NEMO: THE ADULT YEARS

 

Someone in the internet interverse referred to the movie, the Shape of Water, as Fucking Nemo. That has stuck with me.

I’ve read a review over on Movie Boozers where they shredded this film, nearly as much as they went after the Fifty Shades stuff. Okay, not as much, but close. If you’ve never heard of Movie Boozers, go check them out. I find myself actually LAUGHING OUT LOUD at their take on the current and past crop of films. [It might even have been on Movie Boozers where I read that reduction of Shape of Water into Sex with Pixar Character.]

1. Shape Of Water: That said, Shape of Water robs me of the ability to coherently speak due to its staggering levels of self-indulgent, and highly disturbing, narrative dissonance. YOU CAN’T MAKE ME BELIEVE IN AN INTERSPECIES LOVE STORY IF THEIR BIG ROMANCE PRIMARILY INVOLVES LINING UP EGGS ALONG AQUAMAN’S TANK FOR BRING-YOUR-PET-TO-WORK SNACK TIME BEFORE YOU, UGHHHHHHH, BANG HIM GIVE IT UP AND SWIPE LEFT ON TINDER LIKE THE REST OF US, BISH. Oh, yeah, I wondered when the all caps button would get stuck again. No. Just no.

So, I rented the film. Yes, from Red Box. I’m one of those people who miss Blockbuster. Now you have a real and awful glimpse into my soul.

The Shape of Water had just won the Academy Award for, uh, everything? Best Picture, at least, I remember that. And it’s by the guy who did Pan’s Labyrinth. Which, if I need an excuse to sob and feel bad for days, I pop into my DVD player and wallow in the soul-destroying beauty of that film. I don’t need an excuse to sob and feel bad for days, my brain does that to me all on its own…so.

from Vulture. Sally Hawkins as Eliza, Octavia Spencer as Zelda

Okay! I expected a gorgeous, dark film, full of uncomfortable truths and great visuals. Perhaps the people who had not liked this film were more into Lifetime movies about abused women taking back their lives and crazed stalkers being brought to justice. Or movies where shit blows up and it’s ninety percent men with lots of sweaty muscles on display and giant weapons, not to mention shotguns and flamethrowers. Tee hee. 

First off, the film really is gorgeous. The tones reflect a rather watery world, with cool wavery blues, shadows, blurred lights, night setting…yeah. The tiny apartments they lived in, yes, yes, yes. People with no actual money living in tiny dark dingy places! Yes, ma’am! Our heroine masturbating every night before she goes to work, hey, who hasn’t done that when having to work graveyard? Hands? Tee hee.

from Hype MY. Gold and shadows. That’s Doug Jones as Amphibian Man.

Though, I honestly did like that this woman, who lives alone, masturbates on a regular basis and the film maker regards it as normal and natural. It’s just part of who she is. Score! She’s not waiting for some man or beast to ‘wake her up’. She’s woke, baby. It’s just rather startling and pleasant to see a depiction of female sexuality that’s about HER PLEASURE and that she just enjoys it.

It also gave the movie a foreign film air. As America cinema tends to paint women as shrills, shrews, bitches, cold sex-hating ex-wives or very young whores/madonnas. Masturbation among American cinema females is seen as desperate, old-maid behavior. See Girls Trip for an example of this. Jokes about detachable shower nozzles here please.

Okay, before we veer off into how the movies treat women’s sexuality…

from the News Geeks. 

Secondly! I expected more and got far less from this movie. The story…eh. It’s the wallflower and the outsider; they just added a fishman to the mix. Is that bestiality? If you’re having an affair with something with gills? Are we edging over into, gulp, tentacle porn? Well, sort of. We do get brief fish/heroine sex. We also got a finger show on how the fishman’s penis works.

Now, Adult Nemo, wow. Well done on that. It didn’t look like some skinny dude wrapped in plastic and making weird sounds, like oh, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. There seemed to be an utter believability to this fishman of Shape of Water. That it could mate with a human…eh. Does that make it part human? Because that would get into some actual legal and ethical issues over keeping it locked up, torturing it and yes, you guessed, killing it and then dissecting it later on.

