Happy Leap Day!!

Today is Leap Day! Those of you born on Feb. 29th are one-fourth as old as you would be had you been born on one of those boring ol’ regular days. But today you get a cake and candles. And presents! Have fun.

Any ladies who have had their eye(s) on a suitable hubby prospect should have their proposals ready. Yes, that’s right–you can ask HIM to marry YOU today. Totally in tradition! My aunt (age 82) says that my uncle always told everybody that she had proposed to HIM on Leap Day way back when. She says that’s a load of rubbish, but that he enjoyed telling it so much that she just rolled her eyes and let him have his fun. She was sixteen when they married, and he went off to the war. Ah, the good old days.

Quotations to Live By, Pt. I

“Deep down, beneath all our insecurities, beneath all our hopes for and beliefs in equality, each of us believes we’re better than anyone else. Because it’s our beliefs that are right, our doubts that are allowable ones, our fears which are legitimate.”
— Audrey Beth Stein (via the LJ Idol entry of )

“The first thing you should know when you call hardware stores in NYC to see if they have axes, is that all of them, without exception, will ask you who you are planning on killing.

The second thing you should know is that after you pick up the axe, you will have no problems finding a seat on the subway.”
—

Remakes of “Philadelphia Story” out there?

Has anyone ever done a remake of “The Philadelphia Story,” updated, of course? The way “Clueless” is kind of a pastiche/update of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” I mean.

Just wondering, because it could be a GREAT romantic comedy again. It already IS, but I have an idea. . . .

Writer’s Block: *blushes*

“For a fat girl, you don’t sweat much.”

“You don’t look as fat as you are.”

OR

“You’re not really as fat as you look.”

This Is A Serious Question

Just now, on MS-NBC, I saw for the THIRD time today one of those slides that they flash on the screen to advertise a future program. It read, in part, “SNEAK PEAK.” [sic] (It’s “peek,” dears. Media idiocy again.)

This is clearly a mistake. My teachers would have called it an illiteracy, although nowadays I’m sure that term would create outrage and outcry, if not outright screaming. However, it’s a common mistake that is becoming ever more common. All the time I see this, and I see “reign in” for “rein in,” and I see “loose” for “lose.” These are errors. *But*. . . .

All right, those of you who are descriptivists rather than prescriptivists, do you say that this means these errors should be adopted and incorporated into proper usage? The way I see it, most people are just lazy and shouldn’t be rewarded by having their errors made “Truth” when it doesn’t increase clarity. They didn’t pay attention and don’t care about using the right word. Should that mean that we change the language? If so, where does it end? Do we start accepting “your/you’re” errors, “its/it’s” errors, and every old thing, until we have completely eliminated clarity? Should we eliminate all punctuation because “it’s too hard” or “it confuses some people”? Where does this end?

With a post-literate society, I suspect.

Update from East Patio!

I didn’t get to go to see President Bill Clinton talk today at Mountain View Community College–he was holding a rally on the east patio of the school around 11:45. I got up and took a shower, dressed, ate, etc. at 6 AM, but my mother just couldn’t go. Her back had seized up again and she was crying that I couldn’t go without her, that it was too far, etc. Hubby was the same way, and they pointed out that since I’m not a student there, I’d end up stuck way in the back in that 20 MPH wind. Temps dropped from 80 yesterday to in the 50s today. Sigh!

We did catch some media coverage, however! Dan Abrams on MS-NBC just showed a clip of Bill Clinton “campaigning in East Patio, Texas.” *facepalm* *nooseneck* *revolvertemple*

What, they think that’s in East Texas, huh? It’s like Bent Fork, Tennessee, and Bug Tussle, Kentucky! *no*

I suppose some media genius called the college and the rep said, “It’s on the east patio.” They took it from there.

For the record, it’s actually in Dallas. It’s North Oak Cliff and I usually am too timid to go down there because many of the neighborhoods are pretty rough, but it’s not East Patio, either.

Don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You might as well laugh!

A Not So Grumpy (And Brief) Note

What IS it with the new WalMart commercial? The one with “Dancin’ in the Moonlight” playing in the background, I mean, and the shoppers frolicking. Did NO ONE at the company LISTEN to the first line of the song? “We get it on most every night, when that moon is big and bright.” *SPLURT* Listen to what you are playing, people. Or maybe you WANTED to have a song that tells of a Pagan celebration at full moon, skyclad. Barefoot all over. Y’know, just like when we shop at WalMart. *rolling eyes*

I like the song, mind. I just don’t think that the bigwigs who approved the commercial have ever read the lyrics to the song.

And Starbucks Coffee shops are all closing tomorrow for training. Everybody’ll have to park outside some hotel where there’s wi-fi to surf the net with your laptop over your lunch break.

How’m I Doin’, Springtime Edition

About the icon: that’s an old Sun Rexall photo booth pic of me (aged fourteen or therabouts) that my dad carried in his wallet . . . he also had an old B&W Girl Scout pic of me from first grade (snif) and a small color one cut into a circle that came from an old Polaroid pic of me with my Dancerina doll under the Christmas tree around age eleven.

