Thursday, November 30, 2006

Surprising results

I just did a survey for Harris Polls and was very surprised by these results.

http://results.hpolsurveys.com/instantresults.aspx?j=wl26496a

My impression was that only about two percent of people don't drink coffee. Really, most people think I'm quite strange for never drinking it.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

A quote about rape

This quote is from an editorial about rape from the Washington Post. The quote is not the author's words, rather they are a quote from a previous court case, describing the common law of Maryland's stance on rape.

"views the initial 'de-flowering' of a woman as the real harm or insult . . . after this initial infringement upon [her husband or father's] interest in a woman's sexual and reproductive functions, any further injury was considered to be less consequential. The damage was done."

If a woman says she'll have sex and changes her mind after the initial penetration and the man doesn't stop it's not rape because only the initial penetration can be called rape. And that's because the damage to her husband or father is already done. Her value has been destroyed and it doesn't matter what happens to her after that.

What century is this again?

Monday, November 27, 2006

Somebody's a winner...

Check out my profile. http://www.nanowrimo.org/userinfo.php?uid=25188

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Only a thousand words today

I spent most of today over at a friend's house. We watched Medea's Family Reunion, which I liked as much as you can like something when you want to slap one of the characters. There are some really nice deep moments in the film and oh my, some very pretty actors and actresses.

I got home at ten thirty and only had time to write a thousand words before my midnight deadline. Still that's not a bad amount and now I only have three thousand more to write to win NaNoWriMo. Maybe I should come up with an ending to my book...

Saturday, November 25, 2006

My Christmas List

http://horsetopia.horse-for-sale.org/classifieds/ad162106

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

We all have a lot to be thankful for. I hope you do too.

Word count so far - 45086.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Dean Kamen is my hero

I was just watching him on a rerun of the Colbert Report and Colbert was driving the wheelchair that Danny was waiting for. It can go up stairs and it has the ability to lift the user so they are at face height with people who have the use of their legs. It's an amazing machine and was tied up waiting for FDA approval when Danny died. It looks like an amazing machine.

Mr. Kamen also invented the insulin pump and the portable dialysis machine, both of which I believe helped extend John M. Ford's life. I love him. LOVE him.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Great News From Miss Snark

Miss Snark links to an article saying that the plug has been pulled on the OJ Simpson book. This is the book that his publisher called a confession to two murders. I'm sure you know the ones I mean, they were quite high profile.

Anyway, the market has spoken and there has been enough an outcry that the owner of the publisher has said the book will not be released.

In one sense it's a simple cut and dried decision and in another it's kind of awful and gray and could be construed as censorship and could cause trouble with future books that have objectionable content. But I'm choosing to be pleased that such a god awful book that can hurt the family of the victims isn't going to hit the stores. That's my stance.

Migraine day

I woke up at 11:30, really late for me and got Cam up to he could go break the set down. I was going to give him a ride to school but my head really hurt and my vision was screwed so he had to walk.

I read for a little while and went back to sleep, really not waking up until four when I felt like the whole day was down the tubes and pretty pissed off that the whole weekend was gone and I hadn't gotten much done. Then Cam pointed out that it was great I'd gone back to sleep because my head was better. The funny thing is I had forgotten all about the fact that I woke up with a bad headache. Which kind of means that me keeping track of my headaches isn't going all that well. I don't know what I'll saw when my doctor asks if my headaches are better or worse with no Diamox.

I managed to write another two thousand words, mostly by telling myself I'd only write ten words. Then another ten. And so on. 36,000 words so far.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Real World Math

Neil says he signed a quarter of a ton of Absolute Sandmans this week at Dreamhaven. My calculations show that given the mass of that book he must have signed two.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Cam's show opened today

I felt bad for him because his character is grouchy throughout the entire thing, even curtain call. Poor fellow.

It was a terrific performance and I enjoyed it very much.

But from a writer's perspective I don't quite get it. Why does Midsummer's Night Dream end when it does? I would have stopped the show about half an hour before it ended. The last part, the play within the play, doesn't accomplish anything towards the story. All the characters have accomplished their goals (except poor Cam) and everything is settled. So what was the point? I don't know, I may have to read the show because Cameron says Miss Parker cut out a lot of the speeches.

I was really pleased that the new principle came to the show instead of the football game tonight. He says he likes the arts more than sports. W00t!

Thursday, November 16, 2006

This is extremely disapointing

3 Christian Groups Move To Condemn Gay Sex from WaPo

There is a voice of reason on the second page but this could make my head explode.

Every time I think of going back to a Christian church I change my mind because of crap like this.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Fan service!

I'm watching The Daily Show and Jon Stewart just said he could take Ted Kopell in a fight. I totally think they should wrestle. Do it for the slash fan girls and boys Ted!

