Wednesday, April 28, 2004

This is fascinating and really is a lot of what I have been saying for years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1200549,00.html

It's funny how the fight to be thin is almost a religion. If I posted this article at the Vine and people actually read it we would have a very long angry thread pretty quickly.

The first time I said I was fat the people I was talking to got very uncomfortable and said I can't be fat because I'm not lazy. When I said that I never said I was lazy they said that fat means lazy as well.

Sunday, April 18, 2004

Headline at MSN.com - 10 ways to wear a black dress

Here's my list

1) Right side out

2) Inside out

3) Under a sweater

4) Over a sweater

5) With jewelry

6) With opera length gloves

7) With fishnets

8) With fishnets and army boots

9) On backwards

10) with the hem tucked into your pantyhose

Saturday, April 17, 2004

There's a sucker getting online every minute

A friend of mine just forwarded a list of supposed true facts to me. I don't even want to post them here because God knows someone will just see that they are here and assume they are true. I guess all you have to do is say something is true and someone will believe it and forward it on to someone else. Here is a quick recap of my response:

Ostriches never stick their heads in the sand.

Babies are born with kneecaps. How would they walk if they didn't have a patella?

Of course Alfred Hitchcock had a belly button. If he didn't he wouldn't have had an umbilical cord and he would have died as a fetus.

The thing about eating spiders in your sleep is just stupid and inane. How on earth would anyone know that? Is there someone testing people for spider parts when they wake up in the morning? Don't you think you would wake up if something crawled into your mouth?

What's frightening is a quick google search shows this crap all over the web. Don't people think?

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

I wrote a story today called The Box or the Door. It needs a little tweaking and maybe a better title but overall I am happy with it.

It was inspired by my extreme confusion yesterday and also reading Neil's blog where he talks about signings.

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

I'm mostly reading Dreaming Down Under and mostly not enjoying it.

I finished Wolves of the Calla. It must be decidedly odd to write a book for 25 or so years and then be finished. It must leave you feeling at loose ends.

I wonder if Stephen King knew where this story was going to take him and how many of his other works it would permeate when he started it. I think he likely didn't. He started writing and then followed the tail as well as he could wherever it would take him.

My Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases came to day. I preordered it from Dreamhaven last June I think and then I wasn't sure I had ordered it at all so it was a nice surprise. I got the limited edition with about a gazillion signatures in it.

Cullen has been sitting curled up in the armchair reading choice bits to me amidst comments like Ugh and Ooooooh and that makes sense.

Monday, April 12, 2004

Geek Heirarchy

Astonishing but true, as a published science fiction/fantasy writer I am at the top of the Geek Heirarchy.

On a lighter note if I read Wells' Time Machine like the woman reporter in The Hudsucker Proxy (whose name I have absentminded) - if I read it in her voice, her speed and her intonations it's really, really funny.

I was just reading about Frank Muller's accident and neurological deficits. I listened to Coldheart Canyon driving up to see Danny the last month or so before he died. We were listening to Mr. Muller reading The Regulators when I crashed. Dan was laughing at something on the tape.

What does it all mean? I have no idea. I just know that a talented man is currently unable to support himself and requires constant care.

He was so good that I ran into people at the library checking out books he read just because he was reading them. They didn't know anything about the books or the authors.

If you want to contribute to the foundation to help him and other disabled performers then here is a link.

donate to the frank muller fund

Sunday, April 11, 2004

I'm now reading the Dark Tower number five. The new characters in the book have a charming way of speaking that is contagious. I went out to breakfast with two of my sisters and found myself wanting to say "You speak true. I say thankya."

I have this image of Stephen King walking around his house for however long it took him to write this volume talking like that until either everyone was smacking him or everyone had given in and was now assimilated.

Saturday, April 10, 2004

I'm starting to feel better. It's such an achingly slow process that I almost hesitate to name it. Sometimes I think it's shocking how this intracranial hypertension laid me out so badly but then I think it's really the same as a brain tumour and if I had one of those causing my brain to swell I would expect to feel pretty rotten.

I used to get up to do really simple things like go downstairs to answer the door and I would faint, or lose my balance or not be able to see the stairs. Then I would be so tired I would crawl back up the stairs and when I got back to my command central here in my bedroom my heart would be pounding so and I would feel so bad that I would sit here clinically wondering if I were going to die.

