Some sites have “Water Coolers” where you talk about what you want; other sites have open threads to talk about whatever you want.
We have the Open Sesame, because creating an open thread with references to other things that are often “open” in a romance novel would lead to very interesting Google hits, indeed!
So- what’s on your mind? Whaddya wanna talk about?
My mind is a complete blank. No. Really. There’s nothing going on in my head. I just spent the entire morning debugging Delphi code and every brain cell I had left departed my skull for a vacation. It’s the damndest thing but … there you have it.
On my mind is coincidences.
Here’s an example from ‘real life’: this morning I read a headline that said “Lawmaker wants to send virgins to college”. I didn’t read the story because my thinking about how many ways in which that headline could create a funny story amused me too much. I thought of how those poor, innocent virgins would be like lambs to the slaughter (a veritable virgin sacrifice, if you will) and it made me laugh. My favorite thought was that it would make a great movie where the virgins (girls, natch) would have to face several challenges along the way to graduation (a gauntlet of horny college guys, alcohol, sex ed classes – you get the picture) and the one(s) who made it to graduation a virgin won (or lost, depending on your point of view). Anyway, these thoughts amused me quite a bit this morning. Shortly afterwards I received an e-mail from my daughter’s Girl Scout Leader with the opening sentence “the date of the briding ceremony will be…” – well, talk about your virgin sacrifice! My daughter’s only 9 and it’s quite a shock she’s to be a bride so soon.
This, in turn, got me thinking about how sometimes a story will have coincidences and you can buy them hook, line and sinker. But other times, there’s one coincidence too many and you’re rolling your eyes and throwing the book at the wall.
So – coincidences – sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. But sometimes fiction takes one turn too many and goes right off the rails.
Can anyone tell me why I just spent 20 bucks on a lot of Susan Napier’s backlist (fifteen of them) on Ebay? It’s 20 bucks that I could have used to buy bread and cheese that would sustain me for a week (I’m a starving college student).
Because you’re a reader before you’re a college student. I remember when I took the GRE’s (I scored a 98%/12%—don’t ask)one of the thoughts that held me back from pursuing the advanced degree was the lack of reading for pleasure time when you’re in school. I ended up not going because a Masters in Communications is worth about a bucket of warm spit, unless you’re going to teach, and I don’t like undergrads well enough to teach them. I’ve got two undergrads currently draining my bank account. That’s enough.
Darlene, I see your comment and raise you a “Hell Yeah.” I ran the hell out of graduate school short of obtaining a Masters because I realized that I did not want my job to be the only thing I ever did with my time – and being a college prof in writing/composition would mean exactly that.
So now I have a perfect job (it comes with Air Conditioning!!) and at the end of the day I go home with enough energy (unless I am pregnant) to do my own things.
Which makes me wonder: I am fascinated by different novels that portray careers of varying types, yet for myself, I know I am not a “Career Woman.” I’m a “I have a job that gets me health insurance so I can do my own thing after hours” woman.
Yep, just recently quit grad school as well when I realized it was just me killing time—and I don’t want to teach. If the writing doesn’t go through, I’ll probably look for a job that I can just leave at work—I’ve realized that I just don’t have the interest/energy to work for someone else’s company and make it my life.
Sigh. If only writing came with health insurance…I better start eating more vegetables.
OK. A thought just hit me. I was reading the comments on RTB and the animated-smiley-gifs-from-hell were winking and blinking and rolling their lit*tle it*ty bit*ty eyes and I wanted to upload Doom to their server to blast the little smileys into drippy puddles of pixel blood. I notice you put a strike through over the “no animated gifs”. [pregnant pause] Why did you do that? I wondered.
Ha!
It’s because we put up an animated Spiderman specifically for Maili after the London Bombings. If you look back at this entry, you can see that in the interest of expressing our empathy with the folks across the pond, we violated our own animated gif rule.
But don’t worry. This is not going to become a spasm of animated happy faces. It’s even worse at some of the pregnancy/baby boards I frequent. It’s like epilepsy done in graphical form.
I’d love one of those green phaser thing that would reduce them to drippy carcasses.
fiveandfour said: Here’s an example from ‘real life’: this morning I read a headline that said “Lawmaker wants to send virgins to collegeâ€.
I’d like to discuss why in the 21st century virginity is still an issue anywhere. The point of female virginity (at least in Western culture) was to calm the fears of men who wanted to be sure boys of their blood got their stuff when they died. This seems irrelevant today.
