Silver- and Small-screen Follies.

Okay, now, I'm not very knowledgeable in marketing or in advertising. But every once in a while, I come across a movie tagline that is just so creepy and wrong that it's a wonder that those people who do study marketing and advertising didn't catch it before I did.

There's this new movie coming out in Britain, called Stormbreaker. It's starring many famous British gents, namely Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, and Robbie Coltrane, and it's about a 14-year-old boy who moonlights as a spy. Sounds a little like Agent Cody Banks, right? Now, the idea of a teenage spy is not entirely unappealing, and the guy who plays the, er, Stormbreaker, Alex Rider (Alex Pettyfer) is very, very pretty.

But get the tagline: You're Never Too Young To Die. What the hell? Could somebody please tell me how this tagline could be anything but disturbing and depressing? I mean, the whole point of spy and criminal-heist movies is that we suspend our disbelief. The reasons these movies are fun, and not horrifying, is because we, as the audience, convince ourselves that no matter how much trouble they get in, the main characters will come out okay.

That's why, at the prospect of a 14-year-old spy, I'm more intrigued then curious as to why this boy's parents would allow him to be a spy in the first place. I'm sure if Alex Rider's parents saw the tagline, You're Never Too Young To Die, they'd yank him right out of spy-school, or whatever, and ground him for the rest of his life.

There's no way in hell that a 14-year-old would be a spy, so don't trying grounding the audience in reality with creepy taglines like that. Please.

In better news, I heard it on the grapevine that there's a pilot in production for NBC called Heroes, which is supposed to be about normal, average people who discover they have superpowers (and not just the basic ones like speed and strength and X-ray vision and all that crap). Oh yeah, and it also stars the guy who provides the sole reason I tolerate the existence of Gilmore Girls, Milo Ventimiglia! Fantastic! I'm so watching it!

If, of course, the pilot is accepted - which I really hope it is, because it'll kick all kinds of ass!

Madam Librarian...

Okay, you can't make fun of librarians.

You just can't. Honestly, you may think that all you need is enough hand-eye coordination to type your own name and put books back on the shelf, but it's so much more than that.

You see, I want to be a novelist. Now, while I may want to be a novelist for a career, I have to be realistic and admit that it's probably going to take a very long time for me to be able to make a living writing full-time, so I have to find a job that I love that will pay the bills while I'm cranking out the next Hugo winner on my laptop.

Mum suggested Libary and Information Sciences. My first thought was Cool! I get to work around books, and type on computers and put books back on the shelf! What a simple, easy job.

Nooooo. No no no no.

Today I went to the main office of my University's School of Library and Information Sciences. It's a tiny school, as schools go. Here's where, after a long conversation with the woman at the SLIS office, I got a giant kick in the expectations department.

Despite their tinyness (it's only one floor on the libary), it is the only school of its kind in the province. They get 200 applicants a year, and can only accept 45 students. That means, according to the helpful woman (I should have asked for her name, but I forgot and I didn't), that I need a killer GPA of at the very least, 3.3. My GPA is currently 3.2, which is fairly decent, but not enough to get into SLIS even on a slim year. Sometimes, they even get 4.0s and 3.8s. This means, ladies and gentlemen, that even if I manage a 3.3 by fourth year, if some 4.0 applies at the 11th hour, I could get bumped off.

I'm only in my second year, though, and the SLIS only looks at the GPA of my final two years, so I still have a few months to get my act together.

Still, I have quite an act to get together. I'm extremely, extremely lazy. The reason I have a GPA of 3.2 is because I'm pretty much brilliant. Just imagine if I applied myself! But applying myself means giving up reading my fantasy novels and writing my fantasy stories and watching my movies and television....*sigh*.... I don't know why, but I've always felt like I have to work very hard just to work very hard. I never feel like I'm challenging myself, I always feel like I'm doing just enough to pass, so that I can go back to reading and writing and watching television. And I never know how to do more than enough to pass - I have a remarkable lack of imagination in that particular area.

Still, I could always try - I have three papers coming up at the end of the month, and if I ace them I can raise my GPA, and my stellar marks in Japanese should keep my grade point average afloat. The thing is, I'm pretty bad at reading people, socially. This means I can be wretched at reading my professors and finding out what they expect from me in an essay. In my two years here, I've never gotten an A on an essay. Never. Not even an A-. Always a B+ at the very most. I'm supposed to be a writer, why can't I write a good essay? It has nothing to do with style, it's all the tiny details - I don't focus enough, or I'm focusing too narrowly, but "I always have good ideas". Argh.

Back to SLIS - the woman also warned me that it is a huge workload - they jam all the information and courses they possibly can down their students' throats in a two-year period.

Now, why would I want to enter a school that needs a inhuman GPA and hands out a monstrous courseload? Oh, yeah, they have a 90% employment rate for their graduates.

Today's Going to Be a Good Day

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the start of lent. I didn't really make any Lenten promises other than not buy junk food, so most of the promises I did end up making were made on the spot, on Wednesday, and I'm going to try very hard to make them stick. The following things to be done for lent:

1. No buying junk food: I thought this was a good thing to do instead of "no eating junkfood" - this means during birthdays and celebrations when junk food is offered, I can still be gracious and accept goodies.

2. No more long showers: My hair is really, really short - it takes ten seconds to get all wet, five seconds to lather up, and another ten seconds to rinse off. There is really no unselfish reason why, for the last year or so, my showers have tended to be ten to fifteen minutes long.

3. No more swearing: Unless I'm quoting someone, and even that in moderation. I decided that on Ash Wednesday when I quoted a character from The 40-Year-Old Virgin telling someone to, um, copulate with their mother, and the people around me all reacted in embarassed surprise. Hmmm....

4. Excercise everyday: Except for Tuesdays (the cleaning lady comes early) and Sundays.

5. Brush my teeth everyday: I know, like, what am I, ten? I still hate brushing my teeth - I'm so tired when I get to bed, that I just don't wanna bother, or floss, but I really should, because I hate going to dentist and having my gums torn apart by their pointy metal things.

6. Keep my room clean (and make my bed): This is primarily because I got a gorgeous new pink patchwork quilt, and the bed just looks nicer when it's made up all straight and perfect, and if the rest of the room's untidy it just looks out of place. Plus, while reading Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, one of her characters relates how she likes cleaning her room and making her bed because when she returns to it after a long day she can pretend a maid's made it up for her. I keep that image in mind when I do it.

But anyway, now having a clean room and starting a routine where everything is in place, things go so much easier. I like having a routine, a schedule, and managing to create and adhere to a schedule wear things go smoothly and on time is a very cheerful way to start my day. Before, I was always rushing out to catch the bus at the last minute, without a hat and with my (slightly longer at the time) hair still wet from the shower, so that it froze to my head like a stiff little helmet. Unpleasant.

Anyhoo, today, I'm expecting three good things: first, SEE Magazine is going to publish my interview with William Jans, so I can send them my very first freelance invoice for $40. Second, The Gateway will be publishing their "Ignored by the Oscar" nominations, and hopefully they've included the small piece I did on how Judd Apatow and Steve Carell, and their script for The 40-Year-Old Virgin should have been nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Third, two days ago, Amazon.ca let me know that my order has been shipped, so I should be receiving a big box full of Kate Elliot novels in the mail today.

Hopefully. Also, there's a new The Office and My Name is Earl and CSI on tonight. I've stopped watching TV on certain nights as of late (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, actually), so Thursday is the big TV night for me.

Damn! Damn! Double Damn!

Hey there folks, got back my Shakespearean English Essay: a B-!

Turns out that my professor is a stickler, an extremely detail-oriented stickler, for the MLA format - as in, she deducts points for past tense, typos, and extra added line spaces, all of this stuff that none of my other English Professors saw fit to call me on. I have the MLA guide - I refer to it with my citations, mostly. Now I'm going to have to read the whole fuckin' thing from cover to cover so that Ms. Stickler can get her jollies reading my stuff. I like to imagine that wherever she lives is spotlessly clean and bare and boring.

That's probably not true, and probably very cliched. It'd be more funny if she had an untidy apartment while she was marking off points for every tiny missed detail in my essay. Did she even notice the actual content of my essay? Yes, she did, she thought I made a (relatively) good argument. But that still got me a B-. Talking to her afterwards, she said all of this I should have known from 1st year English.

1) I did not take first-year English, I skipped it due to an aced AP exam in High SChool.

2) My second- and third-year English professors had NO qualms whatsoever about where I Italicized and Bolded my fonts in my other essays.

So now I have some more reading to do, but not fun reading, apparently.

In other news, I am now official bored of Patrick Dempsey movies. Not with Patrick Dempsey, mind you, just his films. I watched Happy Together (where Dempsey finds himself [confoundingly] attracted to his very female, empty-headed, "free-spirited", college whore roommate who's afraid of commitment - Brad Pitt got mentioned very clearly in the beginning credits even though he was in two scenes!) and Some Girls (where my bilingual education came in handy when Dempsey goes to Quebec to see his girlfriend [Jennifer Connelly] - very boring, not nearly the quirky guy-sleeps-with-three-Canadian-sisters dramedy the trailer suggested it was). Both movies were tedious, although Dempsey went full frontal for Some Girls - which was, to tell you the truth, rather unpleasant to my sheltered Catholic girl sensibilities.

To be perfectly honest, the only movies of his that I wasn't bored by was Can't Buy Me Love, Scream 3, and Sweet Home Alabama. But now he's on every week on Grey's Anatomy, and he's very very good in that, and the TV show is very very good every week. So that's a million times better.

And, if you've been paying close attention, I've had to change my "What I'm Reading" segment three times! I've read a lot over Reading Week, which is appropriate. But now I have to go and read my MLA handbook, which will be very, very boring.

It's Writing Time!

Yup, I finished reading Mystic Empire by Tracy and Laura Hickman. Turns the Bronze Canticles wasn't a trilogy. Anyhoo, you're not to read the review here - I got it as an advance copy (doesn't even come out until April) so you're going to have to wait your turn and read it at The Green Man Review.

