Okay, so the story is done, and I read it over. They tend to be humorous stories, so I laugh, which is a good thing. Not laughing at my own jokes, but still liking what I’ve written enough to be amused. Then I frown. I’ve just written another humorous story with solid boy appeal and don’t have anything I can do with it.

And I’m left wondering: where do boys go to find stories?

I start thinking, What sort of stories are like the one I just wrote? The first thing that came to mind is the story Gordie tells in Stephen King’s novella The Body about the kid Lard Ass and the pie eating contest. It’s a revenge story, simply put like a campfire tale, and the type of story boys like. But suddenly it occurs to me that even the mighty Stephen King knows that the only way he’s going to get a story like that published is by including it within the context of another, more traditional story.

Because you just know there isn’t a magazine alive aimed at a kid audience that would touch that story with a ten foot pole.

Anthologies exist that cater to humorous boy stories – the Guys Read series of course, and the David Luber Campfire Weenies books – but when a boy is in the mood for some light reading (okay, let’s be honest, bathroom reading) where does he go?

Where did I go?

Eventually I ended up reading National Lampoon, which might not have been the best literature around, but it feed my hunger for funny stories. Occasionally, rarely, I would come across some humorous fiction in The New Yorker, but when it came to finding something short to read I was at a loss. There had to be something more sophisticated than Boy’s Life, less obnoxious than National Lampoon, and not as stiff as The New Yorker, but if there was, I couldn’t find it.

Last fall I was riding public transit and there were three high school boys talking. One of them was telling the other two about this “wicked, sick” story he’d read, and as he went on I realized he was recounting a story by George Saunders from the recent issue of The New Yorker. His friends were attentive, but I could see in their eyes that once they’d heard the story from their friend they wouldn’t hunt it down and read it. It might have been the story itself, or the way the boy told it, but what I think really dulled the fire in the listening-boy’s eyes was when the teller admitted where it came from. Unspoken in those looks was the fact that the story had come from a magazine lying around the house that his parents subscribed to. Very uncool. If he’d lied and said he read the story in FHM or Details it’d be a different story, but then the conversation would veer into fashion or the latest tech gadget or, most likely, the cover model.

Because I thought I was missing something obvious I went to the library to check out the various writer’s market books. One of them (which I won’t name) had a subject index in back and under ‘humor’ there were a couple dozen magazines listed. When I went to check them out almost without exception they stated ‘no juvenile’ in their listings; the exceptions, and there were four listings with this problem, explicitly stated ‘no humor’ which doesn’t speak so well of the copyediting or indexing skills for that title. Almost all of the juvie titles listed were for younger ages than I write for, whose idea of humor most decidedly wouldn’t include pranks, bodily functions, or subversive behavior.

I’ll keep looking for the perfect home for these stories, but I suspect they’re just going to collect over the years until I’ve published several other “real” books and a publisher is willing to humor me by putting out a collection. Perhaps this is one of those “if I won the lottery” situations where I say that if I had the money I’d start a new digital and in-print magazine of humor. Old school thinking, I know, but a boy can still dream, can’t he?

1. trite: stereotyped expression, sentence or phrase, usually expressing popular or common thought or idea that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse; sadder but wiser, strong as an ox

2. trite or hackneyed plot, character development, use of color, musical expression, etc.

3. anything that has become trite or commonplace through overuse.

I think there are many clichés that appear all over the literary landscape, that the use of color or a musical reference isn’t purely a young adult thing, but I’m hard pressed to come up with anything truly YA.

Rebellion against authority?

Bully Boys and Queen Bees?

The nerdy kid who saves the day/wins the prize/is accepted by the crowd?

I know that for middle grade novels I have grown weary of the boy-girl friendship where the girl is a sidekick who is smarter than the boy but lets him think he’s figured things out for himself. This is generally coupled with the equally annoying mystery story where some plucky kids manage to solve some mystery no adult could.

