. Spinning .

Well yes, I guess the last full novel I read was “The Namesake” back in April 2011. And yes, shortly thereafter I started Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World but in truth, I’d only made it 200 pages in by the end of the year.

Well of course I’ve been reading! Short flash pieces of my friends’ work. Poetry, art (yes, you can read art just as you can paint a story), too much current event news coverage, and my own pieces as I flash-edit (a new term I’ve just made up to indicate the fast nature of flash fiction writing). That’s what I spent most of last year doing: writing. Every day, a story a day. Now I need to organize them all in Tinderbox (as I did the previous year’s 100 Days Project), tag them with style or theme if not genre, clean them up, and plan to put a book or two together out of them and make some attempt to publish.

I’m also getting (or planning on getting) more active with my reading and reviewing here at Spinning. I suspect that my couple of years of reading and writing flash fiction may have tuned my mind into short spurts of attention, and I may have to slowly expand it into novel length not only to read, but to write.

See, I’m also planning on writing a hypertext narrative of novel length.

But first, I’ve just gone through fifty more pages of Murakami today and once I go back and refresh my memory with what I read in the beginning of the book, I’ll post the first review. Not my usual style, where I’d post almost daily as I read, but it’s a start!

Let’s say I agree that the money and wealth at the top 1 or 2% needs to be equally redistributed to the remainder of the populace. No matter if that money was ill-gotten or earned by hard work. Sounds good no?

Since I’m not in that top percentile, I’d make out well. And, that extra bonus money (since I certainly didn’t earn it) would be quite welcome and appreciated. Now, let’s look down the road, a generation beyond the great equalization of wealth.

I’d bet my entire windfall that in less than a decade, the shift in wealth would have already become evident. There would already be new billionaires, and there would be a large portion of society that had long lost every penny they’d been given. You see, when you win the lottery, you win money–not brains.

We are not really all born equal, nor are all able to overcome their obstacles and gain their desires, become educated, earn a good to great living, invent the latest new gizmo that benefits mankind. Nor will all born with the silver spoon manage to get much beyond toddling without losing the spoon.  This is the nature of man. Some folks have ambition, some have genetic predisposition to fuck up.

Soon the whole balance would once again reassert itself as a society. The haves would do better and better, while the have-nots would grumble and complain and blame everyone else but themselves. You can’t say that some have an unequal chance in life when you see the self made millionaires like a Bill Gates or an Oprah Winfrey or a Barack Obama who have found their own ways of using their talents to get ahead in a world where they weren’t marked for greatness.

I’m not rich because I’m not super intelligent, or super creative, or super silver-tongued and self-confident nor have the ambition to overcome my shortcomings. It’s my fault and my fault alone.

I often post the same thing on twitter and Facebook and did so with this:

Ever wonder what life would be like if it were the men’s movement of the sixties instead of the women’s? If men decided that the glory of raising children shouldn’t be for women only, quit their jobs and stayed home?

What’s interesting is what came out of it. On twitter, it went in the direction of certain college campus behavior and men hating women. On Facebook, it took off in the theme of women hating men. Oh the wonders of diversity of opinion!

I personally don’t think that men hate women or women hate men. It really has nothing to do with it, though there may be some resentment involved. Basically, I think it has more to do with self-image and projected image and perception.

But getting back to the original question. While one’s first thought would be, “You can’t do that because someone has to earn a living to support the family.” But look at the women’s movement away from the constraints of home and family to grant time for full time meaningful employment, and meaningful employment often means success-oriented with goals that might challenge any normal schedule and a job into much more than a 40-hour week. Didn’t anyone say, “You can’t do that because who’s going to raise the kids?” Or even watch the kids for that matter. Well that problem was solved with daycare that took care of infancy through age six when kindergarten is normally started. Solutions do manage to come up when someone wants something bad enough to make it work.

It’s an interesting question as a “what if?” and it no doubt would have had as large an impact on society as has the feminist movement of nearly fifty years ago.

Thought I’d outgrown naivete. Thought wisdom and patience had been acquired. Didn’t believe I could still be surprised.

While attempting to convert from COBRA coverage to an individual health insurance policy, I called to get a quote. $6000 a month, the girl said. I was outraged, even found it amusing before I figured yeah, she’s made a mistake. So I called back the next morning and spoke with someone else who quoted me, yes, $6000 a month.

I laughed. No, really. I asked her, “Weren’t you afraid to get back on the phone and tell me this?” She said it did seem a bit high. Plus, the coverage wasn’t as good as what we had and had a higher deductible. “That’s $72,000 a year,” I said. “Do you make $72,000 a year? And would you pay that for insurance?” which to me, is like “protection” money, not even a guaranteed service (in that it may not be used, as The Company truly hopes and prays).

