October 30, 2009

Angels, Computer Robots and David Hasselhoff

I had a frustrating day yesterday.

First of all I woke very early to the angels bowling and shooting off fireworks. (That’s what I always tell little kids so they don’t freak out.)

Second the lightening zapped my internet connection so I had to call the robot lady to get help and she had a hard time understanding me. When I said three she thought I said zero. I know my Okie accent is thick but how do you get zero out of three?

So after several minutes she hands me over to an agent that might speak my language or at least understand me better. We still had a communication break down because he starts speaking in computerese and I’m lost. He soon realizes he has a dummy on the phone and starts talking to me like I’m a child. “It’s a plug that looks like a phone jack only it has more wires and is a little bigger.”

“I found it.” I exclaim while crawling around in the dust amongst the electric spaghetti with my butt in the air. I really need to fire that cleaning lady. Oh wait, I’m the cleaning lady. Never mind.

It turns out my router seems to be fried. Darn wild angels.

So this morning I am borrowing my neighbors internet to post this blog. Don’t tell them. It’s not like I didn’t pay for service, I just can’t get to mine right now unless I connect directly to the modem with a two foot chord. I feel like a bad dog on a short leash. “I promise I won’t bite the mailman again if you’ll just let me go.”

I will be busy the next few weeks with NaNo, (Please refer to NaNo blog for more info.) and instead of leaving y’all hanging I have decided to incorporate a few old blogs, kind of like reruns. Most of y’all are new readers so it will be new to you. The handful of oldies but goodies might be like I am and not remember them anyway. If not you’ll just feel like you’re watching Pamela In Red in syndication.

I’ve been blogging for a few years now and have quite a few in my files. In the beginning I didn’t keep copies on my USB but after a few mishaps I soon realized it was a good idea.

Some are pretty funny but in the wrong season so I will have to dig through and try to find some that somewhat relate to current affairs. Like the one where I got a sunburn on my knees and then went to the gynecologist and she asked me if I’d been down on my knees. I love that one.

I couldn’t for the life of me remember David Hasselhoff’s name yesterday and of course couldn’t get online which is an extension of my brain. I was trying to come up with names for all my NaNo characters. One is a drunk and a picture of this famous actor eating a hamburger off the floor came to mind. Only problem is I can’t use the name David because that was my favorite uncle’s name and he’s now my guardian angel and that would be disrespectful so I’m back to square one.

My character is a middle age guy with a drinking problem but he’s not a mean drunk just an apathetic one. Does anyone have a good idea for a name?

October 26, 2009

Theme Songs

Thought I'd share something silly I've been working on for a little while now.


This is the Stalker’s Theme song. Any of you girls that have had a stalker knows what I’m talking about. Does this song creep anybody else out?




The Police - Every Breath You Take



This is the Latino theme song. I love this one!







Here’s the redneck’s theme song.







Gay men theme song.




It's Raining Men - Weather Girls



Lesbian theme song.







Hippie theme song.







Cougar cub theme song.




Fountains of Wayne - Stacy's Mom


If I've forgotten any feel free to add them.






October 23, 2009

The Incredible Unbelievable Internet

Since I don’t work outside my home and spend hours in solitude writing I like to hang out online sometimes to have someone to talk to. In the beginning I mostly went to writing group sites and also a baby boomer women’s group until someone so nicely informed me I wasn’t old enough to be there. lol I felt like a carded teenager trying to buy beer.

The writer’s sites were intelligent people with calm conversations mainly consisting of their latest novel and while I love to read books having a discussion with an author about their latest project can be (how do I put this without offending anyone?) as stimulating as listening to a mother tell about her child’s latest accomplishments. I’m proud your kid is on the honor roll, truly I am but we all know it’s much more exciting for the parent than for anyone else.

One day at a conference a few years a go another member gave a workshop on web pages and how publishers like you to have one etc. etc. She showed us MySpace, which prior to that day I thought was only a teenager's hangout, and said it was a good way to meet other writers, publishers and readers. Keeping a blog was also supposed to help keep the writing juices flowing. So I thought, what do I have to lose and went home and created my own time waster, I mean web page.

They’ve made it so easy to put up a site even I can do it. You don’t have to have any talent, just point and click, copy and paste and voila, you have a page.

One of my biggest concerns and the reason for this long-winded missive is due to the fact that it amazes me the amount of people that thinks everything on the internet is fact. I see time and time again people giving a website as verification to back up their statement and the information is no more accurate than the Tower of Pisa is plumb.

It’s scary that our younger generation hardly cracks a book and gets all of their knowledge online and yet a lot of what’s out there is crap. Anyone can make a page on the world wide web and write anything they want and it doesn’t have to be facts.

I got into a debate with a man over the issue that colleges won’t allow Wikipedia as a source of research material for term papers. He honestly thinks it’s a place to get solid information and got quite pissed about it. He even went so far as to say he wouldn’t allow his kids to attend a college that didn’t allow it. Which of course only made him sound like a fool. Many people aren’t aware that anyone can go in and change information on that site. Most of what’s on there is fairly accurate but I have found a few discrepancies myself. I’m not advising anyone to not read it but do double check the material before accepting it as gospel.

