Digging Out

Still working on that ol' grading. I'll have to give some thoughts to Ornery's Wife's question from my last post. It's a toughie.

Meanwhile, because Eowyn posted a song on her blog, I thought I'd do the same here. Behold the delight that is "The Future Soon," by Jonathan Coulton as posted on YouTube and animated using World of Warcraft machinima by Spiffworld:



This was far too close to many of my junior high fantasies. Oh, if only Amy Farrell could have known all that I had planned, maybe she wouldn't have been so cruel...

I was put onto these videos by Frodo; if you enjoyed that, make sure to check out some of his others. I particularly recommend "Skullcrusher Mountain", "re: Your Brains", "Creepy Doll", and "Chiron Beta Prime". Great stuff.

Also, thought they're odd and disturbing, I can't help laughing at the entire series of videos under the title of The Potter Puppet Pals, which I was introduced to via this strange video:



There are several more, all of which are well worth wasting your time on.

But enough of time wasting for me! Back to grading!

Opportunity, Opinion, and Oath

Three things today:

1. Thanks to the generous donations of several wonderful folks, I will be attending the Audio Publishers Association conferences at the end of this month; in fact, due to their pricing schedule, I am now an official member of the APA as a voice talent (so I can attend their swanky mixers in New York someday). Many thanks to those who sent their support and prayers my way; now I need prayer that great things will come of it, and that I'll have the courage to actually (gulp!) talk to people...


2. I know I ramble on here a good bit about teaching and all its tribulations. If you want a real look at what the job is like, I cannot recommend enough reading this article, sent to me by an instructor friend who knows whereof he speaks. Save for the fact that I'm not an adjunct instructor (thank you, Lord), this article is so eerily on target that it's like "Professor X" crawled inside my life... I had a "Ms. L" just this semester, in fact. And I can't shake that the professor's thoughts on universal college attendance are dead on.


3. My finals were given last Friday, so though the mountain of grading still looms over me, I am at last free of the need to actually instruct for some time. More important, this opens up my schedule enough that I can finally write again. I am vowing to do so every day, because I need to do so. I am excited and worried all over again, almost as though I was starting over from scratch, save that I've got a good 2/3 of the novel already laid down. Discipline is my watchword.

Simple Things

First off, if you like Veggie Tales or are interested in producing Christian media content, or you just want a good read, go check out Phil Vischer's website. I wandered over there yesterday (prompted by something I cannot remember) because I've always wondered about those rumors I'd heard about Phil and Big Idea Productions going bankrupt and lawsuits with distributors and such. Phil has a thorough description of all those things (somewhat long, but very engagingly written—apparently he wrote a book, Me, Myself, and Bob, which details the experience more fully), as well as news on what he's up to now, the state of Christian media in general, and other interesting oddities.

While reading his post about what he's working on, he mentioned an idea that is very popular and shows up in all kinds of places: finding your calling. And, of course, I'm always talking on about calling on here. For whatever reason, the very simple way he talked about his own journey struck home to me (even though it is basic to a lot of programs—heck, even LGCC had their SHAPE class that covered the same thing). In two paragraphs, he talked about his own burden (what he had a heart to do) and his gifting (what talents he had). That intersection, he suggested, was his ministry.

It can take me a long time to figure things out, I know, but that clicked in my head.

So I share just my jottings in response to that (very rough and off the top of my head). I don't know what they mean, or they point toward exactly, or anything, but the rumination is going on.

What is my burden?

I want to show that God is relevant and satisfyingly complex in the worlds of artistry and academics. The art and writing made by His people, for His people and the world at large, can be of a quality as great or greater than that produced by the secular world. I want people to be swept up into stories and experiences larger than themselves and to be given hope and delight and vision and passion and encouragement on their journey.

What is my gifting?

Writing. Storytelling. Creativity. Research. World-building. Humor. Academics.

That's all I've got right now.

Man and Animal

It was a crazy weekend, full of family events (Joanna's folks on Friday, the new Andy and Christina Glenn's wedding on Saturday, and my parents and grandparents on Sunday. (And you haven't lived until you've seen my grandparents bowl on the Wii, or mom nearly wetting herself laughing at my grandparents bowl on the Wii.)

