Galley: n. 1. A large seagoing vessel propelled by oars; 2. The kitchen area of a large seagoing vessel propelled by oars; 3. A pre-publication version of a book sent to the author for final proofreading in the kitchen area of a large seagoing vessel propelled by oars.

I got my author proofs, or galleys, over the weekend--and it really does look like the insides of a book! I've done layout work myself, so I know how much effort must have gone into this thing. There are pictures embedded into the text on almost every other page, chapter headers that look like letterhead, and an unusual font. It must have been a nightmare to put together but it looks great!

I was numb by the time I finished proofreading, but I wanted to get the galley back to Blooming Tree Press as quickly as possible. This will be the absolute last chance I have to make suggestions before the book goes to print, but there's no guarantee that any of my suggestions will be incorporated, since the editor gets the final say. Considering how many work hours must have already gone into the project on the publisher's end, I tried hard to limit my comments to just the important stuff. It's hard to be a perfectionist and have to bite your tongue.

No worries. The book looks awesome and everything seems to be going along on schedule. Yay!

Dreams: n. pl. 1: The in-flight movies of the brain; 2. Conversations with the subconscious mind; 3. The noblest aspirations of humankind; 4. A time when it's socially acceptable to invite Hannibal Lecter to a tea party on the Moon.

Example: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

I had a dream last night that I was driving around town in a pickup-truck filled with advance reader copies of my book, trying to convince people to read them. My wife had a dream that she was riding in a bus, trying to get some sleep, but someone kept talking to her and waking her up. It was probably someone trying to get her to read an advance reader copy of something or other.

Today we celebrate one particular dreamer, one particular dream, and the efforts of millions of people over the past 40+ years to turn that dream into reality. Reality is stubborn and difficult to change, so it's good that we set aside one day each year to remind ourselves how far we've come, how painfully slow it's been, and how much is still left to do.

Working together all our dreams can come true, and someday we'll have true racial equality for America, a pickup-truck for me, and some earplugs for my wife.

Happy birthday, MLK!

Half-Prenniversary: n. 1. The commemoration of a date six months in advance; 2. A nervous time for a soon-to-be published author. Example: I searched every shelf in the store but Hallmark doesn't seem to make a Half-Prenniversary card.

Yesterday was the half-prenniversary of THE PENGUINS OF DOOM release date. They made kind of a big deal about it in today's paper:

Honestly, I don't know where such rumors come from. That rocketship is only for members of my immediate family!

The Gap: n. 1. A clothing store in which you always have to remember whether the men's clothing is on the left or right side because it looks exactly like the women's clothing; 2. A monster who stalks the Underground attacking tourists despite helpful warnings from the train conductors; 3. A period of time with no blog posts. Example: "Mind the Gap," said the clerk of the subterranean clothing store, leaving me in charge of the register with no time to update my blog.

Last night I dreamed a blog entry. It was a good one too, on the topic of names and identities with examples drawn from recent events and a copious sprinkling of interesting links. It really illustrated for me the gap between my blog as it really exists and the idealized blog in my mind, which I would never have time to write and maintain.

Sparkling essays on my real blog are few and far between. I didn't even have time to upload the obligatory Year-In-Review or Happy-2007 entries I'd planned--although those also exist in my head, crammed full with heartwarming anecdotes and subtle wisdom. You'll just have to take my word for it.

2007 is going to be a busy year for me. My first book, THE PENGUINS OF DOOM, is set to debut on 07/07/07 and there will be dozens of exciting milestones and events to report on. When there's time. Which there might not often be. When there is time to blog, that will be when things are slow and boring, so there might not be anything worth blogging about.

I apologize in advance for 2007, in case anyone is especially disappointed by long gaps between entries or a lengthening gap between the real and the ideal. But when the technology develops to allow me to blog by dreaming, that gap will close!

