John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 38

War

Of course you know this means war.

–Bugs Bunny

Wars are foreseeable, if not always preventable. There is a gradual escalation of tensions and provocations between the two sides until one of them can't take it anymore. For example, the U.S. Navy was planning for a war in the Pacific with Japan in the 1920′s — long before rising tensions between American and Japanese interests led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. All but the most optimistic observers could see these two kids were going to have to roll up their sleeves and tussle.

So it was with my cat and I. She had gradully become bolder in her attacks on the Christmas tree and other things that didn't belong to her. She became quite comfortable ignoring me when I yelled and hissed at her, desisting in her criminal behavior only if I got up and came towards her.

On Thursday, she began her reign of terror at 5.30 in the morning, attacking anything that struck her fancy, forcing me out of bed, and causing me to constantly stop reading the paper or stop writing or stop doing whatever it was I was trying to accomplish, so I could arrest her deviltry.

At 9.30, I was so overtired and frustrated, I imposed a kitty timeout by locking her in her cat carrier for five minutes. She didn't tire and take a nap until sometime after 10, and, by then, my productivity was ruined.

But the final straw — our personal Day which Shall Live in Infamy — was last night when I came home to find the Christmas tree toppled. There were thousands of spruce needles on the floor and the couch, and ornaments were scattered about the floor.

And so I decided it was time for no more Mr. Nice Guy. I had been trying for days to divert the cat into socially acceptable amusement such as playing with her ball. No more. We were officially at war.

I retrieved my spray bottle from the laundry room. I set the nozzle for "stream." And then, after righting the tree, putting it back together, and giving it water, I waited.

It didn't take long. The cat went to the tree and selected one of her favorite ornaments to bat and pull at. I opened fire.

The effect was immediate. The feline terrorist let go of the ornament and fled the scene at top speed.

I waited. After a minute or so, she returned. When she rose up on her hind legs to reach for another prize, I pasted her in the back of the head again.

This time after rocketing away, she returned not to the tree but to me. She nuzzled me and asked for affection, as if to say, "Please, kind sir, I do not enjoy being blasted in the face by a tight stream of icy water. Would you mind not doing that? I do love you, you know."

I petted her and allowed her to cuddle. But when she went back to the tree, I hosed her again.

Now when she goes under the tree, I grab the water bottle, get down on the floor, and take aim. She eyes me warily, almost sulkily. Occasionally, she is bold enough to attempt a swat at an ornament. On those occasions, she eats a blast of water in the chest. Most of the time, though, she slinks off, looking for adventure elsewhere.

This war is not over yet. She is a young cat full of mischief. It will take more than a couple of counterattacks to repel her offensive on the house.

But I will win. I have a lot of willpower, and there is a certain sadistic satisfaction in shooting the cat when she gets out of line.

The cat adopted me last week, and she is welcome to stay. But learning to live with anyone is a difficult task. She and I have not yet reached a ceasefire.

So it is to be war between us. But this time, clever friend, the disaster will be yours.

Don Black, The Phantom of the Opera

E-readers Make an Old Christmas Tradition New Again

I used to love getting books for Christmas. I usually only needed one — more than that and I'd have to choose what to read first (although that was a nice problem to have). One of my favorite Christmas pleasures was sitting down with a glass of eggnog after all the presents had been opened and the calls to long-distance relatives to exchange holiday greetings and compare loot had been made, and cracking open a new literary adventure.

I remember becoming totally absorbed in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones a few years ago and reading almost half the book (quite a feat for a slow reader like me). I also remember being unable to put down The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown or The Dark Half by Stephen King shortly after opening their covers on Christmas Day. A good read transports you away in pleasureable fashion, even if the places you go are dark or unsettling.

This Christmas, the prospect is even more exciting. I gave a Kindle 3G last year, not realizing the market for e-readers was exploding. Now I want one myself, but I'd prefer a Kindle Fire, a Nook Color, or (better still) an iPad. I want to be able to do all those nifty things like surf the internet, read email, and maybe download movies.

