Oh we’re going with your bit of writing! We LOVES IT, PRECIOUS. Here’s some promises and possible money paid TO YOU for YOUR WRITING.
Excitement! My writing in a short film. And hey, can use the money, frankly. Cause I’m poor and money is a distant dream most of the time.
And then? Radio silence. Silence. Seven days of waiting for them to get back to me. Waiting.
Still waiting as I go about my soul-crushing, car-destroying temp job. Yeah, I had another bad tire yesterday. Fuck. Knock it off, car gods. Enough. Leave me alone. Go bother someone in a Mercedes or one of those Land Rover tanks.
And then, ah, message from film makers!!! Squee!!!
Wait, what? What now? You’re…going with someone else.
Hey, you’re still a good writer, but we’re totally going with someone else and hey, forgot to mention we were still in the ‘still looking at shit’ stage of our process.
Okay, I’m fine with rejection. Sort of. It stings. Mm. Who really enjoys being told their work is not acceptable or not right for blah dee blurgh or just not a good fit or…?
Are there actually people who love getting such messages or form letters or pat croonings about how they should keep writing? Followed by links to give money to the very thing that just rejected you often times or launch party for all the writers but you that are in whatever.
Are you kidding or high, editors? Don’t do this. I think there are entire wings of the internet dedicated to bashing just this.
What I’m having a problem with here, OTHER THAN THE REJECTION, is that this team made it seem this was a done deal. Not that it was in the initial stages and other works were being considered yet. It felt…dishonest. If that makes sense.
If you’re gonna dangle a carrot, make it a vague carrot, my lovelies.
Just a simple: Hey, we liked your X, are considering it, along with other pieces, for our project. We’ll let you know.
[And then never contact me again, if you go another way. Hey hey!]
To sum up this bitch session—DO NOT DANGLE THE CARROT if you wanna go another way or might go another way or there’s the possibility of going another way.
Just don’t.
It just ruined my entire night. I felt like crap after an already crappy day.
I admit that freely here. That’s life, sure. But…yanking the rug out like that just seemed careless and cruel. Writers already labor often times with little or no reward for their life long efforts.
Just…don’t dangle carrots promising a job or a bit piece that earns you a little cash or might give you a bit of a boost. Don’t dangle that carrot then offer the carrot elsewhere if there’s the possibility that it’s not a done deal. Thanks. That’s all.
Just don’t. It’s just salt thrown on often open festering wounds.
This is just the hay field down the road from me but…look at that!
I took some pictures on my travels today and yesterday.
On the way back to MadeUpTownNameHere, a young coyote trotted onto the highway. I saw it in plenty of time to slow down. The youngster got confused. It zagged. It zigged. No traffic but me. The wild canine finally darted off to safety and an afternoon snack of gopher or mouse.
I spent most of my time today looking for unmarked roads, hoping it was the right road. Dirt road ranch roads leading out into the sagebrush through actual herds of cattle, at times. As we have range cattle here in Eastern Oregon. Bovines that just wander about and there’s no fences. Well, not really. I think I managed to find both roads I needed to find. I did stop and ask. I had one nice gentleman draw me a map and the very lovely lady told me exactly what I needed to hear about the…I can’t do details. Because. I work for the Census and…hey, squirrel! Or coyote!
I also had to go back up into the hills, but in the other direction from my morning’s jaunt. It was actually good. I discovered a possible new rock haven! I pulled over, on this tiny narrow rutted, oh so rutted, dirt path and oh my. Obsidian chunks. Squee!!! It’s about the same distance as driving up to the Owyhees. And there ain’t no people up where I was today, outside of Eastpour. [Made up name!] It’s just a rutted crappy road and rocks. A stream. Rocks.
So, some pics. Have a lovely weekend. Read something good! I’m going to have a cup of wine. A cup of it. Impulse purchase– cheap ass bottle of wine. That last picture is on the backside of my home town. Just sagebrush and sky, ladies and germs. Sagebrush and sky.
Impressive rock formations in Eastern OregonDead center– a giant hawk. I could not get closer than this with my phone camera
The Yakima River. Not sure who took this or what year this is. Washington State.
