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greygirlbeastEverything Outside the house is white, except the sky, which is the shade of grey just before white.
Yesterday, I wrote 1,692 words on Chapter 4 of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, bringing me to manuscript page 169.
Thanks to everyone who left comments yesterday. They were much appreciated. It helps. It actually fucking does.
After the writing, we had dinner and waited on the coming storm. I read. We played WoW.
Shaharrazad and Suraa are mired in the interminable morass of Vashj'ir. If you'd have told me that Blizzards would release an expansion that includes questing on a sunken continent and that I'd hate it, I'd have called you a liar. After all, how can you fuck up a sunken continent? How can you make anything so cool so uncool, or anything so inherently exciting dull? Well, I'm not sure, myself, but clearly Blizzard found a way. I've done 128 quests of the 150 in Vashj'ir, and its been one long, unimaginative, unrelenting blur of tasks that really don't seem to have much at all to do with Deathwing or the Cataclysm. There was a funny cut scene last night, involving getting an elder-god octopus thing stuck on your head and the chaos that ensues, but that's been about it. I liked the Mount Hygal stuff, but Vashj'ir blows, and, at this point, we're just trying to grind through it as quickly as we can.
I was finally able to try Mexican Coke last night. That is, Coca-Cola bottled in Mexico. Like that bottled in Canada, it's free of high-fructose corn syrup. Here in the US, where the government's corn subsidies help to insure that everything is sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, Coke stopped tasting like Coke a long, long time ago. HFCS was first used in Coke in 1980, and became the sole sweetener in 1984. Last night, finally, I tasted Coke as it tasted when I was a kid. And I was not incorrect in my recollection that it used to taste much better. We don't drink it often, but now that we have access the the stuff bottled in Mexico, we'll drink it more often (even though that does enlarge my personal carbon footprint a bit).
Last night, we also watched Dario Piana's Lost Boys: The Thirst (2010). Ignore that other piece of crap, the one released in 2008, purporting to be a Lost Boys sequel. The Thirst succeeds everywhere the first attempt at a sequel fails. It's fun, hilarious, sexy, smart, has a reverence for the spirit of the first film, and doesn't make the mistake of trying to upstage Kiefer Sutherland. Plus, it parodies paranormal romance by inserting the archetypal PR author into the mix. Right down to her tramp-stamp tattoo. Naturally, fittingly, she dies horribly. Corey Feldman is a delight, and Casey B. Dolan is utterly adorable. See this film.
The snow began in earnest about one ayem or so. I went out in it for a bit around 3:30. The night sky was glowing orange-white, the soft filter of streetlights and the blizzard, and there were no sharp edges left anywhere in the world, so far as I could see. Everything was all muted to a gentle, swirling haze. Weather like heroin, both needle sharp and gentle in a single breath. Beautiful. I admit I wanted to lie down and let it cover me, and sleep. There are a few photos behind the cut:
Mexican Coke. Coca-Cola as it ought to taste.
I wanted to walk forever.
There was no sound but the wind and the falling snow. The snow plows hadn't yet come along to louse it all up. I felt bad about leaving tracks.
Just before bed.
And then, this morning, as seen from the front parlor.
Photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac
Yesterday, I wrote 1,692 words on Chapter 4 of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, bringing me to manuscript page 169.
Thanks to everyone who left comments yesterday. They were much appreciated. It helps. It actually fucking does.
After the writing, we had dinner and waited on the coming storm. I read. We played WoW.
Shaharrazad and Suraa are mired in the interminable morass of Vashj'ir. If you'd have told me that Blizzards would release an expansion that includes questing on a sunken continent and that I'd hate it, I'd have called you a liar. After all, how can you fuck up a sunken continent? How can you make anything so cool so uncool, or anything so inherently exciting dull? Well, I'm not sure, myself, but clearly Blizzard found a way. I've done 128 quests of the 150 in Vashj'ir, and its been one long, unimaginative, unrelenting blur of tasks that really don't seem to have much at all to do with Deathwing or the Cataclysm. There was a funny cut scene last night, involving getting an elder-god octopus thing stuck on your head and the chaos that ensues, but that's been about it. I liked the Mount Hygal stuff, but Vashj'ir blows, and, at this point, we're just trying to grind through it as quickly as we can.
I was finally able to try Mexican Coke last night. That is, Coca-Cola bottled in Mexico. Like that bottled in Canada, it's free of high-fructose corn syrup. Here in the US, where the government's corn subsidies help to insure that everything is sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, Coke stopped tasting like Coke a long, long time ago. HFCS was first used in Coke in 1980, and became the sole sweetener in 1984. Last night, finally, I tasted Coke as it tasted when I was a kid. And I was not incorrect in my recollection that it used to taste much better. We don't drink it often, but now that we have access the the stuff bottled in Mexico, we'll drink it more often (even though that does enlarge my personal carbon footprint a bit).
