That thing you do

I desperately tried not to study writing. I signed on with practical majors in college, computer science then communications (advertising). But that didn't work out and I ended up with an undergraduate degree in English/creative writing and a minor in political science. Then I went to law school -- there's little in this life that's more practical and responsible and dull than going to law school.

But don't you want to write? other students asked me when I told them my post-graduation plans.

Yeah, but I want to eat too. Being a starving artist living in a cardboard box did not appeal to me.

But I didn't last long at law school. I knew as soon as I got there that it wasn't right for me, but it took me three months to convince the practical, responsible voices in my head to agree. I spent hours in the on campus bookstore reading Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. I started writing a short story in the format of a case brief.  Finally I gave in to the fact that, yes the classes were interesting and the pace was thrilling, but the students and the atmosphere and lifestyle and the writing that they asked young lawyers to do was life draining.  (Legal writing is the first, and so far only type of writing that I've found I don't enjoy doing -- I even enjoy writing academic research papers!) 

Finally the day came when I decided that making enough money to pay for a fancy therapist was not good enough reason to put myself in therapy in the first place. So I scrambled and got an MFA application together in less than a month, and eleven months after quitting law school, I started an MFA.

MFA programs aren't for everyone, but I knew I needed more education and I needed training for employment. Getting an MFA at the program I chose meant that I've gained experience teaching composition in a college classroom.  And it took me two years in the MFA program to come out of the genre closet and tell people that I'd much rather write fantasy than gritty realism.

Jeanne Cavelos: I’ve always written stories, but when I was young, I thought that writing was frivolous, simply for entertainment. So I thought I had to do more with my life–to boldly go where no man had gone before, make some great scientific discovery. ... I stuck with my career goal through college, majoring in astrophysics and math, doing graduate study in astronomy, and working at NASA. Finally, as I rushed home from work each night to write, I realized that I was more interested in exploring the big ideas of science through science fiction than in doing research in a narrow discipline of science. I decided it didn’t matter whether that was “frivolous” or “important”–it’s what I wanted to do. That occurred when I was in my mid-20s. More here.

So what's your story? Why are you doing what you're doing?

Ad of the Week

Preying on the heart of much chatter and concern this month. At first it made me feel a little silly. Then I realized, hey, I drive a Civic, panic that leads to planning ahead is a good thing when you don't want to end up as the cautionary tale with its flashers on in the ditch.

Quick news post for writers, Firefly geeks, and fairy tale fans

Nebula Award nominations are up.

There's talk of  Firefly returning to TV, which would be awesome! although dealing with the story lines of the film and the two comic series would prove interesting.  Although the one series is pre-TV show timeline-wise; no idea about the Shepherd Chronicles (Dark Horse).  Mostly I'd be concerned how they deal with you-know-whose death at the end of the movie.  Soooo did not see that coming.  

Locus came up with a short list of awesome Tor.com stories, so Tor.com went and bundled them here. Just so we're all on the same page, Tor.com is an online magazine which is affiliated with TOR-Forge press (book publisher).  Poor undergrad in my graduate class on publishing flubbed that one big time when he mixed up the two.  I didn't have the heart to point out the difference in front of the class -- thank goodness I was a student and not the teacher in that situation.

Donald Maass' The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success is available as a free PDF.  Which is great, because I'm fairly certain it's out of print otherwise, so grab a copy now.

And last bit of news: Enchanted Conversations is open to submissions until Thursday at Midnight.  They've recently recreated themselves as a much better looking website, and a pro-paying market (10 cents per word) -- but they're only accepting stories within four day windows, fit the theme (Rumpelstiltskin, this time), and are under 2000 words.  I figure that weeds most people out, but if you have a less-than-2000-word Rumpelstiltskin story, here are the much lengthier submission guidelines.  

And yes, I do so happen to have an under 2000 word Rumpelstiltskin story, I am writing a folk tale inspired MFA thesis after all.

