Lovers, poets, and madmen

Sometimes, I make things up. Not big things - just stupid little scenarios in my head of how a situation could go. For instance: I am in a bookstore and see the "Edward Cullen" action figure (for those of you who haven't seen it, go find a Borders. I'll wait.). And I laugh, because it it ridiculous. At pretty much the same time, I imagine a stranger across the store (I have a carrying laugh) knows exactly why I am laughing - and agrees with me. This person will obviously then seek me out and become my friend and will understand things without having to be told, like why I can't use a basket in a bookstore and why I hate Neil Diamond and why irony is hard to explain to freshmen. If it's a slow day at the bookstore, this person is also male and single and finds me charmingly quirky to such an extent that he buys me coffee.

This never happens. Not that I really expect it to, but wouldn't the world be better with whimsical meetings like that? As if life were really what early Meg Ryan movies would have us believe. So I imagine my own "meet-cute" (what would the plural of this be? "Meets-cute," if "mothers-in-law" is any indication. Anyone know?).

Sometimes I also narrate my life. Not constantly, as that would be insane to a degree with which I am uncomfortable, but occasionally I'll think of how I would write myself, if I were a character. Is this remove from the world normal? Does everyone think like this at some point, outside of themselves, watching and listening? From things I've read, some writers do, but I haven't written much - and little of that is really good. Perhaps my mind thinks I'm a better writer than I am - much like it thinks I am a better artist. I can picture exactly what I want, but I can't make my hand shape it correctly.

If you think about reality too long, it starts to slip, like words that mean nothing after you've said them 20 times. What if I am a puppet in someone else's show? There's no way to be sure, really. "I think, therefore I am" doesn't answer the question of what it is I am. This is an oddly comforting thought at times - that I might be a hallucination, or a computer program, or someone else's dream - because the stakes are lower. Or they seem that way at first; if I am make-believe, then I'm not really hurting anything, am I? But dreams can destroy whole worlds, if we accept history as real (and something has to be, because who would make this up? Although phrases like "unimaginable brutality" have no currency - someone not only imagined it, they put it into practice). And I really don't think I'd be spending quite so much time wasting time, if I weren't real. Wouldn't whoever was tripping me or running me or dreaming me make things more exciting?

Some Jehovah's Witnesses came by today and gave me literature on how to use the Bible to save my family (and, the implication was, avoid falling into the sin of killing them just to get some peace - the primary speaker mentioned families needing help and mothers killing their children. Possibly a veiled reference to abortion, I now realize, which makes it less apropos-of-nothing than it was. Anyway.) I'm starting to think that's all religion is, really - just us trying to find the man behind the curtain, only we're the hologram, not Dorothy. Think I should tell them that when they come back by?

Um. Hi?

Given that it's been more than a year since my last post, I very much doubt anyone is still reading this (you are more than welcome to prove me wrong, though). Nothing terribly interesting to relate, beyond the fact that I've realized all stories are one story, which is difficult to explain and not really true, but true in the way fiction can be - the bigger truth that we are looking for when we end up only finding facts.

Nostalgia has set in very quickly this year. I miss school. I have also deveoped an inordinate fondness for dashes, which are quickly becoming my default punctuation mark. I'll have a student teacher next year. We'll see how this goes...

Oscar Wilde is not blonde.

As you know, I have more books than any one human being can possibly read in a timely fashion. In keeping with my promise to work on reducing the pile, yesterday I read a book I had picked up "on spec." It had a seemingly interesting premise (ex-Marine works as psychologist to the supernatural) and some decent cover art/reviews from other authors.

I realized it was terrible about 7 pages in.

