May 26, 2010

  • OMG Month from HELL

    May has been the worst month that I can remember in a long time. All month I’ve kind of felt sick. Probably allergies, so not a lot I can do about it aside from rent a bubble. I’ve been having some really weird, disjointed dreams too. It’s either stress, allergies, or allergy medicine side affects. 

    Couple weeks ago, my computer caught a virus, and I was without for three days…. $215. Then the phone company I was using decided to buckle, which meant I had to find a new provider, and hey, just for kicks, let’s change over from dialup to DSL. Since I wouldn’t be paying for the phoneline any more, just the DSL, it seemed like a good deal, shaving $15 off my former phone and dialup bill.

    I knew there would problems. I knew it. So I was six days without internet access. Yesterday I called up and gave them an earful and they “kindly” gave me a week of service free. Oh, gee. I’m so impressed. Today it was fixed within ten minutes of the technician showing up. He’d tried to fix the issue on Monday, but apparently Verizon doesn’t feel it necessary to actually staff their offices, and they have people who cover two or more offices a day, driving hither and yon to set up connections. Apparently the man who runs the office nearest me has been sick for three weeks, and there was a huge backlog of people who should have been set up that weren’t. I should have had connection by Saturday but I had to wait till about 30 minutes ago to get back online. But it was actually another issue aside from not being connected that left me high and dry, and the woman who had dealt with the original connection on Monday had switched something that kept me offline for another two days. Just goes to show that the larger a company the less they care, and the harder it is for them to actually get anything done right. Well, it’s good thing for them I’m locked into a year long contract, eh?

    As little as I like to endorse nationalism, every person I got on the help line was either Hispanic or Indian. Either way they were very difficult to understand. Yet every person I spoke to in billing and the guy that initially signed me up over the phone was American. Coincidence? I think not. I’m still not happy, not really. I finally have connection and all, but they installed so much crap on my computer and a week of free service hardly seems like customer service, since they’re only covering the time I wasn’t even able to get online. They should have given me a free month at this point simply for my frustration level.

    I got a lot of writing done. Though I was kind of hindered by my frustration, and I’m sure there are typos that I just didn’t notice since I couldn’t focus. Thank goodness I had updates for Tattoo cached and ready to go without me, though I still have to manually update the index and the sidebar here on Xanga.

    The one bright spot was that my car went in for inspection. And there was nothing wrong, though it cost me $100 for the inspection and oil change/fluids.

May 18, 2010

  • The Quiet One, an excerpt

    This is an excerpt of a fairytale that a spriggan is telling Fiona as she has her hair cut. Spriggans are a wizened kind of fairy which are said to be the diminished descendants of giants. The tale itself pertains to the comb and sheers the spriggan woman is using to work Fiona’s hair, and the story is kind of a recombination of Rapunzel and the Little Mermaid. The Sea Witch will figure much more in the second novel than this first one, as will the enchantress. Eventually I want to expand the fairytale I’ve written below into a novel telling their story more fully. For now, it’s just a little fairytale, but if I’m successful in getting The Quiet One and the next novel published, the fairytale will become the Tail of Two Sisters (Tail being an intentional misspelling). Still haven’t come up with a title for the book in between.

    Enjoy!

    Chapter 11, page 147:

    “Do you like this length?” Amelia asked, running a hand over Fiona’s hair.

    “I’ve never really thought about it,” Fiona replied with a shrug. “I usually trim it myself if I notice I’ve got a lot of split ends. Otherwise I let it go. I guess it likes this length. It never gets much longer.”

    “Oh, I can make it much longer, and I will to cut it. But I can leave it any length you like, longer or shorter than it is now,” the little woman explained as she passed the comb through her hair. Fiona was surprised it didn’t snag on any knots with all the scarves she’d had wrapped around her head. She usually did little more than brush her hair or put a barrette in it to keep it out of her eyes.

    Fiona blushed. She’d never really cared about how she looked, but she’d always secretly wondered what it would be liked to have long, luxuriant hair like Amelia’s. “I… like your hair very much,” she said hesitantly. “I can’t imagine what I would do with it all though.”

    Amelia laughed lightly as she continued to comb Fiona’s hair. Looking down, Fiona was surprised to see it dangling around her elbows and still growing. She heard the snip of the sheers and saw a long strand of hair float down to the tarp.

    “How does it work?” Fiona asked curiously.

    “The sheers and comb are enchanted. They’ve been in our family for generations. My mother told me the tale as a nursery story when I was a baby. Have you heard the legend of Rapunzel?”

    “Yes?”

    “Rapunzel was sea-Folk,” the spriggan girl replied. “They already have such lovely long hair and longer lives. Her foster mother was an enchantress, some mix of Folk that’s been forgotten or gone the way of the unicorns. A silly dwarf who thought he might win her heart made the comb and sheers for her before she lost interest in him. I doubt he’d have done it if he ever knew what purpose she’d put them to, but who knows? Men do stupid things for love. The enchantress was said to be very beautiful and very vain.

