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.

Just let me sleep

I'm changing my name from Mehitobel Wilson to, um, something easier. Well, no I'm not, but I am irritated that so many freaking bookstores have spelled it "Mehitibel." Guess if you're looking for stuff from me, you really need to know the title, because finding me by name ain't going to happen. Unless you can't spell it either and your attempt happens to suit whatever that particular site's chosen to call me. Maybe just search under M*bel Wilson. (Unless you're searching one of the sites that spelled it "Mehitoble.")

Oh, and I won't be at Spookycon next weekend. Seems these aeroplane things ask for money before you can ride them around. Screw them.

Casey was here for a week, then I visited my folks & my DOG, then Nolan came for a week - between microscopy, houseguesting, dayjobbing, and groping miserably for a bit of sleep, FICTION (reading or writing it) is the last thing on my mind. I need nervous energy to write, or some sort of energy, anyway. I can barely bring myself to form entire yawns.

posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 3:25 PM

Living room

I had a dream last night that was basically a big psychological dump of all the crap that's causing me stress. The good part is, though, that if my theory about all-stress-in-one-dream is true, it's nice to see that Tony and writing weren't in there, because in my conscious life, those have been going fine.

Do you ever feel that you aren't making room in your life for living? I've been making a real effort to do more things recently, to be less furious at work (failing this miserably) and less fretty over fiction (failing this too) but usually the furies and frets are all I have. I've been trying for the past year or so to Take Time Off, go out, have fun. Do nothing now and then. It occurred to me that I've spent most of my twenties being dick-broke and bad at my job, and therefore spending 8 hours sleepy and angry at work, then going home and spending another 4 trying to get un-angry, then writing for the rest of night and getting angry that I have to stop because I have to go to bed (where I'm then angry that I'll have to wake up and come back to work.)

This whole leaving-the-house thing also means that I'm so overloaded with crap to flavor stories that I can lock myself away again for another handful of years. I might have to, just to get it all written down & cleaned out of my head. But it doesn't really work that way, does it - no. I'd kicked around the basic premise for "The Mannerly Man" for probably ten years before getting it to behave in text, and attacked "Growing Out of It" via its central image a number of times over the past few years before the image found a resonant context. And there are two stories I'm dying to write: one's just dear to me and will not behave on paper, and one's a serious obsession and I'm just not able to control it yet. So that's a joke, thinking that just because my head is full, I can get it emptied right away.

The concerted effort at reducing my own stress has meant I've done some dreaming, and I'll tell you what I want, in more detail than most of you'll care to see.

My ex-husband was, like many people whom I just plain don't understand, addicted to motivational crap. Books, cassettes, week-long seminars, an entire house plastered with merchandise from Successories, you get the drift. He stopped talking and started spewing Motivatey Sermons instead: "Attitude is Everything! When you want what you've never had, you must do what you've never done! A bright attitude is the right attitude!"

Hurl.

I read most of his books, and couldn't fathom that dudes sat on airplanes and read them, wide-eyed, feeling like they were learning the secrets of business - because the crap is plain old common sense, the secrets of life. "Be fair. Listen to people. Consider the situation before you respond. If you're secure in your sense of ethics, then acting spontaneously or on instinct is fine. If you know you're a shitbag, think twice before you act." The fact that there's a market for books like this suggests there are people that don't think that way on their own, which makes me really squirrely. There are people that feel they have to train themselves to ACT that way, if not BE that way - which means they didn't start out that way. Horrors.

I felt really guilty once I figured out why the slogans and posters and mugs seemed like alien nonsense to me: oh, I thought, that shit's for people who hate their lives, hate their careers, and need help forcing them to go to work every day. They want become A Success at something but they need a fucking lacquered plaque with eagles and kayaks on it to do in the first place.

