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The Lazarus Effect is yet another movie about how bad science is, in the mode of Splice, Godsend and several others. It's kind of weird that so many of these movies seem to want to talk about the dangers of science like it isn't constantly creating miracles for us every fucking day, instead thinking it's something evil and sinister.
I wonder if they think we should all just drop the stuff and go back to worshiping Jesus in the dark by candlelight and thinking the Earth is flat and magic is real because someone invented something. Would that be better, Blumhouse Productions?? I dunno. But I think it's real easy for movies like this to miss the point of The Exorcist, is all I'm saying.
Director: David Gelb
Starring: Olivia Wilde, Mark Duplass
Co-written with Colin/The Observer.
This really is a pretty dumb, silly movie on all accounts – but there is one really, really good moment that comes out of nowhere and is then never seen again. We'll get to that in time.
The film begins with a bunch of scientists trying to reanimate a dead pig, I guess – what a weird opening scene! If the first line in your movie is "this pig smells like shit," then I think you need to go back and rewrite your script, buddy.
Then we see that a new intern chick is filming the two lead scientists, Frank, played by Mark Duplass, and Zoe, played by Olivia Wilde. They're both joking around and act more like college students than actual pros. I guess you have to find humor somehow, but they seem awfully cavalier for a group of people trying to reanimate the dead!
|This is the fun science lab where they break all of God's laws! Also, bad idea to show the type of camera set-up the entire movie had in your first scene.
Oh, and their other scientist assistant guys include one guy who's basically a stereotypical stoner character. Who thought that was a good idea? Did you try harder to assemble a Scooby Doo-like cast of misfits than a scientific research team? I love the scene of these two just sitting around playing a board game in a scientific research lab – what is this, the pre-school daycare section of the lab? Are they waiting for their moms to pick them up?
The idea behind their project, though, is to reanimate the dead and "give everyone the second chance they deserve." Which is awesome, because Fidel Castro just died. I'm sure that's why they're really doing this.
So they test their project on this dog, and it actually works – the dog comes back to life. They seem pretty casual about that, honestly – they barely bat an eye when it happens. Uh, guys, pretty sure it's worth more than popping open a bottle of champagne! You just fucking brought a living creature back from the dead. But you're treating it like you just passed an exam in school. Kind of a disproportionate reaction there.
|"Meh, I got the new iPhone the other day, this isn't that great."
They take the dog home, which seems like a brilliant idea to me. It predictably starts doing weird shit like walking on the bed in an odd, possessed manner... I'm sure this is normal for the dog. The next day they all get into a rousing conversation about if dogs have memories and if it can remember its former life – well, of course it has memories. Based on that bed scene, I think it has memories of watching Paranormal Activity too many times.
They also get in a conversation about the afterlife, with Frank saying when you die you see a light because the brain floods the pineal gland with DMT, so that's why people think they've had some religious experience. Zoe disagrees and says she thinks the soul has a "waiting place" that it goes to after death and that's sometimes why it happens. It's kinda silly, but I only bring this up because it will matter later on...
It turns out the school they're working in has mostly Christian students, so the dean of the school forces them to stop doing it, because... I guess it would offend their delicate sensibilities? Huh. I guess that whole safe spaces on college campuses thing WAS onto something. I love that they apparently didn't have any idea what these scientists were doing on their own fucking campus. "You can do whatever ungodly abomination of science you want, but if we find out about it, our Christian sensibilities will shut you down. We're oddly reactive in that way!"
|"Oh ho ho, I'm a hoity-toity upper class official standing in the way of your progress! I forgot my monocle and twirling-mustache at home! My only role is to be a one-dimensional obstacle that never shows up again!"
I also love Frank's argument as to why they should be allowed to do the experiment. He says it's because many other scientific accomplishments started as accidents – going on to list Penicillin and Coca Cola as examples. Yup, what you're doing is just like those! Penicillin, Coca Cola and the Necronomicon are all on the same page!
