Ze Laboratory!

He's so cute! ^___^

I shorted out the stove today. Spilled a little instant-ramen broth on the controls, and zap! That was all she wrote. Lucky thing I figured out how to unplug the whole shebang, or we'd have a smoking crater for a house right now, and then who'd feed the fish? Still, we are left stove-less until Dad fixes things.

I think the next level of fail is to set something on fire. This is why I really should stay out of the kitchen. -_-

On the subject of Winterthing presents (NOOOOOOOOOOooooo....), I think I'll be giving out skibbles or something this year. I about killed myself crocheting something for everyone last year, and I'm pretty sure everyone's sick of yarnthings anyway. ;P I'd do baked goods, but, well, see above re: kitchen fail.

So,  for a while, my grandmother (who is in her mid-80s) has been in and out of the hospital. It started when she fell in her kitchen and scrapped herself up pretty good. Since then she has claimed to have fallen in her apartment several times - each time ending up in the hospital.

It turns out that this was a lie. She had not fallen and she was just using the hospital to get attention from her family.

Okay, a little background. My grandmother has always been a little bit, no, scratch that...a lot manipulative. She has always been the first person to lay a guilt trip on somebody. It wouldn't matter how many times you visited with her or went over to see her, it would never be enough. And while you were visiting, you would be treated to all the gossip about everyone else - even people you didn't know. This talking behind other's back has cost her a friend that she had had for 25 years, but that is another story.

This leads to now, with her being in the hospital. While in the hospital she starts not only playing up the "can't walk" thing (yet refuses a wheelchair) but also starts telling falsehoods of neglect to the nursing staff. This leads to the staff calling in a caseworker from the state. She lied and said that her family never checks on her or visits her.

Grandma is assigned the caseworker and the woman calls all grandma's children (one being my mother). She tells my mother, my aunt and my uncle that grandma needs round the clock care and that they have 24 hours to figure out what to do with her.

Well, my aunt lives in a cramped trailer over 2 hours away, my mother is nursing a broken knee and is in the process of moving and my uncle - well, he has frickin' power of attorney over grandma, which is why he checks on her damn near ever day. But Grandma lied about people visiting her, so therefore the state thinks that the family is neglecting an old woman. This despite the fact that my uncle and my cousin, D, check on her on a daily basis and my other cousin, W, drives her around.

So, due to all her lies, she no longer can go back to her apartment. The apartment where she had a lot of freedom to do what she wanted to do and all the independence to do it.  Now, the state is going to send her right from the hospital to a nursing home. One in which she has to be signed in and signed out and they dictate the schedule.

Well, I hope that she is satisfied with what her lying has given her in the end. I am quite sure that it was not her expected outcome. I can just shake my head at the situation. She didn't want to go to a home when the family asked her before, and now, she will probably end up in the same one where she committed her own mother. Irony, this has it.

So, the moral of the story is: don't lie. See, people will find out and it will come back to bite you (even if it takes a while).  I wish I had sympathy for her, but knowing what a liar she is...it may seem awful of me, but I just don't.

I am sure the family can fight the state on the case of neglect to get her back into her apartment, but you know, she has so many of us burned out and just burned now, that I don't know how many of us give a damn. Hell, maybe in the nursing home she will have whatever she wants now - people who she can talk trash to about other people and the opportunity to bitch to us how she is being treated.  I hate to say it, but I don't recognize this woman any longer and I really don't like who she has become.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/final-reminder-for-bookshops.html

A quick reminder (as I was just asked) that today is the day that the bookshop Graveyard Book party reports have to be in to Harper Collins. By 9 pm PST.

http://files.harpercollins.com/Mktg/HarperChildrens/PDF/GraveyardContest_rules.pdf are the rules and info for those who lost them.

Hi Mr. Gaiman,

I was disappointed today to read you won't be part of the judging for The Graveyard Book contests. My not-wealthy, middle-of-nowhere bookstore just sent in its entry, and something we're concerned about is the fairness of judging.

