Watch him cook
It never, ever gets old for me.
I find it bizarre that any adult would be unable to at least follow a recipe. Fortunately I married someone who is perfectly competent at any household task.
*pause to applaud my flawless taste*
Pick a Name
Looking back at the “place your bets” entry where readers guessed Mini-Me’s gender, there were two votes for “boy”, several votes for “indeterminate/neither/cthulhu” and one vote for “girl”.
Which says a great deal about my readers.
It also means there is a clear winner.
STEFFI, you may collect your prize of Personal Satisfaction from the downtown office at your earliest convenience. Congratulations.
In the meantime, I need a name. No you mad fools – not a REAL name! CJ and I will work that one out ourselves. But since our daughter will one day be a hot 16-year old, we won’t ever be using her real name online.
So what I need is a name that says “daughter” to the casual reader. Sort of like “Junior” instantly tells you that a man is so-and-so’s son.
Or just a handy name to use online. Throw your suggestions in the hat!
Astonishing Real Life Clockpunk
One of the things steampunks love is the sense of amazingly intricate (and highly improbable) technology combined with craftsmanship. Victorian times deliver time and time again with real inventions that are hardly believable (like the steam man of last Sunday’s entry).
Not to be outdone, pre-Victorian times brim with inventions that are, if anything, even more beautiful and even less plausible.
Like this doll – that has been described as the first computer because it could write ANY MESSAGE you gave it. And I do mean “write” – with its hands. Not bad for a watchmaker’s promotional tool dating from 1774!
It had over 6,000 moving pieces. . . and it still works.
Read more – and watch the video – in a robot article on cracked. Believe me when I say this is just the beginning.
Kill your darlings, and maim your friends
“Kill your darlings” is a great piece of writing advice from various people (including William Faulkner and Stephen King) recommending that you edit out all your most precious turns of phrase, and leave your work stronger.
“Maim your friends” is my personal advice on causing the maximum pain (and, just as importantly, danger of more pain) for your characters. (Sidebar: A couple of writers, like Robin Hobb, take it too far for me to ever re-read them. Most don’t take it far enough.) It hurts to do horrible things to characters you love – but it’s necessary. Plus, it pretty much comes along with the “godlike powers” thing that us writers like so much.
Here‘s one of Chuck Wendig’s delightfully rude and abrasive articles – this time on hurting your precious characters.
And here’s someone who’s an expert at killing and maiming:
Pick your own present
CJ and I just received an electricity bill which is $380 more than usual due to my pregnancy (not being able to eat meant I was extremely cold, and of course I barely left the house). That’s depressing – and I’ve also lost around a grand in income, and another two grand in medicine.
This is one expensive baby.
Which is why it means a lot when I get AWESOME FREE STUFF. This dress was particularly special, because I picked it out myself (but didn’t pay for it) and deliberately chose something ridiculously female (since we now know she’s a girl) and wildly impractical (because I can).
To give a better sense of the teeny tininess, here is the dress again, draped over my friend’s one-year old:
Our pile of free stuff is growing by the week, and I’m loving it.
Steal your neighbour’s rubbish
Our bathroom didn’t come with a mirror. Peculiar but true. So when I spotted a large mirror in our neighbour’s recycling bin (which is wrong, incidentally – ordinary glass is actually not recyclable), I stole it at once, and duct-taped it to our bathroom window (which happens to be over the sink – hence, no built-in mirror).
For the first time, I could merely glance upwards as I washed my hands and know instantly if I had a cat on my head.
The duct tape added a certain thrill, because it meant the mirror could fall down anytime from today to three months from now. And so it was that CJ and I discussed with his Dad (aka Macgyver with better hair) what we should do to improve things.
Also, the mirror is really old and streaked with brown lines.
Also, it was blocking the tiny amount of sunshine that gets into the bathroom.
The logical thing to do was buy a darn mirror. My fundamental budgeting strategy is, “Don’t pay for anything except rent, bills, petrol, food, and non-negotiable social obligations” but even I saw the sense of it.
Then the mirror was mentioned again – this time to CJ’s aunt. She happened to have a mirror that she’d been given as a gift, and had hated for decades. I liked it at once, and found it peculiarly well-suited to our existing bathroom decor.
Also, it’s as good as new.
Also, it can go on a hook beside the window.
Ta da!
The moral of this story is: never buy stuff. It will come to you.
Eventually.
Break up a fight
The other night, CJ and I were woken at 3:00am by a chorus of animalistic screams. CJ leapt from the bed, thinking our two cats had finally decided to fight for real. Would there be blood between the ancient enemies at long last?
Nah. In actual fact Ana (above) was screaming and hissing through the cat door at an impertinent neighbourhood cat. Or, to put it another way, she was being a good girl and defending us from a home invasion (the kind that is likely to involve cat pee on the carpet). CJ chased off the other cat while I watched Indah in our room, hoping she wouldn’t go and fight Ana due to all the excitement.
Indah is thirteen years old and grumpy – and there was honour at stake. She walked to the bedroom door, ready to join the fight. She stopped, and walked back towards the cupboard (her safe place). She walked to the door. She walked back. She walked to the door.
She jumped up into the cupboard and didn’t come down for twelve hours.
When the going gets tough, the tough. . . hide.
Miscellaneous Monday
I got nothing today, so here’s someone else’s brilliant blog entries:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/texas.html
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-fish-almost-destroyed-my-childhood.html
The steam powered man
One of the things steampunk fans love is a slightly insane invention (ideally powered by steam). One of the most wonderful aspects of Victorian times is that utterly serious inventors came up with literally thousands of bizarre and wonderful ideas.
This is one that genuinely worked, as written about in 1868 here: http://www.davidbuckley.net/DB/HistoryMakers/1868DederickSteamMan.htm
Mr. Zadock Deddrick1, a Newark machinist, has invented a man; one that, moved by steam, will perform some of the most important functions of humanity; that will, standing upright, walk or run as he is bid, in any direction, and at almost any rate of speed, drawing after him a load whose weight would tax the strength of three draught horses. . .
The man stands seven feet and nine inches high, the other dimensions of the body being correctly proportioned. . . He weighs five hundred pounds. Steam is generated in the body or trunk, which is nothing but a three-horse power engine, like those used in our steam fire engines. The legs which support it are complicated and wonderful.
What could possibly go wrong?
Sadly, it was too expensive for general use.
Felicity Banks 