Friend Pimping

So I haven't done this before, but I figure I ought to start. One of the members of my writing group has a new story up on The Edge of Propinquity, and it's a really good read. So follow the link and read "The End of Memory" by Amanda A. Gannon.

I just finished reading another superhero book, and it has left me pretty energized to get back to work on Hero Go Home. On the one hand, I think his is a lot better than mine in a lot of ways. On the other hand, mine is trying to accomplish different things, and I think I'll have enough coolness in there to satisfy most readers. The coolest thing is, his book is giving me ideas I can use in mine without making me feel like I'm stealing, because unless you knew which parts of mine were inspired by his, you wouldn't know. It's going to be that different.

Here's the big secret about writing that good writers know, and wanna-be writers don't: Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything. Give two really good writers the same idea, and they're likely to write two completely different stories. The idea has to filter through each person's unique mind and voice and experiences and interests. Each writer will have a different goal and a different approach to character and dialogue. Some writers plan carefully and rewrite extensively; others just sit and let it flow.

Which is not to brag that I'm a really good writer, but I am pretty good one, good enough to have learned this lesson, anyway. So I can steal shamelessly from Sargon, and no one will ever know but me and him, and maybe just me.

Then again, I can come up with stuff completely independently and look as if I'm stealing. Example: his book has a superhero who is embarrassed by his real name and goes by his superhero name, which is often shortened to Van. My book has a superhero who is embarrassed by her real name and goes by her superhero name, which is usually shortened to Val. Looks like a total rip-off, but it's not.

Anyway, the point is, I'm excited again. And go read Amanda's story. Not thrilled with the 'zine's name, but the story is really good.

Writing the Funny

So I'm at this book signing for a few friends, which turns into almost an unofficial second OSFW meeting for the month (we'd had the official meeting the night before). And somebody brings up the fact that the writing in the group seems to be taking a funnier turn lately (I believe the term used was "arms race").

And I felt kind of put on the spot, because I'm the most prominent among the "funny" writers, I think.

Which is to say, I'm not the only funny writer: Sargon the Terrible, K.D. Wentworth, and M.T. Reiten have all presented side-splittingly funny stories over the past couple of years, and that's not even counting the flood of humor that has poured out of the annual Christmas fragment contests.

But I'm the only one who seems to be almost exclusively funny, which is odd, because for most of my life, I've been a pretty serious writer. I wrote action or suspense with only occasional touches of humor (at least intentionally). I tried to be funny in person (often tried too hard, as a matter of fact), but even when I thought to myself that I ought to try channeling that humor into writing, it seemed that all my good ideas were serious ones.

It wasn't until I began writing Blue Falcon that I seemed to break through the seriousness barrier, and even Blue Falcon ended up being mostly dead serious with light-hearted moments. The first four pieces I presented at OSFW meetings were:

Prologue to Blue Falcon - funny opening to funny/serious book

Opening to Cybersorcery - scene from sci-fi action screenplay - the overall story is serious, but this scene happened to have humorous moments and a funny punchline - Christmas fragment

"Skins" - serious science fiction short story

"Frame By Frame" - horror short story (novella?)

So about fifty-fifty serious to comedy ratio. Since then, the things I've read have been:

"The Night They Raided Pulinsky's" - supposed to be funny-ish, but mainly, just bad

"Out of His League" - superhero comedy

First three chapters of Flip - comedy suspense novel that's stalled at about the 2/3 mark

"Deep Shit" - military sci-fi comedy

"Astromonkeys!" - more superhero comedy

"White Rose" - kung fu action - Christmas fragment

"Haunted" - Horror comedy - summer fragment/flash contest

"Double-Secret Weapon" - even more superhero comedy

"Shell" - science-fiction, starts out funny, ends up serious

"Fischer's Wild Goose" - light-hearted suspense - an extended car chase

"Timestorm" - sci-fi comedy - Christmas fragment

Another funny story that I cannot name here

First two chapters of Hero Go Home - superhero comedy novel

So out of the last thirteen things I've presented, all but maybe three were comedic in nature, and two of those two had funny moments.

Now, this isn't all I've written, although it is most of it. But the other, more serious stories, like "Pushing," and "Wolf in the Fold," and "Lurking Beneath Red Blossoms," I haven't read publicly. Some members of the club have seen them on our critique list, but I haven't presented them to the group at large.

