Another Galaxy Post...

I showed up late for the party. Not fashionable late as I usually do, but since the Galaxy has been out in France since June of this year I basically showed up after all the booze had run out.

But getting my Galaxy S2 later has its advantages. Android Market is now teeming with apps. After consulting my few friends who use a Android device of some kind (apparently there is a subculture of "geeks" who use iPhone over Android called "iGeeks"), I've spent the past few days scooping out what's out there and I kept a list.

I should mention I have paid for no apps yet. Tho I have been tempted to pay for Angry Birds just to remove the ads.

Apps I Like:

ColorNote
ColorNote is a Post-It app for your phone that allows you to post notes to yourself on your home screen(s). My only complaint is that it lacks a "ping" feature to remind you.

AK Notepad
You can use this app as a standard notepad, but you can also create checklists for yourself and set reminders for specific times. I've been using it to remind me I need to write.

SoundBoard Pro Extreme
I tried a lot of soundboard apps and this is by far the best. It has 8 farting noises, gunfire, bomb explosions, people laughing, and a nice slow, sardonic clap.

Alarm Clock Plus
This app lets you store multiple alarms and gives you an option of requiring the correct answer to a  math problem to snooze or dismiss alarms. Easy gave me double digit addition questions this morning. Very hard gave me something similar to this:

(1723 - 132) x 2

I tested it wide awake and it wasn't easy, so I think I'll be setting it for something a little easier or else the alarm is going to go off forever...

The app also gives you a nice digital display of the time, your location, and the weather for the week.

Advanced English Dictionary & Thesaurus
Now if I'm going to pay for an app, it probably won't be for a dictionary or thesaurus. I had previously installed Merriam Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus apps separately, but someone recommended this one and it works. It asks you to download the entire word database to use it offline, but I haven't bothered to do that yet.

Anti-virus
No telling yet if this is a goodie or a baddie, but it was free and had very good reviews.

CalorieCounter
I quite like this app, but I'm not too familiar with it yet. It does allow you to scan barcodes of food items, which worked on a box of Golden Grahams so well I didn't eat any for breakfast this morning. After inputting my dinner meal, I found out I had 43% of my daily intake left to consume - or not. It has the traditional US-market oriented features like restaurants, fast food chains, and prepackaged foods. I rarely eat out and almost never cook from a box, so I'll get less from those features of the app, but so far so good.

I'm waiting to see if after a few days if it will help me track my weight in the sense that it will tell me how long at my current calorie intake and exercise schedule it will take me to reach my goal weight, but so far it doesn't look like that is one of the features, which is a big bummer.

Marvel Comics / DC Comics
Fairly standard. You can buy comics, review, get news, and every now and then preview a freebie.

Google
Google's various apps are rather fun. I use Gmail,Goggles,Maps,and Docs.

Apps I Love:

These are harder to find. I love Angry Birds but it eats up a lot of my time. I am on the line between like and love with Evernote, but I can tell you honestly I didn't like Springpad one bit. The app I'm loving the most right now is Thinking Space. I have barely begun to use it, but being able to map out my ideas while I'm sitting on a train (it's 45 minutes to Paris) is going to make me very happy.

Now hate is a strong word, but here's the app I hate. Samsung's Kies.

I was only using it to move my music to my phone, but did it ever piss me off. I was using wi-fi to transfer music. Kies didn't recognise all my music - fine, there's some problem with the ID3, normal stuff. I kept transferring. An hour went by. It moved 7 songs. I plugged in my phone via USB. It took ages for the phone and my computer to settle their difference, i.e. for the drivers for the phone to download. Then Kies told me I needed to update the firmware, but that I didn't have enough space. I tried to resolve the space issue. The update kept failing. As did my patience.

In the end I opted to drag and drop music into the folder for my phone under media. Not all songs copied. Not all the artwork copied. It drove me nuts until 4 in the morning.

Now I have music on my phone, but it's not ideal. I'm holding out for news on the release of Google Music, which will offer a cloud service that will allow you to stream up to 20,000 songs to your phone anywhere. In the meantime, I'll just put up with my current situation, but it's rather frustrating. I have this big feeling Samsung knew there was going to be an issue because of how entrenched iTunes became, but couldn't figure out a reasonable solution because I think they're waiting for Google Music to release worldwide too.

My friend who gave me the phone for my birthday suggested I use Spotify, so I downloaded the app as a trial. The minute I didn't have wi-fi the streaming went to crap. The 3G was too slow so the song kept buffering, ruining what should have been a beautiful foggy walk around the grounds of the chateau de Fontainebleau whilst listening to Joy Division's "Atmosphere". Ten euros a month is a lot given I'm not going to be listening away from home all that often.

So after less than a week, I'm rather pleased with this new bit of tech I'm carrying around. I'll be using it more and more to blog little bits of Paris and my life, but it has most definitely solidified my addiction to Twitter.

I already bought an uninteresting case for my phone and they're aren't as many choices for cases as there are for the iPhone (a tiny shelf at FNAC, the French version of Best Buy for SG2 vs. an entire massive wall for the iPhone), but here are some I'm coveting should I ever want a change.

