The Gift of Rut-Breaking

This will be short, because I've spent all evening writing a L'Engle biography for her Wikipedia article.

Weekend Assignment #106: Suggest a really cool birthday gift for my wife. By which I mean -- if you're a woman, what would you want for a birthday gift, and if you're a man, what would you get for your significant other?

Extra Credit: How good of a job do you do in getting your spouse/significant other gifts they like?

Not knowing Krissy is a major handicap in an exercise like this. For example, does she like to travel? I have the definite impression that Krissy stays home while world traveler John works the science fiction conventions and visits his editors. Is this a matter of practicality and finances and child care, or is Krissy a homebody by choice?

If she actually likes to travel, then John should buy her a trip out of town. Clearly, she's overdue to one. I'm a big believer in rut-breakers, anything that interrupts your routine without being too traumatic. The trip I have in mind is definitely a major rut-breaker, except possibly for people who live nearby and have an annual pass. Yes, I'm talking about

Disneyland!

But this is for Krissy, not Athena, I hear you say. Doesn't matter. Do you really think that Disneyland is only for kids, or that a mother won't enjoy the heck out of seeing her daughter explore Walt's domain? The whole reason he built Disneyland, aside from cross-promotion, was to create a place that adults and children could enjoy together. You have an adult and a child in your life, so that works out fine. Just be sure to pamper Krissy when you get there. Buy her dinner at the Blue Bayou, preceded by shopping in New Orleans Square for something you know she wants, simply because she picked it out herself. If she doesn't want Disneyana, take her someplace cool in Los Angeles - you know, that place you went that one time, or better yet, some place Krissy's mentioned before, preferably with interest or longing or envy.

And if that doesn't work for you, remember this: electronics aren't just for guys. What kind of electronics you get will depend on what she already has as well as what she likes to do. Hey, you've got to do some of the leg work yourself!

On the other hand...

Extra Credit: I have to admit that I was a total failure at buying my husband a birthday present this year. I went for electronics, specifically a DVD recorder to replace the one he bought me for Christmas 2004 (or was it 2003?), which never worked very well and is increasingly unreliable. Unfortunately I forgot to get a new one with a VCR component --a must, since the whole point is to dub old video onto DVD. John insisted on returning the recorder, and refused to choose another gift in its place. Eventually he allowed me to buy him a $15 wall clock. I've done better in other years - I think! - but this year, I was spectacularly bad at figuring out what would go over well with John, who insisted all along that he didn't want anything. Bear this in mind in considering my birthday advice.

Karen


Technorati Tags: Weekend Assignment, Scalzi, Travel, Disneyland

From There to Here, From Here to There...

...Funny things are everywhere." - Dr. Seuss.

I've seen this "I am from..." meme on four or five blogs now, which is remarkable considering that my reading list is somewhat limited (let's just say it's selective). I guess that means it's my turn now:

