Living Reflections from a Dream

for a good romance.

And Jane Austen is the absolute best at romance, in my opinion.

If you haven't been following along with The Complete Jane Austen on PBS (for shame), you can pick it up now when the greatest of all the Jane Austen novels is broadcast once again in the greatest of all adaptations for film: Pride & Prejudice - yeah, the one with Colin Firth (meow!), the most interesting of all Austen's men.

The fun starts Sunday 2/10 and continues for 3 weeks... including the scene where Mr. Darcy sports a wet shirt.

I've got to have something until I can see Tek in his tight pants again.

is Buffalo Tom. Well Buffalo Tom and Tom Brady perhaps.

Buffalo Tom makes me so happy. If you could have seen my shit eating ear to ear grin watching them last night at TT's.. you would know I speak the truth. How amused was I by Bill Janovitz's 'This Old House' t-shirt? SO amused. Only to become more amused he announced, after he and Tom were about ready to go, but Chris was nowhere to be seen: um, we need a bass player. Uber amused! And then they played Mineral and Sodajerk (my secret dream is that they will let me sing that with them one day. If you're reading this, Buffalo Tom, I've got moves! The vocal range of a frog, but I've got moves) and my current favorite, Thrown (a song I listen to each day as I travel to work because it puts me in a calm, zen like place. I need this to face my day in the office). It was an outstanding outing.

In the background, prior to BT hitting the stage, the Pat's game is on tv. For long stretches of the game, it was a tad nerve wracking. My friend says to me: well, they have to lose sometime. To which I replied: actually, they don't. Look at this score. Tom Brady won't be having this! Just then a pass bounces out of Randy Moss' hands. Yikes. But all is redeemed on the very next, almost identical play and the Patriots continue their historical ride.

I know I had a few beers, but did I hallucinate an ad for John McCain with Curt Schilling after the game?

The Best and Worst 80's Videos...

The winners surprised me. I didn't think there was anything more cringe inducing than Don Johnson's 'Heartbeat'. And wouldn't it be fitting if 'Video Killed the Radio Star' had won best video? It was the first video ever played on MTV.. it's been all downhill from there.

As an aside: what is Safety Dance about? "We can dance, we can dance.. everybody look at your hands?" WTF? Clearly springs from the same pharmaceutical place which brought us 'Everybody Wang Chung Tonight'.

today I put the iPod on shuffle and rediscovered how mind blowingly brilliant Bob Dylan is.

It's Alright Ma (I'm only bleeding...)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

Norman Mailer

Boy, could that man write

Ever felt as if you were the last to notice something swirling around in popular culture? Happens to me all the time, but I eventually catch up. I had actually perceived the recent re-emergence of one the few 80's bands whose reunion is worthwhile...

I ask you: people who grew up in the 80s - did you know anyone who didn't own this album? And for people who are younger: do you even know what a 45 is?

I noticed their songs being used in two different commercials, which brought up a whole host of nostalgia for me. Now it's on my iPod and I'm listening to them non-stop. And apparently they were at the Cape Cod Melody Tent (scroll down).

I said "you are a lady", perhaps she said "I may be"

(after all I'm a Red Sox fan with an 11.0 game lead over the Yankees - who are below .500! - I'm in unfamiliar territory here)

BUT:

Rumor: LED ZEPPELIN To Reunite In Honor Of Late ATLANTIC Founder

link blatantly stolen from Ryan over at Geeks, Guitars & Guinness

a lazy summer afternoon spent reading...

The New Yorker Summer Fiction issue has arrived at my homestead and it makes me so happy.

I literally can't wait to read this book. Don't know why.. I lived through it, so I know what it will say.

A couple of days ago when the alarm clock went off, the song playing was "Friend of the Devil". Wow.. blast from the past. Even more surprising is that my alarm clock is set to the local college radio station (it's one of the few stations I can listen to without throwing up. 99% of new major label music blows chunks). This means that somewhere out there there is at least 1 college student who
A. Has heard of the Grateful Dead (keep in mind today's college students were born in the early to mid 80's and probably don't even remember the horrifiic Tough of Grey nightmare - something that caused ridiculous fashion trends during my school years. Co-ed Naked Lacross with dancing bears? What does that mean?)
B. Likes the Dead enough to play them on her radio show.

Could it be that just like the clothes I wore in middle school, the Dead will come back into style? I was recently in Haight Ashbury and I saw few signs of this, but why not? Every 20 years or so, they return. All I know is the song has been running through my head for 2 days now. Got 2 reasons why I cry away the lonely night....

Today the yearly Comcast rate increase notice came in the mail and it included a listing of the channels available in each package. My package has a nubmer of channels I not only wasn't aware I had, but didn't know existed. One of these channels is labeled "Word".

Word? I thought: a whole channel about vocabulary? Followed by (here comes the geek part): cool.
Unfortunately for me, when I turned on the channel, it's focus isn't on Words, it's on The Word.... of God. I doubt I'll be spending time watching Word unless they have some Davy & Goliath action. Everyone likes a good claymation from time to time.

