Far Back Friday – The Days of Plaid & Music.

FAR BACK FRIDAY!  Enjoy.

~Thanks!

My husband (left) and brother-in-law, late 1970s: rocking the plaid at violin lessons.

Perhaps it’s not scientific, but it is damning: Slush-Pile Hell

From Brad Cotton, http://www.bradcotton.com/slushpile-hell-great-blog/

Writers Rejoice.

Or, Writers Despair.

It’s this kind of subjectivity that makes us want to crawl back in bed, cover our heads, and not stick one extremity back out again to consider typing another word.

Or…does it give us hope?  You decide.  Read this article, about a guy who submits a New Yorker story to The New Yorker – and gets rejected.

The New Yorker Rejects Itself

~Thanks!

What makes me squee.

I’ve noticed that the word “squee” is all the rage on Twitter now.  (Or perhaps I’m already behind, and it’s no longer the rage, and I’m terribly out of vogue to even talk about squee . . . regardless . . . )

Definition of SQUEE:  The cry of the overexcited fan girl.  (My addition:  Fan “girl” can also be a fan “boy,” but is still called a fan girl because the people who came up with the term “fan girl” are sexist.)

So what makes Rebecca Of Tomorrow squee, you ask?  Well, I like to group my squeedom into four separate squeeheadings.

#1:  New books coming out by authors I love

From the Charlaine Harris official website: http://www.charlaineharris.com/

For example, the FINAL Sookie Stackhouse installment by the fabulous Charlaine Harris:  Dead Ever After (May 7,2013).  In this instance, my squee is a bit bittersweet because this beautiful and amazing series is ending, however.

#2:  Movies coming out with actors I love OR in a series I love (or both)

From the official Star Trek Into Darkness website: http://www.startrekmovie.com/

For example:  Star Trek Into Darkness, releases May 17, 2013.  Not going to lie, I’m a huge, no-holds-barred Star Trek fan.  I’m a fan of the original series and all of its progeny, and all of the movies, and most of the books.  Plus, BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH is in this one, and there appears to be a whole lot of people jumping off of really high places — so what’s not to squee about?

#3:  New television episodes coming out with actors I love OR in a series I love (or again, both)

From the Sherlockology website: http://www.sherlockology.com/news/2013/3/11/read-through-roundup-110313

For example:  Thank goodness BBC is finally getting around to filming Sherlock: Season 3!  I mean, COME ON!  You simply cannot leave Sherlock dead.  You. Just. Can’t.  (Chill: I didn’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t watched Season 2.  Anyone who knows anything about Sherlock Holmes knows he “dies” at Reichenbach….and comes back.)

Oh, and lookie there!  That’s BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH again.  (Yes, I kinda squee every time I see a picture of him.)

#4:  Awesome things that happen to me

Check it out on Kiersi’s website: http://typewriterstories.tumblr.com/post/45070282204/rebecca-and-the-girl-scout-cookies

For example:  My writer friend, the exquisitely talented Kiersi Burkhart, wrote and mailed me my very own personalized typewriter story, called “Rebecca and the Girl Scout Cookies.”  I squeed when I got it out of the mail on Saturday, and my family thought I had gone a bit loopy.  But it was even better than ACTUAL Girl Scout Cookies – just sayin’.

So, on this Monday-after-daylight-savings-time-makes-you-really-sad-about-losing-an-hour-of-sleep-over-the-weekend, look for the things in life that will make YOU squee.

Thanks!

Your rat-pelt eyebrows look lovely, my dear.

Here’s an interesting scoop of trivial information for you.

Ester Boardman – 1780 – who wore mouse-skin eyebrows. From: Grace Elliot – blog, http://graceelliot-author.blogspot.com/2012/06/mouse-skin-eyebrows-short-history-of.html

Did you know that in Elizabethan through Georgian times, women unknowingly poisoned themselves for years by applying a beauty product to their faces called ceruse – a mixture of white lead and vinegar?  This toxic substance made the face elegantly pale and perfect-looking, while concealing pock marks and acid pitting beneath.  (Think Queen Elizabeth I’s white face and eventual blood poisoning.)  In addition to making the lady ill, frequently mortally so, it usually had the unfortunate side of effect of causing her to lose her eyebrows.  In order to solve the eyebrow problem, ladies would skin rats and glue scraps of fresh rat pelt as artificial eyebrows – the thicker the better, because thick eyebrows connoted youth.   This solved the problem of what to do with all the rats they would catch in their traps overnight.

