shalanna

It's simply too horrible. I don't want to hear the news any more.

(To the tune of many, many punk songs that consist of strumming guitars in an insistent rhythm)

I wanna be radioactive
Nothing can stop me when I start to glow
The world may be falling apart at the seams
I'll be standing in the fallout snow

I wanna be radioactive
You can't beat the party of Cerenkhov blue
The air's blowing all the stuff that gleams
I'll be bathing in electron beams

I have always believed that my friend Terry Sutton and I made up this song in Drama class in ninth grade . . . but he could have heard it elsewhere, because he used to go to live concerts just about EVERY night. Anyway, it has been an earworm for a couple of days now.

The entire crisis in Japan has blown my mind and it has disconnected from reality to the point that I now see the reactor problems as a Monty Python sketch. "I say, Minister, reactor #4 is on fire!" "Why, sorry about that, old chap! How are the radiation levels?" "No worse than in the basement of Fawlty Towers, I can say." "Jolly good!" *bam bam bam*

I guess we'd better not head to California this year. Maybe Rock City, high atop Lookout Mountain, Tennessee/Georgia.

I'm not sure who to trust regarding humanitarian help, either, since the Red Cross promised to give the money we raised for 9/11 to the victims' families, and later we discovered they hadn't gotten a dime. "We had to give it to other recipients," they said, or something similar. Can't be trusted. So who can? We'll have to take a chance if we want to donate. *sigh*

The Battle of the Alamo was a siege that took place February 23 through March 6, 1836. Many brave Texans (then called Texicans) were lost in the conflict. Including Davy Crockett! This year is the 175th anniversary--the Dodransbicentennial. (Word of the week!)

Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!

Check out Lev Raphael's post to authors about improving your reading and speaking engagements.

Also, Kurt Vonnegut's rules for writing stories:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. (SC: I see so many books filled with antiheroes and Mary Sues that I simply find annoying! Characters should have weaknesses and quirks, even if they do need to "save the cat" up front to compensate.)
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things: reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I need to divest myself of a great number of books. I won't re-read all of these, and I don't need all of them for reference, and there simply isn't enough storage space to keep everything.

But! I don't like e-reading. It's tiring. I have an eye problem anyway. And I'm thinking about the lifespan of each format, too.

For example . . . my husband's grandmother, towards the end of her life, began gifting me with a few of the hardcover books off of her shelves. These books might be a bit foxed, and they might have wear on the bindings, but they're still perfectly readable. Many of them date from the 1940s and 1950s. I only have ten or so of these books, but they've lasted. Books from my childhood have also held up pretty well (the few that I still have). Softcover books are a bit more fragile, but I've picked up eBay copies of many of Jack Douglas's old comic reminiscences and the Shell Scott detective stories that originally cost 60 cents at the supermarket and are still perfectly readable today. Oh, and copies of all the "I Hate to Cook" books by Peg Bracken. Old cookbooks are some of the coolest finds around, even if you don't make the recipes. I love to find the spattered ones or the ones with handwritten notes and corrections!

So I will be able to read these books for years to come, or just prop them around the room if I like.

On the other hand, there are many digital files from five or ten years ago that have become worthless or difficult. They're in formats that the common programs don't want to read, or they came off an old BBS and are on floppy disks or memory sticks and therefore at risk of being lost . . . I know that I've lost digital files many a time. They can get corrupted or you can lose the ability to unpack the archive. Even text files can go crazy.

I'm really reluctant to buy into the concept that you buy a book as an ebook file and then everything lives happily ever after. It does take up less "room" in a sense, but it's not really "there" in the same way that a physical book is. I can't pick it up and dip into it in the same way. And if the file format goes obsolete and it has DRM on the file . . . well, then it becomes a brick.

Now that Random House and others have adopted the "agency rule" about pricing e-books, there will probably be even more fighting out there.

It's tough to relinquish these physical books. "They got the library at Alexandria--they're not getting mine" has been my motto for years. Of course I wouldn't give up the special books and the ones that were passed along, but I do need to weed out all the paperbacks that I bought to "support" some published author after I heard him/her speak and was all impressed . . . but as it turned out, I didn't really like the novels. Those people aren't goin' out there to get MY books, I tell you what. So why should I hang on to all of theirs?!

Putting on the armor for another try at the living room bookcase. Surely I do not STILL need "Introduction to RVing."

The other day a teenager whom I'm teaching a bit of piano by ear made an observation about probability that I have not been able to shake.

