Kindle This

Okay, it wasn't this bad. It was bad, though.

So I went to Brother ChiSing's funeral last Sunday.  I gotta say, it was the best Baptist funeral for a Zen Buddhist I've ever been to.  Let this go to show you, folks, that no matter how explicit you are in your will about what you want for your funeral, your family will always win, because they're alive and you're not. And it's really for them, anyway, isn't it?  But there were some bizarre moments.  Firstly, Brother ChiSing made an appearance in a coffin. That's not very common in Buddhism, though I'm aware it's common in America in our time.  (He looked awful, too.  Shriveled up.  Not sure what caused that, the illness or the fact that he'd been dead for almost a week.)  Second, he was buried, like in a coffin in the ground, which I'm positive wasn't his idea. Thirdly and most odd of all, they put him in a suit, jacket and tie for the occasion. Look, I didn't know the man well, but I did know him for almost ten years and I promise you, he did not ever wear a suit, jacket and tie.  Worse still, it was a  brown suit, jacket and tie.  I mean, does anyone even wear brown suits?  I thought they went out with green ones in the 70s, and good riddance and all that.

And I mean, the Bible readings and stuff were okay, and the barbershop quartet was a nice touch, but when the pastor announced that "Norman" (yes, his real name was Norman) "will be waiting for us in the Christian heaven, with all those that have gone before him," I expected ChiSing to get out of his coffin and just walk out in disgust. Of course, he couldn't do that because he's probably already a newborn in Sri Lanka or someplace. ChiSing was not one to wait around.  Thankfully, there will be a second memorial service at the meditation center, and it will be a raucous, noisy celebration of life. Plenty of music, some dancing, snacks to be served afterward.  That would be Sunday, April 3 at 5:00 at CSL, 4801 Spring Valley Road  No. 115, Dallas, TX. See you there.

Meanwhile, a really good friend gave me a nifty gift; a writing master class with James Patterson.  Yes, that James Patterson, purveyor of airplane books the world over. (And in case you do not know what an airplane book is, I'm going to tell you.  It's the sort of book that you pick up because you realize when you get to the airport that, in spite of careful packing, you don't have anything to read on the airplane, which, if you're a reader, is like trying to cross the desert without any water, and so you run into the little airport bookstore thingy and grab something from the display in the front and then you read it on the airplane and forget about it half an hour later.  Which doesn't mean it's a bad book.  I mean it kept you entertained on the airplane, didn't it?  It's just usually not all that memorable. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was my lucky exception.)  It's online and I've logged in and so on but I haven't actually watched any of the lectures yet. Why? Because my life seems to be in free fall at the moment.  Between work and swimming and training for this frick'n 5,000 meter race (which just got moved from July to September, which means that I get to train an extra three whole months for this thing, and whose idiot idea was that?  Idiots) I feel like I haven't been home for more than ten minutes at a stretch, except to sleep.

Yet, somehow, this thing I'm writing keeps crawling along.  And, to my surprise, I recently came to The End.  Well, not the actual end.  There's still a little wrap-up and banal dialogue to go, maybe a chapter or so.  But the basic narrative has ended.  The plot has resolved, I guess you could say.  And I've just run into a problem that I basically have never had before in my life: The darn thing is too short.

Too short? you say.  How could a book be too short?  Plenty of books are too long, but too short?  Doesn't happen.  Well, except that it does.  This li'l work of mine just topped 31,000 words.  That is, seriously, between 20 and 30,000 words too short.  Publishers like to print books that are of a certain length because that's how the big ol' printers and cardboard cutters and so on are calibrated.  Make a book that's too long and it's too expensive to print because you have to reset all the calibrations and the page counters and the--actually, I have only the vaguest idea what I'm talking about here, but anyway, there are machines involved and things do need to be of a certain size.  Make a book too short and it's not worth the money to fire up the machines in the first place.  A work of 30,000 words is pretty deep into novella territory.  And what is a novella, you ask?  Let's let Stephen King tell you (I paraphrase, very loosely):  "Buenas tardes and welcome to Novella, senor!  How long will you be staying with us?  A few weeks, you say?  Senor, I have to tell you, you will be in Novella for a very long time, si?"  Silly stereotypes aside, though, it's true. Novellas don't tend to go anywhere.  They just sit there.  Unless they're written by Stephen King, of course, and then they get wrapped up in a collection with three or four other novellas and published like a group of short stories and sell bazillions of copies and make everybody rich.  But I am not Stephen King and this ain't no Stephen King novella.  It's just a cheery yarn about statues coming to life, the impending destruction of all reality, and why it's critically important that we get Fleetwood Mac back together, preferably pre-Rumors.

