Fresh Ribbon for my Typewriter-Jones

This is what happens when I get a little spring break time on my hands. I started a new blog, Fresh Ribbon. It's a full-blown typewriter-obssession site and I've had a blast getting it started. There are a lot of Very Serious typewriter collecting sites out there in the electronic void - this isn't one of them. Too girly. Who cares.

That doesn't mean I won't let my typewriter-jones creep in over here, though. I just like to put things in piles sometimes, and the No Telling pile was getting a tad unwieldy. Besides, nothing is more fun than designing a new site and it makes me write. Self-imposed deadlining and such. We all play these little headgames to get the words moving from our heads to something more substantial. This blogging thing seems to work for me.

The writer-poet-English major-thing creeps in over there, too. If for no other reason, you have to visit Fresh Ribbon just to see the smoking-and-typing poetry video I've implanted on there. It's not mine, but it should have been.

Obviously, I'm finding excuses not to prepare for the post-spring-break-week ahead. Enough of that. I'm hyphenating too much anyway.

Go write a "Dear John" letter for the weekly challenge. I'll need a little entertainment this afternoon when I'm taking breaks.

Weekly No Tellin' Scribble Challenge, and last week's winner

Stand back, ladies and gentlemen. We had three - count 'em three - entries in this week's challenge! This is a real contest now. While the Viagra-ku entries were all equally stunning and sexually empowering, there can only be one winner.

Last week's No Tellin' Scribble Challenge winner is Tim author of the three-part Viagra-ku, " A 70-year-old Man Attempts a Seduction." Completely enchanting, Tim, and only a little disgusting. Congratulations! Copy/paste the award badge to your blog and let everyone know you've arrived.

This week's challenge should be interesting because it has narrow parameters. This week, I challenge all of you to write a "Dear John" letter in fifty words or less. These can be cold or impassioned, handwritten or text-messaged, post-it noted or slung through a window tied around a rock. Give us a little scenario if it helps - the letter itself should not be over fifty words, but the scenario can be as long as you want.

Post your entry in the comments section or post a link to it from your own site. After last week's 300% increase in entries, I'm understandably excited about this one.

Ready? Break!

Dippity-Do and the Sacred Rituals of Beauty

I've spent an entire, glorious week just goofing off. I've written scads of good and not-so-good pieces, travelled to a typewriter shop in North Little Rock, sang "You Are My Sunshine" endlessly to The Perfect Grandson, and read whatever the hell I felt like reading. I watched old movies - Gaslight, Toys in the Attic, Adam's Rib, and anything I could find to stay away from CNN's election coverage. If we've entered into a new war, please don't tell me until Monday morning. I've still got two more days of this mindless bliss.

It's only fitting that I rounded out the spring break week by making a leisurely trip to the salon. Now, I go to the salon for hair and nails regularly, but those trips are squeezed between very busy hours of very busy days during godawful busy weeks. It's a delicacy to stroll into a salon, grab a cup of coffee, and just hang out until I'm transformed. That's what I did today. No clock-watching. No knee-bouncing hurry. And I just basked in the glow of not needing to be anywhere else but Athena's Salon.

When I was a little girl, women performed the beauty parlor ritual at least once a week. My mother did. Every Wednesday she had a standing appointment at the Jo-La-Ru Beauty Parlor, a sacred place where women shouted gossip from under noisy hood dryers. The objective, as I remember it, was to come in looking fairly haggard and leave with a beehive so manicured, so voluminous, that it was difficult to sit upright in the Plymouth without harming the teased masterpiece.

It took a long time to achieve such hair, especially before blow dryers and hot rollers. And there were hair products then that I never see now like Dippity-Do and that pink tape for bangs. It was all brush rollers and Aquanet at Jo-La-Ru on Wednesdays.

And the talk! Well, I honestly never heard much of it, no matter how loudly Mom's womenfriends shouted from under those hair dryers. Mom was an expert at distraction and always managed to Find Something For Me To Do. I was only in it for the sweaty-cold Coca-Colas in squatty bottles from the ten-cent machine. But over my head I could hear the hoarse whispers of ruined lives and substandard medical care. I wish I could remember the particulars, but I was too busy coloring and drinking Cokes.

