Missoula Jaye Speaks

Last Day of class!

2009-03-18T08:09:00.001-07:00

My class is finally over! Fantastic.

Now I get to continue on and on forever and ever writing on a story about spies in space.

'Tis very exciting.

Writing class a deux

2009-01-27T06:39:00.000-08:00

The tidbit this week:

I leave little crumb to my character's personality in my prose that I need to sweep up before submission. Crumbs = things that are expository that the author needs, but the reader don't.

And now, I am late for the bus.

Writing Class Wisdom

2009-01-20T20:44:00.000-08:00

I have joined yet another novel writing class and feel it is my duty to myself (because I am spending so much damn money) to record the wisdom of the ancients on my nuveau writing tablet.

#1: Imagine the structure of your story, visually- if you have no clue, then it should look like a tangle of earth worms. However, if you are neat and organized it will look like a nice tidy tree similar to that family tree you did in third grade before you realized your daddy ain't necessarily so.

#2: Plot is action- if you don't add enough action to your book, it ain't going nowhere. You will see this at best example in twilight. In movie form it was even more painfully clear that NOTHING EVER HAPPENED. Oh, and Edward was a creepy stalker, not romantic.

#3: Force your plot points- when you have a pivotal moment where the plot must be pushed along at breakneck speed, force your character to make the choice that furthers the story. If she has four days to twiddle her thumbs and cogitate, then there will be no tension.

#4: Tell yourself the storyline every day: Repeat it ad nauseum until you know every little in and out. THe bonus part of this is you will start to weed out undesirable parts of your story automatically.

And then, #5 says 'develop characters'. Well, duh, Jaye. Perhaps you should take better notes. I'll think on it and maybe get back to you.

And that was class #1. Oh,and (random fact learned last night) people with ADD are highly distrating.

Oh, for the love of God...

2009-01-11T20:46:00.000-08:00

Is finding a man going to be this disappointing all the time? I just got the tackiest ass text message from a guy I hardly know telling me he wished he getting past second base with me right now (with a soundtrack). Romantic, no? I'll give you some backstory: this is from a "man" who refused to spend more than $7 on a date with me, tried to sneak me into one of the local amusement centers for free (and refused to pay up when we got caught), made a severely depressing double entendre involving coffee in a bookstore, then tried to make out with me in the middle of a park in broad daylight.

Is chivalry dead?

Stay tuned!

High heels, why they are intimidating...

2009-01-05T21:13:00.000-08:00

Think about what position you would be in if you decided you wanted to jump on some prey and snap it's jugular. You'd be on your toes right? Crouched to spring, you're never going to be flat footed. Ready to run? Your heels are up in the air.

There's always that thing you hear in women's studies that men want women to wear high heels because it makes their feet smaller. Who cares about that when they'd rather stare at boobs all day anyways? I think it is just that women in heels are in an aggressive position everyone subconsciously registers. For women, that's why the threat, the enhanced spirit of competition. For men that's why there's double takes. It may revert to a mode of appreciation, but probably at first there's just a tiny twinge of your inner caveman going "WTF? Is she going to rip my head off?" This also comes with a touch of adrenalie rush which is the same rush attached to sexual urges. Which confims what everyone already knows:

HIGH HEELS = SEX

Of course, the relative discomfort and balance issues right the threat factor immediately, but the initial impact is the same. That rush of "fight or flight" will always exist as a forethought.

Think of that next time you don those stilletos.

Humor Theory: Interesting Stuff or Dry as Toast?

2009-01-03T21:49:00.000-08:00

On a lark (since I am such a good employee) I decided to research humor theory yesterday for a bit during my many 15 minute breaks during the day. I found some damn fascinating stuff, some of which I will share with you below. And maybe with a few other posts.

Yay Everyone! Igor Krishtafovich, a U.S. physicist, has "discovered" the formula for humor! While this theory is just about as prove-able as the theory of relativity*, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and says he's right. After all, the man can probably best me in a battle of wits after drinking a fifth of bourbon after an afternoon lobotomy.

The formula is as following:
HE = PI x C/T + BM
PI – personal involvement
C - complexity of a joke. The higher degree of complexity the better provided that your audience can solve the problem within 1 or 2 seconds.
T – time spent by a person solving a joke. The longer the time, the weaker the effect.
BM – background mood. A joker can have an advantage if an audience enjoys the show. However, a real good joke can “blow up” the most dismal audience.
HE – humor effectiveness.

I figure the best way to analyze whether this theory is effective is to put it to the Eddie Izzard test. No one can deny the man is funny. Even people who are morbidly scared of transvestites will generally come around to the Eddie camp once exposed to his audio work. But the thing about him is, it's not slapstick, simple stuff, it's thinking man's comedy. You have to know stuff in order to get it. Some jokes I haven't gotten for years and then somthing clunks into place and I totally get it (usually slapping myself in the forehead in whatever public locale this happens at. Many strangers think I have spastic limb disorder.) I digress.

The first thing that interests me is the personal involvement index. Now, since his humor is not predicated on strict personal involvement, the jokes must be fashioned in a way to induce personal involvement (PI). I am assuming that humorists such as the White Trash Comedy Tour have a pretty specific audience in mind. They may expand their ideas to involve a wider audience, but generally, their jokes are based on the idea that you, your relations, or your acquaintances exist within the White Trash contingent. But, since much of Eddie's humor is based on history that no one has heard since fourth grade, ancient religious texts or spoken in another language, there is no guarantee of PI. Therefore, each joke must slowly be led into by feeding knowledge to the audience with smaller jokes until a generalized knowledge base exists. This is why many of his jokes become self-referential towards the end of the program. In having that knowledge base, the more complex the jokes can become, because the facts are easily accesible and time for solving the joke decreases dramatically.

These self referential jokes also up the personal investment because everyone loves an inside joke. If the audience is involved with solving these jokes themselves, then the PI skyrockets and you make a fan for life. One show that does this to great effect is Newsradio. There storylines build and build, and with most cases (not involving Matthew who is played mainly for physical comedy) the audience is required to provide the punchlines to the jokes which are played minimally.

Now, if you have a joke that requires more personal involvement, such as inside jokes. The time for solving jokes can be much greater with the same intended effect.

Point is, this humor equation is pretty darn fascinating, and I think I will be doing a little more digging into it. Much to you chagrin, mehopes.

*Sure, everyone assumes that Einstein is right, but if no one on the planet understands his theories, how can we know they're right?

My brand newest theory

2009-01-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

I totally got screwed out of my nap because I had this really important long, involved theory running through my head. Now, it's gone. And I totally wasted three hours that I could have spent dreaming I was hanging out with the Beatles again.

Now I'm pissed.

Ah...New Years in PDX

2009-01-03T21:41:00.001-08:00

Driving drunk on an arcade game is legal right?

Best game ever. Especially after 4 PBR's.

Love has no rhyme or reason...

2008-12-12T14:46:00.000-08:00

(picture from MSN.com)

Hey Sagittarians!

2008-12-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

Another one of your ranks has turned 28!

(It's me.)

Paging Dr. Freud

2008-12-03T08:41:00.000-08:00

It is widely known that what you do on new year's eve directly correlates with how your next year goes. Given this is a theory, I have extrapolated the following: Your dreams on the night before your birthday dictate how your year will go. I don't want to bore you with all the scientific crap that I had to do to lead me to this conclusion; suffice to say it involves types of math you've never even heard of and lots of squiggly lines and greek letters standing in for formulas.

The only problem now is figuring out the interpretations of those dreams so I can either buy a lottery ticket or build a bunker underneath the rich willamette soil.

Dream #1

I am riding a cross town bus under water being chased by enormous rust-tinted great white sharks. Someone says "Wow, this is neat. Last year they wouldn't even come near us."

I think why the hell do you want sharks near your bus?

Dream #2

I am asked by a blind man to help him complain to Safeway that one of their stores is closed. When we get to the other safeway, he throws a fit, trashes the Safeway and I look down to see I am wearing a tatty robe and slippers. Consequently my boyfriend (who is a stocker at safeway) dumps me.

I get pissed, because in a moment of clarity, I realize I have been dumped on my birthday. So I ride my bike home, found out I left my keys in the door (again) and find looters stealing everything I own. So I have to keep them hostage in order to get my stuff back. This involves a lot of shit talking and torture and watching of the lifetime channel. When I try to call 9-11, I get a data error. Then when I try to email 9-11, it turns out that I have accidentally typed my emergency into a website that analyzes plot structure. It says I have a faulty plot.

Eh?

Hancock: The movie that won me over.

2008-12-02T08:13:00.000-08:00

After wandering bleary-eyed and cranky for at least 25 minutes in Hollywood Video last night, I finally fell prey to their in-store movie clips. I was staring slack-jawed at the screen above my minimum wage minion when the trailer for hancock came on. I had been searching in vain for something that would sufficiently numb my brain (which still hasn't been relieved of all the pressure of Nanowrimo). So I ran to the back and got the disc, rushed it home over some perilous SE Portland suburban roads (which may or may not be paved, effing NW) and shoved it in my DVD player.

The whole movie was alright. The special effects were fantastic (as per all will smith vehicles) but I kept getting distracted by the blonde in the corner who was giving all these weird signals to will smith and cooing over Jason Bateman's baby face. I kept thinking "gawd that looks like charlize theron. Nah can't be her." Then it turned out it totally was. And she was awesome. There's a reason she won an oscar.

And I totally didn't see the twist. It just made me all happy and gooey inside.

And, beware: the cinematography makes it look like jason bateman and will smith are always on the verge of making out. Do Americans ever talk that close? And, how many scenes do you have to have with someone's head blocking out most of the screen. That makes their head like 50 feet across (were you to see it in the theaters, 100 in IMAX). Seriously, no one's head will look good that big. Not even Jason Bateman.

So yeah. Probably wouldn't buy it, but I'd watch it again. Which is way more than I expected.

Nano I have beat your sorry ass!

2008-11-29T22:18:00.000-08:00

I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON! I WON!
Take that bitches.

Nano Update!

2008-11-16T21:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I made it thru the first half of the month and nearly bagged the project every day this last week. But, after 4 days of schlumpiness on the writ front, I stubbornly sat down and wrote 6,400 words today to get back into the running. I am even a few words ahead. Don't worry though, in 2 hours and 18 minutes, I will once again be behind.

Word Count: 26,713 (85 pages)

Yay me.

Beware Ladies!

2008-11-09T21:58:00.001-08:00

Writing your own novel may cause you to create a hero with whom you will fall madly in love.

If you think that the idea of a man who willingly changes himself is the ideal fantasy, imagine someone who you can create from scratch! And, he comes with all the malleability of play-doh and legos combined.

