False Advertising

I went clothes shopping the other day, which is usually a hassle for me, because while shopping at the mall is fun, coming home is always a rude shock as I realize just how many of the clothes I bought do not fit or look as well as they did in the store.

Last year, I outfitted my wardrobe with long tanks and short-sleeved shorts, worn under shorter sweaters and jackets. This set-up allowed me to wear normal sweaters and tops without exposing my belly.

This year, it seems that fashion has reversed itself - now, cute t-shirts worn over plain, longs-sleeved tops are all the rage. I thought this was a great idea - plain long-sleeved tops are cheap and plentiful, as are t-shirts in general. Choosing the long-sleeved shirts was easy.

Choosing the t-shirts, not to easy.

The popular tees are ones that have messages and words on them, as well as graphic designs. Now, while I'm not completely tapped out when it comes for confidence, but there are certain things I just can't bring myself to wear, because they seem, well, fraudulent.

First of all, I will not wear shirts bearing the popular slogan, "Life is better Blonde". While I AM blonde, it is a very dark, ashy blonde that regular people insist on mistaking for brown. I know I'm blonde, my mother knows I'm blonde, I don't want to wear something that ordinary people are going to take issue with. I just don't have to time to argue with irate passers-by that, yes, my hair is blonde, they're just not looking closely enough. I also don't have the energy to fend off people who try to look close enough.

Secondly, I can't wear a shirt that is insulting. Tees that say Friends Don't Let Friends Date Ugly Guys or Could You Go Suck Somewhere Else? are just asking for a fight. You can't take back a harsh word if IT'S WRITTEN ON YOUR CHEST. Besides, there's too much of a chance that that second message might be misinterpreted.

Also, there are a growing number of tees that might as well say "I'm a Stupid Airhead - Date Me!" I'm not stupid, so I can't very well wear a shirt that falsely proclaims that I am - so that means shirts that say I'm Too Pretty to Sit in Class, I'm Too Popular to Learn Math, or Socializing is My Best Subject are off the list.

From the other side of the spectrum, I can't wear tees that say I'm something cool, when I'm not. Wearing a shirt that says Rock Star, Brown-Eyed Bombshell or Cute Rebel would make me feel uncomfortable, because it might let people make assumptions about me that are false. I don't like rock concerts - they're loud, and the music is whiny. I don't like rock music in general - and I can't play an instrument or sing with the amount of raw screaming needed to be truly "hardcore". I'm not a rebel either - I like rules. I take my parents' side in nearly all arguments, and I'm not the kind of person who gets off on giving the middle finger to authority figures.

I also wouldn't characterize myself as a bombshell - I'm nervous and childish and while my figure is certainly something to write songs about, my face isn't. Guys attracted by the "Bombshell" message will quickly find themselves turned off by my inquiries into whether they are Catholic or not.

I can't wear Proud to be Single because I'm really not proud to be single, not at all. I've been single since the day I was born and I'm tired of it. I simply can't be proud to be single until I've at least HAD a few boyfriends so silly that being single is preferable. And even if they did make a Ashamed to be Single - Date Me Please! a t-shirt, I still wouldn't wear it.

Always In the Driver's Seat is also unacceptable - not only literally because I can't drive, but also because metaphorically I wouldn't mind being in the passenger seat of a relationship, at least for a test-drive, since I've never been in a real relationship.

Talented In So Many Ways almost had me, but again, I'm made uncomfortable by tees that proclaim disguised slutty messages, like Two Boys are Better Than One and Flavour of the Month.

In the end, I ended up with four tees. The only one that had a coherent message on it said Seriously?. I thought it was a good indicator of my funny personality, without being overtly insulting to the reader (or googler, whichever). Plus, it reminded me of the exclamation most commonly uttered on Grey's Anatomy ("Seriously? SERIOUSLY!").

The second was white with a cool design, with the word "Beauty" in the middle. Nice and ambiguous. The third was black, and had a punky metallic design of a cross on a shield with wings, with the word "Sacred" underneath. Now, I can take "Sacred" - like "Beauty" is fairly ambiguous is regards to the personality of the wearer, and I am religious so I guess that counts. Are my bosoms sacred? You better believe it. The fourth was a dark blue that looked like it had artfully arranged paint splatters on it, and the word "Dream". Nice, simple and harmless.

And I'm not fooling anyone.

The Good and The Bad (but mainly The Good) of FX's "The Shield"

My family has become officially addicted to television shows on DVD. No commercials, plenty of special features, and best of all - you don't have to pay to have the special cable channels that all the really special shows play on. In this manner, my family has gorged on numerous seasons of Gilmore Girls, The West Wing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Angel, Veronica Mars, House, and lately, The Shield.

So compelling, after we watched maybe five of the episodes of season 1, Mum and Dad rushed out to get seasons two and three. Today, we just went and bought #4, because already we've finished up on the last episodes of the third season. Ooh! Suspense! One of the best parts of the series is also one of the best parts of one of my favourite fantasy series, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire: the grey characters. No one is evil on The Shield, but no one's clean either. So, to make this post interesting, here's a Good/Bad analysis (a la Fametracker.com's "Fame Audit") of the main characters (warning - series spoilers ahead):

Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis)
Who is He? The beloved anti-hero around which the show revolves, Vic Mackey is the leader of Farmington's strike team, a band of cops fond of breaking down doors, shooting suspects, skimming cash and drugs off of significant busts, and conveniently forgetting to follow due process. Vic Mackey is the man who makes it happen - whether he uses his testosterone-drenched charm or the threat of very real violence.
In a Word: Efficient.
The Good: Loves his kids.
The Bad: Doesn't love rats - shoots them. Even if they're cops.
The Good: Loves the ladies, and occasionally his wife.
The Bad: Bald. Short. Mean.
The Good: Pretty much single-handedly keeps the Farmington district's crime rate as low as it is.
The Bad: Despite all this, can't keep a handle on the increasingly incorrigible Shane.


Captain David Aceveda (Benito Martinez)
Who is He? The Latino police captain with little field experience and a strong political agenda. While he contented himself in the first season by throwing barely-contained fits of impotent rage while Vic and buds got away with murder, theft, and brutality, in the following seasons he offers Vic a freer reign in order to clean up the area in time for his upcoming election.
In a Word: Ambitious.
The Good: Shows genuine concern for the crime rates of Farmington...
The Bad:...mainly because it affects him politically. Nearly everything he does is based on how it will affect him politically.
The Good: Didn't kill the guy who mouth-raped him, and got his revenge the legal way.
The Bad: His unlikely alliance with Mackey often forces him onto the wrong end of Claudette Wym's contemptuous stare, and that's never good.
The Good: Will not take shit from politicians who are more concerned with maintaining status quo then with putting big baddies away...
The Bad:...which essentially makes him a big, fat hypocrite when you think about it.

Detective Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder)
Who is She? A tough-but-fair Detective partnered with Dutch who dedicates her life to getting predators off the streets. While she's tolerant of Vic in the first season, in the following seasons Vic's dealings start interfering with her cases, which puts her at odds with both him and Captain Aceveda.
In a Word: Righteous.
The Good: Where do I start? How 'bout with the stare. You know what I mean.
The Bad: One person's "righteous" is another person's "judgemental".
The Good: No one verbally-bitch-slaps better.
The Bad: Tendency to meddle.
The Good: Damns politics to hell!
The Bad: Damns politics to hell.

