Puppies and Kittens Hurray!

Gale, the rep for Animal People is back in the store for the holidays and small decrepit creatures abound! Seriously, it's the only reason I like work during the holidays. I'm very pleased to see that Tango, the cat who blows snot-bubbles when he purrs, and Fuzzball, the sixteen year-old, skin-diseased pomeranian made it back this year too. It's like having our own Isle of Misfit Toys, only cuter and without the creepiness of clay-mation (or the idea of sentient toys, for that matter.)

In other news:

I stole this from Janet's blog. I'm slightly disappointed. I thought I'd do better than that, considering I work in a place literally stocked with various zombie-survival guides, but I suppose my lack of gun expertise WOULD be a disadvantage in the event of an undead uprising.

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Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

My personal post-apocalyptic survival strategy? Arm myself with a nail-studded bat, load Frank, my cats, and whoever else I can fit into the back of a Corolla, kit the trunk out with water and first-aid supplies, duct-tape sturdy wooden stakes to the bumpers and drive out to Paynes Prairie. Its close proximity to the highway would allow us to scout for fellow survivors and the alligators would make short work of slow-moving zombies.

It Might Be Done For, It Might Be Not

The blog that is. It appears whatever program bugs I was struggling with before have now been addressed. Although, I'm at a point where I feel I need to give the blog itself some kind of focus. My previous blogs have always been, more or less, semi-philosophical public diaries. But lately, it seems, I've lost my taste for it.

I don't know. I think I spend so much time writing either for school purposes or on the books (plural now! And still, no home for the first... Merf, as Merlin would say.) that rambling about things off the top of my head doesn't come as naturally as it used to.

I was thinking of starting another blog, where I would comb the news for odd stories, post a link or portion of the article and then comment. And then I found that little add-on gadget that automatically links your blog to a streaming list of odd-news stories and couldn't decide if that made my writing idea too redundant.

So I'm back to I Don't Know. Maybe I'll write about the things I've read lately. I'm currently two-thirds of the way through Lovers and Other Monsters. It's a love-themed, fantasy/sci-fi anthology with a great assortment of authors: Poe, Lovecraft, Bradbury, Wells, Asimov, just to name a few. But I've noticed something about this collection that irritates me. The majority of the stories are so... well, sexist. With a small number of exceptions, every female character--regardless of the author--is either a sexpot, a bimbo or a shrew. A lot of times, all three. And of the females that do show a smidgen of intelligence or decency, they are all frail to a fault.

Even in Edith Wharton's story, The Lady's Maid's Bell, the titular Lady just drops dead, and for what? Because her husband did not love her? Because her delicate nerves couldn't take the shock of a bell ring? I could just be being overly critical, but it bothers me that I have yet to read one story with a satisfyingly multi-dimensional female character. I wonder what it has more to do with: the age of the stories, or the fact that the anthology was selected by a man.

Not to say there aren't a few gems to be had from it. I loved Theodore Sturgeon's "The Deadly Ratio" and Parke Godwin's "A Matter of Taste", but seriously, Frederick Pohl's "The Fiend" read like someone's rape fantasy. Ick, ick, ick.

Other than Lovers, though, I haven't read much else recently. I've got Moonheart by De Lint and a couple books by Michael and Kathleen Gear sitting on my coffee table, waiting to be read, but my appetite for books has become as finicky as my appetite for writing. I've been waiting for something really interesting to catch my eye, but I'm always open to suggestions.

This Blog is Pissing Me Off...

I can't add links to other people's blogs, I can't search for other people's blogs, I can't even put up a profile picture!! This place is beginning to sucketh. I have a sneaking suspicion it might have to do with my Mac server, but that's still no excuse. I should be able to put up a stinking link without the window freezing. ARRGH!

Anyway. Had a strange dream last night. I dreamt I had helped organize this huge open-forum style gathering and the topic was hypocrisy. When I stood up and said if people wanted to open up a Bible if they wanted to find real hypocrisy, everyone got pissed off and left. I was then told by some of the people who helped organize the gathering, that I would have to hang myself in front of the forum if I wanted to make amends for my offense. It wasn't a real hanging, it was just supposed to be a symbolic gesture, but even still, I wanted no part of it (and, being the paranoid that I am, I was sure they were really going to hang me) so I skipped out at the last minute and went to Robin's house.

We were sitting at her dining room table and I was telling her about the incident when I noticed she had a big Tarot deck sitting on an end table. So I picked it up and started doing a reading for her, but as I was laying out the spread, I realized I was doing it wrong and that some of the cards weren't real Tarot cards. I did catch a glimpse of the Ace of Wands and the Ace of Cups in the process though. I scooped up the cards and started to reshuffle them so I could try the spread again when Robin walked out of the room and returned with something in her hands.

It was a large china cup with the most amazing blue pattern on the inside and outside of it, in two shades of blue. One side showed a picture of a field with rabbits and swallows and the other had abstract whorls and blue crazing, but these sides changed arbitrarily. On the tiny round handle, there was a little parchment tag that said "merry christmas." She also gave me a matching water pitcher with it that was pale blue and said she had meant to give these to me earlier.