Hi again. Double post. Sorrynotsorry whatever.
I always hesitate about posting some long rambling ranty rant that goes in every direction at once. Most of the time I don’t post those. Thank me with chocolate. I’ll also take your spare change or that coupon that’s stuck to your garbage can for two for one cans of creamed corn at the Piggly-Wiggly. That would mean a road trip for me, but I will accept out of date Piggly-Wiggly coupons because I didn’t post some unreadable screed on postmodern-retro tropes in feminist Marxist socialist anarchist subgenres of indie films that start with the letter J.
However, sometimes I need to clear the writing pipes.
As I’ve been uncharacteristically not writing at all lately, any sort of attempting to write seems a triumph. An actual triumph over my lackluster, nearly dead and gone to hell already spirit.
So yeah, posting the occasional heavy-handed scream against the evils of the universe is gonna happen. Along with updates on my cat and my garden and the state of my sludge-slapped brain. What else, I ask ya, is a blog fer???
I am also trying to force myself to just write something, anything. To get back into practice. It’s very hard to concentrate. I have projects I need to get done that in years past I’d have whipped out, many times over. I was oddly very productive once upon a time. It’s galling now.
So yeah. Trying not to care how unpopular and unseen my writing is. I expected so much more by the time I hit this age and I can’t seem to slap myself into working toward fixing that at all right now. Just want to sleep.
Just wanna sleep.
afterward: thank you as always for reading my stuff. I appreciate it.
Storm about to hit plus the old locust tree. June 2020 pic. That’s a corn field behind it.
The fireworks and dog and pony show are now over until next year. That’s Fourth of July to those not in ‘murica. I did not attend my family’s gathering. I have actually been trying to follow guidelines about public safety and not helping spread this pandemic about as hard and fast as possible. I guess I hate ‘freedumb’. I guess I hates it really damn hard or sumpin. Wear a mask, love the devil! That’s America right now!
A Jimmy Johns employee makes a noose out of dough cause…BLM is the real problem here, obviously. Just head-exploding…yeah.
Okay. Before I just start typing every cuss word every invented and calling upon Satan to curse my own with pus-filled painful boils for their MAGA-filled bullshit cunty cunt…Okay. Okay. See what I mean? Just a screaming unintelligible stream of consciousness filthy river that I hope will drown the world in a river of actual liquid feces infected with exploding small pox so we can be done with all this. Amen.
is there an American equivalent of Ms. Salt?
Ahem.
My mood has traveled to a low point in the life highway. Eh. What’s new. Except the sheer awfulness that is America right now seems to be a permanent stain on whatever composition is actually me. It’s tiring and stultifying.
The hits never stop; they pound relentlessly against the already torn fabric of this country and the world itself. Fraud. Lies. Greed. More lies. More damned lies. Mountains of lies. Victim playing while causing even more damage. Temper tantrums because the likes aren’t high enough from the press. Ratings are bad, temper tantrums, we all get punished.
Daddy isn’t happy! You earned that broken bone, America! Why do you make Orange Daddy hit you??? That black eye is YOUR FAULT FOR MAKING DADDY MAD AT YOU
Oh. Here we go. Bear with me a bit. I apologize if I mangle this.
I’d go into the J.K. Rowling brohouha but others have done it so much better, so much more elegantly, with far more understanding that I do of this terf issue. I had no idea what a terf was until lately. TERF– trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
That’s a head scratcher. Why would you exclude entire groups from feminism? What would be the point and…? Oh, prejudice and ignorance and a host of some other stuff and things, got it.
I will also state that trans people are people, the end.
Someone identifying as another gender or being gender-fluid or anything in between that—please understand I am not an expert in this and sorry if I state things wrong or badly—has no effect on me, my life or anything to do with me. It doesn’t detract from me or subtract from me that someone else is not like me or doesn’t identify in a way that I understand right off the bat. It might take me a moment to wrangle out details, word meanings, words used, terminology, etc. But I will try and understand, read up, listen up, catch up. It’s not my struggle, but it doesn’t mean it’s not real for others going through all this in some way or another.