So then a bunch of cliché guys in suits acting like dicks come in and take literally fucking everything in the lab. They don't take the dog though! You know... the one thing that's proof that the experiment worked. You'd think that would've been their first priority, but I guess they just liked all the shiny lab beakers and toys more.
Then the main characters are all whinging about how they can't go on and they lost all their data... you still have the fucking dog! Did you forget about that??? You know, the abomination of nature that you brought back from the dead? Remember?!
They even go back to the lab, frantically in the middle of the night, to recreate their experiment so they have proof, still never remembering the dog even exists. I guess the script has Alzheimer's and forgot about its own plot. Either that, or this was a cheap-ass way to have Zoe killed off so they could revive her. She really is pretty clumsy though! What a doofus.
|It's barely even clear what happened. She... got electrocuted? OK then.
For some reason they take off her shirt to try and revive her Pulp Fiction style with a syringe full of whatever it is. Do her boobs have antenna powers that make her body more receptive to revival attempts? Maybe. I also like that they never once think about calling an ambulance for her! Nope, these geniuses have got it down so hard that they let her die and have to resort to basically black magic science to bring her back.
But on the upside... it works pretty easily!
|As an added bonus, Zoe always did want to volunteer at her local haunted house attraction for Halloween, so this is good practice.
The others start asking her what it was like to die. But Frank says that isn't important and she needs to rest. Yeah! Pfft. Who needs to know trivial things like that? That shit is for straight-up losers. Frank is right as always!
But things get more somber for the group when they realize Zoe is now using 100% of her brain power, when normal humans only use 10%, even though that statistic isn't really true, in spite of what the movie Lucy wants you to think. But maybe that's a good thing for Zoe now. Maybe she can now use her brain for important things, like remembering the lyrics to even more songs, or knowing really complicated tax evasion schemes. The possibilities are endless!
The one really good moment of this film is when Zoe is talking to Frank about the visions and weird things she's seen when she died and after she came back. She looks really scared and talks about how she's been trapped in Hell for "years" and how she can't get out even now from this eerie 'burning building' world that ties into her past in ways the movie hasn't explained yet. The way Olivia Wilde plays this is quite effective and creepy, and she looks seriously tormented.
But fortunately, the movie realized THAT was a mistake, and quickly return to the awful jump scares and bad horror cliché of every other fucking movie like this. Phew. Glad you dodged the bullet of actually having to put in effort. There's a scene pretty shortly after this where she tries to make out with one of the guys, then when he tells her she needs to calm down, she locks him in a closet and then crumples it to nothing with her mind, killing him instantly. Glad he was in the movie for no reason but to die!
|Nice molasses you put in that cabinet, movie...
The end of the movie is taken up by an endless dull chase scene full of shitty jump scares. There are some more scenes of the burning house hallucination that seems to revolve around Zoe. But nothing of substance, really. Mostly just scenes like this where she gets all black-eyed and growls like a demon dog or something. So lame.
Then it's revealed, pointlessly, that Zoe actually started the fire when she was a kid, and a bunch of people died. I don't know what this has to do with anything. Aside from, you know, making the whole movie a Billy Joel song.
Then the ghost-little-girl version of Zoe (I know it makes no sense, but the stupid movie's almost over) turns into what I can only describe as a great metalcore album cover from 2005.
|No children were harmed in the making of The Lazarus Effect except in terms of their social standing and artistic integrity.
It's also very funny to me that this movie is all about science and the characters are scientists, yet the plot validates a completely speculative, specific opinion of Zoe's about what the afterlife is (that "holding area for the soul" she mentioned earlier). It's exactly what she thought it was! Why not go further? Have her think the afterlife is a bunch of talking pigs wearing sombreros, and then find out that's really what it is. Go all the way, you dumb movie!
Then she kills all of them and the end of the film is just her starting to revive them all with the evil, bad science, like they did to her. Oh no! But I guess it's got kind of a rosy lining – none of them actually die. They all get to live happily ever after as reanimated zombie demons! Except for that one guy who she crushed in the closet earlier. But who cared about him?