Take care, though, to give him some flaws, because eventually (after he has completely disturbed your sleep cycle) he will betray the heroine (your thinly veiled avatar) and you will spend many nights cursing him. It's good to have some ammunition stacked up for that eventuality.

PS. I know this post is poorly written. You try writing blogs after a cup of coffee, a pint of beer and 4,000 words spewed into a spiderweb narrative of questionable dignity.

Wander-lusty

2008-11-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

I was only lost on this bridge like 8 times today. Or, maybe it was another bridge, I can't tell, they all share some sort of similar characteristics that classify them in the bridge category, no? It would be like telling the difference between children, peanut butters, republicans, or some other inconsequential nothings.
P.S. Please tell cranky man at the burrito shop that I am not visiting every day because I have a massive burning crush on him. I just don't know anywhere else to go.

NaNo is Upon us agaiN...

2008-11-05T21:41:00.000-08:00

Fear not, gentle readers, that I should bore you with the detailed musings of a blocked writer, nor that I should post my word counts religiously this year. I know that bores anyone not intimiately involved in the half cocked scheme. All I gotta say is Damn! I am busy this time 'round. Perhaps this will force me to actually finish this year.

Stay tuned for yet another post on the coolness of Stumptown (as they call it here, although I haven't figured out why.)

Pork Sliders

2008-10-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

Gordon Ramsay has told me (via Kitchen Nightmares) that there are always trends in restaurants that need to be avoided as you probably aren't the git with the best ones out there. The trend in Portland is Pulled Pork sandwiches. These little messy love cakes are awful first-date food, but they seem to have captured the hearts of the NW. Unfortunately, there can only be one King. It is not 50 Plates in the Pearl District, or that brewery near 35th and Hawthorne, but rather, Standford's down by the waterfront. Go there, get a plate of these squishy little sandwiches with slaw and munch to your heart's content. I command you.

Local Produce and the Women Who Love Them

2008-10-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

These blackberries may be stunted and fast on the way to being rotting corpses, but they remind me of fall. This will be of some comfort when the yellow leaves have turned to dust and bitter wind strikes fear into those who must scrape frost from their cars.

I seem to be in a fatalist sensibility at the moment.

I love me some hollywood men...

2008-10-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

Shhh... Don't tell anyone, but Pixar had a screening to test two animated films on Monday in Vancouver, WA. Guess they figure this suburban wasteland mimics middle america without having to stray too far from a trusty metropolis.

It was also my virgin temp assignment. If all temping is this good for people watching, I am signing up for life. The whole thing was so James Bond meets State and Main it made my mouth water. We were overlorded by two men who resembled, respectively, Seymour Hoffman as truman capote with a malaise issue, and a weird Micheal Flatley standing in the wind upswept hair guy. They muttered, they adjusted their designer jeans, spoke of level 5 special watchgroups, pissed off the overpuffed security guards, and by the end of the evening were heavy into infighting over the power struggles inherent in a group of travel weary narcissists.

Meanwhile, I was forced to hand out 800 bags of popcorn to equally narcissistic target demographs who felt perfectly in the right bitching about getting their free popcorn too early or whining that they might have to see a movie for free that they wouldn't have picked themselves. Seriously, if you can't handle the ramifications of beggars can't be choosers, you probably shouldn't beg. Plus, there was this awful scene that I foretold coming once I realized I had to ask people to give me their white ticket in exchange for the bag of popcorn:

Me: Can I have your white ticket please?

Idiot: Just the white one?

Me: It's the popcorn ticket.

Idiot: Isn't that kind of (pause, furrow brow) ticket-ist? (laugh, readjust pants, significant look at harrassed popcorn worker that says 'you want to sleep with me, don't you?')

I feel sorry for the people that actually do sleep with them. Can you imagine their pillow talk?

{in.sert} some insightful zen quote

2008-10-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

Does anyone really read zen shit past the first few words?

We are the grass that grows along the freeways...in ways that are free.

I think it's time to start adding pix...

2008-10-19T21:11:00.001-07:00

I photoshopped the horns off my sister's evil cat. Here she is. Proof the devil exists...and is surprisingly cute.

5K Beetches.

2008-10-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

There was a run today, one that required you run like hell. And, oh yes I did. I kitted myself up like a cop-impersonating stripper, snuck out of my front door at the ungodly hour of 0730AM past the apartment filled with impressionable little white trash children and headed for Portland.

Honestly, it felt two parts "walk of shame" one part "wtf am I back in high school?", shaken, not stirred.

So, then god tries thwarting me with fog, but my car triumphs. And the whole way down the 5, I'm having these extended metaphor daydreams where I am arresting during a routine traffic violation for impersonating an officer in a uniform with the name "sargeant sexy" stitched on the lapel. Freudian analysis reveals a deep fear that I am, in fact impersonating my life and will be found out at any moment.

So I finally get to Portland after getting lost for the 700th time since I've gotten here. For those of you who don't know, Portland is designed to resemble an MC Esher drawing with bridges where the stairs should be. And it's frickin' 39 degrees out (I know, Mischa, my scion told me) and I am running around downtown portland in spandex. 5K later and several mysterious pains throughout all of my leg tissues and we're handed beer and hot wings at 930 in the morning. Really, who planned that?

Point is: I finished. I kick ass.

Okay, that's two points.

I have conquered egg drop soup...

2008-10-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

As I get older and closer to senility, my opinion on soup has become much more pronounced. I assume this in in preparation for when my teeth fall out and I am forced to call 5PM a "late" dinner. The one thing that pisses me off mightily about soup is the frickin' salt content. You'd think human beings required salt licks for the crap I have eaten that is supposed to be french onion or egg drop soup. So I made my own. And it was so much better. No salt added. I wish I possessed a servile nature, then I could go into chef-itude and open my own restaurant. However, my forays into the food industry have generally resulted in me be asked to leave or suffer being fired.

Fear not, dear readers, I just burnt those places to the ground.

Portland, I (heart) you

2008-09-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

I am relaxed for the first time in days. Father Jaye's relentless globetrotting for work garnered him some serious Marriott point and we've got a 2 room suite that costs a month's rent for free. They gave me a separate room because of my intermittent surliness. God bless my erratic temper.

Once rested and showered, we struck out to walk around the town. Being next to the river and having unnaturally clear weather for portland, we wandered along testing the restaurants for financial feasibility. Somewhere near an adorable little park, and across from the indutrial buildings doubled in the river refelection, we stopped at this great steak house you'd expect to accompany your parents to and settled in to feast on Pork Sliders with cole slaw. Fantastic, I must say. After a microbrew or two, I am happy to say I am in Portland. Finally.

At least, until tomorrow.

Day 4. Tired. Tired. Tired.

2008-09-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

We only had 5 hours left of driving. Amazing that we held our tempers so long. Talking is at a minimum. Landscape pretty. Stopped in Eugene for the loveliness of Kowloon's although, god help me if that town wasn't designed by stoned hippies. It makes no sense. Dropped cousin J at Junction City. What it's junctioning to, I couldn't tell you.

Arrived Portland to insanely frustrating traffic patterns and extreme annoyance. If someone ever needed an effing nap, it's now. Will shoot anyone who comes to my door.

Ashland, would that you had an enviable infrastructure.

2008-09-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

Day 3 driving North from the Diego of San.

Obviously, we're getting a bit cranky. Cousin J showed up tossed as an English Football Hooligan, but gamely went to sleep after 40 ounces of starbucks and two hours of Harry Potter on tape. God bless that man and his mysteriously soothing british accent. After yet another like 800 hours of driving, we ran into Dottie's man, R, on the great vastness of I-5. After a surfeit of increasingly vague cell phone entreaties, we all landed at the side of the road somewhere near the cali-oregon border. Needless to say, the scenery picked up mightily north of sac-town as there was now foliage present. Still a mess of desert intermingled with pine trees, but at least there's green where there was only dirt with a side of dirt yesterday. Cousin J took off with R in his company car to Grant's Pass while Dottie, Penny and I prevailed ourselves on Ashland. Unfortunately, I have extremely selective hearing due to my eroded attention span and took an inventive track to the Ashland hotel. This concluded my auto tour of most of Ashland and I found it to be a charming and quaint town. I say quaint with the highest regard as it is four times the size of my hometown.

Realizing that we would be left destitute should we not find sustenance before the sidewalks automatically rolled in at 6PM, we ventured out. Penny guided us to the local park (having spent high school years here) then around downtown. Adorable little city, but the prices in shops liken themselves to california. Should I live there, I would be able to afford none than the Salvation Army. After assuring us that our souls would be sucked out of our brains if we settled there, Penny left us for family dining with multiple children. Dottie and I got the local sourdough pizza and retreated to our cave to never speak again until the dawn.

Morning came and I snuck out with my camera as the landscape was breathtaking so long as you took care to walk a few blocks, cross the highway and lean over the fence into the blackberry bushes no longer bearing any fruit. I shall post pics if I can ever find that infernal cord to connect el computadora.

Day 2: Shall we be conquered by Sac-Town?

2008-09-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Buoyed by the Pirate Party, we cut careful swathes up the I-5 in our prized Honda and Scion (mine, totally not the box one). Good lord, I had thought San Diego a bleak prospect when one leaves the moneyed areas, but it is no competition to the wanton barrenness that defines the middle part of California. Certainly, I am aware of the unadorned nature of the "flyover states" separating New York from Frisco, but the middle of Cali is awful enough to convince one that even Laura Ingalls Wilder had it good landscape-wise. Sure, we could have taken a little detour and visited Death Valley for the sheer cheek of it, but none of us wished to prolong our tour through the 98 degree (it's nearly october, dammit) impersonation of a blank slate.

As we hit the pillows on discomfiting (and alarmingly small) hotel mattresses, I would like to send a shout-out to cousin J who may or may not be getting blind drunk at this very second. I shall never forgive you, sir, if you vomit in my car.

Lap of Luxury

2008-09-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

Pirates were afoot at the Marina Del Ray houseboat contingency this evening. Rumor has it that partook in vast amounts of Benedryl and organic free range cheeseburgers. Terrified onlookers blanched as their terrifying cries of "yet another crepe, my good man" rang across the icy waters of a bay of indeterminate depth.

Day 1 is complete of the northern pilgrimage of the Sisters Jaye. We were housed by the excellent Penny and her longtime beau who fed us and even housed Dottie's vindictive feline. A fantastic breakfast was set before us and even attended by Eliza and her new man. It was one of those wonderful meals that wants for neither conversation nor a meteor to break up it's interminable boredom. However, the nonstop laughter was a bit trying on my nerves. Is it possible to be too diverted? To like your company in excess? It is hard to keep a severe countenance with chocolate milk spilling from your nose.