For example, independent bookstores like Powell's (I'm sure you know) easily have enough money and are in a convenient enough location to ask you to come at one time or another. Against stores like that, who were able to put more money into their parties, we stand little chance.

I don't think that it's a lost cause for us; we were very creative. I'm just nervous to know you won't be judging. Can you tell me whether you think the judges will take things like size and location of bookstores into account? It would make me sleep a little easier until the results are announced.

Tusen takk,
Allison

Well, per the rules, the judging is based on:

(i) Overall creativity of the Party, as demonstrated by the invitations, signage, decorations, activities, entertainment, and refreshments.
(ii) Customer attendance and response (i.e., enthusiasm, costumes, participation).
(iii) Ability to capture and represent the spirit of The Graveyard Book.
...specifically to reward creativity, and not the ability to outspend other shops. (That was also why the party had to actually be at the bookshop, and not at another location.)

I asked my editor, Elise Howard, and she said,

Gosh, yes. Here's what we think is happening. We are looking at all the entries. On Monday, we'll send you the best 11, from which you will choose the Grand Prize Winner. The rest will get the first-prize package. So the short answer is that you ARE helping to choose.

The longer answer is that we will be very fair and will consider creativity, which includes work done with available resources, along with pure execution. (Don't you think? We haven't done anything yet; still waiting for more entries to come in.)

...which means that

a) I was wrong and will be the ultimate judge, from the shortlist. (Damn.)

and

b) everyone's on a level playing field.

Does that help reassure you?

PS -- Widgett's Graveyard Book Dessert competition winners have been announced over at http://www.needcoffee.com/2009/11/06/graveyard-book-dessert-challenge-winners/.

This one had NOTHING to do with me at all. But lor' the winning desserts look tasty...

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/note-to-self-nights-are-for-sleeping.html

Still trying to get back onto a diurnal schedule. (And, I should add, failing.)
And, of course, although I posted it before, it bears repeating that you can watch the film that Steven-Charles Jaffe made of the "Dark and Silly Night" comic Gahan and I did for art spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's Little Lit at the New Yorker site, or here:



And if I'd been here for Hallowe'en I would have posted it here then. Which reminds me, The Graveyard Book party season is over. Over thirty independent bookshops had Graveyard Book parties (The ABA's Bookselling This Week reports on thirteen of the parties -- and the shops -- at http://news.bookweb.org/7149.html.) The very best one of all will get me in their shop doing a signing in December and, looking at these thirteen, I am very glad I am not any kind of a judge for the awards.

My only hope is that the shop that wins will be somewhere warm. But most of the places on the party map will be just as cold by December as my house. (Vague and only climate-based relief that HarperCollins said No to Alaska in the rules mingles with vague and selfish disappointment that they also said No to Hawaii.)

It looks like the CBS Sunday Morning profile on me is going out this Sunday, the 8th, 9:00-10:30 AM, ET. According to this website:

Correspondent Serena Altschul visits author Neil Gaiman -- the tender-hearted master of the macabre -- whose books, including Coraline and The Graveyard Book have topped best-seller lists for 25 years.

.. which left me wanting to go "I am NOT a tender-hearted master of the macabre, I am in fact VERY SCARY INDEED," but I suspect I would convince nobody.

Thrilled to see that Odd and the Frost Giants was listed as one of Amazon.com's Best Books of 2009. While I was in China The Graveyard Book was listed as one of the ALA's teens top ten for 2009 as well, an award voted on by over 11,000 teens. (And I made it onto the list with lots of other good people.)

Also, Fragile Things was awarded the French 2010 Les Grands Prix de l’Imaginaire Award for translated short fiction. My thanks to the judges, but mostly to the translator, who in this case is the incredibly talented Michel Pagel. If I ever look good, do well, sell books or am popular in a foreign country, it's because of the translators, and they never get enough thanks or acclaim. And I think I'll post the cover here, because I never have.

