So, yeah. Am done with this year already. Just a big ole nope.
Might be the 16 degrees [F] outside or might just be me.
Rejections galore. Work is draining my batteries far faster than I can recharge and generally, just a mental feeling that none of this is worth it.
Eating guacamole off my fingers with the promise, to myself, I’ll eat an apple because healthy something something.
My cat is doing well. There. Something positive.
Oh, am tentatively researching Wyoming for a possible sequel to a novel no one’s read yet, let alone gone through looking for grievous errors.
Rewriting several short stories but am not sure I am helping so much as making them even more not publishable. Sigh.
Head is as empty as my rotting gourds sitting out on the giant wooden spool beneath the apple trees. I do plan to try and turn them into bird houses. I do have plans and schemes that way.
The world grinds onward and I want to go to hell already. Is that so bad?
Trying to make light of my depression so it gets confused. Hope it works.
Well, howdy 2023. What is up? Are you gonna be slapping us around like 2022 did? Huh? Are ya??
It’s been raining here. Raining. When not snowing, sleeting, foggy or raining.
You know, January weather.
Rejections flying in like dead birds thrown at already broken windows. Yeee haaaaa.
My cat is a sleek, complaining rascal. She sniffs at her food bowls and resigns herself to snack a bit, after pitiful calls for the ‘good stuff’. She enjoys meowing until someone lets her out the front or back door, so she can zoom about to my window, let herself in and have another go at getting someone to let her out a door so she can zoom about outside a bit before returning inside for a nap or several. She is, in other words, a total cat.
My country is, um. An embarrassment? A total eye-rolling puke-inducing stench lately? I should get my passport renewed and get the hell out for several years until it falls or somehow rights itself a bit? Haven’t looked at those teaching abroad jobs lately…
I got myself a pair of avocado platform boots. Because I had to. The compulsion to get them WOULD NOT GO AWAY. You see something wildly not suited to your lifestyle and work needs, and yet, you MUST HAVE IT. I was haunted by these damn boots for months. Such a high heel but it’s a platform, so that negates the heel height. I can do shoe math.
I resisted. I resisted so hard! No, okay, I didn’t. I finally succumbed. They were out of the size I wanted– a size over my actual size 8 because I have wide feet and sometimes things like, oh, boots, don’t fit. And yet…these fit. They fit. Oh. Oh! Anyone not a shoe fanatic will not understand but those that do…! You get me. You feel me. You know.
Writing? Oh that. I am…sure. I’m writing. I feel defensive writing this! My mind seems tired and utterly smooth of ideas and notions about plot, character, setting, genre and theme. Should I attempt a steampunk splattergore sci-fi western set on a planet a thousand years in the past? Should I be pushing out female-only stories that deal with political issues oddly parallel to our interesting times yet no actual real world stuff happens because it might trigger a slush reader and my story won’t pass muster and the rejection will say I need sensitivity schooled and…? Should I just write cute poems about elves in my patch of sage that persists in surviving no matter what? Or write essays about man’s inhumanity toward everything ever?
I don’t know!
I go over what’s acceptable and not for a story and…yeah, I get it but sometimes, when you live in, oh, say a rural place full of people convinced the government under Biden is about to round them up for CRT-re-education camps and about to geld the local kids…well. Yeah.
I went to lunch with a friend the other day. He was spooked to be out. It was in our mutual home town. He was afraid to say stuff because he’s gotten death threats because he’s, you know, a liberal. And a pacifist and very vocal, in the past, about everything wrong with home town. The local crank, in other words. And these days, the handful of liberals in a small, very conservative town might end up shot to death or run over or hurt in some way.
So, I have to shake my head over some of the restrictions placed on what can be in a story. Or just send that story anyway, with the trigger warning. But I do understand why the list is in place, when you see the rising crimes and vicious hatred directed at marginalized groups.
Halloween display, Meridian, Idaho, 2019. Can’t find who to credit this with.
Welp, had to drive to work yesterday in fog so dense I nearly drove off the road, twice. Fun.
It finally rained here in Oregon East. An actual rain. We plunged into near winter temps! It might snow in the valleys! Nah, not yet but winter wants to pounce.
I want to enjoy Halloween and all its orange, black and sparkly glory, but the American midterm elections throw a giant moist pall over everything. Moister than moist. Dripping wet with racism, sexism, fascism and all the other crappy isms imaginable and then some. Who is taking all these polls? It does not seem to reflect anything but what is expected– that the Gross Old Perverts sweep everything and Biden gets made to look like a doddering, shitting himself in public, gibbering fool. Um? And yet so many people registering to vote and yet…mmm.
I just want this all over so I can start breathing again and plan accordingly. Do I still live in a ‘free’ country or do I have to practice my salutes, wave a flag with savage frantic grins plastered across my frozen face? Shout randomly, in public, about eagles and freedom and no more open borders? We don’t have open borders, what the fuck is that noise?
Idaho, by the way, is almost an Ida-don’t go there, stay away, avoid avoid avoid. We do have scary states here in ‘murica and that is becoming one of the scariest.
The Aryan Nations that used to be a joke, who used to live under rocks and only appear if you whispered something overtly racist near an open sewer…have now virtually taken over that state. It’s sad and tragic and awful. Aryan Nations meets QAnon nonsense, has weird disgustingly awful sex, produces a mutant baby and here we are!
And my state, by the way, has a trumpian Gross Old Pervert running for guvvie. I just. No. No!
I do have scary movies lined up, as the midterms causes eye twitches, drooling, screaming when a leaf drops from a tree too near me. It’s tense here, y’all. Tense. Golly, vote for sane people or batshit trumpfucks? I mean no offense to actual bats, who just wish to live their bat lives in peace.