• I am from European ancestors I can't name, never met and don't care about, beyond a mild and vague curiosity. They lived in Germany, Ireland, France and England. Some of the Irish ones were originally Vikings. Some drowned sea captain on my mother's side had my father's surname, Funk. Some of the English ones supposedly came over on the Mayflower. And I don't care.
• I am from a delivery room full of desperate activity, trying to save a baby. The doctor whose inattention to my mom's concerns nearly caused my death then told her, "I can't think of a better person to raise a retarded, cerebral palsied baby." He was talking about me.
• I am from a small white house with black (and later pink) trim, half a short block from a little creek we weren't supposed to visit but frequently did. I am from a bedroom that my big brother had to go through to get to his own. He could keep me out of his room, but I couldn't keep him out of mine. So I locked him out of his own room.
• I am from a block full of small children who liked to tie together their tricycles, pedal cars and wagons with string to make a caravan. This game ended when a toddler managed to floor the accelerator of his mommy's car, causing it to shoot across the street and crush my wagon.
• I am from a different, larger white house with a big dark hole where the cellar and game room would eventually be. The memory of that excavation haunted my dreams for years.
• I am from an octagonal building where I prepared for my First Communion. It was then torn down to make way for the new church building.
• I am from the shallow flight of stairs between the foyer and the living room at 4967, where I sat and tried to understand my mom's half of her grown-up telephone conversations.
• I am from the middle of a circle of elementary school children, teasing me and putting ice down my back.
• I am from Cindy R.'s basement, where we considered the relative merits of Barbie, Francie, Casey and Tutti; and from Cindy's bedroom, where china animals had adventures.
• I am from a three-member Batman Fan Club and a three member Hot Wheels Club, competing clubs of siblings and next door neighbors, and from Monkees trading cards left outside and kept by the new girl who found them.
• I am from a blue living room with a picture window, a pink bedroom with ballerina wallpaper, and long afternoons with no friends to play with.
• I am from Bathtub Pond, and woods full of salamanders.
• I am from Revolver and Introducing the Beatles, from The Monkees Headquarters and The Mamas & the Papas' Deliver.
• I am from a spot next to my dad on the couch during "Sky Trek," where I hoped not to be sent to bed just yet.
• I am from an asteroid with a rose and a tower with a lame prince, from the Murry family and the Thurber family, and summer afternoons at Hundred Acre Wood.
• I am from a large summer rental home on Lake Ontario, with nothing to do but read, ride the waves, and step around more and more dead fish on the beach.
• I am from a hundred bankruptcies in Joel's basement, many of them caused by red hotels on Pennsylvania Ave. or Park Place.
• I am from a town that I loved and hated, with a haunted house and a disreputable hotel, an ice cream stand and a Swan Pond, a three room department store and a "dairy store" that sold penny candy. Thirty years later, I still miss Manlius.
• I am from "lake effect" snow, ice and wind, summer humidity and year-round rain, and 87 sunny days a year. I am from the Great Blackout of 1965 and the Blizzard of "66.
• I am from Shoppingtown and a Dewitt skating rink, the annual Ski and Skate Sale and the Manlius Library.
• I am from a back yard with a flagstone patio and (eventually) an above-ground pool, roses and irises, two large trees and the remains of an old swingset. Sometimes there was badminton or croquet.
• I am from a ninth grade English class where the department head taught us Latin roots, and explained why people who wanted to ban the books she'd put in the curriculum were wrong. I am from a tenth grade biology class where the teacher placed his Bible and his Darwin book side by side, and where I couldn't get out of dissecting a frog. I am from a lily-white high school with exactly three black students, all of them popular and respected. Two of them starred in the school's Porgy & Bess concert, not just for obvious reasons but because they had great voices.
• I am from STAR Syracuse and the pages of 2-5YM, and a living room rug in front of a tv full of reruns.
• I am from Baker Street and Narnia, Middle Earth and the TickTockWorld of Everett C. Marm.
• I am from Mâvarin.
  

Technorati Tags: Personal, Memes, Manlius

My Bid to Take Over the World

Like many bloggers, and writers generally, I'd like my words to be read and appreciated by as many people as possible. I want to spread my Blochery goodness throughout the globe, amuse and inform and inspire. Is that too much to ask?

To that end, I've had several encounters today with sites outside this blog that should result in increased readership, somewhere, somehow. One was my idea, one was a surprise, and one was an attempt to fix a glitch. The fourth was from a friend.

Wikifying the Toros

I happened to look up the Tucson Toros on Wikipedia last night, to see if the team had an entry. It did, very obviously written by a fan who feels pretty much as I do about the Toros vs. the Sidewinders. It was short on facts (and overall), highly subjective, unorganized, and lacked internal links to other Wikipedia articles. A notice at the top of the entry called for someone to "Wikify" it, meaning to make the article conform better to Wikipedia styles and conventions.

I figured that someone might as well be me. Who else cares enough about the Toros, online research and the English language to do the job?

So tonight I broke it out into sections, added few pictures and a lot of facts, and toned down the subjectivity just a bit, more by addition than subtraction. I wrote a history of the team, based on a chronology in a 2002 Sidewinders program, and added a lot of links to other Wikipedia articles (minor league baseball, Tucson, etc.). I even added a list of notable ex-Toros who were in the major leagues as of 2001, and references to sources other than the original article author's web site. I spent hours on it. I did a good job.

That Wikipedia article probably won't lead a single person to this blog, but people will be reading my words, probably more than do so on this page. And it turns out that at least a few people are already reading my words elsewhere as well...

Contributed by Aggregation

Thanks to Georganna Hancock's link in Writer's Edge to something called Copyscape, I found out today that a site called TucsonsNews is posting the feed of Outpost Mâvarin. The site is an aggregator, mostly of Tucson based blogs, with some local news thrown in. I'm not on their front page as I write this, but clicking on my blog's name in the list of sources shows stuff I've written all the way back to my John Manynames entry. When I hit "publish post" on this entry, it will soon be on the TucsonsNews front page. Ironic, huh? Because I'm about to gripe about them.