Why are romance heroines in contemporary novels still virgins? If you’ve got historical settings, fine. If you’ve got sci fi/fantasy cultures, fine. But unless your heroine is in like the 6th grade, what’s the point? Do we STILL need to have our fantasy stand-ins be virgins so we don’t feel bad about sex? Argggh!
On a different note, there’s a fascinating blur at Mind Hacks dot com, mocking a quasi-scientific study that supposedly shows repeated viewing of porn turns you into a zombie. 🙂
Ahhhh, don’t forget the throbbing hearts for our bunnilicious April Fool’s page. *happy sigh*
Those of you who know how to work HTML image tags and want to insert that heart in comments, the GIF is located in /images/heart.gif.
*winces and waits for throbbing heart ‘splosion*
Here’s my random contribution for the day:
Last night, while watching TV, the ad for Must Love Dogs (romantic comedy starring Diane Lane and John Cusack) came on.
Diane Lane (talking about John Cusack character): “He’s hot…”
Very Tall Husband: John Cusack is still hot?
Candy: Oh yeah. Not as hot as he used to be, but still pretty damn hot.
VTH: Really?
Candy: Let’s just say that should John Cusack crawl into bed and make sweet, sweet love to me, at no point would I ever say “Ack, ew! John Cusack! Gross!”
—————-
Fiveandfour said up above: So – coincidences – sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. But sometimes fiction takes one turn too many and goes right off the rails.
I agree with you. Here’s the thing: Generally speaking, good fiction HAS to be neater and more organized than real life ever could be. Real life is weird, and messy. There are very few neat character or story arcs.
People who want to use realism as a strict yardstick for good fiction are missing the point of storytelling in some ways, I think. What we’re looking is something that looks, tastes and feels real—even more real and vivid than the real thing.
This means the story has to be messy, but resolved one way or another by the end. But it can’t be resolved TOO neatly, or by devices that are too slick. Coincidences and events that amount to deus ex machinas (machinae??) have been known to occur in real life, but we usually view their usage in fiction as lazy writing.
How’s that for some postmodern philosophical noodling?
Wow. I’m now breaking my brain trying to figure out how to correctly pluralize “deus ex machina.”
And I don’t know Latin.
This does not bode well for my productivity this afternoon.
Hi Candy!
I agree with you about real life and story arcs. Sometimes, episodes happen neatly, but your whole life isn’t much for an arc. Mine, for example, is all over the damn place. I’m gonna do this – no I’m over here, now! Wait, I’m over here! Whee! Would make for spastic fiction.
The virgin requirement is really an odd one—AND I admit that I fall right into the trap of a) expecting a virgin heroine and b) getting the “Ew. Squidgy.” reaction when I read that she isn’t a virgin. But logically that makes no sense.
If we assume that Romance is all about the HEA combined with the finding of the one true soulmate who completes/complements/understands the flaws of the other party, and then the woman is supposed to be a virgin, then how does she know that she’s actually found the one, true, only the one, not just the faker partner if she hasn’t had sex or been in love yet? Paradoxical in the extreme.
I don’t read too many comtemporaries, but I’ll start thinking about the virginity requirement while I’m vacuuming. Maybe I’ll pull together something coherent in an hour or so.
Coincidences and events that amount to deus ex machinas (machinae??)
Dei ex machinis?
Well, I can think of all kinds of repulsive reasons why some dirty old male lawmaker might want to send virgins to college, but what I want to know is: How do they have to prove they are virgins? Affadavits from the entire high school football team? Proof of a Kevlar hymen? What?
And referencing the point about why virginity might be an issue anywhere in the 21st century, one answer might be the upswing in STD’s, especially HPV. My college-age daughters (yes, TWO sets of tuition!) have told me that being a virgin has a whole different connotation now at some campuses than it did even a few years ago. An og-gyn friend who lives in a college town and treats a lot of students at that college tells me that as many as 1 in 4 women students are infected with HPV. It’s a whole different thing than when I was in college and antibiotics took care of everything.
Wait! Wait! I want to name Candy’s car The Kevlar Hymen!!
Oh God, the mind boggles at the imagery those words induce!
I’m going to be very frightened indeed if some Smart Bitch posts a linky-loo for something along these lines – I’m still trying to get over the whole neuticals scenario.
