It’s Happy Month

Artwork for the Abominable Dr. Phibes movie.

Oh, my fellow babies and compatriots for this thing called life– it’s the happiest month of the year. For me. Cause. Halloween.

Pumpkins. Pumpkin patches.

Ghosts and goblins and ghouls, oh my.

Creaky vampire movies with capes and crosses.

American Werewolf in London time!

The weather cooling the frack down.

The Halloween baking competition with its black garlic cupcakes and four-layer oozing lime basil cake with Italian buttercream something or other. Make entire scary scenes from cake, pumpkins, rice crispy treats and sugar work!

Oh yes, oh please, amen.

I have pumpkins about ready to be plucked. I have gourds. I want to make bread.

I feel energized and ready to watch scary movies with all the lights off.

I have the original Night of the Living Dead tucked away. There’s a compulsion within to find the DVD and WATCH IT the old-fashioned way. On my television through a DVD player. No streaming. No computer involved. Old-fashioned out the disc in, push play when prompted. With a big cup of ho-cho in hand.

Of course, it’s still rather hot here in the day. The nights have cooled off a bit. I now need at least a blanket. Kitters has even taken to napping a bit on me so it must be getting cold outside or she misses me as I’ve been working. I call my cat Kitters, though her official name is Jaws. As she showed up with a broken jaw a couple Halloween’s ago.

So. I hope TCM shows horror movies I’d like to watch. I hope hope hope they show the Abominable Dr. Phibes, with Vincent Price. Where he speaks only through a record. It’s so acid-trippy, weird and satisfying. I’m so glad no one has ever tried to remake this one. Why would you? It’s perfection. From that first scene with the bats to the bitter, bitter end. Dang. And there’s sequels, which I hear, are not as good but still. I will also probably watch the silent Swedish made up documentary on witches, because it’s just so good. Haxan or something like that. 1923 or hereabouts. It’s on Youtube. As are a lot of silent horror movies. Like M or the Cabinet of Dr. Caligaleri. [Spelling?]

Halloween month. It’s the happiest month of the year for me. From baking to horror movies I’ve seen a gazillion times already to new horror films I might discover. I do like discovering some offbeat, nobody’s heard of it, frightfest. Like the Blood on Satan’s Claw [Satanic children, 70’s] Or even something like Only Lovers Left Alive, with Tom Hiddleston as a mopey vampire. It’s a gorgeous film, by Jim Jarmusch, and also boasts a sparkly performance by Tilda Swinton. It’s as slow as frozen molasses and it’s not so much a horror movie as a test of your patience but hey, it might hit a sweet spot or two.

Hey, speaking of Halloween and spooky stuff and scary things…I have two recent novels out that deal with zombies and cannibal bikers. Yay!

Aftermath: Boise, Idaho— where Hannah kills herself to escape death by zombie horde only to wake up in a world run by sentient zombies.

There’s also The Remarkable Women of Brokenheart Lane, where three elderly sisters hiding out in a small Nevada town after a catastrophic world war nuclear event, become embroiled with the decimated cannibal biker gang that’s limped into Fallon.

There’s also Oregon Gothic. The opening tale, Bailey, is about what a real vampire is like and the costs of thwarting that vampire’s will. There’s also the necrophilia-smeared love story of Prince Charming Finds His Sleeping Beauty, which will be in an anthology coming out this year.

Halloween month. Pure joy filling my soul right now. Just pure happy wonderful joy.

Road Trip

My one sunflower. It regally lives among the ever-spreading squash plants.

September. It’s almost over. The weather here is finally cooling a bit. I’ve rescued the same toads from the dog pool many mornings now. The big one that squeaks at me if I handle it too much, the smaller ones that pretended they were frogs, so I’d leave them alone. That was when the water levels were much higher. I dug a giant hole to put the rubber tub into, and it has this valve that keeps turning so all the water leaks out. Why would you put such a valve into a tub designed to hold water? Oh sure, to drain it but still. It’s entirely too easy to brush against it and turn it the wrong way. I blame liberals for this. Is that how that works?

Snark, sarcasm and hissing gently from the shadows. That’s me!

Job? I don’t know. Nobody cares so let’s move on.

Road trip. I am going to go to Mountain Home, Id-eee-ho, for a literary event. I know!! It’s for the Whistle Pig Literary Magazine launch, held this year at the Mountain Home library. I even got myself a hotel room so I wouldn’t have that long drive back, in the dark, with the extra bright lights in my eyes. I probably need to go see the eye doctor about that…yikes.

Or just deal with it because, hey, who has insurance?

Rimshot! I’ll be here all week, try the chicken.

My story for the Whistle Pig is called Lovesmoke. I based it off a short play I wrote ages ago, about a nearly mute man who’s in love with his brother’s girlfriend. She just wants to get married, have a normal life as her boyfriend is about to lose everything due to bad cattle prices and the bottom falling out of that market. The brother in love goes about collecting rocks and such to sell at the various festivals in and around the Western states. If you’ve ever been to small town festivals, with booths– that’s the type of person Salinas is.

In my prose version, I set it in Weiser, Idaho, with the about to lose everything brother having already run off and the other brother crossing the Rubicon, so to speak, by declaring his love for Lily. It’s bittersweet and it seemed to write itself, once I found that balance between manipulative monster versus clumsy overtures of affection toward another. I sort of blended the two extremes of puppet master and hopelessly bad at romance tropes, so to speak. That happy medium? Eh.