If horror movies were a class in school, The Lazarus Effect would be the kid that just ate glue all day. The characters and story are just bad, with nothing of any interest, and the scares are mostly all jump scare crap and cliché like the whole 'black eyes' trick that has gotten really old at this point. The movie was full of a bunch of plot threads like the shady corporation stealing their research material, which just went nowhere. At around 80 minutes long, that isn't very impressive.
There WAS that one really good moment where Olivia Wilde was talking about being in hell, which interestingly was the opposite of the usual 'show don't tell' paradigm. But otherwise, it sucked.
The whole thing was like Re-Animator, except it took itself way too fucking seriously. Strangely, Re-Animator was the better-written and better-done film though. Which is a pretty sad elegy for The Lazarus Effect, as it loses out on every count to a movie that had a scene of a decapitated head almost giving a kidnapped woman oral pleasure.
|This is what's more serious and mature than The Lazarus Effect, for clarity's sake.


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Most common resolutions I've seen (and made):
- Lose weight
- Be healthy
- Be happy
- Find a better job
- Be happy, dammit!
- Follow your dreams
- Find your passion
- Study more
- Work more
- Get married (yes I've seen it, and I sort of get it when a couple has been together for a couple of years and it just doesn't get done!)
- Leave your spouse (seen it too, not an easy choice)
- Become more spiritual.
- Meditate.
- Write more (2014 was an all-time low for blogging at 9 posts –this makes 10 –and 4000 views) so I showed 'em!
- Study more.
- Become a better daughter/sister/aunt/sister-in-law/niece/etc.
- Do something daring.
- Learn to cycle.
- Learn the cello.
- Write a novel (that's my favorite, I always kill all the characters in chapter 1) J
- Finish that story I got in a folder I call "old old old laptop" which just means it's something I've had for a long time.
- Finish that other story in the folder called "stories" which has a few more other stories right next to it.
- Face my fears, again!
- Get in touch with my long lost friends.
- Drop all the sucky friends.
Here's what I know about 2015:
- Absolutely nothing!
Drumroll please…
Follow Through
And to give myself a helpful hint:
So even if I decide to do nothing, and follow through, then I've done something. But, if I decide to become NASA's next top rocket scientist, I'm following through on that too because it doesn't really matter how terrible our lives are now, or even how wonderful. It doesn't matter that I haven't written a story this year, or haven't learned to play the cello, or even if I gained another scary 10 kg. What matters is that I write 1 and only one story, if that's what it means to not have a dozen incomplete stories in my old old old laptop folder and say at the end of the year that I want to finish it on the next.
Bridget Jones's New Year Resolutions

subset: commoncrawl


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View the trailer
for Ellen's latest film
On The Rocks Films Presents:
Second String Guests
CAGNEY Original Cast Recording
Now on iTunes!
CAGNEY is a Hollywood HIT!
West Coast Premier Review
Ellen receives nomination for Outstanding Female Dancer Off Broadway from the 2016 Astaire Awards!
Ellen receives Astaire Award nomination
for Outstanding Female Dancer Off Broadway
CAGNEY receives two
Drama Desk Nominations
CAGNEY receives three Outer Critic Circle Nominations
CAGNEY receives Off Broadway Alliance Best Musical nomination
Ellen get's Broadwaysted in her podcast interview with Bryan Plofsky, Kevin Jaeger, & Kimberly Cooper
Ellen Z. Wright


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super water intensive tanning
Intense, ultra rapid tan for face, body and soft hair.
Ultra rapid tanning water with melanin stimulator. It facilitates a fast tanning process for a homogeneous sun kissed glow, it decreases the feeling of heat on the skin, as it cools it down while moisturizing it. It is also a very handy anti-salt body and face wash. Spray it on your hair, as well, to contrast the drying effects of wind, sun and chlorine. It leaves face and body skin moisturized, hair is soft and a rapid and long lasting suntan is guaranteed. Super practical and very comfortable to use.
