Typography

Here’s a cute YouTube video I found on my iGoogle page. It’s called Typography and it was created by the Vancouver Film School. What’s neat about it is that it’s a new video, but is done in the style of those old reel films we used to watch back in the day. (Back in the day being about 30 years ago or so.)

The Robins Are Back

The robins are back in central Minnesota.  While driving my mom to the nursing home to see Grandma, we saw flocks of them in and along the streets.  Why didn’t any of them bother to check the forecast for today?  We’re getting snow, anywhere from 3 to 7 inches, or so I’ve heard.  Make no mistake about it, it’s snowing outside and it’s sloppy.  We’ll have to wait and see on the final amount.  I hope the robins get their wits about them and find some shelter.

I’ve been fussing around as far as writing today.  I spent the morning going through my current writing notebook pulling out all references to a particular story idea, rewriting them all together in a new notebook.  When I have a big idea, one that I think will lead to a book-length manuscript, I do this, devoting a notebook or two to that one idea.  Otherwise I have to page through my general notebook finding references to the idea.  This makes me nuts.  There was more material to transfer than I expected, which was a nice discovery.  Transferring the notes also got my brain warmed up and thinking along new lines.  There’s still quite a bit of background work I have to do before I bring any characters together on the page.

This afternoon, I edited the fourth story in my Greenville series.  Part of the story deals with the second Boer War.  It was the one topic I covered in my book that I was not comfortable with, not having any direct experience with South Africa.  My husband and I recently met a man who was born and grew up in South Africa, so I sent him the story and he kindly gave me advice on points that needed fixing.  I was pleased that all of his suggestions were about clarifying fine details, rather than giant errors in my historical research.

Now, I’m online (obviously) and doing my typical online things, like checking email, blogging, and reading the news and other blogs.  I avoided turning on the computer this morning because I didn’t want to fritter away my time online, which happens more easily than I care to admit.  By saving my online time for later in the day, I get a real sense of accomplishment.

Channeling Trent

I do not envy Trent Reznor for the task he has chosen.  His band, Nine Inch Nails (NIN), is hosting a film festival with YouTube, in which fans create videos using the band’s new albums, Ghosts I-IV.  515 videos have been submitted since news of the film festival was released in mid-March.  That’s a lot of video to screen.

I’ve visited NIN’s YouTube page a number of times and viewed a bunch of the entries.  Here are my observations.  There are quite a few videos that appear to be no more than random nature shots.  For as much as Trent and Company tried not to influence how these videos turned out, it seems that people took the lovely nature photos that accompanied the albums to heart and used them for inspiration.  In addition to nature scenes, there seems to be a preponderance of black and white footage, more so than you’d normally see on the YouTubes.  I have to wonder if people think that black and white is an easy way to convey angst, of which Trent has quite the history of expressing.   In fact, there’s so much unusual imagery (closeups of things you can’t recognize) in this group of videos, that methinks people are attempting to channel Trent.  (A laudable goal, to be sure, as the guy’s pretty creative.)

I’m not Trent, but I’ll make my own effort to channel him by telling you what I’d be looking for  if I were judging the NIN film festival videos.

First, you’ve got to grab my attention and grab it fast.  If you haven’t piqued my curiosity within a minute’s time, I’ll stop watching.  Actually, it’d be even better if you’d catch my attention within the first 30 seconds of the video.  Not much time, but them’s the breaks.  Hook me immediately and do it with . . .

A story!  A random series of images, no matter how beautiful, doesn’t cut it.  Yawn.  I’m so sleepy.  Give me a character I want to watch and put that character into an interesting situation.  Give me baited breath ’til the end.

Trent’s made this exercise a difficult one for us because he hasn’t provided lyrics, which naturally provide a story structure for music and lend themselves to imagery.  It’s up to us to invent the story and the first step in that is to listen to the music.  Some of the videos I watched weren’t as integrated with the music as they could have been.  This would be key for me in judging the videos.  Trent’s given us the music to see what we’ll do with it and if we treat it as an afterthought, that’s not gonna sit well.

