Cerulean Sins--Chapter 35

 So. Last chapter ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL HAPPENED. How does this chapter start?

THEY’D ONLY BEEN following me for one day, as far as I knew, so why such determination to find out why? One: It’s usually better to know than not to know when people are following you, and two: I was in a truly foul mood.

With Laurel K. Hamilton's subconscious telling her that her writing sucks.Why do I say this? If a character is justifying their moves to themselves ONSCREEN? This is your brain's way of shooting off road flares and screaming HEY STUPID THE ROAD UP HERE IS OUT. Anita does not have to justify squishing unknown stalkers to me. If she feels she does, that means she knows there's something wrong with her next move.

Also: she's committing violence because she's in a bad mood. What?

And then she goes off on how she doesn't know what to do about Asher. Uh, Anita? Stalkers? Car crash? Girl bonding? Can we forget about your love life for a few paragraphs and focus on the fake car crash you're about to do?

And speaking of that, somehow this now involves road blocks and professional drivers, which somehow qualifies Claudia and disqualifies Anita without any more information than "Anita can't drive" being provided. Whatever. Car crash happens, Anita has guilt trip, Bad guys start car and drive off BECAUSE:

They must have smelled a  .  .  . rat.

Dear Laurel K. Hamilton:

Also: Sookie Stackhouse is a flaming idiot, but at least Charlene Harris explains why her vampires like puns.

So basically they just wrecked a couple cars for absolutely nothing and could have gone charging out with the guns anyway. Which is exactly what they do, and it is less badly described and more "not described at all".

Laurel K. Hamilton. Cannot figure out how to summerize her main character walking from one side of the room to the other. Summerizes the first action scene to not involve sex since this book began.

I hate this book.

Anita tries to bad-ass the strangers into submission, and decides that the fact that they won't put their hands up means that backup is on its way. Okay, fair enough. As long as you don't summerize that fight scene we'll be okay. Except the fight scene doesn't happen, the guys finally put their hands up, and we get a play by play explination of how to roll down a manual window.

Because we absolutely needed to know this.

So Anita lets them know that she spotted her, and they let her know that they know that somebody in her car turned furry (how? I mean, they were swerving all over the road, but that was less because of fur and more because of Anita's libido)

Also: Laurel K. Hamilton believes that only Americans can swear. I. Shit. You. Not:

The blond said, “yes,” the other one said, “Crystal fucking clear.” Oh, yeah, he was American, only we have that poetic turn of phrase.

And then finally, finally, FINALLY, AFTER TWO FUCKING BOOKS WORTH OF NONSENSE, we get a taste of the old Anita. Somebody (probably these dude's backup) calls the cops who come, sirens blazing. Everybody curses, the foul mouthed American says "If you put your guns away we'll all pretend this never happened" and Anita rediscovers what a backbone is:

I smiled back, and his smile wilted because I looked too damned pleased. I wasn’t smooth at digging my badge out of my pocket yet, not one-handed anyway, but I managed. I flashed the metallic star in its little case. “Federal marshal, asshole. Keep your hands where we can see them until the nice policemen arrive.”

You're probably misusing that thing, Anita, but Haymitch still approves.

The cops arrive and are being uber careful. Given that LKH has Anita at almost-more-famous-than-Elvis status and EVERY cop in St. Louis has to know who she is, if for no other reason than to hide the evidence collecting kits, I have no idea why it takes a lot of screaming from Anita to get the cops to stop trying to take guns away from everybody, or why the first responders to the Circus do not by default include Zerbowski, but it happens. Anita gloats over the guys in the car, who look very very Humble Tigger at the moment, and the chapter ends with Anita being smug.

Well. Something kind of happened this chapter, if you squint at it side--

---wait.

Was that the doorbell? Is that the mail?

 Oh my goodness. It is the mail. And a package. Just for me.  I wonder what this could be?

Yep. See you tomorrow, kids.

Book Bitch: Mission Earth One

Okay, gang. OBLIGATORY PLUGS FIRST.

Silver Bullet is still cheap. As in free. You'll also notice I've mixed things up a little bit. I'm playing with Amazon's options (and getting really frustrated with them, but they're still the best platform I've used so far) and have split off one of the stories in Silver Bullet into it's own thing. It will be free today and tomorrow. You've probably already read it, so I'm not going to go OMG GO GET IT, but if you wanted to have a copy knock around on your Kindle for a while, it'd probably help me out.

And if you don't have it, definately go get Silver Bullet, because Blue Ghosts comes out in October and it picks right up where it left off. Can you follow the story without it? Probably. But you might want to introduce yourselves pronto.

(And if you have any questions about what I'm doing, comment. I like comments. I like comments a lot. Also? I hate begging, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review the books if you've read them. Preferably on Amazon, but anywhere would be nice. Please guys. It'd help a lot.)

Okay, so today? We get to watch Soltan Gris fail at everything.

Not all that different. Soltan has been failing at everything since this book started, but he's been doing so in a painfully obvious way that accomplishes nothing for us, the readers forced to watch him fail instead of watch Jettero Heller be awesome. Because yes, he is a Mary Sue and horrifically boring, BUT AT LEAST HE ISN'T A RACIST, SEXIST SHIT LIKE SOLTAN. And the only thing worse than watching a Mary Sue be Mary-Sue-ly awesome? Is watching a Mary Sue fail.

So what happens next???

Soltan makes it back to the tug (next chapter:) and has another arguement with the computer, which he fails at. Also, we get to overhear Hubbard's homophobia as a kid is told to go seduce someone they hate so that the narrator gets the news. Isn't it wonderful how disgusting that is once gender is removed?

Next Chapter:

JETTERO HELLER HUMILIATES SOLTAN GRIS.

See, as Soltan has reminded us six billion times in the last four days, HE HAS NO MONEY. And as per Fleet tradition, someone with a new promotion has to take all his buddies out to the nearest nightclub and pay for it. And Jet is calling in this debit right now.

He, the Countess Krak (and I can no longer pretend this is not another name for the Countess's ass. Thanks, Ron) and Jettero's beautiful famous sister, Hightee Heller (OH MY GOD. A WOMAN WITH A NICE NAME. STOP THE PRESSES) all go to a nightclub where you have to preform in public, otherwise they double the bill.