How’m I Doin’? (With this journal)

The DEVIL made me buy this dress

OPENINGS: Making mine more like those winners’ entries

Okay, something constructive for a change. I read over the winning openings on the BookEnds mystery contest and a couple of the other blogcontests again, and I’m wondering if I (we) can come up with a snappy opening for the Marfa Lights novel, one that’s more like these. I know I said I didn’t particularly care for the winners, but when in Rome. . . .

The Marfa Lights mystery is sitting with the MWA contest judges right now, but because there are so many entries and I no longer believe that Believing Makes It So, I figure there’s little profit in getting all gut-wrenched about that. Besides, even if I did win that one (see, I’m still delusional–but then that’s what Obama said his followers weren’t, *his* words, and that must be why I’m still undecided on that entire contest, because I’m perma-delusional), it wouldn’t hurt to have a jazzier opening, one like the ones that win contests.

Let’s look at some paraphrases/pastiches of a few of those openers. Now, mine can’t be all that much like these, because I demand that the opening relate to the story I’m about to tell, but we can perhaps get the drift.

(1) “Have you seen the LuckyPenny ads?” June held the free tabloid out in front of her face as though* she were Ricky Ricardo trying to ignore Lucy’s wild dreams again. “Uncle Hezbap is trying to hire himself out as a hitman again!”

* [NOT ONLY a simile, but one in the subjunctive mood as well! Fifty thousand points off!]

I am kind of out of luck on this one, as I don’t have a crazy uncle in the Marfa novel, but we can examine the reasons that the agent said she liked the one that I based this fake upon. (“Upon which I based this pastiche.” See, I like THAT better, but most people think it sounds all uppity.) She said that humor gets her every time. Mark THAT one down on the cover of your Funk and Wagnalls, kids, as I hear that all the time but seldom see it played out in the actual acquisitions of an agent. Somebody with a sub to PUB LUNCH should go look at Jessica’s acquisitions to see whether she really does represent funny/humorous cozies.

(2) Kozmo Mimgraves could smell danger.

She’d smelled that stench so often that she no longer even bothered to wrinkle her nose. However, this time there was something different.

Mmmph. I couldn’t do much of a pastiche on the one I’m imitating here, partly because I felt that the original was SO CLICHED and TIRED. I mean, please! “Danger is my business.” Maybe it’s just me. Yuck. Let’s take a pass on this one. Why didn’t they, though? Can anyone figure it out?

(3) Quinn watched as the prominent vein on Sol’s forehead pulsated* and the birthmark on the side of his face shaded gradually towards maroon. He continued kicking that poor slob in the ribs to keep him face-flat on the pavement, but what was she supposed to do about it? You didn’t wanna cross Sol. He bent down and slurped the guy’s left ear into his mouth, then slapped his teeth together. Sol’s laughter swellled as he stood above the body, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth.

* [I resisted the temptation to add “to the tune of Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’.” Aren’t you proud of me?]

Yuck, yuck, yuck. I didn’t change this one as much as I did the others. And I find the POV character completely cowardly and unlik[e]able. I don’t know if you could bite an ear off and then laugh while you had it on your tongue without choking, either, and would there be that much blood from cartilage? It doesn’t bleed at all when you pierce ears. See what the passage did to me? It made me doubt the logistics of the horrific act. Besides, I think we’re in the middle of a scene for no good reason. In order to understand why Sol did this and who the girl is and how we got here, somebody’s going to have to either do a flashback or an infodump. If the infodump is done via having someone walk up and demand to know, in a Babylon-5 outtake sort of way, “Just what is going on around here,” it’ll still be lame. If it’s done by way of the cops taking the girl’s statement, that MIGHT work. Still, I just don’t LIKE this.

In fact, I couldn’t find any openings on any agent’s contest that I particularly liked.

However, I probably do need to hoosh up my first few lines. They might be TOO cozy. What could I do to signal to readers that there’s going to be a chase across the Marfan desert with some ghost lights that are out to swallow up my heroine’s car? And that she’s gonna get schmoozed by an off-kilter preacher man?

Yeah, the opening lines I quote below are fairly ZZZZ-making, I suppose. Still, I don’t want to promise what I’m not gonna deliver. I wanted to stay away from the philosophical focus-in opening that I sometimes do (you know the drill–we start out musing about some philosophical thing and then go to the scene.) I didn’t want to have slapstick stuff or open with a weird jolt.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for this business.

My sister was arguing with me about the “right” way to roll paint onto her dining room walls when the phone rang.

“That’s for me.” I started backing down the stepladder.

Zoë always let her machine pick up, so she didn’t object. She stepped back for a better view and pushed back her dark hair, leaving a skunk-streak of vanilla paint through her bangs. “You’re not supposed to paint W’s. I don’t care what they did on ‘Trading Spaces.’ Just go straight up and down, overlapping the edges a bit.” She demonstrated with her fuzzy roller; she’d gotten the longer stick and was taller besides, so she had her feet firmly on the floor. “Who would be calling you here?”

