High Times

Just read an article in the Chicago Tribune that some of the drug manufacturers are getting worried because anti depressant sales are tanking. This is of great interest to me.

I am old. Not that old, but pretty fucking old. I have a copy of the ORIGINAL Whole Earth Catalog. There were many subsequent ones like the New Whole Earth Catalog, but I own one of the real ones. Most of it contains different ways of exploring how to get high. And I tried most of them. I am proud to say I have NEVER taken a hallucinogen. Really. Why would I have to? You have no idea how fucking bizarre my life has been. And, no, I am not one of those people who THINK their life has been bizarre. It has been and continues to be--at a much slower rate. My reproductive history alone, which most of you do not want to hear about, is far more bizarre and unbelievable than that of Nadya Suleiman. Trust me on this.

I take a prescription antidepressant among other things. It runs in my family. My mom and dad both took them. First Gin and then Vodka. I tried that, but I was a migraine person so it didn't work out for me so I ended up in doctor's offices instead of liquor stores. And, like there is a difference between Grey Goose and well vodka, there are differences in doctors and Rx's. One thing, did you not ever wonder why any prescription that has any kind of psycho active effect, whether it be a low dose paxil or a Lunesta or whatever, strongly advises you not to take St. John's Wort? How big a deal was it when GNC started to sell it? They would run out. Like chew on the bark of two willows and call me in the morning? So, it doesn't have to be a prescription, you know that, right?

One of the things mentioned was that magic mushrooms (Psilocybin or 'shrooms) was being investigated for the purpose of being used as an antidepressant. Like Carlos Castenada didn't already know that? Oh, man. I can't wait. I hope I live long enough to see psilocybin mushrooms on the shelf in the GNC store. Guess who will be waiting when the store opens?

Today's CTA: what makes you feel high?

blog endorsement

This is an unsolicited endorsement. There is a blog I discovered, I do not know how, called Fighting Monkey Press and I really like it for some reason. It is just the right mix of serious and profane I think.

Last Call

ANYMORE is free until midnight tonight
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007O47VIE


Here is the new cover I will put up tomorrow.

Despite all the confusion and misspelling in the links I have about 600 downloads so far and reached 42 in freebie "best seller" in Contemporary Fiction

Beating a dead horse.

Actually, I am still trying to ride the dead horse around the town. Someone read me the riot act for something I said, and I was right and they were wrong, so terribly wrong on so many levels, and I have to bring it up yet again. I don't know why just being right isn't satisfaction enough, since I sometimes, actually frequently, am right about some things. Although my statistics do grow less impressive as I age. I seem to age about a year for every day lately. Anyway:

Someone was saying how poor the earning scale was if you worked for a non-profit. This person was a bit older than ten, so I was kind of shocked. Although it is kind of sweet to learn there are still people in the world who have an innocent sort of belief in what people tell them. Illusions I think they call them. I had them once. I find it sad they are gone. I found it painful to give them up.

This is making the email rounds:

Think about these before you donate.
As you open your pockets to do a good thing and make yourself feel good, please keep these facts in mind:

The American Red Cross
President and CEO Marsha J. Evans salary for the year was $651,957 plus expenses

MARCH OF DIMES
It is called the March of Dimes because only a dime for every 1 dollar is given to the needy.


The United Way
President Brian Gallagher receives a $375,000 base salary along with numerous expense benefits.

UNICEF CEO Caryl M. Stern receives $1,200,000 per year (100k per
month) plus all expenses including a ROLLS ROYCE . Less than 5 cents of your
donated dollar goes to the cause.

GOODWILL CEO and owner Mark Curran profits $2.3million a year.
Goodwill is a very catchy name for his business.
You donate to his business and then he sells the items for PROFIT.
He pays nothing for his products and pays his workers minimum wage! Nice Guy.
$0.00 goes to help anyone!!! Stop giving to this man.

Instead give it to SALVATION ARMY.

GO "GREEN" AND PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE IT WILL DO SOME GOOD:·

The Salvation Army

Commissioner Todd Bassett receives a small salary of only $13,000 per
year (plus housing) for managing this $2 billion dollar organization. 96 percent of donated dollars go to the cause.

The American Legion
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!


The Veterans of Foreign Wars
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and
their families and youth!


The Disabled American Veterans
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!


The Military Order of Purple Hearts
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!


TheVietnam Veterans Association
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!


Please share this with everyone you can.

