Superbowl Sunday is tomorrow, but there’s still time to make this epic snack!
The picture has to be seen to be believed.
Writing and my everyday life
StandardFirst, a link: Donald Maas’s The Career Novelist is now available as a free download. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but it looks pretty interesting, despite being from 1996.
Second, my editor asked me to hold off working on Man Bites World until we can straighten out the proposal. She has some concerns with it. Which is fair and, you know, that’s why she reads the proposal. She wants to make sure that the fantasy thriller I’m supposed to write isn’t going to be a daring homage to my two favorite movies, PORKY’S 2 and THE BICYCLE THIEF.*
But I worked on it anyway. It was just a few hundred words, but I couldn’t leave it alone.
And, because I’m not trying to meet a daily or weekly goal at the moment, I took some time to finish the book I’m reading. After three or four false starts, I dug into Murder Among Children by Tucker Coe (a pseudonym for Donald Westlake). It’s a mystery novel written in the mid-sixties, with all the racial and gender issues that implies, but the writing was appealingly bleak and the protagonist engaging. I’m tempted to dig up the rest of the books (I know there are only five, with a personal closure of sorts) to see if and how he deals with his personal demons.
And now I have to sign off, do some research here at the library (my wife found some green mold growing on the wall behind a piece of furniture, and I need to research the best way to deal with it. Seattle, you annoy me.) and then hit a couple of stores. I need to buy a couple of things for the Superbowl/Puppybowl party my son and I will have tomorrow, but not so much that I leave a bunch of food lying around the place.
See, on the Monday after the game, my wife and I will be doing a fast. It’s not one of those crazy lemon juice and cayenne fasts I used to do (she hates those); it’s this thing with specific foods you’re supposed to eat and so on. Anyway, I don’t do these to lose weight (although that happens). I do them because it’s a stark way to look at the way I eat and my emotional connections to food. The first fast I ever did was a revelation, and I’m curious to see what insights I’ll get this time.
I plan to write about it over the next week and a half, though, so be ready to skim if that sort of thing doesn’t interest you.
Off to the reference shelves. Hope you guys are having a nice day.
* Quick note: I haven’t actually seen either of these movies.
Four things
StandardA routine traffic stop in Florida turned up a man who faked his own death in 1989. He isn’t being charged with a crime and claims to have abandoned a fiancee and a child twenty years ago because he has grown paranoid about his “narcotics-related activity.”
Two men in New Zealand, after being convicted and sentenced, were being taken to jail when they made a break for it. Handcuffed together, the men fled across a parking lot, only stopping when the men tried to run on opposite sides of a light pole.
There’s video at that site.
The men had been pepper sprayed in their escape attempt, so I’m guessing they were running blind.
And, watching SUPERNATURAL, I realize I have no interest in seeing Sam and Dean’s high school years.
Finally, I just listened to Michael Pollan talk about healthy food and healthy eating. Interesting stuff, and not the usual “low carb/low fat” dumbosity.
“Bullets… My one weakness!”
StandardChris Sims writes The Internet Writes Batman.
The habits of poverty
StandardFor them what weren’t around back then, a few years back I and my family were in tough financial straits. Basically, my wonderful wife needed shoulder surgery, and the only health insurance we had was a Mastercard.
So, yeah. You know where this is going, I’ll bet. We came close to bankruptcy, and only avoided that by being insanely frugal. When we came out the other end (weirdly, it happened a month before I signed with my agent–everything turned around in those few weeks) my marriage was stronger than ever and I was determined to see health care reform in this country.
Anyway, those frugal habits have been very hard to break. Eating at restaurants. Buying books. Shopping for organic foods again.
And turning on the heat. We didn’t turn on our heat at all the last couple of winters–getting by on found scrap wood in the fireplace and cooking lots of roasts and bread.
But earlier this week, I’d had enough. I was honestly sick of it. I hated being cold all the time. I hated wearing a knit cap and neck gaitor inside, and sleeping under four blankets and two unzipped sleeping bags.
So, this afternoon, my son and I cleared the furniture away from our baseboard heaters. Then we took out all the paper airplanes, flower petals, number 2 pencils, yellow highlighters and paraffin candles that had fallen onto it over the past few years.
And I turned on the heat. I swear, I can not even express to you what a tremendous relief it is to be in a 62 degree apartment.
I wonder what other habits I still need to deprogram.
Check it out
StandardThis is very much how I’ve tried to live my life and solve my problems. It’s not easy. In fact, sometimes it feels almost shameful to continually adjust adjust adjust.
But it works.
Ginger ale and progress
StandardWe opened the Alton Brown ginger ale at dinner tonight, and… yeah. There was no fizz, and I know it’s not because the recipe was flawed. It was because we don’t turn on the heat in our apartment. It’s always in the mid-50’s around here, and yeast really wants higher temps than that.
Still, as flat soda, it was pretty amazing–not very sweet, but the ginger flavor was fresh and sharp. I’ll try it again in the spring when things are warmer around here.
And I managed 1,800 words today, which is a hugely productive day for me. I’d love to be able to write 9K in four hours, the way some writers do, but no. I finished my 1.8K in four hours (and they were difficult words, too), and I’m glad. More tomorrow.
