Poor kitty

Sad news
Mood:  down
Topic: My boring life
My beloved cat Tommy passed away yesterday. He was 15.

Husk vs. husky
Mood:  irritated
Maybe I'm just really old school, but I'm very annoyed by fan fiction writers who misuse the word "husk". A husk is

1. The outer membranous or green envelope of some fruits or seeds, as that of a walnut or an ear of corn.
2. A shell or outer covering, especially when considered worthless.
3. A framework serving as a support.

None of this fits the usual misuse, ie, "'Oh my darling', she husked."

Nope.

What these writers probably mean is husky, as in:

1. Hoarse or rough in quality: a voice husky with emotion.

Both definitions from The American Heritage? Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright ? 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Yes, I'm picking nits again, and I'm quite sure I've misused words before and shall do so in the future. But this is just driving me crazy!

The irritated bard,
JS Stephens

Not blogging much, am I?
Topic: Random musings
Nope, haven't blogged in about a month. If anyone is reading this blog, I am sorry, but real life keeps intruding. I try to snag a few minutes to write new stories, but by the time the muse starts whispering, one of the cats interrupts, or my gf wants me to look at something, or I look up and see it's very late. Humph.

I do have a few stories I've been kicking around for a few years, but they all bogged down in the middle. Maybe I should do something crazy and start at the end and work backwards. Who the heck knows?

JS Stephens

Tank tops
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Random musings
I have to get this off my chest (no pun intended). Why in the world has the term "wifebeater" or "wife-beater" become an acceptable substitute for a tank top or athletic shirt? I even started seeing it crop up in lesbian fiction, which bothers me greatly. If the term is derived from the stereotyped man wearing an athletic shirt while beating his wife, why should this become a popular term for this type of shirt? And why the hell should it be considered a description of a sexy undershirt worn by a hot lesbian?

Call me old-fashioned, but this trend sucks.

JS, who likes to wear TANK TOPS or A-shirts (as she heard it called in her youth) while riding her bicycle...

Did I really write that stuff?
Topic: My fiction
I've gone back to some of my fictions and decided that I am not the world' best writer. I cringed at some of the things in "After the Arrows", where I got off track. The story itself was fine, I still like the idea of Xena teaching Joxer some sword skills, and him actually saving someone's life. I also like how I let him fall in love with another woman. It just had some bad transitions.

Sometimes I think I should go back and rewrite some of the stuff, sometimes I think I should just blow it off.

iTunes and random computer musings
Mood:  cool
Topic: Computer musings
I did some upgrades to my computer today, including a new data hard drive (the ones with my ripped-from-legally-purchased-cds- hard drive died), and that went ok. Next, I opened iTunes to start re-ripping aforementioned legally purchased cd's, and I got a message to update. No problem.

Um, problem.

Every time I tried to rip a cd, I would get a disk access error message. If I clicked ok, it would go away and leave me alone, and let me rip the mp3s properly. So, several hours later, I had just about 10 cd's ripped. Well, I was distracted, I'd bought the 10th anniversary Xena collection and was watching that on my little DVD player while doing all this.

Then, I decided to burn an MP3 disk to play in my truck. Problem. It wouldn't recognize the cd in the drive. I then thought to myself, "Self, when has this happened before?" And self answered, "When you needed a firmware upgrade for your dvd/cd burner. Silly."

So, I googled my brand/model of burner, found the firmware upgrade, and went about the business of updating it. This time, iTunes happily burned my cd of mp3s without a hitch.

Hooray!

JS Stephens

Oops
Mood:  lazy
Topic: Random musings
Looks like I haven't blogged here in quite some time.

Xenafiction.net seems to partly be down, but you can still get to my stuff directly here.

The Patriot act passed. Crap.

I really haven't thought about writing lately. I've been busy, my parents recently celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, which meant a big party. Pretty nice, actually. My partner started a new job, so there's the "I have many weeks of vacation time now and you have none" dilemna.

I really should blog here more often, but my creativity these days is sucked away by the mundane stuff of life.

JS Stephens

Patriot Act
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Random musings
If you want to see a really good collection of posts and links about the Patriot Act, go to bespacific.com. Here's a link to the Patriot Act category.

Censorship
Mood:  sad
Topic: Random musings
Maybe not truly censorship, but YA author Julie Anne Peters reports in her blog that a high school student was beaten up for doing a report on Julie's book, Keeping You a Secret, a lesbian love story.

That just sucks. This is like libraries being forced to hide gay/lesbian/bi/trans/etc. books behind locked cabinets so kids won't get ideas. Heaven forbid that we actually let people read what they need to read! Anyway, how this is censorship in my mind is that the others censored the girl for daring to attempt to open their minds about l/b/g/t issues. That just sucks.

JS Stephens