Musings

Jan. 23rd, 2020 01:43 pm
pjthompson: (musings)
RIP Mr. Terry Jones, one of the pillars of my faith.



*
After two weeks and holding of fighting with my drug plan insurance over a medicine which keeps me alive that I was running out of I finally used GoodRx to buy it out of pocket. It wasn’t cheap but it gives me a three month grace period to sort things out with the insurance. Insurance is nothing but legal extortion. But even with the hassle I know how incredibly lucky I am to have such a plan. I won’t get back that out of pocket expense, but I do expect things will get sorted eventually and I will get help paying for this medicine. I know many people are not that fortunate.

Not only that, my milk went bad before the pull date.

*
Life is never going to be exactly as you want it to be. There's always going to be some little zit on the end of your nose that makes you look at life cross-eyed.

*
I really need to get some new cats. It's been a year and clearly my brain has rotted with Kitty Need because when Betty White came on TV on her birthday I said in kitty voice, "Is da Betty White girl."

*
When it rains at night I like to turn off all media and just sit there reading while listening to the rain.

*
Sometimes my life seems like the bumbling slapstick sitcom dads of the 60s.

Pick something up from the floor, lose control of it, have it fly across the room, walk across the room to fetch, it kick something else, stub my toe and send that flying, bend over to retrieve the other thing and have it fall out of my hand again. You know, the usual.

Sometimes I even hear an opening theme soundtrack while I'm doing it.



(Which is way before the time of many of you and very American teevee sitcom.)

*
Next time you think corporations or billionaires care about you as an individual human being remember that soylant green is people.

*
Well that's embarrassing. For quite some time I've had a tag for my blog of "aesthetcism" when what I truly meant was "asceticism." Hoist on my own Picard.

*
Public service announcement: don't get the shingles shot unless you've got a couple of days to spare for feeling like crap.

(You should definitely get the shingles shot if you are of a certain age because a couple of days of feeling like crap is way better than the shingles.)

I've had three friends who were "taken by surprise" and it was a very unpleasant experience. Months of misery. One of them had what they call internal shingles, which means her nerve endings were on fire for months. Horrible.

*
When you know you've used VRS too much: you are leaving a voicemail for a friend and at the end of the sentence you say, "Period."

*
Writing is the thing I most want to do in the world and yet every day I reach a certain point where I say to myself, "Have I written enough that I can stop now?" Sometimes I push beyond that point if I think there's still water in the well. Other times I know the well is dry and I'll have to wait until it fills up again overnight. The urge to quit is always there, sometimes more insistent than at other times, but always whispering to stop.

*
You know the worst thing about Hellier? I have hundreds and hundreds of books and I'm at a stage in my life where I'm trying to slim down the library because I don't have room for all this and Hellier is forcing me—forcing I say—to buy more books! So many damned books!

*
I was reading a recap of Whitley Streiber's new book, A New World, at http://radiomisterioso.com/2019/12/10/whitley-strieber-a-new-world/
and something reminded me of the God helmet/Estes method session with Dana and Connor in Hellier S2 :

"He said that they 'communicate completely differently than us' without 'an evolved language.' Strieber’s experiences led him to conclude that they lead an existence that is nearly unfathomable to us..."

Sense

Aug. 22nd, 2018 02:03 pm
pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:

“Life doesn’t make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy’s job is to point out that it doesn’t make sense, and that it doesn’t make much difference anyway.”

—Eric Idle, publicity for Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:


“When I invite a woman to dinner I expect her to look at my face.  That’s the price she pays.”

—Groucho Marx, A Night At the Opera

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: (lilith)

No tweet puns in the immediate forecast.

