Year: 2011

I’m Fairly Certain That I Might Be Satan. I Had No Idea.

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

Awwww! Someone bedazzled it for me! You're so sweet!

Something horrible happened to the social media influence website called Klout. Basically, this website looks at all kinds of magical internet data and tells you (and potential bosses) how important you are. That’s great if you’re Steve Jobs. Well, it used to be great if you’re Steve Jobs. If you’re me and your sphere of influence doesn’t even include the people you eat dinner with most nights, it kind of sucks.

Then the horrible thing happened and Klout figured out that the scores they were giving people were waaaay too high. I think they forgot to carry the one. One day, eager Klout users like me jumped on there once again to make sure they were still as important as they thought they were and their scores had plummeted. The screaming could be heard from parents’ basements all around the country.

But lately, I’ve noticed an uncanny knack I have for getting people to do bizarre things that I ask of them. One friend even explained it as God using me as His instrument for good here on Earth and that, my friends, is a lovely Christmas-miracle visual. But what if I’m actually Beelzebub and I just don’t know it? What if I’m, like, Satan-possessing people? I’m pretty sure I’m going to be in loads of trouble for that.

In an effort to save my immortal soul, I’m going to need to ask all of you to stop doing whatever I tell you to do. This, obviously, does not apply to children, pets, or husbands. Or people waiting for parking spots. Or blood donors. All of those people still have to do my evil bidding.

Al Gore Made Christmas Suck

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Here in the South, this time of year is the season that singlehandedly kills more people than any other, and not just because we get drunk and fall out of our tree stands while deer hunting. According to everyone, the wild fluctuations in weather are responsible for literally all illness. Forget that guy who discovered the germ theory of disease, no. All sickness is caused by the fact that it might be 78 degrees one day and 27 degrees the next, meaning that we in Alabama never know how to dress for the weather. I’m sure it makes sense to someone.

The real problem with the crazy shifts in temperature is that I have been unable to decorate for Christmas this year. I’m not going to stand outside in shorts and a T-shirt and string Christmas lights or hang wreaths from every window. You might already think, “Hell, 80 degrees would be perfect for having to spend three hours in my front yard doing something pointless,” but no. You’re wrong. It’s the festivity issue at stake.

This weather thing is not new. It’s a phenomenon that has been killing azaleas and confusing farm animals for hundreds of years now. But thanks to Al Gore and his movie that I had to sit through, now I know that it’s not just something natural that happens in cycles with the constant warming and cooling of the Earth. Now I know it’s my fault. And your fault. Mostly your fault.

How am I supposed to slather on sunscreen and selfishly stand in my front yard basking in the glow of a sun that is now killing polar bears as we speak, just to toss some Walmart inflatable yard art around my property? It just feels wrong. That’s why I have not flung a single decoration at this point. It’s entirely your fault, Gore, and not at all due to my laziness. I hope you can live with yourself.

The Shiniest of Birth Control Methods Available

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

It's for the pizza, silly, not for his surgery.

Somewhere along the way we decided my husband should have a vasectomy. And by we, I mean that as in the royal we, which really just means me. He is not on board with this idea at this time. I can’t imagine why. I’ve been putting up with random people in lab coats playing in my own personal space for years, the least he can do is man up and let our good friend who happens to be a pee-pee doctor (and a pizza restaurant owner…go figure) do a little south-of-the-border pruning.

I basically had to go on strike in order to get Darling Husband to take my list of demands seriously. He realized I was completely 100% for real on this issue when he walked in the bathroom and saw my diaphragm on the counter next to my sink. I had bedazzled it. It was now all sparkly and being used to hold cotton balls. Because I don’t plan to need it any time soon. Snip, snip.

This is not the first time I have had to take drastic steps in order to get Darling Husband to comply with my every wish. I had to Nair his back hair once because he insisted on walking around shirtless in front of our preteen daughter’s friends, which is wrong (and illegal in fourteen states). I had to pay a gardener not once but twice to replant the shrubs Darling Husband ripped out, not that I can’t replant them myself but it stings so much more when he gets a bill for the work.

