I don’t recall how up-to-date the Gentle Readers are on the book adventure, but here’s the short form:

I finished the transcription–and found that the entire terrifying wordcount was *drumroll* 330,000. In other words, Moby Dick and a half, or a third of Clarissa. (Which I have in fact read in its original entirety and enjoyed, I’ll have you know.)

That’s one whole hell of a lot. I knew it was long, but . . .

I’d been thinking for a while that it needed to be split into two books, but even so, it would be too damn long. (When you’re soothed by knowing it isn’t as long as Clarissa, that’s not a good sign.) So I went for three books instead, and have three which are longish but not outrageously so. And I’ve been snipping as I go. At this point, I’m thinking that a couple of chapters here and there can just vanish. But maybe not. I’m conflicted.

I find myself feeling guilty about potentially taking more of the reader’s time than will be found worthwhile. On the other hand, science fiction and fantasy can run you into some long-ass books. So for now I’m more or less leaving it alone. I once had a Russian cabdriver who was a musician, and we talked a bit about art. He said, “Leave it alone. It will never be perfect; you have to just let it be what it is, and move on.” It’s not as if it’s the only book I have within me.

For a number of reasons, I’ve decided to stop waiting for fame and publishers to find me, and to self-publish. So here it is! The next step is to  have it turned into an e-reader format and put up on Kindle. Pandamian plans to be offering that functionality soon, but for now, I have some really neat-o web fiction there for you, and it’s free!

Go read it! Now!!

As of yet, there isn’t a comment function on the site, so if you have any, please just come back here and tell me what you think.

I hate politics. It makes me feel angry, threatened, helpless, and depressed. It grinds my nose into the murky broken-tea-bag grit at the bottom of a glass half-empty. But the Wisconsin issue just has me sick.

For the fraction of a person-percent of you happening upon this fleck of cyberspace long after this hoo-hah is done, the governor of Wisconsin, one Scott Walker, has descended into a small eddy of first-termer psychosis. (He is joined in this by his fellows in the House of Representatives, who have produced a budget based apparently on the principle of, “If I’m not too sure of what this thing really does, we’re getting rid of it.”) In short, he has claimed a “mandate from The People” on an issue which he never once mentioned in his campaign, and which he tacked onto a budget bill (which also gives him various kingly powers as sole arbiter of other stuff having nothing to do with the budget at all).

He decided to close up a budget shortfall with the sinews of his public employees. First, he demanded that they pay so much more of their benefit costs that at least one of my friends now needs a second part-time job to cover the gap. (Wisconsin public employees aren’t paid very well in comparison with either their counterparts in other states, or in private industry.)

Then he pretty much ended collective bargaining. Bad unions! Bad! After a couple of days, the unions rather meekly and politely rolled over and gave him all the monetary concessions he wanted–remember now, we’re talking about the budget, meaning money–but he needed to take the collective bargaining thing off the table.

(Mind you, he isn’t a total union-buster–he exempted the cops and the firefighters, whose unions endorsed his campaign. Members of these unions have now decided that “To Protect and Serve” means standing firm with their fellow citizens. Watch for a last-minute rider yanking those exemptions.)

Nope, no deal. Not budging. Ignoring money offer, still saying budget. (The thought occurs that he actually might not know what “budget” means.) So the 14 Democratic senators, miffed at this lack of necessary vocabulary, refused to come in and give quorum. (Before you scold them, remember that this bill was introduced only a week before the vote, with little time for analysis and discussion; and that at his point, due to the union concessions, the actual M-O-N-E-Y issue was off the table.) Walker took advantage of a vague bizarreness in the state constitution saying they could be “compelled to attend” sessions, and sent the state police to their front doors. They in turn took themselves down to Illinois.

Now here’s a bit of the psychosis part. First, they decided to deny the WI 14’s staff copying privileges. (And yeah, of course they pulled parking spaces.) Then they announced that the senators would be fined $100/day of their absence. Then . . . the governor announced that if they didn’t return to pass his bill, well gosh, he had to make up the money somehow, and he will pink-slip thousands of those employees. I wish I were making this up.

And oh yeah, the senators’ paychecks are no longer going into their direct deposits; they must come to the Capitol to pick them up. I am getting very worried for their pets. And maybe their kids.

Meanwhile, Mr. Walker is gulled by a prankster pretending to be David Koch into saying all sorts of dumb stuff, including admitting he had considered sending troublemakers in to make trouble in the middle of a peaceful protest demonstration.

Oh. Yeah. Protest demonstration.

