Alice of Oregonlandia

 

So, I’m working on a a sequel to a novel I just finished in December.  Which might be coming out soon, I never know these days. How’s that for vague?? I have about twenty five thousand words for Alice. No idea where it’s going. But it seems to want to go and drag me along behind it. Hurry up hurry up!  So that’s either a good sign or I’m going insane in the membrane. And then I look up and notice my country [the United States of Pre-Civil War II A’Brewin] seems to be exploding in all directions as hard and fast as possible, so I dive  back into my scribbling foray and head off, again, to the shining city on the hill Eighties of Herr Reagan, Dirty Dancing and small town politics. Oh and ghosts, because I’m supposed to be writing about scary things but can’t seem to write anything scarier than the rapid decline of Not-Canada.

 

[This is from a protest against the ‘temporary’, did we get a time limit on this ‘temporary’? ban on people coming from several Middle Eastern countries. Here’s the New York Times article on that: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-prompting-legal-challenges-to-trumps-immigration-order.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0 ]

See what I mean? And you wonder why other people are defending this who had relatives who came here or who themselves are refugees or recent immigrants or…and then you realize people can justify anything if they try hard enough and want it to be true. Which gives you a case of the cold dead shivers. And makes you want to watch Pixar movies and just wait for the end of it all. So!! Ahem.

I’ll put a bit of Alice in Oregonlandia here, because I’m a shameless huckster now of my own writing, bwha ha ha, ahem, and you can judge me on a first draft effort. Yah? 

  “Because. Mr. Blue is visiting again.”

    My stomach dropped, my skin went cold, I bit my lower lip so hard I nearly severed it. I tasted blood. “Are you shitting me? Why? He always loses when he takes on my mom. Always.” I knew he was about again, but it hadn’t yet been confirmed. That’s why I’d wanted to go to the house and see for myself. Maybe I should call off our Saturday Night Adventure.

     “Maybe he wants his slick girlhog.” Mr. Peepers actually said to me. “Maybe he’s sitting there like a patient toad for a particular slick girlhog.” Those obsidian eyes regarded me moistly. The little gross thing actually did actually love me. And, I was not going to let Mr. Blue scare me. My mom had kicked his ass to the curb, twice now. Didn’t he know to stay away?

     “Oh please, ” I replied, shooing him off my bed so I could sit. He went reluctantly, those little strange feet slapping down, slapping down. Lysette curled up into a little ball of arms and legs. “I’ve seen the horror movies, you freak. Don’t go in the house! And then they go into the house! This is real life, fruitcake. Real life. He’s afraid of girls. I’m supposed to ignore that, Peepers, old friend, ole pal?” I tried to sound tough, to sound smooth and tough and fearless. Because I did not want to go visit that burned down childhood home of mine now. At all. But pride. Pride, man, it’s a bitchkitty.

     Mr. Peepers went to our closet. Lysette and I shared everything, after all. He gave me a look from those awful black eyes of his. Sometimes they had little orange dots in them, as if his eyes were on fire. “That’s what he wants, Missie Alice. He’ll come sniffing out the holes in this house now…JUST YOU WAIT.” The traveler laughed and laughed, slapped his droopy little potbelly and then stalked off into the closet. He had a nest in that house on Clark Boulevard. Where he kept a deck of cards, some socks and other things I made myself forget as soon as he told me. I just like cards, they’re small and slick and pretty, he had admitted one night. I’d wait until mom and my dad were well and truly asleep, not fighting or anything else…and then get up out of bed or off the couch. And play Old Maid with Mr. Peepers or hear stories from the little girls. Rosiecheeks had one story she told–a version of Little Red Riding Hood, where the little girl doesn’t win. The other little girl in that house liked to talk about her doll and the doll’s tongue would come out and try to touch my face. It became a game to not let that tongue touch me. Dirt, what she called herself as she didn’t remember her name at all, would just smile and smile as her doll’s head tried to lick my cheek. It’s not much fun over here, she would complain. It’s not much fun at all. Sometimes the little boys would show themselves, if they weren’t too busy stomping from the back door to mom’s room, over and over. They thought that so funny. Especially if they could get her to wake up and check on the noise.

     But where do you go? I asked Rosiecheeks that once or twice. She didn’t know. Or she didn’t want to tell me. Or she couldn’t tell me. Then, to distract me, she’d go into her version of Little Red Riding Hood, where the little girl dies and no one comes to save her. The wolf licked her blood off the walls and Little Red Riding Hood watched this as she died. That’s where it ended. Every time. The story always started with: A bad little girl in a bright red cloak walked into the forest.

     Why didn’t that little cloaked brat save herself? I never thought to ask that. A wolf is just a big dog. Pick up a stick, fight back.