You're fired

Yesterday = ice storm.  Half the city without power, the other half creeping along roads where none of the stop lights work while trying to avoid downed branches.  The photo is not me or my car--thankgoodness--but it is from the local paper.  It took me 45 minutes to scrape the ice off my car at noon on Monday.  I had tried at 7:45 AM to scrape it off, but after ten minutes of scraping and only excavating an area the size of a silver dollar on the passenger side window (I started there b/c the ice was the thinnest there), I gave up.  Went back inside, tried to contact the department, and emailed my class.  There was no way I was going to make it there before 9:00 AM.

Snowmageddon, sub-zero temps, a teaser week in the 40s and now an ice storm -- all within the space of a month.

I normally don't behave like this, but ... Winter, you've been vetoed.  You're fired. Auf wiedersehen. The tribal council has spoken. Your banner must fall. You're no longer in the running to be America's next top model.  Pack your knives and go.  You've been chopped.  We're going to have to send you home.

Ad of the Week

Kaffeeklatch

There's something I love about the taste of bad coffee.

It takes me back to places and situations that I remember fondly.  My aunts telling stories around my grandmother's kitchen table while my cousins and I play rummy with my grandmother.  Or late nights spent at the Truck Stop (an all night diner on I-70) with Charlene, doing homework and chatting with the third-shift waitress.  Or brunches at Mark's Midtown Coney Island off of US-23, where  my dad and I can sit and talk for as long as they'll keep filling our cups.

I don't think of meatloaf or fried chicken as comfort food, though they are at the top of the list for "comfort food, definition."  My father's comfort food is mashed potatoes.  For me it's bad coffee -- not truly crappy coffee, not watery coffee, or burnt coffee too long on the hot plate, or the thick stuff, or the kind that's so acidic it eats at your gut the moment you drink it.  Bad coffee, well made, still fresh, but out of a generic can of grounds.  Unremarkable in all other ways.  I love that kind of coffee.  I know where I stand with that kind of coffee.

None of the pretension is there.  None of the nervousness that comes with dealing with unfamiliar jargon and insider knowledge.  I'm comfortable with baristas -- I was one for a while -- and I usually understand them even when they use a specific brand's dialect.  Despite my fluency, their language is not my mother tongue.  Bad coffee is my mother tongue.




Top image by Steve Snodgrass, bottom image by Mark Heard.

Searching, Receiving ... now if the universe could just deliver me a story before deadline

I've been searching for the Robert Heinlein article/letter titled "On the writing of speculative fiction," ever since Elizabeth Twist referenced it in her post earlier this week.  It's better known as "Heinlein's rules of writing."  All I can find of it on the internet are the rules themselves and that it's supposedly from a 1947 private letter to Heinlein's agent Blassingame.  I've contacted my father to see if it's in Grumbles from the Grave, which I remember skimming for a report in high school and recall having Heinlein's letters in it.  Hopefully I'll find it soon because I want to see the whole of the essay.

I also sent for and received The Monsters and the Critics, a book of Tolkien essays on Ursala Le Guin's recommendation.  no, Le Guin and I are not chummy -- but oh how I wish we'd discussed it over coffee! -- I have a long list of "seminal work to read" courtesy of Le Guin's essay in Secret History of Fantasy edited by Peter S. Beagle (and still available in book stores).  And the copy of Monsters and the Critics I bought arrived by Royal Air Mail -- apropos, I think.  In there is "On Faerie-Stories," his famous what is fantasy essay.

And ... I'll be up half the night finishing a short story for deadline.

I love having these weekly MFA thesis deadlines, but they also set a tough pace.  Yep.  Still lovehate deadlines. And I'm on another one.  Right now.  Okay, universe, time to deliver.

What was I saying ... ?

I could have sworn I had an idea for a half-way decent blog post.  Now I haven't the foggiest.  Could be because I'm tired and I've ceased to care about everything, which sucks cause I have a lot left to do tonight.  Could be because I've become a teensy bit food obsessed.

I finally decided it was time to shit or get off the pot.  So on Monday I went and joined Jenny Craig.  Yay.  I carted home my pre-packaged, pre-measured food in its fancy-pants carrying bags.  I emptied crap out of my freezer that I really should have thrown away months ago, and created a fancy-pants organizational system in said freezer.  I read the fancy-pants books ... okay, just the one and just the first section because it all blurred together after a while.

