mediocre blue heron

Category: dribblings

 what’s so great about these blue herons anyway? they’re nervous nellies, won’t cooperate with the camera, and? their stork necks are ridic.

greatblueheron06 

i’m waiting for him to offer me a pickle.

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new kicks!

Category: dribblings

we all know i’m cheap. Mr. Fleegan calls me Jaimie the Jew. i don’t like spending money.

but today i figured out i needed a new pair of shoes. i’ve been taking Roxie to the park nearly every day for about 5 months. sometimes we only do one lap around the park. but on the days when my walking buddy, Jenara, walks with us we do like 3 or 4 or more laps. This is like, miles.

the shoes i’ve been wearing are 5 years old. they were new once, and then became my painting shoes, and THEN they became my lawn-mowing shoes. and now they’re my walking shoes? ridiculous. they (used to be white) are green/brown nasty and they’ve lost all hope of any foot support. they are an embarrassment to walkers/wildlife photographers/dragonfly hunters/reluctant birders the world over and i should be ashamed of myself for wearing them this long.

so today i treated myself to these:

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they claim to be hiking sneakers. they’ll probably help me jump higher, run faster, and take awesomer pictures of hawks or something. i’m not sure if they have coyote repellent on them.

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Hoarders is my guiltiest pleasure

Category: dribblings

Oh man, I had some Hoarders hoarded in my DVR and last night Fellykish and I watched The One With Sir Patrick. If you’ve seen this episode you’re probably already saying, “OH MY GOSH! SIR PATRICK!” If you haven’t seen it, I don’t know what to tell you. Find it. Come over here and we’ll watch it again.

It was fascinating because his hoarding was actual stuff, not just trash and rotten food and dead cats. His house was completely full of chotchkies and porcelain dolls and rope lights. He called it Camelot, and he wanted to be Peter Pan.

The poor man was bonkers. Bless his heart. But his car.

HIS CAR.

His car was also full of decorations (inside and out) and in the passenger seat? A life-size, Victorian-style, porcelain doll.

I paused the show, “Kelly,” I said.

“What?”

“That car.”

“The doll?”

“The EVERYTHING.”

“Yeah.”

“oh my gosh. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU SAW THAT CAR IN A PARKING LOT?”

“First, I’d probably take a picture of it, then I’d call or text you to GET DOWN HERE RIGHT AWAY BECAUSE SIR PATRICK’S CAR IS RIGHT HERE NOW.”

“Kelly, that? Is why you are my best friend.”

“I know.”

ps. any grown man that has that many dolls is probably a pedo. and the fact that he said that he has all those dolls because they remind him of a neighbor girl? not good.

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Netflix Anonymous

Category: dribblings

I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately. Mostly in the form of streaming Netflix. We all have our guilty pleasures. Mine is mostly awful TV shows and MST3Ks. By awful shows I mean, I’m currnetly watching complete series-es of:

Hoarders
Fame
Ruby
Missing (what?)
Psych (what what?)
And I’m currently waiting on them to send me the first season of Beverly Hills 90210.

Mr. Fleegan’s guilty Netflix pleasure is B, C, and D grade horror movies. titles we’s watched recently include:
Blood Surf
House of Carnage
Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires
Living a Zombie Dream
Retardead

There’s this thing about Netflix though, the more stuff you watch the more it reccommends for you. “If you like Hoarders, you might like Mythbusters.” That kind of thing.

Well apparently our TV and movie choices have been so low on the scale that it’s now recommend the shittiest thing it can find:

worst. show. ever.
A terrible show from the ’70s called The Secrets of Isis.

Look, we all know I have no taste. I loved the Xena show (until about the 5th season, anyway, or whatever season they went to China? and Xena learned to fly or something? The Gabrielle hooked up with some crazy with lady with a scratchy voice and antlers? OH MY GOD, REMEMBER HER? Yeah, I tuned out after that.) But this Isis show is so bad. And not in the so-bad-it’s-good kind of way.

