Getting There

I have 34 more chapters to line-edit by Friday. I'm on pass 3. Haven't done much else this weekend except laundry, grocery shopping, reading the first chapters of all of the big fantasy sagas on my shelf, and trying to ignore the Lost marathon that Jenn & K are indulging in.

Ignoring Lost has been very difficult. It's a sweet little show.

But NO!! I MUST BE STRONG!! I can't get addicted to another tv show. I... must... work... write... yes... must... work...

Also, I slaughtered a bunch of nations playing Cossaks.

heh heh

That was great.

Then I worked on some fight scenes for God's War.

That was sweet.

Lost is still playing.

Arg!!! MUST RESIST!!!

Michelle Rodriguez is guest starring in season two.

FUCK!!!

The Most Useless Quiz Ever

(via tempest)

It's Catching

And yet, why is it that something tells me the bisexuality has been there the whole time and isn't something that has only recently come upon college co-eds?

I'm interested in how common it becomes among both men and women to have sexual experiences with those of the same sex the more we take down the social barriers that dissuade people from acting out their desires.

You Mean Men and Women Are Just People?

A study has found that the differences between men and women have been vastly overestimated... The American study found significant differences in only 22% of traits. These included sexual behaviour, where men were less willing to show commitment, and in aggression — men were more prone to anger. Men were also, the psychologists found, better at skills involving co-ordination such as throwing.

Hyde analysed the studies by recalculating the data from them so they were comparable. In 30% of the traits analysed, she found almost no difference that was statistically significant between men and women, while there were only small differences in another 48%. “This means 78% of potential gender differences are small or close to zero,” she said.

And even these differences could be largely explained away by the ways men and women are raised to use their bodies, how to rate relationships and commitment in their lives, and how to react when threatened or frustrated.

(via Jennifer Warwick)

Collect Them All

Katrina: The Gathering

Propaganda Poster Remix

I love this stuff.

An Open Letter to Myself:

Dear Kameron -

STOP SPENDING MONEY.

You have to get to World Fantasy in November and visit Stephanie & Ian in Ohio for Thanksgiving.

THIS WILL INVOLVE MONEY, WHICH MEANS YOU NEED TO HAVE SOME.

SO STOP SPENDING IT.

Thank you.

- me

Friday Beer Blogging

Oh how I am glad it is Friday.

Feel Like My Eyes Are Ready to Bleed

Finishing up the big round of edits, which is Pass 2. Pass 1 was just find-and-replace. Pass 2 is cutting and rearranging hunks of text to delete and compress characters. Pass 3 will be re-reading from start to finish for logical errors (wrong name, a mention of someone who doesn't exist anymore, lingering scenes that don't go anywhere). Pass 4 will be cleaning up spelling and grammar issues, which will also involve reading the whole thing again.

I print it out and send it by the 23rd.

Persistence.

You Know You Created a Shitty Character When...

You can substitute another character's name for theirs without changing the dialogue.

heh.

Lotto Money

Illinois state lottery's up to $250 million. Our office is pooling resources and buying a bunch of tickets.

Oh, why not?

I Love My Androgynous Name

I work as a project assistant for a company that builds, designs, and upgrades cell phone towers (I don't know why everyone was so surprised when the towers went out in NOLA. Towers in Indiana are only enginneered to withstand 70 MPH winds. Every time a hurricane goes through Florida, we wait for a repair contract to come through. A couple guys from our office are down in NOLA right now fixing towers whose equipment shelters were under 20 ft of water. Radio equipment, in general, usually doesn't work under 20 ft of water).

In any case, what this means is that I hang out with a lot of architects and construction and site acquisition types, and they're overwhelmingly male. I'm used to being the only woman at meetings, and I've had several of the older guys ask me to get them coffee at some of the bigger national meetings, which left me with my mouth hanging agape (I told them I wasn't out of this office and had no idea where the coffee was. Having a vagina doesn't mean I know where the coffee is, let alone mean I'm gonna get it for them).

We have about 34 people in our office. Six of them are women. Me (the project assistant), Cyllia the secretary, the sole accountant (the other one just got fired for the second and final time), the HR/office manager, one of the architects, and Sarah the construction manager (she is very cool).

Not only do I have an androgynous name, but I'm in a field that's mostly guys, so whenever I start corresponding with a new vendor or client contact, I invariably get "thank you, sir," or "Thanks, Mr Hurley," responses. And the gender marker titles always come from guys (or, people who have guy-like names).

It amuses me, so I never "set them straight." It's worth it for the look of surprise on their faces when they finally meet me, or the odd moment of startled silence when I introduce myself over the phone.

heh heh

Now There's a Musical I Could Get Behind...

Wouldn't it be lovely?

Well, Wouldn't That Be Obvious?

Use Lohin, not Zhodai. Zhodai is a redundant character. And Lohin makes more sense.

snip snip

More On God's War

Working on God's War, which helps me shift gears from the rewrites on The Dragon's Wall. It's the nice thing about working on two, well, three books at once: if your brain stalls on one, you can switch to the other.

