Category Archives: Non Sequitur Thursday

I Can’t Facebook It

Posted on November 22, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I have been composing a Facebook status in my head that goes something like this:

Let’s see who reads my posts all the way through. Still reading? If so, that is where you and I differ, because I usually stop reading when thus challenged. This post should go on to be sentimental about friends, or self-righteous about some disease or judging others, or even silly about we just got arrested. Then it would get manipulative and sneer at uncaring people who “just keep scrolling.” For heavens’ sake, what’s wrong with scrolling? If we didn’t scroll, we couldn’t read very many posts now, could we? Anybody still reading? Or have you gone back to scrolling (like I would have). Of those still reading, I suppose some of you are huffing, “Well I DO care about Facebook friends and cancer patients and all those other issues, I am NOT self-righteous and I would NEVER manipulate anybody!”

That is pretty much as far as I’ve gotten. I can’t think of a zippy conclusion. In fact, I only really like the first three sentences.

Oh, let’s be honest, I’m not going to post anything like that on Facebook. I really just typed it in here, because I needed a post for Non-Sequitur Thursday. A Facebook post that I do not intend to put on Facebook is non-sequitur enough for me. Hope to see you on Lame Post Friday.

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Kind of a Time Warp

Posted on November 1, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I had intended to have all posts about Halloween movies till Halloween night. I have plenty of material to work with, thanks to TCM and the miracle of DVR. Well, I was working on it, and let me tell you, my post on The Tingler is getting scary and not in a good way.

On the brighter side, I noticed yesterday on my computer that WordPress seems to be twelve hours ahead of me. Thus yesterday, when I wrote about Cat People, was Halloween. Today I can go on to November, or as the retail world seems to think, Christmas. I was thinking I could post this silliness tomorrow on Lame Post Friday, when I realized, according to WordPress, THAT’S TODAY!

However, as I wrote the preceding earlier, before beginning my shift at work, it was (and still is as I type this) Thursday. Non-Sequitur Thursday, in fact (if you saw me trying to rearrange the paragraphs of my Tingler post using asterisks, you would agree that it is). I was and still am having an indecisive day. I had to flip a coin to decide whether to drink coffee or water as I was writing before work (drinking both was ineligible for reasons I will not go into here).

I wrote more while at work, but it was fairly tiresome. There was one parenthetical comment I rather liked, but I can’t figure out how to fit it in now. At any rate, I am over 200 words. I deem that respectable. I will continue to work on my post about The Tingler and eventually publish it, regardless of the day WordPress or the calendar say it is.

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Heard It Through The Grapevine

Posted on October 18, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

There are days I don’t suffer from Writer’s Block, I suffer from Show It To Anybody Block. This sometimes takes the form of Write It And Cross It Out, but other times the words sit in my notebook, staring at me accusingly. “How could you write such a thing?” or “You’re not going to SHOW this to anybody are you?” or, more often, “What kind of a chicken-shit are you that you can write a thing and never let it see the light of day?”

I must be a writer. Even my words have words!

So you may have guessed, it is Non-Sequitur Thursday, better known as another excuse to write a post about Why I Can’t Write a Post Today. The thing is: I WROTE today! I started three different blog posts! I just can’t seem to finish any of them.

One of many memorable lines is the movie The Big Chill is, “I’m not hung up on completion.” It is said rather defensively, and in general I agree. It is usually a good idea to finish what we start. In my case that would include blog posts, novels and cleaning my closet. I probably could come up with some good half-baked philosophy about why it’s good to finish things or even why it is SOMETIMES a good thing not to. However, half-baked philosophy is for Lame Post Friday.

So, at the risk of being sequential on Non-Sequitur Thursday, I offer another apology for a foolish post. Still, I may have entertained. I may have offered an excuse for somebody to feel some superiority. Remember, no life is wasted. You can always stand as a bad example.

Hope to see you on Lame Post Friday.

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Come On, Friday!

Posted on October 4, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

What a terrible blogging day! And not just because of my writing tribulations. Technology has got me down!

I wrote something while at work today (I really feel I must say each time that it was on a break, although I don’t imagine any management types read this blog) (still, you never know) (six degrees of Cindy’s blog?).

Where was I? Ah yes, wrote something at work. It wasn’t very good. Still, it was words. I could have published it. That is, I could have published it if I could have gotten it typed in at my desk top. Unfortunately, my desk top decided to act up.

It has been doing that a lot lately. It gets rrrreeeeaaaallllyyyy ssslllloooooooowwwww. And then it stops. Yeah, kind of like my writing some days.

So I got quite frustrated and stopped trying. I came downstairs and got on our Netbook. That works a lot better. Unfortunately, it is not so good for typing. The keyboard is much smaller than I am used to. You are reading this (oh dear I HOPE somebody is still reading!) and it probably looks pretty OK. That is, if I have caught all the typos I have made with my FAT fingers.

And just now I hit SOMETHING that made this whole thing disappear. I luckily found it under Drafts. WordPress is really a very good site. Hmm, maybe some readers feel it is less than lucky that I found it.

