Gentle (and not so gentle) Friends....

Let me tell you a story.

Once Upon A Time, there was a young woman. This Lady was intelligent enough to count to ten without using her fingers, literate enough to read the newspaper without resorting to a dictionary, and not ugly enough to cause small children to start crying when they saw her.

All in all, she was ok.

Well, one day, the Lady met a Gentleman, whom she came to hold in the highest esteem. For some reason, quite a mystery to the Lady in question, the Gentleman returned her regard.

They were happy.

Now, this Gentleman was not a young toff, fresh cut from his mother's apron-strings. No, he had been out in the world, and had some experience with life, including a failed marriage, and children.

Three children.

The Lady, while she was fond of young people, and enjoyed them immensely, had very little experience with this many children, and being their primary guardian, for any appreciable length of time.

Circumstances conspired, as circumstances tend to do, to throw her into that position with the Gentleman's children, for a period of three days.

The first day, they had fun. Although the Lady wasn't feeling entirely well, she had enough activities to keep them entertained, and they had a good day.

The second day, they had great fun, visiting the park, and taking a long walk on the hiking trail. The Lady pointed out various natural wonders, and small creatures, for the children to gaze upon.

The third day, well. The Lady was never certain precisely what started it all off, but the third day was Hell On Earth, with the middle child.

Keeping in mind that the middle child has a minor developmental disadvantage, effecting his emotions far more than his intelligence, the Lady attempted to be firm, but compassionate.

As the day wore on, her compassion, however, faded. If the Lady had been faced only with this child, she would have been fine. Alas, there were two other children to care for, and all were running our fair Lady ragged.

At the end of the third day, when the Gentleman returned from his labors, the Lady beseeched him, "Darling Gentleman, is there any possible way that another could care for your delightful offspring, soon? For truly, though I care a great deal about them, I have not had the experience nor the training to be prepared for such circumstances as have recently been common. I do not wish to say that I refuse to care for your precocious young ones, please do not mistake me! I simply mean that, as a full time care-giver, I am not, yet, fully developed. Some period of adjustment and mutual learning is necessary, for the children's well being, and for my own."



To which the Gentleman replied: "I'm surprised you lasted three days!"





Ya'll, I am not cut out to be a house-mother.



Yet.

Hello NASA!

Was just checking out my sitemeter and when I hit "who's on?" it popped up with... that's right... a NASA computer!

I'm flattered to be getting attention from someone at NASA, although I'm not really sure why. It wasn't a search so perhaps one of my readers works there?

Regardless, it's yet another of those nifty things that sitemeter allows me to know, and another demonstration of why I'm addicted to it, even when I'm not posting much.

A Great Man....

Is gone.

I didn't get a chance to surf the news as I usually do yesterday, so I was shocked, literally to tears, to discover this morning that George Carlin died yesterday.

I'm dripping as I write this.

Just Friday I was listening to a special interview on XM Radio, in which Carlin detailed his rise to iconic status, starting out as a disc jockey.

I've been a fan of the man since I first heard his comedy many, many years before most would have considered it appropriate for my age. The amazing thing is, as many times as I listened to, watched, or read his routines, they never ceased to make me giggle, and they grew with me.

Once I was old enough to think, they always made me do so. I've long maintained that Carlin is... was... not only a fabulous comedian, but a modern-day philosopher, who happened to make you laugh till you wet your pants, while forcing you to consider things in new lights, or bringing concepts to your attention.

A great loss to the entertainment industry, comedy, and mankind as a whole, as well as to his multitude of fans individually.

George, I hope that wherever you are now, theres a stage, and more importantly, an audience.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go blow my nose and hit Youtube, to honor the man in the only proper way... with laughter.

My Boyfriend Is The Abominable Snowman

Time to pull out all the fuzzy warm pajamas, and my big soft fuzzy robe, and my nice warm slippers that I'd put away for the summer, and take them over to CM's apartment, so that I don't freeze off what little ass I have.

Every time I sleep over there I wake up, all nice and toasty in bed, comfy and well-cuddled... and then I get up and start shivering. He likes it cold.

This morning he laughed his ass off at me standing in the kitchen trying to wrap my whole body around my coffee cup, muttering about breaking out the long underwear.

But then, he wakes up and puts on jeans, a t-shirt, a long sleeved shirt, and socks, right off the bat, so of course he's not cold. Meanwhile I'm in a pair of athletic shorts and a tank top, with roughly three miles of exposed, goosepimpled skin.

I also need to figure up a schedule so that I'm actually spending enough time in my own apartment to justify the rent. Four hundred bucks a month is a bit much to pay for a storage unit....

Roughing It

So, my good friend R is having some (elective) surgery today, so I'm up in even-more-BFE-than-usual watching her children. The youngest is just a baby, pretty typical. The older boy is hell on wheels, but definitely doable. Her daughter is staying with a friend.

