WittyLibrarian and the Book With the Blue Cover

Just Got A Title Idea For a Story

2012-02-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

It's set in my superheroes universe. I just now have to write a story that'll fit the title... ;-)

Lemme get some of it typed before I tell all seven of you what it is.

What Does 2012 Have In Store For Me?

2012-01-22T15:05:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy month regarding job-hunting for a librarian opening. Brevard County interviewed me - twice, which is the really good news - and I did a phone interview with Rasmussen College. Still and all, it would be nice to finally get a job lined up, get my finances stabilized, my life back on track...

With regards to writing, my mood and interests are distracted at the moment. I feel the need to write but not the urgency. Tis the pity.

I'll update here as best I can. Happy 2012 to everyone!

Best Reads of 2011 AKA Witty's Reviews

2011-12-20T16:05:00.001-05:00

Due to the continuing unemployment, I haven't indulged in a lot of reading or purchasing of book titles. It's a good thing the public library is nearby (hi, Centennial Park crew!) and I was able to snag a few titles of fiction, non-fiction, graphic-novel, and whatnot for review today:

BEST FICTION BOOK

Hurricane Punch, by Tim Dorsey.
As mentioned before, it's not what's new I'm reviewing but something I've read this year. And this year, during a nice phase where certain ebooks were for sale, I added Dorsey's eighth Serge A. Storms novel to my Nook Color.
I've might have mentioned the Serge series previously: it's about a ~~seriously deranged~~ enthusiastic promoter of Floridian tourism - Serge, natch - who travels about the Sunshine State obsessing over some new trivial matter about the state, leaving chaos, bodies, and sexually satisfied women in his wake. Hurricane Punch is an interesting insert into the series, where Serge is facing certain realities: he's hitting middle-age, he's getting to that point in his "career" where serial killers start making mistakes, and he's facing competition in the form of a mysterious new psychopath calling himself "Eye Of The Storm" and mimicking Serge's killing style. Equally distracting is that Florida is facing another hurricane season and Serge is desperate to track every single one...
While morbid black comedy isn't everyone's cup of coffee, the Serge series is still entertaining at least to this long-time Florida resident for the sheer level of trivial details that Dorsey throws into the stories. The local culture of hurricane response, the fact that Tampa Bay still has two strong newspapers when most media markets are down to one, stopovers at key locations such as Yeehaw Junction... Tasty tidbits in the larger story.
Naturally a lot of the novel leaves a lot to coincidence and contrived wrap-ups, but in terms of humorous thrillers I recommend this book and the series as a whole.

BEST NON-FICTION BOOK

All apologies, but failed to read one that I feel good about recommending. Read mostly technical, computer science titles for skills refreshing.

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL

Brief Lives (Sandman), by Neil Gaiman and Jill Thompson
The bad news this year was that a bookstore chain, Borders/Waldenbooks, went out of business. The good news, it meant fire sales where graphic novels got to be 50 percent to 60 percent off. What that meant: I got around to beefing up my Sandman graphic novel collection.
Brief Lives is perhaps the crux of Gaiman's entire arc covering the decline and fall of the Endless Aspect of Dream. What happens here is that Dream's youngest sister Delirium - an unstable aspect of life - suddenly gets in her head the idea of finding "their lost brother", an Aspect that abandoned his duties, and she petitions all of her siblings until she guilt-trips a distracted and unamused Dream into helping her find Destruction. And then Dream has to say to his aide, "What could possibly go wrong?"
This particular volume has a lot to say about Life Itself: how we perceive it, how it flies by, how we define it... and sad of all, how brief life can really be. As Destruction, once found, points out during his evening confrontation with Dream and Delirium, even the stars in the night sky do not last and will flicker and end. Even the Gods and Immortals we meet during Delirium's quest must face an end of their travels. Or, as Death tells one character during the story "Everyone gets a lifetime's worth."
It also has one of my favorite story endings ever, both apt and bittersweet.
I've been a huge Gaiman fan since this series came out, and I seriously feel this is required reading for anyone getting into it now.

BEST NOVEL BY SOMEONE I KNOW VIA THE INTERNET

Haven't read any of the recent Stefan Petrucha stuff or Sheryl Nantus', although Sheryl is coming out with a sequel to Blaze of Glory titled Heroes Without Monsters Within next month...

UNAVOIDABLE BOOK FRANCHISE OF DOOM

Anyone else notice how James Patterson is putting his name on a lot of books that seem to be written by other people? Yeah, Tom Clancy kinda does the same thing. But Patterson puts his mug on television ads shilling the works...

Hopefully by next year I'll have a job and a restock of my reading collection. Til then...

New Logo for Witty Librarian at Cafe Press

2011-12-08T16:03:00.001-05:00

Having received some concerns about the legibility of the text on my original design for the Witty Librarian store, I looked into creating a larger logo with slightly bigger text:

How does this look to you? Please comment.

One Problem With Being a Librarian During The Winter Festivities

2011-12-08T15:52:00.001-05:00

...is that when I offer people a wonderful "Io Saturnalia!" almost none of them get what it is I'm saying.

Sigh.

Okay, here's the Wiki entry on Saturnalia:

...A number of scholars view this festival as the origin of later Christmas celebrations, or at least as contributing to them. Others point out that the Christian feast of Christmas on December 25 does not coincide with the date range of the Saturnalia, and that Christmas in any regard has not always been celebrated on December 25. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that church's view on the matter by saying that while midwinter pagan feasts such as Saturnalia may have helped influence the eventual choice to fix the date of Christmas, this does not mean that Christian Christmas traditions find their origin or inspiration there: "though the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too."

Just remember these three things:
1) Say "Io Saturnalia" a lot;
2) Find out which Roman Pagans are still around to answer back;
3) Celebrate.

To The Seven People Who Read This Blog: Cafe Press For the Holidays!

2011-12-05T21:34:00.001-05:00

If anyone's got moneys to spare, and any friends or relatives who work as librarians, I do have that Cafe Press store of Witty Librarian gear.

I just added some Christmas ornaments, a vanity plate for cars, a few more shirts and sweaters, and ereader (Kindle and Nook) sleeve covers! If you are looking for any fun merch for Festivus/Saturnalia/Christmas please check it out!

Why I Failed NaNoWriMo This Year

2011-11-30T12:47:00.001-05:00

Well...

1) Personal issues such as the loss of my poor Silly Kitty Page, whose cancer got bad enough to take her to the vet for one last visit...

2) Problems with my story's narrative, even with trying to correct some of the character introductions and opening action scenes. Things felt heavy-handed or operating on poor assumptions.

3) Chronic Depressive Mood and growing stress from job-hunting as I close in on my third year of full unemployment... :(

All apologies. I am thinking of getting some short stories or novella-type work done in the coming days.

One Week In On NaNoWriMo 2011

2011-11-06T20:08:00.004-05:00

...and I am above 11,000 words.

It's a story idea I've considered before, which had some big flaws about halfway into it, about a university librarian and his crazy student workers who have various "spooky" adventures involving ghosts girls, clones, aliens, and whatnot (various plot ideas from back when I was a huge X-Phile).

I've rebooted the start to be more action-packed, and looking to streamline some of the character introductions.

Wish me luck.

NaNoWriMo 2011

2011-10-31T23:21:00.000-04:00

Yes, I will be doing NaNoWriMo this year.

Yes, you can track my efforts here.

~~Yes, I will get this damn novel finished for once.~~ We'll see how it goes.

A Gift To The Seven People Who Read This Blog

2011-10-11T19:34:00.000-04:00

A FREE download of The Hero Cleanup Protocol!

1) Visit the Smashwords' website for the estory.
2) Select Add To Cart button.
3) Use the Coupon Code JJ47F. It should drop the price of the estory to FREE.
4) Follow the download instructions for the version of ereader you have. There are separate versions for Kindle, ePub (covering Nook, iApple and other readers), and more.
5) Install the story file to your reader and enjoy!

If you can, please give the estory a review (and be gentle!). Thanks!

EDIT: The code is good until November 1st.

Sticking To Deadlines

2011-09-16T23:28:00.000-04:00

As far as the writing plans for the Labor Day Weekend panned out... not so well. In short, I'm scrapping what I did write (which wasn't much). And focusing on getting a few other projects prepped for later.

Writers Block. I hate it. I have it.

There was a time when I spent a lot of it (time, that is) writing. Mostly fanfiction, back in the Nineties during my love affair with the television show The X-Files. Gossamer has an archive of most of what I wrote in terms of fanfic. For normal writing, regular fiction writing, I was focused on short stories mostly for writing contests. Eventually I coalesced the more coherent shorts into a smallish anthology Last of the Grapefruit Wars, which I published in 2003 through a Print-on-Demand service Xlibris.

And since then?

Most of my ambitious projects - actual novel writings, additional short story attempts for contests - don't go very far or very well. I've tried the 3-Day Novel contests for years to no avail... I've joined the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and while the last two years I've "won" the months by hitting the 50,000 word counts I've yet to complete either novel into an acceptable conclusion. This year was practically a miracle seeing me get some stories - Welcome to Florida and The Hero Cleanup Protocol - self-published...

I could explain it away if I was distracted by work or by family. But I've been unemployed full-time the last two years (going on three), and my family is mostly off doing their things while I'm struggling with mine (and family have never really been major motivators in my writing projects, to be honest).

The unemployment issue is what worries me most: when I was working, I was stimulated with library work - research, above all - and that stimulation helped with getting some works off the word processor. Now, stressing out over each submitted resume and cover letter seems to dull my interest in getting writing work done. Even suggestions that I go into freelancing work (for websites like Guru or Examiner.com for example) somehow don't appeal to me even though there's a huge part of me that does. It's even part of the reason why I don't blog as much as I should: if I kept more active, I'd think I'd get more traffic here.

As for future projects... there's obviously NaNo in November. I've been given a heads-up about a 24-Hour Comics contest, hosted this year on Saturday October 1. I am/will be tempted to join in that.

Wish me luck.

And The Winner Is... PIE!

2011-09-02T14:51:00.000-04:00

Wait.
Damn you Carl Sagan and your obsession with pies!!!
Actually, the early vote results are for the "unemployed insomniac" plotline. That means my primary writing objective today shall be a story I titled Midnight Blues. I consider it an attempt to create a new subgenre: the Recession Noir. Hopefully I can get a chapter or two done today... off to work. Happy Labor Day to all of you who voted! And to those who didn't vote... the pie was crumbly.

Polling the Seven Readers About What I Should Write Next

2011-08-31T16:05:00.000-04:00

What the hell, let's make this democratic. I inserted a poll to this blog (to the right of your screen). Hopefully the text is legible and you can select an option as you prefer. While the deadline is set for a week, I'd like to get some results in before Friday, so I can get a good idea which idea is good for you. ;-)

It's all up to you people. And don't worry: I'll make sure that regardless of the plot line, I will include an action sequence involving exploding penguins.

...what?

In Lieu of the 3-Day Novel

2011-08-29T14:17:00.000-04:00

Normally, this is the week I'd get ready for the 3-Day Novel Contest.

But not this year.

For one thing, you have to pay for it. Ouch.

Second, I've found that having it Labor Day weekend makes some sort of sense... except that it's usually the same weekend as the start of college football. And my devotions to USF, UF (and my family's devotions to the same as well as Mom's War Eagle roots) seem to take a full day out of my attempts to write. This year, for example, I may have to babysit my nephews while my twin brother and his wife head up to Gainesville for the UF home opener, and while Mom & Dad are off at Selmon's for the Auburn watch party.

Third, that despite all my efforts and planning and outlining... well, what I come up with tends not to be well-written, well-organized... and nearly everything I've pounded out basically are works I've never re-visited.

So this year, I'm swearing off the 3-Day.

Instead, I'm doing the 4-Day Whatever-The-Hell-I-Write Self-Imposition.

The plan is to write something on each day of the weekend - Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday - that do not necessarily have to be novels. I do, after all, have an interest in writing short stories, and I think my short story efforts can be done within a day.

Given the epublishing limits or lack thereof - that I can basically write a short story however long I want, well into novella size if need be - I could well get at least ONE thing done over this weekend that's publish-worthy.

Some of the ideas up for work are a story idea I've had for awhile about a wacky road trip to Vegas (the trickiest part is writing the whole thing in present tense, which is harder than you think); a humor story about teens planning a Skip Day; another story in my superhero 'verse; an unemployed insomniac getting wrapped up in an unusual criminal conspiracy; and perhaps revisiting an old story in my files that needs a rewrite.

So there goes, here goes, it will go, it may have went. Shush, I'm working on tenses...

Self-Publishing, Self-Marketing

2011-08-17T10:25:00.000-04:00

If any of you seven readers of this blog get into self-publishing, you need to recognize that the real key to success is marketing.

Sure, a good story goes a long way, but if people don't even know that story exists and is available for download to anyone's ereader... well, it just sits there.

When I mention to people on the various online chats I visit that I self-publish stories, more often than not they will ask me "What's it like to go that route? How hard is it to get self-published?"

I always reply that the publishing part is easy. Just find a good self-publish site online - say, Smashwords - and follow their instructions to create an account, then follow the instructions to upload and prepare your story for publication format.

Formatting sounds difficult, but it's not. As long as you know Page Setup / Format Paragraph options for your word processor (more than likely Microsoft Word, or if you're cheap Wordpad which comes with the Windows OS) you can format:

Auto-Indent of first line (usually half-inch or .5).
1.5 or double-space line spacing.
Default font and Default size (usually 11 pt - 12 pt to begin with). If you want to make sure, set your font to Times New Roman, which is standard font.
(Optional: 6pt spacing after each paragraph to create legibility between paragraphs)

The other thing to know is that you're publishing to a format - usually ePub - that shares traits with HTML. That means:

No fancy fonts that HTML doesn't recognize (that's why I said Times New Roman earlier. You can use Arial as your sans serif font. Really don't mess with any other).
No text symbols (umlauts, tildes, that Scandinavian o with a slash through it, stuff like that) that would get eaten by HTML.
You can use Bold and Italic for highlighting of text, as HTML/ePub recognizes that.
You can create links within your story itself: especially links to personal websites to promote author information and direct traffic to other works for sale.

This is all standard desktop-publishing techniques/tricks. The basic rule: keep it simple, but also readable. (This is why asking friends with the right skill sets to edit your work before publishing is a really really good idea)

That all is easy for me.

The problem I have is marketing. Getting the word out. Advertising. There's a level of aggressiveness to marketing to where I'm just simply not comfortable doing it.

If you've got salesmanship skills, good for you. The trick for marketing ebooks as best I can tell is blogging, webpage sites, getting ebook reviewers to sample and review your titles, word of mouth, local author signing events at bookstores, stuff like that. The specifics still elude me.

The regional gathering of the Florida Writers' Association (I just joined this year) had someone a few months ago present a lecture on self-marketing. I gotta see about getting some one-on-one help with this, and see about getting the stuff I have out now more aggressively known.

I have more writing in me. There's a few writing events coming soon (a Write-A-Comic event for October oooh yeah, the NaNoWriMo obviously. But not the 3-Day Novel. I'm burned out of that) and I think I can squeeze out another story for publishing this year. If I can do that, I need to market it like mad the second I get it uploaded.

Good luck, self-publishers!

Librarian Is

2011-08-10T08:37:00.000-04:00

Derek Thompson posted on The Atlantic the other day this article "What People Don't Get About Working In A Library".

Naturally, I posted my own response, defining in my terms what a Librarian is.

Librarian = Bibliographic expert.

Librarian = Research specialist.

Librarian = Hunter-Gatherer of the Information Savanna.

Librarian = Finder Of Secrets.

Librarian = Wielder of Reader Advisories.

Librarian = Party Organizer and part-time Hogwarts Professor Impersonator (true. I got a photo of me in a Hagrid outfit around here somewhere...).

Essentially, to me a Librarian is a key player in the Information Age, the professional who can store, sort, index and locate all forms of materials in all formats (print, audiovisual, electronic).

Don't sell us short.

Things might be changing...

2011-07-14T09:31:00.002-04:00

Keep an eye out for updates.

Also, Harry Potter post in the making.

To the Seven People Reading This Blog...

2011-07-12T11:49:00.000-04:00

...any of you hear yet if Amazon's fixed Kindle to be compatible to epub/DRM specs? I thought it was happening this month...

eStory: The Hero Cleanup Protocol - Published!

2011-07-09T15:57:00.000-04:00

After a few months of realizing I needed to edit the story some more to Smashwords' content rules, that I had to follow through to the Premium stage and request an ISBN (which is the ISBN-13 number 9781458089526, I hope), and that I needed to resubmit after all the corrections...

The "Hero Cleanup Protocol" estory is now available for purchase!

I finally got a cover artist, a friend of a friend of a colleague who knows a guy, fellow by the name of Mike Rooth who does this sort of artwork on a commission basis. A thumbnail copy of the cover is to the side of this paragraph. Once the cover was finalized I completed the Smashwords submission process and finally got the approval about a week ago.

I was only waiting until now to verify that YES the story is for sale.

Because I've already got two purchases yesterday! Ahhhhhhhh, the emotional high of selling your work, it's like a perfect drug...

It's selling for .99 per copy, the cheapest it can go, as it's a short story and not a full novel. The good news is, the overall experience of submitting a work for publication seems relatively simple. As long as I do a better job of planning ahead for cover art, I should get a finished and edited-reviewed draft up and for sale within weeks instead of six months or more with a print book.

