Category Archives: books

The Rise of the Asterisk

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It’s well-known (by people who know me) that I love punctuation. I read books about punctuation. I have two punctuation tattoos. My favorite mark of punctuation is the semicolon (which is one of the tattoos I have). But lately, when it comes to punctuation, the asterisk is in the ascendancy. And that’s because an increasing number of books have swear words in their titles. Punctuation is how we address the problem delicately.

The first example of the trend and at the time most shocking was Go the F**k to Sleep, a book that purported to be a read-to-kids goodnight book, but was really an expression of parental frustration. It caused quite a buzz.

After that came The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (and the more daintily titled The Subtle Art of Not Caring About People’s Opinion), I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck, Unfu*k Yourself, The French Art of Not Giving a Sh*t, and F*ck Feelings. For those who prefer hashtags, there’s Unf#ck Your Brain. The winner for the longest title is The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do (A No F*cks Given Guide). And Everything is #@%!ed! uses a whole string of punctuation. Fucking This shit Show: A Gratitude Journal for Tired Women dispenses with the veil of punctuation altogether. (I can’t help that inconsistent capitalization. That’s the way it’s written. Maybe shit is supposed to look less threatening in lowercase? But I digress.)

(When marks of punctuation are used as stand-ins for letters or words, they’re called “grawlix,” an almost completely useless word, but one I’m quite fond of. Most people have seen grawlix only in comic books when Popeye, for example, wants to cuss. But I continue digressing.)

What’s the reason for all the daintily disguised sweary titles? It’s not like we don’t know what the asterisks stand for. It’s not fooling anyone. Go the F**k to Sleep was obviously meant to be shocking, though it also expressed humor and frustration. After that, it looks like a bandwagon was jumped on. The book even jumped on its own bandwagon. Now it’s a trilogy, including You Have to F**king Eat and F**k, Now There Are Two of You.

(I note that most of the sweary titles go with self-help books. Does this indicate a certain irreverence regarding the concept of self-help? Frustration with the concepts in the books? I know I’ve wanted to swear at self-help books during various periods of my life. Now I write them, though (so far) none have titles that require grawlix. But I digress some more.)

Personally, I have no objection to swearing. For a long time, I couldn’t do it, but after working as a waitress, I made up for lost time. Now I swear like a sailor, though with better enunciation. Sometimes, a curse word is just the right one. And of course, when I use a swear word in writing, I punctuate it properly. No grawlix here.

My favorite unexpected use of punctuation, however, comes in this brief verse:

Mary’s little lamb / Upon the grass did frisk. / But Mary was afraid / Her little * .

Now that’s creative punctuation!

What I’ve Learned About My Writing From Writing

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I’ve been writing since I was in second grade. Back then, and through college, I wrote poetry, most of it pretty terrible. (Pretty depressing, actually. I was bipolar but undiagnosed. Thus begin my day’s digressions.) Gradually, my poetry turned into prose and I went where my muse took me. Maybe it was all those papers I had to write for college English that reinforced my love of prose. (I still write some poetry, but mostly to experiment with different forms like haiku, sonnets, and villanelles. I’m on my second digression already.)

But on to lessons learned.

• My ability to handle distractions has increased. It used to be that I had to write in complete silence, which helped me concentrate. But, as writing became more routine and natural, I experimented with music for writing. Instrumental music was okay with me, but anything with lyrics took me out of the zone. Now I prefer to write with the TV on in the background. I’m not really listening to it. It’s just ambient noise and I tune it out. (My mother used to put on baseball games, which she was not really interested in, just to have some noise in the house. But I digress again.)

• I can keep a schedule. The ghostwriting company I work for bases its deadlines on writers producing 1,500 words a day. I’ve fallen into a routine. I write 750 words for about two hours in the morning and another 750 for around two hours in the afternoon. If I don’t make my 1,500 because of an appointment or something, I write 1,000 words, morning and afternoon, until I’m caught up. (If only I had had this kind of discipline when I was writing my failed mystery novel! Of course, for ghostwriting, I work from an outline, which I didn’t have for my fiction. But I digress some more.) I have to work my two weekly blog posts in there somewhere, but I’ve given myself a deadline for them as well. I post them every Sunday at 10:00 a.m.

