I'm a Friend of Sarge

9:47PM - Brief Announcement

Part of the Borg will be at Windy Con this weekend. This is a good thing. By the time we get home Sunday Marcey will have (almost) totally moved out, because she is divorcing us. This is a sad thing. Kathi (The girl in "Night Lights" from Riding the Hell-bound Train) has been with us for 6 months and it is working out very well. That is a happy thing. All in all, things are pretty balanced.

Like I said in a twitter earlier today, "Poyamory is not for pussy's. It takes a lot of work."

8:51PM - One Worry Explained

One of the people I mentioned being concerned about is womzilla, who has now written an lj entry about the tenacious infection of his leg. It sounds like it'll be OK if he gets the right care, including maybe physical therapy for the bad circulation, but it's gone on a long time & I do worry.

I'm fine myself, not even cranky about too much or worried about too little work. Today on a whim I bought some G.T.'s brand Organic Raw Kombucha with real ginger juice. I like it. Now I just have to figure out what the heck it is. It's intense, as is my other new favorite, Starbuck's actual coffee beans covered in dark chocolate.

Also enjoying Stephen King's Under the Dome, which, like Cell, has no mundane build-up first but starts with an inexplicable event in all its gory glory, then fills in characters as it goes. He's no Peter Straub, but he is good.


Mood: better than if I were worried both about others and about myself

2:11PM - Additions and improvements for Paid Feature

We've made some additions and improvements to Notes!

The Notes feature has been added to two action-taking pages:

• You can now add a Note directly on the Add a friend page - handy if you'd like to mark down where you met them or another name you know them by!
• On the Ban and unban users page (under Account -> Privacy) you can now add a Note, including to a group of users all banned at the same time (so that next year you won't need to ask yourself "hey, why did I ban these guys?")

Other changes:

• When you're viewing your existing Notes they're grayed out; click in a field to activate it to change the text (this page can be found from the header by using Profile -> Manage Notes)
• Changes to editing:
  • When you're going to create a new Note but one already exists, you'll get a warning that you're editing an existing Note
  • You can now delete a note from the "Edit note" pop-up in the hover menu
  • You can now delete notes for multiple selected users on the Manage notes page
  • When you change Notes on "Ban|unban users" page, they can be edited and saved with "Save Changes" button

11:55AM - Pleasures, Guilty and Not

Guilty Pleasures
Fringe, tv show with all the dramatic supernatural nonsense of The X-Files while purporting to make scientific sense, sort of. OTOH, I really like the characters, X-Files mix of bear-of-the-week and overarching conspiracy plot, imagination, and pacing; and the special effects are better. Makes nice late-a.m. but still-over-coffee viewing on my first day off after a lot of long days beginning in the morning.

Evil Evolution, the newest and even more absurd installment in the Marvel Zombies comic book series, in which anthropophagous living-dead superheroes and -villains meet their counterparts from an all-ape dimension. Iron Mandrill! Baboon von Doom! Zombie Reed Richards' head! And Spider-Man reminiscing about eating Aunt May. I don't know if the high-quality repro makes it better or worse.

Some not-guilty pop-culture pleasures: The Venture Brothers (tv), The Walking Dead (really 1st-rate b+w comic), The Big Bang Theory (tv), Comic Book Comics #4 (by the team doing Action Philosophers; why are references to Steve Ditko synchronicitously showing up in my life right now?), re-reading P. K. Dick's Through a Scanner Darkly, reading Stephen King's Under the Dome.

Mood: relaxing, entertained

6:10PM - November 11, 2009

And now for the recent stats for the fabulous urban fantasy adventure about a neurotic vampire/thief and her wealthy blind client, now with Bonus! Cuban drag queen and military intrigue:

Project: Bloodshot
New Words Written: 2060 (meh)
Present Total Word Count: 70,032 words
Goal: 95,000 words by December 12





Things Accomplished in Fiction: Finally wrapped up that scene. It’s a good scene, and important — but it felt like it took forever to write. I’m sure I’ll get around to the revisions and decide it’s either (a). awesome, or (b). terrible and needs to be cut … but whatever. Sometimes you just have to write through these things, because there’s no pole-vaulting over them or tunneling under them.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Day-job work; housework; important official correspondences exchanged; visited B&N forums to answer questions; did more prep for tomorrow night’s event; went to post office.