I did play with having them end up together but it just didn’t gel, it just didn’t flow, it just didn’t…yeah.

Rewrote a short story in the last couple days, turned it from vague woman-empowered claptrap to murderous psycho monster baby claptrap. Wheee!!!! I also realized my lead character is the least of my three in that story. I need to, ahem, punch her up a bit. Or not. I also need to look at the ending. It might be awful or okay, depends on mood, weather, snack consumption and coffee levels. The title also needs changing. Willa and the Mist to perhaps Baby Lamb or The Graveyard Baby or something equally provocative. Two On A Meat Hook? I’d have to add a meat hook. Dang it!

I’ve been reworking short stories that keep getting rejected. It keeps me busy and out of prison, so that’s good.

That’s it.

Oh, for those panting to know– I have pumpkins. I also have three giant gourds growing away. I’m so excited! I researched and it said to wait for first frost to collect them. We are nowhere near a first frost. I’m also watching the pumpkins closely, looking for that all-over orange color. Still a bit green underneath. Small sugar pumpkins, for pies but still so gorgeous. I do love the color orange.

Halloween is close. I have a happy feeling somewhere close by. And then the drudge and stress of the ‘holidays’. All those damn turkeys to bake. God damn it. I’m already sick and tired of turkey. I just want to buy a bunch of frozen dinners, call it good from here until next January. Want a fancy meal? Here ya go– Hungry Man Salisbury steak!

Oh my, I should adjust accordingly, eh? Holiday season hasn’t even officially started yet. Not until Hallmark starts constant Christmas movie rotation BEFORE HALLOWEEN USUALLY. Notice that?? I noticed that last year. Syrupy cookie cutter movies that bring numbness and a sort of Zen blankness if you watch too many in a row. Lifetime, also, has a host of these things.

And the Halloween Baking contest is back. Happiness is oozing icing the color of infected flesh dripping down over a rotted pumpkin face chocolate cake. Or pies with top crusts that look like tortured human faces. Happiness and bliss.

Misery Porn times a thousand

Zip along if you don’t wish to read about an obscure Netflix show. Or maybe not so obscure, I am out of that loop.

Anne with an E. WTF, Netflix?

The good. It’s beautifully shot. I do mean gorgeous. I’m thrown back to the Megan Follows version, with Kevin Sullivan at the helm. The one with Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla. The good one.

The scenery has that superb lushness we associate with Prince Edward Island. There’s giant fields of flowers, there’s waving seas of grain, there’s forest thickets just perfect for trysts and adorable walks by imaginative girls…okay. The backdrops for the series are just about pitch perfect. Great. Good! Well done.

The actress, Amybeth McNulty, playing Anne Shirley embodies that nearly archetypal character as best she can. As written for this series, Anne is a frantic, charmless waif who seems shellshocked and off-center far too much to win anyone over, let alone gain the love of the two who live at Green Gables. She reminds me of those dogs that are deprived of attention and correcting measures. The ones that leap up at your face with frantic ‘lovemeloveme!’ energy that’s so off-putting and even alarming if the dog is big enough to knock you down.

Which is not at all how Anne appears in the first book of the eight book series. Anne, as written, is a voluble, charming child you can’t help but love. She’s amusing and bright, with practical streaks among the fancies.

Yes, there are eight books. The last one takes us through WWI. Rilla of Ingleside. It blends tragedy and humor so much better than Anne with an E ever tried to.

I do like the latest versions of Marilla and Matthew. Both are given some time with their love gone wrong backstories to explain their present single states. It is hinted at in the books that Marilla and Gilbert’s dad were perhaps sweethearts but I cannot remember anything love-ward with Matthew. He was written as too leery and scared of women to ever go courting. He has to overcome a lot to get Anne’s dress with the beloved puff sleeves made, for instance.

Marilla here is portrayed as far less harsh and rigid. The Dewhurst version came straight from the books, with Marilla’s nature slowly revealed as she falls in love with her charge and starts thinking of her as a daughter. Not so with the current, much softer Miss Cuthbert. We get to see a lot more of her pain. She has actual emotions!

Did nobody read the books they based their series on?? Fine. Okay. Fine!

I also love the current Mrs. Lynde. The actress has this low, rich theatrical voice as well as a truly sweet, old-fashioned face, so you can forgive her quite easily for her ‘gossipy’ ways.

And let’s take on the mean girls of Avonlea school, shall we? Holy crap.

Anne blunders her way through the first day of school and it’s a nightmare to watch. She goes from telling tales of her life and what she knows of men and their ‘pet mice’ to pariah supreme. What the actual fuck? Everyone hates her by the end, Diana has to run interference and Billy Andrews has been turned into a abusive bully.

There’s even a hint of sexual violence toward Anne when he sneers about getting her alone to teach her a lesson.

Yes, such things happen in the real world and happened back then. Yes, they did. Do I want that much reality intruding over into the Green Gables world? No, I freaking do not.

We have Josie Pye turned into every last mean girl stereotype out there, from being a domineering megabitch to an unforgiving one-dimensional megabitch supreme. We have the other girls just falling in line with her and Diana coming across as more of a coward than anything else when she attempts nothing to defend her new friend from these vulturous sorts. Other than promising to ‘talk’ to them to smooth things over. Who wants a friend like that?

Anne is further traumatized by all this, we see flashbacks of her being tortured with a dead mouse by girls at the orphanage and holy buttons of bullshit, what am I watching???

A term crosses through my befuddled head at this point. Misery porn.

This is misery porn.