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Amazingly, I've gone over the 50,000 word minimum. In a burst of creativity I woke up in the middle of the night and just sat down and wrote about 6,000 words. And I'm not even done, I have whole scene left that I want to add. It's so rough and needs so much editing. But I did it! I'm going to keep working on it because now it's like my little baby. But first I'm taking the weekend off and having a good time. yeah.

I should be writing... but I was writing the post below (as a rant) and now I'm watching The Brat Back: The E! True Hollywood story. Thanks for all the well wishing on the writing. I'm still trying!!

ok, I know that I have a limited amount of time to write each day and I also know that I'm behind on my word count. So what am I doing with my writing time? Playing minesweeper.. a game I haven't played in ages and used to be quite good at. Now I suck and yet I continue to play. Crazy girl.

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this weekend I made up 2000 words in my nanowrimo efforts (in part due to a plot twist idea I came up with while walking home from the gym. See the gym helps you with more than just the physical!), so I'm only 3000 words off pace. I will catch up, I will, I will. Committing to writing this much is like being in school again. You always feel like you should be doing something.. you could be thinking about what is going to happen next in the plot, or a new type of character development, but mostly it's just spending time getting the words out there.

In other news, I saw Bowling for Columbine. I have alot of thoughts, but they are not organized. I do encourage everyone to see it, because it really does make you think about alot of things that are going on in the U.S. Also, I will never live in Michigan. I don't even want to drive through.

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Every time I think of something to blog about I think: no! must save words for nanowrimo... though theoretically I could use the words twice, but it's too much effort to consider. Despite all my word scraping, I'm about 5,000 words off the pace I should be writing at to finish by 11/30. yikes. I now have an idea of a plot and some characters.. but I am afraid that the plot isn't going anywhere, but perhaps my subconscious will surprise me and come up with something good while I sleep or something.

And for those of you concerned about my hard drive - I wasn't in my home office today, so I'm sure it died while I wasn't looking or I lost all my files. But I can't think about that now because it's a long weekend... weeeeeee..

oh and when I use Blogger's spell check, it suggests manowar for nanowrimo.. ha! Of course, it doesn't consider blog a word, either.

I'm writing this morning, because I'm a writer now, you know. I'm not finding the writing so difficult. My main character is a girl, living in Boston, a little disgruntled with her job, wants to escape her cube to do bigger and better things. She's kind of a sarcastic wiseass (which gets her into trouble sometimes) who rolls her eyes frequently. Don't know who that could be - obviously my imagination has gone wild! Of course when you have no outline, no pre thought out characters or plot, one has no choice but to base their writing on what they know. It's sort of like an autobiography, except it's more the life I want to be living. I'm starting to think of it as free therapy.

I'm having some trouble settling on telling the story in the first or third person. First seems so much more personal, yet I find it easier to form the sentences in the third person, which is odd because 99% of what I write in my regular life is in the first person (as it's mainly here and emails). Maybe it's a way of distancing myself from what I'm writing. I don't know.

p.s. Blogger seems to be smoking some serious crack today. I had to change the time of this post to like 3 am to get it post because it kept making the post time 10 hours later, meaning it wouldn't show up because Blogger considered it a future post. what?

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witches and goblins and ghouls, oh my!

Today is my last day of freedom, as the NaNoWriMo begins tonight at midnight. I will not be beginning tonight at midnight.. I really am planning on getting up early and writing and seeing how far that gets me. So far I have no outline, no real plot vague concepts for characters.. basically, I got nuthin'. So I'll be winging it. Should be interesting. I fear the process will cut into my blogging time (how could it not?), but I guess if I post each days entry somewhere, there will be more to read here than ever before. The weird thing is I have this inate strong resistance to posting it.. don't know why really. Couldn't possibly be worse writing than what I blog each day and since it's fiction you would think it to be less personal. Basically, I'll share my zits with the world, but not my fiction writing... I'm not sure what that says about me. But you never know, I could reconsider. I will be posting my word counts to track my progress, though.

as if anyone who reads this on a regular basis didn't already know that. Today I signed up for NaNoWriMo*.. I had read about this awhile ago and scoffed, thinking I could never do it. But for some reason today I'm more optimistic. Basically, you write a novel in a month, it must be at least 50,000 words (an average of 1,666 words per day). It's not meant to be really serious.. it's to jump start those people who always say they want to write a book, but never actually start. To get into the process of writing, no matter how bad what you write turns out to be. Their motto is: quantity, not quality (right up my alley - ha! How much crap can I turn out on a daily basis - quite a bit!). I can feel some of the winces from the book lovers out there.. I know. I just think it might be fun to see where it takes me, not that I have any time for this. I have this image in my mind of getting up early every day and writing with a cup of tea as it gets colder and colder (yeah, right!). Wish me luck!

*they have been having some issues with their site today, but keep trying.

begins this weekend (and the bookworms go wild!). Seriously, there will be a humor writing panel featuring Dan Zevin (author of one of the funnier books I've read recently: The Day I Turned Uncool - Confessions of a Reluctant Grownup). I'm so excited..

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