Month: May 2012

“I’d Like To Thank The Little People…”

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , ,


Once again, I’ve been nominated for an award. And let me tell you, it’s an off week when I don’t get told on the entire internet how great I am. Usually it’s for something like being the only person willing to flash her ass on a video chat platform to raise money for a sick kid, but that’s what makes me a force to be reckoned with.

Seriously, I got nominated for an award and then I forgot. Not forgot I got nominated, because I was all jazz hands about someone liking my blog, but forgot how to find out who nominated me and what I’m supposed to do about it. Nothing says, “I appreciate your respect and your kind words,” like having to dig through your Twitter contacts because you vaguely remember that some guy whose gravatar was of a man in a striped shirt looking to my left wrote a whole blog post about five great writers he likes. Sorry, Awesome Guy Who Nominated Me! I really do appreciate you!

Seriously again, I was nominated for the Liebster Blog Award by Adam Martin and there’s a really great story about how he was one of the three people who bought my book that month AND had the nerve to tell Twitter that he was actually reading it. I was so grateful for his 99-cents that I wrote back and told him I would send an autographed copy of the print edition. (I left out the part about how I have boxes of these things lying around the house…I plan to give them out to the children at Halloween this year, just to save on the candy budget.)

Now I have to nominate five other blogs, so here goes:

Vinnie The Vampire. Because it’s great and because I can’t do that. It’s so cool how there are pictures and it’s on a website, but I don’t know how he gets comics on his website. And it’s completely oozing with teen angst, if the teenager in question was a vampire and had to put up with all the people in a regular vampire’s life, but if they were vampires, too. “Back in my day, we didn’t have juice boxes of blood, we had to bring down our own victims! Vampires these days have it too easy, I tell ya!” or something like that. I don’t think I have the accent right because they’re probably from Transylvania or Minnesota and plus they have fangs, so they probably lisp.

Tears of Crimson. The whole blog kind of creeps me out, but in a jealous rage kind of way. She has this iPod on the side of the screen that plays music that sets the tone for her books, and all that stuff. I can’t even get my blog to put the pictures in the right spot. Anyway, Michelle Hughes writes this schmexy vampire stuff, but that’s not the cool part. The cool thing is I found her on Twitter and she lives in a tiny itty bitty town that makes my tiny town look like New York and her town used to have its own dog. The whole town. They shared one dog. And they named him Fred. More jealous rage over their dog.

Fear Not The Darkness. Again, creeptastic stuff on her site, but Sheilagh Lee is the absolute best person to know in the whole world of being a writer and trying to use social media without looking like an asshat. She is so supportive of everybody she’s ever heard of and just basically is made of win. Gladiator-style win. The kind of gladiators who actually won their fights in the arena and looked all hot like that guy from The Immortals, not the actual historical gladiators who got crushed to death when their chariots flipped over. Those guys were gross looking.

Write Now. Let me explain to you how much I hate poetry. If the only thing I could ever read for as long as I live was poetry, I would stage my own book burning and roast marshmallows over the crackling flames of dying books. But I have a really good excuse for it (author’s note: it’s not a really good excuse, but I did have a bad experience with poetry once. No, it did not involve a man from Nantucket.). NOW, if I DID like poetry, it would be Aileen McGhee’s poetry. Her poetry makes her look so serene and happy, not like she’s about to drive her car through a crowded McDonald’s like I always look.

What’s A Little Fan Fiction Between Friends? Okay, don’t get mad at me. I know,some people consider fan fiction to be more than a little bit like stealing and other people go so far as to consider it a lot like tossing live woodland creatures into a roaring fire to listen to their screams of agony. Personally, I feel a little sad for people who get so caught up in the lives of characters from a book or movie that they begin to envision all kinds of other stories about those fake people, because there’s a thin line between imagining a fun story line and setting a place for Draco Malfoy at your dinner table every night. HOWEVER, you could actually argue that fan fiction means a reader LOVED your book so much that they couldn’t just let it go when it was all over, so it’s also supremely flattering (or it’s a real bitch slap, because it could also mean you didn’t do it right and they had to come in and fix it. Forget I said that.) Anyway, this site has some awesome fun fan fiction from all kinds of books, movies, and TV shows. The best part of it is you have to click to agree that you’re over 14 years old, so you just know there’s some good sexy stories.

