Recipe: My Mom's Christmas Cookies

3 3/4 cups sifted flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp cloves
1 1/2 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar (sifted and packed)
1 egg

Mix and sift flour (does anyone still sift flour?) baking powder, & spices. Cream butter, add sugar gradually & cream until fluffy, add egg and mix. Add sifted dry ingredients gradually and mix. Chill in refrigerator.

Roll out about 1/8 inch thick and cut with assorted cookie cutters. Bake on ungreased baking sheets in preheated 350 degree (Fahrenheit) oven for about 12 minutes. Store in covered container.

Next, make the frosting:
1/2 stick of butter or margarine
1 pkg. powdered sugar (2 or 3 cups)
1 tsp vanilla
milk to mix to right consistency
food coloring if desired

Frost the cooled cookies with the frosting and decorate with sprinkles of various kinds. Get the family together to help with the cookie decorating, and the person who does the best Star Trek uniform for the gingerbread man wins a prize.

These cookies are a family tradition in my family--- perhaps because they taste like traditional German Spekulatius cookies. But the recipe comes from the Milwaukee Gas Light Co. cookbook of 1958. (My mom's baking some right now--- so must end this post and snag a freshly baked cookie....)

Barack Obama may have Asperger's Syndrome

Background sounds from the movie 'Freaks'*: the sideshow performers chanting 'One of us! One of us! One of us!

Today I was thinking about the remarks Obama recently made about his accomplishments in office, and it occurred to me that if Obama, like me, had Asperger's Syndrome, that might put the story in a more sympathetic light.

So I googled 'Obama' and 'Aspergers' and came up with this, (among many other hits):

Does President Obama have Asperger's Syndrome

Obama is not the only US president who might have had Aspergers. Thomas Jefferson is also suspected of being an Aspie. ***One of us! One of us! One of us!***

Obama, of course, has never been officially diagnosed. If he suspects he might have Aspergers he's probably going out of his way not to be diagnosed, and I defend his right to do so. Aspergers is very stigmatizing. One person I told then presumed I was mentally retarded to the point of not being able to sign my own name. (Actually, my IQ is high enough to join the 'genius' organization Mensa--- which is not unheard of among folks with Asperger's syndrome.)

While I still renounce President Obama and all his evil works and ways, this possibility has reminded me that we must not allow our dislike of someone's policies or ideology translate into attacking or mocking that person's personal quirks, which may be caused by something that person cannot help. Besides, why make fun of Obama's social ineptness when we can make fun of his policies?

*Freaks: a 1932 movie featuring real sideshow performers--- pinheads, conjoined twins, little people--- which was rather notorious in its day. I mention it because I rather identify with the sideshow performers in the movie--- though I don't condone what they did to Cleopatra, that was harsh...

Opium Cactus: paper dragons (with audio)

blue & yellow folded paper dragons
sail away in an indigo Tintenfaß
dragons dangerous yet delicate
for they cannot breathe fire
and live


(c) Nissa Annakindt


Poem #4. The word 'Tintenfaß'--- German for inkwell--- is particularly fine, adding that needed note of strangeness. From Where the Opium Cactus Grows

Shared in Poetry Pantry #86

Origami instructions for making your own paper dragon:
Origami Dragon Folding Instructions

And here is an image of the origami dragon from that web site:

Are you really cut out to be a writer? Some common symptoms

Ever encountered a would-be writer that was plainly not cut out to be a writer? There are the ones who've seen a report on TV about the advances paid to a top best-selling author and decide writing is easy money since you do it sitting down, and so they sit down at the keyboard and bang out something for those fools with nothing better to do with their time but read books.

There are also those who don't have the unrealistic money motive, but who think being an author would raise their status, or make them cool, or whatever. Some of these even read books, if only Harlequin romances. But what they write tends to sound like a rehash of their latest fight with their boyfriend or boss. Or else it's something that sounds like pre-teen fan fiction all about getting Harry Potter or Captain Kirk to notice a character who is suspiciously like the author.

Sometimes I think Nanowrimo brings these hopeless non-writers out of the woodwork. The premise of Nano is that anyone can write a novel. The truth is that while most people can bat out enough words or attempted words to meet the word count goal, the result may not be recognizable as a novel. And even if it turns out to be recognizably novel-ish, it may not be anything that another human being would ever care to read.

This brings out some real fears in those of us who dream of being real writers--- even those who've met with some success. It's not that these attempted writers are clogging up the publishers' slush piles or flooding the self-publishing market. It's the fear 'What if I'm one of them? What if I am in denial about the quality of my writing? What if everyone who's said something nice about my work just pities me?'

How can you tell if you are a writer-with-potential rather than a hopeless non-writer? Here are a list of symptoms that can help distinguish the real-writer from the writing-attempting non-writer:

Symptom 1: Lifelong history of making up stories One of my childhood memories involves watching a favorite television program in the afternoon--- Star Trek, Dark Shadows, Batman, Hogan's Heroes--- and then going out of the house, taking a walk, and making up stories based on the television show I'd just watched. I made up stories in my head all the time. Sometimes my real-life environment showed up in the stories, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I did mash-ups--- a number of Star Trek characters were thrown back into time to visit Stalag 13, the prisoner-of-war camp in Hogan's Heroes. This mental fiction didn't always follow the rules for story-telling--- I'd jump around from interesting bit to interesting bit, go backwards in the story, or replay the best bits endlessly. And it was heavy on non-original characters from television or books. But it was a seed for the more original stories I make up as an adult. (My current head-story involves fighting zombies in Mexico.)

