Friday, January 28
I'm starting to wonder if it's us that makes animals weird.
Our dogs are all weird. On the other hand, they're border collies, so that's a given. Collies are a sure sign that breeding for intelligence doesn't necessarily mean breeding for survival potential: there's no way to give these dogs enough work to keep their brains busy, so they invent things. With the eldest dog, Shep, it's obsessive-goldfish-watching (we bought him an aquarium for Christmas). With Kid, it's chasing things - sticks and frisbees for choice, but failing that he'll chase crows, buzzards, airplanes, and suspicious-looking insects. We once had a helicopter come over to clear brush from the power lines, and if Mom hadn't gotten hold of his collar he probably would have died - of joy, or of helicopter-induced head wounds, one. Sam, the youngest dog, hasn't worked out his hobby yet, so he has to content himself with chasing Kid chasing things and finding new and inventive ways of waking my brother up. Jill pounces on things and rips their throats out. We don't mind so much about the moles and rats, but when she tries it on visiting dogs it's awkward. She also attacks cars that dogs are in, or have been in, or might be in, or which in her opinion might be thinking of someday containing a dog. If she ever figures out where a car's throat is we'll be in trouble.
Our cat is weird, but she's a cat. She plays with the dogs (except Sam, who is terrified of her; him she chases), refuses to let herself be touched, stares in the windows at us, and goes and sits on people's cars - sometimes while the people are still in them - and stares in the windshields at them. Between her and Jill it's a wonder anyone visits at all.
Our cows are weird, but they're Jerseys, a breed that most farmers refuse to keep because they're so curious and so much trouble. Our vet is still annoyed about the one he had to treat for inter-nasal beestings. My bro's just annoyed that they've figured out some new and inventive way to destroy the fence every day.
But now there's the pheasant, and I can't think of an excuse for the pheasant.
The pheasant is in love with our tractor. Neither I nor Mom has seen the pheasant - he runs from us - although ever since he moved into our hay barn to be nearer the tractor we have [i]heard[/i] the pheasant singing amorous love songs to his metal engine darling. Dad reports that he follows the tractor out to the field and back, but doesn't come too close. My brother the pheasant seems to regard as some sort of rival for the tractor's affections; bro now has a lot of cuts on the back of the legs from his early-morning spiking by a love-crazed bird.
This is surely not normal.
Also, I'm not sure the poor thing has thought through the mechanics of this. I mean, questions of orifices aside, he can't have failed to notice that the tractor is about three tons bigger than him. Can he?
And how does he know our tractor is female?
Maybe it is us making them weird. It's hard to think of a better explaination.
Our dogs are all weird. On the other hand, they're border collies, so that's a given. Collies are a sure sign that breeding for intelligence doesn't necessarily mean breeding for survival potential: there's no way to give these dogs enough work to keep their brains busy, so they invent things. With the eldest dog, Shep, it's obsessive-goldfish-watching (we bought him an aquarium for Christmas). With Kid, it's chasing things - sticks and frisbees for choice, but failing that he'll chase crows, buzzards, airplanes, and suspicious-looking insects. We once had a helicopter come over to clear brush from the power lines, and if Mom hadn't gotten hold of his collar he probably would have died - of joy, or of helicopter-induced head wounds, one. Sam, the youngest dog, hasn't worked out his hobby yet, so he has to content himself with chasing Kid chasing things and finding new and inventive ways of waking my brother up. Jill pounces on things and rips their throats out. We don't mind so much about the moles and rats, but when she tries it on visiting dogs it's awkward. She also attacks cars that dogs are in, or have been in, or might be in, or which in her opinion might be thinking of someday containing a dog. If she ever figures out where a car's throat is we'll be in trouble.
Our cat is weird, but she's a cat. She plays with the dogs (except Sam, who is terrified of her; him she chases), refuses to let herself be touched, stares in the windows at us, and goes and sits on people's cars - sometimes while the people are still in them - and stares in the windshields at them. Between her and Jill it's a wonder anyone visits at all.
Our cows are weird, but they're Jerseys, a breed that most farmers refuse to keep because they're so curious and so much trouble. Our vet is still annoyed about the one he had to treat for inter-nasal beestings. My bro's just annoyed that they've figured out some new and inventive way to destroy the fence every day.
