tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22031206242966081602024-03-13T06:47:09.329-04:00Ramblings of a Very Pale ManMark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.comBlogger294125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-29876429404000379582019-01-22T10:27:00.000-05:002019-01-22T10:27:57.822-05:00Five-Year MissionMany times throughout the two decades following college graduation, I would scribble ideas for a scene, or chapter, only to dismissively shove them in a drawer and forget about them. Although I had written a handful of halfway decent short stories in high school and at college, a novel was always the brass ring I hoped to grasp, but never could seem to achieve.<div>
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In 2010, I decided it was time to fulfill my lifelong dream of writing a book. It didn't really matter what kind of book, or if it ended up being a good book. Outlining, writing, rewriting, editing and formatting a book -- even a short one -- is no easy task. The challenge for someone like me with self-diagnosed ADD and crippling authorial insecurity was getting from the start of chapter one to the words "The End" without losing the thread of the story. The result, a murder mystery titled <i>Damage</i>, was just that: poorly constructed with a minimum of characters and no sense of urgency imparted, yet a fairly intact and coherent plot. My apologies to anyone kind enough to have read it for me, because they certainly weren't reading it for themselves. The only good thing to come from <i>Damage</i> was I proved to myself I could, in fact, write a novel-length story.</div>
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Halfway through the process, while mustering the courage to tackle rewriting the clunky first draft of <i>Damage</i>, I took a break from it and wrote several chapters of a fun story for my children. Then the urge to return to <i>Damage</i> struck and I abandoned those chapters. Some two years later, I came across them and determined they weren't half bad, so I redrafted them and created the first book in <i>The Psi Squad</i> series titled, quite unimaginatively, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B50RLQ0" target="_blank">The Psi Squad: Book One</a></i>. The book came quickly and was tremendously enjoyable to write. The characters spoke to me in ways none of the characters in <i>Damage</i> had managed to, and because I had already proven to myself I could write a 60,000-word novel, I didn't feel pressured to prove it again. <i>The Psi Squad: Book One</i> is only about 18,000 words long, if that, meaning it ended up being exactly the length it needed to be. The self-published book hit Amazon's virtual bookshelves in 2013.</div>
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The following year saw the release of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IWEQ6E0" target="_blank">The Psi Squad and the Atherton Ghost</a></i> which was equally as fun to write and slightly longer at 27,000 words. Its story continued where the first book left off and fleshed out the world just enough for my liking. Intentionally short chapters, each moving the story along by inches and providing a little character development along the way, served as perfectly spaced stepping stones to keep me from veering off course. </div>
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Neither of <i>The Psi Squad</i> books have made any waves in the literary world. That's fine by me. Would I like to get rich off my writing and retire to a private island where I could write all day? Of course, but writing is just my hobby and the joy of hobbies is supposed to come from the doing, not some external reward. Besides, middle grade fiction is a tough market. I'd stand a better chance at commercial success writing an un-illustrated 400-year history of gout. After that second <i>Psi Squad</i> book was finished, I felt it was time to try writing something other than fiction for children. I quickly fell back into my habit of scribbling and discarding bits and pieces without any clear purpose. Before long, I decided to give <i>The Psi Squad</i> another try and quickly completed a first draft of a third book. Then something terrible happened -- I convinced myself it was awful.</div>
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The first <i>Psi Squad</i> had minimal ghost story and was mostly about introducing the three main characters. The second <i>Psi Squad</i> had a better balance between ghost story and character development, even managing to introduce a fourth main character. With the third book, it felt I had taken a step backward and provided a story based more on the dynamics of the four primary characters than on the ghost story. As a result, that first draft sat on my Mac as, you guessed it, I scribbled and discarded scenes and chapters for stories that would never see the light of day.</div>
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Late last year, while browsing Amazon's website, I decided to take a peek at my books. Among the various details displayed for each one is the release date. I was shocked to realize it had been four years since the release of <i>The Psi Squad and the Atherton Ghost</i>. This is a series for which I planned to write nine books and there I was with only two published books to show for it and a disappointing first draft of a third languishing. To drive the delay home even more, someone named Tania left a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21486869-the-psi-squad-and-the-atherton-ghost#other_reviews" target="_blank">review</a> on Goodreads for the second book that simply stated: <i>"This book was just as entertaining as the first one. Loved the characters and the story. Such a pity that the third is not out yet."</i></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m3uuCDsZelw/XEcpEuZjBvI/AAAAAAAABqM/-Tsx1oTVUQgbP-wpq6cmr9tkeD8vaksCACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-01-11%2Bat%2B9.32.14%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="909" data-original-width="574" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m3uuCDsZelw/XEcpEuZjBvI/AAAAAAAABqM/-Tsx1oTVUQgbP-wpq6cmr9tkeD8vaksCACLcBGAs/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-01-11%2Bat%2B9.32.14%2BAM.png" width="126" /></a>The very next day, during my lunch break, I pulled up that draft and started reading it front to back without stopping to make notes or edit. I wanted to see if it really was as awful as I recalled. It wasn't. As with any first draft, there were a few errors here and there, a few spots that went on too long, others that needed to go on a bit longer, but on the whole there were no major issues. During breaks in a busy schedule -- Hurricanes Florence and Michael didn't help matters -- a redrafted third book emerged and by January was ready.</div>
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So, five years following the publication of the second book in the series, <i>The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MVK3JKS" target="_blank">Psi Squad and the Unhappy Valentine</a></i> finally is available on Amazon in ebook format (the paperback option is coming soon). At 33,000 words it is the longest of the books and, in my humble and unbiased opinion, offers a simple yet effective ghost story, some excellent character development, and several important setups for the next few books in the series. More importantly, work has already begun on the fourth book. While I won't promise a quick turn around, I can promise it won't take five years.</div>
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© 2019 Mark Feggeler</div>
Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-3055986740708489912018-10-23T17:29:00.001-04:002018-10-23T17:29:09.360-04:00Learning To Let GoIn recent years, my opinions of a number of people from my past have changed. The present political climate has stripped away the polite veneer from some old acquaintances to reveal underlying foundations of self-serving, profit-centered, isolationist, or racist beliefs that find their way into conversations that, thanks to the way social media works, are beamed to the devices of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I've found the removal of this veneer equal parts discouraging, enlightening and instructive.<br />
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Before the 2016 election, back when I believed the morally untenable antics of the winning candidate were merely a means to the end of getting elected, I found it interesting to learn how many people I once believed reasonable were eager to overlook or defend all the hate-fueled rhetoric. </div>
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He just curled up his hand and changed his voice to imitate a crippled reporter who criticized him? <i>"No, you're just twisting what he did and said to make it seem worse than it was." </i></div>
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He just called all Mexican's murderers and rapists? <i>"Well, some of them are." </i></div>
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He just called for a ban on all Muslim immigrants and a registry of existing Muslims in the United States? <i>"Who cares? Muslims are all violent terrorists anyway." </i></div>
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I'm not naive enough to believe that people who look like me and grew up in households like mine all think the way I think, but I suppose I was naive enough to believe reasonable people should be able to spot a disingenuous argument and call out the perpetrator instead of being sucked in by him. Any time I hear someone trying to whip me into a panic, my first reaction is to wonder how my panic benefits that person. A politician telling me I should fear an entire culture has an agenda. Some people were eager to buy into that agenda without seriously considering the ridiculous degree of hyperbole because it tapped into bigotry and fear that already existed inside them. As a child in school learning history, I saw little difference between Nazi sympathizers who targeted Jews in pre-WWII Germany and Americans who targeted people of Japanese descent during WWII. I feel the same way about modern-day Americans who justify tearing children away from their parents at the Mexican border, or aggressively accosting people in public places for speaking different languages. We should be seeking our better angels, not feeding our inner demons.<br />
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As online incivility has risen to fever pitch, I've found myself growing more and more comfortable with the idea of disconnecting from people on social media -- not because they disagree with my viewpoints, but rather because of their inability to remain civil during the course of a disagreement. It starts with seemingly normal discourse until small barbs like "snowflake" or "libtard" get tossed about. Just jokes, right? Don't be so sensitive. But as you persist in trying to present a meaningful argument with facts or opinion supported by facts, things get downright nasty. When facts become too pesky, the argument shifts until you're drawn down a rabbit hole of ridiculous conspiracies and personal attacks.<br />
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Sometimes it isn't the "friend" with whom you're arguing who is the problem. Other people jump in, frequently with a level of vitriol wildly disproportionate to the discussion. An interesting pattern has developed in these instances. The "friend" with whom I was initially conversing will send a private message apologizing for the behavior of their online buddies while never publicly doing anything to temper the discourse. The natural assumption is the "friend" either agrees with the abusive behavior or is too cowardly to say anything.<br />
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By my way of thinking, inviting people to be my "friends" on social media is similar to inviting them into my home. You don't have to kiss my ass just because I've opened my door to you, but you shouldn't kick it, either. If you don't know how to behave I'll gladly push you out and lock the door behind you. Even if you do know how to behave, constantly bringing with you an entourage of people who are rude and abusive is enough reason to show you the door, as well. The end result is a minimizing of my friend base on platforms like Twitter and Facebook that I previously lamented but now welcome. More and more, watching the interactions of people on social media seems to me a variation of <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>, only instead of watching the evils of the world affect my own portrait I'm watching in real time as people I once liked, or even loved, grow twisted and gnarled.<br />
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I believe there is a reason we fall away from each other throughout the course of our lives. The circumstances that once forged a camaraderie are changed over time. We follow divergent paths away from a common point until the people we become are unrecognizable to the people we were. If we're fortunate, paths cross again and the past repeats itself in meaningful and rewarding ways. Unfortunately, that's more the exception than the rule, and I've come to realize the pleasantry of keeping the past where it belongs.<br />
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2018 Mark Feggeler</div>
Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-55722903151170815502018-10-05T17:11:00.000-04:002018-10-05T17:11:16.094-04:00The Frosty Paws 12-StepSo, the dog.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q2Vtqjj0jq4/W7fScGsGdxI/AAAAAAAABpM/qKsIfHSBfxUyzUWflAKvqlBeHk1WVYSwgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Lola%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q2Vtqjj0jq4/W7fScGsGdxI/AAAAAAAABpM/qKsIfHSBfxUyzUWflAKvqlBeHk1WVYSwgCK4BGAYYCw/s200/Lola%2B2.jpg" width="200" /></a>Lola is a six-pound Cuban silk dog, otherwise known as a Havanese, and a not-too distant relative of the poodle. This makes her a perfect fit for the house full of OCD, germaphobic asthmatics that is our family. No dander means easy breathing; no shedding means no mess. The allergies are problematic since we truly are a dog-loving people. Unfortunately, more than five minutes around the wrong breed means two days of popping antihistamines, wheezy breathing and dull sinus headaches.<br />
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I don't know many, if any, Cubans, though I romantically choose to believe Lola must represent the culture well. Small, but feisty, with a determination and stubbornness inordinately disproportionate to her size, Lola manages a charming disobedient gruffness that melts most people who meet her. The fact she doesn't mind being handled like an old rag doll doesn't hurt. Perhaps "doesn't mind" isn't the correct assessment. When you're slightly larger than a guinea pig, and much better smelling, you really don't have much choice in the matter. People pick you up.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g1B3i5j1Hck/W7fS15I6ZiI/AAAAAAAABp0/XNZGoT8oeDokRibbtnmo2FV8qzlYvnJbACK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Lola%2B3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g1B3i5j1Hck/W7fS15I6ZiI/AAAAAAAABp0/XNZGoT8oeDokRibbtnmo2FV8qzlYvnJbACK4BGAYYCw/s200/Lola%2B3.jpg" width="150" /></a>Being of a diminutive breed, and even runt-size for a Havanese, Lola's stomach can be a temperamental thing, like a supreme court nominee during a hearing except with a strong possibility of puking. (Well, actually, then exactly like a supreme court nominee during a hearing.) It took some trial and error to find just the right brand and size of kibble so we wouldn't revisit breakfast and dinner each day. We also avoid giving her table scraps as a general rule. Cheese is an exception, since she can stomach it, it's a great way to get her to take pills when necessary, and it keeps her distracted for at least five minutes when melted into her kong. She has also discovered an intense fascination with turkey due largely to the one Thanksgiving when, unbeknownst to us, turkey grease overflowed the cutting board and dripped from the counter. Lola happily lapped it off the floor while a steady stream struck her squarely on the head, ruining her coat. She looked like a rescue animal from the Exxon Valdese oil spill for several weeks.<br />