Anyways, will all this trauma, I am not up to perking up the less than stellar stuff I wrote earlier. I can only try to come up with a somewhat catchy title and have another Non-Sequitur Thursday.

Oh well, maybe it’s not catchy. Maybe catching, like a virus. Oh dear.

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At Least I Mentioned the Benefit

Posted on September 13, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

Oh, this is terrible. I’m sitting here looking at the blank screen with my fingers on the keyboard and NOTHING IS HAPPENING.

Apparently something is happening, because I just typed in two sentences. Anyways, the screen isn’t blank. It says “Add New Post” at the top, and there is a box that says “Enter Title Here,” and a bunch of little symbols that I can click to access other posts or italicize words on this post etc etc etc.

Welcome to Non-Sequitur Thursday.

I had not meant to write yet another nothing post. I had meant to dash out a blurb for a benefit spaghetti dinner to be held this Saturday, Sept. 14 for Father Paul and Patricia Bailey. Fr. Paul used to be the pastor of the church Steven and I attend (when we attend church). They both have health problems, and it is just too bad, because they are the nicest people imaginable. I know, you would expect a pastor and his wife to be nice, but still. Really, really nice.

I donated an afghan for the Chinese auction to be held with the dinner. I had been going to write about my tribulations finding the lady’s apartment to drop it off (you know my terrible sense of direction). But, quite frankly, nothing is coming.

By the way, East Herkimer Fire Department, 193 E. Main Rd., East Herkimer. 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14. $7 ages 12 and over, $4 ages 5 to 12, younger than 5 free.

Ooh, look, over 200 words. That works, doesn’t it?

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No Potatoes

Posted on August 16, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I don’t really know what that means. Louis Armstrong says it at the beginning of one of the songs on a CD I have, and since it is a non-sequitur there, I thought I would it would be appropriate as a headline on Non-Sequitur Thursday.

As you can guess, I ain’t got much.

I’m not really sure what Non-Sequitur Thursday is supposed to be anyways. I guess I just use it as an early Lame Post Friday. Sorry about that, but, you know what, I’m tired. It’s been a long week. A pedantic person would say the week is seven days long, as is every week since they invented weeks. That person would be quite right, but, you know what, being right is no reason to say something. There’s some half-baked philosophy I may re-visit on Lame Post Friday.

Lame Post Friday, that’s the day I’m waiting for. For one thing, it’s defined. Random observations and half-baked philosophy. What is Non-Sequitur Thursday but me being too lazy to write a real post. Right up there with Wuss-Out Wednesday.

Stand by for some more half-baked philosophy: I started this blog because I wanted to make myself write something every day. Does it count if what I write is dumb? How much effort is it required that one expend for writing to “count”? I put it in quotes, because it just occurred to me to wonder, what does it even mean for writing to count?

I will feel better if I answer those questions. Yes, it counts, no matter how dumb, and “dumb” is a judgement call anyways (we’ll save half-baked philosophy on “dumb” for another day). The effort of putting fingers to keyboard or around pencil is effort enough. For writing to count, it must mean something to someone, and quite frankly, most writing does (maybe something dumb, but let’s not re-open that can of worms).

Now maybe I’ll go eat some potatoes.

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After Staring at a Blank Screen

Posted on August 2, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

It’s not that I can’t write. It’s that I can’t write a blog post!

I wrote more than two pages on my novel while at work today. OK, maybe they weren’t good pages. Maybe it’s a crappy novel. These things happen. The fact is I sat there and wrote them with a bare minimum of staring at the blank page first.

So I sit down to dash off a blog post and nothing. What’s that all about? I know damn well I wrote something about how writing the blog every day was helping me to write the novel. Is writing the novel now making me unable to write the blog? That’s ridiculous!

And obviously not true, because, look, I just wrote two paragraphs (I don’t count the first one; it’s only two sentences). I do find it interesting, if a little snake-eating-its-own-tail-ish, to write about writing. I like to read about writing, too. A writing friend of mine said she stopped doing that, because she feared she was reading about writing more than she was writing. When she said that, I just looked sheepish.

I do have some Mohawk Valley adventures planned for the weekend, one of which I alluded to in a post earlier this week (astute readers will know it when they see it) (extremely clever readers may have already guessed) (now I’m being too coy; OK, I’m done). I may even write another post about Why I Can’t Write a Post, this time thinking of something more substantive to say. In the meantime, this is Non-Sequitur Thursday, so I have only to think of a foolish headline, and I’m done.

Hope to see you on Lame Post Friday.

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Would That Be A Sequitur?

Posted on May 3, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

Did I mention that I cannot plan anything? Oh, yes, I did, on Monday (you can arrow back to it if you’re interested; I’m too lazy to do one of those ping things). My plan this time was to write my Non-Sequitur Thursday and Lame Post Friday posts both on Thursday, to make my day easier on Friday. I began writing them on a break at work.

Can I FIND the notebook I was writing them in? NO! Am I a little STRESSED about it? YES! Do I NEED all these capital letters? APPARENTLY!

