An Idea for a New Character

Seeing how little progress I have made on the Elf story, this may not come to anything.  But, I'm thinking of a girl—maybe a little older, perhaps a woman—who loves animals. 

We probably all have a soft spot for animals—I certainly do!  But this girl has come to think that she loves animals more than her fellow-humans.  She doesn't want to be known to be an animal-lover; her town is being overrun by abandoned pets, and she fears that she might be persecuted for being animal- friendly. 

She has just two pets: a cat, and a dog.  The beginning of the story will be about how lonely she is.  Perhaps one of the pets is very old, and passes away, and her loneliness becomes almost unbearable. 

One of her characteristics (a unique feature) is her compassion.  She becomes furious at her fellow-citizens for creating this crisis of feral animals, and for her fear that drives her love for animals into hiding.  Every once in a while, she sees a litter of puppies, abandoned on the street, and she wants to rescue them, but public hostility to pets is so high that if she's seen, she'll be shunned. 

One day, she sees a woman, unconscious, on the side of the road.  This is different; helping people is still not seen as something as 'anti- social' as helping puppies.  She calls for help, and the woman is revived.  She tries to fade out of the picture, but the woman hunts her down, and expresses her gratitude. 

That's a far as I've got.  I've got some ideas, but they're still fairly vague!

Wow, I had forgotten that I had started a story about a lady professor at a college, whose boyfriend dies, leaving her his car.  But some company calls up and says that the car has to be returned.  The professor loses her temper, and drives off to California.

There's considerably more, but this story fragment is hard to summarize!

Kay

Butch Girls

I was going through my Deviant Art feed, and found that I was 'liking' mostly girls who were borderline butch.  I have nothing against this sort of girl, or woman really; it's not their 'butchness' or 'femmeness' that grabs my attention; I'm almost embarrassed to use those words—they seem to be words that were invented to help writers who focus on lesbian relationships in a sort of formulaic way.  I've met butch-style girls who are mean as hell, and other butch-style girls who are just adorable.  On the other hand, I've met femme women who are really cold and aloof, and other femmes who were really sweet.

I've recently begun a sort of regular activity, and there are guys and gals there, who are—for the most part—friendly and welcoming.  One of the women is an ultra-femme type girl, who always comes over and shares a smile and a friendly word.  I don't think she's looking for a relationship; she's in one already.  There are all types of women in the group—and guys, too—but hardly any romantic pairings. 

I'll stop here; I think I'll report some more on my observations once I have a few interesting ones to talk about!

Kay

P.S.  Kylie Welker!  This is a girl who wrestled for the University of Iowa ('Hawkeyes') team.  She looks totally adorable!  The best of luck, KW!

N.B. :  I don't mean to imply that Kylie is a butch at all!  That's her business completely, and I don't want to interfere with her life at all; life is hard enough for women, without the added complication of being—possibly erroneously—mistaken for someone who is queer. 

Deviant Art Images

Most of my readers know, by now, that I spend a certain amount of time on the website DeviantArt.  I initially went there with the intention of getting artwork for the covers of some of my books.  (And I succeeded; at least 5 of my covers are from DA artists.)

The usual arrangement on the site is to show visitors (or at least members) a series of images; you get to give each one a positive vote, or make a comment, or just scroll along.  But having been—however briefly—a professor, I just have to make a comment.  I can't make negative comments—that would be rude—so I get into this blog, and complain!

I'm now realizing, once again, that I'm thinking about the girls in the images—they're invariably girls—in terms of whether I like them as people, rather than whether they're beautiful images. 

This makes no sense whatever!  When we approve of the Mona Lisa, for instance, are we judging the painting as something Da Vinci painted, or as a prospective bride?  Or a picture of Aphrodite, say, as a work of art, or as an entry in a dating service?  This is a measure of how unprofessional I am as an art critic.

Actually, there is a tiny minority of women members who invariably post selfies 🤳.   I have made friends with a few of them, and they're nice people, but there are only a handful of them.  Often it's their boyfriends or partners (of either sex) who take the pictures; that's what I conclude from their pronouns being 'They, and Them'.

Finally, in the vast majority of cases, the images are neither paintings nor photographs, but images produced by AI apps.  So the connection to an actual person is very loose indeed!  It's rather desperate to have feelings for an AI- generated image.  To go a little further, this is what people on online dating sites are up against: Real, or AI?

Kay

P.S. Girl I could fall for <blush>: I know, that's a bit personal, but I guess it's too late now!

https://www.deviantart.com/kareguya/art/Umaima-1044520040

Pretty Girl Again

Well, they showed me a video of this girl; this time in an awesome 'Little Black Dress'.  Evidently Fb wants to see me in a LBD.  Actually, that would work for me. 

But I resent how stubbornly they keep after me. 

Never Fully Dressed

I rarely get a hook from a Broadway musical stuck in my brain, but I attended a musical review by a semi-professional band in our town, and—you shoulda guessed by now—a song they played is «You're never fully dressed without a smile!»

I've always loved this show, especially on video, and I loved the kids singing this song, particularly.  I wish I could attach an mp3 of the song to this post!  I mean: I easily can, but the strict copyright laws make it illegal. 

Kay

Untitled

Well ... I don't know what to say.  I saw this image on DeviantArt.

 

Its title was: "Bloe job eyes."

I looked at the image closely, and all I could see was a pretty, blue-eyed girl, looking very upset, it seemed to me.  The title, in addition, seemed very misogynistic.  But that's very common in this website; there is a significant number of 'members' who seem to get excited about anything that suggests bondage, or demeaning of women, or fantasizing about demeaning of men, by magically converting them into women, or keeping women imprisoned for sex use.

I'm so upset; there is a box I could check, to complain about the image, but all they would do is request that the picture be taken down. 

Embarassing!

I had undertaken to wash a small load of fabric for someone, when the washer started stuttering.  That's the best weird for it; it would sound as though it's trying to do something, and failing.  I was staring at the washer—a ɓrand-new unit, too—but couldn't figure it out!  I tried some things,  e.g. pausing it, and putting it on just drain and spin.

I was just miserable; I was waiting for my life to end, when it quietly showed the "Done" light!  At least I wasn't making a fuss, like a drama queen. 

K

Another Reader

I just glanced (or 'glimpsed', as some weirdos say) at the sales/download statistics, and I saw that exactly one each of my books had been tallied.  What does this mean?  One person has decided to get one each of my books.  Why not?  They're mostly free, after all!

Love to all of you,

Kay

Eclipse

Huh.

I've seen a total eclipse before—or it may have been a partial eclipse.  But once I had seen it, had had a little insight into how it happened, I sort of stopped being excited by it.  I was watching my dad do bodywork on our rusty old family transport, and that seemed more exciting than the eclipse. 

This time I hardly paid any attention to the phenomenon.  I thought the photographs were great, and the coronas, and all that, but—not impressed. 

I think that I'm too much of a three-dimensional thinker to see the romance in it!  A major component of Romance is the strangeness of it; once it becomes familiar, it isn't romantic anymore. 

The process of two people falling in love, and discovering interesting facets about each other: that's fascinating, and oh so romantic!  So much so that I can re-read a story I've read before, and still make a fool of myself over how romantic it is!  Maybe once I get older, and worn down with life's woes, I'll stop going ga-ga over love and romance, but at the moment, it still hasn't happened.

I'm worried that my lack of interest in the eclipse may come between me and, well, you guys; once I start becoming unable to relate to what most people feel, it's sort of the beginning of the end.  There's no point in fighting it; I'll need to find something else to keep me going. 

Kay

Celebrity _Guys_ I Admire

I thought, since I've been carrying on about celebrity women I admire, I ought to make it clear that there are a few—just a very, very few—men that I admire, as well.  I had thought that there was absolutely no one, a guy, of whom I čould say, he's OK.  But dang, there is at least one, namely: Paul Rudd.

