MUSINGS, BRAINSTORMS & JUST PLAIN STUFF

I find I live a very compartmentalized life. And if I’m in one compartment, all others cease to exist.

Right now I’m in a Nike+ Challenge compartment and I have found new online friends, who like me, are interested in walking for health. So I stay in touch with them — daily — and even though we each live in different parts of the country, we are united by our challenge.

(What this means is I’m not reading; I’m not working on blogs or Crystalline or SIN4; and I’m not keeping in close contact with family and old friends. It’s a very small compartment.)

Anyway, the person who created our Nike challenge set up ground rules: 45 minutes a day; no running; first one to log 30 miles wins. And, of course, we’ve all been giving it our best, after all, it is a challenge.

I never thought I had a competitive bone in my body, but it lurks in there, somewhere. So I was out to walk as fast as I could. The word “out” is figuratively speaking, because I do my walking inside, on a treadmill, where there are no dogs, no bees, no cars and no humidity. My treadmill is right next to the air conditioner, which helps prevent self-immolation.

There I was, trying to walk as fast as I could, even though I hadn’t been on the treadmill for months, and I increased the incline for some fat-burning benefit.

OOPS! Can you spell s-h-i-n   s-p-l-i-n-t-s?

Barely into the challenge, I had to take off two days to heal the rifts in my upper left tibia and my lower right one. Then when I got back into it, I had to start slowly, with no incline. During that time, I watched my teammates  pull ahead of me, leaving me in their dust on the second page of the challenge (competitors are listed in order of the miles they’ve completed).

When I noticed the pain was negligible, I ramped up my walking (both speed and incline) until I got to the point where I was once-again vying for second place. The person in first place had a nice lead and really wasn’t feeling much pressure. I, secure as a possible silver or at the very least a bronze finisher, felt brazen enough to trash talk a challenger who had never logged a mile. 

AND THEN IT HAPPENED!

No. I didn’t take first. Some marathoner (the one I had put down), all of a sudden, plugged in their Nike+ wristband (or iPod nano) and logged in 29.95 miles. Not enough to win. Just enough to let us know that we were road kill compared to her.

Amongst ourselves, we think she broke the rules. She had to be running to log so many miles in such a short span of time. And none of us knew who she was. Apparently, challenges are open to anyone.

So now, there are rumblings amongst my buddies about a new challenge just for us, closed to outsiders, where we can enjoy our friendly competition — and still walk away with our dignity. 

Best of all, I still wouldn’t have to leave my apartment.

But I really need to find a way to walk freely between my compartments.   

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I hate the summer.I’ve been meaning to write chapter 4 of Short Isle News but have little inspiration and less ambition.I think part of the reason is: I’m dieting. I’m suffering from french fry withdrawal. Even worse, I’ve stopped drinking coffee and the need for caffeine is making me cranky.Now I know where the notion of “fat and jolly” comes from.No sugar, no smiles.No fried foods, no happiness.No chocolate, no life.And it’s not just SIN that’s suffering. I’m not working on Evangeline. I’m barely blogging. And I’m not socializing much because I don’t want to watch other people eat.There’s one good thing about this. Usually after depriving myself of food, I find I crave something I previously hated. I’ve never been able to stand the smell or taste of seafood, but after a diet in 1990, I started eating shrimp. It may be my friend Barbara’s fault. She invited me to her house a couple of times for dinner, and served these humongous shrimp, that I couldn’t eat. Normally, I wouldn’t have wanted them, but all that deprivation altered my brainwaves to desire shrimp. Wonder what it will be this time?Tripe? Unh.. unh. Goat’s eyes? Nope!I’ll just have to wait and see.  It’ll be a long wait, though. When I lack ambition, the days seem to stretch endlessly before me. The dog days. 

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I’m so confused…  

This is a picture of an animal carcass that washed up on shore in Montauk and is being called the Montauk Monster.”  

The above picture is too small to do it justice (click the link for a better view), but it really looks unworldly - with a thick, stubby body and what looked like the head of a turtle with fangs.

When  Newsday’s Joye Brown originally covered the story, she questioned whether it was a real picture or one that had been heavily “photoshopped.” And the great debate began. 

