So, this week’s episode of The Durrels of Corfu had the eldest son’s book being published. And his family didn’t give two shits in a barrel that he’d managed to both WRITE A BOOK AND GET IT PUBLISHED.
So, his mother, to make up for her own indifference and so forth, arranges a
PUBLIC READING
for this literary newbie.
Larry and his family show up and one old man. And…no one else. The sister drags someone in off the streets but it’s no good. It’s a fiasco.
Oh Masterpiece Theatre, must ye show me the face of my worst fears? With British accents?! Come on!!
UPDATE. THE NEXT DAY. HI.
Well. I’m glad I did it. I feel, and I know ‘feel’ is a word right up there with the C word and the F word but…I feel truly rhino-skinned now and more than capable of facing an indifferent public who are indifferent to my efforts.
Rhino-skinned. That is my new pet name. Masterpiece Theatre, you fucking bastards. You couldn’t show that episode next week?? I take no responsibility whatsoever that I sat and watched it. None. I’m oddly very Republican right now. Bwha ha ha.
Three quail looking over a freshly harvested corn field. Malheur County, Oregon.
Purple Trainwreck is the name for a marijuana plant. Anything with ‘blue’ in the title came from the Blueberry strain– which is apparently THE BESTEST STRAIN OF MJ PLANTS EVER INVENTED BY A LOVING AND WONDERFUL GOD.
So, yours truly trimmed MJ this last weekend. It’s legal here in Oregon. And no, it has not always been legal here. My aunt has several plants and a commercial license and a small pot farm. I learned to trim the buds. I had a small pair of purple scissors, rubber gloves and a can-do spirit. Rubber gloves?— you find yourself asking yourself. Ah, because loco weed, in the raw and in the buff, is super-OMG-stickeeeeeeeeeeee. It also makes you itch and sneeze, makes your nose run. Because Weed is also a weed. I get rashes and the sniffles around weeds. I do have allergies to said stuff.
I worked and kept my head down. It was, ahem, Redneck Central and being a Liberal Snothead, yep. I also learned that a sales tax is the same as communism. I…yeah. I listened, a lot, because being around people reminds me that I hate being around people. Mostly, the talk around me was family-friend-people-I-don’t-know gossip. What so and so is doing about so and so. That bitch so and so did so and so and now so and so. I won’t repeat anything verbatim because I can’t afford a lawyer. Not that my ‘family’ would sue me for repeating anything they said or, ahem, did.
I did not go to Mountain Home, for that little gala for Whistle Pig, Volume Nine. Because my instincts said, hey, stay home, bad idea. And I had a quarter, if that, in my little pink drawstring purse I bought in Honduras. So yep, I chickshitted my way out of a networking opportunity with local writers, artists and such. The weather was also bad and it was snowing over in that country…I mean, excuses, I got em.
Okay! Let’s move on to a writing project of mine, shall we? I’d talk some more about my MJ bud trimming experiences, but it’s mostly…grab another stem, strip it, trim little stems, gloves are getting sticky, why is my cousin still with this Bitchmonster Womanbeast who’s been constantly pregnant for the last eighteen months now…
Aftermath is the tender, subtle tale of Hannah Gray, who finds herself in a microcosm that’s run by zombies. Through Hannah’s wacky misadventures, we discover some hard truths about our Present Day Society and how the current GOP dumpsterfucks are trying to re-create that first episode of Mad Men, right down to Don the Dickster Draper telling Jax’s old lady, Tara, that no woman talks to him like that. Yeah, it took me several episodes to figure out that woman that got Don all cheaty on Betty, bwha ha ha, is the same actress that plays Tara on SOA. That first episode before Civil Rights, before the moon landing, before…you know, the ‘good ole days’ that Hollywood writers made up as they did heavy drugs and chugged whiskey like it was going extinct.
Yeah, so.
Aftermath is my title, so far, for my, yes, zombie-infused tale. I know, shhh. Hush. Zombies. I know. But, for some reason, I just keep writing on said tale!