This whole idea has been rolling around in my head since I saw the interview with Maurice Sendak by Stephen Colbert where the faux conservative attempted to reduce the basic idea behind picture books to a simple formula:

Sendak: You know the formula
Colbert: You just need an animal… and something they’ve lost
Sendak: Well, yes, most books for children are very bad
Colbert: A squirrel lost their mittens.
Sendak: There you go.
Colbert: The buffalo lost its gun
Sendak: You’ve just written two children’s books

Kidding aside, is the lost-and-found story in picture books fits the “trite or commonplace through overuse” definition of cliché, yet it seems to elemental at the same time. So, with YA, in the end when the boy gets the girl (or girl gets the boy, or boy-boy, girl-girl, &c.) are we looking at a cliché? When our heroic main character saves the day or conquers their fear or achieves their goal, cliché?

Is writing for children simply a question of cliché management?

No, really, I’m asking. What sort of clichés do you see? What are the things a YA story can’t seem to be successful without these days? All comments and answers appreciated.

for Edward of Holloway

First
Find the circumference
Of one golden Kumquat
Cored
Gored
And tossed in a pot

Determine
An Anglerfish’s degree
Plucked fresh from the Sea
Sliced
Diced
Sauted until hot

Next
A measure of Music
Boiled up with a flourish
Brash
Rash
Performed at a trot

Then
A quartful of quarters
Poached from Four-flushers
Stacked
Packed
Set fire to the lot

Last
Add the Palm of one Heart
Unbroken, unblue
Caressed
A-dressed
And free of all clot

When you find your nerves shot
Rattled
Embattled
Once the mixture congeals
You’ll find it will yield
One Lear

Sort of a recipe, kind of an homage, at least the nonsense part makes, er, sense.

Poetry Friday, unlike any other friday because of its poetriness, this week being rounded up over at Hey, Jim Hill! If you haven’t come her from there, then go there from here!

I’m not looking to pick at the worry-wound that is the divide between high and low art, but I have been thinking about the choices I am about to make as a “judge” and feel like exploring this a bit.

I used to teach Art and English to middle school kids a few lifetimes ago. One of things people always asked (and sometimes still do) is “How can you grade Art? It’s such a subjective thing.” The fallacy of this line of thinking is that people confuse the mechanics of creating something with the arbitrary notion of “art.” In publishing this sometimes shows up as a question of whether or not something has “literary merit” as opposed to just being a good story. But these labels and qualifications have nothing to do with the creation and execution of these works. I don’t have to like every great work of art or literature, but I can still respect the quality of the effort that was put into them.

So getting back to grading middle school art students (and how this fits in with judging graphic novels) what I used to tell my students was that every blank sheet of paper, or canvas, or pile of ingredients had the potential to be anything, to be great. Because of this, every project had the potential to be an A, and that’s where every project grade began. From there each project had a set of criteria it had to meet, concrete deadlines or specific instructions to be followed, and how well those were addressed would whittle away or support that A grade. And because my students were often resistant to projects before they began them, I found it easier to make my criterium deceptively simple.

• Was the work completed on time?
• Did you use class time well?
• Did you follow the directions I provided?
• Is this honestly your best effort?
• Did you sign your final project?

Removing the stress of whether or not I would think their work was “good” from the grading equation allowed them to focus on the more important aspect of the project: paying attention to the details and putting forth a best effort to come to a creative solution to the problem. Remove good and bad and that internal voice of judgment gave them the confidence to be creative without worrying what anyone else thought. And when the projects were finished and we held in-class critiques the kids would call each other out on the criteria and not based on whether or not they liked the finished project. When you hear one student tell another “Oh, no, you did not put your best effort into this, because I saw you goofing off!” even the issue of grading becomes secondary.

This applies to any creative endeavor, writing certainly can be appreciated for its quality even when the subject or style bores or distracts, and with graphic novels it comes in handy when deciding between two different titles with different styles and subjects. Story quality counts, certainly, but with sequential storytelling the visual elements also have to be taken into account. Like a picture book the word and images need to work together, and by working together I don’t mean that the style of the art must reflect the nature of the story, though this can’t hurt. In the end it might seem like my criteria is arbitrary, but all judgments are personal so these criteria exist as a way of establishing a set of groundings beyond the old “gut feeling.”  These are some of the things I look for in a graphic novel

• Is there a satisfying narrative arc from beginning to end?
• Does the art contribute meaning to the story that is not otherwise expressed in the words?
• Is there imagery or symbolism  incorporated, and if so, is it unique or relevant?
• Could this story have only been told in this format?
• Would this story be as interesting if it were told as a traditional fiction narrative?

