I dreamed that my teenaged niece had a mouse for a pet. It was a small, brown field mouse and she just let it roam around the house. It would climb into all sorts of things and explore to its little heart's content and nobody thought much of this. Sure, it was a mouse that was randomly wandering around the house, but it was a pet, and so somehow this seemed normal. After all, when you stop and think about it, allowing large carnivores to wander freely through our homes and yards and even play with our children seems far more insane.

And one day this little mouse was doing its little thing, wandering around in the bathroom while my niece applied her makeup. The door was partially closed, though not latched, as she continued to have a conversation with my mother and me about a wedding we were going to. Then, there was a thud. Through the door, we could hear screams from my niece as she said the mouse had fallen and was horribly injured. I tried to go in to see what was going on, but my mother pushed me aside and told me not to look. She went into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, as I heard cries from my niece, begging my mother to cut the mouse's head off and end its misery.

...and then I woke up.

My subconscious is a weird, random place.

Today, I was handed a seventeen year old's iPod. She wanted me to load it up with music. I gave her a rather dubious look.

"You don't listen to the same music I do," I pointed out.
"Yeah, but you introduced me to the White Stripes and I like them!"
"You ran from the room screaming when I tried to make you watch that Killers' video."
"I'm sick of all the music I have, though. I need new stuff."

And so, with no direction or input from her, I had a blank slate to fill up with whatever I liked. I hadn't opened up iTunes in a while, being a Winamp kind of girl, so was pleasantly surprised to find just how much music I had to choose from on this hard drive: 6.7 days worth. Oh yes. I could find some mind expanding experiences for this kid.

This had to be one of the most entertaining afternoons I've ever had, just picking random songs and tossing them at somebody to see what sticks. It wasn't like making a mix CD for someone, since I wasn't trying to "say" something or share things that had personal significance for me. It was just this big, gorgeous orgy of musical experimentation. I'm particularly looking forward to what her response will be once she makes it through everything I put on there. Will she discover a sudden love for Nickel Arcade? Will the Flaming Lips be a transcendent experience for her? Will she realize Franz Ferdinand is a band named after an archduke and not a solo-artist?

And most importantly of all: will she regret having handed the iPod to me?

This bugs me a lot, and I see it quite often. Online is bad enough, but when I come across it in a published novel, I start to twitch.

"Mother," if used as a proper noun, is capitalized.
"Mother," if used as a common noun, is not capitalized.

For example:

"Then my mother told me to wash the dishes."
"Then Mother told me to wash the dishes."

This extends to father, mama, papa, daddy, and any other title such as this. It's a similar convention as, say, president or captain or anything along those lines. If you're using a title as a name--"President Bush"--it is a proper noun, but if you're simply using the title--"the president"--it is a common noun.

Usually, president gets capitalized when it shouldn't be, while things like "mama" are left uncapitalized. I can see where the confusion might make a person think to treat it like a proper noun all the time, especially with very important, powerful titles, but how someone could write. "So dad said he wasn't going to make it," and think it looks correct is beyond me. Do you ever write something like, "I asked susan out"? No, that's stupid. If it's being used as a name capitalize it for God's sake.

Ah, God. Another source of frustration and this particular bit of grammar gets repeatedly violated in fantasy novels. "The gods" does not form a proper noun and so that should be a little G. If you are talking about a specific god, but the deity's name isn't God don't capitalize the G. The Christian god gets the G capitalized because that's what he's called, God.

And finally, one last thing. If you are writing a fantasy novel or a comic with a polytheist character or anything else like that, having your character exclaim things like "my gods!" or "oh Goddess, no!" doesn't let everyone know that your character is very religious. It's stupid and entirely missing the point. If it was a prayer, such as, "Oh, divine mother Danu, rescue me from peril!" it'd be one thing, but just spouting off references to a particular deity as an oath of surprise isn't religious. It's disrespectful.

When you type or read OMG, in your head you hear...

... Oh - Em - Gee.

... Ohmg.

... ohmigawd.

... Oh, my God.

... fucking loser.

... other.

The Birkie--or the American Birkebeiner--is the largest and one of the longest ski races in North America. The whole thing is taking place not too far from where I live, and though I don't ski it's kind of cool because there's all sorts of people around and parties going on and stuff like that. There's a problem, though, and this problem is a doozy.

You see, there's no snow.

I mean, there's some snow. In the shade of trees. In hollows. But, for the most part, everything is slush and mud because it suddenly got really, really warm. How warm you ask? Why, it got up to 50F yesterday. And now everyone I know who lives south of here laughs in cruel glee. Sigh.