Detective Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach (Jay Karnes)
Who is He? Outwardly arrogant, inwardly insecure, generally oblivious, but essentially honest and good-hearted, Dutch's partnership with BAMF Wyms is the one of the only things that keeps him from being the laughingstock of the precinct. The other thing? His insane talent to pull outrageous busts out of his ass.
In a Word: Hapless.
The Good: Awww! Look what he did with the blind kitten!
The Bad: Ewww! Look what he did with the stray cat!
The Good: He took back the planted bra clasp! You're a good man, Charlie Brow- er, I mean, Dutchboy!
The Bad: His dependence on textbook criminal psychology allows him to miss some pretty obvious clues (the one-armed victim was in the trunk, you idiot!)
The Good: His relationship with Wyms and their Good Cop, Idiot-Cop-Who'll-Trick-You-Into-Confessing act is always entertaining.
The Bad: Can't defend himself from Vic Mackey's bullying to save his life.

Detective Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins)
Who is He? Vic Mackey's best friend and second in command, Shane is both a trusted confidant who has Mackey's back and a hotheaded loose cannon that Mackey has to clean up after. How the two have managed to remain friends is one of the show's many mysteries.
In a Word: Redneck.
The Good: When it comes to Mackey, is loyal to a fault. If Mackey told him to eat shit, he'd ask which fork to use.
The Bad: Shane would do better if Mackey remembered to tell him NOT to pee on suspects and leave his police vehicle filled with stolen cocaine unlocked while he goes for a quickie.
The Good: I challenge you to find another fictional police officer who knows more negative euphemisms for "homosexual" ("bonesmokers??"), but who's still willing to have a polite conversation with a male hustler if the subject is on tricked-out cars.
The Bad: I also challenge you to find a fictional police officer in a show after 1960 who still uses the term "darkie" when insulting a black teammate.
The Good: Devoted to his wife, despite Vic Mackey's badmouthing of her.
The Bad: Devotion would have more merit if his wife was not clearly possessive, controlling, and insane.


Detective Curtis "Lemonhead" Lemansky (Kenneth Johnson)
Who is He? Third in the Strike Team heirarchy, Lemonhead ("Lem" for short) is the one member of the Strike Team who maintains a moral conscience. When the task calls for framing a drug-dealer, ripping off the Armenian Mob, or murdering a Mexican rapist, Lem is usually the only one who thinks to question the rightness of their actions, although he always goes along with the final decision.
In a Word: Clear-eyed.
The Good: Easily one of the best-looking gents on the show.
The Bad: Comes across as kinda dumb.
The Good: Aww! He's sensative! He shows guilt! He shows pain!
The Bad: He also shows his ass on TV...wait, is that supposed to be a bad thing?
The Good: Finally showed some spine against Vic Mackey's manipulations by burning the money-train cash.
The Bad: We could have done without the whole vomiting-blood thing. And where did his Latina former-gangbanger-banger girlfriend go?

Detective Ronnie Gardocki (David Rees Snell)
Who is He? Not sure really - he's the fourth wheel of the Strike Team. Wait, that doesn't work. He's the place-filler, someone to round out the Strike Team to the nice, even number of four without contributing anything like character development or plot to the show. Lack of emotional presence makes him the prime choice for being a victim or a patsy.
In a Word: Unnecessary.
The Good: Um...well, he's certainly not the most offensive Strike Team member (that would be Shane).
The Bad: Covered up his one distinguishing feature (a drug-dealer-inflicted stove burn scar) with an ugly beard.

Officer Danielle "Danny" Sofer (Catherine Dent)
Who is She? As Julian's training officer, she helps to show the rookie cop the ropes at the start, then helps him to manoeuvre through the murky waters of police politics later on. Is also Vic Mackey's occasional mistress.
In a Word: Supportive.
The Good: Has a thing for Wagenbach (thank God SOMEONE does)!
The Bad: Also has a thing (a physical thing) for Vic Mackey. Shame on you! He has a wife! And two autistic kids! And a storage locker full of stolen cash!
The Good: Isn't afraid to put Julian in his place, in the field or out of it, when Julian relies too heavily on the word-for-word interpretations of the rulebook or the Bible.
The Bad: After a few seasons, begins to rely too much on Julian, and her constant attempts to spend more time with him come across as needy and desperate.
The Good: Holds head high, and continues to look Vic Mackey in the eye, even when she receives the short end of the procedural stick thanks to the Strike Team's meddling.
The Bad: It's high time she was taken off cutsey gimmick cases (guy attacks people with bug-spray! Fence steals ugly $10 000 chairs and ends up selling them for $10!) and given some real criminals to put away.

Officer Julien Lowe (Michael Jace)
Who is He? The baby of the show, the rookie cop who's only beginning to learn what being a real police officer is like. He is deeply, deeply religious, but also homosexual, which lends him a great deal of inner conflict that interferes with his police work.
In a Word: Naive.
The Good: Manages to be the most moral character on the show while possessing a wry sense of humour that keeps things interesting.
The Bad: That comment he made to Shane when Shane announced he was going father a child - "I didn't know you were married". C'mon. COME ON. How oblivious you can get?
The Good: Was wise enough to rid himself of his larcenous boyfriend, and refuse any efforts to rekindle the relationship - holding his own against boyfriend's pretty pretty pretty charms.
The Bad: The main reason he was able to shrug off his former lover was because he got shacked up with a wife. Now how long is that going to last?
The Good: Okay, he totally showed up Aceveda when the Captain inadvertantly stole a child's bike. That was awesome.
The Bad: Unstable - when he's not veering into self-hating Christian fundamentalism, he's sliding into a rule-bending habit of violence that Vic Mackey would approve of.

Work and More Work

Got fired from Chapter's y'all.

I know, again. And for pretty much the same reason: the managers ran out of money and time to keep all the employees they foolishly hired, so they bumped a few off the list. Since my "termination" from Coles was turned into a "transferral" to Chapters, my probationary period went on as scheduled.

Unfortunately, that mean I only got to work at Chapters for two and a half weeks before my probationary period ended. Once that period's done, it becomes more complicated to terminate an established employee, so the managers thought I was easy pickings for the Firing Squad. And, of course, I can't reapply to any Chapters, Coles, or Indigo for another nine months, because only after that amount of time can my hiring give me another full three months of probationary time.

So, it basically sucks. It sucks worse because my parents, seeing me lose my job for third time for the same reason, are convinced it's because of something I did, despite the fact that none of my managers, upon my asking them, have been able to come up with anything unsatisfactory about my performance. My parents reason is that, while I hadn't been doing a bad job, if I'd been doing a super-crazy-fantastic job, I would have so dazzled my managers with my brilliance that they would have fired someone else. Yeah, right. It's totally possible for the girl still learning how retail works.

However, I got a new job soon enough - the day after I found out I was let go, I got a call from an office where I applied in May (and turned down for Coles - ARGH!), offering me part-time work. I went to the interview and did pretty well, so while it's only part time, it's better than a kick in the head, and I can always find another part-time job to pick up the slack with.

