Like the clouds of death that follow me into the Forest of Doom… And hide in the wardrobe of darkness!

Lil Sis has had me edit her papers since she started middle school. Now, in her third year of college, she still sends me her papers, usually with a "make me sound like an adult" request.

I don't mind doing this, I really don't. What I DO mind is Lil Sis's continuous disregard of my advice for making her future papers sound better.

....I admit that I occasionally get impatient and lose my temper.

 

I should have been an English teacher. 

More than anything else, Lil Sis continues to ignore my teachings regarding the passive voice.

Passive aggression is obnoxious. It can be just as obnoxious in grammar. I have tried explaining this to Lil Sis over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, but she pretends she doesn't understand what I try to teach her.

In high school, we had this English teacher we all despised because of her Passive Voice Policy. Basically, if you used more than 8 "to be" verbs* on a page, she wouldn't even grade your paper--she would hand it back with big red letters across the top saying REJECTED, and you would have to rewrite the whole thing if you wanted a passing grade. By the end of the year, we all wanted her dead.

This is the single greatest piece of writing instruction I have ever received.

We need to use "to be" verbs sometimes, but overuse of the passive voice negatively impacts the overall quality of one's writing. In my first edit of all my fiction projects, I go through the whole thing and try to replace any "to be" verbs I find with the active voice. I don't bother doing that here because I'm lazy.

Lil Bro#1 graduates from college this weekend. He goes to Houghton University, which is literally in the middle of freaking nowhere. The only places to stay nearby are tiny little inns or B&B's with only 6 rooms each. So we're staying at a campsite. 

When Dad informed me that he planned to squeeze 10 of us into one of these, I went out and purchased a tent. It's super fun, you just throw it on the ground and it pops up fully assembled.

*am, is, are, was, were, be, become, etc. So instead of saying "I was drinking the entire bottle of whiskey," you could say, "I drank the entire bottle of whiskey."

it's a crazy, crazy mixed up town

I've been blogging for five years guys, that's insane. I've never been that committed to anything in my life.

I feel like I've been trying to finish book 4 for five years as well, and yet it remains unfinished. It's finally moving again though.....

Y'all remember the band Live? They were big in the 1990's, and they are one of very few bands that have remained playing on my radio throughout the years while I picked up and discarded hundreds of other artists. Classic rock, classical music, grunge, punk, metal, back to classical music, back to metal, bluegrass, country--I still kept Live's albums mixed into my tapes, then later mix CD's, and now in itunes and Spotify playlists.

I never followed Live obsessively like I have done with a great many other bands, so funny enough it never occurred to me until a few months ago that Live has been one of my favourite bands ever for like 20 years. Curious as to what happened to them after they released The Distance to Here in 1999, I looked them up in the itunes store to see if they had released anything since then.

Which eventually led me to the singer, Ed Kowalczyk, and the music he's been making on his own. He left Live in 2009 and has released two solo albums and an EP.

He's making Christian rock now. Christian rock that sounds sort of like Live.

I don't mind Christian rock in church, but I've never really been a fan of the stuff some of my friends and family listen to. It sounds a little too campy to me, and a lot of it sounds all the same. (I don't count Wovenhand as existing alongside Christian rock bands because DEE's music defies categorization.) But now I've been banned from keeping Ed's albums playing at work because, as my boss says, "it's Jesus freak music."

It's weird, I feel like I've carried Ed's music around for most of my life, and then when I went to take a closer look at what he's doing now, he's in the same place I am.

A sign? I dunno about that. Just one of those little things that fits together so neatly, like what my hippie roommates used to call syncronicity.

I love my murder ballads and love me some ear splitting metal, but sometimes I also love blasting this stuff and PRAISING THE LORD




Mumsy and Lil Sis ridicule me relentlessly for this sort of thing. I get them back by praying loudly in public and embarrassing them.