    “She tricked Rapunzel’s mother into giving away her daughter for a taste of cabbage.” Amelia snorted as if it were the most ludicrous thing she’d ever heard, and the scissors continued to snip away at Fiona’s tresses. “Back then, the Sea Witch, the queen of all Sea Folk, wasn’t the sort to let any promise made by or to her kin go unfulfilled, so the poor mermaid had to give up her first born child, even though the hunger for cabbage had been put on her by the enchantress in the first place. Somehow the evil woman had known the mermaid would give birth to a daughter, as I don’t think she would have wanted a boy. She changed the girl’s tail to legs and took her away to a tower by the sea, knowing even if the girl didn’t, that she’d pine away and die without at least the sea air to breathe.“

    “I’ve heard Folk say that her tower was the first lighthouse, built according to some promise the enchantress made to the local monarchy or as an intentional coup against the Sea Witch. The girl tended the light that kept the ships from breaking on the rocks and once a month the witch brought food and supplies, and harvest her hair. Like us, she used the hair for spells, though she used the girl’s hair to enhance her own beauty and vitality, keeping herself young and beautiful. The Sea Witch was furious.” The tarp was covered with hair, but Amelia kept cutting and Fay could see that her hair was still incredibly long.

    “Everyone knows that what the Sea Witch has, she holds. She was more powerful then, and felt every ship that sailed over her waters owed her tribute. If she took one in five, she considered it her just due. The lighthouse was an affront to her, stealing her bounty. She didn’t care a bit about the girl and would have killed her outright, sending a storm to tear the lighthouse from the shore or wearing the rocky cliff away until it fell into the sea, but she felt she had to teach the Enchantress a lesson. She knew the enchantress had grown fond of the girl despite her vanity.”

    “So one day, she presented herself to a passing ship and told the Prince on board about the lovely girl in the tower and how she was being kept prisoner by the evil enchantress. The Prince’s family had a long history with the Sea Witch. They had won safe passage from her as a wedding present when some long dead ancestor married one of her daughters, also long gone. This was when his people were nothing more than fishermen in a ramshackle little harbor town, and her promise to them was something that had weighed heavily since then. His family had prospered enough to declare themselves kings and cover vast distances with fleets of ships that failed to drop even a coin to her in passing, even arguing successfully that allies through marriage were entitled to the same protections as themselves.”

    “The Sea Witch did not tell him that the girl in the tower would become sick and die if she was taken from the sea. She told him to woo the girl and when he had won her, to destroy the tower as a token of his gratitude for enabling their union. The enchantress is always described as evil, but in fact, she had come to love her foster daughter in her own way, and she had found other ways to prolong her life, if not her beauty. She scryed their location and came to warn them that the girl could not live away from the sea, but neither believed them, despite the girl’s failing health. She had come to hate the sea as a symbol of her imprisonment, and the couple had retreated to the mountains after their marriage. The Prince had the Enchantress thrown into a briar patch and told her if she ever returned, he would have her killed. He had the comb and sheers thrown down a mountain gully where my ancestors found them.”

    “What about the Prince and the mermaid?” Fiona asked anxiously.

    “Just as the Enchantress had foretold, his wife continued to sickened, and though all the wise men and healing women in the kingdom came, none of them could make her well. Eventually the Prince had no choice but to take her back to the sea and call upon the Sea Witch for her help. The Sea Witch promised she could make the girl well again, but that the Prince would have to give up his family’s protection. Their kingdom would be as other kingdoms in her eyes. After much hesitation, he finally agreed, and the Sea Witch told him the girl’s true nature, changing her legs back to a tail right before his eyes. She also told him of the burden of all Folk, that she would require the flesh of men every full moon, which is to say once a month.”

    “Some say that he asked the Sea Witch to take him into the sea so that he could stay with his love forever, and that his parents, made childless, spent their remaining years building lighthouses to protect ships from the Sea Witch, thereby gaining some small measure of revenge upon her. Others say that the Prince was disgusted by his bride and left her there with the Sea Witch, which earned mankind the eternal hatred of the mermaid and all her descendants. Years later, when he was old and regretted his decision, he went back to the sea and built lighthouses to remind his love of how they had met. But whether or not she ever forgave him, no one knows, and there’s no one left to ask. No one’s seen any merfolk since mankind invented the engine.”

    Fiona sat silently as the spriggan maid continued to clip her hair. Eventually she set the comb and scissors aside on a nearby table. Amelia braided her hair and set the fat plait over her shoulder. Fiona lifted it with some astonishment. Despite Amelia’s story, she hadn’t expected her hair to end up quite so long and full.