Don't get me wrong...the idea is still very interesting. It's the execution that's the problem. The book falls into the Laurell K. Hamilton imitation arena, and we all already know how I feel about the original, don't we? (there is, incidentally, a plug for Ms. Hamilton's books in this novel, by which I can only assume the author intends to direct people to a more interesting author in the genre). The men are all gorgeous, most perternaturally so, except one (he's also pretty much the only one that would really rather kill her than sleep with her, so there you go). The heroine plays extremely fast and loose with her professional morals and character consistency (as, for instance, when she has sex with her vampire patient's vampire brother on the side of a mountain, although they met scant hours before, she was furious with his chauvanistic attitudes and his decision to spank her not 15 minutes earlier, and, I repeat...his brother is her patient. And she's attracted to him, too. But apparently this just doesn't matter, because the guy is very hot). The editing is atrocious, enough to make one suppose that either the initial editor has no grasp of basic grammatical rules, or something went horribly wrong in the proofing stage. Commas are missing, verb tenses don't agree, parallel structure is constantly undermined, and random, inappropriate capitalizations are used.

Continuity is also a problem as far as the events. The first few pages mention a "Human/Paramortal War", but little else is said about it. Toward the end of the book, the protagonist is most anxious to prevent any serious conflict between humans and "paramortals," because the initial revelation just went so well that there are very few people prejudiced against the vampires, lycanthropes, fey, and ghosts (as anyone who even vaguely studies human nature will tell you: yeah, right. Fairytale monsters are real, but everyone's ok with that, cause they're just so darn cute...). Why call something a war if there was no serious conflict? Was it like the Cold War? Because when a "bad-ass" ex-Marine Special Forces uses a word like "war," I'm expecting something pretty serious.

The protagonist is too much of a cipher. We are told that she is cool, beautiful, stacked, and bad-ass, with a tendency toward violence and unexplained commitment phobia. She also happens to look exactly like the gold-digging bitch the hero used to be in love with (a fact which should come out in his therapy, surely?). Her actions, in the main, do no show us the capable, clever woman she is supposed to be. Instead, she comes off as unprofessional, defiant of authority (which, to the author's credit, several of the other characters call her on, wondering how she lasted as a soldier if she wouldn't take orders. Not that it's ever explained.), spoiled, pouty, foolhardy, and, worst of all for this type of heroine, whiny. Yes, she has some funny lines, an interesting former unit, and some moments where she lives up to what the author tells us she is, but they are few and far between. I don't even think the author likes her very much. She has her spanked twice (in the toddler-acting-up-in-a-store sense), threatened with premeditated physical harm both by the bad guys and the ones who are supposed to at least like her, and placed in dangerous situations that we don't care about, because the spanking and a drugged kidnapping are the worst examples of physical damage she sustains while dealing with all of these creatures that could snap her in two with their pinkies. She is also remarkably mentally resilient, until she's not because we need a touching scene showing how the hero's protective side is ok, rather than outdated and jerky.

Precious little is shown of her profession, though we are repeatedly told that she is legitimate and good at her job. In the ourse of doing said job in the novel, she is unhealthily attracted to one patient, stalked and metaphysically molested by another, and nearly eviserated by a third. She provokes those around her for no better reason than showing how tough she is, a trait that would be less than desireable in a therapist, though expected in a Marine. Her own supernatural power (come on, you know she has one), is empathy...which only rarely kicks in if it's telling her something other than how pissed off or horny the hero is. For instance, she is one room away from a place where people have been recently tortured and killed...and the empathy is nowhere to be seen. Maybe it shuts down in moments of extreme stress, though you would think, like other senses, it would do the opposite. Guess we'll never know.

Speaking of characters, when writing vampires, you have to decide and stick with one very important idea: how are they going to talk? Will it be formal and extremely correct, or will it be more modern? You can't switch in the middle (and no vampire should ever say the words "vampire sugar daddy" without a heavy dose of irony). It's like rewriting Austen and having Darcy say "Ok." It does not and never will work.

The novel also plays fast and loose with time. She can't pursue a relationship with the client she has the hots for for a year after the end of his therapy. Weeks pass, we are told - apparently more weeks than we expected, because suddenly there are 6 months left. A chapter or two later, more weeks pass, and suddenly there are only 3 months left. What the hell are they doing in the meantime?

