my god, what have i done?

I've signed on for National Novel Writing Month, coming in November: 50,000 words in 30 days. That's 1,667 words per day = one 50,000 word novel.
The basic theme is easy enough - it's the theme I've been mulling for years now, about the Whiskey Revolution and how far we've come, or how near we remain. Savages - keepers of the western door - fighting over the right to play the good guy while the seaboard cities smolder in the reflected fire of the moneyed class's counterrevolution, then in full swing, and the excesses of the French revolution. "There's one thing we ought to remember," one graffitist in the University of Buffalo's catacombs wrote: "Those are students holding those hostages in Teheran." All solidarity to the students of the world - starving, delusional ideologues drunk on possibility.
My question, in this moment when the American economy is poised on the tipping point of debacle: What is the value of 50,000 words in 30 days? If the tree pulp's worth of a novel falls in the forest and no one is there to read it, does it make a difference?

A day after Iowa, I made my first move beyond idle tongue-wagging (bite-my-tongue-wagging, I should say, since I am so reluctant to express my true, frank thoughts).

I posted to Hillary's blog:
Offer the nation real change for a change, not chump change. Offer America a tax on carbon emissions. Build your platform around that, from national security to economics to public health to the environment--to the future. Be the future.

Remember the fundamental change you sought when you first became active politically; don’t settle for the impressive yet limited legacy you’ve earned so far. Thanks for all that, but we’re looking more more in our leader. We need more in the 21st century.

Do you think they'll offer me a job speech-writing ?

With grateful apoligies to The Sheila Variations*

Turn this story upside-down. Imagine typing in the word, a Chinaman reading the computer translation over your shoulder. Imagine having to correct that translation.

What’s the use? Isn’t the concept better left to the Chinese character for “unknown”? Unconceived? Inconceivable? (And don’t get me started about the Chinese and the Tibetans.)

If an n word falls off the tongue and there’s nobody there to understand it, does it make any noise? or sense?


Offensive couch label traced to China
Racial slur blamed on Chinese company’s faulty translation program
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:08 a.m. PT April 20, 2007
TORONTO - Doris Moore was shocked when her new couch was delivered to her home with a label that used a racial slur to describe the dark brown shade of the upholstery.
The situation was even more alarming for Moore because it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out “n----- brown” on the tag.
“My daughter saw the label and she knew the color brown, but didn’t know what the other word meant. She asked, ’Mommy, what color is that?’ I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I never thought that’s how she’d learn of that word,” Moore said.
The mother complained to the furniture store, which blamed the supplier, who pointed to a computer problem as the source of the derogatory label
Translation program at faultKingsoft Corp., a Chinese software company, acknowledged its translation program was at fault and said it was a regrettable error.
“I know this is a very bad word,” Huang Luoyi, a product manager for the Beijing-based company’s translation software, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
He explained that when the Chinese characters for “dark brown” are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive N-word description comes up.
“We got the definition from a Chinese-English dictionary. We’ve been using the dictionary for 10 years. Maybe the dictionary was updated, but we probably didn’t follow suit,” he said.
Moore, who is black, said Kingsoft’s acknowledgment of a mistake doesn’t make her feel better.
“They should know what they are typing, even if it is a software error,” she said. “In order for something to come into the country, don’t they read it first? Doesn’t the manufacturer? The supplier?”Store owner didn't know the wordRomesh Vanaik, owner of Vanaik Furniture where Moore bought the sofa, said it has been a best seller. He said he checked his stock but found no other couch with the offensive label.
He added that he had not known the meaning of the N-word.
“It’s amazing. I’ve been here since 1972 and I never knew the meaning of this word,” said Vanaik, a native of India.
His supplier, Paul Kumar of Cosmos Furniture in Toronto, denied responsibility and refused to give the name of the couch’s Chinese manufacturer.
“It’s not my fault. It’s not the manufacturers’ fault,” he said, adding that Kingsoft was to blame.
Huang said Kingsoft has worked to correct the translation error. In the 2007 version, typing “dark brown” in Chinese does not produce the racial slur in English. But if the offensive term is typed in English, the Chinese translation is “dark brown,” he said.
Moore wants compensationMoore is consulting with a lawyer and wants compensation. Last week, she filed a report with the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
Commission spokeswoman Afroze Edwards said the case is in the initial stages and could take six months to two years to resolve.
Moore, 30, has three young children, and said the issue has taken a toll on her family.
“Something more has to be done. We don’t just need a personal apology, but someone needs to own up to where these labels were made, and someone needs to apologize to all people of color,” Moore said. “I had friends over from St. Lucia yesterday and they wouldn’t sit on the couch.”
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

* The Sheila Variations

. . .

