Thursday, October 31, 2013

Spooky deadlines

October draws to a close, and November swiftly approaches. This means several things. First, it means that I and everyone else who agreed to write a story about mermaids in September are late. The end of October also forms something of a hard deadline for that, since everyone who had planned on writing a mermaid story is also doing NaNoWriMo, so new adventures will soon take precedence. I already talked about my own plans for the month.

But the end of October also brings us the yearly ritual of gouging the innards from a gourd and carving it into a human semblance. This year, because there is so much television and only so much time, I did my brainstorming while watching the episode of Angel with the killer tree, and then did the scooping and carving while watching the latest episode of The Walking Dead. But my creative mind, apparently, was elsewhere.

I was pleased with the result.
a dapper o'lantern
A dapper o'lantern.
And here is the gentleman in his natural habitat.
hullo children
Hullo children.
That was yesterday. Sadly, he has been nibbled on a little by the ravenous beasts which scour our neighborhood at night, but the result is merely that his mustache is a bit lopsided.

Today Girlfriend and I realized that a pumpkin on our stoop would of course be an invitation to roving packs of children tonight, and if we didn't want to be paid in the currency of "tricks" then we would need to acquire some "treats" with which to buy them off. Thus I ran out to Target today to pick up some candy, half fearing that they would be thoroughly picked over by the time I got there. Fortunately, they were still well stocked, and wisely so, because I wasn't the only adult in the candy aisle.

However, enjoying the capabilities of my new phone, I did take a surreptitious picture of the Target's "seasonal" section.
Winter is coming.
Winter is coming.
The staff were already at work converting the display. I remember when it was fashionable to complain about this happening the day after Thanksgiving. Apparently if we had wanted to hold that line, we should have instituted a policy of exchanging Thanksgiving gifts or something. Because this year it looks like T-day's just getting a pass.

Friday, October 25, 2013

NaShoStoWriMo

I'm slowly, quietly, growing my collection of rejection slips for different stories. The latest was less disheartening than the one before, and perhaps the next will be even less so. I'm trying to learn to burn this sensation as fuel; receiving a rejection yesterday, today I chose my next target for the turned-down story, and I've come to the sense that what I really need is more stories. Still, a part of me wishes that my time as an English major had included some equivalent of iron shirt kung fu training, with instructors breaking sticks over my ego until what remained was impervious to pain. We're getting there.

As I said, my experience trying to get these two stories published has brought me to the idea that what I really need is more stories (kin to, but not identical to, the eternal exhortation to write more).

Around the beginning of October I get the feeling that NaNoWriMo was coming at a bad time for me this year. It's coming the same time it does every year, of course, but what I mean is that less that a week from its start I don't have an idea for a novel that I'm excited about, but there are several smaller stories I'd rather write.

After I had complained fruitlessly to Girlfriend about this, she pointed out the solution that was too good for me to come up with myself: to use November to crank out a series of short story drafts in the same spirit and volume as the novel I would have otherwise attempted. I slept on the idea, and now I have seized on it: this November I will put out five 10,000-word short story drafts. At this point I have two ideas I definitely want to pursue. The rest... will be an adventure.

Girlfriend wisely did not name the resulting event "NaShoStoWriMo" and I will honor her forbearance in this matter by making the mistake for myself. This year, NaShoStoWriMo is on.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

More ways to keep an idiot in suspense

As problems with the house go, clogged drains aren't so bad. At least it's something I have experience with. (One might call my experience with clogged drains "extensive.") With an apparent dearth of mice and cockroaches for the past week or so, I started showering in an inch of standing water for a change.

Anyway, Girlfriend and I went looking for some sort of product with which to unclog the clogged drain. One of Drano's iterations made a promising claim:
(Sorry it's blurry.) If it doesn't work the first time, it's free! You don't see claims like that very often these days. But where does that cute little asterisk lead?

I expected a block of legalese, but I found something more modern.
Well that makes sense.

Anyway, we didn't go to drano.com right away. It's not like this is so expensive that you necessarily chase down the possibility of a refund, anyway.

Since I'm blogging about this, you may have guessed that the stuff didn't clear our clog. I did ultimately go to drano.com, where I found this again:
I wonder where that asterisk leads?
I see...

Sunday, October 13, 2013

A haul of books

I doubt I will ever forgive this area for its lack of bookstores. When I lived in Seattle you couldn't swing a sack of spiders without hitting a used book store. You could not walk down the street with certain people (who you love very much) without being pulled aside into a bookstore for an indeterminate period. (If the store was Twice Sold Tales*, which had cats, your day was pretty much spoken for.)

Living in the University District of Seattle, it seemed natural to be surrounded by entertainments for literate folks. One would expect no less of College Park, Maryland, the municipal albumen of the University of Maryland**. Indeed, the only book store in apparent striking distance of my new place (or for that matter my old place, a stop south on the green line, in Hyattsville) was the UMD college bookstore. The only time I can recall going in there was to buy a board game, of which they had plenty--I don't recall them selling any books although I'm sure there must have been one or two. Anyway, that's gone now too. They uprooted to relocate and, like a demon eight miles from a suitable host, vanished quietly from the mortal realm.

There is a library nearby. The Hyattsville library is actually quite nice, even if it's a bit of a walk away now--but then I learn that it's to be closed for complete destruction and rebuilding soon. I don't know what makes that necessary, and apparently I'm not the only person who isn't in a hurry to see the place torn down.

But I didn't come here to complain about that. It happened that the church which I have recently (if sporadically) been attending had a used book sale, and Girlfriend and I resolved to descend upon it like locusts. As she has a classroom library to stock, she did the most damage, but I am pleased with what I turned up for myself.

I picked up the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction, apparently the only issue which had been donated. The stories in it would have been current when I was four years old, and I certainly wonder what the genre was like at the time, when the internet was nascent and the Hubble Telescope was still being put together.

I found a large hardcover collection of Dashiell Hammett novels, and I hope to get in touch with some of the stories that I know from retelling and pastiche. One, Red Harvest, is a story that comes up again and again (in Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, arguably the Conan the Barbarian story "Red Nails," and other, less notable iterations), and which I may try my own hand at if I get around to it.

Perhaps the most interesting find of the day was The Thorough-Bred Poor Gentleman's Book; or, How to Live in London on £100 a Year, a reprint of a slim handbook from 1835 which is essentially what the title claims: a guide to living frugally as a gentleman. It has that offhand wit that seems to happen naturally in books over a century old, but also seems to be a legitimate study in the plight of the declining English nobility in the 19th century. What a dilemma is is, surely, to be constrained in one's income and to be "above" doing anything for oneself--never mind taking definite action to earn more money!

What's said is interesting. What's not said is perhaps more so. One piece of straightforward advice reads: "Never get into a cab or hackney-coach when you can possibly walk." But it is never suggested that you would consider eating fewer than two meals a day outside your own home, make your own bed, or wash your own clothes--although you may apparently brush your own clothes without demeaning yourself, and the maidservant will appreciate it.

It makes me appreciate the freedom of the middle class, to eat my own spaghetti on occasion and do my own laundry without being thought less of.

This, of course, is part of the pleasure of used book sales as opposed to your typical bookstore. Foraging encourages a varied diet.

* Now, sadly, a Chase bank.
** Which this year broke into Playboy Magazine's list of America's top 10 party schools, wouldn't you know.