Pictures Worth Approximately 960 Words Each

Hello, readers! Here are some pictures that show what I've been thinking about and doing for the past couple of weeks.

 This is my band, The NRIs (linked at left), playing the Black Cat. I was hopped up on cold medicine and looking forward to the single bottle of Dos Equis that I allowed myself at the end of the night. (Thanks Jess for the photo!)

I didn't take this photo, but if I had, I would have gotten to talk
 to them. I would have asked so many weird questions.

Yes, this is a photo from Wil Wheaton's Flickr. Yes, it's Wil as Fawkes and Felicia as Codex, from The Guild, season 4, which is supposed to come out in time for ComicCon. Yes, I do know when that is. These people inspire me to make things.

I took this photo of Theresa at The Red and the Black before a Machines on Vacation show. It looks so awesome because I used a "retro camera" app for my Droid Eris, the lighting was perfect, and the bar is a throwback to a French Quarter bordello.

Illustration by Michael Byers, Washington Post Magazine

I participated in the 3rd annual Washington Post Hunt, solving puzzles downtown with my good-looking, dirty-minded, married or almost-married rock star friends. We solved the three easy ones right away...then overthought a bit on the super easy one. We were opposed to the execution of the football one (as many other people were, judging by the boos Dave Barry received). And we were a bit flummoxed by the endgame anagram...but all in all, it was a fair showing. We'll rock this thing next year, now that we know what's what. This is only worth about 900 words, but it is an illustration.

Thanks Peter for the photo! Clicking will take you to his Flickr.

And here's some orange and black. These photos are out of order chronologically, but again...high-functioning ADD, here. This is how my mind is processing all these things right now.










That's it for now! I have some more blog topics on the backburner, including a rant about dressing up to drink, a flash fiction contest, and an opportunity for guest bloggers. Stay tuned!

Dispatch from #PAX -- part 2

I didn't know then that the guy in the blue sweater was going to be so important to how the rest of my day played out, when he finally let me onto the escalator. I didn't want to be a dick, so I didn't run up the moving stairs, but I did walk briskly and with purpose. The Hynes Center is a bit of a contemporary labyrinth, with angles and arcs all over the place. While we waited at the doors of the main theater, someone another floor up was visible to a bunch of people right behind me. He did something which got people excited--then he did something that made them sad. I had never seen quite so many people get so excited at the same time, and then all say, "aww!" in unison. "Yay! Awww. Yay!! Awww. YAY!!!!!! Awwww." It reminded me of being in Band again.

That's really when I realized: all these people are here to have fun. They do not care about looking stupid. They do not care about what other people may think of them (and that goes double for the few cosplayers I saw).  They do not care about anything but having a fantastic time and learning new things and meeting new people and not getting conSARS. THESE PEOPLE ACTUALLY DID THIS. And you know what? So did I. But I digress.

Walking into the main theater, I was able to take a seat very close to the aisle in the stage right section, very close to the front. I was going to see Wil Wheaton's keynote, by god, and I wasn't going to have to use the jumbotron to do it. That's what I came here for, after all...to be near one of my greatest writing idols while he exuded amazingness. Of course he's not just a writing idol for me--I was obviously the biggest tween ST:TNG fan back in the day, and I was just getting to the point in my life when Wesley was starting to look pretty fiiine (wink-wink, nudge-nudge, know what I mean?) to my little nerd-teen-in-the-making. This won't be any huge admission to the people who actually might read this blog on a regular basis, but I have kind of a crush on Wil Wheaton. But who doesn't? Amirite??

Didn't I say at the beginning of this post that the guy in the blue sweater was going to be important to the story? Well, at about 2:30--half an hour before showtime--I decided that it was necessary for me to go to the bathroom so I wouldn't be all uncomfortable and whatnot throughout the show. After all, I had been waiting in line, and if you'll recall, sitting on concrete for the past 3.5 hours. I had to go. So I put my coat on my chair to save my seat and I ducked out.

When I returned to the door of the main theater, the guy in the blue sweater was very loudly announcing that the doors were closed and that nobody else was going to be allowed into the theater, per the fire marshal's orders. He calmly told someone who protested that he had no qualms about calling the police if things were to get unruly. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. I had come all this way to see Wil Wheaton's keynote, and that was it? My lovely winter coat was going to get to see him from my plum seat and I was going to have to watch on YouTube?? I felt my mouth fall open, and my eyes go wide. This was not how I had wanted this to go, at all. But I didn't want to be a dick, so I tried to take a few deep breaths while considering my plan of action. 