I watched the movie Clueless when it first came out, in a theatre with some of my friends, and it didn't immediately register that it was Paul Rudd.  Back then, he wasn't that well known.  It's only recently that it turns out that he has a sense of humor, and stuff like that!

He's really funny, IMHO, in fact one of the funniest guests on a Late Night Talk Show.  Ariana Grande is pretty funny, in fact lots of people are funny.

Oh, I almost forgot: I think Jack Black is funny, even if a little bit awkward!  He and Jimmy Fallon do a great job of making fun of those guys who sing "I already know".

Kay

Fast-Talking Celebrities, Caitlin Clark

Normally, the phrase fast-talking implies untrustworthy.  That's not what I intend here; I literally mean celebrities—usually on TV—who really talk fast. 

Seth Meyers.  If you've ever watched his late night show, you would have heard his high-speed monologue.  He talks super fast, and there have to be Seth fans who can barely figure out what he's saying!  I'd really like to transcribe one of his monologues, and figure the time-per-syllable rate.  It's gotta be through the roof.  (That won't endear him to Southerners, who talk really slow; but being a liberal, he's not going to alienate anyone new.)

Most of what he says is what I want to say, anyway, and I'm generally thankful to Seth for saying it.  He makes fun of Trump, and usually Trump does something funny every day, so Seth has enough material. 

Taylor Tomlinson.  My god, this woman is cute.  And she talks fast, fast, fast!  She talked about meeting Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter in the movies, and she tells Stephen Colbert that she barely held back blurting out that he got her through 5th Grade!  OMG, that's painfully cute!  (Wait a minute; that's scary close to how old I was ...).  The entire anecdote lasted less than 15 seconds. 

I'm a huge fan of J. K. Rowling; I think the Potterverse is a fantastic creation, and up there with Star Wars and Star Trek in terms of creativity.   (Tolkien's Middle Earth, I still think, is in a class by itself.  Call me elitist if you must.)

Kay

P.S.  I wish I could honestly say: How about that Caitlin Clark, eh?  I've never watched her playing, but that time I flew somewhere, I saw her on ESPN—or something similar—in the airport!  She has a lovely smile, and pretty hair.  And, man, she's tall!

 

She married Emperor Franz Joseph 1 of Austria when she was 16.  Sadly, it appears that she was preoccupied with her beauty regimen, and in Vienna often got so bored that she went into depression.

From the portrait (could be a photo; I'm not sure) she looks really attractive.  I'm not crazy about the royalty (except that I was, about Princess Diana) but this girl was clearly beautiful.  Evidently she never used cosmetics, which I find hard to believe. 

An Italian terrorist grabbed her while she was going about Geneva, and stabbed her to death.  A horrible way to die.  

In this portrait, it's clear that the woman had tons of beautiful hair, for which she was famous. 

Kay Hemlock Brown

A Dress

Something sad just happened to me. 

I saw a lovely dress on a Facebook ad.  Now, what do I do?   I so want to show that picture here, so that you guys see the kind of stuff I like!!!  But there are so many problems with doing that; copyright ... my desire to be incognito ...

Also, I'm sure I'm never going to fit into that dress; I've slimmed down a lot, but that dress is just too slim cut. 

I could steal it, and smooth it out so much that it's unrecognizable, and then you'd know what I don't look like!  Plan!

There it is.  I don't look anything like this girl, but I love the dress!  Left to my own devices, this is the sort of fabric I go for, but I have some very pushy friends who don't let me wear what I want to wear, so.

And if I got to change my face, that's the sort of face I would get.

P.S. The face looks a lot like Anne Hathaway.  I don't like looking like her, though she looks fairly attractive.  <Heavy sigh>  I really shouldn't get into the whole thing about whom I'd like to look like. 

Kay

The Tragedy of Beauty

I used to think that beauty was immortal, and timeless.  A certain sort of beauty is that way; you feel that it can make time stand still, and that if you were to look at it again decades from now, you'd feel exactly the same way. 

Just today, though, I came across a portrait on a website I have often spoken about; this image was an advertising image for, of all things, a site that specializes in weddings.  "This is your bride!" read the caption.  I was riveted.  It showed a beautiful girl dressed as a bride, in very conventional style!  She was blonde, she was radiant; and for the first time in years, the image made me want to be a man. 

Somehow, though, the image spoke to me of unbearable sorrow; as though we would be amazingly happy, but briefly; that we could not stand each other, and that the only solution for us would be death!

I'm not normally a dramatic, or melodramatic person; I don't have thoughts of death at all, and certainly not often.  But the very beauty of this girl spoke of great disappointment.  It's even painful to recall. 

There were lots of reasons I should not have liked the image; the girl was a very formulaic 'cheerleader' type, well endowed, charming, confident, the dress was a sexy tiered dress, embroidered with rhinestones; every detail was perfect—but not the details I would have chosen.  She was petite; and I usually preferred girls a little bit taller, with darker hair!  But this image seemed to insist that this was my life's partner, and that our marriage would be perfectly tragic. 

Well, have a nice day. 

Kay

Pink, The Color!

Pink!

What's the deal with pink??  I don't understand why women like the color Pink so much!  Wherever I look, I see women and girls—including tiny little ones—defiantly wearing pink.  Tiny tots often insist on having everything pink: their toys, their food, their linen, their backpacks, everything in pink.  I feel like screaming!

Just for the record, when I was a kid, my favorite color was green,—and let everyone know it, too.  I have a suspicion that it was some guy who started this Let's assign pink for girls; that way they'll stay out of our stuff.  They even make cars, and tools, and phones, all in pink for females.  I've seen little girls walking around with pink hammers, 'Just like Daddy!'  I bet daddy would rather die than be seen toting a pink hammer!

Since my pre-school years, I've taken a liking to purple, which, to my eyes, has all the good characteristics of pink, but none of the negatives.  Of course, I still love green, but purple offers lots of possibilities in the area of decorating.  (But purple and green don't combine too well, a cause for regret.)

Sorry, Barbie, but whenever I see pink, I see the hand of the Patriarchy!  I really do.  I don't want to get into the 'Gender Wars,' but it does seem as if gender is maintained by guys.

Kay

Kay in the Air!

Well, unlike you readers, I have not flown very often, and not recently.  But, over the weekend, I had a chance to fly to visit some folks.  It was interesting, to say the least!

First off, I had to be driven to the airport, and this was one of the most harrowing experiences that I ever had.  We don't have an airport in the town in which I live, so I had to take a flight from an enormous airport, at which the parking fees were too high for me to leave my jalopy for a long period.  So we drove up, and had to go around and around, simply trying to get into the Departures and Check In areas.  (I had tried to check in Online, with only partial success.)

I finally got successfully dropped off, with my brand-new little bag, and was happily on my way to the check-in counter.  Luckily, I must have looked quite non-threatening, because they were all nice to me, and I successfully checked in.  The flight was full, so I got to check my baggage in for free.  Then, I had to go through security.  That was painful, because I had not come in very early, so there was a line a mile long—seriously—to go through security.  I pulled out everything they wanted taken off, put it in these large plastic trays—which was not something I enjoyed—and go through the full-body scanner.  No flags were raised, and I went through, collected my stuff, put myself together (which takes me more time than it probably takes you, because I'm not accustomed to dressing and undressing frequently) and headed off to the gate (these are areas where passengers wait for their planes, all sorted by destination), and waited until my group was called.  The groups are separated by class, and by how difficult it is for a passenger to get onboard and settled; e.g. mothers wrangling infants, and elderly in wheel chairs get to go in the first group, and servicemen go early too.  I was in group 5, because I had bought the cheapest possible ticket.

Then I was lining up to get into the plane, and got settled in my window seat.  I wish I had gotten an aisle seat, because there were lots of little kids on the plane, and I love to look at them along the aisle; they're so cute!  The next best thing to having cats to look at.  There was a young lady in the seat in front of me, and she stood, to look at me over her seat back, and she said she liked my ear-studs.  Score!

