Bang 'Atlas Shrugged' against your forehead instead of the Bible

Awesome awesomeness from Matt Taibbi. Had no idea that Greenspan was a devotee of Ayn Rand's wacky shit. Gordon Gecko was right. Greed is a religion. And it's full of fanatics.

Craving Rejection

I lobbed another one at the Bridport Prize yesterday. I cut Those Little Deaths (one of the stories in my anthology, Trailer Trash Confessional) down from about 6,000 words to 4,700 so I could meet the guidelines.


I WISH this was my writer's study

It's amazing how many extraneous words you can squeeze out of a short story. Though, in the case of Those Little Deaths it was more about culling entire descriptive sentences. I'm sure there are still LOTS of words to cut. (I kept a lot of the back story too, not sure how T. will feel about that.) And there are characters that are introduced once, briefly described/summarized and then bow off after one or two paragraphs.

I'm running into the same problem with minor characters in my latest (and still very rough) short story, Brave Sucker. I've got a lot of characters that make an entrance, are briefly sketched out by the narrative voice and then leave the stage. I'm not Charles Dickens, I don't know how to make every damn character important and thread them back into the story later on to underscore the climatic moral duel between the protagonist and the antagonist.

I also got my rejection from Missouri Review which has something like a 99.8% rejection rate according Duotrope.com. It was a form rejection and those tend to be real unhelpful as you don't even get the vaguest critique.

I do not understand why Duotrope is allergic to blind-submission contests that require an entry/reading fee. P. told me blind submissions were THE way to go and, judging from all the famous authors F&SF rejected, I think he's totally right.

ROTFLMAO

And after this week of depositions, stressful court hearings and awful, debilitating flu colds (complete with diarrhea, fever and non-stop nights of coughing) I sooo needed a good laugh.


How to Defeat Someone Made Furious by "How to Defeat a Pit Bull with Your Bare Hands"

Spay and Neuter Your Neighbors

The Stranger just ran a tongue-in-cheek article advising Seattleites how to avoid being mauled to death by pit bulls. Of course, it's fired up the usual rabble on the blogosphere.

Weirdly, this tiresome debate is made up of both extremes of the political spectrum. First there's the wigger/gangsta wannabes out in the slummier 'burbs who think it's their god-given right to own uncontrollable animals (see: gun fetishists). And on the other side of the kennel, there's the weepy PETA vegans who think ALL dogs on earth must be saved from horrible humans (including horrible 3-yr-old humans) who are "accidentally" mauled by this "misunderstood" breed.


I covered this topic over 10 years ago when I was a newspaper reporter. My article was about the importance of basic obedience training and socialization for all breeds. Socialization means regularly walking your dog, getting him used to meeting strangers and making him feel relaxed in new environments -- a concept that escapes the mental grasp of 90% of dog owners.

Being white trash, I grew up around pit bulls. Thanks to pit bulls, I had to bury two pet cats before I was 13. They were used in rural Nevada, primarily by ranchers, to hunt and kill coyotes. Unfortunately most of the pit bulls couldn't tell the difference between coyotes and house cats. Pit bulls were also hazy about differentiating between potential burglars and frolicking pre-schoolers. I've lived with pit bull mixes and had boyfriends, roommates, etc. who kept pit bulls. I've known some sweet pit bull mixes, but the pure breds are not my cup of tea. Fighting breeds -- including Chows, akitas and mastiffs -- were bred with the idea that the best defense is a good offense.

Pitbulls have a strong stalking instinct and in the offense department, the pit bull is king. Think about it. The name alone is appalling. They're not called pointers or lurchers. They're pit bulls. You put the dog in a pit. Then you put something (a badger, a lynx, a lion, another dog or even an actual bull) in the pit with the dog. Then you place bets on which animal will survive. Pit bull terriers are the genetic descendants of dogs that survived hundreds of years of this systematic brutality in England, Spain and most of Europe.

Perfect for your five year old!
The thing that chills me is a comment by an animal behaviorist and director of the ASPCA on Dogsbite.org:

According to expert Randall Lockwood, pit bulls are also liars. In a 2004 law enforcement training video, taped when Lockwood was vice president for research and educational outreach for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), he shares the following story:

"Fighting dogs lie all the time. I experienced it first hand when I was investigating three pit bulls that killed a little boy in Georgia. When I went up to do an initial evaluation of the dog's behavior, the dog came up to the front of the fence, gave me a nice little tail wag and a "play bow" -- a little solicitation, a little greeting. As I got closer, he lunged for my face."

Fighting breeds like pit bulls can lie? That is chilling. Shades of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake where in a dystopian future corporations use "puppies" as military weapons.

But then this debate is not new. A 1999 essay from a New York freelance writer, brings the problem home.