Because what do movie scientists and military folks do the very second they get their moist hands on something exotic, out of this world or unknown and rare? Right! They wanna cut it up and look at its guts! Oh my goddess!! Can we for once NOT GO DOWN THIS PARTICULAR PLOT HELLWAY? Scientists find some one of a kind creature and WANT TO KILL IT RIGHT OFF? Are you INSANE? I just…it’s just not logical or…god damn it!

What if they had discovered the fishman was some sort of undiscovered evolutionary shoot of humans?? What??!! I’m already more interested in that angle than the tired, played out, little shy mouse falls in love with some outcast who falls in love with her, wah, the end.

from tumblr

Thirdly–The storyteller, the film maker here…took away her voice. My my. In a time when it’s so horrifically obvious that women’s voices are already pretty much silenced, to feature a MUTE FUCKING WOMAN as your main character…Jesus wept.

from Dance Network. Suddenly we’ve wandered into someone’s high school prom that took place on Halloween? 

And then that dream sequence where she sings and dances…dances with the fishman…I…I honestly didn’t know what to make of this. Because it seems more fairy tale/fantasy than the entire film combined and then some. It jarred me. It was beautifully done but seemed at odds with the entire rest of the film. Ah, there it is.

from the Verge. Michael Shannon as Strickland. Mr. Grey can see you now. Come on! It’s right there. 

Okay! Here’s four. Here we go. Hold on to something. 

Let’s move on to the super-concentrated Batman-esque villain that rape-romps his way through Shape of Water, shall we?

Michael Shannon is one of my favorite actors. He’s scary-sexy; yeah. I can’t explain it better than that. He should have been Christian Grey. I bet Shannon spitting out those truly abysmal lines would have been something to hear and watch. That intensity, that quiet intent, that notion that he could go pussycat or psycho tiger and you’d welcome both.

My crushes are weird and varied, sorry. If you got through my take on The Big Lebowski…yep.

Now! As the villain of this film, eh. I’m going to blame the story here.

This villain, a government procurer of oddities–honestly, that’s what I thought his job was. He just goes around slapping the shit out of weird animals/human hybrids and grinding his teeth because his wife talks too much-– brings in a tank full of SOMETHING to this government facility in Baltimore, Maryland.

Whee.

It was found in South America. It does not like our villain and shows this by biting off two fingers, which our heroine finds. Now, the fingers being sewn back on to his hand and then rotting away…that alone was great. It was visual, it summed up the villain, it…yeah. Our villain is a rotting smelly finger! Got it!

The problem with the villain? One-note. Bang bang bang. He’s one of the sharks from a sharknado. You just sit back and wait for someone to chainsaw this guy in half while spouting a sporty one-liner. 

Not to mention, he’s such an OBVIOUS villain, everyone knows to avoid him and fight him. He’s repulsive, he’s a bully and then some; he’s a concentrated dickhead. 

Ugh.

I wanted so much more from Shannon’s role. Oh my gosh, a love triangle developing instead of him trying to be a rapey asshole to our heroine.

What if he had been torn by the empathy and such Rita shows to the fishman [is there an official name for the creature?], which makes his job all the harder as he, too, starts to understand and sympathize with Fishy? Sort of like the Russian spy guy…who had an actual character, motivation and arc. He, the Russian spy guy, sympathizes with the monster, and helps with the escape…by planting something that so very obvious the Russians would have used…in a facility full of American military personnel. I just. Ugh.

What if we get to see something other than kill kill wanna rape that silent freak girl I’m mean mean mean from the villain? Give Shannon a real acting challenge. Give him a place to go. He can’t start at ten and stay at ten and end the movie at ten. Boring!

And worse, just bad screenwriting. It’s a rookie mistake. This is a rookie mistake in a straight to dvd movie called Bad Villain, Part 8, Revenge of Squishy. [A Finding Nemo shout-out.]

Give us a story where we root for everyone and it breaks our hearts. Because those we root for can’t all win in the end…which is rather closer to actual stories of love in real life.

from Mashable. Cuddling!

from the Independent, UK. The Creature from the Black Lagoon and friend. For compare and contrast purposes only. 

