Not A Dollarshort

Blogathon Thanks.

More sponsor shout-outs.

Does my demographic actually use the expression "shout-out?"

Anyway.

Thanks go to Daniel of Tinyblog and Ed of edrants.com for signing up to be my two newest Blogathon sponsors.

Note: The $20 minimum pledge amount has been eliminated. So give!

I'll tell you where you can put your special offer.

Me: Hello.

Silence

Me: Hello?

Telemarketer: Hello M'am, I just wanted to let you know that AT&T...

Me: I'm sorry, I'm not interested.

Telemarketer: But M'am...

Me: I'm not interested. You have called three times in the last two days. Please do not call me back.

Telemarketer: M'am, phone numbers are called by the computer.

Me: I don't care. Do not call me back. This is your warning. I'm aware of the law that allows me to receive $500 for every time your company calls back after this warning.

Telemarketer: But M'am...

Me: Good bye.

Well, I should probably expect another call in a few days since I didn't use the code words.

I'm supposed to say "put me on your don't call list." And I was supposed to get the telemarketer's name and company.

I really don't like being nasty to telemarketers. They're just doing their job. It's not like they enjoy calling people and interrupting their dinners.

But then, there are those telemarketing jerks that need to be bitch-slapped.

Me: Hello.

Silence

Me: Hello?

Telemarketer: Hello. We've noticed that your not receiving the Chronicle.

Me: I'm sorry. I'm not interested.

Telemarketer: But for a limited time...

Me: Sorry. But no.

Telemarketer: Please put your mother or father on the line.

Me: Excuse me? I am the homeowner (renter) and I told you I'm not interested!

Phone is slammed down.

Sure, they can call me during dinner.

I'll be polite.

They can call at 7:00 in the morning.

I'll be civil.

But don't they dare call me a child.

Same hang-ups, different century.

I thought I had it all figured out. I wrote this six months before our wedding.

So perhaps, with the realization that time passes too quickly, I have come to the source of my obsession and fears. I am not truly afraid of abandoning those who have lived during this century. Instead I am more afraid of aging -- entering the century in which I will one day die; Everyone anticipates the future, the year 2000. The World's Fair saw it as a revolutionary, wonderful time. The future meant flying cars and steak-flavored pills. Things would be different. Things would be better.

But really, where is my flying car?

It seemed like such a big deal at the time.

Fabulous.

Did you know that there is going to be a fourth season of Absolutely Fabulous?

Well, I didn't.

According to the French and Saunders website, the series will be shown this fall in the UK.

I guess that makes my Absolutely Fabulous Complete DVD Collection a little less complete.

On a similar Britcom note, does anyone have any information about I'm Alan Partridge coming to DVD?

Or, you can view it as a new life.

In college, I swore by Sandra Gilbert's and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. In fact, during one semester, I was incorporating the text into work for three of my classes.

This was during the same time that I vowed to never again use the word "hysterical" because of its negative connotations and did a great deal of research on postpartum depression.

The discussions surrounding the Houston mother who murdered her children has brought to mind my fear of the disease.

One of my most distinct memories takes place in a coffee shop along highway 101. I was four at the time, and traveling with my mother and grandparents to visit my great-aunt and uncle in Gilroy.

As I sat in a booth, staring at a Sue-Bee honey container, I burst out in tears because I had the revelation that everyone I know and love will one day be dead. I wept uncontrollably for about an hour but at no time could express to my family why exactly I was sad.

After that time, I suffered spells of depression about once every couple of months. Eventually able to verbalize my sadness to my family, these bouts soon became part of my personality.

"Oh no, Mena's in one of her moods."

Because of these "moods," I'm horribly afraid of how I will react to having a child.

When I think about having a baby, I realize that when it does happen, I will have made my mother a grandmother and myself a mother, therefore pushing us all closer to the grave.

What a horrible and selfish way of thinking about childbirth. I know.

But I can't help it. I want to prolong everyone's life and try to maintain some sort of familial stasis.

I'll stop now since this wasn't where I intended this post to go. I was simply going to provide a link to an essay I wrote in college about motherhood, depression and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. If you're really bored, you can read it here. And, yes, I know that I use the word "usurp" a great deal.

The illustration is from my postcard series of nineteenth-century women authors.

No na na no na no.

Okay, so we all know that fan fiction is creepy.

Mulder and Scully. Niles and Daphne. Maddie Hayes and David Addison. Usually fan fiction revolves around unrequited love or the single question "will they do it?"

Here's some fan fiction that brings the word "creepy" to an entirely new level.

Small Wonder?

Here's a sampling from the The Small Wonder Chronicles, the fire and brimstone fanfic of Rev. Leslie Benn Lerias:

"Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, we hereby bring forth Victoria Anne Lawson, daughter of Theodore and Joanna Lawson, into the light of God. May the Holy Spirit guide her though her entire lifetime. With this water, may she be blessed." As Rev. Steve pours water on Vicki's head, a little steam appears.

On the way back from the Church, Ted and Joan were talking inside the car with everyone.

"You know, even though I made Vicki, she is still a creation of God." Ted explains.

Joan says, "Without God, you wouldn't exist, and without you, Vicki wouldn't be here. So, I think we did a very good thing to have Vicki baptized."

Jamie says, "Little do they know they baptized a robot."

"From now on, let's not treat Vicki like a robot. She has became very much like everyone else in this house, so let's treat her as one of God's creations." Ted suggests.

And, apparently Harriet's the anti-Christ:

"Jamie has no friends left, all because of Harriet." Vicki blurts out.

Joan asks, "What did she do this time?"