In other writing news, I've been sought out and given an assignment by the editor of one of my city's weekly magazines, SEE Weekly. It's an interview, something I'm usually pretty iffy about doing, and it's kinda last minute, but it's a legitimate publication that loves hiring young people (and especially Gateway alumni), and also, did I mention? They pay. As in, real money. So hurrah for me - a little extra spending money - too bad I already spent it, ordering Storyteller: 27 Years of the Clarion Workshop and the three final books of Kate Elliot's Crown of Stars series. Heh heh heh.

So anyway, the assignment's really flattering, mostly because I didn't go looking to be working for SEE, they looked me up and liked what I wrote and so came and asked me. So, lots of writing. And still lots of reading - but it's very encouraging to see the pictures up on the sidebar.

Also, have you been to the Official Spider-Man Movie Website? They're giving Spidey a BLACK COSTUME for the third movie! This can mean only ONE thing - VENOM! Topher Grace is Venom! Whoohoo!

Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink....

I think I've made it very clear (through my posts and the style of my blog) exactly what my favourite colour is.
I like it very much.
So there.
*sticks out tongue*

I gots pictures now!

Like how I edited my sidebar? Now you can see the covers of the books I'm reading, or going to be reading. Excellent! It makes my site look so classy.

Anyhoo, on more news, I had a great day yesterday. Honestly, a great week. I've been spending most of it with my dear Mum, shopping for summer-job-interview clothes and sheets.

Usually shopping with Mum doesn't end well. Mum will make a well-meaning comment and I'll get defensive and insecure and we usually end up fighting. Well, this time it was just another lucky lucky shopping day because it turned out perfectly. We found a perfect, well-fitting blue-pinstriped suit for me at the second store we looked at, and it was on sale to boot. We bought that, a nice shirt, and pair of black dress pants. In the third shoe store we looked at, I found a pair of good black shoes that fit! (Turns out I have freakishly slender heels as well as freakishly tiny veins - which is why when I tried to give blood last Friday they missed the vein and didn't get enough blood out to do anybody any good) Plus, the shoes were also on sale.

I'm not sure if it was the new clothes that did it, but I aced the Test for Minimum Requirements I had to take to apply for my dream-job - a clerical Staff-Support job reserved for Post-Secondary students. It's a job in a typing pool for the city, which means if I get it this year, I'll be guaranteed it the next year, and the next, and the next, so I won't have to worry about summer jobs for University again (and this also means not having to settle for the movie theatre job).

The minimum requirements for the job were as follows:

I had to get 60% overal on the Word 2002 Knowledge Test. (I got 76%)
I had to manage 40 words per minute with 98% accuracy on the Typing Test. (I got 70 words per minute, 100% accuracy)
I had to manage 8000 keys per hour with 98% accuracy on the Data Entry Test (I typed 9200 keys per hour with 99% accuracy).

And on top of all that, I got asked to an interview! I really, really, really, really hope I get this job (really, really). It just seems so perfect, that any other summer job looks wretched by comparison. But I know I can't just give up and not take interviews with other jobs, even though I desperately want to. But I can't have another debacle the way I did last year, where I was let go from my job at the 11th hour and had to take up with a movie theatre to sling popcorn for three months. It was a great job (and had free movies), but it didn't pay near enough.

Moving on with the shopping - shopping for new sheets was harder, but we managed it without a fight and were able to have some quality time on the way. After THREE DAYS of looking through different stores for the best duvet cover/comforter/quilt (my room is painted pink, and the colours-du-jour seemed to be gold, beige, blue, brown, and green), we finally got the most beautiful pink patchwork quilt and green and blue sets of sheets. It looks fantasic - my room looks like the classiest bed-and-breakfast ever.

I have no problem cleaning up after myself and pretending a maid did it and that I'm living in a classy bed-and-breakfast.

Writing and Reading for Fun Again!

Today is the first official day of Reading Week. It's a ridiculous name - mostly because the majority of midterms (and the studying for said midterms) occur before this week. And also, because I'm done all of the reading I have to do for school and have at last turned to the gigantic pile of books I have to review for Green Man.

I also finished another short story, for my Creative Writing class. This one has to be about 2500 words, and my first draft of it has come to 2300. Pretty close, if you ask me. It's a pretty cool concept - I rely very heavily on the sense of smell more than any other sense in this story (hence the title: "Whiff") and (I like to think) it's dark and suspenseful and creepy without being too obvious and completely giving it away.

I think I'm going to put it in front of my online Writer's Group before I bring it before my in-person Writer's group, primarily because the online one caters to sci-fi and fantasy whereas it's anything-goes for my Creative Writing Class.

But I'm glad to be writing again.

Triple Book Reviews! "Snow Crash", "A Tourist's Guide to Glengarry", and "The Penelopiad"!

Wow, have I started reading faster or have the books just gotten smaller? I finished "Snow Crash", then devoured "Glengarry" and "Penelopiad" before I had another chance to update my blog! Anyhoo, here's the scoop - I will go into detail about why I liked/disliked these books, but not much else. Both "Snow Crash" and "Penelopiad" are the subjects for my University essays.

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson:

This book was absorbing right from the very start, because it threw me right into a world both alarming and hilarious at once. Our hero/protagonist, helpfully named Hiro Protagonist, is a pizza-delivery boy who likes carrying (and frequently using) a pair of Japanese swords. Of course, in the future, all the pizza places are owned by the Mafia, and delivering the pizza under 30 minutes is such a sacred act that one has to study at Pizza Universities, and the failure to meet the 30-minute mark can result in class-action lawsuits, general embarassment, and the firing and possible death of the deliverer.

Anyhoo, Hiro, who only delivers pizza to support his freelance hacker job, due to car trouble nearly misses his deadline, and has to have his life saved and pizza delivered by a spunky teenage Kourier named Y.T. (short for Yours Truly). Of course, now their fates are intertwined, and things begin to get ugly when Hiro discovers that someone's devised a virus specially designed to fry the brains of hackers.

The entire world as we know it is gone in Snow Crash. There are no rules, no governments (except for the tiny United States of America, which is really just a bunch of deluded bureaucrats who like to pretend that rules and goverments still exist), and everything, from churchs (purchase salvation at your local Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise!), to freeways (intersections are hotspots for copyright infringements), to the police (take your pick: MetaCops or Enforcers Inc?), have been turned into money-making franchises! The world is OWNED by capitalism, warping public morality to such an extent that it makes the Mafia look like a wholesome family-run community service industry.

I was swallowed whole by the setting, and fully engaged by the characters, but the ending did leave a few, okay a lot, of loose ends that I hope will be explained away when we discuss it in class. By the way - I've officially finished ALL my reading for this semester. Have I mentioned that? This story was technical without being confusing, with a hint of mysticism and linguistics thrown in. I had to seriously think about the issues and ideas brought up by the novel (such as: the idea of information as virus that affects and changes the brain), and while I never had all of my questions answered, the book never made me feel stupid for not figuring everything out, and that's aces in my book.


A Tourist's Guide to Glengarry, by Ian Mcgillis

Now, while I was sucked into Snow Crash because of its bizarre, fantasic setting, I was drawn to Tourist's Guide because of the very opposite. It's set in Edmonton in the 1970s, and Edmonton is a city I know very well, and know equally well that it doesn't often get to be a setting in the books I read. A lot of the vernacular and scenic references that the 9-year-old protagonist uses are ones that I understand implicitly.

For instance, I've been to the downtown public library when the Children's section was still in the basement, and I remember Iggy the Iguana (although he must have been really old if he was the same iguana Neil saw in the '70s). I've always used the word crazy carpet for the thin sheets of plastic (with handles for us to hold on to cut at one end) that I used to slide down snowy hills with, but I've never read that term used in any book before Tourist's Guide. Despite the difference in time, I empathized and understood Neil.

Neil expresses a desire to be a writer, and his substitute teacher suggests that he start by writing everything that happens in one day. And a lot happens - although not all during that day. He leads us through the morning and each and every class he takes at school, but he frequently pauses to go into flashbacks and memories and weird little tidbits that come into his head. So in the course of one day, he succeeds in outlining the wheels and gears that turn his world.


The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood

I finished reading this book in one day, and was surprisingly short. Also, I was expecting it to be a story of how Penelope got through the years when Odysseus was away, and I was also expecting Penelope to be the focal point of the story. I was wrong on both counts. We go over pretty much the same points in time as The Odyssey does, only from Penelope's point of view. To be fair, there might not have been a great deal of exciting things happening over the twenty years she lived on a rocky island with goats and a baby boy. However, the point of this story seemed to be more on her twelve maids - in The Odyssey, once Odysseus is finished killing the suitors, he hangs the twelve maids who'd been sleeping with them and insulting his family. The Penelopiad serves as an explanation as to what really happened, as well as the consequences of their murders. It was actually rather dull, and anti-climactic, but maybe my expectations were too high. Atwood gives Penelope a wonderfully wry tone, and manages to reconcile how she can be a strong, intelligent woman and a worrying crybaby at the same time.

Battle of the Casts: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" vs. "Veronica Mars"

The Titular, Blonde Heroine
BTVS: Buffy Summers
Pros: Kung-fu grip, upstanding moral character.
Cons: More street-smart than book smart, over-protective of her friends

VM: Veronica Mars
Pros: Whip-smart any way you slice it, keen eye for justice
Cons: Disregards rights to privacy, over-exploitative of her friends

Similarities: Both share pretty, pretty hair, official outcast status at school, teeny-tiny bodies, and hot boyfriends.
Differences: In the brain game, Veronica's miles ahead, but can she drop-kick a fire-demon?
Advantage: Tie.

The Goofy Boy Who Happens to be a Friend, but Is Only a Friend
BTVS: Xander Harris
Pros: Everyboy charm, good-natured humour
Cons: The weakest link in the Scooby chain

VM: Wallace Fennel
Pros: Athletically talented, good moral support
Cons: Bit of a push-over.

