Is this the real life

22 05 2013

I’m so late.

With the edits on Home Away Home, that is. Some time ago K. had expressed interest in the manuscript—she’d liked  The Unexpected Neighbor*—and I said, Ah, yeah, okay, as soon as I give it one last go around.

And then I did nothing.

K. bugged me, and I said Yeah yeah—I know, how awful that someone wants to read your work!—and did nothing. Repeat. And then I thought, Huh, I should get this done.

I made it easier by editing it section by section and sending those off to K. Some sections required sanding, others, sawing, but edits for one through five went pretty well.

And then I got busy with ghosting and grading and in the meantime K. was reading what I’d sent and then she finished and said, Hey. . . and I said Two weeks. And then did nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing: I started with the edits and again with the sanding and sawing and then I hit a point at which I realized Oh, crap, I’m gonna need a bigger saw, and stepped off.

I’ve stepped back up, proceeding bit by bit, but MAN do I have to dial it back. Both The Unexpected Neighbor and Home Away Home are dialogue-heavy and both suffer from the same defect: my tendency to make the characters too knowing.

Actually, it’s not just that they’re too knowing; it’s that this knowingness gets in the way of realistic dialogue. Now, were I writing a mannered piece, this wouldn’t be an issue, but the characters of both of these novels inhabit worlds I’d like readers to recognize; thus, they have to sound like real people.

I don’t mind that I over-write on the first draft; what I do mind is that it’s not until many drafts later that I manage to pare it back. I don’t know what I’m doing on those other drafts—it’s not as if these two works are plot-heavy—but apparently I can’t see the over-knowing dialogue until after I’ve worked everything else out.

