Things I Know I Know

John Henry had another round of chemo on Thursday. So far, so good. All his numbers are back up in normal ranges and he gained another pound. He looks good and acts good and is a pain to take in the yard because he thinks he's all normal and should be allowed to run and wham into Billie and jump up and look over the fence.

Billie had another seizure yesterday morning. About the same as the others. It's been two months since the last one. So far, they are always on Fridays. I talked to the neurologist and she suggested keeping a journal of dates and times and symptoms. If they remain less frequent than once a month we will just go on...

Posted by debco at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What Digby says:

Iraqi women have enjoyed secular, western-style equality for more than 40 years. Most females have no memory of living any other way. In order to meet an arbitrary deadline for domestic political reasons, we have capitulated to theocrats on the single most important constitutional issue facing the average Iraqi woman --- which means that we have now officially failed more than half of the Iraqis we supposedly came to help. We have "liberated" millions of people from rights they have had all their lives.

Posted by debco at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Meet the Press today, evil rears its ugly head:

MR. GERECHT: Actually, I'm not terribly worried about this. I mean, one hopes that the Iraqis protect women's social rights as much as possible. It certainly seems clear that in protecting the political rights, there's no discussion of women not having the right to vote. I think it's important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States, it was a democracy then. In 1900, women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we'd all be thrilled. I mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they're there. I think they will be there. But I think we need to put this into perspective.

If you can't tell, this is regarding the Iraqi constitution and whether it will retain (get that retain) the rights of more than half the population.

In case you were still wondering: Yes. Yes, the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam Hussein. He was an evil, brutal dictator and they were better off than they are now. Hussein may have been evil, but apparently he is not the only evil.

"Women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy"? Women's rights are the evolution of democracy.

Bastards.

Posted by debco at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the grocery store the other day, I bought a package of sandwich cheese for eighty-nine cents because I use cheese when I give the dogs pills and it needs to be soft-ish cheese (harder than cream cheese, softer than, say, cheddar). And I thought, what do dogs care how good the cheese is?

It turns out that eighty-nine cent cheese looks a lot like really soft orange plastic and not very much like food. Milk is the very last ingredient on the label. It isn't even really an ingredient. It comes after all the other ingredients, like an afterthought. Contains: Milk. Like they mixed it in a vat that earlier had milk in it or something.

Next time, I think I'm springing for at least the dollar twenty-nine cheese.

Posted by debco at 09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't had much in the way of writing quotes lately becasue I finished up the whiny professor story and I've been putzing around trying to figure out which story is ready to be worked on next--writing a little bit there, a little bit here to see if anything takes off and runs with itself.

So here's a quote from the story I have no market for (or it might not be a marketable story, who's to know):

When I walked back into the kitchen, she was sitting at the kitchen table with Benning, the two of them drinking coffee, like they drank coffee together at that table all the time. Benning smiled at her and reached a hand across the table. I cleared my throat and they both looked across the room at me. Benning grinned.

Posted by debco at 05:54 PM | Permalink

John Henry went for chemo yesterday, but he flunked his blood test. Or, more specifically, his white blood cell count was too low. He appears to be healthy. He's eating well. He doesn't have a temperature so all that's to the good. He's going to be getting five days of antibiotics and then we'll go back next week and try again.

It costs about a hundred bucks to not get chemo. But what's money in the service of dogness.

BTW, he has figured out how to spin perfectly well on three legs (and is doing it now because it's thundering outside). It makes him all the happy.

Posted by debco at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not even the virtual kind, looks like:

An official monitor in the online role-playing game Second Life told BBC News in April that he knows of spouses of game players who have actually paid money to online-game detectives to learn whether their mates are committing ''virtual adultery'' with other players' characters in the course of the game. (Second Life encourages players to create a character and live out a made-up existence, which can of course include having an affair with another player's made-up character.)

Posted by debco at 06:47 PM | Permalink

Way back in March I did a post about the Mo Movie Measure, which talks about movies where 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.

Jaibe has posted in comments to that thread that the cartoon itself has now been posted on Alison Bechel's blog.

Love the web!

Though it turns out Mo isn't actually involved in Mo's Movie Measure at all:

Julie from Portland, OR, kindly emailed us to let us know that lefty blogs like Pandagon have been discussing the Mo Movie Measure a film-going concept that originated in an early DTWOF strip, circa 1985. We were excited to hear that someone still remembers this 20-year-old chestnut.

But alas, the principle is misnamed. It appears in "The Rule," a strip found on page 22 of the original DTWOF collection. Mo actually doesn't appear in DTWOF until two years later. Her first strip can be found half-way through More DTWOF. Alison would also like to add that she can't claim credit for the actual "rule." She stole it from a friend, Liz Wallace, whose name is on the marquee in the comic strip, reprinted below.

And I just want you to know (because I'm like that) that my blog comes up as the number two hit in the Google search for Mo Movie Measure. Higher than Pandagon. So even though they clearly work harder, post more stuff, and have more readers, I have totally beaten them in this important area.

Posted by debco at 03:48 PM | Permalink

I finished (for some definition of 'finished') the whiny white professor story. Now I need to figure out if it 1) works and 2) if it works the way I want it to work.

Quote for today:

She grins at you. No one over forty should be allowed to grin. No woman over a hundred and ten pounds should be allowed to wear what she's wearing. Although...and for half a second you think maybe it looks good on her--she seems to wear it with assurance.

Posted by debco at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the continuing saga that is my life...I have been looking on and off for a new house since March. I started looking because my dream house came on the market then. I didn't get that house because someone else came along who was willing to pay more than I was willing/could afford. In April, I put an offer in on another, fairly nice, house, though the yard was a bit of a compromise. The owners refused to sell it to me. In May, John Henry had his surgery and since then I've been mostly trying to figure out how many vet students' tuition I am going to cover before I'm finished. But now I'm more or less looking at houses again.

