Milestone #1

Five Thousand Visitors to JISE!

Thank you, everyone!

Favicon!

Thanks to these folks^ at FreeFavicon.com, we now have the ever-so-spiffy JISE logo in place for our favicon.

w00t.

Dire-y!

Perfect Xmess gift for the emo goths on your list!
124 pages, weekly style journal
featuring
Awful Anniversaries, Bad Birthdays,
Morbid Memorials, and more!
and artwork by
Sheta Kaey

A Little Story

Once upon a time there was an administrative savant known as Cally. She could run an office like a finely tuned machine. She enjoyed the challenge and predictability of her work.

Then arrived the monster, a horrible entity known as a PPO which had been fiendishly designed to separate poor Cally from her sanity.

Finally, Cally admitted defeat: the monster could not be tamed nor slain. So she planned her escape and all was going well for her future freedom.

Then, on her last day, arrived the mystery package. It wasn't really a mystery as far as the contents were concerned: she knew by feel the package had applications. The mystery was, how badly would the applications be screwed up?

So with the tender of the monster near at hand, brave Cally opened the package and determined the three applications inside were indeed very badly done, incomplete and unsigned.

"See, this is what I'm talking about," Cally said to the tender. "Look at these things! If I hadn't already given notice, this would have put me right over the edge."

"Oh, I know," the tender said sympathetically.

"No, really," she replied. "I mean it would have put me right over, fire axes, stuff burning, body count, not a good time!"

And so Cally expressed her relief to be free of the monster's horrific influence, and now plans to live happily ever after and never again work in health care for any amount of money.

NaNoWriMo 2008

It’s almost November! You know what that means ...

Nah, not the elections. More important than that, it’s National Novel Writing Month.

NaNoWriMo calls to us all to connect with the writer within and write 50,000 words.

Had an idea lurking forever that cries out to be shared with the world? Now’s your chance to get it out and let it shine. Can’t string a sentence together? No problem! The goal is just to write – good, bad or indifferent – and celebrate the wonders of the written word.

And there’s no need to go it alone. Sign up for free (free is great!) at the official National Novel Writing Month website, www.nanowrimo.org^. Connect with other writers – professional, amateur, and hopeful – in your area and around the world.

See you there!

Help yourself to a copy of the NanoRhino image!

An Essential Jinx

The short-story collection introducing the Quasiverse, following Jinx.
From the internationally recognized rising star of occult fiction, C.A. Broz.

---

Mood:

Impressed

Banned Books Week!

Celebrating the Freedom to Read:
September 27–October 4, 2008^
(link goes to ALA's Banned Books Week homepage)

Check out the Banned Books Meme here^.

Mood:

Thoughtful

Wild Aspie Awards

Wild Aspie Awards are coming, October 2008!

Awards will be given to blogs and websites exhibiting excellence in the following categories:

• Artistic Expressions
• Cryptozoology/Paranormal/Weird Stuff
• Dare to be Different
• Design/Layout
• Education
• Humor
• Neurodiverse Author/Focus
• Personal Diary/Survivor/Self-Improvement
• Overall Excellence

For more info, visit the Wild Aspie Today blog^.

Mood:

Busy

Announcing Moods!

Blogger doesn't offer "moods" like some other blog sites, so I made my own, starring my all-time favorite strip "Calvin and Hobbes^."

Mood:

Pleased

Banned Books

There's an email going around that's presented as a list of books VP-hopeful Palin wanted to ban. Turns out the list (as presented) is "just" a list of books that have been banned or challenged (meaning a request was made to ban them) as recorded by the American Library Association^ (ala.org^).

Me, I read "banned" books. Some books, I agree, have no place in grade school libraries ("A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, as an example). But others - like the Harry Potter series - you've got to be kidding me. I can understand the discomfort of a strict Christian parent concerned that the content might lure a child into "the dark arts," but let's be rational a moment. The kid is *reading* for *pleasure*. With all of the competition literacy has for a kid's attention nowadays, let them read whatever they want, as long as they are reading! If you're really worried, try reading the book yourself first, and if you *really* find it objectionable, go to the library or bookstore and find something better.

Anyway, the Annual Banned Books Week is coming up! Bloggers are often (not always) readers too, so please get the word out.

Celebrating the Freedom to Read:
September 27–October 4, 2008^
(link goes to ALA's Banned Books Week homepage)

And though I don't usually participate in memes, for the sake of books (which, I admit, I obsess over) I am offering one here.