With only a little hint of panic in my voice, I said to the guy in the blue sweater, "My coat is inside, on my seat. Can someone get it for me or something?" He looked at me and probably saw the broken dreams all over my face. Then the heavens opened and a ray of unearthly light illuminated him as he said, sotto voce, "Stand to my left. Wait until the crowd is gone." I swear I heard a choir of angels. 

Thanks to the man in the blue sweater, those of us with problem bladders were eventually able to retake our seats in the main theater, just in time for the speech. Thank you, blue sweater guy. I owe you like eleventy Guinnesses.  

This photo, which I took with my phone, doesn't even accurately convey how close my seat was to the dais. I could see the design on Wil Wheaton's ThinkGeek t-shirt and I could see the different looks in his eyes, a mistiness when he choked back tears or the mischievous gleam he'd get right when he was about to be cheeky (that's my favorite, fyi).

I was close enough to wonder what it would have been like if someone had introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons when I was twelve. As it was, I spent most of that time writing stories about bard guilds and knights and boarding school (somewhat unrelated, but true) anyway. Having a reason to do it and people to do it with probably would have made it all the more enjoyable. The more Wil spoke about how gaming taught him to use his imagination, the more I realized that I was lucky enough to have gone about it exactly backward: I used my imagination for fun when I was a kid, and, much later in my life, it brought me to gaming. 

As it stands, I still haven't technically been introduced to serious roleplaying games. It may happen. It may not. But the most important takeaway from Wil's keynote was that even though I technically was there alone, I was not alone. Wil talked about hot lava in the grocery store and finding adventures around every corner. I saw the people nodding around me, and felt myself nodding along. I hadn't played RPGs, but I read so many fantasy books that I had always just naturally made my life into one big RPG. Even though I didn't have a character to call my own, I had characters in my head--hundreds--living and breathing and some even dying like Aeofel...all the time. It was an entire convention center full of people who thought about things the way I did. I was, as he said in the speech, home.

I very quickly met up with my friend Ben and did the Iron Guard with his friend Dave. Then I wandered around for a little bit after the keynote, wondering where I'd have to go to get Wil to sign the books I'd brought. There was a panel I wanted to see on Interactive Fiction, so I went to that with Ben and Dave. I'll probably discuss that a bit more in the next installment. Then I pretty much had to go back to my hotel room, even though I had a wristband for priority seating for the Metroid Metal show. We'd gotten up fairly ridiculously early that morning to drive up to Boston, so I was pretty much ready to have a bath and pass the heck out. I did those things consecutively.

And as I had a Friday pass for PAX, I suspected that I'd just missed my opportunity to meet Wil Wheaton. Oddly, I was okay with that. I'd gone to PAX a Wil Wheaton fangirl and came out of it with a fresh, delicious pile of self-awareness.

I will let you know, however, that there will be another installment of this dispatch from PAX. What happened? How did I get in? Find out next time...

Dispatch from #PAX -- Part 1

Friday, 11:00a.

I am sitting by myself on a cold, concrete floor, surrounded by thousands of busy, bubbling strangers with shiny electronic devices in their hands and little picture-cards meticulously placed around them on the floor. I do not yet know who I am.

While my posterior slowly falls asleep, I gather what I know about myself and try to organize the facts into some sort of meaning. I am a geek in many ways: I can tell you why nobody can accurately reproduce a Stradivarius violin (it's the varnish--nobody knows what's in it); I can properly use a semicolon in a complex list; and I will always take pains to insist that the fourth game in the King's Quest series is called The Perils of Rosella, and that it was the first computer RPG to feature a female protagonist. (I also know how to use words like "protagonist.") While these bits of niche trivia are occasionally handy, it occurs to me that they are but the merest shadow of the collective niche knowledge in the room. This is, after all, a gaming convention. The sheer volume of rules, procedures, and facts that the couple sitting next to me must keep in their heads at any given time is awe-inspiring. They are playing Magic. It has been fifteen years since I have seen anyone playing Magic. There are thousands of couples just like them, all around me.

I have made the mistake of coming alone to this event. I figured there might be some other loners, considering the sometimes solitary nature of gaming. I was entirely wrong about this. Looking at the line around me, I feel like the only person who has come here alone. I feel strange standing up by myself to let the blood flow back into my arse, so I halfheartedly do some kind of yoga stretch whenever I start to lose feeling in my buttocks. There is some comfort in the fact that I do have at least one friend attending the event, and while I wait, I discover (through the magic of Facebook) that there will be at least one more. I wonder if I will find them easily among these tens of thousands of unfamiliar faces.

