Well, then, I will leave here my comments on a couple of your latest Particles.

I am greatly disappointed at any anagram server which, to the input "Ronald Wilson Reagan," does not reply with "Insane Anglo Warlord."

For movie quotes, and adequate searchability, I still go to www.imdb.com.

Me too. The Heart Attack knife should be pink with a Hello Kitty face on it, so as to more easily get through security checks.

Heh. Surely, there are nicer obscure places you could hide than Lubbock? Lubbock alone contributes more than half of the U.S. annual export of bleak.

True, we'd probably find you in a bookstore in London...

My favorite store name in Texas was the one for a little boutique in Austin called "Lubbock or Leave It." Sadly, I never went in to see what they actually sold.

This has nothing to do with your mail situation, however. Sorry.

I don't know why I fixed on Lubbock.

Back when I was Mg. Ed. at Tor, I was ranting one day about how I was going to move to Lubbock, live in a double-wide, work in a hardware store, and never again admit to having any acquaintance with the universe of books.

Beth Meacham, who'd heard that rant before, sweetly informed me that it was no use; they'd already phoned all the hardware stores in Lubbock and warned them that I was a dangerous lunatic.

Simon: It doesn't? Does it at least know that "Spiro Agnew" anagrams as "grow a penis"?

My all-time favorite: "eleven plus two" is an anagram of "twelve plus one".

Avram: You're right, of course. Black, it's just for funsies. Pink with a Hello Kitty on it, you've got yourself an evil weapon.

I'm possessed by a strange urge to wander around singing Keith DeCandido's "Another Saturday Night In Lubbock", but perhaps fortunately for the sanity of the neighbours I can't remember how it goes.

Simon,

Hey, as long as you like IMDB, feel free to look me up there...(John Farrell VII).

Teresa, you really don't want to live in Lubbock. I wouldn't wish Lubbock on Kris Rusch. Go for Cross Plains or Glen Rose or Bastrop instead: you won't feel like slicing your wrists open with a cheese grater after the first five minutes.

(Although, to be fair, I understand that Texas Tech has more than its share of looniness, but that's only to compensate for the horror of the surrounding town. it's like keeping sanity in Dallas requires an appreciation of George Romero movies and "King of the Hill".

Whenever I get frustrated with my job, I threaten to quit and move into a trailer in the Adirondacks and raise Border collies.

Or persue my dream career of being a bag changer for a prairie dog vacuum.

You should move to Waco. It's really much nicer than Lubbock. Honest. For example, we don' t have a single diseased prairie dog. (Although I can't recommend drinking the water.)

My wife's grandparents live in Poteet, just outside of San Antonio. It is home to the largest plastic strawberry in the world.

You can purchase "Another Saturday Night In Lubbock" here: http://www.sff.net/people/d.honigsberg/music/cds.htm

When the stresses of undergrad life at Caltech got too bad, my roommate would propose transferring to USC to become football players. We figured the physical pain of being 150lb tackling dummies would be less than the intellectual trauma we were suffering.

Jeez, folks, these cracks about Lubbock worry me. I've never been there, but a job in my field opened up there a while ago, and since they're rare, I wondered whether I was being foolish in not applying. How about Oklahoma City?

It doesn't? Does it at least know that "Spiro Agnew" anagrams as "grow a penis"?

Yes, I checked that first. Though it doesn't give the words in that order.

I always disliked Lubbock, but mostly it was because my cousin's family moved there after being in a really really cool part of Amarillo. Both partook of the ghastly-tasting Lake Meredith water.

On the other hand, Dad went to Tech, and Lubbock is where I finally found a copy of the score for "Porgy and Bess." It was expensive at $35, but it's astronomical now.

At least it wasn't Tyler.

Simon: I've been to Lubbock and it's 'eh'. For real awfulness you want Amarillo or, damn, nominal aphasia's got me again. That place in West Texas with all the oil.