These guys are on a secret mission to Earth that should have left ages ago, and Soltan Gris allows his prisoner Jet, the Countess, who is also his prisoner, and the sister that is more famous than Space Elvis, to take him to a restaurant HE CANNOT AFFORD TO GO TO, where they will all have to preform in public.

He is suffering. It is beautiful. There is a running list of exactly how expensive all the things they are buying are, Soltan is whimpering at how much things are. And then the lights flash! SOLTAN GRIS HAS TO PREFORM IN PUBLIC.

HE DOES BIRD CALLS! WHISTLING BIRD CALLS. AND FAILS AT IT, HARD. YES!!! I AM ENJOYING THE VICARIOUS SUFFERING OF L. RON HUBBARD'S GUILTY SUBCONSIOUS AND I DO NOT CARE!

And then! Soltan notices that there are cameras here. And if any member of the table does something exceptional, they will be on the news and everyone will know that Jet has not left Voltan for Earth, yet. Because they are still to go to Earth and help us be Rescued From Ourselves, children. And as Hubbard has NAILED INTO OUR HEADS, the three most exceptional people in all the universe are sitting at this very table!

First! Jet and the Countess preform the Manco Mancho (STOP NAMING THINGS, RON!) and then the Countess does magic tricks. And then Hightee Heller preforms, and it's like Taylor Swift just dropped into your local bar for a drink and decided to do a set with Uncle Hal's garage band just for giggles.

AND THEN SOLTAN SEES THE BILL! AND SHOOTS OUT THE LIGHTS! BECAUSE HE CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY! And there is PANDAMONIUM, loyal blog-readers. PANDAMONIUM, as people fling their bodies before Hightee Heller's gentle form, willing to die to save her from RANDOM BULLETS, and all four escape the nightclub with their lives intact, and their names gaurenteed a spot in tonight's headline news, BECAUSE SOMEONE (this being Soltan) SHOT AT HIGHTEE HELLER. WHILE SHE WAS PREFORMING IN A NIGHTCLUB WITH UNCLE HAL'S GARAGE BAND.

And then Jet reveals that he'd paid the bill himself, because he knew the whole fucking time, Soltan had no money.

The whole mission has been blown for absolutely nada.

Oh, Hubbard's going to ruin all this tomorrow, and I don't care. For right now Soltan Gris suffered as I have suffered, and the whole world is rainbows, my loyal blog-readers. FUCKING RAINBOWS.


TOMORROW: Soltan finds out why he's been so sick to his stomach lately. And no, sadly. It is not M-preg.

Info hub for Sci-fi Book of Mystery+COVER!!!

Okay, I'm going to be spreading a lot of stuff around for the next couple of days, and it's all going to come back here. So first...

Cover art is done! Version with title will be posted on the first, and OMG It looks so kickass. I wish it weren't mine, so I wouldn't feel bad for thinking it looks good (or so that I could read this story without wanting to punt it across the room. Editing is clean, but I stopped enjoying it about two read-throughs ago)

Editing is done! WHOO! FREAKING! WHOO! It is probably not good enough, as I am on my lonesome with this, but it is nice to finally read through and go ten pages without needing to change something. THIS IS NOT BOASTING. This is feeling as if the train has finally stopped moving and I can get off now.

SO. INFO. Which ya'll are probably tired of hearing about!

We (being me) will now be working on the coding for the book. I will post a 4000+ word sample, the finished, titled cover and the title (of course) on September 1st. (LABOR DAY! IEEEEE!)

The book will go live on or around 9/7.

Also on 9/7, I will post a coupon code set up for the following day, Saturday 9/8. It will let ya'll get the Sci-Fi Book of Mystery for free. As I said earlier, you'll need a Smashwords account to make it work. If you don't have one already, go there, sign up, it's just like getting an Amazon account except they're a lot friendlier to authors and they only sell books.

The coupon will ONLY work for the 8th. First, because I am poor and I do need money. Second, because Amazon has bizzare policies about offering stuff for free on other sites and I'd like to duck dealing with that as long as I can.

Now, you don't have to get the book from Smashwords. It will be avaliable through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iBooks, a couple other places about a week or so after it goes live on Smashwords. But the coupon won't work on those sites.

So if you remember nothing else from this post, remember: Saturday the 8th, Smashwords, coupon code, free book.

ALSO-ALSO! If you bought and read Silver Bullet, and liked the first story, there's a sample of the next Exiles story in the Sci-Fi book of mystery. Another reason to check it out!

Alright. I'm done. It's off to work I go...

Kitty wars and pickle juice

At this point Chloe has made three incursions into Sofa territory. We have managed to turn her back each time, but our resolve is waning. It's all in those big eyes of hers. This war is doooooomed.

I am having so much freaking fun with this sci-fi story it is unbelievable. Originally I intended to keep it as a once off, but there are a lot of places I could take this. I kind of love this stuff, you know. Yes, dear friends, I am totally obsessed. ETA is still set for the first two weeks of September. Title and sample will be posted here and on DA 9/1.

I spent most of the last two days doing family stuff. I love my family, but sometimes the drama gets to be a little much. Jamming writing time in between work and family the last couple of weeks has felt a little bit like stuffing pages into a dam to keep it from bursting. I guess it's like that for everybody. Except I've noticed most of my friends and family tend to go dancing or party or something, whereas I spend an evening working out imaginary political problems and trying to balance a character's past with their current (traumatizing) events. Which is fun, but it usually means my outward life is boring. People ask "What did you do this weekend" and I can't exactly say, "fight dragons with other dragons, a cannon and a highschooler's understanding of physics" without looking like I've gone completely cracked. So I say "write" and they invite me to go to a dive and get drunk on whiskey sours that taste like pickle juice (Note to all bars everywhere: DO NOT KEEP YOUR SWEET AND SOUR NEXT TO PICKLE JUICE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ANGELS AND BAR FLIES DO NOT DO THIS THING. THIS TASTES TERRIBLE. YOU HAVE NO IDEA.) And I have to think up a way to bow out without looking boring because Lowest Common Denominator DJs cannot compete with dragons, and I have better sweet and sour at home.


Also: this is 2012. AC/DC is great and all, but if I hear "All my exes live in Texas" one more time I will begin to scream and never stop. My city needs a pool hall. Not a bar with a shitty coin fed pool table that tilts due south.

