The other day, during a lull in the festivities (a six and one-half minute commercial during Dancin’ With The Stars … Someone shoot me please!) Cup Cake (the wife) looked at me and said, “Why do you spend all that time on the computer, writing all that stuff. No one pays you for it and no one seems to appreciate it.”
I just smiled and said, “Because Hon, if I had to do it for a living, it would not be much fun at all. And you are wrong, people (some of them anyway) appreciate it, it does some good. That is why I do it.”
This is a lot different than writing a Union Paper, I did that for a little over four years, and a times, it was a real headache, a pain the part of you that goes over the fence last. Hammering it out, proofing it, tweaking it, taking it out and often pimping it or prostituting it, praying over it, getting it to the printer on time … That part of my life is over. Which in all reality I suppose, is a good thing for the literary world in general and the public at large.
After it was shut down and put to bed, to speak, it left a void in my life. So I started doing this webpage thing. As Martha Stewart sez ……”It was backyard gardening or this.” Hah. That is the plain simple truth of the matter. You know me, “I always tell you the truth.” Often I will “embellish it a little” in order to “clarify” but most of the time, it is pretty factual and to the point. Well, it’s factual anyway.
The truth shall set you free is what the Bible will tell you.
The BBC is spending more than $1 million dollars to teach its staff the importance of telling their viewers the truth. Vin Ray, director of the BBC’s college of journalism, said the cost of taking 1,000 workers off the job for the two-hour training seminar would add at least another $1 million to the cost. Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, ordered the training after the broadcaster admitted a series of bogus broadcast, including made-up documentary, and stories about the Queen Mommy, Queen Elizabeth.
The truth it seems is kind of boring and at the same time, elusive. Meanwhile, back here at home:
Students at the University of Texas recently drew up an “honor code,” in which they pledged not to cheat or commit plagiarism, by copying an honor code in effect at Brigham Young University, which itself was copied from one at Clemson University. It appears that young people today have a different understanding of what in the way of ideas and words is property than can be taken without authorization.
Someone took some of my stuff, put their name on it, posted it and claimed it was theirs. That wasn’t nice. On top of that, one of them actually butchered it up so bad, it was unrecognizable as mine and that wasn’t nice either. Which now that I think of it, really isn’t all that bad of a deal.
Well, at least it has some value; after all, if it was worthless, they would not have stolen it.
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I have put up a new index and it will (eventually) reflect each post and a quick link to that post. All listings will be on a monthly basis and as soon as I can find the time, I will put up the rest of them for your reading pleasure.
