Read Only

I think I am just going to spend all of 2015 reading. I am doing this challenge from PopSugar:

Of course, I intend to cheat. I just don't have the drive to read 52 books in a year, mostly because I read really slowly and the whole reading-induced narcolepsy. So, again, with the resolve to cheat, I started before 2015, and I read "The Scarlet Letter," which covers like 5-8 of the checkboxes above. It was one of the books I was supposed to read in high school but never actually read. No, not true... I started reading it my 9th grade year and got to the description of the roses beside the jail's door and stopped. Having finished it, I am not terribly forlorn that I didn't read this book sooner. It wasn't nearly as awful as I had assumed but it certainly wouldn't have enriched my teenaged life.

With this challenge, I am taking this opportunity to read books I have meant to read for a long time. Right now, I am reading "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote, and I have "To Kill a Mockingbird" on my list, and "You" by Caroline Kepnes, and of course all the books Stephen King will have written by the time I get to them. You are more than welcome to follow my progress on Goodreads if you'd like. 

Last year was a terrible year for reading. I read 4 books. FOUR WHOLE BOOKS (not counting The Scarlet Letter... which doesn't count because I said so). It was "Game of Thrones" that killed my usually much higher average. Between finishing writing the first in a series of a kickass science fiction mystery thriller novels in 3 months and editing it, then trying to get an agent to represent that novel (still looking!), and having my body totally freak out where my hands didn't work for a few months (which seriously makes typing a novel difficult, let me tell you), and my liver and pancreas freaking out from all my horrible medications trying to fix my hands (most of which I am no longer on for the sake of not dying), and having my gallbladder removed, it took me SEVEN months to read the damned book. Just the first book. And it only translates into like the first 10 episodes of the series. I can't read them all. I just can't... until I run out of other things to read and write. I loved it. It was great... but holy crap. It's like the black hole of series. That's not an insult, I promise. It is just SO dense with information. It is wonderful, and I loved it... I really did, but, yeah, I'm abstaining from reading more of the series for the time being as long as I want to do other things in my life.

Thankfully now, my hands are working with just one medication and they no longer feel like they have been beaten with a hammer (as long as I remember to take my meds on time) so I can easily hold a kindle or an actual book (since Klout sent me an hard copy of "You" to read) without crying or whining or needing to train Stevie to press the side buttons on my Kindle to change the page for me.

So, if you need me, I'll be reading. 

If you want to join in on this reading challenge, I would totally be interested in hearing about the books you're reading, too!

Tattoos... The final frontier.

I keep trying to egg my husband into getting a new tattoo.  He keeps telling me to shut up.

My husband has a lot of tattoos. I know I knew how many at one time, but he is wearing clothes and napping so I can't count for accuracy's sake, but it is somewhere around 18, one of which takes up most of his lower right arm.

The tattoo I have planned for him is, of course, for humor's sake, and also because I love Star Trek (he likes it, but gets annoyed when I watch TNG for hours on end. Pfft, doesn't change my mind. He needs this tattoo. It is the only thing that makes sense).

This is my artist's rendering- that is his actual hand. It would be on his left ring finger:

Tattoo Mock up w/o Wedding Ring

 Tattoo Mock up with Wedding Ring

The Best of the Bad: The Horror of my Youth

For Halloween this year, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite BAD horror movies. By bad, I mean of course, good, but bad.  They are not polished or necessarily deep, nor would the acting in them win any awards, other than a Razzie, mayhaps, but they are some of my favorites of all time.

(for those viewing by RSS, there are trailers for each video on the actual blarg)

The Stuff (1985)

The acting is really horrible (as you can see in the trailer), but it is really amusing, and only slightly gross.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

This has it all, sex, gore, graphic nudity, witty teenaged banter, creepy older men trying to hump teenagers, bad acting, and it is fairly bizarre to boot. The ending has apparently made it a cult classic, so join the cult. The kool aid is delicious.

