This frightens me

What's on my mind right now...

1. Religion. I have finished The God Delusion. I'm going to post about it in more detail later. But I am horrified and angry and scared (by the book, not at the book, if that makes sense. I'm not angry with Richard Dawkins.). The world is a scary place, containing some very scary people.

2. Copyright and plagarism. I wonder when we got to a point where for something to be good, it had to be new. Today, Shakespeare never would have been published because his work is too derivative. Campbell's Soup would have sued Andy Warhol. What's wrong with me taking something you made, and making it better? (as long as it doesn't affect you in a negative way). Thomas Jefferson said this: He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

3. My novel. And how I should be working on it RIGHT NOW, and how I will regret writing this blog post and eating lunch and watching Grey's Anatomy (and this clip of TR Knight on Sesame Street) and sleeping, when I get terrible reviews about how underpolished my book is.

4. I think that a large part of my love for Barak Obama comes from his resemblance to Jimmy Smits's character on The West Wing. Is that wrong?

5. Scrotums.

6. How I am such an ubernerd that the Web 2.0 video that everyone is talking about made me cry.

6. The fact that Spiderman's radioactive sperm killed Mary Jane. Do you reckon they were having safe sex, and it just burnt through the condom? "Oh God, I'm sorry! The doctors didn't understand how it happened! How you had been poisoned by radioactivity! How your body slowly became riddled with cancer! I did. I was... I am filled with radioactive blood. And not just blood. Every fluid. Touching me... loving me... Loving me killed you!"

Bay leaves

Jane Espenson recently mentioned something on her blog that is resonating with me, in a somewhat painful way.

It's a less violent variant on the 'kill your children' writing advice.

Jane likens some ideas to bay leaves. You really need them to get the sauce started. They help develop the flavour. But when it's time to take the sauce out of the saucepan, you gotta get rid of the bay leaves.

There are a number of scenes in my novel that are bay leaf scenes. A couple I have changed radically, most I have simply deleted. It's sad to see them go, but I know the book will be better for it.

This post is brought to you by the letter L

Penni has, like a literary fairy godmother, bestowed the letter L upon me. I shall use it to talk about things I like that start with L.

L is for

Lemonade. I rediscovered lemonade on New Years Day, when my body obviously needed to replace some things that hadn't come with me into 2007 (like sobriety).

Small l liberalism. Hurrah for Mr Obama! I'd vote for you.

Canting words that start with L, like Lickspittle (a traitor) and light-heeled wench (one who is likely to end up on her back) and line of the old author (a dram of brandy).

Link Hogthrob, one of my favourite Muppets. Apparently when Jim Henson was doing Manly Things like carving the Sunday roast, he'd put on a manly Link Hogthrob voice.


The Library where I work. There is something very satisfying about walking up those grand steps and under the pillars every morning.

...and because Penni mentioned this clip when she bestowed L upon me, L is finally for La la la LINOLEUM.

An Apology

Dear Meg Cabot,

I am so sorry. So. So. Sorry.

Last night, The Princess Diaries 2 was on TV. Being an enormous Meg Cabot fan, I cooked paella, opened a bottle of wine and invited my friends over. Hurrah! Two whole hours of Cabotty goodness!

I should have known, really.

The first clue was in the opening titles when it said 'based on characters created by Meg Cabot'. Uh oh.

Then... what's this? Mia is graduating? She's 21? Her coronation is in a month?

How come she's forgotten about Michael?
What happened to the other SIX books all set before now?
Why isn't Fat Louie fat anymore?
Where the hell is Mia's mother?
Does Raven actually serve any narrative-related purpose?

and worst of all

Why why why why why is Lilly suddenly a glorified PA?
What happened to her IQ of 170? Where did her strident feministy liberal views go? (and no, wearing a World Wildlife Foundation tshirt isn't enough) What happened to her cable access tv show?

Oh Meg. You must be so sad. I mean, it was a while ago and I'm sure you're over it particularly since you just signed a book deal with Scholastic that includes the words 'world domination', but still. I can imagine that you went to the premiere and you wore a new dress and you were all smiley and lovely. And you sat down in the cinema, politely declined popcorn in case it made the dress greasy, and the lights went down, and you were so excited.

And halfway through you probably had to get up and pretend you needed to pee or something, because you just couldn't bear it anymore.

