Dog Quote of the Day
I used to look at my dog Smokey and think, "if you were a little smarter you could tell me what you're thinking," and he'd look at me like he was saying, "if you were a little smarter I wouldn't have to."
--Fred Jungclas
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March 30, 2005
We don't care if you're dead, pay up anyway
...via BoingBoing:
March 27, 2005
Something You'll Probably Never Say About Me
My theory is that when you write a cat story, you're saying to the world, "I'm now a middle aged author who likes to drink tea, read Agatha Christie, and have my children send my postcards about the world."
...from Ben Peek
March 26, 2005
Dog Quote of the Day
So many get reformed through religion. I got reformed through dogs.
--Lina Basquette
It has finally occurred to me
...because I'm dense but not stupid, that I have RSS feeds for this site, but have no link on the main page. And I never set up full feeds.
So, now there are full feeds and crappy short feeds (okay, sue me, I like full feeds whenever possible:-)
Thing four
At writers' group this morning [ok, this was, like back in 2000] we were talking about best sellers. At one time I spent my time despising best sellers, thinking--I can write better than that. But lately, I've realized that it's not productive. There is something in these books that people want, something that makes them appealing to a wide range of readers even though the writing in many of them (in my opinion) is not very good.
Many readers, given a good story, don't care all that much about the writing. I like to think they enjoy good writing when they get it, that good writing broadens the appeal even more. I also believe--or like to believe--that it isn't necessary or even wise to 'pander' to the audience. But analyzing the basic appeal is more than worthwhile because it helps me to look at my own writing and to see, for example, that while maybe it's beautifully crafted with complex and interesting characters, the story is just flat-out boring. And then you have to figure out why.
John Grisham writes about ordinary people (more or less) who get caught up in things much larger than they are and who manage to triumph. In 'The Client' there's a smart-mouth kid from a trailer park and a lawyer who's had to move back in with her mother and lost custody of her children to her ex-husband. They're people who don't have much power in every day life. But they know right from wrong and when push comes to shove they push back. They are 'small' people who speak truth to power and manage to be heard--something the tiny, repressed idealist in many of us long to do ourselves, though we're not always sure we really would.
Danielle Steele writes about perfect people to whom bad things happen. Mostly undeserved things perpetrated on them by jealous others, but also by the hand of fate. Their perfection, though, shines through and finally lifts them up to the place they've always deserved. People either recognize their goodness and stand aside or try to tear them down because they (the people who try to tear them down) are petty, mean, jealous people. In Danielle Steele novels rewards are material.. Good people get wealth and beauty and love--though they must pass through many trials to get there.
Flawed people who do good.
Good people who rise to their destiny.
Both of these are powerful 'stories.' Many of us want to read them again and again. The appeal is not universal. I can no longer read 'good people are beautiful and deserving' stories myself any more. In some ways they're telling us the same 'story'--that doing the right thing and trying are important.
And even though I no longer really believe that merit rises, I do still figure that doing the right thing and working hard are worth it in their own right.
Thing three
The ends can't justify the means because the means chosen to achieve the ends will change irrevocably and completely what those ends will be.
Thing two
[Boy, this seems apropos right now]
From 'Declarations of Independence' by Howard Zinn
There is in orthodox thinking a great dependence on experts. Because modern technological society has produced a breed of experts who understand technical matters that bewilder the rest of us, we think that in matters of social conflict which require moral judgment, we must also turn to experts.
Remember this: The important decisions of society are within the capability of ordinary citizens.
Stuff I wrote before I had a blog: Thing One
I'm cleaning and I've found some old notebooks....
One thing I think a lot about lately is our need for story. We get caught up in the foibles of our leaders, but we seem so concerned with people seeing us and watching us and judging us that we seem to have forgotten much of the story of who we are, the principles this country was founded on, and who we want to be. Some of the greatest good in this country has been done by people who want to be better than they are and by people who believe it's possible to make things better.
I hear this stuff all the time--'well, that's the way it is' or 'we'll have to learn to do business in this new global economy,' or 'well, he's making all that money, so he must be good and it must be okay for him to have made that money in whatever way he did.' And it seems clear ot me that we've forgotten that we are it. We are the people. It's our culture, our country, our way of life.
We need stories. We need stories not just of wish-fulfillment and not just of small things, not just of despair and not just of goodness triumphing because it's good. We need complex stories of society and flawed people and changing things. We need ways to shift paradigms. And ways to reinvent democracy--or at least to recognize what it is and what it means again. We need both fiction and 'real' stories. And we need stories in the sense that Neil Postman spoke of them--stories that help us to communicate to one another and to understand what we want and what we have and what we hold.