Sometimes I don’t instantly receive all the changed anything to do with this issue of transgenderism and gender in general…I have to catch up, read up, watch something. I try to listen, instead of offering opinions and getting testy and defensive. I also, frankly, become afraid of SAYING OR WRITING THE WRONG THING about trans people or marginalized folks.
Because I know I have misconceptions, prejudices, wrong takes, hasty assumptions all just waitin’ to brand me a big ole idiot with poo for brains. I, like others, have no real need to be embarrassed or shamed, like, ever.
But.
How can you learn anything if you don’t venture into the unknown field of New Ideas and New Notions and Brand New Stuff That’s Scary At First To Explore. You might even get bogged down in It’s Always Been This Way Swamp. Ugh, amirite?
There is more than one way to be a woman, far more than Rowling and others in her camp cling to. You can only be a woman if you menstruate…? Um, no. Geez. That’s so obvious it shouldn’t even be offered forth as a reason to deny people basic rights and/or try to legislate them out of existence.
I understand Rowling’s essay, quotes from it, have been used as part of legislators trying to get laws passed against trans people. So, her views are actively and actually hurting people. I am not okay with that.
I am not okay with that!
Yes, read all the Harry Potter books. I did notice some troubling stuff. The 50’s perfect family conservative vibe, for one. The house elves…ick. The goblins…yikes, or was it just me who wondered why the goblins resembled the hoary stereotypes of Jews that people still vomit up to this day?
And Dumbledore being gay…after the last book was out and selling in the billions. It’s…yeah. Was it said in any of the books? No. Suddenly there’s a hot and heavy affair between Dumbledore and Grindelwald that wasn’t written about in any of the books? I…mm. Why not just be open from the start, write this side of Dumbledore into the story from the get-go? Why pretend it was there all along when it so clearly was not?
The females of this world get short thrift as well. They’re either stereotypical moms, like Mrs. Weasely or hard-nosed grim types, like McGonnagal, or shrill shrews, like most of the other female characters or love interests with no real layers to them, like Cho Chang or even Ginny Weasely. Hermione is the scolding, annoying rule keeper to the two boys being rule breaking adventurous risk-takers. Which is the backbone of Western literature, after all. Sigh.
I am all over the map here, with lots of profanity thrown in. Woot woot.
I am also not writing. I just. My brain seems very empty. Tumbleweeds don’t even bother blowing past the sad line of fences leaning here and there inside my skull. I should be almost done with the current rewrite of a film…This about the worst actual case of Don’t Wanna I’ve had. I just don’t see the point anymore in writing for love or money. Mostly love cause nobody gives a piece of toast about anything I string together; that might be the acute depression mumbling. Might be.
I seem to be waiting for the awful other shoe to drop here in my country. So I can adjust and get on with resisting in the correct way. As those that I’m protesting against have decreed are the correct ways to protest! So they don’t get upset or have to think or have to do anything at all, really but totally ignore my protesting. And then nothing changes and we all go on as before until another forty years has passed and there’s a need for protesting and…
Woot. However, things do change. They do. It just seems to take generations for actual change to register. Plant a tree today. Be buried a long time before that tree gets cut down to make way for more condos. It’s kinda like that.
Hopeful note!
I have a mini green pumpkin growin’ away. It’s so cute! I want to give it kisses and talk to it like I talk to puppies. Hey there, cutie pie! Oh you’re so cute! How are you so cute!? Baby pumpkin breath…No. No, that’s a garden too far.
June. It’s June. A few more months than it’s the glut of holidays. Thank the blessed unicorns of the third-party American voters, I never ever take my various decorations down. Score!
Thanks. I’ll be here a while. Try the chicken.
And on to a movie I’ve been wanting to see since it hit theatres in 2019. So about twenty thousand years ago, or so it seems.
Ahem.
I did not go see it. I think I went to Rise of Skywalker instead, because hey, sat through the other two. And I actually liked Last Jedi. Do I hear snarls? Is that snarls?
Little Women! Feminist remake! Unpronounceable Irish-named actress as Jo! Timothy Challawallabingbang as Laurie, the alleged six foot plus Italian stud-hunk.
