Never underestimate the commercial value of mental illness.
UPDATE 2025-04-04: This no longer works. Use WFDownloader (although the dev is awfully prickly) and follow the instructions.
And I do mean relative, but for a while, I was doing it one image at a time.
Now, how you organize your hard drive is your business, but I created folders and mimicked my board names.
I love utilities. Love love FLOVE me some utilities. I have utilities for every single damned thing I ever did and do, and some are already built into Windows. I even have a utility to make whatever latest Windows OS look like XP. Yes, really. You will find that some of these are quite primitive and/or aren’t developed anymore. I. Do. Not. Care. They do what I want and when what I want to do is something I can’t do, I go looking for more utilities. No, I don’t want one program with all the bells and whistles. I want one program that does one task well. Read more
I watch hoarders programs because they make me feel good about my shoddy housekeeping. (Well, really, I have much better things to do than housework.) But it makes me feel superior because I’m not like them. Read more
“If you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you launched too late.”
In our last episode:
I did my own first cover. It isn’t horrible, but it’s not good or representative of what’s in the book. I take comfort in what Reid Hoffman at LinkedIn said: “If you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you launched too late.” [Footnote 6. I wasn’t too embarrassed until a friend said, “I am amused by your creative use of verbs.” I dun fucked up.] I re-edited it and put out a second edition with a new cover (that someone else did). Read more
A tale of hubris and envy.
“I’ve always wanted to write a book!” I hear quite a bit.
“Do it!” I say.
Writing a book has the lowest barrier to entry of any craft, hobby, art, free-time waster I can think of. Read more
Mormons aren’t a cult. I know because I’m a Mormon and I was in a cult. The cult had me far more brainwashed than Mormonism ever did or ever will.
I didn’t actually do the math.
I didn’t have the numbers for one side of the colon. But based on the proliferation of newsgroups, online critique groups, publishing forums in 2008, and the number of such denizens all trying to get published, I could guess. And it was huge.
Then there was me. 1 : x6214
Mormons aren’t a cult. I know because I’m a Mormon and I was in a cult. The cult had me far more brainwashed than Mormonism ever did or ever will. Read more
Wherein a women’s studies professor missed the most obvious thing about Jareth the Goblin King—and it isn’t his cod.
The movie Labyrinth (1986) is a tale of an adolescent girl’s quest/hero’s journey/sexual awakening. It’s a fantasy that features muppets good and slightly evil and everything in between. It also features David Bowie in very tight tights with his cod on obvious display. You can’t miss it—and that’s the point.
But why is it the point? Read more
A Musing:
A lot of things really bad and really good have happened around Chez Moriah the last couple of years. One of the good things is that XX tax deduction has learned how to drive and is getting out and about on her own. She works only a few minutes away, so we got used to her driving to work and back. But she has an internship 20 minutes away from home, all freeway, heavily trafficked, and sometimes very windy. Today was her first day driving it by herself, and I am nervous and scared. Read more
I was going through some sewing notions that a friend gave me when I found this: Read more
I haven’t written much. I don’t know what I can say that I haven’t said before ad nauseam, and yet, I always forget I said it and continue to say it—at least, elsewhere. In my journals (dating back 21 years), in my doodles (dating back 30), in the two internet communities I participate in now. Read more
Since I am sharing old ads I’ve written, here’s one that got me a lot of sweet emails saying they didn’t want a bunny, but my ad had made their day. It is very nice to know that one’s writing is uplifting.
Sold my car today. The ad is gone now, but it generated lots of interest, and some people said they’d buy it just because of the ad. Hey, folks! Buy my books if you want better stories! Behold Granny:
Read more
God is a terrible matchmaker.
He was, I mean, once upon a time when he started playing with dolls. He looked down on my team’s handiwork and said, “There’s something missing.” He told Michael and Lilith to go wander around and see if they could figure out what.
Dolls.
God saw Michael and Lilith walking around, said, “That’s it,” and there he went playing in the mud. Meanwhile, he told Michael and Lilith to name the animals and plants and oh by the way, do this thing right here so I can see how it all fits together.
They did that thing. Right there.
They didn’t stop doing that thing.
“Okay, I got it. You can stop now.” Read more
… and then suddenly it wasn’t.
So what happened was, 1520 Main was a very difficult book to write for many reasons. It wore me out. I already had two titles on the table awaiting my tender hacksaw that I did not want to work on. I had had, in the back of my mind, since The Proviso, the idea of a Scottish historical featuring Bryce Kenard’s ancestors.
Because Bryce Kenard … le sigh.
All I knew was that it would start with a cliché: Interrupt a wedding to snatch the bride.
Inspired by Sunita’s post, and having sat on the idea of doing my own productivity post, I decided to take up the challenge. Today I’m just going to talk about the most important piece of my productivity regimen. Read more
One day, on a school bus, the bus driver was driving a load of kids to school. They were at an intersection when the bus driver made a right turn on red. A kindergartner who just so happened to be sitting in the front said, “Hey! You can’t make a right turn on red!”
The bus driver then turned around, not focusing on the road, yelled, “I CAN MAKE A RIGHT TURN ON RED!”
So since he wasn’t looking, a city bus came speeding and hit the school bus. Everybody died. The end.
This is why busses don’t turn right on red.
Review policy: I only post reviews on my blog for books I feel strongly about, good or bad.
Title: STILL LIFE WITH STRINGS
Author: L.H. Cosway Read more
I’ve been thinking about the way I eat (for various reasons) and how/why my eating habits are so bad, why I fall back on banal comfort food, why I’m not adventurous in the least.
As I was writing Paso Doble, I kept finding myself associating my characters’ meals at tapas bars with romance. Small bites in small dishes. Tasting. A meal of hors d’oeuvres, eaten slowly, from a lover’s hand. I wanted to be able to do that.