#i wrote all this and then read an article that said no animals can see human bioluminescence but non of this is scientifically sound

[03-ooz]

its time to take the uchiha clan cat conspiracy one step further

the cellular makeup of the sharingan is different than that of a normal human eye and shares some similarities with cat eyes. feild of vision and distance perception are human standard, but color/light perception improves. so, heres how i see this working

because of their kekkei genkai uchiha are genetically predisposed to have more photoreceptors in the eye compared to other narutoverse humans (particularly rods, we'll circle back to that)

the reaction of the chakra on the optical nerve stimulates the typically dormant rods and cones within the eye and changes the way the sharingan percives light

so the extra photoreceptors in the eye are activated by chakra meaning they are only active when the sharingan is active and plain eyesight is unaffected

sharingan users have an enhanced sensitivity to light which is partially why awakening the eye can be a painful process

this enhanced sensitivity nerfs the sharingan a little bit the eye is still incredibly op during night/lowlight combat but it can be incredibly difficult to navigate use during the day because of the strain the enhanced perception cause on the eye although with proper training you can overcome some of the discomfort

the extra rods in the eye enhance night vision for sharingan users

the extra cones are there cause i think its funny that your faves favorite color is beyond your compression

the red hue in the sharingan is like a chakra activated tapetum lucidum which contributes to the motion sensing feature of the sharingan as well as enhanced night vision (most importantly consider reflecive sharingan make brain go brrrrr)

nekobaa loves the uchiha cause they're big spenders but also cause of the cool cat eyes

kakashi keeps the eye covered to conserve energy but also cause constant exposure to light = constant migraine and the darkness helps mitigate the symptoms

all of this to say

uchiha can see human bioluminescence pass it on

this has been sciencey headcanons with a highschool dropout. tune into the next post to read about how zetsus photosynthesize and obito too maybe!?!!? (i did really enjoy my freshman biology class but that was 8 stoned years ago so bear with me here i sure hope the science side of tumblr never ever sees this)

[lazytitans-world]

My research findings on the production of Wish

Never have I seen a fan community do so much with so little than I have with Wish. And to start off, I want to say that you should watch the movie first before going into this and the Starboy fandom as I believe it to be important on forming your own opinion before moving on as I find most of the fandom to have a negative view of the movie, one I do not really share. I found Wish to be fine. I did not hate it, but I did not love it like I do other Disney animated films. But the many rewrites, drawings and animatics featuring character designs that did not make it far in production have become icons in this community inspired me to do a deep dive to see if I could find where in production these concepts died and why.

To save you a read, this production was a victim of simplicity. I feel that many concepts and story ideas were tossed away due to complicating the story, which was always going to focus on Asha trying to save the wishes of her fellow kingdom citizens with the help of a wishing star. I have read many articles and watched a few deleted scenes from the home release and here are my findings.

Starboy never got far in development as the book states that the team went down "a few blind alleys" that lead them to star having a human design for a period. This is probably the period in time where all the Starboy concept art came from and where a potential romantic subplot with Asha was kicked around. It was.

What did Starboy in was the team's choice to make them a shapeshifter as the team thought the character was way overpowered and thus the story lost a lot of dramatic tension (a choice I kind of agree with). It was here where the design team decided that Star needed an overhaul and brought the Story Development artists in and this is where Starboy died and plush Star was finalized.

There are no official storyboards that feature the Starboy designs.

At the start of Wish's production, Frozen 2 was entering it's final stage of production (this would be either late 2018 or early 2019) and was obviously the main focus for Disney animation not to mention projects like Raya and the Last Dragon, Strange World and Encanto were entering their mid development stages before the shutdown.

The effects of the global shutdown were not mentioned in the book, but I would not be shocked if production was affected by it.

Ariana DeBose has said that Wish did not need a love story as she said that,

“I think we live in a time where things are cyclical, right? And so, it’s good for variance and perspective. Not every female Disney character needs to have a go and ambition of simply finding a man to love her. There are more stories to tell.

"And especially in the world we live in today I think something like Wish, that has a broader outlook that talks about community, is just as important as talking about love. And there are so many different ways to love."

"You do see familiar love, love of friendship" in the movie, including the relationship between Asha and Star. Star and Asha have this beautiful connection with each other and so I think it’s good reminding people that not only we can tell different stories, we can also talk about love in different ways.”(source: Exclusive: Wish’s Ariana DeBose defends lack of romance in recent Disney movies (yahoo.com)) whether Ariana had any say on story or character development is unknown.

7. From what I read from the Art of Wish book, the story was always meant to be about Asha defying Magnifico to fight for the people of Rosas and their wishes.

8. As it pertains to "At All Costs", a song that many are saying was meant to be a love song between Asha and Star, in an article by Variety(Julia Michaels Wrote 'Wish' Theme Before the Script Even Existed (variety.com), it states that a love song was not in the film at the time of production and songwriter Julia Michaels "wanted to write a song that as a standalone sounded like a love song that could be played at weddings."

Michaels would go on to say, "How cool would it be if we wrote a song that if you listened to on its own, it sounds like a love song, it could be something you could play at your wedding, or be a lullaby to your kids, just something really beautiful, but when you watch the film, it’s the heroine and it’s the villain.” She continues, “You realize they’re coming about this both from various points, one from a very selfless standpoint and one from a selfish standpoint.”

9. In the same Variety article, it was revealed that for some time in 2020, no script existed for the movie, but Julia Michaels was asked to be the songwriter for the movie and that is where she pitched "This Wish" which would go on to be one of the first songs revealed for the movie.

10. the Variety article also had Jennifer Lee, head of Disney Animation and one of the writers on Wish, say that she wanted a song that showed "it felt like to hold someone’s wish in your hand. How do we viscerally understand that when you’re with them, you feel like you’re holding someone’s raison d’être?” that song would end it being "At All Costs"

11. September 9, 2022, D23 Expo in Anaheim California. This is where certain members of the public got a glimpse of the production of Wish. Jennifer Lee, writer and director Chris Buck, and co-director Fawn Veerasunthorn spoke about the movie and showed the first look of the finalized design of Star which ended up being the mute plush model that ended up in the movie. This means there was a 3-year gap where Starboy and the romance side plot were discussed then shelved.

It was also during this show where the public would learn that Ariana DeBuse would voice Asha and that Alan Tudyk, a staple of past Disney animated films, would have a featured role in the movie as Asha's pet goat Valentino, who would be able to talk thanks to Star's magic. It was also at that show where DuBose came out to sing "This Wish" but at the time the song was called "More for Us".

Magnifico was not revealed at the event but was teased as "one of the most formidable foes in Disney history" which is debatable to say the least.

12. 5 deleted scenes in total appear on the Wish digital and disc copies each introduced by head of story Mark Kennedy where he would describe why the scene got cut. One scene shows Amaya assisting Magnifico in his plan, tying into an early concept where she was a villain alongside him.

Another scene had Asha, Star (who in this scene could shape shift and talk) and Valentino try to sneak into Rosas before being spotted and chased by Amaya, once again acting antagonistic to Asha.

A scene had Magnifco gather the people of Rosas to demand Star be given to him, as he had never seen Star in this version, and Asha her friends try to distract him by having Valentino, who in this version had a more Steve Carell like voice, pretend to be Star while the real Star, who was voiced in this version and was designed as ball of light with eyes and mouth, was trying to free the captured wishes. This scene was changed because they wanted Magnifco to be more threatening and instead of asking the people for Star, he would capture Star. Kennedy would go on to say that they wanted Asha and Magnifico to be smart and that Asha would not do a plan that silly, and they wanted the climax to be Magnifico and Asha alone, so they set it on a platform high above Rosas.

The next scene featured an ally of Asha's named Flazino that was cut out in order to shrink her friend group and tied the group back to the seven dwarfs from Snow White.

Finally, there was a scene where Asha and her grandfather scaled a wishing tree with her grandfather Sabino that showcased their bond but also Sabino's insistence that Asha take down Magnifico.

Each of these scenes felt completely different to the movie that ended up being released.

13. It should be noted that Wish released only a short while after the 2023 Writers and Actors strikes, which meant that for most of the summer and fall of that year, the actors could not do any press for the movie and all marketing was done through ads, trailers and merchandise.

14. As revealed in an article for Disney twenty-three, a magazine for gold members of the Disney D23 Fanclub, in the early visual development stage, there was a test scene that Asha was briefly transported to the village from Pinocchio. This was done to see how the 3D character designs would match with the hand drawn, watercolor backgrounds of classic Disney movies.

15. In that same article, Chris Buck said that in regard to Magnifico's character development that they wanted the audience "to see the evolution of a villain, so he's not a monster from frame one". From what becomes of Magnifico I get what they tried to do, they wanted to show how a character falls into villainy even if they're intentions are good. It also stands with the modern writing style of Disney animation films trying to update classics, this time by having audiences start off by kind of liking the villain through their personality alone.

18. The article also briefly mentions that Star "went through many iterations" another hint of Starboy being considered as a final design.

19. In the Art of Wish book, there is a page that shows the script where Asha meets Star and Star is described as a "cuddly, 3D, five-pointed star." This would indicate that the Starboy concept never got to the scripting stages.

20. In Art of Wish, the reason why Star does not speak is because the film makers wanted to stick to a tenet of film making, show don't tell.

21. Star's face was inspired by the mask like face of early Mickey Mouse cartoons.

22. From all readings, it is safe to say that Asha was NEVER considered to be a princess in any of the iterations of the story as some writers felt it to be too safe of a choice and liked the idea of an ordinary citizen going against the established power of the king.

23. During production, the Disney CEO position changed twice as Bob Iger left the company in early 2020 and named Bob Chapek as his replacement before returning to the company in mid 2023. It is unknown if these changes had any effects of Wish's production as it was it stated development as Iger's first tenure was ending but took place during a majority of Chapek's time.

24. When Angelique Cabal, who voiced Amaya in Wish, first auditioned for the role the character in 2022 Amaya was written as a villain while Magnifico was supposed to be the good king. It was when she returned for the callback that Amaya was changed to what she ended up being in the movie. Source https://www.cinemablend.com/interviews/how-one-character-disney-wish-completely-changed-during-production

In closing, for fans of the Starboy concept, it saddens me to say that it looks the idea only made it as far as concept art as at the time of writing this, no animated sequences, scripts or storyboards have been released that had Star in a human design or discussed a romantic relationship with Asha. I believe the writing team found a romantic relationship between Star and Asha too complicated for the story and decided to simplify the relationship and design of Star to better suit the plot of Asha going against Magnifico. I am disappointed Wish did not go with the more interesting concepts but maybe down the line we'll get that cosmic Disney romance and a villain couple, it just has to work with the story.

I want to say thank you for those that made it to the end, this movie has been on my mind for quite a while and seeing all the re-writes, drawings and animations people have done for Starboy and Asha has been amazing to see. These works have inspired me to rewatch Wish at some point to see if Starboy could have worked in the movie with the story as is, and even share how I would have changed a few things in the story to fit the character and a romantic subplot with Asha plus an idea on how to bring in Starboy while still staying true to the established cannon.

I do hope others watch and enjoy Wish as from what I have read the team did put a lot of effort to makes this movie worthy of not only the high standards Disney animation has set, but as a piece of the 100-year story telling of the Walt Disney company. Film making is already hard enough as it is, especially in animation, but having to make a movie with an original concept and characters that still pays tribute to 100 years of storytelling is a daunting task and I understand and respect the choices they made when making the film and you should as well.

[inkednotebook]

Writer ask tag

Thank you @mjparkerwriting for the tag!!

Doing this for my queer romance Icing Waved Off.

What is the main lesson of your story? Why did you choose it?

Hm. Self-acceptance for queer folks can be a lovely, but messy thing. There's no straight line (heheh) to it, and everyone's journeys are different. But no matter what your journey, or when you embarked on it, your feelings are valid. You are valid.

What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding?

The NHL. I mean, it's set in modern day North America within the league, but with made up teams. I used games and interviews I've watched, and articles I've read to help me piece together the behind the scenes of the game.

What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, or help the reader grow as a person?

It's dual POV, so there are two answers. Teddy is trying to achieve an understanding of who he is and learn to accept that his life might not be what he had envisioned. James is trying to achieve a life where he doesn't have to hide who he is.

I think I'm trying to achieve a few things with them: learning to forgive myself for things I thought I felt or wanted, to help share queer stories and queer love, and to shine a light onto the toxic culture of male hockey.

I'm not really sure what I want to do with this story in those regards. Inspire other queers for sure, but... I don't know. I wrote this for myself first and foremost, so honestly was not thinking of the lesson or whatnot it might have.

How many chapters is your story going to have?

It's sitting at 26 right now!

Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

Ehh. Like I said, it's based on the NHL, and I'd be lying if I said fanfiction didn't play some role in inspiring me to write it, but it itself is all original content.

When did you start writing?

When I could write coherent sentences lol. I used to write little stories about talking animals and teddy bears, then it grew into Star Trek fanfiction when I was 14ish which sparked a love for longer stories.

Do you have any words of encouragement for fellow writers of writeblr? What other writers do you follow?

Write what you love, not what you think will sell!

If you can't afford to take creative writing workshops or post-secondary classes, try to see if your local library has any creative writing books! Seriously, the tips they can give you are amazing.

For writeblr specifically, I think just don't be discouraged if your posts don't get a lot of engagement. I've been on Tumblr a loooong time, and I get how disappointing it can be when you post creative content and it gets few reactions. But just keep at it - limited social media engagement does not mean your writing is bad or that you'll never make it as a writer.

I follow many writers, but I'll just tag a few if they want to do this: @kaylinalexanderbooks, @willtheweaver, @aalinaaaaaa, @theeccentricraven, @cc-writes-stuff, @bardic-tales, @write-with-will, and @illarian-rambling

[featheredenby]

Epilogue

Written by: FeatheredEnby

Word Count: 1,170

Final Part of: Show Your Fangs

A Superhero AU of Empires SMP/Hermitcraft/The Life Series

Read On Ao3

Gem stands on the small stage they’ve constructed in front of the new museum on the day of its grand opening. People stand in a crowd formed around it and reporters and news outlets try and get the closest to get their questions heard. Sitting in chairs behind her are Lizzie, her legal advisor, Scar and Tango, the heads of landscapes and architecture, Katherine, who recreated all of the destroyed costumes, and Martyn, who wrote all of the descriptions.

Gem looks down at the reporters and points at Grian, who has his wings out for once, and Joel, “Any questions?” The other reporters make noises of distaste at not being asked first.

“Yeah,” Grian says he opens a notepad and starts writing on it, “What are you doing in regards to the identities of the people this museum is about? Are you revealing them?”

Of course he already knows this but the other reporters don’t know that, “I left it up to them to decide who they want to know about their identities. Everyone who was a hero, vigilante, or villain knows the others’ identities. The people who were willing to have theirs revealed were Hotguy, the Huntress, the Wolf Spirit, Canary Call, Slay, Cuteguy, Cromia, the Mayor, Owenge Juice, the Red King and Red Hand, and the Time Witch.”

Grian nods and writes what she said down while Joel starts talking, “What will you be doing in regards to the villains and possible prison sentences?”

Gen screams internally as she was sure that Lizzie told him that and not to ask it but fine, “As you know this is a government organization and we have the say over what happens to the people we take into custody. We have made the decision to grant them full pardons as long as they don’t go back to their old ways.” Gem checks her watch, “Well it looks like we don’t have time for any other questions. You can all go into the museum now, plus there’s a surprise due to it being the grand opening.”

-

Lizzie sprints to the museum’s employee entrance and grabs her bag from where it’s hanging on the wall. She quickly changes into her vigilante costume. Lizzie then sprints through the halls, waving to her friends as she passes them, and stands next to her exhibit right as a group of reporters, led by Joel, enters the room. Half of the reporters almost drop their cameras, microphones, tape recorders, and notepads.

Lizzie waves them over, “Hi there! Welcome into the museum, I’m the Mayor but you already know that! However, what you don’t know is my real name.” Lizzie pulls out the mask she wears normally, “My name is Lizzie Shadowlady, I’m a lawyer. Very boring job in comparison to fighting crime while committing one.”

One of the reporters shoves a microphone in her face, “So you admit to being a criminal?”

She chooses to use them to demonstrate her powers, “Now my powers aren’t much but one of them is mind controlling animals along with animal mutants and hybrids.” Lizzie snaps her fingers and the reporter steps back, “Ta-da!”

-

As soon as the rest of the people from the Hemit Times and other papers head inside Grian whispers a quick spell and is in his Cuteguy costume. He then darts through the rooms of the museum to where the cases displaying him and Scar’s costumes are. Scar’s sitting in front of his own case while smiling brightly. “Hi G!” He calls once Grian enters the room.

Grian skids to a stop in front of his case and waves to Scar. “Excited?”

“Yep! I’m thinking about the best way to reveal my identity.” He explains, “What are you gonna do for it?”

“I’m planning on talking about how one of the reporters always seems to have better articles about me. Then point out that I’m missing.” Grian glances at the door as it opens, “Speaking of which, it’s showtime.”

Scar waves at the reporters, “Hello, hello, hello! How are you on this fine day?” There’s a few muttered answers from the group, “I see… Well then the question is which of our identities do we reveal first?”

Grian nods, “Let’s do my identity first.” He scans the reporters, “I can’t help but notice that one of you is missing, well two but we all know where Joel went.” Grian slips one finger under his mask, “I happened to notice that the person who always writes the best articles about Hotguy and I is the one missing.”

“What does that have to do with your identity?” A tape recorder is thrust into Grian’s face, he promptly pushes it away as hard as possible while still seeming polite.

“Well, I happen to know where he is. He’s right,” Grian pulls his mask off, “here. You can ask questions later. Your turn Hotguy.”

Scar clears his throat, “Good people of Hermitopia, I’d like to thank my roommate Grian for that amazing performance which happened before mine.” He pulls off his visor, “It’s me, Scar Goodtimes. Hi!”

-

Throughout the day Grian keeps one eye on each of his friends, it is exhausting and he knows that at least three would yell at him for it but he wants to know how things go. Eventually crowds die down and they all leave to go home. As he and Scar go through the door to their apartment Grian starts thinking. “So, what exactly do we do now that people know our identities? I want to keep doing vigilante work, but the only identity I have that’s not widely known now is a world famous pop star.”

Scar shrugs, “I’m not sure, I want to keep doing it too though, just not for the government. What if we keep the basic design elements of the Hotguy and Cuteguy designs but change some of the colors and shapes?” Scar pulls out his sketchbook and starts doodling costume ideas.

-

Grian leaps down from the utility pole he was sitting on and glides onto the roof next to it, he lands next to his new partner in stopping crime. Scar’s sitting in his new costume, a dark red shirt, with purple accents, and pants with lighter shades of red forming the Hotguy symbol but one half has the design that it’s covered in poppies. He has a red mask on and a poppy design scattered around his purple mechanical legs.

Grian’s outfit matches in a way. It’s a dark purple tank top and shorts paired with red gloves and boots, the Cuteguy symbol is under the hole for his wings. Similarly to Scar’s Hotguy symbol it’s been recolored to shades of purple with lilacs on one side.

“Hello there, Poppy.” Grian greets Scar, “Funny seeing another new vigilante around here.”

“Very funny.” Scar stands up and holds a hand out for Grian to shake despite this being all for show in case someone is watching. “Should we be partners this time, Lilac?”

Grian shakes Scar’s hand, “Partners.”

[u2fangirlie-blog]

Book Club Introduction

Recently, I was invited into a book club on Facebook. A friend asked me to join with other friends she knows. I know two out of 30 members. How are people supposed to introduce themselves and get to know each other in FB groups, particularly book clubs? I have no clue! The book club creator and moderators all follow BookTok and have To Be Read lists. I don't do that. It's all new to me.

To start, I read through posts, liked, commented, and replied to interesting and relevant posts. I thought this would be a good way to get to know new people. Then I took a risk and wrote an introduction. The post was viewed by half the crowd. My friend H. replied, but there were no other comments. Just silence. Not even a clock ticking in the background.

The first book selected is Murder at the Book Club by Betsey Reavley. I want to stay, make new friends, and be introduced to new authors, but I feel like an asshole. My introduction to the book club was dead on arrival, so I'm going to delete it from the group.

Here's the introduction. I put a lot of thought and planning into it and don't want to see words go to waste. Someone might read it in the vast expanse of words on Tumblr.

Hi! H. invited me to join the group. She said you are awesome fun people. H., C., and I have been friends since elementary and junior high school. In the past, I've been part of reading circles where we read and discussed metaphysical books. This is my first online book club. Please guide me in what is appropriate behavior and social conventions for online reading groups. I hope to read books in genres I've never read before. I look forward to getting to know everyone here.

I just want to introduce myself a little bit to the group. I'll start with my reading habits and preferences.

I don't have a TikTok account, so I don't follow any Booktok creators.

