Touch and Enter

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In a comment on yesterday’s Towel Day post, Marta said:

The miracle of the towel! The man who realized this was a man to be reckoned with indeed.

That got me thinking: how cool it would be to come up with a… a something — an in-joke, an idea, a catchphrase, a little fictional detail, an entire story — which lodges in readers’ minds, gets passed around even among people who never read the original, and becomes part of the culture’s stock of unchanging raw materials.

Like towels in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, say.

Or — to broaden the focus to the almost 100% universal (First World) level: The Wizard of Oz. Not the book, either (sorry, L. Frank Baum) — the movie.

  • “I’ll get you, my pretty.”
  • “…and your little dog, too!”
  • “I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks…”
  • “Professor Marvel never guesses; he knows!”
  • “Auntie Em! Uncle Henry!”
  • “Some, where—” (You almost don’t have to finish the phrase.)
  • “If I only had a brain”
  • “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
  • “First they tore my legs off and threw them over there…”

(etc. etc. etc. — all of which I or other people have used in conversations in recent months.)

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Don’t Panic — But Happy Towel Day!

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May 25, as of course you already know, is celebrated worldwide as Towel Day*. Whatever you do, do not forget your towel today. If you cannot be properly entoweled, you might consider alternatives… carrying somewhere on your person folded-up paper towels purloined from the restroom, say.

The point is, do not go about unprepared. Because, well, you never know.

Per Wikipedia, here’s the passage in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy encouraging towelage:

A towel, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Note: The image at the top of this post is but one of thousands of Flickr images tagged “towelday.” (Edit to add: …to say nothing of YouTube videos.) The photographer, one per_p, helpfully reminds us that inanimate objects, too, deserve protection. Especially sentient inanimate objects.

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* Or, as it is known in Colombia, Dia de la Toalla.

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Be Careful What You Wish For: Signing in the Waldenbooks

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[Hat tip to Miriam over at Dancing with Dragons Is Hard On Your Shoes.]

_______________________________

P.S. And belated auto-congratulations to Running After My Hat for the missed anniversary: the most recent whiskey river Fridays post was #500 here. Is there a cake? How can there not be a cake?!?

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In the Water

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[For information about this photo, called “Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida,”
see the Note at the bottom of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Adrift

Let my dreams while I’m wide-awake
loose. Let me be drowned, bap­tized,
in the light given me. Day comes around,
night, fall, win­ter, spring,
sum­mer. Leaves over­head, under­foot.
Waves arrive, buf­fets from friends
offended, ene­mies. Let it all come:
this is my way, this is the canoe I’m in.

(William Stafford [source])

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Pushing Your Writing, Pushing Your Mind

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Remember The Querulous Squirrel’s 100-stories-in-100-days challenge? Ambitious, wot? Supremely well executed, eh?

Okay, now start with a similar premise:

  • Write a story a day for an entire month.
  • Saturdays and Sundays included. Holidays, too.
  • No limit on word count. Just write a complete story each day.

Simple to say, hard to execute, right? Just as The Squirrel’s must have been.

So then add another huge level of complication: invent your own genre, in which you will write every one of your month’s worth of stories.

I’ll pause to let that sink in: your own genre…

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Official 2010 Write Your A** Off Day (Pt 2)

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I mentioned a “contest” of sorts in my post the other day about the New York Writers Coalition’s June 12 event: write 3,000 words on that one day, they said, and you could enter a drawing. Winner of the drawing would receive a free consultation with author Jennifer Belle. But I added:

…other than this email [from a NYWC publicist], I haven’t seen any official confirmation of this 3K-word challenge — like details about how the drawing will work — particularly for out-of-town writers. I’ll see if I can learn more.

Now I’ve got some of those details (thanks, Adaeze!):

  • First, sign up for the online “write-a-thon” here. You have to register, but it’s free.

Note: New registrations do not take effect automatically, but are human-moderated. This means you should expect a time lag before being able to do much of anything at the site. Do not wait until June 12 to register!

  • On June 12th, they’ll use the honor system. (My correspondent says, “We’re relying on them to be honest with themselves” — and I’ll wag my own index finger in your direction on this point. I mean, come on: it’s not like they’re requiring 3,000 tightly written words, right?)
  • When you’ve met the basic word-count requirement, you’ll post a comment on a write-a-thon thread they’ll open at the site.
  • At the end of the day, they’ll close the comment thread and draw a winner, announcing it at the site.
  • And then, finally, they’ll provide details to the winner about the logistics of claiming his/her consultation with Jennifer Belle.

If I learn anything else about the rules, or The Day itself, or Jennifer Belle, or… oh, hell: if I learn anything else about anything vaguely relevant, I’ll post the information here at RAMH. In the meantime, if you feel ready to take the challenge, hie thee to the NYWC discussion board and sign up.

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Official 2010 Write Your A** Off Day

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You may remember from a few months ago that Moonrat, that charmingly impetuous rodent, instigated an early “Take 2” of the Write Your A** Off Day which I myself pretty much ripped off last year, from the New York Writers Coalition.

