Sailbourne

Got this one because someone thinks I’m a literary geek.  As I go through the questions, I’m beginning to wonder about that, I’m afraid … I’m only tagging folks I think might want to see my answers.  No one’s on the hook here — this took me forever to answer, so I won’t subject anyone else to the time sink. The original also said not to bother with italics … so I’m not.

1. What author do you own the most books by?
Strangely, I’m going to say Terrance Dicks.  We have a ton of Doctor Who novelizations.  Not counting that, probably Harlan Ellison.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?
As far as I know we only have multiple copies of one book at the moment: Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not in the least bit.  (Hearing Douglas Rain’s voice there.)

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
At least three but none of them have been widely published as yet.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life?
Probably The Lord of the Rings.  With The Hot Zone a close second.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
The Enormous Egg, by Oliver Butterworth.

7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
I haven’t read any books I’d consider genuinely bad in the past year, so I’ll take a pass on this question.

8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Don’t know if it’s the best, but Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke is probably the most important. And I definitely enjoyed reading it.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
I wouldn’t want to force anyone (because who would enjoy the book then?) but I think if you read either The Wild Trees by Richard Preston or Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson, you would not be disappointed.

10. Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
I have no freaking clue.  Honestly I don’t read much of the literature that gets one awarded a Nobel Prize.

11. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
The Wild Trees, by Richard Preston — but only if done as a documentary, not fictionalized.

12. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, by Dean Motter & Mark Askwith. This story does just fine in its original form, and some “franchises” should just be left alone.

13. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I’ve had a couple where the point of view shifted between myself playing an RPG and the actions of the characters in that game as it was being played. Pretty wild stuff.

14. What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
I have read a handful of Harlequin romance novels. For research. Seriously.

15. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
The Seidensticker translation of The Tale of Genji. Still working my way through it.

16. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
The ones I’ve seen are considered the most well-known ones.

17. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I haven’t read enough of either to fairly judge.

18. Roth or Updike?
Don’t think I’ve read any of either.

19. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
I’ve had some Sedaris read to me, which I enjoyed a lot.

20. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare all the way. (Not that I’ve read a lot of Milton or Chaucer.)

21. Austen or Eliot?
I’ve read “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” … oh, I bet you meant George Eliot.  Haven’t read either.

22. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
See answers to questions 17 - 21, above.

23. What is your favorite novel?
I can’t decide the answer to this. I’ve tried. I just can’t.

24. Play?
The Zoo Story, by Edward Albee. Stumbled on it by chance in high school, didn’t understand it at all then, but was blown away anyway. After having seen it performed once, and having read it a few dozen more times, I think I’m finally beginning to get my head around it.

25. Poem?
I think there would have to be at least ten of these. So for today let’s say: Grass, by Carl Sandburg.

26. Essay?
You, Too Can Speak Gaelic, by Isaac Asimov. Everything I know about pronouncing long scientific names comes from there. First runner-up: The chapter about Hillsborough in Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby.

27. Short story?
A Quantum of Solace, by Ian Fleming. A James Bond story in which Bond is nothing more than the listener of a tale related by someone else — this story makes some very insightful points about human relationships.

28. Work of nonfiction?
The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston.  It’s approaching LOTR for the book I’ve read the most times, and it still manages to scare the snot outta me.

29. Who is your favorite writer?
Joe Medina.

30. Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
J.K. Rowling.

31. What is your desert island book?
Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy.

32. And… what are you reading right now?
Thank You, Mr. Moto by John P. Marquand; The Secret Life of Houdini: the Making of America’s First Superhero, by William Kalush and Larry Sloman; Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower; several RPG rulebooks

[Another meme, but no requirements to pass it on ... unless you want to buy in, so to speak.]