But now there's the pheasant, and I can't think of an excuse for the pheasant.
The pheasant is in love with our tractor. Neither I nor Mom has seen the pheasant - he runs from us - although ever since he moved into our hay barn to be nearer the tractor we have [i]heard[/i] the pheasant singing amorous love songs to his metal engine darling. Dad reports that he follows the tractor out to the field and back, but doesn't come too close. My brother the pheasant seems to regard as some sort of rival for the tractor's affections; bro now has a lot of cuts on the back of the legs from his early-morning spiking by a love-crazed bird.
This is surely not normal.
Also, I'm not sure the poor thing has thought through the mechanics of this. I mean, questions of orifices aside, he can't have failed to notice that the tractor is about three tons bigger than him. Can he?
And how does he know our tractor is female?
Maybe it is us making them weird. It's hard to think of a better explaination.
Tuesday, January 25
When I receive seventeen messages in my inbox, all proporting to be comments from my blog, I'm suspicious. I mean, discussions of the Tape Monster aren't that funny.
Nope. Comment-spammed.
So, seventeen blog entries later, I think I've deleted all the invitations for y'all to come buy Viagra (or Valium, depending on the nature of your personal problem. One of those V is bound to do the trick.) I only noticed on the last few a particularly cute touch at the bottom of each comment:
Well, mofo, actually I believe I'll just ban your IP. Sounds a wee bit more effective to me.
And after that, I suppose I'll go download some of those plugins I didn't before, because no one would bother spamming a blog this small and insignificant.
Annoyed now.
Nope. Comment-spammed.
So, seventeen blog entries later, I think I've deleted all the invitations for y'all to come buy Viagra (or Valium, depending on the nature of your personal problem. One of those V is bound to do the trick.) I only noticed on the last few a particularly cute touch at the bottom of each comment:
Don't like us posting in your blog. Just email me at AliceWalker@postmaster.co.uk and you will never hear from us again.
Well, mofo, actually I believe I'll just ban your IP. Sounds a wee bit more effective to me.
And after that, I suppose I'll go download some of those plugins I didn't before, because no one would bother spamming a blog this small and insignificant.
Annoyed now.
Monday, January 24
Why is it that you can never find tape when you need it? I've finally gotten to the saturation point where I do find tape, after ten minutes of looking and just when I'm about to give up, but then I've bought, at a conservative estimate, eight rolls of tape in the past few months. How many more do I have to buy before I can just lay my hands on a bit of tape when I want it? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?
Screw it. I'm going back to wrapping my presents with duct tape.
Screw it. I'm going back to wrapping my presents with duct tape.
Saturday, January 22
Hi.
So I haven't posted in, oh, a month or so. A lot of stuff has happened in that month, including New Year's, seeing my second-ever musical, revisiting my old college and then spending six hours talking with my favorite professor ever, leavetaking with Dan, experiencing an extended Travel Nightmare via cellphone with Dan, discovering that yes, Canadian weather is much worse than mine via Dan, snow, cheese, picking out my father's fiftieth birthday present, and - as of today - my father's fiftieth birthday.
I'm not going to post about any of that, though.
Instead I'm going to post about writing stuff that only a small fraction of my readers will be interested in, namely, CritiqueCircle.
CritiqueCircle is a forum where you can get your work read and commented on, similar to Critters, Other Worlds Writing Workshop, The Online Writing Workshop, or the crit circles at Forward Motion, to name ones I've been in. All of them fell by the wayside for me for various reasons. Critters was largely meant for short stories, which I don't write; Other Worlds demanded a lot of crits per submission of your work, and was unforgiving to those who, say, dropped out of the workshop for a couple of months; the Online Writing Workshop stopped being free; and Forward Motion, though still my top writing forum, wasn't a great critting setup. The critique groups tended to be small and to go through sparodic cycles as to who was active and critiquing, and since I write science fiction and FM is heavily weighted towards fantasy writers, my group was even smaller and more unstable than most.