But it's really about being able to read. I have the Kindle app on my laptop, and I enjoy it, but reading a book on the computer isn't the same as on an e-reader. Nothing will ever replace the tactile sensation of reading a traditional book or that new-paper smell that comes with a new purchase (or the old-paper smell of one bought at a used bookstore).

Smells and feelings aside, e-readers do a pretty good job of replicating the sensation of traditional reading. They are light and easily held in the hand. Turning a page involves swiping the screen.

Best of all, they can hold hundreds, maybe thousands of books in a single, compact space. I don't have to buy bookshelves and wonder where they will go. E-readers travel easily.

In short, I want one.

The best part about e-readers, though, is that you can get books cheaply. It's no longer $12 for a paperback you may not like or $27 for a hardcover. Most e-books are between 99 cents and $2.99. Three bucks is low risk. A disappointing book is less disappointing if I was only hoodwinked out of a dollar.

And, of course, there's the whole eBook revolution that is opening the doors for indie authors like me to publish, sell, and succeed.

If you're giving an e-reader for Christmas this year, don't forget to load it with some new eBooks for the recipient. You can get mine for Kindle, Nook, and other formats by clicking on the links.

So, like most Christmases, I'm hoping to curl up with a good book — I'm thinking Sundered by Shannon Mayer – after the festivities have died down on the 25th. Hopefully, I'll be doing it in a whole new way.

Adopted by a Cat

I've been adopted.

It's a strange sensation, given I didn't ask for it or seek it. But life is nothing if not strange.

Last week, a cat followed me indoors. This was not our first encounter. She tried to get in three weeks before during a rain storm. She also tried to get in earlier that day, but I was leaving for errands and the grocery.

But the weather was pretty cold, so the cat waited. When I returned, encumbered by groceries, she shot into the apartment behind me. I heard clearly the words of my father, spoken when I was only four years old and living hundreds of miles away in West Virginia:

"Don't feed that cat; it'll stay."

But my mother was a sucker, and she raised me to be one too. I knew the temperature was going to drop into the teens that night. I'd seen the cat lurking around my complex for three weeks or so. It didn't have a collar. It was awful friendly.

I fed the cat. It stayed.

Since then, we've been struggling to work out how to live together. My Christmas tree has been under daily attack. There are spruce needles all over my floor not because the tree is drying out but because a cat keeps messing with it. The cat does not understand that it does not belong on the table or the kitchen counters. She is only slowly learning that we only having a scratching post, not a scratching couch or a scratching bed.

Still, she is a regular source of amusement. Her furious attacks on her ball are hilarious. When she falls off the couch because she isn't paying attention, I laugh. (Aren't cats supposed to be graceful?) Her waking me by attacking my feet for moving under the covers is funnier than it is annoying.

"Wow, attacking that Christmas tree was a lot of work. Think I'll sleep here on your lap."

And when she has concluded her cat business and is exhausted from her criminal behavior, she inevitably curls up in my lap or next to me on the couch and passes out, making sure she is touching me, if only with a single paw. She has decided I am hers, and she is quite content with that decision.

And it is nice to have a writing partner — someone who says, "I'll sleep here and be cute while you get hammer out the next chapter." It is nice to have someone to follow you to bed and curl up at your feet. It is nice to wake up to a friend, even if she is demanding to be fed or knocking something over.

So I suppose I'll consent to being adopted. It's much nicer than living alone.

Even if the most frequently used swear word in my house is now, "Cat!"

Bengals do what they do best: lose

It's time to face facts: the Cincinnati Bengals aren't very good. They teased us with five exciting, come-from-behind wins and a few near misses. But after Sunday's dreadful 20-19 loss to the Houston Texans, the Bengals are now 1-6 against teams with a winning record.

They made us believe they weren't the Same Old Bengals by winning the games they were supposed to and playing every opponent tough, with the exception of last week's shelacking at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But yesterday against Houston, the Bengals lost the way they have in the past: they folded down the stretch. They found a way to turn a win into a loss. Third-string rookie quarterback T.J. Yates threw a touchdown pass with two seconds left in a game the Bengals were winning by nine midway through the fourth quarter.