So there they are. The winners. Or non-winners, if you take into consideration the fact that the only reason they won anything is because I thought they were awesome. Trust me, you never want me to be the one vouching for you or being your only character witness or anything. But congratulations from me to you!

It Doesn’t Cost Much to Adore Me

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

I’ve always envisioned coup leader as my ultimate career goal. All the aptitude tests said I’d be good at it. They also coincidentally said I’d be good at being an engineer, but since I’m horrifically stupid at math I think they meant the person who drives the train.

But if I got to take over a country, I’d be so, so good at it. I wouldn’t start out with killing people or making them change their religions and there would be no book burnings except of children’s books that don’t rhyme. I love me a good rhyming picture book.

Obviously, this has not come to pass. But if I ever do get the chance to take over something, even if it’s just a corporation or something in a major stakeholder buyout thing, I’m prepared with my legions of worshipful followers. In the form of one undersized and very stupid dog.

What my dog lacks in physical stature and mental capacity, though—and I mean she doesn’t have the mental capacity to walk into a darkened room without falling down, and falling down for her only means moving about two inches—she more than makes up for in worshipfulness. This dog literally sits outside the bathroom door and waits for me to get finished showering so she can drink the water that’s left in the bottom of the tub. THAT is adoration, people.

I’ve given this a lot of thought and I realize there were a number of famous czars and dictators and emperors who had this kind of effect on people, but those leaders also had to have royal tasters to keep them from being poisoned. How awesome could they have been? Doesn’t every willing-to-die-for-you-subject get negated by every assassination attempt?

I mean, sure, so there’s a servant somewhere who drinks your bath water to prove his loyalty. So what? Good grief, he’s got to be crazy! Your claim to fame is that you surrounded yourself with people who are just psychotic enough to lick your feet, and you BRAGGED about it? Desperate for friends much, are we?

Nope, I’ll take a standoffish cat any day, and I hate cats. But at least you know where you stand with them. They’re not going to stretch their lean bodies out over a mud puddle for you, then run inside and rip holes in the crotch of all your underwear with their claws. They’re going to let you know that you are only around to work the can opener for them. Hmmm. Maybe you could soften them up by drinking their bath water.

I wear a size 11. You could die from alcohol poisoning if you tried drinking champagne out of my shoe.

IndiesUnite4Joshua Wrap-Up Party and Chap Pageant

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I do promise to put up a real post in a little while, but this was just too much fun not to tell you about. I got to be the producer last night of a really cool concept in social media called Spreecast. It’s just your basic video chat but a) it records everything (even the stuff you really wish hadn’t just flown out of your mouth on the internet…”can my mom see this?”) and b) this one actually works, as opposed to some forums that shall remain nameless.

But the fun part was this was a wrap-up party for a really serious event. A group of authors, headed up by the selfless and courageous erotica writer Eden Baylee, set about raising $10,000 for another author whose son has leukemia. The shitty kind. Not like any leukemia isn’t a big old pain in the ass, but this one I think he said has like, three YEARS of chemo because it’s a really, really ugly one. The kid has had to drop out of school and everything. Grrrrrrrr@CANCER! I spit on you! Pthuh! Pthuh!

Sorry. Did I mention the thing I produced didn’t end until really, really late last night and that the idiot dog still got me up at her unusually stupid hour to go to the bathroom?

Wait, I did say party. Yes, this thing last night on Spreecast wasn’t a telethon or pledge drive or anything like that. It was Eden’s way of saying, “Hey, you people are made of awesome and kittens for donating your money, and all of you who donated signed books or publishing packages or publicity packages or beat-up used cars for the auction, you rock especially hard. Let’s just hang out and drink and take our clothes off!” (I made up some of that…there were no used cars.)

But there was drinking, there was the ceremonial flashing of the tattoo (wait, that was me), and somehow the phrases “assless chaps” and “gaggle of prostitutes” were thrown about like they were part of the industry lingo for authors. A whole lot of people spent two hours laughing their assless chaps off.

