Chaos Attraction

Thank God It's Over

2003-12-07, 12:30 a.m.

After attending this bash, there are now photos! Unfortunately, not very GREAT photos, but oh well... I originally brought my camera to get shots of Jess's new hair because I knew she was going to do something funky with it, but I walked into the party and saw this and knew I'd have to uh, get at least a few other shots. Yay for the camera battery holding out!

We had fun in the car on the way over and back, mostly telling dirty jokes. I brought up that there was one joke that my dad and cousin Ron sniggered about a lot when I was a kid of six or seven or so, and kept repeating the code phrase of (I think it was "unga bunga" or something like that) to each other. I'd heard tons of dirty jokes being in this family by now and demanded that they tell me, but they wouldn't tell it to me until I was older. Of course, by the time I was older, they'd forgotten the joke, and I'd always wondered what it was. Well, Jess KNEW!

The joke: Three explorers get captured by a tribe, and are told they have two options: death, or "unga bunga." They naturally have no idea what unga bunga is, but figure it's gotta be better than death, so the first guy opts for the unga. The unga, as it turns out, is a big ol' buggering up the ass. He comes back crying and carrying on about the trauma of it all. The second guy is terrified, but still figures it's better than death, so he picks the unga bunga and also comes back traumatized.

The third guy figures he'd rather die than get that, and picks death. The tribe leader promptly says, "Death by unga bunga!"

Now I'm finally satisfied :) On the way back, Jess and Dave got into gaming talk, which was cool. We should all do D&D or something sometime when Dave's in town for a weekend.

As for the food conundrum, I'm glad I had Dave do the baking- we came in late and I dumped the cookies down and snagged a few, and towards the end I hear Judy saying she's taking the last of the cookies. Hey, something got eaten, yay!

It was very interesting for us writing gossip types. We were all supposed to bring a page from our novel, and most folks read from theirs. Mine ahem, got some interesting reactions, which was fun. I love getting to yak with other writer types, since I usually don't have friends who write (or to be tactful in one case, write well), and we went on about outlines or not, working on stuff, how long we'd been doing it, what they were about, stuff like that. One woman, Judy, has written Harlequins and other stuff and is getting her NaNo published in an e-book, and she told us all about the joys of publishing and how they insist on your having different names for everything, why the word count requirements are so uptight (they've got the books preprinted already sizewise), how paperbacks only get six months to sell before the covers are ripped off and the content shredded, OR the covers are ripped off and the rest of the book is sold as "damaged." Now I finally know why the covers are ripped off of the front of all of Grandma's books- I just thought she was weird. It was all very educational.

Then the conversation later went into books, mostly Stephen King and similar horror-ish stuff and how J.K. Rowling must really hate Harry Potter by now. I spent a while being a total dork and using my wireless Palm to track down this site for Richard and Jennifer, because you just sometimes have to spread the weird around to those who would appreciate it, and it looked like they would. Heh.

We got some free pen swag- there were NaNoWriMo 2003 pens and "magical pen of wonder" pens. The nametags were freaking awesome, I've got to tell you what they were. You were to fill in your name and your screen name, and also checklists where you checked off what you did. There was a different checklist per tag. I won't repeat the ones about genre and settings and beverages because well, you can figure what those were like, but the rest....

Checklist A: "My novel will have (a) busty ninja lesbians, (b) watermelon vendors, (c) feces flinging monkeys, (d) bongo-playing dust bunnies, (e) zombies with time machines, (f) irate velociraptors in tutus, (g) snuggly clowns, (h) ummmmm...."

Checklist B: "I plan to write: (a) 1,667 words/day, (b) 10,000 words each weekend, (c) 25,000 words on the first day and 25,000 words on the last day, (d) 2,000 words/day, take Thanksgiving off, (e) 50k in 1 marathon session, (f) whatever I can squeeze outta this brain o' mine."

Checklist C: "I will pad my word count with: (a) long dream sequences, (b) ninjas giving driving directions, (c) characters reading aloud from a VCR manual, (d) hourly prayers for all characters, (e) characters repeating themselves, (f) characters repeating themselves, (g) I don't need any stupid word count tricks!"

Checklist D: "I'm writing with: (a) my trusty PC laptop, (b) my trusty Mac laptop, (c) longhand, (d) my AlphaSmart/Dana, (e) napkins, coasters, post-its, whatever, (f) desktop computer at home/work, (g) typewriter, (h) dictation, (i) all in text messages from my cell phone."

Checklist E: "I'm doing NaNoWriMo: (a) to challenge myself, (b) on a dare, (c) everyone else is, (d) I'm a masochist, (e) I'm a sadist and I'm going to make others read it, (f) I'm unemployed, what else am I gonna do?, (g) I'm employed, what else am I gonna do at work? (h) trying to develop carpal tunnel."

I did feel funny bringing Dave along because I suspected he was much bored during the writing yapping, but he said afterwards he was kind of inspired to get around to doing writing himself. Which would be cool, eh?


As for the rest of the day, non-partywise, after I finished yesterday's entry, we went out so I could do my shopping. I had to pick up a white elephant gift for the work party on Wednesday, and found a great one- a $3 light up necklace from a foreign arts store. Even cheaper than if I had made it to the toy store I planned to get it at. I also picked up another present and as a present for myself, I found the monologue version of David Sedaris's Santaland Diaries and Seasons' Greetings. (I have always yearned to read the role of Jocelyn. I could so totally pull off the "I'm being perky even through murder and disaster" thing.) And I then stopped by the bead store, AGAIN, to go pick up stuff to work on Jess's Christmas present. I also found some really cute Christmas tree beads. I wish I'd gotten more of them, because I got another idea for a use for them once I got home. Ack, I'll have to return there soonish.

And speaking of beads...I read this thread today and felt very flattered and mushy. I plan on looking for beads to make certain things for folks after the holidays now, along with the tree beads. I'm already very excited, plus I got another idea for some pendants I already have. I actually wish I had time to make tree jewelry for auctions too, but given the postal situation I can't promise they'd make it on time. Waaaah.


And to answer the question we've all been wondering about... nope, the UPS guy did not come by at all on Saturday. Nobody was surprised. Oh well, at least Dave can actually drive by the UPS station there. Assuming they haven't just done something else evil to the packages.


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