalism school, or whose child or other family member or friend is a professional in the industry.
(Now I'm gonna probably piss Sommelier off again...)
In my defense, I just can't help myself sometimes because the product produced by the professional media SUCKS so badly so much of the time.
If Columbia University--a place recognized as having one of the best journalism programs in the country; a place that only accepts about 9% of their freshman applicants; a place that has graduates living and working in the highest positions of the print and "legacy" media--can't give the public graduates that produce a quality, unbiased, fact based product telling us what is ACTUALLY happening out there in the world rather than disguising EDITORIAL COMMENTARY published as substantial portions of each and every news story, then I feel obligated to take shots at them whenever I can.
By the way, if you went to the local Junior College to get your Journalism classes then I expect the same standards for your product also.
Facts, FACTS, FACTS.
Who What When Where.
Let me decide the rest for myself.
And yes, I have said that I aspire to write as a published writer, possibly in the news field, and NO I should not resort to generalities and "cheep shots" else I'm no better than those I criticize.
But...
I'll close by offering this analogy.
If the men and women working in the field of Engineering (something that I do know a great deal about and have a four year college education in) were to as a group consciously elect to perform their jobs in the same manner and with the same accuracy as many (but not all) of those working as journalists, we'd have Delta airliners falling out of the sky and Ocean Liners sinking to the bottom of the Seas on a daily basis.
Further, I'd never drive a new car across a concrete bridge ever again in my life and in fact, I'd be afraid to put a piece of bread in a toaster or Nuke a bag of Microwave popcorn for fear of having the house burn down or what little brains I have left in my head zapped with radiation.
How's that for an accurate generalization?
1 comment:
Strange, but my reaction was about 180 from "Sommelier" and more closely aligned with your view of the media and others, such as roofers.
Can you imagine how far the space shuttles would get if journalist quality rocket scientists were working on it. I heard somewhere that when a person enters journalism school, the first requirement is a lobotomy, I'm not sure about that, but with their standards, it could be true.
ed drew, your screen keeps rejecting me.
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