NANOWRIMO
It’s started!
Once a year, thousands of would-be novelists try to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It’s a difficult task, and few complete it, but that few become more every year.
I’ve done NANOWRIMO twice, but haven’t “won” or finished my 50,000 words yet. This year, I’ve promised myself I would, and by the time December gets here, my first draft of The Sabra will be finished (or at least at the 50,000 word mark.
Here’s the opening, an excerpt, the first 886 words of my entry this year:
Out-Bloody-Standing
My favorite fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, is about to be played by Robert Downey, Jr.
The trailer looks fantastic, and very much in the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original works. The dour, somewhat sedentary Holmes usually depicted on film (especially the WWII era anti-Nazi Basil Rathbone Holmes) isn’t at all what I’ve imagined the great detective to be. TV’s reimagined Holmes, Dr. Gregory House is much more the brilliant, opiate-addicted musician (get it, House, Holmes?) than any other on-screen rendition.
Jude Law looks to be a good Wilson…er, Watson, too.
This looks GREAT.
I LOVE these – Old Computers
Love this.
100 old computer images at the Obsolete Technology Website.
Hmm…Let’s see. Which of these did I have?
Recent Coverage
Christmas Music and starting the show in Chicago – Recent coverage:
It’s Beginning to Sound Like Christmas A Lot Earlier
WLIT-FM Makes the Switch…To Gossett in Afternoons
Go-Go Gossett
Back in Chicago
As you probably read in the Phil Rosenthal article in the Trib, I’m back on the air in Chicago, doing afternoons on 93.9 the Lite. I’m really happy to be working with Melissa, Robin, Dave, Rick and the whole crew.
As anyone who knows me knows, I love the computer geekery of it all, but when it comes right down to it, communicating about the station and what’s important to Lite listeners in Chicago is the main thing. Our lives are so different in 2008 than they were a few years ago. My boss is two doors down from me, but we communicate mostly through email. Part of my airstaff is based in Phoenix, part of it in Chicago, a bit of it in San Diego, and one guy is from London. Ironically, it’s the British guy who I see every day in the studio! He’s local!
Legendary radio personality Tom Joyner traveled every day between Dallas and Chicago, doing Mornings in one market and Afternoons in the other. American Airlines eventually retired his seat at an event in Joyner’s honor. The amazing thing about technology today, is that I can experience more of life in Chicago (and have in the 5 years since we moved to Phoenix) via the internet than I would be able to without the net, but flying back and forth. All the time required for travel would mean I’d know the O’Hare to Michigan Avenue and Sky Harbor to Van Buren Street (okay, well my studio looks out at Sky Harbor – I even go to lunch there every now and then…but you get the point) routes really well, but not a whole lot else.
It’s such a different world, but we all have to admit, an interesting one, right?
Our neighbors, Lee and Missy fly Bears flags on their house, we watch WGN News (when Fox 10′s not in news!) and I live in constant hope/dread that a Portillos will open close by (hey, they opened one up near our place in Burr Ridge! I can dream!). If Caribou Coffee were a franchise, I’d open one up myself, I love that place so much (especially the one in LaGrange, where I spent most of our last trip at a couple weeks ago). Jill was born and raised in Burr Ridge, and her parents still live there, so we make the trip as often as we can.
Phoenix, where both my wife and I went to college (ASU) is very important to us, but we definitely think of ourselves as bi-locational. Like tens of thousands of our neighbors, we’re Chicagoans who happen to live in the Valley of the Sun, as schizophrenic as that makes us, but if you’ve never been here, come for a visit, and I think you’ll begin to understand the place a little better. You’ll feel very much at home here, surrounded by Cubs and Sox fans, and while Phoenix is definitely it own city, with its own culture, personality and history, you can’t mistake the foundation it’s built on. If you mention “The Mayor,” there’s a pretty good chance that, depending on the accent, the person you’re talking to is referring to Daley rather than Gordon. I remember moving here with my family when I was in college in 1979. The part of Scottsdale known as McCormick Ranch was lush and green with grass and trees everywhere. The real estate people told us that people were moving here in droves from Chicago, escaping the cold, and recreating the midwest through landscaping! In most places today, desert landscaping reigns supreme, but a few areas like McCormick Ranch make you think you’re anywhere but the Sonoran Desert. Thank goodness we seem to have figured out the water situation!
