Category: Life in general

There’s nothing in your spam queue at the moment

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general2 Comments

An empty spam queue is good news whether it’s one’s e-mail account or one’s blog.

According to “A Brief  History of Spam,” a pervasive urban myth is that (when referring to the meat product introduced by Hormel in 1937) the letters S, P, A, M are an acronym for “Scientifically Processed Animal Matter.”  I’m sure the Hormel company doesn’t agree. But I wonder, what does the company call its e-mail queue of unwanted junk mail?

snakeoilWordPress protects bloggers from most of the SPAM. I look in the queue from time to time to see what’s there. Unlike my e-mail accounts which occasionally have legitimate e-mails in the SPAM queue, there is almost never anything other than the lowest quality animal matter in my WordPress SPAM queue.

I’ve written about the SPAM queue here from time to time because I can’t figure out how or why SPAM would ever work. It has a snake oil quality about it that looks even worse (assuming that’s possible) when the messages are written with the pretense that the spammer has actually read the post to which they’re attached.

Many newsletters destined for my e-mail accounts suggest that I put their addresses in my “this stuff is okay” list (or whatever it’s called) since they often have links in them that anti-SPAM software interprets as SPAM.

That’s too bad because my e-mail account has way too much SPAM in the SPAM queue for me to sort through it item by item. Maybe spammers should wise up and make their e-mails and comments look less like SPAM.

If spammers tried to sell me what my blog subjects suggest I might be willing to buy, they might have more luck. That’s what I would do if I went into the SPAM business. Goodness knows, I wouldn’t be peddling Viagra to people with writing-related blogs. I’d be peddling writing services. I never find any of those in my WordPress SPAM queue.

Not that I want to. When we advertise legitimate products, we’re advised to target our audiences. That’s what we do when we boost a post on Facebook. We look for people who might really want our book or short story collection or authors’ services site. Spammers don’t seem to do that. I’m glad they don’t, because I don’t want more stuff I have to manually delete.

You can tell it’s a slow day when I waste time pondering SPAM.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell’s publisher, Thomas-Jacob, is giving away a free Kindle Fire tablet to one of the people who subscribes to the new mailing list. The Random drawing is a couple of weeks away. So, if you want a shot at the Kindle and if you want to keep up with my work and the work of the other authors at Thomas-Jacob, here’s the link for the subscription/entry form.

Springtime means trying to start the lawn mower

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general2 Comments

During the cold, wet, seemingly endless winter when more people than not are discontent, dreams focus on springtime and sitting in the sun and leaving the windows open.

First sign of lawn mowing season.
First sign of lawn mowing season.

I think about the lawn mower.

Later on I think about hot Georgia afternoons and start looking for the first signs of autumn’s more civilized weather. After my wife and I finished planting six more flowering trees, we wandered over to the riding mower out of curiosity.

It started on the first try, bless its heart.

Now that we’ve started the lawn mower, the grass has suddenly gotten the idea that it should grow like there’s no tomorrow. I know there’s going to be a tomorrow: I saw it in the weather forecast which said, “Warmer temps just perfect for lawn mowing.”

Now the grass looks like we’ve never bothered to mow it and in a rural area where people often use combines to cut trim their front yards, it gets kind of hard to go outside during the day time in the grass is tall enough to bale.

Naturally all the gasoline cans were empty. They’re full now and the car smells like the BP station.

I’m almost ready to sit on my riding mower with an ice bold beer in the cup holder and dream of snow and old man winter.

–Malcolm

AtSeaBookCoverMalcolm R. Campbell’s navy novel “At Sea” is free on Kindle March 18, 19 and 20.

Blog housekeeping isn’t any more fun than house housekeeping

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general2 Comments

I get bored with cover pictures and themes on my web site, Facebook page, and blogs. Tinkering with those is fun. Less fun is keeping the blogroll and other links in the margins up to date. And then there are the old posts.

blogclipartWhen I sign on, I notice old posts that are getting a lot of hits. Sometimes I wonder why. Occasionally, I even go out and look at them and find (horrors) that my signature line has an out-of-date link in it, or worse yet that the post has a cover photo of an earlier edition of one of my novels.

If the posts are getting a lot of hits, then that’s where housekeeping is important. Writers who blog hope some of their readers will visit their websites and buy their books. This won’t happen if posts have links to web sites and books that no longer exist.