So I am sorry.

Lots of Love,

Lili.

p.s. Shonda Rhimes, you should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously.

Summer Holidays #3

At Sandy Beach...

Munkey: Would you rather bob for apples in pus, or hit a pinata full of diarrhea?

Snaz: (tremendously excited) Pus! Pus!

(everyone stare at the crazy girl)

Snaz: What? I'm really good at bobbing for apples!

A Question about Harry Potter

Author Gail Gauthier recently pointed something out on her blog which gave me pause for thought.

-In this news article, JK says that she finished writing HP7 on Jan 11, 2007.

-On her website, she mentioned in December 2006 that she was writing scenes which had been planned for twelve years.

-The publication date of HP 7 is 21 July 2007.

It can be deduced, then, that JK was writing original material last December, implying that the draft she finished two weeks ago was the first draft.

Leaving five-and-a-bit months to edit, redraft, re-edit, redraft again, pageset, copyedit and proofread an 800-plus page novel.

Now, I know I am a new author, and my books probably need more polishing than average. But I am currently working on draft THREE of my novel, which won't be published until August!

Hmm. Answers a few questions I had about the quality of the last two HP books.

Summer Holidays #2

Things I learnt in South Australia:

-wine is awesome. Also port.

-South Australians are only allowed to listen to Dido. All other musical artists are banned.

-the speed limit in SA is 60k/h. Everywhere. This is because SA citizens are all born with loosely attached heads, and the authorities are afraid that if they drive too fast their heads will fall right off.

-when you go swimming at the beach, hairy men with tattoos leave laminated cards in your beach bag that say "Pete's Mobile, call or txt anytime", and a number which, out of respect for Pete, I won't include. This is the generally accepted method of courtship in SA.

-cockatoos are fucking evil.

-SA contains some lovely young people ("Pete" notwithstanding), but all the women I encountered over 50 were surly and sour. Apart from my grandma, of course.

-there is no God (imho. and Richard Dawkins').

In Your Pants

YA writer Maureen Johnson has suggested on her (hilarious but often pants-on-fire) blog that all book titles are made much better with the addition of "In Your Pants". This idea was taken up by John and Hank Green in their Brotherhood 2.0 project (check it out if you haven't already).

Here are some favourites from my bookshelves:

Robert Cormier's I Am The Cheese In Your Pants

Robin Klein's People Might Hear You In Your Pants

Robert Holdstock's Unknown Regions In Your Pants

Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh In Your Pants

Isobelle Carmody's The Gathering In Your Pants

Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did In Your Pants

Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy In Your Pants

Inga Clendinnen's Dancing With Strangers In Your Pants

Georgette Heyer's Bath Tangle In Your Pants

A A Milne's Now We Are Six In Your Pants

5 Reasons I am Proud to be an Australian

1. Tim Flannery is the Australian of the Year.

2. Not a member of the Irwin family.

3. Crowded House is reforming.

4. Despite living in a country where we are banned from taking our national flag to rock concerts because idiots might use them as an excuse to beat people up, we must be proud that we live somewhere it is entirely possible to sell your life on eBay.

5. We may have a nasty water crisis going on, but things aren't so bad that we have to breed giant rabbits in order to survive, like North Korea:

Summer Holidays #1

Your valiant heroine (me) is snorkelling around the pier at Portsea. Under the water, there are:
-weedy sea dragons (awesome)
-puffer-fish
-stargazer fish
-cuttlefish
-etc

Above the water (on the pier) there are:
-entirely obnoxious, tanned, bleached-blonde, overly muscularly developed, (did I say obnoxious?) teenagers who clearly think they are living in the OC.

One of said obnoxious teenagers (a boy) suddenly yells out to me:

Kid: Lady! Lady! Get out of the water! Now!

Lili: ??

Kid: There's a stingray! There's a stingray! Right under you! Get out of the water!

Lili: (looks down into water through snorkel) Actually, there's two stingrays.

Kid: (nearly wetting himself which would sadly ruin his expensively distressed board-shorts) !!! Get out!!!! It will kill you!!!

Lili: It will not kill me.

Kid: It will! It will! Get out!

Lili: It. Will. Not. Kill. Me.

Kid: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lili: Kid, how old are you?

Kid: 14.

