Locked Down in the Bunker

8 Comments / Nattering / By /

So, here we are at AWP. Kelly, Gavin, Carolyn, Jed and Christopher forcibly made me stay up until 3 a.m. last night — using the power of white wine and presents — long after the more sensible among us had gone off to bed. I’m not complaining, I’m just marveling that the rest of them are up Doing Stuff, while I’m waiting for my tiny headache to vamoose. Of course, our scene is also complicated by a massive catastrophe on OUR INTERSTATE EXIT. Early this morning, there were sirens galore and it sounded like an airplane was taking off from the parking lot every five minutes; turns out it was emergency vehicles and news helicopters (still out there) and the interstate is closed until noonish.

Here’s the thing I have to say so far based on a very limited amount of time spent at the actual conference hotel last night:

There are some seriously questionable and seriously bad fashion choices going on in America’s creative writing programs and English departments. I don’t want to hear another word about how people at science fiction conventions dress. Ever. Again. It’d be one thing if people just looked like they were auditioning for the part of Ignatius J. Reilly or Katie Holmes in Wonder Boys, but the fondness of the vest I’ve seen on display is truly frightening.

Until things are a go here, I propose you go read Bennett Madison’s expose of Tyra Banks.

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Wednesday Hangovers

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VeronicaMarsTalk

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And tonight I won’t be watching:

Papa’s Cabin. Veronica (Kristen Bell) catches Tim Foyle (guest star James Jordan, "Without A Trace"), breaking into Mars Investigations. Meanwhile, Keith (Enrico Colantoni) questions Mindy O’Dell (guest star Jamie Ray Newman, "E Ring"), finally making her believe that Hank Landry (guest star Patrick Fabian, "Joan of Arcadia") killed her husband, and Keith arrests Landry in the middle of a class. Later, Wallace (Percy Daggs III) notices Logan (Jason Dohring) and Parker (Julie Gonzalo) enjoying a nice lunch together. Francis Capra, Ryan Hansen and Chris Lowell also star. Michael Fields directed the episode written by John Enbom.

Do we never get another episode written by Rob Thomas?

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Oh Woe: Time & Sanctions

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Burningtypewriter

So, usually I hate maxims and wise little sayings, etcetera ad infinitum, but I make an exception for Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project because I often find myself nodding my head at her posts. The other day, she posted a list of the secrets she’d learned in adulthood that changed her life once she figured them out. One in particular stuck out to me, since I was in a fit of multi-day procrastination:

What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE.

I decided I was going for force myself to put this into practice. The three things that offer the most instant rewards when I do them every day, but which I have the hardest time actually being consistent about are: 1) WRITING, 2) eating and drinking sensibly, and 3) exercising. Pretty basic stuff, right?

Since the spreadsheet for a novel doesn’t actually appeal to me, I made a Word document with some tables in it — because I want some sort of spreadsheet, even if not one specifically for my book. I put the quote from Gretchen at the top and made a table with numbered entries for 1, 2, and 3 with Yes or No check boxes for each. Each day, I have to honestly assess whether I did all three of these things. If the answer is NO, then I don’t get to watch any TV the next day, not even if it’s a Veronica Mars day or an Office day or whatever. (Two days a week, I am allowed to take off from any one of these things without sanction but must still do two of them.)
(More after the cut.)

…

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Heroes Yammer

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And tonight we have:

Company Man. Matt Parkman and Ted Sprague arrive in Texas in search of answers and take HRG and his family hostage. More is revealed about Mr. Bennet, the agency for which he works, and how he found Claire.

And the West Coast Avengers take center stage…

p.s. I’m really behind on email, but intend to catch up _before_ AWP.

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Literary Devices of the Mind

3 Comments / Science Project / By /

Researchers can’t find any examples of repressed memory in literary works going back further than 200 years:

In an unusual study, a group of psychiatrists and literary scholars, led by Harrison Pope of Harvard Medical School, recently argued that the psychiatric disorder known as dissociative amnesia (often called repressed memory) is a "culture-bound syndrome" — a creation of Western culture sometime in the 19th century.

Pope pointed out that Shakespeare, Homer and other pre-19th-century writers show numerous characters suffering from other psychiatric disorders: the disjointed thinking that we call schizophrenia, or the persistent sadness that marks depression. Because art draws its inspiration from life, Pope said, this shows that those disorders have been around forever.

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Sunday Hangovers

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