Call Me A Psycho, But…

I plan to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 by ignoring all the maudlin sentiments and having a glorious fucking day, as though 9/11 never happened.
Look, it’s not that I don’t mourn those who were lost. But the goal of terrorism is – say it with me, children – terror.  And that day so scarred our national sentiment that we’ve all been fleeing like light-struck cockroaches every time anyone shows us a guy in a turban.  Every time a politician uses the specter of 9/11 to frighten voters into, I dunno, taking off their fucking shoes for the TSA, that means the terrorists win.
So you know what 9/11 the date is to me? Nothing.  It’s any other day in America. I’m going to go out, and kiss my beautiful wife, and have a nice cold glass of beer, and check in on my garden.
Take that, you bastards.

How The Ferrett Fucks Crowds

So after hearing that someone “Fucks like a beast,” and deciding that “Ferrett fucks like… well, you know that pair of shoes that’s always hanging from the telephone line from the laces, the ones you always wonder how they got up there?  Ferrett fucks like they got up there,” I asked y’all for suggestions on how I fuck.  I got some damned good ones.

• Ferrett fucks like Han shot first. (pnijjar)
• You know the point where you’re walking down stairs and not exactly paying attention and you hit the bottom step, except you don’t know you hit the bottom step and you step like there’s going to be another step and just for a moment it throws your whole equilibrium off and the world stops making sense for a second? Yeah, Ferrett fucks like that. (saaxton)
• Ferrett fucks like he’s got a few +1/+1 counters where it counts. (gomaironin)
• When the Ferrett fucks you think you can hear Carol Burnett’s Tarzan yell. (jemyl)
• Ferrett fucks like anybody else, only with a Benny Hill soundtrack.
• Ferrett fucks like Moose and Squirrel. (noumignon)
• When fucking, Ferrett always remembers that the enemy’s gate is DOWN.
• The Ferrett Fucks like Wil Wheaton dreaming he’s John Scalzi. (phule77)

And, perhaps my favorite:

“When I sucked The Ferrett off, I got mostly apples on both the nose and the palate with a nice lingering finish with just the right amount of acid. There was a slight hint of sweetness to my palate, but for being the first one I tried, it was a good start and it’s a good value for these kinds of parties.
“His second orgasm started with a hint of citrus on the nose with medium sized bubbles and a slight bit of yeast on the palate and a mix of crisp fruit. The second spurt of this orgasm had some citrus on the nose and apple and lime in the mouth. It was nice and crisp with just a hint of effervescence to me, a trait I find I enjoy this time of year.
“His depleted cock had notes of tropical fruit and banana, which I think added a hint of sweetness on the finish. I got notes of orange peel on the nose and floral notes in the mouth with a slight almost petrol note, perhaps from the lubrication he had used with other partners.” – chipuni

In an interesting parallel, I had the delight of a new partner just this past week – and she was willing to commit to my usual exit interview.  (Hey.  When I sleep with someone, I want to do a good job.  So I want the feedback.  Which, if allowed, comes in the form of a conversation about what was good and bad.)
I was given a grade of B+, with the notes that judged on my oral sex skills alone I would have probably gotten an A or more, but unfortunately I kissed with a hint too much tongue, and my stamina in the actual act of penetration provided an act that went on for too long to be fully enjoyable.
I immediately said, “Okay, a B+.  But if we grade on the curve of a first-time encounter?”  I am such a point-whore.

Deus Ex Hilarity

So I’m still winding my way through Deus Ex, but there’s an act of hilarity that absolutely kills me in the game.
For a game that wants you to save and reload a lot, Deus Ex is stunningly incompetent.  When you save a game, it churns for about twenty seconds, then provides you with a dialogue box (Hit “A” to continue!) that alerts you that boy howdy, that game’s done been saved.  Then you have to navigate all the way back out of the menu to the play screen.
Why does Deus Ex simply not return you, transparently, to your play-screen, with an on-screen message in the HUD saying “Game Saved”?  MORTALS CANNOT KNOW.
The good news is that t exit out of the menu, you must mash the “B” button at least twice, and generally out of impatience you’ll do it more.  But once you’ve dropped back into gameworld, the “B” button mutates from “Exit Menu” to “Punch whoever’s standing next to you in the face.”
So if you’re saving next to, say, an old man eating noodles at a shop, you’ll just randomly deck him.  It’s like your character’s so frustrated by this stupid game that he decides to crack-a-lack random strangers right in the chops.
…of course, you then have to reload the game, because then every cop and gang member in the world decides you must be filled with lead-induced holes, necessitating a minute-long reload sequence… but it’s worth it.  Almost.

