Book Bitch Mission Earth END PART ONE

Okay, I'm going to blow through the rest of this book in two big chunks. But first...BUSINESS, boys and girls. BUSINESS.

ITEM THE FIRST: CONTEST! Yes, this is still going until October first. PLEASE guys. I know at least SOME of you have either purchased/...you know, I just realized there is no match word for "getting something for free"...anyway, SOME of you have either read one of my little books because it's ALL I TALK ABOUT on the blog, or you're here because I've been giving books away on Amazon (Um, yeah. I've given away over three hundred copies of things in the last five days) and you want to know who I am. ANYWAY! REVIEW MY BOOK AND WIN AN ART POSTER! OF ART! YES! I do not expect there to be more than ten entries (Okay, I expect there to be ONE entry, maybe, and you know who you are). If there are more than ten entries I will do something so that everybody gets a thing anyway. It'll probably be a wallpaper of something. Maybe even non-book related art. Because my jaw, boys and girls, my jaw will be on the FLOOR if there are more than ten entries.

ENTER THE CONTEST! REVIEW ONE OF MY DUMB LITTLE BOOKS! INSULT IT IF YOU HAVE TO! JUST PUT SOMETHING THERE PLEASE FOR MY SANITY'S SAKE!

Okay, got that out of the way.

ITEM THE SECOND: The Next Book I Bitch. Right now I have a vote for Captive of Gor. Let me remind you that this is the book John Norman wrote from the female perspective. Which means we will most likely be doing that one, as it has been sitting on my harddrive FOR MONTHS, along with copious copious notes on the fail that is the Gor series.

But there are still other options! There is still time to turn the tide if you do not want to drown in a myre of mysogyny and purple prose! Remember, these are the options:

1. Captive of Gor
2. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
3. Eternal Prey, Nina Bangs (Yes, indeed it is a blissful vacation of stupid)
4. Mission Earth: Black Genesis. By the way? My love of teh stupid has me reading the third book because it is there and I am frequently bored. I got to a point where I literally shouted "What the FUCK am I reading?" in the living room. My stepfather gave me a very bizzare look.

VOTE, my loyal blog readers! Vote!

ITEM! THE! THIRD!: You know what would really make my day, loyal blog-readers? More than reviews on my books or votes for the next book I tear into? Comments. Talk to me, sports fans. I'm all ears. Make comments. It will put me on the MOON, guys and girls. the very MOON.

And last, but not least:

THE END OF MISSION EARTH! PART ONE!

Oh, god this is going to suck.  Where were we?

Right about... Here. The drug macguffins. So after revealing the dastardly dastardly plan of the dastards (I just managed to make that stop looking like a word) in the dastardly CIA, Soltan Gris commits random murder of side character we never really gave a fuck about. Right. He then picks up the bug he's going to have *snicker* Prahd Bittlestiffender (WHO WILL BE IN THE THIRD BOOK TOO! YAY!) implant into Jettero Heller. And then he murders the clerk who gives him the bug. And crashes an air car into a hospital because bugs, I guess. I don't know. It's great that our narrator finally grew a spine after five hundred pages, but it is a murder spine, and after the first three that kind of gets a little boring.

Then he checks in on Prahd and the Widow Tayl.

They're having post-surgery post-sex cookies. Meaning that Prahd and the fine madam Tayl had surgery to remove such terrible disfigurements as warts (in a futuristic society) and saggy boobs (Because this is a sign of evil in women, according to Hubbard). And then had sex.

Wait. scratch the parentheses for a second. Having read three books in this series I think I can say the following without shaming his good name. First, the books? Do not get better. Oh god do they not get better. I am now reading the ones published after he died. GOOD. FUCKING. GOD. Second, Jet-boy and Soltan are equally shit-stains, in my book. Third: SATIRE. WHY DO YOU USE THIS WORD? I DO NOT THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS. Fourth: Hubbard does not have a Virgin/Whore complex. He has a Virgin AND Whore complex. As in the evil women? Are whores. And the good women? Are virginal whores. It makes no sense, but that's the only way I can explain this "I am the Madonna sans child, so let's go fuck in that corner" attitude every girl has in this book.  Hubbard makes a BIG DEAL out of how horny the Widow Tayl is, but honestly? I don't see a difference between her and every other woman in these books.

Also? In the third book? There is heavily implied pedophilia. And that was still not the part that made me scream what the fuck am I reading. At some point Hubbard went way, way past OH, JOHN RINGO, NO! and right into face-melting territory. All the hugs in the world will not make it okay.

