Heart of Tears and Joy

This is how today went:

* Woke up early. Went to parents' house.

* Got some presents. The best of which is a pocketwatch which I am wearing and am going to wear every day for the rest of forever. I can't wait until the weather gets nicer, which is when I shall be able to hook it to a belt loop on my trenchcoat and walk around with those and a fedora.

* There is an Xbox360 at my parents' household. We played a game called "BlazBlue" which is a fighting game. There is a character in a cat outfit named Taokaka and she is baaaaaasically the best character ever.

* Watched "Iron Man" which I somehow failed to watch before now. It was amazing. Possible new fave super hero (Spidey and Gambit will have to budge a bit)

* I wanted to watch "Star Trek" but everyone else voted Street Fighter IV. Sooo, Street Fighter IV. It was pretty fun but Taokaka wasn't in it so it wasn't as good as BlazBlue by default.

* Dinnah!

* Home now :3

IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!

Merry Christmas everyone!

(Christmas Vader demands that you be more MERRY.)

The first editing pass of My Book is complete. The word count is languishing in the 60k range, which is still a bit short for my tastes, but fortunately I have a text file that lists roughly twenty rather important things to add to the story.

The important part, though, is that I burned through two ink cartridges to print the thing and I stuck it in a binder and gave it to my sisters for Christmas. It's far from finished, certainly, as I said that text file called "THINGS TO ADD" in big letters is staring me in the face, but I figured it was time for my first live audience test. I want to see how people react to the characters and see if the story flows halfway decently. It's hard to figure these things out on your own when you've been staring at the thing with skewed vision for two months now.

*nervous*

I feel chocked full of random slightly-forgotten references. I have no idea why.

But, but, but...No Problem!

The internet has been won, we can all go home now.

* As of today, I am now closer to age 50 than I am to being born. Somehow this doesn't terrify me as much as it amuses me. I envision myself as a wily ol' rabbit with a cane and a rocking chair, at this point. (And I've gotten good at pushing my biological clock away when it tries to remind me that I'm almost 30 and am living alone in an apartment somewhere)

* The above statement does, in fact, mean that it's my biiiirfday. I'll be heading over to my parents' house for dinner & presents & cake in about an hour. :3

BOOK RAMBLES:

* As editing continues slowly but surely, I've found myself pondering the potential marketing dilemma of the fact that every single one of my characters is an anthropomorphic animal. Seriously, there are no humans in my book. I think "talking animals" would scare away most major publishers, especially since my book doesn't seem to fit nicely into any genre, other than "vaguely-historical-scifi-steampunkish with a small pinch of fantasy".

It's funny, actually, because when I started writing, the fact that the characters were talking animals was largely a characterization device. For example, my weirdly-spiritual-but-transhumanist race is portrayed as sighthounds, because they're always looking far off into the distance, aka, the future. Sort of an Aesop's Fable type of thing. But I also figured, when I got to the end, I could just substitute out all the talking animals for humans. But now that I actually am at the end, it has occurred to me that the anthropomorphism is actually a major part of the story, because at some point when I wasn't looking the book decided to turn into a commentary on the idea of "man vs. inner monster" and having dragons dressed up in nice suits seems to nicely illustrate that theme.

So the realization that my characters being anthropomorphic animals actually works both intrigues me and scares me a bit.

Anyways.

* I decided that if my book ever miraculously becomes something bigger than a "self-published-on-Amazon" dealy, it's going to be a shoo-in for those "Most Challenged Books" lists because it has stuff like evolution in it. Granted, the evolution is really just a plot device and not a major part of the story, but you know. The book also has includes Victorian Era versions of computer hacking and phone phreaking, (both done by the good guys in the book), so I'm sure parents and teachers everywhere will be thrilled!

TL;DR: Back to editing, I may post a birthday lewts list later.

Have you ever withheld information about something affecting you (situation, eg) from the people you consider your friends because you were afraid they would judge you or misunderstand you?  Or expose and shame you?  What did you do?

[Comments screened]

Apparently it's the 4th year in a row. I really should make a new one or do something different. The cut and paste christmas story is so much fun though! :P

The following story is the Bible summed up in 2 min or less "fair orc maiden style". It is everything I believe. As in, this is the core of who I am. The second part is the picture story, but it all ties together. I hope you enjoy this little production. Please turn off all cell phones

THE ENTIRE BIBLE SUMMED UP WITH SHINY PICTURES
a play
into LJ format by Fair Orc Maiden


( drum roll..... )
This is an open play, so if anyone else wants to see it, send 'um this way, 'tis fine. :)

Tiny Tim:  And God bless us everyone!

