Saturday, September 27, 2008

I forgot to watch t.v. and a belated Fess Up Friday

I'm a t.v.-holic and I've been forgetting for weeks now that most t.v. shows have returned from hiatus. Honestly, I'm having fun not watching t.v., not being chained to the boob tube. There's lots of shows I want to be watching, I don't think we've necessary lost quality. But I don't want to be told where to be and when any more than I have to be. Don't have Tivo, so that means I'm going to watch t.v. shows like Bones, which I don't want to get behind on (my favorite show), online. The studios need to get with it and start counting downloads rather than cancelling quality shows based on out-dated and inaccurate Nielson ratings. We're still getting our dose of advertising, so what's the difference? Did catch most of Survivor this Thursday, after forgetting it was premiering till an ex-coworker and always friend reminded me. I'm way behind on House. And I missed How I Met Your Mother, but I'll rectify that shortly. How does anybody have the luxury of being bored anymore?

From somebody or other, here's a hilarious video of the mock Sarah Palin Disney movie Head of Skate. Oh watch it and laugh, for ye will.

And my Fess Up Friday reckoning:

9/20 - 1,646 words (finishing 5/I and working on 5/II)
9/24 - 607 words (probably continuing work on 5/II)
9/26 - 1,303 words (finishing 5/II and working on 5/III)

Still lame, but getting better all the time. Let's see if I can get into better habits and pick up the pace in October before NaNoWriMo kicks off November 1st. That means, I need to write today.

So sad

RIP Paul Newman. Really wish I'd gotten to meet you, you seemed like a really awesome person and I always loved your movies. I think I'll watch The Long Hot Summer today in memorial.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Late Fess Up Friday

9/16: 1,092

That's it. Slightly less depressing than nothing, but nothing to brag on. I'm getting closer to what I want and making some solid realizations. One of which is that I don't think I'm letting anybody read the book anymore until I finish a draft that I'm happy with. This is so opposite to how I usually work - I thrive on feedback. But, I'm figuring out that with TCB, there are too many cooks in the kitchen and I'm kicking them all out till I finish my masterpiece feast. Just wait till you get to taste it - it'll be worth it then. Promise.

So my friend Nick Fox, a writer, doesn't have a website or a blog or anything. He's amazingly low-tech, with only an email newsletter (in which he often argues with Ernest Hemingway and others) sent out to family, friends and folks he meets on his travels. With his permission, I'm quoting from his most recent (a return to New Orleans on The City of New Orleans):

"There’s something to be said for inefficiency, I think. If I’d flown to New Orleans, I would have been here in a couple of hours. But that’s like entering a time machine. You go through elaborate security measures, you find a neatly ordered seat inside a round capsule, there’s some noise and bumping and a couple hours later, there you are, on the other side of the country. It’s time travel. And it’s not very interesting.

On the train, you wait. You watch the scenery go by. There is the sense of an actual journey to a destination. You do not click your heels three times and say, “There’s no place like Basin Street. There’s no place like Basin Street.” You wait. And if you have to wait three hours at a standstill because of trouble with the line, that’s just part of the deal. And if the rails are flooded around New Orleans due to Hurricane Ike and they have to bring busses up to Mississippi to pick up the passengers and take them the last hundred miles in the rain, then that’s just the way it goes. It’s a journey. And you enjoy this journey."

I'm passing along a link about Gustav with a picture of Anna West (one of the infamous Baton Rouge Annas) and here's a link to an interview Nick did with C.J. Hribal (in lieu of a link to an actual, you know, website). Welcome home, mister.

A friend, James B. (one of the roommate candidates) forwarded me a bit of hilariousness regarding Brocabulary. Here's some funny ones (the source of the forward):

brostalgia - Nostalgia for something you did with your bro or bros. 'Oh, man, all this talk about keg stands is making me brostalgic.'
duedonym - A name that only your dudes call you. 'I used to play football with this guy, Kevin. But everyone knew him by his duedonym, 'One Ball Rosenthal.''
fellodrama - Melodrama between fellows. 'Brody peaced at Stephanie Pratt's bday to avoid any fellodrama with Spencer.'

friendjamins - Hundred dollar bills, lent to a friend. 'It's all about the friendjamins, baby.'
guyamese twins - Two guys who are pretty much inseparable. 'Can you believe Brad Pitt and George Clooney are doing another movie together? Those dudes are like total guyamese twins.'


And The Magnetic Fields are coming to Atlanta next month, on the 17th. Anyone want to go to the show with me? I can't miss it, haven't seen them live yet and they're pretty much my favorite band. Or one of them.

