Questionable Responses

If you're connected with me on Facebook, you've already seen this rant, so you can stop reading now if you like. If not, read on.

As faithful readers of this blog know, I greatly enjoy writing (and receiving) letters, and over the years I have become an occasional pen pal with some of you. Letter-writing is a dying art, and I'm doing my part to keep it on life support ... now that I'm retired, I've resolved to write more letters to family and friends. And to my elected officials, which brings me to my point ...

In February of 2017, I wrote letters to both of my senators (Mark Warner and Tim Kaine) and my representative (Don Beyer) to express my frustration on the lack of rational attention to the problem of immigration reform, and enclosed with each a copy of my proposed Immigration Reform Plan (which I have also shared with you on this blog ... see here for the latest iteration). In due time, I received replies from all three individuals, all variations on "thank you for your interest in this important topic" and none of them mentioning anything about my proposal.

It's about what I expected, but was still disheartening.

Last month I wrote to the same three elected representatives again, expressing my concern over the Trump "national emergency" and urging that they and their colleagues demand the White House produce hard evidence to prove the existence of such an "emergency."

On March 7th, I received a reply from Senator Kaine. When I read it, it seemed familiar, and so I went back to my files and dug out the 2017 letter from the Senator. Lo and behold, it was virtually identical to the one I'd just received, differing only in some formatting and updated statistics.

I find myself a bit cranked over this.

Now, I understand that my elected reprehensives are busy people who don't have time to read every letter they receive ... they need to spend a lot of time raising money, after all, and so they have staffs who read correspondence from lowly constituents and draft replies to those deemed worthy of response. That's fine. I suspect that what happens is that only a representative few (if any) letters actually make it to the Big Desks; if anything, the staffs probably condense them down into PowerPoint charts or Excel spreadsheets showing broad areas of public interest to be accommodated or ignored as needed.

What irritated me was not that I had received such an obvious a form letter, but that:

a) it was virtually identical to the first, which dated from two years before; and - most importantly,

b) it had no relation at all to the topic I'd written to the Senator about. I hadn't written about immigration and immigration reform, but about the need to push back against questionable presidential actions. I have to wonder if anybody read my letter any further than to see whether it contained certain words that would permit it to be shoehorned into a particular subject bucket that would trigger Form Letter A7 or D4*.

And to date, I haven't heard anyone in Congress really demand evidence.

So ...

I still love to write letters, and I'll keep writing them to my family, my friends**, and my elected reprehensives, but I'll only expect to get meaningful replies from the first two ... unless I enclose money.

Have a good day. Write more letters ... they may be the only way you'll be remembered many years down the road.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Thanks to my old boss, mentor, and friend Hank for this expression.

** I'll write to you, too ... you just have to agree to write back.

Bad Sex in Fiction

If you do much reading beyond the, say, fifth-grade level, you have almost certainly made the acquaintance of that dreaded element of fiction, the sex scene. Ever since human beings first learned to write down their language, whether it was on cave walls, clay tablets, papyrus, parchment, paper, or digital tablets, one standard thing they've tried to record is vivid descriptions of the act of lovemaking. Whether in poetry or prose, in whatever language, sex is a major element of our literature, both high and low.

How many ways can you describe the sexual act? A lot, actually. And not all of them are equally ... uh ... literary. In fact, some of them are so bad that there is actually an annual award presented by Britain's Literary Review for "Bad Sex in Fiction." According to the Literary Review's website,

The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction, and to discourage them. The prize is not intended to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature.

It's similar to the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, except that the Bulwer-Lytton contest is not limited simply to depictions of sex, but of generally overblown and awful writing, and its entries are limited to a single original sentence of any length. Depictions of sex in fiction, as you may know, can go on interminably and be of sufficient ghastliness to make one swear off sex.

The 2014 Bad Sex in Fiction Award went to novelist Ben Okri for a scene in his novel The Age of Magic, for a love scene involving a filmmaker named Lao and his girlfriend, named Mistletoe. I will not share with you the winning scene (because there are children who read this blog), but you can read it for yourself here. His editor was quoted as saying: “Winning the award is fun but a bit undignified, just like sex, assuming you do it properly.”

The shortlist for last year's award featured many other authors, including one of my favorites, Wilbur Smith. Smith writes action-packed adventure stories that brim with historical detail and crackle with vivid writing, and I can't think of a single one of his stories that hasn't included at least one cringe-worthy depiction of sex*. You can check it out for yourself by reading what I think are two of his most exciting novels: The Seventh Scroll and River God. Needless to say, you won't want to read them aloud to your children, unless you are home-schooling them in advanced sex and violence.

So, Dear Readers, share some of your experiences with the rest of us ... what book have you read that contains sex scenes worthy of a Bad Sex in Fiction Award? The 50 Shades Trilogy doesn't count, nor does the new book in the series, Grey, because the overall writing in those is so bad that it's in a class by itself. And the instructions for the IRS form 1040 don't count, either, even though they offer vivid depictions of the screwing of the average taxpayer.

Have a good day. Read something ... stimulating.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* I can't help it ... here's an excerpt from the scene in Desert God that earned Wilbur Smith a place on the shortlist: "(the woman's hair) did not cover her breasts which thrust their way through it like living creatures. They were perfect rounds, white as mare's milk and tipped with ruby nipples that puckered as my gaze passed over them." Oy.

The Bureau of Communication

As you know, Dear Readers (and as I'm sure you're tired of me reminding you), I enjoy writing. The sort of professional, quasi-technical/instructional/doctrinal writing I do at work, and especially the writing of personal letters. This is a dying art, to be sure, squeezed out by the lack of time, the lack of facility with cursive writing, and the growth of phone calls, e-mail and text messaging as the preferred mode of communication. I've written to some of you, and almost all of you have written back (I won't mention the lone holdout, but his name rhymes with Mike), making for a trip to the mailbox that is more entertaining than simply riffling through the piles of bills, political detritus, and assorted advertisements that have replaced the traditional ink-on-paper letter.