Guilt: I didn't have to pick a career. I didn't have to go into some horrible day job and not only know I might never leave, but PRAY that I might never leave. I'm a writer. Much of being A Writer sucks (it's lonely, you never just live a moment - you're always absorbing details, pay sucks if the checks even clear at all, etc) but, you know, much of being tall sucks too - doesn't matter, it's just part of me & defines how I navigate life.

Anyway, some of the ex-husband's motivational seminars (he went to these fucking things, can you believe this?) told him to Visualize Success. They told him to make a Life Book, a scrapbook of crap to help him visualize the future, to remind him what his life would (not could) be if he just kept plugging. He was, according to the seminars, supposed to keep the book with him at all times, and whenever he got discouraged (or arrested for participating in illegal pyramid schemes) he was to open it and remember that he'd never, ever, ever have that speedboat unless he busted his everlovin' ass.

So he collected pictures of yachts and glass mansions and shiny sedans and diamond-encrusted watches. And I cringed at the shit he apparently considered the goals of life. Not only does it just appall me that certain people want nothing more than status crap, but it also underscored how different he and I were, if we were just going to boil our dreams down to possessions. My big dream possession is a '71-'74 AMC AMX Javelin, though I'd be quite happy with another '77 Ford XLT, especially if I got to bolt my steer horns to the front of it.

I don't do things in order to get things. I go to the office in order to come home with money to pay rent and eat food and pay off my student loans and buy, you know, soap and stuff. I get things, too, but they aren't crucial. They're bits of crap that entertain me. I'm more entertained with them, but I can do without them.

But this photo, here, this is my dream. This is where I see myself living, someday: in a house by a pond (I can do without the pond, if I had to), with some barns and some room to gallivant with my dog or run around in circles or do whatever other stupid tricks I'd do if I had wide, private space. Build a bonfire and shoot the coals later from my lawn chair (which would, knowing how I am, tip over afterward.) Up front there, pondside, is my office: my Airstream. Doesn't even have to be an actual Airstream-brand trailer, but it does have to be a silver bullet, because I'm going to write inside it, and come out and polish her when I need to just zone out and let the story percolate. I can put a porch on it, and it'll have to have an awning either way - and my dog (or dogs) will sleep under the porch.

I'm not living my life in order to -get- there, I just know that I'll -be- there eventually. The house itself may well be a bricked-in doublewide, but that's fine by me. I'm of the camp that thinks living on the right land is more important than locking yourself up in something pretty.

So, one of these days, I'm going to wake up in that house on a Thursday. No alarm will ring, I'll just get up when I happen to wake up. I'll make some breakfast and fool with my goldfish tanks and make sure there's enough sweet tea to get me through the day, and I'll go out to the mailbox in my pink kimono & cowboy boots (i have tender feet, no barefoot pour moi) and bitch at whatever I find in there. Then I'll get dressed and rassle with the Currydawg in the crabgrass, and we'll get all tuckered out, and I'll get mad at the little midges buzzy in my ears.

And then, then I tromp off to The Bullet. It'll be a shithole inside because I'll have to buy one for cheap & promise myself to clean & restore it, though I'm too lazy and inept to do either one. And I'll lay around and read for a while and just be floppy until story stuff in my own head is too distracting to do anything BUT write it, and then I'll put my hat on my head, break out the laptop, and get down to it.

Eventually, the Currydawg will bark at nothing, and it'll start to get dim in the trailer, and the frogs in the pond'll start yarping. Later still, I'll wind it up and take off the hat. I'll scruffle the Currydawg and she'll tackle me and, when I find my legs and take off across the yard, she'll chase me halfway and then get distracted. And I'll vault the steps and slam inside, all out of breath, and fool with the fish more. Then I guess I'd probably eat some meat, watch a movie, and drink the world's best Bloody Mary. And that'll be A Day in the Life.

That, my friends, is the life I think is worth dreaming about. Fuck, yes.
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 4:58 PM

Nesting

Winter's finally come to my town. It's 33 degrees today. I live in a semitropical region, which means that my obsessions over sweaters, ratty furs, and gigantic coats are ridiculous here - but the coats are getting play now. Hurray.

