Sphinx Ink

Mariachi Beluga

2011-08-05T23:09:00.001-05:00

Surreal: A Mariachi band plays "Yellow Bird" to a Beluga whale through aquarium glass and the Beluga nods its head in time to the music, obviously enjoying the concert...another great video via my favorite daily-refreshment website, Cute Overload:

http://cuteoverload.com/2011/08/05/whale-treasures-fiesta/

I discovered from the comments by the blog readers that the aquarium is in Mystic, Connecticut, and the Beluga is a young one named Juno, verified here.

This makes me wistfully recall my long-held secret desire to learn to play the ukulele. My golden years are here, so maybe now's the time. I could serenade the penguins at the Audubon Aquarium.

Storywonk Story Generator

2011-07-17T00:34:00.000-05:00

Having trouble coming up with a good idea for a new story or book? Try Storywonk's Story Generator.

Here are a couple of ideas it gave me tonight:

He's a psychotic fashion designer with an MBA from Harvard; she's a charismatic geek with an attractive smile. Together, they must learn to use their special powers before midnight.

He's a selfish con artist with no sense of humor; she's a respected millionaire with one leg. Together, they must put on a show in the midst of a farce.

Beaucoup entertainment for any writer!

(The site owners do warn: The small print: the StoryWonk Story Generator is not intended for serious use, and the StoryWonk minions are not responsible for any distraction, insomnia, skin rashes or fantastic novels which may result from its use.)

TV or Not TV, That Is the Question

2011-07-16T23:29:00.000-05:00

(Sorry to rip off Hamlet's most famous line, but I can't resist corny puns.)

Today's Topic: Television.

For years I spent little time on TV viewing. I was a Reader. I found most TV shows boring or inane -- to me it was indeed the boob tube.

In recent years, however, I've changed. I spend as much time watching TV as I do reading or online. I've discovered shows in syndicated reruns that I never viewed when they were in active production: Seinfeld, The Office, Boston Legal, Scrubs, NCIS, Criminal Minds. (Yes, I know NCIS and Criminal Minds are still in production, but they both have a long list of past seasons to rerun for my viewing pleasure.)

More than reruns, however, I've found new cable TV series that are thoroughly engrossing--well-written, with great production values and wonderful performances: Deadwood, Game of Thrones, Justified, The Killing, Rubicon, Treme, True Blood, The Walking Dead, Boardwalk Empire. These are all cable network productions, and at least half of them from HBO. I have a kind friend who not only subscribes to HBO, but also has a giant TV, so viewing these shows in her living room is a home version of a movie theater experience.

(Ah, with what scorn I used to look down on people who placed such importance on their televisions as to make them the centerpiece of their homes. Now I wish I had a giant TV. Shades of Fahrenheit 451? But no, I still read. I don't get all my information from TV. A lot of it comes from the Internet, and I still subscribe to my hometown newspaper.)

I digress. Anyway, I recommend the series I've mentioned above, all excellent entertainment, and some of them thought-provoking. And good for writers, too, because they're so well-written. You can sink into them purely for pleasure, or you can sit back and analyze them from an authorial point of view, to learn helpful do's and don'ts for the modern writer. (Because, frankly, nowadays readers like things that are written like movies or TV--lots of dialogue and action, low on expository passages and narrative.)

You can get any of them in DVD for past seasons. My Netflix queue grows longer every day.

Donuts!

2011-07-08T01:07:00.000-05:00

I love donuts. There's a new donut shop in New Orleans called Blue Dot that's getting rave reviews. In addition to the usual varieties, it has some exotic flavors on the menu -- Red Velvet, Maple Glazed with Bacon, Key Lime Crumb, Almond Joy -- to name just a few of the fancies. They also sell ice cream in only-in-New-Orleans flavors: Creole Cream Cheese, Bananas Foster, White Chocolate Bread Pudding, Nectar Soda, Chocolate City Chocolate. (The ice cream is produced by New Orleans Ice Cream Co., not by Blue Dot.)

Photo by Rusty Costanza, The Times-Picayune
Blue Dot owners: Brandon Singleton,
Dennis Gibliant, Ronald Laporte

The part that really tickles me is that it's owned by ... wait for it ... COPS!

Plus it's in my old stompin' grounds, Mid-City -- Canal Street at North Hennessey. I gotta try it soon. Next time I eat at Mandina's, I'll stop at Blue Dot for dessert!

Quickmeme

2011-06-27T15:54:00.000-05:00

Judgmental Bookseller Ostrich

I just discovered Quickmeme, a website that allows posters to add their own caption to a photo. It's hilarious! The only ones I've looked at so far are Judgmental Bookseller Ostrich and Business Cat, and there are so many versions of each I couldn't view them all.

Business Cat

There are lots of other Quickmemes, too. Try it, you'll like it!

The E-Book Revolution

2011-06-20T00:41:00.000-05:00

During my hiatus from blogging, I managed to keep up with my weekly writers' group meetings. I haven't done any creative writing in a very long time, but just being around my writer buddies keeps me from wallowing in the stews of anxiety. Our discussions--works-in-progress, books being read, developments in publishing--are soothing and reassuring. My own writing interests and ambitions have long been in stasis, but I enjoy their successes vicariously and I value their esteem. To the Wordsmiths group--Charles Gramlich, Laura Rowland, Steve Harris, Candice Proctor, Rexanne Becnel, Pam Ahearn, Marie Goodwin--thanks for being there.

Sony Reader

E-publishing has been one of our regular discussion topics for quite a while. The increasing popularity of e-books and the resulting huge changes in traditional publishing concern us all. Our individual opinions run the gamut: Some of us have been eager to embrace the new technology (I myself own a Sony Reader and a NookColor reader); some are gingerly learning about it and trying it out; some have sworn never to read an e-book. We all are stunned by reports of huge sales of a few writers' backlists in e-book form (e.g., Barbara Freethy) and writers who became popular and successful through e-books alone (e.g., Amanda Hocking).

NookColor e-reader

The biggest change that e-publishing works is that many authors e-publish without a traditional publisher. They are self-published or, as it's coming to be called, "indy" published. This wreaks havoc with the financial aspects of the publishing business. Established publishers don't earn money from authors' self-published works nor, in most cases, is there an agent involved. One of the members of my writers' group is an agent, so this directly affects her future in the business.

As an unpublished author, it's encouraging to think I can get my work out to the world despite rejection by traditional publishers, but it's discouraging to realize how few self-e-published authors earn significant money. (There will be very few Amanda Hockings.) As a reader, it's encouraging to realize there will be more variety on the reading market--we won't be locked into books published only to follow trends; we'll get to see good work that was rejected by a traditional publisher as not marketable enough. On the other hand, we readers also will have to wade through a lot of dreck that people will e-publish, because without screening via review by an agent and/or editor, some really bad work is going online.

Kindle e-reader

One way or the other, e-publishing is the future. Paper books won't die, but more and more people will go to e-readers. As much as I love books (and I own thousands of them), I love the idea of being able to carry hundreds of books with me in one small e-reader. I long ago ran out of shelf space in my home for traditional books; being able to store them invisibly in a device the size of a single slender volume is appealing.

I'll still want to keep paper books around. After all, what if I have to do without electricity for a while and can't recharge my e-reader? (I can never forget the post-Katrina morass of loss of power, etc.) The idea of going without reading material terrifies me! So next time I evacuate for a storm, I'll carry my e-readers with me...but I'll also bring some paper books. Just to be safe.

Return of the Prodigal Blogger

2011-06-19T03:10:00.003-05:00

Greetings, my friends and readers! I'm lucky you can still find my blog. I've had a long blank spell. My last entry was nearly seven months ago. During the past couple of years I've endured serious family issues and worrisome health problems. I let go of extraneous activities to manage day-by-day responsibilities. I couldn't focus on things that took mental effort, like composing blog posts. Instead I became a viewer. I watched television a lot. I Web-surfed and read other peoples' blogs. I read books, although sometimes reading novels took more effort than I could muster.

Time heals or it kills. Months have passed, situations have changed. The family issues have partly resolved, which relieves a lot of my anxiety. I'm coping with the health problems. I want to return to life as I once knew it. I've adopted that corny-but-true old saw from the 1960s:

I'm back in the blogosphere and I hope to post on a regular basis.

Confessions of a Book Fiend

2010-11-28T20:21:00.002-06:00

Too true, alas, all too true...

INCIDENTAL COMICS: Confessions of a Book Fiend

New Favorite Humorous Website

2010-11-12T00:35:00.002-06:00

I have a few favorite humorous websites I check regularly to get a few laughs. The newest is Oddly Specific, which showcases peculiar signs, signs that are...well, oddly specific! Here's a sample. (If photos don't display properly, click on box & link will take you to site.)

see more funny videos

see more funny videos

see more funny videos

see more funny videos

see more funny videos

The Walking Dead

2010-11-11T12:25:00.000-06:00

The Walking Dead is a new series on cable channel AMC (American Movie Classics). It's a six-episode miniseries about a zombie apocalypse, where the live people are trying to figure out how to survive. (There seem to be far more Living Dead than Living Living.) It's really well done, with excellent production values and good actors, good writing, classy ambiance (okay, "classy ambiance" & "zombie movie" sound like a contradiction in terms, but it's classy for a zombie movie). The Associated Press critic loved it. I recommend it, unless you just can't stomach the peeling flesh, partially-rotted corpses, etc., that are the stock-in-trade of zombie movies. The AP article on the show has interesting comments from a couple of the network execs:

One big surprise for viewers who thought they knew the zombie-film genre: an across-the-board humanity resonating in the "Walking Dead" saga.

"There are sequences where zombies are actually humanized," notes Joel Stillerman, AMC's head of original programming. "The series has an empathetic point of view that isn't just about the survivors but about the zombies, too.

"Transcending gore for gore's sake was very important to us," he says.

Adds AMC president Charlie Collier, "It's a character drama about survival, where the characters are faced with decisions of 'What would you do, given this adversity? Who would you be? Would you stay or go? Lead or follow?' These are universal themes."

Michael Connelly & Steve McQueen

2010-11-03T01:24:00.000-05:00

Michael Connelly

USA Today has a good article on Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch detective series and the Mickey Haller "Lincoln Lawyer" series. Connelly has become one of my favorite writers. I love his Harry Bosch series.
The article page also features a video interview of Connelly, in which he reveals that his vision of the best actor to play Harry Bosch onscreen is the late Steve McQueen. Connelly says when he created Harry Bosch, he was picturing McQueen in his role as the detective Bullitt.

Steve McQueen in
The Great Escape

That was a surprise to me, because I hadn't pictured Bosch as being anything like McQueen. But then, it's been a long long time since I saw the movie Bullitt. I'll have to put that on my NetFlix queue. My favorite of the roles he played was his character in The Great Escape, Virgil Hilts, "The Cooler King."

McQueen, who was nicknamed the King of Cool, died 30 years ago. If he'd survived he'd be 80 years old now. It's hard to picture an 80-year-old Steve McQueen.

Followup on San Fermin

2010-07-25T01:05:00.001-05:00

To follow-up my post on the Running of the Bulls in New Orleans, the fourth annual San Fermin in Nueva Orleans event was a big success. An estimated 8,000 people participated, with nearly 300 "bulls" consisting of not only New Orleans' Big Easy Rollergirls but also teams of rollergirls from surrounding states.

Below is a video of parts of the run itself. The video starts at the back of the Rolling Elvi and moves through them to the group escorting the fake "St. Fermin" statue (in imitation of the procession with the St. Fermin statue that opens the Pamplona fiesta). Later on you'll see the runners and the rollergirl bulls. (I love the creativity of the bulls' headgear--who'da thunk there were so many ways of putting horns on helmets?)

(Photo by John McCusker/The Times-Picayune)

© Video. neworleans.com © Photo. Nolabulls.com / facebook

I don't know how they could stand the scorching heat, but I guess that's why the organizers set the run for early in the morning. It looks like everyone had a great time. What wonderful silliness!

Oh, and here's some late-breaking news (meaning I just found it via Google). The New Orleans festival this year also included competitions among the "bulls": One for the best dressed bull; the other for the horniest bull -- "You know, the one with the longest, pointiest horns." (No word yet on who won that.)

Running of the Bulls in New Orleans!

2010-07-06T19:13:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again--the Running of the Bulls in New Orleans!

This is the announcement from the Times-Picayune:

Saturday, July 10, 2010

The Running of the Bulls

The 3 Legged Dog, 7 a.m.
Conti Street and Burgundy Street, French Quarter

Tickets: Free
Resources: Official site
More on this event

San Fermin in Nueva Orleans replicates and pays homage to the world famous Encierro of Pamplona, Spain, or "The Running of the Bulls", only the bulls are none other than members of the Big Easy Rollergirls. The event will begin at 7 a.m. at the Three Legged Dog bar the French Quarter. Sangria, Stella Artois beer, Spanish wines and good cheer will be available. The "running," which winds through the streets of the Quarter, begins sharply at 8 a.m.

This event has grown exponentially each year since it started. Now, in only its fourth year, it's expanded to a three-day festival. It starts on Friday night with a pre-party (El Txupinazo) featuring tapas, paella, flamenco dancing, and lotsa beverages. On Saturday morning is the main event--the running of the bulls (El Encierro)--followed by rest time, then a post-run party Saturday night (La Fiesta de Pantalones) that includes a concert, more great tapas, and lotsa more beverages. (Me, I love a good Sangria.) On Sunday there is a grand finale (Pobre de Mí), about which I quote from the Nolabulls website:

WHAT: As part of the grand finale to the San Fermin in Nueva Orleans fiesta weekend, the festivities continue with the second annual Pobre de Mí (Poor Me). Featuring a savory tapas brunch menu by Vega Tapas Café and specialty drinks, the event is highlighted by the 2nd Annual Ernest Hemingway Talent Contest, a collaboration with NOLAFugees:

Death in the Afternoon Drinking Society presents Hemingway, Ole!

Six teams enter the ring, but only one will claim the big prize. Sign up now with your 2 or 3-person team (or just sign up now and draft someone on game day) to compete in this Ernest Hemingway-themed contest of nerves. Teams will perform 2-minute micro-skits (no memorization required,as there will be closely-guarded scripts provided at the event) of infamous Hemingway scenes. A panel of judges, and the audience, will decide who advances to sweet sweet victory.

What you need to participate: absolutely nothing. A sense of humor helps, but is not required.

What you do not need: any prior knowledge of Hemingway’s works or life.

What you will gain by joining the hunt: Prizes. Glory. And your photo will be made over the carcasses of your enemies.

What you stand to lose by not joining the hunt: your sense of adventure, and perhaps the ability to look your mother in the eye when she says, “Don’t worry, honey, I love you anyway.”

So unleash your inner Hemingway and enter now!

We will also roll the party directly into a live screening on multiple screens of the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final Match in South Africa!

I love the whole idea of this--it's so New Orleans and, yes, so Spanish. (Not to mention that The Rolling Elvi will be following the crowd of bull-runners....)

What fun!

Reviewerspeak Awards

2010-06-14T16:00:00.000-05:00

Book Examiner Michelle Kerns has a great post about her monthly Reviewerspeak Awards:

Hilarious yet heartbreaking: The Reviewerspeak Award results for May 2010

Just inaugurated a couple of months ago (It's gripping! It's luminous! It's the maiden voyage of the Reviewerspeak Awards!), Kerns' Reviewspeak Awards aim is

to thought-provokingly observe, vividly record, and unflinchingly report every book reviewer cliché perpetrated daily on the hapless readers of a select number of online book review sites. To leap boldly into a Brave New World where prose isn't always lively or spare or graceful or taut or accessible or lyrical; where debut novels aren't always solid or sparkling; where characters aren't always flawed or fully realized (or, if you prefer, perfectly realized) or quirky or likable or nuanced; where authors aren't masterful or at the top of their game in every third review.

For anyone whose work has ever been savaged by a book critic, damned-by-faint-praise, or even received a rave review, Kerns' Reviewerspeak Awards posts are hilarious. See also some of her previous review-satire articles:

Battle over Search-Engine Placement for Oil Spill Info

2010-06-13T14:43:00.000-05:00

Today our local newspaper (The Times-Picayune) reports that BP has purchased the top spots on search engines such as Google:

BP, the giant oil company that owns the collapsed rig that is spewing oil, has paid search engines like Google to prominently feature links to the company's website. And, according to one online marketing expert, lawyers and other parties with work tied to the spill will likely fight for prominent links of their own. . . .

BP has purchased the "sponsored link" for that search term, via Google's AdWords program, according to Sandra Heikkinen, a spokesperson for Google. Unlike the standard links provided by a search engine, a sponsored link is one that a search engine sells to an interested company -- the link appears above the "related searches" and the "organic" links, which are based on relevance.

I myself when searching rarely click on the sponsored links, but go below them to the organic links. I've always figured the sponsored links are little more than advertisements or propaganda for the sponsor. On the other hand . . .

[W]hile BP currently has the market cornered on web searches, other interests -- such as law firms trying to attract clients affected by the spill -- are going to increasingly attempt to fight the company for the coveted spots at the top of the page.

"Those lawyers are going to start making it awfully expensive for BP to stay at the top of the links."

I Give It a 10 on the Cuteness Scale

2010-06-12T13:31:00.000-05:00

This is so cute I can hardly stand it!

From http://pixdaus.com/pics/124413205779nuL9K.jpg

Mr. Potato Head has left the building...

2010-06-10T13:48:00.004-05:00

This is hilarious--like something from a Saturday Night Live skit:

The Elvis version of Mr. Potato Head will be released for Elvis Tribute Week, according to a Graceland spokesman.

Photo by PPW Toys

Mr. Potato Head Elvis Presley Figures to Launch in August of 2010
From http://www.elvis.com/news/full_story.asp?id=2297

Elvis fans, toy collectors and pop culture enthusiasts will spend much of this summer anticipating the launch of the Mr. Potato Head Elvis Presley collectible figures from PPW Toys, under license from Hasbro, Inc. and Elvis Presley Enterprises.

Mr. Potato Head appeared as KISS last year, and this year he is ready to take on the king of rock 'n' roll. A series of Mr. Potato Head collectible figures will be released, each with a variety of costumes, instruments and other iconic components representing Elvis' most memorable performances.

The first spud to be released this August in tandem with Elvis Week events at Graceland in Memphis and will feature Elvis' famous white jumpsuit, microphone and guitar. A second version with Mr. Potato Head wearing black leather from Elvis' 1968 Special Performance will be released during the 2010 holiday season. Components such as hairstyles, costumes, faces and musical instruments will be compatible with every version, so fans can mix and match the styles with hilarious results.

The Mr. Potato Head Elvis Presley collectible figures will not only appeal to kids, but these figures will also be in demand by music fans and pop culture collectors of all ages. The Mr. Potato Head Elvis Presley collectible figures will be available at specialty retailers and e-tailers.

Created in 1952, Mr. Potato Head, the first toy to be featured in a television commercial, became an instant hit with youngsters. In the past 58 years, the beloved character has emerged as an American icon, a true evergreen brand with broad demographic appeal.

Hasbro licensee PPW Toys suits up MR. POTATO HEAD as Elvis Presley for a unique co-branded product. An Elvis tribute artist shows off the new collectible during a launch event at Licensing International Expo 2010 in Las Vegas.

The Oil Spill and the Chain of Life

2010-06-09T12:07:00.003-05:00

It's Prophet-of-Doom time again. If you're not in the mood to be bummed out, then skip this post.

A few days ago Newsweek published "What the Spill Will Kill," which discusses not only the damage the BP Oil Spill will have on the surface environment, but also what may happen in the deep sea:

The consequences for the delicate balance of existence in the vulnerable ecosystems of the gulf, and for the vast cycles of nature that sustain life there and beyond, are as incalculable as they are potentially devastating. ...

As far as scientists can tell, the undersea oil is actually a witch's brew of crude mixed with dissolved methane, stretching 15 miles long, 5 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in the case of one plume detected by the Pelican, and 22 miles long, 6 miles wide, and 3,000 feet thick in the case of a plume found by University of South Florida researchers aboard the WeatherBird II last week. The latter plume reaches all the way to the surface. ...

