Happy Halloween

Must admit I found this through Elizabeth Twist.
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Pumpkin carving as an art

Believer it or not, I stole both of these pictures off of George Takei's facebook wall. There's just so many layers of geekery to unpack in this post that it's not worth thinking about it.  

Of the first one Takei writes:

One gourd to roux them all, two eggs to bind them, one gourd, add sugar and spice, and with some whipped cream pie them.

Takei had no witty captions for this next act of pumpkin carving brilliance, but my friend stepped in to fill the void. She writes:

I'm afraid this pumpkin will be quite operational...

Ad of the Week, Halloween

It's poor quality, but it was the only version I could find of this particular ad up on YouTube.

That little beauty with the creepy cameo, is a Scottish Fold with a Russian Blue coat. See? that six year subscription to Cat Fancy that I had as a child has paid off in terms of useless information.

Sleep deprivation and other forms of insanity

Work has left me feeling stressed out and crazy. So it goes. Of course my work schedule and job descriptions don't add to the sanity or the number of hours I sleep per night. So in the midst of all this, I have decided to do NaNoWriMo. Because the exact thing that stressed out, sleep deprived, overly busy people who feel they have no time for themselves should do is write the shitty 50,000 word first draft of a novel in 30 days.

Yep. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

... that or a restful, restorative weekend at a spa ... but it was definitely one of the two.

There's the saying that if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. So my NaNoWriMo declaration should read something like a love letter to myself.

Dear busy-self, I love you and I know you've been feeling down, so I'd like you to do this extra task for me. It'll make us both feel good, accomplished, proud. What's 50,000 words between friends, after all? You're the only person I can count on to do this. And if you can have it to me by or before November 30 that would be great. kthxbye.

Logic says that I shouldn't attempt this. However, NaNo-logic says this is the perfect time to write a novel. Right, smack-dab in the middle of your hectic life. If you don't write your novel now, when will you? Does life ever get less busy?

And -- the thing that really made my decision for me -- I miss writing.

I've been so focused on work (the kind with the paycheck) that I haven't been writing lately. Occasionally I muster enough energy and focus to think  about writing, but no new words land on the page. I'm starting to understand why some of my faculty write like crazy over the summer months -- because they're too busy being faculty and parents and responsible citizens during the school year. While I have the luxury of not having a toddler, I don't know if I have the luxury of waiting; their jobs are much more secure than mine. Writing the novel is the most important step in getting the novel published, so if I want to fulfill that dream of mine -- the one where I see my name on a book cover -- then I need to get words on the page. I need to write my shitty first draft.

(See Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird for what a shitty first draft is and why you should want one.)

Are you talking yourself into or out of it this fall?

From whence does the grammar come?

I got thinking -- actually, this little comic got me thinking -- about where we get our grammar. Sure, English mugs grammar from other languages, but where do you and I get our grammar?

In school -- high school, elementary school, middle school -- I didn't learn grammar in English classes. I was able to fake it, however, because of my mother.  My mother had gone to junior high, elementary, with the nuns. Yes, the nuns.  The ones that smacked you with rulers when you misspelled something.

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration. But they were definitely big on the grammar.

And so I sort of got the feel of grammar through osmosis. Mother's nuns and reading a lot of books to pick up other stuff.

But I did learn parts of speech in high school. But not in English classes. In French classes. So I can tell you what verb tense is being used ... but odds are I can only tell you it's name in a foreign language.  Passe compose. Imparfait. Plus parfait. I'm only take stabs at what these things are called in English.

In college I learned more style than grammar. No, really, I learned thought and development of thought. Any grammar and style I garnered were accidental.

In my less than one semester of law school, I learned how to use a semicolon.

In my writing MFA program I learned style, clarity, specificity. And some other weirdness.  Useful weirdness. I got grammar told to me in a  I can't believe you don't already know this sort of way.

It wasn't until Odyssey Writing Workshop that I learned comma rules in a meaningful way.

Odd that.  It wasn't until I took a voluntary course focused in science fiction and fantasy that I finally learned how grammar rules work (and thus had the ability to explain them to someone else).

Where'd you discover grammar? Did you have to mug anyone to get it? Beat any foreigners?

Edited to add: I guess this becomes even more strange when I consider that I got my most recent job on the various degrees I have, but that job expects me to teach grammar -- something which my degrees taught me, but didn't teach me well enough to teach someone else.

Gratuitous Ad of the Week

Which reminds me that the makers of the film 300 --  you remember 300, the film where your mother leaned over the armrest every fifteen minutes or so to whisper her appreciation of the filmic techniques, appreciation which all sounded like a variation on hubba-hubba.  Yes those same film makers are coming out with another ab-ripped screen version of Greek history/myth called Immortals. Of course I want to see it.  Of course my mother wants to see it. But we may need to put an entire theater chair between us while we watch.