 

 

Marching Marching Marching

So, today, January 21, 2017, women and men around the world marched. They marched against an orange little man who would be king. They marched against the rolling back of rights so already hard-won and hard-fought by our great-grandmothers, our grandmothers, our mothers. By our great-grandfathers, our grandfathers, our fathers. By people. People, rather like today, who stepped out and kept stepping, kept stepping.

There is a collective amnesia going on, as well. Why are all those women marching, some ask, with a laugh, a shrug. Women already have a bunch of rights. What rights are they losing? LOL, those dumb women, they should stop playing the victim card. They should calm down. Who knew there were so many ugly women unable to get a date on a Friday night? What about men’s rights? What about the pro-life women or the pre-born women?[Yes, I saw that written all over today and yesterday–” the rights of the pre-born women, what about those rights?” Sometimes I think I’m living in some absurd Beckett play or Orwell is playing  mad prank on us from beyond the grave…]

And so many others eye-rolling and snorting at people marching against such a perceived threat to America, to the world. A man who has said, openly, that he grabs pussies, that he kisses women whether they want it or not. That Mexicans are rapists, that Muslims should be registered, that…oh there’s a list. Others have compiled very detailed and awful lists of what this orange man has said. Who then turned around and denied saying it or had his minions say he never said such and such. That this was what he actually meant. To not pay attention to his words, as Kellyanne Conway said, but to feel what he has in his heart. Something like that, some apologetic impossibility we’re supposed to swallow, swallow, swallow.

And the racists that came out of not really hiding at all. They’ve never really hidden, come on. Come on, America. They’ve squatted in plain sight, waiting for their moment. And with Queen Cheeto, they got it. David Duke celebrating openly and gleefully. Cheeto did not denounce him openly or viciously…if he did, it came far too late. Richard Spencer being punched, an openly open about it NeoNazi. Steve Bannon. Breitbart “News”. Oh fuck, there’s a list, a list of white supremacists with access to the POTUS. We’ve been invaded by Hyrda  and people are celebrating MAGA by excluding nearly all the citizens in the USA…The White House site was suspiciously scrubbed of climate change information, LGTB rights pages, healthcare [ACA], civil rights…America First, which was the rallying cry of antisemite Nazi sympathizers right before WWII. Which Bannon, who wrote that Bane-esque speech KNEW VERY WELL. Stephen Miller helped. White males suddenly felt they had a voice again! I just…I just splutter between laughing and weeping, a sort of strangled coughing comes out.

But.

I saw a woman post a very long, obviously copied and borrowed from somewhere else, screed on how real women don’t complain or march or speak out or cause problems or rumble or notice much at all, apparently. Because we already have all the rights, we women, so why are SOME WOMEN being so silly and saying we don’t when Queen Cheeto– I will never call that thing by its name, it’s childish, but hey– hasn’t even done anything yet and hey, he had a woman run his campaign and he…oh there was this indignant little list of how great Queen Cheeto was and how inclusive he was of women and so forth.

And my reaction to that? Mm. Yeah, except all those rights you listed– to have a job, your own bank account, work outside the home, go to school, earn your own money and buy stuff like houses and land and big ticket items, vote, have a voice in elections at all…ALL CAME FROM WOMEN AND MEN MARCHING, SPEAKING OUT AND TRYING TO CHANGE THINGS. Like, oh, they are now. In Los Angeles and Chicago and Portland and Boise and Seattle and Atlanta and New York City and Paris, France and London, England and…all over the world. As someone pointed out, they haven’t seen marches and outcries and such like this since the days of Vietnam. A lot of women seem really embarrassed by this attention other women are yanking toward us as a sex. That’s fine. But we need to remember that our present-day rights are very fragile and can be yanked away and will be yanked away if we are not vigilant. We take them for granted. We don’t remember that we’ve only been voting since 1920 or so. That it was illegal in the sixties to get birth control if you were single. That sexual harassment was okay until almost 1980. That a woman couldn’t have her own bank account, in her name only, until the mid to late seventies. That spousal rape was okay until the 1990’s. Look it up. Obtaining a divorce. Being allowed to keep working after getting married. Abortion rights. The right to have a say over your own body. Barriers in sports, in education, in male-dominated fields…all shattered by women willing to speak up, out and make a fool of themselves if they had to.

These things, banking, voting, birth control, abortion, career, education, holding public office, driving,  and other things!!  were all fought bitterly over [they still are] and if we little ole gals ain’t careful, will be rescinded as neatly and surgically as possible for ‘our own good’. So that women ‘are protected’. So that we women ‘are safe’. Oh the buzzwords and comforting chains offered!

