after one long season of waiting

And a few things that have nothing to do with Portland:

( So, did you hear what the Gaiman episode of Doctor Who is called? )

Also, I wish I wasn't overcommitted for writing right now, because there are some awesome prompts over at sharp_teeth's current round of prompting. Maybe one of you is bored and wants to write a Toy Story/"Blink" crossover. Or, better yet, Sesame Street/House of Leaves. (Me, I'm seriously considering the This American Life prompt, because apparently I am fixated on fictionalized NPR... and podfic, though that doesn't seem to technically be a category I will make it so.)

A quick review of mid-Aprils in the past confirms that this really pesky upbeat, creative feeling is in fact a result of spring. It seems to happen at the same time every year.

Does spring not realize how much crankier it makes me when I'm at work? I think I completely confused one of my co-workers today, when I dragged her out to Millennium Park for lunch and proceeded to run through Crown Fountain and chase ducks. She's used to office-me, who's sulky, sarcastic, pessimistic and doesn't use Oxford commas.

I'm going to bring my disused sketch book with me to work tomorrow and see if that helps. Maybe if I can get a proper handle on this springtime energy I can keep it for a bit longer and actually do something useful with it this time? (If I only had a dollar for every time I've said something like that here...)

I've had a lot of projects lately that have required thinking. None of them, of course, had anything to do with work. In fact, they've all been things I've wanted to do outside of work...

I was talking to one of my friends over the weekend, about how much easier it was to write in college. Because I could take things in, and the way I'd interpret them (oftentimes) was to write them into things (for example, for those of you that weren't around for this particularly embarrassing phase of my life, there's an entire chapter of an FMA/Naruto crossover I wrote that retcons the whole of Konoha into an extension of Aristotle's ideal city).

And now I'm realizing that this is an essential part of how I think. (Late realization, I know.) In college I got quite good at passively taking in information and processing it through whatever distraction I was actively working on. But in the real world, I'm not taking in massive amounts of largely irrelevant information. At best I'm taking in massive amounts of relevant (or at least news-y) information and either cataloguing it away (because I'm not the sort of writer that works well with real-life, applicable ideas as a basis) or in the case of things to do with my job, spouting them back when necessary. And through most of my work day, it's actually a disadvantage to sit and think, because who can think critically or creatively about anything while filling in tedious forms and transcribing information over and over?

Anyway, basically I've had a heck of a time writing things I intend to finish. And every time I think I've made a dent in the programs I have to get prepared for DI they e-mail me back with a dozen things I haven't covered. I've gotten bad at this abstract, predictive thinking stuff. And I think it's because I don't have any time in my day to think in anything other than a straight line (seriously guys, people were surprised today when I pointed out that one of our county templates had probably been dropped into another county's folder. And the only reason that even came to mind so quickly was because someone last year had lost a partner's folder by dropping it into our Scans directory. This is not exciting or in-depth thought!)

So, I guess... let's say what I want to do for the rest of my life actually involves processing vast amounts of useless, esoteric information and turning it into (possibly) fictionalized but perhaps marginally more entertaining (or, in the case of non-fiction, more useful) vast amounts of useless, esoteric information? What the heck should I be doing with myself? (Other than going to grad school/committing myself to the ivory tower for all eternity. Because I don't have the cash or credit for that.) Can you even devote yourself to being some kind of... I dunno... information-kidney?

(This entry brought to you by A Fever, a subsidiary of Being Sick for the First Time This Winter. Additional sponsorship provided by: Being Tired Because I was Actually Consciously Keeping Myself Asleep Last Night and possibly also Because I Was Up at 4 This Morning, Maybe Because We Had an Earthquake. Hurray.)

I was on the train this morning, and... and... I realized there's something I want to write.

And then, at work today, I realized there's something else I want to write (though this something is unlikely to leave the internet. And requires an artist willing to draw an absurdly cute rendition of Ruth Bader Ginsburg).

