Former Ramblings of an Insane, Lesbian, Book Writing Crip
Normally, I hear about this kind of stuff the day after it is over. But this one I actually find out beforehand!
April is the ASPCA’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals month. Anything that helps the animals also helps us. I’d much rather support the ASPCA than PETA. Those guys scare me because while their hearts may be in the right place, their methods and reasoning are so far off the mark.
Anyway, check out your local ASPCA or similar agency and get involved!
I had been getting a plethora of spam via the contact form. I’ve had it turned off for several months now.
On Mike’s site (“Mike’s Doghouse“), I’d started using a plugin called “cforms” and decided to do the same here. It looks ugly at the moment but making it look pretty is not a priority at the moment. For now, it works so, hey, there you have it.
I’ll be putting up the same thing over at the main website, “It’s Only Words…” later today.
This past weekend I went to Virginia to attend an animal communication workshop. Called “Back to the Table“, the workshop focused on guided meditations, telepathic linking with animals, and the overall concept of “coming back to the table”.
For those of you who are not into the woo-woo or would rather not read about woo-woo stuff, stop reading. For those of you who are curious or interested in more, click the link below. (if you don’t see a link below, that means you are already here)
I will be in Virginia for the weekend to attend an animal communication workshop. It is something I’ve wanted to do for years and decided this was as good a time as any.
The workshop, “Coming Back to the Table” is being offered by Patty Summers, an animal communicator. I’ve used Patty’s services many times before and consider it well worth the money. The last time I talked with Joella through her, I wound up getting Mike.
I will be going alone this time. I’m not even going to take Joella. I’ve got to see if Lorna’s computer (my half-dead Dell laptop) will work with the internet connection hard-wired. If it does, then I can take my laptop (a well-used Toshiba) with me. The workshop is only from 9:30-3:30 so I’ll have plenty of time to….do something constructive, I hope. There’s no Waffle House in Altavista (where the hotel is) but there is on in Lynchburg. While that is where Soulforce is based, I don’t think I would feel comfortable being in that town, ya know? I don’t know where I will eat but I’m sure I’ll find something somewhere. Lunch is provided during the workshop so I only have to forage twice each day.
As usual, I put off taking care of things so will be doing some errands before I leave. I’ll need to rest up from the nearly 6hr drive so I’m leaving hopefully around 3ish. So, like, y’all have fun while I’m gone. If I take the laptop with me, I may give an update Saturday or Sunday. If not, I’ll catch ya on Monday. Later!
I got a boo-boo, an owie, a #$%&@.
We live in an old house and have not been able to do much with it since we bought it back in ’92. In the long list of things to fix, the third thing on the list is the front door. The door frame is so freakin’ warped. Nothing is straight in this house except the critters. Prior to us buying this money pit, someone tried to “fix” the door frame by putting up metal-backed strips of fuzzy insulation to try and stop the draft around the edges. Most of that we’ve removed or hammered down. But it seems there’s a piece that’s worked it’s way back up. I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow while letting Mike out on the long lead (16′ leash) to greet Lorna, I got tangled up in the leash and two other dogs. My arm was pressed against and scraped along the door frame.
We have a code phrase for when a boo-boo is bad enough that an extra hand is needed or whatever. We say “meet me in the bathroom”. This usually means blood is flowing. It gets the other person to slip into the right frame of mind. The bathroom is near the cabinet where we keep our bandages and other wound supplies.
As you can guess from the photo above, it wasn’t pretty. I looked down and at first just saw white skin from the scrape and figured all was sore but fine. Then I saw blood starting to pour. I said “meet me in the bathroom”. I went there and started running cold water over it to rinse it while Lorna got the dogs in. She joined me quickly and cleaned it up. We saw it wasn’t a deep cut, just an angry one. We also discussed when did I last have a tetanus shot. It’s an awkward place to bandage so we’re just letting it air out.
By the time we fed the dogs and went out to take care of some things, the arm was on fire. It’s how my body deals with injuries. It was during dinner that the initial irritation calmed down and we could see the other scratches. I’ll survive, but boy howdee, did I do a good job or what?! The flash from the camera removed the smaller scratches and the redness doesn’t show up at all. So much for the gore, dangit.
This scar will join so many others on that arm. The two tornado shaped ones from Kev’s chickens when we were kids. The long one on the top of the wrist from a burn/cut gotten from a Flexi-lead cord (that one hurt like the beejeebers!). Then there’s the one from the Jeep door cut while on vacation. The bite scars from Jake chewing my hand (I still have problems with the ring finger). It’s also the arm with the Bible Bump (ganglion cyst), the chronically out-of-joint thumb, the ulna nerve damage, and various other weirdness. All of this is from the elbow down! I’m such a freakin’ mess, ain’t I?
No, I’ve not won the lottery. Gotta buy a ticket first and, frankly, I’d rather put my dollar with the others in the Mason jar out in the back yard. Dang, I told y’all where it was and now I gotta move it.