For two weeks straight, there have been thousands of people at the Capitol; for a good bit of the time several hundred were actually camping inside the building itself. All perfectly peaceful. (Consider that this is the state which brought us both Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. Not only do they kill people, they eat them and make useful household objects to boot.)

First Amendment made beautiful. At one point, the estimate was 80-100,000. And they aren’t getting bored or tired. They get off work, and in they head. The teabaggers are going nuts. The very best part was the FOX News clip reporting completely fictitious violence (I have first-hand reportage, loyal readers) and . . . rolling a bit entitled “Union Protests”–showing palm trees.

Yeah, some teabaggers showed up a week or so ago, but maybe 5 or 6,000. Which sounds scary, until you compare it to the 75,000 people on the other side. They’re shipping some more in tomorrow, but bear in mind that the majority of the people in Capitol Square who are trying to save their collective bargaining rights are all citizens of Wisconsin. I’m looking forward to what will likely be FOX pinhead gloating on how far they had to dredge to bring up what they will tout as “wide and deeply entrenched support;” perhaps these non-Wisconsinians are the people whose mandate the governor of Wisconsin is obeying. I dunno.

I’m a Badger myself (BS Art ’89) and I am sick and heartbroken. I don’t think there’s a prayer in hell for this to end well. The Wisconsin unions are screwed, blued, and tattooed.

But people around the country–around the world, really–are noticing. Finally. I’ve been aghast at the stupidity of the liberals blinking amiably at all those hate and ignorance-filled Tea Party rallies. La la, let’s make intellectually humorous remarks about the gomers. Now Planned Parenthood is about to lose its federal funding. Hmm.

At the very least, those plucky Badgers, who are mad as hell and not going to take it any more, are showing the rest of the left their sad, lazy asses, and maybe we’ll get our country back. The one true and fair and face-slap thing the Tea Party is wanking itself about is their bleating, “Elections have consequences.” Yup. Sure do. But the great loophole in their argument is that we are a democratic republic. Meaning that the demo-‘s still have a say in the fact that the “equal power” part of that has been dead for decades, and perhaps now it’s time for the ball to start rolling against the oligarcho-‘s. And that ball will be made of Wisconsin snow.

Wisconsin is a beautiful place filled with friendly people and the only collectively-owned football team in the NFL. (This explains my confusion on Super Bowl Sunday, when the Heismann trophy was handed to the coach instead of the greasespot owning the team–and having had absolutely nothing to do with the win. “Oh,” I’d thought. “They finally caught on that it was dumb.” Well, no. But I digress.)

On second thought; no, I don’t. It’s all about the coach. It’s all about the players. It’s all about the people who do the work. It’s just too damn bad that the people with the clever signs in the 20-degree weather don’t get rings, ’cause they oughta.

On, Wisconsin.

 

You’ve all seen this one on Facebook by now:

GAME RULES: if you choose to play, grab the book closest to you right now. Open to page 56 and choose the 5th sentence. Publish it as your status and write these rules as a comment. Don’t choose the book you think is the coolest; use the closest one to you.

And my answer is . . .

A Collect for Saturdays

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world didst rest
from all thy works and sanctify a day of rest for all thy
creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties,
may be duly prepared for the service of thy sanctuary, and
that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the
eternal rest promised to thy people in heaven; through Jesus
Christ our Lord.     Amen.

— Book of Common Prayer

(Note that this, as are the majority of collects, is one sentence long. There are only three collects on the page, so you have to count the “Amen”s as sentences too. Note also that it’s pronounced KAH-lekt, etymology available upon request.)

OK. Fair enough. But . . . every single time this little game has come around for me, it’s the same damn thing.

I’m not what you’d call devout, really. In fact, for the past few years, the most God-friendly description of my attitude has been, “pretty agnostic at best.” (God and I have Issues.) Yet at every fairly widely separated time, the BCP has been the closest book, and I’ve had it out for random reasons sort of research related: A saint’s day; some overly irate response to some troll. Yesterday morning for some reason or another “O Holy Night” was stuck in my head, and as usual, that second “divine” came out like a rusty chicken. It’s a note well within my range, and I was fishing to see what the interval was. (My BCP has the hymnal in back.)

Anyway, it turns out that a) that’s not in our hymnal, b) it’s a major third, and c) beats the sheep out of me why I can’t do it.  And clearly, d) I’m bad at putting Mr. Book back on Mr. Shelf–or on top of the box under the stereo holding my daughter’s dried corsage from high school graduation and the occasional castrated mouse ball, as the case may be.