The heartaches, tragedies, meanness of the world and so forth, piled high over poor Anne Shirley like a tsunami about to rip apart miles of inland range.

Granted, I’ve only seen the first season of this.

Did I mention Anne only gains some grudging acceptance when she helps fight a fire at the Gillis household? Ruby Gillis, one of the easily led about girls from Josie Pye’s gang of Mean Prairie Girls, has to go stay at Green Gables as her house gets repaired. She throws an actual fit but grudgingly comes to like Anne but we know the second there’s some whiff about Anne that doesn’t seem right to the other girls, she’ll be against her again.

And we see Anne try to conform to what everyone wants her to be, which creates even more trauma and conflict for her. Ugh! Yes, real world shit but in the rather magical reality that is Avonlea kindness and sweetness, no. No!

And Gilbert. The bane and eventual love of Anne’s life. If you do not already know the Anne of Green Gables tale, well, sorry. This post is probably not for you, anyway.

Oh dear. This Gilbert is also tarred and feathered with the constant tragedy brush. His dad is sick, super sick. Consumption is my guess as he went to Denver, CO for the air, which is where people went, if they could, so they could breathe in the ‘healing’ this or that of mountain clime. Gilbert, at about fourteen or so, is in charge of the entire farming operation as well as caring for his father. He does stand up for Anne, and yes, calls her ‘carrots’, which earns him her ‘eternal’ scorn. And she’s been warned, by the other Mean Prairie Gals, that Gilbert belongs to Ruby.

This does ring true. Girls do do this at school and in life. They mark their territory, as it were. My mother said women were like horses. That we have a lead mare, that we fall in line with that lead mare. Mm.

Anne, desperate for love and approval, obeys this edict that she not have anything to do with Gilbert and we’re off!

I did like when Anne got her period. A subject never once addressed in L. M. Montgomery’s writing. Pregnancy was also not discussed beyond it being a ‘blessing’, well, as long as you were properly married. Ahem. Remember that Lucy Ricardo, of I Love Lucy, was the first to show pregnancy and such, in the 1950’s. Women and their bodies have pretty much always been under extreme scrutiny, control, shaming and even taboos.

We also get a glimpse into how women of that era dealt with menstrual flows, by pinning folded over cotton strips to their underwear. We even get tips on how to wash these pre-Stayfree pads by Marilla, in a rather kind, practical voice that was welcome yet jarring. The actual Marilla would probably not have been so understanding and helpful and soothing.

We also get a whispered scene where the schoolgirls discuss their own forays into new womanhood. Ruby, of course, has not yet gotten her ‘courses’.

You so rarely see any scenes in movies or film that deal honestly and actually with menstruation, so the episode that covered this topic was perhaps my favorite of the first season. There was humor and pathos and we got to see the bonding of the girls.

We also got a great conversation between Marilla and Mrs. Lynde over this topic. How Mrs. Lynde, mother of ten, preferred being pregnant to having her period each month. It was a frank exchange that worked. I could hear women in that era discussing just that, with the men safely out of earshot as they canned veggies or fruits.

It was the same in my family. I heard the most interesting stuff when the women of my family gathered together. The same frankness. The use of language not ‘appropriate’ for ladies, etc, etc. My grandmother saying the C word, and how we all laughed, the dirty belly giggles of women having to pretend they didn’t know such words at all.

I’ll end this ramble with how much I enjoy the opening credits. I like the song and the art work is exquisite. Also, at the start of season two, we have Anne running about the woods, interacting with nature and I am hoping we get more of that joyful, silly Anne but it doesn’t seem likely as I read blurbs of following episodes.

I think I am tired and exhausted by the real world depravities, war in Ukraine, American extremism starting to ruin everything around me and general WTF? bewilderment over the news items rushing through the worst timeline, as ‘they’ put it.

Are we in the worst timeline for our times? Yeah. I think we are.

Do I want an Anne Shirley series steeped in darkness, near madness over abuses, townspeople and schoolchildren turned into monsters and so forth? Nope! Because there doesn’t seem to be anything to counter any of that misery gushing from every last scene of Anne with an E.

It’s a valuable lesson to me as a writer. Throw in some goddamn happiness once in a while. Message received!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5421602/

Blood-Stained Words

Vishnu Bala’s test shoot

The world drags onward. America rolls back abortion rights. Spring sluggishly creeps into my neck of the woods. I went to lunch with the relatives and totally regretted it.

No, I had no idea California was, like, totally allowing brown criminals to just do whatever they wanted because to prosecute such folks was…okay. Oh, you got that from the Epoch Times, did ya? Did you know that’s a far right rag started by a cult guy?

Should I say that out loud or just inhale chips and dip until I gain even more pounds, which will send me into panics where I go purge in the nearest bathroom with the water running? Should I admit such things at all?

No one is reading this or anything I write. So. Yeah.

Maybe they are?

I’m just in a sort of weird bubble-vacuum, perhaps.

Maybe I should go write even more stuff about isolated shitty clowns that live on the fringe of everything as some needy cry for help or attention that makes me retreat even more when anyone responds at all in the least tiny way. Wheee.

I can feel the depression smacking upon my inner shores like a tide of vomit and pus. Great. Should be fun. I’ve been doing all right, as the kids say, for months now. Nothing too low or want to smack my wrists against a razor blade fun times.

