The Internet is Full of Lies

I think that most of you are savvy enough to know that a whole lot of lying goes on online, but I think most of us don't really think about how much lying is really going on. I know I don't - I don't want to. I like to think people are trustworthy and generally good. I was reminded today that, especially online, this just isn't so.

What brought this to mind was this article from The New York Times: The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy. I was disappointed when I read that authors (or maybe publishers even? Who knows.) were paying for book reviews. At least many of them were willing to accept honest reviews (if a paid review could be called that), but many were buying positive reviews. I was disapointed - but not surprised. I will bet money that books are not the only things out there paying for fake reviews.

A few years ago I frequented freelance writer boards looking for opportunities to write. That was where I started to learn how dishonest the internet was. There were frequent listings looking for writers to write fake forum posts recommending products as though they were from real people. Lots of calls for articles endorsing something or other that would be posted around on those content sites. Even one form a man who was "too busy" to respond to his personal dating website messages, so wanted to hire a writer to correspond with the women there for him - pretending to be him. Charming.

So this is just a public service reminder. The internet is easy to trick. It is a web of lies. Don't trust it.

And to end on a fun fake review note, I send you to the UK version of Amazon to read the entertaining reviews for BIC Pens for Her. You'll be glad you did.

What I Read in July

Several other bloggers that I read regularly post a list of what they've been reading. Even though it just makes me want to read even more stuff that I will probably never get to, I like it anyway. So I'm stealing it.

Creating Unforgettable Characters by Linda Serger
This is mainly about screenwriting, but it promised to also apply to novel writing. I guess some if it did, but not as much as I was hoping. Although much of what it suggested, I'd heard or read in other places as well, so I suppose that supports it as being sound advice. I was just hoping for something new - to me anyway. Many of the examples I didn't find useful, especially the ones involving commercials. Even really wonderful commercials I just don't get a great sense of character from, so these examples just fell flat for me.

Even so, I was never tempted to skip ahead or stop reading altogether, and even if some of the suggestions were things I'd heard before, hearing them over again can only help to get them through my thick skull. So I'm still happy to have invested my time in this book.

Cat Daddy by Jackson Galaxy
This is less a book about cat behavior and more a memoir of Mr. Galaxy's life. Although he does weave some cat information into the narrative because his life has been influenced by cats more than a little. He has struggles with multiple addictions in his life and goes into that topic in a good amount of detail. The cat behavior information is mostly good, solid stuff, but it was nothing new to me. I've never seen his show, so I had no expectations for the book, and I generally enjoyed it.

Redshirts by John Scalzi
As both a Scalzi and a Star Trek fan, I'd been looking forward to this one, and was happy to receive the Kindle version for my birthday. Honestly, I had a little trouble getting into it. I knew it was going to be a comedy, but the first few chapters just felt sort of. . . stupid to me. Then I realized this wasn't a 'playing it straight' sort of comedy, but more of an over the top, full blown silliness kind of comedy, and I almost instantly started enjoying it more. A lot more.I couldn't wait to make my family read it kind of more.

It's a shorter book, and there are three codas at the end that tie in to the main story but happen outside the central narrative. I read several Amazon reviews that suggested not bothering with the codas, but I'm glad I ignored that. The codas were some of my favorite parts. By the time I was done, I'd gone from 'meh' to five stars in my opinion of the book.

Return of the Silkmoth

Well, not really a return exactly.

Today I needed to use my iron, that I haven't used in a few months. Yes, really. It sits on top of a bookshelf above where I kept the silkworms when they were spinning their cocoons. Inside of and attached to the wrapped up iron cord I found a cocoon. So that means a caterpillar climbed up out of its box, and to the top of this (admittedly kind of short) bookcase.

It has a hole in it, telling me that somewhere, maybe behind the bookcase, is a dead moth too. It never ends, I tell you.

P.S. The photo is a reenactment, as I unwound the cord before I realized a cocoon was attached to it.

The Magician's Nephew, craft project - rings and pocket.

I co-host a kid’s book club. One of my responsibilities is to come up with an activity and/or craft that goes along with our book of the month. Sometimes I’ve found great idea from a simple Google search. After all, we’ve generally stuck to the classics, or books that are commonly taught in classrooms. I’m actually more surprised when I can’t find anything good. It goes to show how spoiled the internet has made me. I expect it to plan everything for me. 

When recently, I didn’t find anything I liked for the book “The Magician’s Nephew” by CS Lewis, I needed to come up with my own craft idea. I decided, since I take so many ideas from other blogs, I should share what I came up with. Only fair.

