THANK YOU, JADE KERRION & FRIENDS! ON TO #ROW80 4TH QTR 2013 - THE DREADED GOALS

I want to thank Jade Kerrion for allowing me to participate in her book launch for the 4th book of her Award-Winning Series, "Double Helix -- Perfection Unleashed!" 

It's easy to do stuff for Jade, because she does all the heavy lifting and besides, she's gorgeous, funny, brilliant and oh, so original. So, she's always welcome here on Nebraska Ave, 33605, 33602, 33604.

Seriously, I just fumble around, do a little HTML code stuff (badly, if you haven't noticed or been blinded by the appearance of my blog) and punch some buttons, and voilà! I'm done. Not that I'm lazy. Much. 

Last year, Jade told me about this little shindig called NaNoWriMo, a festival of finger cramping, where you type 50,000 words during the month of November. I guess you're supposed to have a plot and characters and things. Naturally, I was immediately taken with this concept and got very excited and signed up. I wrote exactly 1737 words in 2012's NaNoWriMo. I hope to best last year's total THIS YEAR; that's all I'm going to say. Life keeps happening. On November 3rd of 2012, my E. T. (Essential Tremor) powered up, or leveled up, for you gamers, or in normal people's jargon, got worse and it was a mess. This not having medical insurance and all back then, was just one disaster after another.

Besides being a first-rate ranter, and an imaginative cuss-word artiste, Andi-roo is one of my first blogging buddies. Truly inspirational as well as ferociously honest and loving, she is my hero! xoxoxo (Andispeak for love and shit)

Andi-roo says calamity now makes for great stories later. She's absolutely right and I have some humdingers. A quick glimpse; I celebrated "Mental Awareness Month" by being committed for most of it, and this wasn't what I had scheduled for March of 2011. Ironically, that St. Patrick's Day in 2011 is one of the few I remember, because throughout my adult life, like all good Scots, I was usually blotto. Let's not even talk about St. Andrew's day (patron saint of Scotland, November 30.) By the way, I quit drinking years and years ago and smoking, too and have the lungs of a coal miner. 

Amazingly, I look pretty good for nigh on 60 and all the self-inflicted damage. There's probably a picture in an attic by now, that is so rotted, it's just a frame. Thanks, Oscar Wilde. 

GINA VALLEY - GLAMEROUS LIFE OF A SOCCER MOM

Gina writes about funny things, or rather, ordinary and sometimes not happy things and makes them. . . hysterical. Posts about trying to find alone time in the bathroom, yet dealing with questions from the "pack;" running the gamut from trivial to existential. Road trips that go on for years, replete with more endless questions from the "pack." Sheer lunacy meets happy impromptu and pointed remarks. I still can't figure out how many 2-legs and 4-legs are in that domicile. But I loved her comment on Facebook, something about it being a long day, as the dog just ran through the door with a couch cushion and jumped into a mud puddle with it. All written with grace, humor and love. Gina is a keeper. I want to thank her for her inspiration and just her presence in my life. I never have a bad day; I just go read something about one of her trips to the E. R. and feel instantly better!

Lynnette Conroy writes with an elegance and a ferocity I haven't read in many a year. And that says a fuck-ton. I am deadly serious.

If you haven't read Lynnette's post, "Open Rant to Congress," please do so immediately. I re-posted in several places, but what I really, really wanted to do was go and throw tea in some harbor, man the ramparts, or fire the "shot heard 'round the world." We need some damn inspiration around here! Where the hell is it? The 60s would have had sit-ins, lie-ins, love-ins, eat-ins, and every other kind of -in you can imagine. Where in the hell is the outrage? We should be outraged. Supposedly, Lenin said that "every society is 3 meals away from anarchy," although it has many attributions. I say, balls. But really, I say, thanks, Lynnette, for getting me fired up again. I just wish it was 1983, so I could go march around the Union in Ann Arbor for Solidarity and give my dad in Los Gatos, California an excuse to call me up and chew me out over the phone, hollering about lists and McCarthy. My mom was the Anarchist in the family.

My own goals for #ROW80 are nebulous. Tenuous, as is the state of my existence in the sense of, I never know what's going on. I can say, "Hey, I think I'm going to write a book. The Title? Fifty Shades of My Little Pony." 

Actually, I have and have had enough material to polish and publish a book about my experiences in music and in the computer industry, as well as the interesting and very broadening experience of losing a house, becoming homeless and sick and ending up here in this chair. Or, I could just end with this:

 Source: Huffington Post                                 

A Silver Lining, of a Very Dark Cloud

Maybe I'm just a one-liner, lookin' for a stage.

After further reflection, I have started a "goals page" as a way of keeping track of what I hope to accomplish during Round 4. I feel good and I am ready to take on some new things and re-establish some great old habits! 

Based on Raising Happiness, a New Theory of Elite Performance, it's actually part of a very old practice that I inculcated during my days in music school and repeated when I took 4 years of college Calculus, Trig and Computer Science in 2. I am gifted in music. I am not gifted in Maths by any means, but I had a 4.0. Unreal. I still wonder who was driving. Anyway, this is where you can read about my goals: DELIBERATE GOALS OF VIOLA FURY

Good luck everyone! It's going to be great and we shall sing the song of our peoples togethers, (sic) as they once did in old country!   