But.

This is touted as a fairy tale.

Fairy tales tend to teach lessons. On behavior and what to do and how society deals with those who step off the path. [Badly. Badly is the answer. Do as you’re told, ladies.] So what do we learn from The Shape of Water?

Mm.

Love conquers all, even death. Yeah, except it doesn’t.

Bad guys always get theirs. Yeah, except when they don’t and they seldom do in real life, if their lawyers are competent.

Friendship is rewarding and wonderful. Yes, actually, it is. Point awarded. I really enjoyed the relationship between Eliza and Giles, played by Richard Jenkins. Far more than the romance between Rita and Adult Nemo…oh dear. I keep thinking her name is Rita. It’s not? 

Scientists are evil and always want to kill everything. Except for the Russian double agent guys, because they know about being different? I’m not sure at all here what I’m supposed to take away about scientists.

Red shoes are a sign of rebellion.

Oh yes, you thought I wouldn’t bring up the RED SHOES our heroine, Rita, [or Eliza. Why do I think her name is RITA? Why?] bought and then wore. Women and shoes, oh yes. Uh huh. Though, women really do love shoes. Here’s why.

Your feet don’t look fat in shoes. Your shoe size doesn’t go up or down, after all. 

No one looks at your feet and tells you about the latest diet craze or that you have such a pretty face, it’s a shame you’re such a hideous porker from the depths of hell. Of course, if you have hooves for feet…welp. So no, women can’t win this one, either. Sorry! 

Same thing with jewelry or scarves or hats.

from Fashiontalks. The red shoes!

But. Red shoes. She couldn’t buy them before she…DISCOVERED NEMO LOVIN’. And got her groove going and discovered her inner sand dollar! Oh god damn it to hell and back and then back again.

An actual romance novel/chick flick staple! Fuck me running.

That woman who finds courage to buy some article of clothing because…I just can’t, my brain liquefied for a bit. It’s Pretty Woman and she gets to wear pretty clothes! Incoherent scream snarls inserted here. 

It might seem I hated this movie. I didn’t. Most of it was well done and entirely watchable. Other parts, not so much. I wanted to love it, I just couldn’t get there. It was no Sharnado II. Feeble joke but you get the point? Sharknado II came together as a whole…Shape of Water just did not. This is why I do not review movies for a living or, um, ever.

Yes, I did compare a movie about sharks raining down on NYC with a movie about interspecies romance that won actual big time awards. Yes, I did.

I had the same problem with La La Land. I could admire the artistry, and that scene in the planetarium, City of Stars. Wow. That I actually watched with real wonder and a slight ache in the remaining straggles of my soul. But the La La story, oh so overdone and been there many times feel to it. Trying to make it in LA as an actress…slap me with a mackerel. And the ending. I wanted to just beat the film makers with a sack full of moldy pudding. It would be gross but not leave bruises.

I hesitated about posting this at all.

It’s rambling, long, disjointed, full of adult language and adult themes and reveals I have a bit of a crush on Michael Shannon. But.

It’s my blog, right?

A few only will glance at this and then go on to look at cute cat videos and some super-popular mommy blog and add their comments under politically charged stories written in the Washington Post.

And last night, Michelle Wolfe roasted all of D.C. and the media. She didn’t mince words. So, if she can do that, I can post a random movie review.

Oh, the mini garden is doing okay. In case you were hankering for news in that area from yours truly.

 

 

THE SMITING IS COMING O SINNERS

Molly, the scourge of the local rodent population. 

It’s been windy since January. Or so it seems. No snow but lots of whushing sounds outside.

So, the dog, Molly. She dug up a nesting pair of shrews or something. Rodents with very short tails, not mice but they were mouse-shaped, if that helps everyone. The rodent she grabbed fought like the dickens. I got over there a bit late to save it. It expired before my eyes after I got the dog to ‘drop it’. I walked back over to where the dog had dug a hole to get at the underground-living shrews or whatever they were. There was a second one. Frozen as I stood over it. I stepped toward it and it went underneath the old boards, into the spring weeds and winterly dead leaves.

