| Passive Aggressive My Ass |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|09:33 am] |
From my FB update, for verily, locals read my FB:
New Novella out today -- read it and find out why the town councilman thinks I'm going to hell!
with a link to Aubergine which is both sweet and sweet. Mostly.
Here's an excerpt:
Joseph growled at his laptop.
Lee looked up from the stack of homework assignments he was grading, red pen poised in mid-air. Joseph didn't notice, so after a moment, he went back to work.
That lasted until Joseph growled again. This time, the growl was accompanied by some muttered profanity.
"You all right, babe?"
Joseph didn't answer. Instead, he set the laptop, none too gently, down on the couch and stalked across the narrow apartment into the kitchen. There, he poured himself three fingers worth of whiskey, the amber liquid sloshing into the glass violently, no doubt surprised at its own velocity.
"Bad review?"
Half of the glass disappeared in a swallow. "You're not going to believe this shit," Joseph said. He went back to the couch, making his progress in slow, heavy steps. "And of course it's getting linked all over the place."
"What?"
"Tavish's latest offering brings us more of his hyperbolic prose in lieu of plot, shot through with obscure references of interest to only the most determined reader. One hesitates to deem the writing purple. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it aubergine."
Lee winced. "Ouch."
"Ouch my ass. You know who wrote this?"
"Daniel."
"Of course it's fucking Daniel." The rest of the whiskey was gone now. "It's always fucking Daniel. I don't know what the hell I ever did to that guy, but he trashes everything I write."
"He trashes everything everyone writes." Lee shook his head. They'd had this conversation before. "That's what he does."
"Not everyone. He gave Katie Lastone's latest a rave review."
"Everyone gave Katie Lastone a great review. She knocked it out of the park. You said so yourself."
And it gets better from there. There's swine flu and a crazy lady in an elevator! Buy lots of copies; I understand when I finally see the light and come around to that particular flavor of redemption, I'd better have lots of green to drop in the collection plate. |
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| Monday Morning |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|08:50 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | pissed off | ] |
It's snowing, a steady, insistent layer of flurries spinning down out of the sky, covering the ground like so much confectioner's sugar. The kids are back to school, which is wonderful; it was a nice enough vacation, but entirely too long.
I'm in an odd place, emotionally. I'm very aware of the disconnect between the life I live online and the life I live in 'reality' -- LJ in particular has a very 'normalizing' affect for me. When everyone reads and writes and thinks and has strong opinions and can have an argument without going directly to personal attacks (Yes, this happens on LJ: I know it's only rumored, but I've seen it!) you forget that any of these behaviors can push you right out of the 'norm' for the social groups that surround you in meatspace. You develop expectations: that people have a certain amount of intellectual curiosity, that you can ban the trolls... These expectations are disappointed. Couple that with the fact that I've had a fairly taxing if not really all that discussed past few weeks here, and I'm something, something inarticulate but troublesome, something wounded and wary, something both resigned and resentful as hell.
My instinct is to withdraw. I've had the luxury of doing that once before, and there is beauty in it. Fail to pay attention to the world for five or six years, and the world will return the favor. That's likely the easy way out: it will give everyone in meatspace the appearances they're most comforted by; it's been made very clear to me that that's what is valued the most.
If we can not enjoy the substance of a thing, we might as well make sure it's packaged attractively, after all. And if we can not achieve that -- for working miracles is the province of the divine, and we would not make such claims ourselves -- then the next best thing is to be innocuous, invisible, so close to gone that our presence becomes less remarkable than our absence.
That? That's a lesson you don't learn from books. I could write them for you, all day, every day, up close and personal, and yet, despite every ounce of skill I have, every bit of trickery I've learned, every little twist of language and bright-strung sound, you will not know it, will not have it as your own, until someone delivers it first hand.
And that truck's backed up to my door more than a few times over the past half year. Delivery for me, time and time again. And each time I've signed, because if this is the price of being right, of saying no, of being who I am, then so be it.
There's a lot of lip service given to the value of authenticity, of genuine self, of living without artifice, and being one's entire real being, unfiltered by social mores and expectations. We're supposed to live our moral codes, hold up our ethics.