F**king bugs.

So one thing we always had as kids were praying mantis. es. (Plural form of mantis?) I mean...there is not a cooler bug in the universe. They look like cats designed by aliens, act like cats (ever watched one clean itself?) and eat other bugs that we human things generally don't like. And the other day we found one. "We" being my brother's awesome if slightly ADD girlfriend. And then I found another one. We've never had more than one mantis at a time, so I figured hey, why not, you know? And as having two we-eat-everything-we-see-moving kind of creatures in the same container usually results in one eating the other, we separated them. Number one is as every mantis ought to be. See bug. Eat bug. But the other one... He just kind of ... sat there.

See, the fun of owning a mantis is care and feeding. Emphasis on "feeding". Yes. I am a mean and cold-hearted bitch. But it is cool. And when the mantis won't eat...you get kind of bored. And when you have two mantis...es...is...s...(seriously. Why have autocorrect if it won't spit out the damn word?) And you're bored, you decide to put them together to see what they'll do.

My brother's slightly ADD girlfriend? Put them together about ten minutes ago. As for what they'd do with each other...well...

...yeah.

Block Party!

Okay, so yesterday I mentioned that I finished my shawl, and that I needed to block it. And I have, it's done, and all I can say is OMG pins. God save us all from PINS.

And I am now going to give you the full story of CW's First Blocking Adventure.

The first thing you do when you block is decide that this is easy; you've done the hard part. You've knitted the garment. This, in book language, is like writing the first draft (aka "lace chart") editing it (knitting it) and then shipping it off to an agent according to all the submission guidelines. You think that the hard part is done. "All" that is left is the blocking.

I mean, Grandma used to do this. How hard can it be?

Serious lace knitters may want to break out the popcorn.

So first you gather your equiptment, which according to the internet are: Bedsheet, pins, sheet of plastic, pins, spray bottle, pins, wool wash or baby shampoo, pins, a place to do it, and while you're at it you might want to pick up another box of pins. You are (thank god) smart enough to know better than to do this in your little tiny trailer house because your bed is too small, you'll have to do this blocking thing on the  floor and whatever room you choose to do it in will be out of commission for the rest of the day. So when you go to Wal-mart to get items, you first stop at Maternal Unit's place of work and request the use of her king-sized bed for the day, because the king-sized bed should be more than enough room to block a shawl that is about four-and-a-half feet wide, unblocked.

If anyone reading this has ever blocked a piece of lace before, they are laughing at me.

Maternal unit gives Okay, so you go to walmart and buy one white cotton blanket, forgoing the pretty blue one only because you remember the words "color fast" in the internet instructions, one clear plastic shower curtain, one spritz bottle, one box of T-pins (40 count) and, instead of a second box of T-pins, about two hundred quilting pins. There is, of course, no way in hell you would EVER need that many pins, but hey, you might need to do this again and some of the pins might rust.

Pictured: shampoo, spritz bottle, small box of pins, large box of pins.

Not pictured: Sanity.

Like I said. Experianced lace knitters. Now laughing their ass off.

So you go home, strip bed of sheets, put down plastic sheet, put down cotton blanket, pin in place, and put lacy thing in sink for first washing.

And the learning begins.

Internet says to treat lace being washed very carefully. About five seconds after turning on the faucet I understood that "very carefully" means "treat as if any form of agitation will upset the capsule of radioactive nitro glycerine wrapped in the middle of the shawl". You might think this is an exaggeration. It is not. First, warm, wet wool + agitation=felt. Felt is not something you want to happen to your six-month project because this cannot be undone. Second, this six-month project is made out of relatively unstable handspun yarn that your mother usually refers to as "hair". And it has just absorbed about a gallon and a half of water that you cannot get back out. Because wringing? Agitation. Crumpling into ball and squeezing? Agitation. And the fiber? Gets very fragile when wet. So you now have a very fine lacy thing that is much more fragile now then when you put it in the sink, and is way, way, way heavier. 

So washing means fill sink with cold water. Submerge shawl. Spread baby shampoo over shawl and squeeze very, very gently (We're talking tomato-test squeeze) to get shampoo through everything. Drain sink, supporting shawl the entire time because you don't want fragile string getting sucked down the drain. Fill sink back up. Slosh shawl around carefully to get shampoo out. Drain sink. Realize there is still shampoo in shawl. Fill sink. Slosh. Drain. Realize there is still shampoo.  Repeat process until water is clean of suds, which is about three more fill-slosh-drain repeats than you want to preform.


Now you have to get heavy, wet, fragile shawl out of sink and to bed without breaking anything. You try pressing shawl against side of sink. You get about a cup full of water out. There is still a gallon or so in the shawl. Next best thing: lay towel out on floor, spread shawl on towel, roll it up and press on it. No wringing. We still cannot wring. Bodacious amounts of water will bleed through towel. Bring the whole thing, towel, shawl and all, to bed all rolled up like a wooly burrito. Lay on bed, unroll. breath sigh of releif because, hey, hard part's over, right?

Wet shawl about to be squished dry

Towel Burrito

Ha ha.

This shawl is a circle. And we want it to stay a circle, which means we have to pin it into a relatively round shape. Now, do any of you remember how hard it is to draw a perfectly round circle? Imagine having to draw that circle using six bazillion tiny dots. These dots being pins.

Logically, you'd think that the shawl, being a circle, would work kind of like a compass and you can use its natural diameter to trace the outline. This would be true, if washing it had not turned the shawl into elastic. You set the shawl on the bed, and because the first step is to pin the compass points, you grab one point of your pretty, pointy edging and pin it to the edge of the bed. You go to the other side, and start pulling. And keep pulling. And. Keep. Pulling. Until you find yourself holding about six inches of shawl that did not exist before you got it wet. Six inches that are much bigger than the king sized bed. Oh, well. Four more pins, and now you have the compass points pinned down, more or less where they ought to be.

Only you don't know about the "more or less" part. Yet.

Then you start pinning points in the middle. And then points in the middle of that. And then points in the middle of that, until you have touched the bottom of your forty-count T-pin pack and you are not nearly done pinning the points down. You realize that the pins, pins, pins internet list wasn't exaggerating at all, and your decision to buy a 200 pack instead of another 40 pack has probably just saved your bacon, if not your fingers.

