Meat

The NYT had an article entitled, "I Love You, But You Love Meat" -- about "mixed" couples, like vegans and/or vegetarians living with omnivores. That headline annoyed me, made me want to come up with my own reply to it...

"I Love Meat. You're Made of Meat. Therefore, I Love You, Too"

The Last Laugh

Dave: 4
Chessica: 15

The joke's on me, eh?

Big Hair

While looking for something else (an example of chick hipster hair), I came across this picture, which reminds me of any number of chicks I went to high school with. Spousette saw my yearbook, and said "So. Much. Big. Hair!"


Too true! That's some serious big hair, there. I love that there's a can of hairspray in the background, although it diminishes some of the impact of it, like makes it obvious that she bigged it up specifically for some retro 80s party, versus it being a normal part of her lifestyle. Still, WHAT HAIR!!

Lightsabers Rule

Man, these guys do some amazing lightsaber duels. The dork factor is through the roof, but what amazing stuff; my production geek self is amazed at the cinematography on this...

Ryan v. Dorkman 1

Ryan v. Brandon

Ryan v. Dorkman 2

I always wanted a lightsaber. I really want one at my current job.

Sun and sweat

Pretty good ride in this morning, although damn is it humid! And I kept hitting little clouds of teenaged mosquitoes or midges or something that would stick to me. What a nightmare! Ptht! (me spitting out bugs)

Six more days until the trip to California. It's a wedge driven in my summer schedule -- an interruption. I'm sure my folks will love seeing the kids, and the kids ought to have fun, but the trip'll be kinda hellish, I imagine, although hopefully the novelty of it will inspire the boys to behave!

But I'm hell-bent on getting the book pitched to agents, and this week-long hiatus is an interruption for me, kind of breaks my stride.

I'm making some additional changes to the story, for a stronger ending. Nothing wholesale, just some more tweaks and tightenings of it. I decided I'm going to kill a major character in the story; normally, I avoid that, since I think it's kind of lame, like "Ohhh, somebody has to die" -- but I thought that him surviving the story sort of weakened it, weirdly enough, whereas his death would positively impact several other character groups -- like if he died, he'd provide strong motivations to three other major characters, and would propel the story forward into another realm. It just works better that way, I think. It raises the stakes of the story, and I like that.

Otherwise, if everybody survives, it's like the end of a sitcom, where they freeze-frame it with everybody smiling and laughing, and the music and credits come up. And I hate that. So, I think he will likely perish!

This quote reminds me of many people I work with...

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." — Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant

I'm an honorable savage in a dishonorable time!

My older son

You know, B1? He's a Dwarf. That is, he has a Dwarvish way about him (which is ironic, since he's very tall for his age, and skinny). Case in point...

1. He loves bridges, fences, any kind of construction
2. He loves cranes, bulldozers, and steamrollers
   
3. He loves mountains, caves, and volcanoes
4. He loves the scraping sound a shovel makes
5. He loves diamonds
6. He loves seeing paved roads
7. He once commented (when seeing some woods while on a hike): "They need to cut all these trees down and build a road."
   
8. He's very stubborn
9. He likes things to be Just So
10. He has a long memory
11. He loves building things

I'm sure there are more examples I'm forgetting, but Spousette and I are always amused by his Dwarvish ways. B2 has shown a fairly Dwarvish affinity for rocks lately -- he loves playing near rocks, checking them out. But we'll see if he's Dwarvish, or, perhaps, Gnomish. He's a scrapper, that's for sure.

As more examples occur, I'll try to remember to add them.