As expected, the official 2010 version of Write Your A** Off Day will occur somewhat later. I’ve recently heard from a Coalition publicity official, who tells me that this year’s date is set for June 12. As before, if you will be in the New York City area on that date, the Coalition has all sorts of activities planned for you.

But my correspondent also tells me that they’ve put an additional twist on this year’s commitment to devote a day to your writing:

We’ve created the challenge of writing 3,000 words (about 10 pages) in one day, and we know you can do it!… In addition, everyone who completes the challenge and writes 3,000 words on June 12 will have the chance to enter a drawing to win a free private phone consultation about your writing project with Jennifer Belle!

Three thousand words in one day. You can do that, right?

(True, NaNoWriMo demands only an average of one thousand words a day. But this is a Saturday! Still a month away! Plenty of time to outline what you’re going to write, stock up on food and beverages, purchase tickets to send family members out of town…!)

Now, one caveat: other than this email, I haven’t seen any official confirmation of this 3K-word challenge — like details about how the drawing will work — particularly for out-of-town writers. I’ll see if I can learn more.

Update, 2010-05-15: I’ve got more information. See this more recent post on the 3K-word challenge.

In the meantime, what say? Give it a try? Launch yourself into a summer of big writing with one big day?

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Sorting Through an Old Hive

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As some of you on Blogger-based weblogs may know, a fraction of those sites recently had to convert from a particular old technology to a newer one. The owners of affected blogs received a series of email notifications from Blogger tech support, and by now any such sites have been converted over to The New Way… or can no longer be updated.

Running After My Hat is my first non-Blogger blog. But over the years — for myself and for others, some paying and some not — I have built and otherwise had a hand in contributing to a total of twelve Blogger sites. I got notifications that four of them had to be converted to Blogger’s current service level, and somehow managed to get them all switched over about a week before the May 1 deadline.

One of the four was a real relic — one I’d almost forgotten about.

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Identity Crises

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[Image: ‘A Little Family History,’ by B. Kliban]

From whiskey river:

Moment

A person wakes from sleep
and does not know for a time
who she is, who he is.

This happens in a lifetime
once or twice.
It has happened to you, no doubt.

Some in that moment
panic,
some sigh with pleasure.

How each kind later envies the other,
who must so love their lives.

(Jane Hirshfield [source])

…and:

We don’t have to hate ourselves for our own vulnerability. We don’t have to hate ourselves for what life has done to us. We don’t have to hate ourselves because hurt or loss or longing has gotten to us. Our desires will always be with us in some form, keeping us firmly attached to a world that will hurt us. We must come to love ourselves, love our life, in its vulnerability, in its impermanence, not in spite of all its flaws, but because of them. Because the vulnerability, the changes, the flaws make us who we are.

(Barry Magid)

…and (italicized portion):

Making art and viewing art are different at their core. The sane human being is satisfied that the best he/she can do at any given moment is the best he/she can do at any given moment. […] Such sanity is, unfortunately, rare. Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did. In fact, if artmaking did not tell you (the maker) so enormously much about yourself, then making art that matters to you would be impossible. To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product; the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork. The viewers’ concerns are not your concerns (although it’s dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is whatever it is: to be moved by art, to be entertained by it, to make a killing off it, whatever. Your job is to learn to work on your work.

(David Bayles [source])

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Real-Life Dialogue (Household Hints Edition)

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The scene: a suburban home in North Florida, USA. Family gathering for Kentucky Derby viewing: gambols and gambles. Much food and beverage being prepared and consumed. He has just returned to house after walking Pooch. Everyone but She is in the living room, talking, laughing, watching TV.

He: [entering kitchen, where He knows She must be] We had a productive walk— What?

She stands before open pantry, laughing madly, pulling things from shelves and dropping them on floor.

She: I can’t find my baking soda!

He: [mentally running through menu items, not remembering any which involve baking soda] Your, uh, baking so—

She: Yes! Baking soda! I can’t find it!

She shuts pantry door, which immediately springs back open because of heap of boxes, cans, and canisters on floor.

He: What do you need baking soda f—?

She: [reaching back into pantry, emerging with familiar dull-yellow box; running around to front of stove, and still bursting sporadically into demented giggles] I need it for the fire!

He: Er, the fire—?

She: Yes! [yanks open oven door] The fire! The potholder fire!

She points, needlessly now, to a flaming mass of thick furry dark-blue fabric on bottom of oven. The oven is filled with smoke, and also with a pan of oven-broiled sandwiches for the Derby Day crowd. She dumps half the box of baking soda on the erstwhile potholder, and shuts the oven door.

She: I dropped a potholder in the oven.

He: Yes, I noticed. But the—

She: I knew baking soda would put it out safely.

He: But the, uh, the pan—

She: [leaning back against counter, sipping at mint juleps] You should never use water on an oven fire.

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