24

Aug

There is NO spoon!

Posted by admin  Published in Random Bitches

There is no spoon

We have all seen the Matrix movies. I have occassionally had a “Matrix” weekend as I have had “Harry Potter”, “Indiana Jones”, “Mummy” and various series weekends. Weekends when the weather sucked to one degree or another, the money sucked, or I was just in one of those “I don’t give a shit” moods.

At a point in the movie, Neo comes up to a young boy and he is bending spoons with his mind. They are of course in the “Matrix”. The boy tells him to bend the spoon is not possible, what the truth is, there is NO spoon. Voila! Hey, there is no f__ing spoon.

In the course of our lives we all run up against things that scare the crap out of us.

“How am I gonna pay that bill?”

“How am I gonna get a job?”

“I’m too_____(put your own adjective in here)”

“It’s too hard.”

“It’ll never work.”

“I’ll fail.”

HEY!!! There is no f__ing spoon! Things will work if you believe they’ll work. Through my whole life this is the way it has been. If I need something and I just believe it will be ok, it always, without fail, is. If I get stuck  in the oh my’s, oh crap, what the hell am I gonna do. I not only feel like shit, things usually go like shit too.

The human mind is capable of some miraculous stuff. Examples being Van Gogh, Fleming, and Einstein. They are all amazing. For an all time “there is no spoon” winner, I would vote for Stephen Hawking. This is a man confined to a wheelchair for the last 40+ years who could give us all a run for our money. He knows the wheelchair has nothing whatever to do with his mind and has proved it time and again.

The point of this little ditty is once again I have set out to kick myself square in the ass when I knew I was kicking myself square in the ass and let it affect how I felt, what I was doing, and how I was living. (Note to self, “Hey shithead, there is no f__ing spoon!”)

It is hard, our day to day lives and that is true. That we are what we believe we are is also true. Sometimes it seems impossible to see that damn spoon in front of our eyes and say….”There is no spoon.”

That is however what we need to do. Things will be ok. Maybe not exactly what I want, but then I don’t always want what I should. Things, however, will be ok. Things will be as they should. The Universe in all it’s glory is far wiser and older than I am, and after all, “there is no spoon.”

no comment

11

Nov

De-li-ci-ous!!!

Posted by admin  Published in Random Bitches

Or something to that effect.

This month is NaNoWriMo….National Novel Writing Month. What the hell does this have to do whith delicious..Ab-so-lute-ly fricking nothing.

I had to take a break, scratch that, I needed desparately to take a break. I have been up till three am every morning, and back at the keyboard by nine. I am quite sure I am writing absolute shit; but for the first time in a very long time, I am writing again.

I am going to give up the ghost, quite literally I am afraid. I have been writing about a character for over fifteen years…yep that is right. Fifteen goddamn years. I have never got the story down in one piece, cause I keep loosing my way. I am going to get it down, put it on a jump drive and forget about the damned thing. After this long, I need to move on to something fresher. She’ll forgive me, I think.

Today, for shits and giggles, I decided to read some blogs, get out of my shit begotten mind, and into somebody else.  It helps, you know, to go away for a while. Read somebody’s stuff. Get loved, bored, born, killed, fucked….whatever the case may be. I am not trying to shock anyone, though in my present state of mind….shock would be good. I am just stating a facts as they appear to me.

I don’t read horror often and have to read Stephen King in the light of the day, in sunshine, with a crucifix, garlic, silver, and lots of other mystical charms protecting my sorry ass. I believe in the bogeyman. There are days when I have been intimately acquainted with him….I call him “self editor.”

I only read romances, occasionally. The ones I do read tend to be in the Sookie Stackhouse, Bella Swan variety. I like my romance with a little bite, my bite with a little blood, and the whole thing intertwined with understated bits of humor.

