The following appeared in the movie section of my local paper:

Parents should go see this delightfully cheeky animated tale of a farm full of good but misguided beasts under siege from wily coyotes and their own social disarray. Protected by wise, brave old bull, Ben, the carefree animals are egged on by Ben’s irresponsible party-bull son, Otis, who eventually must reconsider his prodigal-son ways.

Good old Disney, eh? A fantasy of harmony whose only problems arise from naivety and poor communication. Poor Otis, he’s such a nice bull — if only he understood, we’re sure his heart would be in the right place.

But, with the intention of shedding light on the social assumptions inherent in this synopsis let me make some substitutions:

Parents should go see this delightfully cheeky animated tale of a country full of good but misguided citizens under siege from wily terrorists and their own social disarray. Protected by wise, brave old Uncle Sam, the carefree citizens are egged on by Sam’s irresponsible party-boy son, George, who eventually must reconsider his prodigal-son ways.

I leave listing the inherent assumptions as an exercise for the reader.

Just a quick recommendation for a little stress relieving web page:
http://www.danpat.fi/janne/flash/kuplamuovi.swf

In my other blog, you’ll find my method for writing while working fulltime.

June 29, 2006

Dear Mr. Barclay:

We have received your letter requesting reconsideration of your decision to non-renew your policy due to recently discovered traffic convictions.

This letter is to advise you we have reconsidered our decision to non-renew your policy, and an offer to renew your policy with Government Employees Insurance Company should arrive within the next several days.

I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that our original decision was based solely on the newly discovered activity and was in no way an attempt to increase your rates just prior to the activity falling outside of the 36 months as you suggest in your letter. The original decision to non-renew your policy based on this newly discovered activity was appropriate; however, we have taken the age of this activity into further consideration, and we have reconsidered our decision to non-renew your policy.

Mr. Barclay, I am pleased that we are able to offer to renew your policy with Government Employees Insurance Company. If you have additional questions, please feel free to call me directly at 1-800-654-5896, extension XXXX.

Sincerely,

Randy XXXXXXX
Lead Underwriter
Government Employees Insurance Company

A few days after I got the above letter, a renewal contract arrived — at a lower rate than our original one.

I have only one question for Randy:

Continue reading this post…

July was a busy month for Anne and I.
On July 1, my cousin Laura and her husband visited. We did touristy stuff. We rode a silly tour of the city called “Ride the Ducks.” It’s a tour in a modified WWII amphibious vehicle, that takes us through the city with a comedian-tourguide-driver and into Lake Union for a tour of houseboats and piers. We also did the Underground Tour — the underground sidewalks that were created in the 19th century when downtown rebuilt after a fire. And we went to a Mariners game. All three in one day. Anne and I had fun — I find I can enjoy live baseball: there’s much less commercial nonsense and no newscasters yammering away.

The next weekend Anne and I attended “kissing school” — a 5 hour workshop in introductory tantra. And two weeks after that, midweek, we took a kayaking class, where we paddled across lake Union.

My life in August has no scheduled special events and I’m looking forward to “getting stuff done,” which is how I refer to working on the multiple projects I always have going.

http://www.ridetheducksofseattle.com/

http://www.undergroundtour.com/

http://www.davidco.com/what_is_gtd.php

The new job is going well. I never have a chance to be bored in my job. I work as support for the diagnostics team. Their funding has been taking off this past year, so there’s growth and lots of new grants being applied for. All of their projects involve creating some kind of cheap, effective test for one disease or another. Often it’s targeted at STDs or infant diseases, since PATH still focuses on reproductive health, but some projects have general application.

Several projects are based on a 1/4″ thick plastic card that contains reservoirs of genetic detection material and channels for mixing. A sample can be dabbed on the card, then the card is attached to small device that drives water into the channels and provides heat for the genetic detection process. A disease can be identified in ten minutes for about $5. (the card is disposable and the device reuseable). This is much better than $300 and two days to do standard lab cultures.
One use of the card will determine what bacteria might be causing infant diarrhea, while another will test for malaria, dengue fever, and three other fever-causers all at once. A new project will be testing for a three or four influenza strains to determine whether it’s avian or ordinary.

