Tag: computers

You Don’t Want to Know

When these words circulated around the Internet a couple of years ago, they tickled me for several reasons. My ongoing distaste for many facets of Facebook has been documented so I won’t get into it again. But even though there’s a lot of criticism for the way we use social media to record the “banal” parts of our lives, that actually appeals to me. I like knowing about people’s daily lives and the things that are occupying them. Maybe sometimes those things seem boring or predictable, but what a nice counterpoint that is to the grim realities we get in the news. Especially when people share details of those things that make them happy–the music they listen to, books they read, friends they saw, time with their families, projects they’re working on, fun they’ve had–these things make me happy to know. When they share their challenges or worries, it provides me a chance to offer encouragement or gives me perspective about my own.

However: Would I like to read people’s minds? HECK NO. Our thoughts are still our sacred and private space, thank goodness; we need that. And speaking as an avid reader and a writer of fiction, think of the stories that wouldn’t exist if we were all mind readers. No mysteries. No romances. No suspense. Fiction depends on the secret threads of our lives to weave compelling stories.

Misread signals and misdirected messages are used to humorous effect in Mark G. Harris’s short story “The Green Sweater.” After enjoying a flirtation with a stranger at a party, protagonist Jay becomes the unwitting recipient of too much information.

Jay washed his hands and contemplated his luck. He didn’t have a conceited bone in his body. To his mind, it wasn’t the magnetism of a winning chin, but more likely a kind shove of luck that had propelled him into sublime collision with Doug tonight. No other power besides luck could have dropped Jay within kissing distance of the golden lump of that Adam’s apple above the silk purple knot of Doug’s safety-pins-studded necktie. They’d hit it off. An hour’s conversation was sufficient to make Jay want to mate socks with Doug at a Laundromat years from now. He wanted to steal bacon off of Doug’s breakfast tray. Though modest, Jay was in love with the unfolding idea of Doug and himself getting immodest. He corrected himself; he was in lust with the idea and hoped it might unfold days from now, instead of years, but he was prepared to wait it out.

Jay’s laryngeal musings at the sink might have continued to curlicue unchecked had he not discovered something.

Beside the soap dish stood a folded piece of paper, arched like the roof of a house, or a sawhorse, or a displeased eyebrow. It read, HELP ME!

He opened the note.

If you are reading this you have to help me. This boring guy who is really, really stupid has latched on to me and WILL NOT LEAVE ME ALONE. I’m at this party on my own. I don’t know anybody, so you have to come up to me and pretend you know me and RESCUE ME FROM THIS FREAK. I need a ride home, too. You can’t miss me. I’m the VERY CUTE BOY being tortured by the JERKOFF in the GREEN SWEATER.

Jay placed the note against his chest and examined the hole he’d just noticed in his sweater, near the collar. He also noted, as if seeing it for the first time, that his sweater was the jarring, unnatural color of TV- dinner peas, or golf courses in wintertime.

“So…” Jay said, not really knowing where to go with the word.

You can read the entire story in Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction, available now from booksellers everywhere in trade paper and ebook format.

Excerpt reprinted with permission from Cleis Press. All rights reserved.

Five Days to Ponder


Let us live simply in the freshness of the present moment, in the clarity of pure awakened mind.
Matthieu Ricard

My mind is a constant storm of should be/should do/should think/should go. Sometimes that translates into action, sometimes not.

Often I impose structure by using this blog: for example, the year I wrote a poem each day from randomly drawn words; the year I used a family photograph each day to inspire me to record memories or events or observations about my relationships and life. This past year, I opted not to attempt a daily anything here, though I missed very few days of posting something, even if only a photo. Some months I participated in Photo A Day. Throughout the year I also featured books: favorite books, books authored by people I know, books that have meant something to me, books that I found fun, interesting, or insightful.

Also over the past year, I consciously cultivated an attitude of gratitude. For a while, I made daily entries in a gratitude journal (a real journal, not an online journal), and then I realized that I’d stopped because gratitude became ingrained in all my thinking–I no longer needed to write it to remember to feel it. I think that was, too, part of healing from the losses of 2012–and by that I don’t mean there is no more grief or sadness or yearning. Just that it is not as consuming. There is more breathing through it and accepting that it will ebb and flow.