One of the games I've brought in my bag might give me a little bit of geek-cred. It's a second edition of Fluxx, by Looney Labs. I used to play it a lot when I was in high school. Unfortunately, it requires friends to play. I also brought Set (which is probably not worth any geek pointz) which I also played a lot of in high school. If I weren't so introverted, I probably would have met someone in line to play with by now. Yes, that's right. An introvert came to a gaming convention alone. I feel like that's the punchline to something, but the only possible joke is my life. Being on the periphery of the periphery reminds me that I've always lived with one foot in each of two worlds--races, classes, spheres of societal influence. Now this: I'm geek/not-geek. I'm here, but I don't belong.

(Much of this was written while sitting in line, so I'm going to add an editor's note here. Pro tip: sitting on concrete saps your joie de vivre. AVOID.)

An enforcer (what they call the volunteers they have to answer questions and herd cats) walks through the crowd shouting for Jacob Wilson. After each repetition of his name, some wise guy shouts things like, "Your Mom's here!" or "You forgot your lunch!" and people laugh. Sometimes applause erupts, and I worry that I'm missing enforcers spiriting Wil Wheaton through some hidden door. Most of the reason I decided to come in the first place was because he said he'd be doing the keynote. The applause, however, is usually because someone has managed to take down one of the oddly flimsy metal line barriers--the material is strong, but the construction is faulty. The crossbars are very easily knocked off the posts. Other times, the applause is for some kind of game that's being projected on the wall across the room from where I'm sitting. People are standing and waving their arms. Enforcers are also walking around handing out small prizes for trivia contests.

Strains of rock music ("Carry On Wayward Son," among others) float up out of nowhere and die out as quickly as they arose. Roving camera crews pump up the crowd as they pass through the doors. They have to set up for the keynote, so they get to go first. When the door opens to let them through, the crowd doesn't need any more pumping up. There is a guy playing that sailor jig on a concertina just because he can. They are excited. They are passionate. They are one hundred percent ready to not be sitting on concrete anymore, and so am I.

Friday 2:00

When the doors open, it is a mad dash to get inside, but we are all hurrying up to wait. Once you enter the main hallway, there is a set of escalators going up to the main theater, where the keynote will be. I can see the bottom of the escalator when a man in a blue sweater cuts the line off, starting with me. There are too many people on the escalator. They will be utterly screwed if it stops, so they decide to let people up in waves. I am the very first person in the second wave.

 

a fragment and some musings

"It's not like everyone else is having more fun than you. I mean, everyone else is probably having just as much fun as you, but there are different time zones, you know, so it's like, you're already passed out when people in California are just starting their freakin' nightcaps or are already holding some chick's hair back in the ladies' room, you know? But it's ok because when you've already had your McMuffin or some shit and you feel better, they're just waking up with cotton shoved in their ears and that film in their mouths, especially if they drank milk drinks, like Bailey's milkshakes, I love those, but that's not the point. The point is that nobody parties all the time. And you are an idiot if you think your life is boring because you don't. You dig?" As soon as she finished talking, she snapped her gum and started to pull on the ends of her hair, a habit that belied her wisdom.

___

I've been making a lot of music recently. My husband is assistant directing Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden at Silver Spring Stage. As a special opening night thing, I'll be playing the first two movements of the Schubert quartet with my friends Theresa, Kellie, and Kate. I know the quartet is used to great (negative) emotional effect in the play, but it's still my very favorite piece of music in the world.

I think I like Schubert because he was squarely between periods (Classical and Romantic) and just happened to be working at a time when he had this solid Classical framework to innovate around and all this nascent Romanticism going on around him. That's a bit technical, but the upshot is that this quartet tells one of the greatest stories (ill-fated lovers--you know it's a great story because it's always retold) and really conveys the romance of youth, the passion of maturity, and the finality of death. It's amazing.

There are lots of rehearsals on my calendar, in addition to a random recording session that Kate recruited me for on Tuesday. There are going to be some extremely talented local musicians at this session. I'm terrified, of course, but at the same time I'm excited about it. I'm a musician because I love it, but I have to work pretty hard at it. That's not a bad thing, as I've been discovering recently. It's good to pour my creative energy into things that are somewhat immediately gratifying, such as performing music.

In other news, I'm trying to get 8-9 hours of sleep per night. Have you noticed that my blogging has been more frequent? The sleeping is why I'm coherent again. Hooray!

Readers: are you seeing results from your New Year's Resolutions?

