Truly. Deeply. Madly

!!!EIREE si tihs isht esuaceB ?SIHT gniod si ertupmoc ym yhw nialpxe ydobyna naC

You stay classy Harlequin! You stay classy!

What gets me, is that they've the nerve to be upset that the RWA's taken away thier princess points for that stunt. Did they somehow think that authors would APPROVE of Harlequin pimping (and yes, I mean that 'pimping' in the most denigrating way possible, by the way,) a brand new vanity press at its slushpile? Of COURSE the RWA's disgusted!

Harlequin's spin doctoring attemtp is even worse, given that it's more or less like Huggy Bear trying to deny the existence of his stable of whores to his wife when she busts him at work. It's a plain sign of disrespect, and I look forward with schadenfreude to Harlequin's authors jumping ship in hordes over it. (Not that that'll actually happen, of course. Authors are too desperate, generally, to continue seeing their works in print once they've got a taste of it. Still, chance would be a fine thing.)

In other news.

I lost yesterday to being eaten by a grue. I lost today to a migraine. I got more or less nothing done on either, and am therefore a Very Bad Girl. Now who's going to write my spanking? (Leers at Certain Demographic of my Flist.)

This weekend will involve a drive to Boston, during which I expect I shall write some. We're going to see Enter the Haggis, and that'll be a good pick up to wash the dirt off the shovel with which I'm burying the dismembered corpse of this past week. (And how's THAT for a metaphor? Cause I mean every word, thanks.)

So. I appear to have fallen off the NaNo wagon. Kind of. Except not in such a way that it means I'm not still working on Tempus Fugitive every day or anything.

I'm strangely at peace with this realization, actually. I had thought that if I pussed out on NaNo after having committed to doing it, that I would nosedive in my motivation, and wind up tanking or abandoning the book out of sheer self-disgust. However all that's happened, is that I actually seem to have internalized my ideal pace for this thing, and have managed to more or less divorce it from NaNo's daily grind mentality.

I do not seem to be a Death March sort of writer. That's not to say that the wordcount is anything unapproachable -- for Cod's sake, I wrote Tower of Air in one day, and that story was around 10,000 words. It's the every day without a break thing that seems to be the dealbreaker for me. It's too much like monogamy. That is, the 'you may only focus on this one thing, forever' vibe that makes my inner magpie screech and hurl itself against the bars.

The reason I didn't write yesterday had a lot to do with burnout. I discovered this when I stopped staring hatefully at the blank screen and flashing cursor, and just cracked open hobbitdragon's The Bondage of the Mind (which is the best Snarry I've read all year, by the way,) instead. I gave up. Did you catch that? I gave up on TF for the day, and went to read porn. And suddenly felt immeasurably better, and less like just hitting delete until the entire manuscript and all its generative notes were gone. (Lo, the healing power of pr0n...)

Then today, I woke up with a new take on the scene that had been flummoxing me yesterday. I spent most of today finishing the read (yeah, it WAS that good,) and letting that notion percolate in the back of my head, and then this evening, I started outlining it. Which turned halfway through the outline into proper prose, and even in its half-finished state, is still comfortably within wordcount for the night. Mind, that's WITH all the blogging and thread-debating I was doing today.

So... NaNo. Not exactly my thing. It's not quite as supportive as I'd imagined, what with everyone focused (rightly) on getting out their own wordcount, and therefore not able to talk much. And I do tend to obsess rather awfully about that bar graph on the 'writer's stats' page. However, it did absolutely serve its purpose. It kicked my arse into gear, and it made me get past that fight scene I had stalled out on months ago, and underway. And I intend to still make a concerted effort to have my wordcount at or over 50g by the end of the month, however there's no BLOODY way that number will mark the end of the novel. This is me, after all. My idea of a middling story is around 65,000! My current guestimate has Tempus Fugitive coming in somewhere between 120,000 and 150,000 words. Which is long, yes, but not out of the question for a first novel.

And I'm still going to maintain my wordcount on the NaNo site as I get sequential scenes finished. And I'm still going to be doing updates on cluewrites as I go along. (Although not today, because of that whole 'the first half of this scene is an outline' thing. I have to fix that first.) Only now I'm going to go ahead and let myself TAKE days off when I need them, and to read other things when my brain aches from all the sameness, or when my subconscious knows there's something off in the outline, but can't get its fingers round exactly what it is. (That happens to me a lot, I'm afraid. I have a plot sense that will sometimes just stop me DEAD until I figure out what aspect of the upcoming scene needs to change. It can be vexing when it hits me in the middle of a deadline crunch, but it's never steered me wrong yet.)