The "Man" in the title refers to my dump-running escapade on Saturday. The Hazardous Waste Disposal people were up at Heap's Peak on Saturday, so I figured I needed to run over all that oil I drained out of the cars last month. That turned into an all-day event of emptying out the van, loading it up with all the wood from our recent home projects (removing the old gas wall heater, replacing the back door, replacing the toilet in the boys' bathroom, tearing down the old, useless compost bin), cutting the old back door, unused closet doors, and broken tables in half with a chainsaw (whoo hoo!), dragging out the pounds and pounds of shards from our glass patio table that shattered in the winds this past winter, and a few cubic yards of other junk, and hauling it away. It was good to get the yard and back porch cleared out, and though it took no skill at all, it was sort of empowering anyway.

The "Animal" part comes from the menagerie that passed through our yard this weekend. I came home from the two-hour cleaning of the van after the dump run to see this:

Yes, indeed: a three-foot tall peahen was strutting through our front yard and honking at me.

We called up the animal rescue folks and were contemplating how to catch a bird that big (a bed sheet and a trash can were being considered) when we discovered that it in fact lives with our neighbor. I can't say he "owns" the bird because it adopted him. He keeps chickens under his deck, and one day about a year ago the peahen just showed up and has been living with them ever since. Apparently, some folks in Lake Arrowhead keep them around their grounds for atmosphere (driving the neighbors crazy); my guess is this is an escapee. Why she never showed up in our yard before, or even made a noise we heard, I cannot say.

Then, on Saturday night, our bear came through. (I don't know which of the half-dozen bears we've seen in the past few years it might be, but we feel a sense of ownership.) Of course, he dumped over all our garbage cans and spread the trash far and wide; this time, he also visited our new compost bin, knocking it a few feet off its base and emptying the thing out. (I can imagine a bear eating some of the leftovers, but even most of the potting soil was gone—do bears eat dirt regularly?)

Isn't all that interesting? It was to me, so therefore I assume it was for you, too. You're welcome.

Swimming for the Surface

I meant to post yesterday, but between getting back into the swing of things after a weekend away, being under a pile of grading, and having the Raingutter Regatta last night, it just didn't happen. I've been wiped out enough to fall asleep while trying to put Born Dancin' down, which has been unfortunate, though I suppose I needed the sleep.

The weekend went pretty well. I hadn't had much real contact with—and certainly no classes on—the audiobook industry for nearly three years, and a huge amount has changed in the industry. The upshot was good and bad news (mostly good for me): because of the upsurge in downloadable audiobooks (the industry's growing at about 35% a year, compared to about 6% for traditional audio), fees paid to readers are down—but the number of readers needed is increasing rapidly. We had much talk of the industry and the changing role of the narrators in the business; we also got to get into the studio to record under 3 different directors. I ended up doing trimmed-down versions of the earlier-listed excerpts from Thomas the Rhymer (directed by Pat, who helped me work out the voice separation and counseled me that it was a "girl book"), East of Eden (directed by Hillary, who liked it and could make me flatten out my read so that Steinbeck is the one who came through, not me), and Buttercup's Baby (directed by Stephan Rudnicki, who's a huge name in the industry and by far the most direct and uncompromising director we had, but who liked my reading). In a week or two I should get the edited demo from Pat and Pippin avows to put it up on my website so y'all can take a listen. No job offers were forthcoming (though I'm still praying on that score), but it was an encouraging time. Now I'm just trying to figure out how to get out to the Audio Publishers Association Conference at the end of this month (which is a big deal and a great place to make contacts, and only shows up in LA once every few years, but which costs an arm and at least part of a leg to get in).

Sadly, now I must return to my actual work. Two weeks until the end of the semester (public school teachers, don't hate me) and all the joy (at the short duration) and pain (at the vast workload before it's all over) that brings. I'm off to jump on that right now.

Choices, Choices

So here they are: in my typical overwrought fashion, I have managed to find 30 excerpts that might be possible for this upcoming weekend.

And, of course, I am only allowed 4.

It's your chance to cast your vote—I'd love to hear which of these were most interesting to folks outside of my head. (Joanna, for instance, found some of my early potential choices less than interesting. Whatever.) I've marked my current favorites with a "†", but I'm not married to them. Some of these are probably crazy, but all of them are hopefully interesting. And yes, these are edited and reworked; for the demo, that is acceptable. If I've eviscerated your favorite piece of prose, I apologize, but I can't go over 60 seconds. Think of it as a movie trailer, but for a book.

