Two great posts

A hilarious one about meditation at a Buddhist resort; and one on agnosticism that seems to me to be spot on.

Finally finished. Finally.

Tonight, sometime after 11 p.m., I finally finished Falsely Accused. Only like a year late and after having blown past something on the order of 4 self-imposed deadlines.

But hey, its finished.

It was oddly anticlimatic. For months now I haven't known exactly what to do with the ending. Even when I knew the "what" of the ending, I still struggled with the how.

Even the first ending I wrote tonight underwent a slight edit that changes the "how" - though not the "what." But when it was all finished, I just kinda sat back, looked at the screen, and thought, "huh, I have nothing left to write. There is nothing left to say." Nothing remained in front of me but a dark... void isn't right... more like this wall of solid darkness. Just nothing left in front of me.

So its finished. And printing. Which is actually more terrifying than I expected. Though maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by that. Still, I hadn't expected it to be so scary having the actual words on actual paper rather than having them in pixels on the screen.

The long, cold winter of rewrite/editing begins.

Doggone funny

Wow. That was a bad headline. Perhaps historically bad. As a former newspaper headline writer and current journal headline writer, I hang my head in shame. Somewhere, in the distance, a dog barks. Ok, its my kitchen.

What does all this have to do with 1000 & 1 Things?

This slate.com article posits that you can pick up just about any book and find one of two lines: A) "A dog barks in the distance" or B) "Somewhere a dog barks."

Story author Rosecrans Baldwin traces the line through a veritable A-Team of writers and novels...

The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
Shadow Country.
Ulysses.
All The King's Men
Alentejo Blue
It
Christine
House Rules.
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

Baldwin explains it as a type of breathing point for authors trying to find their way, a rest stop, a breather. He suggests that editors should probably clip out most of the references as unnecassary. But then he posits that, as amatuer as it may be, it might just be that the dog barkerers are using the trope because, well, so many before them have used it. Its like ND players slapping the sign in Rudy. They do it because those before them did it. Perhaps its silly if you think about it, maybe, but its tradition and harmless.

I think I would generally fall on the side of being against such sentences. They seem superflurous. Unless the dog and his bark is in some way relevant to the story, it shouldn't be there under the guidelines of strong, tight story writing. At least that's what I've been taught. I, however, hesitate to question the writing of giants and those much more published than myself.

The funniest part of the story: Baldwin's first novel is being published soon, and after investigation, he realized that he had included the dog barking line himself. And after a friend whose first novel is also being published soon mocked him for noticing the prevelance of the dog barking line, the friend realized that the line appears in his novel as well.

It's the trifecta! The trifecta, I tell ya!

Its not exactly the technological singularity, or even the other, more sciency, singularity, but still.

This reason.com post and the accompanying video (well worth a watch in my opinion - but I wouldn't have posted it if I didn't think that was the case) hits all the interests: government programs, health and food. And there is a TED mention, to boot.

Schmarmapuke

If you've ever wondered what the appeal of the comic Marmaduke is, well, this site won't help you much in figuring that out.

But it is pretty funny in a somewhat mean-spirited way. So, if you don't find Marmaduke funny, and you are looking to waste some time, and maybe laugh a little, and find someone to commisserate with, well, this is the site for you. It certainly won't help explain its popularity - in fact it will do just the opposite.

I for one have always wondered about the appeal of the oafish beast. And I have a dog that is biggish and sometimes mishaves in spoiled ways, so you'd think I would be the prime friggin audience.

Read Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke and you'll realize that not only is the comic not funny, its not very well drawn, either. And pretty dated.

The funniest thing about any of the 88 strips on the blog are the blogger's analysis and some of the insights by the commenters. Cosplay gets a shout-out at one point that I only partly understood.

How much is too much?

You know what, I wasn't a very good person or husband tonight. It's true and it happens.

Anyway, beside that - I love my truck.

And I've been expanding my borders and watching World Cup soccer. But why have the two games I've watched so far sound as though they were played in a bee's hive? Not near a hive, and not merely the cheering of fans, but like the game was actually occurring in a fucking hive. INSIDE THE HIVE.