No sunscreen protection
Low risk of allergies
Dermatologist tested
Paraben free
Made in Italy
Its formula contains a special active ingredient that stimulates melanin, which gets then homogeneously distributed on every skin layer, for a golden tan that looks even and natural.
The natural Moisturizing Active Ingredients give comfort and moisture to the skin.
Does not contain any sunscreen protection
Low risk of allergies
Dermatologist tested
Paraben free
As a tanning and cooling water: spray it all over your body, it is suitable for skins that get tanned easily and that almost never get burned, for high phototypes.
As an anti-salt wash, spray when necessary to eliminate salt and chlorine from the skin, or when water is not available.
Use it on your hair to soften it and to and contrast the drying effects of wind, salt and chlorine.
Super Tan Activator 3 in 1
Prepares, accelerates, prolongs suntan on face and body.
Super Unguent Intensive Tanning
Super Tanning Oil for body, lips and hair.
With melanin activator for a super quick tan.
Vamp! Waterproof Mascara
Pupa's iconic mascara in its waterproof version.


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On the recommendation of her professor (Christopher Lee), a young female student (Venetia Stevenson) travels to a small Massachusetts town to do some research into witchcraft. She finds the town occupied by the reincarnation of an infamous witch (Patricia Jessel) burned at the stake in the 17th century. Though the films stars Christopher lee, the real star is the witch Patricia Jessel, who performance makes me feel uneasy to this day. This is a must see for horror fans or fans of classic films.This film is also known under the title "City of the Dead".
P.S. if you REALLY broke, This film has fallen into the public domain and can be freely downloaded from http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=Horror_Hotel


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Thursday was Desmond's first Thanksgiving! Full of family, food, and football. Just as it should be.
As is tradition, we first attended dinner with Tony's family:
Even Jaclyn was there! Virtually, at least, as you can see by the laptop on the side table. We Skyped with her for a little while. It was good to hear her voice, kinda like she was there in the room with everybody.
Des tried a little of everything for his first Thanksgiving feast. Turkey, squash, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (his fave), carrots, stuffing. He loved it all.
After dinner we headed 45 minutes south for drinks and desserts in Braintree. Des was a little cranky by the time we got there. And my family can be somewhat... overwhelming. It's all the kids. The zillions of kids. And loud people. And scary men in suits who grab babies out of their momma's arms.
I promise, Uncle Dickie is harmless.
Saturday night we attended a friend's birthday party, which meant another trip down to the South Shore. The theme was grunge, and we took it very seriously:
Now we're in full holiday swing around here. I am beside myself with excitement for Christmas!


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A nuts-and-bolts kind of girl.
A kind of girl that many men in her time
had tried to fix
with their grandfather's tools
only to see her
fall back apart,
like wood rotten through that refuses to hold
nails and screws
cause she's been screwed before.
like a child's healthy flesh
that forces out any foreign body
a splinter.
a piece of glass.
A dying body that rejects a fresh transplant
a new liver ( too much booze)
a new heart (too much self-sacrifice).
A little girl who split her own stitches
to let her wounds gape out.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
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Lemon Tea Cakes
2 cup pastry or cake flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 egg yolks unbeaten
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup milk
2 egg whites, stiffly beaten
Sift flour once measure, add baking soda and salt and sift three more times. *( I admit I just sifted once) Work butter with a spoon till creamy. Add sugar gradually, beating after each addition until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks one a time, beating until well blended. Add flour, alternately with lemon juice and milk, until smooth after each addition. *(End with flour) Fold in egg whites. Bake in small greased muffin cups in moderate oven a@ 375 for 20 minutes. Makes 30 small cakes. * (I only got 14) Frost with orange butter.
