Boy, this has been one epic toilet of a year, hasn’t it?  Let us count the ways.

A large number of celebrity deaths

Lots of people, notable and not, died during the year.  But we lost some of our most revered legends, more than usual, and some of them were grossly unexpected, like David Bowie, Carrie Fisher, and Prince.

It’s okay to have a sad.

Image: Macro / publicdomainpictures.net

One of the most contentious and insane presidential elections ever

I’m not going to post the Pumpkin’s New Year tweet here; if you’re so inclined, you can go view it on Twitter.  But this response from Irish singer/songwriter James Vincent McMorrow made me laugh the hardest:

https://twitter.com/jamesvmcmorrow/status/815274894548144128

I love James–and you should check out his music, seriously.

I really don’t have much more to say about the election, other than to remind everyone that we can fight back in many ways.  Help each other out, even those you disagree with.  In the next few years, that kindness will make bank, because a ton of voters are already regretting their choice.  If you cannot, do what you must to keep yourself safe and know that many of us, myself included, will step up for you.

AND GET YOUR ARSE OUT AND VOTE IN THE MID-TERMS IN 2018.  Don’t wait for someone else to do it.

Vast amounts of really shitty personal crap

Okay, I asked the universe earlier in the year to challenge me, not with disaster, but by giving me everything I want all at the same time.  “I can handle it!” I cried.

What I forgot was that in order for new stuff to slide in, first the old stuff has to vacate the space.

Oh yeah…right.

Image:  cw-c.tumbler.com

The universe has been methodically removing things from my life.  Losing my job two days after the election felt like the final blow, though silver linings do exist. There is one more possible crushing and horrible disappointment that I don’t want to talk about. But maybe it’s not a disaster just yet.  We’ll see.

I’m far from the only person who has had a ton of what-the-actual-hell land on them this year.  It does seem like a great big pile-on. When you’re down, there’s nowhere to go but up.  A friend of mine said that sometimes chaos signals deep change.  So all the crazy stuff we’ve been experiencing could be the last desperate death throes of the things that keep us from evolving, both in societal and personal ways.

Here’s to a happier, safer, and better 2017!

I made dis.  Feel free to pass it around, haha.

And see this shitty year get a performance review courtesy of Chris Bucholz at Cracked.

Have A Seat 2016, It’s Time For Annual Performance Reviews

I read this really good Vox article about American authoritarianism and the rise of the Cheeto today instead of cleaning the house.  Because the internet is infinitely more interesting than chasing dust bunnies and hanging up wet clothes, y’all.

TL;DR–Authoritarianism is driving the bigotry we’re seeing–it’s inherently prejudicial, because it stems from a rhetoric-driven fear of the “other” and a fear of change.

Dumb version:  someone tells you you should be afraid of X, and so you freak out and look for hard-line solutions to protect you from X.

This is fascinating from a psychological standpoint.   However, it actually illustrates a huge problem:  people stop thinking at hearing about X and don’t look deeper to see whether it’s actually a threat to them.  A good example is the vaccination scare–one incredibly flawed and eventually discredited study created a panic.  As a result, people (children!) got sick from preventable diseases because everybody freaked out and stopped vaccinating their kids.

Understandably, the study’s conclusion alarmed other scientists, and they took a good hard look at the data.  They found a whole lot of junk, poor procedures, and nothing to support the study’s conclusions.

The vaccines were not the threat–the panic was.

Same thing here.  One incredibly flawed and repeatedly discredited person (Trump) played on a latent fear of change and has fed a new, destructive, and frightening political demographic. Not created, mind you; it’s been there, lurking, and that’s even more scary.

It remains small and ineffective (we hope) at this time, but now more than ever, our future as a free nation depends on our willingness to embrace change.  I’m worried about this election.  I probably won’t be able to relax until it’s over, and if it goes all pear-shaped, I’m not sure I can or want to stay here.  Because as a writer, I know that words have power–and if his can, mine can.  My voice would join those of other dissidents and we would be in danger for speaking the truth.  Our veracity would have little sway over people who cannot or will not use their critical thinking power and who hold such a vital skill in little regard.  And it’s more important to me that I could continue speaking out than remain silent.  If I have to seek asylum elsewhere to do it, I will.