Calling the Girl in the Hat

Disable your comments? Can't I share my tears with you? That was amazing. Straight to the core of this heart. Someday I'll tell you the bicycle story. Or maybe I did. I think I told the Minnetonka story on Betsy's.

debut

First day freebie promo...good news. You just have to take my word for that.

paranoia or guilt

Am I being moderated out again? I wish I could enjoy my sins more.

Did I put this up already? It went up five points so lets consider it an update. And if you think this is boring, wait til anymore hits the lists. Zot.

Saturday, March 25, 2012

This is not a chart of my mood swings. If it were there would be more peaks and valleys. It is a graph of my blog hits for the week. It is nuts.

I posted about my two freebies and had the dates wrong for ANYMORE and the link wrong for THE MAZE. I post in a German forum, an Italian forum, a French forum, and I think I hit up the Spanish forum this time, so I made the mistakes international in scope.

Today was my daughter's thirtieth birthday and everyone had such a good time. It was so nice. Her little girl took some of her first steps and I got to see it. We blew bubbles in the driveway and even my dad said it was a great party. No small praise from such as he.

And now I am #92 on the Amazon best seller list of 100 for my genre. This is even with the mistakes I made. It is basically meaningless in the long run, kind of equates in my mind to having someone tell me my hair looks nice but what a great day. And while we were gone, Henry did not pee the carpet.

Louie said that Lisa called this morning and asked if the women from the courts had called to tell us we have been awarded custody of Billy. There is a terrible misunderstanding here somewhere, but still I feared coming home and finding him standing on the porch with a bag of clothes. This is a huge tragedy, but I might as well try to win the election as figure this one out. What that girl has done to people's lives is beyond horrible and when I think of the darling baby she was and how happy I was to hold her and take her for walks and watch her take a step, it is fucking heart breaking. And the one thing about getting this old is I know I cannot do a thing about it and I won't even try and I won't bother feeling guilt about it. I do feel anger toward the people that have made such a muck up of his life and thwarted all the good I did for him. But I look at Jupiter and Saturn and say "What's up with that?" and think this was a beautiful day.

Lull

I love how when these little storms die down, I am left out in the cold feeling abandoned.

I published ANYMORE, my swan song, but it is not approved yet. Probably tomorrow and then it will be free for three days. Someone told me how to preserve my indents so it looks real nice. It is very tame and I am pushing it as YA. Let's see if that makes a dif. This is totally due to a change in my meds. I think I will spend the rest of my days rotating my four works of art through Kindle Select , editing, putting on new covers, etc. I cannot imagine another story. Although near the end of this book I wanted to kill off the love interest and start a big mystery deal so you never know. I also have about five thousand words of Jenny Agnoli's first marriage which, she told her second husband, was very "dark."

Then, last night, I was thinking, I could always do a bunch of that 99cent erotica on smashwords and just not tell my family. I have a prob with the words kind of pouring out lately, so maybe I will utilize that. Fun.

Rejection letters

Feel bad when you query an agent about your most illustrious work? Sad they don't appreciate genius when they see it? Feel the whole world is being done a disservice because your wisdom and wit will not be available to them? Depressed and confused because you are beginning to realize your mission to change the history of civilization will never be fulfilled since some ignorant, misguided gate keeper doesn't fall in love with your masterpiece?

This is Hunter S. Thompson's idea for a rejection letter. He didn't actually send it. He gave it to Rolling Stone along with the piles of stuff people had send to him unsolicited. They admitted they used it a few times.


You worthless, acid-sucking piece of illiterate shit! Don’t ever send this kind of brain-damaged swill in here again. If I had the time, I’d come out there and drive a fucking wooden stake into your forehead. Why don’t you get a job, germ? Maybe delivering advertising handouts door to door, or taking tickets for a wax museum. You drab South Bend cocksuckers are all the same; like those dope-addled dingbats at the Rolling Stone office. I’d like to kill those bastards for sending me your piece … and I’d just as soon kill you, too. Jam this morbid drivel up your ass where your readership will better appreciate it.

Courtesy of Futility Closet via Wikimedia

From the Playhouse

I've already been read the White Paper on why it is not nice to "shit" in the Playhouse. So I have left the Playhouse for the moment to say words that I know are not "shit" in my own house, on my own soapbox (If you don't want to read them, you can leave.) , but judgmental people also seem to be kind of quick on the draw. At least in my experience.

The organ harvesting entity in our state is corporate. Here is part of their statement regarding employment.