    “Thank you, Amelia!” Fiona said with a smile.


May 12, 2010

  • Arggg

    Last week sucked. This week isn’t much better.

    Last week I had some kind of UTI or kidney stone thing going on. Having never had either, I can’t say if I’m right on my self-diagnosis, but it had me laid up for most of the week. I tend to think it was a UTI because the pain eventually spread from my left side to my right side, though not as bad. Thinking on it, throughout my life, the various pains I’ve had, have always been worst on the left side. I wonder why? Maybe it’s just that more of the body’s organs are piled up on the left? Who knows.

    Three days and two and a half gallons of water later (I was literally drinking straight from the gallon bottles of water), I whacked my foot off a table and was practically speaking in tongues from the pain. Least my kidneys didn’t hurt for a few minutes. Funny it was my left foot. Drinking all that water had me so bloated, I was barely comfortable in my “big” pants. I think it was all the water that made me clumsy too. I have never spent so much time walking into things, dropping things, and generally hurting myself as I did last week.

    I spent a lot of time writing, which is good. I have all the entries assigned for Tattoo through the end of the month. The Quiet One, I’ve decided to break into two separate stories. The first part I’ve decided to keep named “The Quiet One,” while the second part is currently nameless. You can see the progress on the right.

    But then…. Then!

    My computer caught a virus. It was a virus that pretends to be an antivirus and tries to get you to “buy their software” to remove the ton of viruses the “windows” “anti” virus says you have. Like I can really afford that right now. :-/ Oh well. That was three days ago. I have it back now and it cost me way too much money to fix. They had to restore an older setting, and it’s… just annoying. I have to figure out what needs re-updating. I’m really just kind of depressed and irritable about the whole thing. At least I took the opportunity to go through my comic book collection and remove some books that I’m not following or keeping any more. Yay, yardsale fodder…

April 23, 2010

  • Late Last Night…

    Last night was rough. After my last post, things kind of died down in so far as my spectral visitors go. Last night, it wasn’t just whispers bothering me while I was trying to sleep. I actually heard a man’s voice, maybe two. It was to the point where I felt I should go turn on the light and look out the back door to see if someone was trying to break in. To make matters worse, when I had gone downstairs around 1 am, there had been a smell of B.O in the kitchen and my stepdad had not closed or locked the back door. The voices didn’t start until after I closed and locked it, but I still wanted to go down and check even though I’d locked it myself. I try to be accommodating of ghosts, but if one would have manifested itself last night, I think I would have thrown a pillow at it.

    Then I woke up about 2 hours later at 3 with terrible heartburn. I went downstairs and took two tums. Then 2 hours later I woke up with terrible pain in my stomach (gas I suppose) and spent a good half hour whimpering in bed before getting up and going downstairs to hang out in the bathroom for a while. I was <-this-> close to making myself throwup when it finally stopped. Now I have heartburn again. Feh… getting old sucks.

    In other news, I am done editing The Quiet One. Official word count stands at 106740, which is about 20,000 words more than the Hobbit to give you some idea of its length. I’m going to be tagging a few people who I think might be interested or who have expressed interest in beta-reading. If you are interested, send me a private message with your email, and I’ll send it to you. I don’t need any editing done, just your impression of the piece and anything that doesn’t work for you or which is unclear.

    Just so you know, this is a horror novel, and there are very graphic scenes of gore and while there is no sex, there is sexual content and some of the characters have potty mouths. I won’t be offended if you decline reading. Horror’s not for everyone, but despite being a horror story, the story is about the characters, not the horror. The best description I can give is that it is a modern fairytale in the style of the Grimm Brothers- in so far as very bad things happen to people and there are witches,  shapeshifters, and vampires. All of the creatures used in the story come from mythology and folklore (not Hollywood) so the vampires will be like nothing you’re probably familiar with. The story centers around a nerd named Fiona, a very socially awkward and shy young woman, who gets thrown into a nasty situation by family politics she knew nothing about and has to learn to depend upon her new friends, rather than always taking the weight of the world onto her own shoulders. If you do decide to read and can think of a better description, it would be much appreciated! If I did not tag you, and you’re a friend of mine and interested, just send me a message.

April 15, 2010

  • My mother talks to orbs

    I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that my house is haunted. My mother gets these fantastic pictures of orbs. I have albums full of them. She’s taken to talking to them, asking them to help with this or that, sometimes just asking them to show up in her pictures. I rarely watch those ghost hunting shows on tv, but compared to the pictures my mother gets of her orbs, the guys on tv are strictly amateur. Either that, or there was a massacre on our property because she’s taken pictures in the back yard so heavily orbed that you literally cannot count them all. They fill every available space like bubbles of carbonation in the air.