Orange butter frosting
2 Tbsp. butter
2 Cups confectioners sugar
3 Tbsp. milk
1/4 tsp grated orange rind
1/4 tsp orange extract
a few drops of lemon extract
Work butter until soft. Add sugar gradually, beating well thinning with milk until right consistency to spread. Add orange rind and flavoring. Makes enough to frost 2 eight inch layers.
Happy baking, Have a great weekend!


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Bergamot the flower, not the citrus fruit.
2 cubes duck fat and/or olive oil
5 or 6 potatoes, quartered
dash of balsamic vinegar
onion powder
salt and pepper
a sprinkling of bergamot (bee balm) petals
Two cubes of duck fat refers to the duck fat ice cubes I keep in the freezer. Each cube is about 1 - 1 1/2 tbsps of duck fat that I saved from the last duck I cooked. Once defrosted, I mixed the duck fat with a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar and the seasonings.
Toss with the potatoes and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet. Sprinkle more paprika and distribute the bergamot petals over top.
Roast in a 425 F oven for 45 minutes and enjoy the subtle taste of the bergamot.
I started this blog so my daughters could find all of our family favourite recipes in one place. It has actually grown into more than just the family favourites but also other recipes we've tried out in our kitchen. I don't like to fill up the post with alot of chatter. Sometimes there's a little story to tell, but usually I like to get right to the point. So this is for them, but hope you find some recipes that you like as well. I'll be sharing a lot of recipes, and along the way you'll find some crafty things and maybe some helpful hints too!
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Roasted Potatoes with Bergamot
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How Do You Pronounce "Vaad Hoier"?
Speaking of religious beliefs and practices that sound decidedly odd to secular American ears, each and every week one can look forward to the ad from the kosher sub-section of the Blue Ash Kroger's in The American Israelite featuring such items as glatt kosher lean fresh ground chuck for $2.99/lb., Aaron's Best All Beef 100% Marit Ayin Franks 2/$7, Aaron's Best Over Roasted Turkey Breast $3.99/0.5 lb., and so on.
Of course if you ever sneak down there on a Saturday afternoon when the proprietors are presumably home or at shul praying, you can get the sticker shock of your life on $15/lb. roast beef and all sorts of fascinating stuff.
However, of course, again, to secular American eyes, the most jarring part of the ad are the watchful eyes of "Mendy" and "Menachem", the Mashgiachim of the establishment.
Now, I was studying under various Humanist, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbis pretty heavily for about six years and did more than my fair share of time on the Yahoo Jewish Chat channel and I NEVER heard the word "Mashgiach" until the kosher wing of the Blue Ash Kroger's opened.
However, the other reference of course I HAD heard of before - Vaad Hoier. In fact I think I stumbled across their office in the back of Golf Manor once whilst on my way to an appointment with a sofer.
How the heck do you pronounce "Vaad Hoier" anyway??
They're mentioned quite a bit in another article from the March 6, 2008 American Israelite about a restaurant in Dillonvale called the Kinneret Café. Vaad Hoier presumably is a group of gentlemen so frum it hurts that certify that restaurants and grocery stores are kosher beyond a reasonable doubt.
This Kinneret Café apparently has a "dairy license". If I understand it correctly, because of the strict orthodox Jewish prohibition against the mixing of meat and milk, a commerical restaurant can be certified to serve meat or milk but not both. The late Pilder's brunch had a "meat license" allowing them to serve some truly yummy fried chicken but at the expense of not being able to dope up the french toast with even a drop of milk. Apparently though "kosher dairy" restaurants are opening at a much faster rate than "dairy meat" because people are turning vegetarian by the boat load.
Now, despite six years of intense study and about 10 years in all bouncing in and around the Jewish community I had STILL not quite gotten a handle on the kosher thing. Oh, the rules are pretty simple - fresh vegetables are presumed kosher, fish with fins and scales is kosher and parve (neither meat nor milk), eggs are parve(unless they have a drop of blood in which case they're meat), meat (beef, lamb, goat - having split hooves and that chew cud) must be slaughtered by a specific method, meat and milk cannot be mixed, etc.