The main lady is, Joanna, and she’s a science teacher, although I’ve yet to see her in the classroom. And this one time she went to Egypt and found an ancient amulet that no gives her the powers of Isis. This is all explained to you in the opening credits. So now, Joanna is back in California (I assume) and she helps fight crime. It’s worse than I’m making it sound. When she turns into Isis she has this extremely long black hair. And she flies. Sort of. It looks like she’s just standing in place. And when she uses her powers she has to chant these rhymes. Plus, see the bird on her arm? This bird is not explained. It wasn’t in the first episode at all. Then in the second ep, it’s there in the science classroom. Does it belong to the school? Then it helps her solve a crime. Is it a magic bird? Is it a person that’s been turned into a bird? Did the bird come with the science class? Or did it come with the ancient amulet? Shit! I don’t know! I hate that bird! I hate Isis! And damn you, Netflix!

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De-hoarding part 1

Category: dribblings

i’ve been watching Hoarders lately and it has inspired me to get rid of some serious accumulation. mostly in the form of books.

today i found two old sketchbooks from Ye Olde College Days. the’re mostly crap drawings (they’re the small sketch books, mainly used for notes and thumbnails. there were some small sketches of this giant Liz face i painted though. and when i saw them i thought, “oh yeah, i remember that painting.” but i did not remember the sketches. apparently i did one in pen and ink and messed up one of the eyes pretty bad. so i guess (?) i kept it in there and just added a random caption to the picture. i wonder what the professor thought.

lizsketch 

The caption reads:
Her capacity for pain has always been amazing.
It all started when she was 6 years old.
During a weekend camping trip she wandered into
the woods alone. When she came back she was
missing an eye and dragging a dead bear cub
behind her. To this day she still laughs
about the “Bear Incident.”

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Guess what I saw on my walk this morning?

Category: dribblings

If you guessed “giant fucking wild-assed coyote”, you win!

coyote03 
he was looking at Roxie. i was taking pictures. and thinking a big stick might be handy.

coyote01 

coyote02 
He caught a squirrel or rabbit. I think it was a squirrel. He pounced on it like a cat. and at first, all i saw was a big blur pounce into some tall grass and disappear. I thought it was a big cat. and by big cat i mean, a panther. or painter, they are also called. i was all, “shitfuck. why am i so pink and soft? i need a gun.”

also, Roxie was being a very good girl and right by my side the whole time. i am so thankful i had her on the leash. (sometimes, if no one else is around i’ll let her off the leash to run. i w ill now think twice four times before i break the rules again.) Rox didn’t bark or growl and she was probably thinking, “hey! new friend!” although her tail was not wagging. she was actually probably thinking, “you probably need a gun.”

coyote05 

I was too scared to move really. i thought that what if it’s crazy rabid? or so starving that it wants to see what my face tastes like?

luckily two other walkers were coming up and i pointed out the wild hell beast to them. the guy was all, “that’s a coyote. you can shoot ’em all year ’round. no one’ll care.”

i walked with them for a bit figuring there’s safety in numbers.

boosh! wild mammals!

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nature! on my porch.

Category: dribblings

last night we were watching some kind of garbage TV that i was sucked into. it started off a show about people and their strange phobias. then the next show sucked me in about this girl who eats chalk compulsively. yeah, i couldn’t look away. i wanted to. i wanted to not be watching a girl eat chalk and then deny that there was a problem, but how? how do you turn away from that? YOU CAN’T. THAT’S HOW.

so the cat was next to me on the couch (a rare inside visit for Lebowski.) and all of a sudden mr. fleegan and i heard the cat dish clink outside.

when cats eats food out of the dish, they never move the plate. they are not loud. they are smooth creatures. so when we hear the dish clink (or maybe it clanked?) we knew.

we looked at each other and i yelled, “‘possum!”

we jumped up and i opened the door to yell at the ‘possum, “git!” or some other such southern yell. but it was not a ‘possum.

it was three (3!) smallish raccoons!

nature’s little bandits, stealing our cat food!

they promptly ran off. so, no pictures.

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Jeepnanigans part XXLMIIWHATEVER

Category: dribblings

Since it is freezing outside the jeep has decided to leave me stranded. hilariously, she started right up and got me to work on time, it’s just that at lunchtime, she decided she wasn’t going anywhere. wha?

so i’m bumming rides to and from lunch, and since i don’t see the weather getting any warmer i’ll pro’ly be beummng a ride home as well.

i called mr. fleegan and told him the news and asked if maybe he and fellykish could carpool tomorrow so i caould drive the black jeep. he said sure so then i called fellykish to seal the deal.

“hey, my jeep is frozen and acting like a little bitch at the moment.”

“i’m not surprised.”

“shut up. so anyway, can you and jimmy carpool tomorrow? you know, in case it continues to be frozen. and you know it will?”

