lkh_lashouts | Blogflog: Hitting two crazies with one post

URL: http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2008/01/little-bird-told-me-it-was-new-years.html

LKH in blockquote. I'm the one giving the rambling commentary with references to previous blogs. So it's kinda like a blogflog-o-rama here.

Okay, long time readers of the blog have probably seen this before. Specifically, last year (to save your eyes, it's the last paragraph). Usually my eyes glaze over when she starts babbling on about the pretty little birdies -- mostly because I just don't care, and partly because Rainbow Lorikeets tend to swarm all over our apple and fig trees and strip them bare. The bastards.

But yes, last year, both Laurell and Jon saw Cardinals so it was, like, totally fated to be. Or something. This year, it's time to recap on the whole tradition and educate the n00bz on her New Year's tradition.

Some birders travel to exotic locales so they have a good chance of seeing something, well, exotic.

This comes on the back of Laurell informing us, the great unwashed, that Pakistan has nuclear capabilities for reals. So I'm going to choose to believe her on this one. Exotic places have exotic birds? WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT?

Confusion comes when she states that some birdwatchers do this just to cross off things from their personal checklist, however it can also be a spiritual experience. I can understand going through the avian family like it's a restaurant menu, trying to find the things you haven't seen yet (and possibly eating them?) but to do this and have a spiritual experience? I'm trying to imagine the conversation here.

"Last year, I went to Australia and was a Red Crested Black Cockatoo. This year, I'm going to try and be a Dodo."
". . . you do know they're extinct, right?"
"I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN!"
"Wow, that bird theme really does kick in fast."

In any case, we're not actually filled in on What Laurell Saw -- instead we get an explanation as to just how spiritual a Woodpecker can be (insert your own ~~buttsex~~ ~~subtext~~ double entendre here), which segues into this amusing anecdote:

One year, I got up to silence and no birds. Nothing fluttered, anywhere. It was downright weird, since we have a lot of bird life in our yard normally. But there were squirrels in the back yard, and squirrels in the front yard. I finally realized my animal for the year was squirrel.

Squirrels are birds now. Laurell says so. Seriously, what? If I'm understanding this whole bird theme thing right, you're supposed to go out and find a bird. Not just stand around in the backyard and hope one flies by. I know it's cold in the US this time of year, so the birds might be at home wearing their thermal feathers, but that's no excuse for not donning your hiking boots and going out to bond with NAYCHUR. We're only talking about the theme for your life here. What's wrong with embracing your subzero temperatures with the same vim and verve as you do Mother Earth? After last year's, "But we're Celtic Wiccans here, this thing is important to us," having this little anecdote just reaffirms why I don't like "Wiccans".

But it appears I spoke too soon, as we're now told the valuable life lessons that squirrels can teach us:

Well, it could mean a lot of things. Am I saving up for the future? Am I so worried about the future and what might go wrong that I can't enjoy the present? Squirrels also soclize and play a lot. Was I not doing enough of that? They are also one of the sentinels of the forest, so was I not heeding a warning. It actually turned out to be about anxiety about the future, and that sense of never having enough, never being safe. (A lot of us that were raised below the poverty line have that vauge sense of anxiety.) So, I worked on my issues, and tried to trust the universe more. I also tried to play and socilize more. By the end of the year I was a happier, mentally and emotionally healthlier, more well socilized person.

First off, LKH, you're just so ghetto!

Second, I can forgive the first SOCLIZE as a typo, but when it reappears those other two times, it makes me think I'm spelling it wrong. And not just with a crazy S because I'm Australian. Other than that, there's the urge to macro, "I R A SOCIL BOTRFLI!" on something.

Third, sentinels of the forest? WHERE WERE THE SQUIRRELS WHEN BAMBI'S MOTHER WAS SHOT?!

Back to the blog -- there's some babble about what books are handy for figuring out your animalbird theme, and then Laurell teaches us the valuable lesson of research:

Also, once you have your bird or critter, read up on it, the real animal. Find out it's habits, what time of year it's most active, what it eats, how it sleeps. The real animal can give you a lot of insight into what exactly the lesson might be. It's all very subjective, but I've found it useful, so I pass it on.