                        ♯ ♫ ♪ ♭ ♩ ♬                   

PERFECTION CHALLENGED INTERVIEW WITH JADE KERRION

Here is Jade's Interview regarding how she began writing and then went through the process of, first self-publishing and now joining up with a publishing agency. Jade wrote her first novel for the NaNoWriMo in 2010. Her interview is fun and she knows herself well. When she states writing is more of a compunction for her and that being so, makes types of people like that easy prey to alcohol, tobacco, drugs, I can relate in a huge way. Music is like that for me and certain computer games. I quit drinking and smoking in 2010; I'd be pushing up daisies now, if I hadn't. In truth, I'd rather fix the computer problem that had the biggest batch of cooties, ever, ahead of writing. Being on Full Disability ("Retired") allows me to indulge the fun things, although lately, I've been thinking of taking on some part-time job from home. Who can't use a little extra dough? As of late, we've had a few extra expenses that we weren't counting on, and it's hard to stretch when you're on a Surprise Fixed Income. 

One of the reasons I haven't blogged much about what is going on around here, is that there really isn't much going on around here. Remember this guy?

Ray-ray Martineau who thought your 15 cents was his 15 cents. He was convicted of Grand Theft back in 6, of this year and told if he showed his scurvy face around here again (well, not like that,) he'd be violated and have to serve his full term, of 3 years and 1 day. We ran an indigogo for his victim, because ray-ray kept asking for a continuance, hoping the victim, Mr. Wallace (no relation) would drop the charges. To keep Mr. Wallace from doing so, I ran an indigogo for 500.00, and although we got less, JC and Alex and I chipped in, so Mr. Wallace would have some money. Those of you who contributed, you know who you are, *wink, wink* It being such a bitch of an economy, it is hard to raise money, but this worked. 

We, then being the high-minded souls  on Nebraska Ave started a pool to see how long it would take Ray-ray to get violated. I said 4, and chipped in 5 bucks, JC said 7 months (looking for some sort of spiritual turn around?) and shipped in 5 bucks. Alex said 6 months, which sounded about right. Then, we held our breaths.

Well, shit. He was violated on 8/23/2013 for "failure to register as an habitual criminal." They should have violated him for being an habitual psychopath.

Like I said, this guy would run around FSJ and tell the wildest stories. In 3 days, he got his bike stolen, his wallet stolen and his 3 day bus pass stolen. There are certain people that make my "spidey senses" tingle, and I am immediately not only stone-blind, but stone-deaf. You'd have a better conversation with that Umbrella stand over there.

I still think  Ray-ray's going to be going behind bars before the end of his "year" on the box. There is no way he can pass a piss test and those are random. Once, he tried to get JC to pee in a cup for him. I was on the other side of the OTHER house and I could hear JC's Wrath of God voice from where I stood. I still laugh at that. Ray-ray must have scuttled off like an armadillo when JC cut loose like that.

Speaking of Wrath of God, I was waiting for the bus at the supermarket the other night and one of the area's known predators (they have to live somewhere and are in a different class than an offender) was all hunkered up in the corner of the bus shelter. I had my backpack and 2 cloth bags, cane and sunglasses on, although it was after dark. I knew he was there.

I put down my bags and stood to the edge of the shelter. He started in about how little and vulnerable I looked. I let him yammer for a minute, and then, I jumped up, and WHIPPED around, landing on both feet (that ET med really works) pointing my cane at him and said, STOP! I know what you are. I've been here for years. Don't say one. More. Word. And he didn't.

That's the one thing about this area. You cannot show weakness. I know that every time I go out, there's bound to be weirdness on some scale, and my senses are pretty heightened. I may not see detail well, but I can hear and sense and feel the air as it is moved by objects and creatures. Rather like, "Maxwell's Devil," maybe.

BEGINNING 09/23/2013 - PERFECTION CHALLENGED BOOK PROMOTION

There are some reasons I have this picture of the beautiful Jade Kerrion and her books where I would normally display #ROW80. First, there's no #ROW80 going on, although when I first started #ROW80, I just kept on going. Second, when I uploaded the HTML code, for the images you see to the right there, I found this peculiar box, that could mean any sorts of things, and being me, I began to play, um fix. I discovered that the reason the picture does not display is that that is the equivalent of a “404, not found.” Rather like my head. I isolated the part of the code that was throwing the “404” error, and pasted that link into a new browser window. The picture you see up there is what came up, along with the “404” error. I made a note and emailed Jade. When the Magic Blog Fairy sets things a-right, it will be fixed. It wasn't the code; Jade sent me EARLIER a copy of the the book cover reveal she wished to be used in place of “404. Page Not Found." So, yeah, let's call it a "404-PEBCAK error. Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard.” I will honestly look for any pretext no matter how slight to get under the hood, when it comes to anything regarding systems, networking, applications and programming. Just keep the hardware away from me. I did make a copy and paste of the URL to get the image you see above; I would NEVER under any circumstances, touch anyone's code without their permission.

This is the scroll and serif of my viola, Wolf. Wolf was "born" in 1836, just 10 years after the death of Beethoven. I've had him since I was 19 and have never played another viola since, unless it was upon invitation of another player, who wanted to play Wolf. He was made by Guidantus Florenus and is of the Bolognese school of fiddle makers, not the Stradivari and Amati and Guarneri houses. At 15 7/8" which is small for a viola, he's got a huge sound. He was named by a luthier up in Royal Oak Michigan when I had work done on him. Nobody touches him but me, capisce? It's like computers, or workmen and their tools, ask first. I wouldn't have cared if it had been freakin' Jascha Heifitz; ask first.

