Threatening Love Letters

Flash Fic January

2012-01-08T15:06:00.000-05:00

First flash fic contest of 2012!

60 hours to write a story of no more than 2000 words using the photo to the left and the words "Drag," "Corporate" and "Invert."

I looked at this beautiful photo and immediately, after deciding that Harry Potter fanfic was unlikely with this group, thought that there would definitely be time travel stories, and maybe some steampunk. Well, no steampunk so far, and there are fewer stories involving time travel than I'd guessed, but someone did make a Harry Potter reference :)

I'll let you decide the genre of my story. I think it's a hybrid of two, personally.

House of Regret

It looks like a temporary mausoleum, I thought as I reached out to touch the dark weathered stones that were not interrupted by even a single window. I'd never been there before, but I knew it wasn't a temporary anything: this building had stood on the outskirts of our village for hundreds of years. No one remembered who had built it, but we all knew why.

Glancing back over my shoulder, I could just barely see the coffin I'd begged be dragged up here. It couldn't, wouldn't, work if the dead wasn't near. The dead. My brain tried to skitter away from the thought of Jesse being dead, but I knew he was there in that box, waiting for me to rescue him.
No one could understand why I was willing to enter the House of Regret... they didn't know my crushing guilt. If he hadn't snuck out after dark to see me, he wouldn't be dead.

There hadn't been a clear cause of death. Instead his body had been found inverted in the crotch of a tree, alabaster pale, and limp like the discarded dolls still littering the back of my closet. Of course, there were suspicions about what had killed him, and that's why I was standing in front of an iron ring, trying to will my fingers to grasp it and open the door.

The villagers wanted to burn his body as a precaution against the evils their overheated minds conjured up, but he'd told me twice over the past few years that he would rather be wormfood than given a cradle of ash. I couldn't let that happen, so I told people I'd come here and bring him back. Everyone said "Elizabeth don't" but how could I listen to them when Jesse had been so fearful of flames?

People visited the House of Regret only once or twice a generation, and my mother swore that no one had since her grandparents were children. This was meant to be a seed of doubt, a worry that the magic wouldn't work any more, but I owed him. She couldn't understand that, none of them could, but I owed him.

Enough delay. I pulled the door open and it moved with a hideous groan. There were no lights of course. Never had been. None were needed. Once I stepped over the threshold, I pulled the door closed behind me and mourned the passing of daylight as it shrank down to a thin line, then disappeared.

I stood there waiting, shivering in the damp. It would have been pointless to worry about what sort of things might have been in there with me, those that skittered or crawled, because what I'd see when I could see again would be far far worse. Be brave, I counseled myself. Once I get through and reach the clock, I can turn it all back.

That was the point: face your fear and you gain the power to turn back time; not all the way, just a little, just enough. Or so the theory went. Everyone claimed to know someone who had tried it, and more someones who had failed. But they could never back their claims and give them a face, an actual body to ask questions of. It hardly seemed possible given that so many people knew I'd come here, but maybe Mom's insistence was true and no one had been there for ages.

"What do you regret the most?"

I whipped my head around, looking for the source, but that was ridiculous. There was nothing to see. And I knew, knew, that the voice hadn't come out of a throat.

Did I say it aloud, or did I just think it? I wondered, wishing that I'd asked someone that before walking up here. Maybe I didn't even have to think about it I decided as the room began to lose some of its dampness.

Several yards away a pinprick of light began to grow, and I wrapped my arms around myself. When the confusion of lights and images before me began to corporate into a familiar scene, I had to fight a keening that desperately wanted to be voiced. Somehow, when I thought about regrets in the days since Jesse had been found, this wasn't what had come to mind. But it should have.

Our schoolyard. The school had held only the fifteen of us because the hard years during our earliest childhoods had stolen many of our siblings from their cribs, if families had dared to have babies at all. Once there had been two teachers, teaching in separate classrooms, but now there was one and the other room was boarded to reduce heating costs.

While I watched, little Betsy came into view, trailing Jesse and Aaron. I'd been eight, Jesse ten, and Aaron was a great big boy of fifteen. Aaron had once been the oldest of four but was now an only child, which is why he tolerated the little kids' hero-worship. Older than him now, I realized that he missed his siblings, but hadn't then. Not that awful then.

We'd had pails in our hands, and had been charged with picking berries for snack time. The teacher trusted Aaron to keep an eye on us, and he took this duty fairly seriously. But then he had to pee.

"I've uh, gotta go," he'd told us, cheeks warm. "Stay here, okay? I'll be right back."

"Okay."

For a moment we'd watched in interest as he searched for a tree to duck behind, but we soon lost interest. Instead Jesse pointed at a tree. "Look at that."

"What about it?" I'd asked, distracted by the thought that life would be easier if I could pee outside too.

"We should climb it."

"Aaron said to stay here," I reminded Jesse.

"And we wouldn't be going anywhere," he insisted. "The tree is right here."

This seemed logical enough, so I began to follow him as he climbed the low branches. "Not so fast," I complained, my dress slowing me down. Life would also be easier in trousers, I decided fiercely. Boys had all the luck.

Jesse ignored me, and I struggled to keep up. I was so focused on not being left behind that I was hardly aware that we'd climbed so high. But when a branch snagged my dress and unbalanced me, I was made aware of it.

The ground met me with a rattling thump and I screamed. Jesse was so startled that he almost fell out right after me, but managed not to somehow.

Aaron must have heard my yell because he came running, his trousers still halfway unbuttoned. He blamed Jesse, not me, but I protested saying that he hadn't forced me to climb the tree.

When they tried to get me to stand, I couldn't. So Aaron picked me up and carried me back, yelling at Jesse the whole way.

I expected there to be trouble when we reached the schoolyard, but not the way it happened. Our teacher looked at Aaron carrying me, and at his flapping trousers, and whispered to one of the big girls who took of running. I didn't know then, but she'd sent the girl for the sheriff.

When the sheriff came, he took Aaron aside and spoke sharply to him. From where I'd been set to wait for the doctor, all I could see was the sheriff's angry face, and Aaron shaking his head. Jesse had gotten close enough to hear and I grabbed his hand when he walked by me. "What's going on?"

Jesse's face turned red. Whispering, he said, "Teacher and him think that Aaron did... something... to you."

"Did something?" I repeated, uncertain.

"You know," Jesse mumbled.

I didn't, so I shrugged. "Tell him Aaron didn't."

"Can't."

"Why??"

"Aaron's in trouble, not us. We tell the sheriff what happened, we'll get into trouble too. This is better."

"No it's not," I insisted.

Jesse pinched me. "Yes, it is."

As much as I liked Aaron, I liked Jesse more, so I held my tongue and that might be why we'd grown up as thick as thieves and had become more once we were grown. Neither of us said anything. Even when the sheriff led Aaron away just after Doc Addams arrived to set my broken leg. Even when Aaron and his parents were driven from the village. Even when villagers set their empty house to fire so they daren't move back.

The last image before me was one of people bathed in firelight, shouting as they threw burning brands through that house's windows.

I moaned as the scene faded into nothing, leaving me in the chilled damp again. "Now what?" I asked the dark.

"Amends."

Amends? I didn't even know where to start. It had been nearly a decade since I'd last seen any member of Aaron's family. "I will," I promised aloud, though inside I doubted I would succeed. How could I?

My promise must have been sincere enough because once again the darkness was incomplete. Bracing myself, I looked, worried to see another memory given form, but that's not what I saw at all.

The new light was a cool green in an improbable clearing, and there was a single sapling planted there. From one of its spindly branches hung the prize: a small clock suspended from a chain. While beautiful in its own way, it hardly seemed any more special than any of the clocks bartered in neighboring villages.

I ran towards it, scared that the light would fade before I reached it, but it didn't. My fingers trembled as I reached for the clock, and I half expected for my hand to close upon nothing, but it was a chilly solid weight in my palm.

"Ring the bell once for each day," I whispered to myself, studying the small bell attached to it.

Four thin peals later, I let the clock go, watching it swing for a moment.

And then I felt a force at my back, pushing me out. I tried to dig in my heels, hoping I'd see a sign that it had worked before I was expelled, but resistance was futile. I was nearly flung out of the building, and found myself stumbling outside, trying hard not to fall.

To my amazement, it was night. Inside I'd lost all sense of time. Hours must have passed.

When I heard branches snap, I froze. The logical conclusion was that it was someone from the village had come to see what had become of me, but that didn't necessarily mean I'd see a friendly face. Over the years many people have muttered about how we should tear this place down because it was unnatural, and somehow I was sure that they visited it more often than people who held it in reverence.

Moonlight filtered out most colors, but the person I saw was familiar enough. The night bleached him pale, but his dark curls and dancing eyes were the same.

"Jesse?" I squeaked.

"Have you seen Aaron?" he asked.

"Aaron?" Maybe this place had brought Aaron so I could apologize. We both could, now.

"He came to see me a few days ago," Jesse continued. "We talked about the past. He wants to see you too."

"Oh. I need to speak to him, and I will," I promised. "Jesse, I thought you were dead!" Such a stupid comment. It had worked. I'd brought him back.

"Oh, Elizabeth," he murmured, gathering me in his cool arms just before twin dots of fire burned my neck. "I am."
The End

"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness, like resignation to the end, always the end" - Gotye, Someone That I Used to Know

December Music

2012-01-01T12:56:00.000-05:00

Happy New Years! More mainstream stuff than usual this month, but I wanted to check out some alternative stations before the end of the year too and found new stuff by old favorites...

3 Doors Down - Be Somebody
8 KOunt - The Very Thing
30 Seconds To Mars - Night Of The Hunter
A Little Nothing - The Start
Absofacto - Feathers (Don't Change on Me)
Aitan - Nothing Without You
Alkaline Trio - We Can Never Break Up
aNi T - Fly With You
ANR - Big Problem
Arctic Monkeys - Evil Twin
Ariana Sloan - No Apologies
Austra - Shoot The Water
Awolnation - Sail
Bastille - Flaws
Blue Stahli - ULTRAnumb
Bodies of Water - Like A Stranger
Brady - Brady-Breakin
Charlotte Sometimes - Headache
Chop Suzy - Waiting to Inhale
Cultfever - Knewyouwell
Death Cab For Cutie - Underneath The Sycamore
Echovalve - Dirty Little Secret
Editors - Blood
El Ten Eleven - My Only Swerving
Elbow - Neat Little Rows
Foo Fighters - Rope
Good with Grenades - Bruises and Bitemarks
Gotye - Easy Way Out
Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know
Great Northern - Summertime
Gross Magic - Sweetest Touch
Grouplove - Itchin' On A Photograph
Hard-Fi - Fire In The House
Hard-Fi - Stop
Hockey - Too Fake
Jane's Addiction - Irrestible Force only took 12 years for me to find a 2nd song I like by them...
Jimmy Eat World - My Best Theory
Jon Fratelli - Don't Make Me Close My Eyes
Kelsey and the Chaos - Wrapped Around Your Finger
La Catrin - Reverse Citizens
Ladyhawk - I Don't Always Know What You're Saying
Lesley Roy - I'm Gone, I'm Going
Lisa Hannigan - Sea Song
Little Dragon - Ritual Union (Maya Jane Coles Remix)
Little Hurricane - Give Em Hell
Living Daylytes - Launch
L'Spaerow - Front Step City
Madam Adam - Sex Ain't Love
Man The Mighty - Over You
Mesh - Razorwire (Modified Mix)
Minus the Bear - Secret Country
Mogwai - Waltz for Aidan
My Darkest Days - Every Lie
Nerves Junior - As Bright As Your Night Light
Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks
Poor Spirits - Too Easy
Pop Evil - Hero
Q and Not U - Passwords
Queens of the Stone Age - How to Handle a Rope (A Lesson in the Lariat)
Rachael Yamagata - Starlight
Red Ink - What My Friends Say
Rocket Empire - Cruising The Galaxy
Salim Nourallah - Don't Mind Me
Sara Noxx feat 18 Summers - Superior Love (Dark Territory Remix)
Screaming Bikini - Dancing Alone
Shona Foster - Love And War
Snow Patrol - Fallen Empires
Songs Ohia - 45 Degrees (Easts Heart Divided)
Switchfoot - Dark Horses
The Boxer Rebellion - The Runner
The Duke Spirit - Don't Wait
The Duke Spirit - Surrender
The Joy Formidable - Whirring
The Silent Game - Halfway
The Swallows - Darkly Bright
The Wooden Birds - Believe In Love
Utham - So Mote It Be
Will And The People - Salamander

As Usual:
Bold = I have other of their songs in my music collection
Italic = I've heard other of their songs but didn't like them
Neither = I've never heard this band before

"But I'll be there to take care of you if ever you should decide you don't want to waste your life in the middle of a lovesick lullaby" - TV on Radio, Will Do

November Music

2011-12-11T10:49:00.001-05:00

Lots of covers this month, but more that are not.

Autumn's Grey Solace - The Unshakable Demon
Blue King Brown - Moment Of Truth
Cults - Abducted
Curves - If Ever note: not the shoegaze band Curve
Finch - Ink
The Gossip - Are U That Somebody (Aaliyah cover)
John Legend - Rolling In The Deep (Adele cover)
Juliet - Avalon (Thin White Duke Radio Edit)
Kakkmaddafakka - Restless
Mark Ronson & The Business Intl feat. Boy George and Miike Snow - Somebody to Love Me
Metronomy - The Bay
Monarchy Feat. Britt Love - You Don't Want To Dance With Me
New Young Pony Club - Dress (PJ Harvey cover)
Peter Bjorn & John - Second Chance
Philip Selway - Beyond Reason
Say Hi - November Was White, December Was Grey gotta say I like them a lot better post-name change
Sunshine - Today (Is Not The Day)
Tegan & Sara - Northshore does this song make anyone else want to get up and run and/or dance around?
The 66 - Shoot to Kill
The Heavy - Short Change Hero AKA "that song in the Haven Season 1 and Batman:Gothem City commericals"
The Linings - The Way To Do This
The National - Think You Can Wait
The Pierces - You'll Be Mine if you don't like this, we can't be friends
The Pigeon Detectives - She Wants Me
The Rapture - Miss You
The Raveonettes - Forget That You're Young
The Sounds - Something To Die For
Tiger Waves - Funeral March
Tokyo Police Club - Since U Been Gone
Tricky - Kingston Logic
Tricky - Time To Dance
TV On The Radio - Will Do
Villa Nah - Running On
Washed Out - Far Away
We Are The Grand - Save Me
Wiretree - The Shore
Yacht - Tripped and Fell In Love
Yeasayer - Crazy (Seal cover)

As Usual:
Bold = I have other of their songs in my music collection
Italic = I've heard other of their songs but didn't like them
Neither = I've never heard this band before

"Don't pretend that you're better than this" - Blue Stahli, Ultranumb

Found Poem: End Game

2011-12-02T23:25:00.000-05:00

I've been looking for something tonight, pages of a story I misplaced, and found some old poems instead. It's been a while since I've written a poem, but I actually published a few way back when. Not this one, though, written all the way back in 2000. And you know, I still like it. I found an old essay too, maybe I'll post it later.

End Game

Suddenly you notice how much

She's pulled away.
Friendly, but barely affectionate
Somewhat quiet
Somehow distant.

Finally the near silence makes you anxious

Until you convince yourself
That it's all part of an elaborate game
To draw your attention:
That old thing about
Absence making the heart grow fonder;
A way to make you worry
About losing her presence in your life;
Something to get you thinking about
What she really means to you;
Or just to drive you crazy.

Strangely, she never thought

About what you might think
Of her plans to revise
Her perceptions of you
Until a spiteful remark
Made her wonder
What you would get
If you got your way.
-srw

"How do I get you to feel what I feel for you? I will hold on to you like a fool till my hands go blue. But you don’t want to dance with me. You don’t want to dance with me" - Monarchy, You Don't Want To Dance With Me

Indie Music Blogs

2011-11-18T22:17:00.000-05:00

A post for Alexz... :)

Some of the many-several sources for indie music I compile my monthly song recs from:

Built On A Weak Spot
Cable and Tweed
Cause=Time
Covert Curiousity
Done Waiting
Fingertips
www.freeindie.com
headphonesex.co.uk
Instrumental Analysis
It's Too Long
King Blind
bunniesoflasvegas.com
Leaky Sparrow
Let's Sexy Fighting
Lito Music <-- not English
Lost in Your Inbox
More Than Milk
Motel de Moka
Music For Kids Who Can't Read Good
Music is Art
My Reticence
Nine Bullets
Pasta Prima
Puddlegum
Speed of Dark
Acousticwoodlands
The Yellow Stereo
Who Needs Radio
Zonaindie <-- not English

"Turn the world off. Turn myself on. Turn up the radio, turn up the radio." - Die Trying, Turn Up The Radio

October Music

2011-11-11T21:10:00.116-05:00

1,2,3 - Scared But Not That Scared
Ace Reporter - Untouched and Arrived
Agent Ribbons - I'm Alright
Alexz Johnson - Look At Those Eyes [The Demolition Crew Remix]
Android Lust - Fell The Empty Mask
Apocalyptica feat. Doug Robb - Not Strong Enough
Armistice - Neon Love
Ayo - I'm Gonna Dance
Azfault - A Little More
Azfault - Goodbye
Back Ted N-Ted - Hookie
Bear Hands - Bad Blood
Beast, Please Be Still - Mastodon March, Smilodon Smile
Birds of Avalon - Your Downtime Is Up
Brand New - Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't
Brand New - Sink
Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside
Burden Brothers - Beautiful Night this band's lead singer was the singer for The Toadies
Cage The Elephant - Aberdeen
Cake - Easy To Crash
COLDDRIVEN - Don't You Know
Crash Kings - You Got Me
Darius Rucker - I Hope They Get to Me in Time well, I do own one Hootie song...
E.S. Posthumus - Nara
Eisley - Smarter
Elliott Smith - Twilight Elliott Smith. sigh.
Eric McFadden Trio - Bury Our Sins
Fujiya & Miyagi - Ventriloquizzing
G. Love - 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover (Paul Simon cover)
G-Spot - Buried
Infadels - Steady As She Goes (The Raconteurs cover)
John Butler Trio - To Look Like You
Kilians - The Lights Went Off
Kyla La Grange - Vampire Smile I had a halloween theme planned, but I ended up hating most of the thematically appropriate songs...
Metronomy - She Wants
My American Heart - Tired & Uninspired
Soft Moon - Breathe The Fire
Taproot - You're Not Home Tonight
The Boxcar Lilies - The Ghost Tree
The Classic Crime - The Drink In My Hand
The Kamikaze Hearts - No One Called You a Failure
The Love Me Nots - Trouble
The Pale Pacific - Tied To A Million Things
The Rosebuds - Woods
The Veils - The Wishbone

As Usual:
Bold = I have other of their songs in my music collection
Italic = I've heard other of their songs but didn't like them
Neither = I've never heard this band before

Click the "Monthly Music Roundup" tag for 2 years worth of monthly recs.

"This is the last time I will follow you. This is the last time I will follow you at all." - The Cat Empire, Waiting

This article is why

2011-10-13T23:22:00.001-04:00

As someone who is pro-life, I've been snottily asked a few times what I think about gay parents adopting children, and I usually surprise the asker by telling them I'm in favor of it (hell, I voted against a 2010 gubernatorial candidate in the primaries just because he wanted to make a law against gay adoption here in NH. Fortunately he lost). I understand that many pro-life folks are religiously motivated, but I'm not really a religiously motivated about much of anything kind of girl. First and foremost, I want there to be fewer unwanted pregnancies to begin with. And then, if people give their babies up instead of abort them, they need homes. I can't see what about someone's sexuality would rule them out as a good parent, so I don't care the genders of the would-be parents. You (generic you) maybe being uncomfortable explaining to your kids why Meg and Jack have two mommies or two daddies is an absurd reason to make it harder for a child to find a home, so... just no.

Really, articles like this one are why I'm a fan of laws that allow gay folks, both as couples or as single parents, adopt. How could you not be in favor of children finding loving homes like this one?

"They call kids like us vicious and carved out of stone but for what we've become, we just feel more alone. Always weigh what I've lost against what I left. Progress report: I am missing you to death" - Fall Out Boy, I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And...