A couple of those guidelines for the selections:

1. At least one should be first-person, and at least one should be third-person;


2. One should feature back-and-forth dialogue;


3. I'd like one non-fiction piece, but probably not more than one (The non-fiction pieces are at the end, beginning with Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories");


4. If you're tossed up between a British piece and an American one, go American;


5. The excerpt need not be a self-contained story, but it should be engaging and make you want to hear more.

List your favorites in the comments by about 5pm tomorrow (or later today, Friday, May 2, by the time I post this), and you may get a say in my future career!

Thanks in advance, all.

• From East of Eden, by John Steinbeck:†
  

  He could hear her moving quietly about behind the door. A drawer was opened, and the thought leaped in him—she's going to stay.
  
  When her voice came, it was so near that he jerked his head back. “Dear,” she said softly, “I didn't know you would take it so. I'm sorry, Adam.”
  
  His hand trembled, trying to turn the key, and it fell out on the floor. He pushed the door open. She stood three feet away. In her right hand she held his .44 Colt, and the black hole in the barrel pointed at him. He saw the hammer was back.
  
  She shot him. The heavy slug struck him in the shoulder. The flash and roar smothered him, and he staggered back and fell to the floor. She moved slowly toward him, cautiously, as she might toward a wounded animal. Her eyes inspected him impersonally. Then she tossed the pistol on the floor beside him and walked out of the house.



• From Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock:†
  

  Christian crouched back down in the ditch. “It's part boar, part man, elements of other beasts from the wildwood. But it's the old man's mythago. Oh God, how he must have hated us to have imposed such terror on the thing.”
  
  A moment later, he said, “When you run, run for the edge. Don't stop. And when you get out of the wood, don't come back. There is no way out for me, now. I'm trapped in this wood as surely as if I were a mythago myself. Don't come back here, Steve.”
  
  “Chris—” I began, but it was too late. He had thrown back the covering and was running. Moments later the enormous shape passed overhead, one huge, black foot landing just inches from me and passing by in a split second. But as I scrambled from the hole and began to run I glanced back and the creature, hearing me, glanced back too; and in that instant, I saw the face that had been painted across the blackened features of the boar.
  
  The Urscumug opened its mouth to roar, and my father seemed to leer at me.



• From Buttercup's Baby, by William Goldman:†
  

  The country of Despair was hard to find on the map, not because cartographers didn't know of its existence, but because when they visited to measure its borders, they became so depressed they began to drink and question everything, most notably why would anyone want to be a stupid cartographer? Since wars were always changing boundaries, why bother? There grew up, then, a gentleman's agreement among mapmakers to keep the place secret, lest tourists flock there and die.
  
  Everything about Despair was depressing. Nothing grew in the ground and what fell from the skies did not provoke happy conversation. The entire country was damp and dank, and why the locals did not all flee was not only a good question, it was the only question. Locals talked about nothing else. “Why don't we move?” husbands would say to wives, and wives would answer, “God, I don't know, let's,” and children would jump and shout, “Hooray hooray, we're out of here,” but then nothing would happen. There was comfort in knowing that things couldn't get any worse. “We have endured everything,” locals would tell themselves. “Whereas if we pick up and go, say, to Paris, we would get gout and be insulted by Parisians all day.”



• From “Some of Us Have Been Threatening Our Friend Colby,” by Donald Barthelme:
  

  Some of us have been threatening our friend Colby for a long time, because of the way he had been behaving. And now he'd gone too far, so we decided to hang him. Colby argued that just because he had gone too far did not mean he should be subjected to hanging. Going too far, he said, was something everybody did sometimes. We didn't pay much attention to this argument. We asked him what sort of music he would like played at his hanging. He said he'd think about it but it would take him a while to decide. I pointed out that we'd have to know soon, because Howard, who is a conductor, would have to hire and rehearse the musicians and he couldn't begin until he knew what the music was going to be. Colby said he'd always been fond of Ives' Fourth Symphony. Howard said that this was a “delaying tactic” and that everybody knew that Ives was almost impossible to perform and would involve weeks of rehearsal, and that the size of the orchestra and chorus would put us way over the music budget. “Be reasonable,” he said to Colby. Colby said he's try to think of something a little less exacting.



• From “The Blue Flame of Vengeance,” by Robert Howard:
  

  The man's face was long, smooth-shaven and of a strange dark pallor which together with the sunken cheeks lent him an almost corpse-like appearance—until one looked at the eyes. These gleamed with vibrant life and dynamic vitality, pent deep and ironly controlled.
  