So what can you do?   Listen to the words you hear.  Think about them.  Dig deeper.  Do so with an open mind, not one attuned to unrelated nuggets you can use to support your position.  Hear all positions.  That’s what we’re supposed to do during an election.  So do it.

———-

This article, though aimed at college students, can help you exercise these vital processes.

7 Ways to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills 

We will resume our regular flippant writing content after this post.

I need to divert from talking about writing to discuss something important.  You may have seen my previous posts—Psycho Kitty (aka Pig) died on July 7.  When I caught her for transport to the vet, she bit me quite hard on both hands (poor little baby; it wasn’t her fault).

We got to the vet, but there was nothing he could do for her.  From the symptoms I described, he thought she might have had a heart problem.  I took her home and buried her in the backyard, near her favorite bush, her favorite toys with her.

Within three hours of the actual bite, my hand looked like this:

Photo:  Elizabeth West

It hurt like I’d been shot.  Since it was after eight o’clock and the urgent care closes then, I went to the emergency room with an infection called cellulitis.  They gave me a small bag of IV antibiotic, a tetanus shot, an ultrasound, and a prescription for oral antibiotics, but it wasn’t enough to overtake the infection.

The next night, I was back in the ER–it got worse.

More IV dope, and they popped me in the hospital for two days.  I must have had five or six bags of the stuff altogether–four hours on the drip, then a couple hours off, then four more hours, etc.  Round the clock.  They took an x-ray to check for bone involvement.  Fortunately, my bones were good to go.

Finally, they discharged me and sent me home.  I’m still taking the oral antibiotics, and though my cartoonish hand has resumed normal proportions, my finger is still swollen and painful with limited range of motion.  I’ve been assured by a hand surgeon that it will heal, and I have a follow-up appointment with my primary care physician in the morning.

I don’t blame my kitty.  She was very ill and she had never bitten me like that before.  I don’t know if she even realized it was her mummy trying to stuff her into a carrier.

Her little gravestone.  <3

Photo:  Elizabeth West

I’ve been telling everybody who will listen to please, PLEASE take animal bites, especially on your hands, and any signs of infection from any wound seriously.   Cat bites in particular are very dangerous–their teeth are like little needles that poke the germs right in there.  And your joints have lovely sacs of synovial fluid, which bacteria just LOVE.

It’s warm, it’s dark, it’s anaerobic….bring on the mai-tais!

Image:  cuteimage / freedigitalphotos.net

Watch yourself, everyone.  You don’t want to go through this.  I was lucky it didn’t get worse.  And I miss my kitty.

Rest in peace, my little baby girl.

Happy New Year!  It’s time for the annual WordPress report again!

I don’t know what 2016 will bring, but I have a few plans.   They include the following:

• A renewed push in querying and submissions.  I already sent one (yeah, I know it’s not the best time of year for that because of people’s New Year’s resolutions and the aftermath of NaNoWriMo, but too bad).  Tunerville has the best chance, I think, but we’ll see.
• To complete Secret Book and begin the Rose’s Hostage sequel.  I’ve made quite a few notes for the latter. Still working out a subplot, though.
• The upcoming April blog challenge–time to get busy on a plan for that one!
• I’m hoping to go to Europe this year–not sure when, but you’ll get to see/hear about it.  Italy is definitely on the list because of something in Secret Book, but I have friends in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, and Belgium I’d like to visit. It’s time I ventured out of the UK.  But don’t worry, UK; I still love you!  I’ll be sure to see you again!

Many thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2015.  I wish you a happy, safe, and amazing New Year!

———–

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 8,100 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

No jokes, silliness, or funny pictures in this post.  Today, I want to give you my words.

