Welcome the New Millennium

If you're a follower of the Julian Calendar, it's the New Year and the new millennium. Happy happy.

You know, if you're Ethiopian it's a big day. And before you get all self-righteous or whatever, our Western Culture invented the Julian and then adjusted with the Gregorian losing 12 days. And it wasn't all that long ago. Where as most other places followed older lunar based calendars which didn't have as much error in them as the European Lunar Calendars did.

Just another gripe about Iraq

After four plus years of, "stay the course, we're making progress," I want real metrics. On a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 is we just demolished a government and ground the professional classes into the dust and 100 is skittles and beer, just where are we? General, Mr. Ambassador?

I usually just keep these things to myself

All around really nice person (no matter what the test says) Camille had this on her blog, so I thought I would also take the test.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

So, there you have it in a nutshell. I think my moderate score in L3: Gluttonous comes from being overweight and that I do think food is one of the joys on this planet. My moderate scores for L7: Violent and Level 8- the Malebolg: Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers probably stems from my belief that there are people who deserve death (OBL I'm looking at you) and some people deserve to be defrauded (say, the CEOs of Enron and Exxon/Mobil for instance, if they sent money to a Nigerian 401 scam, I'm not going to cry about that one).

But the software puts me in "Second Level of Hell: You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire as punishment for their transgressions. The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. You have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy are two that share in your fate."

Babes! Woohoo!

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Even Elvis Got the Blues

Sometimes those gremlins form up and make a concerted assualt. If it can happen to Jay Lake, it can happen to the rest of us. The best answer when the gremlin chorus grows to that strength, though, is to work through them. Sort of how you work through targets.

Anyway, for the benefit of the writers out there, even Jay Lake gets those moments. So the rest of us shouldn't feel bad about them. They're normal. It passes.

One of those panic moments

Keeping up with any profession requires a lot of homework. I just had a moment where I realized that I am trading off the design career for the writing career. I think I've passed the 33% mark which is a little scary for not having made a cent from writing, yet.

In the background of work is a discussion about someone learning HTML and Flash to do websites. Part of my brain took off thinking of Flash programing (which I would be REAL rusty at now), current CSS implementation, HTML 4 coding requirements and everything from 3 that's been depricated. Hell, I don't even know what's current anymore. It's a panic moment where you realize that you might not be able to get that next job if you needed it. I'm sure with a month of intense work I could be back up there. I guess it's more of a "hey, these tools are rusty and you aren't working to oil them up?"

I better get that first novel written so I can write novels 2-whatever.

Sixth Anniversary

And Osama bin Laden's head is still attached to his body.

That, Mr. President, is your failure. Let me see, almost 3800 of our dead, trillions spent, and your Head of Homeland Security has a gut feeling that something bad is going to happen. How's that "War on Terror" going? Oh yeah, we're fighting them there (glad we could make a nice place for them to play in, Rummy's World) so we don't have to fight them here. Like Al Qaeda has landing craft and are going to storm Virginia Beach, or do you also not trust the security theater of the TSA like the rest of us don't? Also, I'm glad that Al Qaeda has also choose to get bogged down and over spend their resources on Iraq, just like we did. Oh, wait, they didn't do that.

Paying it forward

Mer Haskell (whom I think I've mentioned before is a hoopy frood) has started a "pay it forward" campaign. I was lucky enough to be her number 5 person. So here's the deal.

Pay It Forward: I will send a handmade gift to the first 5 people who leave a comment here on my blog. I don’t yet know what that gift will be, but you will receive it within 365 days. The only thing you have to do in return is "pay it forward" by making a similar agreement on your blog.

So that's it.

Even more writer's stuff

All around great person Mer Haskell has some notes (from a book she's reading no doubt) on editorial mirror/rejection letter scrying. Ah yes, I remember an essay by Athur C. Clarke on how to write recommendations on house boys in Sri Lanka that's similar. Same kind of "read through the lines" coded message, the dog barks at midnight, kind of language.

Because the World Is Round

For those of you who have read this blog for a while, you'll know why this group, CIRCA are near and dear to my heart (and I just found out about them). For those of you that don't know why, remind me when it starts snowing and I'll tell you (yes, there is a reason).

The best weapon against power is laughter. Against imagined power it is devistating. Thanks to the Endicott Studio Blog for the link.

Even more advice, but you get to ask the questions

Via Jay Lake, et in arcaedia, ego's Agent Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (when getting an agent). Go ask a question Miss Manner style about agents. Now that the wonderful Miss Snark is gone, agent info (especially snarkey agent info) is scarcer on teh interweedbies. Go and ask (until 10pm tonight).

Lazy Sunday

I'm taking time and not cleaning up the office (we have the bookshelves arriving this week, so I need to clear it out for installation). So I'm running through and getting caught up with the RSS feeds of blogs I like to read.

And out of the blue, holy mackerel! You turn your back on Jeff Vandermeer for a day or two and he goes and posts like 40 items. Argh! I mean I thought Jay Lake was wacked with posting something like 6 to 10 posts a day. It's like they're wrapped up contesting each other as to who can post the most. If I didn't like reading their posts I would dump them out of the RSS folder I have (I have done that to other blogs, mostly mil blogs that had more politics than anything else).

BTW, very soon now (if he hasn't already started, I'm still reading) Jeff will have a book sale.

'Tis the Season for Writing Advice

The good thing is that normally I become more productive writing wise during the winter months. Of course there are exceptions to this (last night I wrote the first draft of two poems, I thought it was one, but in sunlight they turned into two). I find that when I'm not creative and writing (BTW, one of the best pieces of writing is to write when you're not "inspired," to write at the same time everyday, and to keep at it, unfortunately my schedule, even with less OT than at the begining of the year, isn't so conducsive to that) that I should keep reading stuff I like and also read advice to keep those mental checklist thingies glowing bright from recent memory.

So here are two more links thanks to Justine Larbalestier (who is composing her own post about editing). You are checking Justine's blog, aren't you?

Maureen's How to Revise a Book. It has a picture of Cary Grant. How can you go wrong with that?

David Louis Edelman's Line Editing in 10 Easy Steps (yeah, right).

And a third one from pllogan (who I know I know your real name but can't put my finger on it right now) who points to an article by Ann Crispin over at Writer Beware Blog on How Do You Tell Who's Going to "Make It? I've seen all those points she makes and have worked my way out of them. I've seen other writers get dragged down by some of them (especially the submitting and rejection part).

And there's a way to waste an otherwise productive afternoon.