To my friends who read this blog, yes I already subjected you to this barrage on FB, I know. I'm sorry.

Because it has superpowers.And because DC hasn't made one for Wonder Woman.

Koala bear that looks more like a panda.

Koala that looks more like a bear, but like a 8-bit version of Winnie the Pooh.

All examples from Amazon or Mobifun.



















 

Read more >>

Please forgive me while I play with my new toy

As I may have mentioned, I was gifted with the Samsung Galaxy SII. So far it might be love.

Much to the confusion of Monsieur Redacteur, I took my phone on an official day out to test a few things.

The day's winner for apps was FX Camera. I love the effects. I bought a Diana+ two years ago, never figured out how to use it, and regretted giving it away albeit to someone who will use it - ever since.

But no more. This app is FANTASTIC!

Here are some of the photographic results. These were taken around the grounds of the chateau of Fontainebleau.

Read more >>

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Compared to his bibliography (which seems to merit its own Wikipedia page), I have a rather unimpressive collection of (Vladimir Vladimirovich) Nabokov's works. My first edition of "Lolita" is a well-worn 1st American edition. Published by G.P. Putnam & Sons in August of 1958, "Lolita" went to a third printing in a matter of days and sold a 100,000 copies in three weeks. Originally published by The Olympia Press in 1955. The 5,000 original Olympia Press copies sold out; prompted Graham Greene to declare it one of the three best books of 1955; and ended the career of one of the first people in Britain (Nigel Nicolson) who dared to publish what many considered "pornography". (You can read more about Lolita and The Olympia Press here.)

In April 1947 Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson that: "I am writing ... a short novel about a man who liked little girls—and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea...." It wasn't Nabokov's first attempt at writing on the subject. "The Enchanter", "A Nursery Tale", "Laughter in the Dark", and the third chapter of "The Gift" outlines what was to come eight years later.

Nabokov and Edmund Wilson wrote to each other extensively. Nabokov wrote to Wilson to ask him what English books he should read to teach a class at Cornell. Wilson recommended Dickens' "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit" and Jane Austen.

Nabokov scoffed. He didn't like female novelists. "Thanks for suggestion concerning my fiction course. I dislike Jane, and am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers.  They are in another class.  Could never see anything in Pride and Prejudice....I shall take Stevension instead of Jane A."

Wilson pressed him. "You are mistaken about Jane Austen. I think you ought to read Mansfield Park....She is, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest English writers (the others being Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Keats, and Dickens)."

Nabokov later wrote back to Wilson, "....I have obtained Mansfield Park and I think I shall use it too in my course.  Thanks for these most useful suggestions." Six months later, he wrote to Wilson again singing a different tune.

"I want to make my mid-term report on the two books you suggested I should discuss with my students. In connection with Mansfield Park I had them read the works mentioned by the characters in the novel - the two first canto of "Lay of the Last Minstrel", Cowper's "The Task, passages from King Henry the Eighth, Crabbe's tale "The Parring Hour", bits of Johnson's The Idler, Browne's address to "A Pipe of Tobacco" (Imitation of Pope), Sterne's Sentimental Journey (the whole "gate-and-no-key" passage comes from there - and the starling) and of course Lovers' Vows in Mrs. Inchblad's inimitable translation (a scream)....I think I had more fun than my class."

But the real reason why I'm currently obsessed with Nabokov, is because re-reading "Lolita" reminded me that it is a work of genius by a man who mastered the English language - and it wasn't even his mother tongue! Reading his Lectures on Literature is just my way of seeking out my newest inspiration-sensei for more wisdom.

And here's a real gem that would alone make me glad that somehow this book is in my library:

“Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.” 

Read more >>

Save Community

One of my favourite Abed "moments" is from the episode where he got the news that his favourite show "Cougar Town" was being moved to midseason.  Poor Abed was devastated and now in the wake of the news that "Community" has met with the same midseason fate, I'm beginning to wonder if it wasn't show creator Dan Harmon's way of telling us what was to come.

It's not my style to get uppity. As a fan of shows like "Better Off Ted" and "Arrested Development" I'm used to networks sacrificing quality shows on the altar of ratings. I know it's a business, but I think it's bad business to axe a show that has dedicated superfans like Community obviously does.

Maybe NBC doesn't understand exactly what they have in their hands or maybe I just don't get why every single human being on the planet doesn't watch Community. So I decided to rewatch Season 1 to see if Community could pass my ultimate test: Can it be watched over and over again?

Yes. Yes, it can.

 The show's pilot opens with students milling about campus. A skinny bald man is making as ass out of himself with a boombox.  He announces over the PA system that he's the dean of a - "loser college" - a boy in a varsity football jacket scanning a bullentin board looks up as if his name's been called - "for remedial teens and 20 something dropouts" - a blond girl looks up angrily as if she's been insulted- "middle aged divorcees" - an older lady holding too tight to her purse is pointed out- "and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity" - the white-haired bespectacled Pierce Hawthorne makes a Fletch face.