What I decided to do was to have the kids make their own green and gold rings. First, I thought we’d make them from air drying clay, but the selection at my local craft shop was disappointing. So I wandered into the jewelry making section, and found this neat wire. Even thought I expected it to be more difficult to work with, it would also look way cooler, and that counts for something.

I’ve learned it is always a good idea to test out a project before doing it with a group of kids, so my girls and I tried making rings the night before our book meeting. It was much more difficult than I’d expected. My hat off to jewelry makers who use this stuff. I’d picked a think wire, 16 gauge I think it was. I thought we’d just measure the little fingers, use wire cutters, and pliers to bend. But the pliers also stripped all the beautiful color off the wire, defeating the whole point. So I ended up wrapping the wire around this peg, and precutting the rings, then just passing them out and letting the kids stretch or smoosh them to a good personal fit. 

Now, in the book it is clear that you shouldn’t touch the rings when you don’t want to go into another world, so we needed a pouch or pocket to keep them in. I like felt for kid sewing projects because it is inexpensive, colorful, and super easy to work with. You can leave raw edges without worry. For my sample I sewed a lion on the front of the pouch for decoration, but brought along fabric glue as well, which turned out to be what most of the kids chose to use to add embellishments to their pouches. 

I did need to call on other mom reinforcements when a lot of the kids all needed help threading their needles all at the same time, but otherwise the project went well, and the kids seemed to enjoy their little treasures.

I told them that when they read a book, any book, it is like they are going into another world, so they should put on their outgoing ring (the gold one if I remember correctly). When they’re all done reading and ready to return to our world, they can put on their green ring.

Paper Books vs. Ebooks

I had a moment of epiphany today. I was reading a book on my Kindle, but I sadly had to stop to do other things. As I put book down, I thought to myself, “I love my Kindle.” 

That thought stopped me. Literally. I stood still for a moment. I was one of those people who thought, sure, an e-reader might be convenient, but it will never be like reading a REAL book. I like the way real books smell and feel. How I know how far along I am in the story by how thick the stacks of pages are in each hand. I love all that stuff. 

So this sudden spontaneous thought about loving my e-reader took me off guard somewhat. Do I really love it that much? What do I love about it? I like it. It’s light and has great battery life. It’s easy to use, but it doesn’t smell like old paper or anything cool like that. 

Then the epiphany. I’m really enjoying the story I’m reading. (Redshirts by John Scalzi if you’re curious). That’s what I love. That’s what I suspect everyone who says they love real books means. What I really love is a good story. 

For so long, all the stories we loved came with that certain feel of a book in your hands. The smell. The pages flipping. It created a whole bunch of positive associations that are powerful. The go back to childhood for most of us. I remember hiding in the bushes on the side of my house, or under my bed to read a book in peace when I was a kid. Good memories. For so long now I thought I loved books as a physical thing. Turns out, I just love the stories. I love the stories enough that the physical thing they’re attached to became loved right along with the stories.

There are a lot of people who don’t think they could ever enjoy reading on an e-reader. I even fell into that thinking myself. I’m so happy to realize that the format isn’t all that important after all. I think it’s very good news for stories, because technology doesn’t go backward.

Is There Life Out There? - and Revisiting Older Stories

Ernie waddled to the edge of the iceberg, looking out over the endless ocean. Next to him other penguins dove into the water, and others jumped back onto the berg, but he took no notice of any of them. His mind danced along the horizon, teasing him with imaginings of what lay beyond.

“What are you looking at?” It was Blackie, a friend who’d come up beside him.

“Hum? Oh, nothing, I just... Hey Blackie, have you ever thought about what’s past the ocean?”

“What do you mean, like the breeding rocks?”

“No, beyond that. Have you ever wondered what else is out there?”

“There isn’t anything else. Just look.”

“I heard about a place where it’s so warm that ice melts, plants grow really tall, and there are all types of strange creatures. Wouldn’t it be incredible to see a place like that?”

“Who told you that crazy stuff?”

“Well, one of the fish who goes to the north in the summer said that...”

“You’re talking to the fish? Oh come on Ernie, even if it were true, what would a fish know about it. He’s messing with you.”

“No, no, he met some of the other creatures there. No, I believe him. They swim a lot farther than we do. How do you know there isn’t anything else? Have you ever gone that far?”

“It doesn’t make sense. We would have heard about it before now if there were a place like that. You’re a trusting guy. You should stay away from those fish, they’re playing a mean joke on you.” Blackie shuffled away, shaking his head.

