Mehitobel Wilson: writer, reader, chronic curmudgeon.

Tomboy bombshell cowgirl; lover of funk, attracted to roadsides.

Besotted with spots.

Friend to sleaze.

Admirer of filthy films, fleshy steaks, Hong Kong rap, new felt and pocket-knocking 8-balls; prefers 10 gallons of hat and 4 fingers of Jack.

Procrastination here breeds urgency there. Urgency begets sharper fiction. The dream: hone it to a splinter, and sink it deep.

So I'm here.

All Hallows

You've heard time and again, by now, that I grew up in the middle of nowhere. Here I go again.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere. No neighbors. This meant no trick-or-treating, either.

In fact, it meant a lot of things. I'm a solitary gal with parents who weren't too keen on being social themselves. No Christmas parties, no school dances, no weddings, funerals, or churches. Factor in the part about me being a freak, and voila: for every story of cops, homelessness, guns, friends dead from all of the above, and so forth, I have a story about Missing Out on Traditional Junk. I've never held hands in a movie theater, but I had a knife to my throat in one, once. I've never kissed anyone under the mistletoe, but I've kissed a few backstage.

So I've been to plenty of Punk Rawk Halloween parties, but never have I gone trick-or-treating.

My first Halloween in college was also my first Halloween near anything approximating a neighborhood. I dressed like Mae West and gave this door-to-door thing a shot. I twirled a lock of white wig in my fingers and stared at my first door. That, of course, is when it began to snow. Well, now, snowfall overrode all thoughts of Halloween: for one thing, I'd never seen snow before, and for another, snow in one's cleavage is far less pleasant than it sounds.

Now I live in a neighborhood of brownstones and cobblestones, gaslights and live oaks, and this Halloween you'll be able to catch sight of a true full moon through the Spanish moss.

And it bleedin' kills me that I can't properly enjoy this.

My bed is tucked into a windowed alcove that juts over the street. I have little fantasies of powdering my face, wearing yet another divine white wig, flinging a bit of raggedy pale chiffon around my head and shoulders, and throwing my windows wide. I could light a candle or two, perch a real jack o' lantern (yet another thing I've never had/done) on the sill, tuck a bottle of wine beside me, and rest my chin on my palms as I look down on the trick-or-treating little kids. And if they should happen to look up, well hello, I'm a woebegone glamour ghost.

That doesn't sound too bad, actually.

I even have access to a yowling black cat.

Hmmm.

Enjoy your Halloween, y'all, whatever you choose to do.
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 7:06 PM

I used to be a smart gal

... but I get myself worked into a total damn tizzy over politics, the news media (which I think is far more manipulative of the emotions of the Viewing Audience than entertainment media), international relations, world history, warfare, economics, and the relativity of truth.

I mean, a severe tizzy. I mean, I start to sound possessed. My voice changes. I start shaking and gesticulating and saying things like, "We know nothing! There is no truth! There is no reason! There is only cope! I do not want to argue, because all points of argument, yours and mine, are unfounded! Let us please eat something delicious!"

When I was younger, I'd collapse in tantrums because I could not know everything. I could never absorb every fact, read every book. Those fits turned black and vile when I realized that even if I could -absorb- every fact, I, being me, would research it back to its dawn, and research all of the influences on the things that influenced it.

"Facts" are unreliable: you must consider the source, you must consider all of the filters through which the source speaks and the avenues by which the information was compiled. When the source is a politician or a newsguy, or the chick in the next office who heard from her Navy boyfriend that what really happened was X, I'd almost rather not hear it at all.

This is circular logic, I know: because I consider myself ignorant of even the fundamental background of the Middle East and the designs that Europe, China, the US, and Russia have/had on it, I feel that I can't pay much attention to the "facts" on the news - thereby meaning I stay ignorant, right? Probably. In the mean time, I'm casting leery eyes on this and that, manufacturing conspiracy theories and eating hamburgers, and trying to do as much research as I possibly can. The more I do, the more I can boil what I find down into information that I feel is the most likely or valid.

One of the sidewards effects of my fucked-up mindset is that I also have trouble talking to - or, rather, listening to - people whom I believe are just as ignorant as I am. These are people rehashing what Dan Rather said, or quoting a caller from a talk-radio show. (Hey, if they made it through to the host, they must be experts, right?) I get really pissy.