• I seem to be specializing in self-help books. I gave up on reading self-help decades ago, but now it’s about all I write. (I did ghostwrite one short piece of fiction, but it was pure smut. So I guess I learned that I can write smut as well as self-help. But I digress yet again.)

• Ghostwriting suits me. Yes, it’s playing in someone else’s sandbox. And no, I don’t get a byline or royalties. But it’s steady work and keeps me from stealing hubcaps. Also, it supplements my Social Security nicely—not bountifully, but nicely. I don’t know what I’d do all day if I didn’t write. Become even more sedentary than I already am, no doubt. Or steal hubcaps.

• I can pivot. I write humor. I write about social issues. I write about mental illness. I write about language. I write about writing (you may have noticed). I’ve written about flesh-eating diseases, pandemics, and baseball heroes. I’ve written prayer services and stories about nuns. I’ve written about poverty in Jamaica. I’ve written about playgrounds and childcare. I’ve written lesson plans for textbooks. (My nickname is 1,000-words-on-anything. I suppose I’ll have to change that to 1,500-words-on-anything. But I digress even more.)

• I can call on my husband to help me brainstorm topics. He also keeps an eye (and ear) for news stories he thinks might interest or inspire me. And he has plenty of quirks that are fun to write about.

• And I’ve learned that cats are no help at all when it comes to writing (especially one named Ow-Toby), except as subjects. Which I’m sure will come as no surprise to you, but I put it out there anyway.

What’s So Funny?

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If you ask me (which no one did), the funniest joke there is, is this one:

What did the Zen master say to the hotdog vendor?

“Make me one with everything.”

The second funniest is:

First Old Lady: My, it’s windy today.

Second Old Lady: No, it’s Thursday.

Third Old Lady: So am I. Let’s go have a cup of tea.

(I have a friend whose favorite joke is a filthy one about a guy in a clock shop. But I digress, and refuse to tell it here.)

What makes something funny? There are theories which sound scientific. One is that “a violation of expectations or incongruity between what is expected and what actually occurs” is the source of humor. I’m not sure if that applies to my favorite jokes, but I think it does to the filthy one. Another theory is that “humor can arise from a sense of superiority or relief that comes from perceiving oneself as better than others or from being relieved of a perceived threat.” That sounds like a load of dingo’s kidneys to me and doesn’t explain either of my favorite jokes. (I don’t think that I feel superior to the three old ladies. The older I get, the more sympathy I have for them. But I digress again.)

Anyway, I think that proposing theories of humor detracts from what is funny. What science can tell us is the effects of humor on human beings. Laughter releases endorphins, the body’s “feel good” chemicals, and decreases cortisol, a stress hormone. Rapid breathing while laughing increases oxygen intake and improves cardiovascular function. It “serves as a form of communication, signaling safety, playfulness, and bonding among individuals” and “can help regulate emotions by reducing stress and tension.” Also, laughter is associated with “improved cognitive function, including enhanced creativity and problem-solving skills,” which means that Weird Al must be a genius. (I mean, Weird Al is a genius, but this proves it.)

So, what’s funny?

For some reason, there’s a category of stock photos known as “Women laughing alone with salad.” I have no idea why single women find salad funny or why there are so many of these photos, but it’s a real thing. (I think the fact that it’s a real thing is funny. But I digress yet again.)

One of my favorite types of humor is puns. Many people consider them the lowest form of wit, but they crack me up. I’ve been known to indulge in them, sometimes in pun contests and sometimes in real life.

Once, over breakfast, a friend remarked that her eggs Benedict were slow in coming. I said, “Maybe the kitchen staff had to go out and steal a hubcap to serve them on.”

“I know I’m going to regret asking, but why?” she asked.

“Because there’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.” She almost defenestrated me.

I also love improv comedy. I’m sorry that Whose Line Is It Anyway? isn’t around anymore. But at least some friends of mine have kept up the tradition with an improv group they call “Deep Fried Lemurs.” I’ve participated in it too, at least to the extent of providing setups for the “Scenes From a Hat” bit.

