I am reading Titus Groan, an eccentric 20th century masterpiece by Mervyn Peake. It is full of words I do not know.

abactina: As far as I can determine, the side of a radiate animal (like a sea urchin) opposite from the mouth. I think he uses it to mean something that’s been swallowed, that’s gone.
daedal: As one would expect, complex and ingeniously designed.
equipoise: Again rather self-evident; equilibrium.
hanger: A copse of trees on a steep slope.
monody: An ode sung or spoken by one person.
raddle: To mark as if with red ocher (also spelled ruddle).

screak: Meaning obvious, but interesting that it’s in the dictionary; screech, creak, shriek.
spilth: The act of spilling, amount or substance spilled.
tares: Weedy plants of the vetch family, or, by extension, an unwelcome element.

triturate: To crush, pulverize.
wodge: Bulky mass or chunk.

I started this tabulation rather late in the game, so it’s quite incomplete, but rather long even so! Seldom do I learn so many words from one author! (And more seldom, to be honest, do I actually look up the word, rather than using roots and context and moving on.)

I am beginning to wonder whether 25 is quite so young as my friends insist; or whether, perhaps, spending time by yourself in a consistent and internally sane world is very detrimental to your ability to cope with fools and insanity.

Every time I try to drive anywhere of late, I witness or suffer a potentially perilous situation caused solely by someone’s idiocy. Today, I had barely driven out of my apartment complex when it happened. I was waiting for a green light in a left-turn yield lane. The light turned green, and rather than proceeding straight or turning right, the gigantic grey SUV across the way did…nothing. I oonched out and considered whether I should just turn across her and risk tickets or smithereenification. There was no sign of eye contact beyond the smoky windshield, no indication of the well-meaning ‘generosity’ some people like to demonstrate by fouling up the entire traffic system. She just sat. Finally, she began to move forward, and as she passed me and the cars queued behind her began to file on their way, I could not help but give her a curious glance.

Perched in her gigantic autobeast, directing several tons of lethal Detroit steel around the burg, this woman was actually…wait for it…using her laptop. It was sitting in her lap, still absorbing at least half of her attention as she drove across the intersection.

I ask you, world, is there more folly than in previous months? Or have I, insulated in a nest of books, crafts, phone calls and teapots, become more sensitive to it? Must I, at 25, be a Curmudgeon? And does this mean that well before 40 I shall be an Old Bat?

It’s my last week before my first application to grad school is due. I have two essays still to write, and my manuscript (writing sample) is making the rounds of my immediate family, gathering comments. I should really stop reading things like message forums full of other MFA applicants/students.

Things I’m worried about:

1. Most people are already worrying about whether they got in. Is this just because I’m applying low-residency and they’re not, so they have different deadlines? Or do all serious applicants beat the deadline by two to three weeks? Is my application, screeching in a day before the deadline, going to be viewed with disdain?

2. I have never attended a workshop or seminar on writing outside of undergrad. Will my lack of an academic career post-UG brand me as a dilettante?

3. People talk about reader’s fatigue, and not wanting to make the readers cross by sending them TWO stories which total up to one page over the page limit. What? I am sending two short stories AND two very short stories. It says ‘25 pages’, and I took that seriously! ‘Reader’s fatigue’? Damn!

4. I have to write a personal essay that answers about five questions. Is this supposed to be narrative, cohesive, amusing? Will they find my personality charming if I infuse it, or do they want some sort of formal artistic screed? How the heck am I supposed to divine their intentions?

5. I have to write a critical essay, about anything I’ve ever read, but which has to address issues of being a writer, my own writing, writing craft, et cetera. So not only do I have to narrow the field from ‘everything I’ve ever read’, but I have to decide whose writing I should analyze in order to say something about MINE.

I have read these message boards, and I have looked up other information online, but at the end of the day, I feel like an outsider. There are intangibles at work here, unwritten rules of academia, and I guess I have no choice but to ignore them. I’ll follow the directions, do my best, and then hope and pray.