When it was finally time to wrap it up after two hours of partying, the door opened on some awesome sentiments from people in the community who’ve never met Maxwell Cynn or his son. But as soon as they learned that one of their own in “the biz” was facing a galactically unfair heartbreaking process, they flocked to the rescue to help in the only way they knew how. They left the party with words of support and encouragement and the world is a better place because those people are breathing in it.

The event was just over two hours long, so I don’t think you’re going to sit and watch the whole thing, but here it is in all its glory. Heck, make a pitcher of margaritas and pretend you were there. Don’t forget to read the chat, that’s where all the really good jokes were.

http://www.spreecast.com/events/indiesunite4joshua/embed-large-900

Rules of the Road

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

My husband has finally lost his will to live. It involved lots of nagging from me and just a little bit of arsenic in his food every day for the past two weeks. But he has finally given in and bought me a car*.

Since this the nicest car I’ve ever owned** and since I will have to drive this car for the next ten years, I had to establish a few key rules about being in the vicinity of my car:

  1. Don’t fart in my car. This one is really important. That smell gets in the upholstery and there is no exorcism that can get it out. Plus, ewwww. Who wants to ride down the road trapped in a fart capsule?
  2. Don’t eat in my car. You could spill, and if the trip is long enough it could also cause you to violate rule number one.
  3. Don’t bleed in my car. Even if I’m the reason you’re bleeding. Some stains just don’t come out and I’m not driving a car with blood stains on the seats. Anymore.
  4. No coughing, sneezing, drooling, or any other bodily emission. It spreads germs and if I bleach my car to get your germs out of it, the seats will look like I tie-dyed them to look like a hippie van.
  5. Don’t touch the windows, especially if it’s cold out and the windows are foggy and you draw a smiley face on the window with your human-greasy finger. How do you even know I WANT a smiley face on my window?
  6. If you happen to be in a vehicle other than my car, don’t get too close to my car. You could smash into it and if you did accidentally hurt my car, I will run over you in what’s left of my car.

See? There aren’t that many rules***. And they are all easy to adhere to****. The punishment for violating these rules will be swift but painless*****. But don’t violate the rules.

*once I gave him the antidote

**and I once owned a wood paneled station wagon whose interior had been on fire

***this is not a comprehensive list of rules

****if you don’t like moving around a lot or breathing

*****no it won’t, it will hurt a lot

“There is now a level zero.”

Bounce Your Cares Away

ME Living life, Overly simple thoughts , ,

We bought a trampoline for the express purpose of saving money. Yes, a $300 play thing for the yard was an investment because it’s my sincere hope that our youngest child will get some of her energy out by bouncing up and down on the second most dangerous childhood toy after lawn jarts. If this works the way I plan, we can stop spending $800 a year on generic Ritalin from a Canadian online pharmacy.

But since we’ve always known she’s autistic and not stupid, the trampoline hasn’t worked out exactly as I planned. She’s learned that she can just lie down on the trampoline and coerce other people into bouncing on it for it. She gets launched in the air by their efforts and doesn’t have to do a lick of work.

My husband is her typical victim. He walks in the door after a long day at work, loosens his tie, and is pounced upon. She smiles sweetly, bats her eyelashes, and says, “Daddy, would you come outside and be my friend?” He falls for it every single time because he’s a good man.

Here’s the problem: Our back yard faces a rather busy highway and we have a wooden privacy fence around the property, so all the people traveling that highway are treated to a daily carnival side show act of a 250-pound middle-aged man going to town on a trampoline. He’s putting so much effort into propelling our daughter in weightless oblivion, but he ends up looking like the saddest recruit ever to audition for Cirque du Soleil. The motorists can’t see the little kid sprawled on the trampoline, they just see my husband. Enjoying his toy.

Enjoy the show as much as I do.

The Bloggess Has Cooler Shit Than I Do

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , , ,
Yup. That’s totally me with The Bloggess. Suck it.

No one has ever brought me a cupcake with a dead monkey on it. Let me explain.