I have had a few acceptances roll my way, but mostly, lately, it’s been rejection city. Sigh.
Need to sacrifice something to Satan, I guess. Maybe he’ll accept an IOU? Will hand over the flies stuck to the fly strip. They’re already dead and am just gonna toss that strip otherwise. Why be wasteful? Satan? Hello?
Salty Monkey Mystery is included in this collection, for a refugee charity.
It’s July. Hot. It’s hot. Ugh. Hot.
With that out of the way!
Been applying for jobs. I suck at finding jobs. I suck beans. Don’t know what that means but it sounds keen.
All attempted rhyming aside, it’s the waiting that is truly abysmal. See title!
Will I get an interview nod, at the very least? Will I get the form rejection letter, months later, that says they’ve passed on me? Will there be a black void of ‘we couldn’t even be bothered to send you a form rejection notice’? I have better luck placing my pitiful darlings [short stories] than landing a job. Unless it’s health care and they just need a warm body.
I’m also waiting for November. That’s the midterm elections for ‘murica. I am waiting in absolute dread for that one. Gonna be…? It could go either good or very very very bad. I’m thinking bad because Americans have no capacity for learning, history, showing up to vote or pretty much anything but screaming about how great ‘murica is while waving the nation’s flag that has a Confederate battle flag stamped on the back of it…mmm.
And then sobbing over how awful everything is while blaming the wrong set of people for all of it. Yep.
Okay, I’ll end this very short scream on something uplifting.
My yard toads are thriving. They like to shelter under these two pieces of bark I have placed by the old red rose bushes. It’s right by the drain for the washer, which is how they get into the house. Clever little demons. I can hear them croaking in the pipes in the house. You know spring is coming when you start hearing the toads calling from seemingly inside the walls.
Anyway.
I find them all over my small bits of garden. I often get startled by one as they blend so perfectly with dirt and dead leaves. They’re not big toads. They fit in the palm of my hand. Yes, I’ve picked them up. I have no squeamishness when it comes to frogs, toads or yes, snakes. Have not seen my yard snake this year yet but I’m sure he or she will work its way into the grass eventually.
There’s just something magical about toads. At least to me.
I did attend the Nyssa Thunderegg Days festival. Got some neato rocks. Got out of the house. I am nearly at the point where I don’t want to leave my surroundings even to go to town. It often takes me days to get up the oomph to drive about ten miles to go buy some milk. Days. I’ll go tomorrow. Oh it’s too late now, have to go tomorrow.
Waiting to hear back on jobs, toads and turning into a hermit cat lady.
Thank you as always for reading and hey, go check out my books, short stories, poetry and plays. That’s my strong-arm sales pitch.
I slog onward, wanting to give up all the time now. I slog onward…
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.
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.
I’m waiting for my country to implode. Maybe that event has taken place, and it hasn’t reached my Twitter feed yet. Bwhahaha. Ha.
If I laugh at everything, nothing can be that bad, yes?
I’m writing in fits and starts. I write a bit, read over it, despair at the utter savage awfulness of my words, start over. That’s my 2022 writing pattern so far.
I’m getting conflicting advice from every direction on what being a writer is.
Write every day. Don’t worry about when you’re not writing, after all, blah dee blah. Force yourself to write. Take time off from writing, take up a hobby. Thrust yourself into every writerly space or else no one will take you seriously. Relax, you got this!
Fuck me running, you writer advice-givers. Be militant robots spewing words no matter what or be slack underachievers telling yourself you got this over and over as your coffee cools in your slogan-covered mug.
Make up your collective fucking minds already. Which is it?? Force yourself to write every day, like a machine or because you need product to sling. Or take it easy, breathe, just be, just let your fingers dribble those thoughts onto the page and hey, everything will be okay, you got this.
I can feel the depression creeping in. Maybe that’s a giant chonky block in my writer’s journey. I just made myself vomit a bit, BRB.
Writer’s journey??? What would that even be? I wrote some crap during my lifetime. Some people thought it was good crap. Most thought it forgettable fart breezes oozing from unmentionable orifices. I died alone, very poor and utterly forgotten. The end.
Until twenty years after my death! Someone Important suddenly decided my writing was the bee’s knees. Sales of my obscure stuff become world-wide classics that….Grrrrr. Grrrrr!!!
If that happens to me, I am returning from wherever and I am bringing Jesus with me to start that whole End Times fun.
What month is this? February? Hearts and groundhogs.
I am tired. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to do anything at all. Motivation is zilch, zero, DOA, MIA, KIA, all the letters that spell dead in the water already. I’m trying to revamp short stories to improve their chances. I think I’m making them worse. Ever been there? You try to ‘fix’ your artistic project and holy bells of hell, it becomes a nasty mess of edits, compromises galore and sheer hesitation over trying to write nicely instead of honestly. Or maybe I’ve run out of words.
Oh dear.
Babbling away. I tried to make pancakes this morning and the pan just drove me bugshit insane. Would not cook them. They stuck, no matter how much oil or spray I used. I nearly just threw that so-called non-stick pan away.
So I baked the rest of the batter in the oven in a cast iron skillet. Yes, I was cursing the entire time. I threw in some apples, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, called it an oven pancake surprise.
I can’t write and I can’t cook right now. Go kill yourself with a chainsaw, 2022. I’m off to nap until there’s a new year, a new motivated brand sparkling new me and a brave new world that doesn’t want fascism to be their new lord and savior. For fuck’s sake already, earth. Have you learned nothing at all?
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!!
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.
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.
ANN WUEHLER 