The Rassmussen polling company publishes a daily tracking poll of the Democratic (and Republican, but who cares) primary race. Unlike other such polls, this one displays the actual daily numbers as opposed to occasionally letting you know what the current state of the race is. You can see those numbers in tabular form here.
(Rass only publishes the numbers for the top three Democrats, but does anyone other their most rabid fans think that Dodd, Biden, Kucinich, Gravel, or Schlumwallinger has a realistic chance of winning the nomination?)
It's hard to get an overall feeling for the numbers when they're displayed in that format, so I decided to put them in a spreadsheet and generate simple line graphs. The result is here.
I'm planning to keep updating that graph with the new Rassmussen numbers every day, so anyone who's interested can follow the bouncing ball of our national destiny at that link.
I think I'll also put a link to that graphic on the side.
Gore is really my man, but I'm beginning to think that he won't run. In the meantime, I'm backing Edwards, and I'm getting more and more comfortable with that choice as Edwards gets more and more populist. So I'm hoping to see the Edwards line keep rising. Right now, it's happening sloooowly, but it does seem to be happening - but over the short term, so far.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Did Eureka just jump the shark?
We've been hooked on the television show Eureka since its first episode. The premise is clever, the characters are likable and well acted, and the scripts tend to be pleasantly witty.
But tonight's (9/11/07) episode annoyed me considerably. Some parts of it were fine, but the underlying theme of the town's scientific geniuses finding religion because of mild stress made me grind my teeth.
At the start of the episode, it's clear that almost no one in town is interested in churchgoing. Given that Eureka is filled with the world's greatest scientific geniuses, that's appropriate. Studies show consistently that scientists tend to be much less religious than the general public, and the more advanced they are in their field, the less likely they are to be religious. However, when a series of rather minor (by Eureka standards) calamities strike the town, the geniuses start heading to the church. (It wasn't clear if there's more than one church in town.) This didn't happen in previous episodes, when Eureka faced much more serious dangers. We also know that it doesn't happen in real life -- that not only are there atheists in foxholes, the experience of the foxhole tends to destroy people's faith, creating more atheists. More atheists come out of foxholes than go into them!
Moreover, at the end of the episode, it's made clear that many of the brilliant scientists have retained their new-found religion, even though they have discovered that the town's recent problems were manmade! Aargh!
I assume this was due to network pressure, in turn due to pressure on the network from rightwing/fundamentalist religious groups. I don't know that; I haven't read anything to that effect. It could have been simple cowardice on someone's part. Or ignorance.
I guess I don't really care what was behind it. I only know that I'm quite pissed off right now.
But tonight's (9/11/07) episode annoyed me considerably. Some parts of it were fine, but the underlying theme of the town's scientific geniuses finding religion because of mild stress made me grind my teeth.
At the start of the episode, it's clear that almost no one in town is interested in churchgoing. Given that Eureka is filled with the world's greatest scientific geniuses, that's appropriate. Studies show consistently that scientists tend to be much less religious than the general public, and the more advanced they are in their field, the less likely they are to be religious. However, when a series of rather minor (by Eureka standards) calamities strike the town, the geniuses start heading to the church. (It wasn't clear if there's more than one church in town.) This didn't happen in previous episodes, when Eureka faced much more serious dangers. We also know that it doesn't happen in real life -- that not only are there atheists in foxholes, the experience of the foxhole tends to destroy people's faith, creating more atheists. More atheists come out of foxholes than go into them!
Moreover, at the end of the episode, it's made clear that many of the brilliant scientists have retained their new-found religion, even though they have discovered that the town's recent problems were manmade! Aargh!
I assume this was due to network pressure, in turn due to pressure on the network from rightwing/fundamentalist religious groups. I don't know that; I haven't read anything to that effect. It could have been simple cowardice on someone's part. Or ignorance.
I guess I don't really care what was behind it. I only know that I'm quite pissed off right now.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Not so silent, after all
Whew. What a relief.
I took my hearing aid to the audiologist today, and the situation is not as bad as it might have been. The innards are still working. It's just the casing that was destroyed. So the audiologist took a new impression and will send that to the factory, along with the smooshed hearing aid with its electronical guts, and they'll recreate the thing for me. Not cheap, but a fraction of the cost of a completely new one.
So possibly by this time next week, I'll be able to hear with both ears again. At least, to the extent that a deafish guy with hearing aids can hear.
I took my hearing aid to the audiologist today, and the situation is not as bad as it might have been. The innards are still working. It's just the casing that was destroyed. So the audiologist took a new impression and will send that to the factory, along with the smooshed hearing aid with its electronical guts, and they'll recreate the thing for me. Not cheap, but a fraction of the cost of a completely new one.
So possibly by this time next week, I'll be able to hear with both ears again. At least, to the extent that a deafish guy with hearing aids can hear.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
David's Definitions for October 2007
Nicety
A nicety is a small, important detail that can make a large difference. The word is commonly misused to mean an appealing characteristic, but in fact a nicety may not be nice in that sense. For example, knowing which knife and fork to use for which food at a formal banquet is one of the niceties of formal etiquette, but most of us would agree that such rules are silly, not nice. The confusion arises because the word nice, on which nicety is based, has changed meaning over time. The Latin word it comes from meant foolish or silly, but in English, in different centuries nice has meant timid, then dainty, then precise, then pleasant. Some of the older meanings survive. A subtle difference between two things is still called a nice distinction.
I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html
A nicety is a small, important detail that can make a large difference. The word is commonly misused to mean an appealing characteristic, but in fact a nicety may not be nice in that sense. For example, knowing which knife and fork to use for which food at a formal banquet is one of the niceties of formal etiquette, but most of us would agree that such rules are silly, not nice. The confusion arises because the word nice, on which nicety is based, has changed meaning over time. The Latin word it comes from meant foolish or silly, but in English, in different centuries nice has meant timid, then dainty, then precise, then pleasant. Some of the older meanings survive. A subtle difference between two things is still called a nice distinction.
I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html
Wimpy Georgie
Republicans have long tended to build cults of personality around their leaders, and when one of their own is in the White House, they go completely around the bend. In the case of Georgette, I mean Little George, I mean George W., they've tried to tell us that he's brilliant, saintly, and a rugged, manly, tough athlete and weightlifter. He bicycles! He cuts brush! He can beat up any other president on the world stage! (I'd like to see him try it with ex-KGB thug and still a thug Putin.) He bench presses a gazillion pounds!
This has always infuriated me, and the last item has infuriated me in particular. I can't remember what the poundage claim was, but it was something impressive. Rather, it would be impressive if it were true. Even with the carefully staged and posed photos, one can see that Georgie is no athlete and certainly not a serious lifter.
Here's a picture that his handlers didn't manage to pose carefully enough. This is from our fake president's recent fake visit to Iraq in his latest attempt to boost support for his fake Crusade.
Now, I'm not going to find fault with Georgie for his sagging jawline and wrinkly neck, which are so painfully apparent in contrast with the jawline and neck of the young man he's shaking hands with. Those are inevitable with age even in genuine athletes. And even though I think that if Georgie were as athletic as his worshipers like to think he is his jawline would be firmer, I'm sympathetic because of my own jawline, and I'd be willing to commiserate with Georgie about the sad effects of age over a beer or two. Oops! I forgot! He no longer drinks alcohol! Yeah, right.
But look at that arm and that chest. Those are not the arm and chest of a serious lifter of Georgie's age. Those are the sagging chest and arm of an older man who is not in particularly good shape for his age. By George, George, you've become your father! But with a lower IQ.
Okay, people get old. (Unless they're unlucky enough to be Iraqi civilians, in which case, thanks to George W. S.O.B. Bush, the odds are against them.) And no one is morally obligated to be an athlete. It's the pretense that bugs me. The lies. The posing. The swagger.
And the fact that millions of Americans voted for this pile of horse manure! Twice!
This has always infuriated me, and the last item has infuriated me in particular. I can't remember what the poundage claim was, but it was something impressive. Rather, it would be impressive if it were true. Even with the carefully staged and posed photos, one can see that Georgie is no athlete and certainly not a serious lifter.
Here's a picture that his handlers didn't manage to pose carefully enough. This is from our fake president's recent fake visit to Iraq in his latest attempt to boost support for his fake Crusade.
Now, I'm not going to find fault with Georgie for his sagging jawline and wrinkly neck, which are so painfully apparent in contrast with the jawline and neck of the young man he's shaking hands with. Those are inevitable with age even in genuine athletes. And even though I think that if Georgie were as athletic as his worshipers like to think he is his jawline would be firmer, I'm sympathetic because of my own jawline, and I'd be willing to commiserate with Georgie about the sad effects of age over a beer or two. Oops! I forgot! He no longer drinks alcohol! Yeah, right.
But look at that arm and that chest. Those are not the arm and chest of a serious lifter of Georgie's age. Those are the sagging chest and arm of an older man who is not in particularly good shape for his age. By George, George, you've become your father! But with a lower IQ.
Okay, people get old. (Unless they're unlucky enough to be Iraqi civilians, in which case, thanks to George W. S.O.B. Bush, the odds are against them.) And no one is morally obligated to be an athlete. It's the pretense that bugs me. The lies. The posing. The swagger.
And the fact that millions of Americans voted for this pile of horse manure! Twice!
Monday, September 03, 2007
Loitering Gentlemen
Car 54! Car 54! Check out report of gentleman loitering in front of liquor store. ...
I'm watching the evening news on Channel 2 in Denver, and they said that a gentleman was reported loitering in front of a liquor store in a scuzzy neighborhood. Said gentleman approached a customer, asking for money. Words were exchanged. Gentleman stabbed customer and ran away. Gentleman was later found hiding in a dumpster.
Gentleman?!
"Sir, I must apologize for addressing you even though we have not been properly introduced. I wonder if you could advance me a small loan -- What? You would, would you? Sir, you leave me no alternative but to draw my knife and stab you. Hah! There! Take that, sir! And now, I take my leave. I bid you good day, sir. You have my card. I shall be in my dumpster. Harrumph."
I'm watching the evening news on Channel 2 in Denver, and they said that a gentleman was reported loitering in front of a liquor store in a scuzzy neighborhood. Said gentleman approached a customer, asking for money. Words were exchanged. Gentleman stabbed customer and ran away. Gentleman was later found hiding in a dumpster.
Gentleman?!
"Sir, I must apologize for addressing you even though we have not been properly introduced. I wonder if you could advance me a small loan -- What? You would, would you? Sir, you leave me no alternative but to draw my knife and stab you. Hah! There! Take that, sir! And now, I take my leave. I bid you good day, sir. You have my card. I shall be in my dumpster. Harrumph."
Sunday, September 02, 2007
New meaningless deadline
The time-travel novel that will never be finished is requiring more tweaking than I had anticipated. (Don't they all? Or don't many of them, anyway?)
So I've decided to order myself to be done by my birthday, which will be five weeks from tomorrow.
Five weeks! That's, like, an enormous and immense amount of time! Of course I'll be done by then. Although that does sound a bit like something I remember saying to a coworker many, many years ago: "That hard drive gadget holds five megabytes?! Man, you'll never fill that up!"
So I've decided to order myself to be done by my birthday, which will be five weeks from tomorrow.
Five weeks! That's, like, an enormous and immense amount of time! Of course I'll be done by then. Although that does sound a bit like something I remember saying to a coworker many, many years ago: "That hard drive gadget holds five megabytes?! Man, you'll never fill that up!"
Monday, August 27, 2007
A Silence in One Ear
Aargh! I just managed to destroy one of my hearing aids. The audiologist had said that they're so tough that you could run a truck over them and they'd be okay. But apparently you can't drag a small refrigerator over them.
And of course it's no longer under warranty. That expired in March.
Gloom. They're just little pieces of latex with chips and wiring and stuff in them, but for people like me, they have considerable emotional importance.
I've occasionally wondered what it would be like to use just one of them. Now I'll find out. On the bright side, it should make it easier to tolerate those guys a few cubicles away who talk and laugh too loudly.
And of course it's no longer under warranty. That expired in March.
Gloom. They're just little pieces of latex with chips and wiring and stuff in them, but for people like me, they have considerable emotional importance.
I've occasionally wondered what it would be like to use just one of them. Now I'll find out. On the bright side, it should make it easier to tolerate those guys a few cubicles away who talk and laugh too loudly.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Black Coffee and Red Blood
That would make a pretty good title for a horror short story. However, this is just a brief, unpleasant reminiscence.
I was reading Bella Stander's account of her recent oral surgery, and I suddenly remembered having two of my wisdom teeth out when I was in high school. My father dropped me off at the oral surgeon's office, where they doped me up and did the nasty stuff to my mouth. In the process, I think I swallowed great quantities of blood; they didn't do much about suctioning that stuff out in those days, especially in small towns (Elkhart, Indiana, specifically).
Anesthetics and pre-op drugs have always affected me much more than the average person is affected, so when I came out of the drug haze and woke up, I didn't come out very far or wake up all that much. They called my parents to say I was ready for pickup and delivery back home, and they asked me if I wanted coffee. I never drank coffee back then. It used to make me sick. I said "Grgrgrglllg." Which must have sounded like yes. Maybe I actually was trying to say yes, not knowing what they were saying or where I was or what had happened to me. With cream? "Grglglkerjlglkj." They took that as a no. I gulped down a cup of the horrifying stuff, vaguely aware that it was the most awful liquid in the history of the universe.
My parents came, the adults got me into the back seat of the car, and we took off. I threw up a humongous mixture of coffee and blood all over the back seat. My father was furious but apparently felt that, this once, he couldn't scream at me. So he yelled at my mother instead, blaming her, which he very often did. "It's not her fault," I tried to say. "What?" "It's not her fault!" Probably sounded more like "Grergljlwkkkkkk!"
Ah. Boyhood memories.
Why is this on my blog? Well, where else does one put such stuff, nowadays? It'll probably show up in a novel eventually.
I was reading Bella Stander's account of her recent oral surgery, and I suddenly remembered having two of my wisdom teeth out when I was in high school. My father dropped me off at the oral surgeon's office, where they doped me up and did the nasty stuff to my mouth. In the process, I think I swallowed great quantities of blood; they didn't do much about suctioning that stuff out in those days, especially in small towns (Elkhart, Indiana, specifically).
Anesthetics and pre-op drugs have always affected me much more than the average person is affected, so when I came out of the drug haze and woke up, I didn't come out very far or wake up all that much. They called my parents to say I was ready for pickup and delivery back home, and they asked me if I wanted coffee. I never drank coffee back then. It used to make me sick. I said "Grgrgrglllg." Which must have sounded like yes. Maybe I actually was trying to say yes, not knowing what they were saying or where I was or what had happened to me. With cream? "Grglglkerjlglkj." They took that as a no. I gulped down a cup of the horrifying stuff, vaguely aware that it was the most awful liquid in the history of the universe.
My parents came, the adults got me into the back seat of the car, and we took off. I threw up a humongous mixture of coffee and blood all over the back seat. My father was furious but apparently felt that, this once, he couldn't scream at me. So he yelled at my mother instead, blaming her, which he very often did. "It's not her fault," I tried to say. "What?" "It's not her fault!" Probably sounded more like "Grergljlwkkkkkk!"
Ah. Boyhood memories.
Why is this on my blog? Well, where else does one put such stuff, nowadays? It'll probably show up in a novel eventually.
Monday, August 20, 2007
First Chapter of Time and the Soldier
Okay, so now I'm terribly serious. This is the rough(ish), short(ish) first chapter of TatS:
One
The first blast came at dawn on February 8, 1945. Two men died in that instant. Everyone else was already dead.
Other blasts followed. The windows of the central building of the huge complex blew out, and smoke billowed through the empty frames. A few minutes later, the windows in the wings of the complex shattered. The metal door of the main building began to melt within thirty minutes. Another thirty minutes, and the roof collapsed. Flames and embers shot high into the dry mountain air.
The fire raged on, consuming the building and the dead. It melted the equipment those people had put together and tested so painstakingly. It ate wood and flesh indiscriminately.
#
Twenty-four hours later, a man and a woman appeared in the smoking rubble.