I went to cover a book signing last night for the website I work for. Jenny Lawson, aka @TheBloggess, was shamelessly pedaling her book just because it happens to be on some famous list of books. I don’t know which list, but it has some newspaper name in the title. Let me tell you, the woman was worse than a back alley crack dealer. She sat there for hours and hours because people kept coming up to her and hugging her and stuff. And presumably bought some crack from her. I mean, a book.

The weird thing is her drugged out customers brought her peace offerings of all kinds of crazy-assed stuff. Cupcakes with fondant dead monkeys on them, superhero capes with giant chickens on the back, even metal bugs. Even crazier were the people who wanted their boobs signed.

And through the hundreds of people who wanted their books, their boobs, several baseball bats, and their prescription bottles signed, I waited. Diligently. Because I’m THAT kind of employee. And while I did ultimately end up getting a great interview with The Bloggess, I was a little put out that I hadn’t thought to bring a piece of crap from my house for her to sign. Then I remembered that I had half used carton of cream cheese in my purse (and no, I don’t have to tell you why). But I was afraid she might be lactose intolerant and if I killed her with my cream cheese, her legions of fans might come after me and half of them were holding sharp metal chickens that could cut me. I just got my book signed and went home.

After we were done, she offered me a cupcake which I think is where she hides the crack. Because she’s great like that.

What Do I Have To Do To Get You Out Of That Car Today?

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

*Dealership pictured is not the actual location where I went to purchase a car. Duh.

Car dealers are such annoying people that any time I have to interact with one I give a fake name and address, just out of habit. You never want these people to know where to find you. But since my husband has mostly caved on believing that my car is on the brink of collapsing under the weight of its own shittiness, we had to put up with a pushy car salesman. And that’s how we found out the secret to getting them to leave you alone.

SALESMAN: Welcome, folks! Y’all interested in test driving a car today?

HUSBAND: I sure am! (Honey, does this gum cover up the beer smell on my breath?)

ME: (Stop trying to whisper when you’ve been drinking…it just comes out really loud.)

SALESMAN: Um, so what are you looking for in your next car?

ME: Just the basics. A good solid family car. With rapper rims and really dark tinted windows. I don’t like people to see my business when I’m driving.

SALESMAN: Oh. Okay. Well, we sell a lot of this item right here. It’s got blah-blah-blah (I think he was talking about engine sizes or gas mileage or something. I was mesmerized by the inflatable wavy arm man at the end of the lot.) And just LOOK at all that trunk space!

HUSBAND: Oh no. That’s way too much trunk space. (She’ll put my body in there! She’s told people she’s going to kill me and dispose of my body!)

SALESMAN: Oh, now, a little ole thing like her? She just looks too pretty to hurt anybody!

HUSBAND: (You don’t know what she’s capable of! Go for help! NOW!)

ME: Do you have anything with a vinyl trunk? You know, without any carpeting in it at all?

SALESMAN: Um, over here we’ve got this car. It’s our newest vehicle in the family!

ME: Oooo, it’s very shiny. Does it come in all chrome?

SALESMAN: You mean, like a silver paint?

ME: No, I mean, actual chrome. The whole car. See, if you have the entire car done in chrome, it blinds all the other drivers and they can’t bother you.

HUSBAND: (I told you she’s crazy!)

ME: Shut up, or I’m getting the one with the small trunk and then I’ll definitely have to hack you in pieces to dispose of you.

SALESMAN: Uh, and this model here has these convenient storage areas in the back. You just lift this panel and stow your gear, then drop the panel back in place.

ME: Cool! I bet that’s how a lot of people are getting their drugs across the border. In a minivan. Because no one ever suspects the minivans.

SALESMAN: You know, folks, it just sounds like you’re not really sure what you’d like to purchase. How about you just take this car for the next couple of days? See if you like it, and then we’ll talk business then.

ME: Really? I can just take it? How far can I drive it?

SALESMAN: You know, just use it for your everyday kind of stuff, going to work, running errands. Just get a feel for the vehicle, you know?

ME: Suh-weet! Do you have one without any carpeting in the interior either? Just in case…

Delivering a Scary Altimatum

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,
Who needs air conditioning?