These undersea rivers of oil, though not nearly as concentrated as oil at the surface, are likely to affect the gulf through two mechanisms. The first is oxygen depletion, which has been estimated at 30 percent in the plumes. The other will be direct toxic effects of the oil and methane. Leatherback turtles and sperm whales dive to the 3,200-foot depths where plumes have now been detected, and aren't smart enough to take evasive action. ... Sharks, shrimp, and squid are all inhabitants of the deep, which would protect them from a Valdez-type spill on the surface, but now puts them in the crosshairs. Marlin, snapper, and grouper swim hundreds of feet down. One of the biggest losses may be bluefin tuna. Already imperiled from overfishing, the species breeds only in the Mediterranean Sea and the gulf. ... Even small bits of crude, like those in the plumes, can suffocate fish by gunking up their gills.

Other species imperiled by the deep-sea plumes include those that migrate down from the surface and others that make the reverse commute. "There are plankton that go from the surface to the middle of the water column, and other things eat them and go down deeper, and other things eat them and go to the bottom," says oceanographer Lisa Levin of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "All the zones of life interact, and now they're probably all being hammered."

The worst effect of large-scale death on the gulf floor is nothing as photogenic as dead pelicans, but much more pernicious. "The organisms most likely to be harmed by the oil plumes are those at the base of the food chain," says biological oceanographer Andrew Juhl of Lamont-Doherty. "Most of the primary producers, such as phytoplankton, live throughout the water column. Effects on them would cascade to the larger species we care about."

The deep-sea communities are also linchpins of the global carbon cycle—the ocean's garbage men and recycling centers. They eat the waste and carcasses of creatures that lived and died in higher layers of the sea, and whose bodies drift to the sea floor. ... [W]ithout deep-sea organisms, dead marine creatures would accumulate like bottles and cans in places without deposit laws. That would deprive the rest of the living seas of the nutrients they need to keep life going. If a large enough area in the depths of the gulf becomes a kill zone, organic matter would accumulate in the sediment and be cut off from the rest of the ecosystem, says marine scientist Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A&M.

Uniquely in the crosshairs are creatures living at or near the sea floor: deep-sea corals, jellyfish, and soft-bottom fish such as Atlantic croaker, sand seatrout, Atlantic bumper, sea robin, and sand perch. Three coral reefs live in the area under the surface slick, and two are close to one plume that scientists tracked last week. Oil could be lethal to a reef. The Minerals Management Service's 2007 report concluded that "in the extremely unlikely event that oil from a subsurface spill were to reach a coral reef…in lethal concentrations," recovery could take as long as "10-20 years." "In the time scale of man, this will be a catastrophic event," says Baguley.

Of special concern are the hundreds of "seep" communities in the gulf, enclaves of crustaceans, weird tube worms, tiny fish, mussels, and crabs that live near natural gashes in the sea floor. These seeps release hydrocarbons, which might suggest that the oil-and-methane plumes are good for these creatures. Unfortunately, the profusion of hydrocarbons is likely to be less like sitting down to a Thanksgiving feast than like being encased in marshmallowed sweet potatoes: deadly. Like Yellowstone's geysers, they support unique organisms that may have scientific and commercial uses. Bacteria from a Yellowstone geyser are the source of enzymes that power a biochemical reaction called PCR, a workhorse of the genome revolution. Marine scientists have high hopes for finding similarly valuable microbes at the seeps. Some even talk of compounds that might fight cancer, much as extracts of the rosy periwinkle fight Hodgkin's disease and childhood leukemias.

Oil on the ocean surface eventually evaporates, is degraded by sunlight, gets consumed by microbes, or washes up on beaches, where it can be collected. The fate and effects of the undersea oil are largely unknown. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is thus one big unplanned experiment.

As I said in my previous post, Krewe of Dead Pelicans, the effects of the BP Oil Spill will be felt not just for decades but possibly for centuries. It could change the ecological balance of the entire planet.

Krewe of Dead Pelicans

2010-06-06T15:45:00.003-05:00

Feeling helpless at the immensity of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans resident Ro Mayer organized a protest in a typical New Orleans way: a mock jazz funeral for the Gulf and its wildlife. Participants in The Krewe of Dead Pelicans were asked to wear black pants and blue shirts, and to carry blue umbrellas painted with black splotches--symbolizing the black oil beneath the blue waters. They also were asked to wear shrimpers' boots--the short white rubber boots you'll see many people in the second-line parade wearing--symbolizing the mighty Louisiana seafood industry, which is likely to be permanently devastated by the oil spill.

Photo of oil-coated pelican by Matthew Hinton/The Times-Picayune

As Ro Mayer said in her video interview with the local newspaper's reporter, we feel helpless in the face of this calamity. We have to cope as best we can. At nearly five years after Katrina, we are faced once again with an environmental disaster that will destroy our marshes, our wildlife, our homes, our businesses, our jobs, our economy, our lives. Its effects will be felt for decades, if not centuries, and will reverberate far beyond Louisiana and the other Gulf Coast states.

See the video of the event, held Saturday, June 5, 2010. Hundreds of people participated.

In a press conference last week, BP CEO Tony Hayward said he'd like to have his life back. Yeah, so would we, but it ain't happening. How about this, Mr. BP? You don't get your life back until, and unless, we get our lives back. You suffer what we suffer, as long as we suffer. How about that?

Photo by Michael DeMocker/The Times-Picayune

Memorial Day

2010-05-31T06:00:00.084-05:00

In memory of my mother's cousin, Private First Class Alcide G. Angelloz Jr., killed fighting in France in 1944, I post a famous and touching poem:

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Memorial Day was first observed on May 30, 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. After World War I it became a day to remember not just those who died fighting in the Civil War, but also Americans who died fighting in any war. Inspired by the poem "In Flanders Fields," it became the custom to wear artificial red poppies on Memorial Day.

In December 2000, Congress established a program to observe a universal "National Moment of Remembrance" on each Memorial Day as a "simple and unifying way to commemorate our history and honor the struggle to protect our freedoms." The "National Moment of Remembrance" asks that at 3 p.m. local time, all Americans "voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to 'Taps.'"

The U.S. Memorial Day website suggests these ways to observe the day:

The "Memorial" in Memorial Day has been ignored by too many of us who are beneficiaries of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. Often we do not observe the day as it should be, a day where we actively remember our ancestors, our family members, our loved ones, our neighbors, and our friends who have given the ultimate sacrifice:
by visiting cemeteries and placing flags or flowers on the graves of our fallen heroes.
by visiting memorials.
by flying the U.S. Flag at half-staff until noon.
by flying the 'POW/MIA Flag' as well (Section 1082 of the 1998 Defense Authorization Act).
by participating in a "National Moment of Remembrance": at 3 p.m. to pause and think upon the true meaning of the day, and for Taps to be played.
by renewing a pledge to aid the widows, widowers, and orphans of our falled dead, and to aid the disabled veterans.

"Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all." -- Memorial Day History.

Sources:
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm
http://www.usmemorialday.org/index.htm
http://www.magpieandmuttonfly.com/2008/05/in-other-words-memorial-day-2/

Robin Hood 2010

2010-05-22T00:29:00.115-05:00

Continuing my Robin Hood musings from yesterday, here's my review of the new version of Robin Hood, a 2010 movie directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe.

It's a prequel--that is, it tells the story of how the expert archer Robin came to be "Robin Hood." Crowe plays Robin Longstride, a yeoman archer who's been following King Richard the Lionheart on crusade for ten years. Worn out, bitter and disillusioned, he sneaks away after King Richard is killed while besieging a castle in France. Along the way Longstride and his three soldier buddies happen on an ambush massacre. They repel the attackers and discover the victims are a group of Englishmen who were trying to return King Richard's crown to England. One of the dying victims, Sir Robert Loxley, begs Robin with his dying breath to return his sword to his father at Nottingham. Robin promises he will. He and his buddies return to England disguised as knights--Longstride calling himself Robert of Loxley and bearing the Loxley sword as well as the royal crown. Thereafter plot complications ensue. (For a full plot summary, including spoilers, see the Wikipedia site on the film.)

It has great production values, cinematography, costumes, and period detail. It has lots of action--battle scenes, swordfights, fistfights, chase scenes, executions, etc., as you would expect in a movie by Ridley Scott (whose work I greatly admire--Blade Runner is one my favorite movies). It has Russell Crowe, a great actor, as well as a cast of other top-notch performers--e.g., Max von Sydow, Cate Blanchett, William Hurt.

But...I was disappointed.

Why? Because there was none of the joie de vivre I associate with the Robin Hood tales. All the movie/TV versions of Robin Hood I've seen have had strong explicit or implicit wit and good humor--an optimism, an underlying happy feel. The Scott/Crowe Robin Hood, however, is grim. Really grim. Everybody is grim. Everything is grim. Oh, unquestionably real medieval times were grim. And yes, the whole Robin Hood thing is just a legend. But we expect legends to fulfill our (often subconscious) mythic fantasies. Mine went unfulfilled by this version of Robin Hood. There's no real humor or happiness anywhere in the movie. Robin Longstride becomes a hero as the movie goes along--he helps save England from a French invasion, and directly saves the perfidious King John from being slain--and he's clearly a leader of men. But even at the end, when Robin, Lady Marian (or, as spelled in the movie cast list, Marion), and the merry men are living in Sherwood Forest as outlaws, purportedly one big happy family, the smiles and merriment seemed forced. And the romance between Robin and Marian (Marion)? Hah. I did not sense any chemistry between Crowe and Blanchett, good actors though they are. I didn't get the feel-good ending I hoped for.

Oh, and I have some quibbles with accuracy, if one can expect historical accuracy from a movie about a legend. The movie has King Philip of France invading England, himself along for the ride. It never happened. And the French troops are being landed in boats with drop-down fronts, just like the Higgins LSTs used during the D-Day invasion in WWII. I didn't tear out my hair at the movie theatre, but I did tug on a few strands from time to time.

If you want to read a review of the film by a real movie critic, the esteemed Roger Ebert, go here.

Does all that sound like I'm bashing it? Yet, I still recommend you see it if you love costume dramas, historical settings, medieval battles, and watching great actors in cinematic tropes. It's worth the price of admission, but it may not be what you expect out of a Robin Hood remake.

Musings on Robin Hood

2010-05-21T00:25:00.001-05:00

I've just seen the new Robin Hood movie and it has inspired a spurt of Robin Hood nostalgia in me.

First, let me return to the days of yesteryear, when the British half-hour series The Adventures of Robin Hood was one of my favorite TV shows. Starring Richard Greene, the show had a memorable theme song that I still remember:

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men
Feared by the bad, loved by the good;
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood!

Too bad I can't reproduce the catchy tune in this blog, but I guarantee that any of you who grew up in the 50s-60s remember it, too. I'd say a lot of my idealism goes back to those days of viewing brave Robin steal from the rich to give to the poor...Ah, how my romantic notions were fed by the idylls of Robin and Maid Marian, with Friar Tuck, Little John, and the other Merry Men cavorting in Sherwood Forest, making fools out of the Sheriff of Nottingham and King John and their evil minions.

(It now occurs to me that King John somehow appeared in a lot of those episodes--strange his predilection for traveling repeatedly to that part of his kingdom and dealing with these lowly subjects, when so many other parts of England and more noble subjects must have been much more to his taste....)

I love almost all the versions of Robin Hood I've seen so far:

The 1938 Errol Flynn film (The Adventures of Robin Hood), which many critics consider the benchmark of Robin Hood cinema, with Flynn in his most famous role;
The 1952 Disney film The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, starring Richard Todd;
Disney's 1973 animated Robin Hood (a favorite of my daughter's childhood), in which Robin Hood is a fox;
1976's Robin and Marian, showing the legendary couple in their golden years (and what a couple--the leading roles were played by Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn);
I even liked 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, despite its star, Kevin Costner (among the most stone-faced of leading men, the other top contenders being Keanu Reeves and Arnold Schwarzenegger), because it had the wonderful Alan Rickman as the Sheriff (whose mesmerizing voice made me almost like the Sheriff);
Mel Brooks' 1993 parody Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which hilariously satirizes both the 1938 Flynn version and the 1991 Costner version, stars the delicious Cary Elwes as Robin; his best line is when he turns to the camera and smugly announces, "Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent!" (an overt dig at Kevin Costner's American accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves).

I found the links for these movies on Wikipedia's List of films and television series featuring Robin Hood. That list is much longer than I expected and I've seen only a few of the entries. I know many of those movies are no longer available, but it may be time for a Robin Hood DVD Festival here at the SphinxInk digs. I see there are lots of different takes on Robin Hood out there, including several TV series that I've completely missed.

As for what I thought of the new Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott, I'll post that tomorrow.

Flashlight Worthy Follow-Up

2010-04-18T17:09:00.000-05:00

Apropos my previous blog entry:

Peter, the fellow who runs Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations, just got in touch out of the blue. (He clearly has Flashlight Worthy on Google Alerts.)

Peter's making a concerted effort to increase the number of book lists in his Book Club Books category. Interested in writing a book list? Think you know a number of books that would make a good addition to his collection of book club recommendations? Get in touch with Peter at info@flashlightworthy.com and he'll fill you in on the details.

Lists! I Love Lists! Especially Book Lists!

2010-04-14T02:07:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered a blog that I'm now looking at every day. It's called FLASHLIGHT WORTHY, describing itself as "Handpicked Book Recommendations on Hundreds of Topics."

The Flashlight Worthy bloggers say they're "Recommending books so good, they'll keep you up past your bedtime." They explain,

Why Flashlight Worthy Exists

Amazon sells every book in print, but the choice can be overwhelming. Flashlight Worthy is here to help: We don't list the best selling books — we list the best books. We don't list 6,072 results when you search for John Irving (including 251 versions of Garp!) — we list only his best books just once. We don't make you hunt around for hours to find the very best books on parenting — we do the work for you. Flashlight Worthy is nothing but thoughtful, hand-picked recommendations... Organized into hundreds of useful, interesting, fun lists... And all we do is books. :)

Every day, a new list, with a bit of commentary. How about these:

Just a sampling.

There is even a Questions & Answers page, where you can ask other readers for recommendations of specific types of books, or other book-related info.

I love reading the lists, and making notes about books to add to my (already immense) TBR shelves. I like seeing how many of the books on the lists I've already read, too, and whether my opinion matches theirs. It's a book nerd's delight.

Reading Great Literature. Or Not.

2010-04-08T09:10:00.000-05:00

I was an English major in college, many years ago. My college work was almost entirely reading, then writing about what I'd read. (I chose English as a major simply because I'd always loved to read. At 18 I was far too impractical to worry about what kind of job I could get with an English degree.) Many of the assigned books were not to my taste. Callow and smug, I missed a lot of the subtleties and themes in the Great Literature of which all English majors must partake.

Yet I knew those books were considered great for good reason. Some were ground-breaking at the time they were written, even if they seemed ponderous or boring by modern standards. Others had beautiful prose or great stories or unforgettable characters; some had all of the above. I always knew, however, that I had to consider every book within the context of its times. Even the ones I had to force myself to read -- such as The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter-- were important within the context of the eras in which they were written.

After I graduated from college, I still read constantly, but I turned to popular fiction, with emphasis on genre fiction of various types. I wanted to read for pleasure; I didn't want reading to be "work." Yet although I prefer Popular Fiction to Timeless Classics, I am disheartened by "Amazon reviewers think this masterpiece sucks," Jeanette Demain's essay on one-star reviews on Amazon. The article is funny yet tragic. Demain describes the reviews by people who hated, just hated, the great novels of the the English language. What saddens me is how little these readers seems to realize the books they're panning were written in different eras, written by and for people whose lives, history, educations, and moral backgrounds differed vastly from ours. Examples:

The Grapes of Wrath -- "trite, contrived"
To Kill a Mockingbird--"sappy, cliched"
Jane Eyre--"endless, pointless description ... stupid metaphors"
Charlotte's Web--"how in the world does a pig and a spider become friends?"
An American Tragedy--"bleak narrative of little consequence"

There's more--not only in Demain's essay, but of course on Amazon. I won't go looking for more one-star reviews, however, because they would depress me too much. Certainly every reader is entitled to have his or her opinion of a book, but I'm saddened to realize how many people are ignorant of history, of literary experience, and of the desire to experience the many different forms of the novel.

Memo to Self...

2010-03-31T14:42:00.000-05:00

Memo to self: Never, never drive in between two humongous trucks, especially not when the one in front may have to stop suddenly...

February 2010, Westbank Expressway, Harvey, Louisiana

Photo by Byron Pertuit

I am told the driver survived...talk about his or her lucky day!

A Little Post-Oscars Comic Relief

2010-03-12T17:57:00.000-06:00

I devoted much of last weekend to the Oscars. On Saturday I attended a day-long movie marathon that showed five of the ten Best Picture nominees. (Yep, 12 hours sitting in a movie theatre, watching five films in a row.) On Sunday I devoted six or seven hours to watching pre-show interviews and red carpet fashion commentary followed by the Academy Awards event itself.

But somehow it's not enough. I love all that stuff. I'm sorry I missed the first Saturday movie marathon in which the other five Best Picture nominees were presented.

I'm always willing to laugh at our movie mania, however, and here's a clever website (which I found on Jenny Crusie's Argh Ink blog):

Honest Movie Titles: Oscars 2010

These are funny regardless whether you've seen the movies parodied, but of course they're best if you've seen the flicks.

And this -- also via alert from Argh Ink -- has nothing to do with Oscars or movies, but is extremely clever. (Couldn't understand what they were singing, but I love those Rube Goldberg devices....)

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version

Oh, and hey -- isn't it cool a woman finally won Best Director? And for a truly worthy effort: The Hurt Locker is excellent. You go, Kathryn Bigelow!

Who Dat Won Dat!

2010-02-24T02:50:00.000-06:00

Yeee-haaaahhhhh! That's my cheer for the Saints winning the Super Bowl. I'm a few weeks slow getting this post online, but that works out well. I've had a chance to observe not just the night of the Super Bowl victory, but the days and weeks afterward.

Wow. We're still elated, floating on air, exuberant, overjoyed, delirious with happiness. It's been a huge boost for everyone, not just the sports fans. It gave us our power back, power that seeped away over many long years of defeat after defeat--failures not just of the Saints, but of the city, the area, the whole state. Katrina was nearly a death-blow. We're fighters, though; we've hung in there, remained loyal to the Saints, kept hope alive despite our civic messes, doggedly rebuilt from disaster after disaster.

Now, well . . . who ever thought we'd see headlines like "Aggressive tactics boost mighty Saints to first title" (USA Today) "Mighty Saints"! There was a time when those words would have been said only in cruel derision.

I keep thinking, "Sport as metaphor . . . sport as metaphor . . . sport as metaphor." That, in fact, was what I talked about in a blog entry from 2006, when I first became a real Saints fan. It resonates even more with me now.

We're goin' to the Super Bowl! We're goin' to the Super Bowl!

2010-01-24T23:17:00.000-06:00

The doubters said it would never happen, or at least not unless Hell freezes over. . . .

Well, see the sign!

The Saints versus the Colts. Miami. February 7th.

Yeeeeehaaaa!

In Memoriam: Robert B. Parker

2010-01-23T13:37:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite authors died last week: Robert B. Parker, creator of the ageless PI Spenser, as well as Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. Parker died at his writing desk on Monday, January 18. The perfect way for an author to go.

Here's a great farewell essay from The Lipstick Chronicles blog that gives all the info on Parker and his career, written in the voice of Spenser himself:
Remembering Robert B. Parker by William Simon

And another, more personal tribute from another crime fiction writer:
Robert B. Parker, an Appreciation by Jim Fusilli

Rest in peace, Robert, and thanks for all the great stories and characters. I'll miss them, especially Spenser.

Silent Monks Singing Hallelujah

2010-01-22T12:35:00.001-06:00

The "Hallelujah Chorus" of Handel's Messiah is one of the most beautiful chorales ever written. Take a look at this charming, novel and humorous performance of it:

Silent Monks Singing Hallelujah

Introducing Sphinx Inkling

2010-01-18T14:26:00.000-06:00

My grandson, Sphinx Inkling, born on November 5 (my birthday). It's been a surprise to discover how instantly one falls in love with one's grandchild. I just dote on him.

