Month: December 2003

Well, I caught up on my blog reading. Three and a half hours past midnight, four hours after starting. (OK, I guess I took a brief half-hour break to play some stupid video games with Nate when he got home.) I have been pathetic with my blog reading lately. I think there are several factors. I got behind when I was writing the novel, (no time for anything then), and I just never caught back up. Jason’s took the longest… he’s been writing so much lately that I probably spent a half hour reading the last week’s entries. I promised him I’d be catching up on it all soon… but after the first page of 20, I had to stop reading the comments, and after the second page I started skimming. Finally I found some entries I knew I’d read before, and I felt a sick sense of relief.

I think too that I’ve been appreciating good literature more and more… I hope this doesn’t offend anyone when I say that reading blogs is just often nowhere near as fun for me as reading a good short story or poem. The problem has always been that finding those rare good short stories or poems can take awhile… so the ratio of crap to good may be very close to the same… it’s just that the good is so much better when you find it.

I’m not sure if I have enough left in me to catch up on the other task I was planning for this evening–bringing down the swelling in my email inbox. I owe about 4 or 5 “real” emails to various people. I blame a freak desire I had earlier this week to write to a bunch of people I hadn’t heard from in ages. Of course they all wrote me back yesterday. Maybe I’ll find time to write them tomorrow before we head off to our friend Julie’s birthday dinner. We got her a present earlier tonight that I’m excited to give to her.

and now… sleeeeeeeeeeep.

Haven’t posted in a few days. I’m not sure why, exactly… I’ve seen two sneak preview movie showings in three days… Last night’s was “The Cooler”, which despite an impending theatrical release had a 2002 copyright. (Yes, that was the first thing that came to mind when thinking of it, so no, don’t bother.)

Tuesday night we saw “Big Fish”, the new one directed by Tim Burton. Last night nate and I debated the style of it, and how Burton it felt to both of us. I felt that it was a very good movie, compared to other movies, but that it didn’t really stand up next to his other movies very well. It was good in its own right, and worth seeing, but perhaps a disappointment to those of us who really want Tim Burton’s visual style to dominate a film. Also, Ewan was fairly wooden… (again), and the rest of the cast supported him throughout.

On Wednesday night I purchased used books on amazon, and paid less than $12 for all four. Then I paid another $14 for shipping, but it was well worth it. I’m very excited to get them in the mail.

I could blame the writer’s almanac, but it hasn’t just been there that I’ve been finding new poets to read and admire. For years now (three?) I’ve probably only read one new poet a year. Now in the last week I’ve actually purchased a book of poetry (by fernando pessoa, an author recommended to me by my friend Pete) and I’ve also discovered Mark Yakich who was featured today in the almanac. I spent a few minutes pouring through some of his poems, and have yet to read something of his that I didn’t like.

Elia’s latest blog post mentioned a comment on her previous post that was her best comment ever, so I checked it out. I recommend you do too.

The premise is a war. The soldiers are unwilling participants… the soldiers are blogs.

The poster of said comment, Angelo, left no details of how the war would be waged, other than some notion of “character”, to be determined by what is said and not said in Elia’s blog. The other combatant will be represented by another blog.

I turned to my best source of enlightenment… A google search for blogwars brought me to a MemeFirst post about pitting of three blogs against one another. There was quantifiable scoring, but the categories didn’t really strike me as subjective.

Then I discovered several other blog-fight type things, and remembered that I’d seen blog survivor somewhere before. Once the reality-TV comparison was made, the excitement of “blogwars” faded… (note, none of the links above is the blog survivor thing that I remembered seeing before, and I looked pretty hard–3rd page of google results counts as “really hard” for me, just fyi.)

I realized that it wasn�t the content of the comment that had excited me so, but rather the tone and “flavor”. A religious war holds much more appeal for me than a reality-TV takeoff. I’m excited to see if we’ll hear anything more about this battle, or if it’ll just fade into memory like everything else.

I skipped everything important yesterday, which means I sat on my ass, pretty much the entire day.

In the early afternoon, while I still lay in bed reading a book and laura took a post-wakeup-nap, I was suppose to be at a unicycling meeting. Then, later in the afternoon, I was going to go to a post-nanowrimo party sort of thing, but I found myself looking at the clock an hour before it was going to end, still at home and wearing a bathrobe. We watched movies and played video games all night to commiserate.

My novel is not really coming along. I wrote for about an hour on Saturday, and am maybe 2000 words past 50,000 total. I promised someone that I’d be posting the final parts to the novelblog, but I haven’t bothered yet. There is still a lot to go, and I’m past the outline now, which is causing me problems. I need to spend some real time thinking about where I want this to go, and how I want it to end.

Last Friday I had lunch with Matt who he mentioned this crazy 1and1 deal where they’re giving away 3 years of free webhosting to anybody who signs up in the next 30 days or so. It sounds too good to be true, but I’ve already signed up, and their domain registration is dirt-cheap. We registered http://thankyouten.com for Nate, and he’s going be moving off livingtech as soon as everything goes through. [UPDATE: It’s already live! Less than 24 hrs after registration!]

Three years is a long ass time to give something away for free. It’s the miracle of big business, I guess. Of course, roadrunner just upped our bandwidth (at no extra cost!) and I’m getting speeds from home that rival speeds I used to get from the UofMN, which was heretofore the fastest internet connection I’d ever experienced.