After a lot of fussing, the plane was rolling down the runway—I guess it's rolling up the runway, on a takeoff—-and we were in the air.  In the cheap seats, the engine noise is really bad, and I wish I'd brought earplugs to wear.  You couldn't pull out your tablet right away, because they seem to say that electronic equipment must wait until they gave the word.  The word was given, and I pulled out my tablet, and began to read.  I only looked up to see whether any kids were visible, but they were all on their mamas' laps, or perhaps seated next to them.  We were offered pretzels—which I loathe; I don't mind soft pretzels, though—and cookies, and so on.  But no lunch; but I was prepared for this, and I had brought some french fries.  (Must ease off the little fries; I only got my slim new figure with a lot of hardship.)  I tell you about the dismal options for entertainment, other than my tablet (which had to be put on Airplane Mode) at a later time.

There was a flight attendant who was really cute; I smiled at her when I got the chance, and of course she smiled back.  What were the chances she had read anything I had written?  Honestly, I have never been able to use my avocation to get a new friend!  Next to me was thin, sourfaced, snooty-looking guy, who was watching a TV show (Curb your Enthusiasm, I remember) which I could not appreciate, without the sound.

Kay

Clothes and Fashion

Being as much of a recluse as I am, as I have been all through life, and as uninterested in clothes, I avoid talking about clothes in any of the stories.  With Helen, I kind of finesse the dressy clothes; talking about the fabulous clothes a violinist would wear to be a soloist is a losing plan; I just describe how much someone in the audience was delighted or impressed by it, and leave it at that.  (At home, Helen used to wear a denim skirt; after amnesia, she wore jeans and a flannel shirt.)

Lorna loved clothes, and I had to pay attention if I were to describe what she was wearing.  Lalitha, being foreign, could wear almost anything.  Maria (from Jane) was the same; she usually wore calf-length skirts and a contrasting top.  Somehow, I got away with not describing what Sita was wearing. 

But I'm reading stories where young authors describe what their characters are wearing in painful detail!  This is not good.  This will only draw in readers who really like the particular styles that the author is describing: the Jimmy Choo shoes, and the designer dresses, and the designer handbags, and so on.  What about someone who hates Jimmy Choo shoes?

I don't think describing the fashions in a story as if writing a style catalog is a good strategy; that's my personal opinion.  That approach assumes that the styles a woman is wearing works well as a means of describing the woman herself.  Does it, really?  Are the fashions we wear a judgement on our character?

Then she goes on to describing the house, and all in terms of houses in other books, and TV shows!  This author seems to live vicariously through the books she reads, and the shows she watches!

Kay

Post-Apocalyptic Grooming

The point of this post is to show that it's still fashionable to have untidy hair.  At least, guys depicting girls draw them with wild hair. 

Talking about grooming, there's a cartoon strip created by an artist called Cassandra (both the strip and the main character, and, in fact, the author/cartoonist herself).  The character is intended to be the cartoonist herself, and is super cute.  She has a curl at the back of her head, which always sticks out!  I'll steal a frame from one of her cartoons, and put it here.)

http://www.cassandracalin.com/comics-thighs.html

Flowers

I may not have brought this up before, but: I'm not crazy about flowers, really!  Most girls are; but I'm sort of not.  A single flower: I can deal with that.  A wild flower, out in the woods: great.  A neat flower garden in someone else's house: I can dig that.  But a flower patch in my own home: <sigh> I'd rather not.  But I do have one, to discharge my social obligations; there are a couple of guys that I have charmed into helping me with it, but I water the things by myself, just often enough to prevent them going brown.  At this point, there are just a few stubborn plants that haven't died over the winter.  I'll get serious with them in a month or so. 

But on Deviant Art (you knew I'd start ranting sooner or later!) OMG: there are millions of flowers in so many pictures!  Lots of girls have flowers in their hair ... ugh!  Why do these artists (or AI's) put so many fricking flowers everywhere?

I'm feeling sick.  Later, people.

Kay

Important Details

You might have noticed that, sometimes, a shadow in the background can make the shape of a face all wrong.  Or a dark shape right near someone's hair can make the hair look untidy.  Shadows, and strange shapes in the background can really play havoc with an image that would otherwise be perfect.  With AI, the problems are worse; some of these programs aren't smart enough to realize that anything is wrong, so the human artist has to be extra vigilant. 

Grr, Glimpsed! Wrong, wrong!

I just finished wailing about my drama-free childhood (or school years, anyway) on the other blog, and took my book back up, only to see this horrible sentence about someone glimpsing at someone else.  The word she needs is glanced, and if that feels wrong, look for another word!!

Gosh; maybe the authors I read were just better writers, from the point of view of vocabulary.  I'm just not smart enough to figure out why younger writers get usages wrong!  Authors from the UK, Australia and New Zealand seem not to make so many slips in word usage.  Oh, wait a minute; it could come from how much of a melting-pot the US is; maybe some of these wonderful authors—who just have this single chink in their armor—are in fact incredible overachievers, and are delivering all this fabulous fiction in their second language.  I can't even imagine writing a fabulous piece of lesfic in, say Spanish!

If any of these authors stumbles on this Blog, it would be so reasonable for them to growl: doesn't she know how hard this is?  And who cares about correct word use anyway?

So, anyhoo, all I'm doing is pointing out an error or two, and trying to do it moderately tactfully. 

Kay

Billion, Jillion, ... and Celebrity Women

I'm reading a story, and there's a pair of twins, brother and sister, and he says that there's "a catrillion women" out there, etc etc.   I believe the word he wanted was quadrillion, but who cares; it's over the top hyperbole anyway, he might as well have said bajillion, which is another teen word that really isn't a thing outside teen backtalk.  OK, back to my list of beautiful women!

Crystal Gayle.  I adored this singer, especially back when she had ankle-length hair.  And she could sing, and she had dimples!!  The only way she could have been more perfect is if she sang the sort of songs that I liked!  Honestly, I don't like really long hair in a woman.  But once in a while, we can allow a little excess hair. 

Kendall Jenner.  I think this model is truly beautiful, but she's way too conservative for my taste. 

Kiera Knightley.  Another beautiful woman, with a beautiful speaking voice < swoon-swoon>!

Nicole Portman.  Oh, Nicole!  I would have her children, but too bad; she's already got all the kids she wants!  She was so dreamy in Star Wars I and II.

Jennifer Lawrence.  Jennifer is adorable, and a fair actress, to boot.  But she is a sort of dypsomaniac, and makes jokes about being hammered, which is not as funny as she thinks it is.  She's also great at dealing with pushy guys, which I appreciate.

Kristen Stewart.  K-Stew is lovely in a sort of wooden way; I think to really know what she's like, you have to really get to know her, which is difficult.

Emma Watson.  Emma is a lot easier to understand; I know she's reserved, but her character is not really opaque.  And she's lovely. 

Elizabeth Hurley.  This woman is a different generation from us, but she's drop-dead beautiful, and that's a phrase I'm using for the first time (I think) here. 

Zendaya.  Oh man, she's ethereally beautiful.

Emilia Clarke.  This woman has something special; and a wonderful sense of humor!  Somehow she seems like a bosom buddy that I haven't connected with yet!

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes.  This woman is a member of Congress, as many of you know.  One reason I really love her is that she does her homework.  For the committee meetings in which she's expected to question witnesses, she is fully prepared, with the most important questions.  I also think she's beautiful, and she can certainly dance!  She's going to be a senator someday, mark my words. 

Daisy Ridley.  Oh my goodness, to my eternal embarrassment I got her name wrong!  This woman has contributed so much to the Star Wars universe.  She's easy to relate to, and really pretty.  And she's Australian (or something); what's not to like?  (No, she isn't; she's English.  I still like her :p)

Winona Ryder.  I just love Winona Ryder!  I loved her in Girl Interrupted, and Little Women, and though she isn't a fabulous character actor, she really runs with that main character.  (Oo, forgot about Edward Scissorhands!)  She's the ultimate quirky hippie girl.

