Musical guilty pleasures: Everybody Wang Chung tonight

I remember the 80s for the giant hair and the music for its synthesizer obsession.

A lot of that music was sterile, stuff that sounded like it came from a factory, not actual humans. Sometimes this was even deliberate–witness Gary Numan’s work.

And then there was Wang Chung. They had a big hit in 1986 with the song “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” I hated the song. I found it cloying, insipid, superficial. Most of all, it struck me as indulgent as the band inserted itself as a verb into the lyrics:

Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody Wang Chung tonight

I was 22 years old at the time. I was also a humorless twit because this song is great. It’s catchy as all get-out, it has kicking horns, the bridge is soaring, and it’s obvious–especially if you watch the video (don’t do this if you have epilepsy–seriously!)–that the band knew this was nothing more than a fun little confection.

I watch it regularly on YouTube. Or at least listen to it. I’m not epileptic but if I watch the video too closely I find I am suddenly not having fun tonight, I am about to hurl my cookies tonight.

Still, great song and given how utterly inconsequential the subject matter is, I count it as a musical guilty pleasure, one of about a hundred thousand or so that I have (my formative years musically were the 1980s, you see). I may come back and edit this post with more great fluff from the decade that mastered the art of fluff.

Cool, wet and Vancouver Island

For the Remembrance Day long weekend we went to Sidney over on Vancouver Island to partake in Jeff’s mom’s 75th birthday celebration. We had Chinese food for dinner because why not and overall it was a pleasant little trip, even if the ferry ride over was accompanied by the nigh-endless serenading of car alarms blatting from the vehicle decks. The chief steward at one point came on to the PA to announce that the car alarms of every BMW were going off. The vehicle owners had apparently calibrated their alarms to perfectly match the vibrations produced by a large commercial ferry.

After arriving and kibitzing with Jeff’s mom, his sister and their family, we headed into bustling downtown Sidney and spent some time walking along the pier.

Below is a photo of yours truly.

Me on the pier in Sidney, November 2016
With bonus tiny cloud attached to the side of my head

Some observations:

  • I have my dad’s right ear and my mom’s left ear. I think this is becoming more pronounced the older I get. It is also a little weird.
  • Am I developing jowls? I don’t want jowls. I am either ordering or inventing a jowls-prevention kit.
  • If you look closely you can tell I am freezing my butt off. Because I totally was.
  • I escaped seagull poop, both on the pier and bombed from above.
  • People on the pier were catching tiny novelty crabs. They were like finger crabs. Very small is what I’m saying here.

I also liked this sign for the simple way it says you may die:

a sign of diving doom
A sign of diving doom

The motel room was odd in that it was actually cool and we had to turn the heat on (the condo is almost supernaturally warm, staying at 23ºC or higher no matter what the temperature outside is, as if it was constructed atop the endlessly burning fires of hell). The ferry trip back was much quieter, due to either better car alarm control or fewer BMWs.

Overall it was a nice little jaunt. Sidney is one of those towns that manages to pull off quaint without descending completely into either kitsch or self-referential hipster irony.

But seriously…

Trump? Really?

I’ve never been more willing to believe that I’m just having a long, fantastically elaborate (and horrible) dream than I have this past month.

On the one hand I am (morbidly) curious to see what happens. On the other, I expect nothing less than complete disaster, which dampens the curiosity by a factor of about a billion.

It’s like the entire world is getting a lump of coal for Christmas. And I’ve been good this year! Mostly!

My plan for NaNoWriMo 2017

Now that my NaNoWriMo 2016 project has officially fizzled out, here’s my plan for 2017 if I choose to participate again (and I am at this very early stage leaning toward not doing so):

  • Come up with an idea at least a full month ahead of time
  • Plan out the tools to be used for the writing at least two weeks in advance
  • Outline the novel (new!)
  • Spend at least the first weekend building up as large a buffer as possible (the first weekend starts on Saturday, November 4th)
  • Talk talk talk about my novel–share all kinds of stuff, go totally bananas on it (new!)
  • Attend more local NaNoWriMo events

And that’s about it. I actually did the first two this year and still flopped. Maybe adding in the other four will result in dazzling success.

If I participate.

Which I probably won’t.

Goodbye and good riddance to November 2016

The best thing about November was the day it hit 18ºC thanks to the Pineapple Express. I was not expecting t-shirt weather this month.

I also resumed running, so that was good.

Almost everything else sucked, to various degrees. I’m not even going to attempt a list, it would just be sad and depressing. Instead, I will blow a loud raspberry at November 2016 and hope that December is better.

NaNoWriMo 2016 autopsy: I’m not dead yet

Technically I could still complete National Novel Writing Month 2016 successfully by writing just under 40,000 words between now and midnight tomorrow.

If you are a gambling type I recommend against betting on this happening.

Then again, Donald Trump is President-Elect. Right is wrong, the impossible is possible and all that.

Speaking of which, it’s time to dissect how this year’s failure came to be.

