10,153 and counting….

How many words should I have?

Divide 50,000 by 30 and you get a little bit less than 1667, which should tell you that by the end of today, I OUGHT to be at 16,667 words.

Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen.

At least I have introduced the main characters, and they even have names now. A friend pointed out that my excerpt is DISTURBING,  and I was like, no it isn’t, it’s out of context. He said IT IS STILL DISTURBING.

Apparently I was in denial and my light, fluff of a novel is DISTURBINGLY WEIRD. Great. Or is it not great? I do not know. But as long as I write it. Whatever.

My Last Box of Tea

The Tea

I am down to the last box of my favorite tea, and this situation is causing me low level anxiety.

Another Victory for the Republicans

President Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

This ruins his career, of course. His entire presidency is in jeopardy, naturally.  It only makes him look bad, don’t you know.  He can never live up to it. He will never live it down.

Republicans scoff at the award and proclaim that what Europeans think is of no consequence anyway while at the same time whining that one of their own never seems to receive it.  This is not even a true statement  (Teddy Roosevelt), but you would think it would make them think — maybe there are reasons they are passed over.

Lord forbid that the American people might take pride in their president receiving such an award.

Summer Reading List

Summer is more than officially over. I was trying to remember all the books I read this summer, before I forget. Remember before I forget, that makes sense. Ummm

Abundance, by Sena Jeter Naslund.  I read this on vacation. The language is superb. The ending, when Marie Antoinette approaches the guillotine wrenches one’s guts. The French Revolution has been so romanticized that most people fail to realize how truly horrific it was.

The Film Club, by David Gilmour. A memoir. The man allows his teenage son to drop out of school if he promises to watch three films a week with his father. Every parent of teens ought to read this, not for advice, but to realize they are not alone.

Cupid and Diana, by Cristina Bartolomeo. The term “chick lit” was invented for novels like this. It was okay. I enjoyed the language while finding the characters and storyline involving but annoying.

Celibates & Other Lovers by Walter Keady. Picked this up over a year ago in a Chicago used book store. It is so very Irish! Each chapter could stand alone as a short story, and it does not end up where you think it will — that’s the Irish for you.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. Sometimes you just want to read something you’ve already read, and it was surprising how much of the book I had forgotten. I didn’t even remember what the “Deathly Hallows” were!

The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross. Terrible. When I got to the Mexican killers-for-hire, I gave up.

Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl by Kate McCafferty. This might just be the most depressing book I have ever read.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Set in the 17th century and during a breakout of the plague, it sounded interesting. I gave up on this one about halfway through. The characters are cardboard, annoying, erraaagh. The most interesting character is dead when the story opens. The rest of them, you kind of want to poke their eyes out. 

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. Who couldn’t love a book with this title? Set in Nazi Germany, you suffer along with Death, who is the narrator. The book meanders backward and forward in time, and the constant unusual metaphors got on my nerves at times, but there is no denying that this is an amazing book by an amazing writer.

The Giver, by Lois Lowry. My 12-year-old kept bugging me to read this novel,  a Newberry winner, and I finally did. I think it may have become one of my favorite books of all time. It’s a children’s book, of course, or young adult at most, but I found myself wondering, How could any child be sophisticated enough to understand this? I don’t claim to, myself. Its themes run bone deep. What a book to illustrate the beauty of simplicity in language.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen. Awww! I have a grin on my face just at the memory of reading it! My favorite of hers so far. I still have Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Lady Susan to go.

That’s all I can recall, for now. Oh, I did start reading Much Ado About Nothing but got distracted by other things. Currently I’m reading The Lovely Bones and The God of Small Things (so far it’s weird.)

EDIT: I remembered a couple I forgot:

My Lobotomy, a memoir by Howard Dully. If you think lobotomy patients become little more than animated carrots, you are wrong. This book is chilling. You think government-run health care would be bad? Check out what this doctor got away with!

All I Want for Christmas Is a Vampire by Kerrelyn Sparks. As silly as it sounds. My mother gave it to me, so I was obligated.

EDIT again

Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech. Another children’s book.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

John Keats (1795–1821).
 
La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,     
  Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake, 
  And no birds sing. 

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!     
  So haggard and so woe-begone? 
The squirrel’s granary is full, 
  And the harvest’s done. 

III.
I see a lily on thy brow 
  With anguish moist and fever dew,      
And on thy cheeks a fading rose 
  Fast withereth too. 
 
IV.
I met a lady in the meads, 
  Full beautiful—a faery’s child, 
Her hair was long, her foot was light,      
  And her eyes were wild. 
 
V.
I made a garland for her head, 
  And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; 
She look’d at me as she did love, 
  And made sweet moan.        
 
VI.
I set her on my pacing steed, 
  And nothing else saw all day long, 
For sidelong would she bend, and sing 
  A faery’s song. 
 
VII.
She found me roots of relish sweet,       
  And honey wild, and manna dew, 
And sure in language strange she said— 
  “I love thee true.” 
 
VIII.
She took me to her elfin grot, 
  And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,       
And there I shut her wild wild eyes 
  With kisses four. 
 
IX.
And there she lulled me asleep, 
  And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide! 
The latest dream I ever dream’d      
  On the cold hill’s side. 
 
X.
I saw pale kings and princes too, 
  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; 
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci 
  Hath thee in thrall!”        
 
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam, 
  With horrid warning gaped wide, 
And I awoke and found me here, 
  On the cold hill’s side. 
 
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here,        
  Alone and palely loitering, 
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, 
  And no birds sing.

…And also in Vermont!

Yep, you read it here first, folks. Well, probably not, but. Yay, Vermont! Vermont does not have a residency requirement either, so… so much for all the New Yorkers taking a trip to the midwest. Unless they decide to honeymoon here. 

Only thing is, they’ll have more of a wait if they decide to be married in Vermont. It does not go into effect till September. In Iowa, you can get your license on April 24 and be married three days later.

Palm Sunday

It is with some trepidation that I prepare to leave for Palm Sunday services. Rarely can I last through the entire thing without crying. Palm Sunday is just so emotional to me. The hymn (which counts as poetry) which always gets to me, as much as I remember of it, and I don’t have time to look it up right now:

All glory, laud and honor to thee redeemer king,

To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring….

New Camera

I went ahead and bought a new camera. Same brand, etc, but only about half the size of my year-and-a-half old camera. Here is the first image taken with it: the sunrise reflecting on the frozen lake.

 

The broken camera? I gave it to my daughter, which, in a way, is rewarding her for having broken it. Hey, I never claimed to be a good parent.

The camera works (sort of)

You can still take a picture… you just can’t see what you’re taking it of or what you took it of until you connect to a computer.

Snowfall

The dots? Those are snowflakes!

The Day the Earth Stunk Still

Arrrrghaarrrgharrrghgggrrrraaaaahggggghhhhh.

This is the sound of people who can write good dialogue dying. Because apparently they have all died. Anyway, none of them were involved with this film.  “Gort! Klaatu barada nikto,” the classic line, is retained, but the affecting scene where the scared-out-of-her-mind widow, huddled among toppled folding chairs, barely manages to repeat the words in time is nonexistent. 

This film is so bad that I cannot even think of anything clever to say about how  bad it is. Gort the robot is not scary enough as he was; they had to make him thirty feet tall and able to inexplicably transform into a swarm of all-consuming flies.

Some think that Keanu Reeves cannot act. I disagree. I assert that he can act; he simply chooses not to sometimes, as in this film.  One person disagreed with me saying, “He’s supposed to be a robot!” Eek, no. Klaatu is not a robot, Gort is.

Long review short: rent the original.