A friend of a friend of mine rescued an adorable puppy in Baton Rouge. I want to adopt it so badly but can't, so I'm making it a mission to help find it a home. If anybody relatively close to BR wants this puppy, let me know.

[Thanks to my friend M. and his friend M., the puppy has found a home. Thanks to K. who originally rescued her in BR and to C. for connecting K. and me.]

[M. has informed me that his friend M.'s friends (the new family) have named the puppy Kia. Now there's a name for "the puppy." Yay!]

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Political correctness burns me up, especially when it's worthless

So I'm at a notary public's office where they do vehicle registrations for the DMV and they had a display of possible license plate choices. One of them read: "Choose Life." I'm not going to get into my personal beliefs on the abortion issue or attack anybody else's. But on a very real, rhetorical level, I object to the very way we discuss abortion and our stance on the issue.

PRO CHOICE or PRO LIFE. That's absurd. ABSURD. AB-S-U-R-D. How can there be two pro sides on an issue? If we're debating, we're already screwed. Therefore, many people would have us think that it's "Pro life" and "Anti life," but that's not the issue at all. The issue is about CHOICE, not about LIFE. If I support a woman's right to choose, I'm therefore pro CHOICE. If you don't support somebody's right to choose (and want to pick a DMV license plate to announce that), then you're really ANTI CHOICE, not PRO LIFE. It's that simple. Nobody who supports a woman's right to choose wants to kill babies, is against the idea of babies or new life. We (ahem, they) merely support the idea that a woman should be able to decide. But the pro lifers would NEVER agree to be on the anti stance of this debate and they don't want to discuss the real issue, which is about choice (do we not live in the land of the free? the "freest" country in the world?) because then people would actually have to THINK about the issue, what the issue really is, rather than make an emotional decision. And it's hard not to be emotional about babies. That's biology.

And where's the pro choice license plate option? So much for separation of church and state.

Then there's this: Rose McGowan's comments. When did we get so afraid of people having opinions? Even if they're different than ours. What kind of an idiot would assume that Rose McGowan's personal opinions represent the thoughts and opinions of her studio? I mean, I get that it's for legal purposes. But I just detest this pandering we do to absolute ridiculousness. She has an opinion and it's a little shocking. And, worst of all, she actually spoke her mind. Reminds me of the link I put up a while ago about Katherine Heigl kicking heiny. Yes, they're gorgeous actresses. But that doesn't mean they don't get to speak their mind, even if their studio does think it's ill-timed. What great press, though. Hadn't even heard of the movie and now I have.

I'm getting so tired of people being afraid to argue (even me, y'all). Argue properly in a way that genuinely challenges beliefs, laws, conventions. It's the truth of all things - when your belief in something has been challenged, it is all the stronger when it passes through. But the truth is we're afraid our beliefs won't stand the challenges. And maybe they won't. Scary stuff.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Help

I've known it, but now I've had to sit still long enough to face it. I'm not writing because I'm scared. It could take a book in and of itself to talk about what I'm scared of. But I'm scared. So I'm going to sit here some more and keep trying to not be scared enough to write.

My oh my

I feel like somebody gave me a bon bon looking at this delicious piece of SNL with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton.

As soon as I saw pictures of Sarah Palin, I knew SNL would be calling Tina Fey and thank lordy for it. Just goes to show you that the ladies have it - SNL, that is. If anything could restore SNL to anything like it's former hilariousness, it's Fey, Poehler and hopefully new generations of smart, funny, women.

The bit made me side with Clinton a bit, which scared me. But oh, oh, is it funny ("...and you just glided in on a dogsled wearing a pageant sash and your Tina Fey glasses!" and "...please, ask this one about dinosaurs!")...

Toni's lastest Murderati

Really interesting post from Toni over at Muderati's site. I've had this conversation several times with folks (as a former bookseller) about African-American fiction sections and what that naturally leads to when you think about young adult and any marketing/genre distinctions (in what ways are they helpful, in what was arbitrary).

I especially like her thought about Clarence and the, "I couldn't write that." The reading she mentions was a FABULOUS one at Chelsea's last year with Toni, Clarence and Ronlyn Domingue, arranged as a fundraiser for New Delta Review and also as a way to celebrate these incredible writers. I honestly can't think of three writers who are more different in their style and their subject matters and I adore them all as writers and as people. They all have in common the LSU MFA program, which might be surprising when you see what they've done since their time there. Or it might not be.

Check out their websites and books and see what you think:

Clarence
Ronlyn
Toni

Curious

Saw this piece that is a curious reversal of our expectations. Sure, we're used to movies taken from books, but here's a book, Love Dare, that was written because of a movie (and not a movie novella).