On YouTube, I don't follow many Booktube creators. However, I do watch channels that focus on one author or genre. I like Quinn's Ideas. He's the go-to guy for Dune and A Song of Ice and Fire. He also discusses classic hard scifi and new scifi. I enjoy T.L. is Reading, who is doing a Discworld read-along. If I'm interested in a new book or TV series based on a book, I'll look on YouTube. I learned a lot about the Wheel of Time that way.

I prefer print books. My house is stacked to the rafters. Remind me sometime to tell you about the time a tree branch went through the roof, and instead of going to the basement for safety, I ran upstairs to rescue boxes of books from the rain.

I do read some ebooks, usually if it's a long series or older books that are hard to find in print. Discworld has 41 book, so most of my Pratchett collection is in ebooks.

Kindle Unlimited - I don't have it because of the cost of subscriptions. If I get a book, I buy it. One reason I prefer print books over ebooks is that having physical media is forever (exceptions of fire or flood). What's going to happen if Amazon loses rights to books or if there's a major technology failure? We the consumers will lose access to digital media we "own" and paid for and will never get it back. It's already happening with streaming videos. If the Big One happens and if we lose electricity and satellites and the internet and if electronic devices stop working, y'all can come to my house. I own all the books and DVDs. LOL!

Audible - See above. Cost of subs. Potential loss of access to digital media. I listen to bootleg audiobooks on YouTube. I have a few audiobooks on CD. I haven't got any new audiobooks in ages because they're so freaking expensive.

Genres - Sci-fi. Fantasy. Classic literature. Mythology. Metaphysical. Paranormal. Occult. Tarot. Non-fiction essays and articles. Encyclopedias and dictionaries. You read that right. I'm a sucker for an encyclopedia with pretty pictures. I have lots of specialized encyclopedias in mythology, symbolism, gemstones, animals, and plants. I love etymology and enjoy looking up word origins. Classic authors: As an English major, I read a lot of the classics. Jane Austen is okay, not my favorite. I have issues with the Bronte Sisters and other authors who introduced the bad boy lover and gave really unhealthy expectations to young people about relationships.

Authors - Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Frank Herbert, Diane Duane, George R.R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Diana Gabaldon, Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Laurel Hamilton, and Anne Rice (because smut is better with paranormal characters, and their vampires are infinitely better than Stephanie Meyers) J.K. Rowling (before she turned evil), and Neil Gaiman (Yes, I know about the allegations and am still processing how to respond publicly. His alleged behavior is horrible. The Good Omens and Sandman fandoms are fighting and ripping each other apart.)

First, full disclosure: I have a BA and MA in English, with a minor in creative writing and special studies in archetypal myth criticism. I don't write fiction. The creative writing workshops were difficult for me. My professors didn't inspire creativity, but instead they instilled critical analysis of writing, self-criticism, and self-doubt. My teachers critically wounded my desire to write stories, and later it just died. I gave up writing fiction a long time ago. No, I do not secretly want to write fiction.

My strong suit is non-fiction, including articles and essays. Mostly I write short humorous stuff for my social media and a captive audience of about 70 friends and family. Also I write in-depth analyses and criticism of books, movies, and TV series. And sometimes my friends get sick of my BS and think I'm too critical. That's just how my brain works. Analyzing something to the extreme doesn't mean I don't still enjoy it or love it. (Unless it's objectively crap. LOL!) I have a Tumblr blog for publishing what I don't want family to read.

That being said - When I put a lot of time and effort into writing a longer piece (for example an essay with photos) and people either don't read it or they only respond with a like, I feel frustrated and very hurt. I get it. People don't have time and are selective about what they read. I wrote a Tumblr post about it and will share it if anyone is interested.

For the past 7 years, I taught English comp and how to write research papers at a community college. I also ran the writing center with a staff of one (me) and helped students with their papers. If you need help with MLA and APA citations, I'm your girl! I departed for financial reasons. My past work experiences were in office/clerical. Recently, I started a new job in an office. It's good.

Finally, this is my binder full of maps. As an avid fan of fantasy and sci-fi series. maps are important to know where characters are located and the various cities and realms they are in. I'm obsessive. I'm a nerd and a dang weirdo (in the Muppet Gonzo sense of being a weirdo).

Here's a link to the binder of maps from fantasy, sci-fi, and history in literature.

[corvidry]

Hi! I am working on an assignment for school, and I am trying to find information on how animal crossing is styled. Through my scrounging of the internet I saw a link that lead me to your website that was a "Animal Crossing Style Guide" but it no longer exists. I was wondering if you might have some pointers that I could learn from for my project?

Hi there,

You're about 2 weeks shy of that link working. I just changed web hosts and rebuilt my website and ended up taking down the blog section, which is where that content lived. The Animal Crossing Style Guide was an article / blog post I wrote a few years ago around the time New Horizons came out discussing the topic of animal crossing character designs for artists. While the post no longer exists online, I did archive it to hopefully host again in the future, but I havent gotten around to remaking the blog yet. In the meantime here's literally the entire thing in a tumblr post, and if I remember, I'll try to update whatever links I can. Sorry if it reads or is formatted a little weird on tumblr, but rest assured it's identical except for some shopping / sponsor links that dont need to be on this version. No idea if this is the sort of thing you need for your project, but good luck and enjoy!

Animal Crossing Style Guide: Artist Tips for Drawing Your Favorite Characters

Apr 24 | Written By Birdy

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Fandom Friday. If you’re like every Nintendo Switch owner  right now, you’ve been playing Animal Crossing nonstop for the last month.  And who can blame you? This irresistible chore simulator has no trouble winning the hearts of the masses by helping us fall in love all over again with our favorite animal neighbors. Nintendo found a way to make tedium fun by implementing a fun reward system and fully embracing the rule of cool, or rather, the rule of cute if there is such a thing. Why do I like it? I don’t know, man!! It’s adorable! It turns my brain chemicals into a relaxed, happy soup.

If you’re an artist it’s possible you’ve seen these cute character designs and thought “I want a piece of that for myself.” I know I have. If you love to draw the Animal Crossing cast or have some OCs of your own who you want to mesh with the AC universe, read on for some mini tips for drawing in the Animal Crossing style. I’ve been studying the style for the past few weeks and this guide is a pretty compact version of what I’ve learned, but feel free to let me know if you guys want more.  It was fun to study these characters and I’d love to expand upon this with a more definitive guide or deep dive into more specific aspects of the style!

On to the basics!

Villager Bodies

In the graphic below I describe that most animals are a little over 2 heads tall. That’s because the characters in animal crossing tend to have very large, bulbous heads as part of their appeal. You’ll find that certain species, such as eagles and gorillas, do break this convention slightly, often appearing with their anatomical midpoint lower on the chest than most smaller animals.

That said, this isn’t a hard and fast rule necessarily. While the height and shape of AC bodies is generally in the neighborhood of what’s stated above, there is some variation between installments of AC. Compare the following images and you’ll see what I mean.

As you can see, Bob’s shape and proportions vary between Wild World and New Leaf, as do many of the other characters. While many current players likely think of New Horizons as the definitive style for now, I would encourage my fellow artists to experiment here. Play around with height in the 2 to 3 heads tall range and see what you like. Stylize the torsos to your taste. It’s entirely possible to remain within the AC style of drawing while still making some details your own.

Heads

Heads of AC characters are a bit of a complex subject because there are literally so many different species of animals who all have their own goofy, lovable little faces. I’ve done my best to break them down to the basics without getting too specific about one species or another.

As you can see, even the the more complicated animals can be broken down into these simplistic, bulbous shapes that Animal Crossing loves so well. When designing a new character, it’s wise to plan their head and body using basic shapes before you tack on any other extraneous features. By doing this you can ensure that your character has the round, soft features that are key to Animal Crossing before you ever have to decide what their face looks like or what their personality should be. When in doubt, round it out. You’ll be drowning in the cute in no time.

Speaking of faces, feel free to let me know on social media if you’d like me to expand upon this guide in terms of facial features and placement. I avoided the topic in this case because I wanted to focus more on foundational elements, and animal faces felt it a bit broad for that scope. The sheer expanse of animal individuality in this game allows for quite a lot of different faces with quite varied placement. And that’s not even including the human character options!

Limbs

Arms are perhaps the simplest section of this guide because there are so few styles of arm in Animal Crossing. The vast majority of characters you encounter will have the cylindrical arm style, or something close to it. At that point, all you’ll have to do is vary the length to suit the character.

Birds and octopi are one exception to this rule, with birds in particular being the more complex of the two. In most instances, bird characters will have those flattened out oar shapes for forearms with a simple texture stretched over the shape, but on occasion some birds will have distinct feathering as part of their model, which can at times distort the underlying shape for the artist trying to make sense of it. Our owl friends, Celeste and Blathers, are good examples of this.

With birds and octopi in particular, don’t be afraid to experiment a bit with the design of the limb. Some birds, like Blathers and Celeste, have wider forearms, and many octopi have interesting textures for their suckers. In addition, don’t be afraid of extending or shortening the standard cylindrical arm shape, as this shape can be applied to all different sized animals, from cats to hamsters and beyond. Some animals will have very short stumpy arms while others will have longer ones. Some villagers have slender, delicate arms, while others have bulkier ones. You can adjust the proportions of the shape to suit the character you’re drawing.

Legs on the other hand….those are a different can of worms. I’d like to preface this by saying that legs are another topic I’d love to go into greater detail on if there is interest because this graphic could afford to do the topic a bit more justice.

As with arms, most animals have the same simple cylinder that can be widened and extended as needed to suit the body of the animal. Birds once again have a unique trait in this department, but beyond that, leg styles vary widely. Mostly in the foot department, I should say. When starting off you’ll find that most animals maintain a cylindrical leg even if they have a unique foot, and in most cases the foot can be constructed out of a dome shape attached to the cylinder. Not unlike a plunger, if for some reason the stick was on one side of the plunger rather than in the center. On top of that, human characters can now wear a large variety of shoes, making this a second topic that I felt went beyond the scope of this exercise. If you’re interested in a more thorough explanation of Animal Crossing legs and feet, feel free to let me know. I just might write about it in more detail in a future installment.

But never fear! Feet, like most unique animal traits, do share similar design elements across the entire game even when they don’t look particularly alike.

Designing Unique Features

So you’re an artist who wants to draw a specific character, or maybe you want to design a brand new character. You can construct a simple animal body, but then what? What makes this character Your Character™ rather than Bob or Molly or Flora?

Despite how similar these animals all are in basic constructions, each animal and human has their own unique design elements that set them apart from one another. It is nigh impossible to cover every single interesting design element of every single animal in every single game, so here are some tips that will aid you in drawing any element you decide to apply to a character while still keeping them cute as a button.

Just like up top, I reiterate. Big, round, soft shapes. Even the most hardcore animals in Animal Crossing look soft and huggable to some degree.

Take for example, these animals who all should be at least a little bit scary.  Animal Crossing’s art style keeps them appealing even with their rougher traits on display. Alfonso the alligator should logically be among the most feared of reptiles, yet his sleepy eyes, gently sloping snout, chubby cheeks, and tubby belly give him all the charm of a stuffed animal. His pointy teeth feel more like a clumsy after thought than a mechanism for killing prey.

Coco the bunny is designed to look like a haniwa figure, an item commonly buried with the dead  during the Yayoi period of Japanese history. Coco’s Japanese name is, in fact, Yayoi. In addition, many items in her house are reminiscent of Japanese funeral decor.  She’s supposed to be a little unsettling. Her facial expression does not change like those of other villagers, so she can’t smile at you or put you at ease the way other characters can. Indeed, Coco wears a permanent somber appearance, but even so, she looks sweet and pleasant to touch. Her face is completely curved and she is given the body of a bunny villager.  Her huge, round ears and tiny, dainty paws evoke the charm of a little rabbit even from a villager whose whole design is meant to remind one of death.

Rasher the pig and Spike the rhino have similar charm. Both of them don scars all over their bodies and in some cases wear aggressive looking shirts in their rough or rustic homes. Still, with Rasher’s big sleepy eyes and friendly round belly, he could almost give you a Winnie the Pooh vibe if you squint hard enough. Spike, meanwhile, has had his horns rounded ever so slightly at the tips and his curved hooves and short tail make him seem far from threatening. Even the most edgy creatures in the Animal Crossing universe can appear somehow friendly by making use of these softening design elements.

Go Forth and Draw

And that, in essence, has been my broad overview of Animal Crossing’s art style. I consider that last tidbit to be the most valuable tip of all. By closely studying the way Animal Crossing characters use round bodies, gradual slopes, and pleasant curves, you can make even the most threatening of animal characters look cute and perfectly cuddly for your town, village, or island.

Once again, please let me know if there are particular elements of the Animal Crossing style you’d like me to look into more closely. This has been a very broad and very general overview of the character designs, but I would absolutely love to dive deeper into this art style. If you use this guide to improve your Animal Crossing drawings, feel free to tag me on Instagram, Deviantart, or Tumblr, so I can see what cool art you’ve made!

Have a great weekend, The Internet! Can’t wait to see you again for the next Fandom Friday. If you need me, I’ll be waterscaping a moat around Raymond’s house.

[volt-race]

Hey, I actually wrote something!

I wanted to d a comic for Primrose, Jackie, and Keyson but that clearly wasn't happening, so it'll just be text.

If you wish to read these or any future ones, they will be under Read More blocks as they have a very real chance to be long (oops?)

With that said:

Still nothing.

A lone slime shuffles through the field under a starry night sky. Too far from home to wish to make the trek back, and so she settles upon just looking for somewhere to rest till the morning. Anywhere would do, so long as it was shelter, she thought to herself. She grumbles to herself, cursing the hero's name as she’s gotten into the habit of doing so. It’s been a year since said hero caused everything she knew to be turned on its head, disbanding the group she was part of rather forcibly by slaughtering their leader. Left adrift, trying to reestablish contact with the figures above. They never answered anymore.

The slime spots a farmstead in the distance. It’ll work.

She looks towards the farmstead’s house, the lights dark within and no signs of activity within. Sleeping, unsurprisingly. Instead of the house, she turns and makes her way to the barn. Easier to slip into for the night and be gone without anyone but the animals noticing. It’s not breaking and entering if it’s just for a nap overnight. She cracks the door enough that the broken mask hanging on her belt can fit through the gap, and squeezes herself inside before closing the door again with a gentle thunk. It’s dark, but her eyesight is decent enough to make out the bales of hay on the ground, and pens in the back with sleeping animals. The hay will do. Sitting herself down on a pile of hay, she throws herself back, staring up at the roof of the barn until eventually… she shuts her eyes waiting for tomorrow.

Morning comes a lot more abruptly than the slime anticipated, the hood of her robes being pulled upwards by a less than impressed farmer. Snapping awake, she pulls herself away with a star-bound hand, staring back at the farmer.

“Causing trouble again, are we?”

“You are mistaken sir. I simply  came here to rest.”

“That’s what all you cult members say.”

She glares at the farmer with enough intensity it could slice him in half, when her attention shifts to the barn doors. Another figure stood behind them, mostly obscured other than their head and a pointed ear. Were they there before? From what little can be seen they look to be injured in some form, as bandages are wrapped around their face on one side.

“I’m not fond of being awoken by something other than the birds, missy, and your stunt bothered everyone else in here. Snakes shouldn’t be tryin’ to take a roosters role y’know”

They must’ve been in the barn too. How did she miss them? Stupid, stupid. The slime tries to relax as much as she can.

“Well, since it’s morning, you won’t have to deal with it. I’ll head on my way, you can tend your farm or whatever, and we forget about this.”

The farmer simply stares Keyson head to toe, before finally letting go of her robe. He points to the doors.

“Take her with you.” The farmer’s tone is cold, as he points to the figure at the door.

“WHAT?” Both the slime and the cowering figure exclaim in unison.

“You heard me. You and your cult caused everyone enough problems. It’s about time you started reaping the consequences of your actions.”

Well this day has already gone from bad to worse. Staring down the farmer, and then the figure at the door, the slime snorts, and heads for the door. “May the stars fall on your head.”

The figure that was hiding behind the door recoils as she comes outside. Seeing them in full, the slime understands more how they could’ve been missed in the darkness of the barn. A lamia, darkly coloured from hair to tail and covered in worn bandage wraps. The only articles of clothing being a worn out cloak and various cuffs. They don’t look like any you’d see on a farm however, so how or why she bore them was a mystery. The look on her face was one of fear, their one exposed eye darting between the slime she’d just been handed off to, and the farmer who is casting her away the moment he can. Neither of them like this arrangement that's been forced upon them. The slime groans with a sigh, and starts making her way back to town, motioning for the lamia to follow. She’s hesitant, but follows after the farmer pushes her in that direction, almost pressing into her back, she follows behind the former cult member.

What a bout of bad luck, the lamia thought to herself. She’s being recaptured.

[ciaossu-imagines]

Ronin Warriors doesn’t have a lot of polyships that I strongly love or hate, either way, honestly. I had to let the wheel choose a polyship for me for this fandom to write about and, using this prompt, I wrote some headcanons for Kento/Reader/Cye that I hope any fans of the show will enjoy!

Who falls asleep on the couch?

I really feel like, out of the two of them, this would be Kento. He never means too, especially as sleeping on the couch always end up messing up his back the next day and leaves him feeling a bit sore, but he’ll end up sitting down after a big meal, possibly cuddling with you on couch or watching something with friends and he’ll end up passing out. Cye, meanwhile, doesn’t really fall asleep without intent and he’ll almost always be able to get to a bed.

Who makes friends with the neighbours?

You’d be the only possible candidate for not making friends with the neighbours! Both of these boys make quick friends out of the neighbours, though they have completely different means of doing so. Both are incredibly helpful and will go out of their way to help neighbours they see struggling with anything, like big armloads of groceries or the like and they’re generally well liked for that reason. While people seem to admire Cye’s more soft-spoken, polite manners more and always comment on what a nice boy he is, Kento’s gregarious nature kind of charms people and he makes friends quickly that way. Bonus headcanon – if any of the neighbours have pets, that is totally how Kento is making friends with them because like…who can pass up the opportunity to stop and pet a cute animal? Definitely not Kento, though it’s usually Cye who ‘secretly’ ends up carrying around treats for the animals.

Who is the adventurous eater?

Kento wins this one. He’s got a big appetite and a genuine love and appreciation for food, which he does hope you’ll share with him. Cye, meanwhile, eats fine and all but doesn’t have quite the same level of appetite. And it’s not so much that he’s a picky eater but more that he knows what he likes and tends to stick to those things.

Who hogs the covers at night?

Both of them are horrible at this. All of you will have to have your own blankets that just you use because otherwise, you will never get covers. Ever. It doesn’t matter if all three of you are in the same bed, if you’re in bed with just one of them…the only safe bet you have of getting covers is if you sleep by yourself and even then, it isn’t guaranteed because the dog (Kento really, really wanted a dog and the two of you gave in) will end up jumping up into your bed and even they hog the covers!

Who forgets to do the dishes?

Okay, but this doesn’t happen. Upon moving in together, I think the three of you, on Cye’s suggestion, ended up divvying up the chores pretty evenly and with each person really only doing the chores they like. Kento doesn’t mind doing the dishes if someone else does the cooking and he’s surprisingly good about remembering to do them.

Who tries to surprise their partner more often?

Kento once read a magazine article, or maybe it was a tv show, that said that surprising your partner is incredibly romantic and sure to make them swoon. He’ll go out of his way to try to surprise you with gifts or surprise suppers or big date plans, but the problem is that Kento is so very bad at keeping secrets. It’s so easy for people who know him to tell when he’s trying to hide something. You know the thought is there, but he’s never managed to truly surprise you, though if you’re at all kind, you’ll pretend you are. While Cye’s surprises aren’t large ones and are very rare, he’s better at actually surprising you.

Who leaves dirty laundry on the floor?

Both boys try to be really good about this so it would have to be you. That being said, Cye never remembers to empty his fucking pockets before throwing things in the laundry and Kento balls up his socks after taking them off for some reason you’ll never be able to understand so that whoever is doing laundry needs to separate them and by then, they’re just stinky and gross and kind of crusty.

Who stays up until 2 a.m. reading?

Cye is bad for this. He tries to read a book a month, but his life is so busy that his reading normally takes place right before bed because it’s when he can fit it in. He’ll get really into the book and then falls into the ‘well, I’ll go to sleep just as soon as I finish the next chapter’ cycle that never actually works.

Who sings in the shower?

Cye might, if the radio is going while he showers. Kento tries ever now and then but ends up choking on shampoo-y water because he has to shower facing the showerhead and remembers why he doesn’t sing in the shower. They like hearing you sing in the shower, should you choose to.

Who takes the selfies?

Kento would take more pictures. He takes pictures of himself, of him with Cye, of him with you, as well as taking lots of pictures of just you. However, he’s really kind of horrible at taking pictures but he genuinely enjoys it, so nobody ruins his good time. Cye doesn’t really like to take selfies and prefers taking pictures of landscapes or occasionally of other people, like you or Kento. He’s a slightly better photographer who seems to naturally understand lighting and angles but enjoys it less.

Who plans date night?

There needs to be a mixture there, actually. Neither man likes to be the one always planning the dates and they expect you to plan or give date suggestions about an equal amount of the time.

