A Song For Her

Rudolph is Dead!

Here's a funny story for the day.

Miss Montez's mom is one of the maid's at a hotel. We dropped by to visit her. She and the cleaning staff were having a good laugh and shared it with us so I thought I would share it with you.

One of the maid's had gotten a call from the school about her son. Seems the little boy, who is in kindergarten, had told everybody that his grandfather shot Rudolph this weekend upsetting all the other children.

Yes, it's deer season. The woman's dad had bagged him a deer. The woman's best comment on it was, "I don't know why he had to say it was Rudolph." I guess it would be less traumatic if he said Comet or Donner.

Be Kind

There are lotsa little ways to be kind, but might I make a simple suggestion that's pretty easy and won't take much of your time.

If a door has to be pulled to open it... please open it for the guy wearing the straight-jacket. He will really appreciate it.

Oh, and bring a straw with his drink unless you want to hold it for him all night. Unless you're PB or one of the goth/fetish models and then he really didn't mind you holding the drink for him at all.

Writing with a Reader

Wyatt, who is the head pimpmeister over at PanHistoria, has a really good post in his blog about writing with a partner in collaborative writing and the methods available to you at PanHistoria. Wyatt at Pan Historia: More on Collaborative Writing. So I'll let you go read that.

What came to my mind was the trick of writing with a new partner who is also a reader.

Over in the horror novel FLESH I've been having a blast with my long time writing partner Miss Montez. She writes Dathne. I write Andre. I had been wanting to create one of the NPCs as a writable character since Andre and Dathne will be separated more and more. I was talking to a friend on Pan who is also a reader and she was telling me about a character she had always wanted to put into FLESH, one geekly Anabel Lee, but said she'd never seen a way to do it or how to keep her alive. I liked the character, I like the writer and her style fits with ours, told her I was creating DiDi, and asked her to join us.

So far it's working out great. Miss Montez and I write at a breakneck speed, and write fairly far ahead, except lately with holidays and other mishaps we've been kind of coasting. [We've still got quite a few posts in the bag and plenty more planned out, at least for her. I'm the one snoozing.] What we've been doing with Ana is a little bridgework to connect her character in with ours and it's been a blast. Her character is going to fit in perfectly with our disfunctional zombie-slaying redneck-thwarting household.

Where's the problem? The only hitch is Ana's writer is also a reader of FLESH. I don't want to spoil any surprises for her. This doesn't mean she isn't a part of the planning. We're both asking her for input on the planning, both short and long term. What we're holding back from her, to keep from ruining the story for her, are little plot twists that Ana wouldn't know about anyway. She's clever, she's picked up on things other people haven't, which is why I knew she'd be the perfect person to ask to join us. So she can anticipate certain things will happen, but I'm not going to spoil it by telling her how. I'm not going to deny her any information she needs to know to write her character or to interact with the rest.

Miss Montez held out information on me. I had no idea Dathne intended to use Andre as a bargaining chip. If I had known that from the start I might have let my knowledge of that cloud his perception of her.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, sometimes you have to treat your writing partner like a reader. Save some surprises for them. Even if you plan and plot the way we do, they don't have to know everything your character is going to do if it doesn't affect their character. Plus it can also make a difference in how they write in relation towards your character.

Overheard Randomness

Just things I overheard and wanted to share...



Mdme: Who said I was a wannabe cougar? What's that all about?
PB: You totally misunderstood. Not you want to be a cougar. They want you to be a cougar. Big difference.



BK Employee to Obviously Blind Guy who asked where the woman he was with went: I don't know. What does she look like?
Blind Guy: I honestly don't know.



Mekah: Stupid ass white woman getting all uppity with me like she's all upper class when she's got a daughter with a made up black person's name.



Mdme: She's so crazy about him she has butterflies in her stomach and wanted to know how to make them go away. Normally I'd tell her to just f@!# him. They'll go away. But she's a virgin, so what can I say? I am so not equipped to give advice to virgins.



PB: He's totally sober acting like this. Can you imagine what he was like on drugs? [Referring to me being wrapped around her legs because she was dressed like Dr. Girlfriend, white go-go boots and all.]



Victor: You don't get it because you haven't got it. Get it? Of course you don't. There's a reason you've never gotten any and it's not because you're saving it. Unlike your sister, it's because you've never had the choice. I'm sorry. Am I being catty again? I'm feeling like a little pussy.



Prado: [Explaining someone's bizarre tendencies as normal.] Well, he is German.