A small thing that helps to make a video memorable is to give it a title.  And I don’t mean the title of which Ghosts song was used.  In introducing the film festival, Trent indicated that the songs were given these 1 Ghosts, 2 Ghosts, 3 Ghosts, etc. titles because they were meant to be placeholder names that didn’t suggest much of anything.  The videos I watched that included a title other than Ghosts stayed in my mind longer.

Finally, although fans may want to pay homage to NIN by trying to figure out what Trent likes or what he’d do, I’d go my own way.  Yes, the music suggests certain moods, but Trent lives with his moods everyday.  Why not try to surprise him (and the rest of us) with a video that shows your personality?

Okay, I’m done channeling Trent, the film festival judge.  Now, I’ll give you links to a few of the videos that I liked.  (You’ll notice they all have titles.)

Bill Posters Prosecuted – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22FNbKu9biU – While the imagery gets repetitive, what works about this video is that the creator added lyrics, which provides an underlying story.

 

The Idea of Autumn – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC56fkbaLNg – This video contains unusual, random imagery that works very well with the music.  The imagery and music work in concert.

 

This Hillbilly Life – The War, part one – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2qIrxcsQoU – This video is a good example of making the film festival personal.  It is a documentary interview of the creator’s father, who’s talking about his war experience.

A Ghost’s Memory:  NIN Ghosts I – Tracks 09 & 02 –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILqI0PV-sGU – While I normally click off of videos that use film footage from other sources, this old-fashioned footage, taken from a 1915 film, was riveting.  The video was a good juxtaposition of old footage with new music.

 

The Warehouse – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xXPqWqFVCg – Of all the videos I watched, this was my favorite.  The story hooked me instantly and was suspenseful through the end.  The music was appropriately used to build tension.

While I may come off as being overly critical in this post, let me tell you that I understand the making of a video is no easy task.  I had a video class in high school and a group of us had to put together a film of quite some length.  (That’s my way of saying I don’t remember how many minutes long it was supposed to be.)  Just getting enough stuff on tape for editing was a job and a half.  Editing was another job and a half and getting everything to work with music was a pain.  I can’t look at that video without cringing.

It remains to be seen as to whether I’ll have enough time to enter anything into NIN’s film festival.  For one, I have a steep learning curve in figuring out how to use film editing software.  Also, there’s that little problem of not owning a video camera . . . .

For Reeva

Reeva Dubois suggested I post pictures of my yarn stash, so in Reeva’s honor, here goes . . .

This storage container is a 20 gallon size and it’s stuffed almost to bursting.  The bag you see behind it is part of the stash.  I also removed a couple of bags of filling.  As you can see, I tend to bag yarns together – mostly those of the same type or that were used on the same project.  This bucket isn’t the end of my stash, though.  Here’s more:

This part of my stash is newer stuff that I’ve gotten or received (including the skein from Devin).  It’s what I plan to use in the “near” future, once I figure out what I want to make.  I keep this handy in a couple of tote bags, whereas the stuff in the bin is a little harder to get to.

There you have it, my yarn stash.  I’m sure it doesn’t touch what other yarn-oholics have, but I enjoy it.

For Daughter

There is a white eraser sitting on my desk.  I think it’s made of some kind of polymer.  Erases like a dream.  However, according to Daughter, it has a funny smell.  Here’s what she did with the eraser.  She took the picture, too.  Click on the photo for a larger view.

Wi-Fi Poltergeists

Yesterday, Daughter called me at work, frustrated that she couldn’t get my old computer hooked up to the internet.  She had done a bunch of her own troubleshooting.  (“What’s that word?” she asked.)  She had tried connecting several times, checked to make sure the wi-fi plug-in was plugged in, shut down the computer and restarted it – the whole rigmarole – with no result.  I told her I’d check it out when I got home.  By the time I got home, she was on to other things and didn’t need the computer.  When she tried to hook up to the internet later in the evening, presto!  No problem.

When I came home from work this afternoon, Husband couldn’t hook up to the internet using his laptop.  Loads of troubleshooting, along the lines of Daughter’s attempts, resulted in loads of cussing (and he won’t mind my saying so), but no hook-up.  The strange thing was that both my old computer and Eldest Son’s laptops were both connected to the internet at the very time Hubby couldn’t get connected.  We were able to rule out a problem from our service provider’s end.  Finally, while checking to see if I could turn off Hubby’s virus protection (thinking it was blocking the connection for some reason), the wi-fi connection came on of its own accord.  Strange.