I thought it was weird that the BCP was always the winner, and for a while was wondering why, in a world of feast, famine, woe, and maniacal Republicans, the putative Almighty was all about me praying for Saturday. Then I realized that the answer was perhaps a little more disturbing–at least to me:

I really don’t read anymore. At least, not books.

Back when I started grad school (in English), I finally realized that most of what I read was inept crap; i.e., badly written (but published!) science fiction and fantasy.  Wooden characters exchanging featureless and stilted dialogue, highly predictable plots, you name it. I didn’t have time to read it, especially when plowing through the reading list for the M.A. exam.

By the time I got to graduate school #2, and its own reading list for the A.M. exam, I was so burned out that all I read was non-fiction. And then there was the dissertation, and the simultaneous beginning of my own novel.

I realized right away that reading other people’s stuff would be the kiss of death for me–I’d either ventriloquize that in my own work, or get depressed that somebody actually got paid for that dreck, or something. And I didn’t really want to.

So I stopped reading. Well, almost.

For the usual vague sorts of reasons that lead to your being friends with the best friend of your sister’s cousin’s best friend whom she met at the supermarket, I ended up being particularly enamored of Mr. David Weber and his fellows at Baen Books (see link in my blogroll)–and of Ms. C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series. And I discovered manga; and re-discovered the graphic novel.

But I used to read a hundred books a year. (I kept track.) Now, I think it’s under ten. I’m really appalled by this. Is my brain shriveling? What am I doing with myself instead?

Well, I play more video games, and I do more art–but mostly I write. The huge majority of it is in my head as I wrestle with my characters and try to get to know them and to understand their motives. And I am distressed by this, but Facebook eats a measurable part of my days.

Maybe I’ll try giving it all up for Lent and hunting out a book or two. But only on Saturdays.

Today a friend shared that OKCupid has been acquired by Match.com, a site they had rightly lampooned as being essentially a waste of time. Fear not; as of this blog, they’re tweeting that they’ll still be free.

I used to love OKCupid, but then one day several years ago I was out with my laptop and wanted a profile picture for my new Facebook acount. I went by OKC to grab that one–and immediately got hit by a drive-by, Virtumonde–the one causing those pop-ups pretending to be Windows security alerts; fortunately easy to scrub since it’s probably the biggest PITA out there. (These people are as gods to the Internet, having saved my desktop from an even bigger menace literally right before I was about to reformat.) I panicked and *never* went back.

But when the news above came up, I was curious, so I Googled “OKCupid virus.” Apparently the nice folks at OKC had found and squashed it right away; it’s not their fault their advertisers are such sheeping scum that descriptions fail. What intrigues me is that I’d actually never done this before; never tried to fix the essential problem of “hey, this isn’t fun any more.” (We all know I’m all about the fun.)

Part of this was that this was the first virus I’d ever had, and I reacted as though it were cancer. (The nervous should not follow that link if they’re weak of tummy.

For a while, I was really bummed and self-pitying. I’m that drag on the market: the middle-aged divorcee. Being unnecessarily cynical, I had more or less decided that all the worthwhile men had already been snapped up. Worse in many ways is that I don’t tend to act my age, and on average my friends are at least ten years younger than I am. (Part of this is that raising a bright teenager who shares many of my interests shows me new shiny things.) OKCupid seemed my only hope. (Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi!)

How did I get to this place of desperately hoping that the Internet would fulfill my life in every possible way? Simple enough: One day, a friend sent me a link to one of those amusing quizzes, and I poked around for several hours.

I signed up. What the hell? I was (and am) intrigued by their algorithm, which indeed pulls up interesting people with whom you might actually consider being on the same planet. I wrote an embarrassingly gushy message to the very first hit–something like 80%ish–not realizing that it wasn’t that uncommon.  (To be fair, it was within the first five minutes of logging on, and I was heavily drugged from a very bad head cold.) Later, I discovered that a number of attractive young men in Italy have a weakness for tattoos.

I also got the usual responses, like the time that even before I could get through my no-thank-you, he  changed his profile picture to  . . . well, let’s just say that when I blocked him and added that the bodily part was actually particularly unattractive as such went, I was telling the truth. And the one who takes the biscuit was the man whose correspondence followed these steps:

1: A fairly normal letter commenting that I seemed to be cooler than most PhDs

2: A fairly explicit letter requesting immediate contact

3: A letter scathingly telling me that I was just like the other PhDs (and that this doctor-ness was in some way part of My Problem)

I can only guess that this man was assuaging his incredibly high rejection rate as a human being. What amuses me is that he is apparently unaware that he is smacked on the nose by anybody with a high IQ.

