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- I have an unfortunate tendency to overrely on plot, actually stomping down on character moments in order to hit the, and I quote, "essential" elements of the plot I'm aiming for. Not good. Must unshackle myself from the need to get to that final sentence where it's supposed to be.
- As competent prose writers, we tend to be so inside our head that we forget to explain what's happening in there to an outsider. The number one thing I heard was, "I'm not sure I get what's happening here...." Be just a little more explicit about the fiddly bits than you think you should be (but then the danger is overwriting, which I may have overcompensated into).
- I am constitutionally incapable of being in the same room with people when they are critiquing my manuscript. Every pen-stroke upon the page is like a little sword-swipe at my heart. I have to leave the room.
- Being around writers who work in entirely different thought processes as they create is amazing. I plot. Others work purely on instinct, getting to the end of the story without a single scrap of planning. Others lay down the symbolism they're trying to hit before they can continue. Others have to walk around, storing up visual imagery to lay down 'pon the page. It's so neat, getting these little windows into other people's heads.
- Kelly Link is a warm, wonderful human being who I adore. That said, when she couldn't remember precisely how old she was, we had to Wikipedia her to tell her. This amuses me to no end.
- Eighteen very good writers all looking at the same manuscript? It's funny how much disagreement can break out about a lot of things, but the core problems with any story have (at least thus far) generally stayed the same.
- Writing six stories in six weeks, when all of your bad habits are being exposed and you're trying very hard to stretch and write new stories? Very, very hard. Some people only write two stories in their entire Clarion time; before, I would have wondered how that could happen. Now, I totally understand that when you're struggling to form new instincts, writing becomes very, very strange and very, very difficult.
- The Clarion experience is intense, but the folks here know what they're doing. We've had a lot of sit-down talks about the publishing industry, but we've also had several sit-down talks about the psychological experience of Clarion and where the wheels tend to come off the cart for people. This week's assignment? Get at least six hours' worth of sleep a night, and skip at least one of the sit-down talks to concentrate on writing. Yes, we know it's exciting and you hate to hear the summary the next day from all your excited friends, but actually applying fingers to keyboard is what will be most useful in the long run.
- One week in Clarion time == three weeks in regular time. Maybe a little more.
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| I wouldn't post this here, but am my wits end. I live in rural Scotland, so there is no repair ship near. We have a Sony Cybershot 12.1MP camera my daughter got and it had an accident. The area where the lens comes out is dented and all the photos look like this with lines across them. The camera was about $325 and I know it will cost bunches to repair, but will it cost more than the camera. This shot awesome photos before _the_ accident.
 - Mood:bitchy
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| Blaaaaaaake photographed doing drugs in cell
 
JUNKIE Blake Fielder-Civil takes heroin in his prison cell hours before wife Amy Winehouse begs for his release. Our exclusive pictures show him heating the drug on foil before inhaling fumes through a tube – known to addicts as “chasing the dragon”. The skinny and pale lag, who had claimed to be off drugs, is also seen squatting on his cell toilet as he prepares his stash. Blake, 25, took his fix in London’s Pentonville Prison hours before singer Amy’s pleas for his freedom during her shows at the Nelson Mandela birthday concert and Glastonbury. The lout – who we revealed has been writing sleazy sex letters to a female lag behind Amy’s back – will be sentenced on Thursday for perverting justice and GBH. In January, The Sun exposed a video of Amy, 24, smoking a crack pipe in her flat after taking a cocktail of other drugs. A Pentonville source said: “Blake takes heroin whenever he can get hold of it. His claims to be clean are a fallacy and it is obvious he remains dependent. “There is nothing to suggest he won’t carry on when he’s outside and back with Amy. If she takes him back into her life when she is trying to get clean it will be a recipe for disaster.” Blake had claimed in letters to lag Melissa Goldstone that he was not taking drugs – but planned to get high when he got out of prison. He also revealed sordid fantasies of what he wanted to do to her, and claimed Amy would like a threesome. Jobless Blake pleaded guilty last month to attacking a pub landlord and perverting justice.