Today I have been reading Stephen Parolini, and I have an editorial name for bogeyman. He is however not MY bogeyman. He has a serious case of sharp wit, and I enjoy reading him. He calls himself the Novel Doctor. You can find him at http://www.noveldoctor.com

Visit, I think you’ll have a good time. You might even learn something. I had to seriously get up and check the state of the chair I was sitting in after he talked about cutting a 200,000 word novel down to 120,000 word. My chest hurts and I think I’m on the verge of a heart attack. I am a putter inner. If I write something at 1000 words I will re-write to 1500 words, it’s just my way. It’s also why there is nothing in your local bookstore with my name on it.

I am going to go back to my shit stuff now, break time is over and I gots some serious writing to do. Thanks doc, I WILL try to do better (when donkeys fly, darling)

no comment

19

Oct

Where the Dead Things are!

Posted by admin  Published in Random Bitches

I cannot believe I am doing this. Doing it tho, I am. I signed up for the National Novel Writing Month(NaNoWriMo). Like I don’t have enough to do, which is the problem. I don’t.

I am stuck in that goopy, sludgy, totally stupid time of unemployment. I am going to school. Sorta. Online, cause my freakin hearing eliminates me from audio lectures. I feel more of a burden than a gift. I feel so damned depressed I spend more time on my ass than anyone has any right to.

The only thing left to do is write. So I’ll do school stuff, not because I have to, but because I love learning new stuff. I am sick of watching tv. Have watched every dvd I own at least five times, some more. Have read every book I own, many times over and an freakin bored out of my skull.

The only thing left to do is write. So I will write 175 pages, 50,000 words in the month of November. Most of it will be shit. Shit is a condition I am well acquainted with. I am debating which way to turn. Supernatural, romantic, adventure, crime, or “real life”. Not that it really matters.

The only thing left is to write. I look at all the things I HAVE written and occasionally I say to myself, “Damn I like that. I would pay money for that.” Then the editor-on-my-back gets in a snit and I loose it. The most enjoyable thing in my life and I have a bitch of a time giving myself permission to do it. It ranks right up there with chocolate, booze, and sex.

The only thing left is to write. I figure it’s my, “If it ain’t for money, it’s a waste of time.” thing. It’s not, not really. If I can get myself off my self-conflagration, not good enough for shit list; maybe I could really do something. The first person who utters the words “Get a job.” is going to die a horrible, painful death. Totally licked to death by a phantom cat…with rabies.

This is just me, on a Monday morning…taking out the trash. Cause writing it is the only way I know how.

no comment

8

Oct

Things that go bump on the WWW!

Posted by admin  Published in Random Bitches
Several years ago, let’s say at least ten. I found when I Googled my own name, a review posted by a person working for their master’s (I believe). I thought “Kool” and proceeded to investigate. All these years later, that post is still a thorn in my side.

I did not then, nor do I now know this person; but it hurt my feelings and left me with a large amount of tribulation concerning my writing abilities. I didn’t write fan fiction again for over five years. My creativity suffered. I suffered. It has taken me a long time to get over it. Why?

At the time, I was alone. My teenage son had died. I felt a complete failure.I was trying to raise my other kids with a love of life I didn’t feel. I had been taken advantage of by, not one, but three people whom I had sought to buy property from. I was reasonably broke both monetary and mentally. This one person’s opinion shattered my feelings into a thousand tiny fragments. I lost that which at the time was maintaining my sanity; I lost my writing.

It’s easy to say, “It’s only one person’s opinion. Why do I care?” Why indeed. This one person who had only read a fraction of the thousands of postings I had done at the time, took a story, out of context I might add and totally trashed my writing ability. Not just the story content, but my ability itself. Today it still comes up when I Google my name (though it’s gone from page 1 to page3). Now I’m a little older and a whole lot wiser.