It started off as a short story. Some of you know this one. Where you sit down to write a short, brief, to the point take-down on modern society and feminist politics. Because we gals, amirite? Hallelujah and praise Jayyyyy-sus!
And this little flash fiction piece wannabe bloats, bwha ha ha, into some epic that MUST BE A THOUSAND PAGES LONG. Because you got stuff to say, man. You got stuff to say!
Or whatever you have to tell yourself. You remember, vaguely, that so and so was supposed to be a short story, not a modern political treatise barely disguised as a three-book zombie romp. You obsess about What Happens Next as you trim marijuana plants while your cuz talks about…uh huh.
Why is this called Purple Trainwreck? Because stoners name it. The more you know, right?
Back to Aftermath.
Actually, it’s where Hannah wakes up at a desk office after cutting her wrists during the zombie apocalypse. She’s understandably confused. Suddenly, she’s in sedate, boring office clothes, and ZOMBIES run everything. Except you can’t call them zombies. They’re…well, if I ever get this one anywhere near a publisher, you can read what zombies prefer to be called.
I’m just letting myself write. I’m just having fun with it. I’ve started it over. I’m at about thirty thousand words.
Oh. Also been editing my old blog posts. Yep. Someone was picture happy! Why did no one inform moi that moi was picture happy? You sonsabitches.
I need to go hang posters for my reading for next week. I have a real horror of leaving the house, interacting with others. It’s very nearly at the phobia stage. I am already considering how to get out of holiday gatherings. And then realize I’m an adult and I can choose to just not go.
So, the next time someone tells me how quiet I am, during the next tedious shitday spent trimming loco weed, I’m gonna totally agree with them and say nothing beyond that. Yep, I sure am. End it there. If they persist in ‘chatting’ with me…oh fuck, my stomach hurts now.
Ive been fighting with Feautured Image…ugh a bug a fug a dug so here’s a random pic of the Gator.
Cuss words go here.
I floobed up my blog by being a total bonehead. I was composting a snarkalicious post on coyotes and for some reason, WP would not let me paste pics. Like it does at times and this time, it was really being a butthead so I…ugh. It’s all on me. I am bad at anything computer-wise and have the internet savvy of a Night of the Living Dead zombie. No, really.
So, all my carefully or not so carefully selected pics are gone, gone, gone. Blurgh cuss words sonofa…yeah.
I will go back through and edit. Yeah. Okay. Red-faced and signing off.
Oh. Possibly heading off for Mountain Home this afternoon. I’m in a dither. My instincts say don’t go. I have about a quarter to my name. That’s .25 cents and Mountain Home is a hundred fifty miles away so that’s roughly a three hundred mile round trip this eve. Yet. It’s a good opportunity to mingle with other local writers and get my stuff known and…flooglewop a doo!
October 25– welladay, yours truly, hopefully, finished up editing past blog posts. I’ve been trying to do a few a day. The struggle is real, my loves. The struggle is real. And now that struggle has been laid in a coffin and covered with a layer of done. Does that make sense? Mm.
I look up, movement catching my eyeballs. There. Scurrying across the wall. A gigantic nightmare of a spider. Big. Big spider! It’s minding its own bee’s wax. It’s just boppin’ along, doing spider shit, in other words. Not trying to scare the bejesus out of me. Not that I am all that scared of spiders but still. The spider I watch has the dimensions of a horror movie arachnid. That is, to use modern parlance, a big-ass bug. Yes, I know a spider isn’t a bug, thanks. But we’re stupid now in America and proud of it for some reason, so…ahem. Let’s return to the precious retelling of my Spider Tale, shall we?
Spider was, yes, that big.
It makes its way to the shelves. The colors of this beastie are brown and gray; I wonder if the name is Charlotte. If you don’t get that reference, just a big hearty gol DARN it.