What I did learn was invaluable. I discovered beauty and exactly what it took for a woman to chase it down and own it. I earned my diploma in proper lipstick application and using a teasing comb. More importantly, I learned that these women - when away from their menfolk and gathered together with heads full of brush rollers - these women became themselves. It was like someone told them all to collectively exhale and they did it. They smoked Bel-Airs and sat with their ankles apart and laughed out loud. They tore casserole recipes out of magazines and told stories I wasn't supposed to hear. They went without girdles. All afternoon.

These country club women let loose on Wednesdays at the Jo-La-Ru Beauty Salon, and it was a sight to behold.

What I did today at Athena's Salon wasn't quite that shocking. We live in different times and there's a woman running for President, for God's sake. I sat there getting my nails done anyway, continuing at least some part of the beauty ritual my mama taught me. Tina (Athena) and I laughed and gossiped a bit and I left manicured, rejuvenated.

Just so you know, there was a good five or six inches of clearance between my hair and the moon roof of the Avalon when I left.

The Death of the Polaroid

These aren't really Polaroids. I know they look like a stack of Polaroid pictures, but in reality they're just a little Picasa 2 magic. Pick a folder, click the button, and all your pictures pile up like a mid 70s post-Christmas coffee table. It's quick. It's fun. It's technology.

You might as well have a jumble of digitally fake Polaroids, because ladies and gentlemen - this time next year you won't be able to take a real Polaroid picture. That's right. The company is shutting down factories that produce the instant film and whatever's out there may be all that's left.

Can you imagine?

I don't want to sound curmudgeony, but that's real family history we're watching disappear. Holidays in the 60s weren't complete without a hundred double-exposed pictures covering the stereo cabinet, the dining room table, the top of the TV, every flat surface, just waiting to develop.

And the shake - remember that? I'm not completely sure why we shook the pictures while they developed, but everyone did. The earliest of them had a strange pink squeegee-looking tool that spread some sort of noxious chemical over the picture to...well, what was it for? I don't remember, but it was mighty important for us not to touch those Christmas pictures until Dad said they were dry.

A digital picture can be deleted at the source, or kept and manipulated using scads of different software. I can take digital pictures of The Perfect Grandson and turn his eyes from blue to green, or I can cut and paste the Loch Ness monster in the background and tell him he went to Ireland as an infant. Anything is possible, even if it shouldn't be.

A Polaroid picture is truth, warts and all. There's something comforting in producing something and then leaving it as it is. Digital manipulation is always its own state of flux because it can be endlessly altered. There is art, however, in timing the one perfect click and watching a Polaroid photograph bloom right in front of you. After that click, you're a spectator.

There are some folks out there mad or sad enough to do something about it. At Save Polaroid they've already given up trying to get the company to keep manufacturing film. Instead, the Save folk are splaying themselves out over all sorts of digital media in an effort to convince someone - anyone - to buy the plants and keep making the film. There are TV appearances, photoblogs, online social networks, and a website full of petitions (signed digitally), but I don't hold out much hope.

If Polaroid can't make money they won't make the film, and neither will anyone else. That's just business.

Until all the film is gone, I think I'm going to hoard a little. Maybe put together a Polaroid photo essay and eulogize a photographic era.

So much for the literary gatekeepers...

Here's how it used to work:

1. Struggling writer rakes up astronomical school loans to achieve BA, MFA, attend workshops, etc.

2. Struggling writer sends hundreds of submissions out to small presses and waits to hear back from them. For six months to a year. No simultaneous submissions.

3. After a couple of handfulls of the S.W.'s pieces are published for free in literary magazines, the writer goes shopping (begging) for an agent.

4. Agent finds a few paying gigs for the S.W., while the writer keeps writing. At this point, the S.W. may actually be able to quit one of his three full-time jobs.

5. More publishing, more money, time to upgrade to an agent with better connections (repeat begging from step 3).

6. The years fly past, and the S.W. is graying at the temples. Agent finally has a publisher who "shows interest" in the book.

7. Publisher picks up the book, offers advance, S.W. finally pays off school loans.

8. Struggling writer is now on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and such, where he makes the rounds signing books and hopes for university speaking gigs.

Here's how it works now:

"Stuff White People Like" blogger offered $350,000 Random House advance

Weekly No Tellin' Scribble Challenge, and last week's winner

Let me tell you a little story. A long time ago when my father was coaching track at Hendrix College and I was just a wee thing, there was a summer track and field program called the Cinder Kids. The name came from the red-dog cinder dust used on the track, back before there were painted lanes and such.