The Christmas Meme

2009-12-25T13:37:00.003-06:00

Trying to get back into blogging regularly, I'm finding it easiest to post things that don't require a lot of mental effort. Hence this latest entry, courtesy of Sidney Williams' Journal:

The Christmas Meme

Copy this entire entry and paste on a new post page. Change all the answers to apply to you. Then notify a bunch of people you know, including the person who sent it to you.

My answers:

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Gift bags all the way. If it won't fit in a gift bag, I just stick a ready-made self-adhesive bow on it. I'm all about doing things the easiest way. No Martha Stewart make-it-from-scratch for me!

2. Real tree or artificial?
Sorry, you purists...I like my little two-foot artifical tree with its built-in fiber-optic lights and interior color wheel. The ever-changing light display is lovely...and I can pack the tree away easily to store for next year.

3. When do you put up the tree?
Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving.

4. When do you take the tree down?
After Twelfth Night (Jan. 6).

5. Do you like eggnogg?
Yes--with or without added alcohol!

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
Probably a Breyer horse model, or perhaps my Barbie doll. (And that was back when Barbie was first on the market, in 1958. We got ONE Barbie doll; now every little girl seems to have at least 10 different Barbies.)

7. Hardest person to buy for?
My boss--what do you get for someone who already has, or can afford to buy, everything she wants? (Fortunately, the Boss told a few years ago that if we feel we must give her a gift, to donate in her name to a charity.) In general I no longer exchange Christmas gifts with most of my friends/family--saves money, and avoids bringing in more Stuff That Will Have to Be Discarded Someday. The exception is my new little grandson, Nicholas, for whom of course I had to buy a gift for his first Christmas.

8. Easiest person to buy for?
Baby Nicholas! Of course, bibliophile that I am, I bought him books.

9. Do you have a nativity scene?
Yes....Although I'm no longer conventionally religious, I like the whole tradition of the holiday season, including the religious references. I'm willing to go with a Pagan Winter Solstice theme, too....

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
I buy a new box of cards every year, and every year I "don't get around to" sending them. I also resolve to send e-mail Christmas greetings, but usually miss doing those, too.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
A diet book from my sister--I think it was The South Beach Diet. Yes, I need to lose weight, but still....

12. Favorite Christmas movie(s)?
"A Christmas Story"--I watched it again on Christmas Eve this year, and loved it as much as ever. I can't decide which part is my favorite, the "triple-dog-dare" scene, the leg lamp scene, or Ralph's fantasy about routing the bad guys with his new BB gun. Others I like are "Bad Santa," and "Elf." "It's a Wonderful Life" is the greatest classic, but I'm kinda burned out on it right now. I've seen that SO many times....

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
See answer to No. 7 above.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Not that anyone can prove without investigation and affidavits.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Turkey with cranberry sauce and cornbread dressing. Although, alas, around here most people seem to have oyster dressing, and I hate oysters.

16. Color of lights on the tree?
Multicolored fiber optics.

17. Favorite Christmas song?
"The Christmas Song," as performed by Nat King Cole.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
Stay home!

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, Blitzen (and, by the way, it is DONDER, not Donner! "Donder" is German for thunder, and "Blitzen" is German for lightning).

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Star.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
See No. 7 above. Others in my family who do give/receive presents do it on Christmas morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
With all the thousands of recordings of the standard Christmas songs, why must the radio stations play the same versions over and over and over?

23. Favorite ornament, theme, or color?
Don't use ornaments anymore, just the little two-foot tree with its built-in lights.

24. Favorite for Christmas Eve dinner?
My family does not do anything special for Christmas Eve, only for Christmas Day.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year?
See No. 7 above. Alternatively, to win the Powerball lottery.

26. What is your wish for Christmas?
World Peace...An End to Genocide...Universal Health Care...

Stealing Books

2009-12-18T15:00:00.003-06:00

Interesting (and ironic) factoids from an essay that will appear in the NYT Sunday Book Review, already posted on the NYT website:

The book most often stolen is the Bible. (At least, most often stolen from BookPeople bookstore in Austin, Texas.) The Bible even is stolen from a Christian bookstore that will give 'em away free is people ask for one. (Maybe when they know you'll give it away, they figure they don't need to ask....)
St. Mark's Bookshop in Manhattan locks up the work of certain authors in a display case because they're so often stolen. ("This library of temptation includes books by Martin Amis, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo and Jack Kerouac, among others.")
The most-stolen authors are male, apparently because book thieves are predominantly male.
"Only 40 percent of books that are read are paid for, and only 28 percent are purchased new, said Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry. The rest are shared, borrowed, given away — or stolen."

Read the full essay, "Steal These Books," here.

Breesus

2009-12-15T17:53:00.005-06:00

Miracles are happening in New Orleans. Witness this photo taken on the Mississippi River only a few days ago. For those of you who don't recognize this man on sight, it's Drew Brees, quarterback extraordinaire of the NEW ORLEANS SAINTS football team! They're now 13-0 (a true miracle for those of us who have followed the Saints over the past 40 years), division champions, and heading into the playoffs with a bye the first week and a home field advantage thereafter. Not to mention our hopes, expectations, etc., of the Saints getting into the S-s-s-....er, we won't say the word for fear of jinxing our team. They have three games left in the regular season. Regardless of the results in those last games, however, the Saints are in the playoffs! Many of us, faced with a difficult situation, now ask ourselves, "What would Breesus do?"

It's Halloween and the Sphinx has flown back!

2009-10-31T21:00:00.000-05:00

It's been so long since I've appeared in Blogworld, I can't resist jumping out tonight to say BOO!

I won't yada-yada-yada the story why the blog's been on hiatus for so long. I'll just say this has been a very eventful year for me.

Years ago, a very productive author gave me some good advice. Asked about plotting, he said, "What is plot? Why, it's just one damn thing after another."

If that's the test, my life this past year could be the plot of a book.

On a forward-looking note, any day now I shall become a grandmother. My daughter (Sphinx Link) will be presenting me with a grandson. I plan to call him Sphinx Inkling.

The photo has nothing to do with my lengthy blogsilence, but it's funny.

Resurfacing; or Excuses, Excuses, Excuses; or The Dunciad

2009-08-14T11:13:00.010-05:00

I never intended my hiatus to go on this long. Since my last entry (good grief, more than 3 months ago!), I spent many weeks on a combination of sick leave and vacation time. I thought of topics for a new blog entry, but using my computer was frustrating because it had begun to run very slow and hang up a lot. I kept postponing a new entry. I enjoyed vegging-out to the max.

A couple of weeks ago I had to re-enter the real world, however: I returned to my job full-time and have been busy catching up on a backlog of work. I'm grabbing a few minutes to say I'm alive and still kicking. But disgruntled.

Very disgruntled, because a few days ago my laptop computer was stolen. That means my only Internet access now is at my office. I can arrange for a replacement computer--a friend has already found one someone wants to get rid of--but I'm mourning the loss of everything that was on the stolen computer. Everything I've written in the past year--from e-mail to business documents to personal writing--was on it.

And, alas, I hadn't backed it up. And I didn't password-protect my files.

Yes, you may sneer and tell me you don't feel sorry for me. Any experienced computer user who doesn't back up regularly is a fool. And password-protection is elementary security.

I am making a dunce cap for myself right now.

Not Quite Back from Hiatus

2009-05-10T00:29:00.002-05:00

Well, I'm back, sort of...not having to blog from the afterlife, at least. I'm ten days post-surgery, minus tumor, also minus a kidney. (Fortunately, I have another kidney.) Will be recovering for a few more weeks, but am doing okay. Thanks to those of you who commented on my last post. Whew.

I've been contemplating how I might use this experience in my blog, and thought of recounting various details of the hospitalization/surgery/medication/recovery experience on the theory it might be useful research for someone...then I realized that idea was really just a thinly-disguised version of the recovering invalid's compulsion to talk ad infinitum about her surgery. Which is, of course, excruciatingly boring to everyone except someone else who's experienced the same thing! So I'll spare the details.

All I can say is, having gone through this with laparascopic surgery and found it difficult that way, I can only imagine how much worse it must have been in days prior to this modern method. I have a number of interesting small scars developing across my abdomen, from where various surgical instruments were inserted and removed, and a bit larger scar through which they pulled out the kidney. If not for the laparascope, however, apparently I'd have a scar about nine inches long throbbing across my side and abdomen.

Anyway, thanks to all of you (my vast crowd of readers, heh heh) for your good wishes and good thoughts. I believe they helped me get through it safely.

A Brief Hiatus

2009-04-28T12:25:00.003-05:00

I've been pretty healthy most of my life, but in the last few years some health issues have caught up with me. I had an emergency appendectomy seven weeks ago, and have to undergo more surgery tomorrow to remove a tumor on one of my kidneys. The prognosis is very good; the doctor believes I won't need further treatment and that there will be little likelihood of a recurrence. Nevertheless, this is a more involved operation than the appendectomy, and I'm a little apprehensive. The recovery will take longer than for the appendectomy, and I don't know when I'll feel up to getting back online. So let me bid my faithful readers adieu for a few days or a few weeks. Wish me luck, pray for me, or send good vibrations my way, whichever works for you.

I shall return. And, if not, perhaps I'll blog from the afterlife, whatever it may be....

(Hangs head in embarrassment) Sorry, I admit to being dramatic. Just trying to drum up sympathy!

Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover...Mea Culpa

2009-04-15T16:48:00.005-05:00

This blog entry no doubt is one among thousands using the above title after last weekend.

In case you haven't yet seen/heard the amazing Susan Boyle sing, watch this video. The whole thing is about 7 minutes long, but worth the time. As an occasional viewer of American Idol--the American version of Britain's Got Talent, the British show on which Boyle appeared, I didn't expect Boyle to have talent...because of her appearance. Shame on me.

You must listen to her.

I am humbled. I shall kick myself henceforth as a reminder not to judge by appearance.

My Appendix Says Farewell

2009-03-27T00:55:00.000-05:00

I've been pretty healthy person most of my life, with just a glitch here and there. Much to my surprise, I now speak to you as survivor of an emergency appendectomy. Yes, that scary situation, where you rush to the ER in excruciating pain, hoping against hope they won't have to cut on you, hoping it's only gas pains...only to discover that yep, the pain in the right lower quadrant of your abdomen, which has grown increasingly worse over the last 12 hours, is indeed an inflamed and already perforating appendix.

Fortunately, nowadays there is surgery by laparascope, in which you get only two or three little incisions instead of a big one; the surgeon goes in by remote control, snips away the offending vermiform remnant, suctions out the nasty pus and fluid, glues rather than sews closed any openings that shouldn't be there, then neatly withdraws and seals the tiny incisions with butterfly bandages. Tah-dah! Except for a few hours of agonizing gas pains on the day after surgery, recovery is amazingly fast and you're ready to go back to work within a couple of weeks.

Whew! I'd like to leave it all behind as among my less-favorite memories...but alas, during the presurgery testing, they discovered a problem with one of my kidneys, so I'll have to undergo another surgery in a few weeks. Sigh.

I am comforted to realize that if I'd been born fifty years earlier, I probably would have died of the appendicitis. I'm profoundly grateful to live in the world of modern medicine, with CT scans, laparoscopies, and -- last but hardly least -- really effective pain medication. Heh heh heh.

Celebrations

2009-03-04T23:28:00.002-06:00

The title of this post is both ironic and non-ironic.

I'm writing about two funerals--hardly material for celebration. Yet here in New Orleans, a funeral can be as much a celebration of life as it is mourning for the dead.

Two local celebrities died last week, both of them closely connected to the New Orleans music community.

Eaglin jazz funeral; photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune

The first was Snooks Eaglin, a blind R&B guitarist known for his virtuousity, who influenced many other musicians. This excellent article about Snooks includes a YouTube video of Snooks playing at his favorite venue, Rock 'N' Bowl, and simultaneously giving a music lesson to another local musician, George Porter, Jr. The video is vintage Snooks: he treats Porter--famous as a member of The Meters and considered one of the greatest living bass guitarists--like a newbie. (Porter was one of Snooks' biggest fans and loved playing sets with Snooks.)

The second celebrity we lost was Antoinette K-Doe, widow of Ernie K-Doe, who revived Ernie's musical career and reputation in his last years, kept his memory active after his death, and helped many musicians and others in the community.

Apart from their fame on the local music scene, Snooks and Antoinette had something else in common: Their funerals were held at nightclubs.

Snooks' funeral service at The Howlin' Wolf featured tributes, both verbal and musical, by numerous stars of the New Orleans music scene, and concluded with a traditional jazz funeral escort to the cemetery.

It was the Warehouse District nightclub's first funeral.

"We've had people laid out here before," noted Howlin' Wolf owner Howie Kaplan, "but they were still breathing."

(From music writer Keith Spera's blog on the Times-Picayune website)

Antoinette's wake was held at her own club, the Mother-in-Law Lou nge, which she had made into a shrine for her late husband. Her funeral service was at a church, and she too had a traditional jazz funeral escort to her interment.

K-Doe jazz funeral; Photo by Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune

All the coverage of the events shows how much the funeral guests celebrated the lives of the deceased. There was sadness, but also joy and happy memories.

Celebrations.

Incredible Variation on the Pride & Prejudice Spinoff

2009-02-13T13:07:00.008-06:00

Oh my. I MUST buy this book just because of the title:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance -- Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

As a dedicated Jane Austen fan, with Pride and Prejudice being my all-time favorite book, I must find out how much violence the book does to the original story...

Will this be Elizabeth Bennet's worst nightmare? Will Miss Bingley, Wickham and Lydia be eaten by zombies? Will Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy still get together at the end?

Could this book make my my horror-loving friend Charles Gramlich learn to like Austen?

Thanks go to Jan B. for alerting me to it.

Books Read, 2008

2009-02-08T18:42:00.002-06:00

My friend Charles Gramlich of Razored Zen for many years has kept a list of books he's read. I wish I'd done the same thing, but better late than never. I managed to keep a list of all the books I read in 2008. Encouraged by the reading lists posted by Lisa Kenney of Eudaimonia and Tim Hallinan of The Blog Cabin, I decided to post mine here.

I averaged a little more than one per week, fewer than in any year since I can remember. I find it harder to concentrate on books nowadays--I start far more than I finish. Often they just don't pull me into the story; I set them down, meaning to continue, but end up starting another book instead.

When I put a book on the side, I usually plan to return to it eventually. Only rarely do I start one and know I'll never finish it. When that happens I give the book to a friend or donate it to charity--even if I don't like it, someone else may. (Maybe I should start keeping a list of books I've started but haven't yet finished.)

I have several books on the list that were re-reads--books by some of my favorite authors, "comfort reads." Many of the re-reads last year were novels by Georgette Heyer, one of my all-time favorite authors, who died in 1972. Most of her books have long been out of print in the U.S., but are now being reprinted by Sourcebooks in beautiful trade paperbook editions. I purchase them as they're released, and enjoy the pleasure of rereading her wonderful stories.

My favorite of the new reads last year was The Brass Verdict by Michael Connolly, second in his new Mickey Haller series. Excellent, excellent. He's become one of my favorite writers.

Sphinx Ink’s List of Books Read in 2008
Legend: F = fiction; NF = nonfiction; R = re-read; A = audio book

TITLE, AUTHOR, DATE READ (NOTES)
1. My Sweet Folly, Laura Kinsale, 1/19/08 (F; R)
2. White Night, Jim Butcher, 2/18/08 (F)
3. Psychic Eye, Victoria Laurie, 2/24/08 (F)
4. Glass Houses, Rachel Caine, 2/24/08 (F)
5. The Overlook, Michael Connelly, 3/1/08 (F)
6. Seize the Fire, Laura Kinsale, 3/8/08 (F; R)
7. On the Prowl, Anthology (Briggs, Wilks, Chance, Sunny), 3/21/08 (F)
8. High Profile, Robert B. Parker, 3/23/08 (F)
9. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman, 3/29/08 (F)
10. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, 3/31/08 (NF; A)
11. Wildfire, Nelson DeMille, 4/2/08 (NF; A)
12. Irresistible, Mary Balogh, 4/17/08 (F; R)
13. Never Lie to a Lady, Liz Carlyle, 4/14/08 (F)
14. A Lady’s Secret, Jo Beverley, 4/19/08 (F)
16. Mystic Horseman, Kathleen Eagle, 4/23/08 (F)
17. Staying Dead, Laurie Ann Gilman, 4/28/08 (F)
18. Jumper, Steven Gould, 4/28/08 (F)
19. The Novice’s Tale, Margaret Frazer, 5/9/08 (F)
20. From Dead to Worse, Charlaine Harris, 5/11/08 (F)
21. Bones, Jan Burke, 5/13/08 (F)
22. Dagger-Star, Elizabeth Vaughan, 5/15/08 (F)
23. Hour Game, David Baldacci, 6/7/08 (F)
24. The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson, 5/18/08 (F)
25. Dead to Me, Anton Strout, 6/15/08 (F)
26. False Colours, Georgette Heyer, 6/15/08 (F; R)
27. Spare Change, Robert B. Parker, 6/16/08 (F)
28. Goodnight, Irene, Jan Burke, 6/19/08 (F)
29. Your Scandalous Ways, Loretta Chase, 6/21/08 (F)
30. The Cotton Queen, Pamela Morsi, 6/22/08 (F)
31. Forty Words for Sorrow, Giles Blunt, 7/1/08 (F)
32. The Ideal Wife, Mary Balogh, 7/3/08 (F; R)
33. Winter Fire, Jo Beverley, 7/5/08 (F)
34. Death of a Stranger, Anne Perry, 7/7/08 (NF; A)
35. Sweet Dreams, Irene, Jan Burke, 7/10/08 (F)
36. A Nail Through the Heart, Timothy Hallinan, 7/13/08 (F)
37. Lady of Quality, Georgette Heyer, 7/15/08 (F; R)
38. Black Sheep, Georgette Heyer, 7/20/08 (F; R)
39. These Old Shades, Georgette Heyer, 7/23/08 (F; R)
40. The Sleeping Doll, Jeffery Deaver, 7/29/08 (F)
41. The Black Moth, Georgette Heyer, 8/1/08 (F; R)
42. Cry Wolf, Patricia Briggs, 8/6/08 (F)
43. Death in Bloodhound Red, Virginia Lanier, 8/14/08 (F)
44. Alone, Lisa Gardner, 8/18/08 (F)
45. Red Square, Martin Cruz Smith, 8/21/08 (F; R)
46. Stalin’s Ghost, Martin Cruz Smith, 8/22/08 (F)
47. Polar Star, Martin Cruz Smith, 8/26/08 (F)
48. All Mortal Flesh, Julia Spencer-Fleming, 8/29/08 (F)
49. The Man with the Golden Torc, Simon R. Green, 9/19/08 (F)
50. The Gallows Thief, Bernard Cornwell, 9/27/08 (F)
51. The Ruby in the Smoke, Philip Pullman, 10/2/08 (F)
52. Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer, 10/20/08 (F; R)
53. The Archangel Project, C.S. Harris, 10/20/08 (F)
54. The Butcher’s Boy, Thomas Perry, 10/23/08 (F)
55. Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge, Pamela Morsi, 11/2/08 (F)
56. Faro’s Daughter, Georgette Heyer, 11/8/08 (F; R)
57. Once Upon a Christmas, Diane Farr, 11/11/08 (F)
58. From Dead to Worse, Charlaine Harris, 11/16/08 (F; R)
59. The Brass Verdict, Michael Connolly, 11/21/08 (F)
60. The First Quarry, Max Alan Collins, 12/1/08 (F)
61. The Outlaw Demon Wails, Kim Harrison, 12/6/08 (F)
62. The Shadow in the North, Philip Pullman, 12/7/08 (F)

For some reason Blogger isn't letting me imbed the links in the text, so here are the links to my friends' blogs:
Razored Zen -- http://charlesgramlich.blogspot.com/; Charles' booklist reference -- http://charlesgramlich.blogspot.com/2007/10/reading-and-referral.html
Eudaimonia -- http://eudaemoniaforall.blogspot.com/ (Lisa's past and current booklists are on her blog's sidebar)
The Blog Cabin -- http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/?cat=2

Hail and Farewell

2009-01-30T15:00:00.002-06:00

I welcome 2009 because it brought a new president, in whom I have much hope.