CritiqueCircle, though, seems to have solved a lot of those problems, and I, at least, am pretty damned impressed with the setup. You can run short stories or novel chapters through pretty easily, although you better expect to do a lot of crits if you want to get a novel through in a timely fashion. You can crit via templates, or do an inline crit (my favorite, and a rather nifty Javascript equivelent to writing notes in the margins), and the amount you crit determines how many things you can have in the queue. Crit-to-story ratio, for the weeks I've been there, stays pretty constant; there isn't one story that gets critted while the others languish, and I've rarely seen a story get less than five critiques.
I ran the first half-chapter of my own story through last week and got ten crits. Some were fantastic, some were mediocre, but none were really bad - and ten is enough to make me feel like I've gotten a significant number of objective opinions on the story.
As for the opinions themselves, well - the critiques were unanimous on exactly two points:
A) I needed to give the readers more information. Lots more.
B) My main character was cool.
The first is depressing but expected; I despise infodumping and avoid it whenever I think I can, with the predictable result that no one ever knows what the hell is going on except me. The second is very heartening indeed. I love Joey myself, I consider her the strongest point of the story, but hearing ten complete strangers go "This character is great! I wanna read more about her! More more more!" is, well, is happy-making.
About half the readers loved the little news-style epigraphs I'm opening the chapters with. The other half hated 'em. Still scratching my head over what to do about that one, but oh well.
At any rate, if you're a writer, I recommend you join this workshop, and no, I'm not just saying that so I can get more critiques. *grin* It's the best I've found, and I have been looking for some time.
So I haven't posted in, oh, a month or so. A lot of stuff has happened in that month, including New Year's, seeing my second-ever musical, revisiting my old college and then spending six hours talking with my favorite professor ever, leavetaking with Dan, experiencing an extended Travel Nightmare via cellphone with Dan, discovering that yes, Canadian weather is much worse than mine via Dan, snow, cheese, picking out my father's fiftieth birthday present, and - as of today - my father's fiftieth birthday.
I'm not going to post about any of that, though.
Instead I'm going to post about writing stuff that only a small fraction of my readers will be interested in, namely, CritiqueCircle.
CritiqueCircle is a forum where you can get your work read and commented on, similar to Critters, Other Worlds Writing Workshop, The Online Writing Workshop, or the crit circles at Forward Motion, to name ones I've been in. All of them fell by the wayside for me for various reasons. Critters was largely meant for short stories, which I don't write; Other Worlds demanded a lot of crits per submission of your work, and was unforgiving to those who, say, dropped out of the workshop for a couple of months; the Online Writing Workshop stopped being free; and Forward Motion, though still my top writing forum, wasn't a great critting setup. The critique groups tended to be small and to go through sparodic cycles as to who was active and critiquing, and since I write science fiction and FM is heavily weighted towards fantasy writers, my group was even smaller and more unstable than most.
CritiqueCircle, though, seems to have solved a lot of those problems, and I, at least, am pretty damned impressed with the setup. You can run short stories or novel chapters through pretty easily, although you better expect to do a lot of crits if you want to get a novel through in a timely fashion. You can crit via templates, or do an inline crit (my favorite, and a rather nifty Javascript equivelent to writing notes in the margins), and the amount you crit determines how many things you can have in the queue. Crit-to-story ratio, for the weeks I've been there, stays pretty constant; there isn't one story that gets critted while the others languish, and I've rarely seen a story get less than five critiques.
I ran the first half-chapter of my own story through last week and got ten crits. Some were fantastic, some were mediocre, but none were really bad - and ten is enough to make me feel like I've gotten a significant number of objective opinions on the story.
As for the opinions themselves, well - the critiques were unanimous on exactly two points:
A) I needed to give the readers more information. Lots more.
B) My main character was cool.
The first is depressing but expected; I despise infodumping and avoid it whenever I think I can, with the predictable result that no one ever knows what the hell is going on except me. The second is very heartening indeed. I love Joey myself, I consider her the strongest point of the story, but hearing ten complete strangers go "This character is great! I wanna read more about her! More more more!" is, well, is happy-making.
About half the readers loved the little news-style epigraphs I'm opening the chapters with. The other half hated 'em. Still scratching my head over what to do about that one, but oh well.
At any rate, if you're a writer, I recommend you join this workshop, and no, I'm not just saying that so I can get more critiques. *grin* It's the best I've found, and I have been looking for some time.
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