And Cincinnati only has itself to blame. The Bengals committed three penalties in the entire game, and they added up to a one-point heartbreaking loss. In the first quarter, HB Cedric Benson galloped 42 yards to the Texans' one-yard-line. With first-and-goal at the one, the Bengals false started, moving the ball back to the six. Cincinnati gained two yards on its three plays and settled for a field goal. Two yards was enough for a touchdown from the original line of scrimmage. The Bengals left four points on the field in a game they lost by one.

In the fourth quarter, Cincinnati faced a fourth-and-one near midfield. Head coach Marvin Lewis elected to go for it to try to put the game away with a little over two minutes left. The Bengals false started again, making it fourth-and-six, forcing a punt to set up the Texans' game-winning drive.

And then on that drive, CB Adam Jones was called for pass interference, putting the ball on the Bengals' six-yard-line with 12 seconds left in the game. Three penalties total, which accounted for 11 points in a one-point game.

To be sure, the penalties didn't have to matter. Cincinnati could have gained six yards instead of two for the touchdown. Someone could have made a tackle or covered better on another play, so the Texans didn't score on their final drive.

But the bottom line is this: in a game with their season on the line, the Bengals choked. They wilted under big-game pressure, just like they always do.

It would be easy to blame this on Lewis. In his nine years as head coach, this has been the calling card of his team. Starting in his first season when the Bengals needed a win on closing day at home against a three-win Browns teams to stay in the playoffs hunt and couldn't get it, Cincinnati has found many ways under Lewis to blow it.

But the truth is this legacy haunts the franchise. Even its greatest teams found ways to blow it when it mattered. Whether it was Lewis Billups dropping an interception in the endzone that would have ended the 49ers' comeback bid in Super Bowl XXIII, or failing to score after four shots from the one-yard-line in Super Bowl XVI (a game they lost by five points), the best teams in Bengals' history choked just as readily as the worst.

The painful thing is they had me believing. Yes, they'd lost three of their last four coming in, but they had beaten the teams they were supposed to. They were winning in the fourth quarter. They were coming from behind when need be.

And this is a game they were supposed to win. Houston didn't have Pro Bowl WR Andre Johnson, and it was down to its third-string quarterback. Cincinnati was hosting an indoor team from teh South in 35-degree weather. This was a game they were supposed to win.

But it was also a big game — a statement game, a season-defining game. And we know what the Bengals do in those situations: they lose.

So I will continue to root for the Cincinnati Bengals. My heart is too firmly entrenched in the Queen City to give up. But I am not going to believe anymore. It's too disappointing. I'll believe in the Cincinnati Bengals when they actually win games that matter on a consistent basis.

Until then, I'll expect them to do what they do best: lose.

Weis Hire is Style over Substancce

It seems the University of Kansas got what it was looking for: attention.

KU Athletic Director Sheahon Zenger left Lawrence 11 days ago, and said he wouldn't be back until he found a football coach. That in itself is an attention-grabbing action. But when Mike Leach eschewed the Jayhawks for Washington State and several other hot names went to other institutions, it seemed Zenger was going to have to settle for a second-rate candidate.

Of course, everyone in the country thought that's what he'd have to do anyway. This is Kansas after all. KU is a basketball school. It plays in the tough Big XII Conference, which means it has to compete against traditional football powers Oklahoma and Texas every season, along with more recent powerhouses Oklahoma State and Kansas State. Then there's the small matter of TCU joining for next season. This isn't exactly the place one wants to come to revive a moribund program.

But Zenger found someone who could give him that splash, that big piece of attention the university was apparently looking for. He hired former Notre Dame head coach and Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis.

And, despite the fact that KU classlessly made their big announcement while Virginia Tech was holding a live press conference being broadcast nationally to address the terrible shootings that occurred on its campus, Zenger's plan worked. People are buzzing. This is generating excitement both locally and nationally. CBSSports.com's Dennis Dodd called it one of the "sports stories of the year" in his column.

The problem with this kind of attention is it is short-lived. It's great that KU football finally made the news for something positive this season, but this has all the ring of style over substance. Let's not forget that the reason Weis was available is because he was unable to put together a consistent winner at Notre Dame — the biggest stage there is in college football.