I shrink from 2009, however, because it brought the departure from New Orleans of Laura Joh Rowland, a good friend whom I shall miss greatly.

You know as much as I do about our new president, and the hopes of the voters who elected him. I shall focus instead on my friend, whose departure I bemoan. Laura has moved to New York due to her husband's job change.

I've known Laura since 1993, when I joined SOLA, the local chapter of RWA, a national writers' organization. Laura was already a member and she made her first book sale that year (Shinju, first in her Sano Ichiro mystery series). For a long time we were mere acquaintances, but over the last eight years we became friends. Since 2001 we've belonged to a writers group that meets once a week. Over those years I've seen Laura nearly every Monday--she was a faithful attendee and rarely missed a meeting. I had the chance to get to know her, and everything I discovered about her is admirable.

Laura is, first, a fine person, kind, loyal, honest, hardworking, and conscientious. She has a serious demeanor, but underneath an antic sense of humor and a fine wit.

She is, second, a true artist, creative in many ways. As an author, she's had 14 books published (13 in her Sano Ichiro mystery series set in 17th century Japan, one so far in her Charlotte Bronte mystery series). She's a fine writer, with a wonderful skill at taking us back into a historical setting and making us see, hear, feel, smell and taste it. Her characters live and breathe, as if in the room with us. Her plots are fiendishly clever.

Laura is generous in sharing her knowledge with fledgling authors, and encouraging them to become productive writers. She regularly gives talks to groups of writers as well as readers, and presents programs at writers' conferences. For more than 10 years she mentored a critique group in New Orleans that had been started by the noted science fiction author George Alec Effinger. She always has a fresh perspective to offer on one's work; her advice is cogent, succinct, and as valuable as gold.

Laura is a painter, too, and plans to pursue that talent with serious study at a major art school soon. She faithfully took painting classes for years while in New Orleans, and her work decorated the walls of her home in New Orleans. (I wish I'd asked her to paint one for me.) Last year the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts gave her a special award for "exceptional promise, discipline, and selfless devotion to the fine arts."

Laura now resides in one of New York's five boroughs, outside of Manhattan, in a busy neighborhood full of people speaking other languages. The population in her new neighborhood is mostly Korean immigrants. (Laura, a third-generation American of Korean and Chinese ancestry, says for the first time in her life she's part of the majority ethnicity.)

What wonderful grist for a writer's mill. I know she'll enjoy all the opportunities and excitement that New York has to offer, but oh, how we'll miss her here in New Orleans.

Ave atque vale, Obama and Rowland.

Darwin Awards Winners?

2008-12-11T12:46:00.002-06:00

A friend emailed me the message below, captioned "2008 Darwin Awards." It's hilarious, so I'm sharing it with you. I double-checked it with the actual Darwin Awards website ("A chronicle of enterprising demises honoring those who improve the species...by accidentally removing themselves from it!"). The 2008 nominees listed didn't include any of these anecdotes. Perhaps they're from previous years...but the website has so many I didn't take the time to check them all.

So enjoy the stories, whether true or apocryphal, and visit the Darwin Awards website for more tales of unbelievable (and deadly) human idiocy.

"It's not the heat, it's the stupidity."
_____________________________________________

Subject: 2008 Darwin Awards

It's that time again...The Darwin Awards are finally out, the annual honor given to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid ways.

Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out.

This year's winner was a real rocket scientist....HONEST!

Read on...And remember that each and every one of these is a TRUE STORY. The awards were bestowed this year by December 6th, 2008 because the panel of judges believed that no one else could do more stupid stuff than these morons did by that time in 2008.

* * * * * * * * * * *

And the nominees were:

Semifinalist #1

A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he rushed to vomit into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his unfortunate sister.

Semifinalist #2

Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles (HARD to control light airplanes when everyone moves to one side).

Semifinalist #3

A 22-year-old Reston, VA man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot rail road trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. 'The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground,' Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was 'Major trauma.'

Semifinalist #4

A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend -- no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate -- was hospitalized.

Semifinalist #5

Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc.

After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter.

Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as ''bright'' by his peers.

*** Now, to the winner of this year's Darwin Award ***

(awarded, as always, posthumously):

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist ... had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3..0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds.

The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event. However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?

AND PEOPLE JUST LIKE THIS ARE ALL AROUND US TODAY - AND THEY BREED & VOTE, TOO.

Five Writing Strengths

2008-12-09T11:50:00.001-06:00

A long time ago Shauna Roberts tagged me for a writing meme: to list five of my writing strengths. It would be easier to list five writing weaknesses, but I finally came up with these:

1. Excellent command of punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure, as well as large vocabulary.
2. Widely read in fiction, especially genre fiction, resulting in broad knowledge of literary conventions and reader expectations on which to draw for own writing.
3. Instinctive grasp of good writing style.
4. Good at analyzing facts and setting them out in readable fashion (a skill more useful in writing nonfiction than fiction.)
5. Ear for lyrical language.

Whew. I'm cringing. Too much training in self-deprecation, not enough in self-praise. Better post this before I change my mind and erase everything!

Brilliant Beagle

2008-11-28T03:08:00.002-06:00

Any dog this clever deserves to run free: See Andrew Sullivan's Why I Love Beagles.

Weird Events

2008-11-24T00:35:00.001-06:00

In the last few weeks some weird things have been happening in the New Orleans area, or not far from it:

KKK Reappears
A hitherto unknown enclave of the Ku Klux Klan was discovered about 60 miles northeast of New Orleans, a group of eight or so cretins who had gathered to induct a new member. The leader of the group ended up shooting and killing the new member because she got cold feet and wanted to back out of the deal and go home. The other members of the group helped him try to cover up the evidence and dispose of the body. The whole thing was done so clumsily police had little problem in finding the evidence. All was revealed within a short time. Police were tipped off to the shady doings when a clerk at a nearby convenience store told them two people he/she recognized had asked how to get blood out of clothing. Despite having signed an oath of secrecy to protect their fellow Klan members to the death, etc., the Klanners couldn't talk fast enough once police found them.

Neo-Nazi
Police in a New Orleans suburb arrested a man they saw walking down a street in full Nazi uniform, carrying a loaded 8mm Mauser. He told them he was planning to kill a neighbor with whom he'd argued about a dog. Subsequent news article say his family members say he has mental problems. No sh*t, Sherlock.

Mad Bomber
A car exploded in uptown New Orleans and police were able to determine the bomber lived nearby. They found his home was a stockpile of explosives. What do you want to bet his family members also will soon be reporting that he has psychiatric problems?

Handcuffed D.A.
Two judges at a local court had simultaneous hearings that involved the same assistant district attorney. One was in the middle of a several-days-long murder trial; the other had a pretrial hearing in a murder case that had been repeatedly postponed. Each insisted the A.D.A. had to be present in her or his court immediately. One judge came to the other's chambers and they argued. Finally, the judge with the pretrial hearing ordered the A.D.A. placed in handcuffs to keep him from going to the other courtroom. It was eventually settled when a higher-up in the D.A.'s office came down and pledged to handle the hearing while the targeted prosecutor was uncuffed and allowed to go back to the ongoing murder trial.

Scary things--sometimes kinda funny, except for what they portend.

Meming a Return: 6 Random Things

2008-11-22T23:04:00.008-06:00

Nola over at NOLA Notes tagged me for a meme, and I thank her for the kick in the *ss to get me started back blogging again. Following the advice of my semiguru, Leo of Write to Done and Zen Habits, I won't explain or apologize for my absence, but jump back into the game. Here's the SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT ME meme:

The Rules:

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So, six random things you don’t already know about me:

I once worked as a decorating consultant in a branch store of a well-known national paint company. This was the early 70s and we decorating consultants were the first women who had ever worked in their stores. The idea was we would advise female customers on their choices in paint, wallpaper, and carpet-- i.e., sell the products. We were trained to know the products, but received no training in actual decorating or design. They hired pretty much any woman who was willing to work in a paint store around a bunch of male chauvinists who were alternately panting with lust over having an actual female in the store, or sneering at her for having the nerve to work in a male milieu. (Ah, how things have changed in the past 30 years.) I'm not noted for skill in interior design. Lucky for them I could coordinate colors, at least. I soon tired of mixing paint and lugging around wallpaper and carpet swatch books, and moved on to an office job, much more my preference.
I learned to play the piano and the clarinet in grade school. I haven't touched either in years, but I'd kinda like to get back to the piano. The clarinet, nah. I don't mind listening to good clarinet (yeaaa, Pete Fountain), but I'm not gonna tongue any more reeds myself...heh heh.
My great-grandfather on my mother's side was married four times and sired 24 children, of whom at least 20 lived to adulthood. (The wives kept dying off, either from childbirth fever or other disease. Those were hard times.) My great-grandfather was conscripted into the Confederate army during the Civil War and dodged bullets from Yankee snipers while on picket duty during the siege of Vicksburg. Best we can estimate, he was in his seventies when he was siring those last five children in the 1890s...heh heh.
For several years now I've had a secret desire to attend a monster truck rally.
In sophomore year of high school I scored the highest grade in the school on a nationwide Latin examination. Got a medal for it. It must have astonished my Latin teacher, since I hadn't shown any special aptitude for Latin in class. I still like Latin, and am glad I know a little about it. I think it would be cool to learn conversational Latin--it would be funny to start chatting in Latin at a party, say. Well, I'd find it funny, but I guess everyone else would consider me a total dork. Or sadly insane.
In high school and college I sewed a lot of my own clothing. I even made my own wedding dress, appliques and all. I haven't touched a sewing machine in years, but maybe I'll get back to it someday. (Yeah, like I'll get back to playing the piano.) I have the patience now to do a much better job on that stitching.
Here's a bonus 7th thing: I don't like to cook, but I love cookbooks. I have a lot of them. Every now and then I open one and peruse the recipes, saying to myself, "Hmm, that doesn't look too difficult...I could probably make that." I especially like the ones that include commentary such as the background of the recipe, or anecdotes about the author's life.

I expect most of my usual blog buddies have already been tagged for this meme, but I'll name them anyway. If any of you have already done it, just send me a link to your post on it. And, of course, any of you who haven't done it and don't want to, c'est la vie.

Shauna of For Love of Words
Charles of Razored Zen
Candice of C.S. Harris/Candy's Blog
Roz of The Ninth Muse
Farrah of Farrah Rochon
Rae Ann of Rae Ann Parker

Hey--it feels good to be back.

I'm ba-a-a-ck

2008-09-10T14:58:00.003-05:00

Greetings, all. I evacuated for Hurricane Gustav, but have returned safely. I had no damage, either bodily or to property. The biggest aftermath for me is exhaustion.

I spent three days preparing to evacuate--packed LOTS of stuff this time.

(That's the Katrina Aftereffect: When I evacuated for Hurricane Katrina I expected to return home in two or three days, so took only a few changes of clothing. I didn't anticipate serious flooding, despite the TV warnings...I've been through dozens of hurricanes; there's always exaggeration in the preliminary warnings you hear on TV. Then Katrina came through: the levees broke, New Orleans was devastated, and I couldn't return home for more than three weeks. Although my own home survived Katrina safely, the visions of others' losses stayed with me. For Gustav I was wiser and planned for the possibility of being away for weeks and/or losing my house to wind/flood damage.)

I left on Saturday, August 30, with my daughter and a friend of hers in three vehicles, each vehicle loaded. We didn't go far--to a rural community north of Lake Pontchartrain, about 50 miles from where I live. I have friends there who were willing to house us and our menagerie of pets for the storm. (We had six animals with us--four dogs and two cats.) It's the same place where I stayed during Katrina. It's high ground, no possibility of flooding, although of course it can suffer wind damage. (My friends lost 30 trees from Katrina.)

We settled in and waited, per the usual. The storm came. Lots of high winds, and lots more rain than from Katrina. The high winds lasted for two days and the rains continued on and off for four days. Amazingly, our refuge did not lose electricity, although most around us did. Not only did we have lights and access to TV, we had AIR CONDITIONING (the most important thing to me). We went through the week in comfort, with only anxiety and boredom to plague us.

We returned home on Friday, September 5, to find the house in good shape, with electricity and cable TV working. On setting foot inside my house, I dropped the armload of stuff I was bringing in, sat in my favorite chair in the living room, and burst into tears. I didn't expect it; I guess it was the relief of being safely home. While evacuated I wasn't conscious of feeling extreme anxiety--in such a situation, you have to go from moment to moment and not think about all the awful possibilities--but I guess it was there underneath.

I've spent the last four days doing what has to be done--putting away stuff at home, restocking the fridge, going back to work on Monday, etc.--then collapsing and sleeping a lot. I guess there's some post-traumatic stress stuff going on inside me. It seems odd since I experienced only inconvenience this time (didn't even lose the AIR CONDITIONING), but who can account for the ways of the psyche?

I just hope we don't have to do this again this year. Now Hurricane Ike is down there in the Gulf, but it's heading for Texas/Mexico, and all we'll get is some rain. I don't wish harm on anyone else, but I'm glad it's not heading for us.

And thus ends my tale.

Yikes! Not another one!

2008-08-27T17:22:00.003-05:00

I've been drafting a couple of different blog posts with the Katrina Anniversary in mind, but now we have Tropical Storm (possibly Hurricane) Gustav down in the Caribbean, soon to be in the Gulf, and things in this area are going in to hurricane preparation mode...which means I must do that also. So, unless Gustav changes his mind and heads for Texas or Mexico, I will be probably be offline for a few days. (I hope it won't be longer than that--it depends on where I evacuate to, if evacuate I must, and whether the electricity goes out.) Bye for now.

Alternative Olympic Sports

2008-08-19T17:58:00.000-05:00

My last post noted that the IOC has added BMX racing to the Games this year. In an earlier comment Steve Malley had listed BMX as one of the sports on his list of fantasy Olympics games. His others are pole dancing and dodgeball.

I suggested the addition of pogo stick. Steve Malley immediately came up with a list of pogo stick events: "single pogo, team pogo, triple-bounce for height and again for distance, single-bounce the same way, perhaps even a sort of pogo-obstacle course!"

Lana Gramlich suggested bungee jumping....(Cool, but really scary to me--no heights, please!)

Shauna Roberts suggested cat herding--it "would require athletes with speed, balance, and agility." (Claw-proof uniforms, too...that probably would be the most challenging Game of all.)

Bzzzt! (Light bulb above head) Faithful readers, what are your ideas for alternative Olympic sports?

New Olympic Sport Added This Year

2008-08-17T18:43:00.002-05:00

In response to Excelsior, my August 12 post about the Olympics, Steve Malley commented with his typical dry wit, "I'm waiting for pole dancing, BMX biking and dodgeball to be admitted as new sports..." Well, Steve, one-third of your wait is over: BMX is now part of the Olympics, beginning with the Beijing games this year. Who knows, maybe in 2012, the IOC will add pole-dancing and dodgeball, especially since they're removing softball.

A Few Interesting Links

2008-08-16T17:37:00.002-05:00

I recently came across some interesting blog/website links to share with you. I can't recall where I found two of them, so if those two came from any of your blogs/websites, I apologize for not being able to credit you:

1. On Indexed Jessica Hagy cleverly converts all kinds of ideas and concepts into graphs and charts. Humorous and good for a daily laugh. This has become so popular she has produced a book, which you can buy from any of several popular online booksellers through links on her website. The book's description on Amazon.com states:

A unique, hilarious take on the modern world

Jessica Hagy is a different kind of thinker. She has an astonishing talent for visualizing relationships, capturing in pictures what is difficult for most of us to express in words.

At indexed.blogspot.com, she posts charts, graphs, and Venn diagrams drawn on index cards that reveal in a simple and intuitive way the large and small truths of modern life.

Praised throughout the blogosphere as "brilliant," "incredibly creative," and "comic genius," Jessica turns her incisive, deadpan sense of humor on everything from office politics to relationships to religion.

With new material along with some of Jessica's greatest hits, this utterly unique book will thrill readers who demand humor that makes them both laugh and think.

2. Contrarywise is a website featuring literary tattoos--tattoos based on books, poems, lyrics, and many other things. The site is simple: a photo of each tattoo, with a blurb underneath setting out the exact language used in the tattoo, and usually an explanation of why the person chose it. Some of the tattoos are copies of illustrations from books rather than quotations, such as the rocking-horse fly by Victorian illustrator John Tenniel from the 1871 first edition of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

It's fascinating to see the quotations people choose to wear on their bodies. I'm not into tattooing myself, but if I were to get one it would be a quotation from a book. For example, an excellent one recently posted is a quotation from Gandhi: "My life is my message."

3. On The Ninth Muse, my friend roz m has a link to Wordle, which she says "makes a word cloud that visualizes the word frequency in a passage you copy to the wordle site. You can experiment with different layouts, colors, and fonts until you find the image that makes you most content. This seems like a good tool to use in writing; it could allow you to see what the dominant words (and the ideas linked to them) are in a chapter or scene." Clever idea. Thanks, Roz, for the link and for your description of it. (Unfortunately, I wasn't able to experiment with it on my aging and cranky home computer, but I plan to try it on my office computer next week.)

On Crusie's "The Double-Edged Blog"

2008-08-13T16:08:00.003-05:00

(Yikes, two posts back-to-back! Is the world ending?)

I just read Jenny Crusie's latest entry on Argh Ink, "The Double-Edged Blog." Jenny's a best-selling author of women's fiction, known for her great sense of humor. She blogs about her works-in-progress, the businesses of writing and publishing, and life in general. She's found that while her blog gives her a chance to express herself freely on topics beyond her writing, it also results in the occasional flame-war from readers who don't like her opinions. She analogizes blogging to a double-edged sword:

I found out that blogs were a chance to say anything I wanted and I was hooked. For awhile, everything was lovely, and then I posted something a lot of people didn’t like. I can’t remember what it was now, but it was the first time somebody said to me, “You know, you should stop blogging, it’s going to hurt your career.” I said, “How is that possible?” and she said, “If they don’t like what you say on your blog, they’ll stop buying your books.” That was incomprehensible to me then, and it’s still puzzling to me now. ...
Then I tripped again, this time because I was thoughtless (this happens a lot). One of my friends got a ludicrous letter from a reader and I posted it with her first name on it. That was flat out wrong of me, and I did apologize and take the name off the blog but basically, I screwed up. First lesson: Never blog when you’re really angry but not admitting it to yourself. Practical application: Wait twenty-four hours before you post something you’ve written.
Then while I was being careful on Argh–well, careful for me–I lost my temper on somebody else’s blog and became The Author Who Is Pro-Plagiarism (because that was more fun for people to get upset about than The Author Who Thinks This Is Being Handled Badly and People Should Stop Author-Bashing Until They Know the Facts). This annoyed some people so much that they’re still mad at me; some of them cornered Bob [Mayer, Crusie's co-author on a couple of books] at Thrillerfest to tell him just how awful I am, as if he didn’t know the black depths of my heart already. And of course, they’re never going to read me again. (Actually my fave comment about the whole mess was on another blog: a reader said she was never going to read me again and then followed it up by saying she’d never read me before either. I kept thinking of the old “Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after my broken arm heals?”/”Of course”/”Funny, I couldn’t play it before” joke, but that’s probably just more evidence of how depraved I am.)

I always enjoy Jenny's blog entries, whether or not I share her point-of-view on certain issues. I'm baffled by the people who incite flame-wars because someone has an opinion that differs from theirs. Or, even worse, those who begin online campaigns against a particular writer because they don't like his/her point of view.

Jennie's blog entry is well worth reading, especially for anyone who's had a similar blog-experience. Several of the comments following it are thought-provoking, too.