The best thing about Smashwords is that, unlike the direct-retailer situation I had with "Welcome To Florida" the story I submitted directly to B&N's PubIt service, what I've submitted through Smashwords is going to show up in other retailers: Not only Barnes&Noble's Nook, but also Sony's Reader, the Kobo, Diesel ebooks, and Apple iBook. Amazon's Kindle doesn't have it yet, but Smashwords is waiting for Kindle to get the conversion upgrade for DRM formatting, so when that happens you Kindle owners can buy a copy!

My trick now: marketing. Hoo boy. So here's the deal, folks. If you can get 49,998 more people to buy a copy of "The Hero Cleanup Protocol", I'll be a very happy librarian person. Thank yew. :-)

Kinda Decompressing After Extreme Blogging for April

2011-05-19T15:48:00.002-04:00

So I apologize to the seven people following this blog. ;-)

Future posts about summer movies, job hunting, getting a cover artist for a short story, and more to follow.

To Andy: The Month of Blogging Is Over

2011-04-30T21:19:00.000-04:00

And what have we learned?

That I need to do more blogging on Doctor Who!

No wait, that's not it.

That I need to send my resumes to more libraries!

No, that has nothing to do with the blogging.

That I need to do more blogging on Doctor Who!

No... wait, I've been here before... Oh no... One of those aliens is blogging with me! NOOOO! RUNN!!!

Seeking Karmic Balance Between Job Hunting And Saving Turtles

2011-04-28T11:24:00.000-04:00

Having spent more than two years now job hunting for librarian or computer/desktop help, I've long ago gotten to the frazzled psyche of a man who looks at an Application form and says aloud "Oh no. Not again."

There's something... soul-crushing with filling out an application for employment. There's the hassles of creating not just one resume but a series of resumes to cover every possible contingency that is out there... but now you've got to fill out a form that's asking for the information all over again.

So I was at an office this morning. I dropped off my resume at a table at the St. Pete Job Fair last week, and the company called for me to come in and fill out an application (and apparently a face interview to follow it). And I was sitting there, doing my best to fill out yet another application form...

...and I started getting one of those headaches. The kind of headache that tells me "what the hell am I doing?" The doubt that a long-time unemployed person gets after getting rejected and ignored long enough to haunt you.

And I panicked.

This is the absolutely worst thing to be doing when a job interview is on the line. Panicking. At that moment I knew the whole effort was going to be a waste, that I wasn't going to be any good for the interview. I crossed out some of the personal info I already put on the form, handed the clipboard back in, apologized for wasting time and left. Kicking myself mentally the whole way out.

This is what two years plus of job hunting does to you. I try. I do my best to get in the mindset when I go into job fairs, and interviews, and shipping resumes to hiring workplaces. But the second that Doubt hits you...

The drive home was troubled. That headache was still with me. I took a scenic route home, looping around to get to a grocery store (needed milk, after all). The road I took is undergoing construction, so the lanes are down to two (one each direction). At one spot, the cars in front of me start swerving funny. And then I quickly see why.

A turtle was crossing the road.

This is Florida. This is occupational hazard to driving down here. Lots of roads through wooded areas with nearby lakes. Lots of places for turtles to live and grow. And sad to say, turtles get the urge to wander from time to time.

And our roadways are not designed with turtle-safe passages underneath them. Nor any turtle-level barricades to discourage them from passing the road.

To the cruel and disheartened, let me tell you: driving over a turtle is a bad thing. Especially to me. I've read Terry Prachett's Small Gods for one thing. I have some inkling of the concept of spirit guides, animal totems, etc. And turtles are a very spiritual animal.

Years ago, when I first coped with depression down in South Florida (was on Zoloft at the time), there was a day driving to work where I rescued a turtle off a major roadway... and I felt damn good the whole day. It's not a day I've forgotten: it's been one of the few days I ever felt good. Emphasis on ever.

I am not driving over a turtle. I owe them.

I got out of the car, with the drivers in the cars stuck behind me sticking their heads out yelling about what the hell was going on. I shouted back "I'm not driving over turtles" and focused my effort on picking up the little guy as he was scrambling across the road.

Turtle lifting is tricky. You don't want to drop them, and they do wiggle a lot. The turtle you see just wants to cross the road from Point A to Point Wherever the Turtle Thinks There's Turtle Happiness. So to him, getting lifted off the road and floating through the air makes no sense. Those stubby little turtle legs keep kicking in a walking motion. I finally got my fingers safely under his shell and carried him over into the dirt in the direction he was going. I made sure he'd be safe by carrying him a few more yards to the side than was necessary, in case the turtle changed his mind (Oh God. I hope not). By then the drivers saw I was turtle rescuing and waved back to me that they understood the situation. Got back in the car and kept driving in my own path. I know the turtle and I will not cross paths again...

So that's been my day so far right now. I screwed up a job interview and I saved a turtle off a busy road. I wonder how the Karmic balance on that works out.

What Else Do Libraries Want From Reference Librarians?

2011-04-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

The toughest part of job-hunting these last two years has been tweaking my resume to try and highlight what exactly my expertise and skills are.

And coping with the feeling that I'm still missing the magic phrase that would make a library HR job-hunter go "Hola, this guy has mad skills!"

I mean, I spell out that:

I've got years, 14 years and then some, working the reference and public service desk, answering questions, pointing people to the best resources, getting them to the research they seek;
I've got years, just as long, working with computers - from the heady days of CD-ROM readers (I can still remember the time it took to switch disks locked into special case holders) - into the first citation-only online databases and from there into full-text articles and now into PDF print-quality journal pages. And not just researching them with Boolean search methods but with every Advanced limiter command prompt known to database managers.

And that's just with being a reference librarian. Past that, I've got additional skills with collection management, shelf management (and weeding of dated materials), subject headings and cataloging keywords, and even some skill checking books out and handling overdue fines. If there's been anything a librarian has to do, I've done it. I've even been a branch manager (granted, that only lasted a year before my immediate supervisor found me wanting and suggested I get demoted to just reference librarian... yeah, you're not supposed to mention the "negative things" but hell, it happened and I've got to explain it sooner or later).

And still, I feel I'm missing something.

Anyone out there reading this blog have any suggestions on what I need to say on my resume to impress the libraries out there hiring? Because in this job market, I'm up against one of the tightest markets for librarians ever as every state out there is facing massive budget cuts (and libraries are the easiest target for politicians everywhere... )

Asking Xlibris To Lower the Cost of My Book...

2011-04-20T22:50:00.000-04:00

...I kind of got the feeling when I called the publisher a few days ago to lower the price of the ebook version of Last of the Grapefruit Wars from $5.99 to $2.99 that I was pulling teeth from a very upset lion.

I think the conflict came from the fact that the publisher is one of those mainstream Print-on-Demand services. Cutting the price in half seems like cutting half the money they'd be getting from selling that book.

Problem is, no one has been buying that many copies of my book (I'd say about two ebook purchases in the last year...) anyway. And I think the price of it at over 5 bucks was part of the problem.

The book itself is pretty small in terms of page count (in ebook version it's under 100 pages): calling it slim is being polite. But nobody is going to be buying a thin volume at over 5 bucks... when there are thicker-page-count novels going for less.

With the advent of direct publishing in ebook format, there is now a glut of self-published authors selling directly to the market. And as they don't have to share (much) with a mainstream publisher with the profits, those authors can set their price any way they see fit. And a lot of them are selling at 2.99 per ebook. So I might as well drop the price of Grapefruit Wars to that level as well.

It makes basic sense. If the demand is low, lower the value on what you have on supply to encourage people shopping for bargains. You just can't go too low to hamper the costs of producing said supply (this is where you get that economics chart of the supply-and-demand X crossing). Considering I paid Xlibris good money to have the short story anthology made available to direct-retail purchases, I think the costs of supply have been covered. Now it's just selling the damn thing (and marketing with Xlibris is another issue altogether)...

Still, I NEED to deal with advertising that ebook and let people know it is for 2.99 now...

Things I Should Be Doing In Terms Of Writing

2011-04-17T21:15:00.000-04:00

1) There's a story challenge to write for an all-dialogue short story.

2) There's that Jar of the Atlantic short that's been on the docket for 11 years.

3) There's the NaNoWriMo novel that's got 2 months to complete before the prize discount on getting a free copy printed by CreateSpace runs out.

4) The next Writers Association meeting in Wesley Chapel is the same day as Free Comic Book Day (May 7th)! Damn. The Wesley Chapel B&N better have comic book giveaways!

Witty Librarian and the CafePress of Doom

2011-04-15T20:32:00.000-04:00

I've been meddling in the affairs of shoppers by creating more items with Witty Librarian quote-age and Logo over at the Witty Librarian Shelf of Stuff on CafePress.

So... if you know any librarians with truckloads of money to spare... uh, lemme rephrase that. If you know anybody with truckloads of money to spare who wants to purchase gifts to librarians, send them my way. :-)

Negotiations For A Cover Artist

2011-04-13T12:56:00.002-04:00

It helps to be a comic book fan and to follow links on DeviantArt to those artists who take commissions... ;-)

Welcome To Post #100.

2011-04-08T17:04:00.000-04:00

And for this post I would like to ask a few things of my fine upstanding blog readers:

1) Do any of you know a good graphic artist/comic book illustrator I can commission for creating an ebook cover? Seriously. Email me p.warten@gmail.com.

2) Can you all get 50,000 people to buy my ebook Last of the Grapefruit Wars or the Nook-exclusive estory "Welcome To Florida"? (my latest estory "The Hero Cleanup Protocol" is going through some evaluation at the moment...)

3) Can you help a fellow librarian who's down on his luck? HIRE ME!!! (Waaaaaaaaah) (runs toward the horizon)

New eStory: The Hero Cleanup Protocol

2011-04-06T13:26:00.000-04:00

by. Paul Wartenberg
cover by. Paul Wartenberg, 'cause I'm waiting on word from Adam Withers if he's available to draw a cover for me... ;-)

The story is an idea I'd been bumping about for ages: my own little superhero reality where it's a world where Superheroes exist... but because they didn't know they classified as supers, by the time they could do anything about it (the Sixties) all the superhero names were claimed by the comic book industry. So they have to go with fake "real names" like Charlie or Vicky... except for the rare few who can afford to pay a name squatter the rights to those names. This is also a world where Superheroes have to be registered: either work under legal guidelines for the U.S. Marshals or the military (where supersoldiers rarely worked out well...), or "retire". The mechanics of the world is that 1) anyone can be a hero: there's no defining DNA or chromosomal trait or mutating process; 2) most super powers are basic such as improved agility, speed, and flight... but that's usually it, there are few advanced powers like firestarting, telekinesis, or scrying; 3) the powers are mental in nature, not physical, even the powers of strength and invulnerability; 4) Most supers don't even know they have powers because they're rarely in a situation to employ them; and 5) there are few true Superhumans or God-like beings: most are mortal humans (there's one or two notable exceptions, and they're terrifying...).

In this world, there's (supposedly) one potential superhuman per 500,000 people. Most supers organize into teams per city/metro, dedicated to stuff like bounty hunting, emergency response to disasters, and public relations (they're treated like sports athletes and celebrities: the third thing you get when you become a Registered Super - AKA Talent because "Super" had been trademarked - is your own playable trading card). And in this world, every wannabe hero goes through rigorous training with the FBI and Marshals offices at Quantico. They also go through rigorous psych evals, because the last thing anyone wants on their team is a superhero ready to snap at any second.

My story is about what happens when a new hero arrival snaps on his first day. That's the Cleanup Protocol. And it's my introduce to the key character of my superhero universe: Powersurge, the exception to all the rules I made...

It's been uploaded into Smashwords, made available for various ereader services. I think it has a converted format for Kindle as well, which is a bit surprising because I thought Kindle was still using an exclusive format...

This was part of my Local Authors event presentation: I wanted to demonstrate the relative ease of getting a story uploaded straight from Word document format into an epublishing market.

The tricky part now is, obviously, how to get 50,000 people to buy that estory... ;-)

Local Authors Event: Tarpon Springs April 5th

2011-04-05T08:54:00.000-04:00

I will be at the Tarpon Springs Public Library today to promote my book Last of the Grapefruit Wars, my eshort story "Welcome To Florida", and possibly see about posting a new eshort through Smashwords to demonstrate how that might work. No guarantees though.

Enjoy the Issue 20 updating to City of Heroes!

This Is A Month Of Blogging

2011-04-02T08:48:00.000-04:00

I might not succeed.

Andy from Ta-Nehisi's Open Threads mentioned that April is supposed to be a month of daily blogging, a means of getting bloggers more active in the actual act of blogging. You see, outside of the professionals who are paid to blog as a means of reporting, most amateur bloggers are... inconsistent. Sometimes not even blogging for months on end. When that happens, people who might read that blog tune out, traffic decreases, the possibility of getting your words seen and recognized fades.

So, to blog each day.

Like I said, I might not succeed.

At least not here.

I do have another blog, one where I am more active: my political blogsite The Amendments We Need, although it's been awhile since I've posted any amendment ideas... The deal with that one is, well, it's more biased, and little bit angrier, and a lot more profane (kids, cover your eyes). It doesn't have much to do with my writing interests and my librarianship profession, which I separated to this blog here. Thanks for visiting, by the way.

What I may try to do is blog alternately, once here, once there. But again, this is a busy month for me, and there's about 20 other real-life things I got to be doing around here.

So I might not succeed.

Check with me by April 30th.

The St. Patrick's "Everyone Pretends They're Irish So They Can Get Drunk" Obligatory Thread

2011-03-17T09:14:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again to break out the green socks!

You know how hard it is to find an anime of Belldandy with a U2 soundtrack to it?

Anyway, enjoy St. Patricks Day and stay safe!

Personal News: About My Cat Page

2011-03-06T21:41:00.000-05:00

Page the Silly Kitty, I call her.

I adopted Page thanks to the help of an old workplace friend Judi (she's now helping with the Cat Rescue group in Broward County) back in 2001. So she's roughly 10 years old this year.

Sad thing is, I found a lump on her side a few months. Finally got her into the vet's, hoping that it was just an inflammation from the booster shots she got back in November...

It wasn't. It came back as a kind of carcinoma. A cancer. And it was growing past the skin and bits of muscle that the vet had cut out. Meaning we probably didn't get all of it.

She's suffering through the humiliation of the cone collar this past week, and my older cat Tehya is throwing more of a hissy fit that usual at Page (vet says it's because Tehya can smell something different about Page). She doesn't seem to understand why I'm whispering to her more than usual, at most all she's hoping for is the day I get that cone off her neck...

Hug your kitties when you can.

Our pets never live as long as we want them to.

PubIt Badge for My eShort

2011-02-18T16:27:00.000-05:00

Hmm. B&N says I can do this on my blog...

Hmm. It's not working so well, the image isn't fitting the badge.
Anyway. BUY MY ESTORY!

Authors Den

2011-02-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

As mentioned in the previous entry, I had attended the Feb. 5th Authors Event in Wesley Chapel, and had come away meeting fellow local authors such as Philip Rice, who recommended to me a website called Authors Den.

It's a directory of independent authors, listings of their works, links to those titles available online, contact info, and so on. I signed up for it. It's a question now of figuring out how to use the site to market myself, to increase interest in my work, so on.

By the way, I still need to pay off this new computer. BUY MY BOOK AND ESHORT!

I Survived The Feb. 5th Local Authors Event in Wesley Chapel

2011-02-05T21:22:00.000-05:00

I sold one paperback copy of Last of the Grapefruit Wars and handed out about twelve bookmarks for the eshort story Welcome to Florida. Have to admit most of the book shoppers were curious but few were buying.

I sat next to, by the by, Philip Rice with his memoir Mixed Bag (he was a fellow survivor of the XLibris experience) and also next to Madonna Wise who was promoting a pair of local histories on Zephyrhills.

My Computer Died. Buy My Books!

2011-02-03T12:02:00.000-05:00

I need the money to pay for a new gaming PC. Seriously.

Buy the estory Welcome to Florida!

Buy my short story anthology Last of the Grapefruit Wars!

Get 50,000 of your friends to do the same!

Help a poor veteran of the Rikti Wars who's down on his luck!

Feb 5th: Local Authors Event at Barnes and Noble Wesley Chapel FL

2011-02-02T18:11:00.000-05:00

I will attend the Local Authors event at the mid-Pasco Barnes and Noble store in Wesley Chapel, FL, this Saturday Feb. 5th from 2 pm - 4 pm. Its at the Shops at Wiregrass Mall, 28512 Paseo Dr. It's off of State Rd 56, east of the I-75 intersection along the Pasco-Hillsborough border.

I will be marketing my collected shorts anthology Last of the Grapefruit Wars, and will see about advertising my recently released estory "Welcome to Florida".

Please attend. I need a few people to show up and scream like I'm a Beatle. :-)

Short Story: Welcome To Florida

2011-01-31T22:50:00.000-05:00

I've been keen on writing short stories for a good while. I'd like to think I'm good at it.

So I finally went with getting a short story submitted to an epublish service.

Available on BN.com with their NookBook ereader. "Welcome To Florida."

Yay me.

The process itself with the ereader service is quick. You just go to the retailer's self-publish option (Barnes & Noble is PubIt! and Amazon is Kindle Direct Publishing, for example), you sign up to their ~~contract of eternal damnation~~ and ~~give away your firstborn~~, actually you give them financial info for a direct deposit account, you upload a copy of your story/essay/novel, provide a "book cover" for it, add a description and keywords for browse/search engines, select the price for sale, preview the work to ensure text and font alignment is good, and submit. When I did it with PubIt, it took 24 hours after submitting for the short story to appear for sale on the NookBook menu.

And then you pray that 50,000 people see it and buy it.

