Is it is? Or is it ain't?

After months of toiling away on one of my tomes (ok, just a measly short story) and submitting it to a literary magazine last November, and subsequently waiting more months - I'd given it up for dead, actually - I finally receive the following response:

Hi Margaret.

Thanks for submitting "Of Pizza and Fortune Cookies" to Pindeldyboz. I really like it; it was totally unexpected but I enjoyed how it unfolded. I think the action could be even more subtle, making the tension more palpable.
Thanks for thinking of us and we're sorry for the delayed response. We work with a volunteer team of turtles on Quaaludes; they're great editors though.

Best.

Kxxxxxxxx [Ed.]

pboz print editor


Now, people.

I ask you.

Was that a YES? or a NO?

Discuss.

25 or 6 or 4

I was going to tell you about this guy I saw on the street the other day, but then I realized.....I could just show you. My friend and I were walking back from a Broadway Show (Curtains! with David Hyde Pierce, if you must know), when this picture-worthy dude started singing. And then he became this video-worthy dude, and then I noticed that this here blog site allows video now so...

All You Can Eat, And Then Some

I still have yet to go deep inside myself and find out just why this happens, but my friend Erin and I turn into two poisonous superiority-complex victims when we go to Soup Plantation. We look around and discuss all the disgusting habits of people that come out in an All You Can Eat buffet while we gorge ourselves on chocolate muffins and sourdough bread. And some salad.

The fact that the same thing happens when I go with MrMudPuppy to these places is what makes me believe that I'm the toxic conversationalist and not the person who I draw into my noxious lair.

Anyway, I've taken to bringing along my Valentine's Day present wherever I go now, so I was able to capture one bloke at the table next to us (don't worry - he was asleep). I only hope this picture is big enough for you to see that this lone diner complete with spectacles askew, has managed to stack no less than 15 plates and bowls on his tray. I wonder what he said to the busboys who constantly come by to take away your plate. I'm not finished with that. Or that. Or that. Or that...etc.

And what about all the plastic bags? And what's in the suitcase? Forty-seven blueberry muffins?

Book Review: Slacker Girl

So now I'm a book reviewer for a website called Curled Up With a Good Book. Here's a link to my first review.

Is It Buyer's or Seller's Beware?

So, in my last post, I posed the question: "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?"

This post shall be dedicated to answering that question.

When we last left our hero and heroine, they sent back a counter offer that met the buyer's (Let's call them Buyers B) original offer halfway, to which Buyers B said no. That's it. Just -- no.

So, in true housing market free fall, we caved and countered again to accept their first offer. Then Buyer B said, "Well...now, we don't know." Funny...when they initially made that offer, they knew. But when we come across as desperate, suddenly the house doesn't seem worth as much, I guess. Otherwise, we wouldn't come down to their original offer. So a few F bombs behind their backs later, while they hemmed and hawed and allowed their original offer to lapse and expire, the potential buyers before them (let's call them Buyers A) came back from the dead (so maybe we should call them Zombies) and made us another offer. I never told you about Buyers A. They low-balled us and we countered with our original asking price just to tell them not to fuck with us like that. Apparently it worked, and they came back again with a more decent offer. So now we are in the middle of deciding to jump on their offer or counter. What to do, what to do. We could just jump on their offer, because we're kind of beaten down with this whole thing and don't care any more. On the other hand, we don't want to come across as desperate and take their first offer. Ok, their second first offer. Because for some reason, if you don't haggle enough, they don't respect you and they drop you like an intelligent sitcom (where you may be smart and funny, but it's not about that.)

We just want out already. It's like being nine-and-a-half months pregnant. We don't care if it's fugly, we just pray it's healthy. In other words, we just want an uneventful escrow. We've been rode hard and put away wet before; we've had the rug pulled out from under us at the 11th hour (bowlful of cliches, anyone?) and we will have to kill some folks if this torture doesn't end soon. So when Greta Van Something displays the face of some missing person or persons (depending on just how pissed off we are) on the screeen, you'll know whose names to turn into the FBI.

House Poor-ness

In the last year, we've lowered the asking price of our house about 5 million dollars (well, it feels like it, anyway - wait, what the hell am I saying? I don't know what five millions dollars feels like!)