Unlimited Asshatery

Pretty much everything John (old engineer I used to rent from) told me about HR people has been true. So's everything a hippie told me back in Dec. 2003. Their impressions about how Seattle (and the crazy/stupids who live here) works has been dead on. I just got off the phone with an HR headhunter (we call 'em vendors). Here's the gist of it (with witty embellishments):

"Um, are you a technical writer?"
"Yes."
"Does it say that on your resume?"
"Did you read it?"
"Oh, no. Wait. Oh, I'm looking at it now. But do you have any samples?"
"My online portfolio is listed on my resume. At the top. There's a hyperlink. Just click on it."
"Oh! Okay. But do you have Microsoft experience?"
"Are you looking at my resume?"
"Wait. There it is. Yes, that's at the top."
"How long have you been out of work?"
"Over a year."
"Wow! Are you on leave or a vacation?"
"Ever heard of the Great Recession?"
"Oh yeah, right."
"Well, there's a lot of tech writer positions out there right now."
"Really?! Awesome, where should I look for them? Because I've been staring at the same job postings on the state Worksource site since December. And some of the postings on Craigslist are starting to grow moss."
"So you are looking for work?"
"No, I thought I'd just laboriously post my resume (after re-writing it six times) on Monster and endure endless moronic phone conversations FOR FUN."
"Do you want to work as a permanent at Microsoft or just as a contractor?"
"They ACTUALLY HAVE permanent positions for tech writers AVAILABLE? Great, sign me up."
"Wait, oh yeah, my boss is saying 68% of their jobs are contract only."
"Ya don't say?"


And this was one of the smarter ones I've dealt with. HR twits are kinda like mosquitoes and wharf rats. We don't really need them. Human existence would trundle along just fine without them.

All this over health care?

Anybody who thinks the faux protests going on in this country are over health care is asleep.

The last time we heard the phrase 'state's rights' was right before the South seceded from the Union and started the Civil War.

Sorry, teabaggers, states don't have sovereignty, only nations do. Where would Arkansas be without all those FEDERAL farm subsidies? Where would Texas be without endless FEDERAL corporate subsidies to its oil refineries? Where would North Carolina be without all those FEDERAL military bases? How about Florida without FEDERAL GOVERNMENT subsidies to its massive corporate orange growers?

George Carlin was right. Let's put all the Right-wing wackos in a big fenced-in lot and once a month we'll toss a few tons of raw meat and more gun ammo over the fence.

You can't secede from the American government, you dumb asses. You don't have the money and you clearly don't have the brains.

I miss chickens

In the past, I've had occasion to live in a rural setting with farm critters roaming about. Last time I was down on the farm, was in Australia in 2003. I stayed with an earthworm entrepreneur (I'm so not making this up) at his drafty, sprawling, ranch house 17 miles outside of Perth. He owned chickens (which he neglected), six sheep, a spoiled ugly pitbull and a lovely cat named Bella. There were also emus -- we called them Emu Raiders -- who lumbered into the yard late at night and destroyed clothes lines and trampled laundry. Occasionally they devastated the passionfruit vines and devoured the tomatoes.

But the chickens were the best. They began making that weird groaning noise every morning at 5 a.m. They provided eggs and were diligent bug killers. When I was working in the garden, (which was pretty extensive), they would follow me and if I came across a huntsman spider or a Madagascar cockroach, they would run over and dutifully kill and eat it. One of the chooks as they say in Oz, used to follow me around the neighborhood when I went for walks. She would trail behind me clucking worriedly. It was cute.

I really miss the eggs. And the poultry companionship.

Joined the Pity Party

My rejection is vaguely famous.

I guess I have some idea what the dolts on American Idol feel like when Simon tells them they're too ugly to sing.

Random beauty

I just couldn't let the week slip by without showing some of the art this pro did for the cover of the latest Stranger. If you live outside the Seattle area and don't get the Stranger, that's a bummer. Because Jon McNair is super cool.

It's like Maurice Sendak meets Carl Jung meets Robert Smith when he's extra depressed. It's just screaming cool.

Rapture time?

I always wondered if one of Roland Emmerich's over-the-top disaster flicks was gonna come true in real life.



Personally, I was a bigger fan of "The Day After Tomorrow". I liked the idea of tornadoes eating Los Angeles in revenge for the billions of tons of air pollution that city has dumped on us all.



But lately, I'm starting to wonder: what if the end of the world is a double-feature?

Chilean earthquake photos.

No thank you, really.

The hits just keep on coming over at AlterNet News:

Many women are happy without kids. They'd be even happier if they weren’t reminded all the time how unhappy they should be.



Ummm, didn't Ally (I-Never-Eat) McBeal ... adopt???

Gee, why doesn't this suprise me?

