Guest Blog by Melynda Fleury

My good friend AG has asked/demanded that I write something on his blog. I don’t know if he has lost his mind after some hard negotiating. (I wanted him to send me a chocolate silk pie. He finally agreed to send me ONE SLICE!) He truly is a hard negotiator. I love this guy!

After harder negotiating, on topic this time, (I’m supposed to get a slice of Peanut Butter pie out of this one.) we finally agreed that I was right and he was wrong. The topic should be about what I’m thankful for and not strip joints. (Although he argued that people could be thankful for strip joints.)

So here is a list of things I’m grateful for.

1. Spell check. I know you all feel my pain here. What the heck would a mostly blind person do without all the red squiggles under my well thought out words? Sigh. I would marry the person that improves it by making sure it reads content. For example I once wrote I have the attention span of a FLEE. Oh spell check you rancid traitor! Why didn’t any lines appear to tell me I’m a dumb ass as it should have been FLEA.
2. I am extremely grateful for moronic people. Why? They bring joy and pleasure to my soul. Laughter bubbles up at the sight of an oversized crack peeking up from a pair of suspender strapped pants. Joy overwhelms me when I see some kid with his drawers hanging half way to the ground and I burst into song at this sight. Oh yes. I do. I sing the pants on the ground song. So delightful.
3. Pie. Oh pie. How I love thee. Your cheap imitator Cake, is no substitute for your creamy deliciousness, or your tart filling. I’m so very grateful you bless my table and stomach with your presence. I hope you decide to make many more appearances in almost any flavor. I love you pie!
4. Toilet paper.  Need I say more?
5. Deodorant.  Another blessed invention that some people have not discovered yet. I have recently decided to carry extra sticks of this concoction with me. You want to know why don’t you?  So I can hand them out on busses or in stores.  When someone is in line in front of me or behind me and has obviously not made the wonderful acquaintance of my friend Degree, I can whip out a stick and introduce them. I love giving. It fills my heart with gladness.
6. Indoor plumbing. Something we all take for granted. I beg of you to thank your sinks and pipes, toilets and showers. They are very underrated. Even if they are not in the best of conditions, go take a hiking in trip in December. You will never whine again about their short comings.
7. People that don’t know me. That’s right. Think about it. When you are in a group of people you don’t know, can you not be yourself? When walking down the aisle of your favorite store, imagine your favorite song coming on the loud speaker. You can bust a jam right then and there. You can bellow all the wrong lyrics to passerbies. What does it matter? You don’t know them anyway. God bless you people I don’t know.
8. Friends and family. These people deserve all my gratitude and then some.  After all, these people know what you do in stores AND in private and they still hang out with you. (by you I mean me of course. I’m sure none of you do these asinine things.)
9. Dogs. I love dogs more than pie. I’m thankful for my dogs. They always listen to me when I babble on and on about things like pie.  They never argue or talk back. They love you even if you get their dinners to them late. They don’t care if you dance around like a wild monkey when no one else is home. They are one of God’s best creations.
10. Lastly, I am grateful for packaged meat. I could never be a hunter. If I had to kill, gut and clean my meat I would be a vegetarian. So thank you little Styrofoam packages that hold the meat in place. Thank you, saran wrap for keeping the package together. Thank you butcher for being kind enough to do the dirty work for me. You are a good stranger friend. I know you stink when you get home. Know all of us meat lovers appreciate you.

 

A G Thank you for the opportunity to write some nonsense on your outstanding blog! I will graciously accept your pie donations. ( How are you going to get it to me? You better package it right. I don’t want to have to lick the box. I will, but I don’t want to have to.)

Peace out my friends. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. Don’t quit finding things you are grateful for.

 

Biography: I am a mother or three, in the midst of training my second (and hopefully last.) husband. My days are filled with cleaning, organizing six peoples schedules, (my sister and her kid live with us also.) laundry, (which is the bane of my life.) two dogs, three cats, and two ferrets. When I get a chance to breathe I try to jump in the shower, which is usually interrupted by someone howling for my time and attention. You can find me over at Crazy World   just like AG did. There I spout a bunch of nonsense like you just read. Be warned. This blog has no rhyme of reason. I write about things that amuse me or touch me.

 

And AG Says: And I am thankful for Miss Melynda, who consistently makes me laugh out loud with her crazy antics.  Everybody hop, skip and jump over to her blog and laugh!

Tribute

Elisabeth Hirsch is a once in a lifetime person.