September Music

2011-10-10T20:53:00.120-04:00

Beulah - Your Mother Loves You Son
City & Colour - Fragile Bird
Class Actress - Keep You
Damhnait Doyle - Darkness Round The Sun
David Bazan - Wolves At The Door
Daybehavior - It's A Game
Dead Snares - City Sparks
Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move
Eric Anders - Looking Forward to Your Fall
Glasser - Mirrorage
Holana - Dolphins
Intruder - Teeth In Your Heart
Jakalope - Pretty Life love love love this video
jj - Let Them
Jon Fratelli - Rhythm Doesn't Make You A Dancer
Kidney Thieves - Before I'm Dead (Acoustic)
Kye Kye - Knowing This the band's name reminds me of my favorite lemur, the Aye Aye. Doesn't everyone have a favorite lemur?
L.P. - Wasted
Love You Moon - Why Pop Stars Sell Silicone
Mason Proper - Point A to Point B
Matt Pond PA - Love To Get Used
Mister Heavenly - Bronx Sniper
Mona - Listen To Your Love
Mottorama - Far Better (Superpose Remix)
Niki & The Dove - The Fox
Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bees - Danse Danse Resolution
Santogold feat. Karen O - Go
Say Hi - Devils if only this band would tell me who to say hi to...
She Wants Chaos - Digital
Soulstice - Color
System Of A Down - Lonely Day
team9 vs. Stereogum - Disturbed Youth
The Barlights - Sometimes
The Grates - Like You Could Have It All
The Grates - Welcome To The Middle
The Gutter Twins - Circle the Fringes I still <3 Greg Dulli
The Loyal Divide - Labrador
The Soldier Thread - Fool
The Streets - Let's Push Things Forward
The Strokes - Machu Picchu
The Subways - It's A Party
The Wealthy West - Love Is Not Enough
The Wombats - Our Perfect Disease
The Wooden Birds - Two Matchsticks
Those Dancing Days - Fuckarias
Toby Mac - Made To Love
Trances Arc - Don't Like Leaving
Trophy Wife - Microlite (Acoustic)
Tuó - Walk With Me
William Fitzsimmons - The Tide Pulls From The Moon

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"I don't want to let you go, but it hurts my hands to hold the rope" - Brand New, Sink

Flash Fic October

2011-10-08T19:44:00.007-04:00

This story came to me almost all at once. I hope it makes sense to readers too! As usual the stories must be no more than 2000 words, and they have a photo and three words to "inspire" the stories, which must be written within sixty hours. (I have, oh, 57 to spare, so I have time to revise if necessary.

Anyway, the words are "Album", "Bizarre" and "Perspiring" and as usual too any form of the words are acceptable. The photo is apparently of some sort of wishing icon in Europe, and that's what ALL of the stories so far are about, so voting will probably be fiece considering how pointed the photo part of the prompt is. Ready?

The Judas Tree

"We can't," he said, voice throaty and strangled.

Ignoring his protest, she stroked his thigh, making him groan. Clarissa knew that was too close to the full moon to be trying to seduce Chase this way, but a naughty little part of her wondered. What would it would feel like if his bones began to lengthen and he started to sprout fur, to change while insi-

I snapped the book shut with a sigh. The premise had seemed so promising when I read the summary in the bookstore, and I'd thought it'd be just the thing to lift me out of my sour mood. I mean, how could werewolf themed erotica not yank you out of reality? But then, the werewolf just had to be named Chase.

Of course the book was a failure, Chase was my problem in the first place. God damn Chase.

I'd had a crush on him since the 8th grade, and he finally noticed me in 11th. We went to homecoming together, and it felt like all my dreams were coming true. The feeling didn't last, though, because two weeks later, just days after I'd printed out pictures of Homecoming for my photo album, he was caught with Alison McCreary at Ben Long's party.

If he'd only kissed her I might have forgiven him. But they weren't kissing. Even that literary whore Clarissa would have blushed if she'd seen what I'd walked in on.

Chase tried to apologize later, but I didn't want to hear it. I mean, really, what could you say to excuse yourself from accidentally forgetting you were dating someone and screwing another girl at a party? He was now dating her, of course.

After letting myself stew over it for a week or so, I tried to find distractions from it all. In so many different ways, really. None of them worked, though, because I'd almost get to a happy place and then the memory of seeing Alison under him at the party would surface and blot everything else out. Reading urban fantasy porn as escapism was attempt number 67. Number one had been sending that page of my album through Dad's paper shredder.

Maybe it was because it was Halloween, but after the werewolf story, I knew what I had to do. If I couldn't be happy with Chase, Alison damn well wasn't going to be either. Going back inside, full of the pleasant fire of determination, I gathered up my supplies and jumped on my bike.

I knew exactly where I was headed, and I should have done it a week ago, just like Kenna and Hunter told me to. Back when they made the suggestion I thought I was a bigger person than that, but it turned out that I wasn't above revenge after all. A visit to the Judas tree was the answer to my problem.

~*~*~*~

From a distance the first thing you noticed about the Judas tree was the stump next to the trunk. Part of the tree, actually. Once the tree had been a set of Siamese twins, but one of the trunks had gotten diseased, so someone had hacked the sick half away to save the rest over a hundred years ago. The stump was no mere humble reminder of a tree's better days, though. It had a sinister look to it now, and the coins sticking out of it resembled nothing so much as the raised scales of some prehistoric beached sea creature. It was only as you walk towards it that you noticed that the scales were in fact metal, coins. Malicious offerings.

There were always thirty coins. From what I had been told, and in fact could see on the tree itself, more than thirty people had availed themselves of the Judas tree's dark breakup magic, but if someone took the time to count the coins, there were always thirty. People said that as time went on some of the coins worked themselves deeper into the stump, which was probably true. But how that meant only thirty were visible at a time, I couldn't tell you.

The stump was an ugly thing, when you came right down to it. The living part of the tree on the other hand, was much more lovely. In bloom it had rich pink flowers, but now in October it was bare. People didn't come to the tree to admire the flowers, though. No, it was the bark that was of interest: it held the name of dozens of lovers. Many of the names were crudely carved, but some of the names had a scrolling ornate look to them, as if they had been placed there with a great deal of care. Some of the pairs of names were surrounded by hearts that were quite ironic.

The irony, of course, was that every pair names on the tree represented a couple who did not stay together, which was the tree's spiteful gift to the lovelorn. In my high school, people like to tease couples and tell them that they would they did something to piss the teaser off. A lot of people acted like the threat was hollow, but deep down, I think most people did truly fear that they might come upon the tree and see their name there.

And it wasn't just students, some of the names had been carved by vindictive ex wives, ex-husbands, ex-somethings, stalkers, and shy adults still too cowardly to ever do more than long for the object of their affections to suddenly become available.

As the legend went, you had to do two things: the first was, with malice in your heart, carve the names of soon to be doomed lovers into the bark. The second was to pound a coin into the stump beside the tree as an offering.

When I slipped the coin out of my pocket, it shone in the autumn light, more silvery than it had looked when I'd scooped it off my dresser. No one told me which order you did things, so I took my hammer out and pounded it into the stump. I could almost swear that another coin sank from view while I worked, but it might have been the sun in my eyes playing tricks.

That done, I picked up the knife my brother had given me before he left for college, and examined the tree. I found a bare spot just barely within reach, and began to carve the C first. By the time I was done I was perspiring, and my back and arms ached from having spent that much time reaching up. Chase and Alison's names were neither the neatest or messiest there, and I left with a bitter lightness in my step, satisfied that I'd done the only thing I could to get revenge.

~*~*~*~

The next morning seemed like any other, at least until I got to school. The hallways hummed with whispers, and I felt happy when I finally heard someone say "Alison." I looked forward to someone blurting out the details of their break up.

But it wasn't to be.

Instead, as I slid into my seat during first period, I noticed that Mrs. Creek looked like she was barely holding back tears. As soon as the last person sat, she sighed and addressed us. "I'm afraid that there was an accident last night. Chase Holt and Alison McCreary were in a car wreck-"

She didn't get any farther than that before someone else who hadn't known about the accident already asked her if they were okay. She shook her head slowly. "They think Chase will be okay, just a few broken bones, but Alison is in Intensive Care. Things...they don't look good."

I sat in class, and wondered if how terrible a person I was showed on my skin. It was all my fault, all because I'd decided that they needed to break up too. Had I been too full of malice when I carved the names? Was the coin supposed to have come afterwards and I'd somehow bizarrely intensified the spell by doing things in the wrong order? That hardly seemed possible. I couldn't be the only one to give the coin first, and no one had ever been hurt, physically anyway, before.

By the end of the day my guilt was threatening to swallow me whole: after lunch Alison's brother had been pulled out of class to go to the hospital "just in case."

We all knew in case of what.

I felt more than half-crazy with remorse by the time I got home. But I had a plan. I was going to fix everything. My parents didn't even know I'd gotten home before I'd darted into the basement for my bag, and left again.

The tree seemed to glower at me in the distance as I pedaled up to it. Had anyone else ever come to take back their misdeed? I thought not, but I had to try. Chase and Alison didn't deserve what I'd done. No one deserved that.

"I'm, um, I've changed my mind," I muttered, not really feeling strange to be talking to a tree.

If it had been a fairytale, the stump would have immediately spit out the coin, and the broken bark smoothed over. But it wasn't, so nothing happened.

"I'm calling it off, okay?" I asked, looking down at the stump. I thought I saw my coin, and tried to pull it out. It didn't budge.

This wasn't supposed to be happening. I poked at the coin with the tip of the knife, and barely felt it as the sharp edges of another one bit into my skin.

"I'm sorry!" I wailed, tears streaming down my face. "I didn't mean it!"

Looking at the tree, leaning over the remains of its twin, I think I finally understood what made people so sure that its curse would work: it was forever separated from its other half, and looked so unhappy. Why wouldn't it inflict that on others?

I shook my head, strangely convinced that the tree was merely trying to distract me from my task. Determined anew, my fingers scrabble against the stump, and I couldn't pry the coin back out. If it was even the right coin. The coin wasn't going to come out, I was pretty sure of it. So I turned to the tree's trunk instead.

Frenzied, I attacked the bark where I’d so happily carved the day before, using my knife to score over Chase and Alison's names again and again. Eventually the knife slipped and gashed my thumb under where that other coin had already cut it. I ignored the pain until the slipperiness of my blood made it too hard to hold the knife any longer. The bark was a smeared mess of lines and a red wetness I didn't want to think about. Maybe it was a good thing, though, a blood offering to show I was serious instead of a mere quarter.

When the knife fell from my aching fingers, I was startled to see that the cuts on my thumb and palm looked almost the same as the C I'd carved the day before. That had to mean something.

By the time I got home, my sweater was red to the elbow, and my mother screamed. I didn't whimper or cry out once on the way to the e.r., though, because I was gone on a feeling of serenity. I'd erased my mistake, and everything would be okay.

~*~*~*~

Three Days Later

It took seventeen stitches to close my wound, and all I could think about was how white the bandage looked on my hand as I stood in the cemetery during Alison's funeral. It should have been dirty, dirty to match the new darkness in my heavy heart.

The End

"Got my hands full, so full of trouble. There's something evil when it's double" - Starflyer59, Something Evil

Fall TV Pilot Report Card

2011-10-07T13:59:00.000-04:00

Note: this post will be updated as more shows premiere.

I guess that alphabetical order makes as much sense as any...

American Horror Story: B
This is one of the three shows I was most looking forward to, despite not being much of a Dylan McDermott fan. The pilot had some interesting moments, but so far it also is a bit disjointed. Hopefully the next few weeks will knock out some of the rough edges.

Hart of Dixie: B
You know what the CW has been missing? A replacement for Everwood. This show might just be it. It's kind of cute, and it's always nice to see another The O.C. alum on TV.

Pam Am: incomplete
I bailed after fifteen minutes. I'd heard that this was one of the shows this fall hoping to cash in on the popularity of Mad Men, but you know, I'm not a fan of Mad Men either. January Jones is one of those women, along with ones like Eva Green and Anna Silk, that I find beautiful in a wistful "why can't I look like that?" way, but that's not enough. As for Pam Am, like with Mad Men, maybe I'm just too young to find it very relatable, considering I didn't live though any part of the 60s myself.

Person of Interest: D
If someone had told me that it was going to appeal to the same sort of people who like the Jason Borne movies, I could have been spared the hour I wasted on this one. How can something with action in it be so boring?

Revenge: A
I'll be honest. I will watch anything with Emily VanCamp and/or Nick Wechsler in it. Anything. So, it's happy fortune that not only are they both in this show together, it's a pretty entertaining show to boot. We probably all have revenge fantasies, and it's interesting to see how one might play out if you had both the resources and the ruthlessness required to pull it off.

Ringer: C-
Yeah...no. I watched the first two episodes, and stopped caring after that. Sure, I own every season of BTVS on DVD, but I was always a Spike fan at heart more than a Buffy one. If this show is really supposed to be noir, it's a pretty clumsy one. I'd much rather watch Brick several more times than try to invest myself in Ringer.

The Secret Circle: B-
I'm still trying to decide how much I like this show. I'll stick with it for now, but I can see myself eventually growing to love or loathe it with equal odds.

Terra Nova: B
It's not as fun as Jurassic Park or Primeval, but I do like dinosaurs, so I'll probably continue to watch until it's prematurely canceled. For a show based millions of years in the past, though, they've been very sparing when it comes to showing us the dinos. And I find it slightly disconcerting to hear a man being called by his last name, which happens to be my first name, so I'm thinking that the whole unisex thing didn't work out as well as 70s-era parents who gave their boys my name hoped...

So there you have it, for now. Once Upon a Time and Grimm, the other two shows I've most looked forward to, don't begin until the end of the month, so check back later. FTR, Grimm is the most anticipated - I've been suggesting a supernatural-themed version of Law and Order for years, and TV won't get any closer to that than this.

"Feel me, completer, down to my core. Open my heart and let it bleed onto yours. Feeding on fever down all fours. show you what all that howl is for." - TV on the Radio, Wolf Like Me

So far a good week

2011-10-05T16:15:00.047-04:00

This week has been pretty good so far. Vynce got married (see last post) on Sunday, and from there:

Sarah Palin has announced that she will not be running for president. Happy days! I'd like for there to be a strong female candidate for president as much as any other not particularly feminist female voter would, but Palin and Bachmann are not candidates I can get behind. They're exuberant, I'll hand them that, but neither comes off as particularly bright. Why must the only potential female candidates spring from the cheerleader contingency of the Republican party? I'd so much rather someone like Rice run. Hell, I'd sooner vote for senator Snowe, even, despite her overly liberal voting record. Anyway, the thought of Palin running made a little part of my soul curl up and die because I could not vote in an election between her and Obama. I just couldn't be part of deciding between the frying pan and the fire, and it'd be the first presidential election I'd sit out since being old enough to vote. Now I don't have to worry about that any more!

And on Saturday, after being awake for 23 hours, I decided to write a cover letter and apply for a part time job that I was interested in. I don't know the hours, but it does pay nearly twice as much as my real job, so it wouldn't need to be many to be good. hyped up on caffeine and lack of sleep (I get more hyper the less I sleep. Thanks, ADHD!) I decided to try some of the "power words and phrases" in the two books I've read this summer about writing resumes and cover letters. Reading it over after I woke up, I couldn't decide if what I'd written was completely obnoxious, or brilliant. Since I was contacted today for an interview next Wednesday, I guess brilliant has it. Wish me luck!

What could make this week even better?
* my favorite TV show getting a 2 or 3 season renewal
* having the publisher's clearing house prize patrol show up
* meeting a tall, dark and available guy (and age-appropriate!) with a high tolerance for sarcasm and a propensity for redheads
* finally finding the missing pieces to novel #1 so the first draft can be completed before Christmas

Hey, you never know....

"Did you want all that you bought? It feels good to destroy. Push it down, let it up. Still empty, it's not enough. Like you could have it all if you had 24..." - The Grates, Like You Could Have It All

The Wedding

2011-10-02T19:41:00.008-04:00

After being engaged for more than two years, and changing the date a few times, Vynce and Megan got married today. I'd post pictures of them so you could see the happy couple, but I haven't asked if it's okay, and I don't post people-pictures without permission.

The ceremony was very small, and very sweet. I'm happy for them both. A bit envious too, maybe, but still very happy for them. Megan has been a very positive influence on my brother's life, and I'm glad that he found her because he was kind of wild before he did. Here's to many more great years together.

I'm less happy that my folks have suddenly noticed I'm single, though! God, I don't know how my mother ended up with my father, because her taste in what she thinks would make a good guy for me leaves a lot to be desired. I don't want to be her next project, truly. ::fingers crossed::

"Me and you, And you and me. No matter how they tossed the dice it had to be. The only one for me is you And you for me. So happy together." - The Turtles, So Happy Together <--the wedding DJ didn't know this song when I requested it. Can you believe that?

Fair Day

2011-10-01T10:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was that time again: the Deerfield Fair. We go every year, and it's mostly the same year to year, but why not? How often do you get to pet sheep or look at piglets? It's probably bad to enjoy looking at the cute animals and be an unrepentant meat eater, but I never claimed it was logical to think that they're sweet but not feel bothered about the thought of eating them.

This year they had a Portuguese food stand, which disappointed me a little because they didn't offer Portuguese fried dough. I amused myself by getting my friend to try to pronounce chourico, and she was stymied since it is pronounced nothing like it's spelled ("shu-REES"). I hate to admit it, but it's one of the few words in Portuguese I actually know. You'd think that considering that my great-grandfather, who was from the Azores, lived until I was 11, and my great-grandmother, from Bermuda, lived until just before I turned 19, that I'd know some more. But no, their families were very much "now that we've come to the US we speak English only" so not even my grandfather spoke it. So, all I know is "bless me", "so-so" and slang terms for feces and bugs.

In all, it was a pretty decent day at the fair. It would have been better if I hadn't fallen to the communists the day before and been sore and having to deal with it all, (in deference to male readers I'll just say that 7 hours of walking can do unpleasant things to a menstruating woman, and leave it at that) but what can you do? Mother nature's kind of a bitch, and at least it should ease off considerably before Vynce's wedding tomorrow.

"Promises you never gave, but your eyes have told me so much more." - Intruder, Teeth In Your Heart

Stupid Human Tricks

2011-09-29T07:34:00.002-04:00

Apparently a lot of people refer to eyes the color of mine as "blue-green hazel" and the classic hazel as "gold-green hazel" to differentiate between the two. At any rate, my eyes change colors. The default color seems hard for people to decide if they're light blue or light green, and at times they're other shades of blue, green, gray and blue-green.

Generally speaking they change color due to how dry they are (drier=greener), if I have gotten almost no sleep (bright blue-green - people ask if I'm wearing contacts), if I'm upset (darker blues and grays), and what color clothes I'm wearing. So what makes them change is not something I really can control beyond deciding what color to wear. Until now.

A few nights ago I decided to try the tongue cleaning section on the back of my new tooth brush, and it triggered my gag reflex. I happened to look up at the mirror and notice that my eyes looked blue-green for a moment, but it passed. Being someone who is willing to do unpleasant things to herself in the name scientific experiment, I did it again. And I'll be damned, for 3 or 4 seconds my eyes changed to that bright blue-green color before fading back to the "normal" color. Weird. And consistent.

So, that's my new stupid human trick. What's yours?

"You're a goddamn fool and I love you" - David Bazan, Wolves At The Door

Nothing is ever set in NH...

2011-09-16T16:56:00.005-04:00

I watched the pilot of The Secret Circle last night, which is about the descendants of the Salem witches, and it got me to thinking about something I've thought of before...Why, of the six New England states, are Massachusetts and Maine the one ones to have movies and TV shows set in them regularly? Sure, I adore Stephen King's Maine so I'm always happy to see something set there (like Kingdom Hospital, or my favorite, Haven) and a lot of the Massachusetts things are connected to witches or Boston, but...wouldn't it be nice to see something set in Vermont? Or Connecticut? Or Rhode Island, but not mob related (well, I guess there's Outside Providence too)?

You know I'm a Massachusetts native, but I've lived in New Hampshire nearly twice as long, and we've had, what, that immediately failure of a TV show about Poland NH and the recent and awful Yellowbrickroad movie to represent the state? That's pitiful.