Symptom 2: Compulsive reading If you have nothing else handy to read in the morning, do you read breakfast cereal boxes? Bookcase assembly instructions from an already assembled bookcase? A 2006 goat artificial insemination catalog? The fact is, people with the potential to be writers read, all the time. They read more than one category of book, and when nothing better is available they read whatever is to hand. If you have a history of compulsive reading dating back to childhood, if you read a great deal to this day, that's a sign of writing potential.

Sympton 3: Language awareness You don't have to have had top marks in English grammar class to be a writer. But writers do have or develop language awareness--- an interest in words, their meanings and spelling, their use in comprehensible English sentences.... When you were in grade school, did you ever read the dictionary for fun? Did you ever learn to spell interesting words that weren't going to be on any test? And today, what happens when you encounter an unfamiliar word in your reading? Are you able to cope, or do you put the book down. Not all writers are the kind of people who win spelling bees and know how to diagram sentences with confidence. But the writer's tool kit is full of words and grammar and spelling patterns. If you don't know the tools, aren't interested in them, and aren't willing to learn about them, you won't be able to function as a writer.

Symptom 4: Detachment If you were popular in high school and part of the social whirl, you probably didn't observe things very well. You were too much a part of things to be objective about them. Someone who wasn't so popular, who was often an observer rather than a participant, could probably tell you a lot of things about that part of your life that you were too busy to notice. Observation is an essential skill for a writer, and accurate observation requires you to be a bit detached from the subject. This doesn't mean you have to be a lifelong social outcast (though it helps). You just have to be able to not always be at the center of things, the focus of everyone's attention.

So--- how many symptoms do YOU have? Are there any symptoms that ought to have made the list but didn't?

How I Joined Tencent Weibo, China's Facebook/Twitter

Step 1: Went to the Tencent Weibo home page, English version.

Step 2: Discovered that I needed a QQ account to log in to Tencent Weibo.

Step 3: Went to QQ homepage. There, discovered I needed to go to their English version. I clicked on the 'sign up' button on the right and followed directions.

Step 4: Went back to Tencent Weibo and logged in. Tried to create an account. Found that it seemed to want me to give a real name in Chinese characters.

Step 5: Searched for site to put my name in Chinese. Found lots. Most did not include a cut-and-paste version of the Chinese name. Found one that did. It did not have the name 'Nissa' but did have 'Nessa'. My Chinese name is: 内萨

Step 6: I put 内萨 as my real name. An account was created. http://t.qq.com/nissa_katoj If you start a Tencent Weibo account of your own, you can be my friend (or 'follower').

The Dust Mouse

Once there was a little girl named Demetra who never mopped under her bed. Before long, the space under her bed was full of dust. Little bits of dust clumped together into dust lumps. The dust lumps clumped together into dust balls. Finally, from the biggest dust ball, a dust mouse was born. It was about the size and color of a real mouse, but it looked fuzzier and dustier.

As soon as the dust mouse was born, she was hungry. Luckily, dust mice eat dust, and there was plenty of that under the bed. The dust mouse ate dust and grew bigger and bigger. She got as big as a cat--- she knew because sometimes Demetra's cat came under the bed to play with her. Before long, the dust mouse had eaten all the dust, and she didn't fit under Demetra's bed any more. She was too big.



The dust mouse decided it was time to find a better place to live. She chose the closet under the stairs. There was more room there, and there was plenty of dust to eat in the dust bag of the vacuum cleaner. Sometimes Demetra's mama wondered why the vacuum cleaner's dust bag never got full, but she was happy she didn't have to empty it any more. The dust mouse grew bigger and bigger with all that dust to eat. Before long, she didn't fit in the closet any more. She was too big. And there wasn't any other good place in the house for a dust mouse to live. The dust mouse was sad. She liked living in the house with Demetra and her mama and papa. She liked it when Demetra's friends came over to play. Demetra was the sort of girl who only played with children who were kind to dust mice.

But the dust mouse knew it was time to find a new home. Someplace with a lot of room, and where there was enough dust to eat. The dust mouse remembered Demetra talking about the city dump. That was a very big place. And all the dust from all the vacuum cleaner bags in the city was taken to the city dump by the garbage trucks. There would be lots of dust to eat. So the dust mouse got a ride to the dump on one of the garbage trucks.

The dump was a nice home for a dust mouse. There were hundreds of garbage bags with vacuum cleaner dust bags in them, so she had a lot to eat. There was plenty of room to grow. And the dust mouse did grow. She grew bigger than a garbage dumpster. She grew bigger than the garbage trucks that came every week bringing more bags of dust. Soon she was even bigger than the little house where the dump man lived.

But the dust mouse was lonely in her new home. She missed Demetra and the other children who played in Demetra's house. There were no children playing at the dump, and that made the place seem sad and quiet. After a while, she decided to go back to live at Demetra's house.

But getting to Demetra's house was not easy. Maria and Rolf, the garbage truck drivers, tried to give the dust mouse a ride to Demetra's house on the garbage truck. But the dust mouse was too big to ride on the garbage truck any more. So she had to walk the whole way. She walked through farmers' fields, and got all covered with dirt. She walked through the fishing pond, and got all covered with pond mud. She walked through the park behind Demetra's house, and got all covered with grass seed from the grass seeding machine. Finally she came to Demetra's backyard fence. But she was too big to fit in Demetra's backyard.