[shiningdesignersreflections]

Chapter 3: Grassland Journey

Narrated by Jiang Beixi.

Vivian: Kind mister! Please, you gotta come pick me up in 5 days!

Guide: Of course, of course. This is the fifth time you’ve said this today.

Vivian: Promise me you’ll come! Don’t abandon poor little me!

Narrator: Vivian waves to the tour guide and his jeep. I sigh. If she hates being here so much, why didn’t she just stay in the hotel?

Narrator: I aim my cameras at the riverbank where the plants are lush and settle down to wait. Vivian, restless, starts pacing around.

Jiang Beixi: Don’t get in the way.

Vivian: I can’t get a signal on my phone...

Narrator: She gives me puppy eyes. I shrug. Not like there’s anything I can do. She paces a bit more and tries to start a conversation.

Vivian: How can you capture anything that far from the reindeer?

Jiang Beixi: Those are antelopes.

Vivian: I know, I know. They’re practically the same thing anyway.

Vivian: Oh, look, zebras! Do you think they’re black with white stripes or white with black stripes?

Jiang Beixi: I’m busy.

Narrator: I focus on the three cameras, barely able to spare her a reply.

Narrator: Vivian quiets down for two minutes before launching into a monologue.

Vivian: Welcome to today’s Wilderness Party! In this episode, we’ll be observing some animals that look just like reindeer.

Vivian: But they’re not reindeer. They’re antelopes!

Narrator: She speaks brightly, energetically, in an engaging manner. No wonder she’s a popular TV personality.

Vivian: So... what are these groups of antelopes doing? Are they partying with the zebras?

Jiang Beixi: Ahem...

Jiang Beixi: The antelopes are defending their territory. Areas with flowing water and lush grass are hard to come by here.

Vivian: That’s right! The antelopes may seem cute and harmless, but they’re in fact the lords of this territory!

Vivian: Now, they’ve managed to chase away the white-striped black zebras and black-striped white zebras!

Vivian: Out of the way, or we’ll eat you all! Roooar!

Jiang Beixi: Antelopes are herbivores. They won’t eat the zebras.

Vivian:  You’re lucky we’re vegetarians. Get lost or we’ll ram our antlers into your tummies!

Narrator: The zebras finally retreat, and Vivian concludes her narration. I gather the cameras and get ready to head to our next stop.

Narrator: ...Maybe I need a break. Tuning out Vivian’s whimsical narration really took a toll on me.

Vivian: So what are you filming next?

Jiang Beixi: I’ll follow the antelopes a bit. Their predators, Wasteland lions, will often show up near their territories.

Vivian: Ooh! Wasteland lions? I could come up with some ideas for an episode about that.

Jiang Beixi: So you made up that whole “episode” off the bat just now?

Vivian: Yep. As you know, I’m not that knowledgeable in this field. I just like making stuff up and pleasing the audience.

Narrator: Vivian easily admits her lack of common sense and plops down next to me, stretching lazily.

Vivian: You should tell me a bit about Wasteland lions later. I’d seem less like a joke that way.

Jiang Beixi: You’re not that bad. The articles you wrote are pretty interesting.

Vivian: Wait, you read those?

Narrator: She stares at me, incredulous. I guess I don’t seem like the type to be interested in fashion and entertainment.

Jiang Beixi: I have to learn about my new partner before we start working together.

Jiang Beixi: I know your shows have a larger target audience than mine.

Vivian: ...So you take the target audience into consideration, too?

Jiang Beixi: Anyone who wants to produce a good program would.

Narrator: Silence again, but a pleasant one. The wind rustles the grass. Somehow, it feels like we’ve reached an understanding.

Jiang Beixi: ...You really don’t want to stay for the entirety of the filming?

Vivian: Well, let’s continue filming and see...

Vivian: So... let’s go? Find the Wasteland lions?

Choose either “Does it count as a reconciliation?” or “Got to keep up the good work.”

If “reconciliation,” ...

You: So you guys reconciled?

Narrator: We weren’t exactly fighting in the first place.

Narrator: I’m glad that Vivian is considering staying, though. We may be very different, but she’s a good producer.

If “work,” ...

You: It’d be beneficial for the production if you keep this up.

Narrator: We still have our differences, but I know Vivian has a lot to bring to the table for this production.

--

Narrator: Five days later, the guide finds us at a swamp frequented by crocodiles. As expected, we’re quarreling.

Vivian: That’s way too much crocodile footage! No one will get it! Who wants to watch an episode that’s got nothing but crocodiles?

Jiang Beixi: They are all different crocodile species, with unique habits and traits. These are valuable recordings.

Vivian: Come on! You’re the only one interested in stuff like that! It won’t make a show successful!

Guide: Stop fighting!

Vivian: Oh, hey, what are you doing here?

Guide: Didn’t you tell me to come pick you up in five days?

Vivian: Huh? Oh, I changed my mind. My phone had no signal, so I couldn’t text you about it. Sorry...

Narrator: With the careless apology, Vivian turns back to me and continues our argument, leaving the poor tour guide looking baffled.

Guide: ...Uh, I’ll get going then. And watch out, that crocodile is coming closer.

Vivian: Wait! Here’s an outfit sketch. Please ask someone in Vanta to make two sets for us to be used for future filming.

Narrator: The same sketch from a week ago has been tweaked to accommodate both of our preferences. It’s shorter and more casual now.

Narrator: The pattern on the fabric, too, has changed into a thrazledil motif. The Vantans consider it a symbol of friendship.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

[kierancampire]

I'm not saying this to be humble, but I don't think I'm a very intelligent person. I'm shit at maths, I suck at English, basically any school subject I can't do. I'm not super creative, I struggle to think up/do anything original, I don't do formal things or long words, I don't like/understand "artful" or complex things. I can be easy to confuse, I'm shit at reading between lines as I take everything at face value, many people have lied to me. Probably one of my most intelligent aspects is knowing I'm not, and I'm fine with that

However. The amount of times I've had to explain to other adults that things you see in videos/media are not an accurate representation of a whole community on a day to day basis. Like I just wrote out this message for someone who was being kinda mildly derogatory towards cats, a person who also said they've never had cats and haven't had pets for over 20 years, but just base their views on cats from TikTok videos. But I don't get why I need to explain this so much?

This time, sure it was cats. But the reason I threw in that part about black people in America, it's cause I have had to do it many times in that context too. Like the amount of times I've had to break down and explain, spoon feeding it to someone, that things you see in the news or videos about an individual in that moment, not representing a whole community as they live life. Like I said, I don't think I'm a smart guy, yet so many people need this explained to them and I just don't get it? It's like fucking Americans and "British food". I just don't get how/why people see a video or news article of something or someone, then decide that one thing represents that whole area on a constant basis for the rest of time. Maybe it's the life I've lived working with all sorts of animals and meeting all sorts of people, but that just is never a thought that crosses my mind, yet so many people seemingly do live like this

[jodilin65]

SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011 I’ll have to remember to keep a watch on the inmate search site to see if Mary’s released next month like she’s supposedly going to be. That is assuming they don’t pull anything else on her to hold her there longer. Technically they could hold her till 2013 if they really wanted to. I hope not, for her sake. And I hope she’ll leave the bad boys and the babies to someone else and that she’s realized there’s life beyond abuse and having babies. I think she has, even though it’s been over a year since I’ve heard from her.

That’s another thing I have to think about right there - if I do hear from her, should I or shouldn’t I respond? I’d naturally be curious to talk to her, but at the same time, I don’t want to get hit with a million favors even if I do know how to say no. At the risk of sounding selfish, I’m too busy to worry about others. Remember, fair or not, like it or not, I’m one of the “chosen” ones destined to be forever poor and that means having to work my ass off any chance I get when online jobs come my way, as well as with my writing.

In fact, I’m going to see if there are any translation jobs or other jobs available, then crank out the next chapter of my book.

Despite being naïve, brainwashed, and abused, I know prison has taught Mary a great deal and that she has grown tremendously since the tragedy she experienced, so whether I hear from her or not, I wish her the best!

FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011 OMG, Jesse didn’t come down today! Must’ve gotten a tumor up his ass or something.

I was reading an article yesterday about a 91-year-old woman who’s been selling suicide kits down in San Diego. Plastic bags you place over your head that are hooked up to helium tanks. Like with carbon monoxide, you’re dead in minutes if you inhale helium in its purest state. The woman believes that those who are terminally ill should be granted the same right to die and be put out of their misery as we give animals, and I totally agree. It just seems so insanely inhumane to let people suffer while people are quick to label those who would dare let an animal suffer as mean and cruel.

The funny part was that I posted the link to the article and wrote “Go granny go!” on it. Well, Tammy commented on that with “I don’t know about you? Go Granny Go. You little Sis are mischeivious as ever. Maybe thats what changed things for me, and why I do love you very much.”

Maybe that’s what changed things for her? I don’t get that one. I gotta admit, though, her comment was funny. So was the one she sent after I sent her a quiz in Italian. It’s just one of those Who Were You in Your Last Life things, but she said, “Very funny, sis. How am I supposed to take this quiz?”

I was laughing my ass off the other day at the Klammers. They were getting snowed on and down into the 20s while it was warm and sunny here.

I am so sick of hearing people complain that they have no extra money. Yeah, that’s a bitch, but try not having the money for the things you need. I know we can’t help how we feel about things and how we perceive them to be crisis-wise, but I get tired of hearing people describe the flat tire they got as the “ultimate nightmare” that’s practically the end of the world for them. Really, if a flat tire is so rough on them I’d hate to see them ever walk in the shoes I’ve walked in.

After Tom did the math and all that he estimates we should be back on track by June 3rd. I suppose that’s when the shit will hit the fan again to keep us from getting ahead. It’s once we start to climb ahead that shit happens. If this happened every now and then I’d call it bad luck. But when it happens every goddamn time and a clear pattern emerges I can only call it what it is – something hell-bent on holding us back.

I have already given up the fantasy of owning even the simplest of houses whether it’s in a rural or retirement setting. The question is where we want to spend our lives struggling and in whose little dive.

Tom still insists there’s the potential to make serious money with my writing, but as I told him, I’m still a nobody.

“But all somebodies were once nobodies too,” he pointed out.

True, but it all comes down to fate, and you know what that means for me. I’m not going to give up, though, either way, because being a writer isn’t just what I do, it’s who I am. I even got an idea to try to help promote my book and that was to send a steamy clip from it to that erotica site I submitted a few clips to in the past and include the link at the end of it with a note saying that if they liked the clip they could consider buying the book it came from. Those stories get hundreds of views a day. My first one already has over 32,000 views. I don’t recall anything in their rules about not submitting links, so we’ll see.

THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 2011 I realize things have to get done around here no matter what schedule I’m on, and I appreciate Jesse helping Tom by bulldozing most of the weeds, but I don’t appreciate being woken up by the damn thing either. So when I’m on nights I’ll have to remember to sleep with the sound machine really cranked up and an earplug since he’s obviously going to make a career of coming down here every day.

My allergies have been on a roll so I had to take Benadryl which makes me really drowsy. I was also on a roll with my book, but don’t know how much I’ll get done tonight until the side effects wear off.

It’s been dry and summery in the daytime and chilly really early in the morning. Trying to sleep on Sunday is going to be tough because we’re to be in the mid-70s. We’ll need the cooler that day for sure, and I’ll have to remember to crack the window before I crash.

I chatted with Nane yesterday while she was at work, and Christine checked my blog, but still no Maliheh. There have been tons of tornadoes in the south that have killed over 300 people, but nothing in NC lately. My guess is she’s backing off because of my crush which is anything but mutual. That’s ok, though. I’m too busy for regular chatter and after a few days of it, I do tend to start getting tired of it. I realize she may’ve picked up the other card but I just might not have been notified. I was never notified when Nane picked up hers.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2011 Life may still suck and we may still be forever “sentenced” to a life filled mostly with struggles and hopeless dreams, but today I feel better than I have in several days.

Tom called when their offices opened and was surprised to get through right away. He learned there was a delay in the processing, but the money will be sent today so that much is good to know. Over the next two weeks, we should have everything we’re owed since he filed for Unemployment.

So after my allergies woke me up and I put a Breathe Rite strip on my nose and popped a Benadryl, I was able to sleep more peacefully than I had in a while.

Jesse came down on the ATV when Tom was out weeding. That’s two days in a row now. Is this going to be a regular habit of his?

TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2011 Nothing from Maliheh (I wonder if she lost power again), but I got a quick note from Christine saying she was swamped with work since she was out on jury duty.

I was also delighted to hear from Nane, who was cracking up over the “German omelet” thing. I was telling her how Tom told me Apple’s keyboards do umlauts which sounded like omelets.

She said that the guy she’s been seeing has been hogging up so much of her time that she’s been neglecting friends and family and isn’t sure she likes that yet, but is enjoying things while they last.

As I told her, good things usually do come to an end so enjoy them while they last. Meanwhile, I told her to tell him he’s got envious competition. :) And that I’ll outlast him. I’ll just be doing it from a 6000-mile distance, LOL.

I also dropped hints about writing a story with a character based on her but not with her name, of course, just to see how she takes to the idea.

She was telling me that Nane is Turkish for peppermint and how she thought that was pretty neat. I know it’s also Italian for nannies.

And I was telling her how shitty our lives are and how hopeless things seem.

The money still hasn’t been sent. The federal government just threatened the state government to quit fucking around with those on Unemployment or else! But I guess they don’t give a damn and are still taking their sweet time getting the initial checks out. To hell with anyone whose rent may be due in a few days.

As I told Tom, I’m getting sicker and sicker of this shit by the day. I’m not going to make a career out of “fighting” to live.

Some have commended me for not sugar-coating my life and for being honest about when things aren’t going well. Others say I complain too much. Well, it doesn’t matter what others think. Only what I think. And I think I’m sick of struggling. I didn’t come here to work really hard just to be the equivalent of a welfare bum. That means that no, Tom didn’t get the job. This time he tried to get the temp agency to tell him why, but all they would say was that they “went with the other candidate.” Let me guess – the other candidate was young, not white, or both, right? Only they’re not going to say so, so we can sue their asses and end our money problems the easy way.

Jesse was down on the ATV along with someone in a truck which Tom thinks might’ve been his brother. They got something from the shit pile, but fortunately I slept through it.

Wrote the first two chapters last night of my next book, A Rainbow in Munich, and got my second win. It’s only lotion, though.

The rat’s new game is to take my hair down. I knot it at the nape of my neck and he slowly works it out. Because it’s so long it takes him a few minutes, but he’s gotten quite good at it, LOL.

MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2011 Tom had the interview today, and while everything at least “appeared” to go smoothly, it’s not looking good now. It’s a big building but a small company which is run by an older couple. They said they’d call the temp company today, and Tom called them too, but no one’s called to say he got the job. They did say something about the boss being out at the moment and how she was the one with the final say, so it’s possible that she just didn’t make it back yet. Possible, but unlikely.

We still don’t know if it’s his age or what. Just because they’re older themselves doesn’t mean they want to hire older people. Or it could just be that whatever’s got us cursed so badly is going to make sure no one hires him no matter what. I still say it’s too soon for us. Our problems simply don’t go away this fast. Meaning, he won’t have a job before the fall.

All we’ve done since coming here nearly 4 years ago is struggle. I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea of being broke for the rest of our lives and always renting dumpy old trailers, but I just don’t know if I can do it. Some things we just can’t adapt to, and I don’t think I can ever “get good” at being poor. I didn’t come here to be a bum. Period. I didn’t come here to have life treat us as if we were nothing but lazy, undeserving people who deserve absolutely no better in life.

Tom keeps saying that the only reason we’re going through this shit is because of the economy. But we’ve suffered on account of other things in the past as well. It’s like something up there uses whatever it can to get at us. If it’s not freeloaders using the law against us, it’s health problems. If it’s not wild neighbors, it’s money. But ever since finally breaking free of the freeloader’s grip in 2003, it’s been mostly money we’ve been beaten over the head with.

The rent’s due in less than a week and we have not one penny toward it. Tom said we’re getting paid even though we haven’t received the money yet, and while Jesse may have no choice but to bear with us and keep on being the understanding guy he says he is, what if he runs out of patience since he’s struggling himself now that he’s out of work, too? It takes 30 days to evict someone in this state and that’s some consolation. And so is knowing that being here 3 years and being good tenants has got to mean at least a little something to him. It’s knowing that our lives are never going to change from here on out that’s the problem. The longer things stay the same the less likely they are to change.

Killing ourselves around the first would be the perfect time to go. As I told Tom, I no longer want our own house, but I don’t want to struggle in dives for the rest of my life either. If we killed ourselves next month, neither of us would have to die alone. We wouldn’t have to live to get old and deal with all the health problems that would bring. We wouldn’t have to worry about being thrown in some state-run nursing home by people who will only abuse us.

The only way to escape this curse and not spend so much time struggling, stressing and living in misery is through death. I’m getting more and more convinced of this. If I can’t have a reasonably happy life without constant money worries, then I don’t want to live. Not if all whatever’s up there wants to do is treat me like shit and see that I spend the bulk of my life suffering.

Again, that’s really sweet of Dad to offer to help, but he’s not going to be around forever to run to and our problems are getting more and more frequent. And more severe.

Our lives will never get better and I know it.

I’m wondering if Maliheh’s lost power again. She hasn’t picked up the second card I sent a couple of days ago, nor have I heard from her.

Nane’s been on Facebook less and less and I have to wonder about myself at times. How is it I’ve come to be so hot for someone halfway around the world whom I’ll never meet? Am I really missing sex with someone I lust for and who wants to have sex with me and not for me? Then again, I never really had much of that to miss, did I? Another thing I can thank our lovely God for or whatever the hell it is that’s so hell-bent on holding me back in most areas of life. I jokingly told Nane she just needs to bug me with 20 messages a day to get herself out of my system.

She’ll fade in time. They always do. But then a new crush will come to replace her and on goes the endless cycle of fun and frustrating little crushes.

I really thought Nane would check in from work like usual, but just because she hasn’t posted anything on her wall doesn’t mean she hasn’t at least read messages.

Christine’s done with jury duty. It was a home invasion thing where a group of people killed one person and left another in a wheelchair for life. They were found guilty on all charges. Now let’s hope Ohio has the death penalty. :)

Why is it that I have a very strong feeling that if I were ever murdered the killer would go unpunished? And God just might let them win the lottery while they were at it, too.

What does it matter, though? At the rate we’re going, I’m going to be my own murderer.

SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 2011 My sister sent a message saying she hopes we’re doing better, and “happy bunny day.” Happy ratty day instead, I told her. Tom and I are about as religious as a doorknob, LOL.

We looked online at the place where Tom has an interview tomorrow. It’s a huge building and the grounds are beautiful. There’s even a playground for those with kids (I guess they do daycare, too) and a jogging trail. The pay may not be as good but the benefits are awesome. Too awesome for us, I’m afraid. I just can’t see us being blessed with such a job for him, but hopefully he’ll at least get to be a temp for a few months if nothing else.

They say most of us are cursed in 1 of the 3 main areas of life – love, health and money. Well, to say that I am truly loved is the understatement of the century. I have a man that loves and accepts me as I am. Every ability and every imperfection I behold is loved, cherished and accepted. Then as a bonus, I have friends, cyber friends, family and family-like friends who also love me. Not like Tom loves me, but they love me, and some even have a little lust for me. winks

I’ve also been blessed in the health department since I quit smoking in 1997 with the exception of a set of pretty fucked up teeth that need to be knocked out and replaced with fakes, and the fact that I’ve been waking up with backaches and congestion lately. Snap your fingers and I can run a few miles at just about any given moment. Snap them again and I can throw myself on the floor and do hundreds of crunches.

As for the financial zone; I have been all over the scale. A rich kid who’s a sometimes fairly affluent adult and also sometimes dirt poor and fears she always will be dirt poor from here on out. As I’ve said before, not having much extra money isn’t such a big deal to me anymore. It’s when I have to wonder if we can pay for the necessities that I have a problem.

Tom read an article about how those who have had lots of change throughout their lives are the most likely to continue to have changes along with greater odds of success later on in life. It went on to mention writers and painters who didn’t have success till their 40s, 50s, and even 60s. Well, unlike many people – perhaps even most – who have had the same jobs, homes, phone numbers, love lives, etc. for a million years, we have certainly traveled and lived in many places, learned a lot of things, and have had many a fun adventure and experiences with a few disasters sprinkled in.

At the same time, I have often felt stuck in a rut and that’s pretty much how I feel right now – like things will never change. I am still just as cursed as I am blessed, and just as blessed as I am cursed.

For now, we have our fingers crossed for tomorrow, even if it seems “too soon” for our luck to turn around. He probably won’t know anything tomorrow either way, though. I had a slight vibe earlier about him starting on Wednesday, but my dreams have been more accurate than my vibes lately. So let’s hope I don’t have any nightmares tonight.

SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 2011 Made my third book sale! It can’t be from Andy because his computer’s being repaired, so this may be my first “stranger” sale. It’s frustrating that Amazon doesn’t have a tracker so I can at least see what state/country the sale came from. Either way, I’m glad to have made another sale. :)

Tom has an interview Monday morning for an assembly job here in town. You know how it is, though. Our problems aren’t usually just for hours or days but for months or years, so although I do have a good feeling about it, I’m not counting on anything.

Got a box with $11 in spare change from my folks (presumably from their store), and a couple of flower barrettes. One’s bright yellow and the other’s green with glitter. That was very nice of them.

The Belgium winner finally paid for the toy they won, so we won’t have to complain on them on Monday.

Heard from Maliheh yesterday. She was just 500’ away from losing her place. I’m glad she and her house are ok and that she didn’t end up losing work after all.

Jesse drove me nuts with the motorcycle yesterday. He was obviously having a problem with it, so every matter of minutes he’d gun the fucking thing till he finally got it running. You know how that is too – it doesn’t matter if it’s half a dozen freeloaders or one single older person. As long as it’s our neighbor it must be noisy.

I finished my story last night. :) After Alison read the last chapter she said she’s read enough of my stories for the ending not to be too surprising, but would’ve had “Tesla” get arrested for her outstanding warrant so Nane could bail her out, and then have trouble ensue from there.

I thought to myself, what a damn good idea! So I added another chapter and edited that into the ending.

Speaking of Nane, I’ve got some seriously mixed emotions about this new guy she met. I’m happy for her, of course, but I miss her all the more because she’s not on Facebook as much. She used to be on it on weekends, but now she just comes in once or twice during the week from work. She just needs to bug me with 20 messages a day to get herself out of my system, LOL.

I sometimes wish I could stop lusting for those I’ll never meet, but they do make for fun fantasies and great story ideas. In fact, I have a few ideas in mind right now that I’ve been mapping out. I’m just not sure which one(s) I should develop.

THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2011 Got my first win in 3 years! It was only a coupon for a free pouch of StarKist tuna, but a win is a win. They just need to keep getting bigger and bigger till they equal thousands of dollars once again.

The other night I dreamt I moved to Florida. Only problem is I was moving from Arizona with my parents. I guess they came to get me or something.

Tom said, “Well, as we know, the details of your dreams don’t always matter. It’s the positive message behind them that counts.”

I still don’t see us ever having the money to move there even though the idea of a tropical climate is appealing to me more and more.

In some ways, I feel like I’m in the same prison I was in as a kid. Stuck where I’m at with no foreseeable way out anytime soon.

Last night I dreamt he called me from work, wherever work was supposed to be.

The only disturbing dreams I’ve been having are these dreams where I’m not in jail, nor in a funny farm, but someplace like them against my will. Perhaps these dreams are just a reminder of the fact that I’m never quite going to be where I want to be in life.

I didn’t realize till now that Marie was following me on Formspring. I congratulated her on her upcoming wedding. Hopefully, life will continue to treat her well and she won’t feel the need to become a pest again, LOL. Just say hello every now and then to let each other know we’re alive and thinking of each other. I could never hate her or not want the best for her no matter how crazy she used to drive me.

It’s no wonder I haven’t heard from Christine. She’s been busy with jury duty. She said she’s not supposed to talk about it till it’s over, but it has to do with the worst thing a person can be charged with. Well, I’ll be looking forward to hearing all about this murder case when it’s over.

I still can’t believe they don’t have trained jurors who do nothing but jury duty for a living. There’s just something unnerving about one’s fate being decided by a dozen strangers who were dragged off the streets. Then again, so was having it decided by an old fart donning a black robe who didn’t even know me from a hole in the wall, wasn’t there to actually see the shit I went through as it was happening, etc. Some people are naturally going to be biased no matter what they do/don’t see. They just won’t always admit it and might not even realize it themselves.

Nane didn’t message me or anything like that but she “poked” me for the first time. I asked her where she poked me when she poked me, LOL.

She tends to count down the days till her vacations, and she wrote “23” in Turkish on her wall. I had to look up what it meant, but in response to it I wrote, “Und morgen ist 22!”

The fuckers in Belgium don’t seem to want to pay for the toy, so we’ll soon be filing a complaint with eBay.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2011 LOL, I just entered a sweep that lets you refer friends and enclose a message as well. So I sent one to Molly and said, "Dear Mrs. M, you’re not very bright for a teacher if you haven’t yet figured out that while you have my site blocked on Molly’s computer, you don’t have it blocked on your own. Please see your daughter for what she is so she can get the proper help she needs to stop her voyeuristic ways."

The troll hasn’t written in her blog in several days which isn’t like her. This makes me think she’s moved on to yet another new account.

Tom debated on whether or not to stop admitting he is qualified as a manager because many companies are afraid to hire them for menial jobs. So then he started applying for positions that actually want managers. Only they pay $18 an hour and I can’t believe anything up there would be nice enough to let him have a job that paid that much. It’s almost gotten to the point where I’m wary of good things happening to us. Where good things should be our compensation for bad things that have happened, we seem to be punished for those good things instead.

Right now he’s off to Roseville for an evaluation test for an assembly job. I know better than to get my hopes up, for chances are it’s just another dry run. If he still has trouble getting a job after he stops telling everyone he was a manager, then it’s got to be age or color discrimination for sure. That was one of my first guesses. It’s a youth’s market out there, and non-whites get first dibs on just about everything these days.

The sweeps are still looking hopeless, but I’m entering as many as I can.

Jesse took off at around 7:30 this morning and there were a few barks since it was cold and early, but nothing like when he leaves at night or used to leave at 5am.

Tom just got back, saying the test was super easy. All you had to do was put 5 numbers in order. And now all we have to do is hope we didn’t just spend $7 on gas for nothing.

TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2011 Electronic welfare bums, I love it, LOL. We thought we were going to have to go apply for assistance in person and that it’d be an all-day thing, but it turns out that these days you can apply online. So we applied for whatever medical and food stamp assistance we could get. That should be about $210 a month in food stamps, but who knows what medical-wise?

It’s going to take a month or so, and God do I wish we could tell them thanks, but no thanks because he’s got a job! But I know life would never be that easy for us. I also wish we’d known about this when he first got laid off the first time. Had we known about this and MT, life would’ve been a lot easier. We just had no idea we qualified for assistance. No idea at all.

Today I’ve been productive as far as cleaning and working goes, but wasting time in my imagination on Nane. It’s so pointless, I know, but I can’t help but be so damn hot for her!

Molly still views my blog almost every day, but lately it’s just 1-3 times a day. Someone in Dallas, TX finds the Maricopa part of my bio quite fascinating. They even checked out the first part of Oregon.

MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2011 No wonder I haven’t heard much from Maliheh. She nearly lost her house in a tornado! A record number of 63 tornados went through NC and some people were killed. I didn’t hear any mention of Fayetteville, though, so I thought she was ok. But there was a message waiting from her when I got up.

How terrifying that must’ve been! I hope she doesn’t lose her place. I’d be willing to pawn my iMac to help get her out here if she needed a place to stay.

It occurred to me that nothing like that could ever just sneak up on us. I’d have nightmares galore the night before even if they had nothing to do with tornadoes.

The people on eBay sure are strange. The toy we listed sold for $12, plus a fortune in shipping since it’s going all the way to Belgium. But last time around no one wanted the damn thing, LOL.

Anyway, not much going on today. It’s cold and rainy. AGAIN. It’s never warm for long around here so it seems.

I’m taking a break for a cup of soup, then it’s back to work.

SUNDAY, APRIL 17, 2011 Got back from Kmart, which Sears owns, a little while ago. I returned with a 4-pack of satin string bikini panties, 2 glittery bottles of nail polish, a new set of sheets in lavender, and a few 99-cent smellies. Cucumber-melon, Sexy Musk and New Musk. I also got candy and soda.

Tom read an article yesterday about a new prescription medication for people with my kind of sleep disorder and I guess instead of adding melatonin to the body it somehow enhances the melatonin you’ve got. As he said, it used to be hard to find any information on this type of sleep disorder, so to see an article about it tells us it’s getting more widely recognized.

SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 2011 Every day I awake to a blank canvas of white upon which to tell a story. Only my canvas is that of a computer screen and not the rough material of a traditional canvas. Instead of brushstrokes, it is keystrokes that tell my story. The story of my day-to-day life. Sometimes that story is sad. Sometimes it is uplifting. And other times it is thought-provoking.

What appeals to me most about writing more than anything else I’ve ever had an interest in is the fact that there’s the potential to go from good to great. I got to be a good singer, but nothing can ever make me a great singer. I was a good dancer, but in this day and age, nothing can ever make me a great dancer despite being pretty fit. Even though I have a knack for languages my Spanish can never go from good to great because I will never live in a Spanish-speaking country where I have no choice but to use it regularly. But age, environment and money have no discrimination when it comes to the art of writing. I may never be the best writer in the world, but someday I will be a great writer. And someday I just may take Eileen’s advice who pointed out that I’m doing this ALL on my own and that while I’m a good writer, why not take some creative writing courses if I’m open to constructive criticism? I can only get better if I do. For now, though, I have Mitch, and he is a fine writing mentor who compliments and inspires me when I write well, and who gives me that constructive criticism I need when there’s something I need to improve on.

Being a writer, like many fields within the arts and entertainment area, isn’t just something we do, it’s who we are. And most of us have been at it in some form or another all of our lives.

My journal is my non-judgmental therapist to pour my tears out on as well as my friend to share the good times with, and so I will refrain from apologizing if I’ve sounded down quite a bit lately. Being held back in life and feeling powerless to do much about it other than wait it out and hope it doesn’t last too long or get too rough can be a real stressor. If my journal doesn’t mind what I say, then why worry if my followers might?

I called my parents yesterday to let them know the Magic Jack would expire and that it would be a couple of weeks or more before I renewed my subscription. I told them to call the cell if they needed us. Well, I talked to Dad, actually. Mom was at the store. He said I should’ve called and told them and they would’ve paid for it, and that anytime I need money I should let them know.

I told him that was really sweet of him, but I didn’t want to bother them. He assured me it was ok, that’s what they’re there for, and if they couldn’t help, they’d say so.

It’s kind of sad that Tom’s family really put a complex on me so badly as far as reaching out to others for help after they so cruelly abandoned us in the past, but a part of me is also glad I didn’t ask for help. For one, they have enough of their own shit to deal with, and I also know I can’t run to them for help forever.

I didn’t even tell him we’ve been out of propane. Not literally, but we can’t afford to have the main tank filled because they have a 100-gallon minimum and that costs a couple of hundred bucks. Instead, we’ve been alternating between a couple of 5-gallon tanks, taking showers every day and a half instead of every day, and washing dishes/clothes in cold water. It’s lasting longer now that it’s been warmer.

I also didn’t tell him that we’re not starving, but we’re eating as cheap as we can and doing without the extras that we don’t need like soda.

What I did tell him was that we really, really appreciate the $25 IHOP card they sent and the $50 Sears card. We need new sheets and underwear, so the Sears card really helps out.

“If some people can be blessed in some areas of life, why can’t they be cursed in some areas, too?” I asked Tom. “What if we’re just forever financially cursed no matter what we do? What if this is it? What if it’s actually safe to say that if things are this bad at our age, they always will be? What if owning even the simplest, most ordinary house is just a dream, and what if we’re forever stuck in this tiny old trailer with its doors that don’t stay open on their own, its lack of space, and its floors without insulation that they’re so cold to walk on in the winter even with socks? Really, we live like bums yet we have done everything within our power to try to help ourselves better our lives. So what if it’s hopeless?”

But he got me to see that this world recession that’s going on is a very extraordinary situation that won’t last forever and it’s not something up there that’s picking on us even though it sure seems that way at times and like things will never change. He also got me to see that getting laid off under ordinary circumstances doesn’t automatically mean you’d lose your house if you had one since you’re usually only laid off for a couple of months. Then I remembered that he did get laid off shortly after we were married and we never lost the Phoenix house. He also reminded me that had we been smarter about Maricopa and not gotten such a big place that we couldn’t really afford, we’d still be there, even though we both came to hate many things about Arizona.

He may have a point, but I still worry that somehow, someway, no matter what we do, we’ll always be struggling.

I’m still entering sweeps even though that’s not looking promising at all. Things just aren’t what they used to be where that’s concerned. If I ever won big, Miss Hates to Travel is going to visit friends and family for sure, including my best cyber friends.

Anyway, after getting groceries and talking with Dad and Nane, I was in better spirits.

Nane said it’s a little late, she knows, but she is reading my book and congratulated me again for getting it published.

Instead of being flattered, I felt embarrassed and said, “Not the copy with the errors, I hope!” Then I emailed her the corrected copy.

She thanked me; though she assured me she didn’t mind spelling errors and probably wouldn’t even notice. Perhaps not if your first language isn’t English. Then again, her English isn’t bad at all. Some natives don’t speak/write it as well as she does.

She likes my sense of humor and we have fun with our usual jokes and nicknames for each other. I told her the story of how we “met” and explained how Tom read an article saying that if your native language is English, German would be the easiest to learn, even if I half agree with it. She told me how she ended up in NYC. She met this guy in Frankfurt she was with for two years. After he got out of the army he couldn’t find work, so his mother in NYC got them jobs there. She worked for Wall Street which is pretty big bucks. She was 23 at the time and I was 18 and right next door in MA. If only we’d known!

I’m glad I didn’t dump her, and I know this may sound silly as hell, but I feel like we grew closer than ever for some reason yesterday. And it may also sound silly to say it made me feel really good, but it did. :)

I’m hearing less and less from Maliheh and still I wonder if I’ve got anything to do with it or not. It’s like she’s slowly pulling away. If that’s what she wants, then ok. I enjoyed the time we had. I think it’s time to give her a taste of her own medicine, though, if I do hear from her again, and not be so quick to respond right away. Let her wait for me for once.

The fucking dogs drove me crazy last night. I slept till midnight and figured Jesse would be home by then, but no such luck. They didn’t shut up for another hour and I wasn’t sure if it was because the prick finally got home or if the dogs had simply exhausted themselves. If he left at 7:30 like he usually does, I’d be pretty exhausted too if I barked for 5 or 6 hours.

This morning the damn cock was doing his little engine gunning and running routine, though I think it may’ve been the motorcycle. It’s like he’s idling the damn thing longer before he takes off.

Not surprisingly, Tom “ran” into him at the fork when he was putting the trash up. He was either coming or going and mentioned cleaning the cooler and getting it ready for the heat that can’t get here fast enough. Tom said I was on nights now and asked that he wait till next week and he said he would.

FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2011 Later on this morning I’ll call my folks and let them know their loser of a daughter is about to lose her phone, so they’ll need to call one of the two cells if they want to get a hold of me. As part of my learning to accept the shitty hand the bastard in the sky (or whatever it is) is so determined to deal to me time and time again, I’m trying to focus on the good in losing the phone and not on how much it pisses me off to have to keep on losing this or giving up that. I would prefer to leave my computer on when I’m going to sleep when it’s light out and when the lights on the keyboard and the MJ’s power box can’t annoy me like they would at night. The phone could also ring and wake me up if the computer’s left on. And since things have to get more and more complicated with time, there’s no simple on/off switch for the ringer, and I can’t simply take it off the hook. But now I won’t have to worry about that for a while. The Magic Jack also has a delay in relay and an occasional echo.

I can’t believe I spent most of my childhood and some of my 20s dreaming of moving to California only to end up stuck here in my 40s and hating almost every minute of it. A part of me still wants to scream and cry at the thought of spending many more years or even the rest of my life in this dumpy little trailer. But I think the more we fix it up and make it our home instead of just Jesse’s old trailer, the less I’ll want to leave it after putting so much time into making all the changes. Unless you can buy it outright, it’s just not safe to own a house. One firing or layoff – just one – and you could lose that house or that nicer, more expensive rental in a heartbeat.

By throwing away my dream I then have no dreams to either not be able to achieve or to achieve and lose. Besides, there’s really nothing to “throw away” because it’s not up to me to begin with.

And so every time I long to be in a normal house with adequate space and newer features, I remind myself that it’s better than prison, jail, funny farms, concentration camps, apartments or the streets. It’s even better than an apartment building for old folks only. I’m not stupid. I know that if I lived in one of these places the person above us would have unruly grandkids visiting regularly, the person below us would be obsessed with slamming doors, and the person next to us would be so deaf they blast their TV. Yeah, I know how these things work.

Other than this thing that’s had an obsession with seeing that I’m stuck everywhere I don’t want to be and unable to stay where I do want to be since I was around 15 years old, the weather is improving. We had our last cold day a couple of days ago. Now it’s time to pull the comforter off and put the thin blanket on, though it’ll still be getting cold at night for a while. It won’t be until mid-June before we can have windows open all the time.

So the few trees around here that lose their leaves in the fall are sprouting new leaves and there are baby birds in the nest on the porch. And if they bring Tom a job, it will also be around the same time we can leave the windows open, but somehow I doubt he’ll get a job before most, if not all, of the summer is over.

THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 2011 I miss the beach. I don’t know why. Ocean’s stink, the water’s salty, seaweed’s kind of gross, jellyfish make my skin crawl, walking on sand isn’t easy, and stepping on pointy edges of shells or driftwood doesn’t tickle. Chances are, though, I’ll never see any of it again, so that’s another thing I can forget about.

Tom and I both agreed that instead of buying a place or fixing this place up if I suddenly won 20K, we’d get the hell out of California even if it meant having to go to a place that was cold and snowy. And that’s probably what it would take to better our lives, cursed or not. We’ve been here nearly 4 years now yet he STILL can’t get a permanent job. We spend so damn much of the time being cold enough here anyway that a climate worse than this might be worth it in order to break this horrible cycle we’ve been on for so long.

But I’m almost certainly not going to win 20K and so we’re stuck here. And God knows how many more years things will be as shitty as they have been. I honestly think it will be over a decade before the economy recovers.

What’s both good and disappointing is that the Beanie Babies sold which means less stuff in the way, but they only sold for $37. We were really hoping for $50 - $75, even though we didn’t list the more valuable ones in this batch.

We have a toy I won years ago (a talking animal) up for a buck and it’s got a watcher so maybe it will sell. Meanwhile, we’re so fucking poor I’ll have to call my folks and let them know I’m going to lose the Magic Jack phone since we don’t even have $20 to spare right now to renew it. We’ve got two cells, though, and it’s not like I use the MJ phone much.

Just two days back into exercising and I can already feel a difference in my tummy. I’m still not dieting, but someday I’ll get back on with that, too.

Mitch finally made a sale on Smashwords. :) I’ll definitely take his advice and publish with them too, but not until things settle down a bit here if they ever do.

There are baby birds in the other nest at the other end of the porch now, too. I don’t know if it’s a different family or if Mama Bird moved her babies into this nest. Somehow I doubt they move their babies around.

It hurts to walk on the kitchen and bathroom floors even with socks, that’s how cold it got last night. There’s absolutely no insulation in these floors, none in the so-called roof, and probably very little in the walls. But again, we ain’t getting out of here for a long, long time to come. Might as well try to focus on the good in it – no neighbors attached to us!

Nane really is a fun friend even if she’s not around much of the time. We have our games we play (like what scent I’m wearing) and our nicknames for each other. She’s Goddess Nane and I’m Lady Jodi, even if she doesn’t always spell my name correctly.

I started making my own “hugs” and she thought it was neat and asked how I did it. I told her and she did an ocean scene after I did a rat, not surprisingly for us, LOL.

I told her of a dirty dream I had of her and said she could tell her BF. She said she better keep quiet about it, then laughed and said she just might tell him after all.

The troll took Tuesday off but viewed my blog 3 times yesterday, and I just hit Larry with this second funny/insulting message. I enclosed a joke for old-time’s sake but was sure to insult him a bit along the way, too. It’ll be interesting to see if he ever tells me to fuck off or blocks me. Then again, he may not want to give me a “reaction” any more than the black bitch wants to, who I make a point of reminding of my existence at least once a year. I’d be willing to bet she saves everything I send. Therefore, she had to have been as pissed as I was when Facebook’s latest round of changes deleted old messages, LOL.

Who else from the past have I “dropped” in on? Oh, just Bruce. He was the conceited cock that was a great guitarist. I knew him in Springfield. I liked his guitar playing but I didn’t like him. He was too judgmental but not nearly as bad as Al was. Al was the verbal equivalent of a wife-beater. I even gave him the link to the part of my bio where I mention him, even if it was just one paragraph, LOL. He followed the link but didn’t reply as I both hoped and expected. I just like to surprise people at times. :)

Adonis, my faithful follower with the annoyingly shitty English, said he too, had been thinking about my “preparation” theory. He’s kind of philosophical too, and said what if I’m actually being prepared for riches?

So late in life? I doubt it. I once hoped that my curses would one day be compensated, but each year that passes and I see they aren’t, I give up hope on that one.

Tom said some may think I had it easy just for not having to work out of the house.

Yeah, that’s a definite blessing. But is that blessing why we’re so cursed? Or was I given the sleep disorder as a means of holding us back? After all, I’d be out there working too, if transportation and schedules weren’t an issue, even if I didn’t like it.

