Oh, that reminds me.

I made creme brulee
for Father's Day.
It turned out OK!

Also, I made barbecued chicken and the Best Beans Ever:

1 lb bacon.
1 large can of baked beans, not institutional-size, but pretty large (we used maple-flavored).
1 red onion, chopped in small but non-dainty chunks.
1/4 c. blackstrap molasses or more to taste.
Worchestershire sauce, salt, and pepper to taste.

Fry bacon until crisp. Remove bacon from pan and drain on paper towels. STOP!!! Do not drain the grease. This recipe is meant for guys. Pour the beans in the pan with the grease and warm gently. Add molasses and stir. Add worchestershire sauce, salt, and pepper to taste. Just before serving, stir in the red onion.

After eating, leave the room.



*If you bitched to yourself that my haiku had the wrong number of syllables, you're a dork.

Amusing and delicious.

Seeing as Ray was asleep on my shoulder, Lee ordered Chinese last night from the Swan Palace. On a whim, I ordered pineapple chicken.

"You ordered pineapple chicken, right?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Well, you got pineapple chicken."

And then he brought me half a hollowed-out pineapple with stir fry in the middle. It was the same kind of taste on the tongue as good wine. Not the same taste, but the same type of taste, that makes your mouth swim just thinking about it.

Online Writer's Workshop.

I've been checking out the Online Writer's Workshop. I've submitted the first section of the Gray Hill novel, received four reviews, and been very happy with them. Many good suggestions. I'm still on my free month, but I'm going to keep going with it.

This means, mind you, I will have even less time to play on COH, but there you go.

Madagascar.

Did not suck. And did not wuss out on the question, "What do you do when you have a carnivore and an herbavore stuck on a desert island?"

The more kids' movies that don't suck, the better.

Ray.

I'm going to make this brief, because I've told the story and told it:

My daughter learned how to escape the apartment. She ended up at the front office of our apartment complex, naked except for her jacket and the keys to the apartment. We cut off her escape route using chicken wire. She took a different route involving a five-foot drop over a fence. I think we've cut that one off, too.

Here's something I've learned:

She got spanked, talked to, and grounded all day. This did not work. The last time, I sent her to her room for a few minutes and told her all she had to do if she really wanted to go outside was ask. "Please momma, let's go outside." Then she asked me, and we went outside. The next time she asked me, we went outside. I asked her today if she wanted to go outside, but she was too busy cutting up unwanted coupons. "No, thank you."

Punishing her a lot didn't work. Punishing her a little and helping her work out how to do what she wanted to do in a way we could both deal with seems to have worked. And maybe this will help teach her that she doesn't have to wait for us to do the things she wants us to do or do them all alone--she can tell us what she wants to do. She can ask.

Beginnings.

I'm having problems coming up with a good beginning. I'm going to have to think it out for a while.

Note that beginnings are often a combination of things.

Opening Stasis: Shows things as they are before something significant changes. (As common as boy-meets-girl. LOTR. The Hobbit. Star Wars. If the characters are happy with their setting, the goal of the story is to return to the opening stasis (which may or may not happen). If the characters are not happy with their setting, the goal of the story is to escape the opening stasis and achieve transformation.)

In media res: Shows things in the middle of the action and events.
--Orientation: Shows action that introduces the characters and action. (James Bond movies. The goals are similar to that of the opening stasis beginning.)
--Disorientation: Shows action that introduces the mood. The characters and action are not explained. (Serenity. The goal of the story is to come to grips with reality. Either the reality is as complex for the characters as it is to the audience, or something about the assumed reality is not what it seems. The characters either accept or reject reality.)

Frame Story: Surrounds the main story with a second story.
--Inside: The main story and the frame story are in the same reality. (Harry Potter series. The main story undercuts the assumptions of the frame story.)
--Outside: The main story and the frame story are in two different realities. Story within a story. (The Princess Bride. The main story reinforces or enriches the assumptions of the frame story.)

Simple Story: The story begins with a simple plot which is undercut, reversed, or complicated. (The Dark Tower series. The Sixth Sense. Stories with a twist. The simple plot may or may not have anything to do with the main plot.)

Story-Pattern: The pattern of the introduction shows the pattern of the story as a whole.
--Self-similar: The beginning of the story takes a pattern repeated by the story as a whole. (Scooby-Doo, TV and movies. Spirited Away. Two approaches. In one, the audience loves the familiarity of the story. Often used in TV shows. The story before the first commerical break is something the main characters do all the time, with variations. In the other, a lesson is presented to the characters, which they do not learn. The rest of the story is the repetition of the lesson, with higher stakes.)
--Cyclic: The beginning of the story ties to the end. (The Lion King. American Beauty. The beginning reveals the end of the story, either directly or indirectly. The story often feels mythic.)

Backstory: The story is introduced by a past event. (X-men. An easy way to focus the story on the action of the plot rather than the idea of discovery of the truth. Can be a self-similar story.)

Squishy Intro: The story is introduced by an event that happens to a minor character. (Horror movies. Works in the same type of way as the backstory, but focuses on events where the backstory focuses more on character.)

Flash Forward: The story is introduced by an event that happens in the middle or end of the story but is not the ending of the story itself. (Fight Club. Swordfish. Clever action movies. Challenges the audience to try to guess the plot. Differs from a cyclic plot in that the events do not feel inevitable, and unpredictable things often happen after the story catches up to the first scene again.)

Things Which Will Be Revealed to the POV Characters Later: The story is introduced by an event that will not be revealed to the main characters until later. (Murder mysteries. Sometimes unusual events are disguised with normalcy. Easy way to introduce "mystery" to the audience. Often combined with a lie.)

Lie: The events in the beginning of the story are a lie or red herring.

Metafiction: The story is introduced by commentary on the story itself. (The Princess Bride. A Series of Unfortunate Events. A story about stories. Metafiction is like a frame story, but one in which the audience is to consider the events of the story other than they otherwise would.)

Cosmological: The story begins with an introduction to the universe itself. Discworld. Dune. Either I barely notice this kind of beginning or I hate it.)

Insight.

Insight is when the obvious becomes the really obvious.

Song.

I don't know the name of the song. I have no idea what any of the lyrics are. The part that got stuck in my head was the piano in the beginning, a mountain-stream waterfall of piano. There's a backbeat in there somewhere. The singer sounds like someone I should know, but not really. Like a song you imagined in your dreams, woke up, and forgot.

David Sedaris:

"My father has always placed a great deal of importance on his daughters' physical beauty. It is, to him, their greatest asset, and he monitors their appearance with the intensity of a pimp. What can I say? He was born a long time ago and is convinced that marriage is a woman's only real shot at happiness. Because it was always assumed that we would lead professional lives, my brother and I were free to grow as plump and ugly as we liked. Our bodies were viewed as mere vehicles, pasty, potbellied machines designed to transport our thoughts from one place to another. I might wander freely through the house drinking pancake batter from a plastic bucket, but the moment one of my sisters overspilled her bikini, my father was right there to mix his metaphors. 'Jesus, Flossie, what are we running here, a dairy farm? Look at you, you're the size of a house. Two more pounds, and you won't be able to cross state lines without a trucking license.'"


--From Me Talk Pretty One Day.

Heh.

From Jackie:

"She has more issues that Mad magazine."

I am easily amused.