A bit more than two years ago, X, with whom I'd been anticipating his homecoming for about half the year, changed his mind about coming home. The situation was dramatic, but at the end of the day it stemmed not from "us" but from his fear that if he left he might, for an indeterminate period of time, be unable to be the father he prefers to be, needs to be. The way things happened alienated those around me who saw how upsetting this was for me, but has done nothing to affect what lies between X and me. Still, I have lost the support of some who love me, for my "blindness" where he is concerned. We've been separated six and a half years; they feel (as, by the way, does X himself) that I deserve "better".
The means by which this term "better" is defined, I've discussed more than with anyone else, with X himself. I deny that someone physically present poses an improvement over him. He respects my autonomy enough not to question that. It's a recognition of my intelligence and personal freedom I give a lot of value, because it happens to value the reality of me over the idea of this theoretical improvement on my life. Just as I don't deny my age - I earned every second of it - I am unashamed, and worked to become, who and what I am. And X is a big part of that, in these years since my dad died.
Focusing on him hasn't come without consideration and review (##note to self, actually - make sure to post about The Madonna Principle##). Many times in the years since X has been geographically unavailable, I have actively sought to find someone closer to home. I have never fully closed myself off to other attention. Even in this calendar year, I've taken a look at what is out there. It's a policy to be sure I'm NOT cheating myself; it's X's own policy that he has no firm right to claim me; it's the boredom and curiosity of "well, what IF" ... and it's usually a function of confirming nobody holds a candle to him, as either my friend, or as the man I am interested in.
Never yet have I found anyone who swayed me.
After the situation two years ago, X and I chose to have a summit meeting. I felt no comfort discussing it with those who were so protective of me, so I kept it a secret then, though nobody's asked about my odd little trip since I took it.
I left the hometown - it wouldn't have been easy to conceal his presence here anyway - and he went to a neutral location, and we met, and we dealt with some things. We came away knowing little more than that he and I love one another, and his children are still many thousands of miles from where I live and he wishes he could, and they are still too young for him to desert them.
It had been two years, then, since we'd seen each other physically.
This summer, when we meet again, it'll be about two years once again.
And so ... I am planning a summer vacation in hopes of splitting it between two trips; a good visit with my family. And a few days with him.
***
X is, for good and ill (though the ill seems broader to others than it does to me, I acknowledge our road has not been easy), the one person who knows most completely. He knows me more even than my oldest friends. And loves me even with all that. He's the challenge I need, and the joy I revel in. We miss each other acutely; yet the inability to change that doesn't matter. In any case, it's not as if there is some other option. And any man who'd put me above his kids, I could never want.
He'll be a father forever - but they won't be small forever, and X and I have come through over eight years already, still "us" and undiminished. Whatever else has changed, however difficult it has been, or how bad it looked to anybody else, what lies between us seems to be indelible. Indestructible. I've checked on this and it seems confirmed.
I think of seeing him - and how it was that last time, when it was still painful - and I realize ... this time, it will be more joyful.
Two years, at my age, is a period of time which seems to goes by in a hurry. Who knows what could happen in the next two, or the next. All I know is, for the last two (for all of the last eight), my heart still blooms when I think of X. Blooms. Opens, and is only the larger for it.
Hard as it seems to those who love me - how much harder, I think, to have never had this friend, this man, this challenge, this heart I admire, and the one he's helped build in me. How much worse to have had "easy" and become anything but the woman I am because I've known him. How much worse to have had no love at all.
I flutter a little.
I might see him some time ... fairly soon ...
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The Sin of Pride, or: Can't Even Brag on an Inanimate Object
Just LAST NIGHT I was saying kind things about my Linksys wireless router - nice price, great customer service, good to be fancy free - and this morning my poor dear thing lost its identity *again*.
Silly technology.
Fortunately, customer service still does come through; it only took the rep ten minutes or so to walk me through reconfiguration.
Still, this being the third go I've had with customer service in less than two months, one *could* wish the little thing wouldn't lose its mind so frequently.
So rah for customer service. But I won't brag on them much again! Seems to be a jinx.
Silly technology.
Fortunately, customer service still does come through; it only took the rep ten minutes or so to walk me through reconfiguration.
Still, this being the third go I've had with customer service in less than two months, one *could* wish the little thing wouldn't lose its mind so frequently.
So rah for customer service. But I won't brag on them much again! Seems to be a jinx.
Welcome Waggin'
I'm as happy as a Lolly with a bone - three new followers this week!
Thanks to all,
--D
Thanks to all,
--D
Friday, February 18, 2011
HAAAAhahahahaaa
I love the accidents of life, and its comic timing. Finally finished with the mess of self-indulgent and hostage-taking posting, I hit "refresh" on Netflix. We're right at the part where:
Allyson Hannigan hollers at the cartoonishly-squabbling Buffy Gang, then pronounces, "Now, we've done the research. We just have to figure out how to use it."
My advice, kidlets?
Plug it in.
Allyson Hannigan hollers at the cartoonishly-squabbling Buffy Gang, then pronounces, "Now, we've done the research. We just have to figure out how to use it."
My advice, kidlets?
Plug it in.
This Post Has Been Hijacked
Can I Just Say, I HATE What Blogger Does to Return-Spacing In Photo-Inclusive Posts?
Seriously. With the technology available now, Blogger can't manage "Enter" in HTML ... ???
Some of the closest relationships are the hardest to gauge, which is of course a key reason so many human beings become writers - but, oddly enough, that's not so much my raison d'etre. I'm more interested in pure storytelling; though my first novel concerns the pivotal choice of an early Frankish king to ally with the Catholic Church, its nature isn't theological. Though his queen is a massive influence, his relationship with her plays more on the level of a teleplay than a piece of art with emotional allegory. I think my writing has a great deal of power, but it's not in fact thematic; it is entertainment, not art. I write to communicate a plot, not to address personal issues, nor fantasize, nor even Make a Statement about those things I find important. I write because characters' lives compel me, and because I hope they will compel many, many tens of thousands of others. Ahem.
(Funny, this post was all set to be one thing, and it's gone and hijacked itself. I'll be interested to see how this turns out, because I was all ready to be a passive-aggressive coward and talk about something in my life, and here I am nattering on about writing. Funny thing, the way writing can do that to an author.)
So.
Okay, so relationships are weird things. Given (she says, dragging intention back toward a track she doesn't even really want to be on).
(And then gives up, because blogging personal stuff is a rotten way to get anything "done".)
And writing is weird too.
***
I should be posting this at the Sarcastic Broads Club, now that I'm irrevocably committed (i.e. capitulating to my "muse"), because now this post is all about Process, and we SBs have said we'd each be posting about our process.
I see I can still be cowardly, in this post, though - because now I can point to Kristi A's incredible piece, and say, "No. Really. You're not expecting me to coherently follow THIS act. Are you?" And *nobody's* going to get a load of that organization and find me wanting for being, well, wanting, in terms of my own writing process!
She does, however, inspire me to photography. To wit:
The second photo includes texts which will serve me for the not-exactly-a-sequel work in progress. Not pictured: the thousands of web pages' worth of dead ends, the dozens of searches' worth of branching link-to-link meticulous threads followed, to learn about horses - about ancient pattern-welding techniques and technology - about bricks, about ancient particulars of the Church, and of Christianities once thriving, now dismissed to history as heretical sects. About contemporary culture. Politics. Historical figures. Husbandry. Butter. Flax. Leggings. Jewelry. Hygeine, sandalwood, decoration in loom-weaving, the history of lace (which doesn't stretch far enough back, in my region, to have yielded me useful information: beware, kids, the fascination of detours from your point!). Naming conventions. Wedding ceremonies. Coronation, and Germanic royal election ceremonies. Law. Law. Law. Society. Gravesites. Archaeology.
I learned what I neeeded, in some cases, as I went along. Authors will tell aspiring ones - first research, then write. Heck with that. I wrote to discover the research I would need. My research guided my writing in real time. I did reach a point when I was no longer researching - but I had no period when I was working purely in research, and then transitioned to pure writing.
This isn't a metaphorical statement. This is the simple truth. I found plugs to put in where power was needed. I put them in their places in text that was blue, and slowly, slowly, blue text became black work. Writing. My writing. Slowly, slowly, I plugged enough energy into the piece for it to reach 168,000 words.
I could not have done that. I could not have synthesized half so much, story alone, research or no research, by any othe method. I had to be shown what I needed, and I had to find where it needed to be. And then put it all in place.
My process was unformed - it was my first "real" novel. My process would be considered undisciplined by many publishing professionals' standards. My process was contumacious. Stubborn. Resistant.
My process refused the "rules" of other writers, the advice one "must" follow. The supposedly-necessary path by which, alone, one can manage success in the literary world.
I am a writer. Apparently, I don't take well to rules.
The thing is, though: I am also a secretary. I know from Process. And I know that it's necessary to work in your own way. Other "rules" might be wonderfully effective: for other writers. There is no dead-cert recipe for success in what, after all, is a *creative* field.
As research led content, so education maintained my pace. The understanding I gained from increasing understanding of the process and business of writing yielded confidence which impelled me to completion. Working with my creative output as product, rather than art, I am perhaps too pragmatic about the extent to which my emotions - and that ineffable thing, my talent - were engaged in the work. My instinct and my ambition push me perhaps too hard away from the subjective aspects of this creation. I am pragmatic. I seek guidance, critique, and the WORK of ... the work. I resist my own emotional involvement. I resist seeing myself as more than the skillful conduit of something which is more the result of my effort than the fruit of anything deep, about myself.
And then I read it.
And, frankly, I am moved. I am capable of being completely swept up. Recognizing how I formed some parts. Completely surprised by others - unfamiliar - stunned, in the revelation of words I can't remember. Reading the end, I am capable of weeping. Reading even the battle scenes, I am engaged and immersed.
This work, this creation, is both commodity and offspring. I will be proud to sell it, and professional all the way.
Yet I see enormous beauty in this story I told without thematics, without "art" in it. The story alone is magnificent, and I like its rhythm, its tone and texture, its language above all. I *like* it so much - even if I am willing to allow surgery on it; even if I refuse to see every phrase as a precious infant. I'm loath to claim it as art, or something somehow transcending its practical parts. But it's craft enough that I can see it tempered in fire, polished with cutting and grinding. If I don't see it as magic, I see it as the evocation, at least, of something above the concrete.
I can't wait for everyone else to read it.
Seriously. With the technology available now, Blogger can't manage "Enter" in HTML ... ???
Some of the closest relationships are the hardest to gauge, which is of course a key reason so many human beings become writers - but, oddly enough, that's not so much my raison d'etre. I'm more interested in pure storytelling; though my first novel concerns the pivotal choice of an early Frankish king to ally with the Catholic Church, its nature isn't theological. Though his queen is a massive influence, his relationship with her plays more on the level of a teleplay than a piece of art with emotional allegory. I think my writing has a great deal of power, but it's not in fact thematic; it is entertainment, not art. I write to communicate a plot, not to address personal issues, nor fantasize, nor even Make a Statement about those things I find important. I write because characters' lives compel me, and because I hope they will compel many, many tens of thousands of others. Ahem.
(Funny, this post was all set to be one thing, and it's gone and hijacked itself. I'll be interested to see how this turns out, because I was all ready to be a passive-aggressive coward and talk about something in my life, and here I am nattering on about writing. Funny thing, the way writing can do that to an author.)
So.
Okay, so relationships are weird things. Given (she says, dragging intention back toward a track she doesn't even really want to be on).
(And then gives up, because blogging personal stuff is a rotten way to get anything "done".)
And writing is weird too.
***
I should be posting this at the Sarcastic Broads Club, now that I'm irrevocably committed (i.e. capitulating to my "muse"), because now this post is all about Process, and we SBs have said we'd each be posting about our process.
I see I can still be cowardly, in this post, though - because now I can point to Kristi A's incredible piece, and say, "No. Really. You're not expecting me to coherently follow THIS act. Are you?" And *nobody's* going to get a load of that organization and find me wanting for being, well, wanting, in terms of my own writing process!
She does, however, inspire me to photography. To wit:
What you are looking at is pretty much the sum total of research I could find, in hard copy, which had enough to do with my period and my place to be of use to me. I had to forgo the $163 texts, and the French (a pity, that, as they actually write about my subject), and several books I still wish I could find, which are out of print or, again, wildly expensive for my purposes.
The second photo includes texts which will serve me for the not-exactly-a-sequel work in progress. Not pictured: the thousands of web pages' worth of dead ends, the dozens of searches' worth of branching link-to-link meticulous threads followed, to learn about horses - about ancient pattern-welding techniques and technology - about bricks, about ancient particulars of the Church, and of Christianities once thriving, now dismissed to history as heretical sects. About contemporary culture. Politics. Historical figures. Husbandry. Butter. Flax. Leggings. Jewelry. Hygeine, sandalwood, decoration in loom-weaving, the history of lace (which doesn't stretch far enough back, in my region, to have yielded me useful information: beware, kids, the fascination of detours from your point!). Naming conventions. Wedding ceremonies. Coronation, and Germanic royal election ceremonies. Law. Law. Law. Society. Gravesites. Archaeology.
I learned what I neeeded, in some cases, as I went along. Authors will tell aspiring ones - first research, then write. Heck with that. I wrote to discover the research I would need. My research guided my writing in real time. I did reach a point when I was no longer researching - but I had no period when I was working purely in research, and then transitioned to pure writing.
For me, the process was one of working a puzzle. When I found gaps, I knew I had to fill them. I learned that task very early. And taking the path to filling one gap, I found information which then nosed its way in and filled spaces I hadn't known were open. Research FORMED my work in a very real way. It guided me. It followed a timeline, and dictated my progress. Research was my box of pieces, and finding bits and bobs all of the right shading, and colors, I found what fit together and put it all in place. The puzzle wasn't static, it was made of mood rings, of randomizing LED screens, of mutable images which told *me* where they needed to be, which found their way. I led where I knew I needed to - but if my own instincts had been the order of the day, I could not have written as much as 100 pages.
This isn't a metaphorical statement. This is the simple truth. I found plugs to put in where power was needed. I put them in their places in text that was blue, and slowly, slowly, blue text became black work. Writing. My writing. Slowly, slowly, I plugged enough energy into the piece for it to reach 168,000 words.
I could not have done that. I could not have synthesized half so much, story alone, research or no research, by any othe method. I had to be shown what I needed, and I had to find where it needed to be. And then put it all in place.
My process was unformed - it was my first "real" novel. My process would be considered undisciplined by many publishing professionals' standards. My process was contumacious. Stubborn. Resistant.
Effective.
My process refused the "rules" of other writers, the advice one "must" follow. The supposedly-necessary path by which, alone, one can manage success in the literary world.
I am a writer. Apparently, I don't take well to rules.
The thing is, though: I am also a secretary. I know from Process. And I know that it's necessary to work in your own way. Other "rules" might be wonderfully effective: for other writers. There is no dead-cert recipe for success in what, after all, is a *creative* field.
***
As research led content, so education maintained my pace. The understanding I gained from increasing understanding of the process and business of writing yielded confidence which impelled me to completion. Working with my creative output as product, rather than art, I am perhaps too pragmatic about the extent to which my emotions - and that ineffable thing, my talent - were engaged in the work. My instinct and my ambition push me perhaps too hard away from the subjective aspects of this creation. I am pragmatic. I seek guidance, critique, and the WORK of ... the work. I resist my own emotional involvement. I resist seeing myself as more than the skillful conduit of something which is more the result of my effort than the fruit of anything deep, about myself.