Oklahoma City. I really like OKC, in some ways more than Tulsa, but I'm considered rather weird by those who know me and love me. OKC has lots of tornadoes and is very flat. On the other hand, it has character and some neat old buildings. And Norman, home of the University of Oklahoma, is a mere 30 minutes away.

MKK--genuine Okie even if I am living in Seattle

Teresa: I know that my life needs simplifying in some way when I begin to have fantasies about going to live in Phoenix or some other very sunny place, being a waitress, hnever again having a meaningful conversation with anyone, nor making a decision of any importance. (I recommend a series of books by Charlaine Harris with the word Shakespeare in the titles -- about a woman who ran away and set up as a housecleaner in a small town in Arkansas.)

MKK

Mary Kay -- well, a number of authentic Okies -did- drive west. Wave at Ma Joad if you see her at Starbucks. (Okay, Pike Place Market, giving a geoduck the fish eye.)

This message brought to you by United Popcult Service: This has been obliquely referenced where what is obliquely referenced must be.

Midland/Odessa. My gramma lived there. I spent many summers in the elementary school across the street from her house, or up in the treehouse, playing spies with my childhood sweetheart, Tommy.

My dad was one of those Okies. I don't think I could live in Lubbock. I've got kinfolk there and I kind of like not being in the same state with some of my relatives.

Jeremy, anyone who could survive CalTech deserves nothing but admiration. One of my friends in high school was accepted into CalTech's engineering program but had to switch to SMU because of his father's influence, and I always admired the fact that he still got an aerospace engineering degree on a football scholarship. (In high school, we used to joke that thanks to him, the average IQ of the Lewisville Fighting Farmers football team was 12, because a 250 IQ could only do so much.) I know that CalTech would have eaten me alive, and still would, so hats off to you.

Bastrop is pretty, and close-ish to Christ of the Hills Monastery, which has a wonderful icon shop and its own weeping icon:

http://lightinfo.org/maitreya/bsblanco.htm

test

hello everyone,i am a chinese girl in Shanghai.
Accidently i find the web,i love this place.

hope to make friends with you .

But how would you have felt if you'd gotten home from travelling, to find -no- mail waiting, -no- messages on the answering machine, and -no- comments posted in Making Light?

Laura: Yes, that's the place!

Mr. Ford: You is very silly. Everybody knows Ma Joad only drinks Seattle's Best.

MKK

Hello, Ala, and welcome.

Bruce, I'd have felt paranoid but vaguely relieved. Then I'd have checked to see what happened to Panix.

I hereby award two points plus the keyboard printed on the side of my face for "This has been obliquely referenced where what is obliquely referenced must be."

My backup plan has always been tropical yak herding. If I can't make it as a psychologist, I can go to a remote, sunny island somewhere and herd tropical yaks.

(What? Because they wear Hawaiian shirts, of course.)

Mary kay,

I know that my life needs simplifying in some way when I begin to have fantasies about going to live in Phoenix or some other very sunny place, being a waitress, hnever again having a meaningful conversation with anyone, nor making a decision of any importance.

Are you implying that waiters and waitresses never have meaningful conversations with anyone? As a veteran Boston restaurant gofer and fishmonger, I resemble that remark!

I could have happily lived the rest of my life without seeing that egg separator.

Incidentally, I stumbled across this site

http://www.everyonewhosanyone.com/

which is one of those sites run by one of those poor deluded middle-aged white men who can't understand why he doesn't get published. Was anybody aware of this? Tor is only mentioned parenthetically as an imprint of St. Martin's.

Mary Kay -- forget Phoenix unless you want to fry in 117-degree summers (nightly lows sometimes in the 90s), with extensive local news coverage of child drownings and road rage murders. Though I sometimes figure I'll spend my old age scrubbing floors at McDonalds, at least it will be in Prescott AZ (also home to Alan Dean Foster), with great views of the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, and populations of ravens and toddling quail.

John: No indeed that's not what I'm implying. Waitressing is merely how I intend to support myself while pursuing a life of no meaning conversations nor important decisions. As for decisons necessary on the job -- well hmm. If waitressing is out what would you recommend?