With the idea that every unread book has the potential to be great, after reading a graphic novel I find that I can better understand what did or didn’t “work” for me by using the criteria above. It isn’t an absolute guide, but in cases where I am having a difficult time articulating whether I liked a graphic novel, or why I liked it, these can be helpful.

The quality of the art isn’t mentioned above but that’s because it’s a secondary or parallel issue for me. I don’t care how beautiful the artwork for a graphic novel is, if the story is boring or weak or reprehensibly clichéd, then the book is a failure for me. Gild a turd any way you want, it’s still a turd. Tell me a story I’ve read a thousand before, but give me a unique visual or some clever symbolism to hold onto, and you’ve got my attention. I’ve read mini comix that employed stick figures with more humor and insight than all the Hollywood comedies put out last year. The rudimentary art didn’t bring down the quality of the comic any more than a huge Hollywood budget is a guarantee of art.

If past is prologue, I predict that somewhere in the midst of Cybils judging I’m going to have to compromise. It never fails, my first choice picks almost never get chosen by the group as a winner. That’s okay because the process is a little more like the Supreme Court laying down a ruling rather than a jury delivering a unanimous decision. There will always be splits and divides, and that’s okay because in the end, no matter what committee confers whatever award, or what one critic or reviewer says about any particular books, one simple rule should take precedent over all others for readers:

Read everything and judge for yourself.

Obviously, I’m writing about this because the awards were announced this morning, but not because I had any particular dog in this race. Do I have friends who are writers, people whose book I feel deserve some recognition? Sure, but I’m not writing because they didn’t get a mention either as Winner or as Honor books, I’m writing because the question came up in Twitter buzz about this being a “strong” year with fewer than “expected” Honors given. Then I shot my mouth off about a particular book  not getting attention, calling the award committee “chicken” for not wanting to take a stand on deciding who the books true author was, and the next thing I know I’m back in the mire of my problem with the ALA awards.

Unlike other awards, like the National Book Awards, or the Carnegie or Greenway medals, the American Library Association’s awards for children’s books are announced without a prior shortlist being made public. When the ALA awards are announced (as they were this morning) the public first learns of the Honor books in the category and then the winner of the award in question. The number of Honor books varies as each award committee selects and awards books in secret up until the awarding of the titles (with the exception of the authors who are called early in the morning before their names are announced). This means that until the books titles are named there is no way of knowing which of the 24,000 children’s books published annually will be mentioned during the award ceremony.

Watching the announcements via a live webcast, each of the titles mentioned get cheers and applauds from the ALA members in attendance at the conference, but what goes on with the public (as witnessed on a live Twitter feed) is a collection of individual responses varying from cheers to confusion. Everyone has personal favorites they’re rooting for, and when little-known titles pop up the initial confusion is “Huh, I wonder if that title is truly better than the ones I’ve read.” So the public (or at least the public concerned with children’s books) collectively look at the honor book, then the winner, and they think From this pool of great books a winner was chosen.

Or: A winner was chosen from this pool?

But this year there were only two Honor books for the Newbery Award, which caught a number of people off guard. Normally there are three or four honor books, rounding out the general pool of consensus about which books were considered “the best,” which is what the award looks to celebrate. The problem with only two Honor book is the suggestion that, along with the winner, there were only three books considered good enough for the award. I think everyone in the kidlit community could draft a shortlist of TEN books that would be honor-worthy, and to see only two books honored feel like something is wrong.

What’s wrong is that the process really only looks to award ONE book and Honor books are a bi-product of the committee’s process, not a true designation of all that could be considered contenders for “the best” in that category. Or, as one author suggested, when there is more consensus on the award winner and less dissention within the committee, there are fewer honors. Which if true suggests that if the entire committee agreed on the winner there could be NO Honor Awards that year, not unless they manufactured a list of also-rans.

This is the problem I have with the secrecy of the selection process, it just isn’t transparent.

But should it be?

It’s the ALA awards and they can run the show any way they like. The way they run it now, each award category has its own committee and those committees select and vote on titles in seclusion from the rest of the ALA until the midwinter conference. I have heard tales of books being put forth to the rest of the committee at the conference itself, forcing the members to read and evaluate this last-minute nominee and depriving them of sleep (and consensus) in the process. One could argue that this suggests an openness to be as inclusive as possible in the efforts to find and put forth the best books possible… or that the nature of the process is flawed that the committees are not forced to agree on a shortlist in advance of the award.

