Foreskin Thirteen
How do I feel right now? Don’t ask.
Nuthin’ tonight
It’s 9:49 PM and I’m only now getting to my emails. I was in the OR from 7:30 AM to 6:00 PM, and then I had a meeting until 8:15.
Plus, Karen’s mad at me. That kills the creative juices straight away.
D.
This looks like a good one
When I bought The 2007 Guide to Literary Agents on Barnes and Noble’s website the other day, the site suggested I look at Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages, A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile. Sounded worthwhile, so I bought it, figuring if it could teach me even one new thing, it would be worth the purchase price.
The author is a literary agent and former editor. His goal is to let you, the writer, know what criteria an editor or agent uses to toss manuscripts into the round file.
While evaluating more than ten thousand manuscripts in the last few years, I was able to set forth definite criteria, an agenda for rejecting manuscripts. This is the core of The First Five Pages: my criteria revealed to you.
Here’s the first part of the table of contents, with my words of explanation in brackets. Part I is called “Preliminary Problems”:
Presentation [manuscript format]
Adjectives and Adverbs
Sound [rhythm]
Comparison [use and misuse of imagery]
Style
Part II is “Dialogue,” Part III, “The Bigger Picture” (show vs. tell, characterization, pacing, etc.) I suspect I’ll have much more to say about The First Five Pages as I work through it, but here’s my early opinion: this book looks like a keeper. I’ll keep you posted.
And since I got slammed at work today and I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open, this is all I have for you tonight. Sorry!
In fact, this day reached such an acme of suckitude, I was tempted to begin a new Thirteen: Thirteen Unglamorous Things about my Profession.
1. “I hope you don’t catch what I got,” she said after coughing in my face.
2. “Cover your mouth when you cough,” the child’s mother said after her old-enough-to-know-better child fired off his fifth snot rocket.
3. “I didn’t mean to do that,” my nosebleeder said, gazing with wonder at the pointillistic spray of blood across my eyeglasses and facemask.
4. “GhhhRRRAAARGgggllll omigod RAARGH RAAAAAAAARGH,” my nosebleeder said as we both discovered what had happened to all that blood she’d been swallowing over the past four hours.
Ugh. I don’t think I could manage thirteen of these without making myself sick.
D.
Evening coolness
I’ve made it to round four of the Samhain contest. Cooler still, my pick for winner has also advanced to the next round: Amme’s entry (see comment #16). Go Amme!
But, here you go, some linguistic coolness:
The Interpreter
Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?
by John Colapinto
The people, members of a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Pirahã, responded to the sight of Everett—a solidly built man of fifty-five with a red beard and the booming voice of a former evangelical minister—with a greeting that sounded like a profusion of exotic songbirds, a melodic chattering scarcely discernible, to the uninitiated, as human speech. Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations.
Check it out. The photo alone (atop the article) is worth a click.
D.
SBD: Harvey, meet Eck. Eck, Harvey.
I must confess to irrational reasons for avoiding Erin O’Brien‘s novel, Harvey & Eck. True, Dean liked it, and so did SxKitten and Shaina. But I had these disturbing childhood associations with the word Eck — Los Angeles-based off-the-beaten-path-religion associations. You see, in Eckankar, ECK = spirit, but also represents the audible life stream, and at that point my eyes glaze over.
Let me reassure potential readers that Harvey & Eck has nothing to do with audible life streams, although it does have lots of spirit.
In Harvey & Eck, Harvey (short for Harvest Moon) writes letters to Eck (short for Timothy J. Ecklenburg), who at first is little more than a name she has chosen at random from the phone book. Harvey is young, broken-hearted, soon to be unemployed, and pregnant, and she has no one to talk to. So she decides to spill her guts to Eck.
Before long, Eck responds in kind, but since Harvey’s letters have no return address, Eck has no choice but to save his letters in a cigar box. From the outset, the relationship is uneven: Eck learns everything about Harvey, while for Harvey, Eck remains a black box mystery. The reader, of course, gets to see both their worlds.
Are you my daddy?
Karen’s watching 60 Minutes, and they’re doing a story on a sperm bank which over-utilized one particular donor’s sperm. I gather the mothers are worried that their children might end up marrying a half-brother or half-sister. Interesting, don’t you think? You see, this donor’s profile was so attractive, LOTS of women decided they wanted him to be the father of their children.