 

I’m still awake, don’t know how. 25 Feb

On this date in 1808 Stendahl bragged in his diary about killing three hares, his “first quadrupeds.” 25 Feb

I was awake from 4:30 AM Fri to 12:30 AM Sat then slept ten hours. Torrential rain when I went to bed, bucolic sunshine upon waking. 26 Feb

I decided to celebrate the weather change with a massive sinus headache. Fun times. 26 Feb

Snow in the San Fernando Valley, first since the 1970s. More rain tonight and lows in 30s even here at the moderate beach. 26 Feb

I went to the garage to clear more boxes. Only got thru 2 before my nose and fingers froze. 26 Feb

Oh, now the weather guy tells me that wasn’t snow but graupel, small snow pellets in great quantity. 26 Feb

lilithsaintcrow True. RT @sblackmoore: If a character survives a book without losing something important you’re not trying hard enough. 28 Feb

Something to give some perspective. Beautiful progression: http://bit.ly/huotRo 28 Feb

pj_thompson @lilithsaintcrow re: characters losing something by the end of the book – Do you think that’s true of comedic novels as well? 28 Feb

When I was a kid I thought writers wrote the books in one shot all the way through and figured the plot out as they went along. 28 Feb

How did they know to plant clues and foreshadowing, I wondered? When I’m doing rewrites planting clues I remember that and laugh. 28 Feb

Of course, I was right about them making it up as they went along…At least for the pantsers like myself. 28 Feb

Spent a few days adding new material to WIP when should be cutting but that new stuff will allow me to cut other stuff in the saggy middle. 28 Feb

lilithsaintcrow Lilith Saintcrow @pj_thompson Yes. Definitely. 28 Feb

pj_thompson PJ Thompson @lilithsaintcrow So that’s what I got wrong. :-)   28 Feb

lilithsaintcrow Lilith Saintcrow @pj_thompson Tragedy is easy. Comedy is much, much harder, because it skates that edge.  28 Feb

TrishaTelep Trisha Telep @lilithsaintcrow @pj_thompson That’s not funny! 28 Feb

lilithsaintcrow Lilith Saintcrow @TrishaTelep @pj_thompson *snork* 28 Feb

pj_thompson PJ Thompson @lilithsaintcrow @TrishaTelep Dying is easy, comedy is hard, but comedy don’t get no respect. 28 Feb

On the drive home I realized that the MCs in my comedic novel did lose something. Not body parts unless you count the holes in their hearts. 28 Feb

Yet if it hadn’t been for a good friend reading an early draft I would have skated over that exquisite pain. Thx, Kev. 28 Feb

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: (Default)
Random quote of the day:


"Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.

—H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy












Illustrated version. )


Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
pjthompson: (Default)
I don't like unhappy endings. I know that in some sectors of the literary life, some people think that only stories with tragic outcomes are “serious fiction,” but so be it. The way I see it, life itself provides far too many of those, so in my fiction bittersweet is about as unhappy as it gets. Most times. I have cranked out an unhappy face here and there, but they’re rare.

But I also don't like artificial happy endings. I don't believe in magically-arrived at solutions that avert the tragedy at the last minute. Unless it's a story about tragedy-averting fairies or a romance or other stories that are required by law to have happy endings. Otherwise, it feels like cheating. If something sad or bad is the best thing for the story, no matter how much I love the characters, then that's where things have got to go. Usually I manage to stick those sad/bad things in the middle of the story and pull happy or bittersweet out of the fire by the end. Most times. I'm not sure I've always succeeded there.

I wish I could write straight comedy, I sincerely do, but it seems my brain isn't wired that way. I may set out to write a comedy, but somehow painful twists and kinks crop up. So when I set out to write my current WIP, although it was mostly meant as a comedy, I knew upfront it would most likely be a serio-comic novel. I knew that would be a difficult challenge. I was completely correct in that. Have I met the challenge? I have no idea. Only time, another draft, and reviews will help me determine that.

Currently, I've got comic and tragic elements battling for possession of the story. Your guess is as good as mine which will win. I know what should happen, but it's not what I want to happen. It's not what I set out to write. A serio-comic novel may be the trickiest thing to pull off—and underrated. Some people assume comedy is easy, but it's not. I think tragedy is easy. Perhaps not emotionally easy to write, but technically easy. You don't have to walk any fine lines with it (except the line between sad and melodramatic). You just uncork it and let it flow. The ride isn't easy, not if you're feeling what your characters feel. It can be a squirming, harrowing experience. But the story elements are generally straightforward. At least that’s the way it looks to me. I could be wrong.