As Jenny says:

I feel strongly that anybody who evaluates the rest of the people in the world by how closely their attitudes and statements agree with her worldview is in danger of structuring a life much like the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department. We don’t learn from the people who agree with us, we learn from the people who make us say, “Wait a minute,” and that learning goes both ways. I learn a lot from the critics who intelligently analyze my books and find them wanting; I’ve also learned a lot from the people who have thoughfully and calmly disagreed with me on this blog. Haven’t learned a thing from the shriekers and condemners, though.

Excelsior

2008-08-13T00:06:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a break from my vacation to immerse myself in the 2008 Summer Olympics. I am a total non-athlete, yet I love the Olympics. My sleep/wake cycle has been disrupted as I try to follow the late-night/all-night broadcasts.

This year's opening ceremony was the most fabulous ever--amazing, beautiful, enchanting, overwhelming--with such creativity in its different elements. And, wow, what a way to show off China's huge population: over 15,000 individuals performed in the spectacle. I did wonder, while watching the segment of 2008 drummers beating huge drums, whether this wasn't meant to remind all of us that China has one-fifth of the world's population.

I always enjoy watching the Parade of Nations, when the athletes from the various countries make a circuit around the stadium. I particularly like seeing the native costumes some of them wear.

I prefer the individual sports such as swimming, diving, and gymnastics to the team sports such as volleyball and baseball--although I will watch the basketball finals if the USA ends up in them.

The TV coverage in the U.S. is limited to whatever NBC wants us to see. I wish I could pick and choose what I see. NBC shows different sports on various cable channels it owns, but I don't have access to several of them. If I had a newer computer, I could view video of other sports I'd like to see (such as archery and equestrienne events) on NBC's Olympics website. My computer, however, is aging and temperamental and it limits my online activities. It no longer will play videos.

Ah, the same old story: an info junkie who either can't get enough info, or is inundated with so much info it's overwhelming.

I have enjoyed watching Michael Phelps achieve his record number of gold medals in swimming, and the US gymnastics teams win silver and bronze medals.

A different type of entertainment is hearing the sniping and petty politics, such as:

The press discovered that the little Chinese girl who sang at the opening ceremony was in fact lip-synching to the voice of another little girl whom the Chinese government deemed insufficiently pretty to represent their country publicly. (Stewart Sternberg posted a good blog entry on that.)
Famous gymnastic coach Bela Karolyi complained that the members of the Chinese women's gymnastics team surely are underage. The rule of the international gymnastics organization is that they must be 16 years old.

International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) officials have accepted the passports of the Chinese women, which indicate all are old enough to compete. Karolyi is originally from Romania, and he says falsifying documents is a common practice in totalitarian regimes such as Romania, Russia and other former Soviet bloc nations.
The solution, he said, is to not have any age limit. He believes if a gymnast is good enough to earn a spot at the Olympics or world championships, that athlete deserves to go. He said some juniors today are just as proficient as the age-eligble competitors.

To me, almost all of the Chinese team look younger than 16--one looked to be no more than 10 or 11. I don't know a lot about gymnastics (except the bits I pick up every four years while watching the Olympics), but it's obvious that child-size gymnasts are lighter and more flexible, and can do better contortions, leaps and flips than adult-size bodies. On the other hand, since the age limit presumably is there to protect the very young gymnasts, I don't agree with Karolyi's solution of doing away with age limits.

Good Site for Post-Katrina Photos

2008-08-09T17:13:00.002-05:00

As we swelter through The Month That Contains the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (better known to most of you as August 2008), I may be posting only Katrina-related entries. Or maybe not. For right now, I'm linking to Pontchartrain Pete's blog, in which he's recognizing The Anniversary Month by posting a new Katrina photo every day of the month--his theme is "One K a Day."

Hurricane Preparedness?

2008-07-25T17:00:00.001-05:00

After posting a serious entry on Hurricane Katrina's aftereffects earlier this week (Katrina Tattoos), I'm going for the funnybone now.

A friend who lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast sent me the following humorous e-mail. (Her hometown of Pascagoula was devastated by Katrina.)

This is a witty sendup of the many "hurricane preparedness" tip sheets distributed this time of year. It's going around the Internet via e-mail, with nothing to identify the original author, so I assume it's not subject to copyright protection and reprint it in its entirety.
_______________________________________________

Special Message from the Gulf Coast FEMA Office
Subject: Hurricane Preparedness 2008

To ex-Gulf Coastians, present Coastians, and future Coastians or those who know a Coastian: Hurricane season is upon us. It begins June 1 and ends November 30.

Any day now, you're going to turn on the TV and see a weather person pointing to some radar blob out in the Gulf of Mexico and making two basic meteorological points:

There is no need to panic.
We could all be killed.

Yes, hurricane season is an exciting time to be on the Gulf Coast. If you're new to the area, you're probably wondering what you need to do to prepare for the possibility that we'll get hit by "the big one."

Based on our experiences, we recommend that you follow this simple three-step hurricane preparedness plan:

STEP 1: Buy enough food and bottled water to last your family for at least three days.
STEP 2: Put these supplies into your car.
STEP 3: Drive to Nebraska and remain there until Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, statistics show that most people will not follow this sensible plan. Most people will foolishly stay here on the Coast.

We'll start with one of the most important hurricane preparedness items:

HOMEOWNERS' INSURANCE

If you own a home, you must have hurricane insurance. Fortunately, this insurance is cheap and easy to get, as long as your home meets two basic requirements:

It is reasonably well-built, and
It is located in Nebraska.

Unfortunately, if your home is located on the Coast, or any other area that might actually be hit by a hurricane, most insurance companies would prefer not to sell you hurricane insurance, because then they might be required to pay YOU money, and that is certainly not why they got into the insurance business in the first place.

So you'll have to scrounge around for an insurance company, which will charge you an annual premium roughly equal to the replacement value of your house. At any moment, this company can drop you like used dental floss. Since Hurricane Katrina, I have had an estimated 27 different home-insurance companies. This week, I'm covered by the Bob and Big Stan Insurance Company, under a policy which states that, in addition to my premium, Bob and Big Stan are entitled, on demand, to my kidneys.

SHUTTERS

Your house should have hurricane shutters on all the windows, all the doors, and -- if it's a major hurricane -- all the toilets.

There are several types of shutters, with advantages and disadvantages:

Plywood shutters: The advantage is that, because you make them yourself, they're cheap. The disadvantage is that, because you make them yourself, they will fall off.
Sheet-metal shutters: The advantage is that these work well, once you get them all up. The disadvantage is that once you get them all up, your hands will be useless bleeding stumps, and it will be December.
Roll-down shutters: The advantages are that they're very easy to use, and will definitely protect your house. The disadvantage is that you will have to sell your house to pay for them.

"HURRICANE-PROOF" WINDOWS

These are the newest wrinkle in hurricane protection: They look like ordinary windows, but they can withstand hurricane winds! You can be sure of this, because the salesman says so. He lives in Nebraska.

"HURRICANE PROOFING" YOUR PROPERTY

As the hurricane approaches,check your yard for movable objects like barbecue grills, planters, patio furniture, visiting relatives, etc. You should, as a precaution, throw these items into your swimming pool (if you don't have a swimming pool, you should have one built immediately). Otherwise, the hurricane winds will turn these objects into deadly missiles.

EVACUATION ROUTE

If you live in a low-lying area, you should have an evacuation route planned out. (To determine whether you live in a low-lying area, look at your driver's license; if it says Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, Bay St. Louis, Gautier, Pascagoula, Waveland, etc.you live in a low-lying area.)

The purpose of having an evacuation route is to avoid being trapped in your home when a major storm hits. Instead, you will be trapped in a gigantic traffic jam several miles from your home, along with two hundred thousand other evacuees. So, as a bonus, you will not be lonely.

HURRICANE SUPPLIES

If you don't evacuate, you will need a mess of supplies. Do not buy them now! Gulf Coast tradition requires that you wait until the last possible minute, then go to the supermarket and get into vicious fights with strangers over who gets the last can of Spam.

In addition to food and water, you will need the following supplies:

About 23 flashlights.
At least $167 worth of batteries that, when the power goes out, turn out to be the wrong size for the flashlights.
Bleach. (No, I don't know what the bleach is for. NOBODY knows what the bleach is for. It's tradition, so GET some!)
A 55-gallon drum of underarm deodorant.
A big knife that you can strap to your leg. (This will be useless in a hurricane, but it looks cool.)
A large quantity of raw chicken, to placate the alligators. (Ask anybody who went through Katrina; after the hurricane, there WILL be irate alligators.)
$35,000 in cash or diamonds so that, after the hurricane passes, you can buy a generator from a man with no discernible teeth.

Of course these are just basic precautions. As the hurricane draws near, it is vitally important that you keep abreast of the situation by turning on your television and watching TV reporters in rain slickers stand right next to the Gulf and tell you over and over how vitally important it is for everybody to stay away from the Gulf.

Good luck and remember: It's great living in paradise! Those of you who aren't here yet, you should come.

Really!
_______________________________________________

Once again, I can't take credit for this clever parody. Kudos to the Unknown Wit who composed it.

Katrina Tattoos

2008-07-21T10:51:00.009-05:00

I live in Metairie, a suburb that suffered far less than New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. As we approach the third anniversary of the storm, I can drive around Metairie and see few signs of storm damage except some empty lots where buildings have been razed, and the occasional FEMA trailer still remaining in someone's yard.

If I go into New Orleans, however, it's a different story. No matter where you go in the city, except perhaps the French Quarter, you cannot escape evidence of Katrina. First, many devastated homes and businesses remain, neither rebuilt nor razed. Second, the streets--in bad shape before the storm--now are truly dangerous, with enormous potholes, sinkholes, and other damage either unrepaired or worsened or recently developed. Third, there are the Katrina Tattoos remaining on many homes, even those that have been restored and are reoccupied.

(Photo from the International Journal of Health Geographics, http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/5/1/44)

What I call the Katrina Tattoo is the marking made by Search-and-Rescue teams as they made house-to-house searches for humans and animals in the months after the storm. If you saw pictures of New Orleans in the months after Katrina, you'll have seen the S&R markings on houses. S&R teams supposedly searched every building in all the flooded areas. Many houses were searched twice, by official teams and by animal-rescue teams. To notify others that a house had been searched, S&R teams marked each building with spray paint in a specific manner.

First they sprayed an "X" on the front (or roof) of the building. In the photo, it's on the roof, which means that the water was so high that searchers could access the house only through the roof. You can see they had to hack through the roof to get into the attic of the house.

(In other cases, people hacked through the roof from the inside after being trapped in their attics by rising water. I know people who keep a hatchet in their attic for precisely that purpose.)

The letters/numbers inside the quadrants of the X have specific meanings. In the top (north) quadrant is the date of the search; in the left (west) quadrant is the search-team identifier; in the right (east) quadrant is a notation of any hazards or unusual conditions in the building; in the bottom (south) quadrant is the number of victims found and their condition, e.g., live or dead. You can find an official explanation in the Army's Catastrophic Disaster Response Staff Officer's Handbook.

Interpreting the X in the photo by these guidelines, we can see the house was searched by team CA-8 on September 11, the team had to break into the attic, and they found one victim, who was dead. I interpret the arrow at left of "1 dead" as indicating to subsequent searchers that the victim can be found inside the attic, through the hole nearby. On the right side of the photo are the pieces of wood the searchers removed when they hacked through the roof. It's obvious the hole is too small for the searchers either to have entered through it, or to have removed the body at that time. The initial searchers were looking for the living; the dead were removed later.

The second X, on the front wall of the house, would have been made after the water subsided. It indicates the body inside was removed on September 19 by "Kenyon."

Ray in New Orleans blogged about these markings a few months post-Katrina, with a couple of photos. I'm sure many other bloggers and articles have discussed the S&R markings, but I'm not going to take time to do a full Google search.

After Katrina's second anniversary Travel and Leisure magazine wrote in "Soul Survivor":

Even in mostly recovered neighborhoods, you’ll notice the persistence of "Katrina tattoos," the X marks spray painted on façades by rescue workers after the storm, noting when the property was searched, by whom, and whether any survivors—or bodies—were found. Most have been painted over, but some are intact, left deliberately as symbols of perseverance. One Marigny resident has even had his cast in iron and mounted by his front door.

They were documented most famously in Chris Rose's columns for the Times-Picayune, which he later turned into 1 Dead in Attic, a book chronicling the aftermath of Katrina on the populace as well as on Rose himself. (I did a blog entry on Chris's work when the book was nationally released.)

What makes me think of this? Well, of course, it's only a few weeks until the third anniversary of the storm. (We are daily reminded by local news media, even if we wanted to forget it.) And, as I said earlier, you can't drive through New Orleans without seeing Katrina Tattoos still present on buildings. Some people, even after renovating their homes and returning to live in them, have left the S&R markings on them.

What message are they sending? I think it's something along the lines of "Remember the Alamo" or "Remember the Maine": We suffered and we survived, but others died; we came back, but we won't forget, and we'll keep a reminder ever-present.

For those of you who thought this entry would be about body-art, rest easy. Tattoo parlors, both local and around the country, have reported a huge number of requests for Katrina remembrances since K-Day (8/29/2005). You can see some of the results here and here.

Finally, I came across this while searching for links for other things: the most poignant reminder of Katrina--Unidentified Victims from Hurricane Katrina.

The Running of the Bulls...er, Cows,...er, Roller Girls

2008-07-13T19:15:00.009-05:00

(Photo from http://nolabulls.com/default.aspx.)

Ah, the Big Easy! New Orleanians are always coming up with new things to celebrate and new ways to wear costumes and get wild. The latest craze is the Running of the Bulls, New Orleans-style. Imitating the annual encierro in Pamplona, Spain, a local group has organized to celebrate the Festival of San Fermin by analogy to the bull-running made famous by Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises; Death in the Afternoon).

Like the runners in Pamplona, the participants here dress in white pants and shirt with red sashes and neck scarfs. Unlike the runners in Pamplona, however, the New Orleans runners are chased by the Big Easy Roller Girls, a local team of roller derby pros. For the event, Roller Girls (self-described by one Roller Girl as "a bunch of bad-ass chicks on wheels") carry wiffle bats and wear horns.

The Running of the Bulls, New Orleans style, first took place last year. I don't recall reading or hearing anything about it back then, so I was doubly amused to read Chris Rose's column on Thursday announcing it. The 2008 bull run took place on Saturday (July 12) and hundreds of people participated. The route goes through the French Quarter (of course), and includes stops at two "watering holes" (e.g., bars) along the way (of course).

I've come across some amusing blog entries on the run. Pontchartrain Pete calls it "a winner of a new tradition." Humid City has photos: Roller Girls in their bull costumes; the field of runners in their costumes. Local TV station WWL's website has photos of a guy in full toreador garb, as well as The Rolling Elvi--Elvis impersonators on scooters. And there are videos posted on YouTube, of course.

Looks like the Running of the Bulls will become one of N.O.'s midsummer draws: Last year 150 runners were pursued by 14 Rollergirls; this year there over 600 runners and 33 Rollergirls--exponential increases!

And animal lovers can rest easy: no real bulls are used.

(The official title of the event is San Fermin in Nueva Orleans. I briefly considered that perhaps the subtitle should be The Running of the Cows--since all the "bulls" are in fact females--until I realized it would have completely different implications. Dropped the idea quickly.)

A Tale of Two Bridges

2008-07-11T00:00:00.003-05:00

Eeks, egad, it's eerie how fast time flies, whether or not I'm having fun. I've neglected my blog for over a month due to workplace pressures and homeplace exhaustion. For weeks I was super-busy--barely checking e-mail, much less blogging. I hope I still have a few readers patiently waiting.

I started the post below a couple of months ago and never finished it, which turned out to be a good thing because I now have another experience to carry out the theme.

A few weeks ago I left my home in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb, to drive to the little town of LaPlace. LaPlace is about 15 miles away via a 12-mile-long bridge on I-10 that crosses the marshes at the edge of Lake Pontchartrain and goes over the Bonne Carre Spillway. The spillway is a man-made diversion, created some 70 years ago to keep the mighty Mississippi River from flooding New Orleans in times of high water. When opened, the spillway diverts huge amounts of river water into Lake Pontchartrain. This year was one of the rare occasions when the spillway was opened, due to the river's extremely high water level.

It was early morning and the weather was foggy, but visibility was okay. As my car approached the spillway, however, I could see a wall of dense fog rising over the spillway waters. It was eerie. The fog was so thick I could not see even two feet in front of my car. As I drove into it, I remembered some '50s-era SF movie in which the protagonist went through just such a Wall of Fog and came out...CHANGED. (Cue Twilight Zone music.) My wall-of-fog lasted the whole way across the spillway, which is several miles.

My left brain knew a confluence of air temperatures and moisture from the spillway waters had combined to produce the wall of fog. Yet my right brain ignored logic and my reptile brain took over: chills ran down my spine and I could feel the hairs on my arms and back of my neck lifting. Am I going to turn into a giant insect or something? I wondered. If only I'd had a camera with me; I'm not likely to see something like that again. (And it would have looked really cool posted on my blog.)

In another eerie bridge experience, a couple of weeks ago I was returning home from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge is 24 miles long and runs from Mandeville on the north shore to Metairie on the south shore. Dusk had fallen as I approached the southern end of the bridge. Suddenly my car was surrounded by hundreds of small dark birds swirling around, over and under the bridge. It was bedtime for the purple martins. These birds make this area one of their stops in their spring migration. They live in huge flocks and while in this area they nest on the underpinnings of the Causeway bridge. They spend their days flying around hunting insects--fortunately for us humans, the martins love mosquitoes--and every evening at sunset they return to their nesting area. It's quite a sight to see them flying in from all over the New Orleans area in great flocks, wheeling and diving in unison, swooping and fluttering. Driving through their midst, I felt as if I were in Hitchcock's The Birds. They didn't crash into my car, however, and their swoops and dives seemed joyous, not malignant. Of course, nightfall is prime time for mosquitoes, so no doubt the birds' apparent joy was simply at having a plethora of prey rather than sheer joy of flying. Still, it was a cool experience.

So, metaphorically speaking, I've lived through two horror movies--but I haven't morphed into a giant insect or developed superpowers, nor been attacked by crazed birds.

I did get some ideas for stories. A writer's brain uses every experience, after all.

The photo shows one end of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge.

In Memoriam: Robert Asprin

2008-05-25T12:09:00.005-05:00

I just found out that science fiction/fantasy writer Robert Asprin died a few days ago at his home in the French Quarter here in New Orleans. He was 61. Asprin, creator of the MythAdventures fantasy series, had been scheduled to be a guest of honor at MARCON, a major SFF convention taking place this weekend in Columbus, Ohio. His death occurred shortly before a friend arrived at his home to drive him to the airport. The Times-Picayune website has a good article on him. (Photo from Jody Lynn Nye, Asprin's collaborator on several books.)

Asprin also was an early participant in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), where he was known under his persona Yang the Nauseating, and was instrumental in creation of The Great Dark Horde, a subgroup within SCA (known as a "household").

I haven't read any of Asprin's work, but I recall seeing his books in bookstores, and online as well. A quick perusal of his website and the Great Dark Horde website shows an antic wit and a great sense of humor. I post this memorial out of respect for someone who obviously had great creative gifts, and used them well.

May he rest in peace.

Nero-esque Perspective

2008-05-24T22:23:00.006-05:00

"Bush Fiddles While New Orleans Burns"

I came across this collage accidentally while net-surfing. The poster was created by Lojo in St. Louis and her partner a few days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and was posted on Flickr on September 9, 2005.

In case the photo doesn't enlarge when you click on it, you can see the large version here. Or, if you don't have time to go there, the text on Bush's forehead says, "As thousands of hurricane victims suffered and died, the leader of the richest nation on earth went to a concert."

The artist encourages anyone to download it and post it wherever they like, so here it is.

The Awful Truth

2008-05-22T16:06:00.004-05:00

Kassia Krozser of Booksquare and Dan Green of The Reading Experience are engaged in a provocative dispute about the need for authors to market their own books. See Kassia's "Not a Formula for Success," Dan's "Living on Earth," and Kassia's riposte, "Life on Venus: Authors Do Market."