When I went down to Orlando for the Horrorfesty thing, Dave Barnett and Ed Lee gave me a huge stack of books. Huge! Plus, I've got two other stacks from used/outlet bookstores. Ahem.

So I've built a living room within my bedroom. Two of my fish tanks are there; I finally brought my cushy recliner down from my parents' barn, and I got a little table to hold books, ashtray, jug of sweet tea, and bag o' jerky. I can now sit amidst the fish, kicked back with a cat on my lap, and READ all of those damn books, and I can't wait. WON'T wait, actuelmont.

The used stacks were larger before I pulled out all the duplicates. This always happens - I can't keep track of what I've already read. Sure, if I stood around in the bookstore and read some of the text, I'd know if I'd read it before - but I usually mail-order. When I actually enter any store, I'm in and out as fast as possible - I hate, hate, holy hot loathe shopping. I just grab whatever I came for and run.

I've always wanted to catalogue my books, but the task was just too monumental - yeah, I sure as hell have a lot of horror books, but I also have loads that run the gamut from Loretta Lynn's autobiography to THE REDNECK MANIFESTO; from books identifying parasites common in fancy goldfish, to vintage pulp porn novels. I thought it would be nice if the list could be in my Palm, too (assuming my lil' 8mb could hold my library) so I started nosing around for software, not that I was at all interested in typing in the information on thousands and thousands of books.

Then I found Readerware. I'm only using the demo right now - haven't shelled out the bucks for a license - but this shit is RAD. I bought a barcode scanner for two bucks and all you do is swipe the books and hot goddamn, the program searches the web and fills in all the book's info for you, right down to an image of the cover.

Granted, I'm still going to have to pull all the books from the shelves to scan them, and even HANDLING all my books is such a giant task that I've only scanned about 700 so far (just what's in the 2 cases in my office.) But I did them in TWO HOURS. 700 books, two hours. Unbelievable. Anyone who's in the same boat as I am, check it out.

May I please have a BLT with salt and pepper and mayonnaise, lettuce heart, and thick, crunchy bacon, with some fried green tomato on the side? On toast? And to drink, hmm, how about pulpy lemonade with Wild Turkey? Yes please. I'm drooling here. Drool is pooling in the crevasse-like depths between my ribs. Robert keeps cooking up these huge double Bubba burgers for himself and I'm wasting away. Damn college loans. Damn collection agents and car payments and website hosting and mailbox rental and damn everyone's weddings and birthdays and then also damn Christmas - I owe some people THREE gifts right now.

I ought to give my little brother four:
1. Two weeks ago, he was inducted as a police officer. Finally. He's been in every other uniform possible, from McDonald's togs when he was 15 through firefighter and EMS technician. Throw in Boy Scouts, WalMart Guy, Firestone mechanic, tow truck operator, and plenty I can't remember and you see what I mean. Oh, and he and Sara have themselves land and trucks and livestock already - the Hayseed Ranch, up in South Carolina.
2. Two days later, he got himself wed to Sara, so I have myself a sister in law. She's just a doll, too.
3. Christmas is real soon, so that's three, and then his birthday's two days after that, so he ought to have four. Luckily, they were "registered" at WalMart and the Flying J (truck stop) so it's easy to shop for them. Tank of gas, bottle of whiskey, pack of jerky, bag of dog food, and voila!

My job at the wedding was to gallop around and take photos. Turns out I'm not aggressive enough for this. There were women knocking me out of the way to get photos! Physically shoving me! I'd be planted right in the path of MY BROTHER AND HIS BRIDE and some stranger with a telephoto lens would bowl my had-a-right-to-be-there ass right over. Plus, folks were bitching at me to either get out of their way, or get my shadow out of their shot - I'm 5'10 in my Tony Lamas, and my raccoony coat and my hat do make me take up a lot of valuable space while blocking a sizeable bit of the ground from the sun, but jeez.