In closing, several notions were decided on the Houseboat: first, I am to be known heretofore as BetaWhore; second, Oprah is in all likelihood the same person as Bill Gates and one day, not long from now, will rip her "rich white man" mask off during a press conference a la scooby doo and require PC users to read White Oleander; third, I require more than 4 hours sleep to be sufficiently entertaining.

Gonzo

2008-08-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

I saw the Gonzo documentary at the local pizza and brew theater here Monday night. HST still inspires today with his affinity for random gunfire, honest politics, and a (little utopic, i think) belief that the only thing drugs gateway to is World Peace. On his search for the American Dream, he inevitably came up short, burning out young in a blaze of glory and sticking it out long enough to bag himself a hot young wife before his untimely end. With his death, a legend was cemented. Perhaps this is the American Dream. Even more than the Great American Novel or riding the bucking, infernal stock market. HST found a way to live big and die bigger. His mystique will grow with the passing of time. With all trends pointing the way they do, we are in for belt tightening and moral strengthening. Chances are, HST was one of the wildest of the wild of men in the (soon to be) old west.

Ode to my ipod...

2008-08-27T23:01:00.001-07:00

I (heart) you.

Funny how things always seem like a movie when you've got a soundtrack. Plus, I think this is the closest I will ever get to having my very own, superpersonal and yet quirky / intelligent / tearjerking theme song.

The conundrum of decision-making and all that...

2008-08-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

I realized something this evening, and thought I'd share. Granted, many of you are much smarter than I and already have this wisdom. It was just one of those many, many moments I have had recently where, having chosen a particular path for a section of my life, two days later, I am overcome with chooser's remorse. I want back my decision, because it's obvious that I am not going to succeed at that particular career (in this case). And, as I was busy trumping up the decision and talking all poetically in my head about how I was on a precipice and had to decide NOW what my life was going to look like for the next 40 years when suddenly it hit me:

Once you choose something, you always have the option to recant.

(Barring, of course, such choices as giving away your kidney, adopting a child, or being romantically linked with michael jackson, you're kind of stuck with those.)

I know, I know, this isn't exactly rocket science (is it B?). But this seriously blew my mind. What? I can back out of something at any given time? I don't have to plan everything down to the smallest minute detail and agonize over my imminent failure/doom? What the hell am I going to do with all my free time if I'm not envisioning being stoned in the street for failure to live up to my impossibly high standards? I'll probably take up canasta.

Fact is, human beings are flighty, inconsequential creatures and we spend more time messing up and goofing around than actually being great, or whatever. Those with a fear of success/failure need to just take a valium and let ourselves be essentially human rather than talk ourselves out of it. If I decide not to follow this direction of life sometime in the future, I can pretty much guarantee that I am not wasting my time now. Because, it's not like, in abandoning what I want right now I am going to go out and initiate world peace or fight evil in a shiny suit of spandex. if I wasn't pursuing my half-assed dream, chances are, I'd just be watching reruns of firefly.

So I hereby give myself permission to be monumentally selfish with my time, dedicated to a [potentially] lost cause, and subsidize the local coffee shop with my daily patronage. Thank you coffee shop. [you're nice]

Some advice...

2008-08-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

Dear M Jaye,
My boyfriend is an idiot, although I think I am as well, since I believe I have been snowed by him for approximately seven years. He won't take me to meet his mother because he believes some guy named Darwin says he is higher on the evolutionary scale than I am. Should I dump him or take a frying pan to his head?
-Not a monkey

Dear Monkey,
See, a long time ago there was this scientist who liked turtles and crap and he was paid an exorbitant amount of money through some bet with Genghis khan to convince everyone that man was made from monkey turds or something. So he went the Glapaganos islands which were so crappy no one else ever went there and smoked a lot of ganja and wrote this book called Origin of the Species which is dedicated to his muse – Theodore “Tiny” Roosevelt. Check it, I’m sure its on Wikipedia.
Given that the information spewed by your troglodyte boyfriend comes from such an untrustworthy source, I vote the frying pan. Then sleep with someone more evolved than him, write a tome about it and get on the Times best sellers list.

- M.

It seems my twin has spawned...

2008-07-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

congrats to said twin and twin's better half. I'm sure it will be an adventure to rival the confusion and complexity of the Labyrinth. Parallelism be that bundles of joy come with their own bogs of eternal stench.

Acclimation is a double edged sword.

2008-03-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

Within days of moving to the frozen north, I find myself frolicking through snow covered parking lots wearing only a sweatshirt and spouting steam from my nostrils like a diseased water buffalo. Having grown up hip deep in snow for nine-odd years, I find it simple to ease back into the habit of grabbing for mittens to check the contents of the fridge. Acclimation is good for these reasons. Otherwise, I might find myself carrying a heat rock everywhere, like an iguana.

To my dad's disapproval, I have also acclimated to another aspect of my life. Never have I fallen into something with such ease and enthusiasm. No, I am not talking about my punk phase from college. I am, of course, referring to unemployment. Oh blessed days of sweet nothingness. 'Tis to you I drink this champagne toast at 9:45 AM bedecked with mismatched slippers and tatty nightgown. I grieve for the fact that your days are numbered.

Family Based Superpowers?

2008-03-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

I am wondering if my impressive array of superpowers was passed genetically rather from that nuclear waste bath I took when I was seven. For proof of said superpowers, see the list of relatives that attended/were visited on my recent holiday:

Me, Sister J and boyfriend R, Brother B and Wife C, Mother, Father, Cousin J, Aunt L, Uncle T, Aunt E, Cousins L and G, Grandma R, Cousin Bob and Aunt T, Uncle S and new wife K, a cute Dog, Wife C's mother, Uncle D and semi-aunt (legally) T, and cousin J's semi-ex girlfriend J. And these were just the ones who made it to the beach house. 23 in all and I am sure that I am missing someone or another. There were another 5 relatives back in Salem to be seen.

We were all in no particular order tired, overworked, chatty, insomniacs, alpha dogs, avoiders, lazy, surly (me), compulsively clean, compulsively messy, territorial, ditzy, dazed, napping, hiking, flying kites, vegetarian, natural foodists, covered up to elbows in BBQ rib sauce, watching Top Gun or Sharking the pool table.

On top of that, we were in a four bedroom killer beach house. Five of us were in the process of moving immediately before/after/during vacation. Two were trying to start a family. Most were coming in and leaving at various times during the week. And, we had a minimum of one and max of three rental cars to shuffle about the impressively contented masses.

Given all of the above, no fights erupted and all major snafus were derailed by a cunningly placed glass of wine or the judicious use of NyQuil.

Packing

2008-02-28T10:41:00.000-08:00

Packing...Packing, packing. Go to the next room, pick up semi-vintage collector's edition Fat Elvis Bobblehead, wipe the dust off his face and drop it in the box. Take it back out, put it in another box. Go get soda, take a chug. Go back, sit on floor cradling bobblehead Elvis overcome with odd memories that lead to to others. Realize Fat Elvis is harboring a secret power to derail your packing. Lob semi-vintage piece of junk towards trash pile that has overtaken trash can. Guilt attacks every time you see his self assured smirk as the ass-end goes over the fore-end while he plummets to his fate. He lands facing you, a banana peel wrapped like a canary turban round his shiny head. Guilt turns to anger, and you slam Elvis' head down in the trash can, bundle the trash with a neat red bow, and frog march it down to the dumpster.

Two hours later, convinced the bobblehead is your spirit guide, you are hip deep in the dumpster sifting through old chinese food, dirty kleenexes and a Bob Dylan Record collection. Alas, a banana peel is folded back to reveal the not-so-shiny bobblehead. You wipe it off, take it back upstairs, and drop it in the box. Only, it doesn't look right.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Guilt

2008-02-27T17:45:00.000-08:00

Have you ever tried to tell 45 bleary eyed, non-english speaking janitors that you are leaving to find your path on some sort of existential journey and that working for a janitorial contract, no matter the $, is crap for a wandering soul like yourself? Oh yeah, and you're not allowed to hurt their feelings because they're all nice and remind you in many ways of your extended family. Hand gestures are allowed.

Bright side: My arch work-nemesis boycotted my party by writing I'M NOT COMING! in big fat letters to match his big fat head. Seriously, the thing is enormous. I was relieved. Convention would have required i give meathead a nice tap-tap-pat hug should he have profferred and I would have got his man-slime on me. Ew.

Down Side: SkSn tried to make me cry all over the three dozen lovely pink and yellow roses the whole place saw fit to buy me by listing everything that I was leaving and checking for tears. Not that he did it for sport or with malicious intent, but some people only measure your grief by the level of your hystrionics. People in ancient Rome used to hire paid mourners to follow relatives funeral processions just to up their own wailing and moaning to prove they were really, REALLY sad. But I descend directly from stiff upper lip stock from the heart England, Germany and everywhere else they bury/deny/avoid emotion. I would have been a crap paid mourner.

But, i got a party. It was my first party in years. And, they brought me food and said nice things about me and gave me an engraved timepiece to count down they seconds before I have to get another job.

I have a secret to tell you...

2008-02-03T17:29:00.000-08:00

I am not watching the superbowl. I will get hell for it tomorrow, but who the hell really cares about a bunch of men in tights throw things and hitting each other?

I regret to inform you...

2008-01-30T09:24:00.000-08:00

Danm, I have written a lot of emails lately that carried that header. That's what happens when over the weekend you decide to scrap everything and start over. I regret to inform you I will be leaving this soul-crushing excuse for a job (really, how is one's soul to survive subsisting on governmental janitorial practices?). I regret to inform you I will no longer be requiring your company. I regret to inform you I will not be needing my awesome writing coach. I regret to inform you that I signed up for your kung fu classes on a whim and can't do them now. Goodbye bed, goodbye furniture. Goodbye San Diego.

The Downfall

2008-01-24T08:33:00.000-08:00

After watching the fiasco on TV last night, I am convinced the "tell the truth show" which I am too lazy to look up on dial up is going to kill more relationships than anything in the history of man. First, they up the tension and prolong the show by the cunning use of the PAAAAUUUUSSSSE. Never seen that before. Then, they show the reactions of the family members to the questions, which given their state of being in from of millions of eyes and a large audience is likely to be escalated. Then, they take morally relative questions and force everyone to think of the worst possible outcome.

Take the question: "Have you used the internet to flirt with a woman since you were married?" Given that the lie detector is going to pick up any hesitation on your part, you better answer that question "yes" or you ain't getting that $25,000. But, in truth, you could have spent five minutes flirting back and forth before you realized you were doing something wrong. Playful banter is a slippery slope, one usually doesn't they've gone to far until they look back and see the line behind them. Conversely, they could have solicited multiple nighttime rendesvous with ladies of questionable virtue. Either way, the answer is still a "yes".

