Purple prose prizewinner: the Bulwer-Lytton contest

The Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest is sponsored by San Jose State University, with the goal of finding someone who can write as bad a first paragraph as Edward George Bulwer-Lytton did in 1830 with the opener to “Paul Clifford.”

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

They get thousands and thousands of entries each year, many of which are positively brilliant pieces of writing, in the over-the-top style demanded by the assignment. I’m serious.

Take this, the winning paragraph from a couple years back from computer analyst Dan McKay:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in Chapter 7 of the shop manual.

Take about colorful writing! E.B. White would have applauded the extended metaphor, the specificity of the details, the action verbs, the images that pop off the page.

The 2008 contest winner will be announced in the next couple of weeks and I’ll keep you posted.

Plump Perfection with pterostilbene: blueberries

My plumply perfect blueberries are at an end. I get a solid month-long run from July 4 to August 4, give or take a day or two. The harvest from four mature bushes in a climate they love lasts me a full year.  My freezer is stuffed with them; overflow baggies are in my neighbor’s freezer.

I eat them on my cereal every morning.  Supposedly they are full of nutritional goodies - anti-oxidants. A study in 2004 says they’re also good for lowering cholesterol because they contain pterostilbene - which is similar to resveratrol, another antioxidant identified in grapes and red wine.

Of course the new nutritional darling is beets.   I have a few planted but not enough to keep at bay whatever ails they prevent for more than a month.

Prematurely proud Powerpoint presenter

Last week I was so pleased with myself for my maiden voyage of simultaneously talking and powerpointing  for my feng shui class that perhaps I was overly presumptuous in calling myself a  Powerpoint Potentate: Presentation Priestess.

Well, at least I did not use clip art. I did not use overly wordy slides. I did not use wild wipes and noisy animations. I knew those were non-nos. And I had some very lovely photographs to illustrate some of my points.

But now, having poked around a bit on the web for Powerpoint pointers, and discovering two of Garr Reynolds‘ websites, I see I have miles to go.  I’m not talking about doing fancy photoshopped art, jazzy fonts, fades, etc.  It’s about simplicity, using the least possible material in the most impactful way. (His blog is called Presentation Zen - way cool. He has a book by the same name which I just ordered. I know when I need to eat humble pie.)

In one set of three slides he shows about gender inequality in Japan. First example is typical headline and bullet points. Next example says, “72% of the part-time workforce in Japan are women,”  over a dark background with a woman off to the side.   Final example (same background of woman) in HUGE text : just says 72%.   Pow!  The slide emphasizes the message graphically, but YOU are the messenger.

I’m excited about improving my skill with inspiration like this.

Preposterous profits: Exxon Mobil eats your lunch

Exxon Mobil posted the fattest operating profit in in US corporate history yesterday - $11.7 billion for the second quarter. Up from last year, and from the year before. While the company insists it’s trying to bring down gas prices, the money they spend on exploration ($7 billion) pales compared to what they’ve spent in recent years on stock buybacks ($8 billion) and dividends. (from an AP story)

Company profits were $40.61 billion in 2007.

They want more drilling rights, offshore and ANWAR, when they don’t even use a whole lot of the rights they already have.

In 2007 CEO Rex Tillerson took home a pay package that included $1.75 million in salary, a $3.36 million bonus, and $16.1 million of stock and option awards, according to a company filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He also received nearly $430,000 of other compensation, including $229,331 for personal security and $41,122 for use of the company aircraft.

I wonder if they’ll up his travel allowance to cover higher fuel costs… poor baby. I suppose every time he fills the tank he makes a little more profit, so what does he care?

Occidental Petroleum Corp CEO Ray Irani made $33.6 million and Anadarko Petroleum Corp chief James Hackett took in $26.7 million in 2007 - even more than Tillerson.

Postprandial plunge: to nap or not to nap?

Postprandial: following a meal

Plunge: to descend precipitously

Perhaps I exaggerate - but plunge was the only p-word that comes close to what happens to me after lunch most days… (and after as little as one glass of wine w. dinner) - I want to get horizontal and shut my eyes.

Supposedly it has something to do with blood sugar levels, but it doesn’t seem to matter whether I eat a low or high carb meal; I just get sleepy.

And then I resist it.  I sit at my computer trying to write, trying to compute, trying to think through a problem — gaining no traction but refusing to succumb.  If I get up and tackle a physical chore I can sometimes barrel through it, but at a detriment to my effectiveness.

Half an hour after a nap it’s as if I rebooted my whole system, and all the resource-hogging resident programs in my brain have cleared out.  My question to myself is this: why don’t I just go with the flow and make room in my schedule for a daily nap?

Napping is a high art in some cultures; there’s no shame attached to it. It’s probably good for your health, as a recent study from Greece indicates.   From that story in the NY Times:

Now, out of Greece, comes permission to do exactly that. A study of more than 23,000 adults shows that those who napped for about 30 minutes each week had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from a heart attack than those who did not.

So this should mean that all working Americans will receive permission from their bosses to close their eyes every afternoon at about 4 p.m., right?

Don’t bet your blankie on it.

This is hardly the first study showing that sleep is more than simply time when we really should be at work. Other studies, though few as extensive as the Greek research, show that short periods of sleep during the day increase productivity and creativity while reducing stress. And even without surveys, we know this from experience.