( too much fun... )

It took about a week but I finally finished going through my printed 190 page NaNoWriMo document with a red pen. Took out some un-necessary descriptions, made notations to fix continuity in a few places. That sort of thing. Nothing major, but there are a lot of very little changes. I came to the conclusion that the book flowed decidedly better than I seemed to think it did while I was writing, and even the scenes I was sure would come off as gigantic deus ex machinas seem to work well... but it's a bit rushed. In other words, the characters get from point A to point B to point C very nicely, but I don't think the reader really has time to get attached to them because they're always rushing around from plot point to plot point. It's a hard call, though-- it's so hard to judge these things when you've been "living with" these characters for nearly two months.

Regardless, I've now moved on to Phase Three, which is sitting at my computer with my manuscript's binder in my lap and carefully fixing all that stuff I made note of with my red pen. This is gonna take a while, because there are maybe about four pages in the entire thing that don't have gratuitous amounts of red ink on them. I'm not sure if I'm going to meet my "Done with the first editing pass by Christmas" goal, but who knows? I have tomorrow (my biiiirfday) and the next day off from work.

Really it shocks me that I've gotten this far with this whole thing. And now that I've built up such momentum, I've no plans to stop anytime soon.

So at work they had this cake thing.

Bottom layer was crushed up pretzels.
Layer above that was cream or something similar.
Layer above that was jello.
Layer above that was big thick slices of strawberries.

I ate heaven-- heaven-- today. Oh my gosh. It was possibly the greatest day of the year. I may have to make December 19 a holiday. Amazing Cake Day. It was that glorious.

As soon as I find out what it's called, it's going on my List of Things I'm Building a Shrine To.

Edit: I found a picture. I think I may die of happiness just looking at it:

It's my journal, so fire me :P

This one was brought to my attention a good 5 or 7 years courtesy of my cousin Neil. Thanks to YouTube since then, I can share it all with you! :D

It's only the audio, the pictures aren't important except showing what character is talking (I guess) at the time. Note for those not a fan of Southpark: This is clean and not offensive :D

While being the morrally responsible person that I am, I do have tendencies to slip into oblivion once and again from time to time, meaning I surf the internet at work when I get distracted... *ahem* Today's meandering led me to IMDB and Jeff Bridges (I have no idea how I got there!). As is standard with many of the more popular actors, there is not only a biography and filmography, but several quotes as well. One of his quotes struck me in such a way - it resonated. It is truth, because I've experienced it myself. You may take it for whatever it is worth to you, and hope you find healing in your brokenness :-) ( The Quote ) Disclaimer: I attribute my cheerfulness to the vast tankard of coffee I've consumed this morning :-)

I laughed about as hard as the dancing foam giraffe incident from the Muppets. =D

Sooo today my mom, who has always had health issues, dropped a bombshell on me that she is getting tested for Celiac Disease, which I've never heard of before but is an auto-immune disease which means your body can't handle gluten, aka about 90% of stuff that normal people eat. She doesn't get the results back for a couple of days but apparently she fits pretty much all of the symptoms and doing her own personal gluten-free trial was very promising.

Now the scary part is that if she has it, there's a very good chance that I have it, cause it's a genetic disorder. Not to mention I fit a bunch of the symptoms now that I look at them (chronic diarrhea, gastrointestinal problems, weird mysterious skin rashes, irregular periods, etc.)

If she is tested positive, she is going to pay for me to be tested as well, and if I test positive, then I have this horrible feeling it's going to be Goodbye Ice Cream, Pizza, and All of Pike's Favorite Foods.

Why do you hate me, body T_T


Edit: My mom says she thinks most ice cream is okay, so that's half the battle at least. *clings to pizza*


(In the future when I am a robot, I won't have to worry about this.)

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/12/16/hot-tub-time-machine-movie-trailer/

When I was a kid in Washington State and in choir class in elementary school, we sang this song for our Christmas program. It was similar to "Jingle Bells" in that while the tune was not the same, it meshed well enough that you could sing the two songs together and it would form a neat little medley.

