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!")...
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
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.
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.
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...]
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:
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...]
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