    Recently I rearranged my room to put in the air conditioner. I do this every year, not that I’ve run more than the fan when it gets stuffy. My allergies are such that it’s nearly impossible for me to enjoy a nice day by opening my windows, not without dosing myself with sleep-inducing medication. It really sucks. I can’t even leave my window open a crack at night because I’m such a light sleeper. But speaking of being a light sleeper, I moved my altar around so that it sits at the foot of my bed now instead of by the door. Ever since then, there’s been some phenomena, culminating with something “nudging” my bed last night.

    I can’t say for sure that it was moving my altar that did it, since I also had to go into the attic for my air conditioner. There is something in the attic that doesn’t like to be disturbed. I’ve known it since we moved in. Typically we have a live and let live arrangement. So long as I don’t go up too often, it refrains from coming down. Aside from opening the door to get my air conditioner however, it’s not like I’ve been plaguing it with visits. So perhaps it is some combination of going up and moving my altar. I’m tempted to ask my mom to ask the orbs to intercede, but after I cut my hair, my sister asked if I had a nervous breakdown. Don’t want to give the brat any other reasons to pick on me.

    It’s not an aggressive haunting, and I’m not afraid, but it’s distracting and a little startling when you don’t expect things to touch you or move out of the corner of your eye. There’ve been the typical mystery drafts of any normal haunting. However one thing the attic “ghost” did from the start was smells. After a few (extremely) nasty smells when we first moved in, that kind of stopped. Lately, I’ve been smelling all kinds of things, and not at all unpleasant, so I can’t even say if it is the attic ghost doing it. Seriously, right now I smell a kind of rose-water perfume. Sometimes I smell fruit. I’ve even smelled cooking when I know I’m the only one in the house, we haven’t had a neighbor in the other half of the house in almost six months, and no windows are open to let a smell in. I’d worry that I have a tumor, since phantom smells can be a symptom, but then there’s the other phenomena.

    I’ve heard things moving around in my plants, like a leaf has shifted but when I look over, there’s no corresponding movement to account for the sound. I’ve also heard sounds down in the kitchen like someone moving around, and sometimes almost voices. During the day I have my stereo on, more rarely the tv. At night, I have two sound machines to drown out noises from outside and the “whispers” that have always annoyed me when I’m trying to sleep. Lately I’ll sometimes hear what sounds like a voice under the noise. I’ve been thinking of leaving my stereo on all night along with my sound machines just so I can dismiss the “voice” as something else.

    Two nights in a row I felt something touching my hair and arm while I was at the computer, not with hostility but just kind of playing with my hair and sleeve. That would be creepy enough, but I was speculating on the fourth dimension as the dimension one goes to at death one night in a journal as I sat in my bed, and I swear I saw something move in the other room, like a leonine face and then later something moving out of the corner of my eye near my closet. And then, of course, last night when I was nearly asleep, something nudged my bed enough to wake me. I could hear it as it scraped by the bottom of my bed, like a large animal brushing past at least as big as a medium sized dog. Makes me glad I don’t have my bed on the floor any more, though I’ve felt my blankets sometimes move while I’m trying to fall asleep and just assumed it was normal blanket shifting caused by gravity.

    I’m to the point where I’m considering a cleansing ritual, just to make sure every thing around me has the best intentions. It could just be that I’ve been in the house too much and the ghosties are feeling a bit put upon by my continuous presence. Or it could be because I retrieved my air conditioner or moved my altar… or it could be a combination of three. Whatever it is, it’s starting to wear on my nerves. Now with this post, things will either get worse or better, as I’m sure the spirits wouldn’t be too proud to read over my shoulder as I type. In fact, twice now I’ve caught something moving just behind me at the door to the hall, and I know no one’s come home. So we’ll see. Could just be friendly spirits letting me know they’re around and support my writing…? Though from now on, I hope they let me sleep.

April 7, 2010

  • I tilt at windmills

    I have noticed since leaving my job that I can’t watch television. Not that I ever did watch it much, but I have no patience for commercials or the tidbits of the news that they offer to make you watch later. I never really did care much for either, but since leaving my job, I find them completely disgusting. I barely turn the tv on but once a week. When I see commercials, I think to myself: Do people really want these things? I try to figure out what about the items offered is so wonderful that people would care to have them, to spend money on them, to use them or enjoy them? It doesn’t matter what it is, cars, fast food, toys, department stores, etc. None of it interests me. Why do people like these things? What’s the allure? I’ve never had a real hankering for material possessions aside from books and a few other things that occasionally strike my fancy, a woebegone plant in a supermarket, occasional “pretty baubles” found for a steal at a yard sale. Beyond that, I just don’t care. I find it harder to care every day. Most of my possessions have been gifts or thrift store finds or things I’ve made myself.