Believe me, I've tried to make the thing longer.  I've been able to stuff in a few extra sentences here and there.  But for the most part, it just won't go.  It's the length that it is, and the length is too short.  So I'm not sure what to do with it, except maybe publish it on Amazon for 99 cents or, as has been gently suggested to me by people who actually know what they're talking about, more like $1.99.  You don't need calibrated printing machines to make a Kindle file. And you don't even need a Kindle to read one.  You can just go here or to your app store of choice and download the Kindle app, and then you can read it anywhere on your phone or tablet.

So that's the plan, and at the rate things are going I'd say it'll be ready in another month or so. If you think this is a bad idea, let me know, willya?  Because everything sounds brilliant at 3 in the morning when you can't sleep.

The Vagina Monologue

Warning: this post contains the word "vagina." If you cannot handle the word "vagina" without giggling, please do not read this post. Go over to Yahoo where you will be safe. I'll get to that in a minute.

Today, I learned that some body parts are more equal than other body parts. But first, I have an ugly confession to make. Everybody has a bad habit, and this one is mine: I hang around in the comments section of the Yahoo page.

I'm not sure why Yahoo, exactly, except that it seems to have stories that I like to read. Rather it has stories that I care about, and it would not surprise me if Yahoo picks stories for the home page based entirely on what you click. Sort of like Pandora Radio but with a much more sinister intent.

I'm not proud of this. I have tried to break myself of the habit and number of times, but apparently, I like a little drama in my life, and / or, I just like arguing with people. The only fortunate in outcome of the incident I'm about to relate, is that I might have just gotten myself banned from Yahoo for life. Apart from the trouble of finding another email address, I might actually come out ahead.

It was an article about abortion. Of course it was. I really don't have anything else I feel the great need to argue about, except abortion. And the mistreatment of pregnant women by the legal system, but that's another thing. Anyway, some wit had just made the brilliant observation that women must enjoy having abortions, or else they would just take birth control pills. Now there's all kinds of things wrong with that particular twist of logic, but let's stick to the points made. I answered him with, "Why yes, it is a great thrill to take a day off work, go to a surgical suite, take off all my clothes, lie down on a steel table and let somebody poked a hose up my vagina. I'm surprised everyone doesn't do it."

This, by the way, is called sarcasm. Or rather, sarchasm, that vast gulf between your witty remark, and the person who is incapable of understanding it. My post came up on to the comments section, and much to my surprise, the word vagina was spelled "#$%$.". I was unaware up until this point that the word vagina was a swear word. I thought we were all adults here.

I made another post, in which I observed that the word vagina had apparently been censored by Yahoo. I used the word penis just to see what would happen. To nobody's surprise, the word penis came out just fine. The word vagina was once again spelled #$%$...

Ponder that for a minute. Seriously, think about it. Female body parts must be censored from the delicate minds in the Yahoo comments section, because obviously the word is too coarse for the ears to hear. However, male body parts are just fine. How does it make you feel, ladies, knowing that Yahoo thinks your body parts are swear words?

Well, you know what I did next. Or if you don't know, you can probably guess. I typed the word vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina and clicked send. It came out #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. So I did what everybody should do, when there's an issue that needs lots of attention immediately and you don't know how else to get it. I went over to Twitter and called out Yahoo for being the sexist bastards they obviously are. Several times. And then I went back to the comments section and typed in v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na.

