Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Test

2013-05-25T12:09:00.002-04:00

Ignore this post; I'm just trying to see if something's working right.

Tired writer is tired....

2013-05-25T11:26:00.001-04:00

Thinking hard, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

Every so often -- a couple of times, every six weeks or so -- I have a really early work start at The Store. This is to do PM* work on refrigeration cases that is best done when the respective departments aren't yet open for the day's business. The tasks are enjoyable, and in truth, the atmosphere of The Store in the wee hours is kind of nice: not too many people are there, the place is being worked by the Night Crew (which is a group of folks I rarely get to interact with), and there's a kind-of perverse sense of satisfaction that comes with having a pretty important job done before the rest of the world is waking up.

The problem with the 3:50 am waking time, though, is that later on the day, when I try to write, my brain is pretty much shifting into "Me no put words in pretty strings" mode. This is inconvenient, because I refuse to set aside my quota or my general mission in life of Never a day without a line. So I spend a writing session doing a lot of staring thoughtfully at the computer screen, often rubbing my forehead because that's what we Humans do when we're trying to think up stuff.

I got just shy of 700 words done yesterday. Not great, but at least I didn't goose-egg it, either. Today, I'm operating on a full-night's sleep, two cups of coffee, and I'll do some other routine-breaking stuff that always helps get the juices flowing. Back to SPACE!!!

Zap! Pow!!

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

2013-05-24T15:22:00.002-04:00

I've had this song in my heart today.

21 Reasons You Think You Don't Have Time To Write

2013-05-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

Stolen from Tumblr. I'm going to bold the ones that I can definitely plead as 'guilty'.

1. You are letting people tell you that you should be doing other things with your time.

2. You can’t live with the level of clean that your family accepts as normal.

3. You haven’t decided to treat your writing seriously and so no one around you treats it seriously, either.

4. You haven’t made yourself a writing space.

5. You haven’t realized that you need help.

6. You do what is urgent rather than what is necessary.

7. You don’t let your kids and other people solve their own problems.

8. You think that someday you will have more time for writing.

9. You are spending time doing things you actually don’t care about.

10. You are actually using distractions as an excuse not to write.

11. You are terrified of writing, of actually sitting down and putting yourself on the page.

12. You are too busy criticizing the best selling books that you are reading to write something better.

13. You don’t know what to do with a blank page.

14. You don’t know how to turn off your internal editor.

15. You talk a good game, but you don’t play it.

16. You need to do a little planning and research before you start.

17. You don’t actually like writing. You like having written. (Join the club.)

18. You need to write the first line of the next chapter before leaving for the day.

19. You need to spend time remembering what it is you love about writing.

20. You have convinced yourself that you need 2 hours to write and don’t know how to use the 20 minute chunks you actually have.

21. You don’t have notebooks scattered through the house, including in the bathroom, to jot down inspiration.

Now, I'm guilty of #21, but I don't really jot down much. Maybe I should!

The one that took me the longest time to defeat was number 20. I don't think in terms of time per day, just in terms of words. But it was important for me to realize that carving out two uninterrupted hours or writing a day just isn't going to happen, until I manage to get to the point where I can write full time. Will I ever get there? I hope so. For now, I'm just going to write my arse off. And if twenty minutes is all I have, then hey -- that's 300 words or so, if I'm on my game. If not, it's 200 or so.

Write when you can...and be liberal in your definition of "when you can"!

Something for Thursday

2013-05-23T07:36:00.001-04:00

Here is "Death of a Nightingale", by Tangerine Dream. From the album Turn of the Tides.

Two Hundred Years of Wagner

2013-05-22T20:18:00.001-04:00

Today is Richard Wagner's 200th birthday.

The overture to Tannhauser, my favorite of Wagner's overtures. There's a sense of epic adventure and emotion here that amazes me every time I hear it.

From Lohengrin -- my favorite Wagner opera -- the Prelude to Act I and "Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral". Wagner's reputation is often one of bombast and thick, dense orchestration. This music is as delicate as anything.

The overture to Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. Wagner's other main reputation is one of unrelenting seriousness -- but this is as sunny as anything you'll hear by anyone else.

The Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. The emotional payoff here is one of the most staggering I know in all of music, anywhere, in any genre.

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

2013-05-22T15:31:00.002-04:00

What's your 'limit' on social media sites? Not as in 'How do you limit how personal you get', but...what's a prominent social media site that you know of but don't use because you're on enough already? I have a LinkedIn account, but I almost never use it (and in truth, I don't even know what it's for or why I should use it), and I just deleted an account on something called SchoolFeed because it wasn't what I thought it was going to be and saw little use for what seemed like a Facebook-clone for people who attended the same school.

