Kerry Allen

(As interpreted in C.J.-inspired list form.)

1. Angelic Daughter spoiled me.

2. Other people’s children are Monsters.

3. There’s an episode of House in which a mob guy gets control of an uncooperative child with a harsh word or two and says, “They have to believe you’ll hurt them.”

4. I have found this is an effective technique.

5. I am very good at it.

6. Because I’m *this close* to hurting somebody.

7. The useless parent in attendance.

8. Some people should not be allowed to breed.

9. Speaking of breeders, I accompanied a social worker on a home visit to follow up on a kid.

10. The kid’s mother, uncle, and grandma live in the home.

11. All are agoraphobic.

12. None of them have left the house in years.

13. Not a lot of getting out and socializing with people.

14. Take a wild guess where the kid came from?

15. Yeah. Eww to the nth power.

16. Cue banjo music.

17. But her origins were the least of her problems, so I got to call DSS.

18. The mother was like “But why?”

19. *THIS CLOSE*

20. I’ve been CPR certified since I was 16.

21. This week was the first time I’ve ever actually had to use it.

22. I’d rather not use it again, thanks, so I suggest not collapsing around me.

23. Because I’ll just stand there gawking like everybody else.

24. I asked New Boss if this was some kind of Hell Week organized to test my mettle.

25. New Boss said, “It’s never like this. You’re bad luck. Next week, I’m sending you to shadow my ex-husband.”

26. What jobs require absolutely no human interaction? ‘Cause I have had just about all the frickin’ humanity I can stand.

To me, “the Olive Garden” is the McDonald’s of Italian food, a step up the Italian cuisine ladder from Pizza Hut. There’s one within a block of every interstate exit, right alongside Taco Bell, Cracker Barrel, and all the familiar flavors that comfort hungry travelers. They all look the same. They all have the same food and the same assembly-line service. I assume, since it’s a franchise, there’s little variation wherever you may be.

To me, “an Italian restaurant” is smaller, probably family owned. It has some ambience, even if stereotyped and contrived. It’s not located in the highest-rent district of town. Its clientele is local and loyal. Its menu has the usual fare but varies in some respects from any other Italian restaurant you’ll ever go to because there’s no corporate enforcement of continuity.

Two sets of three words with distinctly different connotations to me and 90% of those participating in my highly scientific poll. Good. I’m not the only one.

I know someone who submitted a story to a certain writer site for critique. It’s a fun story. It’s fast paced. It has steadily escalating conflict and a satisfying resolution. There were a couple of tiny issues like “was -ing” verb constructions that could be cleaned up, but with a quick one-day edit, the story would fit seamlessly into an anthology with multipublished authors in the same genre. Yay for her.

I checked back the next day, and there were FIVE HUNDRED comments, the majority a flamefest regarding the—dun dun DUUUUUNNNNN—flagrant brand-name usage!

Yes, within 30,000 words, the author used three—”the Olive Garden”—to identify a food source for a character staying at an interstate motel. Didn’t name the motel (because it was purposely generic). Didn’t name the character’s car (because it was deep POV and people think “my car” not “my 2004 Toyota Corolla”). Didn’t name her clothes or her shoes or her shampoo. The sole mention of any publicly recognizable entity was “the Olive Garden.”

Clearly FLAGRANT brand-name abuse that completely overshadows the remaining 29,997 words of the story.

I suppose the point is, once again, that I’m dismayed by the lack of interest in STORY so many writers display, having a 500-comment tantrum over a detail that was deliberately chosen to evoke a certain familiar setting rather than evaluating any other element of the STORY.

Is it any wonder books are becoming “homogenized” when all the identifying characteristics are being stripped from the material like a damn HIPAA-regulated medical record during the “critique” phase?

The last huge flamefest I witnessed over there suggested we strike Americanisms from our writing vocabulary because our international friends don’t get the references. God forbid anyone shouldn’t understand and be curious and look something up and learn. I know what “football” means in other countries. I know what a “loo” and a ”lift” and a “flat” are. I know what a “Tata” is. Hey, I can even handle medical and scientific and legal and archaic and foreign and MADE-UP words in the books I read. Are these writers suggesting non-American readers are so unintelligent their reading material must be run through a language filter to strain out all the tricksy words before they can comprehend?

Wow. How staggeringly condescending.

Hey, how about a poll to address in the comments:

Does anyone think “use vague, generic terms to identify all items” and “don’t use your own vocabulary because everyone on the planet might not understand what you mean” are valuable pieces of criticism, or even valid pieces of criticism? And do you think this “crit, crit, crit, must have crit” thing (which is not anywhere near as common in the world of male writers, by the way) does more benefit or harm to the art of storytelling?

