Ah, if only I'd actually finished the story... couple more weeks tho. For now, I'm taking a couple days off. And I'm going to watch LOST.

I am 2,021 words away from making my word count of 50,000 words for the month of November, after which I will be crowned a "winner" for National Novel Writer's Month.

I just spent the last 90 minutes writing for my blog. I am, apparently, quite stupid.

I have six hours to get this done, which shouldn't be a problem. The sad thing is, I won't be done with the story. There's still more to come after 50k. Like the big chase, and the big fight. Maybe I'll work in the big kiss, tho...

And thus ends the month of BNL posts for titles. But a few other thoughts on the concert before I go.

Turning Stone Casino is a little slice of Vegas right in the middle of New York State, off the Thruway. But get this: it's a dry casino. Is that the state not giving the tribe that runs it a big eff-you since they can't get taxes from it? Sickeningly, the majority of the casino floor also allows smoking, give the whole place, while nice looking, the fragrance of an ash tray. Disgusting. It was everything I hate about a casino without the alcohol to ease the pain.

There was no security screening at this concert at all. I could have walked in with my new digital voice recorder (which I left in the car, figuring it would get confiscated) and taped the whole thing. I forgot the cell phone as well, so didn't even get any pictures on that, let alone the big camera. As I recall when I saw KISS/Aerosmith at MGM Grand in Vegas two years ago, they did a full body cavity search.

It was not a full house for the concert, but probably 75-80% of the seats were filled, and like I said in my previous post, a huge range of ages in the audience. I noticed something interesting and the Wife said something about it later: not a single African-American in the entire place. The darkest skin I saw was a woman who might have been from the south pacific. BNL is a truly white bread band. (and the opening act, the LeeVees, is all jewish, so much so, that all the songs they did were about being Jewish, and most of them about Jewish food, like "Kugel" and another called "Applesause versus Sour Cream" (which is put on potato latkes, FYI).

What was truly great: after the stage was set with big tapestries made to look like a living room decorated for Xmas, with a faux fireplace, with stockings for each band member, even a fake fire in the fake hearth, a group of little kids walked out on stage, lined up, and sang a bunch of Xmas songs, then the band came out to sing with them. They were all local kids, who'd been preparing for a month. Here's the news story I found on it in the Oneida Daily Dispatch:

On Tuesday, Nov. 29, 25 members of the Seneca Street School choir in grades 2-6, will sing at the Turning Stone Events Center with the Barenaked Ladies. Carol Buza, the music teacher at Seneca Street, said that the Barenaked Ladies were looking for a local choir to sing with them on stage. "This is the first time that they have used a children's choir," Buza said.
...
"The students will be singing a total of six songs on stage," Buza said. Starting at 8 p.m., the children will sing three songs by themselves and then the band will join them for the other three songs. "One of the three songs that we will sing with the Barenaked Ladies is 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas.' "

Only having about a month to rehearse, Buza said that they will have had eight rehearsals before the concert. "We do everything after school," she said.

Calling the group BNL in front of the kids to keep matters appropriate, Buza said that the students will present the band members with Seneca Street School sweatshirts that they have all signed. In return, the school will receive a picture of the students with the band and the children will all receive T-shirts that say "I sang with BNL".

Great kids, from the soloist (who wasn't exactly out of Love, Actually, but not bad), to the girl in the front row who looked and over-acted just like Dakota Fanning, to the boy in the back who was doing the devil-horns sign after each song. (As the band remarked about him on stage later: "No one loves the devil-sign more than Baby Jesus.")

He probably gave that bitch two rows ahead of me even more incentive to lift her hands up all night long... argh. I am enraged even thinking about it...

But overall, great performance, those guys truly know how to put on a show.

An open letter to the woman seated in section six, row D, seat six or seven, at the Barenaked Ladies (BNL) concert last night, November 29, 2005, at Turning Stone Resort-Casino in Verona, NY:

In the future, please, put your fucking arms down.