You're welcome. I think this link has everything for sale in the auction: http://shop.ebay.co.uk/scrawldog/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

Finally starting to keep track. Makes us feel accomplished and that in turn keeps us motivated.

Goal: Read as many books as we can (hoping for at least 35) from September '09 -- September '10. Since we have to share time this is an acceptable goal. Hopefully we will shatter this.
Definition of "book": any book/any length, whether fiction or not; does not include textbooks that we have to use (unless that text is read purely for pleasure), but will include books used for book reviews and critiques; re-reads are okay
Books read so far: 11


What We're Currently Reading:

Some Trouble With Cows: Making Sense of Conflict by Beth Roy
Across The Pacific by Akira Iriye
Bound by Donna Jo Napoli

Recommendations always accepted.

Over the past few days, these two items hit me in close succession, overcoming my apathy. Gee, that really sounds deep, doesn't it.

And I'm willing to bet that these two women think their words sound really deep, too.

Exhibit A in today's mini-freak show: Dr. Werner explains why homeotherapy really, no shit really, works.



"So, if you take that formula E=MC squared, you can almost cross out mass. So the formula ends up being, energy equals the speed of light. And that's why the vision system is so important, because we have lots of photoreceptors that receive light doorknob tomato eggplant moon out of cheese error . . ."

Exhibit B: A Christian fundie explains yet again that celebrating Halloween will open you to demons. I'd link you to the original, which was even more astonishing, but apparently Charisma Magazine didn't like all the drive-by pointing and laughing. It's still in Google's cache, though.

I feel lazy, so I'll just quote what I already said in Greg Laden's blog:

One thing that strikes me about this article is how incoherent it really is. It skips from one disconnected thought to the next, sentence by sentence: "But we cannot be ignorant of the devices of the enemy. When we pray, we bind the powers of the strong men that people involved in the occult worship."

Each paragraph doesn't have a single theme or coherent thought; it's more or less arbitrary. Often, the sentences and phrases are practically meaningless: "...the vortexes of hell are releasing new assignments against souls."

It makes me think of the "word salads" that psychotics sometimes produce. I wouldn't be surprised if the author was really a borderline schizophrenic who has never been diagnosed.

Seriously . . . my first impulse is to point and laugh hysterically at what I see here. My second is to feel a little guilty and ashamed, because this may go beyond people simply being stupid into the realm of mental illness. Another reader, responding to my comment, guessed "bipolar going into a maniac phase", which I suppose is even more likely: bipolars are probably more common and less often viewed as crazy in day-to-day contacts than schizophrenics.

How much of the weirdness we see today is really this, and not just stupidity? What do we do about it? Easy enough to laugh at it and mock it. But why does it seem to be so contagious, and how do we stop it from spreading? I dunno . . . It's like more and more people have decided that this sort of random free association is a perfectly fine substitute for actual thinking.


I do like Charisma Magazine's new poll, however.

Do you believe the Holy Spirit manifests Himself in drunken behavior?

Yes.
Sometimes.
Never.
I don't understand.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/author-comes-home-and-displays-many.html

I went to XinjiangProvince in Western China to continue researching my Monkey/China book. This is the photo I took of a scenic building that, I discovered when the men came out to arrest us, turned out to be a police station. If you're in Kashgar do not take pictures of this building. Trust me on this.



... or discussion of the pomegranate crop, counted as politics. It made my journey even stranger than it might have been already.
More photos of China and Singapore in my next post, I hope. In summary: Singapore was wonderful, but the visit was much much too short: we were there for about 50 hours altogether. Once again, the food was amazing and the people delightful.


(Middle photo of the amazing bubble by Miss Holly Gaiman. Who is fundraising.)

( Prompts W-Z, Crossovers, RPF )

( Prompts Q-V )

( Prompt K-P )

( Prompts E-J )

Welcome to Round Nine of Porn Battle! This will run until midnight EST on November 11th. Please remember to post the prompt as the subject title of your post, and if the story exceeds the length of one post, make the second as a reply to the first part. Happy porning!

