Sunday, February 15, 2009

Jelly beans.

VALENTINE SUGAR.

Linda bought me a huge bag of jellybeans for Valentine's Day. (I brought home a copy of Settlers of Catan.)

I was jolting awake from sugar rushes until 3:00 in the morning. Also made the mistake of watching the movie, Funny Games. A more sadistic movie I can't imagine, all the worse because of the great acting by Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.

OF ALL THINGS?

Speaking of anonymous attackers. Someone has been poking at me for spelling and grammar mistakes, over on Bend Bubble2. For misspelling 'pomegranate' and misusing the words 'neither/nor' and 'either/or.' (Which is kind of strange, because I'm sure I've been guilty of much more than that.)

How dare I call myself a book writer???

Of all the things that have been said to me over there, (and Buster is no slouch in the attacking mode), I found myself taking an inordinate amount of offense at this silly snipe.

Funny thing is, of all the things I used to worry about when writing books, my spelling and grammar were the least. In fact, I can honestly say I never worried about my spelling or grammar. (I, of course, would spell check my manuscripts before sending them off, and beg people to read them and catch mistakes....)

I worried about my work habits, about marketing, about finishing. But spelling? Don't remember it being a concern.

I worried about coming up with an original story, workable plots, fleshed out characters, believable conversations -- but spelling and grammar(?), not so much. Besides, I used neither the word 'pomegranate' nor the phrase 'neither/nor' in my fiction stories.

I'd have either looked up the rule or not used the phrase.

Besides, I don't obsess on spelling and grammar in this blog, (though I try to get it right.)

And that's the last I'll speak on the subject.

DENTON AND SAWYER.

The Bulletin has pretty much gone after Jody Denton of Merenda and Deep, while still strangely silent on the Sawyers.

But after reading the story, I just have to say this.

There is a reason to be 'realistic' about your business planning, even if it seems negative to others. I never thought either the Deep or Merenda were likely to make it in downtown Bend.

I'll say it again. Almost every 'high end' business that came to downtown Bend between the years 1980 and 2000, either failed or struggled. Only in the last 8 years or so have 'high end' restaurants and clothing stores and jewelry store and so on flourished.

I suspect, in the end, we'll be more like the pre-2000 period (regardless of population) in numbers of 'high end', and less like the last period.

It was an illusion, folks.

Saying this isn't just trying to be negative. As the Bulletin points out,
"...the dream came with a cost. Many investors, banks and local vendors who did business with Denton aren't likely to receive the money they claim is due them..."

After all, I had a business during the same time. And while I can tell you that gross sales were higher than ever, so were the costs and so was the competition for the almighty buck. Having been in debt to my ears before, I realized how easy it was the fritter away ten bucks here, twenty bucks there. Much less the gargantuan amounts of money I was seeing spent around me

Nothing comes without hard work and long-term planning. Certainly, you can't just throw money at infrastructure and startup costs. Most importantly, you can't be hauling out wads of money to buy a big house and a big car and all the luxuries of life or going out to dinner every night or -- dare I say it -- even once a week.

What was everyone thinking?

REGISTER?

Word to the BEBB. I won't be registering. Just so you know.

8 comments:

shopping monkey said...

I didn't mind that you misspelled Pomegranate. Everyone does. Someone maybe needs to get a life, eh? -- Jan (owner of Pomergranit, I mean Pomregrante, oops...)

Anonymous said...

, I used neither the word 'pomegranate' nor the phrase 'neither/nor' in my fiction stories.

*

You had better, if your going to write 'fiction' about BEND, cuz Stewart Resnick that owns Suterra of Cali, has the world 'Pomegranate' market cornered, and he has the cali water market sewed up, and is busy-busy getting all the Orygun water rights.

Yes, I'm sure its 'Parkinsons Law', the notion that when complex issues are at the table, most people will focus on punctuation or spelling. Just the facts.

