Westboro Baptist Church Fundraising Effort for the Oregon Queer Community

While the ideal method for dealing with demonstrations by the idiots of the Westboro Baptist Church would involve baseball bats, I've got to admit this is a pretty cool way to turn their hatemongering back on them.

Via

rae_is

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I am a machine.

An aging machine that's going to break down soon, but a machine nonetheless. Cold medication might slow me down, but nothing short of finishing the job can stop me when I've got deadlines. I AM UNSTOPPABLE.

And now some Nyquil is in order, I think.

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When it rains...

While there's never a good time for having a cold, this is a really, ASTONISHINGLY #*%&ING BAD weekend for me to have a cold.

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What a morning/quotes of the day

"...the proposal itself just doesn't seem to be working. No matter the great new material Andrew has provided, and no matter how I've rearranged and experimented with cutting and restructuring... it's still too confusing and almost top-heavy." The New York Editor (I), explaining why she's passing on the YA novel (at least till I write a few more chapters.)

"The operative word is 'fantastic.'" Emmy-Winning Producer, giving me the operative word regarding a movie treatment I wrote. Revised outline this weekend (because "fantastic" doesn't preclude there being notes), then into the script. And then, somewhere in the future, step 3: Profit. Speaking of which...

"This time last year, I told myself if I didn't get someone offering me something in the way of a paycheque for writing by the end of the year I was going to give up on it altogether once and for all. However, I lie to myself ALL THE TIME." Me, feeling sorry for myself because New York Editor passed on my YA novel of which I've written only two chapters and a confusing, top-heavy outline.

"Well, I'm out guys. If this is what's cool now, I think I'm done. I no longer have any connection to this world. I'm gonna go home and kill myself." South Park's Eric Cartman, responding to the High School Musical phenomenon.

What is the sound of one head desking?

There comes a time in writing prose--and other written media, but it's much more acute and noticeable with prose--when one's gone over the same material so many times in an effort to improve it that one no longer knows if it's any good at all (but, when the one in question is me, one suspects it's complete garbage.) At the moment, I blame The 10% Solution, Ken Rand's incredibly useful but mind-numbingly repetitive editing system, detailed in his book of the same name, for this. Rand says going over the same sentences over and over is a Good Thing, and my personal experience says he's right. But it's damn hard to believe it when you're trawling through the same three thousand words for the tenth or more time.

But! The novel outline is done, and polished to the best of my meager abilities. And, more importantly, it's off to the Book Editor, who will hopefully like it, or at least confirm my suspicion that it's complete garbage. If the latter, I shall cry and then get back to work. If the former, however, the outline, along with sample chapters and the editor's recommendation, will go upstairs to the office of whoever's responsible for deciding which projects the Book Editor's employer decides to pick up.

I'd be nervous about that if I was conscious, but if The Solution wasn't bad enough, winter has arrived. Oh, there's no snow, yet. But darkness is falling in the middle of the afternoon, the air is as cold and bitter as John McCain's campaign staff, and the daytime sky is an oppressive grey ceiling hovering just out of reach. The pills prescribed by the neurologist are not doing their job, or at least not doing it well enough, as today's throbbing headache is going about its business with no regard to the thrice-daily stomach-disintegrating anti-inflammatory I've been taking. I'm not sure if the overwhelming desire to sleep for the next six months or so is the result of the shortening day, changing weather, the new medication, or just common sense telling me it would be Better not to be awake for the winter. Or a combination of all four.

I'm told the Hollywood Producer (I) liked my outline for his movie idea inspired very, very loosely by one of my comics. That said, he of course has "some notes". Why I should need to have a pre-phone meeting phone meeting with my manager prior to having a phone meeting with HPI, I don't know, but the Manager has declared it so, and so it shall be, sometime this week.

While I await those phone meetings, notes and/or a reaction from The Book Editor, I plan to work on an outline for STEEP CURVE, a comic miniseries, in the probably vain hope that someone will someday express some interest in my writing one again. It could happen. An editor contact I thought was dead recently resurfaced wanting to know whether we'd talked several months ago as planned (we hadn't) and suggesting we get together on the phone to discuss a few ideas I'd sent his way. Of course, he suggested this while I was in Calgary and we haven't managed to get together yet, but hope springs eternal. Or, if not eternal, it at least springs for a long time.

Don't ask about the bathroom. I'm not.

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Two Steps Forward.

Was I the only one who felt like he was watching the awards ceremony sequence of Star Wars when the Obama and Biden families assembled on the stage after the new American President-Elect's speech last night?

And, as soon as that thought hit, who thought, oh crap. Now the empire's going to strike back...?

I watched the election results come in with a group of people as cynical as I am, if not more so. When it became apparent Obama had prevailed, one of the group, a Texan, expressed doubt that he'd survive his first term. Another couldn't bring himself to believe that Obama wouldn't become thoroughly corrupt eventually, but hoped he'd resist temptation long enough to fix a few things.

Even if Obama managed to be all the things we hope he will be, there's still plenty cause for cynicism. While Obama crushed McCain when it came to the electoral college, the last time I checked, the popular vote was much closer than I'd have liked. It appears that California, Arizona, and Florida all managed to defend the holy institution of marriage by legally preventing many couples who love each other from tying that particular knot. I haven't been able to find a definite statement on it, but I gather this might in some way actually invalidate previously accepted gay marriages in California, which - if it is the case - is absolutely horrific. Ted Stevens managed to keep his seat, which doesn't do much to redeem Alaskan voters. Bush still has a couple more months to utterly destroy America's standing in the world, to say nothing of significant segments of the Middle East. And, of course, FoxNews continues to exist.

Still. Last night was huge for the US and possibly/hopefully the world. A few weeks after a Canadian election that changed nothing, we got an American one that could, potentially, change everything, and for the better. Here's hoping...

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Idiotic Quote of the Day

Still recovering from the World Fantasy Con, which was equal parts fun, weird, and exhausting. And expensive. Lots of free books, though. I like free stuff.

In the meantime, here's some enlightened commentary on Proposition 8, a motion on tomorrow's California ballot to enshrine anti-gay bigotry into the state's constitution by eliminating legal gay marriage there:

"I vote yes on 8! My son, which just started high school, told me that he does not want prop 8 to pass because he has school friends who are gay. I was shocked! I told him that at his age, his little thing is not yet fully developed, how does a 14 years old know he is gay !!!!" - A mentally challenged Proposition 8 supporter calling him or herself "chen".

I just hope this twit's son had the wherewithal to say, "Because he's sexually attracted to males and not sexually attracted to females."

This was selected more or less at random from hundreds of comments on an LA Times editorial describing the distortions the pro-8 side is using to make its case, a good portion of which don't seem to have been made by narrow-minded assholes. Even so, there's more than enough there to get my blood boiling.

hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate

Deep breath...Think about free books...think about free books...think about free books...

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