In Which Deborah Tries to Make Nice with Blogosphere

Deborah knocks loudly on Blogosphere's door, box of chocolates in hand.

Door cracks open. "What do YOU want?"

"Come on, Blogosphere, at least be willing to hear my case. I know it's been awhile, but there were prelims, and then those two conferences I had to give papers at, while teaching all the while and taking a class..."

"You didn't seem to have a problem keeping up with Facebook. Clearly you're better friends with her anyway."

"Well, that's true," Deborah replies, angling to insert her toe into the door to display the chocolates. "I did keep up with Facebook during that time, but that doesn't mean you're not important, Blogosphere. I just got so busy..."

"Clearly. Too busy to spend time with me. And now you want to come crying back to me, asking to be friends again."

"Yes. Yes, I do. I'm saying I'm sorry, dang it, and I brought virtual chocolates."

Door opens a bit wider.

[Was Deborah's attempt successful? Stay tuned or contribute your own continuation of the story in the comments...]

If Speed-Writing Were An Olympic Sport (1)...

ANNOUNCER: And welcome back to Scribe Stadium. And we have two events going on here right now, actually.

We'll get to the fiction-writing battle in a moment, but for the moment, we're heading off to the most dramatic action in the other corner, where we have a...what is that? Over to our floor reporter.

FLOOR REPORTER: Thank you. Yes, over here we have a second year grad student in one of those social sciences/humanities disciplines squaring off against a seasoned professor in the academic paper-writing category. The grad student, of whom huge responsibilities are asked daily, is going against a prolific but tenured professor, whose output has fallen just a trifle in recent years but has the experience of years of efficient prose-production behind him.

It looks to be an epic battle here this evening, as the grad student's "therefores," "nonethelesses" and frequent quoting from the text go up against the professor's facility in citing several dozen theorists and carefully explicating their positions before an eyelash is batted...

I'm excited to see how it all plays out. For now, though, we have to take a break, but don't leave your seat. You'll want to stick around for this one...

100 Books

Ah, the first Facebook meme I came across (thanks, Cindy!) that I thought would be applicable to this blog...if tangentially. :)

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
3) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x
6 The Bible x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare * (made it about 2/3 or more through in high school and college)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger x
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens *
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky * (started it once)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x (not that I liked it)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving x
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins *
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan *
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x (I liked the first third)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x (loved it)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy x
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (used to use chapter 11 as a cure for insomnia)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson x
75 Ulysses - James Joyce * (I'm a glutton for punishment)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro *
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert *
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry *
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (tried to read it once)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x

Have read: 57
Want to read: 12
Unread: 31

Take that, BBC! Hm, I suppose that's what two English degrees will do for you, although I read a surprising amount of them in high school.

Snarky comments on the ones I haven't read welcomed.

22 Immutable Laws of Publishing

Okay, these are amusing, but don't take them seriously--after all, since I've seen publishing from both sides, I know they're only a quarter true, since they're half-true from each side. :)

An "Open Source" Online Limerick Dictionary--Need I Say More?

Okay, I'm totally writing a few of these for part of my NaWriMo word count--what an absolutely wacko-but-in-a-brilliant-way idea! For those of you doing NaNoWriMo (such as you TextFIGHT folks), you might try playing with one or two word-defining limericks to prime the pump when you need, well, pumping up...

Hm, what word between Aa- and Dd- could I play with to disperse the stress of Election Day? I'll have to play with a few while glued to the election news tonight...

Lions, Tigers, and Huntington Library Squirrels, Oh My...

So since I've been out here in California, I've been noticing that the squirrels out here act differently than the creepy ones at Purdue--at least the ones on the grounds of the Huntington Library, Museum, and Botanical Gardens, where I've been given the privilege of reading a select number of rare manuscripts for a few days. Seriously, I've never seen squirrels acting with this much confidence before. These squirrels are awesome.

The thing is, I'm convinced it's their environment. See, the grounds of the Huntington mix together a whole range of different kinds of these amazing environments for these squirrels to play in. They can go hang out in the desert for awhile, then go play in the jungle garden before hopping over to the Australian outback...

I'm pretty sure that, surrounded by all these big, fancy plants with very few other animals around, they've convinced themselves they're really lions, tigers, monkeys, and/or kangaroos in squirrel bodies.

Yup, that's right, folks. I'm feeling a Wizard-of-Oz-like story coming on... ("If the squirrels were king of the forest...")

(I may possibly be a little giddy from spending a day outside in the beautiful weather in gorgeous gardens. Tomorrow, back to the Huntington reading room, which is quite nice, too--all the nicer that the research is going well. Then, way too soon, back to Indiana fall weather and the-semester-as-usual. But I'll go back refreshed by this change of venue and by how much I've learned here. And when I need a spurt of courage, I'll remember the Huntington squirrels.)

Writing life tip of the day: Go to new places from time to time. And watch the squirrels.

Cage Match (Part 5): The Finale

Announcer (whispering): Aaaaaaand we're back in Cage Match Arena, at the fight between the married Depth and Accessibility. Their son Harry Potter has just raised his wand, so let's see what happens next. This is exciting, folks!