It is axiomatic among musicians, computer engineers, writers, that OTHER PEOPLE KEEP THEIR GODDAMNED MITTS OFF MY STUFF! I came out of the ladies' room, during a break when I was in one of the nameless thousands of symphony orchestras I played in, to find a Russian woman, who had played in the first violin section of the Cleveland Orchestra, playing Wolf. I almost punched her in the eye. I don't get on other people's computers unless I've been given permission and only for repairs. I don't change what people write; that is the intellectual property of someone else. I certainly don't play other people's instruments, unless invited to do so.

The other reason, I must admit, is I am lazy and as per usual, it got hectic around here; when doesn't it? JC was supposed to have his wrist operated on for squamous cell cancer on Thursday, and the supplemental insurance company that provides the rides, never showed up. So, we have to reschedule that, which is so hard on him. He hates the waiting and is understandably frightened. He has a low pain threshold, but he wants it over with as well. We called 3 times, and no one ever showed up. I hate this. When did the world become so careless? After 7 weeks of wrangling with my psychiatrist's office, supplemental insurance office, pharmacy and drug-maker, I am finally back on my anti-depressant, Cymbalta, since Friday. I hope it works because, Damn! I am sick and tired of crying all the time over what seems to be nothing.

I understand that no one has a perfect life, that there are always bumps and stumbles and just plain driving off cliffs, intentionally or not. But there have been times recently, when just every stupid, malicious, mendacious and cowardly act has come back to haunt me. Is it because I've been depressed? Probably. Is it helping me now? Not one bit. Fuck guilt. At some point, after all the maudlin wallowing and all the mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, you have to suck it up and get back up on that horse.

Yeah, I am so so sorry, I smoked for about 30 years, but I am not nearly as bad off as my mom. Could I have done things differently? Why even ask. Everyone has things they wish they hadn't done. What I have to do now, is to keep going. And that has been the biggest hurdle for me, over the last 1 and 1/2 years. Since I have my psychotic break, and had to deal with tremors and weird sensations, numbness, loss of sense of smell, drooling. I've been legally blind for almost 10 years now and I don't even count that a deficit anymore. It's the recent stuff. The stuff that's slippery and hard to define.

I have horrible problems with my sugar dropping quickly, precipitously and within 20 minutes, to the point of dementia. One night I was here blogging, and I looked at Gina Valley's smiling face and saw God. For real. I knew it was time for some OJ. I know how to keep it from dropping, but now it spikes high, higher than it ever has been. 335, 158, 150, 168. WTF? What do I do to counteract that? Eat salt? Buy a salt lick? A bit more sinister, my white blood cell count is high, not high enough to think leukemia, or non-Hodgkins lymphoma, but something else. Having worked in a teaching hospital 35 years ago gives one just enough knowledge to put me firmly in the trenches with all the other hypochondriacs.

Comparing my past blood tests with ABC blood test Company (highly researched) all of my -cytes and various -leukos and trilobytes are just a teeny hair off, until we run into eosiniphils. Oops. I guess I've spent wayyy too much time out of country. Of course, RBC is practically in the negative range, because, redheads are almost always anemic and I have fought that since forever. Scratching around in my chart, which is conveniently online (what asshole thought that was a good idea? Oh! I know! Someone who clearly has no idea about how computers and networking works, and that people like me exist) I also discovered that I carry the diagnosis: childhood failure to thrive.

That has got to be the single most depressing thing I've ever read about myself. Maybe that will teach people like me to keep my nose out of places it doesn't belong. It is true; I was a preemie, in the days that few survived, but not by much. I spent 2 weeks in an egg crate I guess, before my dad took me home, as my mother went back to work. He took me to class, the bar (where I learned to walk) and took good care for me. He was the ever-patient father. If I started to fuss and squawl during his studying, he just fired up the record player, either some Big Band stuff, or more likely, Beethoven and an-ever growing list of classical music from Johann Strauss to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. A lot of you know the rest, so maybe I should just be damned glad I've had the life I've had, and shut up already. I've got the coolest friends on the planet, so, I know I still have lots to do yet. My bucket list is to visit these mega-talented people, in no particular order, ANDI-ROO, GINA VALLEY, AMBERR MEADOWS, AARON BRINKER, NEYSKA, CATERUSSELL-COLE, ALBERTA ROSS, ROBERT LEE HAYCOCK, Baking-in-a-Tornado, Sundae Rye, YumaBev, Nancy Cooper, Cyndee Bowen, That DJPARIS guy, (who has apparently been booted from some kind of men's support group--sounds like me) and a bunch of other people that I just can't think of right now. They are probably heaving a sigh of relief. A visit from me is like a visit from a batch of confused Mongols, only slightly more polite; emphasis on the slightly. Nancy is about the only one of this fine batch of folks who blog and write books for a living who does not have a blog, but she is a first-rate writer and a wonderful, dear friend.

Anyway, while I was tap-dancing through whatever that was, Jade and I were emailing back and forth madly (okay, it was one email and an answer.) She had already sent me a picture of PERFECTION UNLEASHED. I uploaded it and away it went! Her books are awesome. She is awesome! For the next week, starting tomorrow, to help Jade Kerrion celebrate and launch the release of the FOURTH book in her DOUBLE HELIX SERIES, I will be posting a couple of the interviews that she put together. One is with the author, Jade, and the other is with Zara Itani, one of the stars of the DOUBLE HELIX series.

