pjthompson | Entries tagged with kerfluffles

1. Let me thread you a story…(1-30)
2. Mayor Begay has been in office for some time now. We like the job he does and the way he cares for all the people of Portalville.
3. Weren’t always that way. We had us a mayor before who caused nothing but hard feelings and chaos. Mayor Covfefe.
4. As I’ve said before, folks in Portalville are generally accepting of everybody, but even good folks get scared sometimes.
5. If you’ve got an unscrupulous sumbich who likes chaos and playing on people’s fears it’s sometimes hard to break through the stramash,
6. and get people thinking sensibly once more. Mayor Covfefe was one of those sorts. Took over the City Council with his pack of yes men,
7. forcing agendas on the town nobody really liked but were too scared to oppose. Nobody trusted anybody else, see, and figured everyone
8. was out to get them, so no one wanted to listen to what others said without starting a yelling match.
9. So much screaming in the extremes when most folks just wanted to negotiate some peace that the City Council ground to a halt.
10. Weren’t no business getting done, or only what business lined the pockets of Mayor Covfefe and his cronies.
11. They tried to shred every principle we held dear here in Portalville, violating city by-laws like confetti.
12. Pretty soon folks was yelling at each other over every tiny thing that came along and forming parties of folk yelling in the same key.
13. We had us the Portalville League of Lawyers threatening to file suit over anyone who didn’t agree with them.
14. Fortunately, they mostly couldn’t agree with each other so their suits went nowhere or were easily dismissed by Judge Mathead.
15. Then we had us the Portalville League of Opposition. They didn’t really have a point of view except that they were in opposition…
16. to everyone else in town. “What are you opposing?” people would ask. “What have you got?” they’d answer.
17. The Portalville League of Witches got so fed up they put reversal spells on half the town. So many folks walked around
18. with heads on backwards they didn’t know if they was coming or going & got a much closer look at bodily functions than they ever wanted.
19. Finally, Sherman Begay, the town shoemaker, had enough. He formed the Portalville League of the Beleaguered to try to reassert sense.
20. Bar-Bar Shumay was one of the first to join, followed by Madame Mosibelle Nimby and her son Rupert.
21. They held giant clear-seeing resistance rallies where everyone who showed up got the scales lifted from their eyes.
22. Pretty soon, folks saw that Mayor Covfefe was a minor god of chaos, although no god of chaos is ever truly minor.
23. His magic had scared folks into going against their better nature, against what they knew was right.
24. (Then again, some folks ain’t got better natures and think right is only what is right for them. Even the most powerful magic
25. can’t do nothing to heal that kind of perversion. What’s required to fight them folks is a really big stick.)
26. Fear is a great motivator, but I got to believe love is, too. Once Sherman Begay, & Bar-Bar, & the Nimbys broke through the shouting,
27. let people see the truth, most folks came around. They realized that loving your neighbor wasn’t just a passel of pretty-sounding words.
28. It’s a way forward, a commitment to doing what’s right for the whole community.
29. Folks decided that they’d rather live in harmony than have their own way in every tiny thing. Compromise became a holy tenet.
30. Come next election, Mayor Covfefe lost by a landslide. And that’s how the new mayor, Sherman Begay the shoemaker, saved our souls.

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

You can read about us from the beginning at: http://bit.ly/2k1j8B7

Random quote of the day:

“Discussion in America means dissent.”

—James Thurber, “The Duchess and the Bugs,” Lanterns & Lances, 1961

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Discussion in America means dissent.”

—James Thurber, “The Duchess and the Bugs,” Lanterns & Lances, 1961

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Quarrels would not last long if all the wrongs were on one side.”

—François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 496

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Quarrels would not last long if all the wrongs were on one side.”

—François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 496

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. Under the heading of “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” I was asked to do a favor for someone I don’t work for. I agreed and set about the proofreading, formatting, etc., of a long document. I spent five hours at this task and sent it back to the author only to discover that I had been given the wrong version. I was unhappy, but not so unhappy as the author who had to do a compare/contrast of my changes/his changes over the weekend. Then I got it back to finish cleaning up.

