did i say overlords? i meant protectors!

Best_xmas_coverAnd just like that, it’s Christmas Eve. Gifts are wrapped, meals are prepared, the gingerbread house is waiting for our unique brand of mayhem ("Hey, let’s make it a crackhouse this year!" Anne said, because we just can’t do much of anything in a "traditional" way, which is just fine with me.)

I haven’t been into Christmas this year. I’ve been too overwhelmed with work and deadlines to enjoy the few things that I genuinely love about the season. Last night, while my family was out doing Christmas things in the kitchen, I was in my office, struggling to stay on schedule to make my deadline on Friday. I could hear the Christmas music, I could smell the Christmas treats, and I felt sad.

I called my editor, and asked if I could have a few more days on this project, so I can take the 24th and 25th off and give my family a husband and stepdad for Christmas, instead of a bitchy writer who is freaking out on a deadline. He said it would be fine, and I got the greatest Christmas present of all: the gift of time to spend with my family.

For the last 18 hours, I’ve been able to love Christmas. Though my kids are grown, I’ll be watching NORAD track Santa, because it’s silly and magical and reminds me of all the years I sat on dial-up with Ryan and Nolan in my lap (when they could both fit there at once) while we waited for the big guy to get close enough to go to bed. This evening, we’ll be watching A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and, of course, A Christmas Story.

Yeah, it’s only Christmas Eve, and the Christmas season is only lasting a few days for me this year, but it’s okay. I already got what I wanted.

Right now, Anne and Ryan are out taking a walk, Nolan is at his friend’s house, and my house is empty except for me and the dogs. I’m doing a few Propeller things, so I can close up the laptop and officially put myself on 48 hour family leave. I’m listening to my crowning achievement this holiday season: a collection of holiday music that’s so awesome, it took two CDs to hold it all. I’m proud of it, and I though I can’t actually share the CD, I can at least show it off, so here goes:

The Best Xmas Ever! Volume I
1. Linus And Lucy   –  Vince Guaraldi Trio
2. Zat You, Santa Claus?   –  Asylum Street Spankers
3. Little Saint Nick   –  The Beach Boys
4. Christmas Is   –  Lou Rawls
5. Mr. Heat Miser   –  Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
6. Christmas Cocktail   –  Jaymz Bee & the Royal Jelly Orchestra
7. Winter Wonderland   –  Darlene Love
8. Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo   –  Billy May
9. You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch   –  Thurl Ravenscroft
10. Chiron Beta Prime   –  Jonathan Coulton
11. It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year   –  Andy Williams
12. Jingle Bells   –  Singing Dogs
13. I’ll Be Home For Christmas   –  The World’s Greatest Jazzband
14. Feliz Navidad   –  Los Straitjackets
15. Cha-Cha All the Way   –  Capitol Studio Orchestra
16. Winter Wonderland   –  The Golddiggers
17. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)   –  Darlene Love
18. Jingle Bell Rock   –  Bobby Helms
19. Holiday On Skis   –  Al Caiola & Riz Ortolani
20. Christmas Time Is Here (Vocal)   –  Vince Guaraldi Trio
21. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus   –  Jaymz Bee & the Royal Jelly Orchestra
22. Twelve Gifts Of Christmas   –  Allan Sherman
23. Deck The Halls   –  The World’s Greatest Jazzband
24. Christmas in Las Vegas   –  Los Straitjackets
25. Do They Know It’s Christmas?   –  Band Aid

Best Xmas Ever! Vol II
1. Happy Xmas (War Is Over)  –  The Alarm
2. Space Age Santa  –  Jaymz Bee & the Royal Jelly Orchestra
3. Please Come Home For Christmas  –  Charles Brown
4. Mele Kalikimaka  –  The Surfers
5. Run Rudolph Run  –  Chuck Berry
6. The Christmas Song  –  The Raveonettes
7. Donde Esta Santa Claus?  –  Guster
8. Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer  –  Domenico Savino
9. This Christmas  –  Donny Hathaway
10. Frosty The Snowman  –  Jimmy Durante
11. Carolina Christmas  –  Squirrel Nut Zippers
12. Nuttin’ For Christmas  –  Stan Freberg
13. Sleigh Ride  –  Johnny Mathis
14. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town  –  George Wright
15. Carol Of The Bells  –  Hanna Barbera Organs & Chimes
16. (Everybody’s Waitin’ For) The Man With the Bag  –  Kay Starr
17. Parade of the Wooden Soldiers  –  Fred Waring
18. Cool Yule  –  Louis Armstrong
19. What Christmas Means To Me  –  Stevie Wonder
20. Sun Valley Ski Run  –  Esquivel
21. Do You Hear What I Hear?  –  Rauder and Hobbs
22. White Christmas  –  The World’s Greatest Jazzband
23. Baby It’s Cold Outside  –  Royal Crown Revue
24. Jingle Bells Mambo  –  Pete Rugolo Orchestra
25.Marshmallow World  –  Darlene Love
26.Christmas At Ground Zero  –  Weird Al Yankovic

Peace on Earth, and Happy Xmas, everyone!

this one, she holds up the whole log jam

This isn’t going to make any sense. That’s okay. It makes sense to me, and I have to write it so I can get back to work. These are things in my head that I need to put down so they’ll get out of my way and let me finish my script:

I have this idea that there are all these stories racing around the multiverse, and they try real hard be brought into life by a writer, a photographer, a musician, or some other creative person. They’re fickle, though: they’ll knock on your door for a little bit, but if you don’t make an effort to open it for them, they’ll take off and find someone else to grant them access to our world. Writing them down in a notebook will get them to stick around for a little bit longer.

