from me to you

My valiant quest to win every award in the known Universe continues.


Now, I could offer you the usual excuses, self-deprecations, pleas of ignorance, but that'd be tedious. You've heard 'em all before.
"My gosh, I just don't know why I get all these awards."

"Who'd have suspected I would garner all this attention just for shamelessly pontificating?"

"Beats me where all this attention comes from. I just blog here, man."

Let's just skip that part. Suffice it to say, I am once again humbled, honored, and red-faced to receive this accolade. I believe it's called the "From Me To You" Award (didn't see that coming, did you?). Two exemplary bloggers bestowed it upon me: Jon Paul from Where Sky Meets Ground and Mia from My Literary Jam and Toast. I call these bloggers "exemplary" because they epitomize principles every blogger should aspire to:

If you're going to say something, say it well. And make yourself useful while you're at it.

Mia and JP not only write well (and humorously). They habitually promulgate tips and hints to help us poor benighted folk with the agonizing and soul-shaking process known as "writing." (Speaking of which, I need to get cracking. I should find out what that publisher back in Georgia is doing with my first three chapters, and keep editing my MS in the meantime. I might have found an alpha reader I can give it to when I finish the second edit, though. Even so, I'm falling into a stagnant, apathetic rut again. I hate myself sometimes. Come on, my conscience is niggling at me, do you want to be a writer or not? Roni over at Fiction Groupie just won an award with her novel manuscript, and the publication process has started! She's on the road to success! That could be you, chump. Thanks, brain, I needed that.)

Anyway, let's see about the rules of the FMTY Award: seven facts, seven bloggers. Or perhaps we should say "seven truths" because, as Indiana Jones will tell you, fact is not truth. Relate seven truths about yourself, and send the award on to seven worthy bloggers. That's not too shabby. I was hoping I'd get to do another award ceremony again, and mollify my enormous ego by deluging you with ceaseless talk about my favorite subject.

1. I could count the number of lies I've told in my lifetime on one hand. That's if I could remember how old I was when told the last one.
2. I hate asparagus. It is my absolute least favorite vegetable on this benighted green Earth. If every single spear of asparagus suddenly vanished out of existence, or was whisked away into another dimension, or was scorched and fried into oblivion...I wouldn't so much as blink.
3. Speaking of hating things, I once despised alcohol. Couldn't stand it. Liquor, cordials, even beer. The taste was abhorrent. Thank goodness I stuck to my guns and kept tasting it. Eventually it began to taste better. And now look!
4. Sneezing is one of the more under-appreciated bodily functions. It's so enjoyable! Scratches every itch in the nasal tract.
5. It's endlessly annoying when folks say "Here, here" instead of "hear, hear"; "without further adieu" instead of "without further ado"; and "hanger" instead of "hangar." ("Here" is an adverb, "hear" is a verb; and you are telling bystanders to "hear" what the speaker is saying when you proclaim "hear, hear." Adieu is French for "goodbye." "Ado" is bustle or fuss. And a "hanger" is either something you use to put up clothes or a short sword worn by British soldiers and sailors. A "hangar" is where you put your airplane. Are we clear?)
6. I love it when people refer to chimpanzees and other great apes as "monkeys," though. It makes me laugh.
7. I have an irrational fear of fiberglass.

Splendid. And now onto the nominees who have earned this prestigious award!

• Points of Claire-ification
• Writing in the Wilderness
• That Rebel with a Blog
• Murrmurrs
• Sometimes I Think...
• Views of a Star Child
• Sharp Pen/Dull Sword

From me to you, my pretties. Keep the quality coming, the juices flowing, and the Muses grinning. You're lucky I'm rather tired this evening. I was going to spin this post into a huge didactic tale of drone-spotting and novel-editing. But I ain't gonna do it now. I'll have to save it for later. I, my friend, am going to flop down and vegetate for a while. You have yourself a good evening.

Revelations 4:1

After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this."

I know what I should be doing. What I should be doing as I write, which I am most definitely not doing now, is asking myself the same questions that it's recommended every journalist ask himself when writing up an article. How does this affect the reader? Why should the reader care about this? What can the reader get out of what I'm writing? If the answer to these questions is something along the lines of it doesn't/they shouldn't/nothing, respectively, then I shouldn't be writing in the first place. What I've failed to realize, selfishly, is that writing a blog is really not that much different from writing for a newspaper or a magazine. In order to be appealing, interesting, useful and engaging (and therefore justify my existence in the blogsphere), I need to be putting stuff up here that is appealing, interesting, useful and engaging, not just for me but for others. Up to this point I haven't been doing that. The crap that's been posted to this blog hitherto has been partially for your imagined enjoyment and mostly for the massage of my own ego. How else can I explain the literature reviews, the endless blather about cocktail-mixing, the endless stream of inane personal updates and opining? Well, no more. I'll still review, and still for my own enjoyment, but I'll try to do so more accessibly. I'll still pontificate, but I'll pontificate in a way that's entertaining and relevant. I'll still post updates about my life, but updates such as I hope will be relevant to the reader, entertaining and enlightening. I'll still write about aviation, travel and literature, but in less of a indignant, hectoring manner and more in an engagingly didactic vein. (It'll be both educational and fun, instead of whiny.) And I still intend to keep up the inclusion of current events at feasible junctures. (An article in the Los Angeles Times today stated that the Station fire was now 38% contained.) And now for a quick update: I just want to say that my temporary position with the local newspaper is getting a whole lot better. The past two days I've made no major mistakes whatsoever and have been keeping up a steady level of output, mainly obituaries and news briefs but with a few genuine articles scattered here and there. An article in the Review published on Tuesday contained a piece of mine about the man who won the Apple Valley Chamber of Commerce's 2009 Samaritan of the Year Award; today my article about the Inland Empire Report on Business ran; and tomorrow there'll probably be something about the three leopards, three cougars, three tigers and two lions that were relocated from the Wildlife Waystation in Sylmar (and the path of the Station Fire) to the Hesperia Zoo temporarily. On a related note, my article about Seolnar in Seoul that was accepted at Real Travel Adventures (a free online travel e-zine) finally ran! It's on the website as we speak: www.realtraveladventures.com. Not much else to report. The valley is still smoky, despite the containment being reported, and as a result it's miserably hot. But I'm not complaining; there's been over 60 homes lost to the fires at last count, and those poor people who've lost them have more of a right to feel hard done by than I do. Signing off. From here begins a new era.