They stared in bewilderment at the remnants of the machinery they remembered so well. In front of the shattered machinery lay the upper half of a body. He had been a large, blond man. His face was undamaged and unfamiliar.
The man who had just arrived brushed his shoe across the ashes beneath his feet, exposing part of a yellow circle.
"Why is it now?" he asked.
"Come on," the woman said.
They made their way through the ruins, moving clumsily in their heavy coats. The remaining heat kept them out of some areas. The charred floor sagged and creaked under them. Remnants of walls collapsed suddenly.
Hours passed. They found bodies, some burned to charcoal but some untouched by the fire. They were all dead -- of slit throats or bullets in the forehead. They saw no sign of the two people they were looking for.
"He wouldn't be here," the woman said. "He left when we did. We know that."
"But what about her?" the man said in despair.
"I don't think she's here." She said that to encourage him, not because she believed it. "Come on."
It was noon now, but bitterly cold, and yet they were sweating inside their coats. For a moment, they stood looking up at the cracked face of the sandstone cliff. Then finally they turned and walked away.
The fire had changed them already and would change them again. It extended its effects beyond its own brief life, far into the future, changing men and women and their lives and loves forever.
#
Eight years earlier and two thousand miles away, a dark-haired woman and her blonde daughter walked carefully along a country road in southern Michigan. The light was fading, catching the tops of the trees and the brilliant colors of autumn. The road itself was almost dark. They couldn't see the patches of ice, but they knew they were there.
Across the road, invisible in the darkness between the trees, a man watched them.
Absorbed in her thoughts, the younger woman drew further ahead of the older one. The watcher frowned. He had expected them to stay close together. This might be a complication.
The mother called out, "Dolores! ¡Espérame!"
The girl stopped and turned around. "Sorry, Mom. I was thinking about that job."
"Good. You should."
The girl laughed. She waited while her mother caught up with her.
Right next to each other, the watcher thought. That's good.
The headlights of a car swept across him. He threw his hand up to shade his eyes and stepped further back among the trees. He couldn't let anyone see him. He couldn't imagine what the boss would do if anything went wrong.
The car roared around a curve, coming from behind the two women. It was upon them before they were aware of the car or the driver of them.
The watcher held his breath. Perfect.
Mother and daughter stood frozen in shock, caught in the lights, as the car rushed toward them.
The driver seemed to be just as frozen. At the last moment, the car swerved toward the middle of the road.
The watcher willed the car toward the mother and daughter. Hit them! Hit them!
The driver almost made it past the two. But the big rear right fender caught the mother on the hip and threw her against her daughter. They fell heavily to the ground and lay still.
The car skidded to a stop. The driver jumped from it and ran up to the two still figures. In the fading light, the watcher could tell that the driver was a well-dressed man. He couldn't see the man's face, but he read shock in the body language.
"Oh, God!" the driver said. "Oh, my God!"
He stood over the two bodies for a long time, hesitating. Then suddenly he turned and ran back to his car and sped off.
"About time," the watcher muttered.
All he had to do now was drag the girl's body into the woods, far enough from the road so that it wouldn't be found. Nature would do the rest.
He walked quickly across the road. From close up, he could see that the mother was lying on her side. Her eyes were open and unmoving, and her skull was misshapen. Blood pooled under her.
He turned to the girl. Fortunately, she had landed on her back. He bent down and slid his hands under her back and into her armpits and started to pull her toward the edge of the road. She didn't weigh much. That was good. There didn't seem to be any blood under her, which was also good. Pretty thing, he thought, looking down at her face. Too bad.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, confused. "Mama?"
He jumped back, letting her shoulders and head fall to the ground. "Shit! I thought you were dead!"
She struggled to sit up and managed at last. She held her arms wrapped tightly around herself. "Where's my mother? Who're you?"
"She's back there."
"Mama!" She was shouting, trying to get up, looking back at the still, dark figure in the road. "Mama!"
"Listen, Dolores. It's okay. My name's Hank. I'm going to take care of you. It'll be okay."
Except that it wouldn't be. This was a disaster. It wasn't supposed to happen like this at all, and the boss would be furious in that quiet, terrifying way of his.
The girl was dragging herself along the road, trying to crawl to her mother. She was whimpering. She kept one arm tightly against her middle.
Probably has internal injuries, Hank thought. She won't make it, anyway.
But he couldn't bet on that.
He sighed and shook his head. I hate shit like this, he thought. He reached inside his shirt and drew the knife from the sheath strapped against his chest. He stepped over to the crying girl and slit her throat.
He waited till she had stopped moving and then, trying to avoid all the fresh blood, grasped the back of her shirt collar and dragged her into the woods, far enough that he was sure she wouldn't be found.
He told himself that the fresh blood was good. It would attract animals all the faster.
He felt sick.
I need a drink, he thought. Gotta get my car and go back to town and find a bar or something.
He pressed a spot behind his ear. "It's Morrison," he said. "No more Dolores."
There were tough years ahead. There'd be more work like this. Eventually, in the future, there'd be a reward.
The first blast came at dawn on February 8, 1945. Two men died in that instant. Everyone else was already dead.
Other blasts followed. The windows of the central building of the huge complex blew out, and smoke billowed through the empty frames. A few minutes later, the windows in the wings of the complex shattered. The metal door of the main building began to melt within thirty minutes. Another thirty minutes, and the roof collapsed. Flames and embers shot high into the dry mountain air.
The fire raged on, consuming the building and the dead. It melted the equipment those people had put together and tested so painstakingly. It ate wood and flesh indiscriminately.
Twenty-four hours later, a man and a woman appeared in the smoking rubble.
They stared in bewilderment at the remnants of the machinery they remembered so well. In front of the shattered machinery lay the upper half of a body. He had been a large, blond man. His face was undamaged and unfamiliar.
The man who had just arrived brushed his shoe across the ashes beneath his feet, exposing part of a yellow circle.
"Why is it now?" he asked.
"Come on," the woman said.
They made their way through the ruins, moving clumsily in their heavy coats. The remaining heat kept them out of some areas. The charred floor sagged and creaked under them. Remnants of walls collapsed suddenly.
Hours passed. They found bodies, some burned to charcoal but some untouched by the fire. They were all dead -- of slit throats or bullets in the forehead. They saw no sign of the two people they were looking for.
"He wouldn't be here," the woman said. "He left when we did. We know that."
"But what about her?" the man said in despair.
"I don't think she's here." She said that to encourage him, not because she believed it. "Come on."
It was noon now, but bitterly cold, and yet they were sweating inside their coats. For a moment, they stood looking up at the cracked face of the sandstone cliff. Then finally they turned and walked away.
The fire had changed them already and would change them again. It extended its effects beyond its own brief life, far into the future, changing men and women and their lives and loves forever.
Eight years earlier and two thousand miles away, a dark-haired woman and her blonde daughter walked carefully along a country road in southern Michigan. The light was fading, catching the tops of the trees and the brilliant colors of autumn. The road itself was almost dark. They couldn't see the patches of ice, but they knew they were there.
Across the road, invisible in the darkness between the trees, a man watched them.
Absorbed in her thoughts, the younger woman drew further ahead of the older one. The watcher frowned. He had expected them to stay close together. This might be a complication.
The mother called out, "Dolores! ¡Espérame!"
The girl stopped and turned around. "Sorry, Mom. I was thinking about that job."
"Good. You should."
The girl laughed. She waited while her mother caught up with her.
Right next to each other, the watcher thought. That's good.
The headlights of a car swept across him. He threw his hand up to shade his eyes and stepped further back among the trees. He couldn't let anyone see him. He couldn't imagine what the boss would do if anything went wrong.
The car roared around a curve, coming from behind the two women. It was upon them before they were aware of the car or the driver of them.
The watcher held his breath. Perfect.
Mother and daughter stood frozen in shock, caught in the lights, as the car rushed toward them.
The driver seemed to be just as frozen. At the last moment, the car swerved toward the middle of the road.
The watcher willed the car toward the mother and daughter. Hit them! Hit them!
The driver almost made it past the two. But the big rear right fender caught the mother on the hip and threw her against her daughter. They fell heavily to the ground and lay still.
The car skidded to a stop. The driver jumped from it and ran up to the two still figures. In the fading light, the watcher could tell that the driver was a well-dressed man. He couldn't see the man's face, but he read shock in the body language.
"Oh, God!" the driver said. "Oh, my God!"
He stood over the two bodies for a long time, hesitating. Then suddenly he turned and ran back to his car and sped off.
"About time," the watcher muttered.
All he had to do now was drag the girl's body into the woods, far enough from the road so that it wouldn't be found. Nature would do the rest.
He walked quickly across the road. From close up, he could see that the mother was lying on her side. Her eyes were open and unmoving, and her skull was misshapen. Blood pooled under her.
He turned to the girl. Fortunately, she had landed on her back. He bent down and slid his hands under her back and into her armpits and started to pull her toward the edge of the road. She didn't weigh much. That was good. There didn't seem to be any blood under her, which was also good. Pretty thing, he thought, looking down at her face. Too bad.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, confused. "Mama?"
He jumped back, letting her shoulders and head fall to the ground. "Shit! I thought you were dead!"
She struggled to sit up and managed at last. She held her arms wrapped tightly around herself. "Where's my mother? Who're you?"
"She's back there."
"Mama!" She was shouting, trying to get up, looking back at the still, dark figure in the road. "Mama!"
"Listen, Dolores. It's okay. My name's Hank. I'm going to take care of you. It'll be okay."
Except that it wouldn't be. This was a disaster. It wasn't supposed to happen like this at all, and the boss would be furious in that quiet, terrifying way of his.
The girl was dragging herself along the road, trying to crawl to her mother. She was whimpering. She kept one arm tightly against her middle.
Probably has internal injuries, Hank thought. She won't make it, anyway.
But he couldn't bet on that.
He sighed and shook his head. I hate shit like this, he thought. He reached inside his shirt and drew the knife from the sheath strapped against his chest. He stepped over to the crying girl and slit her throat.
He waited till she had stopped moving and then, trying to avoid all the fresh blood, grasped the back of her shirt collar and dragged her into the woods, far enough that he was sure she wouldn't be found.
He told himself that the fresh blood was good. It would attract animals all the faster.
He felt sick.
I need a drink, he thought. Gotta get my car and go back to town and find a bar or something.
He pressed a spot behind his ear. "It's Morrison," he said. "No more Dolores."
There were tough years ahead. There'd be more work like this. Eventually, in the future, there'd be a reward.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Opening Section of Time and the Soldier
I've decided to post the very beginning of TatS here, just in case anyone cares to critique it.
Please bear in mind that this is still a rough draft, and what I'm about to put up here might change. It hasn't been polished. It really is rough.
Okay, I'm delaying because I'm a bit nervous about doing this. Here it is, the beginning of the novel:
The
Gulp! Please be kind. I'm soooo nervous!!!
Please bear in mind that this is still a rough draft, and what I'm about to put up here might change. It hasn't been polished. It really is rough.
Okay, I'm delaying because I'm a bit nervous about doing this. Here it is, the beginning of the novel:
The
Gulp! Please be kind. I'm soooo nervous!!!
Massenet, Minneapolis, U-Haul, and Me
I was going to title this post something like "Cinderella and Me," but that might seem to imply that I think I'm Prince Charming, whereas I don't and I'm not.
Last Wednesday, Leonore and I flew to Minneapolis, where we began the task of helping Daniel and Becca (his fiancee) pack stuff in boxes and clean the apartment, preparatory to Daniel's move to Denver. A bunch of Daniel's friends had promised to show up to help, but none did, so it was us and Pat, a neighbor, who worked tirelessly and good-naturedly just because he seems to be a tireless and good-natured guy. Not to mention remarkably generous with his time. We picked up the U-Haul truck (17 feet, but it drove and handled like 100) on Thursday and started loading stuff into that, while continuing the packing and cleaning. I should clarify that Leonore did the cleaning pretty much all by herself, amazing me by her stamina.
We did take a brief break to go look at the fallen bridge. We went to the building on the campus where Daniel has been working this summer. It's right next to the highway, and the view of the bridge from the parking lot is ... well, excellent doesn't seem like the right word. Sobering. Disturbing. I felt ghoulish, going to look at it as though it were a tourist attraction. It's too fresh for that. Still, we went and looked and took pictures anyway.
We had hoped to be done on Thursday evening, but we weren't, so we continued on Friday morning. The original plan had been for Leonore and me to leave in the U-Haul on Friday at, say, 10 a.m. It ended up being just before 3 p.m. All in all, an enormous job, especially for so few people.
We got to Lincoln, Nebraska, where we planned to spend the night, at about 11 p.m. or thereabouts. We should have fallen into bed, but Doctor Who was on, and we couldn't miss that, so we watched it till 1 a.m. and then zonked out. It was an inferior episode, to boot. Daniel and Becca had planned to be on the road a couple of hours after us (driving two cars), but it took another 24 hours before they left Minneapolis.
We got to Denver yesterday evening (Saturday) and went to Central City to see Massenet's Cendrillon (Cinderella) today. It was the last performance of this CC Opera season, so at the end, there was an awards ceremony, and the audience was invited to join the cast and crew in singing Auld Lang Syne, which I thought was a nice touch. Not that I joined in. Being Mr. Tone Deaf, I never sing where anyone else can hear me, and even if I weren't tone deaf, I wouldn't have the temerity to sing in a building where opera is performed.
The opera has pleasant music, and it's a pretty good reworking of the fairy tale, touching in places. The staging was remarkable. Despite my new SuperHearing(TM), it didn't stun me the way the La Traviata did, but it's not that kind of opera. I did enjoy it far more than I would have BHA (Before Hearing Aids). Now I'm much more eager to go to live music performances of all kinds than I have been in a long while.
Last Wednesday, Leonore and I flew to Minneapolis, where we began the task of helping Daniel and Becca (his fiancee) pack stuff in boxes and clean the apartment, preparatory to Daniel's move to Denver. A bunch of Daniel's friends had promised to show up to help, but none did, so it was us and Pat, a neighbor, who worked tirelessly and good-naturedly just because he seems to be a tireless and good-natured guy. Not to mention remarkably generous with his time. We picked up the U-Haul truck (17 feet, but it drove and handled like 100) on Thursday and started loading stuff into that, while continuing the packing and cleaning. I should clarify that Leonore did the cleaning pretty much all by herself, amazing me by her stamina.
We did take a brief break to go look at the fallen bridge. We went to the building on the campus where Daniel has been working this summer. It's right next to the highway, and the view of the bridge from the parking lot is ... well, excellent doesn't seem like the right word. Sobering. Disturbing. I felt ghoulish, going to look at it as though it were a tourist attraction. It's too fresh for that. Still, we went and looked and took pictures anyway.
We had hoped to be done on Thursday evening, but we weren't, so we continued on Friday morning. The original plan had been for Leonore and me to leave in the U-Haul on Friday at, say, 10 a.m. It ended up being just before 3 p.m. All in all, an enormous job, especially for so few people.
We got to Lincoln, Nebraska, where we planned to spend the night, at about 11 p.m. or thereabouts. We should have fallen into bed, but Doctor Who was on, and we couldn't miss that, so we watched it till 1 a.m. and then zonked out. It was an inferior episode, to boot. Daniel and Becca had planned to be on the road a couple of hours after us (driving two cars), but it took another 24 hours before they left Minneapolis.
We got to Denver yesterday evening (Saturday) and went to Central City to see Massenet's Cendrillon (Cinderella) today. It was the last performance of this CC Opera season, so at the end, there was an awards ceremony, and the audience was invited to join the cast and crew in singing Auld Lang Syne, which I thought was a nice touch. Not that I joined in. Being Mr. Tone Deaf, I never sing where anyone else can hear me, and even if I weren't tone deaf, I wouldn't have the temerity to sing in a building where opera is performed.
The opera has pleasant music, and it's a pretty good reworking of the fairy tale, touching in places. The staging was remarkable. Despite my new SuperHearing(TM), it didn't stun me the way the La Traviata did, but it's not that kind of opera. I did enjoy it far more than I would have BHA (Before Hearing Aids). Now I'm much more eager to go to live music performances of all kinds than I have been in a long while.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Violetta, You Slut
Er, courtesan, I mean.
