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.

Whoops

... spent a lot of time Friday looking at cars, and moved on to other models, trying to keep the dogs in mind. Hard to strap 2 GSDs in the back seat of a Cavelier. Anyway, I'm hot for the Dodge Magnum (in black, it looks like a hit squad's car, or a CIAmobile) and think the Murano's kinda appealing. Can't ever afford either of them, either, even five years from now when I find '04s used. Maybe I'll end up getting a Vibe, looks like the doggers would fit in that.

Just now I thought I'd look at the green Mustang again, figuring I was just car-drunk at work Friday.

No. Heart skipped beats again, I got a little faint, my left foot twitched a-clutch-wantin'.

I literally salivated.

You know how some singers hit notes that give you goosebumps whether you like the song or not? Just the note hits something that freaks out your nervous system.

Seems there's something about the lines of this car that do that to me. It came CLOSE to doing that and still garnered all my lust for a long time, but seeing it in SICKO GREEN has just locked all phasers on stun.

How do people pay for cars? In the car world, $20k isn't much. (Nothing I've owned was more than $6k, and my dad had to get the loan & I pay it off. I have no credit.) At a normal interest rate and without a trade-in, that's $500 a month for a 72-month loan. $500!!! I pay $170 a month and hate it. $500?!!! And cars that go for $40k, $60k? I can only assume the payments are over a grand at least. WHO HAS THAT KIND OF MONEY?

I'm going to go to my boss with a photo of this car. I'm going to say, I've worked here for seven years and can only afford to eat tuna & rice. I am, in kind terms, a disgruntled employee. I would be a much, much happier employee if I got enough of a raise that I could pay for this car.

Nobody's going to buy it in Ugly Green, and nobody's going to trade it in in a few years. I'll never find it in Ugly Green used for cheap. I have to get it new, I know it.

Maybe I'll start playing the lottery.

Maybe I'll write an INCREDIBLE novel and get a Donna Tartt advance. Or maybe I'll write eighteen good novels (gotta pay interest) and sell them to Leisure. (Isn't their advance $2k? Or have they gone up?)

Maybe Eike can be a movie star. Maybe I can blackmail Adam West.

Maybe I can get Ford to sponsor me as a writer. I'd include Ford-driven plotlines in all my work from now on, wear Ford miniskirts to conventions, change my name to Mehitobel Mustang McGee.

Maybe I'll plant a cash crop in the back yard. Fuck the goldfish, I'll grow water chestnuts and sell them on Ebay.

All I need is an extra $500 a month. Actually, $330. If I quit smoking, that's $100, so that leaves $230. Quit drinking, that's probably another $130. $100 to go. Yep, I can get that out of Adam West.


posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 12:52 AM

Oh god, oh god, oh god

I've been wanting it. I've had it as my desktop wallpaper for months.

Today was payday, and after paying bills, I have $128 left to feed me & put gas in my car for the next 19 days. This is standard. There's no way I can buy this car.

AFTER I'd already seen it in its eyebending EPA test warpaint -


... and, of course, got a little lusty, since it's cheesy white leopard camo w/a Road Warrior bra & asscap -

I found this. It's going to come in UGLY GREEN. I don't think I've ever come closer to getting a hard-on than I did when this picture loaded.



Fuck. Fuuuck. Fuck. Oh, man, I - oh. I'm about to yearn myself inside-out.

posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 2:24 PM

Look down your nose at me.

Dig this: I watch NASCAR. My boarhog-hunting country-singing live-in boyfriend Whiskey Dick drives a big fucking Ford. My brother lives in a trailer, goes by the name of Bubba, enjoys mudpitting, and met his wife at the flea market. We all drink whiskey and Pabst Blue Ribbon. We all own handguns and have concealed-carry permits, and we have rifles and shotguns for hunting and home protection. We love Walmart. We love sweet tea and grits and biscuits & gravy. When I'm watching the race in my house, and Robert wants to comment on it, he leans out his window and throws beer cans at MY window until I come out onto the porch with the dogs. I'm probably going to end up in a trailer myself, and I'm perfectly fine with that, as long as I have a good deal of my own land surrounding it & lots of no-trespassing signs on the perimeter.

Do we fit many aspects of a common stereotype? We sure do. But here's my question to the elitist fucking bigots who call us crackers (!!) and tell us to get over our love for the South because we "are losers and got our asses beat a century ago" : how does that make us trash? How does it make us unintelligent, and what grounds do you have to speak of us with such utter contempt?

It's class bigotry. But most people with class grudges hate *up.* Common-man liberals hate up at the Wealthy 1%, dicked-around bluecollars hate up at the corporate overlords, etc.

But, when it comes to us, we're plenty hateable. We're fodder for funny. And it's all 100% politically correct. And they hate *down* to us. We're the only fucking social demographic in America, maybe in the world, about whom it's PC to deride us.