Women

Serious posts kind of bum me out, but I've been reading a lot of things lately that are showing how our culture busts on women...maybe without even meaning to. Felicia Day posted a link yesterday to an article in Vanity Fair about the women of Twitter. Here's the article. But if you click it, promise me that you will also click the link right after it:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/02/twitter-201002

http://www.geekweek.com/2010/01/why-does-this-vanity-fair-article-hate-the-women-of-twitter.html

You can read it in the url: Why does this Vanity Fair article hate the women of Twitter? The geekweek blogger summed it right up, and Ms. Day herself reposted the second link when someone sent it to her. She said that she was finding it difficult to argue with the blogger's points (although the pic was sweet). It's outright misogyny. I mean, yes, Twitter celebrity is a little bit of a fluffy topic. But the women they chose for this article are highly impressive entrepreneurs, creative powerhouses, and--at the very least--pioneers in the successful use of social media technology. If they were men, this article would be "Six Social Media Pioneers To Watch" or something with equal gravitas. But instead, we get this horrible fluffy profile that talks about these powerful women like they're the frontrunners in the race for homecoming queen.

It reminded me of this article I'd recently read, in which a female author analyzed the new PW Top 100 books of 2009 list. Women in the top 10? Zero. Women on the total list? Twenty-nine. But women are, by and large, keeping the book publishing industry afloat--we are the largest segment of book consumers in the market.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122902292.html

What's going on, here? It doesn't matter, as Ms. Baggott explained, that the author of the offensive VF profile was a woman herself, or that there were women on the committees that chose the PW list. The male hegemony (oh crap, a graduate school word...now I know I'm in trouble) may be so deeply ingrained that outside the domestic sphere, the accomplishments of men are automatically given more weight than those of women. Women have to work twice as hard to be considered as equals (but are still earning, according to some reports, less than 80 cents for every dollar a man earns for equal work).

I've never really considered myself a feminist, precisely because feminists who came before me paved the way for me to have choices in my life--opportunities that women in previous generations only dreamed about. But now I'm a person who has written a book. And maybe someday I'll sell that book. And if it's good, maybe it'll be considered for prizes or honors. But if I were to lose that prize to a man's book of equal (or possibly lesser) quality, simply because the author is a man, that would be pretty soul-crushing. Even though it hasn't happened to me yet, my soul feels a little crushed knowing that it has happened to someone else.

What do we do about it? Is there anything we can do about it?

Tying up the loose ends from 2009

I left you hanging on a number of fronts, and for this, I apologize. Please have some closure, on me:

Screenwriting Contest
After the guy in charge claimed to have confirmed that my score had been re-sent, I continued to send him enough extremely polite e-mails to prompt him to ask me to send my entry directly to him so that he could score it himself. He did this quite promptly, and I was surprised to receive a fairly decent score and some rather positive comments. In fact, it was quite conveniently the highest score one could get without qualifying for the second round. I wonder how scoring my entry on time would have changed the outcome of the contest.

Novel Queries
I heard from one other agent, who is currently not taking any new clients. That's rejection #2, I suppose. I believe this means that I currently have one query (to two agents at the same firm) still floating around in the wait-space.

Tweet Me a Story
Those who follow me on Twitter may have seen a few plaintive tweets from me, asking for votes on my 140-character stories for this contest. That's partially what the title of the last post was referring to, but I'm not bitter. (I'm not, really. Amused sarcasm doesn't really translate to the blogosphere the way I'd like it to.) I did not move on to the second round of the contest, but I still consider it an accomplishment to have two stories that made it into the top 25 in my group.

Economic Crisis
Oh, sorry...I don't actually know how this one ends.

National Novel Writing Month
You may have noticed that I went on blogging hiatus for National Novel Writing Month. Happily, I achieved my word count (as seen in the celebratory graphic at right). The story leaves something to be desired, though. I won't be finishing it without massive revisions. I learned, in this experience, that third-person omniscient storytelling is not a strength of mine. While it may be a bit limiting to write in character in terms of being able to express what other characters are thinking and feeling, I find it much more personally satisfying. This particular story may require 3rd person narration, though...hence the massive revisions.

Blogging
Yes, I am doing that again.

