(no subject)

[cleolinda]

Still working on paper; looks like it's going to be a long night. But as I always like to point out, there is a point when it's just over. By tomorrow, for better or worse, it's either done or it's not, and either way, it's over. This too shall pass, etc.

Haven't read my friends list in about two months now due to crazy workload, so I don't know what the Michael Jackson reaction at large is, but mine's... complicated. From what I'm reading, it seems like the prosecution screwed up in huge, huge ways (they didn't even prep Debbie Rowe? They just put her up there with no idea what she might say?) The prosecution also seems to have let several shining examples of bias slip onto the jury ("A family member of his worked for Jackson’s doctor; and he’s met Michael Jackson"; "Juror no. 7  is a  single college student, who is wheelchair-bound because of cerebral palsy. He visited Neverland Ranch when he was 6-years-old as part of a cerebral palsy group. He said Jackson has been mistreated by the media"). Seriously, I can't believe Tom Sneddon chased this guy for ten years like Ahab, to the point where Jackson actually wrote a song bagging on him, and he gets his chance and he and the prosecution blow it like this.

The jurors, from what I'm reading, also seem to be fixated on the mother and some instance of her snapping her fingers at the jury box (the context of this is unclear, but she seems to have been gesturing towards a Hispanic juror and saying, "This is how it is in our culture," and this massively offended the whole jury for some reason). The problem is that the mother is pretty clearly a huckster on her own, what with the attempt at shaking down J.C. Penney a while before, but the fact that she may have offered her kid up willingly doesn't change the fact that something might have actually happened to him.

I don't know. I have to say that I think the system worked, as we were discussing over at another board, because a defendant was not convicted on shoddy evidence. But even one of the jurors has very openly said, "I don't think he's necessarily an innocent man." I think something was going on at that ranch, even if it wasn't that particular time with that particular boy. But because the case has been so spectacularly botched, I don't think that Michael Jackson will ever be held accountable for any of it, or that we'll even know for sure what he did.

Meanwhile, I don't know if y'all are reading about the Natalee Holloway case, but when I was at Yahoo, her name was right under Jackson's on the Full Coverage links, so I guess it's safe to say that she's hit the mainstream American media as well. For those of you not keeping up with American news, Natalee is a girl from the Ham (actually, she's from Mountain Brook, the suburb next door to mine. Vaguely pretentious, but has good shopping) who went missing in Aruba. My mom and I are true crime buffs, so we've been doing the armchair detective thing for a week now--which is dangerous when you're not, you know, an actual detective with access to actual evidence; theories in the neighborhood have run anywhere from "sold into sex slavery" to "killed by the Dutch kid in his car." But now they've actually found some... clothing of hers, and they're draining a "sinkhole," according to the local news, in the middle of a dense mango grove. Things are not looking good. I have to say, though, that I heart her mother for the way she's handled the whole thing. She's been very diplomatic as Aruba moved from "doing everything we can for the family" to "doing everything we can, as long as that does not actually involve telling them the truth, because did we mention this kid's father is a prominent judge?," but she said, "I am not leaving this island without my daughter. I want her and I want her now." Rather than point fingers or accuse anyone of holding out, she simply put her foot down and demanded the one thing that lies could not deliver. If they want Beth Holloway Twitty to leave that island, they're gonna have to find Natalee, and if they want to find her, this Dutch kid and his two friends are gonna have to start fessing up.

And apparently they have--one of the security guards who was initially arrested said that he spoke to the oldest kid, and the kid basically said, "Sorry about all this, man--we know you had nothing to do with it. The story we told about dropping her off at her hotel and handing her over to a guard was a lie." The problem with this is that, under Dutch/Aruban law, apparently you're guilty until proven innocent, as it were, not the other way around (if I'm understanding this correctly), and you can't be arrested unless you've got some seriously compelling evidence against you. So when these two guards were arrested, we all thought, "Oh, man, they must have found some clothing or some blood or something." Well, guess what? My guess is that they were arrested on the basis of... this judge's son's story. In fact, the guards are saying that they're now going to sue for false imprisonment. I don't want to get all wild with the conspiracy theories, but I would not be surprised if it came out that this boy's father put some pressure on the locals to get the (white) boy and his Surinamese friends off and pin the whole thing on the two (black) Aruban guards. As the latest article itself says, "Holloway Twitty said if she did not see results soon, she might start to believe authorities were trying to protect the young men, who told police they took Holloway to a beach after an evening of dancing and drinking, hours before she disappeared." Or maybe the locals didn't need to be pressured; they were terrified that their one main industry, tourism, would be shot all to hell if they didn't come up with something quickly. But of course the problem with that is that lies don't find a body. So here we are.

