Category Archives: Some whimsical stuff

“I got nothin’,” Jason Offutt

Writing and parenting; Our own personal hell

Humor, Non-Fiction, Some whimsical stuff, , ,

As writers, we put ourselves under a lot of pressure. Deadlines, arranging words in the right order, showering. It’s all rather stressful.

Throw in children (or out. See Number 6) and no one should wonder why we bleed from our ears. It’s called Writer’s Ear. Or maybe you’ve never experienced Writer’s Ear; it might be just me. I should probably get that checked.

We all became writers for one reason: to get the words out of our head. Being a parent is much the same. If I’m not shouting, “take that out of your mouth,” “I’m not hugging you, I’m picking a kidney,” and “stop that or you’ll go blind,” I’m probably in the wrong house.

According to Data USA (voted the most boring name in data collecting six years running), there are 181,131employed writers in the United States, excluding self-employed/self-published authors, and that person who did 50 Shades of Grey.

Couple that with the fact the U.S. Census Bureau determined 40.66 percent of American households have children, it’s safe to assume at least some of those households contain writers—some of whom apparently weren’t too awkward to have sex with their spouse. Maybe five, or even six of them. I don’t know. Math is hard.

For every lonely alcoholic writer stereotype, sitting at a bar, needing a shave, scratching thoughts on a stained napkin only to go home and throw up something they don’t remember eating, there’s a writer with children.

Children? No, I’m not drunk enough.

And those children make the alcoholic writer stereotype appealing. Sure, these writers may be sloppy drunks, but they at least get to leave the house. Children like something called “attention” that binds writers to their property. We’re prisoners, and our wardens may have trouble hitting the toilet.

Parenting is a demanding job, but so’s writing. How do we do both? It’s easy if you follow Jason Offutt’s Seven-Step Stress-free Method of Writing and Child Rearing:

  1. Hide. Young parents with small children don’t understand the importance of hiding from them. If they can’t find you, they can’t ask questions, such as “Whatcha doin’?” “Can I watch TV?” and “Do you seriously think writing is going to pay for my college education?” To hide effectively, program your children to believe the basement is haunted by Hitler’s ghost. Put a cozy chair and coffee bar down there for maximum comfort.
  2. Ignore your children. The average five-year-old will only shout for a parent 25.6 times before becoming distracted by a squirrel outside their window. This gives the writer-parent precious time to peck two-to-three uninterrupted sentences into a Word document named, “DearGodHelpMe_FirstDraft.”
  3. Tell the child not to do something, then leave the room.
  4. Eat chocolate. You may not realize this but getting into that bag of Twix stashed in the top of the bedroom closet will help your writing career. A 2009 paper in the Journal of Proteome Research showed eating chocolate reduces stress by lowering levels of stress hormones. This also gives you the satisfaction of not sharing treats with the cause of that stress. Little turds.
  5. Turn a radio onto the oldies station and start singing.
  6. Make the children go away. Not in a The Twilight Zone kind of way, more like the irresponsible parenting kind of way; it’s easier. If your kids haven’t returned by the time you’ve finished writing, post their Xbox for sale online. They’ll be home.
  7. Read The Shining for bedtime. Although your children may need therapy later in life, they will NOT get out of bed to ask for anything, giving you plenty of time to finish that parenting book you’ve been working on.

Happy writing.

Pre-order Jason Offutt’s new novel, “So You Had to Build a Time Machine,” at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

So much for best-laid plans

Humor, Non-Fiction, Some whimsical stuff,

My first day of winter break from teaching greeted me with a writer’s dream. An empty house, a fresh layer of undisturbed snow covering the lawn (that I should have mowed before winter) and the smell of coffee.

Where was my family? At their schools, which weren’t on winter break until the next week.

Fellow parents will understand why I danced in the kitchen.

Oh, man, I was going to get so much done. Fix the 13-year-old’s bedroom door so she can’t become a hermit, go to the DMV, call the number on our new health insurance cards to let the automated voice know we received them (an unnecessary exercise of bureaucratic nonsense), deal with the phone company and, oh yeah, work on my next book – just after I check Twitter. It’ll take two seconds, I promise.