The dust mouse was tired from all the walking she did. She wanted to take a long nap before deciding what to do next.

The dust mouse slept for a long time. She slept when the leaves fell from the trees in fall. She slept when the snow fell in winter. She didn't wake up until after the snow melted in spring.

When the dust mouse woke up, she found out she couldn't move from the spot where she'd been sleeping. She thought maybe the mud and dirt and grass seed on her outside had got stuck in place over the winter. But she didn't mind. She liked being outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine. She even wished she could stay there for always.

The spring rains soon made the grass seed sprout. Soon the dust mouse was covered with growing green grass.

"Look, a big green hill! Let's play on it!" said a voice the dust mouse knew well. It was Demetra. Soon all the neighborhood children were playing on the big green hill. They came back every day to play. Before long, grownups donated playground equipment to be put at the top of the hill, so even more children came to play. And the big green hill, which had been born a little dust mouse under Demetra's bed, was happy and stayed there for always.

c 1994 Nissa Annakindt
The moral of the story--- never mop. Ever.

My Nano novel isn't failing badly enough.... yet

My nano novel Bakoun has been stalled for some time, as readers can see from my lack-of-progress meter. But that level of failure isn't good enough. If I'm going to fail, I want to do a good job of it! So I have the following plans:

1. Everything I have written so far is to be junked. Yes, there is a character or two I can keep--- well, one character, anyway. But all the actual word count is to be zeroed.

2. I'm changing the time in which the story is set. Well, actually, the story starts in the Victorian era and then goes to 1984, 1994, 2004 and so on until the actual near-future invasion starts. I'm thinking of setting the whole thing in the Victorian and or Edwardian era.

3. The setting gives me the chance to go all steampunky. Though anything I write could never be true steampunk. According to my sources (random internet sites) steampunk has to be correctly punk by being in rebellion against a prescribed list of things. I never rebel against the correct things in the correct manner.

4. My new plans require me to write up a brief timeline of Esperanto history, and of the eugenics/euthanasia movement. There are lots of cool quotes about the need for 'lethal chambers' which I can work in.

5. Another research requirement: I must throw together an outline of an alien invasion novel (Worldwar: In the Balance) so that I can see how a real writer handles a global story with multiple groups of characters, including alien ones.

6. The Korean characters I was planning to introduce will now be living in the American West, and running a Chinese restaurant (which serves Korean food, since Americans of the time can't tell the difference.)

7. There will be a boy named Alf from Linz, Austria who might be Hitler. There is a man who may be a time traveler who wants to kill him.

8. There will be robots. Big ones. And steampunky computers. Perhaps the result of alien technology being leaked? Perhaps also a steampunky 'blood-reader' machine that scans DNA?

9. Given these plans, by the end of NaNoWriMo, my word count should be around zero. Is it too early to think about National Novel Finishing Month???

Happy Birthday to Who?

Amanda Borenstadt shared this with me on my birthday yesterday. The Doctor and Weird Al--- totally the best present I got! Way better than the mammogram that my new doctor's office inflicted on me on the day (that's why you should never get poor, they schedule your appointments without asking you and then get huffy when you say you have plans....)

How to write a fantasy/sci-fi series: types of series

Most sci-fi and fantasy writers don't write just stand-alone books, but series. Readers, writers and publishers all tend to prefer them. Publishers like them because each book in the series after the first already has a built-in audience. Writers may like the fact that they can re-use the world-building work from the first book in the others in the series. And readers enjoy reading about familiar worlds and/or characters.

Some series aren't planned as series. Marion Zimmer Bradley at first thought it was a sign of laziness when she set a second novel in Darkover rather than inventing a new world. In other cases the author has planned all the books in the series before the first one is even written.

If you have read a lot of series, you may have noticed they come in different types. In order to plan your own series, you will need to know which type yours might be.

1. One Big Book series--- like Lord of the Rings, this series comes out in several volumes merely because it is too long to fit easily in one volume.Except for the length is is the same as an ordinary one-volume novel.


2. Overarching Story plus smaller stories --- similar to the Harry Potter series. There is an overarching story about the conflict between Harry and You-Know-Who, plus each book has a story which comes to a conclusion by the end of the book. When the overarching story ends, the series is over. But the smaller plots to each book give the reader the feeling that they've read a story which has a conclusion.


3. Cliffhanger series--- Each volume has a story which is concluded in the book, but the individual book ends with a cliffhanger--- a dilemma which won't be resolved til the next book. This can be unpopular with readers, however. This type of series is open-ended and can continue as long as writer and readers are interested.


4. Episodic series, same main characters--- Think of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The mystery in each story is different and unconnected, but the main characters are always present in each novel. Another open-ended type. In some series of this type, the main character undergoes little change throughout the series. In others, the main character will age, change jobs, move to different cities, marry, have children and grandchildren, and other realistic touches.


5. Episodic series, main character group--- This is a variation in which there is a group of main characters. Each novel will have main characters from this group, but different novels will have different main characters, but always drawn from the set. Piers Anthony's Xanth series, at least in the novels I've read, worked that way. The main character in one book was the son of the main character in the first book, for example. In this series form, the main character from one book will turn up as a minor character in another.