Then there was the guy who had Asperger’s, and whose perseveration was drawing erotic comics. He was charming, if a little weird, and I try to be broadminded, despite having a PhD.  His pouncing on me whenever I logged on, day or night, was annoying at best, as my reflexes for hitting “unavailable” are presumably poor. But I tried to be nice. Finally, (having Asperger’s) he shared that his natural style was essentially to appear as “love” when it was merely “like,” and moreover, he commented while talking of an ex-lover that he found stretchmarks revolting. (Two kids over here, ladies and gentlemen. Man up.)  Oh dear. For all I know, he’s still stalking my long-dead profile.

So the nice people running Virtumonde not only wanted my $19.95 to rid my computer of things like their virus, they crushed my hopes and dreams.

But something odd happened. Perhaps because this last chance was denied, I faded from the misery of “I’ll-never-find-anybody” to . . . “Whatever.” Contrary to mythology, this has not immediately brought suitors to my door–but I don’t care. My daughter has gone from actively discouraging any Mommy-competition, to nudging me to look about me; but I don’t care. Just don’t care. Used to. Used to care a lot. Don’t care anymore.

The way I’ve structured my life, I’m quite content, even happy; and I strongly suspect that a boyfriend would sorta get in my way. Which is terrible, but there it is. I can only hope and trust that if said boyfriend should ever weasel his way in, I would be fond enough of him to not mind. But from this end, I’m kind of doubtful.

The only thing I really miss is being snuggled.

What annoys me is that our Noah’s Ark culture puts singlehood into three categories: a) still looking but undiscovered, b) celibate clergy, and c) loser. I find underneath my satisfaction a tiny sadness that this part of life has been denied me, but I do wonder how much of that is because of Option C.  Is it just that the grapes are sour?

Don’t know. And, really, as a practical daily matter, I just don’t care. I’m just glad I got from “Nobody wants me,” to “OKI’mSingle.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Write a haiku about something that drives you nuts.”

As loyal readers know, I’ve taken to cheating on my posts and answering Plinky prompts, which ask a fairly random question every day and invites readers to answer.  The intent is to whack writers into producing at least something. Today’s prompt was the above.

They encourage you to write your own title, which most people don’t. (Today’s default title was “Seventeen Moras of Frustration.” Classical Japanese haiku is a bit more complicated than our Western versions. Among the differences is that it is written in moras. If you already knew what a mora was, you have gained my respect but lost an iota of my warm affection as a peer.)

Anyway. I always write my own, particularly since they stroke your ego by telling you that your answers get viewed more that way. (Hey, I’m honest.) So today, my answer was:

Resisted the urge to turn the title to haiku itself: I didn’t.

Well, there’s always pretentious writing like the above, Annoying, eh?

[Note to loyal readers lacking curiosity or caffeine: The title isn’t a haiku because it’s 18 syllables instead of 17; the first line above really is 17 syllables. Although “pretentious” would be hyphenated, which is cheating.]

OK, I’ll stop now. *whack*

Actual haiku below:

Ah, topical as always:

My cat caught a mouse

Last night. Back and forth they ran.

Morning: Where is it?

 

Adorable, eh?  And even truthful. These mornings indeed drive me nuts, one way or another. Well, the problem is that a) I came up with the notion of the title, b) I followed up with the first line–and c) it took a bit of effort to stop counting on my fingers with the next several things I wrote.

My brain loves this stuff. It’s toys & candy & a nice walk on a sunny day. I can do it for hours. And it also has a serious problem with automatically doing what are called “Tom Swiftys,” she said cerebrally.  I have to go back into my manuscript and take them out, partly because the fact that I do it so much indeed drives me nuts–and partly because the astute reader will pick up on it and it will drive them nuts too.

What’s a girl gonna do? I have the suspicion that it’s not Real Writing when I do it on purpose, and Bad Writing when I do it accidentally. But I also suspect that I’m wrong, at least about the first. At the very least, it reminds my brain that writing is FUN!! This, as any writer knows, is something of a contradiction in terms, as writing can resemble stabbing said brain with a fork and wonder why on earth one is doing such a pointless and frustrating activity.

But at the end of the day, I’m all about fun, because there ain’t a lot out there sometimes. When we find it, we should roll around in it for a while. It’s the light of our lives, she said sunnily.

Can I go home now?