Dear Akismet,

Do you really have to ask if a comment containing the phrase “father/son sex porn” with 92,000 links is spam?

Best regs,

Ker

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My arthritis is killing me today. Early this morning, I thought it was just my hands, but when I had my little “oops” (details to follow) and had to change my clothes, reaching back to unhook my bra made my elbows and joints crack like… something crackly. I went to work screaming for a shot. Since I ordinarily wouldn’t complain if I had a sucking chest wound, they actually took me seriously, gave me a shot and a prescription for Vicodin  (is there not some middle ground between Advil and friggin’ Vicodin? something non-narc so I can have samples? because underpaid, uninsured medical workers can’t afford retail pharmaceuticals, just sayin’), and sent me home because they can’t work me like a dog in my present condition.

The “oops” occurred when I brought a beverage to my lips and the liquid had just begun to spill from the glass to my mouth and, entirely without warning, I sneezed, not only dispersing the flow of liquid but sending a burst of compressed air into the glass, resulting in an explosion of liquid, a veritable geyser that sprayed everything within a five-foot radius in all directions.

What was that liquid? Cranapple juice. Could have had water, but no. Went for the red stuff. I believe the sneeze was the Goddess Anorexia’s way of punishing me for consuming a beverage with calories, and I will be reminded of this lesson for years to come, because (a) I’m sure I’ll be finding really ambitious splatters in other rooms when I move furniture in the future, (b) cranapple juice is instantaneously absorbed deep into semigloss paint, vinyl floor tile, and laminate countertop, so that even wiping down 60 seconds after splatter will not prevent pretty pink stains, and (c) I have a stylish bouse and skirt ensemble presently suitable only for wearing during activities such as painting the house. That’s right. Couldn’t happen on one of the 362 scrubs-or-jeans-and-company-polo-shirt days this year. Had to happen on Look Professional Day.

So I have a few hours off.  I can’t even think of something crackly, so dashing off a chapter or two ain’t gonna happen. I can’t hold a book open because that is the Official Position of Utmost Agony for the 2008 Arthritic Games.

Guess I’ll go back to bed. And lie there. Cursing the invisible demons crushing my joints beneath their cloven hooves.

*checks beneath sofa cushions for change* Maybe I can afford ONE Vicodin…

Like the announcer, I have always wanted to see this happen.

“Damn, Kerry. There is no romance in your soul.”

I don’t find anything romantic about the public proposal. To me, the public proposal means, “You have to say yes or all these people will boo you.” It’s commitment coercion. Marriage proposal terrorism.

Note to all the geniuses thinking about trying this: I didn’t hear anybody booing her. Half of them were thinking “I’ve always wanted to see a refusal” and the other half were thinking “Can we get back to the friggin’ game now?”

You know what a marriage proposal refusal says to me? There was no discussion of marriage beforehand, no “Are we in the same place? Do we want the same things for the future?” dialogue. The answer to “Will you marry me?” should never come as a SURPRISE.

It makes me wonder if she said something last week about not being happy, and instead of thinking “This relationship isn’t working,” he thought “Let’s get married!” was the solution.

Note to all the geniuses thinking about trying this: You can’t fix a bad relationship by making it legally binding.

I am not a huge fan of the institution of marriage simply because it doesn’t MEAN anything anymore. Very rarely is it entered into as a symbol of commitment by two people to spend the rest of their lives together. It’s because somebody wants financial security or community respectability, or because they’re “at that age” and it’s “expected,” or because a relationship has nowhere else to go but down the aisle and it’s more convenient to get married than split up and find somebody new, or because everbody’s drunk at the time and it seems like more fun than going bowling. And if we don’t like it, hey, we can throw it away tomorrow because it’s just a piece of paper.

I had no intention of turning this into a Pro Gay Marriage rant, but as long as I’m in the general vicinity, I’m all for it because if they’re willing to FIGHT for it, they’re bloody well going to take it more seriously than the majority of the population that takes it for granted.

There was a pamphlet enclosed with the electric bill, explaining why rates are so high. They’re actually doing us a huge favor. According to their graph, they’re losing money by giving us a break. Were they not such humanitarians, our bills would be five times what they are now, so we should all be thankful for this latest rate hike.

Burning coal is cheap, but it’s filthy.

Burning natural gas (which they do) is clean, but it’s increasingly expensive.

They’re working to lift the ban on nuclear power plants because that will be cheaper, too. Potentially dangerous on an epic scale, but cheaper.

We live in the Sunshine State. Not one word was mentioned about solar power.

