So imagine my delight when I discovered comedian and critic Sarah Haskins and her delightful series of reports called "Target Women." From yogurt to wedding shows to feeding your family, Sarah shows how modern shows and ads chide women and try to sell us (always with the selling!) a load of steaming patooty.

I've linked to a few of her reports below. Enjoy.

Target Women: Feeding Your F------ Family

Target Women: Wedding Shows

Clive, your clean-shaven face on the DVD promised me the handsome visage I've grown accustomed to watching in superior films like "Children of Men." This? You have a scraggly awful beard. I kept shouting at you, "Shave it off! Please? Shave it!" You obeyed when there were but 10 minutes left in the film. I endured Malcolm MacDowell (ew) and some of the worst dialogue ever for a last minute physical transformation? No.

Damn it, Clive Owen. I know you didn't write the awful script, but when you read it didn't it strike you as a bit stilted? Slow? For a thriller didn't the story seem short on thrills? And I know, I know, it was supposed to be broody. You brooded the hell out of it, really you did. But, um, brooding alone does not make a film. A story usually helps. You know, a story that holds more water than most colanders?

Don't do anything like this again, okay? You deserve better. So do I.

That's the danger in artifacts. You can grow attached to them and lose sight of what they are supposed to represent. I've noticed I'm always much more receptive to suggestions such as "change the ending" or "remove that major character" when I haven't seen the story in a long time (several months). Physical distance somehow begets professional objectivity. I trust the first reader's eyes, perhaps even more than my own, because they're seeing the story new and I never can at this point.

So I'm looking forward to destroying some artifacts...

While it would certainly be nice to move those ice skates out of my room (the same ice skates I had when I was a teenager and cannot fit my feet inside now--super useful) I think it might be nicer to have some of the work I've been agonizing over done.

And to sweeten the deal I'll only allow myself lunch if I go work on the book. Yup. Carrot and stick. But not carrot sticks. That, friends, is no lunch for a working writer.

But it made me think (that's more than we can say for much of the cast and crew). Specifically, it made me think about crime suspects in regards to mystery novels. When the suspects barely make it onto the page and their identity(ies) revealed, readers feel cheated and with good reason. Now, I could see who the villain of the film was a mile off but it was still annoying that he didn't have more than eight minutes on film. That there was no investigation so to speak. And there really wasn't. The cops? The federal agents? About as present and useful as the fricking tooth fairy when you're thirty years old.

This made me realize that my novel's cast of suspects has to be more than mentioned and revealed. And my cops? Going to have to be more present than I had planned originally. Why's that? Because I was planning on being somewhat lazy. It's always interesting when I catch myself out in lazy-writer mode. It involves me scolding myself, resolving to do the right (write) thing, and then bitching about my naggy ass self to myself. Yup. It's a regular carnival in my head.

So thank you, Jeff Hammond (writer) and Cris Sivertson (director) of the worst movie I've seen in a looooong time. You taught me something. How to ruin a story, and, hopefully, how to avoid doing so.

Former Boston Globe journalist Alison Bass tells the story of two courageous women who helped expose a giant pharmaceutical company's corruption.

How do I know Alison? We took a class together at Harvard called Writing the Novel. It's where My Summer of Southern Discomfort's first chapters were created.

Alison's book is non-fiction, but we won't hold that against it. Some very good stories are not made up.

I have a feeling this won't be the last you'll hear about this book. It's gonna be big, I tell ya!

Tonight I found that I'd remembered chapter one as better than it is.

When faced with the dilemma of unexpected suck you can do several things:

1.Drink
2. Go to bed
3. Work on something different
4. Quit writing entirely and become a go-go dancer

Some days, option #4 seems like a great idea. But that's just nonsense. I don't own go-go boots.

Tonight's solution to suck is to work on smaller problems with the narrative and research details. Little tasks to distract me from my "everything I write is awful" moment.

And soon enough I'll rework the entire chapter so that the next time I read it the unease doesn't slither up my spine. Or such is the hope.

