According to my chocoholic mother, the dark chocolate available at Trader Joe's is excellent stuff. Reasonably priced, too. And they have single-origin bars. (The rest of my family lives too far away from a TJ's to go on a regular basis, so I get long shopping lists with requests to bring home on holidays. The little silvery-purple three-packs of dark chocolate bars are always high on the list.)
Re: #33: I'm not loving Godiva right now either, which makes me sad, because when I was little they were awesome, and now they've gone and turned all waxy and flavorless on me.
Re #11: Nope. I'm getting something similar: for the "he loved her, he really loved her" variant, when I hit "Repeat the search with omitted results included" it tells me there are 5,000+ hits, but then goes back to 10 (or whatever) when I click through to the second page of results.
"He so loved her" gets some peoms and and badfic results, but "He totally loved her" pulls up television show discussion boards.
Asimov's, in my experience, can take quite a while to get back to people. They're nowhere near some of the other markets, but more than three months is definitely within my experience there. Fret not, ye Asimov's submitters.
I also recently got a rejection from Largish-Magazine-Which-Shall-Remain-Nameless on a short story I submitted back in December of 2005.
(And all this is reminding me it's time to query on that rewrite request story I resubbed in... ack, that was really November?)
If you're wondering if the time your submissions have spent out is normal, the Submitting to the Black Hole market response time tracker is a good place to find out.
I am one of those people who just can't spell. I managed to learn some basic spelling in self-defense -- I shudder at "definately" and "grammer", at least -- but it's all stuff I had to learn by rote. Incorrect and correct spellings of words don't look any different to me until I stop and break them down letter-by-letter. My brain picks up new words easily, but has no interest in learning how to spell them.
When I was in college, however, I once roomed with a world-class speller, the sort of surpremely gifted speller who can hear a word, get a definition, and spell it correctly without ever having encountered it before. She claimed that spelling made sense -- English spelling! -- because once you figured out the etymology of the word and where it came from, the rules of spelling that applied to it were obvious. This is not the sort of thing I could ever learn by rote; it's the sort of thing you're born with, as she was.
Xopher: "Twink." I ran across it in a different type of online RPing, where it generally meant "person who really pisses off the GM, for reasons including (but not limited to!) power-gaming, rules-lawyering, and bringing OOC into IC."
That's probably not the exact same definition as the MMPORG one, but I'm guessing it's similar.
The impression I've gotten, as an aspiring writer on the ground, is that certain of my fellow aspiring writers are hoping that the pitch session might be the secret key they've been so desperately searching for. A way around the slush pile! A way to write "Requested Material" on that envelope! Glory can't be far behind.
The pitch-happy aspiring writers often seem to overlook the fact that a first-class stamp and a decent query letter can also get material requested. Maybe it's the fact that with a pitch conference, the feedback is immediate, and you don't have to wait. Maybe it's the idea of being face to face with a real live publishing professional. (Zoinks!)
Whatever it is they're getting out of it, I'm happy that they're happy; but I wish they'd stop talking about pitch sessions as if they were a required writer skill, because as far as I can tell they aren't. I've sent out queries that got agents and editors to ask for more material, and I'm a nobody. If I can do it, they should be able to, too. But they don't see that -- they just think pitch sessions are a really great opportunity to get their books in front of Real! Live! Editors! And then some of them try to go sell that theory to other aspiring writers as the One True Way, which just irks the hell out of me.
Since I've just thought of it, there's a better metaphor for how I use html versus pdf docs: HTML docs are part of an enormous library full of large and unwieldy books. I can read anything I like, but I'd better be in the library to do it. PDF docs, by contrast, are lightweight magazines I can pick up and bring with me. If they were available in large books in the library I could read them there, of course, but I don't always have library access.
YMMV, boulders of salt, etc.
This is wonderful. How on earth did I miss this the first time around?
#30: PDFs are somewhat more resistant to plagiarism than plain old HTML, since you cannot just highlight and paste it someplace.
Er -- this may be true of some .pdfs, especially ones which have been poorly scanned, but it isn't true of the one linked to in this post. (I just got curious and tried it. CnP was fully operational. I have Adobe Acrobat on this machine, if that's a datapoint.)
I like .pdfs for reading documents. They're not perfect, but neither is html; and they're much easier to save and bring with me on my machine for reading in airports and the like.