As for my writing, I'm making progress on "Magic Doesn't Grow On Trees", but I'm only going to finish the outline for The Boy Who Would Be Queen before dumping it. My mother made a comment the other day about how much better all my "modern" writing is (ie - my short stories and my boring nonfictional essays), and how crappy my "medieval" writing is (my fantasy novels). I mean, sooner or later parents and loved ones are going to say hurtful and ignorant things about your writing, so I guess it's time I got used to it.

I'll probably continue later, though. I like writing about medieval stuff. My mom can say whatever she wants, but she doesn't know what I feel when I write, so I shouldn't take her seriously in that regard. I don't like writing about the "real world" - it's boring. There's no mythology about modern times! No folklore for modern times! I like writing escapist literature, which means things that help people to escape what's currently going on around them. And if she doesn't like it, fine. She doesn't have to read my stuff if she doesn't like it. She only has to buy it, mount it on her wall, and brag to all her friends about "her daughter the author". ^_^

The Man Who Wouldn't Listen to Voices of Reason: How M. Night Shyamalan became a laughingstock by hiring a sycophant to write his biography

First off, let me say that I think M. Night is a capable director who has produced four movies, two of which I have genuinely enjoyed. Two out of four, for a beginning director, isn't bad at all - and I think it would be even better if he wasn't so fanatically overhyped due to his insanely successful debut. I thought The Sixth Sense had a cool concept, a delightful twist at the end, and a firm grasp of the "boo!" and the "sinister-what's-that-under-my-tent?" factor that kept me interested throughout the movie.

I also adored Unbreakable. Easily my favourite Shyamalan movie, one of my favourite superhero movies, and basically one of my favourite movies of ALL TIME. At least for now. The idea of a realistic superhero, one who groans and sweats and goes red in the face as he lifts a superheroic amount of weight, one who can sense the evil that other people do, really grabbed me when I first watched it, and it held on and didn't let go until the very end. Loved it. LOVED it.

Didn't like Signs, although most of that was due to the fact that I was expecting a twist when there wasn't one, and the fact that the aliens were silly. I mean, beings allergic to water landing on a planet that is 75% poison? Where acid literally RAINS FROM THE SKY? I mean, honestly!

Didn't like The Village either, although it did have some cool visual moments. I think it's the type of movie that would benefit from people watching it a second time. The first time I watched it, I was so annoyed by the obviously-fake Puritan mode of speech the Elders adopted, but once you know the end, it's believable - but it doesn't erase the negative feelings accumulated from sitting through 90 minutes of Bad Accents For No Reason.

Anyway - back to what I hate about him. There's apparently a biography being written about Shyamalan's work on Lady in the Water (which is NOT getting good advance press, by the way). I read an excerpt in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, and my first question was: "Seriously? Seriously? Is this guy for real?" My first reaction: This is a joke. My second reaction: M. Night Shyamalan is a pretentious self-absorbed jackass man-child artiste who has no concept of how to react to constructive criticism.

It's ironic that a piece of work that is so slavishly ass-kissing to Shyamalan would induce such negative feelings against the subject. Maybe it's intentional, *LOL*. It basically portrayed Shyamalan as this social reject who needs to be put away in a quiet little box, away from reality, in order to come up with his staggeringly brilliant films, and woe to anyone who attempts to, you know, cripple his genius with, egads, reason or logic.

It showed him giving his script to his buds at Disney, it showed how these execs read it with a critical eye and didn't get it (for good reason - they were not familiar with the mythological terminology, they figured that a main character with a constant stutter would annoy the audience, they also figured that casting Shyamalan as the SECOND BIGGEST PART in the film would also annoy the audience), how they told him so at a polite dinner, and how he basically starting bawling like a baby about how they couldn't understand his perfect vision and that by rejecting his script, they were rejecting him, boo-hoo, now he had to end his six-year partnership with Disney because of ONE conversation during ONE dinner because he's allergic to rewrites and criticism, and oh, the folks at Warner Brothers will accept him, and then he can go back to his little box and write stories about delusional ghosts and fake-Puritans with bad accents and crazy people who kill small animals only the animals aren't really dead because the crazy person isn't really crazy because he's realized that the animals are a metaphor for his mental instability and that the catharsis of killing said fake-animals provides him with closure and material for a nice fur coat. Er, a nice FAKE fur coat. Or maybe it's real and that's the twist! OOooooOOooo....

And apparently, I'm not the only one - there was a review of the book in the paper yesterday, where the reviewer mentioned that the author compared Shyamalan to Moses, and slammed a movie exec for going to her son's birthday party instead of reading Shyamalan's earth-shatteringly-good script RIGHT AWAY NO TIME TO WAIT SHYAMALAN'S INTERNAL GENIUS CLOCK IS TICKING WE DON'T WANT HIM TO GO CRAZY AND CUT OFF ONE OF HIS EARS, HIS BEAUTIFUL EARS, MY GOD WHY WON'T YOU READ THE FUCKING SCRIPT DON'T YOU KNOW HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS TO HIM HE'LL START CUTTING HIMSELF ANY MINUTE NOW YOU HEARTLESS BREEDING BITCH THE APOCALYPSE IS COMING AND WHEN SHYAMALAN COMES DOWN FROM THE SKY IN A BLAZE OF GLORY HE'S TOTALLY GONNA DISS YOU AND YOUR MOUTHBREATHING KID HOW'S THAT FOR A TWIST ENDING!!!!

Or that's the general idea, anyway. Anyhoo, it does not make Shyamalan look very good, and seems to be an embarassing judgement call. To me, as someone who's aspiring to be a screenwriter, it pisses me off when I see writers who've been given incredibly lucky breaks pissing it all away with bad behaviour. M. Night Shyamalan, how are you even going to get better if you ignore all suggestions of improvement?

Who Made the Dean's List?

I MADE THE DEAN'S LIST!

Still haven't made Dean's List, though...

...But that doesn't mean I'll stop trying!

Do You Like Pina Coladas?

Well, I've just come up with a different plan! The Boy Who Would Be Queen and I will be doing roleplay!

See, I'll come into the bar, and he'll be there - but he'll be in a disguise, he'll have shaved off his beard and put in coloured contacts and put on a blond wig. He and I will meet, and we'll pretend that he's a completely different story - a wild and romantic and new story, not that boring old story that is currently sitting at home with his feet on the couch watching the World Cup and staining everything he touches orange with all of the Sweet Chili Heat Doritos he's been eating.

And I'll pretend I'm leaving behind my boring story, and he'll imagine he's abandoned his silly, derivative author, but he'll still have all of his good parts - the boy-dressed-as-girl plotline, the magic-as-living-creature element, all of the details and names and places, only he'll leave his bad habits at the door (the tedious dinner party scenes, the disorganized and unstructured plot line, the vague and cliched descriptions of castles and medieval political situations written by an author who hasn't bothered to research actual castles and medieval political situations). And we'll walk out of the bar acting as if we've done something very radical and cool, when really we're just making up.

I really hope this saves our relationship.

The End of the Honeymoon

I recently read, in a book on screenwriting, that the relationship between an author and a longer piece of her work (a screenplay in the example given by the book, but it can easily be applied to novels as well) is very similar to a relationship and a marriage.

