Blood Lust

What is the big deal with vampires? Dracula was first published in 1897, and it seems that vampires have been a frequent icon in popular literature ever since. Dracula was not the first vampire tale ever told. And today vampires are the hottest thing around.

Back in the 90’s Buffy put a new more feminist face on the vampire story. Then Bella came along and quickly implanted sparkly vampires into every teenage girl’s fantacy. I have to be honest, I didn’t particularly like Dracula when I read it back in college, and I never watched Buffy. I did enjoy the Twilight series, it might not be high art, but it is definately entertaining.

I watched New Moon a week ago and enjoyed that a lot too. The CGI of the wolves was a bit corny, and the actor playing Jacob is a lot hotter than the actor playing Edward, which detracted from the Edward is the hottest man alive plot point. But for the most part I felt that it stuck to the plot of the book and entertained sufficently.

Last weekend I also caught my first eposode of The Vampire Diaries. Granted I did see a mid-season episode without any pervious context, but I wasn’t thrilled with what I saw. From the one episode I caught I figured out that some of the vampires are good and others are bad and they are living among humans and fighting for blood and justice. While these TV vampires don’t glitter in the sun, they do match more of the Twilight world rules than the Dracula world rules. Mainly I just felt like Vampire Diaries is trying to ride the Twilight money making wave, and the show wasn't adding anything new or interesting to the world of vampires.

Today I listened to a completely different vampire novel – You Suck by Christopher Moore. You Suck is nothing like Twilight, it attempts to be a humorous version of Dracula and I half expect Moore has never read anything written by Meyer. If you love Twilight but generally hate horror, You Suck probably isn’t for you. But if you enjoy a humorous spoof on horror that pokes fun at human fears and desires, then you will probably love You Suck.

Here is a longer list of comparisons between the vampires of Meyer and Moore


YOU SUCK

Bodies go lifeless (effectively dead) at sunrise

Passionate biting sex

Shave a cat before drinking its blood to avoid a mouth full of hair

Can drink from humans without killing them

Vampire gets drunk after feeding on drunken homeless guy

Vampires need human minuons (normally goth teenagers) to do their bidding during the day

The humane way to hunt is to eat terminally ill patiants shortly before they would die anyway


TWILIGHT

Bodies sparkle in the sun

Steamy hand holding but absolutely no sex before marrage

Hunting for mountain lions in the woods without getting remotely dirty

Biting a human can lead only to death or transformation and is always painful for human

Nobody does drugs or drinks alcohol in Forks

Vampires must keep their identities hidden under all costs

The humane way to hunt is to eat animals

Joke of the Day

What does a vampire fear most?

Tooth Decay

Thanks-Jiven

I love the fact that the largest non-religious holiday in American is a celebration of gluttany. My ansestors might not have attended the first Thanksgiving, but I made sure to eat enough this year to make up for their 18th century imigration status. Yesturday, I entertained 20 hungery friends and relatives. We didn't hold back on anything, and a good time was had by all.

Our dining room can't seat 20, 12 maybe, but not 20. But considering the youngest person at our gathering was 17 (and I was the second youngest person) sticking a kids table in the kitchen didn't seem like a viable option either. So we simply moved all of our livingroom furniture into the garagae and set up a giant table for 20 in the living room. Having all of our couches in the garage worked great, because we purchased a second used oven at a smoking low price and hooked it up to our dryer plug-in in the garage. So not only could people sit around and cabits out there, they could cook too.

The appetizer course in the garage consitsted of squash soup, smoked salmon, cheeze/crackers/cold cuts, veggies/dip, apple/carmle, dried fruit, olives, and pickles. And naturally some genrous porsions of wine too.

Once social hour carport style was over we dug into the real feast. Our thanksgiving dinner consisted of a smoked turkey, a deep fried turkey, a ham, two kinds of stuffing, mash potatoes, gravy, yam/apple casoral, green bean caserol, grilled asparagous, cranberry chuttney, orenges, corn bread, rolls (homebaked), butter (home churned), and more wine. It was delicious.