I learned this piece of fascinating information from Sarah Downing’s fascinating book Beauty and Cosmetics 1550-1950. 

On little things, as sages write,
Depends our human joy or sorrow,
If we don’t catch a mouse tonight,
Alas! No eyebrows for tomorrow.  (Matthew Prior, 1718)

From Yahoo Shine/NY Fashion Week: http://shine.yahoo.com/the-thread-style-crush/most-outrageous-style-at-fashion-week-191323689.html

Why am I blogging about this today?  Well, it’s Valentine’s Day: a day when countless men and women do what they can to enhance their own natural comeliness – whether by dressing provocatively, applying makeup, getting a new hairdo, or spritzing on a little too much perfume or Axe body spray.

And apparently, it’s fashion week in NYC.  For those of us who frankly cannot understand haute couture, much of what can be seen there is about as weird, possibly weirder, as Elizabethan rat eyebrows.

Just sayin’.

~Thanks!

Ideas Wanted!

Hey Blogosphere!  I posted this on Facebook yesterday and got a great response.  Feel free to add your own ideas in the comment section.  I LOVE ideas!

~Thanks!

Ok, FB friends. I need your input in a story I’m writing. I need a fictional name for a store/shop that means “retaliation.” I was thinking “Tit For Tat” but that has all kinds of naughty middle school boy smirkiness attacked to it. So other options might be “Quid Pro Quo,” “Pay Backs,” “Turning Tables,” “Serves You Right,” and “Measure For Measure.” What’s YOUR preference, and/or what other names could you come up with? HELP!

• 

  Cement Shoes.
• 

  Would you shop in a store called Cement Shoes? Maybe….
• 

  What service does the store provide?
• 

  Karma Kafe
• 

  “Re-prize-all Used Toy Store”. Where all toys are a prize to be re used.
• 

  I didn’t read your post correctly. I thought you said it was a toy store.
• 

  never-the-less, I like reprisal
• 

  outwardly it sells one-of-a-kind items, but it’s really a Twilight-Zone kinda store that dishes out what people deserve – for good or bad.
• 

  IforNI, Something Karma
• 

  Karma Kitch
• 

  Does the winner get royalties?
• 

  or an honorable mention on the acknowledgment page????
• 

  Retailiation. No?
• 

  Okay, if it gives out good as well as bad… The Winnowing Fork.
• 

  you might check anagram web sites to for some of these words. Or mythological sites.
• 

  Dang it! I was just typing “Retailiation.” Great minds and all that.
• 

  Too funny! Great minds, indeed.
• 

  If it’s an ice cream shop… “A Dish Best Served Cold.”
• 

  The Sauce and Gander. Although that sounds like a pub.
• 

  Teak Jar Music. Anagram of justice and karma
• 

  Themis Retail Tea. Or Old Bailey’s Retail Tea.
• 

  I4NI
• 

  Comuppins
• 

  U Hadit Comin
• 

  In Greek mythology, judges were called “servants of Themis” or themistopóloi. Using “themistopoloi” at Wordsmith, you get this list:
  http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=themistopoloi&language=english&t=1000&d=&include=&exclude=&n=&m=&source=adv&a=n&l=n&q=n&k=1

  http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=themistopoloi&language=english&t=1000&d=&includ

  www.wordsmith.org
• 

  Reciprocity. Strangely I just took a Stanford course at work this week called “managing without authority” and reciprocity is one tool to use!
• 

  You Asked for It.
• 

  You guys ALL rock. I’ll let you know what I go with soon. And the Moirae are going to play a big part in this store.
• 

  And thanks so much for the Chicago earworm. “He had it comin’….He had it comin’….”
• 

  That was sort of the idea.
• 

  OMG, I could waste SO MUCH time on the anagram site. It’s interesting that an anagram of “retaliation” is “A Entrail Trio” because my Moirae will be doing some entrail divination…..
• 

  Ack, get it out of my ears!!!
• 

  I like his suggestion. It works for the one-of-a-kind-items shop as well as for the actual purpose of the shop. You Asked For It seems like the perfect name. And, btw, I LOVE the Cell Block Tango.
• 

  If it is a fabric store it could be Reap what You Sewed
• 

  Keep ‘em comin’…you’re on a roll, sir.
• 

  “Eye for an Eye” or “Serve the Same Sauce”
• 

  Ooh,  I’ve never heard of the “serve the same sauce” expression before.
• 

  Or it could just be “The Same Sauce”….
• 

  Thai Restaurant.
  Pai Bach Sab Ich
• 

  That took me a moment. Geesh!
• 

  Tee hee
• 

  It’s a bit of a stretch but you could do Zeke’s 25/17. Referencing Ezekiel 25:17 better known from the Sam Jackson’s speech from pulp fiction
• 

