This space probably for rent

So due to my lack of posting to this blog and the subsequent lack of verbosity, and thusly my subsequent feelings of inadequacy regarding the verbosity that I've been "advertising" but not delivering, as well as imparting mistaken notions that, were my by-now-probably-nonexistent readers to meet me, I'd actually say stuff using more than one- or two-sentence answers, I've been thinking I'll probably close down this blog. Or at least stop posting to it. I'd like to figure out how to properly save at least my decent posts ("On Solicitors," anyone?) before completely deleting the blog. I'm not sure why I feel the need to mention this since the only people who are likely to see the post may be those on Facebook, since it links to this blog, and should anyone actually bother reading my notes. But I guess on the off-chance that some poor soul happened upon a not-awful post ("On Allergies and Allergens" is semi-amusing, I think) and kept checking this blog in the incredibly optimistic hopes that I'd come up with something good, I'll put out my notice.

I do have plans for another blog, but that one will be focused on my attempts at getting published. Not that there's anything new about that, but I think it might help keep the momentum going if I, at least, expect myself to post about my progress. Because it can get pretty depressing posting about lack of progress and "Instead of writing this week, I watched Season 4 of Gilmore Girls in all my spare time." So I think it might be a good motivational tool, even if I'm the only one who cares.

However, that blog may be anonymous. I'm still debating if I think I'd wind up talking about my day job too much. And I like being able to eat and pay rent. None of that starving artist stuff for me. Because starving means if I can't afford food, I can't afford paper. J.K. Rowling may have scribbled notes and early versions of Harry Potter on napkins, but that doesn't appeal to me, folks. And if I mention what I'd rather be doing than the day job--not that it's bad, per se; there's a pretty good group of people there, and when I'm able to look past the momentary frustrations and remember that these educational materials really do help kids, I can get the warm fuzzies. And that's good.

Where was I in that convoluted sentence? (Ahh, I envision my lone reader saying. There's that good ol' verbosity. It does exist.)

But before I get back to elucidation, the day job is far better than working at Walgreens was. Or (shudder) selling Cutco.

Now where was I? Oh, yes. I am a bit paranoid about including too much identifiable information just in case it might jeopardize the day job. Because of the desire to pay rent and eat on a regular basis. So the future blog may be anonymous. If any readers were wanting to follow me over there.

See, I could have written all that in just a single paragraph, as my little summary proves. But let this be Indulgences in Verbosity's last hurrah.

Archiving/deleting of the blog won't happen this week, however. Last Thursday I was at a panel discussion hosted by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, of which I'm a member. Its annual Colorado Gold Conference is this weekend, and while I hadn't initially planned on going, while at the panel I won a door prize: a breakfast with an agent. This particular agent is most interesting in urban fantasy. The novel I'm currently editing is urban fantasy.

And I pray and believe that God cares about what we want, though his answer may be no. I'd actually prayed for the free conference registration, with "Oh or one of those editor/agent lunches or breakfasts might be nice, too" and while I didn't get the free conference, obviously I got the breakfast with the agent. So,yes, I see this as an answered prayer, and I don't want to pass it up.

Which puts me in a bit of a rush to finish as much editing on my novel as I possibly can on the off-chance I manage to babble out a coherent and interesting pitch (again, in-person speaking, not my forte) and she says to submit chapters to her. But that, of course, is really a no-no--first-time novelists truly should have a completed work before they start pitching it. That way, if an agent or editor requests it, you can send it along before they forget who you are.

Okay, so call this Indulgences in Verbosity's last hurrah slash incipient blog's blathering beginning. Sort of. Because of course incipient blog would have a different URL and whatnot and a maybe-anonymous author.

Ugh, I've spent more time on this post than I intended, and it has no witty or urbane conclusions with which to leave IV's readers. Again, if they exist.

My apologies on the lack of wit or even vague items of actual interest.

But I've got a novel to edit. So I'm copping out and referring you to "Bike-buying for semi-novices".

Farewell, readership. Of one. Or zero. Whatever.

My city park screams

For the purposes of this post, imagine me



not in front of Lady and the Tramp topiary, but on my bike



and to keep with the Frank Miller reference, the image of me on my bike should be in black and white, with one significant color not in grayscale. My bike helmet is black with some blue, so we can pick the blue from that.

There is, however, no actual significance. Get over it.

Also in keeping with the Frank Miller, or more specifically, the Sin City reference, Bruce Willis can be around somewhere if you like him. I'm rather meh about him myself, but it's your imagination.