All set to armor up and swing a magic sword of self-righteousness, I wondered why my husband didn’t seem surprised. Nor, aside from a few, many others. Then it dawned on me: While CIGNA is required by contract and law to not discriminate against me and my spouse by refusing coverage, it’s well within their methods to simply quote some exorbitant price tag. This, folks, is what I didn’t think they were capable of doing, even as I raged against the fee. Though of course, the laws being the laws, loopholes for worms are always included. They can pass a thousand-page bill that besides guidelines and earmarks and all kinds of goodies thrown in, don’t actually solve the problems at all.

There are other options, but I really should have started digging into this six months ago, not realizing quite how complicated it all gets. Group insurance to group insurance is one thing, but if you go to an individual policy, then try to get into a group, the HIPAA doesn’t cover you and you can be discriminated against legally for existing conditions.

Somehow, I’m not thrilled with paying taxes that will pay insurance for others, while I myself may need to do without.

And now, with a new perception of myself as less than Joan d’Arc taking on injustice, I find I must do further battle with the powers of government. Our property tax bill on a 33 year-old car went up 350% because of a new valuation.

You know, we’re all hurting, but somehow, I just wouldn’t think of screwing somebody else so they can hurt too and believe it would make me feel better.

Okay, so the new official garbage can was delivered within an hour of the pickup of the old by our regular drivers for twenty years (Hi guys!). Here it is:

It’s the Big Green Monster in the middle. On the right is Old Faithful, our dedicated garbage container for all these many years. Though garbage pickup is every Tuesday, there are times when I let it go for two weeks because it’s not full. It’s practically never more than half full on a weekly basis. (I don’t waste food or anything else.) Upon occasion I have a black plastic trash bag from the shop, maybe once a month. The small pails to the left? They’re our recycling buckets. I fill one up once a month; they pickup every other week. This will be replaced by a receptacle the same size as the new trash container, only it’ll be blue.

It’s true I’m resistive to change until I’m convinced it’s for the best. This move was touted as being the best, and I’m sure in many ways, for many residents it is. I don’t see how my elderly-with-bad-knees neighbor is going to get this thing down to the curb. I also don’t believe that one of the reasons was to enhance the beauty of the town but suspect that like much else, it was to level the field, to make us all the same, which is too close to those futuristic movies and TV shows I watched as a child.

And what about jobs? These will be picked up via a mechanical arm. That’s why they have to all be consistent. Meaning one guy per truck loses his job.

Enough about me; I’m waiting to see what my husband says when he can’t get the car into the garage.

I was going to tweet this, or put a brief comment on Facebook, since I use those for my random thoughts, but somehow I know that I’ll just invite argument when all I want to do is, well, lay down an idea. And, well, I seem to be in a crowd of one in my way of thinking.

The opening of the floodgates along the Mississippi in order to save New Orleans from more damage brings up ethical questions about who to save and who to let swim. It’s been brought up as a rich versus poor controversy, but everything lately is being laid at the feet of the rich versus poor as a point to blame. For me, it’s the individual versus the masses, or in this case, the lesser will be sacrificed for the majority of the populace.

And it all comes back to this: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Ursula LeGuin).

Why don’t they just face the fact of life that New Orleans is in a bad place. Particularly if you believe in global warming, what’s the sense of rebuilding it over and over again–in the same place? Move it inland a bit, why don’t you? Yes, expensive, but it’d be a lot more secure and it wouldn’t be at the sacrifice of all those little towns along the river that wouldn’t be in peril if they just left the damn river alone. They’ve spent a lot of money building a flood gate system to protect New Orleans and I’ll betcha all of Louisiana, including those folks who are unfortunately at risk to lose their homes though they might’ve been wise enough to build far enough inland paid for that system with their tax dollars.

And for me, it all comes back to Omelas. When I read that story a few years back, I never knew how much it would explain my views on life. I’d've saved the child.

I’ve done this before with tuna cans and probably the coffee–did you know that once upon a time they put a full pound of coffee in that same size container that now holds anyplace from 11.5 to 13 ounces?–but here’s a brand new one.

Dial soap. See how it’s carved out at the top? Yes, it’s a new design, but it also has shaved .25 oz. off each bar. You used to get 4.25 oz. in a bar, now the bars are 4.0 oz. but the price has remained the same, or maybe gone up.

I fully understand that prices go up. Over the past 40 years I’ve seen things rise to ten times their cost. Houses ($40k to $400k), cars ($2k to $20k), a quart of milk $0.25 to $2.50), etc. A pound of coffee used to be $1.00. I don’t mind rising prices, though I wish salaries had gone up 1000% as well (minimum wage was $1.25, now $7.50). I understand that times change and costs and resulting prices adjust.

I just hate when marketing thinks itself clever and insults us with carving off .25 oz. of soap or packaging a half-full box of crackers.

Getting dressed this morning and I’m curious, so I take a look. My jeans are made in Mexico. My Jockey’s brand panties are from Jamaica. My Outback brand turtleneck jersey’s made in Korea. My socks in China. My shirt, a fuzzy plaid put out by Tally-Ho, is made in Mexico, close by my jeans.