I decided to jump online after Hubby’s issue, thinking it was some glitch in his computer and lo!  My laptop wouldn’t make the wi-fi connection.  More troubleshooting, a little cussing, a lot of frustration, and toying with the idea of a system restore, I decided I’d try a virus scan instead.  As it was doing its little scan dance, suddenly the computer connected to the internet, once again of its own accord.  What is it with technology?  Gah!

Hoarding

I fully intended to leave work a little early today. By early, I mean at 4:00 p.m., my usual time to check out, rather than after 4:00. I wanted to catch most of Oprah. Today’s topic was compulsive hoarding and followed the story of a particular woman’s hoarding habit. 10,000 square feet of stuff was hauled from her house. Oprah’s stage was stacked with a mountain of orange storage containers that I’m assuming represented the amount of stuff this woman had collected. I say assume because something came up right at 4:00 that I had to deal with, so I didn’t get home until after 4:30.

While some might think that working in a museum makes me a natural hoarder, it doesn’t. I hate clutter and actively work to keep our house clutter-free. At least twice a year I sort through our children’s dressers and pull out anything that doesn’t fit. I’m perpetually filling bags to head to the Goodwill. I regularly shred old bills and unneeded papers. If it’s not being used, out it goes.

Don’t get me wrong – I have my collections, notably books, fabric and yarn, but all three are well-organized. That is one quality of a good museum worker – we have professional organizational skills. We have to in order to retrieve the information that is requested of us. In fact, organizing is a task I periodically have a strong urge to engage in and won’t feel satisfied until I do. All of this is the long way of telling you that I don’t hoard.

Oprah made a comment toward the end of the show that she figured people would be watching and making judgments, tsk, tsking hoarders. Not me. The subject is fascinating and is one that I’ve thought about incorporating into a story. However, I’d give it a bit of a twist, not making the act of hoarding something that’s a disorder, but a manageable and integral part of the character’s life. After all, another word for hoarder is collector.

10 Words, 20 Minutes – A Reprise

This is a writing activity I invented.  I’ve added the words “A Reprise” to my title because I first posted this activity at Filter & Splice.  The beauty of this writing exercise is that you can repeat it into infinity by choosing 10 new words each time you sit down to do it.  The point being to work those 10 words into a piece of writing within 20 minutes.  You don’t have to work all 10 words into one sentence, although you can try if you like.  Simply work the words into a stream-of-consciousness piece of writing.  The time limit keeps you from stopping to think too much (i.e. turns off the inner editor).  I told LKwinter I’d repost the activity, so here goes – ten words:

evocative

decipher

brace

lemming

fruit

plaid

strip

wobble

lonely

grease

You can modify the words in traditional ways (i.e. wobble can become wobbling, brace can become bracing or braces, etc.).  I’m not an impossible taskmaster.

A Quick Post

A quick post for today.  I’m heading to Soloist’s house in a bit, but thought I’d give you an update on my day.

The kids were off school.  It’s spring break for them through tomorrow.  Not so for Hubby, who trudged off to college.

Monday is normally a writing day for me, but other than post to my blog, I haven’t done any writing, per se.  Instead, I’ve done some writing-related activities that will hopefully move me closer to publishing the Greenville series.  Over the weekend, I looked at several online publishing services – iUniverse, Lulu, Blurb, AuthorCrossing, and Cafe Press – in order to analyze their offerings.  After looking them all over, I think I’ve decided to go with Cafe Press, mostly because it will allow me to have the most control over how I layout my manuscript.  With that extra control comes extra work because I’ll have to purchase and register my own ISBN numbers (I know, that term is redundant), but it’ll be an adventure.  Right?

Today, I did a more thorough read of Cafe Press’ website and the particulars involved with laying out a book.  I printed everything off for reference.  I also looked at what was involved with setting up a Cafe Press store and read the site’s Terms of Service and all that other good legal-ease, which was clearly written, so it wasn’t terribly painful.