So now that I am on my bike and in black and white save for the blue of my helmet, with Bruce Willis there or not, let me give you the background: July 5, 2008, 6:15 am. I take my bike out of my apartment, carry it downstairs from my second-level walk-up, get on, and bike to the nearby park, which is within walking distance. Scratch that. It's within crawling distance. If my apartment suddenly lost access to water, leaving me enervated, dehydrated, and desperate enough to ingest the non-potable water that is to be had at the park, I could crawl there. It's not that difficult a ride. But I'd gone bike-riding the day before, since it was July 4 and I was off work and I could. So I didn't want too strenuous a ride. But likewise, it was Saturday morning, my customary bike-riding morning, and I like me my schedules. So I rode to the park.

My first clue was the amount of cars in the parking lot. At 6:20 on a Saturday morning, the parking lot is never that crowded. There were at least ten when the average is two or three. Then, it hit me. Oh yeah. They're probably the cleaning crew.

They would be returning the park it its normal beauty after the Fourth of July day-long party. No problem; I'd weave gracefully between them as they used their pokey-stick-thingies (professional word, I know) to pick up the odd piece of trash. We'd wave to each other, smiles of joy on our faces.

And then I got on the path around the small lake. And then the smell hit me, a nastified combo of vomit, dog poo, and rotting food. This was my park? And what was with all the pop cans scattered across the grass? And, dear Lord, what had happened to the grass? Vast patches of brown dotted the landscaping. A mere week ago, there had been no brown. Gentle hills of rolling grass had graced the park, with bright spots of fuschia flora. Now, it looked liked there had been sporadic grass fires. Not even the concrete path was clean. Spilled and smeared food, the vestiges of hotdogs and potato chips and whatever snacks people had brought from home, made me curl my lip at my wheels having to touch the ground. Stupid gravity. But better the wheels than my feet.

How could people be so inconsiderate? wondered I as I rounded the bend. There were trash cans around; maybe not always within twenty feet like at Disney World*, but present. Didn't people respect the park enough, which was there for their enjoyment, to attempt to keep it clean? Evidently not.

My city park screams.

As I turned off the path to bike down by street, where the stench couldn't get to me, I then felt guilt over my reaction. Sure, if I'd been at the party, I would've thrown my trash away in the provided recepticles. But did I hop off my bike to help with the clean-up? No. I left it to the paid city workers. Or volunteers; I honestly have no idea who was cleaning up the park, only that there was a dedicated team doing so. And from there, it wasn't too difficult to conclude that maybe degrees of laziness don't count for much; it's still laziness, the idea that "it's someone else's job" to clean up. Which makes me wonder if the premise of Wall-E** is so far-fetched. We let things get so nasty that we actually get on a spaceship to escape it, leaving behind the robots we created just for the sole purpose of cleaning up after the humans, the ones who screwed everything up.

That is, of course, if we haven't killed ourselves before we get to that point.

*twenty feet supposedly being the limit of how far people will walk to throw something away before they just drop it
**an excellent movie, BTW; go see it if you haven't

MDC vs. DBAG

This is the way my vacation ended
This is the way my vacation ended
This is the way my vacation ended
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Or not a whimper, actually, but a shriek and a dead bird.

Let me back up and qualify. My vacation at Disney World did not involve a dead bird. In fact, our very last morning at the parks included a baby duck sighting. It followed its mother around Adventureland while guests (yours truly included) whipped out their cameras to take pictures, since it was a baby duck at the Disney World and therefore cuter than baby ducks elsewhere. It's a strange phenomenon I will call Magical Duckling Cuteness (MDC). MDC worked on me as I ate my final Dole Whip with my friends, Nevi and Melneth. It wiped away the horror at having witnessed the mangy-looking Country Bears sing incomprehensible songs (a mistake on our last day, but alas, we'd missed it during our first Magic Kingdom day, and it was on the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World Touring Plan). MDC was the proverbial cherry on the ooey-gooey, so-sweet-you-could-almost-puke-and-be-happy-doing it sundae that is is a trip to the World. MDC was an excellent way to end the World portion of a trip. I highly recommend it. Should you be planning a trip to the World--or anywhere, really--you might want to consider finding a duck egg and incubator and then time the hatching just right so you can experience MDC too. It is that spectacular.

But I do not consider any vacation truly ended until I'm home in my apartment. I stretch out the warm fuzzies of a vacation to last me through goodbyes and security at the airport, during the flight, and during the drive back to my abode*. It helps sustain me despite the cries of anguish at having to return to work.

So: My vacations do not end until I'm home again. And really, I also employ my silly-puttyish vacation-extending skills to say that if I was off work that day, it's still vacation until I wake up the next morning. Thus, I was still awash in Disney-joy and MDC, if bittersweet Disney-joy and MDC, as I lugged my suitcase and backpack to my second-level walk-up. I shuffled things around until I could fit my key in the lock, opened the door, and spied a dark shape on the entryway beside my bike.

Huh, thought I, Didn't I leave things more cleaned up than that? I like coming home to a clean apartment... I turned on the light to see the carcass of a dead bird, its wings splayed out and its legs raised in the air. I shrieked, made incoherent noises, and my brain kept babbling "That's not magical! That's not magical!"