( Prompts 0-9, Symbols, A-D )

Maybe I am getting to old to be in school or something, but I wish that some people in my psychology class would grow up.

Now granted, this is a 100 level class (and it is a last minute elective for me), but you people are in college now...be adults.

For example: today in class we are talking about emotion, which also includes arousal and goes to the theories on sex and so forth. Some people are giggling behind me while talking to their friend about how men are whores and such.

Maybe I'm a hardass, but I am here to learn something. And the sad thing is that the professor can barely control the flow of conversation around these assholes.

*grrr*

/end ranty rant

besides the brief posts lately.

- As I was walking through the park on my way into school today, something hard dropped on my head. I look up and a squirrel was in the tree. I am surmising that it was a nut shell. I also saw quite a few of those red capped brown finches eating berries off of the bushes. Now that the leaves are falling away they can really get at them.

- Study study study. As always. We are getting toward the end of the term here - have about a month and a half to go and wow, are a lot of things coming due. We have several book critiques to do, so we spend a vast amount of time reading the textbooks (or rather, books that the instructor picks out to read for the critiques. So, long story short - we are spending a lot of time on school.

- Just finished a wonderful text (that was used for one of the above critiques) called War Without Mercy by John Dower. It essentially poses the thesis that the Pacific theater of World War II was a race war. He provides several compelling examples, such as propaganda that depicts the Japanese (from the Western world) as monkeys or subhuman individuals whereas the Anglo-Americans and Europeans (from the Japanese) were depicted as demons or devils. He also makes the case that while the Western world could separate Germans into "good Germans" and "Nazis" there was no differentiating between a "good Jap" and a "bad Jap". This would suggest that whereas Westerners could separate the German culture and people from behavior, they could not do so with the Japanese. Also, while the Nazis committed horrendous atrocities against a select populace, they were never incarcerated in camps in the U.S. even though there were Germans that agitated for the Nazi party present. The Japanese however, were incarcerated even up to the third and fourth generation born in the States even though they were never agitated for either side of the war and many military experts considered the second-born Japanese-Americans more dangerous. This was primarily because in the Western world, a common enemy was the Jews, in fact, the U.S. had many immigration restriction on the Jews as immigrants to the country.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, I suggest you read the book. It was eye-opening and very interesting. I find it fascinating with how many peoples have been depicted as monkeys or gorillas over time - from the Irish, to the Blacks, to the Japanese, all the way up to President Bush - and how that has been deemed as a fine way to portray someone.

- Next reading will be: Some Trouble With Cows - an ethnography of a village riot in Bangladesh (or the former Pakistan colony). I'll let you know how it turns out.

- Still have not heard from financial aid, but hoping to this week. Then decisions will be made.

- Finding some time to watch some movies with the Wers. Finally saw Wolverine and Hellboy. Hellboy was just fun crack, but Wolverine was a little disappointing for those that read the comic. Talk about ret-con! But aside from those changes, the special effects were outstanding and the story good for the changes that they made, but I probably wouldn't watch it again.

- Probably going to be helping our mom and dad move back into their old house over the weekend. The place where they were living has been sold. So that will be fun - haven't seen the parents in a while.

- Reno threw out upper back out a couple days ago. It was incredibly painful - who throws out their upper back at the shoulder-blade level? Anyway, Zack fixed it yesterday. He just snapped whatever it was back in place with a crunch. Go Zack!

- I suppose that I should probably pay attention in class...

Thank y'all so much for all the great prompts!

Now I need to finish putting them in order, then I'll send them over to be posted.

See you soon!

http://girlsdontgame.com/2009/11/03/borderlands-a-sanctuary-for-impatient-diablo-fans/

http://girlsdontgame.com/2009/11/03/pandora-a-sanctuary-for-impatient-diablo-fans/

It had been a while since I had felt like writing here, and then Borderlands came around. Hailed as Diablo 2 meets Fallout 3 and introduced as a success where Hellgate: London so blindly failed, Borderlands was last week’s big news release, and is by far the best game I’ve played in a while.
First [...]