I was temping part-time at a previous workplace on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, I woke with an impulse to go to the TV before making coffee, unusual for me.  I clicked it on and immediately saw smoke pouring from the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.  I thought at first it was just a regular fire; the news announcers muttered distractedly and didn’t make much sense.  But as I watched the screen, BOOM! The second plane hit.

My mouth dropped open.  I immediately called my mum, but she didn’t want to talk then.  She wanted to hear every word the news was saying.

I watched a while longer in growing horror.  The Pentagon attack, and then reports of a downed plane in Pennsylvania.  What was happening to us?

The network had live footage of a man-on-the-street view from local reporters when the towers collapsed.  I remember the faces of the people running away from the dust cloud, running toward the camera, screaming, with a cop standing there frantically gesturing, yelling what was probably, “Go! Go! Go!”

I saw a small redheaded woman, perhaps in her forties or fifties, pelting toward the camera, terrified, her mouth open and shrieking, wearing the same expression as the little boy in the famous Vietnam War photo of the children running down the road after being napalmed.  I cried for her.  I’m crying now thinking about her.  Even now, I think of her often.  I hope she is okay now.

I felt numb.  I got dressed and went to work. Someone had brought in a tiny TV and we watched the news for the rest of the day. The phone only rang twice (we worked for a shopping circular and we took ads over the phone, which typically rang all day long).

Around 2:00 pm, I went out to pick up a copy of a special newspaper supplement and some chocolate chip cookies.  An eerie silence hung over the streets.  Most people were inside, watching the telly or listening to radios.  It hit me suddenly that I could hear no air traffic.  No planes, no helicopters, nothing.  Every plane in the United States had been grounded.  All of them.  Nothing could fly, not even into our tiny, insignificant airport.

It was then that the seriousness of the situation came thundering down on me–even in our small Midwestern city, hundreds of miles from NYC, we were potentially in danger.  We had been invaded.  Nobody knew if there were more rogue pilots on other planes or where they might be.  A chill ran down my spine, and I hastened back to the office.

Over the next few days, I heard many stories of Americans stranded in other countries because their flights had been cancelled. They spoke of the help and sympathy given to them. To this day, I still sometimes hear people from other nations mention it and say how sorry they are.  We’re lucky compared to some of them; they deal with this kind of thing every day.  But they knew how we were feeling at that moment–the shock of attack upending our daily lives–and this feeling brought all Americans together too.   Even those of us who were far away from the sites felt it.

We truly thought nobody could ever hurt us–the US is too big.  Now we know that isn’t true.  America grew up a little as a country that day.  It’s too bad we had to pay such a horrible price.

I’d like to think such a thing can never happen again.  But it will.  It has to.  There is too much hate in the world, too much fear of people and cultures we don’t understand.  It’s ironic that the most visible attack took place in one of the most diverse cities in our country.

What can we learn from September 11?  That hate is destructive.  That blindly following any religious doctrine or government decree, especially ones that advocate harming or ostracizing others, is dangerous.  We may think we are immune to the kinds of thinking that produced Al Qaeda militants and suicide pilots, but we are not.  I see it every day online.  On biased news reports.  When I hear people around me saying awful and judgmental things about others.  I see biblical law slowly encroaching and overwhelming our Constitution, destroying the carefully worded values that keep us free.

We’ll tear ourselves apart if we do not open our hearts and minds.  We’ll have another September 11, but it will be a slow, painful one that creeps insidiously into our lives until we wake up one morning and realize how badly we have trapped ourselves.  We have allowed terrorism to change how we live our lives, caved to fear, and in the process, we have permitted our country to backslide into an era when human rights were not a priority.  We are becoming the enemy.

We must remain vigilant, for now we know that those who want to harm us can do so.   But we can’t do it by treating each other with suspicion and prejudice.  We can’t forget what made our country what it is–optimism, openness to new ideas and new exploration (including scientific discovery), and acceptance of people who fled to our shores from horrors we could not imagine.  All our citizens are valuable:  those who were here before we came, and those who will arrive after us.   Those who are different from us in the ways they eat, love, and pray.  Who look different from us and who speak many languages.