Harry Potter: Silencio. [the arena quiets instantly] Yeah, yeah, I know some of you were looking for me to stride in here and take part in some of those action-packed scenes we've all read me perform, but quite frankly, after all that work in the seven books, I'm tired. And I'm worried about you folks, as well as about my parents.

I know, I see you folks over there with Accessibility painted on your chests in successive letters--it's spelled wrong, by the way. I see you rolling your eyes. Don't think I won't use my wand if I don't have to. I also see you group of Depth-ites over there who obviously think I'm a lightweight. Same goes for both sides. My wand is ready, so no funny business.

The thing is, what we need isn't a cage match. What we need is to work together here, understanding the way the world is evolving. Depth and Accessibility have produced some fabulous kids, and we heap scorn on them from both sides. How could a married couple keep a healthy marriage when both them and their children are ostracized from so many different sectors of society?

Accessibility supporters, yes, you could use a bit better attention span and learning a bit more nuance. Try reading some of Literary Mystery's work from time to time, or Book Club Fiction. Or at least the History Channel.

And Depth supporters, please don't roll your eyes quite so much at such activity. It's rude, and it just makes you look bad. Your work could use a bit of narrative spice to it. The fact that something has drawn popular attention doesn't necessarily mean it's bad.

And you, Mom and Dad, stop turning each other into pounded-up tomatoes. You love each other, and it's time to show it. Marriage is all about compromise, remember? How can you love your children properly when you can't appreciate each other's quirks?

[Depth flings open the cage door and rappels down to where he is. Accessibility reluctantly follows.]

Depth: Well, son, you know how much I hate to be maudlin or sentimental in any way, much less as conforming to anything ryanstates or others may have predicted as the outcome for this event days ago, but you're so right. I'm not going to fling my arms around your father and beg his pardon or anything, particularly with these bruises, but if he's contrite, I may go home and let him sleep on the couch instead of the roof for the next few days.

Accessibility: Same goes for me, son. I'd really like to sucker-punch your mom right now to get ratings, but I'm going to hold back and go home with her. I do love her.

Announcer: Well, that's it, folks. Perhaps a bit pat, the Depth folks might say, and with not enough fireworks for the Accessibility folks' tastes, but that's the life of the Hybrid production, which this, it turns out, happened to be. This is Chuck for Cage Matches 'R' Us, bidding you farewell and returning you to your regularly scheduled blog, which is sure to be just as stirring. Thanks for sticking around for these dramatic events, and feel free to throw tomatoes or other fruits at each other or at Deborah in the comments...

Cage Match (Part 4): The Commentary and Commercials

Announcer: As I promised, Harry Potter is about to speak to the crowd here in Cage Match Arena, in this epic showdown between the married couple Depth and Accessibility. But first, I want to cut to a discussion I just had with our match commentators.

Commentator 1: Thank you, Chuck. Well, clearly this is an epic battle here between Depth and Accessibility. They're breaking all the rules.

Commentator 2: Ah, but in many ways they're also following all the rules, Chuck. And that's a problem for supporters of Depth--they'd like to see her fight Accessibility in a less violent venue. Less punches, more discussion.

Commentator 1: Well, at least this doesn't bore us to tears. Look at all that interest! Harry Potter could do anything, though, what with his magic powers and his willingness to act. I'm eager to see what happens next.

Announcer: As you can see, our commentators have sympathies. Thanks, Commentators, for your input. And now, for a word from our sponsors.

[camera cuts to commercial 1, with a scene of a young man sitting on a sofa.]

Commercial 1: Tired of feeling run down? Watching too many Cage Matches? Buy your own cage and spice up your workout life! Fight your enemies or your closest friends and family! Either way, you'll watch the pounds melt away. Buy now for only 12 installments of $59.99.*

[fine print:*Does not include a surcharge of $5000. Cage is not a toy. Manufacturer intends this as an exercise tool, and takes no responsibility for any deaths or injuries that occur during its use.]

[camera cuts to commercial 2, with a couple arguing over the cage match on a sofa]

Commercial 2: Tired of taking sides in these sorts of battles? Like something in-between? Jump over to Hybrid TV, where we have somewhat-nuanced, never dull, discussions of all the children of the combatants.

[camera cuts back to Cage Match Arena, and zooms in on Harry Potter's raised wand...]

[To be continued...]

Come back tomorrow for the startling conclusion to our cage match adventure... (Oh, and feel free to let me know in the comments if you're interested in the product mentioned in Commercial 1.)

Cage Match (Part 3): The Crisis

Announcer: And welcome back, once again, to Cage Match Arena, where we're hosting a cage match between a couple married for a hundred years--champion Accessibility and challenger Depth. Their children standing on the sidelines have gotten into the fight a bit as well--Journalism is right now down there, it looks like, fighting to defend the honor of his sister Book Club Fiction, who was just slammed with a tomato by an Accessibility supporter.

Up in the cage, things have taken a bit of a turn. Depth was ahead early, then Accessibility, but right now it looks like both of them are exhausted, leaning back on the opposite sides of the cage and glaring at each other.