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Recently, to celebrate her fifth birthday and our daughter's twenty-first birthday, we bought her a frozen treat called Frosty Paws. To be clear, the dog got the Frosty Paws, not our daughter. We had to choose from two flavors -- original and peanut butter. I suggested peanut butter might be best, only because I wasn't exactly sure what the "original" flavor of a knock-off ice cream dog treat might be. Dog anus? Dead squirrel? Regurgitated breakfast kibble? The prospects seemed endless and potentially horrifying to consider once I started thinking about all the things I've witnessed dogs sniffing, licking or eating during my fifty years on this planet.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OV5dLquwcOY/W7fTAnu78YI/AAAAAAAABp8/B7KQieoaCAE3ZaarnuwvhnqlYgiJcNusACK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Lola%2B4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OV5dLquwcOY/W7fTAnu78YI/AAAAAAAABp8/B7KQieoaCAE3ZaarnuwvhnqlYgiJcNusACK4BGAYYCw/s200/Lola%2B4.jpg" width="138" /></a>After devouring an entire cup of peanut butter Frosty Paws, it quickly became apparent a few spoonfuls might have made for a sufficient treat. Lola's eyes glazed over, she became lethargic and took on the countenance of a college freshman who has imbibed too much beer on his first outing. She limply passed the next hour or two being shuffled like a potentially explosively vomitous hot potato from one family member to another until eventually recovering to something slightly closer to her normal self than a bloated narcoleptic with crusty peanut butter face. Upon waking the following morning, the spring was back in Lola's step and we, though possibly not she, decided Frosty Paws might be the hard stuff our tender little puppy was not built to tolerate.<br />
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2018 Mark FeggelerMark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-51660668939837073922018-07-24T17:30:00.000-04:002018-07-25T16:07:50.963-04:00Avoiding the Inner VoiceThere's this guy I knew way back when. Let's call him Jack Weinstein, which is appropriate since that's his name.<br />
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Jack was a year behind me at college and lived for a year in the dorm room next to mine. We were friendly, but not what I would call friends. As with other people with whom I was friendly-but-not-friends, Facebook has allowed us to reconnect in the virtual world for occasional glimpses into each other's lives. In the years since Plattsburgh, while I moved from journalism to public relations to sales, Jack became a philosopher. Seriously. He's a bona fide, published philosophy professor who writes a blog and hosts a public radio show called "Why?" once a month.<br />
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Just the other day, Jack dispatched through his philosophy-themed <a href="https://pqed.org/2018/07/maybe-your-work-isnt-lame-after-all/" target="_blank">PQED</a> blog a post that struck a chord in me. It was as though someone with a greater vocabulary, keener insights, more rapidly firing synapses, and a brain far less clouded by books like "Who Moved My Cheese?" decided to write an essay expressing my thoughts about the creative process and the inner voice that all too frequently seeks to crush creativity. It's easy to dismiss the inner voice that nags at you with unfounded fears and then berates you for having believed and acted on those fears. It's much more difficult to dismiss, however, when someone other than yourself drags that inner voice into the harsh light of day to lay bare just how insidiously harmful it can be.<br />
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Eight years ago, I realized two decades had passed since graduating from SUNY Plattsburgh and I had yet to fulfill my dream of writing a novel. Had I, or had I not, majored in writing? The only thing stopping me was fear of failure. To warm up to the daunting task, I started this blog. I figured if I couldn't write short essays about movies, parenting, candy, or clogged toilets then perhaps the novel was just a pipe dream. Fortunately, clogged toilets are great blog fodder. Is <i>Ramblings of a Very Pale Man</i> a great American work of living art? No. Did the novel I eventually get around to writing win a Pulitzer? Not by any stretch of the imagination. I never expected art, prizes, accolades or monetary windfalls. All I wanted was to find out if I was capable of accomplishing the task. The experience was so pleasurable that I wrote two more short books, introductory episodes in a series aimed at middle schoolers. Then, just as I finished drafting the third entry in the middle school series, something quite unexpected happened.<br />
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I lost faith.<br />
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When you lose faith in yourself, it's easy to blame other things for your lack of productivity. Busy work schedules, family responsibilities, the nasty political climate in the country -- anything becomes an easy scapegoat to avoid admitting the real problem lies within. After six years of writing blog posts and books for fun, it suddenly became a chore. And why? After the first year, people stopped buying my books on Amazon. The blog's tracking of visitors had plateaued. There were the occasional digs, as well, by dismissive people. No one other than me seemed interested in my writing. Perhaps all those people who weren't me were right to be disinterested. Who was I to judge my writings worth reading?<br />
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[NOTE: My Lovely Wife informed me, upon reading this post, that she misses my blog and that I am, and I quote, "a doodyhead." She would be correct.]<br />
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During the past two years, and despite having completed a first draft of that third book, I fell back into the tried and true, unfocused, fruitless endeavors of a nay-sayer. I started writing and outlining at least four different books without conviction or success, considered trying my hand at a screenplay, and entertained other lofty dreams when, in reality, what I wanted to do was write more silly blog posts and finish the middle school series. But, because no one cared about them, they weren't fun anymore. They were unrewarding, or so I thought until a few weeks ago.<br />
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Frustrated at my inability to move any project beyond a few chapters, I opened that third book in the middle school series and started reading. It didn't suck. It wasn't perfect. It needed some nips here and tucks there, but it didn't suck. Before I knew it, I found myself in full rewrite mode and enjoying it. How could I have forgotten how much fun creativity can be? That inner voice lied to me and I was stupid enough to believe it. It told me my writing didn't matter because it wasn't worth anything to anyone else when all it really needs to be is valuable to me.<br />
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When Jack's blog post about creativity titled "Maybe Your Work Isn't Lame After All" appeared in my Facebook feed, it was a perfectly timed validation of what I was already coming to understand. While his post presents a longer list of ways to assess the value of one's own work than I needed, since all I need is my own personal satisfaction as a contented hobbyist, the basic message was clear -- don't let self-doubt crush your creativity. That's what relatives are for.<br />
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Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a book to edit and a blog post about deadly apple slicers to write.<br />
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2018 Mark FeggelerMark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-58154301425261330552018-06-29T15:59:00.000-04:002018-06-29T18:05:56.292-04:00The Ginger & the BlueberriesNot long ago, perhaps five years, I picked up a small blueberry seedling while doing the weekly grocery shopping. This is not an uncommon thing for me to do. Some people's impulse buys are candy bars, shiny trinkets, or a pair of shoes. Mine are plants, and the cheaper and more impractical the better. A packet of watermelon seeds for only sixty-seven cents? Perfect. I'll take one of those and one of the carrot seeds, too. Do they grow in the kind of sandy soil surrounding my house? Who cares, but it might be fun if they do.<br />
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Another good example of this impulse can be found in the gangly remains of wildflowers outside my office window that appear to be nothing more than overgrown, un-plucked weeds. The bag of wildflower seeds found its way into the earth around the same time as the blueberry bush and, due largely to the scorching mid-day sunshine of North Carolina, amounted to nothing more than a smattering of reedy green stalks with yellow blooms. They're nothing to look at, but they make me smile every time I peel my eyes away from the computer screen to gaze outside.<br />
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Recently -- after considerable time, effort and expense invested in revamping both the front and side flower beds -- we experienced rousing success with five or six hostas in the front bed. They were purchased from a proper landscaping company and planted in a semi-circle around our best crepe myrtle. The hostas flourished, quickly doubling and then doubling again in size, inspiring us to buy seven more to complete a border across the front of the bed. One week later, our leafy hostas were reduced to lifeless stalks by local rabbits and deer. I've learned two things since then. Miracle-Gro doesn't really work miracles and Repel All gives your plants that extra bit of seasoning critters love.<br />
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The blueberry bush has benefited from having been planted out of reach from the larger garden invaders in our fenced-in backyard, in the only spot that isn't laid bare to the unrelenting sunlight of summer. And, since spring in North Carolina has transformed over the last twenty years into a rainy season of tropical proportions, the bush receives plenty of nourishment from good old Mother Nature during that important time when buds appear, develop into delicate bell-shaped blooms, and eventually turn into berries, disappointing the bees and littering the ground with white confetti. That's when you can start counting the harvest you might reap if birds and bugs are kept at bay.<br />
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Ever since the plant went in the ground, our ginger-haired son (aka, the German) has obsessively anticipated its annual production. Why? I don't know, because he doesn't eat blueberries, or any color berries for that matter. The only way he might voluntarily choose to eat a blueberry is if you dehydrated it, ground it into a powder and reconstituted it as a chip packed in a canister with other identical chips. Blueberry Pringles. Bringles. Even then, loaded with additives, preservatives and blue dye number eighty-seven, it might still be too healthy for his tastes. Regardless, he watches as the berries develop each year and reports back on their progress.<br />
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"There are going to be a lot of berries this year," he'll say in his trademark monotone way. "They're going to be really big, too."<br />
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That first year, our little blueberry seedling yielded three edible berries. The next year, maybe twenty. Production has since expanded exponentially. This summer, we can expect to pluck close to one thousand blueberries by the time the harvest is complete, and that doesn't include several hundred from a second blueberry bush we planted this spring. I'm almost tempted to see if any other parts of the backyard are fertile ground for these little fruits.<br />
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Our pending blueberry bonanza aside, and even though the side flower bed is doing well, our thumbs remain only middlingly green-ish. Basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme thrive in the same section of yard as the berries, while our tomato-less tomato stalks defy the basic impulses of self-propagation by refusing to yield anything close to fruit. I doubt this concerns the German, though, since tomatoes are just giant red blueberries that he wouldn't eat anyway.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">© 2018 Mark Feggeler</span>Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-20130460081562326402018-02-15T17:08:00.000-05:002018-07-24T16:44:53.534-04:00A Wish for My ChildrenMy children are close to the age of no longer being children. With a daughter turning twenty-one and twin sons turning seventeen this year, it can be easy to think of myself as a rising empty nester, soon to be beholden only to the daily needs and caprices of my wife and myself.<br />
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It's a strange sensation, the idea of returning to the mindset of a newlywed. It's been a long time since we wantonly attended plays, took romantic weekend trips and enrolled in classes at the local community college for the fun of learning flower arranging. I think we're ready for it.<br />
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I know we've done the best we could for our children. Were we perfect parents? No, perfection is impossible. Regrets and missteps are inevitable, but they know we love them and that is the most important thing. We've encouraged their interests, indulged their strengths, pushed them to become involved academically and socially, and held them back when they were at risk of over-committing themselves. They are the responsible, intelligent, questioning and compassionate people I hoped they would become. As my wife would say, I want to be just like them when I grow up. Their prospects for fruitful lives seem boundless as we shoo them out the door to continue their educational careers.<br />
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Then you see the news. Another mass killing at a high school, this time in Florida.<br />
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No terrorists flying planes into the administrative office. No jihadists in Middle Eastern dress setting off IEDs outside the cafeteria. No illegal aliens from south of the border covered in gang tattoos.<br />