I went back outside, that same day, hours later, to check on my wind-whipped, probably don’t have a chance now, collection of veggies. A squash, two pumpkins, an eggplant…that poor cuke plant, ugh. I could hear a faint high-pitched calling. Not a bird. I know the local bird sounds;  this was something far different.

Some tiny voice calling for something that was lost.

I went very still, turned toward the fence. To that spot where Molly had dug out the two rodents and then killed the one…that ‘are you there, where are you‘ had come from where Molly’s nose had led her to investigate. 

I walked toward that still-raw hole in the lot next to the house, where the men folks park their giant tractors and talk of man stuff…and the calling stopped. Silence. Waiting for me to go away. So the calling could go forth again. Come home come home where did you go?

Actions have consequences. What a strange thing to learn so rather late in life.

Jake, to the left, and again, Molly. Note the hole dug…the rodents were not at home this time.

I keep waiting, for the winds that seem to eternally blow here in Eastern Oregon, to knock a giant branch off the elderly cottonwood. The giant branches that hang above the house like something out of the Old Testament.

They will smite us. Oh the smiting is coming, o sinners.

I kept waking now and then in the night, waiting. Waiting for that crash, that boom, the shock of limb striking roof, waiting for it finally to happen so I don’t have to dread the big whoooshy sounds outside at night or the day or ever. Nothing tornado-speed has come through lately, but it could.

And that little widow or widower rodent can perhaps rejoice that justice has come for the spoiled Lab in the smushed dwelling next door.

from Royal Queen Seeds. 

From last November. Me fiddling with the B/W setting. Oh the branches that hang over all our lives, eh? Usually laden with garbage-esque plastic bags. Some writer should take a whack at the symbolism here…

One Egg

 

The actual two egg starter kit

 

The doves have once again built their shoddy little nest at eye level. It sits in a crotch of the old plum tree. I think it’s a plum tree, don’t quote me on that.

At first, two white eggs rested against each other upon that rough bed of twigs. The dove parent exploded and cried out every time I did anything in the yard. I try, even now, not to disturb the nesting doves. But. You can’t not go out into the yard, especially when you put in a mini garden and have this anxious need to SEE IF ANYTHING’S COME UP YET. Or clean up the winter debris that’s gathered, you can’t just ignore it. Well, you can.

So, in my faintly scientific study of the nesting doves, I note that the two eggs have become one single egg. Ah! Was it that big rain storm that went through? Something took one of the eggs? Why didn’t it take both eggs, then? Again, I tried not to harass that poor pair of birds just trying to raise a family. You’d think they’d get used to me going to and fro. Nope. The explosion of dove from that tree, the waiting for yours truly to GO AWAY, the mournful calling. It’s been rather cold so I worry that the egg would not hatch if the easily spooked dove mom and pops had to lurk nearby too much, instead of actually sitting atop their single hope.

Ah.

The egg has hatched! A single ugly baby! Again, I just try to glance at the dove family as I pass by to water my lavender, which I’ve put in a container in the corner of the yard. Maybe I should move my lavender but even stepping into the yard disturbs the doves. It’s a no-win here, unless I just avoid the yard altogether until the ugly baby flops about in the yard trying to teach itself to feed and fly. I try not to go near that plum tree. I try to work in the front part of the yard or find other things to do outside that need doing that are not IN THE YARD. Of course the two dogs want me to either throw sticks or balls CONTINUOUSLY or lift this or that so they can hunt for rodents. Trying to get anything done with those two dogs about is nigh impossible. Or so I tell myself.

I’ll end this brief missive about dove eggs and the hatching of the remaining egg with…something profound and meaningful. If you can think of something profound and meaningful, then, by all means, credit that to me. Thanks!

The hasty, blurry newborn chick pic. 

Jake and Molly, the two dogs mentioned. This was taken at the local reservoir beneath a very gray sky. 

The Gilmore Review

 

So, yes, I am a Gilmore Girls fan.

This is my go-to show. When I just need soothing. I put on Gilmore Girls and the overloaded patter, the swift thrown away cultural references, the quirky characters, the small town setting–it seems about ten people live in Stars Hollow– makes everything go away for a bit.