MKK

The sample chapters he has up are 7, 14, and 25. Why oh why? (Chapter 7 looked like it could have been the start of a semi-interesting story, but it throws me just to know that it's Chapter 7. Weren't chapters 1-3 good enough to show other people?)

Mary Kay,

Hmm. How about this: a friend of my dad's once bought a huge warehouse and turned it into a self-storage building. Offered me $20,000 a year to mind the place full-time. Told me all I'd have to do is sit at a desk all day—I could even do my creative writing on the job.

I turned him down, but it occurs to me that might be the kind of job for you. Self-storage proprietor, if that's the proper title....

:)

Cripes, Holly, that guy's a genius and a half. Publicly posting all your exchanges with agents and editors is great if you're trying to guarantee yourself a steady diet of form responses in the future. And while he doesn't list me, or Patrick, or Beth Meacham, or Jim Frenkel, or David Hartwell, he does list Amelie Littell: SMP's head of Trade Production, who has nothing whatsoever to do with submissions.

I was just really put off by his snarky attitude and name-calling in the guise of "humor." And he repeatedly printed the email addresses of people who asked him not to, claiming that no one has the right to stop their email addresses from being published... He may be correct from a strictly legal POV, but one CAN prevent one's phone number from being printed in the public directory, and now that we have this national no-call list, I figure it's only a matter of time until you can choose where or when your web address is printed, as well.

My backup before I had my college degree was to become a street musician, preferably in a National League city. Most recently I contemplated Miami as a destination whuile me and Avram were split up, but then said to myself, why should he have my home borough all to himself?

Now I live in Brooklyn and he doesn't. Does this mean I won?

Chris - only if you're not together. And you're vindictive.

Although Teresa's choice of Lubbock is interesting, I'm more curious about how she would fake her own death.

nominal aphasia's got me

Thanks Mary Kay! I have it bad, but I forgot what it was called.

That's funny, Jeff, when I've got it, "aphasia" is often the only word I *can* remember.

Jeff: You're welcome. I never have trouble remembering 'nominal aphasia' thought I can't always put my hand on names of Texas cities I know and hate. It always amuses people.

MKK

I've been to Lubbock. Don't do it.

Is nominal aphasia where you lose your proper nouns? I get that most afternoons.

I haven't seen the latest update of the EveryoneWhosAnyone site, but I think it's doomed to eventual failure because of some of the things its operator does such as giving out email addresses when the respondents have asked otherwise as HollyM pointed out. Anyway, I think that a sampling of one, even though he's listing their responses, can be misleading. It's quite possible that we're not seeing enough of his words which could account for some of the responses being the way those are.

My own experience with Preditors & Editors (tm) is that it's better to give out only information that is known to be accurate and verified, if possible from multiple sources though there are reasonable limits. Additionally, P&E doesn't list email addresses unless asked or authorized by the editor, agent, or publisher to post it. Probably, that's a significant part of the reason for P&E's survival in the past seven years despite threats from those it doesn't recommend.

By the way, I didn't make it with my last sub to Tor, so I'll try again when I have something new. Sure did hope it would catch your interest, but that's how it goes.

Regards,
DaveK

Teresa - nouns generally, I think. But there are degrees, from the usual "I picked up a...whatchamacallit at the hardware store" to the guy who said of a comb "It's what you use to comb yourself, but I can't think what it's called!" That last was after brain surgery; note, though, that the sentence has no nouns at all in it. He hadn't lost all his nouns, but there are people who do.

There are so, so many kinds of aphasia. It's really fascinating. For me, the really terrifying kind is Broca's. Patients with Broca's aphasia talk gibberish, and give no sign of understanding anything said to them. They apparently believe they're speaking normally, but no one is sure: there's no way to ask them.

Brrr.

Also, it's absolutely permanent, because it comes from severe damage to Broca's Area in the brain. They can be completely healthy in all other respects, but they have to be institutionalized, because there's just no way they can function.