Wait. Renewing my license feeds information into a computer database about what I drive. Registering our insurance cards feeds my family’s information into a computer database about our health. Spending an hour on Twitter feeds my social media habits into a database. I feel I’m somehow helping make the takeover by our future robot overlords a bit easier.

Who knew our future robot overlords would be so adorable?

Nevertheless, none of these chores or my justified paranoia were going to stop me from working on my new book. Just let me just check Twitter again. Oooh, a meme.

“Dad,” a small voice said. It sounded close by. Am I starting to hear things?

Oh, and TV. I was going to watch loads of TV I can’t watch while the kids are home. Inappropriate comedies, slasher movies, Bigfoot documentaries –

“Dad,” the voice said again. I turned away from my computer to find our 5-year-old daughter looking at me with big brown eyes behind an explosion of messy hair.

 Oh.

“I’m hungry.” She held up a plastic brachiosaurus. “And my dinosaur is hungry.”

Grrrr. Sorry, that was my stomach.

“Of course it is.” I was still in a bit of shock. I’d forgotten she was on break, too. “A brachiosaurus had to eat an estimated 400 pounds of vegetation every day just to maintain its weight.”

“Well,” she said. “Mine needs toast. With jelly.”

OK. Door repairs on hold. DMV on hold. Helping the robots take over on hold. Registering our health insurance cards, maybe. But, how will I get any writing done? Oh no. How will I check Twitter?

My options were limited. I could only justify letting such a small child with a spongy brain watch “Snow White” so many times. Was three too many? How about four?

I’d planned the next four weeks around my fingers on the keyboard. Now I needed to plan around the planning. I was going to write, right?

 Two hours later.

“Dad,” the Preschooler said. “You took off your tiara again. How are you going to play princesses without a tiara?”

“Princesses poop, you know.”

I didn’t write that day.

She only watched “Snow White” once, but I spent those two hours on Twitter.

Looks Like Pizza Again

Humor, Non-Fiction, Some whimsical stuff

The recipes seemed simple enough. They should be. Each was posted on a website boasting, “quick, simple meals kids will love.” It’s not like the internet has ever lied to me.

As the cook in our house, I try to come up with a variety of healthy meals that will hopefully teach our children pizza is not the only food in the universe. That’s a hard sell. The busiest days of the year for pizza sales are New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl Sunday and the night before Thanksgiving. If my kids had a say in the matter, “Any Night at the Offutt House” would rank fourth.

One problem with making healthy meals is the people who create these recipes – often on websites called “Healthy Cooking with Kelly” and “Eat Well or I’ll Come to Your House, Asshole” – is the meals don’t reflect the shopping habits of the average American cook.

Flipping through the recipes, I noticed every one contained an ingredient I didn’t have, or, in fact, would ever buy. Like Brewer’s yeast and goat cheese.

That’s where substitutions come in. I could substitute cheddar for goat cheese and chug a beer while cooking. No one will know the difference, right?

Another recipe asked for coconut milk. Stores actually sell that? How, exactly, does a person milk a coconut? Since I’m not Mary Ann from “Gilligan’s Island,” could I use regular milk, or would that get me on the bad side of whatever vegan gods keep track of such things?

And what’s harissa? Isn’t that one of those annoying baby names parents think are clever even though they only changed one letter? “Harissa, stop teasing your brother Konathon.”

No, wait, harissa is a North African hot chili pepper paste. Sorry for calling you out, clever parents.

Broad beans. Hmm. If someone had asked before today, I would have said I’m pretty up on my bean varieties. Soy, lima, green, brown, great northern, cannellini. But broad? Nope. I know nothing about this insensitive variety of bean. Wouldn’t “plus-size beans” or “full-figured beans” be more sensitive terms in this politically correct world?

I soon discovered broad beans are also known as fava beans; the type of beans Hannibal Lecter ate with a census taker’s liver and a nice Chianti in “Silence of the Lambs.” I decided against the beans. To successfully complete this recipe, I’d need a census taker. Besides, my children already terrify me.

