Noticed in the Los Angeles Times that California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has authorized a divorce ban initiative to gather signatures to qualify for the 2010 ballot.  California is often regarded as the social laboratory for the rest of the country: movie star governors, the anti-tax revolt, a dysfunctional state government with a budget process teetering on bankruptcy,  pro- and anti-[insert hot button social issue here], and whatever else that can qualify for the ballot.   If California got something going, the rest of country will get it too like a bad case of swine flu.

Marriage used to be considered a serious commitment that wasn't to be taken lightly since dissolving the marriage happened under three common scenarios: legally invalid (i.e., underage without parental consent), adultery, or death of a spouse.  If you made a bad decision when you got married, you had to live with the consequences of your actions.  Short of murder, faking your own death, or joining the French Foreign Legion, you were so out of luck.

Then the divorce laws were liberalized to include "no fault" or "irreconcilable differences," and the divorce rate shoot up so that nearly half of all marriages ended up in divorce.  What used to be a shameful secret in society is now widely accepted. Celebrities getting married and divorced—sometimes in less than a day—is routine coverage for the paparazzi crowd.  The Republicans nominees had more divorces than the Democrats nominees in the 2008 presidential campaign.  With prenuptial agreements, you can even plan for a divorce if that should ever happen.

Now there is an initiative in California to change it back to the way it used to be.  Maybe this will be the initiative to force a change in the initative process.  Or maybe the status quo won't change at all.

What's even more interesting that no one else in the media had picked up on the story.  Probably because the initiative is in the signature gathering stage, and not all initiatives qualify for the ballot.   No sense for the media to focus on an initiative that might go nowhere.  But I'm fascinated by all the questions if the divorce ban is enacted into law and survives a constitutional court challenge.

Will people rush to get a divorce before the amendment was enacted the same way people declared bankruptcy before the new bankruptcy law in 2005 went into effect?

Will the legal profession try to challenge the constitutional amendment to protect their divorce and child support practices?

Will social and religious conservatives find themselves dancing around the issue because divorce rates are higher among the "family values" crowd?

Will the divorce ban apply to gay marriages (once all the legal challenges are cleared)?

Will the homicide rate among spouses increase dramatically?

Will Las Vegas become the key destination to get married and divorced?

Will people leave California to move to a state with liberal divorce laws?

Will the other states enact their own divorce bans?

Will this be the beginning of the end of an uncivil society?

Personally, I might put my signature down and even vote for this initiative.  Not because I have a strong position against divorce, either legally or morally.   But, like an anarchist holding Molotov cocktail at a store front, I want to see the impact of this initiative on society.  California can't get any more screwed up than it is now—or can it?

FTC Disclosure: My parents were married for 47 years until breast cancer took my mother in 2004, although I might have benefited if their attempt for a divorce in the late 1970's had actually succeeded.  I have no financial connections with the backers of this ballot initiative, and, beyond a possible signature and a vote, have no intention of actively supporting them otherwise.

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The blogging community got stirred into a tempest this week with the announcement that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will updated the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials to apply to bloggers on December 1, 2009.  If a blogger writes a book review, has a Amazon or Google paid advertising link for the book, and doesn't properly disclose the source of the product (i.e., bought at store or given free by publisher), the FTC could fine the blogger $11,000 USD for each violation.  There's a still lot of confusion about how the FTC will enforce the guidelines among the gazillion blogs out there on the Internet.  (According to this article, the guidelines don't apply to "bedroom" bloggers.)  Most bloggers—including me—see nothing but a big headache with these guidelines which haven't been updated since 1980.

You remember what 1980 was all about?  That's when the big three TV networks ruled American broadcast news, the MTV generation of cable TV didn't exist yet, newspapers were alive and well and being delivered by the neighborhood kids, the Internet was still with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and required a university account to access, the most popular home computer was an Apple II and the IBM PC haven't been introduced yet, a nuclear holocaust of from the Cold War could happen at any moment, and the peanut farmer from Georgia got voted out to be replaced with the cowboy actor from California in the White House.  Flash forward a generation, the whole world is a different place.

Based on my initial reading of the guidelines, my situation is more or less clear cut.

I'm going to remove all the paid Amazon links and advertising from my reviews and websites.  I been planning to do this for a while since I only made five bucks in the last five years from Amazon.   (Ironically, I only made $3.02 over the last four years from writing.)  With the ongoing Great Recession, I have a simple financial rule: if something costs me money, a pain in the butt, and/or, now, doesn't make me money, it has to go.  My life has been greatly simplified by this rule over the past year.  Being fined by the FTC would cost me some change and be a pain in the butt.

This isn't Amazon's fault.  I never seriously tried to make money with my websites or driven the kind of traffic that would enthusiastically click on every Amazon link I posted.  I wrote reviews because I enjoyed reading the book or watching the DVD, wanted to share my experience while honing my non-fiction writing skills, and, if someone clicked on a link and brought something, I would get a small percentage of the sale in return.  Now that I'm in the final year of establishing myself as a writer, I'm focusing on the business side of making money as a writer.  For the immediate future, it would be better for me to strip out all the advertising until I come up with a marketing plan that makes sense for me as a writer, my websites, and my ever adoring audience.

