Caterwauling

Some humor for my techie (and tech-support!) friends, courtesy of Leslie.

ABBOT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I’m setting up an office in my den, and I’m thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the names Lou.

ABBOT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don’t own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my names Lou.

ABBOT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don’t know. What will I see when I look in the windows?

ABBOT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What have you got?

ABBOT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOT: Recommend something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something?

ABBOT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOT: Yes

COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOT: Office.

COSTELLO:.Yes, for my office!

ABBOT: I recommend Office with Windows.

COSTELLO: I already have an office and it has windows! OK, lets just say, I’m sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOT: Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOT: Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?

ABBOT: The Word you get when you click the blue w.

COSTELLO: I’m going to click your blue w if you don’t start with some straight answers. OK, forget that. Can I watch movies on the Internet?

ABBOT: Yes, you want RealOne.

COSTELLO: Maybe a real one, maybe a cartoon. What I watch is none of your business. just tell me what I need!

ABBOT: RealOne.

COSTELLO: If its a long movie I also want to see reel 2, 3 & 4. Can I watch them?

ABBOT: Of course.

COSTELLO: Great, with what?

ABBOT: RealOne.

COSTELLO; OK, I’m at my computer and I want to watch a movie. What do I do?

ABBOT: You click the blue 1.

COSTELLO: I click the blue one what?

ABBOT: The blue 1.

COSTELLO: Is that different from the blue w?

ABBOT: The blue 1 is Real One and the blue w is Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: But there’s three words in office for windows!

ABBOT: No, just one. But its the most popular Word in the world.

COSTELLO: It is?

ABBOT: Yes, but to be fair, there aren’t many other Words left. It pretty much wiped out all the other Words out there.

COSTELLO: And that word is real one?

ABBOT: Real One has nothing to do with Word. Real One isn’t even part of Office.

COSTELLO: Stop! Don’t start that again. What about financial bookkeeping — you have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOT: Money.

COSTELLO: That’s right. What do you have?

ABBOT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOT: It comes bundled with your computer.

COSTELLO: What’s bundled to my computer?

ABBOT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?

ABBOT: Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOT: One copy.

COSTELLO: Isn’t it illegal to copy money?

ABBOT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.

COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOT: Why not, they own it.

I’m exhausted. Really. I did post last night, but it’s still in draft mode and will probably stay there till the end of time. 🙂 Have loads of editing on the magazine to do, but right now, I’m feeling the effects of a major case of insomnia last night, and my patience and energy are limited. My boss asked me a stupid question this morning, and I held up my thumb and forefinger and said, “I have exactly this much patience today; I plan to expend it wisely.” Meaning, don’t waste my tiime with the usual inanities.

Had to park in BFE last night — I got home around 10:30, and I had to park over at the Safeway in the neighboring plaza — between one car with a window busted out and covered with a trash bag and the other with a mosaic-style cracked windshield. I don’t pray much, but I said a prayer as I left my little Samantha shivering between the two scary cars.

So “The L Word” premiered tonight. What does it stand for, you ask? Hmm. Labia. Lust. Longing. Licking. Lots of soft porn. But in the case of the inaugural episode, I’ll say it stands for Long.

And before you even ask, I’ve already reserved my copy of Melissa Etheridge’s “Lucky”.

Spoiler alert!

I had high hopes for the show, and I did enjoy the debut. I will definitely tune in for future episodes. But one L word — lifelike — is not one that I would use for some of the scenes.

Shawn watched the first hour with me but skipped out on the last 35 minutes, which was a shame, ’cause that’s when it really started to get good. They saved all the girl-girl sex scenes for the last few minutes. But the early part of the show was devoted to hetero sex — not that I have any problem with that, mind you, but it seemed really weird on a show that the L.A. Times dubbed, “”Imagine the women of ‘Sex and the City’ sleeping with each other. …”

Well, that’s really impossible, because it’s not LOL-funny like SATC, but it’s got its own merits. Shawn and I were just shocked how unreal the sole “straight” couple (and I use that term loosely) were — after a party at the home of Bette and Tina (who are planning to have a baby together), token straight girl Jenny gets kissed by the ridiculously sexy Marina in the bathroom. Jenny freaks and drags her sorta-cute boy Tim out of a conversation, begging, “Take me home!” Um, dumb bitch, y’all live next door. Walk your scrawny ass over there yourself, mmm-kay?

So he gives up an opportunity to talk to reporters about his glory hole days in the Olympics to take her sniffling ass home. When they get there, she rips open his pants and gives him a blow job. Now if that wasn’t unrealistic enough for you, he pushes her away and says, “Let’s talk!” Um, yeah. Women are just dying to give blow jobs, and men are simply more interested in having a heart-to-heart conversation about why we’re so upset over something that we jerk their dicks outta their pants and start licking it like it’s a melting ice cream cone in the desert. Like Dr. Phil likes to say, “Get real!”