When you need a nap, you need a nap. Nothing — not caffeine, not a chocolate bar, not a pill — recharges the battery in the same way.

I welcome you to join me…

Prevention: public health’s mission

Prevent: to keep from happening by some prior action, avert, thwart

Public: of, concerning or affecting the community or the people.

I mounted my public health pulpit yesterday, perhaps having a presentiment that prevention would be a topic on the NPR program, “Splendid Table.” Host Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s guest was a guy who calls himself ChefMD, internist John La Puma.

He was saying what those of us in public health have been saying for decades: what you eat has a profound effect on your health, but those in the medical (bandaid) profession don’t know anything about nutrition.

All I can say is, “well, duh!!!!”

The majority of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and many cancers are caused by what we are eating that we shouldn’t, or not eating that we should. And yet, according to Dr. La Puma, of the 116 US medical schools, 68 still don’t require any classes in nutrition.

Of those that do, only a teeny fraction of course hours are devoted to it – like 4 out of 3,000.

Most docs, when confronted with an overweight patient, hand them a brochure and maybe refer them to a dietitian. Wouldn’t it be great instead if pediatric and prenatal clinics offered nutrition and cooking classes BEFORE their patients got fat???

Is this not a no-brainer??

Perturbed but not yet pessimistic

Perturbed: greatly disturbed, made uneasy or anxious, confused.

Pessimistic: a tendency to take the gloomiest possible view of a situation.

Times are getting tough. People are perturbed. The usually optimistic are beginning to rethink their positions.

• An old friend stopped by today. She is visiting from the Bay Area for a long weekend with her husband. Just before leaving town yesterday her boss at Oracle called her in to say she was being laid off.  Part of a purge.
• My ex has a real estate investment that just went belly up.
• My gig contributing feng shui articles to the local newspaper was terminated because that section of the paper is being eliminated (along with 20 more staff members).
• My investment portfolio is down 22% since Jan.1.
• Food prices have increased 5.3% in the past year.
• Gas prices are $1.32 a gallon higher in Washington state than a year ago - more than 25%.

It’s not all bad:

• My laid-off friend found a job in a different division of Oracle and will be able to work when she returns from vacation.
• Many of us are driving much less and much less aggressively, which is good for the environment and our stress levels.  Some of us even have enough spare cash to buy a Prius
• Many of us have returned to growing our own veggies… I’ve got lettuce, spinach, herbs, and blueberries right now. Beans, squash, tomatoes, beets, grapes on the way. How locavore can you get?
• I still have a roof over my head, with enough rooms in my house to sleep extra folks if necessary. I don’t know if I can extend that offer to my ex though… (he still has his own roof).
• The less I have, the more appreciative I am of what I do have: friends, family, health, music, dance, books, children, beauty, laughter. On and on. So much.

Pastoral prose poet: E.B. White

pastoral: of or pertaining to the the country or country life; having the qualities of idealized country life, such as charming simplicity and a leisurely, carefree pace.

I’m celebrating the birthday today of E.B. White, one of my all time top favorite writers, not even counting his children’s books. His essays on the “pastoral” life are as alive now as they were when he wrote them decades ago - poetry in prose. My favorite, “Death of a Pig,” makes me smile just to think of it.

From today’s Writer’s Almanac:

Today is the birthday of the man who gave us Charlotte’s Web, E.B. (Elwin Brooks) White, born in Mount Vernon, New York (1899). He was a writer for many years for The New Yorker magazine. He later moved with his wife to a farmhouse in Maine.

E.B. White wrote, “Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don’t have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.”

White was a solid liberal whose political writings before and during World War II were especially thoughtful.

He was also a witty aphorist. Here are a few of my favorites:

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.

I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving he can outwit nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

A writer is like a bean plant, he has his little day, and then he gets stringy.

The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

Prolific Posting is good for you

prolific: adj. producing abundant works, results, or offspring

prolix: adj. wordy and tedious

Since I began this blog April 6 of this year, I have created 81 posts. Whether I’ve been prolific or prolix is up to you to decide. I’m having fun and (almost) don’t care what you think.

My purpose in having a blog was/is to practice, practice, practice the art of writing. For years I’d been saying that writing was a priority, but I wasn’t doing it, so mission accomplishing.

Am I saner as a result of such prolific posting? Probably not. But evidently some people are.

Last week Newsweek reported that some mental health experts believe that the confessional blog has therapeutic power, and are incorporating it into their treatment plans.

They say that blogs are a step up from plain old diaries, chiefly because of the built-in audience. We feel someone is listening. Someone who sympathizes. Because of the anonymity, “It’s high intimacy with low vulnerability.”

This blog is definitely a step up from diarying for me. My diary is where I whine or process material not fit for human consumption. In fact, the other day as part of my paring down process I opened a box of old journals and came darned close to tossing out the lot of them. Such drivel.

Why do you blog?

Pellucid panes

Pellucid: admitting the maximum amount of light; transparent, translucent

It’s been HOT and sunny here for several days. The sun has been rare in the Pacific Northwest in recent months, so I hadn’t noticed how filthy my windows were.

I was blind, but now I see. Sort of. Pellucid they ain’t.

Feng shui doesn’t like dirty windows.

“Somebody has GOT to wash those windows,” I said to my staff, standing very close by.

“Yes, boss,” I replied, saluting smartly. “As soon as you pay me for fifty years of back wages.”