Muses making themselves museful.

There are days when I just want to bind and gag my muse. But I bet she'd enjoy that. I'd promised myself that I'd go back and revise older works, but for some reason I sat down in the bus yesterday afternoon, opened up a blank file, and started writing. 1,314 words later the one-act Androids are Like That I'd mentioned a few days ago, questions about what qualifies for legal protection under traditional Corridor law, and one of Rache's [NSFW] little twisty stories had collided in my head.

Rache is a bit of a phenomenon: she seems to be writing a story a day, and her collection is already as big as mine. Her style is direct and her plots are crude although they're getting better and twistier. Her vocabulary is better than most and her grammar's at least as good as any magazine fiction out there. Her stories are contemporary, all over the map, often kinky and out there, and come straight from the pornoverse. Don't expect my kind of writing when you read hers.

But I thought to myself, "Oh, okay, I can just write a Rache story. Pornoverse things do happen in the Journal Entries universe from time to time, like they happen in real life."

But, nooo, my muse has to have fun with me. The opening sentence launches with, "I'm looking for a friend I can turn off and leave off for a while without feeling guilty about it." The protagonist, a woman named Taim (a name coughed up by my random name generator and so perfect it had to be kept), ends up buying a pet. Characters need to be something, so Taim is a coolhunter whose specialty is identifying "things to be found in coffee shops next year that people are likely to buy on impulse." Taim's major flaw is that she herself often impulse-buys without knowing why, which is how she ends up with Wolf, a big, dumb, utterly unwolflike, friendly, nonsentient(? gryn), used robot dog whose former owner had a reputation before she sold Wolf and, as they say in the Corridor, "retired" (yeah, you can totally see where this story is going).

I've discovered one of my problems: I have to struggle to tell (as opposed to show) anything. I've gotten so good at creating backstories that can be revealed through dialogue and action without resorting to "As you know, Bob" moments that boiling such a backstory down to a single paragraph told by the narrator makes me uncomfortable. My voice is very much one of the narrator as limited-omnicient follower: I tell you how the character is feeling right then, but if you need to know about his history, I want to show you how he knows that history and processes it, rather than just tell you about it. I want my own fingerprints on the story to be as light as possible. I'm not so comfortable with being a revealer.

Shardik stories can get away with this and be short stories because they're in the first person: our hero can just reminisce or ruminate as required. But third-person shorts require a bit of telling. I need to figure out how that works to my satisfaction.

Ouch!

I went to the gym and did my usual workout today. My abs ache as do my thighs. At one point as I was loading up the bar I realized, holy crap, I'm bench pressing my own weight! What the heck am I doing putting two forty-five pound weights on each side?

But between the weights and the bagwork, my right wrist is killing me this afternoon. It doesn't seem to be affecting my ability to type but it is surely annoying.

On the other hand, I am developing not just muscles but actual veins. Kinda cool. Too bad they fade after the workout, though.

If I Had All The Time In The World

If I had all the time in the world, here's what I'd write about:

Florida state representative Robert Allen accused of soliciting oral sex for money in a men's room. Yep, he's a Republican. Married, kid. Family values.

Alberto Gonzalez lied to Congress. Unfortunately, the Bush administration's response now comes down, "Yeah... and? What are you gonna do about it?"

NY Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg is "queasy" about attending a White House ceremony because "the White House Press Corps is under attack by liberal bloggers." What was that about the MSM being too liberal again?

A lot of people have suggested that, pathetically, it's going to take another terrorist attack to wake us from our slumber. Wouldn't it be fitting if it were in a movie theater? Jonathan Swift on the "conservative's" strange desire to see more terrorist attacks on American soil just to prove to us that brown people are a danger.

If you have a friend or relative who has been persuaded by the media, big business, politicians, university programs, including courses of study, or any person or group to try this deadly lifestyle, and especially if your friend or relative is already suffering from a serious disease contracted as a result of it, talk to him or her at the first opportunity about the very real possibility of starting a class-action lawsuit against the group or groups that persuaded them to enter into the activity that did them in. Together, we can stop Big Sodomy.

McCain blames his downfall on his handlers' insisting he wear "gay sweaters." Critics contend this only proves McCain is a micromanaged git who fails to be his own man.

Who knew? Sex is good for ya. Almost like it's, uh, natural for us or somethin'.

Another treasure from Gretchen: How to feel happier by the end of the day.

Dogs Against Romney. Cute!

A history of thermonulear oopses.

Michael Leeden of the American Enterprise Institute: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." From Brad DeLong's Little Golden Book of NeoConservatism, a field guide for the perplexed.

35% of Americans think the Marxist doctrine, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs," is actually a quote from the Constitution.

Conservatives against Capitalism. Thesis: modern capitalism is driven by people satisfying their desires, a drive that is essentially immature. The ability to discern what is truly good for one's self is a barrier to consumption and satisfaction, and so modern society has crafted the paradigm that maturity must be postponed for as long as possible.

Matt Yglasias: Technological and economic change has raised the age at which people-- particularly more upscale people-- do things like get married and have children. But biology stays the same. Consequently, people in their teens and early twenties engage in a lot of courtship-related program activities that don't really entail a good-faith search for a spouse.