Another Yaoi Day, Another Yaoi Dollar

Yaoi Day was yesterday! 

For those who don't know what the heck this holiday is, I'll briefly fill you in.  The Japanese have practically made an art out of making up holidays.  Not official ones, simply holidays that we regular folk might like to play around with.  

One of these is August 1st: 'Yaoi Day.'  It's all in the numbers.  The kanji for 8 can be pronounced as 'ya' in the right circumstances.  0 can be said as 'oh,' like two-oh-nine for 209.  And while 1 is pronounced 'ichi,' it's shortened for the purposes of the joke.  Ya. o. i.  801, which is slang for yaoi in japan anyway.  

I'm sure you can make the jump to 8/01 right?  

Now, I have to be honest with you.  I only discovered this holiday existed half-way through the day in question when Magnetic_Rose at aarinfantasy mentioned it on the forum.  As a good yaoi fan, however, I celebrated the hell out of it in the limited time left to my uninformed, fangirl self.   I finished editing a chapter of The Last Pure Human, I looked at manga, and I even got a little Yaoi Day present, as it were.

Fanart.  

There is nothing that makes a writer's heart go pitty-pat like something created for them by a fan of their story.  Yes, getting a million dollar book deal might affect the heart, too - I've heard that particular occurrence makes more of a thundering rattle, like a stampede. - but it's not the same thing.  A book deal is about money and pride and buying a new corvette (a matchbox one, if you're at my level of literary stardom).  But fanart, or fanficton?  That's all about the love, baby.

I cannot describe what a wonderful feeling it is to receive that kind of, well, honor.  Someone enjoyed what I created so much that it inspired something creative in them.  What a fantastic, amazing thing to know.  Whether it was a character, a scene, a world, or an entire story, it's damn well magic to realize that all that effort I put into my little romances made a difference for someone.

Yeah, sometimes it's just a momentary difference.  Just a second's worth of inspiration.  Who cares?  I love stories myself for so many reasons, and one of the biggest is that a great story makes me feel good.  I love the lift to my mood that a romantic or humorous scene can give me, and to know that I was able to give someone else that lift, even for only a little bit, is frickin' awesome!

No, I'm not suffering from sudden-onset Valley-Girl.  This type of feeling simply requires bold words to describe it and all the giddy, beaming-like-a-loon idiocy that it creates in me.

Frickin'. Awesome.  The type of awesome that needs a hot young surfer boy punching the air as he yells it out at the top of his lungs. Not just awesome.  Frickin' awesome, dude.*

I find it so appropriate that the fanart I received on Yaoi Day was NC-17.  Not that I don't enjoy more vanilla flavored art.  That never fails to makes me school-girl giddy and charged up. Knowing that they were motivated always motivates me to write more.  Smut fanworks, however, tend to do something a little different.  I inspired something adult rated in someone else, and they in turn inspire a good buzz for my next sex scene.  That's always a nice thing to have available: packaged arousal.

I couldn't have asked for a better ending for my Yaoi Day.  

Here's hoping yours was just as much fun!

*I have California roots.  I'm allowed to punctuate my speech with random exclamations of 'dude' and 'gag me with a spoon.'  It might even be required to stay on the 'Descendent of a Californian' registry.  I'll get back to you on that.*

Sick of Being Sick

I have a cold.  Or a flu.  Either way, feels like crap.

However, it does bring up a point that has always bothered me.  Did you ever notice how utterly mundane sounding the word 'cold' actually is?  "I caught a cold" is not a phrase that elicits the same awed murmurs that "I fought off  a school of sharks armed only with a spork and a packet of mustard" does.  And is it any wonder?  Sporks are awe inspiring; it's a fact of nature. 

Colds, on the other hand, are not, through no fault of their own.  They've simply been misnamed.  The word 'cold' does not, in any way, adequately describe these diseases' actual presence in our lives.  Think about it.  You call in sick to work with a 'cold,' and half your c0-workers are simply irritated you're not there.  You call in sick to work with the 'hacking, sneezing, death-by-mucus disease,' and not only are they suddenly impressed, they don't want you coming in to work for the next two weeks.

I have had, sadly, more than my fair share of 'death-by-mucus' diseases this last year.  I feel like I should become a gold 'cold' card-carrying member - like typhoid Mary, but rather than a harbinger of death, I'm just a harbinger of nasal irritation and annoying coughs.  

I don't blame my body; it's trying its best, really.  

Really.  I caught a rather odd illness a couple years back, had a rare complication, and it'll take my body a few years to be back in fighting form.  Until then, I get all the annoying, pitiful, wannabe illnesses that float around town.  Another one seems to have taken up residence in my rather chubby excuse for a body this week.  Urg.

Ahem. Considering my last post, I suppose I should say that my current feverish bundle of bleh is not zombie related. 

Although if it was, would I really tell you?  Of course not. I'd let my legion of zombie minions do that for me.  And speaking of that, it just makes you wonder just how long it would take to convert a zombie legion of minions, doesn't it?  A week?  A month?