Reason for Stopping: Going to grab a bite to eat before Ellen comes over to do (yet more) prep work for tomorrow’s event. Then we’re going to jaunt out to the airport to pick up our friend Avionne and her husband Gordon, for they are flying in from Scotland to stay for a few days. In advance of having these folks in town and/or having other things eating my life, I think I’ll also try to sneak in some more day-job work, to keep my head above water.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

5:40PM - operation ebook drop

Edward C. Patterson and other indie authors have started a "grassroots project" to send ebooks to soldiers.  It started small, at Amazon, but Mark Coker @ Smashwords found out and the project has snowballed.

I encourage all authors to participate.  Spread the word.  Thanks.

(Proud mother of a veteran)

11:59AM - Heads-up all you reader-type folks

For the next few days, I’ll be lurking around in the Barnes & Noble forums — where Boneshaker is a November book club feature — answering questions and doing my best not to post any spoilers. If you’re a member, drop in for a digital visit and fire away. If you’re not a member, registration is free and easy and only takes a moment.

Here’s your chance to ask me anything you like, or just follow the conversation — whatever makes you happy. Click here to dip your toes in the mayhem.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

8:52AM - Because It's a Fallen World

Not my stories to tell (though I'll be asking permission in two cases), but three people I have come to love are having health issues, all tenacious and of various seriousness, including mscancerchick. Flow, my tears.

Makes my concern with the tsuris over the scholarship seem incredibly petty, my overwork even unto lack of sleep not worth being cranky over, and my own health issues small.


Mood: lugubrious but not disconsolate

12:22AM - Thank you

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

10:13PM - Health at Whatever Size

Today I realized that the pants I wore are too big. Lost weight? Bought on the large side to begin with? Probably both. Fortunately, I have some bags of clothes ready to go to the women's shelter anyway. (They are usually full-up with clothes except large sizes.)

I'm glad to be able to say that I am neither upset nor excited about this development. On the one hand, I'm still an almost certainly well within the reasonable range in which my weight oscillated in the years since I gave up weight-loss dieting, so I don't need even any self-image adjustment; and even with bigger changes, I'd still be fat, for me a good thing. On the other hand, my blood glucose and knees are better than ever. Being pisco-vegan? Yoga? The weight loss itself? It's impossible, I think, to truly know what causes what, but that hardly matters considering the results.

And some progress on diabetes meds, too. I tried cutting out the actos, especially since it causes some edema in my lower legs; the results seemed OK at first, but longer-term, no. Now I'm back on actos, but I've been able to cut down the glyburide even further, totally eliminating the p.m. dose some days. The worst side-effect of the meds is the tendency to hypoglycemia--and more hypos the better my control is--and glyburide is the biggest culprit with that, so, wonderful.

One thing I think I am doing is retraining myself to a post-diabetic/post-meds sense of hunger. That is, using the glucometer for feedback in terms of matching inner cues to what my body really needs. I haven't seen any writing about this, but I think it is part of what is going on for me.

While I may yet go Weight Loss Insane, I count on many lj friends to help me not, and so far the auguries are actually good. I am both resisting what temptation I have to weigh myself & not all that tempted. I'm not being gung-ho crazy about anything, as far as I can see.

Mood: ready for bed

6:12PM - Jam-packed week already

The last couple of days have been filled to the brim with errand-running and stuff-doing, including (but not limited to) - grocery shopping, post-office visiting, bank dropping-by, University Book Store stock (and mail order) signing, print framing, house cleaning, laundry washing, official correspondence exchanging, outline jotting, fish tank changing, and event preparations.

That last one may have you wondering … what event?
Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already!
Here, let me refresh your memory.

This coming Thursday, at 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea on Capitol Hill,* I’ll be hanging about and signing books and basically having a marvelous time at a most excellent party being thrown by some of my awesome friends. No, seriously. Ellen, Suezie, and Psynde — these three have knocked it out of the park … and into the local establishment where there will be music, costumes, prizes, booze, caffeine, and snacks for the ordering. You can click here for details or heck, just show up some time after six o’clock and join the fray.

Bring your books and I’ll sign them if you like, or buy them at the event. Or forget the books, and just swing by to be social. I’m always happy to meet new people, and Mark Henry will be MC’ing the event. If you’ve never heard Mark MC anything, then you must absolutely not pass up this opportunity. If you have, then I’m already confident that you’ll be in attendance, unwilling to miss it.

This will be an all-ages event, since (a). it’s open to the public, and (b). Boneshaker is a bit of an adult/young adult crossover. Or so I am told. In any event, lots of young adults seem to be reading it, either by swiping it from their parents or nabbing it from a friend. Let me be the first to say I APPROVE OF THIS BEHAVIOR. Please do carry on.

