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Word Count for Thursday, July 24th, 2008
Just as all great music at heart comes from dance, so the living sentence comes from breath. We write to a rhythm of breathing. A line must breathe.--Donald Newlove How many breaths did you write today? 750 words' worth? |
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The mystery of the marbles
Those of you who have been reading this journal for a long time may remember this story. I recently posted a shortened and amended version to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} mourning_souls because I was way too excited to find a community that shares my love of photographing cemeteries. Who knew? There's apparently a community for every interest, no matter how disconcerting. And the other interesting thing? In the process of posting, I added to the mystery by discovering something I hadn't noticed before. But I'll save that for the end of the post... I thought I'd share a small mystery I encountered in a local, urban cemetery. Back in June of 2005, I wound up at Woodlawn Cemetery up on 14th and Pico in Santa Monica, California. I hadn't been there in while, but I used to like to walk through the place. Not a huge cemetery, surrounded by urban blight on three of its four sides and a junior college on the fourth. But it's a beautiful place, lots of old and gnarled and interesting trees, and since it was established in 1847 it has a wide range of dates for the headstones. Because the sun was so bright, the sky so blue, and the trees so plentiful, I got lots of shadow and light shots. Lots of poignant stories in the headstones, too. Mysteries that are nearly a century old. I doubt anyone knows the story behind them anymore, probably not even the folks that keep the cemetery records. The next night when I was going through the pictures, I discovered another little mystery. I like to view all the pictures in super blow up, quadrant by quadrant. Partly that's because sometimes a piece of a photo will be more interesting than the entire shot; partly because I like to look for anomalies. My favorite shot was a shadow and light shot of a child's grave. And that was the beginning of the mystery:
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Knots
Random quote of the day: "If I were untied, it would be easy. How to undo this knot, how not to want any more, or to want to be, or else to want to be the water that can be placed in all vases...Me, I am nothing but knotted knots, I am made of nothing but knots that resist, that want to be knots. I cannot, I do not want, I cannot, I do not want..." —Eugène Ionesco, Journal En Miettes ( Visual aid. ) |
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Being a Mommy is Hard
Does anybody else feel like, once you become a parent, suddenly, everyone's highly judgmental and watching you like a hawk? Perhaps I'm just being paranoid (God knows that runs in my family), but it feels like I'm constantly getting random comments from people that imply that I'm not doing things right. My kid doesn't already speak 5 words (he only signs them), so there must be something wrong with him. He's still wearing the shirt he slept in once noon rolls around, so I must not bathe him enough. I don't take him out enough. I don't feed him the correct diet. It's almost too much pressure. And yet, I'm sure if I googled ,"Good Mom", you'd get 6 billion different explanations of what that means. So I'm stressing out about that today. Being an adult comes with far too many things to worry about. And now I will go off and worry about them some more...
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The Dark Knight (Spoilers Shall Abound)
In my Readercon report, I made a brief mention of seeing and enjoying The Dark Knight. But this movie deserves its own post. I've now seen it twice, once in Readercon and again yesterday (I'd promised my best friend I'd see the flick with him first, and since he avoids the blogosphere like the plague, he'll continue to think I kept my word--ha!) This is only the second time I've seen a movie twice in the theaters. The first time was for The Matrix Reloaded, when my second viewing also happened to be my first IMAX movie experience. Honestly, I think I'd like to see The Dark Knight again, this time in IMAX. It's that good. I'm not a major comic guy, but I can hold conversations about the major Marvel & DC characters. And Batman also happens to be my favorite superhero. A couple of years ago my friend started a comic store and convinced me to read all sorts of stories. Obviously, I gravitated toward Batman. I read a lot of the best stuff--The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One, Batman: Year Two, and a lot of the issues from recent years, during which time the writers have been doing some excellent work. All these works are dark, riddled with twisted psychology, and carry the suggestion of a better tomorrow if you are willing to endure the heavy cost. This is when the mythology of Batman is at its best. Jonathan & Christopher Nolan (writers & director) understood that. They also understood that movies like the abortions known as Batman 3 & Batman 4 must be avoided at all costs. Joel Shulemacher relied on campiness with those movies, drawing on the Batman of the later 1950s & 1960s that inspired the tv show with Adam West. But this version of Batman only existed because of the Comic Code Authority. These versions are Batman at his most uninteresting, which is a big reason (among others) why these movies were awful. When Batman Begins came out, one of the smartest things that movie did was using Batman villains not seen before on the big screen. The franchise was rebooting, and new villains would prevent the audience from being reminded of the previous movie franchise. Scarecrow & Raz al Ghul (sp?) were both great choices, as they're integral supervillains to the Batman mythology. There was definitely some reinterpreation of Ghul, but I thought it worked. ( Read more... )
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"Pretty please with sugar on top"
( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
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[travel] In transit gloria Thursday
In DFW, loitering near Gate C17. Flight down was uneventful. I did find some lunatic fringe Christian spam in comments on jlake.com, which I deleted. Not sure that was quite the right move, because it wasn’t technically spam so much as rant, but I don’t have time right now for pointless rhetorical combat with someone who confuses faith with facts.