Tom said he thinks it’s harder for me because I didn’t grow up poor like he did. It almost makes me wish I had, though, as sad as it may sound. Then maybe I’d be “good” at being poor. Don’t worry, I’ll be a good little bum and roll with the punches sooner or later. I already realized and acknowledged that we’re destined to spend most of our lives struggling. Acceptance will come, probably sooner than even he thinks. I’ve had financial problems almost all of my adult life so it really is nothing new. The only new twist is that starting in Oregon, but mostly starting in Cali in 2007, it went beyond just not having extra money and became a struggle to pay for the necessities as well.

OMG, though! God is going to allow us enough food to eat this week! But wait. Just what exactly did Tom and Jodi S do to deserve the right to eat this week??? Hell, I thought we deserved a little starvation mixed into the shitty hand He keeps dealing us. After all, we’re just a couple of worthless losers who try too hard to get ahead, aren’t we?

Later…

OMG, this is so fucking funny! It’s nice to be able to laugh for once, too. To send feedback on my-diary you have to give your email addy. Or at least most people think you do. As long as the @ symbol is present and you use a real carrier, you could send it from fuckyou@yahoo.com if you wanted to. Someone wrote “You have no life” in regard to the first part of my bio. Well, another thing a lot of folks don’t know is that you can search FB for any users signed up with a particular email addy. So I ran the addy on FB, which is in Sunnyvale, CA, and up came a person with the same name as in the addy. I was a little surprised at who I saw in the profile pic, even though anyone could’ve sent the feedback. Usually, such comments come from kids. Not from what appears to be a woman in her 40s. I sent her a message thanking her for her feedback on MD and let her know that I already figured out years ago that I had no life. Oh, and to have a nice day. :) ROTFL! She is going to be one shocked lady! LMAO!

It’s funny in itself, but hopefully it’ll keep her from being a potential troll. As soon as I “called out” that Canadian troll on MO it disappeared really fast. Guess that’s what you get for fucking with a savvy net nut. :)))))))

TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2011 We have now been in this little old trailer for 3 years. 3 years and counting. Acceptance is getting a little easier, but it’s one of those things that will take time and that will happen little by little. I just remind myself – whenever I start to feel saddened or angry – that there are worse places to spend the rest of our lives in. Much worse.

Death may be the only escape from the curse we’re under, but I really believe that the best way to deal with it while we are alive and the best way to lead a happier life is to just make the best of what we can do/have and stop trying to turn dreams and fantasies into the reality they can never be. So I’m going to keep the list I made up handy of all the things I want to do to fix this place up as time and money permits and make it our home. I think the more we personalize it and remodel it to our tastes and comfort, the happier I’ll be. Maybe we can even add on another bathroom eventually. The clearing that this trailer is on is narrow and so we’re limited as to how much outside space we have as well as inside. It will take many thousands of dollars and many years, assuming we make it through this latest ordeal, but it’s a hell of a lot safer and smarter than continuing on with this stupid fantasy that we could one day own a house and not lose it. Why pay to fix things that break and worry like crazy about losing them until we actually do? Just one lay-off or firing is all it takes to lose a place, and just about all jobs will eventually let you go for some reason or the other. Very few people ever work at the same place till they retire. It may be easier and tempting to want to run to a bigger, newer place if we ever could, but how could I enjoy it if all we’re going to do is stress and struggle to maintain it? We do enough of that right here in what’s just about the cheapest place you can get for being in California.

This is where we live. This is where we stay. This is what’s meant to be.

Don’t know if the Beanies are going to sell or not yet. They’re getting a hell of a lot more views than the last small lot we tried to sell, but in my experience the more we need money the less likely we are to get it.

At least I sold another copy of my book and Eileen’s going to leave a review. I asked her to, since it couldn’t hurt, but only if she likes it, of course, and she said she’d be happy to. Her mother’s going to read it, too. LOL, it’s a good thing we Jews tend to be more liberal.

I’m not going to bother dieting, but I’ve gone back to working out. No need to fall out of shape just because I don’t care right now that I’ve got too many pounds and inches to my name, is there? But why my weight hasn’t kept climbing and climbing is a mystery to me. At this height and age you, can’t just eat like a normal person. But I’ve been eating quite “normally” at 1500-2000 calories a day and being as lazy as can be. I’m not saying I’ll never diet again. I’m just not in the mood to put added pressure on myself until and if our finances get so bad that I’m forced to go hungry. I’m more focused on saving money right now, and part of that means buying cheap food that tends to be higher in calories.

I’m doing arm, ab and leg exercises which take about 15 minutes. Then I’m running 4 minutes every hour for about 10 hours. My screensaver is set to blackout every two minutes, so I’m doing two “blackouts” per hour.

I got a clever idea earlier to take a spring hook off an old purse strap and attach it to my robe. This way I just hook it to the belt loop instead of having to use the belt which only keeps slipping loose.

Again I’m wondering if Nane’s worth keeping as a friend. I’d just hate to dump her and end up regretting it. I reached out to her about a week ago when I was feeling blue and wanted to chat. I realized she could be busy and it’s not like she’s obligated to cheer me up or anything like that, but the least she could’ve done was at least answer the damn message once she finally got back on Facebook which is where I sent it. She just got back from what I could tell, but she’s completely blown me off. I expected a reply or one of her “hugs” or something, but I’ve received absolutely nothing. Makes me also wonder if I should share a certain story with her. :) She did, however, let me know that my book is $3.44 in US dollars in Germany. So almost half a buck more there.

No troll today. I’m surprised. I’m also wondering how long she can stand to go before she does something to try to make me discuss her in my blog which is exactly what she wants.

Later…

I see myself hurrying down the curvy dirt drive and out to the main road. My heart trembles with fear yet with determination as I wait for the next vehicle to round the corner at 45MPH. When it does I refuse to let myself chicken out. I bravely hurl my body in front of it, allowing the impact of the vehicle to smash the life out of me.

Gone are the money worries. Gone are the lost dreams. Gone is the pain.

And then I snap out of this scary yet appealing fantasy given how shitty my life is right now, and reality hits me in the face like a bowling ball.

I don’t have the guts to kill myself. The only thing that’s going to give me the guts to actually do it would be if anything happened to Tom or things got to the point that they were literally unbearable and there was simply no way to survive.

I wish I could know what dying would be like for me and what – if anything – awaited me on the other side. Knowing this may or may not give me the guts it would take to kill myself before things got a chance to get to the point of no return, though it’s true that Tom is another big reason I still exist. He’s a pretty independent guy who could get along just fine on his own. But I know he’d be sad and lonely without me. The older we are, the less likely we are to find someone to settle down with, especially if we’re not very sociable to begin with. So if I died now and he lived another 30 years, that’s a long time to be alone.

Will things ever get unbearable? Well, obviously we can’t live forever no matter what happens. So yeah, eventually Tom’s going to die and I’m going to kill myself if nothing happens before then to cause me to die first or us to die together.

And then another theory popped into mind that got me wondering about something. I assumed all these spells we’ve been going through where we’re teased with our survival were strictly to punish us. But what if it’s something more? Is it preparation of some kind? Back when I was hauled into Florence Jail I got the distinct feeling something was trying to prepare me for something. It was. Six months of hard county time in Phoenix. So if this truly is a preparation of some kind, then what could it be for? Is it trying to “toughen” me up and help get me gutsy enough to kill myself with or without Tom?

“I’m almost 54 years old and things have always worked out,” Tom told me the other day. “So there’s no reason not to think it won’t work out this time, too.”

Ah, but they say there’s a first time for everything.

MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2011 I dreamt that Tom got a call for a job. I don’t know if he got the job, but he got called for one. Although I didn’t wake up feeling as blue as I have been these last several days, this doesn’t mean I think or feel he’ll get a job anytime soon. Unfortunately, most of the dreams I have that come true are the bad ones. He’ll probably get calls on and off for the next few months, but you know our setbacks last longer than just a few weeks. Even so, Tom’s thinking of leaving out the fact that he was a manager in the past. Since all he can get are menial temp jobs, having that on his record is a very bad thing since no one wants to hire managers for shit jobs, and he’s not going to tell them, “Hey, I’m so desperate I’ll take any job.” The tough part is not only finding a job, regardless of pay but finding one in town so he doesn’t have to drive forever. Especially since gas prices are getting out of hand again.

“Do recycled bird’s nests still count as bringing good luck?” I asked Tom the other day. After all, it is a used nest they’re using out on the porch. He assures me they probably had to remodel somewhat. Well, we’ll see what happens over the next few months and if it’s still a “lucky” thing or not.

We listed 100 Beanie Babies on eBay starting at $24.99. Again, a true test of just how cursed we may or may not be at the moment.

Our connection has been slow as hell. Maybe in a few more years or so, we can get reliable service out here without having to play phone with them all day every few months and beg them to give us the speed we’re paying for.

Christine has been sick with a fever so that’s why I haven’t heard much from her. Hopefully, she’s better now.

Molly’s back to viewing my blog. Yeah, I knew she would be. Houston, TX viewed me too, and when I see anything Texas I always wonder if there’s a connection. Especially when it’s a direct jump.

Anyway, it’s back to not allowing anonymous comments on my blog now that she’s coming around again. In her own blog, she’s written the exact opposite of what she said last time. She’s just back and forth and back and forth like a yo-yo. One entry could say she’s sick of her “friendship” with Alison and she’s not worth bothering with, the next (written just hours later) could be all about how she hopes to earn her trust again and win her friendship over. She’s also swung back the other way with Roman, admitting to harassing him again. She said she’s “not sure” why she can’t stop calling and texting him. Then after claiming to feel oh so loved by fellow thoughts members, now she feels slighted.

People have left comments saying you can’t make people like you, the internet is not real life, and that it’s a waste of time feeling hurt over people online when she should be out meeting people in person.

And it’s all gonna go in one ear and out the other.

She supposedly started a new medication, but I really don’t think all the therapy and medication in the world can help people like her. It didn’t seem to help Marie. I think the only way to stop Molly from bothering people online is to prevent her from being able to get online in the first place. The mother’s obviously not very bright for a teacher if she hasn’t yet figured out that while she may’ve blocked my blog on Molly’s computer, the nut can still get to it on hers.

Later…

If there was the slightest, microscopic amount of doubt left in me as to us not being meant to have money, it’s gone now for damn sure. The economy is so damn bad we’re almost certainly guaranteed not to have even a few grand in the pension fund. Anything to keep us poor and from buying a house. Anything. But that’s fine; I already decided I don’t want a house just to lose it and have to pay for things we can’t afford to fix until we do. So fine. We’ll stay right here. But a little extra money to fix this place up would’ve been nice.

It’s all there, though. The pattern is so damn clear. First we lose hope of ever getting anything from his mother (if she can ever die), then the horse program tease, then the partnership tease, and now God’s made sure to use the economy to fuck us out of our pension. “What’s all that tell you?” I told Tom, trying to point the obvious out to him. Yet he insists that there’s no way I could be screwed out of my inheritance and that while it may suck, now’s a “great” time to be poor because the county could end up saving us a whole “boatload” of money on my teeth.

I first thought it would take months and months to get approved for help with my teeth. But the county funds the dental, he learned, which explains why the state could afford to drop it and not have anyone bitch about it. The state, however, is the one that deals with food stamps, so that would definitely take months.

If I could get my teeth done for free or close to it that would be great. But that’s just one thing. What about our overall day-to-day lives? I’ve known since 2007 that we were meant to be poor for the most part. That’s pretty much when it became obvious enough and I put two and two together and figured it out. I also figured as much as far as us getting fucked out of the pension. So then why is it so hard on me? Why can’t I just accept the fate that’s been handed down to me and just roll with the punches? Why get upset over what cannot be changed? Like wasting time getting upset when a state votes down gay marriage. Well, of course they’re gonna vote it down. Most people hate gays. It does get easier with time, but I still need to fully accept it if I’m ever going to have an easier life. I’ve given up my dream of a house, not that I ever had much choice, and I’m sorry it’s taken me 3 hopeless dreams to finally realize that whether my dream is far-fetched or perfectly reasonable, it’s not meant to be if the dream belongs to me. I’ll know better when dream number 4 rolls around and won’t even bother to think of trying to make it a reality.

This reality hitting home more and more makes me all the more hesitant to bother sweeping. Not just because the odds these days are astronomical but because if we, Tom and Jodi S, aren’t meant to have big bucks, then that’s all the more reason to believe I’ll never win.

Again with the troll coming to my blog today, so again I’m thinking of creating our own site and blocking that IP# altogether. Well, Tom will have to do it, but I did suggest it since he’s going to be out of work for months. Yeah, that call I dreamt he got never came. You know only the bad dreams are allowed to come true. Or something bad after having a bad dream.

I HATE God above so bad now! And I don’t care if He punishes me for saying so. What more can He do to us? He’s taken our dreams, taken our pension, taken our LIVES. We are so His little puppets on a string for life.

Later…

I meant it when I said that not having extra money was ok so long as we could pay for our needs, but sometimes I’ll miss the lack of choices and opportunities a life of struggling will bring us. It may not be necessary, but it would’ve been nice had a year of Harry & David’s been a choice for us, and it would’ve been nice to spend a day being pampered at a spa if we wanted to or to decide to take a vacation somewhere if we ever decided we could use a change in town/scenery, despite hating to travel.

To assume we’ll be screwed out of our pension is as reasonable enough as assuming one will be hurt if they fall 20 feet. And we WILL lose the inheritance. God will make sure doctors, hospitals and other medical-related expenses drain the money in the end. I’m not stupid. I get how it works for us. It started becoming rather obvious in late 2006, but each year it gets more obvious.

I am determined to just learn to accept things as they are and roll with the punches rather than waste time trying to change and control what we can’t. We DID try to better our lives, so no one can say we didn’t try. Also, there is some good in being poor. Poor gets you more breaks and freebies and it makes you appreciate those few scattered bursts of good times. So poor is ok and I’m ready to make the best of it since it cannot be changed.

Now, speaking of working with what we do have and not worrying about what we can’t have, here’s a list of long-term goals. We can do these things as money permits.

New carpet New paint New floors I would like light-colored countertops, but that’s not necessary Install more outlets? Flat-top stove Bigger water tank New doors Water filter so we can drink tap water? Twin waterbed for me New bed/couch of some kind for him Shelves Curtains or drapes for the bedroom Square clothesline Soundproofing and or insulation to regulate inside temp Add-ons: bathroom, bedroom, laundry room

This will take many thousands of dollars and many years to do but this is a REASONABLE goal. Having a savings and buying a house is not. I think we can and should do this. It may not be our #1 choice in life, but you know life isn’t what we plan it. We live the lives we were meant to live and I don’t think it’s all that bad at all when you consider how much worse it could be. I do, however, think we should get Jesse in here next fall to fix the heater and faucets. Remember, if we’re going to focus on the good of renting/being poor, it’s having someone else pay to fix things. So life won’t be what we want it to be, but we can make the best of the life we never wanted or intended to live. Sometimes you just gotta MAKE the place you’re in your forever home because it’s the only one that can be forever.

I also want to sell/donate most of my dolls to free up more space.

SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2011 Just thought I’d write in between entering sweeps. The sweeps that seem very unlikely that I’m going to go back to winning like I used to. Can’t say I didn’t try, though.

The Beanie Babies didn’t sell. Next we’re trying a huge lot and we’re going to go with parcel post instead of priority mail. This will be a true test as to just how cursed we are since there’s no way this shouldn’t sell.

Believe! That’s what Eileen keeps saying to me. But how can I believe when 80% of the last 3 ½ years have been so shitty? How can I believe when we spend 22 months on Unemployment and then after just 6 months of work we’re laid off again?

I think that people who haven’t had it as bad as we have just don’t realize that it’s not that easy to just “believe.” I know they mean well, but it’s not like we can flick a switch within our brains and believe whatever we want to at will. If that were the case I wouldn’t feel stress, depression, frustration and such an extreme loss of faith, even if I’d only be kidding myself in believing things will work out. And they just may work out in the end, too. But in “working out” that probably means a few months on the job after God knows how many more months of struggling to find one in the first place and trying to make ends meet. All we’ve done since coming to California is just go round and round in circles. I’m coming to hate it here, but if a person is cursed, wouldn’t they just get the same results no matter where they lived?

The stress which has turned into depression is killing my motivation to work out and lose weight. I’ve gained back 17 of the 30 pounds I lost. All lost weight eventually finds its way back home, but why don’t I care? Why can’t I get myself to want to diet and exercise? How much more must I gain back before I finally get my ass in gear in that department?

Instead, all I want to do lately is eat, sleep, write and listen to music when I’m not entering sweeps or doing what work I can do online. Today, though, I got a lot more sleep for the depression. I crashed around 5am and then the sound machine broke and woke me up around noon. The old, ancient portable one did, not the off-tuned radio station on the stereo. Then I fell back asleep and got up around 2pm. I was up for about an hour, and then fell back asleep till around 4:00. Then I got up, fell back asleep around 6:00 and didn’t get up till 8:00. Am I really that depressed that I had to spend most of a 15-hour period sleeping?

During my second round of sleep, I had a dream of being in a tiny, old dump laid out sort of in a square like the dump we rented in Oregon. There was a room on each corner – two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. I was in one of the bedrooms which seemed bigger than the bedrooms in the house actually were and saw rivulets of water leaking down part of one wall. I ran to tell Tom about it but saw that he was asleep on the living room couch. I changed my mind and decided not to bother waking him up for something I simply didn’t want to deal with anyway. So I let it leak and went to change the rat’s cage which was also in the bedroom. That’s when I noticed that all our digital clocks simply had the number 4 for the hour, but no minutes visible. Number 4, the real 13.

Was he laid off as a means of protecting Jesse? I wonder that. Seriously, maybe Tom was meant to lose his job as a means of trapping us here so Jesse doesn’t go further into the hole financially. Had he been hired on and given a raise recently, we just may have moved this summer. On the other hand, I would think Jesse would be able to re-rent this place in just a month or two.

If we were smart we’d take our pension money and make this place as comfortable as we possibly could and just stay here forever. If we live long enough to get it, that is. I’m sure Jesse wouldn’t mind having life-long tenants, and it would certainly be safer. The dogs only bark once or twice a week for a few hours now instead of every day for 10 hours like they used to, and even if Tom got a great job with great pay – well – all good things do come to an end, so it’s better to just stay put than take risks. I’m sure Jesse would let us paint and recarpet and personalize the place to our tastes and comfort as money permitted. It’s something to think about. We’d certainly never have to worry about neighbors being just a few feet away from us in this place.

I like different people’s marketing ideas for my book. Eileen suggested a TV or radio station, Maliheh suggested YouTube, and Mitch suggested another self-publishing company that I guess has better features and pays 85% royalties. I appreciate their suggestions, but right now we have more pressing issues at hand than trying to get my book to sell. And also, good writers that aren’t great simply aren’t good enough for big sales. I need to keep on improving.

Maliheh said people were freaked out about the government shutdown and says people are starting to struggle where she is and that if it weren’t for the army base nearby, Fayetteville wouldn’t exist.

I wonder what’s up with Christine. She hasn’t been to my blog since Thursday and hasn’t replied to my email.

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2011 Sandy finally made it into my blog, though she only scanned the first page from what I could tell. She must not have gotten the message till a short while ago because her friend count just went up. Larry and Jenny may not have gotten their own messages yet, though I think it’s unlikely that they haven’t. I’m just surprised none of them have blocked me, especially Jenny.

Molly’s latest hilarious entry which included two more “letters” to Alison and Roman, said she hasn’t been spying on Alison because she’s “been asleep for a few days,” LOL.

Her “letter” to Roman starts off with, “The reason I don’t want to talk to you,” yet she’s talking to him in her blog. shakes head What a nut. Just what a nut.

I was feeling a little down last night and reached out to Nane, asking if she wanted to chat come morning time her time, but not surprisingly, she’s blown me off. I’ll probably get a little “smile” or a “hug” tomorrow or the next day to make up for it. I guess I can’t blame her, though. I mean, what can she do other than listen to me vent? If no one here in my own country can help me, then how could anyone in Germany help me? They could momentarily cheer me up and even make me laugh, but they couldn’t fix the problem at hand and lift the curse that’s been on us so we could actually get ahead for once and stay ahead for more than 5 minutes. She probably had to work, too.

I asked Tom what he thinks is the reason he didn’t get the job he wanted – his age or his color – and he thinks it’s because he worked so long as a manager and most people feel that because of it he wouldn’t be happy doing menial tasks.

So much for thinking experience gets you ahead, if he’s right. Don’t you just love it when others take it upon themselves to decide for us what we’d like, not like, want, or not want in life?

Still only one sale. I was really hoping more of my Facebook friends would be interested, but I guess not. And it doesn’t look like the Beanie Babies are going to sell either.