Sure, Stars Hollow seems a little too-small townish. As someone who was brought up in actual tiny towns, it doesn’t quite ring true. But I was brought up in the West, where no one is friendly or likes each other, so. Oh and the utter privilege at play here…gulp.

I heard that the creators of GG [Amy and Dan Sherman-Palladino] had gone and done some further episodes past the bittersweet ending of Season Seven.

Ten years later. We have Rory floundering, Lorelei and Luke together but not married or with kids, and the Gilmore patriarch, Richard, has died. Rory is also having an affair with her one-time boyfriend, Logan Hamburgler, and cheating on her current boyfriend, Paul Throwaway Character, with Logan.

Logan, by the way, has a fiancée, named Odette Slight Roadblock, that we never see. The ‘running gag’ is that Rory keeps forgetting to break up with Paul. Um?

from the Verge. Kelly Bishop, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel as Emily, Lorelei and Rory. 

Rory’s also, somehow, flying often between London and New England…despite being a severely underemployed journalist doing spec pieces and an article here and there. She wrote ‘something’ for the New Yorker. Rory also has more or less agreed to co-write a book with some boozy British feminist…? Who’s written her own books. This falls through. Also, some web site is stalking her cause Rory is JUST THAT GOOD OR SOMETHING. There’s no Sookie at the Dragonfly and suddenly, Michel is openly gay?

from Punkee. The cast from A Year in the Life. 

But. But!! This Year in the Life rings true enough.

That soft-focus, real life doesn’t really get real here Stars Hollow fantasy bubble…seems a bit more grounded in this outing.

Rory doesn’t magically get everything she wants. Lorelei finds herself unfulfilled and at a loss. Emily must deal with an abrupt, awful change to her life, her status and her way of looking at things. The riff between her and Lorelei over Lorelei not being able to come up with something good about her father during the wake/party broke my heart. And when Lorelei made up for that…damn. You’re crying, I’m not crying!

Lauren Graham as Lorelei in the Fall episode.

Oh and the side characters. Taylor still runs Stars Hollow. His melt down in Luke’s Diner and Luke signing the sewer petition…that was so something the writers set Luke up as being– gruff yet kindly and big-hearted. This is the Luke we recognize.

Lane and Zack…ugh. I never got Lane falling in love with such an obviously stupid, shallow caricature. [He seemed to play the same character, named Terry, over on True Blood, but he was funny and had a pet armadillo. So.]

I was hoping they’d bring back Dave [yes, I can rattle off minutia galore from GG, just ask me] from the original GG’s run or even bring in somebody who was a polar opposite of a music buff or a musician…as that would present a far more interesting and far less depressing outcome for Lane.  

Lane’s now helping her mother run the antiques business, and…ugh. [Ah, this seems a little too real for Stars Hollow. A little too real life. ]

Paris Geller, divorced, with two kids she says she doesn’t even like, and a sharp, harsh, horrible sort of woman…yeah, she was set up to become that stereotype but still. That weird bit with her house. I just. Ugh.

Oh and I liked Jess this time around. He has truly come on a journey from bristling unhappy kid to learned a bit and still learning adult. It’s actually nice to witness a bit of that. It might be due to the acting chops of Milo Ventimiglia and the chemistry between him and Scott Patterson, who plays Luke but I also think it’s the writing and character development as well. Logan just seems the same playboy playing the field, in a way, though…he might be waiting for Rory, blah blah blah.

I so don’t want a revisit of the Rory/Logan Barbie and Ken years. Fuck. There’s also a weird, surreal set of scenes with the rich kids Rory hung out with AT YALE, who are now richer kids ten years older.

Logan, Colin, Finn, that ghastly Life and Death Brigade nonsense revisited. An evening out that must have literally cost MILLIONS to pull off. They go about buying entire clubs and bed and breakfasts, and generally acting insufferably awful…which does not translate as charming in this time of the rich running openly roughshod over everyone else here in America and the world in general. They even managed to make me bare my teeth at a Beatles song. 