Given my recent adaptation to a toilet-based lifestyle, I’m spending a lot more time in airport men’s room stalls. (Yes, this is almost over — the antibiotic course is working well. But it’s not over yet.) I’ve been ranting about the lack of outlets in airport lounges for a long time. Here’s a thought: why are stalls designed as if no one ever carries luggage? Have you tried maneuvering a roller bag and a computer satchel into one of those things. Rant, rant, rant. It’s like the good old days on this blog! I must have woken up feisty. Just now loaned my cell phone to a Marine sergeant passing through on his mid-tour home leave from Iraq. He needed to call some of his family and was messing with some nearby payphones. I have a very strong negative view of the war, but I don’t for a moment confuse corrupt and venal Republican policymaking with the dedicated service of the men and women in uniform. (That was one of the great errors of the Left during Vietnam — inhumane, inhuman, and simply mistaken.) Off to forage for food shortly. Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there. |
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Also, the highlight of my Tuesday night. I was at the library, dropping off some (coughoverduecough) books, and this teeny little girl wanders through with her father, en route to the children's room. She is demanding, emphatically and repeatedly, to know, "What is going on here?" I look at the librarian and say, "I ask myself that all the time." |
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Dude. Post-novel ennui *exists.*
Reposted from the comment threads... http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=toug
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Volunteer Opportunity: SFWA table representative at WorldCon
I'm wondering if any of you'd be willing to help out and sign up for a shift or two at the SFWA table. I'll be working two shifts at the booth as will other SFWA officers and authors such as Cat Rambo and Patrick Rothfuss. * Job Title: SFWA table representative Benefits: Visibility at con, good way to meet new people. Skills required: Friendly. All Workers must be paying members of the convention. (Sorry, no freebies for working the Table.) If you are interested, email me (secretary AT SFWA.org) with how many shifts you are willing to take and a list of your conflicts (panels, meetings, departure date). Glenn Gillette, our table czar, will get you set up with a time slot. |
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i went to hell and to the races
Item the first: Tiny cute computer is tiny and cute. I have gotten all my habitual software (WinAmp, assorted Popcap timewasters, the Zune manager, Semagic, Electric Sheep, Eudora, etc.) and am halfway through the semi-endless process of moving my music and other files over. The hard drive is already groaning in anticipation of the 60+ gigs of music I plan on upholstering it with. Good thing I'm not a gamer.... (The new laptop, for those who are interested in the technical specs, is a 14.1" wide-aspect Dell Latitude D630 core 2 2.0 GHz with 160 gig hard drive--something like double the capacity of the previous machine at half the weight and energy costs. It has a nice big keyboard and it runs XP cheerfully. I had originally fallen in love with the XPS, which brings the shiny and has a bigger hard drive, but that one only allows for Vista and no. Also, it's Item the second: my climbing is getting better. My strength/weight ratio still sucks, but it sucks less (not because I've lost any weight: rather, I continue to gain slowly, though perhaps I have topped