Miscellaneous

Monkey see, monkey do

Moriah

Theric put up his summer to-do list. I thought that was cool. I’ll put mine up, too. Except, well, I don’t have an entry to have a baby. We are SOOOOO done with that Tax Deduction thing.

Readin’:

Torn by God by Zoe Murdock

The Seabird of Sanematsu by Kei Swanson

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale

The Ugly Princess by Elizabeth K. Burton (OOP & no linky)

Writin’:

Work out my sticking points on Magdalene. Thing is, I know what it is; I just can’t visualize how it all goes down.

Edits on Stay when I get it back from above-mentioned editor.

‘Rithmetic:

Create a couple of new products for My Other Business That Is Not Publishing.

There are other things I need to get done, but that’s all pretty boring stuff like, “put up a shelf” sort of stuff.

Convergence

Moriah

June 22, 2009

I’ve been pondering a weighty topic for the last week or so, wondering why a couple of Christian concepts seem to be mutually exclusive, and, moreover, how shall *I* reconcile those?

No, I’m not telling you what they are. I ran across a passage in a book that spoke to my questions (although didn’t answer them, precisely). So I’m just going to post the passage. Character names are left out, as I want it to stand on its own without any preconceived notions.

[The man] smiled. “What does this look like to you, Miss [ . . . ]?” He pointed around the room.

“This?” She laughed suddenly, looking at the faces of the men against the golden sunburst of rays filling the great windows. “This looks like . . . You know, I never hoped to see any of you again, I wondered at times how much I’d give for just one more glimpse or one more word—and now—now this is like that dream you imagine in childhood, when you think that some day, in heaven, you will see those great departed whom you had not seen on earth, and you choose, from all the past centuries, the great men you would like to meet.”

[ . . . ]

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves—or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“And if you met those great men in heaven,” asked [another], “what would you want to say to them?”

“Just . . . just ‘hello,’ I guess.”

“That’s not all,” said [he]. “There’s something you’d want to hear from them. I didn’t know it, either, until I saw him for the first time” —he pointed to [a third man]— “and he said it to me, and then I knew what it was that I had missed all my life. Miss [ . . . ], you’d want them to look at you and to say, ‘Well done.’”

Renovations, part 2

Moriah

June 18, 2009, 8:07 p.m. CDT

I’m trying to finalize the blog theme I’m customizing, which means lots of changes in the way things look. Unfortunately, two things have happened:

1. The new theme has only one sidebar and I’m rearranging stuff.

2. WordPress asked me to upgrade to 2.8 and now my stupid widget function isn’t working. I only found out about this when Dude said, “Where’s the latest comments list?”

I’m hoping to get the thing up and running some time tonight, but don’t quote me on that.

UPDATE on 6/19/09 at 11:11 pm CDT:

1. For some reason, the “date” function on this template doesn’t work. That’ll be a dealbreaker if I can’t get it to work.

2. The “Stories” tab above doesn’t point to anything yet.

3. The blogroll is hand-coded in the other template, so I need to get that in here properly.

4. I have a few other widgets I’d like to try out.

Renovations

Moriah

I’m tired of this template and besides, it’s getting a little too cluttered for my taste. So…for the next little while, I’m going to be working on changing it out. If you come here and see strangity, it’s cuz I’m messin’ with it.

The 1960s ranch

Moriah

I have really fond memories of the house I grew up in, which does not exist anymore. I mean, well, there’s a HOUSE there, where I grew up, but it’s morphed and changed so much (not in a good way) that it might as well not exist. I think it burned somewhat at one time and was um, “remodeled,” or else it was, er, “rebuilt,” but MY house is gone.

Still, when I was a kid, I’d go to my grandma’s house and it was in what I thought was a chichi neighborhood (I don’t know, maybe it was, but now it’s a tad rundown). I would go sell my school wares around HER neighborhood cuz none of my neighbors had any money.

Now, I love architecture anyway. If I’d been more focused in school (ha!) and a little more in touch with my creative/analytical abilities, I’d have known to go to school for that, but, well, hindsight is 20/20.