Maybe I need to Netflix and paint rocks. I do have Netflix right now, just to watch Bridgerton. And British Baking Show. And possibly the Witcher. Because why leave the house at all or my tiny room. I can sneak out and get some water. My cat goes in and out of my open window. I yet have enough cat food for her. I don’t have a job right now so I can stew in my own juices, live in my own head and generally wonder what it’s all about. Which is probably not good at all for my mental health. I’m gonna say it. Not good at all for my mental health.

I don’t want company. I don’t. I find people confusing, wearying, stressful and ultimately, so painful to deal with on any level I just can’t anymore. I just can’t. I’d rather spend time with my tiny pumpkin sprouts than try and make small talk about ‘what my story is about’ or ‘what I’m doing now’ with anyone. I’d rather drive somewhere, by myself, go rock collecting and return home to arrange my finds. I can live inside my head, have conversations with beloved friends I can invent and send away as needed.

I suppose I am intensely lonely but I’ve lived within that state so long it feels intensely natural. And that’s okay. I have such troubles hiding the bewildered, loud, brazen, savagely honest me from others that I’d rather be alone than treated like a monster escaped from a cage. My mother taught me, from earliest memories, that being me was about the wrongest thing to be on the planet. That being ‘nice’ counted for far more than anything I was or could be or actually had inside me. That the real me was not wanted, that the real me was some horrific embarrassment to her, to my family. And yes, to some of my friends over the years. Who “like” me but told me to be someone else entirely, someone ‘nice’. Which cut me so sharply every time. The real me had to be hidden and suppressed unless she escape and go on a rampage!

Which is sort of a Dr. Jeckyll/Mr. Hyde thing?

In my life so far, I have never belonged anywhere. I never quite fit in, I felt. I felt that every year, every day, every minute, every second of my life so far. I belonged nowhere, people just tolerated me but only if I performed to their liking.

Which is boring and self-pitying but feelings are seldom anything but dull recitations of perceived flaws or declarations that this time, it’s really love. Really, truly!

I didn’t mean for this to venture into therapy for this poor schmuck time. But nobody reads this and nobody responds, so I guess I am very safe writing these blood-stained words torn from my tired self’s flesh at all.

Things I’ve Noticed

The Gilded Age, HBO. Bertha and George, Carrie Coons and Morgan Spector.

March. Warming up. Raised bed for squash almost done. Cat doing great. Now that you’re all caught up–

I happened upon Minx, over on HBO.

It’s about a fictional women’s soft porn mag started in the 70’s by a radical feminist and a hardcore porn mag producer. Whacky hijinks ensue! Yep, it goes about how you think it does.

Penises everywhere. Shrill, naive, unpleasant female lead named, seriously, this is her name– Joyce Prigger. I do mean unbearable. Holy shit. Fun, easy-going male lead, named Doug Renatti, who sees ‘something’ in the Matriarchy Rising mag layout of Our Heroine. She pitches her over the top feminist scream to several mag producers in SoCal at this fair. She of course gets nowhere because no one will give her a chance! She’s an editor shopping around her liberated woman ideals and no one will throw her wads of cash and accolades, wah.

I lost any and all sympathy for her about five minutes in. I’ve seen this shit so many times. The unpleasant, uptight female lead, the lead male totally likable and smart, the rest of the cast pretty adorable, sweet, intelligent at times and…ugh. Okay. It’s rom-com time. At least, that’s the take I take away here.

Our Heroine is fresh outta Vassar, working on selling subscriptions for other magazines and generally so stupid about how the world works it’s goddamn painful to watch. She doesn’t know how that to get financed, you have to get big donors with money? She went to fucking Vassar. She didn’t rub up against the children of politicians and even presidents? For fuckety fuck’s sake.

She can’t sit through picking a male model for their debut issue without losing her shit. Joyce is embarrassed and squrimy, tee hee. The college girl hasn’t seen many dicks! Tee hee. She’s not only a shrieking harpy, she’s a prude! Oh goody!

It’s not funny or charming or astonishing. It’s just dumb. She’s a dumb character, a stereotype, a Men’s Rights example of what they think a feminist is. There is no nuance to her. At least not in the episode and a half I made it through before switching over to Youtube animal rescue videos to clear my head of the ‘Why the fuck are they still writing this type of female character? And during the so-called women’s liberation height??? Fuck fuck fuck fuck!’

And then, yeah, I rewrote this series in my head. Because, writer.

What if.

What if Our heroine, renamed Linda Lewis, or some other normal name that doesn’t hint a thing, was cool. I mean, with it, on top of her life, ambitious, calculating, willing to take chances. And a force of nature or someone you’d want to hang out with, hear their views. She’s got a sense of humor! She wants to change the world and she’s not asking for permission to do it. Linda can be unsure of herself at times but mostly, she works out what needs to be worked out. She approaches the pornmag producer guy, pitches him her magazine idea and he suggests the nude male centerfold every month. As Linda is mostly okay with her sexuality, she agrees to this, but says she wants to be in charge of the whole enchilada, even the tasteful nudie stuff. They begin a tentative partnership and learn a lot along the way.

I’m so tired of the naive, awful female lead and the cool, with it male lead that makes the female lead look both childish and boringly stupid. See the Ugly Truth, with Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigel. The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock– which, despite her charm and Ryan Reynold’s scowling with his usual charm throughout it–presented a horrible female boss stereotype straight from a Hallmark Christmas collection of Bad Lady Bosses that just need a Good Man to Show Them Some Good Lovin’. Sweet Home Alabama, where Reese Witherspoon went home to shit all over her home town and her parents, yet wound up with her ex-hubbie after…ugh.