This moral relativism transfers directly over to the TV audience. It gives people the idea that they should know the smallest innerworkings of their significant other. All those fleeting thoughts should only be discussed in confession or perhaps just saved for purgatory leaving the possibility that there is no High and Mighty.

There's a reason the Human Race isn't telepathic: we'd kill each other. All the evolution in the world can't erase the fact that we are impulsive little monkeys with dirty minds. I'm not saying we can't keep ourselves in check from being naughty, but we're certainly going to think about it. We're going to fantasize about bank heists, jewel thieves, running away to Mexico and leaving our families, cabana boys, jaywalking, streaking, flashing, starting fires, eating vegetarian, stealing puppies, buying those spinning rims for our cars, rapping, dying our hair green, following phish on tour and other evils. These are just thoughts concocted out of random neurons firing in the squishy grayness packed in our heads.

We are proverbial racoons with shiny pieces of tin foil clutched in our grasp. We'd have never got to the moon if we weren't so inherently curious. But we are also territorial, private creatures. Our general state of antithesis allows no rest for the conscious mind. Add to it a puritanical notion that the truth has always to be told, and the detante between the sexes will fall. There's been discussion of a battle of the sexes for generations. But I posit if you make it general practice to hook up partners to lie detectors, the slings and arrows shall be leased. The skies will turn black for their numbers. And, only the strong will survive.

Absenteeism is a symptom...

2008-01-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't been around much lately. I have been playing with my side-project blog, The Daily Hypochondriac. It is much easier to post on there with the excessive daily interruptions that definine my work day. Plus, it's like getting to watch Scrubs if they would just kill off JD.*

* - Where the hell are they rounding up there test group subjects for that damn show? Apparently there is a subset** of American society that believes smugness, excessive male femininity, and overly polished facades mixed with tiresome physical comedy are damn fine entertainment.*

** - Upon pondering this, though, one finds it may not be a subset. Ross was pretty much the same character with a medical degree. And the whole thing just reeks of Everybody Loves Raymond if you really start to think about it. The Drew Carey Show devolved into similar antics, and MadTV is the same thing without character continuity. Don't get me wrong, I still love the supporting cast, but good ol' John Dorian has just got to go.

Ah, the school season is upon us...

2008-01-22T07:52:00.000-08:00

Nearly 5 years out of college, and I can't help going back for more punishment. Perhaps it is my purgatorial state of existing in the southern california culture that rewards how much of your ass you can show through your shorts rather than if you got the smarts. Or, it might be the fact that my job requires 50 less IQ points than I currently possess. Okay, maybe 60. The fact remains if humans generally use 8 percent of ther brains at a given time, without these extra little classes, my squishy gray matter would atrophy like a coma patient's dancin' feet. Only problem is choosing which classes I will initially fawn over, then, weeks later, start to hate with every beat of my transplanted monkey heart.

A new category of dream

2008-01-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

A darkened flightline across from a set of trailers. Ebony and Ivory in color, a normal dream of the drudgery of work showed last night in noir theme. Two women bedecked in pencil skirts and heels, only their legs seen as they sneak along the asphalt. A phone call. An order. Silent, eerie mood pervades and no storyline emerges save for the sense of being trapped without reason. We gave in and slept with handtowel sized blankets on concrete.

My apologies monsignior...

2008-01-10T07:46:00.000-08:00

Loathe was I to note, yesterday, that I have neglected my blog for four weeks solid. Like all creatures bred in the north, I am subject to intermittent hibernation. I blame it on the military. Its evil hand swept us to the tundraland when we still traveled by smurfcycle. Trapped between snowdrifts and death-icicles hanging from the roof, something changed. When the sky darkens for too long, a profound laziness threatens. We can be found, curled like snails, under piles of blankets or pressed against heaters. Days, weeks, months later, the boredom sets in. We are forced to crawl out from our hiding space, squinting in the light, take up normal tasks such as blogging or spelunking.

All I'm saying is: t'ain't my fault.

Who is Tyler Durden?

2007-12-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

Something awful happened today. Only 2 days after my 27th birthday, I made two remarks in a row that completely dated myself. I am, officially, old. I will pass on these remarks so you may feel my pain as well.

Mistake #1
“You know, like in Fight Club.” With his confused shaking head, I realized the problem. Aged 21 years presently, he would have been a mere 13 years old when I watched this movie as a freshman in college. Legally, this movie was off limits. While I was sneaking into bars with fake IDs, my coworker was probably busy bugging his mother for candy money and a new pokemon card.

Mistake #2
“No, I don’t know who Jimmie Johnson (the race car driving auto entrepreneur) is…I know who Johnny Johnson is. You know, on Newsradio. Have you seen that show?” My other coworker, fresh from indentured servitude at 22, stared at me quizzically. It dawned on my thick skull, being originally aired from 1995 - 1999, the likelihood that a workplace-based sitcom would appeal to a 10 year old is slim to none. I just stared at my desk and reveled in memories of the sweet rivalry betwixt johnny johnson and jimmy james. They shall not know the greatness.

And I do remember when movies cost 4.25. And gas was $1. And we bought candy with nickels. And our cartoons didn't make any sense because crazy acid-heads were putting animals in shirts with special powers, not because they came from another country and were badly dubbed. Oh, I think I need a nap.

The end of some things

2007-12-04T10:15:00.000-08:00

The last week closed out NANOWRIMO, my novel class and my 26th year on this earth. Of course, I failed NANO fantastically, passed my novel class wonderfully and we are still awaiting results of my life. So, perhaps it was a wash. On the bright side, I am much heavier with knowledge, word counts and holiday food.

BOMBAY II - the revision

2007-11-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

With nothing much happening, I have decided to revise my Bombay post in the manner of Strunk and White.... reading is not necessary as this is my first try at this kind of writing and is probably a gigantic failure. Enjoy, I say, with a flourish of my hands.

Not ready to settle for Guitar Hero and 40’s for my boyfriend’s 28th, we decided on posh restaurant eating to raise the festivities from the redneck classification. We tarted up, brought our doppleganger duo, and paid parking rates rather than circle 15 minutes in increasing frustration. Not prone to dining where reservations are encouraged, we assumed it the height of manners to show early by twenty minutes. This is, apparently, not so. The waitress, on hearing my name, squeaked “the table isn't ready! Your excessive promptness has unsettled us.”

Being inherently gracious, we sidled up to the bar, ordering a round of drinks. Five couples arrived after us and were seated. We ordered a second round of drinks and drained them. Emboldened by boredom, I approached the Hostess and inquired after our table. She gasped, clasped her hand to her face “I need to get your table ready.” I bellowed "how dare you forget me, you heathen!" and threw her in the fountain, or would have, if not for my lingering bout of cowardice .

A table was decorated in haste in the center of the dining area. My mouth busied itself with watering, and my gaze narrowed. With each linen straightened and fork polished, the waitress led us past the elegant table to one in the back. Four chairs were stuffed underneath with little room to maneuever without ruffling the neighbors. A single spotlight glared on C’s head. One could assume we aren't as pretty as we thought.By this time, half our party was decidedly tipsy. We ordered another round of drinks. Eventually, our waitress showed. I ordered the Chicken Tikka – grilled chicken with the appearance of having marinated in cherry kool-aid -- C favored the lamb curry. My portion of lamb was served with a heaping side of invisible guilt.

I twiddled my thumbs, memorized the décor, made small talk. Despairing of the waitstaff, the bartender, having stalled several minutes, brought our drinks. More waiting commences. At that precise moment, half our party is drunk, having eaten nothing all day. Alcohol paired with an empty stomach leads to depravity, so, a blessing occured when the busboy arrives bearing food. Balancing the overloaded tray on an adjacent table, he served the first two dishes. Then, as he turned, the entire tray cartwheeled off the table, and smeared our curries, rice and naan into the carpet.

One would assume this guaranteed prompt replacement of our food. Assumptions, based on wishes rather than fact, rarely find themselves in the “true” category. The clock hand ticked another quarter turn as we licked the empty plates, desperate for calories. Our waitress appeared querying "where's the rest of your food?" We informed her the only curry served to the table was currently splattered on A’s purse. “Oh, that was you?” replied the waitress, near giggling. Her surprise divulges two things; one, the idiot that dropped our food failed to inform anyone; and two, this place sucks.

Ten minutes pass and our waitress delivers 2 servings of rice for four people, half the garlic naan, lamb curries and extra lentils. The food was tasty, but unimpressive. For all the trimmings, I would have expected more. C was served a complimentary mango mousse that is fluffy and sweet and had A digging around with her spoon long after the last drop was consumed. We asked for the check. They charged for the missing naan, and all of the drinks, which are easy to comp when screwing up horribly. Oh yeah, and this place damn expensive for poor folk.

Total time: 2 hours.

NaNo sucks.

2007-11-19T08:18:00.001-08:00

I wrote approximately 3,000 words last weekend. I finished a new first chapter that incorporates all of the new backstory and an entirely revamped plot. While it may seem I am failing with aplomb, through NaNo, I have solved the great mysteries of my novel that blockaded my writing. I shall now burst forth with unprecedented speed to break the NaNo land speed record.

I think I am in love...

2007-11-19T07:45:00.000-08:00

I fell for two men this weekend. There names are Strunk & White.

For those unaware, they are, respectively, the writer and editor of Elements of Style. This book taught what countless hours of English classes have failed: the use of the semi-colon. Far and wide have I searched for an explanation concerning that drasted dot suspended over the lazy comma. No English majors, no janitors, no J school participants, upon questioning, could explain the existence of this grammatical conundrum.

The semi-colon rules follow as such:

If two or more clauses, grammatically complete and not joined by a conjunction, are to form a single compound sentence, the proper mark of punctuation is a semicolon.

Stevenson's romances are entertaining; they are full of exciting adventures.
It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark.

It is of course equally correct to write the above as two sentences each, replacing the semicolons by periods.

Stevenson's romances are entertaining. They are full of exciting adventures.
It is nearly half past five. We cannot reach town before dark.

If a conjunction is inserted, the proper mark is a comma (Rule 4).

Stevenson's romances are entertaining, for they are full of exciting adventures.
It is nearly half past five, and we cannot reach town before dark.

Note that if the second clause is preceded by an adverb, such as accordingly, besides, so, then, therefore, or thus, and not by a conjunction, the semicolon is still required.

I had never been in the place before; so I had difficulty in finding my way about.

In general, however, it is best, in writing, to avoid using so in this manner; there is danger that the writer who uses it at all may use it too often. A simple correction, usually serviceable, is to omit the word so, and begin the first clause with as:

As I had never been in the place before, I had difficulty in finding my way about.

If the clauses are very short, and are alike in form, a comma is usually permissible:

Man proposes, God disposes.
The gate swung apart, the bridge fell, the portcullis was drawn up.