(And sorry for the lack of posting this week...downtime has been a bit tougher to come by than usual, and the novel comes first!)

Finally! A Flickr app for Android!

2013-05-20T21:13:00.001-04:00

Finally! A Flickr app for Android!, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I've been waiting for this. Hooray!

Past tenses and such

2013-05-20T07:43:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum has a post on the IRS scandal, which doesn't interest me all that much (this whole 'scandal' strikes me as everybody chasing the wrong bouncing ball). What does interest me is this sentence at the very end:

They are among the first in what is quickly becoming a whole new subgenre: the story about how the Cincinnati office of the IRS is completely and totally FUBARed.

Here's my thing: Isn't FUBAR already past-tense? Can something really be FUBARed, when the -ed suffix has already been used in the F part of the FUBAR acronym? Seems to me that FUBAR covers all bases, in terms of tense:

"That's gonna be so FUBAR!"

"Wow, that is really FUBAR."

"That whole thing was just so FUBAR."

Anyway....

Making Fun of Benedict Cumberbatch

2013-05-18T09:36:00.001-04:00

I'm stealing this from Tumblr.

No, there is no point to this. Yes, I'm going back into my writing cave.

Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy

2013-05-17T07:40:00.002-04:00

Heckuva lot going on this weekend, folks. I'll barely be able to scratch out time to write, much less post anything here. Keep faith! Content will one day appear here again, THIS I SWEAR BY THE BLOOD OF -- well, that's too weird. Back to the mine shafts!

Something for Thursday

2013-05-16T07:32:00.000-04:00

I heard this on the way to work, and hey, you never know when the occasion might strike for a good old pompous British march. So here is Crown Imperial by Sir William Walton. Stiff upper lip and all that, lads!

Cheerio, chaps!

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

2013-05-15T07:37:00.003-04:00

Does it bug you when song lyrics make no sense? And when they don't, do you try to figure out a meaning for them?

Return to Earth

2013-05-14T20:43:00.000-04:00

Astronauts returning from the ISS looks like this:

Well done!

(Sorry for the lack of a whole lot of content this week...there's a lot going on at Casa Jaquandor this week, so my focus is on keeping the pedal to the metal on Princesses II: A Clash of Princesses.)

This is a bookshop!

2013-05-13T20:33:00.001-04:00

(via)

Sentential Links!

2013-05-13T18:39:00.001-04:00

It's time! For Links! And overuse of Exclamation Points!!!!!

:: Ending a campaign is a difficult process. One of my games is coming to a close within a month or so, and I'm actually extremely nervous. This current campaign is the final one of three that have taken three years to come to fruition, and now that the end is nigh, I have to worry about making it truly epic and worth the investment my players have put into it.

Part of the trepidation comes from the inevitability of The Big Reveal, in which a secret that I've hidden clues to throughout the campaign is unleashed, leaving the players hopefully with minds blown. Pretty much the entire game has been leading to this moment from level one all the way to level twenty. How does one reveal a game changing secret without making the players feel betrayed or cheated, and how does one end a campaign three years in the making? (One question I've considered over the course of the "video games as art" debate is: what about non video games? The story beats of a really well-run and well-designed game can become a HUGE part of one's story DNA.)

:: Yankee Candle is overrated. (Ayup. But then, I pretty much like candles more for light than for scent.)

:: Sidebar #1: Did you see where Melissa Joan Hart is trying to get a project funded on Kickstarter? And here’s her big incentive: She’ll follow you on Twitter for a year. Oh, be still my heart! You and Melissa will be BFF’s! Every day she’ll go on Twitter to see how you’re coming on that dress you’re making for the prom. OR… she agrees to follow 20,000 people and never once looks at her Twitter page. Which do you think is more likely? (Huh? Of what possible use to me would be having Melissa Joan Hart as a Twitter follower? But then, I'm incredibly ill-attuned to things like who follows me on Twitter or on the blog. When people unfollow me, it often takes me months to realize it, if I ever do. So as an incentive, I...simply do not get this, at all.)

:: When some guy loses his life savings playing a carnival game, you just say, “Hunh?” When a government ministry lays down millions to buy pixie dust, you have to say “Wow!”

:: Well, one of the things I listed on the update was to go Somewhere Else and write a book. I’ve thought about this so often–whenever I’m in a new city for more than a few days. Writing books is the great activity of my life. Some people look at place and imagine the club scene–I imagine what it would be like to write a book there. For me, the process of writing is such an otherspace–out of my own everyday and into the unknown and odd and untethered to such things as like, a normal workday clock or regular meals.

