Squeeing Over Trick or Treaters

Oh my goodness - wee tiny little Black Knight - fantastic!!!

Nrgh.

I never have let myself really recover from Friday's illness, and have no intention of calling in sick tomorrow. Wish me luck for Monday, because I feel ROTTEN.

Bleah.

Trick

Anyone who's ever tried to do white makeup knows how difficult it is to get right. It sits on your skin and looks cakey, flaky - it just can't be done like regular foundation.

And that's the trick to getting it right. I used to think white makeup was best served by trying to scrub my skin to the freshest, healthiest layer. Because it seems to sit on the slightest dryness like a highlight, white makeup can make you look positively scaly - so I used to try to scrub and scrub so there could be no possible patch that wasn't perfectly smooth. And then I'd try to go out for Hallowe'en as a vampire, and find that my skin wasn't perfectly smooth except to my poorly attuned naked eye - the makeup would do its "ha ha, you're a reptile" thing - and the effect would be ruined.

White makeup, it has to be said, is not designed to disappear on the skin the way color matched foundation is. It's mean to COVER, not blend - and so it has to sit on a surface primed for that purpose. Not just glopped straight on, more and more, hoping for the least-worst. And no amount of moisturizer will perform this (surface) service.

The trick is: lay down a thin layer of the makeup you use that DOES match your skin. Maybe a shade lighter, sure. But don't try to go straight from your skin to white makeup. Even as pale as I am: that doesn't work. Period.

A layer of your own foundation - even a thin layer - gives something that communicates to both sides, as it were. The foundation designed for your skin is compatible for the job of making up your skin. And the white foundation is compatible with THAT. So you get the velvet-smooth desired effect.

It's a ton of makeup, yes.

But it ends up being probably less than many slather on working white makeup up to the point of a geisha effect. And less makes more of a point, too. You don't have to go clown-white to get a pretty heightened effect, with white makeup.

Anyway. Hallowe'en tip from me to you ...

Boo

It is perhaps pushing things a bit to come down with some sort of exhausting bug and still go out for Hallowe'en, but I am a big dork and have forgotten that, at my age, it takes more than a Sunday to really recover from pushing things like that. So, yes, because I am a costuming NERD I did go out last night - and, though I am not living to regret it per se, all I really have to show for it is the costume itself. It was good to spend time with my friend V and her husband, who are good company we don't get to bring together enough ... but the Hallowe'en portion of festivities, apart from the fact that we were IN costumes, was pretty subdued this year. We might have had as nice a time if we'd just gotten together on some ordinary night, without all the wigs-and-makeup business.

Ah well.

I'm off to the grocery to put something in the larder. And then in my tum. Then, quiet night at home handing out goodies to wee ghoulies. Blasphemously, I'll most probably be watching Star Trek (I got DS9 season 3 this week ...) rather than Langella's Dracula, or even my recent copy of Nosferatu - but that's a show heavy on fantasy and costume, so I am hoping even non-dorks will forgive me.

Off to the races. And still not napping at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday - go me ...

Hmph.

Okay, I've described the questionable incident of my day to two people. X's response is that this isn't an ambiguous situation. The woman (one of my oldest friends) basically wants to know if there's a dead bunny in a drawer coming next.

Grumph.

The Line

So I'm thinking that a line got crossed at work today.

I'm a woman of prodigious noise, but (like most of my kind, frankly) at my core, that stems from timidity more than confidence. When it comes to really fundamental points, unfortunately, I'm the sort who'll go out of my way NOT to be heard, sometimes.

But ... when someone steps out of ambiguity, past perhaps-creepy, and into the outright baffling in their offerings of attention, you have to begin to think: when am I going to have to say something about this?

Because I have a feeling there's going to be a when - and I am not so frail I'm likely to sit mute very long.


I'm not so dainty I can't survive inappropriateness without my calm perfectly intact. The point is that: I don't *have* to survive it, and my tolerating it does no favors to those more dainty than I.

Just because I am made of stern stuff doesn't mean I can't be offended. It doesn't require raving lunacy for someone to be out of line.

Then again ... sometimes, even small moments are ravingly lunatic, at that.

*Sigh*

People.

Administrivia

My boss called me this afternoon, then said, "Wait, I have to call you right back. I wasn't ready."

I'd like to call this: premature administration.

Oh, And

The Sherlock update was entertaining, I'll be sticking with that. Another possible DVD for the list, at some point. The only clanking moment was when Sherlock is describing a miscreant, and stops himself in the middle, realizing he knows who he is talking about. As smooth as this mostly is, that moment stops things dead. But I like the casting - Lestrade is nicely done, and some of the antagonistic supporting players are going to be good. Martin Freeman, as I said last night, makes a great Watson (hee - Watson), but the new Holmes is a very finely considered choice.