Lili: (takes a moment to marvel at the kind of parent that would let their 14 year old son have his own speedboat) Right. Do you know how many people have been killed by stingrays in your ENTIRE LIFETIME???

Kid: No.

Lili: ONE. ONE MAN WHO WAS PROBABLY TRYING TO PASH THE STINGRAY*. Now bugger off.

Kid's Girlfriend: If I get in the water, can I look at it through your snorkel?

Lili: Sure.

Kid's Girlfriend peels off her sundress to reveal the kind of body that I know I didn't have when I was 14. And still don't have. Bitch.

She gets in the water, looks at the stingray. Her boyfriend? Won't move off the jetty. Is that his knees knocking together I see? Is that a puddle of terrified urine I see gathering at his feet? Or is it just the last trickle of his overblown pre-pubescent masculinity running down his inner thigh?

__________

*I am not without blame when it comes to pashing sea-creatures. At one point earlier in the day the man showing us the marine life of the Mornington Peninsula fished out an abalone and explained that it was a gastropod (stomach and leg), and then stuck it on my snorkel mask and made an entirely lame joke about it now being an eye-pod. Except the abalone was obviously feeling frisky and schlooped its way down off my mask and gave me a bigsloppy one right on the kisser. It wasn't bad. Beggars can't be choosers.

Icehouse, qu'est que c'est?

i have Moved House. and i finally have civilised things like internet. and a phone. and a glass splashback.

and a Fabulous Magic Machine with elves inside. it is the Best Thing Ever. you put dirty dishes inside, give the elves some Elvish Crack and then they MAKE THE DISHES CLEAN FOR YOU!!

it's amazing. seriously. revolutionary.

Speaking of cool houses, who remembers the 80s band Icehouse? (how's that for a segue? huh? huh?)

Fronted by Iva Davies, with such hits as Electric Blue, We Can Get Together and Great Southern Land.

Well, my dad's best friend was the lead guitarist in Icehouse. If we were the sort of family that had godparents, he would be my godfather.

After the band broke up, he moved to LA, where he lived on a boat and made wigs for Hollywood films. He left us most of his crap in boxes, including a framed platinum album for Man of Colours. We did what any close, loving friends would do, and hung it in the toilet.

And there it stayed, for several years, until I asked my mum one day if it would play on a turntable. We pried open the frame, and stuck it on our record player. it was green pool felt on one side, shiny silver record on the other.

It did play.

But not an Icehouse song.

It played Psycho Killer by Talking Heads.

Go figure.

I'm dreaming of a...

...White Christmas...
No, wait. Not dreaming. It actually IS white. Last week it was the hottest night on record ever for Melbourne. Today our backyard is white with hail. It's freezing!

Merry Christmas, one and all!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Colour me underwhelmed.

What is a Hallow, anyway?

Christmas Comes Early

So. Excited.

(and it's on my birthday, too!)

Christmas Fun for All the Family

I stole this idea from someone else's blog, but I cannot for the life of me remember which or whose. So apologies, whoever you are, and thanks.

I had some very dear friends over for a pre-Christmas Christmas dinner on the weekend: pudding, turkey, ham, singing - the lot. And with each Christmas cracker, each friend got a little parcel full of crafty items like googly eyes, ribbon, bells and pipe-cleaners. And they had to use all these things, PLUS whatever they got in their cracker, to make their Christmas Hats. Here are the results, with apologies for some really terrible photography:

Byron, "Suspended Babies":

Canoe, "Watching Bingo":

Jelly, "Jungle Dominos":

The Munkey "Googly Altar":

Snazzalicious "Cannibal Baby Throne":

and yours truly, "House of Eliot, Kindergarten Style"
Merry Christmas!

Shh!

It's not every day you meet a real live action figure. But today, we State Library staff were lucky enough for this lady to come and speak to us:

Her name is Nancy Pearl, and she is much better looking in real life. Her action figure outsells Beethoven's, Mozart's and Jesus'. Nancy is probably the most famous librarian in the world.

She talks about reading. More specifically, how to recommend books to people. The right books. This is what I learnt:

Don’t recommend books you love, just because you love them. Everyone has different taste.

So how do you know what to suggest?

Ask them this question: “tell me about a book you liked”. Don’t ask what the book is about, that’s a different question. The way that they answer will tell you a lot about what sort of thing they're looking for. Did they say "I couldn't put it down" or "I felt like I had always known the main character" or "It was like I was really there" or "it was just so beautifully written"?