The good part of the deal is, there's no hassle to getting published (as long as you don't violate community decency standards or national state secrets). You write it, you format it, you get cover art made, you submit it. In the old days (say, fifteen years ago), getting published meant you had to A) write a rough draft, B) find an agent, C) get the agent to convince a publisher to look at your work out of thousands of submissions, D) get signed to a book deal contingent on good sales, E) go through a massive editing process that takes months, F) go through a printing process that takes a year, G) get marketed to retailer and libraries and hope to God the book reviews are kind.

The old way was limited to about 20 to 30 new authors/books a year per publisher, pretty much. In a competitive market, it was brutal. The advantage to getting signed by a major book publisher, of course, was that it paid well and that the publisher handled all the marketing. The alternative was called self-publishing. You went to a vanity press or started your own press, and got it to crank out copies for you to sell. You got published of course, but the disadvantages were that you A) paid out of your own pocket which most people can't afford, and B) you had to market your own book all by your lonesome: no agent or printer to make the deals or create ads for you.

About ten years ago, a new service popped up. Thanks to the Internet, submissions and marketing could work in other ways. Called Print-On-Demand, you still paid to get published, but it was cheaper (in some cases very cheap) than vanity presses. The services also had fees for marketing services, but they still worked as leads in getting the word out and your book advertised. What made the POD attractive was that the printer could keep the work on file in a professional format and easily print out more copies on short notice. The PODs also had deals with retailers (like Amazon) to have the book available for online or special order. They also began dabbling with ebook formats during the early 2000s, but lacking viable reader devices made that iffy.

Until Amazon came out with the Kindle. And other book retailers followed suit with their ereaders.

The ebooks are everywhere now. They were one of the hot items for last Christmas. Sales for ebooks now outpace books. And the competing devices - the handheld tablets - have apps that convert them into ereaders as well. Getting published straight to ebook is looking very attractive.

You don't even need to publish books. The ereaders are not limited by small file sizes (just big ones, meaning Stephen King and Tom Clancy need to start editing their books down more). The story I submitted to PubIt for the Nook was on my word processor about 10 pages long, and that was with a cover page and Authors page. The file itself was about 14k of memory converted to ebook. Very small.

Publishing a short story is akin to issuing a music single compared to a whole album (in fact, most music until the 1960s were issued as singles only, with albums made as compilations afterward. You could blame the Beatles for insisting on working album first, single second). If you have an iPod or MP3 player, you can buy a song separately from the album. The same can be said for the estory separately from an ebook.

The only real conflict I had with submitting "Welcome To Florida" as a story was the pricing. I can set my own price from lowest to highest. Most ebooks by established authors go for $7.99 to $11.99 perhaps higher depending on file size and author's ego size. Most small-press publishers would get their ebooks at $4.99 to $6.99. New authors or self-publishers tend to price their books however they want... but if they were smart they'd keep it under $5 to entice an audience that's looking for bargain deals. The cheapest you can price an ebook on PubIt happens to be... $.99. Roughly the price of an MP3 song, by the by. I tried asking for a cheaper price than that because A) I'm new and need to attract the audience and B) I figured selling a short short for around $.65 was fair. No, I had to set it at $.99, so I hope any buyers of the story won't feel gypped.

So, the great news is, I got a story published. Didn't have to market it to story magazines or short story anthologies. Didn't have to sign an agent to commission. I published the book and set the price.

But now it's all on me to get the word out. It's all on me to market the damn thing. It's up to me to find at least 50,000 friends and family members with a Nook ereader (or Nook app) to spend the $.99 to buy the short story ~~and not ask for a refund~~.

Good thing I'm attending a Barnes & Noble Local Authors' event this Feb. 5th 2011 in Wesley Chapel, FL at the Wire Grass Mall. It's from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Please do show.

Also, I need to print up bookmarks advertising it... It's doable...

Trying To Write. Trying To Publish

2011-01-26T12:15:00.000-05:00

I'm looking at publishing some short stories directly into an epub system like say Nook's PubIt or Kindle's... PowerSurge/CreateSpace, I forget what it's called. If I can get a volunteer or three (again) to scan some stories for 1) grammar erroks, and 2) general readability... that might not help, because I get frustrated with criticisms that tell me to do 150 other things than I'm used to doing. Sigh. :/

To Say Goodbye to 2010

2010-12-31T15:47:00.000-05:00

And en route to 2011... I need to say just one thing:

The TRON: Legacy soundtrack is THE AWESOME.

If Daft Punk doesn't get an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score, it will go down as one of the bigger snubs in Oscars history (well, not up there with Edward G. Robinson never getting an acting nomination, but somewhere in the Top Ten).

Happy New Year!

Witty's Year End Book Review 2010

2010-12-14T13:07:00.000-05:00

Another year of unemployment, more time to stress out and read books to calm down...

To re-state the rules: These are not books published this year that I think are AWESOME AND COOL. Some of these books may have been published ages ago. It's just these are the books I've read this year that I feel are deserving of the AWESOME AND COOL labels of labeling. And for the Chinese Spammers who try to leave ....... comments in my comments field, there's a chance they might notice a title and read a book and BE CORRUPTED FOREVER BY MY WESTERN CULTURE IDEALS BWHAHAHAHA. Okay, maybe not, but here goes.

BEST FICTION BOOK

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
This is a cyberpunk novel that's been out for less than two decades (published 1992!), but I'd heard good things about it and never got a chance to find a copy to read. Well, with the time on my hands now...
Snow Crash involves Hiro Protagonist (yes, that's his name) living in a 21st Century Los Angeles future world where corporations (some having merged with crime families) control everything... even to where people's names are trademarked. After losing his job delivering pizza for the Mafia (it's there in 20 minutes OR ELSE), Hiro teams up with the girl YT (Yours Truly) - who's partly to blame for that job loss - to hire themselves out as a hacker/intel to the privatized CIA. They quickly uncover a dangerous new drug - Snow Crash - that's part computer virus and real-life virus that's infecting more and more citizenry. It all has something to do with Sumerian religion, self-made gods, and a quest for a universal language that can enslave us all...
What makes the novel fun is how it's both standard cyberpunk - the computer universe and its anarchistic hacker culture - and post-modern thriller. Post-modern meaning self-awareness. Hiro is fully aware of all Internet Traditions (even though this book was written before any serious traditions were forged!), and also fully hip to the tropes and memes of heroic narrative. His description of Raven also explains the Badass so well it's what the Tvtropes.org website uses to open their Badass entry.

BEST NON-FICTION BOOK

Battle Cry Of Freedom, James McPherson
If not the definitive work on the American Civil War, most likely it's in the Top 5.
Political blogger Ta-Nehesi Coates hosted a book reading club online for 2010 on this work, and I had chimed in with my comments, observations, and witless retorts. Index here on all of TNC's Civil War entries, by the by.
McPherson goes into excellent detail about both the causes of the Civil War (Slavery, slavery, Southern financial and political elites eager to maintain the status quo, and oh yeah slavery) and the battlefield conflicts themselves. Switching from one chapter that investigates and highlights the political, economic, and cultural changes that the war brought upon the nation; to the next chapter that describes the carnage, confusion, and wartime heroism of each major battle (Shiloh, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Petersburg) and the generals who mismanaged it all.
It's a must-read for all Americans. Even the ones who don't like history. You need to read this because, by simple comparison of the rhetoric of the Southern Slaveowner politicos to the rhetoric of today's Far Right conservatives, you'll realize we're still fighting that damn war...

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL

JLA/Avengers, Kurt Busiek and George Perez
This had been out for a few years, and in fact had been on the drawing board for decades (back to the mid-1980s when the comic business exploded into mainstream culture), but I had finally gotten around to reading the collected series this year.
Comic book crossovers are nothing new. In-universe, they happen all the time (especially as a guest appearance by a popular character - Batman - could boost sales for a struggling title). Crossing universes, however, are obviously trickier: companies are wary of losing any creative control over their characters, and crossovers between universes have a habit of ignoring certain continuity in order to justify its plot. Sometimes, a writer unfamiliar with the history or traits of a character can derail everything both within the crossover's story and back in the established continuity that could well kill off a character's popularity for good. This is, by the way, what happened when DC and Marvel did create a crossover event called DC Vs. Marvel in the mid-1990s that created a convoluted and ridiculous Origin Myth for both universes, set up characters to fight each other for no real reason or resolution, and ended up entertaining NOBODY.
JLA/Avengers did it right.
Taking the primary superhero teams of each universe - Justice League of America (DC) and The Avengers (Marvel) - the story involves a DC galactic villain Krona who travels from universe to universe in a quest to understand how universes are created (in order to control such power for himself). But in order to do that, he has to destroy said universes while studying them. When he reaches the Marvel Universe, he confronts the first being of any power that can delay him - The Grandmaster, a hedonist lover of high-stakes games - and is forced to accept the Grandmaster's challenge of having universal champions fight each other to claim twelve powerful totems... and they choose the Justice League and Avengers for the game...
Busiek has a lot of fun tweaking the cultures and continuity of each comic book universe as the two teams visit the others' world and clash. DC heroes are horrified to see how in the Marvel universe that mutants are persecuted and tyrants like Doom left unchallenged. Marvel heroes are horrified to see that Supers in the DC universe are nearly worshiped as gods in what looks to them like a fascist society. Marvel's resident speedster Quicksilver is envious of the fact that his competitor The Flash has his own museum.
Impressive also is Perez's artwork: Notorious for drawing elaborate battle scenes and massive gathering of characters (the cover art for one issue was so packed full of superheroes that Perez had to rest his hand for weeks after completing it), this series was quite possibly his best effort since Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The clincher for the series is when the two teams, realizing the Grandmaster's plot had forced their two Earths together to trap Krona - and that the trap is falling apart - find out from the cosmic being the price each hero will pay even if they stop Krona. As the heroes had reverted to their Silver (Heroic) Age personas of the 1980s, all of them are shocked by the de-railings (and deaths) each character suffered during the Dark (Antihero) Age of the 1990s. Disgusted by their futures, they nonetheless agree that stopping Krona - who would destroy both universes anyway - has to happen... and they proceed to launch a massive assault on Krona's citadel just as he's carving into the two beings (Infinity and Kismet) that personify each universe...
As a comic book fan, this was a decent read.

BEST BOOK BY SOMEONE I KNOW AND CORRESPONDED WITH VIA EMAIL ON AN OCCASIONAL BASIS

I'm gonna need to get back to you all on this one, I haven't made up my mind between Sheryl Nantus or TNC or...

NaNoWriMo Update: Day 26

2010-11-26T22:06:00.000-05:00

And it was on this day...

I reached 50,000 words.

Specifically 50,358 words as of Nov. 26th, 2010, 10:05 PM EST.

The good news? I got it to 50,000 plus.

The bad news? The novel itself is literally half-way there. If we're going by my original outline, we're still finishing up the first big incident and have yet to reach Incident Point Two, Three or Four. Nor anywhere near the conclusion.

The good news? I got four days to keep going.

Before It Gets Too Late: NaNoWriMo Update Day 22

2010-11-22T23:58:00.000-05:00

Just getting this in as of 11:55 PM on Nov. 22nd. 43273 words.

I've actually slowed down this weekend after the blind rush of Friday. I am within 6,800 words of getting the 50,000 word count. It's the novel itself. I feel myself bogging down into fractal detail right now, creating a situation where I'm trying to leave clues for the solution I've plotted at the end... so I need to pick this up and get it going into the next set of chapters. Grrr.

NaNoWriMo Update: Day 20

2010-11-20T01:17:00.000-05:00

This is coming late at night, having been a busy Friday all around.

Currently at 40,014 words. At this pace 50,000 is no problem. Finishing the whole novel currently at Chapter Five with Five (maybe up to Seven if the pacing goes as it does) more to go.

NaNoWriMo Update Day 15

2010-11-15T23:40:00.000-05:00

The count now at 31,521 words.

I'm 5,000 words above the halfway mark (25,000) and making decent time. Still slow compared to what I've hoped for. The good news is I'm well into Chapter Four, but worried now that the remaining chapters are going to be bigger than I expected.

I'm also a little unhappy that my characters are unsympathetic at the moment. For one character, it's unavoidable, but I think the other character is getting a little too harsh in his behaviors. I need to tone him down a little. Got to make it so that his personality Reveal later on isn't an Ass-Pull of sorts.

NaNoWriMo Update: Day 11

2010-11-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

Now at 21,357 words and counting.

This has been going slower than expected. After the rush of getting 30,000 words done in 3 days for the 3-Day Novel attempt, I had hoped on equaling the 10,000 word-per-day count... but other activities (such as job-hunting, hi there!) have been distracting. The good news is I am keeping pace and well ahead of schedule. Bad news is I'm pretty much at 1,800 words per day per average... and at this pace the first draft of this novel itself won't be completed, which worries me.

This weekend. Gotta make the big push this weekend.

NaNoWriMo Update 2010: Day 7

2010-11-07T11:04:00.000-05:00

Am currently at 14,000 words more or less.

Since I'm eschewing the habit of going back and re-editing earlier stuff that's suddenly not jibing with the latest written stuff, the novel is already a bit of a mess. But the objective remains the same: Finish First. Edit Later.

Typing typing typing...

It is the time of NaNoWriMo 2010. And the cats are wondering why I'm crying.

2010-11-01T21:31:00.000-04:00

Well, damn it all to (expletive). I tried starting off a novel this morning... and this afternoon... and this evening. And already two pages in I'm hating the story idea I've got. And it sounded so good on paper.

The problem is, I'm not writing from experience on a story that is going to require some experience. Operating on assumptions is a terrible way to go.

So I'm starting over. I'm gonna try something else for the next 2 1/2 hours to get something produced for this first day.

Defining the Virtual Librarian

2010-10-25T10:57:00.000-04:00

Just what should a Virtual Librarian be?

Experience:

The Virtual Librarian must have some experience (at least six months) providing either traditional reference research assistance or online reference assistance. This would include reference desk or other public desk service, one-on-one research assistance, or classroom instruction on library services.

The Virtual Librarian also must have some experience with the use of the computer as a reference and research tool. This would include work experience with online research databases; creating or managing online resources such as websites; or contributing to any online project or discussions such as Blogs, Instant messaging, or Web Chats.

The Virtual Librarian's skills and abilities need to cover: Working within a wholly electronic workplace; Providing effective and timely virtual service to students, teachers, and fellow professionals; Conducting effective online research using all available resources, and to evaluate and narrow the results to best likely resources for the client; Teaching such research skills to students and teachers to provide the skills needed for them to self-evaluate their own research; Sharing and coordinating with other Virtual Librarians any research methods and tips to aid their work, as well as working with fellow librarians on any large-scale projects; Working comfortably with computers, and with an online environment that requires independent and self-dedicated performance.

Knowledge:

The Virtual Librarian must foremost have the knowledge of the Traditional Librarian: knowledge of references, of research methods, of tools of the trade. Such knowledge can be applied to the realm of the Virtual world with ease.

It is the knowledge of the Virtual world – the online, the Internet, the Web – that will matter. The Virtual Librarian must know what can be found online and must know how such information can be accessed, and must know a multitude of electronic-based sources and contents.

This requires that the Virtual Librarian stay apace with technological developments in the electronic, computer, library and communication worlds. The Virtual Librarian must maintain professionalism, knowledge, and skills relevant to librarianship at all times. The Virtual Librarian must be comfortable working in an environment of limited personal communication... and unlimited online communication.

Results:

The Virtual Librarian is pretty much a regular Reference Librarian... IN SPACE! Well, cyberspace, but still, wanted to place a link to TV Tropes here. ;-)

Questions about the new epublication services like PubIt

2010-10-15T11:00:00.001-04:00

One thing I've noticed about the advent of the ebook technology - the spread of ereaders like the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony, and a few others - has been the retailers' offer of direct ebook publication such as PubIt. (Amazon's is CreateSpace by the looks of things although BookSurge is supposed to be a name for the service...)

What this means is that writers no longer have to go through an agent or a large (or even small independent) publisher like Penguin, Simon and Schuster, Random House and HarperCollins. All they have to do is sign up for the epublisher program, ~~sign over their firstborn child~~ uh sign over a good-sized percentage of sales and viola you're a writer. Screw you, Dean Koontz.

Of course, there are disadvantages. Whereas a major publisher like Penguin et al can market your book across the globe, you the writer are responsible for marketing yourself... which can cost more out-of-pocket money. Also, from my personal experiences and having met a few other would-be writers over the years... let me just say that for a creative bunch of people who can pound out a 500-page epic about cyborg ninjas battling zombie pandas we writers can be pretty horrible with advertising and public relations. Selling ourselves is rarely a strong trait.

Another problem: the need for editing. Trust me, a first draft of a novel is NOT perfect. An agent and publishing firm usually helps in that they can point out flaws, make suggestions, and meddle (usually in positive ways). It's their jobs, after all, since they're hoping to make money off the good idea that your novel can be. You may notice that the established writers - Tom Clancy comes quick to mind - tend to write terrible and oversized novels further into their careers: this is because their names are so big that they can afford to ignore everybody about the poor grammar, overweighted plots, and overt messaging that the writer wants to hammer into everyone's anvils. Now consider the poor first-time writer, who may not necessarily have the writing skill that the big-name writers had when they broke big, and the desire to rush that massive new epic straight into the ebook market without having their friends and fellow writers, um, check for spelling first. There's a reason why the major publishers take only a handful of first-time novels: the thousands of submissions they get are absolutely horrible. With the epublishing, that filter will be long gone.

