While I’m busy writing a blog that is sure to be profound, I thought I’d share this gorgeous pic of a beautiful kiss.
Check out BeautifulMag for the story and more photos. So pretty!
I am busy, busy with work this week. Yesterday I was away all day in the country and Thurs/Fri I will be doing an overnight trip; hence today’s post.
I know I’ve said that my kittens are adorable, annoying and terrifyingly intelligent, but allow me to explain in further detail.
The things my boys do which could be considered slightly odd behaviour (especially given that they are only 5 1/2 months old)
All in all, yes, a bit strange, but truly scary is one of their favourite ‘games’ at the moment, which is to punish anyone who they think does them wrong. Oh yes, it’s definitely an eye for an eye in this household!
Let me explain some more – As I said, I was away for work all day yesterday and came home late desperate for a shower and alcohol, but I didn’t indulge myself. Being a good parent I gave the boys cuddles, fed them and promised more loves later on. Did this satisfy them – NO!
Their retribution (in order) was as follows:
1. “While you distract her, Feliks, I’ll get into the glass of red wine (it’s wet after all) and finding this particular vintage not to my taste, spit it out, spraying it everywhere in the kitchen before walking through it and thus leaving red pawprints through the house.”
2. “Hey Boris why do you think she left this thing on the kitchen bench all wrapped up like this? I dare you to poke at it to see what it is. Oh wow bread – let’s throw it down on to the now clean floor, have a nibble and when we’re finished play soccer with it.”
3. “She’s angry at us for that?! Let’s go absolutely fucking feral, rug surf on the floorboards, and just generally drive her crazy. In the middle of all this, we can go really quiet. You know that always freaks her out and makes her come running. Hee, hee.”
4. “Do you think that she’s really sleeping? I’ll just go up and pat her face a few times and check.”
5. “Did she really think that turning on the light and yelling at us before rolling over to go back to sleep will stop us from fighting?! I know Boris, why don’t you go get your ball, dunk it a few times in our water bowl, bring it back here and then dump it on the back of her neck? That always gets her up.”
6. “Great idea, Feliks, and if we get distracted on the way back and have a game of wet soccer (two of our fave things) we can play with the dishcloth when she tries to clean up the floor. YAY – morning s are always such fun.”
7. “Hey Feliks I’ve learnt this cool new trick. If I pull out the dirt from this pot plant and mix it with the water in the sink, I can make pretty pictures. Oh, and she gets really pissed when I eat it. That should get us our breakfast faster.”
I don’t even want to think about what they’ll be like on Friday when I get home. I’m hoping they’ll take it all out on my younger cousin who is coming to kitten-sit them. Scary little shites.
In the meantime I’m bribing them with dairy products.
I have been following the various blogs and streams that have resulted from the post at Dear Author earlier in the week and at times felt astonishment, confusion, anger, dismay and disbelief. It was never my intention to get drawn into this debate – that was until I read a few of the later comments as well as a couple of other posts subsequent to Dear Author closing their own particular blog down, which have made me absolutely fucking furious.
Although I realise that to a certain extent I am descending to the same level as some of those people, as much as they have the right to express their opinions so do I of mine. However, this is the last time that I will do so on my or anyone else’s blog.
First, I have read both authors, who have been, inadvertently or overtly, placed at the centre of this debate. I have liked and disliked their work in different ways and to varying degrees. As a recent convert to ebooks and even more recently to blogs, I can honestly say that I had only a vague sense of who the authors were up to this week mainly because, quite frankly, as long as I enjoyed their books what did I care who they were in their private lives as long as they were not hurting anyone else whilst living them.
Similarly, I have only recently come to ‘know’ (as far as you can ‘know’ anyone via the internet) the creators of some of the blogs, who have also discussed points raised during the debate. It has only been in the last month or so that I have taken a more active role in these blogs by posting comments.
Does this make me ‘friends’ with any of the authors or bloggers or part of a clique? I strongly doubt it, and I imagine that if you asked them they would say ‘hell no, we don’t even know who she is’. By the same token, if this makes me a fan, rabid or otherwise, of one or all so be it. It is neither worth the time nor energy arguing definitions and semantics here.