Eventually, after I publish my Pull-Push-Hold trilogy and they become bestsellers, I'll sell the TV rights to Syfy, and they're say, "Shannon, these books are wonderful. But we want to make one little change. We were thinking that it'd be better if we set the show in Maine...." =(

Speaking of making the books into a show (hey, it could happen) I finally have casting ideas.

Caitlin - protagonist, brings the dead back to life: Alona Tal.
Danny - Caitlin's foster son who shares her ablities: Zane Huett
Kyler - Caitlin's dead boyfriend who just won't commit...to living: Sean Faris
Lori - Manchester police detective who enlists Caitlin's help in the serial killer case: Kelly Rowan
Max - the first person Caitlin rescued, now her neurotic ex-fiance: Taylor Kinney
Jasmine - Caitlin's first paying client, sends her referrals from grief support groups: Elaine Cassidy
Reilly- one of the murder victims Caitlin interacts with in the afterlife: Ariel Gade

I haven't decided on who would be ideal to play the serial killer or his unwilling "assistant" yet, but they'd be actors in their mid-to-late 30s.

"Stormed my winter palace but they couldn’t take it" - Santagold featuring Karen O, Go

Your musical taste kinda sucks

2011-09-15T15:13:00.001-04:00

Not you, the specific you reading this blog for some reason, but people in general. If you've read this blog for any length of time, you realize that I listen to a lot more indie music than mainstream, so it seemed like downloading other people's monthly indie playlists would be a good idea. It'd be faster than combing through the music blogs I usually read, so it's a good idea.

But it's not a good idea after all.

I suppose I should have doubted the wisdom of this after taking note of how often bands I hate, like Animal Collective, end up on people's "best of" lists, but surely they couldn't just like terrible bands, right? There's seldom been one of those lists I didn't find some agreement with, so I downloaded a few playlists.

Okay...there are definitely a few great songs on each, but most of them are not diamonds in the rough. They're just the rough. For every song I like, another 10 end up in my reject folder*. For some reason so many of these bands sound the same too, like badly cloned copies of Coldplay recorded at too low a volume. Don't get me wrong, "Trouble" was a good song back in the day, but do we need a million homages?

They say 90% of anything is crap, but why do you [music playlist complilers] like the crap? Why? Huh, huh, why?

*As an aside, I don't really know why I keep copies of songs I don't like on data DVDs, I just...always have. Once in a great while I go through them and rescue a song or three I've reconsidered, but it's hardly worth the effort. Good thing blank DVDs are cheap...

"I wouldn’t let you spark the fire I’m starting now" - Tracing Figures, Bury Me

Hatchbacks part II

2011-09-08T18:25:00.015-04:00

Back what feels like a million years ago, but was really 2006, I posted about things that surprisingly fit in my then vehicle, a Dodge Shadow hatchback. That car has since gone to the junkyard in the sky, and I hope the vehicle after that, a Kia Sephia, is languishing in what passes as the vehicle equivalent of hell, but my current vehicle is another hatchback, a Nissan Versa. I actually don't like it as much as the Shadow (it's bad to distrust a vehicle with 18,000 miles on it, right? I did already had to replace the tires, though), but it is useful. Around here both hatchbacks and Jeep Wranglers are considered kind of girly, and it stands to reason because guys who tend to want utility buy pick ups or big SUVs. It's practical to have something you can haul stuff around here, rather than pretentious. I think.

I think I had a point when I started this post, sorry. Anyway, surprising stuff that fits in a hatchback. I have a new entry to the list: a 24" dual stage snow thrower. God only knows why the old one was impossible to replace in January, but now that it's time for Labor Day week sales, they're everywhere. If there's a God in heaven a snow thrower will never be useful in September, even here. Dual stage this time, because in retrospect a single stage one having our winters inflicted upon it was only asking for an early death for it. Poor snow thrower 1.0, it did try so hard.

Some people hate to make a big purchase like this one, a weather dependant one, but I'll tell you, if $500 is the price for not getting enough snow to make this thing useful, it's money well spent. I'd gladly pay $500 a year for mild winters.

"Say you're confused. You want me and you want to hurt me. To beat out the cold that keeps you from having me completely. Say I'm so cold I rip your skin. Brag that I've got a bitterness in my chest where my love should be." - The Shondes, Winter

August Music

2011-09-05T20:40:00.004-04:00

Bondage Fairies - 1-0 buy

Brainless Wankers - Pogo Prose buy

Conditions - Illuminati buy

Crossfade - Killing Me Inside buy

Darker My Love - Dear Author

Eisley - Better Love buy

El Ten Eleven - Jumping Frenchmen of Maine buy if you don't know what JFoM are, google it

Faunts - Out on a Limb buy

Field Mouse - Anomie buy

Fight Like Apes - Tie Me Up With Jackets buy

Flashguns - St George

Florence And The Machine - Blinding buy

Har Mar Superstar - Tall Boy buy I found this song a little confusing until I learned it was written for Britney Spears

Hey Rosetta - Yes! Yes! Yes!

I Might Be Wrong - Elliot buy

Kanute - Tangle Me

Ke$ha featuring 3OH!3 - Blah Blah Blah buy If you aren't amused by her adopted persona, I don't know what to tell you

Ke$ha - Dancing With Tears In My Eyes buy

Lamb & Damien Rice - Back To Beginning (2011 version)

LAW - XXX buy

Loch Lomond - Wax and Wire buy

Miles Kane - Before Its Midnight

Mono Inc. - Gothic Queen buy

Múm - Guilty Rocks buy

Patrick Wolf - Damaris buy

Singing Adams - I Need Your Mind buy

Skeletal Family - Promised Land (Extended Version) buy

Some Kind of Giant Mudfish - My Heroin free MP3 this song is sort of hypnotic

Sweet Talk Radio - We All Fall Down buy

Testing Tomorrow - Revolver

The Domino State - Pillow Song

The Kills - Future Starts Slow buy

The Rapture - How Deep Is Your Love buy

Tracing Figures - Bury Me

White Lies - Holy Ghost buy

Wintersleep - Experience The Jewel buy

Woods - Mad At You

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"I'm holding out but not getting an answer. I'm finding out that cheating gets it faster." - Jimmy Eat World, Get It Faster

Words That [don't] Work

2011-09-01T17:40:00.003-04:00

Let's talk about Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear by Frank I. Luntz.

Apparently this book is being touted on some Fox News show, because my mother recommended it for me given that I'm looking for a part-time job to compliment my "real" job, and probably would benefit from advice about resume/cover letter writing. So, I decided that reading the book couldn't hurt.

It didn't hurt, but it sure didn't help. There are only two types of people who probably got anything out of reading it: people writing political speeches, and people writing commericals. Sure, I now have a greater store of useless triva knowledge of the TV jingle kind, but that's not what I was hoping for. The part that the book jacket says is helpful in everyday situations? That's in one 10-page chapter.

Reading an unhelpful book might not have been so bad if it hadn't also annoyed the hell out of me too. The funny thing is, as someone who votes Republican (though I'm a libertarian leaning moderate) I'm part of the target audience for this book, and I still found the tone unbearably smug. And for someone who thinks he's a maven of words, he jumped all over the place and repeated himself more times than I could count.

Skip this book. It's full of hot air.

"You could be the reason I love. You could be the reason I cry. You could, you could, you could" - Jakalope, Pretty Life

Come on, Irene

2011-08-31T15:58:00.027-04:00

Well, that was no fun.

Hurricane Irene was rather weak by the time she got here, and there are a few storms every year that have higher winds and so on, but because PSNH is such a lousy power company, we got to experience the first multi-day summer power failure in my lifetime. I now know that 60+ hour power failures also suck during the summer, not just the winter. I would have been content going to my grave without learning that, but what can you do?

You know how some people wistfully say they wish they'd been born in another time? Take away the power for a few days, and you'll cure most of their romantic longings for by-gone days. Everything is harder without power, and you really notice how much you depend on heat or cooling when you can't turn up the thermostat in the winter, or put on the air conditioner or a fan in the summer. I like it hotter than most so it was only slightly annoying to me, but a lot of people suffered in the heat. Plus, you know how in the X-Files episode "Home" Scully told Mulder that he'd fall into a catatonic state if he's without a cellphone for two days? I'm not much better than that without internet access. Since age 18 the longest I've ever gone without checking my e-mail is five days - during, of course, a different power failure...

I feel bad for the folks in Vermont who had no warning that the storm was going to nail them - a lot of them will be without power for days yet, and some have had main roads go so they're inaccessable expect by helicopter...the scary thing is that I can imagine Portsmouth, NH getting cut off the same way if something nailed the bridge (you might be able to get out via route 33, though, I don't remember since it's been a decade since I traveled to Portsmouth weekly). It's hard to believe that this is the best we can do predicting storm movement in 2011. Hopefully they'll be back to normal soon, with roads repaired and the rest of the damage cleaned up.

"I've been crawling in the dark looking for the answer. Is there something more than what i've been handed?" - Hoobastank, Crawing In The Dark

Tick-y Situation

2011-08-12T17:38:00.002-04:00

So...back in mid-July I got what felt like the flu, with a temp of 103, extreme fatigue, chills, headache and muscle aches from neck to knee. In 48 hours I started to feel better. Temp went down, only my neck and head ached any more, so I figured I was on the mend. Oddly, my appetite disappeared just as I was starting to feel better that Friday.

But that Saturday I woke up and knew that I wasn't better, and wouldn't be for a while. See, I had a rash on my belly. And it had a faint bullseye for a few hours. Then it spread and swallowed the bulleye up. Mostly it was pink and purple, like my back was the time I woke up to go to the bathroom as a teenager and fell down the stairs.

It sure didn't look like all the pictures on the internet, but I had every single other symptom for lyme disease, so I forced myself to go to the doctor since I know that early treatment has the highest cure rate. The doctor looked at me for about thirty seconds, and said, yup, there's no point in even doing a blood test because that's what the non-bullseye rash looks like. Or rashes by that point - I got a dozen of them in varying sizes by the time the meds kicked in.

The doctor also said nine people came in in one day the week before, so apparently there's an epidemic of it in my town given there's all of 8,000 people here. NH has been between the #1 and #3 highest infection rate the last five years, so it's probably not too surprising...but in a way it is. I always spend a lot of time outside, and I didn't even see the tick that bit me.

I'm through with the antibiotics by now, and the only lingering ill effects are that I'm still more tired than usual (six and a half to seven hours sleep is no longer enough) and I'm still losing weight because my appetite isn't back to normal yet either. It's okay, I could probably lose 20 pounds before anyone got upset about me being too thin.

The moral of the story is this Boys and Girls: if you get "the flu" and then a rash, have it checked out for lyme disease. Only 40% of people get a rash that looks like the ones we're warned about. Apparently a lot of people never get a rash at all. Who knew?

"Lay me up, then heave-ho. You're sick and beautiful. Peel my bandage slowly, it's psychological. You're napalm with novocaine, A kite in a hurricane..." - Artificial Joy Club, Sick and Beautiful

July Music

2011-08-06T16:56:00.003-04:00

All Ends - Apologize
Symphony Of Life - Avantasia buy
Bandito - Veneno (Mexico City)
Black Heaven - Agony buy
Captain Phoenix - Pistols & Hearts buy
Dave Gahan - Deeper and Deeper buy
Erik Sumo - Friday I'll Be There
Fixmer/Mccarthy - Look To Me buy
Flokati - Sun buy
Fredrik - Locked In the Basement buy
Goose - Words
Hook & The Twin - Race for the Bone
Howls - Hammock buy
IAMX - Spit It Out (SRLremix)
Jesus On Extasy - Tonight buy
Juliette & The Licks - Got Love To Kill
Kane - Wanna Make It Happen
Korn - Hushabye buy
Lilofee - Where The Fallen Stars Lay
Pamela Hute - You Made Me Lady buy
Ratatat - Neckbrace buy
Red On Red - Just a Little Bit Further buy
Robyn - Love Kills buy
Shyama - Chemical Arrest buy
SinFuRoco - Monkey Planet buy
State Of The Union - Dancing In The Dark (Aqualite Remix)
Superdrag- She is a Holy Grail buy
Swell - What I Always Wanted buy
The Boy Judas - My Real Self
The Cat Empire - Waiting buy
The Charlatans UK - Trust in Desire buy
The Cutaway - Never Been Alone buy
The Fast Forwards - No One Left
The Parlor Mob - The Kids buy
To All Our Saviors - Don't You Know
Uncle Ho - Euphoria
Wayne Hussey - Garden Of Delight buy

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"All I want is your soul. Well..." - Law, XXX

The Deathly Hallows pt II

2011-07-31T18:08:00.001-04:00

I finally got to see the movie...I'll explain why I wasn't up to it sooner in another post. I know a lot of purists were upset about changes from the book, but I didn't love the book so I'm not bothered. I'm bothered that they make a point of showing blue-eyed Harry with a voice over saying how much his eyes look like his mother's then immediately showing the brown-eyed girl they cast as his mother as a child, but that's my biggest nitpick.
It's hard to believe that the end has come... Has there ever been another movie franchise where people could literally watch the actors grow up? I'm looking forward to the inevitable box set this Christmas of both parts of Deathly Hallows. The Harry Potter movies are probably my favorite movie adaptations (True Blood for TV for somewhat fateful, and Haven for merely "based upon") of all.

I'm going to miss going to see the movies, to be honest. That's the bad thing about endings: even if the series was really good, eventually it comes to and end. sigh.

"I miss you, each day day day. I miss you, why does it have to be this way?" Feeder, Miss You

Oh, Sookie... (Dead Reckoning spoilers)

2011-07-11T17:14:00.002-04:00

I look forward to the new Sookie Stackhouse book every year, and Dead Reckoning was no exception. What was different, though, was that I didn't love book 11.

As you are surely aware from other posts, I'm a big Sookie/Eric fan, which is one of the reasons why I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see how book 4 will work into this season of True Blood, and herein lies my biggest complaint with Dead Reckoning: Now that Sookie and Eric seem happy together, a huge, vampire-queen shaped monkey wrench has been thrown into their lives. The book ends on a wait-and-see note, and with only two books to go, I'm half anticipating, half dreading what's going to happen next between the mind-reading barmaid and her viking boyfriend.

Come on, Harris, don't do this to us! You probably shed Sookie/Bill fans a long while ago, you don't want to lose the Sookie/Eric contingency too, do you?

Other than the relationship woes, the book led to some interesting developments. Did you wonder why Claude and Dermot moved in? Or why she and Hunter read minds despite it not being a fairy gift? Read Dead Reckoning and you'll find out.

"All this dancing around again, will it break uncomfortable silence?" - Triggerfinger, All this Dancin' Around watch buy

Flash fiction July

2011-07-10T16:58:00.025-04:00

A story of no more than 2000 words that must incorporate the photo to the left and the words "Vie", "Carton" and "Plumb." IMHO the last is the hardest because 98% of the time I hear that word it's in reference to the green spinny thing above sims' heads.

We had 60 hours to write our stories as usual, and again this tied for second. Why must first be so elusive?

Sugar-Free

Smuttynose Island had a beer company named after it, and felt eons away as I piloted a rented boat towards it. By the time I reached the shore, the fading daylight had tinted the water the color of cheap cola. I sighed at the thought: the whole point of the trip was to escape the excesses of modern life that followed me, over fifty pounds worth of it since college.

Bringing the boat against the dock, I was pleased that it was whole. The rental guy had me imagining planks missing or ready to give way under my weight, though my aunt probably would have mentioned it before suggesting I stay there for the summer. The guy might have just been yanking my chain, but his alarm at learning my destination had seemed genuine. "What are you going out there alone for?" he'd asked. "Don't you know that's a murder house?"

I had known that; Grandma kept a macabre scrapbook of articles about our most famous dead relative and I'd poured over it as a child. "She wasn't a beauty, Jenna, neither of them girls were but they didn't deserve to die like that," Grandma, finger hovering over the photo of slain Anethe, would say every time she caught me. Maybe it was meant to be comforting, that notion that even ugly people shouldn't be murdered, but I figured she was trying to nicely say I was homely too.

Sighing, I tried to shake off the old insecurities, and checked to make sure the anchor chain was sound. I never did answer the rental guy's first question. He probably would've laughed to hear that I was hoping that shutting myself away from easily accessible supermarkets and bakeries would be the kick in the pants, the oversize pants, I needed to get serious about dieting.

Docking the boat myself wasn't easy, but I managed. The house was visible from the shore and it wasn't a beauty either. Aunt Katherine had someone out to fix it up, twice, but the repairs were never quite finished, and the worn building advertised its age and state of neglect. I trudged up the path, hoping that the interior of the little building would be nicer.

It wasn't. Opening the door, I could imagine Katherine saying: "Give it a chance, Jenna. You said that life has gone off plumb for you. Maybe this will help." Maybe it would. I could hardly see myself baking in that kitchen - the batter would be as much dust as flour.

At least there was electricity. Katherine might be fond of hoop earrings, gauzy skirts, and prattle about chakras, but even she didn't believe in denying oneself the comforts of modern technology. How else would she have sold power crystals on eBay?

Even with electricity, I found myself clumsily tripping over carton of small tools that someone had left on the bathroom floor. Clearly it belonged to one of the unreliable workmen because the new toilet showed evidence of work in there. Fortunately, the vanity I braced myself against to keep from tumbling into the ancient tub was sturdy.

I hadn't thought to bring a duster, so I found a rag and set about trying to smooth the dust off various surfaces. It was probably a futile effort without a vacuum cleaner, but the burst of activity helped keep my mind off of cake and other forbidden delights. Even without sweets there to actively vie for my attention, my thoughts kept circling back to the fact that I would have gladly killed the rental guy for a Snickers bar.

**

Everyone I trusted enough to ask about weight loss had told me that the longer you go without sugar, the weaker the cravings become. It only took me three days before I realized that none of these people had actually ever tried their own advice. Having nothing sweet in the house drove me to distraction and I couldn't even bake anything. Fruit just wasn't cutting it, and I had bought more of that with me than just about anything else. Horny men thought about sex less often than I craved carbs.

Eventually I found myself looking up sugar detoxification, hoping that webMD might have a page on adverse reactions because I was beginning to imagine suffering tremors or hallucinating a chorus line of Hostess baked goods. A websearch revealed that no one, at least not with the initials DR after their name, had ever seriously researched the matter. It didn't help me much but at least I didn't have to worry about a pie visiting me with rattling chains.

By the morning of the fourth day, I realized that my grand plan had a fatal flaw. I had only thought of how stranding myself on a tiny, otherwise uninhabited island would force me to behave myself, but I hadn't given any thought to what I would do instead of snack. An amateur historian might have combed the property for clues about the semi-unsolved crime, but I had spent only a short while exploring the two outbuildings before deciding that anything of value had probably been eaten by time, so that was no way to occupy myself. The classic hobby, writing the great American novel, was right out because I was as distractible as a kindergartner.

I could clean though, so I pawed through my purse, hoping to find a pen and paper for a list. Quite unexpectedly, my hand found half of a Kit Kat bar. Without even thinking about it, I unwrapped it, and popped it in my mouth. Bliss.

I was still savoring the taste of chocolate when I heard an explosion behind me. Whipping around, I saw that a canister of flour, one that had probably seen the Eisenhower administration, had dashed itself on floor. I stared at the broken shards in the powdery drift, and wondered how it had happened...at least, until I remembered the open window. Sighing, I picked up the biggest pieces, and added a new dustpan to my list of cleaning supplies.

**

Later, as I headed back to the mainland, I was thankful yet again that I'd done a lot of boating as a kid. At least I could escape if someone showed up with an axe, I thought morbidly. It must have been terrible, for the two women who died, and the one who didn't, to have been trapped in that house when someone came.

The mainland hardware store had everything on my list, though I knew that I was being screwed over on prices: Katherine told me flat out that prices got raised in May so summer tourists could be fleeced. After that, I popped into the grocery store, intending only to buy some bread for the seagulls. Without quite thinking about it, I found myself leaving the store with a box of doughnuts and break-away cookie dough too.

On the way back I rationalized it. It has been four days, not counting the chocolate, since I had indulged in sweets. Everyone said that the key to a successful diet was to not deny yourself, so I was just following good advice.