I could not, would not, bring myself to say something about this to you in person for various reasons. (You are only doing what you consider natural and enjoyable, which even though I grew to despise you over the course of the concert, I would not want to disrupt your fun. Even tho you are evil. And, you could be a crazy bitch with a knife, and I was wearing my favorite shirt.) However, over the course of this following day, as I look back on a very excellent show indeed, it is marred entirely by your presence two rows in front of me and your desire to keep both your hands fully outstretched over your head through 80% of the performance.

Admittedly this might not have been that big a deal if the entire floor section had just sat the hell down. The need to stand throughout an entire concert experience is exactly what I was afraid of encountering, and yet I still went to the BNL show unprepared. Even with an audience that ranged from probably age 11 to 65 based on my observations, the majority of people on the floor felt had to stand— the domino effect of those in the first few rows standing forced everyone else to stand as well so we could see anything. Annoying the extreme, especially after a long day and when you're wearing sneakers with no arch support. My dogs was barkin'. But again I could have lived with it. Except you kept putting your damned hands up in the air.

I have news for you: the band didn't see you do it. They didn't see you point. They didn't see you do the devil-horns. They didn't see you sway or even when you apparently were conducting them. None of it. You were only pissing me off.

I was absolutely joyous when, in the middle of "Brian Wilson," you suddenly left the row. I thought perhaps you would break your hands on the upper part of a door casing while on your way out. No such luck. You actually came back in and had a large bucket of popcorn.

And you held this bucket OVER YOUR HEAD.

By the first encore, you were tired, it was obvious. You sat down and while your hands still played about over your head occasionally, I could see your heart wasn't in it. Good I thought. It would have been nice if the row ahead of you had sat as well, so I could see, but I could live with it.

Then, you did something I could not believe— you poked the woman in front of you and asked her to sit down. Maybe you ordered her. She looked at you like the freak you are, but must have also seen some glint in your eye, that "bitch, I gots a knife, I'm gonna cut-chu" vibe. She sat, but not without derisive looks toward you from her friends, who did not sit. Had they any inkling of how tired your arms were at that point, I like to think they would have jumped you.

In the end, after two encores, BNL left the stage. I vowed to myself that in the future, any concert I go to where I get floor seats I'm getting tickets right up front where I an sit even if everyone else wants to stand. That, or I'm bringing a big set of lopping shears, the kind used for trimming shrubbery. I won't be so tolerant of arms up over someone's head again.

Signed,
Fellow concert goer who unfortunately had to stand behind your dumb ass.

Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.co.uk

LONDON (Reuters) - Ever get frustrated with fresh-out-of the-fridge butter that is too hard to spread?

A UK-based company has launched a portable, temperature-controlled butter dish, ButterWizard, which keeps butter at what it says is the optimal spreadable temperature of 18.5 C.

It has a built-in fan and a chip which together control the temperature, adjustable for different textures, be it super-soft bread, crusty toast or delicate biscuits.

"We were trying to find out what people's frustration with butter was. It's either too hard or too soft," said David Alfille, managing director of East Sussex-based company Alfille Innovations Limited.

"ButterWizard heats or cools the butter and you can adjust the temperature to suit yourself."

Nutritionist Fiona Hunter said: "There are over 16 million UK households buying butter on a regular basis, but one complaint I hear time after time is the lack of spreadability of real butter."

"Butter has been part of diet for thousands of years. The important thing is to spread butter thinly," she added.

ButterWizard is available in the UK for 34.95 pounds.

When this is available in the U.S., I will buy THREE.

Ah, Thanksgiving. The holiday weekend that's always multiplied by two so the wife and I can make our oh-so-important presence felt by both our families. It's always shocking to me how much our mothers' tends to plan around us. It used to be uncomfortable since we had to make the six hour drive to arrive, and we knew we had to make it or else put people out. Now it's just kind of annoying as we're at most 105 minutes away and you know what? We're really not all that interesting as company goes. (Okay, that's not totally true... I personally am freakin' hilarious.)

Our first turkey-fests was marred by a nephew who believes that the entire world is his plaything, including, but not limited to: tv channel selection, toilets, my dogs, my laptop, my wife, and more I can't remember. By the end of the day, he'd annoyed his parents, his grandparents and his aunt and uncle. The hat trick of annoyance, that is.