"That little tramp won't leave me alone!" Jamie says in anger.

"Each day, Harriet keeps on asking Jamie if he wants to have sex with him." Vicki tells everyone. "Once, she even offered him $20."

"I wouldn't lay Harriet for a million bucks!" Jamie confirms.

Ted adds into the conversation. "You know, that Brandon has been starting trouble at the office, threatening to have me demoted back to my old position by threatening to tell rumors about me to Mr. Jennings if Jamie keeps on refusing to have sex with Harriet."

"That’s blackmail! She can't do that." Joan says, "One of these days, Harriet's going to get it if she won’t change her sleazy ways."

It gets worse.

And yes, I did indeed do a search for "small wonder." But that is nowhere near as wrong.

You've got to have a gimmick!

You're more than just a mimic
When you got a gimmick--
Take a look how different we are!

If you wanna make it,
Twinkle while you shake it.

If you wanna grind it,
Wait till you've refined it.

If you wanna bump it,
Bump it with a trumpet!

So get yourself a gimmick
And you too
Can be a star!

A gimmick or theme will keep the posts somewhat interesting and prevent the expected "I can't believe it's 4:30 am and I'm still at this stupid computer" sort of entries.

So what will be my gimmick for the Blogathon?

I was thinking about telling the story behind forty-eight photographs. A photograph is such a splendid sort of prompt since it instantly brings you back to that moment in time.

Good idea?

Or should my sponsors go all Medici-on-my-ass and dictate what I should blog about?

Oh, and yes, I'm hoping that " go all Medici-on-my-ass" is going to be the catchphrase of the summer.

Do you have a better idea?

It's literary karma.

I love this idea.

From the BookCrossing website:

Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in an airliner seatback pocket, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records journal entries for that book.

Although it's a smashing concept, I don't know if I could just abandon a book unaware of its possible fate. Would a person in the general public actual go to the listed URL?

If I found a book, I would hope it would be better than the one I found in the first grade.

He did well on tests, though.

Before Ben left for college, we made a silly pact not to make any friends at our respective schools. We were eighteen, in love, and horribly afraid of what would happen when we were separated by a endlessly long two-hour drive.

It was my birthday the day he left. I was miserable. Because my high school grades were less than stellar, I was attending the State University twenty minutes away from home. And because my parents were disappointed that I didn't go to the schools they wanted me to, they forced me to live at home.

Although my parents and I got along somewhat better than we did when I was in high school, we still had knock-out fights over all those little things that teenagers blow out of proportion.

I didn't really want to celebrate my birthday the night Ben left. Moping around and snapping at my parents was really all that I had energy for. They made me come down for dinner -- Chinese food -- and forced me to "get over" Ben leaving. I can't remember what I said, but I'm sure it was some bitchy comment because it warranted my dad throwing chow mein at me.

Happy Birthday.

When I finally started school, I played the part of a commuter student marvelously. I was focussed on school and didn't let making friends interfere with my work.

Unfortunately, I never counted on people wanting to make my acquaintance.

Near the end of my first week in my finite math class, I spied a guy in my class staring at me. And not a oh-she's-cute-and-I'm-functional kind of stare. It was more like a I-want-to-wear-her-skin kind of look.

So I panicked because I've spent my life thinking that people were out to get me. This is the girl who would bring a kitchen knife out to get the mail because, well, my family taught me that everyone is a potential killer.

After class, I casually walked to the quad and tried to reassure myself that I'm just paranoid and he's probably a really nice person that I had just read all wrong.

And then I realized that Bjorn was trying to catch up with me.

Bjorn: Hullo.
Me: Yes?
Bjorn: Are you an artist?
Me: What??
Bjorn: I like you art you do in class.
Me: These doodles?

The art that Bjorn was so impressed with was basically pen doodles of flowers on a folder.

Bjorn: Yah. Very nice.
Mena: Okay. Well, I got to go.
Bjorn: No wait.
Mena: No. Sorry. Got to go.

Bjorn wore a long denim jacket that had a picture of a woman airbrushed on its back. Bjorn had an accent of some sort. It sounded a bit like a German accent but I never could tell. Bjorn freaked me out.

Bjorn also was a frequent user of our school's BBS. One day, not long after our brief encounter, I found an assortment of his posts which basically stated all his fetishes including the desire to razor-slice the faces of all the women he's loved.

Since he never tried to talk to me again, I got over my fear of going to finite math. I pretty much forgot about him until my sophomore year when I became friends with a guy named Jason.

One day over lunch at Red Lobster Jason mentioned that he was acquaintances with Bjorn.

Me: Oh God, he's so f**cking scary.

Jason: He's a weirdo. You know he isn't even foreign?

Me: Really? How do you know.

Jason: He went to high school with my girlfriend, Amy. She told me that he never had that accent when they were in school and that even though he had a crush on her in high school, he pretends he doesn't even know her now.

And then Jason did an impression of Bjorn asking a very Bjorn-like question.

Jason: Friend Jason. Tell me it is like to make love to the beautiful Amy. Do yah make her scream?

At that moment, I realized that it doesn't take much more than a stare to figure a person out.

I'm just glad that it's over.

I'm still not completely happy with how everything is flowing but at least I don't have to look at the orange anymore. I'm actually a bit surprised that the previous design lasted a whole two and a half months. Uncharacteristic of my usual process, that first version was designed and up on the server on the same night. Nothing should come that quickly or easily.

But it was a bit sad to overwrite the index file tonight.

It's just too warm for orange.

Of course, the new design looks a bit like a peppermint patty. But it's a refreshing peppermint patty.

On a different note, I posted my first photo(s) on photographica.org.