I won't call and leave a message on your answering machine, but if you live in Oregon and haven't voted yet, stop waiting. Vote now. Drop everything, find your ballot, vote No on 36, Yes on Kerry, and take that thing in. It's too late to mail it, so you'll have to head to a library or another authorized polling place. Don't just stick it in a box on the side of the road, because that seems a bit risky, what with all the registration fraud that's been going on.

I just saw a commercial with a bunch of teachers asking people to vote yes on 36. This is the ammendment that, if passed, will put language banning gay marriage in the Oregon State Constitution. This is hateful and wrong. I'm so incredibly disturbed that these teachers are promoting intolerance in this manner. It's enough to make my head explode. Their tagline is also my biggest concern -- something along the lines of, "Remember, we're the ones molding the minds of your youngsters.*" Aaugh!

* I admit this is badly paraphrased, but it's not far off the mark.

6 comments | link

Pretend for a moment that you have a burning desire to promote You're Welcomegiving Day, the day after Thanksgiving. Perhaps you want to make a statement about how following an alleged day of thanks with shopping and football is kind of lame. Or maybe you just think it sounds silly and want to introduce more quirkiness into the world. How would you do this? What would your tactic be? Would you hand out fliers? Dress up as a piece of pumpkin pie or other dishes from a Thanksgiving feast and tell people they're welcome?

I ask on behalf of Howdy because when he asked me, I couldn't think of anything that didn't involve chicken suits and I'm not even sure why those came to mind.

In other news, November is less than four hours away. Goodbye, life.

3 comments | link

Today, I like red. Specifically, the shade of red you will find below:

 

I just used it to separate the entries on my books page.

Of course, your monitor looks different than mine, so there's no guarantee that you know what shade of red I'm talking about. Then again, maybe that's a good metaphor for communication in general. It's almost impossible to know exactly what someone else is saying.

I may reformat this page to look similar to the books page -- I kind of like the way it looks. Babble, babble, babble. Can you tell my job is burning me out?

4 comments | link

As you may have surmised by now, I'm all for John Kerry for president. But that doesn't mean I can't make fun of other Kerry supporters. Good golly, some of them are complete loondogs. Seriously, check out some of the comments on the John Kerry blog. My favorite is the one that says "JOHN KERRY is SEA BISCUIT!"

At the risk of joining the loondog contingent, I didn't have a Kerry sign, so I made my own.

Of course, I do not want to suggest that Bush supporters are all in their right mind. The Bush campaign just didn't allow comments on their blog. I'm thinking that was a smart move.

6 comments | link

My advice (to be taken with a grain of salt) for aspiring NaNoWriMo novelists:

It's a little daunting, but most of the preparation you have to do is mental. Repeat after me, "I will write a crappy novel." If you go into it attempting to write The Great Gatsby on your first draft, it won't work. You'll definitely surprise yourself and write some really good stuff. You'll definitely write some really questionable stuff.

Here are some basic rules:

1. Hope for greatness, but do not demand it.
2. Don't look back. Do not edit, unless you're looking for places to add word count. Do not delete words.
3. Have a "plot ninja." Two years ago, I put a pirate in the story every time I ran out of words. It helped. A lot.
4. If you're really stumped and you hate the idea that you even started this whole thing to begin with and you're not having fun, take the day off. Take two days off. Then write 5000 words on a Saturday and all will be well.
5. Most people have four days off for Thanksgiving. Use them wisely.
6. The last third is where the story is more or less bound to unravel (if it doesn't happen sooner). Realize that this is okay, keep writing, and plan to throw that out when you edit the novel and make it into something wonderful.
7. Nobody has to read it. That's important for me because I've written some really bad prose. As soon as I think someone's going to read it, I stop writing (particularly during the last third of the novel).
8. Use it as an excuse -- there's no better way to get out of things you don't want to do than by saying, "I can't, I'm writing a novel." It makes for a hectic December because you have to catch up on everything, but it's worth it, in my opinion.
9. Play with your words. This is the best time for you to experiment with voice, different methods of describing a scene, etc. It's really lovely.

Remember: the beauty of NaNoWriMo is that you get to say, "I've written a novel." And it doesn't have to be good -- it certainly won't be polished -- because you wrote it in a month.

To prepare, I've mostly done character sketches and outlines. The first year, I had nothing, and that was bad. I kept writing myself into corners and even killed a guy off (sorry homeless dude) just to have something to write about. I still haven't managed to read through the whole thing -- it's atrocious. The second year, I had some character sketches and an outline, and that went much more smoothly. The third year, I did a collage, but then I sort of bailed on the whole thing because I started seeing my boyfriend on October 31 and that kind of made for a distracted November. This year, I've started outlining and character sketching again, and will probably use my collage and story idea from last year. I've no idea how it will go, but that's most of the fun.