After dinner we played a few cut throat card games while our food digested before digging into desert. Which consisted of pumpkin pie, apple/cranberry pie, strawberry/rubarb pie, and ice cream. Once all the pie was eaten we played somemore cards before crawling off to collaps into food comas.

Instead of spending black Friday at the mall, I had to move all my livingroom furniture back into my house. But now the couch is were it belongs, my refrigerator is overflowing with yummy left overs, and I still love thanks-jiven.

Joke of the Day

What did the turkey say right before it was roasted?

"Boy, I'm stuffed."

Attack of the Day Dream

So far November has been a bit of a whirl wind as far as the wonderings of my mind are concerned. At the beginning of the month I set myself a goal of not reading or listening to any books for the entire month of November. My feeling was that this would force me to think about a new book and I would eventually start writing a lot more.

I did start writing a new book during the first week of November, but it never went anywhere and after about 5000 words and an outline I gave up. I may come back to the idea sometime down the line, but I just didn't care about any of the characters and I couldn't modivate myself to write about it.

I also got really board at work. I've gotten so good at multi-tasking that not listening to audio books while working is difficult. After a week of unispiring music, I gave up and started listening again. I continued to attempt to write for another week before I scrapped my new story all together.

Then all of a sudden, creativity set in. I started thinking about my old characters, from my last book. The novel that I wrote last year is YA and stars an entertaining group of 16 year olds. In my mind these kids are now all 19 - and they are still fabulously entertaining. I really don't want to write down what I'm thinking about right now. Sequils never work - if a long story is written as a series it can be gripping and powerful, but when a book works well alone it should stay alone. Sequil for the pure sake of sequil tends to read really flat and boaring.

To make matters worse, I've rewritten my last book in my mind. Not the whole thing - I just decided to kill off the mother of one of my main characters. In the book that I wrote, this characters parents our divorsed. But for the sake of my new daydream it works way better if his mom is actually dead. So I'm just letting her be dead in my mind now, but she can stay alive and neglectful in the book I already wrote.

So here I am, November is almost over, my mind is spinning with lots of great characters going on great adventures. I've only listened to five books this month (I read or listened to 24 books in October), and I still don't have a new book to write. But I'm not board - so I'm not complaining.

Joke of the Day

I'm trying to daydream but my mind keeps on wandering.

The Creative Dyslexic - A Result of Brain Geometry

A new study was just published in the Harvard Medical Journal that corrilates a decreased lower posterior corpus callosum area of the brain with dyslexia and ADD. What does that mean? Well according to the good people over at Harvard the corpus callosum is the part of the brain that connects the right and left hemispheres. So it helps to coordinate thoughts between the two sections of the brain.

When the lower posterior corpus callosum is deminished in size, it causes an increase in divergent thinking. Since the two parts of the brain are less linked, the mind is able to further develope divergent thoughts. In other words, the brain is naturally more creative. Studies have shown that people with smaller corpus callosums are more creative than people with standard corpus callosums. So the question is no longer are you left brained or right brained, but instead do you two brains know how to communicated?

Having a diminished corpus callosum is not the cause of dyslexia or ADD. The world has many highly creative people with tiny corpus callosums who read great. But this latest study indicates that the percentage of dyslexics with diminished corpus callosums in higher than that of the non-dyslexic population.

This doesn’t really surprize me. My experence has always been that brain weirdnesses come in clusters. When ever one thing is off, the possibility of everything else being wacked is greatly increased. Also looking at the list of famous dyslexics makes it easy to recognise we tend to be a creative group. Still it is nice to know that the nerds over in Boston are doing their part to add proof to my speculation. Plus it makes me feel good about myself knowing there is one more official advantage to sucking at reading.

Joke of the Day

One person with ADD said to another, "I got a new cookbook, but I could never do anything with it."

The other person with ADD replied, "So the reciepies all contained unussual ingreedence?"

"Exactly, every single one said 'Start with a Clean Dish'."