We indulged ourselves today by going to an opera in Central City. It was La Traviata. More about that in a moment.
Interestingly, this is the 75th anniversary of the CC Opera House, and in their first season, in 1932, they did the play Camille, starring Lilian Gish, and based on the Dumas novel on which La Traviata is also based. Maybe that wasn't coincidence.
LT has always been one of my favorite operas. Is there anyone who doesn't like it? Anyone with a heart and a love of wonderful music, I mean? Heart-breaking soap opera! Heavenly melodies! Great ensemble pieces and duets and individual arias! What's not to love? Well, a bad performance would be not to love, of course. This, however, was an outstanding performance. The acting was excellent and the voices of the principals were stunning in both power and beauty.
I've seen other top-notch performances of LT, but this was the first live opera I've been to since I got my hearing aids. I expected to enjoy it more for that reason, but I didn't expect to be overcome, blown away, stunned, and add other over-the-topisms. I thought I loved opera before, but, wow, what I've been missing! From first note to last, I was in another world, more so than with any other musical performance of any kind that I can remember. There were moments when the music made me lightheaded and almost dreamily detached from reality. It hit my emotions in a surprising way, too. Why, sir, I tell you, sir, during the scene in which the elder Germont persuades Violetta to give up the love of Alfredo so that Alfredo's pure, virginal sister's young man won't reject her (TV soap opera, eat your heart out!), manly tears filled my manly eyes, sir, indeed, I swear it, sir, and some even spilled out and ran down my manly cheeks! In a manly fashion, of course. By Gadfrey, sir.
Oh, and the temperature up there was in the mid 70s, compared to low 90s in Denver. It rained quite a bit while we there. Come to think of it, always seems to rain when we go there, even when it's dry as a bone down here. I should add that we both love the rain, so that's not a dampener, ho, ho, but part of the delight of the escape.
And now I'm back in the real world.
We indulged ourselves today by going to an opera in Central City. It was La Traviata. More about that in a moment.
Interestingly, this is the 75th anniversary of the CC Opera House, and in their first season, in 1932, they did the play Camille, starring Lilian Gish, and based on the Dumas novel on which La Traviata is also based. Maybe that wasn't coincidence.
LT has always been one of my favorite operas. Is there anyone who doesn't like it? Anyone with a heart and a love of wonderful music, I mean? Heart-breaking soap opera! Heavenly melodies! Great ensemble pieces and duets and individual arias! What's not to love? Well, a bad performance would be not to love, of course. This, however, was an outstanding performance. The acting was excellent and the voices of the principals were stunning in both power and beauty.
I've seen other top-notch performances of LT, but this was the first live opera I've been to since I got my hearing aids. I expected to enjoy it more for that reason, but I didn't expect to be overcome, blown away, stunned, and add other over-the-topisms. I thought I loved opera before, but, wow, what I've been missing! From first note to last, I was in another world, more so than with any other musical performance of any kind that I can remember. There were moments when the music made me lightheaded and almost dreamily detached from reality. It hit my emotions in a surprising way, too. Why, sir, I tell you, sir, during the scene in which the elder Germont persuades Violetta to give up the love of Alfredo so that Alfredo's pure, virginal sister's young man won't reject her (TV soap opera, eat your heart out!), manly tears filled my manly eyes, sir, indeed, I swear it, sir, and some even spilled out and ran down my manly cheeks! In a manly fashion, of course. By Gadfrey, sir.
Oh, and the temperature up there was in the mid 70s, compared to low 90s in Denver. It rained quite a bit while we there. Come to think of it, always seems to rain when we go there, even when it's dry as a bone down here. I should add that we both love the rain, so that's not a dampener, ho, ho, but part of the delight of the escape.
And now I'm back in the real world.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Everyone Loves John Sousaphone!
"You've read the new novel by John Sousaphone, right."
"No."
"No? Jeez, I thought everyone snapped up his stuff as soon as it came out. You've read everything else by him, right?"
"One novel. It sucked."
"How can you say that? Everyone loves, reveres, admires, worships the novels of John Sousaphone!"
"Not everyone, obviously."
"But how can you not love, revere, etc. his novels? What don't you like about them?"
"The suckitude."
"No seriously. You can't just say that. You have to explain."
"I have to explain why I don't like his writing?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I don't like it because it sucks."
I've actually had conversations rather like this. In the most recent one, the other person got very upset and started using terrible language - words like "minimalism" and "postmodernism". I had to cover my tender, virginal ears. I explained that I considered the works in question to be bad writing because when I tried to read them, my reaction was to say to myself, "This is really bad writing." And that, I said, was the only ism I needed, the ability to recognize suckism. They sucked because they were filled with suckitude.
The Romans understood this. Or at least one of them (Cicero?) did. De gustibus non est disputandum. There is no disputing about tastes. Hear, hear! Why have people forgotten this?
Of course, the above conversation wouldn't happen if I had dismissed the works of, say John Grisham or Dan Brown instead of those of Sousaphone, the darling of the critics. If it had been Grisham or Brown, the other person would probably have agreed right away. "Yeah, he sucks. Terrible writer." But Sousaphone, anointed by those whose job it is to anoint, must be loved, revered, admired, etc. Maybe the other person feels that I'm attacking his taste and judgment when I call Sousaphone a terrible writer, and so he demands justification as a way of defending himself. Or maybe he distrusts his own judgment in comparison to that of the anointers and feels shaken by the dismissal. Or maybe he's simply outraged that anyone can call into question the wonderfulness of a writer whom the anointers have declared to be wonderful. I have no idea. I do know that if I read something and feel that it's bad writing, then it's bad writing, no matter what anyone else's opinion is.
Because it's all subjective. There is no such thing as an objectively justifiable measurement of the worth of art.
But that's another argument.
"No."
"No? Jeez, I thought everyone snapped up his stuff as soon as it came out. You've read everything else by him, right?"
"One novel. It sucked."
"How can you say that? Everyone loves, reveres, admires, worships the novels of John Sousaphone!"
"Not everyone, obviously."
"But how can you not love, revere, etc. his novels? What don't you like about them?"
"The suckitude."
"No seriously. You can't just say that. You have to explain."
"I have to explain why I don't like his writing?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I don't like it because it sucks."
I've actually had conversations rather like this. In the most recent one, the other person got very upset and started using terrible language - words like "minimalism" and "postmodernism". I had to cover my tender, virginal ears. I explained that I considered the works in question to be bad writing because when I tried to read them, my reaction was to say to myself, "This is really bad writing." And that, I said, was the only ism I needed, the ability to recognize suckism. They sucked because they were filled with suckitude.
The Romans understood this. Or at least one of them (Cicero?) did. De gustibus non est disputandum. There is no disputing about tastes. Hear, hear! Why have people forgotten this?
Of course, the above conversation wouldn't happen if I had dismissed the works of, say John Grisham or Dan Brown instead of those of Sousaphone, the darling of the critics. If it had been Grisham or Brown, the other person would probably have agreed right away. "Yeah, he sucks. Terrible writer." But Sousaphone, anointed by those whose job it is to anoint, must be loved, revered, admired, etc. Maybe the other person feels that I'm attacking his taste and judgment when I call Sousaphone a terrible writer, and so he demands justification as a way of defending himself. Or maybe he distrusts his own judgment in comparison to that of the anointers and feels shaken by the dismissal. Or maybe he's simply outraged that anyone can call into question the wonderfulness of a writer whom the anointers have declared to be wonderful. I have no idea. I do know that if I read something and feel that it's bad writing, then it's bad writing, no matter what anyone else's opinion is.
Because it's all subjective. There is no such thing as an objectively justifiable measurement of the worth of art.
But that's another argument.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Good Things Happen to Nice People
See here.
Okay, so that doesn't work as a general rule. Too often, nice things happen to nasty people and nasty things happen to nice people. But it's nice to see it work the way it should every now and then!
Okay, so that doesn't work as a general rule. Too often, nice things happen to nasty people and nasty things happen to nice people. But it's nice to see it work the way it should every now and then!
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
The Most Stupendiferous Military That Ever Was!
I keep hearing this from Americans, including other liberals who hate our foreign invasions and occupations just as much as I do. They seem to have a need, almost an obsessive need, to couple their denunciations of those acts of aggression and imperialism with the proud declaration that we have the most stupendous, magnificent, competent, highly trained, just-all-around-awesome military forces the world has ever known. Ever. Bar none. No exceptions.
Better than the Roman legions at their peak. Or the armies of imperial Spain or Napoleonic France. Better at sea than the British navy when it ruled the oceans or the Phoenician fleet that served the Persian empire.
Better than those! Yes! By far! Really! La la la la, I can't hear you, betterbetterbetter!
What the hell does this even mean? What's the metric? Such comparisons are meaningless. The only thing that's meaningful is a relative measurement - the comparison of a nation to its contemporary rivals. Moreover, this comparison has to include not just military power but a great number of other factors as well - economic, social, mercantile, industrial, and so on. As I remember, this is one of the fundamental arguments of Paul Kennedy's great book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. If I'm remembering correctly, that's also where I read this interesting thought experiment. Imagine a smaller ship of today's British navy being transported back in time a couple of hundred years, to the era when Britannia ruled the waves. That modern ship could wipe that old wooden navy from the seas and dominate the oceans all by itself (at least until it ran out of fuel). Does that mean that the modern British navy dominates the world's seas? Of course not. What counts is the comparison to contemporaries - today's British navy to today's U.S. navy, for example, or the British navy of 1800 to the French navy of 1800.
Nor is the magnificent virility of our stupendous ships erecting their huge cannons the only factor to consider. Or equivalently our utterly awesome air armada that can drop more tons of explosive horror on terrified civilians than anyone else ever could. We thumb our nose at the WWII Luftwaffe. Hmph!
In spite of that, we lost in Vietnam. We're losing in Iraq and Afghanistan. We would lose terribly if we invaded Iran. And imagine if we invaded China!
Clearly, enormous military force is not enough. Other superpowers have encountered that reality, often at the height of their dominance. There were always places where they couldn't dominate, where local conditions or conditions at home or a combination of the two delivered a much-needed kick in the imperial teeth.
Even if there were a meaningful way to compare our military forces today to those important ones in the past, and even if that comparison did indeed show that ours are more stupendiferous than even the best of those were in their day, so what? That wouldn't change the fact that we lost in Vietnam and are losing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It seems to me that the need to keep asserting our military supremacy over the rest of the world now and over all empires of the past has nothing to do with an objective assessment that we really possess such supremacy. As I said, that assertion would be pretty much meaningless and irrelevant. I think something much sadder and nastier underlies that claim.
We are the old guy who used to be the tough guy. You know the type. He puffs out his chest to disguise the fact that his chest is sagging and his waist is expanding. He waves his fists in others' faces while wearing loose shirts that hide the shrinkage in his biceps and shoulders. He blusters and swaggers and threatens and talks too loudly. He tries desperately to mask his fading powers behind a bullying display, hoping to cow the younger, tougher guys into acknowledging him as top dog. He can pull this off for a while. He has money and retains his position of authority, and for a while everyone else is fooled. For a while, he can fool himself, as well. But in the end, reality always asserts itself, and the old guy is pushed aside and ignored.
There's a period between being convincing and being ignored when the blustering display is embarrassing and a cause for scorn. I think that as a country we're just starting to enter that phase now. Perhaps that's why so many of are yelling ever more loudly about the astonishing stupendiferousness of our military.
I do wish we'd all stop. I don't want my country to be evil. I also don't want it to be embarrassing.
Better than the Roman legions at their peak. Or the armies of imperial Spain or Napoleonic France. Better at sea than the British navy when it ruled the oceans or the Phoenician fleet that served the Persian empire.
Better than those! Yes! By far! Really! La la la la, I can't hear you, betterbetterbetter!
What the hell does this even mean? What's the metric? Such comparisons are meaningless. The only thing that's meaningful is a relative measurement - the comparison of a nation to its contemporary rivals. Moreover, this comparison has to include not just military power but a great number of other factors as well - economic, social, mercantile, industrial, and so on. As I remember, this is one of the fundamental arguments of Paul Kennedy's great book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. If I'm remembering correctly, that's also where I read this interesting thought experiment. Imagine a smaller ship of today's British navy being transported back in time a couple of hundred years, to the era when Britannia ruled the waves. That modern ship could wipe that old wooden navy from the seas and dominate the oceans all by itself (at least until it ran out of fuel). Does that mean that the modern British navy dominates the world's seas? Of course not. What counts is the comparison to contemporaries - today's British navy to today's U.S. navy, for example, or the British navy of 1800 to the French navy of 1800.
Nor is the magnificent virility of our stupendous ships erecting their huge cannons the only factor to consider. Or equivalently our utterly awesome air armada that can drop more tons of explosive horror on terrified civilians than anyone else ever could. We thumb our nose at the WWII Luftwaffe. Hmph!
In spite of that, we lost in Vietnam. We're losing in Iraq and Afghanistan. We would lose terribly if we invaded Iran. And imagine if we invaded China!
Clearly, enormous military force is not enough. Other superpowers have encountered that reality, often at the height of their dominance. There were always places where they couldn't dominate, where local conditions or conditions at home or a combination of the two delivered a much-needed kick in the imperial teeth.
Even if there were a meaningful way to compare our military forces today to those important ones in the past, and even if that comparison did indeed show that ours are more stupendiferous than even the best of those were in their day, so what? That wouldn't change the fact that we lost in Vietnam and are losing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It seems to me that the need to keep asserting our military supremacy over the rest of the world now and over all empires of the past has nothing to do with an objective assessment that we really possess such supremacy. As I said, that assertion would be pretty much meaningless and irrelevant. I think something much sadder and nastier underlies that claim.
We are the old guy who used to be the tough guy. You know the type. He puffs out his chest to disguise the fact that his chest is sagging and his waist is expanding. He waves his fists in others' faces while wearing loose shirts that hide the shrinkage in his biceps and shoulders. He blusters and swaggers and threatens and talks too loudly. He tries desperately to mask his fading powers behind a bullying display, hoping to cow the younger, tougher guys into acknowledging him as top dog. He can pull this off for a while. He has money and retains his position of authority, and for a while everyone else is fooled. For a while, he can fool himself, as well. But in the end, reality always asserts itself, and the old guy is pushed aside and ignored.
There's a period between being convincing and being ignored when the blustering display is embarrassing and a cause for scorn. I think that as a country we're just starting to enter that phase now. Perhaps that's why so many of are yelling ever more loudly about the astonishing stupendiferousness of our military.
I do wish we'd all stop. I don't want my country to be evil. I also don't want it to be embarrassing.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Wanting Lightning to Strike
It's the monsoon season in Denver.
That's the North American monsoon, which in late summer brings water up from the Gulf of Mexico over the desert Southwest, triggering flash floods and washed-away SUVs in Arizona and, if we're lucky, rain in Denver. Unfortunately, we rarely get just rain. We get stupendous thunder storms, with blinding flashes of lightning and deafening cracks of thunder (especially deafening when you're downtown, and the thunder echoes off the highrise office buildings), and all too often violent, damaging hail.
A really loud storm passed over downtown this afternoon as I was leaving work for the bus. I used my umbrella, because it was raining buckets, but I felt nervous the whole way because of the blinding-and-deafening mentioned above. Lots of other nervous people scurrying around. I've read awful stories about people being struck by lightning. Many die, of course, but the survivors often suffer the strangest and most untreatable disabilities and lingering pain.
So no one in his right mind wants to be struck by lightning.
Unless he's a writer.
(Wotta segue!)
When we - or artists in general, or entertainers, or gamblers - speak of being struck by lightning, we're thinking of the brilliant light of success, the crack of, um, cash registers (okay, I'm reaching). In short, of fame descending from the sky like a slightly unnerving gift from the Olympian gods.
When I first started going to science-fiction conventions, I'd sometimes listen to panel discussions where the panelists were published writers who assured the audience that good work always gets published, that success is entirely a matter of quality and talent, and that luck is never involved. I had sold my first book, and selling the next two followed quickly and fairly easily, so I knew that they were absolutely correct. Lightning is simply not involved.
