Tag: random

A confession

Not to horn in on Miss Teenage South Carolina’s fifteen minutes of shame, but I have a confession to make. First of all, I grew up seeing a world map that looked roughly like this:

Yes, there it is, front and center, the USA, with Canada a huge land mass above us, Greenland bigger than all of South America, and Australia tucked comfortingly over there to the left with its cute kangaroos and koala bears and such. To the right, across the Atlantic, were England and a bunch of other places.

Then, after I’d been thirty-five at least a couple of times…

my shame

Five Questions

If you’d like for me to tailor five questions for you to answer on YOUR LiveJournal (or blog), leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite ice cream flavor. It may take a while, but I will eventually respond (also in my comments) with five questions unique to you.

My five questions came from the fabulous Amanda, and I’ll answer them behind a cut. Thanks, Amanda!

click here for my questions and answers

Who is John Galt?

Hmmmm….

Thousands of flights are grounded weekly.
Roads crumble.
Levees fail.
Bridges collapse.
Imported toys poison children.
Under the streets of Manhattan, things are erupting, exploding, and flooding.
Infrastructure everywhere is malfunctioning or failing.
Leaders are interchangeable suits with little to say beyond platitudes.
Coke stopped making C2, and now Lindsey tells me there’ll be no more BBQ Fritos.

I feel like somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, a secret colony of highly competent people is pointing and laughing at the rest of us.

I shouldn’t have read Ayn Rand in college.

Oops, sorry!

I just saw that back on July 31, I was tagged by Shawn Lea over at Everything and Nothing to do that eight weird things about me quiz. However, since I think I’ve done it before, instead, I’m snagging another of Shawn’s wonderful self-interviews. These questions were originally posed to Julia Stiles in Cosmopolitan (August 2007), and I invite anyone else to apply them to yourself on your own journals and blogs. Thanks, Shawn!

The last book I read was: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The movie I watch over and over is: Pillow Talk.

I could never date a guy who: was homophobic.

My friends always make fun of me for: For what? WHAT? Tell me. Or don’t.

If you opened my purse right now, you’d find: one major credit card, two gas credit cards, driver’s license, Kroger card and Kroger/SPCA matching card, Blockbuster card, Hollywood Video card, Mr. Car Wash corporate discount card, voter’s registration, driver’s license, SS card, MT registration card, Borders card, reading glasses in case, distance vision glasses in case, nineteen dollars and some change, shoulder strap for purse, business card holder and a lot of TJB and Cochrane/Lambert cards, pen, a thing that hooks onto a table that you can hang a purse from (such as in a restaurant). I think that’s it. My cell phone is currently recharging next to me or it would be in there, too, and all personal care items (floss!, lipstick, etc.) are in a larger bag that usually travels with me. I keep my purse as light as possible.

I’m deathly afraid of: falling from a great height (that’s really more what my fear of flying is about).

The one thing I wish I knew about relationships five years ago that I know now is: People in my life would continue to surprise me–in good and bad ways. I never really learn that.

I have this secret dream of becoming: a wealthy resident of Manhattan.

If I could trade lives with another woman for a day, it would be: J.K. Rowling.

The one summer fashion trend that you’ll never catch me in: bikini.

The one food I simply cannot resist is: salad.

You’d be shocked to find that I: can keep a secret.

On a random Saturday afternoon, I can most likely be found: writing at my computer.

The best advice I’ve ever received was: Listen.

The biggest problem facing our country today is: spending more time reading about and talking about celebrities than things like, oh, say, the way governmental power to eavesdrop on our private phone conversations has just been expanded.

Four hours isn’t so bad…

Six hours isn’t so bad… Five hours isn’t so bad… Four hours isn’t so bad…

Tim and I used to quote that commercial (for some kind of sleep aid) to each other, because inevitably, if either of us has to be anywhere early in the morning, we spend a sleepless night staring at the clock and counting down the hours of sleep we’ll be getting. Last night, for me, it was three and a half. I’ll be in zombie state by the afternoon.

Originally, I was supposed to be on a beach in Florida this week, and my house was supposed to be getting a little bit of a makeover. But the best laid plans… Instead, I’ll be taking care of an entirely different kind of business and setting myself up so that I can be under even more pressure over the following three weeks to meet my writing deadlines. We’ll see how that works out. Hopefully, I’ll get more than four hours of sleep a night the rest of this week. Probably I shouldn’t have had those last three glasses of water before bedtime…

For Monday, I leave you with this:

The true artist declares himself by leaving out a lot. The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
Goethe


This is a small John Lennon statue in a shop window on Montrose. Right now, John Lennon is the spirit I’m seeing. (Not literally.)

For Marika

The French? The FRENCH? They just copied us. Besides, did the French have CELL PHONES? I think not. Here’s the “Declaration Committee” working in 1776 to draft a MOST important document (which apparently sort of copied the Dutch, but you made no mention of the Dutch, so I won’t).


The Declaration Committee, Currier and Ives

Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and some dude named Robert R. Livingston (New York) pause so Connecticut’s Roger Sherman can make a call. I’m betting he was talking to Tom Paine and sneakily got wording for the Declaration out of him. (I do agree with you that Paine was aces.)

There are two ways of reading this post

There are two ways of looking at the world. You’re either one of the people who disagrees that there are two ways of looking at the world, or you’re one of the people who agrees that there are two ways of looking at the world.

However, that’s not the point of this post.

At 2006 Saints & Sinners, Tim and I were on a panel discussing romance in fiction. We (half)jokingly said that, despite the times when love did us wrong, because I’m straight, I still believe in the possibility of gay romance and can write it. And because he’s gay, he still believes in the possibility of straight romance and can write it. Together, two of the least romantic people on the planet can deliver a plausible love story with a happy ending.

Yes, it’s true. Though I shouldn’t speak for him, Tim and I are of the “please don’t give me any surprises,” “I don’t want you to send me flowers,” “grand gestures make my stomach hurt,” “some people want to fill the world with silly love songs,” “wine? candlelight? you’re breaking up with me?” variety of people. And I think it’s BECAUSE of this that we like the challenge of writing romance. We want to see if our characters can seduce US into believing in curl-your-toes love and happy endings.

It’s not really that we want to convince the world that lovers can live happily ever after in a shiny place of joy and joyness where unicorns run free (with both kidneys intact). We’re all careening every day toward one ending, after all, and most of us don’t know when, as Mark G. Harris might say, the anvil’s going to hit us. But while we’re here, why’s it okay to believe that we COULD get that job, that house, that car, that promotion, that iPhone, that book deal, that recording contract, that Oscar, those BBQ Fritos, and yet somehow not okay to believe that we could get that friend, that lover, and that ONE MOMENT when love is real and we know, we KNOW, that no one’s ever felt this way before and it’ll last forever?

It’s not easy to write about romance in a snarky world. And maybe it’s foolhardy to write romance which is not all about sex, since “they say” sex sells. It’s not trendy to write stories in which friends and lovers don’t betray, belittle, and behead each other and bury the body under the koi pond.

But I can’t help myself. It’s not that I don’t see reality. I’m just one of the people who wants to sweeten my reality with–I believe it was Jeremy who said it to Adam in HE’S THE ONE–a spoonful of possibility.