July 26, 2005
"Try. Fail. Try again. Fail better."

So here I am clutching my Samuel Beckett plush toy with the shiny button eyes, repeating the above mantra until the word "better" is once again more interesting than the word "fail".

July 25, 2005
It's Rapid Blinking Time!!!

My last official Clarion West story is due in less than twelve hours. It currently contains:

2 Hapless time salvagers
1 Chlorine-breathing alien
1 Chechen mobster
1 Dental school dropout from 1983
2 Separate manifestations of Leo Tolstoy
1 Travesty of Vito Corleone called the Grandfather Paradox

It's like Guy Ritchie and Douglas Adams got together and had a crack baby, and then somebody made that crack baby read a hundred short stories and stay up all night drinking coffee for like three days in a row or something. And also kept poking it with a stick. Poor sad little crack baby.

What what what is that buzzing noise I keep hearing?!!

Oh, and my story also had a super-sexy robot named Chareezmo who sounds like Ricardo Montalbán and is in fact upholstered in rich corinthian leather (thanks, SB!), but his scenes got cut so now he's sitting in the scrap pile waiting for a story of his own.

Back to work!!!

July 20, 2005
Okay, Okay

I have been admonished for Failure to Update. And so:

Number of Times I Have Been Late to Class / Meetings: Still Two

OMGINaD Moments / DCiSS: Uh...lost track / One. Or so.

Yoga Sessions: Eight

Caffeine Intake Level: Medium

Sleep Deprivation Level: Medium. I think. The problem is that I'm sleeping in 1.5 - 4.5 hour bursts whenever I need it and/or can get away with it, and this is, of course, taking its toll.

Homicidal Tendencies: Same

Number of Stories I've Critiqued: Seventy-six

Number of Stories Submitted for Critique: Five (next last! one due Tuesday)

Level of Satisfaction with Current Story in Progress: High, mostly because I solved my oh-crap-I'm-conflating-quotes-from-The Godfather-and-Casablanca-and-now-the-joke-doesn't-work dilemma (my very tired brain ran them together as, "Someday, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life." Yeah. I know: sad).

A Sentence from My Story That I Wrote as a Placeholder and Then Decided I Really Liked But Will Have to Change Because One of the Nouns Is Stolen: "Bite me, you frog-faced flitch fucker."

A note about the cursing: yep, I sure am doing a lot of it. That always happens when I'm sleep deprived. Nine more days + sleep time, and I'll be all sweetness and light again. Okay, maybe just "light". Okay, fine: just "and".

July 13, 2005
Ho Ho Ho

I edited my story in green pen, and then I made notes on the same manuscript in red pen, and now it looks like the most fucked up Christmas ever.

July 11, 2005
Overdue Stats

Number of Times I Have Been Late to Class / Meetings: Two (the second incident was a minor, scullery-related thing)

OMGINaD Moments / DCiSS: Still Three / One

Yoga Sessions: Seven

Caffeine Intake Level: Medium-Low

Sleep Deprivation Level: Medium-Low

Homicidal Tendencies: Like, totally minor, okay? Way, way lower than my DJDA (Day Job Daily Average)

Number of Stories I've Critiqued: Fifty-Five

Number of Stories Submitted for Critique: Still Three (next one due Wednesday)

Level of Satisfaction with Current Story in Progress: Medium -- I mean, Low -- no, wait...High! -- er, Medium. Definitely Medium.

Favorite Near-Future Term in My Current Story That I Strongly Suspect Actually Sucks But Which I Will Probably Leave in Anyway: "preBay"

Light at the end of the tunnel: Dim

July 07, 2005
Here There Be Spoilers...But Only for the Really, Really Geeky

I went to a preview of The Fantastic Four tonight (thanks, Leslie and the Science Fiction Museum!). It was okay -- not X-Men good, not Daredevil bad. Only two major disappointments, really:

1) E was not there to see it with me. It just isn't a Marvel Extravaganza without him.

2) Doctor Doom never once referred to himself in the third person. I get that he couldn't run around doing it through the whole movie ("Shrimp puff?" "No, thanks -- Doom is allergic to shellfish"), but there was one moment when it would have been perfect.* Jane was much aggrieved that the filmmakers did not take advantage of it.

Also, Stan Lee's screen time is on its way back up. Bleah.

On the plus side, Michael Chiklis is great as Ben Grimm. In fact, he, um, rocks. Yeah, I know, sorry. Just be grateful I cut the joke about Latverian folk art.

*His last line in the parking garage

July 03, 2005
Frat Boys Exploding

Fireworks. They're exploding fireworks. But at the moment I prefer it without the direct object.

Number of Times I Have Been Late to Class / Meetings: Sadly, One.

That was Friday morning, after I e-mailed my story at 9:07 a.m. and then trundled down to class. And the fact is, if at 8:52 I'd known how to cry "Uncle!", how to get my critique moved, how to explain why I was going to skip class and just curl up in the fetal position on my bed, I would have done all those things. But I didn't know the procedure, so all I could do was turn in the typo-ridden, non-edited hunk of goo and go sit behind my name card yet again.

For the record, I still don't know the procedure.

OMGINaD Moments / DCiSS: Three / One

Yoga Sessions: Five

Caffeine Intake Level: Medium

Sleep Deprivation Level: Medium (on Friday that was, of course, High)

Homicidal Tendencies: Nihil

Number of Stories I've Critiqued: Thirty-six

Number of Stories Submitted for Critique: Three (one to be critiqued Monday)

Level of Satisfaction with Current Story (Stories, actually) in Progress: Medium

Number of Times I Was Asked to Read the Role of a Woman Chattering about Her Engagement During Thursday's Found Dialog Exercise: Two

And then the next day there was this message from S, my lovely former colleague:

I had the strangest dream the other day – you were getting married and for your bridal shower, all you wanted to do was go to Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Okay, here is all I have to say about that, and I direct my comments not to the people involved (who are swell), but to the forces of synchronicity running loose in the universe: fuck you and your plum pudding.

Number of Nights Spent in My Own Bed: One

Update: E asks, "Is it just me, or does the phrasing "Number of Nights Spent in My Own Bed: One" make it sound like "the narrator is making the rounds in other people's beds? Wink wink!" To which I respond "you, plum pudding, etc." And add the clarification, "That's My Own Bed in My Own House and Not the Sorority House, Okay? Sheesh."