moneymoneymoneymooooneeeey!

Taaaax time. The way I get through tax time is to focus on the positive--all the things my taxes pay for, that I'm glad they pay for. I'll need that this year, because I'm back to paying them! Gone are my heady school days of receiving money. Now I have to pay back My Debt to Society for a dirt cheap education.

It's alright, I'm ready. Bring it! Bring it tax software!

The real problem is I can't remember which site I used last year. I tried a new one and liked it waaay better than the one I used to use--much clearer. But which was it?? Must investigate...

songies

Here's the latest song that caught my attention because it's in a TV ad (reverse product placement, as I like to call it.)

I'm faux-published!

When you complete Nanowrimo they sometimes give you offers--one was from createspace.com, which does self-publishing. You could order a free proof copy of your book. I didn't find the site/process very intuitive, but I made a point of doing it just for the fun of having a hard copy of my last book. Then if anyone wants to read it, it's in a convenient form.

Anyway, I'd forgotten I'd ordered it, so when I got this package today I was confused. And I opened it up, and it was a book by London Mabel! Weird. Very weird moment. It turned out cute. I chose a photo of one of the neighborhoods portrayed in my story, and it's really pretty. Except it looks like a literary book from a small Canadian publisher. It looks arty, rather than trashy! (They didn't have any trashy options in the cover-maker.)

I guess if I needed inspiration to keep working on my books, this should be it. It's freaky to see your writing in book form!

more musiz biz

I read about Mo Ostin in my music book, in the chapter on independent promoters. When they upped legislation to crack down on payola (not to be confused with The Payolas), the companies all turned to independent companies to do the promotion and the dirty work--so the money still comes from the companies, but they keep their hands clean. Mo Ostin tried to spearhead a boycott of them, but no one followed. He sounds like a coolio guy. (I'm trying to find models--both good and bad--for my book. So far more bad than good.)

For three decades, Mo Ostin helped steer the Warner-Reprise record labels through a remarkable period of commercial prosperity and musical excellence. During his tenure, which stretched from 1963 to 1995, Ostin became known within the industry as a business-savvy mogul with an artist-oriented outlook. The operative philosophy at Warner Bros. was to allow talented artists to develop and to keep the more deserving ones on the roster without obsessing over the bottom line.

It’s been written that “by the early 1970s, Warner Bros. and Reprise had become the unofficial arbiters of musical taste.” An accountant by training, Ostin displayed uncommon empathy for the non-quantifiable artistic temperament. “Warner Bros. Records has never been run from the perspective of financial people or legal people or promotion people,” Ostin said in 1994. “We’ve always been a label solely about artists and music.”

It proved difficult to maintain that outlook as Warner Bros. got absorbed into increasingly larger corporate media conglomerates, from Warner Communications to Time Warner to AOL Time Warner... In the late 1990s, Ostin and former Warner Bros. president Lenny Waronker moved to DreamWorks, where they implemented their strategy of signing artists of merit and patiently building their careers. (Rock n Roll Hall of Fame)

More "shit my dad says" -- soon to be in book and tv form!

"Nah, we don't celebrate it. Don't know who St. Valentine was, don't give a shit, and doubt he wants people screwing in his memory."

"There's a word for people like that...No, I'm saying, there's a word and I don't know what it is. I'm not being fucking poetic."

"A parent's only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed."

"I lost 20 pounds...How? I drank bear piss and took up fencing. How the fuck you think, son? I exercised."

"HIDDEN roaming charges? Jesus, Sprint has 'fucking people' down to a science, like they practice it in a fucking lab on mice first."

reading and tving

I think I'll read The Agency next, about Victorian girl spies. A coworker picked up a free reading copy for me at a Random House show. I've still got White Teeth on the go, but after reading a couple sewious litewawy books, I'm due for something light.

If it's good I'll save it for the step-mommy. I bet she would have liked to have been a girl spy.

In the meantime I'm also reading that book on the music industry, some business books, and a book of/about poetry that my brother left behind when he moved.

The Husband and I finished watching all the Entourage series last night--can't wait for season 6 on DVD, cause we don't have HBO. But the entire set of Vicar of Dibley arrived, so maybe we'll move on to that. This is often how we spend time when he's not in Warcraft mode--sitting at opposite ends of the couch, playing with our respective toys (me the internets, and for him at the moment Dungeons and Dragons.)

Why do we say we "can't wait" for something when we clearly have to, and therefore can?

1 star! How dare they!

The experiment--find the worst review of your favourite books:

A Fine Balance: I didn't find this book to be crushingly depressing at all, but the 1-star reviewers on amazon disagree with me -- "This book is a piece of trash. I've never read about so much death and destruction. Someone dies, gets raped, or castrated on every other page. At times, instead of making me sympathetic to the plight of the severely unfortunate characters in the book, I found myself laughing, and waiting for the poor fools to fall into their next hilarious misfortune (again, always only a few pages away)."

Pride & Prejudice: I think this review is by Mr T -- "Like others, I really did want to like this book. I tried and tried to read it, but it was all nonsensical jibber-jabber. I may try again, but doubt it. It's torture!"

Adrian Mole -- "This book was so hard to believe, and I'm easy. It's the first book I plan to thorw in the garbage. I thought about writing in the front cover to warn people how bad it is, but then decided against it. It goes nowhere. Why is it a hit?!?!"

The Evolution of Jane -- "Was I disappointed. I thought the characters uninteresting and boring (glad I wasn't on that trip,) and the stuff on Darwin didactic and boring.If I wanted to know about evolution I'd go to Darwin direct andIf I wanted to know about lost friendship I think I'd search the Internet."

The Scarlet Pimpernel -- "I had to read this in 7th grade for English, and I could barley stay awake for it. It takes the character about 5 pages to do something as simple as pour themselves a glass of milk." Well I admit I think the movies are better than the book.

The Doomsday Book -- "Initially I enjoyed the historical part of the book but there was absolutely no dramatic tension to be found anywhere."

Couldn't find 1 star reviews for:
- me fave Georgette Heyers
- my fave Sarah Caudwell (The Sirens Sang of Murder)
- only 1 for a Jeeves book, but the person liked other Jeeves books
- Kate Ross' mysteries
- Jane Langton's Homer Kelley mysteries