I also love literary humor. There are some great humor writers out there and some hysterical stories and books. For short stories and essays, I go for James Thurber and Erma Bombeck (both Ohio writers). And, if I may make recommendations for books (and I don’t see why I shouldn’t), Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy are among my favorites.

Two kinds of humor I don’t care much for are slapstick and revenge comedy. I just never got the appeal of the Three Stooges and hated The War of the Roses. I do like some forms of physical comedy, though, such as the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch from Monty Python And pretty much anything else Monty Python except the Mr. Creosote bit.

So, what are your favorite jokes and puns (filthy or not)? Do you have any theories of what makes something funny? Recommendations for sources of humor? I’d love to hear them. (I could use the laughs right now.) Perhaps I’ll include them in a future blog post.

Writing Sex and Fantasy

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A while back, I spent several years working on a mystery novel that went nowhere. Actually, it went to an appalling number of agents and publishers. It just didn’t stay there. And I wrote a short story that was a mashup of The Wizard of Oz and Star Trek.

But when it comes to fiction that I actually got paid for, my experience begins and ends with smut. Erotica. A dirty book. Whatever you want to call it. Now, I’m a big fan of freedom of speech and free expression and erotic literature, but there’s no getting around it—it was filthy. No redeeming social importance whatsoever, which used to be something people who wrote erotica aimed for. But I’m a ghostwriter and I write what the customer wants. So, I performed my writerly duty on the smut patrol and was compensated—not handsomely, but compensated. Then I went back to my steady diet of self-help books. But I lusted for something more…entertaining.

(We will not now discuss the research needed for the smut assignment or how I conducted it. If you want to, you can assume I drew on interviews with some of my less-inhibited friends. Let’s just say that I needed to include corroborative detail to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. And think of ways to describe body parts other than “throbbing purple-headed warrior” and “quivering love pudding.” But I digress. (Bonus points for recognizing the sources I used in this paragraph.))

Then recently, I almost wrote another non-smut novel, or at least the outline for one with the likelihood of writing the book if the outline was approved. The project was a piece of fiction, 100,000 words of what I guess you’d call “paranormal romantasy,” which apparently is a Thing now. I’ve been looking for a fiction assignment. There’s nothing wrong with self-help—it’s my proverbial bread and butter. But there’s also nothing wrong with adding a little jelly roll to the mix.

I was on the shortlist for the assignment. I didn’t get the gig. But I learned a lot from it, mostly about myself.

Realistically, I shouldn’t have considered taking the assignment, even if they had selected me for it. I’m already working on a long project that will keep me busy for months. I really couldn’t guarantee that I could do the world-building and plotting that the outline required. (There are other kinds of plotting I have more experience with, involving sinister, gleeful laughter. But I digress again.)

So, if I had moved from the shortlist to the one-list, I could easily have gotten in over my head and done a piss-poor job of it. I might have let my current project slide. I might have been sabotaging myself. It could have ended very badly.

But, oh, I wanted it. The opportunity came up over the long Thanksgiving weekend, so I had plenty of time to wait for the offer to come. I found myself prewriting (aka sitting around staring into space). I named the main character. I toyed with what her paranormal power might be. I speculated about what worlds of the multiverse she would travel to. I contemplated who her love interest might be.

It was mental effort wasted. Or not wasted, exactly. I proved to myself that I have the writerly chops to engage with a major fiction project and come up with ideas. I learned how much I want to branch out into fiction. I discovered that I can still get excited over a potential piece of writing. (Not that I don’t like helping selves, but I could use a little variety. It’s slightly disturbing how much I enjoyed ghostwriting a book on flesh-eating diseases. Yet another digression.)

Would I write smut again? Sure. I don’t have a philosophical objection to it. I might someday even look into a job as a phone sex operator. It’s a work-at-home position (sorry not sorry) with no actual (physical) customer contact. But, no. I don’t think I could keep myself from snorting and giggling.

Romance has a similar effect on me, but combine it with paranormal fantasy and I think I can handle it—as I hope someday to prove.

