Friday, March 31, 2006

Super Cool Blog For Your Inner Voyeur

So there's this blog where people anonymously post secrets about themselves, their lives, and their pasts.

I'm addicted.

Heheheheh.
One $#@*& Sucky Morning

Why? Well, I have a cold. Plus, I've gotten not one but two rejection letters from lit agents today.

Not that I'm going to give up, but shit--who do these people think they are rejecting me? Someday in the near future they're going to be kicking themselves in the ass for passing on this project. (Like my mother-in-law's boyfriend, Neil, who passed on a chance to invest in this crazy project called Starbucks. "I thought," Neil remembers, "these guys are going to lose their shirts. No one is going to spend $1.50 on coffee....)"

Anyway. My plan is to plow my way through the top tier lit agents before I start targeting independent publishers.

I know: publishing a first novel is an uphill battle. And since I haven't really published any short stories, the chances that someone is going to bet on me are slim to none. I'm not going to give up--I may be that pathetic 50 year-old in the corner yammering on about this book she wrote, but I won't give up.

Still, I'd be lying if all this didn't make me feel like such a fucking loser.

I come from a family of uber-achievers: doctors, lawyers, etc. Seems like anytime a Myers does something, they either earn a lot of money at it or are the best in their field. Makes me embarassed to tell my grandmother when she asks--Nope, haven't sold that novel I worked on for like FIVE YEARS.

Anyway.

Venting done.

Back to the computer. Sigh.
A Woman Kidnapped

A woman is kidnapped from a busy street in broad daylight. She has no idea why she was taken. She's kept in a clean, well-furnished room for months. She's allowed to bathe and go to the bathroom when she wants. She's fed nourishing, good food. She is treated with kindness--never beaten, never threatened. Then one day, as mysteriously as she was taken, she is released.

Sounds like a Paul Auster novel, no? Ah, but this is a true story. Make sure you listen to the video clip.
They're Cloning Horses In texas....

Egad--what will this mean for the OTB world.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Ms Minerva Jane Cracks Her Whip

I'm Minerva Jane. How did I get that name, you may ask?

Well, long long ago, in the late '60s a woman named Rose Sgarlat met a man named Snuffy Myers. (I wish I were making it up, but alas...) They married and had a baby named Jessie. When Jessie was two years old Rose went back to school for her PhD in Child Development. The dissertation that ensured focused on Jessie's adventures in daycare, her struggle to accept her new baby sister, and her grappling with the sudden death of her childhood friend from leukemia. (All of this is true, btw. I remember nothing of Jennifer's death itself, but I do recall going over to her house to play with her dog, a particularly stupid airedale terrier, so he wouldn't be lonely. Until the day he got run over by a UPS truck. Oh, and Jennifer's grandmother drove one of those old hippie VW vans.) To protect her daughter, Jessica Lynn Myers, Rose renamed the character in her dissertation Minerva Jane Miller (Minerva as in the goddess of wisdom; Jane as in "Dick & Jane"; Miller as in--well, Miller). And so here I am, Minerva Jane to my friends, MsMinervaJane to strangers.

Someone once told me Ms MinervaJane sounded like either a porn name or a dominatrix's title but then he was a skanky old man with bad teeth. Plus he smelled like moth balls. (Ugh.) So I ignore him.

I have my mother's notes from her dissertation--two old fashioned Composition Books filled with two years' worth of observations.... and someday when I get the chance I'm going to transcribe them and post the text here. (Maybe, if I'm lazy, I'll just scan the pages.... We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?)

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Check Out The Crazy Cats


Pretty fucking funny is all I've got to say.
Because I Don't Have Kids

So yes, I live in Brooklyn and yes, I have four (FOUR!) cats. The people who take care of our loveable foursome take pictures of the cats while we're gone. (A little weird, true, but they're reliable and hey--they leave music on for the felines during the day so they don't get lonely. How about that folks?)

So here are some pictures of my lovely felines, thanks to Amy & Chris. (If you live in Brooklyn & need a cat-sitter, email me at msminervajane at earthlink.net and I'll send you their #. They're great, if not a little over-eager.)