So la.

In other, related news, Mr. John Robert Rose, Fenris of the Blackwatch Council, has stepped up and made it known to me today that he is one FUCK of a sexy beast, and Mr. Remus Lupin only wishes he'd been this hot.

Hee!

Let's talk about insults, shall we?

One in particular, for today. Please tell me, in your own words, just what is meant when one is called a "slut".

I am aware that circumstances of activity, surroundings, and relationship to the speaker all have bearing on how the word gets used, and just how much of an insult it's meant to be, but let's discuss its worst first, shall we?

Linguistically and historically, a slut was a lazy maidservant. (This shows up in the word's Middle English origin, of slutte, or dirty) and through use, it expanded to include whores, prostitutes, and Ladies Of Negotiable Affection.

But what I want to know, is what's supposed to be meant by it -- really meant by it today. If some stranger spits the word at you on a bus, what's the first thing your brain's going to seize on as far as meaning? What would bring such a word from you, in anger, with intent to wound? What words go along with it, snugly nestled in the vocabulary arsenal like grenades in a belt? What softens it? What gives it teeth?

And -- this is the discussion part, -- how could we in the world who do not find sex and dirt equable, go about reclaiming the word from the public's vernacular of scorn? Has the process begun already? Even now, girls will sling 'slut' and 'ho' at their best friends by way of a compliment -- is that normalizing patriarchal attitudes of inherent female unworthiness, or is it pulling yet another bolt out of the old Scold's Mask?

Share me your thoughts; I really do want to know.

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Well THIS has been a rotten week already!

The bloody chiropractic appointment was the only thing to go well today.

I got to the coffeeshop to find that I'd forgot my computer cord, and only had 25% battery life left. So I did today's work on paper, in longhand, and yes, my wrist is killing me, thanks.

Then I met Dominus for dinner, just before he headed off to catch his plane... with his boss, so there wasn't even any real room for shmoopiness.

Drove half an hour home, only to realize that I left my glasses at the restaurant.

Was met by Godric upon arriving home, whose left foreleg has swollen to grotesque proportions in the space of one day. I found an abcess on his shoulder and picked it until it began to drain, but he's still going to have to go to the House Of Pain in the morning, so they can drain it properly, and get him on some antibiotics. Which means, because of the infection, I won't be able to get his shots updated until ANOTHER visit, with ANOTHER office fee. We've had a big orange tom that showed up this morning. I've never seen him before, but apparently Godric takes his existence personally. *Sigh* Well, at least he isn't in pain, although I'm not sure I want to know what that bastard's been eating if his bite is THAT septic!

So tomorrow is apparently going to be centered around running errands, instead of making up wordcount from this weekend.
Sorry NaNo.

So now I'm going to open Word, and transcribe today's work, and hope I can manage it without triggering a headache. Better than falling THAT much farther behind!

So one night, a space pod comes down, and lands in your backyard. It's about the size of a VW beetle, and as far as you can tell, it's got no weaponry. But it does have a video screen, which you see when the door appears in its side as you approach. There is a clearly non-human face on the screen, and you can hear its non-human language transposed under a computerized translator.

The alien tells you that it would like to meet a Human, but given the nature of terrestrial broadcasts, it is wary of risking an Earthside landing. Ergo, it has sent a taxi, (which is invisible to Earthly technology, so as not to draw unfortunate attention to its landing,) and it would like for you to make the selection of who that you know PERSONALLY, would best represent your Species.

You cannot go yourself.
You must know the person in question well enough to get them on the phone, and get them to agree before the taxi leaves, which it will do in ten hours. If necessary, you can send the taxi to meet your emmissary, but it will not open again for you, or for any other human.

Who do you choose?
Why?

Would you choose someone different if the taxi was the size of a bus, and bristling with weaponry?
Who?
Why?

I cannot look at you today, you're being too horrible.

Alas, LJ-flavored corner of the world, between the BBS newsfeed, and people linking to stories of the horrible, too much of the horrible is bleeding over and showing up here. Ergo, I cannot look at you either. It's nothing personal, it's just that I had a good morning despite the rain, and if I waste this weekend in a funk due to world-horribleness, I'll also have wasted the only really decent Man-Time I'm going to get for a week, not to mention all of my momentum to continue writing.

Ergo, with appologies to those parts of LJ/IJ/DW land which are decidedly NOT horrible, I must still refrain.
If you'd like, though, please feel free to link me to things which are not horrible, or to relay stories and anecdotes of the same. I welcome your not-horrible, if you've got it to share. I just don't feel I've the heart to go digging for it today.