We also get a peek at Dean, who’s now in New Jersey with a lot of kids. And on Supernatural, of course, fighting monsters with Dean…hee hee hee. Sam and Dean on Supernatural should do a crossover with Gilmore Girls. Who’s on that??!! It could be animated. And Scoobie Doo could show up.

Oh…and in the summer episode…where Lorelei and Rory are FAT-SHAMING people. I just. Ugh. And there’s not enough people to hold a Gay Pride Parade. Geez. [I remember no one was openly gay in Stars Hollow back in the grungy Nineties when it first came on.]

I actually thought the Stars Hollow musical side trip quite funny and that song about not being unbreakable that Lorelei reacted to at the end of that ep…chills. Because it was sung by Sutton Foster. You know, giant Broadway megastar or something. Yep.

Kirk and that pig. I liked the pig. I believed, utterly, that Kirk has a pet pig. I also liked that the dog was still alive, Paul Anka. I normally find Kirk insufferably awful. Too much Kirk and I want to switch over to documentaries on the Spanish flu just to cheer myself up.

But.

GG sets up that yes, Logan Hamburgler will be a big part, allegedly, in any new GG eps. Because of that last line Rory confesses to her mama. Yeah. If you don’t know or don’t care what that is…eh. Why did you bother reading this if you were not a Gilmore Girls fan??

So, overall, I liked A Year in the Life. I had my moments of WTF, of course and my moments of sobbing into a pillow so no one heard me sobbing. I cheered when Emily had her moment with the DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution, an actual organization, btw] and loved it when Emily gave that guided tour in Nantucket on whaling. Ha ha ha!! I also have to wonder if Emily is more of a billionaire than millionaire, as buying property in Nantucket would be ASTRONOMICALLY SPENDY. And that she had funds left over to fund something for Lorelei…mmm.

I also, and yes, I am a girly girl at heart, enjoyed the wedding. That was gorgeously filmed and a long time coming.

That whole April thing. Luke had a surprise child show up in Season Six. I can’t even! There’s not enough coffee and Pop Tarts to combat that fuckery.  

It’s like it never happened. Yet it did. Oh yes, it did.

I wish Emily had been there at the wedding of– SPOILER– her only daughter. I wish that celebration had been more of a chance to pan over the watching audience, made up of Stars Hollow-ites and so forth and so on. But.

Oh!! The dig about teachers and teaching. Rory went back for her private high school’s event  [Chilton Prep] and the headmaster asked her to consider becoming a teacher…and Rory just thought that was akin to being asked to be a part-time pole dancer for the blind. I just. I!!!

What is with the contempt for teachers and teaching? Oh that grated my Velveeta. Big time.

I really do wish they hadn’t given that added OMG moment there at the end. That they had called it a day and let this light frothy confection of a show go off on a quite a high note.

But I am sure I will eventually watch whatever, if anything at all, comes next in the lives of the three Gilmore women. I’m rather a sucker that way. Even a bad Gilmore Girls episode is better than no Gilmore Girls episode. I know how that sounds but you are not me and reality remains a grim awful thing I am coming to realize I might not survive against much longer.

Give me a pastel sweet slice of Gilmore Girls cake and I can ignore pretty much everything for at least five minutes. Yay!

from Oohlo. The giant portrait of Richard Gilmore, played by Edward Hermann.

 

THOUGHTS OF AN IGNORED BUT UTTERLY FANTASTICALLY GIFTED GENUIS WRITER GAL

 

from Texas Wildlife Control.

I must write something sluggishly wonderful to live up to that title.

So I posted a plea over on Acebookfay. If you read Pig Latin, you know I mean Facebook. Okay. It was a plea for ‘friends’ to go ‘like’ my author page. As the two people who regularly read my blog once in a while, you well know I am TERRIBLE AT SELF-PROMOTION.

Or I’m repulsive and lack charm.

Or I’m a terrible writer and everyone’s too afraid of me or ‘too kind’ to let me know I should slip over into customer service rep, complaints department, for adult diapers. Or maybe Dead Animal Removal Engineer for the Oregon Highways Cleanup Wing.