Community's pilot episode is one of the cleverest introductions of characters to ever grace the small screen. 1 minute, 18 seconds in and we've met the Dean, Troy, Britta, Shirley, and Pierce.

In the shadows a shorter man MicroMachine's his life story to a taller man. His name's Abed by the way. The other guy's Jeff Winger though he can't be bothered to introduce himself. The taller guy wants an inroad to the hot girl in Spanish class. Abed gives Jeff the jist in rapid fire. Jeff sees his value. Annie shows up later, uninvited.

In a mere episode those individual characters become a "community" and I became a fan. I tried to watch with clinical eyes, but I really Britta'd it up. I got distracted by all my laughing.

For three seasons I have not learned Spanish with the study group of the show Community. Hearing that the show was being moved to midseason I ranted and raved on Twitter. I had just started to realise, in part thanks to Twitter, that behind the show there is a man some call Dan Harmon and he's a fucking genius.

So why shouldn't Community be canceled? I could go on and on about the show's merits; it's cleverness; the brilliant people involved with the show - but would it help? Being a clever show is obviously the kiss of death in a land where people don't see the value of using your thinking cap while watching the boob tube.

Maybe there's no saving Community, but that hasn't stopped me from tweeting and going so far as to create a Twibbon campaign. If it means anything to the cast, crew, and the one they call Dan Harmon - I've decided to support Community.

(Holds up sign that reads Immunity for Community.)

I went for rhyme over clarity.

Read more >>

Honey 2, the Dangers of Insomnia

I ended up taking a nap yesterday, which pretty much threw off my entire day. When I finally headed off to Bedfordshire at 2 am, I couldn't sleep. So I decided to watch Honey 2.

I confess, I love dance movies. I watch them all, good or bad, because at one point I was ready to quit college because I made the cuts to callbacks to potentially dance on Janet Jackson's tour. I didn't make second callbacks, but I was pretty proud of myself. I went on contented to teach hip hop aerobics and giving salsa and tango lessons until I started having my heart problems.

So of course I had to watch Honey 2. I've had my eye on Laurieann Gibson's moves long before she appeared in the first Honey starring Jessica Alba, which is based on her life (like Jennifer Lopez, Gibson was a Fly Girl on In Living Color). I loved her choreography. Now she's worked with Lady Gaga, who isn't a great natural dancer (which is another reason why she's no Madonna to me). But Gibson is a natural dancer. She moved her body about 3 times in all of Honey 2 and you just see it. Her body moves like it was dancing all along and you just couldn't see it.

Now don't get me wrong, the dance moves in Honey 2 were sometimes top notch, but a lot of the moves are pretty standard across the genre of "street dancing". If you remember the scene in Flashdance where Jennifer Beale's character picks up some breakdancing moves then consider that during the 80's, this was a popular thing to do. Madonna stole the idea off the New York streets for her video and it's been a common "scene" in dance films ever since.

My main problem with the film is they chose an actress over a true dancer. I tend to classify dancers into two groups: jumpers and spinners. I'm a good spinner. I can pirouette 5 times without trying for example, but I am not the best jumper. A good friend of mine who trained with Alvin Ailey is an amazing jumper.

Now Kat Graham is sassy and she's a beautiful girl, but other than shaking her ass she really can't dance. She can't jump and she most definitely can't spin. I think it's ridiculous to have a movie where other dancers are doing complicated jumps, spins, and precise movement and all you can do is, to quote Missy Elliot from Honey, "look like you dance back up for Heather Hunter".

As far as dance movies go, Honey 2 sucked. It sucked so bad I went to sleep, woke up, and still felt like I needed to blog about how bad it is.

The only redeeming aspect of this film for me was the one crew that beat out the steps on their bodies & with their feet. I am so out of touch I don't even know what it's called, but here's a video. These boys were fresh. The Asian crew wasn't bad either, so fast forward through all the non-dance parts is my advice.

Okay, so there's a few non-Asian boys too.

If you're an aspiring dancer keep on dancing. If you're the person who makes the decisions for films like Honey 2, please hire an actress who can actually dance or get better dance doubles.

Read more >>

Updates & Steinbeck

Friday morning I moved my laptop from the coffee table to the dining table and heard an odd sound. My computer rebooted and then couldn't boot up the hard drive.

It sounded a bit like a car in the throws of a breakdown. I prayed, caressed the key riddled dash, and told her she could do it. She can't. She didn't. She needs a hard drive transplant. She is not the little computer that could.

It never fails that some sort of disaster strikes me when I'm getting in my groove. When I'm about - to quote  a  song from my youth, "put the needle on the record when the drums beats go like this" - thankfully there's a crap Acer backup computer with a wonky backspace key to help me through this latest shit storm.

I took a deep breath, made some chicken & sausage gumbo (delish!), some peanut butter blossoms with out-of-date Hershey Kisses, and tried not see it as yet another sign that my writing is not meant to be.