    Am I a freak? I don’t care about money. Quitting my job was the best thing I ever did, despite the fact that I will need money eventually. So far I haven’t been able to find a job to replace the one I left, but I can’t really bring myself to worry. I don’t want to think about it. Since quitting my job, my life has fallen into an easier rhythm. I’m not stressed all the time. I stay indoors, and I write or read with only occasional forays into the world with my mother. I’d go off tramping in the woods if the weather hadn’t been so fine lately that everyone and their brother is out there already. And they just restocked the canal with fish, so all the fisher people are out there too. Better to wait for a less beautiful day so I can be out there alone. I’ve become even more of a misanthrope since I became unemployed.

    I wake in the morning and exercise. I never had time for it before, between working and then trying to do the work that doesn’t pay (ie writing) and the regular burdens of life (ie eating, hygiene, and sleep). So every morning I do some exercises; boy, I never knew how out of shape I was. Maybe it was just the stress that made me all flab-tastic though… I was certainly getting my exercise at Borders. Unlike some of my former coworkers, I was never one to stand around babbling. Depending upon the day, I either start writing or come online. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I come online first thing to update the webserial (only 4 more updates in Chapter 7). Every other day I start writing immediately. Tuesday seems to be my most productive day with anywhere from 5000 to 10000 words, and I average about 20000 words a week. I’ve started updating my word count over on the side bar if you’ve noticed.

    I basically watch tv once a week, and who knows how often I’ll watch once Lost is over. heh I’ll miss Lost when it’s done. I don’t know how I feel about V. It’s an intriguing remake, but in the end, that’s all it is. It doesn’t seem to offer anything knew, just capitalizing on the previous series with better science and effects. Lost, despite being suspenseful and shocking, has a good message… I think. It’s a human story… it’s about people trying to live, struggling to find a way to stay good people in a bad situation, a situation which it is completely impossible to make heads or tails of, but which taken in bite sized increments, is not impossible to deal with. It is, in fact, a story about life. Though the setting is fantastical and confusing, the story remains centered on the people, not the affects, not the smoke monster or the time slips. V doesn’t have that. V has the fear and the effects, but I can’t invest myself in the characters and some of them aren’t even believable as real people. V is just watching tv. Lost is seat of your pants, OMG what’s going to happen to these poor people next? I think when Lost is over, I won’t stick around to watch V, as much as I loved the original series. The original series was about people, even if it was completely cheesy. The new series is more about the drama with zero reflection.

    What I really hate about late night tv though are the commercials for the news. The news is always bad, and the worse it is, the happier the announcer seems to be. Is it that I’m not “invested in the story?” I don’t want to be, if it comes to that. I don’t want to watch the news and see horrible things done to people with no hope of things getting any better. I don’t want to hear about bombings and war, fires and murders. I don’t want to find out that everyone died, badly, at the end. I want the villains to be caught, the families to be saved, the wars to be over, the dictators to be overthrown, and the “bombing” to have been the result of an accidental gas leak. Even news of natural disasters make me sick any more… just another way for the Religious Right to capitalize on the suffering of people made weak with tragedy, a chance for them to convert by hook or by crook, to dangle food and water over someone’s head and say “jump for Jesus.”

    In the end, I would much rather dissociate myself from this reality and simply write. My stories may be grim, but they are people stories. Bad things happen, but my characters rise above them, learn from them, continue to be good people despite the tragedy, try to be even better people to those they love. They continue to reach out to others in ways I can’t any more. I can’t even look at tragedies like the Haiti earthquake. It makes me so angry. I wish I had millions of dollars. I’d go over there and make sure the Pagan Haitians had food and water too. I’d do the same in the other places that have recently had earthquakes and any place else struck by natural disaster like India with the tsunami a couple years ago. It’s important to help people, to reach out to them, but I am poor and helpless, and for all my compassion, useless to do anything to alleviate the pain of victims of earthquakes, wars, terrorism, crime… beyond wishing them well.

    I loathe the human race as an amorphous, nebulous thing, though I hate to see people of any creed or race suffer. In my writing, I fight this thing under many guises. I make my people strong and idealistic. They don’t buckle to peer pressure. They may be broken and scarred by the things they’ve seen and done, but they struggle on to overcome their social programming. This world is sick. I tilt at the windmills of our society’s flaws and overcome them in my stories for my peace of mind. If there is one message I think my writing and shows like Lost embody, it’s that we’re all the same. No matter who we are or where we’ve been, we suffer and bleed and strive to be better than we knew we were. We all fight against hate and selfishness, but it’s when we send that fight outside ourselves that we commit crimes against our own. People, look at yourselves and see yourselves for who and what you are. Better yourselves before you try to change the world. Help for the sake of helping, not to strong arm someone into your religion. Dogma never saved anyone. Compassion is the key.

March 30, 2010

  • The Ultimate Library and other writing contests

    In honor of National Library week, starting April 12th, Laurie R King, author of the Beekeeper’s Apprentice and other Holmsian fiction, is running a contest. Describe your perfect library and send it to her for fabulous prizes for yourself, and more importantly, whatever local library is near and dear to your heart in this blighted age of library cutbacks and closings.