Remember the lessons of September 11.  Once a year all Americans, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, orientation, and identity, come together in remembrance of this terrible day.  But we should be standing together every day.

I wish solace for those who lost friends, family, and colleagues.  I remember those who fought bravely on Flight 93 to keep anyone else from getting hurt.  I give my love to the world, and my hope that someday, we will all know each other, understand each other, and come together in harmony.

How many of you know who this is?

Image:  Bob Ross Incorporated / Wikipedia.com

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the man in the picture is Bob Ross, an artist who had a public television show called The Joy of Painting that aired all over the US, in Canada, and in Europe.

In this show, Bob would demonstrate a wet-on-wet painting technique in which he created the most amazing landscapes and seascapes merely by smooshing colors around on a canvas wet with liquid white (gesso) using various-sized brushes.

Watch him do this here:

Sadly, Bob is no longer with us, but his legacy lives on in endless reruns of his show, and the sale of painting kits, supplies, and classes where you can learn this technique.  I always wanted to do this.  Last year, I bought a Bob Ross beginner painting kit.

Today, I decided to try it.

I wish I could have filmed it for you–you would have found my experience pretty hilarious.  I used to dabble in painting (badly) and I haven’t done anything like this in many years.  I learned some things today.  Here are some of them.

• When you buy a kit, open it the day you buy it. Don’t leave it in the closet for six months.   Mine was missing some things.  There was no fan brush (luckily I have one), and the tray had a space for one more tube of paint than it actually contained.

• You can do this without an easel, though it’s more difficult. I put double-sided tape on a large cutting mat and used it to hold the canvas still.  Then I stood over it and painted.  I didn’t want to buy an easel until I knew if I would do this again.

• Very, very old oil paints will still be good, if you can get the tube open. I ended up ripping the bottom off an old art kit tube of yellow ochre and another of burnt sienna, since the kit did not provide those colors.  When I finished, I just rolled the end of the tube back up and smashed it down.

• Phthalo green will stain your brushes, your clothes, your table, and your palette FOR THE REST OF THEIR NATURAL LIVES.

• I need FAR more odorless paint thinner than the kit provides. Like gallons of it.  Also, I used almost an entire roll of paper towels to clean up my mess.  There has to be a better way.

• Beating the brush is just as much fun as Bob made it look on TV. I had to do it inside the coffee can that held my thinner, but it still made me laugh just like he used to.

Ready to see the result?  ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE READY?  Okay, here goes!

What’s that thing in the sky? A UFO. Hey, it’s my painting–nobody said I couldn’t put that in there!

Painting and photograph by Elizabeth West

This technique is harder than it looks.  My misty foothills look like crap, especially the ones right above the water.  The first row marches straight across the canvas; real foothills don’t do that.

I had better luck with the water than the sky.  The reflection thing works just as advertised.  I’ll have to try again to get fluffy clouds like the ones Bob made.

Also, the instructions in the kit left out a lot.  I would have been better off cueing up an episode of The Joy of Painting and watching it as I went along.

The evergreen trees were easy, but the paint is so wet you really have to be careful not to muddy up the colors.  When Bob tells you to load the brush full, he means it. Using the palette knife takes a very light touch as well.  It turns out that I’m fairly good at cutting off a little roll of paint, but not so great at actually using it.

Like any new skill, painting this way takes practice.  I think I shall try again.  I like doing this–it’s quick, it’s fun, and I enjoyed creating a happy little world, even if my trees look a little bit pissed off.  Despite the horror of this first attempt, I think Bob would be proud of me for trying.

———-

It’s a day later, and I wanted to add a thought.  The most important thing I’ve learned from this? It doesn’t have to be perfect. Despite my mistakes, people have responded favorably to my lame attempt at art.  I’m happy with the painting, even though it isn’t as good as I’d hoped.  It’s still better than I expected.

And that’s about all we can do.  If our endeavors turn out fabulously, we’re golden. But silver is still pretty nice too.

Happy Independence Day!  For me, it’s Not-So-Happy-Wish-I-Were-British Day.  Or at least Wish-I-Were-In-London Day.