This is told to us with the presumption that our moral codes and ethics are a carbon copy of the person doing the proclamation. All misunderstanding flows from that presumption; beyond that presumption, the sheer, overwhelming pigheaded stupidity that precludes knowledge that there ARE even other points of view, that the world doesn't come with a singular viewpoint, that there is no universal standard.
I'm tired, and I'm not sure what the point of fighting it all is. I hear a lot about Mama Bear and (from those who have been closest to this latest bout of despair) Mama Badger, but you forget that the way to get a bear or badger is with aggression and deceit. Provoke them out and then you shoot them, when white blind rage trumps common sense and makes you vulnerable.
Old bears are wary.
I'd been planning to go mad after Book Expo; frankly, if anything was going to send me over the deep end, it would be Manhattan. And it did, a little; I fell apart professionally for a few months there. Someday graduate students will analyze 12 Steps and Cake Walk and a mess of stuff I wrote for Steve Berman and another mess of stuff I wrote for a gullible and easily led target market, and write intricate papers detailing the correlation between the major themes of that work and the chaos behind its creation. But I really didn't have enough time to lose it properly, I was too aware of consequences. And even now, I can't do any of what I want to do, because the kids need their mother to not be a basket case.
And then it dawned on me, while I was washing dishes and pondering how my life would actually change if I just gave in and let myself be depressed in earnest when shitty things happen, and if I just let myself feel all the joy when there's joy to be had, and stopped trying to put a good face on all of the chaos, and stop trying to be who all these people want me to be, for verily, I'm failing big time at that anyway, that perhaps I have left these questions far too late. Perhaps there's no going in the process left to undertake, perhaps the train has reached the station. If I truly flipped my shit, who would notice the difference?
Which brings us back to the normalization process. You can get used to anything; it becomes entirely too possible to lose sight of the shore when you're swimming in the ocean. Do I unplug and try to recalibrate to meat space norms? I don't see the point of that, either, really, but I'm pondering, and while I'm pondering, you might as well ponder with me. There's 4,286 days until my little one is grown up. I can't do anything properly until then, anyway. So I might as well ponder. |
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| Happy Irony |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|02:48 pm] |
The day I decided to become acclimated once again to life on Cold Comfort Mountain, the first snowflakes from the season's first Nor'easter have started falling from the sky.
This year, I am happy to see the snow! |
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| Wednesday Morning |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|09:51 am] |
I tend to be cynical about the law of attraction; it is, to my jaded eyes, distressingly like name it and claim it spirituality; blab it and grab it prayer. There's so much victim-blaming inherent in the system (and I think that's a large if unacknowledged portion of The Secret's appeal; if someone is sick or assaulted or has something horrible happen to them, we WANT to believe they did something to deserve it, because then all WE have to do, to avoid such a horrid fate, is to avoid doing whatever bad thing those other people did!) and it's not even bad science, it's a complete absence of critical thinking with a side of "Eminent researchers are doing studies on the correlation between emotional vibrations and manifestations of material wealth" and "Focusing on the mechanics of WHY something works means you're not adequately focused on achieving your success; you're diverting your critical energies because you are afraid of success, and only after you address those issues will your heart truly open to all the wealth the universe has for you." Funny how having a grasp of internal combustion and the purpose of a transmission has not precluded me from the joy of riding in an automobile.
Anyway, that being said, I do find it funny/ironic/something that after a long day spent pondering relationships and loss and those fun little moments where you remember that every door, even those you leave habitually open, can be shut, that Max the beagle puppy chose to have a mad adventure. He chewed through his canvas harness and slipped his runner; we called and called but there was no sign of him.
At bedtime, I called for him some more. Nothing.
In the middle of the night, I feel compelled to check the back door. And there's Max, curled up on his duck blanket, fast asleep. I let him in the house, and all is well.
I am glad he's back. Otherwise, I'd have to give credence to some very bad philosophy, and goodness knows we can't have that. |
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| Monday Morning |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|09:29 am] |
And I'm just getting started; I think I must address the compulsion that tells me if I don't start work by 5 the entire day is wasted. Normal people sometimes don't even start work until 9...