This Is Why You Don't Do That

Yesterday, I posted about an argument I had with Gini.  The nature of the argument was irrelevant to the main point of the post, which is sometimes you need to use external markers to figure out when you’re out of line.
Yet that didn’t stop people from posting comments debating who was right in the argument.
The response was predictable; Gini felt she had to tell her side of the story, and people said, “Oh, I hate it when folks do that,” and Gini claimed she didn’t do that,  and while Gini was a good sport about it she still spent a good five minutes at lunch composing comments on her cell phone because dammit, someone’s wrong on the Internet.
This is why you never public-blog about your arguments.
At least not while they’re live.  Or freshly dead.  Or still rotting.  Basically, you only want to blog about your arguments long after the argument has passed that “stinking dead possum by the side of the road” stage and has passed into the “flat mat of faintly disturbing animal hair that is crawling with ants” stage.  If there’s any doubt at all who’s correct, then shut your yap.
I wrote about this a long time ago in one of my best essays, “I Aimed The Internet At Your Heart,” which talked about how to blog intimate emotions and still avoid emotional drama in your personal life.  What I said then was this:

“When you open up your relationship to the world, you’re calling sides. It’s getting comments from sympathizers, making people feel bad for you, confirming your point of view. Oh, you don’t think that you’re doing that – you’re just trying to get alternate opinions – but you are.
“And your partner will feel slighted. He won’t say as much to you any more, because he knows that your army of friends is against him. Let’s assume that you’re right, and that he is utterly and undeniably wrong. (It’s not very fucking likely, but it could be true.) It’s hard enough to hear that you’re an asshole when you know you are – but how many people are going to listen when a bunch of anonymous people you don’t even know are chiming in with a happy chorus of, ‘God, yes, that guy’s a dickhead?'”

Now, this didn’t do any damage, simply because Gini and I are experienced enough that we knew this would happen.  (And as a purposeful viewpoint exercise, I wrote it full-on from my perspective so you’d see how I felt when I apologized, instead of presenting both sides.  But it would have happened regardless.)  I read the essay to Gini before I posted it, as I do all essays about our arguments (another helpful trick), and she approved.
Yet if it had been something that mattered, well, this would have just exacerbated it. We’d still be fighting.
Here’s the deal: last week, Beavis and Butthead Do America was on, and I Twitter-posted how Gini was crazy because she didn’t think it was a good movie.  Later on, as an experiment, Gini posted how Beavis and Butthead Do America was an awful movie and how I was wrong.  We both got about the same number of replies.
The lesson here is that what will happen nine times out of ten when you complain about something is that the people who agree with you will post “FUCK YES THAT’S ANNOYING” and the people who don’t will wait for another thread.  Who wants to walk into someone’s journal and go, “Hey, you’re wrong here, this is fine” and get beset on by helpful friends?
There are times you may want to ask for help – when you think you’re in a bad relationship, and are considering getting out.  That’s fine.  That’s what friends-locks and filters are for.  (And generally, if you’re asking the question, you know the answer deep down already.)  But if you’re intending to stay, then find some other way to vent.
Because people will have opinions on what you do.  They’re not necessarily right.

The Traditional Revisional Freak-Out

There’s something to be said for freaking out on schedule.
The first draft of my novel has now received all of its critiques (thanks, guys!), and the verdict is in: It needs a lot of work.  As first drafts, you know, tend to do.  Hemingway infamously said that every first draft stinks, and while that’s not strictly true, for writers like me the beauty comes from the repeated going over of each scene.
I’m a “build in layers” kinda writer.  I write a scene, and then I go over it again and ask, “Would this character really respond this way?”  As it turns out her response is too matter-of-fact, so I tweak her dialogue to be more real and bristly.  Then I think, “What’s she doing while she’s talking?” and envision the environment, and realize that she’s in a janitor’s room, her hands are filthy, she has to wipe them off on a dirty rag.  Then I think, “What’s this secondary character over here thinking when our lead is wiping off her hands?” and I remember that this secondary character is a germ-o-phobe, of course she’s going to flip out at the idea of wiping hands off on a dirty rag, and presto!  More interesting interactions, more palpable environments, more realistic dialogue.
As the writing goes on, I erase more of the original framework until all that’s left is the layers of response I’ve built in.  Anything memorable in my fiction is usually the result of something in the second or third draft.
But of course, this novel sucks.  The beginning is far too slow and info-dumpy.  The lead character’s too passive, and people hate him.  The personal stakes aren’t high enough, and the entire city is whiteroomed and doesn’t feel like a post-apocalyptic New York City. In fact, two people I’ve handed it off to haven’t even bothered to read it at all, which means that frankly, I’m already at a 33% drop rate among devoted friends of mine.  And two more of the people who read it said that they probably would have put it down at point X.
I look at everything I need to fix and break right fucking down.
I can’t do this.  The problems that are inherent in this novel?  They’re unfixable.  Beyond the level of my current skill.  All my novel starts are too slow, the world’s too massive to not info-dump, I suck at description.  This novel will fail.  I am insufficient to the task.
My nightmare’s not rejection, man.  My nightmare’s acceptance.  I get it published, having poured my heart and soul into this, and it vanishes with a resounding “Meh.”  I’m not looking to write a good novel, but a great novel, a crazy page-turner that no one can put down… and what I have here is one of those anonymous fucking paperbacks that disappears onto the shelf with the rest of the books at Barnes and Noble, gets mildly mixed reviews, and vanishes without a trace.
I’m going to do my best and create a slippery novel that’s the equivalent of Olestra potato chips – something that slides through you, providing no nourishment or relevant calories, the only permanent mark an irritating stain at the end.
This freakout is, sadly, predictable. It happens at the 65-80% stage of any first draft, when you can’t do this oh my God it’s horrible, and it happens when you get the first batch of serious critique, when all these problems are unsolvable I’m not that good.  I know this is common.  Doesn’t mean I’m not running around in little panicked Chihuahua circles now, but at least I know this is where I’m supposed to be in the process.
And tomorrow, I will take notes and hope that I can do better and look at all of the fucking cracks in this and reference Elizabeth Bear’s definition of a novel as “A piece of prose fiction between 80,000 and 150,000 words in length, with a flaw,” and remember that I do the work on the finer points.  And that work revisioning is hard, and it’s terrifying because it puts you smack right fucking looking at all of your lack of talent, and you’re going to do it anyway because hopefully maybe you won’t shatter it all to fucking pieces during the revision process.  Maybe you’ll assemble these fragments into something beautiful.  Maybe you’ll manage something.
But today?  Today, I am a terrible goddamned writer.  I’m going to try to live with that, and try not to freak too much out, and play some Deus Ex.
This is normal.  This is expected.  This is to be handled.