Similarities: Both represent an average normality that helps their Blonde Titular Heroines keep things in perspective. Also, both lack the ability to disobey the imperious commands of their Heroines, and frequently find themselves in need of rescuing by their Heroines.
Differences: Wallace has a shy, put-upon side, but he has a healthier style and social life. Xander plays the loser card a little too heavily, and depends on Buffy more than anyone else.
Advantage: Wallace

The "Good" Boyfriend
BTVS: Angel
Pros: Snappy dresser, snappier un-dresser. Sensitive, loyal.
Cons: Bland, square, whiny.

VM: Duncan Kane
Pros: Ironic sense of humour, good-natured, handsome.
Cons: Erratic behaviour, the occasional black-out.

Similarities: Both Angel and Duncan share a tendancy to be dark, silent, and brooding, with occasional bursts of (possibly) homicidal madness - Angel due to his gypsy curse, Duncan to epilepsy.
Differences: Duncan knows how to crack a smile and a joke without killing himself, and also how to enter into sexual relations without killing somebody else. Angel takes himself a little too seriously, and is actually more entertaining when evil.
Advantage: Duncan.

The "Bad" Boyfriend
BTVS: Spike
Pros: The leather jacket! The accent!
Cons: The obsessiveness! The rape attempt!

VM: Logan Ecchols
Pros: The heart of gold! The devil-may-care attitude!
Cons: The drinking problem! The crying!

Similarities: Serious mommy issues, predilictions for violence and mayhem with infrequent but highly-anticipated moments of tenderness.
Differences: Spike's more reliable, and more authentically bad-ass. Logan's a loaded gun, and years of his father's abuse hasn't made him any more stable. Spike's pain is endearing, Logan's is a little pathetic.
Advantage: Spike

The Mentor
BTVS: Rupert Giles
Pros: Used to be a bad-ass black-magic punk, now is a warm father-figure
Cons: His change from bad-ass to librarian left him with a terminal case of Uptight-a-litis and Fuddy-Duddy-ness.

VM: Keith Mars
Pros: World's coolest dad, efficient private detective
Cons: Prone to obliviousness, especially regarding The Bigger Picture, and his Family

Similarities: Both provide moments of warm fuzziness when Titular Blonde Heroines need it most, both are willing to go completely apeshit-Rambo-violent when the situation calls for it.
Differences: Keith is the more blue-collar, down to earth, with intelligence gleaned from experience. Giles is more refined, book-smart, and seriously out of date.
Advantage: Tie.

The Quirky, Attractive Geek
BTVS: Willow Rosenberg
Pros: Cheerful, bubbly even. Oh, and smart, did I mention smart?
Cons: Shy, quiet, unbalanced.

VM: Cindy "Mac" Mackenzie
Pros: Fiesty, organized, a problem solver
Cons: Morally challenged.

Similarities: Both are talented hackers, aiding our Titular Blonde Heroines with the help of records and databases meant to be kept secret.
Differences: Mac's more confident in her personality, and not afraid to add a personal touch to her appearance. She is also not above profiting from chaos. Willow tends to hide in cutesy sweaters and knit caps until she inevitably snaps, sending her over the edge.
Advantage: Willow - but only because she gets more screentime.

The Bad-Ass Sidekick
BTVS: Faith
Pros: Can kick butt in tight leather pants, knows how to party.
Cons: She's an evil, murderous bitch, and also kind of a slut.

VM: Eli "Weevil" Navarro
Pros: Pays his debts, strong family loyalty, and awww, he cried at Lily's memorial service!
Cons: Dude, you cried at Lily's memorial service, you sissy!

Similarities: Both are from troubled family backgrounds, live on the wrong side of the tracks, are emotionally vulnerable, and look good in leather.
Differences: Other than the fact that they have different parts in their swimsuit areas, Weevil, at least, has his sweet ol' grandmother to take care of, that and the fact that he doesn't kill people just to watch them die. Both live in shades of grey, but Weevil's more good than bad, and Faith's more bad than good.
Advantage: Depends on what parts you have in your swimsuit areas.

Cast Advantage: Tie.

Boys! Sex! Cooties! Ew ew ew!

Well, this year's Gateway Purity test is out, and not only that, but they've turned the entire Feb 14th issue into a Sex Issue. The entire front (and back) page has sexually suggestive pictures on it, some of which are quite gross, to me at least. I've half a mind to suggest that next year they distribute the Sex Issue in brown wrappers.

While there were a few articles that went on about the wrongful stigmas placed on people who remain virgins during University, the rest of the issue is devoted to articles about the best way to give oral sex, to the best places to have sex, to information about bondage, and furries, and other things that come across as slightly nauseating to me.

The Purity Test itself was funny, but the final categories (where you're "put", depending on how many points you've scored) seem to place a giant emphasis on how Having Sex in University is Healthy, Fun, and Mandatory, and how Staying A Virgin Is Just Silly And Narrow-Minded.

I'm of the rather paradoxical idea that sex isn't nearly as important to your social life as the media would like to tell you, and that sex is a sacred and significant act. You shouldn't do it with just anyone, and it shouldn't be the best thing about a relationship. It should be a good thing, yeah, but not the Be All and End All. Right now, I'm of the Wait Until I'm Married school of thought, but it's pretty easy to adhere to that idea when I've never dated, or had any relations with ANY guy outside of school EVER.

I mean, there's lots about sex that just seems gross to me. Like the idea of oral sex. One of the guys at the Gateway had a long and VERY explicit article about the best way to do it to a woman. I did not find it interesting, or particularly titilating. It seemed disgusting to me, and unhygienic, and uncomfortable. "No way in HELL is ANY guy going to do that to ME!" was my original mental reaction. There is a part of me that thinks this is just the same as my reaction to the taste of beer or coffee - I may hate the idea of it now, but sooner or later I'll come to like it because everyone else does. Still, ick.

Review: "Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson

While I had to read this for Comparative Literature, Science Fiction, I'm not sure I could totally classify this as sci-fi. While it started out on a wacky, far-out idea, the story, leading all the way to the eventual conclusion, simply came across as, well, regular fiction/mystery.
It certainly didn't adhere to any of my expectations. The main character is Cayce Pollard, and she identifies herself as a "coolhunter" - she has almost a psychic sense of which logos, brands, or advertisements will do well on the market. While this offers her an interesting job opportunity, its downside is that her sensitivity renders her painfully allergic to the worse logos and brands - for instance, she'll have an allergic reaction when confronted with Tommy Hilfiger or the Michelin Man.
While it's intriguing that she can't wear brand-name clothing (or has to have the labels professionally removed), and such, it doesn't entirely have a great deal to do with the plot itself. There aren't any other "coolhunters" with this ability, at least any that Cayce has heard of - she's a bit of an anomaly.
The plot itself is that Cayce is hired by an advertising company called Blue Ant, initially to offer a thumbs-up or -down on a new logo they're considering, using her unique abilities. It quickly morphs into an assignment to find the creator of the mysterious "footage" - bizarre, surreal, and non-sequential clips of film that have appeared on the net to become the obsession of internet addicts everywhere. No one knows who filmed this, where they were filmed, in what time period, or how, but the people at Blue Ant believe that the attention and press they've been getting around the world would make for killer advertising, so, rather mysteriously, they hire Cayce (who is also a "footagehead" aka someone who is very interested in the footage and posts regularly on messageboards about it) to find out who's making it.
And the story goes on from there - it was actually rather rote. Not too much action, a lot of talking, describing politics both corporate and international, a lot of it very difficult to keep straight. Cayce spends most of the book either reeling from jet lag (from jetting from London to Tokyo to Moscow) or sleeping off said jet lag. Every other page, the main protagonist has to take a break because she's so exhausted. Enough, already!
Plus, the ending was anti-climactic, and didn't live up to the hype that the book feverishly generated. I dunno, maybe when I try reading "Neuromancer" I might have a better experience.

Adventures in Reading

I'm almost done, folks.

And by done, of course, I am referring to all the reading I'm supposed to do for the rest of the semester. I just finished Pattern Recognition by William Gibson for my Science Fiction Comparative Literature class, and have just started in on Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Already I'm enthralled by the concept of a guy named Hiro Protagonist who attended Pizza University to learn the subtle arts of delivering pizza on time.

After Snow Crash, will come A Tourist's Guide to Glengarry, by - I forget who, but once I've finished that, I'll have nothing else to read except for the poetry for Canadian Lit, and the Shakespeare plays for Shakespearean Lit. After that, I can finally start reading the Entertainment Weeklys that have started piling up on my desk, as well as February's issue of Locus magazine, which has the Recommended Reading list for 2005.

And after that, I can finally go back to reading the books I got for Christmas from my friends and relatives, and then I can start reading the books I've bought myself. Heaven.

Lately I've been trying to be more social. I'm not a social person by nature, I'm extremely wary and self-conscious - if not outright terrified - when I find myself surrounded by a large group of strangers in a social situation. Of course, when I'm terrified, I'm often jumpy, thoughtless, irritable, and bitchy, and can't resist complaining and making snide remarks, which understandably offends some (okay, many) people.

Being more social means apologizing (in person and in writing) to the Soprano II section of the University Mixed Chorus. I was a total ass for six months. Everyone at the choir was so nice and thoughtful, that it really threw me off. I'm not so pathetic that I'm unused to people being kind to me, but I was unused to complete strangers going so entirely out of their way to be kind to me. In return, I bitched when I couldn't get copies of the sheet music on time, kept to myself, and complained whenever the Soprano II choir director made a mistake in teaching us something. Of course, in my dull, oblivious mind, I sort of forget about other people when I'm off in a rant, so when I come back the next week in a better mood, after having forgotten everything the week before, the others haven't forgotten anything, and are certainly not in a better mood, at least towards me.

When I was rather suddenly made aware of this by the Head Choir Director (who told me in no uncertain terms, that no one, in the twenty years he's directed choir, has ever spoken to him the way I have, which makes me feel absurdly special), it came as a complete shock. I was so sure I'd make friends in choir, that I sort of took their special kindnesses for granted and assumed they were always nice, and always happy, and always ready to forgive.