The Latest Book Trends

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(I shall begin with a digression. Actually, I can’t guarantee that these are actually the very latest book trends. I buy a lot of my ebooks based on newsletters from FreeBooksy and BookBub because they promote heavily discounted books, not all of which are, technically speaking, new. But most of them cost under $3 and, at the rate I buy books, I need to economize somewhere.)

That said, I have noticed what seem to be trends.

The first one is not a book trend, per se. It’s a trend in book covers. What’s hot right now (apparently) is book covers that don’t show faces. I’ve written about how men on the covers of romance novels are cut off at the neck (so to speak) or lost in the shadow of a cowboy hat, but these books feature mostly women on the covers. And they don’t have faces either.

The most common reason for this is that the woman or women are walking away from the person viewing the cover. (Bonus points awarded if the woman is wearing a red coat.) I don’t know why this trend has come to the fore, but I suspect it’s because the cover designers don’t like to draw faces or don’t want to read enough of the book to learn what the main character looks like. Or maybe the women are supposed to be all mysterious. Or the reader is supposed to imagine the woman having their own face. Like I said, I don’t know.

(A while back I noticed that there was a book cover that featured a man in a top hat walking through the rain, in the night, beside a wrought iron fence. In fact, there were two different books that had exactly the same cover. Both were terribly atmospheric mysteries or dark Victorian tales. I guess someone made the cover for one and an unimaginative art director tried to get away with using it twice. I noticed, however. But I digress again.)

Now, as to the contents of the books, I’ve noticed trends as well. When it comes to cozy mysteries, cats are perennially favorite characters or even sleuths. And Rita Mae Brown credits her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown, as co-author of her mystery series. Cats are as popular as ever, or more so. Every self-respecting woman in a modern romance novel has a cat.

Many of those romances take place in libraries and bookstores. The trope of the young woman who moves to a small town to restart her life, taking up the job of librarian or bookstore owner and meeting the love of her life, after suitable conflicts and misunderstandings, is a common plot. (Librarians are no longer portrayed as lonely spinsters—mostly. There can be an older librarian as a mentor and confidante, at least regarding the book aspects of the story. But I digress more.)

You can easily see what’s coming. The romantic heroine has both a bookstore and a cat. And the covers of the books reflect that. In fact, sometimes the cat and the books are all that appear on the cover. The woman herself is missing in (romantic) action.

One other trend that I’ve noticed in romance novels (I don’t actually read them, you understand—I learn about them through reading blurbs) is that, although traditionally the stories involve reckless, passionate, consequence-free sex (the “zipless bleep” that Erica Jong made so popular in Fear of Flying), is that increasingly, pregnancy results from the sex. (No, I’m not saying that romance novels are getting more realistic. They still involve royalty and billionaires, after all. And men from Scotland apparently are popular now, as in the book titled Too Scot to Handle. But I digress still more.) The pregnancy adds an extra layer of potential complications, such as the impending parenthood needing to be kept a secret.

If you’ve noticed any other book trends, feel free to share ’em. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a book that features a man in a red kilt walking through the door of a bookstore with a pregnant cat in the window.

-Punk, -Core, and Portmanteaus

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So you thought punk was something that had its vogue years ago and has disappeared since. Or maybe you just hope it has.

It’s true that you don’t hear much about punk music anymore, but punk is alive and well in the fictional world. As long as it’s combined with something else, that is. There is, as far as I know, no strictly punk genre of stories and books. But there are cyberpunk, steampunk, and even stonepunk and solarpunk.

(All of these are “portmanteau words,” squished-together words or sounds that combine two meanings to create a new one. Think smog, webinar, bromance, brunch, or spork (which I still call a runcible spoon). Or, given the time of year, spooktacular. But I digress.)

These varieties of fiction share the sensibilities of punk such as rebellion, individualism, social inequality, and unconventional thinking. (Less screaming, feedback, and safety pin piercings, though. Thank goodness.)

Most people’s introduction to the hyphenpunk world was a 1984 (appropriately) science fiction novel, Neuromancer, by William Gibson. It presented a dark, gritty, dystopian society in which a killer AI invaded people’s brains. At the time it served as a warning, which apparently we have not heeded. (Since then, almost all -punk fiction has been sci-fi or fantasy. At least I haven’t seen any romancepunk or mysterypunk. Again, thank goodness. But I digress again.)

