caught with my claim flags down- *permed*

My braindeadedness today feels like deep fried calamari and side of coleslaw. I am choosing not to go full aspienado hard shutdown because I'm actually the least likely person to make the noise level worse. One is asleep because overnight job, another is staring at football, I am utterly drained of manna, and a 4 year old is prattling nonstop and remodeling my kitchen into a 'house' of 'pets' defined with an afghan spread on the floor as the rug, various containers and toys posing as pets in their beds, and at the moment the mailman is running around the house announcing "mail! mail!" and handing out quarters. I got 2 quarters, representing the most mail. I bet they're bills. I'm not inclined to check. I was up 19 hours (that's nearly 24) before my 5 hours of sleep last night, and I can't handle bills right now. I'm just thrilled that she's in a good mood and entertaining herself.

Irony is when twitter sends you a long email yesterday letting you know your account qualifies as an item in the U.S. Presidency-Russian scandal investigation and sending a happy little tweet today about it being your 5th anniversary on twitter. It's actually been longer, but I closed a couple other accounts further back. I think I go back to at least 2008 on twitter, technically.

Couple of quotes from that email include, oh what the heck, here's the whole thing. Notice it's from their legal department.

In which my freedom of speech violation is hinted at.

In which it is suggested that I am part of these malicious accounts.

In which I'm let known that people don't come to twitter to see ME.

I addressed this issue publicly over the weekend. This next shot clicks to twitter source, which in turn clicks to the post I wrote.

I handled that while I was vigorously multitasking- cooking breakfast for several people, handling chat help on an international game server, looking after a 4 year old, and getting ready to race out the door to an event.

I made friends with the wrong people. They are Russians. Twitter unites us around the world, and I've been friends with a number of people in a TV show fandom (international production) since 2005. We have a history that goes back across forums full of dates and timestamps. I am very publicly documented in google search in this fandom.

And now I am apparently a possible enemy of the state. Because I am friends with people on the other side of the ocean over a 20 year old TV show. Because I used a public international social media host to be friends with them. Because, of course, every American must now be investigated in this ridiculous scandal conspiracy if they are friends with Russians.

I don't know if other fandom representatives (I'm not official, but very obvious thanks to a lot of web presence) got emails like this. A lot of us on twitter are friends with worldwide fans of all kinds of TV shows. Stargate is a great example.

Heads up, America. It has begun, whatever 'it' is. The Big Brother thing that people have been freaked out over for decades. I really hope social media isn't about to flip into something very ugly.

#transparency- I didn't vote for any of the leading candidates. I voted for someone who had already withdrawn from the presidential race. I didn't want to have anything to do with anyone who is currently in office, and I am neither for nor against any of them. They run the country, I don't, and it's all the same to me.

I have legally documented multiple disabilities. I choose to stay busy with a fandom and a game server. Both are international. I have friends all over the world. I have been visited by well over 150 countries on my blogs since 2004. This has never been a problem before. I wonder why it's a problem now.

Facebook, Google, Twitter: How tech giants are involved in the Russia investigation

News about #russiagate on Twitter

Do social media threaten democracy?

This following is months old. I wonder how big that number is now. I mean, I've recently been included, so... who knows.

Twitter finds hundreds of accounts tied to Russian operatives

Going back to an old favorite.

zombie fog

I took these pix around 1:40 p.m. on the way home from town. The top one is so foggy that the camera refused to even focus. Even using my eyes, I didn't see the lights until the next click. I didn't click until I could actually see the lights. The time passing between the two shots is about an eyeblink.

This is further down the road closer to my home. Driving out this morning was like white out, but at least I could see the trees on the way back.

We're taking a little break from the nasty cold, it seems. I guess Thursday we'll go way below freezing again. I'm super thrilled I wasn't driving in on ice today.

I love damp drippy foggy days, any time of year. I'm literally in my element. 😆😁😂 I've got old fashioned settler's beans and cornbread cooking, so my cave smells beautiful.

Now that I've got my peace and quiet back during the days, I've got a more fun video trail going.

You can check out all this person's vids here.


This next vid is a compilation made by a fan, but you can find all the originals here, there's more. I love this so much.


I chased a few rabbits around and found RichieFromBoston (sorry, Richie, I couldn't make it through more than one vid, but keep up the good work), a whole swarm of Herobrine conspiracy vids (conspiracy off the hook, once you find out the real conspiracy behind it, lolz, I loved it), and after DIY Camper brought me back to earth, I dug back into Space Cowboy history. You gotta admire someone who basically starts off with a completely digital homemade music vid series and winds up touring with Lady Gaga, so the miles of comments are just jealous.

They say do what you love. I love fans. I keep saying that. I'm a fan of the fans.

I just made that. It's dumb unless you know both the show and the fandom.

This was too safe for work. Let's mess that up a bit.

Benlocked

gif clicks to source

I know what books I'll be looking into this next year, thanks to this video, Earliest Examples of the Mandela Effect. That chick's research goes back to 1999 and actually uses some well thought out science, which will be fun. I watched another vid, which lines up with conclusions I've come to myself over the years.