“of course. no problem.”

“thanks, i just wanted to see if it was okay. i mean, i figured and all.”

“he works a block away from me. it’s no trouble.”

“thanks. i just wanted to ask as soon as possible, you know, to get that bug in your ear. in case you think of something later, i can come up with a different plan.”

“no problem. but you know…”

“what?”

“maybe it’s time you start thinking about-”

“shut up! no! don’t say it.”

“-getting a newer car? something more reliable?”

“hey! that jeep is totally reliable! just not in winter… or the month of  july.”

“yeah, well, just wanted to put THAT bug in YOUR ear.”

Dear Jeep,

Why you gotta do this to me, baby?

Love,

Jaimie

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AM clock radio monday morning blues

Category: dribblings

Warning: The blog entry has swear words. I even take the Lord’s name in vain. You can either

1. Not read this or

2. grow up.

This morning I woke up to the clock radio alarm which is set, like all the radios in my life, to the local AM station (they play a lot of Stevie Wonder, okay?). I like this because before I get out of bed I can hear what the weather/temp is outside AND they basically keep me abreast (heh. boobies.) of the local news via reading headlines from our local newspaper. They steal the news straight from the paper and never give props to the paper for doing the actual work. This probably happens a lot? I guess? With other small towns’ local radio and newspapers?

My clock radio is so awesomely bad. It has a CD player in it as well, so I can wake up to any song I want, in theory. For some reason (read: because i own it) when I use a CD as an alarm the volume is crazy low. It’s not loud enough to wake me up, and I’m the one who wakes up 10 times a night because I can hear Mr. Fleegan grinding his teeth. I’m not a heavy sleeper, is my point.  But the radio volume? is fine. I can’t explain it.

The other awesomely bad feathure of this machine is that the clock is not good at keeping time.
Again, for some unexplainable reason, the clock actually gets incrementally faster (yeah, that word had 5 syllables.) as the month goes on. This means that at the end of month two, the clock has gained 10 or 11 minutes. Which, I admit, is way better than it slowing down and waking me up late, right?

I tell you this to explain that when the clock is reset to the proper time, the alarm goes off (AM radio) and it will hit exactly when they’re doing the weather, or maybe traffic first (which takes all of one second: small town.) and then the weather and then the news read straight from the paper. But, when the clock gets ahead, that’s when I get to hear the last part of the song before the traffic/weather/news. And 6 out of 10 times it’s Stevie Wonder. WIN.

The other 4 times is a total crapshoot. Por ejemplo, this morning I woke to “(I’ve Been to Paradise,) but I’ve Never Been to Me.” Which, I’m going to be honest, I’d never heard that song before. This? Is why I love my AM oldies station. They play 4 decades’ worth of shit and I love the variety. I can hear an ’80s Heart song, a Motown hit,  then hear “Delta Dawn”, straight to a disco song, and if I’m lucky? Gordon Lightfoot or Phoebe Snow. Look, I never said I was cool.

Anyway, this “gem” of a song starts out kinda sweet-ish. I thought it was Olivia Newton-John, that’s really the only reason I paid any attention at all to the lyrics. She starts out talking to another lady, trying to cheer her up, I think? I thought that was very Girl Power, right? And the lyrics are very rhyme-y. Like, I’m not saying she’s Steve Miller or Dr. Seuss, but I’m not not saying that either. In fact, she gets to this line:

I’ve been to Nice/And the Isle of Greece

After that I was IN. Maybe she did go to the Steve Miller Band School of Songwriting. She goes on to say something about she’s “been undressed by kings.” which: awesome.  THEN the singer starts talking. one of those dramatic monologues over the music? Yes. And in most cases of this I’m on board. Anything that adds extra cheese to cheese? Yes. More please.

However, she’s doing her talk and it’s like, “Hey, paradise is a lie, the only truth you need is that crying baby that’s in your arms.” I’m paraphrasing. But now it’s too late. I’ve already heard over half the song, and unfortunately I’ve woken up childless, (again! wha?) So this goddamned song has just now decided to stab me in the face. FACE.