Neil Gaiman, a hero of mine - writes everything in longhand, I told myself. I know this because (@)Neil himself confirmed it to me on Twitter.

It was near my birthday. I just bought The Graveyard Book. It was like the greatest birthday present ever that Neil Gaiman (who I appreciate more for his non-comic book stuff, though Sandman was pretty fucking cool), directly shared his process with me. It works for Neil and my image of him sitting in front of a massive blank tome by candlelight like the monks in Eco's "The Name of the Rose" except without the killing and what I'll assume is a lot less Sean Connery (connerie meaning bullshit in French btw).

If you wonder why I blog  - why I often lay my soul bare on the Internet about writing and all the things I manage to do when I'm not trying to write -  well it's because of Neil Gaiman. Discovering his blog basically changed my life. There's a link on the blogroll.

I couldn't get my momentum back Friday or Saturday despite the comfort of a back up computer.

I go through phases. I like notebooks, but until I found my Midori Traveler's Notebook I basically bought every notebook I saw, wrote a few sentences, and the minute I didn't like those sentences I bought and/or started a new notebook. New idea, new notebook used to be my way of thinking. I sort of got around my bad habit by buying myself a notebook I love. If you want to know why, read you can read my rave here.

And that's the thing. I use my notebooks. I collage. I write longhand. I use index cards (à la Nabokov). I use blank sheets of paper; yellow legal pads; post-its galore to draw, write phrases, type phrases with an old manual typewriter. I have a lot of "methods" because I admit I'm falsely obsessed with the Muses, inspiration, blah,blah fuckity blah.

I hate my own conneries and excuses. I hate that I'm unable to discipline myself the way I have in the past to get shit done. 

I am filled with this sort of dread that because writing hasn't come easily to me, as many other things have, that I'm never going to get it done. It's why I'm superstitious (i.e. why I talk to my computer like she's Christine when actually she's not a she at all as HAL is genderless). It's why I struggle. It's why I'm constantly looking for answers to how to write although I know that there are no answers. It's like I don't trust myself, so I need to affirm this with the words of real writers, of which I am sad to say despite advice that if I'm simply writing I am a writer, I do not feel I am.


So here is my affirmation for today. Sundays are generally the days I wake up late and then Coco comes for his English lesson. I try to make a lot of coffee and stay in the swing of things after the lesson is over, but it's tough. I have just asked Monsieur Redacteur if he can't go to Coco's house to give the lesson. He gets it. I'm chomping at the bit.


And maybe it's just a bit of Sean Connery, but sometimes things like this help.


"I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.."

          Dear Writer:

          Although it must be a thousand years ago that I sat in a class in story writing at Stanford, I remember the experience very clearly. I was bright-eyes and bushy-brained and prepared to absorb the secret formula for writing good short stories, even great short stories. This illusion was canceled very quickly. The only way to write a good short story, we were told, is to write a good short story. Only after it is written can it be taken apart to see how it was done. It is a most difficult form, as we were told, and the proof lies in how very few great short stories there are in the world.

          The basic rule given us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from the writer to the reader, and the power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, there were no rules. A story could be about anything and could use any means and any technique at all - so long as it was effective. As a subhead to this rule, it seemed to be necessary for the writer to know what he wanted to say, in short, what he was talking about. As an exercise we were to try reducing the meat of our story to one sentence, for only then could we know it well enough to enlarge it to three- or six- or ten-thousand words.

          So there went the magic formula, the secret ingredient. With no more than that, we were set on the desolate, lonely path of the writer. And we must have turned in some abysmally bad stories. If I had expected to be discovered in a full bloom of excellence, the grades given my efforts quickly disillusioned me. And if I felt unjustly criticized, the judgments of editors for many years afterward upheld my teacher's side, not mine. The low grades on my college stories were echoed in the rejection slips, in the hundreds of rejection slips.

          It seemed unfair. I could read a fine story and could even know how it was done. Why could I not then do it myself? Well, I couldn't, and maybe it's because no two stories dare be alike. Over the years I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

          If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.

          It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

          I remember one last piece of advice given me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic '20s, and I was going out into that world to try and to be a writer.

          I was told, "It's going to take a long time, and you haven't got any money. Maybe it would be better if you could go to Europe."

          "Why?" I asked.

          "Because in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor."

          It wasn't too long afterward that the depression came. Then everyone was poor and it was no shame anymore. And so I will never know whether or not I could have stood it. But surely my teacher was right about one thing. It took a long time - a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never got easier.

          She told me it wouldn't.

    1963

That was written by one of my other heroes, the writer John Steinbeck. 

 


I love this newspaper clipping. "America was proud of its front porch until John Steinbeck showed the backyard".

I still remember when I realised that this cartoon was actually referencing Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men":

I still remember the first time I read "The Pearl". I remember struggling through "Grapes of Wrath", feeling pretty bedraggled by the words that seemed to my 14 year old self heavy and covered with baked earth that hid from me some meaning that I somehow understood of hardship and futility like tilling soil that blows away like the wind and isn't even strong enough to hold on to something by its root.

