Ambiguous Sexuality

My grandmother has dizzy spells and two days ago she had one while she was standing at the top of the cellar stairs. Thankfully she caught herself but it every so slightly sort of scared the hell out of me. I’ve told her to ask me to do anything that she might have to do near the cellar stairs and yesterday Pa-daddy rearranged the back room so that the cat’s litter box and the coat rack and the bin we keep bird food in are all away from the stairs. Hopefully that will prevent any future incidents. The whole thing was really scary, and reminded me of just how fragile my grandmother is and what could happen…

Over the past month or so I’ve been getting quasi-obsessed with the television show Heroes. I watched Season 1 (very good) and Season 2 (very bad) on DVD and I’ve also been watching the current Season, 4.

( cut for spoilers )

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«´¨`·..¤* No U *¤..·´¨`»
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What's In My Bag Meme from fitz_carraldo.



1. My purse. I’ve been using it for about a year and a half since I got is last spring at a “Share Your Stuff” exchange that was held at Whole Foods when I was working there.

2. A $25 Barnes & Noble giftcard—a couple of my co-workers gave it to me at my farewell party right before I left Chicago in September.

3. Chapstick from ALDI’s. Probably toxic.

4. An admissions badge from the Corning Glass Museum where my father and I stopped on our trip back from Chicago.

5. A purple Hello Kitty notepad.

6. My wallet—many years old and a bit overfilled. It’s pink and has the Sanrio character My Melody on it.

7. Bath & Body Works vanilla scented anti-bacterial hand lotion. I can’t use regular anti-bacterial gels because they dry my skin out but this works well.

8. Something my sister got for me this summer at G-Fest (a massive Godzilla collectors show). I think it’s some sort of a cell phone ornament from Japan of a Kewpie in a panda suit.

9. Condoms. Just because I haven’t had sex since 2002 doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be prepared.

10. Pens.

11. A crumpled tissue.

12. A zip-loc snack bag containing 3 quarters. Left over from when I was in an apartment and had to go out to the Laundromat to do my washing every week.

13. My leopard spotted Hello Kitty checkbook.

A couple of days ago I finished reading Jean Plaidy’s Rose Without a Thorn, a historical novel about Katherine Howard (5^th wife of Henry VIII—beheaded) and I’ve just started Cornelia Funke’s Inkdeath, the 3^rd and final novel in her Inkworld trilogy. Inkdeath is going to take me a while to read. It’s 663 pages long and even though it’s a young adult novel the prose is dense and rich like liqueur.

Funke’s Inkworld series is all about books and reading. One of the characters, Fenoglio, is an author who is magically transported into his own book. However another character, Orpheus, has the ability to rewrite Fenoglio’s book and alter the reality therein.

Fenoglio wonders, “…was there any worse fate than having to watch something else twist your own words, adding colorful touches—in very bad taste—to the world you’d made?” Reading this I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt as a writer of fan fiction. Like Orpheus, I delight in messing about with other people’s imagined worlds and adding lurid elements to their stories. I’ve always considered it quite a creative enterprise however Fenoglio’s dilemma does make me look at it from another perspective.

One thing I can take some consolation in is the fact that nothing in the Inkworld series is clean cut. Fenoglio, with his sense of authorship towards the world around him, is a very ambiguous character not nearly so much in control of the world he created as he would like to be.

When I finish Inkdeath, I’ve decided that I’m going to reread Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read it for the first time back in the fall of 2004 but I really plowed through it, I’d like to go back and do a more leisurely reading taking in more of the details.

About two weeks ago I watched an episode of the television show Criminal Minds for the first time.

I usually avoid police procedural show but I was interested because rock star Gavin Rossdale was guest-starring as a sort of strung-out vampire rock star (not that I’m exactly a Gavin Rossdale fan, but I liked him well enough in Constantine).

Watching the show I ended up being pretty impressed by androgynous boy genius Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) so yesterday when I saw there were reruns showing on several channels I ended up watching a couple episodes.

When not ogling Matthew Gray Gubler’s cheekbones, I was pleased to discover that Mandy Patinkin was on the earlier episodes of the show. I’ve had a thing for Mandy Patinkin for about 20 years—when I was in high school I listened obsessively to his recording of the musical Evita. Patinkin was gone in more recent episodes of the show, but I found myself surprised and unexpectedly pleased by another character, an FBI computer technician called Penelope Garcia (Kristen Vangsness).

