ABC in Obama's Camp?

I've picked up on some hoopla about ABC devoting an entire day to supporting Obama's health care reform including broadcasting their nightly newscast from the white house. I read one conservative publication that condemned it, and two liberal publications, one of which defended it and the other that said they would take a wait and see approach.

In my simplicity, I guess I don't get it. I mean, if it were a news story, every network would be covering it. Since they're not, then it's not. That only leaves two possibilities. Either ABC is shamelessly in Obama's camp but refuses to admit it. Or this is some kind of documentary thing. That's what the one liberal publication used as its defense, comparing it to NBC doing a documentary from the white house during the Bush years. But if it is a documentary, then why would they do their newscast from there?

For me, the deciding factor as to what this really is occurred on the night before the election last November when ABC broadcast a full hour of free publicity for Obama, practically begging people to vote for him, under the guise of a TV show called Boston Legal. This shameless promotion was condemned by no one that I know of, probably because any conservatives that might have watched it already knew ABC's position, so felt no comment was necessary.

I don't mind networks favoring one politician over another, or one political party over another. I just hate it that they all pretend that they don't.

Surgery et al

What a day. Kim was supposed to have eye surgery at the Clinic today, but while we were getting ready to go this morning, she broke a tooth while flossing. Guess she doesn't know her own strength. These surgeries require 3 days of traveling an hour each way. Monday we go up there for pre-op testing. Then Tuesday we go up for the surgery. Then Wednesday is post-op.

We called the doctor who said they would cancel the surgery and reschedule at a later date. We knew this would probably mean at least a 3 week wait. We found a walk-in dental place where we had to wait about an hour to see a dentist. But once Kim got into the chair, it didn't take long for the dentist to fix her up with a filling. She'll have to go back sometime for a crown. After we got back home we decided to call the Clinic back to see if they could still take her. They said yes, so we drove up there and she had the surgery done.

Originally she was supposed to be there at 12:30. We actually got there at 2:30. But things went well, more or less, and we were able to leave for home around 6:15. So in the long run, everything worked out well. She was able to have the surgery, and we think we finally found a dentist.

Myrtle Beach Trip

I worked until midnight Sunday night, and after I got home, we decided to go ahead and get ready to leave rather than sleep for a few hours. I figured I’d not want to get up if I went to sleep and since it was at least a 12-hour trip, we wanted to get there while there was still part of the day to enjoy. We got on the road a little after 2.

As it was, I drove for about 2 ½ hours and then pulled into a rest area and napped for about 30 minutes, then did the same thing again a few hours later. We had to get the key to the place at another location about 5 miles away, so that added time, but we got into the condo about 4:00, which I thought was pretty good for having to drive the whole 665 miles myself.

There were a few surprises waiting for us in the condo. The patio door was stuck due to a bent and rusty track. At first I couldn’t get it open at all. Later I figured out that if I lifted the backside of it carefully, so as not to jam my fingers, I was able to pull it over the bent area and get it open. We then just left it open for the rest of the week, which turned out to be fine. Even when we had the violent thunderstorm on the last night, it wasn’t enough to get the living room carpet wet.

At first we couldn’t find any towels or washcloths, but then we found them in the dryer, although they weren’t dry. The sheets that were folded up on the master bed were also wet and had to be redried. All together there were 4 bath towels, 1 hand towel, and exactly zero washcloths in this unit that sleeps eight people. There were also no kitchen linens. For 3 bathrooms, there was a total of one-half roll of toilet paper. There was also no dish soap.

There were other minor problems that were not irritating by themselves, but under the circumstances, they also added to the perception that we were not exactly in a high-class joint.

We were too tired to do anything about it right then, so we waited until Wednesday morning. We drove back over to the Century 21 office, where we had gotten the keys, with a written list of these complaints so they could notify the owner, or whoever. Then we went over to WalMart to buy all the missing items we needed. Since we were only going to have three people rather than the five who were invited, we just bought some washcloths, and called Ralph to have him bring his own towels. It wasn’t until Thursday that someone called us to discuss these problems. The person said they would bring over some towels, which they never did, that they would tell the owner about the patio door, (I’m guessing the owner already knows about it), and that as far as dishwasher soap, they don’t provide it. I told the lady that this was the first time we had ever rented a condo in which dishwasher soap was not provided. After all, we are required to wash the dishes before we leave, so most owners consider it common courtesy to provide the soap.

The name of the condo is The Summit in North Myrtle Beach. It is better avoided for future reference.

Once we got over this initial hurdle, the rest of the week was rather grand. Well, that is excepting my usual $40 poker losses to my brother. But that’s just my life, and I probably wouldn’t know how to handle it if I actually won.

Kim and I got to take our usual walks on the beach, although she didn’t find many shells worth keeping this time. We think the gulf side has better shells. We got to spend a lot of time just relaxing on the balcony listening to the waves (my biggest reason for going in the first place). We went out for the obligatory seafood dinner, a buffet this time. And Ralph took us on a sightseeing drive down as far as Murrell Inlet and back, mostly because he got bored after I was forced to quit playing poker, having reached my loss limit. I got to make my Books A Million run. And we stumbled onto a discount bookstore in a shopping area called Tanger. That’s quite an outdoor shopping center. There must be a hundred stores there, mostly clothing, but other stuff as well. Anyway, I couldn’t believe how cheap the books were in this bookstore. And they were new current books, not used. Recent books by Dean Koontz, John Updike, John Grisham and Ted Dekker, among others. An illustrated coffee table version of David McCullough’s 1776, which lists for $65, sold for $14.99.