Weird, huh? Here's something even stranger still. I've been getting these text messages for a while from an unknown number that say nothing but: 00. I've texted back, but never get a reply other than 00. Today at work, I bought a coffee in the cafe, and when my order slip printed up, Katie picked it up and said, "oh weird, look at this." Instead of my name it said, 00.
So I told her about the text messages I'd been getting and then, not even five minutes later, I get another 00 text.

Both Katie and Shaina freaked out about it and swear it's some kind of ill omen. I don't know about that, but I will keep my eyes open for more 00s.

Incoming Randomness....

I'm not sure I want to write about, only that I feel an urge to write. I'm two glasses in to a bottle of fantastic white wine and in approximately six hours, I have to be at work for---ACTION TUESDAY!!!!! (preferably screamed in a Frankenstein/mummy voice.) ACTION TUESDAY!!!! Is the day all the new entertainment merchandise hits stores and is the day I have to get up at the butt-crack of dawn every single week of my life since I started working at Borders. It is the day I love/hate the most. I love it because it's a fast work day and for much of it I don't have to deal with customers, and I hate it because I have to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and I never have Tuesday off anymore.
But enough shop talk, I'd rather talk about... fractal geometry. Fantastic stuff. I don't know why something that has a limited area but an infinitely long perimeter can make more sense to me than y=mx+b, but it does. I understand that when you cut away more area you are left with more boundaries, but I still don't understand conversion units. Go figure. All I know is that I can't get enough of drawing Koch snowflakes and contemplating the possiblity of finding an isometric pattern in the shape of lightning bolts. I don't know if there really is one, but I don't think anyone has thought to look yet.
Anyways.
OOH! I printed up the first half of my story this morning. Dear gods, I never realized how much paper 187 pages really is. Coolest thing about it though is that the girl at the counter gave me a discount for no good reason. Maybe it's because I nearly shit my pants when she dropped a pound of paper on the counter.
Okay, that's all for now.

Blogging is a Funny Beast

This is the fourth blog I've had, due primarily to the shifts in my community of friends and family on the internet. Last place I posted was on Myspace, but I just never liked the feel of that place. Nobody really seems interested in writing, just updating. Which is fine if you want to catch up with someone, but I've been jonesing for a place to cultivate the kind of blog I once had on Xanga. So here's me, giving it another shot. I stole this question list from my sister's blog just to get started.

1. Do you know any true misanthropes?
I can't say I'm very fond of mankind myself. Sure there are a few exceptions, but on the whole, I would be happier if there were a lot less of us. I don't know what constitutes a 'true' misanthrope though. If we were talking about a scale of 1-10, with 10 being say...the Unibomber, then I would say I'm probably somewhere in first quartile. I'm a very tolerant breed of misanthrope. I'll probably get worse as I get older.

2. What has been your rock bottom?
I think those two years I spent between graduating from highschool and going to college were a pretty low point in my life. I remember running into an old friend of mine from Vegas while I was working at Busch Gardens as a caricature artist. She looked fabulous, had a great-looking boyfriend on her arm and a fat bankroll from her daddy who was paying for her to go to University of Tampa. I, on the other hand, looked like a sweaty, frizzy-haired mess in my uniform that consisted of black shorts and a safari-print shirt, and had next to no money or plans for the future. I about died of shame when she recognized me and could not bring myself to answer the phone when she called later that week to reconnect.

3. Has a spouse or partner of a friend ever hit on you, and if so, how did you handle it?
Yeah. The boyfriend of friend from highschool started hitting on me during the afore-mentioned lowpoint in my life, and like an ass, I fell for it. What can I say? I wanted to be loved. In the end, it cost me a good friendship and my sense of self-worth. But on the bright side, it made me realize what real love was, what real friends were not, and it got me writing again.


4. Have you ever questioned your sexuality?
No, I've always been comfortable with it.

5. In what ways to you live "green?"
I eat locally and organically grown food whenever I can, I recycle, I use environmentally friendly cleaning products around the house, I refuse plastic shopping bags if I can carry my purchases easily out of the store and reuse the ones I do end up taking.

6. Have you ever seen something in the sky such as a UFO, that you just couldn't explain?
I've seen plenty of things I can't readily explain (at least in scientifically proven terms) but, queerly enough, never in the sky.


7. In what ways are you a freak?
I'm paranoid for no good reason. I carry a knife with me wherever I go and habitually size people up for potential threats. Did I mention my hatred for the general populace?

8. What is the biggest risk you have taken this week?
Ummm.... Reading on the job?

9. Do you think there someone at this very moment thinking about you?
Maybe Frank, very likely Merlin.

10. Are you presently keeping a juicy secret?
Hah, like I'd tell you.

~Bonus Question~Time for our random rant. What would you like to get off your chest?
Mouth-breathers, this is your final warning.