I am also not an aspiring writer and therefore not trying to ‘make nice’ with anyone in the interests of networking and/or being published. The implication that a number of those who have participated in this discussion or agreed with a particular view because of these reasons or because they are part of a ‘group’ is insulting.
Second, I apologise to both Lisabea and TeddyPig if any of the comments that I have made on your blogs this week have made you the focus of criticism. I appreciate the fact that you allow people to comment on your blogs without any form of moderation. In that same spirit, I take absolute responsibility for the opinions that I, and I alone, expressed.
Third, if I caused offense to anyone by my comments I apologise. I was raised to take responsibility for the consequences of my own actions therefore it is my fault if I caused anyone to be upset or hurt and for that I am sorry.
Fourth, it is one of the most wonderful aspects of human nature that we care for each other and are loyal to those we care about. For anyone or their opinions to be dismissed for acting in this manner is a sad reflection on our society. I would have thought that anyone; no matter what their point of view, who is put in a position where they were forced to defend themselves would be pleased that others respected them enough to try and protect their rights. As far as I can see this support has occurred on both sides, but I’m not sure I understand why one would take precedence or have more integrity than the other.
Fifth, and because I freely admit that I am a blunt, opinionated bitch, I strongly recommend that anyone who participated at Dear Author or on other sites go back and re-read what was the main aim of the original post, and then remind themselves of what they wrote in their comments. No matter what was intended, in my opinion (and I assure anyone who reads this no one ever tells me what to think or what to say) the discussion did get personal and rapidly descended into a farce with some moments of clarity and sensibility. If anyone is truly honest; to others as well as to themselves, they would admit to and take responsibility for their own part in what occurred and stop laying the blame on other people.
Lastly, as a latecomer to what has allegedly been going on for a year or more, I cannot believe that this has continued to such an extent. There can be absolutely no benefit to anyone in pursuing this further under any so-called reason of intelligent and therefore righteous discourse.
Agree to disagree and end this now.
Because I am completely anal and compulsive about writing things down while I remember them, I do have a blog all prepared which continues of my thoughts about judging books by their covers. But I really need to cheer the hell up so I thought I’d do something totally different and chat about another fave story-telling medium of mine – anime!
Some background to me – I was the young woman you probably saw sitting by herself at the movies when The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast came out. Yes, it was sad, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I love me a good cartoon!
So I thought I’d share a list (in no particular order because that would be too hard for me to deal with @ 6.30am after only 1 cup of coffee) of the anime that I am in serious like with.
1. Basically any movie created by the Japanese production company Studio Ghibli. I think director Hayao Miyazaki is a genius. His films deal with the themes of spirituality, nature, the environment, the purity, clear vision and acceptance of children, and the cusp between childhood and adulthood to name a few. Studio Ghibli was responsible for My Neighbor Totoro (if you watch it, watch it in Japanese – soooo much better), Howl’s Moving Castle and an absolute fave of mine, Spirited Away.
2. I would say that this next one is a guilty pleasure of mine, but there is no guilt involved at all! The Fruits Basket series is what I put on the telly when I am in the mood to watch something totally sweet and romantic (think fluffy clouds and lots of aaaahhhhhs). The story follows orphan Honda Tohru as she finds the place where she belongs with the Sohma family, who have a few secrets of their own! A warning: this series ends abruptly without you really finding out what happens, but have no fear! It is based on the manga by Natsuki Takaya so if you want to find out whether Tohru ends up with Yuki or Kyo you need to read the entire 23 volumes – I did and I’m not telling!
3. Because I’ve never gotten over my want-to-be-in-a-band-but-don’t-have-any-musical-talent-whatsoever teenage fantasies, I’m a big fan of indie movies that deal with garage bands making it big. When I discovered the series Beck (Mongolian Chop Squad) it quickly became a must buy. It has everything from discovering and creating music, rivalry with other bands, sticking it to da man, a festival, and above all else some seriously great music. If you like this kind of thing, I guarantee that this one is for you (even if you might need to be a little patient through some of the slower sections).