:: I was asked to write the following quiz up by my boss, to distribute to the new hires. (Note to self: do this quiz.)

:: Back in the Spring of 1980, when I was 16 years-old, my family took a vacation trip to Washington D.C. with a side trip to the Amish country of Pennsylvania. I was particularly excited to visit the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum because I knew that the original U.S.S. Enterprise model, used in the filming of Star Trek, was on display there. Everything else about that trip was pretty much of secondary importance to me. What really mattered was getting to see that iconic starship with my own eyes.

:: I absolutely adore this, and can't wait to hang it up. Anne may not be Dale Arden, and god knows I'm a long way from anything resembling Flash Gordon... but she awakens many of the same yearnings this painting always has. I'm thankful she's still standing with me in this strange future land in which we've found ourselves... (Wow! I want one!)

:: I do know enough about myself and this farm to know this is a phase. And all this fear and frustration and deadlines and bill calls will ebb and flow away. Right now I need to focus on the work, and working a little harder to make ends meet, but it'll all be fine. Whenever I feel panic wash over me I just sit outside on my porch and take a deep breath or seven with my eyes closed. I tell myself when I open them I will be surrounded by a farm I built by hand, through nothing but scrappy willm hard work, and the kindness and devotion of a readership all over the world. And when I open my eyes the proof is all around me. It's in the waddling ducklings parading to the well. It's in the sounds of Joeseph the sheep on the hillside. It's in the flickering ears of Merlin, the toss of his mane. It's in a dog with a sore paw, and a house with apple blossoms crowning a rack of antlers, and in the heart of the girl breathing slow on a porch.

Good things are on the way, and the only way out is through. (I love that: The only way out is through. I'll need to remember that.)

More next week!

This man can NOT be allowed to return to Earth.

2013-05-12T20:17:00.000-04:00

I just don't have the mental capacity to process the awesomeness of this.

Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome

2013-05-12T09:55:00.000-04:00

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: The video may be funny, but believe me, kids -- there's nothing funny about Bitchy Resting Face. I am a sufferer of the male equivalent, "Angry Resting Face", in that my facial features seem to default to an expression that society has decided is equivalent to SMOLDERING RAGE. I wish I had a nickel for every time somebody walked by when I was just standing there and said, "Wow, you look like you're ready to rip someone's head off!", when what I'm actually thinking is, "Do I want turkey or roast beef on my sub today?"

There's a very odd societal thing we have going on right now where any facial expression that's not a grin is interpreted to indicate a negative emotional state. It would be mildly annoying, but that gonzo assumption can have some unfortunate effects in the professional world.

:: I always wonder just what we'll do in Buffalo if we ever get the waterfront developed, because that will eliminate one of the three major topics of discussion around here, leaving us stuck with the Bills (ugh) and the Sabres (double-ugh). But, over the last couple years, things are really starting to happen down there, which is nice. And in addition to the actual development that's underway, we have also seen a very welcome reduction in the amount of gonzo ideas being tossed about for the waterfront. I, for one, am thrilled to see the Era Of Goofy Buffalo Waterfront Proposals come to an end!

Only...not everybody got that memo, because someone cooked up a really detailed idea for cable cars on the waterfront. And not San Francisco-style cable cars, either -- we're talking about the little ones that hang from an overhead cable. Like this:

What's more, this isn't envisioned as a tourist attraction or 'something to do on the waterfront'. This person actually wants this cable car system to be part of Buffalo's commuter infrastructure. People who work downtown would drive to the cable car station and ride the cable car to their downtown job, or to a Metro Rail station so they might then get to their job. Cable car systems of this type -- or 'aerial trams' -- aren't the fastest moving of transportation systems, so how they'd be embraced by commuters is hard to imagine.

The article concludes with this: "Even our long-held hopes of rapid transit to Niagara Falls and the Airport might one day be possible for far less money than expanding MetroRail!" Did I read that right? An aerial tram from Buffalo to Niagara Falls, which is 25 miles away? Aerial trams don't tend to go much over 30 mph, so are we really expecting people to sit in an aerial tram for an hour to get to a place they could drive to in less than half that?

Now, I like cable cars/aerial trams. I like riding the ones at amusement parks. And I'm sure I'll have a thrilling time riding one if I ever vacation in Switzerland. But as a major part of a city's transportation infrastructure? A flat city like Buffalo that already has tons of roads, surface parking never more than a block away downtown, and declining population?

Oy.

Oh well. More next week!

It's all her fault.

2013-05-12T09:26:00.001-04:00

This is what my mother wrought!, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

If my mother hadn't instilled in me a freakish love of books, Casa Jaquandor wouldn't look like this.