OK, I’ve come up with another thing on my mind today: things that turn me on and I don’t know/understand why. In books, for example, I sometimes love an alpha male. In real life I’d be hard pressed not to commit an act of violence on his ass if some guy presumed to know better than me what was right for me.
Here’s a couple more:
*the virgin talk has reminded me that there’s a whiff of attraction for me to the idea of de-flowering a guy. Given my age and the usual age when guys have their first experience, this has a potentially large ewww factor – but I’m ignoring that for now.
*cowboys – there’s just something about the hat and the well-worn jeans and the horse riding that is rrroowwwrrr inducing for me, but as a life-long city dweller and country music avoider I don’t where my fascination comes from.
the virgin talk has reminded me that there’s a whiff of attraction for me to the idea of de-flowering a guy.
I ended up marrying the guy I de-flowered. There’s definitely something very powerful and sexy about being somebody’s first lover.
I’m now contemplating Photoshopping a Kevlar hymen, but I’m at work. Sigh.
Candy—When I was working drug ed we had a film we used to use, and the first time I previewed it I said, “Whoa! Stop the tape!” The snot-nosed kid in the film who needed to learn how to control his temper and make good decisions was a very young John Cusack. Long hair, baby pudge, but a cutie.
Industrial films are where you can see a lot of hot actors cut their teeth, and we used to have fun previewing these tapes and playing “spot the star”.
Ahahahaha… I’m laughing at Sarah because I know what she’s talking about with the pregnancy/baby boards (uhh…don’t hurt me because I gave you the link to one, k?) and the overuse of smilies. They have emoticons for everything. Let me tell you how bad it is and Sarah, I’ll bet you haven’t experienced this yet…
There are some women who will write their entire message in emoticons. they call them emoticon stories and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out.
There are some women who will write their entire message in emoticons. they call them emoticon stories and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out.
Aiieeeeeee! This makes Baby Jesus a saaaaad panda.
On my mind:
inane names for Baby Holding Centers. My friend (who I believe has lost her mind)is in the process of masticating through red tape galore in order to open an infant care center. Infants! She asked me to help her come up with a name, and after driving around looking at some of the places I have come to the conclusion that baby centers are all about miniature body parts:
Tiny Hands Childcare
Little Feet Day School
Precious Little Wizened Troll Faces
What is it with baby body parts? Is that really a trend? Why didn’t I notice this before? Working from the template, I put in:
Kinder Coccyx
Tiny ‘Ginies and Eeny Peenies
No Hair Anywhere Baby Care!
None of these passed muster. Anyone have any ideas that don’t make me feel like vomiting? I’ll give you full credit!
“Tiny ‘Ginies and Eeny Peenies”
AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Holy shit. Best. Infant Care. Name. EVER.
Trust me, you do NOT want me to come up with names for an infant care center, because I’ll come up with names like “Teeny Spleenies” or “Tiny Aliens from Planet Churchill.”
Agh…I’m never having kids! Okay, not for a loooooong time.
Virginity…hmmm…if I hadn’t met my husband my first year of college, I’d probably still have it. I honestly had no desire to just lose it with some random guy. I was sure I was going to wait til I was married (personal, not religious reason). And there’s that mortal fear of children that still sometimes gets me even though I’m happily married and on birth control that does not require me to remember to take a tiny pill at the same time every day. Though it’s nagging me again since I just switched to a new kind. And the fear of stds…I don’t know how many of my friends had drunken sex and forgot condoms.
And it was a mutual de-flowering. 🙂 Am I a prude? Nope, just picky.
Well, I’m pretty boring too. I still haven’t gotten drunk. Ever.
Of course, DH got into my pants three weeks after we started officially dating. Man won’t let me forget it. So hmm…
Hee! South Park reference?
Very interesting responses on the virgin thing.
I’d still like to hope that there is a nice, healthy middle ground between virginity and promiscuity that maybe our heroines can find.
And may they find it between covers not designed with CGI technology.
I’m still waiting for the nice middle ground, but I’d love to see it.
And yuck with the CGI covers. Darn it, I need to finish my decent ebook cover post.
I LOVE Tiny ‘Ginies and Eeny Peenies!!
We’ve attended lots of daycares named after the street they’re on, but the hands down favorite of all of my kids was an at-home daycare called Pickles.
It was cute, if you go with the Pickles and Ice Cream pregnancy thing it *almost* kind of made sense, and it sounded cute. We asked the woman who ran it, “Why Pickles?” She had asked her six year old daughter to help her come up with a name and she chose “Pickles.” She liked pickles, and she was hoping to like the kids her Mom watched, so it all kind of worked.
