freelanceralph

The recent explosion of video games were players can act like musicians may be fun. However, it is nothing compared to playing the real thing.
My daughter and I play real instruments…she’s a superb young pianist and I’m an avid guitarist with average talent.
She plays in school concerts and take time every day to hone up on her skills. I like to play along with her as backup. If she doesn’t let me play along, I jam with my stereo.
Her friends are turning more and more to guitar hero and rock band video games that do not in any way involve actual reading of music and proper hand positioning. As they go more toward that the start to walk away from real musical training.
Music is one of those glorious gifts that everyone can enjoy. Some are listeners and some are players. However, we all share this great experience in our daily lives.
If everyone ends up faking actual music, we all lose.
The video games are fun and even cool if kept in proper balance and perspective.

I advise anyone who does their own taxes and has some money tied up in investments to make sure they understand all the deductions they may have coming due to the Wall Street debacle.
The tax prep firms out there say people pay significantly more than what they are supposed to pay. I think the reason for that is people choose to use the EZ form to file assuming if they get a little back they’re doing good.
In fact they should be getting more back. In my hometown there are a lot of elderly and hispanics who may not understand the ridiculously complex and overbearing tax code.
And the IRS is like Wall Street…they are happy to take too much of your money without a shrug but if you owe them a dime, look out!
Make sure to understand you taxes and maximize your returns. Both the IRS and the Wall Street scumbags can do fine without getting overpaid.

The playoff picture for the NFL has been finalized. There were a lot of interesting games.
The funniest by far was the humiliation of the Dallas cowboys by the Phila. eagles. It was insanely bad to watch.
I think the eagles will choke in Minnesota next week like they always do. They never win the big games when they have to.
Last week they lost to the Washington redskins by just stinking up the whole stadium. They can enjoy their current win but overall the eagles will fail as they always do.
The best part about watching them choke is seeing their fans get angry and profane.
Philadelphia sports fans can be so low class it’s disgusting.
On a positive note, one guy who deserves to win is Donovan McNabb…he seems to have some class.

Every time we go shopping the receipt given to us from the stores asks for participation in a consumer survey.
I fill them out for the purposes of getting the awards.
I know someone who gets something free every month. Expensive things like a food processor, laptop computer, etc.
The stores that provide these surveys obviously benefit from the research they obtain.
To be honest though, when I fill them out I don’t really read the questions. I just sort of click answers down to get it done. I’m willing to bet that’s what most survey participants do.
THey should devise these surveys better…no one really has the time to rate on a scale of one to ten whether the cashier was friendly or not. A true/false format would be an idea.
They need to make them easier to read and answer quickly. THey will garner much more pertinent information.

I finished my first novel. I think it’s pretty good! At this time it is a sense of accomplishment more than anything. However, I would like to have it published and sell it. I’ve always dreamed of a career writing fiction, and who wouldn’t want that type of career.
But I’m confused as to where to go now to start the publishing process. I’ve done some internet research on this subject and there seems to be myriad options to pursue. If I spend eight hours on my computer searching I almost end up bambozzled, so many choices…so little time.
Which way first?
It is better to use an agent or just poll the individual publishers?
Are there networks that help get new author’s published? Maybe a writer’s group that can give me feedback and tell me who might be interested?
What about contests? Is there a “American Idol” for writers? Are contests a good opportunity for beginners?
If you send your work to a fifty different publishers/agents is there a risk of it being copied without your consent?
What about magazines? I read somewhere selling chapters of your book to magazines helps. If you send a chapter for publishing, do you lose the rights to it and therefore can’t use it again in a novel?
I have so many questions.
I would appreciate some help. I can do my best to help in return.

This holiday was a very good one for my daughter. She received quite a nice assortment of goods including the Wii system. She now says she is no longer the only girl in her school without a Wii.
What made it best though was the fact she thanked us over and again. And, she shared it with her family as they came to visit.
What a kid.
On Christmas morning she woke up before both of us and did not run down to the presents like some greedly little ninny. She came to our room and politely awoke us.
She did not want to open anything until we got our presents first.
Then once we got ours, she went down to open hers.
I know when I was a kid I would knock over furniture to get to my presents on Christmas morning. Then the next day the would all be piled up on the floor and I wouldn’t touch them.
She’ so much better than I was it’s crazy.

This week near where I live in Pennsylvania, another teenager was killed when the car he was riding in hit a pole. The teenage driver was not hurt.
Just because these kids can get their driver’s license at 16 does not mean they can drive!
I know because I got my license when I was 16 and smashed my car like four times.
All of the families are ruined in this situation, the family that lost their son and the family of the driver who survived and has to live with this bloody memory hanging over his head the rest of his life.
Parents, don’t let your kids play with the car. Some parents actually buy their teenagers cars just to make them popular or shut them up or whatever. You might as well give them a loaded gun to play with. Maybe these parents don’t care or are just too stupid to know better.
My daughter is not getting her license until she is in her twenties and she is not getting in a car with an incompetent driver as long as I can do something about it. I will drive her whereever she needs to go.

My daughter is one of the millions of young girls who are fascinated with this new vampire kid in the movie twilight.
She’s eleven years old and saw the movie and is reading the books. Reading with a high level of interest I must say.
I tell her jokingly that if she ever brings home vampire I’m going to drive a stake through his heart without a second thought.
What is it about a vampire that these young girls like? I guess it’s the bad boy thing…or maybe he’s got a real nice personality while sucking the blood and life from his victims.
When I was a kid there was a show on television called “Dark Shadows” which has a very similar type of theme… sexy undead. My sister loved that show.
I’m puzzled.
I believe she is smart enough to know it’s all fiction and fun. But jeepers, couldn’t the object of her fascination be a middle aged working dad…I guess not, she’s got one of those at her beckon call now.

Do yourself and your family a favor during the Christmas holidays and turn off the idiot box televisions.
They only poison the holiday, which in my family of Roman Catholics is important and sacred, with visions of materialism, vanity, sex, and product sales.
If you watch for one hour you will hear the word Christmas said about 50 times…every commercial, new broadcast, movie, sitcom, etc. Just think about the people who are sitting at their corporate desks writing this stuff for consumption. Do you think they know or care about the true meaning? I don’t. I think they are laughing as people dig into their wallets to overpay for their worthless goods and services.
They target the weakest of us…our children.
The retail industry makes about 65% of their total sales for the year in December. And, they put out every insulting product rip-off you can imagine and mark it up about 2000%.
The day after Christmas the airplanes are full of greedy, slimy snake-oil salesman flying to Florida all singing “What a friend we have in Jesus.”
Turn it off.

Today is the winter solsctice and a time for reaching out for the homeless on a national basis. There are lot of people who won’t have a place to stay warm during this winter.
Many of them refuse help. Others are homeless for reasons beyond their control.
Just imagine living in a situation where finding a toilet is a daily challenge.
The homeless plight in the United States motivates many organizations, public and private, to offer free services, raise funds, foster food drives, conduct public awareness events and the like. This speaks volumes about what type of country the United States is where compassion for these people is something we hold important.
Maybe the vast majority of people in this country could not care less about the homeless because they strive to satisfy themselves at the expense of everyone else.
But, the fact there are a percentage of those who care makes me feel pretty good about this mostly ignorant, greedy, self-serving, materialistic place we call home.