I don't know how Yahoo will take to being called out. Thus far there have been no replies. They might answer, or they might do nothing. Or they might ban me for life from the comments section. I did mention, did I not, that my going into Yahoo comments is a bad habit? Getting banned for life might actually be a good thing. If nothing else, I could probably get back those chunks of my life I keep losing 5 minutes at a time.

Anyway, that is my story, and I'm sticking to it. I'm sure I will have something more significant to write about next week. Like maybe world peace, or the Syrian crisis, or global warming or who knows.  In the meantime, please be advised that this is the first blog post I have ever composed entirely in Google Voice, while driving, in the rain, in Dallas.  Cheers y'all.

Jen's List of Ten Influential Books

There's a thing on Facebook right now where you're supposed to list the ten most influential books you have ever read.  I'm not sure why this is a thing, but I'm sure glad they're books instead of, say, movies or video games.  So I guess I could have just put this on Facebook, but I figured, why waste a perfectly good blog post on Facebook when you could stick it on your blog and beat your Thursday deadline by almost a full forty-eight hours?  (And boy, are they ever strict about those deadlines around here.  Last time I missed one they threatened to cut my salary in half.  Eep.)  Anyway, here they are, in no particular order except for the last one. 

Very Far Away From Anywhere Else by Ursula Le Guin.  Really, if you haven't read it there's no way I can explain.  Pick it up and give it a read; it's only about 70 pages long, and if you don't cry at the end, there's something wrong with you.  

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Hannah Green.  Read it at least 40+ times and I get something different out of it every single time.  (Like the John Calvin vs. Thomas Hobbes for custody of the child in the middle third--didn't know that was even in there, did ya?)  And yes, it's dated, and some of its theories have since been proven wrong, but it was the Sixties, and things were different then. Go back in time and experience them. 

God's War by Kameron Hurley, and its two sequels to a lesser extent.  Best Muslim space western sci-fi shoot-em-up ever.  And possibly only.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - not because it's a great story, although it is, or because the author is so good at building characters, though she is, but because it exploded the boundaries of YA fiction in a way that had never been done before and made the series that came came after (Divergent, Wasteland, the Matched trilogy) not only possible but plausible.  

Columbine by Dave Cullen.  Yes, it's about the high school shooting, and no, it's not pleasant reading, but guess what? Almost everything you know about Columbine is wrong.  A series of popular myths has grown out of Columbine and other school shootings, and those myths need to be addressed with the actual cold hard facts.  This book goes a long way toward doing that--if we're willing to listen and put some of our Robin Hood fantasies down.  

Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey.  Hey, they said most influential, not Most Scholarly and Serious.  This was my introduction to Anne McCaffrey, and it blew me away (though unfortunately, a lot of the later ones in this series didn't).  But here we have a rather simple tale about a girl nobody understands, who turns out to be one of the most important people in the world because of something she--sings.  How can you not like a story like that?  And the old "be yourself, and do what you have to do no matter where it takes you" message isn't that hard on the old subconscious either.  

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Good Omens takes Douglas Adams' general wackiness and runs with it at a speed I would not have thought possible.  You cannot get through a page without laughing out loud, and it confirmed some of the things I always suspected but didn't know for sure (like, for example, the truth that any cassette tape, left long enough in a car, will somehow morph into Queen's Greatest Hits no matter what it started out as).  Especially in light of Sir Pratchett's failing health, I'm glad we have this gem among gems (his Discworld series is pretty awesome, too).

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.  Lots of authors write lots of books about lots of things that really happened, but not very many of them invent a whole new subgenre while they're at it.  To Mr. Capote, inventor of what's now called "narrative nonfiction," I give a bow.  And to In Cold Blood, which is a dark and brooding tale that well deserves every single award it ever won, a salute.

Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God by John Donne.  Okay, it's a sonnet and not a book, but it so perfectly captures my problem with religion that I just couldn't help but include it here.  Look, if you want me to believe in your God, your God is gonna have to steamroller me to get my attention. That's exactly what John Donne said--only much better, and much more wistfully.  In about 1618.  So Google it, it's long since out of copyright.

And finally:

The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.  

This is my favorite book of all time.

