So I spent many wee hours of this week’s nights redesigning it - and here’s what I came up with.  This iceberg image, which I purchased from iStockPhoto.com, seemed perfect for the feel of the site so I ended up designing the entire site around it, and really liked the blue tones I ended up with.  I also aimed at making it much more visual than before, both theme-wise and post-wise.

I know very little about jj but I’m really liking the song “New Work” from their new mixtape album, Kills, which was released as a free gift from Sincerely Yours on Christmas Eve.

In Pitchfork’s new review, they comment that on “New Work,” “the duo takes the piano melody from Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and makes it the chassis for a song about being young and starry-eyed elsewhere.”  And admittedly, this dreamy, escapist feel riding on a relaxed, pedestrian beat is exactly what draws me in. I’m also a sucker for lines like “When we were seventeen / The sky was always tangerine / We ran through streets at night under the starlight / We ran through streets at night / When we were winning.”

You can check out the “New Work” MP3 and a review of the album at Pitchfork.

Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt fascinates me for many reasons: her admission to having to be ridiculous at times, her seriousness about her creative endeavors, her ability to ‘take’ great photos, her love of story-telling, her intrigue with death, and the fact that her son was the great love of her life. 

Today Diane Rehm had a rebroadcast of a great show on Robert Gottlieb’s biography of this woman who is said to be the greatest actress of all time.

Now, a part of me wants to play (I haven’t even tried the Kinect out yet) to see if I can get a picture of this, but… another part of me is really creeped out and just wants to get the hell outta and move now!

I did a search for this and found that other people have been seeing strange things in their Kinects as well.  In one forum someone posted:

EUREKA!!!! I found out why it does this. The Kinect can detect Thermal images, and as I was searching around, I realized that Paranormal investigators use Thermal imaging infrared devices to detect Ghost/Poltergeist activity in paranormal environments i.e. haunted houses, graveyards. Yep, you heard that right, the kinect is picking up passing semi physical disembodied energy forms. Your own personal Ghost detecting device, at home. Do some research with infrared and thermal imaging for paranormal research and ghost hunting, then look into the details of the Kinects camera technology, thermal, infrared capabilities.

That’s just… great.

So, anyone else out there experience something similar with the Kinect??

Now that I’ve been stuck in my novel for several months, I thought I’d better take advantage of this time to get rolling on it, before I forget what it’s supposed to be all about!

So this morning I thought about it, then I wrote a small Facebook post about it, then I thought about it some more, and then I thought I’d announce that I’m starting it here. 

Diversions… *sigh* … time to just tackle the thing.

A couple of weeks ago, I did get something that both my daughter and I found to be very cool!  I new Halloween craft book full of a variety of projects – Witch Craft: Wicked Accessories, Creepy-Cute Toys, Magical Treats, and More!

Witch Craft: Wicked Accessories, Creepy-Cute Toys, Magical Treats, and More!

This book comes complete with craft projects that younger and older kids can do, treats that the family can make together, as well as some great crochet and knitting projects (yippee for me)!

Upon first browsing, I immediately fell in love with these really cute crochet bones featured in the book and got started on those first.  Then my daughter and I made a night of fashioning the felt poison apples together (we’ve always liked making felt crafts anyway).  For our apple pictures, we each posed with our plushie apples, and she directed: “Hold it like the twilight.”

As Halloween approaches, we’ll definitely be trying out the treats and other adorable projects, and I’d say that with the vast variety of unique crafts this book has to offer, it’s definitely worth Amazon’s current $10.17 sticker price!

The best thing is knowing that Natasha treasures the things I make for her and the things we make together.  I went into her bedroom, where she has a special display shelf, and found that our new creations were on display.  Sweet!

I’m not active on it anymore, but it was still my baby (and had a shitload of inbound links that I’ve now lost)!

So I bought onetimesone.org and will start working on transferring the files and data ASAP… .org sounds better anyway, right, RIGHT?!?

NOTE: The Google keyword tool states that it will “approximate 12-month average of user queries for the keyword on Google.com. This data is specific to your Keyword Match Type selection.”

NOTE: There are certain issues with the data, including terms that do not seem realistic, for instance where the top Taurus search is “horoscope taurus taurus,” and where certain phrases have the exact same amount of searches as similar phrases, which would leave one to believe that the search number for one could include the similar phrases as well, however this is not the case in all situations. See below where “horoscope cancer” is higher than “cancer horoscope,” whereas for other signs, the numbers for similar phrases like this are matches. Since this redundancy appears more often than not, I threw out the numbers that appeared to apply to more than one search phrase when the search phrases were extremely close in meaning. In these cases, I listed the different phrases with “+”‘s between them.

NOTE: I only used search terms containing a certain sign, and either the word “horoscope” or “astrology” and left out searches with the term “compatibility” or “zodiac” because the numbers were not as significant.

Cancer
201,000 – horoscope cancer
165,000 – cancer horoscope + horoscope for cancer
18,100 – daily horoscope cancer + cancer daily horoscope
27,100 – cancer astrology
411,200 – total cancer horoscope searches

Libra
135,000 – libra horoscope + horoscope libra + horoscope for libra
27,100 – libra horoscope 2010
22,200 – libra daily horoscopes
18,100 – daily horoscope libra + libra horoscope daily
12,100 – libra horoscopes
12,100 – libra astrology
9,900 – libra horoscope for today + libra horoscope today
8,100 – love horoscope libra + libra horoscope love
4,400 – libra astrology sign
2,400 – free horoscopes libra
251,400 – total libra horoscope searches