Source
- Music:My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - A Daisy Chain 4 Satan
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| I am pretty much my shops Saturday girl. I work every Saturday. All day. Saturday's in our town are the days of the market and most of the bus trips. Therefore we get quite busy. And the day gets pretty sucky pretty quickly. In one day, I encountered: - Two separate customers who kept asking the the same question over and over again. I answered it every single time with the same answer, but they wouldn't listen/believe me. - Two customers who upon my reminding them of our very strict returns policy interrupted me by saying "We KNOW!" in the bitchiest tone imaginable. It is my job to recite the returns policy every single time. - People shouting at me from across the shop when I am clearly dealing with another customer. If they had said "Excuse me" I could probably be forgive it, but "Hey you" and "Service" do not make me like you. At all. - Children running riot round the shop and moving things around. I had to spend half my day cleaning up after some kids had moved all of the tea towels around and unfolded them all. And these kids where in the store twice. Thank you responsible parents! But then at lunchtime, I got the suckiest customer I have ever encountered. ( Behind a cut as this may get long ) | |
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| Tonight, Monday July 7th, Dr. Sketchy returns to the Tatame Lounge for another night of dames, drinks and drawing! It's only $5 (we have to keep our models happy and fed) for you starving artists out there, but you can bring your non-participating drinking buddies with you for free. The session starts at 8pm, and lasts until 10. We recommend you arrive around 7:45 so you have plenty of time to grab a seat and start a bar tab. This month, our fabulous model will be the lovely and talented Miss Lily. We'll have door prizes, wacky drawing contests, silly games, and more. Bring your sketchbooks, your friends, and a sense of humor! PLEASE spread the word for tonight! The more the merrier! :D  | |
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| Hey Jude, is that Lily Cole sneaking out of your flat?He is a father of four whose next important birthday will be the big four-0. She is barely out of her teens. But Jude Law and Lily Cole must have found some common ground. The pair have been spotted in public together on several occasions recently.   Afternoon: Lily leaving Jude's flat after he made an early departure to catch a flight to LA( Picture of them at a Radiohead concert and rest of article under cut )Source: Daily Mail: Is there May/December Romance fever going around England? First Ronson and Daisy Lowe, now these two? - Mood:calm
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| The hardest part about Jewel Crafting is getting the skill up to 305. Up to 300 isn't quite so bad, but there are precious few default designs that will guarantee you a point of skill from 300 to 305. You could, I suppose cut gems at 300 in hopes - but I didn't have that many.
Anyway, I finally did make it there, and bought the large number of default designs from Honor Hold. Now I can work on finding some of the others....
On the way, I went hunting for the elemental leader in Un'Goro, where I was getting thorium and mithril, and Azshara, where I realized I'd never taken this character to. Every time I'm there I almost want to cry, because it's such a *waste* of a zone. It's beautiful to look at, but Blizzard has given us almost no reason to go there. It's as if the only reason it exists is to have an out of the way place for the Burning Chasm quest line - which nobody really completes anymore anyway.
Oh well. - Mood:blah
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| I am a night auditor for LQ.
Dear sir,
If you do not call in to tell someone at our lovely hotel that you will be running late, your reservation will be cancelled at 1 AM, and someone else will get your lovely room. Yelling at me when you get here will not change the fact that we are completely booked. Sorry. You should've called in.
Dear crazy lady:
If our rates are too high, don't sit there and scream at me in the lobby. It's 7:15 AM and I was supposed to be home by 7 AM. Go somewhere else, you cheapskate. You get what you pay for. I don't care if you spent all your money filling up your gas-guzzling truck. I fill my car up with premium every 2 weeks and don't blink because I KNOW the gas is cheap at $3.89 a gallon. It's better than pay $15 like in some countries. Don't sit there and tell everyone in the lobby (who is checked in, eating breakfast) that our rates are too high. Everyone is thinking about what an arse you are making of yourself. This is a higher-end hotel. Sorry?
Dear guy with the dog:
When a doggie goes poopie in your room, you clean it up. You don't let it sit there for days. Clean up their boom-boom. You went out of town for 2 weeks, and your doggie almost starved to death. If it wasn't for the front desk, it would have died. Why do you even have a dog if you are at work 16 hours a day and then go clubbing afterwards?