  Lemme go look it up….
• 

  Oh, wow. That’s heavy. But I really like the Bible verse idea. There’s a religious element in the story and the store, actually.
• 

  

  WebSpawner – ezekiel pulp fiction

  www.webspawner.com

  ezekiel pulp fiction
• 

  I’m also thinking of R&P….which stands for “rewards and punishments” but could be an innocent-sounding name of a store on any main street in America.
• 

  Not Your Girl Next Door…….
• 

  Oh a dessert shop. Karmeringue

“Why You Shouldn’t Play With Your [Avocados]” by Tawna Fenske

Wandering around the blogosphere today, I found this little GEM.  It’s wonderful because A.) It’s funny.  B.) I love professional writers’ “life story”-type blogs, and 3.) I just happen to have two overripe avocados in my kitchen.  What, oh what, should I do with them?

Probably not this.  Here, read it.  It’s as funny as a flaccid avocado.  Enjoy:

“Why You Shouldn’t Play With Your Food,” by Tawna Fenske.

Who left the AUGURY out of INAUGURATION?

I love words.  I really do.  I’ve actually considered going back to graduate school (again?) just to learn more about etymology.  I was always a wiz-bang student when it came to suffixes/prefixes & roots.

Inauguration

So for some reason today, I was amused but also disheartened to see this little feature on Yahoo, in regards to today’s inauguration:  People Can’t Spell the Word “Inauguration.”

Hmm. Things don’t look good.

AND I started to think about the word “inauguration,” and wondered if people had any idea what its root word even means:  augury, which, strangely, is the art of predicting the future by means of interpreting animal entrails.  NO LIE.  The word augury is much prettier when defined at Dictionary.com = divination, omen, token, indication.  Dictionary.com goes on to say that the history of the word is French, and means “divination from the flight of birds . . . soothsaying, sorcery, enchantment.”

Why would the word “inauguration” have anything to do with the flight of birds, soothsaying, or animal entrails, you ask?  Well, that’s a terribly good question, isn’t it?   The answer that, you have to understand that words are powerful and particular things.  You can use synonyms if you like, but if you want to be extremely particular in your meaning, you must choose just the right word.  Inauguration comes from the Latin inaugurationem, which specifically and particularly means “consecration, installment under good omens.”  It’s the “good omens” part that is important, isn’t it?  It isn’t just installation of someone into a public office, it’s the installation of someone under good omens.

Of course, I’m not entirely sure that this presidential installation, nor the last several in our nation’s history, is under good omens at all.  (Quite the contrary, according to recent news broadcasts.)  So perhaps, what has been unwinding on national television today isn’t actually an “inauguration” at all . . . unless someone behind the scenes has been studying flocks of birds and/or cutting open small animals to read their entrails and just hasn’t seen fit to tell us about it.

Just saying.  Enjoy the rest of the “inauguration” coverage.

~Thanks

Jim Butcher’s advice on the novelist’s “Great Swampy Middle”

The best thing I’ve read all week:

Jim Butcher’s writing advice is always wonderful, practical, helpful, insightful, and darn-it-all funny.
Navigating “The Great Swampy Middle” of your novel, is, I think, his best yet.

Thanks, Mr. Butcher!

Here Frodo and Sam trek through The Great Swampy Middle….somehow making it through to the other side…..

 

Bring it ON, Christmas. BRING IT ON!

Because nothin’ says Christmas like a REINDEER CONGA LINE!

We did our 2nd Annual Christmas Variety Show at church the other day.  This is how it all ended.

You’re welcome!

Thank you, post-Black-Friday-Monday!

The mall was quite pretty….especially since I didn’t have to view it through crowds of people.

I am thankful — truly, completely, and totally thankful — that I did not need to brave Black Friday shopping crowds and the post-Thanksgiving weekend shopping crowds in order to do holiday shopping for my family and friends.  I am thankful that I was able to drop my children off at school on Monday morning after such a hubbub, and take myself to a very uncrowded mall, shop, and not even have to wait in order to check out.  I am thankful that if indeed I did spend more today than I might have at 4:00 a.m. on Friday (or worse, 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday) I could afford to do so – for the sake of my own sanity and comfort.

I even enjoyed my Philly cheese steak and regular fries at the mall’s food court, where I ate, not rushed, and in peace.

It’s the little things in life . . .

~Thanks!