But guys the idea I had on the train this morning... I actually still want to write it. And it's been almost 12 hours, most of which was spent in disaster mode at work, because (dundundunnnn) the Client is visiting tomorrow. This is good! This is very good! (Not the client thing, of course. The client thing is really annoying, and one of the attorneys hid his ENTIRE mess at my desk so he wouldn't have to clean) ... I should probably go work on it, rather than talking about it.

I think I'm through shouting uselessly into the ether for now. Instead, I am crawling through Craigslist looking for things to do with my time (other than sitting around trying to figure out what to do with my time).

I am probably going to put in a profile for this, because I remember almost doing the 24-hour plays at the UofC once, and almost signing up for these particular 24-hour plays once before, so it's about time I actually, you know, threw my hat into the ring. The main problem is coming up with a witty enough profile. This is hard when I haven't done any actual, substantial writing for two years now (two years!) Any suggestions? I don't know... at least tell me that I'm cooler than some of the people on the list right now? I have to hope that at least one or two of them are cooler than me, because just about everyone agrees that I need more friends in the city, and I'd like them to be less the office-bound type.

There's also a music blog trying to get off the ground here. Considering a significant number of Pitchfork writers already seem to be from Chicago, I am officially interested in working for a different music blog because the people from Pitchfork annoy me. The bonus, of course, is the hope that I'd get advance copies of CDs and get into concerts for free. I can BS my way around indie music with the best of them for that. (And I just added like, six concerts I want to go to to my last.fm list, and I'm thinking, you know, it'd probably be good to have someone subsidize this addiction, so I can afford to pay for taxis on the way back from the shows that run until 1:30 in the morning, after my bus stops running).

The best news of the day, by far, is that my mandolin should be here by the end of the week, which means I can (almost) safely sign up for the next session of lessons. I'm just kind of torn between whether I want to potentially embarrass myself by taking Mandolin 2 without taking the semi-required in-between class. And I'd mostly be doing it because the last instructor I had went a bit too slow, and I want to get more out of the 8 weeks than just a few more chords. And I want to prove to myself that I can still study and practice and get good at something when it's challenging. I just have to hope I don't get myself laughed out of the class (or gently talked-down-to by the prof afterwards).

WTB some self-confidence?

Don't think this means I've forgiven you for screwing me over, University of Chicago. I will never forget.

I hereby revise whatever Best Albums of 2007 List I didn't have to include this album. Yes, it's weird. But in a way I find perfectly endearing, and it's not as clangy as Sunset Rubdown (which sits in the same sort of endearing but weird category for me). Also, it's just come to my attention that these bands contain the same people.

Okay, Canada, I love you and your music to death, but the whole indie swingers party orgy you've got going on up there kind of hurts my brain sometimes, to the point I can never be sure of exactly who I'm listening to. Just when I thought I'd gotten the hang of which bands were side projects of others, and which members of which supergroup went where, you screw me up again. I can never win. I can't even berate bands for sounding similar because, more often than not, they're Tom, George, and Eunice's artier/noisier/lofi-ier side project made up of George, Eunice, Tom, and an antique cowbell they found slung over a power line in Edmonton like a single lost shoe one summer. It does make me feel more justified in laughing at whoever it was in the last.fm shoutbox complaining about how Wolf Parade stole their sound from Frog Eyes, though. But, I mean, you'd never find Sufjan Stevens playing with the Decemberists on some kind of bombastic anti-war celebration of the states sea shanty album.

Okay, U.S. indie artists, I love you too, but you need to love each other more. There should be more musical orgies. Where are the bombastic anti-war celebration of the states sea shanty albums?