And how would you do it?  Bite 'em?  Wonder how many zombies get TMJ that way.  Their dentists have to tell them: hold off on the legion building for a while, okay?  Just let your jaw rest a little.  We'll all be here for you to zombify later.  A week or two won't kill you...more. Aheh...well, you know what I mean.  Uh, wait, I was just...aaaaaagh! 

And there you'd have another member of the legion.  Probably why there's not a lot of zombie dentists: it's a dying profession.

You just know this is gonna eventually lead to my brain coming up with a zombie story.  Terrifying: a Twisted Zombie.  I am actually a little scared at what my mind would come up with.  I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

Yaoi Jamboree and Zombies

Yaoi and Zombies.   Not two terms one expects to see together, unless you happen to be reading a gay zombie romance.  Which I have, and it was surprisingly a little hot.  And that probably says something about my psyche that I'm not going to delve too deeply into.  I'll just let it lie.

Even though that's terribly hard to do, really.  How do you stop thinking about that? Zombies in love.  An undead love story - how does that even work?  Can the nerves still feel?  Can you get it up, or is it just rigormortis?  Is that what being undead is like: one constant erection?  Is the climax going to be figuring out how to do the deed without breaking off important bits? Eeeuuuuuw.

So, yeah. Yaoi and zombies, on the brain.  

Or more precisely, Yaoi Jamboree and Zombies.  

Yaoi Jamboree, for those who haven't heard of it, was a brand new Yaoi convention held in Phoenix, Arizona this year at the end of June.  It was new, it had some problems and some great stuff, and I plan to go next year to see how it improves and changes, as I'm assuming it will do both.    At the very least, I met a butt-load of great and interesting people. 

But back to the zombies...

Have you ever seen a zombie movie?  It's dark, but moonlit (because otherwise you can't see them coming and have that delicious shiver of horror).  Fog crawls over the ground in writhing tendrils of skull-white.  Nothing moves until the shambling undead slowly take form and come close to feast on your blood.  Or eyeballs.  Or that new gucci bag that you love and now wish you'd left at home so your sister could at least enjoy it after your possessions have been divvied up.

Well...that's the scene I was met with as I drove with my friend to Yaoi jamboree.  Minus the zombies.   We left late, well past sunset.  Driving in the middle of nowhere, on backroads, we got a bit turned around.  There was the mist, there was the moon, there was the complete lack of people, and the land around us looked like abandoned fields with stunted, mutant vegetation to complete the picture.  No lights on the roads, and no way to tell where the nearest people might be. 

Any movie maker worth his salt would have added the zombies.  It almost felt like a crime not to have them shuffling along side the road.

And I said as much, to which my friend replied that I had enough trouble with not killing us when I tried to dodge the rabbits and mice that might run in front of me.  It's an instinctive sort of thing.  Run over the zombies, dodge the cute and furry forest critters - run off the road either way.

And of course the moment she says this, a rabbit runs in front of the car and I almost kill us swerving out of the way.  And then another rabbit, and then a couple of mice.    As far as I'm concerned, that was a little message from the deep beyond.  

Which brings us to the moral of this story. If you're in a place that needs zombies and lacks them, be very, very careful.  Because the zombies that the world decides to add to the picture may just be you. XD

Joy and Technology

Today is a time of joy and happy frolic.

I have my laptop returned to me, whole and undamaged.  Hallelujahs resounded within my house the moment that little brown box appeared on my doorstep.  

Ignore the strange echo of furious cursing at the 'you missed our delivery time' that was left on the door the day before.  It is but a distant memory.  The white, glossy finish beneath my fingertips has soothed my soul, while the rhythmic tapping of computer keys and the artificial glow of the screen is calming my nerves like chamomile tea and chocolates.  The heat against my thighs as I support the brittle box is a familiar, welcomed burn.  My eyes squint already from overuse as I am unable to even blink in the fear that this ecstasy will disappear again and leave me alone and laptop-less. 

I am a computer addict, and I accept my fate to be slouched, withered, and blind by the age of 45.

I NEED my computer like I need air.  More so, because without air I'm merely a corpse.  Without my computer, I go mental and then there is always the fear that other people will be the ones to die during my crazed spasm of insanity. Life is worth living again, for myself and all the innocent victims that have been spared without their even realizing their near-brush with the cold, caffeine-buzzed, hand of death.

I will now go and write with gay abandon on... well, gay abandon.  

Living in the Land that Sex forgot

I have a love-hate relationship with programs designed to keep minors away from 'unsuitable content' on the web.

Wait, I take that back, it's all hate. If the programs were done in such a way that I, the parent, had actual control, that would be one thing. But I have yet to see it done well; I don't know if it even CAN be done well. They have ones where I can set it up so that naked men having a wild orgy on screen = no kid views. But at the same time, can I still set it up so that hordes of nude men just walkin' around minding their own business at a nudist colony gets the designation of: sure, why the hell not? Not as far as I can tell, and that just irks my sense of individual morality.

I believe my husband calls it 'being picky as hell unless it's exactly the way you want it.'

Yeah, I can live with that.