Leo
135,000 – leo horoscope + horoscope leo + horoscope for leo
27,100 – leo horoscopes 2010 + leo horoscope 2010
18,100 – leo astrology
14,800 – leo daily horoscope + daily horoscope leo + leo horoscope daily
12,100 – horoscopes today leo
9,900 – leo horoscope today + leo horoscope for today
8,100 – leo horoscope love
4,400 – leo horoscope 2009
1,300 – leo daily horoscopes + daily horoscopes leo
230,800 – total leo horoscope searches

Gemini
135,000 – gemini horoscope + horoscope gemini + horoscope for gemini
27,100 – gemini horoscope 2010
18,100 – gemini daily horoscope + daily horoscope gemini
12,100 – gemini horoscopes
12,100 – gemini astrology
6,600 – gemini horoscope for today
4,400 – gemini astrology sign
215,400 – total gemini horoscope searches

Virgo
135,000 – virgo horoscope + horoscope virgo + horoscope for virgo
27,100 – virgo horoscope 2010
18,100 – daily horoscope virgo + virgo daily horoscope
12,100 – virgo astrology
9,900 – virgo horoscope for today
4,400 – virgo astrology sign
206,600 – total virgo horoscope searches

Scorpio
135,000 – scorpio horoscope + horoscope scorpio + horoscope for scorpio
22,200 – scorpio horoscope 2010
14,800 – scorpio daily horoscope + daily horoscope scorpio
12,100 – scorpio astrology
8,100 – scorpio horoscope for today + scorpio horoscopes
1,600 – scorpio daily love horoscopes
193,800 – total scorpio horoscope searches

Aries
110,000 – aries horoscope + horoscope aries + horoscope for aries
27,100 – aries horoscope 2010 + 2010 horoscope aries
14,800 – aries daily horoscope + daily horoscope aries
12,100 – aries astrology
8,100 – love horoscope aries + aries horoscopes
2,400 – monthly horoscope aries
1,900 – aries astrology 2010
176,400 – total aries horoscope searches

Pisces
110,000 – pisces horoscope + horoscope pisces
22,200 – pisces horoscope 2010
18,100 – pisces daily horoscope + daily horoscope pisces
9,900 – pisces astrology
2,900 – pisces astrology sign
163,100 – total pisces horoscope searches

Taurus
110,000 – horoscope taurus taurus + taurus horoscope + horoscope for taurus + horoscope of taurus
22,200 – taurus horoscope for 2010
12,100 – taurus astrology + astrology taurus
5,400 – taurus astrology sign
149,700 – total sagittarius horoscope searches

Capricorn
90,500 – capricorn horoscope + horoscope capricorn + horoscope for capricorn
22,200 – capricorn horoscope 2010
12,100 – daily horoscope capricorn + capricorn daily horoscope
8,100 – capricorn horoscopes
8,100 – capricorn astrology
2,900 – capricorn astrology sign
1,300 – daily horoscopes capricorn
145,200 – total capricorn horoscope searches

Aquarius
90,500 – aquarius horoscope + horoscope aquarius + horoscope for aquarius
18,100 – aquarius horoscope 2010
12,100 – aquarius daily horoscope + daily horoscope aquarius
8,100 – aquarius astrology
128,800 – total aquarius horoscope searches

Sagittarius
74,000 – sagittarius horoscope
12,100 – sagittarius horoscope daily
6,600 – sagittarius astrology
1,900 – sagittarius astrology sign
94,600 – total sagittarius horoscope searches

What does this mean? I’m not sure, but I’ve made a color coded chart, going from white to dark grey, white being the highest and dark grey being the lowest, to get a visual!

I do find it interesting that the highest, Cancer, is directly across from the three lowest, and that the six lightest are in a row and directly opposite of the six darkest.

Since the data was a little bit questionable, I may have to check out the numbers in WordTracker, if I get bored enough someday.

The main problem is that I am not interested in simply making up a bunch of whimsical creatures and tossing them into the story, no matter how badass they are.  I feel that most of my fantasy characters need to be rooted in some kind of mythology or other idealogy resting in our collective unconsciousness, or represent something; not just some willy nilly meaningless blather.  Or, at the least, they need to be so very monumental that they are totally original (and would definitely have to be badass in this case) while still tapping into some deep rooted Jungian thingy.

And this is why I don’t read fantasy.

(Because I’m afraid most fantasy authors do this?  Because I believed my snobbish Literature professors who shunned genre fiction?)

I should say, I’ve never read any fantasy or science fiction (and I know there’s some good stuff out there, I just haven’t taken the time to find it), but it’s really probably time I gave some of it a chance.  I mean, especially if I’m going to try to write some.

I’m such an escapist and dreamer though, that I’d probably love it.

(On the other hand, writing some without ever reading any would ensure originality…)

The good news is that (I think) I’m better at fiction writing than I am at other types of writing.  At least I enjoy it more.

I had the great pleasure of seeing a Pixies reunion tour, and was disarmed of any preconceived notions that the show might be a little less than exciting by virtue of being a reunion show with the first song.  They rocked like it was 1989!

First they did a B-sides set, followed by the entire Doolittle album.  As fantastic as these were, the encore, with “Caribou,” “Gigantic,” “Vamos,” and “Where is My Mind,” is what really rocked my socks off!

Here are some shots I got, and considering that I was really far back, I was quite happy with them!

Pixies @ Tulsa's Brady Theater 9-18-10

Pixies @ Tulsa's Brady Theater 9-18-10

Black Francis, David Lovering, Kim Deal

Pixies @ Tulsa's Brady Theater 9-18-10

I Bleed

Pixies @ Tulsa's Brady Theater 9-18-10

Pixies @ Tulsa's Brady Theater 9-18-10

David Lovering

must be a devil between us

Black Francis

Pixies @ Tulsa's Brady Theater 9-18-10

Pixies @ Tulsa's Brady Theater 9-18-10

Black Francis

Joey Santiago

Kim Deal

Encore!!!