Just re-read those last two sentences, and then join me with a group headdesk. This comes after the blog where LKH says that she can't be objective in reporting because she, "tended to have trouble staying emotionally detached from the bad stuff," and "elaborate." In the same blog, she went on to say:

I can take what is true and build on it, until it's my world, my characters. Built on a foundation of truth, but the tower above it can be as fantastical as I want, as long as the foundation is solid. Solid first; airy-fairy second.

So, to bring it back to what I was trying to say in the first place, basically all she's saying is do a quick Google, find out the cool stuff about your animalbird, and then totally ignore the bad stuff. Because I'm sure squirrels are just that awesome.

The blog finishes with a recap of her NYE, where she "marthaoned" s4 of House and then:

We had our own private version of ringing in midnight, just the two of us. No one to complain that the kiss was too much for public consumption, because we weren't in public. I'm finding that the more public a personea I'm getting, the less public I want to be on my off time.

Suddenly this explains the crazy in the blog -- she's gaining "personea" all the time. She's got multiple personea! *flail*

And Laurell, you've blogged so much about your sex life...why stop now?

There's also a mention of the, "Oh, God, of Hangovers" from the Discworld novels, and while I'm snidely sneering, "Yeah, Laurell. I watched Hogfather too." I'm also bemoaning the fact that she has a steady diet of Pratchett and House, and apparently all the wit, plot, and inventiveness just whooshes straight in one ear and out the other. HOW? Oh well, at least she remains a role model for aspiring authors everywhere. Though, she's going to have to work hard if she still wants to out-crazy Anne Rice. Maybe they can review movies together! It would be gloriously incomprehensible and would make the English language curl up and cry while punctuation beats it up for its lunch money.

Part the two of all this is actually Darla's return to the blog! Yay, Darla! I missed her. No, really.

URL: http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2008/01/jason-name-contest.html

Yeah, you're reading the URL right. JASON. NAME. CONTEST.

Laurell hasn’t been able to settle on a stage name for Jason. One he uses as his stripper name. So we are opening it to a contest!

OW MY HEAD. I think something just exploded in my brain. Laurell? The Wizzard of Wurdz? Laurell K. "the characters are real to me!" Hamilton -- the woman who gave us Wicked, Truth, Requiem, and Marmee Noir -- is having a mental blank on Jason's stripper name? DOES. NOT. COMPUTE.

Clearly, LKH's technophobia and rigorous work ethic prevents her from ~~research~~ ~~procrastinating~~ wasting time on the internerd, and doing pointless memes, up to and including finding out your stripper name. Because I am such a person, I have it on hand. It's easy: STRIPPER NAME = favorite candy, the name of your favorite perfume/cologne.

BUT! if you enter this competition, you have a chance to WINZ A PRIZE!

The winner will be chosen by Laurell. The winner will also appear in the acknowledgements of Blood Noir and receive a signed hard copy of the book.

This is, like, the best incentive ever to write into LKH! EVER! Never mind that she held that auction for charity where a person could get their name in the next AB:VH novel, only it turned out that the winner was going to be a name on a headstone instead of the previously promised character, and the scene was completely cut from the novel, so it's not like Team LKH have an entirely reliable track record to go by. Whatever! SUBMIT NAMES!

What's worse, Darla's encouraging spam.

Please do not send more than one name per email. So if you have two suggestions, they need to be in separate emails.

The office worker in me is just spitting blood and gurgling incoherently. There's nothing worse than getting a gajillion emails with one line of pointlessness, but whatever. It's not my time being wasted.

I'm amused by the disclaimer:

Should Laurell not like any of the submissions, one winner will be chosen to receive a hardback signed copy of Blood Noir from all the submissions.

I'm laughing because BLOOD NOIR: FROM ALL THE SUBMISSIONS is either a wanktastic vampire porno, goth band tribute album to showcase "up and coming talent", or horror bdsm anthology. Or all of the above.

But really, Darla? All your problems could be solved if you just read your spam email folder (which would be inherently eloquent than any LKH sex scene, IMO). However, she wants to open herself up to THE INTERNETS and getting people to submit porno/stripper names. I'll just kick back and see if there'll be a blog saying, "Guys, you sent us TOO MUCH! The email crashed and we lost everything!" because really...you're asking the internets. If there's one thing the internets knows, it's porn.

PS,