Japanese of the day:

肉 (にく) (n) meat; (P);

そんだけ: (n,adv) only that; that's all (used in casual speech); (P);

言たって (いったって) (exp) even if I told you;

言 (げん, ごん, い(う), こと) (n) word; remark; statement; (P);

兄さん (にいさん) (n) older brother; (P);

Attn Muse: An unexpected thank you.

From: Production
To: Principal Muse
Subject: An unexpected thank you.

I know the Caprice Starr series doesn't look promising right now and we'd all much rather be doing other things, but it is still the current assignment for the next ninety days or so.

That said, I would like to thank you for delivering the final plot twist for Nymphs in November this morning. I believe that the continuity of all four chapters is not terribly fractured at this point, the themes are believable, the ending credible, and the connecting scenes line up adequately. It is now being sent to post-production for spell checking and final review. The total word count of 27,295 is likewise impressive. That's novella territory. Well done!

That said, please explain your latest plot twist in Caprice Starr. Production doesn't quite understand your intentions in taking "the second highest-scoring student ever to come out of the academy" and giving her "the scuttiest assignment the BRTP has to offer." Are we still going with the fractured council theory?

What is it with Idaho politicians?

Despite pleading guilty to trying to have sex with another man in a train station bathroom, Senator Larry Craig of Idaho insists he isn't gay.

(There must be something in the water in Idaho. That's also the state that gave us Representative Helen Chenowith (R-Idaho), a woman notorious for carrying on multiple relationships with various men, not all of them single, during her time in office, all the while screaming for "family values" legislation. She may be relentless, but she's considered dumb as a post. As one GOP political operative in northern Idaho once told a reporter in an unguarded moment: "Helen is living proof that you can fuck your brains out.")

Anyway, Jesus' General gave us the answer to what really happened. On October 18 of last year, he wrote:

And then there are the reports that Sen. Larry Craig is homosexual. I don't believe a word of it. Sure, maybe it's true that some guy put his little soldier into the senator's mouth a couple of times in train station restrooms, but that doesn't mean Craig's a homosexual.

Women might not know this, but that kind of thing happens all of the time to good, Godly, heterosexual men, sometimes as often as four or five times a week. You'll be crawling on the restroom floor, looking for something you dropped when you had your pants down and, bam, somebody will accidentally stick his little soldier into your mouth. Of course, you'll naturally mistake it for a cigar and puff on it for awhile before it starts to taste funny, but it's all very innocent. I'm sure that's what happened to Sen. Craig.

Report to the General for more.

Screw the RWA

As I may or may not have revealed here before, along with SF conventions there's another kind of writer's convention that I have attended on and off in the past: romance writer's. I find the genre fascinating, and believe that understanding how it works is key to acquire a larger segment of women readers, even those who normally wouldn't read romance. The genre itself is huge, with everything from sweet romances all the way to hard-core spousal rape and illicit affairs kind of nasty stuff.

I've just learned that the RWA has defined all epublishing as vanity press and no writer who's book was principally e-published will ever have that book read for the RITA awards. I make fun of Ellora's Cave and ID Publishing, but dammit, they do have editors and they have some standards, and for the RWA to go and tell everyone there that they're cesspits unworthy of the RWA's attention is unfair. I've read print crap that just as godsawful as anything Gaby Reese ever wrote, and for the RWA to just say, "We don't care how established you are, you're a vanity press" is to just stare down the future.

As an aside, while I was reading the RITA guidelines, I saw this:

Best Inspirational Romance

Romantic novels in which one or more characters' religious or spiritual beliefs (in the context of any religion or spiritual belief system) are a major part of their developing relationship, not merely a minor element or subplot. All inspirational books, set in any place or era, shall be eligible for this category. The word count for these novels is a minimum of 40,000 words.

Judging guidelines: In this category, one or more characters' religious or spiritual beliefs (in the context of any religion or spiritual belief system) are blended with and form a significant and substantial part of the love story, and the end of the book is emotionally satisfying.

Does anyone believe that if the characters were Buddhist, for example, that their story would have a snowball in a cyclotron's chance of winning?

Camping, Wednesday.

Yamaraashi-chan at Anderson Pt.

The sun was shining and the girls were giggly. Yamaraashi-chan became obsessed with her bugbites and cataloged all of them. I made my coffee and we had cranberry breakfast muffins for breakfast. The trick to the breakfast muffins is to wrap them in foil and then hold them over the fire on the end of a marshmallow stick; they heat evenly and hold in moisture, so they're deliciously warmed and absolutely heavenly with butter. The coffee is civilizing force for good.

Yamaraashi-chan dressed in a spaghetti-strap top that even she admitted later was "a bad idea" because the mosquitos were all so bad this year.

We drove out to Baker Lake Dam, a modest hydroelectric project of Puget Power and Tacoma City Light. We drove behind a pickup with a horse trailer, and both riders were women. I don't think I've seen a man riding horses recreationally for a long time now.

Latrine.

We entered the Baker Lake Trail from the south side this time, taking an easy 2.4 mile hike in to Anderson Point. When we got there we found one heck of a campsite, complete with a box latrine: no surrounding shelter, just an isolated pit with a wooden box covering it and this sign pointing the way. The girls were fascinated by the idea until I pointed out that you'd also have to sit there to use it when it was raining. There were campers there, too. They had crossed the lake on their boat, only to have the motor break down and strand them. They asked how long the hike was as it looked like they might have to hoof it out of there to get parts.

We sat on the beach at Anderson Point, skipping stones, eating PB&J sandwiches, and lying in the sun while the girls played in the water. The campers had a crappy little weiner dog who barked at us annoyingly and then walked away, head and tail high. "Hmph, my ancestors were timberwolves."

Beercan Chicken!

We made beercan chicken, which admittedly looks a little weird and takes a long time-- almost two hours, while the steaming beer keeps the bird moist and helps cook the upper portion. That, couscous, and broccoli. Who says you can't be civilized out in the middle of nowhere?