Presuming, that is, that I’ve worked everything else out. . . .

~~~

*Click on that link and it’ll take you to Smashwords, where you can buy the novel for the princely sum of 3 bucks! Half the cost of a pint of Guinness! Less than a latte! Totally worth it!


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Back to where you once belonged

20 05 2013

Caught spinning, once again.

I’m not sure why: the semester is ending and I’m scheduled to teach both summer sessions, but something feels. . . off. Unmoored.

This makes no sense. Yes, I’ll have a bit of time before classes begin, but I feel that same sense of drift I’ve had something has ended and there’s nothing else to begin. I hate this feeling; I dread this feeling.

It’s as if I’m cycling around and around, moving, but stuck all the same.

It’s about money. It’s about career. It’s about commitment. It’s about discipline. It’s about every god-damned thing it’s been about every god-damned previous cycle.

I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about my friend M. and her need to go back and around with her cruddy boyfriend again and again until she managed to set herself free.

At least she stretched herself with each go-around; at least she tried.

I’m tethered to nothing and no one and all I do is go around and around anyway.

I’m going to have to stick to something if I am to get unstuck.


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And lay all your lazybones down

18 05 2013

I’m not gonna talk about the final episode of Bones.

Why not? Because I didn’t watch it.

Oh, sure, I skimmed through it, and watched the last few minutes, but I hate this latest psycho and I hate this storyline and I triple-hate the goddamned wrench-everything-out-of-joint cliffhanger.

Pelant, that’s the psycho killer’s name. Had to look it up. He’s horrible.

Yeah, I know: psycho killer. But I mean, he’s horrible as the resident psycho because he’s like goddamned Freddie from the Friday the 13th pics or, even more, like Stefano DiMera from Days of Our Lives, springing back into the picture, just because.

(I was actually a devoted As the World Turns fan for a number of years back in the day, but I watched enough Days to know the score. And, of course, DiMera kept returning, so it wasn’t hard to remember him as an über bad guy.)

And that, precisely, is the problem with Pelant: he’s an über bad guy. He’s a computer genius who’s able to kill a bunch of people and get away with it. He frames Brennan for murder, and while Team Jefferson ends up proving her innocence, Pelant is somehow able to pass himself off as an Egyptian (!) citizen and get released from custody and into the arms of Egyptian officials, easy-peasy.

Then he returns (of course), drugs Hodgins and Angela and threatens their baby, then finds a job at a security firm, from where he steals all of Hodgin’s money (by almost blowing up an Afghan school for girls—don’t ask), kills more people, escapes from this high-security joint, and then kills a vet in order to . . . oh, christ, am I really recounting this?

Then he comes back to menace Team Jefferson and inflict psychological torture by splitting up Brennan and Booth.

Why not just have the guy go BwwaaHAHAHAHAH! I have you in my evil clutches now!

Seriously.

Bones has had serial bad guys before: Howard Epps over seasons 1 & 2, the Widow’s Son in 3 & 4, (and the Gravedigger! I forgot about the Gravedigger, across seasons 2-5) and then the boring sniper guy in season 6, and now this guy, nerdy superkiller Pelant.

You’d think that it would be hard to top a ritualistic cannibalistic serial killer in the no-fucking-way department, but at least in that theme, they allowed for the requisite amount of humor, and, in the end, they didn’t bother dignifying the guy with a name. He was just some creepy dude who Booth shot and killed, the end.

Brennan once referred to Epps as a “creepy serial killer” (actually, in explaining why she broke his wrist, she said something along the lines of “he touched me with his creepy serial killer hands”), and that about sums it up. He’s introduced as a guy about to be put to death who  insists upon his innocence; by the end up the episode it’s clear that he’s played the team and that he’s even worse than first thought.

One of the things I really liked about this storyline was that, in the episode in which Epps escapes from jail and comes after the Jeffersonian team (of course!), his constant invocations of his genius are undercut. At one point Zack reminds Booth that Epps isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.

Yes, exactly: Epps might be very smart, but he ain’t no superman.

That’s what I’ve been missing in this whole stupid Pelant storyline: cutting him down to size. If he’s just going to pop back up after every blow, then why bother even making him a human being? He’s a cartoon psychopath, an avatar of evil, and utterly uninteresting for his demon meep meep ways: there’s no hook, no dimensions, just the flat sketch of a none-too-clever plot device.

Bones will be back next season—have to pull ’em back from that cliff!—and I’ll probably watch it. But where I once used to enjoy the show, now I’m just enduring it.


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Whoops Mr. Moto I’m a coffee pot

16 05 2013

Scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University created the first human embryo clones and used them to derive embryonic stem cells.

Their secret?

The OHSU team added caffeine to the growth medium that nourished the eggs after they were stripped of their original DNA and awaited the new DNA from a skin cell.

Coffee really does make everything better.
.
.
.
.
.
Someday I’ll figure out how to use that nifty Logitech camera-&-microphone to record sound, at which point I’ll sing you my coffee song.
.
.
.
.
.
I do like “Java Jive”, with one large reservation: the inclusion of tea as a drink deserving of equal adoration.

Mmmmm, no.


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All things weird and wonderful, 32

14 05 2013

Not weird, definitely wonderful:

Photograph by Gunjan Sinha, National Geographic Photo of the Day

You should really pop over to the Nat Geo site to see this in full form. Gorgeous.

I’ve mentioned my tornado dreams in the past; this isn’t a tornado, but this is the kind of cloud that if you see it you know something’s brewing.

I miss that, being able to see the weather brewing.

 


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Lord, I was born a ramblin’ man

13 05 2013

So, shit happened and it wasn’t awful and it wasn’t unexpected but it’s still shit and I need to just deal with it but before I deal with it I need to breathe and say Yep, shit happened and it wasn’t awful and it wasn’t unexpected and it can in fact be dealt with and I will in fact deal with it but first I need to breathe.

Oh, and when NPR tells you that the story about rhinoceros horn smuggling includes audio that might upset some listeners TURN THAT SHIT OFF or you will end up listening to a rhino crying as it tries to escape poachers and goddammit a crying rhino will ruin your whole damned evening and make your anti-capital-punishment self want to kill every last poacher if that’s what needs to be done to save the rhinos and elephants and lions and tigers and bears.

Oh my.


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Listen to the music: I live by the river

12 05 2013

When I was young and pure I thought less of musicians who didn’t write their own music nothing of musicians who didn’t write their own music, and was skeptical of covers.

Okay, sure, if they’re putting out a live album, maybe then it was okay to cover a song, but on a new disk of ORIGINAL tunes, well, they best be original, bestn’t they be?

Then I got old and things got “complicated” (read: all my standards went to hell) and while I’m still biased in favor of the singer-songwriter model, I’ve moved from bare tolerance of to wistfulness for covers.

Wistfulness might be the wrong word: it’s more that I wish pop musicians dealt with covers the way jazz musicians do, as ways to take apples and turn them into oranges or mountains or the sea. John Coltrane turned that little slip of a song, “My Favorite Things”, into a classic, fer pete’s sake, which, even given my love for all things Sound of Music, is a helluva thing to have done.

Still, there are a few songs which I don’t think should ever be covered because there is no way to top the original version: The Clash’s “London Calling”, Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?”, and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”. (I used to have more on this list, but, y’know, old and lax and all that.)

There are plenty of great covers, even of those songs which were great in the original. If Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” (Springsteen) doesn’t put you on the floor, I have to wonder what exactly is pulsing through your veins, and Tori Amos’s version of Eminem’s ” ’97 Bonnie & Clyde” so creeps me out I can’t listen to it through headphones.

Some versions are a lot of fun—Billy Bragg and his band did a great version of Dee-Lite’s “Groove Is In the Heart” for an encore at a First Ave show years ago, and I like the B-52’s “Downtown”—and some are sad: Peter Gabriel’s solo-piano cover of his own “Here Comes the Flood”. Placebo’s “Running Up That Hill” works because they take Kate Bush’s lush original and strip it down to bony need. Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris kill just about everything on their Western Wall: Tucson Sessions, but I particularly like “The Western Wall” (Rosanne Cash) and “Falling Down” (Patty Griffin).

(Patty Griffin is one of those singer-songwriters, like Leonard Cohen, whose music is more well-known in their cover versions than the originals. And no, I’m not going to get into a discussion of which version of “Hallelujah” is best, because, jesus, that’s such a magnificent and magnificently overwrought song that you’d have to be a real bonehead to screw that one up—and if there is a boneheaded version out there, I don’t want to hear it.)

Some songs are well-covered even if they don’t top the original. Eva Cassidy’s “Songbird” is lovely, but so, too, is the original Fleetwood Mac song. Jorane’s “I Feel Love” is very good, but largely because Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” is great; ditto with Talking Heads’s and Al Green’s “Take Me to the River”. And while I’ve heard and liked a fair number of Cindy Lauper’s “Time After Time,” with the exception of Cassandra Wilson’s treatment, I like the original best.

Cassandra Wilson: she is the queen and empress and goddess of song interpretation. Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm” is an amazing song, and his jangly original hits all the bitter-sweet spots. But Wilson’s turn at this song turns it into longing promise, broken and fulfilled. Wilson shows you how to do covers: Pick the songs well, and make them your own.

That sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Given all of the lame covers out there—and by “lame” I mean, “uninspired, insipid, money-grubbing”—however, it apparently is not. For every Natalie Maine’s grabbing hold of “Mother” (Pink Floyd), there’s some limp Tom Petty wannabe with a country-smooth blanding of his cranky originals.

No, if you want to do more than just punch the song ticket, you have to reach down, grab the guts of the song, rip it out of the throat of the original, and make your own meal of it. Nina Simone did that with Billie Holiday’s (okay, actually Abel Meeropol’s) simmering, aching “Strange Fruit”, turning her low voice to ice as she drops the song to cold fury. The irony in Holiday’s song becomes harrowing in Simone’s. It’s the same song, and a new song.

That’s a successful cover: the same song, and a new song.