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No, just another broken white male with a history of behavioral problems and access to a soldier's arsenal. Three of the five deadliest mass shootings in our nation's history have occurred in the last two years. The recent Marjory Douglas High School shooting in Florida ranks ninth behind the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting. For those of you who recall the shock and horror of Columbine, despite it's devastation it ranks a disheartening eleventh place, tied with the Oklahoma Post Office shooting in a list dominated by native-born, white perpetrators. In this most recent case, children routed from their classrooms by the fire alarm were greeted by rounds from a semi-automatic weapon capable of firing 45 bullets per minute from magazines carrying up to 30 rounds.<br />
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I can't imagine losing a child to such mindless violence. I can't imagine the degree to which a mind must be twisted to justify committing acts of that nature.<br />
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I especially can't imagine a legislative body so hamstrung by one special interest group that it would allow this kind of bloodshed to continue unchecked, mostly because I don't have to. Regardless of their talk of a safe America, regardless of their promises to build a wall and enact travel bans, our elected leaders have failed to keep our nation safe from its worst enemy. After decades of working nativists, isolationists and conspiracy theorists into a froth over any attempt at regulating gun safety, our PAC-funded politicians have created a 2nd Amendment dystopia in which research on gun violence by the National Institutes of Health is prohibited and law enforcement officials are forbidden to create an electronic database of gun ownership.<br />
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Re-posting a hate group's message on social media can get you flagged as a potential threat, possibly justifiably so. You run the risk of being flagged as a potential threat if you buy too much fertilizer because Timothy McVeigh used it to create a bomb in Oklahoma. You have to remove your shoes at airport security because one idiot tried to sneak explosives onto a flight in his. All these reactions and responses to potential threats, yet there exists no meaningful tracking system to identify someone stockpiling weapons or ammunition. In fact, the creation of such a tracking system has been outlawed by the very people elected to serve and protect us.<br />
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I am not naive enough to believe we can create a utopia. There will never come a time when any one person in our country or world can wake up with a guarantee of seeing the next sunrise. That doesn't mean we give up hope and stop trying to fix this problem. The loss of hope only inspires inaction that results in an environment conducive to more tragedy.<br />
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There is a seemingly endless list of simple, practical things that can be done to proactively address mass shootings, especially those committed by mentally damaged people with semi-automatic weapons. My wish is for a body of elected officials that has the courage to put the safety of our children over its need to please campaign contributors.<br />
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If not for my children, I wish it for yours.Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-85173155042006901832017-12-22T17:37:00.000-05:002018-02-16T09:07:03.138-05:00Star Wars: The Inner Child's LamentSPOILERS! Seriously, stop reading now if you don't want to know what happens in the movie.<br />
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A lot happens from the time a movie is green-lit to the day it hits the big screen, so it's no great sin if a creative misstep happens along the way. In the world of creative missteps, however, <i>Star Wars: The Last Jedi</i> is more a two-footed blind leap off a cliff.<br />
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That cliff is on Ach-To, the planet where Rey finds Luke, Jedi-in-exile and legendary embodiment of all the goody-two-shoes peace, love and happiness in the universe. His was the 30 year backstory we were waiting for. Luke was the sole disappointment of <i>The Force Awakens</i> and the giant, dangling carrot on a stick luring fans, super and otherwise, back to theaters. While we do find out why he's exiled himself, there's precious little meat on the bones of that reason. What we get is a Luke so out of character from his former self there's little reason to care what he's done or what he's going to do. Okay, the bit with Yoda was awesome, but only because his was the only callback of a legacy character that was treated with any regard for all the development that came before. Mark Hamill deserved a better storyline and so did the audience.<br />
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Speaking of deserving better, did Daisy Ridley even need to be in this film? You could say her acting was stiff, but she wasn't given any reason to act. Rey wanders around Ach-To for a long weekend being ignored by Luke before leaving to literally do some heavy lifting for the Resistance. Her big rescue scene near the end of the film is anti-climactic for a number of reasons, but mostly because (a) the boulders are visually out of place for the surrounding environment, (b) they look look like a third grade class made them, (c) a few blasts from a laser probably would have cleared them, and (d) the scene is so poorly filmed it might has well have been cut straight out of a Wonder Woman episode from the 1970s.<br />
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Which leads me to the major overriding issue I have with <i>The Last Jedi </i>-- quality.<br />
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The quality of the dialogue, never a strong point in Star Wars films, is atrocious. The dialogue might as well have been improvised by grade school theater students. Anti-diarrhea commercials have more natural flow of language and Mexican soap operas have more subtlety. The central characters seem to repeat the same conversations over and over with dwindling enthusiasm, while lesser characters lend nothing to the overall. No one is ever going to win an Oscar for a Star Wars performance, but holy guacamole you can at least give them something to work with.<br />
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The quality of the story-telling is atrocious. If I wasn't struggling with ADD going in to view <i>The Last Jedi</i>, I sure as heck was coming out. Most scenes last no longer than a few sentences before we move to a new set or cut to a different plot line. It's almost as though director Rian Johnson was afraid we'd get bored if we stayed in one place too long, but that's what we want. We're going to a party to meet a bunch of old friends and we want to hang out with them for a couple hours. Instead, every time we begin to strike up a conversation with Luke, Leia, Rey, Finn, Poe, Snoke, or Kylo Ren, we're shuffled on to the next person like we're speed-dating. It's difficult for me to believe the same man who directed <i>Looper</i> is responsible for this unfocused mess.<br />
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Most significantly, the quality of the plot is atrocious. Plot is the interrelated sequence of events that leads the audience to the climax of a story. As plots go, there apparently wasn't one. Nearly all choices made by the characters lead nowhere and the holes in basic logic are so ginormous that even Jack, Chrissy and Janet couldn't have missed them. Why didn't Laura Dern tell anyone she was planning to evacuate the remaining Resistance fighters in cloaked ships? How does Benicio Del Toro know Dern's plan when Poe and all his fellow mutineers clearly don't? How does Finn recover so quickly from having his spine severed without acquiring some cool, character-defining tech gear? Why does Poe change from a savvy squad leader in <i>The Force Awakens</i> to a reckless thrill-seeker happy to sacrifice a few dozen people to take out a single enemy ship? Why wouldn't Hux simply request another ship to approach the fleeing Resistance from the other direction, or zip ahead of them and blow them to smithereens? How in holy hell does a spacecraft slow down when it runs out of fuel? I'm as happy as the next audience member to suspend my disbelief from time to time -- we are talking about a serialized space opera, after all -- but space is a frictionless vacuum. A ship out of fuel would continue to move at a constant speed until it hit something.<br />
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There are more issues than bad dialogue, sloppy story telling and incomprehensible plotting, but the fundamental problems with those three are enough to qualify <i>The Last Jedi</i> a misfire and a mess.<br />
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There are reasons to see a movie a second time. To understand everything about it, yes. To fully appreciate layers of detail, yes. To see how you were misdirected throughout the film to be set up for a twist ending, yes. Those are all valid reason why you should need or want to see a movie a second time. What you shouldn't have to do is see a movie twice to prove to yourself it might not be as bad as you think it is.<br />
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© 2017 Mark FeggelerMark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-85791592642567123642017-11-16T09:58:00.002-05:002018-02-16T09:18:11.586-05:00Frankenstein on the Orient Express?Kenneth Branagh broke my heart back in 1994.<br />
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Just 176 years earlier, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley crafted the perfect romantic horror novel – <i>Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus</i>. Shelley gave us gorgeous settings, slowly developed the obsessive madness of her primary character, established the greater humanity and ultimate heartbreak of Frankenstein's creature, crafted burgeoning romance and subsequent tragedy, and intentionally kept us completely in the dark about the science of reanimation to dissuade future generations from repeating the horrendous mistake. Branagh's 1994 movie, <i>Mary Shelley's Frankenstein</i>, did none of that. In place of all those graceful subtleties, Branagh gave us bombastic acting, manic storytelling, graphic gory nastiness at every turn, unnecessary and ineffective alterations, and a detailed (and disgusting) understanding of the reanimation process.<br />
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Granted, I am a purist when it comes to film adaptations of literature, but I'm willing to forgive creative license if the end result proves itself worthy. Branagh at least tried to be more faithful to the source material than James Whale did in 1931 with his iconic and truly awful <i>Frankenstein</i> that so many people consider to be the classic retelling. The big mistake Branagh made was to focus too much on the gothic horror elements of the story and not enough on the greater tragedies of the human spirit. The resulting movie is a grotesque version of a tale originally balanced on a razor's edge between horror and beauty.<br />
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When I first saw the poster for the new <i>Murder on the Orient Express</i> hanging in our local movie theater I was intrigued. The Agatha Christie novel is another one of my all-time favorites. Although the 1974 movie starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot was masterful, perhaps forty years on it was time for an updated presentation to lure in modern audiences. The poster listed a treasure trove of excellent actors including Brannagh, Pfeiffer, Dench, Colman, Depp, etc., etc., etc. And then it named the director – Kenneth Branagh.<br />
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Groan... Intrigue and dread. Branagh had already mercilessly vivisected one of my literary idols. Was Agatha Christie to fall victim to the same treatment as Mary Shelley?<br />
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Commercials showed chase scenes. There are no chase scenes in the book. The trailer shows a bridge and Poirot majestically walking ahead of the train. There's no bridge in the book, Poirot does nothing majestically and he never leaves the train. Branagh is shown to be a dapper, handsome Poirot with a ridiculous mustache. The only thing right about that is the mustache, to an extent.<br />
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When the time came for the movie's release, my feelings were mixed. I wanted to see it, but I didn't. Sunday at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines, I took my seat in the balcony and steeled myself for disappointment.<br />
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Divergence from the novel occurs immediately, telling you this isn't your mother's <i>Orient Express</i>. There are enough similarities between written page and celluloid to let you know Branagh respects the former enough to develop the appropriate atmosphere in the latter. In doing so, he successfully avoids the fundamental problem with his Frankenstein debacle. It feels right, even if details of character and plot are not. The general sense of humor is right, the beautiful scenery is right, the underlying motivation for the murder is right. Again, I'm not against creative reinterpretation if it's done well. Minor changes are easily forgiven because Branagh's <i>Murder on the Orient Express</i> is pretty, fun and loyal enough.<br />
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The only time Branagh really fails is at the denouement. When Poirot parades out the solution of the crime to the implicated passengers, the entire process feels rushed. Certain important details have not yet been uncovered, recent fisticuffs are still too fresh to have been forgiven, and a proper investigation of facts has not been completed. It's almost as though filming had reached a point where Branagh said "Right! This has gone on long enough. Let's wrap it up!" without properly building to the emotional payoff we expect from Agatha Christie's climactic expositions. The hamminess of classically-trained Shakespearean theater acting that had simmered below the surface throughout the film bursts forth and threatens to derail the entire show.<br />
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In the end, even though Branagh's Poirot gets the job done and Branagh himself provides a piece of slick entertainment, I'll have to stick with Albert Finney for authenticity.Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-81286483923198468852017-04-06T17:00:00.000-04:002017-04-06T17:00:18.807-04:00Shutting the Shuttle DownTwenty years. That's how long My Lovely Wife and I have run the shuttle. This September will mark twenty years of transporting the transportationally-disadvantaged to any number of locations within a 20-mile radius of our home for any number of reasons.<br />
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<li>Doctor appointments</li>
<li>Daycare</li>
<li>Day camps</li>
<li>Pre-school</li>
<li>Gymnastics</li>
<li>Dance classes</li>
<li>Elementary school</li>
<li>Sunday school</li>
<li>Girl Scouts</li>
<li>Boy Scouts</li>
<li>Birthday parties</li>
<li>Middle school</li>
<li>Dance recitals</li>
<li>Sleepovers</li>
<li>Summer camps</li>
<li>Church youth groups</li>
<li>Band camps</li>
<li>High School</li>