Anyway. It’s coming up on suppertime here and the husband just got home from work, so I’m going to wrap this up and go get myself some noms. Thanks so much for reading, and I hope I’ll see some of you locals later on this week!

---

* Yes, I am aware that this is really a Starbucks in disguise. We tried first and foremost to run with an independent shop for this event, but we got nothing but hassle and run-around; and then the 15th Ave people stepped in. The store has been exceedingly supportive and helpful, and I’m grateful for the venue.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

1:10PM - Tuned Out, by Maia Wojciechowska

Cover copy: In Jim’s revealing journal, which is the substance of this moving book, we share the experience of that terrible summer – the LSD and marijuana, the hippies, the disillusionment, the helpless confusion and fear. It is all recorded frankly, to the final horror of Kevin’s freaking out and the shaky beginnings of his redemption.



The freaking out silhouette is even more detailed and hilarious in real life.

Written in 1968 by a very square author determined to plumb the horrifying depths of drugs she clearly never tried herself, this novel is regrettably only intermittently amusing: one part Reefer Madness to three parts unconvincing teen angst.

Sixteen-year-old Jim idolizes his nineteen-year-old brother Kevin to a rather disturbing degree. This is how the novel opens:

One day I ought to find out how it is with other kids. I don’t think I’m abnormal or anything for sixteen, but I don’t think that there are many guys my age who are still crazy about their older brothers. They might actually love them, but I just don’t think they are crazy about them. […] It’s not that I’m ashamed of it or anything like that, but how do you explain that Kevin is not just a brother to me? Besides being the greatest guy I know, he’s someone I’ve got to have. I mean it’s very important to me to have him.

Fandom! Stop making me go to the bad incest place!

Jim goes on and on and ON about Kevin for the entire rest of the chapter. He offers to be Kevin’s “Boswell” and follows him around writing down everything Kevin says to preserve it for posterity.

He is important.For one thing he never says ordinary, cruddy things. When he speaks he almost always says something really brilliant.

[…]

I really want his opinions on these things so they can become my opinions too.

Then, at the end of an entire chapter of that: I’ve been re-reading these last couple of pages, and I do sound sort of creepy.

Yes. Yes, you do. I’m going to go out on a limb and surmise that the author wrote this entire thing as a first draft and never re-wrote, but rather added in stuff like that as she went along.

Kevin comes home from college, and he’s become a marijuana fiend! He giggles maniacally, flaps his hands, hallucinates evil circles, and demands that Jim smoke pot (“You know. Tea. Grass. Marijuana.”) with him. Jim does so, despite his a Public Service Announcement’s worth of reservations. What follows is certainly the most unique pot high I’ve ever come across in fiction. While Kevin freaks out over the circles, Jim experiences ecstasy, hilarity, and then is visited by a devil who is out to get Kevin’s soul and an angel who urges Jim to save him. The angel-devil-Jim dialogue goes on for pages and pages and pages. Then Jim comes down and pukes his guts out. But lo! The angel is still there! The angel is real! Jim’s soul really is in danger from the Demon Marijuana!

The angel takes off, having convinced Jim that pot is bad. Kevin then hauls Jim out to score LSD, which Kevin has never tried before. They meet naked, dirty hippie chicks in a filthy squat, and nice adults who warn them of the terrors of “freaking out.” Kevin trips and – all together now – “freaks out.” This is disappointingly tame: he thinks the circles are attacking him, breaks a mirror and goes catatonic.

Kevin is taking to a mental hospital, where a nice psychiatrist fixes him up. He and Jim swear off drugs, and Jim resolves to try to get some of his own opinions. And then he goes and gets himself killed in Vietnam. The end!

Oh, forgot to mention: No one in the history of humanity has ever taken heroin and not become addicted, and it is impossible to ever get off it. If you take heroin, you are DOOOOMED.

View boggled reviews on Amazon: Tuned Out

2:33PM - Movie Review: Tormented

This 2009 horror film is an amazing mix of same-old-same-old and insightfully-worth-watching. A picked-on student commits suicide, then comes back to kill: the title refers to him, to those killed, but more subtly to the female protagonist, trying to fit in with the cool kids without being cruel, who admits her faulty behavior but still isn't saved by that.

The depiction of the students is great. I was won by a scene near the beginning, at the funeral, at which three Goths (are they called that in the UK?) stand apart and comment with superiority: "I have nothing in common with anyone." "I don't either." "No, I have nothing in common with anyone." "Hey, I said that first." Then the social ambivalence and problems of the protagonist are very real, too. And no one is faultless when it comes to the student's suicide, but even the biggest bully is, as they seem to be saying now, "relateable" in some ways.