Like our soon-to-be-retiring (and in my case beloved) sitcom “Friends,” they all hang out at a coffee shop, Planet, which happened to be owned by Marina. And Jenny just happens to stop by there every day (girl, what was WITH your hair that first day you stopped by? It looked like you slapped a hairnet over a weave. Wash your fucking hair before a shoot!). So she clearly wasn’t all that wigged (ha, I slay me!) out over playing tongue twister with a hot chick.

Of course, I wasn’t so cynical for the rest of the show, or I’d have turned the damn thing off. When I first saw the previews, I thought Shane was going to be the character I liked the best, what with her irreverence and proclivity for casual sex. (Let me insert the note that Paul, Bryan, Shawn and I were looking through my old photo albums tonight, and well, it was duly noted that I’d slept with, oh, everyone pictured — and most of them had dated one of my friends beforehand.) But I kind of thought Marina was the hottest, at least tonight — she was waxing poetic about literature, and admittedly, my mind is my “real” G-spot, so I strangely found myself mesmerized by her mouth while she talked.

(OK, the raving bisexual in me is coming out tonight.)

We laughed heartily, though, when the gay dads’ group strolled by, with their babies strapped securely in Snuglis for their weekly walk together. It was just cute, not to mention a desperately needed humor break.

I do look forward to the continued development of the characters. Jenny was an obvious first choice for the focus of the pilot episode — the naive girl who comes out to big, bad L.A. to be with her sweetheart (who proposes at the end of the episode, the morning after she slept with Marina). Jenny was compelling and believable, but a touch on the whiny side. I’m certain the next episode will probably pick up more about Bette and Tina’s attempt to become mommies — they had a tangle with slow-swimming sperm, interviewing various men about donating their sperm and finally, taking home a hottie for a threesome in an attempt to get Tina pregnant, which was foiled when the guy broke out a condom.

Showtime offered an online chat session with Jennifer Beals (who plays Bette) immediately following the show, but I tried to log in and was unsuccessful (fuck you for not supporting Mac users!). I think she was the only one whose nipples weren’t shown, and I wanted to ask why she was so friggin’ special. 🙂

In any event, I was turned on by the sex scenes and headed straight to the bedroom for five minutes of fun with the vibrator before trying to log into the chat session. LOL — I have a confession: I rarely masturbate to thoughts of men. I mean, really, my masturbation sessions are longer than most sexual encounters I’ve had with the opposite sex. I really do enjoy dating men, but there’s something about sex between women that will always turn me on. …

I’ve been planning a book series for the past 15 years, since I was 14. It’s Just Another Set of Trashy Fiction Novels. I mean, I don’t expect it to change the world or even to make a blip on The New York Times’ Bestseller List. But it’s something I’ve been wanting, waiting to do.

Now, I never talk about this, so typing this entry feels really strange. I have identified my major challenges to writing this series, and topping the list is my lifelong mistake of talking about something while it’s in development. My problem is that, once I’ve talked about something, it’s as good as having done whatever was on my agenda. And so I drop the subject and, ultimately, the project. But I’ll be vague enough so that I can’t use my typical excuses. 🙂

So yesterday, I wrote my first 15 pages. What stuns me is that they’re not great. But that’s what rounds of editing are for.

At times, it seemed like the writing muse guided my fingers, and I was pleased at how easily I cranked out the words. Of course, I have no fewer than a thousand pages of handwritten and typed notes scattered about the apartment (and I’ve rejected about 70 percent of the ideas in them), so I at least knew the general direction in which I wanted to go.

I view it like writing a news article (something with which I’m altogether too painfully familiar). The secret to any good article is getting the lead graf just right. It’s possible, but not ideal, to write the rest of the article and go back and write the lead. And that’s what I’ve been doing all these years with this series — I’ve written the ending, and I’ve written vignettes throughout the course of the characters’ lives. And they have hit the trash because I never found the main character’s voice until yesterday.

The writing was therapeutic, even if it did point me toward some massive holes and weaknesses in the storyline. I stopped when I got writer’s block — Chapter Five has a notation: Figure this part out later. Skip to next chapter and write from there. Don’t lose the momentum.

It’s hard to be original — everything has been done before. So I did come up with something, if not outrageous, then just a little bit over the top. But that is presenting its own problems in that I really don’t know what I’m talking about, but what else is new? 🙂 So I’ve attempted to make it as much a journey for me as for the main character in figuring out how to react to said situations at hand. Write what you know. Sit back and think about it. The rest will follow.

