Not feeling organized enough for a full-fledged journal entry, so this'll be a grab-bag:

* I've made my Word document backup for my (as-yet untitled) NaNoWriMo '07 novel, with the link waiting on my computer desktop, waiting to be filled with yummy words. And I will be taking notes in my planner, which I can carry around. I'm already figuring how to fit the word-banging-out stuff into my November schedule. People are likely to see me hunched over my planner scribbling furiously quite often.

And I found that the book No Plot? No Problem! by National Novel Writing Month founder Chris Baty is A) available at Powell's and B) available at my county's library. (Multnomah County Public Library is hip, yo. It carries quite a few Caitlin R. Kiernan and Poppy Z. Brite limited editions, for one thing...) I skimmed bits of it at the Hawthorne Powell's yesterday, and (because I'm trying to spend not too much money right now) I placed a library hold on it. No telling when I'll actually get it, but I'm glad to know it's around!

* I'm really digging the Silversun Pickups song "Well Thought-Out Twinkles" (which just came on the radio). I hadn't really liked their first single "Lazy Eye" -- something about it seemed a little "affected" (the best word I could come up with), where the shifts between the lead singer's quiet style and screaming style didn't really seem totally motivated by the song but by the need to emote, by Gum! -- but "Twinkles" really grabs me, and feels like a real roller-coaster melody. Me likes it.

* (Yes, I also realize how much I said "really" there.)

* Me also likes the Foo Fighters cover of (of all things) "Band on the Run" by Wings. Not a normal song for 94.7 FM (one of the stations I listen to), but Foo is one of their normal bands, and I'm glad the station's giving the song airplay. I think I am becoming a Foo fan, in fact, to the point of "Dude, borrow one of their albums already!"...

* Last night I watched part of the American Gangster episode on the D.C. area snipers in 2002. I have difficult memories from that; it was easy to remember how scary and horrifying those attacks were, and how wounding the whole drama was. I knew some of the places where people were murdered. And learning of some of the backstage drama of the hunt for those men added to what was scary about it; I'd never known until last night that the gunman would shoot from a hole in the trunk of that blue Caprice.

My parents were in Northern Virginia at the time, visiting my brother T.J., his wife Cindy, and their twin sons (who were then seven months old), and my fellow adult Walshes encountered the Guardian Angels group pumping gas for people; John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo had killed some of their victims at gas stations. The sad red herring of the white delivery truck (wrongly believed to be the snipers' vehicle) affected my family, too: there were lots of white delivery trucks going in and out of T.J. and Cindy's neighborhood, but they were there for completely innocent reasons. Cindy was glad she could stay at home with her sons, so that they truly were safe; she saw through the snipers' messiah complex-fueled blustering of "Your children are not safe anywhere." "My children are safe," she said. "They're at home with me."

It's belated, but thank you, everyone who helped capture those two. (I like that truckers were recruited to block the ramps in and out of the rest area with their big rigs.)

And to lighten the mood, watching the documentary also reminded me of formre D.C. resident Dave Chapelle actually making me laugh about the D.C. snipers, when I saw his wonderful film Dave Chapelle's Block Party. Chappelle's comment: "See, that's when I knew the D.C. Sniper was black. 'Cause he was taking weekends off."