Okay, back to book.

So first Soltan scares the shit out of Prahd. Which is okay, the dude doesn't have much of a spine. And then Soltan and the Widow Tayl have an "interview." And by interview I mean this:

(Widow Tayl) was saying "And Prahd and I had the most wonderful night. In fact we had the most wonderful...wonderful...wonderful...wonderful..." The cupid was really rocking! (MM:TIV pg 521)

But there is one great quote in this chapter:

There is nothing quite so discouraging as going through this sort of thing with a woman telling you how great another man is. Wearing.

One: Best. Writer. Ever. Second: Ron, it's one word. Three letters. Sex. If you're going to use the voices you can describe the actual act. Also, I am beginning to think you are permanently thirteen.

Next chapter! Lombar inspects the ship! And he finds what Jettero is planning to do on Earth! And he disables it! And it is exactly as exciting as it sounds!

However, in trying to get Lombar out of the ship without Jet-boy noticing, Soltan agrees to Jettero's going away party. It will have:

-rainbow booze (aka "yellow, pink and purple bubblebrew")
-flowers
-blue skinned party favors ("blue skinned dancing girls for the contractors and their crews." Thanks a fucking million, Ron. The cause of feminism is set back thirty years every time you touched a pen)
-Dance bands
-Dancing bears
-fireworks (TO SEE OFF A TOP-SECRET MISSION SHIP)

And will, frankly, be the best part of all time, forever. You know that Katy Perry video? Last Friday Night? Yeah. It's that party.

To see off a top secret mission. That should have already left over a month ago.

Then he manages to get Jettero to the Widow's secret hospital, where Prahd sees to implanting the bug, and the Widow Tayl sees Jet!

"When I first saw him...I thought he was some woods God. So strong, so powerful." The lamp in her ceiling began to swing and the music took on a throb. "he stepped out of the airbus so smoothly...so smoothly...so smoothly..." A huge multipetaled blossom by the door seemed to get larger. "Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!" Cried (Tayl) and the blossom burst like an explosion!

Two things I want to point out. Apparently if you orgasm on Voltar things randomly explode. Also, you'll note the (Tayl) I put in a couple of places. This is because, like the Countess, Widow Tayl has spontaneously developed a non-insulting name: Pratia. Right around the time that she becomes attracted to Jet.

Jet can purify women. With his penis.

This happens three more times, and Soltan is stunned. She isn't even touching him. Honest-to-God, this book does not imply masturbation. It implies that The Widow Tayl is having spontaneous orgasms just by repeating Jet's name. And this drives Soltan to swear more eternal vengeance against Heller, that EVIL man lying unconscious in the hospital under the care of the doctor Soltan basically conned out of life. 

Our hero, boys and girls.

Come back tomorrow to see the party, AND BE DONE WITH THIS FUCKING TERRIBLE BOOK!

Restaurant 'fo

Work has been...interesting the last couple of weeks. And by interesting I mean chinese curse, stick-your-finger-in-a-light-socket level interesting.

First off, let me identify the day NO ONE EVER GOES TO A RESTAURANT: Monday. If you have ever had a Monday off (and I don't mean Memorial Day Monday. We're open then) and you've had to find someplace to eat, you've probably noticed that your options are McDonalds and That Cheesy Diner Nobody Eats At Because God, It Sucks. The nice places? Closed. Why are they closed? Well, in a lot of cases, those nice places are staffed by the owner, the owner's family, and the handful of good help they managed to scrape out of all the other Good Places. FYI, good waitressing is hard. And I am not a good waitress. I am an okay waitress. I manage to get drink refills, shrimp ends and sugar packets off the table, and plates cleared in a reasonable amount of time, but if you screw up my pattern you will probably have to ask me for a couple extra lemons.

And NO ONE EATS OUT ON A MONDAY. So if you don't have the staff (or income flow) to stay open seven days a week? You're closed Monday. I remember reading my favorite book, Sunshine, and wondering why a coffee shop/restaurant would be closed on a Monday. Now I know! NOBODY EATS OUT ON A MONDAY.

