Cleolinda everywhere

This is fun.

This is entertainment.

This is not brain surgery.

Nobody dies.

life_on_queen

GOD! WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE! There's a hole in the pool, there's a hole in the roof, the carpet needs another steaming (which we do ourselves) and the dogs need bathing again (which we don't, because they need medicated baths and gland-expressing and ear squeegeeing), AND money is tight. You know how people get onto you about using the word "literally" in a non-literal manner? Well, we are literally finding some new problem every time we turn around. "We fixed the shower--but the dogs need--and the pool--and the roof--AUGH!"

For real. Mom and I were discussing the pool as we went upstairs to dig out her box of vintage Nancy Drews--the original books, all of them, preserved in amber since her childhood--when we discovered a puddle on top of them. Fortunately, the books were dry and unharmed, but this caused much dismay and poking in the rafters and the spot diagnosis that the storm last night (and, very likely, previous storms as well) had damaged the roof. As evidenced by... the shingles in the yard. Oh. Those. Duh. So I'm sitting here waiting for the contractor to get here so I can sign his release and he can climb on the roof and, knowing our luck, probably fall off and break a tree or something. And while I'm waiting for him, the pest control guy comes. (This is what I do, you know. This whole "writing at home, taking a semester off" thing? Whether I'm in class or not, I'm kind of the unofficial housekeeper. I am the answerer of doors and the greeter of handyguys and the walker of dogs and the wiper of pee. Also the fetcher of mail, the mopper of floors, the raker of carpets, and Meko's Seeing-Eye Girl. And me and my toiletbowl hands need a change of scenery, quite honestly.)

And what I wanted the Nancy Drew books for was to do some old-school reading-up for the YA detective series I'm hoping to plot out, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get much of that done this afternoon.

Horoscope of Deadly Accuracy: You need some private time alone with yourself. You need it, and you're going to have it. Be prepared to explain it to your loved ones, and rest assured that even if they're not happy, they'll get over it.

The Lovely Emily and I went to see Goblet of Fire again on a nerdtastic, last-minute whim last night, and if you're asking yourself, "What's wrong with that?," this is because you are unaware that tornado warnings had swept the area only a couple of hours before. We were in danger of very little death by the time we went, though, and for a while it looked like we would actually have the theater entirely to ourselves, but then three girls, a mixed group, two guys, and one loner in the whiplash section rolled in. It was my third time seeing it, and I have to say, my funny started to wake up this time. It's still going to be a hard slog through a parody, though, and it still won't be put online (I don't think).

I only have two more classes, a paper, and an exam, though. The class on Monday will be a party, and we are required to bring only foods that appeared in the books we read (Typee, Venus in Boston/City Crimes, The House of the Seven Gables, The Morgesons, The Lamplighter, Pierre), which is going to be interesting. Almost everything in Typee, being set on Polynesian islands (I think? They're islands, I know that), is right out, and I really don't have time to manage Essence de Valet by Monday. I already brought soft gingerbread cookies for Seven Gables, but I think there's at least one tea party in The Morgesons that involves waffles and pound cake, so surely we can pull something out of that.

Anyway, speaking of writing up there, I have realized something, and it is probably something I realize over again every few months and then forget and have to realize again, which is this: I can't write unless I'm writing like no one is looking. It's what the Amazing McRachel would call the curse of "Look at me! Don't look at me!!" I want people to read my stuff, and I want them to enjoy it. But at the same time, I can't be thinking about that when I'm actually in the course of writing, because I sit there with my fingers poised over the keys and a sentence hovering in my brain, all the while thinking, "That's not good. They're not going to like that. It's okay, but it's meh. They're not going to laugh at that. They're going to say it's 'nice!,' but they mean that it's not as good as what I've written before. I have to live up to all that now. I can't think of anything as good as that. Oh God, I'm going to go lie down now."

And it's not even like that's all that terrible a mindset--it's just that it has a certain time and place, and that time is after you've already got a working draft in front of you. That is the moment when you circle things that aren't up to par, you mentally note that this joke is too obvious or that joke is too obscure, that you spent too much time here and not enough there. And if you write fiction, switch out "joke" for "plot twist," or "character development," or whatever element you're looking at. It's all the same process. It's just that you have to switch your internal editor off when the page is blank, and I know this, I've been preaching this for years, and somehow I've fallen into this trap all over again. Hell, I used to write diagonally across printer paper in red ink if that's what it took to convince myself that what I was writing "didn't count," and that no one was looking or keeping score, as it were. And it's particularly stupid of me to have fallen into this again, considering that this is exactly what paralyzed me while I was writing the book (with an extra dash of "Oh, shit, they're paying for it this time, too!"), but there you are.

(I would ramble on about it some more, but I've exhausted the day's ration of italics.)

In other news, it is hot and stuffy in my house and I cannot funny or paper, but it's too cold outside to justify turning on the AC. So apparently I'm going to be outside writing on the front step if it doesn't cool down soon.

(By the way... turns out my bibliography isn't due until tomorrow. The bad news is that a five-page mini-version of the paper is also due tomorrow. Sigh.)


corkdorkdan: "Target Stands by Contraceptive Policy: Target allows pharmacists to choose not to fill requests for emergency contraception, also known as Plan B, if it is against their religious beliefs. I've posted something about it on my own journal, along with other Target issues (no "Christmas" in their ads, no Salvation Army at their doors) here." See, I understand the Christmas thing--as a business, you're trying not to offend customers of other faiths, particularly since there's a shitload of winter holidays. Why not be inclusive and use the word holiday or season instead of Christmas? What I don't get is the seemingly contradictory policy to allow pharmacists to bring their religious beliefs into the marketplace. I mean, I don't agree with it anyway, but I particularly don't understand the juxtaposition here.