As the coach's kid, I had to participate. At five, hopscotch was my event, and they mysteriously didn't include it. I was a terrible runner. Really, really terrible. Daddy didn't let that stop him from entering me in every single event that day. I ran. I perspired. I lost. Over and over and over. My knobby legs ached and I was covered to the waist in a thin film of red-dog cinder dust.

Because the officials gave out swanky medals to all first, second, and third place finishers in every event, there were a lot of kids out there swaggering around with highly decorated t-shirts. Everyone had at least one medal, but not me.

Then I heard my name over the PA system. "Monda Strange, please report to the officials' tent immediately." I dragged my dusty, losing self to the tent and there was Daddy, smiling like a crazy man.

"Hun, you go on over to the long jump pit. They're just about to start. Hurry on, now." And he winked.

I did what I was told, but I sure didn't want to. I slogged my five year-old, no-medal, red-dog dusty self to a long jump pit made for grown people and got in line to lose. Somewhere out in the middle of the field I heard Daddy's ear-piercing whistle, the kind coaches can do without even using their fingers because they're all good like that. I saw him from far away point at me, then hold up three fingers. He whistled again.

It took me a minute, but I realized I was standing in the long jump line behind two other people. I was the third one entered. Shiny medals for first, second, and third place, and there were only three of us.

Needless to say, I took the bronze that day.

I'm telling this long-winded story to illustrate the nature of competition as it relates to the First Ever No Tellin' Scribble Challenge. One entry, one winner. In all probability, Cruelanimal scared off the competition with his stunning poem. It's difficult to stand in the shadow of such fine literature.

Way to clear a room, Cruelanimal, and congratulations! Don't forget to pick up your award by right clicking on the picture, and copy/pasting it onto your own blog as proof of your creative superiority! Add it to your vita!

You'd think that such a slim turnout on the first No Tellin' Scribble Challenge would deter me from continuing. Hell no. I'm a hopeful kind of gal and this is Spring Break. So sharpen your pencils and find some scratch paper.

This week's scribble challenge is inspired by a favorite site of mine, The Spam Haiku Archive. Go ahead, click on the link. The next time you look up, you'll have lost three hours reading Spamku. It's fun, it's easy, it's 19,000 haiku about potted meat.

Writing a haiku is simple - one five-syllable line, one seven-syllable line, and another five syllable line. Three rhymeless lines. With a nod to Spamku, I challenge you all to write a haiku about Viagra. I'm serious.

Write a Viagraku.

This week's winner will, of course, earn the right to sport the No Tellin' Scribble Challenge badge on their blog. So enter often and don't be too disgusting. The challenge ends Friday night, and I'll announce the winner on Saturday.

Tally ho, poets!

Storm Chasing

I knew it would happen. I wrote tornado stories for four days and I conjured one. Maybe more. Dammit.

We’re used to tornado watches around here, so that’s not much of a scare. I generally don’t grab my purse until the sirens actually go off, and only because I have my daughter and grandson here. If I were alone, you can bet I’d be out on the porch right now watching for funnel clouds between lightning flashes. My daughter – normally a rock – tends to get a little anxious about my standing outside during tornado weather. She’s never quite shared my fascination.

Maybe in twent-um, thirty years when I reach retirement age, instead of volunteering at the hospital or making people crazy by driving 15 miles per hour down Donaghey Street, maybe I’ll become a storm chaser. Imagine! I could load up the Avalon with a thermos of iced tea, my makeup bag, and some binoculars. Off I’d go. I could take pictures of the twisters on my cell phone and send them off instantly to CNN, because I figure in thirty years I may actually know how to work a damn cell phone. The Perfect Grandson and all his friends would mention me in hushed, reverent tones imagining me to be the coolest Grammie alive.

“Let’s go over to Levi’s house and watch his Grammie chase tornadoes on CNN!”

You have to agree that beats the hell out of greeting pre-surgery patients in the hospital lobby. Wearing a smock, no less.

Enough daydreaming. Since it looks like I’m going to be up half the night waiting for watches and warnings to pass, I might as well get to work on the tornado stories. Besides, I left Chesaleen clinging frantically to the underside of a horsehair divan, and I suspect someone needs to come extricate her.

