RL

daffodil
-Overalls. Seriously, they’re dorky, maybe a little ugly, but sometimes they just seem perfect.

There’s nothing like pulling on some overalls, my big clunky work boots, and just going out and digging around in the yard. There’s nature and dirt and just not giving a crap about anything but the moment.

-Been editing some projects, writing on others, and basically spending a lot of time by myself. I’m just grateful the sun decided to shine some because I needed to get out of the house and breathe some fresh air. So far it’s been great.

My dog has happily been chasing rabbits and running around all crazy. He likes having some company during his outdoor adventures.

Kahluah 2

There are so many things I’m grateful for. I try to hold those things close to ward off the things that try and bring me down.

A smile may start off fake, but it becomes real the more it’s used.

~ Pax

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good at Amazon

Sorry, I didn’t mean to disappear off the face of the Earth, it’s just that my dog has been really sick. Like to the point where there was talk of putting him to sleep.

I’ve been nursing him along and it seems like he might be getting better, but he’s still at a very dangerous point in his care. He’s been getting frisky the last two days — he turns his face away when I’m squirting food in him and he saw me coming earlier with the q-tips for his nose and made a break for it — so I’m really hopeful that he’s going to pull through.

If your dog ever comes into contact with rat poison, vitamin K1 is your friend (not K2, that’s different stuff) and you can buy it online without a prescription. Even if you’re not sure, you don’t have to worry too much because K1 won’t hurt your dog; it just won’t do anything. So if you take your dog to the vet thinking it might have gotten into rat poison, they’ll just shoot him up (the regimen for rat poisoning seems to be K1 injection and a cleanse, then K1 pills for the next month, and Densoyl pills.)

Oh, and Denosyl antioxidants, which are supposed to save your dog’s liver from being damaged, costs from $80-190 a lot of places. Which is why I was over the moon to find out the dietary supplement SAMe is the same stuff and only cost $30 for 60 tablets of 200 mg (for the size of my dog, I give him two.)

From lying on the floor, unable to lift his head, to walking around and giving me a sassy attitude, I’m so amazed by how much better he already is. I can’t say that he’s better yet and there’s still a chance that he could take a downturn in the next few days, but from being completely hopeless to thinking that he might be all right… It feels like my heart is too big for my chest.

(BTW, he didn’t get into rat poison at our house. I’m giving my neighbors the serious side-eye, though I won’t say anything because there’s no proof. And the way rat poison works, he could have been exposed up to two weeks before he started getting super sick. It looks like he only got a small dose, otherwise he would have already been dead.)

Kahluah

Uramichi Oniisan 01 at Amazon

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There’s not been much happening lately. I’ve been working my way through my NaNoWriMo story “Across Two Divides,” by Sol Crafter. It’s a mm contemporary novel following the life of Nicholas Underwood and Christian Jacobson, and their respective romantic partners.

It’s being updated at Smashwords if you’d like to pick up a copy. It’s set your own price, so you can buy a copy now and have it available when the final copy is made available. (I’m kind of boggled that more people aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity, but there you go.) Enjoy.

IRL — So my neighbor’s dog was eaten by coyotes. There was this loud animal scream last night and today the lady was driving around the neighborhood looking for her dog. The poor thing was blind and snuck out when the garbage was being taken out. I hope it was quick. V sad.

UBIQUITOUS EXCERPT — This is an excerpt from “Star Brite,” a YA-ish novel. Enjoy:

I could feel the humming sway of the world moving beneath me. It was sort of dreamy and frightening at the same time, but there was nothing I could do about it or anything else.

I existed in a cocoon of flowing warm air and there was a series of throbbing spikes against my head. It made my stomach twist unpleasantly.

I could not have said where I was or what was going on, but there was no doubt that something was very, very wrong.

 

I opened my eyes with a groan, blinking away from the overhead light. I felt faintly nauseous and the gray wool blanket was rough against my bare skin. I was in a ship’s bunk, the cabin around it small and cramped with a few bright posters on the walls — I thought I recognized the sultry pout of the wild Fringe singer Pater Familias, but I had never been a fan so didn’t really know.

I sat up and woozily climbed to my feet. I clutched the blanket close around me to keep as much of myself covered as possible. The blanket was terrible, but it was the best that I currently had to work with.