OK, if you're still reading, that was just a warm-up. I'm acutally feeling more ambitious--I'd like to write a story about a man who's become so utterly bored by his horoscope. He's so bored he hasn't bothered to keep up his journal for a month, the journal that's been reduced to horoscope entries that he no longer believes have any relation to his life. Which is more insignificant, the fake fortunes or the life? he wonders. One impostor after another illusory life:

VIRGO (August 23-September 22)
Thanks to Rob Breszny’s Free Will Astrology

March 15-21
High-level financial officials from the U.S. government recently visited their Chinese counterparts, scolding them for having a booming economy and strong currency that's threatening the American economy. Here's what Alan Abelson wrote about the meeting in Barron's. "There's something hilarious about the world's biggest debtor, whose currency is sagging, lecturing a country that runs a humongous trade surplus and boasts a cool trillion in foreign reserves." You may soon get metaphorically similar pressure, Virgo. People with a fraction of your savvy and resources may try to manipulate you into serving their aims. Politely ignore their pressure. This is a time when you should be enjoying your hard-earned goodies with pure relish, not worrying about them or defending them or trying to adjust them to fit anyone else's specifications.

March 22-28
It's the perfect time to kill off old habits that drag you down and to sever bad connections that bring out the worst in you. Therefore, I suggest you make an undercover search-and-destroy visit to the murkiest parts of the underworld. When you get back, invite skeletons to come out of the closet and monsters to crawl out from beneath the bed for a nice long heart-to-heart talk full of tough love. And in general, don't you dare avert your gaze from any song and dance that might half-scare you and half-inspire you into triumphing over evil. P.S. In every decay there'll be beauty; in every loss there'll be a glimmer of future joy.

March 29-April 4
One out of every 20 people claims to have talked to the devil personally. That statistic could change in the coming week, however, because I'm predicting that many of you Virgos will sit down for a heart-to-heart with the horned one. For most of you, furthermore, the conversation will go surprisingly well. You'll out-argue the devil, impressing him with your logic and winning him over with your charm, leading him to promise to dramatically reduce the number of insidious temptations he'll send your way in the future. APRIL FOOL! There is no such thing as the devil. But it is true that you're likely to triumph over evil in the coming week.

April 5-11
The Dalai Lama, one of the planet's superheroes, was born during a rare grand trine of Jupiter, Saturn, and sun in the water signs. This week those same planets will conduct an equally extraordinary grand trine in the fire signs. At the very least, I expect the birth of a sublime being whose benevolence will one day match the Dalai Lama's. I also suspect that millions of other wonders will hatch, a disproportionate amount of which will be engendered by you Virgos. Your fertility is at a peak, as is your knack for creating interesting goodness and cathartic beauty.

April 12=18
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was an intellectual theologian whose doctrines became part of the canon of the Catholic Church, second in importance only to the Bible. But the Church has ignored and disavowed Aurora Consurgens, the work Aquinas reputedly wrote near the end of his life after having mystical visions of the Goddess. "All that I have written seems to me like so much straw," he reported, "compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me." Your assignment, Virgo, is to carry out your personal equivalent of what the Catholic Church hasn't been able to do. In other words, integrate the raw wisdom from your past that you've been unable or hesitant to acknowledge.

Then there’s this one:
April 19-25
"The important thing," said French naturalist Charles DuBois, "is to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." Did he really mean at any moment? Like while we're in a convenience store buying beer? While we're lying in bed ready for sleep and reviewing the events of the day? While we're adrift in apathetic melancholy, watching too much TV and neglecting our friends? At ANY moment?! I say yes. At all times and in all places, Virgo--especially this week--be ready to sacrifice what you are for what you could become.

Shades of Carlos Casteneda!

As I mentioned below, Norma and I got the keys to our new house back around Feb. 22. Since then it's been a hectic, wearisome slog moving from across the street to here. The shortest moves are the hardest we were warned; the warnings were right. I have neither the time nor energy to chronicle all that here, and I'm leaving for New Mexico next week, so for now I'll just recap what the stars have predicted about my past three weeks:

Free will Horoscopes courtesy Rob Breszny
VIRGO Week of March 15-21
High-level financial officials from the U.S. government recently visited their Chinese counterparts, scolding them for having a booming economy and strong currency that's threatening the American economy. Here's what Alan Abelson wrote about the meeting in Barron's. "There's something hilarious about the world's biggest debtor, whose currency is sagging, lecturing a country that runs a humongous trade surplus and boasts a cool trillion in foreign reserves." You may soon get metaphorically similar pressure, Virgo. People with a fraction of your savvy and resources may try to manipulate you into serving their aims. Politely ignore their pressure. This is a time when you should be enjoying your hard-earned goodies with pure relish, not worrying about them or defending them or trying to adjust them to fit anyone else's specifications.

March 8-14
While riding my bike along a route I've often traveled, I spied an unexpected sight: Standing amidst a twist of vines was a red signpost that said "Cherry Blossom Lane." How could I not have seen that before? I pedaled over and found the beginning of a narrow road that had previously escaped me as well. I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you discover a hidden magic room in the attic of a familiar house. My heart filled with an irrational, child-like anticipation of imminent delight. I pedaled up a steep incline, disappointed to see there were no cherry trees in bloom. But as I reached the end of a cul-de-sac, I spotted a glint of gold in the mud. It was a statue of Jesus and Buddha holding hands, and there was a $20 bill taped to the bottom. Everything I just described is a metaphor for what I predict you'll soon experience.