You get your idea, and it's the same as meeting a new person. Things start out swimmingly, you discover you like the same things, the first few pages are blissfully easy to write and you have every hope that this will be the work that gets published, that this man will be the one that you marry.

Of course, partway in, the honeymoon is over, and you start falling into a routine that very quickly gets boring. Your hubby smacks his lips when eats, you find you can't write anything better than scene descriptions, he starts working late hours, you wonder why you were tempted to waste so much time on an idea that is evidently going nowhere, he forgets your birthday.

Even worse, soon into this relationship you start noticing other guys, you start coming up with new ideas - ideas that are so much more creative and clever then the one you've been throwing pages away on, these guys are so much more polite than the husband who won't floss and they like to pay attention to you and tell you how pretty you are (which hubby hasn't done of late), and these new ideas are just so great that it becomes obvious that you're just wasting paper and computer space by continuing with the derivative piece of crap you started with, and you know that life is too short to spend it with a man you're not satisfied with when there are dozens of beautiful men out there who will do it for him!

One has to get over that hump for a successful marriage, methinks, the same way an author has to overcome her insecurities about her story and see it through to the end. Now this isn't completely applicable to me, because I'm polyandrous with my stories. You may say I keep a handsome harem of novels and screenplays, and when I tire of one I will visit another. Usually it works, especially with short stories - I stopped by "Magic Doesn't Grow on Trees"'s place recently, and oh - he's shaved off his unsightly goatee and took a massage class! Working with other stories gives me new ideas that I can then apply to stories I've given up on.

But with novels, well, that's harder. With Shining Empress, I managed to pull myself through three drafts, and while I got to the end, I think I chickened out and didn't really make any conclusion, and in the end I didn't really have a product good enough to ship out anywhere.

So I'm having problems with The Boy Who Would Be Queen. He's become very childish of late, and I don't want to end up with a story that would be classified as "Young Adult". I realize that lots of perfectly good fantasy ends up termed as "Young Adult", but I've never visited the teen section of a bookstore since I was thirteen, and I want my novel to be on the same self as the Big-Girl Fantasy stories. I realize this is childish in and of itself, but that's my current attitude and it's putting a strain on me and My Boy.

Also, I have no idea where we're going. I stopped giving myself much of an outline past the gimmick that starts the plot off in the beginning, because more often then not (and this happened all the time with Shining Empress), I get a new flash of insight, the plot heads in an entirely new direction, and all of my plotting goes to waste. I just write and write and write in the hopes that something will come up, but right now I think I've wasted words on a generally uneventful dinner party, a mild argument that ended with a fish-eyed stare, and is going into a game of croquet where I can descibe the pretty clothes that people are wearing and not much else.

I'm very tempted to give this novel the "Extreme Makeover" - that is, write a better outline and start from the beginning, from scratch. And maybe do some research on what medieval life is really like. I made my protagonist a stable boy, then the son of a coachman, without really knowing all that much about coachmen and stables. I'm going to keep slogging at it, because I know I have some good ideas in there SOMEWHERE, but it's very hard and I'm so tempted to just do away with it completely and focus on my stories and screenplays.

Progress

As our city is bogged down beneath the weight of a heat wave, the headaches, nausea, and periods of listlessness I have when the temperature rises beyond my melting point (25 degrees Celsius) have made reading and writing, as opposed to watching television or listening to music, the choice activity to do.

I've finally pushed my way through the last book reviews due for Green Man Review on the pile of books I received from Warner Books. It was hard, because none of them were really my cup of tea - most being bland novel adaptations of comic books, stories about spunky paranormal girls who flirt with werewolves, have sex with Scottish vampires, and socially-ignorant demons who love pizza, and silly teen novels about crazy kids who fight off drug dealers while transporting themselves into an illusory state where they can see the future.

I also finished a slew of movie reviews for SEE Magazine, which had me watching a lot of films, including Click (which I liked), The Proposition (which I really liked), Peaceful Warrior (which was generally inoffensive), and The Devil Wears Prada (which I hated). On my free time, I've also seen Nacho Libre (which was disappointing) and Superman Returns (even more disappointing - but then again, I've never been a fan of Big Blue myself).

I also went to an interesting information session at the public library which was being directed by the folks at On Spec, an exceptional speculative fiction magazine (I used to think "speculative fiction" referred to that branch of science fiction that dealt with alternative histories, but really it's a general term for fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, etc. etc.). I had heard of it, of course, but due to my ignorance of what "speculative fiction" meant, I'd never considered sending any of my stories there way.

It was a good thing I went to that session, though. I found out that they're situated right here in Canada, quite close to where I live, so that I can save on postage. I used to send my stories to Challenging Destiny first for the very reason that they were the closest and gave the swifted replies, but I think I'll have to make On Spec my go-to magazine, and not only because they are favoured by Tor editor Patrick Hayden.

So, I've given them a shot by sending them my much-revised copy of "Whiff", the short story I wrote in my Creative Writing class last spring. In the last couple of days I toned down the "cutsey" factor of the first half, changed a couple of terms around so that they were less awkward, and sent it in. I really have to be prompt about sending in stories - because if I give it a few weeks, I'll always be disappointed in the story when I look at it again and have to spend more time on rewrites.

I'm still in the planning stages of my screenplay, but that's mainly because I'm learning more about screenplays by reading books on them, and going to websites and reading actual scripts of movies. I'm currently reading James Cameron's script for the Spider-Man movie that never got made, and you have no idea how relieved I am. The story it presented was simply awful. Not only did it make Peter Parker a college senior (in the comics he gets his powers at age fifteen, and even though he took him out of high school really quickly, Sam Raimi's film still had him get his powers in time to fight the high school bully and have a meltdown in the cafeteria), but they had lots of scientific craziness at the beginning that I didn't really like. The fateful spider being irradiated by "anti-force"? Puh-leeze.

I didn't like how they made Aunt May care more about Peter getting a girlfriend then having grades, but I didn't mind how Liz Allen was the love interest here. I much preferred the sympathetic-but-crazy Ock of Spider-Man 2 to James Cameron's Doc Ock--who was an unrealistically portrayed asshat from the start and had a toady named Weiner. Tee-hee, Weiner! I'm still reading through it, though, and it's interesting how they set up scenes. I had no idea how much power the screenwriter has on the look on a movie, considering people (namely, I) can never remember the names of screenwriters the way they do directors and actors.

I always figured that screenwriters did the script, then the directors directed where the characters moved and what the sets looked like, but apparently not. I'm kinda glad. I'd love to be a successful screenwriter - if you want my shallow reasons, it's because I love movies, I'd still have a chance to win an Oscar, the pay would be great, and I'd have fame and respect but no recognition. Perfect!

Two-Year Anniversary!

Wow! How could I forget that this blog has been around for more than two years - and been visited by more than 3000 people!

Thanks for sticking around and reading all about my doubts and bitching and personal problems, guys! That means a lot! ^_~

Okay, um, REHIRED!

Well, not exactly.

At my previous manager's suggestion, I sent in my resume to the large-format bookstore that is one floor below us in the same mall. To my luck, the two months I spent at the small-format bookstore counted as experience to the large-format, which motivated one very, very nice employee to boot it to front of the line and right under the LF manager's nose.