Still, the advantages seem to outweigh the weaknesses. The near-ease of direct publishing is too tempting a lure. But with that I still have questions that need answering:

1) While epublishing books is a given, does PubIt and the other epublish services allow for something like short stories or novellas? I've had an easier go of writing shorts than novels, and there's a pile of short stories I'd like to print straight to ebook format...

2) If I publish to PubIt, which is Barnes & Noble, can I market the ebook to other eReaders like Kindle or Sony or the others? I may need to re-read the Terms of Agreement regarding copyright, ownership, and availability to other eReaders I suppose...

3) This may also be in the Terms of Agreement, but does the PubIt service extend to print publishing just in case there are non-eReader owners who'd like the book? I'm a librarian by heart, I like the idea of multiple formats (and there are people who still like print books... just the simple feel of them).

4) What's the number of eReader downloads I need to aim for to be considered a best-seller writer? (ego-stroking bhwhahahahaha)

Okay, answer those Questions Three, there to the other side ye see. Wait, that's four q... AAAAAAAAHHHH (cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril).

Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2010

2010-10-04T11:40:00.000-04:00

It being the first full week of October, they've renewed the sign-ups for National Novel Writing Month, of course.

The deal remains the same: 50,000 words over 30 days of November. While 50,000 words seem like a lot, it more often doesn't complete the story the novel ought to tell so most writers will need to go way past that.

My first successful trip to 50,000 was last year's NaNo. Problem was, the novel was barely half-way completed, and without a full novel sitting there in my lap ready for editing and fine-tuning, I quickly lost interest in getting it truly done.

This time is different. Because this is also the first time I had any genuine success with the earlier 3-Day Novel contest. Wherein I got 30,000 words done in just three days. 10,000 words a day per average (it was more like 5,000 words each the first two days and then a massive 20,000 rush job on Day Three). I know now the effort needed to get that much writing done in a single day. And as long as I ascertain the distractions I'll face, I am pretty sure now I can get the NaNo's 50,000 word count with ease.

That means the REAL objective I have this NaNoWriMo is this: get a full novel completed, and well in time to be able to edit the rough draft. Something to finally submit to a publisher.

The planning begins...

Aftermath of the 3 Day Novel 2010

2010-09-07T11:04:00.002-04:00

...my God, what have I done...?

95 pages worth.

30,000 plus words.

And it's relatively coherent compared to the earlier attempts I've made.

Dear God. This just might work...

Three-Day Novel: 2010 Attempt

2010-09-04T08:06:00.000-04:00

It's 8:04 am. I am at the Panera Bread on the corner of Little Rd. and State Rd. 54. I am beginning the 3-Day Novel contest... NOW!

"It was in the spring of my youth that my father sat down and told me about this dream he had of turning into a giant insect." What, it's been done...?

The Mix Of News, Good And Bad And Sad

2010-09-01T11:36:00.001-04:00

There's a few things to note:

In the Good News category, Centennial Park Library in the Pasco Libraries system is going to stay open! After the threat of closure by the county commission, the library got 3,000 plus signatures of support from the local community and was able to convince the commission to keep it open. The Bad News: the state and the county are still tight against the budget, meaning cuts will have to come from somewhere else - jobs. The commission will see about eliminating any current vacancies first, but if they have to they may cut existing jobs, which is still a bad thing to happen (as an unemployed person, I will be saddened by anyone else losing their jobs).

In the Sad News category: someone I knew from Tarpons Springs High School Class of 1988 passed away. Mike McGee was someone I knew since middle school, actually, and he was who I considered a regular guy: smart enough to be in the good classes, popular enough to be in the good cliques, but thankfully not a total jerkass about it. Played football, linebacker if I recall (EDIT: My brother Phil corrected me, said it was Offensive Guard). Went to Florida State, got a law degree, went into Patent Law at a firm in Chicago. Only saw him at the high school reunions, but I had emailed him once or twice about patent ideas I was bouncing about me brain (informal chats, really. Any formal chat would have cost me!). He got married, had kids.
And then he got cancer and died yesterday from it.
I don't like death. It ends so many chances, so many things to do, so many people to meet, so many regrets you're left with. I'd like to think McGee didn't regret much: he lived in all respects - a family, children, a good job, God knows what adventures he'd had along the way. The regrets are all ours now.

My cat Tehya she likes to meow in the guest bathroom

2010-08-23T18:55:00.000-04:00

What she's meowing at, I don't know. The only reason I can think of is that Tehya likes the echo effect.

At the end of July 2010

2010-07-30T13:20:00.000-04:00

Just checking in:

1) After the 17th time someone critiquing my resume complained about it, I'm dropping my wittylibrarian email and switching to a more professional-looking email account with Gmail. No, I won't post it here for all those damn Chinese spammers to snatch up. Nyah.

2) I know, I KNOW I keep screaming I won't do it again, but the deadline for the 3-Day Novel contest is back and I'm sorely tempted to try yet again. Maybe if I did it as a serialized work, each chapter akin to a short story, if I think of it in short story terms and all...

3) Job hunting. Still sucks. Libraries are getting cut. My old branch - Centennial Park - is under threat of closing by Pasco Libraries. :( Am sending angry letters to commissioners as I type this.

Shall I dare do another 3 Day Novel contest?

2010-07-26T14:47:00.000-04:00

I keep swearing off that thing, but then August rolls around and I get tempted with an idea for a novel to write and then... ggaaaaaahh. The one thing truly stopping me at this moment? I seriously don't have the $50 needed to register.

I Write Like... Paul Wartenberg! ...Nah...

2010-07-15T10:39:00.000-04:00

So there's this new website that the bloggers and twitters are chirping aboot called I Write Like. As a writer I was tempted to submit my short stories for comparisons...

"Banging the Pipes," The earliest short story that I have the most love for came back as writing like... James Joyce.

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Whew. Previously I submitted just the first few paragraphs but that came back as Dan Brown (AUUUUGHHH)

For "Fifth Annual Office Golf Showdown," the short story that actually won Second Place for a contest, I wrote that like

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Who is actually a name I recognize but never read (the short story is entirely dialogue, I wonder if that has an effect).

For the last short story in my story collection Last of the Grapefruit Wars, "Snipe Hunt," that came back as

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Which is weird: when I submitted just the first three pages it came back as Stephen King.

You know what? All this inconsistency. I write like Paul Wartenberg. So there.

Happy 4th of July!

2010-07-04T13:50:00.002-04:00

And for your troubles, the great moment in history that the history books cleaned up:

Heh.

EDIT: for the life of me, I tried to shrink the video feed to fit the blog column. I must be missing a step, working on it.

EDIT EDIT: fix'd.

What do I have to do to get more traffic to this site? Write about sex?

2010-07-01T08:34:00.002-04:00

...sigh. Lemme break out the Porn Tropes...

No more Chinese Spam! If you guys spam here, at least do it in Esperanto! Show some effort!

I am A+ Certified

2010-06-24T10:56:00.000-04:00

Passed the 220-702 certification exam yesterday. With the 220-701, that certifies me for computer tech support careers.

SO HIRE ME DAMMIT!

Current status June 21, 2010

2010-06-21T11:17:00.000-04:00

Talking to the Xlibris people to drop the value of the ebook for Last of the Grapefruit Wars to 5.99, to make it more attractive as a purchase...
Saw Toy Story 3. Cried twice, and counted at least 3 other moments where Pixar could have made me cry like a beech.
Still studying for A+ Certification, turns out I do need to have the 701 AND 702, not just a 701 and 602. Grrrr.
Libraries are still struggling with budgets. Some places are thinking of cutting back on volunteer work for God's sake..
Sorely looking for work. Part-time work with Census won't start up again until July 1. And it's part-time, I need some revenues to pay the bills. :(
And the damn Chinese spammers will probably be the only ones reading this and posting to it. I just want some love, is that so wrong?

Buy my ebook!

2010-05-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

Finally got around to it, and got the publisher Xlibris to make my short story collection Last of the Grapefruit Wars available in ebook formats!

Buy my book on Amazon Kindle!
Buy my book on Barnes & Noble Nook!
Buy my book on Sony eReader!

It's a good book, people. Half-decent stories with minimal speeling and grammaticalist errors. Cheap too at 9.99 a pop (with discounts)! Tell your friends! Even you spammers in China! Buy My Book! :-)

A Librarian-Writer-Pirate-Wannabe Looks Back at 40

2010-05-08T17:42:00.000-04:00

(cross-posted to my otter blog):
And on this 40th birthday I can say only one thing:

Where the hell can I find a cute single woman - Age 25-35 with brunette hair, doesn't smoke, likes football and comic books, with knowledge of either A) European History B) American Politics or C) Paranormal (UFO and Ghosts) Studies - so I can date her and finally lose my goddamn virginity?!

Before April Goes Out the Door, Lemme Note

2010-04-28T16:46:00.000-04:00

1) I passed the A+ Essentials exam! FINALLY!

2) I STILL need to finish the NaNoWriMo book I worked on in November. :(

3) In another week I'll be just another pirate looking back at 40.

4) I keep asking you Chinese spammers to buy my book, but NOOOOOOOO you cheapskates are just here for the free donuts! Shame on you!

I'm getting spammed by the Chinese?

2010-04-05T13:25:00.000-04:00

Last two entries had comments on them trying to link to other locations on the 'Net. No comments at all, just the links. That never looks good, so I trashed them.

If you Chinese guys adding comments are really reading this, could you at least put in a sentence or two so I know I'm not getting spammed by 'bots? Better yet, can you guys go on Amazon.com and buy my book? Awesome sauce!

Ten Books That Influenced Me the Most

2010-03-23T14:22:00.000-04:00

Picked this up on Sullivan, floating about the other blogs:

Tyler Cowen lists the books that have influenced him most and encourages other bloggers to do the same.

Hmm. Biggest problem for me as both an enthusiastic reader in my teen years and as a librarian for most of my adult life is trying to narrow this down to ten. I dare say a lot of them are over on my Library Thing page (linkage to the right of the screen, no your other right), but some aren't.

I think I'll list them in chronological order as best I can remember:

Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey - Around Second or Third Grade I was into the paranormal stuff: UFOs and Ghost stories. The non-fiction stuff. There were a few titles on the Dunedin Public Library (this was back when it was in an abandoned Publix storefront) and this book I kept reading over and over. It introduced me to the Bell Witch legend, for one thing. It made me wonder what had happened to Merriwether Lewis (whose ghost was supposedly scraping at a water bucket ever since his mysterious death).

Han Solo at Star's End - okay, so it's not the Dune or Foundation series, which I also read at the time (between Second and Fifth Grade). But I ain't gonna suck up to all seven people reading this blog and list 'classic' works and get all mopey and philosophical about the profound literary intents of Asimov and Herbert. You get the trashy stuff I like dammit! I grew up to Star Wars: these pulp paperbacks (such as Splinter of the Mind's Eye) were filling in the years between the films and I liked them. Star's End was fun and had some pretty mature stuff to it - deaths, betrayal, snarky commentary - compared to the other more juvenile titles available to me at the time.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The first truly absurdist literary work I came across (Catch-22 was five years later). The first time I realized that not only does God have a sense of humor but that God was sometimes laughing AT us instead of with us. What amazed me when I go back to re-read his works were the bits of misanthropy I had not realized back in my youth: the jaded despair Adams had for humanity and our inability to see the problems past our own noses. The mood shifts explained away via the series' most cynical character Ford Prefect, who knew madness when he saw it and knew the best response was to avoid it at all costs and go to parties instead. I think that's why most H2G2 fans have a hard time accepting the follow-up book So Long And Thanks For All The Fish: it's perhaps Adams' most optimistic book in the series, or at least ends on a happy note...

Batman: Dark Knight Returns - actually it was Issue 2 of the miniseries, but the collected book itself in the end belongs on the list. It was in Mr. Henderson's journalism classroom back in oh 1986, during a free period between getting school newspapers together, that I spotted a copy of that Issue 2 sitting on a table. Not knowing whose it was, I picked it up and read it, fascinated by the artwork and the kinetic detail (I put it back when done, btw). The more I read it (not just the images: the narration balloons, the dialogue, the words themselves) the more I got hooked. This was the issue with the fight between Batman and the Mutant Leader, with a girl Robin showing up, the Batmobile literally bursting onto the scene as a tank (!), and the intermixing background noise of the DC Universe's fictional media debating the merits of costumed vigilantism. I had until then a vague interest in comic books, mostly some beat-up issues me and my brothers bought in paperback dealers, but this was what drew me in. I sought out a direct comic store from there on right about the time DC went through it's Crisis on Infinite Earth stage. As they were re-booting at the time it was the perfect moment for me to jump in, and I immersed myself (much to my parents' dismay) with the comics culture for about 10 years. But by 1996 I started to drift away, the costs of keeping up getting too much and the DC publishers having a very hard time keeping track of their convoluted re-booting. I've stuck to the occasional graphic novel from then on.

Killer Angels - In hindsight, the novel about the Battle of Gettysburg gets a tad... preachy... but it introduced me to some of my personal heroes, especially Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine (seriously, that's how I call him). One of these days I gotta go visit Little Round Top.

Rosa Luxemburg - we're getting into my college years now, and it's between this and any handful of titles I read for a Literary Utopias class. Problem there is, I can't recall any of those Utopia titles impressing me too much: like Ferris, I came to realize that -isms are bad and those Utopias all have one flaw. That utopias are impractical in real-world application. Actually there's a second flaw with Utopias: the utopian idealist is so intent on creating a model society that any human trait (sins such as greed, envy, lust) that would conflict with that utopia would be ignored rather than resolved, dooming said utopia when that human trait rose up.
So I point you all to a biography of someone I had to read about for another college class, one dedicated to reviewing and comparing/contrasting biographies of famous Great Men of History. I had Churchill, FDR, and Luxemburg. Talk about your contrasts. The first two guys would agree to the Great Man theory of historical thought: Luxemburg being a hard-core communist (international communist, not the Leninist types that dominated the 20th Century) would have argued more for a People's History where the flow of history came from the masses desiring change (in truth, it's a combination of the two: people push for change, but it takes the right leadership to focus that power in the best possible direction). One of the things I did get from reading the biographies on Luxemburg was that the communist movement wasn't entirely focused on Lenin and his Soviet cronies: there were other commies who disagreed with Lenin's motives and ambitions. It helped to read up on communist and socialist theory that wasn't tainted by Leninism... and still see the flaws inherent in communist theory. Leninist party rule led to corruption; Marxism itself oversimplified economics and class systems, and failed to recognize future trends that would lead away from industry and capital superstructure: those factors would lead to its failure at the end of the 20th Century.
There were about three biographies I relied on for the research: I'm pretty sure one was by Frolich, another by Nettl. The third one might have been Ettinger. Most of what I got from reading on Luxemburg was sadness of a sincerely-led life gone to waste.

Sandman: Fables and Reflections - part of my comics reading focused on the... macabre literature that DC was publishing that would lead into their Vertigo brand: I had begun reading Swamp Thing just as Alan Moore was leaving it, and from Swamp Thing I picked up the spin-off work Hellblazer (aka the one with the trenchcoat badass Constantine). A third one began at about the same time: Sandman, which started off as yet another horror-themed series but by the second "volume" began shifting into more high fantasy plot lines. Where the replacement writers and artists for Swamp Thing and Hellblazer thought it was all about the shock value (and where the artwork for Swampie went into questionably bad pencil/inkwork), Sandman retained high production value especially as one writer - Neil Gaiman - was in charge of the narrative. No one else wrote a Sandman story. Over the years Gaiman stuck to various themes, guiding the story lines to what was recognized by fans as a fixed ending - the fall of the Dream Lord - and providing a satisfying conclusion to the series. Few other comic books - excuse me, graphic narratives - could claim to aspire to high-quality literature (the closest I could suggest would be the Love And Rockets / Palomar series by the Hernandez Brothers. Dave Sim tried with his Cerebus but it drove him mad).
This particular volume I'm promoting - Fables and Reflections - is a sort of short story collection: in-between the epic story lines Gaiman wrote - Doll's House, Season of Mists, Brief Lives, Kindly Ones - were one-off stories of various characters affected by their dreams and the decisions they made whilst dreaming. Fables and Reflections collected the ones printed before and after Brief Lives (Gaiman's meditation on mortality, loss, and responsibilities), and included stories of regular people (sort of) and famous historical figures (Augustus the first Roman Emperor, Harum al-Rashid the caliph of Baghdad at its height of legend, Robespierre of the Reign of Terror, Marco Polo the traveler and historian of Kublai Khan). Among the famous historical figures is Joshua Abraham Norton, a expatriate businessman in mid-19th Century San Francisco who loses his fortune... and through the manipulations of the Dream Lord Morpheus playing against his Endless siblings finds his calling as Norton I, Emperor of the United States. It was Gaiman's tale that introduced me to the Emperor Norton, and after additional readings on him over the years I've come to respect the man. You ought to read up on him too. Then call the city of Oakland and insist the Bay Bridge be named in Norton's honor. Oakland never did like the Emperor... :(

American Gods - Gaiman gets two entries here. Oddly enough I don't think he's the best writer I've ever read (that would be Ray Bradbury: pity his best stuff is short stories and they're spread all over the place): he is however the most enjoyable, and the one who has proven to best mess with the established tropes.
American Gods carried over a theme from Gaiman's Sandman work: that the Gods (the pagan ones) are real, defined not by their own existence but by the belief system and legends created by us humans. It turns out that the United States is swarming with gods brought over from the Old World, but because of how and who we worship anymore the pagan gods have to 'find work' in other professions: Egyptian gods working at a funeral parlor in Cairo, IL.; a nameless god of fortune presiding over a Vegas casino; the goddess that may have been the Queen of Sheba reduced to a call girl; a Germanic death god reduced to near-retirement at a slaughterhouse; and Odin left to playing con games across the nation. The biggest problem for these aging gods is that the belief system in effect allows for newer gods to be born: a computer geek god, Media as the goddess of television and its' hypnotic, consuming ways; foot soldiers comprised of every conspiracy theory the wingnuts believe in; and more. And the New gods are convinced they need to destroy the Old gods to claim America for themselves.
The beauty of American Gods is how Gaiman focuses on how legends are born, on how myths perpetuate and how people even need to Believe In Things (even the fantastic, even the cynical) in order to exist in the Real World. The plot itself is irrelevant: the fun is in the details and the clues. And like most Gaiman stories, the climax isn't the big battle or the great moral victory (which actually rarely happens in his works), the climax is... well, that would be telling too much. Just remember this: only the gods are real...