Man Bites World won’t start
StandardI’ve started Man Bites World a few times now, and it doesn’t work.
I should rephrase that. It hasn’t worked so far. It’s been a little frustrating because–as I’ve mentioned so many times around here–I have to give the book to my agent in July. That’s not a lot of time for me.
Anyway, I think I figured out why the opening doesn’t work. Tomorrow, I’m going to rustle myself out of bed before dawn and rush out to the Starbucks. With any luck, I’ll make a good start on this book.
I have a good feeling about this one.
Aaaaaannnnd, I’m going to try the LJ-cut again from my WordPress blog. If the cut shows up, there won’t be anything behind it.
testing testing.
Eight quick notes
StandardOne: my back is much better than it has been the last few days. I’m at the day job, I can move around pretty well, and I’m mostly sitting without pain. Yay for healing.
Two: So much for the rowing machine. I’ve been planning to take the rowing machine out of the back room into the living room (which is the only space big enough for it) but we just don’t have room. Salad Eater has pushed the TV in front of the fireplace and set up her easel, which makes me wildly happy even if she only gets to paint once a week, maybe twice. But there’s no room for the rowing machine out there; I have to let that plan go and do something else for my health. Thanks for the reminder, back pain. Better you than a heart attack or letter from my doctor about diabetes.
Three: Once or twice a week isn’t really enough for her. Once some other crap gets taken care of, we’ll figure ways for her to get more painting time.
Four: Still haven’t heard back about my proposal for Man Bites World and I haven’t gotten my notes for Everyone Loves Blue Dog. For a while, I stressed about this stuff, but at this point I’m going to shrug it off and write book three. It’ll come when it comes.
Five: Last night we made Alton Brown’s ginger ale recipe. It should be ready for tasting Saturday night. I’ll let you know how it comes out.
Six: You know how the economy slows down during a recession? It’s the same for doctors offices, too. The phones have been pretty slow–I guess people have been putting off their routine care.
Seven: On Tuesday, David Frum was on NPR (I know, I know, I forgot to post this earlier. Gimme a break!) to talk about Obama’s economic plan, the recession, and how conservatives can win back the majority in congress. His suggestion for regaining political power? Conservatives need to appeal to working class Americans again, and stop ignoring the wage stagnation of the past decade. His suggested fixes? Anti-immigration and deregulating health care Yeah, he wanted to deregulate. He said government over-regulation had made it impossible for a Sam Walton to create a nation-wide Wal-Mart of affordable health care.
These people are shameless. Worse, this sound bite of his was supposed to appeal to the working class, even though it’s the same old, same old. I guess it’s all about the marketing.
Eight: I’m reading one of Donald Westlake’s “Samuel Holt” novels, but mostly out of a sense of inertia. I’m in one of my book grouch phases; nothing satisfies me and nothing is interesting.
Five things make a post
Standard1) My back is still painful, but I expect to be able to go back to the day job tomorrow. Heating pads, ice, and body work have me doing pretty well. Although I still wouldn’t try to climb a ladder.
2) On the web, James Enge takes the latest episode of Criminal Minds out to the woodshed. Don’t miss that one.
3) Elseweb, Agent Barbara Poelle posts five story ideas she wish someone would submit. Obviously, I’m not going to be working on any of these–I have an agent already and a contract, too–but it’s interesting to see what people want. Her list is nothing like mine would be–in fact, number 2 sounds like it would be appalling. Still, it’s pretty interesting to see how people think about they books they’re looking for and how they frame their interest.
4) and 5) While I was trapped at home on the couch, I had a chance to watch two of the movies I borrowed recently from the library: WANTED and HANCOCK. Weirdly, one was adapted from a comic book and one was about a superhero, and they weren’t the same movie.
Now here’s a chance to see if my WordPress plugin can put in the LJ cut. Spoilers!
WANTED was actually the stronger of the two movies, as sad as that seems. It was based on a comic book of the same name, which I’ve read in trade paperback. From what I’ve heard, producers bought the rights to the story after the very first issue, which ended with the scene where the shlub shoots the wings off a fly. In the comic, the next story beat was that the protagonist learned he was the son of a supervillain in a world where the villains has defeated the superheroes years before, and now ran everything in secret. He came into his powers, embraced evil and consolidated his power through a whole lot of killing.
In the film, his father was a superhuman assassin from one of those millennia-old assassins guild that movies seem so full of. Our Hero learns to use his powers and hunts the dude who killed his father.
It was mostly an excuse for ridiculously over the top action scenes, which are decidedly out of style now. And it was kinda fun. I just wish they’d left out the fat snark.
HANCOCK is the superhero movie that came from a spec script titled TONIGHT, HE COMES, which I haven’t read but have heard is amazing and wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that it had to be made, and had all the misery and desperation drained out of it.
Really, as soon as Charlize Theron turned out to have superpowers, too, the whole thing comes apart. It’s like the scene in DEJA VU where the protagonist climbs into the time machine–the reality of the story came apart and stopped making sense.
Disappointing, both of them.