2. I got a robo-call last week to remind me that I had an appointment at UCLA Med for Monday, October 31. I knew I did—it was my semi-annual thyroid check up. Yet somehow, between now and then, I dropped off the computer. They had no record of my appointment and the doctor was booked solid with other people. I’m glad I took a half vacation day to go to this appointment and that I made special arrangements for a friend to take my mom to dialysis so I didn’t have to reschedule and wait and additional 2-3 months for a new appointment. I’ll be seeing the doctor in mid-December. At least I got to go home for a couple of hours and put my sore knee up with a heating pad (crone!) before picking Mom up at dialysis.

3. Since we usually get home from dialysis between 7-7:30 p.m. (sometimes later), I knew that I would miss most of the cute little trick or treaters that I love giving out candy to. Plus, after a dialysis day, we’re usually trashed and I was so not in the mood this year. So I left the porch light out when I drove to pick up Mom. They had a Haunted House at Westchester Park, about a block from our house, right where Georgetown deadends. As I made the turn from Manchester to Georgetown, I saw hordes and hordes and hordes of older thugs pouring out of the Haunted House, and more parents driving onto our street and disgorging their vans and cars of screaming invaders. I knew we were in trouble. So Mom and I sneaked like felons into our house to avoid the hordes. Even so, as we were letting ourselves into our darkened front door some particularly ambitious candy extortionists followed us up the driveway. “We don’t have any candy here!” I yelled. “Sorry!” and quickly slammed the door. Later, as I was making dinner I was forced to turn on the kitchen light (though the porch light was still out) and as soon as I did kids streamed to our front door yelling, “Trick or treat!” I quickly turned the light out, ignored them, and they departed. Thankfully, it was a school night and everyone had pretty much departed the neighborhood by 10 p.m. Or so I think. I fell asleep in my chair by 8:30. When I woke at 9 they were still traipsing about, and when I awoke again around 10 things had quieted considerably. So I went to bed.

4. This morning while I was showering I noticed the water lapping around my ankles. Sure enough, it was refusing to go down the drain. Simultaneous to this, my mother’s toilet refused to flush and threatened to o’er top its containment vessel. I thought fleetingly, “This must be the trick for refusing to give the treats.” Eventually they both drained, but it took close to a half hour and there was much gurgling and scary sewer sounds. You may remember that we had the entire sewer pipe replaced about a year ago? The plumber who came out today (a different plumber) said that pipe was just fine…but there was this other pipe underneath the house…He’s coming tomorrow morning to replace it. The good news is, we must be getting close to having all new plumbing for this old place. It’s gotten so absurd at this point I just have to laugh. What the hell else am I going to do?

5. Mom seems to be doing better and we have no new doctor’s appointments until Thursday the 10th. I’m hoping we continue in this undramatic fashion for awhile.

6. One more than five! I continue to poke at research for The Numberless Stars, and even did some creative thinking about the plot. There still remains little to no time for actual writing, but you can’t have everything. Some day, however, I may write the Great Crone Epic. I’m wondering if anyone in this youth-obsessed market will even want to read about kick-ass crones?

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

There's just no winning on the internet. I don't know why I'm still participating sometimes.

I occasionally, very occasionally, leave a comment on a certain author's blog under the nickname of PJ. Someone pointed out to me a comment left by someone calling themselves PJ on her blog back in 2006. Not me. I didn't even read her work until last summer. I probably starting reading her blog about that time, too, but it took me a long time before I could get over my natural timidity and fear of being an idiot and to feel comfortable leaving a comment of my own. I don't believe there's anything from me (the real PJ) until this year.

PJ is a common enough nickname, I suppose, and it wouldn't be so bad that two of us had commented there except that this other person said something insulting—insulting enough that the author felt the need to rebut the remark in her next entry.

I was horrified, frankly, and a bit nauseated. First of all, I don't leave insulting remarks on authors' blogs. In fact, I try not to leave rude and insulting remarks on anyone's blogs. I may occasionally be clumsy and inadvertently come off as a douche bag, but I never intentionally set out to be a horse's ass. It's just low class in so many ways. And, secondly, I totally disagreed with the remark. I really like this writer's work, and I like reading her blog. She makes a great deal of sense on the subject of writing popular fiction.

