Rejection

It's times like these that make me miss NYC. I've (seemingly) been turned down again for a job. After 4 years out here, my employment prospects are as bleak as a kindergarten dropout. I had to fight for the pathetic little customer service post I barely earn enough to cover my bills with. I scour the papers, the online postings, the UC job board–to no avail. I've never been unemployed this long. Never has it seemed so futile, my skills so spurned. I'm week-old meat with maggots, last year's trend found cowering in the back of the closet. I can't crack the network of friends that the university requires. Whatever combination of skill with dullard mentality and sexuality California seeks has slipped past me. A degree and over a decade of experience and I sit on the edge of homelessness with pennies to my name, constantly trying to change this circumstance. Once again, I go from, "you're right at the top of the list" to no call, no email, no letter, no, nothing. As time runs out on me, I wonder how much more long I can make do at the fringe of society, if I can even claim a future. I just had no intention of peaking when I did, for as brief a period as it was. If I only had a clue what to do.

Oops, I did it again

Here I go again. I have had the obvious bad taste to do the unthinkable. Again. Once more, I have aged. This month I… celebrate… my 37. At least I think it's my 37th, I just can't remember.
Any jokes about alzheimers can be sent to besmirchminegluteus@cheaplaffs.com.

It's not like I mind, mind you. I never expected much past getting to 18. I thought I'd have more, maybe accomplish something useful, but I sat next to a plant & breathed yesterday, so I suppose that will have to suffice. 37 feels, oddly, like 27, which felt like 17. I don't what happened, but I'm here; I don't what I'll do, but I'll do it anyway; and I fully doubt I'll ever understand the reason why. Ah well, at least my cluelessness is not due to a lack of effort on my part.

This year I plan on officially throwing a party as opposed to the traditional "dragging me out from under my rock of moping and forcing me to eat cake". I don't make much of presents, as my family taught me that gifts tend to suck if you don't buy them yourself, but I do love getting cards. I have 2 birthdays (due to my mom not being very clear on when I was born. Drugs are a terrible thing.) so I'll hang on to the 21st & 22nd as days when I expect a card. Yes, from you, I'm looking at you. Make it a decent one. With glitter.

Necessary Intervention

Dear Laurell K. Hamilton

Normally, I don't do this. 'Live and let create' is my motto. While I don't subscribe to the "everything is art" slackadaisical modern philosophy of the current art world, I neither lift my nose in snobbery at supposed "low art". Great work is great work, whether it's a neo-beuysian performance piece or a good scifi novel. I am not a snob.

However.

I must beg of you, stop it. Just quit writing Anita Blake novels, before you ruin it completely. I know, even now, at the worst form I've ever seen in your writing, you still beat the pants off the alsorans taking the genre–you created–of romantic horror and making it the soppy dreck not fit to line birdcages. But seriously, Ms. H., don't you think mediocrity is a terrible thing to do with a creation like Anita Blake. She spawned a whole genre, dammit! That is bit of persona to be reckoned with. She deserves to have ended somewhere back around "Narcissus in Chains" or, if I were inclined to be kind, "Cerulean Sins". Everything after that, with the exception of "Micah", was a drawing room farce with elements of very weak kinky sex, a touch of gore and a whole lot of talky dramatics. If I were a pyschoanalyst in the room, I would've mowed down all particpants with a silver bullet, holy water machine gun due to my complete frustration. That is sad.

Now, I enjoy a little multiple partner erotica as much as the next sincere pervert. Beautiful men in stripper gear? Bring 'em on! Whips & chains? All I can say is: cattail or crop, handcuffs or manacles? But everything in moderation, dear. One does not enjoy licking a belly decorated with a gold chain, because one enjoys the taste of metal. I've read porn with more plot and more point than the last few books. Save the sex talk, sex acts and sex in general as highlights to a good, old fashioned mystery, which is what the original books were about.

Please, reread "Bloody Bones", "Blue Moon" or " Obsidian Butterfly". Wicked scary villains, fast talking Anita and some serious destruction made those books fun. Anita got out, kicked butt, raised the dead and a few eyebrows. The current, whining-about-my-boyfriends-and-my-stupid-powers-that-require-sex, Anita sucks. Richard should've died 5 books ago or gotten over it. All the new mantoys are pretty–in a forgettable way. Nothing is investigated and everyone's stuck in the same room for 200+ pages. The claustraphobia is killing the characters & the fans. Nobody is doing anything but whine!

Laurell, I promise you, I would gladly take you toy shopping at Good Vibrations or whatever it took to get you over the kinky sex hump (pardon any puns) and back to writing a good mystery. But, please, on the behalf of the characters, who I picture slinking around in a tortured embarassment at their current lines & predicaments on the barest of stages, quit messing up Anita Blake. Don't MarySue all over the pages, girl! Please, think of the characters.

rm