The reason I really do think Aruba wasn't being honest about the whole thing is because I happened to see the first couple of minutes of a Geraldo thing on CNN where he was live! in Aruba! I couldn't watch the rest because of the smarm, but my mother did, and she said that Geraldo asked the parents what their reaction to the discovery of blood in the boy's car was, and the poor Twittys were like, "The who in the what now?" Seriously, the police had not told them about it. They had to hear it from Geraldo.

(I hate to sound flippant about the whole thing, but I do love the fact that Geraldo starts out his whole special with the declaration that "we are going to find out what really happened. TONIGHT." You know, like the accused are going to turn to each other and go, "OH SHIT, MAN, IT'S GERALDO! Well, damn, we've got to tell the truth now! Shit.")

In book related news--"OH SHIT!" made me think of the point I'm about to roll around to--all the edits and the acknowledgements and miscellaneous bits are in. I think page proofs are the next step. Things seem to be going well. My grandmother, by the way, approves of my pseudonym, which surprises me, but she thinks that "Cleolinda Jones" is "sassy." Of course, she's also my maternal grandmother, so it's not like she's particularly attached to my surname. However, my mother is starting to fret about the whole What Will Your Grandmother Say? issue that every single writer on God's green earth has to face at some point. "Did you say fuck a lot?" she asks. "Because that's really going to upset a lot of people. I mean, that's the one word that really gets a lot of people."

Well, not people who watch a lot of R-rated movies, including but not limited to the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino, Serious Independent Drama, and just about every "hard" action movie on the block these days, but... "Well, I mean... I don't remember exactly, but... well, I mean, less than I did in, say, some of the online stuff. I mean--some of these movies actually have actual cusswords! It's part of the material to be parodied!"

"But what if parents catch their kids reading--"

"IF THEIR KIDS ARE TOO YOUNG TO READ THE WORD 'FUCK,' THEY ARE TOO YOUNG TO HAVE SEEN THE MOVIES ANYWAY, SO IT DOESN'T MATTER."

"Well... yeah. Okay. But you didn't say anything bad in movies where the movies weren't rated R, did you?"

"Well... uh... I am sure that Gandalf would have said 'fuck' if it were commonly used in Middle-earth..."

Yeah, I got nothin'. I really did try to tone it down, if only because cusswords are kind of the easy way out when you're looking for a punchline and I wanted to bring my A game and all that, but... you know, sometimes it's just there. And I know that what y'all would say--and have said, the last time I wrote about this--is that I have to be true to myself and my writing and write the funniest parody possible, et cetera, et cetera, but--"It's easy for them to say," says my mother, "because their grandmother isn't the pope of the Baptist church." So there it is. Shit.


ETA: As far as the book release itself goes, I can't get into many details, mostly because I don't want to jinx anything. Suffice it to say that it will be available outside the U.S.--Orion is a British publisher, after all--and that I will make it as easy as possible for anyone who wants it to find it, trust me. Can't say more than that until I know more, however.

Comments

[kittenscurious.livejournal.com]

your grandmother is the pope of the baptist church? the baptist church has popes?

the book's being published under cleolinda? makes it handy to find....

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

issue that every single writer on God's green earth has to face at some point.

Ha, those orphans wot write have it good, heh?

sorry. hi!

and wtf the baptist church has popes? i am soooo ignorant in religion. and happy to be!

Here, have Reservoir Hobbits. They go with the Gandalf who says Fuck a lot. *nods*

You're alive!

