Iowa and Y-con

Did you know that Iowa is flat?  I mean, really flat.  Scary flat.  For someone who has been surrounded by mountains no matter where I've lived, it's like an agoraphobic acid trip.  If agoraphobics dropped acid, that is.  And if I actually knew what an acid trip was like, which I don't, because I was the biggest goody two-shoes you ever saw in my youth.

Not only didn't I inhale, I never even saw a joint.

Don't worry, though, I'm making up for it in gay porn.  Kind of a 'conservation of sin' sort of deal.  And I'm happy to say that my children are carrying the 'sinful' gay torch to scary-flatter than roadkill-Iowa.

Because as we're visiting my husband's fuckton of Iowa relatives, what are my children doing?  They are holding court among the conservative, catholic cousins, and telling them all about violence to gay teens, and how awful it is, and how downright moronic it is to hate someone just because they 'fell in love' with someone of the same sex. 

I love my little pre-teen activists, ha.  Although I don't think we're gonna be invited to any family reunions any time soon!

Good thing, too.  If I had to travel too much, it might eat up my 'going to yaoi con' fund! I can't believe it's that time again already, when my little mind is occupied with dreams of yaoi. And penises...although those dreams tend to come more often than I should probably admit to in a court of law.

I will, of course, share the goodness with all those who aren't able to attend and are wondering what in the world I see in the darn thing (Here's a hint: Many beautiful men, and not enough clothing to go around.).  And if all goes well, I will finally put up the picture of penises before the con. 

Yes, you heard me.  The pictures of the penis paper from LAST con aren't up yet.  Just remember, this is me, here.  A computer, a digital camera, and me, Computer's Bane.

It's taken me this long to have every piece of equipment working, and then working together. But now all I need is some time to take the pictures, and it's penises, penises, as far as the eye can see. Seriously.  The paper roll is probably longer than my house. It's gonna take forever to capture all of this on digital camera...film stuff.

But it'll be worth it.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Gremlins

I believe in gremlins.  Truly. Airplane gremlins, garden hose gremlins, apple tree gremlins, and most especially evil, sneaky-ass computer gremlins, who creep in at night to switch parts inside of my computer so that I can press the 'on'  button and make it explode in some virtual manner that - and I quote - the computer geniuses have 'never seen before.'

There's only so many times one can hear that phrase before you start to believe in either curses or computer gremlins.  Not that those around me are true believers, not yet.  They still have some foolish idea that all my computer issues are related to something that I did.  How silly.  Computer gremlins is a much more logical explanation, don't you think?

I now take pictures.  My computer dies, I take pictures of its death throws, and then when I take the computer to the gurus, I can show them my photo evidence so they know that even if it is currently behaving normally, my computer is actually carrying a demon seed of doom inside of it, just waiting to get out.

I believe that demon seed may have spawned concussion gremlins in my own home, actually.  I cannot think of any other explanation for the string of concussions that have attacked me recently: three in the past two months.  I feel like I need to start wearing a helmet and a sign - Please do not poke. Head may explode.

My friend's hubby has offered to buy me water wings so that I can eat my soup without fear of drowning. 

Well, at least when the computer gremlins and concussion gremlins collude, I don't have to worry about the screen setting up a seizure or something, eh?  No, instead, I get to rediscover the reason I love computers: my handwriting sucks.  Oh, does it suck.

If my handwriting were a whore, it could retire on the money it would make on blow-jobs, I swear. 

Fortunately for me, my computer has now been temporarily purged of its gremlin infestation and seems to be working for the moment.  My head is recovering from the ladder dropped on it(C'mon, doesn't that SOUND like a gremlin?  You know it does! ).  And now I get to celebrate my holidays by lounging around recovering while my husband has to cook and clean and watch the kids on his vacation.

It makes me wonder if I could hire out these gremlins to a few other deserving moms and employees with too much to do. A new money making scheme to help us get by in this economy: rent-a-gremlin.  Want a little time to rest?  Rent-a-gremlin can guarantee you'll be flat on  your ass within minutes. No money back guarantee.

But don't piss them off or they'll pee in your Christmas cake, the little buggers.

Have a great Holiday, everyone.  Hope you are safe, happy, employed, and enjoying the company of friends or family this time of year! 

Yaoi Con, A Plethora of Penises, and Soap

The above soap was purchased at a little store in Japantown.  I went there for bento boxes, saw the soap, and started laughing hysterically because all that I could think of was this: 

Keep getting topped by your bottom?  Not sure if your chosen target is clueless enough to fall for your seduction?  Try our new soap!  Just drop this in the shower and see who bends over!  Guaranteed to find you an innocent uke, every time. 

Oh dear god, it still makes me laugh like a loon, no matter how silly it is. 