So yeah, done with Minx. Boring and irritating, not my cup of anything.

I’m also struggling with Our Flag Means Death. I want to like it more. I just fail at that. I do like Blackbeard. It helps that he’s played by Taika Waititi. I wish this series had centered more around Blackbeard facing the end of his time as the most bad-ass pirate ever. The Stede Bonnet character just repels me so utterly. A guy with a lot of money getting to do whatever he wants. Where in American politics and private blah dee blah have we ever, ever seen this crud?

I need a third to end this TV review rant.

Gilded Age! Now, it’s trashy, but it’s fun, gorgeous trash. I get tired of Marian, the female blond lead who’s so bland she blends into the scenery no matter what she’s wearing. Please, Jesus– let her be ravished by a pack of rabid sailors after that bland and boring lawyer guy sells her to a brothel after her aunt refuses to accept him into High Society. Wheeee!!!!!

And then she’s seen no more when she leaves with the sailors as their new captain. Work it out, writers!

As that would leave far more screen time to the Russels. Not the kids, yuck. Ick. Boring!

No no, Bertha and George Russel are fabulous, arrogant monsters you just love to love. She’s a social-climbing soft-voiced goddess and he’s a fiery, black-bearded robber baron you hope never escapes to run amuck in these here present times. Together they plan to dominate Old Money Manhattan and make it beg for mercy it ever slighted them in the least. Bwhahahahahaha! Yes, please!!

I also love the Peggy Scott character. Upper class black woman, with ambitions to be a writer. Her mom is played by Audra McDonald, of Broadway. The Broadway Audra! If you can’t tell, I love Audra McDonald. But, the show explores the middle class and even upper class POC post-Civil War strata that developed and lead to such things as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I also find it annoying and eye-rolling when the blond Marian doesn’t seem to notice all the rampant racism all around her. Okay, sure. Ahem. But. We do get a scene with her bringing second-hand shoes to gift Peggy with during an unannounced visit to Peggy’s parent’s home. Dorothy Scott, Peggy’s mom, rightfully embarrasses Marian with how Marian expected the Scott family to be near destitute and grateful for a white lady savior. Ouch.

It’s not Downton Abbey. It’s a colorful, somewhat empty, imitation but it’s enjoyable. Watching the New Money sorts clash with the Old Money sorts, great fun. Watching the Russels plow ahead like a team of shiny Clydesdales, also great fun. The two aunts of Marian, played by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon, make up for a lot. They remind me of L.M. Montgomery characters, for some reason. I half expected Anne Shirley to pop in for a cup of tea and a saucer of neighborhood gossip.

And there’s servants but nothing so far that grabs the attention or begs for more air time. There’s no Thomas, for instance, slinking about, causing trouble while managing to remain a near tragic figure we have to love. But, maybe in later seasons, the servants will be fleshed out, given actual characters, become part of the stories around them, rather than just set decorations whenever Mrs. Russel stalks by in a red silk dress.

Thomas from Downtown Abbey. Sorry if I lost some of you there.

I wanted to do a fluffy blog post, what with all the horrors here in America and over there in Ukraine. And other places, and other places after that. Oh dear.

Right next door, Ammon Bundy is staging a protest over the state of Idaho stepping in to remove a baby that was being horrifically neglected, as in that baby could have died if something had not been done. This extremist, who’s running for govvie of the state, claims it’s a medical kidnapping and has called for protests and even possible violence if the child isn’t returned to the parents who were abusing it. As these parents seem to be related to Bundy’s campaign manager…it’s a frigging mess in Idaho, in other words, right now.

This bunch of political theatre stunt-makers even shut down a major hospital there in Boise for a bit. The present lieutenant govvie, Janice McGeachin or something like that, attended a white pride rally in the most open and defiant of ways. She’s an elected official. She also wants to be govvie. And she’s batshit insane and a religious nutball. Wheee!! I’m two hours from all this and it sucks. It sucks!

So yeah, I’m watching trashy historical dramas and submitting my writing now and then to the here and there. Spring is around the corner. 2022 already seems a bust. 2023, baby, you gotta give us all some hope, m’kay? Great!

Meridian, Nampa and Boise are close together.

Update– Just saw, in the Idaho Statesman, where the child in question was returned to the parents, more than likely because of Bundy’s threats and bullying. It really can be an awful world at times. I doubt those parents have seen the light. And terrorism wins in Idaho.

Viking vampire clown

Our Flag Means Death. HBO. Taika Waititi as Blackbeard, Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet.

Full disclosure– the title of this blog post is from HBO’s Our Flag Means Death. Blackbeard observes that he has been turned into a ‘viking vampire clown’ as he discovers an illustration of himself in a book.

I heard those three words slammed together and went, hey, what can I do with that? Is that a title? A monster of some kind? Some sort of for-me only porn novella?

It’s probably also a sign I need to get out of the house.

So, a short one. The Cherry of Her Lips got an acceptance from Black Hare Press, for their War anthology. I really like this attempt of mine to freshen up the hoary Snow White tale.

I’m also looking at having a fifth book published. The Adventures of Grumpy Odin and Sexy Jesus. It’s fantasy? meets mythology meets religious figures meets humans, Minions, ghosts and outer space monsters. There’s also Batboys or angels.

Basically, God wants Jesus to become the newest Satan, which would put Jesus under God’s thumb. This sets off a chain of events that leads to a strange showdown in Oregon’s Alvord desert.

Yes, I am working on how to plug this one. I have to invent something dazzling, interest-provoking and yet short that doesn’t have me trying to explain the plot in a thousand-word sprawl.