Multimedia: adj. 1. Presentations of sound, light, words, magnetic waves, gravitational fields, or any known combination thereof; 2. A fancy way of saying "more than just text". Example: The crowd swooned as the famous author's reading was punctuated by a bout of excessive flatulence, and suddenly it became a multimedia event!

It's old news by now that the Class of 2k7 has gone multimedia--first with a podcast interview I gave on the Just One More Book website and then with a short video produced by Eric Luper. We're also preparing our MySpace page and continuing work on our zine and collective blog. We're quickly running out of bandwagons to jump onto!

I'm told that I sound calm and coherent during the podcast interview, which is strange because I certainly didn't feel calm or coherent. It was only the second interview I'd ever done and I was a wreck, but I'm already starting to develop that interviewing skill where you can be a wreck on the inside while still sounding like you know what you're talking about. I can't bring myself to listen to the thing yet but it was fun to peer into the world of digital audio and ponder a few ideas for the future.

For the video, I'm glad we have talented folks in the 2k7 group who were able to pull together images from all the authors into something cool. And I can watch it over and over because it doesn't feature me talking or otherwise making a fool of myself!

The other media-related item I have to report is that I got a sneak peek at a preliminary version of the PENGUINS OF DOOM cover. I wasn't meant to see it yet, but the cover designer has a blog and momentarily forgot that such things are connected to the entire world. (Yeah, I've been there and done that too.) From the version I've seen, the PENGUINS OF DOOM cover will accurately capture the spirit of the book, depict the characters as intended, draw the eye from across a crowded bookstore, ooze originality and creativity, and radiate cool. I couldn't be more thrilled.

And I don't think I'm favorably biased just because I'm the author. If anything I'd expect an author to be disappointed more often than not, because most real-world covers can't approach the perfection of the mental cover that exists in the author's mind. But this cover is the exception to that rule. This cover makes me want to rewrite the book (again) to make sure the story is worthy of it.

This cover rocks!

I want to thwack my mole inside Blooming Tree Press for making me so anxious about the design. "It's brown and looks like it's been stained with ink and coffee," she said. "And there's a big black stripe down the middle." I was imagining an abused paper bag held together with duct tape! I'm so glad for the accidental blog posting that gave me one less thing to worry about. Hopefully the final version will be done soon and unveiled to the world.

Royale: adj. 1. According to Quentin Tarantino, what they call things in France because they use the Metric System; 2. A wacky casino where crazy spy stuff happens.

I have been so looking forward to the remake of the 1967 James Bond film, Casino Royale. I know the original will be hard to top, but that's what they said about Thunderball (1965) being remade as Never Say Never Again (1983) with much improved underwater cinematography and a new scene in which Sean Connery takes out an enemy assassin with a cup of his own urine. There have always been humorous flashes like that in the Bond franchise, especially during the Roger Moore years, but Casino Royale reigns supreme as the ultimate James Bond comedy.

When I first encountered the genius opus of Casino Royale, it met me fully on my own comedic level. I was ten years old and watching Saturday Afternoon Theater on TV. My memories of the movie are fuzzy but pleasant. I remember some kind of spaceship, that somebody had swallowed a nuclear device that made them hiccup little clouds of radioactivity, and that for some reason there was a trained seal on the set. To confuse the enemy, all British agents had been given the 007 designation, and the climactic battle turned into a slapstick romp like you might have seen on The Benny Hill Show.

I don't think I've ever laughed so hard, but that's not surprising. The movie was based on a novel by Ian Flemming, the man who gave us Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Plus it starred Peter "Inspector Clouseau" Sellers, David "Also Appeared in The Pink Panther" Niven, Orson "Sell No Wine Before Its Time" Welles, and Woody "Love His Earlier, Funnier Stuff" Allen as 007's nephew, Jimmy Bond.

For months I've avoided all trailers, commercials, and news articles about the new adaptation, wanting to be completely surprised. I assume they've chosen a hilarious actor to portray James Bond and an all-star cast of comics to back him up. Ben Stiller, perhaps? Robin Williams? Billy Crystal? I have no idea, but I'll be at the theater when the movie opens today, ready to laugh until my eyeballs bleed.

