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Six word memoir

The Six Word Memoir seems to be all the rage these days. Here's mine:

Sometimes I like to break the rules.

How about you?

The sad tale of Bloggie

I once had a pet that I loved. Let's call him Bloggie (in keeping with other similarly named pets I've had, including Tumbly, Piggie [that's a soft "g," as in pigeon], Blackie, and Callie). At first, I relished the thought of feeding him clever new words and grooming him with new links and gadgets.

But, like many kids with short attention spans, I eventually grew tired of Bloggie. He languished in his cybercage for days, even weeks on end. "What, you want more words?" I'd snap. "I just fed you a week ago!" Some of his links grew tangled, and I told myself I didn't have time to comb them out.

A presidential inauguration that I'd anticipated for so long came and went. I'd occasionally think about feeding Bloggie some of my thoughts (like the way the snowflakes winked and sparkled in the sunlight as they fell outside my window during the inauguration ceremony, made all the more profound by the closing lines from Elizabeth Alexander's poem, Praise Song for the Day: "In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,any thing can be made, any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp, praise song for walking forward in that light."), but then it seemed too much trouble to shake Bloggie out of his torpor and apologize to him for being such a bad owner, and thought better of it.

But some readers (Pat) have apparently noticed Bloggie's silence, and are beginning to whisper about blog neglect. So, dear readers, what do you think? Is it time to take Bloggie to the pound in the hopes that someone else will love him, haul him out to the country and leave him near a friendly-looking farm, or put him down? (By the way, did it ever bother anyone else that that phrase is also commonly used for putting babies down for their naptimes?) Or should I give myself a good talking-to and develop a new, more mature appreciation for Bloggie?

Twilight (abridged)

I read an advance reading copy of Twilight shortly after it came out, and was not impressed by the writing, Bella's self-sacrifice and submissiveness, or the thinly disguised Mormon propaganda about abstinence. So I haven't been even slightly tempted to see the movie. But I did enjoy this synopsis of the movie: "If 'Twilight' was 10 times shorter and 100 times more honest."

Art & Fear

When I need encouragement with my fiction, I turn to certain books for inspiration. One of the best is Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles & Ted Orland. I am now working on Into the Fire, version umpty-million, so this passage resonated with me:

William Kennedy gamely admitted that he re-wrote his own novel Legs eight times, and that "seven times it came out no good. Six times it was especially no good. The seventh time it was pretty good, though it was way too long. My son was six years old by then and so was my novel and they were both about the same height."

Obamafied!

Yes You Can Obamafy yourself with this PhotoBooth plug-in by Dubi Kaufmann. If you have a Mac running OSX 10.5 Leopard, that is. Download it here:
http://www.dubster.com/obamafy/

Local Matters WRFU Benefit

If you live in the Champaign-Urbana area, or even if you don't, I'll be at the Jane Addams bookstore as part of the Local Matters art sale in downtown Champaign from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, December 6. The art sale is part of the Local Matters benefit for WRFU at the Cowboy Monkey, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. The benefit is being held to raise funds towards a new permanent tower for WRFU (104.5 FM), a local progressive radio station collective operating out of Urbana committed to social justice, focusing on public affairs issues, and the arts.

I'll be selling signed copies of Stella Brite and the Dark Matter Mystery. There may be prizes!

For a detailed schedule of the show, go to www.myspace.com/whatmattersbenefit