In Coupland's Shampoo Planet, there's a nice riff on the American tendency to teach their kids that they can do anything they set their hearts on, if they only try hard enough. A European character points out that really, it'd be much more sensible to raise kids with the expectation that they can become mid-level government functionaries. That way, there wouldn't be that sense of betrayal and guilt when the kids discover that they can't do anything they set their hearts on.
I'm not sure how I feel about it. Believing you can accomplish something makes it more likely that you'll put in the work, of course -- but on the other side there's all the people who audition in the first round of American Idol, who don't seem to know they're truly horrifying singers. (The fact that the same skills needed to judge your own ability at something are the skills needed to make you good at it gets wrapped up in this as well, of course.)
And the belief that you can do whatever you dream of also creates this sense of entitlement. Not for everyone, of course -- but in some people. The PHB types who believe they deserve to have a novel published, for example.
Wow. If I hadn't already been thinking about applying for Viable Paradise next year, this thread certainly would have pulled me off the fence.
Something I've been wondering about, which I haven't found addressed anywhere: Does VP focus mainly on adult SF&F, or has anyone applied with and/or brought YA SF&F?
Mary #82: I've missed flights before, and they didn't blow my checked bags up. (Er, come to think of it, that was probably produced by the dream. Carry on.)
amysue #87: That sounds horrible. And you're right on about the variable reinforcement. It was maybe understandable on the day they put the ban into action, but they've had weeks now and they still don't have their stuff together. Even the signs at different airports say different things, possibly because they date to different eras in the restrictions.
Thus far (seven flights since the liquid ban, all inside the US, one on the day itself -- I'm on the road a great deal for work) I haven't had any TSA experiences out of the ordinary with regards to the security checks. I have yet to have them check my bags when I'm getting on a plane. For the first six flights I also didn't see them checking bags during any boarding process, but then last week flying out of Indy I saw them check a few people at random from another flight, so I guess they must be doing it sometimes. I've traveled with my knitting needles (2.5 mm bamboo sock needles) and my asthma inhaler and they have yet to notice either one.
My guess is that they'll leave the ban in place until after the elections. There's too much about this that seems designed to produce fear.
Oh, thank goodness I'm not the only one who can't get through Jared Diamond without wanting to toss the book at the wall (for more than one reason). I want to like him, I really do. But.
I'll definitely have to check out 1491.
For the record, Diamond isn't where I learned the theories about not all animals being domesticatable; I learned that from Professor Lambert-Karlovsky in a class a few years back, and IIRC he presented several different sources regarding that piece of information.
Random note: it's tempting to talk about the plants and animals domesticated in the Americas, as if it's one set of critters that everyone had access to -- but that wasn't actually the case. The Americas are huge, and organisms' habitable ranges are usually limited. So the Mi'cmaq up in Maritime Canada didn't have llamas, and the Toltecs didn't have buffalo....
In conclusion, anyone who thinks squirrels haven't been domesticated clearly hasn't been to Cambridge, where the squirrels are fat, sassy, and frankly creep me out.
I'd argue that manifest destiny, the worldview of NA settlement through the time of American expansion, wasn't about an untouched Eden; it was about coming into a howling wilderness and taming it, carving out a new life for yourself with little more than the pack on your back and your moral strength and quick wits.
I sing in the choir at the church where Abigail Adams is buried, and we sing a hymn she wrote from time to time. It's nice, and historic, and pretty, but certain of the lyrics are appalling-- touching on manifest destiny, and moral worth as a criteria for colonization, and taking over what the savages aren't worthy of.
The Eden view came in retrospect, as well as the reverence for untouched Nature. During the age of American manifest destiny Nature was frightening, and to be put into a box if at all possible.
From the article: Moreover, few Indians carry the gene that permits adults to digest lactose, a form of sugar abundant in milk. Non-milk-drinkers, one imagines, would be less likely to work at domesticating milk-giving animals.
I suspect this may be muddling cause and effect. Native Americans aren't weird for not being able to digest lactose; the Europeans, who had cows and milk around to adapt to, are the weird ones for being able to digest it. Moreover, milk-bearing animals are generally tasty to eat, and some of them can carry or pull things. So it's not like milk is the only reason to domesticate them.