New Global Economy

I know that up until this point, this has not been an economics blog, and venturing into that field might not be what my readers want, but it seems like I end up talking to people about economics almost every day. So I’m tempted to bring the debate online.

I’ll start by grounding myself. I was raised in an upper middle class family, I have multiple college degrees (anthropology and engineering), and both my husband and I are currently employed as engineers. I’m kind of a snob, and its easy for me to think – I want a beach house, I want a yatch, I want, I want, I want. So then I think about possibly making less money and I have to frown.

To make matters even worse, the company that my husband works for recently announced their plan to move all their manufacturing facilities to China. Design work will still be done in the US, and currently my husband’s job appears secure. But when 80% of the companies US employese are laid off, it is hard to take comfort in that security. So I understand the reality of the rising unemployment rate, and I personally know multiple people with Ivy League educations whose jobs are being outsourced.

But then there is another part of me that says, stop acting like such a snob. This isn’t only a problem that I face. It is a problem that all American’s are facing. We are a country full of spoiled brats. There are certain things that are basic needs – food, clean drinking water, basic shelter. Many people in the world are currently living without these things. And out sourcing is bring much needed jobs and capital to the developing world and will as a result greatly increase the quality of many human’s lives.

Cable TV on the other hand is not a basic human need. And owning a yatch is certainly not required for servival. Maybe if we as American’s stopped feeling entitled to all of the things that 95% of the world population would never even dream of, we will be happier living in this new global economy.

Even though I was raised deep in the trenches of the upper middle class, I have had the opertunity to meet several people that refer to themselves as idependently poor. These people have always made money somehow, working as artists, doing odd jobs, and repairing and reselling damaged goods. These people might not have hundereds of thousands of dollars tucked away in their 401K’s, but that just means that they didn’t feel as much pain when the stock market popped. But for the most part I would say that all the independently poor people that I know are far happier than the people who own multiple pieces of vaccation property that they never have time to visit.

I never want to go without food or water, and I tend to get cold easily so having shelter would be nice too. But I’m already happily living without cable TV. If my husbands job is outsorced, we will be able to servive on my income until he finds something else. And while we are both employed, we need to remember to invest our money wisely so that we will have both the security to live through a rainy day, and the flexibility to eventually stop working. And we don’t need to go buy a yatch.

I do want a beach house and a yatch, because I’m sure at some level I will always be a snob. But I also want the people in China to have enough food to eat, and I want the people in South America to have clean drinking water. And I want the joy in my life to come from the people I interact with and the experiences I embrace – not the size of my 401K. Being independently wealthy might be a pipe dream, but I think I could be really happy independently poor.

Joke of the Day

The economy is so bad a picture is now only worth 200 words.

To Read or Not To Read

Yesturday, Natalie Whipple over at Between Fact and Fiction had a post about how everyone can and should be a reader. Her message was that people who don’t think they like to read, just need to hunt more diligently for a book they will love. Her post reminded me of an experience I had when I was 16 years old.

Let me set the scene for you. I was an uber-dork – took all honors and AP classes, captain of the mathletes, ect. Except that I read at a second grade reading level, so I was stuck in bonehead English instead of honors English. I got all my text books on tape, and I also listened to three or four books for pleasure per week. At the time I filled all my audio book needs via RFB&D (recordings for the blind and dyslexic). This meant that I had to know the author and title of a book before I ordered it from RFB&D, so I was always on the lookout for good book recomendations.

Now enters my friend Nathan. Nathan was also an uber-dork – took honors and AP everything (including English), captain of the chess club, ect. For some reason I thought since Nathan managed to get a hire grade than me in Physics, he might be a reader too. So I asked him, “have you read any good books lately?”

His answer, “I like reading Calvin & Hobs, does that count?”

I was floored. Nathan was smart, he probably taught himself how to read when he was four or something. But he didn’t do it. He didn’t read. He just did his homework, and then built robots and stuff like that in his spare time. I couldn’t understand why anyone who could read wouldn’t want to. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to be able to read. I just couldn’t get it.