With love,
Me.

Written by Aimee Mullins, a runner who uses prosthetic legs to compete.

A squick warning though, for eye-phobes. There's a photo about halfway down, of Tiger Woods getting his LASIK treatment. I found it quite triggery, and had to scroll past it really fast, but I still think the article itself is well worth the moment's discomfort.

Racing on carbon fiber legs: How abled should we be?

So there I was, handling my first-thing-in-the-morning online business (you know, e mail, web comics, fail blog, et al.) and Dominus, finished with his shower, and dressed for work, comes sneaking into my office, creeps up behind me -- and for those who have not seen my office, this is practically impossible to do, since I sit with my back to a corner,) and then he squirts perfume (mine,) on the back of my neck. Then he dodges back, and gives me a defiantly terrified look until I remember to say "I'll let that slide this time, but you should know I have delivered epic beatdowns for less."

And then, in deference to Zombieland, we elected NOT to ransack the room and smash all contents within.

Some married-people jokes just don't read to anyone else, I guess.

So this afternoon finds me holding down a table at our local Barnes $ Noble, sucking down green tea, and pretending I can't see the pumpkin pecan cheesecake over there in the pastry case. I'm a little over daily wordcount, but still about a thousand shy of my 'catch up' point for the day I ditched earlier this week. My inner OCD monkey is having trouble coping with that graph which shows my wordcount in relation to the 'quota' for the month. It gets quite stressed and fractious whenever the gold bar is not at least a little higher than the blue one, but luckily I'm a prose hound, and have more trouble reining in the wordcount than droning on at epic lengths.

I might have caught up with myself yesterday afternoon, but my villain chose that time to step up and start delivering dialogue for his introduction scene out of sequence. I probably did a solid thousand or two of serious outline-padding yesterday evening, but technically I can't count it against the 'done' bar just yet. In a chapter or two, though, that sideline diversion will pay off.

We also went to see the chiropractor this morning. it was an exercize in futility for me, since my back was too bound up to Make The Noise at all, but since then, it's been percussion central in my spine. Every stretch and flex leads to xylophonic impact. Now if the muscles will just release a little, I'll be Apples.

Assuming I can convince myself that I do not, in any way, need a red velvet cupcake.
At all.

Nor the pumpkin pecan cheesecake neither, thanks everso.
*facepalm!*

Made wordcount for the day. Taking a break to scrape Stephen Sondheim forcibly out of my brain, and then it'll be back to the salt mines for me. (Literally. There's faeries involved, so salt is a critical plot component.)

So then. Dominus will be abandoning me to my own devices whilst he hies off to bowling for the night, so I put it to you, oh my wise and incisive Flist: What ought I to do about dinner?

Order in? From whom? Go out? Whence? Rummage? For what? Craft a stunning piece of culinary ephemery and then devour it in a sitting?

All opinions are welcome.

I might just be listening to this for the rest of the night.

And don't pretend you aren't singing along with the chorus...

"You are likely to be eaten by a grue..."

I've realized that there have been some folks who have friended me in the time since I last made this announcement, so I'm going to make it once more.

I have a friends-only beta/cheerleading comm for my original stuff, called cluewrites. It's where I am posting the work I am doing on this year's NaNoWriMo, which is my time travel werewolf suspense novel, Tempus Fugitive, and seeing as I am a very social creature, and do better in an environment of feedback than I do in a vacuum, I want to throw the doors open again.

If you want to see what I'm working on, and possibly chuck me notes along the way, please just head on over there, and ask to join. Membership is moderated, so I'll see the request, and add you. I don't much expect that other NaNovians will have time to read, or cheerlead much this month, but I don't want to exclude others who'd be interested in following along, WIP style. (My fanfic friends can vouch for me: I've quite a good track record with WIP's, so even if Tempus Fugitive isn't done by November's end, it (and the readers,) will not get left hanging.)

So there; cluewrites. Readers welcome.

SACVAP's group meeting/monthly presentation was tonight.

The speaker's topic was Human Trafficking.
And GodDAMN, am I glad I live in New York right now! By NY law, as of November 2007, most of what pimps do to get, and to control their girls is now prosecutable as human trafficking. And that also extends protection as a victim to the girls he's enslaved, rather than prosecuting them as co-defendants (to a point, that is. Bird dogging is still going to get them on the defendant's stand, AS WELL IT SHOULD!)