Banned Books Meme

1. Copy the list of books into a post at your blog.
2. Bold the books you have read.
3. Italicize the books you started or plan to read.
4. *Star* the books you really liked, felt changed your life, or would recommend to others to read.
5. Comment back on this post (i.e., the post you saw the meme at) with a link to your list.
6. Find a copy of one of these banned books and enjoy!

[Note: this list is from the anti-Palin email, not the ALA archive.]

*A Clockwork Orange* by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
*Carrie* by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
*Cujo* by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
*I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings* by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
*James and the Giant Peach* by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
*Little Red Riding Hood* by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
*Lord of the Flies* by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse- Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
*The Shining* by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
*To Kill A Mockingbird* by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff [N.B.: A dictionary? WTF?!]
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

August EC Stuff

I joined Entrecard about August 17, so I don't have a full month's info ... but it seems to be "the thing" to make these posts, and I do appreciate those participants that have dropped and|or advertised on my blog. So here goes:

Top Droppers
Whatever Comes To My Mind
PipeB Web Hosting
Top Form Secrets
The Traveling Pants
Juliana's World
Red Pine Mountain
The Simple Witch
Journal of Journey
Modern Witchcraft
My gypsygoods

Advertisers
(this is a partial list, sorry: I didn't think to start keeping track sooner)
Just Renae
Infinite Possibility
Crete Delights
Comely's World
Young Urban Professionals nOOk
Atom Sounds
Barefooted Me
Hawk's Photos

And my personal favorites (in no particular order) I would not have found without EC:
Eco-friendly Life and Toys
Homebound
Clean Solutions
Thyme2dream
My Name's Not Mom
Asdquefty's Journal
Red Pine Mountain
Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff
Wahm Cafe
The Shopaholic Nightingale
Environmental Chaos
PlasticLess
BlueStem Winery
Tiggyblog
Learn tricks of blogging
Easy Homemade Fragrance and Essential Products
My Autism Insights
Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology
Squidom.com
The Peanut Butter Blog
Just Renae - A Digital Scrapbooking Addict
The Transparent Hypnotist
Coffee Tickle
Geek Riddles

Note to EC Surfers

Apparently some IE users cannot see the EC widget/current ad card. I don't know why this is, or if EC has plans to fix this issue ... so all I can suggest is a better browser.

Let me know (comment on this post or send a message at EC, my card in the right sidebar links to my EC profile) if you have problems viewing the widget or current ad card.

Thanks!

Site Tweaks & Additions

This was to be my day of rest, but apparently I didn't know what I was talking about.

But that's okay! Good stuff happened.

A tale of tweaks

I learned HTML and CSS by taking webpages apart and then trying to put them back together. "Oops, I guess that code was important" was a common utterance. :)

Javascript was too much for me though. I'm not a designer, just a hobbyist, and there seemed to be no reason to work so hard on a webpage.

But today I realized I really, really wanted a three-column layout for this blog. I really like the template design, though, and it even came "out of the box" in a color scheme that pleased me. I didn't want to have to start over. I wanted to just add a column.

Easier wanted than done. But I did it! All by myself, even. Usually when I have computer trouble of any kind, I'll e-tap an online friend who's a whiz with this stuff and cry on his shoulder. Then he tells me how to fix it and everyone is happy. But today I wad determined to puzzle out the arcane coding myself and get that column in.

The end result isn't as polished as what I started with, naturally, but I am happy with it for now. After some more practice I'll make it sparkle.

So in my new column (on the left, there) you'll see some buttons and badges and things. Having considered some off-hand advice from my good friend Sheta, I decided to go ahead and get a bit more serious about blogging.

More about those programs ...

Sheta is participating in Entrecard, and had made up some nifty badges - the "Dare to be Different" one - so I decided to join the fun. It's free and easy to sign up, and you get exposed to a lot of neat blogs, as well as getting exposure for your own.

Blogged.com is a rating site. My personal blog merited an 8.3, Great, and I'd really like to see this one inch higher than a 6.4. So do me a solid and vote there, 'kay?

I also signed up for Feedburner, along with their email-update service. That's another cool, free webtool. Who doesn't like free? Not only will they "burn" your blog feed, they make it easy to make sure the webcrawlers find it and keep it current. They also provided the active headline generator over in the right sidebar. Tech toys are so much fun. :)

As I sign up at more places, there will be more buttons, badges, widgets and updates.

