Suck It, November

A couple of weeks ago, I was going through my new blog followers, checking out their blogs and updating the bloglist(s) in the side panels when I came across, almost by accident, a site called "NoMoSlackMo". I was intrigued, at first, but when I saw the tagline of "Suck it, November", I was in love. Er, as much love as one can be in with a website, I guess. No, no, I take that back; I was quite smitten.

As you may remember, I'm none too keen on the whole NaNoWriMo thing. I personally get nothing from it. Oh, sure, it's fun to hammer out words for thirty days straight, but after a while I felt as if, as a writer, I should be doing this more than just thirty days at the end of the year. I mean, if I want to be a serious, professional writer, I need to commit to it, right?

And, I had. I was about 19,000 words up on my current work in progress (WIP) when I sort of...slacked. Purposefully. You'll notice that the writing updates withered during late November and on into December. The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is stressful enough, to be honest, without worrying over how much of my masterpiece novel I've gotten finished. So, I kind of quit and tried to focus on doing other things, like playing Lego Star Wars cleaning the house and preparing for a visit from Jolly Old St. Nicholas.

The holidays are, once again, sadly, behind us. New year resolutions are, once again, sadly, upon us. And so, too, is NoMoSlackMo. For the uninitiated, NoMoSlackMo stands for "No More Slacking Month", and is sort of the bastard child of NaNoWriMo, but without all the stigma that goes along with that. And, the rules are pretty simple. As per the authors:

• Writing takes place from January 1, 2010 to January 31, 2010
• Goal is to reach 50,000 words by midnight on January 31, 2010
• You don't have to start from scratch. The point is to finish what you slacked off on in November.
• You can start from scratch if ya want.

Obviously, I didn't start from scratch. However, I was 19032 words into my current work. I thought, "I could cheat and just start out 20,000 strong, so that I only have to write 30,000 words and be 'a winner'!" But then I thought "Hmmm...I want my book to be somewhere around 100,000 words, so if I were to follow through and write 50,000 words plus what I already have, I'd be almost done with my book."

And, so, that's what I've done. Which is kind of a bitch to keep track of, since my starting word count wasn't nice and round or anything like that. Alas, I have to do...math...and shit...now that I'm doing this. Fortunately, Windows comes with a built-in calculator! How convenient?

Anyway, I finally got to the point where I introduced the king. And, he's supposed to be a slimy bastard lusting for the main character's mother. I thought, "Who embodies this better than anyone else?" And then after I stopped looking in the mirror, I thought, "Who in pop culture embodies this better than anyone else?" The answer: Lando Calrissian. That's right. The king (er, one of them) in my neat little myth story is roughly modeled off Lando. Except, he's Greek, not black, he's a king, and not an administrator of a mining facility, and he tricks everyone into giving him horses, not tibanna gas. Although, I do think they both rock the cape look pretty well.

I have, officially, finished five chapters in the book and I've started number six, but I need to re-read some Greek funerary rites before continuing too much further. Plus, I need to figure out how "youthful" I want my "youth" in the story to be. I'm thinking sixteen should be about right--he'd be hotheaded and impetuous, which is what the character calls for. However, I've vowed to myself that my hotheaded and impetuous character isn't going to be a whiny bitch like Harry Potter; he's actually going to listen when someone imparts some wisdom or knowledge or guidance upon him, rather than just get mad and strip naked on a stage with a horse. Wait...I think I'm mixing Daniel Radcliffe vehicles there...

Anyway, here's the progress to date. I've got 66 pages, and if that's 1/5 of the way done (estimated), then I should end up with about 330 manuscript pages. Not bad, I think. Short enough to get some interest, I'd hope, but long enough to qualify as "novel" status.

The top word bar is my NoMoSlackMo status. The second is the overall word count (sorry, ladies, but the word counter and the button you provided on your blog are a little too...pink...and that would clash with the layout colors of my blog. Yeah...yeah...that's a good explanation...we'll go with that. *shifty-eyed*)

2433 / 50000 words. 5% done!

21465 / 100000 words. 21% done!

What a Rip-Off

Remember back at the beginning of the year when I wanted to read a bunch of books and then, as I finished them, I'd review them on here? Usually I'd do it in the weekend slots since not a lot of people read on the weekends and such. Ha, wow, that fell off shortly after I wrote up my review for Truck: A Love Story (and Kristine insulted me for writing the review), didn't it? Anyway, since I'm not at work this week and only just kind of phoning in the blog thing until I start in with the hardcore writing next week, you're getting a book review midweek.

So, I just finished reading Diana Wynn Jones Castle in the Air today. I read this after finishing up Howl's Moving Castle. I enjoyed the book, but the movie was frankly better. Christian Bale and all.

