December 28, 2009

Environmentally Correct Scrooge

A few hours ago I posted this on Twitter:  

I need more sleep.* Moan. There’s always so much to fit in during, erm, holidays. 

This is true, but it suggests a very misleading image.  The only party I’ve been to lately was Peter’s OBE.**  I have for the umpteenth day in a row forgotten to RSVP Edward and Alex’s Christmas party, which is now the day after tomorrow.  The invite has been lying on the kitchen counter for weeks.***  Penelope, this morning at service ring, was asking me if I were going, since Niall, in typical trainspotter . . . I mean handbell ringer fashion has other things to do, and Peter feels about parties the way I feel about reading my amazon reviews†, as she knows, so she and I could go together.  Yes.  We could.  We did this once a couple of years ago.  Penelope, as I recall, mingled, and had interesting, invigorating conversations both with other known local bell ringers†† and also with utter strangers who happen to know Edward and Alex from some other source than the New Arcadia bell tower.†††

            I lurked.  No lurker was ever more lurky than myself at a . . . party.  I hid round the corner of the fireplace at this particular party and drank too much punch, in that way that you do when you’re nervous and need something to do with your hands and it tastes good.  But as is the way with holiday—ahem—punches, it was stronger than it looked/tasted with the result that I was frelling legless by the time Penelope was ready to leave.  Why does she want to go with me again?  Maybe the fact I missed last year‡ has softened the sharp edges of her memory, even if it hasn’t done a lot for mine.  And meanwhile I didn’t get back to either her or Edward and Alex today about going to the party which will soon be tomorrow. . . . But on the other hand, who needs to talk with that punch around . . . ?

            But I’ve nonetheless been busy.‡‡  I’ve been ordering crucial things.  First I thought I’d be clever and hit a few Christmas sales before all the good stuff is gone . . . and come to find out that most of the on line community hasn’t got its virtual act together to open their post holiday sales yet.  I think this is pretty funny:  there are more 26th-December-opening-day sales happening on the high street, apparently, than virtually.  I was specifically looking for Christmas tree ornaments:  some of Peter’s mice apparently eat them, because I swear every year when the boxes come out there are fewer.  I’m still hoping there will be a Lost Christmas Ornament Box revealed in the rubble of unopened-for-years cardboard aggregations at Third House . . . but SIIIIIIGH that is now a quest for next year.‡‡‡  And somehow I’m just not going to pay full price for tree decorations on the 27th of December.  So that was a bust.

            And then there were the doggy bin bags.  I use these biodegradable ones, right?  I’m so frelling holy.  And they’re a royal pain, frankly, because they aren’t big enough.  It’s not the depth so much as the width.  I’ll spare you the gruesome details, but let me remark that anybody with anything larger than a hellhound is just not going to be able to cope unless there’s some trick of the wrist I haven’t got.  Ewww.  So I use them, carefully, but I grumble.  And then, lo!  What should appear on the pages of a paper catalogue I am idly flicking through to get to the women’s knitwear, since I have a permanent weakness for little layery things in the sorts of colours that are usually in the sales, but a different brand of doggy bin bag.  Bigger.  With proper tie handles.  Gods, I’m so excited.  Yes, it’s true, we’re sad folk, us environmentally conscious dog owners. 

            So I leap on line to order them and discover . . . a disastrous discrepancy in price.  What they say in the catalogue is disgraceful enough but it’s a lot worse on line:  140 bags for £15.  Are you bloody joking?  On a bad day I’ll use four.  And cereal-free dog food already costs Rolls-Royce-hire prices.  This particular catalogue happens to have a Live Chat Room! option.  You can chat with a customer representative!  This is getting really too sad to describe, isn’t it?  It’s two days after Christmas and I’m only just killing off the end of the Christmas champagne while in a chat room with a customer representative discussing the price of biodegradable dog bin bags.  Which no, I didn’t buy, because she said the 140 for £15 was the correct description.

            But wait, let me tell you about my much more successful attempt to buy vitamins. . . .  

 * * *

* Edited for italics.  Since I guess we’re pretending to be all rough and ready with this 140 characters thing, we don’t get wussy stuff like fancy type on Twitter and have to revert to asterisks for emphasis.  Feh.  It makes footnoting more confusing too.^ 

^ Yes of course I could start with something other than an asterisk, but that’s so impure.+ 

+ I could also just . . . emphasize less.  You’re laughing, right?  You’re supposed to be laughing. 

** And I’ve already sheepishly admitted that that was more fun than I was expecting.  People!  Gah!  Conversation!  Gaaah! 

*** Which unfortunately suggests quite an accurate image of my kitchen counters.  There are a lot of Christmas cards I haven’t answered on the same counter.  One of the slightly more peculiar drawbacks of this blasted blog is that it completely destroys you for those round-up letters you used to write at Christmas or twice a year to the people that you feel bad about neglecting.  And so far as I know it’s still not done to send out a list of links to a few representative blog entries. . . . 

† See yesterday’s entry.  ‘If someone held a gun to my head’ is a phrase that occurs.