The de facto writing exercise I happened to amuse myself with this morning

So, I'm sure you've all heard of FML. It's an anonymous gripe board for when your life just seems like one ridiculous (possibly ironic) mishap after another. Well. This morning, my husband sent me a link to MLIA--My Life Is Average. But as I read, I found that the stories were not average at all. Many of them, in fact, were tales of unusually humorous or strange situations. For example:

"Today, the woman's rugby team I am on was traveling to Texas for a game. Our van stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. As 10 girls order their food, a man approaches our male coach. The guy looks at all us girls then at our coach then asks, 'Are all of these your daughters?' My coach, without missing a beat, says, 'No. They're my wives.' The look on that man's face was priceless. MLIA"

The complete non-averageness of this exchange disturbed me. So I took it upon myself to rewrite it to make it actually average (except for the spelling and grammar, upon which I improved). To wit:

Today, the women's rugby team I am on was traveling to Texas for a game. Our van stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. As 10 girls are ordering their food, a man approaches our coach. The guy looks at all of us girls, then at our coach, and asks, "Is this a field hockey team?" My coach, without missing a beat, says, "No. It's a rugby team." Then we ate our food. MLIA

Now that's average!

Here's another one from the site:

"Today, I was walking across campus near the end of the day. I look out over the lawn to see two HUGE leaf piles. When I got closer to see what was going on, I see my History teacher hiding behind one of the piles with a water gun about to attack my English teacher in the other pile. They were having a war. I feel like I chose the right school. MLIA."

What? How is a water fight between teachers average in any way? That seems downright unusual, to me. Here's how I would write it:

Today, I was walking across campus near the end of the day. I look out over the lawn to see two huge leaf piles. When I got closer to see what was going on, I saw two groundsworkers raking the leaves. MLIA.

Much better.

Ok, one more...you twisted my arm. From the site:

"Today, I was waiting at a main bus stop with a few other people. A man started to smoke and a young boy fell to the ground and crawled away on his hands and knees. His mother asked what he was doing and he pointed to the man and yelled 'Smoke is bad! Get down low and go go go!' I hope he still acts this way when he's in his late teens. MLIA"

And my take:

Today, I was waiting at a main bus stop with a few other people. A man started to smoke and he got a few dirty looks from the other people at the stop. He had to put the cigarette out when it was about halfway done because the bus came. Then we got on. MLIA.

I thought I would share that with you, in case you were bored at work or something on this lovely pre-Halloween Friday. The link is above...you can make your own fun!

Blogging Outside

Alas, the food at brunch was so hastily devoured that even the camera with the fastest digital shutter could not have captured it.

If you are ever in the Washington, DC area, the Tabard Inn is an impressive place to take either a date who likes delicious food or a stodgy gentleman who likes his atmosphere dripping with eau de wooden library and leather chairs.

This is a photo of the adorable reception desk, as The Tabard is actually an old-style publick house.

It has been alluded to in many books, though I imagine it's not quite as literary as the original Tabard! I'm told that the guest rooms are equally charming, but I have not seen them myself.

Then the food: we ordered the house special doughnuts for the table. Fresh, warm doughnuts with thick-whipped vanilla cream...covered in sugar...really, they were quite like the little beignets I had yesterday, sans lemon. The thing about these doughnuts is the freshness...if you didn't know that they were fried in the kitchen just moments before, you'd swear they floated down from heaven and happened to land on your plate. On Top Chef Las Vegas, Wolfgang Puck criticized a contestant's doughnut for being heavy, throwing it at the cameraman (or in that general direction). If he could have mustered up the cajones to throw a Tabard Inn doughnut, it would just fly away and keep on going. They are THAT GOOD.

Then I had the eggs Benedict with house-made Tasso ham. It came with potatoes and onions. Everyone else had the omelette, which I think had asparagus and goat cheese. Jim asked for Tobasco, as he is technically on shore leave from France and I'm pretty sure it's hard to get hot sauce in a restaurant there, even if you know how to ask for it. Anyway, I put some on my potatoes, even though they already had plenty of other flavors from the onions and whatever herbs they'd cooked them with.

This other photo is of the pool at Jim's condo complex. After brunch, we went to hang out there, enjoying the unexpected sunshine. Also unexpected: the sheer number of babies we saw. Blair said that babies were the hippest new pool accessory, putting Jim's neon pool noodles to shame. This is, of course, patently untrue. Pool noodles are AWESOME.

I'm hoping to get a good GoodReads widget onto this blog so you can see what I'm reading (and maybe suggest more?). I just finished Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which is actually kind of about geekery. I didn't realize that until after I started reading it! I recommend it, but if you haven't read Watchmen or The Lord of the Rings, I suggest you get those out of the way first. A viewing of Star Wars and some basic Star Trek may also be in order, just so you don't feel totally left out of everything.

And that's that! Go outside and play...autumn will be here soon enough!