Open thread, so here's something apropos of nothing...
I just achieved a personal best for Strange Things My Family Thinks About Me. One of my cousins heard "from someone else in the family" that I was a Scientologist, and has been spreading the tale.
I like Pollack's, too, but I think I win the ultra-short division. (No, it wasn't edited down.)
Re: stupid ethnicity questions...
One of my closest friends, a very dark-skinned Dravidian by way of Malaysia, married a very pale Jewish woman. They have two kids. The kids have dark skin as well.
She's gotten used to total strangers wanting to know if they were adopted or something. But one woman pushed it too far-- she asked, "Are those your kids? I mean, yours, as in came from your body?"
So she said, "Well, they're definitely my *husband's*, but I'm not sure they're mine."
Harry wrote:
> I've decided to take one of the steps Ms. Doe suggests would help mid-list authors.
> I've decided to "think."
> Also, I've begun to "read" and "enjoy culture."
> What a wonderful change of pace! A little taxing, though.
I took the opposite tack. I watched network TV for two hours, followed it up with a DVD of pro wrestling, and microwaved a Prokofiev CD.
Half a dozen midlist authors jumped off the Golden Gate. I like to think of it as doing my part to clear shelf space for *my* crap.
Regarding bringing the laptop to a coffee shop: I was on the bleeding edge on this one. Macintosh Powerbook 100, 4 meg of RAM, 20 meg hard drive. Cost me about a grand and a half. (Side note to TNH: yes, large parts of the ms. were written on that thing. I still have it, although it no longer boots.)
I tried the coffee shop thing, I really did. Thing is, if you're in a coffee shop, you're drinking coffee. If you're drinking coffee, your bladder fills with urine. Damned if I was going to walk away from a a table with a grand and a half of electronics on it, while counting on people sitting nearby to tackle a thief who grabbed the thing and lit for the door. Since writing is time consuming, it was drink coffee, write, pack everything into bag, hit the head, come back, get next cup of coffee, find seat, write for another hour... Any flow I managed to get up was interrupted by having to come to a kidney-induced screeching halt-- save manuscript, shut down machine, pack up, urinate, unpack machine, reboot machine, restart application.
After (A) not having women rip off their shirts and yell "TAKE ME NOW!" at the sight of a Real, Live Writer, and (B) drinking so much coffee the screen turned into a eyeball-twitch induced blur, I went home.
Amy wrote:
> Weren't there Triffles or Truffles or something in a Vonnegut novel?
Tralfamadorians. (Which I had to look up how to spell by typing "Vonnegut farting tap dancing" into Google. Actually, I'm somewhat surprised I didn't end up at a web page offering mp3s of a new-to-me sexual variation.)
And, to be a geek and list things because I can, there's also _Star Trek_'s "Tribbles," John Wyndham's "Triffids," and Larry Niven's "Trinocs."
> — or has the entire universe been unnaturally irritating lately?
Nope. Universe is the same. You're becoming a vicious, bitter old shrew, and nobody loves you. Go on out to the back yard and start eating worms.
In the particular case of this bit of bonehead-mail lodged in your inbox, consider that (A) since you're not dead, your own personal clue level is monotonicly increasing, and (B) as computers spread through the population, the average clue level of someone capable of tripping over your blog is decreasing. Ergo, it's neither that people are getting dumber, nor is it that you're metamorphosing into a harpy-- it's just that the technology to annoy you is becoming more available.
I don't see anything in the original note that looks like an explicit request for advice-- but I have a Y chromosome, and so (per Tannen) that means that when a woman mentions a problem, I immediately assume she's asking for a solution to it. Ergo, this advice is worth what you paid for it... There will always-- *always*-- be a segment of the population that you simply *cannot* explain yourself to. Even otherwise rational people can fall into this category. (Maybe their mothers were frightened by an editor when carrying them.) Eventually, you're going to have to stop trying to punch out the Tar Baby.