Search-and-Replace: n. 1. A computer tool that will turn all your wrong words into wronger ones.

Search-and-Replace is not your friend. Search-and-Replace won't lend you twenty dollars until payday, or bail you out of jail, or help you jump your car battery. Search-and-Replace is a remote-control sledgehammer that will demolish your documents from the inside out while you remain oblivious.

Under deadline pressure, the temptation will arise to trust Search-and-Replace despite the fact that Search-and-Replace has no brain. Do not under any circumstances make Search-and-Replace the final step in your writing or editing process, or you might end up with something like this...

Example #1: The Error of the Day Calendar

Imagine the chaos of putting together a fact-a-day desktop calendar for a historic sports franchise in a multicultural world. Some of your reference materials refer to African-American players, some of your reference materials refer to black players, and some of your reference materials refer to the Negro Leagues of the early 20th Century. Your need to select one term, for the sake of consistency and political correctness, and change all other instances to match. This seems like a job for Search-and-Replace...doesn't it?

Witness the New York Yankees Desktop Calendar entry for August 2, 2006:

Throughout the 1999 regular season and postseason, the Yankees wore a African-American number 5 on their left sleeve in memory of Yankees great Joe DiMaggio. For the final month of the regular season and throughout the postseason, they also wore a African-American armband in memory of New York's former pitching great "Catfish" Hunter.

The thing is, DiMaggio was Sicilian and Hunter was as pasty-white as they come. Even if "black" and "African-American" were interchangable when it came to text, articles of clothing, or people, we can see here that Search-and-Replace isn't even smart enough to change "a" to "an" before a vowel. An African-American armband does sound cool, admittedly, and it really would be fun to see an African-American number 5 on a baseball uniform (but the character from Cartoon Network's Codename: Kids Next Door probably wasn't what the 1999 Yankees had in mind).

Example #2: The Queen Bee is Not Amused

Reuters, the international wire service, has an office in London, England. Sometimes they do an article or two about the hereditary monarch of that nation. There's a filter in place, somewhere in the system, to make sure that references to "the queen" are changed to "Queen Elizabeth" so that no one will be confused about exactly which queen is meant. It saves reporters having to think by allowing Search-and-Replace to think for them. Except that we've already established that Search-and-Replace has no brain...

From a recent article about decoding the honeybee genome:

They have a highly evolved social structure of tens of thousands of workers commanded by Queen Elizabeth.... Queen Elizabeth has 10 times the lifespan of workers and lays 2,000 eggs a day.

Oops!

Example #3: The Cupertino Effect

Let's say you're the United Nations, an international group of governments organized to coordinate peacekeeping, economic development, and human rights causes around the world. Your organization is all about collaboration among governments, so your official documents are filled with instances of the word "collaboration."

The trouble is, your word processor has a curious issue that crops up when "collaboration" is misspelled. Usually it asks, "Did you mean to type Cupertino?" And as an overworked diplomat or civil servant, who are you to argue when a word processor thinks that harmonious action is a city in California? The error is compounded when you click "Change All," the insideous disguise worn by Search-and-Replace within the spelling and grammar-check module.

So you might get a report like this:

The Cupertino with our Italian comrades proved to be very fruitful. The fact that Secretary General Robertson is going to join this session gives you already an idea of how close and co-ordinated this Cupertino is. Services are being addressed using WHO RB funds in Cupertino with the Red Cross Society of Sierra Leone. Co-ordination with the World Bank Transport and Trade Facilitation Programme shall be conducted through regular review mechanisms and direct Cupertino, but a consistent and efficient tax reform approach would make international Cupertino even easier.

With so much Cupertino going on, it's amazing they find the time to ever get anything done.

Jack o' Penguin: 1. A strange visitor sitting outside my front door. 2. He's spooooooky! 3. Rumor has it he's recently been under the knife.

