Come To My Window

I’m not sure which songs count as queer. Do they have to be by queer artists or have explicitly queer lyrics? This isn’t clear to me. Wikipedia says there are gay anthem songs, and “Come To My Window” (1993) is one. I’ve always loved it, plus Melissa Etheridge is queer (not all the anthem artists are), so that’s double points.

PS: It’s not my fault that Wikipedia says gay and not queer; I’m using queer because Bee is using it for her prompt. I have no opinion on which word should be used. If either or both are now wrong, sorry!

V4L Challenge 12

Do Aminals Feel Love?

Match dot com strikes again!

We are talking about romantic love in this post, not love for friends or trains or apple pie with those yummy crumbs on top (mmm pie!). 💖

Humans are animals, and we have defined love as something that at least some humans feel (🚺), so technically the answer is yes. But Rory means “lower” animals, so let’s focus on them. I’m not going to nitpick over the definition of love either. Either it exists or it doesn’t. If you believe it’s only a sciencey thing, made up of chemical type reactions, we can stick with that across the board, from humans to spiders. If you believe it’s a woowoo thing, full of golden stardust and eternal flames and whatnot, we’ll shovel that in the mix. I don’t care. Just be consistent. Why would humans have soul mates and gorillas not? Oh right. God said. It’s in that book. 🙄

So. Back to logic. The higher animals (primates, dogs, cats, pigs, dolphins, yada) feel things, or react to them similarly to us in such ways that it’s fair to say they experience emotional states parallel to ours. We’re talking about fear, anger, and even some advanced concepts such as fair play. Look it up. But many hesitate when it comes to asserting that animals feel love. They’ll say a dog is “loyal” because he’s programmed to be, or a cat stays close only because you feed her. 🐱

But we could say the same about humans then and define away the concept of love altogether. Husband stays because he’s loyal, took vows, is concerned about his reputation, etc. Wife stays because she likes the nice big house and lifestyle. Where is the love? What is love? 💕

If we posit that love between humans (or among for you pervs) is something beyond these cold material things, beyond sexual attraction, then why hesitate when it comes to animals?

Idk! People weird things is my best guess. If you’re wondering whether I answered the question in this jabberish, that’s fair. I hedged. I say if there is a thing we’re defining as love for humans, then all higher animals should not be excluded from the circle. But I am an atheist and, despite my poetry (and even my latest fictional WIP) which can careen into the woo to better illustrate emotions, I don’t believe in souls, soul mates, eternal flames, fate, or anything of that nature.

Watch out for cranky tigers! 🐯

Adverbs Galore [SOCS]

Quietly the members of the secret society entered the deserted building after hours and softly closed the door.

“This is insanely ridiculous,” Fandango said grumpily. “By the way, I brought those cookies everyone likes.”

“Thanks!” Teresa replied cheerfully. “But that’s what we get for electing a crazy English professor for President, who probably didn’t even read as many books as I did.”

“Let’s be fair,” Sadje said moderately. “We didn’t know she’d act so extremely cuckoo once she took office. I can’t eat cookies, so I brought keto-friendly egg salad.”

Happily munching a cookie, Jim said, “I could easily recommend a playlist to our new President, which might get her in a better mood and less likely to randomly order people killed for misusing grammar.”

“I’m a grammar pendant myself,” Fandango boldly admitted. “But even I say that executing people for a misplaced apostrophe is wildly inappropriate.”

“Pedant,” Kristian mildly corrected Fandango.

Fandango paused in the middle of furiously composing a new blog post on his phone. “What?”

“Pedant!” Kristian loudly repeated. “You said pendant but it’s pedant!”

“It’s just a typo!” Fandango yelled defensively.

“Shhhh!” Teresa hushed them fearfully. “No one can know we’re in here.”

“Hopefully the President is busy with more important things than our silly little adverb meetup,” Sadje said placatingly.

“Terribly sorry I’m ignoring everyone,” Rory called out apologetically from the corner. “What do you all think about prostitution? Please extensively explain your answers.”

“Interestingly,” Jim said, “there have been many songs about this topic. Bob Seger, for example–”

Suddenly the door burst open and a group of scarily dressed FBA agents entered.