As Phil said in the piece, we’re already in Christmas Music at KEZ, since for the first time in the 15+ years of doing this (yes, KEZ was the first to be crazy enough to completely change the format to Christmas Music), we’ve never had a competitor before. So between that, and the fact that it turned cold here last week, I decided on Friday to flip the switch and stop worrying about the perfect time to do it. 
As far as flipping the switch on Lite? Well, I haven’t a clue as to when that’s happening, but I doubt we’ll wait for Christmas Eve!
A Plea for Dog Toys
To: Family and friends.
From: Kevin
Date: September 8, 2008
Re: Your dog toy gifts
First off, let me thank you all for the congratulations, encouragement and gifts of toys you’ve been so kind to supply in huge quantities since we got Kacey 3 months ago. 6 months old now, he’s turning into a wonderful dog. As I predicted, he’s pretty much my dog now, as the rest of the family realizes there’s a lot more to having a dog in the family than just having him at your feet, or playing in the backyard. I knew going in that for the most part, any good thing a German Shepherd does (outside of his normal protective instinctual behavior), you have to train him to do. They didn’t realize there’s also a whole bunch of stuff you have to train them NOT to do, like tear pieces of trim off of the house. Exactly where he was doing this demolition work, I have no idea, because I’ve looked, and we don’t seem to be missing any trim. For a couple weeks though, every few days there would be a new 3-5 foot piece of trim on the back patio or in the middle of the backyard. Very strange.
So far, his favorite toys:
-
The rawhide bone I bought him at Safeway.
The soft blue frisbee
My new leather Levenger Circa notebook (and about 20 pages of the expensive filler paper)
Any shoes left out
The pool backwash hose
The house (see above mention of the mysterious, apparently unnecessary wood trim)
For the most part, the sprinkler system is kaput. He dug that up. In fact, as I sit on the back patio writing this, he’s next to me, contentedly chewing on a 2 foot section of sprinkler line from one of the flowerbeds that surrounds (or, surroundED) the spa.
Not that he doesn’t like all the toys you’ve sent and we’ve bought. I guess it’s just that a “toy” that he dug up from the ground is more interesting than one purchased at Petsmart. In fact, I’ve suggested to that company that they build a dog toy area in the form of a nicely manicured lawn where the dog toys they offer for sale are buried. Customers could bring their dogs in to dig up what they wanted. Sent them an email Haven’t heard back.
My plea today relates to dog toys that you may, in the future, send for Kacey. Whatever you do, please do NOT send any more that squeak. These are NOT charming, entertaining or funny. Well, they’re funny for you, maybe, imagining the irritation as I listen to Kacey chewing, chewing, chewing, squeak, squeak, squeaksqueak…squeak. for 10 minutes. It’s NOT funny for me. It’s frigging annoying as hell until I can take it away from him, toss the offending piece of plastic crap in the trash and tell him that there’s still a few more sprinkler heads working – go dig one of those up.
It reminds of when Jamie was a few months old. Someone had bought him a little keychain-like Winnie the Pooh toy that when he grasped it tightly, would play a little bit of the Winnie the Pooh song. In the car, Jamie would press it from time to time, and that was fine. At first, it was a pleasant little tune that after awhile you found yourself humming, even though the toy wasn’t anywhere near. Sadly, (well, infuriatingly really) late one night, the little swtich on the chip seized and the song began playing over and over again. Being well designed and completely childproof, taking a battery cover door off wasn’t an option. There seemed to be no taking the damned thing apart either, so there I was, in the middle of the night, with a hammer smashing the little honey-eating bear to smithereens. It was the only thing I could do to shut it off.
Fortunately, Jamie didn’t have to witness the destruction of Winnie the Pooh, but after all it took to shut it up, to this day, any time Winnie the Pooh and Friends comes on the Disney Channel, I flash back to the moment when the bear’s simple, open, honest little smile burst into dozens of shards of tan and brown plastic under my Craftsman hammer.
Ah, the memories.
So, hopefully we’re clear. Thanks for all the dog toys. In the future though, please limit them to the non-squeaking variety.
Kevin
Linerider coming to the iPhone
Oh man, this is going to be a collossal time-waster. I just know it.
There was a time when I loved Linerider, as did my (at the time) 5 year old.
And then there was this cool Linerider McDonalds commercial.
Cory Doctorow for President
<linkbait>
No, not because of his tax proposals, foreign relations experience or for those 19 months he was in a Welsh POW camp, subsisting on a diet of fish and chips and white pudding.