Incidentally, now that I've mentioned Sunset Rubdown all those sentences ago... I've been thinking of the phrase "Snake's got a leg" all day. It's just lodged itself in my head and won't go. It's ominous. It's... I mean, boiled down to mythology, it's Snake, the evil slithering devil's mouthpiece, and suddenly contrary to the punishment brought down on him, he's got a leg. It doesn't matter that it's just one leg, it's proof that he's broken outside of his limitations. Snake can do anything. And that's scary. And oh, I want to write something that'd portray this properly. Someday, someday.

I finished Electric Blue. This... project of mine, reading this book and then reading my BA, has eaten up my brain for the most part. And the hardest part is yet to come. I'm going to have to read my BA now. Probably tomorrow afternoon. Because I want this over with.

And so now, to get the book behind me, I should write down my thoughts. I... guess I'll go in order. Because I started out hating the book. A lot. (In hindsight, it boils down to my as-of-late hyper-competitive/defense-mechanism critical eye.) I didn't like the main character because she was snarky, but also sounded like my mom. In fact, an awful lot of the first quarter of the book made me think that it had been written by a middle-aged housewife who really had no idea what on earth was going on. And some of the somewhat-misused slang provided a constant source of annoyance for the first few chapters. But what ticked me off most of all was the character's fixation on everyone's looks and their sexuality. And, if the book hadn't somehow redeemed itself about halfway through, I would have hated it the entire time for exactly that reason. But (here is the wonderful thing about reading a book with absolutely no real expectations), I was pleasantly surprised by the characters. Not... the characters themselves, but their interactions. There was... well, here, I'll spoil the ending: no one gets together. In a book that touts the word "sexy" in probably 70% of its reviews, no one getting together is basically the biggest surprise it could have pulled on me. And, I'll admit it, even though her quirky PI dude had this weird cowboy thing going on, and 3/4 of the time I just wanted to shout at the main character to notice that, hmm, this guy is always hanging around her with his shirt off, maybe he's employing your ditsy self just because you're pretty, in the end I found him quite endearing, and there was enough to him that I could fanfictionalize his mindset in my head as I went along so that he at least entertained me. And... I'm going to have to admit that, as much as I didn't like the main character at first, with her flippant attitude towards important information, she is, in many ways, exactly the frustrating and unreliable narrator I was going for when I began my BA. (And probably would have concluded with, had I not been steered off track by my seminar's worrying confusion of me with her, at which point redeeming her kind of became a way of redeeming myself, and it all went downhill from there.) Though I do feel the need to note that there wasn't an actual mystery until probably the last two chapters, and most of it was revealed and resolved within a few thousand words. Still... all in all, I have read much, much worse books. (In fact, some of them have been by authors I actually liked.)

And that leaves me to try to figure out what lesson the Grand Author wanted me to learn from this. So far I have a few, but they're still stewing in the back of my mind, and haven't coalesced into exact words yet. They're mostly to do with knowing your main character, their motivations, and exactly what's going on around them (and how they react to it. Oh, her main character was an excellent unreliable narrator. Mostly to do with relationships but, hey, a good unreliable narrator is a good unreliable narrator). The author here, sure, went very easy on plot, but she knew exactly what was going to happen, which is 100% more than I know going into something I'm writing and considering I was writing a mystery for my BA that is a bad idea. Oh, and maybe I was supposed to learn not to expect to hate everything I pick up randomly that looks like pop fiction. I mean, it's still pop fiction and it largely doesn't interest me, but... okay, fine, there's a difference between "I don't like it" and "bad" when it comes to books. Fine. But I'm still going to hold it against anyone who would read this book for the relationships (even if they are, basically, the only thing going on in it... so, I guess, basically it's not okay for anyone but me (or someone with a similarly bizarre excuse) to read this book).

P.S. Apparently Electric Blue is also the fastest milk float in the world.

P.P.S. This had seriously better not be the copy of my BA that I actually turned in. There... it... page missing in first few paragraphs. Makes no sense. Wheeeere is my actual BA?

