We really lucked out when we moved to
this neighborhood with it's incredibly convenient shopping that is vast in variety and terrific
transit access by bus or car. We find more reasons that this true
with almost every errand we run. Last week, it was the reasonably
priced, fully equipped garden center. Today, we found an old-timey
tailor ad few doors away from a hardware store we've frequented for
years. After we realized that he was a tailor, we stopped in to price
having new buttons sewn on Jon's great coat. It was a good price. He
even told us of a place where we could get a set of matching buttons
for the coat. Our neighborhood is full of wonders. Apparently, we
aren't the only ones to realize this. Hipsters
have infiltrated the neighborhood. They've even seeped into our
apartment building. There are far too many pork pie hats and
over sized eye glasses.
We should have expected this to happen. In
June, the neighborhood reached saturation point with farmers markets.
There are three. We don't just have sushi bars, we have full blown izakayas.
This area is the home base of the chef who invented the gourmet food
truck in Los Angeles. He has two restaurants here. One of them, the
A-Frame,
has even been visited by Anthony Bourdain. I'm so annoyed that I
missed that. The A-Frame is steps from my favorite 99 Cents Only
store. We even have an ironic cake supply store. Hipsters love all
things ironic. Why is the cake supply store ironic? Gloria's Cake and
Candy Supply has everything imaginable for light and airy confections
covered in pastel roses while it's main sales clerk looks like he
came straight from a megadeath heavy metal concert tour. Things have
become very hip indeed. We can cope with hipsters. Despite the last
episode of the Simpsons, there are far worse things a neighborhood
can be. However, if someone sees me in a pork pie hat, slap me.
Baking Frenzy
It is truly that time of year when every
spare spot of space in our modest apartment is piled with bags and
containers of baked goods. The freezer is nearly bursting with doughs
in pre-cookie form. I have introduced three new treats in recent
years. Two are brand new this year. I am making two vegan treats
though I was not deliberately catering to vegans. The sugar plum (a
ball of ground dried fruits, roasted nuts and spices mixed with
honey) and mochi (a Japanese candy made of sweet rice flour and
flavored with green tea and sugar) just happen to be vegan. The other
new treat is a fruitcake cookie. Many of my friends have expressed
interest in the fruitcakes I made to ship back east. Alas, I only
make one batch of those. It's hard to explain. This year, I got sent
a cookie recipe for a fruitcake cookie. It had all the brandy doused
dried fruit as the cake I make just in cookie form. I decided to try
those for our local cookie gifts. I do give different baked goods to
the folks back east than I do the locals. No one gets shortchanged
though. The locals get some of the more delicate and elaborate treats
that won't ship well. In this way, everyone gets something special. I
never want these gifts to be assembly line though there is a bit of
that during the packaging and shipping part. The house does smell
wonderful for many days, and there are always cookies to check for
Quality Assurance. Jon is really good at that. Ideally, everything
would ship out tomorrow. We'll have to wait as see if that works out.
My shopping, baking and shipping are a
bit off for a couple of reasons. I have long been coping with a great
deal of physical pain. I have quite a bit of post chemo nerve damage
and thus nerve pain. The meds prescribed by my oncology docs were
blunting the pain by less than half. I had been finding it harder and
harder to do anything with this pain. Finally, I had a referral with a pain
management doc who specialized in post chemo nerve damage. I think
the biggest relief was that I was not being a hypochondriac. A
treatment was a very close second. The pain doc told me not to be
hard on the oncologists. Their options for meds were limited to those
that are carried at a public hospital where almost all of their
patients fill their prescriptions. Those options there are limited to
generics that don't require insurance. Thankfully, I am now covered
for most anything. The doc and the pharmacist warned me that the new
regimen may slow me down for a while. I did not realize they meant
slow as in spontaneous naps or sitting and staring at things for long
periods of time. So, I'm not sure when packages will get shipped or
even if there will be a dinner on time, but I am feeling a lot
better. It all evens out in the end. I just keep in perspective that
three years ago I had a belly covered in big surgical staples and was
facing a lot of uncertainty. Everything is much better now.
Metafiction vs Star Trek
Metafiction is basically fiction in
which the writer reveals the various artifices of writing to the
reader. Here is a longer definition that doesn't make me want to hit
someone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction
I hate this sort of writing with a passion. Metafiction was all the
rage when I was in grad school. Thus, I hated grad school. The
process of writing is only interesting to people who teach writing.
Actual writers find creating stories with compelling characters takes
up too much of their time to worry about revealing artifices and
otherwise staring at their own navels. Tell me a story or stop
wasting my time, is my writing philosophy. As much as I hate
metafiction, Craig hates it even more. I distinctly remember him
threatening physical violence to visiting authors of such fiction
when we worked at Borders.
I was thus shocked when Craig
recommended a work of metafiction for me to read. He highly
recommended it. He badgered me until I borrowed it from the library.
Redshirts by Jonh Scalzi was worth the badgering. It seems that if
you mix metafiction with something that looks vaguely like Star Trek
and a very twisted sense of humor, something brilliant happens. Here
is the synopsis:
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been
assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of
the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting,
and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s
Xenobiology laboratory.
Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on
the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal
confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief
science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive
these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is,
sadly, always killed.
Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.
I was enjoying the general hilarity of how absurd Trek away missions and the refreshing change of characters noticing that the absurdity when someone comes out of a bulkhead and cryptically tells Dahl to avoid the narrative. The reader is then taking on a surreal and screamingly funny adventure that breaks the fourth wall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall, travels through time and ends up in a Studio Lot in Burbank. The central issue was not how writing impacts a character, but how a writer has a moral obligation to write intelligently and treat their characters fairly. The Intrepid's crew had endured inanities like blood thirsty land worms and ice sharks (?!) and diseases that liquify bones. The last of which did not kill a character from the main cast. Dahl noticed a day later that he didn't look like he'd melted at all. However, said character – the Chekov character, Kerensky – was permanently squirrely because of all the trauma that routinely befell him. Ultimately, Redshirts thoroughly skewers metafiction as much as it skewers badly written sci-fi TV. I loved ever paragraph.
Admittedly, Redshirts did cause me some introspection about how morally I treated my characters. A review found that I write an awful lot of arrogant men who think I'm not spending enough time writing about them. The one character I thought I wronged was Armans of Ritvala in the Gift of Surrender. I wrote The Price of Surrender to correct that. He's pretty happy though he'd also like another adventure. Yes, I'm aware that sounds insane. I'm a writer.
Updates
I am working on Soldier's Destiny at a slow but steady pace. And though I will be a bit distracted with my favorite Christmas gift of the season – Jon is off for a week and a half! We get to hang out for more than just doing chores and running errands. But I'll still be writing.
Stay tuned.