  The stranger's clothing was severely plain. His hat was a black slouch, featherless. From heel to neck he was clad in close-fitting garments of sombre hue, unrelieved by any ornament or jewel, only broken by a wide silk sash of Oriental workmanship knotted about his waist. Its color was a sinister virulent green, and from it projected a dark hilt and the black butts of two heavy pistols.
  
  “How came you here?” asked Jack bluntly. “And how is it that I saw you not until you spoke?”
  
  “I came here as all honest men come, young sir,” Solomon Kane answered in a deep voice. “on my two legs—as for the other: men engrossed in their own affairs see neither their friends—to their shame—nor their foes—to their harm.”



• From Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett:
  

  Teppic's mother had been a pleasant woman and as self-centered as a gyroscope. She'd liked cats. She didn't just venerate them—everyone in the kingdom did that—but she actually liked them, too. It was traditional in river kingdoms to approve of cats, but he suspected that usually the animals in question were graceful, stately creatures; his mother's cats were small, spitting, yellow-eyed maniacs.
  
  His father, the pharaoh, spent a lot of time worrying about the kingdom and occasionally declaring that he was a seagull, although this was probably from general forgetfulness. Teppic had often speculated about his own conception, since his parents were rarely in the same frame of reference, let alone the same state of mind.
  
  But it had apparently happened and he was left to bring himself up, mildly hindered and occasionally enlivened by a succession of tutors. The ones hired by his father were best, especially on those days when he was flying as high as he could, and for one glorious winter Teppic had as his tutor an elderly ibis poacher who had in fact wandered into the royal gardens in search of a stray arrow.



• From Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott:
  

  The new champion struck the shield of Brian de Bois-Guilbert. All stood astonished at his presumption, but none more than the redoubted knight whom he had thus defied to mortal combat.
  
  “Have you confessed yourself, brother,” said the Templar, “and have you heard mass this morning, that you peril your life so frankly?”
  
  “I am fitter to meet death than thou art,” answered the Disinherited Knight.
  
  “Then take your place in the lists,” said Bois-Guilbert, “and look your last upon the sun; for this night thou shalt sleep in paradise.”
  
  “Gramercy for thy courtesy,” replied the Disinherited Knight; “I advise thee to take a fresh horse and a new lance, for by my honor you will need both.”
  
  The trumpets no sooner gave the signal than the champions charged with the speed of lightning, and met with the shock of a thunderbolt. The lances burst into shivers up to the very grasp, and it seemed that both knights had fallen, for the shock had made each horse recoil backward upon its haunches. But the riders recovered their steeds and each received a fresh lance from the attendants.



• From Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner:
  

  There is no one behind the broken window; only eddies of snow drift across the bare floorboards. The owners of the coats of arms have long since abandoned the claims to the house they crest, and moved up to the Hill. No king rules there any more, for good or ill. From the Hill, Riverside is a tiny splotch between two riverbanks, an unsavory quarter in the prosperous city. The people who live there now like to think of themselves as evil, but they're really no worse than anyone else. And already this morning more than one drop of blood has been shed.
  
  The blood lies now on the snow of a formal winter garden, now trampled and muddy. A man lies dead, the snow filling up the hollows of his eyes, while another man is twisted up, grunting, sweating frog-ponds on the frozen earth, waiting for someone to come and help him. The hero of this little tableau has just vaulted the garden wall and is running like mad into the darkness while the darkness lasts.



• From Thomas the Rhymer, by Ellen Kushner:†
  

  “I am the Queen of Elfland, Thomas.”
  
  “I know,” I heard myself say, my voice thin and tinny in my ears.
  
  “I am not made for your earthly lust,” she said, her white teeth sharp, her eyes cruel with pity. “You were best turn now and walk away.”
  
  I took a step towards her. Her horse was calm and still, cropping grass. She leaned low over the saddle bow.
  
  “Will you have one kiss of me? It will be dearly bought.” Light danced on the sweetness of her lips. “Dare to kiss my lips, and know that your body follows.”
  
  I smiled crookedly, the breath hard in my throat. “That is to be hoped for, is it not?”
  
  “Is it? You will be mine, Thomas. Let me be sure of you.”
  
  I pulled her to my mouth, and tasted fruit and flesh undreamed of. She quenched my thirst, and at the same time filled me with hunger I knew would never leave me. For just one moment my mind cleared as I thought, I am lost.