Now I’ve always loved support staff type characters, from secretaries Marilyn (Northern Exposure) and Elaine (Ally McBeal) to sour techie Chloe (24) but in addition to her behind-the-scenes sort of position the thing about Garcia that really endeared her to me was that she was a female character on a mainstream television show who was not skinny. She was cute and sexy and curvy and plump and voluptuous. I don’t follow a lot of television shows but I honestly can’t think of the last time I saw a not skinny female character. Probably teenaged Sara Rue on Popular (she ended up slimming down for her own show Less Than Perfect).

I’ve watched a grand total of 3 ¾ episodes of Criminal Minds, so for all I know Garcia might be a totally stereotypical “overweight” character who does nothing but provide comic relief talk about diets but I don’t think so. It seemed to me like there was some sort of romantic thing going on between her and FBI agent, Morgan, and generally she seemed like someone who was really competent and well regarded by her peers. I’m really curious now to watch more of the show and she how she’s handled.

A couple super adorable pics of Kristen Vangsness as Penelope Garcia

Tomorrow my grandmother, parents and I are going to be having Thanksgiving dinner at a neighbor’s house. 

 

Given my food issues Thanksgiving is always a little uncomfortable for me but oddly I’m not feeling my usual degree of anxiety this year.  I think it helps that I haven’t had to spend the last week dealing with the insanity of holiday crowds at an urban supermarket.  Also I don’t have to work on the holiday itself so I’ll have time to relax and do anything I need to do before hand instead of rushing to work at 7:00 a.m. then having to get to a celebration right afterwards like I have the past few years. 

 

Yesterday I went to the dentist for the first time in 12 years (I know it’s been 12 years because the last time I went was right before my little brother graduated from college which would make it 1997).  

 

It’s almost unforgivably irresponsible to let that much time lapse between dental visits. I have lots of excuses.   I hate going to the dentist.   Because I was bulimic in high school I had to suffer through some extensive dental work when I was in my late teens and early 20’s.  Frankly, it was traumatic.  Also I haven’t had dental insurance since 1998 and I don’t like paying out of pocket to be subjected to pain. 

 

Before I went for my appointment I was absolutely horrified that my teeth would be in such bad shape I’d need hours of expensive dental work to save them (I have recurring nightmares about losing my teeth).  Luckily my teeth were in pretty good shape considering the amount of time it’s been.  I’ll need a filling but that’s it.  Obviously I’m not looking forward to my follow-up appointment after Christmas but it’s a huge relief to know that my teeth are more or less okay.

Found on DW's Metafandom comm, An entry about naming muses and nicknaming fics, I have decided to open a discussion about the subject here on IJ.

Do y'all name your muses? Do you have nicknames for your fics?

( And stuff!! )

So I am using this one because it is fun. :3 :3 ;3

Dear Muses,

Now that I'm starting on the Zero Princess Saga/Void Space Saga/Whatever the hell you want to call this series, Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, turn this into Viceroyverse done Kairi/Rinoa Style.

Please. I don't care how well it works, I don't care that it works on a multitude of levels. I don't care if it'd be cute (and about a quarter as creepy as Quistis/Kairi is!). I don't care if it makes a lot more sense than any other Kairi pairing in existence, Sora/Kairi included. But the Nonsense of Sora/Kairi is another show rant. Aaaanyway, no one would read it.

Even if it is a really good idea--

No. No. If you try and steer it in that direction, and we know that the one-sided Rinoa/Kairi in Braceletverse is enough, I will turn this brain around and write...umm...

I WILL MAKE US WRITE MPREG. SORA/KAIRI MPREG. HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES!?

No love,
Jordi.

( Reply to lemursexbot - i.e., my apprentice - about critiques of my Prison City manuscript )
( Reply to dharma_slut about the LLF thread )
( Brief reply to yonmei )

"My biggest writing mistake is that I can't leave well enough alone. Even after the manuscript has come back from the various proof-readers I use, inevitably, the urge to pick a scab overrules all logical sensibility."

--C. Anne Gardner. Because, um, yeah.

