PAD Challenge Day #5

Another long day away from home left me brain dead. Or just brain tired anyway. So here is my hastily written contribution to today's PAD.

Yeah Right

Sometimes a landmark
isn't all that helpful.
As for instance when the
landmark offered is
"Turn by the big Mormon church."
when you are in downtown
Salt Lake City, Utah.

PAD Challenge Day #4

We had a long crazy day, so I got the prompt late. This was all I could come up with...but I got it done today!

Cookie

The old man we brought home
You were for me, but you weren’t a “kid” dog
Right away you were mom’s dog

Eventually you tolerated my presence
And over the years you became just one of the family
As you watched other animals arrive and leave

I imagined the speech you gave them –
“I’ve seen ‘em come and I’ve seem ‘em go,
but I’m the king around here.”

You even witnessed my departure
With that practiced eye of yours
I doubt my leaving alarmed you

It was mom you loved and mom you pined for
Those long nights when she was away
Waiting right in the big front window

And she loved you always dearly
Never complaining of your presence at her feet
Mourning for you deeply the day you left this earth

Though you were bought for me
And brought home to be mine
It was mom you were truly meant fo

PAD Challenge Day #3

I had a ton of ideas floating in my brain for today's prompt, but in the end, this is the one that won out:

The Problem With This Wind

is that I feel it will soon
carry me off to the Land of Oz.
And I do not have time today
to deal with overly happy
little people or maniacal
green women with flying
chimps or blissful good fairies
with annoyingly lilting voices.
I just do not have time to mess
with three overly affectionate
men with painted faces dressed
in Halloween costumes and with
a desperate need for therapy.
I simply do not have time for
a long walk down a bumpy
yellow road to a strangely
green glowing city ruled over
by a little man with a napoleon
complex. So I hope this wind
calms down soon because I
purely do not have the time.

And, for fun, (not posted on the PAD blog) here is a limerick that also came to mind:

The problem with shaving my legs
is that I can not reach them.
When the baby arrives
in two months time
then maybe I'll be able to see them.

PAD Challenge Day #2

I struggled at first today with the prompt, but in the end two ideas presented themselves, so again I went with two poems:

Today?

In the mountains for a picnic.
A beautiful day.
I follow the other girls -
doing my best to fit in.
Will today be the day
they will finally accept me?
Someone spots a good hiking trail.
We all rush in one direction.
The girl in front of me trips
over a large stone.
“She pushed me! She pushed me!”
All eyes are on me.
I didn’t push her.
She tripped.
No today is not the day.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Outsider

"We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful." - C.S. Lewis

Alone among many
crying for truth.
‘There is no such thing,’
they reply with certainty.

‘All is relative.
Tolerate only those
who tolerate.’
Reason spirals downward.

‘Just Say No.’
‘Just Do It.’
The conflicting images
of my formative years.

‘Just give in,
just give up,
just check your brains at the door.’
The majority is the rule.

Though all around
argue against it
I must find the Truth.
In the end it is all that matters.

(Check out all the other poets posts at Poetic Asides!)

April is National Poetry Month. There are all kinds of ways to get in on the celebration of that fact. My own personal contribution will be a repeat of last years Poem-A-Day Challenge at Robert Lee Brewer's blog (check out my cool completion badge here on this page!). Robert is posting a prompt every day during the month of April and the challenge is to complete at least a first draft of a poem for each day based on the prompt. Today's prompt was a poem about an origin. I couldn't decide between two ideas I had, so I posted the following two poems -

Origins

She called seeking answers.

Is this the man’s name?
Yes.
Is this his social security number?
Yes – but who are you?

I think I may bear
a resemblance to the man.
Maybe he and I share
a bit of DNA.

Who is the man?
I think I’d like to meet him.

She came seeking answers.

Do I look like him?
Yes.
Does he want to know me?
Yes.

The greater questions went
unanswered in the end.
Shared DNA aside
too many years had been lost.

------------------------------------------------------------

April Fool’s

From whence sprung
this strange custom -
of making a mockery
of fellow man?

Such obscure origins
and no clear indication
as to how it came
to be ingrained tradition.

Suggestions, opinions,
guesses and speculations
run rampant, but none
answer the question.

Perhaps we who consider
ourselves modern folk
and enlightened are in fact
the butt of the biggest joke.

If you aren't into writing a poem every day, but would instead like to read a poem every day (personally, I am all about both) you can check out Poets.org. Not only is that a great website every day of the year, but you can sign up for them to email a poem to you every day in April.

Don't even have time to read a poem a day? How about checking out Poems Out Loud. Here, as the name clearly suggests, you can listen to poems being read out loud by their authors or by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky.