[jazzminarino.livejournal.com]

Heh. I missed your writing. Good to see the heart's still a-pumping on your side. And personally I would not give up anything to Geraldo. I'd much rather be on Maury, bwahahah.

Also, I thought of you the other day. Two questions: When IS your book coming out? Or is it out, I didn't read the post, and I need to buy it when I get back to the States?

I saw the fact that in Blockbuster they have Harry Potter: PoA, and I thought of your recap...

... it seriously made me want to rent the movie, then reread the recap!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

the book's being published under cleolinda? makes it handy to find....

That's my theory entirely. : )

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

For the sequel, go for Sin City. There are no swearwords in it!

I can't wait to see it published. I mean, not that I think I'm more excited than you, but jeez. We're doing a little vicarious living here, I think. Just enough teasers to let us know you're doing something that's going to be hilarious, and everyone wants to know how it turned out.

[kudzita.livejournal.com]

The cursing thing is something that kinda bugs me with my family at times, not really because of religion in any sense (Catholics don't care about cussing, yo!) but just because I get the feeling that the elders don't really get the fact that cursing these days ain't as big a thang as it was back in the day. There's a whole different reaction. Like, if I'm watching a movie with my parents and I hear a joke that contains cussing, I'm laughing at the joke and they're still stuck on OMG HE SAID A NAUGHTY.

And dude, I bet Gandalf cursed like a sailor. JR just cleaned it up, poncy old Brit that he was. *nods seriously*

Re: You're alive!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I should add a PS to the entry about the book release details (or lack thereof), because I know you won't be the only one asking. The fact is that I have some idea, but nothing is firm yet, and what I tell you might turn out not to be true.

[froggimus_rex]

However, my mother is starting to fret about the whole What Will Your Grandmother Say? issue that every single writer on God's green earth has to face at some point.

Luckily my mum doesn't like the grandmother most likely to be offended if I ever manage to churn anything out, so I'm covered there.

"Well... uh... I am sure that Gandalf would have said 'fuck' if it were commonly used in Middle-earth..."

Hee!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heeee, Reservoir Hobbits.

[meredith-mae.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. What will your grandmother think? My mom never said that in those words. But my dad was always very mindful of what his mother would think. There were lots of things my parents though it would be better to just "not tell" grandma. My dad didn't even admit that he was voting for Republican candidates* until after she died, because his parents were die-hard Democrats. And he was 47 by the time his mother died. Oy. Ironically, my grandmother always tried to make it clear that whatever her children did with their lives was up to them. She was really accepting.

Re: Michael Jackson. I agree. Before this verdict I was ready to practically lynch him (if I were a violent sort of person that is). I do feel bad for him, though. He obviously was abused by his father and had a horrible childhood. Which is no excuse for molesting children, but I've always thought he was so touched in the head that he didn't realize what he was doing was inappropriate. And now... we'll never know the truth. It's kind of sad that when a man is found guilty, there's little doubt of his guilt. But, like with OJ, when a man is found innocent, there's all sorts of speculation about whether he was or wasn't.

*Disclaimer: I do not support my father's political stances. ;-)

[svz-insanity.livejournal.com]

O_O The thing is that cussing is everywhere nowadays! I even hear parents cussing like a effing sailor in front of their kids at public places, which somewhat disturbs me a little (since the kids are like, four, and they're parrots at that age!)... but it really it shouldn't be a big issue. They allow mild swearing in the HP movies (Ex: "damn", "bugger", "bloody hell", etc.) which might have been a "OMGTHEY'REPROFANITY!!11" in the past, but...

From a high school student who occasionally hangs out at playgrounds when forced to babysit siblings-- damn , a lot of elementary kids swear! It's really not a big deal anymore. :D (Although that might also be why I use profanity quite frequently.)

"IF THEIR KIDS ARE TOO YOUNG TO READ THE WORD 'FUCK,' THEY ARE TOO YOUNG TO HAVE SEEN THE MOVIES ANYWAY, SO IT DOESN'T MATTER."