6. Episodic series, same world/setting--- Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover works like this, as does Mercedes Lackey's Velgarth/Valdemar series. The same fantasy and science fictional world is always featured in books in the series, but some books may be set in different time periods with an all-new set of characters. In this type, there may be mini-series within the series--- three books featuring the same characters, for example.

Each of the different series types has its own appeal. As a writer, some may seem better than others to you. For an unpublished writer who is aiming at working with a mainstream royalty publisher only, the first two types may not be a good bet as you will be asking the publisher to stick with you through a whole series--- something he will not want to do if the first book sells poorly. Better to start out with something more open-ended for your first effort. (If you are going the self-publishing route, you can please yourself--- but be sure you are really willing to stick with a story in several volumes even with little reader interest before you commit to types 1 or 2.)

When I started my own series Taliesin, I was actually inspired by a mystery series rather than a fantasy, Anne Perry's William Monk series. That series featured William Monk, an amnesiac police detective, and a woman he meets in the first volume who assists him in his later cases. This gave me the idea of a supernatural fantasy series featuring a vampire and a girl with Dissociative Identity Disorder who together get involved with a series of unfortunate supernatural events in a series of novels.

Free software for organizing your novel

My project for today was to get together a method to organize my current web novel, Taliesin: Vampire Dreams. I was googling around for something on the Snowflake method and instead I found an article which gave links to free software for organizing your novel. There are 3 different free software options given.

Storybook: Open Source Novel Writing Software for Novelists, Authors and Creative Writers --- tried this. They are really big on trying to sell you the paid version, which is the only version that lets you export and print out the outline you create with it. I'm not sure the free version is all that useful if you can't print out your work.

yWriter: Free novel writing software to help you write a book. Very good software and it really is free, not just a demo.

PageFour: Novel writing software - software for creative writers --- includes a tabbed word processor and outliner This is actually just a demo of the paid version and has restrictions.

After looking all three over I've decided to download Storybook and use it to organize Taliesin and perhaps my other writing. I'm not sure if it will help--- or if anything will help. Being disorganized is my worst failing as a writer. I'd love to hear from other writers who've tried one of these free resources--- has it helped your writing?

NOTE: there is software for the Snowflake Method, but it costs $100, which is $100 more than I can spare this month or any month of the foreseeable future. Besides which I thought the free software, being of more general interest, was worth a mention. But if you have the money and like the snowflake method, you might consider getting that software.

New Catholic Flash Fiction site

There is a new web site/blog for Catholic flash fiction.

What's flash fiction? Like this blog post, only fictional.

Apostrophe Atrocities

"John has three cat's, a mother cat and it's babie's. One of the kitten's is real cute but the other ones face looks like the hind end of an as's."

This is an all too common example of apostrophe atrocity. As a peaceful prolife Christian, I think people who write like this should be killed. With wood chippers.

Well, that might be a _bit_ harsh. But there is no excuse for anyone who is an aspiring writer to write like this. Not even in an email or Facebook post. Not even if you are dyslexic or don't speak English or just had your brain eaten by a zombie.

If you think you may have committed an apostrophe atrocity, get thee to the English grammar confessional at once. Your penance will involve an intimate encounter with the first page of your Strunk and White.

Strunk and White? That's short for 'The Elements of Style' by William Strunk and E. B. White. Every household that doesn't have a copy wedged next to the other household essentials (The Bible, Webster's Dictionary, The Catechism of the Catholic Church (or your denominational equivalent), and The Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble) is probably inhabited by sister-marrying illiterate hillbillies, rather than the literate cousin-marrying hillbilly type that most of us strive for.

Correct version of above sentence: "John has three cats, a mother and its babies. One of the kittens is real cute but the other one's face looks like the hind end of an ass."

And now, for no apparent reason, a picture with cats.

Author Holly Lisle's gone Indie

Holly Lisle, author of 32 sci-fi and fantasy books, has announced she is quitting Big Publishing to go indie.

This will without doubt be a success for her, as her blog has a large following and she's been self-publishing her non-fiction for a while now.  But I think it will also be a good thing for all indie authors as it will bring more attention to the fact that indie publishing today is quite different than the old school vanity presses.

I remember years ago reading the author Laurence Block's advice to young writers. He said that in his early years, writers got started writing short stories for the many paying markets that then existed. He said that though the publishing world had changed since then, young writers would continue to find venues in which to serve out a writing apprenticeship.

Publishing has changed again. Now the unpublished writer will be serving out his apprenticeship in the world of blogging and indie publishing--- perhaps publishing early novels and short stories through Smashwords, or novels in real-book form through Lulu.com--- both free options. A blog, I believe, is essential for such an indie writer. It provides proof to the potential reader of your book that you are indeed able to write the English language without a net. It also provides immediate feedback.

I have reasons that have nothing to do with writing that make it essential that I be an indie writer. I have one poetry book out, Where the Opium Cactus Grows, which is published by Lulu.com. I had said I was going to publish most or all of the poems from the book on this blog. I still intend to do that, and I also want to provide at least most of 'Opium Cactus' as a free ebook through Smashwords.

I also have my new web fiction novel Taliesin, and may be publishing some short fiction on this blog and/or in ebook form.