Giant-Sized: adj. 1. Enormous, 2. Stupendous, 3. Larger than life, 4. Really, really big

Happy 137th birthday, Cardiff Giant!

P.T. Barnum used to say that there's a sucker born every minute. On October 16th 1869, some of those suckers uncovered the fossilized remains of a gigantic man in Cardiff, New York. More suckers flocked to the site for the privilege of plunking down fifty cents (about $6.60 in today's money) for a chance to peer at the Cardiff Giant from behind a fence.

The next suckers to come along were a group of businessmen who paid $37,500 (about $495,000 in today's money) to purchase the giant and transport it to Syracuse. That's when P.T. Barnum himself entered the picture, offering $60,000 (about $792,000 in today's money) to lease the giant for a three-month exhibition in New York City. The Syracuse businessmen, suckers that they were, turned Barnum down in hopes of getting a better offer. Instead, Barnum left town and built his own Cardiff Giant out of plaster--which soon became a whole lot more popular and profitable than the "original."

Today, the "genuine" Cardiff Giant (revealed as a hoax perpetrated by a man named George Hull) is on display at the Farmer's Market in Cooperstown, New York. At a Hall of Fame ceremony this year, the Cardiff Giant denied ever having taken steroids. Barnum's giant is located outside Detroit at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, and has become an avowed Tigers fan.

Bear farming: n. 1. Not exactly the safest thing to do if you're looking for a pail of fresh milk; 2. Nevertheless, a real industry in China

Picture a gentle herd of bears, grazing in a field. Twice a day, Farmer Joe comes by to fill their troughs with a fresh supply of "pic-a-nic baskets" for those who are smarter than average and jars of "hunny" for those with heads that might as well be stuffed with fluff. Each fall, Farmer Joe brings his best bear to the state fair in hopes to win a blue ribbon. And on market days there are delicious bear steaks on the grill and tall glasses of bear milk all around.

Nah, just kidding. According to this article, the bear farms only harvest bile for use in traditional Chinese medicines. Bear farming began in the 1980s and since then the bear bile market has gone through the roof.

Which leaves just one question unanswered...

Who was the genius, 3000 years ago, who harvested and drank history's first dose of wild bear bile just in case it might cure his sniffles?

Spaceblog: n. 1. Just a plain old everyday ordinary weblog...in space!!! 2. Just another day orbiting the Earth...while blogging!!! 3. You got your space travel in my obsessive web journal; no, you got your obsessive web journal in my space travel; and hey, it's delicious!!!

Let's face facts: In 2006, blogging is no longer cool -- if it ever was. Sure there are lots of cool blogs, and lots of cool bloggers, but at the end of the day they all suffer from the same tired old premise of chronicling some aspect of life on Earth. Except perhaps Captain Picard's blog, but that's another story.

Now comes a blog written by an astronaut from orbit--a spaceblog! More accurately she's a space tourist, but come on! In my mind, everyone up there is rightly considered an astronaut/cosmonaut/tychonaut.

Iranian-American Anousheh Ansari, history's first female space tourist, arrived at the International Space Station last week and seems to have brought a laptop with her -- or at least I assume so. Otherwise it could get kind of awkward to fight for spaceblogging time with other station residents conducting microgravity experiments and maintaining the life support systems. Ansari has also brought a ham radio, which would be just the thing for terrestrial bloggers to also consider in case of a web outage.

I've not read any of Ansari's blog entries yet because, upon discovering her groundbreaking (skybreaking?) site, my instinct was to blog first and read later. This, I believe, makes me an excellent candidate for future spaceblogging duties. I imagine one of my own spaceblog entries would look something like this:

HOLY COW, I'M IN SPAAAAACE!!!!
57 minutes past the hour on Tuesday the 12th or Wednesday the 13th, depending on where that International Date Line is at...

Woke up late again today--not my fault because my alarm clock keeps floating away. Is it too much to ask that somebody manufacture a travel alarm with velcro fastening? Hello, Patent Office? One "obvious idea" application form, please.