When blogs focus on events that are ongoing, you can also add updated material or fresh links. I did this a lot with my posts about the White House Boys (notorious school in Florida) and the fate of the aircraft carrier USS Ranger. Both of these were for a while developing stories. You can rewrite the posts, of course, or you can add to them. When you add substantial new information, you can add the word UPDATED to the title.

I don’t delete a lot of old posts, but sometimes it’s good to take a look at them and see if you still feel the way you did when you wrote them. For a writer, this is often like finding old short stories in a file drawer and being a little embarrassed you haven’t thrown them away.

There’s more to do with a blog than meets the eye–just like the attic or the garage in your house.

–Malcolm

Sea of Grass

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general, writing

Sea of Grass was a 1936 Conrad Richter novel about the cattlemen vs. the homesteaders on prairie land referred to as a “sea of grass.”  Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Melvyn Douglas starred in the 1947 Elias Kazan film based on the novel.

seaofgrassEven though I saw this movie a long time ago, I think of it when the “yard” gets out of control. I put that word in quotation marks because when you live on a section of a farm, yard grass tends to run into general non-yard grass along the roadway, between the out buildings, and into other seemingly huge expanses green stuff between the house and the fence.

The plan is for the cattle to stay on the other side of the fence. We’ve talked about the getting several goats to help tend to the grass on this side of the fence. More trees, too, so that there are vast areas natural ground cover rather than the grass.

The problem with the grass, other than the fact there’s a lot of it, is that, say, on a Monday it looks pretty good. Then there’s a monsoon on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Friday, the grass is suddenly several feet high and that’s a chore even for the riding mower.

I’m generally a fan of prairie and am fascinated by the tenacity of the grass with it’s long root systems searching for moisture during dry periods. Mowing that grass is another thing. There’s an old Ford tractor (still runs) sitting in one of the out buildings and we’re really tempted to buy a bush hog for it so we can reduce a day-long mowing adventure down to a half-day adventure.

On the Christmas list!
On the Christmas list!

Frankly, I think the neighbors sneak over here at night and throw 10-10-10 fertilizer in all the yard and non-yard miniature prairie habitats so that when we get up in the morning still tired from mowing the day before, the grass looks again like it hasn’t been cut in weeks.

The neighbor on the other side of the fence who leased and then bought the majority of our old farm, suggests that we bale our into large rolls so he can put it in the barn to dry for his cattle. Interesting idea.

My wife mowed for two hours after dinner last night. I mowed for two hours this afternoon after the grass finally dried out enough from last night’s rain. Grass (not marijuana) doesn’t make for a very philosophical or celestial post. It’s more something to do while I’m cooling off from our sea of grass.

There’s more to mow, of course. While mowing, the yard seems about the size of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Kansas:

tallgrass

There used to be 170 million acres of tallgrass prairie in the U.S. Now, about 96% of it’s gone. Somebody obviously loaded up some of that 96% and brought it down to north Georgia during a night with no moon so I would have to cut it.

If you just bought yourself a brand new riding mower and then realized you don’t have a yard, feel free to bring it out to our place. We’ll even give you a free beer when you’re done unless you run over the shrubs or tear off a section of the back porch.

–Malcolm

KIndle cover 200x300(1)Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat,” a granny-vs-the-KKK novella set in the Jim Crow era of the Florida Panhandle. The Kindle edition is on sale for 99 cents today (9/10) and tomorrow (9/11).

 

Day of Rest

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general, writers2 Comments

“Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.” –  Maya Angelou  (Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now)

relaxationWhen I saw this quotation on Terri Windling’s Myth and Moor blog, I started thinking that while a writer’s life must appear serene to those who work in more active jobs, it’s very hard to allow oneself to get that day of rest.

If one is actively writing a story, the characters seldom take a day off. They’re always jabbering away inside the writer’s head. Or, s/he is thinking of facts to check or scenes that require another look. If one is not actively writing a story, then it’s easy to feel the need to be posting something on a blog like this one or on a Facebook page.

Case in point: before I saw that quote about taking a day off, I was thinking of writing a post in response to a writer/reviewer who doesn’t think Rowling’s adult books are all that good. I don’t agree and was going to say why–not that it matters one way or another in the scheme of things what I think about Rowling’s books.