At least I seem to have a better grade-point than the average forum-poster….

Today I am a quarter of a century old. I’m so old that the eighties were still newish when I was born. I’m so old that I remember four different presidents. I’m so old that I remember Audi not belonging to Volkswagen. OLD, I tell you! OLD!

Now get off my lawn, I have to go check for grey hairs!

Hey, financial institutions! I know you think it’s swell that you can use the Intarneb to interact with your customers. Heck, I think it’s swell, too. However, I understand you have a problem with the phishing. There is, after all, one born every minute, and phishers play on our hopes (Free stuff! New card services!) and our fears (Unauthorized expenditures! Security alerts!) to try to make sure that each and every one of us out here on the fabulous Intertron is, in fact, that sucker.

Some of us are nearly obscenely paranoid about this phishing thing, and on behalf of we few, we nervous few, we band of URL-checkers, I would like to make a request.

STOP USING MULTIPLE FRAKKING DOMAIN NAMES.

You heard me. You managed to register XYZbank.com AND XYZbanklovesyou.com AND XYZbankservices.com? Jolly good! Now slam a redirect on those puppies and never let me see them again. Because the more URLs your actual official website has, the more confusing it is to your customers, and the more likely it is that they’ll think XYZbankishawt.com is actually their financial institution’s web page. If you’re a big happy bank, you don’t need to flash your domain names to prove it to me. Just treasure them close to you. Lock your righteous domain names in a server closet instead of shouting them on the street corners like Phariseebank.com. Calligraph them on soft paper and pass them out at board meetings for use as toilet paper. I don’t care, just as long as I don’t see them any more. CHOOSE AN OFFICIAL DOMAIN AND STICK WITH IT. Thank you.

Inspired by my bibliophilic friend Miss Thursday, I have decided to keep track of the books I finish for the first time each month. Hopefully, this will inspire me to actually finish books, instead of beginning a thousand in a whirl of words and never finishing them.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Discovered: On the guest bedroom nightstand of a family friend
About it: Genre-stuffed as a mystery, this is more of a book about Africa and about creating identity, profession and lifestyle for yourself, which happens to be about a private detective. The main character is a very wise lady founding a detective agency in Botswana.
If it were food: A soothing cup of tea (probably rooibos)

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Discovered: Shadowing the teacher of a Historical Fiction elective at OES
About it: A historical novel in the form of the rough and rustic memoir of real 19th century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. Sometimes bleak, sometimes funny; the story of the first and second generation of poor Irish settlers in Australia.
If it were food: Mutton stew made from rustled sheep.
Quote: “They arrived in broken cart & drays they was of that type THE BENALLA ENSIGN named the most frightful class of people they couldnt afford to leave their cows & pigs but they done so because we was them and they was us and we had showed the world what convict blood could do. We proved there were no taint we was of true bone blood and beauty born.”

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
Discovered: Lent by wonko
About it: I’m not sure it’s fair for Coupland to pick so many squirming thoughts, impressions and experiences directly from my brain and pin them to his pages, especially as he is writing about a different generation of geeks from mine. This book is a rambling, musing journal written by a codemonkey tired of the grind at Microsoft in the early 90’s. I guess if I had to say what it is about, I’d say it’s about technology, isolation, the creation of self and family, intellectual and cultural evolution, and change. So, basically, everything.
If it were a food: A Nerd Rope, except the licorice rope is actually something terribly good for you camouflaged with rainbow Nerd candies.
Quote: “I stared at an entire screen full of these words and they dissolved and lost meaning, the way words do when you repeat them over and over — the way anything loses meaning when context is removed — the way we can quickly enter the world of the immaterial using the simplest of devices, like multiplication.”

It occurs to me that I haven’t updated ye olde blogge about my work situation since I was sent off into the wilderness by my last employer.