That lonely desolate path that Steinbeck speaks of isn't that lonely or at least it has never seemed that way to me. I've always sort of seen myself as a would-be hero on a quest. I imagine the end will be something akin to the ending of Michael Ende's "Neverending Story". I will find out like Sebastian I am making a book come to life. Then I'll soar around in my fantasyland on my luck dragon, wave to a tortoise, and see Artax again.

Tickity-tock, goes my cat plate clock. I have five minutes to tell you a little story, about this cat plate. It's a plate with different cats in various poses around the lip that the old Chinese man who owns an odd little shop on the Place de Torcy (Paris 18e, Marx Dormoy) turned into a clock. It is now three minutes to a grey tabby or, as other people might call it, eleven-fifty seven.

This clock was originally intended to be a Christmas gift for someone who turned out to be a real bitch. It sat around the house, it's mechanisms threatening to break, and so I finally put it up over the door for safe keeping. She really was/is a bitch and I now consider the cat clock my compensation for bitchiness inflicted.

I am going to, as we say in French, stop des conneries.

In the words of The Thing, one of Stan Lee's genius characters from the Fantastic Four, "it's clobberin' time!"

Read more >>

George Orwell's Six Rules for Writing in Plain English, 1Q84, & The Elements of Style

I got my copy of Haruki Murakami's English translation of 1Q84 today. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that Amazon made me quite unhappy this morning given the condition of said book. I've already taken steps to get a replacement copy, but in the meantime I've decided I'm going to read as much as I can before the time limit to return it expires (30 days).

Inevitably thoughts turned to George Orwell.  1 Q (which is the way to pronounce the number nine in Japanese) 84 might seem the reason why, but it's actually moreso because E.B. White and William Strunk Jr. cite Orwell in The Elements of Style (II. Elementary Principles of Compostion #12 Use definite, specific, concrete language).

"To show what happens when strong writing is deprived of its vigor, George Orwell once took a passage from the Bible and drained it of its blood..."

Below is Orwell's translation followed by the verse from Ecclesiastes  (likely from the King James' version of the Bible).

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitve activities exhbits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must inevitably be taken into account.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, not yet riches to men of understanding, not yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happenth to them all.

The citation is taken from Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" published in Horizon in April 1946 criticizing contemporary English.

In the essay Orwell advocates the use of Plain English and devised six rules to guide writers, that:

"...cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases"

The rules are:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Now I don't want to stop talking about Orwell, at least not at the moment because let's face it my posts today have been not the most inspirational.

That being said, Monsieur Redacteur and I don't always see eye to eye on the writers we love. I don't like Hemingway much when it's all said and done. I think Joyce is boring. I brought "Ulysses" and "The Sun Also Rises" with me on vacation once and as boring as I found Las Vegas it was still more interesting to me than either of those books.

But we agree on Orwell. We've both read 1984 a couple dozen times. Once I was so inspired having re-read Animal Farm that I didn't realise all the writing I did was Animal Farm with vegetables.

Orwell's essay, "Why I Write" is one of themost inspiring things I've ever read on the reasons why "we" write. The first time I read it, I cried. Only one other piece of this personal nature written by a writer I greatly admire has ever had such an effect on me* heart, mind, body, and soul, but nothing moves me as much as these words Orwell wrote:

"...After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class..."

I'm 30-cough-something and as the clock tick-tick-ticks away there is more external pressure being forced upon me to have as a Rastafarian I met the other day advised me,"four or five babies". I'm not a moron, I sense the changes in my body, but children are a lot of work, and I'd rather write books than have babies. (Insert birthing literature joke here.)

Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

I see what I want to see in Orwell's words above, but I'm also honest. That's why I made sure to cut and paste the bit in it's - uncensored for my own personal comfort zone - entirety. I won't go as far as to point a finger at my motives for wanting to be a writer, but I'll own up to my healthy vanity and my love of all things me, me, me.

I'll even go so far as to tell you a reason of my own.

When I was four I decided that words were the only way for me to make people understand that because I had a magical power to screw up my eyes and look at the world out of focus that I was in great danger. It was a great burden to possess such a frightening power in case I was kidnapped by street pirates (who had boats that looked like cars) who would force me to use my magical power for evil - that I should find a way to explain it to a few people I trusted (my grandparents) in case I ever went missing and as my sidekicks they'd have to understand how to help me turn off my power if such a thing ever happened.

Then one day there was a terrible storm and after the storm cleared and the sun came out there were all these poor earthworms dying in our garden. I tried to use my magical power to save them, but it was no use. All I could think to do was grab a metal bucket, fill it with drier dirt, and airlift the ones still alive and wriggling in the muddy puddles with my fingers. It grossed me out, but I worked as fast as I could. The sun's hot light shined down on a graveyard. I dumped my dirt bucket full of earthworms on a dry patch of grass under the roof of the house and cried my heart out over those I couldn't save.