Although I still don’t like the idea of the aches and pains that often come with old age, I want to grow old and die of natural causes while surrounded by people who care about me. But I know this is just a dream like any other I’ve ever had in life, and that my quest for security is a joke. Never will I have even the simplest house where we’re both insured and neither of us has to wonder if we’re going to make it. Instead, here I am, still wondering if we’re going to be alive this summer. Will we be? And if we are, how about next winter? At the same time, it seems something wants us to just barely get by so we can live to be teased, picked on and punished.

It seems we’ve fallen into a regular pattern of wondering if we’re going to survive and we just can’t break this pattern. I wasn’t kidding when I said I missed some of my old problems. They were depressing and frustrating, but they were safer and less scary. Yet it seems the past only comes back to haunt us when it’s in a bad way.

I just want to be happy. I want to laugh, joke and live comfortably. Not like a queen in a mansion surrounded by tons of luxuries; just comfortable enough. I want to go back to worrying about things like my weight, not whether or not we may have to kill ourselves in a few months to avoid homelessness. Each year we continue to struggle, the more I lose faith and the more certain I am that things will never change and that this is what’s meant to be for us. I just don’t know what we did to deserve it.

For now, since I can’t seem to motivate myself to work out, I’m going to get some proofreading done of old journals, but I’m no longer going about it the way I had been by reading them word for word. Now I’m just running a grammar/spell checker through the files.

Later…

I’m sitting here wondering how the hell I’m going to market my book. How can I gain publicity, thus buyers?

If just half a million people in a country of what has over 250 million people would buy it, we’d never have to worry about money again. sighs But this book isn’t the greatest and no one knows who I am. I may be pretty good, but I still need to improve my grammar and things like that. Tom said I should also stop writing stories with characters based on people I know and events based on things I’ve actually experienced.

I almost wish I were suddenly famous or infamous for some reason or another, but without all the other shit that would go with it. If I were suddenly arrested for murder like Amanda Knox was, then people would be driven to buy it out of curiosity. So I need to think of a hook – one much less extreme – that would generate sales. But how? What can I do? How can I pique people’s curiosity since I’m not already a well-known writer?

Eileen suggested I see if a local TV or radio station would have me on as a guest to help promote my book, but I don’t see why they’d care to help promote me out of millions of other writers who are now turning to Kindle. It’s becoming a common thing for writers to bypass traditional publishers altogether and go straight to Kindle. I’m just one person floating about in a sea of thousands and thousands of other writers.

I could sit here and fantasize about becoming some sort of hero by maybe rescuing some people from some kind of disaster and getting publicity that way, but that’s just not going to happen.

And so I’ll probably only sell a few more copies, if even that, and we’ll go on to struggle. It’s really quite a pisser to know that the only way to get a guaranteed roof over your head, food in your tummy, and all the medical care in the world is to do something bad enough to land yourself in prison for life.

THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2011 Although I’m trying and trying to shake it, I’m kind of depressed right now. Nothing we’re doing to try to help ourselves seems to be working yet. We have no bids on the Beanie Babies and I’ve only made one book sale so far. I didn’t expect much in the way of book sales since I’m not well known, but it still would’ve been nice to make more than one sale.

Marie did reply to the message I sent her about the book. She was happy for me and seems to be doing well except for a leg injury. She said she wouldn’t email me unless I email her as she knows I don’t want to go back to the constant messages. She said she’d go read my book, but I don’t think she realized she can’t “read” it without buying it, and that I was saying I got a book published for sale, but that’s ok.

She’s also with someone she says she’s marrying this July. I hope she’s happy and that things work out for her. Despite the stress and annoyance she put me through, I doubt I could ever dislike her. I think a part of me will always love her.

I’d say David definitely got my message too, LOL, since someone in Mesa, Arizona did a search for me and stumbled onto my blog. I could see what pages were accessed, but there’s no way to know which pages he himself accessed. Since all but one of the other visitors were regulars, I’d say it probably was he who accessed my archive and photo albums. Only about 5 older entries were accessed. I wonder if he’ll come back, though I doubt it.

Although I didn’t get up till close to 2pm, the day was filled with outside annoyances, though I’m not sure Jesse had anything to do with any of it. A wood chipper was annoying me for a while, then I heard what sounded like a ball bouncing which took me on an unpleasant trip down Memory Lane and back to Phoenix. There I got to enjoy 5-hour basketball games regularly that were just a few feet from our windows. They might as well have been bouncing the damn ball off the wall of our house, that’s how loud and obnoxious it was.

Jesse does have concrete at the front of his house, and while the thumping was relatively soft, it was annoying enough. I first thought his kid was bouncing a ball in front of his place, but it was actually someone hammering in the distance.

Then it was off to run the weed whacker, which I think probably was Jesse. Stupid of him too, since we might get a little more rain this month before it stops till the fall.

I forgot to mention in my last entry that Jesse’s not doing too well either. Of course he’s doing much better than us in that he has land, a nice house with adequate space, more than one vehicle, etc., but he too, has no income coming in at the moment. He’s still trying to get on either disability or retirement. But at least he could borrow money, as we know he did for that little car. We have no one to borrow from, and not having any income other than what we make online is pretty scary. I know I don’t have to take it, though, and that I can end it anytime. I don’t have to take another 30-40 years of this shit.

Sometimes I want to throw myself on the bed and cry, but the tears just won’t come. If bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people so much of the time as is what seems to be the case, do I have to hurt someone to get ahead?

I’m just depressed. Too depressed to care about things like dieting, exercising, language studies and things like that. Right now I’m only focused on how to either make money or save money. Besides my writing, of course, but sometimes even that’s hard to concentrate on.

Being aware of my “life sentence” of struggling in other people’s tiny places is one thing, accepting it is another. Why can’t I just cram reality down my throat and move on?!

I hate older places not just because I prefer the looks of modern places but because they tend to have more problems. So I try to at least be glad we don’t have to be the ones to pay to fix things as they break around here.

Paula called and even she’s doing better than us. Her weather was nicer, her court case might be dismissed, she’s been granted section 8 housing, and she met a “great” guy in a chat room who lives in Sacramento. She was glad to hear about the book, but can’t access the link to that which I enclosed in an email, or my blog because she doesn’t know how to enable links. Hopefully, Justin can set that up for her.

Molly’s still staying away, now claiming that she “learned” from her doctor today that not everyone is going to like her. Wow, you mean it took her 27 years to figure that out? That’s kind of sad. But she’ll get hit with amnesia soon enough. I really think she’s got this sick addiction for bothering those who don’t like her, much in the way I did with the pranks 20 years ago, which she struggles with and has to fight the urges constantly. She’s been the way she is for nearly a decade that I know of, so who knows how long it will go on?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2011 Got my first book sale! It’s probably Christine, Eileen or Andy, and my sales will probably drop off to nothing once my friends help themselves, but it’s still pretty cool either way. Poor Mitch, though, LOL. The guy has no sales yet.

Perhaps another reason it’s not that exciting to me besides the fact that everything else in life sucks, is because it’s not a regular book. It’s a lot like selling something on eBay instead, only it’s something I made.

Eileen was busy with her grandkids, so that’s why she didn’t respond right away. She’s sorry about Tom losing his job but psyched about the story and said she’d download it to her Kindle. I don’t know if Christine has a Kindle, but even though I offered to give her a free copy since she’s a friend, she said she’d rather buy it and loves to read anyway. That is so cool of them! Some are posting the link to the book on their Facebook pages.

Nothing from Tammy yet, though it occurred to me that she might be jealous over something like this. Anything artistic tends to do that to her, LOL, though bookwriting isn’t the same as singing, so who knows? It could be that she’s upset that I haven’t talked to her on the phone, but who cares?

I “dropped” my book link on his brother David. He’s the only one of Tom’s siblings/in-laws I could find, besides his two kids. I even let Marie know, though I have a feeling I may regret that one if I hear back from her.

Not sure how the hell I did it, but I managed to sleep through Jesse coming down to fix the pipe. He said something about coming down to do additional work, and tomorrow we’re supposed to have thunderstorms, so I’m sure my sleep will still be disrupted at some point. Now’s when I hate to be on nights and I hate to be on days. On nights I don’t sleep well, on days I don’t get enough time alone with him out of work. I haven’t had any time alone since I got up 9 hours ago. I hate that! I just want to be ALONE! Gotta get used to it, though, since it’s going to be months before he’s working again.

We listed a lot of 6 Beanie Babies on eBay, so hopefully we can start selling them off lot by lot.

I’m going to send my folks excerpts from the book, some jokes, and a screenshot of the book at the online store. Just not until we have extra money for stamps. I don’t want to spend money on anything we don’t need right now.

Here’s Molly’s latest load of bull. She erased all her other entries, but she does that regularly. I’ve come to know her well enough to know that her words won’t mean much for long. The last sentence alone tells me she’s still hoping to “win” us over. I just don’t get why I’m lumped in as one of her “former friends.” Is she delusional as well as lacking in self-respect that she’s got to seek out negative attention from those she knows hate her?

Molly wrote that she was not in a healthy state of mind during the years she bothered her former friends. She said she was sorry for her past actions online, admitting she didn’t know how to stop herself. She apologized for what she did and said online to people and hopes for reconciliation. She claims she recognizes that she wasn’t thinking rationally when online and now wants harmony without conflict or name-calling.

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2011 I called to wish my dad a happy 80th birthday. Ma was on the line too, but I mostly talked with dad, as usual. He sounded chipper enough for being the old man he now is, as amazing and as sad as that sounds. They had a dry spell, I guess, and said they got some much-needed rain today that was to stop by the time they went out for dinner.

Dad’s hopeful for book sales and says to get everything we can get, assistance-wise. Yeah, it’s looking like we’ll have to, unfortunately. I appreciate whatever help we can get, but still, we didn’t come here to be a couple of welfare bums. I’m not sure which was the bigger mistake, moving to Oregon or moving to California. Life is so not what we plan it to be. But sadly, we are where we’re meant to be which is basically nowhere. In 5 years, if we’re still around, we’ll still be broke and uninsured. Same with 10 and 20 years from now. It’s like a life sentence of sorts that’s been handed down to us where we must spend 80% of our lives struggling to survive.

They’re sending another IHOP GC which is so nice of them, so we at least have that to look forward to since there’s no extra money for eating out. We don’t usually do that much anyway. It’s bad for our diets, and most restaurants are pretty wild these days unless you go in the middle of the night or early morning when the animals disguised as children are less likely to be out and about.

I told them a little about the weather, what we found out about the county and the dentist, and our plans to give the Beanie Babies another go on eBay. We’re going to list them tomorrow, so long as nothing comes up to mess with our plans.

I’ve been tired for most of the day because I barely slept 6 hours cuz of the stress. Tomorrow I’ll also be in for some more shitty sleep because there’s a slight leak in the pipe going into the trailer, so Jesse’s coming back down to fix it. Tom told him I’d be asleep till noon, but I’m sure he’ll wake me up anyway. Especially since I may need to sleep past noon. I guess the worst-case scenario is he wakes me up while he’s here, then I go back to sleep. Lost sleep or not, at least it’s another reason to be glad we don’t have our own place and probably never will.

Despite all the fuss the guy at the temp agency made and the way he got Tom all hopeful, he’s been completely blown off, probably because he’s older and white. I’m not surprised as I said before since we’re not allowed any short-term problems in life. He’ll be out of work for months.

I had wondered if something up there would drive us to our deaths to keep us from our pension fund, but if it kills us then it can’t have all this fun cursing us, so we just may get to live after all. Then it can just screw us out of the money somehow instead. As of yet, though, there’s just over a year to go and no one’s notified Tom of any significant changes or problems.

A close friend was saying that she could relate to the stress I’m going through, but as sad as it may sound, it actually gets easier each time something up there feels the need to get a kick out of teasing me with my survival. Oh, I’m still stressing, but another 4 or 5 layoffs and I just might be a real expert at dealing with this shit.

The bird’s nest I discovered on the porch rafters a while ago gives me a spark of hope, too. I guess it’s an oriental thing where they consider the discovery of a bird’s nest nearby a sign of good luck to come (unless old nests don’t count, since these birds seem to be reusing an old nest). Someone told me that last year when I discovered the nest when it was first created. A little over two months later he had a job. So we’ll see what happens in the next 60-70 days. There’s been lots of deer and jackrabbits out and about too, which makes sense this time of year. It’s no longer cold and rainy, but it’s not hot yet either. Unfortunately, we’re going to have another cold snap where it might even rain. This means we’ll need to use more propane. sighs

As I told some people, it’s hard to really enjoy the excitement of getting my book published with all this other shit going on. It just hasn’t hit me yet that I can no longer say I’m just a homemaker or just a “semi-published” writer. I’m a real author now. For real. I may not make shit for sales, but this “pro” status is definitely gonna take time to sink in.

I told Tammy, Eileen and Sharyn about it, and was surprised not to have heard back from Tammy and Eileen. Sharyn told me it wasn’t her that was divorced 4 times. She was actually married to a guy for 15 years. I felt like such an idiot! Obviously, I read the wrong article. She was featured with a few others and I guess I was reading up on the wrong person or something. Anyway, she wished me luck with the book.

Nothing from Larry, Sandy and Jenny still. They not only haven’t viewed my blog, but they haven’t even blocked me. I’m surprised. Then again, maybe they figure that would be giving me a “reaction” they don’t want to give me if they did, same with why the black bitch didn’t block me.

I haven’t even heard from Maliheh lately.

Upon closer inspection of Larry’s page, one of his “interests” is “being with the people I love, with Stephanie.”

Well, Stephanie, who is also on his friend list, is a definite child woman. From the looks of her picture, she can’t be a day over 18.

Tom finally got his own Facebook account, but only for the sake of getting free stuff. He set everything to ‘friends only’ so no one contacts him.

As for the troll, it took a day off today from viewing my blog, but her friend/ ex-friend in Savannah, GA just checked in. Molly spent the day bitching about Roman instead, a local guy who’s been trying to get her to leave him alone.

I’m sick of the constant change on all the sites I use! As soon as I get used to doing something a particular way they run and change it. I hate change! Changing background images is one thing, but the way they change things around and make me have to hunt for where the features are now located and all that shit really annoys the hell outa me.

MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2011 My book is almost published and ready for sale. For some strange reason, they publish it in stages over about 72 hours. So the book’s there, but there’s no pricing info yet. I selected the lowest price of $2.99 since it’s my first novel and I’m still a nobody. Once Amazon takes its cut I’ll pocket $2.00.

I will have to have Nane, Adonis and Mitch see if it’s available for purchase in their countries. It should be, but I don’t know for sure.

Nane sent me pretty pink flowers on Facebook and congratulated me after I told her about it on her wall and sent her flowers as well. She asked if it could be translated into German, but I don’t know that there’s any kind of automatic translator.

We’re also going to have to edit out Tom’s name. Even though we listed him as the illustrator, the cover page says it’s by both of us which leads one to think we both wrote the book itself. It says I’m the author and he’s the illustrator only when you click on the book.

Also, the cover doesn’t make for the greatest thumbnail. We should’ve used the same bright red for my name since you can barely see it. There should’ve been more contrast between the trees and sky, but hey, it’s our first time doing this.

It pisses me off that I have to be careful where I post my book link, but thanks to Molly I can’t just drop it anywhere and everywhere. I’m sure she’ll still find it. As dumb as she may be overall, she’s proven to have an amazing talent for finding the people she stalks, among other things.

Then again, fuck it. I’m going to post it where I want. That would be letting her control me by not posting it where I wanted. Hopefully, she won’t use it as a weapon to harass me.

I said she was probably harmless, but the more I read the craziness in her blog, the more I wonder if perhaps she’s really a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. And how does she know I’ve been reading it? Does she have a tracker there or something? I’m just wondering because, in one of her “letters” to Alison, she asks why her friends read her blog. But yeah, it’s so crazy that it’s almost funny. She groups us all together and includes me in her list of “former friends,” and goes back and forth like crazy on her feelings and actions. I’ve never seen anyone swing up and down and be so damn contradicting like she is. One minute she just loves Alison, the next she’s badmouthing her. She also swings back and forth between admitting she “spies” on us because she’s bored and lonely, and then insisting she’ll never bother again because online friends are a “waste of time.” She talks about panic attacks and having all kinds of anger and other negative emotions. It’s hard to believe she held a job for 7 years as she also claims as an usher in a movie theater. Wonder why she quit. She claims she was raped over a year ago. Maybe this is part of what’s driving her batty, along with this guy in her town she wants a relationship with that wants nothing to do with her.

It doesn’t look like Tom’s going to get that job after all. I’m not surprised either. I knew it was too good to be true and that nothing lets us suffer for that short of a time. It’ll probably be months before he gets something. Meanwhile, we’ll just have to play the Unemployment game again, sit back and endure the rough ride ahead, and watch the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months.

Thanks, God. Just thanks.

The dreams I had pretty much told me we weren’t going to get any good news today, though they weren’t as scary as that dream where the riot was closing in on me.

In one dream the phone rang, I answered, and a woman said something about Tom’s applying for a job at a warehouse. I repeated the message to Tom who was nearby and he said, “Oh yeah, a warehouse,” and took the phone from me. A second later a black woman was there who supposedly had something to do with the job, but then she disappeared. I asked Tom what the caller and the visitor wanted and he said he didn’t know and that he wasn’t sure.

The bad dream, though it had nothing to do with work and money, took place in some house. It looked like a real house anyway and was much bigger. I seemed to be working on some major project, be it cleaning, decorating, packing or unpacking. I had stuff scattered everywhere and music blasting. At one point I looked behind me to find the screen door to a slider open and thought it a bit odd. I guess Tom shouldn’t have been home at that time. I stepped over to the slider. The sun was setting and I could see the silhouette of what I first thought was Tom in a fairly good-sized backyard. But then the person started running away right as I heard loud banging from inside the house. I woke up trying to decide whether or not to chase the person who was running or deal with whoever was in the house.

A woman did come down here today, though she wasn’t black, and it definitely had nothing to do with any job. She just wanted directions. It’s the first time anyone’s ever come down to ask us, too.

SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 2011 This is it, folks! My book has been accepted for publication and so now begins the exciting countdown to when it’s actually available for sale! It will be available in e-book form only. Not paperback. You don’t need a Kindle to read it, but you will need a Kindle reader which is a free application you can download that will enable you to read it in Word. I will post the link as soon as I get it, probably tomorrow. Buy it and I’ll be your friend for life. :)

Andy’s all excited about it, but I don’t think he realized at first that it’s not going to be available in print. The only way to really get it “in print” would be to print out a copy from Word. I explained to him about the program he can download to read it without a Kindle.

Now if only – if only – Tom could get his own good news tomorrow! I’d give up this whole book thing for him to get the job he wants! It would be such awesome money and I know he would love the convenience the closeness would bring instead of having to drive 45 minutes each way to Grass Valley. We’re still pretty hopeful and I know my good mood will help. I also know now’s a good time to enter sweeps with the way my mood tends to “influence” things in a more extreme way.

As soon as I have the link to my book I’ll start spreading the word and hope others will too! I never would’ve thought I’d get a book published, regardless of the method. All I’ve gotten published before that I’ve actually been paid for was super short stories, articles and reviews. I guess it’s no longer true to say I’m a “semi-published” author, LOL.

Still no poem reviews, not that it matters much, but I got a nice comment on my current book. They said they were glad I posted more of the story and are looking forward to the ending. If life will soon be returning to normal for us, I can get on with that soon enough.

Had someone told me I’d write a story with Maliheh as one of the lead characters, even if I’d change her name, and that she’d know about it and suggest publishing it, I’d have laughed my ass off so hard! ROTFL! I just hope no assholes like Molly post nasty comments in the review section.

Speaking of assholes, no blog views from Jenny, Larry or Sandy. I’m kind of surprised too, though I realize there’s a chance they may not have picked up my message yet. None of them have blocked me yet, so who knows?

Leaving a comment on Alison’s Thoughts blog through Facebook created a new account for me. rolls eyes So I had to run and block Molly since Molly already found Alison’s new account, and when she checks her blog/comments, she’ll find mine. I’m not going to go back to blogging there in the near future.

SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2011 The weekend has been going agonizingly slow as we wait and hope that Monday brings a turnaround in our luck – him with a job and me with my book which we submitted for publication a few hours ago. We changed the synopsis but didn’t bother with dedications. Tom did a great job with the cover. I listed him as my illustrator under contributions.

No bad vibes or dreams lately. The two-story house dreams are back, but I don’t think they mean anything. As long as I don’t have any nightmares! Marie and whatever his name was are renting their two-story house down in “Cluster Park,” as I call it. They’re the people who asked if we had a dog on our way out one day and said some dog was keeping them up all night. Let me guess – they’re leaving because they couldn’t get the owners to take responsibility for shutting it up and of course they won’t tell any prospective renters about it, right? Either way, I always did say it was a lousy location down there by the main road where there’s a cluster of houses. That’s why I call it Cluster Park. It kind of defeats the purpose of moving out to the country if you’re just going to have neighbors on top of you. You might as well stay in the city if you’re not going to get any breathing space around you. I guess sometimes you can’t escape everything by running to the country. Barking is just as bad here as it is in the city.