And then I read it.
And, frankly, I am moved. I am capable of being completely swept up. Recognizing how I formed some parts. Completely surprised by others - unfamiliar - stunned, in the revelation of words I can't remember. Reading the end, I am capable of weeping. Reading even the battle scenes, I am engaged and immersed.
This work, this creation, is both commodity and offspring. I will be proud to sell it, and professional all the way.
Yet I see enormous beauty in this story I told without thematics, without "art" in it. The story alone is magnificent, and I like its rhythm, its tone and texture, its language above all. I *like* it so much - even if I am willing to allow surgery on it; even if I refuse to see every phrase as a precious infant. I'm loath to claim it as art, or something somehow transcending its practical parts. But it's craft enough that I can see it tempered in fire, polished with cutting and grinding. If I don't see it as magic, I see it as the evocation, at least, of something above the concrete.
And I see it as a hell of a good story.
I can't wait for everyone else to read it.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Uuggh
Okay, Netflix instant is buffering PAINFULLY slowly tonight, and my DVD player no longer works, and as much as I love Nova Science Now I'm somehow not quite in the mood for it ... so this is annoying. Boo.
Instant gratification! Now!
GIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMME ...
C'mon!
Instant gratification! Now!
GIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMME ...
C'mon!
Adele Redux
I feel so hip and "on-trend" as the egregious magazines like to say. No sooner do I post the video for Rolling in the Deep than Adele appears for an interview on NPR (with that track backing a good bit of the segment). I'm not accustomed to being cool, but if it means digging that song like a double-wide grave, I will take it.
Adele is such a beautiful, and such a very *young* woman. She says she hates to hear her voice - that dissonance so many of us have, between the reassuring, familiar sound of our voice as heard from within our own skulls, and the sound outside, as heard by everybody else. She says she has no expectations, that she's not confident her career can last, but that what success she has seen she is so grateful for.
She's no less lovely for hearing the person behind the *belt*, that amazing delivery.
I like music with intense power. Rolling in the deep is a terribly, wonderfully potent song.
Adele is such a beautiful, and such a very *young* woman. She says she hates to hear her voice - that dissonance so many of us have, between the reassuring, familiar sound of our voice as heard from within our own skulls, and the sound outside, as heard by everybody else. She says she has no expectations, that she's not confident her career can last, but that what success she has seen she is so grateful for.
She's no less lovely for hearing the person behind the *belt*, that amazing delivery.
I like music with intense power. Rolling in the deep is a terribly, wonderfully potent song.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Love Song
I meant to post this yesterday. So much to love about it.
I'm not as "into" music as a lot of people I know. But there are pieces which affect me tremendously, and this one does that. It makes me weep every time.
...
Wait - but really ... no.
This song makes me just sob, outright cry. Nothing so civilized nor restrained as mere weeping. I can scarcely hold myself together when I hear her sing this.
Rolling in the Deep ... is an incredibly affecting song. God love ya, Adele.
I'm not as "into" music as a lot of people I know. But there are pieces which affect me tremendously, and this one does that. It makes me weep every time.
...
Wait - but really ... no.
This song makes me just sob, outright cry. Nothing so civilized nor restrained as mere weeping. I can scarcely hold myself together when I hear her sing this.
Rolling in the Deep ... is an incredibly affecting song. God love ya, Adele.
THANKS, Ron.
I have always found it frustrating that many of those who choose to be most staunchly republican are in fact the very people that party is out to ignore, take advantage of, and whom it often (even if not "intentionally") outright destroys. I have some personal friends who fit right into this category, of supporters of a force which is perfectly satisfied to demean and betray their resources.
While it's nice to know I'm not the only person who has perceived this, I still have yet to see any actual discussion of the problem. I guess it's only been THIRTY YEARS since it became clear. Baby steps, I suppose. At least this article brings the topic up at all.
While it's nice to know I'm not the only person who has perceived this, I still have yet to see any actual discussion of the problem. I guess it's only been THIRTY YEARS since it became clear. Baby steps, I suppose. At least this article brings the topic up at all.
Monday, February 14, 2011
V-Day
Eight years and one week ago, X and I first said those words, and it was the least dramatic part of that day. He came for his first visit to me, bringing the gift of a DVD player and two movies ("Brotherhood of the Wolf" and "Office Space"), ready to meet the family for the first time, and though he did, it was nothing like the weekend-date visit we'd had planned.
As we did then: tonight, we had email. Email is not optimal.
But email has been good to us.
I miss that man very much.
As we did then: tonight, we had email. Email is not optimal.
But email has been good to us.
I miss that man very much.
The Essence of LOOOVE
Bro and I are talking earlier, and I say something about paying off the car making for a happy Valentine's Day. He says, "Because that's what Valentine's Day is all about: owning something you love."
Hee.
Bro is pretty wrong. Wonder where I ever could have come to like that kind of humor so very much?
Hee.
Bro is pretty wrong. Wonder where I ever could have come to like that kind of humor so very much?
I Love a Watson
IBM's supercomputer makes "his" debut tonight on Jeopardy, and I am dorking out rawther. He's hot (has two massive refrigeration units all his own). He's smart. And lordy what geek cred.
Can NOT wait to see how he does!
Can NOT wait to see how he does!
Oh, HAPPY Valentine's or WhatEVER Day!!!!
I just submitted the payment which, tomorrow morning bright and early, will pay off my car!!!!!!!!
Bloody WOO!
WOO-HOO!!!!
Bloody WOO!
WOO-HOO!!!!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Sticks and Stones
Sometimes, name-calling can be very nice. Like the writer a few days ago who called this blog thoughtful and moving. Or the ex husband bestowing the one-word "formidable" upon me.
It'd be selfishly stupid to dismiss and disrespect the esteem of people I respect myself. And that they respect me is something I treasure. I've long found life is made worth living, just by surveying the amazing people who've found room in their love for me to hold a place. How can we surround ourselves with people we find wonderful and amazing, and not realize that says something about ourselves - and not be grateful for, and humbled by that?
It'd be selfishly stupid to dismiss and disrespect the esteem of people I respect myself. And that they respect me is something I treasure. I've long found life is made worth living, just by surveying the amazing people who've found room in their love for me to hold a place. How can we surround ourselves with people we find wonderful and amazing, and not realize that says something about ourselves - and not be grateful for, and humbled by that?
S'funny
I call my mom kind of giggling, and tell her I'm having a ball, balancing my checking account. When she grimaces, I have to laugh and say, but no, on Tuesday I pay off my car. The payoff total as of today is $199.46, and even if two days bumps that a little, it's still nice to see as much left over after a payment as this will afford - and knowing that this debit will be off my books for the forseeable future. Mom gave me a few bucks recently to buy myself a present, and I put it toward gas and groceries; so now I will have to do justice to some proxy dollars. A gift deferred - but still to be enjoyed!
For now, though, some more caffeine free analgesics, then Stargate for a while. Then bed.
A good weekend, definitely.
For now, though, some more caffeine free analgesics, then Stargate for a while. Then bed.
A good weekend, definitely.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Oh, Brother ...
That's not an exclamation, that headline - it's a personal address. Hey, bro: I talked to mom, and she definitely remembered the hot jam reference you were talking about, with grandma's marmalade. So you weren't mis-remembering that! Happy-making.
To address the rest of Teh Intarwebs: my brother was telling me how he recently made marmalade (out of blood oranges - oh holy YUM), and he remembered our father's mother making it. When she took some of the jars and stuck a cinnamon stick in, the marmalade magically became hot jam, not just marmalade.
Frankly, either recipe sounds just divine to me, and I am only sorry there are so many miles between me and ANYthing made of blood oranges and cinnamon.
Anyway. That's my random, last, headache-induced wild-hair/hare-brained post for the night.
'Night!
To address the rest of Teh Intarwebs: my brother was telling me how he recently made marmalade (out of blood oranges - oh holy YUM), and he remembered our father's mother making it. When she took some of the jars and stuck a cinnamon stick in, the marmalade magically became hot jam, not just marmalade.
Frankly, either recipe sounds just divine to me, and I am only sorry there are so many miles between me and ANYthing made of blood oranges and cinnamon.
Anyway. That's my random, last, headache-induced wild-hair/hare-brained post for the night.
'Night!
11:41 p.m.
The headache, when I woke up this morning, was BAD, but I beat it into submission with caffeine, acetaminaphen, caffeine, acetaminaphen, aspirin, and ibuprofen. Ahh, the cocktail my mom can't worry about me taking ever since that trip to the emergency room when the doc said, "Does it work for you? Then take it." Yes, aspirin and acet. will tear up your stomach. I have a strong stomach. It's my cranium that's apparently weak.
*Cue smart remarks from the sibling- and ex-husband gallery* (Actually, probably not. I like those guys because they're at least nicer than THAT to me.)
So I made it through a pleasant afternoon, but since this evening, the throbbies have been creeping back up on me, and I think it must be time to get to bed. Ah well. It's getting to bed on a good day's socializing, eating, enjoying, and peace-ing. All told, not half bad.
If the head's still thumpy in the morning, it might keep me from church, so actually my hope is for it to settle down. I guess time for an uncaffeinated version of the pill popping, and a refill for the humidifier. I want to go enjoy my priest; she is pretty excellent. And if I don't go to church, I might not get out at all tomorrow, knowing me.
And so it is time to take care of my headbone. Good night to all, and to all a good night.
*Cue smart remarks from the sibling- and ex-husband gallery* (Actually, probably not. I like those guys because they're at least nicer than THAT to me.)
So I made it through a pleasant afternoon, but since this evening, the throbbies have been creeping back up on me, and I think it must be time to get to bed. Ah well. It's getting to bed on a good day's socializing, eating, enjoying, and peace-ing. All told, not half bad.
If the head's still thumpy in the morning, it might keep me from church, so actually my hope is for it to settle down. I guess time for an uncaffeinated version of the pill popping, and a refill for the humidifier. I want to go enjoy my priest; she is pretty excellent. And if I don't go to church, I might not get out at all tomorrow, knowing me.
And so it is time to take care of my headbone. Good night to all, and to all a good night.
Whew
I sit here (and that uses - if not abuses - the verb rather loosely), almost horizontal, relaxing upon my Queen's Chair, completely content after a writers' club meeting. I got the house clean last night and this morning, got myself clean, set out the food, and sat in the sun for a little while, not reading nor doing anything but contemplating how handsome a dog I have, as she joined me in my "west wing", a very quiet room, where she got up on her chair/bed and perched front legs on its arm to stand high up and watch out the window. I'd left the front door open today, and she knows, as much as mama likes the sun, that the door standing open must mean Someone's Coming. It means Friends. She was very excited, but not all spazzy and annoying.
I sat, she stood sentry, the sun shone, and they came. Good meeting, great people. I like this group, and we had a good time but also managed a LOT of focus, and got a lot done I think. Laughing all the way.
We comprise young adult, historical, urban fantasy, sci-fi, memoir, and all the varied influences we bring - short stories, blogs, social networking; it's such a variety, and there are only seven of us total. We had six today, and it was a nice dynamic.
And now I sit, the sun slowly setting on a spectacularly beautiful day, the event of my day behind me, and my DVD player not working. Ordinarily, I'd so love to top this off with a few episodes of DS9 or a couple flicks from my collection. I'm not up for a big night out (and can't afford a very great deal anyway, though with friends like mine I could probably manipulate my way to a discounted night of fun), my friend V is not up for a hang-out at my pad, and my mom and stepfather are off for their own evening. So it is quiet, and very relaxing.
Lolly is perched at the window again, ears up, adorably expectant.
This is the gift of down-time. Tomorrow - church. Then reading, I suspect. I'm not up for much outing, and have a whole trove of things to delve into.
Maybe some writing. The group gets my juices going!
A productive weekend. But not overactive. That must be a perfect balance of some kind.
Off to go putter a little. What a nice afternoon.
I sat, she stood sentry, the sun shone, and they came. Good meeting, great people. I like this group, and we had a good time but also managed a LOT of focus, and got a lot done I think. Laughing all the way.
We comprise young adult, historical, urban fantasy, sci-fi, memoir, and all the varied influences we bring - short stories, blogs, social networking; it's such a variety, and there are only seven of us total. We had six today, and it was a nice dynamic.
And now I sit, the sun slowly setting on a spectacularly beautiful day, the event of my day behind me, and my DVD player not working. Ordinarily, I'd so love to top this off with a few episodes of DS9 or a couple flicks from my collection. I'm not up for a big night out (and can't afford a very great deal anyway, though with friends like mine I could probably manipulate my way to a discounted night of fun), my friend V is not up for a hang-out at my pad, and my mom and stepfather are off for their own evening. So it is quiet, and very relaxing.
Lolly is perched at the window again, ears up, adorably expectant.
This is the gift of down-time. Tomorrow - church. Then reading, I suspect. I'm not up for much outing, and have a whole trove of things to delve into.
Maybe some writing. The group gets my juices going!
A productive weekend. But not overactive. That must be a perfect balance of some kind.
Off to go putter a little. What a nice afternoon.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
JOY!!!!
Joshua Malina on Big Bang Theory? Never mind, X - don't bother calling. I've got a date with Sheldon and "Jeremy" and it's a hot one.
Heh.
Just kidding, of course. X knows perfectly well my real boyfriend is Kier Dullea. (... So how is it my beautiful photo of said boyfriend features X and not me ... ? That's terrible!)
Heh.
Just kidding, of course. X knows perfectly well my real boyfriend is Kier Dullea. (... So how is it my beautiful photo of said boyfriend features X and not me ... ? That's terrible!)
Moonlighting
This is an article I wrote for our newsletter at work. X asked me about it, so I thought I'd share it here just for humor. Oh - name changed to protect privacy, of course.
***
Almost all of us give ourselves an unpaid job of some sort, more avocation than vocation. We pour ourselves into gardening, mechanics or building, extracurricular activities, games or hobbies. People seem to thrive with a creative outlet requiring investment and discipline, which provides the kind of reward a paycheck doesn’t carry. Some of us take it far enough to hope it might produce paychecks of its own. And New Year’s—be that January 1, or the Chinese new year, or some period of renewal that has meaning beyond the calendar—is often a time we choose to rededicate ourselves to these pursuits.
I’m an author. Many of you have heard me mention it; what few people really know is how serious a professional one has to be—even unpaid—to make writing a “working” pursuit. During a three month layoff in 2010, this was my day job, after I spent mornings going through the twenty-three job sources I searched every single day of the week. The writing work actually took up more time than the job search, because that search was a cut-and-dried process (the sort of thing a good admin should be able to get down pat without a lot of trial and error—ahem). The business of writing can make mere unemployment look like a piece of cake!
Step one: I authored a novel. It was completed on February 28, 2010, and had taken me four and a half years to finish. During this time, my membership in the local literary community, James River Writers, provided me an education on how to proceed beyond the creative part. The first thing to learn, as an aspiring author, is that you can’t sell a product that isn’t off the assembly line. If I don’t have something to sell, they don’t have something to sell, and there are probably anywhere from fifty to two hundred authors every single day querying them with completed works. Why would an “idea” take precedence over that much available material? I had to finish.
