Time is money; money is power; power is pizza; pizza is knowledge. Let’s go!
— April Ludgate, Parks and Recreation, Season 6: Second Chunce
Short updates as opposed to full-length blog posts.
I found this envelope on a shelf when I cleaned my office recently. It’s apparently from before I understood what a filing cabinet is.
I can’t believe this album is ten years old now. Sainthood isn’t considered their best album, but I loved it. Tegan and Sara used to be the one indie artist I listened to when my …
Here are a couple things I’ve learned about while doing worldbuilding research for Stars Fall Out:
The Roman month of Mercedonious. Learning more about the history of intercalation (inserting extra days into the calendar, such as in a leap year), provided the inspiration for me to fix a story problem. I have a section of Stars that, timing-wise, felt weird in relation to the rest of the story. I decided to run with the weirdness; I made them intercalated days called for on the authority of one of the Grand Oneiromancers. One of those “can you believe this law is still on the books?” kind of things.
I also learned how to convert between different number base systems. I’ve always thought it would be cool if we had a base 12 system rather than base 10, so I gave one of the cultures in my story a base 12 system, and another base 9. Now I’m trying to make it as hard as possible for them to change currency, which is adding some nice color to a scene in the bakery when a guy comes in with imperial money.
Also, history of the number zero. Unrelated, for my purposes.
This whole weekend, I felt like the person in a horror movie who knows that the entire town will be overrun by vampires come sundown, but no one will listen.
A ton of people had outdoor Labor Day weekend parties going at dusk, despite all the EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitis) advisories in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
Sun comes down, this town gets overrun by mosquitoes…
I came up with a quick method for enchilada sauce that I am happy with.
Normally, I’m not a fan of recipes that use salsa. They’re too back-of-the-box recipe, shortcuts in the negative sense of the word, like when you think you’re going to save yourself a bunch of driving time, but then you end up on a shifty, haunted dirt road that just gets narrower and narrower until it’s basically a trail you have to back out of, and you curse your entire existence.
Anyway, after my recent discovery that canned enchilada sauce is even more underwhelming than I remembered, I decided there has to be a better way.
Salsa verde has the flavor profile I want in a green enchilada sauce, only without chopping tomatillos for a million years. It worked out to about 3/4 cup salsa verde with 2 cups or so of chicken broth, thickened with a bit of cornstarch. So far, it’s worked with at least one red salsa
I couldn’t find the official video for “Outsiders,” if there is such a thing, but this was my favorite Franz Ferdinand song for years. I’d never seen the video before.
This is the result of my hands-on plot-fixing session the other day. It led to me writing a scene I came up with twelve years ago, but hadn’t figured out how to write (in part because of Stars Fall Out’s long, weird history). I plotted and wrote it in an hour-and-a-half, and it’s improved two main characters, my worldbuilding for the city of Nirsuathu, and even the ending.
I slammed my laptop shut, wished Dunkin Donuts were more conducive to victory laps, then drove to work while blasting “Outsiders” by Franz Ferdinand, which is part of my Stars playlist, and is quite a bombastic song for representing a character who’s been stuck in Nirsuathu for months.
A friend posted on Facebook asking which five TV shows you would bring to a deserted island. Here are mine:
Doctor Who
Star Trek: DS9
Gilmore Girls
30 Rock
Avatar: The Last Airbender, and its sequel Legend of Korra
Those last two are separate shows. But meh, rules. I love deep, conflict-rich worldbuilding and sharp dialogue. All of those shows have both.
I just listened to the Unladylike podcast, Episode 59: How to wear too much makeup.
I love the idea of makeup as warpaint, or as a confrontation. Most days I only wear black eyeliner, which is itself an empowering thing for me; I associate it with edginess and rebellion, and it gives me a power boost, even if most days it presents more subtly.
I didn’t think I’d be much interested in this episode, as I’m more on the “makeup is problematic” side of the fence. But now I’m inspired to go on an adventure to find blue lipstick and pink eyeliner, and anything else that screams “over-the-top new wave androgyny” and “you’re not supposed to do this in your thirties.”
If I ever mention “going through a pack a day,” it will probably be in reference to index cards. I keep finding more uses for them.
Index cards, tarot cards, scissors, two rolls of tape, and two plot outlines, one for reading, and one for chopping into pieces.
It’s time to fix a plot problem.