When I write a review on a person or their work, I try to stay objective. I have subjected Bella Swan, Hermine Granger, Vicki Nelson and a few historical women to the same review Rowan Michaels got and now I can laugh. She called my character “Mary Sue” yet in the writing world I found that any strong female character was fallible to the “Mary Sue” syndrome.Yet everyone I have ever read or written about was based on someone’s mother, grandmother, sister, aunt or some other female presence. A true person. Someone of importance for the writer.

The point I want to make is we should be careful. Accent on the “care” here. We should not trash a person’s dreams or ambitions because they are different, competitive, nor make them a point of ridicule because they see with different eyes. Things stay on the bloody internet for a godawful long time.

My main characters are usually women. It’s what I know. The women in my family are the toughest people I have ever known. My mother could kick butt with the best of them and never needed to take names…she already knew them.

I wish I could write really great male leads and its something I am working on. I have however come to grips with the fact that I write what I know. I write history, languages, martial arts, music and art. I write fiction because it is what I am the most comfortable with. The old not a person, never was, blah…blah…I write because any other option is unacceptable.

Tags: , , ,

no comment

2

Oct

Reading and Thoughts

Posted by admin  Published in Random Bitches
I was reading my Google Reader today, cause that’s where I keep the people I follow all the time. Twitter is fine but I am more interested in paragraphs than sentences. I came across an article by Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz and ended up sitting here nodding my head and going “Dammit! Hit the nail right on the head. Again.”
You can read the entire thing here http://ittybiz.com/scuzzy-and-disingenuous/ .

Here’s my short, short, really freakin short version…..

Being a member of the female half of the population I can unequivocally state that Naomi is right; women never look at themselves with the strength we are capable of. My mother once stated that if the human race was set up that woman had first child, man had second, woman had third….etc. There wouldn’t be a family on earth with more than three children.I think in more ways than one, she was right.

Now do NOT email me and tell me how much of a ball buster I am. I am not. I love the male species, and always have. I have five sons and three daughters and have had four husbands. I have “sampled” the pack, darling. I know that women are who we are because women are nurturers and men are the providers. In our society this doesn’t work all the time anymore.

I have met and read about way too many men whose housekeeping and parenting skills leave me in the prehistoric age. Men who stay at home and do what they do cause the women in their lives like working and they like being Mr. Mom. My biggest problem is not with men but with the women in our day to day lives.

I have worked for both men and women and have found in the long run….women are tougher bosses. They expect the same from me they are willing to give (read that as 120% work, 150% of the time), men tend to let me slide. Women tend to be irrational. We can get really pissed at some stupid little drivel of a thing , fly off the handle and sound like a bitch from hell. We also tend to be super multitaskers, which is a polite way of saying ” supebitch from beyond hell.” However when the serious things in my life come to a head I tend to sit back and think about it.

Why? Like many of us, I’ve been shit-awful trained to let “someone else” take care of it. It took me a lot of years to figure out that no body and I mean absolutely fucking NOBODY knows me as well as I do.

My husband, bless his heart knows all the things about me that a partner should. What I like, how I like it or what I hate and why. As good as he is, he doesn’t know that dark little corner I huddle in when I’m feeling overwhelmed whispering “Fuck, fuck, fuck” to my overworked, underpaid ego. He sees me lost in a daze trying to muddle through some stupid web program that I know…just know it sucks because I left out one freakin / or forgot to close a tag or christ forbid closed them in the wrong order and can’t find the goddamned thing; and knows there is really not a damned thing he can do to help.

He on the other hand is studying C# and when I look at it, it’s clean and easy to read. Not like my stuff that puts one page on a site after writing ten pages and three files of code, in longhand, in a steno pad, in the middle of the night, munching Tylenol and drinking tea.

But you know? I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I like what I do. Have everything I could ever want…okay, no wheels, not important at this point….I can be anyone or anything in the autonomy of the internet. I can see things that in reality I probably never will, talk to people I ordinarily would never meet, learn things I am way too broke to pay for. God, I love the WWW.