Um, no. No.
Otherwise the casting was pretty spot on.
Beth, Jo, Meg, Amy and Laurie Laurence
I LOVED Laura Dern as Marmee. This is the first time I found her to be human and lovable, instead of the stalwart lecturer of the four sisters, the saintly mother-goddess archetypal figure so often depicted in nearly every Little Women adaptation. This Marmee is far more human than superwoman. And it’s fantastic. Adds so many layers right there. The way she wipes tears from her cheeks, takes a moment to put on her Happy Marmee Face before facing her daughters…damn. We get a glimpse into just how hard her life is trying to raise her kids and make ends meet and live up to her own ideals is. That little sigh, that little moment of utter weariness. Show don’t tell moment, y’all.
Emma Watson as Meg. Eh. There’s really never been much there to play with. But Watson gives it her best. We also get glimpses of Meg’s talent as an actress, and the creative lives of these lively sisters reminds how limited and few their choices were and how limited a lot of the time women still have it. Even now. Yeah, I went there. Meg marries a good man, settles in for motherhood and caregiving, and oh…we get to see her dissatisfaction, her restlessness, her unhappiness even. This was covered a tiny bit in the actual novel, but Alcott resolved it too neatly and Meg gets to play St. Housewife the rest of her time in the Alcott universe. Through Little Men and Jo’s Boys. Don’t believe me? You have some reading to do, kiddos.
Beth is Beth. I did like this actress in the thankless role of Dying Young role. I am so glad it was not that drawn out or even given all that much screen time. You can see the potential of Beth and how she supports her sisters and lives life through her wild, free, strong protector-friend Jo.
And yes, we also get to blame German immigrants for bringing disease to the March family. That was in the novel, it’s been in all the movies, as it’s an integral part of the story as set down by Alcott.
Amy and Aunt March discuss the realities of life.
Amy had to be my fave here. Florence Pugh gives this most unlikable sister actual layers, practicality, a lot of heart and that careless something we can call charm. Amy’s future relationship with Theodore Laurence, the hunkalicious boy next door, gets a lot of timne spent on it. In the movie, that is. Not the novel. The relationship does seem one-sided. however. Amy loves him, he tolerates her for the moment…but they do know each other, grew up a bit together and don’t ever really face any real challenges. At least, none on screen. Other than Amy’s other candidate for Rich Husband, Fred Vaughn. But he’s not given much more to be than Obstacle. We barely even see his face, let alone how all of this affects him. Amy tosses him aside like a used handkerchief. But we’re supposed to believe she had chosen love over being mercenary. Or has she???
Ah, Jo. One of my favorite literary characters. I identify with someone who wants to write. Yes, I do. I identify with someone who has such trouble fitting in and being what’s expected of a girl. Here the Jo character doesn’t really deviate from all the other Jo’s, not really. I did like how we got to see the business end of writing. The getting your stuff into print work Jo had to go through. She was always working out story ideas and composing her tales. We got to see that. We got to watch her work on a novel. It wasn’t she sat down at a desk, poof, the next scene, the novel is finished and ready to go to print. Nope!
Jo and Teddy.
I adore that this film tackled, head on, the Jo mantra that she would never marry and yet the novel and movie ends with the requisite happy ending. Because it’s what people want and expect, not because it’s what the characters want or need to happen. Gut punch. That’s a gut punch. That a story involving women or a ‘woman’s tale’ has to end in either marriage or death.
Gut. Punch.
I had no quibbles, much, with Professor Bhaer. Except…HE’S GERMAN, POOR AND NOT HANDSOME AND OLDER THAN JO BY A LOT OF YEARS. Ugh. In the film, he was young, French and should maybe have swapped with the Timothy Challawalla kid. I felt a real hollowness over this alleged romance between him and fierce independent Jo. It seemed to arise out of nowhere and suddenly, she was madly in love so they could have AN ACTUAL DASH TO THE RAILWAY STATION scene. I. Just. Ugh.
Louis Garrel as Professor Bhaer. Um…? Yeah.
