goddess of clarity: a blog about politics, culture, and serenity

Archive: October 16 - October 31, 2005

October 31, 2005 — 22:45 EST :: permalink

So here it is. I've been dancing around this idea for weeks now, and this weekend I finally decided to pull the trigger. I've signed up for my first NaNoWriMo.

Weeks ago, during the aforementioned "dancing around" phase, I was checking out the NaNoWriMo site and decided to look for any other fellow Rochesterians who might be participating. And to my disappointment, there weren’t any. Not a single one. I did a search on the whole state, and of course found many participants from New York City. There was a handful from Buffalo. But the whole Rochester-Syracuse-Albany corridor was not represented at all!

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me even now, this really pissed me off! A quick check of my last hometown of Seattle showed dozens, maybe hundreds, of participants there; what the hell was wrong with Rochester?! Fine, I said to myself. I’ll show them. I’ll be the Lone Novelist, toiling away in upstate obscurity. Know what else I'm gonna do? I’ll gonna set my novel in Rochester. Hell, I'll even name it after Rochester! Ha! Howdja like that?!

So now I had a setting (Rochester in the 1920s) and a title ("Flour City"), but no characters and certainly no plot. But those will come, right? I spent the next couple of days trying to think of things that might hang around this frame of a setting. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

"A shy, hardworking girl attends Catholic high school in 1920s Rochester. She dreams of going to college to study chemistry, while her best friend dreams of going to New York City to join the Ziegfeld Follies. Then stuff happens to them. This stuff eventually culminates in the Senior Night Talent Show, an event that will change both their lives."

Not much, right? But it's a start. So yesterday I head back to the NaNoWriMo site to register my profile. I give myself what I think is an appropriately proud user name, UpstateLori, and I choose Rochester, NY as my location. I hit "Submit" and my profile is updated with a link to my "regional affiliation." I click on this link and discover to my embarrassment that there are dozens of participants from Rochester. I look through a few profiles and discover many of them are lifelong residents who are on their third or fourth NaNoWriMo. So before I’ve even written a word, my entire premise has been exposed as illegitimate. I'm left saddled with a suddenly lame username that I can’t change.

So after discovering that I am not alone, I decided to swing by the launch party the Rochester group was throwing tonight at the Ridge Road Starbucks. This was a bit of a leap of faith for me. I didn’t know anyone there, and I’m not known as a "joiner." Still, as Will Rogers said, "A friend is a stranger you haven't met yet." Or was that Fred Rogers? Doesn’t matter. The point is, everyone was of course very nice, if very young. I think I was the oldest person in the group by a good eight years, easy. There were many college undergrads and even a couple high school students. Which is fine, really. Way to go, kids. Future of America and all that. But in a weird way, the relative youth of the other WriMos served only to batter my self esteem even further. At an age when I was still penning Duran Duran fan fiction, these guys are fixing to crank out a 50,000-word novel, some of them for the second time. I was suddenly feeling very old.

Still, I was not going to get myself down before I even begin. When the going gets tough, the tough ... go to a movie. Hey, at least I’m getting off on the right foot as far as procrastination is concerned. Mr Goddess and I left the Starbucks and made it The Little just in time to see Everything is Illuminated.

So here it is, one hour and twenty minutes before midnight. It begins.

—lori.

October 31, 2005 — 13:48 EST

I am a leaf on the wind.

To mark the sad fact that as of this past Friday Serenity is no longer playing anywhere within 200 miles of here, I offer this fun quiz. Which Serenity character are you?

"You scored as Hoban 'Wash' Washburne. The Pilot. You are a leaf on the wind, see how you soar. You have a good job, and a stunning wife who loves you (and can kill people). Life is good, which is why you can't help smiling. Now if you can just get people to actually listen to your opinion things would be perfect."

Which Serenity character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

—lori.

October 29, 2005 — 13:05 EST

The Unflattering Politician Photo of the Week

(Perp Walk Edition)

(Photo by AP Photo)

You wouldn't indict a man on crutches, would ya?

Well, it's not Watergate and it's not Iran-Contra, but it's the best we've got.

On Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby resigned after being indicted by a federal grand jury on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.

And that seems to be all anybody really knows for certain in this whole affair (that and the fact that anyone with the nickname "Scooter" would not have survived into adulthood if his father had punched a timeclock for a living).

Otherwise, facts have been notoriously thin on the ground. As far as I can figure it, someone (most likely "Scooter") leaked the secret identity of an undercover CIA agent to several reporters, and then lied about it to the special prosecutor investigating the leak. And then the reporters -- who knew that this guy was lying -- decided it was more important to honor the confidentiality of their lying son-of-a-bitch of a source than to point out to the rest of us that he was a lying son of a bitch. I think that's basically it in a nutshell.

Oh, wait. There's also the fact that the reason the secret identity of the undercover CIA agent was blown in the first place was to somehow discredit a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq War policy, a critic who happened to be the undercover agent's husband. Confused yet? Don't worry, it should all be cleared up in the next Tom Clancy novel, Double Secret Background.