The murders are bloody enough. (And sometimes improbable--I've really developed an allergy to easy penetration of objects all the way through the skull.) The movie may be too scary for some and not scary enough for a hard-core horror fan. I recommend the film, though, because it's about more than just violence but has something to say about guilt and responsibility, as a story about ghostly vengeance should.

Mood: ghoulish, both morbid and obese

9:54AM - Marked (House of Night, v 1), by P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast

This is the vampire—excuse me, vampyre finishing school book.

Zoey Redbird has normal teenage problems – her stepfather is in a whackadoo Christian cult, her boyfriend is not too bright and drinks a lot, and she fears geometry – until she’s marked by a vampyre. Excuse me, Marked.

Wham! Next thing she knows, she’s attending vampyre boarding school. This point was a little unclear, but apparently the Mark doesn’t turn you into a vampyre, but is given to you after you’ve already spontaneously mutated in order to warn you to get yourself to vampyre academy. Once there, you become a fledgling trained in the ways of vampyres. But there’s a catch: about ten percent of all fledglings have their bodies reject the Change, and drop dead before graduation.

This is obviously not going to happen to Zoey, though, because she is extremely special. How is she special? Let me count the ways:

1. Her crescent moon Mark, which is normally just an outline on fledglings, is filled in.
2. The vampyre Goddess Nyx came to her in a vision and told her she had some sort of important mission.
3. Her personal advisor is the headmistress.
4. She craves blood, which normally doesn’t happen till much later.
5. Her wise Cherokee grandmother imparted special Cherokee wisdom to her.
6. She sees ghosts (or possibly zombies).
7. A very few full vampyres can control ONE of the five elements. Zoey, though still a fledgling, can control all five!

Though I mock, I actually quite enjoyed this. It’s kind of terrible and trashy, but the fun kind of terrible and trashy.

For all her specialness, Zoey is a likable character with a sense of humor that’s often actually funny. The academy is a fun setting, with its classes in Vampyre Sociology 101, cat companions, snobbish blood-sucking sororities, and secret rituals in the dead of night. The pace seems fast even though objectively not a whole ton of a lot happens, and though I never feared for any of the major characters, the Casts do a good job of making the possibility of sudden death hang over the characters’ heads. And despite the obligatory presence of a predictably boring male love interest, Erik Night (!), it’s overall very female-centric.

The novel is told in first person, and one of its main strengths is that, with some lapses, it really does read like a teenager wrote it: casual, teenage-cynical alternating with teenage-earnest, simultaneously frank and judgmental about sex. And one of its main weaknesses is that it REALLY reads like a teenager wrote it, complete with bad sentence structure, pointless rambling, etc. It also has a lot of teenage-plausible casual offensiveness – I winced, for instance, every time she called something “retarded.” However, that isn’t just Zoey being in character. There’s also the wise old magical Indian grandmother, not to mention the sympathetic gay guy who isn’t weird and femme like those other gay guys. Etc. That being said, that sort of thing is kept to a relatively low murmur, and there’s clearly an effort, however hamhanded, made at being inclusive.

What really made me want to read more, though, were the hints at the end that all was not as it seemed, and that some standard plot and character tropes might not go in the way I was expecting. Though I could be wrong about that. Anyway, I tore through this and will check the library for the sequel.

View on Amazon: Marked (House of Night, Book 1)

7:52PM - The Doctah Is In

As you may know, Bob, I am permanent ABD from Duke, and don't find it worth thousands in back tuition to remedy that, but at the Korean-American academy I teach at they call me "doctor." womzilla calls it "a field promotion," which makes sense.

Anyway, over the weekend I gave my phone number to a student--standard for anyone I give my e-dress to, because protocol is to phone to tell me to check my e-mail if I don't for a while-- He asked my first name, then decided to enter my name as Dr. [Real Name]--but he said, "Not 'doctor' but 'doctah'--you're the cool doctor."

I like that, and I sent him some e-mail as Doctah [Real Name]. It reminds me of Frank Zappa's word "philostofer" in "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary." (Dr. Bruce, the Wombat in Womzilla's study who wrote Burrowing Beneath the Ground of Being, is a famous wombat philostofer.) That's what a field promotion from ABD makes one: a doctah.

supergee likes it too. When I sang and danced The Tutor's Happydance for him, he said, "Yeah, THAT's how the doctah sings and dances!"