So what do we produce and if there’s anything at all, how much do we export?

I’m committed to not buying anything not made in the U.S.A but I’ve got things I’ve worn from decades ago when I never bothered checking labels. I don’t buy from Bean’s anymore, or Land’s End or any of the used-to-carry-American-made big names.

As you get dressed some morning, take a moment to check. And wonder why we’re slipping from the “greatest” country in the world.

Well, despite the fact that raw peanuts were nowhere to be found, the almonds as an alternative came out just fine. Expensive, but fine.The other problem I had was that towards the end of the first batch, the thermometer slipped in its holder and I realized that I wasn’t getting an accurate reading–about 20 degrees off–which is vital to candy-making. Once I learned how much to adjust for the next batches, I was okay, but yes, it’s on my list for Santa.

Okay, so the State of CT figured it could get some money in a few years back by claiming unclaimed funds. So it made itself a law that gave it the right to take people’s money if it was not claimed by x years. This includes stuff like refunds, inheritances, fund income, and even bank accounts that show no activity for (I think) 5 years. This rushed a lot of us off into checking on our older folks who wisely let the money get interest while it sat. Many found that the state had grabbed it–though it can be claimed and returned to its rightful owner.

Now get this: the State rolled the unclaimed monies into the General Fund. You can guess what’s coming…and of course, they spent it. Now they’re all upset because folks, in this tough economy, are looking all over for money and if they have unclaimed funds listed with the State, they’re requesting it be returned.

See now, this is why I don’t want the government handling healthcare. As a matter of fact, I think we should take back the motor vehicle department, the post office, maybe even the schools, and definitely, social security.

Technology certainly has changed social communication and interaction in the last twenty years more than it has in the last one hundred. With email, social networking sites, mobile phones, visuals and texting, people interact with strangers as well as family and friends on a regular basis, at all hours of the day.

Even as we communicate more openly and freely with others across the globe via gadgets, we also have to face the reality that some real people, well, aren’t.

We got used to the automatic voice messages a few years back. Particularly when trying to call for a service via the telephone. A voice recording gave us instructions as to which button to press next, and next, and next, and next, until we were routed to our proper responding department or learned the trick of punching the zero to get the only real person available–the operator.

The last couple years have added something new. The automated voice that calls us. Political campaigners aplenty, solicitors, even our own doctors’ offices to remind of an appointment. While this is a huge change in how society communicates there are even more subtle changes that aren’t considered.

Once upon a time, if you had a pleasant telephone voice, you were admired. Nowadays, it can become your downfall. I’ve gotten so tired of feeling the fool when answering the phone and responding to a recording that if there’s a pleasantly trained, perfectly grammatically correct and clear voice that starts a spiel right after my greeting, I hang up without further ado.

I just did that a couple minutes ago. Then a feeling came over me that wait, what if it was a real person? Some poor schlock getting paid minimum wage to make a thousand phone calls a day? Now yes, I eventually hang up on these wretched folk too, but not without at the least a polite “sorry, I’m not interested,” — which I just did a second ago, to “Andy” obviously from India. Andy at least got a human response from me because he wasn’t merely a recording. I sure hope the lady that called before him wasn’t a real person too.

While I’ve been weaning myself off of Facebook and twitter to concentrate more on keeping up on the weblogs, I’ve also gotten myself busy keeping up on the sidelines with the 100 Days Project.

There are some thirty or so folks involved in the project this year, artists, photographers, writers, cinematographers, poets, cooks, coders, and more all of whom are dedicating some part of each day to producing a work inspired by John Timmons’ film clips or something sparked by another artist’s interpretation of the piece.

I’m finding the early morning kick of viewing the short bits of film, the freedom to interpret, and the discipline of a deadline to be an excellent incentive to keep the imagination active and the words spilling out into mainly flash fiction–all flash fiction so far but I’m open to poetry, short story, or hypertext should that be the best path for the story.  What’s been fun to do is either find an image from my personal file or take a photo to fit the story. Maybe because of last year’s hypertext stories that I produced in the summer project it just seems strange to be done with each before night-time. That’s probably what drove the addition of images.

Some of these stories may be submitted, most I intend to hold onto and do some thinkin’ on. Not all have excited me, but there are a few that I particularly like as a more polished form of the narrative. For right now, and to prove that I’m still here and busy, they’re available here: 100 Days – 100 Stories.

In reading around the web this morning, particularly political topics but more personal and opinionated ones as well, I came across a tweet from New Scientist that offers a visual that illuminates the power of perspective on our beliefs as well as our reasoning.

In writing, it gives us the opportunity to show story from different points of view (as in Faulkner’s). In life, it should show us why and how someone sees something so differently than we do. It should breed tolerance and understanding, if not agreement.

Along with an easy answer of why and how what we think we see is not always truth: “Impossible Motion“