Anyway, this post is more about Spam than anything else. That and gullibility.
I use Mozilla’s Thunderbird for my email accounts. The junk/spam filter on it is pretty good and it learns quickly. I set up other message filters to get rid of the obvious ones. If the spam filter thinks it has a spam, it sends it to the Junk folder where I then can check it out and delete it. I have it set up so that anything I say is spam is sent directly to the trash folder which is emptied each time I close down Thunderbird.
I have an idea for a really good junk/spam filter: have a spell check built in. If the subject line contains a \ or ! in the middle of a word, chuck it out.
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of lottery emails. It’d be funny except I know people actually believe those things. So, here’s some hard facts: If you won a lottery in the Netherlands or somewhere in Africa, do you really think they’d let you know via email? Or if someone has umpteen thousands of dollars stuck in some sort of political shift and need your help with it, again, do you really think they’d contact you via email? Or would they, like, I dunno, go to an embassy?
Thunderbird has this column where if I click in it, the email is marked as Spam and away it goes. That way I don’t have to open the email and then hit delete. If your email program doesn’t have this kind of option, try to right click on the email and select delete from there. Opening an email from someone you don’t know or that you know is spam can cause some mean things to happen to 10 people you know. Okay, just kidding on that last bit.
Here’s some other random email advice:
– When the real PayPal sends out an email, they don’t have any links in it. Sometimes, for a real transaction, they will have a transaction number link, but that’ll be it. Why? Because spammers, crackers, virus, and malware folks love to use PayPal to scam folks. The real PayPal says things like: “go to our site, paypal.com” without using a link. Good for them!
– In connection to the above, if you don’t know if you should trust the email, put your cursor over the link. Don’t click on it, just put the little arrow over it. Now, most email programs will then show you the actual URL of that link in the bottom of the window somewhere. Check to see if the URL is the same. Usually, it’s not.
– If a greeting card website sends you an email message and all it says is “a family member” sent you this card, don’t click the link. Legitimate notices of e-cards will say who it is from and often has a short message from them. If you get an e-card and don’t know who it is from, delete it. So for my friends and family: don’t send me e-cards. Yeah, some of them are cute and cool and excellent examples of the artistic uses of flash player, but, really, spend the freakin’ few cents and send me a real card, okay?
– Just ’cause Oprah says it is good don’t mean it is. And just because an unsolicited email says Oprah says it is good, really really means it isn’t good. Delete that.
– Do you really want to order a prescription medication from someone who can’t spell the name of that medication? I don’t care if it does make your man-part stand at attention for hours on end, if they can’t spell it, don’t buy it!
– Same goes for any other penis oriented emails. Do straight women really want big huge penises on their partners? Frankly, it sounds painful. I get more penis email than I do lottery emails. And I don’t do either one of them!
One more thing and then I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing. Let’s say you get a really cute email from someone. It has cute pictures of puppies, babies, kittens, and any combination thereof. I admit, I am a sucker for those things, too. You decide to forward it to everyone you know because it is just so freakin’ cute. Fine. But, after hitting forward and before hitting Send, do a few simple things first. Take a look at that email. Now, how far do you have to scroll down before you get to the cute puppy? Even scrolling a pixel or two if too much. All that information space is usually taken up by the email addresses of all the others who also thought it was a dang cute puppy. Forward after forward after forward. You know, if you send it to me, I’m going to embarrass you something awful. ‘Cause I’m gonna hit Reply All and tell everyone you sent it to that I thank you for giving me more email addresses to sell to spammers! Not just the addresses of everyone you sent it to, but aaaallll those other email addresses, too! I’m gonna make a fortune! Seriously, I’d never do that but it is tempting. (I once tried to count them all and stopped counting at about 120 email addresses that was included in a single fwd-ed message) Delete all that gooble-goop at the top of the message. It’ll take but a second or two. Send the cute picture to everyone you know but use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) instead of To or CC. This means that no one will know who else got the picture but it also means my email address remains with you and not your Cousin Phil, Uncle Ernie, and your college roomie from ’88. Over the years, I have seriously lost two “friends” because I kept hitting Reply All and thanking them for more email addresses to harvest. And, frankly, if the subject line has more than one Fwd in it, I’m not going to bother reading it anyway. So delete those, too. Don’t send me anything about chain letters or online petitions. My name at the bottom of the loooong list won’t mean crap ’cause it has to be a real signature to count in anything legitimate anyway.
It’s been a while since I’ve found one worthy of putting here. Stupid ones aren’t worthy, just the ones that use two-meaning words.
Anyway, here’s the headline:
Wild turkey sends Maine motorcyclist to hospital
No, really?
Okay, so the article is about a wild turkey, not Wild Turkey.
And, no, the turkey did not survive.
BG2 is, actually, BG1 since it was started first. But BG1 became BGCFA because it was finished first. There is also a BG3 and BG4 already started. BG2 now sits at 38291 words, just 51709 words short of its final goal of 90K. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I do the math like that? “Just 51709 words short”…shit, who am I kidding? It might was well be 100709.