 Not. exaggerating. At all.

And then you realize you've spent so much time pinning and are not even halfway done yet, the shawl is starting to dry out. So you spritz, and you keep pinning. You have one quarter all pinned up and you realize that the circle is looking more like well if you squint it kinda looks round. And that the line you're squinting at is made of about, oh, sixty pins (<---lowball estimate. Really low) that you now have to readjust. Spritz away, you've got another hundred and eighty pins to go.

 Mommy.

So to fast-forward through pins, pins, pins, bleeding, pins pins pins, you've decided that since you don't have to squint quite so hard to see the circle, you're done. You go sit in the living room because it will only take about an hour for the nice, light lacy thing to dry.

I mean, it's not like we've underestimated anything else, right?

Three hours later you realize that the "be careful about it drying out" and the guesstimates on drying times were made by people who live up north in the middle of the country. Not in Coastal South Texas, where the air has the same humidity and viscosity as a deep water sponge in an oceanic trench, and that all the panicked spritzing you did has probably extended drying time by a couple more hours. Which you will have to sit patiently through, because you promised you'd have it all cleaned up by the time your stepfather got home, and barring that, you'll need to stop him from throwing clothing on top of the pretty light lacy thing taking up most of his bed. And dear god in heaven, DON'T TOUCH THE PINS.

And then you go back and carefully, cautiously pull the first couple of pins out of the bed. Nothing explodes or unravels, you find no dropped stitches. You continue, growing more and more excited. When it's done you take it outside and take pictures of it, because you know what? All the work, all the sore hands and bleeding bits and the pins pins pins?

It is TOTALLY WORTH IT:

I rock. Just sayin'.

Joy!

Absolutely no one else will be impressed, but I've FINALLY completed my shawl.

This is a horrible picture, but I don't have a better option short of putting it down, and I don't want to put it down yet. It's off the needles. I made this. The only part of this I did not make is the actual wool fiber. I spun the yarn. I spun the yards and yards and yards of yarn this is made of. And then knitted it. And then made up the outer border when I decided the pattern was too small. And it's off the needles. It is no longer attached to the tiny pieces of plastic and bamboo (wooden circular needles FTW) that have sustained it through the last year or so. Off the needles. I need to mention this again. This moment is kind of how I imagine it would feel to have somebody tell you that they absolutely want to publish your book, because the damn thing is done. Well, done-ish. All the little sticky yarn bits are woven in and clipped off, and all that is left is blocking.

Ah. Blocking.

Have I mentioned lately that my house/trailer, while new and wonderful and not in the middle of a horribly big city, is really, really small?

Okay, lemme back up a bit. You know how when you wash a sweater, you need to lay it out on a towel so that when it dries, it still looks like a sweater? This is called "blocking". You set the shape and sometimes, size of a knitted piece of fabric by washing it carefully (DO. NOT. SCRUB. KNITTED. FIBER.) (EVER) (you get felt. Especially if it's a natural hair fiber like wool.) and then laying it out to dry. With a sweater the laying-out-to-dry part is not particularly difficult because the sweater washed is roughly the size you want the sweater to be dry.

Knitted lace has an added problem: it doesn't look like lace. Or rather, it looks like lace that has spent six months crumpled on the bottom of your closet. So when you block lace, you also have to stretch it. Also, you can make a large piece of lace even larger. You have to soak it in water, spread it out on a piece of absorbant pinable fabric that will stay in place, pin the knitting into place, and leave it alone to dry for several hours.

I have never blocked a piece of lace. My first shawl developed a hole in it before I had the room and bravery to risk getting it wet. This will be my first try. And according to research, my options for a large shawl are bed, floor, and floor with carpeting.

I have a small bed. And a cat who really likes the floor. Any attempts at blocking will take the room the blocking happens in out of comission until blocking is over. And I have NO IDEA Where this will happen.

But it will happen tomorrow! And I will report on it here! Because I have nowhere better to go.

(Yes. I totally finished it fifteen minutes ago. And I am tired. And my fingers hUUUUUUUUUrt. And I should be in bed. And I don't care.)

(also-also finished first draft of second novel, but that isn't all that important. nobody is ever going to read that.)

Confession Time!

I am a negative fan, and I enjoy every minute of it.

Yes. I read Twilight, the Left Behind series and Laurel K. Hamilton’s novels (Everything after Obsidian Butterfly, that is .Everything before rocked socks in a positive way) because they suck. I’ve watched Skyline multiple times, and you all know how I feel about that.

In fact, I someday hope I can have my own negative fan group so that we can discuss Why Authors Write Bad Things. Because I don’t understand the phenomenon—you’d think you’d, like, be able to tell—and the only way to educate myself on the subject is to, you know, actually do it.

However, something that positive fans say to we negative Nellys (“If you don’t like it, don’t read it!”) ignores a big part of why bad whatever fans are fans of their bad whatevers. It’s something we don’t want to admit, but it’s true none-the-less.

We do like it.

We spend fifteen dollars on an Amazon rental and a rifftrax so we can watch Clash of the Titans. We own every single episode of MST3K and we watch them with popcorn. We pay money to see the Room and watch Tommy Wiseau’s ass wander across his bedroom. We do it in groups and giggle to each other. We read Twilight, watch the movies, and then go congregate at Reasoning with Vampires or Mark Reads Twilight so that we can get greater enjoyment out of the experience. I love the Left Behind series because it is terrible,  because it is a horrifically wonderful mélange of my faith and total WTF-ness, and because how do you fuck up the Second Coming? And then write a goddamned sequel?!?

Maybe if I ever do get published and I do get my own group of bashers, it’ll change. I’ll want to crawl into my own little hole and whimper to myself about how horrible these people are. I will hate the people who get such enjoyment out of hating my work. But I can’t imagine forgetting my own enjoyment of the crack so thoroughly.