Now, this may have the unfortunate side effect that someone out there-- perhaps even many someones-- may become convinced you're so arrogant, you don't even bother to attempt to gently correct their misapprehensions. Well, bummer. Stress weakens the immune system, and you're not a kid any more. If nothing else, it must have taken a fair bit of time to think about and type in all the above. You could have been knitting instead. I happen to think knitting is nigh pointless, but at least if you'd gone with knitting, you'd have half a sock in hand, rather than a vague feeling that you're trying to be a nice person, and it isn't working, so maybe you're *not* a nice person. (For what little it's worth, you've always been nice to *me*. Given that I'm incredibly thorny, that's pretty clear evidence that you are not, in fact, a she-bitch from the eleventh pit of Hell.) (And, of course, if your teeth itched and you just needed to go into catharsis mode for a bit, that's cool, too.)
If need be, apply the crayon test. That is, look at incoming email, and ask yourself if you'd bother responding to it if it had shown up in your paper mailbox written in crayon. Some of it will still be respondable-- the stuff from first graders saying, "So what doex an editter do, anyway?"-- but some will clearly be written in crayon because the nurse doesn't allow the patient in #406 to have any sharp objects in the cell.
That being said, the excerpts from the bonehead-mail are intestesting-- in a clinical psychology / train wreck sort of way. One of the more peculiar dynamics in this culture is the notion of, "You're filth, but I could deign to love you anyway." (My favorite example is in Hitchcock's _Marnie_, where Sean Connery blackmails Tippi Hedren into marrying him, rapes her, criticizes the technique of her resulting suicide attempt, blah blah blah-- but only to *help* her, you see.) The litmus test to spot this is rapid variation from praise to condemnation. [1] The last sentence quoted is a classic example-- saying *in the same breath* that you're a good writer and you're powerful, but that you're a bitch as well. (Note in particular the use of the term "catfight"-- again, per Tannen, one of those words usually reserved for putting down women.)
[1] Of course, when *I* do it, I'm just being affectionately brusque. Yeah, that's the ticket. You can *trust* me. I'm one of the *good* ones. (Have I already mentioned my theory that the Neandertals went extinct because Neandertal women were too smart to buy the lines men handed them? By the time Cro-Magnon women figured out they were being handed a line of hooey, they were already pregnant. This is also why modern men look for youth in a mate, and virginity has the cachet it does-- what we're really looking for is someone inexperienced enough to actually *believe* us when we say, "Of course I'll respect you in the morning.")
> In Teresa's case I might suspect a 6 after the 1, for the verbal score.
Naah. She's pretty coherent, and as Tom noted, you usually get a 200 on the verbal section of the SAT just for showing up. I suppose a 160 might be possible if it had been an extraordinarily easy test that year...
She's alive. (Or at least she was this morning.) She sounded as coherent as one can expect from someone in the middle of an office move.
McDuff wrote:
> Hell, I think any progressive voter who has a choice of Centre-Right Candidate A or Centre-Right Candidate B has a right to complain that there's nobody on the ticket who adequately represents their views.
This is true. However, I also have the right to complain that my hairline isn't what it used to be, and blueberries tasted better in the old days. But I have a *responsibility* to vote for the candidate who *best* matches my views. There are six billion people on the planet, and the only one who agrees with me on everything is me. (And that's only on a *good* day.)
Jakob wrote:
> after Isandlwana, the Zulus had a stock of modern British rifles and ammunition
Where did the Zulus find screwdrivers to open the boxes with?
Regarding Nader: I'm going to go ahead and condemn folks who voted Nader in 2000, even if
their states went Gore.
At least in my circle of more-or-less lefties, we were sending email back and forth reminding
each other of times in the past when a split vote ushered in a *total* moron. I was flabbergasted
when people equivalenced Gore and Bush about anything-- having read Molly Ivan's _Shrub_, I
would have voted for Charles Manson before George W.
But to get back to castigating Nader voters: the problem was that everything that made Nader look
like he had a hope in Hell, or at least was a meaningful protest vote, drew voters away from
Gore. This includes Nader supporters in states like California-- pre-election polls showing Ralph
was garnering a few points of the vote made voting for him *thinkable*. Any individual Nader voter
may never have been polled-- but supporting a candidate to ones circle of friends spreads the
idea around until it starts showing up in polls.
