If you remember last year, both my Bride and I sign up for (inter)National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. One of us won. One of us didn't. And for the last nine months, my Bride has taken every opportunity to remind me of my trouncing. Seriously. Any reminder of novels, or writing, or months, and she works it into the conversation:

Me: Hey - what do you want to eat for dinner tonight? Bride: Hmm. I think I'm in the mood for Chinese. Me: Do you want me to cook? Or would you like me to pick it up on the way home? Bride: Why don't you just pick it up on the way? And be sure to order a side of I kicked your ass in NaNoWriMo while you're at it! This year, I'm determined to win. Now all I need is a really good idea for a novel. Or a really bad idea that uses a lot of words. (Remember, it's quantity, not quality). After months where I couldn't bear to look at what I had written in my first entry, I have finally gone back and looked at what I banged out last November. I think it was a fairly decent core idea - my Bride and I were both writing the same story, from different first person perspectives. Loosely based on people and places we know, it was the story of a young family who moved from California to a small town in Appalachia after the death of the husband's grandmother. Basing on characters and areas we were familiar with gave us plenty of fodder for writing (at times, I didn't even bother changing the names of the participants. My mother, for example. I ask you: how the heck are you going to come up with a better name than Patsy Lavelle?) I share with you an excerpt of the story below. The first 20,000 words or so takes place in or around the funeral home, as Granny Louise had recently died:

"Here, Daddy. I got this for Matthew." Bernie appeared at my side, stick in one hand, and something dark in the other. She pushed whatever it was into the stroller's tray next to the her sleeping brother's bottle of juice, and stood proudly, confident that she was the most generous big sister in the world. Florizel took one look at it and turned green. She jerked the stroller back fast and the lump of whatever it was fell off with a thud. "Bernie! That's not for playing with!" I looked down at the black bundle at my feet. Apparently Bernadette had been playing with a dead bird for the last twenty minutes or so. Kids are great. Florizel had already dug into the apparently bottomless bag of kid-gear we carried everywhere with us. I was confident that she could de-tox anything up to and including a Chernobyl-level even if called upon to do so. I grabbed Bernadette by the stick hand. "Let's leave the dead bird alone and go wash your hands, kiddo." I toed the bird to one side and out of the immediate child-arm-reach area. "I've got this one, Bing - I'll be back in a bit." My wife hardly glanced up, except to see that I had removed the carcass from the danger zone. She had a forest of handi-wipes and a spray bottle I hadn't known was in the bag out and was dousing the stroller, the tray, and probably would start soon on our son, lest he have inadvertently touched the air around the carcass in his sleep. "Throw this out." She handed me the juice bottle as I walked away. Bernadette looked at the bottle as we walked back towards the funeral home entrance. "Why does Mommy want you to throw that out, Daddy?" "Because it's dirty now, honey." "Because the bird got on it?" "Yes honey. Dead things are dirty." "Oh." She trailed her stick through the gravel. "Is Granny Louise dirty, Daddy?" "Hmm? Oh! No, honey. Granny Louise isn't dirty. She took a bath, special." "Oh. Ok."

So now I have three months to start thinking through this year's challenge. I'm willing to take a leap away from subjects and characters so close to home, but I'm stumped for ideas so far. If anyone out there has any notion, and isn't signing up for NaNoWriMo themselves (and I urge you to - what the heck? What have you got to lose, except a month of your time and a little bit of sanity?) - then write me and pass on your plot ideas, or a really good title, or something. But please don't tell my Bride. She's insufferable enough in her victory as it is.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) recently wrote about the proposed flag burning amendment. It's worth repeating in part:

I was delighted to learn that American politicians are trying to make it illegal to burn the American flag. That can only mean that my dedicated public servants have finally solved the problems of crime, drugs, war, poverty, terrorism, healthcare, immigration, and the mystery of why our children are such idiots compared to Norwegians. Evidently those issues are now under control. I was starting to worry that Congress was wasting my tax dollars doing stupid shit. I heard Senator Frist compare the flag to a national monument. His point was that you wouldn't want people to deface our one-of-a-kind historical treasures. Therefore we shouldn't let people burn an American flag that is one of millions churned out every year by Chinese manufacturers. I think that was his best argument.

Look, I'm not a fan of flag burning, or most of the people who might engage in it. But banning any form of protest which doesn't cause financial or physical harm to the guy who sat next to you on the bus this morning smells a little Eau du Kim Jong Il to me. With a couple of seconds of research, I found that the other countries which have banned flag burning include Cuba, China, and Iran. Well hell, why didn't you say so? That's a club we want to be members of, alright. (Interestingly, it is illegal to burn the flags of foreign nations in Denmark, but perfectly legal to burn the Danish flag there.) The last time I checked, the flag is a symbol of what we stand for as a nation. Which, I'm told, has something to do with freedom and liberty and apple-filled pastries. It would seem pretty ironic to bind up that symbol of freedom in a restriction of our liberty. Hey, I joined the Army and served five years of quasi-discomfort in an air conditioned room in middle Georgia so that you could burn whatever piece of cloth you wanted in protest of the latest White House fashion faux pas that caught your fancy. Which makes me wonder - what do they do with all those little flags they set out in cemeteries every year? If they throw them away, wouldn't that be desecration? Or what about those little flags on top of the toothpicks used to hold my hamburger bun down at Shoney's Big Boy restaurants - if I dropped it in the pickle juice, would I be subject to arrest? Please, dear Congress, go back to trying to figure out a way to reduce the deficit, or salvage social security or something useful and quit trying to put a crimp in liberty, 'kay?

The EU has launched a new initiative to try and re-brand itself as the cooler, hipper collection of nation-states on the block. A new slogan for Europe

Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, will this week launch a "new slogan for Europe" competition aimed at re-invigorating the stalled European integration project. Francis Gutmann, who heads the European parliament's public events department said: "A logo and slogan competition for young European designers will be launched on July 6. We will reach everyone via a website and there will be a cash prize for the winner."

The winning entry will be rolled out during the EU's golden jubilee celebrations next year, together with a new logo to replace the blue EU flag with its ring of gold stars (it represented "perfection, completeness and unity"). On March 25 next year, the Treaty of Rome, on which the EU is founded, will be 50 years old. European leaders will be using the occasion to rebrand their supranational model of government.

Because this is Europe, and God forbid any decision be made which quickly or at risk of offending anyone, you know that the winning suggestion will be decided on by a committee consisting of representatives of every country, including at least one Parisian who insists that the logo be translated into French and include a subsidy for French farmers. However, I've been thinking of a few suggestions:

The EU: Less unified than you might think. More unified than you might wish

Europe: We've got more castles than Disney World

Now with extra VAT!

Europe: We make the best cheese

Bureaucratic by design. Ineffective by happy accident.

Europe: We won't let Dick Cheney hunt here And my current favorite:

The EU: We hate France too