Ashley Judd.  I haven't seen Ashley J. in very many roles, but I saw her in Where the Heart Is, and another movie whose name I—Oh, Someone Like You!  She was great in both movies.   What a talent...

Dakota Johnson.  This girl is an old-fashioned girly woman; she giggles, and she blushes.   I've never seen her in a movie, but if I were a late night talk show host, I'd love to have her on, and flirt with her!

Aaand: we mustn't forget my three most recent crushes, Missy Franklin, Yulia Lipnitskaya, and Lieke Klaver!

ALSO, I must mention that one of my favorite people from the eighties is Sheila E, a percussionist, who played for Prince.  She sang the hit song The Glamorous Life.

Appendix:  Have I mentioned Jennifer Conelly?  She's really beautiful, according to my tastes.  Jennifer Garner?  She's cute and fun, and funny!

Longshot, or Long Shot?

Jeeze, I apologize for constantly talking about correct usage, but some phrases are really jarring to read. 

The meaning of the phrase 'long shot' is well understood; it means an unlikely guess.  Maybe someday it will be written 'longshot', but nobody does that yet!  In the case of some phrases, the single long word, and the two separate words (e.g. everyday, vs. Every day; alright, vs all right; anymore vs. any more) the different things mean something slightly different.  Longshot, though, isn't yet a thing. 

Kay

Promotion at Smeshwords

You know what I mean. 

At Smashwords they're having a sale.  Books can't be priced at less than 99c, unless they're free, so mine aren't going to be on sale.  

It's 'Read An E-book Week,' or month, or whatever, that's the inspiration. 

If you don't read one of mine, just look at the pictures. 

Kay

Body Modification and Ornamentation

Even though I regard surgical modification with great dislike—so much so that I don't want to even describe them—I really love temporary tattoos!  I think they're really cute.  I mean henna tattoos, or other stick-on type tattoos. 

I even love body jewelry: nose rings, eyebrow rings, earrings, even multiple rings!  Nipple rings—this is getting a bit personal ... But I'm too much of a coward to get myself pierced.  I am convinced that young people who get themselves permanent tattoos are foolish.  Why do that when temporary tattoos are available?  Kids who get permanent tattoos—and I include anyone, really; they're awfully difficult to remove; they're usually doing it to make a statement about themselves.  Soon they discover that those statements are not worth making. 

Obviously, that's just my opinion; and it's easy for me to say that because I have a blog; I can make all the statements I want at any time. 

And I do.   Sometimes I'm wrong, and I walk back the statements, and I apologize.  With a tattoo, you can't do that; at least, not easily.  For about a thousand dollars, you can erase about a square foot.  Or less.  No one is worth that sort of statement; screw them. 

An Interview with Helen Nordstrom

Back in 2018 (I think) I felt moved to write a fictitious interview with Helen.  At that time, I felt that Democrats, the Liberal Media, and all sorts of talking heads were coming down on Trump like a ton of bricks.

At that time, I was convinced that Trump was talking in sentence fragments, because it was easier to connect to his base that way.  I thought: (we) Democrats had lost the election fair and square, and it was time to let the Republicans do their thing.  These were the sentiments I made Helen articulate. 

Since then, I have changed my mind; all the lying from the Trump White House was partly effective.  It was no longer possible to talk about any federal programs, without a barrage of lies from the Trump team, with a Greek chorus from a confused GOP.  Obamacare, the low unemployment rate, all sorts of Democrat achievements were papered over, or hijacked by the GOP.  Then came Covid, and the lessons of that missed opportunity to show leadership were maddeningly effective: the GOP was unable to help the poor; they only stood ready to (try to) help Business.  Direct aid to humans was left to the Democrats.

This pretend 'interview' with Helen should be taken as something she would have said before matters got a lot worse:

https://k-helen.blogspot.com/2019/10/helen-nordstrom-interview.html?m=1

Kay

Skiing Down Mount Everest

I just found out—quite by accident—that someone had skied 12,000 feet down Mt. Everest.  (They reported his name, but I forget it.)

Everest, I remember from school, was some 29,000 feet high (I'll check and correct that if I'm wrong*), which means the skier skied just about halfway down.  I've never gone skiing, so I don't know whether the further you ski, the harder it is on your knees.  (*29,032 feet above sea level.  They say, actually 29,032.68 feet, but I can't give a lot of credence to those last few inches, honestly.  Half of that would be 14,500 feet.  But this gentleman couldn't ski further than the edge of the snow line.)

Honestly, this is the sort of daredevil stunt I really dislike.  I expect this gentleman's entire claim to fame is based on dangerous undertakings—and being the first to do them,  perhaps?—so, obviously, he'd head towards an insane idea like skiing down Everest like a lemming to the sea.

Kay.  (Google suggested 'Kayla!'  Hmm ...)

More Celebrity Women

Here's another installment in my list of celebrity women I admire.  There are 27 of them, so there will be two installments. 

Olivia Newton-John.  I've loved Olivia wholeheartedly, ever since I was a kid.  Though she was from a much older generation, I was enchanted by her voice, and I loved many of her songs.  (There are a few I really can't stand!)

Diana Spencer.  This is Princess Diana's maiden name.  My Mom and I stayed up the night of their wedding, and I was heartbroken when she died. 

Whitney Houston.  I think Whitney was so beautiful, and her songs were so wonderful.  But I hated to watch her sing, with her jaw wobbling like mad!  But she was a goddess.

Miranda Kerr.  Miranda is a model, she was one of the so-called Victoria's Secret Angels.  She was married to Orlando Bloom briefly.  I think she's beyond cute!

Elle MacPherson.  Younger readers may not know who this is, but when I was still an infant, she was The Body!  I should also mention Cheryl Tiegs, but I don't want to crowd this thing with Sports Illustrated models ...

Jennifer Connelly.  This woman has always been one of the most beautiful women alive.  Just look at her.

Dolores O'Riordan.  This was the girl who was the front woman for The Cranberries, the Irish band who performed Zombie.  I always felt that Dolores (or Delores, it wasn't clear which spelling was correct) was just a lovely person; completely unaffected.  What a sad loss to us when she died. 

Enya.  I thought Enya was sort of doll-like, and unapproachable.  I loved some of her songs, especially from Orinoco Flow.

Björk.  This woman is so different, she seems almost from another planet!  My favorite song from her is It's So Quiet.

Julianne Hough.  This girl is short, but so cute!  She's primarily a dancer, and also a singer, but I like neither her singing nor her dancing!  Can you believe, I liked her so much at one time, I wanted to use her as a model for Helen!  But there were too many things wrong with that plan.  

You probably want to see photographs of these women; I'll try to get copyright-free images of them. 

Kay

'How about?' in 17th Century England

From all I know, the phrase 'How about X?' hadn't supplanted the older equivalent 'What about X?' until the 19th Century, at the earliest.  But I'm not so well-versed in English spoken in earlier times as to be able to authoritatively say that the phrase 'How about X' is an anachronism. 

I'm reading a well-written story called The Perks of Loving a Wallflower, by Erica Ridley.  Of course, the need to report dialog in language of a bygone time has to be balanced against the need to make the characters feel real, from the perspective of the present day (especially given that the audience would be quick to misunderstand language just a tiny bit away from what is current.)  Readers won't expect the protagonists of a period drama to talk like, say, Taylor Swift, but in a romance between women, there's so much subtlety to convey through dialog! It makes it hardly worth the effort to write a period story, but ... it is so much fun!  Erica Ridley's stories—this one, anyway—is a lot of fun. 

Kay

Feeding Pets!

When I was taking care of my friend's pets, naturally, one of the important jobs was giving the little guys their victuals.  Twice a day, for the doggies, and whenever her bowl was empty for the cat. 