Oh and it’s okay to march if we’re pretty or in some way acceptable, of course. [Note the language cast toward the marchers– ugly bitches, cunts, loud-mouthed twats, dykes, lesbos, professional victims, whiny bloodbags, must all be on the rag, etc. etc.] Language meant to demean, cut down, shame women for wanting anything other than what we’re told we should want. Or that we, allegedly, already have. [And that we should forget how hard-fought those earlier fights had to be to even get a foothold in the door, as it were. Not a few days, but hundreds of years, if not thousands, for women to be treated as human beings. Or…as men get treated without a second thought from anyone.]

I am so glad to see such an outcry. That our great republic is not dead yet nor is decency, compassion and outrage against injustices great or small. I am glad that passion still exists to try and change a wrong. Change is painful and comes at a cost. We’ve forgotten the cost our great-grandmothers and strangers alike paid so long ago. We don’t learn from history. We have to learn the same painful lessons over and over. Those rights we take for granted and get complacent about or ignorant as to just how and why we have those rights today…can be snatched away by pussy-grabbing king wannabes, by dead-eyed zealots who want their version of a murderous, awful god to be our god, too…and they’ll do it to Make America Great Again and make us thank them, on our knees, telling them how great they are, how great they are, how great, how great.

Loyalty was demanded by Queen of the Cheetos. Loyalty. Like I and other Americans are dogs, not citizens.  Fuck you. That’s my answer. Because I live in a society that might wince at my use of a cuss word [ladies shouldn’t cuss, right?] but still appreciates a show of resistance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ms. Positive Vibes and Happy Rainbows of Industry

 

from the Oregon Trail Game

So. It’s four in the morning. I’m awake. I wake up, more or less, between two and four every morning, so this is normal. Don’t worry, I go to bed around seven. Because that’s when the heroin kicks in. Just kidding. That’s what you say when you say or write something awkward and want to dull the edges a bit. “Just kidding” is rather like using the term, allegedly, when you say something that you know is probably ninety percent true. It’s just a version of CYA.

Welladay, it’s snowy here in Oregonlandia. As in destructive, can’t go anywhere in this crap, why am I upside down in a ditch, when did that happen? snowy. Buildings are falling down here in Ontario, Vale, and Nyssa. Over in Idaho, poor Weiser lost its only grocery store. A town of about three thousand people, and home of the Old Time Fiddler’s Convention– http://www.fiddlecontest.org/

Okay, this is supposed to be a bloggie blog about my writerly writings attempts, fails, victories and other assorted bleep, bloobs and blumberings. [As a writer, I can make up words. I give myself permission and sign that executive order to make up all the words I wish because I can and it’s bigly good and I approve of this message.] So aye, maties, let’s stop dawdling and get to the meat.

I actually did start a cheerful dystopian not-gritty not-rebooted Shitweasels of Desire. Except now it’s tastefully called– Pimple Hollow. And since it’s amusing to me, and lets me funnel off some of my brain-melting depression a bit, I’ll probably write at least twenty some pages on it. Or start it all over again, and then again after that, until some sort of story actually occurs to me or I’ll put it aside and work on something else I put aside. Because, being a total Gemini– I even have a tattoo in case people doubt that I am indeed a total Gemini– I have more than one novel, play, short story, bit of sloppy self-indulgent poetic snippet or what I call–“junkcrap no one gets to read because it’s on level with something my dog wrote, if my dog drank whiskey and did crack” going at any one time. And then I read where Neil Gaiman does that, too. Have several projects going at any given time, so that when he gets bored, he can focus on something else for a bit and then come back. Oh my gosh!! I DO THAT, TOO. I so do that, too, Neil!!

 

I also did manage to finish my ghost novel, House on Clark Boulevard. It’s set in one of my childhood homes [we moved around when I was little, so I have several.] during the end of the Seventies. Around the holidays. And yes, it’s a weird mixture of family memories and a housewife fighting the forces of darkness. Nancy, my pragmatic heroine, has to find a way to defeat Mr. Blue, who’s offering her quite a horrific deal. She also had to get through the baking of two turkeys, rocky family waters, and what major appliance will break down next. It’s a full life!

Now, since writers seemingly have to have a series these days, I actually thought, vaguely, of a sequel for House on Clark Boulevard [if you keep repeating something, apparently, people, even though they’ll make faces and gagging noises, will remember it. I think that’s true of propaganda, movies stars, and obscure book titles. Yay!]. I don’t have a title yet, other than Alice of Halliday Road or maybe Alice Remembers. Or something with Alice in the title, since Alice is the name of Nancy’s daughter from THE HOUSE ON CLARK BOULEVARD. Did I mention, yet, that I am already considering a sequel to THE HOUSE ON CLARK BOULEVARD? Well, consider it mentioned!