Cyberpunk didn’t start any fashion trends the way punk music did (using the word “fashion” loosely). But another iteration of -punk has: steampunk. Steampunk combines Victorian-era technology and problems with a sense of adventure and invention and owes a lot to the writing of Jules Verne. You’ll find air battles between pirates in blimps, steam-powered robots pieced together from spare parts, and plots involving gaslighting (the streetlamp kind, not the manipulative kind). It’s a celebration of innovation, progress, and developing technology combined with nostalgia for a time when science was exciting, not threatening, and possibilities for advancement seemed limitless. Steampunk, unlike cyberpunk, is uplifting.

Nowadays, you can see steampunk aficionados at clubs and sci-fi conventions dressing in Victorian garb, embellished with brass gears, gauges, and wheels. One trendy accessory is the top hat with welding goggles as a hatband. Women can dress as aviators (aviatrixes? aviatrices?) with, obviously, aviator goggles. One would assume that the expected reaction from those not in the know is goggling at them. (Sorry, not sorry.)

(And that stonepunk and solarpunk I mentioned? Those refer to fiction that immerses the reader in a Flintstones-like past and a back-to-the-land agrarian setting respectively, with technology based on those eras. But I digress still more.)

Now on to -core, another element used in portmanteau words related to the music scene, rather than fiction. As you might guess, the word “hardcore” is the origin of the term. But instead of referring to pornography, -core applies to an extreme expression of any kind of music. Skacore. Thrashcore. Even emocore, unlikely as that sounds. (Theoretically, you could have punkcore music, but I’ve never heard that term used. Nor punkpunk fiction, for that matter. There is a subset of country music called cowpunk, so I guess you could have cowpunkcore. But I digress even more.)

Historical note: Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass pioneered the creation of portmanteau words. (A portmanteau is “a case or bag to carry clothing in while traveling, especially a leather trunk or suitcase that opens into two halves.” So portmanteau, when it comes to words, is actually a metaphor.) Carroll’s epic poem “Jabberwocky” contained several. Slithy (as in “the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe”) is, he said, a combination of lithe and slimy; frumious, a mashing-together of furious and fuming; and chortle, a portmanteau of chuckle and snort that is still used today.

(Less historical note: Thanks to the book The Annotated Alice (annotations by Martin Gardner), which I highly recommend, I learned how to recite the first verse of “Jabberwocky” in French, a skill with no practical applications whatsoever. But I digress. My last digression for this post. I promise.)

(Just kidding. Bonus digression. Back to -punk and -core. There exists a series of books that combines steampunk, thriller, and fantasy. (A Study in Silks (The Baskerville Affair)). Steampunk-Holmes-demoncore, I guess you’d call it.)

Seven Reasons I Hate The Bloggess

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jennymeFirst, let me say that I read The Bloggess’s (Jenny Lawson’s) blog all the time. I have her books and I read them all the time too. But secretly I hate her, and here’s why.

1. She had a weirder childhood than I did. She lived in a small Texas town full of farm critters and wild animals, and weird characters, including her father the taxidermist, and has interesting poverty stories, like the one about the bread-sack shoes. I lived in a nondescript middle-class suburb with a stay-at-home mom and a dad that went to work every day smelling of Vitalis and Aqua Velva, rather than deer blood.

(This was also the problem I had trying to write country songs. You can’t get very far with “I was born an industrial engineering technician’s daughter/in the Central Baptist Hospital of Lexington, KY.” But I digress.)

2. She had more interesting pets, with more interesting names than I did. She had a raccoon named Rambo that wore Jams and a delinquent turkey named Jenkins. Later she had a dog named Barnaby Jones Pickles and now has one named Dorothy Barker. Her cats are named Ferris Mewler and Hunter S. Thomcat. We had dogs named Blackie and Bootsie and rabbits named Christina and Mittens. Our recent dogs have been Karma and Bridget, and the only eccentric cat names we’ve bestowed have been Django and Dushenka.