March 25, 2005
Children versus The Gay
The Medium Lobster comments on Alabama's attempt to further prohibit adoption by gay parents:
Some may spend some misguided sympathy on the plight of a would-be gay parent, but only after forgetting the true victims of gay adoption: the adopted children, taken away from the comfort of an orphanage or an endless succession of foster homes to be raised by a gay parent - a malicious influence set on assimilating all within its reach into the vast phalanx of the Gay.
As all truly informed gayologists know, the Gay convert others to their massive, hive-like collective by implanting the young with gay nanobots, which reproduce and take over the brains of the young, inevitably transforming right, proper, heterosexual brains into diseased Gay brains, infested with bacterial bath houses and camp subcultures. With this fearsome dedication to assimilating all that is right and normal, no child can be left in the care of the Gay be any just society. (From this we can conclude that gays inevitably raise and recruit gay childen, and that gay children are raised and recuited by gays. To Dick Cheney and Alan Keyes: you are fooling no one.)
The Mo Movie Measure
From Alas, a blog :
It’s and idea from an old Dykes to Watch Out For cartoon. The character “Moe” explains that she only watches movies in which 1) there are at least two female characters with names, who 2) talk to each other sometime in the course of the movie, about 3) something other than a man. It’s amazing how few movies can pass the Mo Movie Measure.)
March 24, 2005
How to confuse your party guests
Just go look...
March 22, 2005
Writing Drafts in My Head
I used to think I was pretty much an organic writer, but then I discovered the beauty of structure (about which I may write more some time). When I'm working on novels, I really like outlines (which in my case resembles a really rough, really tight first draft--as in, say, two paragraphs per scene).
I used to think I was a character-driven writer (which I sort of am) but in short stories I rarely know a lot of physical details about my character (I don't know what Nora looks like in 'Magic in a Certain Slant of Light;' I just realized today that the main character in '46 Directions...' doesn't have a name). I often don't know much at all about them except what's in the story--though there's usually a fair lot of informtion about them in the story.
In some ways in short stories at least, I'd say I am theme and emotion-driven in the sense that there's some 'feel' that the story has for me that I want to maintain all the way to the end. Sometimes the feel isn't quite right though and I have to discover how to adjust it in order to find the ending.
I almost never know the ending until I get there. Though at some point, usually well before the half-way mark, I have to know what the story is about. And I know what it's about long, long before I know how it will end.
But the thing I can say fairly definitely that I am is a backbrain/backburner writer. I was reading someone's old journal entry today about really crappy first drafts and second and third drafts and I realized that I don't really think in terms of drafts anymore. It often takes me a good long time to finish a story, but most of that time is spent thinking about the story in the way that astronomers look at faint stars--not directly, but out of the corner of the eye I write seventy-five percent of my stories in my head. I've had editors or critiquers who suggest changes and I walk around for three weeks thinking--damn I have to get working on this. And I am. It just doesn't look like it--even to me. I write things that I don't even understand until someone says--hey, I really like how you linked this and this and this. I write things I don't even remember thinking up.
There's a balance between thinking things out in my head and trusting that it's there somewhere and will become clear as I type. The better I get at that balance and at trusting that it will work, the better I get as a write (especially at endings, which I mostly suck at).
March 21, 2005
Magic
Magic in a Certain Slant of Light is up at Strange Horizons
"If you could wish for something magical, what would you wish for?" Jeff asks Nora as he enters the kitchen.
Jeff has been gone all day, helping a friend fix the plumbing in his basement. There's no "Hello," or "How was your day?" Just Jeff, in the doorway, asking about magic. "It can't be about yourself," he continues. "I mean, like making yourself immortal. Or about world peace. It has to be—"
"Talking dogs," Nora says.
March 20, 2005
Unconditional Love
Awhile back I watched the movie 'Unconditional Love' with Rupert Everett and Kathy Bates and occasionally Dan Akroyd. As far as I know this movie went directly to DVD/Video which is a shame because I liked it quite a bit. What follows is not so much about this movie, but about why I think this movie didn't get studio promotion or reviewed as favorably as it might have. It's not a great movie. But it's a good movie and it's too bad more people haven't seen it.
Reading reviews for 'Unconditional Love' reminds me of the phrase--'you see, but you do not understand.' It's also an interesting study in genre expectations because everyone (including, one presumes, the studio which released it direct-to-dvd) puts it into a category and then criticizes it for not living up to their expectations of the genre they insisted on shoving it into.