I think I earned some good Mommy points today. Harmony told me over the weekend that she's really been having trouble with math (fractions to decimals and vice versa, the comparison, addition and subtraction thereof) and so Sunday I did her homework with her (she did the problems, but we had to talk a few of them through to get at what the question was asking first. That seems to be the crux of the issue; she answers the wrong thing, often. I think it is because she is rushing and not actually reading the problem through before she answers it. Any of you educational types who have suggestions beyond my "read the problem carefully and make sure you know what they're asking you" advice would be very welcome.) And then this morning, I discovered she'd forgotten both her math book and her notebook from the end table. It was where her book bag was, it was ready to go, she'd just forgotten to grab it when she'd left. So I drove it to school and left it at the office, where they said they'd page her and pass along the homework. I think Harmony will be surprised, as normally I'm all "It's your job to remember", but every now and then, it might be okay to err on the side of compassion.
Today's the only day of school this week, which should make for an interesting work week. Tim is working nights all week, right through into next week (they gave him T-day off, which is nice but unexpected) so it's going to be all-Mommy all the time.
Rainbow Reviews liked Cake Walk! which made me smile. I've been in rather a horrid fiction writing funk lately, so it's nice to see some sort of encouragement.
But now tis time to pay the bills. Until then, don't do anything I wouldn't do. |
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| Nadia's Poetry |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|04:23 pm] |
Presented as is; the spelling is part of the charm, I think.
The Two little cat's.
Uon little cut was happy.
Uon over the net
undr the net.
and den they Fell in the mud.
the end |
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| Late Sunday |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|03:34 pm] |
And lo, the weekend has evaporated. I don't know WHY time is going so quickly lately; the hours slip away. The kids are watching an Ed, Edd, and Eddy movie, which is basically the antidote to every bit of education I've provided over the past eleven years. I'm going to build a quick webpage or two, and then finish my PW review, make some dinner, and call it a day. It's been a lazy day: I've done a few loads of laundry, the dishes, swept the kitchen, bathroom and stairs, washed the kitchen windows, cursed out the vacuum for no longer working, folded some clothes, and discovered that still, after all these years, I don't like anything that Saranac brews that contains the word "Pale" in the description.
I know. You wait BREATHLESSLY for a new LJ entry, and that's what I give you. Pathetic. And Tim voted for pumpkin pie rather than butternut cake, so I can't even report on that. (Aside from saying pie crust made with Amish butter TOTALLY trumps pie crust made with regular butter.) Life is just full of disappointment. |
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| In other pressing news |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|02:15 pm] |
If I buy something off of Etsy and give it to my MIL as the requested handmade gift, does it technically count? My hands typed the words that made the money that bought the gift!
Man. Last year we gave them a $100 grocery card. I should just do that again.
ETA: I am having a really hard time not buying her this but it likely wouldn't be appreciated. |
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| Is it bad manners |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|01:29 pm] |
To point out that yes, RWA did indeed to the right thing via the Harlequin's got a vanity arm thing, but that they're still a bunch of homophobic morons who only want heteronormative work considered 'genre'?
Because if it is, well, oops. My bad. |
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| Thursday Morning |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|09:06 am] |
It is hard getting back to normal, I tell you. Probably because my normal is pretty abnormal *grin* When I get to bed, though, I'm sleeping solidly, 9-10 hours at a go, which is unheard of. Maybe my system is getting caught up.
My system might be, but my workload is not. 14,000 emails piled up in the inbox whilst I was away, and even if I wind up tossing 95% of them (which I really can't, for work purposes) that's still a lot. I have grossly underestimated how long it takes me to get back up to speed; I have greatly overestimated my desire to get back up to speed.
My brain is also being consumed by the review book I'm reading. I can't talk about it since it is a PW book but I think to say it is both absorbing and long. And then I just got a review copy of Interfictions 2 which I have (maybe, she says with a guilty look) peeked at a few stories and already adore.
And my Mother in Law (the local one, Tim's stepmother) has told me that I can give her something handmade for Xmas, but not a blanket, as she already has lots of those. Any ideas, folks? Most of my skillset is of the slow, time consuming sort.
I did add an amazon bookstore to the Ellenburg Community News site, which was remarkably easy, although not everything is lined up right. It's pretty amazing: just over a decade ago, I didn't know how to email, and now I'm setting up websites. Proof positive that you can learn anything, given endless time and the ability to at least recognize your mistakes when you make them, so the next time you can make a different, more efficient mistake!
Whoops! Ten minutes went by fast today, and me without anything witty to say. Quel surprise.
