In the Living Room

Dear Fluffy,

I was dismayed to hear of your impeding execution, and relieved by the governor's last minute stay. I am writing to ask if I could be of any help to you in addition to my signature on the petition to commute your sentence, even as of the State of Tennessee still seeks to carry out your court-ordered punishment.

My support in no way condones the murder of Mr. Jerry, even though he is purported to have raised his voice to you and used your litter box, but instead reflects my commitment to you as your lifelong friend of four months.

Love, Jill

P.S. Remember to not fall for the dragging-the-string-into-the-death-chamber trick again.

World of Warcraft is headed for mainstream America and beyond. More and more people who have never played computer games at all, much less MMORPGs, are stampeding to the game. The beautiful graphics, music, and rapid progress early in the game make WoW acessible to and enjoyable for a wider range of players than the typical gamerboy hunched over his keyboard at 3 a.m.

And now they are crossing gender lines. The one thing that I thought made the game less friendly to female players was the dearth of attractive characters I could make. If I play a human or a night elf, I can be be pretty cute, but that limits the choice the of class I can play. Blizzard has been hinting about new races. I hope they'll be hot.

High level armor is spectacularly ugly, and while I want lots of intel and healing spell enhancements for my paladin, neither Lighforge (red and yellow, kill a fellow) nor Lawbringer (think "Tron" with giant steroidal shoulder pads that could put your eye out) armor sets are very fashionable, and most female players hide their head armor anyway, because big horns sticking out of my head is a Vogue "don't." (A wonderful exception to the generally hideous head armor are the rarely found, but completely fetching, mail and plate tiaras. Some have jewels! The guys complain. They like the big horns, I guess.)

And when I get something valuable and awesome off a monster I just killed, I have no idea how it will LOOK, but if I try it on to see, and don't like it, I have bound it to myself and can only sell it to a vendor, depriving my bank account of a lucrative auction house sale. Likewise when I see something in the auction house with the statistics I desire, I have no idea if it will make my butt look big or clash with my new boots.

BUT NOW. OMG. There is a feature called the Dressing Room where I can see how the item will look on me. DRESSING ROOM. I am deleriously happy about that. Do you think there will be an attendant to bring another size or color?

In writing news, chapters 6-8 are written, and chapter nine is outlined. I am back in the saddle.

On Saturday, like most other normal people, I should have been reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Last year Amazon slapped it onto my brick porch at 9:00 a.m. the day of publication, but by 3 p.m. this Saturday it had not yet arrived. Himself ran out and bought one for the girls to read right away, and while I waited for the brown truck I logged in on Warcraft to check my auctions at the Auction House. It was eerily quiet. Half of my auctions returned to me with no bidders even though my offering was the lowest both in opening bid and buyout. Traffic around town was light. It was like the night before Christmas.

I amused my self by screen-capping some of my Warcraft characters for this lj entry. First, Non, who is a level 50 human paladin, rather hot, but horribly gimped since about level 43. Pallies start out awesomely strong at the lower levels, but top out somewhat at 40 or so. I deal less damage than warriors, rogues, mages, and little white kittens. I can heal, but I have about half the healing power of the main healers, priests. But I love to play her because she was my first toon. And she was given a special Pally Pony (okay, WARHORSE) to ride when she turned 40 which I adore.
( Non on her Pally Pony )

This second shot is of her pet, the Sprite Darter, my favorite pet in the game so far.
( Non and her Sprite Darter )

Here is Non after a Sunken Temple raid where she got a fabulous bit of new chest armor that is unfortnately skimpy. I'm going to have to buy a shirt to wear under that black bra. I wonder what it looks like on a male 'toon.
( Non in her new Skank Top )

When the friends with whom I regularly grouped got busy with LIFE and stupid stuff like that, I played Nonnobis up too high and had to start another character and play her up quickly to party with my pals. I chose a Night Elf hunter for hunters' famed soloing abilities. I tamed a named cat, Broken Tooth, who is famed for a fast attack speed (it whacks once a second, interrupting anything trying to cast a fireball at me and making anything it's hitting mad enough to stay focused on the cat and not me.) I stand at a distance shooting while the cat is whacking. We are a good team. In this shot the hunter is level 43, Sugarpie is stretching and you can also see my pet cat, the tabby-stripe grey kitty.