And surely I still get exhausted frighteningly quickly and surely my heart beats too fast but I don't feel like I'm dying anymore and I think that has to be a Good Thing.

Happy Birthday Megan!

I'm taking her to see Kill Bill volume II next week for her birthday and also Jimi's birthday which I think is coming up but who knows with my memory.

I decided that from now on I am going to think of myself as absentminded and not blow myself crap for having trouble remembering things. Absentminded writer doesn't sound too terrible.

I just got some spam for liposuction. "You can either suck it in or we can suck it out." I can't decide if it's a joke. I cannot imagine picking a plastic surgeon because s/he spammed me.

Cullen came in the other day to tell me about a new reality show called The Swan - nine plastic surgeons - so many patients and I said I didn't want to hear anymore. Ever again. Maybe that is a joke. If not I can only imagine what that will do the low self esteem of a nation of people already obsessed with their appearance.

I also wonder what the aliens who monitor our television transmissions think of such a thing. I'm just sayin'

Sunday, April 04, 2004

I'm reading the Dark Tower book four. Stephen King says that a beautiful chestnut mare is delivered to Susan, who then looks at the mare's dark brown coat gleaming in the summer sunshine and I thought how could he have such a simple mistake slide past his editor. I can only guess that he thinks chestnuts are the colour of the actual nut instead of knowing that chestnuts are red.

Headline at msn.com - New Sport Fad - Tree Climbing

How funny is that? It's like the reporter didn't know that people have been climbing trees since before we were people.

Saturday, April 03, 2004

I Just Don't Get It

What does this description mean? It's so abstract.

We are looking for a completed horror script with a thriller element, centering on the evil that surrounds us every day: stalking, slavery, greed, carnality, torture, abuse, addictions (the script must be about optional evils, evils of choice, necessary evils which give flavor to cosmopolitan life). We are looking for a brand of art-house horror and thriller films that focus on avant-garde issues - alienation, loss of control, confinement, notoriety, consensual terror, that reach into our lives. It needs to be music-driven, youth-oriented and viewer provoking.

Examples would be: 'The Shining', '28 Days Later', 'Jacob's Ladder', 'The Ring', 'Rosemary's Baby', 'The Thing', 'Cronos', 'Blue Velvet', 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.


This particularly puzzles me:

the script must be about optional evils, evils of choice, necessary evils which give flavor to cosmopolitan life


You have to be evil to have a tasty life?

Da da da da dum, Like a Bear!

In case you don't know that is very similar to an MC Honky song that actually says like a duck. I feel like a bear today because I finally got some sleep. True everyone and their cousin in the known universe called me and woke me up but still I got some sleep and I woke up thinking today is the day to start working on some big project. It's peculiar how much I feel like I have been hibernating when I really haven't. It hasn't even been six weeks since I finished Devil May Care's first draft and it's not like I haven't done any writing since then.

vorpal used to tell me that out of great pain comes great art. Sometimes I think he's right and sometimes I think out of great pain comes great pain. I always surprise myself my managing to write under the most painful circumstances.

I'm looking at four projects that are in various stages of completion. Reading about Marjory makes me feel so sad for her. I also feel very proud that she has managed to struggle on in the face of fear, instability and neglect.

In Which I State That Vampire is Not a Dirty Word

It's interesting how many people say things like I didn't write a vampire story so maybe you will read it. What is so bad about a vampire story? Isn't the execution, characters, plot, dialogue, craft, etc. what makes a story good or bad?

I also don't think any words are dirty. I used to think racial epithets were bad but I have come around to the Will Shetterly school of thinking on that one. One of the questions on this American Candidate questionnaire is what three subjects are taboo for conversation? So far I have the consistency of whatever came out of your nose and the plot of some TV show you watched. I haven't come up with a third just yet.

Thursday, April 01, 2004

I'm missing my Danny something fierce lately. I want to talk to him about some plotting for DMC and I know he would be thrilled about vorps moving on up. I wonder if I will ever get to the point where I don't sit here leaking tears as I think about him.

Projects

I keep thinking about the Fragmented Woman. That might end up being my next project.

I think it's a shame that The Rock is only doing action films. I have long thought I should write him a script where he can play someone who is intelligent and caught up in a situation where he has to think his way out. It must stink to always be playing characters like the one The Rock plays in wrestling.