Saffron? Off the top of my head, I’d say that’s either a type of material for clothing popular in the 1970s, a Led Zeppelin song, or that one guy in in those “High School Musical” movies. I think his name is Zac. But no, saffron is actually a spice. An expensive spice, which is why I hadn’t heard of it.

The last recipe I came to required pink Himalayan salt, which is 98 percent the same as regular table salt and roughly 98 times more expensive. The only difference between the two is trace amounts of mystery minerals that cause it to be pink.

So, can I use regular salt as a substitute? Vegan hippy who runs the website said no. He also said alpaca farts are the cause of global warming.

That night we had pizza.

Words Mean Things, Damn It. Use Them Right

Non-Fiction, Some whimsical stuff, , , , , , , , , ,

Jason’s head.

My wife thinks I’m stodgy when it comes to words and when it comes to words I find that a compliment. Words mean certain things and when we use them incorrectly the world devolves into anarchy. Right?

Trigger Smith, owner of the New York East Village bar The Continental, took the abuse of the English language seriously in January. He banned customers from using the word “literally” because it is the “most overused, annoying word in the English language and we will not tolerate it,” according to National Public Radio.

I have no problem with literally when it’s used correctly. The problem is, it isn’t.

Figuratively: It sounds like it’s true, but it is not.

Literally: It’s actually true.

Good for you Trigger.

But the work of people like Trigger seems wasted when an organization such as Merriam-Webster comes out and says two words that don’t mean the same thing now do. Apparently, the dictionary folks are OK with “nauseous” and “nauseated” being synonymous. I guess I can’t trust them as far as I can throw their product.

“We must point out that nauseous, like many other words in our language, is remarkable in its elasticity and range of meaning,” Merriam-Webster posted.

Shut up.

Nauseate: Something makes you feel sick.

Nauseous: You actually are sick and probably going to hurl.

They’re not interchangeable and it’s not that hard to keep them straight.

“Language evolves,” my wife said when she got tired of listening to me rant, which is beginning to happen much more often. “Shakespeare made up thousands of words.”

I hate it when she makes sense.

Although she’s right that language evolves, if we don’t stick to the rules we eventually won’t be able to understand what anyone else is saying. It’s bad now. Have you ever tried arguing with a Texan?

Say “plethora,” I dare you.

Let me complain further:

  • I hate the word “plethora.” It is pretentious and wrong. It’s a medical term from the 1540s that means “an excess of blood.” So, go ahead and say you have a “plethora” of drink choices. I’ll assume you’re a vampire and act accordingly.
  • When someone is dragging something, the past tense is “dragged,” not “drug.” A drug is what I need to take to tolerate bad grammar.
  • Don’t use the word “just” unless you’re writing about why The Batman fights crime.
  • The word “really” is a waste of space.
  • Stop using “theory” when you mean “hypothesis.”
  • I dislike the word “lanyard.” It was once a manly sailing term. Now it’s used to describe the cord people use to hang keys, or Comicon badges.
  • Exclamation points are for the signature page in a high school yearbook. Be strong, use a period.
  • “ATM machine”? Do people not know what the M in ATM means? The same goes for PIN number.
  • There’s a difference between “everyday” and “ every day.” Figure it out.

My wife is right, language evolves, but when does that evolution simply become those who know better giving in to those who don’t?

A Word is a Word is a Word, Damn it

Non-Fiction, Some whimsical stuff, ,

Sitting near the back row of pews at church (are protestants even allowed to sit near the front?) the congregation burst into song because the program told us to. Otherwise we just sit there and try not to make eye contact.

The hymn bothered me.

It wasn’t the message, nor the melody. It wasn’t even that the song had too many verses (some hymns can last as long as a sermon). It was because of a simple, easily avoidable grammatical error that made me nearly shout something I usually only shout during football games. I’m told shouting in my denomination is frowned upon because it’s not in the program.

I might be able to handle this misuse of the English language if it was a one-time deal, but it was in the refrain. The refrain.

The composer used “I” when he should have used “me.”

Inexcusable.

My grandmother was an English teacher, so growing up the use of language was something I had to pay more attention to than silly things like math. That kind of attention turned me into someone who’s not very much fun to talk with at parties.