Okay I have write like six hundred more words in the next half hour...

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Best NaNoWriMo Advice I Have

Post your word count every day. Then you can look at your profile and delight in the geometric progression of it. If you're tempted to take a day off you won't because you don't want the bars to stay the same from day to day.

Two years ago I took the weekend off to go to Fiddler's Green and came home and never got back into the swing of my book. I decided it was too good for NaNoWriMo, it shouldn't be rushed and stopped trying to write a crappy first draft.

I think if I'd known I could post daily word counts I'd have finished. As it is the project is still in limbo, still waiting for a quality first draft. Lesson learned.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Halfway there!

I had a bad day, big headache requiring two Tramadol, and just feeling blah and not wanting to do anything. I had a total of 82 words at 6:30 this evening and I thought I might just take the day off of work and write only a hundred words.

Then I got a roll going and hit two thousand words again. Grand total right now 25,396.

My computer broke. (I'm writing this on a different computer, my own personal main computer that I've been using since October of 2000 is the one that stopped working.)

Cullen swapped its video card out with Cam's computer in an effort to get it fit for running World of Warcraft and about a week later it just stopped. The computer makes one long beep and three short beeps when we try and boot it up. We did a Google and it looks like that could be a huge number of things, depending on what kind of BIOS chip I have. Naturally I've no idea what kind of chip is in the computer. We'll see how this plays out.

Race to Update

I was the library returning books when I realized I forgot to update my NaNoWriMo word count. I wrote two thousand words today to make sure that I got a decent count in and then totally forgot to update.

I zoomed home and ran up the stairs and got it done with a couple of minutes to spare. 23,372 words so far. Whoop!

Dexter tonight was extremely good. I'm more entranced by that show every time I see it. I wonder where they film it...

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Dawn of the Dead

We just watched the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Wow, quite frightening and disturbing. Very well done with some really interesting camera choices.

21,000 words of my NaNoWriMo project. It's totally not what it was meant to be. My characters are supposed to have a platonic relationship but they keep making out at every chance they get. I've no idea where this story is going.

Now we're watching Room 6. We'll see if we get any sleep tonight.

This is hiliarious

No really, this is the kind of sense of humor I have. I have laughed at this picture for three minutes straight now. Every time I stop laughing I start again. For background see this link, thanks to Miss Genoese for cheering me up a little.



Friday, November 10, 2006

Never Quite Gets Better

I used to have this like totally awesome boyfriend called Danny. He was a screenwriter and a big goofball and he was incredibly annoying and amazing and supportive and wonderful. He died about a year before I started this blog. In fact I started this blog in particular because for the year and a day after he died I kept a private blog for him at zoetrope.com, in my office, where I would write to him every day and tell him stuff. But then I was supposed to let him go after the year and a day and not feed him anymore so I gave that blog up and started this one.

He's been dead for four and a half years now and sometimes I miss him so sharply it feels like it's been four minutes since he died. He loved my writing, in fact he said it was the reason I was born, specifically that my novel Carnal Fear was the entire reason I was put on this planet.

We were terribly wrapped up in each other. He lived in another city, New York, but he used to IM me all the time and we talked on the phone for hours and we spent the weekends and holidays together. The only time we weren't able to be at each other's beck and call electronically was a couple of weeks before he died when I was hospitalized with a blood clot. He was pretty frantic and worried about me, calling me all the time and running up a huge phone bill. Ironically he was the one who died shortly after.

We used to talk about our writing all the time and have these brainstorming sessions and plot our plots together. That's been one of the hardest things for me, not having that anymore. We absolutely relied on each other for feedback and guidance and whenever I want it I want it from him and I start longing for him and I get restless and check my email every few minutes, like he's going to write to me and give me advice, and my heart hurts every time the phone rings and it's not him.

I'm 110 double spaced pages into my NaNoWriMo book and I'm thinking about a non-fiction book I've been thinking about writing and I'm thinking about things I could do with Carnal Fear (which I can never seem to finish because it's so hard and he was so in love with it, how can I finish it without him being here to cheer me on or to be amazed by it? I can't.) and I miss him so badly that I'm sitting here on my bed, typing with tears just running down my cheeks and a big enough lump in my throat that I think it's going to choke me. Life is hard. That's all. It's just hard and it doesn't care how hard it is. We just have to deal with it. Or at least pretend to deal with it.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

17296 Words

I wrote my column this evening and figured that was that. I was exhausted and my column was done so no more writing for me. I had about 600 words towards NaNoWriMo, not enough but I didn't think I could do more.

But then I talked myself into trying for 800 and that went okay and then 800 and then a thousand and finally I topped 2000 for the day. I'm extremely pleased. It would be nice if I had 18,000 in total but considering everything I have on my plate this is splendid.