What is the point of all this you ask? That’s the easy part. We are who we are by choice. I picked this way, you picked that way. I took the high road, you took the low, or left and right; depending on your cliche of choice. We are all very, very good at what we do. Even given the fits, tears and altercations. We need not to ask “Can this work?” but “How do I make this work?” Not “Can I be an artist(writer, programmer)?” but “I AM an artist (writer, programmer)!” We need to sit down and have a serious talk with that screaming little banshee we keep locked up within our psyche and let it know WE are the boss, and will take absolutely zero shit for being what and who we are.

Tags: , ,

no comment

27

Sep

This is just f__ed up!!!

Posted by admin  Published in Random Bitches

I am sitting here on a Sunday morning, knowing I should be working. On weekends I try to let the school stuff go, unless I am in the middle of something that is stuck in my mind giving me the “What the hell is wrong with this picture?” attitude.

I like to work, and web pages, hand coded or like this one, WordPress is more like a playground than work. Why I’m sitting here, beating my head against the monitor, is transportation……A-friggin-gain!

I cannot believe I am housebound…..once more. It really sucks. What sucks even more is the frequency. For the last fifteen years, I can count on one hand the number of times I have had nothing to drive, had to depend on others to take me where and when. In the last month there have been at least two. Da je vu!!I am just too damned independent for my own good.

The only really good thing about it, if I can’t leave home, I don’t spend money.

Of course there is always Amazon. I don’t have to worry about Ebay, cause my debit card is not on there. I could actually spend an Ivana Trump shopping spree on Amazon and not get everything I want. That in itself is a whole different story.

So what is f_ed up? I guess the economy. My present world included. While I think I do pretty well. School in getting up there and I only have about six months left, unless I can get the TAA to spring for a programmming course. Then I am either back into the workforce or freelance, or unemplyed and super broke. Winter is coming and I can no way afford “broke.”

The thing I miss most about not having a car or truck I can call my own, is my husband. Currently he is working a nite job at a local vet’s plus taking classes during the day and if I can’t go see him, we don’t. Over the last twenty-five years or so, I have been in this position more than once. You know what? I am tired. Tired of no sleep, allergies, arthritis, sucky meals and just…..well just freakin’ tired.

Maybe things will look better tomorrow, but tomorrow being Monday…Well…  we’ll just have to wait and see.I do believe I’ll be doing a lot of work on my sites this week.

Do you have any idea what it takes to take a 44kb story, hand written and transform it into a web document? If I was using dreamweaver, no time at all. Doing it by hand takes about three hours and that’s without valdation. Just getting it to post. Most of the stuff I’m dealing with was posted on fan sites in 1994-1996. I’m not changing it. Posting it exactly the way I originally did, with the “I don’t own, never did, only borrowing” declarations. If the US government ever figure out how to tax creativity, unpaid creativity, I am totally s-c-r-e-w-e-d!!!!!!

Tags: , , , ,

no comment

25

Sep

Validation and all that Crap!!

Posted by admin  Published in Random Bitches

I guess everyone in my world knows I am taking classes on Web Design. Ok! Ok! Maybe not everyone. Just those in my little galactic rotation.

I seriously want to know how “important” having your pages validated through the W3C is. To me it’s important simply because it’s something that says, “Hey, you did it right!” Others I am not too sure. I have got into the habit (yeh, yeh I know…just a teeny bit obsessed) of checking the page source of lots of web sites. I like to do this if it’s a site I like the looks of or the way its written. Wake up! Hello! Most of them won’t pass validation. Why the f__ not? Maybe I’m beating a dead horse here. It really is a lot like the spelling and grammatical errors I see in posts.

Am I being a bitch? Not really sure about that one. It just torques me that people that are supposed to be experts leave so much undone. I am a far cry from perfect. They broke the perfect mold long before my crazy ass got to it. I do however like things right. I am not a teacher, programmer, or IT expert.