One of my unresolved struggles is whether to set it in the present or put it back in 1991, when I wanted the story to begin (although the ideas evolved circa 1988). I want to reflect some pop culture and politics here and there, but another part of me doesn’t want to date the story. My favorite novels are not too dated — they could have happened in the 1980s or in the year 2024 — and I can read them again and again and still identify with the narrator, no matter where I am in my life. I like that and wish to emulate that.

At this point, I’m babbling. But I really do feel like something’s missing in the character’s development. At this point, she is embroiled in so much drama and chaos created by other characters that I feel like I’m neglecting her, much like the other characters are. I have her giving a lot of historical information at this point, which of course is needed (it is the exposition, after all). But I struggle with the fact that nothing’s really happening to her. I boil this down to the fact that there is already so much going on that I don’t want the reader to have to pull out a scorecard to keep up. But on the other hand, she is the one who is going to survive this storyline, and I need to get a subplot going to ensure that she does have some distractions. But that’s where I’m getting stuck — she needs to have something really good happen for her, and I don’t know what, because her life is about to take a turn for the worse and she’s going to become an emancipated minor.

Drat.

I was hoping that by typing out loud, some fabulous revelation would hit me. It hasn’t. *kicks computer* I guess I have to take her age into account (16) and remember what was important to me back then (um, sitting in my room, listening to heavy metal cassettes, writing in my journal, planning this book series, sneaking a smoke and a drink here and there, doing well in school, avoiding ridicule and heartache in school, putting up with all the assholes my mom was dating). Hmm. Maybe I can get her mom out of her hair for awhile by introducing yet another character. It’s like both of these ladies are searching for their identities after their lives go into upheaval, and all they want is a little bit of comfort, understanding and acceptance. And isn’t that what we all want?

In any event, the lesson I’ve learned is that I have to use my voice in order for this to work. I can create all the fictional characters I want, but I have to truly fall in love with each and every one of them (and I have). But I feel like I have to understand one more so than the rest — I’m not saying the main character is me, but she is everything I want to be, yet also everything I love and even hate about myself. In a word, she’s irreverent. She’s going to make an impact on her world, but it will be accidental. She’s going to make some bad choices and have to live through the consequences. But she is going to be loved, even if she never fully realizes it. And she’s going to earn every last ounce of success that can possibly come her way. It’s just getting the story to that point that I am struggling with. 🙂

Because I’m about three days behind in my e-mails and other online activities, I’m rather impressed with myself that I got this up within the same week it was posted. 🙂

1. What does it say in the signature line of your e-mails?

At work, the usual hoopla about who I am, where I am and the website to visit if people happen to want to know more about my newspaper. At home, I do a simple signature with my name and e-mail address, because all these mail forward programs strip out the original e-mail addy. I used to be cutesy and put quotes in the signature, but Pride Fag trumps it with 17 quotes and all 9 of his academic degrees, and I realized how pretentious it is that a quote (or acronyms after your name) that means something to you could ever do anything but waste the reader’s time.

2. Did you have a senior quote in your high school yearbook? What was it? If you haven’t graduated yet, what would you like your quote to be?

Eeek! Don’t ask me to pull out that book!!! It’s been collecting dust since 1992. I don’t remember contributing a quote, but if I’d had the opportunity, it would have said, “Fuck all of you — I will never see any of you again, and I will be more successful than all of you put together. Watch for my name in lights!”

Of course, I do remember voting on a class quote by Langston Hughes — “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” And our class song was “Wind of Change” by the Scorpions (all my metal-head friends and I made sure that was chosen!).

3. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?

Bah. I keep trying to get vanity plates, but every combination of letters and numbers that I’ve come up with are already taken. I wanted to do something simple like “writer” or “goddess” or something that would make people realize how fabulous I am. 😉 Failing that, I want a plate big enough to say, “Back the fuck up, motherfucker!” or “Hit me and live, and I will kill you with my bare hands.” Or some other vitriol related to highway rage.

Down here in NoVa, the capital of the vanity plates, I’ve seen some really creative ones. There’s the “IH8-495” (they hate the Beltway — who doesn’t?) and of course its counterpart, “IH8-395”). I saw a Maryland plate with “2ndHOME” and it made me laugh. I want to do something along those lines, if I can think of something that hasn’t been claimed.

4. Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? What did the inscription say?

I think my grandparents might’ve gotten me an engraved bracelet some time ago. Or not. The memory fails me. So I guess not.

But every time Shan buys me a book, she inscribes a message inside the front cover. Most of the books have to do with writing or starting a business, and she always throws in some encouraging words that make me feel empowered.

