Tag: Technology

A Sexy Open Letter to Sexy Adults Sending Sexy Emails

G. Derek Adams8 Comments

Seriously. Emails?

Fucking emails?

LITERALLY?

[And yes, I’m responding to the Petraeus Boondoggle.]

I want you to do me a favor. Stop writing your sexy email. Yes, I know you have it open in the next tab over — you’ve been marinating on it all day,  in between doing, you know actual work – grooming and squirming your mental eros into a nicely formatted 4000 word missive. Just stop, for like five seconds and do something for me.

I want you to look at the newspaper on your desk. Yes, I said the newspaper. I know you have a newspaper on your desk. You know how I know? It’ll become clear momentarily — for now just humor me. Okay, now look at the top of the newspaper. Do you see the date?

DOES IT SAY 1997?

What? It doesn’t? It says ‘2012’!?!

Well, heavens to Mergotroid! That’s a Flintstones reference, I’m trying to couch my humor in something you’ll understand, as clearly you have not been paying much attention to some major developments in technology, communication and internet horse-sense.

So before you press send on that Sexy Email — which you are probably sending while at work, on a computer owned and monitored by your soulless corporation of choice — I would like you to consider some Super Science Alternatives. [And one Classic.] All of these methods are much harder [if not impossible] to track, log and throw up on CNN for all of us to leer at.

SUPER SCIENCE ALTERNATIVE #1 : Google Chat

Or really any chat program ever existed. I mean, freaking Words With Friends has a chat feature — but I pick Google Chat because it has a handy ‘Go Off the Record’ option, that means the conversation will not be logged. Just think about it, you could have your sexy email time — like right away! All the time! It’s almost like there should be a word for this. Cyber-sexting? Inter-fucking? Come on, I’m trying to drag you people into the dial-up AOL era, get on board!

SUPER SCIENCE ALTERNATIVE #2 : Tumblr

Use this social network for what the kids use it for. Flirting and arranging hookups and fuck assignations. Here’s what you do — create an extra email account, then use that to create a tumblr profile. Have your paramour  do the same, and voila! Double bagged anonymity — with the added bonus of you can mark your blog as ‘Private’ and then send private messages to each other that are never published. If you start catching heat from the press — or you know, your wife or whatever — just delete the Tumblr profile and walk away.

JUST WALK AWAY.

And don’t be cute and make a tumblr name like penetraeus.tumblr.com — that’s just asking for trouble.

SUPER SCIENCE ALTERNATIVE #3:  Text Messages

I know you’re all thinking — but what about TIGER WOOOOODS?!?

Well, actually I congratulate you. Thank you for noticing something that happened in the world after the Olympics were in Atlanta.

Look, here’s the deal. As long as you have the good sense to delete the text messages saved in your phones regularly — most providers don’t log text communication more than 72 hours old. [If any nerds read this, check me  — this was with some very quick and dirty research into Text Message Subpeona laws. I wouldn’t want to lead these poor Sexy Emailers astray.]

And finally, the CLASSIC ALTERNATIVE: Write a letter.

Because, my reasonably sound suggestions aside, Sexy Emailers. Everything you write on the internet is there forever. If you type it on a computer, it is NEVER GONE.

NEVER. EVER. GONE.

I know you’re approaching your sex life with the same aplomb and discretion of a lemur discovering a pudding-dispensing Roomba — but please, as you slave over your Sexy Emails. Exercise a little common sense.

If you really want your written canoodling to go completely under the radar. Take a pen, write it on a sheet of physical paper and mail it to them.  They can destroy it after they read it, and your fierce passion can burn all the brighter in the flames of your words’ death.

So, short version:

STOP SENDING SEXY EMAILS. STOP IT RIGHT NOW.

 

 

Editing Progress

G. Derek Adams5 Comments

Okay — edit comments on my Google Doc down from 68 …to 26! Whoohoo!

Of course that was all the simple edits, the easy edits. Now I actually have to start tinkering with the engine itself.

Back to it!

Thought-Bursting and Google Docs for Fun and Profit

G. Derek AdamsLeave a comment

Can I just say that writing on Google Docs has been awesome?  There’s something tremendously useful about being able to add comments on the fly, without breaking up the flow of the narrative.

Sceince happening.

I am really prone to having an interesting idea, plugging in some vague reference to it in the story — then not being able to remember a few days, weeks [or hours…] later what the heck I was talking about.

Here’s an example.

I had a character that I was referring to as Madame XXXX.  [Name redacted, because of reasons.]

So, like many fantasy writers [I assume.] I had the thought-burst. “Why am I using a French word in my uber-creative fantasy setting? And on top of that, this character is a young female, does ‘Madame’ make her seem too old? I don’t want to call her Miss XXXX, because that just sounds gross. Am I overthinking this? Is there a better honorific, or title I could use?  WHELP, TIME TO WASTE SOME LIFE ON WIKIPEDIA.”

[I’m sure your thought-bursts are similar.]

Now, admittedly — I am a giant supporter of Who Fucking Cares?: Have a Manticore Attack school of fantasy writing. I think many genre writers get so bent out of shape justifying their world-building that it sucks all the fun out the fiction, and when in doubt I use a modern term, because it saves time for me and will be most easily understood by the audience.

But, this seemed to fall under the purview of But It Might Sound Cooler If… and WIKIPEDIA is Fun. So, I dove right in — and I came across this little snippet.

The French word evolved in turn from the Latin mea domina, meaning “my mistress (of the house)”.

-From the Wikipedia entry on Madame.

Now, I have a huge word-boner for Latin. It’s my go-to dead language for when I want a cool-sounding fantasy term. So after playing around with it for a bit, I came up with Meadoma as my new honorific. It sounds kind of Madame-y, but it more lyrical and not-French.

Success!

[Well, maybe — I’m already having second thoughts, and may shorten it to “Doma”.]

What was the point? Oh yeah, Google Docs!

So, instead of a cruddy Post-It Note or something, I made a Comment on the page about where I got the idea from, so when I come back through to edit in a month or two, there will be some sort of trail to my though process.

So, in summation: Google — send me a ChromeBook! One of the white ones, please.