She’s one of the funniest writers I have known, and her blog has given me light on many a gloomy day.

But what makes Elisa so absolutely amazing is the light that she shares in through her utter honesty of her life.  She has suffered greatly, but has found hope in her life and is brave enough to share her journey with us.

Tomorrow, her memoir “The Golden Sky” is being released and I am HONORED to be a part of her blogfest.

Let me tell you, I’ve been looking forward to the release of this memoir ever since I heard about it, back in August.  I have been waiting semi-patiently and will be snatching up my own copy as soon as I can.  And I think you should, too.

So as a part of the Blogfest, Elisa has asked us to write a tribute to someone we have lost.

This is a Eulogy I wrote for my grandmother when she passed away but was too chicken to share with anybody.

Well, here it is.  I know my grandma is watching me, always smiling.  She’s my guardian angel.  So, grandma, this one’s for you.

————–

I walk into the house and my nose is immediately filled with the scent of grandma and I want to walk back out.

Nothing and everything has changed in the museum of my childhood. There’s less furniture and more dust and my memory fills in the blanks with the phantoms of what used to be, of what is no longer there
(sitting over there in my Easter clothes, fed up with dull and useless conversation, flinging my body across the shoddy couch they always talked about replacing with a new one and never did because it’s sitting there right now, shoddier but without my little body wrinkling itself in its Sunday best)
.

There’s a wall of mirrors and I can see the ghost of myself in them if I look too long, so I don’t. I don’t want to see the smiley seven year old, the twitchy fourteen year old, the twirling five year old oblivious to all that, the ten year old trying not to cry after grandma got gum out of my hair with peanut butter (finally peanut butter after mayonnaise and ice didn’t work, but lord help us I didn’t have to shave my head).

They’re all there, but I don’t want to see them.

The area under the stairs is dusty and empty. It used to be filled with plants, potted plants, green plants that didn’t make me sneeze with pollen, that used to make the room seem brighter. There is only one left, wrinkled and leaning to the side, crippled with age and trying to stay alive.

I hadn’t realized….

My mother has already barreled her way in to the back room, where my grandfather is sitting on the couch staring at the TV, but I linger in her footsteps because I’m not my mother. I have about one minute and thirteen seconds before they’ll miss my presence and call my name (but I don’t want to hear my name today) and my mother will talk about the preparations in the same strong way she talks about everything (Do you need eggs, we can go get eggs) like a shopping list that can be erased and re-written.

She’s braver than me.

So I smile [and for once it doesn’t fill my eyes] and walk back.

(Why would anyone smile at a time like this?)

My grandfather is sitting on the couch and he’s the same but different, his stained shirt open and his hair uncombed, his chiseled face soft and bewildered. I give him a hug and we both try not to cry and don’t state the obvious, but the electricity of not crying passes through us and shocks the part of the heart that pumps out tears

(I didn’t realize at the time that I would be this sad but I am this sad and now people are admitting that I’ll be this sad forever [which is a longass time if you think about it] so I’ll have to find a way to live with the sadness [even though we shouldn’t be sad, we should be happy she’s in Heaven{then why am I so sad?}])

and they glisten in our eyeballs and coat our throat with mucus, but the hellos still come out and the tears retreat for a moment, until the next moment which could be at any time.

My mother bustles around, getting this, looking for that, and I am terrified of being left alone with my grandfather because I don’t know what to say (I WISH MY SISTER WERE HERE), but my mother is trying to find a photo album and goes upstairs to look for it while I sit at the edge of the corner of the couch, looking at my grandfather who looks at the television.

This room is even worse.

(I bet she was really happy the day I was born.)
[I wish I could have been there]

“I miss her,” his hand on the couch, palm down on the couch and he says “I miss her”. I wish he hadn’t and am excited that he did, but I have nothing to say that won’t make me burst into tears, so I just nod that I’m listening but don’t think he knows I’m there because he’s still watching the TV.

And his hand is on the couch and he says “I miss her” in a way that sounds like my grandfather but isn’t my grandfather and of all the words in all the worlds, I cannot think of a single one to fill this moment.
So I put my hand on his
He looks at me
Like he’s seen a
Ghost
And says “She would do that every night.”

What?

“Every night she would put her hand on mine and we would sit side by side, with her head on my shoulder and her hand on mine, we would watch TV until we fell asleep. Every night, she would put her hand on mine and we weren’t alone.
Who’s going to hold my hand now?”