Lee: Maybe his mother was the other girl he knocked up.
Mdme: Oh! Ohhhhh! That is so sick! Why didn't I think of that?

Miss Montez: Lita's new white in-laws were being so politically correct Turkey Day it was hilarious. I thought the mom was going to asphyxiate when one of the kids told her most of us were swirl babies.

Walmart Customer: Are you waiting on me to pay?
Walmart Employee: No, but everyone else in the store is.

Odd Person: You're so tall that I bet if you fell down and hit your head really hard it on the sidewalk, it would really hurt.

Barney Fife Cop upon seeing my track scars: Let me guess, you used drugs.
Miss Montez: With your powers of deduction why are you a traffic cop and not a detective?
Barney Fife Cop: I think you're being sarcastic.
Miss Montez: In a sing-song voice. Somebody's bucking for a promotion. Stage whisper. I bet he's even noticed you're not short.
Barney Fife Cop: Miss, I think you want to get arrested.
Miss Montez: Darn. There went the promotion. So close.*

*Miss Montez has several criminal lawyers in her family. She knows how much she can get away with, especially when she hasn't done anything illegal. When you know you can get quality legal defense for free, it apparently makes you a little bold. Notice I said nothing.

Captain: I am so a Meredith fan-girl now.

Jayn the Dragon Quote: Don't do drugs. Drugs are bad. Pixies on the other hand are all natural and non-addictive. They can be smoked to provide a pleasant high, but they're screaming can be a little irritating so I suggest ear plugs. They can also be eaten, but the effects take longer to kick in and their little bones can get stuck between your teeth.

Jayn the Dragon is the intellectual property of Madame S. and used with her permission. So if you are a Jayn fan don't go running to her saying someone is ripping off Jayn or threatening to sick Jayn on me. Jayn already wrecked my car. I am on Jayn's phone text list. Remember: WWJaynD? Eat You!

Nicknames

If you have a nickname, I hope it's a good one.

Mine is a good one. Scarecrow. I could have been called Slim. Or one of those reverse names, Shortie or Half-pint. I'll stick to Scarecrow. It's what everyone calls me.

I inadvertently gave my friend Brandon a nickname and with the most recent Scarecrow Day and Miss Montez adding a new addition to it, everyone now calls him by it. The new addition was "Call Brandon Milkshake."

Yes, thanks to me, everyone now calls Brandon Milkshake. Noone even cares why. He's just suffered through the weekend being called Milkshake by everybody. It was one thing when I was the only one calling him that, it was an inside joke between us, but now everybody is.

OK, here's the story of how the name came in to being.

Brandon, Miss Montez, Lidia, and I all hopped into the Fairlane to take a road trip to the big mighty bookstore. Along the way we stopped to get milkshakes. Mine was a vanilla malted. Very yummy. When drinking milkshakes it is obligatory that someone has to start singing Milkshake by Kelis. I don't know who started it just that it got started. Eventually we got over it. Stopped singing. That was the end of it. Or it should have been.

Barney Fife cop pulled us over because Miss Montez when she renewed her car tag several months before had forgotten to put the stickers on the tag. So while she's talking to him the rest of us were talking to each other. Brandon was in the backseat. I was in the front. He is a photographer. I asked him something about how he did this effect with his camera, because he uses film, not a digital camera, and he leaned up and said, "I could teach you, but I'd have to charge." This caused me to snort malted milkshake up my nose. Not pleasant.

Ever since then I greet him with "Hey, Milkshake!"

I didn't mean to scar him for life with a stupid nickname.

Brandon, you have my sincere apologies. It could have been worse.

Scars

The writing prompt on the One Minute Writer was Scar Story. Just tell how you got a scar.

No problem, except which one would I pick? I have short sleeves on, so just the visible ones... Do I tell about the ones on my left hand that look like my hand was made of plastic and someone kept poking it with a hot stick and my flesh melted. Do I tell about that ugly scar on my forarm, all the way up to my elbow, that's all discolored and disgusting and has that spidery varicose vein look going on? How about the one on my right forearm that starts in the palm of my hand and is jagged and at least not discolored?

Want me to pull off my shirt and then there would really be a variety to choose from? Let me just strip down. I could tell some tales that would make you realize why I spent the better part of my life looking for a way out. And yes, the ones on my arms are the result of my own stupidity, but none of the burns are, none of the cuts, and trust me, I never stabbed myself.

I'm not proud of my scars, nor am I ashamed of any of them. Some of them don't belong to the person I am now. But they helped make me.

I carry the scars of a ghost. I don't carry the ghost.