Here’s just a smattering from the news in the last two weeks. Bad luck? Karma? Or Florida Ludicrous? I’ll let you be the judge:

Panama City – A man keeping a five-foot alligator in his bathtub as a pet couldn’t understand why his landlord was so jazzed up over it, and was dismayed to see the Bay County Sheriff’s Office at his door. While one deputy tried to explain to him the way of the world, another casually ran his name through the computer. Yep, you guessed it:  wanted felon. He had 16 outstanding warrants for check charges and was hiding out.

Hialeah Gardens – Three guys held up a man withdrawing cash from an ATM in the wee hours of the morning, expecting it to be an easy pull. Heaven knows why they would even attempt it – it’s in a safe, well-lit place in full view of the police station. The intended victim? An off-duty cop. Armed. Two of the would-be jackers are now recovering from their gunshot wounds.

Jensen Beach – A 49-year old man sentenced to twelve years in the state joint on 100 counts of possessing child pornography tried unsuccessfully to float a defense even a fiction writer couldn’t swallow:  his cat really downloaded the unspeakable images to his computer, not him. Apparently by prancing on the keyboard with his little kitty feet while the man was out of the room. Can you hear the judge rolling his eyes?

West Palm Beach – You’d think they would have been more careful. Good Samaritan Medical Center mistakenly sewed up a surgical sponge inside a patient being operated on for diverticulitis. Common occurrence? Sure, more than we’d like to know about. But here’s the Florida twist:  the patient is a judge known for handling medical malpractice cases.   

Fort Lauderdale – Homicide detectives were all over a body found floating 4 miles offshore. They worked to quickly identify the man and figured out that he was a 48-year old guy from Hickory, N.C. More investigating turned up his obit, which had one very important detail:  Burial will be at sea. Apparently the sailcloth wrappings and the weights from the undertaker weren’t enough of a clue.

     So join me in a toast, and raise a glass of hanging chads to the state whose ludicrous machine keeps on chugging, providing me with endless fodder.

     Of course we are; we’re not immune. Especially if that writer’s novel seems to have garnered an unfair portion of critical praise. This makes us berserk. 

     I personally stood in my front yard, when the whole “Twilight” thing took off, and cursed the fickle Publishing gods. You see, I should have Stephanie Meyer’s book deal, and she should have a wart on her coccyx. And every time she scratches it, the gas tank on my hypothetical Mercedes Benz SL550 Roadster should fill up.

     But we don’t sling such things over Twitter, or on Facebook, in the New York Times or across the Huffington Post so that the entire social media world can see our inner five-year old throwing a tantrum.

     This is why I read with great curiosity the recent tirade launched by popular writers Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner against fellow writer Jonathan Franzen, and the furor surrounding his latest novel “Freedom” (which isn’t even out yet).

     The girls are very publicly crying foul over the fact that Franzen has been featured twice in seven days in the New York Times, and has helped himself to a gluttonous slice of the literary review pie. Their charge:  female novelists are unfairly overlooked by critics, and Franzen is somehow propelling this along. It’s nothing short of a shit fit.

     Never mind that their less-than-good natured Twitter jabs are adding to the Franzen buzz. And he doesn’t need any help; “Freedom” got an invariable executive push towards the bestseller list this week after President Obama scored an advanced copy from a Martha’s Vineyard retailer.

     Weiner is known for her snark. The chick-lit author of fluffy books like “Good in Bed” and “In Her Shoes,” both of which I loved, has long been a foe of what her website describes as the “entrenched sexism in the literary world.” (Oh yes, I did call her stuff chick-lit. Her beach-reads are almost soft-core porn for the iGeneration.) So God forbid a boy write better than her.

     And Franzen’s works are pure literary fiction, with compelling settings and characters so lush and ripe you could eat them. No fluff here. Weiner, though, has still labeled all the hoopla “Franzenfreude.”

     But Jodi Picoult? Perish the thought! Her novels are richly written, the issues unique and usually controversial. As one reviewer put it, “it’s hard to exaggerate how well Picoult writes.” She can wield a courtroom drama better than the almighty Grisham. Hell, even Stephen King is a big fan.

     So why all the noise? I would expect better behavior from two bestselling authors like Weiner and Picoult, who can both boast fiercely loyal readerships. Less crap has been smeared in the recent Florida political primaries.

     Ladies, save your poison. There’s enough buzz out there for all of us. And, there are much better targets. Like all those “Twilight” fans …

     Well, sort of. I got an iPhone thrust upon me by my well-meaning best friend. She herself has had Apple’s favorite child – sibling to the iPod – for eight months. Listening to her endless eager commercial on apps and productivity was a lot like hearing people talk about a great party that you didn’t get invited to. I sat on the periphery with a vague smile, pretending to be in on it, but still harboring a bit of resentment.

     I’m a PC, and Bernadette’s a Mac. The line in the sand has been drawn, and although I do own an iPod (it’s 5 years old), that in no way forces me to join Apple’s fiercely loyal ranks. Seriously. Damn their shiny, gluttonous technology.