Plinky prompt: If you could enact one new law, what would it be? How would it improve society?

As I sit here, I’m still working on the morning tea, and my first response to today’s prompt was, “Oh no, are they kidding? Boring, much?” But I’m cranky–not in the mornings, necessarily–and I knew I had an answer for this somewhere; and it only took me a moment. (What, you asked my opinion on something?)

At first I thought, “How about not enacting stupid laws?” Well, what do you mean there, Spanky? “Laws that hurt people.”

Now come there, hon. Let’s cue the background music. (Most good blogs should have background music. This used to have the actual YouTube file until it got pulled for copyright. No worries–you know how it goes.)

*bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?
whatcha gonna do when they come for you?*

If you think about it, one of the main reasons laws exist is to keep people from being hurt by other people: Don’t shoot each other. Don’t hit people with your cars because you were stupid enough to go too fast or to drive drunk. Pay your freaking taxes so we can send the kids to school–all those kids will help support you in your old age, whether they’re yours or not, and it’ll work out better if at least some aren’t at McDonalds.

Laws make societies, whether they are written or unwritten; whether they are enforced by a cop or by your parents. And if you think about it, what they all boil down to is one thing–and getting that through people’s heads is the most important issue facing humanity:

Be responsible.

Be responsible for helping take care of the poor and weak. Be responsible for living within your means and trying to rise from poverty. Be responsible for maintaining the health of your body and not soaking it in poisons which are broadly demonstrated to be lethal. Be reponsible for making a home where your kids realize that school is important; where you read so that they will.

Be responsible for taking reasonable care that your country not be assaulted by outside enemies. Be responsible in allocating the amount of money your country spends on the military, so it is providing security instead of merely allaying fear. Be responsible in caring for what some people call your soul, and seeing that it is nourished by art and music and kindness.

You get the idea. Go into any tacky store and get some posters. I doubt that you’ll find many people who disagree with the general drift. But right now it’s what’s called an ethic, and I would have it be a law–and of course, it already is; but I would have the simple idea underneath ground into us bone deep.

Have our citizens examined, by essay; by commitee; have them account for their accountability. Assign the kids an exam every year where they talk about what the word means and what is expected of them. Have clever posters in every street announcing “Responsible” as if they said “Big Brother” or “Eat our Bad Food.” Teach from the cradle to the grave what the results of irresponsibility are; provide ministries that halp people who have difficulty in maintaining the idea–some gently (Are you mentally ill? Are you truly too poor to pay taxes? Did the schools and the posters and the parents and the exams fail to be efficient?) and others less so (Do you hear the music?)

*bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?
whatcha gonna do when they come for you?*

What a better world it would be, if whatcha gonna do is to stand up and look your fellows in the face and say, “I did this. I was responsible; I had a choice, and I went the wrong way. I beat my kids. I chose money right now over my planet in the future. I voted for venal idiots, I hated the different, I twisted my god into my own human smallness. I turned the page of the paper that showed prisoners stacked four to a cell the size of a closet in a country that trafficks in children and lives. I stole what I didn’t need. I helped people destroy other people. I killed that girl. I tortured that dog. I used violence to promote my personal political opinion.

“I shot those people. I watched homeless kids play in the gutter. I avoided paying the taxes which help my society build its bridges and roads and protect me from invaders. I betrayed the trust of those who elected me. I wiped out my company’s pension funds.

*bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?
whatcha gonna do when they come for you?*

“And I ran that red light, because I was drunk, and you stopped me because I had already lost my license because I had done this before, and my laws were too irresponsible to hold me to it forever. I was going too fast, and I had dangerous things with me which directly encouraged pain. Maybe not all of them, but still.

“And I could have hit that car and killed those people and wiped out the joy of dozens of people who knew them, and all the good they might have done, because they were responsible–and I am not.”

*bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?
whatcha gonna do when they come for you?*

“You’re quite the sailor,” she said cheerfully.

God, how I hated that line. Every time I came across it, I’d wince and read on as fast as I could jump over it. Why did she say that dorky thing? What was she, eighty? A condescending eighty? I wanted to smack her in her fatuous little chops.

What bothered me most was that she was in the middle of being abducted by a vampire who was taking her to an unknown location–and she was attracted to him, to boot.  Just because she was a nerd developing Stockholm Syndrome didn’t excuse that line. Who wrote this crap? Well, I did.