My problem feels like brain lock. I try to think of a word, think of the wrong word, and get stuck on that wrong word. No matter how hard I try, I can't get past it. My solutions are to google it, dictionary it, or thesaurus it, because whatever it is, I can usually think of a synonym or something related to it or even a common phrase or quote that contains that word. Thank God for Google.

My solution of last resort is to forget about it and go on. Some time later, usually when I least expect it, it comes to me.

I think it is a chemical imbalance, because when I am drunk, it doesn't happen as often. Also when I am writing a lot of words a day for a sustained period, it's like the mental exercise keeps my neurons limber, because it doesn't happen as much then, either.

Very strange.

"I try to think of a word, think of the wrong word, and get stuck on that wrong word. No matter how hard I try, I can't get past it....I think it is a chemical imbalance, because when I am drunk, it doesn't happen as often. Also when I am writing a lot of words a day for a sustained period, it's like the mental exercise keeps my neurons limber, because it doesn't happen as much then, either."

Jeff: several years ago, when I had ECT, the same type of aphasia happened to me for a few months. My vocabulary shrank exponentially and all I could come up with were those wrong words: "sounds like...looks like...feels like..."

In absolute frustration, I started slogging through NYTimes crossword puzzles compulsively, several a day. And for whatever reason, whether because my brain got better or the mental exercise limbered up my neurons, the incidence of the aphasia gradually lessened. It still happens, but not nearly as often, and now (sigh) it's just as likely to be age.

Oh-- I also forgot how to get places. I knew where my house was, and where the store was, say, but I couldn't remember how to get from one to the other until someone took me there.

Sounds similar to nomea, the inability to recall propper names. ex: "I just finished reading this great book by that... guy, what's his name? The one who... you know, wrote that other book that was really good."

Nominal aphasia is just nouns in general. I developed it after I began taking Effexor, but several people have suggested that's coincidental and that it's just middle age. I can feel the noun I want hanging there just out of reach. I know its shape and often its initial letter. But I can't grab it. I can usually describe it which is enough to let someone else supply it or carried on long enough, brings the word within grabbing range. It's a very peculiar thing.

MKK

Xopher: We made up a few months later; in fact, we went out tonight. He's in Jersey City now, and I wish he were a bit more convenient to visit.

Those in the know refer to the place as "Labuttock."

"Bruce, I'd have felt paranoid but vaguely relieved."

I frequently feel vaguely relieved to be paranoid. (The nice thing about paranoia is that Everything Makes Sense! Life actually has a -plot-? Man, that is -such- a relief to know....)

Scratching head here on the "oblique reference" reference. Did I make an oblique reference? Did you. Wasn't aware of it, either way, if so.

Nomea--so that's what it's called!

I have it bad. My assistants laugh because I give them affectionate nicknames instead...Once, there were two girls who basically helped me keep the library open during a strike, coming in every day at 7:30 in the morning...and I called them "sweetie" and "corazoncito" for months! (I found out through the grapevine they had nicknamed me "honeybunny").

Nouns are the first things I lose when I'm tired. Never lost them entirely. Yet.

---L.

I've lost nouns in silence.

This happened a lot during bar review. Get up, go to lectures, come home, sit in front of computer and organize notes from lectures into outlines, read more outlines, write flashcards, practice flashcards . . . Chad would come home for dinner and I would be unable to remember the names of anything, because I hadn't *spoken* all day.

It was very strange. I could almost feel the gears of my brain trying to turn through the rust on them.

Just one of many reasons I'm glad the bar is over.

For me it's proper nouns -- especially names. My wife gets rather irritated when she hears me start to refer to someone by a description because the name just won't come forth . . .

Cripes, Holly, that guy's a genius and a half.

His letters are funny, like listening to those excerpts from the cable company's answering machine of people calling to complain because their cable is out.

But he certainly does seem to want to make that hill as steep as possible.

Nominal aphasia is just nouns in general. I developed it after I began taking Effexor, but several people have suggested that's coincidental and that it's just middle age.