Weis's bio proudly proclaims he posted a 35-27 record at Notre Dame and that he won 19 games in his first two years leading the Fighting Irish, the best two-year span in program history since 1992-93. That's great. The problem is, after going 19-6 for two years, he went 16-21 over the next three. He may have gone to BCS bowl games the first two season, but he didn't sniff the BCS afterward.

That means he won with someone else's players. The two recruiting classes he inherited from his predecessor did pretty well. But he couldn't bring in anyone substantive of his own. Anyone think he can win in the Big XII with Turner Gill's players? If he can, I'll happily eat crow with hot sauce and thank Zenger for hiring him.

But I think this hire was less about winning football games and being competitive in the Big XII than about making Zenger and KU look impressive in the short term. It makes KU look serious about winning football games, and, I suspect, if Weis wins seven games a year and gets the Jayhawks into a bowl every season, KU Athletics will consider itself victorious.

Maybe that's good enough at a campus where the rallying cry after most football games is, "You just wait 'til basketball season!" But for what KU is going to have to pay Weis for his services and for what his name is supposed to imply, it seems like the expectations should be a program that is regularly ranked in the Top 10-15 and makes a legitimate run at a conference championship every few years. Weis's record, despite all the gloss from Super Bowls and BCS bowls, doesn't suggest that's what Jayhawks fans are going to get.

So KU got what it wanted. For a day at least, KU football got good, positive attention. But there's a better way to have everyone talking about your program and having nice things to say. It's called winning.

Weis hasn't proven that's something he can bring to Memorial Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

A Merry Little Christmas

MOTHER: Isn't that one a little big?

THE OLD MAN: Nah! Christmas only comes once a year.

–Jean Shepherd, A Christmas Story

I bought a Christmas tree yesterday.

Yeah, I know: possibly not the smartest move I've ever made. After all, I'm unemployed and living alone. A Christmas tree is an unnecessary expense, and I'm going to be moving at the end of the month, so now I'll have one more thing to pack.

But it's Christmas, damn it. The most wonderful time of the year.

I didn't have one last year for a variety of reasons that all had to do with my personal life being messed up, and I didn't like that. I didn't want to be treeless two years in a row.

Christmas is my favorite holiday, after all. You get to sing a bunch of old songs everyone knows (some of which are of questionable quality), there are cool decorations everywhere, and everyone is nice to each other for no reason other than it's "the spirit of the season."

Plus there's presents.

This year's tree is so much better than the one from two years ago when I was in a relationship. My SO at the time had many strict ideas on what constituted proper decorations. Everything had to be classy, classic, and nice. I don't object to that per se, but it ruled out more than half my stuff!

This year, it's all out. My tree is covered with ornaments celebrating the Cincinnati Bengals, A Christmas Story (including a leg lamp in a box marked fra-gee-lay), music, Bumble Snow Monsters, and Spider-Man. Two Santa nutcrackers are flanking the fireplace. Cold Miser and Heat Miser are ready to do battle on the mantle with another Bumble Snow Monster separating them.

This is the pop cultural Christmas of my imagination, and it is on display in my living room. No one is telling me not to get those ugly things out. Some of them, I haven't seen since I got divorced, and a couple were never displayed, because I bought them right after moving out.

And my apartment feels warm, even if I'm keeping the heat down pretty low to save money. Christmas makes me happy. Being happy makes you warm.

So it is Christmastime at my place. I may not have a lot of money, and I may still be desperately seeking work, but I am having Christmas, by golly. It'll have to be a little one, because I am poor, but doesn't the song beseech you to have yourself a merry little Christmas?

Happy holidays to you and yours. It's definitely merry in this little corner of the world.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on our troubles

Will be out of sight

Independent Together: IAN Helps Indie Authors Succeed

HERBIE: Hey! Maybe we can be independent together!

–Arthur Rankin, Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer

It's always been more difficult to be an independent businessperson. To really create the volume of sales to make a difference, you need to advertise to as wide a base of people as possible. But to be able to afford that, you need the volume of sales required to create the extra cash to pay for it.

"You have to spend money to make money," goes the old business saw. The problem is you have to have the money to spend it.