Basically, by 10:00 AM Tuesday morning, after my coffee, Jenny-cereal, measured allotment of milk, and 16 ounces of water, I was feeling pretty damn fancy-pants myself.

I'm completely confident that if I follow the system I'll lose the weight.  So tally-ho, system!  And that confidence is making me feel smug.  I want to titter to the people I pass I'm loosing weight, and be all uber-cocky about it.

Whenever I'd done a DIY diet, I always wonder am I doing it right? did I get the proportion right? is this on or off the list? so I don't feel like I'm losing weight until the scale says so.  And the waiting isn't good for my pysche.  It certainly doesn't make me feel smug.

But I spent this afternoon away from the apartment.  I got in some physical activity, but I didn't take any food with me.  I got back home at 5:00 PM and felt oh-so-hungry.  I tried to take the edge off of it, but it didn't work -- I just didn't have enough vegetables in the house.  I went to the store, came back with $35 worth of fresh produce and started to cook it ... finally sat down to "dinner" at 7:45.  Way too late.  By that point the rationed food could take the edge off but not satisfy.  And the eat-them-until-you're-full-vegetable option?  Who the hell wants to be cooking vegetables at 8 or 9 at night?

So anyway.  Poor planning on my part and now obsession/hunger is coloring everything.  Oh, I'm still pretty damn smug that I'm losing weight, but I'm also pretty damn distracted.

And yes, the food (so far) tastes good.

Wash, rinse, repeat: how novels are born

This morning, theLiz was telling me that she got a brill idea while in the shower.  She practically wrote the whole opening chapter and figured out how to reframe the novel/story so that it would be less work to develop and write!  Ah! Ray-of-light-shining-down-on-the-hilltop moment!

"Why," she said, "do I always get great ideas in the shower?"

"It's the only time you're not multitasking and overworked," I said.  "Wash, rinse, repeat, doesn't require higher brain function, so your subconscious shows up and says by the way, I've found a solution for that problem you were working on, I just didn't want to bother you while you were busy earlier."

She's not the only writerly friend of mine who does some of her best plotting in the shower.  Me? I'm not a shower-plotter.  In the shower I rehearse lectures I'm thinking of giving in the classes I teach.  Or I rehash conversations that I wish had gone differently -- the real life kind not the fictional ones.

My best accidental writing zone is the time before bed.  It has the same conditions as the shower: you're not busy, not working on anything else, you're not able to do another task with those spare minutes because you're supposed to be falling asleep (or all ready asleep).  That's when I start writing scenes in my head and planning out conversations (the fictional kind this time),  It's also the time when I'm most likely to lose my utterly brilliant ideas.

I'll repeat a scene or line again and again, telling myself I WILL remember this in the morning, and then I don't.  Whammie.

My solution?  No, I refuse to get out of bed and write it down -- warm, comfortable, possibly with a cat asleep on my leg. not. getting. up.  No, I refuse to put a pen and paper beside my bed b/c that will mean turning on a light -- gah! harsh light! oh and I upset the cat, damn.  My solution: iPod touch.

Hello, my name is Eileen, and I sleep with my iPod touch.

Now when these ideas strike I grab the ipod, open the notepad application, type until my thumbs/wrists hurt and the auto-spell has fucked up half my words but I'm too sleepy to care, and then email it to myself.  The next morning, coffee in hand, I open my email to -- huh? whaz dat? it's ... oh. OH! Story!!!!!

And all is well with the world.

Where or when is your epiphany place/time?

Photo credit: Rock&Ice

Facebook is limiting your awesome awesomeness

Hopefully you've seen a nice little public service announcement like this one pop up in one of your fb friend's status messages:

Have you noticed that you are only seeing updates or getting comments from the same people lately? That's because Facebook made a change. You only see posts from people you interact with regularly. To change this, Scroll down to the bottom of the newsfeed on the homepage and click on 'Edit Options', click on 'Show Posts From' and change..the setting to 'All Of Your Friends and Pages' *REPOST AND LET EVERYONE KNOW*

And here I was thinking that the majority of my facebook friends had gone and gotten lives outside of facebook. Nope. They hadn't.