Weather today looks a bit stormy--in the Caribbean, at least. Just look at those cloud formations! Glad I'm safe and dry up here. Clear skies over most of Europe, though. How nice!

Drank a blob of juice and ate a tube of eggs, then I showered and answered some emails. Aunt Ginny wanted to know why I didn't visit her yesterday afternoon even though I was in the neighborhood. I told her that 20 miles away "straight up" is not generally considered "in the neighborhood" by normal standards. She said she understood and did appreciate the e-card I sent with the caption, "Greetings from directly over your house!"

Not much doing for the rest of the day. Maybe some writing. Maybe some X-box. I'd like to go outside, but training for the EVA spacesuit would have been an extra $500,000. It seemed like a scam when I signed on for the tour, but I'm wishing now that I'd sprung for the whole package and a moon landing too!

http://spaceblog.xprize.org/

Office Warming: n. (cf. Office-warming, adj.) 1. A controversial theory that gaseous byproducts of office work cause an increase in office temperature by reflecting the rays from fluorescent light fixtures back into the office atmosphere; 2. Office Warming is blamed for deforestation of office carpeting, the unnatural migration of office wildlife, and the melting of polar ice cubes in the office refrigerator; 3. An office-warming party is a means of controlling the problem by inviting a group of cool people into the office to offset the temperature increase in compliance with the Kyoto Protocols.

I got a "new" car this month -- new to me, anyway -- and what better way to break in a vehicle than with a road trip to Brooklyn? was happy to comply by moving the Firebrand Literary offices there and scheduling an office-warming party around my purchase. (That's my over-inflated sense of self-importance talking, and I'm sticking with it.)

Firebrand's new neighborhood is nicer and more townhousey than my preconceived notions of Brooklyn, which were formed entirely by watching episodes of "Welcome Back, Kotter" as a child. Arriving in Park Slope, I immediately encountered a much higher class of street litter than I'd ever expected. Specifically: an empty bag of Firey Habanero Doritos. Dori and I saw these chips advertised once, a couple months ago, and ever since I've been rushing straight to the snack aisle of every supermarket, convenience store, and pharmacy I go into, hoping to snag some. It's become a quest, like King Arthur and the Holy Grail, or Chevy Chase and the Wallyworld Amusement Park in National Lampoon's Vacation. Until yesterday, the elusive chips had proven to be as mythical as a unicorn but, like a unicorn's spoor, the empty bag provided irrefutable evidence and a trail that led to a local market where the magical chip bags grazed in a serene meadow by a reflecting pool. I dragged as many bags as I could carry to the counter, where the clerk gushed, "You like those chips too? They're the best, aren't they? Soooo spicy and soooo good!"

The chips alone would have been worth an 8-hour round trip to Brooklyn, so the Firebrand office-warming party was a bonus. Plus I got to hand-deliver a "new" manuscript -- new to Nadia, anyway -- and get a sneak peek at the upcoming Firebrand website redesign (Get prepared to be impressed!). I finally got my Firebrand Literary binder, which is now sitting proudly on my shelf with several thumbstains of Firey Habanero Doritos, and party swag included a button I can wear to let other authors know how much their books suck in comparison to mine!

The party at Union Hall was a lot of fun. My old schoolmate was there and is still in need of an eye patch to complete her look (private joke: don't ask). Also present were Caren Johnson, , Lauren Barnholdt, , , , , and a whole bunch of other people including a non-Firebrand agent who disclosured that co-workers have dubbed her f**k***t for her adroit handling of the office watercooler. (The stars in f**k***t are due to the solemn oath that everyone present took not to reveal her nickname on our blogs. You'll just have to use your own overactive imagination to make an educated guess.)

Hopefully the new office has been sufficiently warmed.

Piracy: n. 1. Theft on the open seas; 2. A good excuse to crack open a cask of rum, mateys!

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day so here goes...