The daughter took the laptop, though, which made me sad.

That is, it made me sad until I realized that it meant I had a perfectly acceptable excuse to play with the Tablet PC. That's right, Farmdad. I've got a tablet in my hot little hands, and I'm having a blast with it.

R's husband works at a place where they just have things like this laying around. He won't just "lose" one for me though, he's stingy.

I've also got an adorable eight week old schnauser pup snoozing in my lap.

Man, the next couple of days are gonna be rough...

For My Bookworm Friends...

Especially those of you who read sci-fi/fantasy...

We've been eased into "non-traditional" heroes and heroines in these genres over the years. We even have vampire characters who are unarguably blood-suckers, but still good guys. The vamps have come a long way since Bram Stoker.

Is there any reason that a writer couldn't take a leap further into the ever-blurring good/bad character zone?

Is there a line, in your minds, that separates what can be a good guy and what can be a bad guy, based upon what the character is rather than what they do?

With vampire White Hats in books and serial killer vigilantes on TV, is it simply a matter of time, or is there a sensibility line that can't be crossed? And if so, where does it lie? Blood sucking is apparently ok, and being a crazy mofo that does The Bad Thing for the right reasons (Think Edward from the Anita Blake books, god I love that character) but what about animal sacrifice?

If you're squigged out by the idea of animal sacrifice in books and you read Anita Blake though, I'm gonna have to whack you upside the head with a clue.

How about zombies? I mean in the traditional sense (Haitian voodoo) zombies are slaves to their creators, but popular culture has morphed them in many ways over the years. From shambling undead killing machines (either moaning "Braiiiiins" or grunting, it doesn't seem to make much difference) to coherent raised remnants of the dead (a la, you guessed it, Laurell K Hamilton, sorry, I love her books and she pushes the line that I'm addressing so well, it's easy to use her as an example) to movies where they're not really zombies but act like them because of a virus, there's a wide variety of interpretations on zombies now.

Same with werewolves, vampires, witches/wizards, technology, aliens, you name it.

But could you fall in love with a zombie hero?

Is the distinction the characterization? Is it ok to have a creature that would usually be stacked on top of the Black Hat category be a White Hat if he's really a good person, fell into it through no fault of his own, made a mess of things before but had a miraculous bout of leaf-turning and now fights for the side of good?

Or is it the overall tone of the book? Do you prefer a "gray hat" hero in a kick-ass mystery type, or is it easier to love them in a less intense setting like Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels? And does there have to be some kind of "bad" material to the character to make it believable? Ms. Harris makes us love Bill the Vampire right along with Sookie for a while, but then it turns out that he's an ass, although more on a personal level than a life-or-death one.

Where are these lines for you?

Just how smudged and stained can a writer make that white hat before he's not a good guy anymore, to you, the reader?

I'm very curious to see what the responses are on this one.

Why The Hell???

Or alternately: Time To Start Shelving The Baseball Bat By The Dryer Sheets.

I've been doing laundry today. It's a harrowing experience, because the building only has one washer and two dryers, for twelve apartments. I also have a lot of stuff which means if I don't catch the washer open when I have time, I tend to say "oh well, I still have clothes" and try again another day.

Sometimes, this results in the Mountain-O-Laundry. Today it's the Mountain-O-Towels, mostly.

I've been doing laundry steadily since ten this morning. At one point I went out and someone had opened the washer (presumably after the cycle had finished since I knew it was nearly done the last time I was out there.) Ohhhkay someone else is needing to do their laundry. Unlike a couple of others in the building, if I'm doing my laundry and see someone peeking into the laundry room (more like a laundry niche) every ten minutes, and I have enough done that I'm not in danger of having to go to the grocery store in my unmentionables for lack of a t-shirt, I'll leave the washer open once my current load is done cycling. Generally they jump right in there and get theirs in, no fuss.

So, I left the washer open. Nada.

Went out to check on the time on the dryer, and someone had opened the door on it, thus halting the operation, but not the timer.

I'm having a major Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment here. Why the hell would you do something like that? It's bad enough that the complex won't allow you, under any circumstances, to put in your own damn washer and dryer because they get a kickback from the coin-op company, without someone wasting my $1.25 on top of it.

Leave my damn laundry alone. I don't mess with yours.

Of course, the repeat has me wondering (in my suspicious twisted mind) if it's not some skeez looking for women's skivvies to paw. For their sake, I almost hope it's just your run of the mill branch of the peckerwood tree, or Sumdood's slightly-less-evil cousin, the Laundry Gnome.

I catch someone other than Cowboy Mechanic coon-fingering my butt-covers I'm gonna give em an excuse to get a brand new pair of their own, the absorbent kind the nice nurses put on you when you just can't help yourself.