Sometimes I buy things only because I like what they are called. Hence these Sticks and Twigs
Of course the children do not really like them. We've had this half-eaten bag for several weeks. Every now and then I take out a couple and eat them while chortling. Marketers, I am your target. (Maybe that makes me more like the far too easily influenced woodcutter father.)
This beautiful photo (published here under the creative
commons) was posted by bitzcelt on flickr. I concur with his comment.
I realize I've been relying heavily on photos instead of words here on the blog lately -- that's because I've been having a lot of trouble stringing them together when speaking, let alone writing. I am just. so. tired. At about four or five months of age Sylvie started to pretty much sleep through the night. Regular readers of this blog could probably go back and check for the exact date -- I'm too tired to bother. Because ever since Sylvie started to crawl, about two months or so ago, she's been waking up pretty much every two or three hours at night. At first I thought she was excited by her new ability and simply wanted to get moving; then I chalked it up to teething. She had an ear infection in B.C., which certainly didn't help, and now, as a result of the antibiotics, she has thrush. So it's probably been all of those things, in sequence or in combination. I don't consider it sleep deprivation on par with that caused by a newborn -- those wakenings, at least for me and my babies, always lasted an hour or more at a time. These wakenings are usually mercifully brief, except for an early morning one that generally lasts forty-five minutes to an hour, around four a.m.
I'm a big sleeper -- love to sleep! Loved it before I had children. Love it even more now. And I need a lot of it. I've always needed more than the average eight hours a night. I need about nine to feel normal. And I'll happily steal ten if I can. I also like to read in bed, so those ten hours are, ideally, book-ended by a couple of hours lying there reading. Of course, this does not happen nearly often enough for my liking, not with two small children, and probably too often for David's. (The man is a saint. And he doesn't need very much sleep. And I haven't said a word about all the hockey lately. Isn't there some kind of playoff thingy going on?)
One of the subjects I like to read about in bed is, drum roll please: sleep. So this week, I absolutely devoured Patricia Morrisroe's new memoir of insomnia, Wide Awake
For a little taste of Morrisroe on sleep, check out this article about how her mother-in-law, who is 87, takes advantage of her insomnia to work her way through the classics.
I like sleep so much, I've often thought of writing a novel about it. (I wrote "dreamed" instead of "thought" first and then changed it. That was too much of a groaner, even for me.) A novel about sleep would be exciting, huh? Here's a tiny flash I once wrote on the subject.
Also, if you like the subject of sleep and you haven't read Steven Millhauser's novella Enchanted Night
If you know of any more really good books on the subject of sleep -- or somehow related to it -- please do drop me a line or leave a comment.
Screw that whole "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake" technique. We've had rather more than the usual share of crying and pouting around here lately. Until this morning, when we played "I hope the bad guy doesn't <insert chore here>" successfully for at least two hours. All you have to do is shriek something like, "I hope the bad guy doesn't brush his teeth... Oh no! He's getting his tooth brush... Stop him! Horrors, he's putting toothpaste on it! The moon is going to spin out of the sky if the bad guy brushes his teeth... He's... wait... the bad guy's brushing his teeth! Oh noooooooo! There goes the moooooooooooon!"
The bad guy took off his pajamas, put them in the wash, picked out his clothes and got dressed entirely by himself, brushed his teeth, brushed his hair, picked up all his toys, picked up all his sister's toys, took some dirty laundry upstairs, took all the dirty dishes out to the kitchen, took out the garbage, scrubbed the bathroom toilets, did the grocery shopping, and reshingled the roof.
Okay, so maybe those last three are a bit of an exaggeration.
If you're wondering where the moon went, why the sun has turned black, why the earth's orbit has suddenly stopped, and why an alien spacecraft has landed on the White House lawn, well, I'm afraid we might be responsible. We're sorry for the inconvenience but David and I feel it was totally worth it.
It's Day Way Too Many of the new exercise and diet program, an effort to get rid of the baby weight. Weirdly, over the past couple of days I have developed an intense interest in perfume, something I've never had much time for. I think it must have something to do with sensual deprivation -- food was my go-to for gratification before and now I need something else. (And please don't suggest sex. Clearly, sex can be very fattening -- it is responsible for this baby weight in the first place.)