I scratched into the damp earth squiggles. Lines that looked much like the almost fossilised earthworms themselves, but in my mind I was telling a legend of the great struggle against the sun that oppressed them and of a hero that was sent from the gods to carry them to safety. It was a legend that the earthworms would tell to their children and would never be forgotten.

I still remember this legend though I'm sure the earthworms have forgotten it. It would be another couple of years before I'd learn that earthworms have two hearts but no brains...

I write because deep down I believe it's my magical power (procrastination, television, movies, blogging, and nearly everything else being my Kryptonite).

And if you understand that it's not just my ego that makes me believe that, then maybe writing is your magical power too.

Read more >>

Back to the Basics - Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style"

In September I posted about good reference books for writers. You'd think I would take my own advice, but after editing the first "section" of my manuscript it became obvious I hadn't. I wrote on the biggest Post-It on my person to jog my memory,

Re-read Strunk & White ASAP!

and so this morning as I organised my desk it stared up at me. I made some good coffee (Monsieur Redacteur being a practical man often just drinks instant in lieu of using the French press or cafetière, which takes more time to make) and Monsieur Redacteur fished out a copy of The Elements of Style.

I once had five copies of this book in various editions. I now only own three copies, each a different edition- though quite honestly I wish I hadn't spent so much time nitpicking on which edition was better than which - mostly because there were so many copies for sale on Amazon. For just about anyone the 1999 fourth edition is more than adequate.

That is, if you want to purchase it at all. There are those who think The Elements of Style isn't actually good advice at all. Here are extras on the subject that are worth a look: 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice and a forum where the book's merits or lack thereof are hotly debated on StackExchange.

I get the feeling Monsieur Redacteur isn't a fan of the book either because when I read this bit in The Elements of Style to him he said it was pretty much "useless" to me because I'm writing a "narrative".

II. Elementary Principles of Compostion

17. In summaries, keep to one tense.

In summarizing the action of a drama, the writer should use the present tense.  In summarizing a poem, story, or novel, he should use the present, though he may use the  past if it seems more natural to do so.  If the summary is in the present tense, antecedent action should be expressed by the perfect, if in the past, by the past perfect.

Now I didn't really understood what that meant mostly because the "perfect" doesn't exist in  French. 
I asked Monsieur Redacteur to explain it and he gave me the following chart at the back of some Engish grammar book he uses to teach.

Here are the important bits of the chart:

Present perfect (I have done)
Present perfect and past (I have done and I did)

There is no future tense in English (no conjugation of the verb).  You have to use I will or I'm going to.

Past continuous (I was going)
Past continuous (I was doing) and past simple (I did)
Past perfect (I had done)

Since I sort of understand it and sort of don't, I'll be attending Monsieur Redacteur's Sunday English class. The sole other student will be 9 years old. I'll update to let you know who gets it first. The 9 year old native French-Dutch speaker or me the 30-cough-something native Korean-French speaker.

My money's on the kid.

I just discovered this article on The New York Times website  when I was looking for a picture I remembered of E.B. White's typewriter with The Elements of style. It's definitely worth a read.

Read more >>

Andre Malraux - Statesman, Adventurer, & Author

A few years ago I met a man outside of a bookshop in Paris. His name was Olivier Todd. He wanted to sell some books out of his library. We spoke for about ten minutes and immediately I was fascinated by this impressive monsieur. He was a disciple of Jean-Paul Sartre for starters. He also wrote a few biographies I had long since known were important on Albert Camus and Andre Malraux. It was then because of his knowledge of Camus that I was always tempted to contact him again and ask him for a coffee, but quite honestly I felt my 'from the gut appreciation' of Camus (and my bare bones knowledge of Malraux) wasn't quite up to snuff.

Malraux has a reputation for being skimmed rather than read in France. I have read two of his works: La condition humaine (Man's Fate) and my personal favourite, Antimémoires (Anti-Memoirs).

It's a vastly important book. Malraux was a part of some major events during his lifetime: the Chinese Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the French Resistance during WWII, and then as a minister in France for Charles de Gaulle. This book is the memoir of a man who was wounded and captured during WWII, only to escape to join the French underground movement to be captured and to escape again.

Or is it?

Malraux and his life have since been coined as "Malrucian legend". It was mostly invention. There was no relationship with Mao for example. They met, yes, but Andre made most of it up.

So here's some of the real skinny, courtesy of Monsieur Todd's biography:

He went to Cambodia and basically stole priceless works of art. When he was arrested the "Andres" came out in full force in support of Monsieur Malraux. Andre Maurois, Andre Gide, and even Andre Breton. He was then moved to Vietnam.

He met with Trotsky who claimed that Malraux "is incapable of moral independence; he was born biddable". Malraux abandoned Trotsky for the winning team. The problem is, given that de Gaulle was the last great president of France (in my opinion), it's hard to blame Malraux for hitching his wagon to de Gaulle's 5th Republic.

Considered by some as the French Hemingway, Malraux lived his life in search of fulfilling his love of myths. In La Voie Royale, Malraux wrote that "every adventurer is born a mythomaniac".