I would fill her bowl, and I would watch to see whether she was eating her food.  She was quite picky, and sometimes she would take a quick sniff, and go down from the feeding table, and go off looking for some other entertainment.  But some times she would eat the food!  At times like that, I would be so pleased, that I wondered whether this was what parents felt to see their babies eat their food!  It is a strangely satisfying thing; and you get an inkling of a mother's instinct to feed little kids—be they her own, or the children of others—until they can eat no more!

One thing many school districts do well, is to feed underprivileged grade schoolers at least one square meal each school day.  During Covid, we learned that when schools were closed down, to prevent spreading infection, kids went hungry, without school lunches.  Of course, middle-class kids famously despise the free school lunches.  That's the foolishness of extreme youth.  They should hope that the day would never come when they're starving so desperately that they would be glad for that free lunch. 

Kay

Celebrity Women Whom I Like

I've wanted to do this for ages, but put it off because I knew that my taste in women would put off lots of readers.  It probably will; people judge others based on whom they admire; why shouldn't I be subjected to the same process?  I don't anxiously watch the viewership statistics anymore (any more?), and the books are being acquired based more on the prices than anything else, so here we go, in no order. 

Brooke Shields.  I thought she looked beautiful as a kid, and a teenager, but a bit robotic.  But when she grew into adulthood, she blossomed, she had a lovely sense of humor; she seemed as admirable a woman as it was possible to be in show business. 

Goldie Hawn.  I've always loved Goldie!  I think, in addition, she really understood the humor in the scripts she had to work with; well, let's face it, it's not as if the scripts were very intellectual, or anything!  A beautiful woman. 

Ingrid Bergman.  She's lovely, and so is her daughter Isabella Rossellini, and they both have a delicious sense of humor!

Olivia Hussey.  I used to dream of her, ever since we got a Romeo and Juliet DVD.  I was a little kid, but I had a huge crush on her, and I thought her voice was to die for.  (If you notice, her facial features, and those of the figure skater Yulia Lipnitskaya, resemble each other!)

Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn.  For me, what's magical about these two are their voices, especially for Julie Andrews.  Her singing voice, for most people.  In my opinion, she never acts; she's always doing Julie!

Anne Bancroft.  I hated her in The Graduate.  But she's totally an actress; she made us hate her.  (She's lovely in every way.)

Kate Winslet. I have only seen her in two movies: Sense and Sensibility, and Finding Neverland.  In both, she was an awesome—wait, there's three movies I've seen her in: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind!—she's a wonderful actress; I haven't seen The Miracle Worker; if I do, that may pop her into the Brilliant category.  (No, haven't seen Titanic, either.)

Kate McKinnon.  OMG, she is just funny as hell!  I used to watch SNL* like a prayer, but at the time she was a regular, I was somehow missing the show, and having to watch Kate's skits on YouTube.  Amazing!

Fortune Feimster.  Did I get the name right?  She was funniest, I think, on the Chelsea Handler show.  Brilliant!  (Her comedy material is a little limited; maybe she should hire some writers.  They're not cheap 😞)  I love her dimples!  I put the two dimples next to each other, that was clever. 

My goodness; that's enough for one post, I think!  I think I might have more; gotta fink about it. 

Kay

A Moving Story

The last couple of days I've been reading—actually, re-reading—a pretty intense story by an author called Siera Maley.  I'm inclined to think that it's at least distantly autobiographical; like something that happened to her (I think she might be non-binary; I'll clear that up after I go back and read her bio she's definitely female), or someone she knows well.

Among other things, the story is concerned with how Southern (Georgia) Christians deal with the far more liberal attitudes and lifestyle of Los Angeles: non-christians, alternate lifestyles, rebellion against authority, and so on.  The main character is kind of a poster girl for all of those!  The author—Siera—was brought up in the southern Bible belt, she says, so the whole issue of how to be an alternate chick in that environment is kind of a central theme in at least this book.  (In her other books, too, coming out as queer isn't routine; it is a battle in each story.)

You don't have to guess the title; it's a pretty pathetic title, probably enforced by an agent or editor who should go back to publishing school.  Siera Maley: Taking Flight.

The child of a celebrity mother and alcoholic father is completely knocked off her balance, and stays in bed, in LA, for several months, when her mother dies in an auto accident.  She's taken before a judge, who instructs that she must spend several months in rural Georgia, under close supervision, living with a farming family.  She must share a room with their daughter.  What they don't know is that the girl is a lesbian. 

The farmer's daughter is, in some ways, trusting and innocent, but wise in other ways.  The LA girl is cynical and suspicious, but upright.  Inevitably, they are attracted, despite the complex arrangements for the rehabilitation of the 'problem teenager,' Lauren.  I love the relationship that came about between the girls; so much so that I want to write a story about teenagers (so far I've only—or mostly—written about adults), though I could never do it as well as Siera M does it. 

There are a dozen wonderful characters, who give the story a lot of texture; it's a lot more than high school drama.  I'm still just a little more than halfway through (though I've read it before, I can't remember how it goes from here).

One thumb, and one middle-finger up.  No, make that a pointy finger. 

Kay

They're Kids

The images on DA are all of really young misses!  I can't really complain; as time goes on, the median age of DA members is going to grow steadily younger than me—you know what I mean—and the day will arrive when it's no more useful for me to be a member there. 

I look in the eyes of the wild-haired redhead (a ginger is what the artist calls her) and I despair. What are the chances that this infant will understand anything I'll say?  Can I take her to meet a gathering of my friends?  Will she be happy to spend an evening with me?  I don't think so. 

There were lots of images of girls that looked promising.  But increasingly, they're beginning to look like the kind of girl toys that adolescent boys fantasize about.  <sigh>  I'm no longer relevant to DA.

Kay

Every One, and Everyone

Every one means the same as each one.  When Tiny Tim says "God bless us, every one!" the meaning is clear.   When someone says go through these books, every one should be checked for bugs, it means: not a single book should be left out. 

Everyone means everybody.  This word only applies to people; like everyone thinks you're so innocent!  The implication is that 'But I know what a crook you really are.'

Also desert, a place with a lot of sand, and dessert, something sweet, to eat after the main course.  Desert can also be a verb: to heedlessly abandon some person, some duty, or some responsibility. 

A Few More Pairs of Sound-Alikes

I'm reading—actually re-reading—an interesting time-travel story.  There are lots of details that I would change, but the story-telling is so good that, in some ways, if I tried to rewrite it, I would screw it up.

Its title is: Sweet Paladin, by Alex Washoe.  The author is trying to describe someone in modern-day Seattle, who was very, very Greek.

"If you were doing a revival of Zorba the Greek, and you needed the most obvious type for the roll, Babis was who they would send you."

The right spelling of role, a part in a play, is ROLE; the word roll means something rolled up, like a bed-roll (a sleeping-bag, your pillow, and your night-clothes, all rolled up), or something you use to put your hamburger in. 

Wait a minute; this pair of words is already in our list, darn it...

Brooch and Broach.  I wish I knew more about jewelry, but as far as I know, a brooch is a large, pin-on ornament, that sometimes can also be used as a clasp.  You wear it on your breast, just as an accent, or you use it (as a clasp) to fasten a cloak.  Broach is a verb; it means to break through.  You broach a keg of beer.  You broach a sensitive topic, or a negotiation.  To my ears, both words are pronounced the same.

OK, This Is a Political Opinion

So you can skip reading right now if you don't want your Superbowl Weekend to be ruined by something completely non-athletic.

People who have become famous through Television often begin to believe (wrongly, sometimes—or most times, I'd say) that they're never wrong.  Comedians who feel this way, usually know that they're probably wrong some of the time, but that's okay as long as they're still funny.  But serious TV personalities who are convinced of their infallibility are a huge turnoff.  Kanye West (who started calling himself something different, I forget what) is a case in point.  I do not now, nor have I ever, looked to him for serious commentary on any issue.  Clueless people, who don't have two reasonable ideas in their heads to rub together (it's just a saying; people shouldn't be rubbing their ideas together for real) are probably the only ones who spend any time finding out what K. West thinks about anything. 

