(no subject)

AHA! I knew the name Kevin Young sounded familiar!

He wrote the poem I posted yesterday, and when Vivichick told me his name some random neuron fired in the back of my head. But it's not like either name or surname are very unusual, so it took me until this morning to realise he wrote Most Way Home, which is a book of poems that I received as a prize in a short story competition in high school when I was seventeen. It was the first time I'd ever been rewarded or remunerated for writing, and I still have it.

Once Most Way Home hit my brain I vividly remembered the gut-punch I got when I opened the book and read "Reward", so that's today's poem.

Reward
by Kevin Young

RUN AWAY from this sub-
scriber for the second time
are TWO NEGROES, viz. SMART,
an outlandish dark fellow

( with his country marks... )

(no subject)

to do:
filing
-- REMEMBER TO FILE
Jack
drycleaning
deal with The Sheep Poo Situation (planning stages)
invoices: chemist, drycleaner, stationer, Ann Summers

home:
clear out dvr.
strictly come dancing marathon?
--dare we invite Hart?
--jack gets too overexcited (remember to record The Narnia Code for him)
where have all my bloody ties gone

nb:
coffee
creamer (dairy-nondairy)
tea (Doctor) (picky!)
pterodactyl chow
-- what do alien chocolate easter chicks eat?
fluffy toy for max

hub:
2nd lft loo lvl 3 not working (could nobody hang a sign?)
Myf seems depressed. Book on therapy for lizards? NOT FROM AMAZON
return jack's book - steal another

(no subject)

Today was intense. I don't know what happened. Tuesdays aren't usually hell on earth.

I think it's getting better, though. The climax came when R and I spent forty minutes ripping each other's heads off over textmessage and then I said "Hey, I'm fucking cranky, and I'm being a dick, I'm sorry" and he said "I'm fucking crankier, I had to file my taxes today, and I'm sorry too" and then we agreed to be patient with each other.

We have the sort of friendship where if we don't end up being best man at each others' weddings, one of us is going to prison for murdering the other one.

(The argument was about the fact that we were going to make meatloaf tonight, and then he said "I'm going to be back no earlier than 7, start the meatloaf without me" and I said to myself, so you want me to come to your home and cook for you after working for eight hours? We compromised, because he did have to spend all weekend with his mother -- I'm making spaghetti, which is easier and I like more, and he's paying for the food and feeling very guilty, AS WELL HE SHOULD.)

Amazon Fail is wrapping up in one way -- the books are getting relisted, Amazon has said they're sorry (albeit without actually saying "WE'RE SORRY") and they probably won't say anything more.

But.

In another way it's just starting, and here are some links to prove it. They're tied up with Extribulum, because it is always on my mind.

One: Amazon dickery goes back a lot further than I thought, and it took this whole mess for me to realise that I was shopping at Literary Walmart. I shouldn't have to say that Extribulum is, or will be when it gets off the ground, LGBTQI friendly (we'll get to Amazon and whether or not it is in a second). What EP's mission statement does say, and in a way more than anything what Amazon pointed up, is that publishing and bookselling right now is about sellers and buyers, and I want the concept of Extribulum as a word to be about writers and readers.

When did I become an idealist? Half of me is laughing at the other half, constantly. Maybe this is why I don't sleep well anymore.

Two: There are many good reasons to assume that Amazon has lost my business for good. What this means for Extribulum I'm not sure. Amazon is a major outlet -- I believe that first link up above says that if Amazon doesn't sell you, you've lost 47% of your sales -- and it has things in place for selfpublishers that others may not. I'm investigating Powell's right now, and would welcome links to other booksellers who work with self-publishers.

Three: From this post via rm: it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors.

Which nicely concords with a sentiment I expressed in comments:

Legit it may be, excusable it is not. What tag, exactly, was Amazon giving to these books that marked them out to be deranked? Because I can think of some people who might group kink, erotica, gay history, gay lit, feminist history, and sexual health into a single category that doesn't include straight porn, and those are not people I would care to know.

And appended to Three: Two friends of mine were forced to fill out a fake joint tax return today in order to get certain numbers for the individual tax returns they had to file, because they're Domestic Partners in California and not (can't be) married. If they were married, they would have saved three thousand dollars in taxes this year.

Separate is never equal. Shit, why is this so much harder for people to understand in the 21st century than it was in the goddamn nineteen-sixties? Nobody should have to pay a three thousand dollar gay fee to the government.

The bright shining star of today is that the aesthetic edits on Nameless are done, which means tomorrow I put it through to Lulu and find out the dimensions of my cover. One step closer to print!

(no subject)

So, my Mum is a witch.

Srsly -- she picked a roulette number for a friend and they won $750, people follow her randomly in shops, gran's ghost has visited her at least once, and she has almost clockwork bi-annual encounters with Satan in dreams. Apparently Satan needs to be rebuked by her at least twice a year, as a reminder. I don't question! I have dreams about rabid bats.

Anyway, she is a witch, and I have inherited some of her witchery. I've seen a few ghosts, people have started following ME in shops, and tonight I pulled the best magic trick ever, which she used to do about twice a week.

R said he was going to be back around seven, and then called at seven to say he was leaving and would be back around 8:30, and actually showed up at 8:53. And I know this because I was standing at the stove.

At about a quarter to nine, I got up and put the water on to boil and the sauce in the pan to heat.

"What are you doing?" Ratpacker asked. (note: he does not pack rats. He is a huge fanatic for the Rat Pack.)

"Putting the food on," I said. "It's time."

As soon as the sauce started to bubble, R showed up.

WIN.

Mum did this so regularly, even when we were on wildly irregular schedules, that it became a catchphrase: "I knew you'd show up when I put the food on to cook." And this, I said to R, thus completing the circle.

I think this officially promotes me from "novice" to "just a bit creepy". When I achieve the rank of "That was fucking weird", we will know I have assumed my mother's mantle.

It was a good evening, we ate food and watched R rant at the news and finished two and a half bottles of wine.

And thus to bed.