I don't think this author ever learned the difference between telling and showing. The novel is mostly telling, even down to things similar to (not exactly, but I swore I'd never pick that book up again), "She was confused. 'I'm confused,' she said." It would be much better to have the characters' words and actions speak for them, rather than having the narrator tell us what's going on and how we ought to feel about it. I honestly think there are at least 2 chapters in that book with no dialogue at all...just the narrator telling us how they feel. This is fine, to an extent, but don't say things like "He felt both frustrated and confused by the tiny, delicate woman" (again, not a direct quote, but not far off). Describe the character's actions...don't tell us he's frustrated and confused, show us the picture of a man who is frustrated and confused.

While we're on the subject: REPETITION OF SENSORY PERCEPTIONS IS NO ONE'S FRIEND! I do not, for instance, need to know what the heroine smells like every time an interested male nearby feels like taking a sniff. I get it: snow, sunlight, clover meadow (occasionally, sun, snow on meadow, clover). You do realize that sunlight and snow don't have smells unless you have brain damage or are hopped up on PCP, right? But at any rate...unless her scent changes for a reason valid to the story (and intercourse, while apparently one of her very favorite pursuits, is not really valid to the story), do not mention it over and over again. Twilight handled the whole slightly-creepy vampire-smelling-you thing much more elegantly. Similarly, I don't need to read about the character's "Nile-green", "silvery", or "golden" eyes every time he or she looks at something intently. Once was enough.

Alternatively, don't go describing things we don't need. She gets all dressed up for a party, and the hero thinks she's really hot, and we have to read about everything, including her eye makeup. She is, of course, not really going to the party, and within 20 minutes of arrival has changed back into fatigues. So why the big description? So we know the hero thinks she's hot, which we knew already because he thinks it every time he sees her, and so she could later accidentally flash a ghost who, unbeknowst to her, has been molesting her in her dreams. It serves no purpose but to make it clear that she is desirable, something most of us probably got pretty clearly during the "sex-on-the-mountain-with-the-deadly-supernatural-creature-you-just-met-and-had-a-screaming-violent-argument-with-that-ended-in-you-being-turned-over-his-knee" scene.

So, with all these problems, why did I finish it? Because I finished Grimm Memorials, which I hated much more. Because the idea really is good, if only the author would write about that character, rather than focusing on the "I'm a former soldier, you can't tell me what to do" portion. Because there are some funny lines (Vampire: "I shall drink your blood and rip out your throat." Friend of protagonist: "And I shall fuck up your knee." [shoots him in knee with crossbow]). But I refuse to waste money on the sequel, even if they get her a decent editor.

Shakespeare by 9th graders

So I gave my 9th graders a test over Shakespeare. One of the questions was to "translate" this quote into modern English:
"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny they father and refuse thy name
or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I'll no longer be a Capulet."

It's not as hard as it sounds. We talked about that quote specifically, since they need to understand that wherefore means why, not where.

At least 20 of them forgot this interesting little fact THAT I TOLD THEM 25 TIMES. EACH. Not that I'm, y'know, bitter, or anything.

But my favorite translation was this:

Romeo, where you at?
I'm not gonna listen to my father
I'll get with you and change my name to Montague

Got a bit of flow going, doesn't it?

Rules for mystery novel heroines

1. You must fall into solving the mystery accidentally (see the body from afar, run out of money and have to take a job for which you are manifestly not qualified, etc.)

2. This does not mean you are unwilling to solve said mystery. You are, in fact, so ridiculously enthusiatic about proving yourself/getting justice/impressing the hot guy and/or your new employer that you pursue the case to the detriment of your well-being. Which leads us to:

3. You will be injured in the course of the book. You will, 9 times out of 10, black out from said injury and awake in peril.