Loving The Frames' Cry Me a River. What a fun cover.

And more even than the cover, I'm loving the gorgeous fall weather, cool and non-humid, we're experiencing. Too bad it's going to leave soon. Humidity always feels so much worse after a taste of a cool breeze.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Ike

Ike ignored New Orleans, except for flinging some rain and some very intense winds our way (couldn't drive to BR yesterday because it was so difficult keeping the car on the road, especially on the spillway Thursday night and yesterday morning, it'd only gotten worse). Lots of people in Baton Rouge who'd just gained power after Gustav lost it again.

And Galveston. I can only imagine how that city fares after Ike and I hope they recover as best and fast as they can.

I've been hearing from Baton Rouge an old (and valid) complaint, "There's more to Louisiana than New Orleans!" Hurricanes are an entirely different matter in Baton Rouge. I hadn't completely anticipated that when I moved to New Orleans. Baton Rouge, before Gustav, hadn't been hard hit for years. They'd forgotten how to protect themselves and how to recover - Baton Rouge is the most likely place to evacuate, after all! Not the place that gets hit. So we forget how hard it can be brought to its knees. I lived there for seven years and I was shocked, SHOCKED, by the amount of damage while I was evacuated there and as I've been going back for work. Downed trees everywhere. Demolished houses on Park Blvd where enormous old oaks with shallow roots gave up the good fight and toppled into houses they'd sheltered for years. The house right next to a former boss of mine, so badly damaged that it made me shake.

It's entirely understandable why so much attention goes immediately to New Orleans whenever a storm even threatens to go into the Gulf. We're a bowl, so susceptible to flooding and we've never recovered from Katrina completely, never covered from any storm the way that we've needed to in order to stand an honest chance against a direct hit. Add in the economics of it all (hello, tourism, we are generally understood to be the cultural center of the state, not that makes us superior, just incredibly important in terms of economics and culture) and you can see why, not that that makes it right that other places lose focus. Let's not forget how Katrina made the world extremely aware of New Orleans's vulnerability. Nobody wants to see that again...

Anywhere. Gustav and Ike remind us that no, it's not just New Orleans. We need drastically better protection against these ever-increasing storms all along the coast, especially the Gulf. We need better plans. New Orleans had a handle on it this time... nobody dreamed Baton Rouge would be hit the way it was, but we need to start assuming that anyplace can and will be hit, ferociously and without mercy.

And in the end, there's always going to be times when there is something we can't anticipate, can't protect against. We have to try, but we can't guarantee.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Fess Up Friday

I called in "can't keep the car on the road in this wind" to work today, at Cheers working instead. So let's get Fess Up Friday out of the way first because - I've stalled. Nothing. I did some good editing last Sunday, but that's about it. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm a bit spastic and distracted.

More pleasant things abound...

Really digging the new PolyAnna strip and there's LOTS of stuff my inbox insisted on sharing with me and therefore, with you.

NPR review of Alan Ball's Towelhead.

"In the unlikely event that Earth and humanity are destroyed, mankind can be resurrected with Stephen Colbert's DNA," Garriott said in a statement. I couldn't have said it better, so I just copy and pasted. Dying laughing here. Who would you choose to be cloned in the event that humanity is destroyed? I love that I posted a piece a while back about people wanting to vote for Jon Stewart as President and here I am posting that Stephen Colbert's DNA's going into space in order to potentially one day resurrect humanity.

NPR on The Bechdel Rule, 23 years later. I wonder if Alien is STILL the last movie Bechdel's been able to see...

Thanks be to Jenny Rappaport. This is a cool idea. Hope it doesn't get too overwhelming too quickly. Here's just her Book Block website. (Via GalleyCat)

Short shorts, micro-novels and text stories. Interesting. (Via GalleyCat again) The deadline is September 19th and here are the rules. You win free chocolate for a year and an Apple iPhone. Jamey, you have to enter this contest.

Also via GalleyCat, Guide to Literary Agents blog had a worst storyline contest, read about the winner here.

Cool article about how babies begin to recognize words.