I know why I do it this way. I am very insecure about my writing at the best of times, but especially when I'm trying to be serious. If I'm going to be laughed at, it might as well be on purpose. And let's face it, I love the attention and the positive feedback.

And I think it's making me a better writer. I've needed to write the humor to get excited about writing again. That list above represents the greatest creative output I've had since my years at the Oklahoman in the mid-Eighties. In the last three-four years, I've written substantial amounts of three novels (one of which I may actually finish), and something like fifteen or sixteen short stories, plus other fragments that may yet get fleshed out. I'm not super-prolific, but compared to my past, I'm really churning stuff out.

But now I'm seeing that, yeah, I've been turning the writer's group into sort of an entertainment venue, and that might sour the mood for more serious, contemplative work. If I decide to do something about that, I've got basically two choices: stop reading so much, or write more serious stuff. But it's hard to force a serious story if a funny story wants to come out.

So I should probably stop reading for a while. I need to buckle down and finish Hero Go Home anyway, so the shorts will probably get put on hold for a bit. We'll see.

Full Metal Alchemist

So I've been wanting to write about this for a while, but it's been hard. So here goes.

Toonami kicks ass.

There, I said it. Saturday night on Cartoon Network has become appointment viewing for me in almost the same way that Thursday nights on NBC was twenty years ago. I like Naruto, I like One Piece, I love Justice League Unlimited. I even like Zatch Bell. And then, an hour after the Toonami block has ended, comes my current favorite Japanese show, Fullmetal Alchemist.

Here's the deal with anime in general: a lot of it is crap. And even the stuff that's good is, like, formulaic good usually. It's very striking visually, often doing dynamic things with layout and moving cameras (part of the striking look of the Matrix films is the attempt to recreate an anime look in live-action, with the time-shifting and the camera swirling around the characters, going from wide-shot to extreme close-up and back out to wide shot in one take).

But the thing you figure out if you watch a lot of this stuff, as I have, is that a lot of those things that originally drew you, that amazing audacious visual invention, is actually pretty ordinary. The bold artistic splashes - the crescendo of sound followed by a silent pause at the climactic moment, the split screens, the calm, quiet characters who can explode into sudden, stylized violence - these things are commonplace, even cliched. And if you can get past the "ooh-aah" factor and really look at the story, you realize that most Japanese writers are as bad as Americans. For all the hype about Japanese story sophistication, for the most part, it's not better, just mediocre in a different way.

And then there's Fullmetal Alchemist. Like most shows, the early episodes are a mixed bag, combining clumsy humor with rip-roaring magical action. But once the deeper storyline gets going, this becomes one of the best animated shows I've ever seen. There's no easy way to summarize the show, but it revolves around two brothers who study alchemy in a fantasy world. Their alchemy is different from that of our world, but it revolves around a single law, the Law of Equivalent Exchange, which is the magical equivalent of the Laws of Conservation of Mass and Energy. The brothers want to reverse a ghastly mistake they made when they were younger, a mistake that has left both of them scarred in unique ways. Along the way, they are drawn into conspiracies and political intrigues that will change the course of their nation and perhaps the world.

The show has the usual Japanese eyecandy - gorgeous production values, appealing character design. And like a lot of other shows, it has a huge story arc with an epic feel, punctuated by kick-ass action sequences. But unlike most shows, it plays on several levels at once, combining profound philosophical and ethical questions with complex character development and intricate political maneuvers. There are few shows that can excite me, touch me, viscerally creep me out, and get me thinking about the big questions, all in one episode. This one does, with very few missteps.

I only wish they would put out an affordable all-in-one boxed set. There are 51 half-hour episodes, which equates to 25 1/2 hours. That's one season of Lost. If they put out a boxed set of Fullmetal for the same price, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

More Grumbles About Advertising

I know that life's too short to get all worked up about little stuff and yada-yada-yada, but since I've started a trend complaining about the copy on fast food wrappers here and here, I might as well do one more.

We were at Burger King last night, where they're still using old tray liners from the launch of Chicken Fries. And the gist of the thing is to make a game out of eating your fried chicken bits by, you know, nibbling them like a carrot or eating them with your pinky extended like some society matron.

And they've got one idea under the heading "Professional." And this is what it says:

Self explanatory. Don't use your
hands. We know it's hard for
finger food stuff. Get creative.
Tip 'em back like a drink. Or
maybe use chopsticks.

