This is a truly unbearably long entry. Grab a cup of coffee or a 7-Up or something and settle in.
Someone from the Department of Labor in Washington DC read my entry about dead peasant insurance! YAY! Someone else, a guy named Jeff Mehalic (attorney in West Virginia), actually linked to my entry on one of his official legal pages. WOW! I guess every now and then I actually say something noteworthy. Every so often.
As promised, here is a picture of Beanie Nan and her sisters taken after a lovely breakfast yesterday with Mia Farrow and me.
From left to right: Mark Twain, “Sis,” Beanie Nan, and “D-Sis.”
I really like how Mark seems to be hoping for a neck nuzzle with Sis, and how she completely ignores him and smiles for the camera. Those sisters are both such sweetie pies! We laughed and laughed at breakfast. And we heard stories. Too bad we only had an hour.
The statue of Mark Twain is completey random. He is just there in the middle of a strip mall, sitting on a bench, and pretending to read a book. No explanation or story – just Mark, the neck nuzzler.
And speaking of random…..here’s a really funny picture I forgot to post – taken while Indiana Terri and I toddled around the Mission de Acala during the Javelina Hunt. This one just made me laugh.
What kind of doofus throws paper money into a wishing well?
Someone asked me if I was going to do NaNo this year. The answer is NoNo to NaNo. I didn’t really enjoy it very much when I tried it a few years ago. Here is an entry I wrote on November 5, 2006 on Diaryland. I did not have fun. I started writing a typical coming of age story that quickly morphed into the Lydia and the Giant Squid tales. I am grateful that I found Lydia in all of that mess, but the whole NaNo thing was just too weird for me. Anyway….here’s the story.
I fear I don’t play well with other NaNo-Birds. I think I am way off kilter to fit in. My NaNo-Bird doesn’t act like other NaNo-Birds.
Today was a write-in exercise. Everybody got out a laptop or some other mobile writing device and clicked away for almost two hours. We were all lined up against a wall counter, all plugged into the sockets, all sitting on high stools and eating scone things.
The goal of today was to produce WORDS! There was nothing said about quality, process, etc. We just mass-produced WORDS. I wrote 1,500 in just over an hour, before I got extremely tired of listening to some red-haired girl shriek every time she knocked out a “really good piece of dialogue” or reached her writing goal of 8,000 words by mid-afternoon today. And on and on.
While we were waiting to begin, some of us shared our topics and genres. Nobody seemed interested in my topic about a young girl coming of age in small town Minnesota. They talked about science fiction and fantasy things like spinning light into form and stuff. They also put talismans around their writing spaces and paid homage to them, much like elderly women who worship the slot machines in Las Vegas. Somebody finally said to me, “Well, that sounds…… interesting.” Then she went back to discussing her ideal parallel universe with her talisman-loving, cat-worshipping, latte-swilling friend.
After I got really tired of mass producing WORDS, I turned on my stool and saw a nice guy putting his mobile writing device away. He was tired too. I slid off my stool (and noticed instantly that my butt had gone numb) and slipped into a real chair facing the guy who was packing up. As it turns out, he has never done this before. He is shy too, and he writes plays! Just like me! Hoo-Rah! We spent about an hour talking about stage managers, sets, dialogue, character development, etc. It certainly saved the afternoon.I’m sure that after today, someone will send a note home to my mom telling her I need work on my social skills. She used to get that note all the time. “Poolagirl is too shy and doesn’t interact well with other children very often. You might consider an activity that involves spending time with lots of children her own age.” My mother solved THAT by purchasing a clarinet and making me play in the school band! I wanted to kill her!
I’m not a social clarinet player and I am not a social NaNo-Bird. I would rather spend my time looking at a fuzzy moon through the trees or cleaning up grass vomit. Some things are meant to be group activities. Novel writing isn’t one of them.
So there it is….or was. I keep getting emails asking me join the write-in experiences again this year. Ugh. I just can’t.
This is a piece of what I ended up with. My NaNo triumph about Lydia and the Giant Squid and a Pieta statue that is missing Jesus, the central figure. Go figure.