    Here’s my entry:

    For a bibliophile such as myself only an entire house would suffice for a library: one room for my bedroom, also containing shelves for books yet to be read, and of course a small kitchen and bathroom. However, every other room of the house would be filled with books and shelves for books, from attic to basement, books of every description. Every room would have it’s theme, perhaps religion in the attic, history on the floor below, fiction on the first floor, with children‘s books, poetry, and various non-fiction in the cellar.

    Only a few cushy chairs and perhaps a few small tables would inhabit each room, for casual reading and books yet to be shelved. Though plush carpeting has its allure, patterned wood floors with occasional throw carpets would be more visually satisfying. Being of an eclectic nature and moderate (currently nonexistent) income, I have cobbled my collection together over a long period of time. No doubt if I had the opportunity to make an entire house into a library, the style would remain eclectic. Lacking the floor space for all my bookshelves, I have taken to stacking them, one on another, like some literary game of Tetris. If I had an entire house to myself, I would continue in this style, buying shelves of various size and design at yard sales and stacking and bolting them against the walls with room left only for large windows full of lush greenery. For if there’s one thing I love almost as much as books, it’s windows full of happy plants.

    People talk about the “crazy cat lady” but for me, it’s books. As Erasmus said, When I have a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. I will spend my life accumulating books. Whether or not I ever manage to fill an entire house with them, well that remains to be seen. Someday when I die, some small library (the smallest my family can find… I‘ve left orders) will greatly benefit from my book mania, though I wouldn‘t mind if my home became a shrine for booklovers throughout the world, a place to which they could bequeath their own best beloved tomes.



    I also entered a Haiku contest at Haiku Now. There are three categories with $100 prize for each. Deadline is tomorrow, so if you want to enter, whip out your pen and get to work.

    traditional
    salty breath whispered
    over endless golden flecks
    the sea murmurs sleep

    __

    contemporary
    lost and found secrets
    history’s puzzle pieces
    scattered by Dewey

    __

    innovative
    red cape in flight
    little red or superman
    Grandmother’s not on Krypton


    Only 8 more entries in chapter seven of the webnovel. Chapter eight begins the last week of April. In the meantime, I am trying to finish up the novel I started writing last year for Nanowrimo. I hope I don’t sound too biased when I say it’s REALLY GOOD. heh I’ll keep you guys posted.

March 24, 2010

  • Locks of Love

    Since leaving my job, I’ve noticed that I’m not wearing black so much. I haven’t gotten nearly so many headaches (though it’s only been about a week), and my back doesn’t hurt any more. Except my back does hurt right now, I think due to the fact that I just cut all my hair off.

    Well, not all of it, but about a foot to be sent to Locks of Love. I always said that’s the only way I’d ever cut my hair, and now having left my job, I figured it was about time to shed some of the hair grown in that stretch of time wasted at Borders. Of course, my hair hasn’t been this short in 30 years, so it’s kind of freaking me out a little. I can’t wait till my mom gets home. hehe

    I never realized how heavy my hair was… but I miss it. I think that’s why I have this pinch between my shoulders. I’m not used to the lightness of my head. heh I cut my hair to my shoulders, but being naturally curly, it’s shrunk a good two or three inches from that length. This’ll take some getting used to.

    Some good things about my newly shortened hair:

    • not so much hair in the shower drain -Just one lost hair would greatly diminish the flow of water as I showered before.
    • not so much conditioner used and therefore also less water wasted -I was seriously going through a third of a bottle of conditioner every wash, and that takes quite a while to rinse out too
    • easier to dye -I’ll only need one box of whatever from now on, henna or otherwise. I’ve been pestering my mother to henna my hair for over a year now and every single time ‘something’ would come up. Now I can do it myself. :P Mom. Or maybe I’ll go green.
    • fewer knots -Knots are something curly-haired people just have to deal with, but the shorter the hair, the easier the knots.
    • cuter curls -The longer the hair, the more it pulls out the curls. Right now I look like a dark haired Shirley Temple.
    The best part is, I didn’t have to go to a salon. I looked up Locks of Love, found their address and specifications, and can send an envelope with my hair right to them. (I’m waiting for it to dry before sending it.)

    Locks of Love
    234 Southern Blvd
    West Palm Beach, FL 33405

    Some things to remember if you want to donate too:
    • Colored or permed hair is acceptable
    • Hair cut years ago is usable if it has been stored in a ponytail or braid.
    • Hair should be bundled in a ponytail or braid. Hair that is swept off of the floor is not usable.
    • Hair that is shaved off and not in a ponytail or braid is not usable. If shaving your head, first divide hair into multiple ponytails to cut off.
    • Layered hair is acceptable if the longest layer is 10 inches. Layered hair may be divided into multiple ponytails.
    • Curly hair may be pulled straight to measure the minimum 10 inches.
    • 10 inches measured tip to tip is the minimum length needed for a hairpiece.