I know that all my old math teachers, my dad, Professor Angus, Professor Erna, Professor Richmond, and all of 'em are sittin' up there in Heaven shaking their heads at me. But this makes perfect sense and I can't find anything wrong with it.

We were discussing middle school math (which I have also tutored him in--he's a neighbor's kid) and he said, "All this probability stuff is a crock."

Now, I've often suspected the same. I never have fully followed the logic of the "proofs" as to why conditional probability is correct and all that stuff. I did accept that a roll of the six-sided dice is a one-in-six chance, but further than that they went into la-la land with the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

But . . . this makes sense right here:

"I reject all those calculations. Everything's binary. It either happens, or it doesn't." He threw the chord chart to the carpet. "It either landed face up, or it didn't. Fifty-fifty."

I blinked.

"You either win the lottery, or you don't. You either live through the battle, or you don't. The die rolls a six, or it doesn't."

My brain cranked.

"See? I either learn this piece flawlessly, or I don't. I either eat the cheese, or I don't. You like me, or you don't. It's all just Do It or Don't. Do, or not do."

Try as I might, I couldn't come up with a coherent reply that actually refuted this.

Either you liked my book, or you didn't. Either we went out on a date, or we didn't. Either your number came up, or it didn't.

And on that note, we leave you to your regularly scheduled Saturday night computer gaming.

Poor Hubby.

You may recall that he was laid off on January 31st. His entire group was dumped that day--80 people.

I mean, I know that maybe the Universe wanted him to be humbled a bit. It really got his attention when he was laid off. He simply doesn't know how to not work . . . having had a job since he was 15 and worked at Pizza Inn part-time, moving up to Penneys catalog and then credit clerk, and then while he was in college to computer operator, and then upon graduation becoming a software engineer, ending up as a staff engineer and software guru. Unlike me, he is really good at working for The Man and being a team player.

There's one particular job on the company's internal hiring list thingie that reads as if it were written for him. From the day he left the company, his previous supervisor has been telling him to apply for this one and that he and X would recommend him. His paperwork was processed at last on Friday, and he got e-mail Monday telling him that the big boss wanted to have a phone interview with him. This made him very happy. He stopped growling and snarling at me and began pacing around saying that he could do the job and that it was just like the job he had before he joined the Folly. (The project that was just cancelled, I mean.)

This morning the director called him and did the phone interview. It went very well. He knew the answers and they spoke of people they both knew. She talked about figuring out how to do the callback/recall paperwork in order to get employees back. He hung up feeling that he was definitely going to get an offer.

So . . . what does he do but go onto the e-mail list that he and a few trusted co-workers had set up to discuss their contacts and jobs. He posted a jovial message reading, "The call went well. Maybe I'll be back working with y'all in a couple of weeks."

Maybe this could be interpreted as being cocky or arrogant. He didn't mean it that way. Someone who knew him would understand that it was just a "whoopee" sort of deal.

But! The guy, X, who had said he'd recommend him (this guy is still employed and works in the group in question) wrote back, "Not so fast. You should know that L is also a final candidate for this position." L is another of the layoff casualties, but he's not as experienced as Hubby. Also, not as old. (hmm)

Well . . . that message was a slapdown. Was that really necessary? Or perhaps it was just a nice little heads-up. Whichever it was, I thought it was very passive-aggressive or whatever.

[Guilt: It's my fault! It's all because I listened to the Bad Luck song* in the car this morning! I knew better than to listen to that song! The last time I heard that song, I fell and shattered my kneecap. That song screwed up his chances this time! *sigh* Or maybe the dude X is just a back-stabber. Or maybe he didn't realize how that would come across.]

I think I would have written in reply, "Good luck!" And that's all I would've said. But that's just me.

Anyway. Hubs read that and was crushed.

The result was that Hubby spent around two hours walking around the house talking about how L was probably going to get the position because of this and that, and he could see why, and all this kind of rot. But you could see just how disappointed and hurt he was. He doesn't ask for much . . . he has had his heart set on this job, and he can't think of anything else but being unemployed. I don't know why the Universe couldn't have just let him think whatever. Now he's back to being horribly depressed and saying sad things and treating us ankendosh. He says he can't stand to go on a little road trip or anything at all and couldn't enjoy it. Can't even enjoy going over to the Arboretum or the nature preserve for a walk. It's all the fault of this bigmouth that shot off his mouth to take somebody down a notch . . . kick somebody who was already down.

The bigmouth X must be zapped.

I am crushing his head.

Don't worry--I'm also crushing L.'s head. And zapping his guideas rod**. And cursing him so he never gets his blah blahed again***. My voodoo is at work. Justice will prevail.