I've mentioned this here before, I think, a few times (though I can't find the posts.) I've felt my stomach twist when people laugh and joke about the shabby riverside in DELIVERANCE, because plenty of people whose homes I used to visit while growing up lived like that, and it was because they were poor. Shit, our own barns looked like that, all tarpaper & corrugated fiberglass tacked to salvaged 2x4s - and it was because we were poor. Elitist bigots think it's hilarious that we had goats and chickens and rabbits. We drank the fucking goat milk and ate the chicken eggs and rabbit meat, and grew our own vegetables, you assholes, because it stretched the dollar.

Can you think of another subset of humans about whom it's a-okay, and encouraged, to laugh about their income level?

There's your classism, dickheads. It's coming from you.

And you know what? RIGHT BACK ATCHA. Fuck you.

This is why I choose not to go to chatty genre boards. It would be awkward to go to a convention, meet some folks, have a lovely conversation, and then realize that I know them from a board, and that they enrage me. Plus, it's not fair of me to assess someone's personality and make a judgement based on a few posts they've made on the web.

Unless those posts judge me by proxy, based on the place of my birth & the town in which I reside.

I'd borrow THE REDNECK MANIFESTO for another reading if I wanted to get ALL het up about this, but I'm not going to. I'm going to let it burn itself out.

But my misanthropy does get deeper by the moment.

I wrote a muuuuch more vicious version of this post at the office today, then chainsmoked and saved it as a draft. I fumed more (in both tongues) on the way home, and was suprised to realize that this really is one of my biggest hot buttons. I don't give a crap about gender, you know, don't wave the "female horror writer" flag - at worst, I hiss when others wave it on my behalf, and scowl at invites to all-female anthologies (gee, thanks for the break, I'm so grateful not to have to compete for a slot with all those smart men.) I don't talk politics - there's no point to it other than to wave your opinions around and get into fights. If I were an activist, I'd talk politics all day, but I'm not one.

But I get pretty hella riled when people shit on Southerners. One element to my anger is that I don't carry it around with me, and I therefore forget that there is SO MUCH scorn for us. And, when I'm reminded, I'm so disappointed in and disgusted with the people whom I'd thought KNEW BETTER that I climb the walls.

I love other regions of the country, too. New England, the West, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest - the culture, the mannerisms and language and so forth, are all clearly regional and visiting those areas is like entering another country, for me. I'm sure it's the same for folks who visit the South. I'm as captivated by New England accents and clamcakes as some folks are by Southern drawls and grits.

We don't hate Yankees, though. Yet it's clear that plenty of them still hate us, and with the same - you know what? I'm done.

There.

Done.

One more thing: when I went to college, it took me about three weeks to kill my accent entirely. It's still gone, for the most part, except when I'm really sleepy, really drunk, or talking to my Mom. Why'd I quash it? Because everything that came out of my mouth was, to my fellow students, "adorable." I'd speak, and they'd glaze over and smile and when I was done, they'd say, "I'm sorry, your accent is just so cute."

It's tough enough to be taken seriously as a Classics/Latin student when one has a big green mohawk (let's pretend I was playing Centurion of the Jungle, shall we?) But when my presented points were overlooked on account of my diction, I knew that would be the case no matter what I looked like.

DONE now.

Yeah, so, my hard drive blew up a month or so ago. Fried to a crisp. And I have yet to go through my backups to reload all my fiction, because I'm scared that I might find that much of it is missing. I'm not willing to face that just yet.

Tonight I did something I haven't done in a few years, and I'm not quite done yet, because it's fascinating: I'm surfing horror websites. I'm reading blogs and going to little webzines and reading stories on them.

Hooboy.

I miss Bookface.com terribly. Yeah, it's been gone for a few years too, but I read my head off there. I even read the book written about the Jean-Benet case by one of the case investigators.

The dogs are snoring. They scared a guy away from the house today, and I'm proud of them. Nice, the sound of dogs snoring, the little breathy half-barks as they dream.

The birds, meanwhile, stationed in my office, hear my aquariums all day long, and have taken to mimicking the sound of the filter water hitting the surface water. My birds trickle. It's a really lovely sound, and it makes me want to give them dried apples.


posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 3:58 PM

Bluuugh

Wow, I hate this new Blogger design. It'll take some getting used to. (Now THERE'S a sentence we all say, despite the horrendous grammar. Sick awkward.)

Les chiens:



Now that I am, ahem, 19 days past the deadline for the Really Important Anthology, I think that's probably out. I'll finish up the story and try selling it to the next book on the list. I have six deadlines coming up, one a month through September, so maybe it can go somewhere.

I have the flu, which just plain sucks. Kasey Kahne is racing in the All-Stars this weekend, though, which is rad. We were going to vote for him as the additional entry, and he wasn't on the list - now I know why.