They called off the rain we were supposed to have tomorrow and it wasn’t nearly as warm today. We haven’t needed heat all day but we couldn’t open windows either. Tiny yellow and purple wildflowers are all over the land now and it looks really cool, but the Cali oaks are late this year in budding new leaves. During our first two summers here we could leave the windows open all the time starting in mid-June. Last year it was a week after mid-June. Hopefully, it won’t be even later this year.

My Nane story has had hundreds of reads on Booksie yet hasn’t received one single comment yet. No one’s commented on my poems either.

Still sweeping away like crazy too, but don’t know if it’ll be like old times, so to speak. Not with all the people entering these days and there being fewer sweeps to enter. One sweep listed their odds. My chance of winning a lousy duffle bag these days is 1 in 75,000. Yet I was chosen out of 7,000 other entries for the cruise in 2006. If I don’t get any win notices by the time my 3-month subscription expires, I’ll give up sweeping once again. Sure hope I won’t have to, though!

Found Jenny C and her one friend on Facebook, LOL. I sent a message saying: You still fucking my brother?

That ought to shock her, LOL. I don’t expect or want a reply from the selfish, conceited bitch. Can’t say she hasn’t aged well, though, cuz she has. She’s got her hair dyed blondish now and she’s still slim. Guess she lives in the same house in West Springfield (both her parents are no doubt dead by now) and she has a cleaning business.

Wowee, I just found Larry and Sandy. Only, not surprisingly, they appear to be divorced since Larry’s coming up as living in Southwick and Sandy’s still in Feeding Hills. I’m not surprised at all. I’m only surprised it didn’t happen 20 years ago. My brother, as he himself admitted, is quite a slut.

Here’s what I wrote about him and Jenny in my blog (but not Sandy), assuming they check it out:

Found an old “friend” from something like 20 years and 3000 miles ago that I looked up online out of curiosity. I don’t care to ever be her friend again as I remember her to be rather selfish and conceited (not that I was or am perfect myself as I can get pretty damn selfish, too) any more than I’d want to be buds with my hypocrite of a brother again despite his great sense of humor (and he’s one of the funniest guys I ever knew), but I do wish her the very best in life. According to the one picture I saw of her, I’d say she’s aged quite well.

Speaking of my brother, OMG he pissed me the fuck off so badly back when I was 21 and again when I was around 32. I was young, dumb, naive and scared of just about everything at 21, but had he lived nearby when he pissed me off as bad as he did in the late 90s, not even his size could’ve saved him had I gone storming over to his place on account of it! How could someone piss me off so bad that could be so damn funny at the same time??? I’ve always wondered about this. Really, that guy could make even the most serious of people laugh their asses off until tragedy struck and he seemed to take it out on just about everyone. And why did he have to screw every single female friend I ever introduced him to? Oh well. Now he’s divorced, single and free by the looks of it, so live it up and play the field, dude! You ain’t getting any younger.

Talk about the ultimate karma, LOL! I wonder if they’ve ever looked me up?

I also found their daughter Jennifer, who looks very beautiful and has studied nursing. I didn’t message her, though.

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2011 Here’s a little freeform-ish poem I wrote earlier today. The words just came to mind and so I jotted them down. Tom and Mitch liked it.

At Seventeen

At seventeen I had high hopes and dreams. But someone tried to murder me at seventeen. I lived for the moment, never worried about the future. The future would take care of itself, I was sure. But then I grew up and stepped into a whole different world. Disappointment, desperation and a loss of hope left my mind in a whirl. All the while there was hardly a dull moment at any point during the ride. Up, down, left, right go the adventures and heartaches of my life. Almost missed out on some things thanks to the person who nearly took my life. Bad news always has me slipping back in time, wanting to end it all. It’s so much easier to skip out on the chaos that sometimes befalls. But things have a way of working out in the end somehow, some way. And so I’m a former singer who was meant to be an author these days. I write and I write as I always have so much to tell. Funny thing too, for my would-be killer was myself.

Later…

The interview went well, though we won’t know anything for sure until Monday. Tom has a way of being overly optimistic, but I don’t have a bad feeling, and they did give him the paperwork and tell him where the company he might work for is located. This is something they don’t normally do unless they’re going to hire you for sure, he said. He may have to take a drug test here in town. These days they just swab your mouth. Sure wish they had that when I was on probation. Having to piss in front of someone for something you didn’t do was a real bitch. I won’t even get to thinking right now about those days of getting off for the things I was actually guilty of and being made to pay for the things I wasn’t guilty of.

Meanwhile, it sucks to have to wait and hope over the weekend, but he feels 80% certain that he’ll get at least one of the positions they need filled. It’s just a matter of whether or not he gets the one he wants most. He’ll take anything, even if it’s minimum wage or part-time or both, but getting over two grand take-home would sure be nice.

And it would get us wondering, once again, if we should move or not. That would be a tough one as both staying and going have their pros and cons. As I told someone the other day, there are two different types of people in this world. There are the smart ones who follow their heads and do what’s safest, then there are the stupid ones (like myself) who follow their hearts and take risks. I still don’t get how I got to be such an adventurer, LOL! Tom said he’d rather be miserable with me than have it all alone and I agree. :) Right now we’re not miserable, and I hope we don’t get there. I hope my bawling my eyes out like I did the Wednesday before last will end up being all for nothing.

Anyway, the company he wants to work for is only open Monday through Thursday, so that’s why we may have to wait till Monday to find out anything. The person who makes the final decision wasn’t there today and the girl was mistaken when she told him he might start today. If he gets the job he’ll work 10-12 hours a day, starting at 4pm.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up even though it’s so hard not to. If he got this job then his being laid off would turn out to be a blessing in disguise, not something that usually happens to us. Usually, when something bad happens it’s to punish us and inflict some kind of pain and suffering upon us. At least that’s how it seems. And our setbacks in life usually aren’t this short either, so that’s why I don’t want to get too ahead of myself on the thought of being able to stop worrying about money again, or being able to call the propane people out to fill us up, or being able to decide if we want to move or not.

Tentatively, we should be able to submit my book to the submissions department tomorrow. Tom’s still working on the cover. In his opinion, it’s not my best work. He says it’s well written, but the story’s about a 7, and the ending is about a 5. He didn’t like my surprise ending which came to me in a dream, LOL, but that’s ok.

[brigittas-writing-nook]

Writing Prompt Exercise: Encountering a Strange Creature

I wrote about my "writing prompt exercise" in my welcome post, and here is another one! Enjoy.

Writing prompt

Your character has always believed magic exists. They just didn’t know how close it really was.

Writing prompt exercise

There’s a creature outside my door. Not a weird animal. A creature. I can barely describe it. Slightly greenish skin covers a body that is about 2-3 feet tall and stocky in build. Brown eyes – not just the irises but the full eyeball! – stare out of a very round head that sits on and almost nonexistent neck. Short legs end in wide feet that move comfortably in the grass. Arms that are too short end in what looks more like pincers than hands – and then, not quite like pincers, either. I sit at my dining room table and stare. I can’t help it. I’ve never seen anything like this before! The creature stops walking – gliding? – across the lawn and turns to look at me. It pauses, tilting its head to one side, looking confused. Apparently it thinks I shouldn’t be able to see it. And I shouldn’t, right? Magic isn’t real, right? I mean, I have always believed magic was real, but a small seed of doubt lay nestled inside me, being fed just enough food to stay alive if not thrive. The creature glared at me. “What are you staring at?” I flinched. The voice came through the closed window. Oh crap! “Um, I’m sorry,” I said, flustered. “I didn’t know you were real.” “Of course I’m real!”

Purpose of this prompt I wrote about why I'm doing this exercise in a separate post. But what purpose does this writing prompt exercise serve? Well, it serves three purposes by: - Keeping me in the practice of writing. - Helping generate story ideas. - Offering you sneak peeks into what I might be working on next. This piece is raw and unedited. I have made no changes from the words I wrote long-hand in my notebook. Why would I do that? Because I want to show y'all that what you write doesn't have to be perfect the first time. Don't let perfect get in the way of getting things done. Listen to GraphicAudio award-winning audiobook entertainment including full cast dramatizations, cinematic music and sound effects

Got any ideas for writing prompts you would like to see me use in a writing prompt exercise? Drop them in the comments. I can always use new ideas. Also, if you want to support me, visit my Patreon or Buy me a Coffee. I like coffee; it keeps me going. Patreon That's all for now. Stay fabulous, y'all! Read the full article

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Video of Furry in Background of Wedding Goes Viral

"This might be an original experience."

As a parent, I can confidently say I would much rather my children grow up to become illegal narcotics dealers than furries.But that's just my opinion, and there are certainly people who find merit in pretending like they're an animal by wearing gigantic mascot suits akin to what you would see at a sports half-time show, just with a heck of a lot less trampoline dunking, and way more second-hand embarrassment grimaces.Article continues below advertisementBut there are a lot of people who said that they were impressed with the way this furry conducted themselves after they became the focal point of a wedding during the vow exchange between bride and groom.In a viral TikTok uploaded by a user on the app who goes by Shadows (@xxshadowslightxx), she documented the eventual discovery that just a stone's throw away from the matrimonial site was a person who was dressed up as an animal and just attempting to live their life as a "therian."Article continues below advertisement"When your bestie is walking down the aisle and you realize...." a text overlay in the video reads as the bride is being walked down the aisle by a man in a suit (presumably her father).Article continues below advertisementNow if you've been to one wedding, you've probably been to them all. So it's only normal while the proceedings are going on that you're going to tend to look around and see what's happening in your immediate surroundings. Which is something that Shadows did and she noticed across a body of water at the site of the ceremony, there was a cow resting on the grass.However, upon closer inspection, they noticed that the cow wasn't exactly a real cow: "That cow on the other side of the lake is in fact not a COW," they wrote in a text overlay of the video.Article continues below advertisementSource: TikTok | @xxshadowlightxxSo what was it? It was actually a person inside of a costume pretending to be a cow, which Shadows explained in another caption plastered on her video: "but a FURRY just hanging out in the field that just happens to be right behind the altar where they're taking photos..."Article continues below advertisementAccording to the TikToker, the furry wasn't even totally committed to their Fursona either, as it looks like they took the opportunity to snap some photos of the wedding instead of pretending to be a cow to free themselves from the trappings of grazing, presumably.In a follow up video posted to the popular social media platform, Shadows delivered a story time further explaining the run-in they had with the furry during the wedding ceremony. The bride in the video was present in the clip as well, while the TikToker explains what went down.Article continues below advertisementSource: TikTok | @xxshadowlightxxShe went on to explain that it was a "backyard wedding" and that there was a pond on the other side of where the reception was supposed to take place. At first, they didn't notice that the furry was a person "until they stood up."Article continues below advertisementIt's at this point in the video the bride chimes in and says that "a lot of people thought it was a cow" due to the fact that they live in Oklahoma and this type of sighting would be normal.In fact, no one thought anything was amiss until the furry in question stood up and people realized that the animal they were seeing was actually a person in a fursuit.Shadows said that because she had a "really good zoom on camera" she was able to see what was going on with the furry in question.Article continues below advertisementSource: TikTok | @xxshadowlightxxShadows said that after zooming in on the person, however, they noticed that the person wasn't cosplaying as a cow, but rather a "kitty cat."And if you were worried about photographer having to edit the furry out of their photos, Shadows and the bride in the video said that this wasn't necessary.Article continues below advertisement"That person didn't 'ruin' the wedding or 'ruin' the view," the bride says into the video, explaining that their presence really wasn't that much of a downer. Plus, she said that the guests present at the wedding ended up getting a "good laugh out of it," and if you're going for emotions you want people to have when they're at your wedding celebration, jovial laughter is pretty high up on the list.Shadows said that she didn't convey to the bride what was going on with the furry situation to the bride until well after the wedding.The bride went on to say that she wanted to clarify that the person inside of the fursuit wasn't a "weird ex from either side" who was pretending to be an animal so they could snoop on the exchange of the matrimonial vows.Article continues below advertisementSource: TikTok | @xxshadowlightxxThe bride added that the furry was pretty much just doing what they were doing and that it all happened to go down on the day of her wedding. From her recounting of the wedding day, it seemed that the furry watching the exchanging of the vows had nothing but the utmost respect for the sanctity of marriage.Article continues below advertisementThat's because the bride said that the person was "bowing" while her and the groom were exchanging vows with one another; at least that's what her wedding guests were telling her.Before the video ended, Shadows called the entire interaction with the furry, "hard to ignore."Several TikTokers mentioned that the furry was probably a "therian" who didn't know that they were photobombing someone's special day. But there were also those who thought the person was doing it on purpose.Article continues below advertisementSource: TikTok | @xxshadowlightxxWhat do you think? Was the furry trying to garner some attention for themselves and ruin someone's special day? Or was this just a coincidence and whoever was there just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? Source link Read the full article

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As always, this was written on the fly without research or referencing anything else. So if I say something incorrect it's because I was forcing myself to work from memory and I don't want to look anything up as I write each part. If I research or discover something in between articles I'll add that info to the next article. This one likely contains misspellings, typos, poor wording, etc as again, I wanted to write on the fly conversationally and not sit and workshop it into a prose poem. I added a few things after I wrote the article but it will be clear what those parts are. In future articles I won't explain all this, just wanted to make it clear again as I get into the monster writeups. PLEASE comment corrections, thoughts, insights, opinions, and insults. I'm lonely!

All the World’s Monsters: Readthrough Part II: Air Squid to Archer Bush(the complete “a”s!)

Finally! The Monsters!

That’s what I’m talkin’ about. All the text for the monsters is IN CAPS, SO THE ENTIRE ENTRY READS LIKE THIS. WHEN QUOTING I WILL NOT USUALLY DO THIS BECAUSE IT WOULD GET ANNOYING, DON’T YOU THINK? So if I quote “blah blah blah” it actually reads “BLAH BLAH BLAH.”

Air Squid

Starting off with a bang. I said before this is the kind of thing I love. Flying squids rule! So, let’s dive in(fly in?). 

Each chapter begins with a drop cap, which is nice. The little detail of the fighter dropping their sword is cool. I dig it.

This is a Dave Hargrave monster, and that’s one of the names we’ll see a lot. It’s an intelligent monster, with IQ range 2d6, i.e., they have Intelligence scores of between 2-12, so, from almost animal intelligence to quite bright. Chaotic, neutral is its alignment, with the comma between the two just like that. Remember, in Holmes Basic, which this was following, PCs couldn’t even choose to be chaotic neutral - it was true neutral or nothing. I’m not sure if this applied to monsters - I’ll have to look through the Holmes list again. It may even be reflecting a single axis alignment system and noting that the creature could be either chaotic or neutral. Hmm. (I’ll know by the next article, I’m trying to more or less honestly write this on the fly!) (Note: I figure it out with one of the following monsters.) I won’t go into all this with future monsters, just a note for the first one.

Hit dice from 6-12d8+1, with size ranging from 35 to 75’ long. (I did read ahead through the A’s, and I thank Hargrave for clueing us in; you’ll find a frustrating number of monsters whose size is “shrug.”) Quite a spread, but not really illogical. It seems to be one of those things that early writers did that ended up not being the standard: giving many monsters a fairly wide HD range, where most monsters in official publications didn’t have any HD range at all. 

AC of 7 seems okay, interesting that it doesn’t scale off of HD in any way, but not incorrect necessarily. Fly 12 seems reasonable. Dexterity range 1d6+6 is okay I suppose? 

The air squid is found outdoors, in water(so presumably it swims too even though only flight speed is listed?), and of course, “air.” These don’t get as specific as other D&D writeups that would include mountains, swamps, forests, hills, and not just “in the air.” I don’t believe any monster stats had an entry or “slot” like that previously, like a part of the stat block or writeup that says “environment” or “terrain” or “found in.” I think it wouldn’t be til 2nd Edition that that became a standard part of the stat block. That info still existed by way of the wandering monster tables. For example, a monster is found on the tables for hills and mountains then obviously those are the two places in which they can be found. Also, the “interpreting the monster entries” section lists cities, mountains, and so on, so they were aware of the idea. Granted, the editors came up with the explanations for the environment types, or as they phrase it, “found in,” and apparently didn’t enforce much consistency. The air squid’s lair is “on mountain peaks.” Sure, why not?

15% chance in lair, only 1 ever encountered, and they always have a type E treasure. 

Here’s where it gets really crazy: this thing has 13 attacks, and the size/HD doesn’t matter: the tentacles cause 1d8 points of damage in “constriction,” though there are no rules for this. Presumably the monster just grabs, crushes, and releases. Would it come to ground to do this? Just hover around the ground grabbing and crushing, not grabbing, holding, and flying up high to release? Meh. Plus a d10 damage with its beak. The damage not scaling isn’t really a big deal, but the attacks seem a bit wonky. 

Why no ink spit? I’d find that a lot more interesting than a ton of attacks, personally. Being described as “sky-blue,” one would also expect a surprise bonus, at least situationally. Oh, and if you wondered how it flies? Hargrave didn’t just go with “Uh, magic, like, probably an insane wizard’s experiment or something, you know?” but instead attempted to give something of a naturalistic explanation with the squids being “helium-filled.” I can’t help but imagine popping a fully-inflated air squid with a well-placed arrow or spear. It could become like a mini game, with characters trying to pop air squids as they fly by. An attraction at the most incredible carnival ever to exist. Sure only 1 is supposed to appear but let’s be serious with our lack of seriousness. 

Not much else to say about the air squid really. It’s pretty cool. With a generation of hindsight it could use some workshopping in my opinion but these were pioneers, dangit. The next entries won’t focus on some of the topics I focused on here because now they’re been addressed. 

Airfang

The second monster in the book, and the first “..wtf?” Like, what actually is this thing? It’s apparently “tiny,” with an HD range of 8-12. What is “tiny” in this context, since official “size categories” such as tiny, small, medium, and large were not to come for a while(I don’t think it was until 2nd Edition AD&D)? Is tiny how I would interpret “tiny” if someone told me something was “tiny?” Itty-bitty? Probably not. A foot? Who knows how tiny this up to 12 HD monster with 2 attacks scoring 3d4 damage each could be? 

It’s a “metallic scaled creature” with an armor class of 2+4(?) that is “mostly mouth, tentacle, and wings.” Huh. It reminds me of some of the random little enemies in old NES games that swarmed you and you had trouble even figuring out what the heck they even were. Of course, most of those didn’t eviscerate a starting character in a round or two by dealing massive amounts of tiny damage from its tiny tentacles and tiny mouth. 

Is the 2+4 representing separate areas for the tentacles and body(because a “tiny” creature should definitely have different AC ratings by location, a mechanic that was kind of trash even on the few official monsters that used it). Or maybe they meant 2-4, which should more properly be 4-2, reflecting that the AC improves as it increases in HD? 

Once again, we’re given very specific locations that these abominations can be found, such as “outdoors.” Well that sure narrows it down, thanks. Like the air squid, it’s also found in “water” and “air.” So, basically, literally everywhere. And why in Discordia’s name is it found in water anyway? It has scales and tentacles I guess? It’s faster than the air squid, with a flight speed of 24! I forgot to mention, it also “latches on with its mouth and then bites repeatedly,” so I’m not sure if this implies that it only has to attack once with its mouth and then it auto-hits, or if this is just a descriptive visual, but either way, it’s pretty lame. 

You encounter 3d6 of these, too. 3d6 tiny, indescribable monsters that inexplicably have a mountain of HP and have the potential for enormous damage, swarming a PC. Just imagine using these and explaining how their appearance is totally silly, they’re too tiny and fast to potentially make out, one of them took an entire round of hits from the entire party and didn’t die, three of them reduced one party member to bones in a round, somehow, and potentially, some of them are automatically inflicting damage after “latching on.” If your players don’t quit on you, you’ve either built up a huge Loyalty rating with them, or they’re just very, very lacking in discrimination. Or perhaps you knew they’d enjoy a good, absurdist comedy encounter.

Its alignment is “hungry,” hahahahahahahaha! :| If this was a one-off joke, or it was a monster that was otherwise good, it’d be okay. Sadly to the first one, having peeked ahead, this isn’t the first time this “gag” is done in the “a” monsters alone. 

To the second one: this monster sucks. I have trouble believing that out of 5 billion entries, this boring, overpowered, uncreative nonsense was one of the best. 

Mystery solved; turns out, this is an airfang

Ant Man

An obvious idea that would be done a number of times - and I’m not saying that as insult, at all - this version is based on creatures from a book, “Kavin’s World,” which could also be the name of a sci-fi sitcom. 

These also have a very wide HD range, from 1-14. Not having read the books or feeling that it would be worthwhile to research it, I can’t say how widely the ant men in it varied in strength. Their AC does not vary, at a very high 2. So even the single hit die ones are as tough as plate mail. They only move 6, so, fairly slow(I’ve seen some relatively quick ants). Their intelligence skews towards good - 2d6+6, varying from low to genius and averaging at high(13). Dex is average(3d6). Seems to me an ant’s might be a bit low, comparatively, but hey.