I got $283 worth of books for $86.

I would have kept going, but I didn’t want to hold up the others any longer.

Saturday night, our last night there, Ralph went ahead on home. Kim and I sat on the balcony as a rather violent thunderstorm went out over the ocean. It’s amazing how much louder thunder sounds when it’s out in the open rather than in the city. The lightning show was rather fascinating, and it’s always fun to count the seconds between lightning and thunder so you can figure out how far away it is. When the lightning and thunder are virtually simultaneous, the noise is deafening.

Anticipation

So in short it's never a good idea to get excited about something that hasn't happened yet. It turns out that when it doesn't happen the disappointment is far out of proportion to the original anticipation.

Cleveland Boo-Hoo Cavaliers

So how about those Cavs? As I predicted, I was much more upset about the way this season ended than I was any others: 95 Indians, the shot, the drive, the fumble. But there was also a certain reassuring quality about the whole thing. Cleveland is still Cleveland and its destiny is to be the eternal loser.

The reality is that in the NBA being the best team over the course of the long season is next to meaningless. The only thing it gets you is home court advantage, which obviously can be lost in a flash. Orlando, on the other hand, kept getting better so that by the time the playoffs started, they were the best team, at least in the east. I knew the Cavs were in trouble after Orlando manhandled Boston in game seven, in Boston. And after the first two games in Cleveland, I knew it was over. At that time, my boss predicted that Cleveland would lose the series in five games, and I said they would lose it in six. So at least I got that right.

Of course, one can always dream about what could have been. In game one, if Mo Williams last second desperation shot had been 1-2 inches to the right, it would have gone in, and the complexion of the whole series would have been changed. Not necessarily that the Cavs would have won it, but it probably would have gone seven, and then who knows.

Book Writer Part I

Ok, I’ve always wanted to be writer, but don’t have the confidence that I could pull it off. Back in the seventies, I wrote a number of letters to the editor and almost all were printed. I know they were well written, not only because of the comments I received, but also because they were printed with virtually no editing in spite of the fact that a few were rather lengthy.

Back when Reader’s Digest produced condensed books, I subscribed to them. That was when I discovered that books could indeed be condensed without losing any of their readability and without taking away any details of the story. One time I got the original book and set it along side the condensed version and saw how the editors had gone through the book line by line, eliminating superfluous words and phrases. I was somewhat amazed by how much a book could actually be reduced without any loss.

So I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to do this myself. I mean, if I don’t have the confidence to write my own plots and characters, maybe I could make long books shorter, so that more people might want to read them. And even if they don’t, it would still be fun. There are many times that I’m reading a book, and I’ll be thinking of how it would read if this and that were cut out. Is this line necessary, for example.

This led to another thought. There are a lot of rather old books that were written in different styles than people are willing to read today. I know it’s common practice for some writers to update old books into modern English, so why couldn’t I do something like that?

A few years ago, I came across an old book in a used bookstore, which I bought for $2. It’s very long by today’s standards at 754 pages and it’s written in an old English manner. It has some of my favorite things in that it’s a novel about a Biblical character, in this case, Paul. It covers the entire time period from right after Christ ascended into heaven up through the time of Paul’s death.

When I first read through it, I rather assumed that the author must be Catholic because of the way Peter is exalted in the book. In fact, Peter is called the first of the disciples and was considered the head of the church. Of course, in reality, his brother Andrew was Jesus’ first disciple, and Jesus’ brother James was the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Throughout the book there is conflict between Peter and Paul, which was true, but in the author’s mind, at the end of his life, Paul finally acknowledges that Peter was right about everything all along and he bows down to him in Rome. Talk about a vivid imagination. So I thought that the best way to rewrite such a book would be not only to bring it up to date in language, but also to “correct” as many of the author’s misconceptions as I could.

Imagine my surprise recently, when I discovered that the author was a famous Jewish writer. In fact, before writing this book about Paul, he had written a biography of the life of Christ. For writing such a blasphemous work, he was ostracized by the Jewish community and called a traitor to his faith. The book about Paul, simply entitled “The Apostle,” was his follow up book. So now I’m faced with the proposition of “correcting” a very brilliant Jew, whose mind is obviously on a higher plane than mine could ever hope to be. What could be more pretentious than that?

So of course I started working on it.

Cut and Paste?

When I first started doing this, I could write something in Word, then cut and paste it into the blog. For some reason, it won't let me do that anymore. I have stuff written that I wanted to post, but unless I can figure out how to transfer it, I'll have to type it all over again.

I also can't figure out how to add a comment to Sarah's last post. It would have said, "Ditto to what Liz said," but whatever I tried, I couldn't seem to be able to do it.

Maybe I'm not cut out for this.