But, I would scream with delight if a “Tiny ‘Ginies and Eeny Peenies” opened nearby. Franchise?
ok, this site has nothing to do with romance novels or snarkiness, but I want to spread it all over the place.
In memory of the first Moon landing, in memory of all those who have died – or succeeded – in achieving space flight:
Julia Ecklar singing Leslie Fish – life holds no greater happiness.
http://www.prometheus-music.com/video/Hope_Eyrie.wmv>http://www.prometheus-music
.com/video/Hope_Eyrie.wmv
Thanks for sharing, Becca. I was a filker in my misspent fannish youth. I used to sing “Hope Eyrie” to my sons as a lullaby.
That, and “The Green Hills of Harmony” and a few other filk songs fit for young ears.
The virgin thing…At the rate HIV is killing off people in africa it will be a barren continent soon. Some nations have close to a 35% infection rate among the general population. The politician’s motive was good, but it was an idea thought up of by a man and therefore inherently flawed.
Myself, i only ever broke in 2 virgins…then i decided to stick to men that know what they are doing, i don’t have the patience to train a man.
I managed to survive grad school, only to move to a state where 40% of 9th graders never even finish hhigh school. So here having a masters is like having the plague- employers won’t touch you. Now i make 3 grand more than i did before grad school…you guys aren’t missing much.
Virgnity is not so rare or freaky as popular culture would have us believe. But it’s not as common as romance novels would have us believe, either…
*sigh* Looking for the middle ground, here, too…
Virgnity is not so rare or freaky as popular culture would have us believe. But it’s not as common as romance novels would have us believe, either…
If I remember correctly, the majority of romance readers are married with children and there’s a strong implication that the majority of that majority demands virgin heroines. I’m still trying to figure out why. I mean, I like to think that there is more to the heroine than the state of her hymen [whether it’s intact or not], but not in romance genre, it seems.
Maybe it’s to do with the idea that if the heroine holds onto her virginity ‘til she meets the hero, she’ll be rewarded with true love and a lifelong series of orgasms.
On a different note, I was wondering the other day what it’s about men’s dark hair that attracts so many women? And why blond men end up as villains?
Peach—I wouldn’t want to leave the impression that I’m denigrating advanced degrees. Heck, I live in a university town and I feel inadequate ‘cause I only have a BS. I think anyone who feels her life would be enhanced by a masters or doctorate degree should go for it, and maybe some day I’ll go back to school for a Masters in History, but only because I want to enhance my knowledge level, not because it may lead to a larger paycheck.
If you’re teaching, you’re fighting the good fight and I salute you. Hang in there!
Oh, Lord…so much to talk about.
I lost my virginity to a virgin at age 18. I then took another person’s virginity about four years later. So I think I got mine back.
Advanced degrees…my Dh has a Masters in History. He got his BA at Holy Cross, his Masters at Marquette. We’re still paying off his student loans. He’s now working as a security guard. The job market BITES, and in some cases having an advanced degree can hurt you, because they assume if you have it that you’ll want more money, and the resume gets tossed. I have an AS in Computer Information Systems. I’m a data entry clerk. Life is like that.
Day care names…mine is called Smart Cookies. I know, I know. But she’s a good caretaker.As for names, as long as it’s not Neverland Ranch, I’m good.
Me too. The thing is, given my confession over my attraction to the idea of taking a guy’s virginity, I can see how for the person who’s not the virgin there’s an added thrill to the scenario. But in these books, it’s the woman who’s invariably the virgin – so where’s the added thrill for the female reader? Or is this just another thing that’s become so anticipated in romance that it feels jarring if the convention isn’t followed?
I’ve often wondered about this myself. I’ve always been attracted to the dark-haired guys, even way back in grade school before you have even the remotest thought of examining things like this. What, anthropologically speaking, would be more attractive to a woman about a dark-haired guy than a blonde?
My distrust of blonde men has a long and sordid lineage. Especially tall blonde men. Tall, rich and blonde was the trifecta of doom. Anyway, blonde men can’t smoulder. They try, but they look more like they need to pass something.
Smart Cookies and Pickles… I like the food theme much better than thinking about disembodied parts. I also recommended Tiny Members (denied). But there are scads of blackberry bushes and brambles around…
Thanks for the laughs, all!