How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

see more Lolcats and funny pictures Via LOLcat, of course. NaNoWriMo Word Count: 11,663

Nanowrimo Word Count: 9665 In lieu of an actual post during this, the Month of Insanity, I give you the ABCs of Me meme, stolen from Steph Bowe of Hey, Teenager of the Year . Available or in a Relationship: Available. In theory. I don't even know you. Best Friend: V, Queen of Customer Service. Cake or Pie: A close one, but I'd have to say cake. Drink of Choice: Coke Zero. If we're including alcohol, then a margarita is always a party in my mouth. Essential Item For Every Day Use: Pen Favorite Color: Blue Google?: Hell yeah! Hometown: Waukesha, Wisconsin Indulgences: I'm ashamed to admit it because it sounds like a stereotype, but shoes. ::hangs head:: January or February: February. It's closer to spring. Kids and Their Names: No, but if I had kids, I'm sure I would have named them at some point. Life is Incomplete Without: you, dear. Or stories. Yeah, I'm gonna go with stories. Marriage Date: Should you take a date to your wedding? I tho...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures Via LOLcat, of course. NaNoWriMo Word Count: 7,484

1. I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year in an attempt to get a first draft of my current project firing on all cylinders. It should be interesting, since I'm a fast writer, but I'm not typically 1667 words a day fast. If I can figure out how to get the word counter widget thing working on Blogger, I'll post it here. 2. Writer Beware has an excellent post here on copyright and what it means to writers. Most important to my mind is Victoria's last point: if it's not in writing, it didn't happen . I don't care how nice your agent or editor is; I don't care what they promised you. I don't care if they've "never" done something or "always" do something. I don't care if they're related to you. If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. 3. Ann Aguirre talks over at Fangs, Fur, and Fey about her attitude toward phone calls (namely, she doesn't make them). While I'm not quite as Victorian as she is,* I ...

Happy Halloween! In honor of this auspicious holiday, I would like to talk about a song that sounds like late autumn to me -- "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. This particular Jay Hears A Song is brought to you by Anonymous,* who reminded me of this song one day, and now it's on my iPod all the time. So thank you, Anonymous (I think :) ). The thing about "The Wreck" is that it is a song that, by all rights, I should not like, but because of my own personal history with it, I do. In case you haven't heard it, it's a folk song about the wreck of a boat called the Edmund Fitzgerald**, which sank in 1975 in Lake Superior. The events surrounding the sinking are semi-mysterious*** and this mystery is what I think led in part to the song's longevity (at least to me). Let's face it--there's not much drama in "there was a big storm and a boat sank." Also, as much as I personally enjoy it, "The Wreck"?...

One of my new favorite shows this season is Glee , the Fox show about the misfit members of a down and out high school glee club and their teacher. It was created by Ryan Murphy, one of the creators of Nip/Tuck , and has a lot of musical numbers in it, and it's a pretty awesome show. But it's not totally awesome, and since it's been on my mind for a while, I wanted to talk about why Glee isn't living up to its potential. Short answer? Characters. The pilot episode set the characters up very well, giving us an idea of who each of the glee club members were in a nutshell, and most of the people I know who were excited about the pilot were excited to learn more about those characters. But the show has taken some odd twists and turns with regard to the characters that don't really make sense, and its making the characters hard to understand. An example: Finn Hudson is the football quarterback who is coerced into joining the glee club* and ends up staying because (a) ...

1. Am I the only one appalled by the DirecTV commercial in which David Spade tells us we should get DirecTV while his dead friend Chris Farley cavorts in the foreground? Don't get me wrong -- the other incarnations of this commercial (Bill Pullman in a scene from Twister , Naomi Watts from King Kong , Sigourney Weaver from Aliens *) were also pandering of the cheapest sort, but dude. C'mon. Chris Farley is dead . Not cool, David Spade. NOT. COOL. 2. I went on a walk this weekend and took my camera with me. I live in a suburb of Cleveland, which was built in the early 1900s, so there's some pretty interesting architecture.** These people have a moat! 3. I watched the pilot episode of White Collar on the USA channel recently--and it was pretty entertaining. Just like FX is the cable channel for hard core, strange, gritty shows, USA seems to be carving out a niche for itself with snappy, charming, buddy comedies. 4. In case you care, the brightly colored knee s...