First Weekly No Tellin' Scribble Challenge

I'm just full of ideas today. Yesterday I challenged my creative writing students to come up with odd titles to inspire us in class. The titles are trickling in and I decided to post a few of my own. I went completely blank.

That happens sometimes, especially when I'm grading papers. Then I remembered Crazy Texas Mommy ( a blog you simply shouldn't miss) and her recent unpleasantness with mysterious blog visitors. That made me look at my blog stats and voila - there were my titles.

When folks stumble upon this blog, they generally do so by putting a string of words into a Google search. While they're usually looking for something other than my blog, sometimes they stop by anyway. My blog stats handily give me a list of terms and strings of words they used to find me. Here are my favorites:

1. Is Brandy a trashy name?
2. jello salad recipe for funerals
3. ACT test poems
4. pageant hair
5. fuck southern women
6. side dishes with turducken
7. missing pin in a jumperoo
8. poems telling someone you hate them
9. If there's just one piece of advice I could give you
10. Miss America lipstick pageant

So the challenge is this: write something using one of my searches and post it in today's comments. It can be anything, really - a poem, a rant, a story, a twisted memory, a bad country song lyric. I'll even invite rap lyrics because I can't imagine NOT doing it. Use one as a line or a title. Or don't and surprise me. You dream it up, post it by next Friday, and I'll announce a winner on Saturday.

The winner will receive no monetary prize because, well, it's awfully close to tax time. Instead, the challenge winner will receive a gorgeous blog badge (see above) that tells the entire electronic world what a stunning writer they are. With an award like that on your blog, you're almost assured instant literary success, an expanding fan-base, and a ticker-tape love life. It could happen.

Enter as many times as you like. Tell all your friends. Take the challenge.

Spring Break Countdown

Spring Break is just one week away. I'm grading like a fiend and shuffling all sorts of paperwork just to ready myself for NINE glorious days of writing just because I want to. It's a special Spring Break present I'm giving to myself.

I'm fantasizing a string of days when I loll around until noon just playing with words and making delightful strings of nothing in particular. I'm imagining padding around in house shoes and sipping truly hot coffee while warning everyone I've got writing to do. And I'll close the door. And I'll make whatever I want.

When I'm through with that, I'll read books that have no academic purpose. I'll reread Absalom, Absalom again and then some completely ridiculous trash fiction that doesn't include words like curriculum, comp theory, or paradigm.

I'm going to turn off CNN and finally discover what it feels like not to have my days narrated by Wolf Blitzer.

I'll drag my typewriter down to the coffee shop and bang away at the keys and drink iced tea out of lidded styrofoam cups. I'll collect words all day, like I used to before they all became, "use more detail here" and "embed this quote." After I collect them, I'll make stunning poems and tape them on the fridge.

That way, every time I walk past them on the way to freshen my coffee, I can remember who I am.

Out of Season

I'll probably write tornadoes all night until the story comes through. Wish me luck.

Super Tuesday, Part Deux

Heads-up Texas, here comes Huckabee

Sweet Jesus. A friend of mine said this picture existed and here it is. I'm not quite sure how to comment on such a photo. Instead, I'll give you Texans a moment of silence much like the one I had when I first saw it. Such a thing gives pause.

I was a Texan once for two years while my daddy coached at Austin College. Fine place, Sherman, Texas, and I have many fond "tween" memories there that involve writing my first column in the school newspaper, pouring boiling water on tarantulas, breathing my first dust storm, and falling deeply into forever-love with a blonde-haired boy named Bob something. That kind of makes me a Texan, at least in a fleeting, cootie-catcher kind of way.

My fellow Texans, I strongly urge you all to gallop to the precinct polling places tomorrow and place your votes for Mike Huckabee. If he quits campaigning he'll be out of a job and that means he and his familial entourage will be back in Arkansas. Oh my.

Besides, a vote for Huckabee is a vote for a Democratic candidate, in a roundabout, cootie-catcher kind of way, and that's perfectly fine by me.

If any of y'all run into Bob what's-his-name, tell him my love has not diminished.

He looks just like...

TubeArts Contest

I'm completely fascinated by this and can't wait to see the entries.

Hillary, Anne Lamott, and Making a Mess