Thursday, May 27, 2010

WisCon reading!

If anyone out there is going to WisCon, you should stop by Conference 2 Friday at 4PM to see the "Disappearing Acts" group reading. I'll be with that group, murdering the English language. (No, really - that's what my story's about.)

First public reading.

Gulp.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Once again, not dead - just wilting.

I finished the semester. Let us never speak of it again.

(Actually, let us speak at length and in capslock of how TOTALLY AWESOME AND USEFUL my Business of Writing class was, because that nearly salvaged a terrible semester. But not today.)

It was in the mid-90s today, and the air was so thick with heat it felt like soup. I live in an attic apartment with a struggling AC unit and a built-in loft bed that gets no air circulation. Now, normally, my bed is my favorite place. If I could, I would set up a gift shop for my bed and send my friends confusing "Wish you were here!" postcards from it. Bed is my friend. Bed does not judge me for the Dragon Ball Z t-shirt I still wear as pajamas. (And neither should you, if you know what's good for you. I still have my tenth grade fan fiction, and I will read it to you, and you will not like it.)

Tonight, I miss bed. It's stifling hot up there. I'm currently camped out on the cool tile floor near the dog's bed with a pillow, a notebook, and my laptop, putting my inability to sleep to good use by writing. Three things come to mind:

1. One piece of advice I've heard in just about every writing class is "Learn to write anywhere," but I'm pretty sure those instructors meant writing in planes and cafes and things, not lying on my stomach on the floor with an elderly yorkipoo snoring in my ear.

2. How the hell does Hobbes get this much kibble on the floor? There's a path of dog food debris from his bowl at one end of the apartment clear to the other end of the apartment and sometimes winding into the bathroom or my shoes by the door. It's like those Family Circus cartoons where the dotted line traces the path that little Billy has taken around the house, except with kibble.

3. I need another fan. This thought inevitably leads to Mitch Hedberg's joke about oscillating fans:
I've got an oscillating fan at my house. The fan goes back and forth. It looks like the fan is saying "No". So I like to ask it questions that a fan would say "No" to. "Do you keep my hair in place?... Do you keep my documents in order?... Do you have three settings? ...Liar! My fan fucking lied to me. Now I will pull the pin up. Now you ain't sayin' shit."
If I had an oscillating fan right now, I think I'd ask it, "Will sleeping in front of you help?" We'd both already know the answer.