I've been perusing Now Smell This, a top perfume blog; I've added both Perfumes: The A-Z Guide
November 1st is a great day to add to Luke's wardrobe. This half price Credible Hulk (as Luke refers to him) costume will get a lot of wear over the next year.
November 1st is also a good day to perform extensive taste tests. Luke decided to compare and contrast the following fruit candies:
Each candy was given a rating of great, good, or bad:
And then ranked in order of preference:
And then Luke fell over in a sugar-induced coma.
Half-human/ half-vampire baby Renesmee's photo taken from this fan site.
So I finished the last of the wretchedly addictive Twilight saga
Obviously, now that I've read the final book and (spoiler) discovered that Bella gives birth to a half-human/half-vampire child, I can no longer write the vampire/baby allegory I was hoping would make my fortune. Great minds think alike or dull ones seldom differ, whichever. I will say that it's probably not a good idea to read the baby's birth scene/Bella's death as a human scene when you are only weeks away from giving birth yourself. I'll post an excerpt for the Babies in Literature series when I can stomach reading that section again. But half-human/half-vampire babies apparently tear their way out of the womb with their teeth.
I was amused by how Bella came up with her baby's name, as it also echoes some of my own ideas about trying to honour grandparents. She combined her own mother's name, Renee, and Edward's adoptive vampire mother's name, Esme, and came up with Renesmee. (Maybe we should go with something like Ruthinda. Or Luntha.) Astonishingly, Bella managed to go even further than that, by combining her father's name, Charlie, with Edward's vampire dad's Carlisle, to make Carlie, which she used as a middle name. Impressive feat, wouldn't you say? (We'd have to go with Jurray or Mohn or some variation thereof.) I'm wondering if we're going to see some actual Renesmees when the final movie comes out -- I've heard tell of the odd Trinity since The Matrix came out ten years ago. As of yet, Nameberry has no entry for Renesmee. Must remember to give Pam the heads-up.
I've never been much interested in vampire genre fiction -- for instance, I've never read any of the Anne Rice books on the subject and I don't think I was able to sit through any of the movies (were there more than one?). But this past week, unable to pick my head up off my pillow for more than fifteen minutes and unable even to focus on the television, I developed a bizarre craving for the stuff. Chalk it up to pregnancy.
Spurred on by something I saw over at Light Reading, I picked up Living Dead in Dallas: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel
I have now made a private vow to write something similarly wildly successful and lucrative just as soon as I pop out this baby. Should be a piece of cake. And speaking of cake, although the abstinence allegory is certainly very obvious, the novel also works very nicely, perhaps even better, as an allegory of dieting. Edward feels about Bella the way I feel about certain kinds of chocolate and this thought kept me giggling through many of the otherwise romantic scenes. I was not the only one in my household to notice this, either. After I finished the first book and the second, New Moon, I sent David to the video store for the movie. Early on, he commented, "She's just like M&M Slow Cooked Pot Roast to him." This is a dish I've been serving my family ever since I was diagnosed with an iron deficiency -- quite a big deal around here since we normally don't eat much red meat at all. If I do manage to write my own wildly lucrative vampire allegory of something or other, perhaps I will invite M&M to invest in a product placement. Although I have a feeling my allegory might end up having something to do with babies being the vampires, and mothers being the bloody pot roast. Milk = blood, or something. That hasn't been done before, has it? I'm still working out the details.
As for Luke's impressions, well, he didn't take note of the dieting allegory as he was not watching the inappropriate movie but was instead playing an elaborate game with his collection of McDonald's toys on the floor. He did, however, stop for a minute to notice Edward's brightly lipsticked lips. "He's got a funny mouth," he said. He watched as Edward said a bunch of romantic things to Bella and was perplexed by her serious and quivering reaction. "His mouth is so funny! Why isn't she laughing?" Because your pot roast doesn't laugh at you while you're staring it down at the end of your fork, that's why. It just quivers and looks tempting.
Whenever I'm so sick I can barely read, I grab one of Alexander McCall Smith's books and take it to bed with me. McCall Smith, who is so successful I doubt very much he cares, might not consider this the most flattering recommendation, but a writer could do a lot worse than write the bookish equivalents of say, a good cup of hot chocolate or a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup. For my next bad cold, I've got my eye on The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, the latest in the Sunday Philosophers Club series (my favourite) featuring Isabel Dalhousie, which will be out soon. If I develop a sudden illness before I get my hands on that one, I'll be reading (or listening to) Corduroy Mansions, the serial novel that will be published online at the Telegraph every weekday for the next twenty weeks, starting today.