Here’s why I think not having and announcing a shortlist in advance is a mistake: it removes the discussion of books from the public, which fails to engage a wider audience to actually care about the awards.

Once an award has been delivered, it’s a done deal. When you announce awards without any lead-up (like the public discussion that proceeds almost every other award) you fail to build an audience who cares. A year ago when the TODAY show decided to bump a segment on the ALA awards in favor of a visit by Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi to promote her new book the only people who cared were people in the kidlit community. The general public? Eh. They weren’t following the awards prior to the announcement, so they probably didn’t even know the winners were announced. They certainly hadn’t had a chance to review a shortlist of possible winner to factually know whether or not Snooki’s book might have merited more attention than the Printz or Newbery winners – it didn’t, but who knew? And that’s the point. You can’t care about an award you don’t know about, and you can’t build excitement or anticipation over an award whose judging criterium is a mystery beyond simply a group-think definition of “the best.”

While working on my MFA in creative writing our instructors (many Caldecott and Newbery Award winners in the bunch) warned us that you cannot write with the intention of winning awards, that you have to write the book that wants to come out. This is true of any art, really. But what was unsaid was that there was no way in hell you could possibly write toward winning a children’s book award from the ALA because the reality is that the criterium are a mystery. The selection committee changes from year to year, and the decision-making process and awarding of winners and honors is subject to a secrecy elevate to the art of whim.

Given how these award winners are held aloft and foisted onto kids by parents and teachers you’d think the awards were etched in stone from an omniscient god whose decisions are unerring. Instead, we get a tin-can-and-string announcement from a cargo cult committee of self-appointed elders.

And, damn it, I still hope to win one of these awards some day.

an ailing     Greenhouse
wearing an elegant bathrobe     attached to oxygen, was
wheeled in the living room of his Cape Cod home
festooned with paper cutouts of

a beloved teacher.
Greenhouse indulged in a
martini and a plate of oysters. Thus fortified,

though a bit wobbly,

he laid down
and praised
“
his lifelong companion and the darling of his
heart”
,
the Countess.

Greenhouse asked his nurses to lay
next to him in bed
that day on Cape Cod.

On a cold day last winter

Some pages of print, when you see them, they just scream to be played with. It helps when there is already some level of poetry in the prose to begin with, but even when the text is cold or harsh there are sometimes surprises to be found. Here’s what the altered source looks like.

Bonus Time!

On the back page of the same magazine I saw an ad and, don’t ask me what was going on inside my head, but I looked at this ad and the word “eating” just stuck out.

Okay, yeah, so I think about eating hearts and immediately jump to a chupacabra. Doesn’t everyone?  Anyway, there you go, two for the price of one (and, uh, free!) this Poetry Friday. Head on over to Wild Rose Reader where Elaine has the complete roundup this week.

the sanctuary

the old man
raked the thick quilt
of maple and oak leaves, and pine needles
from trees he’d planted seventy years earlier
as a boy
in hopes of turning the yard
into a raccoon sanctuary

the raccoons
never came but the old man
raked away for most of october
preparing the yard for
another winter of hope

winter snows came hard that year
it made the old man smile to think
that beneath it all he’d prepared
the soil
to quickly absorb the snowmelt forcing
the trees
to bloom before all the others

that spring
sitting on his porch
while watching the sun melt
the wind crystallizing the snow banks
the old man
remembered the first time
he watched spring bat down winter
and he smiled
because it was as good a memory
as the first time he thought it

and then he died

while the old man’s
grandchildren argued over his estate
drove off with furniture and knickknacks
bickered with real estate developers
the yard
the maple and oak leaves and pine needles
produced their annual blanket
only to be neglected the entire winter

no one sat on the porch in the spring
no one witnessed the snowmelt
repelled by a brown mulch jacket
water streaming down paths and sidewalks
into the streets
instead of the ground
no one noticed how
one by one
the trees all died that spring
until a windstorm knocked many of them
down

the arborists
hired to fell the lot
were unable to explain
how several dozen trees
vibrant and alive in the fall
had simply withered and died
so quickly

now

when the night air is cold and still
the neighborhood awakens to the commotion
of garbage cans strewn across
the old man’s
barren yard and the explanation
by police
of a sudden infestation of local
raccoons

On the corner of our block is a big, old, green house. We call it The Green House. A very old man lived there. He lived in the house until he died, just last year. On a block full of modest yards full of bushes and the occasional tree his was unusual in the dozens of maples, oaks, and pines he had planted there as a young boy. He’d always hoped to make it an urban sanctuary for raccoons.

