( other months' notes ) ( Last month(s): March-June 2001 ) ( Next: September, at purpletricycle.com )

I am beginning to restructure my web presence. These notelike update thingies are moving to the purple tricycle, because, darnit, everyone else has their own domain names and I want to play too.

It still points back here aside from that, until I decide different. And notes already here will stay here. Wherever "here" may end up being, in the long run. Always in motion, that future. You think only one domain name have I? Hahahahahahahaaaaa.

You know those motivational posters that feature a pretty picture with an inspirational homily? The pictures here are just as pretty, but a lot funnier.

I'm having FTP issues with medianstrip at the moment, or i would confront you with the latest poster for the first Lord of the Rings movie.

I'll just have to give you a link to the poster instead.

bounce bounce bounce!!!

For those of you just tuning in who wonder what this silly person is going on about, get thee to my favorite fan site for the scoop(s).

I am inordinately proud that both the chicken and artichoke saute and the batch of chicken enchiladas that I cooked yesterday turned out well. Woohoo, ready-made lunches and dinners for the next week at least.

I may have discovered yet another way to avoid writing, but at least it's somewhat creative.

It's baking day! My desire for chef-hood will be tested in two phases. I've finished Phase One, oatmeal muffins. And successfully. Tasty little things they are, if I do say so myself. Applesauce for dessert yum too (though that's from a jar).

Phase Two shall begin soon: Chicken and Artichoke Saute'. If I decide that I'm good enough at this, I may start inviting people over to share these things. although I really ought to get something resembling a dining table, or any kind of table, in that event. and more chairs.

I woke up this morning, about 4:45, from a dream about getting held up and robbed. I don't know what I was doing, sitting in the back seat of my car with all the windows open, in a not-nice neighborhood next to the Harbor Freeway, late at night. But there I was, and a gray van found this too obvious to pass up, and elected a delegate to hop out with a gun and take my money. He was a bit disappointed that I only had $25, and I did not want him to be disappointed (angry), so I suddenly realized I had a beat-up $25 bill in addition, which I handed to him, making him happier. Unfortunately, my parents then pulled up in their van to pick me up, and he decided to ride along home with us. (At least the gray van decided not to follow.) As I tried unsuccessfully to secretly suggest to my dad that we drive to a police station instead, and he continued to head for the house, my subconscious said 'forget this' and I woke up.

Happily I do not think a dream like this means I'm going to get robbed soon. But, I decided to take the extra hour of wakefulness to update the addresses in my computer file, just in case, you know, I lose my purse (with address book), somehow.

Friday! Good.

poem "Three Stages" submitted to Strange Horizons (.com) 8/4, rejected 8/13. My first official-for-pay rejection "slip" (email)! I'm on my way.

happy birthday to me,
happy birthday to me,
happy inaugural 29th birthday to mee-ee,
happy birthday to meeeeee!

I remember in fourth grade we did a project predicting what we would be like twenty years from then. Time's up! How accurate was I?

I ran across this project a little while ago, stored in the parental garage like all the rest of my family's lives. I was still in wanting-to-be-just-like-the-parents mode, when I wasn't wanting to be Wonder Woman, or maybe I just couldn't think of anything interesting; I predicted something along the lines of "I was a schoolteacher but then after getting married I quit in order to have kids and stay at home with them." I figured this would have happened already by age 29, because getting married at 30 like my mom was just waiting way too long. I mentally set a deadline of the year 2000 for finding a husband, so I'd have someone to celebrate with at the party. Ha.

That was if our culture survived to the year 2000; the opening credits of the cartoon "Thundarr the Barbarian" showed a meteor destroying civilization in 1994. I knew it was made up, but I couldn't help hoping. Ariel the sorceress was another character I really wanted to be.

So here I am, and I am me.
It didn't seem to take as long
As I expected that it should
When I predicted history.

I have a little problem. I want to visit dear brother o'mine in New York City this fall, and in fact have already bought a super-duper cheap Southwest ticket. Problem lieth in the fact that my financial situation is rather precisely balanced as is, especially considering that my rent is about to go up. Long story short, if nothing changes I will be doing my own little part to keep the USA economy from sliding into recession by going into credit-card debt like a good little grasshopper.

But wait! This means a stick, in the form of evil immediate indebtedness, has finally materialized to balance out the carrot of potential (but hazy) future fame and fortune, as the twin impetuses (impeti?) to get me to finally WRITE SOMETHING(S) AND SELL IT(THEM). This would be a good thing.

Anne and dlevy suggested a good article topic, but while I explore that I figure I might try to dig up something I've already done and see if anyone wants to give me any money right away. I'll let you (all six of you) know how it goes.

