Tag: rants

On this day in history…

On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned from office.

And on August 8, 2006, I suffered the following plagues:

Three pounds of dog crap to pick up in the yard.
A toad that scared the fire out of me when I was bending over to pick up three pounds of dog crap in the yard.
Four cars coming down the street when I was outside IN MY NIGHTGOWN picking up three pounds of dog crap in the yard.
And 7,223 mosquitos to feast on my flesh while I was outside IN MY NIGHTGOWN picking up dog crap in the yard.

I blame Nixon.

The Un-News (now with more editing)

All day long, I’ve been subjected to the same headline on one news site after another: Oprah Says She’s Not Gay.

While I find the statement of Oprah’s friend of many years–who said if they were romantically involved, they’d say so because there’s nothing wrong with being gay–so much more palatable than a person who snarls at Barbara Walters that being called gay is “sick and disgusting” (not that I’m referring to any famous and extremely heterosexual actor in particular), still, is this news?

Considering everything that’s going on in the world and our nation, why does this rate so much attention? I don’t really give a crap if Oprah’s gay or if she isn’t. I don’t even care if she’s lying or if she’s not. However, if Un-News is the trend, then I’m going to start saving up some stuff in case I get famous enough to have my own book club or at least have a name like Famous Author Becky (FAB)*. Here are the headlines I’ve come up with so far. I know they’re not very shocking, but I’m just getting started.

BeckyFAB Says She’s Not Batgirl
BeckyFAB Says She’s Not Ghostwriter of Anne Rice’s Novels
BeckyFAB Says She’s Not a Nuclear Physicist
BeckyFAB Says She’s Not Stevie Nicks’s Love Child (shut up, Tim, I could so be since I’m only 35)
BeckyFAB Says She’s Not Brad Pitt’s Former Mistress

Not that there’s anything wrong with being Batgirl, Anne Rice’s ghostwriter, a nuclear physicist, Stevie Nicks’s love child, or Brad Pitt’s former mistress.

*FAB–Like FARB but without the pirate noise.

Foiled!

Do you ever get phone calls on your regular phone from a fax machine? And someone has programmed her/his fax machine to resend until transmission is successful, which means your phone rings repeatedly and all you hear is fax whine? And ultimately, you begin shrieking into the phone, “I’M NOT A FAX MACHINE, DAMN IT!” Even though such shrieking is useless.

Sometimes you can outfox the machine and forward your number to an actual fax machine where you know a person who will receive it for you. That person will provide you with the sender’s phone number, enabling you to call and shriek at someone who can actually hear you. Or you can be nice and calmly say, “Your fax is not being delivered because you have the wrong number.” Which option you choose is totally up to you.

Unfortunately, that solution doesn’t always work with all fax machines. But tonight, I thought I would finally get satisfaction. After getting two fax calls, I connected the fax machine that my brother sent me a while back. This requires some strange logistics (I live in an old house, and it’s not always easy to find a phone jack and an electrical outlet near each other), but I knew it would be worth it. At last I could call Mystery Faxer and tell him or her to STOP FAXING MY DAMN PHONE. (It’s clear which option I’d choose, huh?)

But the sender’s fax machine quit trying after two attempts.

Bastard.

To paraphrase Phoebe Buffay…

…I wish I could ignore it, but I don’t want to…

I try, I really do, to follow the advice and wisdom of other authors, including my writing partners, when it comes to not letting reviews bother me. Our reviews have always been more positive than negative. Sometimes they have given me new perspective. And reviews never matter as much to me as the reader mail we get, which, whether critical or complimentary, seems more from the heart and lacking any kind of agenda. (Well, except for those who blatantly want to “date” either of the two Ts or the J in Timothy James Beck, and I enjoy those letters, too.)

But occasionally, a review dumbfounds me. Like one recently sent to us by our editor. I don’t know the reviewer. I’m not familiar with the publication. But some of his comments just scream for my reaction. If you haven’t read SOMEONE LIKE YOU, you may want to stop here.

click for rant

Why do YOU think?

On the way out to Shady Pines today with Tom and the in-laws, we saw a bumper sticker that provoked a bit of discussion.

Annoy a liberal. Work hard and be happy.

Because you know, I’M a liberal, and I had no idea that I didn’t respect hard work or that I didn’t want people to be happy. In fact, I thought I respected hard work and valued happiness (yes, even the happiness that comes from hard work!) tremendously, for myself and anyone else.

So… This whole glut of anti-liberal slogans and billboards and bumper stickers I’ve been seeing lately. When people get so hateful and snide and condescending toward a group, does that mean they feel like they’re IN control, or does that mean they’re afraid that they’ve LOST control?