I'm not a fan of facebook trying to limit my awesomeness and the awesomeness of the few hundred people are supposedly my "friends" on that website.  Yes, I've probably interacted even more with the few dozen people I "regularly interact with" since the change was instituted, but is the purpose of facebook to limit me to my regular people?  Hell no. If I only wanted my regular people I wouldn't have bothered with a facebook page in the first place.

How am I suppose to know that people I haven't talked to in five year have gotten married if their profile pictures don't change to white gowns in my news feed?  And hello! facebook admins, what is your purpose if not to make the stalking of acquaintances possible with minimal effort on my part?  I'd never be so proactive as to drive by someone's house trying to tell what they're doing/if they're there -- far too little data to collect for far too much effort -- but I am totally down with reading the occasional status message.

Actually, I'm beginning to think it's more voyeurism than stalking: I want to see how you're performing on facebook.  Are you being funny? Sad? Political? Newsy? Stupid? Whiny? Are you showing off your offspring for the world?  It's all a performance and I want to watch.  So come on facebook.  Bring back the voyerism!

For writers

Sign up for the writers' platform-building crusade closes tonight at Midnight. Check it out and sign up quickly if you like it!

From Rach Writes:

We have the passion and the drive to make it, but…we could all do with a bit of support.
So I started thinking. What if we link all these people together? What if we create a way to meet people in a similar position, people who genuinely want to help build our online platform while at the same time building theirs? People who want to pay it forward in the spirit of writerly writerness and blogging beautificity (and see it come back to them in turn).

Ad of the Week

An ad with a Valentine's-ish feel without being too shmoozy, woozy, or over the top. Unless you're dating the UPS man, I guess.

Dear Deadlines: I lovehate you.

I lovehate you, deadlines.  Rly, orly, lovehate you.

When I have oodles of time, I laze about on my ass.  I do all the things that are both precious to me and easy, like read novels upon novels.  I catch up on Top Chef.  I contact old friends and read every remotely interesting blog/article I find on the internet.  I enjoy these activities, yet I have little to show for them in terms of accomplishments.  (Although some could argue that gleaned knowledge and an increased usable vocabulary are accomplishments, they aren't things that bring much with them in the way of substantial reward.)

When I have deadlines, I sweat.  I stress.  I stay up too late, get up too early. Feel crazy tired and drink copious amounts of caffeine (the bean and the carbonated types) so that when I finally give up and carve out time for a nap I can't fall asleep for all the heart-palpitating stimulants swimming in my system.  I sit in the same chair for 12 hours a day.  I make microwave meals from boxes in my freezer that I'd forgotten I'd had because there's no time to go buy proper fresh food.

But damn do I love how much I get done when I have a fast approaching deadline to light a fire under my ass.

Yesterday I wrote somewhere between 3000 and 4000 words in order to get short story revisions done.  Lately I've been patting myself on the back for every 500 words written, so this feat was entirely the result of major MFA thesis deadlines creeping in.

Knowing how I am about deadlines -- that far off ones hold no pressure for me -- I've created a situation where I have work due every week.  Either a new short story or a short story revision.  And I have someone other than that good-intentions fairy of mine to hold me responsible / make me feel guilty for not getting it done.

And it's the revisions that are harder for me.  I lovehate them too.  I love some of the things that accidentally turn up when you're revising.  You've gotten feedback and formed an image of how to build a better mousetrap -- now all you have to do is build it!  And then little things pop up as you edit that smooth and connect things that you (and your feedback givers) had not even thought of.  It's the things popping up and clicking into place part I love.  It's also something I love about the writing the first draft.

I hate ripping the seams out of something you've already sewn only to resew it better.  It's why I say the seams give my quilts character.  (they're far from perfect)  But my quilts are just for me, and if I want anyone else to pay attention to my stories, then I have to pick up the stitch ripper, as much as I might hate it.  Revision's a bitch.  And I hate it, hate it, hate it.  I'd string it out over as long a time as I possibly could.  Unless I had a deadline to make me do what I lovehate.

And I lovehate you, deadlines, I really, really, lovehate you.*

Image by Nenyaki.
*You ever reference a movie without realizing it, then sit there thinking was that in a movie? what movie? and then you repeat the line again and again until finally hear the frustration/tears in voice and then suddenly you can see Meg Ryan in a poofy sleeved 80s cocktail dress?  Happens to me all the time.