I honestly think I just have to hold my breath, overcome my near total lifetime of conditioning not to draw attention to myself and JUST FUCKING GO FOR IT. Like. Ovaries out, grinning, trying to sell every last used car [book, story, play, etc] on my writer-lot. Be that aggressive, rhino-skinned used car-esque, religious preacher selling salvation and snake oil, smiling grinner. Always Be Closing.

from Udemy

Which is not me.

But me is not pushing the Ann Wuehler line of products that well.

I need a spokesmodel, I need a new, brash face of the Ann Wuehler factory line of novels and plays! I need a Shamwow gal with no sense of shame or vocal volume. I can’t do the sales pitch without sounding like a sarcastic monster. It’s not in my wheelhouse. I’d have to take several years of acting classes to pull that off and even then…I’d come across as a sarcastic monster with some acting classes under my belt. And yet, I know very well that’s EXACTLY WHAT I NEED TO DO.

Be a pushy annoying rhino-skinned saleswoman pushing against all the other pushy annoying rhino-skinned sorts selling their snake oil. Whee. Oh goody. Yay.

It’s the doing it that…makes me sick. Actually sick, as in nausea and tears.

Hey, buy my books. I worked hard on em. They’re nice.

Does the above work for any of you?? Yeah. I need to work on this area of schmoozing and sales. I do. It’s my Moby Dick. [A giant whale that slaps me with its tail or something. I never read Moby Dick. Should I admit that at all?]

from Etsy

So, my goal is to make myself start being the aggressive pusher of my own stuff. To crow about WHAT A FANTASTICALLY WONDERFUL WRITER GAL I AM. That people need to part with their pennies for my stuff! PART WITH YOUR PENNIES FOR MY STUFF, IT’S WONDERFUL.

I need rum and cigarettes if I’m going to actually tackle this side of writing…the push it until your sanity snaps side. And then someone else can write a biography of my attempts to sell my own writing, become a best-selling New York Times darling and get a movie deal, with that movie winning all the Oscars ever invented…ugh a bug.

The Disaster Artist, anyone? Anyone? It didn’t win blah blah blah, but that’s what sprang to mind for an actual real-world example.

I might also need to pick up some forms for Dead Animal Scraping, part-time intern with no benefits or pay check expected, too. Just in case. It’s outside, you bring your own shovel and you’re outside. You work with animals, too. That’s a big plus right there.

Yes, that’s an actual thought in my head. If I do dead animal removal, I’ll be outside. Uh huh. Yep.

Actual photo taken under the local tiny bridge over the Malheur River. There is no hope for humanity or sales, is there? 

DOWN AT THE SPOTTED HORSE

from Pinterest. A blanket Appaloosa, chestnut. 

I got a flash for a short tale. About a goddess drinking at a dive bar.  In Payette, Idaho. The protagonist writes travel books. She’s collecting stories for a a book about rodeos.  

It’s in strictly rough draft, prolly needs a rewrite or the scrap heap, early stages yet.

Here’s the opening shot across the indifferent bows of the world:

A sign, made of tin, nailed to the outside, announced that the Spotted Horse had been established in 1956. A vague horse-like shape had been painted onto the tin, and this, one had to assume, was the horse the bar had been named for. I also saw a no minors allowed warning and we shoot, then we card cutesy plaque. Peaked metal roof, wooden structure. Otherwise, this place looked just like any other dive bar anywhere in the United States of America. Dirty, full of low-life rabble-rousers and shady sorts a step ahead of Johnny Law. Bikers to underage whores to out of work locals waiting for that switch to flick. That switch that kept them from murder sprees and desperate crimes of passion. A few beers at the Spotted Horse or the Pit or the Longbranch or the Sailor’s Bees, as one place was called, in the wilds of South Dakota. Then, a life-changing decision to take up a gun or an axe. And go kill people, whether you knew them or not. He was a quiet man that never caused any trouble. Those quiet men started off their day of mayhem usually with a few shots of rotgut crystallizing their thoughts and silencing their doubts.

The Fourth of July rodeo, Vale, Oregon

from Celtic Legends. The Wicker Man.