( Driel and Sugarpie the Cat )

My daughter and I wanted to play together in the worst way, so for my birthday my husband bought a second WoW account and we tricked out a cheap computer for playing the game. Since my daughter's main character was on my account, I started a new character on the second account and played her up quickly so she could quest alongside my daughter's Night Elf druid. Here is my warrior babe, Boadacia. In the first pic she is wearing her bronze outfit, in the second pic at level 34 she is attired in the full Green Iron Armor set, all of which she made herself. Her weapon is enchanted, also by herself.

( Bronze Babe in Darkshire )

( Green Iron Goddess in Stranglethorn Vale )

I have a mage and a priest I will show if I ever play them over level 30. They die a lot at lower levels.

Now back to chapter 6 for the Sunday Monkey meeting. And I have to check my calendar, because last night while falling asleep I realized that I may have missed a deacon's meeting. Couldn't I have thought of it just a few hours earlier and grabbed me keys and run for the car?? I'm hoping that the meeting is NEXT tuesday and I am sitting here worried about nothing.

You thought that this entry was gonna be about Warcraft, didn't you?

BUT NO. This is impossible to close. I may not be able to make dinner tonight.

Also, we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium today with my daughters and two of their friends. I love the jellies, and feeding time of any animal.

I find it a teeny bit incongruous that the museum is there to educate people about the fragile beauty of the marine environment and the majesty of pelagic animals...who are kept in tanks...

There is a site that keeps track of LJ mood trends. I LOVE IT. http://ilps.science.uva.nl/cgi-bin/livejournal/mood

And the correlation between "drunk" and Fri/Sat night is unarguable.

My father died in May. He had a cough that got worse over the course of a few months, and finally, when he was weeks from death, his doctors were able to locate similar cases in an old Army data base, and pronounced him terminally ill with a rare form of heart cancer.

He proclaimed that he had cancer, lung cancer, quite a while before his official diagnosis. Since he'd been dying since he was about thirty years old, I assumed that this was another bit of drama, but no, he was really dying as it turned out, and in that odd way that hypochondriacs often can often manage he was actually very brave when real death came.

( more hideous truths )

The last I saw him, shortly before he died, he went after my marriage by saying to my husband (after I said I LIKED my husband without his mustache,) "You must not know who you are or what you want after being married to this thing," he hooked a thumb at me, "and I say 'this thing' cause I don't know what else to call it, telling you what you should look like and what you should do all the time." He went on in that vein for a few minutes, half-smiling as if to say ALL A JOKE, CAN’T YOU TAKE A JOKE?

I finally stopped him by interrupting and saying, "David is a very stubborn man, you have no idea." My mom demurred and said, "Oh no, it's not that at all Jack." David looked at him, and exchanged a look with me, saying, "We do just fine." Back in the rental car David said, "Well, that worked. I'm divorcing you now."

Then my dad died and we buried him. The only people there were my mom, the four sibs with spouses and kids, and one friend of my mom's. Dad had no friends.

Every time that I went to update this journal in the past few months, all I could think to write about were:

1) my dad is dying/dead,
2) WARCRAFTWARCRAFT,
3) omg I am so sick, or,
4) my-old-friend-who-demolished-her-life-and-most-friendships-too has recontacted me.

And none of those things seemed appropriate fodder for public consumption when I use my real and actual name and all.

But it happened that because I would not write about what was carooming inside my brain and smacking the inside of my skull, I could not get up the enthusiasm to blog anything at all.

SO.

I am going to write about each of those things and get on with my normal three-times-a-week-ish schedule.

As you all have probably figured out, I have fallen into the deep chasm of the World of Warcraft. Apparently Method Writing is my metier, and I am doing (and writing about) what my character does in Smoke. Good thing I'm not writing about the life of a serial killer.

Teaming up with your real life friends and whacking the crap out of evil monsters, saving widows, and completing quests for the Alliance of goodness and light while earning pretend cash and becoming more skilled is SO MUCH FUN.