For instance, I discovered that the most interesting thought process follows the question "If I could go back and tell myself anything, what would it be?" I took that question very seriously for years and decided that everything I am doing NOW is the result of this question. Everything I ever wanted to understand about reality and why we are here is all coming to me. I concluded years ago that I am affecting my past, and that a lot of the weird stuff I seem to go through might actually be from me at a later date. I've had far too many coincidences, remote views, dreams that come true, and deja vus in my life to not be meaningful in some way, and I gravitated to synchronicity as I was looking for answers, which I've talked about many times. I've 'always known' who I need to be and what I need to be doing, I just didn't always know how and with what at the time. It's like I had to accumulate experience and knowledge, like you do in gaming, to be able to level up and do bigger things.

Here is one example of that process. For years I questioned faith if people assume praying changes nothing once a certain time has passed. How can an omnipotent god be constrained by something like time? (Especially now that we can visualize stepping outside of time ourselves.) I didn't realize I had the opportunity to test this until I found out later it worked. I was on my way to nursing clinicals at an insanely early hour, and about halfway there I had a sudden urge to pray for my kids to get to school safely. That was not a daily habit back then, and I was very distracted with pain issues, so it felt weird for that to come so strongly into my mind. I took it seriously and focused a few minutes on asking for my kids and I to all arrive home safely that day, and that the day be easy for all of us because it felt like things had been so hard lately. After we were all home hours later, I found out the school bus had just missed being broadsided on a major highway by a big transport truck. The kicker was that happened before I prayed, so where did that big urgent feeling come from? I immediately thought of quantum reality and figured time going forward or backward has no power over anyone I could possibly pray to about affecting reality, and that meant my prayer was still very meaningful and important after the event had passed, particularly because I didn't know about it. I think that the not knowing somehow gives us more power to affect change, and I don't mean that *I* changed anything, but that I inadvertently asked it to change and it did.

The key is the not knowing. The whole point is about going with your gut and focusing on what you want. What do you REALLY want? Give that all your focus for a quiet minute or two. This has become a daily habit for me. I use the form of prayer because I honestly can't not believe in someone being more powerful than me being able to see all this stuff from the outside. Given the new breakthroughs in cosmological thought about simulated universes, this isn't that big a stretch. I think our wording is very misleading, instantly lending to downplaying intent and purpose, but it makes total sense to me that we mimic our bigger universe by creating more digital universes ourselves.

I've turned this process into a shared journey.

clicks to source

And of course I played around. Since every time I do a search for ANYTHING and Benedict Cumberbatch usually pops up in there somewhere (hence #bengruity lol), I thought I'd do a deliberate search for "Benedict Cumberbatch Mandela Effect" to see if anything pops up, especially since he's got one of the largest fandoms in the world possibly mass mind quantum changing everything around us, right. Well, guess what. The only things I could find at all were one person swearing his name had really been Cumberpatch, one person certain he'd played Doctor Who at some point, and one person swearing they'd witnessed him dying in a car accident with a girlfriend that apparently doesn't exist now. You'd think there would be a lot more weirdness around as big a deal as him. Maybe the fandom has locked him into place. Benlocked.

we are number one

I flashbacked most of the day Tuesday. Much of it was like being back 20 years ago.




I didn't blog back then, and struggled with one real friend at a time, when I even had a friend. I had very little social introspection and very limited social assessment skills.





I've worked very hard since then to understand intellectually what I didn't understand intuitively. Because of this experience, this life, I know that changing one's perspective is possible, even being neuroatypical with dx perks, but it greatly depends on dropping judgmentalism (social engineering) and rigidity (personal comfort zones, i.e. ruts).


I've said before that it all boils down to selfish vs selfless, embracing the them with us, owning how we affect others, and deciding who we want to be by the way we handle incoming knocking us down over and over.

It's been tough, but I can see I'm in a much better head place than I would have been if I had taken the selfish route.


And staunchly believing in finding my own social fit saved me far more than anything.


I always hated my name. I found ways to function around the self loathing and I eventually found 'my people'. I love my niches, groups, gangs, fandoms. This one tends to abruptly disappear, but I relish it whenever I find it.


Supervillain. I will own you. Come hell or high water.

Bunnython

Epic things happened on 11-19-08 and 11-20-08. They burned their way into my brain during an epically tough time, so I'll never forget them. Why are they coming up now? No idea. They just popped into my head.

I'm currently brain grinding through a 3-day Bunnython. That poor kid is so wacked with norovirus, uti, and pink eye (what the heck, let's throw in snotty allergies because tree season is starting early here) that there's just no other way. While I have no brain, I'm doing mundane chores like plowing out a mountain of cobblestone, stripping and tiling over bedrock, harvesting pumpkins and setting up chicken pens, and reorganizing my storage. I'm doing dishes and laundry, too, but that's just real life.

Anyway, I felt curious about what I was up to around that epic time, and of course the only thing public after those events is an old beat up survey, parts of which I'll share because I'm too brain dead to pontificate.

50) If you could go back in time, how far back would you go?
All the way.  All the dang way.

And of course, there were other fans who were utterly swept up the same way I was. They lifted me up in the dark and carried me through the abyss on their wings of imaginations, techabilities, and obsessions.

24) Have you ever had a panic attack?
It lasted about 4 1/2 years.

We still find each other in the deep dark. We follow the light into our glowing monitors and see each others' souls.

16) Did you have a dream last night?
It had me.  They wait for me in the night.  I fear them.  I try to stay awake as long as I can, but they come after me, hunt me down.  They grapple me, taunt me, abuse me against my will.  And they never, ever turn out like I wish they would.

What we find saves us in ways people around us can't even imagine.

12) What TV show could you watch over and over again?
Even I have my limits.  And I think we all know I can far outlast anyone I know in the over and over department.