Just because it’s online doesn’t make it true. A non-fiction book has to double-check its resources because they can be sued if they print inaccurate information. I hear of pending litigations all the time. That’s why many authors won’t even touch non-fiction because you have to be exact in your writing; there can be no errors. The trouble with the internet was in the past it was difficult and sometimes impossible to find the creator. That has changed. With the threat of terrorism and child pornography the authorities have gotten better at finding people.

In the beginning the internet was kind of like the old west when outlaws ran rampant and people said and did whatever felt good not caring what happened to anyone that got in their way. Eventually things were cleaned up, sort of, and people could live peacefully knowing the sheriff was just down the road.

Recently I read about a lawsuit because a woman wrote an unflattering opinion of another individual. YouTube was sued for showing patented movies and music.

Yes, my friends law has come to cyber space and it’s just a matter of time before they clean up this one horse town.

Elton John- One Horse Town:

October 19, 2009

Nano is Coming

No, Nano isn’t my Indonesian boyfriend as tempting as that sounds. It’s short for National Novel Writing Month.



You nice folks that have been reading my blogs for a while (God bless your little souls) are possibly familiar with this particular madness I insist on putting myself through every year. But you newbies might need a quick lesson.



Chris Baty founded this crazy idea about ten years a go and talked a few loony writers into joining him every year the month of November. We write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days and while that’s not a full novel it gets us well on our way to pert near having a book wrote.



He started out with a handful of his closest buds and somehow it snowballed from there into a huge thing that has even gotten famous authors like Stephen King and Debbie Macomber involved. Don’t bother trying to find them on the website they use a pseudonym making it impossible to recognize or so I’m told.



There’s something about a deadline that gets us off our fannies (or on it as the case is) to write our little hearts out.



Why pray tell am I sharing this tidbit of info with my blogging friends you may ask? Well I’ll tell you. Cause I might be so busy writing for real I might not post quite so many blogs next month and I don’t want y’all to think I’ve fallen off the face of the earth.



Last year I bombed. I thought I’d try my hand at romance since it’s such a booming market and I read so many of them. Turns out they are much harder to write than I first thought. I started out with a Welsh lover, that one petered out and then I started another one with a Native American lover and while I think that one has potential it didn’t go very far either and even with two stories I didn’t make my 50,000 mark.



This will be my fourth year doing NaNo. I made my quota the first two years. I have a much better idea and feel like I can make it for sure this go round.



My story is called Chinese Road Trip. It’s about a middle age Chinese man that loses his wife, buys an RV and decides to take a road trip cross country with his youngest son and his son's stowed away girlfriend. I figure there are all sorts of adventures that can happen with a story like that.



What the hell? There’s a song called Nano. Okay, y’all stop looking at her boobs and listen to the words. Oh I have no idea what she’s saying either. Lord, I hope it’s not nasty.



October 12, 2009

Things That Make You Go, What?

Sometimes YouTube sends me videos that are just really strange and I thought I’d share a few of them with you.



This one is a woman exercising with poodles? I think.







This guy is really good at making guitar noises with his mouth. They even have real guitars dueling with him. You gotta listen.You can tell by their expressions that even the musicians are impressed.




The Man is Playing Guitar with His Mouth - More bloopers are a click away



If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while you may have seen this one before but it still impresses me.







This one is a little creepy and creative at the same time.







This one makes me laugh every time I watch it. Thanks for sharing this one Mak. It’s a Japanese game show and most of you won’t be able to understand the dialogue unless you speak the language but you don’t have to speak Japanese to get the gist of what’s going on. The audience reaction is great especially the woman in the striped dress. I promise you will get a kick out of it. The guy is really cute and I love the wiggle dance he does to put his pants on. ;o)







And for my music video I’m using one that I stole from my friend Cat Zen. Thanks Bill.



October 9, 2009

You're Not Grown, You Just Think You Are

One day I went to the high school to pick up my daughter at 10:15 and while sitting in a chair waiting for her to appear I noticed there is a vast difference between this campus and the junior high she went to last year.



For one thing in middle school we have the dollar bill dress code. Your skirts and shorts cannot be shorter than the length of a George Washington above your knee. In high school anything goes. Some of those shorts don’t even have legs.



In junior high your tank top straps must be the width of a dollar bill. The upper grades can wear camisoles. I haven’t seen any in tube tops yet but for all I know that may be allowed too.



We live in a small town and don’t have the gang and violence trouble big cities have so our kids don’t have to wear uniforms.



It was quite entertaining to watch kids come into the principles office. Two were just now waking up and had to call mom to get it excused.



“What’s your reason for being late?”



“Uh- I just woke up.”



Then there was the boy that came in because he’d missed a few days. The principle called his mom and she wouldn’t excuse him so he had after school detention.



He calls his mom to let her know, “Remember when I ditched all those days? Well, I have to stay after school.”