Plus, he's pretty attractive, for the sort (like me) who dig good looking nerdy guys. (Sheldon - seriously - call me. Or Jim Parsons; I'm not too picky.) Amazing, actually, how wildly popular those've become.

"Moon"

For any kid who grew up in a certain period, dreaming that we'd conduct our adulthoods from other planets, looking at the amazing art works of space and conceptions of LIFE in space peppering pre-Hubble textbooks and magazines, this movie is a genuine love letter. It hits all the bases - "Hi, Dave" - and turns a lot of them on their heads. Makes retro what once was intended to be futuristic. And doesn't stop there, but tells a good story.

It's hard for a performer to carry a movie - to this day, I never have made it through "Castaway" beginning to end - but I've always liked Rockwell, and not just because of his Zaphod or even his turn in Iron Man 2, though he was a gas in those. Have you ever seen "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind?" Do. And see this, too.

It does the sixties-seventies vision of the future dead-on, right down to Sam's haircut. It incorporates visuals right out of those paintings we used to gaze at for ages. It says hi to "Alien", to "2001", but it doesn't quite pay homage. It's neither bogged down in tribute nor distracted by sarcam. It's not done in irony, though it's capable of flirtily winking.

Seriously. Spacey. Have to love it.

I didn't even wait to watch the DVD extras, I just hit buy it now on my new copy.

Great little space movie. And not a bad human one either.

New Holmes

I'm giving the Sherlock Holmes 21st century update a go on Masterpiece Mystery. I like it, and Martin Freemen sits well as Watson, as he did as DentArthurDent as well. Nice intros so far, a good visual style, and the story does seem to have a hook. I'll be interested to see how bogged down they choose to get in graphics over the intellectual procedural.

So far, so good.

Off to go finish watching.

And So On

Adriana Trigiani wrote me back. Wow, that's a generous woman, truly. She encouraged me to query her own agent, and said she would recommend me. Obviously, the likelihood of my fitting the agency is probably small, but it's still another contact to make, another piece of work on the assembly line toward getting agented, and finally getting sold. So that is incredibly nice.

Today is Saturday, house cleaning day, and hopefully going out night. I wanted to have a fun Saturday night last weekend, but was a bit depressed - more a physical sort of thing, more just the opposite of "elevated" than anything one might ascribe to Marvin the Paranoid Android. So I just didn't go, even though it was a nice night, and I haven't gotten out in a good while.

Today, I'm not feeling so subdued, so I see gettin'-out in my near future. Good.

Soundtrack to housecleaning: "Dune", my new DVD. Big brother, now this is a movie you'll have to share with your sarcasm-training class some time, don't you think? Heh. Almost up there with "Planet of the Apes", AND it includes the wonderful enunciatory powers of so many egregiously wonderful actors.

Yes, I said this was my new DVD. I may be a geek, but here's how bad a case I have: my copy has been, for some years now, on VHS. Now that is a very special stripe of nerd cred. I know many nerds enact it by being the first with editions of certain entertainments (and I know DVD is hardly state of the art, too). But I'm a LUDDITE nerd, kids.

Anyway. Wow, what a movie. I marvel at it every time. Let it be understood, this is not precisely a statement of admiration ...

Off to clean. Later, taters.

Glama-Zombie

So my costume this year is going to be a big old splash. Last year, I went femme fatale vintage, and that was tons of fun (how I wish I could get away with wearing that crinoline with my magenta dress, just because ... !!). Year before that, I was Sarah Palin - about the masculine response to which, the less said the better. Before that, Amy Winehouse (hah - talk about a shift, those three years!). Before that, I finally went as The Goddess Diana, which I'd waited many years to do. That was a big old geek-out, and I had a good time planning that.

So this year - time to do something as extravagantly dorky as that once again. And I ended with: GlamaZombie. Or Glamazombie. Or Glama-zombie. Seems I need it capitalized, but spell it as you wish. The fun's in the outfitting, not in the semantics (next year: grammar-zombie ... ??).

I found a grey chiffon dress online for about forty bucks, which will lend nicely to a ghostly look - and a white wig I've already started to distress. I found a suitable body paint in a wonderful pearly white, and have been strategizing some monochromatic gore (grey bruising, perhaps, and pitch black blood here or there). Add to this a bit of tattering, and a ludicrously over-the-top set of jewelry, and keep the gashes "Hollywood" (the inevitable pretty little cut just at the top of the cheekbone, maybe a dribble of lip-glossy blood beside the mouth/nose) and my joke is to be the prettiest corpse I can be.