First came Zelda, knocked up at eight months. (Hey, I thought I had a while until I had to get her spayed...)


And Zelda gave us a wonderful set of kitty-babies.











Janus, the runt of the litter, who is actually a little slow. (He's the one who will sit in the corner of our bedroom at 3 AM and meow nonstop at the ceiling for like hours and hours and hours until either Rod or I finally yells SHUT THE FUCK UP and throw a pillow at him. At which time he jumps into the bathtub and meows at the faucet.
























And we have The Girls, who beat Janus up almost every day. Lately, he's learned to defend himself with the Kitty Samurai warrior move. (I don't have a picture of that yet, but someday.)


This is Jasmine:




She's Rod's favorite. He loves to hold her in his arms and pretend he's an evil comic-book villain.








And this is the beautiful Jubilee who has never learned to meow--all she can manage is this odd high pitched squeak.




You may ask--Are you a crazy lady? Four cats in a two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn! Lady, get thee to an asylum. But the weird thing is I swear to god there are times during the day that despite the smallness of the apartment and the nummber of the pride, you can't find a single cat if you wanted to. Where do they go? Ah, they have their hiding places... Or if the back of the closet really a door to an alternative cat reality? Are they off having all sorts of cat adventures while I, poor, lonely, bored and procastinating writer that I am (Okay, I should we working right now.... And here I am writing about my beloved cats) sit cat-less.

And so last night, petting one of them (Janut, if you must know) I realized--"Heyyyyyy. You're not a baby. You're just a cat. Fuck."

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Moose Stautes???

Look at the google ads on the top of this page. Used to be yoga ads. Then goddess ads. Now elk satues? Lion Statues? What's going on here???

Google peons you've lost your marbles.
I'm bored and posting old pictures. Ha!



So this is Rod and me on our wedding day--July 24, 2004.

I'm the one in the white dress. Rod's standing next to me.

Our friend Mark Kraynak is standing to Rod's left.

My sister is the one in yellow on my right.

Her name's Gabrielle--Cool California Poet Farmer.

She's the shit. (Really, she is. Just ask anyone. They'll say--Gabi Myers. Ah. The shit.)

She sent me a poem today, by James Wright.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
Blogging Into The Void

So: if you read this blog, my friends, for god's sake, de-lurk.

Post a comment... So I feel like someone other than my dear hubby and darling little sister reads this thing.
Things I Love About Brooklyn

That within three blocks of my front door there are: three middle eastern restaurants, a british chip shop, a sushi place, a gay bar, a regular ole bar with a full bocce court; a thai restaurant; a coffeeshop; a middle eastern grocery store; a regular grocery store; a specialty coffee store; two mexican restaurants; two produce stores; two drug stores; a burger place; a dunkin donuts (!); an indian restaurant....

That as I walk to any of the above on any given day I can overhear conversations in at least three foreign languages...

I'm about a half hour to hour subway stop from some of the best museums in the world.

I'm a half hour subway stop from Prospect Park. And I swear, standing in that park, looking up at the sky you wouldn't even know you were in a town let alone on the edge of the biggest cities in the world.

Public transportation. (Ah, the freedom of being car-less. No parking hassles. No trying to find a gas station. No traffic...)

Walking culture. Nothing better for people-wathcing, I swear. (Although, in the winter it sucks. See "Things I Miss About Charlottesville, VA" for more on frigid NY.)

The Brooklyn Promenade. You can look out over the east river to downtown Manhattan--all tall buildings and sparkly water.

Being seven hours away from unending family dramas. (Those of you who know me well know just how much of a plus this really is...)

Any writer worth her salt does a reading in Manhattan when their book comes out. Some even when they don't have a book to promote.

This is kind of related to above: Paul Auster lives here.

Go Brooklyn. I hate you and I love you. I'll never leave but I reserve the right to complain ad nauseum. :-)
Things I Miss About Charlottesvile, Virginia


The warm weather. (NY is fucking cold, I don't care what anyone says. And yes, Canada's colder but I would NEVER chose to live there.)
Having enough cabinet space to load up on a month's worth of groceries. (Okay, this one is true of all non-urban living spaces.)
Silence. (I live a block away from the Long Island Hospital. It should be illegal to have an emergency after 2 AM and blaring sirens after 3 AM should be punishable by death!)
The mountains.
My friends: Grier; Wendy...