It’s not personal. If anything, it’s the opposite of hating the author/ writer/director. Why should we hate you? You provided the crack! Part of me wants to snuggle S. Meyer for kindly providing the world with Breaking Dawn, Nina Bangs for giving me Eternal Prey, and the special effects team that gave us Skyline, the movie so bad it attempts seppuku halfway through its runtime.  Hamilton has provided weeks of quality entertainment in her first ten books; she has provided years of crack with everything else she’s written, and you know what? It’s still good storytelling. It’s just…kinda lost in there. You know. Under the porn. (It’s porn. If your main character has a male harem whose only purpose is to get her preggers, we are not pretending it isn’t porn anymore)

Yes, there are people who genuinely hate the authors…but you know what? They don’t read them anymore. I refer to my not-so –infrequent trips back to LKH’s section of the bookstore as “falling off the wagon” for a reason. I know those books are not good for me. I know I will hate myself in the morning. I know the plot will not be what I want, that the tantalizing hints of good storytelling will never pay off…but you know what? This is a series where sex with the MC is that series’ sonic screwdriver. It is the kind of comedy gold you cannot make up unless you are totally and absolutely serious about it, and that makes it fucking priceless.

When I have issues with a crack writer, it’s not about their writing. It’s about their behavior IRL, and there are a lot of fantastic authors that I have equally strong issues with because as soon as you get them away from the typewriter they kind of turn into an ass. If a writer can produce something uniformly awful and then be a good sport about it? I will not only buy the book, I will buy you dinner.

Everybody wants to be taken seriously. To be the great (insert whatever here). Everybody wants to get nominated for an academy award with their first movie (DISTRIC 9 SHOULD HAVE WON. IT SHOULD HAVE WON ALL THE THINGS. That’s all I’ll say on the subject.) or get a Pulitzer, or at least a Hugo, for their first work. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. Sometimes the public looks at your baby and goes…uh, really? You’re serious about this? And they either like it, hate it, or break out the popcorn and call the guys from MST3K, because this is gonna be a party, man.

And you know, if I had a choice—and you really never do—I’d rather have people love my books because they suck than ignore them because they’re…meh, almost good enough. I’d love to sit on the couch with hypothetical fans and discuss just how crazy that was and why I should never. Do. That. Again. (Except for the right group I totally should. Crack is almost as hard to find as good books)  I’d rather be the Rocky Horror Picture Show or the next Amanda McKittrick Ros than I would be just good enough.  It may not look like it from the outside, but people like me love Eye of Argon, and the Gor novels (shudder. The Gor novels) and The Aztec Mummy Vs. The Robot, and those old 1950s rocket man shorts. Our lives would be incomplete if we could not elect to tear one off with Asylum pictures like Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus.

We are the love-to-haters, the negative fans, and you will get your books back when you peel them out of our cold, dead fingers.

Movie Bitch: Megamind

I. love. this. movie.

I just wanted to get that out of the way. It is not awesome like Fight Club, or Oh-Fuck-This-Is-My-Head-getoutgetoutgetout like Black Swan. It is the sweet, gooey center of loveyness that I must watch at least one more time for my life to be complete. And it will never be complete because I can always watch it again. :D

And it's weird, because I should hate it. Will Ferrel is not quite movie Kryptonite like Tom Cruise is for me, but I have NEVER (up till now) seen a movie with him in a starring role that I actually like. I don't like him. I don't like his face, his mannerisms or his acting style, mostly because it's based almost entirely on Embarisment Squick and Stupid. And yet here? I want to take Megamind home and snuggle him for a while. Everything in it is perfect. The voice acting, the character design (why is the fish wearing a gorilla suit?) the plot, the character arcs, and the little details that make everything in it come alive. It's like taking the back off a clock and finding all the little gears that fit together. I just want to watch them tick.

(Seriously. Why is the fish in the gorilla suit?)

We open with a CGI sunset, and Megamind is falling to his death. I am not hot on this opening because, personally? I don't think it's that necessary. Basically Metro-Man=Superman, Megamind=Alien!Lex Luthor. Metro-Man got the privledged upbringing of being handsome and rich, Megamind landed in prison from day one and nobody ever really gave him a chance. He became "evil" because he wasn't any good at being good, and he's going to spend the rest of his life in time out in the corner, he might as well get credit for it. He also has a minion named Minion. Who is a fish. And he spends the majority of the movie wearing a robotic gorilla suit.

I cannot figure this out.

So we open with Megamind escaping from jail so he can crash Metro-man's celebratory museam opening by kidnapping his reporter friend Lois Lane Roxanne Richie, voiced by Tina Faye. She gives the most sickeningly sweet intro I have ever heard, and her cameraman Hal makes fun of it until he realizes that Roxanne wrote it herself. Then he starts buttering her up and flirting with her.

Hal is probably the best written character in the entire movie, but I'll get on to him later.

Then Roxanne gets kidnapped by Minion (Fish. In. Gorilla. Suit.) and held captive by Megamind. And the banter between them is that trade-marked, "We're going to be screwing by the end of this movie" stuff. And yet it does not annoy me, because it works perfectly with these characters. Megamind is a kid having fun because he's bored, Roxanne knows she's not in any danger at all, and Metro man kind of acts...bored with the whole thing.

Also, Megamind mispronounces a lot of words. Metro City becomes MeTROSity. Revenge=ReVANGE. Spider=Spiey-der (I cannot spell the mispronounciation phonetically, just take my word for it). It is the most brilliant character touch I've ever seen (or heard) and it was all Will Ferral. Because, guys? I do that. All. The. Time. I read words and never have to say them, so they become their own sweet little critters in my head and when they come out it's all weird. It's one of those subconsious things, like Lonnigan's Limp, that tells you more about the character in two seconds than you'd learn in six hours. It means Megamind reads a lot, and is smart, but he doesn't talk a lot, which implies that he doesn't get out and socialize a lot. There is a scene later on in the movie where Roxanne says "You don't get out much, do you," and because you already know this, you're like "NO DUH!!!"

It's great.

So instead of getting rescued, Roxanne watches Megamind blow up Metro Man. And Megamind just kind of stands there, looking at the skeletal body that flew through the window attached to Metro Man's cape, and you can totally see it going through his eyes: Oh shit. Now what do I do?

After a montage showing him try and fail to occupy himself--'case the whole point of being the bad guy was him getting his butt kicked, for him as well as everybody else--he decides to re-create Metro Man, and in the process disguises himself as a regular guy and falls in love with Roxanne. One result of this? he winds up picking Hal as the new hero, Titan.

And this is why I heart Hal.