Suddenly we’re in romantic movies land and it just rang so goddamn false. I DIDN’T BELIEVE THE CHARACTER SET UP OVER THE COURSE OF THIS LONG ASS MOVIE would suddenly turn into Meg Ryan galloping after Tom Hanks or some other screen couple we wait two hours for to do just that. Not Jo March, no sir! Christopher Columbus! But…then again, we are set up that the publisher guy told Jo her stories involving women had to have it end with a wedding or the death of the woman. She could not go off to a life of happy spinsterhood, no no no!
Now, the neighbor guy who was in love with Jo from their first meeting to marrying some other sister cause…mm.
I, too, always asked why Jo didn’t marry Laurie. Or Teddy, as she called him. Teddy, in the book, made the other boys call him Laurie, after beating the shit out of them. As they were teasing him anyway. He’s also presented as some sort of ‘other’ due to his hot Italian blood. Alcott’s wording. As if those of Italian descent are fire-blooded hotheads with almost no morality. Oh, you thought stereotyping of other cultures was a new thing??? Bwha ha ha ha.
We get to see a very torn up Jo, lonely and confused, reconsider her choices here. Openly saying she’d give another answer to that proposal. It was hinted at in the book but here we get to hear it.
Aunt March is played, with lots of fun and vinegar, by Meryl Streep. Teddy’s grandpa is played by Chris Cooper, one of my fave actors. Both are a hooty hoot.
I was taken out of this otherwise stellar film every time Timothy Wallawallbang bang popped into frame. He looks twelve years old to me. He’s heroin skinny with the frame of a stork. I just. I just can’t overcome my suspension of disbelief barriers to swallow him as the over six foot tall, built like a brick shithouse, Theodore Laurence. Who is also supposed to be astoundingly handsome. Rather the perfect foil to Jo March, who is often described as her hair being her only real beauty.
Christian Bale and Timothy Chalamet compare/contrast time
Teddy and Jo. They share actual bonds. Friendship, confidences, trust, companionship. They spark each other. We are led to believe this is bad; that actual passion, conflict and being hot-tempered are the worst things, like, ever.
Alcott makes it clear that because the two often fight, this is a bad thing. We are led, by Alcott, to think that Meg and John Brook have the idyllic- more or less—married relationship. All cooing doves, no screeching falcons. That a marriage should be polite barely affectionate people…or a marriage of that time. Okay. Okay!
This film breaks the linear fashion of the story up. That’s good. I didn’t expect it to work, I expected to be highly annoyed. I was not. It worked. It often paralleled a moment from the past with one in the here and now to one of the sisters. We got to watch a jigsaw puzzle being filled in rather than being spoonfed a homespun tale of sisters finding their way through life.
I was jarred a bit by all the legs and underwear shown. That’s fine for modern audiences but…not at that time. Even at home in private with no neighbor watching. Marmee had her skirt hiked up, baking, as Meg was brought home by Jo and Laurie from a winter dance due to a twisted ankle. Marmee, no. No.
And to end this rambling screed on Amy. I adored her speech about how marriage was an economic everything to women, not so much for men. As men held all the power, the land, even the children were theirs. Men held the pursestrings mostly and women were very limited as to what careers they could pursue without having to endure society calling them all sorts of names and shunning them accordingly. Amy declares she can’t be a great artist, so she will be an ornament to society. Laurie is horrified by this but she icily reminds him that she really has very few choices here beyond marry a wealthy man or live in poverty with a poor man or…work at some job she hates for very little money to retain her respectability. Aunt March, in an earlier scene, lays it out quite baldly. She never had to marry because she had oodles of money. She urges the sisters to marry wealthy men because that’s one of the only ways a woman can move up in the world. It’s also a means to take care of the entire family. As the Marches have no sons…well.
And of course…if you know this story at all…who does Amy end up marrying?
I could ramble on for days and days over the nuances of Little Women, feminism, the various cinematic takes on Alcott’s most famous work and the absolute puzzlement that the casting folks can’t cast a decent Theodore Laurence already. Though…Christian Bale was okay, in the Winona Ryder version. Which is such a beautiful film, if you have not seen it.