Step one, subsection A: confidence. Knowing my work is a product, I consider its quality with a critical eye. During the process, and afterward too, the novel is not my precious baby, and I look forward to advice on how it can be better, from people who know. I’m willing to stand behind it, in front of it, talk about it, be confident in it and in myself as its shepherd. Moreover, I’m as much a product as the book. The response rate I get in-person with agents and editors is very high—which is as important as the fact that the story is compelling; if they want to listen to me, it’s because they think others might, as well. And the ultimate goal of a published author is to sell and be sold. Realistically, the goal might not be to become David “Daddy signs books for a living” Baldacci successful (my boss knows he’ll have to forcibly evict me from my job with **** to part me from it!)—but it isn’t to have an unpublished manuscript sitting around all by itself either. And this brings us to …
Step two: getting agented. People ask me every so often, “Is the book published yet?” and look disappointed in me when I say, gracious, I haven’t even got representation yet. It can take years to get the right agent, and as much longer for them to sell it to a publisher. You have to expect to query a hundred agents—two hundred—as many as it takes. I’m entering my transatlantic queries at this point; reaching out to those who handle my genre in the U.K. You have to research agents’ catalogues and “show your work” on that point to make yourself relevant and attractive. You have to approach EVERY contact individually, personally, just as with job hunting. An email blast of cold queries is a doomed waste of the minimum effort it shows. It’s an enormous, demanding, pain in the, er, elbow, and some days you want to kick a puppy—or just an agent or two. And all these things … while having a full time job … and trying to make progress on a second novel. In the best of circumstances, querying is a lengthy process. Precious few authors are blessed with those circumstances.
If I am published within three years of completion, that would be wonderful and amazing; and one year is almost gone already. The fantasy of it happening even sooner would be perfectly spectacular. That I will not be published is not among my expectations (see also: step one, subsection A). I just look forward to step three, the publishing, and seeing my work go out into the world. And then the second. And then the third …
The beginning of a new year is not only a moment when we rededicate ourselves to whatever matters most, it’s also when we reflect on time and its passing. As an author, I’ve learned the greatest investment and discipline of my work has to be time. This isn’t a pursuit for the impatient; if someone isn’t spontaneously famous and hiring a ghost to write about why that is (“my six-minute marriage to Britney” or “how I said I was a terrible, drug-addled criminal and turned out to be a liar on Oprah”), no book ever hits the shelves in a hurry. The idea that trends have a persuasive place in publishing isn’t one worth attempting to control—or to follow. Harry Potter was an accident—and, many forget, a huge surprise to everyone at the time. The market can’t be timed, and the goal can’t be raced-to.
Some things in life refuse to hurry, and some go by too quickly. Maybe in a way, those pursuits we assign ourselves are most important to us because they stay with us for a long time, they make up who we are, not merely what we do. We keep our unpaid jobs even when the paying ones change over time; when one phase moves to another, or when one project ends, or when a team has to shift and reconfigure in some new way. Some things may not happen quickly, or produce easy yields, but we don’t lose our dedication, because gratification isn’t always about this month’s calendar. Some paychecks don’t direct-deposit in the most straightforward way.
***
Almost all of us give ourselves an unpaid job of some sort, more avocation than vocation. We pour ourselves into gardening, mechanics or building, extracurricular activities, games or hobbies. People seem to thrive with a creative outlet requiring investment and discipline, which provides the kind of reward a paycheck doesn’t carry. Some of us take it far enough to hope it might produce paychecks of its own. And New Year’s—be that January 1, or the Chinese new year, or some period of renewal that has meaning beyond the calendar—is often a time we choose to rededicate ourselves to these pursuits.
I’m an author. Many of you have heard me mention it; what few people really know is how serious a professional one has to be—even unpaid—to make writing a “working” pursuit. During a three month layoff in 2010, this was my day job, after I spent mornings going through the twenty-three job sources I searched every single day of the week. The writing work actually took up more time than the job search, because that search was a cut-and-dried process (the sort of thing a good admin should be able to get down pat without a lot of trial and error—ahem). The business of writing can make mere unemployment look like a piece of cake!
Step one: I authored a novel. It was completed on February 28, 2010, and had taken me four and a half years to finish. During this time, my membership in the local literary community, James River Writers, provided me an education on how to proceed beyond the creative part. The first thing to learn, as an aspiring author, is that you can’t sell a product that isn’t off the assembly line. If I don’t have something to sell, they don’t have something to sell, and there are probably anywhere from fifty to two hundred authors every single day querying them with completed works. Why would an “idea” take precedence over that much available material? I had to finish.
Step one, subsection A: confidence. Knowing my work is a product, I consider its quality with a critical eye. During the process, and afterward too, the novel is not my precious baby, and I look forward to advice on how it can be better, from people who know. I’m willing to stand behind it, in front of it, talk about it, be confident in it and in myself as its shepherd. Moreover, I’m as much a product as the book. The response rate I get in-person with agents and editors is very high—which is as important as the fact that the story is compelling; if they want to listen to me, it’s because they think others might, as well. And the ultimate goal of a published author is to sell and be sold. Realistically, the goal might not be to become David “Daddy signs books for a living” Baldacci successful (my boss knows he’ll have to forcibly evict me from my job with **** to part me from it!)—but it isn’t to have an unpublished manuscript sitting around all by itself either. And this brings us to …
Step two: getting agented. People ask me every so often, “Is the book published yet?” and look disappointed in me when I say, gracious, I haven’t even got representation yet. It can take years to get the right agent, and as much longer for them to sell it to a publisher. You have to expect to query a hundred agents—two hundred—as many as it takes. I’m entering my transatlantic queries at this point; reaching out to those who handle my genre in the U.K. You have to research agents’ catalogues and “show your work” on that point to make yourself relevant and attractive. You have to approach EVERY contact individually, personally, just as with job hunting. An email blast of cold queries is a doomed waste of the minimum effort it shows. It’s an enormous, demanding, pain in the, er, elbow, and some days you want to kick a puppy—or just an agent or two. And all these things … while having a full time job … and trying to make progress on a second novel. In the best of circumstances, querying is a lengthy process. Precious few authors are blessed with those circumstances.
If I am published within three years of completion, that would be wonderful and amazing; and one year is almost gone already. The fantasy of it happening even sooner would be perfectly spectacular. That I will not be published is not among my expectations (see also: step one, subsection A). I just look forward to step three, the publishing, and seeing my work go out into the world. And then the second. And then the third …
The beginning of a new year is not only a moment when we rededicate ourselves to whatever matters most, it’s also when we reflect on time and its passing. As an author, I’ve learned the greatest investment and discipline of my work has to be time. This isn’t a pursuit for the impatient; if someone isn’t spontaneously famous and hiring a ghost to write about why that is (“my six-minute marriage to Britney” or “how I said I was a terrible, drug-addled criminal and turned out to be a liar on Oprah”), no book ever hits the shelves in a hurry. The idea that trends have a persuasive place in publishing isn’t one worth attempting to control—or to follow. Harry Potter was an accident—and, many forget, a huge surprise to everyone at the time. The market can’t be timed, and the goal can’t be raced-to.
Some things in life refuse to hurry, and some go by too quickly. Maybe in a way, those pursuits we assign ourselves are most important to us because they stay with us for a long time, they make up who we are, not merely what we do. We keep our unpaid jobs even when the paying ones change over time; when one phase moves to another, or when one project ends, or when a team has to shift and reconfigure in some new way. Some things may not happen quickly, or produce easy yields, but we don’t lose our dedication, because gratification isn’t always about this month’s calendar. Some paychecks don’t direct-deposit in the most straightforward way.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Stop-N-Sniff
Lolly and I are off today, so we had a nice leisurely walk of it this morning. It is fairly warm outside, the sun out but not overdoing it; a pleasing, soft February day. Spring starts making promises early around here, and this is one of those days it's hinting around, flirting. I spent last night fraught with dreams, so quiet has been the order of the morning so far.
Sid particularly loves wild onions. Today we had a browse, and she investigated all the dark green patches shooting up out of the low, mossy turf. I listened to the quiet sound of our footfalls, and she softly nuzzled up in all the rubbery green shoots of onions.
She likes a Stop-N-Sniff, does my girl. Not walking in any particular direction, given free leash to lead me a little, and all the time in the world to investigate the breaks in the evergreens, the shadowy damp underneath, the stories told by dogs gone by. More often than not we're on a mission; in the mornings, she doesn't get to do more than say hi to her friends and get her business done. In the evenings, she usually only gets to take her preferred detours on the second half of our walks. So a day off, and a good, short-but-SLOW stop-n-sniff is luxury for her. Hey, it's her thirteenth birthday today. She gets the sweet treatment she *always* deserves, in good helpings.
She also got some scraps of turkey for breakfast. Didn't mind a bit if it was still a little kinda-frozen. It's turkey! She's a dog! Lay it on me, says she. And so I did.
She's just thumped down next to me in the dim outline of her sunbeam. Her eyes are looking up at me. Beautiful, big old glossy things, those eyeballs. Almond shaped, clear, bright, and trusting. Her ears are up. If I am living well enough that my dog has her ears up, it is a good day.
And slowly, she begins to kind of sniff at, in preparation to relax upon, her elegant forepaws. The sun is gleam-shous on her. She uncertainly, then finally, relaxes. And all is well, for now, with the world.
Sid particularly loves wild onions. Today we had a browse, and she investigated all the dark green patches shooting up out of the low, mossy turf. I listened to the quiet sound of our footfalls, and she softly nuzzled up in all the rubbery green shoots of onions.
She likes a Stop-N-Sniff, does my girl. Not walking in any particular direction, given free leash to lead me a little, and all the time in the world to investigate the breaks in the evergreens, the shadowy damp underneath, the stories told by dogs gone by. More often than not we're on a mission; in the mornings, she doesn't get to do more than say hi to her friends and get her business done. In the evenings, she usually only gets to take her preferred detours on the second half of our walks. So a day off, and a good, short-but-SLOW stop-n-sniff is luxury for her. Hey, it's her thirteenth birthday today. She gets the sweet treatment she *always* deserves, in good helpings.
She also got some scraps of turkey for breakfast. Didn't mind a bit if it was still a little kinda-frozen. It's turkey! She's a dog! Lay it on me, says she. And so I did.
She's just thumped down next to me in the dim outline of her sunbeam. Her eyes are looking up at me. Beautiful, big old glossy things, those eyeballs. Almond shaped, clear, bright, and trusting. Her ears are up. If I am living well enough that my dog has her ears up, it is a good day.
And slowly, she begins to kind of sniff at, in preparation to relax upon, her elegant forepaws. The sun is gleam-shous on her. She uncertainly, then finally, relaxes. And all is well, for now, with the world.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Not the Death Scene
I'm watching a show right now, it doesn't matter what, wherein a cast of years' experience together is portraying the loss of one of their members. It's not the death scene getting to me, but the mourning scene. Right now ... the sight of a pair of cmpassionate hands, encompassing someone's back - the sound of weeping - is probably more than I can bear ... and yet, perhaps, just the right thing, too.
We are near an anniversary of sadness, me and those I love most dearly. Today was bright, beautiful, not very cold, and empty of a certain life.
Tonight, I just have a terrible headache, and I can't breathe, because even if I'm not actively weeping, I'm still close enough to a sob that the congestion has overtaken me.
That, and I never have breathed right since that life was taken.
Christ, loss is so horrible.
We are near an anniversary of sadness, me and those I love most dearly. Today was bright, beautiful, not very cold, and empty of a certain life.
Tonight, I just have a terrible headache, and I can't breathe, because even if I'm not actively weeping, I'm still close enough to a sob that the congestion has overtaken me.
That, and I never have breathed right since that life was taken.
Christ, loss is so horrible.
Happy Ronald Reagan's Birthday
I take it he'd have been 100 this year.
His terms of office felt like a century all to themselves.
His terms of office felt like a century all to themselves.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Absurdum Again
Turns out Mr. Bernanke doesn't like this sort of writing any more than I did - and less.
Probably a more cogent response than bad Latin puns and snarking about writing styles, but that doesn't mean I don't stand by my snark.
Probably a more cogent response than bad Latin puns and snarking about writing styles, but that doesn't mean I don't stand by my snark.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Firefly
Okay, so here is a thing about actors. I'm coming to the series Firefly about eight years late, so I'm backing in with a lot of post-production knowledge - aware that Summer Glau is a big deal now, the frustrating short life of the series, all that.
I like the show. It's an interesting conceit, to take Roddenberry's idea of pulling off the cowboy hats and setting a western road story in space - and put the cowboy hats back on. There are aspects of just how (literally, not metaphorically) "earthy" things get which distracted me at first, but Willing Suspension of Disbelief is my friend, and I've certainly WSD'd worse entertainment than this without questioning it. I like the scripting mostly, it's an engaging show, ingratiating even.
What's interesting to me is that one of the MOST engaging aspects of it - characters - is not the one who earned the most attention for it. Jewel Staite is a ludicrously appealing actor - pretty, but like an actual person, fully fleshed out, and playing the role of a character of winsome charm, Kaylee. Next to her, we have Summer Glau, who has gone on, as far as I can tell with what I must admit is limited geek-cred ("hi - backing into Firefly almost a decade later ...") to by far the greater share of the nerdly adoration.
Glau gets to play the difficult, and frankly INCREDIBLY irritating and sketchily understandable River - a part, to be sure, fraught with the daunting challenges of getting an adolescent actor to scream and play almost psychotic recalcitrance - and a part, I can just smell it, people are impressed with by its nature.
Here's Staite, able to embody a clear and full character, with actual lines - and some good ones - whose experience is mercurial and emotional, acute and very vulnerable; and here is Summer Glau - still, at episode TWELVE, barely verbal with anyone beyond her brother, and even with him largely still All About the Riddles. There've been opportunities galore to develop the character (her relationship with Kaylee, actually, has been quite the missed opportunity), but as much as I love Whedon, this is one of those areas he insists on being infuriating: he has *such* a thing for his Have-A-Secret characters. Oh, he likes the mature and mysterious black man, to be sure, but his near-creepy relationship to his youthful female players is hinted at here in ways that kind of came to a head with Dollhouse so much later. Glau isn't a person, she's a fetish in a box (for those who don't know: *literally* the way she is introduced in the series). He likes ever-so-slightly Asian-appearing mixed-race actresses, the younger the better, the more his cameraman can highlight the intense clarity of their beautiful skin the better. Why that didn't creep me out in Dollhouse, but does so badly here ... well, there's probably a dissertation in that, or at least a women's studies research paper, but I'll stick with this: these two are VERY young, and Dollhouse wore its exploitation on its sleeve, *and* played its creepy aspects with a lot of sophistication. Here we're treated to a broken doll, and a vulnerable one, and the broken one getting as much attention as she does makes me feel queasy.
Staite's role (here's where I finally remember that "thing about actors" - thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?) is not uncomfortable enough to get the same level of attention. Her considerable attractions, surprisingly, seem to have been no match for Glau's River, damaged and crying out to the male urge to protect - and, if I were a women's studies major, I might frankly say, to exploit. River is a repellant character, in the end, and as I say, twelve episodes in, I find her unpleasant to watch. The performance is good, and Summer Glau is likeable in a way that only layers the creep onto the harrowing nature of what we know of River's problems, but she has no relationships, even with her brother, and she's only waiting around so we can be shocked by her, so Whedon can perform those acrobatics for which we rightly love him, and for which right now I'm about ready to strangle him. I find myself watching Staite, knowing what I know - and NOT knowing what I don't (remember where I am in the series) - and almost resenting the extent to which she's going to become irrelevant, or at least a side dish to whatever it is Whedon's put under the silver cover on the platter of River's next shocking steps to come.