There were several other things on my list of things to do that I didn’t get to, but I think I was being overly ambitious in creating my list this morning.  The stuff I didn’t manage to cross off I’ll be working on throughout the week.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with this link that my Hubby found.  It’s for The Unisex, Omnisexual Purity Test.   Take it, if you dare!

Slop

It’s time for the high school boys’ basketball tournaments in Minnesota and we in Minnesota know exactly what else that means. It’s time for a snowstorm. Nature delivered. I can’t say how much of the stuff we got because it’s melting faster than it can be measured. It’s pure slop. The sidewalk I shoveled this morning is clear of the snow I couldn’t get off. The cars are nice and clean, the dirt having been removed with the wet snow. Great weather for a snowball fight, as long as you’re wearing insulated puddle boots and waterproof gloves.

I did the grocery shopping this morning. Ran into four people I knew, which isn’t unusual. Because Easter is tomorrow, all of us last-minute shoppers had crowded the seasonal aisle in Wal-Mart, trying to pick through what was left of the candy. Can you believe that I didn’t find a single bag of jellybeans in the whole place? Disgraceful! So, along with bunny-peeps, malted eggs, and colorful candy eggs with a creamy filling, we’re having Swedish Fish. We’ll call them Easter Fish – and, hey, how appropriate is that? Isn’t one of the symbols for Jesus a fish? The Fisher of Men. Hubby prefers Swed . . . I mean, Easter Fish over jellybeans anyway and Daughter is cool with the plan.

Other than shoveling and grocery shopping, I’ve done some laundry. Not being a total glutton for punishment, I’ve also spent some time reading today. I’m wolfing down Jodi Picoult’s book, “Nineteen Minutes,” which is about a fictional school shooting. Picoult really knows how to drag you into a book and keep you there, madly turning pages, swallowing it whole, practically without chewing first. In this way she reminds me of Michael Crichton. My writer friend, Soloist, recommended Picoult to me, saying that Picoult is meticulous about her research. The only piece of information I’ve read in her book that I said “Really?” over was when one of her characters is watching TV and remembers that the scrolling ticker tape news that appears at the bottom of CNN didn’t exist until 9/11. (It’s on page 100 of the hardcover version.) Really? I’m actually not questioning Picoult’s research on this. I believe her, but it’s hard to believe that the ticker tape hasn’t been around forever and that 9/11 was the impetus. Wow.

There was a minor shock of recognition for me in “Nineteen Minutes,” too. After the school shooter’s house has been searched by the police, there is a list of stuff that was removed from his room. Item 5 lists the following: “Books. The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger; On War, Clausewitz; graphic novels by Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman.” (page 111) I wonder if Neil knows . . . .

Chicks in the Mail

No, I didn’t say, “The check’s in the mail.”  And I’m not referring to mail-order brides, either.

This morning, when I went to the post office, two women were standing in the entry chatting.  One of them was holding a box full of chicks.  Even though I couldn’t see the chicks, I could certainly tell they were in there because they were cheeping to beat the band.  While it may seems strange to mail chicks, this is a common practice.  It’s how my sister receives the chicks she purchases.  How else would those who raise chickens get chicks if they don’t breed chicks themselves?  Run to the grocery store?  Have you ever seen a live chick department in  Wal-Mart?  Now that would be weird.

The Confessions of Caroline

Yesterday, a woman named Caroline left a comment on my blog.  Being blog neighborly, I stopped in over at her blog, The Confessions of Caroline, and was utterly amazed.  I started with her last post first, because that’s the way blogs are set up, and after reading one post, I began at the first post and read forward.  Caroline’s story is so compelling that I couldn’t stop reading until I came to the end.

What strikes me as unusual about her blog is the cohesiveness of her narrative, and I told her this in a comment.  Most of the blogs I’ve followed, including mine, jackrabbit around, hopping from topic to topic from one day to the next.  (I’m not counting those blasted advertising/spam blogs in this assessment.)  It isn’t until you’ve read a blog for a while that you start to see the patterns that make up an individual blogger’s life.  Not so with Caroline.  Aside from her constancy, she is a gifted writer.

Because Caroline started her blog in February of this year and has only made 17 posts, if you pop on over, you can read the whole thing in less than an hour.  It’s gripping stuff, I tell you.