Archive for
October, 2005
October 14th, 2005
Remember back in August when I wrote how my friend made annoying comments implying that the Red Cross was somehow communist or whatever. Mind you this friend is one of those rhetoric spewing Republicans who are always talking about how people should take care of themselves and not live off of government money, etc.
It occurred to me last night that he said this about a week before Hurricane Katrina hit. Of all my friends, he probably lost the least but he was the first to get his grubby hands on the Red Cross money and aid and
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Tags: hypocrisy, Red Cross, Hurricane Katrina
October 14th, 2005
Cross-posted at Nano Maine, Maine’s NaNoWriMo Blog.
O.K. I’m in.
I think.
I tried Nano last year and didn’t get very far. I seem to suffer perpetually from writer’s block. I’m sure there’s some psychological explanation like I’m afraid of imperfection and afraid of people mocking my art and I’m lazy. 
Really, I just felt overwhelmed, like I do know, and a little desperate for an idea for a plot that goes more than one sentence. Heh.
So, I’ve got a couple of tentative ideas.
I could write a space western-type thing; maybe fanfic for Firefly/Serenity. I think fanfic still fits in the
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Tags: NaNoWriMo, writing
October 14th, 2005
O.K. This is really starting to annoy me. When my computer comes back from hibernation/sleep mode, it always goes to a splash screen where I must select my session before “waking up” completely. Since I’m the only one who uses the computer and thus there’s only ever one session running on it…how can I make it bypass this annoying feature?
Tags: none
October 14th, 2005
- Marigold’s transluscent rainbow-colored wings twitched anxiously as the cleaning fairy eyed the pigstye before her.
- Julie was damned perky if you woke her in the middle of the night — a complete contrast to her regular waking hours.
- Jana resisted the urge to shove that whole disgusting jelly donut into his secret spewing mouth.
- Established horror writer, Treaux Kincaid suddenly realized she hadn’t a clue about real vampires.
- “Uh,” was all Craig could think so say.
Tags: writing, Friday Five 1rst Sentences
October 12th, 2005
I went to see my new neurologist today.
Personally, I hadn’t been interested in acquiring a new neurologist since moving to Maine. It seemed to me that they were pretty useless as the two I saw in New Orleans never really figured anything out and didn’t seem to run any tests and one of them dropped me because he said there was nothing else he could do for me.
Anyway, the new GP wanted me to go because my migraines and headaches are getting more frequent and painful again, but my blood pressure is staying gloriously normal.
So, I went.
And when I
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Tags: migraine, botox
October 11th, 2005
O.K. I love Firefly and I want Joss Whedon to succeed in making enough money from the movie to get the “O.K.” from Universal Pictures to make the planned two sequels, but there’s a limit to how far I’d go. I mean, I went openning night to see Serenity and I may go see it again if it’s still in theaters this weekend, but I admit there are definitely bigger fans than me.
Like, for instance, this unknown man who bought 320 Serenity tickets on September 30th and then stood out front of
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Tags: Firefly, Serenity
October 11th, 2005
Last night I went to my first group therapy session. I was told by one of the other ladies that I appear to be harboring quite a bit of anger on quite a lot of subjects. Most notibly, I’m angry that I lost my job and “had” to move to Maine.
Now I realize that I’ve been harboring some bitterness about how it all happened, but I guess I never realized that I am really angry about having been fired, about the struggle to find a new job, about having “had” to move to Maine.
- bitterness
- Difficult or distasteful
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Tags: therapy
October 10th, 2005
I spoke with El yesterday. She painted a rather grim picture of the apartment she used to share with PW. The images she painted were similar to photographs seen all over the news and net.
The higher parts of her first floor apartment had a watermark 4″ from the ceiling, but most of the apartment was lower than that and was completely under water. Those rooms are in danger of having a sagging ceiling falling in. She rescued PW’s jewelry by breaking through the back of PW’s dresser which the water had wedged somehow and then breaking
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Tags: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans
October 8th, 2005
Remember that guy who was encouraging U.S. soldiers to post pictures of war dead on the Internet in exchange for access to porn on his website?
Well, he’s been arrested.
But not for what you think.
Christopher Michael Wilson, a former police officer and owner of the sickening website, has had 300 obscenity-related charges filed against him by Polk County in Florida, but none of them involve the graphic war-scene images posted by soldiers; they’re all about the sexual content of his website.
Late last week, U.S. Army officials said they could not confirm whether photographs on Wilson’s Web site, presumably showing
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Tags: Iraq, Afghanistan, American soldiers
October 8th, 2005
Through a thread on NaNoWriMo’s forums, I found some nifty websites for character creation and design and thought I’d share.
Fiction Writer’s Character Chart — This is a PDF file that someone was nice enough to upload and share. The original html version is here. I really like this one a lot and am going to try it out this weekend.