Frankenhooker (1990)

 The VHS box of this at our local video store, when I was in high school, had a button on it that would declare "Hey, wanna date? Got some money?" when pushed. This was repeated by me and friends throughout high school and college, which got me some weird looks, let me tell you. It is hysterical, though, and bizarre and icky (not really gorey like things are today, but icky all the same). And did I mention it is funny. Horror comedy at its best.

House (1986)

Again, funny, and scary.  There is some good creature work in this and it stars The Greatest American Hero! My sister and I watched this as young teens, and then made our dad watch it with us because we thought it was really good and really scary.  He spent the first 5 minutes asking us "Is this the scary part?" and declaring "This doesn't seem very scary." And then, he spent the rest of our teenaged years terrifying us by sneaking outside to press his face against random windows, since he looks like one of the scary characters in the movie. He might be the reason I have intestinal issues.


Invaders from Mars (1986)

This movie has always been one of my favorites. It is unfortunate that it is not on DVD, but it can be viewed in entirety on YouTube.  It is a  remake of the 1953 Invaders from Mars that nods to the original. This movie fascinated me as a kid, and is more suspense and creepy sci-fi than flat-out horror, really, though it does have some creepy creature design done by Stan Winston who is responsible for some of the best special effects in cinema (Alien, The Thing, Edward Scissor Hands, seriously, the man is legend).


So, now that I have shared my favorites of the B rated horror classics, that I hope you will check out for Halloween, what would you recommend I watch?

New News is Good News

There have been good reasons for my quietness, that is, not necessarily acceptable, but GOOD, like, I enjoyed them sort of good, you know, the opposite of unfortunate.

Some of it is news, like:

OMG, MY ART IS GOING TO BE SHOWN IN TIMES SQUARE, MOTHERFUCKERS!

Remember me begging for votes? I know, which time, right? Well, the time I was doing it asking people to click "COLLECT ME" so I could have my art shown in Times Square. That time. After one last big push, I got enough votes so that my art will be shown on a billboard in Times Square, NYC. Which art? I don't really know. They haven't told me. Will I be there? Not bloody likely. UNLESS they choose me as a finalist and I make $10k as a result, which would only happen with more votes, but nevertheless HOLY SHIT, TIMES SQUARE, MAN! June 18th. I need pictures of it if any New York City dwellers could go check it out for me.

And OMG, I AM WORKING ON MY NOVEL AGAIN! 

JRose, we were unaware you were working on a novel. Yeah, I know, that is why it is news. It's a sci-fi novel, set way in the future... on the MOON. I started it several years ago and it has been nagging at me and  so I am working on it again. And I am telling people I am working on it so they make me continue to work on it because it is an awesome premise and I am surprisingly, sometimes, a pretty damned good writer (which is an opinion I formed when I reread what I wrote 5 years ago).

Only I haven't worked on it for three days because I was feverishly reading:

11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King, and it was my favorite book of his so far. Most likely because it revolved around time travel and time travel is my favorite plot point of all time. EVER (Surprisingly, the book I am writing has no time travel at all, because I don't think I can do it justice, and because it doesn't fit with what I need to write about, although, since it happens in the future, it is kind of my way of time traveling, but I digress...). You guys should know by now that I suck at reviews, but this book had a great balance of the usual suspense of a King novel without the choking detail that makes you want to punch yourself in the face. I stopped doing everything to read it because I needed to know what happened next. I even looked into ways to waterproof my Kindle so that I could read while bathing so I didn't have to stop. Seriously, it is awesome. And I didn't give a festering bowl of dog snot about Lee Harvey Oswald (the main topic of the book) before I read it, so you don't have to care, either, to read and enjoy it.

Pocket in the Sea by E. Stoops

Another book by my friend who wrote Being Emelle, this book is an alternative history fiction about paranormals, and submarines, and is an interesting and enjoyable homoerotic romp. It was a little confusing in the beginning as to what exactly was happening, but as I kept reading, it all wove together and made perfect sense. 

And now, I have the house to myself for three weeks, so hopefully, I will get lots of writing done and things will happen that will spur great blarg posts, and maybe Jason Segel will agree to be my internet boyfriend/celebrity endorser.