First, what I did right:

  • I settled on a story (of sorts) well before November 1st, giving me plenty of time to mull it over and have some ideas ready so I could hit the proverbial ground running
  • I had an established, successful plan from years past, using WriteMonkey, saving to OneDrive and writing during my lunch at work, something that can spot me as many as 1,000 words before I even get home, a big psychological boost
  • Day 1 started strong, well above the minimum word threshold
  • Despite uncertainties with the story, I continued to stay above the minimum word count for five of the first six days–a good start!

At the end of day six I was at 10,002 words, on track to finish November 29th (today). Cutting it a bit close but still, victory was entirely possible. What went wrong, then?

  • I took Day 7 off. I planned to spend time thinking about how to best tackle the rest of the story, which was still a bit too vague and shapeless for my liking. This is not in and of itself a bad idea but in the context of NaNoWriMo it is a great way to kill momentum. By skipping a day and by not having a big cushion of words to fall back on (let’s call it The Stephen King Zone) I had to double my input the next day to stay on track (writing 3,334 words instead of 1,667). This would also mean finding twice the time to accomplish the task. With doubts about the story lingering, taking a day off was a tactical blunder.
  • The day after I took the ill-advised day off was Election Day in the U.S. Throughout the day I experienced a level of anxiety that by evening transformed into a kind of existential despair, sapping me of the will to write anything except perhaps a brief essay on what it feels like to curl up in a ball on the floor.
  • The following day I re-read the 5,000 or so words I’d written for last year’s NaNoWriMo and found what I’d written to be more engaging than expected. I decided to switch back to this story. I had ideas. Changing gears could work! (Hint: wrong.)
  • I hit a dead end on the old story almost immediately. Looking back I was still not in a good frame of mind to write. My brain was buzzing, but with maddening, distracting and negative thoughts. I settled for writing anything as long as I was writing but was utterly incapable of putting down anything coherent. The experience was subtly surreal, so much so it would probably make for an interesting character moment in a story. Irony.

After my briefly-revived alternate project stalled out, I returned to my original story but could never summon more than a few sentences each day, usually totaling a hundred words or so. I fell even further behind. Eventually it became obvious that I was not going to complete NaNoWriMo this year and I quietly accepted this. I moved onto other projects and am just now starting to really write again.

Without getting overly political, the election of Trump had a fairly profound effect on me. Friends joked about how I’d want to suddenly switch to writing about some near-future dystopia but both of my stories were nominally hopeful and over the course of a day they came to feel false, even pointless. I’ve come out of the funk since then and have some thoughts on how I’d approach NaNoWriMo if I participated again–and I am leaning toward not doing so–but for now I am just happy to be writing anything again.

Book review: This Year You Write Your Novel

This Year You Write Your NovelThis Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a brief but solid overview on the basics of putting together a first novel. Mosley doesn’t go into great detail, he just lays down some rules, some less-strict guidelines, offers suggestions, often gives the writer the thumbs-up to do something however best it works for him and really, really believes in the idea of rewriting.

His advice comes down to a few essentials, most of which will be familiar to anyone who has read any how-to’s on writing:

  •  set up a daily routine:
    • write every day (no exceptions)
    • devote 90 minutes per day to writing (this can include editing or reading drafts)
    • target daily output of 600-1200 words
  •  show, don’t tell
  • characters should grow and transform, not remain static
  • write without restraint
  • take about three months for the first draft
  • take a week to read the first draft (this counts as the second draft)
  • read and if possible, record the entire novel in your own voice to hear how it sounds
  • focus on every sentence in rewrites. Every sentence!
  • writers write too much. Edit without mercy.
  • don’t write things you aren’t sure of; do follow-up research after the first draft as needed
  • you can write from a first person, third person or omniscient perspective; third person is recommended for first-time novelists
  • you never mention second person perspective because it’s weird and makes you look funny
  • to find an agent, write to the publisher of a book whose style you like and get the agent’s info; send a query letter and vitae to the agent
  • don’t ever take an agent that demands to be paid directly

And that’s pretty much it. Mosley provides examples of plot, sentence structure and other part of a novel, and the whole thing can be digested in a single sitting if you’re so inclined–all the better to get started on that great novel lurking within.

I can’t really quibble with any of the suggestions, though ninety minutes per day may be tough to manage for a lot of people. But where’s the fun if you’re not suffering for your art?

Given the endless tide of writing advice on the internet, a book like this is probably going to be a tough sell, especially at full price. On sale, it’s a tidy little volume that says what it wants to say simply and clearly. A first-time novelist will find value here, but more experienced (if unpublished) writers may find most of the lessons to be familiar.

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Book review: Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft

Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by MicrosoftFuture Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft by Elizabeth Bear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Despite its title, Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft is mercifully not about people making the world a better place with their Xboxes, Windows 10 and the HoloLens.

Instead it’s a collection of stories about future tech that sometimes hints at Microsoft products without naming them–such as the augmented reality glasses used in the graphic novel story “A Cop’s Eye” that could be the follow-up to the HoloLens, to various extrapolations on AI. We’ve come a long way since Clippy. The stories shift in tone from playful (the Dr. Doolittle-inspired “Hello, Hello”) to weird (Greg Bear’s mind-bending take on what happens when a quantum computer starts to successfully do its job in “The Machine Starts”) but never veers entirely toward the dark. These visions are sometimes tales of caution, such as Ann Leckie’s take on culture clash and mistranslation in “Another Word for World” but there is usually some hint of hope or redemption, no matter how bleak the situation may seem.