(Ordinarily, I don’t like cat names like Baryshnikat and F. Cat Fitzgerald. I think cat names should be something you wouldn’t be embarrassed to yell out the door if one of them wanders off, like Louise or Garcia. I suppose the Bloggess’s neighbors are by now used to anything. But I digress again.)

3. She has more interesting disorders than I do. I have bad knees and bipolar disorder type 2 (and a blog about it, www.bipolarme.blog). The Bloggess has generalized anxiety disorder, anti-phospholipid syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and, apparently, an obsession with chupacabras and vaginas. This gives her much more to write about. Although I do have two blogs. Two! In your face, Bloggess!

4. She’s less inhibited than I am. The Bloggess would have ended that last paragraph, “In your face, motherfucker!” I didn’t learn to cuss till I was in my 20s and no one I meet ever believes I swear until I do. Then they’re shocked. Also, I swear all the time, except in my blogs, where I’m afraid I’ll offend readers, all of whom I assume have tender sensibilities. The Bloggess knows her readers better than that.

5. She has way more readers than I do. And she’s published books and has another coming out. I have some followers, but I think most of them want to sell me books on how to publicize my blog. I should probably study a book like that, but I’d rather read ones about emerging viruses, cloud cities on Venus, and mostly true memoirs. On the other hand, I have the distinction of being the only writer ever to have articles in both Catechist and Black Belt magazines. So take that, moth . . . Bloggess!

6. She and her husband have more interesting arguments than my husband and I do. We never even talk quietly about whether Jesus was a zombie.

7. She has a stronger voice than I do. I mean her writing voice. I had no idea what her speaking voice was like until I saw a video clip of her on the web, talking about vaginas. But when I’m going to write in my blogs, I have to lay off reading her for a day or two, because her voice takes over my weak, tiny mind and it wants to sound like her. I wish I could write like that. Or at least as well as that.

But, like the Bloggess, I am a strangeling. And that’s a start.

Romancing the Body

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Romance novels have changed since I used to read them. (Yes, I am here publically admitting that I did once read what I called “tempestuous” novels because the cover blurbs always started, “The tempestuous saga of an innocent young woman and the pirate she couldn’t live without.” Hey, I was 16. But I digress.)

The covers of the novels, which were also called “bodice-rippers” back then, usually featured a picture of a man and a woman, with him ripping open her bodice (duh). The man always looked like the king of book covers, Fabio (a famous cover model) or a fair imitation, with lovely flowing locks, a square chin, an intent gaze, and an irresistible (apparently) sneer. The woman was slim, beautiful, and wearing a dress with a bodice (again, duh). She could be soft and yielding or, more often, fiery and tempestuous. If you knew about such things, you could sometimes guess the era in which the tempest played out by the details of the clothing, but usually not. An open, puffy-sleeved shirt and a ripped bodice don’t really convey that much information.

The point is, the cover art generally featured two figures, a man and a woman, with some indication of conflict and/or passion between them.

Not anymore.

I’ve noticed that these days, romance novels tend to have cover art that features a man only.

And not just any sort of man. He will have the physique of a bodybuilder, a hairless chest, no shirt (or one that exposes the entire torso), tight jeans, and not much else. He could be a bodybuilder or a cowboy or a firefighter or a musician or (I suppose) a beach bum, or even, since Fifty Shades, a business tycoon on his day off.

But he has no face.

Where a face should be, there is a shadow or a hat. Or the picture is simply cropped so that the cover doesn’t involve even a hint of a face.

What does this say about women and the men they are attracted to?

In sexual politics, there is a thing called “the male gaze.” It refers to how television and movies and advertising and just about everything else present females that will be pleasing to a man who is looking at them. How women react to the images doesn’t matter. (This can also be called “heteronormative,” but you didn’t come here for a sociology lesson.) The “male gaze” reinforces the idea that stereotypical males value women only for what’s between their neck and their navel, as the saying goes. (Or their neck and their knees, to be more accurate.)

Now, on the covers of romance novels, we have images that are meant to appeal to the female gaze. And what do they show? Besides torsos, I mean?