For independent authors, the problem is no different. To be successful, you have to find readers. So how do you find them if you can't afford to spend a bunch of money on advertising?

Enter the Independent Author Network. This website features authors who have self-published or been published through a small press. It gives information on the writer, features up to six of their books, and contains links to where you can buy them online. Check out my page here.

As great a resource as the IAN is for finding indie authors, like any store, customers have to know it exists. That's where the "network" part of the name comes in. By being a member, you agree to promote your page, the network as a whole, and other authors in it.

This is where the Brave New World of social media really makes a difference. Most IAN members tweet a link to their page periodically. When tweeting, IAN has a special hashtag you can put on your posts (not just ones that feature your page), #IAN1. Other authors who are members who see the hashtag then retweet it. So you gain exposure not only to your followers but those of other members of the network. This makes it possible for your message to truly go viral.

The IAN is the brainchild of William R. Potter, an indie author himself, who's published two novels and two novellas. By reaching out to other indies, he's not only helped other people gain exposure for their books, he's given himself access to their publicity platforms as well. Which is the whole idea: we can help each other and ourselves.

Since joining IAN, I've seen the number of times my tweets have been retweeted skyrocket. I've gained followers on Twitter whom I don't know how they found me. I can only presume they received a retweet from one of the kind people on IAN.

I've tried to follow suit. When I see the #IAN1 hashtag, I retweet. But I also recognize that the network is about getting people exposed to authors they've not heard of. So, I decided to go a step further. Every day, I tweet a link to a different author's IAN page. And I use the #IAN1 hashtag, so my fellow IAN members will retweet it to their platforms. Hopefully, it's helping get the message out there for dreamers like me, who are trying to get read.

If you're an indie author, I strongly encourage you join IAN. There's a very reasonable one-time fee, and you get the benefits of having more than a hundred fellow authors help sell your books. If you're a reader, you should check it out too. Features like the Avid Reader's Cafe and the Trailer Park (where you can view book trailers) will help connect you with new books and authors you're sure to enjoy.

Being an independent author is hard. But, if we can be, as Herbie the Elf put it, "independent together," our chances for success are much stronger.

Fishing for Love

Repairing an estranged relationship is never easy. It's even harder with a child with attachment disorder and harder still if that child also has oppositional defiance disorder, especially towards her parents.

But if you want something, you find a way to make it happen.

After driving my daughter home to her mother's house following an incident too complicated to describe here, I told her, "I did you a favor by driving you home. Now I want you to do me a favor and spend some time with me." I suggested we could decorate my apartment for Christmas on Sunday after the Bengals game.

She texted me during the game wanting to know if I could pick her up at five o'clock to go fishing. Fishing? We hadn't fished in almost two years, and I'm not very good at it to begin with.

"You know it's only going to be 30 degrees outside," I texted back.

"Soo?" she responded.

"Won't it be dark by five?" I replied.

"Can we at least try?" came the response.

And there you have it. How do you say no, when you are trying to reach out to a child you want to repair your relationship with, and she's doing her best to meet you halfway?

So I dressed warmly and headed over to her mother's place at five. The sun was rapidly fleeing towards the west. The kid was making us a picnic dinner — ham sandwiches, Wheat Thins, cans of soda, and puppy chow for dessert.

She doesn't say, "I love you." I've only heard those words come out of her mouth about twice in the seven years since I adopted her. But I've learned she has alternate ways of expressing her affection, and taking care of you is one of the principal ways she does so. She wanted to make me dinner.

So I let her run all over the kitchen trying to stuff one more thing we "needed" into the cooler for about 15 minutes. Then I told her to look outside at the failing light. We left shortly thereafter.

When we got to the lake we tromped out onto the dock and set to trying to get her pole set up. I never realized before how fishing line is designed to be invisible. After all, I could always see it. Then again, I was always looking at it in broad daylight. It's a different story at dusk.

I did my best to thread the line while The Kid tied on the hook and baited it. But naturally, the line got fouled back by the reel. By now it was getting pretty dark, and neither of us had a flashlight. (Sometimes my foresight could really use a pair of glasses.) So we got out our cell phones and took turns holding the phone for light and trying to unfoul the line.