However, I'm still not entirely sure I'm real grounded on what exactly the PENALTY in Judaism is for inhaling half a platter of jumbo shrimp and chasing it with a triple bacon cheeseburger.
Of course the Christian tradition for "breaking the rules" is that you're going to BURN IN HELL, presumably for all eternity, but I never did get a clear picture even from the ultra-frum Jews I studied with where one might find one's soul deposited for sitting down to a 50 lb. lobster at Amor de Brazil or some such.
But it does bring up the possibility that if we start mixing civil and religious law that a trip to the Golden Corral or some such might get WAY complicated ...
Labels: Judaism, Kosher, Vaad Hoier


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Well the day has arrived and I am off on my holidays to Turkey. I hope you will continue to visit if you have time as I have postings scheduled each day for you to view.
Have a fabulous 2 weeks while I am away and I will catch up with you all on my return.
Today is a tag I have made using a mountboard tag. I have given this the crackle effect first by painting PVA glue on and letting it dry until it is tacky then painted with cream matt emulsion and using the heat gun crackled it. I then coloured over it using PanPastels in Magenta I then stamped the wings onto the tag which are from Aly's Inky Fingers Time Flies stamp set. I then sprayed with Crafter's Companion Spray and Sparkle Iridescent Pink. On a separate piece of card I have stamped the pocket watch and again used the PanPastels in Magenta. I cut this out and placed it onto the tag and highlighted the clock face with Glossy Accents. The ribbon I have inked using my Promarker pen to match the colour of the tag.


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We went in search of a Christmas dress for Abby today because we're going to Sears to have a family picture taken next weekend. I'll be wearing a black top with a green and black skirt, so I was really hoping to find a green dress for Abby. Unfortunately, there were so few to choose from. We went ahead and bought these to see what they would look like on. We hit the mall first, then I went to Target later after seeing these two dresses. That's what I'm looking for, but in green. The Target closest to me only had those dresses in the bigger girl sizes, but I did find this first one that she's wearing. The only problem is that it's purple. I'll probably try the other Targets close by to see if I can find either of those other red dresses later this week.
She was so great while I took pictures of her in the first dress because there was a tag on the sleeve of the shrug that she was fascinated with. She did not want to cooperate at all with the second dress.
I got smart with the third dress and bribed her with a package of unopened Halloween candy. This was our least favorite dress of the three.
Of course, instead of those socks she'll be wearing tights and these adorable black Mary Janes we found at Payless. So, which is your favorite dress?
Saturday, October 29, 2005
3 comments:
- dee said...
She looks so cute all dressed up!
She is so cute!!!
Paula likes the first dress.
I like the solid green dress; because the color flatters her skin tone.
Jake like the green and print skirt dress. He thinks it is dressier.
Aren't we a lot of help?
Of coarse she will look beautiful in any of the dresses.
- Maureen said...
They are all cute, but I think my fav. might be the last one. Buying dresses is so fun.
I bought Connor's Christmas outfit a couple of weeks ago, but I still haven't tried it on him because he is such a pain to dress and undress. He gets mad unless I find something to distract him.
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on the off chance
I doubt that anybody else besides Andrew and I cares much about the Whitewater debate (my side=whitewater was a desperate but clever right-wing attack on what republicans then saw as a dangerously popular and effective Democratic president. The plan was orchestrated by Newt Gingrich and implemented by Ken Starr, whose primary technique was to leverage Clinton's friends and associates with the threat of prosecution to get them to testify against Clinton, regardless of the truth or falsity of their testimony. And when Clinton came out clean from these approaches (only after many lives lay in ruins), Starr cynically exploited Clinton's sex-life to embarass him, again for obviously political purposes, and these events, at least the sex part, were overcovered by the media). (His side=Whitewater was a legitimate investigation, occasioned by compelling evidence of wrongdoing, carried out in a fair and professional way by Ken Starr, who aggressively but dutifully did his job, who uncovered substantial evidence that Clinton was engaged in criminal behavior, and who prosecuted those crimes that he came across during his investigation. Finally, the media under-covered these events due to their liberal bias.)