Now let’s fast forward about fifteen years. I am now married to yet another uber-dork. He is an electrical engineer by day, and in his free time he enjoys fishing, woodworking, restoring antique farm equipment, and inventing zany new contraptions in his shop. The guy is definitely smart, and way to productive for his own good. But he doesn’t read. In the six years I’ve known him, I’ve seen him read exactly one book – and I wrote it. He doesn’t like watching movies either, and the only TV show he likes is Mythbusters.

When we go on long car trips, my husband never complains when I subject him to audio books. His problem with reading is simply that it requires sitting still, which he hates to do. So I write books, and my husband invents new fangled fishing loors. We are both entertained, so it shouldn’t really matter that we have different hobbies. Still, when I read a really good book that I know he would love it always pains me a little bit – knowing that he will never read it.

And as for me. I’m still a dorky engineer who is constantly plugged into audio books. Only now I am capable of reading dust jackets and usually do a pretty good job of finding titles to keep myself entertained, without depending on the recomendations of the non-reading computer nerds I live with.

Joke of the Day

Once there was a lady in on an airplane with a poodle. The man sitting next to her was smoking a big cigar, even though they were on a no smoking flight. The lady was seated in an exit row, so she opened the airplanes door and threw out the man’s cigar. The man then grabbed the poodle and through it out the door. The pilot saw what had happened and quickly did a loop-d-loop and the poodle landed on the wing of the plane. In the poodles mouth was the brick from Monday’s joke.

A Change of Plans

I have decided to shelve the book I’m suppsedly writing indefinately. This really isn’t a very big sacrifice, concidering I’ve only written about 5000 words. Basically I’ve decided that writing when I’m not in the mood is never a good idea. Not because my time is precious or anything like than, but simply because the things I come up with are total crap.

I heard the first sentance of my last novel in a dream. I woke up the next morning and started writing. I didn’t stop until I had a completed novel that I felt happy with eight months later. At first there was only one voice in my head, asking me to tell her story. But as I wrote, I began to hear other voices and the stories cast of characters fanned out and came to life. Writing was fun, writing was addictive. Even when I wasn’t writing I spent every waking hour thinking about the characters in my novel.

I finished that book about a year ago. Since then I’ve written about 2/3rds of a first draft of a memoir, I’ve written this blog, and I’ve read or listened to more than 100 books written by other people. But I haven’t caught that addiction to writing again. I haven’t dreampt up a new story that I felt an uncontrolable urge to write down.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about anything. In the past year, I’ve invented about a half a dozen casts of characters. Some have been interesting, and some have been ordenary. But their stories have all had major problems that told me without question that a book about their lives could never find a market. They weren’t stories ment to be written down, they were just stories meant to entertain me.

The book that I started two weeks ago in my half hearted attempt at NaNoWriMo, wasn’t about a character who has taken over my conciousness. Instead it was a plot that I thought might have a market and consisted of characters that I didn’t know or care about. The result is simple. I don’t care about this story. Writing feels like a chore, and everything that I write is flat and lifeless. Nobody will want to read what I’m writing right now. I don’t even want to read what I’m writing right now. So why am I writing it?

Last weekend I went camping – yes in November. I know I’m insane. I didn’t bring anything to read or write, I just hung out in the rain and did a lot of day dreaming. The story I invented for myself over the weekend had nothing to do with what I’m supposed to be writing. It also wouldn’t work as a novel. But it entertained me during a wet rainy weekend.

So I’m just going to take a step back and trust myself. I’m only 30 years old, and I daydream 24/7. Obvoisly, I will write another novel. But I don’t need to force it. When a character wakes me up at night begging me to write – I will. But when I find myself board with my own writing, well then maybe I should just read a book and think about something else for a while.

Joke of the Day

Once there was a man who decided to build a house. He carefully counted out all of the bricks he needed before he began construction. But when he was finished with the house, he had one brick left over. So he threw it in the air.