The main reason one uses semi-colons is to link two sentences, with the same subject, to inform eachother. i.e.

John was mean; he liked to kill kittens.

NoNo

2007-11-17T00:11:00.000-08:00

Just got 616 words detailing the outline of my whole novel. Which, in case you're keeping count leaves me totally screwed.

NaNo is bending time and space to defeat me

2007-11-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

Where did the rest of the month go? It's half gone starting today. And am I at the halfway mark? No. It therefore follows that external forces are thwarting me. But, on the bright side, I solved my novel problem and can now move on unencumbered.

And the Worst Service Award goes to... BOMBAY!

2007-11-14T07:43:00.000-08:00

Intending to swank up the decidedly low-class* festivities surrounding my boyfriend's birthday, I made reservations at a posh restaurant in Hillzcrest. We got all tarted up, brought our doppleganger duo, and actually paid for parking in a nod to our swanky togs. So excited were we, that our habitually late party showed twenty minutes early for our reservation. Maybe I haven't made enough reservations in my life, but I assumed it would be the height of manners to show early so they wouldn't have to hold the table for a bunch of ruffians. I was mistaken, methinks, the waitress, on hearing my name, stared at me in horror and told me the table wasn't ready because we were *gasp* early then ran away to do stuff.
Being that we are inherently gracious, we sidled up to the bar and ordered a round of drinks. At least five couples that showed after us were seated. We ordered another round of drinks. When those were finished, I sauntered up to Hostess and inquired after our table. She, yet again, gasped and clasped her hand around the cross on her neck and squeaked that she needed to get our table ready. And I screamed at the top of my lungs, "how dare you forget me, you heathen!"and threw her in to the fountain. It was either that, or I went back to the bar and waited quietly for another ten minutes as they hastily set up a table in the middle of the dining area. When that was finished, she led us past the beautiful table to a cramped table in the back with one weird spotlight glaring on the birthday boy's head. I guess we ain't as pretty as we thought.
By this time, half our party was decidedly tipsy. We ordered another round of drinks. Ordering time came I got some Chicken tikka. You know, that chicken that looks like it's been marinated in cherry kool-aid and grilled in heaven's barbecue. We also got lamb curry which is served with a heaping side of guilt.
Then we wait, and wait. We wait some more. Finally, the bartender takes pity on us and finally brings our drinks. So we wait some more. At that precise moment, half of our party has finally passed into drunk, having eaten nothing all day. I don't know if you have ever been around drunken, famished people, but it ain't pretty. Suddenly, the food arrives and a crisis is averted.
The busboy puts the overloaded tray on a table next to us and serves the first two dishes. Then, as he is turning, the entire tray cartwheels off the table and smears our curries, rice and naan into the carpet.
You would think this would put us at the top of the list to receive our food, but no dice. Fifteen minutes later, licking the plates clean, we finally see our waitress again. "Where's yo' food?" she asks, then lets it slip that no one told her we were the people whose food is now a permanent part of the decor (and A's purse).
Ten minutes later, we get one bowl of rice for four people, half the naan we ordered, our lamb curries and some random lentils. We have to ask for more rice and are charged for extra naan when the check comes ten minutes after we ask for it. Oh yeah, and this place damn expensive for poor folk.

Total time: 2 hours.

*40's and guitar hero, while totally awesome, do conjure images of white tanks and sweat stains

NaNo you selfish crab, give me back my weekend

2007-11-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

So, despite having my bf's b-day, I managed to somehow crank out near 7,000 words this weekend of backstory. Turns out this little town is quite interesting and everyone's got drug problems and anger management issues. Pretty sweet huh. Still working on the backstory for the nemesis, but I promise there will be beheadings and swordplay!

Word Count: 17,520

Words to Goal: 7,485

New Word Goal: 25,005 (friday night 12am)

Words to end: 32,480

Me so tired...

2007-11-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

Got a new word count. So, Vanna, tell them what the new total is!

Word Count: 10,733

Words to Goal: a million, or 7,604, whichever comes first

New Word Goal: 18,337 (sunday night 12am)

Words to end: 39,267

Woohoo! Wasn't sure I was ever going to pass the 10K mark.

me ate gator burger.

2007-11-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

I have incorporated the soul of this scaly being and am now that much more powerful...

now more than the termites and William Scranton III will fear me.

Haha I wrote something

2007-11-07T20:47:00.000-08:00

Well, just when you pick up a big project, that's probably when life throws a bunch of lemons at you a little too hard and you wake up in a hospital bed two days later and realize you have missed your word count by a landslide. Was that last sentence a run-on? Or was it an amalgamation of mixed metaphors lengthy enough to throw even the most dedicated reader into a snoring stupor? Either way, it boils down to the fact that I take no responsibility in my lack of word count. It was the other guy's fault.

Word Count: 8,905

Words to Goal: a million, or 9,432, whichever comes first

New Word Goal: 18,337 (sunday night 12am)

Words to end: 41,095

I say damn! I gotta step on it. But most of my writing tonight was backstory that informs the frontstory and is worth, like, the weight of a hamster in gold.

Ugh, with the time change

2007-11-06T07:39:00.000-08:00

Everything else is peachy keen with that silly little thing call daylight savings. Sleeping in an extra fake hour because you forgot to go to sleep early -- totally awesome. Showing up to work late with your hair still in curlers because you pretended to forget about said time change -- priceless. Having your three hour novel class be extended to your muscle memory of 10:30 instead of 9:30 -- Absolute shite. However, the bonus of actually being in the class will be passed on to you via my world famous writing tips! (oh, and just a forewarning, my typing seems to be going the way of my stuttering, spluttering speech...down the crapper.)

******************************************
Writing tips 87A - Why adverbs suck.*
*Illustrated using the timeless device utilized by Animaniacs. Please view the following good idea/bad idea example in stick-figure vision

As my infinitely intelligent teacher said last night, the reason your adverbs suck is one of the following:

a) you use an adverb when you could be using more specific language

Bad idea: Johnny ran briskly.

Good idea: Johnny, the space cowboy, galloped along the uneven, ketchup-colored, terrain; peeking over his shoulder, he noticed the hoard of rabid space cows closing the distance.

b) you use an adverb to re-emphasize a point that was previously emphasized

Bad idea: Amy lightly sprinkled some poison stuff on her diary, covering it completely and thoroughly. She desperately wanted to know which person it was who had invaded her privacy so thoroughly and completely. If she knew, then she could quickly and efficiently hide her diary in a place that horrible person, that had so dastardly invaded her stuff, could not get to it, verily.

Good idea: Amy sprinkled anthrax on the front cover of her diary. Let's just see who falls first, she thought. Because, it was not a question of if, it was a question of when...

******************************************

Okay, I have more, but my mound of paperwork is teetering precariously.

And the hare turns back into a turtle...

2007-11-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

Well, despite my best inentions, I got less than 500 words yesterday. That puts me just shy of what I am supposed to be doing. This whole writing insane amounts is really hard when you are not sure what to be doing with your story. I am going to be putting up a new goal that is really optimistic and hard, but will only get me slightly higher than the minimum, 12,000 words by midnight Nov. 7th. This is hard for two reasons, one: I have a three hour class tonight and they will notice in a novel writing class if you are in fact novel writing and not participating; and two: I need sleep. I found out last week that I get really cranky when sleep dreprived. Now, I just need to figure a way to incorporate napping and writing without spouting out gibberish. Ideas are welcome, there's a box on the door if you don't feel comfortable speaking to me directly.

Word Count: 6,553

Words to Goal: 5,447

Words to end: 43,447

Her first write-in! Awww.

2007-11-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

I went to my first write in which was brilliant because it uses the double team of shame and peer pressure to urge you to write more.

I stayed an extra hour and a half to get over 6,000 words.

Word Count: 6,142

Words to Goal: 3, 858

Words to end: 43,858

NaNo Word Count

2007-11-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

Too tired for anything else right now.

Word Count: 3,846

Words to Goal: 6,154

Words to end: 46,154

Ugly Betty Warning!

2007-11-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

For those who have always wondered if something that is mostly silicone and bleach could be classified as a sentient life form, wait no longer! Guess whose guest starring as Wile's bridesmaid... Victoria Beckham!

Wonder who got hornswaggled into thinking that was a good idea?

I'm intrigued though, they have gotten so much out of the wooden Rebecca Romijn and TV movie staple Vanessa Williams, maybe they'll get a good bit out of her. Fingers crossed for no recurring roles though. Her mystic tan haunts my dreams. (I'm assuming it's mystic tan, although she could just marinate herself in Fanta overnight for the same effect.)

I'm rooting for her though, I have always been a fan of anthropomorphizing.

This can't be! Can it?

2007-11-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

Oh you lucky, lucky people. A second Ugly Betty Recap in nearly so many days!

Whoever thought that setting a sitcom to the score of Wicked would work out so darn well? Not only do we get to see Freddie Rodriguez harassing Betty to the Valley Girl lilt of Popular, we get to seethe with jealousy that Taye Diggs wife still looks gorgeous under sage colored, matte makeup. So, as a quick recap, because my friday is uncharacteristically stuffed with working to be done, I am just going to storm through. Mark totally disses his new boyfriend because he is just not mode-tastic, more closely resembling Seth Rogan and the Wookie population than homoerotic greek sculptures. He confesses to Amanda that he wuvs his fuzzy boytoy and doesn't want to end up sad and lonely like Wille who is unfortunately weeing within earshot. Did I mention Wile has to gain six pounds in a week? Nothing funnier than watching models eat under duress. Betty and Henry try to lie their way to forbidden love, but are so awkward and artless that their affair is a miserable flop. Only when Hilda reminds Betty that it could be worse, Henry could be pushing up daisies like Santos, do she finally do the reverse walk of shame to get her freak on to the strains of defying gravity. Oh yeah, and Daniel gets dumped by a cougar for having a brain. Didn't see that one coming.

Hello NaNoWriMo!

2007-11-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

You thought I wasn't going to answer the door because I was cowering from all those trick or treaters last night. But I did. And hell ya, after freezing a bit, I was able to get down 2,121 words of rambling in a brand new character. And shout out to P-Town cuz that's where I am writing about.

I'll set up an end of the week goal (sunday y'all) of ten thousand words because it is always a good idea to get a leg up on it for the week two slump.

Word Count: 2,121

Words to Goal: 7,879

Words to end: 47,879

Mode Madness!

2007-10-31T20:32:00.001-07:00

Awww..the most adorable UglyBetty episode yet.