So, now I'm all social, or trying to be social, in order to make for past mistakes. This means going to Karaoke with the choir after Wednesday practice, a tradition that involves drinking a lot of beer (this I did not do), and howling into a microphone while the infantile DJ makes crude sexual jokes (this I did). I'm not good at Karaoke myself - I always imagine I will be, but my Soprano II range makes me uniquely unsuited to singing pop music - the girl songs are too high, the guy songs are too low, so I'm always stuck in some sort of neutral, toneless middleground that isn't horrible but doesn't really show up my voice, either.

Aaaanyway, if I'm under the right circumstances, the experience can be good. The best thing to do is to meet up with a group of friends (or people who remain friendly towards me) BEFORE going to Karaoke. Its much better to travel to the bar with friendly people than to go up alone, and have to search for them in the dark, loud, crowded bar later and have them juggle seats to find a place for you to sit. I'm not going to go every week, but I will go more than once, and sing at least one song before leaving. So far, on 2 1/2 Karaoke excursions (the 1/2 was the time I went up alone, and sang Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" before a group of strangers, and felt so embarassed I left right away, passing choir members in the elevator who'd arrived later), I've sung the Beatles "Can't Buy Me Love" (I'm still in the Dempsey phase) Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", and "Ghostbusters".

I'm not going today, because I'm already meeting a friend for coffee after class, so that already fills up my social quotient for today. At least for me. I'm tired, okay?

I Don't Like Poetry - A Poem

I don't see what's special
About creating without
Rules
Without boundaries or
Limits.
Anyone can do it
It's easy.
Noun noun verb adjective noun,
Forget syntax! Banish grammar!
Poetry has no
Use for punctuation.

Poetry is the crazy grandmother,
The one who wears
Young-lady perfume
Hoop earrings
Bright shirts you're
Too embarrassed to wear,
Who lets you eat
Cake for breakfast
Jump on the featherbeds
Until the springs shriek,
Rollerskate across
Clean white floors
And stay up all night.
You come home from
Grandmother's
With bright memories
Of boundless freedom
But with drooping eyes
And a stomachache,
Eager for broccoli again.

The older poems
are alright.
The Victorians,
Women with romantic
Names and romantic
Words arranged in perfect lines
With rhyming ends.
The modern stuff
Is too tenuous,
Too-general words
That could mean
Anything.
Are meant to mean
Anything,
Because I think the poet cannot decide on
Anything.
Black is white,
Love is death,
Death
Is
All
Because
Life
Is
Meaningless (snap, snap).

I suppose
If there's a narrative,
A straight line
The words are drawn to,
Instead of tumbling
Heaps
Of nouns and adjectives
Tossed together,
Word-salad,
Brain-food.

I suppose
A narrative
As a magnet
To keep the words
From wandering where they please
Would be acceptable.

Give me a story,
Words undisguised,
Just beautiful in themselves.
Isn't that better?
To build beauty with logs
That remain made of wood,
Blocks that are still
Numb stone and concrete,
Than materials varnished
With ambiguity,
Needless.

I'd rather a
Red scarf
Be a
Red scarf, something that
Warms,
And not a symbol of
Death (it strangles the neck)
Sexuality (its colour is red)
Freedom (it flaps in the wind)
Lies (it hides the bruises)
Or perfect truth (you tell me).

I don't like poetry.
I'm meat-and-potatoes,
With walls that are solid,
No hidden compartments
Secret doors
Primrose paths leading off
To gardens of verbose confusion.

I like novels,
Slabs of pages, hard covers
Resting heavy in my hand
Neatly on my bookshelf
Nestled in my purse.
Books I swim through
With the knowledge that
The shore on the other side
Will be one I can hold on to,
Pull myself onto,
Dripping and finished
And on solid ground.

Poetry itself is easy to read,
I slide down words
Polished smooth
With significance,
Greased with meaning,
Faster and faster,
Until I land with a bump.
I've come to the bottom
But my hands hold nothing
I remember nothing.
Meandering through novels
I can pick things up
Take them with me.
Buttons,
Branches,
Orphaned children destined
For heroism,
When I come to the end
I've a sackful,
And I am pleased.

Poetry
Is easy to write
And easy to read.
I suppose the reason
Must be
I prefer challenges
With a prize at the end
To simplicity
That leaves me
Empty-handed.

Review, "Autobiography of Red", Anne Carson

Now, this was a weird little book.

Normally I don't like weird little books - oftentimes I can't understand how they end, and this usually renders me belligerent and negative towards them because they make me feel stupid for not catching the nuances and symbolism and great revolutionary literary ideas that all the high-and-mighty book critics whose positive blurbs are pasted on the back covers seem to find.

I didn't quite understand it, and I didn't have a working knowledge of the particular Greek legend that provided one of the sources of the story, but I did come through the book feeling relatively together and with a vague, blurry (but still present) idea of what happened. The main character is Geryon, a creature who is red, sees red, and has bony, fluttery wings (that actually work - although he only uses them once). He does have to hide his wings when in public, but other than that his appearance doesn't seem to bother anyone else, despite the fact that he is supposed to be brilliant crimson. While at first, I was at a loss to decide Was he really a red, winged monster? Or just imagining himself a red-winged monster? eventually it is revealed a shade less ambiguously than at the start.

The very beginning of the book is something I can barely describe or comprehend. It begins with an explanation that Geryon the red monster was, as found in fragments of writing attributed to ancient writer Stesichoros, Herakles' 10th labour. He lived on an island with red cattle and was killed by Herakles, as was his little red dog. It then goes on through three appendices that describe inane things about how Stesichoros was blinded by Helen (of Troy), because he called her a whore. It reminded me, of all things, of my Symbolic Logic classes, because the body of Appendix C ("Clearing up the Question of Stesichoros' Blinding By Helen") is "1. Either Stesichoros was a blind man or he was not. 2. If Stesichoros was a blind man either his blindness was a temporary condition or it was permanent"...and goes on and on in "either it was or it wasn't" scenarios.

After the puzzling appendices comes the main body of the book, which is more straightforward and is one long poem. It's divided into chapters that are one to four pages long, and follow Geryon from when he was first sexually abused by his older brother at five, to his homosexual relationship with a young man named Herakles (the name is significant) at fourteen, to his trip to South America as an adult of twenty-two where he sees Herakles again with another guy and is forced to re-evaluate his feelings for him, feelings that unfortunately still exist.

The myths explained in the Appendices don't really have any bearing on the main body of the story. I'm sure it must be a metaphor, but not one that I, at present, can accurately evaluate. For instance, in the main body, Geryon is a photographer, not a keeper of red cattle, and so on and so forth. However, as it was one long poem, I read it very quickly and it allowed for some very beautiful turns of phrase that really made the adventures and feelings of Geryon come alive. It got me under Geryon's scarlet skin, where everything was hot and tight and hurtful. I empathized deeply with his character, and that's why I enjoyed this book and didn't throw it aside right afterwards, dismissing it with a mouthful of sour grapes as "a ridiculous artsy-fartsy novel".

Review: "The Last Crossing", by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Read it: For Canadian Lit.

The Last Crossing started out as something really straightforward, but then spiralled off into another story entirely. It started out as a suspenseful murder mystery/quest, then ended up as a sad reflection of fatherhood, brotherhood, and the eventual destruction of the livelihoods of Canada's First Nations.
In Fort Benton, abused-and-abandoned wife Lucy Stoveall and horse-dealer Custis Straw are shaken by the gruesome rape and murder of Lucy's little sister Madge. Lucy is convinced that Titus and Joel Kelso, two ne'er-do-well brothers, are the perpetrators, and makes it her mission to track them down and get revenge.

When two brothers from England, cruel Addington and weak-willed Charles Gaunt, arrive on a quest to find their lost brother Simon, she teams up with them to leave Fort Benton and hopefully find Titus and Joel on the way. Custis, who is in love with Lucy, follows, and the entire group is reluctantly guided by half-Indian, half-Scottish Jerry Potts.

While the quest for Simon, Titus, and Joel is certainly significant to the story, the book is drawn together by the characters that inhabit the story, and the changes they undergo, rather than the destination/goal they originally set out for. Lucy, abandoned by her abusive husband and now deprived of her last vestige of family, has to find something to live for. Charles, an initially spineless but earnest young man, finds himself in an uncertain place in life - as a mediocre artist, the only thing that currently offers him any drive is the quest for twin Simon, and to redeem himself in his brother's eyes. Jerry Potts is a border-line alcoholic (but then again, nearly everyone in this novel is one as well) who has found himself eternally divided between his First Nation and white heritages.

Addington, on the other hand, is a repulsive, impulsive, hyper-masculine creation who lives to hunt, fight, drink, screw, and eat. He already believes Simon dead, and is only leading the expedition to experience fresh air and adventure, and hopefully find a cure for his nagging venereal disease, and while he isn't redeemed at the end, we do become more enlightened of the darker, inner recesses of his nature.

Eventually, both goals are ambiguously fulfilled. The murder of Madge is solved, indirectly, but it comes as a complete surprise and actually had me thumbing backwards through the pages to see if the timeline of it fit. But by the end of the novel, it becomes clear that finding Simon and the person who murdered Madge was never the point. I hate to resort to this cliche, but in this book, the destination wasn't so much the heart of the story as the journey itself. To me, it appeared to be more of a study of characters under stress than a quest or an adventure.

I enjoyed the reading of it, but it didn't evoke any particular emotions in me. Fort Edmonton gets a location cameo, and Calgary has a brief mention, and we are treated to marvelous descriptions of rugged Canadian scenery, but the hills and valleys of the human mind are more closely examined here.

The James Frey Question

These days, everyone's been all up in arms about the controversy, if you can call it that, of finding out that James Frey fabricated or exaggerated parts of his best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces. People like Oprah and the people involved in the ridiculous lawsuits against him have accused him of betraying his readers.