And I watched Karate Kid tonight. And it got me thinking... how much is too much when it comes to "compassion" for Buddhists? Is there a final breaking point? Should there be? I'm all for accepting each other, and helping each other, and giving the other the benefit of the doubt, but at what point does it end? At what point do we recognize that the world is as the world is and act in accordance. Or is the idea to change the world altogether? It seems like maybe its that second one.

And a few lines in the movie got me thinking... at one point Dre (Will Smith's son) says something along the lines of "Everything in China is old." How much of our "Westernistish" is from the fact that almost everything around us is less than 100 years old, let alone 200 or 1000. Doesn't being around 1,000 and 10,000 year old buildings and structures and history have to affect you in a different way than beind around 100 year old stuff? And does that necassarily mean that 1,000-year old stuff is better? Because doesn't that mean that 10,000 year-old cave drawings are better than anything that came after? I for one think that the "newness" of our nation means that A) we are bound to have a different outlook than the "older" world and that B) that's not necassarily a bad thing?

Having said that, I wonder if maybe we all couldn't be a little better if we were a little more Busshist? (As I write this, the Republic of South Africa - the host continent, if not nation - scores the first goal of the 2010 World Cup against Mexico. South Africa is the lowest host country in history.

These are a few of my favorite things

Black tea: Yunnan Jig, followed closely by Assam Melody
Green tea: Sencha

And I should note that after, oh, 3 or so years of brewing, I've managed to coax a subtle sweetness out of it to go along with the usual bitterness.

Such a great weekend.

I had a gin-inspired post all ready, but I'm replacing it with this: I love life. The end.

Kinda I'm Doing Something (Take Two)

I'm sitting here, having a cup of Sencha tea, having exceeded what is expected of me from work today and having not yet gotten started on what is expected of me for tomorrow. And so I'm trolling the Internet to unwind a bit. And yes, its hot; and yes, blogging is probably not what is expected of me, regardless of my level of production.

But as I said, it's what I'm doing.

And I stumble upon a... its not really a review... more of promotional item by a journalist but we'll call it a review... about a self-published book called the "The Shack." The article itself is really well done.

A sample from the article: "The novel's subject is faith in God, but it is written as if to a reader who has little interest in religion. And although it is a Christian book, its author does not seem to follow any church." But wait, it gets better: "The Shack is to narrative form roughly what the Leatherman Multi-Tool is to pliers."

It makes me want to read the book. And I thought that the topic was cool and probably of interest to at least some of you.

So, I'm trying to kill the rest of my work day, and this got me to Part Two of the post: There is so much to do right now. My book is nearly finished. I've said that probably 100 times. But each time I say it I'm a bit closer. I'm on the final scene now, so I can't be far off. Plus, the next story is already writing scenes in my head. This writing stuff would be easier if I could take the scenes in my head and just transform them into written word, rather than, you know, actually writing them. And don't fear, because this actually does tie into The Shack, because the author of that book took two years writing his novel. So I'm in good company. The novel is self-published, yes, but its been on the best-seller list for 105 weeks.

There is just so much to do. House work, work work, yard work, dog work, car work, life work, health work, blog work, avoiding-the-annoying-census-girl work, book-writing work, book-editing work, reading work, hiding-messages work, XBox work. It can be, well, a little much.

Update: Oh, and in amongst all that other work, I'm surprising R. tonight with a steak dinner. I had kinda intended it to be a candle light dinner, but since it doesn't get dark enough for candle light, it will just have to be a surprise steak and potato and tomato dinner. That might not seem like much, but we don't eat beef or potatoes around here much anymore since we went on the the weight-loss/healthy eating path.

Speaking of which... I'm doing this Spartacus workout. Ten stations of 60 second workouts, with 15 seconds to change. Three full sets for a total of 41ish minutes. Its from the Bible. And its a killer workout that involves weights, but thanks to the stations also improves cardio performance and burns mucho calorieo. So me can eat Oreo. But instead I usually just eat Jello.