Sometimes I really long to be in college again. At least then, I could skip classes and try to learn as much as possible. It's hard to skip your day job for such things.

Ah, crap.




posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 5:19 PM

Iron (Hand in a Velvet Glove) to Mouth

Oh, sometimes it takes every ounce of strength (and sometimes, a few ounces of alcohol) for me to keep my mouth shut. Unlike some, I'm aware that my fingertips speak more than, and faster than, my mouth - so times when I know I should keep quiet, I also have to keep away from the Box of Potential.

I like to tell the truth. The truth can be a weapon, a salve, a strike, a cushion. It can back people into corners and it can give them relief. I'm perfectly willing to allow the truth to do any of the above to me: it's only fair.

But sometimes it's not appropriate to tell the truth, and that's very hard for me to tolerate. I loathe lying - it's far more subversive to be honest - so when the truth isn't appropriate, my only option is dead silence. That... itches.

At this time there are a variety of truths that I can not address. This is driving me batshit.

But here's a truth for ya:

What the fuck? These stockings secrete juice to slicken your dry, dry legs? I confirmed this horror at the L'Eggs website; they insist that the oozery continues even after you wash the stockings. Sweet merciful crap, that's disgusting.

New Marquis' Mehitabel discovery: Edward Gorey drew her in the 1986 McMillan edition of Archyology. I'd like to see this.

Then there's always Shinbone Alley, the animated Archy and Mehitabel musical produced by Mel Brooks, in which Her Shabbiness is voiced by, uhhhm, Carol Channing.
Here she is, and please note the tufted rack on this kitty.


Eartha Kitt played Mehitabel in the Broadway Shinbone Alley, too. Ms. Kitt stipulates in her rider that she will only sit on leopard print. She performed here a few months ago and my friend was in charge of decorating her dressing room, and as per the rider, the room was bedecked in leopard.

Now, there is a diva.

Reading: CHOKE was good. I bought THE HUNT CLUB, by Bret Lott, because Lott taught me at Governor's School and I wanted to see what he was up to. He was up to excellent use of language, and plotting as paltry as an episode of Scooby Doo. Upon checking Amazon a second ago to see what else he'd been doing, I discovered that his novel JEWEL, released after THE HUNT CLUB, was one of Oprah's picks. So that nice man with the good words and the plot so familiar that I can't understand why anyone would waste his time writing it all over again... got rich quick. Well, that's nice.

Tonight I'm finishing up Lebbon's THE NATURE OF BALANCE, which is, by the way, a goldurn masterpiece.

I bought a Roald Dahl book as a gift for a friend, and got so jealous that I had to order one for myself. It took me a long time to determine which book of Dahl's contains "The Swan," but I got it. Stories like "Royal Jelly" and the leg-of-lamb story appear in every single collection, seems like, but "The Swan" is only in one book, THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR AND SIX MORE. This title tricks folks into thinking they're about to read kid-style whimsy. Tricks, I say, tricks. "The Swan" ain't whimsical in the least.

Another friend - distant as usual - is in love. It's about damn time. Strange, though - sounds as if the boy he loves is an exact replica of him.

Geoff Cooper said in his blog that I sent him a distressing email, might have been joking, was probably serious. Now I have to check my sent emails to figure out what the hell he's talking about. Joking? Serious? I don't remember. Distressing? Couldn't have been that.

Oh, unless maybe I was (still) pouting about Darren's decision to excise all of the archived nonfiction. In which case, yes, serious, and yes, distressing.

Horror stories: I'm still not in the mood to write any, really. I'm dicking around with a few things but they just won't turn scary. If it ain't scary, it's a character study, and who the fuck cares?

dgk goldberg's new Design Image release, DOOMED TO REPEAT IT, is a nice-looking book. I will read it.

(Carol Channing??! oy vey.)

Did I scream at you all, with mighty joy and pride and so forth, "Hurray for the Wise British Folks, for they awarded China Mieville's PERDIDO STREET STATION the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel?" Yay, yay. I love it when things go as I demand.

Lebbon won for his short story, "The Naming of Parts," and - these dang British men write too well.