Picking carefully across the floor, I looked through the drawers built into the walls for clothes. There was a lot of different things that I thought might be useful later, but it all seemed like the possessions of a teenager. Drawer after drawer of someone’s life that I was digging through. It made me feel so uncomfortable, but I didn’t really have a whole lot of choice.

It was with a sense of relief that nearly halfway around the room I found three drawers with clothes.

I dug through the clothes and held shirts and pants against myself to try and guess the sizes. It was kind of surprising that everything seemed to be my general size. It made something strange twist in my belly and it took me a moment to realize that it was fear.

Something very strange was going on here. To wake up in a ship’s bunk in a room that had clothes in just my size? It sent a creepy chill down my spine.

I quickly pulled on a pair of pants made out of some durable feeling material and a long sleeved red and white striped shirt that was only slightly ridiculous looking. Whoever belonged to these clothes either didn’t have a very developed ense of style, or just didn’t care all that much.

I had to huff a faint laugh when I realized that I was stressing about fashion while not even knowing where the hell I was. Talk about a shallow sense of survival.

Turning, I spotted a pair of heavy duty black boots tucked under the edge of the bunk. I tossed the blanket back on top of the bunk and leaned down to pull the boots out, sitting down right on the decking to pull them on over the pink and black argyle socks I was currently wearing.

It was strange to feel so relieved at having my feet covered, but there it was. These boots made me feel just a little less helpless and a little more bad ass. Though what I was going to do if I ended up in a fight, I honestly didn’t know.

I looked down at my hands — they were small and delicate fingered, definitely not the killing instruments I was going to need to get out of a bad situation. And even though there was lots of junk tucked away in the cabin, there wasn’t much I could use as a weapon, not without being laughed at. It made me feel terribly helpless, a sensation I was quickly growing to hate.

There was a creaking sound from the hatch and I leaped to my feet, instinctively going into a half-crouch with my hands ready at my sides. Scenarios flashed through my brain and I thought that maybe I wasn’t as completely useless as I’d thought at first, though maybe I was full on delusional and just didn’t know.

The hatch opened and a bearded man stepped through, limping a bit on his left leg, though my judicious eyes told me it was an old injury likely as healed as it was ever going to get without a graft. He was dressed in standard spacer fare — a gray coverall with a ship’s patch on his left sleeve and magnetic soled boots much like the ones I was currently wearing. His graying black hair was cut close to his head and his brown eyes were hard as they looked around the room — right up until they landed on me and went so warm I could feel it through my bones.

“Star, girl, you’re back with us.” He strode toward me across the room, his arms opening wide as though to engulf me. He hesitated and lowered his arms when I drew back away from him nervously. The big smile fell off his face and he looked a bit more wary. “Star, are you okay, darling?”

“Who are you?” my voice sounded rusty and strange in my own ears. For some reason I had been expecting a different kind of voice, not this girlish thing. “Where am I?”

“Oh, honey,” he said sadly, “we were worried about something like this.”

“About what?” I demanded, narrowing my eyes. I inched slowly backward, wanting to get a corner behind me just in case it turned into a fight.

“You got knocked hard on the head and Gant said there might be problems.” He shook his head. “I should have trusted him.”

“What are you talking about? Who are you?” I asked.

He pressed a hand to his chest and tried to give me a sincere expression that I wasn’t buying. “It’s me, Star, your daddy.”

My eyebrows shot up into my hairline. “What?”

Who was this guy and why was he trying to pretend he was my father? My father was… my father…

I sucked in a shocked breath. I didn’t remember my own father, and when I tried to think about it, I didn’t remember my mother either or any siblings or even any friends. All my frantic thoughts could draw on were the names of celebrities, nothing personal.

“Wh…” I raked a hand through my hair — it was short and felt vaguely fluffy, though like my voice it seemed strange and unfamiliar. “What’s happened to me? Where am I?”

He slowly extended a hand toward me and I couldn’t help the slight flare of resentment I experienced when I realized he was treating me like some kind of wild animal. “It’s like I said, you got hit pretty hard on the head. If we hadn’t been able to get you to Gant so quick, you might have been dead.”

“Who’s Gant?”

He shook his head. “Oh, right, sorry. Gant is our ship’s medic. He’s been taking care of you since you were a baby, so when he said there was something off about your brain waves I should have listened.” He blew out his cheeks, then gave me a piercing look that made me want to cringe back. “Do you know who I am, Star?”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” I asked.