†† You haven’t forgotten that Edward is ringing master at my home tower, have you? 

††† For example, from other bell towers around the country. 

‡ Can’t remember why.  Probably we had visitors.  Shudder.  Driven from pillar to post^ by superfluous humanity, that’s me, during the festive season.^^ 

^ Disaster.  The disaster part is very important.  http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/from+pillar+to+post.html  

^^ There were zillions of people out walking their frelling dogs and churning the sodden countryside to ever deeper mud today+.  We met a friendly Rhodesian Ridgeback.  Cost me ten years’ growth when I saw that thing barrelling toward us.  And an extremely friendly three-quarters-grown yellow Lab, whose owners finally nailed her and dragged her away . . . and about two minutes later there was uproar behind us and bang:  three-quarters-grown-yellow-Lab bullet, did not want to continue with slow boring humans when there were hellhounds nearby. 

+ It’s going to freeze again tonight which means that tomorrow the landscape will be a low but deadly massif of sharpened mud-stakes, like an iron maiden lying on its back.  Tuesday it starts snowing again.  I know that global warming is a complicated issue but . . . maybe this is Gaia saying GAAAAAH to the pig’s ear that useless lot in Copenhagen made of setting up a schedule for humanity to stop destroying itself.~ 

~ I tend to the theory that Gaia herself will survive, but she may have to get rid of us and put her energy into developing intelligence in axolotls and fruit bats.  Or she may decide that intelligence was a mistake, and leave the axolotls and fruit bats alone. 

‡‡ First I had to get up and go ring again.  Any week that includes two mornings of getting up before 8 a.m. is not a good week.  Although presents and champagne do help. 

‡‡‡ And speaking of Third House . . . I need a greenhouse heater.  I thought with the walls, the bubble wrap, the grow light, and the foliar mass, that I wasn’t going to need a greenhouse heater too, which make me a little twitchy although most of ’em have failsafes up the wazoo any more.  It hasn’t even been that cold!  25°F!  Big frelling deal!  But my begonias have said, nope, not doing this, and croaked.  Damn.  I still have quite a few in the cottage windowsills but . . . damn.  Everything else still looks alive.  Cranky, maybe, but alive.

December 28, 2009 | Filed Under Piffle, bell ringing, countryside, critters, misanthropy | Comments Off 

A Day Beyond Ratbaggery

 

I have been sitting here staring at the blank screen for a while.  I have an obvious opening for tonight’s blog entry, to wit: 

I am not stupid enough to say ‘this day can’t get any worse’.  It can always get worse.*  But for a day that hasn’t involved major blood loss it would be very difficult for it to get any worse.** 

. . . The problem is that a few of the things that are driving me over the incandescent edge are nothing I wish to air in public.***  And I’m so busy trying not to eat anyone†, punch my fists through any walls, or inadvertently set fire to the town centre–speaking of incandescent–by walking through it,†† that I’m not sure I’m up to making a good story out of  the little dumb stuff.  But the first rule of blogging is Do Not Waste Good Material, and the last item on my suitable-for-communal-delectation list should definitely not be wasted.

            So.  My little list of trials.

            In the first place it is still hot.  I do not like it when it is hot.  So as background to what follows imagine a vague oppressive headache and an energy level of about 30%.

            The house painter who is supposed to be finishing kitchen and bath at Third House has disappeared.  Not only do I desperately want the builders OUT of there††† . . . I want to know if the frelling blue in the bathroom is going to match the frelling tiles.

            My hay fever, having been absent so far this season, and which is, indeed, wearing off as I get older, just like they told you it would, and despite the innumerable temptations floating in the air of lush southern England, has suddenly staged a comeback.

            A few days ago I made reference to the fact that I have an honest-to-Jehosaphat film contract to sign.  It’s worth about $7.50 but The System Is the System and part of the Hollywood system is that you have to get your signature on a contract notarised.  There are notary publics on every street corner in the States, right?  Waving their little stamps and offering a three-for-one deal and a free pizza.  Not over here.  Over here they’re a rare, valuable breed which must be sought out by arcane ways and, once found, placated with gold and costly gifts.‡

            So this morning I got up what passes in my world as early to get the hellhounds hurtled‡‡ before I drove half across Hampshire to beard a notary public in her gilded lair.‡‡‡   Turns out the roadworks that are making my immediate vicinity dusty, noisy, and mostly impassable, extend a considerable distance . . . including most of the way to the notary’s.  By the time I got back the car was turning into a deep-fat fryer and I was starting to feel a trifle wombly.

            I also got back just about in time for the Descent of the Computer Men.  Both Peter and I are having issues§ so I managed to get about half my lunch eaten and a few fires put out, continuing the incendiary theme, by email, before Computer Men, having striven well on Peter’s behalf, turned to me.   My issues have a habit of being more exciting, since they exist as a result of a clueless technosilly having way more complicated toys than she is capable of coping with.  Or, sometimes, than they are capable of coping with. 

            They were here for three hours, while I twitched and twiddled and thought about the pages of PEGASUS I wasn’t getting written.  I have several computers:  a true warrior princess would get out another computer and settle down to do some work, despite the alarming and distracting presence of Computer Men.