Anyway, Castle in the Air...it's the story of a guy from a middle-eastern-inspired country called Zanzib who is essentially a street urchin with a carpet-selling business, who falls in love with the daughter of the Sultan, finds a magic flying-carpet and a genie and adventure ensues. Wait, where have I seen this before...oh, right, Disney's Aladdin.

Well, what a rip off. I mean, maybe I'll write a story about a girl who eats a poisoned apple and falls asleep and is protected by a bunch of...elves. Yes, that's right. Seven--no! Eight!--elves to protect her. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Hello, what's this? Castle in the Air was written in 1990 and Aladdin was released in 1992, with a final script handed in in 1991? Hmmm...something is rotten in the state of Denmark Zanzib.

This is not, however, the first time Disney has *ahem* borrowed heavily from someone else's work of fiction. Apparently, Robin McKinley's book Beauty was heavily-borrowed from when Disney decided to do Beauty and the Beast, but they changed just enough to keep McKinley's lawyers from settling a large sum of money. Now McKinley's all pissed, and none of her excellent stories can be made into movies, which is too bad because, apparently, her stories of love Vampire-style are really kickass, and would put Twilight to shame (you know, like how any Vampire-based story puts Twilight to shame).

Anyway, the same pretty much happened here to Diana Wynn Jones' Castle in the Air (which is in no way related to Miyazaki's movie Castle in the Sky). Disney changed the story enough that there couldn't be any lawsuits, and by changed it, I mean, they dumbed it down. Way down. They dumbed it down to Disney level. Whichever way you slice it, though, I'm pretty sure Jones got screwed in this lack of deal.

What we have here is the story of Abdullah, a carpet merchant in Zanzib who falls in love with the Sultan's daughter whom he secretly courts after buying a flying carpet. Then, he sees the Sultan's daughter stolen by a nefarious djinn, and then gets captured after dropping his nightcap in the Sultan's daughter's night garden. He escapes (thanks to the flying carpet) and comes across the genie's bottle. With the genie in hand (heh, I made a joke), he escapes the Sultan's armies and flees to the land of Ingary, where he befriends a veteran of the war Ingary just fought with Stangia (I think this is the war that was being fought in the movie version of Howl's Moving Castle). With the help of the soldier and another character (I'm leaving it a surprise on purpose), Abdullah manages to rescue his beloved Flower-of-the-Night (the Sultan's daughter) and defeat the djinn's evil brother, who is the puppeteer pulling all the strings in the kidnapping of princesses and such.

Fortunately, the ending doesn't feel as rushed in Castle in the Air as it did in Howl's. The character of Abdullah, with his constantly flowery speech and overly-polite customs, is quite likable and you can feel empathy toward him while he is trying hard to rescue his princess, but doesn't seem to get anywhere. Also, the way that Jones weaves together several plotlines into one finale is reminiscent of how another of my favorite authors, Tad Williams, which is high praise. The ability to bring all the facets of a complicated story into one, believable ending is difficult to do, but Jones manages quite well in Castle in the Air. Also, it's quite fun seeing how certain characters...appear...toward the latter stages of the story.

The story is a follow up to Jones' story of Howl's Moving Castle, which I also recommend reading (and watching the movie, for what it's worth). The stories aren't necessarily interlinked, but it will make it a lot more fun as you begin to figure out the roles and identities of some of the characters in Castle in the Air. That's a long, drawn-out way of saying you should read both books.

When I finally check-out Jones' House of Many Ways, I'll let you know how that one turns out, too. Until then, happy reading.

Friday Morning Latin Lesson, Vol. LIV

Since no one's really going to be reading this today, I thought I'd forego my usual long, pedantic tale of how Christmas relates to Roman times (according to Pope Benedict XVI, the Bishop of Rome, there is no connection between Rome and Christmas).

Instead, I thought I'd shoot you with a few key phrases that you might need, should you find yourself dropping the subjunctive later in the afternoon:

Felix dies Nativitatis!
Pronounced: "Fay-leex dee-ace Nah-tee-wee-tah-teese!"

Felicitous translation in the hovertext!

And don't forget to thank the one who brought you all the goodies:

Pater diei Christi natalem
Pronounced: "Pah-tair dee-aye Krees-tee nah-tah-lame"

Delightful translation in the hovertext

Plus, there's this timeless classic:

"Tuum oculum transfigeres, parvule"
Pronounced: "Too-oom oh-cue-loom trans-fee-gare-ace, pahr-wyoo-lay"

You'll see the translation in the hovertext!

Felix dies Nativitatis, omnes! Have a safe and Merry Christmas!

What Can Brown Do For Me?

Well, I just got off the phone with my local post office. Seems as though the package I ordered December 16th and was shipped to me on December 17th and was supposed to arrive to me on December 22nd won't get here until after Christmas. Really? You know, you could have thrown the package on the back of a truck and driven it from Nevada to Durham in that amount of time, but apparently, it hasn't arrived in Raleigh yet. According to them.