Through my blog and related activities I've had the opportunity to meet other indie authors such as:
Amanda Borenstadt: Syzygy
Tracy Krauss: And The Beat Goes On
Michael Anthony Lee: Horker's Law (The Six Books of Magic)

One advantage of indie publishing is that you can create your own little niche-genre, and that actually will help you out in gaining a readership. Christian science fiction, especially that with hard science fiction elements, is not welcomed at major Christian publishers (or secular SF ones), but is a natural for indie publishing.

One thing you can do to help your indie writer friends is to purchase/download your indie fiction from Amazon.com. This helps the book climb in sales on that site. Reviewing and tagging indie books is also a mitzvah you can do for your indie writer friends.

Writers: How important is character naming to you?

Over at Faithwriters there is an excellent article called Seven Tips for Naming Characters. It set me to thinking about how character naming is more important to some writers than to others.

I'm sure there are some writers that could just pluck a name at random from a name book and use it for a character--- if they came up with 'Carol' that would be just as good as any other name and they'd have no problem with it.

Other writers agonize. I have one character who commonly goes by the name 'Mina Bayern'. Some time ago I came up with the absolute perfect name for her actual family name (which is also the name of her House, a clan-like grouping). But I don't know where (or if) I wrote it down and it's driving me crazy and I can't just pick another name because it won't be the right one.

Because of this name-obsessiveness I collect a lot of name books. I have one or two ordinary baby name books, 2 baby name books in German, a book of Esperanto names, and a book of Celtic names. I also have an encyclopedia of the Saints. I also have a hand-written list of Korean names gleaned from Korean dramas over the last 4 years.

Some writers have a real talent for coming up with appropriate names. J. K. Rowling comes to mind. Think of the names of Hagrid, Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, or Lord Voldemort. Aren't they just-right names for the characters?

Romance novels tend to have romance-y names for the heroine and her love-object. Some realistic writers make a point of using the most commonplace names they can find, one almost might think they derive the names from common-name lists. Science fiction names can include the weird, the unpronounceable and the randomly hyphenated. (like F'nor in Dra'gonride'rs of P'ern)

It's also possible to use temporary names for minor characters--- like Mr. Alpha, Miss Beta, Senator Gamma--- to keep the flow of your writing going rather than stopping for an hour to name them.

So--- how do YOU handle the name thing? How important is the just-right name to you? Do you have naming methods that you use? Please let us know in a comment!

A NAME GAME:
Here are eight Korean female names: Namju, Haebi, Dohui, Chunja, Boksun, Sunok, Juri, Sojin
From these, pick the names of:
1. a young main character from a poor family, who loves a rich boy, Taemin
2. an older woman at the market who sells dumplings
3. the maid of the rich family
4. a hateful over-the-top female villain (think Bellatrix from Harry Potter)


What do people want from this blog? According to this blog's stats, what people are looking for on this blog is mainly Billie Piper pregnant (all time most popular search terms), David Tennant naked, and Torchwood Miracle Day nudity. Just in case you were curious.

Holignes! I lost my notebook of cool word verification words!

When I am writing and a new character, place, or alien species pops up, I often take out a small notebook of word verification words I've encountered, and pick one more-or-less at random.

It's better for my writing than stopping the writing process to search for the perfect name for an hour and a half. And some of those word verification words are worth keeping in the final draft.

But today, alas, in between trading kittens around to different cat mommies and feeding a newborn kit milk with a spoon (she won't take a bottle), I discovered that my little word verification notebook is missing in action.

This is doubly tragic as I have started work on a writers' naming book. It will have a section on German names, one on Korean names, one on Welsh names, one on Esperanto names, and a list of word verification words as a source for alien and other odd names and words.

So--- I've had to start a new notebook. Luckily I have a spare one that's the same as the one I use for Korean names. I'm also going to start files on my computer and enter the WV words into that whenever I have a page or so. I already have similar files for Korean names.

But it's an ednesh lot of work, so if you have a cool WV word to share, mention it in your comment and it will be added to the list.

The Irresistably Sweet Blog Award

This blog is sweet? Really? I mean, I could understand winning an inconsistent blogger award, or a weird blogger award, or obnoxious off-topic ranting blogger award, or mentally challenged blogger award, but sweet?

I got this award from Amanda Borenstadt, author of the urban fantasy novel Syzygy, whose blog is A Fortnight of Mustard, which is the best condiment-titled blog of all time, easily beating out Catsup Dreams and Where's the Soy Sauce.

The Rules:

1. Thank and link to the person who nominated you.
2. Share 7 random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 8 deserving blog buddies.
4. Contact those buddies to congratulate them.



The one scary part is passing the award along. The last time I passed out an award, one of my awardees was Operation Counterstrike, who as it turned out was not available to pick up his award due to being in jail for the death threats he kept making (which were no surprise to his blog readers.) So now I'm puzzled--- do I try to find bloggers who WON'T get arrested to award them, or should I consider it a challenge to pick another potential trouble-maker? I'm torn....

SEVEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT ME:

1. My cats steal one another's kittens. In fact, that's how I found out my cat Psychokitty had given birth this year because I couldn't find one of Willow's three-week-old kittens which had been stolen by Psychokitty and stashed with her own newborns.
2. My favorite condiments are soy sauce and chocolate syrup. I put one or another on everything except communion wafers.
3. I swear too much. I had a dog who wouldn't come when called unless I said 'come [effing] here!'
4. In 1881 two loggers were lynched across the street from what became the site of my grandmother's house. (My brother lives in the house now.) My great-great-grandmother's cousin-in-law may have supplied the rope. [See Song of the McDonald Boys, my new blog, for more details.]
5. I have an unnatural obsession with ampersands. &&&&&&&
6. Mi amas lerni lingvoj, kiel Esperanto, Germana kaj Korea. (I love learning languages like Esperanto, German and Korean.)
7. I am totally in love with the following fictional characters: Angelique Collins from Dark Shadows, Pavel Chekov from Star Trek, Tracy Quartermaine from General Hospital, Niki Smith from One Life to Live, Romana from Doctor Who, Kes from Star Trek Voyager, Trance Gemini from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Annie and George from Being Human, Thomas Kincade Brannigan from Doctor Who, Rose Tyler from Doctor Who, and the Racnoss Empress from Doctor Who (the sexy red spidery alien with all the eyes). Because fictional people are just cooler than boring old real people.
8. I'm smart enough to join the genius organization Mensa but I'm too smart to want to.

DESERVING BLOG BUDDIES WHO ARE NOT IN PRISON (YET)
1. Letters for George: I just discovered this blog which has a lot about local history in the town of Menominee, Michigan, among other things.
2. Happy Catholic: I added this blog to those I follow some time ago. Visit to find out why to boycott Nestle and what Saint Ambrose wants you to do when you're insulted (hint: it doesn't involve chainsaws.)
3. Bluegrass Pundit: conservative news, video and comment from the Bluegrass state. Visit the blog to find out which state that is, and to read about the complete and utter destruction of Al Gore.
4. Tracy Krauss-Expression Express, a blog by a Christian writer and artist who is author of My Mother the Man Eater and And the Beat Goes On....
5. Dragons in our Midst & Echoes from the Edge: how can you go wrong with a blog with an ampersand in the title? The blog by author Bryan Davis has a press release for his daughter's new book, do check it out.
6. WORD up! offers Bible study and book reviews.
7. Reviews from the Heart: a Christian blogger who does book and product reviews.
8. IT CAME FROM ALLEN'S BRAIN! Check out his job interview questions for the position of assistant. I particularly like #6:

06. I am capable of making:
__ Plutonium from common household items
__ Repairs and modifications to both atomic- and lightning-powered machinery
__ Flimsy excuses
__ Eleven different death-rays
__ Decent coffee
__ A mess

GETTING A BLOG AWARD IS TIME CONSUMING
I mean, I could have spent the time blogging about how Richard Nixon is one of my favorite Doctor Who companions, or providing proof that US President Barack Obama is the Doctor's arch-nemesis, The Master AKA Harry Saxon. Or doing laundry or returning stolen kittens to their real mamas or the mamas I want them to have. I guess that's why some bloggers don't accept these awards. But not me, I want all the awards I can get. Just because.

If YOU want all the awards you can get, add your name and blog address in a comment and I will add you to the list next time I get an award, or I will completely forget about you. One or the other.

Go ahead, write something shocking!

We are surrounded by a sea of bland, flavorless fiction, non-fiction, blog posts, bathroom wall graffiti.... The mucky waters of conventionality are rising and we will drown if we don't fight back.

How did we get to this point? Most of us learned to write in school. The purpose of a school is to homogenize us, to turn each of us from individuals into part of the school collective. *You Will Be Absorbed* says the school.

The school does the work so well that the child learns to rigidly conform even when proclaiming himself a non-conformist. All the non-conformists conform to a rigid non-conformist code.

As a result we are conditioned to see the bland and ordinary sentence as the safe and correct and grammatical sentence. And our readers drop with soft little thuds as they die from boredom.

So: write something shocking! Don't do what they expect you to do. Instead of 'she went to work as she did every day', write 'down! down! down! she fell, into a vat of melted lawn furniture'.

Don't write about some accountant who can't get the girl, write about the guy in purgatory who just found out Adolf Hitler is moving in to the purgatory-cabin next door. Write about the guy who sees fairies in the back garden--- then calls the exterminator.

If you are afraid to shock people with your writing, you may well end up seeing your writing coming to a screeching halt. After all, even if everything in your novel seems bland and inoffensive, something in it will offend somebody somewhere.

I am finding lately that my best writing in years is coming from a project that has an element in it that would shock the secular publishers silly, and another aspect that would put off Christian publishers as well.

Doing this is not safe. It's not practical. But at least it's not boring.

we kissed when I was 8 and he was 7....

...and now he's the Gay latino Elvis impersonator, El Vez. Maybe it's just as well I quit kissing boys...

Using Babelfish to write poetry

I have an unnatural obsession with machine translation. I have a great time using the various internet sites that provide computerized translation from one language to another, like Babelfish.

Since I am a person that actually knows about languages (during my Pagan days I translated a Pagan booklet from German into English) I know that computer translations usually suck. They are helpful if you already know the language you are translating into well enough to catch mistakes, but otherwise they can be trouble.

But while Babelfish and her sisters may not be able to solve the world language problem, they do have another use. They can write poetry.

You see, one day I was testing Babelfish to see how well it could translate into Korean. I know next to no Korean, so what I did was I wrote a test sentence: "My cat Claudius has a neurological disorder", translated it English-to-Korean with Babelfish, and then cut-and-pasted the resulting unknown Korean sentence into Babelfish and did a Korean-to-English translation.

This is what Babelfish spit out at me:

To my cat Claudius
there is a military force
at the nervous crane.