The second turkey-fest on Sunday, with my side of the family, resulted in what we like to call in this house, "ass-fire." After returning home from Turkey-day, Part Deux, I drank too much diet soder-pop. By four in the ay-em, it was gushing out of me like an enema. I'm sure it didn't help that I ate deep fried turkey and a new concoction by my cousin's girl-friend called deep fried stuffing. This was like the hard, baked-on, crusty stuff at the bottom of a fryer, scraped off with a paint-scraper and served up with bread crumbs. Urk.

My illness doesn't compare to what my dog Caper did two years ago at the same feast. While we all ate and drank, he was outside lapping up some old rancid peanut oil my brother Paul didn't bother to cover up—he just left it in a pot in the yard. It was left over from frying a turkey back on the fourth of July. To my Labrador-able boy, it was like sweet nectar.

Paul and I went out later that night and found Caper, quite literally, shooting grease from his ass like he was a SuperSoaker. Horror was mixed with the laughter... I was worried, sure, but it was hard to be mad at him since he got what he wanted, and then got what he deserved. I just had to pray it didn't hurt him. More importantly, I had to pray my wife didn't find out.

We drove home that night with the smell of a McDonald's dumpster filling the car more with every passing minute. I gripped the wheel and prayed Caper could make it home without an accident. His farts were bad enough (and making me crave French fries). But if he still had a belly full o' that stuff, letting loose in the car would spell not only his death for drinking it (he would be killed only after he was found to be fine, as is the way with misbehaving animals and children), but also mine, my brother's, and perhaps the peanut oil industry if my wife could get her hands on them.

I've always admired Caper's sphincter and bladder control—he's able to hold it far, far longer than his sisters—and he didn't let me down that night. He made it into the backyard... where he proceeded to make several hot oil deposits in the snow. Bonny watched this with horror, and I put on my best face of fury—god damn my brother, I'd have his head! How could he do this and not let me know? It was an Oscar-worthy performance.

Luckily, after wiping his but down with Dawn dishwashing liquid (it takes grease out of your way) for the next few hours, Caper was back to his normal self.

A few months later, when the topic came up and I was sure the statute of limitations on my getting in serious trouble was up, I admitted to the Wife that I'd known all along during the ride home that Caper was in distress. I got punched, but survived.

This year at dinner, we sat around eating deep friend stuff, watching my nephews smear whipped cream on themselves and we said, "that's why we don't bring the dogs out on thanksgiving anymore." This lead to reminiscing about the grease ingestion two years ago, and we all laughed. Even Bonny (tho I think I got punched again).

But it didn't seem as funny at 4am when I was making my own deposit in the porcelain bank.

The noise sounded to me like the wind picking up and knocking something over on the porch. The wife and I were sitting in the dining room eating dinner when we heard it and we both looked at each other quizzically and then she said, "Someone hit a deer." It was a moment of clarity that was dead-on correct. I grabbed my bright four D-Cell batteries flashlight and walked out into the dark and down to the road in time to see the diver of a pulled over SUV pulling the full-grown female deer out of the middle of the lane. He told me that it had come across the road—right out of my front yard—and he never saw it because there was another car coming in the other lane. All he saw were lights. By the time he saw it, the deer was dead center on his front bumper. If he stopped right there, compared to the deer's location, that poor animal flew at least 20 feet down the road. As we spoke, standing next to the crushed plastic of his grill, listening to it hiss with escaping air or fluid or both, we looked over and watched the deer shudder and kick in its death throes. I offered to go back up to the house and make some calls for them, but the man's wife was in the vehicle on her cell. I told them to come up if they needed anything, but they sat in the car for another hour waiting. I was writing at the dining room table and saw their lights down there, still shining on the animal as it (probably) slowly died from its internal injuries.

I face two potential mental setbacks today to the continued writing of my novel:

1) In an hour I'm going to go see the new Harry Potter movie (based on what was probably my favorite of the novels). Since my book's high concept pitch is "Harry Potter meets Desperate Housewives," the high quality of the film's story could make me look at my own story and panic at my pure inadequacy. I'm hoping not.