I'm telling you, you've gotta watch out for womenfolk at weddings. The guys, they all just shot their guns after the ceremony and then headed for the beer (as did I. I didn't have a gun, though. Didn't even think to bring one. Dumb old me.) The women, lord, they squealed and fiddled with the decorations and rearranged the food and ran around hugging and kissing people and, like I said, got downright animalistic when it came to taking photos. I thought I'd get bitten, once.

You'll be happy to know there wasn't one video camera present. A HELL of a lot of guns, and a whole dead tasty pig, and some Shania Twain (blech) and a horse trough full of iced Bud. No video camera. It was a great wedding.

Now that all my weddings are done with, though, I have a free weekend coming up, and boy, you'd better believe I'm going to be socked into that recliner, reading SHIVERS and DEAD CATS BOUNCING and HOT NIGHT IN THE CITY and PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING and, well, plenty of books. And thus, winter comes to my town.

posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 2:46 PM

The Protean Rush

Tuesday

Cream Abdul Babar => very very good.
Melt Banana => very very very good.
Velvet => extra supremo packed to capacity; many out-of-towners, yet there were no fights
My boss => rad for giving me Wednesday off so I could have unrestrained fun & up-lateness

Wednesday

Velvet staff and their Others took Melt Banana to the beach for oysters. The Mighty (hungry) Bel appalled these nice Japanese people by devouring: oysters. crawfish. mussels. shrimp. crab legs. crazy crab claws. sausage. Oh, and PBR, of course. The whole band split the same enormous platter that Tony and I ate ourselves (plus the bucket of oysters that I put away alone.) I think they enjoyed themselves & the food - it's hard to be sure, seeing as they barely BARELY speak English and none of us speak Japanese at all. Or maybe they speak plenty of English and just didn't want to talk to us, which is also possible. No, they were really nice, and the guy who'd begged us to find him oysters seemed plenty thrilled. We all dug the stray cats roaming around & the howling yowling cats in the trees overhead.

They've been on tour for nearly fifty days now and have another handful to go, then they leave the US and tour Europe. Having tagged along on legs of a few tours, in my home country, only for a few days at a time, I can't imagine what it must be like for them - foreign language, foreign culture, the shitty discomfort of touring, the mental strain & personality conflicts that brew up quickly after being boxed in a van, the exertion of having to perform almost every day, the stress of getting paid & working out accommodations... man, you'd have to be strong or crazy to do this.

I've watched strong people GO crazy doing it. I hope it was worth it. It wouldn't be worth it, to me.

[11/12/2002 11:38:21 AM | Mehitobel Wilson]

Why Bother?

No real reason to update this today, other than a demonstration of the Often
Low-Key Life that is Bel's.

Sopranos: I liked last week's episode; it felt a little more par for the
course than most have this season. Last night's episode, however, was like
a homecoming. Rock on.

ICHI THE KILLER: Ed Lee sent me this movie, along with a copy of Asian Cult
Cinema in which he'd reviewed it. Since watching the movie I've checked out
a few other reviews, and all are the same: unwatchably gory, offensively
exploitative, detatched, etc. Meanwhile, not only did I think it was a
great movie, I thought the gore was... fine. Not excessive or even unusual.
It's a visually sharp movie; I'm a big Tekken fan and the movie makes Tekken
nods galore, from physical moves, to locations (such as the arena-like
closing showdown locale) to costumes. The music was great (turns out to be
a side project of the Boredoms, so there ya go - though I was disappointed
to learn that, because here I'd thought I was about to expand my little
musical horizons some more, and lo, it's a band I already know.) The
characterization was interesting, with the stylized morals and motivations
of a fable, but a murderous one. I'd call this Artgore if there weren't
more to it than that; most of the reviewer who called it "exploitation
cinema" would doubtless call it Artgore, but there was a genuine plot &
intriguing, if withdrawn, characters. I suppose the Thrill Kill-style blood
spray, which was hilarious - hell, the fact that the goriest effects were
often played with comedy - might piss some people off, especially in the
harsher context of the plot proper, but I saw them as theatrical shorthand,
the visual (bloody) equivalent of cacophonous music.