Well, after a lot of soul-searching, bitterness at the workaday world, and consultation with my family, I have ended up deciding to apply to grad school. The application deadlines are fast approaching, and getting into a school is pretty much my job at present. I’m applying to low-residency MFA Creative Writing programs, so every day is a struggle to believe in myself and the quality of my writing. My sister has been an amazing source of strength, support and ego-stroking. If all goes well, I will work on my grad degree from home for two or three years (varies by program) and continue to work from home on my writing after that.

Now just be dears and cross your fingers for me. wanders away muttering, “I AM a good writer, I AM a good writer”

One of my mission statements back when I started this crazy thing was to remind my distant friends to be glad that I’m all the way across the country from them. Today I thought I’d pursue that mission statement with a very random series of thoughts.

I know I’m not the only girl in the world who is so addicted to changing her hair that she wishes she could just press a button and have an entirely new hairstyle every single morning. One of the most frustrating parts about the syndrome is missing your long hair when your hair is short — and for me, at least, the big thing I miss is braids. I don’t miss brushing it out or conditioning it or my mom complaining about the long hairs clogging up the vacuum (let me tell you, it’s hard to argue with the blame assignment when everyone else has a maximum of five inches on top.)

I miss braids. Little braids swinging in amongst the rest of the mane, big heavy braids to mess with while you’re thinking, twin braids to make you feel six years old and full of mischief. Even now, with that lovely ‘new hairstyle’ feeling in my tousled head, I can’t watch Xena without noticing braids on either the W.P. or the annoying blonde and feeling just a bit wistful.

And of course, the cream of the crop, French braids. I remember when French braiding was a coveted commodity. A few moms, mostly moms with gigantic broods of girls, could French braid, and the rest of us would peer covetously at their daughters’ beautifully woven tresses. As you got older, some girls learned, and you might come home from a slumber party with a gorgeous, slightly aching braid; or a disappointing, lopsided one¹. At some point, my father studied a picture and reverse-engineered the French braid. Then, for special occasions, I could sit down in a kitchen chair under good light and have my hair operated on. He used two combs and a rattail, and your hair was taut as a drum when he was done. It took hours, but you could sleep on those babies for days and they’d still look pretty keen.

Then, of course, I finally taught myself — years after my first frustrating attempts on the rebellious hair-substitute of Samantha Parkington — spurred on by the reflection that a French braid was as close as a time-starved college girl on a Halloween budget was going to get to Carrie Fisher’s hair in the Hutt Leia costume. (It may have been improvised and ragtag, but that was one of the best Halloween costumes I’ve ever had…and to those three or four people who didn’t know who I was? When you die and Yoda’s Force ghost says ”’Hated all that nerd stuff’ did you?”, I’ll be the high soprano singing ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ from behind the Pearly Airlock. Or, if I’m not dead yet, I’m sure some other geek will be there for me — but I don’t know the pitch of his or her voice, sorry².) The only problem with French braids is that, when you’re in your twenties, you can’t wear them to work or people talk all day about how you look like you’re fifteen. Or maybe that’s just me.

What’s the point? Was there one? Well, I guess it was just to say: if you have long hair, appreciate the simple joy of braiding, of shaping, creating, and controlling that often rebellious medium. Because for every one of you loving your braids, there’s a gal (or guy) with a short haircut, however stylish, who’s thinking wistfully of those long, smooth plaits of yesteryear.

¹ Unless you went to a slumber party with a certain flower-named friend of mine. Then your hair would neither ache NOR disappoint. She could even make two French braids that TURNED INTO one French braid. MAGIC.

² I don’t hate non-geeks. I’ve just never trusted them, and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of Captain Kirk’s son.

I get annoyed at the strangest things, but I maintain that, as a linguaphile and degreed English nitpicker, I have every right to care minutely about language.