      Please Note:

    • No dreadlocks. These cannot be made into children’s hairpieces.
    • Nor do they accept wigs, falls, hair extensions or synthetic hair.
    • Hair that has been bleached (usually this refers to highlighted hair) is not usable.  Colored hair is not usable if it is colored over bleached hair.
    • Shorter hair can be separated from the ponytails and sold to offset the manufacturing costs. Though shorter hair cannot be used in the hairpieces, it still helps reduce costs.
    • Gray hair is accepted and sold to offset manufacturing costs.

March 8, 2010

  • I finally did it

    Well, I finally did it. I gave notice.

    Last week I had a talk with my manager. I basically told her the store looks like ass. Give me more hours so I can fix it. But I was more diplomatic about it (of course). o.O She said, oh, well we’ll have some extra hours next week. No problem.

    But what really happened was, they eradicated my Supervisor’s position. The poor guy, he’s had his job pulled out from under him for about the 4th or 5th time now. I’ve lost count. He’s been a supervisor several different times and even a manager once, and each time they decided, whelp, don’t need that position any more, and “fired” him, basically allowing him to stay on if he wanted to but not in that position. Now they’ve told him he can come back as part time if he likes, but probably at a pay cut in addition to the loss of his position. Now I am an extremely conscientious, hard working person. I don’t feel a job is worth doing if it’s not done right. But he bends over backwards for Borders. In regards to the sheer volume of work he does on their behalf, he does the work of two or three men. He does our manager’s job and isn’t it going to suck if he decides not to come back? It would actually be better for him if he took unemployment. He’d make more money at this point than he will coming back to “help” (which is to say, do most of our boss’ job).

    And you know what, I’m not going to profit from his loss. There’s zero job security at Borders. Any position higher than supervisor, and you can forget people acting with any kind of human compassion. I am not going to sacrifice my humanity for a job and a company I despise with every fiber of my being. So I told my boss that she can consider this change in store management my two week’s notice. They’re hurting for hours so bad, they can have mine too. I only stayed on because the amount of work they expect the merch team to get done is completely ignorant of the hours they give us. I refuse to be the only merch person left, busting my butt to get everything done on 8-15 hours a week because they don’t feel that the merchandising needs a supervisor any more.

    The thing is, my manager knew a week ago that they were going to do this, and she played it like nothing was going on. That they were finally just going to give us more hours. But they didn’t; they simply got rid of a full time position to divide those hours among the remaining employees. You know what that reminds me of?

    cannibalism

    Borders is now cannibalizing itself. And despite what they think, this does not help us with our workload. The people who work there will still have to get everything done that my supervisor and I did. And you know what? I don’t care. It’s someone else’s problem now.

    And I don’t care if Borders catches me blogging about them either. What are they going to do? Tell me not to come in? Coming in barely pays for my gas. I continued to work for Borders as a favor to my manager and my supervisor because I know how to show loyalty, not to a company but to the people that work there.

    Borders, you suck. Your business plan sucks. Borders does not know how to run a business. Borders does not care about its employees or its customers. Borders forces its employees to sell books that most of its employees don’t even want to read, let alone foist on an unsuspecting public. Whatever hinky deal they have going with the publishers to push these books on people is just not worth the effort and certainly can’t be worth the profit. Borders runs around all proud of itself for pushing books that end up on the bestseller list because of it and all I can think is that they’re like three year olds pleased with themselves for painting a wall with their own feces.

    So goodbye Borders. I don’t care any more. (And that’s a pretty sorry state of affairs, considering I’m one of the most conscientious people you’re ever likely to meet.) I hope you rot. I hope disgusted customers bring rotten fruit and vegetables to fling it at your windows. I am currently trying to get my fellow employees to walk out with me and picket. I foresee you out of business or at least greatly diminished within a year. Money isn’t everything, and the sooner you and other corporations like you realize this, the better. I am not a slave and no one who works for you is a slave. Stop treating us like we are worthless and easily discarded. We are people. Maybe, and I could be wrong here, but maybe, if big business chose to show their employees the same loyalty they demanded of them, the “positive work ethic” might not be such an antiquated notion.

    Borders… is a soulless, soul-sucking, undead monster of a business and the sooner someone comes along to drive a stake through its cinder of a heart the better.