I also look at storytelling like a cable that runs through spacetime. Grab a cable and it’ll take you to the place you want to go and reveal the story to you along the way, but you’ve got to hold on real tight, and you can really only hold on to one at a time. It’s okay to jot down where you saw other cables in your notebook while you pass them, though.

Then there’s the log jams, which is where I’ve been the last three days.

You know that old cartoon with the logger who keeps saying, “This one, she holds up the whole log jam!” The camera reveals a gigantic pile of logs, hundreds of them at least, and they’re all stuck behind this one log that’s holding them together, preventing them from falling down and unleashing some mayhem. I think it’s Woody Woodpecker, and he wants the one important log for a house or something.

Well, I’ve had this logjam. I don’t think of it as a block, because I have my structure all in place, I know where my guys are going, and I know how the whole thing ends . . . I’ve just been stuck on this one very important thing . . . that happens to be in act one. I can’t just skip past it and come back later, because the way I handle this particular thing will affect everything else in the story.

I’m not going to go into specifics, but it was frustrating the hell out of me. I’ve written and thrown away hundreds of words and dozens of pages while I tried to work it out.

About an hour ago, the one log that held up the log jam fell down. I figured out what to do in act one, and in the ensuing pile of apparently random logs, I found a lot of other ideas that I will probably use in the rest of the story.

This is a huge relief to me, because I can finally dash out the door and grab a cable now. Be back later.

“You are still half savage . . . but there is hope”

I watched a couple episodes of the original Star Trek with Nolan last night, including Court Martial.

He’s not a big Star Trek fan. He prefers Battlestar Galactica — he calls it "gangster," which is teenager for "good" — and Firefly, but he watched it with me anyway.

Though he’s thankfully grown up in a world where it’s not out of the
ordinary for a woman to be a prosecutor, or a non-white man to be a
judge, I explained to him that it was a very big deal in 1967, and that allowed him appreciate the show on a new level.

Something we both noticed, though, that made us laugh and reaffirmed Nolan’s opinion that the original Star Trek "just looks kind of silly": according to Court Martial, the three buttons a captain always needs to have easily accessible when he’s sitting in command are: Yellow Alert, Red Alert, and Eject Pod.

We saw some other things that made us laugh and cringe, but people who fall over white barriers and crush plants shouldn’t cast stones at white paper labels on the captain’s chair, so that’s all I’m going to say about that.

After he went to sleep, I watched Arena. Though it was one of my favorites when I was a kid, I haven’t watched the entire episode for such a long time — I think it must be at least 15 years — that I’d completely forgotten about the entire first half of the episode, when they’re getting shelled by the Gorn at Cestus III, which was surprisingly violent and exciting. All I remembered was Kirk running around Vasquez Rocks while he fought the scary guy in the rubber suit, which was awesome and awesomer.

I’d also forgotten about Spock’s suggestion that maybe the Gorn were protecting themselves when they attacked the human outpost on Cestus III, and Kirk’s initial refusal to consider it. It was pretty brave to put the idea out that someone you automatically assume has evil intentions may have a very good reason — from their perspective — to think the same thing about you. A big part of American mythology is that we’re always the Good Guys who are incapable of doing anything evil or wrong, and I thought it was daring to suggest — on network television in 1967, no less — that maybe it’s not that simple.

Even though Star Trek frequently looks silly and cheesy, I think it says a lot about the writing and the stories that audiences have not just overlooked that, but embraced it, for the last 40 years. I’ve seen movies that spent more on special effects for one shot than Star Trek
spent in an entire season’s worth, but I didn’t care about the
characters, and the story didn’t stay with me for one minute after it
was over. We know it’s just a guy in a silly rubber suit, but when Kirk empathizes with him and doesn’t kill him, it’s still a powerful moment, and the message it sends about compassion and empathy is a powerful one that’s just as relevant now as it was then.

xkcd addresses the rock band haters

Last night, Ryan and I played Rock Band for a couple of hours, taking turns playing guitar and drums. We’re both sore today, and it was entirely worth it.

The point isn’t to play real instruments. The point is to pretend that you’re in a rock band, and have fun while you do it.

Our final set list was:

  • All I Want is to be Next to You
  • Reptilia
  • . . . And Justice for All
  • Foreplay/Longtime
  • Won’t Get Fooled Again

At the end, I threw my drumsticks down on the living room floor, and threw both my arms into the air, throwing double goats. Ryan spun his guitar controller around his neck, threw his arms up into the air, and we shared a spontaneous double high five.

I don’t care about playing real instruments. I just want to have fun with my friends (or, in this case, my son.) I’ve played real guitar and real bass, and though it was always satisfying to play songs well, it was never as fun as it was playing in Zombitis* last night. Rock Band haters (who have to try real hard to impress everyone with how cynical they are) completely miss this fundamental point, which is sad. Maybe if they were having fun like this, they wouldn’t be such dicks.

*2/3 of Zombitis, anyway. We couldn’t convince Nolan to stop playing Warcraft long enough to rock out with us.

I’m going to live forever

Well, it’s official: Guinness is good for you!

The old advertising slogan “Guinness is Good for You” may be true after all, according to researchers. A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as an aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks. Drinking lager does not yield the same benefits, experts from University of Wisconsin told a conference in the US.

[…]

The Wisconsin team tested the health-giving properties of stout against lager by giving it to dogs who had narrowed arteries similar to those in heart disease. They found that those given the Guinness had reduced clotting activity in their blood, but not those given lager.

There are, of course, some caveats:

A spokesman for Brewing Research International, which conducts research for the industry, said she would be “wary” of placing the health benefits of any alcohol brand above another.

She said: “We already know that most of the clotting effects are due to the alcohol itself, rather than any other ingredients. It is possible that there is an extra effect due to the antioxidants in Guinness – but I would like to see this research repeated.”

Clearly, this requires more research, for which I am happy to volunteer.

(via Propeller)