            After they left, and I turned my freshly enhanced kit back on and pressed a few buttons . . . I got a lot of errors messages saying ‘cannot open.  This file is corrupt.’

            I rang Computer Men.

            Computer Men are coming back tomorrow.  So I can waste another day.

            And . . . remember the handbell wedding?  Which is now two days away?  And how our fourth is having back trouble and so dropped out, but Darcy and Niall and I–and Darcy’s new puppy–were going to be there with, as it were, bells on?

            Darcy has broken her wrist.  

* * *

 * Even when there’s only about an hour of it left.  But how do the gods of worseness count days?  I don’t trust them to close down at midnight when my ‘day’ tends to carry on a while after that. 

** Just to ensure that I hadn’t forgotten that I was having a day of unparalleled ratbagness, we couldn’t get through a touch of Stedman tonight at ringing practise.^  Although I don’t think it was me. 

^ Yes, I thought about staying home and getting some PEGASUS done.  And I thought, if I’m going to wreck something, I’d rather wreck a ringing practise than a page of PEGASUS. 

*** I assume that regular readers of this blog will have figured out that it’s not only that I am a cranky, overreactive cow whose daily existence is a series of ridiculous superficialities, but that in fact there are also great swathes of my life that you hear nothing about. 

† With, I fear, mixed results 

†† Hellhounds, fortunately, being hellhounds, are fireproof 

††† Except that they’ll have to come back.  The new front door still hasn’t arrived.  Oh yes, and we’re also still missing one tile of the eight that make the splashback in the attic bathroom . . . and the tile company is planning to charge us £20 shipping when it finally comes back in stock.  My builder promises to argue about it. 

‡ No joke.  The one I didn’t use charges £250.  Yes, you read that right.  Merrilee’s assistant found me the one I did use.  The internet is a wonderful thing.  Especially under the fingers of someone young and clued-in.

 ‡‡ Which meant I was out there with a lot of other dog walkers.  This is not a good thing.

‡‡‡ I asked her why–ahem!–notary publics cost as much as a weekend at the Dorchester when back in the States you get a free pizza.  She said because a notary public is first a lawyer and then takes additional training.  I didn’t ask what in.  Advanced Stamping?  

§ Peter got them first, while I hastily tried to find one of the things I needed them for.  He came out of his office, where they were vying with demons, and said to me proudly, I’ve baffled them.

June 3, 2009 | Filed Under perversity of life, too much, ugh | Comments Off 

PEGASUS

 

. . . is driving me mad.  Well, madder.  Not that this is the least unusual.  Writing novels does drive one mad. 

Well, writing mine has always driven me mad.  Peter, however, is a pain in the butt about this as about so many writery things.  I always used to say–grandly, smugly–that while I am perhaps a little slow, no one can crank out really superior prose quickly:  a book a year, say.  Anyone holding to that schedule very long* is inevitably writing inferior stuff.  Then I started noticing the copyright dates on Peter’s books.  I’d first discovered his adult murder mysteries;  I didn’t know he also wrote kids’ books till I started working in the children’s department at Little, Brown–as it then was–one of whose lines was the Atlantic Monthly Press, which published Peter’s kids’ books in America.   He’s been known to publish more than one book a year, the comfortable-philosophy-wrecking ratbag. **

And then!  As if this is not bad enough!  He isn’t driven mad by his stories!  He may sometimes sit at the kitchen table with his hands over his face muttering to himself but . . . he still gets up and makes dinner!***  He never snarls, I’m working† when I address a remark to him!  He even remembers to shave!††

I, on the other hand . . . †††

Well.  PEGASUS is driving me mad.  Have I told you it started life as an AIR story?  Oh, you’d guessed, had you?  Yes, by the time PEGASUS galloped/flew into my ken and I tentatively sprinkled a few words of it on paper and watched it instantly start straining at the margins I was cynical enough to guess that it wasn’t a short story.‡  But the margin-straining has gone on.  And on.  About a month ago I decided I couldn’t do it in one book:  so perforce I’m going to be writing a real sequel for the first time in my life . . . well, sort of.   It’s going to be a sequel like THE RETURN OF THE KING is a sequel to THE TWO TOWERS.  Remember the last line of TWO TOWERS?  ‘Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy’?  Yes.‡‡   You’re going to hate me for the ending of PEGASUS.  Well, I hope you’ll hate me:  you’ll hate me if you like the book.

I can’t help it!  The freller is too fricking long!  And that really is the place to end volume one!   Anyone with the most rudimentary sense of Story will see this at once!‡‡‡

But my problem now is that having decided to hack it in half and breathing, as I thought, a long sigh of relief, because I might thus still make my end-of-summer deadline . . . it’s shaken off its restraints with a hurrah and taken off for the horizon.  Wait!  Wait!  Wait!  I’ve got old!  I don’t move so fast any more!  And laptops weigh more than pads of legal paper used to!

