It's just too hot

We're on the third day in a row over 100 degrees. Which is fine if you happen to live in Albuquerque, but sucks in Minnesota. I'm not a fan of heat myself. When it's cold, you can always put on more layers, but when it's hot...

For the last few days I've been wearing pretty much the same outfit: an athletic bra and a super airy, floaty skirt. The skirts were on clearance at Target for $4 a piece, so I bought a couple in different colors. They're so light I can pack the whole thing into my fist. Very comfortable. On the downside, being that they were on the clearance rack the only size choices were way too big and way too small. I went with too big, figuring that was actually an advantage anyway. I break out in rashes in the heat if my clothes rub on my skin at all, so too big was a good thing.

I was making lunch yesterday (or trying to; all of our bread had molded even though it had been in the freezer since I bought it. Preservative free, there is a downside. Luckily, I keep a wide stock of tortillas and pitas). I looked up to see Aidan staring at me in a look that can only be described as abject horror. Now they've both been freaking out, having to look at my belly for days on end, but I sensed this was something new.

"What?" I ask, looking at myself.

"Mom! I can see your underwear!"

This from the boy who is currently wearing only his underwear. As is his brother. And his father.

"And I see your underwear too. What's the problem?"

"Mom, yours've got little pink flowers on them."

It's supposed to storm all day tomorrow and then be in the 70s on Wednesday. Sounds like bliss.

Have you ever read a review so harsh, you just had to see the movie?

No one is liking M. Night Shyamalan's new movie Lady in the Water. I even think it looks lame, and I'm a big M. Night fan. Then I read Roger Ebert's brilliant review. Now I have to see this movie (not in theaters, on DVD; I'm not nuts).

Ebert says: "There will be no mystery, no discovery, here -- everything is going to be explained and explained and explained in the most banal, literalistic fashion. No show. Just tell." Wow, I didn't even know that was possible in a movie. Leastwise not outside of some of the fine films they did on MST3K where the filmmaker lost the soundtrack and replaced all the dialogue with voiceover.

But my fave is when he says: "It's a movie that insists on the importance of fairy-tale mythology and storytelling that doesn't respect the integrity of mythology or know how to tell a story...Were I the late Joseph Campbell, who devoted his life to exploring how myths are not arbitrary shaggy dog stories but speak to the hunger for meaning deep within our species, I would will my spirit to return from the Land of the Dead, raise my hollowed body from my grave, and pelt this movie with rotten lotuses."

Man, I gotta see this movie! It sounds like a complete train wreck.

I'm a gangsta!

The Evil Editor had this link to a web site that translates any webpage into "jive". I couldn't resist. Here's my Bloomsday post, a la Snoop Dogg:

Today is June 16, n tizzle makes it Bloomsday bitch ass nigga. W-H-to-tha-izzat, you may be ask'n, is a Bloomsday? Well, James Joyce wrote a novel called Ulysses W-H-to-tha-izzich follows tha wander'n of one Leopold Bloom around Dublin on June 16, 1904 cuz its a doggy dog world. This novel has many very devoted fans who baller in pubs around tha world every Jizzle 16 ta celebrate Bloomsday by drink'n Guiness n ballin' tha book out loud ta each gangsta (man, I neva git invited ta tha coo` parties) . Throw yo guns in the motherfuckin air.

Now Ulysses is hands-down mah absolute favorite bizzy of all time. But it's also a book that many thugz start n jizzle cizzay finish , chill yo. It's a lot of wizzork, n unless it's yo sort of th'n, it's not wizzorth tha wizzle with my forty-fo' mag. I git tizzy . You gotta check dis shit out yo. It's jizzust so much My Sort of Spendin'. Someone at Backspace recently asked me why I like it so mizzle so sit back relax new jacks get smacked. I hadn't really thought `bout it before, not in tha sort of way thiznat I could articulate it anyway like a motha fucka. So it tizzle me a while ta come up wit mah response puttin tha smack down.

I think Joyce would be proud, don't you? I'm definitely going to find ways to work "I can articulate like a motha fucka" in converstion. But my fave is what it did to my Joss quote at the top of my page:

Every time somebody opens they grill they have an opportunity ta do one of two th'n—connect or divide. Some thugz inherently divide, n some thugz inherently connect . Boo-Yaa! Connect'n is tha most important doggy stylin' n actually an eazy thing ta do. I try ta makes a connection wit someone every time I rap ta them, coz a connection can be made. People can be treated wit respect so show some love niggaz. I'm shocked tizzle there is so many thugz thizzat live ta divide . Its just anotha homocide. - Joss Whedon

Yeah, boyz!

Precision, not accuracy

I took statistics in college twice. (Not intentionally, some credits just didn't translate over between getting the Associate in Arts and getting the Associate in Applied Science). I remember the little diagrams both teachers drew to explain the difference between precision and accuracy:

Precision (the bottome one) is hitting the same mark over and over, but the mark can be anywhere. Accuracy is the special kind of precision that involves actually hitting the bullseye.

My writing career has precision but not accuracy.

I'm looking at my latest Quarter-finalist from Writers of the Future (Tale of a Fox, for those familiar with my shorts, i.e. Backspacers). (Hi, Backspacers!) Quarter-Finalist means it falls in the top 10-15% of all their submissions. It also means the slush reader got all of the way through to the end of the story but it didn't make it into the Semi-Finalist or Finalist stacks. It is supposed to be good news, and it was terribly exciting the first time it happened. But this is the fourth or fifth time I've made quarter-finals. There's no way to tell if I'm getting any closer, which is quite frustrating. I'm also grumpy since my husband crashed our computer right after I mailed the submission out, and as much as I was sure I was religiously backing up to my jump drive and to the second computer (which he is forbidden to touch), neither had the most recent version of this story on it, the one with the revisions I did that I'm sure were quite kick-ass but are completely gone from my memory now.

So Joss, why do you write these strong female characters?

I'm hoping this will work, I've never actually done anything this tricky with the blog before. If it does work, this is an awesome speech given by my hero, Joss Whedon, which is well worth listening to. It's typical Joss, funny and poignant and deeply serious all in a blow.