“Freeze!” shouted the FBA leader. “You’re all under arrest for adverbing! Place your hands over your mouths. Slowly!”

😱😱😱😱😱

3-2-1 Quote Me: Creativity

Rory tagged me in this game, which is a great way to begin the week. I intend to get back to my novel in progress, so you’ll be seeing a bit less of me around Blogville.

I found these gems on Wisdom Quotes. Perfect for my renewed foray into the chaos of editing the mess I wrote during NaNoWriMo last November and then coming up with a stellar ending to tie everything together.

Perhaps Laura, Jordy, and Linda would also enjoy playing along. They’re very creative!

Happy Monday! It’s raining ☔️ again here in Southern California.

*

I did agonize over capping “southern,” if anyone cares, and googled. It doesn’t look right to me, but CMOS and Grammar Girl say cap, so I will. These are the distractions that plague me endlessly.

A Kitsch Love Song

This is for Bee’s month of song prompts. I love the word kitsch ~ there’s no parallel English word, though people use cheesy. That isn’t really right because it doesn’t encompass enough. Maybe that’s why we just said the heck with it and added kitsch to our dictionary. If you want a fantastic explanation of kitsch, you must read this passage from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but really you should read the whole book if you haven’t already. It’s so good.

Back to music. Obviously there are a ton of luuuuurve songs that are ridiculously overdramatic… and I like a bunch of them. If we can’t be sentimental and soaring about our passionate feeeeeeelings, then what’s the point? I mean, even the Beatles were yelling about wanting to hold her hand quite strenuously back in the day. Nothing worse than someone being all restrained and boring about what’s in his goddamn heart like I have ESP or something… oh, I was supposed to use my superpowers to know what you meant when you couldn’t express yourself in words? Eff that.

Sorry, got carried away there. It’s actually difficult to choose just one kitschy koo tune from my playlist here. Okay, gonna do it! Some men text and go hey whassup, but not Stevie Wonder. Stevie does this…

Egads [SOCS]

AD, to me, does not connote anno domini but Asbestos Dust. He’s a sporadic blogger, never into fads, and I don’t know if he’d want me to add his link to my post; he can do so himself in the comments if he desires. Anyway, I’ve always admired AD’s writing style: it’s gritty and deep, full of depth and shadow, like a radical painting you want to view from many angles. Sometimes I feel my writing is sadly shallow in comparison to that of AD and another friend, Don, who both seem unafraid to peel more layers from their onions to get to the heart and soul of a piece. Makes for a tasty read. But we shouldn’t compare, for that only leads to a bad headache. 😛

Many Are Called…

… few are chosen.

My color blending didn’t work so well in some places ~ this isn’t paint, after all. 🙄 But then again it makes some of the letters appear appropriately angry, so we can pretend I planned it that way. 😂

~*~

January Coloring Club

The Alphabet Challenge

Yay, a new game! Thanks Rory, for tagging me. I won’t be tagging anyone, but this is fun and I hope peeps will voluntarily choose to participate. Just pick a word that comes to mind and jabber on a bit about it, all philosophical like. Obviously, mine will be obsessively themed and not random cuz that’s how I roll.

A is for all the annoying men on dating sites.

B is when they bark questions at you, like sea lions in a fight.

C is for closet, as in the one some are still trapped (not that there’s anything wrong with that 🙄).

D is for the double standards that they hold,

While E is how you must appear eager but not too desperate or too bold.

F is for the family they won’t introduce you to, while swearing they’re so into a future with you.

G is for glam, which is how they want you to look,

And H is their hope you’ll be a top-shelf cook.

I is for ice, as in the diamond you won’t get,

Since J is the job he hasn’t quite nailed yet.

K is the knife with which you want to stab him in a rage,

Cuz L stands for the fact that he lied about his age.

M is the money you’ll be spending on the date, since he “forgot his wallet” and was two hours late.

N is for the naked selfie he requested;

O is for the unfortunate one he texted 🤮.

P is for persistent, borderline stalking,

And Q is for the quiet guys who do no talking.

R is for rightwing conspiracy loons,

While S is for lefty snowflake maroons.