Last night, we also watched Dario Piana's Lost Boys: The Thirst (2010). Ignore that other piece of crap, the one released in 2008, purporting to be a Lost Boys sequel. The Thirst succeeds everywhere the first attempt at a sequel fails. It's fun, hilarious, sexy, smart, has a reverence for the spirit of the first film, and doesn't make the mistake of trying to upstage Kiefer Sutherland. Plus, it parodies paranormal romance by inserting the archetypal PR author into the mix. Right down to her tramp-stamp tattoo. Naturally, fittingly, she dies horribly. Corey Feldman is a delight, and Casey B. Dolan is utterly adorable. See this film.
The snow began in earnest about one ayem or so. I went out in it for a bit around 3:30. The night sky was glowing orange-white, the soft filter of streetlights and the blizzard, and there were no sharp edges left anywhere in the world, so far as I could see. Everything was all muted to a gentle, swirling haze. Weather like heroin, both needle sharp and gentle in a single breath. Beautiful. I admit I wanted to lie down and let it cover me, and sleep. There are a few photos behind the cut:
Mexican Coke. Coca-Cola as it ought to taste.
I wanted to walk forever.
There was no sound but the wind and the falling snow. The snow plows hadn't yet come along to louse it all up. I felt bad about leaving tracks.
Just before bed.
And then, this morning, as seen from the front parlor.
Photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 06:34 pm (UTC)I love the snow pics. I enjoy the snow most when I don't have to travel in it.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 06:37 pm (UTC)I enjoy the snow most when I don't have to travel in it.
I'm looking forward to a drive to College Hill, perhaps tomorrow.
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Date: 2011-01-12 06:45 pm (UTC)You look very Oscar Wilde in your snow picture, sauntering off into a misty unknown. It would make an awesome book cover.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 06:46 pm (UTC)The Pepsi and Mountain Dew Throwbacks appear in my regular grocery with some frequency and they taste so much better.
Agreed.
You look very Oscar Wilde in your snow picture, sauntering off into a misty unknown.
That is likely the best compliment I'll get all month.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 12:57 am (UTC)Touché.
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Date: 2011-01-12 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 07:16 pm (UTC)brilliant photos of the snow at 3:30
It may be the finest part of the finest hour for viewing snow (recalling Bradbury's comments on 3:00 ayem).
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Date: 2011-01-12 06:56 pm (UTC)I'm glad that you feel better today.
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Date: 2011-01-12 07:18 pm (UTC)Don't you just love that *hush* that falls with snow?
Like being by the ocean, it's one of the few times I feel peaceful. Today, the peace is shattered by the noise of snow plows.
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Date: 2011-01-12 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 07:18 pm (UTC)but after watching the first attempt at a sequel my reaction was mostly incoherent angry hairball noises.
That was pretty much my reaction upon seeing the first sequel.
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Date: 2011-01-12 07:36 pm (UTC)Of course, first I have to find the original -- my boyfriend has never seen it. That's what I get for dating a pup.
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Date: 2011-01-12 07:39 pm (UTC)we'll just skip that and go straight to the second.
The best course of action.
That's what I get for dating a pup.
Indeed.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 07:35 pm (UTC)There is a small side street that exists (seems like the best word for it) in a small part of our neighbouring We're-Not-Part-of-Hamilton city, Burlington, called Aldershot. On that street, which hides several yards back but runs almost perpendicular to the main road, there are a few houses, and a fairly old graveyard. It's a pleasant place to walk, and leads into a ravine that takes you out by a small bay that forms essentially the very western tip of Lake Ontario. During the winter, that part of the bay is invariably covered in snow and ice, but I digress.
The street by the graveyard is lovely all year round, in that way that all quiet neighbourhoods near a graveyard tend to be. But the most beautiful thing I ever saw in Aldershot was the day I was walking back from work after a snow storm. The sky was light but grey, and the snow was at least a foot deep, and it was pristine, completely untouched by man or machine. It looked like those idyllic postcards you swear couldn't exist in real life. I felt like a barbarian, daring to wade through it and break its flawless surface. I swore to myself that day that, some day, I would wait for the perfect snow storm and make my way back there in the dead of night, and then wait until dawn just so I could photograph the snow-covered perfection of the bare bushes and trees and wrought iron fencing in that same light.
Some day.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 07:41 pm (UTC)I have a perverse love of snow.
A nice sentence.
I felt like a barbarian, daring to wade through it and break its flawless surface.
Another one.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 07:44 pm (UTC)And those photos are divine. The one of you walking downe the street is another fab author bookjacket photo.
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Date: 2011-01-12 07:57 pm (UTC)Love me some Mexicana CokeaCola! It's the REAL Thing!
We heard from Katharine you have a fondness for it.
The one of you walking downe the street is another fab author bookjacket photo.
Maybe.
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Date: 2011-01-12 07:49 pm (UTC)damn. i couldn't even begin to put words together like that. beautiful indeed.
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Date: 2011-01-12 07:58 pm (UTC)i couldn't even begin to put words together like that. beautiful indeed.
Thank you.
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Date: 2011-01-12 08:35 pm (UTC)Also, have you or Spooky gone to Uldum? That's where I took my main after Mount Hyjal. It's Egyptian themed. I like it so far (at level 84).