In a way, it's not so much an actor thing as it is an auteur thing, in this case. But it's all sorts of people. Great performances that don't involve Meryl Streep and a dead child, extremes of volume, behavior, or challenge-to-the-viewer are never as well noticed as they should be.
Jewel, you made something beautiful when you took the role of Kaylee. I could watch her show and be most contented.
Still interested, sure, to see what's coming next. Just interested, too, how funny people's attention is.
I like the show. It's an interesting conceit, to take Roddenberry's idea of pulling off the cowboy hats and setting a western road story in space - and put the cowboy hats back on. There are aspects of just how (literally, not metaphorically) "earthy" things get which distracted me at first, but Willing Suspension of Disbelief is my friend, and I've certainly WSD'd worse entertainment than this without questioning it. I like the scripting mostly, it's an engaging show, ingratiating even.
What's interesting to me is that one of the MOST engaging aspects of it - characters - is not the one who earned the most attention for it. Jewel Staite is a ludicrously appealing actor - pretty, but like an actual person, fully fleshed out, and playing the role of a character of winsome charm, Kaylee. Next to her, we have Summer Glau, who has gone on, as far as I can tell with what I must admit is limited geek-cred ("hi - backing into Firefly almost a decade later ...") to by far the greater share of the nerdly adoration.
Glau gets to play the difficult, and frankly INCREDIBLY irritating and sketchily understandable River - a part, to be sure, fraught with the daunting challenges of getting an adolescent actor to scream and play almost psychotic recalcitrance - and a part, I can just smell it, people are impressed with by its nature.
Here's Staite, able to embody a clear and full character, with actual lines - and some good ones - whose experience is mercurial and emotional, acute and very vulnerable; and here is Summer Glau - still, at episode TWELVE, barely verbal with anyone beyond her brother, and even with him largely still All About the Riddles. There've been opportunities galore to develop the character (her relationship with Kaylee, actually, has been quite the missed opportunity), but as much as I love Whedon, this is one of those areas he insists on being infuriating: he has *such* a thing for his Have-A-Secret characters. Oh, he likes the mature and mysterious black man, to be sure, but his near-creepy relationship to his youthful female players is hinted at here in ways that kind of came to a head with Dollhouse so much later. Glau isn't a person, she's a fetish in a box (for those who don't know: *literally* the way she is introduced in the series). He likes ever-so-slightly Asian-appearing mixed-race actresses, the younger the better, the more his cameraman can highlight the intense clarity of their beautiful skin the better. Why that didn't creep me out in Dollhouse, but does so badly here ... well, there's probably a dissertation in that, or at least a women's studies research paper, but I'll stick with this: these two are VERY young, and Dollhouse wore its exploitation on its sleeve, *and* played its creepy aspects with a lot of sophistication. Here we're treated to a broken doll, and a vulnerable one, and the broken one getting as much attention as she does makes me feel queasy.
Staite's role (here's where I finally remember that "thing about actors" - thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?) is not uncomfortable enough to get the same level of attention. Her considerable attractions, surprisingly, seem to have been no match for Glau's River, damaged and crying out to the male urge to protect - and, if I were a women's studies major, I might frankly say, to exploit. River is a repellant character, in the end, and as I say, twelve episodes in, I find her unpleasant to watch. The performance is good, and Summer Glau is likeable in a way that only layers the creep onto the harrowing nature of what we know of River's problems, but she has no relationships, even with her brother, and she's only waiting around so we can be shocked by her, so Whedon can perform those acrobatics for which we rightly love him, and for which right now I'm about ready to strangle him. I find myself watching Staite, knowing what I know - and NOT knowing what I don't (remember where I am in the series) - and almost resenting the extent to which she's going to become irrelevant, or at least a side dish to whatever it is Whedon's put under the silver cover on the platter of River's next shocking steps to come.
In a way, it's not so much an actor thing as it is an auteur thing, in this case. But it's all sorts of people. Great performances that don't involve Meryl Streep and a dead child, extremes of volume, behavior, or challenge-to-the-viewer are never as well noticed as they should be.
Jewel, you made something beautiful when you took the role of Kaylee. I could watch her show and be most contented.
Still interested, sure, to see what's coming next. Just interested, too, how funny people's attention is.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I am wireless again. Having had a good day at work, this is serious icing on the yum-yum cake.
*Dorkily happy*
*Dorkily happy*
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Oh, And
Nova Science Now: ridiculously awesome tonight - magic and neuroscience. Almost scary, and what science is more fun than scary science!???
And Nova: Clean stuff, especially cars. Geek-tabulous. Love, love, love, love.
Further recommendations for this week - a fun thumbs-up for a bit of a breathless piece on the DaVinci -- er, CHRISTIE -- code; analyzing the formula of Agatha's wonderfully literally-puzzling work. Amusing if only for the incongruently dramatic/rather sexy narration from Joanna Lumley, who earns love even when she's not tricked out in a giant french twist.
Sometimes, I love British casting agents. Hee.
Oh, and make sure to catch Frontline this week, sharing investigation with NPR on a piece about coroners and forensic pathologists. The program description blurb unfortunately misleads, as if the story is about the shortage of professionals, but it's deeper than that, and more individual - an exploration of the systemic issues inherent in the nature of the current system, its massive shortfalls (not enough attention on this on PBS/Frontline, but from what I caught on the radio on the way home today, NPR may be stronger on the financial aspect), and some areas of overwhelming corruption and the reasons that is so hard to do anything about. Some gross-out shots, perhaps, for the lily-livered among us (I don't know what that is like ...), but a very good set of pieces I wish I were hearing more completely.
Okay, go. Listen. Watch. Good.
And Nova: Clean stuff, especially cars. Geek-tabulous. Love, love, love, love.
Further recommendations for this week - a fun thumbs-up for a bit of a breathless piece on the DaVinci -- er, CHRISTIE -- code; analyzing the formula of Agatha's wonderfully literally-puzzling work. Amusing if only for the incongruently dramatic/rather sexy narration from Joanna Lumley, who earns love even when she's not tricked out in a giant french twist.
Sometimes, I love British casting agents. Hee.
Oh, and make sure to catch Frontline this week, sharing investigation with NPR on a piece about coroners and forensic pathologists. The program description blurb unfortunately misleads, as if the story is about the shortage of professionals, but it's deeper than that, and more individual - an exploration of the systemic issues inherent in the nature of the current system, its massive shortfalls (not enough attention on this on PBS/Frontline, but from what I caught on the radio on the way home today, NPR may be stronger on the financial aspect), and some areas of overwhelming corruption and the reasons that is so hard to do anything about. Some gross-out shots, perhaps, for the lily-livered among us (I don't know what that is like ...), but a very good set of pieces I wish I were hearing more completely.
Okay, go. Listen. Watch. Good.
Okay, In NOT Complaining News
I stepped out earlier to go and walk Lolly, and happened to see the next-dog neighbor, out in his backyard with two friends. Next has these buddies visiting because Next's mom is so generous - and she is sitting for the dogs of a guy at her office, and his fiancee' - who are getting married this week. So she's got her handsome, fluffy man Next, and the two friends are Bitty-Tiny and Big-Grinning-Meat-Boy. BGMB and I are old friends by now; Neighbor has sat for him a number of times. He's a pit, and has the most magnificent brindled brown coat; he looks like the most amazingly polished, beautiful piece of burled wood. Made of meat.
He's a slab, and an absolute darling of a boy.
Well, it turned out Neighbor was on her way out too, for a walk, so Lolly got to go with a whole pack tonight. For a while, I walked Next, our oldest friend, while Neighbor took Bitty and BGMB; then we switched, I took BGMB and she took her boy Next.
BGMB is very very good, and so is my Lolly.
But boy do I wish I had X here! Myoflex doesn't sound like the least bit of a bad idea ... Heh. If my girl is Tuggy McTuggerstein, I can't even come up with a nickname for BGMB indicative of his power - but maybe Meat Boy goes some way to provide an idea. You give Lolly a pat on her side and she has a nice barrel-chested, deep thump. You pat a hand on Meat Boy, and it sounds like slapping a side of beef. Or a piece of polished MARBLE. That kids is solid.
The two of 'em weren't going to pull me apart, but it didn't stop us making jokes about my accidentally becoming an amputee ... Shew, maim me ... oh my. No. Ah-hem.
Anyway, an energetic walk was had by all. Heh. And Lolly, I think (and would be gratified to hope/believe) is enjoyably shot. My good old girl.
He's a slab, and an absolute darling of a boy.
Well, it turned out Neighbor was on her way out too, for a walk, so Lolly got to go with a whole pack tonight. For a while, I walked Next, our oldest friend, while Neighbor took Bitty and BGMB; then we switched, I took BGMB and she took her boy Next.
BGMB is very very good, and so is my Lolly.
But boy do I wish I had X here! Myoflex doesn't sound like the least bit of a bad idea ... Heh. If my girl is Tuggy McTuggerstein, I can't even come up with a nickname for BGMB indicative of his power - but maybe Meat Boy goes some way to provide an idea. You give Lolly a pat on her side and she has a nice barrel-chested, deep thump. You pat a hand on Meat Boy, and it sounds like slapping a side of beef. Or a piece of polished MARBLE. That kids is solid.
The two of 'em weren't going to pull me apart, but it didn't stop us making jokes about my accidentally becoming an amputee ... Shew, maim me ... oh my. No. Ah-hem.
Anyway, an energetic walk was had by all. Heh. And Lolly, I think (and would be gratified to hope/believe) is enjoyably shot. My good old girl.
Dang
Dadgum George the Router has gone on me. His settings apparently spontaneously changed, and a system restore and two rounds of troubleshooting haven't worked. Stupid wirelessness. (I'm back on my DSL box.) Not quite annoying enough to be down to my last couple dozen bucks - no, I have to be down electronically too.
Stupid internets.
Stupid money.
Stupid NEXT oil bill, which is going to top $700. So much for being excited I'm paying off my car; it's not like I'm going to get any relief out of THAT apparently.
Stupid technology.
Come on eBay auctions ... sell already ... !!
*Pleh*
Stupid internets.
Stupid money.
Stupid NEXT oil bill, which is going to top $700. So much for being excited I'm paying off my car; it's not like I'm going to get any relief out of THAT apparently.
Stupid technology.
Come on eBay auctions ... sell already ... !!
*Pleh*
I Hate Heating Oil Bills
Thirty-four bucks until the next paycheck. Dang is that too far away, and gas too stupidly expensive.
Gah.
Gah.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Slack Indeed
I really do like my Slacker Radio station, but today it treated me to the most absurd review ever - and it has some SERIOUSLY flawed reviews on tap.
Mixing heavy metal riffs with punk's fury, Van Halen were onto a whole new sound
Anything more antithetical to punk, than long haired metal men, I can scarcely imagine. Not that I don't love Eddie and - yes - even Diamond Dave. But the punks I knew said, "It's 1983 (or whatever the year) - can't you affor a ****ing haircut!???" as often as they said, "Can I bum a cig?" - so VH was not on anyone's list of must-have punk properties. Metal fans were a joke to the punks I knew. And when I married a hair metal front man - as much as my brother loved my ex husband - don't think I didn't take a few jokes about my thing for Hair Boys along the way (and still do).
For at least twenty years now, I have had to contend with people who think The Clash were punk rock. For fifteen or more, it's been the commoditization of pop as "punk", in everything from the sentiment "I am all about the leopard" to Avril Lavigne to (Lord help me to even say the words) Green Day. I once saw a movie in which Adrien Brody explained to me that The Who were punk.
I once thought that was perhaps the most baffling use of the term I'd ever heard.
This, though, goes right on the shelf beside The Who.
***
Mind you, I love Van Halen, and I love The Who, too.
Mind this, too, though: I am not now, nor ever have I been, a punk. There was punk music I liked, and much I was afraid of, growing up with a real one in the house. For me, punk's anger was manifest regularly, in the person of my brother, whose closed door did nothing to stifle That Noise. At 43 now, noise has a visceral, deep position in my own musical tastes.
But that doesn't make a punk. I never was one. Very, very few people actually have been, if the truth were told. And the label grows emptier and emptier and emptier.
The Who had some anger. They had politics. They had a lot to say, and Daltry could yell it wonderfully. Punk? As much as I.
Van Halen?
That's just BAFFLING. Not to say what I hope some will be thinking, that it's actually laughable.
...
Mixing heavy metal riffs with punk's fury, Van Halen were onto a whole new sound ...
...
Wow. No, it just doesn't get any less brain-twisting, reading it again. But then, I am insufferably narrow in what I allow the label and definition of punk, in my mind. A good ninety-nine percent of what "kids today" think was (or - HAH - is) punk never came even close. The Clash. Good heavens.
I don't even think TSOL is "really" punk - though they've made their share of a living on it, from people who do. What they don't know, and I do, is that TSOL was largely dismissed as kind of Romanti-Goth before the term had been invented. I remember seeing "Suburbia" (AKA "The Wild Side" - and a more suprising Penelope Spheeris joint I can tell you you'll never even imagine), seeing them performing, and having to be embarrassed - as the NOT PUNK girl - for LIKING them, because they were interlopers plopped in the middle of a movie about kids who "should have" hated them.
Even I knew (loving the band as I did) that TSOL wasn't what the punks I knew considered to be "loaded with cred" shall we say. Shoot, I sure knew Jack, with his Billy Idol costume design, was an actor, surrounded by "real" kids. He looked it. And so did TSOL, in a way.
Van Halen and punk's fury.
I have a feeling that one'll keep getting funnier and funnier. Can't wait for my next conversation with my brother. This could be good for a bit of breathless mileage.
Sheesh.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Would You Like A Little Reductio With Your Ad Absurdum?
This is one of those stories which, like those by the Mac-haters, contains a discussion with merit and worth discussing, but which unfortunately is done no service by the ludicrous style of its delivery. In the end, the article as a whole ends up useless thanks to junk writing like THIS:
Um.
I color writing purple when, even if it's "journalism", it tends this starkly toward ravishingly purple prose. Yeesh. Don't even get me started with EXCLAMATION POINTS in "journalism"! Good lord.
And it might just be a shame, too - because, stripped down to its dumbest essence, the point about inflation isn't bad in itself. But the hysterical hyperbole and outrageous misinformation (yeah: The Fed doesn't print the money, actually - gah) make this one a frustrating miss.
While a number of major countries are battling inflation and are alarmed by food and fuel price inflation, Bernanke is battling low inflation, or imaginary deflation, and is determined to inject US $600 billion to prevent low inflation and achieve higher inflation, as per the Fed's mandate to achieve full-employment. Bernanke's theory could imply that 10% inflation per year is better than 3%, 50% is better than 10%, and 100% is better than 50%....
Um.
I color writing purple when, even if it's "journalism", it tends this starkly toward ravishingly purple prose. Yeesh. Don't even get me started with EXCLAMATION POINTS in "journalism"! Good lord.
And it might just be a shame, too - because, stripped down to its dumbest essence, the point about inflation isn't bad in itself. But the hysterical hyperbole and outrageous misinformation (yeah: The Fed doesn't print the money, actually - gah) make this one a frustrating miss.
I Don't See London, But Guess What I Do See?
More readers from France than even stateside, by a margin of over 200%.
I love seeing the French landing here, even if they are bots, because I have gained THAT much of an affinity for the place, writing about their first king.