2) I just recieved in the mail, FINALLY, my rejection from the magazine to which I'd submitted my short story, "The Front Door Burglaries." I submitted it back in mid-August, so a three month turn around, that's not bad. I got the usual form letter, saying "it does not meet our needs at this time," which is what I expected. I'm going to send it out to a couple other places if I can find markets for the story at the size it's at (almost 14,000 words) and see if anyone else bites.

I'm feeling more like putting up a fight for the story than rejected, which is, I'm sure, exactly what the editors hoped for when they found the story unsuitable for their needs. But that's how I roll. Hopefully I'll still feel that way after I see [SPOILER ALERT] Harry win the Tri-Wizard tournament.

2 Things -- another silly-as meme which I use to impart information about me, to you. And I know you care, otherwise you wouldn't be here...

Two Names You Go By
1. Eric
2. Griff

Two Parts of Your Heritage
1. Welsh
2. White guy

Two Things That Scare You
1. Unemployment
2. Mice

Two of Your Everyday Essentials
1. Diet Sierra Mist
2. Chocolate in any form

Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now
1. Felt Fedora
2. jeans with a worn out crotch

Two of Your Favorite Bands or Musical Artists (at the moment)
1. Barenaked Ladies (duh)
2. James Horner (for writing the soundtrack to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

Two of Your Favorite Songs - at the moment
1. Battle of the Mutara Nebula (I love that STII soundtrack, it's what I've been writing to for days...)
2. All I Want for Christmas Is You (the version sung by the little girl in the movie Love, Actually)

Two Things You Want in a Relationship (other than Real Love)
1. A true partner in all things.
2. Total obedience to my every whim. NOW.

Two Truths
1. I bored from 9 to 5 most days
2. I think I have a cavity

Two Physical Things that Appeal to You
1. The soft fur on my dogs' ears
2. Real boobs

Two of Your Favorite Hobbies
1. Astronomy
2. Sailing

Two Things You Want Really Badly
1. A finished novel
2. A finished novel that doesn't suck

Two Places You Want to go on Vacation
1. Arizona (well, my wife wants to go there. I'd take her. I'm nice tha way.)
2. A writer's colony. Somewhere warm. But with broadband.

Two Things You Want to Do Before You Die
1. Buy a house on a big lake, maybe just for summer use, because I'm rich.
2. Get published for something other than a computer/tech article.

Two ways that you are stereotypically a Chick/Guy
1. I really do like power tools. Even though I can't operate most of them.
2. I don't like to ask for directions. And I wouldn't have to if I could sit in the passenger seat and navigate, god dammit.

Two Things You Are Thinking About Now
1. I really need to go to bed.
2. I really want another fudge-covered mint Oreo cookie before I go to bed.

Two Stores You Shop At
1. Target
2. Lowes
(this list could go on for ever... where don't I shop?)

Two people I would like to see take this quiz
1. My wife
2. and You

There are lots of things my wife -- whom I call Squanto -- says that I just don't like to hear.

Some examples:

I'm half convinced my wife is trying to kill me tonight. She says she's making soap, but it smells like she's boiling pennies and pewter statuary and old mercury thermometers. And she's doing it without water in the pot.

But I'm not letting the smell get to me, for I am in my little world where I am one with the iPod (Superman: The Movie is the world's greatest film soundtrack ever, there is no question) and the laptop keyboard. I'm so one with them, that I've now pushed myself ahead of my expected count for the day by around 400 words, and it feels, well, like this (SPECIAL NOVEL PREVIEW! READ IT HERE NOW!):

Barry felt himself exhale for what seemed like the first time in a long time. He knew now what he'd almost been feeling before, that sensation inside that even superseded hope. It was belief. A belief in something beyond just humanity, beyond traffic and bullies and pollution and noise and school and homework and eating your peas and anything else that was bad in the world. It was trusting in something else, something from beyond this reality.

"It's magic," Barry said.

"Actually," Timmy said, "it's thaumaturgy."

Now, the boys have to talk about what the hell that means exactly, just before they go home to their talking dog. (A Labrador, natch. His name is Odin. Bonny named him for me. Before she tried to kill me with her soap-creation stench...)