This movie has already ditched its hero figure, so the struggle is not the archetypical Good Vs. Evil. In fact, I think the movie is saying that the archetypical Evil is not really evil. It's basically Yang-Interpreted-As-Evil-Because-We've-Got-Nowhere-Else-To-Put-It vs. HEY STUPID THIS IS WHAT EVIL REALLY LOOKS LIKE.

Hal is a nerd and he likes Roxanne. And I don't mean likes as in "Crush" I mean likes as in "Edward Cullen". He's one more news broadcast away from creeping into Roxie's bedroom and watching her sleep. He is creepy. You get the sense something is "off" about him for his first scene. His second scene, you realize that if he were real, you'd never want to see him again. I remember thinking, "what are they doing with this guy?" because I couldn't figure out why he was there.

Then Megamind gave him powers and I got it. Because this dude? Not a hero. The only reason he was not a bad guy pre-power is, it's too much work. And it's hilarious watching the powered-up Hal hit on Roxanne, because it's basically what non-powered up Hal did. Evil is small minded, self-centered and apathetic, and it only acts in its own best interest, which oddly enough (for the purposes of this movie, anyway) means not fighting. There is a hilarious scene where Titan-Hal tells Megamind "Hey, we should team up", and he gets all offended, "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE GOOD GUY", and then has to actually provoke Hal into the fight, which totally backfires because now Hal wants to kill Megamind and destroy the city, because hey, now he can and it isn't much work with all these cool powers and all.

Also, when Titan-Hal burns his name into the city, he spells it Tighten.

So Megamind and Roxanne go off to find Metro Man's hidden fortress, which turns out to be their old school house, because they need to find out Titan's weakness, and the copper that defeated Metro Man ain't workin' here, man. Well, they don't find Metro Man's weakness. Instead, they find Metro Man. He faked his death. Sorry. The whole, super-hero thing got boring.

Roxanne gets it. Megamind, you can kinda see the gears in his head go "sproing".

And yes, Megamind becomes the good guy, gets the girl, Hal goes to jail and goes back to being powerless and creepy, and the movie ends in a burst of pretty color that lasts however long it takes for me to find the remote and start the movie all over again.

The writing is so awesome, so very, very, very awesome, that I think anybody who wants to write hero/villian stuff ought to take a look at it. Also: PROACTIVE PROTAGONIST. Even if 99.99999% of the time, it backfires on him, Megamind is the first person to move in the story. He's also reactive (this is one of the defining traits of an archetypical hero protagonist. They are by definition reactive) but he's reacting to his own dumb choices. It's a "I fucked up. I fix it" kind of story. Also-also, villian who is co-dependant on the hero. OMG I just realized this myself, and I am suddenly very very happy and IDK quite why.

I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone with a pulse.

Movie Bitch: Fight Club

Sometimes whether or not you like a movie is determined by how you feel about it.

For example, the most disappointing movies I've seen are usually ones that I got kind of excited about. Star Wars prequels. Dolan's Cadillac. Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Why in the name of God did they have to shoehorn a religious plot into a movie that already had a fucking religious plot? Explain, movie! Explain!)

On the other hand, I went to see District 9 and expected a movie other than what I got. Generic Bruce Willis Movie without Bruce Willis was the gist of it. That was not what I got. Black Swan, I expected Single White Female meets Center Stage (I had a dance movie phase. Shoot me.) and got, well, Black Swan. A glorious, beautiful mind-fuck of a movie with ballet shoes on top.

Fight Club, I expected what I was marketed. Guy movie. Beat-em-up (this is there), fuck the establishment (this is there) guns and explosions and sex (there, there and there) and absolutely nothing that could appeal to anyone with two X chromasomes. Rocky, basically. Only illicit.

So after sitting through the completely rocking opening song, and the this-is-what-I-expected intro scene (Tyler Durden sticking a gun in the unnamed narrator's mouth) I find myself sitting, mouth wide open, eyes wide, mind completely blown, when the next scene chronicles a man's journey into support group tourism.

Trying to explain what watching this is like is roughly similar to trying to explain what Niagra Falls is like by bringing home part of the water in a teacup. The Narrator, whose name is never given, has insomnia complicated by narcolepsy (he falls asleep and wakes up in strange places) and his doctor refuses to give him sleeping pills.

I want to point one thing out: The whole movie could have been avoided if this doctor had pulled the stick out of his ass and given Narrator sleeping pills. It might still have happened, but further down the road and probably not in the same way. Instead Dr. Sarcastic Asshole tells Narrator to go drop by a support group for testicular cancer to see "real pain". During which Narrator discovers that if he goes to the support group and cries, he can sleep at night. So he starts going to a different support group every night: cancer, parasites, blood diseases.

I grew up in a world where AA and NA meetings were a daily occurrence and roughly as important as church. My mind. was. blown. Support group tourism.

One thing that the movie didn't seem to make entirely clear, that the book did (yes. I have bought and read the book already) is that Narrator is not having some kind of contact sorrow high. Rather he's allowing himself to realize that his life is pretty much a hopeless mess, and thus giving up hope and sobbing. Same thing everyone else is doing, except they're crying because they have testicular cancer and he's crying because he has a pulse.

Another faker upsets the applecart, a woman named Marla Singer, they split up the days, and ... this is never exactly resolved. The book explains why Marla's presence has such a deep effect on Narrator (and Tyler Durden) but the movie just kind of ... goes with it?

I realized at the "Punch me as hard as you can" scene that this movie was marketed as a testosterone-fuled violent beat-em-up because the marketers had no idea what else to do with it. Realize for just one second that actually selling a story is much harder than writing a story. When you tell a story, hell, you just tell the story and do whatever it takes to make it work. When you sell a story you have to summarize it in a way that is brief, interesting, and coherent. Sometimes, you can do this really well. Sometimes you have to forget what your story is really about, pick the two or three elements that can most easily summarize themselves and then attempt to wing it without actually lying. Selling a story and telling a good story have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and the resulting confusion is one reason why I have never seen this movie before.

After Narrator moves into Tyler Durden's world, things go from "Gee, this is a weird movie" to "What." really quickly. About the time they make soap (from liposuction leftovers, which they then sell back to the women who had lipo to begin with) I realized we were about to have a very strong shift in tone, and I was pretty much right. I also began to realize that this movie has pretty much created internet culture, and is probably the reason why Anon. and trolls are the lovable god-kill-it-with-fire-now-please creatures they are today.