Ernie looked out again, trying to see as far as he could. Was he a fool to listen to fish? It didn’t matter; he needed to believe there was more.

########

I wrote this for an online daily writing contest. . . oh gosh - so many, many years ago. But I still kinda like it. I like the optimism and curiosity of the main penguin, Ernie. What I never cared for is the ending. For a long time, I knew the ending was bad, but I didn't know why. Now, it is obvious to me that the problem is there really is no ending. This is a beginning. It sets up the character and his desires. Then it stops. I've been thinking lately that it would be fun to finish this. Give Ernie his adventure. I even checked out some books about penguins from the library today to read up on what might be a plausible way for him to get started on his journey.

I suspect, however -deep down, this may actually be a procrastination tactic I've created because I'm stuck in my novel.  Today, I planned to give myself a few hours of dedicated writing time. I didn't need to do other things, I'd let the kids have the run of the house, do whatever they wanted. I would write. Ya know what I did? I cleaned. I hate to clean. Hate. And I took a nap. I didn't sleep well last night. That's what I told myself. I couldn't write while I was so sleepy. Right? I would do so much better after a nap. Then it was time to start dinner. Oh darn - out of time.

Pitiful. Embarrassing and pitiful. 

So here is what I'm doing now. I'm making some quick notes on my ideas for Ernie, then I'm setting that aside. Giving him a real story will be my reward for finishing my novel. Finishing is a big problem for me in general. I'm to the point where I don't really care if it's good. It just needs to be finished.

Do you ever catch yourself self-sabotaging? What are your clues, and how do you get yourself back on track?

Way, way, way too many silk worms

We have raised silkworms for several years now. Enough that I mistakenly believed we knew what we were doing. But this year, we learned something new. Well, a few new things actually.

Last year was the first time we raised silkworms hatched from the eggs of our own silkmoths from the previous year. I saved several hundred eggs at least, but only a dozen or so of them hatched. I'd followed what limited instructions I could find at the library and online about how to care for and store the eggs. I thought Id done everything right. So I assumed that this was a fairly normal result. Most eggs don't hatch. Some do. I filed that knowledge away in my little brain.

Then this year, we had saved all the eggs that those dozen or so silkmoths had produced. We hoped for a little better turn out, but would be happy with a dozen or so again.

Every single egg hatched.

I looked really hard for any duds. Every tiny shell was split open. Every little catapillar emerged.

I knew it was a awful lot of silkworms, but when they are so new, they are too tiny to count, and even a lot of them don't look like much of anything. They're the size of a comma at the start. But as time went on, and they grew - and ate, and ate - and grew, it became more clear by the day that we had a problem.

We managed to find other families to take some of them when we realized we were in over our head. We should have tried harder to give away more.

For several weeks, our chore, morning, noon, and night, was finding enough food for these caterpillars to eat. I developed a thick hide about the strange looks from passersby as my kids and I attacked any mulberry tree we could get our mitts on. It really stopped being fun very early on.

Once they had gone into cocoons, I did a count. There were 652 cocoons. That's way too many for one tired mama and a couple of slightly helpful kids to take care of. In case you were wondering how many to get for yourself. Aim for closer to the dozen than the 652 mark if you value your sanity. This doesn't even include the probably 70+ caterpillar we gave away or the ones that died without making cocoons. Unfortunately, there were more of those than I would have liked, but I wouldn't be surprised if some just didn't get enough to eat in the critical bulking up stage before spinning. We spent hours every week picking leaves, and still they would disappear in minutes. So I'd estimate we probably had over 800 hatch in the beginning.

It was insanity I tell you. Insanity. Don't do that.

Naturally, after my hair turned grey and we spent a solid week with no clean clothes or dishes because every spare moment was spent taking care of hundreds of insects, my kids announce they want to raise silkworms again next year. Of course they do.

But I am carefully counting how many eggs I save this year. Maybe 50 at most.

Maybe more like 10.

Daisy Bird 1998(?) - 2012

Photo by Robert M. Hartz. All rights reserved.

Found as a stray, with her beak broken completely off at the cere, and full of parasites, Daisy found her way to me. She healed better than anyone expected. She loved my husband best because being whistled to was more important to her than who cleaned her cage. She taught my children about reproduction with her clutches of empty eggs. She chewed her nails when she was nervous, and loved to have her head rubbed. She could pick out her own beloved silver bell from a group of identical bells. She will be missed.