I have an awful headache. I wanted to go out to party for Halloween last night but I have been so sick, I couldn't drag myself into costume. So we went down to the Century instead, on Pearl St. across from the Hyatt, and amused ourselves as normal, with Otis the owner and a bartender we didn't know. (Usually we go early in the week when Adam's tending bar. He's funny.)

I posted a couple of atmospheric little essays on my Livejournal but didn't get much of a response. Chita was being super cute and I figured people like essays about cats. I'm reposting them here, since I should've put them here in the first place: I got Chita via (e:strip) after all!

So, revised, edited, updated, and shortened, here I will post my little observational essays, but I'll do it in two parts. :)

Part the first: Rainy Caturday
being more a rumination and observational piece about life in my house on a rainy Saturday morning in autumn.


Chita is reciting moody emo poetry all over the house because it is raining and she cannot go outside. Well, she could, but she knows she would be miserable. But she is miserable in here: all there is to do is alternately chase and be chased by Remi, all over the house.

Moo, says Chita. Moo?... Meoo. Ao?... Prrrmao? Rao. She is disconsolate. It is steadily pouring, and across the street, on St. Joe's new all-weather fake-turf playing fields, teenage boys in sodden long-sleeved shirts are sprinting around after soccer balls, while adults in raincoats watch with strangely close attentiveness. It's not a game, but some kind of specialized practice. I can't believe they can keep their feet and not die of hypothermia.
Someone's blasting something from their car stereo, which I think sounds an awful lot like the shit people listened to when I was in high school-- has nothing happened in music in a decade? I swear it sounds like Lit. Or maybe Matchbox 20. Seriously, guys. Just the same song over and over, two guitars and a bass drum and a drum set, and one of the boys has terrycloth wristbands and a tight t-shirt and a whiny but clear voice, and tells the microphone with his eyes closed and his mouth wide open about how terrible the world is.

Moo, says Chita, forlornly, broadcasting her discontent from the kitchen table where she crouches, bored. And then the mailman shoves mail through the slot in the door and she comes tearing into the living room, badly startled. The song which I couldn't really hear ends on a harmonic of drawn-out guitar, and the car door slams.

Chita slinks back into the living room. Rrrrrrmm, she mumbles to herself, rolling it in her throat. Rrrr, rrrrmmmm? Inng?

I hear Siamese are very chatty. I can't imagine why anyone would want that. I have quite enough operatic narrative out of my little whiny emo mongrel.

Rrrm, she says, picking her way over to the couch so she can sit on Z and lick herself. She'll be quiet for a while now.

This Livejournal user posted a video she took when she encountered a group of protestors lobbying for Proposition 8. She simply walked up to the group with her phone out, and they attacked her.

"
    

theremina

The Face of Proposition 8 from Theremina on Vimeo.

I was on my way home from the Lakeshore district when I encountered this group of supporters of Prop 8. After turning my vidphone on, I was screamed at, physically intimidated and eventually attacked by one of the more aggressive sign-wavers.

Approx two dozen people were standing under the I-580, chanting "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" and "Mom and Dad, not Dad and Dad", etc. There were at least three counter-protesters present as well.

For several minutes prior to shooting this footage, I watched from a distance. One of the Prop 8 supporters lunged at a solitary man holding a "Vote No on Prop 8" sign. She didn't actually touch him, but she got right up in his face, screaming. She was loud enough that you could hear her several blocks away. As far as I could see, he hadn't provoked her in any way beyond the dissenting opinion stated on his sign. The man seemed to remain quiet and calm throughout. Witnessing this, I decided to turn on my phone's video application and approach.

Proponents of Prop 8 have gone to great lengths to try to deny the inherent fear, anger and bigotry fueling their camp's desire to ban gay marriage. However, these Prop 8 supporters (and many other protesters I've seen in recent weeks) were visibly enraged and screaming themselves hoarse in their righteous indignation over the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in the state of California.

Having documented this clash between fellow Oaklanders, I'm putting it online because I think it's important to convey to as many people as possible --supporters and dissenters alike--- just how irrational, hysterical and potentially dangerous the situation actually is. This is bigotry, blind rage and senseless hatred of the saddest kind."

Now I don't remember what I was going to post. Dang it. I came to post something pithy, and then paused to read posts, and now I don't remember what I was going to say. D'oh.