Here's my problem. On one hand, I want people to read my words and look at my pictures. I've deliberately made Outpost Mâvarin entries available in full via FeedBlitz and Bloglet and Bloglines. Is a Bloglines feed so different from a TucsonsNews feed? Really? Shouldn't I be happy that five to seven people a day are reading me on a Tucson news aggregator?

On the other hand, I knew about Bloglines and the others. I didn't know about this one. The others link to the blog, so you can go there and read it directly. TucsonsNews doesn't. (Actually it does, but only from certain screens.) Furthermore, their page says that my entry is "contributed by" me. That implies consent, even active participaton. But I did not consent. I didn't even know about it, until today. And the charm of the local angle is somewhat diminished when I learn that the "Whozis" points to Scottsdale, not Tucson, and that the site is affiliated with a similar one in Atlanta, and one in Nashville, and on and on. It's all still in beta, but it's clearly a commercial venture, and I'm providing free content for it.

The site has an opt-out policy. All I have to do is ask, and I'm outta there. But is that what I want? I kind of don't think so. What I want is for them to ask people before using their words, even if it's just a one-time permission to carry the feed on a regular basis. And I want them to take the cutesy clip art off the top of my articles. It shows a woman at a desk with a coffee cup. Sorry, but I don't want people thinking that clip art is my idea. If I don't pull my feed - and I probably won't - I'll want to send them an alternative image to replace the woman at the desk.

Grumble, grumble.

Last Updated 120 Days Ago

I came home at lunch today and called Technorati on the phone, having previously emailed them repeatedly with no response. Their listing for this blog now says that it's been 120 days since Outpost Mâvarin was last updated. You and I know that's just not true! The nice woman on the phone took town the URL and my email address, and said the customer service manager would get back to me. I'll believe it when I see it, but at least I tried. Again.

Thinking and Linking

And DesLily (Pat) linked to me again today, in connection with her own "brush with fame." It's a cute entry, and not because of the link. Go take a look!

Karen


Technorati Tags: Baseball, Writing, Wikipedia, Tucson

Out of Love With the Game

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Present a picture of something baseball related. It could be of opening day, if you happen to be at opening day this year, or it could be a picture from previous years of you enjoying a day at the park, or just batting around a ball with friends.

Gee, John, what can I show the folks that I haven't posted before? I've shown off my Tucson Toros and Tucson Javalinas pennants, my autographed souvenir batting helmets and my collection of mostly-broken Louisville Sluggers. I'm pretty sure I've posted pictures of my collection of old Toros uniforms, and the entrance to Hi Corbett Field, where USA Baseball and the Arizona Heat women's fastpitch team play these days. I've even posted a picture of a Toro participating in a milking contest at Hi Corbett. What more can I do, especially with most of my baseball collectibles currently put away and inaccessible?

Well, okay, I can at least artfully arrange a few things that are still in reach, even if they aren't exactly new to my blogs. Here's a Tucson Toros T-Shirt, an autographed batting helmet (kid's size), a Tucson Sidewinders program from 2002, and an autographed bat from the 1993 AAA championship Toros.


Here's a closeup of some of the autographs on the bat. Shane Reynolds is on it, and Donne Wall, and a bunch of players you probably never heard of, like Dave Hajek and Frank Kellner. But they mean something to me. They were Toros, in the glory days of the Toros.


And here's Craig Counsell, batting against the Rockies in spring training at Hi Corbett several years ago. I don't think I've posted that shot before. We liked Craig because he's got more hustle than raw talent, and makes that work for him; and also because of his goofy batting stance.


And how about a picture of Dinger? He's no Tuffy the Toro, but he's better than Sandy Sidewinder, anyway. Who ever heard of a snake with arms?



I've already told the story of my disenchantment with Tucson baseball, but that was in the old blog. Here's the semi-short version. When John and I first started going to games in 1993, the AAA Tucson Toros were on their way to their second championship in three years. It was also to be their last. We loved Hi Corbett Field, making friends with the people who always sat behind us, passing notes with helpful trivia up to the broadcast booth, hanging out for autographs from friendly players - and, of course, the game itself. There were several years in which we went to nearly every home game. In the fall there was Arizona Fall League, with the Tucson Javalinas. In the spring we had the Rockies. All was right with the world. I was even the Toros' webmaster for a season, but that turned out to be too much work.