I don't think there's any useful clinical data out there, but my nominal aphasia got markedly worse when I started taking Effexor. I also lose adjectives and adverbs, which worry me more. For a while, though, I seemed to be losing verbs, and that downright scared me, but that seems to have stopped happening. Any gate, my psychiatrist seemed unsurprised at the nominal aphasia, said it could be a side effect, and not to worry. She did frown when I mentioned the verbs, though.

I can feel the noun I want hanging there just out of reach. I know its shape and often its initial letter. But I can't grab it. I can usually describe it which is enough to let someone else supply it or carried on long enough, brings the word within grabbing range. It's a very peculiar thing.

The first time I ever heard the term, Scott Imes said that the way around it was to describe it in words and keep on until the word popped up. He said that usually you can see it in your mind. "Big box, the doors open sideways, in a hotel, it has buttons on the inside, it takes you up and down -- Elevator!!!" That technique works great for concrete nouns, I can see them and describe them. It's lousy for adjectives, though.

Ah, drugs. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em (or, at any rate, I suspect that mainlining Effexor would be a Very Bad Idea).

Jeez. That guy (anyonewhoseveryone)is just the sort of crank/pest we all grow to know and dread. But he's out front enough to perhaps make something out of it all in a Don Novello sorta way, if he has the humility to do so, which I doubt. His exchange with Mitchell Ivers (formerly copy chief at RH trade) is especially amusing ("the moral equivalent of spam").
Yeah, why Texas? Take it from me: if you want happy obscurity, Europe is the place. And you can bone up on your foreign languages (unless it's an English-speaking country--those are OK, too). I fantasize about working in the dusty, cluttered secondhand bookstore in Torremolinos--not that the sullen, sunburned Englishman who ran it would ever give me more that the minimum conversation required.

If you want real obscurity, though, don't simply try Europe and some romantic little small mediterranean town -- try somewhere nasty in Europe. Bits of the former East Germany, maybe; or if you want English-speaking (for incomprehensible values of English), somewhere like Dewsbury or Livingstone.

I once worked in Dewsbury for a year. Then I escaped.

I once worked in Dewsbury for a year. Then I escaped.

Just goes to prove that every place has its own small corner of hell. Some have big corners.

Charlie, Dewsbury is out of the question. The North Country is out of the question. I swear, I had less trouble figuring out what people were saying to me in Rome than I did in Newcastle.

In Rome, I only understand a dab of their language, but all the consonants are there so I at least have a fighting chance. Whereas in the North -- you know the joke about the guy giving directions who says to turn left at the vacant lot on the corner where the Grange used to be? In the North, the words are full of vacant lots where the consonants used to be. Whole sentences go by where I can't pick out a single word.

I had this one terrible moment on the road when I realized that it was getting late, I needed to find a room for the night, I was wearier than I'd expected, and the only people anywhere near me whose English I was sure I could follow were the Indian immigrants running the gas station and convenience store.

Thanks for mentioning my little list, boys and girls. I'm sure I've left a few people off and I may even have gotten a thing or two wrong here and there, which I'd be grateful to hear about and glad to fix, but where else are you gonna get current, up-to-date contact information for over 2,000 literary agents, editors and publishers--around 600 or so with websites--for free? My personality is my personality. I like it. G.

Oh, dear God. I did it now. I should have remembered about webcrawlers.

"I was just really put off by his snarky attitude and name-calling in the guise of 'humor.'"

Snarkiness is in the eye of the beholderess. Name-calling is name-calling, it's not in the "guise" of anything.

"And he repeatedly printed the email addresses of people who asked him not to, claiming that no one has the right to stop their email addresses from being published..."

I didn't claim anything, an e-mail address is an e-mail address.

"I figure it's only a matter of time until you can choose where or when your web address is printed, as well."

So much for Google; it was cool while it lasted. G.

Interesting; did Mr. O'Neill pick this topic, quiescent for three months, at random?

I don't know -- but he won't be picking one of mine again.

Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, MT Blacklist.