No, I think he should be elected President of the United States for another reason. Wait a minute, Cory’s from Canada, isn’t he? Oh, who the hell cares? About time we elected a Canadian to the White House, anyway. They deserve it, putting up with our crap for so long. And then again, Obama wasn’t even born on this continent, and he’s close to getting the job.
No, I like Cory’s common-sense thinking, and his forward-looking fiction shows that he’s got a mind that’s very comfortable speculating about what will become of us, instead of where we’ve been. I like his Goldwater-reminiscent glasses and 60s flattop/crew cut. I didn’t like either John Edwards or Mitt Romney because of the hair, and John McCain’s got that comb-over thing that makes me grimmace and shake my head. Let’s not even talk about Joe Biden’s plugs, okay? I remember a time in the 90s when looking at that joker’s scalp and being reminded of the freshly planted rows of early-June corn of my native Indiana.
Cory would make a great President. He’s young, energetic, devoted to one of the most important issues outside of the ones where we could DIE or BECOME EXTINCT if we keep making the wrong choices (Nukes, Global Warming, etc…), which is copyright and the ownership of intellectual property.
Now, you may wonder “what brought this sudden love of Cory on?” Easy. This post on BoingBoing.
THIS is the kind of brilliant, non-stupid thinking we need to survive in the world we’ve created. I blog books a lot, too. Having graphics in a /covers directory is a BRILLIANTLY simple idea. I love that. Life, and the things we do to have a better life SHOULD be simple things. We need many, many more of these types of ideas, ideas that just WORK without requiring a 7 digit funding pitch. Think how much better life would be if most things we need and do were accomplished with simple hacks of existing technologies and systems. Interesting startups are good. Hacks that make a startup unnecessary are better!
Extending this suggestion, Xeni would make a fabulous VP, and Mark strikes me as a friendly, non-evil Karl Rove with better hair. THAT position can have nice hair. I’ve got no problem with that. The key to the Doctorow Presidency would be who Cory appointed to the cabinet-level Secretary of Hacks position. Now, I know, you’re thinking HELLO! MERLIN MANN! Well, I’m not so sure about that. Merlin’s probably better suited to White House Chief of Staff. Can you imagine four years of zero-inbox politics? Delicious! Gina Trapani‘s probably the best choice for that seat at the big cabinet conference table.
Cory2008. The Time is Tomorrow.
</linkbait>
I know. I figured that even though I didn’t write it to be linkbait, it sure as hell looks, sounds and smells like BoingBoing linkbait, so I’ll just put the tag on and go with it.
Fabulous Web Content
One of the unintended consequnces of the writer’s strike last year (for the record, I was for the writers), was the opportunity for creative people to create content on the web that had a better chance of being discovered. Though the strike’s effects will be discussed for years, I’m not sure it was the best idea for the people who finance content creation (the studios and networks) to lock their doors when YouTube’s doors were wide open.
The strike is over, of course, but the non-traditional TV concept was proven, and is starting to thrive. Two really excellent examples of creative people creating compelling content are Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and The Guild (both star Felicia Day). Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion, both big stars in the “traditional media” world round out the cast of Dr. Horrible, and though I don’t recognize any of the other Guild regulars, they’re outstanding.
Buy Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on iTunes, and watch The Guild free from their site or YouTube.
I absolutely love them both. The monopoly that the Hollywood “machine” has over video entertaining is evaporating. Shows like The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog make this very clear.
Cross-posted on KevinGossett.com, NGDGU.com and my blog on KEZ999.com.
Why I’m Never Going to Be a Power Blogger
Because apparently, it can kill you.
It’s easy to shake your head at stories like these, where people work so hard at their craft that they keel over and die from exhaustion, and/or the effects of ignoring personal care, healthy living and the very necessary act of chilling out occasionally, so they can keep their vocation running at high speed. The flip side of that is “well, they died doing what they loved.”
No judgement here. I’ve read both of these guys’ work and it’s really good. Sorry they’re gone.
I remember working with a guy several years ago who died of a heart attack while bike riding. Really nice guy who was really out of touch with himself. Biking up a hill, he started having chest pains, and told his companion he was just going to “push through the pain” and get to the top. Well, he did, but then collapsed. Sometimes knowing when to quit is the difference between life and death.
Feeds
On the Air
The Kevin Gossett Podcast
Tools I Use
-
Kevin Gossett Photo Montage by Kevin Gossett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.flickr.com, by Dave Winer (Scripting News).
