P is for....

[plumtreeblossom]

lifecollage issued me the letter P to meme upon. Ten things beginning with the letter P that are relevant to me and/or my life. Here we go...



Plumtreeblossom-- c'est moi. An obvious first on the list. My grandmother's nickname for me was Plum Blossom, but someone on LJ is squatting on the name, so a tree grew in the middle.

Parasols -- I love parasols, and I do use them in the summer sun. I would say I collect them, but unfortunately I'm down to only 2 at the moment because they do eventually break when you use them regularly. Any trip to Chinatown will find me sniffing around for parasols. If you're ever stuck for a birthday gift idea for me...

Performance Art-- If you'd known me in my 20s, you could have said "Oh yes, I'm friends with a performance artist." That was my primary artistic outlet up until I moved to Boston. Ask to see the scrap book sometime. None of my performance was naked, unlike many of my colleagues.

Pie-- Something I bake extremely well. Artisan pies with obnoxiously fine lattice tops are a specialty. Oh also, P is for Punch and Pie.

Puppies!-- They make me go squeee and talk babytalk. My parents were Collie breeders around the time when I was born, so puppies were my first friends.

Pittsford, NY-- The ruralish suburb of Rochester NY where I spent my junior high and high school years. A preppy, upper-middle-class burb where our middle-middle-class family emphatically did not belong. The price of having a 5-bedroom colonial on a full acre lot that you can't afford is that your kids have to wear clothes from K-Mart.

Potter-- Why didn't I think to write those books?

People Person-- I am and I'm not. I analyze quite a lot, more than most people would think. I'm one of those people who needs to be in groups of people, and sometimes get close to selected individuals. Actually that's not the definition of a "people person" at all. But it started with P.

Poly-- It's a keystone of my local community, and a large part of many of my friends' lives. I only became fully aware of the concept a few years ago, and I've been through 4 of the 5 classic stages: Shocked Mortification, Guarded Tolerance, Warm-Hearted Amusement, and Noticeable Interest. Depending on what life brings down the pike, I may go through the final stage, Trying It Out. Actually there's nothing "classic" about those stages and I just made them up right now to fit my own circumstances. But as a writer, I'm allowed to do that.

Pasta-- unhealthy and unbelieveably delicious. Whatever the afterlife holds for us, there's not likely to be any carbonara there. Eat pasta. You can go low-carb when you're dead.


Ask for a letter and I'll deal you one!

Comments

[komos.livejournal.com]

There is no "I" in team, but there is an "I" in pie...

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

OK, I give you the letter "I," sir!

[jimmystagger.livejournal.com]

deal me a letter pretty lady.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

R is for retro... lets see what else it's for in the world of jimmystagger! :-)

totally unrelated

[androidqueen.livejournal.com]

have you read about this thing with the girl from harvard plagiarizing her novel? i'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Re: totally unrelated

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I think blame for that can be equally distributed between author, agent, and publisher. The author, who was too young to yet fully understand the consequences of borrowing protected content, nor probably appreciative of the likelihood of getting caught, made a major mistake. The agent and publisher should have been on top of that genre's existing market to have recognized the theft.

Plagiarism aside for a minute, I have to deliver an especially hard bitch-slap to the publishers for publishing a book based around so cringingly obvoius a Mary Sue. That alone shames them deeply in my eyes.

But back to the plagiarism. So the kid, and she is a kid, fucked up. In a way I think it's good that she's being run up the flag pole, because it serves as a lesson to any who would consider appropriating protected content without permission. I'd like to see it stay in the public eye for a while, as an example. The Harvard girl may or may not ever write again, but you can be damn sure she isn't going to steal content again. And the publishers get to learn a lesson about giving half-million dollar advances to child authors.

The other author isn't going to be hurt by any of this. People who never heard of that first book will buy it just to see what the bad little plagiarist stole. I'm quite certain it will see a small spike in sales that it wouldn't have had otherwise (if it's still in print, and I'll admit I don't know if it is). The source author is owed an apology, but she won't suffer losses in any bottom line sense.

That's my 2 cents.

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

Maybe I could go low-carb tomorrow, then, being that it is zombie celebration day:)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Brains are low carb, chomp chomp!