Pancreatic Cancer Linked to Sodas
Study Says 2 Sodas Per Week Raises Pancreatic Cancer Risk
By Kathleen Doheny, WebMD Health News

Feb. 8, 2010 -- Drinking as little as two soft drinks a week appears to nearly double the risk of getting pancreatic cancer, according to a new study.

"People who drank two or more soft drinks a week had an 87% increased risk -- or nearly twice the risk -- of pancreatic cancer compared to individuals consuming no soft drinks," says study lead author Noel T. Mueller, MPH, a research associate at the Cancer Control Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C. The study is published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers& Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Cancer of the pancreas was diagnosed in about 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2009, according to American Cancer Society estimates, and about 35,240 deaths from the disease were expected. The pancreas lies behind the stomach. It makes hormones such as insulin to balance sugar in the blood and produces juices with enzymes to help break down fats and protein in foods.


Whole story here


* * *

Let's see what did my vegetarian friend, Richard, tell me way back in 1991? "HFCS fries your pancreas."

And what'd my holistic doctor tell me in the same year? "Eating a lot of sugar causes your pancreas to 'mis-fire' which causes the liver to dump too much insulin into the blood which creates hypoglycemic symptoms, which then leads to eating more sugar."

And soda pop containing HFCS is THE biggest culprit because HFCS is in liquid form so it reaches your stomach lining and then your blood stream in a fraction of the time it takes, say a cookie, to reach your blood stream. And HFCS inhibits the body's ability to produce leptin, a hormone that 'tells' your brain you are full. Essentially, your body can't tell the difference between consuming a half can of Coke, Pepsi or 7-Up and drinking an entire 6-pack. It feels the same.

I have been a lobbyist

Where's my expensive car, paid dinners, etc? Oh yeah, that'd be the pharm/gun/oil/death lobby in Washington, D.C.



But we did get free sandwiches. And buttons! And I now know who at least one of my state legislators are. And his office was really, really small.

Little Anderson

I've always been a little behind the curve on social trends and gadgets which is why I am just now (pregnant pause) discovering the marvel that is Anderson Cooper!

If you haven't read this guy's Wikipedia profile, please drop everything and go immediately to that site and look him up. I'm 90% sure Danielle Steele herself wrote the first five paragraphs of this silver-spooned queer's bio. It's To Die For!!!


Anderson and "friend"

Mum was THE Gloria Vanderbilt. Daddy died when Lil' Andy was a pup. And his older brother jumped off the terrace of the Vanderbilt penthouse apartment due to ... a drug allergy?! In an early attempt to "deal" with the losses in his life, Lil' Andy went to Africa and caught malaria. OMFG, this guy is the DEFINITION of drama.

Andy wandered woefully between the dizzying world of being a male model (gay) and going to Yale where he joined a secret society ala George Bush (SCREAMING GAY). Later he once again hit the rock bottom of despair and self-doubt (or was it loathing) when he took pictures of dead people in Rwanda during the genocide for his "own personal album."

If John Waters and Ed Wood mated and produced a genius drama-writer child? That child could not have dreamed up this super freak. Cooper's celebrity freakiness crushes all other celebrity freaks COMBINED. Couch-jumping Tom Cruise has NOTHING on this queen. All the former-child-star-turned-liquor-store robbers combined can't touch this freak's freakiness.

And what's a closeted, uber-rich gay boy's life without, yes, a stint in the Company aka the CIA.

AND, (there's always an AND with Anderson) while visiting Vietnam in the 1990s, he claims he learned Vietnamese and snuck into Myanmar/Burma to film interviews with locals.

I have to pause now because I'm having a celebrity freak-out orgasm.

(PAUSE)

I'm just wondering: when will the alien abduction stories emerge?

Fun with flea abatement

Greetings fans (all three of you),

So the wonderful, needy, overly affectionate kitty went back the Seattle Humane Society today looking a hell of a lot better than he did when I picked him up. They were about to foist another kitty-in-need on me for another 14-day "fostering" session but I begged off saying I had to do something about the fleas which were now happily residing in the shabby old carpet in my tiny apartment.

I mentioned that I'd been using baking soda and diatomaceous earth and that the fleas just sorta laughed that stuff off and I asked if there was something between baking soda and a RAID flea bomb which I didn't want to do as you have to like go check into a motel for a few days until the Sarin gas wears off. Somebody said something about 'boric acid' which you can get in powder form some where and it's only mildly toxic to people-n-pets but apparently way more irritating to fleas, the Star Trek Borg of the parasite world ('resistance is futile!').



So off I went to the vast, depressingly empty Factoria mall and at Petco I let a cashier talk me into "Zodiac Carpet and Upholstery Flea Powder". Remember that name, folks, because it should have had A GIANT BLACK SKULL on the front of the can and they should have called it "Ode 'de Love Canal" or "Essence of Linfen" (Linfen is supposedly the most toxic city in China).

