I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. I write fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and nonfiction. For more than 20 years I edited and published an anthropomorphic sci-fi/space opera literary fanzine. I attend and work on the staff for several anthropormorphics, anime, and science fiction conventions. I live near Seattle with my wonderful husband, still completely amazed that he puts up with me at all.
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Everything’s better when Willy Wonka asks it.Are you old enough to remember when the Washington Post was on Richard Nixon’s enemies list? Those days are certainly over.
So, Richard Cohen wrote an editorial at the Washington Post trying to prove that the Republican party isn’t racist. And in the course of that op-ed piece, he said:
People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.
This caused an uproar. The Post‘s editorial board has gotten defensive. Cohen has since claimed that he wasn’t describing his own feelings, but the feelings of some people.
Religion excuses everything (http://brucegarrett.com)So, the Senate passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but everyone is certain that the Republican leadership in the House won’t let it come up for a vote.
And, actually, that’s a good thing. Because the Senate added more religious exemptions to this version of ENDA than it has had for the nineteen years it has been kicking around in the Congress. The religious exemptions it had were different than the religious exemptions granted to any other federal legislation, and they were crazy then. The additional ones essentially gut the law…
We’re in the middle of football season, so I am watching games each week. I’ve written before about the complicated relationship I have with football. This week it was impossible to watch the games without having those issues front and center.
Two Miami Dolphins players have been in the news. Jonathan Martin has left the team, is getting treatment for stress-related illness, and is entering counseling. After which Richie Incognito has been suspended for allegedly harassing and bullying Martin to a level that goes beyond what is expected. Each of them has ended up with a lawyer and who knows where this will end. The voice mail messages and texts that Incognito left for Martin which have been seen and leaked do not paint a pretty picture…
Freedom to marry doesn’t hurt anyone.So, the Hawaii legislature has passed marriage equality, setting the Aloha state to be the 16th that will allow all citizens, gay and straight, say “I do” to love and commitment.
It has been an extraordinary year. Think about it, just 18 months ago, the citizens of North Carolina, a state that already had a law banning marriage between same-sex couple, approved an amendment to their state constitution prohibiting the state from performing or recognizing either same-sex marriages or civil unions. Then, 12 months ago, on election night, the voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington state all approved measures in favor of same-sex marriage (and the voters of Minnesota rejected an attempt to amend their constitution to prevent the marriages). That brought the number of states recognizing marriage equality to ten. And it was as if the floodgates had opened…
The Alternate NaNoWriMo, as proposed by Cafe Aphra (http://cafeaphrapilot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-alternative-nanowrimo.html)Yesterday was day six of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). On Wednesday I only wrote 1258 words of new content on my novel in progress. I lost a bit more time than usual researching some stuff for the book, as well as researching something because of a comment from a friend about another blog post. My total word count at the end of day six is 9789.
This isn’t my first year to do something NaNoWriMo-related, but it is the first year that I’ve actually set up an account at the site, and the first year that the alternative I’ve crafted for myself is so close to the spirit of NaNoWriMo.
I’m writing every day on one novel.
I have a daily word count target I’m aiming for.
I have the long-term goal of finishing the novel at the end of the month.
The only thing I’m doing that breaks the “rules” is that I didn’t start a new book from scratch on November 1.
Besides having several friends participating with whom I am checking periodically, this year I have recruited my mom to give it a try. She aspired to be a writer before I was born, and had a particularly traumatic experience when her new mother-in-law found mom’s unfinished first person romance novel and accused mom of having an affair. My paternal grandmother told anyone and everyone she had proof mom was having an affair, and she even coerced my dad into meeting with a divorce lawyer, among other things.
I only learned about that particular incident recently. Growing up, I knew my mom loved books, and she was quite supportive of my early interest in both reading and writing.
Anyway, for some years now I’ve been trying to encourage her to write, with only moderate success. Until I told her about NaNoWriMo. “Can anyone do it?” As soon as she said that, I knew she was hooked.
The first two days she did everything long hand. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve showed her how to use the word processor program on her Mac. For some reason it has just never sunk in that you can do something other than write a short note in those things.
So I walked her through it. I thought, given how she’s always talking about how much she likes having a laptop and how portable it is, that she’d want to write on it. Turns out that what seems to work best for her is typing on her iPhone. Yep, she now has not one but two Word Processors on her iPhone. I showed her how to set up the Dropbox synching with that, so she can work on the stories easily on either her computer or her iPhone.
And she’s writing away and so far having a ball.
The only pep talk I’ve had to give her was when she found herself worrying about some scenes she thought that maybe she should go back and edit. But she already knows that she has a tendency to get caught in unending revision loops on a single scene, so she knew it was a bad idea. I suggested that when the voice in her head started worrying about mistakes that needed fixing, that she just tell the voice that December is for revising.