If my fifteen-year-old self only knew. In our house, "French" was a dirty word, and not because of the kiss, and NOT because of my folks. My brother and I were the anti-francophiles; surrounded by pink and green preppy girls (a large number of them named for that color green) who thought the adjective determined the Nth degree of romantic, and who thought the nation itself proceeded from the eighteenth century cartoon-like, fully formed in quisine and cigarette-hazed languid accents, defining a refinement they could scarcely even have named as such, having learned the admiration more by funnel action of the crowd than through any individual experience (... or interest). So we hated what they loved. To fully entrench the rule, it had its exception - the French marines; perhaps itself a conceit chosen less from depth of education than some known factoid or other and b*tchin' footwear or something.
If I had known then my first novel would CENTER on this center of my adoptive reverse-snobbery, I would certainly have been pretty torn. Torn asunder at the idea I really would write a book someday ... but about something I was so faux-passionately against.
It would have been worse than the knowledge that my future self would come to own a cat. (And then three.)
***
Yet, in its way, my lacking the years-deep background in adoration - er, or even deep respect, ahem - in fact served me to be a clean slate in coming to my subject. In this reverse-decision, if in nothing else, it's impossible to deny that subjects choose authors, not the other way around.
In the early days of my writing, I actually feinted a tiny bit from looking too French-loving. I would joke, "if you go back far enough, the French are German" - which isn't strictly speaking true, but which research did make at least a defensible statement to make (if not a purely nice one, born as it was out of franc-ambivalent defensiveness and denial).
But the deeper I got into my own reading (I have no honest gauge for any extent to which my WRITING has effect here), the deeper my subject's homeland and heritage got into me. The homeland he *created*. The heritage of nation which was his patrimony, and the heritage of name which lives now around the world, and has been on the throne of his country more than twenty times. And which caused me to write my book.
My people come from Europe in its many stripes, mostly the UK and Germany, but my family's name, at least so the story goes, was born in the Channel Islands, of a Norman and his love. Norman territory is so close to the seat in which my King made his start, I as a dork and a woman and a writer hear some kind of *thrum* in the juxtaposition. I don't need to count myself part of Clovis' line (it is enough joy to know one of my best friends can clearly do so), but I like the idea nonetheless - that, even if not in blood, some part of me extracts from that place that spawned my first book.
The king's name helped make what I am. I count my work a service, hoping I can claim some ghost of the same in return.
***
So hello, France. I love to see you visit.
I love seeing the French landing here, even if they are bots, because I have gained THAT much of an affinity for the place, writing about their first king.
If my fifteen-year-old self only knew. In our house, "French" was a dirty word, and not because of the kiss, and NOT because of my folks. My brother and I were the anti-francophiles; surrounded by pink and green preppy girls (a large number of them named for that color green) who thought the adjective determined the Nth degree of romantic, and who thought the nation itself proceeded from the eighteenth century cartoon-like, fully formed in quisine and cigarette-hazed languid accents, defining a refinement they could scarcely even have named as such, having learned the admiration more by funnel action of the crowd than through any individual experience (... or interest). So we hated what they loved. To fully entrench the rule, it had its exception - the French marines; perhaps itself a conceit chosen less from depth of education than some known factoid or other and b*tchin' footwear or something.
If I had known then my first novel would CENTER on this center of my adoptive reverse-snobbery, I would certainly have been pretty torn. Torn asunder at the idea I really would write a book someday ... but about something I was so faux-passionately against.
It would have been worse than the knowledge that my future self would come to own a cat. (And then three.)
***
Yet, in its way, my lacking the years-deep background in adoration - er, or even deep respect, ahem - in fact served me to be a clean slate in coming to my subject. In this reverse-decision, if in nothing else, it's impossible to deny that subjects choose authors, not the other way around.
In the early days of my writing, I actually feinted a tiny bit from looking too French-loving. I would joke, "if you go back far enough, the French are German" - which isn't strictly speaking true, but which research did make at least a defensible statement to make (if not a purely nice one, born as it was out of franc-ambivalent defensiveness and denial).
But the deeper I got into my own reading (I have no honest gauge for any extent to which my WRITING has effect here), the deeper my subject's homeland and heritage got into me. The homeland he *created*. The heritage of nation which was his patrimony, and the heritage of name which lives now around the world, and has been on the throne of his country more than twenty times. And which caused me to write my book.
My people come from Europe in its many stripes, mostly the UK and Germany, but my family's name, at least so the story goes, was born in the Channel Islands, of a Norman and his love. Norman territory is so close to the seat in which my King made his start, I as a dork and a woman and a writer hear some kind of *thrum* in the juxtaposition. I don't need to count myself part of Clovis' line (it is enough joy to know one of my best friends can clearly do so), but I like the idea nonetheless - that, even if not in blood, some part of me extracts from that place that spawned my first book.
The king's name helped make what I am. I count my work a service, hoping I can claim some ghost of the same in return.
***
So hello, France. I love to see you visit.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
They're Short Enough As It Is ...
... that I can't say I'm quite nuts about spending my weekends feeling sick. It's a waste of what should be good rest and good productivity - and here I am (a) wishing I could barf, and (b) planning how long before I can go to bed.
Mmm.
As it turns out - I can actually go up whenever I want to, and cuddle in, and if I feel like it I can hit the tube or some downloaded "Dollhouse" eps, in the comfort of my bed. Hm.
George, my wireless router, is making being sick one hair easier. What a little blinky prince of a guy George is.
Mmm.
As it turns out - I can actually go up whenever I want to, and cuddle in, and if I feel like it I can hit the tube or some downloaded "Dollhouse" eps, in the comfort of my bed. Hm.
George, my wireless router, is making being sick one hair easier. What a little blinky prince of a guy George is.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Ever Have One'a Those Days?
Yesterday was just one of those days when I could do no right. Night before last, the tip of my incisor finally broke off while I was eating, and apparently I just do not operate well without a fully matched set of teeth. *Le sigh* In the morning, my day began with some travel planning for the boss; wanting to redeem some reward points, I hit the website and found an array of options. Sent them to boss for approval. Boss says, "I'll do this myself" and I feel rotten about basically offloading something he asked me to help with right back to him. Gah.
Later in the morning, I call to follow up on an expense report. Boss has paid for a train ticket out of his own pocket, and our scan of the receipt is unreadable. Because of the nature of our employer, for audit purposes, it simply is not allowed to forgo a receipt, even for an expense of this nature under $50 - and so, since Boss no longer has the original, I call Amtrak to arrange a duplicate receipt.
Do you know, Amtrak charges TWENTY DOLLARS to provide this service???? Outrageous (and train travelers with expense accounts, be warned - that's pushing half the cost of the dang ticket itself - and of course, it's not an expense-able fee!). I approach Boss again, and he has to throw up his hands again - and it's not even twelve o'clock, people. I just forced a manager I really want to please to eat a travel expense personally - having already set him to tasks he wanted to put on my plate.
Stellar morning.
After this, it's more of the same - just moron, moron, moron, all morning long. At 12:30, my buddy K, our laid back hep cat, says, "your day gets a reset button; you will come back from lunch and it will be smooth sailing" basically.
Apparently, one needs an actual fairy godmother to fill the magic slippers, because though the level of "ugh" stopped ramping up, it didn't reverse, and it didn't even quite peter out. None of what went wrong was technically my fault, and I know that, but I'm the sort who, when I want someone satisfied at my hands, I don't feel good about their being served with mediocrity. Even if I'm just the bearer, I don't like handing over un-stellar messages. Or missing the meeting cancellation I apparently misunderstood, or not being able to answer a question with alacrity (or a positive response). I got these people thinking I am a rock star, and so average-to-meh performance doesn't make me happy.
Today, I started off with a good morning of follow up and taking names, but my visibility in front of my boss didn't change (and one doesn't tug the sleeve of an uninvolved party on administrivia to show off its being competently done), so the impression of yesterday still sat on my nerves.
I ended in good stead, efficient and things accomplished, with tons of follow though today. Still. Could hope for a more exhileratingly fulfilling time of it to come.
You know, and teeth. Ferengi-osity ... *Bleah*
Later in the morning, I call to follow up on an expense report. Boss has paid for a train ticket out of his own pocket, and our scan of the receipt is unreadable. Because of the nature of our employer, for audit purposes, it simply is not allowed to forgo a receipt, even for an expense of this nature under $50 - and so, since Boss no longer has the original, I call Amtrak to arrange a duplicate receipt.
Do you know, Amtrak charges TWENTY DOLLARS to provide this service???? Outrageous (and train travelers with expense accounts, be warned - that's pushing half the cost of the dang ticket itself - and of course, it's not an expense-able fee!). I approach Boss again, and he has to throw up his hands again - and it's not even twelve o'clock, people. I just forced a manager I really want to please to eat a travel expense personally - having already set him to tasks he wanted to put on my plate.
Stellar morning.
After this, it's more of the same - just moron, moron, moron, all morning long. At 12:30, my buddy K, our laid back hep cat, says, "your day gets a reset button; you will come back from lunch and it will be smooth sailing" basically.
Apparently, one needs an actual fairy godmother to fill the magic slippers, because though the level of "ugh" stopped ramping up, it didn't reverse, and it didn't even quite peter out. None of what went wrong was technically my fault, and I know that, but I'm the sort who, when I want someone satisfied at my hands, I don't feel good about their being served with mediocrity. Even if I'm just the bearer, I don't like handing over un-stellar messages. Or missing the meeting cancellation I apparently misunderstood, or not being able to answer a question with alacrity (or a positive response). I got these people thinking I am a rock star, and so average-to-meh performance doesn't make me happy.
Today, I started off with a good morning of follow up and taking names, but my visibility in front of my boss didn't change (and one doesn't tug the sleeve of an uninvolved party on administrivia to show off its being competently done), so the impression of yesterday still sat on my nerves.
I ended in good stead, efficient and things accomplished, with tons of follow though today. Still. Could hope for a more exhileratingly fulfilling time of it to come.
You know, and teeth. Ferengi-osity ... *Bleah*
Quote
This is about the best description of, and insight into, Tea Partiers I can think of:
Yep, that's about the size of it. Strangepersons fear The Intellect. *Sigh*
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
--Alexander Hamilton
Yep, that's about the size of it. Strangepersons fear The Intellect. *Sigh*
Mac Again
I don't know, I don't mean to be one of those puling brand haters, because I just don't care enough to whinge about something I don't even use (and, yes, I can see that the article is sharpening an ax) - but Apple really comes across like Big Brother sometimes ... It makes the appeal of their products even harder to grasp, for a dimwit like me. I don't get the staunchness of the loyalty to this stuff (though YES, of course I have heard the arguments; since the fact is, the arguments usually just serve as justification for what generally appears to be a much more subjective elitism, they don't mean all that much, at the end of the day). I mean: Apple had been using 5-point Torx screws for its MacBook Pros, not standard 6-point Torx screws."We did a little bit of research and found out that this particular screw has been patented," Wiens says. "It is illegal to import screwdrivers that can open this screw into the U.S. unless you buy it through Apple's sales channels. Apple sells the screwdriver for $40."
Really ... ? This is the enlightened, superior company? I'm still not partisan here, but I'm genuinely befuddled.
Really ... ? This is the enlightened, superior company? I'm still not partisan here, but I'm genuinely befuddled.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
So
During the past six months, I have noticed a strangely large percentage of the people I know starting sentences with the word "So". The first time I encountered it was during the in-person interview for my job, and it was so unfamiliar and distinctive, it has struck me as ever stranger and stranger that this pattern seems to have not merely caught on, nor developed, but sprung fully formed from nothingness into the most astounding ubiquity.
I'm certainly old enough to have heard a few trends in speech patterns develop in my lifetime ("like, totally"), but this one was unheard-of one day, and has become everpresent every day since. And, no, I thought at first maybe this is just a linguistic tic amongst the people I work with: but I saw it on the NEWS tonight. It seems to be cropping up all over the place.
I don't mind it. But I'm fascinated, and I want to know why this happened, where it came from, how it's spawned so prolifically. (Prolificly? I'm not looking it up.)
Anyway. So.
I'm certainly old enough to have heard a few trends in speech patterns develop in my lifetime ("like, totally"), but this one was unheard-of one day, and has become everpresent every day since. And, no, I thought at first maybe this is just a linguistic tic amongst the people I work with: but I saw it on the NEWS tonight. It seems to be cropping up all over the place.
I don't mind it. But I'm fascinated, and I want to know why this happened, where it came from, how it's spawned so prolifically. (Prolificly? I'm not looking it up.)
Anyway. So.
Nova Nerding
Neil Degrasse Tyson is almost unbearably cool. And so are giraffes. Love. It.
American Idol? Who needs that? This is content. This is ENTERTAINMENT. Space suits and gross food and ani-mules. Woo!
American Idol? Who needs that? This is content. This is ENTERTAINMENT. Space suits and gross food and ani-mules. Woo!
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Also
Can I be Nichelle Nichols when I grow up?
Heh. I know - keep dreaming. I do. Her career is sort of based on that being the point. (And growing up isn't, necessarily.)
Heh. I know - keep dreaming. I do. Her career is sort of based on that being the point. (And growing up isn't, necessarily.)
Monday, January 17, 2011
Follow
By the way, I know I have more readers than I have followers, but if y'all don't mind I'd appreciate your hitting "follow" if you come much. I need all the support I can get during this querying process - and I know how pitiful seven looks! Not that I don't love my currently-advertised readers, of COURSE. I just need more of you on the bandwagon, m'kay? M'kay.
Mac Daddy
So the 8% drop in foreign holdings in Apple on this day where our own markets were closed and Steve Jobs announced his medical leave brings to mind a consideration outside his wellbeing, but which has made me scratch my head for years. Mac users have always confounded me because of this: the most loyal (morally superior, actually, often) of them have a brand snobbery which one hardly finds outside of your basic celebutante regarding her shoes - and yet an aspect many of them share in common is a disdain for consumers of OTHER kinds. I know a lot of Mac users who sneer at certain kinds of consumerism ... and yet, it is funny: they themselves actually embody it, in their superior disregard for The Great Unwashed - er, those of us on Windows.
It doesn't offend me, mind you. It just seems a kind of unusual irony, considering the source and the nature of the thing. Odd.
It doesn't offend me, mind you. It just seems a kind of unusual irony, considering the source and the nature of the thing. Odd.
American Vitriol
I can't add to the mountains of words about the shooting in Tucson last weekend. But I would ask one thing:
Why is it the republicans and Tea Partiers think it is smart to respond to calls for civility with anger, outrage, and offense? HOW is it they think that is okay?
Deliver me from discourse, if this is its shape and nature.
I'm not precisely a government employee, but I do consider myself a public servant, and I for one wouldn't mind seeing the hatred and bloodlust for my kind ABATE. Good lord, people. Simmer the hell down.
Why is it the republicans and Tea Partiers think it is smart to respond to calls for civility with anger, outrage, and offense? HOW is it they think that is okay?
Deliver me from discourse, if this is its shape and nature.
I'm not precisely a government employee, but I do consider myself a public servant, and I for one wouldn't mind seeing the hatred and bloodlust for my kind ABATE. Good lord, people. Simmer the hell down.
Cure-ish-ative
Well now I *have* gotten some sleep. Sometimes, it's good to know my old ability to sleep whatever the circumstances remains intact. The headache has nothing to say about this rest, but it has been gotten, and the headache can't gainsay *that* at least. Now I'm bleary and slow, but that's not too bad. The afternoon is just giving way to dusk, and the dog is making sweet tired sounds at my feet. Light in the living room is softening; it is dim here now.
Not the worst day off.
Not the best headache.
I could cocoon on a day like this.
Oh, wait - I kind of did. Heh. If only X had been here to nestle into a day like this with me. That would have been perfect.
