Gawker and the NY Post are both reporting the latest in Cougar news.  Women are not actually hunting down young men in huge numbers.  I know, all of you cougar-istas are surprised by this finding, and I’m sure your age-appropriate SO is sighing in relief, and yet, we consider to be surprised that all of humanity is not exactly alike.

Drudge is reporting that 25% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. I believe 20% of earthly residents believe that aliens (space, not the other kind that make Lou Dobb’s head explode) have actually landed on earth and walk amongst us.  73% of Americans are unable to believe this S&IT, which has gone on to become a best-seller, 73% of All Americans Unable to Believe this SH&T My Father Says.  And 89% of all Americans believe politicians are corrupt (I just made that one up, but I bet it’s true).

Also, in other news, both Wired and Newsweek are reporting that the Internet is dead, although NPR and BNET both say that the reports of the Internet death (by both Wired and Newsweek) have been greatly exaggerated.  I say that you are not actually reading this post on the Internet, instead it is being channeled through your computer via the Psychic Friends Network (which actually died in the 1980s, but nobody knew, because DUH!).

Also, the New York Times is reporting that John Lenin is still dead.

Fiction is not dead.  On the Internet, nothing will ever die.

From the Chicago Tribune, a quote from Garrison Keillor on the future of publishing:

Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 1derful), blogging like crazy, reading for hours off their little screens, surfing around from Henry James to Jesse James to the epistle of James to pajamas to Obama to Alabama to Al-Anon to non-sequiturs, sequins, penguins, penal institutions, and it’s all free, and you read freely, you’re not committed to anything the way you are when you shell out $30 for a book, you’re like a hummingbird in an endless meadow of flowers.

And if you want to write, you just write and publish yourself. No need to ask permission, just open a Web site. And if you want to write a book, you just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you’ve got yourself an e-book. No problem. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.

From Kathleen O’Reilly, quoted to nowhere in particular:

It should be noted that publishing is not going to slide into Lake Wobegone, where all authors are above average.

I couldn’t resist.

I found this one on Jezebel.  Painfully obvious newspaper headlines.  And I should note that my DS has a t-shirt with Death: The Nations #1 Killer on it.  It always makes me snicker.

I like this story.  According to the UK Dailymail, archaic words like smoyle (old English for smile) are accepted in Facebook scrabble and hardcore Scrabbleista’s are snuffy that such slumgums are allowed.  I didn’t even know Facebook had scrabble, but now I want to install it.  Elain Higgleton, who oversees the Official Scrabble Dictionary is not vexed (16 points) by the rumpus.  However, I began to investgate high-point-value Scrabble words and found some fun ones.

• xerotic — heheh, not what you think.  Prone to hardness, associated with aging skin. 16 points.
• abaka – related to the banana plant.  11 points.
• coccyx – tailbone.  22 points.
• joypop- to use habit-forming drugs occasionally without becoming addicted.  20 points.
• hutzpahs – variant spelling of chutzpahs.  25 points.
• kavakava – an herb used to treat anxiety.  22 points.
• zyzzyva – a genus of a tropical beetle, also it’s usually the last word in dictionary’s, so it’s becoming a common shorthand for “the last word”.  43 points.

On that note, zyzzyva.

I love this one, and today, I will strive to use a lengthy, hard-bitten description of a character on the chink-ridden road to putrification hell.

Oh, ink, you indelible mark on my soul, my contract, my white-cushioned couch….
I surrender to the lure of your awesomeness, your sultry smell, your sooty liquid nature.  I compare thee to the effervescent allure of your digital twin, its voluptuous, its easily-correctable and fleeting nature, and the siren call of fast lucre.
Oh, ink, hold me fast, hold me tight, wrap me in a chain of perpetuity, so that I may not be swayed.  You are my marker, my touchstone, my Northern star.  It is you who rule with an iron hand, who oversee all, and I all lay down my contract before thee, for now and all days…

until some days…

until I get my rights back, and then ink, we need to talk.

I share a great love with Dee Davis and Barbara Vey.  Jack Bauer, and 24.  I was not pleased with last season, nearly ready to abandon my 24-ness, but then….  Tony’s undead (and not in the zombified, but in the soap opera sort of manner) and they found the groove of Jack Bauer, one man fighting to save the country from terror, no matter the price to his soul.

In homage to this rebel patriot with a cause, from whom no terrorists knee-caps or private organs or safe, I submit:  The Jack Bauer peep.  Credit must also be given (I promised) to my daughter as the creative consultant on the project.

As an O’Reilly, when March 17th rolls around, people expect you to break out the cute green bowlers (hats, not Lebowskis), load up on the keg O’Guiness, ape a heavy brogue, and merrily slap everyone on the back, strangers included.

I consider myself a quasi-jovial person, but there’s a something *undiginified* about St. Patrick’s Day.  It’s a glorified Pats Gone Wild without signed waivers and an exchange of cash.  I never reveled on March 17th, and I kept my name secret.  If I was on the telephone and had to say my name, I would mumble it.  Oritchitley.
“What?”
I only mumbled louder.
“Can you spell that?”
“O-R-E-I-L-L-Y.”
“That’s O-R-I-E-L-L-Y”  Orally?”
No, ‘i’ before ‘e’ except in O’Reilly.  “O’Reilly,” I would answer with the most infinite patience ever.