Speaking of nummy braiiiinnnnnss ...



I love Hallowe'en. This must be the reason I never had kids. They might distract from my own plans for the holiday.

The E Thing

The thing about loving someone who's thousands of miles away that's strangest, and so hard to convey, is that ... of all the abundantly generous and loving people in my life, X is the one who supports me most. He never judges, though he's not uncritical in seeing me (he *is* rather wonderfully biased in how he sees me, though; and I secretly love it). He knows more about me than anyone else who's ever lived, and he *loves* what he knows. He responds with more joy to my accomplishments than anyone has since my dad died. He's far away, he's contentious, he's not an easy choice to feel what I do for. But he is more "for" me than anyone who ever lived. Even if, in practical terms, "for" can't mean "together" right now.

He is the best friend I have.

That is not a statement of the slighest sadness, nor disappointment.

Ohh, Check Out the Brains!

Reasons I am more interested in X than I am in single males living in my ZIP code ...

Talking about our weekends, it transpired that we both spent them a little bit down, as did his entire family, and several people I know of down here as well.

"It was the ennuikend."

Juicy, yummy, delicious brainmeats. Plus: Teh Funnay!

X is kinda awesome. Nummity, nummity bwwwaiiiiiiiinnnnnsss ...

People - Really?

Look. I know I'm a luddite and all that ha-ha-oh-isn't-she-such-a-silly-old-writer stuff, but ... I have also experienced unemployment. I can TELL every one of you reading, if you have a job, there is probably a minimum waiting list of 200 people who would be THRILLED to take it from you, if you are not interested in doing it.

Yet, apparently, it's incumbent upon employers to deal with what their workers prefer to do ON company equipment, ON company TIME. This absolutely floors me.

I am a born and true underachiever. I really am. If I had my druthers, I would nap every single day, and not have to work for a living. If I had my d*mned druthers, frankly I would be a waste of skin. In many ways, it's lucky I was born at such a time as to get vomited onto my first serious job market in a major recession - because I had to learn how to be a decent employee.

It's like this, you halfwits: People WANT TO WORK. If you are lucky enough to be DOING that, consider seriously the option of doing so ethically - of, you know. DOING SO.

It amazes me how incessantly, now, I am hearing stories about people who seem perfectly happy to abuse their *living*. And did I mention? I am lazy, people. I do not like that I have to work for a living. That is why they *pay* people to come in and do it. But, dang. The older I get, the more I feel like some sort of meritorious service award winner, because I just can't get over how happy people are to act like jobs aren't particularly worthwhile endeavors.

Promise you: those 200 people, working on their resumes outside the door? They think it's worthwhile. You insult THEM, perhaps more than you insult your very own employers, by wasting work hours.


***


The thing that really bugs out my eyes about the level of "entitlement" to play on social networks comes around page 6, where the CORPORATE side of the equation is discussed. The bit about how easy users make it for the marketing professionals happily gobbling up their data to get their personal information.

The other big advantage, says Rosetta Stone senior vice president Jay Topper, is how much data companies can glean from sites like Facebook -- for absolutely free.

"Companies spend so much money trying to get information from their customers, while places like Facebook are essentially a free 24/7 focus group where every day thousands of people are providing you with a constant flow of information," he says. "It's mind-boggling how much you could mine from this."

In what universe is this a desirable state, no MATTER the supposed return on the venture ... ? And what actually is the return? Seriously.

I have belonged to FB. Even apart from the incredibly creepy and horrifying reality of this aspect, I quit it because ... seriously, there is no discernible content. I don't GET it, and that's not because I'm a frowzy weirdo fuddy duddy. It's because the people I want to have relationships with, I want to have RELATIONSHIPS with. It's just not possible to do that on an electronic wall. All I ever got out of FB was advertising, exhortations to join groups I was not interested in, to sign things, to give to things, to do things, which - as an old weirdo - resemble friendship about as much as an advertisement resembles entertainment.

Never mind the fact that some of the people I've lost touch with in this life, it took me literally years to do that with. Why would I wish to invite them all back to be "friends" (who can then ping me with pointless links, animated livestock I don't understand the point of, or expect me to bask in their importance)? Why should I expect that of the people around ME, for that matter?


***


But I have gotten off my point.

That happens, when I am as thoroughly creeped out by human behavior as I am by both sides of the satanic bargain people seem to love to make with their personal lives. Yeep.