I cannot bring myself to load the rifle and take that spider out. I cannot turn into a good gal with gun; Wyetta Earp sleeps yet far in the corners of my Wild Or-ee-gone soul, curled up and waitin’ for action, a’course. That spider freezes when it notices me noticing it. We contemplate each other. No, Sirius-ly! I stared, the spider stared, we both stared. I also talked to that arachnid that probably wished my actual death.
Read the following in the same voice you talk to your pets or stuffed animals or pet rocks when you think no one is around: Hey, look at you. What are you doing, spider? No, go back up toward the ceiling. There you are! How would you solve the Middle East thing? Who gets a worse rap, spiders or clowns? Would you get behind a gritty reboot of the Twilight movies? Do you hang out with a pig named Wilbur? [Gol-DARN-it if you don’t get that. I just can’t. Shut my head. LOL.]
Some sort of lesson happens. I learn something. The spider learns something. Nature versus inertia. I get my camera and try to get pictures. Because I’m batshit crazy at this point in my life. I find real delight in a spider that obviously bathed in some nuclear waste. I had happy moments watching this small life trying to get from whatever point A was to Point B. There’s a clear trajectory for that spider, an arc. There’s a story there, surely!
And here’s the kicker.
I did not see where that spider went.
That spider could be anywhere.
That spider could be watching me, right now.
Wondering why I bothered it and pointed a little square at it. Perhaps sharing tales of the weird human with the other giant house spiders. Or the outside spiders that live in the rocks and trees and discarded bits of machinery.
My brain tells me to stop. It’s just a fucking spider!!! Arrrr!!! Are you going to turn some stupid spider into a billion-selling YA novel centering around a typical male character saving the day except you named him Marsha because it’s fashionable right now to have a female ‘heroine’? It’s cute! Oh look, a ‘strong’ female! That’s like hot ice and wonder snow and– SPIDER!
[Random cursing, bitter diatribe, more cursing.]
My my. Must read some positive memes and just cure myself of any modern malaises. Whee. Wahoo. Whoop a do.
I had a week. It was. Um. That spider delighted me. I ‘worked’ on my ‘zombie’ novel, experienced nature without leaving my seat, much, and tried to ignore the outside world.
Oh, hey, my book/s are on sale RIGHT NOW. Buy one or several. Thanks.Look at me, being all Willy Loman!
There’s also a new poetry challenge to tackle! I see the words ‘Jesus’ and ‘ass-licking war dogs’ in my future!
No, I haven’t been posting some weird zombie erotic novella piecemeal. I’ve been trying to write a Welcome to October blog post but I keep…drifting over into a stream of consciousness vomiting on my country’s reaction to mass shootings. I’m having a low kind of day. I won’t go into that because I’m a god damn pixie of positivity, curse words better suited for sailors inserted here.
After all, I went to school at UNLV, grad school. I lived there for three years. I endured flash floods, cockroaches, truly insane neighbors and heat. But it was a dry heat. Which, hell, I prefer and grew up with. Eastern Oregon, Western Idaho, Southern Washington State, all one big happy high desert sorta landscape. Humidity?? What’s that? I moved to Maryland and found out. Gawd! So, Las Vegas was just hotter than I was used to but still dry. No humidity!
Mandalay Bay went up the last year I was in school there in Lost Wages. A big gorgeous casino, to compete with the other big gorgeous casinos and the older, looser slots of real Vegas, on Frontier…off the ‘Strip’. Or the slots in the various grocery stores. People playing the poker machines at the local Lucky in my neighborhood, fun times. You went to Wal-Mart after midnight so your car tires didn’t melt. Fun times as well. Yeah, I drank and acted in very stupid ways and somehow managed to walk away with a degree in, yep, playwriting. Or writing, if I want to sound more hire-able.