This piece of writing just sort of lolloped back and forth through a couple of years, as other bits got written (including a doctoral dissertation), but Toria’s plopping out that bizarre little stupidity hung in there the entire time; I’m pretty sure it showed up in the very first draft. And I vaguely remember (or am backediting) that I hated it from the start. It wasn’t my fault, really. At the time, I had no idea who Toria Piper was; I didn’t know her abductor either. They were just people who showed up on Memorial Drive one Cambridge night, and I wrote about them, just because.

So every now and then for two years, I’d shudder and move on. And this wasn’t the only place in my writing it happened: I’d reread, feel ill, and go on to the better stuff that didn’t make me feel stupid.

Then one day a few months ago, I had an epiphany. I highlighted the sentence with my mouse–and pressed delete. It was sort of the way I feel when I take off my bra at night. Why did it take me so long? What was my stupid deal? I owned this work; I owned Toria and everybody she met that night. But it was as if I didn’t; as if I were somehow locked in to keeping it, as if I were in a bad relationship which I was committed to make work.

And I think it was that very thing. I had been in a bad relationship on which I squandered years of my time, in which I felt helpless and passive; it was as if I were reading my life as written by somebody else. Word after word, day after day. I learned that it didn’t matter what you liked or didn’t; that things just were the way they were.

More insidiously, I knew that beneath the talent and pretense, I was actually a pretty bad writer, just as I was a pretty bad everything else. I had my characters say things like that (even if rarely)–and it was a dead giveaway. I had to leave those little breadcrumbs of mediocrity alone, to demonstrate that I didn’t know what I was doing; that I was your basic talentless fangirl who wrote nothing but awkward sententious crap.

Ironically, I’d already been able to make a lot of major changes fairly fluidly–X-ing out pages of longhand; noting in marginal pen things like, “What are you thinking?” and “Oh, just stop it.” Similarly, I’d made many big changes in my life–moved, changed jobs, finished school, had a lot of therapy, etc. But looking back, I think that one little change meant something more.

It wasn’t like when I could see the blinding miserable fact that maybe an entire half-chapter was pointless and really needed to be moved to the outtakes file. The devil is in the details, after all, and when I finally silently bitchslapped that duhhh out of Toria’s mouth, I was taking it out of mine. It said that I had control.

Like so many things I’m actually quite good at, I’d somehow seen the story as something outside myself. It was really decently done, which meant that I didn’t really write it; indeed, it felt–and still feels–almost like automatic writing much of the time. It works best when I get myself out of the way and let the story flow through my fingers. But I am doing it; it’s not a fluke. I am making this good thing from my own cleverness, and because I own it, because I own me, I have control.

There’s undoubtedly a whole lot of dumb left, in both author and work, but when I see it, I can change it. I am not helpless and passive. Sometimes I have to take stock and weigh how much fiddling around it will take to fix it, and sometimes I just do a workaround as I can. But if I am able to, I just hit delete, and make one more dumb thing go away.

 

(Plinky prompt: Have you ever thought of starting your own business?)

OK. Maybe I play okay with others. Most of the time. Especially if they’re gamer geeks or something. Unless they’re a particular kind of gamer geeks (and you know the ones I mean), in which case, definitely not.

I suppose you can substitute any damn thing there for “gamer geeks.” Moving on:

In a way, writing is my own business. It took a while–a long while–to realize that this was the big trick in my bag; now all I have to do is to get paid for it. Well, I have, in tiny bits: I do a little grantwriting for a non-profit that can’t afford to pay me any more until the grants start to come in–meaning it’s in the same boat as most non-profits right now.

But . . . I wrote this novel, see. It’s probably more practical to think of it as two of them, because it’s wicked long. We’re talking Moby Dick here. It’s pretty damned good, if you like science fiction about realtime biological vampires with forays into serial killing and the nightmare of sexual abuse–and (let’s all do the *anime fall* here: some gay characters). An influential friend sent the basic info on to a couple of agents, who have failed to get back to me for several months now.

And all I can do is push back the terror that chunks of five years of my life (off and on) were spent on artistic self-therapy–and keep at it. Currently, I’m responding to my damnably insightful reader (Noooooo. You’re wrooooong. I . . . . Okay. I have absolutely no idea what I meant there at all. Noooooooo. You’re riiiiiiiight. Etc.) on the LAST cleanup of the damn thing. I figure I have time since nobody’s asking me to hand it over. Sob.

But I’m glad I’m in the convo with the reader, because I’m tired of it by now–and am already sniffing at the ankles of the sequel. Or whatever you call a book which might be a sequel or might not, depending on whether the previous work was one book or two. You see the problem here. At least with the numbering.

