"You could be right. They might come for me at night..."

[greygirlbeast]

Dreams that do not bear repeating; wield spite, and bury a dream in oblivion. Besides, this is one of those days when I have too many things to write about, not too few:

1. We have just passed that "magic" moment, the eleventh second of the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh year of the Twenty-First Millennium. Of course, I would argue to anyone so feeble minded to read any significance into all those elevens, alas, they actually missed the boat back in the year 1111 A.D.

2. With an emotion gently and precariously balanced between horror and bemusement did I, this morning, read the story of how the Corporation for Travel Promotion, via JWT and The Brand Union, and armed with a budget of 200 million dollars (!!!), plan to solve all of America's PR/image ills with a campaign so stupid it sucks the air from your lungs. Hideous logo aside, the resulting slogan — the "United States of Awesome Possibilities" — almost had me squirting sugar-free Red Bull from my nostrils. Did no one stop and consider that the slogan, an abomination in its own right, can readily be rendered as the acronym U-SAP? No, of course they didn't.

3. Yesterday is a day I would rather not write about. But I will write about it, just to carve another notch into the bedstead of stupid I have experienced. The good part of the day (or at least the "goodish" part) was me writing another 1,334 words on "Ex Libris." But Kathryn is checking the galley pages for The Drowning Girl: A Memoir against our photocopy of the CEM (copy-edited manuscript), to be sure that the copy-editor's changes with which I didn't agree had not been made. And...she discovered that someone had, seemingly at random, made NEW changes to the text. Changes in wording, in punctuation, and so forth. Now, this wasn't my editor, and it couldn't have been the copy-editor, so...have you ever seen a warthog with rabies? Well, then you don't know what I was like for an hour or so yesterday. This means, you see, that every page of text, every word, every punctuation mark, has to be read over again twice (galleys against photocopy of the CEM) before the galleys go back to NYC. Recall, I said yesterday they're due back on November 15th. There was a flurry of email and phone calls. When all was said and done, 1) it had been determined that no one has any idea who made the changes or on whose authority, and 2) that it was a horrible thing that had been done to my book (like I didn't know this from the beginning), and 3) that the production manager, being the saintly sort, would extend to deadline to the 21st of November, so that Kathryn has time to read every single page over again, twice. Anyway...yeah. Bullshit. But my thanks to my agent and my editor for helping me through this mess.

Later, after the new deadline had been established, granting me and Spooky those measly four extra days, Spooky and I read through what I've written so far on "Ex Libris." By the way, Subterranean Press will be publishing "Ex Libris," together with "The Yellow Alphabet," in a hardback cloth-bound "mini-collection," The Yellow Book (yes, a nod to Chambers), which will come FREE with the limited edition of Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart.

4) I may have mentioned that the ebook pirates are nipping at my heels again. Well, technically, they're nipping at the heels of my publisher. For my part, I'm ready to wash my hands of this whole ebook fiasco. Let the devil take the hindmost and all that. I just don't care anymore. NMP, because I choose for it not to be. Hey, this strategy is working just fine for the United States of Awesome Possibilities, in their approach to the country's absence of affordable healthcare, and towards the homeless, and poverty, too. So, it can work for me and ebook pirates. NMP.

5) And here we are on Veteran's Day, which I do not recognize. Instead, I continue to recognize Armistice Day, and on that note, as I do every year, I will yield the floor to the late Mr. Vonnegut:

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, "Romeo and Juliet," for instance.

And all music is.

And So It Goes,
Aunt Beast

Comments

[blackestdarkness]

I love that quote from Vonnegut. Thanks for sharing it.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

If nothing else, 11/11/22 also brought us Kurt Vonnegut (as he noted in that passage, 'accidentally'), so that too should be celebrated. The dear man. I still miss him so.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

so that too should be celebrated.

Agreed.

[whiskeychick.livejournal.com]

And how.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

One of my favorites from Vonnegut.
Happy Armistice Day, Aunt Beast.

Short-Term Memory Loss

[whiskeychick.livejournal.com]

I remember Armistice Day celebrations from my youth. It was still noted on the calendars as that. I remember my grandfathers talking about it. We actually noted it. Recognized it. The day, as Vonnegut said, "was sacred."

I'm appreciative that folks recognize Veterans' sacrifice, but that is not the point of the day, now is it? However, when I started to wish a thought-focused day to my fellow comrades, I started to type Armistice Day. Something in my genetic code keeps going back to that.

This rambling is my way of saying, I'm glad someone else goes back to that. It's about trying to reach that point where we don't need armies and soldiers or ever have veterans. That we stop butchering one another.