out around 245, and maybe now that my body has built a completely unreasonable amount of muscle (I've gained twenty pounds in the last ten months while dropping a shirt size and half a jeans size) it will consent to giving up some of the dead weight. Anyway, it's on cereal, sandwiches, soup, and salads until further notice... and maybe the occasional cookie. Because dammit, I want to climb better still. (The good news is, I have been doing all this work in the equivalent of a sixty pound pack, so if that weight does come off and I get down to a nice sensible 170 or so, I will be flying up those overhangs.) Anyway, as I was saying, strength, balance, and recovery time are all improving, and I think I'm actually back to what I consider a reasonable level of fitness for the first time since 2001. Yay! I've climbed three days this week--Sunday, Monday, and last night, and still managed to go out for a three mile run this morning, in the driving rain, getting soaked to the skin in my new ugly Prana stretchy shorts. I swear, I am 50% more physically competent in the rain. What's up with that? I started a 5.8 on Monday--couldn't stick the transition over the lip, but I got up on it, which is more than I have ever done on a 5.8 before, and I'm getting to the point where there are a couple of 5.7s that I can send reliably, though I have to dog on the rope a bit on both of them. (There's another one I'm going to try on Monday--or Saturday, if it's still rainy/wet and we don't get to climb out doors.) Yesterday, I did six routes, if you count the bouldering route I made four tries at before I just said "fuckit" and cheated on the last pusbucketing move, which I cannot quite swing. ...Okay, I also rainbowed a bit on #6, but it has a big mantle move and I was le tired by then. Sewing machine legs and the whole deal. (Rainbowing is when you cheat on a route by using hand/footholds intended for other routes. Mantling is when you have to press down on something at chest level to get your feet up higher: it's hard. Sewing machine legs is.... well, self-explanatory if you have ever seen a sewing machine. *g*) But that last route I'm still proud of, because I used to thrash terribly on the bottom part, and now I'm sailing up that bit. I think any other gym would call it a 5.8, but Prime Climb is special. Their 5.5s are like 5.6s or easy 5.7s I've climbed in other gyms... Anyway, visible progress. Which makes me think I may someday attain my goal of being able to do 5.10s. And I have to remember to ice my left elbow and take the NSAIDs today, because I do not want the tendinitis getting worse, thanks. It's nice having a sport again. It's been a long time. And my last sport did not have couches. Item the third: Tomorrow I have to revise "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood." And do laundry. Saturday is climbing and maybe late lunch at Tapas with The Jeff and Alisa and Tanya. Sunday, to Fall River for an AD&D game. Monday, nose to the grindstone again, as my post-Readercon recovery is pretty much over by then and I have Deadlines To Hit. Today I am having a goof-off and play with computers day, and then I am going to archery. It has occurred to me that in other jobs, you get, you know, days off. And that maybe I should look into that idea. Item the fourth: Lone Star Stories, the 'zine with the fastest turnaround time on the block, will be publishing my maudlin Tam Lin poem "Seven Steeds," which some of you may remember from when I posted the very rough draft to this blog last year. Item the fifth: Dora Goss is smrt. ...I really love this little computer. 64 miles to Lothlorien.