Then in the course of about two years, practically everything we loved about going to Toros games was dismantled, bit by bit. The team severed its relationship with the Houston Astros, resulting in a 100% turnover in players, first to Brewers prospects and then to future Diamondbacks. The Toros' wonderful longtime general manager, Mike Feder, left or was fired. The team was renamed the Tucson Sidewinders, and moved from Hi Corbett (practically next door to where I worked) to Tucson Electric Park (a long way away). Players and broadcasters were no longer readily accessible for chatting or autographs. One of our friends in the stands died. Fall League players griped about the two hour drive to Tucson, so the Javalinas moved to the Phoenix suburb of Peoria. No more "fall ball" in Tucson.

We stopped going to games.

For a while, the Arizona Diamondbacks managed to get us interested again as they made their World Series run, and for a season or two after that. We never did get Randy Johnson's or Curt Schilling's autograph, but I did get one from B.K. Kim the following year. We even went to the BOB up in Phoenix a few times a year. Then most of the players we liked left or retired, and they fired Bob Brenley. And that, once again, was that.


We didn't get to a single spring training game this year, even at Hi Corbett, which we still love, and where the Rockies still train. I don't think we got out last year, either. It stopped being fun. We've tried to go back a few times, to 'Winders games or Rockies vs. D'Backs, but we just can't recapture the joy we once had. We end up bored and annoyed.

Is it them, or is it us? Or both? I think it's both. We've moved on to other interests, and I'm still nursing a broken heart. I miss my Toros. Sometimes they put Sidewinders in Toros uniforms, but it's just not the same, at that sterile, fan-unfriendly ballpark across town.

Maybe someday, the Diamondbacks will make another run, fueled by the "Baby 'Backs" from the Tucson team. Or maybe we'll get interested in the Rockies again.

But not this year, I think.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Monday Photo Shoot, Baseball, Tucson

In Praise of a Bad Show - and An Underrated Actor

After being distracted all day yesterday, I actually managed to finish off a couple of obligations today. Yup -I finished writing up half a season's worth of music on Quantum Leap, a season that barely had any music not written by the show's main composer, Velton Ray Bunch. And I wrote a one-page article in appreciation of a nearly-forgotten tv series from 1992, Tequila & Bonetti.



Say what? Tequila & Bonetti?

That's right.

The show about the talking police dog?

He didn't exactly talk, but yes, that's the one.



But that was a stupid show. The dog was constantly making not-so-funny wisecracks, and the humor mostly involved the dog peeing on something or someone.

It got better.

You're kidding.

No, really.

Tequila & Bonetti was produced by Donald P. Bellisario (Quantum Leap, JAG), with a lot of help from a bunch of Quantum Leap producers, writers and guest stars. Sure, it was a terrible idea for a show (Universal came to Bellisario with it, not vice-versa), and some of the humor was extremely lame and sophomoric, especially early on. But a few episodes in, the show started to find the right balance of drama and comedy. Charles Rocket (SNL, Max Headroom) was particularly brilliant as Captain Midian Knight, a frustrated Hollywood screenwriter moonlighting as a police captain.

Veteran wrestler Terry Funk (no relation) was funny as Sgt. Nuzo. But
Charles Rocket as Captain Midian Knight was the real comedic standout.

Here's another standout. Liz Torres was great
in at least two episodes as Gina the psychic.

I was going to write more about the show here, including the fact that good writing and a great cast can't save a show with a fundamentally bad premise. But I was just over at IMDb. Having just watched and enjoyed a bunch of Charlie Rocket's work, I was shocked to learn that the reason Sharon wanted material about him for The Observer is that he killed himself in October 2005.



This is terrible news. I really liked him in everything I'd ever seen him do, except the gig that made him both famous and infamous, Saturday Night Live. Way back in 1992 I saw him shooting a scene of Tequila & Bonetti, doing every take slightly differently, improv style. I even wrote him a fan letter, and got a handwritten reply. His stationary had a little drawing of a rocket on it.

I don't want him to be dead.

Drat.