Malraux inscribed many of his letters with a cat - perhaps an indication of his many lives, but just before his death he scrawled the words, "it should have been otherwise".

In Antimémoires Malraux wrote something even more fitting that has always stayed with me: "La vérité d’un homme c’est d’abord ce qu’il cache." - The truth of a man is before that which he hides.

Perhaps that is what inspired Monsieur Todd to write his biography on Malraux, but I have always admired the man whether or not ''Ce n'était ni vrai ni faux, c'était vécu.'' - because regardless of whether or not the myth of Andre Malraux stands up to the truth because as he said in his Prix Goncourt winning book La condition humaine, "it was neither true or false, it was experienced".

And if you read Anti-memoirs, you'll see more clearly why I feel a certain love for Malraux. What he hid was a very sad life, but he certainly tried to make the best out of it. And sometimes he did.

Malraux putting together one of his "museums without walls", which is what he considered art books.

Read more >>

This Month's Posts

Found this today on GadgetHovel and thought it was wildly appropriate as I'm dedicating all this month's posts to NaNoWriMo related stuff. I'm tripling the challenge of writing 50,000 words before November 31st with writing a daily blog, and Twitter'ing helpful tips to other "NaNoWriMos" across the globe in 140 characters or less.  You can follow me @LaFemmeFlaneuse on Twitter!

If you missed today's NaNoWriMo inspired post about Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules of Writing Fiction you can read it here.

Keep on writing NaNoWriMos!

I'm going to get back to it myself now.

Read more >>

Writing Advice for Day 2 of NaNoWriMo from Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules of Writing Fiction

1.Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2.Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4.Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5.Start as close to the end as possible.

6.Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7.Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8.Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Bon courage NaNoWriMos and Happy Writing!

Read more >>

You Can Now Follow Me on Twitter!

Click here to follow me on Twitter!

Read more >>

What jack-o-lanterns look like after a rough night of Halloween

Thanks to Jackie for the pic!

Read more >>

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month. Last year I had all these plans to participate, but of course life is what happens when you're making other plans, but this year my other plans were all about getting ready for NaNoWriMo.

Now technically speaking you're not supposed to start early, but planning and notes are allowed, so that's what I've been working on. All my notes, clippings, post-its, random napkin scribblings, and the like are now starting to amass. I keep anything I write on, so eventually I'll take all these "things" and use them. Or I won't and maybe I'll use them somewhere else another time.

Now 50,000 words isn't going to be the length of my novel. I have calculated my novel will be around 65 - 70,000 words. The 50,000 words are supposed to be a rough draft too. Since I've decided to rewrite the 130,000+ words I've already written, I'm basically starting a new novel.

Last week I worked on writing a synopsis. I called myself out by asking friends on Facebook if they would be willing to read my novel. A few of them said send it over. I wanted to send a synopsis first, so I had to write one. It's damn hard work mostly because you're not supposed to write a synopsis until you have a finished book. I wrote a synopsis and now I'm using it as an outline. My friends are impatient.

One month of writing not for quality, but for quantity. Catharsis. Respite from the pursuit. 50,000 words just for fun. A challenge. A deadine.

I can't wait.

Read more >>

The Thoughts Occupying My Mind

Last night I posted the following to my Facebook page:


I have helped to write so many cover letters and online applications now for firms like UBS, GS, BarCap, MS, JP,etc. that I now feel like I could probably get a job as a quant myself. Except for the fact I'd pretty much like most of these places to burn to the ground.

And then I posted this amazing article from the New York Times/International Herald Tribune written by Thomas L. Friedman: http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=860524&single=1&f=28 . I encouraged my friends to read it because while I've been really quiet on the subject I am 100% in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the other "Occupy" movements happening around the world. Quite frankly, I think it's about damn time the people, the real people, the 99% of us who aren't billionaires or near billionaires, get pissed off.

I tend to not talk about politics on my blog. I worry that I am not well-informed enough and that I could possibly spread misinformation, but I wrote the following off the top of my head. It's my view on politics. It's what I would like to see happen. It's what pisses me off. It's what in my opinion has gone wrong and what needs to change.

It's why I'm 100% behind and in support of movements that could affect change.

I believe that:

Lobbying for any interest, think tank, or industry should be made completely illegal and the only way to insure that lobbying does not dictate government is to change the election process entirely.

If all campaigns were paid for by public funds and if each candidate were allotted the same amount of funds, not only would this insure that future politicians wouldn't already be "in debt" to contributors, but it also means that ANY person who met a list of criteria (in sync with the Constitution) could run for public office. This means that the real people with real issues and a real understanding of what concerns the people could actually make decisions for the people they represent - which is the very premise that the American republic (because it's not a democracy) was founded on.

The deregulation of the banking industry is a crime against the American people. Big banks need to be broken up not only to avert catastrophe in times of financial crisis, but because there is an obvious conflict of interest. The greatest con in American history  was getting the government and American taxpayers to bail the banks out when the failure of these institutions was due to greed, negligence, and a complete disregard for what little regulation remained.

