Five things kick off the squee

1: #SOTU: My president is a left-leaning pragmatist. I approve. Now to see if he can drag Congress with him or not [and how much violence he's willing to use to do it. I would approve of carefully-applied presidential violence, in this case].

2. Internet: Ur doin it Right: My congresscritter just used his e-mailing list to ask us to vote on the top three things we want him to focus on during the year. No trees were killed in the soliciting of these opinions.

3. Giving a certain publisher a deadline for a response is a pretty good way to get a "No." Then again, after 18 months of waiting, even a no is a relief of sorts. [yes, even multiply-published writers get rejected. The game is not rigged, just slightly biased]

4. Every day is a mix of bad news and good news, up moods and down. Any day you can end on an even note is a good one. I need to remember that when the bad stuff hits.
4a. Also, I have the best damn friends, even if too many of them live on the wrong damn side of the country.

5. Leverage. Oh, show. I ♥ you. "The first bomb is the hardest."
5a. I really wish story ideas would wait until after my show(s) to come knocking in my brain. Then again, jumpstarting ideas is the mark of Good Stuff, so kudos to them.


And here, your Thursday morning Leverage-squee kickoff:

( Awesome Maggie is still awesome... )

JD Salinger

On this day in 1986, we lost the crew --and the dream -- of Challenger.

Today we have lost J.D. Salinger, who has died at age 91 -- although some might say we lost him long before, to his own quirks and traumas. Loved or loathed, his work -- most famously Catcher in the Rye --changed the game in ways most writers only dream about.



(I loathed CitR, btw. Thought the writing was brilliant but so relentlessly negative and unlikeable that you took nothing away save a sense of grimy displeasure. I feel much the same way about Bret Easton Ellis, yes. Like HEAs, there's only so much dispirited self- and species-specific hatred I can handle before I go "enough already, I got it., thanks")

I'm a live-and-let-live woman, but sometimes....

EtA: from: @cnnbrk Kansas jury finds Scott Roeder guilty of killing of abortion doctor. http://bit.ly/catNSa

"Scott Roeder’s lawyers want jurors to consider his opposition to abortion as a valid motive for shooting George R. Tiller."

*stares*

Seriously: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29roeder.html

If this is considered an acceptable defense for shooting an unarmed man -- in a house of worship, no less, in front of his family, then I move that "s/he needed killing" be returned to common usage, along with "too stupid to live." And I'm buying a gun.

all wisdom, and most snark, is contained in the LJ overmind...

So I'm in the process of proofreading the Cosa Nostradamus stories that will be in the BookView Cafe collection prior to taking on the OMG Ack task of formatting it, and I thought maybe I should offer a something 'extra' for people who buy all five stories together, rather than individually. But what would be "value added?"

Damned if I know. So I figured, hey, why not ask the LJ Groupmind what they'd want?

[Poll #1518043]

Votes are for consultation purposes only and the winning votes will not be considered binding, although I'd be a moron to ignore an overwhelming majority, and I try not to be that stupid....