**

"It's good advice," I muttered as I entered the house. Could houses be disappointed in you, I wondered idly. Of course not. Going sugar-free really was making me lose my mind if I was personifying the house so someone could be disdainful about my purchases.

The strangest thing happened when I put the cookie dough away: the refrigerator shuddered, bouncing my endless supply of fruit. I stared at it and made a mental note to check if there'd been an earthquake. People think the northeast doesn't get any. It does, just too small to be noteworthy.

I got the donuts put away without incident, but I thought I saw the cabinet door move a little out of the corner of my eye. It was just nerves, I decided.

Truth be told, I was a little disappointed in myself for those thoughtless purchases, so I took the L-Glutamine a friend swore by, and tried very hard not to crave anything but sleep. I made it a whole night without caving in, and it felt like a victory.

**

The victory only lasted until three, when I found myself being drawn to the fridge like a redneck in an alien tractor beam. I was only going to eat one dough blob, not even giving myself the satisfaction of warm cookies.

Next thing I knew, I was opening the dough, and a flicker of movement froze me. For a second I'd been sure someone had been staring at me, but no one was there. I slammed the fridge shut, stuffed the dough in my mouth, and dashed back to bed. The house's history was getting to me, that's all.

**

The house suffered another tremor as I gathered bread and donuts and headed outside. Maybe it was built on a small faultline. I promised myself to ask Katherine about it later.

As soon as they saw me, seagulls gathered along the shore and I spent a while tearing bread into pieces and tossing it to them, only slightly bothered that their hungry cries sounded like lost toddlers. Some were more daring than others, and I found myself laughing at their antics between bites of donut.

But only until something horrifying happened. A hand made of water surged out of the ocean and smacked away everything I was holding. I shrieked and jumped back, fully expecting that a closer look would provide a logical explanation.

What I saw was watery fingers waggling disapprovingly at the food scattered on the ground. The seagulls didn't mind and dove for what I'd dropped. But me? I ran screaming all the way back to the house.

**

My heart pounded as I slammed the door behind me. If I thought the house would provide sanctuary, I was wrong. Something sticky immediately fell on my head, and I felt for it, hand trembling, only to discover cookie dough. Before I quite knew it, several more unseen assaults were launched, like someone was firing the dough at me from a paintball gun.

In the kitchen donuts hung in mid-air until they noticed me, then they flew at me, leaving powder all over me as I ran away. I stopped only long enough to grab my phone before shutting myself into the cellar.

**

Somehow, there was a signal. "Aunt Katherine," I cried shakily when she answered. "I think the house is haunted."

"Why, dear?"

"This is going to sound crazy, but every time I eat something sweet, weird stuff happens."

I'm not sure what I expected her reaction to be, but laughter wasn't it. "Of course it does."

"What?" I asked blankly.

"I suggested you stay there for a reason, Jenna."

"What reason?"

"Anethe hated sugar. She wouldn't allow it in the house. So..."

"You're saying that I'm being haunted by a sugar-hating ghost?" My voice rose at the end.

"I think so. Both those workmen who skipped out on me, they complained about rattling and stuff moving while they finish their lunches. So it only stood to reason-"

I hung up on her.

**

You probably think I jumped back in the boat and left immediately, but you'd be wrong. I stayed as long as I'd planned before everything weird happened.

I needed help with my sugar addiction, and Anethe was more than willing to provide it. I can't think of a better way to stay in line than knowing that a sugar-hating specter is ready to pounce poltergeist-style, can you?

Anethe and I made our peace - with just a few more sweet slipups - and I left the last week of August feeling better about myself than ages. When people ask my weight loss secret, I'd just smile and say I got some help from an old busybody relative who helped me break my bad habits.

The End

P.S. the murders really did happen, late in the 1800s. Google "Smuttynose Murders" for more info.

"Everyone has respect to uphold, you lost mine when you screwed me over tenfold." - Captain Phoenix, Pistols & Hearts buy

June Music

2011-07-08T18:33:00.003-04:00

30 Seconds to Mars feat Kanye West - Hurricane 2.0 buy
A Balladeer - Nightmare On Elm Street  buy
Amy Ray - Measure of Me buy
Bright Eyes - Middleman buy
Comaduster feat. Cecil Frena - Foam Abbattoir
Fake Blood - I Think I Like It buy
Fields Of The Nephilim - Celebrate buy
Headmix - Passenger buy
Maps - It Will Find You
Matt Pond PA - Basement Parties buy
Matthew Good - Raygun buy
Matthew Ryan - The Little Things
Maximum Balloon feat. Little Dragon- If You Return  buy
Mesh - Only Better (Alien6 Mix) buy
Mesh - Who Says? buy
Metallspuerhunde - Wer Hat Dich Bloss So Ruiniert after seeing the video I'm afraid to wonder what this song is about
Metric - Front Row buy
Modest Mouse - Tiny Cities Made of Ash buy
Morcheeba - World Looking In buy
Mr + Mrs - One Million Screaming Angels
Mumford + Sons - Winter Winds buy
Nural - Surefire buy
Remedy Drive - Something Made To Last buy
Rooney - Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Ryan Star - Brand New Day  buy
Schelmish - Für Euch buy no idea what this one is about either. Recorde, hablo solamente Ingles y Espanol
Silke Bischoff - Phoenix from the Flames
South - Safety In Numbers buy
Spoon - Nefarious buy
Starflyer 59 - Something Evil buy
Stella's Notch - Subrosa
Stereo MCS - Warhead buy
Stereophonics - Superman buy
Stranger Than Fate - Drifting Away buy
Sufjan Stevens - The Upper Peninsula buy
Tegan and Sara - Hell buy
Tegan and Sara - The Cure buy
Terrorvision - Babyface buy
Jaguar Club - Sleepwalking buy
The Motion Sick - Grace Kelly buy
The Parallel Project - Consequence buy
The Raveonettes - Lust buy
The Smithereens - Blues Before and After buy one of the only 80s bands I actually liked during the 80s
The Stranglers - Golden Brown buy
The Thermals - Never Listen To Me buy
The Twang - Push The Ghosts buy
Them Crooked Vultures - Caligulove buy
Triggerfinger - All This Dancin' Around buy
Tripdavon - More Than I Can Bear buy
Tripdavon - Never Let You Go buy

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"Your eyes are blue like a dead man's lips but you're shaking your hips like you're in a trance. I'll take your words if they fill me up" - Lilofee, Where The Fallen Stars Lay

I'm Orange, Dammit!

2011-07-06T23:22:00.001-04:00

I know what some of you are thinking, "But Shannon, redheads almost always hate it when people say their hair is orange." Yes, yes we do. But that's not what I mean. My hair is a coppery-red, thank you very much. It's my skin that's orange.

No, I didn't use a fake tanner. That would look ridiculous on someone with my coloring.

I had to do yard work today, so I sprayed myself liberally with sunscreen, because I can only take an hour or so a day in the sun without smoking and threatening to spontaneously combust. And the little vampires, mosquitoes that is, are out in full force, so I sprayed myself with bug spray too.

And every where they mixed by being wet at the same time turned orange.

Stop laughing.

It's not coming off without a fierce scrubbing here, and you're laughing?

You suck.

"I'm not what you wanted, don't you love me though?" - The7method, Your Disappointment

Super 8. It's Super!

2011-06-27T22:25:00.002-04:00

I went to this movie without knowing much about it and I liked it quite a bit. It was nice to see Elle Fanning, who was a toddler in the first thing I saw her in (Taken) in a pretty big part, and the boy who played the lead did an excellent job for someone who has never had a TV or movie role before.

Was it a masterpiece? No. Was it fun to MST 3000 with the people I went with? Yup. And it the Super 8 film at the end was worth the price of admission. Go see it before it's gone.

"I don't just want to be a footnote in someone else's happiness." - Fall Out Boy, Headfirst Slide Into Coopestown On A Bad Bet

May Music

2011-06-10T18:30:00.094-04:00

Bill Withers - Grandma's Hands buy mp3
Client - Happy
Disco Ensemble - Protector buy mp3
Jack Penate - Be The One  buy mp3
John Vanderslice - Forest Knolls buy mp3
Joy Zipper - 1 buy mp3
Julian Plenti - Fly As You Might buy mp3
Julian Plenti - Fun That We Have buy mp3
LCD Soundsystem - You Wanted A Hit  buy mp3
Lunascape - Chemical Lingo buy mp3
Massive Attack featuring Madonna - I Want You
Melissa Ferrick - Drive buy mp3
Millencolin - Black Eye buy mp3
Nada Surf - Mother's Day buy mp3
Necessary Response - Elements buy mp3
Necessary Response - Spilling Blood buy mp3
Neon Trees - Drop Your Weapon
Nine Inch Nails - Sin buy mp3
Paramore - Careful buy mp3
Paramore - Ignorance buy mp3
Peaches - Trick Or Treat buy mp3
Peaches - You Love It buy mp3
Peter Murphy - A Strange Kind Of Love buy mp3
Pillar - Whatever It Takes buy mp3
Placebo - Battle for the Sun buy mp3
Robyn - Be Mine! (Ballad Version)
Sea Wolf - O Maria! buy mp3
Spoon - Got Nuffin buy mp3 did you wonder what the song at the end of House's season finale was?
Sugarcult - Hate Every Beautiful Day buy mp3 I own this cd, but apparently the song didn't gel with me before
Sunmay - Let's Go To Bed (The Cure cover) buy mp3
The7method - Dead Like Me  buy mp3
The7method - The Breakdown buy mp3
The7method - Your Disappointment buy mp3
The Afghan Whigs - I'm A Soldier buy mp3
The Classic Crime - Abracadavers buy mp3
The Classic Crime - Medisin buy mp3
The Courteeners - Kings Of The New Road buy mp3
The Courteeners - You Overdid It Doll buy mp3
The Go-Betweens - Was There Anything I Could Do? buy mp3

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"You touch yourself and think of me. Come on, it's not that dirty" - Die Trying, Dirty Dirty

Flash fiction May

2011-05-31T23:58:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to upload this story for a couple of weeks, but...even if I told you how much of my free time has been spent gardening, would you believe me?

Anyway...

We had 60 hours to write a 2000 word or less story, use the words "Phrase," "Detract," & "Thankfully," and draw inspiration from this picture.

I barely finished on time and wrestled with whether I should try to write a story when my muse wasn't being cooperative. I guess it turned out okay all things considered.

Spring Break

The first time it'd been a warthog, and Devin Green had gotten away with it. Later on things got more complicated, but right at the beginning, it had started out almost consequence-free...

~*~*~

Despite the fact that Devin was dutifully packing his duffel bag for spring break, it didn't stop him from making a last ditch effort at avoiding the trip. As soon as his mother poked her head into the room to check on his progress, he went on the attack. "I don't want to go, Mom. Don't make me."

Ellen Green sighed and looked towards the ceiling, as if she could find words of wisdom written up there. "You know you have to, Dev. You spending school breaks with your father is written into the custody agreement."

"So? Am I gonna go to jail if I miss a spring break with Dad?" Devin asked irritably.

He thought he'd been a pretty good sport about things up until now, but this year, when he and his friends were actually old enough to do something interesting over break, his plea to stay home had been met with a resounding no. It wasn't fair, he'd been packing up to wander all over creation with his father every spring since he was seven and he was sick of it.

"No one would send a fifteen-year-old to jail for missing spring break-" Ellen started to say, only to have her son cut her off.

"Well, would you go to jail then? For being a bad custodial parent?" Devin asked, getting more wound up.

"No-"

"Then why do I have to go? It isn't fair. You have an affair after Dad ditches you for work, and I'm the one who spends the next eleventy-seven years paying for it every spring and summer. Where's the justice in that?!"

"Devin!" Ellen's eyes flashed dangerously, and Devin knew that he'd pushed her too far. "You're going and that's the end of it."

"Fine. Whatever. I'm going to go to college in Australia and never coming home," he said petulantly as he dragged his duffel off the bed and stalked out of the room.

"If you can find a way to pay for that, power to you," he heard his mother muttered behind him, and it did nothing to improve his mood.

Three more years and they'd stop being able to shuffle him back and forth like a rook on a chessboard. He couldn't wait.

~*~*~

Three hours later Devin got off the bus and went into the station to look for his father. Rich wasn't much of a father, but he usually had drinks and snacks with him when Devin got there, which was a point in his favor. This time was no exception and Devin spotted him clutching a Dunkin Donuts bag and bottles of Sprite.

"Hey, Sport!" Rich greeted him in the same way he had since before Devin could tie his own shoes. It was something his son found both annoying and endearing. "How was the bus ride?"

"Long. Hot. I sat next to the last living member of the Spanish Inquisition and spent the trip answering stupid questions about how I liked high school," he said, taking a bottle and opening it for a long swig.

Rich gave him an uncertain smile, obviously not sure how to react. "Well, at least it's over."

"Right. Where to now?" Devin asked. "Are we backpacking in some dry place that's never heard of plumbing, or are we going somewhere it rains twenty days a month?"

Neither possibility would have really surprised him because his father usually spent spring breaks dragging him to places that people who didn't have "investigative" TV shows to host knew better to stay away from.

"Nope." Rich shook his head. "This year we're staying stateside."

"Did you get fired?" Devin blurted out before thinking that through. Though, it would be interesting if the job that he'd picked over Devin and Ellen tossed him out on his rear.

Rich's eyes narrowed. "I did not. I'll have you know that we're investigating urban magic this week."

We're. Rich always phrased it that way, even though Devin usually spent the entire time trying to keep out of the camera crew's way, and definitively off-camera himself since his mother flatly refused to let his dad "exploit" him that way. During a good spring break he might get to lug some equipment for the crew so he had something to do other than miss his friends.

If his dad had been a suburbanite commuting to and from a job in a nearby city, maybe these breaks every spring and summer might not suck so much because he'd have neighbors, and neighbors often had kids. The idea of friends he saw at his father's might have been okay.

"Urban magic?" Devin asked when he realized the conversation had lulled. "Really?"

"Yup. We're heading to Detroit."

~*~*~

"Here we are," Rich announced, but he was speaking to the camera, not Devin. The show liked to tape arrivals, even if it meant "arriving" six or seven times to get the intro right.

It wasn't a burned-out building, but both neighboring buildings were. Devin got out of the van and looked around. "Shithole" didn't even begin to cover his opinion of the place.

A door opened and a wizened old woman the color of mahogany began to slowly approach, which one of the cameramen captured in loving detail. Devin didn't stay close enough to hear his dad or the woman speak, but he could pretty much imagine the exchange. Viewers didn't seem to notice that it was basically the same stuff over and over again, or maybe they did and they actually liked it. Either way, Rich's show 'What's Out There' usually made good ratings for something on cable.

After the whole meet and greet was captured on film, the cameras went off so Rich could speak to the witch, if that's what she was, off camera to strategize. Viewers might think that everything they saw was completely spontaneous, but nothing could be further from the truth. It was in the best interest of everyone involved that both the host and the gracious guests were both put into the best light, and every detail of that was planned.

"Dad, I'm going to poke around," Devin called before wandering off.

He contemplated exploring one of the gutted buildings before he decided that falling through a floor might be more exciting but not more fun. He was at a loss until he realized that he could see someone waving to him, so he went to check it out.

The someone turned out to be a girl about his age, and she had a complexion just about the same shade as the old woman. It made Devin feel absolutely pasty in comparison. "Hey," he said cautiously.

"You're with the film guys?" the girl asked. "You don't look old enough."

"'cause I'm not. My dad thinks that dragging me from film site to film site is father-son bonding," Devin groused. "I'm Devin."

She smiled at him. "Belle, and I'm totally with you. Grandma's got the same idea, but I usually just get dragged to her clients' houses."

"So...is she a witch, or something?" Devin asked, not really worried about sounding rude. Belle didn't strike him as the touchy type.

"Or something," Belle agreed with a nod. "Fact is, anyone here can do what she does, they just don't know it."

"Just here?"

"For like the next four blocks, yeah." Belle glanced around. "There's something screwy about this place since everyone left. Grandma said that 'the divide is bleeding,' whatever that means."

"Are you talking about magic, or..."

"Right. Magic."

"Okay..."

"Really," she insisted.

"So you're saying that I could do magic?" Devin asked dubiously.

"Yup."

"Uh huh."

"No really. Close your eyes and think of something, anything, really hard. Concentrate on it, and when you open your eyes, it'll be real."

"Whatever."

"What, are you scared?" Belle taunted.

This got his back up. "I'm not scared."

"So try it."

Sighing, he closed his eyes and thought really hard about something that would never wander through a half burned-out urban neighborhood.

Before he even opened his eyes Belle was squealing. "What is that? It's so ugly!"

The warthog standing in the road didn't seem to think much of Belle either, and glared at her with beady eyes. "Holy crap!" Devin yelped. "How do we get rid of it??"

"We-" Belle started to say, but she stopped when a speeding car barreled into the warthog and erased it from existence. It didn't simply disappear, but the red, slightly furry remains would be hard to identify.

"Ewww." Devin looked away. "So, can you make anything just by thinking about it?"

"Almost anything," Belle amended. "I've never been able to get a giraffe right."

"You've tried to make giraffes?" Devin looked surprised. He'd thought that replicating the warthog that'd attacked their jeep last summer was pretty clever, but it was disappointing to learn that the neighborhood had seen other exotic animals already. "Why?"

"Dunno, I just like them."

"How do you 'almost' make a giraffe, anyway?"

"You kind of make them headless," Belle muttered. "It's not on purpose, I just have trouble with animal heads. Usually I stick to non-living things."

"Uh..." The thought of a headless giraffe struck him as pretty unpleasant, but it did give him an idea. "Hey Belle, you want to make your grandma, like, the most famous person ever for a while?"

"If it'd get us out of here, sure. What do we have to do?"

"We've gotta wait until..." Devin outlined his plan, and Belle nodded along.

~*~*~
It wasn't until people began to scream later on that the plan seemed like a bad idea. Devin had tried hard to imagine what would happen if, just when Belle's grandma looked like she was concentrating hard, a headless giraffe suddenly appeared. But his imagination hadn't done the image justice.

The poor beast lumbered around, swinging its long neck to and fro, before thrashing against the brick wall of Belle's house. It gamely tried to get somewhere, but the lack of eyes, or a brain, made it hard for it to find its bearings, so it was more sad and horrific than anything else.

Everyone but Belle and Devin shouted in alarm, and at least one of the camera crew dropped a camera as they tried to do something, anything, about the headless ungulate. Belle poked him hard in the ribs. "Holy shit, we're going to be in so much trouble."

Devin shrugged. With everyone screaming and failing about, no one even seemed to know they were there, thankfully. "If they blame me, maybe I won't have to spend the summer with my dad." He couldn't imagine that his mother was going to react well to a headless giraffe incident, so maybe it'd work out in his favor.

~*~*~

Later on, after the photos were published (a reporter got wind of it before the giraffe was banished) two things were crystal clear: one, 'What's Out There' had never enjoyed higher ratings. Two, even if he was forced to spend more school breaks with Rich, it'd be hard to top the excitement of the magic in Detroit...but as mid-June rolled around, Devin found himself looking forward to what his dad had in store next.

The End

"I break my wooden bones for you. You took my crystal heart and shook it through and through" -Sea Wolf, O Maria

Scary Statue

2011-05-05T19:59:00.000-04:00

Argh!!!