I did a speed test, and I was getting 5 gigabits per second, which is theoretically in the 600K/second range, but the fastest download I’ve yet managed was approximately 400K/sec. Anyway it’s blazing fast. I should really set up that server at home. But I have to have time for that, I guess. And time is one thing I’m always short on.

Tonight I’m going to juggling again for the first time in over a month. I’m excited to work on my five off the ground, but I’ll probably spend just as much time catching up with all the people I haven’t seen in ages.

This is far too funny not to post on here. I got an email from my mom tonight with this long PS from my sister:

Dear Gangster! I am writing this letter because I just had a cup of coffee with lots of caefine and I love you and I can’t sit still to do my math homework! The dog peed on my bed yesterday and it was very bad but I love her and I love you more because you do not pee on my bed and if you did, I would make you clean it up. Instead Chelsea could not clean up her pee and I was forced to do it. By the way when I realized that she did pee on my
bed I rolled over and got my pants and my sock wet in her warm pee and that was not fun. Also did I mention that it was mostly on my new blanket that I got from Steve and Robin which you used and liked and I like it too and it was my new favorite blanket which doesn’t mean much because it was my only new blanket but it was still my favorite and I love the dog less than I did before which is still lots but less than you because I love you more lots and she’s a poopsicle just like you altho not as big as a poopsicle which is why I love you more! Speaking of more, right now I have to do more homework.

I have copious leg hair. This should not surprise anyone who knows me overly much. I’m a hairy guy. Anyway, when pulling my pants down just now to take a shit, I noticed a large amount of leg-hair-static that caused every hair on my legs to stand straight out from them. I wish I could have got a picture.

This next tidbit is probably more information than you needed to know… I thought about posting it a while back, but since I’m already talking about pooping, here goes: I like to watch myself poop.

I know, the big question is how! A question I discovered the answer to about six months ago, quite by accident. I believe the lighting in the bathroom has to be perfect for this to work, but the toilet at work is somehow perfect for it. Basically, I can lean forward a bit, and see my reflection in the toiletwater, through the gap between my legs. It’s strange, I know, but also gruesomely fascinating. The reflection is not the most detailed representation, and I sometimes wish I could see more clearly… but then at other times I’m glad. More detail may push fascinating… into the realm of disgusting.

Have a good one, and may all your stools be soft and pleasant!

So, today I bought all three of the Director’s Label DVDs from best buy. I didn’t know there were only three… and truth be told, I would probably have bought more of them had there been more. I really like the concept, and am excited to view them!

But first, I have a long list of things to do tonight now that I’m free of the novel deadline. 1) watch the rest of the Battle Royale DVD Nate, Laura and I started last night. 2) play some of the new Simpson’s videogame that I purchased before I left for turkey-day, and didn’t get to play, and 3) any number of other “possible” tasks/activities, including: pay bills, write more on the novel, read/finish Blood Music (the Greg Bear novel that I started in the six hour car ride yesterday, which is turning out to be SUPER good), play other video games that I haven’t started and/or played in the last month, and just maybe wrap one of laura’s x-mas presents (hehe).

I can hardly believe it, but I did it. One of only 3680, if you can believe the statistics.

My novel isn’t actually finished though. I just have 50,000 words on it. I think there are maybe another 3K to 10K words left. It’s possible there are more than that even.

I have a nice list of things I want to “fix” when I do go back for editing, and one of them is to make the novel more “literary”. I’ve been up a full two hours just goofing around after the deadline, reading the forums, ordering the nano t-shirt, checking email, and now this entry, (but I’d wanted to do this before I went to bed from the beginning), so my eyes are starting to get all blurry and I really need to get some sleep. I’ve been sniffling and blowing my nose almost since I got home. I hope I’m not coming down with anything.

So the novel is set around mercury, right? In the first few days, I took a lot of inspiration from that. Reading up on mercury, getting all the facts and figures straight… but then I sort of forgot about it. Then tonight I was reading the nano forums, and found some guy who was asking a question about sci-fi books based in the courtrooms… (I know I’ve read a few, but I’m horrible about remembering names and things.) …anyway, it occurred to me to check my copy of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which is one of the most amazing books I own.

Nothing. Not an entry for law, lawyers, courtrooms, courtroom drama, judges, judicial system or any of the few others I tried. I may be missing a term, but I definitely couldn’t find anything.

Long story short, after I hit zero on that one, I looked up mercury. Now I’ve got some reading to do… I’d like to read William Wallace Cook’s Adrift in the Unknown, and re-read David Brin’s Sundiver in the relatively near future. And if I can find copies, I’ll read the short stories “Masquerade” (by Clifford Simak) and Asimov’s “Runaround”.

Plus, I’d like to put a buttload more imagery into the thing. I’ve been writing some dry ass shit, I think. Fast paced, but very little descriptive details. I’m not sure why, really. I get more into the ideas of the setting than the description of the setting. It may not be a bad thing… but I would like more visual imagery.

I’m going to aim for at least 1000 words per day till I’m done with this thing. Definitely not as harrowing as the 3.5K I had to hit today to finish on time. And now I can say I did it. Not, yet, that I’ve finished a novel in my lifetime… but that I’ve written 50K in one month, which I think of as no small accomplishment. *finishes patting self on back*

Now I’m off to climb in bed with Laura, to sleep for a good hour before she gets up for work.