This book is available as a free download from major ebook retailers so the only investment made here is with your time. Given the brevity of the collection and the generally high quality of the work (none of the writers have phoned it in–perhaps why there’s no Lumia product placement) it’s an easy recommendation.

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A haiku to November

I am not so keen on what November has given me, the world and possibly the entire universe.

If Only Time Machines Were Real

November you suck
Clowns, despair and no good words
Christmas will be coal

1,000 creative writing prompts: No more of 1,000

I once had a cute little notion that I would work my way through the 1,000 writing prompts found in 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2. Here is the blurb I attached to the end of each post for the first ten entries:

These are prompts featured in 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2 (Goodreads link). My intent is to write ultra-short stories that are no more than a few paragraphs long, working through the prompts in order. When I am done I will perhaps have a party of some sort.

Sometimes the short stories will be longer and sometimes instead of a story I will answer the questions (most of the prompts are in the form of questions).

There were two problems with this plan. First, 1,000 prompts is a lot, even if I followed the rules I’d laid out (which I didn’t because brevity may be the soul of wit but my wit apparently has no soul). Second, most of the prompts lend themselves more to “What I did on my summer vacation” pieces and not so much fiction, which is what I’m attempting to write here. If I am writing about actual events I don’t need any prompting other than a sense of outrage over Trump being elected president to get going.

But I digress.

I am officially announcing, then, that I am changing my goal from writing all 1,000 prompts to writing the first 10, which I have done. It’s only missing two zeroes so I like to think in some way I came pretty close to my original goal.

I will endeavor to find other writing prompts to mangle and may even return to some in this book as I confess to not reading all 1,000 of them yet. Onward and upward. Or off in some direction or another, hopefully not spiraling down.

Run 374: Cold and wet, just the way I (don’t) like it

Run 474
Average pace: 5:20/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 5:05 km
Time: 26:58
Weather: Rain, cloudy
Temp: 6ºC
Wind: light
BPM: 162
Stride: n/a
Weight: 160.2 pounds
Total distance to date: 3760 km
Devices/apps: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

I was going to run on Saturday but the weather was monsoon-like all day and I did not feel like running in a monsoon, so I settled on my usual Sunday run.

Come this morning and the weather was monsoon-like again. I waited and it got better, then reverted to monsoon-like. It kept doing this until mid-afternoon at which point I either had to head out regardless or skip the run as it would be too dark to do more than bumble about and run into a tree.

By the time I headed out the rain had eased to a light shower and it actually stopped for most of the run before resuming with more light showers at the end. I caught another break as the wind was low and stayed that way until the walk back, when it started picking up. It was fairly chilly at 6ºC, especially combined with the rain, and it took about two km before my hands didn’t feel like fleshy ice blocks.

I encountered a total of six people: two couples, one with a dog, and two people walking solo, one also with a dog. The couple with the dog had the dog on a leash and it was struggling mightily to get to me. They were smart dog owners.

The woman walking alone had her dog off-leash and was playing some cutesy game where she and the dog stood about 25 or 30 meters apart and she excitedly called the dog to her and it came running and (fortunately) kept running past me instead of seeing how tasty I was (it looked like a Doberman or a Doberman cross). She was a dumb dog owner. I later saw she had put the dog on a leash, possibly because she encountered the other couple with their dog, so I guess she was semi-smart in the end.

Oh right, the actual run.

My pace is usually faster on the river trail and that held true today, with my pace coming in at 5:20/km vs. last week’s 5:31/km. BPM was also slightly down, so that was nice. I still need to get back to more than one run per week, though. This feels like treading water, except there’s no water, I’m just treading.

Still, this was an entirely decent run, especially given the conditions and my enthusiasm for going out into the perfectly ordinary late November weather.

November 25: I blame Black Friday

As I’ve noted already November 2016 has been a month of disappointments and general awfulness. This blog has been hit by inactivity on both ends–the author (me) has been flailing about and not writing and even the few souls who randomly arrive on the site completely checked out on November 25th as seen in the site stats below:

November 25 2016 blog void

The gap you see means there were no visitors on that day. Not that this site has been hugely busy on other days, as the same chart shows. The taller bars represent 15-17 unique visitors. I tried calculating what percentage of the world’s population that is (currently over 7.46 billion and climbing) but let me just tell you: it’s a pretty small number.

I’ve also changed the header of the site to include an actual image of my mug (passed through a Prisma filter). Further changes are to come as I prepare for the bold, brash year to come that is 2017, the year when we all snap awake and laugh with relief when we all realize 2016 was just a crazy dream!

Also, I went to Metrotown today, not really considering that this is Black Friday weekend or whatever you want to call it. The usual madness of the mall was magnified about five times. I’d ask what was I thinking but I was clearly not thinking at all. But worming my way through the crowds before I decided escape was the only sane course of action did push me toward my daily step goal. See? Lemonade from lemons. I’m such a glass-half-full kinda guy.