When we last visited Lydia, she had just escaped from the evil clutches of the whore nurse who had given her truth serum. After having called Lydia a SLUT, the evil whore nurse with Chiclet teeth wanted to find out how Lydia had contacted mononucleosis, the disease spread by sharing SALIVA. As the serum began to wear off, Lydia was able to vanquish the evil whore nurse by deflecting a menacing and possibly life-threatening blow with a metal bed pan. Lydia bounced off the bed and ran from the room, wearing nothing but a flimsy hospital gown. She fled to the church, the last place where her SALIVA might have been shared with……Jesus!
We join her standing in front of a replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta. Mary is there, but Jesus is gone! And there is a Tootsie Roll Pop wrapper on the floor.
*ominous music swells*
“Oh, my God!” squeaked Lydia with surprise. “You’re gone!”
With a modest grasp on her flimsy hospital gown, Lydia fell to the cold marble floor and began to sob. She picked up the Tootsie wrapper and turned it over in her hands. It was red.
“Cherry,” she whispered fruit-flavoredly. ”Cherry,” she said again for good effect (a repetitive word technique that worked so well for Orson Welles).
As Lydia sobbed with her face pressed to the floor, she looked under a nearby pew. Ewww! There were some dust bunnies! Father Frangelica would be very upset to know that, but since he doesn’t factor into the story, she decided not to tell him. Anyway….whilst gazing at the dust bunnies, she saw something else. It was….the Tootsie stick! She reached for it and grasped it to her bosom (bosom grasping works well in highly successful novels).
Lydia did a two-handed bosom grasp, and in doing so, her flimsy hospital gown fell askew, revealing her tender thighs and a few other things (good moment to include something suggestive to keep reader interest high).
She pulled the Tootsie stick into focus and realized that there were still remnants of the cherry candy there. Bits of churchy flotsam and jetsam sticking to it – things like bits of hair, holy card dust, and a piece of lace from Mrs. Larpinski’s black mantilla that she wore every Sunday, even Easter. Whoever ate the Tootsie was a cruncher! That’s why the stick was still sticky (more intentional sexual innuendo).
She grabbed her flimsy hospital gown and gazed into the face of Mary.
“Oh, Mary, where is your son?” she pleaded. “Did he eat this candy and then just run away? Your pain must be more than the world could ever bear!”
Mary didn’t say much. In fact, she didn’t say anything. She just looked sadly into her empty arms.
Lydia moaned (short paragraph for punchy literary effect).
As she knelt on the floor clutching her flimsy hospital gown and the chewed upon Tootsie stick, she heard a rustling noise coming from the confessional next to the Jesus-devoid Pieta.
“Oh, God,” thought Lydia worriedly. “Father Frangelica is probably in there and he has probably heard everything! He must think I am looney. He will go posthaste to my mother and lodge a complaint.” (nice touch with that posthaste term)
Father Frangelica doesn’t factor into this story and he was not the source of the rustling noise. So then, what could it be?
The curtain of the confessional drew back and a man’s voice whispered stage whisperly.
“Hi, Lydia!”
Lydia recoiled, grasping her flimsy hospital gown tighter around her self, all parts included.
“Jesus?” she asked.
“No,” said the mysterious voice. ”I am not Jesus.”
“Where is Jesus?” asked Lydia uncomprehendingly.
The curtain drew back further and Lydia could see a beautiful man with his loins covered in a rough cloth. He looked just like Jesus. But he wasn’t Jesus. That has already been established. It was very confusing.
“You look like Jesus,” said Lydia.
“I know,” said the man. ”Everybody tells me that.”
“But where is Jesus?” she asked again.
“He is at the restoration facility having his hands re-marbled. The whole replica comes apart for such purposes. He will be back next week. I was taking his place,” said the mysterious cloth-covered man.
“But….but…but….I didn’t know the statue was in pieces!” cried Lydia.
“It’s a cheap replica,” said the man. “Jesus has been gone for days. I ate your candy. It was delicious.”
“But…but…but…who are you?”
“You’ll never guess,” he said. “So I will tell you.”
DUM DUM DUM…..stay tuned. Who is this mystery man whose loins are covered in rough cloth – a Tootsie cruncher?
So now we can all see why it is abundantly clear that NaNo didn’t work very well for me. What happened to the coming of age novel set in Minnesota? How did that idea morph into a whore nurse with Chiclet teeth who injects truth serum into a young child in hopes of finding out all the details of some perceived slutty behavior? Some things are mysteries and are better left unsolved.
Captain’s Log 3,412