But in thinking about a day of rest–after I’ve already gone to the store and cleaned out the gutters over the front door—going through that reviewer’s negative Rowling points one by one, seemed very in-restful. So, I’m letting that go in favor of reading more of her latest “Robert Galbraith” detective story The Silkworm.

Growing up, I never looked forward to Sunday because–in that era and in that town–Sunday afternoons were reserved for calling on other people. My two brothers and I were ordered to stay in our Sunday clothes, keep our rooms clean, and not to get involved in any games that messed up the house. It was not a day of rest.

Traditionally, I think of Sunday as a day of rest even though a fair number of people are working at the restaurants, movie theaters, malls and other places where many people go to rest. Folks are still working their yards, though possibly not starting up their lawn mowers quite as early as they do on Saturday.

There’s always football and beer, and whether one slumps on the couch with a six pack or has friends over for grilling, that’s probably better than heading off to the office to catch up on paperwork or clearing the thicket of privet out of the backyard. There’s always taking a nap. For some, there are hobbies that provide some of the best relaxation on the planet. Perhaps one can also call it rest.

We need more than we’re getting even if we have to trick ourselves into resting rather than thinking of all the stuff we ought to be doing. Thank goodness, the era of people dropping by to call on Sunday afternoons is long gone. For a kid or a writer, boring conversation is hell rather than rest.

Now, time to pick up my copy of The Silkworm in spite of what that reviewer said about it, and get some well-deserved rest after yesterday afternoon’s yard work. Later this afternoon, there’s a U. S. Open Tennis game I want to watch, er, with a glass of wine rather than a six pack of anything

–Malcolm

P.S. Thank you, Mel Mathews for your kind words about The Sun Singer in ‘The Sun Singer’ – The Hero’s Journey par Excellence

 

 

 

It’s all in what you’re used to…

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general6 Comments

…when it comes to hot weather.

todaysweatherMy wife and I lived in houses without air conditioning when we were growing up. Her north Georgia house finally go A/C after she had long-since moved out; my north Florida house got A/C when I was in college. When hot weather came, we turned on the fans, sat on the front porch and drank iced tea, hers with sugar and mine with lemon.

Our A/C unit was limping along at the end of last week and finally quit on Sunday. Sunday’s the most popular day of the week for stuff breaking down. Fortunately, the temperature got down into the high 60s last night, so we were finally able to get some cooler air in the house.

Nonetheless, our cats acted like the A/C breakdown was our fault.

Okay, I know people are living in places where the daily temps are always over 100. I don’t want to hear about it. They’re used to it. Plus, my DNA was probably altered by the fact I was born across the bay from foggy and usually cool San Francisco. When I was a kid, 88 wasn’t too bad.

But, years of soft living with A/C, have conditioning me to need ten degrees cooler–if not more. I’m a winter person in spite of growing up in the land of hurricanes, alligators and hot weather.  So, until the repairman arrives this afternoon with a replacement part for the unit, I’m not a happy camper even though I’m not actually camping. To add insult to injury, iced tea now gives me heartburn.

Maybe we’re all just getting older. (You may want to write that down.) Maybe 88 degrees is hotter now than it was fifty years ago. Maybe it’s global warming and the weathermen have inflated the temps to keep up and it’s really 120 in the shade outside.

If worse comes to worse, I suppose we could go sit in the car with the A/C up on high.

–

TSStitleTo segue to another sun-related subject, Second Wind Publishing will be releasing my novel The Sun Singer this week in e-book and paperback editions. That’s cool news after the novel has been out of print for a year. I’m looking forward to the new edition.

—Malcolm

 

When love is not madness, it is not love

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general2 Comments

Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca got it right over 300 years ago when he wrote of love and madness. On this day, we celebrate that reality with love, kisses and cash.

According to a survey reported in today’s Pittsburgh Tribune Review, “on average, lovebirds are expected to spend $116.21 each on V-Day merchandise.” If you’re 25 to 34, your average expenditure on Valentine’s Day is $189; if you’re over 65, then you’re getting by for about $60.

The temporary chocolate, balloon and flower department at the local Kroger—billed as the largest Kroger store in Georgia—was mobbed. Fortunately, I was just passing through en route to the Krispy Kreme doughnut display.