The Clarion Blog-A-Thon Prizes

I can’t believe that I forgot to announce who actually won the prizes, but that’s my Etch-A-Sketch brain for you.  So let me announce.
The winner of the Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli poster is Jeremy Wiggins.  Which is good, because he’s a die-hard comics nerd.
The winner of the Catherynne M. Valente jewelry-and-signed-book is Kate Parkinson.
Next year: I’ve gotta get even more prizes for y’all, since the two don’t seem like nearly enough.  Even so, we raised $1,850 for Clarion, so thanks so much to everyone!

Apologizing By Evidence

The analysis of this fight, and my subsequent apology, will tell you what you need to know about our twelve-year marriage, and why it thrives to this day.
The source of this scuffle was simple: I was due to leave for Connecticut in half an hour, and Gini and I were having a fight.
The problem was simple: Gini was asking when I was leaving. I, in turn, asked her why she was asking – because I could delay my leaving for an hour, if she had something sufficiently pressing and needed the car.
Gini, in turn, proceeded to ramble on for valuable minutes of the remaining time I had left – I still had to pack and shower – not actually telling me what she wanted, just a bunch of apologetic preamble that I told her I didn’t need.  I needed to know what I could do for her.  I cut her off once, twice, three times, asking her to get to the point and just tell me what she wanted me to actually do.  She did not.  Voices were raised, shouting began.
Then Gini got up quietly and left the room with that stricken “I am not dealing with this”  look on her face I, unfortunately, know so well.
Here’s what you need to understand. I’m right.  I still think I’m right.  I wanted to know one thing at a time when I had very little time before I left – something that I was willing to do to benefit her – and Gini was dorking around when I needed straightforwardness, not excuses.  She should have just said what was on her mind: namely, “I have a hair appointment, would you mind leaving an hour later so I don’t have to walk back a mile in the heat with newly-cut hair?”
But I was also ridiculously stressed about leaving for Connecticut.  I didn’t want to drive nine hours alone.  I was stressed to the gills because I’m an introvert, and the last three weekends have been all filled with people, and the next three weekends would be all filled with people, and every circuit in my body was – is – screaming for an afternoon alone to recharge.  I was nervous about visiting my Grammy, who is going downhill (as you’d expect from a 92-year-old) and I didn’t want to reenact the hellishness that was my maternal grandmother’s slump.
So I sat there, and after a few minutes of DON’T WANNA I found Gini and apologized.
I did not apologize because I felt like apologizing.  But looking at the available evidence – stressed Ferrett, rushed on time, stricken Gini – everything around me suggested that I was, in fact, being an asshole.  In fact, the only data point that didn’t suggest that I was being a jerk was the little voice inside shrieking, She’s wrong! You’re so right! – a voice I’ve learned, over the years, often leads me astray.
I was apologizing based on pure track history.  I know Gini well enough to know that nine days out of ten, when she gets that look on her face, I’ve crossed a line I shouldn’t have.  I know me well enough to know that when my energy supplies are worn to the marrow after a solid month of socializing, I act funny.  And we cuddled, and I figured out what she wanted, and I left later.  More importantly, I left for Connecticut with the feeling that we loved each other, not dashing out for three days apart after a nasty fight and having to patch it up on the road.
Sometimes, you need to look at yourself and go, “Okay, internally this feels completely correct… But viewed from the reactions of others and my situation, would a smart investigator conclude that I’m actually in the right here?”  Because every so often, you’re gonna  wind up in a situation where you’re in a bad headspace – stress, PMS, a little too wired on one drug, legal or not – and you’ve gotta be able to step outside to look at it objectively.
Cuddled up on the bed, Gini and I discussed this.  She laughed.  “You think I only apologize when I think I’m wrong?  Oh no, my love.  I do it too.”
This is why we’ve weathered twelve years.