I guess he had more important things to do than attend school.



A girl came in to change her information because her dad moved away and she is now 18. Apparently, the school doesn’t care if you are considered an adult outside school grounds on campus you still have to have a legal guardian. Her father was going to have to sign his rights over to someone else. ???



She turned 18 so her dad thought his parenting responsibilities were over. “You’re on your own kid.”



So now she’s going to have to hunt him down to sign a form. Something crazy about that rule.



Then we have the 22 year-old-student that I saw kissing a girl out front on another day. I wonder if he has to have a guardian answer for him too? If so they need to inform him that dating teenage girls can get him into big trouble. My daughter doesn’t know why he’s still in high school. I guess better late than never.


October 5, 2009

People I May Know, Waste Management's Bad List and My Dog Needs Cesar Millan

Do you ever go to a concert or some other big event with lots of people and see someone you are sure you know but can’t for the life of you remember their name or where you know them from? This happened at the Journey concert. I was hesitant to approach him because:

A) It could be someone I didn’t like and wouldn’t want to reconnect with. I know that sounds bad.

B) I don’t really know him and it could be quite awkward thinking I know a person when in fact I really don’t. Plus he was with a woman I didn’t recognize at all and she might get the wrong idea.



I decided it best not to go over because as my husband so nicely reminded me I get people wrong all the time. Just the other day I thought that woman lawyer in the movie “Moonlight Mile” was that blond girl that always played in those Clint Eastwood movies. He informed me that Clint’s co-star would be at least in her 60’s by now while the woman in the movie we watched was only in her 40’s. I swear it looked just like her. Maybe she has a good plastic surgeon.



Some of ya’ll know I’m a tree hugger/recycling nut and do my part in my little patch of the world to be a good citizen. The other day I was on the phone with my husband while I was cleaning the kitchen. So I asked him, “I wonder if they will recycle steel wool.”



I hear him laughing on the other end.



“What’s so funny? It’s not gross or anything, it’s just gotten kind of raggedy and I didn’t want to just throw it in the trash.”



He says, “Waste Management probably has you on their bad list. They see your tub and go, Oh no, it’s that crazy lady that tries to recycle everything.”



So I said, “Well they should recycle everything. If they did we wouldn’t have Mount Garbage and Trash Hill.”



Those aren’t real names they are my made up names for the two landfills we have at either ends of Oklahoma City.



My poor dog has lost his noodles. He’s never been aggressive in his whole life but the other day he actually ran at the gas meter man barking and acting like he would bite the guy’s leg off. I had to go out there and call him off. I have no idea what’s gotten into him except old age. You know some men get real cranky when they get older and maybe that’s what’s wrong with my pooch. He has decided he’s older than we are and can do whatever the hell he pleases.



He’s also taken to eating the sheet rock on a corner in the hallway. I noticed he mostly does that if he didn’t get any attention that day. I fixed his butt. I put him outside and he’s staying there for a few days. It sounds much worse than it is. He has a crate in the garage with a flannel blanket I made him and a doggy door so he can go in and out anytime he wants. So it’s kind of like sending a kid to his room that has video games, computer and a television set.



“Who do you think you are eating my house?”



He’s been outside four days now and my husband gave me a sad face last night asking how much longer Basil has to stay outside. It hasn’t been long enough. I know that old stubborn dog and it will take a while for him to realize whose boss.



Funny thing is he was supposed to be my dog. Mark didn’t even want one but nobody told me before I picked out that breed that Boston Terriers prefer men so he’s not so much mine anymore unless discipline is doled out. He minds me better than anyone else even though recently he’s not obeying anyone so good.



Where’s that dog whisperer man when you need him?


October 2, 2009

Journey Then and Now

My husband has this thing about going to concerts that only have all the original members. As you can imagine, that is getting more and more difficult as time goes by especially when a man is stuck in the 70’s and doesn’t expand his taste in music. No offense to others that love the oldies. I love them too but am a bit more flexible about new groups and the reorganization of old ones.

It took some coaxing and showing him YouTube videos to convince him that Arnel Pineda is every bit as good as Steve Perry. Mark never was a big Journey fan anyway but decided to go with me. Still he insists on calling them “Fake Journey” since they don’t have all the original members.

I miss Steve Perry and his gorgeous voice but Arnel Pineda is excellent and brings a wonderful gift to Journey. He has a lot of energy and talent that cannot be denied. I actually like Arnel's voice better and think he's cuter. ;o)

Here’s a video comparing the two singing one of my favorite songs, “Open Arms.”



Have you ever tried to sing one of their hits and do it well? It’s not easy to hit those high notes. I’m a girl and have a hard time.

Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain both of which are no longer with the band wrote most of their music so it will be interesting to see what they come up with in the future.

And in case you haven’t heard Pineda’s story here’s the video that brings tears to my eyes every time I watch it. ~sniff~


The concert was awesome. There were people from teenagers to senior citizens and the place was packed.

This is one of my favorites and if you're like me and wore grooves in your album you're expecting to hear "City of the Angels" right after this ends.