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 08:54 pm (UTC)Here in MN/the frozen tundra, that's what I call a dusting of snow. But no matter the amount, snow makes everything better.
Not sure how much we got here. In inches and all. A lot more after the pictures from last night.
Also, have you or Spooky gone to Uldum?
Not yet. We wanted to do Vashj'ir while we'd still get points for it (and I thought it would be cool).
It's Egyptian themed.
Which, on an alien planet, makes a lot of sense. If only Blizzard could be a little more imaginative.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 08:44 pm (UTC)maybe the straight sugar involves less processing which might make the two cancel out.
I thought the photos were beautiful. I also think the one would be a great cover shot.
I enjoy the way you've described snow in your work. Perhaps your love for the fresh falling attributes to that, like your love of the ocean.
We will be on the lookout for The Thirst. Thank you.
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Date: 2011-01-12 08:56 pm (UTC)maybe the straight sugar involves less processing which might make the two cancel out.
Maybe, but I sort of doubt it.
Perhaps your love for the fresh falling attributes to that, like your love of the ocean.
Yes, I think so.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 08:49 pm (UTC)That's a lovely photograph. There's an oil painting in the MFA with that quality of light.
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Date: 2011-01-12 08:56 pm (UTC)There's an oil painting in the MFA with that quality of light.
I would never be able to capture it.
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Date: 2011-01-12 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 08:59 pm (UTC)i buy that often here in chicago, and sometimes it does have HCFS even if it's made in mexico.
We did.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 09:13 pm (UTC)If you perhaps have a kosher market nearby, kosher Coke also uses regular sugar. It comes in two litres, and has a yellow lid with the k-in-circle mark on it. D found it at Toco Hills, here.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 10:55 pm (UTC)If you perhaps have a kosher market nearby, kosher Coke also uses regular sugar.
Yep, we read that. Though I don't like the plastic two-litre bottles, as the plastic is permeable to C02 and they can get flat long before I drink them.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 09:36 pm (UTC)The photos are lovely. We have, I think, 18 or so inches of snow here in Massachusetts and it's gorgeous. I hope you and Spooky don't have too much to shovel.
I am so pleased you are working on a new novel. I love your short stories, some of them are so amazing I have to read them aloud to my husband immediately. That said, I think, in some ways, you are at your best in longer works where you have more room to develop or describe characters and things unfold so organically. I'm not saying quite what I mean... it might be partly that it's just more satisfying being able to sink into a story for a much longer time, to be able to savor it. I don't know if it means much or if it helps; but I don't want to be pandered to. As a reader I want to read what you want to write and I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way.
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Date: 2011-01-12 10:57 pm (UTC)is that what happened to coke???
Yep. Are you too young to recall the "New Coke" fiasco of the early 80s?
Where can one get Mexican Coke?
Depends. We have a lot of Latino and Mexican markets nearby.
That said, I think, in some ways, you are at your best in longer works
Thank you. I've always felt exactly the opposite.
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Date: 2011-01-13 12:41 am (UTC)"I've always felt exactly the opposite."
I can see the argument for either, honestly. "The Ammonite Violin" for example is just perfect and would not be better if it were longer; it's complete and wonderful. I read it aloud to my husband and he said; "I will never write anything because I could never write anything that comes close to that." I think I suffer from bias toward longer works in general. (though because of your short stories, as well as those of a few other authors, that seems to be changing.) On the other hand, I would have read the entirety of "The Red Tree" aloud to him as well if I could have. It is marvelous and I enjoyed every word. I think the enjoyment may just last longer with a longer story and might be why I have a bias toward them.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 11:46 pm (UTC)Amazing how the beauty and tranquility of the night is so utterly destroyed by even the diluted rays of the sun.
Yep.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 12:56 am (UTC)You're very welcome.
I wanted to walk forever
Date: 2011-01-13 12:41 am (UTC)Re: I wanted to walk forever
Date: 2011-01-13 12:56 am (UTC)Yes there might be a story in that photograph, but it doesn't really need it.
Agreed.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 01:28 am (UTC)Those snow pictures are lovely. Makes me remember the feeling I get everytime I look out the window and see it snowing. We got something like 11cm today.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 02:33 am (UTC)We got something like 11cm today.
Getting all metric on us.
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Date: 2011-01-13 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 02:35 am (UTC)Also, the "I wanted to walk forever." photo is beautiful.
That seems to be the consensus.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 02:34 am (UTC)I read you because I adore your writing and find you a fascinating person—but what I take away most often is film recommendations, because you rarely steer me wrong. Funny, that, but I can't complain.
Hey, directing people to good movies is one of my worthier goals.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 02:34 am (UTC)Gorgeous stuff, although to quote my boy "two words: brrrrr... (the fucking is silent)." I'm glad I no longer live where it gets that cold, although I occasionally miss seeing snow.
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Date: 2011-01-13 02:36 am (UTC)I'm glad I no longer live where it gets that cold, although I occasionally miss seeing snow.
Having lived most of my life baking in the South, I'm surprsied how well I've adapted.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 02:32 pm (UTC)