In order to understand this glare, let's bring you to the crisis that led this couple from wedded bliss to this point. It seems that it happened when one of their youngest children, Reality TV, was five years old. There was a note home from his kindergarten from his teacher saying that he had tried to have one of his classmates voted out of school.

When Accessibility came home from work, he and Depth got into it. Accessibility thought that the behavior was delightfully amusing, and praised his son for his creativity. Depth, however, thought the child needed a stern punishment. She's reported to have yelled, "He's just like his father! Shallow and ignorant!"

Tragic, folks, when marriages go bad, but then, I wouldn't have missed this fight for the world.

Look, the challengers are going at it again! Accessibility just got in the first blow, a particularly good one...

Cameraman: But look! Down in the audience! It looks like one of their younger but widely respected children, Harry Potter, is breaking through the crowd, ready to make a speech. Is he trying to stop the event?

Announcer: Shut up, Jake. You're not supposed to talk. Yes, it does look like Potter is getting ready to say a word. We will bring you all of it, we promise, but first, we must bring you a word from our sponsor (and break for tonight's final presidential debates)....

[To be continued...]

Cage Match (Part 2): The Progeny

Announcer: So welcome back to Cage Match Arena, where challenger Depth is taking on champion Accessibility for the title. They've been, so far, going punch for punch, which doesn't surprise us here at all. See something we didn't tell you yesterday is that these two combatants know each other extremely well, as they've been married for the last hundred years or so.

[cut to wedding shot of Accessibility and Depth stuffing cake into each other's mouths, then another of them standing on a beach, with Depth on Accessibility's back]

Yes, that's right, these two fell in love sometime during the Romantic period in England, and they've been together ever since. Sometimes, like tonight, their relationship has approximated the War of the Roses, but over the years they've also had many many children, some of which resemble their dad, some their mom, but many of which look like both. Some have migrated to other countries, but they're all here tonight.

[pans to faces on the sideline]

In case you've forgetten who they are, a sampling of names should be enough:

• Journalism
  
• Creative non-fiction
  
• Book club fiction
• Literary mysteries
• Complex hour-long TV dramas
• Biographies
• The History Channel

These children, many of whom are quite successful, are standing on the sideline, eagerly watching and wondering what the outcome will be for their much-loved parents. It's quite brave of them to stand there, as the crowd is getting near riotous with their support of either Depth or Accessibility, meaning that these hybrids are getting occasional boxes of popcorn dropped on them.

It looks like Journalism is particularly taking a beating down there, though he's throwing that piece of fruit right back at them... Oh! Up above, it looks like Accessibility just took quite the blow from Depth. She knows just where to hit him, it seems!

Ah, tensions are high here: no telling what's going to happen next. Unfortunately, we need to break now for a word from our sponsors. Don't go away--we'll be back soon to continue this saga.

[To be continued...]

Readers, please inscribe chants you think are going on in the audience, from either or both sides, within the comment area.

A Cage Match: Depth vs. Accessibility

As the lights go up on the arena, the audience roars...

Announcer: Yes, folks, today, on this beautiful Columbus Day (Canadian Thanksgiving for you Canucks), we have for you a rare event. Previously this would have been handled by way of a Socratic dialogue, but we must roll with the times, so here it is, the showdown between our reigning champion, Accessibility, and his challenger, Depth. Now, if you've been around, you know that this format favors Accessibility over Depth, but it looks like Depth has been training up by lifting heavy tomes of French philosophers. She looks remarkably buff. I'm anxious to see what happens.

Depth and Accessibility face each other in the cage.

Depth: You ready to throw down, punk? Those long nuanced sentences may not be concise, but they've built up my strength.

Accessibility: Your long sentences are worth crap. A short punch is the most powerful.

Depth: We'll see about that: you err in thinking that my deep thinking has stopped me from Karate Kid-esque training while teaching deeper substance at the same time (and using many colons and semicolons). Furthermore, I have an attention span that can grind yours into the ground.

Accessibility: You going to stand there and argue, or fight? That's what people came here to see. Let's rumble!

Depth: Don't think I can't be passionate, nuanced, and right at the same time. Bring it on, dude. Bring it on.

They pitch into each other.

[To be continued...]

Any takers for the chances of either side?

In Honor of T. S. Eliot's B-Day...

I'd like to propose an interactive post here.

I'm going to loosely connect a few previously disconnected lines of Eliot poetry, and then I'm hoping a few of you will either add any Eliot lines you know of in the comments, or make up your own similar lines to add to the general poeticness?

Oh, and if anyone can identify each line quoted with the Eliot poem with which it originally belonged, you get bonus points. No prize, mind you, but bonus points anyway.

Please? It'll be fun...

Here goes (Happy birthday, Mr. Eliot, and sorry about the alterations I'm about to make to your poetry, especially since I'm not paying much attention to line breaks or exact wording):

Let us go then, you and I
In April, the cruellest month
When the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And watch the evening spread across the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
Or perhaps be engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of our names
Or the lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender
While the women come and go, speaking of Michelangelo

(and of Mr. Eliot's birthday).