Month: February 2017

I Miss My Skinny Little White Friends

I miss my skinny little white friends.  I don’t care that they were trying to kill me.  I love and miss them.  They were there for me when I was happy or sad or hungry or stressed. Or bored or waiting or talking on the phone. Or drinking or driving in my car…..but, not at the same time.  I could choose between tall or short and minty or not. They never failed to satisfy. Sometimes I needed two in a row.  I never ended up like Nic Cage’s character in Wild at Heart . In one of my all time favorite movie scenes…..Nic lights and smokes two cigarettes at once.  Cinematic genius. Not because of the smoking. Because of the sentiment and it was completely unexpected.

I love smoking. I know it is horrible for me. I have stopped and started many times.  It is hard. So hard.  But like the Joan Jett song, “I wanna walk, but I run back to you….” I have told myself if I am still healthy(ish) at 70….and, I don’t smoke any between now and then……I will smoke again. Until I die……

My favorite thing about quitting was all my friends’ “help”: chew gum, get the patch, go for a walk, do 5 push ups……….I don’t want to do any of that….I want to smoke. “Vape” they said.  There is NO SUBSTITUTE!!!!! And, I accept no substitutes…..but, what is this vaping thing?  Like any good writer, I did some research. “Vaping” is a blog for another day.  However, I did try it.  And, it is like nothing…..you inhale….and feel almost nothing (compared to smoking). My favorite thing about it is that it tasted good. And, there was no smell.  But, I found it to be mostly stupid.

Lucky for me, I didn’t love it….so, I will be saving money.  Also lucky for me, it didn’t drive me back to smoking.

I quit for all of the right reasons: health.  It was a good decision, doesn’t mean I don’t still think about it. I do.  I have smoking dreams……seriously. I still miss it. Every. Single. Day.

 

Bush is Following Me

As I type this title, I laugh to myself…..an erotic book author is writing about a Band named Bush. http://bushofficial.com/   Of course, it is 2017 – nobody has a bush anymore. Still amusing. Titles for this blog could have been: “There is a Bush on my Tail.” “Bush Follows Porn Author” “Porn Author followed by Bush everywhere she goes.” “If a Bush was going to follow you, what would it look like?” Jenna? W? Barbara?

I am constantly working on my writing.  I tell people I am “working on my book.”  They don’t really want the details, I figure. One friend finally replied….”when are you going to fucking finish that thing?” Haha. To be clear……writing the books is the fastest part. Editing takes about 800 times that long (or more).  The promoting, researching, reading, networking, and  learning….that is the real time consuming part.

I have been building my following on several media platforms…..Twitter being one of them.  I am having the best time….following people. Seeing what people do…..what they tweet. Who they are.  This has all been new…..and not everyone needs twitter…but, as a promotions tool, might be as good as any.

Twitter, like any good social media platform, is based on the premise that people want to be popular. You want followers….lots and lots of followers. You build your twitter following by following others, tweeting and retweeting things your followers have tweeted.  It is not complicated…but, it is a timesuck.  So, it is particularly fun when someone follows you that you have actually heard of…and you do not already follow them…..basically, they are asking to be your friend before you ask them…..for those who did not hang out in the popular crowd….super coolness…..

My first “celebrity” was a fellow erotica author who I have read. Find her here. That was pretty cool.  I bought and read her book and followed her on twitter. And now she was following me. I know that is how it works…but, it was still cool.  Then next was Mr Zog’s sex wax.  I had actually heard of them.  I had a few hundred followers and they had over 10K.  I was pretty excited about that.  That was fun.  I know what their products do and have used them….tweeting about Mr Zog’s and knowing the double takes those tweets will get, fun for me.  

But, today…..TODAY…..BUSH followed me……Bush…the band…..231k followers.  Two hundred and thirty one thousand followers!  I still have less than 2000.  I am so thrilled. So excited.  I feel so important……Not only have I heard of them, I have listened to them. I admit, I was going to boycott them because of the whole “cheating on Gwen thing”….but, then this happened.  Bummer. Sorry, Gwen. I can be a slut…I write porn after all. She won’t even miss me.  

Okay….maybe not “important”…but, legitimized…there is a better word, I can’t find it. Either way, it is fun and a little thrilling. And, no, I am certainly not finding my value in my followers.  Fun is always good so…what to do?  What do I tweet….what do I say? $231K.

The new single they are promoting is “Mad Love”…..funny…..I could use that name for my Hard Compliance series……maybe my characters can use it in the background…I will have to listen.  Maybe I will listen to it while editing the next book?

Incidentally, I just read that Kanye is no longer following “The Donald” on twitter…….hmmmm.  So much to say about that……

Keep America Beautiful 2.0

It was Christmas Eve, and I was driving with my brother and two teenagers. I stopped at the drive thru to get a magical diet coke from McDonalds. As any connoisseur of diet soda knows…….a fountain soda is the best option and the diet cokes at McD’s are perfect….the perfect mix of syrup and CO2. Then the big straw……so, I can get more to my mouth quicker…..add to that the $1.00 price tag for a large…..magic. While in the drive thru, my brother (he is older) tossed his empty soda can out the window into the bushes.  

“What? What are you doing? Littering…… in front of the kids? Dude…..”

“No problem” he replied……”some can collector will be by soon…..it’s not like real litter…..” We went back and forth for a few minutes when I said…….”you know what? I don’t litter…….because of the crying Indian.” He smiled, instantly going back. Way back. The teenagers, who hate being left out, are like “what?”

So, I told my kids the story of the commercial (it was actually a PSA). How the Indian was dressed like an Indian…headdress, Indian “costume”, a feather……and as I am describing it I am realizing how horribly horribly racist and stereotypical and just plain wrong it was. And, I started to laugh….until tears came out of my eyes.     The whole time teen-aged girl is like, “That is so wrong. That is not funny mom. That is racist….blah blah” like only a 15 year old know-it-all-can. And, now I can’t stop laughing…because it is all so ridiculous. Especially when I got to the part about the car driving by, throwing trash on the Indian. Causing him to shed a single tear…… I am trying to describe the commercial…but, it keeps getting worse and worse. Well, it keeps getting funnier and funnier.

By now…we were home and friends were over and they wanted to know what was so funny….because I had reached that point of no return….where I was just going to laugh until I calmed down…..breathe…….they are younger than I and never saw that PSA…so we looked it up online…….(where I discovered it was a PSA) and it starts out with the Indian rowing a canoe……so, now I am not able to breathe again I am laughing so hard….because I don’t think they believed me…..

Kids still not laughing.  All of the adults laughing.  Teenager still ranting “that is so wrong…”

Yes. It is. Racism is not funny. Stereotyping is not funny. The fact that anyone conceived that commercial and it was shown over and over AAAANNNNDDDDD everyone thought it was okay….is not funny “haha” but, funny like……”the world is flat” funny. Okay….that isn’t very funny.  But, this still tickles me.  Maybe the expression on my kids faces? Mostly it was so preposterous…..We have come so far.

I wrote this piece weeks ago, but I guess I knew it wasn’t finished. Since then, I have seen the “crying Indian” being discussed on on Friends…..a TV show same teenagers mentioned above are obsessed with.  And, recently someone posted it on FB.  Mentioning how much they loved that commercial and wondering why they didn’t show it anymore. So, I piped in….”racist, canoe, feather…..”  The responses I received to that were unpleasant. And they neglected to see the racism……OMG really?  Aren’t we the same people who are trying to decide if Washington should rename their team? People are funny. And, after I laugh, I write about it. Lucky you.