You're Wrong, Now Shut Up

<tirade>
No, not you.  The inconsiderate $*^%#*$ sitting behind me during the 4:35 showing of Green Lantern today.

I paid to watch this movie, not listen to some white-trash, mullet having jackass explain Green Lantern lore to your son/friend/whatever he was.

Don't get me wrong, I understand if he had some questions and you were trying to fill him in on the back story so he could enjoy the movie. I'll even give you leniency and give you a pass on it, even though it was the first movie and was ENTIRELY ORIGIN STORY! If you had just had the courtesy to whisper.

But no, not you classy guy in the nearly sold out showing. You had to speak loudly enough for everyone in a three row radius to hear everything you said. And you continued to talk through at least 10-20% of the entire movie.

When the movie got particularly loud during an action scene, you raised your voice to a near shout to make sure you could be heard.

Really? REALLY?!

You, Sir, are the antithesis of everything great about comics/superheroes/good movies (not that I'm sure Green Lantern necessarily falls into this category, I'm just sayin')/the world! This little tirade cannot begin to cover how much everyone around you hates you for this greatest of sins: talking through a movie.

But what's actually worse? At least half of the "lore" that you spouted is wrong. And not even slightly factually inaccurate wrong. Wrong like you had lumped a dozen super heroes' back stories together and still didn't manage to get a single fact about any of them correct. Seriously? W? T? F?!

</tirade>

Google, You're My Hero (Flawed, but still my hero)

Google gave me all their wonderfully Google-y apps like blogger and reader for my domain account. I had been using my domain account for gmail, calendar, and documents. However, when I first set my domain email up through gmail, they didn't offer services such as reader and blogger.

I could not be separated from my Google Reader, so I kept using my original gmail account. And then when I switched my website over to being hosted on Blogger, I had a separate account for that.

Thank you Google for letting me combine everything I use into this one account.

So I have now copied over my reader feed and starred items, moved the website over, and gotten everything from my now extraneous old accounts. This doesn't make any real difference on my page--except now all my posts have lost their original dates and are now listed as being posted this week. But it is sure a hell of a lot more convenient for me. One log in! No switching accounts/commenting from the wrong one.

I am easily stoked. And you probably don't care, but I had to share my excitement.

The Sweetest Perfume

There is something about being in a library that immediately puts me in a good mood. I used to think it was just being surrounded by books, being enveloped in the presence of all those stories. And I was half right.

Part of being surrounded by those books, the part that sets me instantly at ease, is the smell. The smell of the paper and the ink bled into its fibers. Even the smell of the dust that collects, that musty old book smell that is different than any other musty item smell. It is the smell of infinity. It is the smell of being surrounded by thousands of stories, thousands of histories and worlds, thousands of possibilities. It is the smell of escape and adventure. It is the smell of bliss.

And I am surrounded by it today. It will be a good day. When I'm not paying attention I keep finding myself smiling for no apparent reason. That is what a library does to me.

It's one of the big reasons I have not switched to an ereader yet. There is a draw to easy access to so many books. To be able to have them all at my fingertips all the time, to be easily carried with me everywhere I go. But I have hesitated because repurchasing all my books as ebooks would be expensive. Plus there are still a few publishers who wait to release ebooks rather than release simultaneously with the hardcover, and I can't bring myself to wait longer for the new books in any of the series I am a devoted fan of. By the time the book is released I am usually already slavering for it and devour it in a day.

But my big reason I haven't made the switch? That wonderful feeling I get when I sit in a room full of books, like I am right now. I'd miss that so much.

Finding Love: Teenage, True, and Otherwise

This is not the post I had planned to write when I opened up my browser this afternoon, but sometimes that's how the best posts turn out, so I'll go with it.

I had planned on writing about revisions and finding crit partners, but I opened my google reader feed to see if there was anything going on that I should know about before I posted. (Yes, I read all my blogs my rss feed. I am the penultimate lurker, hehe) What I found was this post by Natalie Whipple about love and our expectations of it, both it book & movies, and in real life.

There is a reader mentality that she talks about that I'd like to discuss.

And this is not the first time I've heard this. I hear this off kilter argument all the timewhen people start ragging on paranormal romance or praising contemporary fiction.

"Oh, that relationship is so unrealistic! That never happens. People don't just take one look at each other and end up getting together. People don't do that undying dramatic love for all of forever."