Karen

Update: 11/9/07: Please the comments below and this MySpace posting for more on the life and death of Charlie Rocket. - KFB

Wikis, Ilsa and Me

In case anyone is curious about last night's photo, here is the unedited version. I took it a little while before sunset on Thursday. Even in real life, it was a freaky thing to see - but yes, it was just the sun shining through clouds. For my edited version I brightened the darkest parts of the photo, boosted the color saturation, made several copies of the picture in different hues, and pasted colorful bits from the copies onto one master.

I always intended to show it off as looking like a vortex, but it wasn't under I was considering the possibilities for April Fool's Day that the idea came together. I'm not big on pranks or hoaxes, generally. But fiction...yeah, that I can do. So think of last night's aberration as a fiction entry. I even changed my "About Me" profile for the day.

It's all back to normal now, but I saved a screen capture of the profile box as a souvenir of the day. For the record, Romana Jean and Alexander Scott are the names John and I picked out when we tried to have a kid, nearly a decade ago.

One of the things I did today was keep an eye on the Wikipedia page about April Fool's Day hoaxes perpetrated on April 1, 2006. The list kept growing longer, with occasional duplications and reorganizations. Finally, someone edited it down into a more managable page with the more significant hoaxes (tv, radio, newspapers, and major web sites), and relegated the complete list to a secondary page, already marked for possible deletion. Personally, I'd like to see it retained, as a document of the day's ephemera.

You know how easily I get sidetracked by stuff. In messing around with Wikipedia, I discovered that their Madeleine L'Engle entry was much improved from the last time I looked at it, but had some outdated info. So I made a few edits. Wow, that felt good, and a little scary. A reference to L'Engle's book Ilsa led me to a "disambiguation" page that referenced both the book and an unrelated porn movie, Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS. There was no actual entry for the novel, however - so I made one. It took hours to do! There were odd coding conventions to learn, and I never did figure out how to add a picture. Still, I'm happy with it overall.

In researching these two Wikipedia pages, I did some Googling of other L'Engle pages, and made several edits to my own L'Engle site, The Tesseract. Suddenly it was almost midnight, John was in bed, and I hadn't gotten around to cooking dinner. Oh, well. The sausage will still be good tomorrow.

Karen


Technorati Tags: Photos, Fiction, Wikipedia

Something Odd

Is it me, or has something odd happened? I've felt kind of strange ever since taking this picture of, well, I'm not quite sure what it was. Weird weather? A vortex? Just the sun through the clouds?

All I know is that I saw this bizarre patch of sky as I looked west down Fifth Ave late yesterday. So I took the shot. Ever since then, I've had the opposite of deja vu. Things that should seem normal just...don't. Romana and Alex keep catching me staring at them, as if I haven't long since memorized every contour of the twins' five-year-old faces. Ro even asked me if I felt all right. She's a smart one, that little girl. So is her brother. He thought maybe there was something on his face. It turned out he ate all the diet Jello, except for the lime one that he spilled on himself.

That's not the only weird thing. I keep getting the urge to work on the manuscript of Mages of Mâvarin, only to remember that it's already been finished and published. I had to go to my bookshelves, pick up all three volumes and handle them, to prove to myself that they were real. I can't get over what a great job Michael Whelan did on the covers, especially the one for Another Mâvarin.

Jon thinks it's lack of sleep that's making me act so weird, but I'm not so sure. Even he seems a little different somehow. I guess I'm just not used to Jon being so thin, but I should be. He got down to his ideal weight about a year ago, right after I started seriously working out.

I've had a theory for many years - well, not so much a theory as a story idea. But sometimes I half-believe it. I've noticed that things that are true in my dreams tend to be always true, in every dream. Dan is always dead but haunting me, and so is my mom. And in my dreams our house is always full of hidden rooms, just as it is in real life; but they're not the same rooms. I've always wondered whether the world of my dreams is somehow real, maybe in another dimension or something. Sure, there are distortions, because I'm there only in my subconscious, and I don't always remember the details. But maybe the core stuff, the part that's always consistent, is a glimpse of some other Karen's life.

Nah, it doesn't make sense, does it? It doesn't have to be real, just because it's consistent. It could be like Mâvarin, just another "fig newton" of my imagination, except that this one I've built in my dreams rather than on the page. It's probably the fact that I'm so sleep deprived that's causing this unreal version of my life to intrude on my waking one, confusing me with false impressions of being childless and not having sold the books yet. Maybe if I get more sleep, my two beautiful children will no longer feel like strangers to me.

But that doesn't explain yesterday's sky....

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, Writing, Tucson