a fool's musings

Boreas by Waterhouse
Fool, said my muse to me,
look in thy heart and write...

Warning: Adult Content

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the five Ws, or, all about me

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current mood: current mood

"pathological and unbalanced"

Items of Interest

    Music
  • Walk On - U2
  • Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
  • If I Can't Change Your Mind - Sugar
  • Sick of Myself - Matthew Sweet
  • Town Called Malice - The Jam
  • One - U2
  • The Space Between - DMB
    Books
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Catch-22
  • The Neely Trilogy
  • Absalom! Absalom!
  • Possession: A Romance
  • Foucault's Pendulum
  • Dreamhouse
  • LA Confidential
  • I Capture the Castle
  • Sandman
  • Waking the Moon

    Shows
  • Angel

    •
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in reruns)

    •
  • Alias

    •
  • West Wing

    •
  • The Simpsons

    •

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2002-06-20 - 10:00 a.m.

there is no disputing taste

So today is the big departmental outing -- we're going to Belmont for the races, so I'll be away from the PC again all day.

Twice in one week... they're trying to kill me. *snerk*

So no big thoughts. I'm still pondering the whole slasher/shipper v. gen thing, and wondering why the people who write and like gen fic always feel the need to bother people who write slash or shipper fic (and really, come on, most slash *is* shipper fic, so I don't see a distinction), because I never feel the need to tell people who write gen and noromo stuff to write romance.

de gustibus non est disputandam.

Live and let live, people.

I guess I'm feeling all mellow and groovy, but if people push me too far on this, I'll have to lay the smack down.

So what I'm saying is, don't harsh my mellow.

Now, gonna go get some money so I can lose it all on the pretty horsies.

~victoria

[current mood: mellow]
[current music: How You Remind Me - Nickelback]
[random quote: \"Life is a gamble, at terrible odds—if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.\"]

~*~

2002-06-19 - 8:28 p.m.

searching for inspiration

Fucking Explorer fucking grrr...

::count to ten::

I had a Mr. Softee vanilla ice cream cone with chocolate sprinkles for dinner.

It was good.

::deep breath::

You people who search for things on the internet? You are a bunch of sick fucks, lemme tell ya.

::shakes head::

Why do you click on the link when this diary so clearly DOES NOT CONTAIN what you are looking for?

I am utterly baffled.

There is no Simpsons porn or incest here. No Boromir fic. Repeat after me: "There is NO BOROMIR FIC HERE," nor is there any Orlando Bloom RPS.

Sigh.

Those aren't the sick people, though. Well, okay, the Simpsons incest fic people are, but there are worse searches that have turned up this diary.

No narcoleptic rhinoplasty, though. Oh no, it was some other kind of rhinoplasty and narcoleptic oral sex.

Huh.

~*~

My Amazon troubles have been straightened out. I went on a used book/Regency Romance binge.

I blame Oracne for talking about one of my favorite romances ever - The Devil's Cub. Finally, I will be getting to read the first one, the one about Avon and Leonie, which I'm sure will be a blast.

And along the way, I just had to pick up copies of Miss Whittier Makes a List and Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand, because Carla Kelly breaks my heart in every book (Marian's Christmas Wish anyone?) even with the requisite happy endings.

Gah, those are the kinds of romances I want to write, if I'm going to be "damned" with the "romance" label.

Plus, I finally found The Counterfeit Coachman by Elisabeth Fairchild, another Regency writer who makes me sniffly. Dukes and coachmen, and pretty young girls who learn that looks aren't everything.

Hmm...

I'd still like to get a copy of Scandal Broth and The Sugar Rose. Maybe next time.

~*~

Jenn was talking about quotes and one line inspirations, and well, I tend to take my inspiration from songs. One line in a song can set me off - just a phrase can do it - "the space between" or "she's like water" or "Fuck you and your untouchable face, fuck you for existing in the first place" or yes, a line in a fic can spur me.

Inspiration is an odd and unpredictable thing, which is why I try never to blow it off when it comes knocking, and why I still try to read and listen and watch as much as possible, because everything is fodder for writing. Everything.

I wish I could get back on the writing track. Opened up Caliper today. Meg has some great ideas, and I obviously suck at this type of story, since I've been stuck on it for weeks... Sigh... I'm hoping it'll get written soon. It's not a romance. I'm out of my element, and it's throwing me off my game.

I think that's why Day's Hard Light is not getting written.

'Cause I don't know a goddamned thing about being a soldier and being at war.

I know there were some people who said they'd help me with it - it's the Logan-in-Nam fic, and I've got my Tim O'Brien here to give me help, but I can't decide what exactly I want to happen.

I need to mull.

Maybe I should rent Black Hawk Down.

Because I definitely want it to be a big ol' FUBAR situation, one that sticks with Logan and resonates even after he's lost his memory. One that makes him recall what the cost of war is, and how much he wants to protect the people he loves from it.

Hmm...

~*~

Oh, there's other stuff from earlier today in the LiveJournal about slash and why people write it and how much it annoys me sometimes to hear "Oh, there's not enough gen fic" or "There's not enough noromo fic" or "There's not enough "friendship between men" fic. Why must it always be sexual?" and on and on...