Keeping the tone right when writing comedy with a side of tragedy is maybe the hardest thing I've ever tried. I do seem to like throwing these challenges at myself. I don't always pull them off and failure is always a depressing option. I could cheat. I could have some magic fairy come in, wave her wand, and yell, "Just kidding!" In fact, I came up with such a scenario last week, but it felt wrong, not what my story is calling for, and getting past that big lump of late-in-the-game-sad to the imminent quirky ending is giving me migraines.

For a week I've been staring at that ending (longer if I count the foot-dragging leading up to this point), alternately wondering if I have the cojones to unleash the magic bomb—or if the cojones are for writing things as they should be, then worrying about rescuing the tone for the ending. I guess the answer is: just write it. Rework the tone in the next draft. But I’m resisting both jumps and about to unseat the rider…

La di da la di da, tomorrow is another day. I think I'll go work on content for my website instead.
pjthompson: (Default)
Random quote of the day:


"At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted."

—Eric Idle, quoted in Monty Python: The Case Against by Robert Hewison



Illustrated version. )


And now for something not quite so different:






Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
pjthompson: (Default)
Will Farrell gives us the unvarnished truth on the health care issue.
pjthompson: (Default)
★ I have an herb garden and periodically I gather herbs to hang them from the rafters so they can dry and I can bottle them. I usually hang these in the entryway to the house because that's the lowest part of the ceiling and, well, it does make for some interesting conversations when guests come over. I hung some dill weed quite some time ago and I've been trying to remember to take the durned thing down and bottle it, but yanno: lax.

I felt something brush my hair last night and realized one sprig had detached itself from the bunch and was hanging way down. "I should do something about that," I said, and promptly forgot about it. I had the same experience this morning with the same results. When it happened again as I was rushing to get out of the house, I didn't even bother to look up at it—just hurried out the door.

When I got to work my colleague asked, "What's that in your hair?" Yes, that's right: it was that selfsame piece of a dried dill weed. That last snag had detached it and I wore it like a jaunty beret in my hair. I walked through the corporate lobby like that. ::sigh::

★ And speaking of hopeless geeks crying in the wilderness, I've begun submitting corrections to thinkexist.com's quote collection when I find their errors. Like they're going to pay any attention! At least they have a corrections form. So called brainyquote.com didn't. Nor did the quotationspage.com. I was, however, gratified to see that the quotationspage had gotten the quote I was correcting correct. I don't recommend any of these pages, btw. They all have a tendency towards misquotes and rarely have sources.

★ All week Min has been coming into the bedroom at about 3:30 a.m. to meow loudly and insistently until I wake up. Once she sees I'm conscious, she lays down on top of me and starts purring loudly, ready for sleep. It's as if she's saying, "Hey, did you know that you were asleep? Just wondered." Fortunately, I'm able to go right back to sleep or she would be a deceased kitty by this time.

★ I am not in Montreal this week. I will, however, be going to lovely seaside San Pedro tomorrow evening for a picnic and Shakespeare in the park (Point Fermin). We're going to see As You Like It. Last year when we did this it was great fun. Ann is bringing a wee bit of champagne because all three of us have something to celebrate this year.

★ Since I gave up writing for publication, the writing is going much better.
pjthompson: (Default)
I've discovered that writing a comic novel is no more fun than writing Serious Stuff. When you get to the crappy middle, it's still the crappy middle and still a chore. I find the same level of resistance as I felt with my sturm und drang novels, the same desire to goof off and do anything but write the damned thing, the same unrelenting doubts, the same pounding forward just to get the words on the page, the same certainty that I've lost my voice and am drifting in a Sargasso of cliché.

Well, actually, I probably am drifting in a Sargasso of cliché. It's a first draft. It's supposed to stink like mats of decaying sea matter. But it is something of a revelation to me that the same processes occur in my tortured psyche whether I am sailing in sunshine or storm.

What a rip off.

The good thing? This feels much closer to my natural voice than the high fantasy/steampunk novel I'm editing. I've completely lost track of who I am on that one. I imagine some time away from it will help.

The other thing? Doing a close reading/edit on that other novel (one of the stormy ones) while trying to write the funny is schizophrenic, to say the least. In fact, much of my writing energy for days now has gone into finishing up the edit. I am closing in on the end of the edit (2 more chapters!) and will concentrate on getting that done before diving back into the WIP.