Here's the rub: the shipment tracking that I'm using to follow the status of my package? It says the package arrived in Raleigh Monday night. At 9:46 PM. But, you know, that's a fucking lie, according to the postal service. That was auto-generated by the people in California, according to the postal service.

Looks like I'll be doing all of my business through UPS and FedEx from now on. Fuckstains.

Dump on top of this frustration that I went out this morning to buy the food for the Christmas feast. Traffic was ten times worse than the crowds at Target or Kroger. Although, both places were out of fresh thyme. Who the fuck runs out of thyme?

They were probably waiting for a fresh shipment from the USPS. Cockknockers.

You know what? Fuck you, postal service. You are not stealing my fucking Christmas spirit. Where's the fucking eggnog?

So, to make me feel all warm and glowy on the inside, I'm going to talk my wife into some hot, angry sex tell you a story about my favorite time traveling for Christmas.

With my mother- and father-in-law living in South Bend, IN and my parents in the Fort Wayne area, we have, in the past, driven up to Indiana in order to celebrate the holidays. When my thirtieth birthday rolled around, we decided to head up to Indiana so that I could see my family and get drunk enough to pass out on the couch mid-sentence have delightful and intellectual conversations with some of my college buddies.

The bonus prize in all this tomfoolery? There was a six-inch snow pack on the ground in northern Indiana. We were hoping we'd be able to celebrate a white Christmas with the kids. As luck would have it, a massive bubble of warm air traveled up the Mississippi and situated itself over the lower great lakes valley that week, and as we were driving up, the snow was melting.

When we drive up, we go up through a brief slice of Virginia and up through almost the whole of West Virginia and up to Ohio, where we cut across countryside and go through Columbus and then head up 75 to Lima and cut over there to Fort Wayne and then on up to South Bend. It's a long drive. Since the kids were little, we tried to make that drive at night, so they could sleep.

Crossing into West Virginia, there was snow on the ground. By the time we got to the point where we were crossing over the breadth of Ohio, the snow was almost totally melted. It was actually warmer at three in the morning in Ohio than it had been at six o'clock in the evening in North Carolina. All the melted snow plus the rising temperatures caused things to be foggy, but not so much that it completely obscured the roads. It was sort of a heavy haze hanging over the fields and forests of the Buckeye State.

Fortunately, Ohio was one of those places where the glaciers had flattened everything out all nice and dandy. What that meant was that I could look out over the plains and see, literally, for miles, because the highway was raised slightly in relationship to the farmlands stretching out toward the horizon.

Every little farmhouse and every little homestead had their lights on that night. So, I could look out and, through the gloom of the darkest part of the night, see hundreds of twinkling lights in every shade imaginable. It was beautiful. It was magnificent. It was truly magical.

My heart swelled three times that day.

Whenever I need a little pick-me-up--like, if the fucking postal service is dicking me over with a special little gift that I had ordered for my wife to brighten her Christmas--I think about the trip across central Ohio and looking out through the black and blue and gray haze and seeing little spots of colored lights shining through the murk.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Addendum:

This is fucking brilliant. Go read it.

The Most Couch-Loungingest Time of the Year

Well, we are fast approaching another Christmas, my friends. I've bitched and I've parodied my way up to here, but this past weekend's snow and the extra twenty-five pennies I found in my car this morning so that I could buy coffee at work have put me in the moodiest of holiday moods. And so, I thought maybe I'd set aside the dick jokes and the drooling over large breasted women for just a moment and reflect on what the season is truly about: Holiday specials.

Now, my friend Joshua, Master of the Technical Parent and all-around nice fellow, has a little Tuesday event he calls "Top Five Tuesday" wherein he lists five things that he likes and gives a short description of them. Since Tuesday was reserved for me electronically and mentally stroking myself talking about my birthday and the end of the world, I was too full of myself busy to participate.

Well, better late than never.

Unless we're talking about ovulation cycles.

Anyway, since I'm a day late on the whole Top Five Tuesdays thing, I thought I'd break my top five down into two categories: favorite animated holiday specials and favorite holiday specials.

Five Favorite Animated Holiday Specials:

5.) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: There's just something about clunky stop-motion animation that gets me. Well, at least here. The rest of the Rankin-Bass stable kind of sucks. Except for their version of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, but those aren't stop-motion animated. Anyway, there's probably a lesson to be learned in there somewhere when Rudolph takes the high road and doesn't rub it in everyone's faces that he saved Christmas. Way to be an exemplary humble little reindeer, Rudolph. Especially since your name means "famed wolf".