Nor were the droppings in my laundry room magical. The bird carcass, in its pre-carcass state, must have come in through my laundry vent and relieved its bowels all over my laundry room before fluttering about and deciding that my bike would provide it final comfort as it expired. I suppose it might have mistaken the handlebars, or perhaps the pedals, as wings.

So that was the end of my vacation. Dead Bird in Apartment Grossness (DBAG) terminated it prematurely, robbing me of those final hours when I might have dreamed of smiling characters and Cast Members and a final trip on the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster.

Oh well. I still have the memories. And the photos. And my Pirate and Princess mouse ears. As vacations go, it was pretty sweet.



*Unless it was a bad vacation involving illness or theft or emergency surgery or crashes on deserted islands with mysterious shadow-beasts or other unpleasant things. But hurrah! such was not the case.

What I'm doing now

I have a (mostly) legitimate reason for not posting. I'm spending quite a bit of my time here. I'm in the midst of writing a pre-trip report, and I honestly considered linking my blog there--but for various reasons I don't think that'd be a good idea. If you're incredibly bored, however, or feeling a little stalkerish* you're welcome to peruse the board and see if you can guess who I am.

My other reason for not posting here is that I'm attempting to polish the first chapter of my NaNo novel and get a synopsis together to enter this contest. Anyone writerly inclined is welcome to enter, but I must warn you that if your entering means I miss the 200-submission cutoff, I will hunt you down so I can beat you with my keyboard. I wouldn't mind getting a new wireless one anyway.

*If so, please don't tell me, because I'd rather not know.

Orphan Works Bill

Okay, so I know that with my fanbase of, hmm, four or so, this may not make much of an impact, but I figure every little bit helps.

Being creatively inclined myself, I'm concerned about the Orphan Works Bill, which can strip me of the rights of anything I've written, anything I've photographed, anything I've made, unless I pay to have it registered with the copyright office. That means that if I make something semi-decent, any Slick McTheiver (okay so it's not my best) can steal my work. Current copyright law is that I own the works of anything I create as soon as I create it. If someone wanted to steal my work, they'd have to prove they own the copyright. With the Orphan Works Bill, they could steal my work, and then *I'd* have to prove I own it--which I wouldn't, unless I'd shelled out some cash to register it.

Anyway, fanbase of four, please read the following, watch the youtube video, and if you're a creator of works yourself, or sympathize with those of us who are, contact your congress representative.

_____________
Permission to share is granted at the end of this, so please do.

There's a reason why Google, Getty, Disney, et al are interested in seeing
this bill pass:

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=CqBZd0cP5Yc

PASS IT ON

The Orphan Works Bill promotes theft of creative work, pure and simple.
This bill, currently under consideration in Congress, will deny you the
right of immediate ownership over the product of your own creativity, and
therefore makes it increasingly difficult to make money--much less a
living--from it.

Copyright law, as it is now, acknowledges that the work you create is
legally yours--your own property--as soon as you create it.

The Orphaned Works Bill will deny that right of ownership. It requires that
the creator of any work must pay to register that work before it can be
legally deemed the property of the creator. It means you have to register
with a private company to have it copyrighted. That means your work can be
"orphaned" as soon as it's created, especially since such companies don't
exist right now.

Should someone copy your work and leave off your name, it becomes "orphaned"
especially when the copied work is copied again and again. These days, this
happens all too easily. That repeated copying makes it difficult to
discover who created the work in the first place--even for the "diligent"
copier.

In addition, it pits million- and billion-dollar companies that want easy
access to creative work against artists who can hardly make ends meet from
their own work as it is. Why? Because it puts the burden of proof on the
creator of the work, rather than the copier.

Worse, it seriously erodes the property rights of citizens of the U.S. as
outlined in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to our Constitution.

Write your senator and congressperson now.

Washington state residents:

Senator Patty Murray: http://murray. senate.gov/ email/

Find your state representative:

https://forms. house.gov/ wyr/welcome. shtml

Feel free to forward this e-mail.

"The three great rights are so bound together as to be essentially one
right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him
all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but take from
him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still
leave him a slave."

- George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
1921.

Pardon me, your mouse ears are showing

So I'm in the midst of planning a trip to Walt Disney World with two of my most favorite people in the world, my old college roommates. Here we are in San Diego last fall, looking photogenic:


I anticipate looking photogenic at Disney World as well.

I've sort of taken on the role of lead planner since (1) the trip was my idea, and (2) I believe I have some deep-seated control issues, the resolution of which would probably be for me to relinquish control to someone else, but I've enjoyed planning this, so that's not gonna happen any time soon.