     I also live in the Kingdom of BlackBerry. I don’t give a you-know-what through a rolling doughnut WHAT people say about their Droids or Envys or what have you:  the BlackBerry is the Queen Mother of smart phones.

     Or so I thought.

     Bernadette ran out and obtained the much-trumpeted new iPhone 4, the only recent techie unveiling with enough oomph to dwarf the iPad. She insisted I take her old iPhone and upgrade myself; stop living in the dark ages! Of course I hemmed and hawed. How the hell was I going to get my entire life from my dependable, sturdy BlackBerry into this sleek, black Corvette of a phone?

     Easy-peasy, she told me. I’ll talk you through it. How do I set it up and keep my phone number? I’ll talk you through it. Where do these apps come from and how do they get on there?! Relax. I’ll talk you through it.

     She predicted that the second I started using the iPhone that I would fall so far in love that I would send that BlackBerry sailing off the back steps like a dead Easter chick. I’d be completely addicted, completely distracted (to the point of turning down really good sex with my husband to cruise the app store), and completely obsessed.

     I hate it when she’s right.

     I can’t put this stupid thing down! Everything is slippery-fast, the touch screen like digital ganja for visceral people like me. And the things it can do border on the ridiculous. Can’t sleep? There’s an app for that.  Air traffic control in Japan? There’s an app for that. Want to find the cleanest public restrooms on Fifth Avenue in NYC? There’s an app for that. Need a laser leveler? Yep. There’s an app for that.

     Even as I sit here writing this, the thing is blinging away with Facebook updates and emails. I can’t not check it. It’s in my left hand right now, a permanent appendage.

     Of course, my husband is mad that he’s been effectively trumped by a phone. He’s offered Bernadette cash money to take it back, or else a divorce might be coming down the pike.

     Hmmm. Maybe there’s an app for that.

And I myself have quite the colorful vocabulary. I think most writers do; it doesn’t come from lack of linguistic ability or slow intelligence or being a dullard. Instead, most of it comes from channeling our own frustrations, so that we don’t run outside and beat someone with a baseball bat. When those little unexpected calamities arise during the day – say, when you drop a 2-liter bottle of soda square on your foot and break your toe – sighing and exclaiming “oh, shoot” just doesn’t do your emotions justice. It helps to choose a few four-letter words, and weave them into an intricate oral tapestry.

Comedian Lewis Black says there is no such thing as “bad” language today. Not with all of the things currently going on world-wide. I wholly agree. Black had been asked to perform one of his HBO specials at the Kennedy Center, but abruptly had to move it to the Warner Theatre in D.C. after someone at the Kennedy Center watched a tape of his show and realized that he had said the word “f**k” at least 40 times.

Then, he was asked to perform his act at a Congressional dinner where Dubya and Dick Cheney would be seated right to his left. The only stipulation? He couldn’t use any “bad” language. He told them, “Well, it’s going to be a short evening.”

The fact that they wanted to censor his colorful cussing in and of itself is ridiculous. Black was right to be offended; these people after all truly are out first line of defense against the War on Terror, and as he put it, the word “shit” makes them cry.

So I assume everyone had their hankies out a few days ago when President Barack Obama became the first president in history to use the word “ass” in a  formal interview setting on national television. He told Matt Lauer in a spot on the Today Show June 8 that he was trying to figure out “whose ass to kick” over the BP oil spill crisis in the Gulf.

He’s mad, just as the rest of us are. That was an off-the-rolled-cuff comment and it was beautiful. Political experts surmised that he was channeling the electorate’s emotion over this Full F**k Up by BP, which seems never-ending. (To channel my feelings over the oil spill would require a stronger word than “ass,” but it’s a start.)

And people are shocked over this? Why? Because Fox News told us we should be? Pffffft! In my eyes, the President just went up about 30 approval points. Good for him. The rest of the Congressional body ought to thank their lucky stars that I’m not the president. I’d have Lewis Black as my VP, and conjure up the late George Carlin to be press secretary.

They’d spend a lot of time crying, believe me.

In lovely St. Petersburg, two men apparently broke into a dead man’s condo and stole all kinds of things – while he lay there rotting.

That’s right. They stepped right over the corpse and went on their merry thieving way, carrying out various items like a couple of televisions, laptops, tools and a semi-automatic rifle. Guess the smell or the sight didn’t bother them any.

This poor man had taken his own life with a gunshot to the chest several days before the break-in, and must have been quite ripe when Erik Michael Silvers, 39, and Charles Andrew Coloso, 25, both of Largo, entered to burglarize his home.

Obviously, not as ripe as his belongings were for the taking. These two are one hair above grave robbers, and should be convicted on their mug shots alone. Gruesome. (Go to pcsoweb.org and look them up if you don’t believe me.) They’re still in the Pinellas County clink, since neither of them could make bail. Thank God.

So here’s my question:  What the hell motivates two people to break in to a dead man’s home and unload his worldly possessions over his decomposing corpse? Have we lost all shame? What happened to having respect for the dead, if not the living? What in fact have we become?