"Be still my love, be still my love. Don't you move while I rip your heart out." - No One Goes Home, Be Still

April Music

2011-05-04T19:18:00.000-04:00

Caribou - Hello Hammerheads
Christopher Anton - This Is Where I Am
Constantines - Shine A Light
Covenant - Call The Ships To Port (Kaylab Remix)
Crosscut - Perfect Gift
Cyberpiper - Mary
Devendra Banhart - A Ribbon
Devotchka - Venus in Furs
Dirty Passion - Liar
Disco Ensemble - Drop Dead Casanova
Disturbed - Bound wow, it's hard to believe it's been a decade since I saw 'em
Echoes the Fall - Bloodline
Elliot Minor - Electric High
Elliott Brood - Write It All Down For You
Emery - Churches And Serial Killers
Hotspur - Chandelier
IAMX - My Secret Friend (Ft. Imogen Heap)
IAMX - Spit it out
IAMX - Think of England
Imogen Heap - I Am In Love With You
Indigo Girls - Become You
Informatik - Falling
Iris - Annie Would I Lie To You (T.O.Y. Mix)
Islands - Shining
Jack Penate - Pull My Heart Away
Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson - Jackson Hole
Kings Of Leon - Notion
Kirlian Camera - The Dester Inside
Kutless - In Me
Old 97's - Timebomb
One Minute Halo - Under The Blues Skies
OneRepublic - All The Right Moves
Oomph! - Burning Desire
The Ropes - I Miss You Being Gone

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"And if you ever change you mind, you know I'm not hard to find. And if you ever need someone, I'll still be waiting..." - Devlins, Waiting

Easter

2011-04-24T17:51:00.003-04:00

So...today is my 36th Easter, even though I've just turned thirty-four. There's a math puzzle for you. Any idea how that worked out? I'll tell you, next year is even worse, I'll be up to 37 before turning 35.

If you haven't worked it out yet, I'll give you a clue: I was born on Easter Sunday. And today I overheard Dad telling Vynce that stupid people ask me if my birthday is a different date every year. It's totally true, and I've been asked that by multiple thoughtless people! They must find Thanksgiving births puzzling too.

"Come on, come on. Come on little rabbit, show me where you got it." - The Afghan Whigs, 66

Sucker Punch

2011-04-08T21:42:00.000-04:00

I hope Colleen and Ophelia liked this movie too, because I did. I didn't love the ending, and I was unhappy that "Panic Switch" by The Silversun Pickups wasn't in the movie after being heavily featured in the trailer, but other than that...

I'm not much of a feminist, but I'll admit that I have a general fondness for tv shows and movies that are big on girl-power. Girls kicking guys' asses is pretty sweet. This movie had a fair amount of that, so I enjoyed it.

More so, though, was the apprication of the visual aspects of the film. Gothic surrealism is an under-used film style, so I'm always thrilled when something new comes along to make use of it. I'm not sure what is so exciting about the up-from-under wide angles, but I really love that (even in ballroom scene in this backstreet boys video) for some reason. I really wish that more films would make use of it, and I think the emergence of steampunk will eventually grant me that wish...if we end up getting a bunch of steampunk movies, that is.

Anyway, I give Sucker Punch 7/10.

"..blew all in me with gold silence, then a science project volcano erupts inside me, filling me with flat champagne." - Children Colide, Jelly Legs

March Music

2011-04-06T20:52:00.096-04:00

Wow, a lot of this month's recs lack videos. Sorry about that, but it's the luck of the draw.

Black Lab - Broken Heart
California King - On Planet Earth
Catherine Wheel - Gasoline
Damian Carbenell - Im Not Alone
Dan Auerbach - The Prowl apparently I only hate The Black Keys together as a band
Dar Williams - Empire
Drawn From Bees - Long Tooth Setting Sun
Garbage - It's All Over But The Crying
Gene Loves Jezebel - Kiss of Life
Goldfinger - 99 Red Balloons (Nena cover)
Good Charlotte - The River
Good Shoes - Everything You Do
Griffin House - Flying Upside Down
Guadalcanal Diary - Michael Rockefeller
H-Blockx - Little Girl
H-Blockx - Leave Me Alone
Jax Streeter - Another Life
Jax Streeter - Last Night
Johnossi - Execution Song
Jonny Cola & The A - Grades - Summer Of Hate
Ladyhawke - My Delirium there's also a band called Ladyhawk...with dudes
LANCE - Blue Sky Eyes
LANCE - I Love You and it Won't Go Away
Larkin Grimm - Ride That Cyclone
Manchester Orchestra - Where Have You Been
Octoberman - Dancing With Your Ghost
Orenda Fink - High Ground
Parlor Hawk - Home
Parlotones - Life Design
POL Arida - Get Out of Here
Scott H Biram - Sinkin' Down
Seth Smith - Warm Regards
Shapes Of Race Cars - Get Melted!
Silversun Pickups - It's Nice To Know You Work Alone
St. Vincent - Paris Is Burning
Swans - She Lives
Taddy Porter - Big Enough
The Caesarz - Take Me Away
The Family Stand - The Last Time We're Here
The Hot Toddies - Keep on Runnin' (The Vampire Song)
The Rational Academy - Unsolved Mysteries
The Spring Standards - Queen of the Lot
Tijuana Cartel - Persian
Turnstylz feat. Sciryl - Passport
Watchmen - It's Not Too Late
Will Hoge - Even If It Breaks Your Heart

As usual:

Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

FTR, a lot of this month's songs can be found as free MP3s on Amazon (for now).

"We'll give you everything. Things that you'd never need, things that you'd never dream. Things like eternity..." - Cracker, Star

Night Coming On

2011-03-22T21:23:00.001-04:00

As much as I bitch about winter, I'm not completely immune to its beauty. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that right at twilight the snow glowed an eerie blue, so after a few more days of missing twilight, I finally had both charged batteries and the right timeframe...only to discover that night landscape mode won't let you shut off the flash. So, in order to catch that blue glow, I ended up bringing out my tripod (and cocoa) to take a series of photos before night came on completely.

It seemed like it'd make an interesting gif. What do you think?

Photos taken between 6:20 and 6:28 EST...or, if you want to be really pedantic, EDT since we're in daylight saving time.

"Blue Light marches on the distance, could be a TV or a UFO. Most nights, they start at least six times. Maybe I'm in the movies, maybe I don't know." - Marry me Jane, Blue Light

The Lost Art

2011-03-21T22:21:00.001-04:00

Do you ever wonder what bored people with English degrees do to amuse themselves? Besides writing disturbing stories in the second person, that is. (That was the most common comment on that story. Which is good, it was my aim.) Well, some of us try our hands at the lost art of letter writing.

I noticed that the newest Accu-Check commerical was different, so I felt like writing to them to ask what was up was the proper thing to do.

To whom it may concern,
I was concerned when I saw your latest commerical. Robin no longer mentions that Rodney's kid has diabetes like she does. Was Rodney laid off (the recession and all) or, god forbid, did something happen to that poor child?? I've spoken to other worried viewers too, the child is okay, isn't s/he?

Shannon Rene

Of course, they wrote back. They always do.

Dear Ms. Rene,
Thank you for sending your message to our website. Yes, Rodney still works for Roche and is still in the commercial in the locker scene. Rodney’s child is doing well but we do want to thank you for the heartfelt concern.

Best regards,
C.V.
ACCU-CHEK Customer Care

The letter I got back from Jergens after asking them how much of their lotion you should ingest in order to heal your skin from the inside (they said right on the bottle that it heals skin from the outside and the inside) was more amusing, but I can't find it at the moment. If I do, I'll edit this post.

Maybe next I should write to Exxon about putting a tiger in your tank... ::evil grin::

"She's so afraid that the world's gonna get her. Yeah, I think that's true." - Shapes of Race Cars, Get Melted

February Music

2011-03-11T21:20:00.112-05:00

So...this month's recs are a bit more eclectic than usual because I decided to pull out bands I had 3 or more unlistened to MP3s by, and they turned out to mostly be: alternative rock/metal, christian metal, and darkwave. Hopefully it's not too jarring a mix for you.

10 Years - Actions & Motives
10 Years - Shoot It Out
A Split Second - Rigor Mortis
Abrupt Edge - I Know
Advent - Caving In
Advent - Grow
AFI - End Transmission
AFI - It Was Mine
Alien8 - Bombs Away
Assemblage 23 - Disappoint
Ayria - Bad List
Balkan Beat Box - Quand Esct-Ce Qu'on Arrive
Beatsteaks - Run Run
Beborn Beton - Situations
Before Their Eyes - Finding A Way
Blowsight - Based On A True Story
Bouski - You Don't Need My Love
Das M Neonlicht - Ist Das Wirklich Nötig
Fall Out Boy - Headfirst Slide Into Coopestown On A Bad Bet
Feeder - Miss You
Florence And The Machine - Kiss With A Fist
Flyleaf - Ocean Waves
Flyleaf - Swept Away
Flyleaf - The Kind
Indica - Straight and Arrow
Ingrid Michaelson - Soldier
Iron and Wine - Swans and the Swimming
Lifehouse - In Your Skin
Linkin Park - The Catalyst
Papa Roach - One Track Mind
Poets of the Fall - 15 Min Flame
Queens of the Stone Age - Gonna Leave You
R.E.M - Final Straw
Rhett Miller - I Believe She's Lying
Rocco DeLuca and the Burden - Save Yourself
Ryan Star - Right Now
State Radio - Camilo
The Corrs - Forgiven Not Forgotten
The Jesus And Mary Chain - Reverence
The Tragically Hip - Love Is a First
Thievery Corporation - 33 Degree
This Fires Embrace - Warrior Poets
Thom Dowd & Thomas Coard - Flute Singer
Thousand Foot Krutch - Break the Silence
Thousand Foot Krutch - E For Extinction
Thousand Foot Krutch - Step To Me
Three Days Grace - Break
Veil Veil Vanish - Secondhand Daylight
VNV Nation - Chrome (SITD Mix)
VNV Nation - Sentinel
Zeromancer - Need You Like A Drug

As usual:

Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"Trying to go to France, want to see Brazil. Trying to see the islands, take a trip to China. Go and get your passport, go and get your passport..." - Turnstylz, Passport

Flash fiction V-Day

2011-03-03T19:35:00.005-05:00

You know how it goes: 2000 words written in no more than 60 hours. To be frank, I wrote this story in 70 minutes. Hopefully it doesn't read like a story written in just over an hour, but it probably does. Edit: tied for 2nd, again, so maybe it doesn't read like it was written in an hour.

<-- All stories much incorporate this photo
and the words Imagine, Sob, & Initially.

Plus, the story is to have a Valentine's Day theme...not my favorite holiday, but I think I made it festive enough =)

Straight Through The Heart

When Ellie broke up with you three days before Valentine's Day, she'd said that she was worried about you. You were, in her words, unstable, if not worse. She looked sad as she said it, a portrait in angst, but she meant it. You were through. Forever. In a teeth-gritting way, you were glad you hadn't married her, because if she sincerely believed you were ill, she definitely wasn't going to live up to the 'in sickness and health' clause of traditional wedding vows.

Maybe it wouldn't have gone down that way if you hadn't been so honest with her. Your mother drilled honesty in all things into your head, and even as an adult who should know better, you found yourself still desperate to live up to parental expectations. So, when you realized that you and Ellie had a deep connection, you told her. Initially she seemed flattered, but as you elaborated, you began to notice that fear was creeping into her eyes.

The break up hardly came as a surprise a few days later. But that didn't mean it didn't hurt. Having your heart ripped out and stomped on, no one gets past that without a whimper or two. Without waking up with the desire to scream when they realize it's all real, not a nightmare that would soon dissolve away.

So, you learned two lessons. One: honesty is not the best policy. Two: when it comes right down to it, Ellie is a bitch. These two thoughts grappled in your mind like dogs fighting, and eventually you began to wonder if revenge was a better policy than honesty.

Revenge sat across from you as you sipped cold coffee and mechanically chewed toast that had been burned because you hadn't wanted to leave the toaster on the setting Ellie had preferred before she walked out on you. And revenge put its arm around your shoulder when you stood in the bathroom and contemplated suicide. The ring that you slipped out of your pocket then, as you thought about it being smeared red, sparkled in the light from the open window. The stone scored well in all the qualities you were supposed to look for, clarity, cut, color, and caret. Sitting in the palm of your hand, it represented 200 hours of listening to people complain. Jared's wouldn't take it back, you'd asked. Begged. Ranted. Been asked to leave the store. Snapping the ring box shut, you walked away from the straight razor, the clock radio close to the bathtub, the bottles of pills Ellie left behind. They'd wait patiently, if it came to that.

If the ring couldn't go back, and the hours it cost couldn't be unlived, and you couldn't unlive either, maybe you could perform alchemy instead. After you called into work, you hit the streets, looking for someone who could help you transform the ring into something different, something that you had more of a use for, considering you weren't going to be asking Ellie to marry you on Valentine's Day.

All the stores along the strip were dressed up like cheap whores, flashes of red everywhere you looked, and you could almost smell the cheap chocolate crammed into every one of them. It didn't matter. Your head was full of 1929, and cheap paper hearts weren't enough to lift your thoughts to the present. But even more, as you concentrated on the task at hand, you were able to ignore the thread that stretched out before you, leading back to Ellie.

It was the thread that had you thinking of revenge, of Lincoln Park, of Ellie...when she broke up with you, you assumed that the thread would snap, that cold and moiraeic, she'd take shears and cut through the fabric of a shared life. It wasn't a literal lifeline, you knew, you were pretty sure, but you'd still worried that the severing would leave you lifeless. It hadn't, and the thread hadn't broken either.

No, instead the trailing light still spooled out in the distance, leading back to wherever Ellie had gone to be a her again instead of half an us. For a while you tried to convince yourself that Ellie was right, and you were becoming unhinged, but you'd followed it again, the day after the jewelry store incident. And there, at the end of the line, she'd been, morosely sipping coffee in Starbucks. How could you have known she'd be there, if the link between you wasn't real? She wasn't such a creature of habit that finding her was more inevitable than chance.

If she hadn't immediately freaked out when you told her about the connection between you, it would have been nice to talk to her about what it all meant. Calmly, rationally, maybe the two of you could have gotten to the bottom of why you'd noticed, just a few weeks before, that a cord of light bound you both. You had your theories: maybe you were seeing beyond the weave of the world, and were noticing something that others couldn't; maybe it was like those people who promised to read your fortune and tell you the color of your aura...that could be an interesting new line of work, better than hearing customers whine, but so far you only saw it between you and Ellie; maybe it was a brain tumor, and if it was, it was pretty low of her to dump you when you were defenseless.

Another time, the next night? it was getting hard to recall the passage of time, but the Valentine's decorations everywhere still, not yet desperately proclaiming "50% off!" said it hadn't been as long as it felt, you followed the thread again, and found yourself standing outside a motel room, looking in through the windows like a peeping Tom. Ellie had been in there, dressed in a white robe you didn't remember, and she managed not to see you. It shouldn't have surprised you, not considering that she'd packed up all her things and left your apartment looking like the scene of a half completed robbery, but in a way it had. You'd assumed that she'd turn to her sister, but she'd ended up there instead. You walked away, hoping she wouldn't look out the window as you retreated.

She hadn't been sobbing. Instead, she'd been reading, and she looked...content. Maybe if Ellie had looked wounded too, you might have relented, but for her to seem fine...Revenge slipped an arm through the crook of your elbow and walked you home.

In the end it was an idiot you'd found on Craigslist that helped you forward your plans. It was hard to imagine that the police wouldn't have beat you to him after reading his ad, since it was unlikely that trading "anything" (and listing what that meant, which was the part you felt would interest the police) for a "good" ring was even legal, but he'd opened the door and welcomed you in, asking to see the ring before the draft from the winter crouching outside had even dissipated.

He'd jabbered about how much his girl was going to love the ring, but you weren't really listening to that beyond wondering if she would. Instead you interrogated him about the list of "anything" he'd mentioned in the ad. No, you weren't interested in the all-star hockey tickets, not the X-Box 360 setup, none of that. You wanted to know about the gun.

Oh, that, it was a beauty he claimed. Guns didn't strike you as beautiful so much as utilitarian, but you let him talk about it anyway. He'd bought it at a gun show after one/two/many TV shows about FBI agents convinced him that owning a glock would be so cool...but he'd never gotten around to learning how to shoot at a firing range.

A smarter man might have asked why you wanted a gun, perhaps recalling that there were waiting periods to buy them, but he wasn't that sort of guy. Instead he'd wrapped the gun up in a soft cloth bag, and handed it to you the moment the ring box dropped into his out stretched hand.

It was heavier in the pocket of your winter coat that you imagined it would be. LL Bean reinforced the pockets of their outerwear, so the weight wasn't a problem, but it made the gun feel very real as you walked back past the tarted up stores. Eventually you passed a newspaper machine and read the date: those desperate signs would be going up bright and early the next morning. That bothered you: if someone passing by had asked the date, you would have thought it was the 13th still. That meant you'd found the craigslist idiot just in time.

Why it had to be Valentine's wasn't something you'd completely worked out in your mind, but it just seemed fitting. Asking Ellie to marry you that day was going to bring you together forever, but she'd wrecked that. She didn't seem to know it, but you were still bound to her, and it was growing unbearable. The light between you hadn't dimmed, not even a little, and it was beginning to frighten you. What if it meant Ellie was your soulmate? A soulmate who didn't want you seemed like a special sort of hell, so you had to do the snipping yourself, and the gun seemed like the tool to get the job done.

You didn't want her to suffer, so it was good that you were a decent shot. Your dad had taught you to shoot when you were small, first with air rifle almost as long as you were tall, and then with live ammo around the time he taught you to drive. Once, straight through the heart, and she'd barely feel it. You didn't owe her much, but you did owe her that.

Waiting was the hard part. Joyful couples streamed the sidewalks, and you couldn't find Ellie then. Well, you could find her at any moment, but it didn't seem wise just then. So you waited, endured watching people kiss, walking by with roses tucked into the crooks of elbows, sharing a love you worried you'd never find again, not while you and Ellie retained an unwanted connection. By then you'd decided you didn't want it either, not if she didn't love you any more.

Eventually the crowds thinned as people went home to fuck. That's when you got in your car and followed Ellie's trail. A worry that following it by car would be hard crossed your mind, but it was no more distracting than GPS so you managed fine. To your surprise, you found yourself in the museum district. Dimly, you recalled hearing something about an Egyptian art exhibit, but you hadn't realized Ellie was interested in that.

You weren't so you barely noticed the art in the windows, samples meant to whet the art appetite, as you made your way to the windows outside the gift shop. Ellie was there, as you knew she would be. Her hand was about to touch a scarab beetle paperweight when something made her turn her head and look out.

Your fingers closed on the gun, ready to pull it out and end what lingered between you. You'd never fired on a living thing before, but this had to be considered self-defense the way she was making you suffer.

The light between you flared up as she continued to turn her head, as the gun came halfway out of your pocket. Her eyes met yours, and you said a little prayer, asking for forgiveness for what you were about to do.

And the cord snapped. There was a bright sparkle as the center was cut, and it quickly faded from both ends, racing back to you, to your centers. In seconds it was gone.

You jammed the gun into your pocket, turned, and walked away, leaving her to stare after you.

The End

"You don't just blurt love is a curse..." - The Tragically Hip, Love Is A First

Praying for snow?

2011-02-27T19:17:00.017-05:00

If you're the one praying for snow, please stop. We've had enough. If I find you, I will hurt you.

Things I'm sick of:
- snow
- shoveling snow from the driveway
- shoveling snow off the roof
- ice
- narrowed roads & driveways
- mountains of snow in parking lots that make it hard to see other cars
- snow!
- frost heaves
- the cold
- windy windy days (seriously, 50mph wind gusts? I'm so over that)
- snow!!
- wearing layers
- wearing boots
- scraping car windows
- daylight disappearing before 6pm (though this is a vast improvement over December when it got dark at 4:30pm)
- snow!!!

"Well it just started to snow & again it fucking blows, & blows & blows" - 22, Winter Sucks

January Music

2011-02-10T19:36:00.032-05:00

Beck - Youthless
Bush - Afterlife
Cable35 - Harry
Cassock - Zombie
Children Collide - Jelly Legs
Cocoanut Groove - End Of The Summer On Bookbinder Road
Dave Gahan - Kingdom
Deaf Pedestrians - Dharma Moraine's Automatic Armor
Depswa - Take It Back
Devlins - Waiting (Tom Lord Alge Remix)
Ectoplazmic - Residue
Eskimo Joe - Black Fingernails, Red Wine
Good Charlotte - Keep Your Hands Off My Girl
Ian Carey ft Mandy Ventrice - Let Loose
Intervurt - Union Square
Jorge & Alexa Narvaez - Home (Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros Acoustic Cover)
Justin Ossher - Strength of Your Command
K's Choice - Virgin State of Mind
Low Vs. Diamond - Heart Attack
Malcolm Middleton - Carry Me
Natasha Bedingfield - Pocketful Of Sunshine
Powderfinger - D.A.F
Puracane - All Over Now
Queens Of The Stone Age - Auto Pilot
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Road Trippin'
Rivers Cuomo & Rainn Wilson - One Of Us
Sarah Mclachlan - Ice
Sender - Sleepwalker
Shiny Toy Guns - Ghost Town
Sparkadia - Falling Down
Stromae ft Kanye West - Alors On Danse
The Bravery - Above And Below
The Fray - Say When
The Hard Lessons - Bamboo
The Honorary Title - Everything I Once Had
The Pretty Reckless - Make Me Wanna Die
The Sunpilots - Faking This
Tinie Tempah ft Eric Turner - Written In The Stars
Tom McRae - Ghost Of A Shark
Tom McRae - You Cut Her Hair
Violent Soho - Jesus Stole My Girlfriend

As usual:

Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"The cupboard is empty, we really need food. Summer is winter and you always knew." - Bush, Little Things

For the love of...