Dear naked couple:
I told you at check-in about the doors. If they close, they automatically lock. Having a good time is one thing, but don't share it with the first floor! When you chased your girfriend/wife/mistress/other out of the room, that "click" told you that, indeed, you are locked out. And please, don't come down to the front desk in your birthday suits in front of other guests and ask for another room key. WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!????
Dear everyone:
STOP RUNNING INTO THE PLANTS!!! Thank you. There is a WALL OF VEGETATION THERE! It's not an optical illusion, I promise you.
Dear lady who is mistaken:
No, I don't care what your "Travel Book" said about our hotel. Our rates aren't that cheap. Yes, I see that's what the book says. No, I cannot change the rate. Our rates constantly change, and the book you're holding doesn't have a magical device in it to change it to the rate our hotel is now. Sorry. No, I'm not being mean. If you want to stay here, you pay the price like everyone else does or go somewhere else. Why don't you call around next time, or just use the INTERNET and make a cheap reservation?
Dear everyone (again):
When I say "we're full", that's what it means- we have no rooms left to sell. Standing there for 5 minutes isn't going to make a room appear before your very eyes. Don't ask me, "You don't have ANY rooms? No rooms AT ALL?" The answer is going to be no. And don't even try to sleep in our parking lot, you freeloader.
~Thanks,
Your lovely night auditor | |
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| so, started vmware fusion and got "The network bridge on device /dev/vmnet0 is not running." as an error. This is coincidental with an OS X crash and an update of the OS at the same time.
after applying "sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/boot.sh --restart" I got the bridged services back up and running again.
Weird. | |
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| Recap: I'm a carhop.
Just a few general customer sucks...
Concerning trash,
Who in their right mind thinks it's perfectly acceptable to just dump trash all over the parking lot? I understand if you drop your straw or a napkin and don't want to get out of your car or fuss over it, but when I come back to your car to hand you your credit card reciept and your just tossing bits of lettuce and tomato and all kinds of other nonsense out your window onto the ground I seriously have to question how you were raised. Would you find it acceptable for people to come eat at your house and throw food all over your driveway? Common sense, use it.
Though to the people who placed all their trash into a bag and dumped it on the ground by their car when there are trash cans all over the lot... DIAF, plz.
Concerning the skates,
Yes! I'm on roller blades! How nice of you to notice. Compliments are fine and while I've heard 'I'd hurt myself doing that.' a min. of 5x a day it is alright as well. What I don't need to hear is 'Oh! Your going to fall!', 'Wow, your not too good at that.', 'So, how many times have you fallen?'(zero, thank you very much!), or anything of such a nature as your lack of faith in my ability to do my job is just a tad unsettling.
On the flip side, on the rare occation I'm not wearing skates, please don't complain about me not wearing them as that's just a bit rude(especally given hardly anyone at my store does skate).
Concerning children,
I understand that when it's nice out and you have a swarm of children to feed sitting on the patio can be a good idea, and save you the trouble of cleaning out your car afterwards, though please be sure to watch/control them. For one the patio area is only so large and there are other customers in their cars coming by a lot and carhops rushing about with trays full of food. Both of these are serious hazards should your child get in their way.
And, on a less 'general c_s', note...
Ma'am, you ordered an ice latte'. What the hell makes you think your entitled to a free one later because you didn't like that there was ice in it? *facepalm*
Sir, you ordered a blue coconut slush and that is exactly what you got. Drinking half of it, deciding you don't like it, and demanding a different flavor is not cool. Your an adult, suck it up.