Tomorrow I have got to do my homework. For real. It's fractals! Whoop!

In Which a Pair of Traveling Pants Disrupts My Word Count

I picked up a copy of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants at the Goodwill the other day, I think I paid a quarter for it because it was a "kids" book. It's been here next to my bed with the rest of the enormous stack of stuff I plan to read someday and for some reason it gravitated to the top of the pile, maybe because Cam said it was also a movie and I was curious as to what made it filmworthy.

My goal for NaNoWriMo is to write a certain number of words at the top of every hour, or at least every hour that I'm not working. So if I get up at eight I can get some word count in before I start work at nine. This is nice for me because then I have a head start for the day and I don't feel so overwhelmed. Today was shopping day, always an ordeal since florescent lights make me throw up and faint, hopefully not at the same time, and I get overwhelmed by all the bright colors and smells at the store so I was a little worried that I might not get my word county, but not too worried.

I started the Traveling Pants book last night and read maybe the first two chapters before I went to sleep. There was nothing in the beginning that warned me that I wouldn't be able to put it down and that it would consume most of my evening and make me cry and feel terribly sad. But it did. It's an excellent story, much more compelling than it's frothy lime cover would lead you to believe. Don't pick it up unless you have time to finish it.

Total word count today - 1025 words for a total of 15267.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

I Got My Vote On

I went out and voted today. I had to get Cam to stand next to me because I was sick but I managed it. I had to fill out a form and I did it in great big letters so they probably thought I was a moron but whatever. Good times.

Monday, November 06, 2006

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy)

You're a great thinker and a true philosopher.
You'd make a talented professor or writer.

Look at these pictures


I was just flipping through the next blog option and found these amazing pictures. I love this one the best, it looks like Cthulhu has attacked an abandoned cottage...


10,200 words so far

I'm still managing two thousand words a day but my math is feeling the pinch. I'm really behind in my homework but then again I'm having trouble with it. It's population something something, being able to show the explicit and recursive expressions for sequences. Too hard for my scarred up brain I guess.

I read Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking this week, did I mention that? It's an amazing book and anyone who has been really hard by grief should read it. You'll feel better about how crazy you felt because you won't feel like you're the only one who ever had those kinds of thoughts.

Then I read Terry Prachett's Going Postal which is a little more somber than most of his work but very interesting and kind of a puzzle. He makes some interesting points about hope and it's opposite, fear. Sutter wrote something similar in her blog a couple of years ago. I may have posted it here, I think I did anyway. Hope is both a great and terrible thing. It can sustain you and it can cut you quite deeply.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

NaNoWriMo Day Four

I had a revelation in the bath this morning and started my novel over again. Six thousand words that I'm ditching. Not that I'm deleting them, I mean I did write them this month so they count, but the new story starts with today's words.

I've got two grand of the new story. Now it starts with my protagonist in a parking garage, with a gun, waiting for an actor to come out so she can kidnap him. We jump right into the story, all the stuff I wrote earlier this week is just back story. Whoop!

Friday, November 03, 2006

Jumping Jesus

I'm watching an episode of Masters of Horror on Showtime on Demand with Cam and I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight. It's extremely frightening and disturbing. It's called That Damn Thing. I think turning it on was a bad idea.

I'm at around 5400 words of my NaNoWriMo project. A decent start I think.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Flashbacks and Voiceovers

I'm writing my column, partly about Showtime's Dexter, and I realize that quite a lot of the show is done in flashbacks and voiceovers. Now we're told by just about everyone that both of these tricks suck and that almost everyone should avoid them. But it's hard for me to imagine the show working any other way. How can we empathize with a monster with no feelings unless we can get into his head and understand his motivations and stimuli?

Weirdly I just got a call from a "national opinion poll" company I've never heard of called Call, that was supposed to ask me about how I was going to vote. But because I work for National Mortgage News I'm disqualified. What sense does that make?

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

NaNoWriMo Take Four

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year, my fourth in a row. I'm going to try and write the book I meant to write last year, the one about the woman who goes a little crazy and tries to kidnap an actor, only to have him hold her hostage instead.

I started it a little after midnight and have 2325 words so far. That's pretty good I think. So far the hardest part is not stopping and rewriting as I go along. I think it's a good exercise for me.

In other news I read a book Miss Snark sent me called Mother's Milk by Edwarde St. Aubyn. It was extremely good but left me feeling a little blue when it was over. But then I've been a little blue for the last month or so anyway, residual sadness over John M. Ford's death.

In the good news area I heard from my friend vorpal today and he's making a short film that looks like a lot of fun. I'll post more details later as I get them.