It really is actually damned good. Evidence: A friend who’s pretty blunt read some of the early still-head-half-up-my-butt stuff–and he said, “It sounds like a real book.” In other words, not the usual pathetic drivel your friends make you read, but unusual and hard-fisted drivel which makes you laugh and cry and write me abusive email.

And here’s the actual pathetic drivel: Part of the “works badly with others” is because I’m disabled. Not badly enough to need a dog, but badly enough for the uncle to hand over a pittance of SSDI–which, for non-Americans (and some Americans) is the sort of government dole you get when you actually worked your ass off and paid taxes. Soooo—

–it’s tiny, and fixed, and insert factual whinging here–but in a way, I can actually afford to not make money at writing, although the actual money would certainly improve my standard of living and that of the kid and the ferrets and cat and whatnot.

But what I WANT is for people to read it. And like it. And want more. For at bottom, that’s the real business writers are about. Unless we are the sort of pretentious literary trash I wanted to dropkick in grad school (now that I’m a doctor I know the zen of them having dropkicked themselves)—unless you’re an idiot, or somebody just wanting Nanny’s vanity pat on the head, we want to be understood. More or less.

After all, being understood (more or less) is our business.

I woke up this morning and discovered that Jared Loughlin “allegedly murdered several people” the other day. I am sure Jared’s defense attorneys are relieved, because as of yesterday, he had definitely done so. In front of witnesses, no less.

al·leged adj.: Represented as existing or as being as described but not so proved; supposed.

For those of you who didn’t click the link, this news was courtesy of  the Huffington Post, which is well-respected and read by many. Let’s put this straight: He allegedly attempted to assassinate Congresswoman Giffords, i.e., to murder her because she was a public figure, and because of her political beliefs. Right now, we don’t know whether or not this was literally his intention–I’m going with “crazy” myself right now.

But there’s nothing “alleged” about those murders, and nobody in the country doubts either that mowing down the congresswoman, the kid, and the other four people, was MURDER.  Did I have to link that to a definition? Thought not. Moving on. This wasn’t an unfortunate shooting accident demonstrating the need for gun control (don’t get me started), Loughlin actually indeed intended to kill these people.

There are fine points to be debated here, and there’s a lot to be said about “innocent until proven guilty,” and the culpability of the mentally ill (just being crazy is not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card); my point is that using this particular term is allegedly irresponsible, and an allegedly poor understanding of our language.

We all know that “alleged” goes along with “suspect,” right? But it’s a) one of the fine points mentioned above and b) something we’ve picked up from Law & Order. Using it here is media jingoism–it’s a two-word word, a phrase that conveys a sense of distance from the visceral–maybe he did it, and maybe he didn’t: Actually, according to that word, he didn’t until a jury of his peers says so. Next?

But he did. He did, he did, he did. Our justice system is charged to prevent Jared from being outright randomly lynched, and that’s a good thing, lynchings being bad things. But telling a country–a world–that mass murder can only be “alleged”–well, that’s a bad thing too.

See, I wanted a couple of condoms.

As the popular button has it, I am currently Doing Strange Things in the Name of Art. My primary area in school was watercolor; my secondary was ceramics. Thus, I enjoy color–and texture. I’ll post the link to the thing I’m mucking about with some other time, like when/if it’s finished. Suffice to say that I wanted a couple of condoms of particular spiffiness. They’re glossy, stretchy, and come in colors. (Sorry.)

The merry young lady at Walgreens thought it was worth taking a look, but all I discovered was that condoms are damn pricey these days, and that almost everybody thinks he needs an Xtra-Large, which is a marketing triumph if ever there were. So I whinged to the girl that I would have to schlep down the street to the local sex shop, poor lazy bitch that I am. She took this in good spirit.

So I went to the local sex store. With some regret, I will not publish their name (but local residents probably already know and can personally ask me if they like). I was sure they’d have condoms. Black condoms, to be specific. (I should say here and now that I later decided that these were not in fact going to do what I wanted, so I’m over it per se.)

Now, with black leather and black maid’s uniforms and black high high stilettos and whatnot, I figured that black condoms were not very special. In fact, I went in there vaguely seeing them as a party favor for New Year’s Eve, tossed into a punchbowl with silver glitter.

I’ve been in this shop before, for some reason I don’t recall but that is undoubtedly none of your business. Although they had previously had a charming young saleswoman (with whom I ended up having a motherly chat, as people often confide in me), tonight they had the more senior sales associate, who has the flattest affect I’ve seen outside of a heavily medicated loonie bin.

