smothering in blueA wild, wild night here in the Northeast. In Providence, a strange warm wind blew in, and the night was lashed and balmy. I left the window open, and the noise of that wind, whipping branches, rattling leaves, snapping twigs kept me on edge. Later, there was heavy rain, but not a hint of thunder or lightning, adding to the peculiarity of the weather. Today, it's bright, sunny, the wide carnivorous sky as blue as blue knows how to be, 70˚F out there. I want to go to the shore, but...the Mordorian Death March.
Speaking of which, yesterday I did 1,747 words on Fay Grimmer, Chapter Four ("Plan A"), meeting the daily quota and dropping a few words into the word bank. Yay for me.
Also, a very important phone call, which I'm sure I'm not at liberty to discuss. No one ever tells you, one way or the other. Usually, we writers have to figure that sort of shit out as they go along.
Last night? Besides the storm, I mean. Well, Spooky and I have been dividing our gaming time (stretching ourselves thin) between Rift and GW2. I am, by the way, becoming very addicted to the latter, and that long list of cons I made back on September 11th seems less and less relevant. Well, except the part about not having mounts. Not having mounts is bullshit. A civilization that can figure out how to make guns, but not ride some sort of animal? Baloney, says I. Contrived, says I. There seems to be a very vocal group of GW2 players who think (and this is an expression I see again and again) that having mounts would "break the game." Um. Yeah. Anyway, I'm mostly playing my human warrior (she's about sixteen), Selwyn Gévaudan, while Spooky plays her human mesmer, Beatrix Graves (about eighteen or nineteen). But! Meanwhile – as Rift dumbs itself down and caters more and more to the "why can't this be more like WoW" crowd – we're suffering Brutt* the funny satyr, who is permanently high on shrooms. Part of the stupid "Autumn Harvest" event before the big expansion. Stupid as fuck. But hey, we get cool, ghostly mounts. Ah, intangible, nonexistent, virtual rewards for a hundred hours of drudgery!
We fell asleep listening to the storm and to the audiobook of Paolo Bacigulpi's The Windup Girl.
Last night, James Selwyn Nightshade the Kitten found himself on my shit list for chewing the corner of Donald R. Prothero's After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals. He better watch his fuzzy little ass, that's all I have to say.
And speaking on dinosaurs, have you heard about Yutyrannus huali?** A thirty-foot feathered tyrannosaurid? This, kittens, is the sort of thing keeps me moving.
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What the FUCK is with the LJ header today? Big yellow smiley faces? They're fucking freaking me the fuck out. Where's my freakin' elder sign!***
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Round Three of the "pay the taxes" eBay auctions has begun! Help us avoid the poorhouse!
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Cry, little sister.
(Thou shall not fall.) ~ Gerard McMann and Michael Mainieri
Full Speed Ahead, Mr. Sulu,
Aunt Beast
* "Twinkle, twinkle, little fungus./I'm so glad you are among us."
** You can read the actual paper describing the new genus online: "A gigantic feathered dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China."
*** Turns out, today appears to be the thirtieth birthday of the goddamn smiley face emoticon. But...I think that's not actually true. I'm pretty sure it dates back to the invention of the telegraph in the 1800s. Proof forthcoming. Note, we are NOT talking about the invention of the yellow smiley face symbol, which dates to 1953.