I’ve always believed there are some really wussy ultimatums (ultimata?) flying around out there. “Marry me or we break up”…”Pee in this cup or you’re fired”…”Get that possum off your head or I’m not taking you to the store with me.” Kid stuff.

I like ultimatums (ultimatae?) that end with, “or you’re gonna die slowly.”

But that kind of ultimatum isn’t always conducive to furthering the conversation and engaging in dialogue and crap like that. Once the person realizes his life is in actual for-real danger, he either just gives in (which is no fun) or he fights you on it. Once the guy calls your bluff, then you have to kill him or you risk losing every argument forever after.

So I’ve been trying really hard not to deliver any ultimatums (oh, hell, go look up the plural of a Latin word yourself!) about my car. This poor vehicle had an ugly beginning anyway once the tornado dropped the entire roof of my house on it and squashed it. Luckily, God has great insurance against all the stuff He does so the “act of God clause” repaired the whole car. Or at least made it pretty again.

As with most cars, the problems began slowly. Water began pouring into the front passenger floorboard any time I ran the air conditioner. Got that fixed. The brakes began making a horrible grinding noise. Got that fixed. My daughter held up some curvy plastic hose she found under her seat and smoke came out from under the hood. Got that fixed. And so on.

Now, the air compressor is making a noise, it’s leaking enough oil to fund a small Middle Eastern economy, and the headliner is coming down. (I swear on all things holy if anyone puts, “Just staple it back up there,” in the comments section, I will email you a virus.) So I’ve been campaigning for a car.

It’s not that I NEED a car, I just need to stop having to drive this one. If my husband would like to invest in servants to carry me around in a litter, that would be fine as well as long as it has trunk space and cup holders. Since I don’t think he’s going to do that and we would have to feed the litter bearers, we went to look at cars last night. We strolled through the darkness after all the salesmen had gone home, running our fingers lovingly on the shiny Altimas and Maximas at the Nissan dealership, leaving smudgy finger prints everywhere. It was exactly like watching porn except you actually got to touch stuff.

Then he announced we would see how much it cost to get my car fixed. What the hell? Why did he drag me down to the dealership only to rip away all hope of the pretty cars? Even better, he announced we would start with repairing the oil leak because that was necessary, but that the air conditioner and the headliner were just extra stuff that I don’t really need.

Now I need to have the car reupholstered to get the blood stains and that weird rotting flesh smell out of my trunk.

You Don’t Have to Click on this, It’s Not a Really Good Post

ME Living life, Overly simple thoughts , ,

Yup, it’s sheer laziness that has kept me from posting anything all week. In my defense, I’ve been busy. No, seriously, I mean it this time.

You’re gonna be seein’ this image when you close your eyes tonight.

It’s weird how even when you’re really busy there’s still time to get sucked into the black hole of playing around on the internet. My downfall is Pinterest. Going to Pinterest is like Alice falling down that rabbit hole and spending about a week or so in Wonderland and when she comes back up it’s still only about five minutes after she left the party. Except when I go on Pinterest and get sucked into looking at other people’s favorite pictures for three hours, it is actually three hours later when I finally dig my way out.

Of course, when Pinterest first came on the scene I had to get in on it, only because it was by invitation only. There’s no way I’m not accepting an invitation to a website that only us A-listers can go to. The rest of y’all can just wait behind this velvet rope until the man with the earpiece decides if you’re hot enough to come into this party. I might be confusing Pinterest with something cool like a movie premier or a bookstore opening.

So since my busy week has kept me from having the brain cells to think of anything (including what we’re going to eat for dinner), here are links to my favorite boards. If you don’t know how this works, be careful: you will emerge three hours later.

My this-crap-makes-me-laugh board:

My I-wish-I-lived-on-Martha’s-Vineyard-so-my-house-would-look-like-this board:

My favorite-books-whose-covers-have-appeared-on-the-internet-as-a-jpg-file-so-I-could-Easily-click-on-them-and-put-them-on-Pinterest-without-going-to-a-lot-of-effort board:

My these-pictures-are-so-cool-someone-really-should-make-them-into-a-calendar-and-sell-it-like-that-Greenpeace-calendar board: