GOODY "GOOGS"

Little bites, big bites the vast, varied conglomeration of tasty morsels is unbelievably delicious.

I know Google is not a human. It's a quiet, discreet, benignly sprawling inanimate interwoven thing that's there, but doesn't exist unless you seek it out

You don't eat it, just chew, swallow, and digest what you get ...

I have on my computer an old Encyclopedia Britannica, a current Britannica, a World Book, Encarta, two Groliers, a huge file I made of history from 1900 to 2000, anything-everything that rang a bell in my mind. On my shelves, there are World Almanacs from 1985 to 2008, a hard cover edition of the Lexicon, the Columbia Encyclopedia, Merriam Webster Encyclopedia, and the Americana Encyclopedia -- an old one, a newer one....

All of them are ... gathering dust.

A goog (my word for a bit of information) is ... WOW ... almost instantly, effortlessly obtainable. And googs by the dozen are saved by me (unnecessarily) in my work files ... why? Because I'm a fact hog. When I find out something I didn't know. I put it someplace where I can find it again. (Like in my file called "Verbee" -- I put words I suddenly can't remember, or names -- often celebrity names that are attached to faces I remember but names/appellations, alas, are getting to be too many for me to retain.

Every book I've written has a QF file (quick find) with any and every word I've looked up and used in the book.

I'm a lousy speller. Google the word and it usually comes out spelled correctly. I need information about some wispy, small, very vague memory, which (even sloppily) I've gathered into a sentence, and it will be clarified, able to be located in time, in some category.

Words, ancient, current things, ideas, ditties, rhymes, slang etc., etc.

Okay, I know just about everyone who goes online finds out about Google and Yahoo and the others. I'm just newly in love. I just want to somehow, in some way say to somebody -- to all the bodies, brains, minds, typing fingers, translating, downloading, participants, paid or unpaid employees, contributors, editors, conceptualizers, thank you Google Guys.

You can't call them up. Can't e-mail or write them. So I can just say it again. Google, you've made my life richer, my mind broader, my ability to do my work, any work, more fun, easier, faster, better.

TRY TRY TRY

Am I a perfectionist? No. But the pictures for my post -- "Tea at Em's," and also "Gallery" -- they took hours for me to take, and they're still bugging me.

I want my house, my paintings to look good, to look the way they really look!

JC says they look fine. (He's the perfectionist in our family --the way he learns and drills his lines, and keeps drilling them throughout the run of the show is inspiring.)

Dammit, my Orange Cityscape picture isn't sharp enough -- you can't see all the details -- and the brown living room looks cluttered. I want to get the camera and shoot them again!

Try, try again is a dancer thing -- perfecting plies, tendus, frappes, extensions, mastering "attitude, arabesque, pirouettes, jetés" -- it's probably just a bunch of words to you, but to me each word represents a major challenge -- to do it right, to do better than okay, to master, conquer and be able to perform the step, the position easily, fluently, effortlessly.

Took a coffee break, while writing this, and turned on the TV. Caught a glimpse of an arena like a skier's slope, but shorter, with high hills and deep valleys.

Suddenly -- vrroom -- a motorcycle's flying through the air above the arena.

This guy in a blue helmet was high up in the air -- turning, whirling around mid-air on a motorcycle. Hands on the handlebars! Hands off the handlebars! Feet on the foot pedals! Off the pedals! Leaning, defying gravity, tilting the motorcycle and himself ...

The announcer's voice blared -- "Unbelievable torque -- four "360's! Fifth 360! Here's the sixth 360 !"

The guy in the blue helmet does another -- it's scary to watch -- it's dangerous -- how did he learn to do what he's doing? Must have taken hours, hundreds of doings for him to learn what to do -- head to toe -- with each part of his body.

"Wow," the announcer yelled, "Dave's doing a triple! No one's ever done a triple. Incredible, a triple after he fell on his face in the prelims, I was sure he'd be out of the lineup for today!"

Cheers, whistles, as Dave waves to the crowd, and drives off the testing arena into an area with other cyclists on motorcycles. With his helmet off, his heavily tattooed arms look as if they are covered with green moss. He's boyish, young. He tells the interviewer, "Yesterday, in the prelims the hill was slick. It psyched me out ... or maybe it psyched me up after my fall!" He's articulate, educated as he explains that he came to the arena at 1 a.m. last night and practiced for a couple of hours.

I'm on my way back downstairs to my office with my coffee, as the Announcer hoots, "He won -- he's today's winner -- Dave Mirra's number one!"

Take a look -- Dave Mirra, doing 360's -- seven of them -- without hands ...

I don't know why it hasn't occurred to me sooner -- "Try, try try again is the song, the motto, the commitment of anyone, not just artists and athletes, but everyone who loves his work.

Hooray for Dave Mirra.

BRILLIANT SHOPPING

JC needs a new computer. He's using the Dell I bought nine years ago, and upgraded all by myself upgraded. Yes, it's still operating, but with all the wireless high speed internet stuff I've added, it's creeping, inching along unbearably slowly.

Diligent Em reads computer magazines. The latest gizmos fascinate me. I breeze through the big print, browse though the smaller print, squint at the fine print, absorbing numbers that indicate restrictions and additional costs. A good shopper has to know what's going on.

The latest stuff doesn't bewilder me, though it's bewildering. I browse online, and learn, by wandering in the black forests, and overgrown jungles of various websites. Even the unclear directions, clicks that get me nowhere, take me to something that tells me what I want to know -- like bits -- 64 bits versus 32 bits.

It's not boring, just enormously time-consuming. And almost fun. If you called me and asked me what computer I think you ought to buy, I'd impress you with my educated knowledge and opinion.

So ...
I called Dell. I know the number. I waded through a twenty-minute talk with sharp, knowledgeable Bryce. Impressed him with my educated questions and got myself a pal. He emailed me a list of what we'd decided on -- 38 items, an order number, a price.

I told my pal Bryce I'd check it out with my husband and call him back.

Didn't need permission -- knew JC would be delighted, but gee ... boxes arriving, unpacking, plugging in, installing the midi, the high speed stuff ... gee ... not next weekend ... the week after?

That was April 14th. Brilliant, decisive, knowledgeable shopper Em has been hemming and hawing -- worrying, fretting -- installing and configuring our thirty software programs is a three-day, full-time job. I called Mike, a high-priced professional who'd helped me in 2007 -- got an even higher price per hour for him to do the job -- no way José-- ridiculous! waste of money!

On my breaks, I scribbled lists, hunted for installation CD's -- tore up my office looking for one -- had double-double-toil-and-trouble nightmares about templates, virus protecting, old versions, updating drivers ...

Boom! July 4th ... Sarah Palin breathlessly, illogically quitting her governor's job -- soccer Mom letting us know she could face the music, "you betcha."

Em picks up the phone and calls her pal at Dell. Didn't expect he'd be at work, but he was. Gave Bryce my credit card numbers and bought it. Called Mike the high-priced professional, and you betcha -- did the most brilliant thing a computer expert like me can do -- I hired him to do the job.

Whoopee ... I'm facing the music.

SCARY MOVIES

I can't, I won't, I refuse to see them. I blink away the ads.

Except maybe ... well, I love John Landis, especially his "Blues Brothers" movie ...

"Shh ... The Octopus" -- who in the world took me to see it. Was it one of my sisters or Ann, the live-in maid who'd become part of our family? How old was I? It scared me. I had nightmares about it for a long time.

What would happen to me if I were a child now? Would I have the comic book vision of art? Or would te murder-death-news be shaping me and my imagination.

Current ads, sales pitches -- (the ads that immediately turn me OFF) -- seem to have been created by young, raw, murder-death-comic book minds. The humor that is meant to be ha ha, isn't funny--not to me. It's crude, toilet-bathroom-snickering.

Wait a minute, haven't ads always been annoying? Yes.
Aren't they more amusing, more interesting, and less stiff nowadays? Yes.

Maybe what's wrong with the current ads is the repetition? Yes.

What does this have to do with "Shh, The Octopus?" Everything!

The movies we see --the big hits, the money-making, record breakers are explosions, crashes, killings, murders, suicides, hideous bloodletting, unending horrors suspensefully arranged, to keep us yearning for the next shocking event, and the next.

And television shows -- briefer versions of the same thing -- are larded, with murder-death, and comic book bang! splat! visions, hammering in that snickering toilet-paper point of view. They're telling you and me to crumple it up, quickly wipe yourself, and aim it -- shoot it into the basket like a Michael Jordan, and wowy --you've won those extra points for yourself.

(Excuse the image -- I guess the toilet scenes in the hit shows are corrupting me.)

"Shh ...The Octopus" did infect me, corrupt me. Early on, creatively, in ballet, and in writing I wanted to shock, show uniquely ugly forbidden things. I outgrew it. I figure the current crop of ad creators, and screen writers, film directors, will outgrow their jobs (at an earlier age than I did, because younger folks, with all this sex stuff in the air, are growing up faster and faster).

And the guys who make oodles of money from these blockbusters, and ads will pretty soon be hiring the newest youngest generation. And they ... well ...with global warming, stock market crashes, economic disasters, lying-cheating-unfaithful governors ...

Okay, we might have newer worser visions for a little while longer, but their children, and the children of the children ... their visions ...

Hey babies read at 2 -- toddlers learn facts of life at 5 -- working at 7, 8, and 9 -- their ads, their movies might be fine! We'll laugh at clowns, applaud the puppies...rappers can rap/sing "roses are red and violets are blue" ... Hey, why not ... sweetness and light could be hot ...

What goes around always comes around ... And older folks who grew up on yucky ugly stuff could always pop in a CD, and see the "Blues Brothers" one more time, and secretly love John Landis.