Or at the grocery store.

Standing in a grocery store checkout line one day, perusing magazine headlines like “Kim and Kanye are Space Aliens from the Moons of Jupiter” (which I don’t doubt in the slightest), and “Sandra Bullock Channels Nostradamus; the End is Near,” I noticed a handmade cardboard sign on the credit card reader. It read, “This Machine is Broke.”

Really? Broke?

So, this device that is connected to every bank in the country is somehow out of money? I pulled a red Sharpie from my pants pocket and added an “n.” The man behind me laughed.

I can’t help myself. I’m OCD enough (my favorite rock band is OC/DC) to have been a newspaper editor, which made my head hurt. Here are some of the major offenders:

  • No matter how many times you use it, irregardless is not a word.
  • Pacific is an ocean, it doesn’t mean precise or exact.
  • Doughnuts are made out of dough. Donuts don’t exist.
  • Theatre is a British word meaning theater. Theater is an American word meaning theater. For all you theater types, stop trying to use the British version. That’s a level of pretentiousness that can only be pulled off by hipsters.
  • PIN number is repetitious. What do you think the N means?
  • Free gift is silly. If it’s not free, it’s not a gift, is it?
  • Fantastic doesn’t mean something is amazingly good. It means something is not real. If your dinner is fantastic, you’re going to be hungry later.

I’m serious about grammar. Don’t make me come over there.

But still, about that I/me thing.

“This composer is still alive,” I told my wife as I sat in front of my laptop. You bet I looked him up. “He has contact information on his website. I’m going to write to him and tell him he has a grammatical error in his hymn.”

She put her hand on my wrist. I looked up. She just shook her head.

Damn. What’s the point of being a grammar nerd if I can’t correct everybody?

A Little Love from the Local Press

Horror, Some whimsical stuff, , , ,

New Offutt book proves fiction stranger than truth

Jason Offutt, Maryville’s best-known literary bogeyman, is at it again with more tales about the scary, spooky, supernatural and downright strange.

Offutt, a former newspaper reporter who is now a senior instructor of journalism at Northwest Missouri State University and a columnist for this newspaper, has made something of a name for himself as the author of books and articles about the paranormal.

“Road Closed: Twelve bloody stories to brighten your day,” now available through Amazon.com, is his 12th book, and the fifth dealing with topics beyond the realm of what most people would call daily experience.

What makes “Road Closed” a little different from anything Offutt has produced previously is that it’s fiction in the classic sense, a collection of 11 short stories and one 23,000-word novella.

Of course, one could argue that all ghost stories and other paranormal tales are fiction. But much of Offutt’s earlier work has a distinctively journalistic cast and consists of reports and “eye-witness” accounts he’s collected from people who really believe they saw something — though just what is open to question.

The stories in “Road Closed,” however, are pure imagination and include, among other things, yarns about a family farm where trees come to life and a convicted man fleeing his victim’s family through what amounts to a dystopian nightmare.

As for the novella, “Matriarchal Nazi Cannibals,” Offutt said he’s not too worried about reviewers providing readers with spoilers because “the title pretty much does that anyway.”

Here’s a quick summary that offers a few hints: “A small Missouri town where a Nazi matriarchy lies silent, hidden, waiting — and they’re hungry.”

Offutt said the story revolves around a group of college film students who “find something hidden,” but he swears the plot isn’t based on his own experience with young people studying media at Northwest.

“It came to me in a dream,” he said. “My wife told me, ‘You’d better write that down. That’s good.’”

Another of the tales, “A Just Cause” was adapted by former Northwest student Harrison Sissel into a screenplay that won Best Science Fiction Script at the 2011 Los Angeles Film and Script Festival under the title “The Balance.”

Offutt said he thinks readers will find his latest offering to be more than just a collection of spooky stories. Some of the tales, he said, are closer to related genres like horror and science fiction.

As a boy, Offutt was a big fan of the “Twilight Zone” television show, and he said he hopes “Road Closed” offers something of the same flavor. Though, unlike the classic anthology series created by Rod Serling, Offutt said readers looking for moral insights and reflections on the state of society may be disappointed.