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations so please read carefully:

• I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.
• What I create will be just for you.
• It’ll be done this year (2009).
• You have no clue what it’s going to be. It will be something made in the real world and not something over the internet. It may be a mixed CD. It may be a poem. It may be a felt mouse or a triple-chocolate cake or a handful of origami wish-stars. Who knows? Not you, that’s for sure! [not me either]
• I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

Here’s the fine print:

In return, all you need to do is post this text into a note of your own and make 5 things for 5 others.

[This is going out on my personal blog as well as over Facebook so I will go by the timestamps of the comments I get.  Not that I think there's gonna be a mad rush or anything, but maybe I'll be proved wrong.]

1. Open your music library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For the first question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…just type it in man!
7. Tag 10 people, and they have to do it too

Not tagging anyone else on this one, either.  So there. ;)  Instead I would love to hear from anyone who thinks they can make sense of any of this.  Maybe it’s just my mood today, but I’m not seeing it.

Movie Title:
“Doctor Christian,” episode original airdate Feb. 6, 1938

Opening Credits:
“Under the Top”
(Elliot Goldenthal, Batman Forever score)

Waking Up:
Dowland: “After My Departure I Called to Mynde …”
(Sting, Songs From the Labyrinth)

First Day at School:
“I’m Looking Through You”
(The Beatles, Rubber Soul)

BFF Hang Out:
“Stones In My Passway”
(Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings)

Falling in Love:
“Growing Up”
(Peter Gabriel, Up)

First Nemesis:
“Council of the Flocks”
(Renaissance of the Native American Flute)

Losing Virginity:
“Franklin In Medlab/Franklin Arrested/Minbari Attack/Sheridan’s Plan”
(Christopher Franke, Babylon 5: In the Beginning)

Fight Song:
“G’Kar’s Emotional Address/Franklin Is About to Leave/et.al.”
(Christopher Franke, Babylon 5: Objects at Rest)

Break Up:
“Music At the Inn”
(Dan Jones, Shadow of the Vampire soundtrack)

Prom:
“Ruby, Found At Last”
(ZBS Productions, Ruby: the Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe)

Life:
“The Last Train”
(The Goon Show, season 5, episode 9, November 23 1954)

Mental Breakdown:
“Cartoon Cartoon”
(Cartoon Network promo, Cartoon Network’s Cartoon Medley)

Driving:
“La Vieja”
(Orchester Mariachi Del Sol, Fiesta Mexicana)

Flashback:
“7 Screaming Diz-Busters”
(Blue Oyster Cult, Workshop of the Telescopes)

Getting Back Together:
“Dodo/Lurker”
(Genesis, Abacab)

Wedding:
“White Lightning & Wine”
(Heart, Dreamboat Annie)

Birth of Child:
“Hamma Hama Hula”
(Jon Rauhouse, Steel Guitar Rodeo)

Mid-Life Crisis:
“Heaven Help Us All”
(Stevie Wonder, Signed, Sealed and Delivered)

Final Battle:
“Little Wing”
(Stevie Ray Vaughn, Greatest Hits — SRV)

Death Scene:
“Stealin’ Apples”
(Benny Goodman & His Orchestra)

Funeral Song:
“We Can Work It Out”
(Stevie Wonder, Signed, Sealed and Delivered)

Those You Left Behind:
“Smoke & Wine, et.al”
(Hank Williams III, Straight to Hell)

End Credits
“The Greatest Story Ever Told,” episode 68, original airdate May 9, 1948

For my Facebook friends, I’m not going to tag back anyone this time.  At the risk of painfully dating myself, you deserve a break today.

Five names you go by:
1. Jamie
2. Sailbourne
3. Ayeshalan
4. a feline word that seems to translate roughly to “hey you!”
5. Puddy

Three things you are wearing right now:
1. Badge
2. Wedding ring
3. battered black running shoes

Two things you want very badly at the moment:
1. To sleep
2. To feel loved

Three people who will probably fill this out:
Not tagging anyone this time, so I think I’m off the hook for that one.