See what bugs me? If you can't, read it again and see if there's anything a little, well, idiotic about that statement, besides the fact that Burger King doesn't have chopsticks.

Okay, here's the thing. They open the description with "Self explanatory," and then go on for five freaking sentences explaining this thing that doesn't need to be explained. And the kicker? The reason they had to explain "self explanatory" is that "Don't use your hands" is not the first thing that jumps to mind when you read the word "Professional." So it's most certainly not "self explanatory."

Duh.

Okay, I feel better. But only slightly, because now we move from fast food to TV, where I must sadly inform you that UPN has decided to dub their hit reality series "America's Next Top Model" a dramality series.

What is dramality, you ask (assuming you're able to pronounce it - it does not trip easily off the tongue)? I ask, as well.

I know that one complaint about "reality" series like "Survivor" is that they are not real, in a very basic sense. They take a carefully selected group of people, place them into an engineered situation and painstakingly edit the resulting footage to create a compelling storyline. So in that sense, you could say dramality is a show that engineers drama out of unscripted material.

But then, there are also the dark rumors that "Survivor" cheats. They restage challenges with stunt doubles in order to get more dramatic camera angles, they cut backroom deals with favored contestants, they even arrange a call-in contest so that one of their most popular players (though far from the best) gets his own million. I've even heard a story that at least one player's ouster was set up by the crew off-camera. I'll give details if anyone comments wanting to know.

In short, could dramality be a tacit confession that, if nothing interesting is happening on the show, then the producers will engineer something? Could, say, Shandi's illicit Italian hot tub romp on "America's Next Top Model" (and all the ensuing long-distance drama with her boyfriend back home) have been set up by the producers just to wring some interesting TV out of her agony? Is that what dramality really means?

It's possible.

Plate o' Shrimp

So I'm freaking out yesterday about all the authors I'm sharing web space with in the new e-zine, and this morning when I check my email, I've gotten a comment from one of the writers I mentioned, specifically Elizabeth Bear. I felt a little odd that one of them had actually witnessed my little geek fit, but it's cool.

Then I visit my friend Matt's LJ blog; he has a bunch of writer friends, so I tend to read their blogs through his friend list. And I'm reading Jay Lake's entries from last night, and he's talking about guess who left and right?

That's right.

According to Jay Lake, she's, like, one of the smartest, coolest women on the planet right now. But in one of those strange serendipitous timings that I'm constantly encountering, he chose last night to wax rhapsodic over Ms. Bear, so that I would read it today, right after she contacted me from out of the blue (and of course, why did she contact me? Because she got a Google Alert that someone had used her name - which means that she's probably also reading this right now!!!).

Brrr... It gives me one of those shivers you get when you're watching TV late at night, and they're demonstrating backward masking or EVP, where you hear the ghost voices on the tape, and your skin draws up in goosebumps as one side of your brain screams, That is so weird! and the other side screams, That is so cool!

Okay, I'm done.

Wow

So I finally get my first look at the e-ARC (advance reader's copy) of Jim Baen's Universe, and there's my story, "Astromonkeys!," in the Table of Contents.

Now get this: I share this Table of Contents with Alan Dean Foster, Gregory Benford, David Drake, Elizabeth Bear, John Barnes, Gene Wolfe, Bob Shaw (whose name you may not know, but who wrote one of my favorite short stories of all time), Mark Twain (yes, that one), David Brin, John Ringo, and Eric Flint. I mean, holy crap. Holy. Freaking. Crap!

Now granted, I haven't really read all of these authors, but I've read several of them and heard of all of them, and I am just amazed that I'm published alongside them. It freaks me out that I might, just might, possibly, run into Gene Wolfe some day and have him say, "Oh you're the guy that wrote that monkey story. I loved that story."

Yeah, I know, probably never happen, but what if? I'm freaking myself out.

Man, I need to start writing again. I've been on a break for too long.

Anticipation or Avoidance?

So I've been trying since November to write the end of Act 2 of Hero Go Home, and I realized I wanted to do more scene-setting for the big climax to the act. So now I've got a bunch of scenes lightly sketched in which build toward the climactic confrontation.

On the one hand, I think it's necessary for the story to have a certain amount of build-up. It's like foreplay; a certain amount of teasing works well. I think one of the better passages of Blue Falcon is the long build-up to war at the end of Act 1, climaxing in Colonel So's rousing speech and the soldiers shouting "Victory" in unison. The book as a whole embarrasses me a little more with every passing month, but I still think parts of it are really good.