4.) Mickey's Christmas Carol: While I'm not a big fan of the Disneyfication of stories, this one works for me. Probably because Mickey himself is just a supporting character. Oh sure, it's his lame little kid that melts Scrooge McDuck's heart, but we all know that it's really Pete's cigar smoke what changes Unca Scrooge over from the miserly old bastard to the generous and lovable grandfather figure in the story. Tragically, the story of Tiny Tim drowning when he tries to swim in Scrooge's Money Bin is buried on the back page of the papers.

3.) A Charlie Brown Christmas: I know I might have given Chuck the old run around a couple of days ago, but at the heart of it, Charlie Brown just wants us to remember the spirit of the season. And he's got a point. Everyone's pretty dickish the other eleven months of the year, can't we at least be decent during the month between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day? What's that? Not while we're stealing each other's parking spots at the mall? Fair enough.

2.) How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Boris Karloff's voice really makes this for me, but overall it is the ultimate story of redemption that doesn't involve lightsabres and big, black breathing apparati. I wonder what it would sound like if Karloff read it in Latin! *shivers down my spine* Not to mention, my favorite color is green and I think Max is perhaps the ultimate name for a dog. Put all that together and stir in some Chuck Jones animation and that's a recipe for awesome.

1.) Phinneas and Ferb Christmas Vacation!: Maybe it's that the shine hasn't come off this new holiday special, but I sat and laughed through the whole thing. Whether it was Frosty getting his smarmy ass creamed by a snowplow in the opening scenes or the little cut-scene references to A Charlie Brown Christmas or the not-so-subtle O. Henry "Gift of the Magi" subplot, I loved the whole thing. I even got a little teary-eyed when Perry the Platypus gave Doofenshmirtz some almond bark. Okay, so the tears were because I was laughing so much. Bait and switch, baby. Bait. And. Switch.

And now for the live-action holiday specials! Bring on the eggnog and brandy!

Top Five Favorite Holiday Specials:

5.) White Christmas: No holiday list is complete without the Binger's White Christmas on it, be it holiday special or favorite songs. It's charming, it's heartwarming and it's just a fun movie to watch. It sort of gets your right here. And by right here, I mean in the "...sisters, eh? Why don't you ladies drop those feather things and let's get going" gland. Plus, thanks to White Christmas, every year, I aspire to have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since the Binger tap danced with Danny fucking Kaye.

4.) Miracle on 34th Street: This makes the list because I watched it a lot as a kid. Back then, the miracle of this thing called a "VCR" was new, and my father, being too tight economically-minded bought blank video tapes and then we recorded the Christmas specials off channel 55 out of Fort Wayne. Problem was, he didn't want to deal with those commercial bullshit (my dad, so Charlie Browny), so I would have to sit there with the remote and push pause to avoid having the commercials in the recording. So, yeah, I watched this a lot. Nice to see the USPS can deliver a shit ton of letters to the courthouse but they can't get my wife's fucking last Christmas present to me on the day that they promised. Cock knockers.

3.) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation: Did I mention something about the Binger tap dancing with Danny fucking Kaye? I sure did. And when Santa squeezes his fat ass down the chimney, he's going to find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse. I've seen this movie a lot, too. It's stuck with me. Now, if you'll pardon me, I've got some work to do. The shitter is full.

2.) Die Hard: What? It's Christmas effing Eve. There's an exploding helicopter, a platoon of dead Germans, plastic explosives tied to an office chair, Alan Rickman playing an evil German (as if there's any other kind), and Notre Dame playing football against USC...though why we're playing the Trojans on Christmas Eve still kind of confuses me. Let it Snow... is playing as the end credits roll. Plus, you know that the kid Reginald VelJohnson shot was Urkel! I'm so fired up, I'm going to have to go find this DVD somewhere. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers.

1.) A Christmas Story: Could it have been any other choice? We dorky white kids with glasses growing up in Indiana have to stick together, and while I didn't grow up during the depression nor did I ever ask for a b.b. gun for Christmas (I got a .22 when I was 12), I just have a connection with Ralphie that's primal, gutteral...maybe it's the blond thing, maybe it's the glasses, maybe it's the hounds (my brother had a pack of hounds), maybe it's the love of romance languages (fra-jee-lay), maybe it's just that the family kind of reminds me of mine, but I love this movie. The building where I went to kindergarten could have doubled for Warren G. Harding elementary, and while I grew up outside of da Region where the movie was set (before it became the armpit AND asshole of creation), I can still appreciate the story. Plus, I had a friend whose last name was Farkas when I was a kid. No lie.

So, there you have it, folks. My top five animated specials and holiday movies. Feel free to dissect and discuss all you want.

I would be remiss if I didn't add this little bit for your viewing pleasure, however. Given the year we just went through, I think this is a touching tribute to a fallen star. Plus, it mixes movies and puppetry, so it's kind of like this post.

And, if I don't see you before Friday, Merry Christmas.