Nancy says that there are 4 doors into reading: Story, Character, Setting and Language. People generally tend to enter books through one of those doors. If you enter through Story, then chances are you’ll enjoy other books that are primarily Story. Like The Da Vinci Code. Or Harry Potter. Or Stephen King.

Character readers will like Georgette Heyer, biographies, Bridget Jones.

Setting readers might like Bernard Cornwell. Or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Or William Gibson. Much fantasy falls into this category.

Language books have the smallest readership, but win the most awards. Here you’ll find A S Byatt, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Margaret Atwood. I’d also argue that you’d find Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde and PG Wodehouse here, too.

Some people might read, say, Master and Commander because they are a Character reader, and love the relationship between Aubrey and whatsisname (you know. Paul Bettany). But a Setting reader loves it because of the boats and the water and the history.

There are of course authors like Jane Austen and Tim Winton who have four equally sized doors. This is because they are awfully clever.

Try it. Write down five books you love, and figure out what door(s) you generally enter through. Here are mine.

1. The Last Samurai (Language, Character)
2. Alice in Wonderland (Setting)
3. Fire and Hemlock (Character, Story)
4. Love that Dog (Language)
5. Skellig (Language)

(This surprises me. I would have said I was more of a Story person.)

Tis the Season

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
Neither. Don’t like dairy beverages.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Is there somewhere in the world where Santa doesn’t wrap presents? I mean, I know, the trees… but really...

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
I don’t think we have mistletoe in Australia (goes off to google). It’s a parasite! Spread around by the Mistle Thrush (I shit you not). We do have it in Australia: more than 240 species of birds that nest in foliage in Australia have been recorded nesting in mistletoe, representing more than 75% of the resident avifauna. (from wikipedia). The Norse God Baldur was killed with a weapon made from mistletoe. It is also known as the “vampire plant”.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
Some time in the first week of December, and leave them up until Twelfth Night.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish?
Everything. Turkey. Stuffing. Bread sauce. Gravy. Biodynamic organic ham. pudding on fire with rum custard. mince pies. trifle.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child:
Putting up the Christmas tree listening to A Disney Family Christmas on CD. I still do this every year.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I barged in on my mother in the shower, aged 7, and demanded that she had to tell me the truth. She said she couldn’t lie to me.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
No.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
Fairy lights, gold and red baubles, and lots of little bits and pieces collected over the years. Most recent additions: a Tweedledee and Tweedledum from the Sheep Shop in Oxford, and a glittery little HMS Victory from St Paul’s.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
Love it. Unfortunately not much of it around in Australia in December. But I did have one beautiful white Christmas in the Japanese mountains at a hot springs resort one year… but really, I like the complete incongruity of eating pudding and roast beast when it’s 36 degrees outside…

12. Can you ice skate?
Yes, but not very well. I don’t really see much point in going round and round in circles until some fat kid barrels into you and knocks you down.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
My grandpa hand-made me an amazing dollshouse one year. Later on, my parents made me give it to my younger cousins, and they trashed it and left it out on their porch in the rain. I rescued it, and spent a large part of my last year of high school lovingly restoring it*. It now has fancy tiny wallpaper and tiny plaster ceiling roses and a fireplace that really lights up.

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Food. Also family, but only if there’s food.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
Pudding. We make ours in November, and I regularly open them up and pour in more rum. They are deadly.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Making a full traditional Christmas dinner for my friends the week before Christmas, where we sing carols, drink far too much and watch The Muppet Christmas Carol.

17. What tops your tree?
A red and gold angel called Poppet Fancypants. Last year a spider crawled up her skirt and made a nest.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
Giving. I know that sounds very selfless of me, but it’s really all about me. I love the praise when I pick the perfect present. I also like wrapping things fancily.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
Favourite Carol is O Holy Night. Favourite songs are Sleigh Ride, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and One More Sleep Til Christmas.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
I like them in theory. But they give me a tummy ache.

(I stole this meme from a number of people. You know who you are.)

____________________________________________________
*That makes me sound like I was very boring in Year 12. For the record: I also had a boyfriend, went out nearly every weekend and drank a reasonable amount of beer. See? You can be cool and interested in Craft at the same time. True story.