In the spirit of digging things up, as I was looking for the other thing, I found this, which fits the current moment quite well.

in search of a pome
i sit here at home,
but think about going to bed.
i try and i try
to be clever and wry
but my wits've done flitted my head.
a tickety tock
from the rotund wall clock
keeps telling me i should go sleep.
but stubborn old pride,
stuck fast here inside,
is demanding of me to be deep.
so here in my chair
i sit and i stare,
as my eyeballs they slowly turn red.
but all i can think
is that i want a drink.
pome maybe tomorrow instead.

Copyright Carrie King, etc etc.

The world has it in
for my right shin.
A chair it was
that led the cause.
The electric fan
had a sly plan:
to make me lean
round its metal keen
and stretch behind
to reach the blind
of the window there,
above the snare -
the futon frame -
which made me lame.
My furniture, it does not shirk:
I've bumped again, on my desk at work.

.

My friend L. (we were in a dorm together in college) has been in town the last few weeks, taking a couple of biology classes at UCLA in order to get recertified as a high school biology teacher. She had been planning to sublet an apartment, but that fell through at the last moment, so she's been staying with various L.A. area friends. Last week, she stayed at my place, and I realized what a woeful lack of energy I have compared to some people (especially those who take afternoon naps to recharge). Here is what we did over the course of the week (including the weekends on both ends):

Let me muse a little more upon the Neil Gaiman signing, since my previous entry spoke almost completely of myself, ahem. I had a good view from my spot semi-under a floor lamp, about ten feet away from the microphone, and felt rather cozy. ...Mr. Gaiman? Neil? what does one call him in these informal times?... NG appeared in his trademark leather jacket, black T-shirt and jeans. "First," he said, "it's hot," and took the jacket off. He then explained that he would do a reading from the book, and then there would be a question-and-answer session. "I will provide the answers. You will provide the questions." He gave out a very casual, friendly vibe, spoke very easily, has a nice voice. A British accent but not a strong one (he's lived in Minnesota, it seems, for several years now; his wife's family is there).

Since the book (American Gods) covers many areas of the USA, he's been trying to read from an applicable local section in the various cities on the tour. But he was going to be at Book Soup in West Hollywood the next evening, and he wanted to save the Sunset Strip episode for them. He read a different part instead.

Voices! He does voices of the characters, notably the scratchy-voiced Wednesday, and he's quite good at them. I zoned my eyes out on the carpet, concentrating on listening, as he carried us along with him. The only hiccup came when he discovered the typo on page 87. There is a sign that a character hangs, which includes the word "IMPROVEMENT'S". Intentionally. An overeager copyeditor seems to have corrected out the apostrophe at the final moment, and NG saw it (or its lack) in the midst of reading, and stumbled a bit in his surprise. "Sorry," he said, pausing, "but I have to say, there's an apostrophe missing on page 87," and explained.

Later, in the signing line, the person ahead of me asked NG to correct it in her copy, and I followed suit, being the third person to get such a correction according to a line assistant. 'I kept that apostrophe through all the galleys,' said he, putting my apostrophe in and initialing it. 'You just know that the person who "discovered" that was so proud to have found this "mistake."'

I already told you about my Q&A adventure (see latter June entry); I'm afraid I can't remember many other people's questions. I couldn't hear them all, from my lamp corner. Someone asked what was his favorite curse word and why. The answer is "fuck" because it's 'a good solid old English fricative. And it's very versatile, good for all sorts of situations.'

The answer he gave to my question about research, by the way, was that he does try to do careful research about historical things and about places, because he wants to get things right and not have someone speak up with "but that couldn't have happened, he was dead already by that time." And if he gets places wrong, the people there of course will know. Being a history major (and general stickler for details in subjects I care about), I was quite happy with his answer.

Then, it seems, there are people who think he has made up absolutely everything. Someone once said to him in awe, "Did you know there was a real Emperor of the United States?! And he was just like you wrote about him, you got everything right!" As if there had been a magical coincidence.

Aside from getting the facts correct, he said, stories mostly grow out of his head and things he's read and absorbed (this was when I realized I'd asked, or at least he was answering, a form of the dreaded 'where do you get your ideas?' question, and berated myself). This came up also in another answer, to a question of why he writes so often of gods: he simply has always loved to read myths, and old stories. He mentioned one rhyme as an example, that appears in American Gods, a three-line snatch of folklore about trees, including "willow-man goes walking in the pale moonlight," approximately (I don't have the book here right this moment). It was just a rhyme he'd seen and remembered for some reason, and out it came, in the book.

As he paused, about to ask for the next question, I spoke my surprised thought aloud: "I wonder if Tolkien read that rhyme."

"Maybe," said Neil Gaiman.