I have friends there yet, in Sin City. Oh a list of major ‘worst shootings in modern American history’ since 2007:
Oct. 1, 2017. Las Vegas July 7, 2016. Dallas June 12, 2016. Orlando Dec. 2, 2015. San Bernardino Nov. 27, 2015. Colorado Springs Oct. 1, 2015. Roseburg July 16, 2015. Chattanooga June 17, 2015. Charleston Oct. 24, 2014. Marysville May 23, 2014. Isla Vista April 2, 2014. Killeen Sept. 16, 2013. Washington, D.C. June 7, 2013. Santa Monica Dec. 14, 2012. Newtown Oct. 21, 2012. Brookfield Sept. 27, 2012. Minneapolis Aug. 5, 2012. Oak Creek July 20, 2012. Aurora April 2, 2012. Oakland Oct. 12, 2011. Seal Beach Jan. 8, 2011. Tucson Aug. 3, 2010. Manchester Feb. 12, 2010. Huntsville Nov. 5, 2009. Killeen April 3, 2009. Binghamton Feb. 14, 2008. DeKalb Dec. 5, 2007. Omaha April 16, 2007. Blacksburg
Thoughts and prayers offered. More like a ‘fuck you, lol– from your true leaders at the NRA’ …in actuality.
Oh sure, granpa fought the entire German army with a butterknife and a can-do bootstrap spirit so mass shootings by lone wolf, probably mentally ill, sorts JUST HAPPEN FOR NO REASON AT ALL…suck it up, buttercups. Granpa didn’t fight the entire German army with a dull, broken butter knife so you libtard commies can take our gunz. 2A, you assholes! How dare you. How dare you. How dare you try and come for our gunz? We can’t do anything to stop these massacres, because libtards took prayers out of schools so society is sick now. Sick! Gunz have nothing to do with it! Nothing! And Chicago. Yeah, Chicago defeats anything you libtards throw out, LOL.
Not the Onion, sadly. Read the very tippy-top.
The above is…yeah. That’s kinda what passes for ‘discussion’ about gun control here in the USA. Australia had that one Port Author thing…Yeah, but Australia doesn’t have our population and they’re not free there, they don’t even have roads yet. Yeah, LOL, Australia, fuck them.
HALLOWEEN
So…I’ll drift over into Halloween waters.
The actual Uncle Sam’s in Shenyang. Note some are in costume, some are not.
Where the zombie is high and the livin’ is easy. A slight riff on Summertime, from Porgy and Bess.
How I love October. It’s getting colder, pumpkins are everywhere. I’m not talking the pumpkin spice craporama that infiltrates EVERYTHING. Jesus, just buy some Pumpkin Pie spice and be done with it. Holy flipping gerbils!
No, it’s the actual rounded balls of squash that have the distinctive coloring that thrill my cold, dead soul. Something about that deep orange of a pumpkin’s sides…claws me in that good way like no other squash does. Not even the summer squashes make me have to stop and caress their quivering sides with a single finger.
No, squash don’t quiver. Stay with me a bit. It’s okay. I love to carve faces into pumpkins, oh yes. I love to murder pumpkins and put candles where their guts used to be. Guts meaning the seeds and stringy crap you have to yank out or scoop out with a big spoon.
Whee!! Bad makeup jobs
And yes, dressing up and going out to drink myself into an actual blackout event. That, too. Sometimes, that is. Maybe twice. I’m not admitting to anything. There was one after-Halloween morning where I woke up with pantyhose embedded in my knee. Embedded in an actual wound I had somehow sustained. No memory, even now, of how that hose came to be smashed into my wound like that. Ever yanked blood-encrusted pantyhose from a wound in your knee? Fun times. Did I magically stop drinking, change my ways, become a constructive member of society and cure cancer? Uh. No.
Ah, zombie tequila nights. I went out, in China, on the actual Halloween night. No, it’s not really celebrated there, for those of you keeping score on your Who Celebrates What Holidays cards, which can be turned in, when full, for prizes. I did full zombie makeup. I looked truly hideous. Like someone had beaten the crap out of me. Now, in China, women are supposed to look pretty all the damn time. Why go out looking like death warmed over, ever? It’s nearly unthinkable. And anything performance-wise or dressing up wise…you go for glam and pretty, not zombie-ish and stomach-turning.