Each year since I moved my blog here from LiveJournal, I’ve let the masthead reflect my purpose. A pile of Magnetic Poetry words. Old family photos scattered on the table. My take on My Ideal Bookshelf. For the past few days, I’ve been wondering what “theme” the new year will bring and how my masthead might show it.

The phrase that stays in my mind as I think about all this is “mindful living.” I keep stumbling over this concept with people I know or meet and with things I read or see. I’ve always believed a message or a lesson comes when you’re ready. But what makes this particularly challenging for me is that I feel it’s a journey I took in the latter half of the 1990s, and it led to a flowering of creativity. Then my energy and focus went in other directions. I don’t see that as bad or good, although certainly there will always be other people willing to tell me–to tell any of us!–You’re doing it wrong. (Tip: This is an ineffective way to motivate an Aries.)

I’m not sure what any of this means. The title of this post is my attempt to make myself feel that I have a deadline. To come up with a masthead. To come up with a purpose for keeping this little bit of the Internet alive. To come up with a plan to live mindfully. That seems a little silly and counter-intuitive: mindful living means being in the moment. Yet here I am trying to take on a whole new year. Maybe I won’t have a new masthead by January 1. Maybe no master plan will have unfurled in my mind.

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s enough just to be. And to know each day may bring a new way to be that I should welcome.

Photos: Sun catcher gift of David and Geri. Book gift of Brad. I’m grateful for both the gifts and the people.

February Photo A Day: Where You Stood

Today I got up very early so I could take my computer to the Apple store because I had some concerns about it. Usually if I have reason to go to the Apple store, I go to the one in the Galleria. But since they’ve opened a store more accessible and closer to The Compound, I decided to go there. I’ve shopped at that store, but this was my first time to use the Genius Bar, and I was able to turn something that should have been easy into a morning fraught with drama.

First, because I didn’t have an appointment, I arrived well before opening time, thinking, FIRST! The doors were already open (Good grief; what retailer does such a crazy thing? I never did.), so I went inside, lugging my computer in its box. The store was already rocking. I needed an appointment and there wasn’t an available slot until one, but since Tim needed the car in the afternoon, I didn’t want to push my luck on the time. So I lugged the computer back to the car with the intention of calling the Galleria to find out if the Mac could be seen sooner there. Only you can’t actually get through to the store; you have to make an appointment online. I went back inside the first store to see if I could just leave the computer, thinking maybe Tim could drop me off later for the 1 p.m. appointment, and the woman who’d talked to me before said, “You came back! We had a cancellation! They can see you at 10:30!”

YAY, right? I went back to the car to get the Mac so I could wait inside for thirty minutes. Except…I’d locked my keys in the car with the computer. I NEVER DO THIS. I called Tom in a panic; his workplace is almost a straight shot from where I was, and traffic was abnormally kind, so he arrived with a key to unlock my car before my appointment time.

I then proceeded to sit there for nearly three hours as my Genius did all kinds of tests and cleaned some stuff off the Mac, but she never found any problem connected to what I was worried about. It was kind of cool as my computer was running scans to watch her help other people and to share computer stories with them in which we, the users, are generally about ninety-five percent of the problem with our computers.

So that’s where I stood today–at the Apple store. As an aside, I’ve read a few bad reviews about both the Galleria and Highland Village stores. I’ve always had great customer service at those stores, both when purchasing something and when needing computer support. Thanks, Erika–you made those three hours fly by.

Prompt from FMS Photo A Day.

I wonder…

I wonder how many people are trying to read my blog and getting a message that it’s been suspended? It was, because it was ruthlessly attacked by malware. It was like something out of Star Wars! But Han Solo or somebody at my hosting site and I spent a lot of time on the phone Thursday morning getting it all fixed. Only if people don’t clear their browser history/cache, whatever it’s called, they’ll keep thinking the account is suspended.