The Scriptorium has a whole toolbox of writing but here’s a brief sketch worksheet and here’s a more detailed “biography” worksheet.
This one was created for the purpose of designing characters for roleplaying
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Tags: writing, character
October 8th, 2005
This is Izzy’s introductory post in the PBeM I joined.
Who: Izzy
Where: cockpit of the Tianlong
She’d crashed once. During the war.
That had been an unpleasant experience to say the least. Her fighter had taken an unlucky hit that had knocked out part of her propulsion system and she’d been sent spinning toward the unwelcoming view of a mountainside.
This was worse.
Cold fingers touched her forehead and came away with a sticky, wet substance. Green eyes tried to focus but it occurred to her that there was nothing to focus on. Not when her eyes were closed. Slowly,
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Tags: writing, fiction, Firefly, Serenity, Fan Fiction
October 8th, 2005
I wrote the following to be a writing sample for an audition for a Firefly PBeM game. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had to audition for a game. Usually I go on reputation because I usually know someone. Izzy is an original character, an ex-ace fighter pilot with a history with both the Alliance and the Independents which left her liking neither.
Izzy pulled her Stetson down low over her brow as she settled into the back corner of the hole in the wall bar. The bottle of whiskey sat on the unfinished table
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Tags: writing, Firefly, Serenity, Fan Fiction, fiction
October 7th, 2005
- I just discovered that I can subscribe to The Signal podcast via iTunes. Shiny.
- I’ve felt nauseated all day and it has nothing to do with politics.
- The new maple coffeecake muffin at Starbucks is so sickeningly sweet, it made me feel ill the moment I opened the bag.
- I’m all signed up to try NaNoWriMo again. Hopefully I’ll make it past the first few days this year.
- I’m toying with writing a vampire/hunter story in the midst of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
- I’m still annoyed at PW but now for even more trivial things. She’s just slipping into
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Tags: none
October 7th, 2005
“Religion plays the role of direction, enlightenment, and offering advice. It should not be dragged into the political process, as this diminishes its sacredness. Religion should not be politicized.”
– Ayatollah Hussein Ismael Al Sadr
Tags: politics, religion, Quote of the Day
October 6th, 2005
I find it amusing that less than a month ago, when Democrats were agonizing over the nomination of now Chief Justice John Roberts and they were nitpicking over important questions like Robert’s positions on the woman’s right to choose and minority rights and all the big Supreme Court issues, Republicans were indignantly telling Democrats to just sit down and vote “yes” and let the President have his chosen man.
Now just weeks later, the President’s second nominee is out there and the conservative Right aren’t so sure about where she stands on those same important issues and now they’re agonizing over
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Tags: politics, Women's Rights, Supreme Court, Democrats, Republicans
October 6th, 2005
Well, well, well…it appears that Bush is losing his hold over Congress. At the very least it appears that some Republicans in Congress are starting to think for themselves or are maybe listening to the increasingly disenchanted majority.
There’s a growing alarm in both parties over the mistreatment of prisoners in the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay and yesterday, in defiance of the White House, 46 Senate Republicans joined forces with 43 Senate Democrats and 1 Independent Senator in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects, suspected insurgents, and the like.
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Tags: George W. Bush, Congress, Republicans, Middle East, Guantanamo Bay, torture, John McCain
October 5th, 2005
I spoke with PW last night. Apparently she is flying back to the states the Saturday with the boyfriend who’s now a fiance to try to salvage what’s left of her stuff.
She said that El told her that the water mark was 4 inches from the ceiling, which is not good. Also the ceiling apparantly is dripping and El is afraid it’s going to fall in before they get their stuff. It’s none of my business but I don’t understand why anyone is letting El walk around in the mold and toxins considering she supposedly has a
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Tags: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans
October 5th, 2005
Well, I think I’m calmed down enough to actually talk about “the dream” I had the other night.
It started off fairly normal as far as dreams go. I was apparently working for the NYPD on the special crimes unit with the new Law & Order: Criminal Intent cast. Except instead of 2 man teams, they were 3 man teams, but mostly I stayed at the office and sat in on the interrogations. I was completely obsessed with rearranging the furniture in the office I shared with Officer Logan and someone else.
The dream turned dark, as dreams
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Tags: none
October 4th, 2005
I’m going to take Britt Hume’s argument to heart and I hope he’ll understand when I say that, if you wanted to clear cable of about 75% of the bullshit spewed into the national debate, you could just fire-bomb Fox News headquarters. You’d probably have to set up a couple firing points outside with a rifle to make sure none of the on-air talent survived.
Of course, that would be morally reprehensible. [“It’s All Good If You Say It’s Wrong (Nitpicker)”]
Tags: Quote of the Day, Fox News