Reviews have called 'Unconditional Love' dark comedy, romantic comedy, murder mystery, and thriller. Not dark enough, not funny enough, not mysterious enough, not thrilling enough, they say--and what was up with that funny/dark/scary part that didn't fit what I wanted? But the problem with these criticisms is that 'Unconditional Love' isn't any of those things. It's not dark comedy or romantic comedy or murder mystery or thriller. It may be unclassifiable, but really, it's a coming of age story for adults.
At one point, Rupert Everett's character tells Kathy Bates, 'You're intending to matter. You just had a glimpse of what you probably could have become if you'd only had a little more courage.' And that's what this movie is about--intending to matter. It's not even--really--about mattering. It's about meaning to, about doing things that are worth doing because they're worth doing, not because the world at large will approve or disapprove or care.
It's not even, in the end, about character change because who the characters become is who they always probably were.
Toward the end of the movie, Grace (Kathy Bates) tells her husband (Dan Akroyd), who has left her and then returned to her--telling her he wants things similar, but different--that she wants things different. He tells her he's not sure he can be different. 'Find a way," she says. She doesn't say try or I'm sure you'll do fine. She says, 'Find a way.'
This is a movie about finding a way, about ordinary, forgotten people, about 'losers' who transcend their lives--to care about each other, to make a difference, to change the world. It is romantic, mysterious, and occasionally thrilling. For extra bonus points it has dwarves in red raincoats, serial killers, fireworks, crossbows and Julie Andrews.
March 18, 2005
Thumb Rules
43 Folders uncovers these important Rules of Thumb:
Passing a Car - You can safely cut in front of the car you are passing when you can see its headlights in your rear-view mirror.
I learned that one in driver's ed when I was sixteen.
Lowering Your Travel Risks - Pick a hotel room between the third and sixth floors. Three floors put you above street attacks and random shootings, while six floors will keep you in range of a cherry picker or fireman’s ladder if the place goes up in flames.
I can honestly say that though I have stayed in some fairly low-rent motels in my time, I have never once worried about random shootings.
Feeding Cockroaches - Twelve cockroaches can live on the glue of a postage stamp for a week.
Just so you know...
Doesn't Everybody Do This Already?
...or maybe it's just me.
Talktoaliens.com offers to transmit your message Out There. From their FAQ:
Q. Where in space are you sending my messages?
A. Based on discussions with astronomy consultants, we decided to point our antenna into the area of the sky with the highest density of regional stars (and, thus, hopefully planets and other civilizations). That region is commonly referred to as the "Milky Way" -- the galaxy in which our own solar system resides. As the sky appears to turn over the earth, our fixed-mounted parabolic antenna sweeps through much of the Milky Way Galaxy (and its estimated 400 billion stars). For more information on the Milky Way Galaxy, visit: http://www.seds.org/messier/more/mw.html
Q. Why do you charge $3.99 per minute? And why is it through a 900 number?
A. This entire service is funded and run by a handful of individuals who have put in considerable personal money and countless hours of time. The fee will help us begin to offset our equipment and time investments, and help us develop new features for our service. The 900 number keeps things very simple. You only pay for the time you use. It also eliminates the billing complexity and fraud commonly associated with credit cards.
....
Q. Can I say anything I'd like in my broadcast message?
A. We strongly encourage that you refrain from any profane or indecent language. As mentioned above, it is highly unlikely that anyone here on earth will hear your messages. Even so, it would seem prudent and polite to keep your language respectable. Feel free to speak your mind, sing, chant, rant, etc. to your heart's content. Be a good "Earth Ambassador" to any civilizations that might be tuned in!
March 15, 2005
one more time again
these will eventually go away...
Update: Ok, this entry was going to go away, but now that it has generated comments that aren't about online poker or texas hold 'em, I guess it can stay.
one more time
I'm really testing a different weblog that isn't working right...
March 05, 2005
House
I am thinking about buying a house. It's a really beautiful house in a really beautiful neighborhood and has, like, the most perfect back yard ever. It also costs pots o' money (not California housing money, but plenty o'money for me).
Rough calculations say that I can afford it, even by somewhat conservative estimates for this house and mortgage rates and so on. But my rough calculations are often wrong...and I have to get this house ready to sell...and clean out the basement...and hope that meanwhile no one from California comes driving into town and says 'what a deal' and....
Cross your fingers...
Magic in a Certain Slant of Light
I received, reviewed, and returned the edits for 'Magic in a Certain Slant of Light' which is going to be published by Strange Horizons.
It looks like things are still on track for it to go live this month.