Then I had the rude awakening that awaits so many snotty young writers. My sales numbers weren't up to snuff, and my calls and letters (this was, gasp, before e-mail!!!!) suddenly went unanswered. And then I found myself looking for an agent and a publisher, and not having any luck. And that's when I realized: It is luck! Those panelists were just smugly mouthing self-serving claptrap.
And then I started getting published again, and I realized that it's only partially luck. And not all that much luck, really. No, come to think of it, it's really talent and quality, but it is true that even the talented quality folks can have rough patches.
And then once again ... And I realized that ...
And so on. The cycle repeated. Being published: luck is not involved! Can't get published: it's all luck, and mine is rotten, sob!
Anyway, I've settled on a balanced view in my battle-scarred late middle age. (Hey! CNN says that 60 is the new 40! Let's party! But not too vigorously.) It's a combination of luck and talent. There's certainly nothing novel about this balanced view, but I finally really believe it.
Just as with everything else, there'll always be the statistical outliers - people who can't write a coherent sentence but whose books are all bestsellers, and people whose work is brilliant but who can't get published. But still, you pretty much need to start with at least some talent, and you need to polish and nurture and train that talent, and you need to produce oodles of words, and then you need to contact every (good) agent in existence because that is the step that increases the chances that lightning will strike. That's the only way you can optimize the luck.
At least, that's my opinion now. If I sell Time and the Soldier and have a successful career again/after all, then it will be as clear as day that it's really all a matter of talent. Or maybe as clear as a lightning flash.
That's the North American monsoon, which in late summer brings water up from the Gulf of Mexico over the desert Southwest, triggering flash floods and washed-away SUVs in Arizona and, if we're lucky, rain in Denver. Unfortunately, we rarely get just rain. We get stupendous thunder storms, with blinding flashes of lightning and deafening cracks of thunder (especially deafening when you're downtown, and the thunder echoes off the highrise office buildings), and all too often violent, damaging hail.
A really loud storm passed over downtown this afternoon as I was leaving work for the bus. I used my umbrella, because it was raining buckets, but I felt nervous the whole way because of the blinding-and-deafening mentioned above. Lots of other nervous people scurrying around. I've read awful stories about people being struck by lightning. Many die, of course, but the survivors often suffer the strangest and most untreatable disabilities and lingering pain.
So no one in his right mind wants to be struck by lightning.
Unless he's a writer.
(Wotta segue!)
When we - or artists in general, or entertainers, or gamblers - speak of being struck by lightning, we're thinking of the brilliant light of success, the crack of, um, cash registers (okay, I'm reaching). In short, of fame descending from the sky like a slightly unnerving gift from the Olympian gods.
When I first started going to science-fiction conventions, I'd sometimes listen to panel discussions where the panelists were published writers who assured the audience that good work always gets published, that success is entirely a matter of quality and talent, and that luck is never involved. I had sold my first book, and selling the next two followed quickly and fairly easily, so I knew that they were absolutely correct. Lightning is simply not involved.
Then I had the rude awakening that awaits so many snotty young writers. My sales numbers weren't up to snuff, and my calls and letters (this was, gasp, before e-mail!!!!) suddenly went unanswered. And then I found myself looking for an agent and a publisher, and not having any luck. And that's when I realized: It is luck! Those panelists were just smugly mouthing self-serving claptrap.
And then I started getting published again, and I realized that it's only partially luck. And not all that much luck, really. No, come to think of it, it's really talent and quality, but it is true that even the talented quality folks can have rough patches.
And then once again ... And I realized that ...
And so on. The cycle repeated. Being published: luck is not involved! Can't get published: it's all luck, and mine is rotten, sob!
Anyway, I've settled on a balanced view in my battle-scarred late middle age. (Hey! CNN says that 60 is the new 40! Let's party! But not too vigorously.) It's a combination of luck and talent. There's certainly nothing novel about this balanced view, but I finally really believe it.
Just as with everything else, there'll always be the statistical outliers - people who can't write a coherent sentence but whose books are all bestsellers, and people whose work is brilliant but who can't get published. But still, you pretty much need to start with at least some talent, and you need to polish and nurture and train that talent, and you need to produce oodles of words, and then you need to contact every (good) agent in existence because that is the step that increases the chances that lightning will strike. That's the only way you can optimize the luck.
At least, that's my opinion now. If I sell Time and the Soldier and have a successful career again/after all, then it will be as clear as day that it's really all a matter of talent. Or maybe as clear as a lightning flash.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis
Horrible event.
Daniel left a voicemail message to say he was okay. He takes (took) that bridge to and from the campus. Today, he drove over it an hour before the collapse.
Update: I guess he must have said half an hour, not an hour. In his Live Journal, he posted that he thinks it was actually more like 10 minutes, and that he felt the bridge shaking as he was driving over it. When I told Leonore about that, she was even more upset than she had been at first.
Curiously, this sort of runs in the extended family. When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco in 1989, causing, among other damage, the collapse of part of the Oakland Bay Bridge, the husband of one of Leonore's nieces (I guess that makes him my by-marriage nephew by marriage) was driving across the bridge, felt something, looked in his rear-view mirror, and saw the car behind him drop from view; he had just passed over the section that fell down to the level below.
Daniel left a voicemail message to say he was okay. He takes (took) that bridge to and from the campus. Today, he drove over it an hour before the collapse.
Update: I guess he must have said half an hour, not an hour. In his Live Journal, he posted that he thinks it was actually more like 10 minutes, and that he felt the bridge shaking as he was driving over it. When I told Leonore about that, she was even more upset than she had been at first.
Curiously, this sort of runs in the extended family. When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco in 1989, causing, among other damage, the collapse of part of the Oakland Bay Bridge, the husband of one of Leonore's nieces (I guess that makes him my by-marriage nephew by marriage) was driving across the bridge, felt something, looked in his rear-view mirror, and saw the car behind him drop from view; he had just passed over the section that fell down to the level below.
Monday, July 30, 2007
The Decline in Literacy
The country just keeps on going to the dogs, but fortunately it never seems to quite get there.
Perhaps the ancient Romans grumbled about the declining standards in literacy among the young. And the Greeks, as well. And everyone before them, back to the dawn of writing. Of course, the further back you go, the smaller the part of the population the question would apply to, but I bet people grumbled about the declining standards of literacy within that social group.
Ah, but it's worse now! Young people today, they don't know how to write a proper sentence. And they spell funetickly. And their music - ! Oops, sorry, that's a different post.
I don't say such things myself, despite being very much, er, not-young, and I find myself snapping at other not-youngsters who do say such things. The kids are al(l )right, I tell them. Why, I say, I remember that when I was a lad, most of my acquaintances couldn't write worth a damn. I'm not convinced that the percentage of serious, intelligent young people who can speak and write well is any smaller now than it was then. Let's face it: Most people, in every generation, don't give a damn about proper English usage, and most of them have always thought that the minority of us who do care are creepy weirdos.
But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that literacy really is declining and that communication in our society is suddenly and rapidly becoming based on video and sound and funetickly spelled, icon-filled text messaging, :). All that really means is that we're returning to our natural social and intellectual roots.
Reading and writing are fairly recent innovations in human history, and their widespread use is much more recent. Surely there were always people who enjoyed them for their own sake, but their adoption was due mostly to necessity - a way of compiling, communicating, and storing lists and laws and contracts and royal orders. Verbal communication and storage by means of memorization became impractical once societies grew past a certain size, geographic extent, and degree of social organization. But now, thanks to technology, those old ways are once again practical even in a highly complex society spread across the surface of the world.
Marshall McLuhan talked about the global village and the ways in which the medium changed the nature of the message. We've pretty much reached the global village part. I'm not convinced that the medium is the message. Rather, I think that the old message has reemerged, not so much changed by the nature of the (new) media but enriched by it. We're moving back to being a village in which people communicate not with the writing and reading most of them always secretly, or not so secretly, hated, but instead with sight and sound, spoken words and playacting. It's enriched, for example, because instead of drawing a scene on a cave wall to show others, you can take a picture of it with your cell phone camera and send it to your zillion online friends electronically.
I do hope that great numbers of us creepy weirdos who love writing and reading hang around, though. And even though the kids are al(l )right, their music still sucks.
Perhaps the ancient Romans grumbled about the declining standards in literacy among the young. And the Greeks, as well. And everyone before them, back to the dawn of writing. Of course, the further back you go, the smaller the part of the population the question would apply to, but I bet people grumbled about the declining standards of literacy within that social group.
Ah, but it's worse now! Young people today, they don't know how to write a proper sentence. And they spell funetickly. And their music - ! Oops, sorry, that's a different post.
I don't say such things myself, despite being very much, er, not-young, and I find myself snapping at other not-youngsters who do say such things. The kids are al(l )right, I tell them. Why, I say, I remember that when I was a lad, most of my acquaintances couldn't write worth a damn. I'm not convinced that the percentage of serious, intelligent young people who can speak and write well is any smaller now than it was then. Let's face it: Most people, in every generation, don't give a damn about proper English usage, and most of them have always thought that the minority of us who do care are creepy weirdos.
But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that literacy really is declining and that communication in our society is suddenly and rapidly becoming based on video and sound and funetickly spelled, icon-filled text messaging, :). All that really means is that we're returning to our natural social and intellectual roots.
Reading and writing are fairly recent innovations in human history, and their widespread use is much more recent. Surely there were always people who enjoyed them for their own sake, but their adoption was due mostly to necessity - a way of compiling, communicating, and storing lists and laws and contracts and royal orders. Verbal communication and storage by means of memorization became impractical once societies grew past a certain size, geographic extent, and degree of social organization. But now, thanks to technology, those old ways are once again practical even in a highly complex society spread across the surface of the world.
Marshall McLuhan talked about the global village and the ways in which the medium changed the nature of the message. We've pretty much reached the global village part. I'm not convinced that the medium is the message. Rather, I think that the old message has reemerged, not so much changed by the nature of the (new) media but enriched by it. We're moving back to being a village in which people communicate not with the writing and reading most of them always secretly, or not so secretly, hated, but instead with sight and sound, spoken words and playacting. It's enriched, for example, because instead of drawing a scene on a cave wall to show others, you can take a picture of it with your cell phone camera and send it to your zillion online friends electronically.
I do hope that great numbers of us creepy weirdos who love writing and reading hang around, though. And even though the kids are al(l )right, their music still sucks.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Clack Clack Clack Clack Clack Ding Zzzzzziiiip!
They were lovely sounds.
Yesterday, I was sitting at my computer, working from home, and a stray smell passed by. The window was open because it was delightfully cool and rainy outside - nice change from the baking desert Denver has been for most of the summer - and this smell drifted in. It only lasted a second, and I don't know what it really was, but for just an instant, it smelled like the unique combination of oil, metal, rubber, and paper of a manual typewriter.
Ah, sweet memories! I wrote my first few novels, and vast numbers of short stories on a portable typewriter that I bought in high school. I still have it, er, somewhere. The smell triggered wonderful tactile memories of striking the keys and feeling the letters being impressed onto the paper.
And of course of unsticking the keys, and trying to correct typos, and pages getting messed up and having to be retyped, and paper cuts, and changing ribbons, and that loose t that I had to keep pressing back into position so that that one letter wouldn't stick up above the rest of the line. Sure, it was an awful way to write, and I was daydreaming about some kind of computer setup long before those became practical. I'd never go back to using a typewriter. The idea is absurd.
Still, on some level, that's still real writing to me. I kind of miss the beautiful machining and engineering, the clacking of the keys, the ding of the bell, the feel of the carriage return lever, the zzzziiipclunk of the carriage being returned. Even the electrical typewriter I graduated to from that manual portable didn't have the character and tactile and sound pleasure of the manual.
Couldn't blog with it, though.
Yesterday, I was sitting at my computer, working from home, and a stray smell passed by. The window was open because it was delightfully cool and rainy outside - nice change from the baking desert Denver has been for most of the summer - and this smell drifted in. It only lasted a second, and I don't know what it really was, but for just an instant, it smelled like the unique combination of oil, metal, rubber, and paper of a manual typewriter.
Ah, sweet memories! I wrote my first few novels, and vast numbers of short stories on a portable typewriter that I bought in high school. I still have it, er, somewhere. The smell triggered wonderful tactile memories of striking the keys and feeling the letters being impressed onto the paper.
And of course of unsticking the keys, and trying to correct typos, and pages getting messed up and having to be retyped, and paper cuts, and changing ribbons, and that loose t that I had to keep pressing back into position so that that one letter wouldn't stick up above the rest of the line. Sure, it was an awful way to write, and I was daydreaming about some kind of computer setup long before those became practical. I'd never go back to using a typewriter. The idea is absurd.
Still, on some level, that's still real writing to me. I kind of miss the beautiful machining and engineering, the clacking of the keys, the ding of the bell, the feel of the carriage return lever, the zzzziiipclunk of the carriage being returned. Even the electrical typewriter I graduated to from that manual portable didn't have the character and tactile and sound pleasure of the manual.
Couldn't blog with it, though.
David's Definitions for September 2007
Reticent
To be reticent is to be reluctant to speak. It comes from the Latin word for being silent. It can refer to someone who is taciturn - that is, simply doesn't talk much. Or it can refer to someone who is reluctant to speak about something specific. For example, a politician who is being cagey about his plans to run for President might be reticent on that one subject but loquacious (very, very talkative) on all others. Many people misuse reticent when they mean reluctant. They might say, "He was reticent to act." That should be, "He was reluctant to act." Reticent can only refer to speech, not to action.
To be reticent is to be reluctant to speak. It comes from the Latin word for being silent. It can refer to someone who is taciturn - that is, simply doesn't talk much. Or it can refer to someone who is reluctant to speak about something specific. For example, a politician who is being cagey about his plans to run for President might be reticent on that one subject but loquacious (very, very talkative) on all others. Many people misuse reticent when they mean reluctant. They might say, "He was reticent to act." That should be, "He was reluctant to act." Reticent can only refer to speech, not to action.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Karen's Great Adventure
Check out this blog.
Until a few weeks ago, Karen was a fellow tech writer at Quark. She quit to go map trails in Alaska for a year. She created the blog so that people who know her could follow her adventures. The latest post has a link to a photo album she put up. There are some good shots of dry but dramatic scenery in Colorado and other Western parts, and then it ends with nice pictures from Victoria and Vancouver, BC. Sigh. I wanna go back.
Lahdeedah, I hope this doesn't make you too homesick for The Most Beautiful Part of the World.
Until a few weeks ago, Karen was a fellow tech writer at Quark. She quit to go map trails in Alaska for a year. She created the blog so that people who know her could follow her adventures. The latest post has a link to a photo album she put up. There are some good shots of dry but dramatic scenery in Colorado and other Western parts, and then it ends with nice pictures from Victoria and Vancouver, BC. Sigh. I wanna go back.
Lahdeedah, I hope this doesn't make you too homesick for The Most Beautiful Part of the World.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Yeah, but What Have You Done for Us Lately?
When I sold my first novel, to Pocket Books in 1975 (I think), I was sure that my writing career had begun a smooth upward trajectory that would take it all the way to the Moon, baby! and would very soon take me out of the workforce. I don't remember if I said as much to any of the older and more experienced writers I met as a result of that book sale, but if I did, they would have been justified in snickering behind my back.
It's all in the numbers - the sales numbers. That's no surprise to anyone, but it's still painful when you learn that your numbers aren't good enough and your current publisher isn't interested in seeing new proposals from you. What has surprised me is how often this happens to writers I thought had solid, flourishing careers but who now can't sell their new books, or who are selling books but sense that they're on a downward trajectory. Understandably, people prefer not to talk about this when it's happening to them. When they do, the conversations are carried on in private places, online or not. In some cases, I've learned about the dormant state of someone's writing career from a third party. In every case, it's been a shock.
In a way, it's even more shocking when I see this happen to someone who came up the ranks after me than to someone who was already there when I first got published. With the older writers, I just assumed that they had grown tired of writing, or age had interfered.