" Our employees enjoy competitive salaries, a team environment and business-casual workplace attire. Qualified full-time staff receive full medical, dental, vision and life insurance benefits, as well as pension and tuition reimbursement benefits and a generous time-off plan.

All of our employees work in support of our critical mission: to save and enhance the lives of as many people as possible through organ and tissue donation.

All candidates must demonstrate excellent verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills; be detail-oriented; possess the ability to handle multiple projects; and possess the ability to work independently. Basic computer skills are a must. Travel by personal auto and the ability to work outside normal business hours may be required."

A teenager gets $15.00 plus to sell t-shirts in a record store in this neighborhood. Also, a corporation may stipulate they are not for profit in order to get certain ear marked funds, but they manage to build executive type salaries into that structure. A fund raiser for Community Chest cannot live in North Oak Park on thirty grand a year.

Certain people with certain lifestyles tend to take offense at certain things. I feel this is drawing a parallel, not making a judgement. That is, of course, an exercise in semantics. I have gotten on my high horse about being treated dismissively before, and I will fight it. Say it if you want, but I do have the ammo. And as I have said before I will lend you some so the battle will at least be almost even. People say things in public about their most personal relationships, like why it is just easier to give the husband a blow job then have to explain one's thoughts on love and respect to him. They can do what ever they want in their multi layered lives. My marriage and my life in general are travesties of the case model. Maybe yours is model perfect. I don't fucking care. What I do care about is you pointing a finger of judgement at me for no reason. I did not point the finger of judgement at you, so back the fuck off.

Do you honestly think Larry Hagman or Steve Jobs were on a waiting list? Do you know all the fine print on signing the organ donor thing on your driver's license? The rules about why you can't let the EMT intubate the 92 year old stroke patient, and what you MUST do to prevent that? The ramifications of putting the tube in versus taking the tube out. I don't care what kind of environment you work in, there are people doing the same job you are doing that are way dumber and less capable than you, just as there are people doing the same job you are doing that are way smarter and way more capable. There is also a very broad spectrum among these various people regarding their moral judgement and personal prejudices or beliefs.

I am not going to go look in a book to find out if I should put a certain comma in a certain place in a certain sentence. I am not going to take what someone else "feeds" me as the truth. I am going to make my own decisions based on my personal experience, my knowledge, and carefully gleaned and weighed knowledge and opinion from other more experienced people. Then I am going to do exactly what I want and make a shit load of mistakes, errrors, wrong turns, false statements, and when I find out about it, I will apologize. I will also live with the results of my choices.

When zulily, or some like entity, asks me to post for them on my Pinterest board, that is whoring. When I post a link or a remark on Mises.org, that is whoring. When you have sex with someone you don't respect cuz he makes the car payment, or lets you come first, or whatever, that is whoring. I do not care what sex either of you are, or whether or not a priest made a gesture in front of you, or you have a piece of paper with an embossed emblem on it. Everyone is a whore for something. But that is just MY opinion, my PERSONAL feelings,and another exercise in semantics.

It is strange how you get a sense of pure hatred through the ethernet. It is so palpable, and yet, it cannot be seen or measured. Can it? And if you stopped to ask yourself why you were emitting that or receiving that feeling, you would be hard pressed for an answer. You would be. Probably not me.

THE LIST

I make constant joking reference to being on NSA's "list" because of the controversial things I sometimes say on my blog or on twitter or facebook. I follow several people on twitter because of their military affiliations. I am from a military family and married into a military family. I have posted in the past on my blogspot blog about my feelings in regard to the goings on in the middle East. My husband was stationed in the Persian Gulf for a while. He was there when the Ayotallah Khomeini died and I thought it was all going to go up in flames and, strangely, nothing happened. It turned out he was there on a sort of preparatory mission. He was in a small boat unit, supporting a Seal team (three I think, but not relevant and maybe should not even be mentioned.) They were stationed on barges and there was a small story in Time a few years later with a picture of the barge he was on and how they "actually, were never really there". I was subjected to stories of target practice on bloated dead sheep floating in the gulf and various personnel conflicts which crop up in the news even to day. It is a tangled web, that military network. He won some award and I wanted to put a mention of it in our local paper because in our very small town they did that sort of thing. He advised against it, mentioning retribution. This was around the time the school teacher who was married to a military man had a bomb placed on her minivan in California.