I. Want. A. Nap.

Not certain if I have much to add beyond the title of this post.  Ironically, today's Writer Unboxed post is "Do you ever sleep?"  To which the answer was an emphatic, of course, eight hours every night, I'm just terribly productive and organized.  And it kind of made me snicker.  Or at least roll my eyes knowingly.  Yeah, I know that whole "slow and steady" parable, but this rabbit likes her naps.  She doesn't even mind staying up too late then getting up way too early if it means getting another nap.  Nap.  Napnapnapnap.

Update from Ad of the Week

So the boy who plays the little tiny Darth Vader in VolksWagon commercial featured this week,  was specially invited to take pictures with James Earl Jones after his family attended  a performance of Driving Miss Daisy which Jones is performing in now in New York.  Jones presented the tiny Vader with an autographed helmet.  Photos here. Amazing cuteness.

Here and now, here and previously, or here and later?

I'm writing what can be best labeled as "urban fantasy": contemporary setting, fantastical elements.*  When you start writing realism, the reader assumes you're in the "now" (the contemporary present) unless you tell them otherwise.  But lately, I'm having a hard time cuing my readers in to the fact that we're in the "now" not the past or the future.

Oh I'd love to blame this on the people who tell me I'm writing surrealism -- which, by the way, I'm not; surrealism undermines the rules of reality, fantasy replaces the rules of reality with its own (there's a fabulous Ursala Le Guin essay about this and other things in The Secret History of Fantasy).  But I can't blame this on the people who don't get any of what I'm doing, because the reactions are too across the board.

I would love for all readers to walk into all stories and assume "here and now" until their told differently, not assume "here and now" until they encounter a fantastic element, but that's what I'm seeing:

The first are those who hit the fantastic element and are transported back into the woods to a time gone by, when not all the world was known and therefore they can accept the strangeness.  This group does fine when you give them Buffy, but struggle when you give them a scene like this image by L. Helje where a gnome and a house cat interact.

The second are those who hit the fantastic element and are propelled forward to the near future, when such a discovery exists.  This group probably wouldn't put the gnome/cat in the past, but tries to propel Buffy the Vampire Slayer--or better examples would be Flashforward or Lost--ten years into the future just because that sort of stuff "doesn't happen now" so it must happen in the future rather than in a present altered by the author.

There's a third group, the hard core reader of urban fantasy, who sees (for example) a female witch doctor and so long as she's not wearing a gown and carrying a dirk, and the author didn't say in the year 2029, this group assumes that the jeans and Metro-card the character has, could have been bought at the very same places the reader bought hers.

And then there's the way-outliers who hit the fantastic element and that catapults them into an "other world."  These people assume all fantasy must take place in a secondary world of the imagination that has nothing to do with the primary world we live in.  Which is an intriguing psychological state of being, but not all fantasy is second-world fantasy.  And frankly, I don't want to live in a world where there's absolutely no room for wonder, so let's not even contemplate those people.

I sincerely want my writing to put everyone on the same page. The third group gets it, the fourth isn't worth bothering with, so my conundrum is how do I convince groups one and two that we're in the world of the present day?  Stick in a description of a kid with an iPod?   The way to convince someone that you're not in the present is to present them with items that stick out as not-right.  Sipping orange Nehi,** or carrying a ray gun.  But to convince us we're in the now without putting a year/date on it? ... I'm frankly feeling rather stumped.

I've had it suggested to me that my characters could/should spend more time observing/interacting with their world as a means of setting the time frame.  I'm beginning to think that more time spent contemplating the world would be good for narrative voice as well, because it would allow me to develop voice, character, and setting all at once.  I pulled back from this between my undergrad writing and now because in undergrad I ONLY set stories using the voice of the protagonist because that voice was (ahem) mine.  Unfiltered and undiluted.  I wanted to branch out as a writer, so I developed a calmer, more reserved, writerly voice which worked for me in the third person.