But WE have Carol Channing.







posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 4:55 PM

Y'all oughta read this:

There is a fantastic editorial, to which I say hella-ay-men, right here.


posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 2:09 PM

I Found That Essence Rare

Another day, another trip to the dentist. Other people are far more bothered by this than I am. Why all this fear? I'm scared of the bill, but that's it. What's wrong with you folks?

Let's see. They numb you with a swab. This does not hurt. They stick you with novacaine needles. No hurting, thanks to that swab bit. They did a new thing to me today, which involved clamps and rubber sheeting and really cool pliers, but that wasn't painful at all - the only thing that hurt was my inability to signal properly for a mirror, because I really wanted to see what all the pistachio rubber and giant steel bars and clamps were doing. There's scraping, there's drilling. I don't like it when my teeth get dried out, but that rubber sheeting was awesome - my good teeth were slick with spit underneath, and my victimized tooth stood alone, dry but senseless, up above.

When it's time to pull the last wisdom tooth, my dentist will saw it in half, then put one knee on the table, one hand on my forehead, and haul that sumbitch out. No shit. He did that last time. Worked fine, took just a second, and I didn't bother filling my codeine prescription. This may sound barbaric, but the alternative is foul play: other doctors give you IV drugs and hook you up to a heart monitor and then pulverize the tooth and pick it out bit by bit. They can't even just suck it out because there would be too much blood loss. MY dentist was an army dentist in Korea. MY dentist is ALL BUSINESS. MY dentist ROCKS THE CASBAH.

Wait.

I didn't come here to talk about dentists. Got carie-d away. (Haw haw haw! er.)

But there is news: Peepshow #2 is at the printers and will be available soon. Swell cover art, stories by folks like David J. Schow and Mehitobel J. Wilson, porno = good deal.

Also, Brainbox 2: Son of Brainbox looks like it'll be released on Halloween. This Halloween. That can't be right, but it sure would be cool.

Further, there's evidence that Darkside 2 is doing stuff out there in the waiting room. I trusted that it was, but received proof. Neat.

The contributors list for Dead but Dreaming looks good, too.

Now, I suppose I'll get working on something to contribute elsewhere. Look at me go. Just watch.

Yep, I'm going.

Sure am.

Gone.

[speaking of going - I might, just maybe might, sneak around Orlando on the 20th, nosing around the fringes of Owl Goingback's big fancy writerclot. Just maybe might not, either. If you see a mighty redhead drowning in leopard, bring her a beer - even if she's not me, it's just a nice thing for you to do.]
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 5:05 PM

Ack, so many things are going on.
Word's out that I placed a story in Dead but Dreaming, which is a coup for me not because of the market or the story itself, but because of the neurotic habits I had to break in order to write the story in the first place.

I bought film so I could take photos of my town and my friends, so I could have a record of my activities and my existance, but I keep taking pictures of my pets instead, because I'm a loser. (Besides, it's so rude to just take photos of people. That's why they call it taking.)

The new Gothic.net launched, which is cool, but every trace of my involvement there, every last scrap of nonfiction, has been wiped away, which is just a fat fucking bummer. I was psyched as shit about the final blow-out coolio articles I saved for September, and bam, gone after a month. Ah, so it goes.

I'm halfway through Piccirilli's new Leisure paperback, A Lower Deep. The man puts words together too beautifully. He's got a very distinct style, some kind of, um, purple noir (pourpre noir?) - hardboiled poetry. Better to stick with "distinct" than try to describe it, huh. The story and the characters are, as always, addictive, and I'd like to be home now, reading it.

I was excited about reading Stealth's new Nolan collection, too. Then I read some of it and became unexcited.

My copy of Brainbox arrived today; I'd had a copy in my hands for a few hours before giving it away as a gift, but this one's all mine (though Robert's threatened to steal it, the cheap bastard.) Anyway, these books are beautiful, and I'm proud as hell to be involved - and let me tell you, if you get a chance to work with Steve Eller, take it. He's a straight shooter, as honorable as they come, and the kind of editor who edits. (Whatever happened to that kind, anyway? Sheesh.)

I had more to say, but the computer has now crashed three times, and I'm sick of re-typing it. It boils down to this: Peepshow Magazine #1 is really pretty; I have a story in #2 and am looking forward to having my pornographic porno presented there.

Now that I've typed the word "porn" the thing is liable to crash again, so I must away. Away!


posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 3:51 PM