2011-02-07T19:56:00.009-05:00

Look, I know that climbing up on a roof and pushing snow off of it sucks. I know through personal experience, since I've done it often enough the last three years. But you need to do it. I'm rapidly losing sympathy for idiots on the news who cry about their roof caving in.

Snow is heavy. You are probably smart enough to realize that. So shovel and save your roof! And if you're the public works department, you should die of shame when the building's roof caves in under the weight of snow.

"Underground where the fingertips call her name, trapped in silence waiting on the shallow plain. I’m searching with my hands & bones. Beneath the snow, there’s something down below." - The Dirty Secrets, 5 Feet of Snow (Miami Horror remix)

Season of the Witch

2011-01-15T17:53:00.001-05:00

Well...this was an odd movie. It's one of those films that never really decided if it wanted to be a straight up horror movie, or if it wanted to be campy, so in the end it settled for a blend that left the movie feeling somewhat disjointed.

That said, though, it's not that bad a film. Not worth the $10 I paid to see it (matinees that end before 4pm?! I hate that theater sometimes) but you should catch it sometime.

"Kill that middle class indecision, now is not the time for liberal thought. So I go hunting for witches." - Bloc Party, Hunting for Witches

December Music

2011-01-08T19:43:00.001-05:00

!!! - Jamie, My Intentions Are Bass
A Perfect Circle - Passive
Adele - Rolling In The Deep
Aeroplane - Without Lies
Brandon Flowers - Jilted Lovers And Broken Hearts
Broken Bells - Mongrel Heart
Bullet For My Valentine - Your Betrayal
Civil Twilight - Anybody Out There
Cloud Cult - Forces Of The Unseen
Dark Meat - Well Fuck You Then
Detachments - Holiday Romance
Egyptian Hip Hop - Rad Pitt
Fever Ray - Mercy Street
Hot Chip - I Feel Better
Jaguar Love - Polaroids & Red Wine
Jakob Dylan - Everybody's Hurting
Junip - Sweet & Bitter
Kula Shaker - Peter Pan RIP
LoneLady - Immaterial
Margot & The Nuclear So And So's - New York City Hotel Blues
Massive Attack - Atlas Air (Goldsworthy Remix)
Massive Attack - Paradise Circus
Mock & Toof - Suppress Your Feelings
Mumford & Sons - White Blank Page
New Young Pony Club - Architect of Love
Pendulum - The Island - Pt I (Dawn)
Seabird - Don't Know You're Beautiful
Sia - Hurting Me Now
Skream - I Love the Way
The Raveonettes - I Wanna Be Adored (The Stone Roses Cover)
Tired Pony - Dead American Writers
Tricky - Murder Weapon
Underworld - Always Loved A Film
Wintersleep - Mausoleum

As usual:

Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"Hang around out of convenience and sooner or later, You'll be on your way. I don't why it would be one thing when it's not. How could it be one thing?" - Griffin House, One Thing

flash fiction Xmas

2011-01-05T18:37:00.002-05:00

As usual the flash fiction contests are 2000 or less words written in 60 hours, with three words and a photo for inspiration -->
(don't blame me, I didn't pick the picture) This time the words were:
Coolness
Winterize
Unpardonable
...and the story was also supposed to have a winter theme this round.

Christmas Eve With Timmy

I sat and stewed while Hermey the elf sang in the background. New Years was still over a week away, but I already had my resolution firmly in mind: I was never going to babysit on Christmas Eve again, no matter how cute or how desperate the person asking me was. All that got you was a bruised shin and a stupid hat.

Rubbing my shin, I thought back ruefully to how I'd gotten here. It all started just after lunch on a day that was otherwise shaping up to be peaceful. Little did I know then that the peace was about to be shattered.

I'd answered a knock at the door, hoping that it was someone dropping off a package for me since I wasn't going to be going home for Christmas this year. Instead, it was my neighbor, Ryan. He'd moved down the hall from me four months ago, I'll admit that I was instantly attracted to him. My heart fluttered a little bit when I saw him standing there because I had been trying for weeks to find a way to start a conversation with him that didn't seem completely contrived. So far I had failed.

It was only after I stared at him, wondering what I should say, that I noticed that he looked really upset. Without even having to think about it, words fell out of my mouth. "What's wrong?"

He bit his lip, which was adorable, and gave me a shy look. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm in a real bind. My brother and my nephew just got here yesterday, and my brother hurt himself."

"He did?" I asked, wondering why he decided to tell me. "How?"

Ryan sighed. "They're from Dallas, and the thought of winterizing a car is completely beyond him. Instead of covering the car last night when it snowed, he just left it. And he didn't have an ice scraper either when he wanted to go shopping, then decided not to come back up to ask for one... Long story short, his method of cleaning ice off the windshield involved a screwdriver, and now he needs stitches."

I winced. My mind shied away from all the possible ways one could have injured themselves with a screwdriver, since it probably wasn't very pretty. "Oh, that's terrible."

"Yeah... I'm going to be bringing him to the emergency room. The problem is my nephew." He looked away, his cheeks suddenly appealingly pink. "Look, I know that you don't know me, and I won't be upset if you say no, but do you think you could keep an eye on my nephew today so the kid doesn't have to spend the afternoon at the hospital too?"

"Uh..." I stammered, stalling for time. I was trying not to let on, but I was disappointed that our first real in-depth conversation just involved him asking me for a favor. "How old is he?"

"Timmy is six."

Timmy. That sounded like a name for a nice little boy. How bad could babysitting the little boy named Timmy be? Without much further thought, besides the fleeting one that maybe this would spark a friendship at least between Ryan and me, I found myself saying, "Sure. Bring him over."

Ryan's face lit up, and for a moment I was convinced that I had just made a very good move. He touched my arm, and I tried not to shiver. "Thank you, you don't know how much I appreciate this."

If I had been another sort of girl, I probably would've purred that I was sure he could think of a way to thank me, but that's not me. "No problem. I hope they get him fixed up quickly."

"I'm sure it's nothing a few stitches won't fix," he said over her shoulder. "I'll go get Timmy right now. Thanks again for doing this, Hannah."

**

A couple minutes later Ryan returned, this time accompanied by a little boy, and his brother. He looked a lot like Ryan and probably was nearly as attractive when he wasn't white with pain. Ryan looked down at the boy, and said, "Timmy, this is Hannah. She's going to watch you so you don't have to go to the hospital with us."

"Come on in," I said to Timmy, who immediately brushed past me. Looking up at Ryan, I asked, "Two questions. Is it okay if we leave the apartment? And do you have a number in case I need to reach you?" I handed him my own cell phone number.

He deferred to his brother, who mumbled something about not caring what Timmy and I did, before shrugging. "I guess you can go wherever. I'll give you a call when we're on our way back." He glanced down at the boy again. "Be good."

"Whatever," the boy muttered, steadily refusing to look at any of us.

**

Timmy sulked for ten minutes after they left, then gave me a calculating look. "I want coco."

"Sorry, I don't have any."

His look suggested that I'd just committed an unpardonable sin. "But Uncle Ryan promised me some!"

Deep breaths, I told myself, the kid doesn't know you, and his dad's hurt, so he's having a bad day. "Let's go buy some then."

"Where?"

"Starbucks?"

"We have those at home," he said in a way that suggested familiarity wasn't a plus.

"Oh. Well, there's a café near the mall, too," I suggested. "Famous for their coco, even." In a moderate, small town sort of way.

Timmy perked up. "Is Santa going to be at the mall?"

"I don't know, maybe."

"I wanna see him! Dad said we would, but he hurt himself like an idiot."

It felt like I should protest, but his father did strike me as sort of dumb. I mean a screwdriver, really? So I just ignored that. "If he's there, we can see Santa." It didn't seem like my idea of fun, but what else was I going to do with the kid?

**

Things seemed to go well enough...at least until we'd been served. "Do you like the coco?" I asked as we sat in the café.

"No, it's gross. Can we see Santa now?" Timmy asked, sliding off his chair.

Mortified that a waitress had overheard, I left a big tip before bolting out the door.

**

Two hours later I knew that bringing a kid to the mall on Christmas Eve was to pass an occasion in hell. Children were running all over the place, only to stop abruptly and make you trip over them as they chattered about the coolness of whatever had caught their shifting attention. I almost trampled six kids before we even got to fake North Pole at the far end of the mall.

Timmy's excitement had waned once he saw how long the line was, but we stoically joined it. Or, at least he was stoic about it - after an hour, I was beginning to whine like a toddler myself. "Timmy, are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yeah, I gotta!"

"You must have already sent a letter to Santa," I said, feeling both desperate and clever at the same time. "So he knows what you want."

"No, not this," Timmy insisted. For a moment I began to feel bad, and assumed that he was going to ask Santa to make his Dad feel better. That seemed rather sweet. "I only saw it here in the mall."

Oh. So much for sweet. I stared ahead a the seventy kids in front of us, and thought about throwing myself on the ground and kicking my feet like the little girl having a tantrum in front of the toy store was. "Oh, okay..."

Timmy was quiet for a while, but eventually he looked up at me. "How come you don't have kids?"

"Um...I'm not married."

"Do you at least have a boyfriend?" Timmy asked, and I could almost swear he gave me a pitying look.

"No."

I was trying to think of a subtle way of asking if his uncle was single when Timmy looked me up and down. "Because you're fat?"

"Jesus, Timmy."

"You shouldn't say that."

"We're giving out prizes!" a booming voice announced next to me, making me jump a foot. A man stood there holding the ugliest hat I'd ever seen. He gave it to Timmy. "Here you go!"

"Thanks," Timmy muttered.

"Wow, you won an ugly hat," I couldn't help but remark.

"You wear it," Timmy insisted.

"No."

Then the brat hauled off and kicked me in the shin. Hard.

"Ow!"

"Wear it!"

"For God's sake!" I jammed the hat on my head and grabbed him by the arm. "We're leaving."

"But Santa!"

"Forget Santa. I hope he brings you coal."

"You're mean," Timmy whined, looking over his shoulder as I pulled him through the mall. Santa faded into the distance, and I was happy to get the hell out of there. We'd wasted hours in the mall, and neither of us had anything much to show for it.

**

Later

I hadn't been naive enough to expect better behavior from Timmy when I got him back to my apartment, but I hadn't anticipated worse, either. While I set about making us soup and sandwiches, he trashed my living room.

I almost dropped the tray when I saw that he'd flung my laundry about, using it to redecorate. Seeing me, he pointed at my bike. "Guess you don't use this much."

"Why?" I asked, waving a hand at the mess.

He shrugged. "Bored."

"Put everything back!"

"Yeah, right." Timmy grabbed one of the sandwiches. "Are you getting paid? 'cause you suck at this."

"I'm never having children," I muttered, bending for my strewn clothes.

Timmy laughed. "Of course you're not. Who'd marry you?"

I took a deep breath and counted to three thousand. I started over when he toppled a bookcase.

**

Things did not improve. Defeated, I curled up in a chair and decided to ignore Timmy until they came back. I'd hidden the matches and knives by that point.

"Uncle Ryan!" Timmy shouted eventually, making me look up. Ryan was standing in the doorway, taking in the disaster zone my apartment had become.

"Timmy, go back to my place," he said, yanking Timmy out into the hall. Looking at me he said, "Sorry?"

"Oh, you better be," I snapped.

My pant leg rode up as I brushed past the bike and Ryan noticed the huge bruise already spreading on my shin. "Bookcase falling over do that?"

"No, your nephew kicked me," I said, only to remember I was still wearing the stupid hat. I yanked it off.

"Timmy can be a handful," Ryan said apologetically before beginning to pick up the things that used to live in my bookcase.

I looked up at him, incredulous. "A handful? You're a master of understatement."

"I know. I'm sorry." He did look contrite.

"His behavior is your brother's fault, not yours," I said grudgingly.

"It's just...the divorce has been rough on the kid."

I nodded like I knew what that was like. "Sure."

"They're going home on Tuesday," Ryan said, apparently trying to reassure me that Timmy wasn't going to be a permanent fixture.

"Oh." I wasn't supposed to say "good" but it was hard not to.

"So, um...do you have plans for Friday?"

"No."

"Want some?" he asked, giving me a hopeful look.

I took a moment to think it over. "Alright."

"Great, so it's a date." I half expected him to say something about how it didn't have to be, but he stood firm. I liked that.

"How often does your brother visit you?"

Ryan blinked, apparently not expecting that question.

"Once a year. I mostly visit him."

I nodded. I guess if things worked out, I could put up with Timmy once a year. Then a horrible thought hit me. "You're not Timmy's godparent, are you?"

"No, why?"

"Just wondering."

The End

"Too much to pay, no one to blame" - Junk Circuit, The Devil Wears A Crown

True Grit

2011-01-02T21:16:00.024-05:00

I'm not one of those people who has a fond attachment to the original, because to be honest, I never saw it until two weeks ago. The trailer for the version out in theaters now looked awesome, so I asked my dad if he'd like to see it, and we watched the older one first.

I like this new one much better. The original is kind of...I don't know if the word I'm looking for is hokey or campy, but for a movie that mentions grit in the title, it's not very gritty. The new one has that in spades. It's much darker and less silly. Don't get me wrong, I liked them both, but if you don't have a lifetime of memories of the other version, I won't be surprised if you prefer the new one too.

My only complaint is that until yesterday the closest theaters playing it were 40 miles away, so we ended up not seeing it before Christmas as planned. What's up with that?

"I'm selfish and cold, and I feel like we're all pretending. Careless and I'm lonely again. And I am torn on the inside." - Revelation Theory, Selfish and Cold

Christmas/Movies

2010-12-25T23:25:00.013-05:00

Are there Christmas movies your force people to watch with you? Every year I'm not happy unless I get my family to watch The Santa Clause 1 & 2. (let's never speak of 3. never). My mom makes us watch Rudolph. Both are great, because when Santa arrogantly says "I guess we'll have to cancel Christmas" you get to yell "Christmas is about Jesus, you smug bastard!" That just might be me, though.

I hope you had a good Christmas too because mine was lovely. I got Vynce to roll his eyes when I mentioned that we'd watched Holidays in Handcuffs twice, and his fiancee said she loves that movie too =) I'm going to buy us each a copy on DVD next year.

"They're lost in Christmas Day." - Sponge, Christmas Day

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

2010-12-17T23:07:00.019-05:00

Let me be frank: if it wasn't for Ben Barnes, I wouldn't bother with this movie series. The movies aren't bad, but...

Anyway, I wish that the awful, terrible island was a lot more awful, or terrible. There was a lot of wasted potential there, though perhaps it might have been too scary for the kids if it lingered.

What I'd really like to read (or write) and see would be something akin to a dark Narnia. A magical land that is really off-kilter and nightmarish. Wouldn't that be more fun? Maybe I can sell the syfy channel on the idea...

"You are still in my dreams, and you're knocking at my door. Nightmares of you creeping in my head. Nightmares of you sleeping in bed. And the way you're whispering my name so slowly..." - Silver Sunshine, Nightmares

November Music

2010-12-05T21:41:00.001-05:00

Despite my computer woes - and as a total aside, I think I know almost enough now to build a computer, not that I would. But I can now repair/replace/install everything but the motherboard, CPU and a hard drive - I did manage to listen to some music in November. List's short, but it is what it is.

Agnes Obel - Riverside
Amanda Palmer - Idioteque along with Creep and Just, Idioteque is in my top 3 favorite Radiohead songs.
Apocalyptica feat Gavin Rossdale - End Of Me
Arcade Fire - Ready To Start you didn't misread, I'm really rec'ing an AF song
Becca - Kickin' & Screamin'
Birds Of Tokyo - Silhouettic
Booka Shade - The Sun and The Neon Light
Call The Doctor - Little Bones
Chumbawamba - Mary Mary (Stigmatic Mix)
Escape The Fate - Issues
Florence & The Machine - Heavy In Your Arms
Green Vinyl Dream - Shelter
Harper Simon - Shooting Star
Hawthorne Heights - Dead In The Water
Hawthorne Heights - Lost, So Lost
Middle Class Rut - New Low
Renfey - Come Down
Smile Empty Soul - We're Through
The Pierces - Love You More
Wolf Parade - Ghost Pressure

As usual:

Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"For you we fill our sails with tales and fables." - Lisa Hannigan, Keep It All

Nanowrimo 2010

2010-12-01T17:30:00.003-05:00

November was National Novel Writing Month, and I won for the second year in a row. I reached the word goal on Saturday. Yay! To make things more fun, three of my work friends were also doing it, so we had fun sort of competing with, sort of supporting each other through it. 50,000 sounds like a pretty daunting task for just thirty days, but it works out to less than 2,000 words a day, so it's only somewhat difficult, not impossible. As far as I know all four of us succeeded, so that's really nice too.

This year I wrote a sequel to the story I wrote last year. Well, not "wrote" since that implies it's finished, but I've been working on it since then. You need to keep in mind that the word goal for nanowrimo is set at 50,000 words, but the vast majority of published novels are twice that long. Anyway, I'm 3/4ths finished the story from last year, and knew how it would end, so it was easy to work on a sequel without knowing what happens in that middle bit.

In the first story, Pull, Caitlin makes her living pulling people who died young out of the afterlife, and the Manchester police ask her for her help: there's a serial killer on the lose, and they hope she can talk to the victims to get a lead on the elusive criminal. Oh, and she's in love with a guy in the afterlife who has no interest in being alive again. In the end the bad guy is caught...and Caitlin realizes that she's pregnant, which is something she and Kyler thought couldn't happen because the dead don't reproduce in the afterlife.

Push picks up six months later, with Kyler having crossed over to be with Caitlin and their upcoming baby (and Danny, her foster kid who has her gift). Learning to live after having been in the afterlife since dying at birth causes Kyler more than a little stress, and Caitlin and Danny are also learning to cope because of it. Caitlin herself gets an education in something she's never thought about before: what it's like for the people she's rescued to start their lives over.

Before long the police officer from the first story comes to ask Caitlin for help again: someone has been forcing people who were happily dead back into life. Caitlin agrees to return them to where they belong, but finds out that she can't. Things explode into new tragedy for one of the dead she couldn't help, and Caitlin finds herself sleuthing again, this time trying to figure out why someone like her would be "helping" people against their will.

Ultimately, I'd like to write this out as a trilogy (the next story, Hold, is going to be about the dead not being able to get into the afterlife...for some reason. I haven't thought it out too far yet. It'll upset Caitlin's belief that there are no ghosts, anyway!) and of course get them published. I learned recently that the average age of a novelist being published for the first time is 36, so that let's me angst a little less that I haven't finished a (publishable) novel quite yet. Apparently 12-year-old me deciding I should be published by age 30 was overly ambitious, lol.

"must keep writing if I'm to be better than everyone else" - Jets to Brazil, I Typed For Miles

Halloween, Thanksgiving etc

2010-11-27T13:15:00.002-05:00

Man, not having access to my desktop for more than three weeks means that there's a lot I'd normally talk about here but didn't get the chance to...

Halloween

Normally one of my favorite holidays, it was just okay this year. Halloween night itself went fine, and we scared a whole bunch more kids than usual, which was nice.