Two things you did last night:
1. Ordered CD’s online
2. gave a foot massage

Two things you ate today:
1. Instant oatmeal
2. Lemon drops

Two people you last talked to on the phone:
1. Joe
2. a coworker

Three things you are going to do tomorrow:
1. buy groceries
2. try to start our taxes
3. grumble at stupid politicians on the TV

Three longest car rides:
1. San Jose to Portland, OR
2. Portland to Missoula, MT
3. Great Neck, NY to Spokane, WA (I was about five at the time)

Four favorite beverages:
1. Moose Drool Brown Ale
2. Coke Classic
3. any good Gewurztrauminer
4. Rose petal black tea with cream and sugar

Continuing the craziness that was 2008 …

May — The Thing

One of the true highlights of the year came on a warm Saturday afternoon in May.  It was the ninth annual UFO Festival at the McMenamins Hotel Oregon in McMinnville.  It was our third trip there to help the folks at Willamette Radio Workshop put on a live performance.  This year was extra special, as the main feature was an adaptation of John W. Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?” titled (as several of the film adaptations of the same story were called) The Thing, written by Joe!

Mattie’s Room on the second floor of the Hotel Oregon was packed!  All the seats were taken, and several groups of people sat on the floor behind the seats, while more stood and listened.  For some forty-five minutes, the WRW cast, speaking Joe’s words, held all those people absolutely spellbound.  In between The Thing and a performance of “Flash Gordon,” Joe and I talked to people about WRW, and sold discs of WRW shows, Dry Smoke and Whispers, and of course, “Afterhell.”

Q3 — Medical Leave and Heavy Downtime

On the first of July, right about noon, I was struck with a pain in the lower abdomen.  It put me in the emergency room, and before the end of the month, into surgery for a full hysterectomy.  Joe has written a well-detailed and heartfelt account of this over in his blog, so I will keep the note here to a few bits and pieces that still stick out in my mind about the whole experience:

• I took a cab to the emergency room that first day.  Turns out the driver was an audiodrama enthusiast who gave me a copy of a disc he’d helped create, called “Yes, Virginia, There Is an Anti-Claus.”  Absolutely hilarious.  I’m still trying to locate him again.
• At the end of the visit to the emergency room, the doctor was preparing to write me a prescription for painkillers.  I distinctly remember telling him, “Let’s start small and go with the Vicodin.”
• In the near-frantic rush to get ready to go into the hospital, one of the most important things to me was going to buy a bathrobe.  I did manage to find a rather nice one.

After the surgery I spent the next seven weeks at home, healing and trying not to do too much too fast.  (Always a challenge for me, that last.)  I got to watch a bumper crop of 1980s TV on DVD — the entire first season of The Equalizer and most of the short-lived Stingray series.  It was a treat, really, since I missed both the first time around.  Also got to take in a lot more of the Democratic National Convention than I would have otherwise, and completely ignored the Olympics.  (Heck, I had to think for a minute as I was writing this where they were even held.)

By mid-September I was back at work, and things were looking a bit more normal, but the year wasn’t done with us yet.  I’ll finish it off in a few days.

Since I didn’t follow up on the 16 random things, I’m going to try this one.  It’s taking me a while to think of stuff; please do bear with me.