Smoke and Sesame

There's something very unnerving about the smell of bushfire smoke. It's 37 degrees celsius today, and 170 000 hectares of Victoria are on fire. It's not a cloudy day, but you can't see the sky for smoke. It's setting off people's smoke alarms even in the inner city.

I'm trying to put the finishing touches on this last draft of my novel, but it's hard when it's so hot, and the smoke is making my eyes water.

So I thought I'd take a minute to say a few words about a documentary I watched recently, called The World According to Sesame Street.

It's about all the different versions of Sesame Street all over the world - there are 120 - and how Sesame Street tries to provide education to all kids - not just ones in privileged countries.

It was a seriously revolutionary idea, back in 1968, that TV could actually teach kids stuff. Joan Ganz Cooney had the wacky thought that you could use advertising techniques to help kids learn, "instead of selling them soda or candy, we're selling them the alphabet". She approached Jim Henson to come on board with his Muppets, and an international sensation was born. 4134 episodes (and 109 Emmys) of American Sesame Street later, it's one of the most successful, popular, critically acclaimed and long-running TV shows of all time.

It seems an incredibly un-American thing, the way that Sesame Workshop works with other countries to form a new, unique Sesame Street, tailor-made to appeal to the kids of that country. Whether it's incorporating traditional hand-puppets in the Bangladeshi Sisimpur, or introducing Kami, an HIV positive muppet in South Africa's Takalani Sesame, or exploring race relations and promoting tolerance in Kosovo's Rruga Sesam (Albanian) and Ulica Sezam (Serbian). This isn't about imposing American popular culture on the rest of the world, it's about taking a good idea and adapting it to suit each country's requirements.

"The only kids who can identify along racial lines with the Muppets have to be either green or orange."
--Jim Henson

The documentary itself wasn't fantastic. There was far too much footage of grownups in meetings, and not nearly enough of kids, and how watching Sesame Street has influenced them.

I read a great story about an Israeli/Palestinian Sesame pilot, in Jim Henson's time. They asked some Israeli children what they would do if they saw a Palestinian child in their street. The kids replied "I would throw stones at him". They showed the kids this Sesame pilot, and asked the same question. The kids replied "I would go and play with him".

It's these sorts of stories that give you hope for the future. And brilliant documentary or no, I spent most of The World According to Sesame Street with tears running down my face.

You rock, Sesame Workshop people. You are doing more for our children and their future than any politician is.

Text Appeal

We held our first literary speed dating event last night, and it rocked.

50 people of all ages, temperaments, genders and sexual orientation came in and met new people, drank some wine and talked about books.

The vibe was amazing. Really amazing. It felt like we were doing a really good thing - bringing people together over their love of literature. Isn't that what it's all about, folks?

Anyway, we're tallying the responses today and hopefully we'll have some bona fide romances!

For the interested, here is the list of what books everyone brought:

BOYS
Housekeeping by M Robinson
Everyday Zen by C Joko Beck
Archy's Life of Mehitabel by Don Marquis
Third Reich by R J Evans
Magician by R Feist
Story of O by P Reage (yeah, someone really brought it)
Michael Palin: Diaries
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by J S Foer
Norwegian Wood by H Murakami
Give the Anarchist a Cigarette by M Farren
On the Ceiling by E Chevillard
The Family of Man by E Steichen
The Rattle Bag by T Hughes
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
A Merry Dance Around the Work by Eric Newby
The Time Traveller's Wife by A Niffenegger
Daywalks around Melbourne
Metamorphosis by F Kafka
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelley
On Beauty by Z Smith
Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen

GIRLS
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
About a Boy by Nick Hornby
The Kinky Friedman Crime Club by K Friedman
The Accidental by A Smith
Slaughterhouse 5 by K Vonnegut
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The Plague by Albert Camus
Venetian Stories by J T Rylands
The Alchemist by Paulo Cohelo
Bravemouth by P Stevenson
The Broken Shore by P Temple
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
Every Day a New Beginning by S Dowrick
My Brother Jack by G Johnston
THUD by T Pratchett
The Little Prince by A Saint-Exupery
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
The Hero and the Crown by R McKinley
The Passion by J Winterson
The Inheritance of Loss by K Desai
The Telling by U LeGuin
Momo by Michael Ende