The following day, Newsday showed a picture of the same carcass taken from a different position. It showed tufts of fur, and a different angle of the head that didn’t make it seem so pointy. Someone speculated it looked like an otter (I agree). But do otters have really long, pointy fangs in the lower jaw? A second article (by Joye Brown) said the carcass in the picture is “real.” 

What I don’t get in the article, is the line about the guy who didn’t want to be surfing next to it, so he threw it in the dunes. Or how one of the girls who found it and photographed it, moved it to her friend’s backyard.

What are they, nuts? 

Who in their right mind - picks up a dead carcass and saves it in their friend’s backyard?

Then, there are the sightings. Someone saw it in Patchogue while someone else saw it in East Quogue and another person spotted it in Montauk. And that’s only a few of the sightings that were mentioned.

It sounds exciting to have a monster in Montauk.

What doesn’t sound exciting are sightings of an unexplained rash of carcasses washing up on shore and the  people who cavalierly  handle them.

To me, that’s scarier than any monster. 

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So I opened Newsday this morning and there was a story about a cocaine drug bust with this picture: 

It’s the Suffolk County D.A. wearing a set of metal claws on his knuckles.

Now, anyone who’s ever seen an X-Men movie knows Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, sports a pair just like them.  But, he’s just a film character sporting a prop dreamed up by Marvel Comic Books.

However, the guy who owned the pair seized by the D.A. had a pretty serious-looking weapon.

So when you hear the words, “Life imitating art,” believe it. 

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Apparently, eating in bed can have a profound effect on your sex life.

One of the more interesting news stories making the rounds lately, is about watermelon having Viagra-like effects. According to Science Daily magazine, the juicy fruit contains elements similar to those found in Viagra that enhance libido. No wonder there are so many fireworks on the 4^th of July. It’s the watermelon!

And lately, people have also been discussing how peanut butter is an aphrodisiac. I tried to confirm this as a current news story, and I couldn’t. But I did find a lot of older stories on the web, attributed to sexologists, who claim peanut butter is an aphrodisiac. So the next time you make your kid a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, think: Do I really want to do this?

Of course, chocolate is an aphrodisiac. Why do you think it’s so popular on Valentines Day?

And oysters. Although I never could understand how people can enjoy something that looks like snot on a half-shell.

Champagne may or may not be a aphrodisiac,  so I’ll throw it in, just for fun.

That means a menu designed for romance, might look something like this:

Hors d’ Oeuvre: Peanut Butter on Toast Points and Champagne

Appetizer: Cold Watermelon Soup

Entrée: Linguini with Smoked Oysters

Dessert: Chocolate

However, (and there’s always an however): if your hoping a menu of aphrodisiacs will incite amorous moments because you goal is front-loading a baby-on-board, STEP AWAY FROM THE SOY PRODUCTS. 

A recent study shows just eating a half-portion of soy can lower a man’s sperm count.

Good for population control.

Bad for baby making.

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Good news for those of you awaiting Chapter Three of Short Isle News.

I just posted it on the same page that chapters one and two are located on.

I hope you enjoy it.

Tags: SIN // 1 Comment »

I just attended the first-half of a really great conference for writers and I’m wishing I had signed up for the second half, as well. But I wasn’t familiar with this conference and didn’t know anyone who had attended it previously, so I limited myself to what I thought would benefit me the most. 

It’s called Thrillerfest and it’s being held this weekend in New York – Wednesday through Saturday.

I attended two components of the event. The first was called Craftfest which was a series of sessions about writing suspense. An author headed up each session and we’re talking heavy hitting best-selling authors. James Rollins (The Judas Strain), Steve Berry (The Templar Legacy), David Morrell (First Blood). The second component was a 3-hour session called Agentfest that’s best described as speed-dating with agents. There were 45 agents in the room and a 150 writers got to pitch to them for 3-minutes. I only lasted two-and-a-half hours before calling it a day, but during that time I got to meet with more than a dozen agents and was handed several business cards asking for partials ranging in size  from the first ten pages of my manuscript to the first 100 pages (go figure).

What I’m kicking myself for, is not signing up for the Thrillerfest component. That included an opening reception followed by two more days featuring thirty-five panels with at least five authors on each one. These weren’t panels on writing, but panels on topics that interest thriller/suspense writers, like: hands-on weapons demonstrations; conspiracy theories; and profiling dangerous minds. 