When I read the interviews, I was originally asked to choose one, but was so taken with both, I asked Jade if I may run them both. She readily agreed and for more than one or two days. I hope you have as much fun reading them as I did, and don't hesitate to leave comments for her. All of her contact info is to the right of this post – I've “tailored,” (read mutilated) this template so many times, we're lucky to have words to read. You also have the chance to purchase her e-books .99 (discounted from 2.99.)

Congratulations and kudos are due Jade. She is a marvelous writer and a wonderful person and I wish her every success in her book launch and subsequent blog and book tours. 

Title: Deeper Meanings—Cover art from the Double Helix

Today, I’d like to talk about the meaning behind the cover art of the award-winning Double Helix series. First, let me give you a bit of background for context. The Genetic Revolution has transformed our world, and humans live alongside clones, in vitros, and mutants. An uneasy peace exists between the politically powerful humans and the genetically superior human derivatives, but that peace shatters when Zara Itani, a human mercenary whose attitude exceeds her beauty, frees Galahad, the perfect, lab-created human being, from his laboratory prison.

Danyael Sabre, an alpha empath, survived a traumatic childhood and now wants nothing more than to be left alone. Galahad’s escape, however, plunges Danyael’s life into a free fall when Danyael learns that his genetic code was used as Galahad’s physical template.

What would you do if you came face-to-face with perfection, and it looked just like you? Danyael will spend the rest of his life struggling to find the answer to that question. Zara’s dilemma, though, is quite different. How do you choose between the pinnacle of human perfection and his equally compelling, though flawed, physical template?

The first three books of the Double Helix series, Perfection Unleashed, Perfect Betrayal, and Perfect Weapon, trace the events around Galahad’s escape and its tumultuous aftermath for Danyael.

 The concept for the cover of Perfection Unleashed came from Michelangelo’s fresco, The Creation of Adam, where God reaches down to activate the spark of life in Adam. The hand in the cover of Perfection Unleashed comes directly from the fresco, but instead of connecting with a human, it touches a sparkling vial of DNA, the innocuous origins of Galahad, the perfect human being.

I took a chance with the cover of Perfection Unleashed. Its religious origins may result in some readers drawing erroneous conclusions as to its contents. The topic of genetic engineering and its potential ability to alter human beings has religious implications, but the Double Helix series focuses instead on the societal and personal impact on people living through those tumultuous times.

In Perfect Betrayal, the spotlight shifts to Danyael Sabre. Danyael, an alpha empath, is rare and coveted, and Galahad’s escape provides an impetus for powerful men and women to seize Danyael for their opposing ends.

Perfect Betrayal is the flashiest cover in the Double Helix series thus far. It is even more abstract than Perfection Unleashed and features curved and concentric rows of dominos arranged in a yin-yang pattern. The yin-yang symbolizes the interdependence of seemingly contrary forces, and the cover emphasizes the duality of the forces at play; light, dark; male, female; fire, ice. Two hands—one male, the other female (representing the two contenders for Danyael’s empathic power)—are poised to push at the dominos from either end. The dominos will fall; the question is, will Danyael?

Finally, in Perfect Weapon, the cover shifts from the abstract to the concrete. Weapons abound; first and most obviously, the sniper rifle and person behind the scope of the sniper rifle. Too large to miss are the inhuman forms of the genetically altered super soldiers clustered in front of the Capitol. The scope of the sniper rifle, however, is focused on a lone and seemingly harmless cripple, Danyael Sabre.

Who is the perfect weapon; the remorseless mercenary Zara Itani whose finger tightens on the trigger; the super soldiers that are genetically bred for war, or Danyael Sabre, the alpha empath who can, with a touch, heal or kill?

I had a great deal of fun designing the covers for the Double Helix series, and am eternally grateful to my cover artist, Jason Alexander, who put up with all my bad artistic advice with good grace, and more than compensated for the fact that I failed art in eighth grade. I hope you enjoyed this quick insight into the meaning behind the cover art, and that you’ll also enjoy reading the novels as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Author Bio:

Jade Kerrion unites cutting-edge science and bioethics with fast-paced action in her award-winning Double Helix series. Drawing rave reviews for its originality and vision, and described as “a breakout piece of science fiction,” Perfection Unleashed, and its sequels, Perfect Betrayal and Perfect Weapon, are available in print and e-book through Amazon and other major retailers.

About The Double Helix series: 

His genetic code sourced from the best that humanity offers, Galahad embodies the pinnacle of perfection. When Zara Itani, a mercenary whose abrasive arrogance exceeds her beauty, frees him from his laboratory prison, she offers him the chance to claim everything that had ever been denied him, beginning with his humanity.

Perfection cannot be unleashed without repercussions, and Galahad’s freedom shatters Danyael Sabre’s life.

An alpha empath, Danyael is rare and coveted, even among the alpha mutants who dominate the Genetic Revolution. He wields the power to heal or kill with a touch, but craves only privacy and solitude—both impossible dreams for the man who was used as Galahad’s physical template.

Galahad and Danyael, two men, one face. One man seeks to embrace destiny, and the other to escape it.

The award-winning Double Helix series, consisting of Perfection Unleashed, Perfect Betrayal, and Perfect Weapon, will challenge your notions of perfection and humanity, and lead you in a celebration of courage and compassion. Science fiction, urban fantasy, and action-adventure readers will enjoy this thrilling roller-coaster ride as it twists and turns through a world transformed by the Genetic Revolution.