I know dozens of writers, both published and unpublished. What surprises them most when their first books are published is learning they'll be responsible for most--or all--of the promotion and marketing.

As aspiring ("pre-published") writers, we all imagined we'd merely need to complete the manuscript. Once we signed that book contract, maybe we'd have to make a few changes here and there based on the editorial letter. After that, however, we would move on to our next manuscript. The publisher would take care of actually selling the book to retail outlets and readers.

T''ain't so. The Awful Truth is that publishers' promotional and marketing resources are allocated to the authors who bring in the most money...i.e., those who are already big sellers. You know, your Stephen Kings, your James Pattersons, your Mary Higgins Clarks.

The average writer is a peon--very low on the list for services from the publisher.

Thus it is that the typical novelist--probably an introvert, almost certainly someone who hates the idea of "selling" anything to anybody--has to get out and beat the streets (and Internet pathways) to promote and market his/her book.

Sigh. Yet another note of harsh reality intruding into our fantasy worlds.

A Little Housekeeping

2008-05-18T14:03:00.003-05:00

I just performed some long-overdue housekeeping on my blogsite. I cleaned up the Links section, removing some links that were defunct or no longer of particular interest to me, and adding several for blogs I now follow regularly--specifically, Curtiss Ann Matlock, Cute Overload, Full Throttle and F**k It, NOLA Notes, Pontchartrain Pete, Rae Ann Parker, The Dreaming Tree, and Zen Habits. Hope you'll check out any that you haven't tried before.

Six Unspectacular Quirks Meme

2008-05-17T18:00:00.001-05:00

My friend Shauna Roberts has tagged me for a meme. Here are the rules:

Link the person who tagged you.
Mention the rules in your blog.
Tell about six unspectacular quirks of yours.
Tag six bloggers by linking them.
Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blogs letting them know they've been tagged.

1. I love animals, especially cats and dogs, and can't remember a time in my life when I didn't have pets. Currently, I have three dogs, three live-in cats, and two neighborhood cats who visit daily. One of my favorite websites is Cute Overload, which I visit every day just so I can be cheered up by viewing photos of cute animals. (The pic at left is from Cute Overload, in fact.)

2. I dislike talking on the phone. I put off making phone calls, especially business- or repair-related, for as long as possible, sometimes causing myself great problems because of my procrastination.

3. Speaking of which, I'm an inveterate procrastinator. This sometimes causes me serious difficulties (but we won't talk about that now). The procrastination also helps me produce my best work. It's amazing how being up against a deadline makes my brain kick into gear and start clicking away like a well-oiled machine. Even when I start projects well ahead of time, they stretch out to fill the time available--until, once again, I'm up against the deadline and have to complete everything in the next 24 hours.

4. I love to clip articles from magazines and newspapers. Sometimes it's self-help stuff or practical information, but a lot of times it's quirky oddball factoid stuff (like the article on the Velcro 5oth anniversary celebration I mentioned in my last blog entry). I have stacks of clippings stashed away in various places around my house (not, unfortunately, properly sorted or filed away).

5. I like alphabetizing things -- lists, books, canned goods, etc. I find it soothing. I've been known to start alphabetizing other people's books in their homes or offices--by author if fiction, by subject/title if nonfiction. Usually they're amused, but occasionally someone is irritated and I have to apologize and reshelve the books the way they were. Yes, I realize it must be OCD....

6. I despise brand-name snobbism. To be specific, I'm appalled that people want to wear clothing or other items with the designer's name marked on the outside, especially when it's splashed all over. I disdain those who feel they have to prove their affluence by buying/wearing/using clothing or other items for their brand names. Their whole purpose is to show off, which I find contemptible. ... It's okay to buy high-quality products--it's sensible to buy the best quality one can afford. But why show the world you lack a sense of self-worth by covering your body/home/etc. with these signs of insecurity? Why be a walking billboard for designers or manufacturers?

After reviewing what I've written, I realize I sound curmudgeonly--rescued only by my love of animals. Ah well, by this point in life I've earned the right to be a curmudgeon!

Oops, almost forgot I'm supposed to tag other people for this meme. Don't know that I can come up with six, since others already tagged some I would have chosen, but here goes:

C.S. Harris at Candy's Blog
Charles Gramlich at Razored Zen--oops, no good, I see Lisa already tagged him.
Steve Malley at Full Throttle and F**k It--oops, I see from the comments following his latest post that someone else already tagged him, too.
Timothy Hallinan
NOLA Notes
Pontchartrain Pete

(I won't be offended if the taggees decide not to participate--memes can be time-wasters as well as fun. But it's interesting to find out these things about one's acquaintances.)

The Sound of Success

2008-05-16T14:54:00.006-05:00

The great thing about newspapers is that the factoids are more fun than the real news. For example, this Associated Press article from earlier this week grabbed my attention.

It reports that Velcro USA marked the 50th anniversary of its patent of the hook-and-loop fastener by lining one-and-a-half miles of Manchester, N.H. streets with employees who performed a "wave" by tearing apart swatches of Velcro in succession.

You can even see video of the big event here.

I love it. Saturday Night Live couldn't have thought this one up. And let us all give tribute to the inimitable hook-and-loop fastener, without which our world would be far less convenient, and much less fun.

Viva La Velcro!

More Book Awards & Nominees

2008-05-04T20:55:00.005-05:00

More book award listings, via the Poisoned Pen eNews for May 1, 2008. I am fond of these lists, both to give me an idea of what's popular in various genres and also because the lists offer fodder for my reading appetite.

2008 AGATHA AWARDS

BEST NOVEL
Louise Penny, Fatal Grace (St Martin's)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Hank Phillippi Ryan, Prime Time (Harlequin)

BEST NONFICTION
Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley, Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters (The Penguin Press)

BEST SHORT STORY
Donna Andrews, "A Rat's Tale," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (Sept/Oct 2007)

BEST JUVENILE
Sarah Masters Buckley, A Light in the Cellar (American Girl)

2008 EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARDS

BEST NOVEL
John Hart, Down River (St Martin's)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
Tana French, In the Woods (Viking)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
Megan Abbott, Queenpin (Simon & Schuster)

BEST FACT CRIME
Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (W.W. Norton and Company)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley, Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters (The Penguin Press)

BEST SHORT STORY
Susan Straight, "The Golden Gopher" – Los Angeles Noir (Akashic), ed. by Denise Hamilton.

2008 ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD NOMINEES
From the Crime Writers of Canada

BEST NOVEL
Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye (Bantam)
Terry Carroll, Snow Candy (Mercury Press)
Maureen Jennings, Journeyman to Grief (McClelland & Stewart)
Louise Penny, Cruellest Month (St Martin's)
Jon Redfern, Trumpets Sound No More (RendezVous Crime/Napoleon & Company)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Claire Cameron, The Line Painter (HarperCollins)
Sean Chercover, Big City, Bad Blood (Harper)
Liam Durcan, Garcia's Heart (McClelland & Stewart)
Susan Parisi, Blood of Dreams (Penguin Australia)
Sharon Rowse, The Silk Train Murder (Carroll & Graf)
Marc Strange, Sucker Punch (Castle Street Mysteries/Dundurn)

2008 LAST LAUGH AWARD NOMINEES
The Last Laugh Award is for the best humorous crime novel published in the British Isles in 2007.

Declan Burke, The Big O (Harcourt)
Ruth Dudley Edwards, Murdering Americans (Poisoned Pen Press)
Chris Ewan, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam (St. Martin's)
Allan Guthrie, Hard Man (Harcourt)
Deanna Raybourn, Silent in the Grave (Mira)
Mike Ripley, Angel's Share (Allison & Busby Ltd.)
LC. Tyler, The Herring Seller's Apprentice (MacMillan)
Donald Westlake, What's So Funny? (Grand Central)

Louisiana Queens

2008-04-20T23:25:00.004-05:00

In the midst of writing a new post that is going to be elegant, discursive, and celebratory, I realized I couldn't finish it today--I have to look up further info to make it complete, fact-check, etc., etc.

But I wanted to put up something new on the blog, so here we are: Ta-dahhhh! Louisiana Queens!

I'm thinking Louisiana has more queens than any other state. We have carnival queens, festival queens, and of course, cross-dressing queens. We even have dog queens.

Photo: 2008 Louisiana Association of Fairs and Festivals Queen of Queens, Brandi Stout (2007-2008 Miss Zwolle Tamale Fiesta Queen)

If the legislature ever decides to change the motto on our auto license plates--which has been "Sportman's Paradise" for as long as I can remember--I suggest LOUISIANA--THE QUEENLY STATE.

And, by the way, creds for giving me the idea to a couple of local blogs I just discovered--NOLA Notes and Pontchartrain Pete. (Their Queens entries are in their archives--here for NOLA Notes and here for Pontchartrain Pete.)

And this is off the subject, but too good not to share: NOLA Notes' "Ode to Galatoire's" (one of the storied New Orleans restaurants).

Closing thought: Being a blogger is like being a stand-up comic--we "borrow" a lot of material.

"The Long Slow Revenge of Inanimate Objects"

2008-04-09T22:52:00.001-05:00

Tim Hallinan has a great post on his blog today, "Long Slow Revenge." It's hilarious, yet sobering. Haven't we all had days like this...or perhaps not quite as bad as his day was.

I spend a lot of time trying to fight my way through the piles of inanimate objects--especially books--I've surrounded myself with over the years. I never thought, 25 years ago, that my love for buying rather than borrowing books, and for keeping memorabilia, would come to overwhelm me. Because, of course, being a procrastinator, I've continually put off the all-important technique of organizing my collections. Every now and then a box full of whatevers falls off its stack and spills all over the place, and I must pick up, rearrange, reorganize, etc....yet it's never done.

My sympathies, Tim. May you wreak vengeance on those objects! Let us say unto them, "The mills of Tim grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small...."

Retribution

THOUGH the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

2008 Hugo Awards Finalists

2008-03-30T01:45:00.002-05:00

The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) is an unincorporated society which sponsors the annual World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) and the Hugo Awards. The Hugo Awards, given annually since 1955, are science fiction’s most prestigious award. The Hugos are voted on by the thousands of members of the current Worldcon which is also responsible for administering them. Winners will be announced and trophies awarded at the Hugo Awards Ceremony at Denvention 3, the 66th World Science Fiction Convention, on Saturday, August 9.

Best Novel

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins; Fourth Estate)
Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)
Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog 10/06-1-2/07)
The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)
Halting State by Charles Stross (Ace)

Best Novella

“The Fountain of Age” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 7/07)
“Recovering Apollo 8” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Asimov’s 2/07)
“Stars Seen Through Stone” by Lucius Shepard (F&SF 7/07)
“All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s 12/07; Subterranean Press)
“Memorare” by Gene Wolfe (F&SF 4/07)

Best Novelette

“The Cambist and Lord Iron: a Fairytale of Economics” by Daniel Abraham (Logorrhea, ed. John Klima, BantamSpectra)
“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang (Subterranean Press, F&SF Sept. 2007)
“Dark Integers” by Greg Egan (Asimov’s 10/07)
“Glory” by Greg Egan (The New Space Opera, ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, HarperCollins/Eos)
“Finisterra” by David Moles (F&SF 12/07)

Best Short Story

“Last Contact” by Stephen Baxter (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, ed. George Mann, Solaris)
“Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s 6/07)
“Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” by Ken MacLeod (The New Space Opera, ed. Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, HarperCollins/Eos)
“Distant Replay” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s 4/07)
“A Small Room in Koboldtown” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s 4/07; The Dog Said Bow-Wow, Tachyon)

Best Related Book

The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Diana Glyer; appendix by David Bratman (Kent State University)
Breakfast in the Ruins: Science Fiction in the Last Millennium by Barry Malzberg (Baen)
Emshwiller: Infinity x Two by Luis Ortiz, intro. by Carol Emshwiller, fwd. by Alex Eisenstein (Nonstop)
Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (Oxford University Press)
The Arrival by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Enchanted
Written by Bill Kelly
Directed by Kevin Lima (Walt Disney Pictures)
The Golden Compass
Written by Chris Weitz
Based on the novel by Philip Pullman
Directed by Chris Weitz (New Line Cinema)
Heroes, Season 1
Created by Tim Kring (NBC Universal Television and Tailwind Productions)
Written by Tim Kring, Jeph Loeb, Bryan Fuller, Michael Green, Natalie Chaidez, Jesse Alexander, Adam Armus, Aron Eli Coleite, Joe Pokaski, Christopher Zatta, Chuck Kim.
Directed by David Semel, Allan Arkush, Greg Beeman, Ernest R. Dickerson, Paul Shapiro, Donna Deitch, Paul A. Edwards, John Badham, Terrence O'Hara, Jeannot Szwarc, Roxann Dawson, Kevin Bray, Adam Kane
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Written by Michael Goldenberg
Based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
Directed by David Yates (Warner Bros.)
Stardust
Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn
Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman
Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Paramount Pictures)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

Battlestar Galactica “Razor”
Written by Michael Taylor
Directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá and Wayne Rose (Sci Fi Channel) (televised version, not DVD)
Doctor Who “Blink”
Written by Stephen Moffat
Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)
Doctor Who “Human Nature” / “Family of Blood”
Written by Paul Cornell
Directed by Charles Palmer (BBC)
Star Trek New Voyages “World Enough and Time”
Written by Michael Reaves & Marc Scott Zicree
Directed by Marc Scott Zicree (Cawley Entertainment Co. and The Magic Time Co.)
Torchwood “Captain Jack Harkness”
Written by Catherine Tregenna
Directed by Ashley Way (BBC Wales)

Best Professional Editor, Long Form

Lou Anders (Pyr)
Ginjer Buchanan (Ace/Roc)
David G. Hartwell (Tor/Forge)
Beth Meacham (Tor)
Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor)

Best Professional Editor, Short Form

Ellen Datlow (The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (St. Martin’s), Coyote Road (Viking), Inferno (Tor))
Stanley Schmidt (Analog)
Jonathan Strahan (The New Space Opera (HarperCollins/Eos), The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 1 (Night Shade), Eclipse One (Night Shade))
Gordon Van Gelder (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
Sheila Williams (Asimov’s Science Fiction)

Best Professional Artist

Bob Eggleton (Covers: To Outlive Eternity and Other Stories (Baen), Ivory (Pyr), and The Taint and Other Novellas (Subterranean))
Phil Foglio (Cover: Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures, Vol. 2 (Meisha Merlin), What’s New (Dragon Magazine Aug. 2007, Girl Genius Vol. 6-Agatha Heterodyne & the Golden Trilobite (Airship Entertainment ))
John Harris (Covers: Spindrift (Ace), Old Man's War (Tor, pb), The Last Colony (Tor))
Stephan Martiniere (Covers: Brasyl (Pyr), Mainspring (Tor), The Dragons of Babel (Tor))
John Picacio (Covers: Fast Forward 1 (Pyr), Time’s Child (HarperCollins/Eos), A Thousand Deaths (Golden Gryphon))
Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine

Ansible, edited by David Langford
Helix, edited by William Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans
Interzone, edited by Andy Cox
Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, Liza Groen Trombi
New York Review of Science Fiction, edited by Kathryn Cramer, Kristine Dikeman, David G. Hartwell, Kevin J. Maroney

Best Fanzine

Argentus, edited by Steven H Silver
Challenger, edited by Guy Lillian III
Drink Tank, edited by Chris Garcia
File 770, edited by Mike Glyer
PLOKTA, edited by Alison Scott, Steve Davies, and Mike Scott

Best Fan Writer

Chris Garcia
David Langford
Cheryl Morgan
John Scalzi
Steven H Silver

Best Fan Artist

Brad Foster
Teddy Harvia
Sue Mason
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne

John W. Campbell Award (An award for the best new writer whose first work of science fiction or fantasy appeared during 2006 or 2007 in a professional publication. Sponsored by Dell Magazines.)

Joe Abercrombie (2nd year of eligibility)
Jon Armstrong (1st year of eligibility)
David Anthony Durham (1st year of eligibility)
David Louis Edelman (2nd year of eligibility)
Mary Robinette Kowal (2nd year of eligibility)
Scott Lynch (2nd year of eligibility)

From http://www.denvention.org/hugos and http://www.thehugoawards.org/?page_id=2

Diggin' Poetry with the Rest of You

2008-03-19T17:02:00.003-05:00

Lately several of my favorite bloggers have posted about poetry. I generally tell people I don't like poetry--I got burned out on it in my long-ago years as an English major in college. I don't read it as a leisure activity. Yet at times of high emotion or tragedy, I've found myself writing poetry. Poetry is the highest expression of the art of language, and good poets are the most skillful users of language. Perhaps at times that have intense meaning for us, we need to express ourselves within the discipline of poetry.

I recall several poems from my college years. My all-time favorite is "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold, which I reproduce here. (It's long out of copyright because Arnold died 120 years ago.) It's easy to find on the Internet; I got it from http://www.bartleby.com/42/705.html.

Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand.
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Zen Focus

2008-03-16T20:40:00.004-05:00

I've been working on unitasking since my post last week, but it's a lot harder than I expected. The monkey mind jumps around from topic to topic. Turning off the TV helps for a while, until I remember I haven't listened to the evening news, etc. I turn on the 24-hour news channel, but after the half-hour go-round, I find myself switching to entertainment channels. Before long I'm back at trying to get work done while keeping an eye on the TV program. I'm back at square one.

I've been following the Zen Habits blog I mentioned in the Unitasking post. I especially liked a recent post on Focus. Here's a trenchant excerpt:

Your focus determines your reality.

It’s something we don’t think about much of the time, but give it some consideration now:

If you wake up in the morning and think about the miserable things you need to do later in the day, you’ll have a miserable day. If you wake up and focus instead on what a wonderful gift your life is, you’ll have a great day.

If we let our attention jump from one thing to another, we will have a busy, fractured and probably unproductive day. If we focus entirely on one job, we may lose ourselves in that job, and it will not only be the most productive thing we do all day, but it’ll be very enjoyable.

The essay discusses four ways to focus:

"Focus on a goal. ... Maintain your focus on your goal, and you’ve won half the battle in achieving it."
"Focus on now. ... [F]ocusing on the present can do a lot for you. It helps reduce stress, it helps you enjoy life to the fullest, and it can increase your effectiveness."
"Focus on the task at hand. ... People find greatest enjoyment not when they’re passively mindless, but when they’re absorbed in a mindful challenge."
"Focus on the positive. ... [L]earn to see the positive in just about any situation. This results in happiness, in my experience, as you don’t focus on the bad parts of your life, but on the good things."

I'm tempted to reproduce more of it here--Leo Babauta, the Zen Habits blogger, has released all his content from copyright, and freely grants permission to others to reproduce it, although he asks to be given credit. (Speaking from my lawyer side, I'm astounded...but what a very Zen thing to do, eh?) I won't copy it here, however, but rather recommend you go to the Zen Habits website and read it. The guy has a good prose style and the site is well-designed, with lots of good content.

FOCUS. Yep, that's what I need to do.

Unitasking

2008-03-09T20:35:00.000-05:00

Picture from The Atlantic Monthly
Multitasking. This is a word coined originally to describe the way computers operate, but it soon spread to human behavior. (Merriam-Webster dates its first use as 1966.)

I've been hearing about, reading about, and seeing multitasking for years now. I've been doing it myself for a long time. In this technologically-driven age, I can do a bunch of things at once. I can read the newspaper, watch TV, answer e-mail, talk on the phone, file my nails, and give myself a pedicure while fending off a cat trying to nap on my computer keyboard. When my daughter was a tot, I did all those things plus try to entertain her so I could get some work done.

But just because I can do it, must I do it?

I've been longing more and more for a return to yesteryear. A return to the days when I did one, or at most two, things at a time. Maybe the reason my memory's failing and I can't concentrate isn't so much the hormone swings of menopause, or the natural aging process. Maybe I'm just trying to do too much. Maybe I need to concentrate on one thing at a time. I've lost the feeling of satisfaction I used to get from completing a task, because so often I feel that I could have done it better. Maybe I'm not performing as well because I'm doing too many things at once.

This conclusion, which I've reached more or less on my own, is supported by research.