I love samurai anything so my next two are…
4. For something a bit more hard core – Samurai 7. This is based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film Seven Samurai and, for those of you who don’t know, this is the same movie upon which The Magnificant Seven was based. Basically, it is about 7 warriors who are recruited to defend a small village under siege from the baddies. The setting of the anime is different to the original premise and is a world that has a steampunk feel to it. I enjoyed the first part of the series better than the second half, but it is still a winner.
5. My second samurai pick is Samurai Champloo. This is about a girl on a quest who manages to convince two warriors to join her on her travels. It takes place in feudal Japan, but the very cool thing about this series is that the director has given it a hip hop edge – it’s lots of fun and Mugen (see left) rocks!
6. Shinichiro Watanbe, the director of Samurai Champloo, was also the creator of Cowboy Beebop. This series about a group of bounty hunters has a huge cult following. For a number of years, rumours have been circulating about it being made into a ‘real’ movie – let’s hope that if they do they don’t fuck it up because it is friggin awesome in my humble opinion. It’s also sci-fi so if you don’t like this genre then CB is not for you.
7. Full Metal Alchemist to me has all the ingredients of a true steampunk story; being set in a world where magic and 19th century machinery are common place. It did take me several episodes to get into the story of Edward and Al, but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed this unique world and the brothers’ quest to recover that which they have lost – and, no, I’m not giving any spoilers here – get it out and watch it! It’s mammoth (51 eps), but worth it.
And finally (because I’m still waking up and need more coffee) one for the yaoi fans…
8. What’s not sweet about the love story of a young, upcoming musician and a more experienced, romance author?? Absolutely nothing! I haven’t read the manga upon which Gravitation is based, but, as I get more sucked into reading yaoi, I have no doubt that it is likely to appear at some stage on my TBR list. Dammit.
I have had better years than 2008. It hasn’t been total shite; it just hasn’t been the best either.
I don’t know about other people who work for themselves, but I tend to take on quite a few projects because I’m always a bit afraid of what could happen around the corner. Ordinarily I can cope however this time, just after the madness of the end of financial year, I was struck down by what doctors have been calling the 100-day flu. Needless to say that deadlines have come and gone, been rescheduled and then gone again. Now I am struggling to play catch up as well as deal with the end of year rush before the Christmas hols.
I’ve also had a few family dramas, but the absolute worst thing that has happened to me was the passing away of my girl.
God, it was quick. I went to feed her dinner one evening and when she didn’t come, went looking for her, eventually finding her collapsed under my bed. I frantically rang my Mum, who came and then drove us to a late night vet clinic. Mum was so good trying to keep my hopes up, but I already knew.
I knew all the way through the initial consultation. I knew all the way through the tests and the wait for vet’s diagnosis. Even when the vet was telling me that my girl had suffered from an aneurysm and that they weren’t sure of her chances of recovery, I knew.
I knew from the time I had found her up to the time the vet told me what she thought had happened – a whole 1 1/2 hours – that I would be having to make the most difficult, yet the absolutely right decision for my girl. I knew that, as much as I wanted her to live, it would be a choice for me, not for her – so I chose for her to go to sleep in my arms with as little suffering as possible.
I was devastated. My girl wasn’t just a pet to me, but a life long companion. She and I had been together for 15 1/2 years; we grew up together. We had moved out of home, we had gone through personal and relationship crises, we made a new home together in my current house, we kept each other company, we looked out for each other, we understood each other, and we loved each other. She, probably more than anything or anyone else, had been the one constant in my life that I could absolutely rely on. God, I fucking miss her.
I don’t think you have to be a cat person or a pet person to understand. I just think you have to understand going through the loss of someone who has been close to you.
It took me a long time before I made the decision to bring another companion home and then got my two boy kittens. They are affectionate, entertaining and terrifyingly intelligent. I adore them, even when they are annoying the crap out of me, but the loss of my girl still hits me occasionally.
I’ve been feeling a bit down lately and last night when I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep I suddenly thought that if my girl were here she would be cuddled up giving me comfort and company. That was all it took to set me off.