8 comments | link

Some things:

• How Stuff Works delves into the mysterious world of hangovers (link from Jesse, who got it from Jesse -- I'm thinking Jessie will find it very helpful).
• Chris and Becky are the host and hostess with the mostest. They let me play with their bunny AND eat Cheerios! Woo hoo!
• Work is super busy, so if you're expecting me to answer email, you should limit it to three sentences.
• I skipped my creative writing class last week, so I'm doubly excited to go tomorrow. I wonder what I missed? Probably the one piece of advice that would have made me famous. Sigh. Still, I think I'm doing well in preparation for NaNoWriMo. Goodbye, November.

4 comments | link

In a wheelchair borrowed from our hotel, I rolled over large portions of the strip in Vegas. It was lucky that there were ~15 people to push me around all weekend, and I learned some things about being in a wheelchair. For one thing, it's a pain in the ass for everybody. Getting into a cab takes significantly longer. Crowded places are mostly okay because people usually get out of your way, but not always. Sometimes they even back into you, almost fall into your lap, and then give you dirty looks.

One thing that happened several times is that the person pushing me would stop paying attention and would come close to hitting someone else walking in front of me. "Be careful!" I would shout. The person we were about to hit would think I meant them, but I meant the person pushing. So that was a little awkward.

Another thing is that people all have different wheelchair pushing techniques. For instance, getting into an elevator, most of my friends just shoved me in a corner. Two of them, however, were nice and backed me in. This was nice because I wasn't just shoved in a corner, and because it was easier to get me out of the elevator. In this way, I learned a lot about my friends and how much they really care about me. I also came to the conclusion that, though it was an extremely good looking group of people, Michele has the nicest ass of the bunch. Must be all that yoga.

There were some nice things about the wheelchair -- even with two healthy legs, I'm sure they would have been sore from so much walking. So that was kind of nice. But I felt like a huge faker when I would get up and stand on an escalator and walk for a bit, then sit back down in the wheelchair. That's the worst thing about this phase of healing: I really can walk and do things, just not for very long. So I feel like people think I'm a huge faker all the time. It's getting better now, though. Soon, I won't be able to get out of anything by playing the broken ankle card, and I'm pretty happy about that.

3 comments | link

I'm confused, for a second, to be getting into the cab with an open bottle of beer. "Really? It's okay?"

"This is Las Vegas," the driver tells me.

"See, I told you it would be okay," says one of my friends. I take a sip of beer and tell the driver to take us to The Stratosphere. He seems to be in a good mood and I'm feeling a little chatty myself.

"What's the question people ask you the most?" I ask him.

"Well, the stupidest question they ask is whether or not I live here."

I interject to tell him that we've just spoken with a stripper who flies in every weekend from Texas. She said about thirty percent of the strippers she works with come in from out of town each weekend, mostly from L.A. But, we both agree, taxi driving is a completely different industry. It really is a stupid question.

"But most people want to know what's the craziest thing that's ever happened in my cab."

"And what do you tell them?"

"I tell them that I was driving along one night and this woman who was entirely naked flagged me down. I pull over and she says I have to give her a ride somewhere. Now, I can see she doesn't have any money, so I ask her how she's going to pay for it.

"'With these,' she says," and he pantomimes a jiggling and gesturing toward breasts.

"So I say, 'Do you have anything smaller?'"

He laughs loudly at his own story. I laugh, too, wondering if it's true. I finish off my Heinekin as he turns left, onto the freeway.

3 comments | link

For those of you who are still undecided about the upcoming presidential election, there's a new way of looking at things. You could choose a president based on his stance on issues that are important to you. Or, you could choose a president based on who looks best in drag.

Don't forget to register.

A few quick other things:

• Vegas, baby -- I finally get to take a vacation. For that intense sense of relaxation, I'm meeting approximately 15 of my high school friends in Vegas. You do understand sarcasm, right?
• Erik has jumped on the blogwagon. (Yes, Mom, it's "Do you live under my house?" Erik). He's funny, you should check it out.
• The vice presidential debate sucked; I don't like either of them (although Edwards isn't anywhere near as creepy as Cheney, who barely looked up from the table).
• Physical therapy hurts, but I can walk a whole 1/4 mile now in under 15 minutes -- if I could walk a whole mile, I'd be doing about a 45-50 minute mile. Also, I almost have a right calf muscle again, and the skin isn't draped over my tibia so you can completely see the outlines anymore (which is kind of a bummer because that was a neat trick).

12 comments | link