“Hi! I’d like some black condoms!”

“We don’t have any.”

“You’re kidding!” (I mean, really. See above.)

“I never kid about things.” (Oh dear.)

“I was so sure you’d have them.”

“Ma’am, you’re the first person to come in here asking for black condoms. It’s a supply and demand. If people end up wanting black condoms, then I’ll order them.” (Gosh, the creativity and vim and brio of Cambridge disappoints. Nobody wants black condoms? What do the SMBD people use?)

I was then recommended to try Condom World. This brought me visions of a Walmart of latex and sheepskin, and I was delighted–and, being me, amused. (I’m sorry. Condom World?)

“Where are they?”

“Newbury Street. They’re closed now.” It was indeed almost 8pm, when the condom-desiring (sorry) were undoubtedly safely home with their moral and utilitarian purchases.

She was clearly unhappy with me. As far as I could tell. It soon transpired that she thought my being somewhat tickled (sorry) was because I had never heard of the store. (I have no idea what other reason there might have been.)

“Um, purple?” Artists always have a Plan B.

She did wearily draw my attention to the condoms available which were flavored. Maybe some of them were colored. She didn’t know.

Now, boys and girls, I have been in several other such establishments during my long and faintly checkered career. They usually tend to have bouncy and outgoing personnel who know everything about their merchandise. As you can extrapolate, I thought this lady’s ignorance about these fetching little packets right by the register to be . . . well . . . limp. (Not sorry.) Anyway, they didn’t have licorice or anything. She tediously thought that maybe they had chocolate, and fished out the cola one. Hmm, I thought. Probably pale brownish. Not what I was going for.

The lady who owns the place (I think) came over to help if she could. Fortunately, she had somewhat better affect. I couldn’t find chocolate. But they had grape. In the face of no other method of discovery, I recklessly shelled out a buck and opened it on the spot.

“Woooeeyy!!!!” A quite fetching bright purple.

Although I had now enlightened them about their product, they were supremely uninterested.

The owner was concerned. “Do they have to be a certain color? They all do the same thing.” It was now very clear that I was misbehaving, and possibly putting my sexual health at risk by being pettish (sorry) about which condoms I thought suitable.

I explained that it was for an art project. Condoms are used in art all the time; I’m not the only one who thinks they’re nifty. The boss was very surprised when I shared that the Alien’s mucous membranes were condoms–and the slime was K-Y, which had the right viscosity so as not to melt under the lights.

The scary girl told me with weary annoyance that she had handed me a chocolate condom, ma’am. I told her that it was cola, and she apologized for giving me the wrong condom. (“Condom.” Not “one.” Pronouns are apparently forbidden due to their intrinsic funniness. Comparatively.)

Apologetically, I said, “I’ve never before looked for condoms that weren’t for penises.” This very concept was amazing and offensive. OK, I immediately realized what I had said–and was unfortunately amused, me being me. I explained the way I’d meant it, and that I did in fact understand that condoms were an item expressly designed for the penis. It was all too clear that they thought I was some kind of moron.

As such shops often do, I was being educated about the world’s oldest subject: Sex is not funny. At all. People who think sex, or sexual paraphernalia is funny, or who are enthusiastic about purchasing an object that is often wrongly construed as having funny possibilities–are very very . . . well, naughty.

Flat affect girl wandered off. “Well, I’m not the most eccentric customer you’ve ever had,” I muttered to the air, and the owner’s lack of reassurance indicated that apparently, I probably was. I tried to rehabilitate myself with the owner by confiding that I had in fact utilized the objects in their penile-adorning form back in my salad days. This obviously reassured her.

I said various things touting their marvelousness at Doing What They Were Meant To Do, and my truthfully fervent agreement that they should be used by all for those purposes. I then appeasingly bought some of the dandier ones (I know somebody who collects them) and slunk out with my small leopard-skin paper bag.

I then returned to the drugstore to pick up my prescription, and confided to my cheerful friend the events above.  She was jeeringly amused (at them) by their complete lack of humor; was appropriately impressed by the intense purpleness of my very serious condom; and did vouch for Condom World, where she had been with her boyfriend. I was greatly relieved to find that he had brought her there . . . because it was Condom World, for crying out loud! Disappointingly, it was apparently rather small, and my envisioned racks upon racks of exotic membranous confections didn’t exist. I hope that they appreciate the . . . well . . . funniness of their name, but for all I know, they too are serious about their sacred mission to keep penis-related fluid exchange safe for democracy.

And yes, it tastes like grape.