If you shop for groceries, you cannot help but know that everybody in Hollywood is pregnant, just delivered, or is thinking about getting pregnant. Everyone. I fully expect to hear next that Colin Ferrell passed out one night and woke up pregnant the next morning. Everyone’s pregnant. However, somewhere around Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy, women stopped ‘showing’ and ‘looking very pregnant’, and their enlarged abdomens ceased being ‘bellies’. They are, apparently, ‘bumps’.

Whose idea was this, and why is it now the premier pregnancy nomenclature? Does anyone else find it vaguely repellant that Star X is ‘seen in public sporting a bump’ in the same way that she might sport a Gucci handbag? Even apart from the clear implication that a pregnancy is just the hottest Hollywood accessory trend, the word is not attractive. Bumps make me think of traffic calming measures, poorly surfaced roads, and being jostled in line. They don’t make me think of new life in any way, shape and or form.

Obviously, I am only the Word Police in my own mind, but this lazy, objectifying and ugly choice of words annoys me constantly, and I know I am not the only one. You are free to think I’m crazy, but as I am the girl who dreamt last night that David Boreanaz was teaching her ballroom dancing but refused to tell her the names of the steps, I think that’s a foregone conclusion.

There was a small island in a blue sea. It was a pleasant place, if austere, and the trees grew tall. The people were not so tall, but were merry and busy, and loved their home. Many of the men were fishermen, and the women made beautiful things from wood and cloth and bone. So things had been for many years.

But there came a time when the women would pause in their work at dusk and wait with full hearts for the returning footsteps of their fathers and husbands and brothers; for even fair weather could no longer guarantee their safe return. Pirates from a nearby island had infested the waters, and the men’s catch filled the pirates’ holds while the fishermen were sent below the waves, their blood spreading in the blue sea.

Now, the best boatbuilder in town was named Nikolaos, and his son, Mihalis, was a clever young man. He watched the boats go out in fear to win food for their families and for market, and watched fewer boats return. He shut himself in his room for a week, and when he emerged he addressed the town. “These evil men will never let us alone again,” said Mihalis, “unless we can defend ourselves, our home, and our boats. They will become more bold until they have taken everything we have.” The people murmured sad agreement.

“But how are we to defend ourselves?” said one fisherman. “We have spears, and they avail us nothing! One fishing boat cannot prevail against the pirates, and we cannot fish any closer than we already do — already the catch suffers.”

“We must build a ship,” said Mihalis, and held aloft the drawing he had made in his days of solitude. It was a beautiful thing, sleek like an arrow and raising high sails to catch the wind.

“Can we really make such a thing?” said the men of the village, full of doubt, but Nikolaos stood.

“I believe we can make this ship,” he said, “and I believe in my son.”

Nikolaos went high into the hills to find the tallest, stoutest trees. The sailmaker labored long with all his relatives to make the vast sails of the craft. The smith sacrificed two dozen spears and fishhooks to the forge to bronze the ramming beak of the ship. The carpenter, his sons, Mihalis, and Nikolaos worked without ceasing on the ship, and many others who had never before worked wood came forward eager to learn and help. Men went with great coated baskets to the pits of tar, and built catapults to launch it at their enemies and flame them into ruin. The woodcarving women of the village planed and joined, and Mihalis’s sister Sofia painted upon her side the name she had chosen: Dolphin.

When she was done, the village looked upon her in awe, and every man who could be spared from fishing hastened aboard to unfurl her sails and set her lovely form speeding through the water. Mihalis knew her best, had drawn every line of her swift hull and designed her tall sails, and so he captained her. How she flew over the blue sea in the sun! How the pirates, on their way to harry the fishing fleet, scattered, flamed, and broke upon her beak! And when the day’s danger was past, the ship sang on through the water, ‘til all the sailors laughed at the sheer joy of her speed.

Below, the Sea God stirred from his work and looked upon the ship. He liked the men of the village, for there was not one among them who failed to release his largest and best fish to carry the message of his reverence back to his Lord’s ears. He stared up at the swiftly moving ship, and sent his dolphins to race alongside it and remind the men that even they were not so fast as his folk.

