Tag: random

Purge


Each week I’ve begun recycling paperwork from the last seven years. Here was this week’s. I’ll have a lot more shelf and drawer space as this progresses.

Somewhat related, someone I do not follow on social media and who has shown zero respect for me FINALLY stopped following me on social media.

It feels good to be cleared of things and people who weigh down my spirit.

ETA 2022: I don’t even remember who this was! That delights me.

Tough Talk

I need y’all to brace yourselves because I’m about to tell you some hard truths AND YOU SHOULD HEED THEM.


1. Pinterest is the research cockblocker of the Internet. If you are a writer, and you want to research something from some distant year like, say, 1937 or 1969 or 1958 or 2019, about the most arcane, random shit, for which you are willing to spend a goodly portion of your time for ONE SINGLE SENTENCE in your work-in-progress, the truth is out there, but good luck getting past Pinterest, especially if you want a damn image with your information. Do you need to know if there were phone booths on the streets of Niagara Falls (Canadian side) in a certain year? And what they looked like? Hafuckingha. No matter what your key words are for a search, you are going to pull up thousands of pictures from Pinterest users of “my favorite phone booths ever” or “people crammed in phone booths” or “serial killers and phone booths” or “my top ten sexiest phone booth scenes from the movies” or “every picture since Alexander Graham Bell of every dog who hiked his leg on a phone booth.” There is no subject this does not apply to, and the Pinterest users won’t give you any actual information that’s of use to you.

2. BLESS YouTube. I don’t care about your issues with it, every song since dinosaurs bit it is on there. You can identify that obscure band from 1962 and that one song you sort of remember by putting one single snippet of a lyric (sometimes even mis-remembered) in a search engine, and YouTube WILL HAVE IT. And you can HEAR it. You will no longer wish you still had your albums that were drowned in the flood or that your one roommate or possibly bitter, vindictive ex stole. THE SONG IS THERE. But here is the warning you must heed. Somewhere in the comments, someone will say, “BEST SONG FROM BEST ALBUM EVER*.” And you’re thinking (but NOT REPLYING, FFS), Dude, I loved this song and most of the album it was on, but it isn’t even the 1032nd best album ever. Then you remember the mantra we’ve all learned the hard way and yet ignore and that’s probably why 2020 happened to us: DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS. No good can come of it.

You’re welcome.

*”Freebird” excluded is always implied.

Saturday Roundup

Here are some things I’ve read this week that made me think, and I’ve added a few of those thoughts below each.


In many of the incidents of violence against people of color by police that we read about, I hear a lot of, “Well, he shouldn’t have been…” and “Didn’t she know better than to…” And I almost never agree with these, because for every “If only he/she had…” there are endless accounts of white people who didn’t do those things and didn’t end up dead. In this case in particular, a woman was killed for sleeping in her own home while Black. And still nothing has been done toward justice for her.


It is madness to me that one of the simplest ways of protecting ourselves and others has been politicized. Wearing a mask is “uncomfortable?” I challenge anyone to think of times they’ve been physically uncomfortable by choice and no one really benefitted. For example, that time you sat in a football stadium for hours in the freezing cold to watch a ballgame. Wearing a mask curtails your freedom and it’s wrong to mandate it? Do y’all know how tired I get of red lights? Should I be hindered as a driver by laws just so I don’t kill anyone by running a light? I could come up with these examples all day…


By all means, please do meditate and do yoga! It’s self-care and we all need it. Especially when we allow ourselves to grow, to feel uncomfortable, to do the hard work of living a just and honest life. It’s challenging to grow and change, but ultimately, stretching your heart and soul and mind are as important as the comfort and growth found in stillness.


You know I believe in education, but I also believe that children are resilient and learn so many things in so many different ways. We are in an extraordinary time and one thing I know about humans is that we find solutions. Parents and teachers, to use a couple of song titles: Help one another in finding creative ways to teach your children well. The kids are all right. Even when they go back to school, things may never be the “same.” As a larger community, it will be more important than ever to support educators and students.


Coming back to the case of Breonna Taylor and the two different worlds we live in… I can’t say more than what the original post points out.

Saturday Stuff

By day, I write if I can. By night, I often have insomnia. So sometimes by day, I nap.

A lot of times, I think I DON’T nap; that I never dozed off. But the other day, when I heard the chime of an incoming text message, I picked up my phone and read a group text with Tim and Jim in which one of them said Abe Vigoda had died. After a pause, my mental response was, Wait. Hasn’t Abe Vigoda BEEN dead?

Abe Vigoda, among many other notable roles, played Tessio in The Godfather, which ranks high in my most beloved movies, along with The Godfather Part 2 (we rarely speak of the third movie).

Abe Vigoda died in 2016, but now I was truly awake and picked up my phone and it was a text from Debby and no one was dead, she just wondered if anyone was parked behind her in the driveway since she had to run an errand. Far less dramatic.

Later that day, or maybe the next, I walked into the office where Tom was working. I had on the wrong glasses for distance vision, and as I peered out the window, I thought I saw a possum at the back of the yard. I pushed up my glasses, and it was actually palm fronds. I told Tom this and said, “But if it HAD been a possum, I’d have named him Abe Vigoda.”

Stay with me here.

Two years ago, I asked Tom to record what was then a new TV show, “Yellowstone.” Two seasons passed, and the recordings piled up, because when the hell did I have time to watch TV? But now I’m laid off, so at night when we eat dinner, we began watching the recorded shows, and we’re up to the two-hour season finale. Then we can watch the second season, and the third season begins next month. I’m actually watching a TV show. It’s the most shocking thing ever.