In Is Multitasking More Efficient?, the American Psychological Association notes that "multitasking may seem more efficient on the surface, but may actually take more time in the end....[T]his insight into executive control may help people choose strategies that maximize their efficiency when multitasking. The insight may also weigh against multitasking." Those conclusions are from a study reported in "Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching," Joshua S. Rubinstein, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City, N.J.; David E. Meyer and Jeffrey E. Evans, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., Journal of Experimental Psychology - Human Perception and Performance, Vol 27. No.4.

I downloaded the original article from the APA website, but discovered it was easier to read about it in "Study: Multitasking is counterproductive" on CNN .com, which summarized the findings and also had good comments from the authors.

In "The Autumn of the Multitaskers," the Atlantic Monthly (via writer Walter Kirn) posits the theory that multitasking isn't efficient and it's going to go away. (Interesting, but not likely.)

Time magazine reports in "The Multitasking Generation," "Decades of research (not to mention common sense) indicate that the quality of one's output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks. Some are concerned about the disappearance of mental downtime to relax and reflect." That article also explains that changes in the prefontal cortex make it harder from the very young and for those over, um, a certain age to multitask. (I haven't reached that certain age yet, but it's only a few years away. Apparently my prefrontal cortex has already changed.) The article also says our brains need rest and recovery time to consolidate thoughts and memories. Thus, "Teenagers who fill every quiet moment with a phone call or some kind of e-stimulation may not be getting that needed reprieve. Habitual multitasking may condition their brain to an overexcited state, making it difficult to focus even when they want to."

For the last week or so, I've been trying unitasking--trying to do one thing at a time. I don't turn on the TV while I'm on the computer. I read the newspaper without watching TV, or without sitting at the keyboard to check e-mail. When I get a phone call, I put down my book, or I put the TV on mute, and focus on the call. At the office, when I start a task, I'm trying to complete it before I switch to something else.

You know what? It's hard. I'm addicted to doing several things at once. I'm addicted to trying to "save time" by keeping all those balls in the air. And, to be realistic, I have to acknowledge that there are many areas in life--our jobs, for example--where we don't have a choice. We have to multitask sometimes.

I'm trying to have a Zen attitude about it. I even found a Zen website that gives advice on how NOT to multitask.

Unitasking: a goal to achieve. I'm working on it.

To do two things at once is to do neither.
—Publilius Syrus, Roman slave, first century B.C.

2007 Bram Stoker Award Nominees

2008-02-20T23:27:00.003-06:00

The Horror Writers Association has announced the nominees for the 2007 Bram Stoker Awards:

Superior Achievement in a NOVEL

THE GUARDENER'S TALE by Bruce Boston (Sam's Dot)
HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
THE MISSING by Sarah Langan (Harper)
THE WITCH'S TRINITY by Erika Mailman (Crown)
THE TERROR by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)

Superior Achievement in a FIRST NOVEL

I WILL RISE by Michael Louis Calvillo (Lachesis Publishing)
HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
THE MEMORY TREE by John R. Little (Nocturne Press)
THE HOLLOWER by Mary SanGiovanni (Leisure Books)

Superior Achievement in LONG FICTION

AFTERWARD, THERE WILL BE A HALLWAY by Gary Braunbeck (Five Strokes to Midnight)
ALMOST THE LAST STORY BY ALMOST THE LAST MAN by Scott Edelman (Postscripts)
GENERAL SLOCUM'S GOLD by Nicholas Kaufmann (Burning Effigy Press)
THE TENTH MUSE by William Browning Spencer (Subterranean #6)
AN APIARY OF WHITE BEES by Lee Thomas (Inferno)

Superior Achievement in SHORT FICTION

THE DEATH WAGON ROLLS ON BY by C. Dean Andersson (Cemetery Dance #57)
LETTING GO by John Everson (Needles and Sins)
THE TEACHER by Paul G. Tremblay (Chizine)
THERE'S NO LIGHT BETWEEN FLOORS by Paul G. Tremblay (Clarkesworld)
CLOSET DREAMS by Lisa Tuttle (Postscripts #10)
THE GENTLE BRUSH OF WINGS by David Niall Wilson (Defining Moments)

Superior Achievement in an ANTHOLOGY

FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT edited by Gary Braunbeck and Hank Schwaeble (Haunted Pelican Press)
INFERNO edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor)
DARK DELICACIES 2: FEAR edited by Del Howison & Jeff Gelb (Carroll & Graf/Avalon)
MIDNIGHT PREMIERE edited by Tom Piccirilli (Cemetery Dance Publications)
AT EASE WITH THE DEAD edited by Barbara & Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press)

Superior Achievement in a COLLECTION

PROVERBS FOR MONSTERS by Michael A. Arnzen (Dark Regions Press)
THE IMAGO SEQUENCE by Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
OLD DEVIL MOON by Christopher Fowler (Serpent's Tail)
5 STORIES by Peter Straub (Borderlands)
DEFINING MOMENTS by David Niall Wilson (Sarob Press)

Superior Achievement in NONFICTION

ENCYCLOPEDIA HORRIFICA by Joshue Gee (Scholastic)
THE PORTABLE OBITUARY: HOW THE FAMOUS, RICH & POWERFUL REALLY DIED by Michael Largo (Harper)
THE CRYPTOPEDIA: A DICTIONARY OF THE WEIRD, STRANGE & DOWNRIGHT BIZARRE by Jonathan Maberry & David F. Kramer (Citadel Press / Kensington)
STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED by Joe Nassise and David Niall Wilson (Storytellers Unplugged/)

Superior Achievement in POETRY

BEING FULL OF LIGHT, INSUBSTANTIAL by Linda Addison (Space and Time)
HERESY by Charlee Jacob (Bedlam Press [Necro Publications])
VECTORS: A WEEK IN THE DEATH OF A PLANET by Charlee Jacob & Marge Simon (Dark Regions Press)
PHANTASMAPEDIA by Mark McLaughlin (Dead Letter Press)
OSSUARY by JoSelle Vanderhooft (Sam?s Dot Publishing)

###

Jenny Crusie, Reformed Quote-Giver

2008-02-17T16:31:00.010-06:00

After posting my previous blog entry today, in which I linked to three recent entries on Jenny Crusie's Aargh Ink blog, I came across something else on her blog that's too good to leave out.

This entry, however, is not humorous--or only marginally so, since Crusie is naturally comic and possibly incapable of writing anything completely humorless. Rather, this is a serious entry on a topic of great interest to authors: getting quotes from other published authors for one's books. Or, from the other end, being asked to give a quote praising another author's soon-to-be-published book. Crusie discusses the effects, and the ethics, of the practice in Confessions of a Reformed Quote Wh*re. Worth reading, and worth sober thought.

P.S. (January 20, 2010) Nearly TWO years after posting this entry originally, I've had to go in and change a few words because of blog-spammers, whose spambots apparently are set to track certain words (e.g., "wh*re," but with an "o" instead of an asterisk) and to post spam about certain medications, etc. For nearly a year this entry had five comments, all made shortly after the original post. In recent months, 44 more "comments" were added, all of them ridiculous, but I don't know how to remove them. And I hate to make it hard for my readers to comment by turning on Comment Moderation. What aggravation. Guess I oughta complain to Blogger's powers-that-be, but I'm too lazy.

Bits 'n' Pieces

2008-02-17T13:10:00.003-06:00

Okay, I think everything she does is funny:

Jennifer Crusie blogs on how she screwed up a booksigning. (Even those big-money NYT bestseller-list authors f*ck things up. This is why she calls her blog Aargh Ink.)

In a subsequent post she talks about how she and her houseguests, who are collaborating on a book with her, write in separate rooms in the house and e-mail each other to communicate. (Well, hey, when you're in the creative-flow mode you don't want to be interrupted by a corporeal being appearing at your door, do you?)

And she discusses earworms--you know, those tunes that get stuck in your mind, replaying endlessly until you go insane? Because of Jenny's post, my brain now is alternating between "It's a Small World" (anyone who's ever been to Disneyland or Disney World knows what I mean) and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (a song I actually love, but not played over and over and over). The comments following the entry are great, and it's interesting to see the oddball songs that have become earworms for people.

sQuba: Isaac Asimov and James Bond combined

2008-02-16T21:40:00.005-06:00

This is so cool...Like something out of an SF book or a James Bond movie. A car that drives underwater! In fact, turns out the inventor was inspired by a car from the 1977 Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2008-02-15-squba-car_N.htm?csp=tech

RSS Feed

2008-02-10T19:42:00.000-06:00

One of the coolest things I've discovered since I started blogging is the RSS feed.

Before I got into the world of blogs, my Yahoo home page had modules to keep me up-to-date on local, state, national and international news; the publishing industry; magazines I like; advice columns that entertain me; my favorite cartoon strips; practical advice; humor; health information; and local movie showtimes. I chose these modules from lists provided by Yahoo when I was designing my home page. I didn't understand how they worked--changing on a daily or even hourly basis to reflect the latest news of their various topics--but I liked having them.

After I started reading blogs a couple of years ago, I began finding more and more blogs I enjoyed, but it was a lot of trouble getting to them regularly. Whenever I found a blog I liked, I'd add it to my Favorites list. To get back to it, I'd have to click on Favorites, then find the particular blog I was looking for, and click on it--a lot of repetitive effort. Most days it was too much effort, or too time-consuming, and I'd end up having to ignore blogs I would have liked to keep up with more regularly.

Then one day I noticed the "RSS FEED" button on someone's blog and thought, "What is that?" I clicked on it, read the Help information explaining its use, and then added the RSS feed for that blog to my home page.

Voila! Suddenly I no longer had to make a special effort to find that particular blog. Instead, the blog's title and its most recent entry were right there on my home page, and all I had to do was click on them to read the blog. Plus, I could see when there were new entries, so I wouldn't waste time going to the blog only to be disappointed when there was nothing new.

After using the RSS feed for the first time, I went crazy with it. I started adding RSS-fed blogs to my home page right and left. I place them at the top of the page, because the blogs are what I most enjoy reading so I want to read them first.

I now have 28 blog feeds on my home page. It's great, but sometimes reading the blogs takes up all my computer time, and I never even get to the 40 news, information, and humor modules below.

Oh well. This is why net-surfing uses up so much time.

But the RSS Feed is really cool. Instant info on tap.

FAT TUESDAY, NOT SUPER TUESDAY

2008-02-05T10:21:00.000-06:00

Over most of the U.S., today is Super Tuesday, the day when 24 states hold their presidential primary elections to elect delegates to the national party conventions to be held this summer. The candidates have been campaigning madly for months. Those with the most delegates pledged to them will be the official candidates of our major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. (Flag clipart from http://www.historyimages.com/.)

Here in Louisiana, however, it’s Fat Tuesday, better known as Mardi Gras. Louisiana’s presidential primary election won’t be held until Saturday, February 9. (Good thing, too—if it coincided with Mardi Gras, the vote turnout would be really low. In fact, the state wouldn’t be able to get enough poll commissioners to run the precincts in south Louisiana.)

The long weekend just past was a hearty-partying celebration featuring a multitude of parades—not only in New Orleans, but all over south Louisiana. In New Orleans alone, the “super krewes” of Endymion, Bacchus, and Orpheus paraded successively on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. These parades are fabulous, the sheer beauty and glamour of their floats and costumes beyond description. Rolling at night, lit by millions of fiber optics, they create a incomparable experience. (Photo of Orpheus float by Sharon Keating, About.com’s Guide to New Orleans Travel.)

Today is the final big blowout. Ten parade krewes will roll within the 30-mile area around New Orleans. In the city itself, the day begins with Zulu, followed by Rex (King of Carnival), followed by hundreds of truck floats in the krewes of Elks Orleans and Crescent City; in suburban Metairie, Argus, followed by the truck krewes of Jefferson Trucks and Elks Jefferson; across the Mississippi in Gretna, Grela; on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, Lions and Covington. (The Northshore is home to Charles Gramlich, for readers of his Razored Zen blog.) Not to mention walking groups such as Pete Fountain’s Half-Fast Marching Club and the Jefferson City Buzzards, both of which have been trekking from Uptown to the French Quarter on Mardi Gras for over 40 years.

The festivities officially end at midnight tonight, when a phalanx of New Orleans Police Department officers, led by the Chief of Police, sweep down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, warning the revelers, “Mardi Gras is now over! Mardi Gras is now over!,” followed by a fleet of sanitation trucks sweeping up the mounds of debris.

A little taste of Carnival

2008-02-03T14:19:00.000-06:00

Taking the easy way out: posting photos borrowed from other websites. I hope the copyright Nazis won't come after me. (Yeah, right, like any of the copyright holders would even know about this blog....) The Joker photo at left is from http://www.kreweoftucks.com/.

At right is the 2008 King of the Krewe of Tucks, which paraded yesterday. (Photo from The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com/.) This krewe started life in the late '60s via a bunch of drunken college students who held their beer blasts at a local hangout then known as Friar Tuck's. (I remember those days--used to go there myself, lo, a-many years ago....In fact, I attended the inaugural parade of Tucks.) At the time it was raunchy and scurrilously parodied the traditional old-line Carnival krewes. The original parade had an actual toilet as the king's throne. The early Krewe of Tucks, populated by impecunious collegians who made their own floats and costumes, was a half-assed affair for years, but always funny. Over the years, however, Tuck has been tamed. It still has a bit of satirical edge, but mostly has gone the way of the bigger krewes, renting commercially-designed floats, and omitting its most jaw-dropping attempts to shock the populace. The biggest vestige of the original Tucks is that the king still rides on a toilet throne, although it's one made of papier-mache or fiberglass by a float designer. I guess you could say it's better than the original real toilet, because it's a lot bigger and shows up better on the float.

Regardless of what you can tell is my nostalgia for the old half-assed Tucks parade, it's still fun to watch. My sister rode in it for years, with the same group of people on the same float with the same theme: they were The Blues Brothers every year.

Oh, and at the Krewe of Tucks' coronation ball, the maids of the royal court are usually 30-to-40-something women rather than debutantes, dressed as French maids rather than in traditional white gowns. (They ain't no debs, that's for sure!)

(The above photo is either maids of the royal court, or else medieval wenches--I got the photo from the Tucks website. It's from the 2003 Krewe, and was uncaptioned.)

Here is the krewe's own description of itself, from the website (recognizing 2008 marks their 40th year parading):

The Krewe of Tucks announces the 2008 Theme:
Tucks Tops Faughty but Still Naughty

Known for its irreverence, the Krewe of Tucks began in 1969 as a group of Loyola University students. The club takes its name from Friar Tuck, an uptown pub where two college students decided to create their own Carnival krewe after unsuccessfully trying to become white flambeaux carriers. The parade has grown from a small nighttime parade of pick-up trucks into a procession of major proportions. In 1983 the parade became a daytime event and in 1986 the parade route finally stretched to downtown. Even though the club has grown in size and stature, Tucks has not lost its sense of humor.

Yipes...

2008-02-01T23:47:00.000-06:00

Yipes, January 2008 is already past, and I posted only one blog entry in the entire month. Somehow time got away from me. I hope to make up for it in February.

Rather than focusing on a single topic today, I have a miscellany of comments.

It's now Carnival Time in New Orleans. Mardi Gras is extremely early this year--Tuesday, February 5. Because it's right in mid-winter, there's been a lot of rain and cold weather (well, cold for New Orleans--to us, anything under 60 degrees is cold). Already a number of parades were rained out. (Most of them were rescheduled to other days and nights, sometimes resulting in as many as four parades rolling one after the other.) Tonight (Friday, February 1) starts the really intense weekend that leads up to Fat Tuesday itself. Hotels are 90% full and will be 100% by Tuesday. Our favorite saying here is Laissez les bons temps rouler, that is, "Let the good times roll!"--not grammatically correct French, but idiomatic Cajun French.

I no longer go out to the parades myself; my physical problems preclude walking distances or standing for any length of time, both of which are necessary if you want to watch parades. Now I stay at home and watch it on TV. I'll spend Mardi Gras day at a friend's home, playing Trivial Pursuit and eating junk food. Maybe I'll wear a mask and wig to stay in the spirit of the day.

I posted in early December about my fractured wrist. The cast was removed three weeks ago and the fracture's healing nicely. I'm astonished by how much range of motion I lost simply by having it immobilized for five weeks. Unfortunately, it's my dominant hand, too. I'm taking occupational therapy sessions to regain full use of the wrist. I sit in my recliner chair at night, doing wrist exercises while reading and watching TV.

And here a segue: For most of my life I have spent little time watching TV, a residual of my childhood--when I became a bookworm to escape the constant battles between my brother and sister over which channel to watch on the family TV. I've gone through life oblivious to television programs that were cultural icons for others. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, however, I've found myself watching TV more and more, especially news programs and sitcoms. My TV time increased so much during the past year that I began scheduling my activities around my favorite programs.

I assume the TV addiction was a reaction to some extreme stress I underwent in 2007. Perhaps my brain needed rest.

As a result of the Hollywood writers' strike, however, my favorite shows went into rerun mode early, due to lack of scripts. After going months with having read very few books, a couple of months ago I started reading again. Since November I've averaged about a book a week--a low rate compared to my former reading pace, but an improvement over the preceding months. I've decided to start keeping a list of what I read this year, encouraged by the lists of my blog buddies Charles Gramlich, Tim Hallinan, and Lisa Kenney. I wish now I'd kept a list all my life--it would be cool to look back over the years and remember my past by what I was reading.

It would be hard to match the books-read list of Art Garfunkel, however, at least for sheer duration. He's been keeping his list for almost 40 years, beginning in June 1968. In that time he's read 1023 books, as The New Yorker recently reported in "Lists: The King of Reading," by Nick Paumgarten, January 28, 2008. The article says this works out to an average of 2.16 books per month. The article mentions some of the books on the list--most of them classics or "serious" literature (e.g., Foucault, Balzac, Heidegger, Spinoza, Hazlitt, Milton, Proust), with the occasional foray into popular literature or humor (e.g., Chesterton, Dan Brown). In general, however, Garfunkel says he doesn't read "fluff":

The list contains just—just—enough low- or middle-brow work to suggest sincerity. In the spring of 1996, between “Flaubert in Egypt” and “I, Claudius,” he took on “You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again,” by Robin, Liza, Linda, and Tiffany. In February, 2004, he gave Dan Brown a go before returning to Flaubert and Aristophanes. He has read several books by the actress Carrie Fisher, one of Simon’s ex-wives, as well as “Simon and Garfunkel: The Definitive Biography” (in May, 1998, two years after it was published, and just before moving on to Plato and Locke).
“I avoid fluff,” Garfunkel explained last week, on the phone from a Marriott in Florida. “The stuff that men are always reading on planes: I don’t read that.” He also doesn’t read postmodern fiction—the Garfunkel Library contains no Pynchon or Barthelme. “I tried ‘Gravity’s Rainbow,’ and I thought it was fraudulent,” he said.
“I read for the reading pleasure, not for the gold star,” he went on.

IMO, Garfunkel shouldn't be called the King of Reading--2.16 books per month isn't much. Many people I know read more than that every week; I know of some people who read a book or more per day. Garfunkel may be King of Books-Read-List Keeping, however, to have faithfully maintained his list for four decades. If you'd like to see the entire list, it's on his website.

Resolutions

2008-01-06T14:57:00.000-06:00

These are my New Year's Resolutions for 2008:

1. I will be kinder to myself.
2. I will procrastinate less.

These don't fit good goal-setting criteria--the S.M.A.R.T. system of making objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. I've also already violated Resolution No. 2, to procrastinate less, because in my December 31 entry I said I would post my resolutions the next day (January 1), and here it is January 6 and I'm just getting them onto the blog.

The good thing about these resolutions, however, is that despite having violated No. 2, I won't castigate myself or feel guilty, because of Resolution No. 1: I'm being kinder to myself...kinder by setting these resolutions, which are vague, not measurable, not at all time-bound, yet mostly realistic, and surely attainable.

Oh, and I'll add a third one:

3. I will laugh more.

Speaking of which, go here for a humorous take on possible New Year's resolutions in the SciFi publishing world. The image above is taken from that same web page, owned by WSFA, the Washington Science Fiction Association.

