(edited to add the )

He was not wearing a bike helmet (idiot) and got a ticket. A Traffic Diversion is Police-speak for Traffic school. But I am in the middle of writing a steam punk-romance short story where the MC (a proper young lady named Mercy) talks about being diverted so I sat for two hours while the officers (who ride motorcycles), one of which was british and did not speak Californian and the other who had managed to make it to adulthood and gods knows how many of these classes and still not know how to man a PowerPoint presentation go on and on. I do believe they resurrected several frames of blood on the highway. While I imagined Mercy and Horatio being diverted by their wonderful flying machine...wearing helmets, of course.

After class, I asked them what a Diversion was and they gestured around them and said "Well, this..." and then I asked why it was called a Diversion and they looked at me like two leather clad owls. Their boots were cool, though.

It was an odd week.

It's not really as simplistic as depicted by Pauli Shore in Encino Man, or as slick as Alicia Silverstone in Blast from the Past. Mr. Shore's dialect is really a derviative of Dude, which has roots in the Malibu surfer communities of the mid 70's. And Ms Sliverstone bases hers on the Galleria movement of the mid-80s so prevalent in the Valley.

Today's modern Californian, as observed in Northern California, is closer to a blending of LOL-speak mixed with cracker-rap as interpreted by over indulged white boys. Most communication no longer happens verbally but only via txt.

Examples include:

"Dude, Mom. I didn't cut that class I was just hanging." (single example of verbal communication)

"I feelin bad and none of my classes r doin anything. Can I come home?"

"U r a dwb" (this was in response to a negative on the above)

I have discovered that removal of the cell phone, X-Box and computer (where WOW is played) results in a slow resumption of normal communication.

8)

quote:

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I have discovered that removal of the cell phone, X-Box and computer (where WOW is played) results in a slow resumption of normal communication.

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Which is funny, because I spent some time in LA and the actual memories of that time was concrete, traffic, and more concrete.

And as for X-Boxes and WoW... one of these days I should disconnect my internet for a month as a social experiment and see what it does to my home life. Maybe those brain cells WoW ate will grow back and my productivity will no longer look like this:

Never got into games. I kinda bought my first computer to try out a video game of "The Simpsons," but everything else I loaded onto it was either (a) free, or (b) associational with something I was interested in. By the time I bought my second computer, I hadn't found any games I was so interested in that I thought it was worth downloading...most of the downloads since then have been music-related, i. e. maintaining and adding to an iTunes program.

I think I lost all the IQ points I gained from not watching TV.... 8(

*****

Come to think of it, I do have something to say.

Last month, after a bad hangnail experience, I decided to let that fingernail grow long...then started letting them all grow long. Twasn't easy, being an inveterate nailbiter, but I managed...somehow. Yesterday I trimmed them a little, but...

While I was sitting watching football in the drivers lounge of a truck stop in the middle of nowhere a driver noticed that I was on the net and started to ask me questions about the shooting at Ft Hood. Now I know it was a week ago but hey, some people really try to disassociate themselves from all the bad news. You really can't blame them. Well, this guy just heard from home that a kid he knew back in Indiana was one of the ones that was murdered. I pulled up todays news and the Sgt he knew as his neighbors son was the first person mentioned in the story. This poor guy crumbled right before my eyes.

My comments are based only on what the article said and in no way reflects you rich. It only sounds that way.

I think it is obnoxious the way every would be writer has to bash Stephanie Meyer. I know she made mistakes, like "shhh" she hushed and everything. But come on. Twilight was her first novel. The very first novel she ever wrote, and I bet if you dug into your bag of tricks and pulled out your first novel, there would be a few minor mistakes in it. I know there are in mine.

Second off, Steven King must feel threatened or something, or Oh yeah... he has a book coming out. Let's bash the most popular book out there and remind people how well he can write.

I think the article is just a publicity stunt used by the man who hocked his new book on The View.

Personally, I wish he would have taken the Orson Scott Card route and spoke kindly. Then, when the fad fades away, and Stephanie Meyer has to stand on her own skills as a writer, she can either fade away with the fad, or show everyone why so many people have bought her books. Steven King calling her out as just a fad, might come back to bite him on the butt now that she has more power in publishing than he does.

And third off, if a publishing house bought her book, and she actually can't "write worth a ****" then, Sweet! There is hope for me to be published too.

He never called Meyer out as a fad, and I don't think he's jealous of her success. It's just the guy's opinion. Obviously a few of you don't share his opinion, and that's cool. But I think you're attributing motivations to him that are not possible to gauge from that snippet.

You want to make a mint? Write a door-stopper about a couple of angsty witch-sisters....Do that with "Charmed".

I think it comes across that he was once one of the sheep, and now he thinks he's the shepherd.