Mood: happy, tired, silly

2:23PM - Hilarious Angel Sanctuary post

coraa reads the first four volumes of Angel Sanctuary: At one point there's a big flash of glowy light and a winged figure appears, and I think, ah, Lady Alexiel manifesting! Or possibly Rosiel! But no, it was Adam Kadamon. At this point I went, wait, who? Adam Kadamon is apparently on its (it's a hermaphrodite or possibly a neuter) own side, and is actually the second most powerful after God, only everyone says that that's Lady Alexiel because apparently Adam Kadamon just kind of wanders around doing... stuff, and doesn't count in the war between heaven and hell. And everyone goes, "Oh, Adam Kadamon, still running around being incomprehensible, eh?" and then goes back to business as usual..

10:07AM - That Knits the Ravelled Sleeve

Sleep, Good
I just slept for FOURTEEN HOURS--minus two pee breaks, one moderate hypo, and 15 minutes to respond to a student's paper due this morning--and it feels wonderful! (No, I'm nowhere near self-sacrificing enough to do that paper thing in the middle of sleep usually, but I knew that so many hours wouldn't happen in one unbroken stretch anyway.) I teach at 4:00 p.m. and may even NAP!

Last week I worked 45 hours, a personal record or close to it. And more demanding because (1) the two daily students for the Saturday test were very emotionally intense for me (and, of course, moreso for them), and (2) I'm not dissatisfied with the commute to Manhattan, because I can read and even grade/critique student essays, but it does make the day even longer.

Teacherly Bragging
Did I mention that on the October SATs I got two vicarious 800s in Writing and one in Reading? Well, if so, I just mentioned them again. Out of 800, of course. One student got one of each, and she's a talented sweetie, too, not a drudge!

And the 8th-grade student, the one I'm BEING PAID to teach poetry and myth to? We started because she didn't get the poetry on the SSAT (private school entrance test), bringing her score down. This weekend, she referred to Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" as currently her favorite poem. The cool thing: she had no idea what that implied or how much it would mean to me.

ICFA PoC Scholarship News
No wonder I felt blessed and needed to share it with the world. No wonder the response pissed me off so much. But, by the way, all seems to possibly be quieting down on that front, maybe. So, OK. The ICFA board has decided not to take an official position, which is completely right, since it is our project.

And you guys, I love you. (I mist up! Despite more sleep I'm still emotionally labile, but that's one side of me.) I focus on the negative so much that even womzilla felt I was letting several nay-sayers outweigh all the support I got from so many wonderful people. But that's not true. For one thing, I could never have seen the situation from the other point of view at all until I didn't hurt so much; some time was needed for that, but also reassurance and solidarity.

Mood: deciding between coffee and more sleep

6:13AM - Misfits

I own an iPhone 3G S, and fortunately I encounter few problems with AT&T’s 3G network in the Portland area... it can be bad (network overloaded) at lunchtime in Portland near the Lloyd Center... but that’s the only network availability issue I’ve noticed.

And I’ve always loved the Island of Misfit Toys (don’t we all identify with misfits?)... so it’s not surprising that I get a big kick out of Verizon’s iPhone Misfit Toy Ad (YouTube).

Good thing I don’t normally buy stuff based on commercials. (^_^)

8:35PM - Software Is Magic

Mat Kearney Concert

When I was preparing one of the Mat Kearney images for printing in my 2010 calendar, I was zoomed into a detail view and saw some Purple Fringing. What was pretty impressive is that the lens did such a great job minimizing the fringe that it was noticeable only when pixel peeping. The fringe wasn’t showing in the lower resolution web display images. I was shooting with a wide-open aperture into very strong backlighting, so I was surprised the fringe wasn’t bold and ugly. The Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 is indeed an impressive little lens.

What was even cooler is that with one click I told Lightroom to Defringe Highlight Areas, and the purple fringe – only the purple fringe – instantly went away. I love Lightroom. (Too bad I can’t run the Lightroom 3 beta. *grump*)

7:41PM - Upcoming Show

I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to attend... but the show is on my calendar... Peterson Toscano will be in Portland a week from Thursday to perform his one-man show, Transfigurations.

The one-person play Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible will be performed one night only at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1333 SE 28th Ave., Portland on Thursday, November 19th at 7:00PM. Performer Peterson Toscano drew inspiration from interviews with transgender and gender queer individuals, weaving their experiences into the stories of transgender and gender-variant people from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Both hilarious and moving, this play unearths transgender Bible characters, those who do not fit in the gender binary, and those who in transgressing and transcending gender find themselves at the center of some of the Bible’s most important stories.

To note that it’s a small world, Toscano was interviewed in Trans-Ponder Episode 102 by jaynatopia and Mila.