*sigh* Any suggestions? We want to arrive in this scene fairly quickly, because the phone call is about the murder. Yay, murder, something mystery readers like!

Ah, but let us look again at the opening sentence of one of the big winners of the contest. It seemed like a complete cliche and re-run to me, as it echoes the title of at least one film and a couple of thrillers. But hey, wadda I know. Let us attempt to take inspiration from this, a pale pastiche of the true opening.

Sarah Jane Fernbeck was dressed to kill. (*ouch! Bad enough, buddit goze on*) She liked the sound of that. Purrrrrrr. Glancing around the bar, she slid off the barstool and into the lap of the guy next door, in mid-pat. “Hello, Sailor.”

Okay, the real opening that I was copying doesn’t have the “Hello, Sailor” bit or anything from “Purrr” on, but I didn’t wanna be plagiarizing too closely, as someone might be watching (though I doubt it!)

I feel we could steal THAT and riff on it, as it is DEFINITELY A CLICHE that has been heard before. Surely (Shirley) I can get away with retyping it with a twist, or even a twist-tie.

Let’s see what kind of wacky opening I can get out of this. I feel that “dressed to kill” is fair game. If you don’t think so, let us discuss it in the comments. Let us reason together. Meantime, take a gander at this.

Ariadne French and her sister weren’t dressed to KILL, but possibly the sight of them could MAIM . . . or more likely BLIND . . . at least make you NEARSIGHTED or all squinty like Pee Wee Herman’s best buddy . . . (GROSS–now you see why I don’t go there. STOP STOP STOP)

Okay, trying again.

Ariadne French and her sister Zoe weren’t dressed to KILL, but possibly the sight of them could MAIM . . . or more likely BLIND . . . well, at least make a man NEARSIGHTED, if he caught sight of them in the fading afternoon light wearing their finest grubbies, splattered with paint, and glowing with perspiration (because Southern ladies don’t drip with sweat; their mother had made certain of that.)

Everybody else is out on the town dancing and having fun, or over at the con and filking up a storm, and I am sitting here making up stupid new opening lines to my novel. Is that not pathetic? It is pathetic. The great Oz has spoken.

Any ideas at all. . . .

“I’d sell out, but nobody’s buying!”–SC

Happy Birthday to Edna St. Vincent Millay

I’d quote one of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poems here, but they’re all too depressing, albeit lyrical and worth your attention–if you like METAPHOR and even SIMILE.

That’s somebody who wouldn’t have let ’em pry the metaphors and similes out of her poems, for sure.

Let’s not quote any poems. I’m really kind of down now. I was already depressed, anyway.

Was thinking about doing ConDFW, which is happening within walking distance of our neighborhood, but it costs money and I’d have to put on shoes . . . and it’s really more about fandom, although they do have writing panels. I’d like to get a look at the GoH, Peter S. Beagle, but I’m just not in a fannish mood. Skipping the Grapevine DFW Writers’ Workshop convention this weekend as well, because it costs a lot more and is much farther away. I think my prospects are so poor as far as getting something published that it would really be a waste to go out there and get all pumped up again.

My mother wanted to go to today’s Hillary Clinton rally, but (1) she’s 78 this year and she wrenched her back and skinned her arms the other day by falling down, so she’s really too fragile to stand outside for an hour or two; (2) it was really cold this morning, and her lungs don’t work well in the wind and cold; and (3) the rally was in South Oak Cliff at 9 AM, for Heaven’s sake, and we’re nearly in Plano. That’s an hour or more away in the going-to-work traffic and in an unfamiliar area, far from home and her nebulizer machine. So I set up a browser window so that Mama could watch the rally on my computer, on WFAA.com, which she did . . . but as soon as it ended, we discovered that one of the motorcycle police officers who was escorting the motorcade across that cursed Houston St. Viaduct (yes, the same one that Kennedy’s motorcade was heading for way back when, IIRC) lost control and was thrown off his bike and into the concrete wall. He died at Methodist shortly after arrival. They didn’t tell Senator Clinton before the rally that this was happening–there were a boatload of people in her car, and she didn’t see what was going on, and they went ahead to the rally–but as soon as the rally ended she found out and went out to have a press conference, looking sad. And no wonder. What a terrible thing to have happen, and how awful for the family and the police force. Mama said, “Just cry, hon, and you’ll feel better.” Even our Pomeranian picked up on the sadness . . . nothing can look as hangdog as a little dog looking up at you from between its little paws.

I tell you what, Dallas is an unlucky place for Democratic presidents and candidates, IMHO, and I think it needs to be exorcised or something. In fact, everything’s too materialistic, too fast-paced, too frenetic here, and everyone’s focused on all the wrong things. I’m ready to move to a quiet little resort town . . . you know, like Carmel-by-the-sea. The only thing keeping me here is that I don’t have two nickels to rub together.

Got a nickel I can borrow?