(Actually, I did realize during this vacation that I use a lot of local slang unconsciously. Tell the kids to get their butts moving tout suite -- that'll confuse their Maryland cousins, I'll tell you that for free!)
Onward, upward, forward! |
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| Home Again |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|08:11 am] |
Yesterday evaporated *Poof* in a mess of errands and returning rental cars and generally recovering from the road trip. I'd never understood before the need for a vacation after a vacation, but I surely do now: given my druthers, I'd still be sleeping this off. But my druthers be damned -- there's tons of work to do, and Nadia's home sick after we've discovered that not only infants can projectile vomit. Big kids can do it too!
The trip was magnificent. Meeting Tim's family was wonderful, and they were warm and welcoming and more than ready to assist us with directions, lodging, etc. And the food! Tim's mother is undoubtedly the best cook I've ever met: that's a pretty high bar, considering some of the people I know. She cooked an amazing Thanksgiving style dinner for us (and all of her children and grandchildren) and even now I am longing to go back for just one more bit of this and another taste of that.
It is amazing how much more *stuff* there is down there than here. Our entire town could fit neatly inside one of the shopping centers (Ok, it might be a tight fit) The kids got to experience Chuckie Cheese for the first time ever, which was very cool. We went into Baltimore's Inner Harbor and visited the National Aquarium: a bit crowded but a phenomenal experience. They had a demonstration of The Polar Express in 4D which was beyond amazing. Nadia got to see starfish for the first time ever :-) and there was a dolphin show which was very neat indeed.
The drive home was shorter than we'd expected-- we pared off nearly an hour in travel time somehow. There was one scary incident where a driver of a flatbed semi decided to swerve into another lane before checking to see if that lane was in fact occupied -- it was, we were there -- but Tim handled that very well and the kids got to learn some exciting new words.
Home just in time for the town council meeting, where I learned that my plans for a town news website is viewed with no small amount of hostility by both the current and the incoming administration. The level of resistance is amazing, but frankly, the proof is going to be in the pudding: the value (or lack thereof) of the site will become clearer with time.
Now I must buckle down and get to work. I'm horrifically behind, as is to be expected after vacation, I think. I've also had some interesting imperatives dropped in my lap. I'm figuring out what to do with them, probably in my copious free time. And I've dropped the ball badly with a couple of friends, so that will require fixing. Luckily, I have 'breakfast for dinner' to look forward to -- scrapple and eggs *grin*. Can you tell we got our souveniers at the grocery store?
Onward, upward, forward! |
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| Am Home |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|07:36 pm] |
It was an amazing trip, very full and very energetic -- and now I am home, very tired and as soon as I can reasonably put the children to sleep (25 minutes!) I am going to bed. Tomorrow should bring updates.
But just for future reference, if you're ever going to meet your spouse's family for the first time ever, after spending 16 years with them, it REALLY, REALLY, REALLY helps to have two amazing kids who behave like angels the whole time! Trust me on this one. Not that it's likely to come up, but if it does? It really works *grin* |
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| Tuesday Morning |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|08:12 am] |
This is one of those mornings where much of what I have to say is really not for public consumption. And yet I'm loathe to use my morning ten minutes on random crap; the appeal of trivialities pale at times, and apparently this is one of those times.
In one morning, I've read far too much at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, with a side of Carrie Prejean on the Today Show, talking about how making a sex tape was the worst mistake of her entire life.
If making a sex tape was the worst mistake of your entire life, you have not lived a very full life. Really. Can we have a little perspective check here? The timing of this disclosure, which comes very closely on the heels of her new book's debut (I'm Still Standing...chickie doo, if you'd been standing all along, there wouldn't have been a tape, now would there?) is about as coincidental as (insert an obviously not coincidental thing here)
I wonder if there are plastic surgeons who specialize in serving the fundamentalist Christian community. Boobs for Baptists, as it were. I mean, the whole concept just seems wrong. How DARE you go in and improve on what God has wrought? If God wants you to be a B cup, it seems sinful and whatnot to go shoving silicone bags in there.
But it's a move to embody some kind of Christian male-defined vision of perfection, I think, for most pagan men I know, as well as the Jewish men, and a few delightful secular humanists, are loudly in favor of natural boobs, thank you very much.