Anyway, I’d go around my g’ma’s neighborhood and see all these NEAT houses of mostly the same style: 1960s ranch, with a mid-century modern (which I did NOT like as a kid, but have come to appreciate more as an adult) mixed in here and there. I wanted to live in that neighborhood so badly. To me, living in a 1960s ranch represented having “made it,” but I was 12 and didn’t dare dream any higher (even though I knew there were far more grand neighborhoods in existence and had drooled).

So fast forward a couple of years and here I am with husband and tax deductions and 2 cats, in want of a house and we moved into…a 1960s housing development with…1960s ranch types (albeit no mid-century moderns). Some are more georgian (which here means, ranch with a second story) and a couple are split ranch (of both types) and ours is a raised ranch (finished, walk-out basement).

Friday I did some yard work, which involved going outdoors. (Shocker, I know.) Once I collapsed on my front porch to rest, I looked out over my neighborhood with the old, well-kept houses, the pristine lawns, and somewhat 1960s-ish landscaping (well, hell, I planted arborvitae, so who am I to talk, right?).

This morning, my door is wide open and I can see one old 1960s ranch with the brick veneer facade and the diamond-mullioned windows and the immaculate emerald lawn. The only sound in the neighborhood are the birds and the 3-year-old Tax Deduction.

My inner 12-year-old is very happy right now.

My angel is the centerfold

Moriah

I sorted my music by Mojo-defined genre for a change and noticed a very strange juxtaposition in the category of “’80s Pop”:

“Centerfold” by the J. Geils Band directly followed by

“Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles (don’t hate me ’cause I’m cheesy).

and I’m like, why? Why do I have these together in the same sort because they represent two vastly different phases of my life.

The remembery I associate with “Centerfold” is a roller rink. I was 13.

The remembery I associate with “Black Velvet” is my room in the apartment I shared with 3 other girls in Provo, Utah. I was 21.

That’s not to mention all the flashes of rememberies in between the Centerfold part of my life and the Black Velvet part of my life, all rich in music, rich in experience, all helping to define my personality and philosophy, riding with me through alternating giddy and painful adolescence to adulthood. (Although to be fair, I don’t remember much between giddy and painful ’cause I tend toward the melodramatic. Betcha hadn’t noticed that yet.)

I have self-defined genres that fit a certain aspect of my life. I remember nearly every song on the radio the day I sat in my aunt’s house in Salt Lake, waiting for my parents to say it was time to take me to Provo and leave me there for the next 4 years of my life, 1200 miles from home. Shit, I couldn’t wait. (Never mind I didn’t make it 4 years and ended up with a home-grown degree from UMKC.)

I also have one that chronicles the summer I was 20, feeling my oats, not a care in the world and delivering pizza on a lunch rush for fun money. I went to Europe that summer for a month with my family and I couldn’t turn around in Holland and Germany without hearing Belinda Carlisle’s “Circle in the Sand.”

I did a lot that summer. I wish I’d done more.

Easing back into the groove

Moriah

It’s been almost a year since I started blogging and honestly I didn’t think I could keep it up this long. Oh, wait. I haven’t. I kind of dropped off the face of the planet in early March. I ran out of things to say about the same time I started becoming a slave to my stats, falling in like with Twitter, and having had some projects to work on.

The break has been nice, quite honestly, but I do have a backlog of things to say now and after I got a tweet from a concerned tweeter inquiring as to my rightness with the world, I eased my way back to twittering too. (I do love Twitter. Facebook…not so much. Actually, not at all.)

I’m going to pick up where I left off over at PubRen and start being more of a contributor over at that juggernaut April set up, Publetariat.

Tales from the cryptergarten

Moriah

The 5-year-old Tax Deduction has just informed me that [insert Trendy white-bread Suburban Male Name here]’s mom and dad are always fighting.

Me: So do they fight at school in front of the children?

TD1: No. At home.

Me: Is [TSMN] upset about this?

TD1: No. They don’t want to be together anymore.

Me: Oh, really? How do you know this?

TD1: [TSMN] told me.

Me: Hmm. Do YOUR mommy and daddy fight?

TD1: No. [beat] Do you?

Me: No… We discuss things.