<li>Band competitions</li>
<li>Concerts</li>
<li>Robotics competitions</li>
<li>Track meets</li>
<li>College tours</li>
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Logging sufficient hours each month to earn a chauffeur's license isn't the half of it. Child safety seats required for small children come equipped with a complexity of straps and harnesses worthy of the greatest puzzle masters. When strapping your first born into a car seat outside the hospital, they ought to warn you to prepare yourself for a buckling system so ridiculously intricate it should come equipped with a flight attendant to guide you through the procedure every time you leave the house.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-USRDKvYXwMw/WOaR8yMFIuI/AAAAAAAABmM/q9cEHfODAZMZBKgVirM7DDjFpxQil-AuwCK4B/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-04-06%2Bat%2B3.06.08%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-USRDKvYXwMw/WOaR8yMFIuI/AAAAAAAABmM/q9cEHfODAZMZBKgVirM7DDjFpxQil-AuwCK4B/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-04-06%2Bat%2B3.06.08%2BPM.png" width="276" /></a><i>"Take the right shoulder strap, feed it through the plastic chest thingy and down between your child's legs. Take the left shoulder strap, feed it through the other side of the plastic chest thingy until you realize you have the chest thingy backwards. Undo the right shoulder strap, reverse the chest thingy, feed the right shoulder strap back through the chest thingy, then the left shoulder strap, and place the two metal tabs at the ends of the straps together. They should fit like puzzle pieces, but they won't snap together because that would be cheating. Holding the two metal tabs together with one hand and picking up your child's fallen binky with the other, press the conjoined tabs into a narrow, invisible groove that lies directly beneath your child's heavily diapered buttocks. Spend the next three minutes struggling to fit the conjoined tabs into the invisible slot while cursing. Once you find the narrow slot and have inserted the metal tabs, press with a force much greater than you believe is safe for your child. If your child is not crying when you have finished, then he or she is probably not securely buckled. Return to step one and repeat the entire process."</i></div>
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It isn't just infants who need car seats. As your children grow, car seats morph like Transformers from back-facing infant seats, to forward facing infant seats, to half-infant/half-toddler seats, to small toddler booster seats, to large toddler booster seats, to the <i>my-child-is-way-too-freaking-big-to-need-a-booster-seat</i> booster seats. If there weren't a cut-off for age, most people I know would be riding with booster seats because the cut-off for height is six-foot-three.<br />
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If you're silly enough to have more than two children -- in fairness to us, effective family planning is impossible when they choose to arrive in pairs -- you'll need a vehicle of size, if not two. When our first child arrived, half our fleet was instantly hobbled because the Mazda Miata was not designed to serve as a baby-transporting device. The Miata, itself, is barely bigger than a pram, with almost enough leg room for a tall dwarf and head clearance adequate for a medium-height badger. With the invention of twins, it didn't take long for us to embrace the minivan, and later the minivan with automatic doors. Scoff if you must at the unsexy middle-aging of my family unit, but few things liberate the middle-class American more than pressing a button to eject children into the school drop off line. It's like all the convenience of tossing them out the window, only with a brief stop and the assurance of a soft landing.<br />
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Don't think older children are any easier to shuttle. Sure, you can celebrate ditching the diaper bag, bottles and spare onesies, but they are quickly replaced by school bags, instruments, dance bags, and after school club supplies. If children aged without taking on extracurricular activities, which I believe is a perfectly reasonable expectation, then life might get easier, but they don't. Before you know it, you're running each of them in a different direction for a variety of reasons that all begin at the exact same time at locations miles apart, and finish in 30 minute intervals conveniently spread over the dinner hours. Artistic programs such as band and dance are the best, by which I mean the most obnoxious, because there's something about artistic people that instills in them the belief that their programs represent the most important commitments your child will ever make. Every rehearsal and performance is mandatory. Absence or tardiness -- regardless of how many of your relatives just tragically died from powdered sugar inhalation at the donut factory explosion -- results in the stripping of privileges or public shaming. As if you weren't already stressed about managing a multi-stop municipal bus route, now your child is fussing at you to drive faster so she won't have to do push-ups in front of the rest of the kids in marching band.<br />
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With one child halfway through college (how the fu-hell did I get that old?) and the twins mere months away from being granted their driver's licenses, it might be possible that M&D Taxi is coming to the end of its days. I say "might be" because we so far have been colossally wrong about each coming stage being easier than the present one. I can not, however, in my wildest imaginings foresee the need for continued shuttle service, at least not on a daily basis, even with the twins sharing a vehicle.<br />
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Should the end of the shuttle era truly be at hand, the ramifications will ripple through our personal and professional lives with immeasurable results. My Lovely Wife and I will be able to spend the kind of time together we haven't enjoyed since September 1997. If we're smart, we won't leave the house for a month.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">©</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> 2017 Mark Feggeler</span></div>
Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-81447786173737647652017-03-13T12:39:00.000-04:002017-03-13T12:39:10.847-04:00The Falafel FailBeing volunteered for random tasks is an occupational hazard of parenthood. The ability to say "no" is a critically important skill to possess, particularly when you've been granted the luxury of deciding whether or not to accept the gift of having been involuntarily volunteered. Unfortunately, it is not a word of which My Lovely Wife and I avail ourselves frequently enough.<br />
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We have served on numerous church committees, band committees, school booster and PTA committees. We have volunteered in school classrooms, Sunday school classrooms, chaperoned field trips, overseen finances, orchestrated parental support, planned and implemented fundraisers, and provided more meals than we care to recall. In almost all these situations, we had the chance to say "no." However, faced with the knowledge no other parents were stepping forward, we stepped up to take part or take charge. <br />
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The positive take aways from these experiences are immeasurable. The most significant is a rewarding sense of fulfillment knowing we helped enhance the lives of our children, and hundreds of other children, throughout the last two decades. The only negative is having seen the wizards behind the curtains at many different institutions and events that have lost their magical luster as a result. People are flawed, I get that, but sometimes flawed people are so content to remain flawed that they've no interest in receiving constructive criticism and no ability to learn from it when it's offered. It can be disheartening, causing you to back away from volunteering to regain your naive faith in humanity. It's at times like these -- when you start thinking you're doing too much in too many places and alienating too many people by offering your opinion too often -- your children volunteer you for a simple task you simply can't refuse. </div>
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It's been years since I've been able to help with math or science homework. I've forgotten all formal education back to kindergarten, it seems, so when the twins told us they volunteered to bring homemade falafel to school as part of a Human Geography project, I was excited. Cooking might not be my calling, but I love it, and I had never before made falafel. Here was a challenge I could face with a smile, my boys by my side, as we mastered making this Middle Eastern meal. </div>
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Perhaps mastered isn't the correct word...</div>
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We started off on the wrong foot by using canned chick peas instead of dried chick peas and soaking them for twenty-four hours like the recipe instructed. When you have only 48 hours notice, you can't sit around waiting for a garbanzo bean to rehydrate. You take the ones packed in water and chuck them in the food processor.</div>
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Next we added the brief list of spices that, despite the brevity of the list, infused such a toxic pungency of Mediterranean aromatics that tasting the raw batter was an exercise in self abuse. It's nearly impossible to determine the proper quantities of cumin and cayenne when your tastebuds have been carpet-bombed into oblivion.<br />
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The canola oil I found to deep fry our fiendishly fiercesome falafel batter wasn't much help. The only canola oil in the house had been used once already for frying donuts. Our falafel would set your mouth ablaze and scorch your throat like a barbed jet-fueled ghost pepper, but at least you'll enjoy the subtle hint of cinnamon apple while rolling on the ground scraping your tongue with a cheese grater. </div>
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Fortunately, we never found out. Possibly because our batter was too wet from having used mushy canned chick peas, or possibly because the donut oil wasn't quite hot enough -- or most likely because we're from the Mid-Atlantic and not the Middle East -- our batter entered the oil in tablespoon-size dollops and rapidly dissolved amidst greasy cinnamon apple splatters into thousands of quickly burned falafel particles. We tried a few to similar effect, only to discard the remaining batter and reach the conclusion that hummus and pita chips are a reasonable substitute for a school project, especially since someone else would be making the hummus. </div>
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2017 Mark Feggeler</div>
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Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-87077692174434901282017-01-15T12:54:00.001-05:002017-01-15T21:49:23.492-05:00An Extra Plate<span style="font-family: inherit;">The work day is done and dinner is heating on the stove top when I reach inside the cabinet for plates. Five square ceramic plates clatter on the granite countertop and I head for the silverware drawer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Five forks, five knives and five spoons, counted out and placed on the stack of plates in a jumble of clinks and clunks. Five paper napkins follow, each to be folded in half and set on the dining room table to the left of each plate and under each fork. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I realize something is wrong while folding the first napkin. I don't need it. Four will be enough. <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Four napkins, four forks, knives and spoons. Four plates. Only four. There is an extra plate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">For the last month, there were five mouths to feed. Five is too many to seat at the small table in the breakfast nook, which is why the dining room table is still set for service. Table pads and black tablecloth ready for five plates and accompanying silverware, along with bowls and trays and serving utensils, glasses and drinks and a game of cards afterward. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Four fit in the breakfast nook. It's cozier for four and easier than carrying things out to the dining room. Four is an easier number, in general. Easier for setting the table, easier for meal planning, easier for clean up. Four is simpler. Four is quieter and quicker. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Four still means conversation and games, laughter and delicious meals. Four can be tremendously infuriating or joyously enlightening. There is absolutely nothing wrong with four, with the single exception that it isn't five.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The days of five are numbered. Holiday breaks and summers off from college are now on the endangered species list. At least we have four, for now. </span></div>
Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-32653391905408980722016-12-08T15:18:00.001-05:002016-12-08T15:18:53.554-05:00Aggressive Kong Dropper<i>Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i><br />
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Pretend as though nothing is happening. Avoid eye contact. Do not engage.<br />
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<i>Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i><br />
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Don't smile. It isn't cute. Don't acknowledge the behavior or encourage the persistent badgering. Like an ignored child throwing a showy tantrum, the unrewarded behavior will eventually be abandoned.</div>
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<i>Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i></div>
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The red, rubber kong bounces randomly, knocking ankles and ricocheting off chair legs and kitchen cabinets. It is empty, an objectionable offense if you're a seven-pound Havanese in need of your daily dose of melted American cheese. Pick up the kong with your teeth and launch it where you will.</div>
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<i>Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i></div>
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It lands on my shoe. I have to look down. How frequently does your dog toss a toy in the air only to have it land perfectly on top of your shoe and stay there? In doing so, I spot her a foot away staring up at me with the expression of someone having a difficult time explaining a very simple concept to a very stupid person. The kong is empty. She wants cheese. If she were bigger and had opposable thumbs she'd solve the problem herself, but she isn't and she doesn't and she's annoyed at how staggeringly thick I am that I haven't figured out what she's trying to tell me.</div>
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<i>Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i></div>
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Some people fill kongs with peanut butter, or kibble. We cram it full with American cheese and stick it in the microwave for several seconds. If she's forgotten about the kong, simply pulling open the refrigerator drawer containing the individually wrapped slices of processed cheese-like stuff is enough to bring it top of mind again. </div>