What wasn't nice were the halloween activities we tried beforehand. An amusement park when it's only in the 30s and very windy isn't nearly as much fun as when we went to Spookyworld two Halloweens earlier. There was a lot of whining, some mine, and people just didn't have that good a time to justify the cost of the Screamfest tickets. The three haunted houses were pretty good, though, despite needing to stand around in the cold forever to get in. And the rides, forget it. The sort of rides open swung people around, and we gave up after freezing on the ferris wheel, which is much slower. I think we all agreed to do something indoors next year!

And then, even worse, was Ghosts On The Bank, an event put on at the local historical tourist trap. It was advertised as being about, you know, ghosts. So, in that case we went expecting to hear some ghost stories about the Portsmouth area. And instead it was 98% safe trick or treating. I rather doubt many adults would have wanted to go knowing that, but at least it wasn't terribly expensive. Just really disappointing. There wasn't even a single ghost story!

Thanksgiving

On the other hand, I have no complaints about Thanksgiving. I don't really understand the point of this holiday and never have, but I do love turkey, so I count it as a win.

We stopped doing the big extended family get-together the year after my grandfather died my freshman year of college (he died 2 days before Thanksgiving, actually) and I don't really miss it much any more. Once Grampy died, and great-Grammy a few months later, things fell apart when it came to family gatherings. He'd been the force keeping everyone together at the holidays, ever since my grandmother died eleven years earlier, and without him... Anyway, I don't mind the smaller meal now, with just my parents and lil brother. It's kind of nice that no one has to endure a 3 hour drive, you know?

Black Friday

Colleen and I brave the Black Friday crowds every year (the one day of the year when I get up at 4 a.m.), and this one was no exception. It got off to a bit of a rough start, though, when I learned that my deicer doesn't work for crap when it comes to freezing rain. It takes a long time to scrape windows by flashlight.

It was fun, but the sales were underwhelming. The news kept saying stores were going to pull out all of the stops this year to get shoppers in, but they didn't have too much on offer that I cared about. Possibly because I've done the bulk of my christmas shopping early this year.

Later, in the afternoon, we met up with my dad at the theater to watch the latest Harry Potter movie. You're shocked, right? =)

To be honest, the last book is by far my least favorite, so I was pleasantly surprised that they managed to make part one of The Deathly Hallows a lot more exciting than them sitting around in a tent complaining at each other. It gives me hope that the last movie, next summer, will be decent too. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, they did handle my second least favorite (Chamber of Secrets) fairly well too.

Dad and Colleen seemed to like the movie too.

And that's all I have to report about the holidays.

"Careful what you say, oh it's too late now, you've broken my heart" - Class Actress, Careful What You Say

October Music

2010-11-24T14:03:00.003-05:00

The night before Halloween I went to a rather stupid Halloween event at Strawbery Banks, and came home to discover my computer was off. And from that point on, it stayed off except for trying to start for a few seconds. The power supply (and videocard) got toasted during a power surge. It took me more than three weeks to find, get, and install a new power supply...So October's recs are really late. What can you do? On the plus side, at least two of the videos are only 3 weeks old, so I wouldn't have found you links on the regular schedule.

Anne McCue - I Want You Back
Bad Lieutenant - This Is Home
Ben Harper - Gather 'Round The Stone
Boy Kill Boy - Promises
Brandon Patton - Rockets
Call The Doctor - For Your Leisure
Closure In Moscow - Vanguard
Cobra Starship - Nice Guys Finish Last
Copeland - Chin Up
Dial M For Murder! - NYC (Now You Care)
Feral Children - On A Frozen Beach
Griffin House - One Thing
House Of Heroes - If
House Of Heroes - In The Valley Of The Dying Sun
Johnny Society - I Can't Win
Junk Circuit - Make Me Cry
Ladyhawk - Corpse Paint
Lisa Hannigan - Keep it All (you may know her as the chick who sings with Damien Rice)
Maroon 5 - Can't Stop
O+S - Permanent Scar
Old 97's - Dance with Me
Old Canes - Trust
Orenda Fink - That Certain-Something Spring
Outlaw Nation - Shine
The Tragically Hip - Locked in the Trunk of a Car
Thomas Dybdahl - I Need Love Baby, Love, Not Trouble

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection

Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"When the red light's on, no one's home." - Birds of Tokyo, Silhouetics

More?

2010-10-20T03:27:00.002-04:00

I'd rather use my powers of photo manipulation for evil, rather than good. Good is terribly over-rated, as well as boring.

So which should I do more of next?

Retitled (for accuracy) books?

Fake products?

"I used up all my tricks and I hope you'll like this, but you probably won't. You think you're cooler than me." - Mike Posner, Cooler Than Me

Fellow Townies

2010-10-19T23:04:00.001-04:00

Please drive more carefully. Yesterday's horrific fatal accident follows hot on the heels of my young neighbor dying in another accident just two weekends ago. And then there are the two people who got ran over in seperate accidents within the past year. Four car-related deaths in less than a year in a town of way under 10,000 people is too many.

So please, don't use your cell phones while driving, and don't drink. I'm tired of meeting sad faces when people ask how well I knew you (I knew 3 out of the 4 at least a little each), no more completely senseless deaths, okay?

"I'm as blue, I'm as blue as the ocean is true, it's just reflections of the sky" - Ryan Adams, Note to Self: Don't Die

September Music

2010-10-08T21:24:00.001-04:00

Big Bang - Something Special
Boom Pam - U R Mine
Brendan Perry - Wintersun
Broken Bells - Float
Chew Lips - Eight
Class Actress - Careful What You Say
Cold War Kids - Hang Me Up To Dry
Crystal Fighters - In The Summer
Eagle Seagull - The Boy With a Serpent In His Heart
Feeder - Call Out
Her Space Holiday - The Candle Jumped Over the Spoon
I Blame Coco - Quicker
Jena Rose - Ticket To Bombay
Junk Circuit - Devil Wears A Crown
Kazety - 13
Laura Veirs - July Flame
Laura Veirs - Wide-Eyed, Legless
Les Savy Fav - Let's Get Out of Here
Local Natives - Sun Hands
Menomena - Five Little Rooms
Miami Horror - Moon Theory (Punks Jump Up Remix)
Mike Posner - Cooler Than Me
New Politics - Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
New Young Pony Club - Lost A Girl (if you watch Gossip Girl too, you heard this one 10/4)
Sleepwalk, a Robot - Astronaut
Stone Sour - Say You'll Haunt Me
Switchfoot - The Sound
The Decemberists - Annan Water
The Epoxies - Synthesized
The Hundred In The Hands - Pigeons
The Rapture - No Sex For Ben
Thieves Like Us - Forget Me Not
Thirteen Senses - Answer
Warpaint - Billie Holiday
Who Knew - Sharpen The Knife
You Me At Six -Stay With Me
Zeigeist - Chasing Your Shadows All Around The World

As usual:

Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

I'm not entirely sure who Ben Rama is (other than being a DJ) but I find songs like this one by the Rapture and "Nicky Wire You're a Liar" by Bard of Ely to be entertaining. There's being a rival with someone else in the field, then there's writing a song to trash them...

"Maybe in another life I could find you there. Pulled away before your time,
I can’t deal it’s so unfair" - The Offspring, Gone Away

Family Tree

2010-09-28T17:26:00.002-04:00

...or 8 degrees of separation. I don't have a facebook account (and probably won't unless I date a guy who really wants me to) but my dad does - see also: July 4th, 2009 post - and he's been talking to one of his cousins who is into genealogy. Turns out that our family is related to this guy. In addition to being one of the first governors of Conn, Samuel Huntington was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence. I guess that's kind of cool that someone important springs up in our family tree if you trace it back 8 generations.

Dad said, "I can't wait to tell Vynce!" because he knew that my brother would get a kick out of telling people that he's related to someone famous. I thought the same thing, because that's just the kind of thing Vynce would find funny. He and Joe like to complain that the few times they've ever been stopped by cops is racial profiling (note: Vynce has fair skin, red hair, and blue eyes like I do. Joe is half Cuban but, as a fair blue-eyed blond, looks as Cuban as Cameron Diaz does) because of Joe being half Cuban and the fact that one our great-great grandfather was black and we're 1/4th Latino, not that either of us look it at all beyond me inheriting my great-grandmother's curves rather than the boyish figures common to the Irish women in my mom's family. Anyway, he thinks it's funny, and he's amused by our famous ancestor too.

"You say I'm just impossible, but why should we even try?" - Eagle Seagull, The Boy With A Serpent In His Heart

Flash fiction May

2010-09-23T17:23:00.001-04:00

I finally found the picture from May's contest...

The picture to the left and the words "Pandemic",
"Sanctuary," and "Spy" needed to be used to write a 2000 word or less story in sixty hours the weekend of May 14 - 16.

Silver Blues

I ran. My pursuer growled as he chased me, and this fueled my panic as I crashed through the undergrowth. There wasn't enough air to keep me from wheezing, and a stitch in my side burn hotter every step - at least until a tree root tripped me. I landed with a bone jarring impact, but it was soon forgotten when gray fur and sharp teeth boiled over me -

My scream still echoed in my ears as I sat upright amidst tangled sweat-soaked blankets. No neighbors shouted for me to keep it down, and only a full moon stared at me in disapproval. Moonlight or not, the hand that reached for a flashlight trembled in time with my still galloping pulse.

It was silly, I knew I was alone, but I still arched the light into every corner of the room, especially the ones were the sterile glow of the moon didn't reach. Spit dried in my mouth as the beam hit the bulletin board. It was the photo that did me in: a boy on a bike forever captured as he hung in mid-air. An image from before, one happy memory worn at curled, coffee-stained edges, half hidden among leaflets about disease prevention and flyers promising safe harbors.

Slipping out of bed I loosened a mirthless bark of laughter as I thought about that dull tease - sanctuary. Those flyers were old, all from the early days of the disaster. Sanctuary had been one of the first casualties of the blight.

As I stood there and contemplated hard liquor, it had been 270 days since the lupine flu had been discovered, and 241 days since it had been declared a pandemic by newscasters whose doll-like masks of nonchalance had begun to slip with a wildness about the eyes. One had to wonder how many of them were out there now, no longer constrained by studios or uniformly hideous hairstyles.

People, if they'd still dare to emerge from their hidey holes to converse, would have argued about precisely when humanity had teetered at the blink before going over in an Alice-like freefall into utter chaos. Part of this stemmed just from no longer having the primetime lineup to fix internal calendars to, but the rest was because we'd each descended into a private hell on our own schedule.

For me, it had been 63 days.

- Mom and Dad no longer kept up any pretense of being able to stand each other's company by the time the contest rolled around, so I'd been sent as family representative 275 days ago, accompanying Max as he competed in Paris. The appeal of BMX biking was beyond me, but that didn't stop me from cheering myself hoarse. Max won his class and the trip took on the air of a wholesome family film about trying one's hardest and being rewarded for it.

We didn't even realize anything was wrong until we got off the plane at Logan airport six days after we'd set out. Which isn't to say that the French media had covered things up, I simply didn't speak French. Instead Latin had fulfilled my college language requirement. Max used to tease me for not picking a more useful language, like his own barely passed high school Spanish, but the dead language had resonated with me. At the rate we're going, all of them will be dead soon...

Anyway, the airport. There hadn't been anyone there waiting. If you've ever been to Logan, you know it's usually teeming with frayed tempers and poor drivers, but no one greeted the new arrivals. I'd shivered taking in the tile and metal ghost town, at least until Max grabbed my arm and pointed at a TV that babbled on, unaware that it'd lacked an audience.

Men on screen howled as they were dragged to their execution by a foreign government. Given it was all going down in another language I didn't speak, I was grateful for a bulleted list that patiently explained that these were the men responsible for the theft, spies who'd broken into a lab and taken the first thing they could find that was valuable, dooming us all though no one had known it just yet -

A sound. I'd been pacing as my thoughts ran through the same worn grooves, but froze when I thought I heard something outside my apartment door...a canine snuffling, a doggy chuffing, a death threat. Neighbors might not have minded my scream, but had something else been listening? When it didn't repeat, I chanced moving to the chair, drawing up my knees as I sat, and wrapping my arms around them. It almost felt like a hug. Or I was forgetting what human contact was really like. Don't do, just think, I told myself, slipping back into the fractured past.

- Outside the airport there were signs of normalcy, taxis waiting. The driver of ours didn't speak as the tires ate the miles, and gave off the air of someone impatient to return to something more important. Through the windows of passing houses I saw entire families glued to TV sets, and worried about what had happened. What had the executed men done?

I think Max and I both expected our parents to stop fighting long enough to explain everything to us, but the house was empty when we finally got home. We checked every room. At last we discovered a note set on the table. All it said was, "Jessie, Max, take care of each other. Mom & Dad".

My brother's eyes had gone wide just then, and he looked to me for answers. I might have been an adult, twenty-five to his sixteen, but I felt no less Hansel and Gretel abandoned than he did. We never did see them again, and by day 94 we no longer expected to.

I have my theory, as grim as it is: they killed themselves before things got bad. It was a more logical explanation than thinking that a couple that couldn't go without bickering over breakfast had somehow decided to run away together. They'd both been government screws, and I'm sure they'd known which way the wind blew. Maybe I was wrong, and they were together somewhere, a cozy cabin, a white sand beach, laughing up their sleeves. But I doubted it.

Before newsmen no longer wore cheap suits, we all knew something about what happened. The lab those now headless spies had broken into in Babel had been birthed in the US before being outsourced like everything else. Bioweapon, a mistake, a plague waiting for just such an opportunity, no one knew that detail, but what followed? Yeah. Hard to escape that knowledge.

In the wake of the supposed swine flu the year before, preservationists prophylactically objected to the term lupine flu before the name even caught on, even with the clear presence of wolf in the deadly viral cocktail. Someone on talk radio jokingly dubbed it the "K-9 flu" and that's what stuck despite the minor inaccuracy. Back then it was almost funny, but that was when it seemed like the illness that the spies had unleashed was going to be combated with hand sanitizer, face masks (for the most paranoid of germaphobes), and that we'd tough it out as we waited to see how long companies took to produce a vaccine for this flu strain.

Of course, this was before anyone's neighbors grew excessively hairy and developed the disquieting propensity towards chasing prey by moonlight.

The first time Max and I saw the guy next door lope home with a bloodstained mouth (muzzle?) and glazed eyes was the last time either of us went anywhere on our own. Not that it helped in the end -

Snuffing again. Then scratching that reminded me of how joyfully our long dead husky has dug a labyrinth of holes in the backyard. If only it had been Blaze's ghost visiting me. My eyes flew to the door as I considered my options. A bat under my bed, pilfered from Max's little league days, and the gun, of course. I eyed the gun with a bitter resentment. It had been my grandfather's, but the silver bullets had not come with it. So, I'd covertly ordered some, but not covertly enough.

Would the door hold, I wondered as the scratching set up a tuneless percussion, long enough to grab the gun? It did, even though I nearly fumbled it. But then what? Shooting through the door would be foolish, weakening it. But how quickly could it burst though? They had a fluid grace, these wolves at my door. There was nothing to do but check that the gun was loaded. It was. I'd known that, but I'd still had to check. You understand.

- It had been Max's idea to keep moving, but I hadn't done that since ordering the bullets. Being nomadic had been a good strategy, as far as end of days planning went, but the only way to get the bullets was to freeze in place long enough for them to be delivered. And we did need them, that was becoming a surer necessity every day as wolves, wolves who used to be stockbrokers, housewives, and paper boys ripped through the populations of every town, both literally and blood-soaked, and in a figurative sense as the virus passed from person to person, or make that wolf to person...It was hard to know how many people shed their humanity every twenty-eight days because they still looked like us at times, but I think everyone got the sense that the world was drowning in fur, and we'd all soon be like them. Or dead.

People said, when people said anything, that silver bullets worked. But you couldn't pick them up at Wal-Mart or even a gun shop, as many as there still were scattered throughout the northeast. To get the bullets we'd had to order them through a mail-order company, and I more than half feared that a lupine mafia would get wind of our sin, and come for us.

In the end I lost Max to people, not to the wolves.

Turned out that the silver bullet seller's records had been compromised, supposedly without his knowledge or consent. It had been easy enough for the government to hack into things like that, especially with the Patriot Act, a declaration of martial law, the suspension of habeas corpus...we ordered bullets. They came for Max.

Conscription.

I guess they figured that anyone with the balls to hunt werewolves nee neighbors had balls enough to join the US military, even against their will, even if they were sixteen. I begged them to take me too, but lacking the necessary external gonads, they patted me on my pretty little head and promised me that he'd come home safe.

It's been 63 days, seven hours, and 26 minutes since then. And I'm here still, family to come home to. Please God, let him come home.

Behind the door the scratching became more frantic, and I knew that it was coming to a head. If I failed to act, Max would have nothing left, if he survived this unearthly draft. A sliver of wood gave way with a scream of protest, and through the jagged cut one xanthic eye gave me a baleful look, full of the promise of my red, wet death.

I fired.

The End

"We think the same things at the same time. We just can’t do anything about it." - Thom Yorke, Harrowdown Hill

Flash fiction Sept

2010-09-14T01:35:00.005-04:00

This past weekend was the second Flash fiction contest, and results aren't in yet on voting, but I thought I'd post my story. If I can find the picture from May's contest, I'll post that story too.

Edit 9/23: Results are in, this story tied for second place.
Anyway, on Friday we were given three words (Auroras, Habitual, Cherished - any form of the words) and the above picture to include in our stories. We then had 60 hours to write a 2000 word or less story...mine came in at 1,999. Here's My story:

Osgood's Machine

"Ben, I need you to drive me to Aurora," Frankie said, not realizing he was about to ruin both our lives with his request that fated day off from school.

"Hmm?" I'd been in the middle of pouring imitation maple syrup onto a stack of microwave pancakes. No one else was home, and I'd failed home ec. "I thought we were going to go see a horror movie tonight."

He attacked his own pancakes with a knife. "I don't mean tonight, I mean today. Now."

"I don't know..." Aurora was way up in Maine, and even worse you had to drive through Alfred with its ridiculous 25 mile in hour speed limit. My dad had fumed about that when we brought Julianne up to the U-Maine campus in Gorham. "It's awfully far."

"Aww, come on, Ben. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. It's not like I can drive myself," he pointed out. That was true, he was only fourteen.

"What the heck do you need all the way up there?" I asked, still not really considering whether or not I was actually going to make the trek. Frankie was a good friend, but we were talking about a trip of three and a half hours. Each way. I wouldn't admit it to him, but the thought of a long drive made me nervous because I'd only had my license nine months.

He wouldn't look at me, which was a bad sign. "I promised my grandpa Osgood that I'd get something for him there."

"Why would he ask you to do that? He ought to know you can't drive, so you'd have to rope someone else into it."

"Please?" Frankie was beginning to look a little desperate, and that worried me. Almost as if reading my mind, he said, "It's nothing illegal, but no one else is home today."

"Well great. I'm flattered that you asked because I'm home."

"Do you have anything better planned for the day?"

Not really. I was just glad to be out of school. The only reason I was talking to Frankie at nine in the morning was because he'd slept over the night before.

Against my better judgment, I found myself agreeing to the drive. "Maybe I should run it by my mom-"

"Don't. What's that saying, it's better to ask forgiveness than permission? She might say no."

That should have made me more cautious, but it didn't. Next thing I knew, we were piling into the 2000 Camry that was nominally my sister's, but really mine to use for the year because freshmen weren't supposed to have cars on campus.

"This thing really doesn't have a cd player?" Frankie asked, peering at the dashboard.

"Really. The radio's good, though." If it had really been my car, I'd of saved up for one.

A familiar voice began to coo as soon as he turned the radio on. "Give me faith. Give me joy, my boy, I will always-"

Frankie flicked the dial, and muttered, "Great, soccer Mom music." Over the next thirty seconds I heard parts of a dozen different songs, like an annoying game of Name That Tune. Eventually he stopped on something he didn't hate. "That's more like it." Frankie sang along with the guy rapping, "Late night sex, so wet, you're so tight..."

I cringed, imagining what Julianne would say if she heard those words coming out of the speakers of her car. She was majoring in Women's studies, and had lost her sense of humor.

The drive didn't seem to take as long as I thought it would, and I gradually came to realize that Frankie's habitual stream of talk was doing what he wanted: keeping me from asking what the hell we were doing. Eventually we stopped for gas (I made him pay) and there was a break in his chatter long enough for me to ask, "What exactly are we going to do in Aurora?"