So now I'm contemplating sounding like a raging nerd (in addition to being misidentified as a douche bag) and leaving a new comment declaring myself not to be that other PJ. It would probably be stupid in many ways, not the least of which is that it is probably not a fraction as important to her as it is to me. Also, she may not even remember the incident, although I generally tend to remember insulting people, especially if the name pops up again after three years making nicey face. It would make me suspicious. But then, I'm not only a raging nerd but paranoid. I should probably let it be, except for the part about being horrified, nauseated, timid, and afraid of being an idiot. (Really, my nightmare scenario.)

So I guess I won't be using PJ anymore to leave comments.

No. I have just as much right to my silence and anyone else has to their free speech.

But nothing new. It was this way on USENET, then mailing lists, now blogs. People just love to have an excuse to be as mean and nasty as they can be without looking someone in the eye. People who would never scream at a sales clerk or a waiter will heap excesses of abuse on disembodied words on the screen, or the disembodied voice on the phone. When I worked on a switchboard while putting myself through college, all the operators got a ton of abuse. Inappropriate channeling of frustration and hostility: one of the nicer sides of human nature.

http://newsbusters.org/node/12184

It's been a challenging couple of weeks—but all petty stuff. Elsewhere on my flist and in the wider world, real and heartbreaking challenges have been happening. But the minor league stuff has eaten up my time and made me distracted.

My petty list: Unanticipated events, scheduling kerfluffles, misunderstandings, annoying narcissists, I've been sick twice (including today), and there have been major and minor pet mishaps.

The good things: Undie's doing much better. Now that the nasty infection's on its way out, she's been rolling onto her back and making coy burbles in order to get scritches. It's nice to see her feeling better.

And I finished chapter 40 of Night Warrior yesterday. Chapter 40 is the last chapter of the book. It's all over except the epilogue(s), my friends. I'm not giddy yet, because I've got to tie up the loose strings for three timelines in that (those) epilogue(s), and I had to fight hard for every damned sentence of chapter 40. The epilogue(s) is (are) already partially written (I've been anticipation writing for weeks now), but I don't want to get cocky. It'll be done when it's done.

And then I'll get giddy.

Watch this space for whoops and chortles. ☺☻☺☻

After a great word count (for me) on Tuesday of 2500 words, I did the usual 500 on Wednesday. Then Thursday and Friday were complete washes because of a grand computer kerfluffle at work. I was just trying to deal with the mess on Thursday and didn't take much of a lunch at all, consequently no lunch writing session. The mess was ongoing Friday so I was still dealing with it and stressing. I think I managed half a page! And I'm always too fried by the time I get home at night to be very productive.

Right, I thought, I'll make up for the lack of production on the weekend.

My body had other plans. Yesterday, I felt like something the cat drug in. I thought I might be coming down with that cold everyone's been getting because I had a massive headache and a scratchy throat, body aches and enervation, but no. I just felt crappy. It could be I got a bad dose of synthetic thyroid hormone--that occasionally happens. Or maybe it was just non-specific crud. Although I feel better today I'm still low energy.

However, the upside of crudville yesterday is that while I was laying around doing no writing, I was able to do quite a bit of worldbuilding for Charged with Folly. I had enough oomph to do some reading, and in that synchronicity that often happens to me when I'm coming up with a thematic metaphor, everywhere I turned I ran into more things that reinforced the trend of my thinking--TV shows, novels, seemingly unrelated nonfiction books. So odd.

I don't necessarily attribute anything in this synchronicity to a supernatural agent (although I never reject any possibilities). It's possible that I've been surrounded by these intimations of theme for quite some time and have now passed into a zone of hyperfocus on them. Certainly, the symbol of labyrinths and images of the underworld are not strangers to me. But it never ceases to amaze me how when I decide to focus on a theme, the references begin blooming all around me.

So, wasted days and nights on the writing front, but good progress on the thematic front. And that pesky plot thing, as well.

Because of that remarkable Tuesday, though, I still managed to come up with my average weekly word count of between 3000-4000 words. Not a staggering word count and I'm trying to up that, but it's steady and reliable, week after week.

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Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm here because I'm here because I'm here

Entries tagged with kerfluffles

Down Portalville Way – Chaos

Disagree

Disagree

Contretemps

Contretemps

Not a bucket list

I'm not that PJ!

Speak out

Well, this is pretty awful, but not a surprise

Minor league challenges—and some good things, too

Wasted days, wasted nights?

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May 2025

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