Only six months ago, this would have been cause for great frustration for me. It was cold, we couldn't see, and nothing was going right. I knew going in this hair-brained scheme of hers wasn't going to work. I probably would have yelled.

But a lot has changed in six months. I'm seeing life differently now, and all I really wanted was to spend time with The Kid. So I just sat on the dock patiently, freezing my ass off, and hoping she would get it worked out soon.

We probably spent 30 to 40 minutes trying to get the line set. By the time it was done, it was truly dark. The only illumination came from the half-moon shining on the lake. I showed my daughter how to cast, and, after we worked out how to unlock the reel, she sent the line sailing out into the cold water. After a second, I heard a plop as the hook broke the surface.

"Now what?" she said.

"Now we wait for a bite," I told her.

I explained that fishing is a sport that requires patience and that the object is often less to catch a fish than to sit out on a lake and relax.

We sat down on the dock and dug into the meal she made. We chatted a bit as we watched the moon on the water. She almost knocked the pole into the lake, when she thought she saw a spider on the dock. I explained that the dropping temperature was prohibitive for insects and arachnids.

After about 10 minutes, she said, "I'm cold; let's go home."

So, after we finished our sandwiches, we packed everything up and reeled the line in. The hook was gone. I surmised she had failed to tie it on tightly and had thus, thrown it into the lake when she cast.

"You mean I just fed the fish for free?" she said.

I consoled her by telling her that, since she had used artifical bait, she hadn't really fed the fish.

We walked (rather quickly due to the cold) back to my truck. We hopped in, and I turned on the heat. We finished our dinner. Then we headed home. The whole adventure took about an hour and twenty minutes.

My father used to take my brother and I fishing when we were young. It wasn't a lot of fun, because my dad really didn't know much about fishing, and we never caught anything worth keeping. On the rare circumstances we did hook something, it was always a small catfish.

But fishing with my estranged daughter was immensely satisfying. In many ways, it was more comically disastrous than any fishing trip from my youth. But what I didn't know when I was a kid is that the point of fishing with your children is to spend time with them. It builds connections.

So I will take my daughter fishing again if she wants to go. And I will sit there patiently as the line gets fouled and the hook gets thrown out into the lake, and every other little amateur fishing disaster occurs. Because it was nice to spend time with her.

I just hope it's summer the next time she wants to go.

The Magic of Music . . . and Writing

Many authors write to music. Some of them even tweet what they're listening to while they're writing.

The reason for this is simple: it creates an atmosphere that puts you in the right mood to create. In fact, I've often used background music as a means to overcome writer's block. Sometimes, I'm just not in the mood to write, or I know what I want to do but just can't seem to get started, or the weather's crappy, or whatever.

But if I put on some music, the barriers melt away. I lose myself in the story, carried along on the notes of the soundtrack emitting from my speakers or headphones.

What I listen to depends on what I'm writing. When I'm working on a horror piece, I like to put in Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks soundtracks. The dissonant tones of his eerie jazz evoke an atmoshpere of the strange. My mind returns to the small town in Washington where everything was wrong somehow. That makes it easy to conjure dark scenes for my readers.

When I'm writing fantasy or just something epic, I like Randy Edelman's Dragonheart soundtrack. It has all the sweeping tones and majestic melodies to take me to far off places where incredible things happen. John Williams's Superman: The Movie soundtrack is also good for this, and, if I want something with a slightly more contemporary feel, I'll go for Andrew Powell's soundtrack for Ladyhawke.

(I should note here that I can't listen to music with lyrics when I'm writing. I'm a singer too, and I'll pay too much attention to the words and start singing along, losing all focus on what I'm supposed to be doing. It has to be instrumental music for me.)

But, when it comes to writing the Wolf Dasher material, James Bond music is the only thing that will do. In particular the John Barry and David Arnold sountracks are the best (personal faves are On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Living Daylights, and The World is not Enough). The jazzy swing, the pulse-pounding action music, the quieter numbers for sneaking around — it all creates the perfect atmosphere for me to think about Wolf and what he's up to.