The facial expressions of those lined up, as though waiting for a St. Valentine’s Day massacre, were hard to read, though–surprisingly–nobody was showing outright fear. Maybe the fearful people show up later in the day. Some people were festive and others were determined, while most were businesslike and dutiful as though picking up sentiments of love was no more difficult that grabbing an eight-pack of toilet paper off the shelf.

In grade school, long before the political correctness mob outlawed the practice, each student in homeroom created a special Valentine’s Day mailbox for himself or herself and taped it to his desk. Mailboxes were typically crafted out of large mailing envelopes adorned with hearts, flowers and other cute pictures cut out of magazines.

Meanwhile, each student prepared a stack of cards to be distributed to his/her classmates via these mailboxes. Some people gave cards to everyone. Some only gave cards to their best friends. Many anonymous cards were hastily tucked into mailboxes by people who wanted to say “be my Valentine” without the recipient knowing who had a crush on them.

The practice has been discontinued because some kids didn’t get squat. Who knows, maybe they were ugly or unlovable or beat up people on the playground or wore clothes that had been handed down since Civil War days.

I don’t know, maybe this is good. An empty mailbox is a very hard lesson so early in life. Yet, it could be instructive as well. Some of those with empty mailboxes in 5th grade had full mailboxes in 6th grade because they changed their attitudes rather than having to face another massacre of the heart.

Love can be cruel as well as mad. Plato called it a grave mental disease. Jerome K. Jerome said it’s like measles; we all have to go through it. Victor Hugo said that being convinced we’re loved is life’s greatest happiness. Love’s reviews are mixed, don’t you think?

Is cupid a poor shot, is falling in love hard on the knees, or are there some kinds of madness that we just can’t do without?

–
You may also like a bit of dark Valentine’s Day satire: Quiet Crowd Celebrates Penicillin G’day

This report was filed by the infamous, yet lovable, special investigative reporter, Jock Stewart of the Junction City “Star-Gazer.’

Or, on a lighter side, you may like a free copy of the “Love and Chocolate” e-book filled with humor, recipes, stories and (of course) love by the authors of Vanilla Heart Publishing. You can download your copy here: Gift from Malcolm

dreamhost code

Ice Bound in Jackson County Georgia

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general2 Comments

Snow and Shadows
Last weekend’s snow in central and north Georgia dumped six inches of very celestial powdery white stuff on our small town. A few hours before it all began Sunday night, I saw the mayor at an event at the Crawford W. Long Museum and asked if the city was ready for the winter storm.

He indicated we would attack the streets with our personal shovels and spades. So far, nobody’s shoveling off our street. The problem really isn’t the snow. It’s the freezing rain and freeing drizzle that came down on top of the snow. The traffic around metro Atlanta is a chaos of wrecks, jack-knifed tractor trailers blocking the interstates, and cars in the ditch.

At least, metro-Atlanta has sand and salt trucks and plows. We don’t. So, we are more or less ice bound even though the ice is probably less than a half an inch. Yesterday, the temperature got up over freezing for just long enough to begin creating slush, slush that froze solid last night making the roads worse than they are.

Footprints next to a slick driveway
We’ve been making do with whatever groceries happened to be in the refrigerator from last week. The vat of chili has been tasty, but were running low on wine, candy and doughnuts. The snow has brought a lot of birds to our feeders, giving the cats something to watch out the kitchen window.

After living in northern Illinois, I feel somewhat awkward being snow bound and/or ice bound with less than a foot of snow. A friend who got hit with 14 inches of snow says that we’re just lightweights down here in Jackson County, Georgi.

Possibly so. We’re staying warm, though. Wasting time on Facebook. Reading more. Being ice bound is conducive to working on my next novel. Goodness knows, I can’t escape from it right now. As the words pile up, I can feel virtuous about my dedication even though the weather ought to get a mention on the acknowledgments page of Sarabande when it comes out later this year.

Thank you for all your help, Mother Nature.

Ah, a locomotive’s horn: well, at least the trains are running.

—Malcolm

Learn more about my novel The Sun Singer via Vanilla Heart Publishing’s book club extras!

People who need to shut up in 2011

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general, satire2 Comments

Guest post by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter, the Star-Gazer

At the end of the year, hack reporters traditionally make inane statements about what has been important during the past twelve months and what will be important during the next twelve months.  Truth be told, I don’t have a clue. I’m paid to tell you what happens, not why you ought to care about it.