Unfortunately it appears that our erstwhile president Trump has patterned himself on Mr. West.

There is a small group of people who consider Trump their oracle.  They deserve our pity; the times we live in are too complicated for us to have any hope of finding an oracle anywhere.  At least Jon Stewart will be hosting the Morning Show*—or whatever they're going to call it—starting tomorrow, and he's been good about laying all the important facts before his audience, so that we can all worry about what they mean together, but I wouldn't call him an oracle.  [*The Daily Show.]

Kay 

Another Ridiculous State of Affairs

OMG.

I don't know about other people, but I had got the impression that I wasn't the only one who thought twins were adorable!  I just love seeing twins, and an unexpected sight of a pair of identical twins really makes my day!  (It's so cute to study the reaction of a pair of twins who notice that you've guessed that they're twins!  Some of them react identically <squee> while others have quite distinct reactions, which is so strange.)

When photographers used to post a photo of a pair of identical twins on DA, of course I would 'like' it.

Now, using AI, a member can generate an image of 'twins' and put it up any time they want.  It most definitely isn't cute anymore.  If an artist painted an image of actual twins—as I had Jane do in Jane—it would be attractive or uninteresting based on simple criteria.  But a pic of fake twins using AI?  What are we to make of that?  All the artist has to do is instruct the software to paint a pair of twins, based on Emma Watson, or even a set of quintuplets.  Can they call that 'art'?  I should complain about this in DA, it doesn't do any good to gripe about it here.  Any of you who are members of DA—I assume there must be a few—should join me to speak out against this totally fake way of posting what amounts to 'clickbait'.

Kay

Magic Cat

I swear, this cat is magic.  If I turn to go one way, she's running ahead of me.   Then I turn to go the opposite way, and—guess what?—she's running ahead of me again!  How does she do that?  When I finally sit down, she magically appears on my lap, and I'm supposed to pet her.  It never stops. I so want to show you a photo of her, but I have decided no photos, and I'm sticking to that decision.  (Kitty is scowling at the phone in severe disapproval while I'm typing, but at least she's letting me type this morning.) 

But it was such a battle getting breakfast this morning, with the dog following me around licking his lips even after I had fed him.  And then there was the magic cat business. 

If I briefly use the toilet, when I come out, they're both looking at me with great interest: can we come in with you?  That's so weird.  I guess cat people take it all in stride.

Their peeps are coming home at lunchtime. 

Kay

Cats and Dogs

Last week I was again looking after my favorite animal friends.  I'm so thankful that, as a kid I wasn't up to my neck in pets, because I can enjoy the experience so much more now!  Of course, I'm sure there are many adults who grew up with animals, and who now, as adults, have pets for the sake of their children, and they're quite happy.  But I think they get a little jaded; they can't quite go absolutely bonkers about their pets the way people who have been pet-deprived in their childhood do!

I'm sure people who have grown up in a farm, say, look at the silliness of adults losing their cool with kittens and puppies, and just feel pity for them!  (When I say 'farm', I mean any household with pets; it's just easier to write 'farm.')

My friend, the owner of the animals, had bought a little dog-bed for her dog.  He sleeps anywhere except in his bed.  There are exceptions, but he generally sleeps on furniture, in front of the fire, all over the place. 

Somehow, my friend never got around to getting a bed for her cat.  The cat sleeps all over the place, too.  But if she happens to notice the dog bed, she walks up to it,  cool as you please, and hops into it and falls asleep. 

At first, I saw the dog march up to the dog bed—currently occupied by the cat—and growl.  The cat just calmly stared at him.  That's all; they can't show any feeling in their faces, all they can do is stare.  After a brief minute of growling, the dog walked off.  (I can guess that this has happened before, and maybe the cat swatted at him, with her claws out, or something.)

Everybody knows that dogs want to be fed at all times of the day; if you feed them, they'll happily eat, until they burst.  In complete and utter contrast, the cat is fed at some convenient time, and she eats a little of it, and then does something else.  She proceeds to eat from time to time from that same bowlful, until it's gone, at which time she climbs into my lap, and sort of does some low-pressure pestering of me.

At first I thought she was getting very fond of me, and I was flattered!  After a while, I realized that perhaps she wanted something.  I asked her: what do you want?  She looked puzzled for a bit, and then she marched up to where her food was given to her (where the dog couldn't get at it, otherwise he'd eat the whole thing in a second), and then turned round and looked at me!  See, she seemed to be saying, it's empty!

I was in heaven; we were communicating!!  I'm not sure how excited other people would have been if this had happened to them!  Farm-raised humans—you know what I mean; not wild-caught humans—would have expected this, or even anticipated this problem, and said to themselves: her bowl must be empty.  But I had to learn; and she taught me!

The moment her bowl was filled, she settled down to chow down her usual two mouthfuls, and moseyed off to look at the birds through the window. 

Obviously this routine has taken place a number of times, and I'm no longer surprised by it; I just think about how much the real 'mommy' of the pets is missing, by taking it all for granted!

Kay

Dressing Sexily

Wow.  Has TikTok made this happen? : Just some of the TikTok clips get on Facebook, and some of the chicks there really dress sexy.  I guess each individual Fb person has to set her filters, so that these ultra-sexy clips don't find their way into our feed.  But if I'm unhappy with them, imagine how much Whassername Taylor-Green would hate it?

In an ideal world, nobody would care how anyone dressed.   At first I cringed when women wore tights with tunics; then I got accustomed to it.  But then girls began to wear crop-tops with tights or leggings.  I know they're quite different things, but I haven't figured out the difference.  (The first step is to start wearing the damn things.  I've lost a little weight, so I could do it, but for whom am I doing it?  Rest assured I'm not going to post a photo of myself wearing those things on here!!)

But the more everyone shows skin, the more the presumed targets of this sexy dressing will be de-sensitized to exposed skin, etc.  Between yawns they'll think: 'Ho hum, there's another half-dressed chick.  She ought not to wear clothes like that with her goofy body,' etc, etc.  Everyone is a critic. 

Gosh.  Practically every girl seems to want to get themselves recorded, pirouetting around on TikTok.  I'm getting jaded. 

Kay

Odds and Ends

After I had blogged about Barbie, I suddenly wanted to get several things off my chest.  (I'm glad I managed to be critical of the movie without completely dumping on it.  I think it will be an influential movie for years.  Greta Gerwig seems to be trying to nudge the degree to which a film makes demands of a movie audience in the direction of more.  But remember that we have to absorb the sense of the movie in real time!  The ability to do that depends on a number of things; if a moviegoer loves the movie enough to watch it a second time, it could make a huge difference in their understanding of the movie.)

I was looking for information about something on Google, when I came to the bulleted list of previous queries.  OMG.  Let me just say that the typical user of Google is quite unable to formulate a grammatical question.  Let's see whether I can get you a screenshot ...

Nuff said.

It's an interesting puzzle.  An ultra- conservative, or  Tea Partier would probably assume it is an immigrant; at any rate, it is certainly a question from someone whose native language is not English.  But this person is interested in a hymn—a Christmas hymn, in fact—and in locating it in "Methodist", the Methodist Hymnal, I would guess.  All he (or she) had to do is to look it up in the alphabetical index at the back! Is this person new to hymn-books?  It is a whole pile of interesting questions. 

To be fair, there's no basis to assume this person is a typical user of Google; in fact this was the second of several items of this sort, and the other items were phrased reasonably intelligibly.  (I don't want to sound ignorant, but as a teacher I know that confusion between 'intelligible' and 'intelligent' just has to be expected.  Intelligible means easy to read (if it is text, or easy to understand, if it is spoken).  Intelligent is probably what you think it means; I can't do a better job of defining that word. 

But wait, there's more!