No Plot? No Problem! - Shameless plug for the NaNoWriMo.

Price of Loyalty - A book focusing on George W. Bush's first Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, this is a fascinating insider look from a noted business and political figure whose falling out with the Bush/Cheney/Rove crowd was big news. While O'Neill's early focus in the administration was on getting passage of Bush's prized tax cut package, the later chapters detailing the descent into war-frenzy after 9/11 are chilling. O'Neill's recognition that the push for an Iraq War required the government to pull back on the tax cuts led to in my mind the most insulting moment in political history: a disinterested, almost nonchalant VP Cheney telling O'Neill "Deficits don't matter." Trillions of dollars in debt later, Cheney still needs to see jail time for that kind of blase mismanagement and political short-sightedness.
There have been tens of other books published about the nightmare that was the Bush the Lesser administration - Dean's Worse Than Watergate, anything by Glenn Greenwald - but this one by Suskind is more accessible as it has a likable and believable protagonist in O'Neill, whose forays into the world of business (Alcoa executive) provides a surprising amount of humorous moments.

There you have it. Took me 3 days to pile this list together. Now, is anyone willing to add my book to their list of influential titles?! Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?!

I Survived South Florida

2010-03-14T13:57:00.000-04:00

From my previous post, discussing my trip back to the Ft. Lauderdale/Miami metro and what I expected from the job interview:

Except for the traffic. I'm pretty damn sure South Florida traffic is still a frakking nightmare.

Hmmm, yeah, that was pretty much right. I-595 heading in Thursday night, definitely nasty. The drive into Hialeah on I-75 went well, but driving back? Bumper-to-bumper from Miramar to Weston...

As for the interview itself? Florida National College was hiring for Library Director. Supervisory, with two librarians, a library assistant, and a handful of clerks on staff, so it was a better staffing situation than the previous small college I interviewed last year.

The interview itself went... I have to admit I was rusty. Haven't interviewed in a year. There were questions from the panel about why I had a year-long gap on the resume: I noted I was taking classes for computer certification and was job hunting, noting the current difficulties of the job market. They asked about how I lost my last full-time job: I answered honestly (incompatibility) but it's never easy explaining why you lose a job. They seemed to be packing in a set of interviews that afternoon, so I do know there's competition for the spot (in this market there has to be. Officially it's six people per open job: from the rumors I'm getting it's more like twenty per open job!)

Well, we'll see how it goes.

Going Back to South Florida

2010-03-09T20:03:00.000-05:00

As in the Boca-Broward-Bimini Triangle... Palm Beach/Broward/Dade Metro of Doom. I'm going back for a job interview down there. Going back...

I moved there in 1994 to begin my first full-time job as a Librarian I at the North Regional / BCC Library. It was a brand new structure back then, fresh paint, new carpeting, new shelves, new everything. Lord, that was 16 years ago, and it was pretty beat up the last time I visited in... what was it, 2004?

What happened was... I had wanted to work in academia, you see. And the NR branch was part of a County Public Library system. While as a joint-use library it also served the community college students, in truth there wasn't much in the way of academic-level research offered. So even though I had a decent job there, I kept sending my resumes to colleges here and there, just looking, interviewing sometimes (why I didn't get that North Florida job, I'll never know, I thought I nailed that interview). So in some respects I never really wanted to stay there...

Part of it also was the fact I took a promotion up after about six years from Librarian I to II, which moved me to a supervisory role and into the Public Computer Labs... at other Regional branches. Worked at South Regional for about seven months in one of the most cramped staff offices I'd ever seen (it had been built before the widespread need for computers at every staff cubicle... it was also built with some of the shoddiest materials I'd ever seen, the roof LEAKED, this was a Library for God's sake), then transferring up to another brand new Regional library for about a year... then transferred from there to the Main branch as a regular Reference librarian again until 2003 when an opportunity opened up at my alma mater UF. Job history from there gets a little more complicated to where I'm sitting here unemployed in Pasco County wondering just what the hell I've done wrong job-hunting the last 14 months...

I last visited Broward County for a friend's retirement party. That was 2004, maybe 2005. Only stayed for that and not much more. It's been six (maybe five) years since I'd even been down there. I know South Regional built a new building roughly 4 years ago. I figure most of the people I knew working there probably moved on... It's been so long, and I never made an honest effort to keep in touch.

The job I'm interviewing for is a small private college in Dade. If I have some time, I might visit a few old haunts, see how the place has changed... sure it's been five (six) years since I'd been down there... but I know things change within a heartbeat.

Except for the traffic. I'm pretty damn sure South Florida traffic is still a frakking nightmare.

Geekin' Out On Trek

2010-02-07T15:04:00.000-05:00

If I have any blog readers, you might know I'm a huge geek. Well, both in girth and in attitude, but still.

Grew up a huge fan of Star Trek, for one. Also was hard into video gaming, as I was a middle-schooler the years that console and arcade gaming exploded on the market. Atari Boy, y'all. Evolved from there into other scifi obsessions (X-Files, the Matrix) and other gaming habits (computer and Massive Multiplayer Online).

All of this is leading up, of course, to this previous week. When Star Trek Online finally came out (nice Websnark review here).

This had been a game in development for AGES. Other franchises of fantasy and scifi had come out with MMOs of their own - notably Star Wars Galaxies and Lord of the Rings Online - but Trek seemed to have serious issues.

A lot of it had to do with roleplay within the established universe, as it were. Most other games, you create a character and play it however you want, no problem. The powers and actions of that character based on Archetype, sure, but otherwise you can do whatever you want wherever you were (depending on zone hazards, of course). But Star Trek is, well, a little different. Star Trek is an ensemble effort: a character in Trek is part of a crew. A Trek character serves a function on a starship, be it a bridge officer, a security guard, an engineer, an Away Team scientist, a medic, what have you. In a true roleplay environment, your character would be performing ship duties alongside hundreds of other online players... bumping into each other, arguing over who gets to work the Botany lab (or worse, arguing over who gets to sit in the Big Chair), filling out paperwork... in other words, getting bored out of your mind as you would in the Real World. It also meant that when the ship you were on finally went into battle or a conflict of some kind, the success of the ship depended on hundreds of fellow online players, which meant shiploads of lag or problems with key players not being online when the action goes down. Meaning harsher gameplay that wouldn't really be any fun at all. Word is/was the original game designers were trying to create that kind of MMO experience... and were failing miserably.

Other companies passed this project around like a hot potato before it landed with Atari and Cryptic Studios. The people involved here (including a particular person I'm not a huge fan of from the CoH days) made a judgment call for playability over pure roleplay.

They created a situation in-game where everyone gets their own ship and becomes Captain of their own crew.

The Trek purists, for what I know, did howl at that. The gaming purists I'm willing to bet cheered their asses off.

It does simplify the game. No arguments over who gets to be a Captain as EVERYONE gets to be one. The argument now is more about A) what ship you really get and B) how quickly you can upgrade to the bigger (Enterprise) better (Enterprise-E) ships (ENTERPRISE!!!).

No arguments either on who plays what role as bridge bunnies, uh officers. Each Captain hires on or 'buys' other officers at key positions (Tactical, Science, Engineering) depending on the number of Assignment slates available (higher ranks achieved adds up to 5 spots). The bridge crew also works as your default Away Teams with you (basic Red Shirt security guys to fill the spots not yet unlocked in Assignment).

Multiplayer works like this in Trek: you fly your ship into star systems, to either patrol them, locate problems, fight off bad guys (Klingons! Who have allied themselves with the Gorn, the Cardassians, and a few other minor villain classes), and otherwise cause havoc before the Prime Directive comes in. You have fleet battles and beam-down away missions. And you automatically team with anyone else who enters your system working the same mission objective (if people come in half-way through a mission, the objectives scale to difficulty accordingly).

Ship and crew upgrades come with Inventory items to boost shields, weapons, engineering, science, and tactical advantages. You can sell Tribbles, if you dare. Leveling up in rank involves 'training' your talents in particular matters as well as training up your bridge NPC officers (you can install Inventory items like more powerful phaser rifles to your bridge crew as well).

I've been playing for the past week (between job hunting and all). One of the advantages of Cryptic being involved is that Trek Online gets the Character Creation system that Cryptic enjoys deploying: it's one of the most complex of all the MMOs out there, but also the best as it lets you choose uniforms, body shape, facial color and structure, EVERYTHING. Eric at Websnark is particularly thrilled he built a Tree officer (!).

For myself, I am now Captain (Lt. rank, actually, but working to actual Captain status) of the USS Esoteric (yes, Phil, I'm borrowing one of your favorite words, sue me!), flying about the Vulcan/Risa sectors handling a lot of zone hunting missions and doing my best not to attract attention from the GIANT SPACE WASPS OF ALTAIR NINE! eeeeeeeeeek. Anywho. The game is a bit of a blast... except I'd really love to get more weapon slots on my Cruiser. Only two in front (Phaser, Torpedo) and one in back (Phaser). I need more torpedo tubes!

Gameplay itself is a lot like the old Starfleet Command game: you fire attacks, you balance your shields, and you turn and circle about in space with your strongest shields facing your opponents at all times. Meaning a lot of evasive maneuvers and spinning about the game grid. Ground attack fights with Away Teams are a lot like regular MMO PvE: shoot at bad guys, get your teammates to heal you or buff your shields, and target the bad guys with special attacks for a one-shot kill. Oh, and the Away Team missions if you team with other players have the 5-character slots filled by your teammates and by whatever NPC the team leader chooses (haven't played that option yet, but should be interesting).

I haven't run into any PvP instances yet, although I'm pretty sure that aspect is in the game - probably the Neutral Zone between Federation and Klingon space...

And now... TO INFINITY... AND BEY... what you mean, wrong show? Sigh. Go geeks!

Job Hunting Update Jan. 2010

2010-01-25T13:04:00.000-05:00

It's been one full year of joblessness. I'd been spending most of it studying up for the CompTIA A+ certification exams.

The CompTIA A+ 220-601 Certification for Essentials? Tried it twice, once in December and once this month. Missed both times by what looks to be one question (arrrrgggghhhhhh)

The CompTIA A+ 220-602 Certification for IT Technician? Tried it last week. Passed by what looks to be 1.5 questions! (wooooohoooooooooooooooo yeah baby yeah I RULE I RULE)

Problem is I still need the Essentials to be fully certified for computer tech support. And the problem there is the CompTIA exams are upgrading to cover more Vista (why?! Vista sucked!) and some Win7 (which should be more appropos). So I gotta keep studying and re-trying for the ~~601~~ 701 exam. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I can send out more resumes and try more job possibilities and... and... there's not much else to do with a state unemployment rate at 13 percent AND GROWING. I shoulda been a CEO...

Witty's Year End Book Review 2009

2009-12-19T16:12:00.015-05:00

Just as a reminder, this isn't a list of new books that came out from 2008 or 2007, these are simply the best books I've read this year.

Best Fiction Book

Being a little busy in the job-hunting and college-class-taking this year, I didn't get many chances to sit down and enjoy a novel or five.

Best Non-Fiction Book

Presidential Character: predicting performance in the White House, James David Barber.
My college studies at Florida were geared for a Journalism degree, which didn't work out as I'd hoped. But class requirements included a good number of Political Science classes, and in one of them (either a class with Professor David Conradt on comparative political systems, or another class on Famous People which had me comparing FDR, Churchill and Rosa Luxemberg... yeah, go figure) this research by James Barber came up. Barber had worked out a system of psychological profiling for Presidents, based on work histories and biographies of those that came before. He became famous for predicting Richard Nixon's decline/fall during Nixon's first term, and his subsequent reviews of following Presidents (Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder).
Barber is responsible for establishing the two measurements for Presidents - Positive/Negative and Active/Passive - creating four types: Active/Positive (constant policy actions, positive and flexible view of Presidential power and decision-making), Active/Negative (Lots of policy actions, but with a narrow, inflexible and sometimes corrupt view of power), Passive/Positive (little initiative, relying more on Congress or on society as a whole to go their way, but eager to provide leadership as a statesman or captain at the helm), Passive/Negative (very little true initiative, only leading out of obligation). Interesting side note: the first four Presidents on the list - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison - fit each type. Quick, figure out which was which. :)
Given my political leanings (and my ever-growing animosity towards certain current-ex-vice-Presidents who ruled behind the curtain) I've been digging around for Barber's work for ages. I finally spotted Amazon selling a 4th edition (textbook for a college course again) and ordered one. Thanks to Barber's book, I've gotten a better understanding of how we should rate Presidents... Bush the Lesser? In my estimates he's a Passive/Negative - more a pawn of other political forces than his own, more intent on the perks of the Presidency than actually leading (enjoying a birthday celebration while Rome burned uh New Orleans flooded, for example). The book also helped nail Dick Cheney (who as you look closer at the Bush the Lesser admin was a true co-President than anyone before him) as an Active/Negative (a true heir to Nixon, which is terrifying).
Hmm, I should leave that for my other blog. But still, this is a great Poli Sci book and a lot of libraries ought to carry it.

I still suggest the No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty, as this is vital reading for the NaNoWriMo event.

Best Graphic ~~Novel~~ Series, This Year

Instead of a novel, this year I've taken a liking to a crossover event series.
DC Comics' Blackest Night primarily written by Geoff Johns and penciled by Ivan Reis, is still in production, Issue 5 so far out of 8 issues. And a lot of background is needed here...
Long long time ago, there were major comic book publishers: National/DC and Marvel were just a few. They used to publish their superhero titles with little interaction between their established characters... but then one day Superman teamed with Batman... and then Justice Societies got together... and then the World War ended and superhero comics were attacked for unhealthy morals and everything went to Western and WWII titles... and then superheroes came back, but with new origins... and then the new Flash literally ran into the old Flash and proved there were alternate universes... and then DC heroes formed a Justice League while Marvel started Avengers within the now-expanding comics universe in each publisher's realm... and by the 1980s it all got convoluted because writers and editors with each book weren't keeping up with everyone's else work, and conflicting mythologies and plotlines were cluttering up stories where the fans expected clarity and continuity.
So DC Comics decided in the mid-1980s to rewrite their universe with a Crisis: update it, kill off cumbersome galleries of side characters, streamline the history to make it compatible with the real world, everything. They killed off major characters - Supergirl, Flash - and rewrote existing ones with brand-new origins - Superman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, slew of others. It got so popular that Marvel countered with Secret Wars as a crossover, and then DC published a few crossovers to keep their universe interactive (and to make money). And thus were the crossover comic events born.
But where Crisis tried to clear up everything, it actually made things worse. Origin rewrites for some characters - Hawkman in particular - were delayed and conflicted with other stories. DC's solution? More crossovers! But in the process, existing characters were re-written again - in particular Green Lantern being turned into a villain called Parallax - and more killed off. In attempts to attract readers, the publishers started more and more crossovers - to encourage purchasers buy multiple titles - and in order to justify the crossovers being MAJOR UNAVOIDABLE EVENTS OF ULTIMATE DESTINY - those crossovers kept killing more and more characters.
But all this character killing created problems. For one, the publishers - both DC and Marvel were guilty of it - were bumping off what proved to be marketable, likeable characters. When replacement characters proved unlikeable, flimsy excuses and retcons were used to bring dead characters back. The biggest publisher stunt ever was the Death of Superman... all because it was too quickly followed by a plotline of multiple Supermen leading up to Supes' all-too-expected ressurection. The other problem with all the superhero deaths was that by relying on it too often as a plot device - oooh, we're killing a character! oooooh, we're bringing a dead character back! - it became too cheap a gimmick. Readers got jaded by all the death to where rather being a shocking, humbling moment in a comic universe's storytelling, it was mocked, parodied, and expected. Everyone now expects a superhero's girlfriend to end up in a fridge... which is both sad and sick. Oh, by the way, they killed Captain America a few years ago... and where the mainstream media made a big deal out of it, fans knew he was coming back sooner rather than later... Oh, and Batman's dead too. Yawn.
Which leads up to Blackest Night. Written by Geoff Johns, currently the guy responsible for the destruction of DC Comics, Night is playing off the threads of ideas than ALAN MOORE HIMSELF toyed with back when he worked for DC in the 1980s. Moore had during his brief stint there tossed out idea after idea that deconstructed, rewrote, and expanded the superhero mythos in ways you couldn't even imagine... and almost all of it never happened. Twilight of the Superheroes remains one of the best-known "lost" works in popular culture, with only bits and pieces - the Armageddon 2001 crossover, the Kingdom Come Elseworld miniseries - emerging as bastardized versions. Night is playing off a storyline Moore created for a Green Lantern anthology, wherein legendary Abin Sur is confronted with prophecies regarding his eventual death and the fall of the Green Lantern Corps itself. It was Moore's attempt to explain why Abin Sur was flying a spaceship when Lanterns are perfectly capable of flying solo: the prophecy weakened Abin's faith in the ring, and paradoxically led to his death (allowing the ring to pass to Hal Jordan of Earth). Johns read the story, and decided that the other elements of that prophecy - namely, the fall of the Corps (which would mean the fall of the universe) had to be played out. Hence the coming of Blackest Night.
Johns has basically, over the past 5-7 years, been revamping the entire DC Universe yet again, trying to undo the wreckage caused by Crisis on Infinite Earths by bringing out more Crises after another - Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis. Each one actually killing off more characters than before, infuriating readers with bizarre character derailments, bringing back dead heroes with more bizarre explanations, each one actually causing MORE damage to an increasingly unworkable multiverse.
But it turns out Johns might have planned this all along. Make things worse in order to make things better... and so far the idea is bearing interesting fruit... Because it might fix the problem with comic book deaths once and for all.
Night is basically Johns' answer to all the comic book deaths we've suffered over the last 40 years, in fact. Every character killed during the past series of Crises are RISING from the grave, but as zombies... No, wait, while you think "Hey it's been done" this time these zombies are different. Powered by Black Lantern rings (a whole rainbow of Lanterns have exploded on the scene), the undead superheroes are attacking their still-living colleagues by provoking emotional responses... using the moment of peak emotion to kill their prey and in true zombie fashion turn the fallen into more Black Lantern zombies. All in an attempt to resurrect a Death demon called Nekron... who seeks to destroy the emotional light of the universe (basically ALL LIFE) to return all to the black void. Deal is, Nekron just revealed he is not only powering the newly dead, but that he had a hand in allowing previous heroes - Superman! for example - to return from the dead with Nekron's taint... meaning they all Came Back Wrong... From what I'm gleaning off the plotline, Johns is seemingly wiping the slate clean, bringing back ALL dead heroes (and villains) for the purpose of this miniseries, and then using the mechanics of the Black Lantern's strengths and weaknesses to hammer out a method in the future (once all is set right) of killing certain characters and giving them an out of getting resurrected later.
What's enjoyable about this miniseries is that finally someone is looking at the bigger picture of how haphazard the universe-fixing attempts were, and how stupid and eventually fan-crushing the whole Comic Book Death meme has played out the last 15-20 years. Just as long as Johns gets it to make sense in the last issue...