And we go there. We step over the lines, leap off the cliffs, reach for stars we can barely see, and hope someone out there cares.

10) Do you believe in God?
I think it’s amusing that people feel compelled to announce a *disbelief* in God.  If you have to go out of your way to make sure someone knows you don’t believe in God, it’s quite possible his existence is bugging the crap outa you, and that alone is making him a little too real for you to handle.  If you don’t want God to exist, stop saying his name and fighting against it. I, for one, attempted atheism and failed miserably, because every time I flop on my face I find myself thinking of God and begging and making deals with the guy. If you haven’t faced imminent horrible death, don’t worry, you’ll have your chance to test this.

11) Have you ever thought about converting your religion?
“Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27

Now that we’ve defined ‘religion’, I see no reason to change it.  Maybe the problem with people changing their religions is that they have no idea what it means in the first place.

*I* care.

6) Can you handle the truth?

People can’t handle me being truthful.  Most people don’t want the real truth.  Most people want to find out they were Egyptian or famous or a sheepdog in their past lives, I’ve never heard of anyone thinking they might have been Plato.  Personally, I think I know the guy.  Like Einstein has said, All times are now.

And isn’t it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. (Plato)

The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge. (Plato)

Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth. … And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth? (Plato)

What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error to the truth, that climb up into the real world which we shall call true philosophy. (Plato)

The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality. (Plato)

The underlying truth to all reality, though, as such, is represented in this one super condensed realization...

5) Last myspace message you received?

Egads, I keep forgetting about myspace.

So my brain is enjoying *trewth*. I hope your brains enjoy things this weekend.

Day 22- last of 2016 30 day challenge

I usually write about Festivus, but you can click that and see the old stuff if you want. Some people rerun archives this time of year, but I'm still blogging live and asking if you've got your poles set up for tomorrow's Feats of Strength. By the way, if you are ironically winding tinsel rope around your pole, I'm just as ironically torn between #thumbsup and you're doing it wrong.

Naturally, I dreamed about my dad debating (he likes to call it 'arguing' and relishes it like a sport) with me last night until I finally got sick enough of it to just walk into my bedroom and get into to bed, and the second I fell asleep there, I woke up here and discovered I had slept in 2 hours past my usual time, ~*~awesome~*~, so I extra long dreamed about religious and political debate (my childhood feats of strength, as it were) and then abruptly woke up when I thought I was finally escaping it. I don't feel refreshed...

I don't have anything else, except yesterday's pain reverb from therapy turned into a super focused woodland mansion search mission since the latest minecraft update. Srsly, my luck, mine generated next to a lava bed, and I have that on video, so here's this huge roofed forest fire blazing up just a few blocks from the mansion... But that story goes on the minecraft blog. Eventually.

Holding my breath with the Sherlock fandom, first ep to air since last Christmas will be on New Year's Day, and if you're not a Sherlock fan, the one crucial thing you need to know about the most worldwide rabid fandom I've ever been a part of is that there have only been 3 seasons (with 3 eps each for grand total of 9 eps) airing every other year and then one special- in 6 years. Is there any other TV show on earth that could have not only survived like that, but gone viral around the world? And by that I mean even in Japan and China. I'm pretty sure Moffat cleared a little path for Benedict to world trot intro'ing Doctor Strange in one of the biggest world sync releases in history. I think fans in the United States who still aren't aware we saw it premier last need to get a grip on how important world sync is and what that really means for us. I won't go into the political power structure building around the movement of big money in fandoms, but we are definitely going there.

seriousness srsly getting seriouser

After a string of 5-6 hour nights since the time change, got one of my rare 8 hour nights last night. Now I'm ready to work and fighting with photobucket over login, whee. I've been riding out upgrades and code tweaks since 2005 with no regrets, but once in awhile we do a sort of Indian wrestling contest before I get the thumbs up to enter. Ah, I can see my account now. No, I still get the boot on upload. Guess I'll go back later. Crossing my phalanges they're just working on coding again because of the BIG NEW SALES THEY KEEP HAMMERING MY EMAIL WITH. #facepalm In my long experience, 3-5 a.m. is maintenance hours, so I guess I'll just do that work later.

Bunny is learning our names. Sploit named me "Janik" when she was four, and it has always stuck. Bunny is three and I hear she just named Papa "Spock". All the Scotts out there- Scott is Earthspeak for "Spock". #thumbsup

Yesterday was the closest thing to an actual business meeting that I've had a very long time. Myke and I met in chat and eventually moved to private and talked about SyfyDesigns stuff. It's been an idea sort of on hold with mostly me playing in what I dub the empty hallways, but I think it's nearly ready to bloom into its originally intended galaxian hipster coffee shop / spaceship dive bar.

Our opinions about the medias-

• Facebook is trying too hard to 'do it all' and ultimately cosmically failing at providing a place designed for hang outs. The 'scifi' gangs and groups there don't work in a way where it's easy to see archives, or even last week's discussions if the group is busy enough.
• Twitter is great for live tweeting, in the moment gabbing, and archived convos, but so quickly gets jumbled that even the most ardent payer attentioner can sometimes lose track of hundreds of notifications, and the convo threads splitting don't always stay connected to original thread when one is backtracking.
• Reddit is simply just really hard to read and not at all useful for gang hanging outing.
• G+ is great for mass distribution but it doesn't draw crowds. At all.