This really gets me - on Oprah, while she was apologizing for defending James Frey and making his book a part of her Book Club, she says she let the fact that so many people called and wrote in to say how much that book inspired them cloud her judgement. This was, of course, before she said James betrayed his readers. How, exactly, did he do that?

I mean, people enjoyed this book. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+ grade and named it one of the best nonfiction books of the year. Millions of readers bought this book and let it change their lives. Does learning that he exaggerated parts of that negate those changes? People can be just as inspired and uplifted by fiction books (which are entirely fabricated, just so you don't get the wrong idea ^_^) than by nonfiction. True or false, this book was well-written enough to give millions of people a unique reading pleasure.

What bums me out are the lawsuits against him. One of the class-action lawsuits is sueing for damages for the money spent on the book and the time it took to read it. Excuse me? Why don't you just return the book to Chapters and get your $30 back? It's thirty dollars. And now they want compensation for the time they spent reading the book? What the hell? Why didn't they just put the book down in the middle of reading it? Could it be, because they enjoyed it? I don't see how learning a book is fabricated can turn that pleasurable reading experience into something bad. These are just people eager for a quick buck.

The second (of many) lawsuits against Frey says that if they'd known the book was fictional, they never would have bought it and read it in the first place. I don't see why this has to be fought about it court - just take the stupid book back, or give it away second-hand, or something. Greedy greedy greedy.

I dunno, as I writer (of fiction), I'm repulsed by the actions of these people who are sueing Frey.

Bright Yellow Postcard

A writer should never give up hope. After all, that's what's supposed to keep a writer going during the interminable waits between handing our precious babies wrapped in manila envelopes to indifferent postal workers and receiving a slim envelope (usually a rejection) in return.

I'm forced to admit, however, that I was just about to give up on that copy of "My Brother's Own Words" that I'd sent out to CICADA magazine. I'd sent it out, when? In September? Yes, in September! After more than four months of silence, I assumed it must have gotten lost in the mail, and was lining some lucky canary's birdcage, or giving a drunken hobo some semblance of a blanket for the cold winter night.

But no! It arrived safely, and was squished beneath a giant pile of other (hopefully lesser, or at least lesser than mine - they pay up to 25 cents a word!) stories sent by other hopeful writers. Today I received a yellow postcard in the mail from CICADA, and while my first thought was, They rejected me with a postcard (!), it was actually a notice saying they've received it (meaning, they know it exists now after clearing away the rubbish, er, other stories, lying on top of it. So they're going to be reading it soon, and that means they'll be giving me a response.

Please please please plllllllllleeeeeeease be an acceptance!
By the way, once I get off my lazy butt, I'm going to send "Desert Muse" to Realms of Fantasy. I finally received a free copy from them, and I think the magazine is right for "Muse".

Interesting Readings

I'm ahead on all of my school readings, although sometimes that can become a disadvantage, especially when classes give reading quizzes, because by that time the book is long past read and you can't remember all the details.
For my Shakespeare class, I'm still in the middle of Henry V. It doesn't really inspire much interest in me, and his depictions of Welsh, Irish, and Scottish accents is irritating. However, strangely enough, in a scene where people are speaking actual French (like when Katherine wishes to learn certain English words), the French is quite straightforward and simple. I was expecting it to be more difficult, considering it's old French, like Moliere, but it was actually easier to understand than some of the English.
I came off of reading Richard III, and while my professor thinks he's a compelling villain and it's one of her favourite plays, I really can't see the appeal. First of all, I haven't read all of the Henry plays that have come (historically speaking) before this one, and so with all of the different Henrys and Edwards and Richards, things can become quite confusing. Secondly, I didn't see Richard as a compelling villain at all - he was completely evil from head to toe. I understand why he had to be so, Shakespeare would not have earned the Tudor Queen's approval by portraying the King who was overthrown by her ancestor Richmond as sympathetic, but that doesn't make him any more compelling.
Black-hearted villains are boring, it's the grey ones who are more fun, at least in my mind. Give him a heart, give him hopes, dreams, wishes, give him love, give him a motive, for God's Sake, something other than "I'm going to be evil, just for the hell of it, because I hate everybody! Ha ha!" Dull, dull, dull. Shakespeare could have made him a tormented anti-hero, a man seeking to prove himself strong and capable after years of being teased for his physical deformaties. I heard someone say once, "Evil is just using evil means to achieve good ends." No one sets out to be evil - they all have a good goal in mind. Terrorists believe they're liberating their people, their beliefs. Thieves believe they're putting clothes on their backs, food in their mouths, roofs over their heads. Richmond believes he would be better for England than Richard - that's certainly a good intention, isn't it?
Moving on - I'm just at the tail end of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. I've enjoyed it. At first it's a little disconcerting how she often writes without quotation marks, in rambling run-on sentences, but it sets a certain rhythm that's not hard to follow, once one gets used to it. I found it much better than Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, which also used no quotation marks, but was so pared down that it was hard to tell who was who's sister, wife, mother, victim, etc. I had to read both for Canadian Literature.
Next up - Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I've heard people saying that while Dick came up with fabulous ideas, his writing was sadly subpar. I guess I'll just have to find out for myself. I know that this book laid out the plot for the film Blade Runner, but what I recently found out was that they actually purchased the film rights to a different story called Blade Runner, just so that they could use the title. I find myself feeling rather sorry for the author of Blade Runner, because now everyone will get the wrong idea of his or her book whenever they pick it up, and the film adaptation of the same name has nothing to do with the story he or she wrote
Currently reading: The Author's Afterward to Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. Next Up: Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

Gah!

I have been getting behind on my blogging, I know, and I'm sorry.
I've been actually very happily busy, although I am just as happy writing in my blog. The thing is, the battery on my laptop was shot - it can hold, at maximum, about 45 minutes worth of juice. Thankfully, the classes I'm in do not require my laptop, and it's probably better that I don't bring it. Bringing my laptop to class is very productive for my novel, but not for paying attention in the actual classes. That being said, without me brining my laptop to class, there has been less occasion for me to use my laptop, for instance, to go onto the internet. And so I find less occasion for me to write in my blog.
I know, I shouldn't need motivation, but I do. When I'm bored at school, I used to power up my laptop and use the wireless internet, and then I'm inspired to go onto blogger. Not so much now, now that I don't use my laptop all the time. Also, I have been writing my novel, but in a wire scribbler notebook, and I can type way faster than I can handwrite, so progress is slow.
I'm enjoying most of my classes. The projects (essays where you DON'T need outside sources, just to go on and on about how you feel) are cake, the homework (reading novels) is fun, and I have lots of free time thanks to the fact that my Tuesdays and Thursday classes start at 12:30 and end at 2:00.
Creative Writing is interesting, to say the least. I signed up to be in the first group to present their stories, and we were supposed to write a short-short (400 words). I finished mine rather quickly, and got positive reviews from both Mum and Sister #1, so I can't wait to show it off and receive lots of compliments. I'm sure there'll be some criticism, but I'm also sure there will be lots of compliments as well.
Also, I celebrated a birthday a few days ago. I got an Indigo Gift Card from Granny (which I used to buy Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld) along with some fancy earrings, a cat sculpture from Nana; Veronica Mars, The Essential Billy Joel, Brian Setzer Orchestra's Greatest Hits from Mum and Dad, and an angel pin and cash from my godmother. Good stuff.

"Thanks For the Review - All Best Wishes"

I met him, dear readers.
I went to the bookstore where George R. R. Martin was holding a booksigning on his Canadian Book Tour. I arrived 45 minutes earlier, and there was already a substantial lineup. No matter. The line-up got a lot longer as time went by, and one of my friends from The Gateway managed to wrangle me a spot further up the line. Anyway, finally George R. R. Martin appeared, and I found myself reduced to childhood, as I had to stand on tip-toe and jump up and down and shift every which way so that I could see him better. His Darwinian beard was longer, and whiter, than it appeared in the photo on the dust jacket of A Feast For Crows, but he was wearing the exact same hat. Maybe it's his lucky writing hat, I don't know.

He had a very amusing talk at the beginning about how his first book signings for Game of Thrones were very unsuccessful, and how pleased he was that so many people showed up to see him here. "Lots of writers complain about book signings where nobody showed up," he said, "But I had a booksigning where -4 people showed up." Meaning, four people, upon hearing the announcement that science fiction/fantasy writer George R. R. Martin was ready to sign books and talk about his work, got up and left.

He also had a book signing that was upstaged by Clifford the Big Red Dog. 100 people showed up to have a junior employee of the bookstore in a ratty red dog costume smear inky pawprints onto their children's books, while 2 people showed up for him.
After his talk, he answered a few questions. His favourite character? Tyrion - this statement was met with whistles and cheers. His least favourite character? Bran - because he was the youngest of everyone else and still had to view things through a child's eyes. I got to ask a question - so I asked about why the chapter headings in A Feast For Crows were titled "The Drowned Man", "The Prophet", "The Soiled Knight", instead of just plain names. He went on to explain that he'd written certain scenes as a type of prologue - but the events became so long and intricate he couldn't put them all into a lump couple of chapters - it came up to 250 pages. So he spread it out throughout the whole book, but with the changing chapter titles to show the progress.

Then came the book signing. I told him how I'd reviewed his books for The Green Man Review. It was a brave move of me - my review for A Feast For Crows isn't entirely positive (feel free to go to greenmanreview.com to read it), but George R. R. Martin gave no indication that he recognized the my name, the review, or Green Man at all. I did get to tell him that I found out he'd written "The Pear-Shaped Man", the only horror story I've ever read that truly creeped him out. He laughed (he had a very good, earnest laugh - he sounded like he was really enjoying the whole booksigning experience to the utmost), and said he'd based it on a real pear-shaped man who had creeped out one of his acquaintances. He did hope that the real Pear-Shaped Man hadn't read the story and recognized himself. I made the tentative joke that maybe he (the Pear-shaped Man) identified himself more as a Banana-Shaped Man. George R. R. Martin laughed at that, and then I was off and the person behind me got his lucky chance.