I’m not sure how long it was before I realised that one of the boys was on the bed with me. He gave my cheek a lick, laid down, put his paw on my arm and started purring. He calmed me down.
A little while later, after getting a thorough face clean as well as a cuddle from my other boy, I realised if my girl had really been with me the comfort thing would have lasted only a short time before she would have gotten up and as she was leaving given me that look which said ‘okay Kris that’s enough – time to fucking get over it and pull yourself together’. My girl could be a bossy, bitch of a friend like that.
No, I didn’t leave an ‘l’ out of the title.
I hate to say it, but I think that maybe, just maybe, I might be reading too much at the moment – too many books, too many blogs, just too much in general.
The reason I say this is because my impressionable mind has again been suckered by a good world-building.
Besides obviously enjoying the story, I always know a world has totally engaged me as a reader when innocently going about my business I suddenly come under a sneak attack from a word from that world. (There’s a song in there somewhere.)
Having grown up in a country mining town, I admit that I need/have a permanent filter between my thoughts and my mouth in an attempt to avoid embarrassing situations.
It’s probably not hard to believe then that it’s always the naughty words from new worlds which hide in my subconscious just waiting for the right moment to jump (speak? be spoken? whatever) out.
For eg, earlier in the week I had to do the always exciting shop for groceries during which I did the inevitable taking something off the shelf and thereby starting the domino effect. Did I say my usual ‘fuck me’? Did I say the semi-acceptable ‘shite’? No, instead I yelled ‘DUST’. Dust?? 
It’s all JL’s fault! And, yes, I’m using this image again because it’s a good excuse to have another look at those gorgeous lips.
So my mind managed to embarrass us (me + my psyche) anyway because you can imagine the ‘what the hell did she say’ and ‘stay away from her, honey, I think she’s sick‘ looks I got from other shoppers.
*sigh*
I won’t even go into the family discussion we had last year over my whole ‘frack’ stage.
Slightly mortifying for a 34 year old to be sat down and given the ‘talk’ about watching your language because everyone knows what that word really means.
One day, long, long ago…
there lived a woman who did not whine, nag or bitch.
But that was a very long time ago…
and it was just that one day.
The End.
Ever read a book, got to the end, then read the epilogue and thought ‘well fuck that killed it for me’.
Is it just me or does there seem to be more and more epilogues in books lately? Especially epilogues that are unnecessary and total shite, which no author or editor in their right mind should have ever written/allowed. Obviously there are authors and storylines that use the technique well, but I still think that they are becoming over-used and miss-used.
Srsly why bother? I mean generally a story already has some kind of conclusion, doesn’t it? Even if an ending is open ended, why not leave it to us, the reader, to use our own imaginations about where the characters and their stories go to from here?
One of the reasons I like reading so much is because I can actually use my imagination, my own creativity to engage with a story. An unnecessary/crap epilogue can absolutely ruin an otherwise good story, leaving the reader feel hollow with an unconscious or sometimes conscious dislike of the author’s writing and work.
A case in point
I purchased this book based on the recommendation of a blog *I know – quel shock*. I admit that it was initially a bit hard for me to get in to, but anyway the story was along the lines of: an out rich, city boy meets a closeted poor, country boy, they get it on, bad things happen to both of them but they fall in love, and city boy buys country boy a ranch of his own where they both live happily ever after, the end… ??… well, it should have been, but no… an epilogue appears… describing events some time in the future where the city boy is grieving because, after fulfilling one of his life long dreams, the country boy has died of cancer and, although still relatively young, city boy will never get over the love of his life… ??… ???? …?????????? …WTF????????????????????????
Just why did I need to know this?!? I would have been happy to imagine country boy teaching city boy how to do things like muck out shit, and city boy taking country boy to the big smoke where they could do the dirty in the back room of a nightclub somewhere, but no city boy is crying, curled up into a fetal position clutching the treasured belongings of the now dead country boy.
Yeah, I s’pose it could have been touching, blah, blah, blerk, but still… just why??
Since discovering ebooks at the end of 2007 (before that I was a print fascist), there have been occasions when I’ve had to remind myself why I like this medium so much.