So, I emailed my former professors at OIP&T hoping to get a recommendation towards a brand-new college. The emails were returned as undeliverable. Went to the website to see what's up.

Turns out, the programs I graduated from? Don't exist anymore.

This is not a good sign.

Trick or Treat! Well, the Turks tricked and Soldier treated, but in the end Avalanche came away with the candy haul. They win the trophy this week with 10 points.

This week's prompt is #121 - Bulwer-Lytton

This week, you may write any type of drabble you like, but there is a twist. You must write it in the style of Bulwer-Lytton!

So, throw together your best dramatic flair, your redundancies, your confusing sentences and run-on sentences, you know, the ones that don't make sense in one reading but hit you like a freight train in the middle of the night when you are trying to sleep but can't because of how much caffeine that you had in the early hours before the chiming of the clock at the strike of twelve.

Write us a dark and stormy night at the Seventh Heaven or ShinRa headquarters or the strange little spaces that the Turks call home but don't admit to for all the cockroaches running in the walls like mice on a quest for peanut butter. Or hit us with a battle between foes so vengeful that you wouldn't think their feud would even make it to the battlefield.

Regardless of the scene that you paint, not with oils and acrylics that tend to dry out before you get off your lazy ass to use them, but with the words well crafted like that of a frenzied fan fiction writer that has had too much Mountain Dew, write us a drabble in the manner of Bulwer-Lytton. Give us your worst (and by happenstance, your best) in just 100 words.

And here is a link to those unfamiliar to Bulwer-Lytton: Wikipedia ahoy!

Mod note: for those that like to play on LJ as well, we now have the community there - here is the profile! Basically, all new prompts will be posted here whereas past prompts will be copied and pasted from here to there in the order that they were assigned. Does that even make sense? ><

Ended up being late for my history class today.

Decided to go to the restroom before sitting in class for 45 minutes, did my business and was washing my hands when I took note of a girl that was in the restroom when I arrived and was sort of huddled near a sink in the corner (when I came in, I assumed that she was fixing her make-up).

Between classes the restroom is usually bustling - women coming and going at lightning pace. And yet out of the ten or so women that were in the restroom at the time, I was the only one who looked at this poor girl and noted how unusual her behavior was. I asked her if she was alright to which she shook her head no.

Even after that exchange, the women cleared out of the restroom in quick order leaving only the young lady and myself.

Turns out that she went to blow her nose and acquired a nosebleed, but not just any nosebleed. This one was really gushing and wouldn't stop. She was crying and scared and bleeding all over the restroom. The paper towels that she was using were filling up very quickly, and I was concerned for her.

I got some basic information and told her that I would be right back that I would go get some help. I rushed to the Political Science department which is right across from the restroom and had them call public safety. Then I went back to her side to wait with her so that she wouldn't be afraid. It was all I could do, not having much medical knowledge but I felt good for doing it. Within about 5 minutes, they were there and able to attend to her.

I don't know what happened to this young lady after I left her, but I hope that she is alright. While waiting for public safety I told her that I wouldn't leave her until they got there and she made the mention that I was the only one who stopped to ask if she was okay and that she was very grateful. We chatted about how she had been sick with the swine flu and was just now getting back to classes and she was terrified to miss any more school. And most importantly, she was very scared about the fact that she couldn't get the nosebleed to stop and "what if it won't stop" and the prospect of having to go to the hospital. I admit that I was afraid for her too. I have never seen a nosebleed that bad.

But one thing that she said just caught me (in her words): "people were just walking around me. They wouldn't help me and I didn't know what to do." People could see the blood everywhere and they did nothing and I am ashamed for them.

Yes, I was late to class, but sometimes there are just more important things to attend to - like your fellow human beings. When I apologized to my professor after class, even he said that what I did was the right thing and in no way did I owe him an apology.

I feel a little sick that no one else wanted to take notice, but I am on top of the world for that little difference that I made to someone today.