Maybe we’ve reached the point where we don’t have basic decency anymore; where we can’t even remember when we had it at all.

Florida Ludicrous. There you go.

Since we live in the digital age, doing your homework on a subject that you want to write about should be easier than ever, right?
Research is a mere click of the mouse away, thanks to the Information Super Highway and all of its powerful search engines. Type in a keyword or two, and you have yourself a veritable smorgasbord of links to choose from. Wikipedia, so-called experts’ blogs, and promotional advertorial sites are just a few of the things that pop up.
Here’s the problem: it’s murky out there. Unless you’re quite skilled at separating the credible from the unattributed, there’s no way to tell if the info in front of you is bogus or not. Instead of streamlining the research process, the Internet often gets us tangled in the spider webs.
In my former life, (say, oh, 14 years ago), I was a news reporter. I worked years for daily newspapers, pounding a beat for my stories, and rushing against 5 o’clock deadlines. Back then, research was research, and your details had better be credible.
Newspaper reporters are savvy scrappers by trade. We “save string,” collecting bits of this and that like magpies. We’ve employed a few quick ways to dive deep into a subject we know nothing about to write a clear, concise piece sometimes within minutes.
Mimicking some of these methods can solidify your own research:

Use public documents. Official documents on a wide range of topics can be found on various state and federal government agency sites in PDF form, usually for free download. And they have statistics galore.

Find a local expert. Whatever your piece is on, you can usually open up the phonebook and find a working list of businesses to call or visit. It adds flavor to your writing, and educates you on your subject.

Go to the library. Seriously. And not the online version, either. Get out of the chair, and go down to the public library, where you will have instant access to clips from papers such as the NY Times, the Washington Post and academic journals on everything.

Chambers of Commerce. You’d be surprised at what they know, which is pretty much everything.

Above all, stay skeptical. While I’m not suggesting you ditch the online research altogether, I do say dissect that info with a critical eye. If it’s not attributed within a couple of links, don’t risk it.

            One of my favorites is Stephen King’s “On Writing:  A Memoir of the Craft.” I’ve read him since I was about 10, sneaking his gruesome books into Catholic school, where they were surely contraband. In fact, I can’t remember a time when I was without a good Stephen King book. (I’m face-deep in “Under the Dome” right now, and I can’t find my way home.)

            “On Writing” is more like a memoir of King’s booze-soaked, cocaine-laced marathon writing sessions rather than a true instruction on craft. Good. That’s the way he meant it. At times hazy and at other points brutal in its clarity, the book does have some writing tips embedded along the way, but you have to skip through the primordial soup of King’s brilliant imagination to separate them.

            At the end, though, you’ve got a good little virtual toolbox. Amazing what’s in there. Even more amazing what’s not:  journaling. Uncle Stevie doesn’t recommend keeping a journal.

            Really? I don’t have to keep a journal? But I have so many lying around, because I buy them obsessively. Lined, unlined, spirals, macramé covers, sketch books, fine parchment paper, even three-by-five jotters. They’re in the car, my purse, my laptop bag, under the couch, in the bathroom, and by my bedside so that I can wake up abruptly out of an Ambien-induced coma and scribble something that I will later find frightening and incoherent.

            The entries that are scattered in these journals aren’t entries at all, but disjointed bits of lint and wrappers and such, like the bottom of a really big purse (or the floor of a 1981 Dodge Dart after a road trip with family). One-liners and pencil sketches of people with funny heads; recipes for things I’ll never cook. Dialogue with no characters attached to them. Titles of novels I may someday write. A suicide note. Things I’m positive my dog would say if he could speak.

            I use all those journals in no particular order, wherever I happen to be at the time. There are even leaves pressed in them from the grand finale of Rhode Island’s yearly fall foliage, sent to me by my 92 year-old grandmother, so that every time I crack a spine the heady smell of my childhood drifts out. (In the back of one with a pink fabric cover, I have a list of every lover I’ve ever had.)

            But no where in any of them are the clinical, cold writing exercises so revered by these how-to books; or pages of fanatical diatribe “from the heart” based on some pretentious writing prompt. Tedious obfuscation and drudgery.

            That’s the kind of thing that makes me feel like the journal is keeping me, instead of the other way around. Useless. And I refuse to be a kept woman (don’t tell my husband). Why have one more daily obligation to dread, like the gym or laundry? Where’s the inspiration in that?

            But still, I get pangs of guilt when I don’t scribble something proper in there. Like some alarm somewhere is going to sound off, and everyone will figure out that I’m an interloper.

            So to hear Stephen King, arguably THE master of the modern novel, say that it’s OK to throw the journals out the car window just bathes me with relief. Guess I can still keep filling pages with descriptions of things that may get me labeled as disturbed, the random inventories of junk in my drawers, and countdowns to meaningless events like big sales at Office Depot, none of which have any bearing on anything I write. (At least, I don’t think so, anyway.)

            Thanks, Uncle Stevie!