Ah well, wax on, wax off.  Time to apply everything I've learned

(The Dandelion image at the top of the post, btw, comes from this etsy shop which I love, love, love and bought some note cards from at one point.)

*I just read David Hartwell's essay on "The Making of the American Fantasy Genre" where he writes about the pulp magazine origins of urban fantasy (yes, before Charles de Lint).  The discussion of urban fantasy is tangential to his discussion of the publishing of second-world fantasy, but he had my full attention for both.  Also, discusses John W. Campbell's attempts to codify urban fantasy like he did with science fiction.  The essay's not in my copy of Age of Wonders (I have the 80s edition, but it's supposedly in the 90s edition) but it is in The Secret History of Fantasy in extended form.

**Apparently, along with retro-candy there's now retro-soda, and that means you can get your bottle of orange Nehi once again.  Though let's face it, at that price point you've gotta be hankering some nostalgia for that atmosphere the fictional reference is trying to create.

Ad of the Week

Probably the BEST ad of the week I've posted in a year. Perhaps ever. I'm in love with it.

Since you're not at AWP, the Grab-bag: Laugh, cry, and shake your fist

It's Friday.  It's AWP week.  If you're reading this, then you're likely not at the busiest day of the AWP conference.  I decided not to go this year.  I've been to the two past, and while I really enjoyed my previous trips to AWP (except for the part where the Denver airport limos didn't take me to the right hotel and caused me to have a cab ride that was twice the cost of the airport limo ride to get to the right hotel), I decided that I'm doing enough this year trip-wise.

On to the grab-bag.

Laugh: The Journal of Universal Rejection is now accepting submissions.  They are committed to rejecting your submission no matter what it is.  Although, I've heard that no one's gotten an actual rejection yet, just an automated message stating that they're backlogged.  Sounds like they've lost sight of their mission.

Cry: Tracy Hickman talks in this podcast  about the power of just words, and just writing, and what it is that we do as storytellers whether we realize it or not.

Shake your fist:  If you read this essay, "Don't date a girl who reads," you won't shake your fist at the writer -- you might heave a sigh at the end though -- you'll shake your fist at the dumbasses leaving comments after the essay.  Don't read the comments after the essay.  At least, I didn't, and I don't recommend spending your time, emotions, or brain power that way.  But the combined essay and comments did produce this conversation between me and theLiz.

theLiz: Just sent you this: "Don't date a girl who reads,"  Borderline pretentious, but I really really like it. Thought you might too.

me: From that I'm affirmed and saddened. Yes, I'll walk away from you. Dream bigger, schmuck.

theLiz: LOL

I think this may be another case of people over-reading/analyzing? The comments are SO pretentious and irritating they make my eyes bleed.

I'm not seeing this as an insult to the "girl who doesn't read" (or the "small town girl" which may be a stereotype but why the heck not use it? Doesn't bother me in the slightest) but an insult to himself, like "damn girls these days are so much more well-read and intelligent and self-sufficient than they used to be that they aren't willing to just settle for anything anymore." You have to WORK at it and really want to be with the woman. She has to KNOW that. There has to be really passion between the two of you, not just a house and babies, because they know there is more to life.

I think about the girls from [town lived in long ago] I know who who've had babies and aren't doing anything with their lives. Because not only are the uneducated but they "don't read" ie don't realize that there is anything else they could have done with their lives and it depresses the hell out of me.

I wouldn't settle for this schmuck either.

And I'm a girl who will never be satisfied unless I have the real thing.

Am I totally off base here? Are there layers to this that I'm just not seeing? This is why I don't want to be in an English class -- not everything that people write has to have 50 layers. I think he's just saying that it's easier to please a girl who doesn't think for herself. Women who know there is more out there are harder to keep happy. As well we should be.

I thought it was amusing.

me: If there are comments, I didn't read them. I've discovered that "comments" to pieces like these in journals and newspapers are for people too small and too stupid to find their own 15 min of fame and must therefore they must comment on someone else's. (they should at least start a blog-- it's not that much more work!-- and talk about it there, rather than argue in the comments of a published piece! ) 

This piece isn't an insult or a compliment. It's about a guy who got dumped for all the right reasons and he knows it, but getting dumped hurts like hell.

theLiz: THANK YOU. See I'm totally with you. And I like it and I find it amusing.