I miss this.

Photograph: Elizabeth West

You might wonder why I’m so attached to England.  When I was a kid, my auntie married an Englishman  and moved to London (they’re divorced now, though she is still there).  This fascinated me–growing up in a small Missouri cow town, I had no concept of foreign places.  Getting Christmas presents from her thrilled.

I corresponded with my step-cousin in high school.  Pen pals were a big thing back then and since we had no internet, we wrote letters.  We sent each other teen magazines and painted nail varnish colo(u)rs on our missives.

Jackie magazine, 9 June 1979.  I had this one, until my mum threw out all my mags and comics while I was at music college.  GAH, MUM!!!

Image: crazyaboutmagazines.com

When I turned eighteen, my parents’ graduation gift to me was a two-and-a-half week trip to London to visit Auntie, then-Uncle, and cousins.

I fell madly, passionately in love with it.

I wanted to go back, wanted it crazy bad, but it just didn’t happen.  So I tried my best to put it out of my mind.  It didn’t exactly go.  It lurked silently in my system until last year, when unrelated conversations with both European and American friends brought it roaring back to life.  A bit like how the chicken pox virus hangs out in your spine, only to cause shingles later.

I’ve changed a lot since that first visit, in various ways:

• I’m not as picky. Seriously, my auntie thought I would starve to death; I barely tried any foods.  The last two times, I ate everything that didn’t eat me first.  Including haggis and black pudding.

This is delicious and there is no way I would have touched it back then.

Photograph: Elizabeth West

• I’m more experienced. At eighteen, I could not have planned an independent trip to Scotland or Wales.  Also, it’s lucky London is such an easy city to get around in.  I was the most clueless, small-town idiot ever and I’m surprised I didn’t get mugged or fall into the Thames.

Me at 18, in Regent’s Park rose garden.  Oh my God, what a dork.  #TBT (yeah, sorry, I know it’s not Thursday)

Photograph by random English person using my camera

• Technology has caught up. In the 1980s, no one had a smartphone.  Everyone had a London A-Z.  They still sell this marvelous map of the city, because not everyone has a phone (or wants one), but let’s face it; you look like a tourist standing around flipping through it.  And besides, the print has shrunk–oh, sorry, it’s my ancient eyes.  Well, bollocks.

Getting old ain’t for sissies.

Image: imagerymajestic/freedigitalphotos.net

Now everyone has their faces in their phone screens. You pause somewhere to check the directions and it looks like you’re texting or reading email (be careful to watch for phone snatchers, however).  So thank you, Google maps, for helping me blend in and still get around.  An updated A-Z made a great souvenir instead.

I’ve no idea when I will return.  Right now, I feel very much like I did after that first trip, wondering when or if it will happen again, and thinking it’s out of reach.  But I’ve learned one more thing since that time: anything can happen.  Anything at all.

Let’s hope anything does.

———-

UPDATES

1. Secret Book is becalmed. I’ve slowly realized that it’s a much larger and more involved project than I thought.  The amount of research I still have to do to write convincingly about subjects of which I know nothing staggers me.  I’m still working on it, never fear.  The main priority is still to actually finish the book, but it will be the sketchiest first draft I’ve ever written.  I think that’s part of the problem; I’m headiting too much instead of just writing Blah blah blah check this later like I usually do.

2. Brian Keene says he is finished critiquing Rose’s Hostage. I hope I get it back now.  I’m still trying to work out a subplot for a sequel.  The book did get a minor rewrite already; I replaced an interrogation scene with a MUCH better version.  It added to the word count, but fuck it.

3. A friend is beta-reading Tunerville.  She’s my consumer test person; her job is to see if it’s readable.  I’m nervous because I want her to like it.  (She did like Rose’s Hostage.)

4. I have three queries out on Tunerville at the moment. No word from anyone, but there’s always hope.

That’s all I have today.  Later this week, look for a vocabulary post, and by next weekend, I will post a review of the sequel to Knight of Light for you.

Everybody have a safe and happy Fourth!