Inside my copy of A Feast For Crows was written: "Thanks For the Review - All Best Wishes", followed by a long, unidentifiable squiggle, two loopy deformed Rs, and another squiggle. Hurrah!

Books!

Huzzah!
I went to buy my January Buspass at the University the other day, and I thought I would check the bookstore to see what kinds of books I'd have to pick up later for my winter semester courses. I checked for Comparative Literature Science Fiction, and I had so many books in that class, I picked them all up at once and lugged them home. It's easier that way - I broke one of the zippers on my knapsack last semester trying to carry all my books at once.

I have so many good science fiction books to read now! I read primarily fantasy, but I wanted to start into Science Fiction, and what better way to do that then to sign up in Comp Lit Sci-Fi, where they'll doubtless have me read the best? For the first time, I've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the sequel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I enjoyed them both very much - they were quick reads but entertaining. I like Douglas Adams' writing style.

Right now, I'm reading Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian sci-fi writer!). So far, the concept is freakin' brilliant. An experiment gone awry makes every person on the planet (or most of them, anyway) black out for two minutes, only to experience a vision of their future 21 years from now. One guy sees himself as an old man happily married to a woman who is decidedly not his current fiancee, and another doesn't have a vision, and then gets a phonecall from a stranger whose vision included reading about his murder in a future newspaper. Cool!

I've got so many other books to read though - Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson (I just bought the first book in his Baroque Cycle with my Christmas money), The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, Canticle for Liebowitz, Pattern Recognition, Solaris (with a big picture of George Clooney kissing a pretty lady on the cover), and so many others! This semester, I have no boring, needless history, math, or logic courses - only English, Japanese, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing. So pretty much, my entire homework this semester is going to consist of reading and writing, which is like being assigned to eat cookies for marks. Good stuff.

And on the last weekend of the holidays, I watched Coupe de Ville, which I got at the library. As you can probably guess, it has Patrick Dempsey in it. I would rather have watched or Some Girls or Happy Together, but I couldn't score a ride to the Good Old Movie Rental Place That's Inconveniently Far Away, and the Bad Old Movie Rental Place That's Close By lost its copies of Mobsters and With Honors, or sold them, or something. The mouthbreathing clerk wasn't too clear on that point.

In Coupe de Ville, Patrick Dempsey is the baby bad-boy brother Bobby (say that three times fast!) to nerdy Buddy and Air-Force man Marvin. They're all called together to deliver a power-blue, mint condition car (the one of the title) from Detroit to Florida for their dying father. Supposedly, bonding ensues. Dempsey's quite good in it - for a reform school student who sneezes "suck me off!" to his professor (did he invent the "insult sneeze"?) but cries when someone messes with his coin collection. Enjoyable, but he didn't get enough screentime.

Oh, and for some bad news - I got another rejection letter from Challenging Destiny. No note this time, he didn't read the entire story ("Most of the story" was checked off), and the reason for the rejection was still "didn't quite 'do it' for me". Good news - this usually means I'm not a terrible writer. Bad news - this usually means there's not a lot I can do to improve.

Happy New Year!

I have two resolutions:
1. Do more writing.
2. Do more reading.

That's about it. I got a LOT of books for Christmas - a LOT - especially after I spent all my Christmas money and gift certificates and such. I've finished three books so far, so that's good, but once semester starts I'm not gonna have a lot of time - I have two English classes and a comparative literature course. Lots of school reading. At least I have no crappy science or math or symbolic logic or some shit.
I haven't been writing at ALL the past few days, either. I've been really lazy, which is the result of a Christmas Diet. The Christmas Diet is an annual period of one to two weeks where I only eat things that begin with the letter "c", like Christmas. So cookies, crackers, chocolate, candy, cola, chicken, chips - it's gotten to the point where I'm always feeling slightly over-full.
And I'm in a bit of a depressed slump these last few days. I dunno - maybe it comes out of watching Firefly on DVD - it's a great show, but I can't help but watch it and know that there's only 14 episodes, and there will only ever be 14 episodes, and no more. Damn it! Maybe it comes out of the fact that there is no Grey's Anatomy on this week. I did watch 2 Dempsey movies, though, Loverboy and Run. Loverboy was funny, and I forgot how much of a physical actor Patrick Dempsey was in his youth. As Doctor McDreamy, there is less occation for dramatic double-takes, jumping over tables, and strutting. Loverboy had an icky scene where Dempsey (playing a young man who becomes a gigolo to pay for college tuition, so that he can make up with his girlfriend!!) plays out a bored Japanese housewife's fantasy (lots of suggestive rolling around behind a gauzy curtain), but he more than makes up for that because he dances! He dances in the movie! He's very good at it.
Run was pure silliness. Pure unadulterated silliness. He plays a law student who's delivering a car from Boston to Georgia who gets in a fight with a mobster's son (who looks like Christopher Walken, only 100 pounds heavier). When the son dies (by accident), Dempsey is forced to flee (or more accurately, run in circles with his arms waving in the air). Again, he's very physical in this film, but it really doesn't go over well because a thriller about a man on the run from the mob and crooked cops on the take does not need to be funny. There are several scenes where Dempsey's character makes inappropriately funny remarks after significant deaths. After he watches a police car topple off of a parking garage, killing the two crooked cops in it, he says "Just one of those days!" Or when he's blamed for the shooting death of a cop, he says "My reputation [as a lawyer] is ruined! I'll have to teach!" What the hell? Plus, Kelly Preston should have a word with her hairdresser in this movie - those bangs are truly unfortunate.
Still, both were enjoyable.
Anyhoo, I'm going to have to back to writing, and reading, and whining about how Firefly has no more than 14 episodes.

Merry Post-Christmas!

I hope you're all enjoying the wonder of the holidays. I know I am, so much so, apparently, that I've neglected to post for a few days. Heh, heh...hmmm..yeah.
Anyhoo, Christmas was excellent. I got my first MP3 Player ever! I was pretty late in my decision to hop on the MP3 bandwagon, and when I did a little research I decided that I wanted a Creative Zen Micro - and that's exactly what my parents got me! Whoohoo!
They also got me lots of biographies of famous writers (Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Amy Tan, etc - crap, now that I means I have to go out and read Austen, Hemingway, and Tan!) Also, I got cute little bath kits, bubblegum, bubble bath, and of course - lots of money and gift certificates, most of which I spent today when Sisters #1 and 2 dragged me and Dad off to the mall to cash in on the crazy Boxing Day deals.
I did pretty well - I got Madonna's new CD, the Black Eyed Peas' and Kanye West's old CDs, Weezer, Fullmetal Alchemist #2, the soundtrack to 13 Going On 30 (because it had that Billy Joel song I was dying to hear - "Vienna"), and Robin Hobb's Shaman's Crossing, Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel, and two pairs of earrings. Of the Christmas money, all I really have left is the 25$ Chapters Gift Certificate from Uncle #1, and I'll soon use that when the whole family goes out on the Official Post-Christmas Insanity Book Run. Excellent!

I have links now!

I've mentioned in a few of my posts that I've been reading authors' (or writers') blogs, and so I finally defeated my laziness and put them up on the site.
True, Brokthor Goreflinger's blog is not technically that of a writer (specifically, he is an "Illegal Acquisitions Engineer" - a professional pillager), but it looks like it might be fun to read, and may follow an interesting storyline, once he publishes more than one post.

Christmas holidays are going excellently - I finished all my exams, and have been spending the free days reading through the Entertainment Weeklies and Locus issues that I've allowed to pile up due to my studying, so that I can hurry up and get cracking on my booklist already! Read read READ! Write, write WRITE!
I've finally started writing the first draft for "Aunt Tansy's Alma Mater". It's not going to well, but I'm going to fight through it to the end and see what comes out of it.

A Very Different Christmas

I guess once the snowball starts rolling, it's not going to stop until it reaches the bottom of the hill. More things are changing this Christmas, in order to make these holidays easier for the members of our family. We got a new tree, for instance. Our last one (we've never had a real tree in our house for Christmas, it's messy and stinky and probably not very environmentally sound), well, I can't remember not having that tree.
Every year, the family would put it together, than fumble and swear and grouch in tune to Bing Crosby holiday songs as they carefully arranged the lights - they were small, pastel-coloured fairy lights on strings, and we were always rearranging them to make sure the lights were distributed evenly, and one string always blinked no matter what we did, so we always had to arrange it so that it was on the back of the tree where we wouldn't notice it so much. Then came the gold-and-silver tinsel garland, and then came the ornaments.
The ornaments were much more fun to put on than the garlands and the lights, and everyone cheered up at that point.
Not this year. This year, Mum got us a lighted tree - one with the lights already on it and already evenly distributed. And we completely abandoned the garland. It's narrower than our old one, and the lights are different. I've spent my whole life accustomed to the fairy lights, to waking up in expectation to go down and see those fairy lights, and right now I can't help but distrust the new look, at least for a while. The bulbs that have come already-wrapped on the tree are larger, and come in bright, sharp primary colours. I can't account for why I feel so different just because there is a different set of lights, but I just do. I'm sure I'll grow out of it, or move out of the house - whichever comes first.
Also, I handed in my essay today, and had a surprisingly helpful tutoring session with my Philosophy professor. Tutoring usually doesn't help me, it's just my way of lessening my guilt at getting bad grades by telling myself "that I did everything I could", but I think I actually got the message this time. I guess we'll see. The waiting for the last exam is killing me though - to hell with time to study, I want the exam to be right now, so that I can get over it and can stop worrying for the rest of the Christmas Holidays.

Christmas, Yay! Finals, Boo! Parties, m'eh...