The dolphins returned, laughing in disbelief. “He outdolphined us,” they reported, and the Lord of the Waves frowned. He sent for the swiftest of his nereids, and sent her to try her speed against the ship, but she came swimming back, pouting her defeat. At last, his anger swelling, he went himself, he who moves as the water does, and failed to match the speed of the windborne Dolphin.

Then all his friendship for the people of the village melted away, and he hovered north of the island, his rage creating bergs and ice floes despite the summer sun. When the Dolphin came to port that night, her sailors were greeted with flowers, fried fish, and smiles by the people of the town. It was then that the Sea God lashed out, and sent a great gout of water smashing against the base of the island, so that it shuddered.

The people cried out in fear, dropped their feasting dishes, and held on to the shifting earth, while the boats in the harbor bobbed wildly like seabirds on tempest waves. “What is happening?” they cried out, and no one could answer them but the priest Kyriakos.

The old man shook his head as he read the portents. “We have angered the Deep God,” said he, “and he will destroy our island if we do not give him what he wants.”

“How angered? What does he want?” cried the folk, and the priest answered:

“We have built a ship too swift for his liking, and he demands the ship and the man who designed it be brought to him…to be buried beneath the waves.”

Mihalis stared upon the priest, but there was no doubting his words. In a daze, he walked home, while the wise men of the village gathered to discuss what was to be done.

Sofia met him there, and studied his face. “You are going?” she said.

“What other choice do I have?”

“You could wait for the elders to discuss it…”

“There is nothing to discuss, and I would rather go myself than let those good old men feel they had ordered me to my death.” And he kissed his sister, and told her what to tell his father, and stole down to the docks where the Dolphin was moored.

Only the man who had designed her could have single-handedly cast off and guided the great xebec from her harbor. Even so, it was a slow and laborious journey. Mihalis looked out across the sullen sea and set his course towards the source of the gleaming ice. The Dolphin, slow now and stately as she nosed her way through the dangerous floes, moved silently as night fell. The stars and moon appeared, and Mihalis felt he moved through a dream, the star-studded night and the ice-studded sea one darkness about him. At last, a sound roused him and he looked upon the wrath of the Sea God, a great vortex in the water, darker than the darkness, and gnashing its teeth of ice in hatred. Mihalis shuddered, but he set the Dolphin’s sails to catch the failing breeze and bear him to their common grave.

The sound rose around him even as the current caught at the smooth hull of the ship — a roar and a crashing, a ravening sound with an eddy of cruel laughter beneath. The world began to move with him, around and around the still point at the center of the vortex, the point where dark air and dark water met to form one true darkness. His skin was wet and cold and the Dolphin’s timbers groaned.

Then all was still; the vortex itself paused, and the water gelled as sleek as the ice. Mihalis wondered if this was death, one moment which never moved rather than the end of all moments. After a time, however, the water moved again. It roiled under him, moving again, rushing in on the hollow of the whirlpool, buoying the ship and lifting her back up, up to the stars. Mihalis found himself staring across a calm sea at a host of small boats.

“Sofia,” he said as he saw his sister in the nearest boat with the priest Kyriakos. “What has happened?”

“We came to tell the Deep God he could not have you…not alone. We would rather give ourselves up than let our champion, our brother, be killed for our cowardice.” And Mihalis saw that every man and woman in the village was gathered, manning the oars of the fishing boats. They smiled gravely up at him as he stood at the prow of their ship.

“How could you do this? And more, why did he relent?”

“He said that if men and women could be greater of heart than a god,” Sofia smiled, “it was only fair that they should also be fleeter.”

And together the village folk journeyed back to their island on a breeze that rose as if called to fill their sails. Never again would they be easy prey for man or unfairly toyed with by the gods; and it was for the ship that they made with Mihalis, not for the slim creatures playing in its shallows, that the island was ever after called Dolphin Island.