(e:tinypliny) mentioned something about a novel-in-a-month, that someone else on here is doing? I'm assuming she means National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, which is next month.
The object of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in a month.
I have done NaNoWriMo for... five years, I believe. I have never failed to clock in over 50,000 words during the month.
2002 I wrote a space opera with pirates and sort of ninjas, though I didn't manage to get any dinosaurs in it. It was very angry-feminist, which I think not enough space operas are. I reached 75,000 words and then my grandmother died and then I went on a trip to Germany, so I didn't finish the novel, but I won NaNo.
2003 I wrote a historical novel about my ancestors. Well, I tried to. But it turned into a really really smutty romance novel, which skeeved me out so much I never finished it. This was my first clue that perhaps a lucrative career in young-adult fiction was not to be mine.
2004 I had begun to catch on to the fact that I could write 50,000 words without a problem, but I couldn't finish a fucking novel. So that year, my goal was not the wordcount, but to get a coherent story. In 20 days I wrote 94,000 words and made a complete novel. It was about a young Welsh girl who gets kidnapped by Viking raiders (ca. 1000) and falls in love with her captor, a Dublin Norseman. It had a lot of sex in it, and did indeed go from start to finish. Unfortunately, the ending sucked, and most of it wasn't very good. Some of the sex scenes were good, though. This is notable for being the only novel I had actually intended from the beginning to be a romance/erotica novel.
2005... What did I do in 2005? I think I had caught on that yes, I could hit the wordcount goal, and yes, I could theoretically write a whole novel, but so far I had failed to actually create a *salable* novel. So that year, I "cheated", and rewrote an existing novel i'd started working on in January of 2004. (It's "cheating" because you're supposed to start fresh, from 0, on Nov 1.) The novel was about, well, it's changed a lot, but at the time it was about a young, very hunky, very duty-bound Iron-Ageish barbarian, and his forbidden love for the virginal daughter of a nobleman from a "civilized" neighboring city. I'm actually working on this novel right now, but I'll come back to it.
In 2006 I had a different idea. I worked on a time-travel novel, about a woman from an alternate version of current history-- only with magic-- and a man from Bronze Age Ireland. I hadn't planned on this, but it wound up being mostly sex scenes. Really surprisingly hot ones, too.
So, 2007. I know I did it in 2007. I almost didn't, and then I did. At the last minute, kind of halfheartedly. I can't find any reference to what I wrote, except that I mentioned on my LJ that everything I tried to write turned into porn.

Which brings me up to now. I will probably do it this year. But I'm working on the 2005 project again. Now the virginal nobleman's daughter has been changed to a courtesan spy from the distant but sinister empire to the south, sent to secure favorable trade agreements for her people, but waylaid by bandits and rescued by the virginal hunky barbarian hero, who his marked by a god and is sworn to celibacy. Of course they fuck, but there's more to it than that.
I think I'm doing well-- I finally came up with an ending that makes sense, after five years. The coherent draft is up to 40,000 words, and I'm rather proud of myself because the first sex scene isn't until... well... oh. Crap. I forgot. OK, well, the heroine and (virginal!) hero have known each other for at least twelve hours when the first sexual scene happens, though there isn't full-on actual-fucking sex until at least the third chapter. Which is better than the last draft.

I don't know about y'all, but I find the virgin heroine to be kind of boring really. But a virgin hero! Now that's hot. And I don't know why.

It's the final countdown!!
Just kidding. But I've had that song stuck in my head for like three days now. When (e:zobar) writes a blog, he winds up to it for a while.

Just wanted to post an update: It took me six hours of pedaling like a maniac to finish reading Kushiel's Dart.

I admit, somewhat shamefully, that I kind of skimmed all the sex scenes. This is unusual for me. I admit with no shame that I totally dig the sex scenes even in bad books.
And I even kind of like s/m D/s stuff, a little bit. Not like I'm into the lifestyle, and not like I'd ever let some dude make me scrub the toilet for his sexual kicks, but who doesn't like a little light spanking, maybe getting tied up a little, maybe a blindfold? And who wouldn't want to read about a reasonably hot chick getting tied up and kinda liking it? I figured it was win-win: I like smut, I like spankings, what's not to like?
But either the book wasn't well-written, or the bike seat digging into my assbones was just too painful. I was like, She's getting fucked again? Man can't somebody just get shot or something?