If, on the off chance you do care, I found an interesting interview with Susan McDougal, whose husband went to prison and died there, and who herself was inprisoned for refusing to testify against Clinton. In the interest of finding multiple points of view, read her version and decide for yourself if you believe her.


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I had the privilege to take a "History of the K-16 Mathematics Course" from Dr. Sharon Senk at Michigan State University. I loved the opportunities I had to dig into old mathematics textbooks – it's amazing how many are available digitally through Google Scholar or other resources.
I argue that looking back at old textbooks helps me in thinking about mathematics education by broadening my perspective on what "traditional" means, how often the goals of textbook authors have changed, and giving me some additional support when I talk to parents and preservice teachers about why they need to learn "new-fangled" methods for understanding basic arithmetic operations.
I like to pull out some images I found in Swetz (1995), showing that multiple methods of multiplication (yes, even the "new-fangled" methods like the lattice method) were included in textbooks as early as the 13th century:
I like looking in old textbooks because they also help by allowing me to "rediscover" old methods or strategies that fell into disuse, and yet could be used to help students choose from additional methods, find methods that make more sense to them, and accept that mathematics isn't a set of rigid procedures invented by a group of old math teachers somewhere, but that creativity can enter the mix – students can come up with their own strategies!
After looking at these methods, I also found this site that gives many other strategies for mulitplying:
Swetz, F. (1995). To know and to teach: mathematical pedagogy from a historical context. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 29(1), 73-88.


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I won't say much about Pubit! because they do things right: I create an epub file in Apple's Pages program (Calibre also works, and it's cross-platform). I upload the epub file. Barnes & Noble publishes it. It's so simple and intuitive that no one would praise it, were it not for the alternatives. (I did have one problem with Pubit!: their accounting system failed to recognize my social security number, so I had to spend a little time with customer service, but that went fine.)
Though epub is becoming the industry standard ebook format, you can't submit epub files to Smashwords or KDP. You submit .doc files to them, and their converters create formatted ebooks. Alas, their converters can do odd things. The problem, if I understand it correctly, is that .doc files can hide invisible code which makes the KDP and Smashwords converters misbehave in ugly ways, creating bizarre formatting like misplaced italics and misaligned type.
My suspicion is that if you created an ebook in Word and never worked on it in another program, it would convert fairly easily at both KDP and Smashwords. But if your file has gone through several other programs, you're probably in for headaches.
What's extra frustrating is that while the process is similar for KDP and Smashwords, they have different quirks. I recently added a book to Amazon via KDP that made me think I'd finally mastered the process, only to find that the almost-identical file failed at Smashwords.
While I'm still learning, I'm ready to share what I've found useful:
Read the introductory material for Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing. The documention at both sites needs more work, but you got to start somewhere.
If you use Word, read Preparing to Smash Words and Smashwords Nuclear Code.
If you use Apple's Pages, read Creating ePub files with Pages.
1. Only use one font, or no more than two if you insist on a different font for titles. Use 12-point type for the main text and 18-point for titles.
2. Delete all tabs.
3. Replace two hyphens with a dash.
4. If you use # to designate scene breaks, replace it with * or •.
5. Replace underlining with italics.
6. Use smart quotes.
Smashwords recommends a "nuclear option" which involves saving your file as a text file, then reformatting it. If you're as fond of italics as most writers I know, this is a horrible option.
The Word macro at Smashwords Nuclear Code may help you, or you may find it creates quirks. (It did odd things to a file with "#" symbols in it.)
Saving a .doc file as an .rtf file, then opening it again and reformatting the headings may help.