I suspect most male medical students get the letters — you know, the ones that politely suggest you can earn money by jerking off. Not much money, but $40 a pop adds up after a while. And how many times had I thought, “If I had a nickle for every time . . .”
So I answered the letter. An attractive receptionist took a thorough medical history, and if I’m not mistaken, my blood was drawn as well. Last thing they want is an HIV positive sperm donor, and even waaaaay back then we had testing for carrier status on certain genetic diseases, like Tay-Sachs.
Once I made the first cut, I was told I would have to audition. Because, well, you know — they don’t want just any old sperm.
Auditioning is harder than you might think. They informed me that my “sample” (are you thinking about a supermarket deli yet?) could not be wrung from a condom, nor could my wife help in any way involving bodily fluids or lubricants. Nor could I use any bodily fluids or lubricant. It needs must, apparently, be the product of a dry hump.
You ladies: ask the man in your life, or affable male friend, how easy it is to ejaculate sans lube. NOT.
I was beginning to understand how I would have to earn my $40.
Remember, this was in the 80s, pre-YouPorn, pre-porn DVDs, pre- any porn whatsoever except for magazines, which have never done much for me. Oh, I suppose I might have gone to an X-rated movie theater, but folks got arrested for such behavior. No, I would have to do it the hard way.
Oh. And it had to be fresh.
Some time thereafter, the sperm bank called and requested my presence. What could be so important that I would have to meet with one of the supervising physicians? Were my little guys Super Spermatozoa, so viciously potent they would have to dilute my donations 1:10, such that each sample would garner me $400?
I wish.
Nope. The doc told me there were “too many aberrant forms.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said. “You’ll probably be able to father children. But we can’t use donors who provide too many aberrant forms.”
Some years later, when we were having fertility problems, I got myself checked out once again. This time around, everything was fine*, which leads me to ask: was it my spermatozoa who were aberrant, or was it me?
Don’t answer that.
D.
*Karen recalls: “They were better than okay. You had a very high sperm count, with excellent motility.”
So there.
Phaturday Phlickr Babe: Sultry
Dean loves nudes, but I love faces. Some of the best faces appear when you search Flickr for sultry.
This expression doesn’t say “sex” to me. There’s sadness, thoughtfulness, and above all else intelligence in her gaze. I want to know more; I want to know her. (This is a new photo since the original post. Funny thing . . . my comments still apply!)
As usual, I’ll try to hit the live blogging circuit by 7:30 PST. We had quite a crowd last Saturday. Feast or famine around here!
D.
Friday Snippet the First
Holly Lisle’s meme, by way of Tamara Siler Jones (who has posted another scene, woot!)
I’ve posted a bit of Nest before, but you needn’t read that portion. What follows is the first scene of Chapter Two, and all you need to know can be conveyed by the movie’s tagline (for when this trilogy gets published and becomes a blockbuster motion picture):
Animal Farm — in Space!
Meet the Grith Lyssomes.
(more…)
Thirteen numbers: FINISHED!
I should have stopped with the number list and borne the brunt of your insults.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Because sometimes, that’s all I gots.
Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?
Contemplating a “Thirteen Worst Pickup Lines” post, I find this gem of a page, which includes the warning
Any attempt to rebroadcast this page without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and the Atlanta Braves is strictly prohibited (Implied oral consent is insufficient).
Do Major League Baseball players even need a pickup line past, “I’m a pitcher for the Atlanta Braves”? But I digress.
True story: back in college, I found a book entitled 1001 Best Pickup Lines in an Embarcadero gift shop. At that time in my life, I really could have used 1001 Best Pickup Lines. My idea of a good line: “You know, sex doesn’t HAVE to mean anything.” Or: “Yeah, I know you’re a head taller than me, but I think I can get past that.”
Needy or not, after leafing through 1001 Best Pickup Lines, I didn’t waste my money. It’s amazing how fast you can rack up 1001 lines when the first one is, “Hi! You look like a Gemini,” and the next 11 follow suit. “You look like you enjoy [motorcycle riding, gymnastics, scuba diving . . .]” is good for a few dozen lines, and “Hi! You look [Swedish, Brazilian, Turkish . . .],” covers at least 100 more. (Watch out, though, because, “Hi! You look Burkinabé,” might be met with a blank expression, or worse.)
So it intrigued me, to say the least, to find Major League Baseball’s repository of pickup lines, complete with success statistics. To wit:
“Do you take it up the ass?” 17 attempts, 2 successes.