For those of you who would like to write, but lack the time, energy, vocabulary, or legible handwriting to do so, there is an option available to you: The Bureau of Communication. This is a wonderful website that provides fill-in-the-blank stationery for everyday correspondence. Need to send a complaint? Offer unsolicited feedback to someone? Deliver bad news? Offer congratulations on an event? Reply to an invitation or, conversely, invite someone to an event? Air a grievance or offer an apology? Look no further! The Bureau of Communication has a form letter waiting for you, and all you need to do is print it out, fill in the blanks, and drop it in the mail. What could be easier?

Amaze your friends ... confound your enemies ... send your thoughts! Visit the Bureau of Communication today!

Have a good day. Write to someone today ... they'll thank you for it.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Letters for All Occasions

If you've been reading this blog for long, you already know that I love to write. I've exchanged handwritten letters with many of you (Kathy, Amanda, allenwoodhaven, and Andrea, among others) as my way of keeping the art of letter-writing alive.

Of course, not everybody likes to write letters any more, and our schools are too busy teaching students to pass standardized tests to teach the joy of communicating in writing. This is most unfortunate, not only because personal letters can convey information to family and friends in a uniquely intimate way, but because we often need to be able to write letters to achieve specific results in life ... cover letters for resumes we hope will get us jobs, letters seeking restitution for some wrong, and letters expressing our opinions to our elected reprehensives*, among others. Very few people nowadays know how to craft a letter to achieve a desired result.

But help is at hand, retro though it may be.

Back in July, my son Matt sent me a link to Frost's Original Letter-Writer, published in 1867 and described in its introductory pages as "A Complete Collection of Original Letters and Notes upon Every Imaginable Subject of Every-day Life, with Plain Directions about Everything Connected with Writing a Letter."

This book includes some 300 sample letters on many useful subjects, including (really!) the following:

- Letter introducing a young musician to a lady friend;

- Letter of complaint for imperfect goods;

- Letter requesting delay in the payment of rent;

- Letter answering an advertisement for a milliner;

- Letter declining to recommend a cook;

- Letter congratulating a friend on the unexpected return of a son supposed to be dead;

- Letter from a lady to a gentleman accusing him of inconstancy and demanding the return of her letters; and,

- Letter advising a young lady to discourage the visits of a suitor.

With the assistance of this useful book, even Mike might finally be able to write me the letter he still owes me. Stranger things have happened.

Have a good day. Want a letter? I'll write you one. E-mail me your snail-mail address and I'll send you your very own handwritten letter ... as long as you promise to send me one in return.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Such letters are much more likely to result in positive action when accompanied by a large financial enclosure. Content of the missive itself is less important.

Nashunal National Proofreading Dey Day

I didn't mention it yesterday, because it was Cartoon Saturday and I was busy engaging in my orgy of self-congratulation over my blogoversary, but March 8 was National Proofreading Day - a day to "promote error-free writing and communication to enhance a professional and personal image," according to its official website.

There's a day for everything, isn't there?

This one is actually pretty important, though, when you think about it. Grammatical, error-free writing is important to the projection of a professional image. People who may never see us in person form opinions of us based on the way we write, and if that writing is full of errors, their opinion isn't likely to be a good one.

Here's a true story from The Annals of Bilbo on the importance of good proofreading ...

Many years ago, I was responsible for a project my organization was running in conjunction with a similar organization in another country. For political reasons, the project had been going along for years on a more-or-less informal basis, but at the time I was in charge, it was decided that it should be formalized. Our senior officials on both sides came up with the basic framework of an agreement (about two paragraphs), and it became my job to turn it into an official document that could be formally signed at an appropriately solemn and stately event.

I spent several agonizing months working with specialists in international law to make sure that the agreement was exactly right ... that everything was legal under the laws of both countries, all responsibilities of both parties were outlined accurately, all considerations of funding were addressed to ensure everyone knew who would pay for what, etc, etc ... by the time the lawyers got done with it, the simple couple-of-paragraphs-on-the-back-of-the-napkin agreement on which the seniors initially agreed had turned into a document of many pages of dense type, with appendices, annexes, annexes to the appendices, and appendices to the annexes. God Himself only needed ten commandments, but our agreement needed that many pages and more. So many people had their fingerprints on it that no one knew any more who had written what.

So ...

Fast-forward to the day the agreement was to be signed. The foreign dignitary and his staff had come to the US for the ceremonies. We'd made all the protocol arrangements, and two pristine copies of the agreement were laid out on the conference table with brand new pens* for the official signing. All was in readiness. Everyone filed into the room and took their places, appropriate remarks were made, and our boss and his foreign counterpart (a man of cabinet rank in his own country) picked up those nice new pens to apply their signatures to the agreement ...

... on which the foreign dignitary's name was misspelled.

Being a gentleman, he made a joke about it and signed anyway. I hid under the table.

And so, Dear Readers, that is my cautionary tale to you of the importance of good proofreading. Dozens of people had reviewed that draft agreement and looked at every letter of every word of every sentence of every paragraph ... and yet we all missed the glaring typo that might have proved to be a grave insult to a less jovial, more self-important person. I try very hard to make sure there are no typos in my posts, but - as you know - they occasionally do creep in, no matter how hard I try ... and there are those of you out there (yes, Dave, I'm talking to you) who will be happy to find them for me.

I wish all of you a happy, if belated, National Proofreading Day! May you never have trouble with your colons. Or any other punctuation, for that matter.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilby Bilbo

* Yes, we had done test signings to make sure the pens would actually write when called upon to do so.