In a perfect demonstration of his perfect grandfatherly-ness,* McCall Smith is even willing to take plot suggestions from readers:
I am writing the story as it is published, usually keeping about twenty episodes ahead of publication. This means that I shall be very happy to receive suggestions as to the plot, and will play close attention to them, incorporating them if possible. Obviously I shall not be able to use every twist and turn proposed by readers, but I'll certainly be reading everything sent to me and will give it serious consideration.
What will it be about? Well, Corduroy Mansions is a building in London, not dissimilar to 44 Scotland Street. The story is about the lives of the people who live there: William French, a wine merchant, and his feckless son, Eddie; four young women, sharing the flat below; a dog named Freddie de la Hay. Other characters include Oedipus Snark MP, an odious politician; his mother, Berthea Snark; and Marcia Light, a warm-hearted cook. I propose to enjoy myself writing about this little slice of London, and I hope that you will share my enjoyment. There will, of course, be illustrations by that greatest of contemporary British illustrators Iain MacIntosh, who illustrates Scotland Street and the von Igelfeld books.
*I know that's not a word but it should be and I can't think of a real one that means the same thing at this moment. If you can think of one, please leave it in the comments. Maybe I'm already coming down with something...
I first came across Margene's blog when I became addicted to the HBO television show "Big Love" last summer. Over the course of a couple of weeks I'd watched the entire first season on DVD and all the current shows available on OnDemand. I was desperately searching for the next season's start date when I noticed the blog. I find it amusing and well-written (only because it is very much in character) and also just a little bit creepy. You see, Margene is not a real person. She is a character on Big Love, played by the actress Ginnifer Goodwin. The comments section is particularly interesting. Most of the posters are either deluded -- like those people who attack the actors who play villains on soap operas when they happen to see them in public -- or else they are playing along really, really well. I had to fight the urge to post myself. I wanted to ask "Margene" leading questions, to try to draw out more of the story and more information about the characters. And then I thought, "Okay, this clearly means it is time to turn off the computer."
According to this article about the growing trend of television characters "writing" blogs, Margene's blog -- apparently written by a writers' assistant -- is one of the best of its kind because it reveals interesting and perhaps pertinent information about the world of the television show that wasn't on the show. Most blogs supposedly written by television characters offer nothing in the way of extra story -- they're little more than a cutesy marketing technique. And frankly, Margene's blog could go a lot further. It'd be interesting to watch/read a television show/blog that worked in tandem, where both media were equally important to the forward momentum of the story.
And then I was reading Absurdistan
And so, for the next half hour, while I stroked her body up and down with my lurid male gaze, Nana told me many, many facts about the Cathedral of Saint Sevo the Liberator. I will try to relate some of the highlights (did I mention the orange highlights in Nana's soft brown hair?), but for a full appreciation of this weird octopuslike church, the reader should turn to the Internet.
And so I did. Not because I was particularly interested in Shteyngart's imaginary church but because I hoped that he'd provided some kind of extension of the novel that googling "Cathedral of Saint Sevo the Liberator" would reveal. Nope. As far as I can tell that link leads only to a post about the book on the NABOKV-L listserv. The novel is terrific but it would have been beyond perfect -- hilarious and somehow very fitting to both Absurdistan's plot and tone -- to discover more online, even if it were just a paragraph or two.
And that got me thinking about the notion of a kind of online novel written in the form of a blog with links to other kinds of sites. I don't mean a straightforward serial novel posted in blog form. I don't even mean some kind of densely literary, amorphous hypertext novel written on special software, like the kinds Robert Coover's students appear to be writing at Brown, or like Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, which I purchased years ago and tried to read but never felt particularly drawn into. And I absolutely don't mean an elaborately produced game/story like the viral marketing campaign designed for the movie A.I. I'm thinking of a kind of novelistic story -- something with narrative drive and mostly in the first-person -- told online through a blog and associated sites, some of them real sites where the author would be permitted to post like anyone else, and some of them sites conceived and built solely for the novel's purpose. I think that would be fascinating. And I think it's inevitable. I'm guessing the first one will be written by a science fiction author and/or one who writes for young adults.
Or am I late to the party again, as usual, and something like this is already exists? And if so, what is it called? An internovel? A nog?
