Kaboom - pishaw

So, I'm cleaning today. Part of the agreement is that I clean the bathrooms. One hint on keeping things sparkly clean, clean them every week. Just saying.

Of course those who give advice rarely follow it. So I've found some good things to help out when I've let it go a few weeks. A while back I was buying some specialty cleaners at the grocery and decided to buy some Kaboom! I'm sure you've seen the commercials.

They lie like rugs.

Powers through tough soap scum? Sorry, try has trouble removing light dirt. The best thing this product does is make the surface slippery. That's not a plus, btw. And it clogs up the scrubber side of the sponge (which makes cleaning even more difficult).

Complete

Waste

of Money.

Thank the gods for local hardware stores still open and Lime Away. Not only did Lime Away help break up the dirt, the soap, the hard water stains (something Kaboom! is also supposed to do), but Lime Away breaks up the Kaboom crap left on the surface. (note, Lime Away is not for Stainless Steel. Keep the two away from each other).

So, end result, do not trust Kaboom! to clean anything. Including cleaning itself off whatever you've sprayed it on. (for quality control purposes, tried it on an single piece shower stall)

Great News (for other writers)

Long day at work, various stages of busy and not busy today. Didn't get any extra writing done except the previous blog entry. Stopped by the client's place on the way home (after picking up the meat, btw, my butcher) and got some pictures. Client will be borrowing my camera to take photos (really wish I had ordered by newer camera already, my bad). Was looking forward to a hard sleeping, hard working weekend, until I got my email.

One good writing friend (she ran the first writer's group I went to, also, she's a librarian, and you just know librarians rock!) landed an agent with her (I think) second book. The agent says her book has good potential, that lots of people are looking for just that story. Christina (who I don't think reads this blog), you so totally rock (I sent her an email to such). This is really great. She's worked hard for this. I might have to make a special effort to go to the next group meeting and take her a gift.

Another writing friend, Mary Turzillo, just sold a story to Analog. This is a great story (we read it in the group). It was very funny in a very smart way. You're all in for a treat when this gets published. Congrats, Mary. You also rock (but I've told you that in person).

Memorial Day Round 'em Up

I'm going to be off and on this weekend, depending on the freelancery and chores lists. There may be other posts, if not, enjoy your weekend. As I posted on someone else's blog, "Go out and see your neighbors molting into summer this weekend as they shed the heavy outer coats, shake off the excess liquid, and unfold their wings of gingham in the warm air."

Until we see each other again, here's some linkery and newsery.

Ken McConnell's story, The Renoke, is finally up for your reading pleasure over at Space Westerns. Give it a read and let Ken know what you think.

Charlotte is a Misner! Nathan is up to no good, again. Yes, it's another writing exercise. And it's not SF! Oh, the horrors, the horrors, the... mmm, Fannie Flagg.

Mars landing this Sunday. Phoenix will land this Sunday. While it's not as glamorous or interesting as the Mars Rovers (which are starting to develop problems, four years into their 3 month mission :) ), will feature a powered landing. Very tricky. The video of the landing, "7 Minutes of Terror" is nice (although a bit over dramatic).

Robert Asprin has passed on. I was all set to attend MarCon, where we was Guest of Honor, when the economy put a kobash to those plans. I first knew Robert Asprin from the Thieves' World shared-world anthologies. For a young boy, just starting out in D&D, those books definitely formed much of preconceptions of what fantasy was. They also colored many of my D&D campaigns into rough, gritty, stab before you're stabbed adventures. Then I found his Myth books when I ran out of TW, and I lightened up. A lot. His books probably were the first I found I could quote from memory ("Aahz," he said. "Oz?" Skeeve asked. "No relation.") It was just on Tuesday that noticed there was a new Myth book out (and a collection of the old stuff). If Glen Cook is the serious side of fantasy, and Steven Brust the sits in the middle writing his tales, Robert Asprin is on the other end of the table cracking jokes. The Myth series did to heroic fantasy what Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series did for Space Opera. It poked a much needed hole in the pretentiousness bubble of high-fantasy to release the gas in a whoopee cushion fashion. As much as I was going to take my Brust books to be signed, I had collected my Myth books together as well.

danger mouse 2

Today saw a little more dialog, and an edit run through yesterday's text. Yes, I'm not sharing the whole clip. I have to leave you some reason to want to buy the book when it's done. I also added some description. Barry working on the clapboards looks a little like Abe Lincoln, rail splitter, tall and broad shouldered.

