Kirsten Mortensen's blog

some will a strut and some will fret
see this an hour on this stage
others will not but they’ll sweat
in their hopelessness in their rage
we’re all the same
the men of anger
and the women of the page

they published your diary
and that’s how i got to know you
key to the room of your own and a mind without end
and here’s a young girl
on a kind of a telephone line through time
the voice at the other end comes like a long lost friend

so i know i’m alright
my life will come my life will go
still i feel it’s alright
i just got a letter to my soul
when my whole life is on the tip of my tongue
empty pages for the no longer young
the apathy of time laughs in my face
you say
each life has its place

From Virginia Woolf, by the Indigo Girls. Unfortunately no video on YouTube. As if they never did anything but Closer to Fine. And Galileo.

This version of the lyrics is from the rites of passage CD liner notes, only with line breaks.

the place where you hold me
is dark in a pocket of truth
the moon has swallowed the sun and the light of the earth
and so it was for you
when the river eclipsed your life
but sent your soul like a message in a bottle to me
and it was my rebirth

so we know we’re alright
life will come and life will go
still we know it’s alright
someone’ll get a message to your soul

The song stunned me when I first heard it because it so perfectly captured how I felt when I discovered Woolf’s diaries. (Her novels otoh — I should probably reread them now. I read them in college because one was supposed to, and didn’t really warm to them. Perhaps I was too young.)

I wonder if she came to realize, at the end, that her gifts could not substitute for a belief in deservedness . . . nor earn it.

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I am officially done with 2006. December is mop up month. I’m starting over.

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To all of you, I hope you’re having a wonderful Thanksgiving. And thanks to all who visit this blog. It means so much to me to have people read & appreciate my writing. Thank you so much.

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Isn’t this nice? Outwitting Dogs cracked Amazon’s Top Ten List of dog training books!

This was last night. Since the list is updated hourly, the ranking fluctuates–the book had dropped two placed by this morning. Still, it’s cool, isn’t it? Up there with Karen Pryor! :-o And the Monks of New Skete! LOL

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It isn’t easy to find, but if you check out the Participation Guidelines that Amazon publishes on the Community section of the site, there’s a clause that suggests sock puppetry is a no-no. It’s under Prohibited Content or Activities, which lists the “conduct or Content that is prohibited” and includes this bullet:

The impersonation of any person or entity or forging of any e-mail communication or any part of a message

I suppose that someone with a slippery enough grasp of ethics might argue that impersonating a fake person — posting under the identity of someone who doesn’t exist — doesn’t count. I mean, it’s not like the fake person would mind. Since he’s fake. Not that you can ask a fake person’s opinion.

But the issue isn’t just that you’ve taken advantage of some hapless fake person. It’s the act of impersonation: pretending to be someone you’re not in order to gain some advantage. (And hey — fake people are entities, too!)

Amazon doesn’t bother policing their site for this kind of activity, obviously. But it’s nice to see they do recognize it undermines the credibility and validity of their reviews and they don’t consider it an acceptable use of their site.

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I’ve been trying to pretend this wouldn’t happen! Silly, aren’t I? LOL

John Scalzi has some advice. It falls along the lines of the whole Biblical eye-plucking idea.

Nothing about whether it’s a good idea, if your sock puppetry has been outed, to threaten to sue bloggers who blogged about it, though.

Hmmmmmm. I do suppose that if you have removed both hands, it would be hard to phone said bloggers with your threats . . . even hands-free phones need to be dialed . . .

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Writer Alex Kuczynski’s been outed for . . . not sock puppetry exactly. Because she’d revealed on her Amazon profile that she masquerades as one “Walter” — a Walter who’s written glowing reviews of Kuczynski’s books:

Update: Uhhh, we guess it’s not sockpuppetry if you admit that it’s you in your profile. Then it’s just stupidity.

(Actually it looks like her profile has been taken offline. Must be she actually grasps that she’d goofed up. Huh.)

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China — who is actually delivering on her NaNoWriMo promise — hit a slight glitch yesterday:

Today’s story tidbits: My characters rebelled. A simple conversation between the MC and a character I’ll refer to as “T” turned into a demand for the return of a precious book. Which left ME asking, “what book?”

LOL

Dontcha hate it when that happens???

LOLOL

Technorati Tags: National Novel Writing Month

To John “Duke of Earle” on the death of his mother.