TD1: Is that like fighting?

Me: Only if we have loud voices and yelling. Have you heard us do that?

TD1: No. And [insert Trendy white-bread Suburban Female Name here]’s mom and dad, too.

Me: [TSFN]’s too?

TD1: Yeah. They don’t want to be together, either.

Me [aside to self]: Two meanest kids in the class.

The definition of honor

Moriah

The XX Tax Deduction is 5 and in kindergarten.  All day.  She has an account she can use to pay for her breakfast and lunch, and we just put money in it from the web.  Nifteee. Yet…she comes home every day and says, “I’m STARVED!”  Oh, really?  Have a snack.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, we found out she’s been throwing her entree in the trash wholesale.  Every day.  And she’s starved when she comes home from school?  Well, lemme tell ya.  Two parental unit heads blew up. So.

We cut her off.  Now, she’d been begging to let her take lunch to school in her nifty Dora lunch box (not a real one, just a little play tin thing), but we wouldn’t let her.  So we knew that sending lunch to school with her would be no punishment.  But…she loves having breakfast at school and always eats all of it.

Bye bye school breakfast. That made her howl.

Bye bye school lunch, bye bye Dora tin-with-a-handle thing, bye bye hot variety.

Today is day 5 of bologna-and-cheese-on-white-with-Miracle-Whip, cheese cubes, and a bag of carrots. In a brown paper bag. Welcome to my childhood, kid, enjoy.  She was forbidden to try to access her account and she was told to bring home whatever she didn’t eat. Today is also day 5 she didn’t eat her lunch and brought it home, ate it after school because she was STARVED and wasn’t allowed anything else until she did.

Except today… Her current best friend had his birthday party, for which his mother brought the class pizza for lunch.  Since we had not anticipated such a thing happening, we didn’t tell her she could eat whatever was brought as a treat.

Even though she loves pizza above all other foods and it broke her heart to watch the other kids eat, she didn’t have any.

Because we told her she had to eat the lunch we gave her and nothing else.

I need to get out more

Moriah

Today, February 7, at 4:25 CST in Kansas City, it is 70 degrees outside. I got a sick kid (have had for about 3 days now). I got a list of things to do a gazillion miles long. Since it is my mission in life to give birth to a new race (Glow in the Dark) and the sun cackles wickedly every time I go outside in anticipation of what evil it can wreak upon my skin, I don’t go out unless I have to. I’m a hermit, I tell you, and I like it that way.

But you know what?

I’m missing something, I think. I had a visitor yesterday, like, came to the door and rang the doorbell adult human type of visitor. The real deal. To visit. With me.

I’ve forgotten how to converse with people. My face feels all out of whack. My voice doesn’t seem to work very well. I’ve begun to stutter. I space out faster. I don’t smile much. My small talk is microscopic. Once I actually manage to pry my mouth open, I talk in longer monologues than I used to. I mean, I’ve always felt more comfortable with the written word than the spoken—but lately I’ve just gotten downright terrible.

It’s been my goal in life to become that old woman on the block, you know, the one with the muumuu and the orthopedic shoes and the orthopedic stockings rolled down to her ankles and the funky straw hat, the one all the neighborhood kids whisper about (“I heard she’s a witch”). Mmmm, I dunno.

Mebbe not.

Pardon me, dearie, while I go stir my cauldron.

Beethoven makes me peevish

Moriah

Not really. I’ll take Ludwig over Wolfgang any day. But I have not bitched in at least 1/2 hour; thus, I am overdue.

One thing that totally gives me an emotional wedgie is this: When you reply to a blog post that asks an open-ended question, and you put a lot of time and care and thought into your reply, and you’re not acknowledged by the original poster, not told that you’re brilliant, not told that you’re a fucking idiot. What I mean is, NO ONE who comments is acknowledged and the blog doesn’t have enough traffic (read: any personality) to generate its own activity.

Hit’n’run poster who was doing her time on a group blog. I’m on several like that. They have one thing in common: They’re LDS. They’re about writing. PLONK

I don’t think I’ve done this (I try to be conscientious about commenting), but if I have, feel free to shove it back in my face.