I was contacted very promptly, and I just had the interview today. The first question the manager asked was about what had happened that had made me leave the SF bookstore upstairs. I'd had to rehearse that line in my head, because there were several reasons I and my family members had concocted, out of spite, self-loathing, or too many idle hours watching House M.D., which, primarily, were:

-The SF manager hired me to take the place of an employee who went on an extended vacation, and just found an excuse to fire me once the employee returned: I definitely couldn't use this one - there was really no proof other than the fact that I was hired on the employee's first day off and fired on his first day back. Besides, both the LF store and the SF store were managed under the same umbrella company, and presumably their staff communicated with each other from time to time, so badmouthing the SF Manager would hardly go well with the LF one.

-I'm a social retard who lacked the necessary communication skills to get along with the rest of the team, and the attention span to multitask with my work: This was out as well - not only was it (mostly) the result of the dip in my self-esteemed caused by being let go from a job I genuinely thought I was good at, but it would hardly pursuade the LF manager to hire me on.

-The SF Store was very high pressure, and had extremely high standards that I couldn't match up to: While at first this seems like the best response, upon closer analysis it possessed the worst traits of the first two excuses - it portrayed my former manager as a hard-ass taskmaster, and me as a hapless underachiever.

The response I ended up settling on was this: the SF bookstore was a very high-pressure workplace, as it had to compete with the LF store with a staff of only eight or nine people. Thus, those eight or nine people had to be able to learn very quickly how to do all the tasks in the store, and learn how to do several of them at once. While I was passionate about my work, and learned how to do individual tasks without too much trouble, I was, in the end, too inexperienced with retail to learn quickly enough to be a contributing member of what had to be a very close-knit and communicative team, and led to my trouble with multitasking.

I also mentioned in the interview that I had trouble with my social skills. The manager's next question was for me to explain that. I replied very honestly - the SF store job had been my first job in retail, the first job I'd ever had where people came in not knowing exactly what they'd want (fries with your burger? Butter on your popcorn?), the first job where I had the chance to suggest and persuade people to buy something from the store. At McDonald's, and the Movie Theatre, very few people came up to the counter without being sure they were going to buy some food. People coming into bookstores, however, could go either way - they were just as likely to browse and leave empty-handed as they were to find a book they liked.

Well, that was where I aced my interview. The LF Manager revealed right then that she had had a talk with my SF manager beforehand, and that she had said pretty much the exact same thing. The LF Manager praised me for my honesty and my openness, which made me feel pretty damn good. A lot of times in interviews, I (and, I presume, lots of other people) have been tempted to fudge a few facts and accomplishments (especially if the interview questions are "situation" questions, i.e. - 'name a time when you had a problem with a customer and you went beyond the call of duty to solve it'. In those cases I twist up a real-life situation, if I don't outright make up an entire interaction, in the fear that if I confessed to not being able to remember such a situation, or worse - had never experienced such a situation, I was in some way losing points with the potential employer). I didn't during this interview - and that's a lucky thing. If I tried to smarm or gloss over or explain away the fact that I didn't leave my SF job voluntarily, the LF Manager would have called me on my bullshit and that would have been that.

But I didn't. Essentially, I was hired - or, to be more precise - "transferred". Considering that I'd only been off the SF job for about a week, the LF checked the paperwork to see if I couldn't just be seen as transferred from one job to another - essentially eliminated my termination from my record, and leaving me with the same seniority and position. So, I'm being "transferred", although I do have to come in next week to redo the paperwork for my file and get my new schedule.

But still - I'm employed! Back to the 30% discount! Back to "Free Books on Loan" - and in a store with infinitely better selection!

But I can't mess this up.

Not this time.

I really, really really am going to try to get along with everyone and to do the best job I can. No dawdling while shelving books - I don't have the luxury of stopping all the time to check the cash register, because now there are specific people assigned to the cash register. No more having to deal with only one or two staff members at a time - no, now I have to tone down my seemingly uncontrollable gift of inadvertantly annoying everyone in my presence, and try to make real friends.

Because I got lucky. I might not get another chance as good as this one.

FIRED!

Wow - I have to say this has been one emotional rollercoaster of a week. I made my first professional sale for an absurdly high amount of money considering it's my first professional sale and it's the first story I ever wrote with the idea to publish it. The guy I'm currently dating (yes, dating), showed up with a mind-boggling amount of romantic spontaneity to drop off flowers (yay!), and the next day, I'm fired from the only paying job (save writing, of course ^_^) that I've ever truly enjoyed.

The manager told me that she usually "let people go" (she actually used that namby-pamby term) at the start of their shift, but instead, due to time constraints, she let me work for two hours in blissful ignorance before giving me "the talk" after my break. She gave me rather vague reasons, and I was too much in shock to actually ask her to give me something specific.

Basically, she let me know that in a small bookstore, the employees had to be part of a small, close-knit team, and they also had to handle all the different jobs at once. From what I gathered, I didn't fit into the team, and I was easily flustered. She suggested I work at a larger bookstore, i.e. Chapters, where one was hired to do a certain task and only a certain task. She then went on to describe how over the last few weeks the store had become a "disaster area" during closing, how not everything was being done. I found that hard to comprehend, seeing as I always made sure I did rounds and checked things, and I never closed alone - I always did so with a more experienced coworker.

I realize part of the firing had to have been my fault, but I can't help but harbour a few suspicions. I'd only been working there for about a month - what happened to my supposed three month probationary period? The reasons I was given seemed to be the mistakes of someone who is inexperienced, not stupid or deliberately destructive - they hardly seemed drastic enough for her to let me go this soon. I also happened to notice that the senior employee who went on the long vacation that required the manager to hire new people started work the day I was fired. Of course, the worst scenario I can come up with is that the manager was always planning on only hiring me for the short term but didn't have the decency to say it up front. The best scenario is simply this: she runs an extremely, extremely, EXTREMELY tight ship, and my square peg corners chafed in the round hole she needed filled.

To be honest, this "letting go" was the employment equivalent of the "just didn't do it for us" rejection letter - it lets me know I'm not good enough, but can't give me constructive reasons as to why I can't measure up, and it's very disheartening. At least I worked there long enough to get some free and discounted books out of it.

ACCEPTED!

I've been accepted.

Go on, check my sidebar. Yeah, there it is: "My Brother's Own Words", accepted, as in "not rejected". As in - I didn't get sent a mysterious and unsettling envelope addressed to me, in my own writing, with nothing inside and no return address.

Accepted.

Someone liked my story. Someone wants to publish my story. It's not published yet - it has to go through an editing process and contract stuff, but I've still been accepted! By a magazine! A big, paying magazine that people actually subscribe to, voluntarily, and not because they'll get a free coupon book if they do!

Accepted.

I have no idea how this will turn out, but it's certainly much more exciting then another rejection letter and another "it just didn't do it for me". I'm very excited and nervous and enthusiastic.

I've been jumping up and down. My mother's making calls to everybody. I have a chance to be a real, published author! An AUTHOR!