“OREILLY?  Oh, Really?” They would pun, as if they were most clever.  Over the phone, no one can see an eye-roll.

Today, I will be working.  Editing chapter 7 and chapter 8, probably Chapter 9, and 10 as well, because I’m at the point where there’s more passage-hacking and book-maiming.  Truly, you’d be impressed with how fast I can throw a red line across an entire page (sometimes three to four) and scrawl CUT.

I’m looking to create plot things, because I need a most excellent sub-plot for heroine.  She’s an interesting person, and I realized I had nothing for her to do, except be acted upon by the fates – not good in a novel – so today I’m looking for sub-plots in all the wrong places.  If you choose to throw a plot my way, I will be extremely grateful.

In other news, the Onion reports, “U.S. Economy Gunned Down in Gas Station Robbery.”  Oddly enough, the following Onion headline is “Patrick Duffy Turns 60.”  Methinks the Onion is playing tricks on me.

Happy January 3rd.  Hello, gals and dolls.  I have been sloth-ish in my holiday doings, but slowly my conscience has beat my more lackadaisical leanings into submission, and I have full expectations that by Monday, I will be back operating at a solid 47%.

DearAuthor pointed out  list of words that Lake Superior State University said should be banished in 2009.    Nothing thrills me more than word lists, so here’s my thoughts:

• The consensus word was ‘green’ and ‘going green’.  I can hear Thomas Friedman anguished cries of agony at the loss of going green.  Yes, I think the trendiness of the word green  has gone, but perhaps we need to find a replacement word.  For instance, going ‘verdant’ which is grassy green, or virescent, which is ‘greenish,”  which would be wanting to go green, but perhaps your intentions (like mine) were not as inclined to deal with the real pain in the virescent ass that is recycling.
• The next word on the list is carbon footprint.  I was crushed, because the word will be doomed to obsolescence, and I have yet to use it.  Alas, my carbon footprint will be doomed to stay as large as my carbon posterior.
• Maverick.  Oh, ho, ho.  I love this word.  I love James Garner  I love James Garner as Maverick.  Oh, we’re not talking about old western TV shows?  Politics, you say?  Maverick, as in, running off the range, going rogue (another one I love, which you will see in Kathleen O’Reilly print).  As a romance author, I think maverick has its own place in the romance vernacular and should be preserved.  “He was kissing on me, and then slowly he was sliding down the carbon footprint of my spine, and I think, oh, man, he’s going maverick….
• First Dude.  Okay, Lake Superior State University, you got me on this one.  I concur.
• Bailout.  LOL.  What else can you do, but snortle at the idea of the government carpet-bombing every industry on the planet with cash in order to save them?   Sadly, I think we are only at the beginning of a bailout  bombardment.   Don’t you like the way that rolls off your tongue?  I bet it rolls off Nancy Pelosi’s tongue just as sweetly, perhaps even sweeter.
• Wall Street/Main Street – this is boring  I agree.
• The suffix –monkey.  This was another word that escaped my attention, but I think it’s a hoot.  I’ve heard love-monkey, but I didn’t realize it’s myriad uses.  Page-monkey, steak-monkey, exercise-monkey, sloth-monkey, Owen Wilson-monkey….. Hmm, I think retirement is for the best.
• <3, as in the texting icon, supposed to be a heart, or love.  Now, I have seen this before, I didn’t think it was a heart.  For me, it looked more like a butt, which I think was strange to put in messages, but like those word games where you add “under the sheets” to every hymn, it kinda works
• Icon or iconic.  Eh.  This is a boring word to begin with.  Off with its iconic head.
• Game changer.  At least this is an active noun.  However, it’s still boring.
• Staycation.  This is a very unattractive word, probably created by some journalist at 2am, after too much coffee (perhaps Jack Daniels), and he liked it (at 2am) and decided it was a good idea.  Bzzzt….  Wrong answer.
• Desperate search.  I think this will have to stick around.  There are very few effective adverbs to modify search.    Slow search, Seeking search, haphazard search.  If you are J.D. Robb, there is ‘ripping search’ or ’search born of fury.’   However, If I am alone in the woods in minus seventeen degrees weather, please do not execute a haphazard search.
• Not so much.  I like this one.  I will continue to use this one.  Do I think Lake Superior State is wrong on this one?  Yes.
• Winner of Five nominations.  Okay, this one, the Susan Lucci of phrases, cracked me up.
• It’s that time of year again.   Eh.  Kathleen Brosemer call this “six useless and annoying words.”  However, there are filler words that are necessary to ease the transition from beginning to paragraph-meat, and once you find good filler, you should stick with it.  Kathleen Brosemer, call out a desperate search for new and iconic filler if you’re so unhappy.  I’m sticking with these six.

As 2009 starts, I will resolve to try and blog weekly.  I will resolve to try and write almost daily.  I will resolve to avoid the overuse of the word ‘just,’ and I will seek out truthiness and honest-esq-ness in my writing.

<3.
Kathleen