What about mortals?

"What more noble pursuit for immortal souls? Riches? War and Butchery? Political chicanery? Superstition? Pleasure? What we seek is the TRUTH!"

Answers in a form of a top five "Shirts of the 70s" list, please.

Y'see, you have to squint at the french fries...

...to see face of the Virgin. (Possibly Madonna, circa 1984.)

This guy has his own plastic cowboy e-bay. It's phenomenal.

And it's called Cowboy Parts! (Completely G-rated, at least, I hope it is.)

No outlaws or mass murderers in my family, though perhaps a few scumbags. There is a rumored crazy great great aunt sitting somewhere in the family tree, scribbling poetry that is unfailingly described as "weird" and so might have actually been good. None survives -- that we know of.

Hey man, I don't throw the fries around here

But someone else did when we went to Springfield to see Holes at the $2 theater. Wooeee, $2 theater with free French fries scattered around the parking lot -- now that's a night out.

We have been and cycled to the farmer's market and bought, um, 3lbs of tomatoes. ("tom-ah-toes") Tomorrow we're going to Red Fire Farms to get more. Gazpacho, anyone?

One of her brothers was a bad outlaw...

...or one of her great-grandfathers was, rather, the "her" being my Grandmother Rowe. Exciting new information (or rather, old information newly revealed) in the wake of a family funeral in Harlan County this past weekend. My Granny Rowe is the daughter of a man named Sign Kassam (a Syrian immigrant to Appalachia, whole 'nother story altogether) and of my Granny Kassam, who was originally Sally Turner. Granny Kassam's father was John Turner, who brought a lot of his family with him when he moved down from the mountains to Adair County. Turns out my great-grandfather John may have left Harlan to escape the reputation of his father, Devil Jim Turner.

maybe fixed?

So, the withboots template pulled a vanishing stunt earlier and this is my attempt to make things right with the universe.

test post

Mostly just a test to see if Blogger is working.

I like Karen's idea of summarizing novels as a game like Charades and Name That Tune. I think you'd need one person to act as host, and two teams would play. The same title is given to one member of each team, who then bid on how many words they'll need to identify the book to their team members. Whoever thinks they can do it in fewer words gets to try first. No title words or character names allowed.

But do you require the words to be in the form of a "What if" sentence? Do articles and prepositions count, and if so, is it legal to omit them? "Murdered girl narrates"? "Magician vanishes Harding"?

Best Synopsis Ever (only not)

This is probably mean to post here, so I won't say too much only -- French Poodles and pedophilia. Why didn't I think of that?

the day I shot with boots...

...and killed it dead. Someone post something witty or fun or with pictures of willful sea monsters to revive the boots, please.

I hope it's not as hot where you guys are as it is here. Yucks and yeeps hot.

harder than it sounds

In screenwriting there's something very similar called a "logline" which is actually a mini-synopsis of the story that you ideally want to be one sentence and maximum two. And that's supposed to make people want to read/buy/make your movie. It's kind of like TV guide description-ing but slightly more. It is SO hard. It is the hardest thing ever. It stinks.

On the up side, it can also really make you focus in on your story and find the spine. It has helped me immensely with overall structure the few times I've tried doing it BEFORE I started working. And sometimes, you (you here being me) find it in your notes when you are in utter despair and go, "Bottles!" Well, no, but you hit your head and think, so that's the story I meant to tell when I started. Sheez. No wonder this crap I've written stinks. Or, alternatively, this is much better than that -- I need a new 25 word description.

I like the idea of making it into a game. What about...

"Stranded on a desert island..."

Oh wait, that's Survivor and they aren't really stranded.

More underground hijinx

Story fwd'd by my brother about a town, Centralia, PA, that's been abandoned due to underground fires.

"What would our brilliant-but-under-a-cloud young firechief do if the fire reaches the humungous fungus?"

25 words or less

"Dale Evans meets a spaceman drawn by Lynda Barry. They fight a lot, save the world, then live happily ever after."*

But I guess saving the world is passe now that Buffy's defunct.

*great for reading in coffeehouses

No safe spaces online

Shh. Don't look up. Told you Not to! That's a Google ad up there (because they need to advertise??). Anyway, Google will search and archive all posts, so no Maui revelations this way.

"What if a novel conceived and written in a cafe could be interesting to anyone not reading it in a cafe?"

"What if the color yellow changed its spelling and no one noticed but one girl in Idaho?"

"What if I got kicked off a group blog for wasting time?"

Fingerpointing

hey ChristopherBootsman you could always email me about any typos. I pretty much published it as is -- which made me laugh. And I always said I was going to do so near the publication date (Aug. 15th).

This is the contentious page. Well, maybe the page under contention.

Ah, the air-conned cafe.

little notes of random

Does anyone know how I make the post headings and text a teeny bit smaller? They seem kinda big. I will gladly send you the secret information to change this for me if you know how. Well, only if I know you, which is a good bet since only the people who are members of this thing know about it.

I wish we lived in New York so we could go see these girls goof on Matt and Ben Haircut Boys.

And, does anyone know anything about "Well" by Matthew McIntosh? It sounds interesting, but I'm waffling on whether to read it or not.

Good days one and all.

Self Referential

Over yonder on the left (see? over yonder?) there's a link labelled "LCRW." Now, take some notes here, because I'm about to walk you through some surfing because I haven't figured out how to do that high tech Bond/Butner style hot linkage yet. Anyway, click on that, then kind of piddle around on the page it leads you to (oohing and ahing over way swank TRAMPOLINE and KALPA IMPERIAL cover art would be appropriate at this point) and find the words that are saying "Not a Journal."

"Not a Journal" is this lie Gavin Grant tells.

So click on that, and a newish entry (at the very top as I type this) is all about the Kelvin Grink Collective's recent foray Southward, to North Carolina then Kentucky. Gavin has put up those interviews he's been saying forever he's going to put up. I haven't read any of them yet, except to look for the typos in mine. There are typos in mine.

Good morning, little Susie

Are boots strange?

This article suggests that they are, and possibly mean as well.

Do they have racing stripes? Possibly. But they never, ever race.

ahem

Um, something's wrong with the archive and if you post then there'll be an error message. I'll have to to try and fix that later.

But the post should show up on the main page anyway.

Mr Rowe won't wake up and invisibility

I think I remembered my own passcode. Things should be working now. Anyone who wants to make a new post should be able to log-in under their username and password, select this blog from the list over at the right-hand side of the page and then do "Create New Post." Then just follow the instructions for publishing (preview post, then either re-edit and publish or publish).

Of course, things never work like they're supposed to.

Now I have to go wake up Mr. Rowe before he goes invisible.

"Broken Citadel" is a really, really good book.

Test from Christopher

Another test.

Test post.

Test post. Test post. Test post.