On the other hand, it strikes me that I'm spending so much time on the build-up because I'm a little hesitant, if not downright afraid, to write the actual climax. It's a complicated scene with a bunch of characters and a load of action, and my mind just seems to shut down every time I contemplate starting it. Maybe a part of me thinks that if I spend enough pages setting all the dominoes up, that they'll fall that much faster when I finally tip one, but I worry that the other part is just using the dominoes as an excuse, the way my daughter suddenly finds vitally important things to do right at bedtime.

Then again, as I began writing the first of the build-up scenes, I found the characters really breathing in a way that they never did when I was rushing through, trying to keep up NaNoWriMo pace. So it's not as if I'm not getting anything valuable out of it.

In other news, I experienced a couple of cool personal milestones. I got invited to a NeoPro online writers group, which made me feel really good. Of course, now that I've joined, I feel a little like an imposter, a kid being asked to sit at the grown-ups' table. I'm not sure I take the whole writing game as seriously as most of these guys. But I'll stick it out for a while, at least; I must admit, the discussion there is on a whole other level than most of what I was reading on Baen's Bar.

The other thing is, I got invited to my first Con as a guest. Granted, it's Conestoga, put together mainly by folks in my writing group. Last year, I was about the only member who wasn't an invited guest. But it's another signpost to me that I'm making legitimate progress and not just spinning my wheels the way I did for for the fifteen or so years before I joined OSFW.

I've always thought my stuff was good, but lots of people delude themselves. I've seen lots of people who thought they were awesomely talented while they produced pure crap, if they actually produced anything at all. And I've always had this secret fear that I could be one of them (I still do, actually - I've never been good with the characters and the themes and the substance that makes the witty lines and funny turns of phrase worth reading - Sargon, feel free to slap me anytime). So it's awfully gratifying when someone else comes out and says I'm doing good work.

Now I've just got to do some more actual writing to pay off on that.

Christian Jihad

You, know, I don't want to harp on this, but I'm a little surprised* at how entrenched the attitude I mentioned in my last post is. What brings it up again is a story I read in the online slush for Baen's Universe. Without going into too much detail, the story features a character who is a cross between Jerry Falwell and Rev. Don Wildmon, who is protesting a particularly violent TV show. When he is supplied with military weapons, his followers not only attack the remote island on which the TV show is taped, but also begin randomly attacking abortion clinics and homosexual-rights groups.

This is at least the second story I've read in past months in which Christian rightists (and more specifically, American Christian rightists) take up arms against a world of sinners in order to impose their own moral views by force. And what's more depressing than the assumptions implicit in the stories (and though both authors denied that the stories represented their personal views, the denials seemed disingenuous - I can write a story about elves without believing in magic, but can I seriously argue that my story about lazy, stupid blacks who prefer slavery to freedom doesn't represent my personal views in any way?) is the lack of protest from anyone else on the boards. There were plenty of criticisms of this point or that point, but none about the stereotyping of Christian conservatives as being one step away from worldwide jihad.

Am I just crazy? Look, I think it's silly and ignorant to believe in the six-day Creation, the worldwide Flood or the Virgin Birth. But I think people who believe that we're just a Supreme Court appointment away from outlawing abortions, legalizing homosexual murder and reinstituting slavery are just as silly and ignorant (and they're out there, apparently in large numbers and supported by famous names). It's a hateful caricature, and I'm getting tired of it.

*to which a friend of mine would reply, "I'm only surprised that you're surprised"

To the Alarmists About the Christian Right

You know, I left the whole Christianity thing behind long ago. And I'm not one of those milquetoast agnostics who says, you know, even though I don't go to church, I kind of believe in Christianity in a general sense. I don't. I'm an atheist. I don't want the Ten Commandments hanging on the wall of the courthouse, I'm not a fan of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, and I don't want to see the blue laws enforced.

Having said that, for the American liberals who piss and moan that the Christian Right is the greatest threat to freedom in the modern world, you cannot seriously argue that the Christian Right would do anything like this. So count your blessings.

Could this thing keep escalating? Could the civilized world survive something as barbaric and shocking as 9/11, only to go to the mattresses over cartoons?

Another Dose of Irony

Am I the only person who watched the Stones' Super Bowl halftime show, in which 62-year-old Mick Jagger sang (among other songs) "Satisfaction," and thought of his famous quote, "I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm 45"?