And while I’m bitching, might as well throw this out, too:

Takes me about 3 days through the blogosphere these days to get tired of the latest catch phrases and buzzwords. And I’ve used some of them in the last 6 months. Well, no more.

drinking the Kool-Aid (thank you, O’Reilly, like, 3 years ago)
honing your craft (and plain ol’ “craft” by itself by now, no matter what it’s in reference to)
made of awesome
made of win
meme
OMGWTFBBQ and any variant thereof
FTW (for the win)
trope
srsly

And also? My blog is just way too cluttered for my taste. I’m going to have to figure out something workable before my ADD gets violent.

What are you latest internet pet peeves?

For fun and a free e-copy of The Proviso, be the first to peg the reference in this post’s title.

The role of urban fantasy…

Moriah

…and the kick-ass heroine.

Came across an interesting article by Jennifer de Guzman about the female audience need for a female superhero. Well, you know, I followed the links to the XY asshole type who said, “No, you really don’t.” Then I went to Jezebel’s post. Read them all, then come back. Josh Tyler (who knows what women want) posts:

Catching bad guys is not a common female fantasy.

Hey, you know, lemme go back in time to my 7-year-old self and tell Little Miss Batgirl that. (Notwithstanding BatGIRL opens up a whole host of other topics and is problematic in itself.) He further digs his hole:

Men are interested in imagining themselves as ass-kicking heroes. Women are interested in movies about relationships and romance and love.

Now, this discussion falls under the two of my pet topics: The definition of feminism and the gatekeepers, the gatekeepers in this case being filmmakers. And I gotta say, I can think of only one filmmaker who does the female superhero well (albeit not in WonderWomanish garb): Quentin Tarantino. And he made a lot of money exploiting the hell out of her. What does he know that Josh Tyler doesn’t?

Better yet, what does genre romance know that Tyler doesn’t? This is where the genre romance gatekeepers have stepped up to the plate and it’s where women will find their superheroes, albeit it not in graphix or on celluloid.

It’s the kick-ass heroine in urban fantasy. They don’t have a Batgirl or Wonder Woman outfit. They don’t have a golden lasso or an invisible plane. Sometimes they don’t come from a mysterious Other World. They have leather. They have a tramp stamp. They have guns or cross bows or daggers or swords or a combination. They prowl the streets looking for wrongs to right and bad guys who need an ass-whoopin’. Yes, yes, I hear Buffy’s name being screamed from the rooftops, but she’s not part of this discussion because…

…most of these setups (unfortunately) involve otherworldly paranormal goo-drooling and blood-drinking types, and, quite frankly, I get tired of the endless fighting of the supernatural. How ’bout some human baddies? (This is one reason I love Beatrix Kiddo just so damned much.)

Aside: I’m not talking about kick-ass heroines whose JOB it is to be kick-ass. I’m talking about the ordinary woman pulled into extraordinary circumstances and who rises to the occasion [ahem, EILIS], or the anti-heroine who exists outside a societal structure and takes on the role of vigilante as a form of service to society (with hopes of paying restitution or redemption or at least a few cosmic brownie points) [ahem, GISELLE]. Or—better yet—a heroine who starts her journey being a milquetoast and ends up with a spine of steel [ahem, JUSTICE]. After all, we’re not born kick-ass. Life makes us or breaks us that way and the hero’s journey has never been just for men.

So here again we see that the gatekeepers (in this case, filmmakers) don’t know their audience well enough to exploit another revenue stream—but genre romance does! We’ve been subsisting on these women for decades (can you say “pirate queen”?). Clarissa Pinkola Estés even wrote a little book about the kick-ass heroine, her history, and her place in our evolutionary collective subconscious, so this?

Men are interested in imagining themselves as ass-kicking heroes. Women are interested in movies about relationships and romance and love.

He really needs to go talk to Dr. Estés or at least read her book.

Tarantino! Thurman! Thank you for The Bride. I love her. (And all of her wicked evil baddie stepsisters, too!) Now, step up to the plate and give us a female superhero only with spandex this time, ’kay? Call me!

Favorite kick-ass heroines. Who are yours?