Sir, please stop stalking my co-worker. I don't care that a year ago she went on a date with you, it never went beyond that and we all find you creepy. Please go away now. | |
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| COMMERCIAL #1
COMMERCIAL #2
COMMERCIAL #3
COMMERCIAL #4
COMMERCIAL #5
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| First of all: Here are the specs on my system. The Story: So, roughly 27 hours ago (give or take) my internet mysteriously craps out on me. Now, this happens from time to time so I run the usual trouble-shooting protocols. I start out by severing power from my modem and router (sometimes odd software and/or hardware issues come up with those that only resetting them completely will solve) by unplugging them. That was a no go. Figuring then that it likely wasn't an issue resultant from either of those pieces of hardware I attempt to disable my wireless (right click --> disable) so that I can enable it again and upon doing so, the icon in my Tool Bar disappeared. Now, that is par for course, so on that front I wasn't worried. However, what is truly inexplicable to me thus far is two things: 1) The wireless is no longer in my Network Connections. All that remains are the Local Area Connection which deals with the ethernet connection and the 1394 which, in all honesty, I have no clue as to its function. 2) An icon to Network Connections no longer exists in my Start Menu. Now, with this system there is a hardware switch on the front of the computer for the wireless card. To the left means it is off and is indicated by a red light whereas to the right with a blue light indicates that it is on. However, in either position the red light remains. Further: Under the Device Manager under Network Adapters, all that shows up is the 1394 and the NVIDIA nforce networking controller. So, neither hide nor hair of my wireless card is to be found. I am fairly sure that this is a hardware problem, but I could be wrong about that. So, any thoughts/advice? P.S. I am also reading on other forums about this little issue and I think that there is a motherboard failure going on. Given that HP is facing some sort of class action lawsuit at the moment (which I didn't give much thought to when having received notice months ago, as I did not see my particular product listed) I am thinking that it could be my motherboard failing on me, as there have been some other symptoms that come along with that. | |
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| Mark Ronson on Amy Winehouse, Daisy Lowe and growing up
He’s well connected, shuttles between New York and London, has crafted records for Amy and Lily, DJed at Tom Cruise’s wedding and has three Grammys. Man of the moment Mark Ronson is pop’s new crown prince Article from The Times (London), 5th July To get away with the suit Mark Ronson is wearing today (blue stripes on white, solid blue collar, bum-freezer jacket, cropped trousers tight as a tourniquet), you must be able to tick a series of boxes. Young and Slim go without saying. Handsome helps a lot. But to really carry it off on the streets of London and not look like some affected fop, you need to have Rich, Successful and Very Confident at your disposal, too. The record producer, DJ and fashionable man of the moment, 32, is all of these things and more, and hence carries his clothes with ease and style. “Do you like it?” he asks of his ensemble (by the Swedish-born, New York-based designer Patrik Ervell, and a recent purchase). “Who else cares enough to wear seersucker in a light colour? It’s just me and Tom Wolfe, I think.” ( CUT for the tl;dr crowd )SourceHe comes across as a really genuine guy- very self aware. I like him! | |
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| Just a quick word to let you all know that I'll be leaving the flat tonight/tomorrow morning, off to a summer house by the sea. I'll be back Saturday night.
I will be taking the laptop but suspect internet connection will be non-existent (as 'twas in England).
So you know when you don't see me around.
Have fun and play nice! | |
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|  This evening USA Today posted your first look at Nicolas Cage as a father who tries to avert the end of the world in Knowing, a film being directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City). The film follows a man who discovers a series of numbers that foretell catastrophes, including the 9/11 attacks. Cage discovers a letter buried in a time capsule outside a school. It doesn't mean anything to him until he sees the digits 911, which sets him on a course to prevent further catastrophes. Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury, Ben Mendelsohn, Adrienne Pickering, Tamara Donnellan, Brett Robson and Jayson Sutcliffe also star in the film arriving in theaters March 20, 2009. sourceidk about this movie, but I love rose byrne so much | |
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| Yes! The sign in the window says "Up to 90% off!"
It also says "While supplies last."
Today is the last day of the sale.
STOP BITCHING THAT THERE ARE NO 90% OFF ITEMS.
*praises God that today was the last day* | |
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| Did you ever have one of those moments where you're watching a movie or tv show, and you just know you've seen a performer before? And then it hits you that you saw them in a mst3k ep? Through the never do anything productive again device that is known as Hulu I've been watching the cheesy fun Swamp Thing tv series. In the episode Falco an enraged half bird half man tries to kill the scientist who created him. I knew the actor looked familar and looked up his, Peter Mark Richman's, imdb entry. Richman was none other than agent from h.a.r.m Adam Chance. That's right, your dad's alcoholic golf buddy as a vengeance minded mutant. He was much better, not to mention more likeable too. So, ever have that happen to you? | |
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