So!! This as of yet somewhat sorta named not at all yet sequel would be set in the late Eighties, maybe the last year of Reagan. [As HOUSE ON CLARK BOULEVARD was set in the last years of Jimmy Carter’s turn as POTUS. See what I did there?? Points if you noticed, dear reader.] Alice would be taking up the fight, more or less, that her mother, more or less, fought. How’s that for a ‘must-read that!’ tagline?? Sucks, yeah. Thanks. I could also explore how others see Nancy from HOUSE ON CLARK BOULEVARD. And get different versions of events from HOUSE ON CLARK BOULEVARD. Fun! [Points again if you notice the repeating title I keep repeating, dear reader.]

 

I also started a novel about ghouls. Which I labeled “Infection“. But. It’s fairly hardcore graphic and has cannibalism right off the bat. I might post some blurbies from it for future bloggie blog postings, the scrubbed and nice paragraphs only, of course. We might be in a post-PC world now, but there is a limit!

It’s probably tortureporn a bit, ayway and should be kept locked away in this writer’s little trunk of “nevva evva gonna show that to a living soul, amen”. Why am I bringing this one up?? It’s a project that I set aside! It’s not calling out for me to come play. Oh, did I mention I finished HOUSE ON CLARK BOULEVARD??

I’ll end this rambling screed with a shudder at anyone eating lamb blood pancakes with raisins sprinkled in the batter. Raisins. In pancakes. No!! I saw that on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman. Some supercold, Northern European place, where they slaughtered a lamb, then used the blood to make blood pancakes and…blood oatmeal cookies. [There was oatmeal in the fried blood pudding– they thickened it with oatmeal, then pan-fried slices of that blood pudding in butter– and Andrew took a bite of it, nodded as he does, and pronounced that it tasted like a ‘bloody oatmeal cookie’. With ‘bloody’ being used to describe the flavor, not how it was a wanker. That’s what I got from that, anyway.] So, there were two kinds of blood pancakes made– with and without raisins. Always, always, choose to leave the raisins out. I can’t put a positive spin on that. Just leave the damn raisins out!

HOUSE ON CLARK BOULEVARD. OREGON GOTHIC, by the way, is, like, totally available and doesn’t even have any Goths in it. What??? Buy a copy and find out why it doesn’t contain any Goths!! BUY A COPY TODAY.  https://www.amazon.com/Oregon-Gothic-Ann-Wuehler/dp/1514140527

 

 

Funny Dystopian YA fiction SHITWEASELS OF DESIRE

Yeah, I got a wonderful, terrible idea. More a sarcastic notion, really. Shitweasels of Desire, set in some vague dystopian future but it’s funny. Funny. And about kids. Well, kids old enough to have urges they have to suppress until the big wedding at the end, of course. Yay!

I think ‘shitweasels’ is a Stephen King word. Might have to invent a new word that means ‘shitweasels’ or borrow one…mmm

So far, I have Weasel and Wanda and Pimple Hollow. Oh and the Emperor of Cheese. Something about star-crossed lovers, they have to wait, wedding, fight the Big Cheese with pithy sayings instead of actual weapons, hail of bullets during wedding, knock knock jokes.

I shall post any actual words I drop toward this here, of course.

My inner demons handed me this hot steamy little pile of sarcasm and maybe an actual something or other. I posted something over on Whorebook and yeah, I get more likes for posting pictures of bread then anything else. I’m a touch bitter. A touch. So, my inner demons took some time off from telling me how horrible and awful I am and flung a tiny gift grudgingly in my general direction.

Okay!! This is why I don’t do blogs. Nobody reads them and it’s rather like masturbating without finishing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter

Molly tired from playing in the snow

The snow is eight miles high. It’s January of 2017. I am wondering what exactly to do with this damn blog thingie. I’m not a blogger, I’m not into sharing my least fart and when I made a loaf of bread and thought deep thoughts about shallow things.

After all, my cleverness seems confined to a small area that no one else seems to find clever. That’s probably just all the snow talking. Did I mention this is the god damn snowiest winter since, like, ever, here in Eastern Oregon/Western Idaho? No? Consider it mentioned. Roofs collapsing. Roads closed. School cancelled.

So I’ll start this bloggety blog AGAIN. To promote my work. To post bread recipes. To tell about when the dogs scratched themselves and it was just so fucking unbearably cute. I can’t muster up much of anything approaching enthusiasm. Queen Cheeto TinyHands-Pussygrabber is about to grab the greasy reigns of ‘murica and it’s like watching a child take a shit on a kitten. Something like that. Honestly, seriously, that’s what went through my swirly head. A mean bloated child taking a runny shit on a kitten.

So!! I’ll try and check back with this every so often, but I tend to actually write, being a somewhat actual writer, and uh, not blog and share stuff I’d rather reveal via cerebral plays about potted plants talking directly to the audience about the nature of God. Just kidding. Oooh…maybe a seashell talking about world economic downtrends…ooooh.