T is for tired of not meeting my dream man;

No one out there gets a U for understand.

V is for the world’s smallest violin, since this is not as bad as it might have been.

W is for what if I’d met Mr. Dreamy, but it turned out he was allergic to G? 🐱

Then I’d have a third X husband to add to my pile of romantic fails and sads.

Y for best not to dwell on yesterday (or god forbid join any new dating sites today!),

But instead zero in on our goals and ideals, which should be, I suggest, buying my new poetry book with some zeal!

MONOCHROME <— click to purchase

Upswing

The Haunted Wordsmith asks us to use page 192, line 6 of the nearest book as our prompt. I’m going to the next full sentence and gonna make you smarties guess which book and author.

“Life, for J. R. Isadore, had definitely taken an upswing.”

Upswing. That’s a fine word. Seven letters, good for a bingo. I still think about stuff like that even though I no longer play WWF or any phone games. Serious me mode. The otter day I was searching for the calculator on my Mac and I found chess. Naturally, I had to open it. God, a brand new pristine game, soooo tempting! Luckily I wasn’t allowed to start playing until I downloaded a microphone (huh?) and agreed to some new gobble, so I declined all that and the chess went away. Whew. Remember when I downloaded spider solitaire on my poor ice-tea’d Lenovo and disappeared for a week? Well, I remember. I was trapped in that game web and couldn’t escape. It was nutz! In any case, my commitment to writing is paying off cuz very soon I will have a brand new poetry book up on Amazon that no one will read, hurrah!

I’m on an uproll.

Fandango No. 5 [FPQ]

It’s like Chanel No. 5, only a lot cheaper and won’t trigger a migraine.

So here’s this week’s provocative question (actually three questions):

“Is there a ‘blogging-you’ who is different from the real-world you? If so, how are the two ‘yous’ different? How has the ‘blogging-you’ evolved since you first started blogging?”

Yes. I am different here, but not just in Blogville.

There is an online-me who is somewhat different from meatspace-me. In the real world, I’m a small, older woman and I’ve been alone for many years. I have no one to back me up, physically, financially, emotionally, etc. So, I’m very careful. Extremely cautious. I am known as kind, sweet, helpful, by most. In fact, when people have met me in person after knowing me online for a while, they said I’m a lot nicer than they thought I’d be.

Online, I feel freer to state my opinions, to make jokes about whatever thing. To diss our horrible POTUS whenever I please, no matter who is around. I dgaf about people’s delicate feelings, nor do mine get hurt easily here. It’s words on a screen. Move on if you don’t like what you read. I do. I block racists on Twitter; I don’t cry over them. I also feel free to say no, to not do things I don’t want to, to simply fucking ignore irritating people, to ghost them, to delete, to mock, to parody… and there were years I used to troll the trolls. I’ve quit that though.

In meatspace, I don’t do most of that ever. I only make jokes when I am comfy with my audience. I did do a few rounds of stand-up comedy at a venue I felt okay about ~ it was tame comedy, relatively speaking. I usually don’t ignore people. I say thank you and no thank you and sorry, even to bums asking for money. If the gross guy dumpster diving at my apartment complex says good morning, I say it back. I try not to make enemies. I try very hard not to make anyone angry or displeased. When I fail, which is rare but it happens, I feel bad. Online, I don’t care.

Sometimes it turns out that characters on the screen and real people occupy the same space in the Venn diagram intersection, which can be tricky for me to deal with. It’s hard to go back and forth, and I haven’t fully mastered that task, since I am also a character of my own creation, continually evolving, except exactly the same person since I was 14 years old. Paradox. I think only one of my readers will possibly be able to grok this paragraph. No, not you. 🙄

That’s two questions answered. As far as the third, I have become much more discreet since I began my first blog. I say waaay fewer personal things now, hard as that may be to believe. But those who were reading Ultrablog know. Plus even this blog had much more daily life type stuff for a while. It’s not that I’m paranoid now, but more that my life has become such a bore there’s simply nothing to say.

I’m not complaining. You can have the “interesting life” fortune c00kie. After the drama I’ve had, I prefer boringness.