The man is gone, the trees aren’t in very good shape, no one has seen any raccoons recently.

Poetry Friday Number Two for 2012! And a Friday the 13th at that! Tara over at A Teaching Life has the roundup this week, and I’ll bet there are at least 13 great posts there, if not more.

A good deal of the things I’ve been reading have been as a Cybils Graphic Novel finalist judge and I really cannot talk about those books because them’s the rules. I have been keeping a sort of “diary of a judge” post running as I go so that on the 15th of February I can let the world know what was going on during the process. Not me giving away secrets about the other judges or gossip like that (like I’m clued in enough for gossip) but the process of how I came to the decisions I made. Or am making at the time. It’s weird to talk about the future in the past tense when it’s happening in the moment.

But to be fair, I have been reading a lot of other things as well, I just haven’t had a chance to write or review them. Which means that down the road there’s going to be a flood of catching up I’m going to have to do. That said, there are still some general things I can say about all the reading I’ve been doing lately. Hopefully it won’t sound too vague.

One thing I’d like to see less of are graphic novels about characters with powers or who fight crime. If there’s one thing that makes the graphic novel novel is how it differentiates itself from comic books. It’s just too easy to use the inherent action of superhero comics to give a story a false sense of plot and character development. Far too often the main character’s growth is patently shallow, and if you removed the action sequences (which more often than not have little to do with any inner character growth at all) what you have left is a laughable pamphlet that reads like a 1950s sitcom plot synopsis. “When the Beaver attempts to tackle a problem on his own he quickly discovers there is strength in numbers.”

What are monsters? What do they stand for? Aside from scaring us, or our hero, there has to be a reason they are there. Either they represent a surrogate for a tangible fear or they express a larger concept or idea. If they are merely obstacles to drive a plot or provide a character something to defeat, if they aren’t organic to the story, what’s the point? And if they are symbolic of the main character’s struggle, is it perhaps too much to ask that they be incorporated into the story in a way that they aren’t so heavy-handed, leaden, or obvious?

Fight scenes. They make for good action scenes, especially in a visual medium like graphic novels, but can’t we do something more creative in conveying struggles? A battle of wits, a battle of logic, I’d even take a bake-off as a climax provided it was chemistry that ruled the day. Honestly, sometimes when I’m reading a graphic novel and a fight scene is ramping up I feel as if I’m watching a Chuck Norris movie… which is fine if I’m reading a Chuck Norris graphic novel. Sadly, I haven’t come across a Chuck Norris graphic novel yet.

Finally, I understand – honestly, I do – that a writer or artist can only tell the stories that drive them. But there’s a line between the universal story told personally and what is so personal that reads like therapy. I acknowledge that there can be some great literature and art from pain and grief, that deep emotions can be mined to stunning effect, but no one wants to feel as if they’re going through grief counseling and psychoanalysis as a bystander. Maybe that’s just me.

So aside from my weekly Poetry Friday posts and the occasional check-in I hope to be back to the Grimmoire and delve into some new territory here in the coming weeks.

For you regulars, I thank you for your patience, and or you occasionals, for your kind attentions.

But I was conferred the distinction of a Versatile Blogger Award from Heidi Mordhorst over at my juicy little universe. Having already made one cultural reference in the title of this post (from the movie version of A Christmas Story) I think it only appropriate (and versatile) to make an Eeyore-related point of saying “Thanks for noticing me.”

And with the award comes some major responsibilities. Okay, so some call them rules, but I like the idea that award winners have a certain set of “responsibilities and duties herein.” You know, like a Miss America.

• Thank the person who bestowed the award on you
• List seven random facts about yourself
• Spread the love by passing along the award to five other bloggers – and let them know

This last part should be easy as I am trying to be more comment active among the various bloggers I follow in keeping with a blog comment challenge posted by Mother Reader. But lets take care of business first, shall we?