1. My hair is naturally curly, and also pretty thick.  This caused me problems when I was young, because I hated to brush my hair.  My mother had to cut mats out of it more than once.
2. I wrote my first story at the age of ten or eleven.  I gave the manuscript to my fifth-grade teacher and never saw it again.  (I moved to another city in the middle of that year, and she neglected to keep in touch with me.)
3. I have applied for and failed to get a job working at McDonald’s.  (Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to the interview carrying a copy of Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine.)
4. I was born in Texas, but haven’t lived there since I was a few months old.
5. One of my worst-ever experiences as a writer was my one college creative writing class.
6. The only time I have traveled outside the continental USA was a trip to Victoria, BC in the summer of 2007.
7. As far as I’m concerned, the Star Wars prequels and A View to a Kill never happened.  I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of Star Trek made after “The Voyage Home” plus all the series made after the animated one.
8. I’m a fan of singer Chris De Burgh, but “The Lady In Red” (just about the only song of his that anyone in this country has ever heard of) is actually one of my least favorite songs.
9. I have had dogs, cats, hamsters and fish as pets; I really wanted a snake when I was little.
10. I have attended two different high schools and four different colleges; I have a diploma but no degrees.
11. I have created an alternate universe version of our world in the 1930s for the pulp adventure game I run.  Some of its history goes back thousands of years.
12. I’m left-handed but usually hold the pen the way a right-handed person does.
13. I love the smell of coffee but not the taste.  Despite the fact that I don’t drink it, I’m told I make quite good coffee.
14. My first paying job (aside from babysitting) was washing dishes for a motel diner.
15. My two main online identities — Sailbourne and Ayeshalan — are both names I created for RPG characters.
16. The first Doctor Who show I ever saw was “The Five Doctors” in the fall of 1984.  I actually understood that these five characters were the same character.
17. I’ve been to a live professional baseball game three times and a live rock concert once.
18. I was reading Agatha Christie when most kids my age were reading Nancy Drew.  I tried reading Nancy Drew a couple times but didn’t like it because there weren’t any murders.
19. I have two holes pierced in each earlobe and two tattoos.  I’d like to get one more tattoo, but no more piercings.
20. The one “domestic skill” I’m consistently good at is cooking.  I would like to master candy-making and mixology.
21. I learned how to write computer programs on a Commodore VIC-20 with a cassette tape drive.
22. I presently own three pairs of shoes.  I dislike buying shoes.
23. My Meyers-Briggs Type Inventory profile is INFP.
24. I have voted in six Presidential elections; always Democratic except in 2000.  Yeah, I voted for Nader.  It seemed like a good idea at the time …
25. The bulk of my ethnic hodgepodge is Northern Irish and Italian.  I do not lose my temper easily — but when I do, it can get really ugly.

Here’s the rules for my Facebook friends:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

It seems like 2008 was a really wild and crazy year for just about everyone we know — no less for Joe and I.  Before the memories fade too far into the distance, I thought I’d do a brief summary.  Then I can stash all the grief where it belongs — the past.

Q1 (Jan-March) — Black Cat, Giallo Hotel

It all started looking like Lilith had a cold — her nose was runny.  We gave it a week — the normal time for a virus to run its course — and took her to the vet.  It wasn’t a cold.  After some tests, it seemed likely that she had nasal lymphoma.  There was only one way to be certain it was cancer — take her to a specialist for a rhinoscopy.  We had the money for that.  We paid it, Lilith had the surgery, and we got good news and bad news.  Bad news: it was definitely lymphoma, it wasn’t really curable, and we didn’t have the money for things like chemotherapy.  Good news:  the rhinoscopy left Lilith feeling much better, almost as if she wasn’t sick at all.  We had some more time with her.  No telling how much.

At the same time, Joe was working like crazy on the last episodes of the latest, biggest, meanest Afterhell story:  “Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel.”  The final installments went out over the podcast feed, and Joe compiled the story in time to send it off for the Mark Time/Ogle Awards.

Q2 (April - June) — Farewell, and a Mention

After six weeks of good health, Lilith took a bad turn for the worse in early April.  We and the vets did what we could, but there wasn’t much left.  At the end of April, we had her euthanized.  It broke our hearts.  After almost exactly ten years with us, she was gone.  Lilith had adopted Joe back in 1998, and he was always her person.  He has begun to tell her story in his own blog.

Not long after we said goodbye to Lilith, we got surprising news from the folks at the Mark Time/Ogle Awards.  Afterhell Volume 3: Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel had earned an Honorable Mention Ogle award.

