(no subject)

This is when my laptop keyboard decided to fail completely.

You know, I am STILL mad at the university for requiring students to purchase a laptop. First of all, the campus wireless sucks; second, assuming that students at a *public* university have the funds to purchase $2000 machines is unbelievably stupid, and we end up getting substandard computers.

I did buy a new keyboard (wireless!) but, truth be told, it's really hard to use given that the space right in front of my monitor is taken up by a nonfunctioning attached keyboard, and I still have to use the trackpad. (The keyboard came with a mouse, but because this computer only has ONE mouse/keyboard port, I can't attach it. And don't have space to use it anyway).

What this means is that I'm going to be getting a desktop as soon as I move and get a job, when I'll need the money to buy things like work clothes and furniture. Even though replacing a computer after only two years is stupid and wasteful. It's the cheapest laptop I could find, and it's a pretty awful machine. (Mind you, I had reasons for buying a pretty awful laptop; I like laptops so little that I'd be getting a desktop at the first possible opportunity anyway).

(no subject)

My youngest sister has several seasons of CSI on DVD; dubbed in Spanish, no less. (Reminding me, I'll have to check the rest of the medium-sized DVD collection later). At first it struck me as odd that shows dubbed from English are so, so much easier to understand than The Motorcycle Diaries and the telenovelas, but upon further reflection, it makes sense; translations usually move in the direction of making things blander and removing ambiguities. And of course, there's a whole shared cultural context that you can lean on. So--Buffy wasn't easy just because it had an extremely limited vocabulary.

Wonder if it'll get harder once I get to the medical jargon.

(no subject)

My initial reaction to this was "Yes!" but I think it's turned into a "Yes, but--"

You know, on further reflection I don't disagree with any of it. What I disagree with is the straw-man that I still hear way too often, that (insert author's name) is a hack who writes without passion and if only people wrote with passion (which is only a matter of will) then they would write better stories.

When you talk about alive stories and dead stories, I don't think it's simply the willingness to poke around in your backbrain and drag out the monsters. I have done that, to the best of my knowledge, in most of the fiction I've written. There are little bits in even the worst stuff that make me shiver with glee: Moriyuki the fox, Khathara and Pietra and their melodrama, the crowskin cloak. There is passion and blood on the page. But I don't know that it makes them alive, and I think that it does take a certain amount of skill just to make sure that when you bleed all over your story your readers see blood instead of gloopy ketchup.

Some of the time one (and by 'one' I mean 'me') sees things so clearly in their head, and doesn't pause for long enough to realize that the words on the page don't do justice to the bright wriggling shining thing inside their imagination. And what you have isn't a technically flawed story with a heartbeat, but a story without any visible heartbeat at all. I think it's very easy to see passion and technical quality as being in opposition to each other, but they're not; passion and restraint are in opposition, though it's true that the contemporary style favors restrained writing (maybe since Hemingway. God, I hate Hemingway. But that's because my eighth-grade teacher made me try to figure out "Hills Like White Elephants," and I'm not that smart). Ideally--technical skill is how you take the passion and the guts and the self-indulgence and get them on the page in a way that is sharp and clear and honest.

I guess what I want to say is that no one *tries* to write with stuffed and plastic monsters. I don't think anyone takes the easy route intentionally. I believe, maybe just because I have to, that everyone who does a stupid thing like writing stories with no intention of getting paid for them is doing so because they have passion, and they have no other choice. Even Robert Jordan. Even Michael Crichton. And it doesn't always come out on the page, because it's not a sheer matter of will to go rummaging around in your backbrain. It's hard and strange and capricious, and even when it seems to work it doesn't, always. But I believe they try, because I know that I try.