Social media and buy links:

Connect with Jade Kerrion: Blog / Facebook / Twitter

Perfection Unleashed: Amazon / Amazon UK / Smashwords

Perfect Betrayal: Amazon / Amazon UK / Smashwords

Perfect Weapon: Amazon / Amazon UK / Smashwords

~*~*~

Jade Kerrion, author,  DOUBLE HELIX Series

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REMEMBER: To celebrate her launch of Perfect Betrayal and Perfect Weapon, Perfection Unleashed will be available for only 0.99 at Amazon, (down from $2.99) for the duration of Jade's virtual book tour through March 1, 2013

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#ROW80 1^ST QUARTER POST 1 – THE START OF A NEW YEAR AND A NEW ROW

Well, here we are. The start of a new year, a new row, I hope, a tad more energy than what I finished out the old year with. I really didn’t intend to be so, well, hum… drum… I really didn’t. But, geeze, when it becomes a chore of Sisyphean and Olympian efforts to grasp at words, form sentences or shape arguments coherently, it really ceases to be any fun at all, and rather than looking forward to trying to craft a cute, funny or even thought-provoking little post, I can barely stand to look at my blank computer screen.

It sits there, mocking me, just running its happy little SETI arrays, as if to say “Looky! Looky at me! I can work! Ha Ha! See me! Ha ha. Ho ho!” Well, at least the arrays are pretty to look at and somebody is doing something in this house; look at the bright side!

2013 is already better than 2012. For one thing, we have a cat. Mama-kitty wasn’t too keen on the fireworks, but they were pretty to see. There were a couple of small planes circling around and around during the fireworks; probably very cool to see all the different venues from that high up. Of course, being me and hating the whole flying thing (pilot parents’ genes be damned) I expected full-on mid-air collision directly over my head, and couldn’t watch the pretty boom-booms, not that I can really see stuff, anyway. But, I could hear them! I couldn’t even enjoy my general visual impression; I had to worry about those damn planes up in the air!

I want to thank Jade for letting me host her book tour. It is an honor and she is a wonderful author and a wonderful person. As I was testing the link to each of the sellers' sites, I was able to read the more in-depth plot summaries of each of the Double Helix series books. What an imagination and what brilliance, intricacy and depth, Jade has brought into her world! I urge everyone to read these books! She has wrought a series packed with situations and dilemmas that we all are facing and for which we are currently struggling to find answers for. I'm very much looking forward to reading the entire series, and again, it's been an honor, and a real treat to host her here on Homeless Chronicles in Tampa!

#ROW 80 POST 43 – SUNDAY CHECK-IN – TRUTHINESS IN ADVERTISING

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I am pleased  and proud to announce that I will be hosting Jade Kerrion's Double Helix Tour on Wednesday, January 2, 2013! She is a wonderful writer and just a wonderful person. To celebrate the launch of Perfect Betrayal and Perfect Weapon, Perfection Unleashed will be available for only 0.99 at Amazon, (down from $2.99) for the duration of Jade's virtual book tour through March 1, 2013. Her writing is thrilling and I think, prophetic in many ways.

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I know that ROW 80 is on hiatus. I also know that I posted #44 yesterday, so yeah, I apparently can’t count. I’m trying to knock off the hard-wired anality that is me. I know that I pretty much ditched the last half of it too, due to “illness.” If Wayne Borean wants me to bring a note from home, I’ll channel Mom and see if she’s willing to provide. She should be, since she follows me around and has been busy fucking up every single clock in my house all these years, except for when I was homeless. I can’t blame her there, I wouldn’t have followed me, either, had I a choice. Ma can’t even provide a decent haunting; she just louses up all my clocks so that nary a one tells the same time. The least she can do is provide a note to the headmaster telling him I’m batshit insane and here the analogy just ran off the road.

Well, I wanted to bitch about advertising anyway. The kind that is on TV. I actually avoided “TV” for quite a while and had a good streak going there. We kind of got around it with HULU and DVDs and I didn’t have to watch 35 episodes of “Walker, Texas Ranger” in a row, or "COPS" which has become unintentionally hilarious, due to the fact that every time it’s from Tampa or Hillsborough County we recognize both the miscreant and the law enforcement officer. If we still drank, it’d be a hella drinking game. Take a drink every time you recognize Officer Friendly and his playmate, Quandarious Hammond!

I’m okay with this and JC can watch the things he likes; besides "Walker" and "COPS," he enjoys the Animal Planet and "Criminal Minds" and "NCIS". All cool stuff and the last two are shows that won’t kill off any more of my brain cells, but My God and all that is Holy! The fucking advertisers are horrible! The tag lines alone are an insult to anyone with an IQ over 12. To wit:

Some woman facing the camera bellows, “Women! We have to get real about what goes on in the bathroom!” Oh. Really? What was I doing before? Was pooping into a little hole a trip to Fantasy Island? What the fuck? Never mind dealing with toilet paper and wrapping up sanitary napkins or tampons or all of that hoo-ha when we menstruated, for those of  us who are of the distaff nature. Thank god that Acid Trip is over. Please, Mrs. Spokes person, tell me how I can make my bathroom experience “real.” Should I have been wiping my ass with my toothbrush? No? Maybe I should put my deodorant on my ass? No? Maybe a little mascara, since I’m too stupid to know that I’ve just been unreal in the bathroom all these years. Then, this dim-bulb woman goes on to say, “I like to feel clean, really clean.” Not ME! I want to run outside and roll around in the mud after I go to the john! Thanks, Quilted Northern Ass-Wipe for making women sound stupider than ever.

If I had some Internet Darts...