The funny thing is, what I had written for Thursday began with a lament about my current stress. And here I go adding to it by misplacing my notebook it was written in. That gives me a bit of a chuckle against myself, and laughter is a known stress reliever. You see how I go around in a circle. That must be why my friends say I’m dizzy (you know who you are) (oh yeah, like all my friends read every post).

So I’m feeling a bit better about the stress, but I realize it is scarcely a non sequitur. Really more of a logical progression. What’s that all about? I’m not a logical, organized, orderly person. I’m sitting here, typing off the cuff (as Truman Capote said, it’s not writing, it’s typing) (although in my case, I like to think it’s both). You would think I would be a little more non-sequitur-y about it.

I am going to feel a little bad about posting this, because I think it sounds kind of dumb. I don’t suppose I’ll feel bad enough to not post it, though. It can stand as a bad example and an encouragement to others: “Look at the tripe she publishes! I am obviously a MUCH better blogger than that!” (I see you use a lot of capital letters, too).

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Can’t Say All the Syll

Posted on April 12, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I would like to spend today’s Non-Sequitur Thursday on a minor tirade in defense of three syllable words. I don’t know that there’s anything particularly non-sequiturish about it, but it is what happened to come out of my pen.

Full disclosure: I am actually writing this on Wednesday, in my on-going quest to lessen my busy week stress. I’m not sure it’s working.

So here’s my question: When did people get too lazy to say all three syllables of a word? Some time ago I got annoyed when sportscasters started calling Syracuse “The ‘Cuse.” I think this really started on t-shirts and bumper stickers. That’s where I saw it first. Then the sportscasters started in and I realized Syracuse as I know it is doomed.

And you notice how they put the cool “the” at the beginning. Hello! You shorten the word by two syllables but add a one syllable word. That’s a net savings of only one syllable. And one could argue that since it’s adding a whole other word, it’s not a savings at all.

Also, nobody spends time with their family any more. It’s “the fam.” That one’s all over Facebook. Statuses share how somebody had a great time with “the fam.” This one’s not even a net savings, because it’s typed. T-h-e-space is one more keystroke than i-l-y. So these folks are just being cool.

The example that got me to write about this foolishness comes from my beloved cable television. A cheesy series which shall here remain nameless invited its most loyal viewers to purchase “merch” from their online store. For heavens’ sake MERCH? Why don’t you just say “stuff”? “Things”? At least she didn’t say “the merch.” If she had, I could have suggested “items.”

I think part of the problem is we’ve all gotten too cool for school. Sarcasm is our default setting, and we just can’t be bothered. Well, there are things I can’t be bothered with, too, but yet I can usually manage to say an entire word.

Oh, one exception: I rather enjoy the expression “Not no mo’.” Of course, that’s not even saving a syllable, just an “r” sound, which is not really a very burdensome sound to make. I just think it sound cool. So, YES, I, too, succumb to the lure of seeming cool. Point and laugh if you must (and I know some of you must) (you know who you are).

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Lame Non-Sequiturs

Posted on March 29, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I saw on the news Tuesday morning (WKTV out of Utica, NY) that somebody had declared it No Complaints Tuesday. My rebellious nature immediately asserted itself.

I will naturally complain about anybody telling me not to complain. After all, we can help improve things by complaining about what’s wrong. And if we can’t change things we can relieve our feelings by expressing ourselves. I have a lot of intelligent, thoughtful, CERTAINLY NOT whiny complaints, and I am sure you do, too, gentle reader.

That is the cue for somebody to sniff, “I never complain. It doesn’t do you any good to complain. I look on the positive side always.” Well, if that is truly what you say, I bet a lot of your friends complain about you as soon as you leave the room.

I wrote the preceding Tuesday morning but decided to save it for Non-Sequitur Thursday. I actually continued my Tuesday in a non-complaining fashion, I think largely because I had gotten it out of my system with that silly diatribe.

So today is Non-Sequitur Thursday, but it is also my Friday — that is, Lame Post Friday — since I have tomorrow off. Score! I can be random, half-baked and none of it has to make any sense (I KNOW some of you are saying, “So what else is new?” and what an obvious thing to say. Find some new jokes!).

I intend to spend a good part of the weekend watching cheesy movies which I will write about for your entertainment. I have some waiting on my DVR especially for the purpose. I might also hit some local retail establishments in search of Easter goodies.

Hey, why is it there a moon on my watch (how’s that for a non-sequitur) (and a random observation)? It can’t mean p.m., because I have my watch set to military time (if you want to annoy some people, tell them it’s 16:48 when they ask you what time it is). It’s not that I’m such a gung ho, prior service kind of veteran (but feel free to call me Sgt Q). It’s that this way when I set my alarm for 3:30 or 5 I know it will ring in the morning. Just another little bit of security when I go to sleep at night that I’ll get up on time in the morning. Maybe the moon has always been there. Or maybe my watch is mooning me. Wise-ass Timex!

Well, that is over 400 words. I think that is plenty enough silliness for one day (is that half-baked philosophy?) (I know “plenty enough” is a tautology, but I like the sound of it). Time to get on with my weekend. Happy Thursday, everyone!

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