Unavoidable Book That Spells Doom for Humanity

There's actually been a lot this year: all of them far right screeds. All of them wrongly made best-sellers (more out of marketing and fan-driven quantity than actual quality). I'm not linking to any of them. Suffice to say, just avoid the Personal Narrative political bio/philosophy titles for the past 3-5 years. You'll thank me.

Best Book by Someone I Know and Corresponded with via Email on an Occasional Basis

Kinda hard to list one this year: being out of the library profession, I haven't kept up with Petrucha's latest. I do know Nantus is getting a second book reviewed in the galley stage, meaning a print release soon. 'Course, I've been busy meself...

NaNo Update 12/15/09

2009-12-15T10:13:00.002-05:00

I'm finishing up the novel, but now without the deadline - and with an A+ Cert exam I gotta cram for due next week - I'm finding it hard to keep up with the pace I had in November... sigh.

Meanwhile, I'm looking at creating another Best Of year-end list... with a few changes.

Holy Hyperbole! I survived NaNoWriMo!

2009-11-30T19:47:00.002-05:00

It's true, it's all true, check out my page...

And the worst part is, the novel itself isn't done: the 50,000 words has covered roughly 2/3s of the tale, maybe even half... there's still a lot to put in, crazy stuff to be sure...

Bwhahahahahaaaaa...

Congrats to any others who read this blog who have partaken of the NaNo.

NaNo Update 11/24/09

2009-11-24T19:05:00.000-05:00

30,000 plus words. 3/5th of the way done.

Need to focus! I can get 3,000 words done tonight, maybe 4,000 if I push it...

NaNoWriMo Update 11/18/2009

2009-11-18T23:04:00.001-05:00

Holy cow. I actually got 15,000-plus words at the moment!

This is the latest into the month I've yet found myself still typing. Last couple of times my writer's block had kicked in hard by now. This is good for me.

Yesterday I did 5,000 words, and that's even with the distraction of the new Star Trek movie on DVD. So all I need are a few more days like that, I might even make the 50,000 word count!

Writers Block In the Age of NaNo

2009-11-05T16:50:00.001-05:00

Nanowrimo is on.

I have only 95 words at this point.

I need to write 1,667 words per day to get to 50,000 by the end of the month.

Someone please get over here with a shotgun and an egg timer to get me motivated please.

It begins... again! NaNoWriMo in one month

2009-10-07T11:47:00.001-04:00

Now that I'm mostly unemployed I might actually have time to do this... sigh.

Carl Sagan Has Been Modified

2009-09-26T16:46:00.003-04:00

Caught this on Mightygodking (and apparently it's achieved memetic mutation):

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Can you imagine waking up to this video/song in the morning, and having your brain upload the chorus (A still more glorious dawn awaits / Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise / A morning filled with 400 billion suns / The rising of the milky way)?

My head would have exploded.

This is, for those who don't know, a video editing mash-up of sorts of Carl Sagan's epic COSMOS series from 1980. I was ten at the time of its broadcast, just learning myself about the world around me, awareness of the globe, of history and literature and space and time. And here came Sagan, presenting astronomy and physics and mathematics (and even biology to explain how humanity can even conceive and think of the universe where other animals can't) in simple, easy to learn concepts. I think he caught a lot of flack from hard scientists for 'dumbing down' as it were those scientific fields. The critics were wrong. Sagan probably did what few scientists, and indeed what few philosophers and theologists, could do: he helped explain where we (humanity) were in the vast cosmos (a small blue dot on a thin sunbeam).

The mixer's website is here. He has downloadables for MP3 and MP4/iPhone formats. I seriously recommend dropping ducats in his hat: this is an awesome work. Links to others who have made their comments and awe known are here and here and over there in the vast cosmos of the Intertubes.

Lyrics posted below. Highlights are mine, where the song touches my imagination the deepest. (The song starts with Carl Sagan apologizing for his attempt to sing. He begins to whoop and caw like a bird, which is edited into a sampled backbeat.)

Lyrics:

Sagan:
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

Chorus:
A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has its own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world

Chorus

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

Hawking: (Rolling in like a rap artist cohort, like Snoop Dogg to Dr. Dre, singing counterweight)
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas

Sagan:
How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds

Chorus x2

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we've waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting...

(mind blown)

Well, Once Again...

2009-09-11T12:32:00.000-04:00

...The 3-Day Novel didn't pan out. Got 4.5 chapters done.

But I can now plan out getting at least one chapter a day done. Well, once I get a few more days cleared out...

2009: 3-Day Novel

2009-09-01T14:00:00.001-04:00

I'm trying it again this year.

I'd created an online blog just as a place to type out personal motivationals (get to work, dammit!) and I think this time I've done a better job of creating characters, set pieces, plot...

Knock on formica, I start this Saturday.

Why Harry Potter?

2009-07-11T16:37:00.008-04:00

In 1997, based on a search in OCLC WorldCat, there were 83 English language books written about magic that would be considered Juvenile fiction (search term - Su: Magic Juvenile Fiction).

One of those books was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, published in the UK. The US market would get the book in 1998 (retitled with Sorcerer's Stone), published among 90 such fictional works.

This book would go on to sell 300,000 copies by 1999 in the UK and roughly 11 million (hardback AND paperback) in the US; top bestsellers lists; spawn a series of equally mass-selling books - nay spawn an entire industry of toys, foods, and other books; get made into blockbuster movies; and basically turn childrens' literary publishing into a financial behemoth as hundreds of other would-be Rowlings scribbled out pale imitations to cash in (with only a handful - Lemony Snicket comes to mind - showing any originality deserving our love).

The deal is, why? Why this book? What was it about the first Harry Potter book that made it so popular?

The reasons why are that firstly Rowling created memorable characters and memorable settings, and secondly like any good author Rowling stole (c'mon. Every artist a cannibal, every poet a thief...) from the good and/or great storytellers that came before.

The earliest comparisons Rowling got were to another well-known children's author, Roald Dahl, whose classics (Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) were detailed child's-eye-view-of-the-world tales replete with adult (and child) grotesques. Are there any true differences between Matilda's uncaring parents the Wormwoods and Harry's Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon Dursley? Draco Malfoy and Veruca Salt are practically siblings (hate to think of them as boyfriend/girlfriend shudder. Oh God I hope there's no fanfic on that). Dolores Umbridge and Mrs. Trunchbull have to fight it out as Worst Teacher Ever. These characters are archetypes: bad parents, spoiled children, officious and uncaring bureaucrats, and all of them bullies to boot. Note too the detail of names, how they roll off the tongue as literally defining each character and yet made colorfully off-beat.

Rowling also borrowed heavily on a form of literature better recognized in England than in the US: that of the Boarding School coming-of-age tales. Such tales were prevalent when boarding schools dotted the British landscape, mainly the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Post-WWII era with a decline in such schools being replaced by regular public-funded schools also meant a decline in such stories, replaced by standard coming-of-age tales. Boarding school stories focused on basic themes: friendships made, bullies defeated, sporting events won. Said sporting events usually cricket or football (no broom-riding sports I'm afraid, old bean).

It might surprise, but Rowling also steals from a British author more popular than her: Agatha Christie. Potter books are - for the most part - plotted like murder mysteries: Whodunnit? (also How'd They Do It? and Why'd They Do It?) Who's stealing the Philosopher's Stone? Who opened the Chamber of Secrets? Why after 13 years is Sirius Black coming after Harry Potter now (or is he...?), and how is he doing it? Who really betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort? Who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire? What's Voldemort want with the Department of Mysteries? Who is the Half-Blood Prince? What are Horcruxes? And the most important question of all: When will Josh and Donna make out? Oh wait wrong fanfic obsession... And that was resolved halfway through Season 7 anywho, but I digress.

Last but not least, the real reason Harry Potter sparked so much interest: Rowling followed the basic rules and plotlines of the Monomyth. And while Joseph Campbell's critics can argue that over-reliance of the monomyth as simple plot structure has led to a lot of crappy fiction, you can't argue when it's done right (Star Wars, the Matrix, even Star Trek). And Rowling gets it right. It also doesn't hurt that she follows a lot of fantasy-themed elements set down in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, a reference that was in the works just as she published the first Potter book.

She created foremost a world that is both mundane but magical. Obviously, she created a Hero (Harry Potter) but also loyal Companions (Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger) who provide the Hero with vital tools: Ron gives Harry access to the Weasley family who act as advocates and guides to a Wizarding world he's unfamiliar with (as well as providing a surrogate home the Burrows) while allowing Ron opportunities to shine separately from his successful older brothers; Hermione provides knowledge and problem-solving skills that otherwise would lay dormant. There are additional Companions as well, notable among them Hagrid, Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. Harry has his Mentor in Albus Dumbledore, although Remus Lupin and later Sirius Black provide Mentoring as well. And there's the Pariah Elite formed as the Order of the Phoenix, the wizard resistance formed to fight Voldemort and his Death Eater minions. And Snape... I'm tempted to place him as a Threshold Guardian, but arguably as the most complex character Rowling created pinning Snape down to any one Role is tricky. One more obviously is that Rowling created a Dark Lord (literally) in Tom Marvolo Riddle AKA Lord Voldemort, who threatened both Wizarding and Muggle worlds (The Land) with Plight... and like all Dark Lords he may be powerful but can be maddeningly blind to obvious flaws in his various plans to rule/destroy the world. Voldemort violates Rule 6 nearly every book he appears. Sheesh. Oddly enough, Voldemort never evens tries to violate "Rule 34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps."

With the pieces in place, she follows most if not all of the monomyth rules faithfully: the Call to Adventure comes with that first letter from Hogwarts (addressed to the abused Harry's "Cupboard Under the Stairs"). The Refusal of the Call isn't Harry's fault: his aunt and uncle despise Wizardy and hoped by abusing Harry they would crush it out of him. Supernatural Aid comes via Hagrid who ensures the Call to Adventure is heeded, and Hagrid is the first to escort Harry into the Wizarding World (Diagon Alley) and help him locate tools (Wand, Owl, School Supplies) to assist in his survival. The Crossing the First Threshold and the beginning of the Road of Trials are basically Harry's first journey to his new school Hogwarts, during which he meets his Companions (Ron, Hermione and Neville) as well as Enemy/obstacle Draco Malfoy who acts as a bully and minor threat for most of the overall series. Draco is merely a representative of the True Threat Voldemort, reflecting Voldemort's bigotry and sadism but unable to truly achieve the malice of his Dark Lord. Past this, the book series is replete with Thresholds to pass and overcome, and various Belly of the Whales that Harry must survive: Entering the final chamber to confront the person stealing the Sorceror's Stone; Entering the Chamber of Secrets to save Ginny; Entering the Shrieking Shack to save Ron and confront Sirius Black (and the Truth and Atonement with the Father that Sirius represents); Entering a labyrinth that would lead to Voldemort and the Death Eaters at the end of the Third Trial of the Triwizard Tournament; Entering the Department of Mysteries to rescue Sirius Black but instead facing a trap; Entering Tom Riddle's childhood cave to recover a Horcrux; and with the last novel Entering an otherwise impenetrable goblin bank to steal a Horcrux, Entering the Room of Requirement to locate another Horcrux, and Entering the Forbidden Forest to finally confront his own Death (?) at Voldemort's hand. That's a lotta whale bellies.

There's Apotheosis with Harry's self-sacrifice at Voldemort's hand in the final book, but that leads to the Boon, the wisdom and knowledge gained in the Afterlife. With the Boon (knowledge that Harry is no longer a Horcrux, and the realization that Voldemort doesn't have true mastery of the Elder Wand) Harry considers for a moment the Refusal to Return, then acknowledges he must Return to bestow the Boon to everyone else by destroying Voldemort once and for all. He returns to the mundane world but is Master of Two Worlds (the World of Magic and the World of the Afterlife), and exults in his Freedom to Live by showing he was and remains unafraid of Death, unlike Voldemort who fears Death and is destroyed by his own Killing curse.

There's probably a more detailed way (probably a whole book) of fitting the Harry Potter series into the Monomyth structure (I didn't even touch on the Goddess stuff), but the point is Potter-as-Monomyth works. And despite all the complaints about the Monomyth, it DOES create easily-read, easily-recognizable tales that appeal across the broad spectrum of storytelling (well, at least within Western/Eurocentric Literature). That's why Harry Potter got to be so popular 10 years ago, and why it's still popular today, and why it may yet remain popular 100 years from now.

After the 4th of July...

2009-07-09T11:57:00.001-04:00

...It's downhill to Christmas and New Year's from here.

Where does the time go? Oh, right.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... snore... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

With a movie en route, Harry Potter post forthcoming.

Geek Days Are Here Again - Trekkie Edition

2009-05-07T10:26:00.002-04:00

I've mentioned elsewhere how much of a Geek I am. Tomorrow will be a day I get my Geek on, a special day, a red-letter day.

One, it's my birthday. Two, it's the release of the Star Trek: The Reboot movie.

I need to note how much of a cornerstone Trek is to the Geek culture. There are a slew of different Geeks in the world - Tech Geeks, Anime Geeks, History Geeks, Political Geeks, High Fantasy Geeks (LotR geekdom started years before Trek did), Sports Geeks - and in some ways Trek touches upon them all. Fans of the West Wing noticed how the show brought out the scifi Geek in them and duh it's just Star Trek In the Oval Office, with Bartlet as Kirk, Leo as Spock, CJ as Uhura, Josh Sam and Toby as Scotty Sulu and/or Chekov, and Donna as Yeoman Rand (with the Republicans as Klingons). And the inverse of that is how the Original Series came as a parable of the Cold War era, the utopian ideal of JFK's New Frontier, with Starfleet as the West, Klingons as Russians, Romulans as Chinese. Star Trek VI is practically a Trek revisionism to the collapse of the Soviet Union: Praxis' explosion as Chernobyl, Gorkon as Gorbachev (destabilized via coup rather than assassinated), script filled with quoted references to Cold War dialog (my twin brother at this point still doesn't get the "Only Nixon Could Go to China" reference), the Khitomer Accords akin to the opening up of Eastern Europe and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Everything else in Geek culture owes something to Star Trek. Even Star Wars, a cultural behemoth in its own right. Trek was the first science fiction show to have dedicated conventions that actually got noticed (usually mocked from the 70s to the 90s) as a cultural phenom in their own right. Trek made geeking out over Tolkien and Hobbits more high-brow (snerk): before Trek, obsessing over Middle-earth was something kept to university coffee houses and halfling-weed-scented basements. Trek culture meshed and still meshes with Superhero Comics culture. Quoting from Trek is now so common people don't even blink or snicker when they do. Wearing Trek outfits outside of movie theaters and convention halls doesn't seem so weird anymore. We've even got serious (well as serious as current circumstances allow them) political commentators noting how much Obama is like Spock (that Obama shows signs of being an unabashed Geek (only a Geek would pose like that in front of a Superman statue) in his own right helps)... and that supposedly humorous Onion article that posits the BSG finale got Obama emotionally distraught? Probably was more accurate than the satirists thought... but I digress.

People who wouldn't even think of themselves as hardcore Trekkies or even hardcore Geeks could still quote heavily from the series magnum opus, Wrath of Khan - and not just Shatner's overemotive "KHHHHAAAAANNNNNN!" I'm talking knowing what a Kobayashi Maru is, that the Klingons have a proverb about revenge being a dish best served cold, that Ricardo Montalban didn't wear a chest prothesis for that outfit (yeah ladies, Mr. Rourke was BUFF).