Our most recent offer came in Saturday night with a 24 hour time-limit. We agonized. We thought 'Take it!', then 'Fuck that - let's stick to our guns', to 'OK, let's meet them halfway', which is what we eventually settled on. So we countered with another 24 hour deadline. Then late this afternoon, mere minutes before the last of the sand falls through the hourglass, we get a phone call from our real estate agent. THE phone call. The one where she says, "Well, they didn't accept your counter", or "Well, they accepted your counter".

I tilt my head, my right ear pointing toward the stairwell, where I can hear the Mud Puppy saying things like, "OK.....OK.......OK.......OK...." and many other helpful one-sided monosyllabic sentences.

He hangs up the phone but doesn't come down the stairs to report. Oh, he must be waiting for an email from our Agent where he will pounce into my office with papered proof of the start of our escrow.

Minutes crawl by like snails on parade.

Nothing.

So I accost him and ask, WTF?

"Oh," he says. "They'll give us their answer tomorrow. The guy is out of town or something."









Well, it's been a year since we posted that most-likely-dry-rotting-by-now FOR SALE sign. What's 12-24 more grueling hours, right? I mean, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

The Pink Dog

So the other night, MrMudPuppy and I were dining at Ink, as in, Miami, except it's in Sacramento, and it's not a tattoo parlor, but it's tattoo parlor-themed and I think the owner may own a local parlor, but anyway, that's not why I came here, is it? I came here to tell you about this dog I saw outside the window and to show you a picture and if it weren't for the other dog in the picture to serve as contrast, you might think my camera sucked. To wit...

Another Entry for The Ether

Cliche Alert: Life is short. It's almost shorter than I can comprehend. For example, I'll post a blog entry one day, and then I'll return the next day to post another blog entry, because I'm trying to write every day, or at least every other day, and I look at the previous day's entry which, strangely, is dated over a week ago. Time is slipping by me without notice. I seem to have entered a time-warp, an inescapable black hole that accompanies my forties. I've taken stock of my life and the shelves are too empty for my liking. I contemplate life's meaning for five lousy minutes and three precious weeks fly by. Meanwhile, people are dying. People I know. It makes me question everything I do and why. It takes mere seconds to pose these questions, yet more weeks fly by as I ponder them. I watch a bunch of History Channel specials on The Universe and I learn about Mercury and Saturn and comets, and evolution and I think about how speck-like we all are. We are but one little Who-ville on Horton's dandelion of life. The earth spent billions of years burning and spinning and forming into continents and oceans and atmosphere and one-cell organisms and dinosaurs and monkeys and humans and yet, I sit here on billions of atoms that make up a chair and spend time deleting emails whose text insist I refinance my house, divulge my bank account number, or enlarge my penis.

Every generation talks about how the next generation is so spoiled and walks around with a sense of entitlement and they don't appreciate anything they have. I would submit that they don't appreciate anything they are born with. If you shove a silver spoon in a newborn's mouth, it serves as an unappreciated benchmark. since no work was required to attain it. Just as no work was required to attain our human bodies. It was given to us by someone else's labor, not ours. So the laborer may appreciate it, but not the laboree. That's right, we are all just a bunch of lazy and ungrateful laborees, pouring our energy into worrying about all the THINGS we don't have. I may be digressing here and wandering aimlessly and have no point, but it's my blog, so what the hell, right? If you don't like what you read, you can just change the damn channel.

All over the world, people are completely missing the point and gathering hoardes in their wake to do their bidding. And I'm not just talking about hate. I'm including the ideas that seep into our psyche in the form of advertising. Everything from Burger King to Viagra to Eric Estrada's idea of Paradise-like real estate to con man Kevin Trudeau's claim of what They Don't Want You To Know About to Channel 13's breath-baiting Story You Don't Want To Miss Because It Could Kill You And You The People Have a Right To Know, Just Not Right Now to any noun prepended with the word "deluxe".

This diatribe only scrapes the surface, but I don't want to bore you further with my own narcissistic babble. A writer must be able to analyze her audience, all four of you, and know when to change direction. I'm going to go back to my scratch pad and figure out a way to sneak in the self-serving hot air-ness without boring you to death about it. It must be entertaining to keep the your attention.

Hello?

Is any one still there?

{SIGH}