It’s almost science fiction!
http://www.path.org

My wife and I have been Geico customers for six years now, and have found no reason to doubt the acumen and good faith of your company – until now.Recently, we received a phone call from one of your agents, who told us that, because of some speeding tickets that had just been discovered, Geico could no longer continue our policy. Of course, we were welcome to get a new policy at a much increased rate…

I was baffled by this, and asked what tickets the agent was referring to. I was told that these tickets had occurred back in 2003! Three years ago! How is it that Geico has been covering us for so long and never noticed before? Was the original agent who arranged our policy incompetent? I had to wonder.

Then I learned that traffic tickets can’t be taken into account by a car insurance company after 36 months. Lo and behold! These tickets are 34 months old! I now wondered if some computer in your system had spat them out as Geico’s last opportunity to increase our rates. A very sharp business practice if true. I am very disappointed.

You will find that this letter appears on my blog at http://www.alanbarclay.com and I am sending a copy of this letter to the Better Business Bureau. However, I await your response before posting to other consumer forums.

If you wish to retain this long-time customer, I suggest you reconsider your position and offer to continue our policy, at or, perhaps, below our previous rates.

Sincerely,

Alan Barclay

Writer’s Weekend June 22-24 2006

Writer’s Weekend apparently started out as an annual getogether in Karen Junker’s back yard. How she convinced agents and editors from big publishers to attend, I’ll never know. How many people can invite an editor to their backyard party and say, oh, there’ be thirty of my writer friends too — all dying to get published. (Editors must be a rare species and honestly passionate about finding new talent.)

It has grown from those days to a full blown writer’s conference in the Bellevue Sheraton (WA). I attended last weekend. As I’ve been growing out of my shell as a self-marketer these last few years, I set myself the challenge of always choosing to do the thing that made me most uncomfortable.

So on Thursday night, I attended the “choose a partner and practice your pitch” hour. On Friday morning, I braved a workshop, where major editors would give feedback on my work (of which I chose what I thought was a _weaker_ piece), and that afternoon, I pitched to an editor from Bantam. For added credit that evening, I read at an open mike, and staged a guerrilla workshop on Balancing Job and Writing. Whew. That was all Friday. Programming Saturday proved tame, providing no similar challenges, so I viewed it as my break.

Good things happened. At the pitch practice, someone pointed out my key opening line. At the workshop, the senior editor of TOR told me I had a tight little scene and gave me great advice on adding emotion to make it more engaging. As that workshop wound down, the other writers at my table were kind enough to listen to my pitch and help me cut it to three minutes. At the pitch itself, the editor asked me to submit.

Hurrah!

Watch for this conference next year:
http://www.writersweekend.com/

Well, the new job is going well. I’m pretty much on top of things and all the people are pleasant. I notice a distinct difference in the non-commercial environment. Also, because most of the people are from an academic background, the attitude is more collegial.

As it happens, we’re not going to Canada for my birthday as normal. We’ll be in Seattle for that weekend. My cousin Laura from out East and her husband are visiting us on July 1 — we’re going to Mariner’s baseball game! (I figure we can do something she likes, and I might find I enjoy it along the way.)

Speaking of things I didn’t expect to enjoy — Anne and I attended the Fremont Solstice Parade yesterday. Fremont is a Seattle neighborhood with a lot of “hippy” history.

The parade featured painted nudists on bicycles, many community floats — including a game show where contestants spin a wheel to determine what punishment a Bush effigy receives (we saw him dunked in a tub of water), a group of dancing and drumming Hindus, a float of Astarte, a procession of Central America day-of-the-dead type costumes and skeletal figures on sticks, and a long procession of belly dancers with banners of various mother-goddesses carried behind them.

It was fun, if crowded. We met a senior citizen from out of town who surprised Anne by saying she most wanted to see the nude bicyclists.

All these liberal hippy goings-on attracted one set of protesters: a pair of prosletizers who held up signs announcing all sinners burn in hell. One guy had a megaphone and was telling us all how all this sex was damning our souls. A few people heckled these evangelists, but no one forced them to leave. The acceptance of free speech seemed to come naturally, even in a packed throng.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont,_Seattle,_Washington

http://solsticecyclist.org/index.htm

A quick post today.
Youtube has a series of cute parody videos of Star Trek, using stop animation of star trek figurines. Very funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBXal1GAA4A