First, a heartfelt thank you to Heidi who is most talented in both teaching children and writing poems. Despite her protestations that she barely manages two posts a week, when she does post they are far more fulfilling that a lot of places I’ve been to that confuse quantity with quality. If you don’t already make weekly pilgrimages to Heidi’s site via Poetry Fridays, why not go now and bookmark her for future visits.

Now, seven random facts. Boy, this takes me back to all those random facebook memes I used to get sucked into. Back when I was on facebook. You know, back in the first decade of the 21st century.

• If I eat anything with garlic in it I crave chocolate like mad.
• And while I’m on the subject of food, I find cooking meditative, and I like to blend ingredients according to what color combinations I think work best.
• I used to troll thrift stores for photo albums, and when I was a teacher I had a collection of the notes kids used to write in class and left behind. I called these my memory orphans.
• I love drinking ice-cold beverages in the winter, provided I’m inside and it’s warm.
• For a brief period of time in high school I thought I wanted to be a photojournalist but I was afraid to travel. I was nearly 40 before I got over that travel fear.
• I was a radio DJ for the better part of the 1990s. Man, that was fun.
• Amsterdam is my favorite city to visit, with New Orleans a close second. If I were an international jet-set writer the dust jacket bio would say “…and he divides his time between his homes in Amsterdam and New Orleans where he collects photo albums from thrift stores and occasional DJs local radio stations.”

That was fairly random, no?

Right, now on to the “pay it forward” portion of the program. These would be the bloggers who I visit practically daily (stalk might be a more appropriate word, since I don’t comment as often as I should) that are truly worthy.

poet Laura Salas
the aforementioned Mother Reader
Jules over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Laurel Snyder
and Colleen Mondor over at Chasing Ray

And that should cover it! Once again, a hearty thanks to Heidi for the initial award, and a congratulations to the latest round of recipients!

Independent of this I was listening to Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” on the radio and explaining the banality, the shear ridiculousness of the lyrics to my 13-year-old. It was only as I said the words aloud to underscore how lame the lyrics were did I really hear them. What a mess! Did a grown man write that, or did he have his moon-eyed teen son write it? Later, taking a shower, I wondered if there wasn’t something that could be done with the lyrics, if they didn’t contain something greater than their original order. Then I see the prompt about a cento and, voila!

through the revolution

to the sea
’till I’m free
like an eagle
let me fly

through the revolution

feed the babies
into the future, shoe the children
into the future, house the people
into the future

through the revolution

I want my spirit
in the street
to carry to me
into the future

through the revolution

time keeps on
time keeps on
time keeps on
time keeps on

through the revolution

There, let Steve Miller become the new rallying call for politics! I could see the Occupy Wall Street movement using this as well as Tea Partyers. And why not? Shouldn’t poetry speak to all? Okay, okay, at least it doesn’t read as silly as its source material.

Or do you disagree? Is “Fly Like an Eagle” untouchable?

First Poetry Friday of the new year, and it doesn’t contain any leftovers from that New Year’s Eve party you went to! JoAnn over at Teaching Authors is hosting the round-up this week, why not grab a napkin and a paper plate and head on over!

Toward the end of last week and the beginning of this, as one year wound down and the other was about to tear off, I began pondering what sort of posts I wanted to end the year with, what I would start the year with, and what sort of goals, ideals, or promises I would make public. Everyone does it, not always aloud or even publicly, but on some level there is a subconscious thought machine churning over the idea of new and fresh starts, the mental dusting-off of old ideas, and so on. There was also that desire to try to make some sense of the year just past. So much seemed to happen that more than once I wondered if we were having a sort of 1969 sort of world tumult. But by what hook would I peg these thoughts, and to what audience?

Hello? I don’t even know if we’ve been properly introduced. My name is David Elzey. This is one of the places on the internet where I collect my thoughts. I occasionally offer up retellings of fairy tales and original poems. And while I try to hit this space two or three times a week I occasionally slip. I am, fortunately, more regular in my personal life than on the internet. Far too much information, to be sure. Pleased to meet you!

That said, everything I had been considering was doused when the cosmos decided I needed to catch a cold on New Year’s Eve. In my cold-medicine-addled state I could do nothing of note but watch the rest of the world summarize and pontificate and place resolutions before mine.

And so, like the first page of a new notebook, I fill this first post of 2012 with the sort of desperate filling-it-in urgency that will be quickly ignored as we charge forward.

Onward!