She must have taken a page from the Britney Spears PR playbook. All she needs now is a razor and an umbrella.

When I took interior design courses in college, one of my instructors, an architect, said in any creative profession, criticism is abundant. Therefore, it’s important for people to learn how to receive various kinds feedback and criticism, even if it’s negative. She made us do presentations in front of the class so we could get a taste of what it was like. Some people did well. Some people acted like that crazy author. I was amazed at what could set people off. In some cases, the criticism was only that they didn’t follow the instructions — the poster board was not the correct size or they didn’t label correctly. The behavior of some of the people was astonishing. When I read that crazy author thread, I was reminded of the classroom critique.

There are several morals to this story — be professional and courteous, and don’t pay close attention to every single review. Seriously. I’m sure a person could go mad from it. Mostly, I was reminded of the value of learning to receive criticism, constructive or otherwise. It’s a must. As the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s what criticism is supposed to do: make you stronger, faster, and better than before.

My writers’ group is shutting down soon and I’m going to need another. I’ve been investigating various online groups, but most of them involve hundreds of different people who don’t know each other, the criticism is hit-and-miss, and, in order to make it effective, total strangers must download your work.

Call me paranoid, but there’s something about letting strangers download your material and keep it… It’s not like I’m the next J.K. Rowling and I don’t want anyone stealing my multimillion-dollar prose, it’s more that strangers make me nervous. The next group will need to involve people I trust, not a million strangers from the internet.

If anyone out there is looking to start a smallish critique group, let me know. I’m interested.

I honestly had no idea he’d be so upset.

Last night, Team Kirchner met over dinner to discuss the event that was Blogmageddon 2011. Calmly, we talked it out and, in the end, we both walked away from the conversation getting everything we all wanted. Even Maggie-Toes. There was a lot of Canadian Bacon flying out of the pan last night.

So here’s what I wanted:

1. Easier commenting on blogs.
2. A professional presence where I can start to generate some interest in my work. (I have a plan – more on this in a second.)

And here’s what Tom wanted:

1. A professional looking website — if we don’t own the domain, it won’t look professional (his opinion)
2. A site we own so we can own all the content

We both understood both sides of the argument, so in the end we agreed to do the following:

1. Forget about Blogspot
2. Purchase JenKirchner.com
3. Start writing lots of content to put on the site
4. Ease up as Comment Nazi on all sites (in progress — some things take time… and healing)

Step one is already done. As of this morning, we own JenKirchner.com! Now I need to start working on my writing-related content. I have a lot of ideas and I just need to turn that into something solid.

“You had a dream… and it was solid.”

At the moment, Tom and I are working on a MUD. Tom’s working out the programming portion, and I’m working out the quests, characters/classes and story elements. What I intend to do is release some short stories that support the MUD world. This new site is where I can do that. I’d also like to write more of my humorous stuff, like what I did a few years ago with the “24: The Unwritten Hour”. I’ve always said that I wouldn’t watch Twilight unless it was remade by Michael Bay, and I’ve been toying around with writing something that reflected what that would look like. All this would go on the new site. I also have a lot to say about leading a writing group and writing novels, so all that kind of craft-related content will go there as well.

Now I need to get writing it, and saving it all up so I’ll have lots of stuff to put there once the site goes live. There’s a lot of work ahead for me.

Hoo boy!

The pic gets a little cut off, but you get the point. I also should give Maggie-Toes more time to explain why she didn’t get a job. Slack cat.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about tonight’s fare, it’s the Light & Healthy Spaghetti Carbonara served with garlic bread and salad!

Sexy Mermaid Jonah and other biblical coloring book disasters

Tom and I have been discussing canceling our cable. After a long discussion, we determined our DVR is currently set to record three different kinds of programs:

1. Programs we like (10%)
2. Programs we watch when there’s nothing else to watch (15%)
3. Programs we thought the other person liked so we sit through them and pretend to be happy about it (75%)

To make matters worse, if we want to watch a show on our 1980′s tv, we have to warm it up for 15 minutes before it works. The damn thing is on its last legs and we’re waiting for it to die before we cough up the money for another one. As of this moment, no dice. Like Joan Rivers, it keeps hanging on.

More and more, we are turning to Netflix streaming. It’s free with our current subscription (it’s $10 a month or something), we can watch a multitude of shows that are almost immediately available to watch (takes 1 – 2 minutes to upload), and we can watch it up in the computer room on something that doesn’t need a warm up. My favorite thing about Netflix streaming is that I can watch a lot of British comedy, which Tom and I love. British humor seems a little offbeat to the average American, but I guess after so much Monty Python and Red Dwarf, it’s perfect for us.

Our current favorite is a show of sketch comedy, called “That Mitchell and Webb Look”. A lot of their different skits are recurring themes. One is nonsensical game show called “Numberwang” where the same two contestants appear in every single show, and they just spout out random numbers for no reason. At random times, the host will shout “That’s numberwang!” No one knows what any of it means, and that’s because it means nothing — and that’s what’s so funny about it.

Numberwang, episode 1:

The other clip I attached is a recurring theme they do about Nazis (the Brits love doing comedy about Nazis for some reason). In their Nazi-themed skits, the characters always change, but the general idea is the same.

Mitchell & Webb Nazis:

If you have Netflix, or if you happen to see this at your local movie rental, check it out!

Full of win.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Asks the wife.

“They’re on sale, only $10 for 24 cans,” he replies.

“Put them back, we can’t afford them,” demands the wife, and so they carry on shopping.

A few aisles further on along the woman picks up a $20 jar of face cream and puts it in the basket.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Asks the husband.

“Its my face cream. It makes me look beautiful,” replies the wife.

Her husband retorts, “So does 24 cans of Budweiser and it’s half the price.”

Tonight, my boss is participating in a Q&A session. The director who is coordinating this event asked, via her assistant, to find out what my boss, as well as a VP who is also participating in the event, might like as a thank you gift. They asked for our bosses’ hobbies, and asked for a little help in what a humorous gift might be.

The other admin emailed back first about her boss. She says:

She likes unique things. A good sense of hummer and is very unorganized!

When I was done crying from laughter, I sent her back a private note saying, “I’m fairly certain you meant HUMOR.”

Update: She emailed me back with this little gem:

oh gosh yes….ha-ha sorry about that…I really do not like hummers.

That’s more personal information than I wanted, but thanks for sharing.