“I write a lot of things that are what I like to read, and I write for entertainment,” he said. “It’s not a social message, it’s just wanting to have fun.”

And Offutt has a word of warning for readers who may have squeamish stomachs.

“The book’s subtitle is ‘twelve bloody stories to brighten your day,’” he said. “I’m not necessarily trying to scare somebody’s pants off, but hopefully there’s a little bit of that in there.”

Offutt has published short stories before in magazines, and he said the form places demands on a writer that are very different from those associated with creating a novel or a work of non-fiction.

“With a novel you’ve got 300 pages,” he said. “These short stories are maybe 5,000 words. One is only 700. The shorter it is the more challenging it is to be able to tell the story.”

Follow Jason Offutt on a Trip Into Shadows

Horror, Some whimsical stuff, , ,

Sift through the dark memories of a family farm where trees come to life. Run with a frightened young woman through quiet streets after a sinister priest’s smile clings to her like a spider’s web. Meet a convicted man who must flee the family of his victim in a dystopian nightmare. And visit a small Missouri town where a Nazi matriarchy lies silent, hidden, waiting – and they’re hungry.

“Road Closed: Twelve bloody stories to brighten your day” is Jason Offutt’s first book of short horror fiction, which includes the tale “A Just Cause” that won Best Science Fiction Script at the Los Angeles Film and Script Festival in 2011 as a screenplay entitled “The Balance.”

Luke Rolfes, author of ‘Flyover Country,’ says of ‘Road Closed,’ “Readers should put this book down at their own risk. Once these twelve sink in their teeth, it’s all over but the screaming.”

Now available as an ebook, and print.

Hmm, aluminium is a word? Thanks for nothing, Noah Webster

Non-Fiction, Some whimsical stuff, , ,

Back off, this is MY language now.

The British chap* on television said something that struck me as silly. Not the context, the pronunciation.

Given that Americans speak English, and the English speak English (strange but true), language comprehension problems between Americans and the English should not exist.
They, of course, do. There are enough subtle differences between the two versions of the English language to make a conversation between an American and a Brit sound like it’s in Klingon.

The man on television pronounced aluminum “al-U-min-E-um,” which I discovered is correct, although horribly uncomfortable to say. Go ahead; try it.

This particular pronunciation problem came from two sources.

The first being English chemist Sir Humphry Davy who in 1807 discovered a metal in alum and named this new metal alumium. He later changed the name to aluminum because “aluminum” sounded more (whatever word they used for “hip” in 1807). Davy’s colleagues in the chemistry department couldn’t let well enough alone and changed the spelling to aluminium in 1812 because they just couldn’t let Davy have his day in the sun, now, could they.

The second reason is that Noah Webster developed a God complex and completely mucked up American English.

Noah Webster, Jr., was a lexicographer, a pioneer in the field of textbooks, and yes, the dictionary dude. In 1828, he published “An American Dictionary of the English Language.” You see what he did there? It’s the “American Dictionary of the English Language,” meaning it’s not the real English language.

Ever wonder why former British colonies like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and freaking Belize spell color with a “U”? It’s because that’s how it’s spelled. Webster thought English spelling rules were inconsistent, so he tried to standardize them.

He cut out the “U” in words like colour and flavour, changed “ise” to “ize” in words like organise, and realise, turned tonne into ton, grey into gray (although for some reason he left the greyhound dog alone), and aluminium to aluminum even though compared to Sir Humphry Davy, he didn’t know jack squat about chemistry, or apparently spelling.

Damn straight.

It doesn’t stop there. Because of Webster’s tinkering even words spelled the same in both countries are not always pronounced the same.

In England, privacy is PRIV-a-cee, advertisement is Ad-vert-ISS-ment, schedule is SHED-u-al, mobile is mo-BILE, oregano is OR-EH-GON-O and garage is GARE-idge.

As an American, this bothers me. I grew up thinking the British talked funny. Turns out it was us. However, Americans aren’t the only villains here. Time, culture, and geography also play a part. But mostly Webster. Yeah, let’s blame most of this on him.