And another about letting misspellers off the hook. I see the point, but we have to have standards and we have to correct students' mistakes so that they'll learn something. In this day and age, what with texting and instant messaging and just plain emailing already messing changing the face of our language and our spelling, punctuation and even salutatory standards, we have to continue to at least TEACH our standards, not just throw up our hands and say "oh well, your spelling is variant." Everyone misspells and wrongly punctuates on occasion, and some times it matters more than others. But we still have to TEACH the standards of our language. Yes, they'll change and mutate with our technology and culture, but we still have to TEACH them. Big breath. "In 1906, Mark Twain lobbied the Associated Press to use phonetic spelling. "The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet," he once wrote. "It doesn't know how to spell, and can't be taught." I agree with changing the standards, perhaps (because they're changing and have always changed on their own, regardless) but this quote bothers me: "The senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University in Buckinghamshire, England, sees so many misspellings in papers submitted by first-year students that he says we'd be better off letting the perpetrators off the hook and doing away with certain spelling rules altogether." Yes, I know correcting it consumes so much of a teacher's time. That just means we need to focus on perhaps better standards and better METHODS FOR TEACHING those standards, not a throwing up of our hands and no standards. Where'd that rant come from? I don't know, but here's another related article. (Last three via WordSmith's newsletter)

A word about my bevy of Word of the Day links. I'm trying to improve my vocabulary. Not because I don't know a lot of word, but because I'm lazy like everybody is and tend to use the same ones a lot. Which isn't a great idea for a writer. So I'm overdosing on words of the day. They're not all created equal, but they're all good. I like the format of Merriam-Webster's the best, and the "did you know" about the origin of that day's word the best. I like Dictionary.com's format a lot. And I love WordSmith's perhaps best of all because it contains an audio file where you can hear the word pronounced AND a bonus thought for the day. Like this recent one:

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you CAN make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all." -Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) [Through the Looking Glass]

Do you know why libraries rock? Because both of my local ones have decided not to charge late fees after the hurricane. Here's a shot out to East Baton Rouge Parish Library and the Nola library.

For the record, speaking of libraries, Sarah Palin scares me a little. She's starting to remind me of Umbridge from the Harry Potter books. Here's one of the reasons why.

A friend sent me this video on Facebook. Take a look at it.



It might seem like I'm random, but that's because I am. My reward for finally finishing this blog (think I was feeling guilty about having nothing to fess up to for Friday) is to watch the first episodes of Bones, which I missed. So happy it's back on, though. Just have to remember to go plug in my cable...

[This amuses me endlessly - The title of this post is Fess Up Friday, but it looks like I posted it on Wednesday. Posted it on Friday, in fact, but it's from a post I started on Wednesday, saved and then deleted. I am easily amused...]

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Back in Nola, back to Normal

Wow, that was a whole lot of all over the place. I got back in Nola last night and went back to work today. Now we're all playing catch up - paying the bills, putting evacuation-ready homes to rights, returning library books - and hoping Ike nor Josephine nor any other as-of-yet unnamed storm comes near us.

Let's see - Samurai Girl pretty much sucked, as could be expected. The main actress wasn't a phenomenal actor, but the main problem I had was the adaptation from the books. I mean, it's ABC Family, so I wasn't expecting great writing, but even with the ability to lavish 2 hours on each of the first three books, the plot was so terribly condensed. It could've been done. But this was one level above soap opera writing and acting. The ONE consistent exception was the actress Saige Thompson, who played the best friend Cheryl. She had the best lines and the best delivery. I pretty much watched the rest of the installments for her. She was hysterical. And the music was really good.

Was really sorry to miss The Zydepunks and their new cd at One-Eyed Jack's on Friday. However, it was almost worth missing in order to catch up with J, her husband B and their son Jack (I'm always going to call him that, J!). J and I have known each other since we were 7 years old. Or as we told just-turned-6-year-old Jack (who thinks he's almost 7), "We were just a little older than you." And then we both looked at each other and gasped, "Oh my gawd! TWENTY YEARS almost!" I think we were proud and horrified in equal measure. And then A and I caught up on my way through Auburn, of course, as we always do (we've known each other more than twenty years).

Read this crazy article about how dogs perceive time. WEIRD. And this even weirder one about an anti-wedding that made me think of C and R, who's wedding celebration I missed while I was in NYC. I always miss the best stuff when I'm out of town.

Tonight, I play volleyball. Hurrah! This weekend, I dance! Double hurrah!

Friday, September 5, 2008

First Post of September and a Fess Up Friday Confession

After waxing lyrical about being home, I promptly hopped on the highway and drove overnight to Georgia. Yes, really. Sigh. Really. It's good to be here, I guess, though I'm sad not to be there. I had a great couple of hours back home, checking out Cheers and having dinner at my favorite place with a cute puppy and his owner too. And on the way here, I finished the audio of "To Kill a Mockingbird." If I thought I was a fan of Sissy Spacek before, that's nothing compared to how in love with her voice I am now. BIG fan of Harper Lee, too. Near the end of the story, this line caught me, "His heavy boots punished the porch." Did you know that all of Alabama's rest stops have to be staffed 24 hours a day? Even at something like almost 2 a.m. when you're stopping to charge your cell phone.