And the edit? That shining castle on the hill that I first envisioned is looking more like a shotgun shack in the swamp these days. The story is far more melodramatic then I thought it would be. I suspect I don't really know what it is at this point. Late in the late draft blues. I've floated on that Sargasso before, too.
pjthompson: (Default)
I avoided one pitfall, only to fall into another. I thought my way out of that one, and pushed on. Oh! the histrionics and Saturday matinee dialogue! Oh! the proliferation of exclamation marks upon the page! Oh! the agonizingly torturous use of twistingly descriptive adverbs! Oh! the frantic search in the thesaurus for synonyms of "pain" and "scream!" Melodrama! But I pushed on!

And that was just for the love scene--ba! da! bing! But seriously, folks...

The 1968 timeline is all finished except for the koda. Now, to tackle the truly gnarly end of the truly gnarly 6th century.

My next novel, I swear by the Allmighty Pledge Taker, will not be dark and moody and have torturous things happening to its characters. I'm going back to writing comedy. I swear!

Which is not to say that won't have melodrama in it...but we live in hope:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15816

Windfall!

May. 21st, 2005 06:25 pm
pjthompson: (Default)
Yes, I've come into an unexpected windfall.

But before I tell you about that, I have a sad story to relate. When I was in college I inherited this used, but still solid (steel frame), once-expensive, once-good quality recliner chair. I had no furniture so I wasn't going to say no and it was very comfy. I had it reupholstered in a subtle blue-white-beige stripe and it was pretty passable. The chair saw me through thick and thin and many moves. Eventually, it got old. A couple of years back, it got stuck in the permanent erection position. The only way I could get the footrest to go back down was to pound on the footrest until the steel joints holding it up decided to bend. This was such a pain that mostly I left it erect which meant that to get out of the chair, I had to hoist myself forward by the arms, put my feet down on the floor between the chair and the footrest, and step over the footrest to go about my business. (Yes, my life often resembles a slapstick comedy. Why do you ask?)

Eventually, not even pounding it would make the permanent erection go down again. (You may take that in whatever metaphorical sense you wish.) Since I am the ultimate workaround girl (in other words, a procrastinator of the highest caliber), I lived with it. I had no money to replace it, anyway.

A couple of months ago just on a regular night when I wasn't even pounding the erection or anything, it went ka-blunk! and the footrest collapsed, the chair listed to one side, groaned, then settled.

"Maybe I need to do something about this," I said.

I did. I pulled a wicker chest up to where the footrest had been, put a pillow on top of it, and sat back down. Really, the list to the right was not so bad—and I am right-handed, after all. I did consider that I needed to replace it, since it was my reading and screen-viewing chair and the only furniture in the living room besides the two-seater divan conversationally across the way from the chair. But since my car had just gone belly-up and I had unanticipated car payments, I thought I'd just have to live with my listing, footrestless recliner.

So last month my mother said she'd been contacted by a state agency to say they were holding money for me from a defunct insurance policy. Seems the insurance company couldn't locate me anymore. So I called them up. $300! Wow! Not only that, but they said if I contacted the insurance company, they might have a little more cash for me. They did. Nearly $900! I got the check last night. I still haven't gotten the $300 from the state because I've been procrastinating over the paperwork. (Yeah, I know. I have no survival instincts.) But $889! I can buy a new chair.

And maybe I can get a new mattress, too. See, it once was solid and a good quality mattress, but that was a long time ago. Sometimes when I turn over at night, I can hear the springs go bwwwoing!

I'll have to pay capital gains taxes on this booty next year, but in the short term I'm heading to the hotel surplus store to look for a nice comfy chair with a footrest. Not today, though. Not this weekend. Maybe next weekend, but then...well, who can say?

And about the music notation above: all afternoon I've been listening to the neighbor across the alley using his buzz saw and every time he starts it up the foo-foo dog next door starts yapping. So the song goes like this:

wwwwwRRRReeeee yapyapyapyap!
wwwwwRRRReeeee yapyapyapyap!
wwwwwRRRReeeee yapyapyapyap!
wwwwwRRRReeeee yapyapyapyap!
pjthompson: (Default)
Oh, how I wish this was Shakespearean, but it isn't—unless you count the low farce aspects of his plays.