"This relationship is realistic—they break up and hate each other forever and move on with their lives. The girl loves the guy, but he never notices and that's how it is. Betrayal. Divorce. Boredom. Fights. These are real." 

I understand that in the real world these are the circumstances many times. I understand that a lot of adults feel that it's a false advertising of sorts to imply to YA readers that they'll get that girl/guy they love and be happily ever after 9 times out of 10. It might be. But I've got to tell ya, that happens to some people. It may be complicated and messy, relationships are, it might be the hardest damn thing you've done in your whole life, but it happens. I'd know, it did to me.

On July 12, 2010, on our nine year anniversary, I married my best friend and high school sweetheart. I've never really talked about O and I's story on here or any of my other blogs, mostly because I assumed that anyone reading knew us and already knew the story. But I'd like to talk about it a little bit now, because this backlash that says it can't happen bothers me. It really pisses me off when we tell teens what you feel can't be real love, you're too young. The relationship you're getting into won't last, so it doesn't really matter. Seriously? F*$& that!

I spent much of my adolescent life head over heels in love with a friend of mine. It was destined never to work for a whole variety of reasons, but it was that aching, pining love you find in most YA books. Man, did that relationship ever give me angst ammunition to write YA for years. :) But if you had told me then that what I felt wasn't real or wouldn't last I would have been seriously pissed off. Ya know what? I still would be. Just because it was flawed and didn't work doesn't mean I felt it any less acutely at the time.

If anything I felt it more because I was at that age, not less. I hadn't become bitter of hardened by things going wrong, by all the crap there is to deal with. I felt with my whole heart from the get go. It was a long drawn out thing, with us falling back into familiar patterns and then breaking them and seeing other people. It was during  my sophomore year that I met O. He was a senior and in my creative writing class. He was smart, funny, older and seemingly wiser/more mature. I had a little crush, but he had a longterm girlfriend and I was still in love with the unnamed friend.

We talked during class that year, flirted a little (though unsuccessfully), and then he graduated and moved away for the summer and that was the end of things. See, O and I weren't even really friends. He was that guy you talk to in one of your classes that you never talk to or see outside of school. That's all. We were both wrapped up in other things. Other people. Though he still professes to have been madly enamored with me from the get go. Silly boys.

At the end of that school year I started a relationship with somebody new. It went on for over a year, but crazy happenstance, he was acquaintances and slight friends with O, despite a 3 year difference in grades. Yes, if you're doing the math, I spent a year in high school dating a boy in the grade below me. No, I was not a cougar-in-training. We were the same age, I was younger than most of the kids in my grade.

Anyway, he was emailing O while O worked at Cedar Point over the summer, and I sent an email to O also, saying hi and asking how he was doing. We didn't keep exchanging emails, but it was a gust of air that kept a little ember burning, if you will.

We didn't really talk again for almost a year. The next April, almost the end of my junior year, the boyfriend asked me to come along to O's birthday party. I did. O's long term girlfriend and he had just broken up and she was about to move away. Suffice it to say, I am a terrible girlfriend and O and I flirted like mad. After that night we kept talking. Mostly chatting online, some phone calls. After a few weeks we started hanging out. O lived about a half hour away so I would bum rides with his best friend when he went to see O.

Soon we were inseparable. We were talking constantly when we weren't hanging out together. I was very lonely for a lot of reasons back then and O quickly filled that void. He became my best friend. And it was through our being such close friends that we fell in love. I'm not saying it wasn't messy or complicated, I mean I was still dating somebody else (though, admittedly trying to find a way out of a sticky relationship). It was extremely complicated and messy. It almost didn't work. We even broke up once. It didn't take. (Mostly because Oliver can be stubborn, said you're being ridiculous, and then proceeded to wait for me to also come to this conclusion.)

We were young and sometimes stupid (not that we aren't also sometimes stupid now) and not as mature as we thought. There were times when it was the hardest thing I could imagine, there were times when it almost didn't work, times when I threw my hands up in the air and said, "I quit." But to say that it is impossible to find true love at that age, that is can't last, that what a teenager feels is just lust or infatuation may be true for some, but certainly not all.

Of course, you could argue that almost ten years is not that long, that I have no way of knowing what will happen to O and I, that we could still get divorced. And you might be right, I have no way of knowing what the future holds, but I find it highly unlikely. We have grown into our relationship and still remain best friends. We have moved from the knock-down drag-out brawl (metaphorically) level arguments we use to have, to something else. We still fight, don't get me wrong. But now it lasts less than a half hour and at the first sign of something even remotely funny we're both giggling and the fight is over.