In the old days, fandoms used forums and chatrooms. Believe it or not, those have been quietly evolving in the business world and have turned into sleek limo style high security hosts that can be adjusted down to micromanagement of individual IP masking for clients who'd like to remain anonymous. Usually that sort of thing is bulldozed by the host and people get lost in conglomerates pushing worldwide connecting upping and then fun things happening, like having to submit grievance forms regarding stalkers and ID ripoffs. Yours truly has actually had to report a false Pinky pretending to be me (Janika Banks) in another country because facebook is so connect happy that IDs can be ripped and copied.

SyfyDesigns is owned and operated by a person who has managed business level forums and long dreamed of one day hosting a fun scifi board for people to hang out. It's been a registered domain for some time now, requiring registration for forum interaction and blog posting so that spam could be controlled. Guys, I've watched spam hammering old forums from an admin POV, it super sucketh. For Myke to have gone all these extra steps and the extra mile keeping this forum secure and holding its place all this time with out of pocket expense shows me this is solid planning with clear goals toward the future. All the view counts you see are genuine people, and there are some impressive view counts there for such a slow forum.

We believe forums will be making a comeback as other social medias continue to outgrow themselves and start to decay. Forums allow international readership and interaction, which is awesome for fandoms. They are easy for finding topics and archives and following threads. They are very easy to join, and even better- Myke's SyfyDesigns forum has the most beautiful text editor of any forum I've seen. You no longer have to know or wrangle with BBC code (but you still can if you want to). We are talking WordPress level text editor.

Chatrooms are their own animals. I've used a number of chatrooms through the years, and while I think they're great for real time grouping up like we do with movie gang, they can be a little costly. Myke has graciously paid for chat capability for some time, and this winter we'll be test driving and comparing chatrooms. The latest comparisons are being made between Rumbletalk and Mibbit's  IRC style. It's kind of boiling down to ease of use vs micromanaging security.

Still can't upload. I could blame our President-Elect, whatever good that would do (you guys realize he doesn't actually have any POWER yet, right? And when he does he won't be a dictator... get a grip) (I didn't vote for either one of the top 2 candidates, y'all could've totes turned that mess into an entirely different thing noticing other names on the ballot, you know that), anyhoo, guess I'll keep finding other things to do.

TODAY. Money $$$. I have a big spit test payment to make, get those rolling into auto-pay. Still worth knowing I'm not a genetically inclined carrier for key cancers, so that's my Christmas present to my kiddo and the rest will be a little tight till that's paid off. I'm thinking about letting favstar go this year. I've had my fun with it, but I'd rather spend that on Minecraft. Also thinking about letting statcounter expire. I'll still have a free account for immediate tracking, but all the archives will go away. It was fun, too, but honestly, with all the masking people do nowadays, it's just not that useful for actual data, especially when half my readers are coming in through Google translate or referring from facebook. Those are both excellent data masks.

7 days till Thanksgiving! My fave thing about this time of year is all the produce suddenly spiffs up into best of the best, so we're diving back into salads. I cooked a little peppered bacon ahead and chunked some up into my big ol' chef's salad last night, super yum.

By the way-
The Muppets Will Brave Manhattan’s Crushing Holiday Crowds to Lead the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
Also- Who Will Participate In The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
Just thought you might wanna know. Was hoping we'd see some Doctor Strange, but oh well.

HOW TO BE DOCTOR STRANGE IN MINECRAFT
Watch this vid, it's amazing.



Using Minecraft to become part of the Doctor Strange world? Yes, please!



Ug, still waiting on photobucket. May as well get all over folding some laundry and a couple other things before offices open up and I can start making phone calls. Last time photobucket had a code fix it took a few hours. I can get to all my other stuff, just can't upload anything new yet.

Work music! Pick your poison. Some material might be NSFW.

surviving fandoms

*le sigh* Back to a real life post.

I blame these guys.

"Pine Processionary Caterpillar"
click for info

Really, I have no idea, but there's such a big health warning all over most of the stuff you look up about them (especially for kids and dogs) that I can only conclude that my house being covered in them for 2 weeks is making me sick, because even though I have a leaf mold allergy, I have never been like this in October. Itchy eyes and scratchy throat, yes, hacking super sticky globs and nearly choking, no.

At any rate, we're going on 18 days now and it's progressed into lungs over the weekend and it's not going away any time soon, so once again I will drag myself up to clinic and see if I qualify for antibiotic now. In years past I've been on antibiotic every other month, but I've gotten so healthy now that my glands barely even get tender for a day and the rest of me always looks really impressive for someone complaining of specific problems at my age.

I remember my parents dragging through chest gunk because they were too stubborn to go to doctors. One year my dad coughed for around 6 weeks and dragged around looking awful. He's still busy, tried calling yesterday and he didn't call back till he got off the tractor. 87 years old.

So all that is kinda quelling the birthday chocolate cake waffle with coffee cream cheese dip thing, I can't smell or taste anything right and nothing sounds good because I'm gunky gross, so I'm putting it off until some of this clears out. If aliens abducted me right now they'd be wowed over what a super productive sticky mucus machine I am.

Brief crabby whine sentence stating that I'm super jealous of people who don't have to live with allergic reactions. You guys suck whining about stuff when you can easily 1- breathe, 2- eat what you want, and 3- not have to live on round the clock antihistamines nearly all year long.

*clear*

Ok, moving on.