I think I ended up with 700+ words, so only an extra 100 or so today. I was really tired after staying up late to watch the PBS show on depression. Plus today was a busy day at work, lots of proofs, lots of lending a helping hand, not much down time to be found.

dangereux expérience

As she has before, my favorite Littlebird got me thinking. I've been waiting to find or make time in a large chunk to start writing. As everybody who has done this know, one should not wait for time or find time, one must make time. I had been successful with this before. I could make chunks of time available to write. Life has changed.

Now, there is time out there, but there aren't large chunks of it. Most of these blog posts, the ones written during the week, are often composed or thought out during work time. There are one and three minute gaps in work that I could use to scrape out fragments of thoughts, or read blogs while a plate prints out, a file downloads, or an application loads. Time that most of my coworkers would use to chat or joke, I would use elsewhere. Lately there has been more time at work, moments when work just peters out. That's time that is actually harder to use, as I spend more brain power trying to make or find work.

So there are moments, there is time, just not in a chunk. Instead of focusing on catching up on blogs, I'm going to see if I can use it to write fiction. I've already used it to scribble out messages from the Muse. But that doesn't happen every day.

So, today was an experiment. An experiment that yielded 600 words. Not much. As someone who can write a thousand word email without thinking about it, it's not much. But it is mostly coherent and linear (except near the end when there were more notes and "gee I want to write about this" kinds of things.

So here's some of that. First, some background. The character of Barry Mygnot is not a new thought. He was there for a bit, and it was about a month ago I realized, he's how Steve finds the girl (Rachel, still not good with that name). Also, Barry is a now a mortician (although he wasn't always) and works at a funeral home that bears his name (well, his grandfather's name who started the business). This is from Act 1, Second Chapter (even if it may not be Chapter 2 at the end). Ugly Draft Zero text follows.

"Steve had gone to high school with Barry, who was a few years ahead of him in class, and light years ahead of him with the girls. Having access to a large car with both a bench seat in front and lots of lying down room in back was an irresistible turn-on for some of the local girls.

"After high school Barry got the hell out of town, wrestled an associates degree in accounting to the ground, and went into collections for a bank in Cleveland. Forever trying to reach escape velocity from Cedarbank, he quickly found his calling was in finding people and money and moved ever farther away to work as a private investigator in Minneapolis.

"It was only the boat anchor of his father's death that brought Barry back into the gravity well of small town Ohio. And once he was back, he found he couldn't escape again. So he set up shop in his namesake's business, put on a black suit and set a polite smile on his face to answer for the umpteenth time that, no, that wasn't his name on the business, and Mygnot and Sons had been caring for the dearly dead, "planting them," Barry would say in an unguarded three-beer moment, for nearly a century.

"Barry was in back, his black suit coat (he bought them by the gross), sparkling white shit and narrow black tie were draped over a bush, handy incase drive through business may come in. He was repairing some of the wooden clapboard that had rotted through. Under his t-shirt and suspenders he had his cell phone (dead batteries, Steve tried to call) clipped to his pants, his constant worry-doll companion. Never knew when business might pick up, and the dead were always impatient to be dealt with.

"While his retail business was mostly paid through insurance, there were those who never had enough, or any at all. Some of those would try to run out. Then there would be slow payments from the business-to-business aspects. (cash/casket and carry business joke?) He collection days helped the family business collect from the dead beats."

Misc and Match

Some links of how we're living in an SF world. Still, no jet pack, crystal cities, or moonbases, but progress.

Boeing has made a successful ground text of their air-to-ground high energy laser platform. Personally, the writer in me squees we delight, the former military in me is worried. There's just something wrong with thinking about this weapon being used in an anti-personnel capacity. Vehicles or hardened stationary targets I feel okay about. It's the same feeling I get thinking about an A-10 strafing troops with that vulcan cannon it has, only more intense. Maybe it's the total overkill capacity that's keying off my internal moral monitors.

Real low cost solar energy is soon to be available. Looks like somebody was paying attention to the helios project and said, "hey, we could do that, cheaper, on the ground." Although they haven't matched the solar cells to fuel cells, just the adding focusing lenses to solar cells. (swiped from John Farr)

Vat grown meat is quickly becoming a commercially viable product. Really sets off the squick meters in my head. But, because my wife has advanced degrees in biology so I pick up on things like this, to paraphrase Carleton Heston from the end of "Solent Green", "It's cancer. It's made of cancer." Do a search on the Hayflick Limit if you want to find out why. Sure, you can add telomere bits, but that doesn't go on forever.