March 1-7
In May 2005, while floating in a heated, heart-shaped swimming pool in Milan, Italy, Andrea Pedrani and Federica Di Venosa kissed underwater for 87 seconds. That's got to be a world record, right? If their mark is ever broken, I bet it will involve at least one Virgo and will happen in the next few weeks. By my reckoning, your tribe is in a phase when you're capable of peak performances in both the erotic arts and oceanic emotions; you're primed for transcendent acts of sensual pleasure and rich amusements in warm, watery depths.

VIRGO Week of Feb. 22-28
Here are tips on how to get the most out of your time with the other signs of the zodiac during the next three weeks. With Sagittarius: Think bigger and go further than you normally do. With Libra: Enjoy beautiful things together. With Cancer: Make yourself easy to give to. With Taurus: Let him or her help you get less theoretical, more practical. With Aquarius: Collaborate in making the flow of ideas crackle and splash. With Capricorn: To deepen your bond, laugh at hypocrisy together. With Pisces: Join together in feeling rich emotions about a person or situation you both care about.* With Gemini: Dare to express three of your different sub-personalities. With Aries: Remember that spontaneity leads to truth. With Leo: Playfully brag to each other. With Scorpio: Dive down together, going deeper than you could have by yourself.

* We received the key to our new house Feb. 22.

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY / Courtesy Rob Brezsny
Virgo Feb. 15-21
It's time to take down the "Under Construction" signs and clean up the messes from your works in progress. At least for now, your heart has lost its drive for further renovation and rehabilitation. Whether you think you're ready or not, then, it's time for a grand re-opening. I suggest you offer free toasters or other incentives to pull in new clients, as well as to coax disaffected old ones into returning. It may also help to put up an "Under New Management" sign.

YES, I'M A WITCH
Until I have time to evaluate Yoko's new album myself, here are excerpts from a post by Thom Jurek courtesy of allmusic.com (http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:4tfqoara5ijx~T1)

Yoko Ono inspires either reverence or indignation whenever her name is mentioned. Being the surviving widow of John Lennon is no easy task, either. But for the last six decades, Ono has been an artist first and foremost. Lennon helped to make her a recording artist. Her own records have been both celebrated and reviled, but her catalog stands on its own and it holds up as a reflection of the artist in her time (italic emphases mine—bst). "Yes, I'm a Witch" is a collaborative album with a twist: each of the 16 artists involved with this project was given Ono's entire catalog to listen to and pick a track. They were given the vocal tracks to each song they chose and were also able to pick any instrumental tracks they wanted to use. Most decided to keep just the vocal. ...
That said, this is no ordinary collaboration. There isn't anything lazy or lackluster about the way these artists use Ono's vocals and her phrasing—and in some cases the accompanying music. The sum total is not only that Ono is relevant in the 21st century, but more than that, it's—perhaps — that the 21st century is ready for Ono. ...
Ono's ... voice and words are woven into, juxtaposed against, folded on top of, and haunted like a ghost through the middle of each of these songs. ...

• [T]here's Shitake Monkey's "O'Oh," where he sets Ono's killer singsong verses against a wall of samples and breaks. The track includes a killer sample of the opening riff of Grover Washington, Jr.'s classic "Mister Magic" as the base groove.
• The Blow Up use "Everyman Everywoman" as a full-on psychedelic rave-up worthy of the Kinks circa 1965.
• Le Tigre drop the bass-throbbing bomb electronic funk with horn loops and backing choruses on "Sisters O Sisters."
• The Apples in Stereo choose "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" and turn it into a psych rock love ballad full of vulnerability, ringing bells, and sweeping refrains outlined with synth strings and a big fat keyboard through the middle. (That said, no one will ever touch Rosanne Cash's aching version of the song on "Every Woman Has a Man Who Loves Her," the astonishing tribute album of Yoko cover tunes that John set in motion before he was taken from us.)
• The Brother Brothers make "Yes, I'm a Witch" into a towering industrial funk metal groover.
• Cat Power merely illustrates Ono's voice with a piano and her own subdued backing vocals on "Revelations."
• The glorious treatment Pierce gives to "Walking on Thin Ice" underscores the loss and heartbreak in the lyric before turning into an acid-drenched celebration of life where tears are part of everything at one time or another. The violence in the mix offers a different dimension to the sparse delivery of the original and brings back the feeling of chaos that Ono must have felt with Lennon suddenly gone. It's among the most impressive selections on the set.
• Antony and Hahn Rowe's treatment of "Toyboat" is everything you would expect from him: it's tender, simple, childlike. Antony's reverbed piano lines the cut as drum loops and Rowe's double- and triple-tracked violin float around Ono's vocal. It's the most beautiful thing here.
• The Flaming Lips simply do their thing to "Cambridge 1969/2007." It sounds more like a Lips tune than anything, and the artist's individual identity suffers a bit because of that huge wall of music and noise they construct.

There are a few titles that don't work very well ... but most of it's a wonder and a new manner of hearing Ono, not through a lens, but through a prism, as part of a swirling wave of color, texture, rhythm, and artifice that brings her rightful place to the forefront. Highly recommended.