Of. All. Time.  

If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for?  Yeah, you know how it ends, but still, give it a try. Again, it's about 70 pages long. You can read it in an hour, even with all that highfalutin' 19th-century prose.  The way that Stevenson sets up his final shocker is masterful; we start with Mr. Utterson, the lawyer, follow him around for a while, then he exits stage left right around the time another character enters from stage right, and then we get to follow him for a while.  Dr. Jeckyll, himself, doesn't show up as a character until almost 2/3 of the way through the book, and by then you're not sure you can trust anything he says even though you desperately want to know what the hell is going on.

I could go on for decades (I'd make this book my master's thesis, if I were going to grad school, which I am not) but I'll just stop with this:  This is not only the scariest book I ever read, it's one of the most important--heck, maybe even the most important.  And if the idea of your subconscious leaving your body and walking around on its own, developing a personality, meeting your friends, taking your stuff and just maybe going on a murder spree, doesn't scare you, my friend, I suspect not very much will.  For other versions of this story I'll give honorable mention to the movie Mary Reilly, which documents some of the same events and is one of Ms. Julia Roberts' best performances ever, and the BBC series Jeckyll, starring James Nesbitt (who was robbed of a Golden Globe for his performance here).  

So that's it. My list of ten influential books.  Hm, nothing by Hemingway or Big Steve.  That's interesting.  Maybe I'll do this again in a year without looking back and see if anything changed.  In the meantime, happy reading, kids.

Losing My Jury Box Virginity

Well, I had this nice rant all fired up and ready to go.  I was angry, and I do some of my best writing when I'm angry.  The issue was the treatment of pregnant women, a perpetual issue with me, and something that happened in Alabama, and this court case, and--oh, never mind.  I'll just have to get all fired up about it next week again, because while all that was going on, I got picked for jury duty and everything just spiraled out of control.

I can't figure out what lawyer in his or her right mind would want me on a jury.  I'm jury box poison.  I'm mouthy, opinionated, sarcastic and I won't shut up.  On top of that, I'm a paralegal, and somehow anybody who knows anything about the law isn't anything you want on your jury.  Why, I'm not sure.  I guess they confuse ignorance (of the law) with malleability (they'll vote my way).  Well, this much I've learned from the other side of the bar: Juries may be ignorant but they are not stupid, and if you treat them like they are, the outcome may not be pretty.  Last time I was on jury duty, the guy next to me leaned over and whispered, "If the state loses this case, it'll be because their attorney pissed everyone off."  Kinda not the best way to start out.

Well, this one started out with me feeling safe because I was Juror No. 34.  I mean, they never get up to 34.  They start with No. 1 and skip the ones they don't want until they have twelve.  So they'll call, "1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8..." like that.  First they ask lots of questions of everybody, such as, in court, please rate where you take the word of a police officer from a 1 (least trustworthy) to a 5 (most trustworthy). At one point they asked if we could think of any good reasons why a defendant might choose not to testify.  They called on me fourth.  All the good answers were taken by then, so I said, "He might have a girlfriend."  The attorney turned an interesting color and said, "A girlfriend?"  "Yeah," I went on, "and maybe while he was supposedly robbing the liquor store he was actually with his girlfriend, and if he testified on his own behalf he'd have to admit being with his girlfriend."  "And why would that be a problem?" the attorney wanted to know.  "Well, it'd be a serious problem to his other girlfriend."  "And then we have a murder trial," said a guy behind me.  Everyone, including the defendant, laughed at that one.  Except the defense attorney, who looked powerfully unhappy.  I thought for sure I didn't need to worry about getting on this jury, but when they started calling numbers it was "1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 31, 34..." And I blinked several times.  I mean, this does not happen.

Fifteen minutes later I'm in for another shock.  The bailiff shows me to the jury lounge.  I sit down at the head of the table and upon realizing I was at the head of the table I quickly said, "Just because I'm sitting here does not mean I'm in charge."  A big black man, whose name was Vincent and whom I came to like very much, said, "Honey, we all know you goin' be in charge."  A few minutes later I was elected jury foreperson.  Talk about adding insult to injury.