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<i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i></div>
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<i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Take out the leftover grilled chicken to make yourself lunch. </span></div>
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<i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Walk through the kitchen in the vicinity of the refrigerator. </span></div>
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<i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Or, perhaps most egregious, sit at the breakfast table eating your breakfast while she is clearly faced with the challenge of an empty kong. </span></div>
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<i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...</i></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Avoid eye contact. Do not engage.</span><br />
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2016 Mark Feggeler</div>
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Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-42586738826313310452016-12-06T14:44:00.000-05:002016-12-06T14:44:44.547-05:00A Fantastic (Beasts) ReviewHarry Potter fan here. Let's get that clear from the start.<br />
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As such, I argue the designation suitably qualifies me to determine whether or not the most recent addition to the Harry Potter universe, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," does the universe proud. I am, however, reasonably demanding of movies, which means "Fantastic Beasts" had better do more than offer a few passing Harry Potter references in an otherwise underwhelming and unrelated mess.<br />
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Fortunately, while "Fantastic Beasts" might not be the most streamlined ship in J.K. Rowling's armada, it is solidly built and should carry viewers safe and sound to the coming sequel.<br />
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Let's begin with the negatives, the greatest of which is editing.<br />
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The many different scenes are well-crafted and interesting to behold, but some drag on a bit too long and are strung together in ways that don't allow time for any of the individual storylines to develop sufficiently. As a result, "Fantastic Beasts" manages to be both slow-paced and choppy. Like having a long, dull, frequently interrupted conversation with a famously fascinating person, it leaves you wanting. You get a little of the witch hunters, an intriguing angle that needed better set up, but just as the characters begin to pique your interest and you're hoping to learn more about them, the movie takes you elsewhere. You get a glimpse of the political governance of the American magical world before being whisked elsewhere. You get a little of the obvious bad guy, a compelling Colin Farrell in an under-developed role, before the movie again takes you elsewhere.<br />
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The elsewhere to which the movie keeps taking you is the second-biggest problem with "Fantastic Beasts." Namely, the beasts.<br />
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They are whimsically fun. They are appropriately cute and/or frightening. And they are a seemingly endless collection of magical creatures that have little to no bearing on the story of good versus evil that should have been the focus of this film. In short, they are enjoyably superfluous and occupy far too much screen time. It doesn't help that Eddie Redmayne is allowed to bring little more to Newt Scamander than introverted mumbling and an awkwardly shy grin, and any potential chemistry between Redmayne and Katherine Waterston is, largely, squandered. Even Scamander's purpose for being in the States, to return a winged magical creature to the wilds of Arizona, is largely inconsequential, except to prove unreasonably convenient toward the end of the movie.<br />
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Helping save the day, both as supporting heroes within the story and as entertainment for the viewer, are Dan Fogler as a non-magical bystander drawn into the adventure against his will and Alison Sudol as a mind-reading witch. The two play well off each other and lend a much-needed, endearing playfulness.<br />
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In some ways, Fogler's Jacob should have been the main character, allowing the audience to witness the tale unfolding around him as he discovers the magical world, puzzles over the mysterious developments of the plot, and falls in love with Sudol's Queenie. His progression from bafflement and fear to wonderment and acceptance is the best performance in the film, whereas Sudol looks like she's having tremendous fun and its effect is infectious. It would be a shame of near criminal proportion if the two do not feature prominently in the coming sequels.<br />
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In all, "Fantastic Beasts" remains loyal to Rowling's creation while taking us in new and entertaining directions, just barely managing to rise above its clunky aimlessness. The degree to which I'm willing to forgive its shortcomings depends on the how well the sequels avoid them.<br />
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2016 Mark FeggelerMark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-7832141294448352382016-10-26T17:30:00.000-04:002016-10-26T17:30:32.025-04:00An Angelic ClassicHalloween is creeping closer, so naturally my thoughts have turned to Christmas.<br />
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The very moment that last miniature ghoul makes off with your final treat of the evening, grocery stores across the nation will hastily be swapping candy corn for candied yams. Horn-o-plenty decorations will hang for all of eleven seconds and Thanksgiving gravy will barely begin to congeal before the jolly fat man and his frost-bitten buddies take over every end-cap in the local megamart. The Christmas season will magically appear out of nowhere like reindeer poop on the rooftops.<br />
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Not that I'm complaining. Among the many things that get me jazzed for the holy days -- along with holiday shopping, homebaked cookies, pumpkin pies and rum-enhanced eggnog -- are the movies. And it won't be long before everything from the classic standards to the made-for-TV knockoffs are cluttering the airwaves.<br />
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Obvious favorites are "Elf" and "It's a Wonderful Life." Both excellent family films, although I suspect My Lovely Wife would rather ingest a handful of mistletoe berries than rewatch Jimmy Stewart's mild-mannered everyman be pushed to the brink of suicide in the name of peace on Earth. Surprisingly, some people aren't filled with Christmas spirit by depression-era movies that spend their first 90 minutes highlighting every sucky detail of a beaten down man's life. Without the magical twist ending it's about as cheery as "The Shawshank Redemption." She also doesn't care for "A Christmas Story," which might have been grounds for annulment if only I had learned this fact before Our Daughter was conceived.<br />
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Then you have movies that aren't really Christmas movies, but happen to take place during the holiday season. "While You Were Sleeping" and "The Ref" are two of my favorites here. The first is excellent for all ages, while the second is more appropriate to watch after you've put the kids to bed.<br />
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"Scrooge" the musical with Albert Finney, "Scrooged" the comedy with Bill Murray, and "Miracle on 34th Street" with Natalie Wood are strong standbys. Conversely, all "Home Alone" movies are intolerable rubbish, "The Santa Clause" series is meh, and "The Polar Express" makes my skin crawl. There's something unrepentantly eerie about the characters' faces. Watching "The Polar Express" gives me the same sensation I believe I would experience if I sat alone for two hours in a dark room filled with ventriloquist's dummies and, every now and then, one of them moved ever so slightly (or did it?).<br />
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Stacked up neatly in a row, with Charlie Brown's Christmas and the head-trippy Rankin & Bass specials included for good measure, my favorite is one with which you might not be familiar: "We're No Angels."<br />
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Admittedly, I am a Humphrey Bogart fanboy. His films with John Huston are classics and he set the example for Hollywood tough guys for years to come. At a time when the movie industry was young and most leading men were handsome stiffs with pretty hair and passable singing voices, Bogart was a bonafide stage actor who quickly learned how to play to the camera. At the end of his stunning career, he teamed with "Casablanca" director Michael Curtiz for a fourth and final time to bring a pet project to the screen.<br />
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"We're No Angels" is an adaptation of a play, and it very much feels like it. The sets are few, yet detailed. The cinematography simple, yet richly steeped in glorious Technicolor. The dialogue is timed for audience response, yet manages to remain light and breezy. The comedy might be a bit dark for some (it is about a Devil's Island prison break, after all), but the silly premise and simple characterizations should keep anyone from taking it too seriously.<br />
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Best of all are the three leading men -- Bogart, Aldo Ray and a young Peter Ustinov -- who strike up a warm camaraderie for the camera. In other hands, "We're No Angels" could have been little more than a stodgy period piece. These three manage not only to nail the humor of the situation, they're also having fun with each other and their supporting cast. Perhaps Bogie is a bit clunky delivering a comedic line here or there. Who cares? By the time it's all over, he seems to have settled comfortably into the rhythm.<br />
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Many diehard Bogart fans vociferously proclaim "We're No Angels" one of his worst films, primarily because it doesn't conform to his tough guy persona. I disagree. It is one of his greatest performances because it breaks with preconceived notions of what a Humphrey Bogart movie should be and showcases both the range of a Hollywood legend and how gracious he could be as part of an ensemble cast. Anyway, the tough guy is there. He's just tempered by the yuletide season, as evidenced by the scene in which he tells his fellow jailbirds not to get emotional about the family that has taken them in.<br />
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<i>"We came here to rob them and that's exactly what we're going to do. We'll beat their heads in, gouge their eyes out, slash their throats... As soon as we wash the dishes."</i><br />
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See? Still a tough guy, but with manners.<br />
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2016 Mark FeggelerMark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-18767794781516332692016-09-30T17:30:00.000-04:002016-09-30T17:30:09.165-04:00Checking Me OutI have a love-hate relationship with the self checkout section at the local supermarket.<br />
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It frequently enables me to avoid long lines, which I appreciate. When others wheel up to human cashiers with four-hundred-and-seventy-nine dollars worth of groceries shoved into their shopping carts and I have only three apples, two bags of Oreos and a tube of Preparation H, it is a wonderful thing to drift toward the self checkout machines. A few minutes scanning, jam the credit card into the chip reader, and off I go on my merry way with boodle in hand.</div>
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Utilizing self checkout also makes me feel smart.<br />
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I realize supermarket cashiers don't have to earn a degree from some institute of higher learning to run the cash registers, but many of them become so proficient they don't even need to refer to cheat sheets to know the code for my Envy apples is 4167. That's a skill I value which is why, at times when I do have enough items to warrant waiting for a human cashier, I spend less effort searching for the shortest line and more searching for the seasoned veterans. Mary on aisle 9 with her head down, a grunted "hello" and the weathered appearance of a middle-aged chain smoker will get you through that line a hell of a lot quicker than aisle 7's Jimmy, who just called for a manager because he's wasted five minutes trying to figure out how to charge by the pound for milk.<br />
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When using the self checkout stations, I strive to be like Mary. I approach with the sticker pulled off the apple and stuck to the back of my hand for easy reference. I inspect the Oreos the moment they come off the shelf so I know where the barcode is and I know how to hold them when running them over the scanner because I've watched the people ahead of me struggle like amateurs until they got it right. The same goes for the Preparation H. In. Scanned. Paid. Done, all so quickly accomplished I could represent the U.S. in self checkout Olympics.</div>
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Every now and then, you do come across troublesome machines.<br />
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Some have bad scanners. No matter what you do -- invert the package, flatten out the bar code, hold the bar code close up or far away, slam the can down hard enough to cause a crack in the Earth's mantle -- it won't make a difference. The register will still give you the "wrong answer" buzzer sound and ask you to try again.<br />
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Sometimes you get a screamer, usually on a very quiet morning. You walk up and punch in produce code 4167 for Envy apples and suddenly the skies open up and it sounds like God himself is telling you and the rest of the hearing world what to do with your fruit.<br />
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"WEIGH YOUR ENVY APPLES!"<br />
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There's no option at this point other than plugging your ears and forging ahead with the rest of your purchases.<br />
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"MOVE YOUR ENVY APPLES TO THE BAGGING AREA!"<br />
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"PREPARATION H IS NOW 2-FOR-1! DO YOU WISH TO PURCHASE A SECOND FAMILY-SIZE TUBE OF PREPARATION H?!"<br />
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Other times your machine has a faulty scale in the bagging area. You've weighed your Envy apples correctly, entered the number of bags of Oreos you're intending to purchase and confirmed that, no, you really don't need a gallon of hemmherhoid cream, only to find every time you attempt to bag your items the machine argues with you.<br />
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"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED ITEM!"<br />