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Odd doesn't begin to cover it
I was reading a very amusing thread in the librarians group on LT, which is full of all the daft things patrons/customers have asked for in libraries & bookstores. (E.g. "Tequila Mockingbird") That led to this priceless page on Library Juice (language warning!), which consists of "search expressions that led from search engines - mostly Google - to pages on Libr.org between mid-2001 and March of 2004" I'm only part way through the list and wow, is this planet teeming with strange people or what? |
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I'd ended up not riding on Tuesday night, after all, for a bunch of reasons: had to mail in my King Oak entry after work, then too much traffic that took too long to die down, and it had been over a week since I last had a night to just chill out at home, and I figured Tucker could use an extra day off after an intense week and an adventure over the weekend. Just as well, it turned out. I would probably have done something very low-key and chill, and wouldn't have gotten last night's lesson in taking the cross-country back out of the horse. He came out a little electric--big active walk and stretching into the bridle--and I was having one of those and-then-a-miracle-occurred! days, with my body actually, easily, doing the right thing so that I could focus on riding rather than on wrestling errant legs and shoulders into submission. Huh. So we went through our warm up--walk, trot, canter, leg yield, input from T. on staying deep in the saddle just a hair longer in the down phase of the post and appropriate moment in the canter to slow down Tucker's hind leg and ask him to sink into his hocks and carry a touch more--feeling about 80% of good, and still a little tight and--not stiff, exactly, but not entirely available, either, and not sure whether to stick with this gentle work until he loosened the rest of the way up or to go on. But T. said, as I played with the leg yields (forward and easy, but again, not quite flowing), to do a spiral, a shoulder-in, smaller figures--something to make him organize his body more. So we tried it. Spiral in tracking right, outside leg guarding the outward swing of the haunches, spiral back out and down the long side in shoulder-in-- --which he stepped into easily, calmly, cheerfully, and after a couple of steps, he went, "Ahhhhhhh." That was, clearly, much better. So, encouraged, we went on, some more of that. Add the sitting trot (hey, I can sit the trot!). Quick-change trot/canter/trot--he started off a little stiff into the left lead canter, so we worked on softening that--and a series of 10m half-circles really attentive to keeping him up off his inside shoulder and to the changes of bend. Just asking the horse, generally, to use himself. Nothing demanding. All very sympathetic. But quietly saying, "Hey, buddy, doesn't this feel better that going around that other way?" Finished up with work on keeping the shoulders turned a little in on the circle, lined up in front of his haunches so the power and the half-halts can go through: the work that had my in tears a few months back when I realized that I'd never had my horse truly straight before, and that now makes me laugh like a fool because it's such a stunning feeling, that hind leg kicking through, and it's fun. And some 10-12m circles at the canter, where I really have to stand him up around the inside leg and keep him in the outside rein. To the right, it's pretty easy; to the left we tend to lean in and need a little work. And then patted him and let him walk (there was another break in the middle of all that, while T. and I discussed what to do about the intermittent poll twist that he's been telling me how to fix for a while now but that I'm only just now starting to feel: a little feel of the rein on the side the nose tips away from, a little feel of the leg on that side, rein on the other side just softly there, a little low, so I can ride him onto it as he straightens) and headed out back for a short hack. A 40 minute session, plus the walk at the end, taking the beastie from run-and-jump mode back to my nice dressage horse. Huh. I forget--or rather it sneaks up and I don't realize--that this work is available, now. That I don't have to wait for brief shining moments of breakthrough to sit the trot, or try a shoulder-in, or otherwise amp things up a bit. "Oh, right," I go. "We can do that now." And then I forget again. But we can. Somehow, over the last few months, we went from stretching towards this stuff to having it essentially confirmed as part of our work. Which doesn't mean it doesn't need refinement; I wouldn't take that SI into the show ring, yet. It's in there, though, and it doesn't have to be a big deal anymore. Huh. I was even finding the spaces in the trot in which to act, tonight. I wonder what's next? Lengthenings, I suppose, at which point we'll be working on a higher level of event dressage than I ever expect (or want, really) our jumping to reach. I hear a few folks at the barn are toying with the idea of hitting some of the straight dressage shows in the foreseeable future. Might see if I can't encourage that interest, a bit; I really liked the one we did last November, and the schooling shows, at least, are relatively inexpensive, as ways to keep a hand (a hoof?) in go. Meanwhile, it looks like Scarlet Hill and T. and the Area 1 Adult Rider Program are teaming up to run a thing next month. Weekday, but it sounds like it should be a good use of a day off: a cross-country school combined with strong safety focus. It is being strongly recommended to the weenie adult amateur contingent at the barn, by which I of course mean: me. (Also others, but definitely me.) Looks like you have to be an ARP member to go--I've emailed for clarification--but I don't think that's prohibitative and hey, cross-country school! So. Ride tonight, probably more of the same, and maybe a conditioning day on Saturday if the rain stops for like five minutes. Or ten. Onward. |