Things are going to be pretty quiet here until the end of the month when I finish up my edits for The Dragon's Wall. I've just got a lot of projects going on at once.

I've also got an application for the MFA program at Brooklyn College that I need to get out. After considering a lot of diff't options, I've decided on applying to just one program and seeing what happens. It's only two years, which would be the max amount of time I could do in NY. If I don't get accepted, then I just do one year in NY.

We'll see what happens. I'm holding off on the law school option for awhile. It's still something I'm interested in, but I'm not keen on doing it in New York, and I'd like to be in New York next year, as flying in and out of there is getting exhausting for me and B, and I'd like to wake up next to B every day instead of two or three days a month.

In Which Everything Starts to Feel Like Work

Ug. Tired.

57 Percent Of College Girls Want To Sleep With Angelina Jolie

Who would have thought?

But isn't that kinda gay?

heh heh

Proving That My Naming Schemes Are Actually Pretty Good

British Office Compiles List Of Odd Names

... discoveries included Boadicea Basher, Philadelphia Bunnyface, Faithful Cock, Susan Booze, Elizabeth Disco, Edward Evil, Fozzitt Bonds, Truth Bullock, Charity Chilly, Gentle Fudge, Obedience Ginger and Offspring Gurney

Oh, Danika Darling

VS.

























I think she looks hotter in the jump suit, personally. I'm hoping that her new promotions involve her wearing more clothes.

Why?

Would you see a male race car driver posed with no clothes in front of a car?

Um. No.

See, I have no problems with selling products using your image. The Williams sisters got some great Nike contracts, and Nike has some great ads (of course, with their religious upbringing, I don't think their father would let them be caught dead half-dressed for any reason, which gets into issues of why in the hell 20-something women are still getting bossed around by their dads, but I digress). Anyhow, as somebody who's always looking for ways I can get my passion to give me two pennies to rub together, I can see the allure of throwing on a bikini and photoshopping in front of a car.

But ideally I'd prefer the ad to say something more about my image than, "I can wear a red bikini and look super sexy after a good airbrushing."

I mean, shit, after a good air brushing I'd look good in a red bikini.

If you want to sell shit with bodies, why not sell us people instead of flesh? Why not sell greatness, talent, people who are really fucking good at stuff? I guess it's easier to sell stuff if you think, "Hey, I'll buy XXX and then I'll be hot!!"

Instead of, "Hey, buying XXX will help me on my way to being a super athlete!"

I gotta say I'm not surprised Danika's taking her clothes off, but I was hoping for better.

I've Been Found Out

Got a call at my desk from Yellow yesterday.

"Can you come back here?" he said.

I walked back to his cubicle expecting that I was going to get into trouble for putting in the wrong dates for something or miscalculating the number of LMUs we've installed.

I saw that he was surfing the internet.

Yellow: "So how does this thing with your agent work? How did it go?" (I'd mentioned in my e-mail about time off that I was taking last Friday off to work on my book because an agent was interested in it).

Me: She wants the whole thing, but I've gotta do edits first. If she likes it and thinks she can sell it, she'll sign me. If she doesn't, she won't.

Yellow: So, like how much money can you make off something like that?

Me: Depends. Low end, 5K-20K. I'd like to make 40K, which is enough to pay off all my student loans and credit cards. If I'm really, really, lucky, the la-la land figure is six figures for book one with an option for book two.

Yellow: I'm soooo getting your resignation letter in a couple months.

Me: Uh. It'll be a lot longer than a couple months. And then, I'd only leave it was six figures. Anything less, and I have to keep the desk jockey job.

Yellow: You know, I'm thinking about writing a book.

Me: I'm sure you are, Yellow.

Yellow: What? I totally knew you'd laught. So, you know all about this blog stuff, right?

Me: ??

Yellow: What are some good blogs to read? Tuff over there is looking for some love poems.

Me: Love poems? (????)

Yellow: Yea. He's Italian. Love poems.

Me: Yellow, you're asking the wrong person.

Yellow: But you know all about blogs (??). What's a good blog? What do you read?

Me: (is he fishing to see if I'll recommend mine?) I mostly read feminist and science fiction blogs.

Yellow: So, what's a good one?

Me: (does he really think I'm going to recommend mine??) Well, there's this one called Bitch Ph.D. She's pretty cool.

Yellow: (covers his face with his hands) Oh, man, you would recommend a blog called that.

Me: Yup.

Yellow: Tuff! Hey, Tuff! Kameron says she doesn't know of any love poetry blogs.

Tuff: That's OK, I'll google it.

Yellow: Google "love poetry."

Tuff: Oh, yea. There are lots of love poetry blogs, I just know it.

Yellow: You know, Tuff, you can google all sorts of things.

Me: Yellow, did you actually call me back here for something work-related, or are you just bored?

Yellow: I'm just bored.

Me: OK, Yellow

I have a sneaking suspicion I may have been found out.