He looked surprised. “What, ‘Star’? Honey, I been calling you that since you were shorter than the soles of my boots. It’s your name. Jenna Star Brite.”

The name didn’t mean anything to me, though when I tried to remember my name I drew a complete blank. A surge of panic went through me and my hands trembled so bad I clasped them together over my stomach in the hopes he wouldn’t see. “My name is Jenna?” I asked.

“Well, your legal paperwork name, anyways,” he said. “You’ve always just been Star since just about birth.” He made like he was going to step closer, but stopped when I cringed away. I didn’t like putting that hurt look on his face, but there was no way I wanted this strange man getting too close to me.

“And you’re my father?” I asked slowly.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said. “Willis Brite, captain of the Maybell.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said. “There’s obviously something very wrong with me if I can’t remember anything. I mean,” I laughed, though it didn’t really sound like one, “I didn’t even know that I didn’t know anything. How screwed up is that? What’s happened to me?”

Willis made a shushing sound and carefully drew closer. This time I didn’t pull away and he slowly reached out to rest a hand on my shoulder. It felt strange, but what did I know; everything was strange. “It’s all right, Star, we’ll get through this,” he said. He tugged me and I let myself be pulled into his arms, let myself be hugged close by this man that said he was my father.

He smelled vaguely of some musty cologne that made my nose wrinkle against the cloth of his shoulder where he couldn’t see. I felt incredibly uncomfortable, but if he really was my father… How could I push him away when he obviously loved me so much?

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, pressing a kiss against the top of my head. “I promise, Daddy’s gonna make everything be okay.”

/EXCERPT

 

Allies & Enemies at Amazon

Trailer For “Psycho Beach Party”
Vietnam Veteran Talks to Mitt Romney About Gay Marriage
Obama and Romney Tackle 14 Top Science Questions From Scientific American
Bill Clinton’s Full DNC Speech 2012

 

Trailer For Psycho Beach Party

The trailer makes it seem kind of over the top, but I actually really love this movie. Lauren Ambrose did an awesome job as Chicklet — which the trailer didn’t really highlight — a sweet and unintentionally hilarious character. Then the switch to Ann Bowman… wow. She is a great character actress.

For some reason, this movie was marketed as though it was an American Pie kind of movie, and it’s not. All the characters are pretty innocent and hyper-1960’s American TV people. Except there’s all these innuendos and every once and a while a character will have a “WTF?” moment as they realize something kind of sexual or raunchy just happened. It’s kind of like Pleasantville, though with a lot of silly humor.

This movie is also gay friendly, parodying a lot of the 1960’s beach movies. There’s a mystery to be solved, and a lot of hot guys that mostly go around with their shirts off. The murder is gruesome, but in a cartoonish manner. There’s a sexual identity crisis, multiple personality disorder, and tough women — the guys think they’re in charge, but the women are the ones going around doing everything. There’s a bit of raunch and some black humor, but as long as you can laugh about it things should be cool.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA_G2Ts8xmo

 

Vietnam Veteran Talks to Mitt Romney About Gay Marriage

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRN9Y5Nvdqk&feature=player_embedded

 

Obama and Romney Tackle 14 Top Science Questions from Scientific American

So they went and answered some science questions. There’s a lot of politico spin on it and some definite… I don’t even know the word. Mitt Romney says he’s not a scientist and I believe him. But he is a politician, so I was still confused by his answers. Obama was a little more concise and to the point and I liked that a bit better than a long rambly answer that didn’t really answer anything.

They were both being the politician guys, which kind of disappoints me because I wanted some straight, honest answers. Science stuff is actually pretty important, and even if I’m personally too dumb to understand it… it’s still the kind of thing that shapes the way we live in the world today and tomorrow. And the President of the United States, as the Commander In Chief, is the guy that while he doesn’t know how to make flying cars himself, can point at some inventor dude and say “Get it done.” That or he’s supposed to know enough to say “This is stupid. Work on something that’s actually relevant. And please don’t tear up the environment while you do it. No more chopping down redwoods to make picnic tables.”

Here’s the link to the article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=obama-romney-science-debate.

 

Bill Clinton’s Full DNC Speech 2012

I didn’t see the speech as it played live because I was watching the movie Battleship (there will be a review of that coming soon) but I was kind of skimming the tweets. Then I tried to catch the rehash on CNN and they were just cutting it all up. So of course I went in search of the full speech.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzDhk3BHi6Q&feature=youtu.be