Anyway, so it's all slushy and muddy and it's getting cold tonight. This is probably going to mean that on the day of the race instead of having good snow for skiing there's going to be a wee bit of snow that's been scraped together and whatever happened to come in overnight, covering ice. They're still trucking snow around for the course and trying to get things ready, but they've already had to cut it from 51K to 23K and I'm not so sure they'll even be able to handle that much.

I was thinking of going up to the resort where my friends are staying and just hanging out there anyway, though. It'll be a nice show of support for the people I know who signed up, plus there's lots of booths and stuff there, so there's stuff to look at. I'm really not thinking there's going to be any skiing to cheer on, but we'll see.

Wow, I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of responses that got. This essay was originally written in response to a group of writers I was doing workshops with. Everyone was trying to out-do each other with just how bizarre and gross they could be, without putting much effort into it beyond "OMGSOSHOCKING" and so I wrote this, as commentary on these attempts.

While I did make sure my references to cannibalism were accurate, the main point was to be mocking of writing about something gross simply for the sake of shocking people. Of course, the essay itself is rather gross, but it has a point to its grossness, n'est-ce pas?

You want to be hip. You want to be cutting edge. That guy down the street wrote a story about a man who cut his girlfriend's head off and had sexual relations with her neck. You've got to one up him now. You're going to write about cannibalism.

Good for you, I say. This is a brave, bold choice, one that many writers delve into for shock value and yet often come away from feeling disenchanted. With a few easy tips to keep in mind you too can cover up the lack of substance in your plot by filling it with hideously realistic crimes of humanity.

To begin, you need to throw out everything you ever read in any novel and anything you ever saw in a movie. All of that is fiction and usually based on cliche rather than fact. If you want to spit out all of the trite cannibalism cliches like an automaton, go right ahead, but this article is for the serious writer. No Hollywood hacks, please.

Human flesh does not taste like chicken. The only reason that people say "everything tastes like chicken" is because they haven't actually eaten everything. Sushi does not taste like chicken. Veal does not taste like chicken. Venison does not taste like chicken. Anyone with a properly refined palate even knows that turkey does not taste like chicken. Many things do taste like chicken in that they have a creamy, soft fat and a very mild flavor, but this is owing to a constant diet of grain and little else. With the advent of Atkin's, it's unlikely that there are many people who eat a diet of nothing but grain. As your diet determines your taste, you will find that if you take a bite out of your arm (preferably the one you won't use to hold a pen) that you do not, in fact, taste like chicken.

Most likely you taste like pork.

This is backed up by the descriptions of the real life cannibals in the world. Not those racist and often inaccurate accounts from anthropologists encountering supposed "cannibal tribes" in South American and Africa, of course. Such accounts were usually given for shock value--much like your standard, cliche riddled cannibal story--or else based off of the witnessing of a feast of skinned monkeys. No, each cannibal who has supplied this writer with information is one who was convicted of cannibalism in a court of law.

Such cannibals describe human flesh as having a pork like quality in texture and flavor, most likely because these animals have a diet similar to ours while also being a source for emergency organ harvests. Meat eaters are found to have a rather gamey taste, being slightly bitter, while vegetarians are found to be almost sweet.

Cannibals almost always act out of a desire to possess--or, more accurately, consume--another human being. This is based off of a sexual attraction virtually everytime. If the cannibal is heterosexual, all of his victims will be female. If he is homosexual, all of his victims will be male. If he is bisexual, then we're all screwed. No well documented cases of a female cannibal have yet been discovered and it is possible that the apparent sexual element to the act may only be a male trait.

Human beings, it should be noted, are neither white nor dark meat. We are a combination of both and so the color of the meat will vary widely depending on where your cannibal takes it from. White meat generally has a lower myoglobin level, which means that there is less oxygen being provided to the muscle tissues. Dark meat, with its high levels of myoglobin, is oxygen rich and is normally found in muscle groups used for sustained acts of strength, such as in the legs. White meat is only suitable for short bursts of strength, and so shall likely be found in the human back and abdomen.

Breasts and genitals are described by all cannibals across the board as being chewy and unpleasant. No one likes the tough consistency of these bodily tissues, so no matter how shocking and perverse it might seem for your story no self-respecting cannibal would waste more than a moment on these parts.

In conclusion, your cannibal will most likely be attracted to his victim, will find with time that vegetarians are especially delicious, and will probably develop a preference for baby back ribs.