But today the servers are down. My youngest and I, left home alone by the husband and eldest who are back east interviewing at colleges, have other things we should do besides save Azeroth from corruption. And the WoW servers are down today. So I naturally used this time to research more about the game (purely in the interest of research) and found the most mind-boggling article I have EVER READ. EVER.

Winning Souls to Christ in the World of Warcraft Favorite quotes:

"I think the reason so many people are open to hearing about Jesus in the World of Warcraft is because the majority of people who play the game are lonely kids who don't have any friends. I doubt any of them play sports so you can pretty much guess that there are lots of gay boys and fat little pale-faced Wiccan girls on the servers who hate themselves and escape into virtual characters so they don't have to deal with their pathetic lives. When they hear that someone loves them, even if it is just the Lord Jesus Christ, they always want to hear more!"

And this one is good: "I really like our guild leader," says young Billy Houston. "He has a strict policy against letting unsaved people join our group. I think he's from Alabama in real life. In fact, he won't even party-up with anyone who isn't a Christian."

And perhaps my FAVORITE: "I follow them around the game, across snow-capped mountains, and blasted wastelands until they accept Christ or persecute me so much that I have to report them to the server administrators for making fun of my religion. I think I've been responsible for getting over thirty accounts suspended for bigotry directed at me because of my faith." There are a LOT more special quotes in this article but you'll have so much more pleasure discovering them yourself.

This is a JOKE, right?

See, *I* thought that evangelizing is sharing the changes that God made in you by LIVING OUT grace and acting with love, generosity and integrity. From what I've read, Jesus told the truth and let people make their own choices.

[ETA] Check out the ad for the WWJD thong at the bottom of the page.

What to do, what to do? If I mine for half an hour I can sell my copper for, pardon me, A MINT. But if I do that, I don't have enough copper to make armor and weapons that raise my blacksmithing skills. My crafted items sell for next to nothing. I often GIVE them away to baby Paladins, because, my cricket, that's what paladins DO.

Today I have do the stupid Missing Heirloom quest in Westfall. There is this farm overrun by level 12-15 bandits who group up on my sorry paladin carcass and then corpse camp me. I've died about four times and am no closer to my goal.

Here is what happens:

1. I pick off everyone I can lure close to my hammer, trying to avoid getting all of them on me, and kill any nearby monsters who wil get pesky when I am fighting the bandits. (Ask me how I know about thier peskiness.)

2. When there are just the two guys in the farmhouse I waggle my hammer at one.

3. He charges.

4. His friend charges.

5. I hit them.

6. They hit me.

7. No matter how I buff, seal and damage, I die.

8. Repeat.

Warcraft is sucking my soul. I thought: I don't want to play an online game but I NEED to for this novel. All I've every played on the computer is Hearts and Tetris. I know nothing about D&D.

I love Warcraft so much that I want to marry it and spawn its spider monster babies. I've only played a few hours a day for the past four days and I'm already at level 14. Of course the leveling is slowing down, but I don't mind; I'm still mastering all of my auras, buffs and blessings. And the big hammer.
The big hammer is so satisfying. I whack, I hit, and I smack. Then I heal my group and myself.

And when the yellow light appears on my mini-map, I fell such a thrill. COPPER OMG COPPER! Anyway, some silly and some cool things have happened in the World of Warcraft that are SO going into Smoke. Excuse me but I have to carry the six copper axes and the six copper chain belts I made to a guy named Thorvald whom I should find at the guard tower south of Loch Moran.

So Himself and I went forth to procure a new monitor because How in the world can I play Warcraft with the monitor we have, a third-hand black hole that, when measured it diagonally, is actually NEGATIVE FOUR INCHES. Took us all day to buy the first one we saw. You know how it went. We went to Best Buy, saw some great ones, went to Costco, went to blah blah blah and then back to Best Buy.

We (I mean HE) hooked it up and stuck in a new G4 video card, and CRASH, there went the hard drive. We (him again) decidednow was the time to rebuild the computer (me chafing for Warcraft, NOT ANOTHER DELAY) so now our downsairs computer is ALL! NEW! and twice as fast with twice the memory and NONE of the old files. I saved all of my writing which brings me to:

OC tip #6 BACK UP EVERYTHING.

