fine whine

To say that I was discouraged today about my so-called novel would be an understatement. To say that "I am not going to pretend that I’m not doing so well with my novel." as I did Monday is a bad double negative, and in fact an incorrect statement. I'd meant to say that I wasn't going to pretend that I wasn't doing badly with my novel, which in fact I was. Doing badly with my novel, that is.

I am, of course writing this several days from the date that is above this. I left this as a draft and returned to it only after having given up on said novel, attempting to write another (which I also abandoned) and having written two other entries about such (this and this).

This whole lack of motivation/bad novel thing did not make me happy. As such, in Monday's entry I pretty much trashed Bruce Sterling's Zenith angle, and he dropped by my site within hours to leave me words of encouragement.

Seeing his name in my email (I get a copy of every comment before you ever get to read them), I was totally deflated. Here was a guy whose book I'd said was "very, very bad" and he had seen it. In retrospect the book's not very, very bad, but it's not great. I wrote the words in question mere minutes after putting down the book, the last chapter of which I'd sped through due to annoyance and a nasty headache.

For what it is, and that is a fictionalized look at events parallel to the paradigm shift (sorry, just had to use that phrase) up to and after the 9-11 attacks from the perspective of a practicing geek, the book works. It probably feels more dated now that some of the principal political players have been re-cast as evil, and all the more so since there hasn't been any more major terrorist happenings in the intervening years. At least, not on American soil, where it matters.

So Bruce, thanks for stopping by and for the kind words. I didn't hate your book, and I will in fact pick up others from the library.

Also, in the intervening time, another author dropped by and weighed in on the issue. He's Pauly D, author of Consumer Joe (soon to be made into a feature-length blockbuster film, or perhaps just a TV show) and he's stopped by here before. Nice to see you again, Paul! Now I feel bad for aggregating his blog and never visiting it to leave comments.

Shockingly enough these two aren't even the only published authors to have visited my little corner of the web lately. Lee Goldberg stopped by and commented on my entry about his book Unsold TV pilots. At least I didn't insult him too.

Incidently, I'd deleted that comment accidently, but was able to recreate it from my emails. Sorry about that, Lee. Stop by again some time, okay?

We had a big meeting today at work, consuming almost my whole day. The idea of it was to get all of the teams together to do team-building exercises as well as to have, on paper and projected on the wall, very generalized overviews of processes that are not yet set in stone. Good stuff, that. Cynicism aside, I had in fact been looking forward to this meeting, in a way. After all, once it was over we were supposed to be all chummy with our teammates (some new, some I hadn't even met) and clear on what everybody's responsibilities were now, in light of the recent firings (eliminations, departures, whatever) and the results of our long efficiency project.

Well, it was a nice idea anyway. We did cover a little bit of that material, but unfortunately my department is the one that always gets exceptions made for it, and it looks like now will be no different. So much of it is still up in the air, also, but at least I got a heads up on the next batch of abbreviations and lists that will matter to the higher ups (we've got the 3 Cs, the 9 Ps, 10 of something else, and so on) that won't change much of my job at all.

Interspersed with the thankfully short presentations (I'll give them credit for that -- the organizers knew how to mix things up to not bore us too much with any given thing at once) were a number of activities that were meant to bring us closer together as a team and teach us things at the same time. The first activity was one of the cheesiest, and an exercise in frustration for me as I suggested immediately a solution to save us at least one step that we ended up doing anyway. I think my mistake was telling one or two people, not barking it out as an order to all fifteen of us.

The activity was thus: We were given a tennis ball for the whole group and we were to stand in a circle. Somebody would start the ball by throwing it to somebody else, calling out that person's name. We needed to do this for everybody in under thirty seconds. I reasoned, as soon as we stood up and before we started tossing, that we should just each pass it to the person next to us, but instead we threw it back and forth like all the other teams. The people in charge then said we needed to cut our time to ten seconds, and suddenly somebody else had the idea to pass it my way. So it goes. Then things got to be absurd, as we all took turns touching the ball without even passing it and ultimately huddled around it and shouted each others' names simultaneously. By that time the whole thing was an exercise in stop watch button pressing, and I think we came in second place. Not that it matters. I returned to my desk annoyed at myself for being annoyed that my initial idea was ignored.

The second exercise was odd, if not almost stupid. We were to line up on either side of a length of PVC pipe and, having raised it into the air with two fingers of each hand, lower it to the ground. Think about that one for a minute. Then, ponder the fact that they didn't account for larger or smaller teams, giving the group of five the same length pipe as my group of fifteen. Oops. So we did manage to do it, but not before wasting at least five minutes trying to get it to a good starting position for the short people. "Lowering" it is an exercise in, well, something, since the physical act of holding it up opposes the idea of lowering it. In the end I and the guy on the other end wound up barking out orders to the people in the middle who were not as low as the others at any given time, which worked fine but taught us little about teamwork. It was a trivial exercise, that, since the pipes bent at the person who needed to drop. Oddly enough it took a person on the end to figure that out. You can make of that what you will.