Truth in Advertising

So this dude who works with me came in with an Arby's cup, and on the cup, it talks about how they only use 100% chicken, not chicken containing significant percentages of water and phosphates.

No, that would be their roast beef. (scroll down to read ingredients list for "Roast Beef")

Digger Goes Electronic

So I decided to make a new character in City of Heroes, and I thought, "Why not see if I can make Digger?" As it turns out, not so much.

The look, I think I got pretty close on. I don't have a scan of one of my later Digger drawings, after the character had evolved a bit, but here's an early one that has most of the major elements: two-tone blue shirt, tan pants, boots (with wacky fringe that I later decided to replace with Captain America-style buccaneer flaps), blasters on the arms. Ignore the other characters in the drawing. They're character concepts for a super-group I was trying to put together, but they were generally silly and went nowhere (except for that yellow-and-red arm on the left - keep an eye out for him, because you may run into him sometime later if Hero Go Home ever gets published).

And now, the City of Heroes version (pardon the dark colors):

As you can see, I kept the two-tone shirt, although I reversed the colors (not sure which way I like best). They didn't have the straight break across the torso that I liked so much (another design element lifted from Captain America - Kirby was a genius), so I made do. For the blasters, I used the same gloves I used with my first 'toon, Metatronic, with more metallic colors. The boots look pretty good, although I'm not thrilled with the color - something about their browns doesn't translate well to the character.

Of course, I couldn't even come close on the powerset. Two of Digger's most basic powers - digging tunnels and clinging to walls - do not exist in the City of Heroes repertoire. And the powers don't mix-and-match, so you've got to select groups of powers that come close to what you want. I built him once as a Scrapper, with super-fast reflexes. But the closest I could come to a main attack power was claws, which just... no. So now I've rebuilt him as a Tanker, nearly invulnerable, with energy punches, which fit the Driller Beam Generator concept more closely, although he doesn't get any knockback :( Oh well...

As far as the real Digger's adventures, I finally wrote a scene that I'd been afraid to write since late November, so I'm that will get the book back on track. I want to finish the first draft by the end of February; that's my goal.

"I'm the bad guy?"

Mom-in-Law rented Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron last night for The Girl, who luuuvs cartoons as much as her old man. I had seen the trailers in the theater, but had never been especially tempted to see the movie. It looked like a typical Hollywood multi-culti/environmentalist preachflick, ala Pocahontas or Brother Bear or Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Nature good, people bad; white people really bad, Native Americans not so much. But it's what was on last night, so I watched it.

Made it through about twenty minutes. The animals didn't talk, but the horses would whinny while making faces that looked as if they were talking. It was weird. And then, of course, it got into the main story.

Spirit meets people. People are bad. They enslave horses. The cowboys try to catch Spirit, but he leads them on a merry chase, and just when he thinks he's beaten them, they rope him and drag him away. Then they take him to the most evil place on Earth: an American cavalry fort. The soldiers try to break him, but they can't. Nor can they break the spirit of the good-hearted Lakota they've captured. The Lakota saves Spirit from being shot by the American commander, and together the two make a daring escape.

So to recap: Horses good. People bad. White people worse. White American military people worst of all. Nogoodniks, the lot of 'em.

Yeah, okay. Got better things to do with my time. Thanks for playing.

I Need a New Plan

I just found out that I have an extra five days' worth of vacation this year. Apparently, you get a third week in your fifth year. Odd to think that I'm approaching my mid-forties and this is the first company I've worked five consecutive years for (other than the Army, which doesn't really count).

Onthe one hand, this is cool news, but on the other hand, I wasn't able to spend ten days last year. What makes me think I'll be able to spend fifteen this year?

My first thought was that I might try to hit more conventions this year. It sounds like a good way to spend a few long weekends, schmoozing with other writers and editors. But conventions can be expensive, especially if I'm not an invited guest, so I don't know how much of that I can afford to do.

Then again, I could just take the entire thing in one big lump during the summer, but then I'd just end up going to movies or shopping and spending tons of money, and things would just fall apart at work while I was gone.

I could take a summer's worth of three day weekends. It would be like having a holiday every week. But the problem with that plan is that The Wife would find ways to fill my free time until it didn't really feel like a vacation at all. And how awful would it be when the vacation time ran out and I had to work full weeks again?