I'm sure I can work out the details with my husband.

The Craptacular Day

I have several obnoxious and rather icky chronic diseases, which is why I am now trying to make a living by writing funny stories and drawing silly pictures on the internet instead of working "a real job."  Sometimes these diseases all gang up on me and make me not want to do a damned thing, which includes entertaining other people.  Sometimes, I force myself to do it anyway, and sometimes, those posts aren't very amusing because my heart is not behind them.  Today is one of those days.  Not that I mean my heart isn't behind this post, I just mean, I feel like crap and this probably won't be very entertaining.  And I don't mean, my darling readers, that you should to try to guess where I wasn't feeling very well in my blarg archive and let me know, because it might just insult me when you guess that a post I loved and thought was my best was crap but you know it's only because I was sick and you were just trying to be supportive by pointing out that I am not funny, and nevermind, let's just pretend like all of my posts are fried gold.

Anyway, when I am having one of these days, distraction is the best remedy for wanting to dig a hole and never come out. It helps me not to feel so guilty for not wanting to do my job, and for not getting out of bed, except to go to the bathroom 7500 times (this may be a slight exaggeration, which is clearly a symptom of my illnesses too, both the exaggerating and the bathroom trips, that is).

These are the things that are serving as my distractors today:

MTV's Teen Wolf
Yes, I know this is a show made for teens and I am roughly twice the age of the target demographic, but as a fan of the original Teen Wolf movie, I had to check it out, and since I feel about 14 years old most of the time, it appealed to me.  It is absolutely nothing like the movie though there are nods here and there, and it is ridiculously melodramatic, and I freaking love it. There. I said it. I'm a dork. Plus, Stiles... duh.

Looking up candies
I could have sworn that Whatchamacallits had marshmallow in them once upon a time. Apparently, I am completely wrong.  But there was some candy bar when I was a kid in the early 80s that had a wafer and chocolate cream and peanuts and marshmallow in the center, and damn it, I want to know what it was, because in my nostalgic memory, that was THE most delicious confection in the entire world.

And may I say, as a collector of Pez, I am really disappointed that there are no official Harry Potter Pez Dispensers.

Movie Clips on Youtube
UHF is one of my favorite movies from my youth. Weird Al is a comic genius. This clip never fails to amuse me.

By the way, "twinkie wiener sandwiches?" They're terrible. Please believe me.  It is a horrible waste of a twinkie, a hot dog, and easy cheese.

Reading

    

I'm currently reading an actual copy of  "City of Glass- The Mortal Instruments" by Cassandra Clare and "Spiderwork- A Post Apocapunk Fantasy Romance" by LK Rigel on my kindle. I don't usually like to be engaged with two books at the same time because it feels like I am cheating on one with the other, but I was reading "Spiderwork," which is the sequel to "Space Junque," both of which I downloaded for free from Amazon and am enjoying very much, when my friend loaned me the final book of the Mortal Instrument series (I mean, I think it is the final book... I guess I could research that, but I am afraid of spoilers, so I'll just not care instead) and since it is borrowed, I have set aside the other. But reading, of course, has the added benefit of making me sleep which helps with healing so I can write actual posts and not be a grumpy asshole.

Checking my emails a billion times and crying.
(I have no emails, hence the crying)
(except my mom, she writes)
(hi mom)

And that's about it.  Have anything you think might amuse me? Wanna tell me what you do to make yourself feel better when you're having a craptacular day?  I would love the distraction.

Nerd Love- Star Wars

I just watched Star Wars this morning and I was reminded of the following:

OMG, I LOVE R2D2!

Yup, that's it. 

And yes, I did fall asleep during it...

Llama Theatre: Total Llama

Ready for our date? Wha!? You're wearing sweatpants?! Oh well...

It's Llama Theatre time again!

Another of my favorite movies, this time from 1990. I actually employed this movie quite a bit in college to try to attract nerds.  It worked a couple times.  I'm still using it... *waggles eyebrows*

Get your ass to Mars!