If no one can see my blog, DO I EVEN EXIST?!?

Y’all can totally see me sitting here at my desk, right? Hello? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

If I could turn back time

It’s a good thing these stories I’m editing are so enjoyable to read, since…


The other night I went to Murder By The Book because the wonderful Carolyn Haines was signing her new mystery, Bonefire of the Vanities. I’m behind in the series, so I now have two Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries beckoning me from my TBR pile. I’m using them as my carrot: When I get caught up with the editing, I can start reading Bones of a Feather.


In my last post, I mentioned how my aunt and uncle were great storytellers who I wanted somehow to weave into my fiction one day. But honestly, I feel like if I could just follow Carolyn Haines around and listen to her tell stories, that would be as humorous and inspiring. If you ever get a chance to meet her, take it.

One of the things she talked about was how it took her so long to give her character Sarah Booth a cell phone. When she started the series, Carolyn didn’t have a cell phone herself, but as the years progressed (well, in book publishing years; only about a year and a half has passed in Sarah Booth’s life, I think), it became implausible not to introduce a little technology. It reminded me of a time Greg and I were talking about an old Mary Stewart novel, and I said a coincidental plot point couldn’t happen in modern times because of technology. But Greg pointed out that the characters could have stumbled over an Internet news story and acquired the same information.

Still, I have a real longing to strip away technology from a novel I want to write. Sometimes characters don’t need to be able to access Wikipedia and Google. They need to think their way out of bad situations–or NOT–without rescue available at the touch of a button. There are only so many times a person can lose a cell phone or forget to charge it…or the Internet can be down… It’s a writer’s delight to put a character in awkward or perilous circumstances and watch as they use their wits and nerve to save themselves. It’s just not the same if OnStar and Siri and Travelocity do all the work.

Although I suppose technology-rich bestsellers prove me wrong daily, I’m still pretty glad Scout Finch couldn’t point a security camera at the oak tree; Juliet didn’t have face recognition software; and Miss Marple never hid a smart phone in her knitting bag. Though I can’t help but wonder what her ring tone might be.

30 Days of Creativity 2012: Day 10

Today’s theme from 30 Days of Creativity is “8 Bit.”


The Ram lets the kids kick it old school during a break from filming Super Mario Brothers.

Other Day 10 creations can be seen here.

Thanks to Tom for the props, because I didn’t know “8 Bit” from an interdimensional hole that could take me to an alternate universe where dinosaur descendants rule and plumbers are heroes. On second thought, plumbers are heroes in this dimension, as well.

Legacy Writing 365:96


Sometimes a girl’s just gotta cry when the wind blows up her dress because she knows she’ll never look like Marilyn Monroe.

I have a Canon scanner hooked to my PC, and with that scanner came some good photo editing software that was extremely user friendly. When we got the Mac, that scanner and software worked on it. When the Mac died a few months after purchase and Apple had to install a new operating system, it was no longer compatible with the scanner and software. Maybe I could have upgraded the software or something, but I’d long been using a paid version of Picnik photo editing through Flickr, so I didn’t care, even when I bought another, more Mac-friendly, Canon scanner (gift cards are wonderful!). Then Flickr announced that Picnik was closing on April 19. Only they jumped the gun. It was closed when I wanted to work on this photo, and Flickr offered me their new photo editing software, Aviary.

Problem is, Aviary doesn’t really do what I need. My photo editing needs are few and relatively simple, but they are also specific. Photoshop and other good editing software programs are far more technical than I want. I don’t do a lot of post-processing of my photos, but most of my old photos, like the one above, need some work.

Maybe I’ll see if I can install and upgrade my old scanner software.

Or maybe I’ll just cry about it.

My mother once asked to hear my earliest memory. I told her I was reaching for a rotary beater on the kitchen counter and could remember her saying, “No!” She asked what color the cabinets were, and when I told her, she said I was probably around two, and we lived in Colorado. I’m pretty sure that’s where this photo was taken.

I still don’t much like being told no. Not even by Flickr.