So as Darling Husband writhes in imaginary agony at even thinking about letting anyone do permanent and vindictive harm to his nether parts, he has been warned that more bedazzling of important things will take place if he does not hurry and accomplish this unpleasant task. For his part, I have been forbidden to post photos of the procedure if he does comply and I quickly agreed, but he never mentioned anything about inviting people to watch the video on my YouTube channel. It will be sparkly.

Happy Birthday Dear Blog, Happy Birthday Dear Blog…

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

I. Want. That. Make it so, Number One.

…Happy Birthday Dear Blooo-aaahhgg, Happy Birthday Dear Blog!

Yes, today is my blog’s first birthday. I bought it a cake knowing full well that it would just smash its chubby little hand into the frosting and shove fistfuls into its greedy little cheeks, so to save any mess that would ruin the cute little first birthday outfit I bought for my blog, I just ate the entire cake myself.

It’s been a lot of fun and I have to say, I am mightily shocked that my blog lasted this long. My last potted plant didn’t make it for three months, and that damned thing was a cactus. You have to be talented to neglect a cactus to death. God invented cactus specifically for climates that like to neglect things until they die.

The amazing thing is I still managed to have a career or two, a family, and even a couple of hobbies this year, and STILL write about stuff. Obviously, a lot of the stuff I got to laugh at involved my job, my family members, and my hobbies, but that’s a good thing.

So what will next year bring for my blog? Well, I’m expecting it to have serious issues with the terrible twos, so by this time next year it will be completely unreadable. Unless it’s gifted. Oh, wouldn’t it be great if my blog was gifted? Then I could show pictures of it to people in line at the grocery store and bore them to death with stories about how talented it is, and they can’t get away because they haven’t paid for that bag of gummy bears yet but they already opened it and ate some.

I do want to take this opportunity to say thanks for reading, because my blog wouldn’t have lived to see its first birthday if WordPress hadn’t kept convincing me all year that 47 people read it on a regular basis. Who am I to take the only source of joy in a bleak world away from all 47 of you? I’m like Florence Nightingale. Or Lady Gaga. I don’t know which.

Here’s to another year!

Professional Executioner Is Off My Career Aptitude Test

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Little known fact: not all beheadings go as planned. I already told you I’ve been watching the entire episode list of The Tudors on my iPad, mostly just because I can watch TV on my iPad and I really don’t like television so I had nothing else to watch.

There’s one episode in particular where Henry is beheading someone AGAIN (it’s a running plot line). The executioner had gotten drunk the night before and it took about three or four loppings before any real sizeable chunk of the head came off. Then someone else snatched the axe from the man’s hand and finished the victim off because the crowd of people who had turned out to watch the execution were starting to get upset and vomitty.

So tonight as I was nailing holes in the lid of a pickle jar for my daughter’s homework (yeah, they go to public school, how could you tell?) and it took me several tries on each nail just to make a dent in the flimsy metal lid, I thought, “I just don’t have the accuracy and upper body strength to destroy things for a living.” Luckily, the invention of the guillotine will save me from an unsatisfying workplace environment.

On a lighter note, I am extremely good at washing pickle jars, but I purposely left that part of my career aptitude test blank. No sense giving people the impression that I’m even willing to do housework, let alone good at it.

I’m So Awesome, People Line Up To Make Me Awesomer

ME Overly simple thoughts


I know what you’re thinking: there’s no way Lorca is this amazing without a full staff of lackeys who work ‘round the clock to make her this…well, awesome. And the answer is, you’re right. People line up to do my bidding because the Earth would simply stop spinning if I weren’t so freaking amazing. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have been drinking and taking cold medicine at the same time.

Let me be the first to tell you, it’s smoke and mirrors, my friend. In fact, from time to time people ask me how I manage to do it all. The answer is simple. Crystal meth. Just kidding. But thanks to a cruel twist of genetic fate that produced a child who doesn’t need more than five hours sleep in a forty-hour period, I’ve learned to tap into those previously wasted hours that occur between 9:00pm and 2:00am. I’m uber-productive at that time.

But occasionally, the awesomeness that is me does need a little help from the back-up dancers, and so at this time I would like to thank the little people who helped make my most recent novel possible. Just shove me over when I get too full of myself.