P.P.P.S. Holy freaking crap am I glad that was the wrong file. Typos, missing sections, nonsense. Oh, it burned. But... the final draft? Not quite so horrible. In fact, there was obvious and apparent editing done that must have involved 1) actual thought and 2) re-reading. I don't remember doing either of these things. But um... yeah, so, I guess since I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would, and it's not quite entirely an embarrassment, I'll let people read it if they ask now (but only if you've read this far into my nonsense entry, yay). I think I'll figure out in the morning if this is a weight off my shoulders or not.

I just found out that Giles (you know, from Buffy) was the evil principal in School Reunion. How is that even possible?! Never in a million years would I have drawn that connection. (Apparently he's also the voice of Baltazar in Infinite Quest, but I think I might've known/recognized that.) Trying to make this make sense is hurting my brain. Also, I'm bored out of my mind, and can't make myself go back to reading things because the book I'm working through right now is actually making me feel like a decent writer. Appositions, people... Use Them Wisely.

I mean, especially in this book... which actually brings me to one of my theories/rants about fanfic... which is that you have to know your audience. Most people who aren't familiar with a series aren't going to pick up a novel based on it unless it's one of those novels that's basically a retelling... in which case, yeah, it is up to you to do all the characterization and exposition properly. However, an entire chapter in a book that kind of boils down to fan-oriented (fan)fiction that's full of something like...

"Kara Thrace, who's pretty much never called Kara Thrace because she's a Viper pilot and people call the pilots by their call signs, which are nicknames for pilots, so she's called Starbuck, unless Lee, who is really Lee Adama AKA Apollo, not to be confused with the Arrow of Apollo, which is a mythical item that Starbuck (Kara Thrace) had to bring back to the Galactica, which is a giant ship in space under the command of Bill Adama, Apollo (Lee)'s father, is talking to her, which is what's happening now. "Hi Kara," Lee the Viper pilot says. "Hi Lee," Kara says disdainfully because Kara and Lee have a complicated relationship because..." etc. (Okay, it's not nearly that bad, but that was fun to write.)

I'm pretty sure I completely forgot where I was going with this... Moral of the story is to trust your audience to know/figure things out, and that sloppy bad exposition is bad. Yeah.

If this wasn't so fun sometimes, I would hate writing so much.

(1.5 hours of sleep. This script sucks, and people have got to read it aloud in class today. I'm going to die. Omg.)

(I'm out of "Writing is going to kill me" icons, so here, have hot pink snazzy Teddy Roosevelt, straight from the government. I also recommend Rutherford Hayes, Warren Harding (who appears to be staring into some kind of mind-control device), and John Quincy Adams (who has enough skill to match his books).)

Jokes are hard when you're by yourself. Freakin' a, I've only got a two-page scene to write and I have nothing but bits of flat dialog. Maybe if I had no soul this would be easier. Maybe if these were my characters, or characters I had any degree of experience with. I'm kind of thinking, if I ever write for TV, it won't be for sitcoms. As if that would be a surprise to anyone. Oh, and it's hard to be funny when you're given a scene like "man and his father in a car in the rain, father is a backseat driver." I have no experience writing families! Especially not fighty ones. Rargh. I remember the good punchlines I've written because I've written so few of them. I can count like... five. Blerrr. I am a fount of bad and surreal ideas, but witty punchlines are not my forté.

In the good news department, though, my preceptor not only avoided offending me at our meeting today, but also gave me some good advice, so I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I won't die this weekend as I try to pound out another chapter and a half. Maybe. Chances are that I probably will. And if that doesn't kill me, my newly-developed habit of falling down in front of the buses will. I don't know how I did it twice today, but I'm pretty sure it's fair to say that's a bit worrying.

P.S. The phrase "some Borg" is now one of my favourites. Imagine a conversation in which "Just because they killed a couple of boxes doesn't mean they killed The Borg. They killed some Borg." is the essential point. Now say "some Borg" a bit. It's such a delightful deviation from "The Borg", innit? And it makes a wondrous singular-turned-plural noun.