Pageturner

There's only one thing more disconcerting than coming home to learn, by her relentless sniffing, that you got something unknown on your pants. And that, my friends, is learning you got something she finds delicious on them.

Nothing quite like reading off your work to your peers and having them respond, wide eyed, with "Fantastic!"

The first snowfall of winter is done!  The first shoveling of winter is done!  The first dog walk in the freezing cold on a slippery road as she rolls in the snowbank while I carry a plastic bag full of her leavings is...done!  Of course one of those I'll have to do again in about six hours...

Now I play the waiting game...waiting to see when my SW:TOR access begins.  My plan is to go Sith Warrior.  That way I get my lightsaber and my Twi'lek slave girl.  And really, that's all I've wanted out of life since I was 16.

Grammar hurts. It really does. the only thing that hurts worse is typos you didn't notice before putting your work up for public purchase >.<.
But in this case Grammar and I are in a very specific fight. The main character I'm currently working on is kind of dumb. Illiterate type dumb, not stupid type dumb. So he gets his points across using the words he has with no regard for how they should be ordered.
Result: Me and my grammar checker are about to get into a steel cage match for supremacy. I have some advantages: I own the program. I two years of grade-school Kenpo training and I still have mad nunchuck skills. In addition I'm a physical person unconfined to the digital realm. On the other hand, the checker can put green lines under everything I write.
Oh yeah, gonna hunt me some software and mount it on my wall.

Hello insomnia my old friend.  Here to talk to you again.

Let me explain, first off, that I don't really have insomnia.  Not as a true, honest condition.  No, what keeps me up and awake at this ungodly hour (yes, 6 am is ungodly to me) is the fact that I have to be up early today.  That means I have to  go to sleep early.  Now going to bed early isn't the problem.  It's the *staying* in bed.  Because every time I try to get in a few hours prior, fate rises up and demands I awaken a mere 3 hours later.  Very irritating.

So in about four hours I'm due to make a trip to NY.  In 3 hours I need to go to Radioshack and Best Buy in the hope of getting a car charger for my laptop so I have something to do on the four hour trip.  Either of these places might have it.  But they're at the opposite ends of town.  That'll necessitate me spending even more time in the car than this long trip would otherwise call for.  If Radioshack has it, no problem.  But Radioshack won't have it.  Here's how this is going to go:

I'll arrive at Radioshack and look around.  Not seeing it, I'll wait ten minutes for the only employee to be done helping someone who doesn't know the difference between a PS/2 and a Playstation 2.  He'll tell me they're out, but try to convince me I should order it.  I'll drive to Best Buy.  I'll look at the nearly bare shelves and be unable to even find an employee.  At last I'll prevail on someone in the appliance section for help and learn that they sold the last one on Black Friday, but they can...order it.

This is my prediction.  And I'm making it now because my predictions tend to be wrong.  The only question is, how shall fate try to screw me this time?

Yesterday my first novel launched to the fanfare of...2 sales.  Still, that's more than I expected and it's seven dollars in my pocket that  wasn't there before.  My prayers now lie in the direction of positive reviews and beneficial word of mouth.  Overnight success would be nice.  But I'll take over-year success and I fully intend to have over-lifetime success no matter what I have to do to achieve it.

Vive Libris!

**Note: The author does not speak French or Latin but enjoys pretending to do both.

Tickletorturegirl...challenge accepted.

Yesterday, after bread stuffing but before sweet potato pie (god I miss that pie) I was informed by my uncle that within two months of the next presidential election that society will break down.  Given that I rely on a functioning society to provide medication that keeps me breathing, I couldn't quite take his recommendations on food storage to heart.  I won't make it one month    This will be preceded by a breakdown in rule of law and triggered by the advancement of socialist agendas by the democractic party.-_-

Then, at work, I overhead a Seth McFarlane talking about how the conservative element in Wasthington has basically stifled any attempt by Obama to improve matters, preferring total inaction to allowing a potential victory by their opposing party. >_<

I don't generally like politics because in the end my opinion boils down to one simple statement:  "If you two numbskulls aren't going to do anything useful can you please step aside for someone who will?"

It's more vexing because both parties are usually correct in their assessments of the others.  This isn't a paradox.  Politics, even boiled down to two-party politics, is basically a pair of tangled webs that tear at each other even as they adhere to one another.  These webs are so vast that any single node can act independently of the others.  Opposing forces are very keen on coloring the entire party by the acts of a few fractions of it.  The problem isn't so much in the name calling, but in the decisions made based on mutual hatred.  The purpose of conservation is to protect what was.  The past must give way to the future, but that doesn't mean it's without value.  Some things must be preserved.  The purpose of liberty is to allow for change and progress.  But action without forethought and reflection is a leap of faith.