And So It Goes. Indeed.

Re: Short-Term Memory Loss

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

I'm glad someone else goes back to that. It's about trying to reach that point where we don't need armies and soldiers or ever have veterans. That we stop butchering one another.

Yes. A moment when there is no longer any need for sacrifice.

Re: Short-Term Memory Loss

[whiskeychick.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to soil your page here with the shite they are turning this day into in my community. A ceremony planned to honor peace has now been turned into politico b.s.

Okay, maybe I just did soil the page. Sorry.

But, I knew you would understand.

Re: Short-Term Memory Loss

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Okay, maybe I just did soil the page. Sorry.

It's okay. All is soiled.

[spross.livejournal.com]

I suppose you could look at it from the point of view that the Armistice had such a powerful hold on the memories of people of the time, that when it came time to remember the veterans not just WWI, but all wars, that the date of November 11th was a natural choice.

Before it was Armistice Day, it was the date of the Battle of Crysler's Farm. So it meant more then symbolizing the end of one war.

Dreams

[rexallen.livejournal.com]

I dreamt that I was watching a slow motion video of pearls falling into a black and silver basin of water. Scarlett Johansson was sitting beside me, and across the room, Justin Timberlake.

Long story short - Scarlett left with Justin, and I drank a glass of orange juice.

Re: Dreams

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

I dreamt that I was watching a slow motion video of pearls falling into a black and silver basin of water. Scarlett Johansson was sitting beside me, and across the room, Justin Timberlake.

Okay. Lose Justin Timberlake, and I love this. I'll trade.

[iterum.livejournal.com]

I first learned about Armistice Day as a young 'un from that Vonnegut passage.

NEW changes to the text

Ugh, hate that. I used to work for an academic journal, and sometimes the final galleys would come back from the publisher with Inexplicable Weirdness neither we nor the authors had asked for in first proofs. (And not just recurring problems with Greek text; that was explicable.) So it turned a quick check to make sure specific changes had been made into a long check to make sure random changes hadn't.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

. I used to work for an academic journal, and sometimes the final galleys would come back from the publisher with Inexplicable Weirdness neither we nor the authors had asked for in first proofs.

Spooky's dad is an anthropologist, and has published well over a hundred papers. Yesterday, he told her something like 80% of them had suffered this very same sort of inexplicable "editing."

[iterum.livejournal.com]

My boss could be a very interventionist editor. Usually he'd run changes by the authors in letters that could be longer than the articles themselves -- but only usually. Then, with the publishers introducing their own unsignalled changes, it could get a bit messy.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Then, with the publishers introducing their own unsignalled changes, it could get a bit messy.

I can imagine.

[sovay]

the "United States of Awesome Possibilities"

That has an effect on me, but I don't think it's the one the marketing department was aiming for.

And all music is.

Amen.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

but I don't think it's the one the marketing department was aiming for.

Exactly.

[birgitriddle.livejournal.com]

Thank you for number five and the quote. It makes me feel less of a freak for not recognizing today as Veteran's Day and instead seeing it as Armistice Day.

[wolfsilveroak.livejournal.com]

Those of us who've served, remember and honor today for what it really means, not for the political b.s. it has become in many cities.

[stsisyphus.livejournal.com]

I've always found it grating that the US feels the need to add Veteran's Day on top of Memorial Day, which serves nearly the same purpose. Let it remain Armistice Day or if they feel to distance the holiday from its historical origins, maybe "Peace Day", or "Don't Be a Dick and Kill People Day", or something, people.

This doesn't even touch the bullshit that's "Patriot Day", but I'm not very popular on my opinions in that regard.

[opalblack.livejournal.com]

My baby didn't make it. Kurt Vonnegut was wonderful. To have died on the anniversary of his birth, she's in good company. She fought to the end, and so did we, and so did the vets. They breathed for her for over an hour, but the paralysis tick venom was stronger. And so it goes.

Currently the main reason I am not interested in traveling to America is that I don't want to be molested at the airport. That's it, that's the extent of it. If they stop manhandling people against their will on entry, I'm so there. America has lots of wonderful, and I fear I won't ever meet it because I don't want some stranger's hand in my crack.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

We were lucky at Newark airport - nothing intrusive, in fact they seemed more relaxed than at Heathrow.

I'm sorry about Bast.

[katesavage.livejournal.com]

Auntie Beast wrote "Yesterday, I wrote a very respectable 1,602 words on "Ex Libris." It should surprise no one this is a story about malign books. No. That's wrong. About how women and men shape, wield, and bend books for malign purposes."

Yum! Hurry! Hurry!