Getting into Georgia, it was about 4 a.m. local time and I couldn't sleep!!! I couldn't get my muscles to stop twitching (Damn coffee. Open Letter to McDonald's #2: THANK YOU for letting me charge my cell phone in your office, exit #13 McDonald's. You're still evil for the vanilla iced coffee, but you help a girl out, too.) and couldn't shut off my brain. So I ended up checking my email and catching up with a few things while Mamma Mia! was waking up for work.

I have a local Cheers in Georgia too, a cool place called Cocoa Bean Cafe that has the smooth operation of a chain and all the local friendliness you could want. Great drinks, too. TONS of options. And now, apparently, homemade cakes.

Here's my horoscope today. Erlack, as Louise Rennison's most famous character would say (why do I still read those books? Because she smears the pages with crack, taking a page from McDonald's book). "Friday, Sep 5th, 2008 -- You may lack direction about how best to handle this next phase of your life. Everything at work may have already started to change, yet you aren't prepared to push the shift any faster than it is already going. A well balanced approach will work best for you today as long as you don't let your attachment to material things get in the way." (Tarot.com)

Holy fangs! The rough draft of Stephenie Meyer's Midnight Sun was leaked on the internet. Why am I so surprised? You know what I am incredibly impressed by? Her reaction on her website. She wrote a letter to her fans saying how she felt about the leak and then POSTED THE DRAFT herself. She continually impresses me. Who gives a flip what her teeny bopper fans thought of the recent book? I was AGAPE at how she managed that one. Somehow, she gave me BOTH things I wanted at once, though I thought they were opposing AND she did it in no way I could have foreseen. And you know what? I am so freaking excited about the movie. I watched all of the teaser trailers again today. I don't do that folks. I don't watch trailers over and over and over again. But I'm excited about this movie.

Another book-to-movie I'm excited about is a bit more immediate gratification-y. Samurai Girl, based on the series, on The Family Channel tonight. Oh yeah, I'm gonna catch me some Family Channel on a Friday night with Mamma Mia! Yeah, I just admitted that in public (ish) forum.

Here's some super coolness about The Times-Picayune during Gustav.

Let's talk PerNoWriMo for Fess Up Friday. I made about 1/5 of my projected goal word count at a grand total (ish) of 9,936 words. But, in keeping with the spirit of its parent NaNoWriMo, my PerNoWriMo is not a failure. Here's why:

1) That's 9,936 words I didn't have before.
2) I made a lot of other, less quantifiable, progress on the book.
3) That's a lot of words when you consider the distraction of NYC and a hurricane. Let's do the math, if you count NYC and Gustav, I was out of commission for pretty much 2 weeks this month, so the 9,936 words is really a 2 week total. Yeah yeah, I could've written during Gustav and I'm splitting hairs, but...
4) I'M DOING PERNOWRIMO AGAIN THIS MONTH. So keep it coming with the support and goading, guilting and cheering. Let's see how I can do this month with a 4-day handicap.

A lightning frenzy of links for you (all via my inbox via GalleyCat):

Great idea from Cory Doctorow.

Duh. But you know what? The short story, like everything, needs a little adversity to thrive. So it doesn't get complacent. Ask the poets.

A home for Jewel of Medina.

My now-favorite bartender/literati.

Let's keep the tradition of writing horror stories on Friday going with this.

It's a good book, one of the best I've ever read. But I just really love the title of the piece: "Hey, Diaz! Save Some Awards for the Rest of Us!" So true.

And here's some fun words of the day, don't let 'em go to your head: pleonexia, nadir, peccant, prorogue, comestible, dissert and bevy.

[Oh and yeah, this is the SECOND post of September. It's not like I've had a ton of sleep, folks.]

Thursday, September 4, 2008

I'm home.

Nola made it through, better than BR actually. It figures the storm would follow me. My host's power went back on an hour after I left, too, after being off more than four days. Self-centered much? Hey, I'm not the only superstitious one. My host joked, "You should've left earlier."

I have to avoid the thinking that a lot of us can fall into if we're not careful. "It missed New Orleans, it wasn't that bad. I shouldn't have left." As glad as I am to be home, as often as I find myself thinking that, it wasn't as bad BECAUSE WE LEFT. We heeded the evacuation and got out and we didn't lose lives like we did before.

All I needed to hear was, "Your power's on, Cheers is open and so are some of the restaurants on your street." I barely stayed long enough at my hosts' to be polite, I was so eager to get home after hearing that. Luckily, they understood. And they got their power back. ;")

Home feels so good. It reminds me with every sight, sound and smell that it IS home.