~~~

77. Kate Bush, The Whole Story
78. Cake, Fashion Nugget
79. Camera Obscura, Underachievers Please Try Harder
80. Kate Bush, The Sensual World
81. Camera Obscura, to change the shape of an envelope
82. Vinicius Cantuarias, Vinicius
83. Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Come On Come On
84. Neko Case and Her Boyfriends, Furnace Room Lullaby
85. Johnny Cash, American Recordings
86. Rosanne Cash, 10 Song Demo
87. Rosanne Cash, Interiors
88. Rosanne Cash, Rules of Travel
89. Rosanne Cash, The Wheel
90. Eva Cassidy, Songbird
91. Eva Cassidy, time after time
92. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Murder Ballads
93. Exene Cervenka, Old Wives’ Tales
94. Charms, Pussycat
95. Chop Chop (eponymous)
96. Clannad, Bamba
97. Clash, London Calling
98. Clash, Combat Rock
99. Clash, Super Black Market Clash


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Ok computer

11 05 2013

You know how there are things you know you should do because if you don’t do them you’re fucked but you still don’t do them anyway?

Yeah, well, I have plenty o’ experience with that little run-in scenario.

This time around, it was backing up my computer hard drive.

I used to be a champion backer-upper: When I was writing my dissertation I heard a horror story of someone losing a chapter or half her dissertation or something similarly terrifying, so I had copies of copies of copies. I had those crappy little 3 1/2 inch disks in my office, my book bag, at home—and I made print copies (which I kept in various places), just in case.

It was fine.

My next computer had a zip drive (remember those?)—which did me no good when my computer was swiped, because I hadn’t backed up the hard drive between the August purchase and November burglary. I still had all of the disks from copying everything from my old computer, so it’s not like I lost all of my work, but I had done a fair amount of tedious database work which was lost.

Still, when I got the replacement computer, I remembered to back things up. And some time after I moved to Somerville I got an external hard drive and backed stuff on that fairly regularly.

Until it died. Then I putzed about getting another one. I did, finally, then putzed about actually using it, then actually used it. I kept it close so I’d remember to back stuff up regularly, but, you know, I. . . didn’t. Oh, I used it, but not nearly as often as I should have.

Well, I did a disk defrag recently and thought, huh, it’s been awhile since backed my shit up—I oughtta get on that.

And I didn’t.

Then a coupla’ weeks ago my computer began having issues with trying to install an update and thought, Huh, I oughtta back my shit up, just in case.

And I didn’t.

And then a coupla’ days I had that issue with transferring photos from my camera and. . . you know what happened: squat.