It will be an interesting journey.

Site Update

www.WildAspie.net
has been updated!

New links on main page, and:

• Added "Clickables" page
• Added "Writing Archive" page and selected works

Rending the Veil Update

I had a “duh” moment, and after a chat with Sheta found myself promoted into a formal title at Rending the Veil. My suggestion had been “Assistant in Charge of Stuff” - all I wanted was a psychological seed to help me be better at promoting what I consider to be a very well-done site and valuable resource for energy workers (or as termed there, “magicians”). Her version is “Assistant Managing Editor” - which means I am in charge of stuff. :)

I've contributed a few articles, a series on Nontheistic Energy Work, which have received appreciative reviews; but I find that writing such things is not my strong point. So I am happy to have another capacity in which to be helpful; and Sheta, now Editor-in-Chief in title as well as actuality, is not only an easy, open person to work for and with, but a real professional with a wealth of wisdom and fascinating experiences and perspectives.

We are working on RTV logo products to be featured with the next issue August first; we also will be presenting a new feature, an almanac, with art by Sheta and dates compiled by yours truly. And of course, another short story by C.A. Broz, continuing the Quasiverse tales, as well as articles from those authors of magic theory and practice that have helped establish RTV as the quality publication it is.

Today's Stupidity Index

Today's Stupidity Index is

HIGH

with a 95% chance of idiocy.

What this means:

• Avoid unnecessary driving, as other drivers will be on the phone, eating lunch, and otherwise not paying attention to the one-ton projectile they have aimed at you.
• Also, do not expect road construction to be announced with any sort of signs or other warning materials, since that would only enable you to use an alternate route.

Wild Ink'd!

Got my first tattoo yesterday afternoon:



2 more pix:

The labyrinth has special symbolic meanings for me, as well as being a practical choice for permanent body art: I now can "walk" it with my fingertip whenever I need a moment to reflect, calm down, or refocus.

The simplicity was also a good choice, being my first tattoo and one of the first done by the artist. (I am far happier with the result than he is, but he's a perfectionist and I just wanted my labyrinth, dammit. :) )

Today's Stupidity Index

Today's Stupidity Index is

HIGH

with a 95% chance of idiocy.

What this means:

• Avoid unnecessary driving, as other drivers will be on the phone, eating lunch, and otherwise not paying attention to the one-ton projectile they have aimed at you.
• Avoid unnecessary shopping, as other shoppers will stop short in front of you to stare blankly at nothing, then swing their cart randomly into your way as you try to go around them, then mutter darkly about how rude you are as you walk away.
• Hell, just avoid people in general. Stay home and get drunk. That's what I'm going to do.
  

On a Personal Note

No YouTube vid for tomorrow, Sunday, June 15, 2008, due to a death in the family. Regularly scheduled content additions will continue Wednesday, June 18, 2008.

Some details, and thoughts

"Grandma Dorothy" was born June 13, 1923. She graduated nursing school in 1944 and shortly thereafter worked for, then married, "Doctor Grandpa." Together they had eight kids, six boys and two girls, of whom my father was the third.

Growing up, the three eldest boys had a life markedly different from that of the five that followed. A polite way to sum it up would be to say that Grandpa was very strict. He was also my first example of pharmaceutical hostage-taking, freely writing prescriptions for Grandma to keep her mellow and compliant. A life on these drugs essentially ruined all chance she had for a healthy body, and I always knew her as fat, though there were photos to prove this had not always been the case.

In the early sixties, they moved to Hillside. Her parents had a little farmette there, and sold the neighboring lot to their son-in-law to build a house. That was the house I will always think of as my grandparents', a grand split-level home built into the hill with a walk-out basement. And at Great-grandma Aurelia's next door was the huge yard and in-ground pool. Most weekends of my childhood were spent there, visiting grandparents and Great-grandma and grandma's sister Jeannie, who was taking care of their mother.

In summertime, we'd get out to Hillside in the midmorning, spend the day swimming, visiting, running about and swimming some more. It was like a party every weekend, my aunts and uncles bringing my cousins, my dad's cousins bringing their kids, and everyone happy and at ease in the joy of family and recreation.

After Great-grandma died, Jeannie took over the property. Then came the summer everything fell apart. Jeannie went on a trip, and while she was gone Grandpa decided that the diving board for the pool, and the fence on that side, was on his property. He had some of his younger sons come while Jeannie was away and remove the board and move the fence.