Someone recently posted about when the general cried in Afghanistan and I commented and retweeted the link and referred to my story on my blog "FINE WHINE" about it in 2010. I followed the person and he followed back. He also posted about how a military person might feel about our leaving Iraq in the condition it is in, and whatever the mission was in the first place. (As an aside, it is curious to me that we are pulling out when they are on the verge of going nuclear) When I retweeted this, the Iraqi Government retweeted me. I asked the person who was the source of the stories if this was for real and I have been unable to sign into his Wordpress blog which is strange because here I am signed into my wordpress blog.

This is the sort of thing that ANYBODY I know would advise me to drop and go back to writing frivolous fiction. But even in my frivolous fiction I refer to black ops agents planting micro nukes in the Hindu Kush.

I think I will go put the laundry in the drier now and check and see if the dishwasher needs to be run and work on my scrapbook and photo album and springtime wreath projects.

We did it before so we can do it again...

Interesting. From Wikipedia. (Who took these notes re: power generated?)

Two billion years ago, in what is now Gabon in West Africa, groundwater seeped through sandstone to inundate a layer of uranium ore, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. When the deposit heated up, the water boiled away, slowing the reaction; when it cooled, the water returned and the cycle began again.

The result was a natural, self-sustaining nuclear reactor that generated 100 kilowatts of power for several hundred thousand years.

French physicist Francis Perrin discovered the phenomenon at Oklo in 1972. “As far as we know, we only have evidence of natural reactors forming and operating at the one site in Gabon,” said Jay Cullen of the University of Victoria, “but that demonstrates that it’s possible, and our calculations suggest it was much more probable earlier in Earth’s history.”

LAWMAN

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KN6S4E

Once upon a time, a girl. . .

Sometimes you see something at just the right time.

Inexplicable.

Philippa Gregory says she has to fall in love with her characters. The book about Margaret Beaufort was not easy to read. She pissed you off most of the time. But she willed stuff to happen and at, what I consider, great personal sacrifice. "What I did for love" etc. She could love and did love but had this other agenda. Couldn't do it. I'd carry the growler to the bar to get a refill for grampa. So she admitted she found it hard to love her and you knew it when you read the book THE RED QUEEN. It was one of her least enjoyable works.

So this last book I wrote, I couldn't fall in love. There really was not a character for that. But now I am finished and I am in love with them and don't want to put it up, want to keep living their lives for them, controlling the weather and what color to paint the porch.

Amazon goofed up the listing and the royalties and Smashwords has yet to cough up a cent. And the promoting is so whorish. Either you like it or you don't but why the fuck don't they even want to look? I spend hours every day just reading blurbs cuz I am so afraid I am going to miss something. And my Kindle has at least twenty books I am dying to get to. So I sit and play Spider Solitaire on the iPhone. I am so sick of it. I don't think I am going to do it anymore. I just read this John Steinbeck quote where he says you have to not stop and think and plan otherwise you lose your association with the words that are making these people live and that is in direct opposition to all this MFA stuff and outlining and little index cards with plot points. And how I write. Just sit down and wish the fucking crippled fingers would not keep hitting the wrong keys I want to go so fast.

And I am half in tears over it. Like they said my baby was funny looking and kind of dumb, and that is when I get these ridiculous blog spikes and I do not even know where they came from. Some one read a post from about six years ago. It tells you that, so I looked at it and I was talking to Louie about it being when Lisa had that little house and Billy lived with her and it was like a lull in our lives. So strange. Why did someone go and read that out of a clear blue sky? And what could it mean to them? What do anyone else's words mean to someone else? I don't know, but sometimes I am crying over it and laughing and hoping for a certain thing to happen to imaginary people. Cuz I couldn't make it happen for my real people. I guess.

Tomorrow: back to the big white Welbies, for sure.

Today's CTA: Do you put stuff in your fiction that you really wish did happen to you? Or do you want it nothing like your real life?


Image Attribution:  thecollaboratory.wikidot.com

words

My brother took a course at Marquette that was etymology, or related to etymology. I loved it. It made me buy a book by some guy named Hayakawa. I don't know if it was the senator, but it was about words. I keep saying I love to fool around with the letters, but it is the words. They get me in so much trouble but I love to mess with them--manipulate them. I can define myself three different ways to three different people just by letting them look at my words. Actually I think I can even do that to myself. Here is a cutie for today. From Futility Closet.


anserine
adj. of or resembling a goose

Irony

I feel so bad that my attempts at irony are misconstrued or missed altogether. I fear I have taken subtlety too far. Yet, that cannot be possible. Otherwise, why would all this flak be flying past my ears?

