Swedish Goats and Other Digressions

So sometimes I have little things I want to mention here that don't warrant a whole entry to themselves, and I string them all together in a sort of verbal, trivial collage... This entry is gonna be one of those.

I discovered today that there's an interesting Swedish holiday tradition-- the burning of the Swedish Christmas Goat. My informant is unsure whether this is a local, idiosyncratic tradition (she lived in Sweden for a couple of years, and witnessed it in her town), or a rich and vital part of the Swedish national experience as a whole. Apparently little festive decorative goats are common all over Sweden, but she described a huge flammable goat, two stories high, which the teenagers torch after Xmas.

Pär? Care to enlighten me?

I have a program that puts Xmas lights on your computer screen. It's rather customizable; you can have different colors, different patterns of flashing... and different shapes. Snowmen. Stars of David (somewhat oddly; but I guess the program is described as "Holiday Lights," not specifically Xmas). Snowflakes.

And, best of all, fish. So now I have a bunch of smiling, colorful, flashing fish strung around my computer screen. This is so deliciously surreal.

They don't offer goat-shaped bulbs, though.

So I'm supposed to be revising a brochure right now. It's a very factual, clearly written brochure at this point (I wrote it, and it's pretty good). My boss wants it to be "punchier." He wants to "spice it up." I'm also expected to cram lots more info into what is already a text-heavy brochure. This is a brochure aimed at trail managers, who in my experience are incredibly busy people. I want to give them crucial information in a clear, uncluttered format. I'm a believer in terse, informative copy.

But now I have to "spice it up." At Lowe's, we called that kind of writing "Crazy Eddie!" copy. As in "Come on down to Crazy Eddie's Used Salmon! We've gone crazy! We're slashing prices in our semi-annual Salmon Jubilee! Sparklers for the kids! Apple wine for the parents! Yee-ha! Take advantage of these fabulous free offers before they haul us off to the loony bin for being so crazy!"

Gah. I'll come up with something.

Maybe I was the only one who called it "Crazy Eddie" copy. Or maybe I just thought about calling it that. Those six months in advertising are kind of a blur.

I am all wrenched up with irrational financial anxiety. I wake up in the middle of the night terrified that my car's going to break down and the repairs will leave me destitute, or that I'll get evicted and have to eat the vegan trash out of the Saturn Cafe's dumpster.

It's a dumb worry, because I've got enough money, and a pretty good buffer of savings (by my standards, anyway). And yet I've found myself obsessively checking my bank balance, and hesitating to buy beer or eat out. I think it's just deep-down fear about the fact that this job is disappearing in January. Part of me really believes that I won't be able to find another job, and that I should start saving up for the lean times. Which is silly-- I'll find some kind of a job, and it'll probably be a pretty good one, right? Right. But I'm still all nervous and twitchy.

I was really terrified about how I was going to pay for my half of Meg's plane ticket for her visit in March. Then I heard from two editors that I could expect payment within the next couple of weeks-- and the total amount I'm getting for those two stories is exactly how much I need to pay for the ticket. So the world seems to be looking out for me. Except I don't really believe that. As Kelly O'Dell of 3-five-7 sang, "Trust me when I say that the world don't give a damn/You're on your own. Do what you can."

I'm not on my own, of course; I trust in my friends and family to look out for me. But I don't trust in the world. I've noticed that things tend to work out well a preposterous amount of the time... but they don't always work out.

Fear. Fear. Fear.

I'll be better once I have another job lined up. Until then, I'll try to keep the whining to a minimum.

I'm getting lots of email today. That's nice. I love getting email. It's like getting a little present, every time. Except when it's a rejection, of course.

You guys can send me email, you know. I don't mind. I'll even reply, I promise. (hush, Seanan. I always reply. Eventually)

On the journal front, fellow Clarionite Hilary Moon Murphy is restarting her journal. I was very close with Hilary at Clarion, and she's both a wonderful person and a damn fine writer (who shares many of my obsessions). I'm glad she's doing the journal again...

Hmmm. I guess that's it, for now. I have other stuff to chat about (locusts, rain, acts of nature), but I'll save them for later entries...