4. The really, really obviously bad guy? The one who kicks puppies and has prison tattoos? Yeah, not the bad guy. Sorry.

5. Unless you think for sure he's not the bad guy. Then he totally is.

6. You will work with at least 2 improbably hot men. The one you fall for will be the one who was once a rake/roustabout, but now works on the right side of the law. We will call him Man A. He will be good in bed, so that's nice for you. It is likely that he will be a former cop, and will tell you repeatedly that this is too dangerous for you. You will not listen.

7. The one who is still a rake/roustabout (Man B) is not your match, but he is also good in bed. Enjoy that. He will leave you or die on you at some point. But hey, you still have Man A.

8. At some point, you will believe Man A guilty of a crime. He is not - it is a spy operation/secret sting/setup by the real bad guys. You will doubt him for most of a book, but be more attracted by his bad-boy aura.

9. Man B is probably guilty of the crime. It doesn't matter which...if he can be guilty, he probably is. This makes him sexier to you, and is good for a whole book's dithering over A or B. Plus, B will usually buy you extremely illegal weapons. Enjoy that.

10. The bad guy will catch you and threaten you with rape and death. Don't worry; at this point, one of 3 things will happen:
1. your improbably advanced skill with your illegal weapon/magical talents/obsessive karate practice will take care of the bad guy.
2. The bad guy will suffer a bout of fatal clumsiness involving the way he intended to kill you. It may involve a bag of poisonous snakes, or a "fall" down a steep precipice.
3. Some man will come save you. This is usually A, but may be B, a combination of both, or the guy with the prison tats you thought was the bad guy.

11. Once properly saved, you will black out from your ordeal. When you wake up, some nice man (often whichever one has been telling you to butt out the most) will explain what happened in a Holmesian fashion. You will make out with Man A, and all your problems will be solved (until the next book).

Bastions of feminism, rejoice! Finally, a genre with strong female protagonists!

...What's that? Oh...

"Elementary, my dear Watson"

I live a sad, sad life. Know what I did today? No, it wasn't anything silly like contribute to the human race. Or shower. I played "The Secret of the Silver Earring" until I finished the mystery (it's a Sherlock Holmes computer game). It did not take the 30 hours advertised on the box, but it did lead to the interesting experience of thoroughly cussing out a fictional character for not running fast enough. Several times.

I did leave my house. Once. About an hour ago. To get the mail, so the mail delivery lady wouldn't think I was dead. If I hadn't had a bill to mail, I probably wouldn't have even done that.

Notice how composing complete sentences is too much for me now? I'm choosing to regard it as a stylistic choice, when what it really is is depression so great that I can't bring myself to care about proper grammar.

Oh, by the way. eHarmony? Sucks. Not one guy of the 15 possible matches I have can even be bothered to tell me no. They just don't answer my questions, possibly in the hope that if they ignore me, I'll go away. Some of them have ignored me for 4 months. That's a 3rd of a year. I am trying not to take it personally, however...maybe they got amnesia, or were in terrible but not deadly accidents (see? I'm not morbid, not at all), or got married and forgot to take their profile off. Whatever.

On top of this, a personal situation is...not really working out like I wanted, and hurt feelings are just getting more hurt, with no end in sight, which, I can tell you, puts a really bright spot in your day. Just like prison spotlights.

So. Ultimately, not a good day. I have hopes for tomorrow, though. Definitely a shower. Then, possibly Harry Potter. Even if I have to go see it with my parents.

Damn, that really doesn't make my life any less sad, does it?

So...Colorado?

"Row, ya bastards!"

Stupid kids. Grr. Argh.

This is really all I have to say. I had a whole series of interesting things to record for posterity, but then I was possessed by the spirit of planting. I planted 9 irises, 2 daffodils, 12 gladioli, 6 shamrocks, 12 pansies, and 5 coneflower plants. In slightly more than an hour. In the partial dark.

On another note, I am frelling sick of the centipedes and spiders deciding to move in with me. Frakking, frelling, and every other made-up sci-fi cuss word SICK of it.

Grr. Argh.