We live in a state with hundreds of miles of coastline, along which there is a perpetual breeze. Not one word was mentioned about windmills.

We live in a state with hundreds of miles of coastline, along which there is a constant movement of water. Not one mention was made of hydroelectric power, or whatever they call it when it’s wave power instead of dammed rivers.

No, we’re just going to keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them for the past 50 years and hope something magically changes. Instead of trying something new, which would be inconvenient, we’re going to wait until the day we completely exhaust all the nonrenewable resources we’ve been relying on and then say, “Oh, shit. Now what? Didn’t those environmental crackpots say something a while back about ‘harnessing the power of the sun’? Stupid hippies. I like the sound of forcing everyone in the world to pay for something that’s free, like those other guys did with bottled water. Let’s sell ‘em sunlight!”

We should have begun implementing alternative power sources 50 years ago. It didn’t have to be 100 percent alternative power overnight. If we’d converted a measly 1 percent a year, we could now be at a point where a significant portion of the energy burden was not dependent on finite resources.

We didn’t start 50 years ago, or 40 or 30 or 20 or 10. It’s not too late, but there’s no indication we’re going to start tomorrow, either. The attitude remains: “*pfft* Tomorrow is somebody else’s problem!”

Kinda makes me want to buy a shack in the boonies, cover the roof with solar panels, erect a wind turbine in the back yard (they run about 40 grand, hence the shack), and go completely off-grid.

Did you know, if you generate more power than you can use yourself, the electric company will buy the surplus from you? So they know it works. They just want somebody else to take responsibility for it.

Angelic Daughter’s school has reached new heights of ridiculousness.

You must understand, I am not being facetious when I call her Angelic Daughter. We might have our little squabbles at home, but since infancy, she has been perfectly behaved whenever she leaves the house. She’s quiet and thoughtful and considerate of others and has never been in trouble a day of her life.

So imagine my surprise when I’m asked to come to the principal’s office on her first day of seventh grade.

Guess why. Go ahead, guess. Be creative. I thought it couldn’t get more outrageous than calling the cops because a student was carrying the highly dangerous controlled substance known on the street as “Tylenol” or a deadly weapon like nail clippers, but I was mistaken.

I had to leave work and go to the school because my child had a rubber band around her wrist.

Often during the day, she will find it desirable to pull her hair back in a ponytail. They’re not allowed to have backpacks or purses, mind you, so there’s nowhere to carry a rubber band other than on her person.

“Did she take it off her wrist and pop somebody with it?”

“No.”

“Okaaaaaay. Then I’m really not seeing the problem.”

“What concerns us is the statement she’s making.”

“That statement being… she might like to keep her hair out of her face? I don’t recall anything in the student code of conduct indicating this was a strictly hair-in-face school.”

It was an hour-long lesson that people cannot hear the stupidity that comes out of their own mouths. I tried mirroring back the stupidity that was said to me, and it sounded just as stupid the second time.

Toward the end, I became somewhat belligerent, since calm, rational dialogue had zero effect. Words to the effect of “How did a fucking idiot like you get a job that doesn’t involve a hair net and a deep fryer?” may have been spoken.

I just might have to find a way to make home schooling work because I am increasingly terrified of subjecting her to so much idiocy 6 hours a day. I’ve tried to teach her to use her brain, but being submerged in anti-intelligence 5 days a week can do a lot of damage.

And I’m still not clear about the “statement.” Was there a Fox News report that wearing a rubber band on one’s wrist is the mark of the Taliban or something?

.

1. (Passed) Not saying “What the hell were you thinking?” upon learning the names inflicted upon two teeny little babies. Not my problem if one sounds like the name of a mutant in an RPG and the other is a variety of cheese and these poor kids will be mercilessly teased until they snap and go on a killing spree, right?
2. (Failed) Not saying “What the hell were you thinking?” upon learning the equally ridicule-worthy middle names inflicted upon Mutant and Cheese, robbing them of the old standby of “I go by my middle name, for obvious reasons.” Yes, you were very creative. Remember how proud you were of that when your kids are crying because the other kids start picking on them at the moment of introduction.
3. (Failed) Not being pissed that when minimum wage goes up 70 cents and my salary does not, I’m 70 cents closer to making minimum wage, with the added kick in the proverbial nuts that the price of everything I buy is going to increase to cover increased payroll and maintain profit margins, in addition to the ongoing skyrocketing price of everything due to gas prices, which in the not too distant future is going to drive me and a few million other people right out of the “middle class” range. Hey, Feds—how about doing something to improve the cost of living, which will benefit everyone, instead of your usual fake “solutions,” which screw everybody in the long run?

And it’s only Tuesday…