Not the worst day off.
Not the best headache.
I could cocoon on a day like this.
Oh, wait - I kind of did. Heh. If only X had been here to nestle into a day like this with me. That would have been perfect.
Not Resting
I need to be sleeping, but the caffeinne in that headache pill is keeping me from the possibility. I lay for a while trying to think lovely thoughts of X - of his being here on a day like this, the way we'd run errands, the way we'd sit and read at each other - but I am restless and unable to do right to myself.
The pills aren't working (on the pain) - but they are keeping me nattering. I "called in" on our writers' club meeting today, and can't seem to get down to un-business.
From my experience Saturday, going out when I knew my head was clanging with pain, I know at least I'm avoiding exacerbation. And the laptop is quiet, where turning on the TV would attack me - and reading a paper book would have me in glasses I have been fighting against for a week - but it isn't the brightest headache treatment. I know that. But it is so easy, so temptingly, time-wastingly present.
X tells me if he had headaches like the one I've been describing this week, he'd be grabbing a doctor by the lapels demanding relief.
I, of course, respond by abandoning my glasses, failing to lie down and rest, and pretending that a cocktail of acetaminaphen and ibuprofen, and leaving the TV off, are some sort of therapy. Meanwhile barfing out of my puling brain, knowing the result is drivel.
Hey, clearing the head of drivel must be good for what ails the brainpan. ... No ... ?
Ah well.
Time to try lying down again.
Then probably a stab at Chinese food, later. That might actually be a step up.
The pills aren't working (on the pain) - but they are keeping me nattering. I "called in" on our writers' club meeting today, and can't seem to get down to un-business.
From my experience Saturday, going out when I knew my head was clanging with pain, I know at least I'm avoiding exacerbation. And the laptop is quiet, where turning on the TV would attack me - and reading a paper book would have me in glasses I have been fighting against for a week - but it isn't the brightest headache treatment. I know that. But it is so easy, so temptingly, time-wastingly present.
X tells me if he had headaches like the one I've been describing this week, he'd be grabbing a doctor by the lapels demanding relief.
I, of course, respond by abandoning my glasses, failing to lie down and rest, and pretending that a cocktail of acetaminaphen and ibuprofen, and leaving the TV off, are some sort of therapy. Meanwhile barfing out of my puling brain, knowing the result is drivel.
Hey, clearing the head of drivel must be good for what ails the brainpan. ... No ... ?
Ah well.
Time to try lying down again.
Then probably a stab at Chinese food, later. That might actually be a step up.
Headline
If I have said in the past that I am made of hope, and that headline on this page is one of meaning, it's true too that there are more ingredients. But the fallout is, I am full of ambition.
My drive isn't toward pinstripes and paychecks - that career thing so many people understand as ambition. I have more goals than one. There is my work - that at my office, yes; and that of my dreamier, unpaid kind, which might someday become more lucrative. There is my family and my dog - the ambition to become the woman they need in me, the kind heart, the dependable resource. There is my love - the need to have something to offer beyond the effable, because there are so many miles between us.
Chiefly, though, in terms of "real" ambition, my motivator is that work I'm seeking partnership for. My writing. My querying. My marketing and marketability. My confidence, and yes my product.
Hope is what ambition is made of, and I am a success waiting to happen. When someone takes advantage of it, together there will be rewards aplenty, even if I'm not Kirk Ellis waiting to happen. But certainly, if I *am*.
My hope in some of the places above quails, but my understanding of what I am as an author never seems to wilt nor question. I know my talents and my assets, and I know this is just "waiting" - there is no worry "it might not happen" for me.
My full has been out since October, and on November 12 I got the note about opening the document. If this is when the agent started actually reading, I'm eight weeks into potentiality here. Nerve wracking, but in the best way!
I have my hard copy queries qeueing. Now is when we begin overseas. UK options, a rich mine for me.
The path isn't unclear to me. I'm on it.
I can't wait to see who joins me.
My drive isn't toward pinstripes and paychecks - that career thing so many people understand as ambition. I have more goals than one. There is my work - that at my office, yes; and that of my dreamier, unpaid kind, which might someday become more lucrative. There is my family and my dog - the ambition to become the woman they need in me, the kind heart, the dependable resource. There is my love - the need to have something to offer beyond the effable, because there are so many miles between us.
Chiefly, though, in terms of "real" ambition, my motivator is that work I'm seeking partnership for. My writing. My querying. My marketing and marketability. My confidence, and yes my product.
Hope is what ambition is made of, and I am a success waiting to happen. When someone takes advantage of it, together there will be rewards aplenty, even if I'm not Kirk Ellis waiting to happen. But certainly, if I *am*.
My hope in some of the places above quails, but my understanding of what I am as an author never seems to wilt nor question. I know my talents and my assets, and I know this is just "waiting" - there is no worry "it might not happen" for me.
My full has been out since October, and on November 12 I got the note about opening the document. If this is when the agent started actually reading, I'm eight weeks into potentiality here. Nerve wracking, but in the best way!
I have my hard copy queries qeueing. Now is when we begin overseas. UK options, a rich mine for me.
The path isn't unclear to me. I'm on it.
I can't wait to see who joins me.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
The Horror of Loss
It's a long weekend, so timing is strange, and nothing is happening as normal. Not feeling well, I took a two hour nap today on the chaise, and just now I finally recommitted to cleaning the house.
I dropped my father's old transistor radio. Circa probably sometime in the 1940s, this was a mahogany colored bakelite little breadbox, and had still worked even as recently as when we were kids. It was fully intact, still had all components and tubes, and would even buzz quietly if actually plugged in and turned on. And I have shattered its case.
My instant response to this was to fall to the floor in shards myself, loud sobs, terrible tears.
I know that the loss of a thing attached to a man is fearful only because it is one less piece of HIM. Because it reminds us that as time passes, there will be less and less. It's not about the object; the object is a symbol.
My brother trades in symbols like that, saving what has been hidden, and calling it artifact.
My mom is able to ascribe symbolism to approximate objects - not the "real" thing from her childhood, she can still attach the immortality imbued in artifacts into new artifacts like the ones actually attached to memory.
I live surrounded by artifacts. The beautiful tables TEO has let me hold onto, which stood silent at the center of warm afternoons at her father's. The chair my sister-in-law upholstered, in which I sit typing right now. The television X left with me, and the DVD player he gave me the day my father died. The paintings of my grandmother, the globe, always beside this radio, which my dad had as a kid. There are pieces of my grandparents', parents', siblings', even my nieces' lives all over this cheering, welcoming house. They MAKE it cheering and welcoming. They make it feel "warm" to me in that ineffable way beside the point of temperature.
My very father's cremains, in his little dragon box.
This is why I could never in good faith (har de har) be a Buddhist. I'm a believer in the cult of Stuff.
Breaking my father's radio means there is one less (intact) thing of his in the world.
Maybe my brother's old advice - to bury some piece of it in one place, other pieces of it far away, in some archaeologically-impossible configuration - is the next response.
Now is not the time to contemplate disposal.
Now is the time to still the wracking horror, to sit in this good chair, to be glad of those things which do survive, to survey my blessings, to nullify my self-blame for something which isn't even a crime.
Now is the time to clean this house.
Now is the time to be glad of the father I had ... *have* ... who was so fine a man that the very loss of his childhood radio is occasion for such anguish. Tears and flapdoodle.
***
The anniversary is coming, and I'm surviving a lush case. What once was a radio had become just a piece of silent decor. I know better than that this is genuinely loss.
But I know enough, too, to experience this sadness, to know it for what it is. And to be so grateful I have so much to lose. How blessed my dad made me.
How like a little kid in the way I miss him.
I dropped my father's old transistor radio. Circa probably sometime in the 1940s, this was a mahogany colored bakelite little breadbox, and had still worked even as recently as when we were kids. It was fully intact, still had all components and tubes, and would even buzz quietly if actually plugged in and turned on. And I have shattered its case.
My instant response to this was to fall to the floor in shards myself, loud sobs, terrible tears.
I know that the loss of a thing attached to a man is fearful only because it is one less piece of HIM. Because it reminds us that as time passes, there will be less and less. It's not about the object; the object is a symbol.
My brother trades in symbols like that, saving what has been hidden, and calling it artifact.
My mom is able to ascribe symbolism to approximate objects - not the "real" thing from her childhood, she can still attach the immortality imbued in artifacts into new artifacts like the ones actually attached to memory.
I live surrounded by artifacts. The beautiful tables TEO has let me hold onto, which stood silent at the center of warm afternoons at her father's. The chair my sister-in-law upholstered, in which I sit typing right now. The television X left with me, and the DVD player he gave me the day my father died. The paintings of my grandmother, the globe, always beside this radio, which my dad had as a kid. There are pieces of my grandparents', parents', siblings', even my nieces' lives all over this cheering, welcoming house. They MAKE it cheering and welcoming. They make it feel "warm" to me in that ineffable way beside the point of temperature.
My very father's cremains, in his little dragon box.
This is why I could never in good faith (har de har) be a Buddhist. I'm a believer in the cult of Stuff.
Breaking my father's radio means there is one less (intact) thing of his in the world.
Maybe my brother's old advice - to bury some piece of it in one place, other pieces of it far away, in some archaeologically-impossible configuration - is the next response.
Now is not the time to contemplate disposal.
Now is the time to still the wracking horror, to sit in this good chair, to be glad of those things which do survive, to survey my blessings, to nullify my self-blame for something which isn't even a crime.
Now is the time to clean this house.
Now is the time to be glad of the father I had ... *have* ... who was so fine a man that the very loss of his childhood radio is occasion for such anguish. Tears and flapdoodle.
***
The anniversary is coming, and I'm surviving a lush case. What once was a radio had become just a piece of silent decor. I know better than that this is genuinely loss.
But I know enough, too, to experience this sadness, to know it for what it is. And to be so grateful I have so much to lose. How blessed my dad made me.
How like a little kid in the way I miss him.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
So Full of Thoughts
I had things I wanted to write about tonight, but I also have a pretty bad headache. Why'm I online? Things to do. I have a birthday card to get out for someone wonderfully amazing. I have a baby shower card to make - and I had wanted to really make that personal, with a little poem or something. I had planned to inventory some things I have from my late Uncle, to figure out what to do with them.
How is it my life after work hours used to be so much more my own? Weird.
How is it my life after work hours used to be so much more my own? Weird.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Being Bad
Last night didn't have much to offer in the way of sleep, and, as sometimes happens with nights like that, it led to the fairly strange-feeling morning I am having. It's wreaking havoc on the poor dog's nerves, but at least I'm *here* to be all reassuring and some junk.
Richmond is sandwiched between the two major storms hitting the east coast right now, and as such we are having not-such-great weather, but not to terribly awful either. The weathermen have been pretty excitedly yipping about this for literally a week now, and so I had plenty of notice. Last night, I brought my work laptop home, and have duly logged on to do my job.
I am not blogging from my work computer, no. But I am blogging, yes. For I am evil, profligate, and slackerly-selfish. (I feel my self-respect as a member of Generation X swelling even as I say so.)
The thing is, I was actually up and working well in advance of my usual reporting time. And my usual reporting time is 7:30 mainly in service of my function as security escort. I come in before the 8:00 races so as to be available for Julie McCoy Your Cruise Director duties - and, given that the building isn't crawling with visitors, I don't expect much demand for that this morning.
So I was up and working by seven a.m., and why the heck would I be doing that, one might ask.
I did that because, in the blear and hate of oh-dark-thirty, and having been up all night, I FINALLY drowsed for a moment - I finally almost fell asleep - and my body realized it couldn't allow that. And so I woke. All sure that I was late.
I got up, I clambered down the stairs, I refused to notice how dark it still was (it's ALWAYS dark when I get up!), and I was 2/3 the way through my various inbox audits before I realized the clock on my laptop had interesting information for me. Seven oh seven??
Good lord, even for me that's a bit eeeeeaarlly.
I indulged the luxury of going upstairs to scrape my hair off my face, to wash it, to clean my teeth, to get some shoes on. This office floor is icy cold tile. It was luxury, to clothe my poor feet.
So I am blogging (but I won't be all day) because it is that eerie kind of time where there's snow outside and it's wildly dreary, but I am home ... but I'm not "off" either.
And because, of course, if I had anything to SAY I'd hardly be a self-respecting blogger. Or Gen X'er, for that matter.
So blather, blather.
Maybe it's time for a bowl of cream of wheat and something to sip on.
***
Side note: it's so weird being able to scritch my Lolly in between work stuff. I always did want to bring her with me.
Richmond is sandwiched between the two major storms hitting the east coast right now, and as such we are having not-such-great weather, but not to terribly awful either. The weathermen have been pretty excitedly yipping about this for literally a week now, and so I had plenty of notice. Last night, I brought my work laptop home, and have duly logged on to do my job.
I am not blogging from my work computer, no. But I am blogging, yes. For I am evil, profligate, and slackerly-selfish. (I feel my self-respect as a member of Generation X swelling even as I say so.)
The thing is, I was actually up and working well in advance of my usual reporting time. And my usual reporting time is 7:30 mainly in service of my function as security escort. I come in before the 8:00 races so as to be available for Julie McCoy Your Cruise Director duties - and, given that the building isn't crawling with visitors, I don't expect much demand for that this morning.
So I was up and working by seven a.m., and why the heck would I be doing that, one might ask.
I did that because, in the blear and hate of oh-dark-thirty, and having been up all night, I FINALLY drowsed for a moment - I finally almost fell asleep - and my body realized it couldn't allow that. And so I woke. All sure that I was late.
I got up, I clambered down the stairs, I refused to notice how dark it still was (it's ALWAYS dark when I get up!), and I was 2/3 the way through my various inbox audits before I realized the clock on my laptop had interesting information for me. Seven oh seven??
Good lord, even for me that's a bit eeeeeaarlly.
I indulged the luxury of going upstairs to scrape my hair off my face, to wash it, to clean my teeth, to get some shoes on. This office floor is icy cold tile. It was luxury, to clothe my poor feet.
So I am blogging (but I won't be all day) because it is that eerie kind of time where there's snow outside and it's wildly dreary, but I am home ... but I'm not "off" either.
And because, of course, if I had anything to SAY I'd hardly be a self-respecting blogger. Or Gen X'er, for that matter.
So blather, blather.
Maybe it's time for a bowl of cream of wheat and something to sip on.
***
Side note: it's so weird being able to scritch my Lolly in between work stuff. I always did want to bring her with me.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Lush Case
You know it's going to be an indulgent encounter with PMS when watching the final episode of "Dollhouse" leaves you fighting hard not to sob.
Heh.
Aww.
Heh.
Aww.
Sarah Plain and Tall
I have this fantasy - not *only* about the Palin, to be sure - but most specifically about her, that her "popularity" (or, at least, her career of fame-whoring) could go something like this, if people actually change, with all the talk of The Vitriolic Atmosphere comes to more than hot air.
Sadly, it requires that people actually change. I remember 9/11, and do know better.
Pity, though.
Perhaps a better thing to remember was the day the president was elected, and hope almost seemed a sane possibility.
We DID do that. Possibility is always possible.
Sadly, it requires that people actually change. I remember 9/11, and do know better.
Pity, though.
Perhaps a better thing to remember was the day the president was elected, and hope almost seemed a sane possibility.
We DID do that. Possibility is always possible.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Off the Tether
Finally, with thanks to "Jake" the CSR at my router's help line, I am online without actual lines.
Ahh, computing from my Queen's Chair. Most excellent, and comfortable too.