But lately we've had Random Mondays. As in Tuesday I get called in when we have two other people on the floor because we got slammed. Wednesday I am the only person on the floor and it is DEAD. Today probably went well. Friday and Saturday we will want to kill ourselves because shit, we DO make the best Margaurita in town AND THAT IS NOT BRAGGING ON OUR PART, it's just a shit town if you want something complicated. (Marguarita is not complicated. One part tequila, half part triple sec, one part sweet&sour, which is a fancy way to say Lemon/lime syrup. Why is this so hard? WHY CAN NO ONE ELSE MAKE A GOOD MARGURITA IN THIS TOWN?) so the tourists and such show up on our doorstep and wonder why we don't let them decide how they want the Salmon cooked. (Because we are not your personal chef. If you want a medium rare Salmon, please hire the chef for your own household.) (No, really. Get her out of our hair)

And then we have Those People. They are the ones that THINK they know the owner. They don't know the owner, but they THINK they do. So they THINK that on a busy night, telling me "Oh, (the boss) can pick something for me" is a good idea. THIS MEANS I HAVE TO GO ASK THE BOSS WHAT TO FEED HER CUSTOMERS. Just in case the all caps screaming isn't a hint, THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING. Do you see the menu? Do you see the entry that is fish in blue cheese? Do you realize this is her default for when people come in and ask that? I have FIVE OTHER TABLES, dude. Pick out your food, pick out your wine, and stop being a patrionizing asshole because, for the love of GOD mister, you are not the center of the freaking universe. It's bad enough you want me to do a side substitution that is totally and utterly inapproprete for the food your wife is ordering. And by the way? let your wife order her own fucking food. 

And don't ask me if the wine is good. I hate wine (Unless it is Italian Bubbles, or a really high end Malbec). I will lie to your face because it means I get you to order something faster. Don't ask me if the food is good, either. The answer is yes. I am paid to tell you yes. I will sell you on my least favorite dish because, if you look like you want it, it means i get to go do refills on all my other tables. And yes, the fucking cabernet is from fucking California and I know there are other countries on this fucking planet but DO! YOU! NOT! REALIZE! That I am POOR! And will never get to SEE those countries? And you are wasting my time telling me about things that I cannot change, BECAUSE I DIDN'T WRITE THE FUCKING WINE LIST?!?!

 *sigh* Here's your lemon.

Guys and girls, the person deciding whether or not the salad dressing/cheese/puree for your drinks is spoiled is the same person you're lecturing on why Talapia Is A Bad Fish To Serve. Please adjust your behavior accordingly. The next person might not be nice.

Okay. BOOK STUFF:

I have finished the next Exiles story (Silver Bullet sequel. You know, the one with Casey Winter and Marco Creed. There's going to be a series of them and every series needs a name, right?) so I have begun editing the sci-fi story (tentative September release date...sometime) which puts the next Exiles story either LATE September or early October. Note that neither of these dates includes artwork and (cringe) ebook coding.

There will also be another story to pick up where Winterlord left off. So the plan for the next three months, or so, is as follows:

September: Untitled Sci-Fi story

October: Exiles story

November-December: Winterlord story.

Mark calendars and make plans accordingly.

Don't live for your dreams. EVER.

Okay, this is gonna be cynical as hell, so please forgive it. The trigger was an advertisement for a new movie, Santa Paws. I don't know what Santa Paws is, other than talking puppies and Walt Disney's ashes spinning in his urn, but one of the puppies said, at the end of the trailer, "All you have to do is dream."

I've had this backbuilding annoyance with this part of popular culture. We've marketed the living fuck out of the idea that if you work hard enough and day-dream even harder, you'll get your dreams. Disney Princesses moon over lakes and water and men (mostly men) while singing about how much they want something. Books talk about Live Your Best Life Now and The Purpose Driven Life and how "God has a plan for you", implying that this plan is not right now, and God am I going to get into the Prosperity Gospel bullshit in a couple of minutes. And every single "uplifting" movie shows someone pulling themselves into success of some form or another. TV shows never follow the losers, it's always the winners and then OMG when the winners lose it's a tear fest and a showcase of character and integrity because our self-inserts the main characters only lose when they deserve to learn a lesson. The natural tilt of the universe is that we, the centers of it, shall win eventually. I don't think our parents had this level of bullshit saturation that we do right now. The result is we have a generation that believes we'll get our fifteen minutes of fame. Usually presented on a platter, but sometimes after a shit-ton of hard work that somehow falls far short of the real work involved in being successful.