Strange Dream

I had a dream last night that I was so eager for the next month's OSFW meeting that I showed up at the locale for the next meeting on the next night (in other words, I pulled up to the house and realized I was 30 days early - the previous meeting had been the night before, not the month before). I sat there in the driveway, thinking how stupid I was, then I backed out, forgetting that this person's house (which was not any of the actual houses I've been to) sat on a tall hill with a steep drop-off on the other side of a narrow lane.

Next thing I knew, my car was rolling backwards out of control down a steep slope that was almost a cliff, until it finally smashed onto the street. I think I woke up about the moment that I actually hit, or maybe just before.

Modern World, Shifting Memory

I had a strange experience today. I was thinking about somebody I met at a convention years ago, with whom I briefly stayed in touch. I'm talking late 80's here, back when I still lived in OKC and wrote for the Daily Oklahoman. And as I thought about her, I had this memory of her e-mailing me. Now keep in mind, this was years before I knew what e-mail even was. I got my start on-line in the early 90's, and even then, there was no e-mail, only BBS's. I used to hang out on a FIDONET BBS in Tulsa called Shadowland, I think, as well as a couple of others. But I was in touch with this person at least three years before that. I don't remember if we snail-mailed or talked on the phone, but I know for a fact that there was no e-mail, even though I vaguely remember it. Funny how memory works.

Glad I'm not being asked to testify before a committee about this, because they'd definitely charge me with something.

Cool Conestoga News and Guilt

I found out last night that Conestoga here in Tulsa is going to be an official Baen's Universe event. I had hoped, considering David Drake is the GOH, but now Baen's has confirmed it, which is cool. It will be fun to meet some of the people I only know through the Baen's Bar Webboard and e-mail.

I'm feeling a bit guilty about my flip comment concerning M.T. Reiten's stack of rejections. Fact is, he's doing what I wish I were brave and disciplined enough to do: write a lot and submit continuously. I write sporadically, and only recently have begun to submit with any regularity, and even then, I went several months last year without any stories in circulation at all (except for some contest entries trapped in limbo). It's all too easy for me to start a project, hit a snag and let it wither on the vine (see Flip), or to give up on a story after a few, or even a single, rejection. I think I'm getting better, but the only reason I don't have as big a stack of rejections as Matt is that I haven't had the drive to write, the discipline to research markets, or the bravery to submit, that he has. So there.

Quick Turnaround

"Shell" got a super-quick rejection from F&SF. 11 days round-trip by snail mail. It was a John Joseph Adams and not a Gordon Van Gelder (a grading scale introduced to me by M.T. Reiten, who has collected quite a few of his own rejections from them), which means it didn't make the cut to get passed up to the big guy. However, the wording is slightly more encouraging than the first rejection I got from them, so I'm slowly making progress. Maybe in another couple of stories, I can, like Matt, start getting GVG rejections rather than JJA's (which is a small, sad ambition, I know, and yet I've learned to grasp any tiny indication of progress and cherish it as I try to work my way into this business).

In other news, I heard a story on the news the other night about a local highway crash that sounded pretty Darwin-worthy, except that nobody had actually died yet. A woman was in critical condition after being ejected from a vehicle that overturned. The vehicle in question was being driven by the woman's boyfriend and overturned after it tried to pass the vehicle in front of it... on the shoulder... in a CONSTRUCTION ZONE. I've been trying to find a link to the story to see if in fact the overturned vehicle was a pick-up truck, but so far, I have not succeeded.

Of Course

So I mentioned a while back in this post that I expected I might never sell "Frame by Frame," because I just couldn't find a suitable market. I got to thinking, what I really needed was a horror/suspense anthology with a movie theme. Lo and behold. So I've now got a submission in to them. What delicious irony if I were to sell it now, just after whining that I might never be able to. Wouldn't that just put me in my place?

C'mon fate, put me in my place, already.

Is My Face Red

Well, not super red. Turns out the Product Key for the media center PC was on a sticker on the case all the time. But in my defense, it was toward the back of the case, hidden in the recesses of the entertainment center, and the 25-digit code was in like 5 point type, incredibly tiny. And then, once I finished entering the 25 characters, I had to call a toll-free number and read like 45 numbers into an automated system, and then enter another 45-ish numbers back into the computer. Oof. But it finally works again, so I can watch digital cable. Still can't record, but that's coming.