But there was a long period when the realization was sinking in that my career had stalled. "That's all the power there is, Captain! Mah puir wee bairn engine's canna deliver any more!" "Our orbit is starting to decay, Captain. We will impact the planet's surface in approximately 5.287111965493 hours." Meanwhile, I was watching the rockets of Hot! New! writers taking off and heading for the Moon, baby! They were the buzz. They were brilliant. They were changing everything. I was filled with envy and poisonous resentment that I didn't want to feel but couldn't purge myself of.
And now, some years later, I'm hearing sad laments from some of those very writers. Few of them are still well known - or even being published.
What a depressing post this is! The point I want to make, to the extent that there is one, is that if you sometimes wonder what happened to X, a writer you really liked a few years ago, and why hasn't X written anything lately, don't assume that he hasn't. Don't assume that X got bored with writing. Assume that publishing got bored with X. Assume that he's still writing, but to the publishing biz, he has become a non-person. He's yesterday's Hot! New! writer, and now he's cold and old. It's even possible that, in despair, X has given up writing entirely. Now, that's depressing!
Oh, there was another, related point. Back when I used to whine to friends about the state of my writing career (I learned not to, finally), some of them would protest that I had proved myself. I had so many published novels I could point to. I was a proven professional. Yes, but what I had proved was that my books didn't sell lots and lots of copies. Oopsie. On the bright side, if you're a newcomer, you haven't yet published books that didn't sell lots and lots of copies. Therefore, in the eyes of the publishing biz, you still have the possibility of becoming one of the Hot! New! buzzthings. They're actually more likely to take a chance on you than on someone they know is cold and old.
So write on. You'll have two or three books to prove yourself. And you might well be one of the ones who makes it to the Moon, baby!
It's all in the numbers - the sales numbers. That's no surprise to anyone, but it's still painful when you learn that your numbers aren't good enough and your current publisher isn't interested in seeing new proposals from you. What has surprised me is how often this happens to writers I thought had solid, flourishing careers but who now can't sell their new books, or who are selling books but sense that they're on a downward trajectory. Understandably, people prefer not to talk about this when it's happening to them. When they do, the conversations are carried on in private places, online or not. In some cases, I've learned about the dormant state of someone's writing career from a third party. In every case, it's been a shock.
In a way, it's even more shocking when I see this happen to someone who came up the ranks after me than to someone who was already there when I first got published. With the older writers, I just assumed that they had grown tired of writing, or age had interfered.
But there was a long period when the realization was sinking in that my career had stalled. "That's all the power there is, Captain! Mah puir wee bairn engine's canna deliver any more!" "Our orbit is starting to decay, Captain. We will impact the planet's surface in approximately 5.287111965493 hours." Meanwhile, I was watching the rockets of Hot! New! writers taking off and heading for the Moon, baby! They were the buzz. They were brilliant. They were changing everything. I was filled with envy and poisonous resentment that I didn't want to feel but couldn't purge myself of.
And now, some years later, I'm hearing sad laments from some of those very writers. Few of them are still well known - or even being published.
What a depressing post this is! The point I want to make, to the extent that there is one, is that if you sometimes wonder what happened to X, a writer you really liked a few years ago, and why hasn't X written anything lately, don't assume that he hasn't. Don't assume that X got bored with writing. Assume that publishing got bored with X. Assume that he's still writing, but to the publishing biz, he has become a non-person. He's yesterday's Hot! New! writer, and now he's cold and old. It's even possible that, in despair, X has given up writing entirely. Now, that's depressing!
Oh, there was another, related point. Back when I used to whine to friends about the state of my writing career (I learned not to, finally), some of them would protest that I had proved myself. I had so many published novels I could point to. I was a proven professional. Yes, but what I had proved was that my books didn't sell lots and lots of copies. Oopsie. On the bright side, if you're a newcomer, you haven't yet published books that didn't sell lots and lots of copies. Therefore, in the eyes of the publishing biz, you still have the possibility of becoming one of the Hot! New! buzzthings. They're actually more likely to take a chance on you than on someone they know is cold and old.
So write on. You'll have two or three books to prove yourself. And you might well be one of the ones who makes it to the Moon, baby!
Monday, July 16, 2007
Dumped the House. Sob.
Not Daniel's house. A fictional house, in Time and the Soldier.
This house has been there since the earliest outline for the novel, as I remember. It was a nifty and niftily mysterious house. I really liked it.
But it just didn't fit into the plot. In fact, keeping it would have required all sorts of extraneous stuff added to the story, for no other purpose than to justify keeping the house. So tonight I gritted my teeth and girded my loins and bit the bullet and wrote the house out of existence. Oh, the iron demands of aaahhht! Sob!
On the bright side, some stuff gets blowed up real good.
This house has been there since the earliest outline for the novel, as I remember. It was a nifty and niftily mysterious house. I really liked it.
But it just didn't fit into the plot. In fact, keeping it would have required all sorts of extraneous stuff added to the story, for no other purpose than to justify keeping the house. So tonight I gritted my teeth and girded my loins and bit the bullet and wrote the house out of existence. Oh, the iron demands of aaahhht! Sob!
On the bright side, some stuff gets blowed up real good.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Absurdly Complex World
Is all this shit really necessary? I mean, really, really necessary? Or is it the case that our laws are created by lawyers as a way to keep the lawyering business humming? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Because Daniel is still in Minneapolis and his house closing was scheduled for last Friday, he signed a power-of-attorney form, and I did the closing stuff in his place.
I've only been through one house closing before. That was in 1971, for the house we still live in. Back then, Leonore and I were somewhat befuddled twenty-somethings, new to Denver and a bit frightened by what a big commitment we were making, and we thought we were just going to a title company office to, as the realtor had said, sign some papers. Holy cow! By the end of that loooong day, we were two stunned, bewildered, terrified, disoriented, broken-down sixty-somethings! No, wait, that's now. But we felt pretty stunned, bewildered, etc., then.
Closings have not improved in the last 36 years. Oh, of course there has to be paperwork. What's being bought and sold has to be properly described, and recorded for the state for tax purposes, and the details of the transaction have to be specified, and so on. And the same for the mortgage. But, being blessed with not being a lawyer, I cannot see why all of this requires so God-damned many pages and signatures and versions of the same thing. It's effing ridiculous.
It's nothing new, of course. I was reading a history of the Persian empire recently (cool stuff!), and it's remarkable how much of our knowledge of those ancient times comes from detailed contracts and lists recorded in clay tablets. Christ, I shouldn't complain. Those ancient guys had to do it all in cuneiform! Anyway, so if all of this survives, it will be of immense value to future historians from some alien civilization visiting the ruins of this one and trying to piece together how we lived. "Great Ungi, look a this, Grzlb! This is just as bad as the stuff back home!" "Yeah. You know, disgusting as these creatures were, it's hard not to feel sorry for them." "Oh, I wouldn't go that far."
Nonetheless, it sucks with teeth and it should all be done away with. We're not ancient Persians, and we're not record keepers for hypothetical future alien historians. A half-dozen succinctly worded sheets of paper should be sufficient. The current situation isn't proof of how advanced and complex our society is; it's evidence of how primitive and clumsy we are.
Because Daniel is still in Minneapolis and his house closing was scheduled for last Friday, he signed a power-of-attorney form, and I did the closing stuff in his place.
I've only been through one house closing before. That was in 1971, for the house we still live in. Back then, Leonore and I were somewhat befuddled twenty-somethings, new to Denver and a bit frightened by what a big commitment we were making, and we thought we were just going to a title company office to, as the realtor had said, sign some papers. Holy cow! By the end of that loooong day, we were two stunned, bewildered, terrified, disoriented, broken-down sixty-somethings! No, wait, that's now. But we felt pretty stunned, bewildered, etc., then.
Closings have not improved in the last 36 years. Oh, of course there has to be paperwork. What's being bought and sold has to be properly described, and recorded for the state for tax purposes, and the details of the transaction have to be specified, and so on. And the same for the mortgage. But, being blessed with not being a lawyer, I cannot see why all of this requires so God-damned many pages and signatures and versions of the same thing. It's effing ridiculous.
It's nothing new, of course. I was reading a history of the Persian empire recently (cool stuff!), and it's remarkable how much of our knowledge of those ancient times comes from detailed contracts and lists recorded in clay tablets. Christ, I shouldn't complain. Those ancient guys had to do it all in cuneiform! Anyway, so if all of this survives, it will be of immense value to future historians from some alien civilization visiting the ruins of this one and trying to piece together how we lived. "Great Ungi, look a this, Grzlb! This is just as bad as the stuff back home!" "Yeah. You know, disgusting as these creatures were, it's hard not to feel sorry for them." "Oh, I wouldn't go that far."
Nonetheless, it sucks with teeth and it should all be done away with. We're not ancient Persians, and we're not record keepers for hypothetical future alien historians. A half-dozen succinctly worded sheets of paper should be sufficient. The current situation isn't proof of how advanced and complex our society is; it's evidence of how primitive and clumsy we are.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The Nastiness of Bad Memories
I disapprove of deliberately misleading titles, but the title of this post is deliberately misleading. I couldn't help myself.
I'm not talking about the kinds of memories that bedevil us and interfere with sleep. We all have those, surely. Rather, I'm talking about not being able to remember things - a memory that doesn't function properly, in other words.
My memory has always been awful. If anything, it's not quite as bad now as it was when I was a kid. I think I've developed coping mechanisms, as they say, such as being sure to write things down and using a calendar program on my PC. When I was a kid in school, my inability to remember, coupled with poor hearing and poor vision, sometimes got me classified as either stupid or naughty, depending on the teacher. I can understand why it must have looked that way.
If this problem is hereditary, it must have come from my mother. My father has always had a remarkable memory. He's now approaching 100 and complains about how bad his memory is nowadays, and it's still better than mine. Gads, what will happen to me if my memory does start deteriorating because of age, as it normally does with everyone? Maybe it's not hereditary. Maybe it's yet another aftereffect of my mother having to get up in the middle of the night while heavily pregnant with me and trundle down a few flights of stairs to the basement, dragging two sleepy daughters with her, because of the German bombers coming overhead. It's the fault of the Germans, you see. They started it. They invaded Poland. (Fawlty Towers joke.)
My inability to remember is an oddly intermittent, patchy thing. I can remember books and movies from decades ago, which causes Leonore to insist that I have an extremely good memory. Somehow, my brain handles that kind of information differently from practical info, such as where I'm supposed to be on a certain day and at what time. Or what I did last weekend. Maybe that's not uncommon, though. Years ago, in an online discussion, the writer Damon Knight talked at length about which stories by which authors had appeared in which issues of a particular science-fiction magazine around the time of WWII. This was all from memory. I expressed amazement that he could remember that. He responded that it was because it was important. I guess I need to train my brain to regard future appointments as being as important as old books and movies. That might be impossible.
I'm not talking about the kinds of memories that bedevil us and interfere with sleep. We all have those, surely. Rather, I'm talking about not being able to remember things - a memory that doesn't function properly, in other words.
My memory has always been awful. If anything, it's not quite as bad now as it was when I was a kid. I think I've developed coping mechanisms, as they say, such as being sure to write things down and using a calendar program on my PC. When I was a kid in school, my inability to remember, coupled with poor hearing and poor vision, sometimes got me classified as either stupid or naughty, depending on the teacher. I can understand why it must have looked that way.
If this problem is hereditary, it must have come from my mother. My father has always had a remarkable memory. He's now approaching 100 and complains about how bad his memory is nowadays, and it's still better than mine. Gads, what will happen to me if my memory does start deteriorating because of age, as it normally does with everyone? Maybe it's not hereditary. Maybe it's yet another aftereffect of my mother having to get up in the middle of the night while heavily pregnant with me and trundle down a few flights of stairs to the basement, dragging two sleepy daughters with her, because of the German bombers coming overhead. It's the fault of the Germans, you see. They started it. They invaded Poland. (Fawlty Towers joke.)
My inability to remember is an oddly intermittent, patchy thing. I can remember books and movies from decades ago, which causes Leonore to insist that I have an extremely good memory. Somehow, my brain handles that kind of information differently from practical info, such as where I'm supposed to be on a certain day and at what time. Or what I did last weekend. Maybe that's not uncommon, though. Years ago, in an online discussion, the writer Damon Knight talked at length about which stories by which authors had appeared in which issues of a particular science-fiction magazine around the time of WWII. This was all from memory. I expressed amazement that he could remember that. He responded that it was because it was important. I guess I need to train my brain to regard future appointments as being as important as old books and movies. That might be impossible.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
They Aren't Making Fairies the Way They Used To
Wasn't there a day when fairies granted wishes and so on? And of course genies and all sort of other supernatural critters. Where are they now?
I'm about to start ironing shirts. There's a big stack of short-sleeved waiting for me, and underneath that is a bunch of long-sleeved shirts that have been sitting there since the cold weather ended. We have a perfectly good ironing board and iron, all set up, and I was sure that if I waited long enough, the Ironing Fairy would do his?her?its? job. But, no. The stack just sat their, wrinkling, and finally I'm going to have to give in and do the hot and unpleasant work myself.
Same applies to the Dirty Dish Fairy. If we stack the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and ignore them, the next morning, they're still there! That's another fairy falling down on the job.
I'm disgusted.
Don't even get me started on the Beer Supply Fairy. Lazy bastard.
I'm about to start ironing shirts. There's a big stack of short-sleeved waiting for me, and underneath that is a bunch of long-sleeved shirts that have been sitting there since the cold weather ended. We have a perfectly good ironing board and iron, all set up, and I was sure that if I waited long enough, the Ironing Fairy would do his?her?its? job. But, no. The stack just sat their, wrinkling, and finally I'm going to have to give in and do the hot and unpleasant work myself.
Same applies to the Dirty Dish Fairy. If we stack the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and ignore them, the next morning, they're still there! That's another fairy falling down on the job.
I'm disgusted.
Don't even get me started on the Beer Supply Fairy. Lazy bastard.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Vanishing C
Or Low C. Or No C. See? There's nothing to C! And so on.
I've changed the working title of the it's-only-some-notes-so-far possible next novel, and so the working codename for it changes from BBC to BB.
Which is scarcely worth a post, except that it made me think about internal company codenames for upcoming software releases and how they sometimes change, which is really idiotic.
As I understand/remember, codenames came into use to foil industrial sabotage in big companies (and just where are those beautiful Chinese industrial spies, I ask you?) and to simplify referring to the next release in small companies. You can't use the number, as you might think, because nowadays the marketeers will dictate some illogical number based on their perception of the market's perception. E.g., what should logically be Version 3.2 will instead be released as Version 4.0, or vice versa. Or, even worse, what should be 3.0 will be released as 3.3, just to fool all those apparently really dense customers. But if internally everyone refers to it as Umslopogaas (anyone get that reference?) (without using Google!), then the marketeers can do their silly stuff without messing up all the internal documents, which always use Umslopogaas. The code names were meant for internal consumption only and never revealed outside the company. (But if any beautiful Chinese spies want to try to wheedle such information out of me, I encourage them to try. Nothing will force me to give away secret company information. No matter how hard they try. Or how long. Or what amazing beautiful-spy techniques they resort to. Why, I'm shocked and horrified and repulsed just thinking about it.)
Later, software giants like Microsoft and Apple started using those codenames very publicly as a way to build the buzz and excitement for their boring releases. Wronghorn will change the world! Jackoffyouare will change the paradigm itself! Wow. Whole new ways to rename or delete files. New looks for old icons. Yawn.
But ignoring Gates and Jobs, real software companies have no good reason to change the codename. Doing so would contradict the reason for using codenames. And yet I've been in smallish companies where exactly that happened. Just when you've got it straight in your head which set of features is associated with Umslopogaas and when it's likely to be released, suddenly you get an e-mail that henceforth that version will be known as Des Moines, while the name Umslopogaas will be reserved for future use. Or not.
Utterly absurd.
Well, I suppose it helps confuse those beautiful Chinese spies. (I can help! Call me!)
I've changed the working title of the it's-only-some-notes-so-far possible next novel, and so the working codename for it changes from BBC to BB.