Anyway, this is how the song goes:

"Grab your coat and mittens and your old wooden sled
We'll go up to Deadman's Hill to see if it is ready yet
It snowed last night and it's supposed to snow today
If it sticks they'll close the school and have a holiday

So let it snow the whole night long
Let the wind blow cold and let the snow drift everywhere
We've been waiting all year long
But it snowed last night and we are on our way"

This was a catchy song that has stuck with me through the years and today I found myself wanting to re-discover it, so off I went to Google. And guess what.

Nothing.

Actually that's not entirely true. I turned up four links that contained references to this song. Four.

One of them is a reference in an X-Files fanfic. (Interestingly, the fanfic describes it as "A song [Scully's] elementary school chorus had once sung for a Christmas concert.")

One of them is on a Geocities-esque "Poems I Like" page with no references to who wrote it or where it came from, although it says that the title is "Coat n' Mittens" (no idea if it really is or not). From what I can tell the person whose site it is is roughly my age and lives in Maine.

One of them is on a Twitter account that is supposedly from South Africa, according to the "location" field.

And one of them is a MySpace forum thread where somebody briefly mentions it as "a Secret Jingle Bells verse." The person who posted it up is based in Austin, Texas.

So.

I find myself at a loss to where this song came from. My only explanation thus far is that perhaps my choir teacher made it up and the only people who knew it actually, at some point, went to my school or knew people who did. Though if the locations given for these people is correct, they've traveled far and wide since then. (To be fair, I have too.)

(Edit: or perhaps it's just some obscure sheet music that a few choir teachers around the world bought at music stores?)

But this is bothering the heck out of me. I MUST KNOW WHERE THIS SONG COMES FROM.

Halp D=

* Quoting the movie "The Christmas Story" ad infinitum. "In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan."

* Editing my book, which is surprisingly fun!

* When my printer actually works

* The fact that it is warming up outside (25 degrees? Heck yes!)

* This comic, which I cannot read without giggling hysterically.

Idea taken from me and created by Erin, modified by Peter, then recreated by me with liberal use of there ideas. Also great project to learn GIMP as I go . . . AHAHHAHA OMG WANT TO RIP MY SCALP OFF!!!


. . . anyway, woo! I think I need to work on the words, the ones in red seem hard to read, but I'll get to that later. The Santa hat didn't turn out as well as I hoped but I think that's partly me not knowing what I was doing with GIMP and partly because I won't be happy until I go back in time and put a Santa hat on Vader myself.

Edit: text is now better.

At the advice of... a lot of people, I tried to take a few days or a week or so off from anything involving my novel before attempting to edit it. I really did try. ...but I felt horribly useless, so yeah, I'm editing.

I see now why everybody says you need to detach yourself from your novel before you edit it, I feel like I'm not coming at it from an appropriate angle, but I can't help myself. I keep trying to distract myself with WoW and other things and I keep running off to edit =[

Right now though, the tentative plan is as such:

1.) Do a quick basic edit that removes any glaring grammar issues and also resolves/retcons some stuff that changed mid-novel: a whole lot of characters seemingly "ran away from me" at some point during the writing process and so their personalities at the beginning are massively different from how they are at the end, for example. Also at least one character had their entire backstory and history revamped halfway through the story, so I have to fix that as well.

(The characters' final forms are the ones they came up with "by themselves", of course... =P)

2.) Print it all off and put it in a binder and give it to my sisters as my first live audience test. My four sisters are between the ages of 10 and 18 and all of them are super well-read and are veterans of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and pretty much any major series that has come out recently (sans-Twilight, fortunately), so I figure they'll be as good of a test audience as I'm going to get.

3.) Drill them with questions, get a lot of feedback, and then do a SERIOUS edit that resolves big issues such as the fact that my novel starts to meander around during the second quarter, or the fact that deus ex machinas abound.

4.) Go from there.

So yar~

In other news, Google Chrome is out for Linux now so I'm giving it a test spin. I really, really love Firefox but lately it's been nothing but YouTube issues and random crashes, so... =/ Thus far, Chrome bothers me less than any other non-Firefox browser, but... we'll see!

This remains one of the greatest movie musical scenes of all time ever. Tru fax. (Couldn't find it without the lyrics at the bottom, sorreh)

P.S. Goat's mom at 2:35ish is the best part in the entire thing. "laydeoda - laydeoda - lay... mm hmm *eyebrow waggle*."