Plus, if the kids are too young to read the word "fuck", they probably don't even know what it *means* or understand most of the parody to begin with, no? ^^

[sapphsmum.livejournal.com]

So happy to see ya back online and that things are finally getting wrapped up for you!

Looking forward to the book I'm sure it will be well worth the wait!

After tomorrow , you party right?

Christina

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

With me, the 'uhoh?' moment of movie-watching with my grandma didn't even involve cursing. My cousin and I were watching Bed of Roses with her (yes, sappy, but ah well) and afterwards we asked if she liked it or not, and she said, "It was nice, but I didn't like that the two of them slept together before they were married."

Which was a point I hadn't even considered. And it makes me a bit wary of grandma reading my novels. Not much swearing, whole *lot* of sleeping-together-sans-rings.

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

"It's easy for them to say," says my mother, "because their grandmother isn't the pope of the Baptist church." So there it is. Shit.

*snortchokedies*

That was brilliant, Cleo. Really brill. ;D

What is it with grandmothers and being head of the Baptist churches? It's not like you ever see any women deacons or pastors or anything. They're just always the leaders of the intercessory prayer groups and the sunday school classes...

*sigh* For an agnostic, I sure am nostalgic about my former religion. ;)

[sturmclan.livejournal.com]

Gotta say, I'm glad you're publishing under the Cleo name. Cuz every time I see the full name? I start singing. "Meeeee and....Mrs. Jooones, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones......we got a thaaaaaaaang goin' ooooooon..."

And no. I don't mean it literally.

[kaileron.livejournal.com]

The problem with this is that, under Dutch/Aruban law, apparently you're guilty until proven innocent, as it were, not the other way around (if I'm understanding this correctly),



Meh, not really... our "justice-system" is so screwed up they always make a big deal about the innocent ones, yet do nothing at the real criminals.

Wether this boy did it or not; nobody knows or can pressume to know or have any opinion about that. Guilty until proven innocent and I stick with that for now.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

In all honesty, your grandmother would have to be the most puritanical Baptist pope there ever was to not laugh at your writing. If you can smooth the situation over by talking to her about it and hashing out the issue in a constructive non-emotional way, that might be best. Failing that, everything blows over in time, especially when people love each other.

I'm with you on the Jackson Twelve, and you've heard my thoughts on the trial elsewhere. They pretty much accord with what you wrote above. (I'm not posting on the trial anymore because opinions are running too hot at the moment.)

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Dude, "fuck" makes everything ten times funnier. I am glad the book is as profane as is natural.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me, this is for you for later when you have a few moments. Quentin Tarantino's Republic Dogs (http://tinyurl.com/bt6k2)

Socrates: No, motherfucker, the Iliad, you've got the Iliad all wrong. Do you wanna know what the Iliad is about? Well, I'll tell you what the Iliad is about. It ain't about no bitches, that's for fucking sure.

Alcibiades: Sure it is. You're saying Helen of Troy ain't one hot bitch?

Socrates: I'm not saying Helen of Troy ain't a hot bitch, I'm saying the Iliad ain't about her. She ain't even in it.The Odyssey is about bitches, I'll grant you that. But I'll tell you what The Iliad is about. It's about big boats. Didn't you ever read the second Canto? Boats boats boats boats boats boats boats. Hence, the Trojan War.

Aristotle: You're full of shit.

[flower4444.livejournal.com]

lool. so is your book a parady? i really want to read it, but will probably not have actually seen any of the movies in.. the book.

[kudzita.livejournal.com]

That. Is the funniest thing EVER. EVER EVER EVER.

'Scuse me, have to go crack up now.

[flower4444.livejournal.com]

hah. i love that.

[mysticowl.livejournal.com]

You've heard all the "I can't wait for this book" you can stand, I'm sure, so I'm just going to ask, can we mail our copies in to you to get autographed? And can those of us who LJ get a copy that comes with a "Original M15M Fan!" certificate? ;)

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Just to make it clear: I didn't write that, I just love it to pieces.

[erinlin.livejournal.com]

OOoooooo, can we? Can we, Auntie Cleo? Can we can we can we? *jumps up and down like an exited puppy*