Actually, the whole idea of a protest vote strikes be as being as silly as a a toffee spear. You
don't like either of the candidates; great. In that case, why bother voting at all? I guarantee
you that Bush the Lesser didn't take office thinking, "Gee, more people voted for leftists
like Gore and Nader than for me. I'd better make sure I don't do anything to piss off the tree
huggers."
McDuff wrote:
> but I have my doubts that Clinton, or Kerry, are different enough.
Er... George W. won a little under 50% of the popular vote, remember. When push comes
to shove, there are *lots* of Americans with all the raw brainpower of canned pineapple. You can
*forget* a "real progressive" taking office; we're fighting a holding action to keep from slipping back
to the 1930s right now.
FranW wrote:
> It's madness enough for fiction publishing, but trespassing on scientific freedom seems really OTT.
You did hear about the group of sixty scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, blasting the
current administration for ignoring inconvenient scientific results? And note too that as a
direct result of the ban on stem cell research, the most recent breakthrough towards theraputic
cloning occurred in South Korea...
I have a theory: the current administration wants to roll back to the Good Old Days: the mid 1930s.
No New Deal, women and minorities firmly in their place, cheap and plentiful labor, and technology
going to build new and better toys for the moneyed classes.
(Thread drift warning...)
Goedels work has a boatload of implications, one of which being that any finite state machine designed
to prove or disprove theorems in a formal system will be unable to prove some true theorems and
unable to disprove some false theorems. For more than any sane person could want to know about this,
Hofstadtler's _Goedel, Esher, Bach_ beats the point to death.
Adriana, TNH-- apologies. Nothing like misremembering who wrote what what where to look dumb.
As far as math being easier than writing, or writing easier than math, it's not worth worrying about.
You start saying things like "This blob of marmalade makes a better hammer than this dead fish."
They're two different skills-- although they do have one thing in common, in that there's no way to learn
how to be an insightful mathematician except to try to do it and hope for the best.
(Side note: per Goedel's work, there's no machine that can tell whether a mathematical theorem
is provable or disprovable, either.)
I have to admit, I felt for the poor fellow over in
Slushkiller who asked something along the lines of
"How do I tell when it's good enough?" to get hit
with TNH's "It depends." Of course, that's better
than what I felt like saying, which was, "When it
no longer sucks."
I don't mind Ten Rules lists, but I'd feel better if
they were called "Ten Heuristics." If Writing Good
Stuff was just a question of finding a magic recipe,
writing would be an engineering degree. (Cf. Fritz
Leiber's _The Silver Eggheads_, if you can find
a copy.)
Re: Abigail's question about why Courier?
Answer: that's how it's always been done. (Well,
for the last 70 years or so.)
Typewriters had one font-- Courier-- and there's no
compelling reason to change an existing standard.
A manuscript isn't supposed to be *pretty*, it's
supposed to be easy to work with-- and bookmakers
have been working with Courier for 3.5 generations.
(Side note: 12 point Courier, not 10 point.)
'Twas Friday, and the slush heap grows;
It rocks and teeters in my glare.
All hopeful, as the sheer height shows
Are the writers out there.
Beware the editor, my son!
With pens of red and eyes of pearl!
Beware the mail room glitch, and shun
The non-SASE-ed transom hurl!
I take the first sent screed in hand:
Long time the gibberish I scan--
I've never seen prose this damn bland;
Must answer; must make plan...
But as in weary thought I stood,
The bean counter, black tie on blouse,
Threw red spreadsheets, dodge though I could,
And cried for more cash cows!
I quit. I quit. My heart won't sing
I'm here to read, not to crush dreams.
I'm a lit geek, not marketing;
This underside's all seams.
But I have bills, and New York's cold;
Send no-thanks note, and move along.
At least he tried, his heart is bold;
Sign name to standard song.
'Twas Friday, and the slush heap grows;
It rocks and teeters in my glare.
All hopeful, as the sheer height shows
Are the writers out there.
Niall wrote:
> So, who’s the candidate from Tatooine?
I don't know. But I do know Ann Coulter reminds
me of Jabba the Hutt. Not in shape-- just in the
schadenfreude and live frog scarfing sense.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 20 |
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