Four Fried Chickens and a Coke

So the story that made me so sad was workshopped this morning. I was feeling pretty badly about the story as a whole, it seemed kind of over-the-top in some places, and not very good at all. Everyone loved it, though. They found flaws, of course--that's what the workshops are for--but the preponderance of feedback was positive. Everyone raved about it, several people (including two of the grad students) told me after class that it was great (or in one case awesome), and the professor not only told me it was very good, but on the copy she reviewed and gave to me, she wrote that it was amazing. I am floored.

Everyone's mom seems a little less crazy right now.

In what may be great news, someone (NY Attorney General, in fact) is suing a company that bundles their "free" software with spyware. Even if the lawsuit fails, it has already hurt the company's stock prices. I sure hope the AG wins this case.

Sometimes things that seem genius are just annoying. (At least when I tried it.)

Most important news, Lisbeth has an interview for a grown-up type job on Wednesday. She went out today to buy an interview suit. She's pretty excited (that's what writers call "understatement") and I am too. I really hope she gets the job, because I think she'll enjoy it a lot, and will be very good at it. She's good at everything she does, but most of this job seems almost tailor-made for her.

Johnny was a soldier--He can't dance anymore

I remember a Reader's Digest story from my childhood. I was somewhere between 7 and 12, probably 11 if I had to guess. The story's two primary characters were a married couple. The husband was a writer, and the part I recall was when the wife walked in on him crying in his office. When she asked what was wrong, he sobbed "I killed him." I was freaked out. She was living with a murderer, that's not what she thought she was getting into! As it turned out, he was talking about one of his characters. She knew right away what he meant. I was baffled. How could a grown man have such difficulty separating fantasy from reality? I was just a child and I knew the difference.

Yesterday, for the first time, I killed one of my characters. My eyes are watering a little just typing this. At the time I was actually writing it, Lisbeth came in the room to ask how the story was coming. I'd told her the plot already, so when I said I was kind of sad, she asked "Because he's dying?" I nodded and started to cry. Vince was dying, right at that moment I was writing his death scene. It wasn't a just death at all, either. He shouldn't have died. But that was really what the story was about. I tried to stifle, and she tried to reassure me that it was okay, that I should let it out, but I managed to cut off my emotions and finish the story. This morning I was typing it out and revising, and when I got to Vince's death I started again, and for real this time. I had to set down my notebook and turn away from the computer.

I realize this looks like it's all about me, and I suppose technically it is, but really it's about Vince. This is his eulogy. He was good, and I liked him. He wasn't someone new, either. He was an old character. He died in his late 20s, but I'd written about him in his teens before. I'd seen Vince grow from a young punk to a grown-up with a job and a mortgage. Not all of that is in the story, but it is in the preliminary stuff I wrote while I was coming to the story. Vince may not have been real, but I felt like I watched him die, and in an attempt to do something good, and at my request. I wish he were real so I could apologize to him.

Go, Speed Racer, Go!

School is keeping me pretty busy lately, but even with class work and tax season and all that other garbage people use as excuses to not do the things they should, I find time to peruse the internets. I've found a few interesting sites, such as thesneeze.com, and rediscovered old favorites, such as bisqwit's NES videos (only for the most hard-core of nerds), and old content at (relatively) new sites, like the BOFH (also for the extremely geeky among us.)

In real-life news, my family is down a couple of vehicles lately. My youngest brother has been restoring a 1968 Camaro for some time now, and has a good deal of time and cash invested in it. Last Friday, my dad borrowed my truck to pull the Camaro home on a trailer. The short version of this is that the trailer lost control, totaling the freshly restored, not-yet driven (and consequently not-yet insured) Camaro in a spectacular barrel-roll down a 30-foot embankment. To help my brother deal with his loss, some terribly considerate person came to the wreck site before he could secure a means to get the remains home, and removed most of the valuable exterior parts, such as hub caps, beauty rings, spoiler, you get the picture. God bless you, kind stranger. I hope you get much good from making a bad situation worse. My truck was damaged too, but being a driven vehicle, it is insured, and is being repaired. In the mean time the insurance company has granted me the use of a two-week-old Pontiac Grand Prix. I am quite fond of European cars, but this domestic is turning my head. It is fun. It accelerates like nothing I've driven recently, and the stereo has me carrying CD s again, a habit I had grown out of at some point in the not-too-distant past. I'm really not looking forward to sending it back next week.