( Background to my entries )
( Writing: Wordage and my Internet addiction (a look at the past) )
( Writing: My ability to write descriptions )
( Simplicity: And the computer file purge continues )
( Writing: More schoolboy fiction )
( Writing: The advantages of being blind, word-count-wise )
( Writing: Switching over to editing The Three Lands; plus, W. Somerset Maugham )
( Home: Fall leaves and gardening )
( Writing: Switching over to writing The Eternal Dungeon; plus, The Beta Reader Problem )

"Look, I do know this: stories matter.

"Sometimes they come to me in the middle of the night, I wake up and I know there was once a person with a name, a history, a life -- and sometimes they died a hundred years ago and sometimes they haven't been born yet, but they're so real, they're right there, like I can touch them. I write them, when I can, and grieve them often, in ways I've learned to be smart enough not to talk about.

"At times that bothers me, the silence I feel obligated to that comes with storytelling. It bothers me when I write, which is one manner of inhabiting a character, and it bothers me when I act, which is another. But I've learned to live with it because stories, and the people they are about, are, in the telling, more important than me.

"I'm just a translator, a medium, a canvass and a liar. Their stories matter so much that in the telling of them, all I can wish is to disappear.

"And I love them so much, the people I tell into being.

"Which means that when it comes to the business of awards my gut says, honor them. Not me. Not writers. Characters. Stories. Honor them."

--RM

( Background to my entries )
( Writing: Man, oh, man, I'm offline for a month, and the entire e-publishing world changes )
( Simplicity and Writing: My time online; plus, the Prison City stuff I found )
( Writing: For your amusement, the Nautical Telegraph Code )
( Writing: The Lambda Literary Awards discussions in the blogosphere )
( Simplicity: Getting back on track )
( Writing: Squee! My name was mentioned at Yule Treasure! )
( Home: What happens in today's society when you aren't geek central )
( REVIEW: Recommendation of Rudyard Kipling's 'Stalky & Co.' )
( Writing: Monthly totals )
( Writing: My Muse moveth )
( Writing: My Muse really moveth; plus, Rosemary Sutcliff and P. G. Wodehouse )
( Writing: My Muse slows down a bit; plus, turn-of-the-century romantic friendship fiction )
( Writing: Triumph! The Turn-of-the-Century Toughs world is now the Mid-Atlantic )
( Home: Reasons why I often feel I'm a conservative )
( Writing: Not-quite-good-enough writing )
( Writing: My unfocussed Muse )
( Writing and Mentoring: I've decided to make my winter schedule my year-round schedule )

"In the midst of winter, I finally realized that deep within me there lay an invincible summer."

--Albert Camus.

I'm posting separately this entry some medical problems I've been having recently. (Don't worry, they aren't life-threatening, just painful and annoying.) I figure that people who are interested in reading my Daily Life entries may not want to wade through tons of medical stuff, and vice versa.

( Background to my entries )
( My doctor and my wallet )
( Well, whadya know. I have a stress-related illness. )
( Pillows. )
( Tiny food. )
( Less talking, more progress )
( Sleeping and posture )
( Desk posture )
( Now my glasses have decided to misbehave (but wow, once they behave, life'll be great) )
( Yet another bodily complaint )

I pressed my Muse hard and persuaded him to finish writing Law Links (The Three Lands) today, November 8. I began writing that novel fourteen years ago, almost to the day: November 15, 1995.

By coincidence, this year happens to be the thirtieth anniversary of the original draft of the first Three Lands story I wrote, Blood Vow. In honor of that, I thought I'd show three versions each of two scenes from the novel, so that you can see how my writing has ceased being absolutely dreadful progressed.


( The first appearance of the Chara in 'Blood Vow,' just after my 16th birthday. Spoilers for Part One of 'Blood Vow.' Warning for bad teenage humor. )
( The same scene re-written one year later )
( The final version of that scene, age 45 )
( The first appearance of Lord Carle, in a passing reference, as part of a flashback )
( The second appearance of Lord Carle. Warning for a horrible simile. )
( The final version of that scene, age 45 )
( Journal entries about 'Blood Vow,' 1979-1995, with major spoilers )

I went to the supermarket yesterday.  There were fairly long lines with the pre-Thanksgiving crowd and the cashiers were hauling whole turkeys over the scanners. 

 

I was very grateful not to be working in a supermarket anymore. 

 

In fact, the market was always open on Thanksgiving and I started working there in September of 2006 so this is going to be the first Thanksgiving since 2005 where I won’t have to go to work.