I’m supposed to be at the end of the second draft!  I have got to be at the end of the second draft by the end of May§ or I am seriously frelled!  I should be getting ready for the frenzied final yanks and twitches, knots and clamps, of the third (more or less) and final (more or less) draft§§!  And what am I doing?  I’m writing more new, raw, first-draft stuff!  I wrote one page today.§§§  And it wasn’t merely one wretched horrible new first-draft page . . . it was a wretched horrible first draft page that tells the heroine something she didn’t know and casts a very long retroactive shadow–that I, the miserable scribe, am going to have to go back and crosshatch in.

Whimper.

Even Word has given up on me:  when I hit 75,000 words a while back it gave me an error message that said:  There are too many misspelled words in this document and we can’t deal any more.¤  And all the little red squiggly underlines went away.  I almost miss them.¤¤

So Days in the Life may start having Links Entries to go with Guest Post Saturday.  Or Poetry Entries.  Or something.  And if I sign on some night vnb&^c****q/@zbzb gah!!!!! frzppp?%, don’t worry.  I’ve just used up all my articulateness on PEGASUS that day.  And am probably also in kind of a arrrgh, snorty mood.

 

PS:  I listened to the Midsummer Night’s Dream I saw the beginning of the week on the radio tonight . . . it’s nowhere near as bright and funny just listening on the radio.  Sigh.  And furthermore the Words & Music tonight–which I declined to attend when I found out Radio Three wasn’t paying any expenses–on The Faerie World was totally brilliant and I’m sorry I wasn’t there. 

            Never mind.  I can go to bed early and get started on PEGASUS earlier tomorrow. 

* * *

 * Yes, I’m about to have a third book out in three years.  But FIRE is short stories and only half ^ of them are mine. 

^ In story count, only two-fifths of them are mine.  In word count . . . um . . . more than that. 

** I am very grateful he’d slowed somewhat by the time we got together.  There is only so much humiliation a woman can stand.^ 

^ Some day when I’m in a really bad mood I’ll tell you stories about being Mrs-Peter-Dickinson-oh-she-writes-too?-How-quaint.  I know I’ve threatened you with Mrs-Peter-Dickinson stories before, but I’m never in quite a bad enough mood.  But I’ve told you, haven’t I, that Robert Maxwell took his header off his boat about a fortnight after I moved over here, taking my entire British backlist with him?  When they got round to fishing for drowned treasure they didn’t bother with anything that hadn’t sold well in the first place, and I have never sold well in this damned country.+  So I remained at the bottom of the ocean and there I have mostly stayed since.++ 

+  So, choose:  the public footpath system and rosebushes that survive the winter, or credibility in your own home.  Okay, fine, credibility is overrated. 

++ I’ve been afraid to check the sales figures on the reissued SUNSHINE, but–sigh–I somehow imagine that if it did anything startling I’d hear about it.~ 

~ However I will have an announcement about the British SUNSHINE in about a fortnight.  Mwa ha ha ha ha.  Stay tuned. 

*** Yes, really! 

† As someone else we know is inclined to do.  Ahem. 

†† Well, usually.  And he’s never been too good at the matching sock thing.  And he wears a lot of black because you don’t have to figure out what it goes with.  I have created another of those rods for my own back by giving him clothing in colours.  Whereupon I am obliged to spend a certain amount of time saying, Aaaugh!  That does not go with that! 

††† Fortunately I’m not expected to shave every day. 

‡ It’s one of the reasons I managed to buy Third House, though.  You remember I signed a contract for 1,000,000 books to scratch together enough of an advance to make the bank and the estate agent/realtor stop laughing?  This required writing up, you know, sample chapters type things.^   PEGASUS was Merrilee and my editor’s favourite. 

^ Thank the gods nobody expected a complete outline.  

‡‡ And have I told you how I read LOTR for the first time?  That my best-friend-in-seventh-grade’s brother was giving it to her one volume at a time, over the course of birthday-Christmas-birthday?  So there was months to wait in between?  This was back in the early ’60s, when it was only just beginning to be discovered by American college students, which my friend’s brother was.  My friend and I were in Japan, however.  Borrowing the next book on inter-library loan wasn’t an option.  Although military dependents’ libraries were not entirely to be despised:  I discovered Elyne Mitchell in a Tokyo US Army base library.

            But ‘Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy’ still kind of echoes down the decades at me.  It was a long few months. 

‡‡‡ Yes, I’m setting you up. 

§ MAY?  HOW DID IT GET TO BE MAY ALREADY??  I’d think you were lying, but I’ve noticed that it’s still daylight lately when we get out of ringing practice at 9 pm. 

§§ Frenzy is necessary.  It has nothing to do with the fact that when I get there I am invariably behind schedule. 

§§§ It was single spaced.  So about 750 words.  This is not unreasonable when I’m writing a first draft. 

¤ I never get around to putting all the funny words and made-up names in the dictionary.  I actually have put ‘pegasus’–no capital P– in the dictionary and it ignores me.   With an attitude like that, no wonder it can’t cope. 

¤¤It’s okay.  They still talk to me for blog posts.