Now, if I have to work remote on Tuesday because of the snow the local weathermen are getting so frothy about, I will be able to set myself up in a more civilized way at the dining room table. Also excellent.
Ahh, computing from my Queen's Chair. Most excellent, and comfortable too.
Now, if I have to work remote on Tuesday because of the snow the local weathermen are getting so frothy about, I will be able to set myself up in a more civilized way at the dining room table. Also excellent.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Tired
As with so many intentions, I also let slip my plans to write about the headline on this page ... and about work this week. So goeth the Thoughtkiller. (... and wouldn't that make a great sarcastic overwrought online ID ... ?) More to come. But if I don't force myself offline, I'll begin to be reckless, and get off useful stuff like query research - and even off idiotic stuff like posting complaints about agents so they can google me and be offended (oh - wait - nobody I'm kvetching about got queried) - and end up visiting fora I haven't been registered with in years, or reading Miss Manners, or the usual, eBaying pointlessly and obsessively checking the items I'm trying to sell.
Sleep, also, is good stuff.
Even short of going to bed before 9:30, like last weekend, I need to disconnect. The dog surely has qualities more worthwhile than even my Asus.
Sleep, also, is good stuff.
Even short of going to bed before 9:30, like last weekend, I need to disconnect. The dog surely has qualities more worthwhile than even my Asus.
Wired
You know, I had planned to come home and work on installing my router tonight (what's a good day's work, having been up since six and online since before 7:30, without a pile more hours in front of a computer, after all??), but I came home and got all inspired and writerly, and here it is suddenly almost nine o'clock and I just fired off another query.
It was the only one, out of today's crop, to be sure. But it was a productive night, even if the yield doesn't look "impressive" by the standard of number-of-emails-sent. Sometimes, finding the RIGHT person to query is worth finding five or six others you end up not wanting to pester.
(To be sure, sometimes a fifteen hour day yields to self-righteous whinging. However, in this case, I am opting to pretend I am Noble and Intelligent, choosing my deployments with care and doing small amounts right, rather than quantity in mediocrity.)
It was the only one, out of today's crop, to be sure. But it was a productive night, even if the yield doesn't look "impressive" by the standard of number-of-emails-sent. Sometimes, finding the RIGHT person to query is worth finding five or six others you end up not wanting to pester.
(To be sure, sometimes a fifteen hour day yields to self-righteous whinging. However, in this case, I am opting to pretend I am Noble and Intelligent, choosing my deployments with care and doing small amounts right, rather than quantity in mediocrity.)
Hm.
Tonight's search yielded some of those things resulting in the post below, and one possible agent I pulled up on QT. QT is nice not least because it links a list or sampling of agents' authors' product on Amazon. It's a lazy tool, BUT a nice snapshot if you're just window shopping agents.
When you find one with seven links, that's nice.
When all seven of those links result in "no products found for 'this author-under-representation's name'" ... you maybe think better of querying. Amazon is what it is, but if it can't find this agent's authors, you're not likely to become *more* visible. Are you?
Apparently, I am playing Devil's Advocate today.
And also playing Repel All the Agents (whose bad habits you're snarking about here). Stupid game, one might say. But, though I'm not cranky, the one-way-street instructiveness tends to be for querying authors gets to be a dreary road to trudge sometimes.
When you find one with seven links, that's nice.
When all seven of those links result in "no products found for 'this author-under-representation's name'" ... you maybe think better of querying. Amazon is what it is, but if it can't find this agent's authors, you're not likely to become *more* visible. Are you?
Apparently, I am playing Devil's Advocate today.
And also playing Repel All the Agents (whose bad habits you're snarking about here). Stupid game, one might say. But, though I'm not cranky, the one-way-street instructiveness tends to be for querying authors gets to be a dreary road to trudge sometimes.
To Don'ts
In the process of querying and research, you run across blog after blog, article after article, about what not to do, what not to say, what not to write in your contributions to the many dozens of slushpiles you're sending your work to join. I won't regurgitate the tips; for those doing this job, you know already. For those maintaining slushpiles I've become a part of, googling me up and finding this place - who needs it?
For the latter, though, I would like to turn the tables upon you.
How not to "help" your prospective authors ...
In conclusion - either "physician, heal thyself" or "practice what you preach", depending upon your preference for medical or religion-themed metaphor.
Sheesh.
For the latter, though, I would like to turn the tables upon you.
How not to "help" your prospective authors ...
- Please don't say you want to read "something that will keep (you) up at night turning the pages". For Pete's own dear sake - you guys tell US ad infinitum to use specific, clear, pointed examples and language in pitching our work at you. Offer the same courtesy in kind; that would give it some depth and urgency. After all: how can you imagine I know what keeps you up at night? I just eliminated a query because I couldn't get a handle on the agent, thanks to communication just as vague as any poorly-constructed query letter they can ever have complained about. (See also: "I like ALL kinds of reading!" and "I never know what I am going to go for." Terribly helpful. I mean, again, I get it. But it's not precisely instructive either.)
- Don't describe what interests you as "transformative historial fiction" ... If I've been instructed once, I've been instructed a hundred times now not to make up genres to describe my work. What in Maud's name is tranformative historical fiction? And - again - how is it you imagine we can get a handle on that, any better than y'all can understand made-up and crossbred "genres" which don't exist? Sure, if you say you like romantic historical fiction, that makes sense. But if you get schmoopy and bring an amorphous term like transformative in, I'm wondering if what you prefer is fantasy.
- Please please DO tell us what you don't take. There are times that kind of bullet point helps clarify what you DO take, if "historical fiction" isn't addressed in some way in your blurbs, on your site, or even in your completely absent list of actual works under representation.
- Please put your list of actual works under representation SOMEWHERE we can access it. If you can't bear to do so on your own actual site (it is astounding to me how many agencies won't do this), then let QueryTracker have a shot. Please? I know it just coddles us spoiled authors, but gravy on gravel, people: it serves you, too, actually.
- And, yes - do please address how you personally define the genres you cover. We all know they are bludgeons, not scimitars, and I don't want to waste your time or mine shilling my fairly muscular work at you if you prefer heaving bodices and lots of candlelight to axes and intricate religious politics. I can take my cues if your website is pink and all images soft-focused, but not everyone is that on-the-nose in their electronic aesthetic.
- And building from that point: consider web design. I've gotten a migraine every query-night since last February visiting agency pages, and some take a LONG time to (a) navigate, and/or (b) load. I want to know your library, and I *need* to "meet" your agents, but I don't care about all the scrolling you have never heard people hate to do (the studies on this date back to the nineties, people; and even I am aware of them). And, as much as I love nifty graphics, if they bounce and swoon to the point I can't control or get beyond them you're wasting my time as much as any slush pile so famously wastes yours. Simple is perfectly fine. There's no taint nor shame in having a sensibly designed site; even if it's pink and loaded with clip-art of Fabio. Like your writers' pitches are - if the content is no good, the showy Flash won't help me *or* you - and if it is good, you don't even need all the Fancy-Fancy. Just sayin'.
In conclusion - either "physician, heal thyself" or "practice what you preach", depending upon your preference for medical or religion-themed metaphor.
Sheesh.
SHOCK
I came home today and had received an email from "Mary Sue Doe" ... The agent who has my full in hand right now is named Mary Sue D'oh-ish, and so for a fraction of a second, my eyeballs perceived in my Inbox the potential for ... An Answer.
***
Huh.
And I'd thought X was the only person whose emails could get a splash of adrenaline quite like that out of me.
Live and learn.
***
Though X is still something rather more personally fierce, even than Good Writing Stuff.
***
Huh.
And I'd thought X was the only person whose emails could get a splash of adrenaline quite like that out of me.
Live and learn.
***
Though X is still something rather more personally fierce, even than Good Writing Stuff.
Writing Groups
I have two levels of writing groups, the Big One and the Intimate One. James River Writers is of course a thoroughly amazing group; responsible for the foundation of my education, stoker of my enthusiasm, font of one of those "scenes" I *do* feel very much part of, and annual squee-fest for the Conference. The SBC is smaller; newer; and "mine" in another way than JRW is. JRW inspired me. But in the Sarcastic Broads Club, the inspiration is exchanged and more intimately personal.
We're new, and we're only getting ready for our second meeting, but I'm a little girlishly excited to have a club of my own ... and tickled, too, at the way group-ish-ness lights my authorial fire.
I almost wrote professional writer instead of author up there, to indicate the inclusion of all the publishing work "writing" necessitates. It seems to me, though, the august title of author includes that implicitly.
Boy howdy, language is neat stuff.
***
Randomly, I smile and think of the woman today (someone whose mode of expression I respect) who told me she expands her vocabulary reading my emails.
And of my old friend the Frenchman, from my last job, who gave me a sterling compliment indeed: he said I speak English like a European.
He didn't need to explain that, nor that it was a very deep piece of praise. Exceptionally nice.
We're new, and we're only getting ready for our second meeting, but I'm a little girlishly excited to have a club of my own ... and tickled, too, at the way group-ish-ness lights my authorial fire.
I almost wrote professional writer instead of author up there, to indicate the inclusion of all the publishing work "writing" necessitates. It seems to me, though, the august title of author includes that implicitly.
Boy howdy, language is neat stuff.
***
Randomly, I smile and think of the woman today (someone whose mode of expression I respect) who told me she expands her vocabulary reading my emails.
And of my old friend the Frenchman, from my last job, who gave me a sterling compliment indeed: he said I speak English like a European.
He didn't need to explain that, nor that it was a very deep piece of praise. Exceptionally nice.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Epiphanic Moment
Today is epiphany, the day Christ entered the world with us. I had an idea today of what to post today, but the headache has pushed it out. I then had a good laugh with X, and then finally put away the tinsel of Christmas. Seems right.
Maybe I'll remember what the epiphanic thought I was going to blabber about.
I'm betting I won't, though, and will let it go, and tomorrow will go on until it's done.
Maybe I'll remember what the epiphanic thought I was going to blabber about.
I'm betting I won't, though, and will let it go, and tomorrow will go on until it's done.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Punkin' OUT
Speaking of punk rock. Here we have the PERFECT example.
Oh, good lord, people.
It's enough to make you LONG for Hot Topic. Seriously.
Oh, good lord, people.
It's enough to make you LONG for Hot Topic. Seriously.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Acceptance At Work
I realized today I have become accustomed to being a little trodden-across in my work life. It's an interesting thing, because I was handed a tray to carry by someone with no right to determine my workload, and I was a little apologetic (let us say "tactful") in pressing the shyest question about this to my manager.
With the economy as it is, and as confident a woman as I am - I am still a new kid at a very large establishment. I learned from my last employer that questioning was not allowed (for secretaries), and that additions would be given to my job both without warning, and certainly without pay.
(What is most interesting about that is any sort of *initiative* or attempt to provide value-added service on my own was greeted with pearl-clutching horror; but that is a whinge for absolutely no other time and beside the point here. Mostly.)
I learned that from one day to the next, not only would I have multiple managers in the first place, but several others were also going to be allowed to call upon me.
Boys and girls: this is one of the reasons a multiple-manager operating structure is to be avoided, if at all possible. It never works very well, the politics become deeply tedious, and sooner or later, the thought occurs to higher-ups, "if she can support two, she can support three more a little in addition ... but not for additional pay of course."
Aherem.
I have always loathed multiple manager setups, since the time I worked for three guys, one of whom backed out on his WRITTEN promise to provide bonuses, with the other two, and the PRESIDENT OF THE FIRM had to step in and pay me one because all of them ended up collapsing on the thing when one decided to be tight-fisted.
Le. Sigh.
So no small joy in my current job is that, while I am core to the team, and we HAVE multiple managers I support, my actual reporting structure is clearly to the top banana, and there is no question that my provision of work for EVERYONE in my group leaves him still and unquestionably at the top of my priority list, every day, no dibs-calling on my time he can't trump.
I love the way I work on special projects with the manager who calls me Tenacious D. I enjoy working with the guy in the midwest, with the local officer, and sitting back and watching as my whole group, nationwide, comes to understand - and act on - the fact that I am to be depended on for certain functions. They seem to like having someone to turn to, and I at almost-six-months-in am reveling in the ways this educates me, entrenches me (frankly), and begins, bit by bit, to make a difference for everybody. An explicit part of my role is to be a core unifier, and this is coming to be, just a little faster and deeper as time moves me more "in" my job.
***
And so.
When someone outside my team, whom I've begun a new relationship with through providing regular deliverables he compiles, turned to the admin he thought was there to support his team - and she turns out to be offloading her administrative duties in favor of more project management, or analysis, or whatever-it-is she thinks is more "worthwhile" than administrative work - they both turned to me. I took on a small to-do, and then, innocuously, the guy's boss emailed me to ask if I could help out administratively.
I didn't argue my way out, but I did consider the senior level of my boss, and emailed him a quick FYI.
Then the admin-who-isn't-doing-admin-work-anymore emailed two of the senior admins explaining to them that my name needed to be put next to other-manager's as his assistant.
Ahm.
"Yeah: no" was the gist of the diplomatic email I sent right back, explaining that unless and until my actual manager says I need to be given a new job alongside my own, I'm not interested in formalizing my support of someone who in fact told me he has an admin actually.
(To which I say: what is it she does ... ? Maybe I missed that bit.)
Anyway, so another quick FYI to my boss, accompanied with "I don't mean to create politics where there are none" but the clear understanding I defer to him, not just anyone with a tray to hand off, no matter how lightly laden it might be for a minute.
I got an actual thank you from one of the seniors, who felt I had expressed a very proper expectation, that MY boss decides my job - not an admin who doesn't want to be an admin, and who isn't even a part of my group, and assigning to me people not part of my boss's.
***
There isn't a good coda here, other than my ruminations about my newfound (since the last/cr*ppy job) willingness to get myself handed-off on. It brings to mind an interesting train of thought about the last GOOD job I held, which so often I actually find myself thinking of more than the one more recently held - the one I keep passively-aggressively half writing out of my work history, in conversation and in my consideration. The last good job provides a very interesting view of me as a worker, indeed.
With the economy as it is, and as confident a woman as I am - I am still a new kid at a very large establishment. I learned from my last employer that questioning was not allowed (for secretaries), and that additions would be given to my job both without warning, and certainly without pay.
(What is most interesting about that is any sort of *initiative* or attempt to provide value-added service on my own was greeted with pearl-clutching horror; but that is a whinge for absolutely no other time and beside the point here. Mostly.)
I learned that from one day to the next, not only would I have multiple managers in the first place, but several others were also going to be allowed to call upon me.
Boys and girls: this is one of the reasons a multiple-manager operating structure is to be avoided, if at all possible. It never works very well, the politics become deeply tedious, and sooner or later, the thought occurs to higher-ups, "if she can support two, she can support three more a little in addition ... but not for additional pay of course."
Aherem.
I have always loathed multiple manager setups, since the time I worked for three guys, one of whom backed out on his WRITTEN promise to provide bonuses, with the other two, and the PRESIDENT OF THE FIRM had to step in and pay me one because all of them ended up collapsing on the thing when one decided to be tight-fisted.
Le. Sigh.
So no small joy in my current job is that, while I am core to the team, and we HAVE multiple managers I support, my actual reporting structure is clearly to the top banana, and there is no question that my provision of work for EVERYONE in my group leaves him still and unquestionably at the top of my priority list, every day, no dibs-calling on my time he can't trump.