March 2, 2010

  • Retail is a full contact sport (and I don’t have the protective gear)

    I found myself thinking this morning that the only reason I don’t kill myself is because it would be such an inconvenience to everyone who survived me. Does that mean I’m not really depressed/suicidal or that I’m just not depressed/suicidal enough to ignore other people’s feelings? I wonder if other people have these thoughts. It seems to me that the suicide and depression are both rather selfish mindsets, and I pride myself on being unselfish. At the same time, there must come a point where the burden of my existence weighs more heavily on the people around me than my death would. (What lovely thoughts go through my head the day before my 36th birthday…)

    Which is not to say that I am suicidal right now… I’m certainly less suicidal than I was right before Christmas. But therein lies the rub. In November, I asked my boss to drop me down to part time and only have me come in before or after hours to work. She kind of did that, but in the same breath, she’s not giving me the hours I need. I could work 20 hours a week this way, and believe me the store needs the work, but lately I’ve gotten less than half of that. I know it’s not entirely her fault since they keep cutting back on payroll, but on the other hand, the more she “plays ball,” the more hours they’ll take away because they think it’s okay. Well it’s not. One need only come into the store and see the sty that it’s become to know that we need more hours.

    But I digress. I had her cut me back because I am an agoraphobic and the stress of working retail, especially with the way retail has degenerated to sycophantic brown-nosing of both the customer and corporate, was taking its toll. I can count the number of back injuries I’ve had to seven that I recall over the years, and whenever I am stressed, the muscles of my lower back begin to contract until it feels as though a vise is crushing my tail bone. This is how it was at Christmas and had been for much of last year. I just couldn’t do it any more. More than that, I felt myself unable to even interact with strangers in a polite manner. It’s unbearable to even be on a busy highway more often than a few times a week… another reason I asked my boss to drop me down to work before or after hours… less traffic. More than two lanes? Forget it. It seems the longer I’ve been on the road, the crazier people drive. I want no part of it. It terrifies me, especially after my last accident at the end of 2008. I honestly don’t know how people pass their driving test any more.

    But again, I’ve gone off on a tangent. I need more money, and I can’t find any home-based jobs. I’ve tried. Most of them are scams and the rest are misleading. I’ve been working on my novel (over 65000 words now), but there’s still the act of getting it published when it’s done. What’s really ironic is that as an agoraphobic, it’s going to be next to impossible for me to do signings unless they put me in a box. :/

    Really… don’t worry too much about my talk of suicide above. It’s just a reflection of the frustration I’m feeling in regards to my job and money in general. I’ve been off and on suicidal my whole life. I’ve just never done anything about it aside from thinking of it. Like I said, I can’t imagine being that inconsiderate of other people’s feelings. Even beyond them missing me and feeling abandoned by me, there’s the fact that someone would have to find my body and someone would have to clean up after me and the financial burden of dealing with my burial. I wouldn’t do that to someone.

    I hate money. I really do. I don’t need a lot. Just enough to pay my bills. I hate worrying about it. I hate having to use it in order to live. I wish we lived in a Star Trek universe where money was a thing of the past, like the dinosaurs. I don’t want to work any more. But that’s a lie. I don’t mind working. I want to work. I am a conscientious person. I just don’t want to work in retail any more. I don’t want to work with people. I want to do what I’m good at without being supervised or having new instructions come down on a weekly basis that contradict or micromanage the instructions of the previous week. I basically want to be left alone to do my job (whatever it may be), and get paid for it (of course). I really think I must be borderline Asperger’s. It would explain a lot, and my brother is, and my siblings are both manic, so… yeah, I’m messed up. Thanks mom.

    I am not an unscrupulous or lazy person, but I’ve been thinking about applying for disability. My agoraphobia and anxiety issues are getting worse, as is my back. They exacerbate one another. I thought I was getting it under control over the years, but it’s to the point where I feel like lashing out at people again, like when I was still in high school. I want to smash things. I want to hit walls. I’m not a violent person, but I’m feeling crowded. I need to be free and by myself. The one clear benefit of suicide would be that at least I’d be turning the violence on myself.

    I really need to find something to do where I don’t have to deal with people except through an intermediary, like the internet. People make me sick, and usually not even because they’re being bothersome. I just need to get away from them. I suppose I could go work on an oil rig, but – I don’t approve of oil harvesting and I’d just be stuck for months with a smaller crowd of people. I can deal with people on my own terms, in bite sized portions, but I need to be able to walk away when it becomes too much.

    I just can’t deal with society’s social and monetary pressures any more. I could live on 20 hours a week, $10 an hour. I am a very frugal person, and I don’t mind work, as inconvenient as it is to my personal life. lol I just… I can’t live in this society. It’s not healthy. I said as much months ago when I pretty much gave notice by asking to be made part time, but I’m still not healthy. The pressure’s building again, and I just don’t know what to do. That’s the worst part, I think. I just have no idea what to do… how to make it better. The only things I can come up with are finish my novel and apply for disability. And neither one of them are quick fixes. In other words, they’re long term fixes for a problem that is becoming increasingly immediate.