My point was that doing all this stuff at WORK - apart from the sheer, exuberant selfishness and stupidity of it - is dangerous indulgence. And not strictly becuase of the way it compromises one personally. Because it compromises your bread and butter. The security of computer equipment YOU DON'T OWN. The security of the entity which PAYS YOUR BILLS by employing you. The security of information - personal and professional. You name it, it's poor thinking to go assuming hitting a mirror site is harmless just this once. It's poor thinking, frankly, to put this sort of playing above your d*mned job.



When you accept a job, you accept a certain contract. Are we all so inured to maintaining an attention span, that we can't concentrate even on our own livelihoods for eight lousy hours in a day? Seriously? Is it THAT bad, is it THAT HARD - to discipline ourselves into such simple behavior? Is the next comment on your own last comment actually even that interesting ...

Good grief, if nothing else, leaving that stuff alone for a sec gives it time for all the other slackers to manage to accumulate something for you to actually read, if you aren't constantly checking for new updates.

I was only unemployed for three months, and I THANK MY LUCKY STARS I don't have all day, every day to waste on emptying my piffling brains online. I am so bleeding happy not to have time for that stuff. Even on my lunch hour, the reward for me is this funny hardbound thing made out of paper, called a *book*. I pull it out, I read it.

It doesn't put my company at risk.

Nor my job.

I signed up for this employment, assuming what it means is, I'm not going to be the transparent ween calling in sick every third Monday, or suddenly having family drama and car troubles conveniently timed to allow me to sleep in (or go out late the night before - *ahem*). I'm not going to take home all the paper I want to print my book (I don't have a printer in any case - that works - but one has a point to make, har-de-har). I'm not going to spend my time at the office texting, or talking on the phone, or shopping on eBay, or social networking. Good grief. I wouldn't have time, even if I wanted to do these things. Because MOST of us who still have the good fortune to be working are so stinkin' slammed, because there's still as much to do as when millions of our bretheren and sisteren were ALSO working, who aren't now.

I don't know - maybe that's the point. Maybe people who feel overworked, when so many are not employed at all, come to feel a sneaking entitlement - it's okay, just this once. They get so much out of me, they can give me my Facebook too. I've finished my spreadsheet, now I'm going to look at my wall. Or maybe the habit, the addiction, really IS as pathetically entrenched and automatic as I'm sitting here assuming, and people are just idiots.

Experience lends, a bit, to that last possibility. Yeah, it's probably a mix.

But people really are kind of idiots. Just look at the emails they're still forwarding, even after all these years.

Two Down

I have done it, and I think it is as good as it can be, even if my expectations are realistic. To add to the joy of my evening, I did something else too - I took Adriana Trigiani up on her offer.

Adriana came to the Conference two years ago, and she was lovely and funny and excellent and enthusiastic. More than once, she fulsomely exhorted attendees to reach out to her when we finished our respective works, whatever they might be - or in whatever form or genre. Thoroughly generous, and enthusiastic enough: I believed her.

So tonight I hit AT's website, and wrote to thank her for being so wonderful - for giving those of us still aspiring a dose of her potent and heady encouragement. I wrote to her so I could write something completely unlike a sweated-over, stakes-are-everything, oh-no-did-I-MISTYPE-A-WORD-OH-NO, query letter. She offered - and I figure the worst outcome of such an entre' is that it could be deleted by a site administrator. So it goeth.

I never feared to network when I was unemployed.

Well, fabulous day job or not, in a way - as an author - I'm unemployed. And networking.



Plus, it's just a pleasure to reach out to people. I've found, from that Conference: it has rewards much deeper than getting oneself agented.

Another First Time

Tonight, talking with E (because he's the person who gets this stuff out of my brain), I was laughing, writerly-ly, about the way characters behave. It's a weird thing, let's face it, for some random middle-aged white suburban hausfrau to go around writing novels about ancient Frankish kings.

I mean, oh sure - as E points out, from the perspective of someone who knows MY interests and oddnesses, it does make sense. But looking at it from the king's standpoint ... who the heck am I to go around presuming to recount the life of the first king of France ... ? Seriously. And yet, here I am, the American weirdo - all up in bed with an ancient barbarian. He and I did something, we made something - I don't think there is any sort of direct line, but I do think that if we have souls, his is not unaware of my activities in his relation. I think, if he hasn't CHOSEN me: he hasn't objected. And I'm mystified I have gotten away with what I have.