The other thing is I will have to update each individual review article and blog post with a disclosure statement that every item I had reviewed to date has been paid for out of my own money.  A blanket statement apparently won't do, which is stupid considering that I had paid for everything.  If I had gotten a book, DVD or movie ticket for free, I would have disclosured the source of the product anyway.

When I revamp my business website (which used to be my author website), I'm going to stick my post office address on the front page.   Apparently, there are some bloggers who are getting truckloads of free stuff mailed to them.  I'm definitely missing out on something here.  The only freebie I got this year was a copy of a magazine from a publisher that sat on two of my short story submissions—which, due to an oversight on my part, were both the same short story—without responding for a year while sacking the editorial staff.  I'm open to receiving any books concerning science fiction, fantasy, young adults (no hormonal vampires, please), and programming languages, DVDs, movie tickets, and any product from Apple.  No review unless a check is attached since my time is valuable and writing reviews take time.

The new FTC guidelines can be summed up in the eternal words of the penguins from Madagascar upon reaching the Antarctica: "Well, this sucks!"

[Disclosure: No company mentioned in this blog post has compensated me in any shape or form for mentioning or linking their services and/or product.  If the FTC doesn't like this disclosure, I'll pay the fine for each violation in 1,100,000 pennies like a good American.]

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Last night on the "Late Show," David Letterman told a story about finding a strange package in his car at 6:00AM three weeks ago, where someone wanted to produce a screenplay about "the terrible things" he had done in his life and would happily sell him the screenplay for $2 million USD.  After bringing his attorney and the district attorney's office into the mix, the man with the package was indicted and arrested for grand larceny.  Letterman than confessed he had sexual relations with female staffers over the years.  This was funny, sad and horrifying at the same time.   I'm somewhat familiar with the concept of being blackmailed by those who think they can take advantage of you.

Within the church I used to belong to, I had reputation that range from being "a sweet guy" to "a future California serial rapist."  The last remark came from a non-paid ministry worker—an unemployed patent attorney—who encouraged me to rape the woman who was giving me trouble so I could do everyone a favor by going to prison.  When I asked him to explain how the woman would feel about that, he said it would be a "small sacrifice on her part for the betterment of the Kingdom."  A few days after that, another unpaid ministry leader threaten to make public my emails concerning the situation.  You would think that non-paid ministry leaders would figured out that encouraging rape and trying to blackmail someone was wrong according to the Bible.  These two weren't that bright.

Unfortunately, a church culture can devolved into spiritual entrapments and witch hunts that makes this behavior perfectly acceptable.   (I was even accused of witchcraft and divination in my campus ministry days when I predicted what would happen to three jobless brothers if the brother who paid all the bills moves out of the household, and all my predictions came true when I moved out.)   Such a culture makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the paid ministry leaders to do what's right according to the Bible.  My only regret is that I never got an attorney to put the fear of God into everyone.  I had to endure four months of possibly illegal surveillance by the non-paid ministry to prove my innocence until the woman who caused me trouble was caught making a false accusation against me and formally rebuked for her behavior.

As for the emails, I threatened to post them on my website and send out the link to everyone with a note that it was the ministry leader's idea.  Who has the most to loose with the publication of these emails?  Not me.  The blackmail attempt was quickly forgotten.  When later ministry leaders hinted that were saving my emails, I again offered to publish all those emails on my website and send out a link to everyone in their name.   Their response was always the same that they had no intention of blackmailing me.  If so, why warn me you're saving my emails if you weren't trying to gain an unfair advantage over me?

When I was working at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (same company, different owners, multiple identity crises), there was an email list called the "chum bucket" for off color jokes and web links.  I bailed out of this email list after a few weeks when the supervisors started calling each other and everyone else who disagreed with them "douche bags" or worst.   The email list survived for several more years until there was an incident involving me that forced HR finally shut it down for fear of a lawsuit.

A co-worker sent anonymous emails to the list that were critical, negative and mean-spirited about me.  This wasn't blackmail as far I could tell but more like slander.  When the co-worker stepped forward to apologize and his supervisor talked to me about the situation, I had no clue what they were talking about.  At the time, I was a lead tester working sixty hours a week with a project ready to go out the door, attending church and teaching children ministry classes on Sundays, and taking two programming classes at San Jose City College.  Anything outside of my immediate focus I was too busy to care about.  When I later ran into the co-worker at a bus stop, he thanked me for being the only the lead tester who said anything nice about his friend, a female tester who I thought needed additional training but was let go by the company, and he admitted he was wrong about my character.  I never did find out what his motivation was against me.

I believe that a writer should stand behind everything he or she writes, whether in private and in public.  That includes the good, the bad and the ugly.  After all, if I get famous enough after I kick the bucket, someone will edit and publish a book of selected letters, emails and stupid rants that I had written.  A generation of tormented college students will write their dissertations on why neuroses represented early twenty-first century American literature.  If someone wants to pass a moral judgment on me whether I'm dead or alive, there's really nothing I can do to stop them.  If they want to use my own writing against me in sinster way, why not let the whole world judge me and my blackmailer?