I'm going to keep watching The Walking Dead. It's just now getting good. In fact, I can now honestly finally say I respect what they're doing with this show. Watching Rick breaking from his internal point of view, reality blowing apart, not knowing which fear was real or imagined, all his emotional connections blowing apart until he was alone with only death- I hope that ep wins awards galore.

THAT is PTSD, guys. That is exactly what happens to people who go through moments of super anxiety not knowing what to believe or hang onto, moments when you can't make decisions because you can't even trust your own brain to keep giving you stuff to hang onto. Not all of us are in an apocalypse like that, but when you're driving on a highway and have to remind yourself to check whether you're really driving because you can't tell...

That scene was an art form that I thought was exceptionally well done. You need to pick up on what happened in that scene so you will understand Rick's point of view going forward. You might not like a few things Rick does in future. He might be a mess and fall off the hero pedestal. He might wind up a wild dog killing everyone. Or he might wind up psycho enough to take out Negan. But for awhile he might be a very weak unlikable character. Are you a fair weather fan?

Allowing ourselves to be too overwhelmed by our emotions to handle something and shutting down is turning our back on dealing with stuff. I had to learn at a young age to shut those emotions off, or set them aside for later. Human brains are fantastic for survival if we learn how to use our emotions as tools. It's good to process through them, but if they are in the way in time of crisis, especially if freezing up costs you or someone else harm, the best way (for me) to deal with that is step into role playing and then look at what happened later. It's really hard, but if that's the only way you can escape a difficult situation, like domestic abuse or surviving abduction or something, then that's what you do.

Whining about a TV show focusing entirely on how an apocalypse shreds us emotionally for not playing fair showing us something gruesome that hurts our emotions is a little bit antithetical to being a fan. I've been through fandoms full of the staunchest fans booing and hissing because something didn't go their way and they want it refilmed, and some even spend years making life projects out of how unfair a television show was. Seriously not kidding. I watched a lot of people shut down years of friendships over political side taking nonsense the last couple of months. Well, that's how fandoms are, too. It's cool if you don't want to watch a TV show, but going on and on about how unfair something is and you're not going to watch any more is kinda silly. Just stop watching it and move on. It's just a TV show.

The really interesting thing is watching some of the fans go through what Rick did, just bust apart and say no mas. Fans mirroring the scene. That is an incredible amount of power to give a TV show over your life.

Just saying.

From me to you guys. Hang in there. It might be worth watching Rick come back and eat Negan.

DALTSU

That's code. I think there are probably ten people on the planet who remember what DALTSU was on what we fondly called purple list. No, this isn't a reveal post about DALTSU.

A little over a year ago I wrote My name is Pinky, and this is my Haus where I started sharing how far back I go in fandoms. I had a flashback today that sent me on the kind of hunt that has a person wading through piles of boxes and dredging out the contents, and nothing inside has been touched in so long that you can't believe it's been 20 years, or just shy.

Among the contents of one box, I ran right into the old Darkwing Duck / Joxer crossover story I wrote and submitted to a fan book for Ted Raimi's birthday one year (still don't know if it ever made it in), and now I can copy it here.

click for more Xena pins

Let's Get Dangerous

Quick note: In a recent Tedlist post I wrote 'I am a HUGE Darkwing Duck fan, and I think it would be really cool to see Joxer get more into the spirit of his self perceived heroism.' I was blown away at the number of responses I got; Rob asking if I was "PROMISING" to do this crossover, Phil offering to post it, Purple Lemon sending me fabulous Darkwing Duck artwork, JJ and others saying I should post it to Ted Tales, and Lana herself telling me Darkwing Duck was one of his favorites. So, *NOW* to get our intrepid hero into a cape...
*****************

There was only one other time he could remember feeling this miserable, and come to think of it, he'd RATHER be tied up naked in a bale of wool in a hot barn, dang it.

He could see it as clearly as yesterday, hanging out around the sheep pen at the annual shearing; crusty old farmers muttering curses and grunting in the heat while the pretty little sheep girls (really farmers' daughters, but they were so much cuter thinking of them as sheep girls for one day), anyway, while the pretty little sheep girls cut out ewe after ewe for the next shearing. Joxer had attempted to wade into the milling flock with them, mainly to show off a few manly skills without his shirt on, but after they spooked and mowed him over in whatever otherworldly terror only sheep can see, he sorta crawled, then sorta limped back to the fence and managed to flip over it before an especially fattish ewe could butt him right through it. He stood up and leaned nonchalantly back on the fence as soon as he'd been able, looking discreetly around to see if any of the sheep girls were laughing, but they were busy dodging and diverting and apparently hadn't seemed to notice, thank Zeus.

But Jett had... There was just no escaping a twin. Well, triplet, really, but they hadn't been counting Jace ever since Jett depantsed him in the town square at the tender age of twelve and found him wearing one of Mom's corsettes and several garters. After that, Jace basically hung out with milk maidens and sheep girls, so Joxer was careful when he scouted this particular pen.

"Thought you were Jace there for a minute." Jett had perfected that sneer to a fine art, but he still hadn't gotten the glint in his eye down. He was practicing it right now.

"Hey, we don't mention his name in public, remember?" For some reason, Joxer was the only teenager around for miles who still talked back at him like that, and Jett wasn't quite sure if he liked that or not. Brother or not, though, Jett had a reputation to nourish.

"We're not in public, brother." The sneer got sneerier.

It was true to a point. The din of bleating sheep pretty much muffled nearly everything the farmers were yelling at the sheep girls, who simply ignored them anyway and continued sorting one ewe out here, one there.