Laura Dern as Marmee.
Over and out, fellow babies. I need to croon over my growing squash plants and squee over the opening of the bachelor buttons.
Oh! Jaws, the kitty, jumped off the fence and must have come down on it funky. I was freaking out thinking she’d broken her leg but after some rest and TLC, she was fine. Today I caught her tormenting a baby mouse, which is now resting and recovering a bit before I find a place to release it or…let it live with me a few days. I’m sorry, the little frightened squeaking! I put it in a giant glass container and will give it some water and…Yes, it’s ‘just a mouse’. But I like to think the March sisters would approve.
It’s my birthday. I didn’t spend the day weeping. So it’s a good one. This is one of the good ones!
I made my own cake—chocolate raspberry with a raspberry syrup-vanilla frosting mix atop it. If it has raspberries in it, there are no calories. That’s, um, how that works.
Oh, I took the three dogs for a mini trip. I drove up the road toward the state park. I pulled over onto the little side roads, parked, let them run and shout as I collected rocks for my garden efforts. We all had a lovely morning. They flushed a rabbit. And possibly found a snake. I just heard the hissing. I did not see the snake. One of the dogs brushed against an electric fence and got a shock. Poor baby! Yes, it’s cattle country as well as state park area.
Just a low-key enjoyable day. I even rented myself Little Women for tonight. The new one. I discovered you can stream videos from a service…yeah, it’s a whole thing. Why didn’t nobody tell this near-Luddite??
Two good things this week. DACA is still a thing. LGTBQ people cannot be fired for being LGTBQ. There are actual meltdowns going on because…people retained or gained some rights. Grudgingly so. Some folks are losing their minds! Because other citizens of their same country have the same protections they do, sort of…
It’s…mm. STOP BEING HORRIBLE SHITS TO EACH OTHER. There. I said it. I even wrote it down.
The DACA decision hinged on some paperwork that didn’t get done right…so yeah, America, still gotta vote. Still gotta get Pumpkincunt out of office.
So, hey, June is flying by.
Oh. Union County, up the road from moi, is swimmin’ with COVID-19 cases. Traced to a Pentecostal church in Island City. Eastern Oregon, we’ve joined the pandemic team, so to speak.
Tomorrow is Juneteenth. June 19, 1865, when the slaves were freed. This is not a date I was ever taught in a school.
All righty, fellow babies, cuties and assorted stardust mamas, have a great month.
Sorry. My country has imploded/exploded. I’ve scrapped several posts.
I keep hearing this feels very much like 1968. I keep hearing this time it’s gonna change, it’s gonna be different. I am actually full of some small hope that our obviously racist craptastic framework of a system will indeed be broken down, scrapped altogether and rewritten, reworked with justice and freedom for all. Or at least not so obviously racist, so overtly racist and…
This is how society changes, after all. Tiny little steps forward, upset in-power folks dragging us all backwards, more tiny steps forward, maybe even a riot or a revolution and changes, changes, changes, going backwards; oooh is that a dictator we have now? protests protests revolution changes.
It’s all messy and frustrating and exhilarating.
Even here, in my tiny red corner of a somewhat blue state, Oregon…there are protests being staged. Has hell frozen over? Is the devil skating over the lakes of fire even now??? Hope seems to be growing that this, too, can change.
I seem not able to write much at the present. I am waiting, perhaps, for that climactic moment when my nation decides if it wishes to be a dictatorship or not. That’s pretty grim but if I can’t be honest here, then why post a blog at all?
Boise protests. A ‘boogaloo’ counter-protesting Black Lives Matter.
Well, my quick jumble of vague notions. My garden is doing well. My raspberry plant thrives. My cat, Jaws, is living her best life, I tell ya.
I’ll try to post more but I find I drift along, and that time seems to reduce the days to the same day over and over. Sort of like Groundhog Day but not as funny. However, there are rodents.
Oh yes, a brief but violent storm blew over two trees and the old barn. But no real damage. Ten seconds, seventy an hour mile winds. Dang.
I don’t know who took this pic or who the woman is but yeah…Yep.
ANN WUEHLER 