I wrote that story over three days while I was recovering from wisdom tooth removal, and I sent it in, in September. In January, I received a yellow postcard back, saying that they were looking at it. And now, I've received a letter that says they thought my story was "fresh, poignant, and endearing" and that they're willing to publish and pay for it. "My Brother's Own Words" has been on a nine-month journey, but by God, it was worth the wait!

Because I want to be a writer for a living, and this acceptance means that I am one step closer to getting my absolute dream job!

New books, and I'm finally writing!

I finished the first segment of Daniel Leon's storyline for the "Virtual Season of Heroes", and the creators really liked it. I'm still thinking about the next segment, and I hope it's just as good.

Also, I'm done with Theodore Judson's Fitzpatrick's War. I found myself really enjoying it. It has a fairly depressing premise (the book itself is said to be the "unabridged version" of the memoirs of Sir Robert Bruce, a former friend of Fitzpatrick, who is, in the time that this version of the memoir is published, a glorious war hero of times past), but it is stuffed with little bits of humour, most of it coming from the footnotes of the fictional "editor" of these memoirs, who occasionally fleshes out a point that Robert mentions, or discredits Robert's accounts of Fitzpatrick's mass-murdering deeds as wholely uncredited and spiteful lies.

The depressing aspect is that Robert writes his memoirs in order to show the world the truth about Fitzpatrick's rule, but in the future, he is still unbelieved.

The world itself is post-apocalyptic. All electricity is lost or banned by the usage of Storm Machines, weapons created during the Electronic Age (that is, our present age) that caused loads of suffering and death and allowed all of Canada and the United States to merge into a Christian fundamentalist confederacy known as the Yukon. So while medicine and weaponry have advanced, the social climate is very much like that of imperialist Britain.

The unique setting, a mixture of old-fashioned social beliefs and futuristic steam technology and feudal politics, creates a very interesting world that was intriguing enough to forgive the occasional info dump. On occasion, the author spends pages and pages on detailed descriptions of weapons and military manoeuvres, none of which is any interest to me, but if you can slog through that, the rest of the narrative is highly entertaining.

Returning to the Fold

I'm sorry folks - I know I spent a lot of time not posting on this blog, or updating, or reviewing, or anything of the sort. Well, now I'm back, and I'll try to be a more diligent writer.

I'm enjoying my job at the bookstore. I've had my share of long, eight-hour shifts - and the fact that I still look forward to going to work is proof enough that I'll be able to handle this job for the long-run. I've already been rewarded for my superb membership-selling skills twice, and in three weeks I've already made more than a quarter of what I earned working at the movie theatre for two and half months.

I finished Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld. It was not what I expected - it was more than I expected. It was very introspective, and the hero of the story, Lee Fiora is the type of person whose adventures related to me very closely. She is a scholarship student at Ault Preperatory School, and she finds that going to a boarding school was not even close to what she expected. She finds herself isolated, and is always worrying about every little move and decision she makes and what people might think about it - even though, as it turns out, not many people care. I've felt that way in high school - and while there were many parts of this novel that I didn't enjoy, there was a lot that I sympathized with, that I personally understand that Curtis Sittenfeld was able to describe so aptly.

Now, I've started reading Fitzpatrick's War, and it's off to a very good start - it's written like a pseudomemoir recovered by a scholar from the future, who makes a great deal of humorous footnotes.

Also, I've become involved with an internet writing project. My other efforts have stalled, for the most part - the main reason of that being laziness. Writing under a deadline, or at least for the scrutiny of large amounts of people, might inspire me to be more productive then I usually am. The internet project is located on the messageboards of SuperHeroHype.com, and it's a Virtual Season to coincide with the actual first season of Heroes, which premieres on NBC this fall. The premise of Heroes is that a small group of people spread out over the US suddenly develop superpowers - flight, foresight, magic mirror powers, etc. Well, for this project, each participant creates their own character and proceeds to write a script detailing their particular storyline in the Heroes mythos. I think it will be good - I'll be able to share my writing with people who share my interests, and I'll have the opportunity to try my hand at screenwriting, as all of our contributions will be in script format. Wish me luck!

New Books!

As you can probably tell - my reading list has been interrupted by a new shipment of books for review, for The Green Man Review. Goodies! The pile of "books to be read" is getting so large (or tall, more accurately, as I stack them on my desk to provide visual encouragement to read faster) that I despair of ever finding the time to read them all, or to ever have the opportunity to make use of my bookstore's Books on Loan perk.

It's Official! I Love My Job!

It's true!

I know what you may be thinking - oh, she's just started, she's liked all her jobs at the beginning, it'll only be a matter of time before she quits for the summer and blogs a hilarious "Things I Hate About the Customers at [My Job]" post. Well, that could be true, I suppose - but for now I am revelling in the glow of enjoyment I get from my employment (see that? I'm so happy I'm rhyming!).

For one thing, the store has a wonderful manager and a small, tightly-knit staff. The small staff is probably going to be actually beneficial for me - according to one of my coworkers, this means I'll be trained in everything, whereas in the bigger bookstores I'd only be trained in specific tasks. So, I'll be getting a more well-rounded training at this store.

I like it. It's quiet, and the customers are (for the most part) great. I like merchandising the books (a fancy word for "arranging them in pretty ways on the shelves"), and stocking out ("putting books on shelves"), and selling the books - we have a very cool, up-to-date computer till that makes everything very easy and fun to use.

Oh yeah, and did I mention the fact that I'm VERY GOOD at my job? All my other jobs were kind of banal - take the order, sling the popcorn, fry the fries, rip the tickets. Not a lot of room for improvisation. At the Bookstore, though, I've found I possess a near-miraculous talent at selling Membership cards. You know - those cards that give customers discounts on books in the store.

When I first arrived at the job, I was told that everyone had a quota to make regarding the number of Memberships they sold or renewed. On the day's Task Diary, beside the person's name would be a dollar amount of memberships that they had to sell. It usually came to about one Membership a day, but my coworkers said it was usually expected to be only two a week. Now, I was worried about this. It wasn't commission or anything, but it was a quota I would have to meet by SELLING it to customers. That meant I had to up my personal communication and social skills and sell people something very specific, instead of just suggesting books for them.

However, just like my fear of my Japanese classes that turned out to be extraordinarily easy, I appear to have an almost supernatural ability to sell Memberships, record amounts of them. Yesterday, I sold seven Memberships! In one day! A few days ago, as it happens, the VP of our Bookstore paid a visit to our branch in order to do an inspection, since our branch has been having great progress and tip-top sales despite being small and sharing a mall with a larger bookstore at the other end. And my manager complimented me to the VP on my great membership sales, and the VP also complimented me on the way I engaged customers.

My sales have resulted in me getting rewards at work, which is great, but I feel just a little nervous because I have no idea what I'm doing better than anyone else to get the Memberships, especially considering I've only been working here for a week. Yesterday, I tried to tell the Manager that I had no idea how I've managed to sell so well, but was interrupted when a few more customers came in, and I ended up selling two more memberships right in front of the Manager! -_-;; She laughed and said, "You should be teaching us!" or something to that effect, but I only felt embarassed, because I wouldn't know what to teach!