Friend of mine is on crack again; he was clean and healthy after his last stint in prison, and now, not so much. (When I say "on crack," I'm not using a hip funny euphemism. I mean he's smoking fucking rock.) If someone had just fucking opened their mouth and told the kid he was important, maybe this wouldn't have happened. I found out too late. Told him anyway. All of this has sent me into a furiously antisocial headspace. I'm always GENERALLY antisocial, but I'm hot babboon rage beast right now. I want to hit everyone. This is a sick, shallow town.

I think we're trained to be shallow here, because this is an impermanent town. People here are either in school (or here because of someone in school) or in the military, and people leave. If you do make a real connection with someone, chances are they'll move within the year, or you will. Sometimes people come back, having not made it in New York City, and expect to settle into their old lives, which are gone by the time they return. I've been here seven years, and I've watched the scene (and the face of the town - bars, restaurants) - turn over completely a few times already.

Funny. I came here, planning to stay for no more than two years. I just wanted to get my shit together again, then move on, maybe to Montana. Now I, Queen Wanderlust, have been here for 7 years, while the town itself moves on, and on.
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 11:46 PM

Beatrix Kiddo (Black Mamba)




You're the Bride! Strong and determined, you can do anything once you set your mind to it. You long for vengeance and for a happy ending, and will do anything to achieve them.

Kill Bill: Which Deadly Viper Assassin Are You? (Vol. II spoilers... results with pics)

... "once you set your mind to it." There's the trick. I'm so ridiculously fucking lazy, people.
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 2:35 PM

I was wrong!

I wrote a long, enraged blog entry inspired by net chatter about the Michael Moore/Disney not-news today. Had to leave for lunch, so I saved it as a draft. Upon my return: no entry.

I wrote a condensed version, still angry, but I did not use the word "idiot" as frequently as in the original entry.

My browser crashed. No entry.

Third try, in shorthand:

1. I'm sick of people (writers of unpublished fiction included) whining that they're being "censored" because a purchasing entity or distributor chooses not to handle their work. The broadest definition of censorship includes our own creative processes, whether conscious or unconscious, when we decide what to include in a work and what to leave out, or later expunge. "Censorship" is a hugely important word, and it's an EMPTIER word now because of people like this. Nothing infuriates me more than the erosion of true urgency by idiots.

Fuck Hormel for censoring that batch of meat. They bought it from the supplier: how DARE they choose not to distribute it? Piss and picket, people.

2. I'm sick of people who, disliking one side of the coin (in this case, Bush), assume that anything that falls on the flip side is 100% accurate, correct, moral, and perfect. This boils down to nothing but a kindergarten back-and-forth of "yuh huh... nuh uh:" pure opposition without reason. It boils down to a matter of taste.

You can not convince me that stewed tomatoes are good. You can convince me that they are nutritious, that some people find them tasty, that they are useful in many recipes, and that they should not be abolished. But if your "argument" is "They're good," that won't fly, because they fucking well are NOT GOOD. They are NASTY.

[Note: FOURTH FUCKING TRY. At least I copied the above to my clipboard. The entire post vanished AGAIN, even after a reboot. Cocksuckers. Whatever lesson you're trying to teach me, you're failing.]

3. I'm sick of people who summarize situations, and make their summary nice and succinct by leaving out pertinent information. "Disney, afraid of losing tax breaks, directed subsidiary Mirimax not to distribute Michael Moore's new film." You'd think Newsweek wrote that line, but nah, it was just a guy on a board. Too bad he left out the bit about the tax break reason being a speculative allegation made by Michael Moore's camp. Surely it was just more convenient not to type those words while spreading the story; surely he was just in a hurry. Or he was ignorant, maybe. I trust he wasn't willfully excluding information that he did not want his readers to see, for that might be CENSORSHIP. (Feh. See how ridiculous it sounds to wave that wand?)

I dig Michael Moore, so far. I haven't sought out all of his work, but I always enjoy watching a passionate (and funny) person present another point of view. I loathe Disney for a horde of reasons; I squirm when I hear the word. I'd like to see Moore's film and hope that he finds a distributor.

****EDITED MAY 28: I UNDIG MICHAEL MOORE. FUCK MICHAEL MOORE RAW. HE'S A DISPICABLE PERSON.***** (You know what made me dig him? He fucked with Kevorkian. Good for him. Fuck with Kevorkian all day long; nobody's set the terminal-condition assisted suicide movement back further than that cockwad.)

This post isn't about Michael Moore or Disney. It's about my ever-deepening misanthropy. I won't beat 'em, I won't join 'em, and I'm becoming convinced that I can't even communicate with 'em.

Now I suppose I'm off to see if I can find, just for fun, some contractual details, to see if they're just passing on the film & leaving it without a distributor, or if they're allowed to hold on to it for a while. Contracts can fuck you in the ass that way, and don't we know it.

For the FOURTH FUCKING TIME, I'm going to try to post this bitch. Is someone out there keylogging and hiding my posts? Is someone at Blogger reading drafts and deleting mine? No. I won't get paranoid like that. I'll just keep a copy of this elsewhere and, if necessary, manually insert it into my own code.


posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 2:47 PM