These days, many journalists are breaking that rule. Here’s what that means to you. You know what they think before you know what facts led them to think what they think. What a shame. Why should anyone care what a hack reporter thinks? Reporters aren’t gods, sages or soothsayers. Hell, a lot of them are just plain stupid.

My profoundest hope for 2011–other than getting rid of the IRS and TSA–is that journalists who tell me what they think will shut up.

Whether I’m watching FOX or CNN, I’m pretty well guaranteed to see a bevy of talking heads (usual suspects) who are paraded before my wondering eyes who just happen to feel the same way about the issues that the network feels. Hell, what are the odds that an objective panel of experts would all think the same way?

My profoundest hope–other than not seeing celebrity divorces and affairs spattered all around the Internet like they’re real news–is that those CNN and FOX news panels of “experts” will shut up in 2011.

There’s a fair number of celebrities who need to shut up in 2011 because, quite frankly, we’re tired of hearing how they hate the “evil rich” even though they’re rich and/or seeing them testify before Congress because they’re famous rather than actually knowledgeable about a cause or an issue.

My profoundest hope–other than not seeing boring trailers for movies that are supposed to be funny–is that most celebrities will just speak the lines the writers give them and then shut up in 2011.

“Silence,” Lao Tzu reportedly said, “is a source of great strength.”

Why then, do we admire those who never shut up? This is a puzzlement, if not a paradox. As a hack reporter with credentials that will get me inside any meeting, press conference or sanitarium, I would like to report stories about the strong, silent types rather than the noisy weaklings who occupy so much of our attention, column inches and air time.

Alas, we live in a noisy world of sound bites. As a reporter, I have to report that the beauty queen really wants to feed the hungry, that the movie star who earns more than my neighborhood really cares for the poor, and that the politician cares more about his constituents than his next election. In the world of sound bites, I know from experience that all the usual suspects won’t shut up in 2011. So, my profoundest hope–other than learning that soup makers have decided we don’t need all that damn salt–is that we’ll just stop listening to the people who can’t stop talking.

If silence is golden, then noise must be fool’s gold. All the more reason in 2011 to ask why the people who should shut up won’t give us a moment’s peace.

As a hack writer, I’m paid to listen. Since you’re not, you can tune out all those people who need to shut up in 2011.

—Jock

In search of stocking stuffers

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general2 Comments

I put on my best suit this morning for the yearly pilgrimage over to the “On the Run” shoppe at the Exxon station for stocking stuffers. While browsing, I enjoyed a giant sausage biscuit, several Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a giant cup of coffee with a dash of skimmed milk in it.

Shopping at Exxon isn’t as much fun as it was in the old days when it was called Esso (still is in Canada) when potential stocking stuffers included spark plugs, fan belts, radiator hoses and clamps. These days, service stations don’t know anything about your car anymore exept that it needs gasoline.

While healthy and tasty, those greasy sausage biscuits don’t mesh well with the other stuffers in the stocking, especially after sitting there for a few days and attracting the cats. So, it’s all packaged delights this year: beef jerky,  fried pork rinds, Twinkies, Snickers, gum and more gum, Lance crackers and a quart of Quaker State.

I felt good about myself and my purchases when I left the store, especially when I heard on the radio that a lot of people haven’t even started Christmas shopping this year because they were either drunk or thought that if they closed their eyes, it (Christmas) would go away. Those who did remember at the last minute were down at ritzy stores like Walmart and BestBuys the feed & seed using up 2-3 tanks of Exxon gasoline looking for a parking space.

Gift Wrapping

The gifts hadn’t yet been wrapped (not counting the stocking stuffers), so I hit that project as soon as I got home. Since my wrapped presents usually look like they’ve been used as clay pigeons and/or run over by an F-150, I hung the paper between to pine trees and and blasted away at it with my 12-gauge and some #4 shot. Then I backed the tractor over it.

I put the resulting mess in a 33-gallon leaf bag along with the unwrapped gifts, shook it up, and attached a bow on top. It’s going to be a big hit.

I hope your stocking stuffers, gifts and wrapping are under control. If not, just say you couldn’t find a parking place at the feed & seed and that the gifts over at Exxon had already been picked through by long-haul truckers.

–Malcolm

The Kindle editions of Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire and The Sun Singer are currently on sale for only $3.99.

So are other fine e-books by authors from Vanilla Heart Publishing.