I want an older (20s, 30s, 40s) home in an established neighborhood with a reasonably big yard. Friday I looked at a house built in the 20s and one built in the 30s. The 20s house was an arts and crafts two story with four (possibly five bedrooms--yeah like I need five bedrooms). It was brick and stucco and looked fairly decent from the street. Up close, though...well, first of all, I like my back yard connected in some small way to the house. I like the rooms not to be all cut up. I like the front steps not to be crumbling. And I like a fixer-upper not to be priced like a move-in ready house.

Second house was a 1930s house, very much in style for that period. Really nice house with a tray ceiling in the living room, french doors in the dining room, a re-done kitchen, two bedrooms downstairs and two bedrooms up. Hardwood floors. Fireplace. A few things that you'd want to change but all in all well-built, well-maintained and with the features that I like. And it's a good price. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a yard that will work for me at all. I'm willing to compromise some on size but because of the way the garage is set, there's a lot of concrete and it would be difficult to fence usably.

Ah well, maybe something else will come along....

Posted by debco at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I haven't had one in a couple days...

He was young, younger than she'd thought when she'd first seen him. He wasn't even twenty yet, she figured. He had a half-finished face as if it hadn't yet made up its mind to be handsome--a little round yet, a bit undefined. He had dark blue eyes and close-cropped blond hair nearly hidden under a battered hat. His wrists stuck out from the cuffs of his shirt and they gave him the look of someone who was all bone and sinew with some kind of hunger that ate away at him no matter where he was or what he did or how many meals came his way in a day.

Posted by debco at 09:29 PM | Permalink

I see I haven't mentioned what's up with the dogs lately (generally, from me you can take that as a good sign).

John Henry is doing well. He didn't have any noteable side-effects from his second round of chemo and he's scheduled for the third round next Thursday. He and I go for a walk every morning which he enjoys very much. He and Billie are convinced that he's perfectly fine and just like he oughta be which is great except when they think they can run over each other in the yard.

I also talked to Billie's neurologist this week and we agreed that since she hasn't had any more seizures since the two original ones (and it's now been over six weeks since the second one) that we can adopt a 'wait and see' attitude. If she has another one then we will talk about CT scans and medication. This makes me happy since I don't want her on medication (though, if it were necessary I would definitely do it).

I have entered Billie in Rally in September which means we have to actually train between now and then.

Posted by debco at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My current goal for the next month or so is to finish more stories than I start.

Today's writing quote:
You find yourself half-listening to the people next door. "Gear up," you hear. And "...cooked over open flames, you just have to--" And even, "It is so not about the weapons," followed by, "No, look, if--"

Elizabeth Bear has won the Campbell Award for best new writer. She's been incredibly successful and obviously hard-working over the last year or so. It's well-deserved and makes me happy :-)

The main story I'm working on currently is the first one I've written where what the narrator 'gets' about any given scene is not what the reader gets, or what I hope the reader gets. He's not an unreliable narrator so much as in a different story. It's interesting to write--I have no idea if it's working.

I wish I wrote plottier stories. My stories are much more 'literary' than I ever aspired to or wanted to write. I put 'literary' in quotes because academics make fun of me because I like plot, don't use the same cultural references they do, and I want people to care about my characters (this is true--actual academics have actually made fun of me--I live in a university town and they try to pass it off as witty but, you know, it's not). Even on the SF side I don't think I really use the same cultural references that other people do--I don't think this is a bad thing, I just find it interesting and I'd love to figure out what to do with it and how/if I can use it to be a better writer.

Plottier stories and finishing things. I could probably build, like, a career out of that.

Posted by debco at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Articles of a Personal Nature got an Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Science Fiction. It doesn't really mean much except to other writers flipping through the list to see if their stories got mentioned, but pleases me because I like this story, it was the first story I sold after five years of not selling (or even writing much for two of those years) and it's nice to know someone noticed it, at least.

Posted by debco at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is actually the writing quote of yesterday:

"If you die in fire," my father said, "It won't matter if the world freezes later on."

"It will matter to the world," my mother told him.

Posted by debco at 06:34 AM | Permalink

It is spelled 'Interesting.'

Get a dictionary.

Posted by debco at 06:30 AM | Permalink

From Strategy page:

Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*

...via The Slush God

Posted by debco at 04:32 PM | Permalink

I have decided that my only post for the day can't just be a quote from my writing (there may be a once a week exception to this rule--refs are conferring). So, that's why there wasn't a quote yesterday. Blogging for me, as you can see, is like a never-ending game of Calvin ball...

Anyway, here's today's quote:

The closest you got to Italy was cheap wine from the state liquor store at the strip mall.

Posted by debco at 04:41 PM | Permalink

From Klepopotamus via BoingBoing:

I think a lot of people incorrectly assume that Copyfighters are people who believe that copyright should be abolished and that everything should be free. Copyfighters aren’t saying that all media should be freely distributed. We are saying that as consumers of media (film, television, software, literature, etc.) we have certain rights that we would like to protect. One of these rights is Fair Use. Fair Use means that you can reuse copyrighted work without permission as long as you are commenting on it, or copying/parodying the original. Fair Use is what allows you to quote song lyrics when writing a review of a new CD. Another right is First Sale. First Sale means that when you buy something, you own it and are thus entitled to sell it to someone else. First Sale is what allows you to buy a book, read it, then sell it on half.com for someone else to enjoy.

Posted by debco at 03:41 PM | Permalink