Monday, March 27, 2006

We're going to Burning Man

Our friend Mark has convinced us to go to Burning Man in August.

Should be fun!
Ashtanga Kicked My Butt

So. I like to think I'm in good shape. I work out. I lift weights. I do yoga three to four times a week.

Then I took this ashtanga yoga class last night at Yoga People here in Brooklyn Heights. It wasn't even the full primary series and I was sweating like a pig by the end. Plus, I can't do full lotus--my thigh muscles are so stiff my knee juts out about six inches from the floor. Sigh.
Slacker Jess


Once again I hang my head in shame.

More posts on the way. Cross my heart.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Paul Auster's Moon Palace

I'm finally getting around to reading this book and it's blowing me away. I was a little dissapointed with Brooklyn Follies--kind of like watching a famous acrobat do a simple back bend... I'm only about half way through MP but I love the descriptions of his "freegan" days in Central Park.

Rod's reading Leviathan right now. Says that too is wonderful, so I guess that's next on my list.

So I tell myself when I'm reading a PA novel on a Thursday morning at 9:30 AM that it's research. (I'm in the middle of writing a short story (which is quickly morphing into a novella) about a writer who moves to Brooklyn and starts stalking Paul Auster... So yeah. Research....

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Ancient Warrior Goddess Statues Unearthed In Egypt

My friend Mark Kraynak alerted me to this... Apparenty archeologists discovered six statues of the lion-headed Egyptian war goddess Sekhmet in the southern city of Luxor.

According to the article "The team found the artifacts in the Kom Hitan area on the location of the 18th dynasty (1580-1314 BC) temple of pharaoh Amenhotep III on the west bank of the Nile..."

The statues were made of black granite and each shows Sekhmet seated on a throne holding the key of life.

I have to admit I'm not that familiar with Sekhmet... I've just never been that drawn to Egyptian mythology. But a quick scan through her entry in my copy of Merlin Stone's Ancient Mirrors Of Womanhood, tells me that at one point the goddess Hathor became angry when Ra told her that the men had gone to the mountains to plot against him. In her anger at this betrayal she turned into the goddess Sekhmet--the protective lion-goddess... Sekhmet easily defeated the conspirators but as she did so she began to enjoy the taste of blood. Her wrath seemed to know no bounds. In an attempt to placate her, Ra mixed red ochre with barley beer and spilled it on the ground. Thinking that it was blood, Sekhmet lapped up enough beer that she became so drunk she returned to her original form, the gentle Hathor.

According to Wikipedia, "In order to placate Sekhmet's wrath, her priesthood felt compelled to perform a ritual before a different statue of her on each day of the year, leading to it being estimated that over seven hundred statues of Sekhmet once stood in the funerary temple of Amenhotep III, on the west bank of the Nile. It was said that her priests protected her statues from theft or vandalism by coating them with anthrax, and so Sekhmet was also seen as a bringer of disease, to be prayed to so as to cure such ills by placating her."

So it seems these six statues (along with the other 24 uncovered at the site thus far) are really just the first of the 700 presumably buried at the temple.

I just love it when archeology verifies mythology....

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Interviewing Anna Rabinowitz

About a week and a half ago I interviewed Anna Rabinowitz, author of Darkling and the upcoming Wanton Sublime, at her Park Avenue apartment.

I'd never met Anna before, so I was a little nervous I have to admit. But she's such a kind, interesting and interested person that I was immediately at ease.

I have to also say that her apartment was fantastic--like something straight out of a Woody Allen movie... And it turns out her son is a fantastic painter--a vibrant colorful style reminiscent of Kandinsky.

You can read my interview with her at Bookslut.
Woody Allen's Matchpoint

Check out my husband's (Rod Schecter) new article at Fringe. A meditation on Woody Allen's new movie and the role of chance in the unfolding of our lives.