Happy December (But Don't Please Don't Mention The C Word)

Happy December, everyone. November's over. No more Hulles birthdays. No more disturbingly quiet Thanksgivings. No more NaNoWriMoFos in my coffee shop taking up space.

You have to suspect that thousands of would-be novelists around the world are saying to themselves right about now, “What the hell was I thinking? November's finally done and I have a screaming headache, a bladder infection, and 50,000 words of insipid drivel. Next November I'm renting a million monkeys and a million typewriters and they can meet my verbiage quotas and get bladder infections.” Little do they know the ASPCA did away with the million monkeys thing years ago, plus you just can't rent good typewriters anymore. Hands up among you children out there who knows what an IBM Selectric is. Anyone?

Not everyone is uniformly glad that November is over, however. I speak of the sharp increase in the suicide rate among editors at publishing houses that always occurs in December. I guess they need to be made of sterner stuff. Perhaps they need to stiffen up the curriculum for English majors by devoting a semester to reading random cat blogs.

Speaking of publishing, my pal Anne Frasier just sent her latest manuscript off. Congratulations, Anne! If you aren't Anne and haven't read her books, you can find them listed on her blog static. They're suspense/thrillers, perfect for Minnesota winters, so read 'em and creep. Dang, I like that.

December First was Hilary Hahn's 27th birthday. If you don't recognize the name, she's a wonderful violinist (see sidebar) and I talk about her all the time. Happy birthday, Hilary. I didn't get you a present this year except for my continuing adoration.

In other trivial news, the astute reader might notice that I changed the format of the blog links slightly. With the addition of NYC Balderdash, whose blog can be very funny and whose blog you better not like more than mine, I decided that it is misleading to call the list “Blogs I Watch,” since I can no longer read all of them every day (and half of them half as much as they deserve) and get anything else done. I thought about dividing them into camps (the Minnesota Blogs, the NYC Blogs, the Writers, the Blogs Posted By Totally Hot Brazilian Women, The Just Plain Funny Blogs, etc. etc.) but some blogs fall into more than one camp so I gave it up for a bad idea. If I get around to it, though, it would be fun to summarize what the linked blogs are about on the sidebar somewhere.

And finally, I note with pride that my female friend (see NYCB's take on what this means) Shelly said I was a good hugger the other day. Damn straight I am. The line forms to the right over there.....

All for now. I am so out of here.

-- Hulles