Anyway though, I'm come through several long shifts with a smile on my face. I spent the whole day at a job, and I've left it still happy about my job, and not dreading the next time I'd have to go and do it - unlike my jobs at the movie theatre and McDonald's. The only hitch in my whole plan was that my feet hurt like HELL during the eight-hour shifts. I wore these really comfortable heels. They hurt a little on a shorter shifts, but I just figured that was because I hadn't stood up for so long since working at the theatre a year ago.

Turns out, though, that spending eight hours with the majority of my considerable weight on the balls of my feet is almost enough to give me a stress fracture. Which means, I'm going to have to clean off my theatre all-black sneakers and give those a go instead. However, for now that is the ONLY hitch in my otherwise fantasic job.

"Crown of Stars", by Kate Elliott. B-

This is an interesting review in that half of what I find disappointing about this novel, I'm not sure whether it's because they were oversights on the author's part, or because I've forgotten something that's happened in previous books. It's been a while since I read the first five books of the Crown of Stars series, I remember the main plot points, but some of the tinier details do continue to escape me.

Either way, here goes - and as a warning: if you haven't read the first five books, go out and do so before reading this review, or else read on and be spoiled, or confused, because I don't have the space to explain every last detail to newcomers.

Anyhoo - continuing on. In the final novel, things come to a head. Sanglant and his army, Conrad and Sabella and their army, Stronghand and his warband, the evil Hugh of Austra all come to meet by the city of Kassel. Battle will be joined, and at long last the throne of Wendar will be decided. Allow me to list the things that disappointed me in this book:

1. What happened to the elf-like Ashioi? Under the banner of the new, warlike Feather Cloak (who happens to be Sanglant's mother), they have decided to wage a war of annihilation against mankind in retribution for all that they have suffered over the centuries. The Church of mankind doesn't like the Ashioi any better. However, after one Ashioi warcamp is decimated by Hugh's weather spells, their rampage is cut short. No more war parties, no more attacking with poisoned arrows and attempting to blame it on King Sanglant. I couldn't understand what made it stop so suddenly.

2. What happens to Queen Adelheid? She married Henry, plotted to have him controlled by a daimone (with Hugh's help), then moved to the background after Henry died and Sanglant claimed the crown. In the first half of the book, she's plotting to gather forces to her aid in order to press her claim and the claim of her children, but after she and her new husband kill the Biscop Antonia (which is, by the way = YAY!), she also abruptly vanishes as a threat.

3. A lot of the revelations that people have have no corporeal proof to support them, and are imparted by visions that, to me, seemed out of the blue. For instance, the idea of the Phoenix, of their religion's Redemption of Daisane (aka Jesus), is decided to be th real thing, without so large a religious debate, even though there's not a lot of proof on it. Same thing for the creatures - like lions - that just drop random objects at certain characters' feet, giving them visions about the truth about their ancestry or some such tidbid of information.

4. We never find out who, or what, Alain is. He's something special - perhaps even supernatural, given the way people react to him. He begins as a flawed, but pure-hearted character, but merges in these last two books into a kind of resigned, sad saint. The end of the book suggests that he spends his days wandering around like a kind of medieval superhero, righting wrongs and fighting injustice with kindness. Hmmm...also - the concept that the Lady of Battles (who started Alain on his journey in the first place) turns out to be Satan came WAY out of the blue for me. I thought she was a good guy! When did that change?

Still, the ending wasn't completely unsatisfactory. Happy endings were doled out all around, and the final chapter jumps ahead an astonishing forty years to show us a brief glimpse of how the children and grandchildren of the main characters are getting by in the new world order. The characters are the reason this book didn't get a C. Kate Elliott rights really well, and I enjoyed reading the book despite the number of questions and loose ends I was left with.

"In the Ruins" by Kate Elliott. B+

Aah, sweet relief. Comfort food. I'm not going to lie to you - part of this novel's high review is that, in comparison to the deadly boring Quicksilver, this is packed with action and good characters. The reason is doesn't get an A is mostly because of my forgetfulness. I haven't had the time to read the Crown of Stars series for at least a year, so jumping right into the penultimate volume left me with serious disorientation.

It took a long time to remember who Antonia (the eeeevil, fanatical biscop) was from the previous books, as well as her son Heribert. But anyway...

This book starts off in fine, if depressive form. For any of you who haven't read the Crown of Stars books, I'll try to explain things, but I can't let this review get too long, so read the first books if you can. No, really. They're good. They're chock full of intrigue and medieval detail and have one of the finest political systems I've ever read of. In this world, men and women are more or less equal, but are given different functions. Women are political - in this world, the eldest daughters inherit. So women get most of the position of power - plus, in a cool twist on Catholicism - they rule the Church! Only women can be biscops (bishops) or become Skopos (Pope). I loved this idea.

However, guys fight - while women can be military leaders as well, it's mostly men. Wives stay on their estates and govern them, while their husbands ride off and defend them. It's an interesting and highly effective system.

In In the Ruins, the world is once again in deep trouble. Anne, an evil Skopos, and her followers attempted to weave a giant spell that would keep the elven Ashioi's world from returning to their own, and failed. The resulting cataclysm of the two worlds joining to become one again creates unspeakable devastation - earthquakes, volcanos, floods, tidal waves, and a huge layer of ash that coats the sky and hides the sun. However, according to main character Liath, the destruction would have been much worse if Anne had succeeded, as it would have literally sundered the world in two.

Sanglant, bastard half-Ashioi son of King Henry, and husband to Liath, has been declared regnant by Henry's dying words. Always an obediant son, he takes the remnants of his father's great army, combines it with his own, and seeks to return home to his country in Wendar to help repair what damage has been done to his nation. While still faithful to Liath, their marriage hits an obstacle when the higher members of the Church urge him to put his wife aside, seeing as she comes from no great family, and was excommunicated in a previous book to boot!

Meanwhile, the evil Antonia (one of the few of Anne's followers to survive the backfiring of the spell) has been declared Skopos by Queen Adelheid - the wife of King Henry, and the one who orchestrated the plan to have him ensorcelled by magic in order to declare their daughter heir to Wendar (instead of Henry's older children), and forcing him to try and kill Sanglant. With Henry dead, she scrambles to set up a court of her own in order to challenge Sanglant for the throne.

And finally, the sundered Ashioi find themselves one big happy people again, but troubles arise regardless. During the original spell, thousands of years ago, that sent their half of the world into an exile in the aether, half of the people were exiled to eke out a starved existance on the dying fragment of their land, and the other half were suspended in time back on Earth. The poor, thin exiles must contend with the much more numerous, healthier Ashioi, who, as their humiliation is more recent in their minds, wish to wage war against all of humanity and destroy them forever.

That's basically the set-up of the book. Kate Elliott writes a great page-turner, although sometimes she's a little too heavy on the setting descriptions. Her characters are flawed, but fabulous, with solid pacing and a great story. Nothing goes right in this world - it keeps getting worse and worse, leaving me in greater suspense as I wait to see how the problems can possibly be resolved. Hopefully, unlike China Mieville, in her last volume she won't freeze everyone in time, but will actually come up with conclusion. I've trusted her this far.

"Quicksilver" Book One of the Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson. D+

Free at last! Free at last! Those, attentive readers, were my thoughts at having finally, finally read though the 916th page of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. I will not be reading The Confusion, the second book in his trilogy, as you can tell from the Updating What I'm Reading section. I loathed this book, for so many reasons that I shall relate.