I’ve always loved this D.C. Simpson cartoon.Continuing from yesterday, there are some really ridiculous arguments people assert against anti-discrimination laws. The ones that annoy me the most are those put forward by people who claim that they don’t believe in discrimination, and support fair and equal treatment for everyone, it’s just that…
“Quit squirming!”So the U.S. Senate appears on the brink of passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would bar businesses from taking into consideration sexual orientation when making decisions of who to hire, who to fire, and who to promote. And all the usual arguments are being trotted out as the usual suspects go into a frenzy. I’m not going to pick the overt haters’ arguments apart here, but what I really get tired of are the people who insist that they aren’t in favor of discriminating against anyone, for goodness sake. And then they say, “However…”
One wonders how I hit 105 wpm with those paws.Word count at the end of the third day: 5848. Average per day is not high enough to hit 50,000 by the end of the month, but my word count per day is ramping up. And so far I’ve exceeded my minimal goal each day.
Since I’m doing The Alternate NaNoWriMo this month, my blog posts are either going to be shorter and less meaty, or simply less frequent.
I will try to write about something else at least occasionally, since I know that simply reporting my word count and occasionally commenting on what I’m working on is probably not going to be that interesting.
So far (and I realize it’s only been three days), I’ve been finding it works better than my previous attempts to do an alternative version of the exercise. Previously I didn’t set a daily word minimum, so while I did try to keep track of how many words I wrote, I wasn’t focused on that. It was also a little difficult since I had given myself an open-ended assignment to finish “some stories that have been stalled.” Since I was jumping back and forth between tales, figuring out the word count was a little tricky (not impossible, just a multistep tedious process).
It also gave me a great way to procrastinate by doing something I could rationalize as “productive.” If I wasn’t making progress on one story, I could just open one of the other files, and waste time by re-reading what was there in order to orient myself. Some nights I opened and re-read a half dozen or more unfinished tales and got no writing done at all.
Limiting myself to this book in progress, and not any of the many short stories, et al, hanging out there (and not allowing myself to count anything I write in them toward my total) seems, so far, to be doing a good job of keeping me focused.
It wasn’t a complicated costume.For many years my Halloween costume has been driven by a party hosted by some friends of ours who have been hosting a Halloween party every year for more than 20 years.
It began way back when a sub-group of the Elfquest/sci fi fan groups we were associated with went to the Evergreen State College the weekend before Halloween to celebrate K’s birthday. Our friend, Mark, bought a piñata shaped like a Pokémon. I think more time was spent trying to figure out how to hang it from the window of the dorm/apartment and a nearby tree than anything else at the party. Though I also recall that the piñata was really difficult to break.
Anyway, K, D, and Auntie have been hosting Halloween parties ever since. The parties always have a theme, and one of the activities at the party is a piñata that matches the theme. There was a skull representing Horatio at the Shakespeare party, for instance, and a moon with little stars floating around it for one of the space themed parties.
There was never any requirement that one wear a costume that matched the theme of the party, but for those of us who are procrastinators and indecisive, having the theme could give you some ideas. The year the theme was “Antarctica” Michael and I showed up in shorts, Hawaiian shirts, leis, and sunglasses. We had a little act we did where we fumbled with a map of the Hawaiian islands. Our costume was “Lost Tourists.” I don’t remember what the theme was that had me dress as the Next Doctor and Michael dressed as his companion, a 1950s hard-boiled detective.
Anyway, having the deadline of our friends’ party pushed us to make a decision, and having the theme gave us something to either conform with, make a joke of, or just ignore.
Then, because of a series of events which culminated in a major appliance failure at their house and has kicked off a long-delayed kitchen remodel, they didn’t host a party this year. Which is understandable, but also a teensy bit of a downer.
So I thought I wasn’t going to be doing a costume this year.
Then one day at work I got an e-mail with the subject line “Top Secret!”
I don’t want to go into all the background, but during the last year among the changes and shakeups have been that the person who had been the VP of Sales for our group has been promoted to the head of our business unit. In some ways it was a very big change, as the guy who had been leading the unit had been in that position for well more than 10 years, and the company (like a lot of American corporations) didn’t have very many female executives. She’s not entirely conventional. She almost always wears black, for instance, and among her definitions of office attire (and not on casual days), is Levi jeans.
Anyway, it had occurred to someone that all of us could get long blonde wigs, and just show up wearing all black and with the wig. Then we could surprise her by coming into her office, all of us dressed as her. We even had “masks” that consisted of a printout of a photo of her that we could hold in front of our faces.
It wasn’t a very complicated costume, and it wasn’t something that anyone outside the company would recognize without an explanation, but it was fun, and silly, and what else is Halloween for?
Font Folly 