And from good friend Dan, not exactly "living in the future" but still important to it anyway, Web Monkey is back. If you know and care, it's big. If you don't, that's okay. Not everybody is an HTML/XML and Javascripting geek. Hand-coders rejoice, da monkey is back!

Same But Different

Still sick, still at work. Although with the help of fresh Nyquil (I think our old bottle was purchased in 2002) I had a decent night's sleep (almost uninterrupted, or as interrupted as usual) so I'm feeling a little better. My mucus is more viscous than yesterday, which is probably more information than what you wanted. Although, right now I seem to be overheating.

Also health related news, tomorrow night on PBS they are broadcasting Depression, Out From the Shadows. Also, there is a link from that site to a non-diagnostic prescreening test. I only started to look at it (I am at work after all), but for the first few questions I wasn't scoring well. And those are also the symptoms that I recognized I was falling into. Lately the big "D" has been winning. I chalk that up to increased stress, perceived duty and being sick. I have already made the decision to talk about medication when I go for my already scheduled appointment. I haven't made up my mind if I will take them, but I have made up my mind that I don't want to go years like this (as I have in the past). I also don't want it to be used as a maintenance drug for long term.

And now, at the moment of finish typing this, the fluorescent tube over my desk went dark. The dark humor part of my brain just loved that synchronicity .

The Wounds We All Carry Are Not All Visible

I'm sick as a dog. I've been attempting to hack up my lungs for the past week and my left eye is twitching. However, I'm not throwing up, which means I'm not sick enough to call off work. I wasn't sick enough to skip the Village Clean-up Day this past weekend, where it rained off and on as we helped people off-load moldy carpeting and wood, which didn't help.

I'm not sick enough to call off work because I'm not throwing up. These are some of the wounds we carry. I know where this function comes from. My mother raised us by herself and had to work. Therefore the hurdle that needed to be crossed for us to stay home from school or anything else was very high. So if my brother or I weren't tossing cookies, we were going to whatever it was we had to go to (school, camp, etc). We couldn't afford for Mom to stay home with a partially sick kid.

This is possibly also where my borderline workaholic tendencies come from. I will work, as long as there is work, until I drop over. That end point keeps getting closer the older I get. When I was younger I could work 72-hours straight (with two one-hour breaks to shower and change clothes). I know this because I had done it more than once. I have worked others into the ground. At my WV job (which most of you don't know about), after one particularly maddening last-minute all-night production session to get art to the printer, my boss, who was younger than I, was asleep on the floor as I burned the final CD and then drove to the local airport to meet the courier company that would get the disks to the printer in LA by noon local time. By the time I got back to the office, his parents (who also were a part of the business) had gotten him home. I, then, got to work another seven hours. Yeah me.

I used to think of that as a strength. I now look at it as my own insanity. Note to kids, a healthy work ethic is a good thing. What I have borders on obsession.

On the plus side, I've never had a problem getting a job with people who know me. I've also made a good chunk o' money in overtime (when I would get paid for it). For the day job before this one, we didn't get paid overtime, so I rarely worked it. Especially after working several weekends to get a catalog on track, with the promise of a bonus. Let's just say with the current day job I made more in overtime in the first four months than I did with eight years of "bonuses" (and that includes Year End/Xmas and Birthday gifts).

Flip side to that I've missed out on being places I should have gone, places I should have been, life passed by that I'll never get back. I lack the ability to relax, which may seem strange to some of you that know me, as I'm a pretty relaxed kind of guy in person. Little do you know that just because I'm kicking back, it doesn't mean that inside my brain isn't running on all cylinders. I am not a person who can nap (unless I'm exhausted in the clinical sense). It's how I'm put together.

If It's On TV, It Must Be True

So, nothing is really on TV. We spent most of the day at the Cleveland Museum of Art looking at the the amory of the last days of the Holy Roman Empire. It was a really excellent show. It focused a little too much on the armor side (I like the sharp pointy things myself). The armor was fabulous, and in the last gallery they had formations of armor with pikes. "Treguna Mekoides and Tracorum Satis Dee" is you know what I mean. We also had friends along which made it fun, it's good to catch up with friends while seeing new things.