Phoebe took a long running jump onto the back of the sofa, clawed her way up the curtains and howled, "LET THERE BE DARK!"

The lamp fell over, the top broke off, the two lamp wires touched and arced with great blue and green lightening bolts. Tiny blobs of molten copper bounced across the hardwood floors. A fuse blew.

ALL HAIL Phoebe, Destroyer of Lamps.

Last night we paddled in the Oakland estuary and went around Coast Guard island and southward to the first bridge. A few people raced to the second bridge, and the rest of us let the strong outgoing tide pull our boats back northward while we waited for the racers to catch up.

An amplified voice called in the dark: "RAISING THE BRIDGE." All bridge traffic stopped and red lights rotated and the bridge opened up from the middle, raising its arms to the sky. We tucked our boats around some abandoned barges as this slow ship laden with industrial equipment passed by. COOL. Our leader for the evening, an experienced kayak instructor, led the way as we all started back toward our dock, another two miles or so north. Before us was a tall lighted tower up ahead that wasn't moving.

ALL OF A SUDDEN the towery-thing-with-lights turned on a PIERCING white beam that lit us up like Christmas, and boomed two deafening blasts at us. Turned out it was a BIG tug that had moved aside and stopped to allow the barge to pass, and now it wanted to move to where we were. OKAY!

Himself said, "Feck *ME*," and we all paddled madly to the other side of the narrow channel. We and the tug passed like, you know, SHIPS IN THE NIGHT, and THEN the tug moved sideways, blocking the entire channel. The racers who'd been behind us were back there somewhere completely cut off. The tug seemed to be trying to push at one of the barges we'd sheltered near, but when she turned sideways the tide pulled hard on her. Eventually she moved to one side and stopped there, and then the rest of our party went around her. WHAT ADVENTURE.


TEST: Okay, so I took the Commonly Confused Words Test and passed. I was afraid to take it, because how embarrassing would it be to call yourself a writer and fail an English test? My score?

"ENGLISH GENIUS

"You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!"

Heh heh.

SO. In revising chapter six I realize that the Real Problem with it is that I am trying to cram in too much so I can get to to a Good Part. So it is rushed. And is really 2-3 chapters. And the whole chap/s need to be a Good Part. (OKAY, I know this is elementary. Stay with me)

SO. What I rully, rully MUST DO is immerse myself in an MMORPG which I did NOT want to do, because, duh, gaming is a huge time-sucker for people who have time to burn and I DO NOT HAVE ANY TIME FOR THE BURNING. (DIGRESSION: I just heard the town siren go off and I needed to mentally calculate that this is indeed noon on the first Wednesday of the month. SO NO PROBLEM.) But to sink into the world and pull the rug over my head so I can WRITE it properly I just have to DO IT.

Just at the moment that I made this decision, the phone rang. It was Joshilyn.

She said, "What are you doing?"
ME: I just decided that I need to play an MMORPG until my eyes bleed.
JOSS: OMG I KNEW YOU WOULD HAVE TO!
ME: Warcraft III
JOSS: I don't think I'd like that game.
ME: *explain everything I know about the game*
JOSS: I have to play that game.
ME: Let's play it together!
JOSS: Let's!

SO today as I shop online for a new monitor for the desktop downstairs so I can play WoW, THE PHONE RINGS. IT IS JOSS.

JOSS: Guess what I'm doing.
ME: Dunno. *clickety*
JOSS: DRIVING HOME FROM THE STORE WITH THE GAME IN MY CAR.
ME: OMG NO YOU CAN'T. WAIT FOR ME.
JOSS: Okay, I will wait for you. I will blog first and THEN play.
ME: ARGH! YOU ARE BEATING ME TO IT! *dies of terminal competitiveness*

So I just checked her blog. THAT WOMAN IS NOT BLOGGING, SHE IS PLAYING.

[ETA] Okay, she BLOGGED while I was typing this.
[ETA] Just now I called to see if she was playing and her husband was just loading the game onto her computer. RRR! BYE, I'M GOING TO THE STORE.