Feel free to join the discussion...

~victoria

link

[current mood: baffled and thoughtful and sitting in the dark]
[current music: 3 Libras - A Perfect Circle]
[random quote: \"If I die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home\"]

~*~

2002-06-19 - 12:50 p.m.

"your essential rhythm is your heartbeat"

After several false starts, I'm reading Traveling Mercies, which I received as a gift from my Maleficent Mistress, Dotificus.

I think the writing is lovely. Sharp, precise, evocative.

I still dislike Anne Lamott with cordial venom, however.

I can't get over the impression she made - a very bad one - in a Salon article about overweight women, and how she used to think of them (us), and reading this book ...

I know I'm supposed to feel for her, but I keep thinking, "you stupid bint. You were pregnant and you drank and smoked and did drugs and I'm supposed to *feel sorry* for you? WTF?"

I guess maybe if she'd grown up black and poor I would, but white, middle-class, faux-hippies don't inspire any sympathy (or empathy) in me at all.

(And yes, I realize the inherent racism in that sentiment. But I'm trying to be honest here. It would have been even harder for her to be black and poor than it was for her to be white and middle-class.)

Strange, considering I grew up white, middle-class and petit bourgeois, though up until the past couple years, I always thought we were lower middle class (and just barely not working class), which definitely informs my perceptions.

I mean, I never considered us white-collar, though my dad had an office job.

I always knew we weren't poor, and we had a lot of stuff, but I guess ... we didn't have designer jeans, and we shopped at Sears until we kids were old enough to think that wasn't cool anymore, and I grew up in a neighborhood that was definitely the - hmm, what's the opposite of a beneficiary? -- definitely informed by white flight in the '70s.

Walking to church on Sunday mornings (or to the subway during the week) in the '80s and seeing crack vials on the street, and used condoms and syringes...

I guess I think of myself as poorer than I was. Which is odd, no?

I'm still wrestling with this -- false impression, but it definitely colors my attitude toward Lamott (I *loved* Crooked Little Heart, btw, but couldn't read Rosie, 'cause I read them out of order, so I already knew what was happening, and now I see how autobiographical the two novels are) and other writers of middle-class "drugs/depression/recovery" type books, because I have no patience for them, even as I myself am "recovering" (bleh, hate the term) from and on medication for depression.

I try not to be a hypocrite, but maybe I am...

... <- indicating me having thought about this more than is probably healthy as I type sentences like: "as amended by that certain First Amendment of Office Lease dated as of August xx, 199x, that certain Second Amendment of Office Lease dated as of March xx, 200x..."

(you can see why my job is all excitement even when I'm busy, eh?)

In rereading that Salon article, I'm thinking it's not at all as bad as I recall, so I must have been in a crappy mood or PMSing or something, but once I get into that, "I don't like you, you irritate me" mode, it's *very* *hard* for me to begin liking a person or find them non-irritating.

Lamott is a wonderful writer, though, and once she starts writing less about herself and her fucked up life and more about her life with her son, I like her much, much better.

I guess I just get really tetchy about people who used to be thin and have put on a few pounds getting snippy about people who have always been a little heavy and how obviously, they've let themselves go...

It's funny, because the weight issue is being discussed a lot around my blog rounds lately, first in relation to fans ourselves (fan-shaped, Kat Allison called us, iirc, those of us who could stand to lose a few pounds and get out from behind our computers every once in a while to exercise) and about Amber Benson and now Nick Brendon (again). About how people who get angry at people who rag on Amber for being "chunky" are hypocrites for turning around and criticizing NB for being "puffy" and who the fuck are we to say how he should look. He's bulked up, yes, and he was ill, and maybe he hasn't been able to lose weight, and maybe (and here's a revolutionary thought) maybe he doesn't *want to*. (See Te here and here, Jessica-Ruth (who I really should add to my buddies, if not my sidebar...), and Destina [who also tackles that old favorite, warnings and labels on fic, just for added piquancy *g*].)

So yeah, Lamott has some cool stuff to say about faith and God and it's not all preachy, but I'm still not liking her much. She strikes me as self-indulgent and self-obsessed, and being very much self-indulgent and self-obsessed myself, those are two things I dislike immensely in other people.

Which just goes to show I'm as idiosyncratic as the next person.

My theory of life is generally, everybody starts out on the Shit List and very few people get moved over to the Good List (because you have to change your mind far less frequently this way), and some people will never ever make it off the Shit List, simply because I can't get over whatever residual feelings I may have had in the past.

I'm human. I have flaws.

Mark this day down, 'cause you won't see me admit that very often. *g*

And to end, a small quote I really liked from the book:

Maybe it's because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.

~victoria

link

[current mood: thoughtful]
[current music: She Talks to Angels - Black Crowes]
[random quote: She don't know no lover, none that I ever seen, and to her that ain't nothing but to me it means everything.]

~*~

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The painting is "Boreas" by John William Waterhouse. Again, not a muse, but I like her. She suits the color scheme.

The quote is from Sir Philip Sidney.

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