Whether it be 'neither or nor', or Pomegranates, or Zykon-B manufactured in Bend to be sprayed on Cali's, ... Truth in Bend is stranger than fiction.

p.s. Resnick (Suterra) really does CONTROL the world supply of Pomegranate Juice, and he made a BIG press a few years ago by forcing stores to keep his juice in the 'fresh produce' areas, not in the frozen OJ area. Quite interesting story actually sent goons to all the big stores in Cali, and threatened to break-legs, if the stores didn't keep his PJ in the fresh-fruit section of the store!!

Leitmotiv said...

Spelling? Wow. If there's one thing I learned about being a writer, it's that you don't stop to think about spelling and the minor hangups along the way. You just write and let it all flow. Only later do you go back an edit. When you're in the zone, you just go baby, go!

To see someone complain of someone else not spelling right, is like suggesting they've never made spelling mistakes. Which we all know is a crock of butter. The English language is full of opportunities for you to screw up along the way. The English language contradicts its own rules all the time, hence new rules for "special occasions." "I" before "E" except after "C", and so on.

RDC said...

Duncan,

I see that you do not allow comments from unregistered users. Are you planning to change that approach for youe blog?

Duncan McGeary said...

Really? Maybe I don't understand registered....

Anonymous said...

Registered allows the informe.com admin ( RDC, BENDBB, TT, Elliot, ... ) to view the IP's ( reverse lookup phone number ) of all posters who are 'registered'. This way they can GPS your home, or 'out' you like they did homer(butter) @bb2, or do as they wish. Information is POWER, and in BEND a list of all trouble makers, and their address is worth real $$$ money in these tough times. I bet you could sell that list to a lawyer in Bend on craigslist.com.

The question is why do they want this information?? The second is why would you want to give it to them??

FYI, on blogspot.com there is NO information available to dunc, even if he knew how to get it.

Anonymous said...

I thought this William Wallace quote from Butter ( Homer, marges husband ) was fucking awesome, the quote is From what BraveHeart (MelGibson) should have been, but here it's Mike Hollern addressing the Bend public, ...

"Lower your flags and march straight back to England, stopping at every home you pass by to beg forgiveness for a hundred years of theft, rape, and murder. Do that and your men shall live. Do it not, and every one of you will die today."

*

So, what would be the equivalent??

Hollern: "Good people of Bend. I stand before you humbled during my end times ( being over 70 ). I live in Terrible Times. Our 'Exceptional #1 Bend' seems to stand out. Well I'll get to the point, cuz I'm a real town man talking to a 'non-real' people. We're broke, we're finished the town is Kaput. Now we all made a lot of money in the last ten years, tons of money, and we all supported the Bulletin. We all got rich flipping Real Estate. You wouldn't be dumb, fat, and rich today sitting on your fucking internet if not for me. Go to every home in BEND tonight, and tell your neighbors that your town is a fraud, that you are a fraud and your church is a fraud. Do that and the Republican Party will bless thee for 1,000 years. Do it not, and you shall all inherit the wrath of the entire USA, where all heads turn to Bend, Oregon as the sleaziest parasitic town in the USA."

RDC said...

BilboBend,

That is garbage and you know it. The IP connection for any post to the software that is being used for the Bend Economy Bulletin Board is logged. The IP address is an integral part of the software. It is used as part of the database structure for indexing messages and for distinguishing posts. Does not matter if the user is registered or not? Makes absolutely no difference.

The same thing applies to Bendeconomy2. For all of its claims that IP addresses are not logged.

As far as I can tell from looking at the support group for that type software there is not anyway to remove how the IP addresses are used by the software, without almost completely rewriting the software. If anyone wants to investigate this themselves the software used is phpBB and the support groups for that software is

http://www.phpbb.com/

So the real questions is why do you continue to try and proliferate the false information about the software, IP address logging and registration.

Duncan,

All registration is that someone must select a user ID and password and that anonymous posts are not allowed. THe software can also be set up (as your blog is) so that it requires the person signing up to have a valid e-mail account. I do not think that BEBB is requiring that however.

So even with registration it requires less information than posting on your blog, because to post on yours you must either have a valid Google account or a valid blogger account. Both of which require more information.

From your posting screen:

This blog does not allow anonymous comments.

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