Anyway, because that's clearly more inane than I'm ready for this morning, let's move onto something else. Actually, as the phone rings, let's not. Let's take a poll, instead:
Is making a sex tape conceivably the worst mistake you could make in your life? Or does it pale besides other mistakes you've already made, are making right now, or are going to make, probably between now and the end of the year?
(If your answer includes a link to where we can buy a copy of said sex tapes, well, I expect a reasonable kick back for use of my marketing platform *grin*) |
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| In Which My Day Becomes Interesting |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|11:02 am] |
So I'm working on creating a media outlet for my town; as my town rather fails at sharing political information. And I just got my first phone call from someone who feels the enterprise is tainted because I write gay and lesbian erotica.
It's been a long time since someone told me I was going to hell.
It gives me deep, profound, unmitigated joy that this conversation happens in context of me creating a news portal. This little conversation right here illustrates WHY we need a diversity of voices in our region. |
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| Twenty Years |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|10:00 am] |
And all of my kin it would have mattered to died before it happened. I am sad that you did not live to see this happen, Oma, Opa, Daddy.
No matter how long I live, I keep running into emotions that don't have names. Today brings us another one of them. |
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| Monday Morning |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|08:33 am] |
And I am so very ready for vacation. It's insane how ready for vacation I am, despite the fact that vacation involves travel and meeting new people and being the Responsible Adult on this trip. (Just to make many of my nearest and dearest laugh out loud, clutching their sides in the sheer humorous wash of such a thought, I'd like to point out that for this journey *I* am the most experienced traveler, who knows *the most* about going far from home and dealing with unfamiliar environments, etc. Yeah. Funny stuff, that.)
But I don't want to be a whine ass this morning, so I'm going to point out lots of positive things. The first is that I've been lucky to land in a great pile of wonderful reading lately. I'm shocked by how much I enjoyed the Brandon Sanderson book -- because, frankly, generally, if anything BESIDES the alphabet puts your work in proximity to Robert Jordan, I'm likely not going to be enamoured. And then Marshall Thornton...woot!
Of course, I spent a great deal of time pondering the appeal of Thornton's work. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I'm a huge fan of Joseph Hansen, and the parallels are clearly there. I made a bunch of notes and want to write a not-exactly-literary-criticism type of thing, for verily, I don't actually know all of the language I need to do that, but I do want to write about the two of them and what it means to me, as a reader, to engage with both writers and see what deeper stuff is bouncing around in my brain.
And it occurred to me that I could write this while I was on vacation! And I was all happy. And then it dawned on me that somehow I have become a person who plans to write awkward literary think pieces whilst on vacation, and that, let me tell you, will produce a little cognitive dissonance, particularly while watching promo clips of UFC.
So I stopped thinking about that, and flipped through the channels, and LO! There's another "The World Is ENDING DAMN IT!" special on. Did you know one of these is called "Apocolypse How"?
This both delighted and disturbed me, because what if we all die when Kurtz comes back down the river after forty-odd years of really bad days and takes us all out? In my head, we've got a really wrinkly guy in fatigues, an insane grin and too many guns. Yes, technically, this likely is not a funny image, but it made me laugh so hard I cried.
And apparently, my tears disturbed the cat, who POUNCED on me from across the room and proceeded to lick my face. Normally, this cat hates me (and she has reason, frankly. I keep tossing her love offerings of decapitated mice, squirrels, weasels, the occasional rabbit, and wayward Canadians back into the yard) so this was unexpected entirely.
Fun times.
Then I wrote some porny sniblets, and tried to figure out if the music I heard was coming from my children or my neighbor, decided it really didn't matter, as I was tired, and went to bed.
It's like that all the time around here, you know. Non-stop excitement. And sometimes, there's pie!
There wasn't any last night, mind you, but all of the ingredients were here, just taunting me with their potential. |
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| You heard it here first |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|01:12 pm] |
The gay mystery writer you should be paying attention to, if you're a fan of noir, taut prose?
His name is Marshall Thornton, and he's the latest name on the "Authors Cindy is going to relentlessly promote until you all read him and agree that he is, indeed, the bees-freaking-knees." It is no stretch at all to compare him to Joseph Hansen, and verily, we loves us some Joseph Hansen in these parts. |
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