I love the way I work on special projects with the manager who calls me Tenacious D. I enjoy working with the guy in the midwest, with the local officer, and sitting back and watching as my whole group, nationwide, comes to understand - and act on - the fact that I am to be depended on for certain functions. They seem to like having someone to turn to, and I at almost-six-months-in am reveling in the ways this educates me, entrenches me (frankly), and begins, bit by bit, to make a difference for everybody. An explicit part of my role is to be a core unifier, and this is coming to be, just a little faster and deeper as time moves me more "in" my job.
***
And so.
When someone outside my team, whom I've begun a new relationship with through providing regular deliverables he compiles, turned to the admin he thought was there to support his team - and she turns out to be offloading her administrative duties in favor of more project management, or analysis, or whatever-it-is she thinks is more "worthwhile" than administrative work - they both turned to me. I took on a small to-do, and then, innocuously, the guy's boss emailed me to ask if I could help out administratively.
I didn't argue my way out, but I did consider the senior level of my boss, and emailed him a quick FYI.
Then the admin-who-isn't-doing-admin-work-anymore emailed two of the senior admins explaining to them that my name needed to be put next to other-manager's as his assistant.
Ahm.
"Yeah: no" was the gist of the diplomatic email I sent right back, explaining that unless and until my actual manager says I need to be given a new job alongside my own, I'm not interested in formalizing my support of someone who in fact told me he has an admin actually.
(To which I say: what is it she does ... ? Maybe I missed that bit.)
Anyway, so another quick FYI to my boss, accompanied with "I don't mean to create politics where there are none" but the clear understanding I defer to him, not just anyone with a tray to hand off, no matter how lightly laden it might be for a minute.
I got an actual thank you from one of the seniors, who felt I had expressed a very proper expectation, that MY boss decides my job - not an admin who doesn't want to be an admin, and who isn't even a part of my group, and assigning to me people not part of my boss's.
***
There isn't a good coda here, other than my ruminations about my newfound (since the last/cr*ppy job) willingness to get myself handed-off on. It brings to mind an interesting train of thought about the last GOOD job I held, which so often I actually find myself thinking of more than the one more recently held - the one I keep passively-aggressively half writing out of my work history, in conversation and in my consideration. The last good job provides a very interesting view of me as a worker, indeed.
This Post Is the Sister Post to a Post In Equatorial Antarctica ...
My brother's been going through old vinyl and memories on his blog, and I told him recently he had to tell about his one gig as a punk rocker (hee - in our house, that was usually pronounced PUH' rokka) and the moment of glory he spent on a White Cross album cover or I would be all stupid-baby-sister and pouty about it. Heh.
What an obliging lad he is. With imagery, too. Bro is the black thing with stripes on him; wearing a shirt from our grandfather, doing that thing guys do which is the ultimate remedy to the White Boy Shuffle, grainy and denatured, twenty-five or so years ago now.
It's funny to me; he talks about not being core to the scene ... but, of course, he was my entre' into it. I've posted before about the subcultures I've touched, never counting myself full membership out of respect for the imaginary boundaries subcultures tend to set up (which he talks about too, to be sure), but so often being accepted anyway, welcomed, and encouraged to consider myself at home. Bro, though, doesn't know about himself what I do, and would never be so vain as I am, to admit it, if he did: but he had charisma. I forget this often, but growing up in the house with him, *I* was subject to him. I idolized him not in his capacity of My Big Brother, but in his skin, in his shape, in the space he occupied, and always has.
We both nursed on social openness as kids; our father taught us how to move in any context of people, it was a conscious lesson his own parents had given to him. And our mother is a meeter of others; not in the sense of introductions, but in her desire and ability to reach out to them. So, though Bro and I both accidentally shared an intensive shyness and even backwardness in some ways - we both also gained a talent for people, as well.
In him, this built on an innate charisma. I think I have it too, but as a woman I have refined and cultivated it out of a natural state, and as a vain one I have abused it to the point age has dulled it. My brother, though, had this scimitar way of cutting through crowds, and even without my desperation and intention, he had attention, quite aside from the mohawks. Bro still has a "way" about him.
I've known only a very few people with charisma - hiya, Zuba - but I recognize it, and that's not because I recognize it from those people-person parents of ours. It's because I was imprinted pretty early on someone with a personal power he both used in rebellion against his context, and which he rebelled against in itself. If I hated being "That Guy's little sister" for all those years, he himself had to BE That Guy. If being smaller-sib made me want to be A Famous Person (actor being quite secondary to the cause), then appreciating how hard a time he had even on the normal human scale of personal power has made me all the more grateful that never happened.
But yeah, there's something magic about my bro, and if out of love for him I had to put away my stupid-eyeballed idolizing, I still admire something about him which exists quite independent of my having been his sister. I get the pleasure, still, sometimes, of watching people come to see what he is - through his work, perhaps more than any other way - and sitting back, silent, all swoll'up with pride and some junk.
Family's always grainy in the eyes of its strangely-linked members. But my brother's not a dark, indefinable thing with ancestral stripes on him. He is that. But I see more, too.
Neat guy. I like him.
What an obliging lad he is. With imagery, too. Bro is the black thing with stripes on him; wearing a shirt from our grandfather, doing that thing guys do which is the ultimate remedy to the White Boy Shuffle, grainy and denatured, twenty-five or so years ago now.
It's funny to me; he talks about not being core to the scene ... but, of course, he was my entre' into it. I've posted before about the subcultures I've touched, never counting myself full membership out of respect for the imaginary boundaries subcultures tend to set up (which he talks about too, to be sure), but so often being accepted anyway, welcomed, and encouraged to consider myself at home. Bro, though, doesn't know about himself what I do, and would never be so vain as I am, to admit it, if he did: but he had charisma. I forget this often, but growing up in the house with him, *I* was subject to him. I idolized him not in his capacity of My Big Brother, but in his skin, in his shape, in the space he occupied, and always has.
We both nursed on social openness as kids; our father taught us how to move in any context of people, it was a conscious lesson his own parents had given to him. And our mother is a meeter of others; not in the sense of introductions, but in her desire and ability to reach out to them. So, though Bro and I both accidentally shared an intensive shyness and even backwardness in some ways - we both also gained a talent for people, as well.
In him, this built on an innate charisma. I think I have it too, but as a woman I have refined and cultivated it out of a natural state, and as a vain one I have abused it to the point age has dulled it. My brother, though, had this scimitar way of cutting through crowds, and even without my desperation and intention, he had attention, quite aside from the mohawks. Bro still has a "way" about him.
I've known only a very few people with charisma - hiya, Zuba - but I recognize it, and that's not because I recognize it from those people-person parents of ours. It's because I was imprinted pretty early on someone with a personal power he both used in rebellion against his context, and which he rebelled against in itself. If I hated being "That Guy's little sister" for all those years, he himself had to BE That Guy. If being smaller-sib made me want to be A Famous Person (actor being quite secondary to the cause), then appreciating how hard a time he had even on the normal human scale of personal power has made me all the more grateful that never happened.
But yeah, there's something magic about my bro, and if out of love for him I had to put away my stupid-eyeballed idolizing, I still admire something about him which exists quite independent of my having been his sister. I get the pleasure, still, sometimes, of watching people come to see what he is - through his work, perhaps more than any other way - and sitting back, silent, all swoll'up with pride and some junk.
Family's always grainy in the eyes of its strangely-linked members. But my brother's not a dark, indefinable thing with ancestral stripes on him. He is that. But I see more, too.
Neat guy. I like him.
Monday, January 3, 2011
RIP Mr. Kobayashi
Pete Postlethwaite has died. I always love his voice.
Only 64. Not enough time, Pete.
*Off to pull "The Usual Suspects" off the shelf*
Only 64. Not enough time, Pete.
*Off to pull "The Usual Suspects" off the shelf*
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Oh Yeah, It's 2011
Huh. Yes, I skipped the opportunities to stay up late for NYE (I did end up succumbing - by 9:30, as a matter of fact), and - shockingly, for I am A Writer - to go on about the new year.
I don't believe in my life I've ever made a new year's resolution, and by and large I didn't really grow up around resolutions. Aware of the concept, yes, but unfamiliar with anyone actually troubling to enact it. So new year's has always been one of two things for me, either the opportunity to celebrate, or, since my late twenties, the opportunity to privately, silently, reflect.
Couple years ago, it was about simple, unadorned, bereft depression and shock. So last year I made it a party.
This year could have gone either way, but in the end it was WORK had the final word. Yes, because instead of early dismissal, I had the pleasure of someone showing up at the office at 2:00 p.m. and spending an hour and a half sitting in my cubicle with me working on a mass of expense reporting, dating back twelve months, the deadline for 2010 having passed by two weeks ago.
To those who have protested that I should have found a way to say no, I say: I got it over with. And the boss is in town this week. Just as well to endure the tedium, and have it off my plate, as to put it of still more. In any case, that would have led to bad feeling, and who needs that. So.
I came away from the day frustrated, tired, and without time to unwind and even nap, as might have been ideal for the pulling on of impractical cuteness and shoes - and set myself a few tasks.
The wireless router had arrived (and in record time, Amazon, it must be said! so thanks). Any remaining doubt about whether to go out was dispelled when I called Roma Ristorante and they were open.
So to spinach and feta pizza, the installation of the router, and the dismantling of the tree!
Or, in fact, not - as the case may turn out to be.
The router connection instructions were great, nicely elementary and clear and quick - it was after that that the disc seemed to lose its senses. And, of course - no paper manual. And the PDF accompaniment skips installation, in favor of "advanced internet setup" ... which would be useful, I'm sure, were the installation complete. One needs must call customer service, which I'm sure is good. But at nine-thirty, pizza snug in my tum and having been up since six, I opted for the middle-aged, single homeowner's prerogative, and said hang ALL of this (including housecleaning, router, *and* tree) and Went to Bed. Mmm, now, that was delicioso.
Up and at 'em on 1/1/11, I did move to the router, which had decided to go to new, less "stuck" looking screens for the morning ... yet even less 'splicable somehow, and so it was time to shut down and get to the rest.
My brother is right when he says it's hard to spend too much time staging for actual action. I love staging for housecleaning - and did so to my pleasure/leisure. And then talked to him for a while, about 1973. Then it was on to staging for the taking down of the tree.
And the hoisting of all the other pointless and unseen (did I mention I'm single - and mom and my stepfather came over only briefly - with my friends, V and W being the lion's share of holiday activity inside this house?) decorations up to the guest room
Which itself, now, is a staging area - everything "cleaned" up from Down Here is now piled up Up There - the double bed hosting a huge jumble of acres of silver tinsel, purple orbs, sixteen kinds of painted, ceramic, silver, brass, and even musical knickknacks, shiny decorations, multicolored candles, heavy piles of lights, and a partridge in a pear tree - none of which passed the penultimate state of Putting Away - which is to say, they're in their room, but not in their closet just yet ...
I took until 11:00 doing everything, including one load of laundry - and still stopped with Swiffing; vacuuming only the upstairs.
So this morning began with the final frontier, ten minutes of speed-sucking - and NOW the house is done.
Still no router; no.
But I've got a book I vastly prefer to spend time with. And I am online, even if only in my office. That has sufficed (well!) for a year now almost exactly. A little longer, wireless-less, I count less as symptomatic of my laziness than as the badge and banner of a better priority: for reading, fella babies, is better than computing.
It is early yet - and plans to get out in the nice weather have been shifted, by yesterday's sopping rains arriving about eighteen hours late, rendering plans to go out and collect breezes and photons in my hair are no longer interesting.
Bookshelves are a grand thing. And my Queen's Chair makes such a comf place for dozing and reading.
Mmm.
***
Oh, and happy new year, fella babies. I may not have much to say about its staggering importance, but the wish to all to have a fine 2011 is intact. All the best, kids.
I don't believe in my life I've ever made a new year's resolution, and by and large I didn't really grow up around resolutions. Aware of the concept, yes, but unfamiliar with anyone actually troubling to enact it. So new year's has always been one of two things for me, either the opportunity to celebrate, or, since my late twenties, the opportunity to privately, silently, reflect.
Couple years ago, it was about simple, unadorned, bereft depression and shock. So last year I made it a party.
This year could have gone either way, but in the end it was WORK had the final word. Yes, because instead of early dismissal, I had the pleasure of someone showing up at the office at 2:00 p.m. and spending an hour and a half sitting in my cubicle with me working on a mass of expense reporting, dating back twelve months, the deadline for 2010 having passed by two weeks ago.
To those who have protested that I should have found a way to say no, I say: I got it over with. And the boss is in town this week. Just as well to endure the tedium, and have it off my plate, as to put it of still more. In any case, that would have led to bad feeling, and who needs that. So.
I came away from the day frustrated, tired, and without time to unwind and even nap, as might have been ideal for the pulling on of impractical cuteness and shoes - and set myself a few tasks.
The wireless router had arrived (and in record time, Amazon, it must be said! so thanks). Any remaining doubt about whether to go out was dispelled when I called Roma Ristorante and they were open.
So to spinach and feta pizza, the installation of the router, and the dismantling of the tree!
Or, in fact, not - as the case may turn out to be.
The router connection instructions were great, nicely elementary and clear and quick - it was after that that the disc seemed to lose its senses. And, of course - no paper manual. And the PDF accompaniment skips installation, in favor of "advanced internet setup" ... which would be useful, I'm sure, were the installation complete. One needs must call customer service, which I'm sure is good. But at nine-thirty, pizza snug in my tum and having been up since six, I opted for the middle-aged, single homeowner's prerogative, and said hang ALL of this (including housecleaning, router, *and* tree) and Went to Bed. Mmm, now, that was delicioso.
Up and at 'em on 1/1/11, I did move to the router, which had decided to go to new, less "stuck" looking screens for the morning ... yet even less 'splicable somehow, and so it was time to shut down and get to the rest.
My brother is right when he says it's hard to spend too much time staging for actual action. I love staging for housecleaning - and did so to my pleasure/leisure. And then talked to him for a while, about 1973. Then it was on to staging for the taking down of the tree.
And the hoisting of all the other pointless and unseen (did I mention I'm single - and mom and my stepfather came over only briefly - with my friends, V and W being the lion's share of holiday activity inside this house?) decorations up to the guest room
Which itself, now, is a staging area - everything "cleaned" up from Down Here is now piled up Up There - the double bed hosting a huge jumble of acres of silver tinsel, purple orbs, sixteen kinds of painted, ceramic, silver, brass, and even musical knickknacks, shiny decorations, multicolored candles, heavy piles of lights, and a partridge in a pear tree - none of which passed the penultimate state of Putting Away - which is to say, they're in their room, but not in their closet just yet ...
I took until 11:00 doing everything, including one load of laundry - and still stopped with Swiffing; vacuuming only the upstairs.
So this morning began with the final frontier, ten minutes of speed-sucking - and NOW the house is done.
Still no router; no.
But I've got a book I vastly prefer to spend time with. And I am online, even if only in my office. That has sufficed (well!) for a year now almost exactly. A little longer, wireless-less, I count less as symptomatic of my laziness than as the badge and banner of a better priority: for reading, fella babies, is better than computing.
It is early yet - and plans to get out in the nice weather have been shifted, by yesterday's sopping rains arriving about eighteen hours late, rendering plans to go out and collect breezes and photons in my hair are no longer interesting.
Bookshelves are a grand thing. And my Queen's Chair makes such a comf place for dozing and reading.
Mmm.
***
Oh, and happy new year, fella babies. I may not have much to say about its staggering importance, but the wish to all to have a fine 2011 is intact. All the best, kids.
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