Seasons' Greetings!
I've just had two exams, and I fearfully await the completion of two more, plus a take-home essay exam that I have planned but haven't written yet. I only thank God that the professer who asked for the essay is this cynical bohemian type who considers himself above caring about the rules of MLA citations, and doesn't give a fig for the amount of research you do. Yay for me.
I took my Classics exam - I expected it to be hard (I had to leave a disquieting number of questions unanswered on the midterm, and crawled out of there with a 75%), but this time I managed to study the right areas so I finished off the 3-hour exam in 30 minutes feeling relatively proud of myself.
Japanese was this morning - it was that delicious mixture of easy/difficult that comes from a subject that takes a great deal of work to master, but it so very entertaining to study that remembering everything is far from an impossible task.
In an hour and a half I proceed to my English final - a tricky piece of work that requires me to remember the names of Victorian poets and essayists (like WB Greg and his loathsome "Why are Women Redundant?" paper along with F. P. Cobbe and her intelligent rebuttal: "What Shall We Do With Our Old Maids?"), and what they were supposed to symbolize, and then write about them. I'm a little nervous about this one - I had no trouble remembering the novels I read, but for the papers and poems (as well as some of the discussions that took place regarding such fickle pieces) I admit that I drifted in and out of paying attention to them.
After that, however, the weekend is free for me to write that essay for Film Studies and read up on Symbolic Logic. Symbolic Logic is another sticky whicket - I got 97% on the Midterm, but the later half of the course was a shade more difficult, but thankfully the exam is cumulative.
More good news - it's cold again! How I have longed for a white Christmas! For the last few years, our winters have been unseasonably warm and brown. People used to blame it on El Nino, but El Nino is supposed to stop after a few years. In November, the temperature dropped drastically and we got layers of snow, but then in the earlier weeks of December these horrible warm winds came in and ate it all up. It's very hard to get into the spirit of Christmas when outside it looks like it's mid-March. Now its back to a lovely -19 degrees Celsius, and there is snow, but not a great deal of it. It's settled in fits and starts, coating everything in a delicate, thin layer like a sprinking of icing sugar. One day of -5 and all of that will be gone, and we'll be back to mud and puddles again, so I'm hoping that more snow comes down soon.
I may have mentioned that we are not having Christmas dinner at our house this year - instead it has been decided that we are going to Uncle #3's house (Uncle #1 being Dad's brother, and #2 being Mother's brother who is younger than her, but older than #3). Mum had been the pillar our family has relied on for the Christmas Feast since Nana and Papa's self-imposed exile to Condoland, and her wish to relinquish the duties this year has jabbed a sharp stick into the anthill, so to speak, with all the relatives flailing about to come up with some sort of alternative, and saying many things they didn't really mean that have placed a shadow over our anticipation of the festivities.
As amusing as it is to discover that Mum and her siblings can still engage in the verbal equivalent of hair-pulling and snowball-chucking and tattling to an extent that rivals the bitchfights I still hold with my sisters,I do hope they can mend everything by the time Christmas truly rolls around.

Nominations!

Patrick Dempsey's received a Golden Globe nod for Best Actor in a Television Series, Drama!
And both Jason Lee and Steve Carell have been nominated for Best Actor in a Television Series, Comedy!
I'll definitely be watching the Golden Globes this year.

Another Story Takes Wing (and movies are reviewed!)

*sniff* They grow up so fast...Yes, I did it - I followed up on my declaration that I would do the final polishes to "Desert Muse" and sent it out on Friday.
Yes, it was at the very last minute, but that's the norm for me - most of what I've done has been performed at the last minute, including my birth (wouldn't you know it, the day before they were going to induce labour, I came out all on my own, ha ha ha). But now it's out, and I feel satisfied. There was a long line at the post office, though - so many people trying to beat the Christmas rush created a Pre-Christmas Rush Rush. Human nature at its finest, eh?
I've been studying over the weekend - exams are coming up. I've been re-reading my Victorian poetry for the English final, and once again I'm surprised at how much reading Tennyson's Idylls reminds me of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. The descriptions of sword and shield, of battles in the lists, and especially the behaviour of Guinevere in Lancelot and Elaine - she could have been Cersei for how bitchy she was in that poem, what with her contemptuous disdain for Arthur and insane jealousy towards Lancelot for wearing Elaine's favour during the tournament. Whoo-boy.
Still, I did have some free time. Watched some good videos on the weekend - Fantastic Four and Lucky Seven, an ABC Original Movie starring Patrick Dempsey that I happened to find at the local video store (instead of the specialty Old Video store, which requires me to take a 40-minute bus ride there and back if I want to rent Mr. Dempsey's more classic films like Loverboy, Happy Together, and Run. Yes, Run. I want to see it. Stop looking at me like that! )
I'm a Marvel comics fan, and while my tastes tend to run more towards Spider-Man, I do have a working knowledge of the Fantastic Four. The film version was generally panned, and I can see why - the plot is silly, they never fight the Big Bad Guy until the very end (and then they defeat him by pouring cold water on him - I'm not kidding!), and it generally makes no sense whatsoever. However, I enjoyed it immensely. This film, unlike Hulk and DareDevil, tended to swing more towards humour, most of it based on the dynamics between the Four. Despite everything else in the film, this they did pitch-perfectly. The dialogue was sharp and funny, the interactions hilarious, and the characters spot on. Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman didn't do very much, to be sure, but they didn't give her much to do other than look pretty and take off her clothes in public (!), which she does reasonably well.
Ioan Gruffold as Mr. Fantastic was better - he managed to portray a lot of Reed Richards' kooky, oblivious science-nerd charm, and they explained the creation of his superhero name with a hint of wit ("yes, yes, you're great, you're Mr. Fantastic!). Still, he couldn't hold a candle next to Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis as the Human Torch and the Thing, respectively. Chris Evans portrayed the Human Torch as a complete asshole - which is the Human Torch to a tee. It was great fun to see him square off against the Thing. Chiklis played the Thing with admirable charm, macho humour, and, yes, sadness - he was the most "human" of the characters, if you'll believe it, because, really, he's the one who got the short end of the Super-Power-inducing-Ion-Storm stick.
Lucky Seven was pure silliness. In an hour and a half, the movie contained a ridiculous, plot-starting life plan, a lawyer who hates her job and would rather paint, bagels and schmeer, a fake relationship (that ends in real sex!), two weddings, a man who quit his Wall Street job and gets dumped in the bargain, and a difficult choice between two gorgeous guys. Which should the motherless protagonist choose - the sexy, successful, loved-by-all-of-her-friends, blond venture capitalist? Or the sexy, somewhat less successful, had-his-tender-heart-broken-before, green-eyed Irish-American bagel shop owner? Money or bagels? Financial security or SCHMEER?
To put it in clearer terms, our Motherless Protagonist becomes motherless through cancer, but not before the soon-to-be-deceased matriarch plans a timeline of advice to help our Motherless Protagonist get over being Motherless. In the timeline, she plans for our Motherless Protagonist to go the Summer Camp, run for Class President, get a Law Degree, and settle down with her Seventh Boyfriend, He who is Prophesied to be The One For Her.
Fast-forward several years, our Motherless Protagonist has just broken up with Boyfriend #5: He Who Cheats, and runs into Blonde Venture Capitalist. Sparks and fireworks fly, but our Motherless Protagonist is frightened to take the relationship any further - after all, dating Blonde Venture Capitalist would make him #6: Almost Had Her, and she's destined to be with to #7: Wedded Bliss, and Blonde Venture Capitalist is just so perfect - he's rich, her dad likes him, and he buys her chocolate strawberries! She wants to have his Blonde Venture Capitalist Babies, but she can't defy the Dead Mother Prophesy!
So, she decides to make him #7 by a technicality - she takes up Bagel Boy (that would be Dempsey) on his offer of accompanying him to his brother's wedding and pretending to be his girlfriend in return for free bagels. She seeks to fool the Dead Mother, thinking that if she's publicly declared to have Bagel Boy as her boyfriend, that will make him #6: Close But No Cigar, thus pushing Blonde Venture Capitalist into the coveted #7 spot.
Yes, Poor Bagel Boy needs a Pretend Girlfriend - when his free-spirited bagel-loving nature inspired him to quit his Wall Street job for small business paradise, his gold-digging fiancee dumped him at the altar, and he needs the Fake Significant Other present at his brother's wedding to convince his clingy relatives that He's Over The Bitch. More chocolate strawberries, hands-on croquet lessons, and kayaking mishaps ensue, and pretty soon they're making the sweet, sweet, off-screen luuuuuurve (as the Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels would say). However, Bagel Boys wants a Real Relationship now, but our Motherless Protagonist dumps him (at a Pancake House, no less!) because she's in a rush to have Blonde Venture Capitalist's Blonde Venture Capitalist Babies now that he's firmly seated upon the #7 Throne.
However, (surprise, surprise!) Free-Spirited-Bagel-Loving-itis is apparently a sexually-transmitted disease, and our Motherless Protagonist finds out that she's become far less enamoured of her Time-Wasting-Lawyer Job, and of her Not-Free-Spirited-Enough Blonde Venture Capitalist, and finds that she much prefers Free Bagels with Schmeer to Chocolate Strawberries. Cue realization that Dead Mom's Prophesy was to be taking Figuratively, Not Literally! Cue Money-Shot of Patrick Dempsey's Smile! Cue Wedding Bells! Cue Credits! Cue mad, guilty giggling!
Yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, Dempsey was very good looking. Was it better than Tales from the Whoop: Hot Rod Brown, Class Clown, starring a teenage Tobey Maguire, a film I watched during my recovery from Spider-Man withdrawal? God, yes. Was it worthy of an Oscar? Hell, no. Here's to guilty pleasures!

Blasphemy!