Why people are angry now is not only because they have less money, less jobs, and less opportunities to accumulate their own wealth - but they also need to be angry about the fact that the same lobbyists pushing for further deregulation screaming "big government is communism" is the same fucking industry that accepted a bail out and didn't admit that by doing so they were actually accepting a level of government help that is more akin to socialism. Terms like "government interference" are thrown around loosely to confuse those Americans who see the involvement of the government as a bad thing and rightfully so in many cases. With the propaganda used against the American people, it is no wonder that many Americans don't understand the inherent differences between a communist government and a socialist one. Why should they? Reagan pretty much made it his sole purpose during his presidency to make Americans fear communism and socialism as "evil" without bothering to explain they are not the same systems even by the simplest of definitions.

In France the govenrment has a history of bailing out big French companies such as TGV/Alstrom and Air France because letting them fail was worse for the greater good. It meant that tens of thousands of people would lose their jobs and the impact to the French economy and the reputation of French industry was too high a price for the French people to pay in the long run. However regulations were tightened further as a preventive measure and to give people more faith in the government's abilities.

Let's be clear: bailing out the banks was better for the banks. The American people were given no choice but to pay for the mistakes made without their knowledge. Instead of the brunt of the impact being absorbed by the government, the impact was felt in every wallet of every American who doesn't sleep on a mattress stuffed with bills in a massive McMansion that also contains a "Scrooge McDuck" room where they could (if physics didn't mean you would die instantly upon impact) dive into massive piles of gold.

I am sick of seeing the wealth that is built upon the backs of the people. I am sick of seeing people profit from the human need to simply be physically healthy in order to live free of disease and pain.

I am tired of the consumerism and the resulting problem of what happens when you can't actually keep up with the Jones' - and all in a country where a vast majority of the population adheres to a religious principle of "do not covet thy neighbour's goods". Thankfully in America (and other countries thanks to America's biggest export: capitalism) if you can't keep up with the Jones' you can always get a high interest credit card with the actual terms in extremely fine print.

Nevermind that the company might a) be owned by a bank or b) that the cardholder can pay up to $0.40 on the dollar for the priviledge of owing these credit companies money, without accounting for other fees and costs they don't understand but will eventually be held accountable to pay or c) that banks make a tremendous profit from selling these debts on the market.

I am further disgusted by the religious right that won't support universal health care; that judges when they should not lest they be judged; and have essentially turned religion into a for-profit industry while maintaining 501(c)(3) tax exempt charity status that allows groups like the Mormons to throw $40 million at halting gay marriage because it conflicts with their belief system or the billions of dollars spent by the Catholic Church to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

As long as government officials can be bought and paid for by those who have no interest in helping the American people in any way except to continue to profit off of their hard work, pain, and suffering there will be no real change for America.

The rich 2%  will weather this crisis as the rich weathered 1929 and other economic recessions. As the gap widens more and more people will fall into it or, as the bail outs proved, be thrown into it.

Combine economic depression with lobbyists fighting against the people on every possible level from religion to destroying the environment to insuring that health care will be more and more unaffordable for the middle  and lower classes - and the only thing that can and must happen is that every individual who sees the real problems must then communicate their knowledge to another individual until there are enough people to stand up and say NO, WE AREN'T GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE.

I broke my rule about writing openly about politics because I can't be in New York right now standing alongside the protestors in Liberty Park. I want to be. I want to be there because I represent a contingent that the media says isn't present in Liberty Park, but I can assure you is.

My friends aren't hippies. My friends are highly educated with degrees from Wharton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and my alma mater, M.I.T. We represent a generation that was told that by accumulating these degrees we were insuring our future success. Some of our parents took out mortages to pay for our expensive educations. Some of us have hundred of thousands of dollars worth of debt from getting these degrees.

The media wants to pant the protestors with the same brush, but the real beauty of what is happening in Liberty Park is that the real America is there. There are people from each and every walk of life - bankers who quit their jobs to be there because even they can  no longer ignore the obvious stink wafting around their offices; teachers who are fed up with cuts to the education budget who see the disadvantage these cuts inflict upon the young; the people who without them there would be no infrastructure, no order, no basic services.

Regardless of where you come from or what you "have", the same government makes decisions that effect everyone except the 2% who use their wealth to purchase a "have it your way" government that only benefits their profit margins that didn't even translate to profit for Burger King when it was their company jingle because it is not profitable to let people have exactly what they want whether its burgers or banking.

The people need to make those in government accountable to the people again and for the first time in a really long time, I feel like real change is going to happen.

If you are one of the people standing up for the rest of us, I just want to say thank you. While I cannot be in the US right now, I am doing what I can and that means speaking up, staying informed, and offering my support albeit from afar.

The tenacity, resolve, and solidarity that the Occupy movement has displayed across the world has made me want to give more to the world I live in and to stand up for what I believe.

The OWS retweeted a quote I posted the other night: "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything".

Monsieur Redacteur would like to add, "You don't have to know what you're fighting for, when it's clear what you're fighting against", said by George Orwell.

So let's stand up and fight!

Read more >>