May 10, 2009 | Filed Under my books | Comments Off 

Bitty

 

It’s been a bitty kind of day and I am feeling very bitty about the brain and disinclined to compose a smooth flowing blog entry moving thoughtfully and gracefully from one topic to the next Get real McKinley when have I ever done this???  Okay less than usual tonight.  It’s a Sunday supper evening–now shoe* courtesy is a demonstrably variable item, as pursued lately on the forum, so how common is the leftovers supper on Sunday possibly after the big midday meal or possibly just End of the Weekend it’s Monday Tomorrow I Am Unmotivated**?  I think of Sunday leftovers as a Fine Old Familiar Tradition that . . . I just have never somehow had much to do with, like beer drinking or wearing white gloves.***  As far as I’m concerned leftovers are always a good idea.†

            And I have all these links stacking up in my ‘blog stuff’ folder.  Hmm.  [juggling noises]

            So lying around in a stupor of digestion is the perfect time for a movie, right?  So just before you hit the TV remote†† here’s a little one to warm up with, courtesy Blackbear:

http://upyernoz.blogspot.com/2009/02/star-wars-retold-by-someone-who-hasnt.html 

And speaking of the stupor of digestion, you may or may not want to approach this:  

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/02/passive-aggressive-cakes.html ††† 

Right.  Now that I’ve got you and your clicking fingers all softened up . . . Something completely different: ‡ 

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/ 

I can’t decide if this guy(s) scares or fascinates me more, but before those of you hitherto unacquainted with the faf, the gib, and the lob switch off after the first paragraph of the first entry on the opening page ( . . . as I write this, presumably someone reading this post a fortnight or a year from now will see something else), well, skip on down to the last two sentences which take my breath away for their sheer vicious accuracy about life in this world, whatever the specific politics behind them: 

As much as we might all yearn for peace, history has shown that Palestinians understand only violence. Well, violence and Arabic, but Arabic is notoriously difficult to learn, while most of us can become fluent in violence in just under a semester. 

I tend to come away from a read of fafblog‡‡ needing a strong cup of tea and a lie down‡‡‡ but it’s mind expanding in a way not dissimilar to hallucinogenic drugs.  Which way did you say up was again?  And the concept of  ‘down’ again please?  If Castaneda’s Don Juan were into modern politics, he might write like this.  I recommend a scroll down the opening page, which will include:

The Second Coming

Snow Day

Pie Blogging 

And the side bar is good too.  Say, for example, George Washington’s thirty penises.  No, sic.  So go look already. 

And now that I’ve managed to get us back on politics (sort of) let me offer you something Blackbear posted in response to last night’s entry about Obama: 

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/black_man_given_nations 

And don’t forget to click through to: 

http://store.theonion.com/black-man-given-nations-worst-job-p-372.html § 

Which made me laugh immoderately which laughter may or may not be a good sign of something or other.  I fear the Onion’s readership is a trifle college educated and white which for better or worse would be me.  But at least we now all have a particoloured president.  Ha.  Ha.§§ 

* * *

 * Okay, here’s one of those links I’ve been longing to offer you and no idea how to plug it into one of my standard smooth flowing etc entries.  FEET CAKES.^  View and be  . . . slightly ill. 

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/02/thisll-cure-that-freaky-fetish.html 

  But you’re all fans of cakewrecks, right?  One of the truly brilliant manifestations of the blogosphere:  you look at something like cakewrecks–so simple, so inspired–and think, Yes, It Was All Worth It, Computers and Blood and Screaming, etc^^, we have cakewrecks.blogspot.com. ^^^ 

^ Courtesy southdowner, although several of you have sent me cakewreck links.  Which says something about the unity and communality of this blog’s readership.   Let’s just leave that thought right there. . . . 

^^ I am not only very tired and brainless, I am listening to Beethoven’s Fifth, which always makes me feel a bit like Harry standing on the top of that mountain about to save the day in a grand and swashbuckling manner or, well, there’s a scene in One of the Third Damar Novels that has that effect on me too, but you wouldn’t know about that, would you?+ 

+ No, I am not a nice person.  Hadn’t you figured that out yet? 

^^^ And now, whilst still speaking of links I have been longing to offer you and clueless as to how to present them, aside from with a flourish, um, er, here’s one that made me laugh so hysterically that the hellhounds came to investigate+ but it’s very rude and anyone of a delicate disposition should eschew it.  She Whom I Will Not Expose to the Calumny of Millions By Revealing Here suggested I put it in very small print down at the bottom of an entry, but I don’t know how to do very small print in Wordpress, so you’re just going to have to PAY ATTENTION TO ME TRYING TO WARN YOU HERE THAT IF YOU DON’T LIKE BAD LANGUAGE, STAY THE FRELLING WHATEVER AWAY FROM THIS LINK, OKAY?  For the rest of you, especially the Computer Challenged, click through immediately: 

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of 

+ Don’t you think you need to lie on the sofa to recover?  