This is where iTunes is one of the greatest advances of the last 20 years. I own every Bond soundtrack on CD. I've imported them all to iTunes and created a Bond playlist. All I have to do now is hit "shuffle" and "play," and I've got hours of uninterrupted atmospheric music to write by. I've yet to make it through the whole playlist, and it doesn't get boring, because the styles and pieces are mixed together randomly. If something isn't working, I can skip it. Otherwise, it's writing in a shaken-not-stirred atmosphere.

And, boy, does it work. Yesterday I was writing the final scene of a Wolf Dasher short story I intend to give away free as a loss leader for State of Grace. Naturally, this was the exciting fight between Wolf and his nemesis, which involved a battle in a locked office followed by a chase through the skies of Mensch, with Wolf's antagonist trying to crash his magical vehicle.

By good fortune, I got a string of action pieces all in a row from iTunes. And, as the scene was building to a climax, iTunes spit out one of my very favorite pieces, "Show Me the Money/Come in, 007, Your Time is Up" from The World is not Enough. As the music blared out of my headphones and built tension, my heart was pounding and I couldn't type fast enough. I'm sure I could have won a Scripps-Howard typing contest while I was listening to the piece.

The scene and the song finished at the same. Man, it was great.

So, yeah, I'll be continuing to write to music. It fuels my creativity and makes me want to write.

What kind of music do you like to write to? Leave a comment and let me know.

Too Poor to Bank

Periodically, I receive forcible reminders that the economy still sucks. I read the paper and listen to the radio, and I hear stories about the Europeans working hard to handle their debt crisis and US consumers spending well as we hit the holiday shopping season, and I want to believe things are getting better.

But then my bank hits me with a $12 service charge, and I'm reminded that any improvement we're seeing is incremental at best.

You read that right. My bank charged me 12 bucks in a single service fee. Why? Because I'm too poor.

I had an interest-bearing account. (Of course, the interest is so low, it's laughable, but forget that part for a moment.) However, to have such a privilege, you have to maintain a minimum balance, and I evidently fell under it.

Now, I do understand banks placing restrictions on premium accounts. Business is a two-way street. But 12 bucks? That's outrageous! They want to charge me $12 a month for the privilege of investing my money. I have to pay them because I don't have enough money for them to make enough money off me.

So, naturally, being unemployed at the moment, I asked to be switched to a different kind of account where this won't happen. That's when the real trouble began. The next best account has no fees — as long as you maintain at least $1500 or have at least one direct deposit of $500 or more a month.

Problem: I'm unemployed. Thus, maintaining any minimum amount is difficult, and the state issues unemployment insurance on a debit card, not via direct deposit. So to get this account, I'd have to let the bank take $8 of my meager sums each month. Again, just for the privilege of them being able to invest it and make a profit.

The only other option I was offered was an account that was free as long as I did all of my transactions electronically. Now, I do pay most of my bills online (one of the reasons it irritates me the state issues unemployment insurance to a debit card). But there are a few, like my rent, that require paper checks. If I write a check against this new account, they charge me $2 per check. So, to access my own money, I have to pay the bank.

This is insane! It's my money. I'm allowing the bank to hold it, so they can invest it to make a profit. I shouldn't have to pay them to get it back.

How can bank executives look at this situation and not understand why people are outraged? How can they have been bailed out by the government and not comprehend why people are mad about it? How can they look at the Occupy Wall Street movement and be confused about what's driving these people?

I was a 20-year customer of Commerce Bank, and had a relationship with the branch manager and the tellers. But when I lost my job, none of them could help me. They were bound by the rules of their corporate headquarters in Kansas City, which isn't concerned about me or any of its other poorer customers.

So I left Commerce Bank. I found a credit union that will not charge me any fees to access my own money. They have no problem with me writing paper checks or with the fact that I'm struggling to find a job at the moment. As long as I can put $25 total into a savings account, they'll let me bank with them without any penalties.

I'm really sorry about leaving an institution I enjoyed doing business with for 20 years. But evidently, I'm just too poor for them to value that relationship.

When my finances turn around this year, someone else is going to profit.