Uncle Sam’s wall where a person can write things…Notice anything, dears?
That’s right. I went out, by myself, on Halloween. In China.
I had a great night. I drifted in with others I sorta kinda knew. I ended up at this one little bar that became my favorite bar for reasons I won’t ever discuss in public. [Probably exactly what you’re thinking.] Lenore’s. Yep, a bar called Lenore’s in Shenyang, China. It was around the corner from the Swiss place, Heidi’s, where you could get stuff with cheese on it. Cheese. Real cheese. For about the cost of what you made every two weeks teaching but still. [Not really but close enough.]
The Halloween Pub crawl. Yes, that’s Lenore’s. And that’s a teacher dressed as a dinosaur.
Swiss-French-German food in China, to be found at Heidi’s.
And just down the street and slightly around the corner was Uncle Sam’s. An American bar. Run by an actual sleazy American guy who oozed creepiness. But it was American, with an actual American feel to it. An actual dive bar that any self-respecting Sons of Anarchy sort would have felt comfy in. Uncle Sam’s served burgers. Real actual hamburgers. With cheese. Are you under the impression that China is not real big on cheese? Impression correct! Yes, there was also a McDonald’s and right before I left China for, oh, good, a Burger King went up.
But!!! A not-mass produced burger and hand cut fries, worth the high price. Worth it. Especially when you’re far, oh so gosh darn far, from home. Even a crappy burger and overpriced limp fries, worth it.
I remember Uncle Sam’s solely for the Go Ducks! graffiti written on the wall. As in, yes, the University of Oregon Ducks. If I turned my head, there it was, when I sat at the tables along the filthy wall. It wasn’t a dirty place, it just gave you that feel of filth, depravity and the need to take a shower right after leaving the premises. So yeah, an actual real life dive bar in the heart of Manchuria.
Reminded me strongly of the biker bar in La Grande, Oregon. The Long Branch. Oh, they had cheap, cheap alcohol– as in dollar tequila night. Shots of rotgut tequila for a buck. OMG doesn’t even begin to describe what nights like that did to poor widdle country mouse me.
Mostly because I don’t remember that much about said dollar shots of tequila nights at the Long Branch. I do remember throwing up, getting vomit on my shirt, then turning it inside out and telling myself no one would notice. Except. My shirt had shoulder pads. And yep, I walked out of the bathroom with an inside out shirt and shoulder pads revealed…can you picture that? It’s a dim, misty swirl in my head at best but apparently, people still tell that tale about me. Fun!
Halloween fun, second year in China. Look at me, gross yet comfy. Yay!
Also, there are Halloween parties I both threw and attended that linger fondly in my noggin. Nights of debauchery, clownish makeup and inviting Satan to nestle in my heart. Costumes I recycled, costumes I made an hour before going out. Costumes I planned for almost two months. Witches, ghosts, Satan’s Mistress, a sock puppet, a yes, zombie…mostly scary choices. I have more fun doing zombie makeup than slutty nurse makeup. I know!
I should just do a post about my drinking. It was, at one time, legendary and truly awful. And one on China and how I revived my truly awful drinking habits. And a post on why America is now a parody of itself and not in a good way. And…oh. I’ll probably just try to stick to hustling my stuff.
Hugs and kisses from a zombie at heart. Oh. I somehow started a zombie novel…yeah. It’s weird how that shit takes off from a weird stray suggestion found on a stray bit of paper written, uh, X amount of years ago. A woman wakes up after killing herself during a zombie apocalypse. Aftermath. That was it. And I’ve been flinging words ever since. Restarted it, of course. I really like my main character, who finds herself in a zombie-run world and who…oh, that’s a whole other post, my lovelies.
Note the American flag in the top pic. See the shots and burgers and fries in the second. All Uncle Sam’s stuff. And the third is Lenore’s.
ANN WUEHLER 