I’ve already mentioned that the very nice man who founded the website InsectsAreFood.com was not only helpful, but extremely punctual in his helpfulness. I hadn’t even gotten the horrible image of having a cricket leg stuck to the roof of my mouth out of my head yet when this man emailed his response to my really stupid list of questions. Face it, has anyone ever asked YOU what bugs taste like? How about, “Is it okay if I mix them with beef fat and make it into a paste?” I think not, but this man didn’t even blink. I, however, threw up in my mouth while typing that question. The Insect Man is awesome.

I also relied heavily on a website founded by a man simply called Merriweather. How do you not love someone, male or female, named Merriweather? He OWNS that name. And he owns a great website called ForagingTexas.com. If you and I are ever lost in the middle of nowhere in Texas and have to eat plants, we can look up that website on our smartphones (instead of ordering pizzas on those smartphones) and eat stuff we find, thanks to Merriweather. More importantly, my main characters didn’t die in Chapter 2 from eating poisonous plants, making my novel the shortest novel ever.

And very importantly, a wonderful HAM radio operator very, very patiently explained why my entire book premise won’t work because radios actually do use a lot more electricity than one solar panel can provide, but then he was very nice about explaining how I could possibly still make it work. Thank you, Larry Barr (K5WLF) of the TAARC ham radio club, for answering all forty-three of my emails.

These people join my hall of fame of people who make me look really, really smarter than I am. I thank you heartily.

I Can’t Believe It’s Over

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , ,

This totally beats Janet Hardy's second place spelling bee trophy from third grade. Suck it, Janet.

It’s over. I did it. Book number five, my NaNo novel, is finished. The T-shirt has been ordered, the winner’s certificate printed out and hung in my office. It’s some of the worst angst-ridden crap I’ve ever written, but at least it 50,000 words of angst-ridden crap so that makes me an official 2011 winner.

And let me tell you, November this year was a bitch. All novels and their deadlines aside, work was tough, the kids were tough, the holidays with family were even tough (I seem to recall my mom waking me up on Thanksgiving by saying, “Don’t be a diva just because you’re a published author now,”…as I slept on her couch. I think all published authors have to sleep on their parents couches at some point or another, but divas we are not.)

The sad thing is now that NaNo is over, there’s nothing to do but start another one, hopefully one with a smaller body count. (I told you November was a bitch…at one point, an entire town is slaughtered. All of them. Even the pets.)

Maybe this time I’ll write a nice, pleasant, Austen-esque novel about men with noble titles and love gone wrong and snobby British aristocracy who couldn’t possible lower themselves by marrying badly, even if it was to save the entire from being slaughtered by ruffian outlaws who lined everyone up for a mass execution as a warning to the other towns not to mess with them. Oh wait, that was so last November.

Happy Thanksgiving

ME Food stuffs, Overly simple thoughts , ,

I want to cut her.

In a fit of Thankgivingness, I decided to cook something. (pause) Sorry, I couldn’t finish that sentence without laughing. Here’s what actually happened:

I dropped my last red jelly bean in the pantry and had to dig around to find it. To throw it away, people, not to eat it. While I was digging around, I found an open bag of pretzel sticks, half a bag of chocolate coated popcorn, two open bags of marshmallows, and my kids’ trick-or-treat buckets. I know, you can totally see where this is going.

I piled all of that on the countertop and looked inside the buckets first to make sure there were no rodents in there. Guess what you’re going to find in children’s candy buckets in late November? Four hundred Tootsie Rolls.

Not to bring any lawsuits on myself, but let me tell you my opinion of people who give out Tootsie Rolls on Halloween. Never mind, I should probably just keep it to myself. Oh what the hell…you’re a douche bag if you give little children a wad of impossibly chewy faux chocolate. Does anyone on the planet actually sit themselves down on the couch on a Friday night with a giant bowl of Tootsie Rolls and a chick flick? NO. Tootsie Rolls are worse than the guy who gives out pencils printed with jack-o-lanterns, like you want to be using that pencil in February.