Would someone please, please, please tell Gallagher to stop that shit. It’s not funny in 2012. It will not be funny in 2013. It wasn’t funny in 1987 or whenever he last plagued my existence. My best friend at the University of Michigan was a total Gallagher fan and I wasn’t. What we do for friends is hard to believe; I’m no saint and I’d do it for her again; Cynthia I miss you. God rest your soul.

Not. Funny. Ever. Ever. Give Geico a refund.

There’s a kind of commercial that is supposed to be “sophisticated.” Walker 46 shows a glass of whiskey and plays this cool-cat kind of music on the piano, with snare drum and rim-shot. Very cool. Very grown-up in a 1964 kind of way. Unfortunately, I remember those mornings after my parents had those parties and the living room smelled like cheap cigars and farts, so the urban suavity and cool sophistication is kind of lost on me. That’s what that music reminds me of.

Cigar ashes, farts, regret and hangovers. Sophistication, yeah...

CDW and Charles Barkley. These have to be the most hilarious, knowing and dead-on commercials in the history of. CDW has the client mentality down, certainly, after years of dealing with, well, clients. Charles Barkley and the fat, little red-haired dude, who is the caddy are hilarious. Charles took golf lessons and is still, bar none, the worst golfer in the world. He knows it and is okay with it. I idolize Charles Barkley. He doesn’t care that he’s that horrible. When he says “So you my caddy, blah blah” and caddy replies “you have a bunker to the left of you, a bunker to the right of you… remember, this is Client golf” and hands Charles an iron the size of his head, I crack up every time. Charles just looks at it. Great stuff.

I wonder if that club is a Mac?

So, general adverts are still in the main, horrid. People are still being paid to write shit and talk down to their audiences, and trying to make us want crap we don’t need. Some things never change.

#ROW 80 POST 44 – WE ARE YOUNG AND HAVIN’ FUN 2012

"We Are Young"  fun. Official Video

Sorry PSY; I love you and Berklee College should be proud, but fun. rules!

The title says it all. This post is about all of the stuff in 2012 that made me laugh. When I laugh, I feel young. And dammit, I love to laugh; it is the best high, the best drug in the world and I love to share it with people. I don’t care how stupid it is; I laugh at a lot of stupid stuff and myself as well. When I lived at FSJ, homeless shelter, there were a few of us who laughed all the time, at, well the expense of others… but they didn’t know they were being laughed at, so it was okay… sort of. Anyway, moving on, here’s some of the funny shit of 2012, in no particular order; stuff that made me laugh and I want you to all laugh too:

1)         http://www.theworld4realz.com/cotton-swab-causes-emergency-room-visit/

I’ve tried to tell you why this is one of the most serious funny pieces I’ve ever read, but I can’t stop laughing long enough. The dialog between Andi-Roo and her Hubz, talking to Andi-Roo’s mom, the dawning horror of Andi-Roo when she realizes what the nurse really means by “safe at home,” and it’s not big shards of glass on the floor or cleaning her ears with a knife, or the “dumb-ish” nurse, the whole piece is flat-out hysterical, even on like the 5^th reading.

I've heard the adjective "fearless" applied to ol' Nic here. Maybe he should get some. Fear, I mean.

2)         Is actually a post I can’t find, but it has this very boffo picture of Nic Cage in bear suit in “Wicker Man,” a remake of the 1973 “classic.” I do have the picture and I’ve posted it here for you to enjoy, but back to Nic; I never saw either of the “Wicker Man” movies; the older is supposedly classic, but I hear the newer one sucks out loud. I ran across this picture in a “Worst Movie of…” on Cracked.com. There are not enough superlatives to describe what I felt upon seeing this picture. Feel free to supply your own.

*Burp* I wonder if I have Briefcase-Breath?

3)         Lion Drome. I actually thought JC was going to have to take me to the hospital for this. I literally stopped breathing during this awesome post on Cracked.com by Robert Brockway. Having “PD or non-PD, that is the question,” for some reason, also causes me to laugh harder and cry harder and to call Mr. Brockway, “Bwockway” for some reason. I hope he has gotten over that. I bought his book, too. Eventually, I may be able to read it. If my eyes ever settle down. In March. In the meantime, check out this “Executive Lion,” or better yet, read his whole post @ 

http://www.cracked.com/blog/15-old-photographs-that-prove-world-used-to-be-insane/ and a tip of the hat to Mr. Robert Bwockway, who has provided me with hours of hysteria and apoplexy. Enough clap for him and on with our merriment.

4)         This is something that I ran across in our freebie newspaper that comes out 5 days a week, the Tampa Bay Times. It’s called the “Zim Bear.” The link connects to the whole post and the post itself is interesting for a couple of reasons. I wrote it during a very brief period of lucidity, when I was writing my S.I.F.O.T.S. blog, on March 2, 2012. It’s actually kind of hilarious, in hindsight, now. February 29^th, 2012, I wrote, “Chthulhu Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” which was wishful thinking on my part. He lives here part-time now. I just collect the mail and water his plants. I really should write a follow up post, “Chthulhu, is that Yhouhlhu?” but I so confused myself just trying to type that, I think I’ll leave that moment of whimsy alone.

So, the rest of THAT month is pretty sketchy and some of this I don’t remember, but this is when the tremors moved in and stayed, along with my bipolar symptoms, for real. If I weren’t so damned rational and old, I’d probably have jumped off the roof. The fact that I understand what is going on, makes all of the weirdness pretty easy to deal with. That and the hella medicines my psychiatrist makes sure I get. The Tampa Police Department are good to me as well. “PD or non-PD, THAT is the question?”