They show that publishers – or at least their marketing departments – are trying to appeal to the “female gaze.” And they think that gaze rests on the same areas as men’s gazes – neck to knees. To appeal to the romance reader, they think, men should be manscaped and body-sculpted, physical as all get-out. And anonymous.

It may be true that some women do long for anonymous sex these days and that romance novels increasingly sell sex. And it may be that the female gaze is as superficial and body-conscious as the male gaze. Maybe that’s the way it is for women who read romance novels. Maybe the publishers know their audience.

As for me, the things I look for in a man are all above the neck – bright, witty, creative men with facial hair. (In fact, three of those qualities are not just above the neck, but above the eyebrows. And I’ll disregard a guy’s lack of facial hair if the other three qualities are strong. But I digress again.)

That’s what’s romantic as far as I’m concerned. And sexy. But I suppose it doesn’t sell books.

Fun With Dictionaries. No, Really.

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When I was a kid, I had one of those small, plastic record players that came with small, plastic records of children’s songs. One yellow plastic disk had a song on it about dictionaries. I still remember it.

“Oh, the dic-dic-dictionary/is very necessary./Any word that you can cook up/you can look up./Pick the book up.” It also included a verse exhorting children to look up the words “dromedary” and “estuary.” Or maybe “actuary.” The sound reproduction was not that great. Neither word is one that I needed to know until much later in life, but I went through childhood with them stuck in my brain.  For that matter, they still are.

Also stuck in my brain is a dictionary adventure from slightly later in my childhood. Like many – perhaps most – of you, I ventured to the fount of all knowledge to look up “dirty” words. I didn’t find them all (I didn’t know them all at that point), but I found one that made a distinct impression on me. To this day, I can quote the definition of “fart” word for word: “an anal emission of intestinal gasses, especially when audible.” In other words, what was called a “poot” in our household, though that was not listed as a synonym.

There was one dictionary in history that caused quite an uproar, and it was largely (though not exclusively) caused by a different four-letter word: ain’t. Webster’s Third was not the first to include “ain’t” – even Webster’s Second did that. But Web3, notorious for downgrading (or I guess upgrading) usage labels, no longer listed the word as “illiterate” or “substandard,” but merely “colloquial,” or usable in regular conversation, though not in formal speech.

Headlines abounded: “Ain’t Ain’t Wrong, Says Webster’s.” Lexicographers were incensed and language mavens had the vapors. Not to mention the grammarians, who really got their undies in a bundle. The only people not freaking out were the linguists, who considered “ain’t” “nonstandard,” which was what they called a word that others called “substandard.”

(Lexicographers, linguists, and grammarians are different species, whose nether garments bunch at different sorts of things. Let me know if you want to know the difference. I’m lots of fun at parties. But I digress.)

Speaking of parties, there is a nifty party game that can be played with a dictionary, if you’re trapped at a party with no drinks, food, or music. It’s called Fictionary and bears no relation to Pictionary, which at least can get raucous.

For Fictionary, one person, acting as moderator, wields the Webster’s and selects a suitably obscure word. Each participant writes an imaginary definition on a slip of paper, while the moderator writes out the actual definition. The papers are then collected and read aloud. Participants vote on which is the correct definition. If a bogus definition wins out over the real one, that player gets a point. Hilarity ensues.

(The secret to winning a point is to start your fake definition with “of or pertaining to.”)

And speaking of word games, there’s Scrabble (aka Words with Friends if you’re among the techno-literate, which if you’re playing Fictionary you’re probably not).

A fascinating book (for those like me who are fascinated by such things) is Word Freak – not my autobiography, but instead a searing look into the dark underbelly of competitive Scrabble. For those who never thought competitive Scrabble was a thing or that it had a dark underbelly, it is and it does.

Now, of course, dictionaries have been replaced by the computer and particularly the internet. Among the most useful and colorful sites is the Urban Dictionary, where you can find the definition of words like “yeet,” though not its past tense, “yote.” (“Yeeted” seems to have become the past tense, though I’ll stick by “yote.” I still don’t know what the past participle is. “Yoten” is what I recommend, though I’ve never written or spoken a sentence where it was needed. But I digress again.)