And then, too, not all animals are good candidates for domestication. Some animals adapt well to fences, while others don't. (I seem to recall deer as one of the "very hard to domesticate" group.) The argument I've heard advanced is that Native Americans didn't domesticate many animals because they didn't have many domesticatable animals available to them.
Simple fresh tomato sauce which does not contain onions: Take an appropriate quantity of fresh tomatoes, somewhere around three per person, because you'll want leftovers. (Ideally they're from your garden; if not, look for ripe tomatoes rather than pretty ones.) Chop into medium-to-small pieces. Throw into a bowl, including the tomato guts. Add chopped fresh basil, at least three handfulls (again, ideally from your garden). Mix and cover with a mixture of good balsamic vinegar, olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper to taste. Let sit for at least two hours before serving over pasta, crostini, or flatbread. Combines well with goat cheese.
For those who are looking for a lower fat tomato-free pasta-and-sausage experience, I've done something similar to this, but with white wine and Trader Joe's chicken sausage and lemon and a bit of olive oil in the pan to keep things from sticking. Topped off with the Trader Joe's powdered Romano -- most powdered Romano and Parmesean is crap, but the stuff Trader Joe's sells in tubs in the cheese section is recognizably Romano and doesn't require washing a grater. It worked out quite nicely. (I like tomatoes, but disapprove of nearly all tomato sauces on the grounds that they are far too sweet.)
I strongly approve of Gorgonzola, but am allergic to mold and once had an asthma attack after being exposed to it. So I try to stay away from it. When my resolve breaks and I just have to have some moldy cheese I make sure my inhaler is close to hand.
...oh. So that's why they had all of those hazmat response crews outside the Lindbergh terminal when I showed up for my flight yesterday. I wondered why only a couple of the airlines had long check-in lines.
There are other hazards from liquids than just the go-boom and create-poison-gas ones, as this showed. I wonder if OSHA has looked into the potential for carcinogen exposure from broken bottles of acetone, etc in the bins? (All the ones I've seen have been those big plastic rubbish/recyling bins on wheels.)
Apparently now they're profiling nervous behaviors to single people out for questioning. Which would make sense, if not for the fact that airport security checkpoints are very good at turning previously unafraid individuals into nervous and frightened ones. I feel sorry for all of the infrequent fliers who are going to be picked up by undertrained TSA staff for looking nervous when confronted by yelling people and dogs and guns.
If party guests offer to help clean up, smile and say, “Why, thank you!” and give them a task. There's no such thing as too many helpers.
Yes. Yes. YES. I spent a year as the designated clean-up organizer at my headmaster's weekly Saturday night open-house, and this is spot on. It's giving them a task right away that's key. People with a task, even a simple or quickly completed one, will get into the swing of the cleanup. People without a task tend to stand around feeling awkward and getting in the way.
The rest of it is spot-on too, of course; that's just the one that jumped out at me.
I was required to show ID in order to buy Acela tickets about, oh, maybe six months ago? Not long-haul, just Boston to NYC and back.
I flew yesterday. Phoenix back to Providence. Based on my experiences and those of colleagues who were flying at different airpots, the security measures were very unevenly applied at different airports. At PHX they were just looking at the X-rays of carryons and then inspecting a few things that looked strange, and there was no secondary check at the gate before boarding the plane. At a smaller airport in NC they were going through the bags of some passengers, but not all. At BOS they apparently were going through every single bag.
Lots of news cameras. I saw reporters interviewing the "sheep-like" passengers mentioned above. You know what? Having been in their shoes, I think their reaction was perfectly understandable. Try being at an airport with people with bullhorns yelling at you that there's a terror threat, and TSA people who ask if you'd rather be SAFE when you ask about whether you'll be able to make your flight, and security teams and dogs and fire response teams -- and not being at least a little bit freaked out. Taking away people's Chap-Stick is idiotic. Absolutely bloody pointless. But I get why it made people feel safer.
*shrug* Maybe if you [generic you] had been at an airport yesterday, in the middle of the freak-out, you'd have been able to tell the television reporter all about what bullshit the whole thing was. But maybe not. It was a scary situation, and the response couldn't have been better-designed to evoke fear. If they had interviewed me yesterday, I might well have been one of the sheep.
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