(Well, that's not entirely accurate...it's not her fault that my filing system is based on the age-old concept of the "Teetering Stack of Doom". That's all me. But believe me, the first thing I'm gonna buy with the money from the inevitable movie deal for Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title)? Shelves!)

Everything I need to celebrate John Scalzi's birthday!

2013-05-10T16:43:00.001-04:00

ScalziFest, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

Happy birthday to a guy of whom I am eternally jealous and for whom I wish a swift, swift descent into madness and doom! (But not for a while yet. I do enjoy his writing, after all. So I hope he gets another 6-12 books done...but after that? DOOM!!!!!)

Tales in the Photo

2013-05-09T13:22:00.004-04:00

OK, there's a photo making the rounds on the Internet via various sports fansites and gossip whatevers. It's of a nicely-dressed blond woman making an effort-filled obscene gesture in the face of one of the opposing team's players at an NBA game. (I'll put this below the fold, because it is an obscene gesture.)

Post continues...into the rabbit hole we go....

Something for Thursday

2013-05-09T07:39:00.003-04:00

In honor of the passing of special effects genius Ray Harryhausen, here's one of his many enduring effects: the evil dueling skeleton from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

National Coconut Cream Pie Day?

2013-05-08T14:45:00.001-04:00

A Marie Callender's Coconut Cream Pie, prior to dispatch into my face, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

Apparently it's today. National Pie Day, Pi Day, and now this. I miss all the cool stuff!

[pouts]

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

2013-05-08T07:38:00.002-04:00

Someone is visiting you for a few days, and they have never been anywhere near your part of the state/country/planet. What's one thing that you make ABSOLUTELY SURE they see or do before they head back home?

A Vignette

2013-05-07T20:25:00.002-04:00

She didn't look elegant at first, with her enormous purse on her shoulder and her white NorthFace fleece jacket. She wore her shoulder-length hair in a tousled style, and her glasses were slightly off-angle. But her lips were rose-red, she had solid control of that purse, and her white jacket was immaculate.

There was a bookcase between where she was standing and where I was working at one of the tables, and she stood there, against that bookcase, looking around the library as if she was supposed to be meeting someone. But there was something nervous about the way she was doing it: she was looking around quickly, right to left to right to left, drumming the fingers of her left hand on the bookcase as she did so. I wondered what she was so nervous about. Was she having a clandestine meeting with an old lover, perhaps? What an odd place to do that – the public library where just several feet away was a guy pounding away on his Macbook, and two old guys sitting by the magazines talking about their respective health troubles.

But as she drummed her fingers on the top of the bookcase, I could see that she wore no ring on any of her fingers.

She decided that she had arrived before her expected party, and opted to sit down. So she came around the bookcase, into the area where the tables were. She had on a skirt of brilliant crimson, the most wonderful red ever. Somehow the skirt matched her lips exactly. She put the purse on the table next to mine and took off the white Northface jacket. The skirt was actually the bottom of a dress, the whole of which was that gorgeous red. The V-neck didn't plunge too deep, and she wore a necklace of wooden beads that rattled ever so softly – had we been anyplace other than the library, I wouldn't have heard them. She slung her jacket onto a chair and started unpacking her purse.

The beautiful red dress was also a maternity dress.

She pulled out a purple plastic water bottle, and her keys which hung from a long lanyard. She also pulled out a spiral-bound notebook and an iPad. Her nervousness from before disappeared entirely, which struck me as odd – if she could set that feeling aside so easily, why had she been nervous in the first place? She sat down and went right to work, taking absolutely no notice of anyone around her. She alternated between tapping the touchscreen of her iPad – only using her slender index finger – and jotting notes in her notebook with a number-two pencil. I returned to my writing.

Minutes later, her awaited party showed up. A teenaged girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen. The girl plunked her bookbag down on the table. "Hi!" the woman said, looking up and giving the girl a radiant smile.

"Hi," said the girl. "OMG, you look amazing!"

"Thank you!" said the woman. "How was your break?"

"It was OK. We didn't go anywhere."

"Sometimes that's the best kind of vacation. So, where were we?"

The girl pulled a thick textbook from her bookbag. "The Depression just started."

"Bummer!" The woman laughed. "All right, let's get into it. Can you tell me some of the causes of the Depression?"

Ah, I thought. That was it: she was a tutor. There tended to be a lot of them in the after-school hours at the library, and we were now sliding into that time of day. Their conversation delved into the Depression, and my attention returned to my writing. I spared one last look at the pregnant woman in red before I left, though.

Why had she been so nervous at the start?