5. What would you like your epitaph to be?

You know, I always loved “Spoon River Anthology” and what really surprises me is that, 15 years after I read it, the epitaph of “Lucinda Matlock” sprung to mind:

“At ninety-six, I had lived enough, that is all

And passed to sweet repose

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters,

Life is too strong for you —

It takes life to love Life.”

I want to send loads of love to some really good pals out there for making my day (week, month, etc.).

I dragged my butt into work today to find a King Cake from Tricia and a copy of “Quirkyalone” from Erica.

Thanks so much, ladies! *hugs Tricia, licks Erica* You’re the BEST!!!

*yawn* *stretch* *shriek*

Ahh, much better now, although the neighbors must think I am having sex or something. And yes, I’ve been known to moan and shriek when it’s only sex for one, too. Lord knows I haven’t always had a reason to moan with pleasure when there is actually another person in the room!

But back to the here and now (or, the here and none) I was up till 2 a.m. doing edits. Just woke up, only to find that I have acquired another cold. Bah. Fucking sub-zero wind chill factors. I want to keel over and quit breathing, I feel so wretched, although Mother Nature has done her part to ensure breathing is difficult today. And I was hoping the watery eyes were a result of taking a break to watch an amazing episode of “ER” last night (“NICU” — reminded me of Alex’s early days/weeks. I didn’t realize that I was even crying until I went to fiddle with my necklace and realized my shirt was sopping wet). But, alas, the evil cold has planted itself in my being. Fucker.

I still have about five more editorial items to do before the paper can be laid out, but they’re gonna have to wait for me to drag my butt into the shower and then cover said butt with about four million layers of clothes.

I can’t wait for the weekend so I can catch up on the life I thought I left lying around here somewhere. …

Let’s see, editorial deadline was two days ago, and I am still getting in submissions. Two people at least had the courtesy to call me and ask me about a possible extension (i.e., they could turn in a crap piece on time, or I could wait a day and get their version of editorial gold). I always choose the latter, because their gold wouldn’t buy a dime-store hooker a gumball.

I got a late submission today, and of course it came after me repeatedly hunting these people down and finally telling them that I won’t accept a word over 1,600 because of their lateness. OK, this led them to A) Crawl out of hiding, B) Promise me an article and C) Assure me that 1,600 words was perfect and I would receive it post-haste.

Four hours later, I get the document. What’s the word count, O Great Editorial Goddess, you ask? 2,750. D’Oh! Was their, oh, “Word Count” feature not working properly?

Not to mention, it sucks. Blows. Hurts my ass worse than butt floss. I’m in editorial hell, I tell you. Hell.

I worked from 9 a.m. till midnight last night (with breaks, of course), editing pure shit. And today was no different. Sure, I did read some redeeming submissions, but my eyes are tired and my hands hurt from rewriting sentences and moving paragraphs.

In better news, I had great (work-related) phone conversations during the last two days. I really do love my people, even when I want to beat the shit out of them. 🙂 But some of these people are doing the work as volunteers (read: unpaid), so it is arguable that I get what I pay for.

Bah.

We have a furlough day tomorrow (read: I’ll be here till midnight again tonight) and a holiday on Monday. The printer graciously gave me a one-day extension, given this fact, but I ain’t tellin’ nobody that — I am going to ask my proofers to just work really fast so next week can be a little less painful than this one.

In any event, thanks to everyone who took Tricia’s survey (for her thesis)! If you haven’t done it yet, go now. Thanks!

Er, rather, do me A FAVOR.

Please take five minutes to help a sister out. Tricia has an insightful blogging survey that she’s actually doing for a grade. It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s easy — much like your Caterwauling hostess.

And besides, what else do you have to do right now? Work?!?! Um hmm. Thought so. Now scoot. I’ll be here when you get back.

And, of course, those who might want to do me, you know where to find me (dawn AT caterwauling DOT com)!

I stayed home today to do intense editing (that, and I had a wicked migraine last night, so bad that I had to leave work before I murdered someone, just so they’d feel my pain). So I’ve been engrossed in talk shows and soap operas (I love the former, detest the latter).

I think daytime soaps and maybe even porn have totally ruined sex and romance for us. Sure, they’re turn-ons, but is it really like that in real life? (Allow me to insert the caveat that, on the few occassions that I’ve been lucky enough to have porn-quality sex, it was usually with someone who couldn’t form a complex sentence if they tried, and my brain needs just as much stimulation as my clitoris.) I swear, I blame television for making me want to find a storybook romance. But on the other hand, it makes me hope that it really is out there somewhere.

But until I find it, I’ve enjoyed masturbating like a dozen times today. 🙂