Granted this is generally after I’ve read one by an author whose stories I know can drive me round the bend with their ‘unbelievability’ (there’s that word again) and sometimes overblown characters, but I still end up buying the bloody things anyway. Rather than a lack of will power, I am putting this one down to unknown masochistic tendencies.
anyhow… ‘how I love thee ebooks, let me count the ways’:
instant accessibility and therefore gratification! Prob’ly not so good when I think of the $$ that I’ve spent. Srsly though my problem is that I speed read. You see I read a lot of material for my research, which means I skim. While this skill is great for work, it’s not so good for recreational reading. So the bottom line is that I go through a shit load of books every day, let alone every week. Having access to ebooks is a therefore a godsend, cos quite frankly there is only so many times that I can re-read Anne Bishop, Charlaine Harris, etc, etc.
storability (is that a word??) I’ve got crammed book shelves everywhere in my house as well as books in my bedroom cupboard, linen closet… what a relief to be able to put books in a folder on a hard drive and not worry about trying to find space!
cost Sorry to be crass and all, but print books in Australia are getting bloody expensive. Don’t you think it’s ridiculous that in a country where literacy is such a major problem that they price books beyond the reach of the majority of people?! It’s fucked!
novel vs short stories vs series I do collect a lot of authors who write series, but they need to be v. good for me to read anything beyond a trilogy. The worst thing about liking scifi/fantasy is that some authors just don’t seem to know when to quit already and just go on and on and on and on… where was I going with this?? Oh, because a lot of ebooks a really quite short (for me anyway cos of the speed reading thing) they make a great, quick break in between my regulars/keepers.
the ending My name is Kris and I am a chronic reader of the end of books. I know it’s a bad habit, but I can’t help myself sometimes, especially (a) when it’s so friggin obvious where a story is heading so I want to see if I guessed it right and (b) when the story is shite and I want to see if there is any real reason why I shouldn’t just put the book in the secondhand pile straight away. Reading an ebook on a reader (well the one that I’ve got anyway) makes it harder for me to read the ending without having to get out the pointy thing and use it, which generally means that I’ve got to put down the glass of wine that I’m holding – totally unacceptable.
and finally..
a whole new world (this song is haunting me!) Before discovering ebooks, I would have never, ever discovered m/m romance. Yaoi anime and manga I vaguely knew about and enjoyed the ones that I’ve been able to access, but m/m was a totally new genre for me and one that I’ve very quickly become addicted to. And who could not with such great authors like J L Langley and Jet Mykles.
Why I like m/m romance is a subject for another day. Plus I’m on my last cup of morning coffee, which means I need to get up and brave the world of Sat morning shopping. I also suddenly remembered yesterday that I’ve got a $50 book voucher to spend and it’s not so much burning a hole in my pocket as lighting a fire under my fat arse!
At the moment I seem to have a stack of books waiting to be read, which is unusual for me to say the least. Generally, it is the other way round and ends up with me on the internet madly trying to find/buy ebooks to read.
Why the reading backlog? I would love to come up with some excuse like work (however this would be a total lie because working for myself allows me to structure my life around my addiction – see, you should all quit your day jobs – fuck the down turn in the economy when you can read!), but in all honesty prob’ly has more to do with the fact that book pimpage, lack of will power, etc has seen me spend a shit load of money on books. Bugger (I guess).
My attitude towards a non-read book is usually that if I haven’t read it within a couple of weeks/a month then I am never going to read it so off to the secondhand book shop it goes! The only times this doesn’t count is when the book is by an author I keep or when some strange person has given me a ‘proper’ book thinking that because I love reading I will read some esoteric crap – it’s a guilt thing.
Books on the shelf waiting to be read:
Anyway gotta go – my tame book store has an order for me that’s just screaming out to be picked up. Impatient much, yes??
 | Kayla on tasting ‘a note in the… |
 | Marcus Roche on maybe it’s me, but… |
 | ouaqquwcgk on my confession |
 | dkmhwgijnw on random awesomeness |
 | Kris on maybe it’s me, but… |
Kris + Books = Good. *Sometimes*. 