I guess my argument for why I know it's possible for teenagers to find that person while they're young can be summed up as this: When I was a child I asked my father who his best friend was. He smiled and told me, "your mother." I thought this was a ridiculous notion. Mom didn't count, they were married. Wasn't it the guy he went bowling with or one of his work buddies? No, he told me, your mother is my best friend in the world. I shook my head and left, thinking he had cheated and given me a cop out answer.

Fifteen years later, as I married O, I had come to understand exactly what my father meant that day. My parents met in high school and were on again off again for several years until they married. In four months they will celebrate  their 28th wedding anniversary. Do not discount the love you find as a teen, it might not be the person you expect, but they might stick around a lot longer than anyone tells you is possible.

Overhaul Overload

I am a bit burnt out on anything even remotely connected to website design, but I am finished.

There will inevitably be a few tweaks. Especially as I start adding new content, since I didn't bring over a lot of the old posts, particularly ones about my writing which others likely have little interest in. But I did create a page for my writing, which has a page for each of my main projects with a short synopsis and current status. (My main YA projects are all listed, though none of the adult projects are because the synopses for them are all under revision.)

Also! I made a page for my cooking posts, which I love dearly. Now you can just click cooking and it will bring up a page with all the posts with that label. Neato! I lost the pictures they used to contain, so after I move to the new place I'm going to have to take new ones with better lighting.

So what do you think of the new layout?

Strawberry Pie

This one's a delicious pie that's perfect for spring. An excellent accompaniment to Easter dinner.

Strawberry Pie

Crust:

• 1 1/2 cups finely ground graham cracker crumbs (in my experience this ends up being one packet of graham crackers)
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Filling:

• 2  quarts fresh strawberries
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 (3 ounce) package strawberry flavored gelatin

Crush the graham crackers as finely as possible.  If you have a food processor, this is perfect for it. If not, just get them cruched as well as you can. I often put them in a ziploc baggie then crush them with a rolling pin.

Mix the crumbs with the sugar, melted butter, and cinnamon until well blended and then press into pie pan. If you use a smaller pie pan you may have some leftover crumb mixture, that's okay.

Bake at 375 degrees for 7 minutes.

Wash the strawberries, cut off tops and slice.

In saucepan mix together the sugar and cornstarch, blending thoroughly. Add the boiling water, cook over medium heat until it thickens. Remove from heat, stir in gelatin. Let cool to room temperature.

Pile the strawberry slices in the pie crust evenly. When the gelatin mixture has cooled poor over the strawberry slices. Place in the fridge to set.

Serve with whipped cream.

Book Snobbery

There's something that's been really bugging me lately. It's happened around me so many times in the last month that I took the time to sit down and put my thoughts on it into words. I have to say, book snobbery really angers me. There's little that annoys me more.

I don't care what you read, it doesn't make you better than people who read books you don't like. No type of book is inherently better or worse than another, you just like it more or less. Not every book that you didn't enjoy is bad. I will admit there are books out there that may be so poorly written that you may not like them for that reason, but most books weren't bad, they just didn't match your personal tastes. And even when it was writing that turned you off, most of the time it still wasn't bad, it just wasn't a style of writing you enjoy. There are almost 7 billion people on the planet, it's pretty conceited to assume your personal taste is the barometer for quality.

Even if your taste was so amazing that it defined good and bad, there's going to be a variety of quality in any genre. You're going to have a few stellar books, a few stinkers, and a whole lot of stuff in between.

Reading 1-5 books/series in a genre does not make you an expert on the genre. It's not even a good sampling, given how many books are published each year. Do not complain that you read: Harry Potter, Twilight, whatever, and YA sucks. Don't tell me you read one of your mother's romance novels when you were twelve and you're just not into that crap. And for God's sake, don't be one of those people who says I've never read one of those books, but I don't need to. If you haven't read one of those books (no matter which books those refers to), keep your mouth shut, you have nothing to add to the conversation about that genre.

You want the right to talk about it? Look up a list of the best books in the genre and go read at least a dozen, focusing on trying to find ones with stories/writing styles that suit your tastes. If you're not willing to put the time in learning about a genre you haven't earned the right to talk about it derisively. If you do put in the time and after all that reading you still haven't found anything you like, by all means, tell people you're not a fan. Just don't call it crap because it isn't your cup of tea.