I find faults as such: The republican party should have had the courage to let the administration make a try.  If they succeed, the nation improves.  If they fail, you get to say "I told you so".  A failure allows us to learn.  A refusal to act gains nothing at all.

On the other side, Obama is president.  He should have been less concerned about opinions that may or may not result in re-election and more concerned with pushing his goals through.

The great sin in this whole thing is not longer failure to succeed, but failure to act.  We're sitting around thumb-wrestling instead of making attempts.

And on this day we lay down the sacrificial turkey; honoring the memories of those who fell in the global turkey war of 1408. May their spirits fight on in our memories. Gobble on, my son. Gobble on.

"What's in a name?" William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Names are funny things, aren't they?  They're central to our personal identities.  Changing a name is usually precipitated by a fundamental change in one's persona, demeanor, or lifestyle.  Lots of people make use of this, small scale, in various avenues.  When we sign in we make a screen name.  Many of us have names we use for scenes.  I'm sure everyone's familiar with forum users who use their new names to justify idiotic behavior.

However changing a name assumes something much deeper.  When someone changes their name, rather than adding a new facet to an existing one, they're usually reflecting a change in who they are.  A common example is for our transgendered friends who, upon finally becoming who they've longed to be, change their names to better fit them.  It's not uncommon for masters and mistresses to pick new names for their submissive significants.  Some, on the other hand, don't want names at all.  They prefer to be referred to with the pronouns 'it' or 'that'.  It reflects a unique attitude where they prefer to have no identity whatsoever.

Recently a friend online asked what name I would choose for her, which got me thinking about what kind of process I would go about for naming another human being.  Having a lot of experience with naming pets, I know that names can't be rushed and fit best when given time to present themselves, rather than forcing them.  Pets, however, don't really take much from their names besides, "Oh!  Time for a cookie!"  For a human, who will have to identify with it for an extended amount of time, the decision must be made much more carefully.  So later I'll present a fun experiment: A three-tiered naming system.

So then, on the subject of the Nook.  I happen to enjoy reading from mine tremendously.  However, I'm having the opposite reaction towards formatting for it.  The nook doesn't like how I write, and hates the very concept of page breaks.  This angers me.  But what angers me more is the Kindle's approach.  Because the kindle is a tease.  It leads me to believe the formatting went fine...only to stab me in the back by failing to notice any indentation.  I am a bit angered by all this.  Especially due to the labor intensive corrections I'll have to make to fix them.

>_<

And all for a book that will probably sell twenty copies despite (possibly) being the great american novel.

So here we go, in approximately a week the cover art I ordered should be finished.  The work in progress is nearing the end of 'progress'.  It seems I'll make my self-imposed end of November deadline.  Three months of labor are coming to fruition and I, for one, can't wait to release this book onto the unsuspecting critical populace.

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"You're not very clear on the whole 'good things vs bad things' are you?"

She shrugged, "What are bad things?"

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Amigos and Amigas, yours truly is now a twice-published author!  I had a speech for this moment, and so I told it at the reading.  Each story was submitted and pitted against a hundred other submissions to earn a spot in two consecutive anthologies.  Given the odds against me and my perseverance I think I can finally say that yes, I have some talent.

Cheers for triumph!

You know what?  When you don't want to write a scene, that's a pretty clear signal that the scene is boring and will fail to entertain anyone.  Gah.  This book WILL obey me if I have to thrash the living hell out of it.

I need a friend with benefits.  Preferably health coverage.  Maybe vision.  Just in case.

I've figured golf out.  Beforehand I was confused.  Each hole is comprised of roughtly 75% fairway and 25% rough.  My shots, however, kept going into the rough minority.   The odds were not in keeping.  I did not understand until I had an epiphany.  Namely a foreign golf ball whizzing by my head like a mortar shell shortly after the word 'FORE!" was shouted across the grass.  That's when it hit me.  It's not 75% fairway and 25% rough...it's 5% fairway and 95% rest of the course!

Now I understand.

Golf is a unique sport.  I've played for two years.  During my first year I could barely hit the ball at all and never consistently.  The second year, this year, I took a class.  Now my game has improved considerably.  But I have no idea why.  I've been run through a series of stances, shifting weights, and grips.  These are all completely counter-intuitive.  However they result in the ball going up and over in ways I only dreamed of last year.  This begs the question: How did golf start?  Some time ago someone invented a sport that requires motions never before demanded of the human body.

Much like the fun stuff in kink.

I know a woman is going to die.  But I don't know when.  I have a rough idea of how. She's old, and she probably won't recover.  But then again maybe she will.  She has family and friends she loves.   I'd ask her what she wants, but she can't tell me.  She can barely breathe and if I fail to act on any level the decision becomes moot.  So what do I do next?

That's how I know my job isn't like every other job.