It, gets EVEN MORE face-stabbingly worse. I was so ready to slit my wrists that even her lyric “the subtle whoring” couldn’t snap me out of my destroyed state of mind. DON’T get me wrong, “the subtle whoring” is an amazingly bad lyric. Really? Subtle whoring? I likened this to Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer.” (GREAT SONG, by the way. “Private Dancer” has NEVER inspired me to CRY IN BED. Nor has it ever STABBED ME in the FACE.) And may I remind you that this took place FIRST THING in the morning, first thing I’ve heard all day, I’ve not even moved to get out of bed yet? And? It’s Monday. Mother Fucking Monday.

So basically the song is all, “I should have stayed home and had armies of babies instead of literally fucking the whole of Europe (and possibly Georgia) and having a good time. I’m now bitter and incomplete.”

This calls for a list.

1. first of all, your whoring? is actually not that subtle.

2. i’m not saying you weren’t a classy whore, i mean, kings, right? (see also: Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy“, she ain’t done bad.)

3. this song should not be allowed to play on the radio between the hours of 12am to 12pm. nor from 6pm to 12am. And not at all on weekends or Mondays.

4. actually, this song should get no airplay at all.

5. shame on you for tricking me into thinking you were Olivia Newton-John.

6. there is no number six,

7. if this had been Olivia Newton-John, I would have heard this song before and would have known to slap the off button and NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. WHERE WERE YOU, OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN, WHEN I NEEDED YOU? Heartless bitch.

8. can someone help me get this knife out of my face?

9. now i just feel guilty for wasting my life away and NOT EVEN ONCE have I gotten to whore around Europe. Count your blessings, whore!

10. goddamned AM clock radio monday morning blues.

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some Christmas curmudgeoning

Category: dribblings

Hi kids!

I have for you today NOT a picture of local wildlife, NOT a picture of my dog, NOT a rant on baseball (although I COULD HAVE ranted on what I’m now calling That Hot Mess of a Jeter Negosh. Yes, negosh. Deal with my trendy word.) today I bring you a High Quality Rant.

Okay, a mediocre quality rant.

Well, it’s a rant.

I’ve worked at my local liberry (mmmm, liberries.)  for nearly 4 full years. Three years and 11 months to be exact. Before I worked at the library I was a pretty good reader of books. I usually went to the ‘brary once or twice a month and would check out books I like to read, never noticing that there were tons of books I never noticed. Now that I work at the library I notice pretty much all the books that come in, even the ones I’m not interested in, and even the ones that four years ago I never would have noticed at all because they are NOT “my” books. I’m looking at you, Christian fiction and self-help schlock.

But there was one genre of book I had never heard of until this job. A genre so foul, so marketable, so condescending, so simple, so evil, so fake, so contrived, so banal, so pandering, so mind-numbingly full of shit, so it’s like the Monkees of genre fiction, and no, I’m not talking about vampire fiction, and yes, I too like the Monkees but you know what I’m saying: the overproduced-easy-to-swallow-bubble-gum-cheese?

Is Christmas fiction. (see also: The Amish Fiction Rant I Haven’t Written Yet.)(oh, but it’s coming. stay tuned.)

Yeah, that’s a thing. And if you don’t know about it count yourself blessed. And if you do know about it, let’s take a moment to silently eye-roll our judgment upon this pox of the fiction world. And if you read it? God help you.

I am not a bah-humbug, okay? I enjoy holidays. I enjoy Christmas songs. I’m not a Christmas hater. Do I think the holiday has been bastardized into a huge commercial for to make the moneyz? Yes, of course. But do I let that ruin my holiday? Nay. I’m very chill.

But this Christmas fiction? This is some bullshit.

It’s basically this: Some Kind of Drama + Christmas = $

And usually? IT INVOLES A BIRTH. GET IT. DO YOU GET IT? ARE YOU SURE? Also, lots of single parents raising kids, people bitter about the holidays, orphans, have i left out any cliched themes? I’m specifically talking  about Donna VanLiere’s oeuvre, and don’t worry, I’m throwing Debbie Macomber under the bus here too. In fact, VanLiere is what it is. 90% of her books are Christmas books, so whatever, at least she owns it.

But Debbie Macomber, oh my gosh. It’s not enough that she keeps spitting out books with addresses for titles, (“It’s a series!” you say. “Shit’s weak!” I retort.) but every year she’s getting in on the sweet, sweet, worn-plot Christmas book as well as her tired, beach books.

This is not to say that Macomber and VanLiere aren’t nice ladies. They are probably the sweetest people you ever met, okay?

But treacle is treacle.