Which is scarcely worth a post, except that it made me think about internal company codenames for upcoming software releases and how they sometimes change, which is really idiotic.
As I understand/remember, codenames came into use to foil industrial sabotage in big companies (and just where are those beautiful Chinese industrial spies, I ask you?) and to simplify referring to the next release in small companies. You can't use the number, as you might think, because nowadays the marketeers will dictate some illogical number based on their perception of the market's perception. E.g., what should logically be Version 3.2 will instead be released as Version 4.0, or vice versa. Or, even worse, what should be 3.0 will be released as 3.3, just to fool all those apparently really dense customers. But if internally everyone refers to it as Umslopogaas (anyone get that reference?) (without using Google!), then the marketeers can do their silly stuff without messing up all the internal documents, which always use Umslopogaas. The code names were meant for internal consumption only and never revealed outside the company. (But if any beautiful Chinese spies want to try to wheedle such information out of me, I encourage them to try. Nothing will force me to give away secret company information. No matter how hard they try. Or how long. Or what amazing beautiful-spy techniques they resort to. Why, I'm shocked and horrified and repulsed just thinking about it.)
Later, software giants like Microsoft and Apple started using those codenames very publicly as a way to build the buzz and excitement for their boring releases. Wronghorn will change the world! Jackoffyouare will change the paradigm itself! Wow. Whole new ways to rename or delete files. New looks for old icons. Yawn.
But ignoring Gates and Jobs, real software companies have no good reason to change the codename. Doing so would contradict the reason for using codenames. And yet I've been in smallish companies where exactly that happened. Just when you've got it straight in your head which set of features is associated with Umslopogaas and when it's likely to be released, suddenly you get an e-mail that henceforth that version will be known as Des Moines, while the name Umslopogaas will be reserved for future use. Or not.
Utterly absurd.
Well, I suppose it helps confuse those beautiful Chinese spies. (I can help! Call me!)
Monday, July 02, 2007
Seduction of the New
A while ago, I nattered about living in the next book. I was trying to emulate my hero, Anthony Trollope, Tony the T, The T Man, The Teester! (Okay, I'll stop.) I was thinking of a couple of possible next books, actually, not one; both of them have been hanging around on my hard drive for a number of years, in partial form.
Today, somewhat out of the blue, a new book blossomed into ... well, not existence. Potential existence. Serious ideahood. Virtual bookhood. (The B Thing! The Bookster!) It would be mainstream, light but not frothy or shallow. Interesting characters, with a central story line that I've actually been thinking about for a long time but didn't know if I'd ever have a way to write. And it should be possible to do it with a lot of humor, even though the basic subject is quite serious. I love writing humor and do it only rarely in fiction. My last novel, Business Secrets from the Stars, was all humor, as many yucks per page as I could cram in. One reviewer complained that there were too many yucks. Hmph. I had a ball writing it, though. Interestingly, that book begins with its protagonist, Malcolm Erskine, getting an idea for a book and being sort of possessed by it. I'm not possessed with this one, but I am entranced by it.
The seduction part is that I'm eager to get to the new novel (which I'll refer to by an in-house code, just as software companies do for forthcoming releases: BBC) and I'm suddenly feeling impatient to be done with Time and the Soldier so that I can jump into BBC. Gotta fight the temptation to switch in midstream. The end of TimeSold is ... well, sort of almost visible. Must be self-disciplined!
Today, somewhat out of the blue, a new book blossomed into ... well, not existence. Potential existence. Serious ideahood. Virtual bookhood. (The B Thing! The Bookster!) It would be mainstream, light but not frothy or shallow. Interesting characters, with a central story line that I've actually been thinking about for a long time but didn't know if I'd ever have a way to write. And it should be possible to do it with a lot of humor, even though the basic subject is quite serious. I love writing humor and do it only rarely in fiction. My last novel, Business Secrets from the Stars, was all humor, as many yucks per page as I could cram in. One reviewer complained that there were too many yucks. Hmph. I had a ball writing it, though. Interestingly, that book begins with its protagonist, Malcolm Erskine, getting an idea for a book and being sort of possessed by it. I'm not possessed with this one, but I am entranced by it.
The seduction part is that I'm eager to get to the new novel (which I'll refer to by an in-house code, just as software companies do for forthcoming releases: BBC) and I'm suddenly feeling impatient to be done with Time and the Soldier so that I can jump into BBC. Gotta fight the temptation to switch in midstream. The end of TimeSold is ... well, sort of almost visible. Must be self-disciplined!
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Earthrise - Apollo 8
See here for the famous photo and some commentary about it.
At the time, I was a 25-year-old kid working as an aerospace engineer at NASA/Houston - the Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Johnson Space Center. The rumor was that the Roooooshians were planning some kind of lunar mission to steal our thunder, so we had to get there fustest with the mostest. So a special mission was crafted from existing hardware and lunar-landing plans. It would only be a pass around the moon, but it would establish the primacy of the U.S.A. over the dastardly U.S.S.R. USA! Number One! Number One! But it wasn't supposed to look quite that smug. The mission, to be called Apollo 8, was announced suddenly, because of them Roooooshians, and I remember spending days doing computer runs analyzing navigation. 24-hour days. Literally. We all stumbled around like zombies looking at printouts of numbers that had ceased to have any meaning. That's paper, right? With numbers? Can I go home now? No!
I had a deep sense of foreboding. This isn't going to work. They're not going to be picked up by the Navy when they splash down.
As history shows, the mission worked very well. The astronauts read Biblical verses from space, reminding everyone that it was Christmas and we had triumphed over Godless atheistic Communism, which drove me, an atheist, crazy with anger and a sense of betrayal. This shit was not what I had worked for! This was not what I dreamed about as a space-crazy kid! LBJ said something; I can't remember what. The Rooooshians sulked, and it turned out they hadn't had a mission ready after all.
Later, this wonderful picture showed up, and none of the above mattered. What mattered to me was that the space-crazy kid had played a part in getting Man to the Moon.
Later still, NASA printed up a gazillion fancy prints of this picture to give out to members of Congress and others, only to realize too late that they had all been printed in reverse, in mirror image. Oops! Your tax dollars at work! So they handed out the reverse prints to us, the engineers, the guys who had made it all possible. Give it to those guys. They'll accept anything!
Despite the mirror-imageness, Leonore and I loved it. We had it professionally framed, and now it hangs over the couch in the living room of our house in Denver. I still stare at it in amazement and delight. No matter what else happens in my life, I'll always be able to say that I was part of that great anonymous army: I helped send Man to the Moon.
(I also worked on Apollo 12 and Apollo 15. Apollo 13 is the fault of other people entirely.)
Meaningless postscript: One day at NASA, I passed Wernher von Braun. He was visiting from his home base in Huntsville, Alabama. Houston was hostile territory because of the bureaucratic battles between his base and MSC. He was a tall, smug, fleshy-faced fellow surrounded by a clique of pandering pukeheads. His autobiography was title I Aimed for the Stars. The comedian Mort Sahl said that it should have been subtitled "but Sometimes I Hit London." When he was shooting off his V2s, I was a baby in England at the receiving end. I wish that when I passed him I had jumped up and down and sung, "You missed me! You missed me!" But I probably would have been fired.
At the time, I was a 25-year-old kid working as an aerospace engineer at NASA/Houston - the Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Johnson Space Center. The rumor was that the Roooooshians were planning some kind of lunar mission to steal our thunder, so we had to get there fustest with the mostest. So a special mission was crafted from existing hardware and lunar-landing plans. It would only be a pass around the moon, but it would establish the primacy of the U.S.A. over the dastardly U.S.S.R. USA! Number One! Number One! But it wasn't supposed to look quite that smug. The mission, to be called Apollo 8, was announced suddenly, because of them Roooooshians, and I remember spending days doing computer runs analyzing navigation. 24-hour days. Literally. We all stumbled around like zombies looking at printouts of numbers that had ceased to have any meaning. That's paper, right? With numbers? Can I go home now? No!
I had a deep sense of foreboding. This isn't going to work. They're not going to be picked up by the Navy when they splash down.
As history shows, the mission worked very well. The astronauts read Biblical verses from space, reminding everyone that it was Christmas and we had triumphed over Godless atheistic Communism, which drove me, an atheist, crazy with anger and a sense of betrayal. This shit was not what I had worked for! This was not what I dreamed about as a space-crazy kid! LBJ said something; I can't remember what. The Rooooshians sulked, and it turned out they hadn't had a mission ready after all.
Later, this wonderful picture showed up, and none of the above mattered. What mattered to me was that the space-crazy kid had played a part in getting Man to the Moon.
Later still, NASA printed up a gazillion fancy prints of this picture to give out to members of Congress and others, only to realize too late that they had all been printed in reverse, in mirror image. Oops! Your tax dollars at work! So they handed out the reverse prints to us, the engineers, the guys who had made it all possible. Give it to those guys. They'll accept anything!
Despite the mirror-imageness, Leonore and I loved it. We had it professionally framed, and now it hangs over the couch in the living room of our house in Denver. I still stare at it in amazement and delight. No matter what else happens in my life, I'll always be able to say that I was part of that great anonymous army: I helped send Man to the Moon.
(I also worked on Apollo 12 and Apollo 15. Apollo 13 is the fault of other people entirely.)
Meaningless postscript: One day at NASA, I passed Wernher von Braun. He was visiting from his home base in Huntsville, Alabama. Houston was hostile territory because of the bureaucratic battles between his base and MSC. He was a tall, smug, fleshy-faced fellow surrounded by a clique of pandering pukeheads. His autobiography was title I Aimed for the Stars. The comedian Mort Sahl said that it should have been subtitled "but Sometimes I Hit London." When he was shooting off his V2s, I was a baby in England at the receiving end. I wish that when I passed him I had jumped up and down and sung, "You missed me! You missed me!" But I probably would have been fired.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Oldest Guy in the Office
No, this is not a whine about being old. Really.
The post by alternatefish referring to not yet having a job reminded me of how it felt, when I started working, to be the young kid in the office, lo! those many decades ago. I kept thinking of myself that way - as the youngest kid in the office - even as the years passed and intellectually I knew it was no longer true. That was my self-image.
Then, suddenly, at some point it struck me that I was one of the oldest people in whatever company I was then working for. Very soon, I was almost surely the oldest person in the company. I'm fairly sure that's the case at my current employer, Quark.
No profound insights in this post. (Aww! You've all come to expect them!) (Okay, so you haven't.) Obviously, this is a common experience. But it seems powerful and unique to me right now. What am I rambling on about? Cognitive dissonance, I guess. It hits one in various ways in connection with aging. That fellow in the mirror is just some fat, bald, old guy with sagging jowls instead of the kid who's supposed to be there. Who kidnapped that kid and substituted his grandfather, damn it? Again, this is obviously a common experience, but lately I've been thinking about how odd it feels, almost otherworldly or detached from reality.
The post by alternatefish referring to not yet having a job reminded me of how it felt, when I started working, to be the young kid in the office, lo! those many decades ago. I kept thinking of myself that way - as the youngest kid in the office - even as the years passed and intellectually I knew it was no longer true. That was my self-image.
Then, suddenly, at some point it struck me that I was one of the oldest people in whatever company I was then working for. Very soon, I was almost surely the oldest person in the company. I'm fairly sure that's the case at my current employer, Quark.
No profound insights in this post. (Aww! You've all come to expect them!) (Okay, so you haven't.) Obviously, this is a common experience. But it seems powerful and unique to me right now. What am I rambling on about? Cognitive dissonance, I guess. It hits one in various ways in connection with aging. That fellow in the mirror is just some fat, bald, old guy with sagging jowls instead of the kid who's supposed to be there. Who kidnapped that kid and substituted his grandfather, damn it? Again, this is obviously a common experience, but lately I've been thinking about how odd it feels, almost otherworldly or detached from reality.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
328 Weeks
From next Tuesday is my planned/hoped-for retirement date.
Putting it in weeks makes it sound not all that far away. 328? Heck, that's nothing!
Putting it in weeks makes it sound not all that far away. 328? Heck, that's nothing!
Thursday, June 21, 2007
NOT A MILLION MILES!!
At Amazon.uk, an online reviewer said this about Daniel's and my alternate history novel, Dawn Crescent:
THIS PLOT IS NOT A MILLION MILES FROM WHAT HAS ACTUALLY OCCURRED!!
Well, er, that would be because it's alternate history.
THIS PLOT IS NOT A MILLION MILES FROM WHAT HAS ACTUALLY OCCURRED!!
Well, er, that would be because it's alternate history.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Slightly off the Mark
After a good writing session, I was feeling up and building castles in the air, as usual. This is the one! This is the book! It's going to happen at last! I can feel it! Etc.
Leonore reminded me of the early years, when I was pouring out my first novel and oodles of short stories and was constantly enthusiastic about it all. Back then, I was sure I would make it and become a full-time writer before I turned 30.
Oops! As Maxwell Smart used to say, "Missed it by thaaat much."
Leonore reminded me of the early years, when I was pouring out my first novel and oodles of short stories and was constantly enthusiastic about it all. Back then, I was sure I would make it and become a full-time writer before I turned 30.
Oops! As Maxwell Smart used to say, "Missed it by thaaat much."
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I Still Feel Like a Kid
Can't help obsessing about age. These guys aren't helping.
That's the site for the exhumation (excarvation?) of a car that was buried exactly 50 years ago. That's also when I arrived in this country, a skinny immigrant kid, shivering in the cold, speaking no English*. It used to seem like it was just yesterday, but now those bastards in Oklahoma have converted it into ancient history. The nerve!
* In the interests of nitpickery, it was summer, I was pudgy, and English is my native language. But that doesn't fit the standard stereotype at all.
That's the site for the exhumation (excarvation?) of a car that was buried exactly 50 years ago. That's also when I arrived in this country, a skinny immigrant kid, shivering in the cold, speaking no English*. It used to seem like it was just yesterday, but now those bastards in Oklahoma have converted it into ancient history. The nerve!
* In the interests of nitpickery, it was summer, I was pudgy, and English is my native language. But that doesn't fit the standard stereotype at all.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Recursive Blogging
This is getting strange.
My post about the search terms people used to get to vampire stuff on my Web site has resulted in people getting to that blog post via similar terms. So in searching for, say, vampire sex they got a blog post about people searching for vampire sex.
The post about the Web site and blog hits from Turkey has resulted in blog hits from people doing searches involving the word Turkey. There have also been a couple of cases of hits from Turkey where the exit click was to the Turkish site which has the translation of my unemployment essay - what started that thread in the first place.
It seems inevitable that this post will result in hits on the blog by people searching for information about looking for stuff on blogs.
Or something like that.
My post about the search terms people used to get to vampire stuff on my Web site has resulted in people getting to that blog post via similar terms. So in searching for, say, vampire sex they got a blog post about people searching for vampire sex.
The post about the Web site and blog hits from Turkey has resulted in blog hits from people doing searches involving the word Turkey. There have also been a couple of cases of hits from Turkey where the exit click was to the Turkish site which has the translation of my unemployment essay - what started that thread in the first place.
It seems inevitable that this post will result in hits on the blog by people searching for information about looking for stuff on blogs.
Or something like that.
Monday, June 11, 2007
David's Definitions for August 2007
Patrimony
This can refer specifically to an inheritance, such as what's left to you in a will, or more generally to your heritage, such as the customs and laws handed down to you from previous generations. It derives from the Latin word pater, father, and originally meant what you inherited from your father. Thanks to the Romans, a lot of our words derive from pater. Some are obvious, such as paternal and patriarch. A less obvious one is patriot. The Romans referred to a man's country as his patria, his fatherland. Thus, a patriot is one who is devoted to his fatherland.
Hmm. Getting a bit political, this time.
I've decided to start putting these on my Web site, all in one page so far, here. I'll add this most recent one after the August issue of Community News comes out.