The first reason is that I wasted money on this book. Christmas money. I came across it at a bookstore, remembered the big deal reviewers made of it, and was attracted to its width, attributing said length to a wealth of content akin to the magnificient storylines in George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. My Mum warned me off the book - she said she'd already bought it, tried to read it, couldn't, and subsequently gave it away/sold it/threw it out/burned it - I don't really remember, except that she got rid of it. I should have listened to her -but noooo...I had to have it for myself, I couldn't just get it out for a free at a library.

The second reason is that it took so much time to finish this novel, time I could have spent reading better books, like the concluding volumes of Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series, which are infinitely more entertaining.

Now, I'm not saying Neal Stephenson is a bad writer. Quite the opposite, in fact - he's a very good writer. I loved Snow Crash, and his style in Quicksilver was enough for me to buck up, and read it all the way through in respect for the fact that he knows what he is doing. If he'd been a bad, or worse, a repetitive writer, I would have put this volume down on page 200 (when 2 out of the 3 main characters still hadn't shown up yet!). I did as such to Robert Jordan, who dragged me though five and a half of his books in the Wheel of Time series before I came to my senses, realized that due to the prophesy in the first book I already knew what was going to happen, and goshdarnit, that I didn't need twelve novels of 600 pages or more to tell me as much.

The writing isn't what bothered me about the story, it was the way the story was told, and what happened in the story. The story itself hinges on the concepts of math, physics, and philosophy round the 17th century. I hate math, I failed physics, and the only philosophy class I've ever taken was Symbolic Logic, which was basically Math But With Words, but helped me get out of taking actual Math or Stats courses in University.

Most of the action concerned the discoveries and experiments performed by the members of the Royal Society, a club of eccentric British chaps who dissect dogs while they're alive and set off cannons to find out how they work. Nothing, to me, could be more boring. All of the action that occurs in this novel (and, on paper, it certain seems exciting - the London Fire, children out of wedlock, rebellions, espionage, mathematical discoveries, political hugger-mugger) is told to us third hand. The reader is never there to experience the majority of these things as they happen, we are told what has happened during dialogue. A great deal of the novel went something like this:

Royal Society Member (RSM) #1: By the way old chap, have you heard? The king is dead! *sips coffee*

RSM #2: Yes, I heard about that - it happened outside my window, in fact. Quite loud, actually. *adjusts his wig*

RSM #1: Awful luck, that.

RSM #2: Indeed. By the way, Isaac Newton's discovered this quaint thing about gravity.

RSM #1: Really? Extraordinary. *both take a shot of snuff* By the way, don't you just despise the French?

RSM #2: I do! Along with the Dutch, the Catholics, and James Duke of York!

RSM #1: I know - something's bound to happen. I can't wait until it does, because then we can talk about everything that happened, casually, over coffee!

RSM #2: I'm looking forward to it - it ought to be most pleasant. Unless, of course, I'm killed.

RSM #1: Well, in that case, I'll just have something to tell RSM #3.

RSM #2: Jolly good!

So, not only was the plot itself something that was the complete opposite of something that would interest me, but it was told in such a fashion that felt like nothing interesting happened - I only heard about the interesting things that happened. It distanced me from the story, made me feel like an interloper, someone without the authority to see things as they happened. I personally think the whole point of reading fantasy novels is to be put into fantastical events and experience them directly along with the characters - not to hear about it afterwards in a well-furnished parlour.

Also, if you're expecting this to have magic or fantasy in it, or anything out of the historically ordinary, expect to be disappointed. It might be speculative, although my knowledge of 17th century history is just this close to nonexistant so I can't tell if this is all invented by Neal Stephenson or not. Certainly some historical characters are mentioned (Isaac Newton is quite prominent, there are cameos by King Charles II and James II, and a boyish Benjamin Franklin gets a shout-out), but I was too confused to put a great deal of it together. Certainly the discussions of math and physics are entirely beyond me - but Stephenson is too good of a writer to let me get too mired in that - but the book is of such a disastrous length that I'd often forget about important people who'd turn up later in the novel without so much as a hint of their previous backstory.

There are a few humorous bits, normally pieces of ironic humour regarding linguistic differences between then and now (the origin of sabotage and dollars are thrown out), but when it came right down to it I was not engaged at all throughout this book's gargantuan length. Boring, tedious, long. Who knows - if you have a hankering for mathematics, physics, the Dutch stock market, and 17th century history, you might really enjoy this novel. But as a 20-year-old English Major who remembers Isaac Newton mainly as the villain from Vision of Escaflowne, this book was a colossal waste of time.

Hired! Hired! Hired!

I got hired - on my second job interview - on the SPOT!

I now work for the Tiny Book Store (TBS). Easy to get to, adequate wages, the manager seems really nice, and while it can't guarantee full-time hours - I realize that, realistically, no job will be able to guarantee full-time hours until I've worked for them for longer then three months. I've never passed the probationary period for my jobs because they were only for the summer. With TBS though, I want to work for it part-time during the next school year as well, so I'll probably make enough money for tuition, eventually.

The interview went really well. The manager really enjoyed the part of my cover letter that said I had to pin my posters onto my ceiling because all the other wallspace was taken up with books, and I acquitted myself nicely. I think it was because this time, during this interview, I was more honest in the answers. I don't mean to say that I've lied during other interviews, but when they would ask a question like "Do you recall a time in your other jobs when you went beyond the call the duty?" , I'd always assume that if there were no such time, I wasn't good enough to be hired. So naturally, instead of saying most of my jobs were cut-and-dry and didn't have a whole lot of opportunity for improvisation, I'd fudge a response.

I'm terrible at improv, so most fudged answers come across badly. Here I actually told her that I didn't have a lot of opportunities to do more than was strictly required, because I was working in the food service industry, and only to get money for tuition. I wanted to work for TBS because I loved books, and yes, I did need a little extra cash to take the pressure off of my parents for next year's tuition payments. Also, when she asked in team situations, whether I was a leader or a follower, I honestly said, "follower", even though alarms bells were going off in my head saying "Don't be a sheep! Sheep don't get hired! Innovators get hired!"

Well, it must have worked, because she hired me on the spot. I start Monday, actually. I still have my last exam on Wednesday, and a movie screening for SEE Magazine on Friday, but I don't need to study for the exam (it's for comparative lit, so all I need to have done is the reading, which I have), and my shift on Friday is hours away from the movie screening.

So, I'm excited. The manager said that a lot of the people in the store (TBS has a staff of, erm, about six people) loved my resume (I stated how I reviewed books and freelanced), and the benefits of this job are great. Working for Cineplex Odeon, I got free movies all summer, which was a blast during a year that had Batman Begins and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But working for TBS, I can take out any book in the store on loan for two weeks, for free, as long as I return it in pristine condition. And even if it's not, I get a 30% discount when I buy it! So, YAY!

However, now that a day full of thinking and hoping and planning has passed, my glee has been chilled slightly by nerves. This is a job where I will have to perform, to sell things. I have to help people find what books they want, and provide good customer service. I love books, though, so I'll try to hold onto that passion so that it will help me deal with people, who tend to scare me sometimes.