** I of course find these little observances of normality^ fascinating because Free Lancers Have No Normal.  One can get quite wistful about other ways of life even when, for example, one knows one couldn’t keep a schedule to save one’s life.  I have enough trouble getting to service ring at 8:50 every Sunday morning.  Especially when I was probably up till about [MMMPH] the night/morning reading.  You know I used to fall asleep over whatever I was reading, and that was the sign to turn the light out.  Now I hear my chiming clock chime unholy numbers^^ and think, shut up!  You’re lying!  If it were that late I would be falling asleep!  

^http://wondermark.com/488/  (also southdowner, who gets around) 

^^ 666+ 

+ You all know this t shirt, right?  http://www.topstitches-uk.com/proddetail.php?prod=1005 

*** Although first time I started learning to ring handbells, I was ringing the handbells of a Careful Person Who Cherished His Beautiful Glossy Handbells, and we all had to wear gloves.  This is not uncommon, by the way.  But it did cast a pall of surreality over the proceedings that . . . actually suits handbells extremely well, and it’s probably where the glove thing comes from and nothing to do with keeping evil corrosive fingerprints off the bells.  Niall is much too eager to get handbells into people’s hands, anyone’s hands, to obstruct the process with a question of gloves.  If asked, he would probably say that his bells will see him out, corrosive fingerprints or no corrosive fingerprints, and his handbell heir can worry about it later. 

† No cooking!  More time to play piano/read/plant things!  And nineteen bars of chocolate left from the box of twenty!^  ‘Over’ is perhaps a superfluous detail. . . . 

^ So Peter has only just brought it home, okay?  I haven’t had much time. 

†† Which in this household causes an avalanche of hellhounds, who know what that noise means.  Person on sofa!  Yaaaaay! 

††† Speaking of cakewrecks, which we already were, down here in the footnotes, and southdowner, who’s responsible for this one too.  I feel that some of these people must be murder mystery readers and maybe they should get out more. 

‡ It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it 

‡‡ Which is Blackbear’s fault/blame/responsibility/daring/luminosity/twistedness/etc 

‡‡‡ Yaaay! say the hellhounds.  Hmm.  Is Blackbear conspiring with the hellhounds?  What are those special mod powers anyway?  

§ And possibly apropos of views from different sides of a question

http://wondermark.com/062/ 

§§ And if whoever sent me the link to the grade-level comparison of Obama and Bunion’s first press conferences would be so kind as to remind me I’ll frelling credit you.  I couldn’t find the email last night, but fortunately the link itself popped up on google very nicely.

February 23, 2009 | Filed Under Piffle | Comments Off 

Other people’s blogs

 

So I tottered out of the bell tower this morning* and while watching Peter buy the Observer** noticed a headline in the Sunday Times:  THE 100 BEST BLOGS IN THE WORLD.  I was weak and silly and a headline writer’s patsy.  I bought it.   

The Guardian did the 50 best blogs a few months ago and I was entirely nonplussed:  my hazy recollection now was that by the descriptions in the article 49 and a half of them were hard nonfiction and the half was one of those train-wreck tell-alls.  I’m not sure I went to have a look at any of them.  Okay, I thought, the net world is a big place, there is a corner for hellhounds and roses and bells and books and pianos and horses and . . .  fortunately it’s a large corner.  But today I decided that if I wasn’t made of sterner stuff then I ought to be and I was going to go so far as to read a few of these recommendeds and then I would blog about it.  It is profoundly ridiculous that I write a blog but rarely ever look at anyone else’s***:  I might be missing good blog topics.  As I understand it that’s what everyone else does:  you read each other’s and then talk about it.  Right.  Okay.  Hat on straight†, feet flat on floor††. . . .

The first thing that happened is that the first address listed gets you This Webpage Cannot Be Found.   This may be a peculiarity of my computer, of course–or of Sunday evening:  although it reproduces itself nicely I admit it’s still Sunday evening–but when I finally got there via Google there was more address than the Times gave you: 

 http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/ 

This first category is called ‘world affairs’ and normblog is described as ‘an indispensable window on the world’.  Hmm.  Okay, here’s a clip:

The question here is: why are we so interested in anniversaries? And although no direct answer is given to it, this is offered as one of the effects of that interest:

[A]nniversaries are to be praised because they constitute a historical review system allowing us to think about just a few things at any given time rather than trying to think about everything all of the time.

Review system, maybe; but allowing us to think about just a few things at a time I don’t buy. We’re both allowed and able to be selective anyway, without the aid of anniversaries. You don’t celebrate your child’s birthday so as not to have to think about your other children. So why? . . . It’s a way of organizing what would otherwise be chaotic.

It’s what?  Okay, this is a sober, serious, thought-provoking world affairs blog and I write fantasy and think the way my hellhounds sleep on their backs is the ultimate in hilarity.  I accept that I’m missing the point.  I would have said anniversaries are an officially sanctioned excuse to have some fun.  You know, fun?  I know the economy has just crashed and burned so the excursion to the Fat Duck††† may need to be put off, but you can still buy a balloon and go for a walk in the park.  And presents?  You know, presents?  You need to be really focused to buy presents for no reason.  Anniversaries are a reason.  And I never knew a parent who stopped thinking about one kid because another one was having a birthday.  And one of the nice things about anniversaries–or three day weekends commemorating some national anniversary–is that they don’t have to be organized:  they’re just lying there!  You can pick them up or not just as you choose.