Mark curbkicks his underwear model for the most adorable hitchcock fan ever. Seriously, if my heart wasn't already surgically attached to Trent from Daria, I'd paste his poster on the ceiling over my bed. As it is, I'll only paint his likeness in acrylic and enter it in the county fair. Christina figures Betty will get over Henry if she can just quench the fire in her loins with a little internet dating. After a couple tries, Betty can only muster up a suitably sexy photo when staring at a ham sandwich. Hope she doesn't hook it up with someone kosher. A disastrous bowling date ensues; he ditches when she dries her pits on the hand blower thingy. I mean, ew. Henry wins her back by making up a story about a dead bird, dropping his silverware and finally getting some action on the awesome CGI brooklyn street where Betty dwelleth. Fish and Yoga nearly off the Meade family and Alexis finally gets over that pesky amnesia thing. Guess she'll start having to wear a bra again.
Back at the casa de Suarez, Hilda ignores her ailing son to quilt with ladies who are so old, they've climbed into their own graves and starting piling the dirt on themselves. Justin steals the family car, wraps it around a sycamore and gets his first ride home with the PoPos. Good thing Brooklyn has good mass transit, because the last time I counted, Betty was the only one with a job. And she don't makes much bones slaving for trust-fund-baby-cum-mode-wrecker Daniel.
Elsewheres, Wile is still scheming, Ignacio is underused and where is Amanda? Is she making out with that dog again in the love dungeon? Oh, and the scene between Hilda and Justin is totally hanky worthy. This show is even better than HIMYM at pulling the old heartstrings while being silly, stylized and slathered in Neon Green.

What we talk about when we talk about love....

2007-10-31T20:32:00.000-07:00

Amanda: Ooh. maybe I'll stay here and mock you.
Mark: He's a 9. I'm an 8.
Amanda: He's a 10, you're a 6.
Mark: You're a bitch, I'm a 7.

10...9...8...7

2007-10-31T20:01:00.000-07:00

Well, the countdown is over. I only have a few more hours cowering in the dark, hoarding candy before the NaNoWriMo is upon me. Wish me luck.

And just to set the record straight, I am only hoarding the candy so I don't have to give it to those greedy, wandering heathens.

Maxim names Fuglies!*

2007-10-27T22:53:00.000-07:00

Maxim magazine stepped up its campaign to undermine/destroy all remaining traces of female self esteem today by posting its top "Unsexiest" list. Is this rag a plant by alien invaders to convince the gestating population to off themselves so they can terraform more easily?

#1 Goes to...wait for it...Carrie Bradshaw! Oh, sorry, I mean Sarah Jessica Parker.

Perhaps it is not sexy after all to be able to blend in with a crowd of malnourished six year olds. Whodathunk?

#2 Goes to Amy Winehouse.

I guess heroin chic really is over. And somewhere in the darkness Calvin Klein smashes a model in an apoplectic rage.

And, number quatro is crowned on the ex-queen of sleeze Madonna. Or is it Esther? And the reason is probably the harshest thing I have heard since Margaret Thatcher snarked on my widening ass. Maxim donned her “Willem Dafoe with hot flashes.” Ouch. But really, doesn't her faux British accent open her to any slights that should come her way? I rather think so.

*Is this something the male population really wants to start, because MissJaye might just start a "Tiny PeePee List" that will devastate the male Hollywood population.

2007-10-27T22:03:00.000-07:00

Here I was going along thinking I wasn't a crazy person. Well, let me qualify "crazy" as in not drooling on a street corner crazy. It's already documented on many a government form and police record the other type of crazy. But, I guess I am closer to the foil hats and food sculpture than I thought according to this.

I was feeling all superior to all the stupid people who are superstitious. Really, aren't superstitions just social indicators of backwater upbringings and tussles in the hay with your second cousin?

That was...until I reached the bottom.

The most admitted-to superstition, by 17 percent, was finding a four-leaf clover. Thirteen percent dread walking under a ladder or the groom seeing his bride before their wedding, while slightly smaller numbers named black cats, breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas indoors, Friday the 13th or the number 13.

Awww...Miss Jaye is so guilty, guilty, guilty.

Apparently I am in the company of people such as this:

Those who dismissed the existence of ghosts include Morris Swadener, 66, a Navy retiree from Kingston, Wash.

He says he shot one with his rifle when he was a child.

"I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a white ghost in my closet," he said. "I discovered I'd put a hole in my brand new white shirt. My mother and father were not amused."

Okay, maybe I'm all prudish being an American and whatnot, but who the hell gave this kid a gun? Every time I thought I saw a ghost, I was tied to my bed by invisible fear ferrets. In order for this stupid zygote to get his hands on a firearm, it either had to be in his room, or, he had to venture through a ghost filled shanty to get pa's gun from the chicken coop. My money's on it been propped up next to the hayfilled bag with mysterious stains he called a bed. Nice parenting bitches. I'm sure the rest of that rat trap wasn't childproofed either.

I have to go, this post is creeping me out.

An ode to Dr. Evil

2007-10-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

We remember your humble beginnings from you heartwrenching speech in Austin Powers...Your words shook my soul.

The details of my life are quite inconsequential.... Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize; he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament... My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon... luge lessons... In the spring, we'd make meat helmets... When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard, really. At the age of 12, I received my first scribe. At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Wilma ritualistically shaved my testicles — there really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it's breathtaking... I suggest you try it.

Ever ditch a friend on accident?

2007-10-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to tune in to Ugly Betty last night and therefore can do no witty recap to rival TWOP's. My day is ruined.

However, since all of the major networks have started putting full episodes online I can just hop over to ABC.com and watch all the shows to my heart's content. Rotten thing tho, if you don't have broadband, you're totally screwed. How come I don't feel more sorry for you?

I give better advice than this...

2007-10-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

While stumbling throught he internet this morning, I banged my shin on a particularly unweildy webpage. As I sat on the floor, rubbing my injured knee, I happened to read the advice posted on this "Dear Margo" website thingy. This woman, Margo (who used to be Dear Prudence on Slate and never even once lived up to the Beatles song) admittedly has not earned this pedestal to spout her wisdom from. She doesn't even have those silly little letters at the end of her name (you know, the ones that differentiate her from real doctors). Her only credentials come from being the progeny of an agony aunt of old. And, as evidenced by my lack of ability to place an I.V. line, a parent's talents are not necessarily your own. Miss Margo proves this yet again with her sage advice to this reader.

The unfortunate and unimaginatively named K.L. wrote in with a husband who is clearly suffering from referred post-pardem psychosis. This is evidenced by his onset of germophobia, constantly bathing his dog's feet as if this were the bible, angry outbursts at family pets (did she even see Single White Female?), and belief in "homemade remedies". Obviously this guy is out of his frickin' mind and headed towards delusions of grandeur. She should check her accounts to make sure he hasn't withdrawn junior's college fund to start up a new branch of the Branch Dividians. That is, of course, unless she likes Texas and Kool-Aid. Then it's fine.

"Dear" Margo's only advice to her was to eventually boot the dog out the door and go see a pediatrician. Because no self-respecting crazy person is going to go against the advice of a doctor. You better make it a male doctor because it seems like homey don't like them chicks.

My advice to K.L. is to run far and fast before the husband get picked up yet again by his mothership. He is obviously an alien. I mean, really, home remedies? Tell E.T. that here in America, if you can't overdose on it, it ain't medicine.

Change my f-ing job already

2007-10-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you spend a lot of time on free websites trying to find a new career to siren call you to the rocks of job stability. You spend countless hours prodding and poking in the hopes that finding the perfect job that will cure you of your distressing apathy.

While leapfrogging through About.Com, I came upon an article delineating the 6 reasons I should consider a career change. They include: life change; negative job outlook; burnout; stress; boredom; and $$$$. I know what you're thinking, these broad, vague labels can cover just about any career malady that works you up enough to crawl all the way online from your cubicle. But given that About.Com is such a large, and therefore reputable, website, they must know of what they speak.

Or do they?

In reading this, I discovered a shocking dissonance between experience and recommendations about the job market. The assumes that you had once madly loved your chosen job and then, like that boy you dated from prep school, the love faded and he eventually fired you for falling asleep on the job (please spend the rest of your day turning that simile into multiple euphemisms). The essential mistake here is that the job market is some sort of genie that is actually granting our career wishes.

Not so! cries the masses.

There ain't no one I know chose the career they're in. No one got that chance. In the thousands of people that are in my first two degrees of separation, I can think of like ten people that are doing what they wanted. Everyone else clawed their way into something to pay the bills. Even then, the people who are doing "what they wanted" are doing it at some crap business they'd rather not be associated with. It's lose/lose right now for most. So I should probably just sit back and stop looking at the greener grass over yonder and start my filing.

*I am rather sorry for the qualitative decline in this post. If you need me to fix it, I will be over at craigslist.org trolling for a job.

Corps and Copses

2007-10-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

There's something inherently useless about forcing people to work when their county has been declared a national disaster area. No one is going to give a crap about the little things when people's houses are burning and you're looking every five minutes to see if your zone is being evacuated. What should really happen in these times is the companies that can afford it should ante up, put what amounts to chump change on the table and give some worried people some goddamn time off.

Class was cancelled :(

2007-10-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Because some stupid pyro couldn't keep his lighter in his pants.

San Diego! You on fi-yare!

2007-10-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

This reminds me of a lovely little cocktail party I attended on the lower east side of Eugene. Quite smashing really. A darling stump and ax set up for drunken revelers to try their hand at that quaint old art of lumberjacking. So chic! We were all taking a bit of air in the yard when an old dorm-mate of mine comes trotting out wearing the sacrificial head of the latest pinata. As he was strutting around, showing off his new animal head, someone (alas, I can not remember who) took a lighter to the back of his head and set the animal on fire. This dorm-mate continued his loud boasting while smoke start to rise from his topside-nether-regions.

The boy he was talking to screamed "Dude, you're on fire!"

He replied, swigging his beer. "I know!"

"No, dude! You're on fire!"

"I know!"

Then, apparently the heat finally traveled from his hat to his scalp and he squeaked like a monkey with it's tail caught in a meat grinder, threw the pinata hat into a five gallon bucket with two inches of water. Good sumaritan that I am, I stomped it down with my shoe and caught the hem of my ratty jeans on fire.

He stared in to the bucket that steamed with burnt pinata. "Dude, I was on fire."

"I know."

Writer's block

2007-10-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

I'll give 5 whole dollars to anyone who can convince me that it is easy to write 8 pages when you have to hand them over to 25 judgmental peers the next morning. I am up for anything up to and including, hypnosis; chemically induced delusions of grandeur; a "miracle elixir" sold from the back of a traveling caravan. I would prefer the elixir, preferably in a brown medicine bottle with a handwritten label.

Okay. I'll go as high as six dollars. But it better be good.

Ugly Betty, the American Telenovela!