We took our time coming back home, so there wasn't all that time to do anything productive, so we ended up the evening watching TV. Of which there is nothing on anyway (why I'm blogging and surfing).

That's when we chanced upon the SciFi Channel's "The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls."

What a piece of crap. It's so bad you have to watch to see what other incredibly, outrageously stupid they're going to say next. It's the same entertainment value you can get from crazy street people (as in the ones who talk to the air and wear two heavy winter coats in the middle of summer and actually have a tin-foil hat), but without the possibility of having a shiv pulled on you. I'm sure SciFi has a website for this, but I don't want to pollute your minds with it.

What's worse is this is being presented as an actual documentary. For that, the producers have no shame and should be horsewhipped. Yes, I know it's all a part of the media ramp-up to the latest Indiana Jones movie, "The Geritol Years." But seriously. "Face on Mars" being brought up? Haven't we debunked that enough.

This "documentary" leads off with the great non sequitur from the genuine nutjob "expert" saying that the skulls are made of the same thing out high tech computer chips are made of. "Just think of how much information could be stored there?" he asks rhetorically. Because, you know, they're alien artifacts (insert standard, "once humans are evolved enough we'll be given the keys to the knowledge inside" - yeah, everybody has one of those). Except for the fact that silicon is used as insulator, not actual memory storage. Bizzzt. Thanks for playing, but no parting gifts.

And then completely forget that they're mixing Mayan and Aztec mythologies in their "ancient history is all mysterious" brand cuisinart. Oh, and Bette wants me to make sure I mentioned that they squeezed in Atlantis.

But wait, there's more. If you watch now you get the gratuitous Native Spiritual Guides who hold all the secrets (living like his ancient Mayan ancestors in a hut in the jungle with mud floors and with the repurposed Pepsi machine made into a fridge.

Really, truly, terribly bad. It makes Ghost Hunters look positively intellectual.

Edit 10:47pm Okay, Edgar Cayce showed up around 1:26 into the show, and now the main "expedition" (no, really, "idiots running around with cameras following them" is more the case) just entered "the cave" which is guarded (you know, like dragons guard treasure) by a "giant tarantula." OMG. When the horror/slasher movies "based on a real story" look more non-fiction than a supposed "documentary," something is very, very wrong. heck, the trailers to the new Hulk movie look more non-fictional.

Edit 11:06pm Saved by the Family Guy take on Star War on Adult Swim. It's the rescue scene. Love the elevator music. Ah, sanity.

Week's Worth of Advice

And you know just what kind of advice that is, don't you.

Justine Larbalestier wants you to know other writers are crazy (like you really need to go to her site to find that out). Also, she's a Goddess of Writing Advice.

Joshua Palmatier talks about muddling around in the middle. That place where writers begin to question their sanity, and maybe start habits they shouldn't. But hey, free therapy, so you know, you won't start on of those habits. It happens to everybody. I plan to write the middle last. Not sure what that will do to his theory, but something tells me it's an overall wordcount kind of thing, not really a place.

S. C. Butler confesses over at SF Novelists that he hates writing.

Holly Black on the other hand wants to help you find a four-leaf clover (not maybe entirely writing related, but I liked it).

On the other end of the writing life, this week saw two rejections. A form rejection letter from Realms of Fantasy Magazine for Running of the Deer. And Strange Horizons emails what I think is mostly a form letter to reject Journey Haiku. Maybe I should reread how to get that clover after all.

Apropos of Nothing

At work, the most recent 2-liter bottle of pop has lasted a week and a half. For some reason I'm proud of that.

Danger, Muse at Work

One of the tips Tobias Buckell (and others) has for new writers is to find out when then are most active in writing fiction and then write during those times (seems easy, but then the best, hard-won advice and the most difficult to follow always seems easy). When I was starting out, my Muse liked to work late hours (and I think she still does), but now it seems she wants a lunchtime shift. Bad thing for me as I don't get lunches at the day job. So lots o' notes get taken (note to self, maybe a picture of a week's worth of note taking is in order here).