And at about the same time we realized that Kyouju wasn’t well.  More vet visits, more bad news and good news.  Bad news:  he had a hyperactive thyroid, not uncommon in older cats but relatively rare in a nine-year-old.  The treatment: radioactive iodine, involving a four-day vet hospital stay and four weeks of isolation and minimal contact with us.  The good news:  He was completely cured.  Even before we could let him out of his cage, he was putting the pounds he had lost back on.  Joe’s written about this in detail, too.

I’ll cover the second half of the year soon.

Looking for a relaxed, easy-going online spot to chat about the latest in news, events, and pop culture?  Want a place to compare notes on writing, art, sports … or tea?  Looking for a friendly place to share your favorite pet stories?

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Want to take part in a roleplaying game (or, if you prefer, collaborative storytelling) where the only limit is your creativity and imagination?  Pulp adventure, high fantasy, Babylon 5 or Star Trek — there’s a wide choice, or you could even start your own game.

You can find all of this and more at The Starlight Teahouse.  There are contests too!  Come check us out!

A special offer for my friends who read this message on Facebook:  send me a message with your email address, and I’ll create your account for you!

Thanks to Alida Saxon, longtime Teahouse member, who created the lovely logo above.

This was one of the three quotations on Google’s Quote of the Day gadget today:

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O’Connor

Never were more apt words spoken in the age of Twilight.

I am not a violent person, but if I hear one more gush about the books or the movie, I’ll break something.  If I see one more clip from the movie with dialogue that would make Ed Wood say, “Uhm, not so sure that’s gonna fly,” I am going to scream.

No, I haven’t read the books.  No, I won’t.  I’ve seen enough reviews from a wide enough variety of people, and seen enough passages from the book excerpted in those reviews, to know that I’d be wasting my time and raising my blood pressure for no good reason.  The only reason I can see for bothering would be to know how not to write bad romance.  And I have read enough other bad romance to already know what to avoid.

My advice to the Twilight junkies: Go read Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-Germain books.  You’ll get vampires that can walk in daylight (without sparkling!), amazingly researched and historically accurate settings, romance that is rooted in the way people really relate to each other, and horror that has a lot more to do with what human beings are capable of doing to one another than anything else.

Please.

[crossposted on my DailyKos diary page]

Despite having moved out of California over a decade ago, I still have strong ties to the SF Bay Area and one of my main sources of online news is the SFGate website.  Today I spotted an article which seems to have generated a lot of controversy and really got me thinking.

The article, Troubled students produce rap CD, begins thus:

San Francisco school officials spent $50,000 over the past several months to produce a hip-hop CD, one with so much profanity it requires a parental advisory label slapped on the front.

And they couldn’t be more proud.

It goes on to describe how this group of students, with help from teachers, artists, and no-questions-asked funding from the school district, wrote, performed, produced and mastered a rap CD.  The total cost: around $50,000.

The project appears to have had some degree of success.  Some of the students described in the article are making a real effort to turn their lives around, hoping not just to graduate from high school but go on to college.  Yet most of the reaction by readers is … outrage?

The “most recommended” comment reads in part,

It is absolute insanity to waste this kind of money - taxpayer money. And the district is planning to do more projects like this?

And the poll question attached to the article is running three to one in favor of the answer, “It’s a waste of money.”

Does no one in this country think in the long term any more?

It didn’t take me long to discover (on this page) that the cost to incarcerate a person in the state of California was $25K a year (in 2001).  So if even one of these kids, as a result of taking part in this create a CD project, stays out of prison for just two years (and probably less, now) the CD project will have paid for itself.  Where is the waste then?

I get the sense that one of the reasons behind driving this country toward universal health care is the idea that the cost of preventing illnesses is a lot lower than the cost of letting uninsured folks just go to the emergency room.  And people finally seem to be getting behind that idea.

So where’s the difference between spending some money up front to help kids in trouble from going down the road to prison, and spending some money up front to help people without insurance from going to the emergency room?