Done! (again)
With a near record-breaking 4625 4993* word day, I’ve finished my romance. Final word count, 106.5K.
The working title has been Sloppy Firsts, but that’s been taken — recently, too. It looks like it was a popular book.
As a backup, I like Technical Virgins. That title was last used in 1998, and as best I can tell, the book wasn’t nearly as popular as Sloppy Firsts.
Eh. I suck at titles.
Note to my betas: I’ll be rereading the last 10K pages or so this next weekend, and once I’m happy with the new ending, I’ll send out the new version. No one is under any obligation to read this, of course, but I know a few of you have expressed an interest.
If you think you’re a beta and you don’t have something in your hot little hands by next Sunday, let me know.
*wipes sweat from brow*
I’m done!
D.
*Couldn’t resist the urge to fiddle. (Really, though, I remembered one more loose end which needed tending.)
It’s a mug’s game
You can’t win.
(Pinched from an Orj Ozeppi comment at Daily Kos.)
Enough procrastinating. This book ain’t gonna write itself.
D.
Time-eater #1
Human Brain Cloud, a repository of word associations world-wide, but the word association part isn’t all that interesting. If you want to have fun, click on “view” and type in a provocative word. “George Bush” yields “braindead,” “miserable failure,” “idiot,” “is an idiot,” “warlord,” “impeachment,” “is an asshole,” and more.
Live blogging tonight. I have to feed my family first.
D.
GallimauFriday
Check out The Hermit’s new political vid. Davis Fleetwood hooks into an emotion I tried to explain here, but y’all thought I was talking about music or something. And I was thinking about it again this morning on the drive to work. On NPR, they were yapping about the housing crash, about how devastating an experience it is to have your house on the market right now. “I’m so exhausted,” the woman said. “I never know when the real estate agent is going to show up, so every morning, I have to Windex the windows before I go to work.”
I thought about Davis’s video, and everything snapped into perspective.
Join me below the fold for
FROGS!
ZAFTIG WOMEN!
A FRIDAY SNIPPET!
and more, because there’s always me, too.
Thirteen female vocalists
Last week’s YouTube Thirteen was so much fun (for me, anyway) that I decided to do another. This one will be musical.
I’ve always preferred women’s voices to men’s, and unusual voices at that. You’ll find some boring old standards here, but I hope a few of these will be new to you.
Are we having fun jetzt?
Historian Richard Westwood-Brooks is auctioning a collection of Nazi era children’s board games:
The games include Bombers Over England, a form of bagatelle or primitive pinball where players score points for “bombing” British cities, shipping or lighthouses.
Another, based on Snakes and Ladders, sees players take their U-boats from a German port to the Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow, sink British warships and try to make it back home.
Another is a game where players drop weighted paratroopers onto a representation of the English countryside.
You can view a short slide show of pictures of the games here.
Reading these stories, what tickles me is the implication that Nazis were somehow unique, indoctrinating their children so early. Yet there are no shortage of “shooters” out there (games in which the goal is to shoot as many of the enemy as possible), including games targeting, excuse the pun, “Middle East terrorists.” Oh, and don’t forget my #1 Abomination, Left Behind, the Game (in which you target the faithless), currently being enjoyed by our troops in Iraq.
Funny thing, though: Nazis are among the most common human villains in video games nowadays. Guess there’s no question of political incorrectness shootin’ up a bunch of brown shirts. But the Nazis are fighting back . . .
While anti-gaming critics are busy worrying about a mod that sees two fictional characters engaging in consensual sex, a neo-Nazi organisation has released a game designed to promote racial divisions and encourage violent acts against members of ethnic minorities.
The PC first-person shooter is titled Ethnic Cleansing and is published by Resistance Records, which also distributes racist ‘White Power’ music. Resistance Records is owned by the National Alliance, the biggest and most active neo-Nazi group in the US.
Players take on the role of either a skinhead or a Ku Klux Klan member – dressed in full KKK robes and carrying a noose – and explore a city that’s clearly based on New York. The object of the game is to kill black and Latino people, described as “predatory sub-humans”, and their “Jewish masters”.
Read the rest of that article to discover some truly special moments from the game.
This is worrisome: when I read this out loud to my son, his response was, “Yes, but is the game any good?” Oy vey.
D.
The Talk
I figure if my eleven-year-old son wants his sheets changed, he can damn well strip his own bed and bring everything to the washing machine. However, once a year or so, his sheets achieve sentience and cry out to me in their filthy anguish.
“I suppose we might start finding crumpled Kleenexes under his bed soon,” I said to Karen last night before we went to sleep.
“Kleenexes? Is that what you used?”
“I think so.”
I remember stuffing them between the bed and the wall, where no one would be any the wiser. Like me, my mother never made my bed or washed my sheets, not that I ever noticed.
“How old were you?” Karen said.
“Twelve, I think. I woke up one morning with a mess in my shorts and figured the plumbing was working. Some time after that, I checked.”
And I thought my parents were overprotective.
In yesterday’s post, my sis asked if I’d ever given my father a heart attack — you know, me doing dangerous things, the way Jake climbed to hair-raising heights on those damn slippery rocks.
I’ve thought about her question, and, um, NO.
Of Billy Goats and Heart Attacks,
Of cabbages and kings.
Good thing Jake and I went to the beach yesterday, because today, it looks like this:
It rained last night. Rained! If we’d gone out today rather than yesterday, I wouldn’t have this farmer tan, and undoubtedly Jake would have had any number of streams to dam up. Still, I can’t complain about yesterday’s weather — a true summer’s day, without the heat the rest of y’all have had to endure.
Pix below the cut . . .
Rude fruit
Don’t make me explain this.
Live Blogging starts sometime between 7 and 8 PM PST tonight. See ya soon!
D.