This can refer specifically to an inheritance, such as what's left to you in a will, or more generally to your heritage, such as the customs and laws handed down to you from previous generations. It derives from the Latin word pater, father, and originally meant what you inherited from your father. Thanks to the Romans, a lot of our words derive from pater. Some are obvious, such as paternal and patriarch. A less obvious one is patriot. The Romans referred to a man's country as his patria, his fatherland. Thus, a patriot is one who is devoted to his fatherland.
Hmm. Getting a bit political, this time.
I've decided to start putting these on my Web site, all in one page so far, here. I'll add this most recent one after the August issue of Community News comes out.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Anyone Read Turkish?
This blog has been getting hits from various places in Turkey. Some of them come from my Web site, and the hits there are coming from a discussion forum in Turkey, where a long post ends with my Web site's URL. I'd love to know what it's all about.
The Turkish post in question is here.
Maybe someone from Turkey who ended up here because of that post will enlighten me.
The Turkish post in question is here.
Maybe someone from Turkey who ended up here because of that post will enlighten me.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Oh, Vampires! Oh, Oh, Oh!
Because I've published two vampire novels (and there were supposed to be two more, sob!), and because I have an essay about vampires on my Web site, I get a fair number of hits via search engines (overwhelmingly Google, by the way) where the queries have the word "vampire" in them.
I tend to keep track of what search terms bring people to my site, and I've noticed a pattern in those vampire hits. I decided to take the time to filter out the hits from May that had "vampire" in the query. A few of them seem to be from people who think vampires are real and who also think that Google, which knows everything, will give you the real skinny on real vampires. Most of them, though, seem to fall into a very specific category. It's hard to detect. You'll have to apply all of your analytical skills. Hint: look for a certain word that appears along with "vampire" in most of the queries.
So here are the search strings that brought people to my site during the month of May 2007.
(Oh, and to the person whose search string was Vampire novels suck, I just want to say, "Yeah? You too, man!")
sexuality of the vampire
vampire sexuality
vampires have sex
how do you have vampire sex
vampire convert
vampire rules
what do vampires represent
what are the vampire rules
vampires and sex
vampires sexual
vampires sex
Vampire appeal
vampires and sexuality
vampire novels
vampires rule
Erotic Vampire Story
erotic vampire tales
vampire sex appeal
vampires sex
vampire sexual
sexuality vampire
vampire and sexuality
vampires sex
vampire zombie short stories
modern vampires
Vampire Rules
vampire novels
erotic vampire stories
erotic vampire stories
vampires sex
vampires having sex
vampires and sex
vampire erotica short stories
modern day female vampires
modern day female vampires
vampire sex novels
vampire sexuality
vampire sexual bloodlust
vampires sexuality
vampire sexuality
VAMPIRES HAVING SEX
vampire sexual
vampires having sex
do vampires have sex
vampires having sex
Vampire Novels
modern vampires
VAMPIRE SExuality
vampire rules
are vampires having sex
vampires and sexuality
vampire sexual beings
Vampire Sex Novels
Modern vampires
do vampires have sex
writing a vampire story
writing a vampire story
vampires and sex
modern vampires
modern vampires
modern vampires
vampires having sex
rules about vampires
Short Erotic Vampire Stories
vampire sexual
vampire rules
things vampires are afraid of
things vampires are afraid of
vampire romantic fiction
vampire romantic fiction
vampires sex
vampire sexuality
allure vampire
vampires having sex
vampire sexuality
vampires sex
VAMPIRES SEX
sexual vampires
vampire rules
vampire sexual
vampire sex
vampires sex
vampire sexuality
vampire sex fiction
vampire rules
vampires and sex
Vampires having sex
sexuality and vampires
Writing a Vampire Story
vampire sex
sex and vampires
sex and vampires
rules of a vampire
the modern vampire
modern vampire essays
vampire novellas
the modern vampire
the modern vampire
the appeal of vampires
a girl vampire controlling a human girl to have sex
Vampire novels suck
vampire and sex
vampire sexual
Vampire Rules
vampire sex
Modern Vampire
things vampires are afraid of
erotic vampire stories
vampire sex
vampire attraction symbol
rules for a vampire
what are the appeals of vampires?
vampire sex
Vampire and sex
vampire sexuality
vampires sex
sexual vampire
vampire novels
Vampires and sex
vampires sex
vampires having sex
vampire sexuality
Vampire Rules
vampire sexual
Vampire Sex
vampire rules
vampire sex images
vampires sex
vampire sexual
vampire rules
vampire sexuality
vampires and sex
vampires and sex
vampires love essay
modern vampires
can a vampire have sex
vampire sex
Vampires modern
vampires can they have sex?
vampire novel
can vampires have sex
vampires and sex
vampires rules
vampire and sex
sex of vampire. com
sex of vampire. com
modern vampire
vampire sexual
vampire sexual
modern vampire
vampire rules
Vampire's having sex
vampire sexuality
vampire
vampire sexual
vampires having sex
Vampire sexuality
modern vampire
vampires sex
Vampire: their hearts beat
sexuality of vampires
vampires sex
vampire allure
Sex vampires
vampire sex
vampires sex
vampires sex
vampire sexual
vampires having sex
sex and vampires
vampires and sex
vampire-sexuality
vampire-sexuality
vampires sex
vampires sex
vampire sex
vampire rules
vampires sex
vampire sex
vampire sexuality
vampires and sex
vampires having sex
romantic vampire novels
sex vampires
Vampire rules
Sex vampires
modern vampire novels
beautiful male vampire
appeal of vampires
appeal of vampires
vampire rules
VAMPIRE NOVEL
rules of the vampire
vampire sexuality
sex and vampires
sex with vampires
vampire sexuality
sex vampires
vampire sexual
vampire sexuality
vampire sex
vampire appeal
the allure of the vampire
vampires - sexuality
vampire sexual
vampire encounters sex
vampire sexuality
the vampire rules
modern vampire
vampires having sex
vampire sex novels
vampire have sex
vampires having sex
vampire rules
vampires having sex
vampire rules
vampire sex
vampire rules
vampire novels
vampire novels
vampire novels
vampires - sex
vampire et sex
vampire sex seduce
vampire sexuality
allure of vampire
I tend to keep track of what search terms bring people to my site, and I've noticed a pattern in those vampire hits. I decided to take the time to filter out the hits from May that had "vampire" in the query. A few of them seem to be from people who think vampires are real and who also think that Google, which knows everything, will give you the real skinny on real vampires. Most of them, though, seem to fall into a very specific category. It's hard to detect. You'll have to apply all of your analytical skills. Hint: look for a certain word that appears along with "vampire" in most of the queries.
So here are the search strings that brought people to my site during the month of May 2007.
(Oh, and to the person whose search string was Vampire novels suck, I just want to say, "Yeah? You too, man!")
sexuality of the vampire
vampire sexuality
vampires have sex
how do you have vampire sex
vampire convert
vampire rules
what do vampires represent
what are the vampire rules
vampires and sex
vampires sexual
vampires sex
Vampire appeal
vampires and sexuality
vampire novels
vampires rule
Erotic Vampire Story
erotic vampire tales
vampire sex appeal
vampires sex
vampire sexual
sexuality vampire
vampire and sexuality
vampires sex
vampire zombie short stories
modern vampires
Vampire Rules
vampire novels
erotic vampire stories
erotic vampire stories
vampires sex
vampires having sex
vampires and sex
vampire erotica short stories
modern day female vampires
modern day female vampires
vampire sex novels
vampire sexuality
vampire sexual bloodlust
vampires sexuality
vampire sexuality
VAMPIRES HAVING SEX
vampire sexual
vampires having sex
do vampires have sex
vampires having sex
Vampire Novels
modern vampires
VAMPIRE SExuality
vampire rules
are vampires having sex
vampires and sexuality
vampire sexual beings
Vampire Sex Novels
Modern vampires
do vampires have sex
writing a vampire story
writing a vampire story
vampires and sex
modern vampires
modern vampires
modern vampires
vampires having sex
rules about vampires
Short Erotic Vampire Stories
vampire sexual
vampire rules
things vampires are afraid of
things vampires are afraid of
vampire romantic fiction
vampire romantic fiction
vampires sex
vampire sexuality
allure vampire
vampires having sex
vampire sexuality
vampires sex
VAMPIRES SEX
sexual vampires
vampire rules
vampire sexual
vampire sex
vampires sex
vampire sexuality
vampire sex fiction
vampire rules
vampires and sex
Vampires having sex
sexuality and vampires
Writing a Vampire Story
vampire sex
sex and vampires
sex and vampires
rules of a vampire
the modern vampire
modern vampire essays
vampire novellas
the modern vampire
the modern vampire
the appeal of vampires
a girl vampire controlling a human girl to have sex
Vampire novels suck
vampire and sex
vampire sexual
Vampire Rules
vampire sex
Modern Vampire
things vampires are afraid of
erotic vampire stories
vampire sex
vampire attraction symbol
rules for a vampire
what are the appeals of vampires?
vampire sex
Vampire and sex
vampire sexuality
vampires sex
sexual vampire
vampire novels
Vampires and sex
vampires sex
vampires having sex
vampire sexuality
Vampire Rules
vampire sexual
Vampire Sex
vampire rules
vampire sex images
vampires sex
vampire sexual
vampire rules
vampire sexuality
vampires and sex
vampires and sex
vampires love essay
modern vampires
can a vampire have sex
vampire sex
Vampires modern
vampires can they have sex?
vampire novel
can vampires have sex
vampires and sex
vampires rules
vampire and sex
sex of vampire. com
sex of vampire. com
modern vampire
vampire sexual
vampire sexual
modern vampire
vampire rules
Vampire's having sex
vampire sexuality
vampire
vampire sexual
vampires having sex
Vampire sexuality
modern vampire
vampires sex
Vampire: their hearts beat
sexuality of vampires
vampires sex
vampire allure
Sex vampires
vampire sex
vampires sex
vampires sex
vampire sexual
vampires having sex
sex and vampires
vampires and sex
vampire-sexuality
vampire-sexuality
vampires sex
vampires sex
vampire sex
vampire rules
vampires sex
vampire sex
vampire sexuality
vampires and sex
vampires having sex
romantic vampire novels
sex vampires
Vampire rules
Sex vampires
modern vampire novels
beautiful male vampire
appeal of vampires
appeal of vampires
vampire rules
VAMPIRE NOVEL
rules of the vampire
vampire sexuality
sex and vampires
sex with vampires
vampire sexuality
sex vampires
vampire sexual
vampire sexuality
vampire sex
vampire appeal
the allure of the vampire
vampires - sexuality
vampire sexual
vampire encounters sex
vampire sexuality
the vampire rules
modern vampire
vampires having sex
vampire sex novels
vampire have sex
vampires having sex
vampire rules
vampires having sex
vampire rules
vampire sex
vampire rules
vampire novels
vampire novels
vampire novels
vampires - sex
vampire et sex
vampire sex seduce
vampire sexuality
allure of vampire
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Wings of the Heart
That's the title of a horror short story by yours truly, which will be published in World Audience Magazine #6. Brief description of the story: Great quantities of blood.
World Audience is a fairly new quarterly print magazine that has a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, poetry, and plays. It's a non-paying market for now, although the editor and founder, Mike Strozier, is hoping to change that eventually. He's always open to submissions. He's also a small publisher.
Their Web site: http://www.worldaudience.org/
World Audience is a fairly new quarterly print magazine that has a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, poetry, and plays. It's a non-paying market for now, although the editor and founder, Mike Strozier, is hoping to change that eventually. He's always open to submissions. He's also a small publisher.
Their Web site: http://www.worldaudience.org/
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Anti-anti-war
This one has been around for a while, but for those who haven't seen it, here's a photo of a dimwit who was demonstrating against a group of anti-war demonstrators. He wrote his own caption.
That's supposed to distract attention from the lack of posts describing my writing progress. They're lacking because progress is lacking. In my defense, we were away a lot - driving to Kansas City and then to Minneapolis, staying a few days in Minneapolis, then driving back to Denver, and only a few days later flying to New York to take the city by storm (it seems not to have noticed).
Right now, I'm doing some major Web site maintenance for a friend and student of Leonore's, something I had volunteered to do before we left on the first trip.
Then I'll get back to writing.
That's supposed to distract attention from the lack of posts describing my writing progress. They're lacking because progress is lacking. In my defense, we were away a lot - driving to Kansas City and then to Minneapolis, staying a few days in Minneapolis, then driving back to Denver, and only a few days later flying to New York to take the city by storm (it seems not to have noticed).
Right now, I'm doing some major Web site maintenance for a friend and student of Leonore's, something I had volunteered to do before we left on the first trip.
Then I'll get back to writing.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
A Worldwide Phenomenon
Kinda cool. According to sitemeter, the counter I use for this blog, this map shows where the last 500 visitors are located:
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Gawking Rubes
And just a small selection of what they gawked at.
First, the obvious. I must have passed this 50 years ago, when I was a wee immigrant child on the deck of a ship heading towards Hoboken, but I was too entranced by the neon lights along the shore to notice the heavy, symbolic stuff. That had to wait for sober late middle age.
Meanwhile, back in the city. Here's a nice contrast between grand old showpiece and new glass and steel.
Leonore was intrigued by the Chrysler building and took oodles of photos of it.
Gnarly, man! This is a tree at Wave Hill, an estate on the banks of the Hudson River. Mark Twain and Toscanini both lived there. Handsome old buildings and lovely gardens, of both of which our photos aren't as good as I had hoped. You can look across the Hudson at the Palisades on the New Jersey side. Naturally, as a Coloradan, my main reaction was, "Good God! Lookit all the water!"
This is the famous Wall Street bull, posed as you don't normally see him. In real life, he isn't sitting there all alone. Tourists are crawling all over him. Also, he's not on Wall Street, but rather on Broadway, a couple of blocks south of Wall Street.
Rather undignified for the poor chap, don't you think? But he looks like he's about to get his revenge via his hind end.
First, the obvious. I must have passed this 50 years ago, when I was a wee immigrant child on the deck of a ship heading towards Hoboken, but I was too entranced by the neon lights along the shore to notice the heavy, symbolic stuff. That had to wait for sober late middle age.
Meanwhile, back in the city. Here's a nice contrast between grand old showpiece and new glass and steel.
Leonore was intrigued by the Chrysler building and took oodles of photos of it.
Gnarly, man! This is a tree at Wave Hill, an estate on the banks of the Hudson River. Mark Twain and Toscanini both lived there. Handsome old buildings and lovely gardens, of both of which our photos aren't as good as I had hoped. You can look across the Hudson at the Palisades on the New Jersey side. Naturally, as a Coloradan, my main reaction was, "Good God! Lookit all the water!"
This is the famous Wall Street bull, posed as you don't normally see him. In real life, he isn't sitting there all alone. Tourists are crawling all over him. Also, he's not on Wall Street, but rather on Broadway, a couple of blocks south of Wall Street.
Rather undignified for the poor chap, don't you think? But he looks like he's about to get his revenge via his hind end.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
A Hell of a Town
We stayed in the Bronx, which of course is up, and went on a harbor tour that started in the vicinity of the Battery (down), and we walked around a fair part of Manhattan (in between).
We were in NYC for four days, getting back home last night. Unfortunately for us, the original forecast of cool weather was wrong. It was hot and humid (by our Denver standards, anyway) all the time. Nonetheless, we did lots of touristy things and walked great distances and ate much food. The food part seems to be a constant in our trips to other cities, which is probably why our bathroom scale covers its ears when we get back, so that it won't have to hear the cries of, "Oh, no!" and "However did that happen?"
We stayed with Lisa, a college friend of Leonore's whom she hadn't seen since Lisa visited us in Denver 30 years ago, and Lisa's husband, Andrew, whom neither of had met before. Anna Lee, another college friend of both of theirs, whom Leonore hadn't seen in almost 40 years, was able to come down for a day from Connecticut. I met Lisa at Indiana U. when Leonore and I were dating, but I didn't know Anna Lee in those days.
I've been to New York before, but only as a child, both coming to this country and leaving it, and my memories from then are faint and vague and childlike. This time, I was a sober adult. Well, except for when I was a gawking tourist, staring at all the big buildings and getting in the way of the rushing Manhattanites. Managed not to get run over. I learned quickly that traffic lights, including Walk signals, are just quaint things that New Yorkers ignore. I guess you learn that quickly or you go home to flyover country in the airplane's cargo hold.