However, if he gets more people to listen to Emmylou Harris then he is a good thing, even by my somewhat off-centre criteria:

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/10/the-compact-emm.html 

Although he is wrong wrong wrong about Red Dirt Girl being less than her best, it is a brilliant album and I wrote about half of SUNSHINE to it. 

Next we have 

 http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/ 

. . .described as ‘A superb way into the mind of America.’  Oh?  Ah.  Well, I haven’t lived in America in almost twenty years.  Things change.  Also, being the sort of evil cow who nonetheless hates confrontation, the author photo puts me right off, being a Wanna-Make-Something-of-It?-stare author photo.  If this were a book, I’d quickly and nervously lay it down again.

But I do like the conceit of posting TH Huxley on Valentine’s Day, and the remark:  ‘Those who would have us live “according to nature” invariably have a stupid view of nature’  is my idea of dead on.  

 Next on the list is 

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/

 ’ . . . The assumption is that you are on the journey with Sullivan, that you read him every day, as indeed millions do.’  Okay.  Textbytes.  We can do textbytes.

This of course immediately caught my eye:

For The Love Of Dogs

Heather Havrilesky hates both animal lovers and people who hate animal lovers. She talks about the latter:

I don’t think there’s anyone I hate more than people who can’t shut up about how deeply sick and wrong it is to love your dog and call her stupid names and treat her with the respect and kindness and around-the-clock fawning and admiration to which she’s clearly entitled. I have a big problem with people who want to hold court on how bad it is for a dog to be invited onto the bed or the couch and squeezed and kissed and anthropomorphized. “Dogs were meant to roam around in the wilderness,” they remind us, “ripping little animals apart all day long! Dogs weren’t meant to lounge about on the furniture, wimpering for more Snausages!”

I’m for the boring middle. It’s impossible not to give a beagle the couch and to treat them as almost human. But once you realize they actually like the security of knowing their place in the pack, you find it easier to enforce some simple boundaries.

 Hmm.  This does not seem to me a particularly informative or soul-sounding gloss, but then the hellhounds and I are more or less attached at the hip and this is Critters 101 when I’ve got two or three PhDs on the subject. 

Havrilesky’s article certainly made me laugh‡ in happy recognition.‡‡  I’d have her over for coffee:  I bet she has blogworthy words to say about owners of four-legged aggressive off lead threats to society and friendly hellhounds.  I feel she’s a little underinformed about the ripping apart of small mammals, however:  squirrels bite.  They’re vicious little sods.  If you want your Natural Dog to have a joyous hunting experience, you don’t want to start it on either squirrels or rats:  stick to rabbits.  Preferably very old or very young rabbits, that can’t kick very hard.‡‡‡   

Money, Things, And Experiences

Renee Grinnell summarizes a new study:

According to a new San Francisco State University study…money can lead to greater happiness for the person possessing it and those around them, if it is used to buy experiences, not possessions.

According to SFU’s February 7 press release, the study by Ryan Howell, an assistant professor of psychology at SFU, “demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality – a feeling of being alive.”

 

If you see the point of money as freedom, it works. As soon as it becomes anything else, it doesn’t. And possessions are not freedom. In many ways, they can be its opposite.

 Er.  Um.  ‘In many ways they can be its opposite’?  Well.  Yes.  True.  But I’ve been that kind of free once or twice in my life, and I belong to the the ‘freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’ philosophy.  Also, you separate me from my books, my piano–even my computers, especially the one with Finale on it–and my All Stars§ at your peril. 

Although the original study looks pretty interesting, and this blog is supposed to flag stuff for you.  Yes, this is one of the sneaky virtues of bell ringing:  you get all this exercise, mental, physical and social, and furthermore it’s (ahem) free. 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/default.aspx 

‘a good stop for witty and non-PC politics’ 

Okay.  I give up.  I don’t know anything about Obama’s stimulus package except that the price tag scares the bejeezus out of me:  being a taxpayer and all I take it personally.  I’m a little depressed that the knives are already out–the guy’s been in office what, three weeks?–but I suppose they would be, for an $800 gazillion anything§§ even if we have documentary proof that he walks on water and heals scrofula at a touch.§§§  

http://thewashingtonnote.com/ 

I’m now losing the will to live.¤  I am just not a political animal.¤¤    My favourite item in this blog is an ad at the top which states:  ‘The Ony [sic] Real Obama Watch.  Exclusively Here, the Same Watch Barack Obama Wears for $325.’  My brain, deprived of more digestible material¤¤¤, is fascinated that the ad-buyer thinks that people who follow closely argued discussions on the horrifying quandary that is the Middle East are also going to fall for a Barack Obama watch.  Hmm.  Maybe this is how they’re planning to fund the stimulus bill? 

http://www.truthdig.com/ 

‘A feisty, left-leaning American news and comment blog . . .’  Oooh.  Hors d’oeuvres page.  Good for us butterfly minds. 

