Me? A Dad?

Apropos of my last post, about people using the internet to share all manner of personal information, I'm thrilled to say that Fiona Helen O'Rourke arrived last week, on December 9, 2009.

She and Jenna are doing well, as am I. Fiona came in weighing 8 pounds 13 ounces, and unfortunately for her, it looks like she may have gotten her feet from her father (I wear a size 15).

In my estimation, Jenna and I have averaged about four hours of sleep a night for the past week. I'm fairly delirious at this point, so I hope this post makes the least bit of sense.

Now I know what it feels like to be a Muslim detainee at Gitmo, being woken up every couple of hours.

In terms of this blog, well, I won't be posting with much frequency for the foreseeable future, for obvious reasons. I hope you all can forgive me, and by "all," I mean: Seana Graham, Nate Green, Marco, Adrian McKinty, Nicklas Hughes, Rita Vetere, and any lurkers (?) that might be out there, including dear old Dad. But I wanted to thank you for taking the time to read my otherwise inane ramblings and comment on same.

A bientot.

I've Been Tagged

Those of you who know me well know I don't like to talk about myself. Perhaps that's why I sometimes struggle to come up with material for this blog. Today I am going to write about myself a little bit, but I have a good excuse: I was tagged to do this 4X4 meme by the notorious Seana Graham. I've tweaked it a little bit as you'll see.

Four golf courses I'd like to play:

1. Augusta

2. Pebble Beach

3. Pine Valley

4. TPC Sawgrass

My four favorite Westerns are:

1. The Searchers

2. Rio Bravo

3a. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

3b. Once Upon a Time in the West

4. Unforgiven

PS - When will we see a revival of this genre? I hope soon. It is one of America's greatest contributions to the cinema.

Four books that I recommend to friends, family, and strangers:

1. Dead I Well May Be

2. The Shadow of the Wind

3. Noble House

4. Bernard Cornwell's take on Arthurian Legend

Four reasons why The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie ever made:

1. George Lucas didn't direct it.

2. George Lucas didn't write the screenplay.

3. No Ewoks, Jar Jar Binks, or bad dialogue.

4. "No, I am your father."

Four languages I studied in high school:

1. English (yeah, it counts)

2. French

3. Latin

4. Greek

And no, I don't really remember any French, Latin, or Greek, and even English is a struggle these days.

Four stories I want to write before I die:

1. Screenplay for a biopic on Caravaggio

2. Sci-fi western set on Mars

3. A book that makes money

4. Screenplay for a sequel to this year's Star Trek

Four people I'm tagging to do this as well

1. Jenna O'Rourke

2. Nate Green

3. Nicklas Hughes

4. Matt Damon

Writer's Blog

Warning: This post contains elements of self-indulgence, so if you're easily offended by this, stop reading now.

I have writer's blog. I was so excited when I thought up this term during my car ride this evening, thinking I had coined a clever if somewhat obvious phrase, but apparently, it's a common enough term to have found its way into the unholy of unholies, the urban dictionary.

For the last couple of weeks, I've had trouble coming up with things to blog about. I have only one rule when blogging: write about whatever I want so long as it isn't self-indulgent, look how great I am/woe is me crap. So I know I've hit rock bottom when I break the one rule I've set for myself.

How do bloggers combat this fairly common occurrence?

Some of my favorite bloggers have an overarching theme to their blog. My good friend, Nate Green, explores the nuances and oddities of language in fiction and in marketing in his blog, 500 Words on Words. Peter Rozovsky somehow manages to be prolific and accessibly esoteric with his wonderful blog, Detectives Beyond Borders.

Speaking of prolific, Seana Graham manages four of her own blogs, each one with its one motif, while also being a frequent contributor to many other blogs.

On the other hand, Adrian McKinty blogs about the "psychopathology of everyday life," to steal his turn of phrase, which is a pretty big umbrella covering just about anything and everything.

So yeah, I may take a week or so off from the blog to recharge and think up something more intelligent than "writing about the practices of other bloggers." See you soon. I hope.

What's Romanian for "Great Story"?

The Carpathian Shadows Volume II is a collection of short stories set at Lord Erdely's Castle in Transylvania. A group of travelers, most of them strangers to one another, end up stranded at this "tourist trap" for a few nights. Each story in the collection offers a different point-of-view character, or set of characters.

Seana Graham wrote "The Scholar," a story that follows a textual scholar, his wife, and a Romanian friend/colleague on their outing to the castle. Ostensibly, the story is about the scholar, Howard Green, and his quest for information to further his research on the area. But as the story unfolds, Seana deftly spins a yarn that is both unpredictable and very enjoyable. Disguised as a horror story, "The Scholar" is every bit as much an exploration of love and marriage. I won't say more because I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

I have yet to read any of the other stories in the collection, but I do highly recommend it based solely on Seana's contribution. Seana takes everything that's good about old-fashioned storytelling and adds to it her own acute sense of observation when it comes to her protagonist, Howard:

"After all, unlike him, she was actually on vacation. Must be nice, he thought begrudgingly, conveniently forgetting that it was his project that had been the catalyst for this trip."

As many of you know, Seana is a prolific blogger, who is somehow able to manage four of her own blogs while still frequently contributing to many other blogs as well. She works for a bookseller at a large independent store in Santa Cruz, CA.

The Love of Language (More Blogs I Follow)

Many of you have figured out by now that Nate Green and I are pretty good friends. We go back longer than I care to admit. Nate's just started his own blog, 500 Words on Words, an exploration into all things language.

So far, Nate's already unleashed his first diatribe (of probably many), this one against the ridiculous, incorrect usage of the nominative case in a situation calling for the objective. I won't spoil it, but go check out his blog when you get a chance. You're in for a treat.

Just think: if you become a regular reader of his and Seana Graham's writings, your vocabulary will improve and you'll make fewer grammatical errors. Everybody wins.

Aside from being a language connoisseur, Nate plays the bagpipes, writes novels, and of course home brews.

You Too Can Improve Your Vocabulary (More Blogs I Follow)

Confessions of Ignorance is another gem of a blog. Its author, Seana Graham, took to heart what your English professors constantly harped on--if you don't know what a word means when you encounter it, look it up.

Seana is a bookseller in Santa Cruz, California and quite the prolific blogger. Not only does she manage four of her own blogs, but she is a frequent contributor to other blogs.

Some of her recent vocabularic explorations are: shibboleth, infamy, scintilla, paean, and synecdoche. Confessions always makes for interesting reading, because often when I think I know a word, I find out I don't quite have it. It's a shock to the literary system when you take the time to look up a familiar word and realize that you haven't always used it correctly.

Also, Seana's blog has reinforced the cold, hard truth that deriving meaning by "context" doesn't work all the time. It's no substitute for cracking the Webster's.