Yeah, I’m having faith issues. Faith in my ability to write a novel well enough to justify it being 90K words. I don’t like padding a novel (adding in stuff just for the sake of adding to the word total) but I am not above adding in scenes that further the story along while at the same time it pushes it toward the word count goal. Hell, at this point, I just want to reach 60K. Way short of the goal, but at that point, the story is either sinking or swimming. 30K is where I usually falter on a story which is why I have so many at that point. At 60K, I am heading down the hill toward the finish either in a good way or just wanting to get the damn thing finished.
Kinda like a bad date. You don’t care what happens, just as long as you can get the date over and get home before you poke your eyes or ears out.
BG2 doesn’t even have a freakin’ title. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with it. BG1 started as a title and exploded from there. BG3 has a title but I really want to get this one done first. Bless its heart, it keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the pile. BG2 is about Nikki Rogers and Ellen Hess who meet on line and start an “intentional” relationship. In what I have so far, they’ve just loaded Ellen and her stuff to move down to High Pond, NC. Now the story shifts away from “will we/won’t we” to “pick up your socks”. BG1 was furthered along with various misunderstandings because no one trusted anyone else, not really. This book is more about facing things head on and dealing with them face to face, not letting something simmer.
Any ideas for a title? So far I have “Butch Girls Can Fix Anything”, “Butch Girls and Stereotypes”, and “Butch Girls, Barbecues, and Babes” (although that one isn’t started yet, just running around in my head). Several folks have commented that they really don’t like the “Butch Girls” words so I am considering dropping that sort of. But hell, I gotta write the damn things first, right?
So, I’ll need beta readers soon. Folks who can tolerate romance and give feedback other than “I loved it!!!”. No timeline yet, but soon.
We are! Really! We are so powerful an enemy to God that He punishes everyone for supporting us. Really! We are so terrible a species of human that God wreaks havoc on cities and nations just because they have gay marriage rights and stuff.
Okay, stop laughing, Paula.
I could get angry. I mean, really, why would God kill thousands of people on 9/11/01 just to punish everyone for supporting homosexuals? Kind of odd, really. Why not rain terror during the Gay Pride March in NYC? Or smack Orlando upside the head during Disney’s Gay Days? Now THAT would hold a message, don’t you think? No, “they” think that Hurricane Katrina was punishment to New Orleans. Please, the levees were the punishment, not Katrina. Hurricane Rita did more damage in Texas than Katrina did to New Orleans. Katrina and Rita wiped entire towns off the map, but we never hear about that, do we? But I digress into another rant.
Where was I? Oh, right.
I got onto this particular rant when I read an article on LiveScience: NY Pastor: God’s Wrath Is Near (Again) by Benjamin Radford, LiveScience’s Bad Science Columnist.
According to the founding pastor of New York City’s Times Square Church, David Wilkerson, denizens of the Big Apple should stockpile survival gear and a month’s supply of non-perishable food in preparation for an “earth-shattering calamity” that could happen at any moment. The threat is not from foreign terrorists this time, but instead from God.
Wilkerson, claiming he was prompted by the Holy Spirit, recently wrote in his blog that “An earth-shattering calamity is about to happen… It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires… There will be looting — including Times Square, New York City.” (Only a Manhattanite would assume that God’s destruction of the world would begin with New York City).
(…)
This is far from Wilkerson’s first prophecy; in fact he has made something of a cottage industry of cranking out bible-based predictions. In 1973, Wilkerson issued a nearly identical message in a book titled “The Vision.” He described the great tragedies that would befall the United States if Americans continued to pursue homosexuality, greed, and sin. Nearly 40 years later, the issues include gay marriage, abortion, and stem cell research.
Most of his prophecy did not come to pass, but it is a common theme. Rev. Jerry Falwell infamously blamed pagans, abortionists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union and others for bringing about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In Falwell’s view, God had enlisted Muslim Saudi Arabians to punish Americans for their decadent ways. In 2005, Rev. Gerhard Wagner suggested that Hurricane Katrina was “divine retribution” for New Orleans’ tolerance of homosexuals and sin.
(source)
The God I know and follow doesn’t do things like that. God knows that with the knowledge of science, we would need direct intervention, not far flung things like Katrina and 9/11. We are no longer the superstitious God fearing peoples of long ago. We have faith in spite of science, in spite of our knowledge. Now, ain’t that a good thing for God and us?
For those of us who must follow the arcane ritual known as Daylight Savings Time, tonight is the night! Spring Forward and all that means that at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, POOF! it becomes 3 a.m. Sunday morning.
Maybe all that dark matter slowly tearing the universe apart is that missing hour. Rips in the space/time/common sense continuum.
Either that or I need more chocolate milk.
Oh! Don’t forget to change the batteries in all your smoke detectors, fire alarms, and/or carbon monoxide detectors. And if you don’t have any of those, are you nuts?!
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