But if there's a guaranteed solution, I haven't found it. I'm going to see if I can convince a friend to make a program to strip everything from a .doc file except for the most basic formatting: justification, italics, bold, and underline.
To be continued!


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Frequently events that occurred as the van was being loaded with children, Bibles, purses, bookbags, diapers, extra outfits, passies, coins for the Sunday School offerings, and adults, during the month of peace and glad tidings were characterized by neither. I recall at least two Sundays when, after all 48 of us were assembled in the van, my Man called the family to prayer, before we even left our driveway, to beg the Dear Lord to show mercy on us sinners as we were preparing to enter His house in a few moments for the purpose of worshiping Him and would He please give us another chance to act better and help us to like one another once more. THEN, he began praying for the children.
All of that praying, while necessary for a fresh start on those perilous Sundays, served to make us even tardier for our classes and areas of responsibility. In addition to the stress of the chaos that had caused us to be late, were the feelings of guilt for having been late the Sunday before and the yet-again-busted-intention of doing better than the previous week.
Our sole resolution this year, was not just to do better, as doing better could still find us arriving to church late, just a bit less late. Our goal this year is to be early to church on Sunday mornings
The first Saturday evening of the year rolled around and my Man and I began to prepare for the next day. Outfits were assembled and laid out, children were scrubbed and shined and put to bed on time for the first night in over a week (NOTE to any grandmothers reading: the children were of course, scrubbed and shined during the week, just not put to bed on time). As bedtime prayers were uttered, Kate prayed her usual prayer for her Sunday school teacher, "Dear Lord, please help my teacher be ready for me...". No truer words.
Both my Man and I set alarms for "crack of dawn" and were up and hitting our paces by the time the first child's feet hit the floor. By 8:30, we were almost 30 minutes ahead of schedule. After her breakfast, Kate popped into the bathroom where I was just finishing my Sunday "helmet" and shared, "Mom, you know how big people take a long time to get ready? I wanna be like that from now on, okay?"
"No way, babe, not this morning, we are in high gear today, remember?"
Wordlessly she headed upstairs to get dressed. After finishing Molly's "do" I was ready for my next customer.
"Kaaatttteeeeee, come down so I can do your hair." Nothing. "KATE! Come on, let's go!"
"Mom, I'm still getting ready!"
"Come now, you can finish after I've done your hair!"
Thump, thump, patter, patter.
"Mom," she looked me in the eye, "you interrupted my 'eenie-meenie-miney'."
"I'm sorry, was there an important matter to be decided?"
"Yea, which ring I was gonna wear."
Something that she didn't need help deciding was which glasses she was going to wear. Kate had acquired over the Christmas holidays, a pair of non-prescription, accessory specs that she had simply been a'twitter to sport amongst the flock.
At exactly 9:13 a.m. on January 3, 2011 all 48 of us, those bespectacled and those not, found ourselves in the van on the way to church. "Wanna stop for coffee?" asked my Man, "I don't want to be responsible for anyone having a heart attack when they see us pulling into the parking lot 30 minutes before Sunday school begins."
"Sure," said I, never one to turn down coffee. As we turned down the road, the cherubs in the back began singing their favorite song, though not a hymn, "Oooo ooooo you know it's gonna be allllllright...."
And it was alright, even though a few Bibles didn't make the trip and I'm pretty sure that Molly had Kate's tights on, and Kate was in her fashion glasses, and The Pastor discovered a smudge or four on his dark suit that had to be tended to by his wife who had arrived at her Sunday morning post ON TIME and unperturbed (though a bit nervous about next Sunday...)!
(Please note the EMPTY parking lot behind the gingerbread gal, we were the first ones in the lower lot!! Whoooo Hooooo) I think it would be advisable for all reading this boastful post to begin praying for the Wright's beginning next Saturday night and continuing through the night and into Sunday morning. Only a miracle of grand proportions will see the previously recorded event happening two Sundays in a row, let alone all January-long! Please. We'd be ever so grateful.


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