This was showcased really well in a chick flick a couple years back, Julie and Julia, about the life of Julia Childs and Julie Powell. Half that movie is good, and it's the half with Meryl Streep in it. I am not going to say that Julie Powell is a waste of skin and air, because the character is based on a real human being and I refuse to believe anyone can be that bad. Amy Adams as Julie Powell is annoying, entitled and obnoxious, and there's an undertone running through the whole movie that the success both women get is something they earned, something they're entitled to because of all the hard work they went through to get there. In the case of Julia Child, that was probably true. The Julie Powell half of the movie ... guys, if you succeed at internet anything it's not because you're good at something or bad at something. It's because the internet farted in your direction today. In her half of the movie, after she worked hard, screamed, cried and threw tantrums, she was literally handed her goal on a platter, right next to her deboned duck.

And then you have Prosperity Gospel. For those of you who haven't darkened the door of a large church, picked up a bestselling Christian book or listened to Christian radio lately, Prosperity Gospel turns God into the big Slot Machine in the sky: put in enough faith tokens and you'll get a pony. The two big headliners are Joel Olstine and Rick Warren, authors of Your Best Life Now and The Purpose-Driven Life, respectively. I have not read Best Life Now because there's only so much Olstine I can take in one sitting. Purpose Driven Life centers on the idea that if you can figure out what God wants you to do with your life, he will bless you and you will be happy, or at least happier than you are right now. That God does not want his children to live a life of sorrow and despair, and if we just work with him, he'll make everything good and beautiful and reward us for our work and suffering right now.

Guys, I'm listening to a Christian album right now, one of the best I've heard in years, by Stephen Curtis Chapman. He wrote it after his adopted daughter died in a car accident. He wrote it to deal with the sorrow and quite obviously, his difficulty reconciling a loving God with his daughter's death. If you believe in the Christian God and you believe that God is in control, than you have to believe that it was his will for that to happen. Because if He didn't want it to happen that way, it wouldn't have. And that's why I find Propserity Gospel so fucking offensive. It implies that if your life has gone to shit and things aren't happening the way you want them to, there is something wrong with you. You don't know something. You're not doing something right. You haven't figured the Great Question of Reality out yet and if you just pushed a little bit longer and held on a bit further, you'd break out into the great meadow of rainbows and unicorns and everything would be alright again.

If you're a Christian, you believe that God Himself became human -- I mean, think about that for a second. You go from being God of All to being a subsistence-level carpenter, who is also a member of one of the most despised races in human history, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius in Ancient Rome. And God's will is that we prosper? Poverty is not God's will for us, sometimes? What, did he just make an exception for himself? -- and died one of the ugliest, most brutal deaths humanity ever conceived of, shortened only because he was severely tortured the day before his crucifixion. Yes, it had a point. It had a beautiful point. The payoff never came during Jesus's life, the last years of which were spent homeless. Hell, our own homeless would be a step up. They get down filled jackets and warm concrete to sleep on. According to my belief system, God's will for his own life was horrible, with an eternal payoff.

You know, sometimes things just don't work. For every uplifting story, there are a lot that end poorly. The happy stuff is remembered, not because it's normal, but because it's so abnormal, and we humans are self-centered enough to believe that if it happened to you, surely, surely eventually it'll happen to me. Surely if I sing at Simon, I'll go on to American Idol, win and get a singing contract. Nevermind that most of the people who go are fodder for our amusement, I am different. Surely I am different. Surely God will bless me. He didn't bless himself, but he'll bless me.

The best thing a person can do for themselves, in my opinion, is not to live for your dreams. Live for your family. Friends. For the weekend when you get to go fishing, or do whatever else it is that brings you joy. Living for your dreams is about as solid as attempting to eat them.

Am I saying that you shouldn't try to get them? Hell no. I'm just saying you shouldn't expect it. I'm saying that "think positive" and "keep high self-esteem" is bullshit. "Focus on your potential" is bullshit. Think pessimistically. Attempt success and plan for failure. Keep an exit strategy in mind. Prepare for failure. Maybe don't assume that something you made sucks, but assume that it could be made better. Because the thing nobody tells you about? The dreams don't die. Even when you want them to. Having a dream will eventually feel like you've swallowed burning coals, because it's guaranteed that you will fail most of the time. And your choice is either to think that there's something wrong with you -- because they always win on American Idol -- or to think that maybe it's just not going to happen this time. Either way, the coal is not going to go out. You're not going to throw it away. You might have planned that exit strategy, but you're not going to take it. Ever.