Now, my Facebook feed has started showing me trivia about figure-skating as well!  This is how I learned about a Russian skater called Yulia "Sunny" Lipnitskaya.  This is a pint-sized beauty whom I'm half in love with!  My enthusiasm was greatly dampened when I saw a photo of her receiving a certificate from our good friend Putin, and when I read that she had given her blessing to her husband to go fight the Ukrainians.  I would have put up a photo of her (and her adorable little baby girl) if not for struggling so much with the blogger software.  OK; let me try ...

Sunny Lipnitskaya ❤️

(You probably think that she looks a little like me!  Actually, she looks like the fake picture I put up as my portrait, which in turn only looks a tiny bit like me.  I wouldn't mind looking like Yulia—now calling herself Julia—except that I'm liable to get looked up by Vladimir.)

Barbie

OK.

I thought Margot R. was excellent for the Barbie role.

I thought all the Barbies were cast beautifully, acted brilliantly, and were an awesome ensemble team. 

I think Ken did really well, but I couldn't comment on the role, because, honestly I couldn't really get my head around the plot.  This gender-roles thing makes sense to me, but at the upper echelons of the "Patriarchy" psycho-babble, I tend to lose my grasp of what they're saying. 

I thought America Ferreira was just perfect, and the girl who played her daughter was brilliant, but that could just be me thinking they were really cute. 

I really love Greta Gerwig, but I did not like her Little Women as much as I liked the Winona Rider film; maybe I haven't figured out the Calculus of the gender war really well.  To get into the advanced levels of the gender dialectic, you have to be able to understand certain arguments really fast, but I couldn't.  They were going by too fast for me to grab. 

That Kate McKinnon is beyond brilliant!  She could persuade me about anything!  Will Ferrell was excellent too, but he wasn't involved in advancing the argument at all; he was just a placeholder.

In the end, Greta G's plot was a little too complex for a movie audience to pick up on the fly, though it probably made sense for those who have been involved long term in the gender wars (which I haven't).  Even while I was dismayed by the failure of the plot of the movie, I was giggling at the comedy of the screen action!  It really is funny. 

I shudder to think that about fifty guys will want to pressure GG for the rights to the story with a view to doing a better job of it, and only succeed in screwing it into the ground.

Kay

An Observation ...

I stayed the night with friends.  As I was being dropped off, I noticed something; the roofs of some houses were adorned with dish antennas. 

I realized that TV was a large part of the entertainment of large chunks of the population.  Writers have been deploring this fact in the past, but I haven't seen much groaning about it in recent years.  In fact, when I'm forced to watch TV at the home of other people, I groan.  But obviously having a TV in the house is super important for lots of people.  In stories I read, some people just leave the TV on, but don't sit and watch it.  I, in contrast, have to scroll through various apps on my phone, often unsatisfied with what I see there.  (Of course there's always ballet reels on Facebook, and lesbians kissing on DA.  If you join DA, you won't necessarily be forced to watch pictures of lesbians kissing; I have been caught approving—or liking—these kissing pictures, and that's why I'm blessed with so many of them in my 'feed'.  Can't complain.) 

Kay.

P. S. : So anyway, DA is only showing me (1) Redheads, and (2) Lesbians, kissing.   It's a little like only eating ice cream all the time, you know?  My guess is that the guy (or gal) who maintained their algorithm asked for a raise, they got mad and fired him, and they replaced him with a part-timer who just continued with the basic, very basic, choices for each member.  I need my vegetables.  I need my fiber!  Oh man, nothing goes the way I want it ...

Kay

Another Two Pairs of Sound-Alikes

"Mel quickly returned from stuffing the garbage (bag) down the shoot."

Most of my readers probably know that, what an apartment-building dweller stuffs their garbage bag down is not a 'shoot', but a 'chute'.  Chute is also the word you use for one of those slides kids go down, at a kids' playground.  And there are "Chutes and Ladders," the game, and so on. 

The sentence was taken from an excellent book that I'm 📚 reading.  There is even an adorable seven-year-old who's on the spectrum, and a trans person, and someone who's non-binary.  The 'them' pronoun is a pain, though I see why some people prefer it <sigh>.

Snow!

We're having a steady, fine fall of snow, the kind that skiers like.  The sky is relentlessly leaden, so that it's gloomy. 

Talking about skiing, there are so many things I ought to have gotten Helen to do, and one of them is skiing.  I should have sent her to a ski slope, and had her break a leg!

Another thing she could have done is Karaoke!  I mean, the woman can sing, so why not?

She swims, in the Flowershop Girl story, but just incidentally.  In the original Helen story, I had her buy a swimsuit that was see-through when wet—she was a horny teenager at that time—and have a big argument with Janet about it. 

The best was when she and Leila danced wearing only paint and flowers, at Leila's mother's nightclub.  I took these episodes out before I published the stories. 

Oh ... My ... God ...

DeviantArt is the limit.

When I get bored, there are a few places I go: FaceBook, email, and DA.  The latter, because I like to look at pretty women; there's no point in being coy with you, my readers, because you know how I am.  I try to be inconspicuous when I'm out and about with friends, but ... Oh!  I figured, in the privacy of my own home ...

It all goes to show that there's no privacy anymore.  DA has—obviously—noticed that I like to look at pictures of women.  I ascribed the lack of guy pics to, naturally, the preponderance (there I go again with my left-wing vocabulary) of male members on the site.

But now, they're showing me, almost exclusively, pictures of two women kissing!  Well, I  think I must have liked a lesbian kiss one time too many, and now I'm labeled a 'lesbian kiss lover,' and that's all I'm going to be shown!!

On the face of it, there's no problem; commercial-minded artists (and I think that's most of them, on DA) create whatever they think people like.  But I happen to know that straight girls don't like to pose as lesbians.  They just don't, just as lesbians don't like to pose as straight.  For some girls, sure: it's not a problem; they'll do anything.  It's just a job.  But it's ... I just don't know; getting categorized this way feels like an invasion of privacy, really. 

And another thing: in some pictures of girls kissing, it seems to me as though the girls are really into it, you know?  I think I can tell.  In other pics, they're just kissing, like, a sisterly kiss, or kissing a BFF.  Most annoying is that guy artists don't seem to be even trying to convey a little more authenticity. 

On the other hand, if a pair of models actually were lesbians, and if they actually happen to be a couple, let's say; there's a good chance that they would not be on board to display their private feelings for a commercial purpose.  They just do a kiss, a moderately convincing one, and get it over with. 

Maybe I'm overthinking this, and these are very private matters, and everybody's different.  But something I've tried to do is to set aside my hangups when I'm writing, to add a little more persuasion to my work.  But my romantic writing is, I know, just a little wooden.  I tend to be a tiny bit removed—like recalling intimacy from sometime in the past—so that it isn't as immediate as it should be.  Anyway ... what's to be done. 

Writing About Fern

Fern is, you might not know, the name of the elf in my half-written story.  The human girl is Lauren; a black girl, an orphan, well-educated, a tax accountant.

I just read several pages from the manuscript, and I had put so much feeling into the story that it was affecting me very strongly.  Lauren—like most of us—had been brought up to reject all sorts of superstition.  But Fern had some powerful tricks up her sleeve: she could read Lauren's mind; not just casually, but with some effort.  She could influence Lauren's mood; she could adjust her appearance.  And she was beautiful.  So Lauren was twisted up in knots, and she had had trouble enough to believe that Fern existed in the first place ...

As they gradually fall in love, Lauren learns that this is an irreversible process.  In fact, Fern says that if she had known that Lauren existed, she would have set out from her home, and found Lauren, and ...  I had never before written a love story that had so epic a structure (though Prisoner comes close), and I just may not be up to it.  Actually, I have a 'page' with a lot of the story, I think ...

Yes, I do; it's called The Girl with the Pretty Eyebrows. 

Kay

P.S. :

Speaking of Prisoner, I have an idea about how to continue with that.  The way I left that is, the princess's homeland is invaded by a strange army of giant people, and Maia and the green princess, and the healer couple, husband and wife, slip away, and go to the healer couple's home country.  From there, Maia and the green princess make their way to Maia's home city.  They somehow have to get the people organized, and establish something like a government.  Maia feels not up to the task, but the princess speaks sternly to her, and insists that it is Maia's responsibility. 