The creepy thing -- the DEEPLY creepy thing, -- was hearing some of the methods of capture that pimps use to get girls (and it's usually girls, since they're easier to manipulate than women,) under their sway. And to realize from that brief, and non-exhaustive sketch of pimping strategies, that when I was a teenager in Tucson in the 80's, I was approached not less than five times by exactly that kind of creature, spouting exactly that kind of lure!

Men in flashy cars would pull over near where I was walking, or waiting for the bus, and the offers would begin. Persistent, escalating, getting too close, offering ridiculous things that were clearly a ploy to get me INTO those flashy cars. Even saying that I had a boyfriend or fiance was no deterrent. "Just coffee, I promise! I'll pay you. Just to talk for awhile, I swear. How much you want? It's all right, really!"

On the scale of personal threats go, the pimps weren't anywhere near the one I'd already faced when I was 13, so I generally didn't worry too much about it, or them. I just said no, kept saying no, and kept walking. I carried a knife in those days, (yes, even to school,) so I felt annoyed with it, but not afraid. There was at least one, though, who probably would have tried grabbing me, if the street traffic had been less busy.

It had me shaking a little as the video finished out, just remembering how close I came, time and time again, to what very likely would have been a life of slavery. I've always known myself for an addictive personality. I come by it honestly, and was raised in an addict's house; knew how to cut lines when I was six, how a hash pipe worked, and how it differed from an opium pipe when I was eight, and how to roll joints by the age of twelve. I realized, as soon as I heard how addiction worked, that I would be one of those one-hit-wonders who would then carry that monkey until it killed them, and I developed something of a phobia about such drugs as a result. Imagining how I was one bad day, one bad choice, one mistake away from becoming nothing more than a cautionary tale... yeah. That shook me a bit.

Still, back to the positive side of things: THANK GOD New York law treats pimps as the bottomfeeding slavers they actually are now!

To the moderate majority in the US.

Whether slightly left, or slightly right, will you PLEASE stop letting the effin' WINGNUTS steer your party?

Will you stand up to your own side, please, and make them stop slinging racist, sexist, bigoted, narrow minded, idiotic, and hysterical BULLSHIT in your name? (Yes, Lefties, I am looking at you too. You've got just as many racist, sexist, bigoted, narrow minded, hysterical idiots as the Righties do.)

When you read your own party's obscenities and untruths in the press, will you please speak up in contradiction of it? Will you do it in public? Will you do it at the dinner table? In the library? In the town hall? In letters to the Editor? Will you EXERCIZE your right to speak freely while you've still fecking GOT it?

Will you please stop letting your silence imply agreement that isn't actually so? I know you're not all teabaggers and trehuggers, and so do you! So will you please speak the fuck up, and DISAGREE OUT LOUD?! So the word "Republican" doesn't become synonymous with neo nazi, two-tooth mouthbreathers who won't follow Jesus to the Rapture unless he's white and blonde haired, and the word "Democrat" doesn't become synonymous with hemp wearing, hippy commune love-bead wranglers who can't stand up for themselves or anybody else?

WIll you stop letting your party turn ITSELF into a caricature that is offensive to you, and every other moderate on your side of the fence?

Will you kindly make it known that the Conservafundies and the Liberalistas do NOT speak your truth when they're up there in the cameras, tubthumping and mudslinging and otherwise carrying on like apes?

WILL YOU PLEASE TAKE YOUR PARTIES BACK SO WE CAN ALL GET SOMETHING THE FUCK DONE?!?!?!

Comments disabled because this is a steam-blowing-off rant, not a call to debate. I just needed to get that off my shoulder, so I could get through my day without limping under it. I do mean it, though. I mean every goddamned word of it, and a whole lot more, besides.

IJ's borked. refusing to give me the toolbar links so I can navigate on the damned site without having to type every URL in by hand, from memory.

Nano site's acting like it's been hacked, and saddled with a Trojan. (Thanks, but NO, I will NOT download some unheardof piece of software you seem to think I need in order to make a site which worked yesterday (when I was not born,) work today! Especially when there's been no official notice FROM the site regarding such an addition to the works.) And, while I am over the day's wordcount, I am NOT interested in picking up the eclap, thanks everso!

And on top of that, the various search engines, from google, to junble, to ask dot fucking com seem to be having a goddamned turf war on my systems, so that at any time I try to open a tab, or enter a URL, and if at any time I need to repair my wireless connection, I'm going to be spontaneously diverted from the target URL, and sometimes from the URL where I'd been before repairing the connection, to one of those asshats.

At present, my URL address bar tells me that I'm logged onto the NaNoWriMo site. The title on the tab says so as well. But it's Google's homepage that's showing on my damned screen.