There was a lot of flowery language. Which maybe if I was lying in bed with a cup of hot cocoa and a box of truffles and a delicate lace hankie on a rainy day, would push my buttons, as it were. But as it is, I was just like For the love of GOD will someone DIE so we can get ON with things?
No good. I'll have to reread it sometime while not torturing myself.

But, as an exercise scheme, it seems to have worked. I'd never have done the extra half-hour today if I didn't have like, fifteen pages left. Because not only does the book start out slow? It winds up slow! There's like 30 boring pages, 300 pages of action, and then another fucking boring 30 pages.

It makes me feel a lot better about the novel I'm writing, I tell you what. I've been down on myself for not having good pacing, but I'm doing better than this published and popular book I'm reading.

I met someone at Pennsic with a tattoo from it, which now that I've read it, is kind of... well I am sure the person wants me to say 'perverse' but on reflection it mostly just seems sad to me. The character in the book gets a tattoo to mark her as being a whore and celebrate her liberation from it. And doing that to myself as a woman in the real world of the 21st century? Eh not so much.

Though I was just reading the blog of a woman who got the last words of James Joyce's Ulysses tattooed on her wrist:
"Yes I said
Yes I will
Yes."

Which on the one hand is like, aw, how liberating! But then the rest of the blog was about her struggles, as a hardcore slut, to learn to love herself at last. And I thought, Hm. I mean, still, yes, good tattoo, but on the other hand, now it's got me humming the song from Oklahoma about the girl who can't say no.
Mm... I suppose, on balance, it's clever. And I guess I'll leave it at that.

Today I finally took back the bottles from the party I had mumblemumbletwoweeksagomumble. It was $10 in bottles and cans. Work it out. That's a dang lot of bottles to haul.
I used canvas grocery bags. I only had four bags. I didn't think I'd be able to fit much, but at least I'd save a few plastic bags.

Everything fit. And when I say "everything"... well, I spent $130, and redeemed the beverage deposits too.
You can fit a damn lot in a canvas grocery sack. And it's super easy to unload the car too. Filing that one away for future reference. I should do as my mom does, and promptly return said grocery sacks to the car, so they're there next time I go. But, we'll see.

On the way home I weirdly hit every green light. I came out onto Amherst St and the light to cross Elmwood was green. I didn't hurry, figuring it would change before I got there, but it didn't, and I sailed across Elmwood. Likewise, Delaware, which had me incredulous. I never hit that light. I even hit the light to turn left onto Colvin from Amherst-- the green arrow had shut off, but there was no one coming so I could turn left on the green light.
It was freaky. It was weird.
I came up Colvin and hit that first light after the railroad underpass-- it was red, but turned green as I approached.
Coming up, I could see the Hertel light was green. it was an old green. But I knew if I pushed it a bit, I could make it.

But some fuddy-duddy in a baby blue four-door sedan was in front of me, and slowed down, and slowed down, and the light turned yellow, and they stopped. I was annoyed. I was in a little bit of a hurry, since (e:zobar) needed the car to go in for an afternoon meeting and I wanted to get home in time to get some lunch down his skinny gullet before banishing him to the corporate world.
So I sat behind this fuddy-duddy at Hertel, annoyed.
After a moment I noticed that the car was moving. Not rolling. Bouncing.
I looked through the rear windshield. I could see... a drumstick.
The driver was rocking out, with drumsticks, on the steering wheel, thrashing along to a song. To the extent that the car rocked.
I could not see if it was a man or a woman. I could see sleek dark hair, and that was all. It wasn't a tall person, or it was someone with the seat adjusted low. Tough to say.
Intrigued, I followed them up Colvin, hoping that when I got into the right lane so I could make my right onto Kenmore I'd see them. Alas, the left lane was moving faster-- someone was making a right, so I was far back. But as we came up to Kenmore, someone was making a left, so I passed the fuddy-duddy pale blue car.

It was a girl, a young woman, probably younger than me. She had stopped drumming, though her radio was still up loud. She was sitting, looking very mild-mannered and not particularly hardcore. I rolled my window down, even though there was a tiny bit of snow falling and it was gross out, to try to hear what she had been rocking so hard to, but the car in front of me had a bad muffler, so I heard nothing, and had to make my turn without finding out.
Since she'd stopped rocking out, the good song was probably over anyway.

But I swear, she had drumsticks in there.