A bit blasphemous? Sure, why not but it does involve other gods, other mythologies and a nod toward the irreverent and sassy. Honestly, it’s not dark or hopeless or dystopian. It’s even funny in spots. I think so. There’s some actual character journeys taking place. Jesus, for one, gets a great big arc.

So, yeah.

Now. How to use ‘viking vampire clown’. Isn’t it odd what combo of words can bring you such fulsome, wonderful delight? Happy almost spring!

The potential cover!

March madness

Spring attempts a coup in my neck of the wilderness. Ukraine yet holds off Russian invaders. Gas prices continue to be used as a political hot button. Even considering adopting renewable energy sources to ween an entire country off fossil fuels brings on mass parades of screamy ‘patriots’ waving bald eagles and drinking oil milkshakes ‘to own the libs’.

I seem to be yet on a winning streak, writing-wise. A tiny one, but still. Cherry of Her Lips just got an acceptance for an anthology put out by Black Hare Press, on the theme of War. Lilith’s Arm got a nod for an anthology, too. Debuting this month will be Blood and Bread, in Toilet Zone 3, the Royal Flush. Seffi and Des will be in Musings of the Muses, a short story collection about the Greek Gods.

There’s also the flood of rejections. Don’t even worry about that, fellow babies.

Don’t know who wrote this. Seems apt and succinct, however.

I just saw an Idaho law that proposes going after librarians if they check out ‘obscene’ materials to kids. HB666. Idaho ledge. I have to think that numbering is a jest, a joke, an attempt at humor but no. And I have to ask…who gets to decide what’s ‘obscene’?

Rep. Skaug: “I would rather my six year old grandson start smoking cigarettes tomorrow” rather than view obscene materials in a library, he said.

What? Huh? Are Idaho librarians letting kids check out The Story of O or somethin’? Is Story of O obscene or artistic? Does it have ‘artistic merit’? Holy fuck, this really is the worst timeline, as wags have opined.

Are we bringing back smoking for kids in Idaho so they can have something to look forward to after working all day instead of going to school? Is that the goal here? Did Skaug give the game away??

Oh? That 666 thingie passed? Of course it did. America, the land of oppression, don’t say gay and targeting librarians, teachers, trans people and women’s reproductive organs, cause freedom eagles Jesus.

What does ‘mandate freedom’ actually mean? For? WTF seems inadequate here.

But hey, at least we still have ‘freedom’ convoys getting lost and mixed up on the DC Beltway to show them scary libs in Congress a thing or two! If you don’t know what this is, consider yourself a truly blessed and happy person. Remember the Canadian trucker fiasco there in Ottawa? Yeah, a breakaway group decided they would DRIVE ACROSS COUNTRY from California to DC, to protest…things that don’t exist or were never taken seriously, in America. Like mask mandates. Except the American tantrum league began to claim it wasn’t about mask mandates but about. Um. Not becoming robots of the state or something. And why didn’t they just drive into DC, shut down the Beltway, like they promised? Nancy Pelosi set traps and they were not falling for that! Um. Yeah, okay or the Beltway is about the most confusing snarl of roads ever invented by a sadistic pack of civil engineers.

Having lived in Maryland, and having avoided going anywhere near DC because frankly it made me cry to even think of trying to navigate that and get home again, I awaited to hear how the control the Beltway narrative would go. As I knew, deep in my black dead cold heart, it would go badly or not happen at all.

It went as expected. Stalling out, people got lost, people refused to try it at all…yep. No locals to help out, you tantrum-throwing darlings? There has to be locals sympathetic to ‘freedom from tyranny masks trying to turn us into robot sheeple’ sorts there in Maryland. The Old Line State would harbor reb-flag wavin’ collections galore. Some of them with trust funds. Nobody got in touch with the Maryland branch of trucker freedom fighters for eagles and Jesus?

I think this cross-country trek, sucking up gas as much as possible, imaginary joust against imaginary tyranny is America to a T right now. Just my humble opinion. That loud-mouthed, reactionary, emotional punching at made up villains while wasting time, resources, people and ideas. What if these truckers/assorted drivers of other vehicles had driven across country to protest…oh, low wages, vastly expensive bloated health care costs, human rights violations happening on American soil, student loan shackling so many people from having any sort of a future, education being dismantled by religious zealots and those eager to keep Americans stupid and…yeah.

Real stuff, in other words. Real stuff that would matter not only to the trucker bunch waving Trump and QAnon flags but to all Americans. I guess that’s commie shit?

Before I depress myself into a serious bout of eating everything in the house while watching Gilmore Girls for the 666th time, signing off on this storm-laden Tuesday. I will plant some actual seeds today, try to work outside and start a short story about a hidden garden. I will hope Ukraine holds on and Russia runs out of war steam.

An image taken from CPAC, conservative political action conference. Says it all, oh yes indeedy.

Goblins and Wild Hats

O this month, thou doth weary me to the gosh darn bone.

Drama queen set aside for now, I am starting a new job. It’s already stressing me out and we’ll see how it goes whoop de doo.

A poem of mine got nominated for an award. A tiny little poem, really, about an imaginary goblin that lives in my pumpkin patch. Yeah. I was surprised and gratified to find that email. I needed it. I needed some slight nudge that, yes, I should keep writing and sending out stuff. As the rejection tsunami is rather daunting at present. Ouch. Ouch! OUCH.