This is from an interview with the great writer George RR Martin, who is currently writing one of the best fantasy series I've had the fortune to find (thanks to Josh, who also pointed me to this interview and quote). Martin previously edited one of the best "jam" book series (AKA, lots o' authors writing about a "shared universe") I ever read, called Wild Cards:

Do you enjoy the work [writing] itself?

Martin: Not especially, no. There are days that are good where you lose track of time, and you're so immersed in what you're doing, and the words are really flowing, and suddenly you look up and it's dark outside, and your morning coffee is still sitting next to you, ice-cold. Those are great days, but they don't happen very often. Mostly, it's a struggle. I enjoy having written.

Amen, brother. And when I say brother, I of course mean, you, Mr. Martin, are my master and I am not worthy to eat the salt spilled from your pretzels.

Though I have to say, even better than having written is the pre-writing where it's all just ideas and scenes and funny lines, like a movie trailer playing in your head. Though, like with the movies, sometimes the trailer is better than the final product, I suppose.

The creepy baggy eye is watching me. It knows I'm 1000 words behind as of tonight, which I must make up for this weekend. Pray for me, as the eye will have no mercy; it knows that I have only one chapter left in me before I run out of plot and have to start actually thinking again about where this story is going ....

See what I mean? One of the graphics in my last post, the site is down today, or maybe permanently. Argh.

Let me try this one (still not hosted by me):

or the big one:

I'm a little obsessed lately with the user forums at NaNoWriMo (lurking, not posting much), especially the Tech section, where people talk a lot about word processor software and fonts and how to count words. Mainly I've looked for something to post regulary on the blog, to show my updated word counts, like this:

or

(And, yes, that's my current word count as of tonight, 11,669 out of 50k. And that is my working title, "The Thaumaturgical Three." I'm playing with changing it to "Thaumaturgy for Children," but I like the Fantastic Four vibe. I have ever since I first thought of the idea waaaay back in 1993...)

But nothing's caught my fancy. Mostly because I'm afraid that since I don't host the images, someday they'll go bye-bye, which would probably bother absolutely no one in the world except me.

Two plus years ago, my friends Lauren and Elaine came to visit and brought us the gift of Magnetic Poetry(TM) to put on the refrigerator. Knowing us well, they gave us the "canine edition." These lines are what came of it:

No one is more surprised than me: after three days of NaNoWriMo writing, my tweener fantasy novel stands at 5,740 words. One tenth down and I've still got momentum. Holy cats. (It helps that as I write it, I pretend I'm Neil Gaiman. Just without the black clothes or the movie money.)

Is it wrong that my frist two chapters are all about the kids walking to school? I think it helps that they live in a neighborhood with a gian Bosch-esque fountain in the middle, tho.

Oh, yeah, I'm back from vacation. Got back Tuesday night in fact, but too exhausted to go get my precious dogs, we instead got take out sandwiches and chocolate mousses (meese?) and watched TV and went to bed.

But not until after I got through day one of NaNoWriMo by writing 1695 words -- about 30 words more than is needed on a daily basis to make it to a 50,000 word "novel" by the end of the month of November. On November 2, however, it was back to work, and then I did really have to get the dogs (who made it worthwhile with a truly slobber filled greeting of pure joy), and that took me right up until 9:30pm, and then I had to watch Nip/Tuck (I have my priorities) and then, damn, I was tired.

Luckily I got up this morning and got in 1,227 words before work. If I can do (wait, let me do the math...carry the one...) 2,076 before bed, I'll be all caught up. Luckily I'm still in chapter one. No idea what comes in chapter two. But that's what makes NaNoWriMo scarier than a house full of hungry rats. But more fun. Really.

Let us recap:

Saw II opened last weekend at $30+ million dollars. That's sad enough, but...

DOOM opened around $15+ million dollars.

The Fog — a remake — opened at $12.2 million.

And Serenity? Best flick of the year? (Certainly better than Revenge of the Sith, the top grossing film 2005 so far and the #7 biggest U.S. box office money maker of all time.) Opened at a measly $10 mil. Then fell out of the top ten after three weeks.

I could handle it all if Saw II hadn't made $30 million.