I do however know the difference between here and hear. Is it that people are in such a hurry that they just don’t care anymore? Is it really so hard, with all the good shit we have today to run some through the spell check, page source, or validator? I am not in that much of a hurry.

I think we have gotten out of the habit of having someone “beta” our stuff too. I use at least three different beta readers from all over the country with all sorts of online access to see if my stuff will fly. Sometimes it does and some times…well…we all know IE can be a friggin nightmare. The point is I try to get it right. I do care if people can read my scribblings or whatever. I could never put something out there and just say, “Oh well, good enough.”

If it’s not good enough in my eyes, I damn sure am not going to consider it good enough for some one who is really interested in the dead space between my ears. In other words, “It don’t have to be perfect. It DOES have to be right!” (You caught that!….Right!!)

Tags: , , , , , ,

no comment

2

Sep

WTF???

Posted by admin  Published in Random Bitches

(warning for profane language. if you get insulted easy….move along…read something else)

WTF??? I see this on the internet a lot. It stands for, if you don’t know,” What the fuck?” So I am sitting here, I have read Naomi(www.ittybiz.com), Johnnie B.T (www.theeconomyisnthappening.com), Havi (www,thefluentself.com) and quite a few others. In my mind, it runs like an old 78 record….”Fuck…fuck…fuck!!!” This is where my tired, sordid, overworked, unpaid mind goes when things are off. It’s my personal equivalent of a rubber room. Cowering in a corner with eyes squeezed shut. Hyperventilating. WTF?

August sucked the big one. First because we lost two of our dogs, Frank(golden Lab) was just old (17) and he died in my daughter’s arms. Rally (sheltie) had been abused before we got him. We had him for 8 years. He died from a brain tumor. We were lucky to have them as long as we did. WTF?

Here I am,folks; in a household that owns 6 vehicles of which only one is running. To top it off it is the one that belongs to my son in Japan. Yeppers. Now I am freakin house bound, cause I am the only one without out of home job or school. Bada…boom…WTF?

I have this really nice instructor in Photoshop that doesn’t realize, though I have repeatedly repeated myself, I have never used Photoshop before and have to go look up half the shit he says, course he is also 30 years younger than me and knows it all. Well most of it I guess. WTF?

This same Photoshop is giving me freakin nightmares. You know the kind. Really weird poster colors, types, furniture and craziness chasing me down some dark unrecognizable alley, breathing fire down my knickers. What the hell are layers anyway? WTF?

I’ve got more bills than I have money,and a mechanic that saw me coming and stood back rubbing his hands in evil glee figuring out how much he could soak me for the drive shaft laying on the f-r-e-a-k-i-n ground. WTF?

Back in the corner of my mind I am huddling in a corner whispering “fuck…fuck….fuck” Tomorrow is garbage day and I have to clean not one but two freakin refrigerators. Four, count the suckers…four litter pans, and empty four or five garbage cans. WTF?

You see this is where my mind goes. In the midst of it all. I have everything I could ever want. My kids are healthy and relatively self-sufficient. I have a husband who would follow me into hell carrying a fire extinguisher. I’m not really hurting for green, though it’s a little tight. I have things to read, three computers, the best online there is and lots of stuff to write about. I don’t usually bitch so much. It does however come around rather regularly. I know this. Any time I get my knickers in a knot thinking things are good, fate throws a wrench in the works and proclaims it not to be as good as I think it is.

But you know? It really is. I may cower in the corner of my mind, sitting in that tight little corner, whispering unintelligible things. Maybe I don’t have the self confidence to be all I should (working on this one). All in all though, with all the “WTF?” it is still good. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Ok, so maybe that’s a bit of a fib. We would all like more money and vacations (hubby in speedo-yum) and good stuff. It really depends on what you consider good stuff. Guess I should go find some of that “good” stuff now and get my blathering ass out of that “WTF?” corner. It really is just a point of view. Ya know?

Tags:

no comment