I was still flying high from the positive response to my reading of Smoke Friday night when a pitch contest was announced. I wrote a very short pitch as instructed and tossed it in the box. By eight o'clock that evening we were all ready to hear the winning pitches and get advice on improving our own.

Katherine Sands, an agent who wrote Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent's Eye,hosted the impromptu pitch-craft session. As each entrant read his or her pitch, Ms. Sands offered very helpful and specific technical advice.

When it was my turn I read then sat with pencil poised to take down everything she said so I could make my pitch A THING OF BEAUTY AND A JOY FOREVER AND EVER ALLELUIA. She said, "You use lyrical language but it's not doing for you what you think it's doing for you." I DID NOT KNOW what to DO with that. What could you do with that? So I waited until nearly everyone had left the room and she was very kind to allow me to show her what I'd been scribbling during the past hour-and-a-half.

"Is this a direction you think will be more effective? Or am I totally off the mark and should toss this approach and start all the way over?" I showed her the opening lines of the novel and asked if they might work as an opening to the pitch. So she took my reading out of my hand and read it. OMG! THE READING EVERY ONE LOVED! SHE WILL LOVE ME AND WANT TO SEE THE REST OF THE MS!

She frowned. "Is her mother crazy or psychic?"
Me: "It's a slow reveal that won't be resolved on the first page."
Her: "Hm. This looks Southern." *Like that's a bad thing.*
Me. "Yes. It's supposed to be. My mother was born and raised in Alabama and my fa..."
Her: *shakes head and sighs* "Well, you should start with this sentence HERE." She points.(That was actually very helpful advice.)
Me: Thanks very much.

SO. A hardcore NY agent with an excellent reputation hated my pitch, hated my novel, and seemed to dislike my hair and PROBABLY MY SHOES, TOO. I dragged my feet all the way to my room, flopped back on my bed and told my roommate, "If the clock radio is missing in the morning, it'll be with me in the bathtub." I hated everything. I hated me, you, and that guy over there.

Then came Holy Sunday.

Several lolz in this excellent use of Super Friends cartoons. The lip flap is carefully animated to match memorable lines from Office Space including TPS reports, Paper Jam, and "O" face.

[ETA] I cannot stop snerfling over this.

At the San Francisco Writers Conference we have readings in the evenings. This year, my friend Joss lectured me, “A writer should never pass up a chance to read.”

Friday night I sat in my chair, halfway back on the right, with my hands sweating and my breath quivering, dreading my turn and aching for it be over so I could go up to my room, scrape off the rotten tomato and weep in relief. There were near to forty readers signed up, and maybe double that in the room. Readers received polite golf claps, neutral comments, “I found your setting evocative,” and faint praise handed out to all of us aspiring authors. I wanted to die of terror. terroooooooor

Then it was time for number five, my number. “Looks like next up we have J--” I stood, “—Jennifer [someone whose last name is lost to me in a sea of adrenalin.]” So there I stood like the first runner-up grabbing at the crown. I sat.

Then it was my turn and I hyperventilated all the way to the podium, trying to not vomit on my shoes. I struggled to open my notebook to the right page. I put my head next to the microphone and raced through my selection, then slithered, soaked in flop sweat, toward my chair while reminding myself that even with paper-cuts, it's down-the-road not across-the-street.

BUT A MIRACLE OCCURRED.

There was thunder and whistling that followed me all the way to my chair. Oh! My joy! I channeled Sally Fields “They LIKE me, they really, really LIKE me.” I took off my clothes and bathed in the warmth of glowing praise. Suddenly birds sang and I loved EVERYONE. I loved you, and that guy over there, and even the driver who cut me off on the freeway last Tuesday. Then came Black Saturday.

Teen Girl Squad #8, the best in a long time. It's probably been up for ages, but I rarely remember to check Homestarrunner for new TGS episodes.

Have you all seen Strindberg and Helium? August Strindburg was a suicidal playwright who in this animation is teamed with a piping-voiced helium balloon. An unexpectedly comic effect. "heeeeliuuuummmm"

Also at the Sir Francis Drake hotel was the Imperial Council of San Francisco's drag queen coronation ceremony. Friday night the elevators were full of middle-aged men in full, magnificent, sparkly drag. They were splendid. And I didn't have my camera.