I even won a ticket to the big Thriller Awards Banquet with James Patterson and Sandra Brown, but gave it away because I going upstate to visit my father this weekend.

So you can guess what I’ll be doing next year at this time…

The irony is, what I learned in the sessions I attended would benefit any writer – not just a suspense writer. And it wasn’t inexpensive to attend, but was worth every penny and every minute of it.

So even though I’m writing this before this year’s event is over, I still can’t wait until 2009 to do it all over again. 

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The skyrocketing cost of crude oil is affecting the American way of life. We are a country that relies on our cars, spends hours on our computers and always needs to charge our cell phones, Blackberries and whatever other electronic gadgets we own. And I haven’t even mentioned the TV, DVR, VCR etc., etc., etc… But the cost of keeping all our possessions running is skyrocketing as well, because most of our electrical energy is generated by burning fossil fuel.

Energy experts cite three reasons for the high price of energy.

1. Increased demand from rapidly developing countries like China and India
2. Political unrest in oil producing countries
3. The fall of the US dollar

We can’t do anything about the demand in China and India.

Political unrest in oil producing countries deserves a blog all its own.

And the fall of the US dollar is the result of greed in the mortgage banking industry, again, a topic deserving a blog of its own. 

I’m all for offshore drilling, but not for oil. I’m thinking windmills. We’d have to drill into the seabed to establish a foundation for each windmill, but imagine all the power a windmill farm could produce. Anyone who’s spent an afternoon on a boat knows how windy it can get out on the water and wind is a renewable source of energy.

The President is also talking up nuclear energy. Hasn’t the man ever heard of Chernobyl? Maybe he’d like to come to Long Island and talk to residents who are still paying the bill for the now-defunct Shoreham nuclear power plant. It was a boondoggle most people didn’t want. It cost a lot of money to build it. And now, every resident is forced to foot the bill for its construction and decommissioning.

If I didn’t own just one of sixty residential units in a condo building, you could be sure I would be putting solar panels on my roof; a windmill in the backyard; and with the money I’d be saving on my electric bill, I’d go out and buy a hybrid car (which unfortunately costs more than its gas-guzzling counterpart). 

Instead, I now only drive half as much as I used to; bought energy efficient appliances for my home; and I’m cornering the market on energy-efficient light bulbs.

 The answer isn’t more oil. It’s a change in our way of thinking. We have to let go of the idea of fossil fuel and embrace renewable energy.

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I saw a news article this past week, saying President Bush has enlisted British Special Forces in a last-ditch attempt to hunt down Osama Bin Laden.

Remember him?

He’s the guy everyone was after, right after the attacks on September 11^th, 2001.

Unfortunately, just weeks after the ensuing war in Iraq began, Bin Ladin was placed on the back burner, and the war turned into the hunt for Saddam “he tried to kill my daddy” Hussein.

Fast forward six years.

Finally, it has become politically advantageous to capture Bin Laden. It wasn’t in the past, because his capture might have meant an end to a war that Republican backers (read: Big Business) didn’t necessarily want to end. War means defense contracts and the burning of lots and lots of crude oil in tanks and planes and trucks.

Even better, you can use the headlines war generates to divert attention from political embarrassments here at home. There’s nothing like a headline from the front to take everyone’s mind off the administration’s latest peccadillo.  

And now, there’s a race for the presidency.

Wouldn’t it be convenient for the Republicans to capture America’s nemesis and bring our boys home just before the election, creating all that good will and giving the Republican candidate a strong push toward the white house?

Of course. And even if they don’t find Bin Laden, by whipping everyone back into a frenzy over the search for him, they can urge voters not to abandon the party that’s doing all it can to bring the enemy down.

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Why doesn’t every car sold in America have a photovoltaic panel for a roof?

Think about it. All those cars sitting out in the sun all day; riding on those sunny highways; parked in those big open lots. Why hasn’t anyone put solar panels on car roofs, yet?

The panel could be connected to a special battery that could supplement the car’s power – thereby saving on gas.

True. Places that are often overcast (How ya doin’, Seattle?) would have to rely mostly on gasoline. But they’re doing that now.

And people in New Mexico (Yo, Roswell!) would find the pot at the end of the rainbow.

Why isn’t somebody working on this? I need one before I run out of gas. Or money. Or both.

Empower my car. Empower me.

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