"So!" Joxer tried sneering back. "Besides, when's the last time you saw Jace without something lacy over his chest? Gimme a break!" and with that, Joxer had squared his shoulders, jutted his jaw, and puffed his chest out for a little manly emphasis.

Big mistake. Jett had snickered and twisted him into a headlock before Joxer could get a breath out to yell whichever password they were using for "I give up" at the time. He wasn't terribly clear on how the rest of what  happened came about, but it was a couple of hours before enough sheep were sheared and turned out for the din to die down so his voice could be heard filtering through a mountain of wool. By the time they'd untied and unwrapped the big ball of wool from around him, he was woozy with the heat and soaked slippery with sweat. He did remember the sheep girls giggling, though, and one of the farmers yelling at them to run find his pants. They never did find them, no telling what Jett had done with them, but somehow they'd gotten something else put on him and carried him home. He'd broken out in a beautiful case of hives after that and hadn't been able to wear wool since.

And this had to be every bit as bad. Worse! Dang ticks! If it wasn't an itchy bite up one leg, it was a crawly sensation up the other, and no telling how many times he'd had to dart off the path behind a tree to shake out his trousers and check his legs, then get all his gear readjusted and run to catch up again. It was getting pretty ridiculous, this shortcut through THESE woods in THIS heat, and on top of it all he'd blundered right through some poison oak catching up last time. Well, actually, that was the first time all day he'd appreciated having all those hot clothes and armour on, but it still slapped across his face and promised all kinds of hell on his nose and lips the rest of the week.

"Ok, let's take a break! Gabrielle, refill the water skins while I check Argo's hoof again. Joxer, I need you to help me out here."

Great, just when he was enjoying the word "break" he had to go and let the horse lean on him again. Why the beast couldn't just lift a leg up was probably another curse from the Tick God. But she'd started limping a couple of hours before, and Xena discovered that not only had she picked up the tip of a blackjack thorn in the right fore, she'd also managed a hairline split sliding off a rock as she suddenly shifted to her left fore when the thorn slipped in. Consequently, they were now traveling very slowly through the evilest forest Joxer had ever experienced. He didn't know whether the slow part was a good thing because it allowed him time to take off his pants every 15 minutes to look for ticks or a bad thing because the slower they went, the more ticks he seemed to pick up. He wondered if Argo was as miserable with ticks as he was, then decided Argo had him beat with her sore feet. Joxer noticed, however, while Argo was leaning heavily on him and slowly crushing him down, that Xena's bare legs moving around somewhere on the other side over there didn't have a single tick on them. Hmm.

"There's still a little drainage, but it's running clear, so at least there's no infection setting in." Xena let Argo's hoof down gently, but that didn't stop her from continuing to use Joxer as a crutch. With a big "umph!", Joxer dug his shoulder into Argo's armpit, if there was such a thing, and she thankfully shifted over before Joxer fell flat with the horse on top of him. He straightened up with a groan and a drip of sweat in his eye and happened to glance over just in time to see Xena make a little flick motion with her fingers on her thigh.

Ah-HA! So THAT'S how they did it. No clothes, no ticks! After Gab got back with the water he kept a careful eye on her, too, and counted several flicks by the time Xena said the break was over. Meanwhile, Joxer was itching like the demons of Tartarus, and couldn't WAIT to get a move on again so he could drop back a little and try out an idea...

"What's wrong with your face?" Gab was suddenly looking very intently at him, but it certainly wasn't one of those looks he'd always dreamed of-- maybe more on the slightly what-a-gross-bug side of of the spectrum of Gabrielle faces, and it make him squirm with embarrassment.

"Looks like poison oak." Xena had glanced up and gone back to rubbing Argo's fetlocks and pasterns down with a mint salve to help ease the pain radiating from her hooves. That was the best thing about Xena- she never gawked or smirked no matter how stupidly Joxer flubbed up, so at least he could keep a little dignity.

"Well, you look like a duck," Gabrielle announced. "Not a wood duck or a mallard. More like one of those fat white farm ducks," she nodded decisively.

"Great, now she thinks I'm a duck!" Jox muttered, and crabbed off to be more alone with his demons while the girls gathered stuff up so they could move on.

As soon as they were out of sight, Joxer tore off all his armour and every stitch of outer clothing he had on, leaving a pair of baggy boxers covered with little smiley faces that his mother had embroidered for him. It wasn't like anyone would see him HERE, in these stupid woods. He tried the flick thing a few times and decided it was fun flicking the little buggers off like little catapults. He flicked off a good 20 or so, then wadded all his gear and clothes together. He had to unroll the wad and grab his blanket out to whack a few ticks off his back that he couldn't reach, and decided that if he tied one end of his blanket around his neck and let it hang down his back, the ticks back there would crawl on the blanket instead of him. He put his helmet back on, girded his sword around his boxers, picked up his gear, and strode much more happily through the now much less evil forest.

And quickly discovered that he'd waited too long to catch up...

Not a problem. They were probably just getting up and over the ridge about now... a ridge. What ridge? He'd been so busy itching and cursing the evil woods that he hadn't noticed whether they were sorta going up, or sorta going down, or sorta staying somewhere in between. Rats! Well, he'd just have to use  his superior tracking skills, that's all. He bent down a little, looking this way, squinting that way, and found several obvious signs that a horse had been through recently. After he finished scraping his boot off with a stick, he stuck out his chin and squared his shoulders and marched resolutely onward.