So we listened to testimony and we reconvened in the jury lounge to vote.  It only took about half an hour.  For this guy to be guilty, the state of Texas had to prove three elements.  It proved the first two, no problem.  We got stuck on the third element.  For about 20 minutes we went around the table.  I said, "Here's my problem with this element," and laid it out.  "Somebody explain it to me."  Somebody did.  And after that I was ready to vote with everyone else.  Nobody was rude.  Nobody shouted.  It wasn't Twelve Angry Men or anything.  Everybody was respectful and we got the job done.

We found him guilty.  I wasn't happy about it.  I don't think anyone else was either, but the way the law was written, there wasn't a choice.  It was just a stupid charge.  It was like getting sent to prison for driving without insurance.  Fortunately the Judge came back after the trial and told us she was giving him probation.  He wasn't going to jail.  That was great.  Bad enough my name's on that verdict for all of recorded time.

So after that, I went home to get a bite to eat and maybe lie down a little while.  Instead I ended up falling asleep.  As in, I didn't go back to work. Until the next day, when I had 68 emails and 8 phone calls to return.

Talk Thursday (on Saturday): Sticks, Stones, and Words That Stab Much Deeper

Significant words in the life of Jen:

Reading an email from a literary agent on a crowded elevator on my way to work one morning quite recently, I suddenly exclaimed, "GODDAMMIT!!" Uh, it was kinda loud. And everyone turned around and stared at me. I was pretty embarrassed. The email wasn't good news, either.

My ex broke up with me, she said, because she didn't want to be in a relationship "just because it was convenient." Yep, it happened about seventeen years ago and I can still hear it. That's "convenient" with a sharp "c", a long "e" and a pointed "t". I didn't want to hear the word "convenient" for years. Still don't, in all honesty.

When I was about nine, my mother, in an odd fit of prescience, took me to a psychiatrist. I told her I didn't want to go back because the doctor asked lots of questions and I felt invaded. My mother said that when she took her car to the mechanic, she had to answer all his questions or he wouldn't know what was wrong with the car. I didn't get past the word "car." Great. I was now equated with a motor vehicle. I'd better be good or I'd be recycled for spare parts. Or worse, recalled to Detroit. (Or Tokyo.)

Joan, my wife, is often referred to around here as "Pi." While this is a common Southern nickname for a woman, it's not often spelled out as a mathematical formula. It came about that I was abbreviating "pie" as "22/7", which is, "3.14285714...." or the radius of a circle, in a note. Joan read this literally as 22/7, meaning 22 hours, 7 days a week - because everybody deserves two hours off. So now "Pi" means two hours off, the radius of a circle, 3.14285714...or a fine pastry that often contains fruits, nuts, or both. And sometimes it just means Joan.

Back in the Middle Ages, people used to get sick and die of various diseases that involved facial lesions, all of which were lumped together (for lack of medical knowledge) under the general heading of "the pox." Since then (and I've been alive since then; indeed, I've been alive for ages and ages) I've discovered that the word POX!! pronounced exactly that way, with at least two exclamation points, makes a fine, satisfying fake swear word in circumstances where FUCK!! would get you in big trouble. Another satisfying fake swear word is GEORGE W. BUSH!! but that can be taken wrong in certain circles. You have been warned.

"External" is a word most often applied to something that is, uh, not internal; unless, of course, you live around here, in which it means a certain kind of cat. There are two kinds of cats in this house; the internals and the externals. The internals are the spoiled rotten house cats. The externals are the feral cats, who live in the back yard and share food, however unwillingly, with Madame Raccoon. We think rather highly of the externals around here, so much so that we named our external hard drive "Clan External" in their honor.

And this post is going nowhere fast, so in closing, I leave you with the word "ay-yow." This word comes from a cat dialect, most commonly spoken by all black and tuxedo cats. While it is most often used to express the concept, "Give me some tuna," the word literally means "heart's desire." Should one's heart's desire be thwarted, beware of the "maaaaare," which in most cat dialects means, "I'm going to smother you in your sleep."