The only "disappointing" thing is, I pretty much knew that Tyler Durden and the Narrator were one person with MPD really, really quickly. I think I must have read something about the movie and then forgotten all about it. That said, though, it almost made the movie more enjoyable, which IMHO is a sign of good writing. Anybody can pull a left-feild plot-line out of their ass. Half of "Anybody" can probably make it work. It takes a writer of incredible skill to make the movie just as good once the plot twist is known.

Also, this is usually the plot twist I most hate. But what made the "it's all in your head" plot work in Fight Club and fail in just about every other book and/or movie I've seen it in is, it wasn't a last-minute left-field twist. Like how in Vanilla Sky (Which, BTW, the Narrator should have watched to cure insomnia) you find out at the last minute that Tom Cruise is in cryo and this is all a dream? Imagine how it might have been if this happened twenty minutes away from the end, and in the last twenty minutes Tom Cruise had to deal with the consequences of choosing to wake up and live in an unknown future. It works in Fight Club because it sets up the finale, and sets up a nightmarish question that it doesn't (quite) answer. How do you fight part of yourself that you not only can't control or even access, but part that is much, much smarter and far more amoral? At this point I was already pretty wigged out. This created so many levels of untold creepyness that I probably would have screamed if I could have stopped watching for a couple of seconds.

The Narrator tries turning himself in to the cops (Which Tyler has already countered) shutting down the movement that grew out of Fight Club (Countered!) and finally shooting himself in the head. Which...kind of works. Except the Narrator survives by blowing out his own cheek. Honestly, the only reason this made any kind of sense to me is, one of my Dad's favorite movies is The Fisher King, and he once spent several hours explaining what abreaction is (the moment the fragments of personality become aware of each other and recombine. Usually a violent and uncomfortable moment) and how it applies to people with MPD. This is also why the many (many. Many) scenes of Narrator grousing about listening to Tyler and Marla have sex made sense, and why I had no trouble believing that Narrator thought he and Tyler were in two different rooms when he was not. Co-consciousness is not completely unheard of (I think), and if you're in deep denial about having MPD, well, you created a whole 'nother person in your head. Making a trip to the basement when you didn't really go isn't that hard.

So yes. I have finally seen one of the great classics of cinema. And read a great piece of literature (whose writing style drives me batty, but that's just me). And this post is little more than me gushing about discovering a new favorite movie for the first time.

So what? It was awesome.

Work, or: How my boss got me drunk on a Friday.

So the first thing you learn in a customer-service based job is that you no longer have a life. This is because normal human beings have things called "Weekends" and "Holidays", and they like to use these days to do things like shop and go to restaurants because when their free time is over, they will go home and die. So you are scheduled to work when all of your friends and family are doing the beach thing, or planning their celebratory dinner at the restaurant right next to yours. And on your days off, nothing is open, because you get the slow days off. The days when it is not cost effective to be open. The days when all your competition are also closed down and you have to stay at home and get caught up on your movies.

You can adapt around this. Obviously going to that hot new restaurant is out. But, as you have been hearing stories about this restaurant for months now, and your only reason for going would be to attend the train wreck in progress (As of right now, the disaster indicators are paying waitstaff in excess of $600 a week, plans to be open seven days a week from eight till late, HUGE, HUGE floor, owner with no plans of working kitchen/floor duties--as indicated by the presence of three kids under five--and total inability to get appetizers out during free appetizer night. Closing-Restaurant-gossip rocks) this is not a huge loss from your life. HOWEVER, this does leave you relatively unprepaired for the unmigitated fluster-cluck of holiday service.

Which brings us to mother's day. Originally created to celebrate the womb that birthed us and the very real human being in charge of said womb, and currently used to sell cards, flowers and very expensive dinners to justify ignoring Mom the rest of the year. Our restaurant has declined to be open tonight (THANK. GOD.) and did brunch instead.

The lunch crowd is not an improvement. Oh, we survived. Don't get me wrong. And aside from a long adrenaline rush and aching legs, there was nothing notable about it. No, it was the days leading up to it that sucked.

The fluster cluck began three days ago. Thursday. Our slow day. Not at all slow. The phone rings at four oh-two (we open at 5 pm. The idea time for the phone to ring IMHO is 4:30. This means tables. 4:02 means OH FUCK WHO IS ON CALL why are they not calling WE ARE GOING TO DIE). It is answered cautiously.

"Are you doing anything special for Mother's Day?"

This confuses me. First of all, my restaurant is not exactly Joe's Crab Shack. There are several dishes that are worth crawling over hot coals for, and if you like wine, we have some pretty incredible selections. We can also make sake do things that sake cannot normally do (this gets around our lack of liquor license). But I assume that Mother has already been here and would like something super extra to jump up her life.

"We're running brunch out of our (outdoor) stand."

Pause. "What about dinner?"

"We're going to be closed for dinner."

Pause. "Okay." Longer pause.

*Deep breath before customer can regroup* "We will be having Eggs Benedict (and trimmings) along with (lunchity items not normally served in outdoor stand) in addition to the outdoor stand menu." And I hope desperately that they have been to Stand and know the menu.

No such luck. "And that is?"

There are several jobs I need to be doing right now. Including getting both restaurant AND Stand ready for customers. "Several kinds of coffee, (Fancy fried doughnuts), (fancy french sandwich), (fancy bagel preparation) and adult beverages if you come after ten." Thank god for Texas blue laws. If I had to deal with mimosa orders at eight am I would probably start drinking them and throwing things at the customers.

"Can you give me more detail?"

I tried, twice, burning about five minutes each time. Now, normally you would think that five minutes on a customer call isn't bad. But that was ten minutes I needed, desperately, to do basic set up work, spent on people who would not show up on Sunday. You can always tell. The people who will show up start foaming at the mouth at the mention of the fancy doughnuts and the Eggs Benedict. The people who won't say "is that all you have?" and get you to  repeat yourself in the desperate hope that your litany will change.

Then a caller got our owner.