Marching with resolution is weary work, and an hour of it eventually had Joxer stumbling up and over another ridge. To his surprise, it ended in a tumble of bracken and rocks and stretched into a beautiful valley that would have made an ideal backdrop for a picnic with a beautiful girl, had Gab and Xena not gotten lost somewhere back in those evil woods. The idealness was preempted, however, by a mob of crazed sheep who were caught in a tangle of thorns, and they were both so embedded that the little boy herding them home couldn't pull them out. It looked like a couple of thieves had come along to offer the boy a hand, sheep prices being what they were these days, and they kept knocking him down while they tried to cut the wiry blackberry branches enough for the sheep to be able to at least move forward.

There was no time for contemplation. Joxer threw down his bundle, checked his helmet, brandished his sword, and charged down the rocky slope in full battle cry with his blanket flapping wildly. It was magnificent- he heard himself yelling, "I am the shadow that swoops in the night! I am the radish that sticks in your throat! I am the tick that woaoohhohoooohhhhh!" Joxer slipped, um tripped? Stumbled... no, a warrior catapults, definitely. Joxer catapulted off a loose chunk of rock and for one brief, exciting moment was as airborn as any bird, arms outstretched with his terrible sword, blanket flapping like a thunder god, mouth open in full battle cry.

Well, that was all the sheep needed. They surged hard enough to pull the brambles out by the roots and took off with the little boy chasing close behind. The thieves didn't wait for a second look and took off in another direction, yelling something about leprosy. Joxer hit the ground and slid with his bare body into what remained of the blackberry thicket. When Xena later found him, he was so covered with bites and thorns that Gabrielle gave him a teeny sympathetic peck on his forehead where his helmet had protected him. She didn't want to risk getting poison oak from the rest of his face. They had Joxer tell his story of daring-do several times that night, and the more he embellished it, the more Gabby smiled at him and ducked her head and whispered to Xena, so she must have been pretty impressed with the Mighty Jox.

The little boy had quite a story to tell the villagers that night, too. It had been a rather boring growing season, so the story grew with each telling, about the mighty Tick Man who wore a cape and came swooping out of the forest to save a little shepherd boy and his flock from two swarthy giants. This story became so popular in the region that soon, all the heroes in all the stories had to have a cape and be able to fly or it just wasn't a good hero story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There you go.

does not play well with others

Epic facepalm first thing this morning. If anyone else out there is thinking about offering promo swaps in my DMs, like I write a review and you retweet some stuff for me, at least have the decency to look at my actual account and see what it is I'm promoting before you offer to promote junk I'm simply retweeting. Really hard to miss Lexx in the header and bio link. If you've followed me for 2-3 years and don't know by now that I'm the only person on the entire planet purposely gathering a cult TV show into its own hashtag feed, you really need to pop your head out of  your hole and get to know your neighbors a little bit, especially when I've already been promoting you. I'd roll my eyes, but this head cold inhibits me from enjoying it.

One of my fave John Watson lines is "There is a mute button, and I WILL use it." Oh, by the way, once I've muted someone, they can promote all my stuff they want, I'll never know it's happening. There will be absolutely no pressure or guilt to promote you back. I'm not team follow back, I'm not on twitter for your convenience, and I don't play well with others. If I'm retweeting or promoting other people, it's because I genuinely like them or what they're doing, not because someone offered me a deal.

This is day 4 of the head cold from hell. I know people all over the United States who are in about the same stage of it that I am. We all agree this is about the worst and stupidest cold virus we've ever had. It feels like eardrum death but there's no sign of ear infection. It feels like a taffy machine broke down in our heads, but there's no sign of sinus infection. It feels like strep, but there's no sign of strep. I even had an influenza swab because I spiked a sweet fever, but there's no sign of that, either. This is like a stealth bomb that goes off inside your head and spins you into the dark side of the Force so fast that you wonder where the Sith robes came from.

In case you don't facebook, I did a throwback Thursday yesterday, so it can be a flashback Friday here. These are from about the mid 80s, on a just shy of 200 acre farm. The people before us raised long buildings of turkeys, Dad converted it to a cattle ranch. In the 4th pic down, that's a gas tank on the far left. We gassed up our cars on property. The little girl at very bottom is Batman's mama now.

Time to focus. Despite being a gummed up sticky brain with a bad attitude, I've pulled some pretty cool stuff out of my brain hat this last week. I've done more actual digging and organizing in the last 2 weeks than I have in months, all because I decided to buy new spirals and started listing things I'd like to get done. Every little bitty thing. Pick one, takes 5 minutes or maybe half an hour. Little by little those are stacking up into what feels like a ton of stuff getting done. Yesterday I went through 4 sacks of mobile office dump from the last 6 months and got all my paperwork into folders in date order (thank you, awesome back to school supplies), so now all my EOBs from Part B, Part F, Part D, and medical visit printouts are out of envelopes, stapled, and segregated into their own pockets. It feels good. I should probably pick up a few more folders before they clearance out of stock and then go back to ridiculously high prices.

