Alaska News

Creating sweet e-gift makes sour mood

It seemed such a simple, happy thing: All I had to do was record the "Twas the night before Christmas" poem for my lovely granddaughter in one of those newfangled electronic books. That's all. How hard could it be? No heart attack. No insanity. No Alaska politics.

The book was intimidating in its own way. After all, years after I'm gone my beautiful granddaughter will dig out the battered old book and tell her friends, or even her children: "Here's my crazy old grandfather trying to read. Poor man. He suffered a head injury, I think." It dawned on me this stupid book is forever. It would capture my voice until eternity, or until the little digital doodads die or do whatever they do. There could be no mistakes. No sounding like a moron until the end of time.

The book itself seems solid, able to withstand the daily pounding sure to come from an 18-month-old girl. The way the tome is set up, you open it to the page you want to save for posterity, push the record button and read the part of the poem on the page; then you press the stop button and move to the next page and repeat.

The very first page was a brief, elegant introduction. How hard could it be? I read. I muffed it. I read again. Muffed it again. For reasons I cannot fathom, I would read the words and say something else. Add a word. Drop a word. Make up a word. Or my glasses would slip and the type would dissolve into a blur for a second. Or something really good would pop up on the muted TV. It was too long. Beep! Or too short, inviting, "Is this @#%$^&* thing working?" Click.

Finally, the introduction was history and -- as we say in the electronic book world -- in the can. I admit I was rattled. On to the first actual page of the poem.

"Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the mouse. ..." Cut!

"Twas the night before Christmas and -- AAAAhhhchooo! -- through the house. ..." Cut!

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"Twas the night before Christmas ... I'm gonna kill those dogs, I swear to God. ..." Cut! Cut! Cut!

In reconstructing it, this is where I started to lose it, but I plowed on like a trouper. I should have stopped. But no. On and on. Page after page. I worked on inflection and timing and pace and delivery. It all sounded the same to me, except in those places where it sounded more than just a little weird, like a carnival barker on crank. Then there were odd words in the poem. For instance, what is a "courser"? Wondering that, I muffed the line. Beep!

Finally, the end approached:

"He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, 'Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!' " Hey, isn't that supposed to be Merry Christmas? Beep! Cut!

Onward. Blah, blah, blah, town of a stistle. Cut! Yada, yada, yada, would a fat guy really "sprang"? Cut! Why would he say "ere" when he could say "as"? Cut!

Then, victory. The end. Finito.

Time to play back the pages. One after another they were perfect, or at least in English, even with the occasional odd inflection -- except for the last two pages. They were both the same. No sweat. I rerecorded each of them. Then, inexplicably, the last three pages were identical. I recorded each of them again. And again. And again. And again. I came to hate the poem, and I am not all that fond of the book. Fat guy down the chimney with a sack? Dead Santa.

Back to the bookstore for another book. Recorded all the stinkin' pages again. Am at this point able to recite parts of the poem from memory. Tone, inflection, pace, the whole enchilada. It still sounds weird, but so what? Unbelievably, the pages were screwed up -- again. Waving the book around. Dogs fleeing. You dirty @#%$^&^%$#%.

Fast-forward, another book. The same thing keeps happening. Out of luck. Out of time.

It was a grand idea. Now grandpa is wildly homicidal. Maybe I'll just call my granddaughter on the phone and read the poem to her.

Such a simple, happy thing.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the anchoragedailyplanet.com.

PAUL JENKINS

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Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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