The Urban Dictionary proved useful to me once when a character on House, M.D. (okay, it was House himself) used the term “squish mitten.” I pretty much got the meaning from context but felt a need to verify it, just for accuracy’s sake.

Actually, the internet is a good place to get your lexicography. The language changes constantly and rapidly, so the only place you can really keep up with it is online. Although I think it’s fair to say that “fart” hasn’t changed much, is still spelled and pronounced the same way, and still has the definition that made such an impression on me as a kid.

Oh, Boy! Day Off!

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Days off are great! Most people get two days off a week and fill them up with a number of things, from picnics in the park to errands they couldn’t take care of during the week. Mostly, that occurs on weekends, which are eagerly awaited and finished with reluctance.

My husband and I have different attitudes regarding days off. This was recently brought home to me when we each had a chance to explore what days off meant to us.

Dan actually had five days off in a row. Before you gasp in amazement, he didn’t actually take five days off work. He took three vacation days and smushed them together with his normal two days off to make a solid week.

I had one day off this week. I do project-based work rather than a regular 9-to-5. When my previous project was over, I scheduled one day off before I started my next one. (I’m not a total masochist. Since I don’t work 9-to-5, I can fill up those hours however I like. I generally work for a few hours in the morning and longer in the afternoon. In between, besides lunch, I make phone calls and deal with bills, banking, appointments, and other “housekeeping” issues. (Non-housekeeping housekeeping, if you get my drift.) But I digress.)

So, what did we do with our respective days off? Dan slaved. I relaxed.

Dan had been anticipating his days off for literally months. He did have to request them off at work since they were technically vacation days. But most of the planning consisted of ordering plants from online nurseries, staking out local nurseries for sales, and scheduling deliveries of literal truckloads of compost and mulch.

So, Dan spent a lot of his time off planting everything that had been delivered and a few more of the plants he picked up locally. He decorated his garden bed with large rocks. He watered and rototilled nearly every day. (I once knew a man who rototilled naked. He was very brave. (The first Saturday in May is Naked Gardening Day, in case you didn’t know. Dan does not celebrate it, much to our neighbors’ relief.) But I digress again.)

After five days of this, what did Dan have at the end of it? A lovely, large flowerbed (with no thistles) and a flourishing vegetable garden. And a ton more plans that would require even more truckloads of mulch and compost, pounds of micro clover seeds, and still more flowers, shrubs, and trees. And probably more big rocks. All of which – except, presumably, the rocks – will cost hundreds of dollars more than he spent last week.

In addition to that, he had serious muscular pains, grubby everything, and a severe case of Gardener’s Butt Burn. (That happens when his shirt rides up as he’s planting and exposes to the blazing sun a strip of flesh between his shirt and pants. Fortunately, it’s hidden when he goes back to regular work and wears his uniform shirt. Yet more digression.)

And what did I do on my one day off? I was much less ambitious. I checked my email and timeline, as usual. Generally farted around on the computer. Petted the cats. Watched a little food competition TV, as usual. Then came the time when I usually start my work, and I was at a loss.

I settled in my comfy chair and picked up a book. Ordinarily, I only get to read for about a half hour when I go to bed. This was special. With a cold drink on my little table and an actual paperback novel in my hand, I dove in. I read until I couldn’t anymore – that is, until I got sleepy. Then I retired for a three-hour nap. (I have a third-degree black belt in napping.) When I awoke, I went back to my book, and by the time I was done reading, I had finished half the book. (It’s proving somewhat interesting, except the characters’ names got on my nerves. Maximus Bluster. Solless Cinderheart. Snidely Krewler. Jo Naberly. I mean, this was a middle-grade book (I think), but honestly!)

Then, in the evening, I did some actual housekeeping. Except for that, it was a beautiful, relaxing day. At the end of it, what did I have? A day much like my usual, except for not doing all the writing. A marginally cleaner study. But, oh, the nap and the reading! They fed my head, rested my body, and soothed my soul. That’s my idea of a day off!

Frankly, though, I don’t know if I could do it five days in a row. But early next month, if I work a little harder now, I’ll have the chance to find out!