*sigh*

Crud. I suppose it isn't L's fault. (But I'm still crushing his head.) It's all a crapshoot. If they don't pick Hubby, it'll be their loss. He knows the product line and he can do the job. They may still choose him. But now that he thinks X would prefer to see L get the job, he's all depressed. He's applying elsewhere, but his heart isn't in it.

I'm accustomed to being rejected. But Hubs isn't. Apparently he's got a lot of his identity tied up in his job and his ability to support the family and so forth. And this entire sequence of events may be designed by destiny to knock that out of him and change his direction.

However, it's tough to see him suffer. And Mama suffers because she's a child of the Depression who went through being poor and is completely freaked about being poor again. I am the only one with any faith here. Dum-dum me, always trusting that Something Good is about to happen.

Surely something will. That's not the only job in the world! But I still hate to see him so disappointed.

(sigh)

* The R. E. M. cover of John Lennon's "Dream #9" off the CD done for the Darfur relief charity. It's a really good cover. But every time I hear it, something bad seems to happen right after. That's not the only Bad Luck song, but it's probably one of the worst. I really like the song, but hey, how many times do you have to touch the hot stove??

** "Guideas rod" comes from an old family story. One of my mother's uncles back in the day when cars were new got a Model A Ford. Everyone was duly impressed when he drove it up their gravel road and showed off his new Horseless Carriage. But about halfway down the road something went wrong. He came back trudging along crying and carrying his steering wheel and the shaft it was connected to. "What happened?" the family cried. He looked up miserably and held out the parts. "My guideas rod broke," he shouted. (Not knowing what to call the car parts.) So whenever something goes wrong with the car . . . you know the drill.

*** Refers to the Lenny Bruce "blah-blah-blah" routine. I first heard it on the "Lenny" soundtrack album made from the Dustin Hoffman film. (It's at 01:18:57 in the film.) You can probably guess what it is a euphemism for.

I'm a finalist in the 2010 Robert Benchley essay contest!

The Robert Benchley Society is relieved to finally announce the long-awaited Top Ten Semi-Finalists (in alphabetical order) in the 2010 Robert Benchley Society Humor Writing Competition:

http://benchley.blogspot.com/2011/02/rbs-announces-top-ten-entries-in-humor.html

Go read the top ten essays, if you haven't. They're really good. I think my entry is very Benchleyesque this time. Maybe it'll place in the top four.

I also have won another manuscript contest through an RWA chapter and received a very pretty hand-beaded necklace with a camellia as a charm. It's very comforting to think that "regular readers" (as well as published romance novelists) like my work, even if it isn't good at impressing Those Who Count.

This seems like something that a lot of people would want, so it SHOULD be possible. I'm just not seeing it when I Google.

I have lots of tracks now in my iTunes library. I would like to separate out the classical and Christmas music so that it's not in normal rotation. I have the stuff tagged by genre and even in separate playlists, but it's all also in the main library, which is too large for the new iPod I have now. (The original 60GB iPod was stolen, remember.) Is there any way to take these tracks and create a new, separate iTunes library? Then you could just hold SHIFT down as you launch iTunes and open the different library instead of the main one. I could create new libraries and add all this stuff and then manually delete it from the main library, of course. But that would be a hassle and dangerous (I'm afraid). I also have the stuff scattered all over the disk in folders, and I would like it to all be consolidated, but that ship has sailed, I think.

iLounge never talks about this in particular that I can find.

Perhaps I shouldn't have added ALL those tracks in the first place.

Everyone's saying today is Chinese New Year, but it's really tomorrow, Feb. 3rd. However, it starts on the eve, so let's go with this.

Xin Mao, the Year of the Rabbit 4708, starts on 2/3/2011.

Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is "the most luxurious meal of the entire year," explains one site. "Make eight to nine dishes for the New Year's Eve dinner. In the Chinese dialect of Cantonese the word for eight is baat, which rhymes with faat, the word for prosperity. And the Chinese word for nine means 'long-lasting.'"

Good enough for me. *rooting around in cabinets to find something to go with the rice I made last night and the chicken salad that'll have to serve for the chicken dish*

We'll miss the parades. I don't think they can get out in this ice. *pout*

Don't sweep today! You'll sweep all your new luck out the door.

I had no trouble complying with this proscription.

All right, the Universe doesn't approve of Dallas making any money off the tourists for the StuporBowl. But we don't need to be completely iced in and closed down! This morning we were colder at 14 degrees than Green Bay at 19! This is outlandish!