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Fine by Me
Your result for The hardcore SCA Test... The Queen's ChampionYou scored 52% hardcore SCA! You are really involved in the SCA. You probably have some really cool garb. You put a lot of work into playing the game and making sure its fun for others too. For a lot of folks an event wouldn't be the same without you. You probably have a tendancy to over do it sometimes. You may need help knowing when to say "No" or when to stop sewing and go to bed. Take The hardcore SCA Test at HelloQuizzy Actual content later, I promise! |
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Honing the New Edge, Part 3
Still Honing That Edge, part 3 In my previous posts I strove to define sword-and-sorcery and to argue for its importance. Now I want to revisit some of the conversations I had with Bill King and John Hocking and Clint Werner and Martin Zornhau, among others, and look at what we need from sword-and-sorcery today – and what many are already striving to do. When Tolkien and Robert E. Howard crafted what they wrote their worlds were fresh and new. They never set out to create unbreakable molds from which all fantasy had to be cast. Tolkien did not mean to suggest that all fantasy had to be quests with bands of elves and dwarves in a vaguely European world marching off to fight an all-powerful baddie by destroying a magic whatsit. Likewise, it should be understood that sword and sorcery is not limited to a barbarian with a sword, despite Conan's prominence as the first sword and sorcery hero (well, Kull was actually the first, but I’m trying not to get over technical). Bill King wrote that: "One of the main problems with High Fantasy is that it has become a sort of post-Tolkien monocrop where a good deal reads and looks the same. The thing about the writers I grew up reading is that every one of them read differently and wrote about different types of worlds. Hyboria was very different from Zothique which was very different from Carter's Lemuria and so on." But on to the guidelines I’d like to see in play for putting a new edge on an old blade. 1. We can find inspiration from the pulps without pastiching them. Specifically I mean setting aside the sexism and racism and the suspect politics, but embracing the virtues of great pulp storytelling: The color. The pace. The headlong thrill and sense of wonder. The celebration not of the everyday and the petty, but of those who dare to fight on when the odds are against them. 2. We can create new characters. Not homages. And not ironic sendups. I would prefer to go a long time without seeing any more “comedy sword-and-sorcery.” 3. We can craft exotic settings and/or settings that live - as in NOT faux Tolkien of faux Howard. We need to make our own worlds and look past the groundbreaking ideas that have now become limiting barriers set in place by Tolkien’s imitators and bookshelves stuffed with gaming manuals. 4. We must restore the sense of fantastic. Once magic is banal or easy, once magic rings can be found at the corner market and wizards are everywhere, sense of wonder all-too-easily goes straight out the window. It may be possible to write good fantasy in such an environment, but it would be very challenging to craft good sword-and-sorcery there. 5. We can check the irony at the door. Sure, humor and irony can be found in the world our characters walk, but we don’t need to write, as Martin Zornhau says, with “amused detatchment to revel in swordfights.” We should either embrace the genre or not, but we shouldn’t pretend to do so then try to excuse it to our literary friends by claiming it’s all just a joke and is really beneath us. Pfah. Sword-and-sorcery can be hard to defend when we are constantly offered up poor or diluted gruel substituted for the real thing, or treacly imitation. But then we, and others, should remember the now famous Theodore Sturgeon’s Law. Whether or not 90% of all fiction is truly crap, or if 85 or 97 percent of it is crap might be endlessly debated, and one might as well argue over the number of angels on the head of a pin. The pin head is pointless, just like the debate. We should judge the genre by its best works, just as a wise critic knows to judge the contributions of an author by his or her best works, not the worst. Now rather than going on and continuing to hone the language, I'm taking this public. I want to hear what you think of the points. What more needs to be said? What needs to be clarified? As for what we can do to help sword-and-sorcery today? Well, one of the things we can do is support those few markets we have... and I'll post about that very soon. Hope to hear from you. Part 2 Howard |
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[links] Link salad, in which I apparently have a lot to say
Article serie: Building Jay Lake’s Colon — More from the indomitable Mary Robinette Kowal.