Our owner is one of those spectacular people that you underestimate on first meeting because she looks nice. And outside of the restaurant, she is nice. There is a whole shelf of books spread behind the celebrity booth (friends of Owner only. It doesn't matter if we are cramming two-tops into the bathroom seats, you have to ask her before anybody goes back there) and it is approximately 1/2 cookbooks, 1/2 Kurt Vonnegut. She also has a large collection of oil paintings of pills. There is a fascinating story attached and she will tell you the first chance she gets. But if you are inside the restaurant, god help you.

One of the more interesting floor shows is when one of Owner's friends shows up for dinner. Owner has special people who we are not allowed to take money from, ever. My mother is one of these people. I once poured a glass of Riesling that wasn't properly cooled, and gave it to Mom. She paid for it. Owner told me if I ever took money from my mother again, she'd fire me. She was only half joking. Unfortunately this particular friend is the kind of person who likes to give gifts and/or spend money on her friends. She delights in taking me and my mother out for pricey sushi and she popped my sake cherry long before I came to work for Owner. The last time she ate here I went back to Owner and said (wild eyed and a little desperately. This was not our first run-in) that Friend wanted to pay for her meal. After a few moments of deliberation, Owner told me to just charge for the alcohol, and only because she didn't know the third person Friend had brought with her (the second was, of course, my mother.)  I brought them their check, set it down gingerly, ran back to my post and waited for the invariable "Oh, HELL no."

Fortunately, Owner was right there. Force, meet object. I stayed out of the way.

So Owner is a little stubborn, and also a little volatile. Even more unfortunately for our "menu" caller, this has been a particularly bad day for her. Owner had the roof of our deck removed, no fuss, little mess, but the posts that are left still have old lumber stuck on them and don't look very nice. She wants a privacy fence added and the left over roof bits removed. Today the guy she hired for post removal has finished, four days over schedule (he charged by the day) and he added his broken chainsaw blades to the total because, in his words, "there were nails."

He also left the mess for her to clean up. Bad idea. I could hear her from the front desk.

At this point I am desperately running ice between our water cooler (AKA the Tin Can) and our ice machine. I'm not strong enough to carry the whole thing and I don't like getting Dishman to do it. He's got enough to do. Also, he's not here and if I wait for him, I will forget. So I miss the first part of this call. Then I hear her giving our hours and a brief summery of the menu.

And then I hear a pause. It is the kind of pause one feels when the tsunami crests and has begun to fall towards you. And then I hear "No. I am not going to read you the whole menu." Said very calmly.

I can hear just a little of the other caller.  Someone has shouted at Owner. I set down the ice and listen.

"I do not have the TIME to read you our whole menu. It is posted OUTSIDE, beside our door, and you can come by and read it anytime."

She can also make a wireless handset make noise when hung up. I was not entirely sure this was possible.

"The next time someone does this," She told me, "you say that we are busy." And she repeats the call, and her response, verbatim, to every regular she sees. Everyone laughs. All of our regulars know the Owner.

I have gotten very good at saying "we are busy". In the middle of Friday night I say this four or five times, juggling salad plates, lettuce and the handset. Number two says, "I know you are very busy, but," and continues to ask questions about our dress code. We've had millionaires come in flip flops. If you can pay for the food, there isn't one. 

Then I get the person who thinks we are an all you can eat buffet. And who refuses to be disabused of this, no matter how much I explain. "What do you mean you charge by the item?"

"You order at the shack. You pay at the shack. You sit at a free table and we call out your order."

Pause. "But...how much is it a person?"

I think I have finally hit the nadir of stupidity (not counting Train Wreck: The Restaurant) but this happens twice more. Then the night is over, and I must race around to get the Shack ready for Saturday, which I expect to be particularly grinding.

Owner has other ideas. She sits down with my brother, my mother, a canister of strawberry puree, several kinds of syrup and a bottle of champagne. She calls me over and hands me something with a strawberry stuck on the rim. It is official Champagne Tasting Time. I discover that strawberry puree is good, rose syrup and sugar cubes are better, and that she used too much orange petal water and turned the champagne into perfume. "We won't do that on Sunday," she says.

I then discover that restocking food is difficult, when done on three glasses of champagne. Also, someone has hidden our ham. This is not good. I need the ham. It is when I begin tearing strips off the destined-for-soup bone left over from last week that I realize, my beans-and-rice binge at four wore off about five thirty, and I just drank three champagne cocktails on an empty stomach. The ham bone will begin talking to me any minute. I guestimate that I have enough ham for five fancy sandwiches, locate enough mint for twenty iced teas or two sake mohitos, and decide to leave before the ham and I have a stimulating conversation.

I still don't know why people choose to do that recreationally.

Next morning I wake bright eyed and bushy tailed. Being drunk agrees with me, which is sad. I have pledged never to do it again. And having valiantly survived Mother's Day with only one more glass of Sangria to alleviate the crushing pain, and no more notable morons (other than Train Wreck: The Restaurant's owner coming by for a pep talk from Owner. Floor show was particularly good this time around) I can now curl up with Hamburger Helper and a piece of chocolate pie.

God bless capitalism. It's a great show.

Movie Bitch: Black Swan

So my brother and father sat down one evening to watch The Big Lebowski (or however you spell it). I have never seen it. I want to. I just, you know, never found the time. Anyway, at one point my brother turned to my Dad and said "Holy shit. This is the inside of your head."

Black Swan is the inside of mine.

Seriously. It's as if someone sat down, made a list of all the things I wanted, dreamed about and was afraid of and put them into a movie. A beautifully scored, wonderfully costumed, well acted, holy shit did that just happen kind of movie. Everything that has ever been important to me, with the notable exception of religion, appears in it. I was in tears when it ended. I'm not entirely sure why. Probably because it opened a couple of very old wounds along the way.

I also am very glad that when my Dad and I were planning on seeing it, we dodged into Tron: Legacy instead. I love it, but I do not think I could have watched it with my father.

First off, the film is marketed as a dance story, which it is, and as a fatal-attraction, Single White Female sort of story, which it is not. I expected to see Nina and Lily have a catfight halfway through the movie over who got the lead role, lots of backbiting and name caling, mean pranks and some dangerous, deadly finale during the opening night preformance. Which I got. Sort of. In reality, Black Swan is the story of someone haunted by themselves. It's also a story about Self Injury. Consider this your official trigger warning. Which, BTW, they ought to put on the DVD cover.