So, this afternoon I was on my computer and had a nice long chat with my friend L. on Skype, which meant I’d plugged in my nifty Logitech camera. No problems. I wasn’t feeling great afterwards, so decided to take a nap; when I awoke, I assembled some of my DELICIOUS mushroom-tofu burritos, lifted some weights, showered, then turned on the computer for a delightful evening of Hulu-watching.

You know what happens.

I will spare you all of the details, save the main one: the damned thing wouldn’t move beyond the “Welcome” screen. Repair, restart, stuck. Shut down, start, stuck. Repeat until you’re sick of it, then repeat some more.

Then I thought to get out my netbook and look up what might be the problem, found and tried this and that, then the other thing, then each and all of them again, then something else, then the things I’d done before, and at some point I thought, Hm, I should e-mail GeekHiker with an SOS.

I’m sure he wouldn’t have laughed—much—over the age and un-Apple-ness of my laptop before or while helping me. Still, I thought there was more I could try.

I got information like “memory .DMP in index $I30 of file 449 incorrect” and “The instruction at 0x773D1bcb referenced memory at 0x.00000000. The memory could not be read” and “Bad Image C:\Windows\System32\BCMLogon.dll not designed to run on computer or contains an error” and “System volume is corrupt file system repair completed successfully Error code =0x0 Time takes 271005 ms.”

I have no idea what this means except that it is not good that I am getting these messages.

Anyway, the Windows Support site was actually useful, cluing me into the secret that if you hit F8 just as the computer is booting up you get to these options which just might save you a trip to the computer repair store. More clicking around and trying this and that and nothing working and thinking, Shit, what about a Windows Restore and/or something about mirror imaging?

I was leery, however, because your disk wipes itself before recovering and replacing the wiped info. You do get walked through the steps and can say no before hitting Go, but, man, that seemed extreme.

So I thought I’d try System Restore again. I had tried it before, but thinking it wasn’t working I clicked on it again and it got huffy and “exited the program.” Well, what the hell: I did the same thing again (including clicking on it again), and while I got the exit message, the program nonetheless proceeded to run.

Yay!

I picked the earliest date I could (April 10) because, ah, shit, reasons, but it didn’t want to go back to April 10, so I tried April 24. And it ran. And it completed. And it restarted.

And it booted past the Welcome window! Whoo hoo!

The first thing I did?

Plugged in that hard drive and backed my shit up.

Happy ending, five hours later. I’ll take what I can get.


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Little boxes on the hillside

9 05 2013

Underground living is probably the way to go—environmentally speaking, that is.

The earth is a great insulator, the joint will be cooler in summer and if you install a decent heating system, you’ll probably do all right in the winter.

Well, you will. Not me.

I was checking out the houses here, and my first thought was. . . No.

The Cooper Point House might be livable, but those other underground joints? Nuh-uh: I’d be buggers before the week ended.

It’s silly, actually, not least because I live in an apartment with windows only on one side (again, one of my few good memories of Somerville was my apartment, which took up the entire second floor of a house and oh, glory had windows on all sides), so, really, what’s the difference between my third floor apartment and the same thing, below grade?

Um, that it’s below grade!

No, really, I don’t know why that bothers me so much, but I have it on good authority—past freakout—that it would, in fact, freak me out. My first apartment in Albuquerque was a newly-redecorated basement apartment (windows on two sides, even!) and I had to move out, losing my deposit and the rest of that month’s rent, less than two weeks later.

I felt like I was in a tomb.

Okay, the gigantic flying cockroaches didn’t help, but, hey, it was Albuquerque, and (as I discovered just a wee too late), those suckers were everywhere. No, it was living underground, and going to bed every night in a room with no fucking windows at all. (Yes, I kept the bedroom door open and no, it didn’t make a difference.) I decompensated.

Now, I can hang out in basements and have tipped a few pints at below-grade bars, but, as with SmallTown, I can handle that because I don’t have to live there.

If the post-apocalyptic world requires us all to live in caves, I am well and truly fucked.

Give me a treehouse any time.


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Can you hear me, cont.

8 05 2013

One more small bit on normal:

Some bioethicists who worry about enhancement don’t worry about normalization; some embrace enhancement precisely because they think it offers a way out of normalization.

Neither position makes sense insofar as enhancement and normalization are linked.

The enhancement-worriers fret about new techs or practices taking us away from a baseline normal human, yet don’t wonder about the creation of that baseline normal human. The enhancement- embracers think other-than-normal is just dandy, yet don’t consider that enhancement can lead to new normals.

This is not, I must say, the position of all those who write on enhancement and normalization; one of the things I like about Parens’s book Enhancing Human Traits is that it includes plenty o’ pieces by those who weigh both enhancement and normalization.

Me, I think the real issue is normalization, such that my concerns about enhancement are precisely that they might become the new norm. Enhancement leads to questions; normalization feeds off forgetting.

I think forgetting is a bigger problem for humans than questioning.


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