• From The Gunslinger, by Stephen King:
  

  The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
  
  The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that had cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.



• From “On Fairy-Stories,” by J.R.R. Tolkien:
  

  I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold. And overbold I may be accounted, for though I have been a lover of fairy-stories since I learned to read, I have not studied them professionally. I have been hardly more than a wandering explorer in the land, full of wonder but not of information.
  
  The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of the traveler who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.



• From “On Fairy-Stories,” by J.R.R. Tolkien:
  

  Fantasy is a natural activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific veracity. On the contrary. The keener and clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If ever men could not perceive truth, Fantasy would languish until they were cured.
  
  Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done, be put to evil uses, even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true? Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshipped them, even worshipped those most deformed by their authors' own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their sciences and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice. Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made in the image and likeness of a Maker.



• From No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty:
  

  When I actually sat down to write my first novel back in 1999, I discovered that my ideas about novel writing were woefully mistaken. You don't need a plot before you write a novel, nor do you need an evocative sense of place or a winsome, engaging cast. You don't need coffee.
  
  What you really need is a secret weapon.
  
  You need a superpowered, diabolical device that will transform you into a bastion of literary accomplishment. And I'm happy to report that this implement is just waiting for you to pick it up.
  
  Without hyperbole, I can say that this tool is the most awesome catalyst that has ever been unleashed on the worlds of art and commerce. Nearly every beautiful and useful thing you've ever touched or witnessed was born in its mighty forge. It's portable, affordable, and nonpolluting.
  
  It's also invisible.
  
  What you need to write a novel, of course, is a deadline.



• From “A Reflection on White Geese,” by Barry Lopez:
  

  The staging of white geese at Tule Lake in northern California in November is one of the most imposing—and dependable—wildlife spectacles in the world. At first one thinks of it only as a phenomenon of numbers—it's been possible in recent years to see as many as three hundred thousand geese here at one time. What a visitor finds startling, however, is the great synchronicity of their movements: the long skeins of white unfurl brilliantly against blue skies and dark cumulonimbus thunderheads, birds riding the towering wash of winds. They rise from the water or fall from the sky with balletic grace, with a booming noise like rattled sheets of corrugated tin, with a furious and unmitigated energy. It is the life of them that takes such hold of you.



• From “A Presentation of Whales,” by Barry Lopez:
  

  The sperm whale is the most awesome creature of the open seas. Imagine a forty-five-year-old male fifty feet long, a slim, shiny black animal with a white jaw and marbled belly cutting the surface of green ocean water at twenty knots. Sunlight sparkles in rivulets running off folds in its corrugated back. At fifty tons it is the largest carnivore on earth. Its massive head, a third of its body length, is scarred with the beak, sucker, and claw marks of giant squid, snatched out of subterranean canyons a mile below, in a region without light, and brought writhing to the surface. Imagine a four-hundred pound heart the size of a chest of drawers driving five gallons of blood at a stroke through its aorta: a meal of forty salmon moving slowly down twelve-hundred feet of intestine; producing sounds more shrill than we can hear—like children shouting on a distant playground.



• From “Against Abolishing Christianity,” by Jonathan Swift:
  

  Another Advantage proposed by the abolishing of Christianity, is, the clear Gain of one Day in Seven, which is now entirely lost; beside the Loss to the Publick of so many stately Structures now in the Hands of the Clergy; which might be converted into Theatres, Exchanges, Market-houses, and other publick Edifices.
  
  I readily own there hath been an old Custom, for People to assemble in the Churches every Sunday, and that Shops are still frequently shut; in order, as it is conceived, to preserve the Memory of that antient Practice; but how this can prove a Hindrance to Business, or Pleasure, is hard to imagine. Are not the Taverns and Coffee-Houses open? Is not that the chief Day for Traders to sum up the Accounts of the Week; and for Lawyers to prepare their Briefs? But I would fain know how it can be pretended, that the Churches are misapplied. Where are more Appointments and Rendezvouzes of Gallantry? Where more Meetings for Business? Where more Bargains driven of all Sorts? And where so many Conveniences, or Incitements to sleep?

EDIT: So I combed through ditched all those choices that were unworkable, wouldn't be appropriate, or I just wasn't good on with further reading. A wise friend wrote the following message by email: "Are you spending too much time picking and not enough practicing? Pull the trigger, man!" Yes, I suppose I am...