It's impossible to write about my relationship to this character without skewing all Frowsy Nutbar Middle-School Art Teacher (not that there is a dadgum thing wrong with middle school art teachers, whom frankly I should be so lucky as to resemble - particularly Miss H, who was in fact not frowsy, and a stone cold fox actually) ... But the fact is that I have always felt some manner of consent issue, since I'm touching HISTORY. Fiction, to be sure. But about actual people.

For the most part, I have felt myself nothing more than a framework, a doorway through which some sort of traffic has emanated - onto my 530-plus pages of manuscript. I know I put in a lot of work, and I remember some of the oldest parts of it. But the extent to which the product is unrecognizeable to me, even un-encompassable, I would probably do best, actually, not to disclose. It's amazing, and I marvel at it all the time. "I *did* that" is not an expression strictly of wonder, that I took on a project and completed it. It is wonder at the "that" itself, which seems well beyond me. It's almost confusion, not at the process, but at the simple fact of creation at all.



There is a definite remoteness between me and my character, and actual barriers - of many kinds - between me and the man my character means to speak for. Never mind time itself, and gender, experience, understanding, and intellect. I know some writers are a little in love, or even in lust, with their creations. This is not me. I know some writers long to know some "real" avatar (if such a phrase can even be invented) of their character. I would probably hate him, and vice versa. I think most of us write, and exorcise parts of ourselves within the pages - the people - we try to create. This may be possible, but what I would work out through the lips and acts of ... this person ... I cannot imagine. I've never even thought to try, and I'm one heck of a navel-inspector. ("I know, you're saying, 'Howie! Can't BE!' ... "). It is beyond me to understand my own relationship, my own bond, to my creation OR the real man behind it. I started off going, "neat, my middle name means 'famed warrior' - cool!" and ended up a novelist.

That is pretty amazing.

And I like that it is so.

I like not understanding, not even particularly wondering. It is the closest I can come to thinking of the thing I have experienced, and the thing I have done with that experience, the work that's come out of it, as being artistic. It's ineffable, inexplicable. I don't get it, I don't want to. I am simultaneously honored and proud to have been the instrument by which this novel came into being. Pretty humbled, and only occasionally coherent enough to be confused.

I sit here typing, seeing more of the screen than the peripheral image of my pale, big hands. I can see the veins reaching upward toward my wrists; like my father's hands. I can see the deft motion of my fingers, the speed of my typing. But I can never truly break down what it is traveling between my cramped and shadowy hypothalamus and this white, grey, orange, blue and black page, and on out into the world. I would be disappointed if it were knowable.

I made a book. I feel like I made it with consent of its character. It wasn't given, but what I took wasn't theft either. And I have honored the king.



Strange bedfellows, we.

I wonder how the offspring will do now.

I Hate the First Time

Telling people about my relationship with X for the first time always gets on my nerves. This week's response to hearing about it:

"That is NOT a boyfriend."



Of course it's not.

Fortunately for me, I don't want one of those. I want to love X. And that is what I got.


If John and Abigail Adams could do long distance, why should I settle for less? Some souls are more important than their geographical proximity.

Cue Phil Collins

Because to-NIGHT, to-NIGHT, to-NI-YIGHT! Whoa-ooooooooooohhh! Tonight's the night, my dear fella babies. Tonight's the night, I write, whoa-ooooh: the query for my first full MSS submission.

The complication ... I had a dinner invitation. Unfortunately, I was mistaken in the nature of this invitation. I'd thought, oh, everyone wants to go for a sandwich shop. Good. I can do that, come home, bat this thing out.

I am betting this sandwich place sells wine. Because (a) the time of our occasion is supposed to be 7:30, which speaks to me of a Friday Girls Night Out, more than a "let's get a sandwich"-y occasion. And (b) 7:30 also does NOT speak to me of a relatively short affair. Hmm.

On the one hand, I am probably a crappy neighbor and friend if I flake on the night out (though at this point I *still* haven't been able to speak with anyone directly about it ... so does phone-tag-invitation mitigate late-date-out-flaking ... ?).

On the other: seriously, I have been planning all week for tonight to be my deadline. And I'm kind of a weirdo of a writer. I actually hit my deadlines.

Hm.

You Know, It Really IS

What I said to the guy in the elevator this morning who observed the heavy rain we were having (not disapprovingly) by saying, "Beautiful day."

We haven't had enough rainy days in the last few years to start getting snobby about them when they come - and even without a drought, it's only against the background of grey days the bright ones seem so dazzling. Rainy days are wonderful days - yeah, even when you have to go out in them.

The last time I heard precipitation, it was the dry echo of acorns falling from the big oak at the southern end of my side street. Nice enough sound.

But real rain has something going for it right now.