The third activity was the one that haunts me to this day. We were given a regulation sized bag of marshmallows and another of spaghetti noodles and the task of combining them, and only them, into the tallest possible structure. Never, ever, ever try this with fifteen people. This is a three person task, six at best. As it was we had too many people and not enough to do. I managed to not be named team captain, as the others nearly unanimously picked the bigger, louder guy. Only two people wanted me, with my engineering background or whatever, and they were the quiet ones. As such I got to be chief builder and stay on task the whole time instead of moving around between all the other teammates and ask if they needed any help or whatever else our captain did. I think that some of the others knew they were redundant so they tried to innovate with the materials, and soon we began receiving pre-built noodle/marshmallow pieces with only half a marshmallow. Never, ever, ever split your marshmallows. It's not worth conserving marshmallows if you lose stability, which is precisely what happened to our structure. We ended up shoring up two of the sides with outriggers (well built ones, I must say) and achieved a mere 39 total inches which was the tallest, but still a defeat for us.

We took the wrong approach, I think. Instead of sitting down and designing first we tore into the bags and started spearing marshmallows. I am as guilty in this as anybody else. We also did not use the spaghetti as best we could. I know now that we should have split the majority of the pieces down to 70% of their length so as to be able to use full-length noodles for crossbars diagonally and the shorter pieces for square edges on all sides. As such we could probably have even gone a step further and built cubes that could be independently stacked, since any given one should be pretty darn stable.

I fear I am going to need to stop myself from buying a bag of marshmallows and another of spaghetti just to try for myself. Just to know. I just need to know...

Other highlights of the day were some new verbs that I'd never heard before, at least not outside of the usual noun usage: to "bucket" and also to "hindsight". "Hindsighting" is pretty obvious if not just wrong. "Bucketing" is a practice most people would consider "Lumping" or perhaps even "Pigeonholing", both of which are good verbed nouns but already established ones, darn it. People, stop verbing nouns!

On a related note, one reason I didn't find myself liking The zenith angle was Bruce Sterling's constant reference to "melting smokestacks" or something like that. I am utterly unfamiliar with that metaphor, and haven't yet found a suitable explanation of it. Did he make it up, or am I just missing out on some jargon? I was, after all, the last person to find out about "going forward" so this could well just be a gap in my knowledgebase.

Well, I am not going to pretend that I'm not doing so well with my novel. I need to write over 45,000 words in the next week.

On the upside, I just read Bruce Sterling's The zenith angle and it was really, really bad. Not as bad as what I am writing, but Bruce is a pro. In a way it was a little inspiring.

Tonight I made the mistake of getting Northfork for us to watch. Big mistake.

If I had paid to watch this, I think I would have demanded my money back plus interest. I'd reserved this from the library because I had an interest in it, at least the movie that I thought it would be. The trailer (which preceded Greenfingers and Focus on DVD, if I recall correctly) seemed to me to be a sardonic look at a 1950s small town (very small) that was being relocated due its positioning right in the middle of what was to be a new reservoir, and the story of the men who were faced with such a task. James Woods among them, even. That movie I wanted to watch. Instead I got this high-concept thing with an ugly Daryl Hannah and Anthony Edwards as a four (or more) eyed freak with wooden hands about chasing the so-called unknown angel, and the mischevious little boy who may just be a cherub in disguise. There's much, much more to it than that but none of it matters, let alone makes sense, and I think what the Polish brothers meant to instill a sense of wonder creates bewilderment instead. Bewilderment, followed by frustration if not dementia.

Avoid this movie. I cannot think of another Daryl Hannah movie that I have watched (save for Blade Runner) let alone one that I liked, but if this is how she is to be remembered her prospects are dim indeed. Nick Nolte pops up, too, and frankly he hasn't done too much that bowled me over either. Yet these two names are likely selling points. Go figure. Avoid this movie!

Today I had a thought, whilst watching the cat yawn. When she does so she bares her teeth (inadvertantly, likely) and I was stuck with the thought that such was a good adaptation, to turn a moment of increased vulnerability into basically a show of strength.

Jessica then pointed out that I'd pointed that very idea out before, though I could not remember such a thing. Thus I am putting it here, for posterity (certainly not to entertain anybody).

Today's bit of trivia is also courtesy of the Page-a-day Fact or Crap desk calendar. It seemed appropriate for today (though it is in fact from August 7th), since I was able to sleep in until after noon, and I while I snoozed this morning I had some odd dreams myself: "Reptiles do not dream." Once again, this is a fact (not crap) and they continue:

Although all reptiles, birds, and mammals sleep, they do not all dream. It is believed that some birds dream for just seconds at a time, while some mammals, such as chimpanzees, can dream for several minutes, the way humans do. Reptiles may have rapid eye movements during sleep, but scientific studies prove that these movements are not accompanied by brain waves that allow them to dream.

What a life that must be, to not dream.

I tried watching City of lost children (by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro) recently but wasn't able to give it the concentration and attention it deserved (or rather demanded). I'll try it again once I've lifted my half-hearted library embargo once this month ends or I finish my novel. I've got quite a stack of movies and books and music even to enjoy once I turn off my vacation hold.