The truly witty part in this purchase? The effing can said something like "may treat a 200-400sq ft area". Fuck me running. It should have said: "To kill everyone at Safeco Field during a game, open can, and run away very fast."

This shit was so bad, I'm pretty sure if Keith Richards snorted a line, he really would die ... or at least have a bad cold for a week.

I put a small half-circle of the crap around the bottom of my bed frame as that was Valencio's favorite napping//lurking area. I then began the 4-hr task of washing every piece of linen I own including all the towels the cat had bedded down on and all my sheets, duvet, etc.

I came back upstairs and about then I noticed the paint-peeling vapors from this small line of powder in the carpet. I had already opened all my bay windows, cranked the fan, etc. The directions said "allow to sit for 60 minutes or over night". If I had actually let it sit over night, I'd be dead right now and the powder would have burned a crescent-shaped hole thru my floor!

Instead, I immediately vacuumed the shit up and desperately started sprinkling baking soda everywhere the nuclear waste had been. There were multiple sessions downstairs cleaning my vacuum, knocking crap out of the now pretty trashed HEPA filter, wiping every part of the vacuum down with Orange Clean and water, etc.

Finally, after five hours of living inside a freezing wind tunnel, the vapors seem to have eased off. I took a long shower and will have to wash the Agent Orange out of my clothes tomorrow and dust every single freaking surface in my apartment.

A quick look at the can, which is bagged up and going in the trash tomorrow says:

Linalool 2.5%
piperonyl butoxide .5%
pyrethrins .075%
Nylar pyradine .020%
"other" 96.9%

Yummy!

I'm sure this stuff wouldn't fly with the cocaine crowd but if you like a good gas huffing or glue sniffing high, this stuff will do the trick. I'm still dizzy and confused.

And if even one flea egg hatches and I get one more bite after this AND I grow gills or a hand-shaped tumor in the middle of my forehead, I am so suing "Zodiac".

Year of the Turd

I nominate 2009 the year of the turd. For me personally, this year has been fecal from start to finish.

• Really blew out my back in January and had to fight to get an MRI,


• nearly bled to death in June right before my birthday,


• got a stress fracture in my foot apparently from just walking down the street,


• had a second (or fifth?) bad back episode in May,


• a surreal heatwave partially melted my building's roof,


• had a creepy, damaging visit from an un-welcome relative,


• had scary (albeit successful) surgery in October,


• and then worked for these Conservitards on a seasonal Xmas job,


• and through it all I was chronically un- or under-employed all the way.

Now if I just had some cat litter sprinkles to go on top. Bon voyage 2009, it's time to flush the toilet on this crap year.

Dances with Smurfs!

Best psychedelic-CGI flick EEEVER. And Lindy did a far, far better job writing a hilarious review than I ever could.



And Cameron's latest entertainment juggernaut has all the right-wing nuts snarling about the 'overt pro-environment message'. Let's hear it for decadent Hollyweird!

Days like these ...

... I especially miss being in Oz. Why right now it's probably 87 F in Sydney and I could be engaging in croc dangling.

Cage of Death designed to thrill, not kill

The Cage of Death at Crocosaurus Cove is a popular tourist attraction / AAP

(And fuck you, Rupert Murdock, I'm pinching one of your slave's pics.)

Smug Marrieds?

The above is from Bridget Jone's Diary where the author Helen Fielding called her married friends Smug Marrieds because, ummm, well they are. Or they tend to be.

I ran into this phenom yesterday at my final writing class meeting at Hugo House. We read a short, short story by S.L. Wisenberg called Brunch. It was humorous and sardonic and originally ran in the New Yorker.

Anyhoo, afterward, everybody (all the Smug Marrieds in the room) were moaning about how 'bitter sweet' and 'lonely' the story was. Hello? I'm sorry. Was your day of Sesame Street-promoted sunshine canceled? Or as the hipster druggie across my hallway would say: "Welcome to America."

Yup, some of us go through life experiencing multiple relationships at different times that start and end for all sorts of reasons, not all of them logical or even our fault. Woe unto us the risque, the (dangerously?) adventurous, the sexually experienced. What un-ending horrors our lives must be! (or is it whores?)

I loved what cynical old Hanif Kureishi said about this: "... people marry when they're at their most desperate, that the need for a certificate is a sure sign of an attenuated affection."

Chance of Frogs

Just remembering what a mind-blowing film this was when I first saw it. And now, 10 years later, I'm lucky enough to own it on DVD.



On the 'Making of', Paul Thomas Anderson looks like he's about 18 years old.

On my All-Time, Top 10 Movies List.