Whatever the hell is going on, it's been kinda fun watching both sides trying to spin the case in their favor. For the Democrats, there is the whole liberal wet dream that a possible trial of Libby will lead to a re-examination of the Bush administration's rationale for war and prove once and for all that it was all a tissue of lies. Please. Let's all come back from Happy Cloud Rainbow Land, 'cuz back here on planet Earth there is no way the Bushies will ever let it come to that. Cheney will *not* be testifying to *anything* under oath. Sorry. Not gonna happen. For some on the right, the argument seems to be that the indictments aren't as bad as they could have been; that there were no indictments related to the original leak itself, and that lying under oath isn't as big a deal. This line of reasoning might have some credibility to it if it weren't in such direct opposition to the Republicans' gleeful pursuit of Bill Clinton -- to the point of impeachment, no less -- when *he* lied under oath about blow jobs and cigar sex. It seems the chickens are coming home to roost for the Republicans, and they're wearing blue semen-stained dresses.

—lori.

October 26, 2005 — 13:05 EST

You Know You're From Rochester When ...

A co-worker just sent this little e-meme around the office. I've lived here for three years now, and am already nodding with nostalgic recognition over most of these.

The only thing at the annual May Lilac Festival is snow.

The worst four-letter word you could say is "Fuji." (ed. this is a Kodak town, after all.)

You can't swim at the beach.

You thought that you had figured out that alternate-parking thing, but wind up with a ticket anyway.

Toronto is about 70 miles away, but it takes four hours to get there.

The name "Greater Rochester International Airport" is bigger than the airport itself.

There's an 800 number to report a pothole in the road.

You know that a "Can of Worms" is not something that you take fishing. (ed. this is what passes for "traffic" in Rochester. Seattle commuters would laugh in the face of the Can of Worms.)

Your baby's first word is "Wegmans."

You ask lifetime residents where the George Eastman House is, but they don't know either. (ed. I live right down the street from the Eastman House, so this one doesn't apply.)

In a city where it snows at least 90 inches a year, they build a new sports stadium with no roof on it.

It can be 70 degrees one day, below freezing the next, and you think nothing of it.

Your mother is buying outfits to wear to Wegmans.

Your low-fat diet is never low enough to exclude an Abbott's custard.

You order a white hot and a pop, and the counterman knows what you're talking about.

You can travel from Egypt to Greece in about a half-hour by car.

D&C is a newspaper, not a medical procedure.

There are no hamburgers, only ground steak.

You can go to any mall on a Saturday and see at least 5 people you either work with, went to school with or dated.

A musical comes to town 10 years after its Broadway premier and the entire town goes nuts!

You awaken from a deep sleep, look at the clock and see that it's 6:00, but you have no idea whether it's AM or PM.

When 18+ inches of snow falls overnight, but you never thought of NOT going to work.

You are perplexed when friends from other cities come to visit and want to "see the sights".

In winter if the temperature hits 45 degrees and the sun comes out, people walk around downtown wearing shades and no jackets.

There are places at the poles that seem to get more sunlight during the winter months than we do.

Wegmans is somewhere to go on a Friday night, for entertainment.

You know who Vinnie and Angelo are. (ed. it's the Irondequoit Dodge boys!)

You define summer as three months of bad sledding.

You think that people from Pennsylvania have an accent. (ed. I don't know what yous are talkin' 'bout.)

Halloween is snowed out with great regularity.

You have experienced frostbite and sunburn in the same week.

Half the change in your pocket is Canadian, eh.

Your idea of a seven-course meal is a six pack of Genny and a bucket of Buffalo wings.

You believe that "down south" means Maryland.

Your snowmobile, lawn mower and fishing boat all have big block Chevy engines.

You can compare Nick Tahoe's garbage plate to at least 3 other knock-offs in competing restaurants. (ed. who knew, but it turns out nothing is better at two in the morning than two hot dogs, baked beans, and mac salad.)

—lori.

October 23, 2005 — 12:43 EST

Best bit from Friday night's Lewis Black show at the University of Rochester:

Gay marriage! Gay marriage! That's all we heard about during the last election. On the list of things this country has to worry about, "gay marriage" is on page six right after, "are we eating too much garlic as a people."

—lori.

October 21, 2005 — 12:46 EST

The Unflattering Politician Photo of the Week

(Mug Shot Edition)

(Photo originally appeared in The Smoking Gun)

Howdy folks! Nice to see ya. Y'all enjoying the chicken?

On Wednesday, an arrest warrant was issued for House Majority Leader Tom Delay on charges of conspiracy and money laundering stemming from his fundraising activities for Texas state legislative candidates. Yesterday, Delay turned himself in to the Sears Portrait Studio -- um, I mean, the Harris County Sheriff's Office -- where this mug shot was taken.

What I never get about these kinds of cases involving rich and powerful folks is the whole "turning yourself in" part. I'm guessing that when the Harris County sheriff issues an arrest warrant for Nico or Ramon, they don't get to put on their best clothes and walk down to the sheriff's office at a time most convenient to them. If the TV show Cops is any guide, they'll be lucky if they get a chance to put on a T-shirt before being dragged away by police, which is decidedly inconvenient.

—lori.

October 20, 2005 — 09:35 EST

President Bush Haiku

(An ocassional look at the actual musings of George W. Bush through the medium of 19th-century Japanese verse)

And do, like — I mean,
How do you — how would — are you
Confident? I mean.

—President Bush talking to the troops in Iraq during a stage-managed October 13 videoconference.

—lori.