Evil Internet

I remember times, writing in the middle of the night, when I needed information that was available only in a library or a bookstore. I remember when I could call telephone operators (and get REAL PEOPLE!) in another state and ask them questions about where they lived and they would answer me and be glad I gave them a break from their 3 a.m. boredom.

But even now with the Internet, research can be a painful process. While everything you could ever want to know and all its inaccurate versions may be available, finding it is challenging. First you plow through the million things that have nothing to do with what you want. Then you begin to weed out the unreliable information. And there’s a delicate balance between giving a search engine too many parameters and not enough. Then…you are constantly diverted to other places where you never intended to go.

Shannon asked why I was up so early in the morning. Actually, I was up so late at night. I just wanted some simple answers to a few questions, and I ended up spending all night reading about the NYPD, finding a fascinating blogger who got a book deal for his blog, checking out his links to other bloggers who got book deals for their blogs…. Is it possible that there’s much of anyone left who DOESN’T have a blog and ISN’T being offered tons of money from Big Publishers to write a freaking book?

I’m not saying some of those who are writing memoirs at 22 haven’t led fascinating albeit brief lives and aren’t good writers. But on behalf of those who’ve spent decades polishing their fiction-writing skills and don’t get six-figure advances for writing disparaging things about their families, coworkers, professions, and certain ethnic groups, may I just say….

Aw, never mind. I’ll save it for my memoirs.

they wanted to go to church

The following people were killed by gunfire on May 21, 2006, at The Ministry of Jesus Christ Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

• Gloria Howard (72)
• Leonard Howard (78)
• Doloris McGrew (67)
• Darlene Mills Selvage (47)
• Erica Bell (24 years old), wife of the perpetrator, who he took with three children from the church to another location before killing her. Two of the children were found safely, and the shooter was captured while holding the third child, an infant who was unharmed.

Erica Bell’s mother, pastor Claudia Brown, was wounded during the shooting at the church.

Coffee Cups and Kings of America



This morning’s coffee mug is brought to you courtesy of my old job as a bookseller. Our manager, Tim W., decided it would be more economically friendly to drink our water out of mugs than styrofoam cups, so he purchased Bookstop (Anyone remember Bookstop? It was Bookstar in New Orleans.) mugs for all the staff and wrote our names on them with indelible pen. Over the years, my name is disappearing little bits at a time, but my memories of being a Bookstop assistant manager really are indelible. The store changed my life in so many great ways, as it brought not only fantastic people to me but was my doorway into AIDS awareness and queer writing and politics. Would I be a writer without Bookstop? Yes. Would I be published? Hard to know. That time of my life provided the place and support I needed to find and develop my voice.

And for future reference, if you read A COVENTRY CHRISTMAS, the bookstore manager in that novel is in NO WAY based on Tim W., who was never anything but good to me and for whom I feel the greatest affection.

Now, about this king thing… I first saw a reference in FARB’s blog, then it was all over my AOL welcome screen, that W thinks brother Jeb should run for president. Let’s just nip this in the bud now, shall we? I have a plan.

I freely admit that I’m an Anglophile. It’s true; I love many things British. So I agree that we should gently put aside our nation’s silly founding notion that we didn’t need a king. I’ve been watching the British royal family for years, and as far as I can tell, they make a lot of money and cut a lot of ribbons, have interesting horses and dogs, and occasionally trot out to publicly tsk tsk something they think is in bad taste, but for the most part, they are harmless figureheads who do some good in the world and often make people feel better about bad things.

If the Bushes want to be our nation’s royal family, I’m all for it. Paying them a salary equivalent to what the British royals make would cost boatloads (and when I say boats, I mean BIG boats, like the size of the Queen Elizabeth or the Queen Mary or whatever all those bigass boats are named) LESS money than the Iraq war has cost, for example.

Some of the Bushes already look kind of funny in that inbred British way, and others are attractive and would look good on PEOPLE magazine just the way Diana and Sarah Ferguson always did when they were photographed at Ascot. The matriarch already has chests full of pearl necklaces, so we won’t have to buy those, just maybe a crown or tiara or two to match, and I know someone at Mikimoto who might be able to negotiate some good prices on that. Hopefully, they also already have their own mansions, because it’s really hard to get the government to furnish new housing quickly, just ask the people on the Gulf Coast. Or I guess we could move the royal Bushes into some of our national landmark homes, if they promise to keep the dogs off the furniture.

And just like the British royals, they wouldn’t have any real power–that would still rest with the government, or at least the corporations that are funding the government. And the Bushes already know how to peel off those reassuring statements along the lines of “Good show!” as W proved with such bracing comments as “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie!”

So please, by all means, make Jeb king and keep this family busy playing whatever is their version of polo, or providing the tabloids something to write about, while everyone else tries to fix some of this country’s messes.