5)         Oh! Speaking of. @YumaBev. I cannot have a list of hilarity without the Numero Uno funniest lady on the planet! Funny was still abed when she got up. Over at Parkinson’s Humor, I couldn’t believe it when she was trying to figure out a way to live blog her DBS surgery! Yup! That’s our girl! Only Bev would come up with that corker! A crappy day won’t dare show it’s face around her! I laugh just thinking about her. YumaBev is one of those people that when you think of her, you’re glad to be a member of the human race; she’s that great. Without her and others like her, Jim and Penny Adams, Cyndee Bowen, and P.A.N.D.A., all  tireless workers, their grace and insights, it would be so hard for anyone with Parkinson’s or any Movement Disorder to understand and deal with and try to navigate any of the medical care systems and understand more importantly, the symptoms. Bev and her (now mine, too) buddies are reassuring, and fun. Back to more fun.

 Check out Bev's websites Parkinson's Humor and YumaBev.com and @YumaBev on Twitter. Her book Parkinson's Humor is available on Amazon.com and the proceeds go towards a cure for the disease. A worthier woman and a dearer one to my heart, would be hard to find in this hemisphere.

6)         Spiders. Yeah, I know. Most of the world (of 15 readers?) just jumped off my blog, ¼ of you went ewww!. The rest of us went, SQUEE!! It depends on the type of spider. Nikki McCormack wrote about them and started with the cute little fuzzy type of jumpers and I can’t believe anyone thinks those are icky or scary. We have a batch of them that live on our porch banister and they have their little territories staked out. Once in a while, they bump into one another and jump! Turn and dart off, very synchronized. I think they’re cute as hell. They stay outside and don’t intrude on anyone else’s space. I loved Nikki’s description of Harvester spiders; something about walking death, as I recall.

We did have an interloper; a brown recluse got in the house, when we were living in the homeless shelter. JC got him, we were moving anyway; that was just a little added incentive. We had already been dealing with bedbugs. We didn’t need rotting flesh on top of that.

Anyway, check out the world’s funniest video on why not to film a jumping spider:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/a2ab701e7e/why-not-to-film-a-spider

7)         So, this gets us to the 2012 Presidential election, with all the signs, portents and many important issues and timely questions and serious discussions. The tone was pretty well set by the world's largest and continuous, party, Twitter. I thought that after 2000, the election was an aberration, because it took a month. It turned out I was wrong. The election of 2012, according to who you listened to, was a continual ongoing work of art, a Noh drama, bushido in style, or a train-wreck. Romney, Ryan, Rovian and nothing less than epic. The fact that Hurricane Sandy intervened and Governor Chris Christie got to play Orestes to Romney's Agemnon made it all the more epic-er!

What made it so extra-fun was being IN Twitter and reading and sometimes even trying to come up with witticisms in reaction to the shit that one Mitt Romney was saying, however, our fearless leader, President Obama was holding his own, and Mr. Chuck Wendig an awesome, awesome writer, who blogs "Terrible Minds" was also adding to the hilarity with his #fakedebate; once again, JC was at the ready, poised to dial 911, when I came up for air:

I can honestly say that I have never, ever enjoyed political discourse so much. I am sure that Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken et. al,, would agree.

8)         Winding this up, I thought I’d include one of my own idiocies. I come from a family that celebrates its idiocies, much in the way Rome allowed her generals to celebrate victories with triumphs. The only dilemma here is which of my many stupidities garners the honor.

Could it be the time I followed myself on my own blog? That was a good one, but wasn’t really all that complicated and didn’t require the level of air-headedness or denseness necessary, nor the prolonged state of confusion I typically exhibit.

How about the time I “rebutted”  Andi-Roo on a #ROW80 post about Suicide and then, in a swift, rapier-like and extremely cunning move, worthy of Errol Flynn and Dr. No, I submitted MY post title, with HER verbiage, so SHE rebutted HERSELF? The editor, Wayne Borean was probably swamped; knows us both and just went with it. The twin posts festered around on the internet and on Paper.li for a few hours before I caught the error and fixed it. A huge MEA CULPA followed and lots of falling on my cyber-sword. Andi-Roo, was vastly amused, as I knew she would be. Thanks Zeus for that wonderful woman. Had it been anyone else, I would have had to change my name and move to Neptune. That’s not really quite showy enough. I could go back and scratch around in my old blog posts and what not, but I’m just too damned lazy.

This stupid Parkinson’s Disease, not-Parkinson’s Disease, that is the question leaves me tie-rd. I sleep 11 or 12 hours a night sometimes. I got up today around noon. Ate breakfast, took vitamins and I’m ready for a nap. I digress. PD, or non-PD seems to be a lot like the elephant in the room. I keep wanting to pretend that everything is the same, but my damned brain will not allow for that.

So, I’ve got what seems to be a perpetual geek show in my head. Everything is weird. “Chthulhu is that Yhoulhu?” should be a sit-com in my head. Anyway, the last thing that I did that counts for a stellar idiocy that had me laughing for a while, was this doozy:

This is what happens when I cook

Now, to top it off, yesterday, when I was getting off the bus at the grocery store, this topped it off. There was a little round woman, very jolly, a sort of Mrs. Claus type, saying “God Bless,” to one and all as they exited. I, as everyone knows, am a hardwired creature, like a cat. I do the same thing, every time. I get up, cane and all and brace myself for the next stop. I don’t like to stand in one place too long. I prefer to be a moving target, as it were. She says something about me not falling, or am I okay, or am I really blind and I hear her say “Or is that your hustle?” It didn’t register for a minute. I stood there, with a blank look, so she repeated herself. I grinned and said, “It’s 3 things; it makes a good weapon, too.” We both laughed, as I got off the bus. That shit cracked me up.