Who knew Babelfish could write a haiku? So, anyway, I slapped a title on it ('catpoem/claudius') and added it to my collection of poetry written. It is now included in Where the Opium Cactus Grows.

In this first case I liked what Babelfish did enough to keep it pretty much as it was, I just arranged it into three lines.

Most of the time Babelfish poetry is more work. You might have to run it through a couple of languages (Asian languages seem to work best), and pick-and-choose the best results and do a lot of rewrites. But it produces some pretty cool imagery and can help to fire up those creative juices on days when you just don't feel like writing anything.


Here is today's poetic rough draft:
1. (original sentence) The werewolf's girlfriend is now pregnant. When will the puppies be born?
2.(after translating into Korean & back) werewolf' s girl friends now are pregnancy. The pup when will be inherent?
3.(after translating 2 again into Korean & back) werewolf' s girl friends now are pregnancy. The pup of the case which will be characteristic?
4. (tranlation of 3 into Dutch and back) werewolf' s the little girl friends pregnancy now its. The young of the case which characterising will be?
5. (translated 4 into Japanese and back) werewolf' s now pregnancy of the friend of the girl. The young person when is the fact that it characterizes?
6. (translated 1 into Japanese and back) werewolf' The girl friend of s now becomes pregnant. Is the puppy when born?

1. (original sentence) How many puppies, how many? Only one, says the ultrasound machine. How odd, how very odd.
2. (1 translated to Korean and back) How many many pup, how many is many? 1 revealed the supersonic machine only. How many is odd, is quite odd and is how.
3. (1 translated to Chinese and back) How many puppies, how many? Only one, said the ultrasonic wave machine. How strange, how is strange.

These are the raw materials.

The werewolf's
little girl friend
now becomes pregnant.

The puppies of this case
when will they be inherent?
which will be the
characteristic?

How many many pup,
how many is many?
how many is odd
is quite odd
and is how.

the pregnant little girlfriend
and the wolf
will have one


Not really happy with that--- you don't get a military force at the nervous crane every day--- but will print it out and bury it in a file for awhile, then do some revision and reworking, add and subtract a bit.

How to Write a Juxtaposition Poem

When I write poetry I like to write what I call juxtaposition poetry. It's a little like found poetry, except that you 'find' the raw materials from three different sources--- books, newspapers and the like. It's not only interesting of itself, but is something that can get your writerly juices going when you have writer's block.

Your three sources need to be very different from one another--- in 'nuclear sainthood profits' from my book Where the Opium Cactus Grows I used a Catholic prayer book, a book about nuclear war, and something by Karl Marx.

What you do with your sources is 'point and click'. Open each one at random and point, without looking, at the text. Copy out words or phrases from that point. Do this one after another until you have enough material for the poem at hand.

A pure juxtaposition poem just uses this material as you found it. But the secret to writing a good juxtaposition poem is to cheat like hell. Fudge a bit when you are pointing to select your source material, and add, subtract and re-arrange the material to help it make more sense. Or less sense, depending on your writerly goals.

I might point out that my 'nuclear sainthood profits' is not an average example of my juxtaposition poems, but one I feel is one of my best efforts in that direction. Most juxtaposition poems are choppier and don't have unified themes (whatever themes are, I try to avoid them). 'nuclear sainthood profits' is what happens with juxtaposition poetry when your Muse is in the building.

Here is the complete text of 'nuclear sainthood profits' from 'Where the Opium Cactus Grows'.

nuclear sainthood profits


wages after the labour, we beseech you, o limited nuclear war
a son is given to us, testing increasingly smaller warheads
if this limit is overshot, ground zero will accumulate debris
o mary conceived without sin, detonate a nuclear weapon
in the presence of mine enemies


behold, a virgin shall declare war on the soviet union and china
the market price of our pope, our bishop, and all true believers
includes mutual assured destruction when wages and prices are high
and large numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles
now and at the hour of our death

This poem was written 21 years ago--- wow, a poem that's old enough to drink! At the time I wrote it I was NOT a Catholic, and I WAS a Marxist. But I never meant it as in any was anti-Catholic. It was more like a nuclear-war-drives-us-all-to-pray thing. And of course there was the 'blame-capitalism' reish going on as well. (Did you know that capitalism is responsible for the lack of life on Mars?)

The sharpness of this poem is a result of using sources with high emotional impact. You don't have to do that all the time--- I've used a local newspaper as a source many times, both for juxtaposition poetry as I've described it here, and for single-source found poetry.

These blander sources are essential for school teachers using juxtaposition poetry in the classroom, since in a school setting one WANTS a bland result. In homeschooling, a wider variety of sources are possible, whatever the homeschooling mother thinks is acceptable.

In my experience, some juxtaposition poems are finished after the first day's work, and others need more work. In addition, any type of poem benefits from being 'aged' in a file for a few months and then being given a bit of polishing if needed--- or even a complete re-write.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT: write a juxtaposition poem of your own. (If you post your poem on your blog, do post a link to it here in a comment.)

Related Post:
Blogging 'Where the Opium Cactus Grows'

Featured Books:
The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets
Modern Korean Poetry
Where the Opium Cactus Grows





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7. Cuddle a cat for me. Any cat. Except maybe a surly tiger. They bite.

Strange Blog Wins Second Award

Amanda Borenstadt of A Fortnight of Mustard has awarded The Lina Lamont Fan Club the Stylish Blogger Award. Maybe it's because of the fetching nightgown and ratty blanket I'm wearing right now?