Texas Woman Mauled to Death by Six Dogs.

Teen With Peanut Allergy Dies After Kiss.

Some New Orleans Students Happy Elsewhere.

RIP Papa Berenstain.

mouseykins1: "May I reccommend something v. funny for HP fans? It's the official disgruntled-against-a-character form and you can....do something with it. I dunno, I just thought it was pretty funny."

"Man, I wish they would stop calling me Harry." "Hey, Frodo!"

'Lost' world created by diverse writing staff. There may be spoilers; I haven't read it yet.

There is only one Narnia collectible I want, and it is this.

The Church of Apathetic Agnosticism: "We don't know and we don't care." 

Courtesy telesilla: Victorian pr0n!

Earring of the Month Club! 

saadiira: "I know that you like to post goodies from the news. Have you done the FORBES top 200 charities yet?  It gives all kinds of interesting breakdowns on how and where they are spending."

torificus: "I keep meaning to mention to you, every time I see the links on your posts: an extension for Firefox (possibly other Mozilla things, I don't know. I'm fun and illiterate that way ;)) that pops up a reminder to click to The Hunger Site, The Breast Cancer Site, the Literacy Site, and a few others every day. :)"

Well, I was feeling better until Sister Girl got her bitch on. Although there is something inherently funny about hearing someone scream, "THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING KIND OF MIDOL I WANTED!" from the room next door.

Rewind. I didn't even think about this, because I'm a doof, but this is the first class I've taken after four months of being off--just long enough to get all wiggy about it. I mean, I know we all fear the unknown, but I have an almost pathological fear of new situations. It's seriously worse than it has any right to be, and it's ridiculous. So here I am: I'm not even sure which building the class is in, where the room in that building is, who the professor is (the name is unfamiliar), or who's going to be in the class. Lest you think I'm overstating the case, I actually had one first day of class blow up in my face due to a mix-up and ended up kicked out of it. (Granted, I'm pretty tight with the professor now and everything's been smoothed over, no problems, etc., but at the time it was fairly disheartening.)

So I get to the Educational Building. Never been in it before (well, more on that later). It looks weirdly familiar and yet not, and there's a crush of people going both ways and it's hard to get through and the hall wraps around and WHERE IS 128 OMG OMG OMG? So eventually I find it, and guess who I see through the little window in the door? Gay Boyfriend Clifton! Yay! So it turns out to be a very small class mostly full of people I know, and one girl who's completely new but struck up a conversation with me outside the door, so I sort of feel like I know her. The professor is awesome and chatty and goes through a large swath of English history, starting with the Tudors (which as you know I am all up in) and through to Cromwell, because Milton was Cromwell's Latin secretary/PR guy/apologist/whatever. We have the Riverside Milton and, humorously, the Companion to Milton, like a little seeing-eye dog beside it. And the class is only a little over an hour long, and none of the written work is due until October, which as you know is Deadline Day (10/1) for me, so that's good. In fact, the first day of class is usually the only day I really worry about. I don't know why--I mean, I worry about presentations and final papers, but I never really fear for my grade, because--well, I'm capable of doing the work, so there it is. In short: It was awesome.

However, cleolinda.blogspot.com won't work, and this pisses me off. There's an awesome post about why I think War of the Worlds, Spielberg's self-proclaimed attempt to create the biggest-budgeted, biggest movie of all time, is going to suck, and Blogger won't post it. Fnarr. (I mean, War of the Worlds? WHY? Wasn't the selling point of the original radio play adaptation that no one knew what was going on? Like, you could totally do this on TV, although I think it would be cruel and ill-advised, but you could do it.) So basically, minus the novelty element, the element of giving random members of the populace fatal heart attacks, you're left with... Independence Day. WHY?

Also, I wanted to post something about how Ain't It Cool News has a thing up about the new Jurassic Park 4 script being cracked out. John Sayles wrote it and it is craaaaacked ouuuuut. Like, so cracked out that I would actually go and see it. Cracked. Out.

(Of course, the way there's this huge build-up in the article about its crackitude, I was fully expecting a lot more weirdness than was actually delivered. Seriously, don't ever leave me to imagine the worst in any situation, because I'm really, really good at it. I had this vision of, like, Jurassic Park as the bastard hatespawn of David Lynch and Philip K. Dick. Maybe some George Lucas thrown in for extra crack. We go back to Jurassic Park! But it's on another planet! Where Laura Dern plays a blonde and a brunette! And the dinosaurs take over and pit midgets against men in giant arenas! One of them is the Jarjarbinksasaur! We must stop them from reaching Earth! BUT WE WERE ON EARTH ALL ALONG! Silencio.)

But I can't post, because Blogspot hates me. Thanks.

Oh, I totally forgot to follow up on that bit about the Educational Building seeming weirdly familiar. I didn't realize it until my mother reminded me, but that's the building I used to go ever year for the Young Authors conference. And they mean very young--I'd say kindergarten through maybe fourth or fifth grade? And while the building has super-glossy modern vending machines as you come in, something about the lowness and the dimness and the darkness of the carpet reminded me of something, and the railing on the right--it's because I remembered it from all that time ago. In fact, I think the room back there that I have Milton in may have been one of the rooms we used all that time ago. (The first story I ever took, in first grade, was about earthworms. Oh, and we'd made little books bound with cardboard and contact paper, and mine was about the little gremlin-esque creatures I was convinced lived in our giant forsythia. Even then I was hitting the crack, apparently.)