As scattered as my life has felt for awhile, I keep reminding myself I've gotten all my paperwork handed back in, I'm on top of all my health maintenance, pretty stable with my calendar and money sync although that has started slipping again this month, and staying caught up with dishes and laundry. I'm wanting to keep going through all the stuff that has been and keeps getting shoved aside for other things going on in this house and just get it DONE. For years I've dropped everything I'm doing for other people having crises, and I've got documentation in blogs proving it was often weekly for several years, and to be handling my own stuff on top of all that required sacrifice, and that meant allowing my home life to skid into chaotic mass dumping of my own stuff to make way for everything from major furniture and box storage, major baby and toddler time, major leaving the house a LOT making sure others were getting what they need medically, and point blank, it can get pretty depressing looking around and thinking that line of crazy piles of stuff has been sitting behind my bed for 6 years, and every time I drag any of it out and start organizing, the phone rings or people walk in the door on short or no notice.

Every. Time.

Not saying that's a bad thing, because people in our lives means we're loved and important in their lives. Just saying it's creepy weird how perfectly timed it always seems to be.

My goal in this house before I die (hopefully many more years, but so tongue in cheek because dang if those piles in the basement have been shoved out of the way nearly my entire 23 year marriage) is to go through ALL this stuff so other people won't have to after I die. I've seen others go through that, especially saw how it affected my mom when her mom died, and then us going through Mom's stuff, and I just can't see doing that to my own husband and kids, you know? All this junk, years and years of supposedly important stuff never being sifted through because we're always taking care of something else. And then I finally got a couple years of sorta semi quiet spells between crazy weeks or weekends and fell into that weird life review abyss and still wasn't getting that stuff done. Well, now it's getting done.

And no, I don't have time to stop and write a review for a book I didn't choose to read, even though I've seen it come through my feed a thousand times. What I do the rest of my life is for *me*, and I very much doubt I bug people to do me favors once my own stuff is published, which could take another 5 years at this rate. Original plan didn't include my kids having kids or consider aging parent and spouse stuff. Real life comes first.

I'm blaming all my bad attitude on this obnoxious gunk in my head. Don't worry, I've been displacing it into minecraft. I'm working on Potatohoe off an on, a world we know very little about except through 3 astronauts in 1 episode of Lexx, so I'm kind of toying around with the usual Lexx motif of smashing high tech with low culture. My Potatohoe world in my Planeta de Yablo realm will have space ports and lots of weird hillbilly stuff. It's very relaxing. This is just a tiny glimpse into one of very many things going on.

That's right, we don't know if that's how they actually grow their people, and we never find out. After seeing the other abandoned worlds retaining vestiges of experimental bio science, I'm going to bet that the bioviziers had discovered a way to combine human and plant DNA and were experimenting with human production for the feeding and growth of both the Lexx and the slave population across the League of 20,000. I seem to be developing a deeper mythos through minecraft, already on its way to a whole backstory. At any rate, along with so many other little planets, Potatohoe was a bit forgotten until those 3 astronauts ran into the Lexx.

Potatohoe and Krikkit are my 2 fave planets in all of science fiction.

Did I mention I've learned the 'fill' command? I've learned the fill command.

You guys didn't see me get wildly distracted for an hour. I need to keep focusing on time passing before I'm running out the door last minute.

All you fun fans smashing allthethings, what you don't yet realize is it all started with Lexx. Some of you are into Doctor Who being the one behind the other brilliant faces, well, where did the Timelords come from?


If you've not yet seen the far reaching consequences of the bioviziers under His Shadow, you have no idea how deep this can really go...

mishaps & mayhem series- Oct 2007

Throwback Thursday- Odd tidbits I'm running into through the way past while I look for some old @bonenado stuff. These bits come from random days through October 2007.

I always feel funky when I learn I've spelled a word wrong for years.  Like lavender.  I've spelled it lavendar for decades. I like it better with the 'a'. Now I feel out of synch and a tad put off.

I have this special cake recipe that is heavenly and highly adaptable to anything.  Takes a cup of buttermilk, so I had Scott bring buttermilk home last night. Oops, forgot we are out of red food coloring from the last colored baking experiment, and three sets leaving me only green, yellow, and blue will never make orange.  Oh, well, run into town myself, ten miles one way for a bottle of red food coloring. While I'm there, may as well pick up some pink and purple decorator frosting.  Yes, I know... orange and chocolate swirl cake with white icing and pink and purple decorations.  That's my Twinkles.  And I will seriously make it look cool.

So, I got the batter divided, got the chocolate done, switched to the orange...  Oops, a bigger bit of orange flavored splash than I intended, but what the heck.  Always good with chocolate.  And ~oh no~, the red food coloring bottle wasn't sealed properly at the factory, and laid in the bag soaking the inside of its box.  Wow, what a mess.  Both my hands are red, my light gray counter has big splotches of bright pink, and boy howdy, that is one dang orange cake.  I made up for it with a bunch of yellow.

Smells good, though.

Scott set the catch 'em live trap out again a couple of days ago after we saw an armadillo in the yard late one night in a rain storm.  They love the rain because it makes the grubs come up for air, and the armadillos dig up the yard looking for grubs.  Welp, forgot all about it.  Till just now.  We assumed he wouldn't be back because Scott had shot at it in the rain and missed, the sound scared it half to death and it ran like mad.  It's funny how fast those things can run.  But I guess he came back.  Our area is so infested with armadillos now that they lay dead all over the roads, and they aren't indigenous to this state at all.  30 years ago there weren't any.  About 20 years ago they started mass migrating across the Ozarks.  Now they are thicker than rabbits, skunks, and possums.

Twinkles and Jack. (I conned her into switching to MY team, heh heh. She was on Scott's team. Ah, the competition in this household...)