Might have some new and revised novels coming out this year. Malheur Baby, Owyhee Days, The Adventures of Grumpy Odin and Sexy Jesus are ready or almost ready for a publisher to go over. And, gasp, Oregon Gothic, a collection of short stories, might get a revamp and some stories added into the mix already there.

My cat is doing well.

Finished Peacemaker and enjoyed it thoroughly. Fun, raunchy, sad, action-packed and gets better and better as the series toots along. It might not be everyone’s cup of peppermint, but that

SPOILER, LOOK AWAY IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE LAST EP YET

[cameo from the Justice League made me snort and giggle. ]

Mrs. Maisel also started up again. I am not so charmed with it…for some reason. Mm. I dunno. Will I still watch it? You bet your best wild hat I will. I loved, loved, loved Imogene’s hat in ep one, with the pink flowers all over it. My grandmother wore such hats. I do love the clothes of that time period, they’re so gorgeous. I want Susie to win or have some sort of story beyond propping up Midge all the time. And I want season five to be where Midge doesn’t make it. Where she has to keep on doing standup for peanuts in shitty places. You know, like real life? Except real life seems tinged with actual blood and human screams anymore…yikes. Downer!

I need to go over Malheur Baby, again. It needs about ten thousand more words. It’s sitting at 48 thou. But it clicks along so well now as is. Maybe it’s a novella? Maybe I can pair it with Army of Flamingos. odd pairing but…! Found baby and man fighting back against the slowly awakening lawn ornaments of his mother. Mm?

December

O it’s the month of snow, figgy pudding, evergreens and tense family gatherings. If one watches too much Hallmark schmaltz, one gets the notion one is really flucked in the noggin. Or cursed by Krampus to endure a black pit of despair and stress for what remains of the year.

Why are not my holidays filled with the actual Santa Claus, snow, skating rinks, hot chocolate, baking sugar cookies and sparkly holiday evening wear??? Why???

Oh yeah, cause real life, can’t skate, global warming and the local thrift store doesn’t seem to have much sparkly holiday wear.

So. Abortion is going away in America. Legal, safe, medically supervised abortion is going away in a lot of states when Roe V. Wade gets gutted or just tossed out by a handful of gleeful religious extremists, most of them men. One woman who’s replacing that glass ceiling as hard and fast and much as she can. Amy Coat Hanger Barrett, is, I believe, her actual legal name. This overturning of Roe has been in the works since it got put into law in the 70’s. The Moral Majority wed itself to Ronnie Raygun [or Ronald Reagan if you have to have the actual name of that fuckstick], and here we are. They worked, schemed, planned, got their people into high places to make this happen. And the left sat back and scrunched their faces a bit, but otherwise ignored all that as much and as hard as possible. And then acted all surprised when Roe V Wade is on the chopping block, is already chopped.

Hey, going backwards when women died at home from botched abortions seems to be the holy grail of the American GOP. With the issue of banning abortions decided by men, for men, with seemingly no input from the females it will impact the most. They’re not even a consideration here, seemingly. Religious fanatics seem to rule the roost in ‘merica and it’s fucking scary.

That the left can’t form a single cogent means to attack any of this is also scary and feels like it must be inevitable that America will try on that coat of fascism to see how it fits.

So yeah, am not feeling too hopeful right now. I admit it. As others have said, the Gross Old Perverts ain’t gonna stop at ending abortion rights. They want to roll back that clock to a time when only rich white Christian straight men had the only voices, the only power, the only presence on the work or political stage.

Which brings me to that scene in the first season of Handmaid’s Tale where Serena Joy, who campaigned so tirelessly for shoving women into roles of livestock and silent powerless nothings, gets bit with her own rhetoric. The same laws she saw applying to other women, also apply to her. Her face as she’s relegated to wife only, stripped of her public persona and her public work. That face of someone realizing too late she aimed the gun at herself, too.

Do the GOP ladies not realize they’re in for a rough road, as well? Do they really think none of this shit will affect them?

I’ll say it plainly. Women have power and control over their own bodies. Their bodies belong to them, not the church or the state or anyone or anything else. We do not legislate men’s bodies. We do not treat sperm as a state property that must be used no matter what is going on with the man who spewed it.

But hey, no health care, no paid leave, no maternity anything, and all those kids being born into a system stripped to the bone or just gone when it comes to helping out those in need. Social safety nets??!! That’s commie shit, after all. Just ask the GOP, they’ll gladly shout about that for days on end. Bootstrap it, babies, bootstrap it!

I smell a Dickens revival! I suspect the rage-filled poetry written during this time will rival some famous poet nobody reads. I suspect the left will send out emails demanding signatures to save blah dee blah and to chip in a few dollars so business can continue as…usual. Yeah.

Hey, December 2021. Can you send us some chuckles before the new year crushes us completely here in ‘merica? Thanks!

Or at least a pretty snowstorm and a big plate of nachos? And some of that fabled fighting spirit to combat this extremism crappola? Extra thanks!!

Storms

Oh October, you beautiful orange beast. A big round ball of pumpkin-y goodness! A bowl full of candy corn and candy cigarettes. That time’o year when the leave turn yellow and the cows munch desperately at the corn stalks as they try not to lean against the electric fence. Whoop whoop.

I am now working a graveyard shift, at a place I used to work in the way back when time machine. A group home. It’s what it is. I hate it already. I cried the entire weekend  I had to start work. Why am I not father along, why am I not doing better, why am I not better at being me, better at everything by now??? I wrote to a friend of mine, she’s also crying about going to work, while working on finding some other way to pay her bills. What she’s doing now causes her untold stress.