"Uh, I told you, we need to get something," he said evasively.

"Yeah, I got that. What sort of something? And where?"

"It's in an impound lot."

"An impound lot?" I asked, growing alarmed. I'd seen movies that had junkyards in them, and they always seem to contain dogs with a taste for human flesh.

"Don't worry, Ben. My grandfather owns the lot. We won't get in any trouble."

"Is there a dog?" I asked, picturing one with teeth bared.

"Nah, he doesn't keep a dog."

"If this is his business, I don't see why he can't go and get whatever it is himself."

"He's not there right now."

"Oh yeah, where is he then?" I asked, feeling clever. What I didn't expect was what Frankie said next.

"Do you believe in time travel?"

I figured he was just changing the subject. I supposed that it didn't matter where his grandfather was, since we were almost to Aurora by that point anyway. "No, not really. I've read some stuff about how it's not really possible because of time paradoxes."

"But if it was real, when do you think you'd want to go in time?"

The idea of seeing myself in the future came to mind. Being forty, maybe, and seeing if my wife was hot, how many kids I had, and if Julianne ever became bearable to hang out with again. "A couple decades into the future, see how my life is turning out."

"There isn't a time in the past you'd like to revisit?"

"I don't know, maybe. There are a couple of Christmases when I was a kid that I wouldn't mind experiencing again. Why do you ask?" Even though I mostly had my eyes on the road, I could see his expression change. That desperation that had been on his face when he'd practically begged me to bring him up to Maine was back. "Are you all right, Man?"

"He's in 1956." Frankie said so quietly he was hard to hear.

"Whatever," I grumbled. "If you don't want to tell me what this secret mission is about, fine. But don't screw with me."

"I mean it," he insisted with an alarming intensity.

"Yeah, sure."

"When we get there, you'll see."

"What, are you going to show me his time machine?" I asked, starting to laugh. I stopped when I realized that I had accidentally hit on the right answer. "Oh God, don't tell me we've driven all this way so you can show me a fucking time machine."

For the longest time Frankie didn't say anything. Not for miles and miles. I thought about turning around the moment I realized that he had the crazy idea that his grandfather was able to time travel, but by that point Aurora was only ten or fifteen miles away.

Since Frankie wasn't talking, and I'm too prone to day dreaming – at least according to my dad, since he tells me to pay more attention every time we're in the car together – I let myself imagine what it'd be like if Frankie's grandfather really was in 1956 right then. I sort of knew what people dressed like back then, so I imagined him putting on a suit and stealing a hat from a hipster before getting into his fabulous machine. You know, so he'd blend in. I figured that all the women would look like Donna Reed, and everyone would whistle as they walked. The kids would be well scrubbed and wholesome, and you could pick out the bad guys by their slicked back hair and black leather jackets-

"There, up ahead." Frankie's voice sounded raspy, and I wished I'd bought a soda when we'd stopped for gas. His index finger pointed at a sign that said "Osgood's Salvage."

I pulled in, and there wasn't anyone around. "Where do we park?"

"Over by the office." So I did, and we were the only car there.

"So now what?" I asked, climbing out of the car. Peering into the yard, I realized that my sister's car looked a little out of place here. Most every other vehicle in the lot had been made before my parents were my age.

"We're looking for a car."

I followed him into the yard. "What sort of car? There are dozens here."

"It's the only one of its kind, he promised. It's a Hudson Hornet."

"A what?" I knew a fair amount about cars, but I'd never heard of that one before.

"A Hornet. They made 'em for a while during the fifties."

"Naturally. You said he hopped back to 1956, so that makes sense. Does he need a Dodge Charger to get to the late 60s?" I asked, thinking of old reruns I'd watched with my sister when we were little.

Frankie shook his head. "It doesn't work that way."

"Then how does it work?" I asked, trying to keep up with him as he walked by car after car. I had no idea what a Hornet looked like, so I was just looking for cars that might look like the old Chevy my aunt restored. Somehow, though, I didn't think it would be powder blue. Hornet sounded more like earth tones to me.

"Hey, there it is." Frankie said, point to a car a few hundred yards away. It stood next to an old VW microbus with yawning doors.

I grabbed his arm before he ran off. "If the car's here, and if it's his time machine, he can't be back in the 50s, can he?" I asked, hoping that he was going to laugh and tell me that the time machine thing had all been a big joke, and we were just supposed to take something out of the office here.

He went still. "If it's here, then he's back."

"Frankie, what are we supposed to take out of this 'time machine' exactly?"

Instead of answering, he pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket. "Him. He left me this letter, saying to let him out today, October 18th, 2010."

"Out of the car?"

"Out of the trunk. That's where you sit when you time travel."

Of course.

Frankie held something up. "He left me this key and this letter before he left six months ago."

"Great…" In another second or two we were standing at the rear of an unremarkable old car whose paint was coming off. Osgood's machine didn't look special. It was no Delorean, that was for sure.

I watched silently as Frankie unlocked the trunk, but I was standing back a ways so I couldn't see in at first, which is why I was surprised when he moaned "Oh no" and collapsed to his knees.

"Frankie?" I looked over the top of his lowered head. The inside of the trunk contained a whole mess of electronics. And a desiccated corpse curled on its side. "Is that…" I didn't finish. Of course it was grandpa Osgood.

"He must have gotten stuck in there," Frankie said before dry heaving. "No safety release thingie in old trunks."

I realized then that Frankie thought the dead man had been locked in the car for six months. That didn't make sense, though, not from what I'd learned at the museum and from watching CSI. It took a lot longer than that to make a mummy.

"It didn't work, oh God, poor Grandpa…" Frankie rocked back and forth, holding his head.

Looking past the body, I noticed two things in the trunk. The first was a newspaper, looking brand new, that said it was from October 1st, 1956. The other was a series of numbers that I eventually realized made up a date. The date was October 18th, 2000. He'd misdialed.

I dragged Frankie back to my car, and called the cops. It took hours before we could go home.

Officially the cause of death was listed as an accident, the basic assumption being he'd been trapped in there for six months. Which was fine, if you didn't think too hard about that misdialed date.

The End

"She's not the kind of girl who likes to tell the world about the way she feels about herself. She takes a little time in making up her mind." - Garbage, The Trick is To Keep Breathing

August Music

2010-09-13T23:48:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the lateness. But anyway, here are my recs for the month

8bit Pipe - Bless America
All Left Out - I Was Wrong
Animal Kingdom - Tin Man
BettySoo - Who Knows
Billy Talent - Fallen Leaves
Black Lab - Say Goodbye
Black Sunshine - Once In My Life
Customs - Rex
Didorion - Tag Along
Emprise (Canada) - Light Of Day
Eskimo Joe - Sweater
Florence + The Machine - Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)
Francis Bakin - Cold Snap
Get Well Soon - If This Hat Is Missing I Have Gone Hunting
Ghetto Cowgirl - Thing Like That
HIM - Vampire Heart
Heather Combs - Something More Like You
holloe - Disease
holloe - Level
JaclynRose - only one you love
John Enghauser - Breathe Again
JunkFood - Who's Your Enemy
Kaki King - Life Being What It Is
Kongos - The Way
Law - Brain Probing Relativism
Lucinda Williams - Rescue
Martina Topley-Bird - Snowman
Miike Snow - The Rabbit
Music For Animals - Change Yourself
Music For Animals - If Looks Could Kill
New Fight Scene - Backside of New York
Nine Even - Gone, Comprimise
Prick - Animal
Rachael Yamagata - Accident
Shout Out Louds - You Are Dreaming
Silversun Pickups - The Royal We
Sister Cities - We Don't
Sparky James - She's Not My Keeper
The Hundred in the Hands - Dressed In Dresden
The Ropes - Flimsy
The Rosebuds - Nice Fox
The Rugburns - This Flood
The XX - Teardrops

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"Take the longest day, waste it all away. I can't stand it but I can't do anything." - Toad The Wet Sprocket, Woodburning

Shaveless

2010-09-05T17:13:00.003-04:00

When I was a kid, my dad listened to a lot of country music. There was one song he insisted was called "Shameless" but it didn't sound like he was singing shameless. It sounded like shaveless. "I'm shaveless!" the singer would practically shout. Hey, me too.

It's been a little over a year since I stopped shaving my legs on a regular basis. I think I've shaved them four or five times since then. Don't get me wrong, I haven't turned into a hippy chick or anything. Instead I discovered the wonders of this.

I'll be honest, I hate the color pink, which is why I decided to do laundry today primarily because I discovered almost all my clean undies are the pink ones I wear the least - why does virtually every multipack of women's underwear have pink ones? But other than being pink, I like my epilator a lot. To my surprise, it didn't hurt very much when I started using it, and now it doesn't hurt at all. (On the legs, that is. I try my underarms once in a while, but it does hurt, so I'm still shaving there). The ads say you can go up to four weeks without epilating, but neglect to mention that it's like that if you do it for years. However, I need to do it about 1/3rd as often as shaving, so I'm not too het up about that.

The very best thing about using an epilator is knowing that the more you use it, the more damage you do to the hair follicles on your legs. You know what that means, right? The damaged ones can't grow hair. I know someone who has done it for a decade, and she has very little hair left. Awesome. After just a year I've noticed that there's significantly less hair. It's a nice feeling of satisfaction to know that you're defeating an enemy, even if the enemy is leg hair.

Anyway, if you've gotten over feeling like pulling a bandaid off is painful, I suggest you try an epilator like mine out. They're no longer the Inquisition-based torture devices that left women screaming in agony during the 80s.

"If looks could kill she'd be an automatic, watching empty shells raining down on me. It's your blood she spills waiting for another rabbit. In her hands you will beg and plead" - Music For Animals, If Looks Could Kill

Primary Woes

2010-08-31T12:33:00.003-04:00

For reasons I can't quite fathom, the New Hampshire primaries aren't until September 14th. It makes it feel like the parties think the election is no big deal, but it is. On the other hand, I'm still not sure who I'm going to vote for for senate. None of the candidates is a great fit :(

In some ways I'm a predictable Conservative voter: I'm strongly pro-life, weakly pro-death penalty in that I approve of its limited use for multiple murder, I'd like a smaller government and a reduction of earmark projects, I'd like to see more employers of illegal immigrants viciously fined to discourage them...

But I'm also in favor of gay marriage & adoption (the latter of which jives perfectly with being prolife IMHO. If you want to keep babies from being aborted, they of course need good parents. I don't understand prolife people who are against this), and in favor of universal health care. I don't want to vote for someone who might make it so some of my coworkers lose the right to marry whomever they choose, and hey, making health care affordable would be great so I don't want to vote for someone against it either (but don't tell my folks, okay? I avoid the issue when they rally against the idea). These issues together aren't more important to me that the ones in the last paragraph, though, so I'm not about to vote for someone in favor of these but against the rest so I'm unlikely to vote for a democrat. I guess I'll be somewhat unhappy with whomever I do end up voting for.

Sigh.

When are true moderates going to run in either party?

"Everything you say, I am listening, I am all ears. But if you still believe I'm thinking of you, you're dreaming, yes you're dreaming" - The Shout Out Louds, You're Dreaming

Overthinking

2010-08-30T23:40:00.004-04:00

I'm a little disappointed that I can't find out the answer to the latest burning question I have for my novel: If a person claimed to be something like a psychic who could find people, what sort of business license would they need in the state of New Hampshire? I found out that if this was VA they'd be classified as a Fortune Teller...

But does anyone really care what sort of business license Caitlin needs in order to charge for bringing people back from the dead? Readers probably wouldn't stop me at a book signing and demand to know what sort of business the IRS classified hers as, would they? Supposing this book is eventually published and does well, would even one person who read it really want to know this detail?

Then why do I get so hung up on the tiniest details like this?! I think my muse is confused. Not always, since I'm over 70,000 words into this project (which in paperback form is 250-280 pages) since November 1st, but often enough to be frustrating. Stop spinning your wheels on the inconsequential, muse!*

* for the record, my muse isn't a chick like these. It's a dude, more like this.

"If you won't save me, please don't waste my time" - Oasis, Falling Down

George RR Martin. sigh

2010-08-18T02:10:00.003-04:00

I've been doing the 50 Book Challenge every year since it started in 2003. At 23 books read for this year to date, I'm pretty far behind. Why? I read all four books in the Songs of Fire and Ice since January. Now I'm not sure I ought to have bothered. The rest of this post contains minor book spoilers.

I kept on, because...I thought the story would go somewhere. But somehow, four books and thousands of pages later, it hasn't. How can that possibly be?! I should have been wary, what with having heard whispers of what a tremendous asshole a lot of readers consider him (besides Neil Gainman, but I hate half of his books anyway, so why listen to him?) but I was lured in by the rumors that they're making A Game Of Thrones a TV show. So, I read on and on, with the vaguely disquieting sense that the various plots, subplots and sub-subplots should build to something...and I'm apparently an idiot, because even after four whole books, the supposed central theme ("Winter is coming" or maybe "we must band together to defend ourselves against the Others") is still as nebulous and misty as it was in book one. And people have been waiting four years for this to continue?!

I guess I could forgive the guy a severe case of writer's block, though he did say that he'd just be splitting a big book into two (this takes 5 years to do? The other book is supposed to have already been written) but his sins are worse just in the writing front. What's with his need to write the same details over and over and over again? Arya's prayer has been repeated - in full - no less than 47 times. It feel like he's under the impression that we've all suffered head trama so he's doing us a favor repeating things dozens of times, or else is convinced that he's being paid by the word. And those words are far too often in the passive voice. Didn't he take at least one writing class in college? Passive is bad, not something to stride for so your work sounds old-timey. Not to mention that despite the books being unreasonably bloated, there are so many things that are never touched on despite it being natural for readers to what to know about them. For example: when/how did Jon end up in Winterfell? Catelyn is supposed to despise him, so who raised him until he was old enough to ignore?

Other readers might gnash their teeth and wail in despair when they think of Martin's odds of living long enough to finish the other three books, but not me. I don't care if he ever writes another word. He's just not that compelling a writer. If he has better things to do than write, the hell with him.

"Never say that much to me, I guess it feels okay. Sometimes try and draw you out, sometimes but not today" - Faster Tiger, Unrequited

Sucky Indie

2010-08-17T23:59:00.008-04:00

Least people think I'll listen to anything...

I hate every song by them I've ever heard:
The Mountain Goats
Animal Collective
She & Him
Taken by Trees
Vampire Weekend
Frightened Rabbits
Brazilian Girls
Box Car Racer
M. Ward
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Dr. Dog
The Go! Team
Passion Pit
The Weepies
The Twilight Sad
Neon Indian
The Black Keys
Scissor Sisters
My Morning Jacket
Grandaddy
Lanterns on the Lake
Los Campesinos!
Owl City
Foster The People
Robyn Hitchcock
Monsters of Folk
Surfer Blood

I hate every song by them I've ever heard...except one:
Andrew Bird
Athlete
Of Montreal
Belle and Sebastian
Fleet Foxes
Angels & Airwaves

"I hear your words, they call my name. I won't go back. You must be out of your head" - Birds Of Tokyo, Broken Bones

Random Photos

2010-08-12T21:24:00.005-04:00

I feel like posting, but I don't have much to say. So I'll post a couple of pictures I've taken this year.

I think the look on his face is something we can all relate to now and then "oh no, now what do you want?" (and yes, he puts his paws like that all the time)

I like the clouds in this one. They're a strange shade of blue. My eyes are too, come to think of it - just not this color blue. I've tried taking pictures of them, and just about all you can make out is that they're an odd grayish blue-green, so I won't inflict a picture on you.

"You must be an illusion. Can I see through you?" - Minus the Bear, When We Escape

Photo Mishaps

2010-08-10T00:45:00.005-04:00

You know that old saying about the best laid
plans of mice and men? Clearly it also applies to amature photographers.

You see, last night I noticed one of these solar lanterns in the yard glowing eerily as its charge was draining down. It seemed like it'd make a good picture. Of course, I wanted a photo with the flash off so it would look spookier. What's scary about a lantern you can fully see?

It didn't take too long before I realized that night photos take forever to expose, and it's really hard to stay still that long. That's why my first attempt looks like this. I suppose it ups the eeriness a bit, but it's definitely not what I was going for.

After a few more attempts that look almost identical, I had an ephiphany: the biggest problem was that I was foolishly breathing. So, to solve that problem, I just needed to hold the camera against me, so it wouldn't move when I breathed. Or maybe not.

Then I thought, doesn't this camera have a couple of nighttime modes? Let's try those out. Well, if I'd been trying to take a picture that said "hey! look out, an angry demon is going to get us!" rather than "look at this neat lantern" this might have been a success.

In the end, this is the best picture I took,and it's not very good because it took so long that the solar battery was more drained that would have been ideal.

In retrospect I might have done better if I hadn't been too lazy to get my tripod out of my car (I have no idea why it was in there) but what's the challenge in that? Maybe later this week I can give it another shot - with the tripod.

Oh well, let's chalk this one up to a learning experience.

"You flirt with disaster but never give in" - The Tender Box, Beautiful Sin

July Music

2010-08-01T09:24:00.007-04:00

5 Cent Theatre - Shifting Sands
Amanda Blank - Shame On Me
Ambulance LTD - Sugar Pill
Amy Rigby - You Get To Me
Anya Marina - Whatever You Like (T.I cover)
Arab Strap - Don't Ask Me To Dance
Arab Strap - Infrared
Bettie Serveert - Deny All
Black Wire - Attack! Attack! Attack!
Black Taj - Cold Comfort
Brad Sucks - Look And Feel Years Younger
Brad Sucks - Making Me Nervous
Brendan Benson – The Pledge this is the only vid I could find, sorry
Cary Brothers - Blue Eyes
Chris Isaak vs. Billy Idol vs. HIM - Wicked Wedding [DJ Schmolli] mp3
Civil Twilight - Letters From The Sky
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band - Roosevelt Room
Constellastions - Felicia
Copeland – Control Freak
Cruel Black Dove - Isolation
Eskimo Joe - Inshalla
Feist + Ben Gibbard - Train Song
Gomez - Little Pieces
Greta Gaines - Whiskey Thoughts
Handsome Furs - Radio Kaliningrad
Heavy Young Heathens - Drawn From Memory
I Was Totally Destroying It - Done Waiting
Inu - The Bailing
Isobel Campbell And Mark Lanegan - The Flame That Burns
Junius - Blood Is Bright
Junius - Hiding Knives
Justice vs. New Order - Confused Phantom
Kate Nash - Early Christmas Present
Kathleen Edwards - Back To Me
Kenna - Better Wise Up
Leiana - Nothing=You
Metric - Gimme Sympathy
Micheal Franti & Spearhead - Hey World (Don't Give Up version)
Minto - Tonight I Lay My Head
Moufette - Chew Your Heart
Moving Units - Nail It To The Cross
Moving Units - Wrong Again
Nelly Furtado & Chris Martin - All Good Things
Nine Inch Nails vs. Ace Of Base - She Wants Animals [DJ Tripp & Bass211]
Octoberman - 51
Phantom Planet - Dropped
Princess Superstar vs. Simian vs. Von Bondies vs. Fatboy Slim - C'mon Fuck me [DJ Zebra]
Rise Against - Savior
Rock Kills Kid - I Turn My Camera On
Royal Bangs – My Car is Haunted
Sarah McLachlan - Dear God
She Swings, She Sways - What I Wouldn't Do
Slot - Noon
Solvent – Loss For Words (Solvent’s Compurhythm Remix)
The Butchies - Send Me You
The Cast Before The Break - From The Earth At A Crossroad
The Charms - I Want You Back
The Like - You Belong To Me
The Pillcrushers - Way Down
Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill
USS - Neurochemical Warfare Gas Masquerade

You know, I'd love to be able to make my own mashups, but thus far I haven't gotten anywhere when I've tried with various software. There are songs that would be cool to mix together just for the titles - like I could do a mashup of Bill Wither's "Ain't No Sunshine" and The Kill's "Sour Cherry" for "Sour Sunshine."

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before

"I made an obstacle course out of me. When my laundry is through, I'll tumble with you." - USS, Neurochemical Warfare Gas Masquerade