Today's gift (of which the muse says, "Share it, damn it!" My Muse, she's such a potty mouth :) ), goes toward the book. In Act III (Orpheus in the Underworld Redux), I have a character of a cop/administrator/demon (I think his title should be "Deacon") named Karen (actual pronunciation of Charon, it's a guy, as he explains, "It's an old family name"). I've been wondering what he's like, how he works, how he can help the story (he's been standing there tapping his foot every since I realized Steve would need help in the afterlife/Hell's waiting room, waiting for me to pay attention and write him). Turns out Karen is either English or Aussie (could go either way, although I'm leaning English). Just got a part of a scene, mostly dialog.

So, as the Muse commands, so we do. Here it is with all my notes to myself and thinking out loud lines in parenthesis (yes, I write them out so I won't forget). The incredibly horrible Draft Zero edition.

Scene starts midstream, Karen is driving Steve somewhere in an electric golf cart (the afterlife is Green and Hi-Tech, natch), at this point Karen is trying to help Steve find the Girl (still named Rachel, although it doesn't feel right and she's not speaking to me yet because of it - I think Steve is talking about her here, saying how she would be the type that was Raptured).

"The 'Rapture'," asked Karen.

"Yeah, it happened six years ago. Lots of people taken up to heaven," Steve said, making grand gestures with his hands. "You know," he smiled hopefully at Karen.

"Oh," Karen said, shaking his head. "That. What a Holy mess that was. No memos, no planning, no warning and bingo-bango all these people start showing up (need something about like refugees on the shores, "Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...") Completely overwhelmed us. Total cock-up if you ask me."

Steve gaped, "But I thought it would only be on Heaven's side?"

"Well, they got full up now, didn't they, Busting at the seems they were. Naturally we had to deal with the overflow. Had to set up refugee camps to manage them all. First time the hotel (is explained earlier, "Hotel Hell, there's always room for one more") ever ran out of rooms, and they were packed in their there like cord wood inside. Big fire hazard. Totally mismanaged. Took us months to repatriate everybody once we determined (need better word) they weren't for our side. And those were on top of the normal errors (might need term here for those sent to wrong side of wall)."

"What errors?"

"Oh, it was a mess, I can tell you," Karen looked over and nodded his head in sympathy with himself. "Then we had to clean it all up. I mean, they were really messy people. Trash Filth all over the place (Hell's half-acre?). The maintenance crews did a really good job. Hell is a much nicer place now." (maybe a joke about urban-planning here)

"What errors," Steve asked again.

"What? Oh, well, with such a big operation," Karen waved his left hand in a big circle, "there's always someone who's queued to the wrong side of the wall. Once we got the software working right, we were down to less than three percent in error, " Karen said with some pride. "Pretty good, eh?" (too Canadian?)

Steve was thinking. "Just what happens with these errors?"

"Oh, we process them out as quick as possible ASAP. It's what we thought you were at first," Karen leaned over to Steve conspiratorially. "But you're something else entirely."

"But if I were, what would happen to me?"

"We'd drop you off at the Heavens Gate (Brandenburg Gate, wack-a-loon group mashup) for processing like all the rest." Karen said that, slowing near the end. He stopped the cart and looked at Steve.

"Where," Steve started to ask.

Karen stepped on the pedal and swerved the cart around, "Way ahead of you, mate."

(I don't think they find her there, hey, that would be too easy, but I don't have that full scene anyway, only notes of what it's like, I think I shared those before, and I know Karen helps them out, I don't know how they figure it out, but I know how they do it - mostly, maybe, somewhat, I don't know, the Muse has that smile on her face that she's got something up her sleeve for that.)

Gotta post now, I'm starting to make edits. Must... stop... editing...

Story Bone

"There are some things I'm under orders not to talk about. However, once I'm dead I'm free to discuss it."

One Less Bell to Answer

Marc Dann did the honorable thing and resigned today.

Note to the anybody still clinging to the Open Sourced Boobs project, Marc Dann was forced to resign over (among other things) a consensual (except, I'm assuming here, his wife) relationship. That relationship, however, lead to what is called a "Hostile Work Environment." Also understand that in the last administration we had several scandals involving the loss, theft, and misappropriation of millions of dollars of State Funds, cronyism, improper business arrangements (pay to play), and lets just say a complete failure in regard for the citizens of the State of Ohio to whom they swore an oath. Marc Dann helped force many of those issues into the public light. None of those in the former administration faced a real threat of impeachment. Marc Dann did, and it was mostly about the sexual harassment case (which has already seen several officials close to Dann resign).