Enjoy National Poetry Month and let me know how you are celebrating!

The 3-Day Novel Contest

I've never heard of this before, but it sounds very interesting. Write an entire novel in three days and have the possibility of a publishing contract for that novel? Sound crazy? Well, more than a few people have accomplished the feat. Here is the link to all of the info: http://www.3daynovel.com/

Shysters, Scam Artists and Snake Oil Salesmen

To paraphrase an old saying - "When the going gets tough, the con men come out of the woods." Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in much of the media doom and gloom regarding our economy. (I'll have to save all my thoughts on that for another blog.) But, should the down trends continue, I think it only inevitable that the trend toward scamming and conning will continue as well. The unfortunate truth is that swindlers and crooks have been around forever and they will be around from now till doomsday, but when people are at their most desperate is when they are at their most vulnerable as well and the tricksters love to prey on that.

Last week my boss asked me to go with him Tuesday (yesterday) as his guest to a seminar that he had signed up for. The topic - website development. Hmmm....right up my alley. He is looking for any way to make a buck these days (who isn't?) and he had attended a 90 minute session put on by these guys during which they sold him a software package and access to their website where they give you some tools to put together a website with merchant services, a shopping cart, etc. Sounded interesting. Supposedly, they were going to teach you at the all day seminar how to use that software he had purchased and tell you about how you could upgrade to more of their services. Uh-huh. What we walked into was a fast-talking, high energy sales pitch designed to convince you to part with $6000 of your hard earned cash that day. Before you walk in, they insist that you fill out a form telling them if you have access to a line of credit, credit cards, personal loans or other means of financing. My hackles went up on the spot. Why are they asking that question as a prerequisite of letting me in the door? They proceeded to tell me why - not long after I sat down, actually. Lo and behold, folks, they are making me an offer and it's a today only offer. If I didn't take them up on this offer right now, then I can never take them up on it again. I don't have any time to go and do my due diligence (as an intelligent business person should do) to research this company, talk it over with my spouse or find out if anyone has ever even heard of these people. No, I must buy their product today. And, wonder of wonders, if I don't have the cash, can't put it on a credit card and can't borrow it from my great-aunt Margaret, they have the perfect solution! I can finance through them today (I read later that their interest rate is around 18% - I don't know from personal experience.) My boss and I left at the first break they had around 12:00. About twenty minutes of surfing the internet last night convinced me that we made the right decision. The name of this company is Storesonline and their parent company (from the research I could find online) is iMergent. You can Google them if you care to. There are a few success stories floating around out there and a ton of unhappy customers with lawsuits. I found one article dating back to 2002 (http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/team4/1419114/detail.html) claiming that attorneys general in seven states had opened investigations against these guys. Before they did business as Storesonline, they operated under the name Galaxy Mall. As I said, the shysters have been around for a long time (as evidenced by this shady company), but right now people are really feeling the need to "do something" and are, I think, more susceptible to this stuff. As my boss said yesterday about a very nice lady who sat next to me, "It's like they're just wanting to take her social security check right out of her hands."

I heard another story today about the latest in credit card scams. Apparently prescription medicines and cameras are the hot scammers commodity in recent days, according to a family member who was just scammed last week while trying to purchase a video camera from a disreputable online company. She was told by a customer service representative of her credit card company to be wary of the television ads promoting the first three months of your prescription free. By the time you figure out you aren't getting the medicines in the mail, they are long gone with your money. In my cousin's case, she found out the next day after ordering that she was being had and when her husband called to demand a refund or some proof that the camera was being shipped he was told that a shipping confirmation number would not be available for another 48 hours. The credit card company rep explained that this is because the credit card companies will not help you out after 72 hours, so the scam artists were trying to buy enough time to make a clean getaway.

Here are some tips when considering buying anything in person or online:
1. Know your seller - Is it a reputable company? Have you ever heard of them? Do you know people who have done good business with them before?

2. Don't be fooled by high pressure sales pitches - If you have to make a decision right now, it's probably a bad decision.

3. Do your research - If you don't know the company, a quick look online at the Better Business Bureau (http://www.bbb.org/) or often just a simple Google search will give you all the information you need.

4. When using your bank card, as often as possible, choose "credit" instead of "debit." - This will increase your level of protection in most instances (http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/fitness/archive/2001/ff20010808.htm) (If you are dealing with a small, local merchant that you know you can trust, you may want to stick with debiting your card as a courtesy because they are charged higher fees on credit transactions.)

5. Stay informed - Check out websites like Scambutsers.org (http://www.scambusters.org/) or Snoopes.com (http://snopes.com) to find out the facts about anything that sounds too good to be true.