24 August 2002

Days left to deadline: 7.

Days left to final draft goal date: 5.

Pages of The World Builders written (total): 138. (All of my own nitpicky edits typed, an entirely new opening sequence written, one of the small new scenes towards the end written.)

I'm getting there. I got less cranky as the day wore on yesterday. I took out the recycling and did my yoga and vacuumed and got thwarted by Office Max and cleaned the bathrooms and did a load of laundry. Yep. And worked on my book.

I got my birthday present from Scott! It's a journal with a cover he painted himself, the big kind of lined journal I like to use. He painted it with a red fish with a kind of sinister look about him. Scott paints well enough that someone else might want this journal (unlike my own journal covers, which amuse me but have little artistic merit).

The fish kind of has the face of the deer king from "Princess Mononoke," the one they translated as "forest spirit" even though the Japanese version was "deeru kingu" or something like that so that it was pointless to translate it because they knew what they wanted in English, and let me tell you it was not "forest spirit."

Aaaanyway. I just remembered that we used to "fish" people, that is, throw Kevin's stuffed fish at them, when they made particularly bad puns, back in high school. And I'm hoping that I didn't make a pun so colossally bad that Scott just had to fish me in great detail.

I guess I'll live with it if I did, and I'll be sure to tell you what the pun was. But I doubt that has anything to do with it.

Watched "Monk" again last night, and there were some pretty good lines. The mystery part of it felt a little thin to me, but you win some and lose some, I'm told. The thing that really amused me is that Wrangler is still using "Fortunate Son" for their commercials. "Some folks are born, made to wave the flag, ooh, the red, white and blue." Keep singing, people! "But when the band plays 'Hail to the Chief,' ooh, they point the cannon at you." It's a protest song about the class differential in the draft during the Vietnam War. And now they're using it to try to make me believe their jeans are more patriotic than other people's jeans. Hee. If they actually used the whole song, I might think that was a cool flavor of patriotism and buy their jeans. Maybe. Probably not, because I doubt that they'd fit me. But now, definitely no.

They keep doing this, advertisers, I mean. I thought it was funny when "Thick As a Brick" was a car commercial, but at least they left out all the words there. Didn't go with "I may make you feel, but I can't make you think" and hope nobody could complete the rhyme. There's one on now wherein they don't cut anything in the segment they use, it's just that they only use the chorus, which includes, "So don't delay, act now, supplies are running out." That band is laughing their way to the bank, people, because in context that song is quite, quite anti-consumerist. I'm not sure what I think of that, though: we're really anti-consumerist! But we love making money from a consumer culture, wheeee! And we won't be donating it to anybody else, you'd better believe.

My all-time favorite was when there was an airline using "Rocket Man" on their preflight ads before the safety videos -- "I packed my bags last night, pre-flight. Zero hour, nine a.m." It showed the pilot with his packed bag, walking towards the plane in the misty morning. Aww, how dedicated. My fellow passengers looked at me a little sharply when I sang out the next line that they had attempted to cut to voiceover: "And I'm gonna be hiiiiiiiigh as a kite by then!" People. People. Do not imply to your passengers that your pilots will be using drugs before they get on the plane. Some passengers will know the song you picked. It's about there with "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," all right? Sure, it mentions the sky, but that doesn't mean it makes a good airline ad.

I should not have to say these things.

Now that I have, I will feel really frightened if "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" becomes an airline ad.

So. The British Folklorists is...shall we say a tiny bit dry. Yes. It's interesting in spots, it's just not what I was looking for, particularly. (I'm not sure that what I'm looking for exists. But I think a bit more searching is required before I can say with any confidence that it does not.) And the long stretches of solarist folklore interpretations get to be a trifle dull. It is interesting, though, to watch the evolution of what people wanted to do with folklore and how they wanted to perceive "primitive" or "savage" people. This is a book I will be glad to have read, even though I'm not entirely glad to be reading it.

I'm appalled by the paper again. There are tips for not forgetting your kid in the backseat of your car and letting him or her die of dehydration, freezing, etc. And one of them is "Keep something important -- a purse, briefcase, or lunch -- in the backseat with the baby so that you'll remember to get it when you turn the car engine off." Something important like your lunch. As opposed to something forgettable like your kid. I know that the people who came up with these helpful tips are child safety advocates and only want what's best for children. But if anybody has to take that tip and put his/her important bag in the back in order to remember that there is a restrained, tiny, helpless human being back there, I think child safety advocates would be better off trying to get the kid a different home and different parents entirely. Honestly.

Other than occasional ranting from me, it's been pretty quiet around here. Much work on the book. Much more work on the book to come. And a run to Office Despot and (I hope) some tea with Mark. And some more cleaning and probably some cooking and/or baking. I tell myself that I'm putting off writing the synopsis until I hear from the four critiquers who still have the thing, in case they say something that changes how I would synopsize the book. Really it's that I hate synopses, though. A lot. But it has to be done, preferably within five days, definitely within seven.

To work, then.