Songs of My Misspent Youth: Caribbean Blue

Wait, Enya? How could time listening to Enya be misspent? It's not, that's not the point of this series. It's all music that made this mortal existence bearable. Yes, that's what this has been every week.

There have been a lot of low points in my life, as you've been subjected to every week, but the one I don't mention much at all is the Thanksgiving weekend I wore my pajamas. They were nice pajamas, and maybe you see no problem in wearing pajamas for three days straight while in the company of other people who are not wearing pajamas but are in fact wearing proper clothing.

My skin hurt, you see. It was the '90s, and where the '80s were all unfortunate accidents and hormonal imbalances, the '90s were the resulting mutation. I'm not going to get into why my skin hurt, because at the time I didn't know why and I want to keep it real. All I knew was my skin hurt and everyone thought I was being ridiculous when I wouldn't give them hugs because my skin hurt. They were all fine with the the pajamas, though, because the pajamas were nice and soft and long-sleeved and this was before the pajamas developed great wear spots that made me resemble a zombie and it's not like I didn't put my bra on or anything, I just sort of turned into a crabby Hugh Hefner.

Around this time 92.7 WDRE was doing a retrospective of their Shreeeks of the Week. I was going out to the basement every 45 minutes to flip or put in a fresh cassette and yes I taped the whole thing, Caldor had a great deal on TDK D90s and 92.7 was sold to Univision for millions but I still have the Shreeek-end on tape for $10.

The second morning, before the Shreeek-end picked up again, the Enya song Caribbean Blue debuted. I loved it. I stood there in the basement with the nice painted floor in my pajamas with my cousin-dog Zorro listening to Enya, and it was the high point of an otherwise difficult time for me. Did I mention I also had some sort of runny nose?

The story picks up two years later, when WDRE was playing a former Shreeek called Caribbean Blue by Enya. I knew the song was good, obviously all the other listeners did too one Thursday in December, 1991, because here it was December of 1993, and the Shreeek from two years back was playing. I was outside, in the below-freezing backyard, getting snowed on, enjoying the hell out of the song. Didn't really think about my skin hurting anymore because I just got used to it. Mainly by standing outside in below-freezing temperatures until my nerve endings figured out what pain really was, but also by going up in my head and going "La la la, everything is lovely and I'm dancing a frikkin' waltz with myself which is good because no one else can touch me."

Not in so many words, though.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Caribbean Blue

What's That Smell?

It's been a while since I took part in the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge, right? Time flies when you're...throwing clocks out the window.

The theme Smoke came up, and like the early, good challenge entries, this one would not leave me until I wrote it down.

Don't smoke, she told me. She doused me in gasoline, told me the next cigarette would be my last.

I put arsenic in her donuts. She locked herself in the bathroom for three days.

I offered her a truce. I'd take her out to eat if she let me take a shower.

How could I know she'd been hooking up the bathroom plumbing to a tank of acid?

As I soaked in the cooking oil she was so fond of drinking, I told her she'd have to find another man.

"Did that five months ago," she said, lighting a match.

I wonder sometimes if these are the same characters from Hmmmmmmmmmmm and Over The Falls In A Barrel, or if they all live on the same block, and if they do, should a wall be built around their neighborhood so they can't get out and breed with anyone else. Not that many of them really need to worry about that, being all burnt and mangled in so many delightful ways.

The smoking section is hopping and can be heard, read AND smelled here.

What's That Smell?

My Calendar Can Be Your Calendar!

Do you like flowers? Do you like knowing what day it is? Behold! I have photographed 12 of the most delectable bee-approved flowers in my world and will share them with you all through the year!

I made a calendar at Lulu, kids. It's not cheap, but it's cheaper than buying the prints of the photos at Etsy, and I only get...a fraction of the cost....hmm.

Hey, if you want a pretty and expensive calendar, click the link below!

It's great, if you go there, to Lulu, and look at my calendar, which is still called My Calendar despite the ten times I changed it to What The Bee Sees..., there are links to hotter-looking calenders. Dammit.

So there you go. I took a course in marketing, you know. Unfortunately for me I just don't see the point in the part about making people emotionally attached to something so bad they'd pay lots of money for it. That doesn't mean I failed my marketing course, no. On the contrary, I did obscenely well...and people hated that.

But flowers, come on! Everybody loves flowers! They're pretty flowers!

There should be a preview there. If not, click here.

Capitalism at its most flowery.

My Calendar Can Be Your Calendar!

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Tears of A Clown

What song do I pick to signify all the time I spent weeping in the basement? The totally awesome Smokey Robinson song Tears of A Clown!

You know why? Because it took me years but I eventually learned that the only way to get people to quit harassing me about being such a mope was to be happier than everyone else. All the time, like a total maniac! That, and it's a fabulous song and Smokey rules.

And for good measure here's The English Beat version I listened to a lot while I was painting the basement and being happy because I love painting over the evidence of misspent time and leaks.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Tears of A Clown

A NaNoWriMo Winnar Is Me!

Once again proving to myself that avoiding most of the Internet allows me to write entire books, I hit 50k words on my twelve-year-old tale of something nasty coming to the town with the busted up but otherwise lovely saloon around 5:12-ish (and 36 seconds) in the early evening of November 30, which is the last day to win the NaNoWriMo goodies.

Short version: I won NaNoWriMo!

Then I kept going. The story is nowhere near done, as usual, and there will need to be many revisions, but I've got enough love for the story and the people in it--who no longer exist solely in my head, OMG--to see this one through. Tomorrow I get a code for a free printing of the book, and I've never used the other two codes I was given, and where love for the story fails, being pissed off that I lost out on free stuff should also get the third act of this thing written.

While I'm off doing that, why not see some completed and awesome Old West horror goodness by a Tom Waits fan who is not me? Go read High Moon by David Gallaher & Steve Ellis. It's so good I put off writing the story I just won NaNoWriMo with for a year because why would anyone want to read my words when High Moon exists? WITH SUCH PRETTY PICTURES.

A NaNoWriMo Winnar Is Me!