Normal people know how to pronounce "nuclear wessels." People driving 90 MPH on the highway get pulled over by cops telling them they're speeding over Warp Factor 9. Regular people know Sulu got married... well, yeah, still don't know how he's gonna squeeze out a daughter though... Shakespeare is getting translated (back) into the original Klingon. Doctor Who knows of Spock as a TV character (which ruined the hell out of all those damn epic Crossover fanfic stories that had the Enterprise crew Trekkin with the Doctor! NOOOOO).

This is the Internet Age. Brought to you by computer nerds, bringing you information over the tubes, fashioning all Internet Traditions. And don't forget all those engineering techheads who designed mobile phones. Of course Star Trek is going to be all over this place. Soon, all will be Trek.

(Flashes the Vulcan greeting). Party Hard, fanboys!

NFL Draft Day Blogging 2009

2009-04-25T10:54:00.009-04:00

Hola, to all three people who might even know this blog exists. :)
Today's a huge day for me as a Bucs fan, I'm gonna be following the NFL rookie draft this afternoon. I'm gonna see about liveblogging it, which means constant EDIT updates to this particular post. I'm gonna see if I can do it, and how many updates I can do before the computer decides to kill me for overloading its CPU...

Some notes beforehand, I've made my predictions (based mostly on the Bucs NOT trading down from the 19th spot, something they're hoping to do) and am now waiting to see how far off I am in mah guesswork.

I'm primarily hoping the Bucs go for Percy Harvin as a need pick for WR. But I'm not blind to the Bucs' needs at DT and DE, so if the team goes there (possibly DT Peria Jerry) I won't have any problems.

What I will have a problem with is if the Bucs go with selecting a rookie QB like Josh Freeman with the 19th overall pick. Half the scouting boards (including that pompous ass Mel Kiper) have the Bucs going that way even though 1) Bucs have a decent roster of veteran QBs already and 2) Bucs have needs elsewhere. These jokers can't even argue that picking Freeman would be a Best-Available Pick (as opposed to Filling-Need Pick) because Freeman is ranked around the 50th spot with most scouting boards. These scouts seem to think the Bucs are screwed at QB because they don't like Leftwich or McCown or Griese. Phooey on that.

Early notes: Detroit has locked up the first overall pick to QB Dennis Quaid, uh Matt Stafford. Teams looking to trade up include the Giants who are hoping to snag WR Darrius Heyward-Bey before he goes to other WR-starved teams. Arizona has WR Boldin on the trading block, and apparently are dropping their demands so much that a smart team could snag Boldin, keep a decent early pick and still get a rookie they wanted. So DON'T expect the Bucs to make that move. ;-)

Draft officially starts in 4 hours. I will post UPDATES! Stay tuned.

Update - 3:42 PM. Currently at a Buffalo Wild Wings. Wireless works. Laptop now on battery power. See how long it lasts.
Most of the talk on the car radio was on the ridiculously rich contract Stafford got, and for the locals arguing about the need to trade down with the two teams most wanting to trade up (Arizona, NYGiants).

4:52 - Big shock with the Jets trading up to get Sanchez. Big question now is how this affects the next QB on the list (Freeman). With DE Jackson going ahead of other big names at the DE spot, there's a possibility the DE lineup will see a lot of activity with the next 12 spots...

5:37 - Didn't realize Denver needed RB. Wonder if the Bucs have a shot at LB Cushing... Biggest shock so far is still the Jets trade, but seeing some of the DEs slip from Top 5 to tenth and eleventh means there'll be more defensive end players on the board to tempt the Bucs...

6:01 - I call riot. FREEMAN?!?! WE TRADED UP FOR FREEMAN?!?!?! WE NEEDED DT! WE NEEDED WR!! WE COULD HAVE TAKEN OLB FOR GODS SAKE!!!!! GAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It's official. We suck.

9:00 - I doubt the Bucs can work out a trade to get back into the Second Round, so this is it for the day. My grand experiment in liveblogging the event kinda goes nowhere and I end up frustrated with the team once again. Sigh. It's a good thing there's a Star Trek movie coming out on my birthday I can geek out over in two weeks...

So I obsess over a few things

2009-04-18T21:06:00.003-04:00

I'm a geek. You might not have noticed by now but... yeah I kid. All four of you noticed on Day One.

I'm a comic book geek, movie geek, scifi geek, Trekkie (yes, I accept the term), XPhile, lit geek, cat geek, cheese geek, tall-long-haired-brunette-with-huge-tracks-of-land geek (I have a fetish, so? especially if she looks great in a Wonder Woman cosplay uniform), and sports geek.

I know that last bit sometimes doesn't square with all the other geekdoms - well other than the cheese and the tall brunettes with yabbos geekdoms - but, yeah, I get it from my mom's side of the family (poor Grampa was a Cubs (or was it teh Braves?) fan, Mom knows ever syllable of the War Eagle fight song). And having grown up in the Tampa Bay region from 1977 on, I got hooked early to the Tampa Bay Bucs pro football team (having them go to the playoffs when I was nine started the fan crush). So yeah, I follow a lot of football, college and pro.

I also obsess over the annual NFL rookie draft.

Not everyone gets the draft, I know. It's a hyped-up non-event in their eyes. No game is actually played out. No one really wins, or really loses (unless you're the Browns or Lions or Raiders, they haven't drafted smart in years!). It's a real-life version of Fantasy Football where REAL team owners get to select newbies to fill out their rosters, nothing more.

Except, except, except... There's a reason thousands of fans do follow Draft Day, or at least the First Round.

How the teams draft can tell you how the coaches and owners are thinking about their team's chances for the coming season. Who a team drafts can tell fans what to expect, what holes in the team line-ups needed to be filled. Like a few other team sports (baseball and hockey for example), pro football has a whole line-up of diversified player positions that require specific skills, so a team drafting a Wide Receiver with their first overall pick is telling fans they're trying to upgrade their passing attack. Like basketball, football draftees can immediately see playing time on the field their rookie year (baseball and hockey both have farm systems in which rookies can hide for years before seeing pro-level play time), so a top draft pick can become an immediate star first game of September.

Another thing is that NFL Draft Day is a time when both the college level fandom and pro level fandom intermix. College football fanaticism is actually bigger than the pro game (more schools, more regions, more history), and not all college fans are pro fans (and vice versa). Draft Day is when fans from Wake Forest can gather to watch a top-rated Defensive linesman can get taken by the Green Bay Packers, or the Oakland Raiders, or the Cincinnati Bengals (poor guy) or the New York Jets (whose fans will boo him anyway. Lord, those guys would boo the Pope if they could).

Draft Day IS a day for the fans, because it gives fans a chance to gather at local watering holes (or at a team's draft party, or AT the draft in New York City itself) and bicker and whoop and praise and curse the team they follow.

It's a HUGE day for me, because like I told you earlier the Bucs are mah team. And from 1984 to 1996, the Draft Day was really the only real fun day a Bucs fan could have, trust me we were THAT bad a franchise those years. So yeah, I'm into the draft.

This April 25th, I hope to gather with a few Bucs fans in the bay area (perhaps Oldsmar, there's a Buffalo Wild Wings there that might have wifi handy), and maybe even liveblog it from this blog. Hope you don't mind... but it's not like I've got a lot of reasons to write about librarianship these days...

Time flies when you're plugged in

2009-04-13T09:57:00.003-04:00

It was ten years ago this month when The Matrix came out.

As a Gen-Xer who measures time by cultural milestones, this is yet another moment where I sit back and realize that DAMN I'm getting old. My 20-year high school reunion kinda worked the same way.

How can I describe 1999 (or 1985 for God's sake) to those who weren't there? That was a crazy-ass year. Everyone, well every geek, was waiting for Star Wars I - The Phantom Menace to come out that summer: a brand-new website called Countingdown.com was practically created to flash a timer waiting for the day we'd see Anakin Skywalker start on his destiny. The only summer film that looked to compete with the Force was this Austin Powers sequel. There was this buzz about a small indy project called the Blair Witch Project that had this weird-ass website of background info. Meanwhile in the real world, politics was getting all screwy with the Clinton Impeachment over Blowjobs fiasco that was wiping out Republican leadership instead of the Clintons themselves. Bush and Gore were lining themselves up as the de-facto party choices for 2000. There were Melissa Worms and Napster and everyone waiting for Y2K to erupt on New Year's. Stephen King nearly dies in a hit-and-run accident. Enron starts messing with California's energy supply. And on April 20, 1999... that was a bad day all around.

Into all of this came The Matrix. For all we knew or heard about this film, it had something to do with computer hackers figuring out something, not sure what, about the universe and reality in general. Nobody I knew who were into films had much information on what this was about. Warner Bros. was kinda releasing this film with almost little fanfare, in early April of all times rather than the more lucrative summer months as though they wanted it done and out of the way before Star Wars cleaned up the market.

For meself... Two hours after going in, for myself, every geek I know, and every geek I knew existed out there on the planet, had to have exited that film with OUR FREAKING MINDS BLOWN!

It had hackers saving the world (nice ego-stroking there). It had questions about reality, about our senses, our perceptions. It had proto-goth culture mixed with techno-shoot-em-up culture mixed with Far Eastern mysticism and every form of kung-fu (Jedi, wire-fu, gun-fu, hack-fu, wtf-fu) you had ever seen. It had Christian parables and messanic overtones. It had Keanu Reeves saying "Whoa" and actually SELLING THAT LINE! It had Hugo Weaving owning the title of "Badass" (even in good-guy roles like Elrond!) for the next decade (would half the people who even moderately tolerated V For Vendetta even been that way if it didn't have Hugo Weaving's near-perfect dark voice as the anti-hero?). It had Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, out-mentoring Yoda in some of the best kung-fu sparring you'll ever see. It had Joey Pants as the one sensible jerk in the whole universe ("Why didn't I take the Blue Pill?"), who of course turns out to be a total -ssh-l- because in a war against the Machine you need to accept the Red Pill and accept the reality that we are all brains in batteries.

Those who came after this movie came out can't begin to understand how the Matrix warped our geekhood. We came to quote from Morpheus and the Oracle more than Yoda. It also hurt that when the Phantom Menace finally came out - Jar-Jar??? Mitichlor-whats? Anakin crushing on Padme even though he's clearly 8 years away from hitting puberty? What??? - that a lot of geeks felt betrayed (ten years later, IT STILL HURTS) by Lucas' lack of understanding his own vision (the geeky response of The Phantom Edit tells you all you needed to know: if only Lucas had the supporting staff he had back during the 70s-80s trilogy, people like Gary Kurtz at producer and Lawrence Kasdan at screenplay who could have pulled back on Lucas' worst indulgences, the prequel trilogy could have been SO AWESOME).

So here we are, 10 years later. I'm getting to 39 years old, plugged into a computer messing with blogging and Facebook and a bunch of other things other than having an actual, you know, social life, pretty much like the USENET threads and emailing of days past. Has anything really changed?

Oh, and there's a rebooted Star Trek movie coming out. Gasp drool worship. Some things definitely never change...

St. Patrick's Day reminder WITH SPOILERS

2009-03-17T20:04:00.004-04:00

Remember your Marquis of Queensbury rules. Um, just who was the Marquis of Queensbury anyway?

The link is to the most famous scene from John Ford's classic romance film The Quiet Man. Ahhh, every St. Patrick's Day I break out the DVD and watch this film. The romance involved isn't so much Sean Thorton (John Wayne) courting the fiery redhead Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O'Hara), it's director John Ford being in love with Ireland itself. Ford was the son of Irish immigrants, and the theme of "Those Who Are Irish, and Those Who Wish They Were" pops up a lot in his films. Actually, I kid: Ford's recurrent theme throughout his films was Community, be it an actual town, an outpost of U.S. Calvary, or a band of brothers of some form.

Alert: here on there be SPOILERS, I do give away a lot of the film's plot. Still and all you should see the film, it's near perfect.
Here, the community is Innisfree, an idyllic coastal village two steps removed from Brigadoon or Avalon. Thorton is returning to the home of his parents from the United States, bringing with him wealth but a troubled soul. He wants to find heaven, which Innisfree has become for him, and he just wants to settle in his father's abandoned house and grow roses. Conflict immediately rises up when he repurchases the property from the Widow Tillane, drawing the ire of "Squire" Will Danaher who coveted the land (and the widow). Thorton had also come across Will's sister Mary Kate ("O that red hair of hers is no lie") and becomes smitten with her (and she with him), but being American is unschooled in the then-Irish customs of matchmaking and courtship. Will, as head of his house, refuses to let bygones be and allow his sister to even look at Sean. So the townfolk of Innisfree, coming to think of Thorton as "the best man in Innisfree" (another reason Will Danaher hates him), decide to help out by tricking Will into thinking the Widow Tillane won't marry him until Mary Kate leaves his house. The ruse works well enough to lead to Sean and Mary Kate's wedding... but then Will Danaher finds out he'd been tricked and refuses to pass on Mary Kate's dowry. Sean, having his own small fortune, doesn't see the bother: Mary Kate, knowing the money is her sign of independence from her brother, is infuriated her new husband won't fight for her rights. Their passionate love turns to equally passionate anger, and the Innisfree folk share the doldrums. It's just that, other than the Protestant minister who follows the sport of boxing, no one knows that Thorton had accidentally killed a fellow boxer during a fight ("For what? Lousy stinking money.") and has been guilt-ridden about throwing a punch ever since.
Things come to a head when Mary Kate shames Sean by running away: finally angered up, Thorton chases after her and drags her from the railroad station. Having interrupted a squabble already in progress, the train crew and just as quickly the whole town of Innisfree come arunning to witness the confrontation. Thorton openly calls Will Danaher out for the dowry in front of the whole community, and when he refuses Thorton calls the marriage quits. Now embarrassed that his sister could be shamed by the annulment, Will tosses the money at Sean's feet and curses him.
Sean takes the money and heads straight to a nearby kiln. Mary Kate meets him there and opens the oven, letting her husband toss her dowry into the fire. He's proven he has the backbone to stand up for his love: she's proven she had no interest in the money, just only the integrity of being his wife. All demons are resolved except one, and that leads to the epic donnybrook between Sean Thorton and Will Danaher.
The fight quickly proves to be more comedic than tragic: Will is physically fit enough to trade blows with the more professional Sean, and the two quickly figure out it's not really a fight to the death. What really happens is that the town of Innisfree is rejuvenated: the town elder (played by the director's older brother Francis) literally springs from his deathbed to watch the fight; the local police are more interested in tallying bets from other agencies; the Protestant minister wagers (a bit unfairly as he knew Thorton's rep) with his visiting bishop; and the Widow Tillane finally expresses her love for the bull-headed Will. The film ends with a reaffirmation of the community (and a shot of Will Danaher and the Widow Tillane on the courtship cart), with all the major cast members waving Hello to the audience.

Did warn you about the SPOILER, but you should still see the movie. As I mentioned earlier, it's John Ford's love letter to his old family's homeland of Ireland, and of the four Directing Oscars he'd garnered over his career I'd wager the one he got for Quiet Man had to be the one he most prided on. If you see enough of Ford's films, you'll notice he works like a canvass painter: scenes staged with almost snapshot-framing precision; vast landscapes in incredible detail (every director loves to film in Monument Valley: Ford's the only one to ever do that place justice); characters posed (sometimes rather stiffly) as for portraits to hang on museum walls. The Quiet Man is Ford at his best. It was filmed almost all on location (a rarity in those days when it was cheaper to film in California and pretend it was Toronto: now it's the other way around), and Ford's eye captures the beauty of the landscape. The cinematographers (Winton C. Hoch and Archie Stout) also won Oscars for their work on this film as well. The location scenery caught in Technicolor was so gorgeous that it actually causes a problem: for certain shots Ford had to film 'outdoor' scenes on a stage, and the switch is so noticeable (especially during a horse race and especially the rousing fight) that it jars the viewers. It's the film's biggest flaw.

You can tell it's a love letter because the film is really an American's dream of an ideal Ireland. People of Innisfree may be improvished but they're happy. Most mentions of the Troubles are practically asides: the local Sinn Fein plotters are more concerned with the next lager than with blowing up buildings. There's an elderly gent in some scenes, upper class gentry, and I think he's meant to be an implanted English lord. There's a running gag of seeing this guy in the background completely oblivious to the going-ons, while the Catholic priest played by Ward Bond and the leprechaun-like matchmaker played by Barry Fitzgerald are the true town leaders. The film ends with the mostly Catholic townfolk cheering on the Protestant minister in order to convince his bishop to let the minister stay: only an Irish-American long separated from the religious divisions that still rack Ireland and Northern Ireland would conceive such a scene back in the 1950s.