And you are totally right about the commenters with their big words and overanalyzing just trying to find their 15 minutes of fame.  Ugh. Don't read the comments. They ruined my initial enjoyment.

(a little bit later ... )

theLiz: LOL these people pissed me off so much I commented.

No in a sick kind of way I WANT to be in that English class with the asshole so I can go toe to toe with him.

Anyway. I'm really sad if there are a bunch of angry or angsty comments to this essay in the comments section because I loved the essay when I finished it because that feeling of I know why I got dumped and I really can't blame her ... but I really want to blame her was just so damn human. We are messed up little creatures with convoluted logic. And I loved that the piece highlighted that.

If I had a band ...

If I had a band, we probably wouldn't be named the Crown Prosecutors. But following these guidelines, that's my band:

1 - Go to wikipedia and hit random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days...(tharr be more)”. Third pictu...re no matter what ...it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use picnik.com to put it all together.

Introducing Crown Prosecutor's debut album Bits of a Star Gone Wrong

I've seen these instructions online before, but this is the first time I've put together the album cover.  It's just a bit of fun on the internet which appeals to my Photoshop skills.  Okay, the above picture doesn't take much in the way of photoshop skills, but it at least was a reason to open up the program and play.

Post-snowpocalypse

My morning has been filled with the sound of spinning tires. Not mine, thankfully, but those of my neighbors' cars as they try to get out of the drifts in the parking lot and onto the back-roads that will lead them to the main road and maybe the sight of a snowplow.

The weather service says we got 7-10" here. Less than the 8-12" they were predicting for my part of the world, which is disappointing, but then again, if I hadn't been expecting a foot, then 7" certainly would have inspired awe.

Although we did get thunder snow just after midnight last night and that was pretty freaking sweet. I wouldn't have believed what I saw (probably would have blamed it on a fluctuation in electrical lighting) if I hadn't seen the Weather Channel reporter in Chicago talking about the same phenomenon earlier that evening.

Although the most amusing news out of Chicago was probably that they had put not only their nearly 300 snow plows on the streets, but that they'd retro-fitted some 150 garbage trucks with plows.

The university here posted a Feb. 2 closing last night. Most of my neighbors are college students, but I can see why they think it's time to go out. The drifts are deceptive. From my warm and cozy apartment, I can see my car. The roof and windshield are clear of snow. But the back passenger tire is more than half covered. There's a row of 16" bushes against the far building. One has about four inches of its base covered. The one at the far end of the row has only three or four inches of bush showing.

The roofs and trees aren't well covered. It makes it seem like there's not that much snow. But there is.

There's a sedan in the parking lot half in, half out of a spot. Looks like he tried to back out and leave then gave up ... and couldn't pull back in.

This might not be the snowmageddon we were expecting, but it's certainly enough to shut everything down for a day. But those damn high expectations have me feeling let down. Then again, maybe I'd be thrilled if I knew I had to wield a shovel. The mix of snow that fell is not the nice fluffy big flake kind. It's heavy wet packing snow, that at times came down as sleet, pinging into my window.

Oh! a snow plow just came through my neighborhood! Hello private contractor!

Forecasts and premonitions

I keep checking outside ... snow yet? ... how about now? ... what about now? has it started now?

The grocery store Monday afternoon was a zoo. And all I wanted to do was buy a frozen pizza and a two-liter of diet Dr. Pepper. Meanwhile the rest of the world is stocking up on jugs of water and milk, boxes of dry cereal, and one woman was buying four dozen eggs. I understand the water and milk, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the four dozen eggs were not related to the impending 12" of snow looming in the clouds above just waiting to sneak up on us.

And if the eggs did have to do with the blizzard then I really don't want to know.

But something about this storm definitely feels sneaky. Maybe it's because I've known about it for so long, of which I've witnessed nothing particularly malicious in the weather. It's ... calm. The days are overcast, but there's no precipitation. The only change is that it gets colder each day until it was chill enough to make me take notice -- and I don't easily take notice of the cold in late January. All this calm has produced an impending sense of dread. I'm waiting for the Big Bad to come out and show itself.