Mystries demand plot in ways other novels don't. The very first book I wrote was a mystery. It was bad. The plot was okay but it had little twists the reader couldn't possibly predict because the author hadn't seen fit to think them through until the very end. Those twists ended up being the ribbon to wrap up the story in a nice neat fashion. Unfortunately, said ribbon was rather terrible in the ways just-tacked-on bits of story usually are terrible.

Lesson learned? Sort of. I'm smart enough to know I can't pull that trick a second time with good results. Unfortunately, I have a hard time thinking my story lines through from start to end. That may strike you as odd. It may be. Being weird doesn't worry me. Writing a bad book does.

So today I made myself go running because that has sometimes made ideas bubble to the surface of my mind. Why physical exercise=mental breakthroughs I have no idea. But the run did help. I've got a kernel of an idea that explains why the corpse is where it is and how it got there and who put it there. Let's hope I can grow this wee idea into a plotline. Because the running? It kind of hurts on hot, humid days.

Turns out the salt levels in her blood were critically low. Salt? Yes, salt. Lack of salt can lead to extreme fatigue and mental confusion, and the longer it goes the worse it gets. Not cool. Seems one of her blood pressure meds was to blame. Oy.

Having spent the first night in the hospital with her I can assure you that hospitals are no place to get any sleep or rest. It's a wonder anyone gets better in those places. I did overhear some amazing (and depressing) stories while there.

The highlight? Aside, of course, from Mom getting well, was using the ear thingy. You know that lighted scope doctors use to look into your ears? For years (truly) I've wanted to use one, but you can't use it on yourself, and I hesitated to ask my doctors if they'd let me look in their ears. For some reason I always suspeted the mere act of asking might lead to a psych consult. Anyway, while Mom reclined on a stretcher I asked if she'd like to indulge my dream. She agreed. Turns out ears look kind of pink and not very interesting. But still...I got to use the ear thingy.

And Mom is well. Huzzah to the nth power.

But for being such troopers I will share with you a birthday LOLcat that Andres (one of my grad students) made me.

I got a ton of personalized LOLcats plastered all over my office door and wall. They were amazing and all the participants: Annina, Adam, Karen, Ingeborg, Ellen, Noah, and Andres deserve mad props for the joy they brought me.

Here's hoping Mom gets better and that I'm back in the blogging saddle soon.

I had three coffee drinks today. Usually I have one. Today I had three. That's two more than most days. And wow, I'm not sleepy. Not even a little. I'm a little scared that I'll never be sleepy again. Or that coffee will be my gateway drug to dieting pills (don't those have speed or am I remembering my after school specials wrong?) and then to real speed and then to cocaine and then to rehab and then to my triumphant career comeback on Dancing With the Stars. Oh man. That sounds sad.

Maybe I'll just have one coffee tomorrow.

This bubbled to the surface of my mind because the forecast here in and around Boston calls for four 90 degree days in a row. Yowza. Let me tell you, it's pretty easy to imagine a steamy summer Georgia when you're sweating it out in 90 degree weather. But imagining a crisp autumn day in which the color pallete runs to red, not green? I'll just have to use that imagination of mine. If I don't perish of heat stroke first.

This one begins "Asteropeus discharged they cut". Ah, Homer. This is a classicist amongst spammers. Sadly, the story gets interrupted by a lot of cheap-drug links. To you, dear spammer, I say, "Yes, the cost of prescription medications in this country of ours with poor health care coverage is indeed criminal. You are a pioneer for calling this important issue to my attention. Now that you have done so, return to The Iliad, good sir. May the bloody tale of battle inspire you to continue on in your quest to bring low-cost medicines to the people!"

Then we have "Viagra relaxes muscles and increases blood flow to particular areas of the body." But what areas? And which muscles? Dear spammer, you have left me without crucial information. How can I know if I want this, how you say, Viagra? If you will not tell me more of its promised properties I will have to turn my attention to...."free sexy girl cursors." Huh. Imagine that. Sexy girl cursors. Now if you'd said "sexy girl cursers" I would have told you I'm all full up. Me and my sexy girl posse swear like sailors (when we're not busy sailing). But cursors, huh? That seems...distracting. I think I shall pass.

And that's all the spam I have time for today. My apologies to all those spammers kind enought to contact me that I simply don't have time to respond to with the sort of stabby personal attention I wish I could devote to them.