Now, as to what I was doing before Japantown and my newly discovered soap obsession?  Attending Yaoi con for the fist time.  Yaoi con - the land of guitar-playing, half-naked catboys and their stripping friends. I kid you not.  I even have access to internet-friendly proof, as a sweet gal I know managed to get some interesting footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSMb6EBCQEI

Childish and perverted fun abounded, as you can see. And as with all things yaoi, I went on a roadtrip with Jessjess to get there. No zombies this time, more's the pity (Although a zombie penis did come into the picture.  More on that later.).  Singing for almost the entire drive really did a number on our throats.  Since you weren't able to join us in our automotive experience, however, here's a small taste. (it's like you were really there, minus the numb butt cheeks). 

It's OK2B Gay - Oh, like you don't know why we picked this one?

I don't wanna show off no more - solely because of this video

The chocolate song - 'cause we LIKE chocolate

CaramellDansen - because of THIS puppy.  We even did the dance.

The last Saskatchewan Pirate - because everyone needs a pirate song 

Just elongate this to about 18 hours, add in a few crunchy snacks, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what it was like to be in our gas-conscious rental car.

As for the con itself?  It was interesting.  Costumes galore, including boys in short skirts and tight-clothing who looked much better in them than I ever would.  Sales of japanese manga,all things Naruto, ball-joint dolls, cat ears, and everything yaoi and anime I can think of.  Panels on topics both serious and silly, from the male perspective on yaoi to yaoi mad-libs.  

And the penises.  Note the title: a Plethora of Penises.  That's because at the y-gal meet-up, Forchan thought we should collect a horde of penises  (it finally got whittled down to 900 penises).  She had the crayons and pencils.  And who had the giant roll of paper?  

Yup, you got it. Me and Jessjess.

So what did Jessjess and I do for most of the con?  We went around with our giant roll of paper, collecting penis drawings.  We even had a few of the con guests contributing.  Most of the bishounen running around the con added their art to the endeavor. Artists of all styles and abilities added a penor for the cause.  

The final count is still unknown, as I'm slowly trying to add them up.

Think of a paper that unrolls for probably about 15 yards, filled with penises in all shapes and sizes, and then imagine trying to unroll it in a house with kids, without being seen.  It's a slow -and very, very careful - process.  When it's all counted, I'll be putting up pictures of them all, on-line, because it was probably the most childish endeavor I've ever done, and it was also ridiculously fun.  We met a ton of people, even had a few help us flag down other people to come and sign their phallic signatures, one of which was - I told you there would be more on this - a zombie penis with a bite out of it. 

I can't escape the yaoi/zombie connection.  Looks like I better start stocking up on the twinkies.  And if you don't know why, it's because zombies hate twinkies.  They hate rainbows and unicorn princesses, too.  That's why when the world ends from zombification, it'll be the zombies, the cockroaches, and the frilly little girls who make it.  I think I might be more frightened of the roaming bands of girly-girls than I would of the zombies.  And considering my daughter's love of all thinks pink and lacy, I speak from experience.

Beware the frills.

Bewaaaare.

Secret Society of the Computer Inept

Yesterday, I was startled by the sound of my sweet, geeky, computer-guru husband laughing hysterically in our bedroom.  It didn't take long for him to come and show me what had made him laugh so hard it gave him stomach cramps.

This comic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/3

And what does he say when he shows it to me?

I saw this, and all I could think of was you, honey.

Thanks, dear. And no chortling allowed over the fact that I own both a box of crayons and an abacus at this precise moment in time.  It's nothing but a cruel coincidence.

There is a shining light in the dark truth of this comic, however (aside from the gut-busting humor involved).  It's a reminder that we computer idiots have a connection.  You might think we're all alone in our oblivious world, but no!  We think and act against computers as one mind.  Did I not say in my very first blog that we would save the world someday?  Didn't I?!

You thought I was simply a computer idiot spouting my foolishness to the internet, but now, now you can see that I am not alone.  This highlights a little known fact: not only are we anti-computer geeks your future saviors, we are organized.  Knowing our duty to humanity, we have slowly been banding together.  Most of us have actually been initiated into the Blue Screen Avengers - a secret society that was started at the dawn of the computer age to prepare for the day when those overly logical, micro-chip carrying bastards would try to topple their masters.

Every meeting opens with a clip of the first Terminator being crushed to death by a hydraulic press, mostly to remind us that we need to figure out how to kill one of those suckers in ways that won't require us to use any computers whatsoever, including the damn hydraulic press.

For some reason, it grinds to a screeching halt whenever one of our members tries to start it up. Never fear, though, we're working on a viable solution. So far, the most promising one involves a key lime pie, mittens, and a salt water enema.

Don't ask.

Really, don't.  The computers might hear you.  So simply go about your business and enjoy your life, safe in the knowledge that your future is secure from AI machines coming after your ass in ways too gruesome to mention in mixed company. 

The Blue Screen Avengers will be there to save the day, so long as you don't have a computer lock on your house that we need to get through in order to save you.

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