Let it go? Never. I shake a thing, with my teeth in its neck, until it is dead.

CONTRAST

I have the bitterest taste in my mouth.

I need some sugar.

Fuck It

Funny how you make a very brief personal observation about how something painful once happened to you and it now tends to distort your perceptions of certain things, things which people may find great joy in, God having given them the grace to feel such enjoyment, and a pack of vicious animals starts chewing on your ass like you are literally dogmeat. And the remark can be about a very small and painful moment in your life, but they have to construe that only a drunk would spew such shit. To concisely paraphrase if such a thing is possible. And the remark can have been made to reflect upon why you are unable to share everyone's joy at the moment, actually a remark that certainly didn't need to be made at all, but since I have started messing around with the alphabet I get myself in more and more trouble.

Almost reminds me of that cabal that gets all undone when you mention that fifteen year olds entertain sexual thoughts.

I fucking give up.

And, then, they flock to the fucking blogsite like flies to the corpse. What the fuck is this all about?

"You can't please them all. There's always somebody calling you down. I do my best..."

MY FUCKING BEST. Not good enough for you, you unknown. THEN DON'T READ MY WORDS.

Buzz the fuck off. That's what flies do.

Over the Pipe

Mood. What a silly word. Silly sounding. Something a cow did. Must look up the etymology. Starting to think Wikipedia is more useful than google. Reminds me of a joke.

That was cheap of me. Cute tho, no?

I am in the slough of despond, I think. I am in an adolescent place. For sure. I did one of those Kindle Select promotions, and it was so important to me that I forgot to start promo til half way through the first day. So it pretty much tanked. I felt so desolate. For a couple of minutes. Whatever I didn't do to enhance that promo, my blog stats again went through the roof. Then I got some kind words about my "craft" from another source. So if my life is a see saw, I am standing on the board in that middle place where you could make it rock back and forth. You know exactly what I mean. In our playground it was over the pipe. Which sounds much cooler than 'mood'.

Then we had a recent family event where an aunt by marriage died and all the other strings tied to that part of my life are already gone. I hold grudges till like eternity, and found less and less reason to deal with those people, but the aunt was always nice to me. She kind of treated me, when I was little, like she knew I needed someone to be nice to me. My brother did some really mean stuff to me, like the story about the swimming pool and the watch, Bobby. And auntie Edie was kind. Maybe she was kind to everyone, or maybe I noticed it cuz she was the only one kind to me at that time, but when I went up to the casket, I was thinking, Auntie Edie, this does not look like you AT ALL, but where ever you are you are fine now, and thank you for teaching me the easy way to learn to swim.

You go to these things to offer condolence and to say good by and "pay respects". Because you are supposed to. They had this slide show thing about her with many wonderful pictures of her and her family and these certain friends of theirs. One of the sons said, "You are in there a couple of times." No. I wasn't. Nor my brothers. Nor my grandma who was her mother in law, one glimpse of my mom who was Edie's husband's sister, that I got ticked off about at his wake cuz my mom, his sister, was left standing in the rain, and one glimpse of my dad. This family was so close to mine when I was small. I would take the bus to go stay over at their house. My cousin, the godmother of my first child, used to ask me everything about the facts of life. And at that wake, I realized, we were nothing to them. Not even a memory. And all my instincts to draw away from them over the latest years have been correct. When my mom was dying, they did a couple of things that displeased me, but I chalked it up to them trying to be nice and it being an awkward time, and most of them are kind of slow, but now I don't think I am going to have anything to do with them if I can possible avoid it. My circle of friends and relatives is growing smaller and smaller. It seems convenient to me. There are so many things in life you can't control--that you have to put up with, and up to this point I thought I was growing more mellow and tolerant, and making peace with some of the crap that is my life, but I'm not. In my head I am more angry than ever, and at the same time, I feel so good about so many things. One thing I would love to tell younger people is that they need to be more selfish, but I can't because I don't know how to tell them how to do that with out hurting anyone's feelings. That has been the consistent thread running through my life. I was always teased about having hurt feelings, (which I always had)and I always worry about hurting people's feelings. This from the person who has said, "I hope a truck runs over you on your way home." Yeah, I apologized.

"The problem is all inside your head", she said to me.

The gospels should be Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and Art.

FREE

Two free days for the MAZE in the Amazon KDP Select program, Saturday and Sunday, March 3 and 4.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0061SB3TC