Neutral alignment is fair. Again, I have no idea how these things are in the book. They appear a lot of places, but no place unreasonable for an ant, much less an alien ant or whatever these things are. 200d20 of these appear in a lair, which even by ant standards seems pretty high, but book yadda yadda. Wandering or in lair they have the same amount of treasure, and a 100% chance of it, at that. Seems a bit odd but whatever.

Boy do they get a lot of attacks. 2 “hands”(quotes theirs), 2 stings, and a bite, scoring up to 44 points of damage plus poison from the stings which cause 4d6 on a failed save for another potential 24 damage… yikes. Keep in mind, this describes the 1 HD version and the 14 HD one. A 1 HD monster that can potentially cause 68 HP damage in one round. The bite says “HIT -2” but I’m not sure what that means. It’s a -2 to the attack roll with the bite? Or the damage is 2d6-2? I’m guessing the former, but I’m not positive.

Ant men are big-ass ant people with four arms, two which end in stingers, because sure! and two end in “hands” that score damage as a two-handed sword. They’re also immune to “mental spells,” which I assume means charm, fear, illusory magic, probably hold, and so on. They believe that other sentient species, including those with demonstrably similar intelligence, are cattle, which is not a very true neutral position to hold. Sounds neutral evil or lawful evil at best. “True Neutral. I believe that there should be a balance in all things. Nature is balanced, law and chaos must be balanced, good and evil must be balanced. And everyone not of our race are animals to be used as slaves and food.” Not seeing it.

I don’t know what to make of this one, but it’s not the strangest one I’ve seen so far, so it’s okay.

Ant, Giant

An expected monster, a classic. Is this the first time a giant ant was statted in print? I don’t know, but IT HAS FROM 1-27 HD. But it also doesn’t give an actual size range, so I imagine this is so you can stat from chihuahua sized giant ants to “Them!” giant ants up to true kaiju giant ants. This is also the first one we’re seeing that has an AC that scales to its HD, in this case “its armor class is 3 plus one third of the number of its hit dice, fractions are rounded up giving a range of 2 to -6.” Chuck Cady did well, I like it, and obviously pleasing me is everyone’s top priority. 

Its damage also scales, +1 per HD, which gets pretty high - arguably, unreasonably so - but on the other hand, one of my biggest gripes at high levels is how bad the damage often is by high level monsters(the tarrasque doesn’t do jack in damage to any party high enough in level enough to fight it), so I’m just a hypocrite. Wait. I just realized. I thought it was +1 per HD + acid, and it’s actually +1d3 per HD in acid damage. So a 27 HD giant ant doesn’t get +27 damage, it gets +27d3 damage. In acid. 

So its bite doesn’t scale, with a 1 HD rat-dog or a 27 HD kaiju ant scoring the damage of a short sword… plus or minus a few dozen d3 in acid. It seems really weird to me that the acid scales that greatly and not the bite, but… I’m kinda okay with it?

Do ants use acid? Hmm. Well, slugs don’t, so. At least there are only 3d20 of them in their lair and not 2,000+ of them like ant men.

“Alignment: any, hungry.” C’mon, Chuck. I’m introducing good-aligned giant ants and blaming you. The giant ant appears in all the same places as the Ant Man, even though this has a different creator. Ants can be found about anywhere, though…

I would be remiss not to mention the incredible description: “The generic description of the giant ants.” (In all caps of course.) Now we’ll never know exactly what an ant looks like. “I once lay awake long into the night, wondering just what kind of creature was the noble ant.”

Ape, Desert

Back to Hargrave with another pretty decent monster. Desert apes are apes with a literal third eye with accompanying hypnotic powers. I think I’d have liked to see a full-scale psionic ape, but this is cool. Movement 10 is a bit unusual for the way this game scales movement, but I don’t have a problem with it. HD spread on this one is only 4-8, reasonable for rank and file apes up to the leader. Intelligence averages low at 2d6, with dexterity being high, equaling that of the very agile giant ant and ant man(for whatever reason). AC 4 is.. all right I guess.  

Chaotic neutral is okay, though I dislike the tendency to lean towards that alignment that seems to have existed since the beginning. I’d like to see hypnotic apes that are more lawful, allowing them to better take advantage of their incredible power, but honestly this isn’t a complaint. Despite how it may sound, very few of my comments are “complaints,” merely observations, though I may make them in a sardonic way in a lame attempt at humor. The truth is I highly respect the effort and passion that is put into these kinds of works, even if I joke otherwise. 

Found in “dungeons, open, deserts.” Can we just skip listing “dungeons?” Literally every smegging monster to ever exist is found in dungeons. Pterodactyls are found in dungeons. I’m sure treants are found in dungeons. Like, literally every monster is indexed to a specific “dungeon level” for the purpose of putting them in dungeons. There’s really no need to state “dungeons” on every single monster. Also, what is “open?” Is that the same as “outside?” Or do they mean non-forested, non-mountainous regions, like plains or something? The opening explanation for the book doesn’t list “open,” so it’s another case of monster creators doing what they want and the editors not enforcing any kind of continuity. It’s not a big deal, but I have to comment on it in a readthrough.

Two attacks, one being a rather heavy club(scoring 1d8 damage) and the other, hypnosis, which is listed as an attack with no real indication of what “hypnosis” actually entails, though it lists it as a “visual” attack, I guess because it’s using one of its eyes, so perhaps it means a gaze attack? Not sure if “gaze attack” was a term cemented into D&D/AD&D yet. Either way, is hypnosis the same as charm, or…? 

These apes cannot speak a normal language, though you might imagine they could, being of low human intelligence and having hypnosis and stuff. Alas, ape biology simply doesn’t allow for the forming of words like we use, and there’s no such thing as evolution or crazy magical effects to cause this to happen, and so we’re stuck with psionic apes only communicable with through magic such as speak with animals, and we’re told these chaotic neutral scoundrels will lie 30% of the time. 

Ape, Snake

This is one of those monsters that when you look at the name you just try to guess what it might be. An ape made of snakes? An ape with snake arms? An ape filled with snakes? This is another Hargrave monster,  with the most reasonable HD spread so far, 5-7. these small spreads are okay(not saying the larger ones can’t be, they’re just uncharacteristic of what we tend to see in official writeups). Technically they exist in AD&D for various humanoid monsters as well, they’re simply expressed differently: a stronger kobold is statted as a goblin, an even stronger one as an orc, etc. By the time you get to hobgoblins, their strongest members are statted as ogres. So their HD could have been shown as “1+1 - 4,” and it would have been a greater spread than the snake ape. 

Let’s skip to the description to see what this thing actually is. One line leaps out and suckers my face with tentacles: “Also known as an octorilla.” Dave, buddy, you could have called this an octorilla and you went with snake ape instead? Octorilla is much cooler, and gives an almost immediate idea of what it might be like. Was it so it would go into the book earlier, like why people give their businesses names beginning with “a” so they get in the front of the category in the yellow pages(back when people used yellow pages)? Tentacles aren’t snakes, Dave. “But maybe people back then wouldn’t have known!” People “back then” wouldn’t have known half the stuff we put in these games, let’s move on.

So, this thing was “spawned in the vats of chaos,” which was basically the precursor to “probably the result of a mad wizard’s experiment.” Both of these are the equivalent of Marvel Comics’ “they’re a mutant.” They are what they are and we don’t have time to come up with origins and explanations, dammit. (Not even kidding - mutants were created because Stan Lee was too lazy to continue to come up with origins for characters so he basically said “what if a mad wizard(God) did it?” I’ll wait for angry responses from Stan Lee fans “correcting” me about something I couldn’t actually care less about.)

AC actually has a range, from 6-7, or as I observed previously, should probably be listed as 7-6(I won’t comment on this in the future). Move 8 seems okay I suppose for an octorilla. Swim 6, so, it’s better running around on land than swimming. Intelligence very low, but not quite animal, averaging 5, with a high dexterity averaging 16! Why exactly? 

Alignment “chaotic,” so I suppose they are going with the single description alignments. Found in dungeons and “open,” again, among other places, specifically woods and water, which makes enough sense.  

This is another with way too many attacks. I really miss OD&D with 1 attack per character or monster regardless of how many arms it has or whatever. Two of its three attack types have scaling damage, and it’s high damage. It gets 4 attacks with its arms, which I guess is a punch or slam of some type, beginning at the same damage as a two-handed sword. The largest cause double this damage. Its beak begins at 1d8 and can also double for the largest ones. It also gets four “constrictions,” which score double its “regular damage,” so, 2d10 for the smallest and 4d1 for the largest? You know that’s overkill. 7 HD giants don’t do that kind of damage in a single attack(though they should). The description tells us that if a sucker-lined arm hits twice in a row or two arms hit in one melee turn(which was probably still 1 round in Holmes and not 10?) constriction takes place and continues until either party is dead. This is when I’m noticing it actually says “1-4 constrictions,” so maybe it only gets the arm attacks unless the previous conditions are met? It’s kind of confusing, and generally, such conditional attacks aren’t listed among the regular attacks like that, but this was an early time. It would certainly make the monster more reasonable if that’s the case. It also says that there’s only a need to make an attack roll for constriction “each turn” if someone is wearing plate mail. That tells me they do mean rounds, but what is the roll for? If they’re saying if an arm hits twice in a row or two hit in a round, the constriction is automatic, then there was already an attack roll made - two of them. Are they saying that constriction isn’t automatic if someone is wearing plate mail? I don’t get this at all.

Aside from some confusing aspects, including what this abomination actually looks like(sure, gorilla and octopus, complete with octopus beak - I still have no idea what that would look like), it’s a neat monster. I like it.

After completing Part II of this readthrough, I looked up “octorilla,” and found that such a monster was published in “the Arduin Grimoire II,” by Mr. Hargrave here. Perhaps Chaosium appealed to Hargrave to change the name because the book was lacking in “a” monsters, or he only really finally decided on “octorilla” between AtWM and tAGII, but I doubt it. Also remember that the introduction expressly stated that no “Arduin Grimoire” monsters are found here, and the second volume of tAG hadn’t been released yet, so this was probably a precursor to the later Arduin “octorilla.” You can see an OSE writeup and the original monster writeup here, complete with pictures(the modern version, not by Hargrave, skips the beak!).

Arceel

It would be understandable to think this was a made-up nonsense word by emphasizing the pronunciation incorrectly, like “ar-keel” or even “ar-seal,” but it is “arc eel,” as in electric eel. It’s man sized, and 10 HD! Sheesh! 

The AC is 2+6, the same thing its creator, Steve Henderson, did with his last entry, the nonsensical Airfang. “Its AC is high due to its rubbery skin.” Thanks for the important info, why does its Dex average high though? Also, it’s “repulsive,” lest you think it was adorable. 

It has low human intelligence, but never lairs nor has treasure(I guess it’s the lack of hands?). Chaotic in alignment, it only lives in swamps - not “outdoors” or in dungeons - and its swim rate is abysmal, maybe to allow PCs to escape when they realize this thing is an inexplicable bucket of HP that does 4d6 lightning damage. It’s described as a “lightning bolt,” but clarifies in the description that it “must touch its victim.” I’m not sure if “must touch” simply indicates that an attack roll must be made as opposed to it being an area of effect power, or if it also means that someone touching it takes damage. 

These eels are a lot cooler, put them in your game instead

I wish it flew like the air squid. Water-based monsters get so little use, comparatively, in my opinion(though this could be a flaw in execution, i.e., people need to find ways to use them more). And the HD seems pretty high, really. I know it’s a nitpick, but I don’t care for the cutesy name either. Why not just call it “giant electric eel?” That’s what it is, man. It doesn’t even have acid or cold breath given to it by a mad wizard, or that it gained in the vats of Chaos, so it’s just a big-ass electric eel. 

Archer Bush

This is one we’ll see other places, such as Mystara. I suppose it’s one of those natural or obvious ideas that multiple people come up with, as mentioned before. It’s mentioned as being taken from the book “Symbiotica,” so it’s just as possible that whoever created it for Mystara was inspired by the same book.

It has no intelligence, but usually has treasure; which makes sense as it’s described as being a “guardian” creature, planted almost invariably for such a purpose. 

No alignment is given, not even a joke one like “alignment: wood.” That’s not funny, but neither is “hungry.” Speaking of which, it’s found in “open,” as well as woods. So I guess “open” must mean literally any outdoor area at all aside from cities, which are listed as their own environment, and ruins, which are actually considered part of the “cities” category for some reason. Which means technically, nobody ever plants these in the ruins in which they lair, nor do wealthy lunatics plant them around their yard for security. I’m sure the creator didn’t intend to make their use that narrow, I’m being pedantic, or something similar to it. I don’t think it actually needs an alignment, and sometimes I think systems overstat things that don’t need them. (DC Heroes was the worst for that, statting things like coins - and by the rules, the weakest human can snap one in half.)

One of the most reasonable HD attributions so far, and it doesn’t even have a spread! The AC is pretty low for something that could logically be argued to be a bit higher. Its dexterity is 12, so it’s going to act in melee a little faster than an average person; too bad it doesn’t get melee attacks, and it isn’t high enough to give it a bonus to its ranged attack, and monsters don’t really work like that anyway. It attacks with the “probability” of “a light bow fired by an eighth level fighter of average dexterity.” I don’t put “probability” in quotes to mock it, but to highlight a specific way that certain rules were often expressed early on that you didn’t see so much later. If you read the “AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide” - and I‘m going to write a short article in the future on why you should, regardless of what RPG you run, and what parts are universally useful and often overlooked - Gygax goes into dice probabilities, and describes the potential universality of die rolls and how one can be exchanged for another. I talked about this a bit in the previous part. Looking at chances as probabilities, converting them to percentages, can be very useful. I also point this out to question why “light bow” is mentioned. One could argue it’s to reflect the range or damage or something, but it expressly states that it factors into its hit probability somehow. 

It certainly doesn’t factor into its damage, which is insane: it fires 50-100 needles, each of which score 1 HP damage, so we’re talking 50-100 HP of damage potential per round from one bush alone and they average 21 appearing at a time. And that’s before poison, which is save or die, meaning an average of 1,575 possible save or die attacks PER ROUND. That assumes all 21 are within range, but still.

Well, we’re done the “a”s, and I could use a breather after that last one. K. Jones, I’ll be watching you. 

Next time we sail into the “b”s, with the Bagda and Fallowman, and, oh I don’t know, tentatively end with the writeups of beetles. See you then!

[nakamuso]

Censorman Part II" - Memories of the Collaboration Cafe

I do not think. My colleague said. The second part of "Censorman" has finally begun. The second episode is being delivered this week. Speaking of "Censorman," this article I wrote for Da Vinci Web a long time ago was ranked in the list for quite a long time.

It is serialized in "JUMP! What is it about Denji's "heroic" character in "Chainsaw Man"?

I wondered why so many people read this article, even though it did not delve deeply into the work in particular and only touched on the character of Denji. I guess fans were looking for articles on the Internet anyway.

But reading it now, I was surprised at how short the article was. I should have written longer. I looked up the date it was first distributed and found it was October 2019, three years ago, which is more recent than I thought. The serialization ran from January 2019 to February 2021, so once again, it was over really quickly. But to successfully wrap up that first part in just two years, Mr. Fujimoto is truly a genius.

Now, the long-awaited second part, I don't need to tell you now that it is already stable and interesting. At the time of the preview, I was wondering if the main character was going to be changed.　And a girl, or why is Denji-kun not going to appear in the show?

As of episode 2, Denji-kun has not appeared yet, but I would like to thank him for bringing out Yoshida instead. He used a large panel to make an appearance like in a shoujo manga, but it is interesting that he could have died next week.

I believe that he won't leave at such a high speed, but…I believe it. I also believe that Captain Kishibe will be alive and will make a reappearance.

The heroine? Mitaka-chan, the heroine, is also good, overflowing with a sense of being in the shadows. Not only in Chainsaw Man, but in the manga drawn by Fujimoto-sensei, there are basically only shady characters. He probably doesn't like or dislike wayward characters. Denji-kun was a relatively cheerful character, but he is a child, so his image is different from that of Way. If Mitaka-chan were to board the Thousand Sunny, I can imagine him getting off the ship after a few minutes without fitting in. Come to think of it, there hasn't been a single decent male character, or even a single decent female character, in the show. I dare to say it. They have not appeared. It is good to feel the shape of the author's soul in that area.

A colleague of mine had this to say about the molding of the female characters.

When he was a student, Fujimoto-sensei must have thought… that ordinary high school girls… were having sex with their teachers….

I don't believe that Fujimoto Sensei thinks that way. My colleague told me. I wonder if Kokeppi is no longer available. I wonder if he has died. Poor thing… I am looking forward to the continuation.

Animate's collaboration cafe By the way, Censorman has held several offline events so far.

Like the Censorman Cafe and the original art exhibition. I have been to all of them, but the most memorable one is the collaboration café with Animate, which took place in March 2021. Because of the Corona disaster, it was in doubt what would happen until just before the event, but they managed to hold the event.

However, since the world was in such a state, it was not allowed to stay for a long time in a small restaurant.

So eating and drinking in the restaurant was prohibited. Take-out only. After ordering from the menu at the counter, you take your food or drink and go outside. However, there is no terrace seating available, so you will have to either eat standing around or look around for a place to sit. My friend and I wandered around Ikebukuro at night with drinks in our hands. Looking closely, we could see people wandering around in the same way. Everyone is looking for a place to sit.

Eventually, we found a place a few minutes walk away, a park?　We sat and ate on a step in the bushes in a sort of place. Here is what I ordered at that time.

The name is Power! My name is Power!" Blood devil soda with Meowko (650 yen)

Pochita Man (750 yen)

The taste does not change even if you eat it in the dark. It tasted exactly the same as the total price of 1,400 yen. It is not expensive at all. Eat it with that in mind. If there is another collaboration cafe, I would love to go there.

I am sure I will be able to stay inside the restaurant this time. I believe it.

[catboii]

← Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 → Full Thread

[Excerpt taken from Agent 23's personal diary]

[Day ####]

Oh wow. I’ve missed a few days here. A lot has been happening at home and I had to take a few days off to focus on non work things. 

My dog Macy had a stomach ulcer, but the Vet gave me some medication for her and wrote up a new diet to put her on, which will work better with my work schedule. Now she has a special dry food left out all the time, which is measured out on scales, and she gets wet food before I leave for work, and when I get home, even on the days I’m not working, just a better routine to back up the better food. I was always feeding her just whenever when I had a day off. It sounds a little anal, and the food is more expensive, but I’d do anything for her. I can’t imagine waking up one morning and her not being there laying at the foot of my bed, awake but patiently waiting for me to get up, to go make coffee, and have breakfast together. 

She’s seemed fine since the medication, and I think the better schedule is good for her. It’s only been a few days but she’s already getting used to the new times. And the food seems to make her alot less gassy than the old cheap food I used to get her. 

I had started to fear the worst, but I was trying to keep it out of my work life. I think I was focusing so much on work, that I didn’t give my home life enough thought. Although maybe I was subconsciously trying to keep it out of my mind because I didn’t want to think about it. 

But enough about that, this is supposed to be my WORK journal. 

Even though I don’t HAVE a home journal, I don’t have time to sit around and write at home, and I have other more interesting things to do if I even did. I just write this in my downtime at work, once I’ve finished up all my tasks for the day. They still pay me for being here, so technically I get paid for writing this! This is the best job ever. 

… There I go again.

Back at work, I checked with my Overseer if anyone had taken over my place with that crow looking creature, but no one had! At first I felt bad, because that means it’s been left alone all this time, but part of me was kind of happy? Because that means that I’m still the only person it’s been talking to.

… That’s a weird statement huh. ‘Its been talking to’, it’s not talking to me! I’m just talking to it. Although it feels like we’re kind of communicating? In a way. 

I went back today and it turned slowly to the sound of the intercom, like it did the first time I spoke to it, but then when I said who I was, it seemed to perk up. It sat there for a bit, and when I started telling it I went to see the vet and that my dog was going to be alright, it stepped forward and sat facing the door. I told it that she’d started seeming like her old self again, and it sort of… fluffed up. It almost looked… happy? 

I don’t know…

[Day ####]

Sometimes the Anomaly reacts a lot, sometimes not much at all, but it still always turns and seems interested in the greeting speech. It seems to like hearing me talk about animals. I only had my dog to talk about because I don’t get out much, but I got permission from the Overseer to bring in a book about wildlife from the foundation fibrary to read to it over the intercom (they don’t call it a library, it’s a multi something depository~ but it’s full of books, so it’s a library to me, even though there’s lots of other things there). After the initial greeting, I told it this, and read out the intro in the book. It walked off as I was reading the boring parts, I guess, it didn’t want to hear about the habitats or how hard it was to photograph any of the animals, so I skipped ahead to an article on red foxes. It perked up partway through and came closer to the speaker. As I was reading through a section on birds it put it’s wings out and flapped, as if saying, “that’s me!” I skipped through until I found another bird entry. It seemed to like those. 

Tomorrow I might ask if I can go inside.

Just inside the first door, maybe.

So that it can see me.