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20090213_allen_barra_on_the_myth_of_ronald_reagan/ 

“This book is born of annoyance: a great bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan. It gives voice to a vast swath of psychically disenfranchised Americans, millions of them, lumped most thickly in the urban areas on either coast, who never understood Reagan’s appeal.”

 Yes.  That would be me. 

http://io9.com/5148820/while-batmans-away-batwoman-takes-over-at-last 

Oh, what a relief:  frivolity 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090211_ellen_goodman_jobs_equality/ 

I suppose this falls under the general heading “Be Careful What You Wish For.”

    There are a whole lot of folks who once looked forward to the day when women would become equal participants in the work force with men. . . .

    What they didn’t predict was that women might finally reach the goal of equality less because they scaled the heights than because men slipped downward. But here we are.

  In the winter of our economic discontent, women now hold more than 49 percent of jobs on the nation’s payrolls. If we cross the 50 percent line-hold the applause-it will be because men are losing their jobs even faster than women. . . . The other dubious part of this “equality” for families is that even if women fill half of the payroll jobs, they don’t bring home half the paychecks. They still earn only 78 cents for every male dollar. In two-worker households, husbands earn close to two-thirds of the income and usually hold the job with health insurance.

    So women’s work has been more stable but less profitable. And don’t forget that the recession is still on. Women may yet catch up (or catch down) with men’s job losses. They are especially vulnerable to cutbacks in state and local government, where they work in disproportionate numbers.

. . . Sigh.   

And last under the ‘world affairs’ category we have: 

http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/harare/ 

‘An extraordinary blog maintained by the staff of the British Embassy in Harare.  It must be unique in the annals of British diplomacy–embassy officials saying what they really think . . .’

 Well, it’s getting late, and I’ve spent way too much time looking at other people’s blogs which is why I don’t, and horizontality (and hellhounds) are beginning to call me in a voice that will not be denied.  So I must have missed the extraordinary entries:  the ones I looked at read like rather gentle newspaper columns.  But as long as I’m complaining, pardon me, but this is supposed to be the 100 best blogs in the world.  And under ‘world affairs’ we have . . . a total American-British lockdown.  I realise that the Times is selling to a British, English-speaking audience, but . . . 

I am, being Old and No Fun, going to skip the ‘Celebrities’ and ‘Style’ categories but I’ll have a go tomorrow or next Mumbleday at ‘Words’ and ‘Comic Relief’.  Then I have to try and remember to buy Blogs Part Two next Sunday.  And since I don’t read other people’s blogs I can blithely ignore the fact that all around me hot, happening, cutting edge blogs are writing muscular, grappling-hook commentary on the Times’ list.  Never mind, I’ll make myself a nice cup of tea and read a, you know, book. 

* * *

  * Having clung cravenly to the treble for Grandsire, was driven inside for Stedman which I rang perfectly competently and then fluffed bob minor, arrrrrrgh 

** I swear this ritual exists to give us something to complain about.  I would have thought we could find other things to complain about even if we didn’t buy a Sunday paper, but I daresay–old hardcopy fuddyduddies that we are–we’d miss it if we stopped. 

*** That would be the bells, books, hellhounds, roses, piano, etc.  Hey, I got out into the garden today.  I mean for longer than it takes to move a few pots of flowering trees. 

† I don’t wear a hat 

†† . . . and I usually type with at least one leg folded under me.  Factoids about Robin McKinley, #15:  cannot sit in a chair as the chair was intended for sitting in

††† http://www.fatduck.co.uk/menu_alacarte.htm

And they recommend you stay here:

http://www.clivedenhouse.co.uk/accommodation.asp?Page=tariff

‡ Although it also made me feel old, tired and . . . uh, British.  Golly.  And I thought I get bent out of shape about stuff.

‡‡ But I couldn’t get her talking dog to play for me!  Drat and ratbags!  Note to self:  must learn little video-clip thingy on digital camera, so I can record Darkness and Chaos backchat.  Take us ooooooooout! 

‡‡‡ If you do click through, you’ll discover the original article is on salon.com.  I really have to learn to cruise salon.com.  I’m just afraid I’ll never be heard of again. 

§ Do hellhounds count as a possession?  Do I count as a possession?  Who owns, the goddess or the devotee?  I know I pay the bills^ but we are seeking a higher truth here. 

^ don’t I know it 

§§ I just googled for the exact figure and the first Google page of just the headlines quotes four different figures.  This is not reassuring. 

§§§ Which so far as I know we do not have 

¤  But speaking of author photos, here’s a really scary author photo.  

¤¤  And the White House dog search goes on:  http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gGfERtIuYk_00Udf16Hctly2CM7w   Very first advise anyone gives anyone about choosing a puppy is don’t choose a puppy mill puppy. . . . 

¤¤¤ Reading a serious political blog is for me akin to eating a cheese sandwich:  major personal cataclysm follows

February 16, 2009 | Filed Under comments, real world, unbook media | Comments Off 

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I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it. -- Dorothy Parker