This asinine act forged a rift. Siblings had to choose sides; most of them agreed with Grandpa, his eldest son (my Uncle Ray), and my dad agreed with their aunt Jeannie, and the second son simply decided he wanted nothing to do with any of it and refused to speak to anyone for a while.

It was heartbreaking for me as a child, to see my cousins visiting Grandma and knowing they couldn't cross that imaginary line into Aunt Jeannie's yard to play. That was the year I started hearing the ugly truths about Grandpa, how he treated his family, and how much Grandma's siblings despised him for ripping their family apart.

All because of a stupid diving board. Of course the board wasn't really the issue: it was just a physical representation of Grandpa's determination to be right and have his way, no matter what the cost to those around him.

As time went on, the rift was healed to some extent; when Aunt Jeannie died, it seemed that summer that they would all forget the stupid fight and we could all be a family again. But reconciliation didn't last long, and soon the family slipped back into its quiet division.

Once I hit 18 and moved out of my parents' home, I didn't see much of my dad's family. I didn't want to; older and wiser, I knew much of my dad's troubles with his own family were directly caused by what his parents had put him through, and I had a hard time forgiving them for that. I did miss my cousins, and many of my aunts, whose only sins had been being the children of or married to the uncles that followed Grandpa no matter what.

We did make the trip north to Wisconsin for their 50th wedding anniversary, and to Berwyn for Grandma's eightieth birthday in 2003. That birthday was something: eight kids and their spouses, 24 grandkids, and four great-grandchildren in attendance, along with other family members and friends, made for a very crowded banquet hall.

So much of Grandma's life was overshadowed by Grandpa...

She died late Monday, June 9, 2008. My dad called me a little before 6:30 AM Tuesday to let me know. And I cried, not because I felt any grief for her or myself, but because, after everything, my father was clearly torn up to know that his mother was gone, and he would never see her alive again.

So on Thursday I made the trek to Hillside once again, to be there for my dad. And of course Grandpa was there, mostly deaf, getting infirm, but still the same old curmudgeon, freely criticizing his three eldest sons and their sons, even as his wife lay before him in her casket.

It did give my cousin Jason, only child of Uncle Ray, an epiphany to his father's "pinched look," to know he had to silently accept the abuse about his weight (hefty but not fat), his habits, his wife (who wisely stayed in New Mexico). My brother, who had already learned this, cheerfully said "yes, Grandpa," to every slam and slur, and let it go without a second thought. Not so for my cousin David (only son of the uncle who, back when, opted to ignore the whole family rather than get dragged into a fight with them), who more than once simply walked away when Grandpa started to talk to him, giving the excuse of having small children to tend to.

Grandma was interred the next day, her birthday, Friday the 13th. We actually started off the service at the funeral home with a verse of "Happy Birthday," cruelly ironic icing for the whole morbid ritual. After the singing stopped, a small hopeful voice of one of the great-grandkids piped up from the back: "Are we gonna have cake?"

After the funerary rite at the church, we all went to the gravesite, and once the casket was lowered and the lid placed onto the liner, the family milled about, pointing out the marker stones of other dearly departed; some of us went to the section for "the Innocents," where children are buried, to find graves of those unfortunate infants that didn't survive very long. We could not find the marker for my mother's sister, who had been struck and killed by a car when she was ten, but we did find, in my mother's family's area, the grave of her youngest brother, also killed in a vehicle mishap in 1995.

Then it was lunch at a local restaurant, and by three we were at Uncle Ray's, where most of us (who weren't driving) commenced to drinking. I spent most of the next four hours outside. We talked freely of everything and anything except Grandma and Grandpa, and I got to remember that sometimes, family can be good, and soothing for the soul.

When my parents were leaving, my dad got a little teary as he told my brother and I how much it meant to him that we had been there both days for him. On the long ride home, my brother admitted he didn't have a favorite memory of Grandma, and I vented a bit of inherited venom about Grandpa.

At the church, I did write a poem about her, politically-correct but pointed just the same:

"Grandma Smiled"
Grandma smiled
While cousins cried
And aunts sighed
Grandma smiled
If a kid's wild ride
Made uncles chide
Grandma smiled
Deer gobbled corn
Made Grandpa forlorn
Still, Grandma smiled
In her heart and her mind
As the clock did unwind
The truth of her peace
Kept her always at ease
And she smiled.

w00t!

My vids on YouTube have broken the 1000 views mark!

I'm tickled spitless.