stacia_kane on how to be a sex-writing strumpet — Some pretty good stuff on writing sex and erotica. (Thanks to calendula_witch.) Newspaper Misspells Own Name on Front Page — (Thanks to danjite.) World’s Oldest Bible Pieced Together — Interesting story, but the story-behind-the-story looks even more interesting. Portuguese team makes first paper based transistor — Whoa. Serious cool potential here. (Thanks to lt260.) Fish pedicures — Um, right. (Thanks to lillypond.) A disease called “previous cesarean” — Another triumph of market-based healthcare finance. Speaking as someone with the mother of all pre-existing conditions, my interest in, and anger with, the distorted system of healthcare finance in this country only mounts. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I have compassion and sympathy for the 40 million uninsured, and the 40 million more underinsured. What I don’t understand is why the Republican Party, the AMA, and so many conservative voters do not. HSA’s (a long time Republican panacea) are meaningless to the unemployed, the underemployed and those on or near minimum wage. I had one in a previous insurance plan, and it was damned near meaningless to me. There’s an underlying unspoken social assumption that the poor somehow have earned their lot (residual Calvinism perpetuated by the GOP and other social forces, I think), combined with a spoken social assumption that if they’d only work a little harder they’d be fine. That’s an opinion which speaks very poorly of Americans’ human nature. Is it good social policy to force people into $1,000 ER visits because they don’t have the insurance coverage or the cash for a $120 doctor visit? It’s not like the market-based system has produced a viable outcome, not when you look at American life expectancy (42nd worldwide) and infant mortality rates (34th worldwide) — two very basic measures of healthcare success. (Thanks to dinogrl.) Amanda Peet apologizes for calling vaccination protestors “parasites” — She goes on to explain her position. Very long time readers of this blog will recall I am passionate on this subject. the_child has a disease-specific immune disorder which means she is a lifetime carrier (asymptomatic and healthy) of a rather nasty viral disease which part of the ordinary childhood vaccination course. Almost half her kindergarten class were unvaccinated due to a high prevalence of vaccination protestors among the Waldorf population. Several parents suggested my daughter not be included in the class because of the health risk she presented to their children. My child, who was completely unresponsive to a widely-available vaccine, was considered a health risk by parents who were one clinic visit away from medical safety. You can imagine my response to this at the time. It’s an iteration of the free-rider problem, but basically, anti-vaccination parents are banking on all the parents around their child doing something they would not do to their own child in order to protect their child from communicable diseases. I’m sorry, “parasite” might have been a poor word choice, but Amanda Peet was right in the first place. Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power — An investigative report from Salon on domestic spying. Nothing to see here, citizen. Move along smartly, now. (Thanks to my Aunt M.) Maryland State Police spying on peace activists — Because, you know, all the great American terrorists of recent years have been leftie peaceniks. Like Eric Rudolph! And Timothy McVeigh! Why you should vote for McCain — Straight from the Great Orange Satan, whom I don’t usually bother to link. (I rather imagine that most of you already read Daily Kos, or you don’t care.) But this is very funny, because it has the benefit of being objectively true, as opposed to editorial opinion. 7/24/08 Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there. |
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Couple of things
First, I just signed the petition against age banding of books. This is a battle being fought in the UK, but you can bet Australia will be next. (There's nothing we love more in this country than a good classifying, preferably administered by half a dozen overlapping government departments.) I don't intend to go into age banding here, but if you don't have a clue about the problems it might cause, visit the site above and find out. Second, I just noticed Planet Fantastic's Bestselling Books of All Time, and the first three Hal books are all present. (Hal 4 was their #1 bestseller last month, so it's a bit soon to expect to see it in a list covering over three years of sales.) First, this is the top ten: 1...Temeraire, by Naomi Novik then the Hal books take up these positions: #25...Hal Spacejock, by Simon Haynes Congrats to everyone on the list. |
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Kitchen re-build saga (continued)
They're here. Yesterday they broke down and removed all the old units, shelves, worksurfaces (counters), etc. This morning they ripped out the plumbing and heating, and now they're taking the entire structure of the room back to bare brick. The ceiling and the old electric ring main are history, and for the past two hours they've been breaking off hundreds of floor-to-ceiling ceramic tiles with one of these monsters: Can you imagine the very loud noise and the deep vibrations going through everything and everyone in the house? I'm grabbing their coffee break time to share my misery with you. I've had more fun. |
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worried
accomplished
complacent
chipper
thoughtful