So there. Whew. Done.

Ave atque Vale, Annus MMVII

2007-12-31T14:36:00.000-06:00

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." -- Edith Lovejoy Pierce (b. 1904), poet

I thank my friend Shauna Roberts for the quotation, which is perfect to start off the New Year.

I believe in new beginnings, and I like them. I always make New Year's resolutions, although I rarely stick to them for long. I am an optimist. I always try again.

2007 was not a good year for me. I suffered through a variety of worries: extreme anxiety for a beloved family member dealing with addiction, as well as my own health problems, financial worries, caretaking responsibilities, job issues, and free-floating anxiety.

Today marks the end of 2007, however, and tomorrow is a new year. I mentally erase the blackboard of 2007, washing it clean for the new self-history I will write in 2008.

Things for which I was especially thankful in 2007:

My Family: I love them and they love me, even when we are in conflict.
My Friends--especially Brenda, Carolyn, Cheryl and Joanne: their love and support have rescued me from despair.
My Writer's Group, Wordsmiths (Laura, Candice, Charles, Steve, and Emily): They are not only professional colleagues, but also good friends; their opinions, tastes and judgment in literary and other matters are significant to me; their concern during my dark times over the past year has helped enormously.
My Pets--the dogs (Dozia, Galadriel, Squeaky) and the cats (Katy, Harmony, Precious): their unconditional love and eagerness to please have comforted me through dark times.
My Job: Even when there is chaos at home, at the office things are orderly, logical, peaceful and predictable.
My Books: Reading them lets me escape into other minds, other lives, and other worlds; possessing them makes me feel rich, replete, rapturous and reverent. When I am anxious I sort out piles of books and I am calmed.

I will post my New Year's Resolutions for 2008 tomorrow.

Happy New Year to all my blog-friends. I'm grateful to have "met" you over the past year, through our exchanges of posts and comments.

A Few Interesting Links, and Some Greetings

2007-12-24T22:39:00.000-06:00

A few interesting articles:

If you like Top Ten lists, Time Magazine has 50 Top 10 Lists of 2007 for you.

Over at The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers, Kevin Guilfoyle talks about how media coverage of books nowadays tends to focus more on the business of publishing rather than on the products of the publishing houses. As an example, Guilfoyle links to "Anatomy of a Thriller," the Wall Street Journal's recent article on the prepublication promotional machine kicking into high gear for a debut book by a new thriller writer who received a million-dollar advance (28-year-old screenwriter Tom Rob Smith). Cleverly, Guilfoyle titles his blog entry "Don't Know Much about Anatomy."

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it; Season's Greetings to those who don't. And for those who not only don't celebrate, but don't want anyone else to celebrate, Bah Humbug!

Pantsing to the Max: The Dickens Challenge

2007-12-11T16:12:00.000-06:00

I've posted several times on the Plotter versus Pantser styles of writing. Recently I invited multi-published author Timothy Hallinan to guest on my blog, and he wrote an excellent entry on how a pantser writes a book proposal. I first learned of Tim on reading an excellent article he wrote for The Internet Writing Journal, called To Outline or Not to Outline--a big issue for pantsers, who generally are uncomfortable with extensive advance plotting of their books.

Now Tim Hallinan writes to me with an interesting proposal for courageous pantsers:

Hi, Sphinx Ink --
If you get a chance, look at my latest blog at http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/?p=64.
It issues a challenge to writers to do what Dickens did, and post a chapter at a time AS THEY WRITE THE NOVEL, meaning it's pantsing to the max.
I've said I'll attempt it if two other people are crazy enough to join me.
Is this something you'd like either to attempt or to share with your blog community? I'm sending it to half a dozen writers with sites and also posting it on Crimespace.
Let me know.
Tim

What say ye, O bold and faithful pantsers? Shall ye try your hands at this experiment? Can you emulate Charles Dickens, whose chapters were printed week-by-week in the newspaper as he wrote them?

Visit Tim's blog and let him know.

(I am thinking about it...thinking....thinking....)

Miscellany

2007-12-09T15:49:00.000-06:00

Today I'm posting a miscellany of small items:

I am sporting a cast on my right forearm. Last week I fell in my house and fractured a small bone in my right wrist (the radial styloid process, if that means anything to you). It's awkward, considering I'm right-handed, but I'm still managing to drive, type and write, albeit with some difficulty. The last time I had a fracture I was eight years old--broke my collarbone jumping over a Hula Hoop. How casts have changed since then! Now they're made of fiberglass (much lighter than plaster) and they come in colors. I chose purple, in honor of LSU (whose football team will be playing for the national college championship on January 7, against Ohio State).

Apropos my November 24 post on Laura Joh Rowland, see Shauna Roberts' For Love of Words blog. Shauna has posted an excellent interview with Laura--insightful questions and thoughtful answers that give good insight into Laura's writing process.

Recently I read the memoirs of both Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd. I enjoyed both, especially Boyd's, which is better-written. (Boyd shares credit with a co-writer; Clapton doesn't, so perhaps he actually wrote it himself.) I plan to post an in-depth discussion and comparison of the books when I have time. As one who came of age in the Vietnam era--I graduated high school in 1968--the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the whole "British invasion" of popular British music and culture are an integral part of my memories. The rumors about Clapton (I still remember the "Clapton is God" graffiti) and Boyd (muse and wife to two of the greatest rock musicians of all time) were both romantic and titillating. More to come in my (future) post on the subjects.

Currently I'm reading Empire of Ivory, fourth in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, which I highly recommend. They are alternate-history fantasy novels that recount the adventures of a British military officer during the Napoleonic wars, but with a big twist: in this version of history, there are dragons, which humans use to help them in battle and otherwise. The dragons are highly intelligent and can speak human languages. The Temeraire website describes them as, "A reimagining of the epic events of the Napoleonic Wars with an air force—an air force of dragons, manned by crews of aviators." The books are fascinating and well-written, with lots of action, battle scenes, and surprises. They can be read for pleasure only, or for those who like more substance in their stories, they can be read for the deeper social questions they pose. Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings movies, has optioned the Temeraire series for film.

Next in line in my TBR pile is Richard Matheson's My Name is Legend. Matheson is a prolific scifi/horror writer, dozens of whose stories and books have been made into movies and TV shows. I remember seeing the title I Am Legend around for years, but the advent of the upcoming movie starring Will Smith piqued my interest enough that I decided to read the book before I see the movie. I'll let you know what I think about the book versus the movie after I've read the one and seen the other.

Laura Joh Rowland

2007-11-24T20:46:00.000-06:00

My friend Laura Joh Rowland, author of the Sano Ichiro mystery series, has promised to be a guest blogger on Sphinx Ink. However, this week she's proofing galleys for a new book and hasn't time to send an article--instead she sent a photo from her recent trip to China, with a little comment:

Hi, Sphinx Ink,
Thank you for inviting me to be a guest on your blog.

Last month I went to China, my first time since 1978. I found it spectacularly transformed. (For more on that subject, check my website at http://www.laurajohrowland.com, where I'll be posting a photo essay about my trip.) Here's a picture of me cruising the Li River in Guilin.

Laura

Laura's newest book in the Sano Ichiro series, The Snow Empress, was released earlier this month, and has garnered kudos and honors--Publishers Weekly not only gave it a starred review, but also named it one of the best books of 2007. PW says, "Demonstrating an impressive level of sustained excellence, Rowland’s mysteries set in 17th-century Japan form one of the best recent series in the genre.... Compelling pacing and well-rounded characters enhance the intriguing plot and will draw in new readers as well as longtime fans."

In addition, PW published an interview with Laura on September 24, 2007, which you can read via this link.

Hallinan on Managing Writing Sessions, Part 3

2007-11-23T23:56:00.000-06:00

Tim Hallinan has posted the third (and final) segment of his essay "The Writing Session." Key phrases: getting there, tuning in, opening up, and turning on the sorter. Thanks, Tim, for an inspiring and helpful series.

For a good laugh, see his Nov. 22 entry, "America’s Next Top Writer."

Hallinan on Managing Writing Sessions, Part 2

2007-11-18T23:36:00.000-06:00

Tim Hallinan has posted Part 2 of his blog essay on managing writing sessions. (For a link to Part 1, see my previous entry.)

This one discusses how to have a productive session. It's excellent. Read it.

Tim Hallinan/Managing Writing Sessions

2007-11-13T16:37:00.000-06:00

Check out Tim Hallinan's The Blog Cabin for a good post on managing writing sessions. In "The Writing Session (1)" Tim gives some solid advice to those of us who despair of ever finishing a manuscript. He deftly puts together some tips on overcoming the fears that stop some of us from completing stories or novels we start writing. I admit, I've seen all these tips before in one form or another, but I like the way Tim organizes them and sets them out.

I have no problem at all writing nonfiction. I write legal opinions in my day job and have been doing it for so many years it is second nature. I edited a newsletter for a writers' group for several years, which included writing most of the copy for the newsletter, and I always found it easy and enjoyable. My writing problems arise when I try to write fiction. Despite my long-professed desire to be a novelist, I have the greatest difficulty making myself work on my manuscripts-in-progress. When I sit down to work on one or another of the several novels I've started, my mind goes blank, I become uncontrollably restless, and everything I set down seems trite or stereotypical or something everyone's done before.

Tim has promised a Part II of "The Writing Session," and I look forward to reading it.

Memento Mori II: All Saints Day

2007-11-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Today marks the anniversary of my first posting on this blog. On November 1, 2006, I wrote "Memento Mori," in which I talked about our South Louisiana custom of visiting the cemeteries and remembering our dead on this day, All Saints Day. In keeping with our custom, I plan to visit my family's plot in Metairie Cemetery, one of the most beautiful and historic cemeteries in New Orleans. Buried in our plot are my maternal grandparents; my brother and a cousin, both of whom died in their early 20s; several uncles, an aunt, and other more distant relatives.

Setting aside any religious overtones, I find the practice of remembering our dead soothing and comforting. It's good to revive memories of those we loved. And don't we all hope we, too, will be remembered when we're gone? I shed a few tears when I follow the yearly rite, but tears are good for the soul.

For more information about New Orleans' cemeteries, visit "New Orleans Cemetery Tours" on my friend Sharon Keating's New Orleans for Visitors blog. The photo above is by Sharon Keating.

(Oh yeah, another good thing about All Saints Day is that I get the day off work.)

Two for the Price of One

2007-10-27T00:40:00.000-05:00

Gasp! It's been a while since I last posted. I hope all of you in blogland haven't given up on me. I won't offer excuses for my silence. Suffice it to say, I'm back.

Why not celebrate my return online with something funny? Check out this hilarious review of The Twilight Lord, a Bertrice Small book, from RipMyBodice.com: 2 for the price of 1. Hint: The heroine has two lovers. One of the lovers has two, er...appendages...and, well, read the review to find out the shocking story!

My reaction? Eeewww.

I admit to having read several Bertrice Small books years ago. Her characters' sexual escapades are, well, not in tune with my fantasies, so I stopped reading her. She's still a bestselling romance author, however, and I'm sure her bank account hasn't noticed that I'm no longer buying her books.

A Pantser Speaks: Writing the Book Proposal

2007-09-28T02:12:00.000-05:00

How cool is this? The blogosphere puts us all within only a couple of degrees of separation.

On September 8th, I posted The Pantsers' P.O.V. in response to a A Question for Pantsers by C.S. Harris, who wondered how seat-of-the-pants authors write book proposals. I posted a link for "To Outline or Not to Outline," an Internet Writing Journal article by Timothy Hallinan. In it, Hallinan described the writing process of a writer who doesn't like to plot his books ahead of time.

Within a few days, Tim Hallinan himself contacted me. I wrote back to him, and he offered to send me an article on how he writes book proposals.

* * * * * * * * * *

Tim Hallinan's A Nail Through the Heart (William Morrow, June 2007), first in his new Poke Rafferty thriller series, was a July BookSense Pick and has garnered high praise. Kirkus Reviews calls it "ultimately enthralling"; BookSense calls it "first of a truly remarkable series"; NYT bestselling author John Lescroart says, "Hallinan's a writer's writer, and this is great stuff"; NYT bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker calls the book "haunting...fast, bold, disturbing and beautifully written."

Tim's bio on the book flap states:

Timothy Hallinan divides his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia, primarily Thailand, where he has lived off and on for more than twenty years. As a principal in one of America's top television-based public-relations firms, he represented programs sponsored by many Fortune 500 companies and pioneered new methods of making television programming accessible to teachers. He also taught writing for many years.

I am thrilled to present Tim Hallinan as my first guest blogger. Welcome, Tim!

* * * * * * * * * *

I can't outline. For one thing, I don't think that way. I think that plot is what characters do, not a box to squeeze characters into.

For another, the one time I tried to write a novel to an outline, it bored me silly. I wasn't having fun, and I think that fun is one of the kinds of energy that finds its way onto the page. So I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer who comes up with a basic situation and a handful of characters and then lets the characters lead me through the story.

So how do I write a book proposal?

One answer is that I actually don't. I write series novels, which makes things a little easier. The publisher is invested in the idea of the series continuing, so they usually accept a truncated outline, which I'll describe in a second. But I've sold the first book in both of my series by writing the whole damn thing and then submitting it. And I wish I could write them all that way.

However, the way contracts are written, the first payment on books three and four is signaled by acceptance of a proposal. So this is what I do.

I figure out my basic situation and who the main characters might be. Then I write four or five chapters (say, 10,000 words) to make sure I actually want to write it. (I don't want to be stuck for a year with a story that's going to die on me.) By that point, I've created some momentum and I usually know where I'm going, at least through the first major reversal in the book. I write a proposal to that point and then generalize on where I think it's going from there. I throw in anything and everything that's both plausible and (in one way or another) exciting. THIS IS NOT AN OUTLINE. It's something like, "But Poke finds that the best intentions can have unforeseen consequences . . ." and then throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Then I share it with a few people and add any good ideas they have. After my agent says it looks okay, I send it to my editor.

And then, when I write the book, I pretty much forget about it. I figure that no editor will question whether I stuck to the proposal if the finished book is better than the proposal. So far, I've been lucky and I haven't had one sent back.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

Tim Hallinan

Flavor of the Old West

2007-09-23T22:29:00.000-05:00

Tim Hallinan, whose article I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in "The Pantsers P.O.V.," has a great blog entry today. As he travels through the desert Southwest on a book tour, he's noticing,

We all know about the Arizona towns with butch names — Tombstone, Deadwood, Red Rock, even Yuma. But we don’t hear much about towns with names like Florence and Queen Creek. With nothing to do except drive, I asked myself why, and below is the reason I came up with.

See his blog entry, "Death at the Chokegulch Saloon," for his answer.

Very clever, Tim.

Boo-Hoos for Newspaper Book Sections

2007-09-19T20:54:00.001-05:00

Over the past couple of years several newspapers around the country have canceled their book review sections. Book lovers have greeted this development with sorrow, fearing it reflects a decline of reading in the population overall.

Yesterday Kassia Krozser commented on the phenomenon in her Booksquare blog. In "Stop Your Sobbing," she makes some acerbic points I hadn't considered, and her excellent essay gave me a new point of view on the situation. She points out:

[Steve] Wasserman [former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review] seems to put the failure of newspaper books reviews on the shoulders of some sort of anti-intellectual movement. Perhaps instead of blaming the public for a lack intellectual rigor, Wasserman and others should consider their failure to communicate. It isn’t the failure of the citizens of Los Angeles or any other community to read; it is a failure of book review editors to connect with those readers.

Instead of valuing the whole audience, they cherished only a small percentage. This, more than anything, is why book reviews are being cut. Book critics often point to the sports sections of newspapers as low revenue generators. Why isn’t sports coverage being cut?

The obvious answer is that people don’t subscribe to newspapers for book reviews; they do subscribe for sports coverage. Possibly a less examined reason — but one that is often valid when it comes to the Los Angeles Times — is that sportswriting is often more compelling and emotionally engaging than literary criticism. Oops, did I really say that? I think the fact that the section of the paper devoted to good writing is drier than toast is proof positive of every student’s nightmares are about reading.
Where is the passion, the enthusiasm, the joy that comes from reading something wonderful and wanting to share it with the world? Is it completely impossible to be analytical, thoughtful, and interesting? Writing about books should not inspire boredom, it should inspire someone to buy and read books.
* * *
To the book critics of America, I say it’s time to stop your sobbing. If you are as important and relevant as you say you are, prove it.

Food for thought. Certainly, all of us who love genre fiction know that standard book review sources tend to ignore our favorite types of books. As a result, many genre book review sites have sprung up across the Web over the years, some becoming very popular. And of course, we now have the ubiquitous Amazon review, straight from the keyboards of actual readers. (Oh, okay, we have to allow for the sandbagging by authors and their friends and/or enemies....)

The book review is not dying. It's just appearing in other places, and from other sources, than before.

The Pantsers' P.O.V.

2007-09-08T18:00:00.000-05:00

Publishers generally require an unpublished fiction author to have a completed manuscript before they will buy the book. After the first novel, however, most publishers will offer the writer a book contract based on a proposal, which is the first three chapters and a synopsis of the full book.

A couple of days ago C.S. Harris posted "A Question for Pantsers" on her blog. C.S. is a plotter, who plans her books fully before she starts writing the first line of prose. She wanted to know how pantsers--writers who write "by the seat of their pants," not plotting the story fully in advance--come up with synopses for their book proposals.

I am a pantser, but can't answer her question because I am unpublished--and also because I have never yet finished a manuscript.

(Aside: "Aha," say the plotters, "You can't finish because you don't plot!")

The Internet Writing Journal recently posted an interesting article by Timothy Hallinan. His seventh novel, A Nail through the Heart, was released this summer. In "To Outline or Not to Outline," Hallinan explains his writing process. He doesn't mention how he deals with writing a proposal, but he does give a good description of the way many pantsers probably work. Here's an excerpt:

I personally can't stand to outline. My main problem is that I don't know my characters well enough until I've written about them at some length, and it doesn't work for me to try to force them into a story they might outgrow. I want them to grow as I write them, and then I want the story to grow out of them. [Emphasis added.]
Someone once said, "We learn what we're writing about by writing about it." For me, and for most of the other novelists I know, writing a novel is (to use an inelegant simile) like circling a drain. We start out by working around the edges of our story, and then the spiral narrows as the story, and our characters, become clearer to us. We center in on the things that really matter.

I particularly like his "circling a drain" metaphor for closing in on his story by starting at its edges. I recommend you read the entire article for a fuller explanation. I do wonder, however, how he writes a book proposal. Surely he has done so, since he's had several novels published before this one. In addition, his new book is first in a series, so he'll have to present something to his publisher to get contracts for the later books.

Maybe I'll go to Hallinan's website and email him about it.

2007 Hugo Awards Announced

2007-09-04T22:15:00.000-05:00

From the Hugo Awards website:

The results of the 2007 Hugo Awards, as announced at Nippon 2007, the 65th World Science Fiction Convention, in Yokohama, Japan, on September 1st 2007, are as follows:
Best Novel: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge [Tor, 2006]
Best Novella: “A Billion Eves” by Robert Reed [Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2006]
Best Novelette: “The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald [Asimov’s July 2006]
Best Short Story: “Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt [Asimov’s July 2006]
Best Related Non-Fiction Book: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B Sheldon by Julie Phillips [St. Martin’s Press, 2006]
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro. Directed by Guillermo del Toro [Picturehouse]
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who - “Girl in the Fireplace” (2006) Written by Steven Moffat. Directed by Euros Lyn [BBC Wales/BBC1]
Best Editor, Long Form: Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Best Editor, Short Form: Gordon Van Gelder
Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola
Best Semiprozine: Locus ed. by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong and Liza Groen Trombi
Best Fanzine: Science-Fiction Five-Yearly ed. by Lee Hoffman, Geri Sullivan, and Randy Byers
Best Fan Writer: Dave Langford
Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu
The winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines and administered on their behalf by the World Science Fiction Society, is:
Naomi Novik
Full details of the nominees and voting figures can be found here.