An illustration of the writing process

I found a gif this afternoon that illustrates the writing process better than anything I've ever seen. Here it is:

We're getting the house boxed up so we can make it pretty and sell it.

An illustration of the writing process

Proverbs du jour

Here are a few proverbs from around the world, with thanks to the wonderful folks at the Bathroom Readers' Institute:

It is not for the blind to give an opinion on colors. --Italian

Trust in God, but tie your camel. --Persian

If you cannot catch a fish, do not blame the sea. --Greek

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell. --American

Do not hit the fly that lands on the tiger's head. --Chinese

Proverbs du jour

Quick interim post

I'm in the middle of doing taxes, which, being self-employed, involves vast and annoying quantities of paperwork--every receipt, every check, every expense may go on the Schedule C, after all--so I haven't gotten to the stuff from my 50th birthday party... but I did want to pause and throw a few things on the blog.

One of the things that always happens with doing taxes is the excavation of any stray piles of paper, looking for said financial records. And as part of that, I unearth notes and miscellany. I turned up one fun item with notes from a sermon last fall that I particularly enjoyed. Caroline the minister started by recounting a quote from a newspaper:

Just to set the record straight, the article yesterday should have said "Whistler's Mother," not "Hitler's Mother" There is nothing to be gained in trying to explain how this error occurred.

In the same sermon, according to my notes, she also used a wonderful expression:

We are porcupines of intimacy: motivated but cautious.

We're getting the house ready to sell, which means that we're talking to a storage company that brings storage pods to your house, you fill them, and then they tow them away and keep them in storage until you need them. We'll be able to empty the garage and get a lot of the extraneous stuff out of a couple of rooms to make the house easier to show.

And in the course of everything, there's the eternal question of "Do I/we really need to move this particular item I'm looking at to the new house?" I'm seeing a lot of computer stuff that's not going to need to go anywhere but the church's fall fundraising garage sale.

BC has been very affectionate and rather clingy, but he's in pretty good health and seems very happy.

Well, I'm grabbing a late breakfast and then back to collating checks. It's not completely boring work; I've now got the complete run of Family Guy and so I'm working my way through the entire 4 seasons one episode at a time: tacky but deeply mutant fun.

Quick interim post

I'm 50!

Well, it's my birthday and I'm 50. I had no idea what I'd be doing or where I'd be or anything when I was 50. I'd had some ideas for what I'd be up to when the calendar rolled over, but nothing for 50. My, my... feels about the same. :)

My sisters have been plotting for a gift for me, which I'll tell you about a little later. But it's a little after 10:00pm and I'm an old fart now and so I must get to bed. I'll tell you all {yaaaaaaaaaaawn} about it tomorrow.

I'm 50!

Lots of updates!

I've got photos and stories from my trip to LA on Tuesday to give a speech and see my sister Lorraine and her daughter Addi, stray photos from several months ago of sugar gliders, and this and that as well. However, I'm dashing out the door at the moment and nothing's going to happen for a bit because it's going to be a Very Busy Weekend. Bear with me and I should have lots of things posted Real Soon Now. I swear!

Lots of updates!

What age do you act?

I'm going to be 50 next Tuesday. Quite a momentous occasion! I took an online quiz to find out what age it is that I act, just to get a perspective. Here's what came up:

You Are 26 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

What age do you act?

The Diagram Prize Winner for 2005

The winner of The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year was announced today:

People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves To Unsuspecting Bystanders and What To Do About It, by Gary Leon Hill.

The Diagram Prize "honors bizarre and odd books for their creative and unusual titles." 1980, 1989, 1995, and 2004 are particularly masterful. Past winners of this prestgious award are:

• 1978 Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
• 1979 The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution
• 1980 The Joy of Chickens
• 1981 Last chance at Love-Terminal Romances
• 1982 Population and Other Problems
• 1983 The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling
• 1984 The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
• 1985 Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts
• 1986 Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality
• 1988 Versailles: The View from Sweden
• 1989 How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
• 1990 Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual
• 1992 How to Avoid Huge Ships
• 1993 American Bottom Archaeology
• 1994 Highlights in the History of Concrete
• 1995 Reusing Old Graves
• 1996 Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
• 1997 The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
• 1998 Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw
• 1999 Weeds in a Changing World
• 2000 High Performance Stiffened Structures
• 2001 Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service
• 2002 Living with Crazy Buttocks
• 2003 The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
• 2004 Bombproof Your Horse

The Diagram Prize Winner for 2005

Senator Bill Napoli (R-S.D.)

Bill Napoli is the clown from South Dakota who likes abortion restricted to unbelievable limits. Here's a quote from his appearance on the Jim Lehrer news hour:

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books ("All of the romance, none of the bullshit") is recommending that we make Napoli's name a verb (a la lynch and boycott and santorum).

I like this. Treat him with every bit of respect he deserves.

Senator Bill Napoli (R-S.D.)

Sisyphus's Geology Website

Brian Chinn just sent me this little nugget. Wait until it's done loading.

Sisyphus's Geology Website

Postmodern Garfield

Lakini Malich's LiveJournal has an interesting interpretation of the comic strip Garfield. If you remove Garfield's thought balloons, he points out, it goes from an unfunny comic to a rather sad, poignant story about a lonely man who has wasted his life talking to his cat.

He got so many responses to the first bunch of Garfield cartoons he posted with Garfield's speech balloons excised that he posted more "chronicling Jon's spiral into depression and eventually madness. It's what Jim Davis wanted."

Postmodern Garfield

Banjo jokes

For those of you not familiar with the genré, banjos, banjo players, and banjo music in general are the inspiration for banjo jokes.

My first encounter with banjo jokes was in early December 1991. I was lunching with a few people at a client's and we were swapping jokes. One of the people said, "Oh, I've got some banjo jokes," and proceeded to whip out four of them. As a longtime banjo player, I was initially a little bristly but I thought to myself "Oh, what the hell: I tell jokes about all sorts of people myself and these are funny! And what's more, they're true!!" Since then, I've collected and told a number of banjo jokes myself.

As a matter of fact, I was doing a concert in Portland some years ago and was telling banjo jokes. I'd been whipping them off fairly fast and thick--"What's the difference between a banjo and a chainsaw? ...a motorcycle? ...an accordion?" (Look 'em up for the answers.)--and I got to "What's the difference between a banjo and an Uzi?"

The answer that I was about to rattle off was "An Uzi only repeats 40 times" (not too bad), but someone in the third row upstaged me by shouting out "The banjo clears the room faster!" Right HERE they getcha....

Banjo jokes

Latest house news, sort of

I actually shot these pictures of the house's progress this weekend, but I'm only getting around to posting them now.

The footings for the new house are poured.

Footings are poured

And the house next door, which is 7 weeks ahead of schedule, is ripping along: in the few days between the previous pictures, the builders have got the siding up. Pretty cool!

House next door, now with siding!

Latest house news, sort of