Although I feel I have just cause to be irritated with adult filters, especially today. The worst day of the year so far. The day my laptop, my third child who never whines although periodically throws tantrums, is in the shop. Yes, I know, horrifying, isn't it? I'd almost rather lose a limb.

Although I do have another computer I can use (okay, so there is enough computer crap in my house to choke a walrus. Two words for ya: geek husband). BUT the only computer I have access to is the one with adult filters that only my husband knows the code for...and he's away at a conference and unavailable right now. Not that he'd probably even tell me the darn thing until he was home because, well, you recall the previous posts? Computer touch of death and all that? I wasn't kidding. My husband's eye will start twitching at the thought of me even breathing on a keyboard.

Hence the reason I got one of my own and usually never touch this sucker I'm on right now.

Of course, being on here, with the kid filters, means I have NO access to my daily ration of romance and erotica. And I've now had a lovely dose of looking up things for the kids with this damn filter on. It tastes a bit like arsenic, I'm fairly sure. The recent search of choice: trying to view a page on monarch butterflies. I dare you to try and look at a site with actual pictures of actual monarch butterflies, with the kid filters on. It's a pain in the ass. Apparently, these sites are horrible for kids to view because...who knows the hell why. They mention butterfly sex? Too much explicit butterfly violence? I know that's something I worry about a lot; can't be too careful with butterfly violence. It's really prevalent in the schools these days. I hear the little fluttery bastards are getting tattoos to ID themselves to other butterfly gang members and everything. Damn butterfly hooligans. You just know they were mooning the camera on purpose.

Or, hey, maybe it's gay butterflies, because there's nothing gonna get you an R rating faster than gay anything. Well, as long as its male. Two naked women molesting the crap out of each other somehow seems to get a lower rating at times than two partially clothed men simply kissing. So, obviously, two boy butterflies gettin' it on would put the ratings up over the edge into no-kids-see-this-ever. And from the trouble I had trying to find a site the filter would let me view, this must be a pretty common image of monarch butterflies. Although maybe it's just one famous boy/boy couple in the butterfly world. They're helping the cause of gay and lesbian butterflies around the world by sneaking into the background shots when entymologists try to take their pictures (so far, I understand that bi and trans-gendered butterflies are still looking for a good advocate). More power to 'em.

No matter what the reason, though, it is simply icing on the cake of my sexless, meaningless computer time. I can't have my lovely, romantic gay and straight stories, and now I'm even deprived of the brief enjoyment of gay butterfly romance too.

Shit. Guess that means I gotta go write something if I want any chance of reading about a happy ending tonight.

The rest of you, enjoy the porn that surrounds you in all its varied and marvelous forms. Read some for the Twisted. I'll live vicariously.

Returning to the Land of Sentience

Sentience - you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.  And when it goes, you can hear the agonized screaming as it's dragged away.  Or in my case, the sharp round of cursing after a lovely blow to the head. Followed by stars in front of the eyes - which were quite pretty, by the way - and a couple weeks of bed rest while the body tries to regain an ability to think at normal speeds and walk without dizziness.

As with many things recently, this gives an excellent opportunity to reflect on the good things in my life.  Like thought.  I like thought.  I like having thoughts.  I like even more being able to create them without losing them half-way through so that they turn into something such as: "I need to go to the kitchen...to...wow, I didn't know that was red.  When did I get that?  Hmmm.  I'm tired.  Do I have any chocolate?"

So here is my public service announcement for today.

 Thoughts are our friends.  Research their needs.  Treat them with kindness and love. Care for their habitats and fight brain deforestation. If we're lucky, and vigilant, maybe we will still have thoughts remaining when our grandchildren have arrived on this planet. If all else fails, I believe there may be room for them to be stored in the cage for the dodos.

What the world needs now...

...is a bath.  Really, how long has it been since it had one?  A shower, sure, it gets those all the time.  But a real, nice, long soak in the tub?  I imagine the world hasn't had one of those in ages.  And it could probably use one.  It might have to rinse off all that nasty smog and garbage and pollution scum that'll float to the top of the water, but it'd be much happier afterwards.

And that is what my brain thinks of when I have too much time on my hands.

Although my thoughts could be worse.  

I could be - just theoretically, you understand - researching sex toys (It's research. I wouldn't have a choice.  Situation totally beyond my control.), and then the resulting information overload could warp my teeny little brain.  So that, say, when I'm listening to a child's program on tv, I hear this:

'To the butt plug!"

intead of this:

"To the book club!"

Not that this has ever happened to me or anything, of course.  It simply could, and it would be worse than thinking about bathing the world.  That's all I'm saying.  Truly.  And don't act like it's never happened to you - really, they sound almost identical.  Butt plug.  Book club.  People mix these two up constantly.  I bet book club presidents have to worry about it all the time.

"Damn, better remember not to accidentally say 'Welcome to the DiddleFop Butt Plug' today.  Wasn't that embarrassing last time."

See?  

And damn, wouldn't that be worth seeing? ^-^  I think I'll have to find the town of DiddleFop and move there now.