Amanda claims I now must tell seven things about myself. But then again she's part of some weird cult that worships Playmobil people, so what does she know? But I'll do it anyway as I promised I'd finish this blog entry before I have breakfast and I'm hungry....

1. There is a two-day-old kitten in the room making weird kitten noises. His name is Other Joel 2. Last year his mama had 5 kittens, 4 survived and were named Joel, Other Joel, Girl Joel and Other Girl Joel. This year his mamma had 5 of which Other Joel 2 was the only survivor. It was a narrow thing since he chose to spend his first night on Earth making kitten-racket all night long.

2. I used to have Asperger's Syndrome but I gave it up for Lent.

3. I am addicted to Facebook games, chiefly FrontierVille, and, lately, PriestVille (which is kind of like Mafia Wars but with less whacking people. Too bad, I like whacking people.)

4. My role model and secret crush is the Crazy Cat Lady from the Simpsons. Like her, I also enjoy screaming gibberish and throwing cats at people. I'm throwing one at Barack Obama right now, for interrupting the soap operas 2 days in a row. (It's a really bad tempered black-and-white cat named Sarah Palin. Yes, my cats are all Republicans. One is even named after Dick Cheney. Cheney is the mother of 5 kittens, by the way.)

5. My third favorite character from Doctor Who is The Master (Harry Saxon version). My eighth favorite character from Star Trek (The Original Series) is Khan Noonian Singh. I'm writing a story about The Master and Khan. It's a romance.

6. Is it seven things yet? I lost count. I hate mathematics and counting and crap.

7. I'm older than dirt, but I still haven't decided what I want to be when I grow up. I'm thinking 'cowboy'.

Now I'm supposed to pass on the award to seven other bloggers. Which ones to pick? I'll just have to pick out the top seven from my Best Blogs Ever list. Or maybe I'll just throw darts at the wall--- or cats--- to pick seven at random.

1. Fabianspace, by author Karina Fabian
2. The CHASTITY Ring, which is about my favorite alternative lifestyle.
3. Operation Counterstrike, by Melvin 'Operation' Counterstrike. Hey, he's got style, it's just not a very civilized kind of style. His blog has gone all by-invitation-only, so someone please tell Mel he's won an award?
4. The Least Read Blog on the Web by John, a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod pastor.
5. Tea with Morbius , a Doctor Who blog by Celestial Fundy.
6. Expression Express by author Tracy Krauss
7. Biblical Evidence for Catholicism by apologist Dave Armstrong

And now, The Game. I'm not going to tell the award winners that they won just yet. That's YOUR job! So, go to the blogs on the list and drop the authors a comment that they won an award.

UPDATE: Celestial Fundy is the first award winner to have discovered his award, so as a prize, he gets one of the NEUTERED cats. The hard bit is sticking enough postage stamps on the cat to get it to the UK.

Operation Counterstrike (real name Theodore Shulman) will probably not be picking up his award as he's been arrested for making death threats. When he gets out he will probably have to give up his blog, or at least refrain from making death threats there, which means he's going to have to find a new theme for his blog. Please folks, pray for Theo!

And Other Joel 2 the kitten has passed away. His mamma has also had 1 other dead kitten for a total of 6. Luckily there are other kittens around here who will volunteer to dispose of her milk supply.

Related Post: Prolific Blogger Award goes to Crazy Cat Lady

Read the Bible in a year--- and the Catechism

There are a lot of plans out there for reading the Bible in a year, and now that I am a Bible Christian instead of an Odin-worshipping Neopagan, I see the value of them. It's harder to get in the discipline of Bible-reading if you always are wondering which part of the Bible to be reading on any given day.

Today I found a Bible reading plan with something extra--- it's based on the complete Bible, not one that omits the books tossed out of the Bible by most Protestants after the Reformation. And it ALSO includes daily readings of the Catholic Catechism, so that you will also read THAT in a year (if you so choose.) Read the Bible and the Catechism in a Year

The daily reading includes a chapter from 3 different books of the Bible each day. It's in PDF format and if you print out the 2 pages onto the same sheet of paper and fold it in quarters, you have a little leaflet you can keep in your Bible.

Some people might assume that only those Bible Christians who are Catholic would like this scripture reading plan. But nowadays Protestants and Evangelicals are often less than fully convinced that Martin Luther was inerrantly inspired by the Holy Spirit when he treated the Deuterocanonical books (the 'Apocrypha') as not really Biblical, since Luther also wanted to kick the epistle of James out of the Bible altogether (the Deuterocanonicals were included in the Luther translation of the Bible, but grouped together between the Old and New Testaments).

Even Pastor Arnold Murray of the Shepherd's Chapel TV Bible study program is not against reading the Deuterocanonicals and says good things about them, though he doesn't preach on them as he does with other books of the Bible. So this Bible reading plan meets the needs of many Bible Christians who are Protestant/Evangelical as well as the Catholics.

I'm starting with the Bible reading plan today. Another nice thing about it is that it doesn't have the months and days listed so you can start any time, and if you skip a week, you can just keep going with where you left off--- and you can read ahead when you are energetic. I challenge anyone out there to do likewise.



Kindle Bible (KJV with Apocrypha) (best navigation with Direct Verse Jump)
Kindle Catholic Bible (D-R) (best navigation with Direct Verse Jump)