Besides, all these incidents in my life are grist for my writing mill.  I'm currently revising the rough draft of my first novel that is based on my six years as a video game tester, trying very hard not to let it be a roman à clef novel since I'm not settling old scores but writing a unique story that hasn't been told.   My planned third novel will probably revolve around the church incidents above, and I had written several stories around other related incidents.   A short-short story, "The Forgotten Sinner," was accepted this week and slated for publication in Conceit Magazine (December 2009), is about an old man waiting to get right with God because his minister never called him back.

If someone wants to blackmail me, they can try.  But, like the David Letterman case, they should fear public exposure more than I would.

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I usually mention on Twitter what I get in the mail as a writer: rejection slips that take four long paragraphs or 20 bullet points before mentioning the obvious ("REJECTED!"), the once in a blue moon acceptance letter, or rarely hard cash ($3.02 USD - KA-ching!).  With about 60 short stories and poems floating in the slush piles, I'm always adding to my rejection slip wallpaper collection.  A few weeks ago, I mentioned a credit card notice where fees and interest rates are being raised across the board.  Since the notice wasn't in super-extra-fine print that credit card companies love to use, the amounts I could be screwed over for was breathtaking.

Last week I was contacted by an editor for Business Week who saw my comment on Twitter.  We traded emails,  I sent a scanned copy of the notification letter, and we talked on the phone.  The article, Dodging Credit Card Reforms, came out this week's issue (September 21, 2009, p. 26).

C.D. Reimer of San Jose was switched to a variable card last month. At the same time the issuer, Barclaycards, upped his rate to 26.99% from around 16%. Reimer could have canceled the account. But the 40-year-old was laid off from his software support job and depends on plastic. Barclaycards declined to comment.

This isn't how I expected to break out in the national media.  (The Oprah's Book Club nomination is still some years away.)  However, I'm planning to cancel that the credit card before the opt-out deadline in late November.  Unless the credit card companies want to take rejection slips as payment, I need my cash more than they do.

Updated 16 September 2009 @ 2:00PM - Cancelled the credit card mentioned above.  One rule in today's economy: if something cost money and a pain in the butt, it got to go.

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Google recently announced their forthcoming Chrome OS, which is a light-weight operating system designed for netbook computers.  The mainstream and tech media response to this announcement was fascinating, hailing this development as the killer app to bring down the evil Microsoft empire and send the snobbish Apple kingdom on the run.  Except for one small detail.

It won't happen.

There's a ten-year cycle with emerging technology.  By the time a technology is widely recognized by the public—not the media pundits—to claim the "killer app" title (the popular application that everyone wants to use), the technology been around for at least ten years or longer.  The two most notable examples are spreadsheets and the World Wide Web (what everyone generally refers to as the Internet).  If the Google Chrome OS does become a significant threat to either Microsoft and/or Apple, that will happen in the next ten years.

However, there are significant problems with Google's strategy.

The Chrome OS is initially aimed at netbook computers, a small but growing segment of inexpensive laptops.  This segment has been dominated by Linux from the beginning, with some vendors offering Windows XP as an option.  What the vendors are finding out with returned Linux netbooks is that people don't want to learn a new OS.  They are conditioned to use Windows, they expect the OS to behave like Windows, they want the same application that they find on Windows.  That's a significant hurdle for Google to overcome.  Especially when Microsoft's newest OS, Windows 7, coming out this year, is designed to work exceptionally well on netbook computers at a price point that vendors can afford.  That could eliminate the need for alternative OSes.  If the Google Chrome OS can't succeed with netbooks, it won't succeed with desktops to compete against Microsoft.

We still don't know what the ecology is for this new OS that will attract programmers to write applications to attract users to use the OS.  Since this OS is supposed to be open source software, programmers will use available open source tools and Google will provide the necessary documentation to make programming applications possible.  But what about applications?  Neither Microsoft nor Apple will be incline to offer their flagship products (i.e., Office and iTunes, respectively) to the new OS.  If Google relies on the open source applications that typically runs on Linux, and users are still resistant to learning non-Windows applications, the OS will become another niche OS used by a small group of techie users.

A New York Times editorial praises Google for taking on Microsoft in the OS market.  If Google is successful in beating Microsoft, I wouldn't be surprised if another editorial in ten years demonizes Google as another monopoly that needs to be crushed in the market place and/or in the courts.  America loves the underdog taking on the hated big dog until the underdog becomes the next big dog, and then we're all rooting for the next underdog to start snarling.  This love/hate relationship gives American businesses a schizophrenic quality at times when not under the influence of Wall Street's quarterly forecasts.

For more detailed analysis of this situation, read the Fake Steve Jobs blog post on the announcement.  If you're not familiar with the Fake Steve Jobs, this is a parody blog written by Dan Lyons based on the good boy/bad boy personality of the real Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic founder who can be brilliantly tactful and brilliantly tactless, sometimes all at the same time, if he was to write a blog.  This analysis tears apart the entire argument for Google Chrome OS in a colorful—if not completely vulgar—way, especially from the Apple perspective.

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