And yeah, you can give up. That has nothing to do with "living for your dreams" ... frankly I think "living for your dreams" encourages people to give up. They're not successful, so it must be their fault. There must be something they're not doing. But if you realize that most of it is just chance and persistence, the only thing you can do if you want to succeed is to keep trying and to keep trying a lot. It's like the lottery, the more tickets you have the more likely you are to win. It's also like the lottery, in that you're not really likely to win, but dreamers are compulsive gamblers.

So expect failure. Make sure you've got a landing platform. Make sure you've got a life. Don't give up, but don't be wedded to the idea of winning, either.

The Ovaries are coming! The Ovaries are coming!

Carol Burnett once described labor as follows: "Grab your bottom lip and pull it over your head."

I have actively considered becoming anorexic, not because I want to be skinny, lethargic, unhealthy and have my family fawn over me constantly, showering me with steak and chocolate (...actually that last part doesn't sound so bad) but because one diagnostic criteria is, your period stops. Your body becomes so unhappy with you, it begins shutting down critical functions, kind of like car manufacturers going on strike until they get health benefits and a pension. I guess your body wants to blackmail you back into compliance. The problem is that your period has stopped.

  It's basically the Ransom of Red Chief on a biological scale.

Men joke about it. "Never trust anything that can bleed for five days and not die," "she's on the rag", so on, so forth. One section of the totally awesome first Council Wars book, There Will Be Dragons (It's silly as all get out, but how many books do YOU know contain a literal dragon catapult AND Sluggy Freelance's Bun Bun?) uses period humor, where the previously artificially sterile women suddenly have periods en masse and all think they are dying. And while this may seem very fucking funny to a guy, let me point out that the female human body contains a function where your first reaction is OH FUCK I AM GOING TO DIE. 

People wonder why thirteen year old girls are so flighty and brain-dead. My proposal is, about two weeks before/after their thirteenth birthday they looked down and saw a great deal of blood staining their clothing and, naturally, screamed because they are fucking bleeding out of an orfice, and humans are trained from birth to consider sudden blood out of any biological opening as a bad thing. Naturally these terrified shreeks bring either Daddy or Mommy, who (our child knows) will sweep them into their arms, run downstairs without stopping for coffee and take them to the ER, where a CT scan will show the source of the bleeding.

So imagine our little girl's horror when Daddy backs out of the room veeeeeeery slooooooooooowly and Mommy starts laughing and cheering and discussing ways to celebrate this huge step via a large dinner. There is much cheering, and Daddy may be sent to get a stuffed bear and Baby's First Maxi Pads while Mommy shows her daughter how to rinse blood out of panties (always use cold water, kids). Our heroine here realizes one of nature's fundamental truths: Her parents want her to die. There could be no other possible reason for such celebratory behavior. They will probably put her ashes into the stuffed bear, or worse, into the maxi pads.

Then the truth hits her. This is normal. Mom does it to. This is how we get babies to continue the cycle of life. And then the cramps hit her, and she realizes she would rather cut these organs out of her stomach with a blunt button than she would ever have children, if it means she's going to feel like this more than once. And when the tears are dried, the cramps are over, and the maxi pads applied, our little girl finally sees reality clearly. She sees what life wants to do with her. She sees a future of rigorous sanity punctuated by a period of red, a celebration of womanhood preformed by women in too much pain to stand upright, and our heroine says, "Fuck it and pass me the hair gel."

Also, I'd like to address something that feminists keep bringing up. Now, I do consider myself slightly feministic, in a Susan B. Anthony kind of way. Equality, ya know? And yeah, I do the whole when-I-have-a-brand-new-hair-do thing, because there are times when I do like being girly. But there are a group of women who insist that the reason women consider their periods a curse is because the Patriarchy says it is. Which leads me to believe that the misogynist accusation that all feminists are transsexuals is correct. These women have obviously never had a period in their life and experienced the joy of severe cramps, or putting on your favorite off-white jeans and then looking down halfway through your workday, or trying to explain to a humorless male boss that your abs hurt so much you are dry heaving and you need to go home and lay down. It is not a gift, it is not the moon's blessing, I am not going to fucking paint with my menstal blood what the hell!?! I am going to go lay down with tylenol and a heating pad and a tub of chocolate ice cream and try to pretend that I am not bleeding uncontrollably into cotton batting. There is really only one picture that can fully portray what a period makes me feel like and this is it:

The chestbuster is my uterus.