NaNoWriMo: Heeeeeeeere's JOHNNY

I wonder if anyone's ever submitted an entire novel of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" for NaNoWriMo. Someone's got to have tried that, right? I'd guess that they've got ways of preventing it, though. More's the pity.

On the subject of my NaNo: I'm kind of in love with it right now. We're in the honeymoon phase, I think, where it's all flowers and intimacy and figuring out the character voices. In particular I adore Sam, which is handy given that he's the main character. He's just such an angry, adorable little fucker. Witness:

"At least I didn't choke," Sam muttered.

"What?"

"Sometimes in fights I don't do anything, I just stand there. I didn't this time." Because of the moon, the voice inside his head whispered. You could never do that on your own.

"And you think the fact that you did this time is a good thing? I just picked you up from jail, dude. Maybe violence isn't something to aspire to. Just a thought."

Sam bristled. "What, I should let people walk all over me?"

"No, but I think there's a big difference between defending yourself and breaking a guy's nose for sleeping with your girlfriend. There are other ways of solving that." Sam scoffed and David shot him a frown, his brows knit together. "You think I'm wrong?"

"I think," Sam said, "I think you live in nice fucking house in a nice fucking part of town. I think you have a rich daddy who likes you and you've never had to really work for anything. So no, I don't think you know shit."

They drove on in silence. Sam stared out the window at the houses and yards passing them by.

"You know, Sam," David said after a while, "sometimes you make it real hard to like you."

"Yeah, well, ditto," Sam shot back without turning.

AWWWW, SAMMY, look at your precious little >:( face. You hate everyone in the world, don't you, bb? Don't you? N'awwww. (This snippet is made more amusing by the fact that David is pretty much the easiest person in the world to like. He's like a slightly less randy version of Jack Harkness.) (Very slightly.)

Today's "A Softer World Comic"

NaNoWriMo: Day 1

I've never done National Novel Writing Month before, but I've always wanted to. For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is where you try to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. From midnight Nov 1st to Nov 30th, people all across the globe become hermits, pounding out the word count to the tune of 1,667 words a day.

I'm doing pretty well so far --

My novel is tentatively called "Nature Boy," a magical realism urban fairytale about a young werewolf cat burglar who falls in love with the married couple whose house he broke into (though he kind of falls in love with the house first). The wife has two voices and the husband takes pictures in his sleep that become famous works of art. Without knowing about the burglary, they fall in love back. AND THEN POLYAMORY.

Drumming diary: Good Times, Bad Times

This week, on Rachel learns the Zep...

After a necessary hiatus, I've gotten back to work on "Good Times, Bad Times." The muscle memory had faded a bit, but it's returning. Really, the only part that's giving me any trouble is this one:

C=Crash, R=Ride cymbal, T=high tom, S=Snare, FT=Floor tom, Bd=Bass drum, Hf=Hi-hat pedal played with the foot.

That's a long string of triplets played pretty exclusively with the feet. The hands are involved, but it's mostly half notes played on the hi-hat pedal with the left foot (1+2+3+4+) with triplet beats on the kick with the right foot (-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea, with the - representing the half notes played with the left foot). Bonham loved his triplets. He was also known for his speedy foot, and thus had no compunction about throwing, what, 10 triplets in a row on the kick?

Incidentally, this track was the first one on their debut album, and thus was the world's introduction to Led Zeppelin, and John Bonham. Everyone who knew anything about drumming stood up to pay attention. Even the drummer who influenced his technique, Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge, played his kick triplets with a double-kick drum setup; but Bonzo did it solo.

I'm not that fast yet, so whenever I'm sitting down or even just standing still, I'm playing triplets with my feet. I'll catch up to you yet, Bonzo. You and your little dog, too.

Why I don't support the injunction against DADT.

I joined the Army when I was 17, a couple of months after 9/11. At first I was in the reserves as a PFC, but then I received an ROTC scholarship and went to college to train for the officer ranks.

I'm also queer. I was active in the GLBTA and there were some nights when I would attend both an Army training session and a queer pride fundraiser in the same night.

I know firsthand the damage that DADT does to individual soldiers, unit cohesion, and the Armed Forces in general. It requires queer soldiers to either limit their social contact with their comrades to the point that they never have to lie about their personal lives, or it compromises their honor. It removes skilled technicians from the ranks at a time when we are fighting two wars and desperately need them.

DADT is wrong by every standard we could apply: constitutionally, morally, and functionally.

But placing an injunction against it that slaps the whole system down is not the right way to go about ending DADT. I know the military. If there isn't a very detailed manual telling them how to deal with a situation then they just...won't. And there will be situations to deal with: the soldiers around me in the cadet ranks were tolerant to the point that several knew about me and chose not to say anything, but enlisted combat units? Those are the guys who either didn't have the IQ for Armor or actually wanted to be enlisted Infantry. In the words of Joe, an enlisted Infantry soldier I spoke to a couple months ago on the subject, "We're the kind of pricks who'd shoot a fag."

Basically, if this injunction stands, we will see dead queer soldiers. We will hear rumors of beatings and abuses, but the chaos of such an abrupt change would leave queer soldiers with no proper channels to make a complaint. We will see a spike in friendly fire. We will essentially have thrown them in there with no safety net, no protections, and no way to defend themselves. Then we'll get the regulations and support network--but it will be reactionary and too late for some.

We need to do this the right way. We need to give the military time to set up proper support that can ease the transition--and that's key, making it a transition. An injuction in federal court that ends DADT so abruptly is not good for the Armed Forces and it's definitely not good for queer soldiers.

Fighting hate with laughter

I think of all the It Gets Better videos thus far, this one is my favorite: a bunch of queer comedians got together at the Gotham City Comedy Club for a night of laughter and encouragement.




This is a great runner-up, though: a cop and a Marine, in uniform, in love.

Drumming diary: ~The Process~

I have a very specific process by which I learn how to play a new song on the drums. My specific process, let me show it to you in glorious MS Paint flowchart:

Click for larger view