I thought that the logical next phase of the story would be to have the Blue Princess, Tatiana, head back towards her former home country, as planned, only to find that the giants have settled in in a new fortress, some distance from the old fortified city.  The princess, the guard Peder, and Peder's wife Neela study the situation, hidden from the giants. 

A enormous number of (former) residents of the city are hidden in the hills, having watched the giants for some months.  They need to come down to meet the Blue Princess, and let them know what has happened. 

This sounds like the plot of an Edgar Rice Burroughs story!  It can't be helped; that's what it is already!

Kay H-B

I'm Old-Fashioned!

My parents were old-fashioned; all through school I was totally unhip, and hung out with older kids, and even teachers; the same happened all through college.  (In fact it was a former professor of mine who encouraged me to write.  You can imagine how I cringed when I learned that he'd read my manuscript!  I mean, if I had been a guy, that would have been fine, but being a queer woman—Oh Lord, I'm so glad that couldn't happen again.)  Also, the friends I chose to keep company with were old-fashioned, and listened to the music of the '40's through the'60's, so I'm familiar with old-time Country and Western (both Country and Western, as the guy says on The Blues Brothers).  (This is obviously all of a piece with my interest in classical music.)

Just today, I posted a journal entry on DeviantArt, about my tastes in (graphic) art, but I think one of the DA managers has to check out whether it's up to their standards.  (<snort.>)  The post emphasizes what would be called old time values. 

Like Helen (my OC), I prefer to wear dresses than pants, but sometimes I make the mistake of looking in a mirror, and quickly change clothes.  Anyhoo ...

A song that just popped into my mind is "End of the World", by Skeeter Davis.  She was a musical powerhouse of her time, and recorded several songs that Donny and Marie Osmond later made famous in the seventies.  Skeeter's family name was actually 'Penick', but she sang duets with a girl called Jack Davis, and they called themselves the Davis Sisters.  Jack was killed in a car crash, but 'Skeeter' (basically derived from 'mosquito') kept the name Davis. 

The words of the song End of the World are simple: Why is the world still going on as usual, even after you stopped loving me?  It is a classical theme, even found in classical poetry; guys and gals for centuries have said the same.  (Unless I'm mistaken, Juliet says something a little like that when she wakes up from a drugged sleep to find Romeo lying dead on her —Juliet's—bier.)

Gosh, I can't think why I decided to write on this subject.  But if you have the energy, search on YouTube for The E.O.T.W, and see what you think!

Kay

I'm Too Old For This

Youth culture is—well, let's just say that I'm losing my grip on it.  On DA, at least, the women are looking sluttier every day, but I know beyond a doubt that it's men who put up the images, and they seem to prefer slutty images.

A lot of the people I admire still dress beautifully, smartly, attractively; but a lot of the women seem to follow along with the crowd and the fashions, even when some of the elements of current fashion are in really bad taste.  I wasn't watching the Golden Globes (has it been held yet?  I don't even know), so I'm speaking from what I see on Facebook and so on.  The biggest survival skill I must learn is: to focus on the things that are pleasing to me, and to ignore the rest.  Someday, that will come easy to me, but at the moment, a lot of things make me cringe!

What people do in private doesn't bother me a great deal.  There are 'stories' on DeviantArt that describe casual incest.  I have written stories that have incest, but they are not in the least casual; in fact they cause a certain degree of trauma—ultimately to all the concerned parties.  But we don't need to know everything that people do in private; that's the point.  A little intimacy, to establish the progress of a relationship—that's not inappropriate.  But an entire story based on sex, that borders on pornography.  (Porn is creeping into commercial mainstream fiction as a genre.  I guess that was inevitable.)

After the turmoil of the 80's and the 90's, I was hoping that fashions and styles of the two sexes would converge.  That guys could wear skirts just as much as women could wear pants.  But that did not suit the fashion designers; they would lose revenue, you see?  A few brave guys—bless them—wore skirts.  At first, just kilts.  Then they went on to wrap skirts of all sorts.  But the trends are changing; guys don't seem to feel welcome among the skirt-wearing population.

At first, I noticed that girls' fashions were growing more and more elaborate and fussy.  Hair-styles were the fussiest of all; braids here, curls there, ornaments, back-combing ... Very few female portraits on DA showed a natural-looking girl.  (And, of course, they were nude, or in their underwear.  That's a time-hallowed tradition from when Art was produced by guys, for guys.) Things have to settle down sooner or later. 

Another interesting phenomenon is that young people just love to dance!  There's nothing wrong with dancing; it's just that I never got into dancing, and I find it hard to relate to it, while at the same time I really admire girls who can do a little dance, just to express themselves!  A lot of what goes on in TikTok, I understand, is dancing.  Girls who regularly dance like this must keep in shape.  (Unfortunately, a lot of young people aspire to be influencers, which is a little like getting into politics, but with the explicit motive of making money.)

Kay Hemlock Brown

[Just making sure that all who read this blog know that how I have signed this post—Kay Hemlock Brown—is only a pen-name.  'Kay Brown' may or may not be distantly related to my true name, but 'Hemlock' is completely from out of left field.  In fact, the inspiration for Hemlock came from the muppet Sherlock Hemlock, who was a character on Sesame Street!  In fact, one of my favorites. —Kay]

Happy 2024!

Well, it's snowing in Central Pennsylvania, which I certainly don't mind!  It's the absence of snow that I object to; I'm sure those who live at the top of a steep hill in the country would much rather live in a climate that's dry all the time, but as for me, a little judicious sprinkling of snow is very welcome indeed. 

This promises to be a very busy year, not least because President Biden is likely to be opposed—at the polls—by Donald Trump, who is not only a scofflaw, but also a publicity hound.  As for myself, though I recognize that maintaining this Blog can be seen as a plot to obtain publicity, in my case I trickle out the publicity in a measured stream, just enough for anyone who stumbles into this site to feel welcome. 

Of the other candidates competing for the Republican nomination, Chris Cristie is the one most able to take an intelligent, rational position.  He's a bit vindictive, as in one occasion on which he punished some president—was it Bill Clinton?—for some action, and closed down the George Washington Bridge.  But face it: any one of the candidates could have done such a thing. 

Nikki Haley, of late, has seemed reasonable, but her attitude towards Trump has been inconsistent. 

Vivek Ramaswamy seems to be a loose cannon. 

Ron DeSantis seems to be dancing a complicated tango with the various components of the GOP, taking stands based on how well they go over, rather than based on his convictions.  He's insincere, I guess is what I'm struggling to say. 

Compared to these, at least we know what Donald Trump stands for; his dissembling is amateurish, at best.  And I have to admit that I have never liked him, and not just because of political reasons.

In the end, we will get the President we deserve, abominable. unless we work hard to persuade our friends to come out and vote, we will be very sad. 

[Abdominal???  I don't have any idea what I intended to say there; can't even guess!  Except that it's disappointing ...]

Kay, feeling irrationally cheerful. 

Missy Franklin: She Walks in Beauty

Missy Franklin is this beautiful woman, who is at present the winner of the most gold medals in swimming of practically anyone.  She was a swimming goddess, and her achievements will last some years.   But the Rio Olympics of 2016 (did I get that right?) hurt her shoulder muscles, so she announced that she would retire from swimming, and concentrate on being a mother. 

Missy with her Baby!  Cuteness overload!!

I have to confess that what draws me to this woman is not her athletic ability, but her absolutely dazzling smile 😍.  You can't have a smile like that without having a heart of gold!  Apparently she loves to dance (which sets her apart from me), and she is said to have challenged the man to whom she's married presently by challenging him to a dance-off!  I like her style. 

She looks close to tears in this image

I would encourage her to work from home, while she is a mother to her baby; but I don't have a leg to stand on, being a totally idle person myself!