Aluminium indeed.

 

*You can’t use “chap” unless the voice in your head talks with a British accent. For example, “that German chap with the funny mustache gave us quite a fit during the war.” Or, “that New Guinea tribesman chap with the spear.” Wouldn’t sound right coming out of the mouth of a Texan, would it?

Ernest Hemingway’s Bloody Mary Recipe

Humor, Non-Fiction, Some whimsical stuff,

Ernest Hemingway getting the job done.
Ernest Hemingway writing: Just getting the job done.

Writers drink. Or do drinkers write? Either way we should all turn to the masters to learn our craft. As for writing, Ernest Hemingway said, “Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.” As for what happened next, Papa Hemingway often had a cocktail … or seven. Below is Mr. Hemingway’s recipe for the perfect bloody mary.

Hemingway not writing: Having a few drinks, and taking his son fishing.
Hemingway not writing: Having a few drinks, and taking his son fishing for literary critics.

“To make a pitcher of Bloody Marys (any smaller amount is worthless) take a good sized pitcher and put in it as big a lump of ice as it will hold. (This to prevent too rapid melting and watering of our product.) Mix a pint of good Russian vodka and an equal amount of chilled tomato juice. Add a tablespoon full of Worcestershire sauce. Lea and Perrins is usual but you can use A1 or any good beef-steak sauce. Stirr (with two rs). Then add a jigger of fresh-squeezed lime juice. Stir. Then add small amounts of celery salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper. Keep on stirring and taste to see how it is doing. If you get it too powerful, weaken with more tomato juice. If it lacks authority add more vodka.”

Corporate-Speak: Don’t Let It Happen to You

Non-Fiction, Some whimsical stuff

bloggraphic1

The company email was painful.

“We are focused on enhancing our climate by creating a paradigm so that we may be a model for blah, blah, blah.”*

And you’re selling what, now?

As someone who’s dealt with politicians, large faceless corporations and small children for years, I’ve been attacked almost daily by gibberish. However, “enhancing our climate” is not just an attack, it’s the literary equivalent of an intentional food poisoning.

Trust me. I just threw up a little.

The point of communication, any type of communication, is to communicate. And the best way to do this is to choose words that actually mean something. Unfortunately, since we Americans have used the English language as long as we can remember, we think we can communicate. However, most of us have a weaker vocabulary than Koko the sign language gorilla. We have the mistaken idea that if something sounds good, it must be good. Right?

Wrong.

For example: “The positive aspects of the elements of our character factor into condition of the situation.”

blahI just made that up (hey, I could work in government), and although the sentence may seem important, all it really sounds like is official. Read it again and tell me if the sentence means anything. No, wait. I’ll save you the time. It doesn’t.

“I want French fries,” has meaning.

“I sat on a cat,” has meaning.

Even “I like both major candidates running for president,” has meaning. It means you’ve gone stark raving mad.

The point is Americans are busy people and we don’t have time to spend determining if we should listen to what you say, or if we can nod our heads and wander off to read in the bathroom.

Kenny Rogers, during simpler times.
Kenny Rogers, during simpler times.

Here’s a tip: If you use words like aspect, character, condition (unless you’re talking about the great 1968 song “Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In” by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition), element, factor or situation, chances are you’re simply babbling in Corporate-Speak.

If something’s important enough to read, it better be written simply enough to understand. Here are Jason’s Five Steps to Battling Corporate-Speak:

Step one: Have an idea.

Step two: Chose words to express that idea. If you can’t define a word without saying “uh,” or “um,” don’t use it.

Step three: If you’re confused about words, you can find lots of them in a big red book. No, the one labeled “dictionary,” not the one labeled, “Better Homes and Gardens: New Cook Book,” although that one does have a killer recipe for roasted potatoes.

Step four: Put these words together. If the words don’t make sense, try putting them in a different order.

Step five: Read it aloud to Koko the sign language gorilla. If she doesn’t throw you through a window, you’ve advanced beyond Corporate-Speak and can now communicate in English.

 

*Company name withheld to protect the enhanced integrity of its character.