So, anyway, you may remember that I've had a series of adventures involving my post-Soviet apartment manager and the Boyfriend and Girlfriend who live upstairs from me.  Many times my friends and I have engaged in What If scenarios involving the strange nocturnal habits of Upstairs, often to hilarious effect.  Made for good stress relief, too, when they were seriously getting on my nerves.  You may also remember that some of my adventures were definitely Not Fun, involving as they did my car being broken into twice in two weeks.  This caused Yuri, my manager, to be deeply suspicious.  Perhaps due to a fondness for American crime shows, Yuri concluded that the break ins were an inside job and asked me if I'd had any problems with anyone in the building.  I told him that the only folks I'd had trouble with were the ones who lived upstairs in 207. 

"Ah, 207," Yuri said, nodding and looking appropriately squinty-eyed and contemplative.  "I have had a lot of trouble with him."
"Oh, really?  The boyfriend?"
"Yes, Benny.  He is much trouble.  And she has broken lease.  He moved in after she signed, and he is not on lease, and he's trouble, so I evict them.  They will be gone by end of the month."  (Yes, he really does talk like Boris Badanov.)
"Really?  207?"
"Yes!"
"Great!"

I didn't wish harm on anyone, but as these people have been extremely noisy, spiteful, and inconsiderate for over a year despite my pleas to them to play nice,  I was a happy camper.  My spirits were further bolstered (if you'll pardon the furniture pun), when I saw their couch in the back of Boyfriend's truck and a couple of other furniture items.  When the couch gets packed, that's a significant sign of moveage.  I was somewhat mystified that they left the couch in the truck parked on the street in a neighborhood that is hardly crime free—and in the rain.  And really scratched my head when anything that was loose in the back of that truck had been stolen overnight.  What chuckleheads.  But much hilarity ensued between my friends and I. 

My ebullience was tempered somewhat when the end of the month came and went and Upstairs were still there.  Some of the people in the building moved in on the 15th rather than the first and I thought perhaps that was the case here.  This view was bolstered (again with the furniture puns) by an argument I overhead between Yuri and a young woman tenant.  I couldn't help overhearing since it was right outside my living room window and in the atrium which acts like an echo chamber for the building.  The blinds were drawn and I wasn't going to do the full-on Gladys Kravetz routine and flick the blinds, so I just listened.  She wanted an extension on the time to pack up and move out, Yuri was standing firm, and it got quite nasty.  I was trying hard not to feel glee because it's just so tacky, but these people have given me such grief that it was hard not to gloat just a wee bit.

So imagine my chagrin when I came home from work one day and found a cleaning crew busily scrubbing and a mound of possessions heaped outside the door of apartment...107.  Yes, that's right.  Yuri heard what he wanted to hear and so did I.  Hoist on my own What If petard yet again.

I said to Yuri later, "I thought it was 207 that was being evicted." 
"Yes, that's right." 
"No, insert Girlfriend's name here in 207." 
"Oh."  This would have been the perfect time to clarify the situation, but Yuri just looked shifty, said, "Oh," again and walked away.

The good news is, they've been very quiet and considerate lately.  But they've had quiet spells before.  It never lasts, and this one won't either, I suspect.

So now I'm back to concocting more What If scenarios about Upstairs to explain their strange behavior.  "I guess they got a new couch and were taking the old one to Goodwill," said one of my friends.  "I guess that's why they didn't care if it got rained on and vandalized."

I guess.  And Boyfriend's truck came home the other day with the whole backend filled with dirt, right up to the gunwales.  He'd covered it in black plastic, but since he'd driven through rain and wind to bring his load of dirt back to the apartment building, the plastic had gotten blown around and rather intricately involved with the soft squishy load of mud it covered.  The truck has sat for about 5 days in the garage draining muddy rainwater while the mud dries and hardens.

"Maybe they were going to do a reconstruction of that scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind where Richard Dreyfus's character builds a replica of a mountain on the dining room table," I told a friend.

It makes about as much sense as anything else I could What If at this point.

And people wonder why I'm an ironist.

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