And? I’ll tell you how tired this gets. Macomber came out with a Christmas book two years ago called A Cedar Cove Christmas. This is from the Publishers Weekly review (ganked from Amazon)

Mary Jo Wyse, the protagonist of this trite little throwaway, is extremely pregnant. She sets out for Cedar Cove on Christmas Eve to hunt down her child’s delinquent dad, David. Hot on her trail are her three overprotective brothers (the three Wyse men—get it?), determined to make David do the right thing. Mary Jo can’t find a hotel room or her man, so she takes shelter at Grace Harding’s ranch, in an apartment above a barn. She delivers her child that night with Grace, an EMT, and several farm animals as onlookers, and everyone is reminded of the true spirit of Christmas. Clearly, subtlety is not the order of the day. Sadly, neither is quality storytelling. There’s more life in a lump of coal. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Two years later (being this year) Macomber comes out with a “new” one called, I shit you not, Christmas in Cedar Cove. This one is a complete misery because it’s actually two books in one. The first book is 5B Poppy Lane and the second book is A Cedar Cove Christmas. Both stories (both!) are reprints (reprints!).

This is called Shitting on Your Fans.

So now, not only will I be at the circ desk trying to figure out if the patron wants A Cedar Cove Christmas OR Christmas in Cedar Cove, but I’m going to have to break their hearts by telling them that it’s the same book as the other one, and THEY WON’T BELIEVE ME.

“I want the new one.”

“The new one is actually the old one.”

“No, no. I saw it in a magazine. She has a new Cedar Cove Christmas book out.”

“It’s just a reprint.”

“But it has a different title.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“but it-”

and on and on.

And the book cover for this LIE of a book in NO WAY informs the buyer/reader that they are getting a total reprint rehash of two of  her old shits! I’m calling shenanigans on this, and so should you.

“Oh, Jaimie,” you’re saying, “you one-note crime fiction reader, you. You’re just mad that there’s no Christmas murder books.”

That just shows what you know. There are quite a few Christmas murder books. And do you know what Christmas murder books all have in common? Other than 80% are written by the Judd Family of Fiction (oh, I said it), the Higgins Clarkses?

Punny titles. Here, let me provide some examples for you. These are by all different authors.

The Santa Cruise

The Twelve Deaths of Christmas

‘Tis the Season to be Dying

Santa Clawed

Wreck the Halls

Fatal Advent

Slay Bells

Shrouds of Holly

I don’t think anyone has done O Little Town of Deathlehem. Yet.

Okay We’ve talked about the romanc-y/sappy ones, the mystery ones, and that leaves us with the SERIOUS Christmas novels. And by serious I mean the make-you-cry-but-still-with-the-nice-and-tidy-so-you-don’t-kill-yourself endings. He’s the Nicholas Sparks of tiny, tasteful cover arted books: Richard Paul Evans.

THIS guy. He might be the nicest Mormon you’ve ever met, I don’t know. But his small, tear-jerkers drive me crazy. I think he uses the same formula Sparks does, but his books are much shorter. I’m not sure if that makes them better or worse. On the one hand, at least he gets right to the story. On the other hand, if you weren’t able to finish the whole book in one sitting, I doubt you’d pick it up a second time to even finish it.

I understand that I don’t have to like every book out there. And I know that not every book should be written to be great literature (thank God.) I don’t even read literature. You know the crap I read. My problem with this is that it is only written to make money. There’s no art to it, no originality, no quality. It’s all: take a sappy story, someone has to die or be abandoned, throw in a kid or an old person, add a handsome guy or a beautiful chick into the mix, the story takes place during the Christmas season so everyone is either bitter or sad, then they all fall in love and remember how great Christmas is. Slap a tree or decorated housefront on the cover, and rake in the cash.

And yeah, I’ll bet that all of the authors I name probably wrote their first Christmas book and did a good job with it. I mean, The Christmas Box and The Christmas Shoes (which, oh my gosh, is a novelisation of the song?! The more I look into this the angrier I get.)? Those have become part of the Christmas Television Special canon. But these authors, once they see how easy it is, can’t just leave it alone. They can’t just do “one and done.” They realize that if they can get another mawkishly trite Christmas flavored book out by October, they can all sit pretty on their piles of green just in time for the holidays while the readers are getting cheated.

Of course, not even the master, Dickens himself, could stop at one. He wrote five.

It’s all about the greenbacks, yo. I say we ALL write one of these. I’m calling dibs on O Little Town of Deathlehem.

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