I admit that I have been remiss in updating my site. The last few times I tried to update it, it went kablooey and I had to have intervention of the professional sort. So, I have been leery of messing with it. But hope springs eternal and I shall once more endeavor to start a dialogue of sorts with any or all of you.

My podiobooks.com podcast has been incredibly successful. An amazing number of people have subscribed--over 800 at last count--and most seem to have stuck with it through all the stories! No, I haven't made any money, but that was never the point. (Although some money would be nice!) The point has always been to have the stories read or heard and enjoyed. On that level I consider the experiment a success which is good because it was pure torture trying to get it all recorded and coded and uploaded and all the rest. Having learned many valuable lessons in the process, I am considering podcasting A World Apart some time this year. I guess I am just a glutton for punishment.

I have been wondering about domain names lately. a website's domain name is what you type into the box at the top of your home page like wrightales.com or npr.org or ebay.com. If you don't have a website of your own, you may not realize that you have to buy your domain name, or more technically, you have to pay to register it usually for a period of 2 years. There are any number of companies you can pay to register the domain name, but my question is how did those guys get the right to charge me money for my domain name? Isn't a domain name really just a trademark? Who decided who is in charge of domain names?

There was a minor brouhaha in this area when businesses suddenly found that they needed to have a presence on the web even if they didn't do anything but post their address and hours on it. Some enterprising computer genius registered domain names for all of the groups and businesses in the area thus forcing them to purchase their own names from this guy. You do not, apparently, have to have any right to a chosen name in order to register it. And once you register it, nobody else can use it. This just seems perverse to me.

Have you heard the segments on National Public Radio called This I Believe? This is a series that was originally started by Edward R. Murrow back in the fifties. NPR started the series up again awhile ago. It consists of short essays about beliefs. Sometimes it is someone famous, but often it is average people. They now have a data base of over eight thousand essays which can be searched by name, date, region, topic, etc. Only a few are aired, but all go inot the database.

Belief is a powerful concept. It goes way beyond what we know into the realm of what we feel. I have noticed that most people are uncomfortable committing themselves to a "belief" other than the standard religious variety. Why is that? What we believe is who we are. It is what wars are too often fought over. Maybe if more people were willing to discuss their beliefs we would all understand each other better.

I submitted an essay to the program. It is now on the website thisibelieve.org I would like to know what you believe.

I know that there are changes that occur in our bodies as we age: our bones become brittle, our memory starts to slip, etc., but is it a physiological change or something else that makes old people think plaid pants are attractive? Don't any of these plaid-clad oldsters have anyone to remind them that they would not have been caught dead in those atrocious slacks even ten years ago? Is it due to a change in visual acuity? Something like plaid-eracts?

Why would anyone want to be a meteorologist? Weather forecasters are cursed for getting the forecast wrong and for forecasting bad weather correctly. Few people understand just how many variables can change a certainty of six feet of snow into a bright, sunny day. We should all give them a break or at least give them a window to look out before they make their predictions.

Hey! Is there anybody out there? I would love to hear what you think. Not just about my books / writing, but about books, movies, opinions, writing, reading, being. I have strong opinions about, well, about almost everything. But it is a lot more fun to argue with someone else than to pontificate. Let me know what you think via my email lisa@wrightales.com

Maybe it's just me, but I don't get this urge some (too many!) authors have to write sequels to classic books. Continuations of Sherlock Holmes, Gone With the Wind, and Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte. Are they too lazy to create their own characters? I can understand spoofing like The Eyre Affair and The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde, but serious continuations of other peoples' books? Why do they want to write like someone else instead of discovering their own voice? This annoys me the same way that the movie industry's constant re-making of movies that weren't all that hot to begin with. Now they are making a sequel to Charlie's Angels which was itself based on a canceled television program. Does that sound like a good idea to you?

Who ever figured out what to do with artichokes? I mean come on, someone had to have looked at this spikey plant and thought "Hey, I bet if I steamed that I could scrape something tasty from the leaves and maybe find something good under all that chokey, hairy stuff on the bottom." And then they had to convince other people to try it too!

What is it with public bathrooms? Why is it that seemingly normal people behave like such pigs in public restrooms. I have never been in a large (or even a not so large) ladies room where there wasn't evidence of broken locks and unflushed toilets. You can blame the staff for running out of toilet paper, but unflushed toilets? I don't get it.