I know I haven't blogged for a few weeks. I've been deliberately lying low, due to my neurological whatever, which is a bore, but there it is. I am pleased  and proud to announce that I will be hosting Jade Kerrion's Double Helix Tour on Wednesday, January 2, 2013! She is a wonderful writer and just a wonderful person. To celebrate the launch of Perfect Betrayal and Perfect Weapon, Perfection Unleashed will be available for only 0.99 at Amazon, (down from $2.99) for the duration of Jade's virtual book tour through March 1, 2013. Her writing is thrilling and I think, prophetic in many ways.

#ROW80 POST 13 SUNDAY CHECK IN – DYSTONIC DISAMBIGUITY, OR JUST SAY IT ALREADY

Arresting title, isn’t it? I had my first experience with dystonia in my right hand the other day. Dystonia is just a fancy, schmancy word for “cramping” up. But if this is a cramp, it’s an odd one. It’s more like “ball o’ fingers.” Anyway, it went away and life went on. It always seems to do that.

I’ve decided that if I’m going to do this writing thing, I’m going to go whole hog. This dipping a toe in, and then waiting around to see if anyone notices, or goes into a lather, or the world melts, before dipping in another toe is ridiculous. I never really did that as a musician. I just went out and flopped gloriously for a while. I failed auditions right and left and worked at stupid jobs. I played half-assed gigs and started getting better gigs through word of mouth. Better playing and not being so green helped a lot, too. I ripped and snorted my way through the musical world and had a grand time.

After I went back to school for computer science, and was applying for jobs, I received job rejections, due to my lack of experience in the field. Rather than worry about that, I threw my c.v. and GPA and all that good shit out on the Florida jobs network, packed up my wondrous viola, "Wolf" and went on a tour with some half-assed orchestra for a few weeks to make money.

When I came home from the tour, I found out that I had a response from IBM. I interviewed; they hired. I went to work. For the next 3 years, I worked for them. Sometimes in-house; sometimes from the road. Sometimes from my own single-wide. I helped a guy rebuild his utterly hosed O/S2 system on his ThinkPad 360 once. I remember pacing back and forth in my living room, watching the clock; it was 6 am. He had an entire hard drive’s worth of contracts worth millions. I had a plane to catch to Atlanta at 11 AM. This was before anyone saved anything on remote servers. We still had the portable hard drives that smoked and caught fire. Guess what happened to his backed up data? So, we were able to fix his badly scrambled OS/2 system, which was good for our in-house support team. It helped that I knew the difference between system file and a text file. I also knew not to erase my hard drive which is more than I can say for MS Engineer Dave who did that very thing at Verizon. Oops.

Anyway, with all that in mind, instead of just dipping in one or two more toes, I’ve decided to put myself out there and go for it. If we’re going to write, let’s not pussy-foot around. Let’s just get it over with, kind of like when you decided you no longer wanted to be a virgin and any old dick would do. Well, not quite like that. Good thing my folks are not still alive to see that one. Who am I kidding? I really hate ambiguity, almost as much as I hate obfuscation. Yet, sometimes, as much as I try to clarify something, or cut to the chase, or get to the point, I end up with such a tortured phrase, that when I do go back and read it, it either a) means nothing, or b) means something else. The worst of all possible worlds is c) d) and e) ad infinitum, where you return to it, repeatedly and it means something entirely different in a Rashomon-like way, every time! Argh!

So, with no further ado, I have decided at the urging of the lovely and extremely talented Jade Kerrion the author of "Perfection Unleashed" to participate in NaNoWriMo. This NaNoWriMo is a National Writing challenge where one writes 50,000 words in a month, that will, hopefully, turn into a novel when I am all done polishing and waxing. How insane am I? Well, that is a question. Since I am the one who stayed up all of February of this year and was Baker Acted for most of March, which by the way, I remember almost none if, with the ironic exception of St Patrick’s Day, and the last part of March, I guess on that count, I’m fairly qualified. Judging by my past life’s history? I’d say it might be business as usual and a good move for me.

I’ve certainly made some progress in this whole write-o-sphere:

1. 2^nd ROW80 (could be posting more) 

2. Editing essays from past (no, future, Duh) posts Homeless Chronicles in Tampa

3. Start planning out word count for NaNoWriMo

4. Bone up on my "Perfection Unleashed" portion of Jade's Blog Tour! Yes! For January 2, 2013. I am very excited about this. Further updates forthcoming for this portion. She along with, Jess Witkins' Happiness Project are also GoodReads friends, too. As is Amberr Meadows at Like a Bump on a Blog. 

On that note, does anything ever have a completely non-complicated acronym or just words anymore? This whole “PD non-PD” thing is driving me even more batshit. I may as well be typing with my elbows anyway. Dystonia = cramps. Dementia, Delirium = crazy (bipolar.) Tremors = shakes. Enough. Pictures say a thousand words. 

Smooth, even strokes when I move quickly. No tremors.

I slowed my movements down about 10X, you can see the "tremors."

They are not constant. This was done at about 6 pm.

Post 14 is going to be a very special post for a very, very dear friend in memory to another dear person who died recently. You will understand more why this hits close to home after the post. This will be in honor of someone close to me for someone close to my friend. I didn't know this young man, but that is not the point. I still grieve.