I've attributed my love of reading to my parents, who had exceptionally good taste in the choices of children's books they read to me, and let me read once I was old enough. The Mouse Who Wanted a Cookie, The Missing Piece, the entire collection of Beatix Potter's books, and A. A. Milne. Mum always used to read to us the stories of Winnie the Pooh, and I love Milne's poems, especially "King John Was Not a Good Man". I watched the Winnie the Pooh animated series when I was little, but I grew out of it quickly, and it was never a favourite. I never watched the movies, either.
However, I never really minded what Disney was doing with the stories - until now.
Reading Neil Gaiman's blog over at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp, he brought to attention the fact that Disney, for it's next animated Winnie the Pooh series, has decided to replace the Christopher Robin character with a "six-year-old tomboyish girl", as yet unnamed, in order to "bring a breath of fresh air to the franchise". WTF?? You can read the article at http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-12-06-winnie-the-pooh_x.htm.
That, my friends, is heresy! What were the folks at Disney thinking? I'm trying to imagine the nitwits in the boardroom going over why, exactly, they saw fit to dissect the childhood memories of millions of people to tear out the beating heart of the A. A. Milne story and replace it with an cold artificial thing of mechanical moving parts that pumps sugar and anti-depressants in place of blood.
Maybe they thought that since there is only one female character in the Pooh crew (that would be the Roo's mum), that they were alienating the toddler girl audience. Balls. BALLS, I tell you. Girls and boys alike loved the books and the cartoons. Christopher Robin and the Rabbit character are suitably androgynous, and really, three-to-six year-old girls do NOT care - they like the stories. Since when has a four-year-old darling, with chestnut curls and the money of her doting parents in equal abundance, ever said, "Gee mommy, I don't like Winnie the Pooh. I feel alienated because there is no female character with whom I can relate to, and so the story has no emotional relevance for me anymore."
ARGH! Dammit, Disney - go back to doing what you do best: which is making faithful adaptations of fairy ta...wait a minute...
Damn. I guess this is just a regular workday for the Mouse House, then.

Best Birthday Gift EVAR!

Guess who's coming to town two days before my birthday!
GEORGE R R MARTIN! For his Canadian Book Tour!
I'm SO THERE!

Home For The Holidays!

NO MORE CLASSES! Squeeeeee!
Sure, I have to study my butt off for exams, but still - I don't have to sit through the completely ridiculous and unnecessary subject Symbolic Logic anymore! Huzzah!
Yesterday, I celebrated by going to Karaoke with the Mixed Chorus afterwards. The place was packed, and as such I didn't get to sing more than one song before I felt it best to go home so that I could wake up at a reasonable time to start studying. It was very fun - the two DJs were really crude, but I grinned and beared it. The whole room would sing and dance to the more popular songs, to the point where some songs had to be sung from memory because the dancefloor in front of the screen projecting the words was too packed with dancers.
"Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Russia's Greatest Love Machine!"
"I've got friends, in loooooooow places...."
"Play us a song, you're the piano man...."
"It's now or never, I'm not gonna live forever, I just wanna live while I'm alive - IT'S - MY - LIFE!" This was especially popular.
The two social organizers of the choir had really good memories, it seems - after I sang, both of them sought me out to tell me how good it was that I came, and that they hoped I would come again. (I'd like to - but I'll either have to find a ride for next time, or save up for the $20 cab ride home) Their attention baffled me - it was just karaoke, but to them it seemed to be as if I'd passed some bizarre initiation ritual to be really "in" with the Mixed Chorus (despite the fact that I missed half of this year's Christmas concerts due to cold and cough).
Oh, and the song I sang?
"Can't Buy Me Love".
"Oh, so you like the Beatles?" *blush* "No, I like Patrick Dempsey." ^_^;;;

The Writing Track

I haven't been keeping up on reading my authors' blogs, and I probably should. Reading about other writer's progress makes me all frantic to keep up, and spurs me to write more. ^_^
I should probably think about setting up a list of all the links to the author's blogs I visit, because most are quite fun to read. Some, true, aren't really by authors, but by people connected one way or the other to books and writing. Those would be Ms Snark, Literary Agent (misssnark.blogspot.com) a very helpful agent from New York who answers dozens of questions on her blog every day - to the extent where many doubt her claim that she actually is a literary agent, seeing as she spends so much time answering writer's questions. Bollocks! If she wasn't an agent, then her answers wouldn't nearly be so well-informed as they obviously are.
The second exception would be Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels (www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com), written by women who are unabashedly devoted to the Romance novel industry, but not afraid to call them on their shit, when they see fit to produce shit.

Still, moving on - I've been riding along with a fairly even pace through George R. R. Martin's Clash of Kings. A Feast For Crows appeared in the mail a few days ago, and I'm in a rush to catch up so I can start reading the new book.
I've noticed something about novels and writing style - depending on the style, I read books slower or faster. I use the metaphor of a track - reading George R R Martin and JK Rowling is like riding a rollercoaster on a neverending slope downward - I'm drawn in and in and keep reading faster and faster until I reach the end. They're that good. Other authors have a style that's read more awkardly - Ian. R. MacLeod, for instance. Reading Breathmoss and Other Exhalations was like driving a rickety stationwagon over an unpaved dirt path littered with giant rocks and gaping potholes. Bounce, bounce, jolt, bounce - very rough, very meandering, very slow to get through.
My style, well, I enjoy it, the way a child might enjoy a jostling cartride along a flowering forest path - it goes all over the place, and it's hardly smooth, but I have a sentimental attachment to it. I think it all goes back to adjectives. Speech tags, upon closer examination, don't really grab my attention unless they're grossly misused. Adjectives, though, and the tongue-twisting names and new concepts often introduced in science fiction and fantasy, can provide obstacles in a writer's style, a rock on the path, if you will. A good fantasy writer, something I'm desperately striving to be, should learn how to add all those touches in such a way so that the passage of reading is smooth and uninterrupted by confusion.
So, I'm trying to do that for The Boy Who Would Be Queen. It's working, but mostly because I tend to unwittingly copy style from the author I'm currently reading - George R R Martin. I'll have to polish it more into my own style (presuming I even have one yet...^_^;;) during re-writes and revision.
Now, I'm back to school and waiting at the mailbox - I'm expecting the last of my Christmas presents (I'm done all my shopping!), a rejection/acceptance letter from CICADA Magazine, books from Green Man Review, and Locus, the December issue with an interview with Robin Hobb!

Cancel Christmas!

There were good things and bad things about today.
Bad things first - I'm still coughing up a storm, which meant no Choral Rehearsal for me today, which means I can't perform during the Choral Performance tomorrow. It's a tragedy, I know, but maybe I'll be in better health when I go to karaoke with the chorus on our last rehearsal this Wednesday.
Also, I made my first attempt to find a replacement sweetie for my Mum's snowballs. Snowballs and fudge used to be a Christmas baking tradition at our house, but with my development of a dangerous allergy to pecans, snowballs have become verboten and we've had to look for other baked delights to fill the sad-looking void next to the squares of chocolate fudge on the seasonally-decorated plate.
I found a recipe call Mocha Bites - which mixed instant coffee and cocoa and butter together into small, round coins that were rolled in sugar afterwards. Mum and I (mostly Mum, because of my cough) made them, but when they came out and were finished, the reaction was less than stellar. My mother said they were too bitter, my sisters said they weren't as good as I had hoped. My dad ate one, and said "They're not bad." I ate them, and while I thought they were nice, they were dry. They were the kind of dessert that I wouldn't hesitate to eat if they were being served at a stranger's house, but not the kind of cookie that I would want representing Casa AnimeJune.
Horribly disappointed, I tossed all three batches into the sink (after eating fifteen). Afterwards, however, Dad and Sisters #1 and #2 wailed, tore at their hair, and demanded why, why, why had I been so heartless and wasteful as to dump those delicious cookies into the sink? They then proceeded to salvage as many of the cookies from the garbarator as was possible (about half a dozen). Well, excuuuuse me.
Good news now - we've cancelled Christmas!
By which I mean, we've refused to hold a Big Christmas Dinner at our house. We've done it almost every year since Nana and Papa moved to the condo, and while it's a pleasant affair for those who eat the food and retire to the cheapseats with coffee and fudge afterwards, it's a pain in the butt for those of us, and I mean the people who own the house, who have to clean it up afterwards. It's tiring and frustrating and has to be planned very meticulously in advance, and very often Mum and Dad are too exhausted to enjoy Christmas dinner as much as everyone else.
Relatives have suggested other alternatives, but none of them were appropriate, and would, if they didn't make it even harder than it already was, make the dinner more uncomfortable for the guests as well. So, we've decided to do just hold a Christmas dinner for us, Mum, Dad, me, and sisters #1 and #2 (#1 has volunteered to cook the turkey - she's in Food Sciences). And it's not a complete cancellation of Christmas, and nor are we isolating ourselves from our family members. We're still going to have a big Christmas Eve dinner at Nana and Papa's condo before going to Mass, a gettogether that is, allegedly, much more popular with the aunts and uncles and cousins than our dinners.
I think it's going to be a pleasant change - the work that went into the big Christmas Feasts had arisen to the point where we dreaded the approach of Christmas - and it should never go that far.
And, I've already bought all my Christmas presents. Huzzah!

Striking While the Iron is Hot

Yesterday, my cough worsened to the point where it felt like I was being uncomfortably squeezed around my mid-section everytime I hacked something up - the effort it took for coughing strained my diaphragm and the muscles of my back.
So I stayed home, drank soda, read George R R Martin, fiddled with my homework (it's dwindled due to the approach of exams, but I'm become horribly lazy concerning it all the same), and wrote some more pages for The Boy Who Would Be Queen. By the way, that's just a working title - my mother thought it was gimmicky, and I have to agree, but it was the only think I could come up with at the moment.
However, I haven't had any trouble writing down for that story. It's amazing - sometimes I have to force myself. Reading the Willow King is stillborn - I have no passion left for it. I think the reason is that I'm writing Boy right when I'm feeling passionate about the story - and the act of writing creates momentum for the passion that keeps me writing. If I plan a story (like I did for Willow King in August), but don't write it, it goes to seed. I have to keep writing if I want to keep involved with the story - that's what helped me finish The Shining Empress, because I kept writing at it regularly, and it keep the iron hot, so to speak.
Well, live and learn, I suppose. I can always come back to Willow King and try and ressurrect it someday, but for now, I'm going to focus on Boy.
Also, I've been dilly-dallying for Desert Muse. Next week - I will send the story into the Challenging Destiny. You all heard me. I'm going to do it - if Mum can't read over it in time, well then, too bad.