So I had a brilliant idea and here’s the recipe, lovingly created and passed on to you for your holiday baking:

Lorca’s Shit Bars

Ingredients:
Butter (I don’t know how much, figure it out!)
All of the Tootsie Rolls that don’t have mold growing on them
All of the pretzels and popcorn from your pantry
All of the marshmallows, except the ones that were pastel and shaped like bunnies ‘cause those went bad in August
Other stuff

Directions: Melt the butter in a cheap saucepan because if you’re making these while drinking you’re going to forget it on the stove and ruin your pan. Melt all of the Tootsie Rolls in the butter. Take the wrappers off first. Melt the marshmallows on top of that. Stir. Add pretzels, popcorn, Flintstone vitamins, whatever. Pour out onto waxed paper in a big pile. Break off little pieces and set them on a plate just before people come over. Don’t tell them it’s really Tootsie Rolls and see if they can figure it out. If you’re Martha Stewart, there’s probably some reason that you should have added vanilla in there while you were stirring.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I’ve Always Wanted My Own Gallows

ME Overly simple thoughts

I’ve developed a serious addition to Netflix, specifically where my new iPad is concerned. No, I’m not staying up all night watching Icelandic porn, I’m actually bettering myself by catching up on my understanding of British history by watching the entire series of The Tudors, from start to finish. Wait, that show is actually a lot like Icelandic porn, but I digress.

Completely unrelated to my addiction, you may already know that we took in a stray dog a few months ago. We don’t like her and we don’t play with her, but at least she’s not working a street corner to pay for her heroin addiction. Gravy Train addiction. Whatever.

But this completely irritating mongrel actually did me a great service (see how I’m talking like the Tudors now? Cool, isn’t it?). She has eaten everything in our back yard that is made of pliable substances, including our swing set. Almost the entire swing set. She literally ate the swings off the swing set, right where they hanged. (More Tudorishness)

The great service part is that now I have my own gallows, just like Henry VIII. He preferred beheadings, but he used a good hanging once in a while to keep the peasants in line. That’s the same reason I’ve always wanted a gallows, and now, thanks to a mutt we rescued from a life of turning tricks for Rottweilers with a little extra kibble to burn, I have one. The ropes where she ate the swings actually hang nicely frayed, like I’ve just cut the bodies down after they rotted in full view of the peasants. I mean, the neighbors. Same thing. Long live the Queen.

The NaNoNess Continues…

ME Overly simple thoughts, Short stories , ,

“Raina, look at me. No, look at me. We’re going to be okay. I know we will.”

“How?” she asked him. “Just tell me how and I’ll believe it. I’ll throw myself on the fire to put it out myself if you can just tell me how it will be okay.”

“I can’t answer that yet, but I just know it. Can’t we hunt around here? Is there anything we can find to eat? C’mon, you’re the Find, remember?” She did smile a little at his remembering her job back in Refuge.

“I’m the Find,” she sighed. “We’ll hunt. Come on, I’ll need help bringing back whatever we kill.” She stood to go, grabbing up her slingshot rifle and pocketed some shards of glass out of a pouch on her pack. Xander made to go with her.

They walked a good ways from their makeshift camp to a thicker part of the woods, hoping animals might be more plentiful away from the path and where the trees would hide them. Raina crouched low suddenly, holding a hand back towards Xander to make him stop his walking. She squatted close to the ground and held both hands to her mouth, using their twisted shape to whistle a bird call. Xander whispered a scoff.

“The two of us are going to eat sparrows? Are you going to call the little woodland birdies to your hand like the princess in the story?” He managed to hold back his laugh, but only because they were hunting. Raina sighted something through the trees and immediately shouldered her slingshot and fired in one fluid motion, then darted off into the thick patch of brush and trees. Xander simply stared after her, afraid to follow her and risk making a noise that would scary off any potential dinner.

She returned only minutes later with a largish dog thrown over her shoulders, its neck dangling at a nauseating angle, blood seeping from where her glass shard had hit it directly through the eye. She tossed the dog over her head and off her shoulders, letting it land directly in front of Xander.

“No, we’re going to eat the coyote that thinks we’re birds. Now carry that back to the fire.” She turned her back on him and slung her slingshot up on one shoulder, walking with a cocky saunter. Xander couldn’t see her face with her back turned to him, but he knew she was smiling that annoyingly smug grin of hers. Again.