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"But I scanned the apples."<br />
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"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED ITEM!"<br />
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"They're Oreos. The screen says Oreos, two packs, and that's what I put in the bag!"<br />
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"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED PREPARATION H!"<br />
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"I scanned the *!#@! Preparation H!"<br />
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"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED BUTT CREAM!"<br />
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"Shut Up!!!"<br />
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The final insult -- perhaps not quite as humiliating as publicly arguing with a hearing-impaired computer about my alleged quasi-medical issues -- comes when the machine begins questioning my age. It thinks, in its programmed mechanized way, that it's being nice to me when it asks if I qualify for the senior discount. What it doesn't realize is that I'm on the other side telling it to go do something with itself in ways that aren't even remotely possible.<br />
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2016 Mark Feggeler</div>
Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-33030221032327420352016-09-15T17:00:00.000-04:002016-09-15T17:00:03.779-04:00Because I Can<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a2lYmzLGCAA/V9r81yFzkzI/AAAAAAAABkg/YVQ9qibDQ54KPGQh7np85hzgjF1RwT68QCLcB/s1600/Tie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a2lYmzLGCAA/V9r81yFzkzI/AAAAAAAABkg/YVQ9qibDQ54KPGQh7np85hzgjF1RwT68QCLcB/s1600/Tie.jpg" /></a>This tie I'm wearing is not meant to impress you. There's no ulterior motive behind it.<br />
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I'm not asking for a raise, or going on a job interview, or giving a big presentation. I'm not attending a funeral, or officiating at a wedding, or sneaking out for a romantic rendezvous, either. <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The only reason I'm wearing this tie is because I'm not fat anymore. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Overweight? Yes, by about ten pounds, but no longer by thirty. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The more forgiving khakis have been shoved to the back of the closet, along with extra-large dress shirts and some of the poofier cargo shorts, waiting for the next time I balloon into them. That's been the story of my waistline throughout my life. Bone skinny as a little kid, fat through middle school, bone skinny through high school, slightly doughy in college (thanks a lot, beer), slender at the wedding, second-trimester imitation during the pregnancies (thanks a lot, greasy cravings covered in cheese sauce), and so on through the years since the kids were born.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The most recent weight loss has been possible thanks to a way of eating we've adopted that seems to promote a better balance of calorie intake to calorie burn. We haven't cut out sugars, but we have cut them way back. We haven't cut out flour, just all-purpose flour. You'd be amazed the array of baked goods still available if you embrace baking with alternate flours like oat, almond and tapioca. The purpose of this post, however, is not to preach about healthy eating. Rather, it is to explain why I'm suddenly wearing nicer clothes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">You see, when you gain weight it can be disheartening and embarrassing to purchase stylish clothing to fit your new girth. We've all got those lines we don't want to cross. For me, it's thirty-six. So long as the zipper zips and the button doesn't tear free of the fabric and rocket across the room like a ballistic missile, I'm buying nothing larger than a thirty-six-inch waistline. The pants might be screaming, the pockets might be in a state of permanent gape, and my shoes might be staring up longingly at a hemmed cuff hanging halfway down my calf, yet I will convince myself they fit perfectly just to avoid the reality that I truly need thirty-sevens. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Unfortunately, that approach to denial does have its limitations. Suits are a perfect example.</span><br />
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Whoever invented tailored suits should annually be burned in effigy because suits don't care if you can't cope with your new found fatness. I own several suits and they're all tailored, which means they were purchased at times in my life when I could stomach the notion of being publicly measured like cattle at an auction by a stranger drawing chalk lines on my ass. The moment your weight fluctuates five pounds in either direction, a tailored suit looks more like something you borrowed from a cousin who's <i>almost </i>your size. Gain more than ten pounds and the suit becomes a relic of bygone days, relegated to the far ends of your closet along with winter coats, embroidered sweatshirts and Halloween costumes.<br />
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The pants aren't the half of it, either. Few things scream "unchecked weight gain" louder than suit jackets so tight your range of motion is only slightly better than someone encased in an upperbody cast. When your double-breasted jackets don't even afford you one-ply protection from the elements... When your vests ride so high up your stomach they might as well be tube-tops... When your shirt collars are so tight you have to unbutton them to swallow, that's when you trade out suits and ties for husky khakis and reasonably attractive golf shirts.</div>
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Then comes the day you take a diet seriously, or begin exercising regularly, or reduce your intake of sugar and gluten as we did. The pounds gradually melt away. You become reacquainted with your jawline. Your nose no longer appears ready to pop off your face. You realize your clothes are suddenly so roomy you wouldn't look out of place singing lead for the Talking Heads. Little by little, you experiment with pants, shirts and suits you gave up on long ago, and they fit!<br />
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Which brings me back to where I began. I'm not wearing this tie to impress you. I'm wearing this tie because I can.<br />
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2016 Mark Feggeler</div>
Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-64850418599101282182016-09-09T16:03:00.000-04:002016-09-09T16:03:09.113-04:00Strike Up the (Marching) BandHigh school football starts today, which means it's time to get excited about watching kids I don't know play a game about which I don't care so I can enjoy the marching band for fifteen minutes during half-time.<br />
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Our Daughter marched in the band during her four high school years. We marched along right behind her, loading trucks, chaperoning special trips, hauling pit equipment onto the field, and volunteering at band competitions across central North Carolina every fall. There's nothing like six consecutive Saturdays eating band competition concession pizza, combined with six Fridays eating football game concession cheeseburgers, to help ensure you won't need a belt to hold up your pants by the end of the season. If the concession food isn't bad enough, then there's all the tailgating.<br />
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People don't bring health food to tailgating. You bring five boxes of Little Caesar's pizza and a basket of home-baked pretzels, or buffalo chicken dip and chips, or deep-fried jalapeno poppers. You bring the Colonel's chicken, or Mexican black been taco salad, or bowls of pulled pork barbecue and cornbread. You bring sliders, or pigs in blankets, or cookies and cakes. The family that brings vegan hummus-stuffed lettuce coils in a balsamic chanterelle reduction does not get invited to the next tailgate party because you don't need all that fiber and roughage coursing through your colon when you're facing four-hours of bleacher squatting on a hot night.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lZ7_e-ZU3qU/V7cV9svR30I/AAAAAAAABkI/2gmODqT0pPsxSjd04aJhildOblrdQvbCACLcB/s1600/Nathan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lZ7_e-ZU3qU/V7cV9svR30I/AAAAAAAABkI/2gmODqT0pPsxSjd04aJhildOblrdQvbCACLcB/s200/Nathan.jpg" width="132" /></a>Weight gain aside, marching band season is a manic, sleep-deprived time filled with dramatic highs and emotional lows. Instruments will break, uniforms will tear, notes and steps will be missed, and the weather will gradually change from hot and humid to freezing damn cold. Concurrently, awards will be won, routines will be flawlessly executed, camaraderie will blossom, and important life lessons will be learned. The kids somehow manage to keep up with school work while dedicating weeknights and weekends to performing and practicing. The adults somehow manage to make it all happen football game after football game, band competition after band competition, without killing one another or their kids.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uRzpe4GQqBs/V7cWAP_H7zI/AAAAAAAABkM/ig_mbSfN4I8vafRGL1UYHhKjWJi9B5-tgCLcB/s1600/Noah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uRzpe4GQqBs/V7cWAP_H7zI/AAAAAAAABkM/ig_mbSfN4I8vafRGL1UYHhKjWJi9B5-tgCLcB/s200/Noah.jpg" width="132" /></a>Tonight's season opening home football game marks our return to the marching band scene as our sons, both rising freshmen, take up their instruments. The German plays the sax, the Italian the trumpet. By all accounts, the German is loving it and will probably stick with it all four years. The Italian is enjoying himself, but has his eyes fixed on other interests, so this season might be his only marching band experience. Regardless, the two of them have spent the past few weeks immersing themselves in a demanding group activity and developing friendships with kids from all grades.<br />
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As the usual suspects gather at the high school auditorium this evening, we will follow the double-line of uniformed marchers to the stadium to take our seats and wait, as we do every year, for the football teams to get off the marching band field.<br />
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2016 Mark FeggelerMark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-76957565611322165462016-08-16T17:30:00.000-04:002016-08-17T08:55:23.042-04:00In Defense of My Shorts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Cargo shorts have come under attack lately. And why? Because they're ugly. They are ugly, fugly, God-awfully smugly ugly in ways too prolific to enumerate.<br />
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<li>They cause any man wearing them to appear five inches shorter than he really is. </li>
<li>Their wide, ungainly, below-the-knee openings make even the most muscular man's calves look like spindly dowels. </li>
<li>The pleated, poofy pockets are impossible to iron and catch on every cabinet knob below counter level. </li>
<li>They cause the wearer to spill over at mid-thigh into neighboring airplane, train or bus seats. </li>
<li>They give the man wearing them the roughshod appearance of one who rolled out of bed and wrapped himself in the first thing he could find that was at least one step better than pajamas. </li>
<li>To top it off, scientists will likely discover cargo shorts are responsible for chronic joint degeneration due to the incessant knocking of wallets, smartphones and keys against the knee.</li>
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Will any of that stop me from wearing them? No, and it isn't simply a matter of obstinance.<br />
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I have understood the effect cargo shorts have had on my appearance and psyche ever since buying the first pair. I knew they made me look like a pale, unkempt, bloated Smurf with emaciated legs from the moment I saw my reflection in the dressing room mirror.<br />
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When people openly embrace something they know is bad for them, there is typically one root cause. For all their evils, cigarettes provide a calming effect, which is why so many people in high-stress occupations smoke. Chocolate might be fattening, but it provides a temporary elevation of mood some studies have claimed is similar to the way we feel when falling in love. Professional wrestling might be idiotic pantomime appealing to adults who never developed a taste for entertainment beyond Tom & Jerry or Punch & Judy, but... Actually, there is no benefit to professional wrestling.<br />
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The single reason cargo shorts have, for me, proven more than a passing trend is simple -- practicality.<br />
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My wallet is a huge mass with its own gravitation pull and weather system. I would never, for no good reason, wad up layers of leather and cram them full of plastic, pictures and paper just to shove it all in my back pocket, and neither would you. Sitting all day with one butt cheek propped several inches higher than the other can't be good for the spine or the sciatic nerve, so if I can wear shorts that position the wallet elsewhere in my attire, I will. Apperances be damned.<br />
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If I look back through the photographic journal of my life, there are style choices that immediately come into question. Acid-washed jeans, anyone? Facial hair? Anyone who has ever seen me with facial hair has witnessed living proof why blondes should not grow beards. There are only two end results for blondes with beards -- spiraling drug addict or shopping center Santa Claus. How about the tried-to-grow-my-hair-out-and-failed-with-a-bad-mullet phase? Wind suits, polyester pants, two-tone shirts, high-top sneakers, courduroy pants, oversize belt buckles, calculator watches, pink dress shirts, Magnum P.I. courduroy short shorts, knee-high tube socks, flannel shirts... Had any of those trends proven themselves anywhere near as practical as cargo shorts, I might still be wearing them.<br />
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I have no immediate plans to abandon my cargo shorts and I have every intention to replace them as they wear out. They might be ugly, and they might not be sexy, but they sure do come in handy when you ask me to carry your phone.<br />
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2016 Mark FeggelerMark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-17056220988668369382016-08-04T17:00:00.000-04:002016-08-08T10:39:08.934-04:00Will It Rain Today?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Will it rain today? According to the various weather apps on my iPhone, the answer ranges from "No, silly boy" to "Ark-worthy." Perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration.<br />
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In actuality, the free <b>Weather </b>app on my iPhone calls for a 20% chance of rain today based on a 30% prediction of rain at 10:00pm. </div>
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<b>The Weather Channel </b>app also calls for a 20% chance of rain based on a prediction of anywhere between 15% and 35% chance of rain.<br />
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Then there's the roguish <b>AccuWeather </b>app, which calls for a 60% chance of rain based on an hourly forecast from now to midnight of between 20% and 56% chance of thunderstorms.</div>
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I wasn't a math major in college (that's Our Daughter), but I'm fairly certain if your hourly report says the greatest chance of rain is 35%, then you shouldn't be low-balling at 20%. Likewise, if you're calling for a 56% chance of rain at any point in the day, then the greatest chance of rain you should be predicting is 56%, not 60%. Imagine my boss's reaction if I told her I fully expect to make 100% of my annual goal based on an expectation of never exceeding 67% of any of my monthly goals. It sounds like the kind of mathematical acumen you'd expect from an English major.</div>
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These apps don't seem to play loose and free with numbers when it comes to the temperature. </div>
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Today's high temperature is consistently predicted by all three apps to be 86 degrees Fahrenheit and the low tonight will be 71 degrees. When I check the hourly forecasts, I clearly see where the high and low temperatures fall throughout the day. None of the apps say the high today is 86 degrees but at 3:00pm it'll be 92 degrees, or the low tonight will be 71 degrees but at 10:30pm we'll have snow. That would be ridiculous! The high is the high and the low is the low, and no other numbers are dangled out there in the minutiae to the contrary.</div>
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Maybe there's some greater-concept thinking going on at national weather central headquarters that I simply don't comprehend. Maybe an over-riding formula beyond the grasp of my simplicity is applied that factors the forecasted potential for precipitation and averages it out to a number that, while seemingly ungrounded in reality, is soundly based in scientific actuality. </div>
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For instance: If the greatest chance of rain is 35% at 8:00pm, and the least chance of rain is 5% at 4:00pm, and there will be seven hours of cloudless sky before noon with at least three hours of severe thunderstorms (with hail) after sunset, and if the color of the liver of a sacrificed park pigeon is favorably red, and there's enough milk in the fridge for all the Oreos in the pantry, and it's been more than six months since any of the college interns have filed a sexual harrassment complaint with Human Resources, then the chance of precipitation today is 20%. That's the only way it makes sense to me.</div>
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I understand weather forecasting is just a best guess given available scientific data. Fronts move, winds change, storms stall, hurricanes shift direction and unexpectedly gain strength off the coast... Anything can happen and frequently does. I don't expect the different weather apps to agree with each other, but at the very least they should agree with themselves.</div>
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So, will it rain today? Who knows...</div>
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Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-16806873461576702842016-07-13T17:00:00.001-04:002016-07-15T10:36:32.404-04:00Sham Shopping ShenanigansWe don't buy things like new bed linens in a simple, straightforward manner.<br />
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To begin with, we have a tendency to wait until the condition of any item needing to be replaced is so critical as to suggest the only reason we haven't replaced it is because we suffer from a diagnosable attachment disorder. Such was the condition of the bed linens in Our Daughter's room. The bedskirt was irreparably torn in several places and a corner of the fitted sheet had slowly been unravelling for years. It didn't help they were made of the kind of material that clings to your skin like plastic wrap, sticks to your hair with a death grip, and stores enough static electricity to cause a power surge.<br />
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If you've purchased bed linens at any point in your life you must be aware it's significantly more complicated than a quick jaunt to the store to buy a spread. A properly dressed mattress involves the layering of patterns and colors to accentuate the decor of the bedroom. You'll need accent pillows, throw pillows, blankets, throw blankets, duvets, quilts and coverlets. And don't forget the sheets (to include the flat sheet, fitted sheet, pillow cases and shams, just in case shams don't come with your comforter set, or if you have an unsatiable desire to load your bed with pillows stuffed in decorative covers intended never to be used for resting your head on, ever).<br />
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Step one in buying new bed linens is to photograph the most colorful object in the room with your smartphone. This object -- in our case a painting inherited from my in-laws that hangs above Our Daughter's bed -- gives you the option of moving in a variety of color directions while limiting you to select hues, values and intensities. For the women in our family, the photograph serves as a color guide. For me it is a tool applied only every fifth time I randomly ask the question: <i>"How about this one?"</i><br />
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Once you've scoured the store and located a few decent comforter sets that come complete with bedskirt and shams, and that are on sale for under $100, or were marked clearance (but not if the store doesn't accept returns on clearance items), you can now begin the hunt for twenty more decent comforter sets at all the other stores to expand your options. In our vicinity there are several places to go for reasonably-priced beddings -- Bed Bath & Beyond, Tuesday Morning, Ross's, Kohl's, Steinmart, Walmart, Belk and TJ Maxx, just to name a few. Only when it appears to strangers you might illegally be selling stolen comforter sets from the back of your minivan are you ready to shop for sheets.<br />
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Shopping for sheets is a very similar process, except you you might find yourself carrying comforter sets into the store like a directionally challenged shoplifter in order to match colors. Also, I ask <i>"How about this one?"</i> much less frequently because even I know color basics, like how boysenberry purple is NOT a match for Tuscan Sun yellow. Before too long, you're home putting freshly washed new sheets on the bed and arranging shams ever so carefully behind accented throw pillows.<br />
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The final step comes the following day when you revisit all the stores to return all the shams, sheets and comforters that didn't pass muster. Of course, I could always just park the minivan in the mall parking lot and hawk my wares:<br />
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<i>"Pssst... Hey, buddy! C'mere. You lookin' to score a sham?"</i><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px;">© 2016 Mark Feggeler</span>Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-35274723264953535982016-06-24T17:30:00.000-04:002016-06-24T17:30:15.433-04:00Dropping Like FliesThe older you get, the less reason there is to pussy-foot around the topic of mortality. I'm not purposely trying to be morbid. I realize that "almost 50" doesn't directly equate to "one foot in the grave."<br />
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We're all as young as we feel, in which case my relative age changes more rapidly than Donald Trump's estimated net worth. In the span of any given day I can go from feeling like an awe-inspired toddler to a tottering old fool depending on how the day plays out. My general take on mortality is to ignore it, live each day as it comes, and try to go to bed content in the knowledge I haven't wronged anyone and, with any luck, have made the world a slightly better place in which to be.<br />
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Then the alumni newsletter arrives in the mail.<br />
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Brimming with pictures of people I don't know doing things in a place from which I am now 26 years removed, the alumni newsletter is a mildly entertaining distraction. It's nice to see my alma matter keeping up with the times and bettering the lives of its students. I particularly enjoy issues of the newsletter that don't dedicate 75% of their space to college sports. I couldn't possibly give less of a fornication which team won what trophy, or what player was named All-American. Didn't care when I went there. Really, really, really don't care now. I'd much rather read how the university is preparing kids for the future, not how many of its alumni will suffer early-onset joint trouble and concussion-related memory issues.<br />
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Like many alumni, the first section of the newsletter I flip to is the one in which alumni provide updates on their wherabouts and doings. And why not? It's the most directly relatable part of the newsletter. There might be a name I recall, or a photo that jogs a pleasant reminiscence.<br />
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<i> "Look, there's so-and-so! He's vice president of a bank!"</i><br />
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<i> "And there's what's-her-name! She supervising physician at a teaching hospital in Oxnard!"</i><br />
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Stuff like that. Every now and then, I might even see my own name in there and hope someone, somewhere, sees it and says something like: <i>"There's that guy! I remember that guy! Says here he just self-published his third book. Poor bastard still doesn't have an agent..."</i><br />
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Unfortunately, adjacent to that section of the newsletter is a page titled "In Memorium." The college obituary column; the list of names that, until recently, was largely free of people my age. The section that once was occupied mostly by deceased alumni from the 1970s and earlier decades. The section of the newsletter that really didn't apply, or if it did, marked a singularity; a unique tragedy; a cancer or car accident that caused an anomaly in the life-expectancy statistics. Not so any longer.<br />
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I counted ten names in the issue that arrived this week. Ten names of people my age or slightly younger who apparently dropped like flies at a Raid-huffing party without even warranting special comment as to how, or how tragically young they were when it happened. So many of them together in one list probably makes it difficult to find space enough to put much more than their names and year of graduation. Besides, alumni from the 1950s and 1960s were hogging all the column inches.<br />
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Rather than worrying about silly things like aging and dying, however, spotting so many of my former classmates In Memorium has made me wonder what I'm leaving behind. What have I accomplished to be proud of? What legacies -- apart from encouraging the daily consumption of chocolate and teaching my children it's okay to laugh at highly inappropriate times -- am I responsible for that will make the world a better place once I'm gone?<br />
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I've written a few books and a few hundred blog entries. I've tried my best to be helpful to people throughout the course of my life. I've tried to be as responsible a person as my degree of attention deficit disorder permits. My Lovely Wife and I have saved money, worked hard and tried to provide an example for our children to follow as they move into adulthood. Perhaps, in the end, that has to be enough.<br />
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I won't last forever and nothing I create will, either. But, with a little luck, the children we brought into this world will brighten a few corners of it. I'm good with that.<br />
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<br />Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-25398777575556163852016-06-16T17:04:00.003-04:002016-06-16T17:04:54.640-04:00A Cautionary TaleSome years ago, after her husband passed away, my mother-in-law booked a cruise through the funeral home that handled his arrangements. It's a service many funeral homes provide -- vacation packages for the recently bereaved. The idea is simple and well-intended: people who suddenly are alone can meet others who also are alone. Friendships might evolve and all those people might find themselves a little bit less lonely. It didn't hurt that Mom was a diamond-level priority member with Royal Caribbean.<br />
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The thing you might not know about these bereavement vacation packages is that unfilled spots are sometimes sold to the general public. Such was the case with the cruise my mother-in-law booked. Some people on the cruise were clients of the funeral home while others were not. When she returned from her trip, we heard all about two new non-client friends she had made while away. Let's call them D and J.</div>
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Suspicions were immediately aroused in our household when we heard how they met on the bus to the airport. Mom had raised her hand in response to a question asked by the group leader.<br />
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J, a short man of roughly 60 years, noticed the rings on her fingers and later said he simply had to meet a woman with such exquisite taste in jewelry. I've never been emotionally stirred by another person's bling, but I realize some people are that superficial. Mom, of course, took it as a compliment and was flattered by the attention she received from J and his lady friend D, a strange woman I initially and incorrectly assumed was J's wife.</div>
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Very quickly, D and J were socializing with Mom at every opportunity. They met for lunch several times a week. They became regular fixtures at family dinners and poolside lounge sessions on hot summer days. They ferried her to and from medical appointments. The fawning and praise they showered upon Mom were excessive, and they seemed to be at her beck and call, available at a moment's notice should she be in need of anything.</div>
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Their helpfulness wasn't limited to my mother-in-law, either. They repeatedly offered to help us on busy days should we need someone to pick up the kids from school. The day we moved into our new house, J offered to take our sons over to see his collection of military medals while D helped unpack boxes. Every time I recall his offer, and the fact those two ever crossed our threshhold, I cringe.</div>
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The friendship between my mother-in-law and this odd couple ended abruptly on Easter weekend of 2007. While at our house for Easter dinner, Mom called D and J to wish them a happy holiday and ask if they could, as they had done many times, pick her up from dialysis the following day. That was all it took. Mom later received a harsh email from them stating how offened they were at not being good enough to invite to dinner, yet they were good enough to shuttle her home from a medical appointment. If I recall correctly, Mom had no further communication from the couple and passed away later that year still as confused as the rest of us.</div>
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Several theories have since crossed my mind regarding D and J. The one I believe most likely is that they were opportunists hoping to worm their way into a lonely woman's life and, through legal maneuverings or other chicanery, take what they wanted from her estate. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened to an elderly, emotionally vulnerable person. I suspect they cut their losses and moved on after realizing Mom's bonds with her family were too tight break. Call me paranoid, but that's what I believe.<br />
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The worst part of it all is we learned, several months after Mom died, that J was a registered sex offender who had spent 12 years in prison for aggravated felonious sexual assault involving forced penetration of a child under 13 years of age. He was on the registry by the time we learned this, but not for very long. It seems he spent at least a year secretly living with his girlfriend in North Carolina while maintaining registration on another state's sex offender list. When I called our county Sheriff's office to tell them he had been in the state for a much longer period of time than his registration date would suggest, my concern was dismissed and I was told to be content that he was now registered.<br />
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The man had been in my home. This potential sexual predator repeatedly offered to pick up our children from school, take them off our hands when we were busy, even entertain them at his house. Exactly how was I supposed to feel content about that, other than from knowing he never was alone with our children?<br />
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The takeaway lesson from our brush with D and J is to guard your elders just as you do your toddlers. Give them room enough to lead their own lives and be their own people, but bear in mind their weaknesses and help them steer clear of those who might do them harm.<br />
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I hate to seem like the kind of person who casts a suspicious eye at every new aquaintance, but in the words of Stephen King: "The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool."<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px;">© 2016 Mark Feggeler</span></div>
Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-54879616450954571242016-05-27T17:30:00.000-04:002016-05-27T17:30:18.421-04:00The Benefits of BaldingIn recent years, my forehead has rapidly advanced in the battle of the receding hairline, so much so it's surprising I don't wake each morning to a pillow covered in fallen folicles. I'm not particularly bothered by the idea of balding, with the possible exception of not being very fond of the shape of my head. Modeling and movie stardom might never have been in the cards for me, but it would be nice if my dome didn't resemble a semi-deflated ball of room-temperature mozerella.<br />
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Alternatives to balding are available, toupees and hair transplants being the most obvious options. Unfortunately, I've never wanted to look like my hair was installed by the Home Depot carpet department or planted neatly in symmetrical rows by some subcutaneous farmer. And there's something about all those chemical scalp treatments that scares me. The hair is surrendering willingly. Who am I to keep it from making a graceful exit?<br />
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This all got me to thinking recently about the many reasons to celebrate going bald and I came up with the following items. Feel free to add more in the comments.<br />
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<li>Hair cuts are much, much quicker. Gone are the days of trimming here, blending there, feathering the crown into the back and sides and wondering if bangs are manly. Grab the trimmer and buzz me like a farmer shears a sheep. So long as I leave with two ears and most of my blood, it's a job well done!<br /> </li>
<li>No more hair product. I have no need of mousse, gel, spray, conditioner -- hell, I barely need shampoo at this point.<br /> </li>
<li>No longer needing any of those products makes packing for trips a much simpler task, and there's one less bottle of liquid that needs to be checked with my baggage or inspected during the security screening. I was lucky I didn't get pulled for a cavity search the last few times I traveled with a can of mousse. You could see the incredulity on the faces of the TSA workers as their eyes darted suspiciously between the shiny metal canister and my shiny head.<br /> </li>
<li>Temperature control is a breeze. It was easy to overheat and difficult to cool down when a bushy head of hair was the norm. Without that extra layer of insulation, all I have to do is find a shady spot and let the wind do its job. And if your head gets cold, just grab a hat.<br /> </li>
<li>Speaking of which, baldness allows you to build a kick-ass hat collection. I prefer baseball caps, but you can use your sun-exposed cranium to justify everything from a fedora, to a gatsby, to a pith helmet -- whatever makes you feel good about yourself and helps you avoid a melanoma or two.<br /> </li>
<li>Bed head is less of a problem, and eventually not a problem at all. Back when I had a full mop on top, I woke each morning to the most horrendously interesting nocturnal stylings. My favorite was the one where the hair on the left side of my head was smushed tightly against the scalp, while the hair on the right side of my head stuck straight out. I used to call that one "Exit Wound."</li>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px;">© 2016 Mark Feggeler</span></div>
Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-27490614368646668002016-05-20T17:00:00.000-04:002016-05-20T17:00:16.683-04:00The Dreaded Birthday ChickenMy father and I went to Dugan's Pub the other day so I could get my annual celebratory Buffalo chicken sandwich in honor of my upcoming birthday. This isn't a long-standing tradition. I discovered the sandwich somewhere in the last decade and, knowing that eating it on a regular basis would shorten my lifespan, have assigned it formal designation as a birthday treat.<br />
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The sandwich is a model of perfection. A full breast of chicken, butterflied, deep fried and Buffalo-ized in an amazing spicy, yet flavorful, red-orange sauce, covered with melted Swiss and served on a bun butch enough to hold up under pressure. Since I was already throwing caution (and several major arteries) to the wind, I went ahead and ordered the beer-battered fries as my side and didn't forget the bleu cheese dressing. It's Buffalo chicken, after all. Any other condiment (with the possible exception of ranch) is un-American.<br />
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The end result of eating the Dugan's Pub Buffalo chicken sandwich should come as no surprise. Sensations of burning, bloat and discomfort are immediately visited upon you, and again several hours later when the alien vacates its host body. Sweating, congestion, tears of shame and joy -- all the things you hope for when over-indulging in your favorite flavors and seeking a satisfyingly trough-like experience, leaving you emotionally drained from overwhelming satisfaction and self-loathing.<br />
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This year, all the effects were magnified exponentially.<br />
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Not only am I growing older, finding myself slightly less capable of tolerating such unbridled over-eating with the passing of each year, My Lovely Wife and I have also been making an effort since the start of 2016 to eat less like hormone-charged teenagers and more like responsible adults interested in meeting our grandchildren. Since January, I've lost close to twenty pounds and dropped two inches from my waistline. Shirts have gone from extra-large to large and I'm as close to not having a pot belly as I've been since graduating high school. While we have cut back on certain foods (I'm looking at you, breads and starches!) and reintroduced ourselves to daily portions of fruits of vegetables, the biggest factor for me has been portion control.<br />
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Left to my own devices, I'd eat and nibble and pick and peck and nosh and munch and crunch all day long on all the things I know I shouldn't be eating. Then, I'd sit down to a table three times a day and stuff myself. Even during past diets, I'd replace pretzels and chips with apples and carrots, yet I'd still cram those healthy items down my pie hole like a starved hyena gulping down a baby gazelle. This time around, I'm taking it seriously. Meal portions are reasonable, snacking is down to a bare minimum, water consumption could flood a small Texas town, exercise is more strategic, and foods and sundry ingredients are chosen with greater care.<br />
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Which is exactly why Dugan's Buffalo chicken sandwich and beer-battered fries were such a delicious, spice-coated, deep-fried offense to the senses. I've always known fries weren't good for me, but this was the first time in 48 years I could recall ever wishing I had ordered the broccoli florets or fruit cup instead. Not that the fries weren't awesome -- they were, and I ate every last one. Not that the chicken sandwich didn't meet my expectations -- it did, and I smiled and snorted all the way through it and went home with a red-orange tint around my mouth and finger tips. It's just that I was uncomfortably full for several hours.<br />
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You might be wondering what lesson I learned from this experience. As I'm fairly dim, with a memory that can be measured in nanoseconds, the answer is: probably none. Next May, I'll go to Dugan's Pub and order another Buffalo chicken sandwich. I might think about a healthy side, but that insanity will pass before the waitress arrives to take my order.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px;">© 2016 Mark Feggeler</span>Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2203120624296608160.post-14667304251374298042016-05-10T17:07:00.000-04:002016-05-10T17:15:00.855-04:00Indiana Jones and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad MovieNot too long ago, in a movie theatre just down the road, I wasted two hours of my birthday watching <i>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</i>. Perhaps the best assessment of the film I ever came across was a simple statement from a kindred spirit in an online review: "George Lucas pooped on my childhood again."<br />
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To be fair, you can't lay blame for the horrendous awfulness that was <i>Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</i> solely at the feet of George Lucas. After all, Steven Speilberg directed it, Harrison Ford agreed to star in it, Cate Blanchett should have been jailed (or at least assigned several hundred hours of community service) for her over-acting, and poor Shia LaBeouf was left a broken shell of his former self by oppressive guilt over his participation in the violent wrenching of an iconic film franchise from the hearts of lifelong fans.<br />
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I won't waste your time reviewing the myriad things wrong with the movie. Well, okay, maybe just a bit of your time, but I'll be quick about it:<br />
<ul>
<li>Ridiculously bad script;</li>
<li>Over-abundance of CGI-enhanced gimickry;</li>
<li>Lackluster performances;</li>
<li>Under-developed subplots;</li>
<li>Overwrought action sequences.</li>
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It's as though Lucas and Speilberg thought all we wanted was a clever MacGuffin, as Hitchcock called it, and to see stuff blowing up; that we were interested only in the spectacle (which is important) and not at all interested in the slow, character-development moments (which are equally important). They haplessly flung a few meager scraps of actual storyline at us like lazy waiters tossing around undercooked food. </div>
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The two have often spoken about how Indiana Jones was always intended to be a riff on the fun adventure serials of early Hollywood, and I can appreciate that as an inspiration, but it isn't a defense for low-quality story telling. Story and character development, along with a heaping helping of spectacle, are exactly what made <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> and <i>Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade</i> so much better than either <i>Temple of Doom</i> or <i>Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</i>. The two superior installments in the franchise allow us to glimpse the emotional motivators driving the characters and leave us feeling connected in some way, unlike the other two installments that come across like bloated video games.</div>
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Recently, it was confirmed that a fifth Indiana Jones movie will soon crest the horizon and the news has filled me with dread. I'm not talking about a the-Hobbit-wasn't-nearly-as-good-as-the-Lord-of-the-Rings-because-it-strayed-too-far-from-the-source-material kind of dread, but rather a sincere, heartfelt and oppressive dread brought on by the possibility of witnessing yet another nail being driven into Indiana Jones's celuloid legacy.<br />
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Perhaps I, as a fan of the series since elementary school, can offer several suggestions to all at LucasFilm:<br />
<ol>
<li>Build all the sets you can afford and skip as much of the CGI as possible. The audience really can tell when an actor is standing alone in front of a green screen reacting to a scale-wage handyman waving around a mop instead of a sword-wielding bad guy.<br /> </li>
<li>Put the characters in the correct year. <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> took place in 1936 and was released in 1981. Thirty-five years later, Indie should be taking part in moon landings, the Vietnam War, or the opening of Walt Disney World.<br /> </li>
<li>Apologize to Karen Allen (and John Hurt, while you're at it) for completely wasting her time in <i>Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</i>. Bring her back and give her more to do. I still say the MacGuffin of the movie should have been Marion's son and his true identity -- not aliens.<br /> </li>
<li>Forget the fourth movie ever happened. None of it. Not a stitch. Write it off as a delusional head trip brought on after Indie experimented with acid at a Steppenwolf concert in 1968.</li>
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If you can accomplish any one of those things, then you might succeed in getting me to the theater to see the next Indiana Jones movie. Otherwise, it might be time to hang up the fedora.</div>
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Mark Feggelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13378318592424889688noreply@blogger.com0