2007-10-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

I give this episode a C+ on the Mode Meter, although against almost anything else on TV, it's still an A. The main story sucked and I am so over the accountant who, incidentally, got crowned "baby daddy" this week. Victor Garber intimidates like a mo'fo' from his post as High J. School inquisitor. And his bitchy aside about gambling away his pulitzer money made me want to squeeze his cheeks more than I wanted to when he was on "Alias". James Van der Beek plays a throwaway character who can't stand post-op tranny's (on the bright side, it seems he's grown in to his forehead). Betty lies, cheats and steals. Daniel and Alexis share many awkward and slightly touching moments next to the urinals. Jason makes out with a girl while drunk even though he's only like 12. This is going to be his "ugh, when I pretended to be straight story" when he comes out in college with his musical theater degree. They certainly are letting him get away with a lot. I mean his dad died like 4 episodes ago.

But, the bright shining star of this episode was Amanda, who, somehow stole the show in the middle of last season and stubbornly refuses to give it up. Now, she must disect an ancient studio 54 random sex pattern to unmask her real father. I smell cameos!

A/P style despises me

2007-10-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the grammar of the last post. It is amazing how much you grammar suffers when you are forced to switch from blogger to a spreadsheet every time someone walks in your office. I shall leave them here for nostalgia's sake.

P.S. I totally won a dictionary bet regarding the word "auxilliary" on wedensday.

Jaye: 1
S: 0

Q & A

2007-10-18T10:32:00.000-07:00

“How was your weekend?”

“Fine, I didn’t do anything. You know, but fine. I mean really, what is there to do?” (uncomfortable laugh)

Why are they still here? “So, you do anything?”

“Went to vegas. Why didn’t you do anything?”

Uncomfortable pause.

This pause is only uncomfortable because I can’t tell the truth. The truth would go something like so.

“No. No, I didn't go anywhere. You wanna know why? This is why. Because I hate people. I hate being around them, I hate driving next to them. I hate traffic. I hate waiting for it to die down. I hate trendy places, non-trendy places, the next big thing, “so last week”, and dives. I hate parking. I hate not parking. I hate driving around the same block for the 17th time, riding someone’s bumper and scaring pedestrians because I don’t want to pay $27 to parking in a godforsaken parking garage to go to some lame club where everyone is judging me by the size of my non-mystic-tanned-ass. I hate hair extensions, bitch drinks, and cover charges. I hate waiting for an hour for overpriced table scraps and gorging in the middle of a crowded restaurant next to two losers on a blind date pretend her diatribe about how she’s the best interior decorator on the west coast is fucking crap because it looks like a colorblind backup dancer picked out her outfit. That’s right honey, he’s just trying to get in your pants.”

Okay, and there’s no way you can actually say that without salivating and having to wipe the spit on the back of your hand.

There are also other statements/questions that resemble the “how was your weekend” question that require similar responses. Questions such as “whatcha doin’ this weekend?”, month early queries on my plans for holidays that are repeated twice daily, and anouncements that it is almost Friday give me the same aneurysm. This is compounded by the fact that up to 85 people can ask me these questions with varied understanding of the English language. So, instead of throwing myself from the control tower of the airport across the desolate flightline that comprises the view from my office in a rented trailer stuck in the middle of a vast, endless parking lot, I’ve just decided to lie my ass off.

I have already told various people that I have been to Morocco over the weekend, staged a coup and invented a new kind of jet fuel. I shall keep you comprised of the details until my lying reaches such grandiose proportions that I am hunted by homeland security and stored in my rightful place in a storage locker in Gitmo.

Vivacity on the Punk Tip

2007-10-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

Writing tips #3 (or four, who can count that high?)

Last night's class was pure madness. After the smoke cleared and the "officers" left the area back to the reigning troglodyte, we pulled up our chairs (those who had chairs left) and sorted through the wreckage of our notes for useful suggestions.

Tip #427
Your story sucks and your main character keeps getting in the way of things. Every time the camera zooms in and there's some action, you can see her in the bottom of the frame, painting her nails or something. Egomanical slopbucket that she is, your going to have to get rough with her if you want her to learn her lesson. So, take a baseball bat, or a particularly vivid shade of red pen and fight her back until she is crying in the corner.

Bad Ex: Shanna thought she might get in trouble.
Good Ex: I reached back like a pimp and I slapped the ho.

There will be more once I can raise the bones for a nasty little ransom on my baby blue messenger bag. Donations Accepted.

Ode to the Coronado Bridge

2007-10-15T08:14:00.001-07:00

I hate you.

Writing Tips #2

2007-10-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

Tip #1
"I would never write about someone who is not at the end of his rope." -Stanley Elkin

Damn fine point, Mr. Elkin. Why would we want an account of someone in the mid-rope range? So get out there, shove all of your characters to the end bit and start pushing them toward a cliff. I am currently doing this to the flat, boring nemesis of my novel and just realized I know nothing about her.

This quote was acquired from the lovely little required book for my novel class: The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman.

Tip #2
Don't let your novel get all dressed up with nowhere to go. My common problem, and apparently the problem of many writers in pompous MFA programs (per this book I am reading, The Portable MFA)is to sacrifice plot for the sake of pretty language. Being that most of my previous catalogue has less plot than the back of a cereal box, this tip pretty much excludes most of it from being technically classified as writing.

Tip #3
(Pulled from the Kidd Tutorial, which could use a massive overhaul) Don't ever, ever, ever use words for their archaic meanings. Unless, of course, your novel quotes an ancient text which your hot archaeologist will explain to the busty intern to get in her pants and save the world (isn't that the plot of Librarian III?). Looking up words in the dictionary and using the fourteenth definition down for the verb of your seven word poem does not make you smart or deconstructivist or whatever you were going for. It just shows everyone that rather than going for something worth reading, you spent your saturday night reading the dictionary while the rest of us were chugging brewskis.

Tip #4
Find a nemesis. Chances are, you have read at least one novel that has personally offended you by its existence. Now, set out to prove that you are better than him/her. And, hopefully, you will eventually gain enough clout in the publishing world to personally destroy the dreaded author's career. This was the motivation I needed to get my art show.

Update!

I finally tracked down my nemesis book. It took some doing, but here is the plot synopsis for Jane Heller's Female Intelligence:

A contemporary comedy of manners, Female Intelligence is a social satire about the way men and women communicate - or don't. Dr. Lynn Wyman has a wildly successful practice in sensitivity training, instructing men how to become fluent in the language of Womenspeak so they can relate better to the women in their lives. She teaches them how to ask for directions, how to participate in "active listening" and how to say, "How was your day?" With thousands of satisfied clients, numerous talk show appearances and a bestselling book, Lynn Wyman is at the top of her game. But when Lynn's personal life suddenly becomes the stuff of tabloids and her professional reputation is sullied, she must do something - anything - to resurrect her career. After spotting macho CEO Brandon Brock on the cover of Fortune magazine's "America's Toughest Bosses" issue, she bets her friends that, by tinkering with his words, by adjusting his speech patterns, by putting him through her Wyman Method, she can turn him into "America's Most Sensitive Boss" and climb back on top. Little does she know that by winning her bet she will lose her heart. Female Intelligence is a hilarious look at our inability to bridge the communication gap between men and women, despite all the Mars/Venus books on the market. It's got Heller's trademark mix of humor, romance and suspense, not to mention her dead-on take on men, women and relationships.

Ugh! Awful book.

November Madness

2007-10-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

I must be off my frickin' rocker because I have decided to do NaNoWrimo this year during it's actual month. You can check out my previous anxiety attacks about this on previous postings. Probably anything with profanity in the title and a word count at the bottom refers to my last writing catastrophe. Or to my court appearance.

Everyone who knows me intimately can now look forward to bitchiness and incoherent ramblings. Well...you know, more than usual.

Countdown to November starts now:

Days 'til the madness ensues: 17

(I'm just warming up for my word count marathon)

Update: Dancing to lil' wayne in indecent fashion finally pays off for SoCal Woman

2007-10-13T08:14:00.001-07:00

What's that up there? Is god crying?

No, little tommy, god is pouring one for his homies over southern california.

Someone out there wants to do something stupid...

2007-10-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

And you know who you are.

Polyphasic sleep may sound like a rash, but actually, it is an insane experiment in sleep deprivation and will power. And someone who really admires Napoleon is about to do it (it would be more effective in publicly pronouncing your love if you wore a blue bustier with gold trim and stuck your hand down your shirt, but, to each his own). Since I have a miserable track record in both sleep deprivation and will power, we will just have to pretend that I did the experiment so I can publish the results for my foolhardy first cousin twice removed, backed up once to reverse niece status, or as we shall call her henceforth "Jenni".

Day 1 -
I accidentally slept through the first 3 alarms I set, set fire to my hair with a hair dryer that wasn't even plugged in and stubbed my toe trying to kick my door down when I dropped my keys down the storm drain I was trying to clean with a toilet brush. I think today went rather well.

Day 5 -
My mind has entered a new realm of existence. I now know that the only way to world peace is through the cunning use of double negatives and twine. I have started keeping super secret video diaries in a language I have fashioned entirely from gutteral noises and finger gestures.

Day 12 -
The sound of the follicles falling from the skin of my cat grates on my nerves. The cat is less happy since being shaved, but I have been able to take off my earmuffs for moments at a time. I have also begun to run my neighbor's errands since their incessant bickering over the large scale rocket I am building in my backyard has begun to overpower my will to live. Having a slave has calmed them somewhat.

Day 17 -
The wife was out of hemmorhoid cream. I must find a new place to live. I have been scouting caves in the remote regions of the Appalachians.

Day 31 -
My cat ran away. This cave is a bit lonely. I have decided to forego sleep altogether to make my true breakthough.

Day 35 -
The hallucinations have started. Who knew I would be Admiral of my own private army of tree people? We march on Washington tonight.

Day 47 -
I decided to build my very own flying machine. While testing it today, I died from birdstrike.

See, the dangers of Polyphasic Sleep are very real. However, if you happen to turn in to a dictator of the finest quality, please remember that I was always behind this. You're really great, you are. Super-fantastic.

Awesome.

Please don't hurt me.

Writing Tips from the writing class

2007-10-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

These are the gems I have acquired so far. Write this down.

Tip #1: Your book (if it has multiple characters) is only as good as the interaction between those characters. So, if you find yourself between a bitch and a skankplace, change them hos. They don't play nice.

Tip #2: You have to make it clear from the first bit what is at stake for little Molly with the false leg. Have someone take it away in the first page so she can spend the rest of the 400 pages trying to get it back.

Tip #3: Don't let your main character disappear from a scene he is in. We're not going to see him getting drunk on cough syrup at a bar mitzvah if we don't follow him to the toilet to watch him pee sitting down.