Also, we have had rolling 15-minute mini-outages of electricity since 5 AM. I awoke to the sounds of the dog freaking out and Hubby saying, "The power's out." Mama's oxygen concentrator beeps, and the computers' UPSes beep, and the alarm beeps. I ran around getting everything turned off and getting flashlights before I called the electricity provider and discovered they were doing this purposely, to spare the grid. All the school districts and city governments are closed, so you'd think we could generate enough power, but I guess what with everyone at home playing "Kill Everything" and surfing the 'net and turning those all-electric heaters waaay up, it couldn't.

The Pom baby really freaked out. He whined, coughed, wheezed, had attacks, shivered, and walked through the house barking. I had to hold him as the power went UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN. The outages lasted 15 minutes and then we had power for an hour in between, so he kept freaking out anew. I took him out (and you would have frozen to death! You couldn't balance on the ice in our courtyard! His little toes slipped!) and fed him and held him and everything, but the poor baby. He couldn't handle the beeping, I think. It reminds him of some crisis we've had or of some medical thing, perhaps? Simply awful. He wouldn't settle down until around noon, when the company made the power stay on longer and longer and gradually faded into normalcy. I had already gone to bed on the sofa and he was running in circles through the house, and he eventually decided it was safe to get on the sofa with me. Then he jumped down and settled under the piano bench where the vent blows. That's his usual guard position.

But anyway!! I had to hurry to microwave my oatmeal and Hubby's gruel, and Mama had to hurry to take her nebulizer treatment, because we had to coordinate it within the time the power was on. The heater kept having to shut down and then start up again, because it's a gas heater and when the power is cut, it does a shutdown. Hassle!

FINALLY I got my computer back up again and got our 'net connection back. Whee!

Hubby did get laid off on Monday. But they told him and the others that they were keeping his badge, laptop, and phone stuff in a Special Box because they could be called back at any time during the next nine weeks. He came home immediately and contacted the other company that had said it was interested in him (the woman called him specifically when she heard this project was closing), but the job they have is a contractor position. He explained he needs a full-time job, but that he might call them when this nine weeks is up. She said she'd try to make this into a permanent job, as she wants him specifically for some skills they've seen him display with the network. (The company is a vendor and they know all about this project being shut down.) He was really disappointed and didn't hide it.

So, on Monday, we started a project fixing Mama's car. At first it was just to get the trunk closed; we had shown it to this crazy firewood-company man who had tried to buy it from us two or three times, and he'd opened the hood and trunk. But it's a 1984 Lincoln Town Car, Cartier Edition, and the trunk closes itself--you put it down until the latch clicks, and it finishes the job. So the trunk had been sitting slightly ajar (the car's battery was down), and we had left the battery on the charger since Sunday.

Sure enough, the trunk closed itself as soon as the battery came up. Then Hubs decided to try starting the car. (It had been sitting since Mama got her pacemaker . . . that's nearly a year and a half.)

It revved on the first try!

So he decided to check the fluids again and back it out of the side yard. The tires looked pretty low, so he aired them up with this little compressor thing he got last year. Then. . . .

"Want to go around the block?"

We all piled in (including one happy Pom) and went slowly around to the front of the house. The tires were REALLY low. We decided to see whether it would pass inspection, so I jumped into the van and followed them--very slowly--to the corner tire store that also does state inspections.

It passed! We also got four newish tires at a discount, because the originals just weren't impressing me. We need new wipers. But the car runs fine!

To top it off, when I opened the mailbox, I found they had sent her replacement driver's license.

Cosmic.

Anyway, then we went on to do several more errands to prepare for this storm, including getting Hubby's iPhone transferred onto our family cell phone plan. I was hoping we could Go Somewhere, but now we're iced in until Friday, the weather says. Stir crazy!

Hubby's e-mail beeped on the iPhone as we were walking out of the AT&T store. They expect to put together a deal so that a skeleton crew starts back to work next week. They think they will know on Friday. Guess who is on the Tiger Team (skeleton crew)?

Yes. He's that important to them. (They ought to pay more.)

So everyone else gets nine weeks off with pay and full benefits, and ten of them have to go right back to work. Sigh!!

I'm looking at it all wrong. He will have a job to go back to, at the same salary. And they'll HAVE to let him take some time off later, because he's contributing like this. Still, I think it's unfair. I didn't get to go anywhere for a week. *pout*

We don't know if this deal will fall through or not, though. We're in limbo until they tell us something on Friday or on Monday. I really, REALLY wanted to go to Austin for a few days before he started back to work. I guess I think like a little kid, but we haven't had a vacation in forever. . . .

I think I'll bake something. . . .