Ahoy, mateys! Any of ye landlubbers have a bittorent address for the latest Mission Impossible movie? I'll swing ye from the yard-arm if'n you don't hand over an unregistered copy of Adobe Illustrator. And ye won't be needing those pieces of eight or MP3s down in Davey Jones's locker, neither. Yarrr! Avast! Shiver me timbers, warez off the starboard bow!

Whew, that's hard work. Thank goodness this holiday only comes once a year. Now I'm off to vote in the Massachusetts state primary elections. They make it so easy...I just cast a vote against the candidates who sent the most offensive campaign material.

A pox be upon ye, Bruce Desmond, candidate for Clerk of Courts for Middlesex County, for sending your campaign literature in an envelope marked "OFFICIAL BUSINESS -- JURY DUTY NOTICE ENCLOSED". By Neptune's beard, you'll not have my vote!

134340: n. 1. In Roman mythology, the god who ruled an underworld realm typically reached by contracting with a ferryman named 136720 to cross the river 135992 and sneak past a three-headed dog named 140243; 2. The ninth planet in our solar system, no matter what anyone else says.

I feel bad for the former-planet formerly known as Pluto. First it got snubbed by planet-inspired composer Gustav Holst. Then the world's astronomical community let a eleven-year-old girl name it after Mickey Mouse's dog. A Schoolhosue Rock song forever tagged Pluto as "the farthest planet from the sun" even though it was clearly eighth of nine from 1979 to 1999. Earlier this year a bizarre new definition stripped Pluto of its planet status, and now comes the final insult:

They've given our beloved ice-ball a number in place of its name!

This will not stand. If we allow the MPC to treat Pluto '340 with such disrespect, where will it stop? How much longer before we're forced to refer to Saturn as "146356" and Earth as "153454"? What pnemonic device will help children remember the structure of our solar system when they've reduced it all to a series of bar codes?

I predict a backlash of planetary proportions. Sign the Pluto Petition today!

Stingray: n. 1. A vicious killing machine capable of spearing three or four people at a time on the end of its horrific barbed tail; 2. The only creature worthy of battling Chuck Norris, a team of ninjas, or a highly-trained Crocodile Hunter.

When I first heard that Australian naturalist Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin had been killed by a stingray, I assumed that he'd been run over by a classic car. I couldn't imagine that he'd been done in by a fish. This guy wrestled fifteen-foot crocs before breakfast each morning but couldn't defend himself against the dreaded "kitten of the sea"?

My wife and I saw stingrays on our honeymoon. We swam with them. We have it on video. They'd rub against our legs for attention and we were told that it was safe to pet them with our bare hands--their skin is silky smooth, by the way. Stingrays do have poisonous stingers but sting humans only incidentally and usually without harm. Fatalities are extremely rare and almost always the result of an allergic reaction to the stingray toxin--which really isn't their fault, is it?

To be impaled through the heart by the stinger, as Irwin apparently was, is a one-in-a-billion fluke that may have never happened to anyone else in the long history of human/stingray interaction. It's like that heart-injection scene in Pulp Fiction--the one that made you say riiiiight, suuuuure, as if that could really happen--only with a stingray instead of John Travolta.

I've had conversations about the Crocodile Hunter with Australians, who all seemed bemused and slightly embarrassed by the way Irwin would exaggerate the dangers of various animals and overdramatize his encounters with them. Irwin was a showman first, a self-promoter second, and an environmentalist as perhaps a distant third or fourth--but you always had to grant him bonus points for energy, genuine enthusiasm, and self-deprecating humor. Crikey, he was fun to watch! And so much the better if he drew attention to the plight of rare animals and habitats in need of conservation.

I never watched his show, yet I knew him on sight or by voice just from talk shows and commercials. Irwin was one of those rare soundbyte-friendly individuals who could impose himself on the consciousness after just a minute or two. He was a fun-personality in a world where there are far too few fun-personalities and far too many outrageous-behavior types.

Our world needs more Steve Irwins and fewer Brittany Spearses, Mel Gibsons, and Tom Cruises.