Tip #4: Don't use cliche's. You will get all red faced when everyone knows your character intimately and has already crosssed them off their xmas card list. Baby jesus doesn't like having boring people at his party. And neither do we.

Ugly Betty Update!

2007-10-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Henry's hung over on wine coolers and antihistamines (who hasn't been there?). And if he doesn't channel his temper towards someone other than the ModeWhores, he's about to get laid more than a skanky gorilla. Charlie's back in some flyover state carrying either the spawn of a spineless accountant or a mildly unattractive dentist. Oh, and she's so busted for cheating. Unfortunately the chemistry is off on Willy and her bottom feeder. Did they accidentally have hetero-sex this summer and botch their codenpendency? The blond stick nudes it up on the red carpet! Murder! Mayhem! And, the tranny's not much fun since she stopped being a bitch.

Stay Tuned!

The answering machine will get it

2007-10-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

I am going to be in the poconos this weekend for the annual coconut harvest. I suggest all of those who plan on telemarketing my number this weekend leave a brief and detailed message so I can return your call later.

Thank you,

Jaye, M. Esq.

I felt guilty about the lobster. Just a little.

2007-10-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

I got my first crack at crab legs in a while last night. It’s pretty easy to distract people from what you are saying when you are waving four connected twelve inch claws, a tiny fork and a nutcracker in the air. So, just to recap the night’s business proceedings the following things were decided:

1. My father has named me the sole beneficiary of his will and offshore tax shelters (including those in Thailand).
2. J – I have your power of attorney.
3. R and S.P. have agreed to join the circus for the foreseeable future.
4. Oh, and I got our waiter’s license and registration should a getaway car be needed. Any suggestions on what to do with an ’89 datsun?

To: The Fiery Haired thorn in my side

2007-10-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

I would like to give a shout out to Danielle Oz who has managed to make my life seem even more boring than usual. Congrats on the pilot! Break a leg and all that.

(Just to make everyone else feel worse about themselves as well, I will inform you that she will be paid to sit pretty in a bar and make fun of people. Life is so unfair.)

Homework

2007-10-02T07:58:00.000-07:00

Last week I had to deal with the first large amount of homework I have had in about a year. It's always suprising how deer in the headlights it makes you feel to know that you are actually paying someone to make your life harder.

After hemming and hawing for, oh, about 5 days, I finally sat my ass down and wrote. Do you know what the crazy thing is? My blog actually helped. The very thing I had vowed would never help a living thing has helped little ol' me. Not that it would admit to helping me. It would rather eat metal shavings in an undercooked flan.

Back to Saturday...

After defacing some school property, I sat down and had a little "me" time with a gin and tonic, called forth the spirit of truman capote and tried to get some words down before my vision started to blur and I fell of my chair. Okay, maybe I didn't, but it sounds more literary than "i got up early and stared at my laptop for 3 hours before leaving to marathon scrubs, yet again."

I am so sick of J.D. and his overstuffed pillow lips. Why are they so red and shiny?

So, after twenty hours straight of worrying about 8 tiny little pages, I hit up kinko's for some mindboggling copying and showed up ten minutes late for class despite breaking the speed limit by several prime numbers.

Here comes the part where the blog helped... wait for it... wait for it...

Then, this girl in class started lamenting the fact that she couldn't get her character to do anything. She pushed and nudged and prodded and finally whacked it in the back of the head with a canoe paddle, but it still refused to budge. And I realized an actual rule for characterization, which I told to the whole class while stuttering and spurting out the wrong nouns.

Now!

It's a given that you will relate to your main character in some way, but in the beginning you may have trouble separating the character from yourself enough to differ what their actions will be and the actions you would make in the same situtation. If you find yourself with a stuck character just make a list of ten things that you would not do in that situation and try one of those for your character. If this does not free your character up, then maybe you are just a bad writer.

Petraeus

2007-09-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

In an effort to get my ever-expanding ass off the couch, I have signed up for a class. Sure, you say, I have tried this before and dropped. Didn't I sign up for both Soccer and Piano last term and drop within hours? Didn't I even walk out of the piano class halfway through, after a quick speech about how I was too poor, because I couldn't be bothered? Haven't I signed up for, and subsequently dropped, half of the community college catalogue? The answer is, unfortunately, yes.

Walking on to a community college campus may be uplifting for some. But to me, the whole thing looks like a run down high school for the most populated class on Earth. Sure, they try to cover up the concrete walls with interesting architecture, and you know that everyone there (per advertising) has a burning will to learn and endless potential. But the whole thing smells, tastes, and feels like high school. I hated high school. And no matter how much I want to learn and get motivated / improve myself, there is no way in hell you can get me back there. If I had to do it all over again, you can be damn sure I would be one of the girls smoking in the bathroom and starting fights with the band geeks. I have learned that all the shit we put up with in high school is simply not necessary. Since I am older and wiser now, I have realized there are several things I would do if a genie sent me back to that evilness. For your convenience I have fashioned a list.

Things I should have done in high school:

1. Punched out one, or several, of my coaches for being ass faces (before I turned 18, of course.)
2. Bilked a student association out of a grand of tax free profit pocket money. (wait, I did that. no, i didn't steal it.)
3. Sued my principal just for fun.
4. Smoked on campus and then run from the cops through freshly falling snow that covered my tracks.
5. Defaced the school mascot.
6. Engaged in hijinks.
7. Set fire to the football field the night before homecoming.
8. Did the nasty with Christian Slater after he fired blanks in the caf.
9. Spiked the cafeteria food with hallucinogens.
10. Skipped every day save for assembly days when I would hide and smoke in the bathrooms with other malcontents.

Given that I have such an extensive list of things to do should I go back to high school, and Community College is so similar, it stands to reason that I am too busy to get all of this done and must therefore forfeit my place in the class. Really, it will be a relief to the principal/dean of said institution.

Dear...

2007-09-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog,

I am very sorry that this past year has been riddled with dry spells and avoidance. I promise in the future to follow through with my pledge to ignore work in a more productive fashion.

More or less Sincerely,

M Jaye

Quarterlife Crises

2007-09-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

seems to me that our specific generation is in perpetual crises. perhaps it is the youth that being only 26 affords me, but me and mine, we always seem to be on the edge of a cliff or straddling an oblivion that threatens to overwhelm us. and everyone you talk to, no matter what age, we've deemed it socially relevant but naming it a crisis. For those who graduate college, there's the depression and m&m's crisis that marks the overwhelming knowledge that you have to go out in the real world for the first time in your life. And once you've finally righted yourself from that catastrophe, you've got the quarterlife crisis which peaks on your twenty-fifth birthday and makes you realize you're finally old enough to mark you life in percentages. This blends nicely in to the 10th year reunion crisis where you decide that nothing you have accomplished in your life is enough to go back and face those who tortured you/you tortured. This, of course, blends seamlessly with the I am turning 30 and now am supposed to be responsible meltdown... All of them, seemingly unrelated and revolving around specific life events have one thing in common: the perpetual feeling that this isn't what it was supposed to be. Somewhere along the way, it all turned to shit and most likely the damn thing was hollow to begin with.

Maybe it is the fact that we were brought up with such high expectations. We came of age when millionaires were made overnight with little to no training. We all expected that silicone valley rush to the top. The ease of it all. We figure, as long as I have my website, or do this one other thing, it will be fine, I will be set for life. But that won't happen for most of us. And with increasing debt and cost of living, we're clinging even more tightly to the dream of hitting the one big thing that will land us our cushy life once and for all. I sure as hell want that. But then you start to get older, and your back starts hurting and you start settling lower and lower. You start bargaining with your dreams which one will you sacrifice first. And after the first one goes, the second.

I guess I am just maudlin today. Perhaps I have indigestion.

F the war

2007-08-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

It seems that when my opinion of the so-called "war on terror" can sink no lower, they always surprise me and add yet another dimension of fucked up-ness.

Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

Seems like really good idea to reinstate the draft on the war with the least public support since the Spanish Inquisition. Which, if you take in to account the torture, rampant idealism, persecution of idealists and unchecked abuse of power, this war is really starting to resemble. I think that they only leaked this proposal on NPR so they could judge the sort of public outcry they would get. And, given that this new advisor is only a few months old, Bush could abort him in a sacrificial goat sort of way to save the administration should he come under fire.

President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a "major policy shift" and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.

I think the President should really be weighing his options more carefully if he's reinstating policies that Nixon decided was too evil for his administration (which was armed solely with horns and pitchforks).

The only thing that has saved us from this in the past was bra-burning and rock music. Oh, and rampant drug use, interracial crises and jimi hendrix. We must draw on the sixties and seventies if we want to get ourselve sout of Iraq. So, come on people, smile on eachother, and send some hate mail to the big white house on a hill.

(info courtesy of:huff po)

p.s.

2007-05-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: screw the book. the book is dead. i'd rather fall on my boyfriend's ceremonial head-cutting sword than try to make that thing in to a book again. and thus with my avid declaration of hate, my interest i once again piqued.

i have to get a therapist.

{ yawn }

2007-05-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

and she crawls out of her cave ready to face a bright new day...

hello there spawndevils. it would appear I have been having a bit of a nap for the last couple hours...months, maybe years, I'm too bleary eyed to read the clock. It seems due time I should strike up my correspondence with the nether regions of ethernet once again. I hereby swear torture to those who have pushed the "next blog" button one too many times and fallen on my asscrack of a page. and if you ain't having it, piss off and push the button again. this time it'll be porn. i swear.

seems i am in a confrontational mood. would anyone care for a joust?

ahhh...the weekend

2006-07-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

I ran into a brick wall this weekend, but spent a lot of time thinking about how to restructure the book so it fits the story better. Rather than a single point of view in third person limited, I have decided to go with five POVs. This means I will be doing a lot of rewriting, but I think it will be worth it. That given, I also have a slush fund of words from the previous week, so I won't be starting with nothing.

I'm going to try for 15,000 words by the end of Sunday. Do you think I can do it?

word count: 5,160

words to goal: 9,840

words to finish: 44,840

oooh she's starting again

2006-06-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

well, now that I have the first 50,000 words, looks like I am going to have to get the next 50,000 or so words down quick, or I will lose interest. I am just that way. So after taking a couple weeks off and letting the plot stew, I am ready to set myself up for the challenge again. I'll give myself the buffer of the words I have written recently and start the clock for 31 days starting saturday July 1st. Hopefully by the end of that I will have my next 50,000 words and another 160 pages to add to my pile o' pages. Which I will then format and do a quick one-pass revision which will then be forced upon anyone who had the silliness in them to ask if they could read my novel.

So, here it goes (again)I'll add an arbitrary goal of 10,000 words by sunday night because it makes things interesting.

word count: 0

words to goal: 10,000

words to finish: 50,000