And he’s just written the poem I couldn’t.

Regecting Social Media….

…because I was on a deadline.

Correction.  Because I was on multiple deadlines.

Addition.  Because I was on multiple deadlines and had rehearsals until 11PM.

Now before we all get excited and you assume I’m not still a Regected Riter, all of these writing deadlines are for unpaid things, self produced projects that I’m initiating throughout the City.

That’s write right.  Takeover. Small Fish in a Big Pond.

I’ll tell more about that later.

But in the meantime, I discovered that there was no longer enough time in the day and I could feel every moment passing by.  So I did the only thing I could do.

I put my gameface on

Social Media Lockdown.

I can’t say it was easy.  I could hear twitter calling to me.

It would say.

It would say, over and over again.

How would whether or not that hilarious random thought I had WAS hilarious?  I DID want to say hello to my friends.  My gameface began to falter like jello left out on a hot sidewalk in July.

Maybe I could go on for just five minutes….fives minutes wouldn’t hurt…

“That’s right,” Twitter said,

Just as my resolve was about to shatter, I suddenly remembered something. Something important.

ALL  MY FRIENDS ARE WRITERS! I shouted at my computer THEY’LL UNDERSTAND!

And I looked like this:

And twitter was all,

“First of all, you’re talking to a computer, crazy. Secondly,

And that is exactly what came to pass.

The moral of this story?  Well it’s quite simple, really.

If you have a deadline, stay off twitter. Twitter is evil ad wants your soul for its own.

Happy Writing, all!

 

Guest Blog: Ultimate Regection by April Denton

Hey all!

Toady I’m a Zombie in honor of one of my favorite writers, Miss April Denton!  You can check out her blog HERE

April is one of my favorite writers; she’s writes everything from poems to zombierotica to fiction and she’s the leader of the Zweeps Army.

So, without further ado, I give you her wonderful eerie poem,

Ultimate Rejection

“Prepare for the end” they said,

for we must survive among the dead.

The zombies came from to and fro,

they came crashing through my window.

My shot rang out loud and clear,

then I realized my worst fear.

For the shot was like a call,

“come horde, it’s a feast for all.”

Retreat now don’t haste,

these decaying monsters won’t be outfaced.

Avoid their bite that is how it’s spread,

first the fever and then you’re dead.

One sunk their teeth into my wrist,

blew the head off that ugly witch.

Praying for useless hope,

maybe with this I can cope.

Immortal and hungry,

decaying and angry.

Death I reject you,

my hunger I will pursue.

A zombie I will become,

feasting forever in bedlam.

Hunting and stalking my next fare,

my lungs will need no air.

My body will never tire,

sleep I don’t require.

Death a rejection,

my gift the infection.

———-
April Denton is a zombie poetess that enjoys the darker side of the undead. When she is not writing, which is very rare, she is drawing or singing. She resides in Indiana with her husband and young son. Read April’s work at poetry & zombies and follow her on Twitter

 

Movies I Regect

I’m a last minute participant in the Worst Movies Ever blogfest, but better late than never, as the White Rabbit would say if he were an optimist!

You know what pisses me off?  That bad movies get made.  Not just sometimes but often. Madd often.  Why the BLEEP didn’t these people get BLEEPING rejection letters?! Can somebody answer me that?!

Money.

Well, here’s my open letter of rejection, regecting those movies that made me go R U FOR SERIOUS and yet give me a glimmer of hope that if absolute garbage can get made, maybe I, too, will one day shine on the big screen.

Probably not, though.

SPOILER WARNING: Some plot points WILL BE REVEALED! Read at your own risk, stay out of the water, etc!

Also, just want to reiterate that this is just in good fun, no intention to offend or anything; I like many a movie others would gag at, that’s the beauty of diverse opinion.

And in my diverse opinion, these movies are crap.

Anywho, my nominees are:

1. Anger Management

The movie poster I did not doctor in any way, shape or form says it all!

Fine, I doctored it a little bit.

First of all, this movie makes me want to kick a tree. Because it stresses me out. If you’ve seen the movie, you know why.  If you haven’t, please just read a book.
(Don’t worry, I didn’t kick the tree.  Because afterwards I would be overcome with feelings of guilt and buy the tree whatever it wanted.  And also, my foot would hurt.)

Second of all, it’s too long.  I started watching it when I was in HS and JUST finished it last week.  Okay, that didn’t happen, but after I watched it I felt like Robin Williams and Bonnie Hunt from Jumangi when they had to go back to being kids after living a lifetime as adults.  Know what I’m talking about? Good.  Don’t? Watch that movie immediately.