Calender Men

If you've seen the film Calendar Girls you know the basics of the plot: older women decide to produce a calendar to make money for some very nice charity project by posing naked behind strategically placed items.  It's a funny and charming film -- and if you liked it I highly recommend Kinky Boots another British comedy with similar themes and wit though less nudity and more shoes.

I bring this up because I've recently come across The Men of the Stacks a 2012 calendar of, you guessed it, male librarians.  There's ... well you should really just see it. The pictures range; obviously they weren't all shot by the same photographer, but the proceeds go to the It Gets Better Project. http://menofthestacks.com/

Also sent to me was this series of photos of men in traditional pin up poses. There's such a brilliant combination of the traditional pin up and the average man that these are absurdly amusing.

For facebook

Check it out on www.facebook.com/whof1 and "share" it to your fb wall. (Obviously, the arrow makes more sense in facebook than on this blogger template)

Ad of the Week

This ad, on the surface, is just another example of The Strange in advertising ... until you start considering history and the influence of other ads. But when you begin considering it as a referential narrative work, it starts to get interesting (in my opinion).



History:
I first saw the following ad about 6-9 years ago. It's a European car ad that, at the time, rocked my freakin world. The quality of the video below is obviously lacking when compared to the above video, and part of that is the fault of the youtube poster and part of that is just how much CGI has improved in the past few years.


Take the Citroen ad and add to it the hamsters of previous Kia commercials and the production of first ad in this post -- with its cyborgs, mice, cars and lots of dance moves -- becomes the logical, inevitable conclusion.


But in spite of that "inevitability," I totally want to see what they come up with next as they continue down this path -- plz continue down this path, because it both confuses and amuses me. Plz!

Link+Love

This week's Link+Love post comes to you a bit early.

Absolutely awesome advice to those thinking of going or already attending grad school -- it's succinct, it's honest, it's got enough depth to have meaning, and most of all it's so damn true.


Grammar Girl -- whom I love, love, love for her grammar savvy and word-geekery podcasts and newsletter -- recently posted a podcast of some tips about identifying and overcoming writer's block. Lower your standards, she says, and join NaNoWriMo. Well, okay, she doesn't suggest that, but lower your standards at the beginning is the moto of NaNoWriMo (which starts in less than a month, ohmy!).


I'm teaching two sections of the exact same class this semester. Classes always vary, one to the next. But usually, when you teach the same syllabus at the same time, you have a similar experience in both sections. Not so this semester. I am amazed at how differently each class responds to exactly the same material and exactly the same lecture. I won't say any more about the specifics of the responses, but serve to say: I'm floored.


This past September would have been Jim Henson's 75th birthday. Tor.com remembers.


Writer Sara Douglass recently passed away. When I read her Wayfarer redemption, my jaw dropped as I admired all the world building and the tight building of plot that those novels possess. Although I have to say that once Axis left this earthly plain, I wasn't much interested in reading further -- note to all: don't deify your hero. A tribute, also from Tor.com.

Got my hands on a copy of Florence + the Machine's album Lungs -- and it is awesome. I thought that when I got it, I would like "Dog Days Are Over" (the reason I got the CD in the first place) and that the rest would be just okay -- how pleasantly wrong I was.

Mysteries of the universe

So as I was eating Chinese food for lunch today -- I'm having a bit of a spat with my Jenny Craig counselor, thus my deviation to the land of vegetable lo mien -- I stumbled upon a question that perplexes me: the origins of baby corn.

Is baby corn the same as regular ears of corn but someone has picked them when they're small and young? Like how bonsai trees are actually regular trees that someone has just forced to their small stature?

Or is baby corn a genetically different breed of corn that will never become the corn I, as an American Midwesterner, am infinitly familiar with? Like how a teacup poodle will never become a standard poodle no matter how much you feed it?

These are the mysteries of the universe.

I suppose I could Wikipedia it, but I'm not that interested in the right answer; I'm more interested in posing the question. Which is probably why law school failed to interest me for even one semester.  So instead of spending my time looking up the answer, I thought I'd share with you my lunch-time thought process.

(picture shown is not my lunch)

Fall is Coming

Screw the Starks and all their winter is coming dourness. Fall is coming! Fall is here!

It's 60 or 70 degrees outside and the leaves are starting to change and the air smells mossy -- of cut grass and crushed leaves and rain all mixed into one.

Ah, fall, how I love you!

Now, whether or not you capitalize the names of seasons has been a point of contention between my father and I over the past year. He says you must capitalize them as they follow the proper name rule. But I was all skeptical.

Turns out the discrepancy comes from the fact that the rule has changed.


It used to be the rule to capitalize Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall -- or Autumn if that's the way you lean. But that rule has largely gone out of favor. so unless the name of the season is part of the proper name of something (like Winter Olympics) then it gets denied status and is relegated to the lowly lowercase regions (like summer school, or spring break, or wintertime).

Darn English, always in flux like all other spoken languages. If only it was dead like Latin, we wouldn't have any of these problems.
Image Credit: Mal B

Ad of the Week

Although I hate to see coffee made a villain, I absolutely love the high drama.