NOT BEST PLEASED, DAMMIT!

Don't make me get out my Farraday Cattsuit! Because in copper, with gold grounding wires... I'm Stunning!

I am studiously, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the existence of American Politics today. I consider this an exercize in self-preservation, and maintenance of the household budget, seeing as how having to come up with bail would almost certainly completely joss our payment schedules beyond all repair. And we needn't even discuss lawyer's fees, either.

So. Today is happy fluffy stuff (except in NaNo land, where someone's on the verge of emotional collapse, two others are about to rip her in half out of sheer frustration with her shenanigans, and it's only the zombie who's managing to keep her head on straight. Yes, I am conscious of the irony, actually.)

The weather is a windy and balmy sixtyish, tossing golden leaves around like mad, and sending all the cats into paroxisms of chase and pounce. I have, thusfar today, managed to spill nearly a full bottle of Dragon's Blood ink all over the table, my journals, my computer cords, and the short story anthology I'd been reading this morning. It's a magnificent mess, this, and given that the anthology is horror stories, I'm already faintly amused at the conjecture that will surely arise if/when this book is once more circulating on the open market. My fingers are still faintly ruddy, and I imagine they will be for some time to come, really.

I also failed my save-vs-Id roll just earlier, resulting in the violent collision of several graham crackers with homemade ginger/cream cheese frosting. they were delicious, and utterly without any socially redeeming factor. I also refuse to regret them. In fact, I might just go and have some more. And you can't stop me, either!

You thought I was kidding, didn't you?

Seriously, this thing can smash an atom, but it chokes on a baguette? Seriously, the jokes really do write themselves, don't they? But the pr0n doesn't.

Now who's gonna write me LHC/French Loaf oral-noncon?

Okay, so yeah. We went to see Zombieland tonight. I was 500 words shy of daily quota (but am still ahead by nearly half of tomorrow's, thanks to yesterday's push,) and I decided that I wanted a real, grown-up date, with dinner out, and nice drinks, and, apparently, zombies.

It was laugh out loud, ridiculously funny, that movie. Predictable leik whoa, and probably the closest America will ever get to a zombie movie in league with Sean of the Dead. Zombies come from eating mad cows, apparently. Who knew?

Look, this movie isn't gonna change anybody's life, but it will make you guffaw at Woody Harrelson fan-humping *Secret Stealth Celebrity Cameo who's name I am withholding*'s leg in an epic geek-out moment. Or the four-gun funeral salute, with pause in the middle to reload the double-barrel. Or the Purel scene. Or the squeaky nose.

I'm just sayin.

And I'm also sayin, for a movie in which The Rules Of Survival play such a prominent role, how the HELL is it that when the Hummer rolls up on the gates of Pacific Playland, and pushes gently through as twilight gives way to dusk, Dominus and I were the ones who leaned over to each other and murmured "Rule one: Don't go at night. Rule two: Don't go alone. Rule three: Save the last bullet for yourself." Sadly, none of those rules made an appearance in this film. Though they should have done, as they were all broken at one point or another.

Still, I believe I will officially add Zombieland's rule two to the list from now on, as it bears keeping in mind.
Double tap. Always double tap.

* 3,000 words today. An entire action scene. I am exhausted, but I still rock.

* I officially adore Hairy Meg. I predict I may have trouble keeping her from upstaging the main characters if she keeps on being so very awesome.

* Cat piss flouresces AK green under blacklight. This has led to some innovative, and infuriating revelations around Mandala House this week.

* No, I have NOT checked to see what other bio-fluids flouresce, thanks, I've been writing, like a good girl!

* Forgot to remind Allyson to come and visit tonight. Woe. Although solitude did contribute to wordcount win, so... *shrug*

* saw Chiropractor. Made The Noise. Now have fierce adjustment headache. (And am planning to raid the final hold-outs from last year's broken-shoulder painkillers, so I'll be able to sleep through it while my neck and back get used to things being where they're meant to be again.)

* Am suspicious that the writers of Criminal Minds are setting out to deliberately nail each and every one of Clue's personal squick-triggers this season. *Huddles under the bed, shielding eyes with fists, and rocking quickly back and forth. There might be keening as well...*

* Brother Godric wishes it known that he is not a fan of NaNoWriMo, as it drastically cuts down the availability of lap and pettins.

* I have a venus flytrap. Alas, I no longer seem to have any fruit flies infesting my kitchen for said flytrap to trap. Hamburger will do for now, I suppose.

* And now, to bed. More words tomorrow. Avaunt.