Today, I had a blinding revelation, walked into the living room, and told Tom, “‘Yellowstone’ IS THE GODFATHER!”

“Of course it is,” he said. Like when you watch a show about cowboys in Montana, it’s just logical to understand it’s basically The Godfather.

Fuck. Maybe everything is The Godfather. Tom Hanks tried to tell us this in You’ve Got Mail.

The body count is high in both, but there are a LOT more dead animals in “Yellowstone” and I can only remember the horse in The Godfather.

If they ever make a true Godfather coloring book, they better leave out the horse and include Tessio (my version of “Leave the gun, take the cannoli”).

I bring up coloring books because these days, I color when I take a break from writing and color when I work out things I’m going to be writing. Since I spoke of steampunk earlier this week, here’s a page I colored out of a new coloring book.


I picked it because as I was flipping through pages, I named it “Tori: The Girl With the Gun,” which my beta readers should recognize. I didn’t realize until after I began it that I was doing the same page that was on the cover. Theirs is better.

Thanks to Marika, I now have three new coloring books to delve into. It’s possible she believes I need more “Think about writing!” time and less nap time. But more likely, it has something to do with llamas. Marika, can you please name one of your llamas Abe Vigoda?

Sad but not too sad

Over on my sidebar, I’ve long had a link to Polyvore. I loved using the site to make fashion boards for my characters or just of things I liked.

I decided to go back and look at some of them, but when I clicked on it, it took me to a new site: Ssense, which apparently bought the site and then shut down everyone’s accounts. In doing a little research, they did provide the option to users to download their stuff by May 15. Let that sink in for a second, as today is May 16. And I thought, I missed it by a damn day?!? Well, no. The deadline was May 16, 2018. Another freaking thing I was too busy to be aware of.

A reasonable person would say, “Becks, if you haven’t used it in two years…” Except, now I’m writing some of the characters I used it for, and their boards are gone, and I no longer have an account to create more.

Anyway, I’m experimenting with a new site, Fashmates. Here’s a first attempt.

That’s not a baseball jersey, but he’ll allow it.

…a little storytelling…

Like anyone who gets news via the Internet, I am daily confronted with photos of bubbas with their big bellies and big guns and big belligerence thinking they’re standing up for their rights or their freedoms or what-the-hell ever. I’m always trying to think of names for them (beyond “white supremacists”): bevy of bumpkins? rabble of rednecks? herd of hillbillies? obstinacy of oafs?

It’s a fun game, but because I’m a storyteller, I have another level of fun. I come up with tales about them.

First, I must establish character. These dudes likely never served in the military, and if they’re hunters, they don’t need the weapons they brandish for a squirrel, a rabbit, a deer, etc. Their fallback reason for gun ownership is that they’re protecting their homes and families. I know and love people who say and do the same, although none of them are out waving their guns in public and showing up in my Twitter feed, and I thank y’all for that.

Next, I must think about setting. They are not home protecting their homes and families. They’re standing around businesses and government buildings bullying and berating other people–which I have to tell you, if I were going to a government building to do business and saw them posturing and carrying on, I’d forego a driver’s license or marriage license or building permit and just go home.

Home. Where they should be. You know. To protect their families and property.

Now I have to develop story, and story needs conflict. I pick one from the group–we’ll call him Big Dude–and imagine his home life. I don’t know what his job is, but he gets by. He lives in a decent house on an acre of land. He’s married to Missy and they have two kids who are elementary school age. Missy works for an insurance company and during the Time of Corona, she’s able to work from home. She’s trying to do her job and home school their kids and probably clean the bathroom and let the dog in and out ten times a day. A little help would be nice, but Big Dude is not there. He’s gone somewhere with his friends to stand up for his rights. It’s beginning to be a bit of a pain for her, quite honestly.

Big Dude’s second cousin, Good Ol’ Brian, comes over looking for Big Dude to get help fixing his garage door. Brian has been divorced a few years and has no children, so he’s a kind of honorary uncle to his friends’ kids. When he comes in the house, he can see at a glance that Missy is off the hook. In no time at all, he’s got the kids in the kitchen watching Sponge Bob on his tablet while he makes grilled cheese sandwiches and heats up a can of tomato soup. The dog stays on high alert for a falling bread crust and is finally out from under Missy’s feet.

Meanwhile, Missy answers three emails, takes a load of clothes out of the dryer, refills it, and begins washing a load of sheets. She takes two minutes of precious alone time to pee (she doesn’t forget to wash her hands afterward) and brush her hair, which she forgot to do that morning. When she heads back to her computer, Brian calls her into the kitchen. The kids are eating and laughing at Sponge Bob. Brian points to her place at the table, where he’s put a steaming bowl of soup, a diagonally cut grilled cheese sandwich, and a fresh cup of coffee.

Big Dude, you really should have stayed home and protected your family. Won’t be long and you’ll be discovering a whole new meaning to social distancing.

Love,
Team Brian

Quarantine Hair Update

Last cut in November 2019. Last colored on March 3. Roots are now at about two inches. Bangs definitely need a trim. None of this is a complaint. I’m interested to see if I can grow out all the blonde and what I’ll do next. But for sure I’ll cut my bangs. They make me crazy when in my eyes.


That mask is from my sister. She so wants me to accept that we’re Scottish. But a cousin met family members in Ireland, so I stand strong with my “Éirinn go Brách.” We may be a family divided, but I got a cool mask. Thanks, Debby!

P.S. I have more masks I can model, including some from a wonderful friend Michelle that were made by her mother to give away. Everyone who’s making masks for frontliners, essential workers, and friends and neighbors is absolute aces.