What makes this movie near-perfect is also the cast: the biggest problem in a lot of Ford's films is that the actors' performances tend to be a bit stiff, but in the Quiet Man nearly everyone is relaxed and you can tell the cast are enjoying themselves. The performance that will shock you the most is John Wayne's: while he's usually the hero and 'gets the girl' in a lot of his films, the Quiet Man was the first one (maybe the only film) where he's genuinely a romantic figure first and action hero last. His acting alongside Maureen O'Hara, especially the tender scenes, and the wordless flashback to his boxing accident showed actual acting chops. Usually it's John Wayne starring as John Wayne: here's, it's John Wayne as Sean Thorton. That Wayne didn't even get nominated for an Oscar for this role remains one of the Top 10 Injustices in Hollywood History (it ranks below Edward G. Robinson never getting an acting nomination at all, and above Annie Hall beating out Star Wars for Best Picture).
Maureen O'Hara, by the time of this film, was one of Hollywood's most beautiful leading ladies, probably the most beautiful redhead in film history. Her performance in Quiet Man is all passion, nearly combative with every character but with firm purpose and with genuine desire. Her pairing with Wayne here is considered one of filmdom's greatest romantic performances ever (Speilberg payed homage to the kissing scene in E.T.).
As for the rest of the cast, well. Ford was well-known for working with a standing company of regulars, and for each of them this was a good time for them to dust off their comedic skills. Victor McLaglen is usually a clownish figure in a lot of them: here it's put to good use as the bullying brother who needs a good bop on the nose to put him in his place. He received a Best Supporting nomination here. Equally up to the task were the likes of Ward Bond (who serves as narrator as well as the head priest Father Lonergan) and Barry Fitzgerald (as the matchmaker Michaleen Ole Flynn). You have to watch Fitzgerald's slow burn when he finds the newlywed's bed in shambles. The rest of the cast was pretty much related to everybody else (Maureen's brothers played the young priest and/or one of the Sinn Fein drinkers, uh plotters). As another sign of this being John Ford's love letter, his older brother Francis gets a lot of prime scenery-chewing, and at the end Francis gets the only solo shout-out to the audience.

My film-viewing fare tends towards science fiction and action thrillers. The Quiet Man is one of the few romances I even openly admit to having seen, and one of two I own on DVD. 'Cause there's nothing wrong with that: it's one of the best movies ever. Makes you wanna finish up filing for a passport so you can go visit Innisfree!

Checking in 02/2009

2009-02-25T10:13:00.002-05:00

Still job hunting.

There's not much else to say or do at the moment, other than to say that for all the resumes I've sent out there's a lot of waiting time for any responses...

There's also the US Census jobbers: I had taken the civil service exam, passed it, but now I'm waiting for the call if it ever comes.

Sigh. Tons of.

Form of Things Unknown

2009-01-29T16:24:00.001-05:00

Pardon for the last post, I was trying to get something aligned between this blog and the Technocrati site. Don't think it worked...

Currently, I'm still job-hunting, checking out every opening in the state of Florida for librarian spots, and kinda keeping an eye open on the other states as well. Otherwise, not much else to report other than pleading with God about my hair... double crowns, YOU had to give me double crowns...

Technocrati post

2009-01-13T20:02:00.001-05:00

Technorati Profile

Technorati Profile

LibraryThing

2009-01-13T15:16:00.003-05:00

I added the LibraryThing gadget to this blog, as you may note to the right of the screen here. :)

This is still an incomplete list, as there's still about 3-4 shelves of books I need to cart to my computer so I can plug in the ISBN numbers to insert the records. But now I've got something to do in between emailing resumes everywhere...

New Year's Resolutions 2009

2009-01-01T11:46:00.002-05:00

1) Aw, gee, pondering for a moment... oh yeah, GET A JOB

2) I hereby resolve to get my weight back down to 275 lbs. I was there briefly and need to get back there again.

3) I hereby resolve to work on one short story or one book chapter per week. Get something good finished, maybe published.

44) I hereby resolve to actually finish a NaNoWriMo. I finished a 3-Day Novel contest to some satisfaction, now I gotta finish the other challenge.

555555) I hereby resolve to, you know, actually get my resolutions resolved. Ayup.

Witty's Year End Book Review 2008

2008-12-24T11:37:00.012-05:00

So what if I'm not a librarian anymore! I still read dammit!

Just as a reminder, this isn't a list of new books that came out from 2008 or 2007, these are simply the best books I've read this year.

Best Fiction Book
Every so often I go back and read a title I've passed by before, which is where Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett comes in. Part of his expansive Discworld series, it's a bit of a stand-alone book as it's not fully part of any sub-series like the Weird Sisters or the tales set in Anhk Morpork (although cameos abound). A relatively serious work (okay, there's still jokes and puns aplenty), the novel details the struggles of a young man selected by a Large God of Discworld (one of many) named Om whose followers are losing so much faith in Him that he's been reduced to the form of a turtle. Struggling to re-establish true faith across the land, the boy and his Turtle-god discover that Om's religion has become oppressive and more obsessed with ritual and routine, and the land ripe for war. Serious questions - admist the wordplay - about faith abound, especially when Pratchett reveals at the end the fate of believers - true and fake - in the Discworld afterlife. It's a more serious work than others in Pratchett's 'Verse, but I consider it a good introduction to the place moreso than any of the serial novels. It also contains a fave quote: One day a tortoise will learn how to fly...

Best Non-Fiction Book
No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty.
I grabbed this off the Pasco library shelves more than once. Mostly because it's a survival guide for NaNoWriMo. Not that it helped me much this year... 9k word count, sigh... bummer, and damn... but still it's a good motivation and how-to book on writing. Sincerely suggest all would-be writers take a glance.

Best Graphic Novel
Empowered Volume 4, by Adam Warren.
Just a warning, this is a graphic novel not meant for kids. There's still a few people out there who think comic books are all for 13-under preteens. Sorry, there's a market for adult-level comics. And Empowered fits that market to a T. There's no outright nudity, but there's enough exposed flesh shown to hint at what's what. We do see couples getting intimate, and there are elements of sexual roleplaying and yes bondage (which I'll get into later in this review). A bigger issue would be the profanity the characters drop nearly every other word, although most of those are bleeped out (savvy cursing enthusiasts can tell which f-word and s-word is which). If there's an appropriate age level for reading this, I'd say 16-up.
It's a superhero series set in its own universe (it's not Marvel or DC with their own multiverse problems), where nearly everyone we meet are spandex-bound metahumans with overly sized muscles for the guys and overly sized... ah, "tracks of land" for the ladies. But in Warren's world, everyone's got emotional issues: the guy heroes are all confused poseurs more worried about their battle cries than doing a good job; the women heroines have emotional issues stemming from high school traumas. In Warren's most cutting idea, nearly everyone in his universe gets their superpowers from sexually transmitted diseases (one superhero group forms from a STD support group).
In to this world comes Empowered, a young lass and rookie heroine who somehow inherited a powersuit that grants her strength and energy blasts. Unfortunately, the suit is hyperthin and prone to tearing up, meaning one scratch makes her powerless. And in her world, all the thugs and supervillains are adept at hog-tying people: while they won't kill her (cape-killing is akin to cop-killing), they do the more humiliating thing of tying her up and leaving her bound and helpless and half-naked for the world to see. She wants to do good, but she ends up an embarrassment and mocked - sometime openly by her supposed teammates the Superhomeys - by all, leaving her prone to massive emotional issues of her own (as the series progresses, readers learn that the suit is still powerful when torn: it's really powered by Emp's emotional state, which is as fragile as the suit).
Warren started off this series as a set of one-off panels and artwork, mostly from requests he'd get at comic cons from guys desperate for good-girl (and bad-girl) art of bound women. Yeah, some guys are into that. From that, he starts off with a series of witty, sadly brutal stories about a heroine in constant bondage, and the surprising thing is that he actually brings up troubling questions about just what it is that's making us watch her get bound and gagged in the first place.
Because Warren provides depth to his characters, especially Emp. We watch not only her getting bound and gagged, but we also watch the emotional turmoil afterwards when she's back home trying to cope. As she gathers a small circle of friends - a boyfriend called Thugboy, a former ex-thug who was the first to say nice things to her; a female friend and New Jersey ninja (!) Ninjette; and a captured dimensional wolfdemon trapped in a powerbelt and left on her coffee table constantly demanding the latest DVD series to watch - she gains an audience to hear her gripes and provide emotional support. And with her friends' emotional issues - Thugboy's backstory of crossing other Heroes and Villains keeps popping up; Ninjette's fleeing from an abusive family home that's slowly catching up with her - thrown into the mix, we get to compare/contrast all the trauma everyone's going through. Wait, what was my point?
The point is, this isn't all titillation for us. Warren throws out ideas about bondage and what it actually means: is it really fun to watch someone get bound and gagged and humiliated? How much of this is really about sex, or even about fun? In Volume 4, Warren takes us right to the edge of 'Uncomfortable' when he has Empowered show up for a Make-A-Wish event for a cancer-sick preteen boy... only to find the boy's wish is to be a supervillain and roleplay 'capturing' a heroine like her. At what point to we readers worry about the pedo aspects of this questionable roleplay...? Bondage and empowerment (there's that word) issues come up when her best friend Ninjette is hunted and captured by a rival ninja clan at the climax of Volume 3, one of the more violent and unsettling stories in the series (yet).
Volume 4 picks up where 3 left off, with Ninjette suffering the psychological trauma of her near-mutilation by the ninja bounty hunters. But while she's dealing with that, Empowered gets word that she's up for an award (the Capeys, the Oscars of superheroing and as equally self-serving) that ups her self-esteem to new heights... only to find out from her teammates the Superhomeys that the award is a joke, comparing her to an earlier pathetic hero who was devastated by the prank years earlier and seemingly disappeared...
This volume is when we see where Warren is going with this series: it's not about sexual empowerment (regarding the bondage and sex-roleplay issues) as it is about emotional empowerment, the struggle against other people's torments upon our heroes. The plotline of the prank award is the latest and largest blow yet: an open mockery of Emp's attempts to be a real heroine and save others. The conclusion of the plotline - where the awards ceremony turns into a deathtrap - is completely satisfying, and hints that Empowered may have finally proved her worth (slight SPOILER there: that Empowered defeats the bad guy even with her suit in tatters suggests she's learning that she's still powerful even when it's torn).
The beauty of the series is with the characters: no one is two-dimensional and everyone adds value to the storyline. Best of all is the development for Empowered's nemesis, Sistah Spooky, the one Superhomey literally working hard to make Emp's life as miserable as possible. It's Spooky who, after a heart-to-heart with an ex-lover warning her of her phobia against attractive blondes (Sistah Spooky's origin from Volume 1 is hilariously twisted in its own right), reveals to Emp that her Capey nomination is a prank. And Spooky's horrendous love life and the poor decisions she's made there provide an arc of sympathy that might allow our heroine Empowered a better career in future issues.
Nah, that won't happen. Warren's gonna figure other more devious ways to get Empowered tied up again. Maybe with Canadian-grade hemp...?

Best (not really) Unavoidable Book of Ultimate Destiny
Anything by Stephenie Meyer, but especially Breaking Dawn, the fourth volume of her Sparkly Vampire series. I swear, SPARKLY VAMPIRES. This is, actually, something I avoided at all costs. Everything I heard from the summaries - emo teen girl meets broody vampire boy 'neath a silvery moon ~~which then explodes for no good reason~~ actually the only thing exploding are the moody werewolves yeah that does happen - made me just sit back and think: "Wait. Wasn't this from the Roswell High series???"
This whole series is basically an overripe Harlequin romance novel with extra teen angst thrown in for good measure. Not for guys, this is definitely for teen girls... and their moms. Oy.
There is a book recently out by Meyer however, that's not part of that vampire series and by all reports is actually pretty good: The Host. It's an alien invasion story, where humans are possessed by space-wandering parasites. Uninfected humans are in the minority and try to hide and fight back against the takeover, and one rebel girl is captured and merged with a parasite that ends up sympathetic to her cause, joining with her even as separate personalities in the fight to end the invasion. Of course, there's still a cute boy or two motivating the heroine(s)... This wasn't a book of Ultimate Destiny (which means a book of hyped expectations, much like Harry Potter's series finale last year), so it didn't fully fit this category the way Breaking Dawn did. I didn't read The Host: I did give it as a birthday present to my friends' teenage daughter, and she liked it. It will be a series of its' own, so keep an eye out.

Best Book by Someone I Know and Corresponded with via Email on an Occasional Basis
This breaks down to basically two people: Stefan Petrucha and Sheryl Nantus. Since I did Sheryl last year I'll see about reviewing one of Stefan's work.
Petrucha I know from the old old days of the Topps X-Files comic book series, when I did online reviews of the comic, and Petrucha went out of his way to gripe about my speeling errors. Ah, fun times. ;)
He's in constant production by the look of things, mostly with working on Nancy Drew paperbacks (!) and Mickey Mouse comics (!!! dude? Well, hey I guess work is work...) but of higher literary value is a recent work The Rule of Won. Meant for young adult audiences, there's enough bite here for adults to enjoy. The Rule of Won is about a teen slacker drawn in to an overactive high school social club obsessing over a self-help book similar to that Secret book. Only this time, the motivationals seem to be working all too well, and people are getting what they want... with painful consequences. Eventually the slacker has to rise up and get a part-time job at the mall... um, fight back against the evil teen overlords. While it falls into the familiar teen novel realm of standing against peer pressure and groupthink, the snarky ripping into self-help thinking is what caught my eye and fit my reading mood.

So with that, Io Saturnalia and Happy New Year. Now, back to job-hunting...

A 20-year path finding its end

2008-12-19T13:38:00.004-05:00

This all began back in August of 1988. Just moved in to the dorms at University of Florida. Went to Anderson Hall, back in that day it was where the student employment office was. Filed an application, spotted an opening for a job with the university library, and signed up.
The job was part-time, working with printing labels and adhering them to book spines. Stripping them with security tags. Processing them for the shelves at all the branches at the school (lemme tell ya, the Maps collection was literally back-breaking! And we had to walk those over to Marston Science ow ow ow). In 1988 it was with the cataloging dept., crammed into a small corner of the first floor of Library West. By 1989 they had relocated to roomier space on the third floor of Library East, where cataloging resides today.
All four years of going to UF, I never went to another job. I liked it. I LOVED working with the books. And I'd like to think I did a good job (for all UF students, check all books with spine label dates between 1988 to 1992. Odds are, those labels? I printed 'em :pride:). And the thing was, it got to where that was the real reason I was going to college. My Journalism degree? Well, I was having problems with that (when you have to take the required course, Reporting, twice just to get the bare grade minimum, you need to reconsider. I still think I'd have been happier switching to poli sci, but I digress). I was more interested clocking in to do my job printing labels than going to classes.
So when I squeaked out a Bachelor's in Journalism, with no viable job offers out there (1992 was a poor year for jobs), I sped back to graduate level at University of South Florida for a Master's in Library and Info Sciences. Graduated with high marks by December 1993. Got a part-time Library Adjunct job with St. Pete (Junior back then) College in Clearwater. Got a full-time Librarian job at Broward County (North Regional) in 1994, and worked as a full-time librarian ever since. From Broward back to UF then down to Pasco County. Got published in a few library journals here and there. Enjoyed my work. Loved helping people find things on the shelves, on the computers, and thought I was good at it. I hope I was good at it. Spent 14 years of my life as a librarian.
This week I lost my job with Pasco County Libraries. And this was that, and that was it.
Right now is a bad job market across the board. Libraries are hurting from massive budget cuts. The Florida Library Jobs website has gone from 5-6 pages of openings to just one page. The latest jobs are all in South Florida, where the cost of living is too ridiculous for anyone looking at a $32,000 minimum annual (librarians work cheap, sad to say). Still, I'm sending out resumes left and right. Looking and hoping and praying. But I might not find a job as a librarian. I might have to look elsewhere.
And in some respects, maybe I do. Part of me feels tired, empty. Part of me feels kinda grateful I got kicked out, feeling like it can shake this damn lethargy. But still, I *liked* helping people. I *liked* finding them information, I *liked* the occasional puzzle, a challenge, stuff like that.
I will come about to post a "Best Of" books I've read this past year, but past that? Maybe about stuff I'm writing. I'm still trying that. Maybe other things. Depends on what tomorrow brings.

NaNoWriMo - One day left

2008-11-29T22:08:00.001-05:00

I'm not going to make the 50k word count. I'm barely making 13k. :(

But here's the deal. I'm going to keep writing this novel. I want to finish this. I may not be able to finish it on this month's deadline, but I will finish it.

Still and all... sigh... :(

Update on NaNoWriMo 2008

2008-11-21T09:02:00.000-05:00

One word.

AUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH (as of Nov. 21st, only 9,000 words done)

Compare to a good colleague of mine, Sheryl Nantus, who's got 38,000 words by Nov. 21st. Sigh.

This Saturday. I'm going to try to find an Internet Cafe place in Tampa, see if I can get a few other local writers to join in, and GET SOME DAMN WRITING DONE!

NaNoWriMo 2008

2008-11-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm trying it again. I'm gonna try another superhero novel for the National Novel Writing Month event.

For those not in the know, NaNo is a non-profit event urging people (usually bad writers like me) to pound out at least 50,000 words worth of a story that could be developed into a published novel. There's no award or guarantee of publication like the 3-Day Novel contest promises, but the deal is, a finished novel is better than nothing. And in this day and age of Print-on-Demand services and small press publishers, getting published is slightly easier than ever before. The only thing you'll get if you make 50k word counts is a certificate and a firm handshake, oh and a html-code for a graphic on your webpage that says "Hey, I can write 50,000 words and not suck." :-)

I'm going to try the superhero-verse I've conjured up, I've had the heroes in my head for 4 years it's time to let them out and do something...

NaNoWriMo 2008

2008-10-22T09:07:00.000-04:00

Time once again to mess with mah noggin and squeeze out random clauses and phrases. It's NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH!

I'm already registered and raring to go. I've got a couple of ideas bouncing about, the one I keep coming back to is a superhero novel about a big-city heroine getting 'sent down to a minor-league city' and struggling to work her way back to the major leagues of crime-fighting. Either that or a crazy, post-apocalyptic earth where a solitary survivor wanders the wasteland in search of... something I haven't figured out yet. ;-)

See you starting November 1st! Sign up if you want! And read the book on writing the book for NaNoWriMo!