Life sucks, then you die. That has never been a more apt or true saying. Perhaps the only true saying. Depressed yet?

I also, if you go back through these hit or miss posts, trim weed for my aunt every year. Until this year. I flat out quit. I wrote a desperately long scream about that, did not post it. Why bore the shit and crap and hell out of my patient sometimes readers? Why??? To sum up, my aunt and her new-ish boyfriend are deep down the alt right rabbit hole. It was like sitting in at a Klan meeting. Right down to the n word being tossed out. As in there are good Negroes and then there are ahem ahem. It’s 2021 still, yes? Not 1951? 1851?

Not even kidding was this person. This was tossed out with the reasonable tones of someone who meant it, was not trying to be satirical. The person tossing that out, by the by, is the reason I up and walked out of that shed.

I had headphones on, the day was frigidly cold, so the portable heaters blasted away, adding their level of noise. In walks, let’s call him Klarence, who brings donuts or some sort of breakfast type breads. Like he does every damn time he shows up to trim. So, it’s my aunt, her boyfriend, some ex-cop [who’s a total shitshow loudmouth braggart sort you might find in a Smoky and the Bandit movie. Old reference but Google is right there, kids.] and me cutting the devil’s lettuce this Arctic morning.

Klarence stops right in front of my table, says something. I can’t hear him. I’m fighting with my phone to pick up anything FM wise, as my aunt does not have the internet. That’s right, no internet. I’m trying to tell myself all that static will be fine, at least it drowns out the We Love Joe Arpaio Hour.  At least I don’t have to listen to how we need donnie chump back to save us from Joe Biden’s Commie Agenda. Fuck me running, some of their conversational threads about turned me into an actual serial killer. I just grab the nearest chainsaw, and there’s one right behind my trimming table, and go all Letherface on living beings who bought into everything Fox News was selling, is selling still.

I can’t hear Klarence. I say, rather loudly, yes, I saw you, hello, hi. Something like that. As he insists on greeting everyone when he comes in…so fucking annoying. I thought I was the only one who bristled at this. But no, it’s not just me. I really honestly don’t get upset or mad if someone doesn’t say hi to me or good morning. But I have no manners and I was brought up by parakeets.

So here’s the gooey good part.

Klarence EXPLODES.

I WAS JUST GONNA FUCKING TELL YOU THERE WAS DONUTS and some other stuff that probably had ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt’ included in it. I mean, he blew several gaskets. I don’t know what those are but he blew several. The other two guys had to rush in and save poor Klarence from the loud-voiced meanie. Again, not kidding or making that up to sell my books or make you go read some of my short tales available on the web even now as I write this.

I decided, logically and coolly, that remaining there as my aunt sat there like a lump, not saying a word, to go home. Enough of this stressful experience that I dreaded so each time I went up there to trim weed. My first day there was a surreal theatre of cruelty play as if written by Samuel Beckett, except ole Sam didn’t have talent and could only vomit back up what he’d heard that day from a Q drop. That’s where the someone/s pretending to be Q released some fecal-infused blurb about the Clintons, mostly, and their love of draining children of fluids at pizza parlors.

That first day, people there shared how they all kept guns on them at all times because the Civil War was almost here. My aunt was the loudest voice in that one. My aunt.

Back to Klarence. I told my aunt I couldn’t trim anymore. I told Klarence to enjoy his donuts and mind you, he’s still ranting and vibrating visibly with the urge to smack me. All because I spoke a bit too loudly, over the heaters and my headphones. And hurt his feelings. I can’ even with these people is, I believe, an expression that’s probs out of date by now. My aunt is asking if I’m all right…not telling Klarence to stop acting like a murderous tree frog on meth.

I left my purse in the shed. I had to go back and get it. The ex-cop was in the middle of a thoughtful diatribe on what a bitch I am. I pop back in, ask him pointblank if he just called me a bitch. I then tell him thanks, I love being a bitch. Out I swan, into the sunrise, as it’s before noon and go home. My aunt also tried to say that they all like me, just not when I’m…yeah.

She has not called or come over to see if I’m okay. She sided with Klarence so quickly it should have gone into a record book but it’s expected. It would have been my fault, after all, if poor poor Klarence had smacked me for hurting his feelings with my loud vocal range-ification. I’ve experienced this one before, after all. When my brother tried to choke me. It was my fault, according to mom and dad. I deserved it.

Yeah.

Okay, enough common as dirt family confessions.

It’s nearly Halloween, darlings. My favorite time of year. I love skulls and spiders, pumpkins and witches, vampires, ghouls and zombies, oh my. The season is changing, winter is around the corner with its snow and smell of cinnamon and sage. It’s harvest time, the mice move into the house and you’re not surrounded by ominous corn fields full of cult-minded children with butcher knives at the ready.

I am skipping the stressful, awful end of year holidays this year because I have to work. That’s my excuse. I have to work, sorry, can’t sit there and suffer through Fox News shitvomitings from y’all. As I’m the only not-Foxie on either side. In a deeply red part of Oregon, with a lot of my relatives from batshit blood-red Id-ee-hell. I don’t want to sit there and silently hate every single fucking one of them this year or ever. I have to call quits to all those family helldays. Sorry, holidays. My mouth wants to flap. I don’t have any backup and I don’t truly wish to hate any of them. I’m almost there already. Sigh of sighs.

The toad is croaking away. There’s a big collection of storms comin’ in. The cat says hi.