But anyway, planning began by purchasing The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, which I have now read, not quite cover-to-cover, but thoroughly nonetheless. Example: I now have an idea of how to go about touring WDW with a child, if the three of us happened to have one. I also know that if we were to obtain a Pal Mickey, the best way to go about hearing his helpful hints would be to decapitate him, leaving attached the one arm you can press so he'll tell jokes and whatnot.*

Most adults without children might halt their planning there. But I also ordered Disney's vacation planning DVD. I didn't watch all of that, but I did spend 1.5 hours of my life watching the bits on WDW, and sort of cringing to myself whenever a sentence began with, "Your little one..." or "Imagine your little one..." or any variation on the implication that I, or my friends, should be visiting WDW with progeny in tow.

Then I also ordered the set of customized maps WDW offers free, though I thought my "customization" would be that I wanted them to include all the attractions. But wait! My customization didn't end there: We have "The Helms Family's Guide to the Magic Kingdom Park,"** "The Helms Family's Guide to the Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park," "The Helms Family's Guide to Epcot," "The Helms Family's Guide to Disney's Hollywood Studios," and even "Spellbinding Tips for the Helmses." And since I am an editor, I give Disney props for the proper pluralization of "Helms," but they failed to achieve consistency in the style of the headers of the "guides."

So between the "Imagine your little one" statements and "The Helms Family's" guides, I'm starting to feel like I should adopt a child just for the duration of the trip. Except Disney World is expensive enough just splitting a hotel room and paying for my tickets and meals. Sorry, urchins.

Still, it got me to thinking--WDW is really sort of "oriented" toward kids. It's the dream vacation for most family with children 12 and under. So why do I want to go so badly, to the point where it's seeping into my dreams? Twice now I've arrived at the parking lot of one of the parks, but for some reason could never get inside. Another dream involved the Haunted Mansion somehow, and yet another the Tower of Terror, though I haven't been to WDW since I was 10, and the Tower didn't exist back then.***

Why is WDW a prime destination for weddings and honeymooners? Why, in fact, do adults like it at all? I mean, the entire time I spent with the Disney vacation planning DVD, I watched it with a smirk--it's orchestrated, it's pageantry, and I see through it. Those smiling children--that's right before they had to stand in line 2 hours to ride Space Mountain. It's before their ice cream fell on the sidewalk, before Mom and Dad refused to buy the Princess Tea Party set because it's too expensive at the World and can be bought online for half the price. And likewise, the grinning adults haven't gotten their credit card bills yet, or had their wallets stolen, or developed blisters on their heels walking from service restaurant to service restaurant, trying to find one that isn't booked solid. I know Disney trips aren't as "magical" as the DVD presents.

But I'm still going, and I'm still excited. I look at my Helms Family's guides, and I appreciate that it's actually a pretty great marketing scheme, one that makes me think I might like to be an editor for Disney. To think that yes, it is a huge conglomerate, but if it's so popular, they have to be doing something right. And back to the trip, there's so much to do, I understand why people can and do spend a year or more planning these things. And that's what scares me, that despite my semi-cynicism, I'm still getting sucked in.

I've been verbose enough for now, and this is even one of my less entertaining posts. Should anything brilliant occur to me re: Disney, I'll post. If not, I might be able to post a video clip of my friends' and my Disney commentary. We have our moments.


*Visions of our videos featuring discussions with Pal Mickey's head, including a reenactment of the "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio" scene from Hamlet, but alas, I don't think any of us want to spend the dough on him.

**I should have that little "registered" copyright symbol after pretty much everything from Disney, but sadly am not Blogger-efficient enough to know how to include it.

***Incidentally, after having a dream involving fighting off a gelatinous alien life form, I've had no Disney dreams.

Draft the first

Since I think I've put something or other about writing in my "About the blog" blurb--or was that a couple of descriptions ago?--I just thought I would let all and sundry (meaning fanbase 'o three or four) that today I finished my first draft of the novel I started for NaNoWriMo. Mixed feelings of satisfaction and anticlimatic-ness, the latter largely because I know it still needs so much work.

Like I'm definitely going to have to take out the chapter entitled "In Which I Am Attacked By a Bike-Riding Ninja." And I'll probably also excise all the chapter titles. Though they were pretty fun to include during the craziness of NaNo itself because I'd have a flash of inspiration *cough*, include my title, and then have an idea of what I was going to write for the next twenty pages.

And I really need to solidify how, exactly, my MC's, er, "abilities" work. I'll have to dig out one of my journal entries (no, I don't blog that sort of stuff) since I think I came up with something semi-intelligent.

Anyway, it's here, draft the first of Augmentation for Beginners,* weighing in at 119,075 words; 348 pages in 12pt double-spaced Times New Roman.

If only my printer didn't keep blinking at me that it needs more black toner, I could print it out and snuggle with it. Alas.

*No, the novel has nothing to do with plastic surgery. It's a working title.