We took absurdly many pictures, as we always do. I haven't looked at any of them on the computer yet, so I don't know if there are some good ones among them. If there are, I might post one or two here. Watch this space!
Update
On second thought, don't watch this space. I'll put a few photos in a new post. We'll see if Blogger objects to my uploading a fair number of bytes.
We were in NYC for four days, getting back home last night. Unfortunately for us, the original forecast of cool weather was wrong. It was hot and humid (by our Denver standards, anyway) all the time. Nonetheless, we did lots of touristy things and walked great distances and ate much food. The food part seems to be a constant in our trips to other cities, which is probably why our bathroom scale covers its ears when we get back, so that it won't have to hear the cries of, "Oh, no!" and "However did that happen?"
We stayed with Lisa, a college friend of Leonore's whom she hadn't seen since Lisa visited us in Denver 30 years ago, and Lisa's husband, Andrew, whom neither of had met before. Anna Lee, another college friend of both of theirs, whom Leonore hadn't seen in almost 40 years, was able to come down for a day from Connecticut. I met Lisa at Indiana U. when Leonore and I were dating, but I didn't know Anna Lee in those days.
I've been to New York before, but only as a child, both coming to this country and leaving it, and my memories from then are faint and vague and childlike. This time, I was a sober adult. Well, except for when I was a gawking tourist, staring at all the big buildings and getting in the way of the rushing Manhattanites. Managed not to get run over. I learned quickly that traffic lights, including Walk signals, are just quaint things that New Yorkers ignore. I guess you learn that quickly or you go home to flyover country in the airplane's cargo hold.
We took absurdly many pictures, as we always do. I haven't looked at any of them on the computer yet, so I don't know if there are some good ones among them. If there are, I might post one or two here. Watch this space!
Update
On second thought, don't watch this space. I'll put a few photos in a new post. We'll see if Blogger objects to my uploading a fair number of bytes.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
LAA - League of Arthritic Authors
We here at LAA have a few thoughts we'd like to share with you. But first, we have a question for you:
Okay, so I've been thinking about age a lot lately. Rather, I've been thinking about being old. More specifically, I've been fretting about being an author and not being young. Most specifically, I've been hyperventilating about being a non-famous, non-established published author who is not young.
Why? Because I have the impression, or perhaps it's really an irrational fear, that what I said about myself above will cause my next novel to be dismissed by agents and/or editors simply because I'm a non-famous, non-established published author who is not young.
Some months ago, I asked Miss Snark about this. My question was never answered, but another, very similar one was. (She said she had been asked this before, meaning that at least three of us are hyperventilating about this matter.) Her answer was that an agent you query of course won't know your age and, more important, won't care about it. Don't worry about it, she said. She ended with her usual, and very good, advice: Write well. Just concentrate on that.
However, over the years, I've heard of authors being dropped by their publishers because of their age. I've also heard of second/third/etc. novels not being picked up, despite a good sales record for the published books, because of the author's age. I just hope this doesn't apply to genre writers. We don't have to look young and beautiful. How often do you see one of us on a TV talk show? (And it's a good thing you don't....)
I can't quite help the fretting, but while fretting I'll also write well. (I'd say "Continue to write well, as I always do," but that sounds awfully conceited.) (Oh, heck. Why pretend! When it comes to my writing, I am conceited.) I'll also keep fretting.
You hear that, sonny? Eh? What? Speak up!
Eh? What was that, sonny? Speak up, God damn it! You young people today, you all mumble. And your music -- !
Okay, so I've been thinking about age a lot lately. Rather, I've been thinking about being old. More specifically, I've been fretting about being an author and not being young. Most specifically, I've been hyperventilating about being a non-famous, non-established published author who is not young.
Why? Because I have the impression, or perhaps it's really an irrational fear, that what I said about myself above will cause my next novel to be dismissed by agents and/or editors simply because I'm a non-famous, non-established published author who is not young.
Some months ago, I asked Miss Snark about this. My question was never answered, but another, very similar one was. (She said she had been asked this before, meaning that at least three of us are hyperventilating about this matter.) Her answer was that an agent you query of course won't know your age and, more important, won't care about it. Don't worry about it, she said. She ended with her usual, and very good, advice: Write well. Just concentrate on that.
However, over the years, I've heard of authors being dropped by their publishers because of their age. I've also heard of second/third/etc. novels not being picked up, despite a good sales record for the published books, because of the author's age. I just hope this doesn't apply to genre writers. We don't have to look young and beautiful. How often do you see one of us on a TV talk show? (And it's a good thing you don't....)
I can't quite help the fretting, but while fretting I'll also write well. (I'd say "Continue to write well, as I always do," but that sounds awfully conceited.) (Oh, heck. Why pretend! When it comes to my writing, I am conceited.) I'll also keep fretting.
You hear that, sonny? Eh? What? Speak up!
Monday, May 21, 2007
Living in the Next Book
(But first a beer digression. I've been buying Kokanee, a really pleasant, mild lager from British Columbia, almost a Koelsch. Had one tonight and felt so happy that I then had a Pilsner Urquell, which I don't usually buy, but I did last weekend. This one had gone skunky. Blech. Unsettled my stomach and left a nasty taste in my mouth. [I had to drink most of it, just to be sure, you see.] I was soooo tempted to, um, cleanse my palate with a third beer, but I managed not to. I'm almost proud of myself. Fortunately, I had made myself a pot of Serious Tea, and that seems to be helping.)
As I work my way toward finishing Time and the Soldier, I'm daydreaming increasingly about plot and character details of a planned forthcoming novel. It's not in fact going to be the next one I work on, but that sounded better as the post title.
Trollope talked about this in his autobiography. I downloaded a text version of his autobiography and tried to find that in there but couldn't, and I hope I'm remembering this correctly from when I read the book (in, gasp!, printed form) many years ago.
As I remember, Trollope said that he would start the next book right after finishing the preceding one. Perhaps he even said that it would be the very next day. He said it wasn't hard to do that because he had been living with (I think that was the phrase) the characters in the next book while finishing the preceding one, and so he already knew them well. That struck me as wonderful when I read it.
Years, or decades, ago, I used to daydream about books I planned to write, but it wasn't realistic. I was really daydreaming about having written them and being a success as a result. Nowadays, it seems more concrete. I'm not imagining the future book as a finished product. Rather, I'm thinking about the details that will go into it. Doing that keeps me excited about that future book, even while I'm immersed deeply in the current one, and it makes the future book seem more real and makes me feel that, like Trollope, I'll be ready to dive right into it when the time comes.
Or so I hope.
As I work my way toward finishing Time and the Soldier, I'm daydreaming increasingly about plot and character details of a planned forthcoming novel. It's not in fact going to be the next one I work on, but that sounded better as the post title.
Trollope talked about this in his autobiography. I downloaded a text version of his autobiography and tried to find that in there but couldn't, and I hope I'm remembering this correctly from when I read the book (in, gasp!, printed form) many years ago.
As I remember, Trollope said that he would start the next book right after finishing the preceding one. Perhaps he even said that it would be the very next day. He said it wasn't hard to do that because he had been living with (I think that was the phrase) the characters in the next book while finishing the preceding one, and so he already knew them well. That struck me as wonderful when I read it.
Years, or decades, ago, I used to daydream about books I planned to write, but it wasn't realistic. I was really daydreaming about having written them and being a success as a result. Nowadays, it seems more concrete. I'm not imagining the future book as a finished product. Rather, I'm thinking about the details that will go into it. Doing that keeps me excited about that future book, even while I'm immersed deeply in the current one, and it makes the future book seem more real and makes me feel that, like Trollope, I'll be ready to dive right into it when the time comes.
Or so I hope.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Enormity
This is David's Definitions for the July issue of Community News.
Enormity
This is commonly misused to mean "really, really big." "He was amazed by the enormity of the mountains." That is incorrect. Enormity does come from the same Latin root as enormous, but the two words drifted apart long ago. Enormity came to mean something extraordinarily evil or immoral or shocking. So you can speak of the enormity of a crime (meaning its awfulness, not its magnitude). Or you could refer to a major social transgression, such as behaving very badly at a very formal event, as a social enormity, although that meaning is somewhat old fashioned. If you simply want to say that something is really, really big, then talk about its hugeness or its immensity or its enormousness, but not its enormity.
Enormity
This is commonly misused to mean "really, really big." "He was amazed by the enormity of the mountains." That is incorrect. Enormity does come from the same Latin root as enormous, but the two words drifted apart long ago. Enormity came to mean something extraordinarily evil or immoral or shocking. So you can speak of the enormity of a crime (meaning its awfulness, not its magnitude). Or you could refer to a major social transgression, such as behaving very badly at a very formal event, as a social enormity, although that meaning is somewhat old fashioned. If you simply want to say that something is really, really big, then talk about its hugeness or its immensity or its enormousness, but not its enormity.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Mysterious Minneapolis
As I said, we're back in Denver.
On Thursday of last week, we drove to Kansas City, where we stayed with one of Leonore's sisters (of whom no fewer than 52 live in Kansas City; the remaining 35 live elsewhere). (No, none of them is from KC originally. They all just ended up there.) A fine time was had by all, and we ate vast quantities of food.
On Saturday, we drove up to Minneapolis. It's a very attractive city and the freeway system sucks. I got lost numerous times during our stay there. Fortunately, thanks to the Norwegian/Swedish/other Scandinavian influence, even when you are lost and are driving around wondering why the street layout doesn't resemble the street map, you get many opportunities to remark on how clean the streets are. "Gosh, darling, look how clean these streets are!" "They certainly are, sweetheart, and, by the way, where the fuck are we?"
But we did like it. And we also liked the many restaurants we went to with Daniel and Becca, his fianceeeee (how many es in that word?). The food was excellent, and we ate vast quantities of it. The good news is that I think we each gained less than 50 lbs. on the trip.
Monday was the graduation ceremony. Unfortunately, it was also a hot, muggy day (the only one of our visit, though), which made things unpleasant, especially for Daniel, who was wearing a cap and gown. (For some details about the ceremony, see Daniel's Live Journal.)
Here's the freshly minted Master of Biostatistics:
On our last full day in Minneapolis, we spent a delightful time walking around Lake Calhoun, part of a string of beautiful lakes inside the city. 10,000 lakes, indeed!
We drove back on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Instead of going back through Kansas City, we took a right turn at Des Moines (which we managed to hit at rush hour, but fortunately it's a fairly wimpy rush hour) and then on through Nebraska. It's not widely known that Nebraska is 5,300 miles in diameter. Fortunately, the speed limit on the interstates there is 75 mph, which does help. We stopped for the night at Lincoln, Nebraska, and if you find yourself in that area and needing a place to stop, I highly, highly recommend the Countryside Suites motel (not the chain with a similar name; this one's independent) at exit 403 on Interstate 80.
Nebraska is greener and prettier than I remembered. Northeast Colorado is just as dreary as I remembered.
The route made for two days with a reasonable amount of driving in each. We got home last night (Thursday) at a reasonable hour. A notification that I had received a MacArthur grant was not waiting for me. This keeps happening, and I'm getting annoyed and impatient.
But it was not all fun and games and vast quantities of food! No, forsooth! I had my laptop with me, and I wrote. Yes, I did. I'm not making this up. I really did write.
I'm in the editing/whipping-the-monster-into-shape phase with the book, now. I have a file full of notes regarding plot problems, so I'm scrolling through the text, wondering where I can stick a particular item in without it looking as though it was stuck in after the fact. I have these notes stored in the notes file in the form of bullet points. For example:
On Thursday of last week, we drove to Kansas City, where we stayed with one of Leonore's sisters (of whom no fewer than 52 live in Kansas City; the remaining 35 live elsewhere). (No, none of them is from KC originally. They all just ended up there.) A fine time was had by all, and we ate vast quantities of food.
On Saturday, we drove up to Minneapolis. It's a very attractive city and the freeway system sucks. I got lost numerous times during our stay there. Fortunately, thanks to the Norwegian/Swedish/other Scandinavian influence, even when you are lost and are driving around wondering why the street layout doesn't resemble the street map, you get many opportunities to remark on how clean the streets are. "Gosh, darling, look how clean these streets are!" "They certainly are, sweetheart, and, by the way, where the fuck are we?"
But we did like it. And we also liked the many restaurants we went to with Daniel and Becca, his fianceeeee (how many es in that word?). The food was excellent, and we ate vast quantities of it. The good news is that I think we each gained less than 50 lbs. on the trip.
Monday was the graduation ceremony. Unfortunately, it was also a hot, muggy day (the only one of our visit, though), which made things unpleasant, especially for Daniel, who was wearing a cap and gown. (For some details about the ceremony, see Daniel's Live Journal.)
Here's the freshly minted Master of Biostatistics:
On our last full day in Minneapolis, we spent a delightful time walking around Lake Calhoun, part of a string of beautiful lakes inside the city. 10,000 lakes, indeed!
We drove back on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Instead of going back through Kansas City, we took a right turn at Des Moines (which we managed to hit at rush hour, but fortunately it's a fairly wimpy rush hour) and then on through Nebraska. It's not widely known that Nebraska is 5,300 miles in diameter. Fortunately, the speed limit on the interstates there is 75 mph, which does help. We stopped for the night at Lincoln, Nebraska, and if you find yourself in that area and needing a place to stop, I highly, highly recommend the Countryside Suites motel (not the chain with a similar name; this one's independent) at exit 403 on Interstate 80.
Nebraska is greener and prettier than I remembered. Northeast Colorado is just as dreary as I remembered.
The route made for two days with a reasonable amount of driving in each. We got home last night (Thursday) at a reasonable hour. A notification that I had received a MacArthur grant was not waiting for me. This keeps happening, and I'm getting annoyed and impatient.
But it was not all fun and games and vast quantities of food! No, forsooth! I had my laptop with me, and I wrote. Yes, I did. I'm not making this up. I really did write.
I'm in the editing/whipping-the-monster-into-shape phase with the book, now. I have a file full of notes regarding plot problems, so I'm scrolling through the text, wondering where I can stick a particular item in without it looking as though it was stuck in after the fact. I have these notes stored in the notes file in the form of bullet points. For example:
- Farmhouse nice touch, but how and why is it there? You can't just have it in place because it's cool, dummy. Make something up to justify it!
- So when and how did Delia figure out her relationship to the mysterious young blonde woman? Damn.
- How to handle Pedro? When and how does he discover that he's actually the heir to the family fortune but was sent off while still an infant to live with a peasant family in Brownsville? How will this discovery affect his plans to destroy the family mansion on the secret island off the coast of Florida? What about his rivalry with Rock, and his passionate desire for Blaze (the woman, not the horse)?
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Back Home Again
Just got back from Minneapolis. We were away for a week. Drove. Having a beer. Feeling much better. Good tea is brewing. Some details to come.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Portrait of the Artist as an Old Dog
Recently, in an online discussion place, someone insisted that young male actors with muscles (the one under discussion was Tom Welling, who plays Clark Kent in Smallville) must be using steroids. I insisted otherwise. You can read the thread here . At least, I hope that works.
To try to finally win the argument, I decided to add a picture of myself. I posted:
Here's the picture:
To try to finally win the argument, I decided to add a picture of myself. I posted:
I was a fat and completely inactive child and teenager. When I went away to college, I lost the fat, but I didn't become all that active. I had admired bodybuilders and fiddled very slightly with very light dumbbells occasionally as a teenager and did it a bit more when in college, but I didn't really get into it until I was almost 40. I'm now 63, so I've been lifting weights -- not often enough, not regularly enough, without enough self-discipline (sounds like my writing career!) -- for just about 25 years.
The attached picture shows the results. Please ignore the busy background and the embarrassed smile.
The point of this picture is that I've never used steroids and I started relatively late. I do (as far as I can tell) have good genes going for me. So a healthy young man, starting lifting in his teens or early twenties, with good genes, can expect much better results much more rapidly. There's no reason at all to assume use of
steroids.
Here's the picture:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)