Seriously, what are you waiting for?

Thirdly, just because you’re Jack Nicholson doesnt mean you’re immune to making a bad movie. It happens, especially if the writing is bad.

THE WRITING IS BAD.

Redeeming Factor:

The End.  No really, it had a cute ending that if it wasn’t a million hours I might’ve appreciated. Maybe.

2. The Happening aka Any of its working titles,

Is this Really Happening?
Why Are We Making This Happening?
Does Anyone Know What is Happening?
She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain Oh Really When is that Happening?

Things I wanted to say to M. Night Shamalamadingdong as this movie was Happening:

Really?
Seriously?
No.
Why?

Reedeeming Factor:

Drinking game. Done.  Literally, every time somebody says Happening, take a shot.  Every time Zoey Deschenal and Mark Whalberg look wide eyed into the distance, take a shot.  You’re welcome.

3. The Human Centipede

Or, as I like to call it, Someone’s Working Through Some Issues.

Seriously, it’s disgusting.

Not only is it disgusting, which is essentially what it was made to be, but it has weak characters, a shallow plot and absolutely no redeeming value.

Not only is it disgusting, has weak characters a shallow plot and no redeeming value, but it smothers puppies and eats dreams like they’re licorice candies.

Someone’s gotta get a therapist on speed dial.

Reedeming Factor:

Any movie that smothers puppies should be sent away to the place in Eternal Sunshine where they erase minds and stuff so that it never exists.

4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, or as I like to call it, You couldn’t come up with something better than aliens and nazis?

Did anybody else watch this movie going WHY!

And also, the special effects? Not so special.

And also, Shia Lahoweveryouspellhisname? Not that great.

And also, really? Really.

And was it just me, or were we missing an actual Kingdom? I think we were. I think we just arbitrarily threw a word into the title to make it have a couple of extra syllables.   But I don’t know, I was too busy crying into my popcorn, mourning the loss of a great trilogy due to the birth of this bastard son.

Redeeming Factor:

Karen Allen.  She was all adorable and “Yeah, I’m doing this movie, what’s it to you?” Love her.

5. The Lovely Bones

It was SO GOOD until Mark Whalberg came on screen.  I also have a prejudice against Mark Whalberg, but especially when he’s got his acting face on.

Observe it.

Redeeming Factor:

I thought the beginning of the movie was great. Oh and STANLEY TUCCI IS A BOSS! But only acting, not that character.  That character is the opposite of a boss.  He’s a Gross.

6. Mr. Deeds

Did anybody actually watch Mr. Deeds besides me and Adam Sandler’s mom?

Redeeming factor:

The commercials were funny.  That’s how they got me.

7. Rent

Chris Columbus DESTROYED this.  Seriously, it’s a freakin musical, nobody wants to listen to DIALOGUE THAT RHYMES.  It’s awkward and WEIRD.  Adam Pascal wouldn’t just walk around rhyming like he’s freaking the Cat in the Hat, he’d rock OUT!  Like they’re supposed to do!

Because its a musical, nobody’s going to go to the musical and say,
Hey, Tom, isn’t it weird how all of these people are singing instead of speaking?
Yeah, Bob, I was just wondering why they weren’t speaking in rhyme.

ARRRRRGH THIS MOVIE MAKES ME NEED TO SIT IN A DARK ROOM, PUT ON MY SUNGLASSES AND LISTEN TO SLAM POETRY

Redeeming Factor:

If only.

8. Winter’s Bone: A Title Too Good for “The”.

This movie is great.  There are lots of long establishing shots that establish boredom and realistic sounds of boots crunching gravel.  You want to see a girl get beat up? You’ll have MULTIPLE chances to in this film!

It takes place over the course three hours of your life you’ll never get back.  It’s about a girl who needs to saw off her father’s dead hands in order for her and her family to keep their shack.  SPOILER ALERT she does it!

Favorite line? “Come on, hun, you gotta do the other one, they’ll say you stole the one from a corpse”. Flawed logic? Just a bit

Redeeming Factor:

The End.  Seriously, never been happier to see end credits roll.

Well, I’m exhausted.  And I wrote this in a little bit of a rush so as to publish this before midnight (WIN!), so I apologize for the messiness, but I will edit it tomorrow. And then this statement will magically disappear.

Good night, folks!
ROLL CREDITS