Gotta say, though, that no matter how entertaining the flick was, my
attention kept being pulled a bit to the right, where my new big fat heavy
18" bloody ol' Leatherface figure (scored for dick cheap yesterday from a
toy outlet) was standing there, looking motherfucking, um, killer.

(I also got a Nina Williams figure from Tekken 3. They had Soul Calibur
figures, too, but no sign on the carding of a Voldo - time now to research
whether one exists at all.)

Next door to the toy outlet was a book outlet. I resisted going into either
one of them, but ze arm, she twists, and the lunch/beer/bill money, she
rapidly drains out of ze pockets when confronted with cheap Leatherfaces and
cheap new books. (I did not buy the stuffed hammerhead shark that, when his
belly is pressed, says informative things like "I'm a Hammerhead Shark, and
I have no bones," in The Continental's voice. I will go back for him after
payday.)

Tonight's a night. Tomorrow, however, is likely to be Big Fun, because I
get to see Melt Banana and Cream Abdul Babar at Velvet. Big loud. Big
twisted. Big fun.
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 11:38 AM

Cramming Seafood in the Mouth

There's a right way, and there's a wrong way.

The right way: befriend Ed Lee. Drive down to Florida for Owl Goingback's annual Horrorfest event at Borders. Entrust Necro Dave Barnett with the duty of finding a proper oyster bar. Upon arriving at the oyster bar, assure Lee and Dave that though THEY are visibly unnerved by the sheer redneckiness of the place, that *I* feel right at home and will, if necessary, save the day.

Gorge upon: raw oysters. Steamed oysters. Clams stolen off Dave's plate. Fried oysters. Beer. Pound of shrimp, just in case. Debate whether or not another bushel of oysters or another pound of shrimp is worthwhile; agree that it is, and that it is doable, but that there are many hours of drinking ahead and, besides, Dave's looking decidedly green, having never seen any girl in a Pabst Blue Ribbon t-shirt dive face-first into sea snot.

Leave. Enter club. Drink. Smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke. Sleep.

Wake. Kill self with godlike, gravy-drenched hotel buffet breakfast. I'd like a hotel steam table buffet breakfast in my living room at home, please.

Pause gluttony to: bum around Horrorfest for a while. Okay, for all five hours. I'd tried to be an invisible being but was stapled with a name tag by Owl promptly upon my arrival. Dang. Now I had to behave like a professional and couldn't just hide in the alley and take a nap. "Behaving like a professional" meant being happy to see Jim Moore, and spying on Lee while people adored him, and chainsmoking on the sidewalk, and meeting Hugh B. Cave, and growing overly attached to a radioactive rubber skeleton. I turned tattoo-related harrassment ("what's that on your arm?" "my skin" - okay, I'm bad at the professional thing, and the saleswoman thing) into a chapbook sale. (He looked at the title and said, "You're all about skin, aren't you." Er. Actually, I'm all about whiskey, Marlboros, and naps, but "Guess that's right" sufficed.)

I learned that I am not clever enough to write funny inscriptions in books.

Horrorfest continues at a swank Chinese restaurant across the parking lot. Let the gorging begin anew. Salt ribs, calamari (really good), Chinese beer Lee'd recommended, and a couple pounds of ginger chicken vanished down my sleepy throat.

We hit the club again while Dave did his DJ thing. I was my normal scintillating self - extremely sleepy, yawning every three seconds. A few Red Bulls fixed this and it was safe to move on to whiskey again. John Urbancik and Naima Haviland found Lee and I, and we shot the shit - and lo, unlike my local bars, this one decided to stay open another hour thanks to Daylight Saving Time. Glad I wasn't sleepy or anything. Ahem.

THAT, then, is how you properly cram seafood down your throat.

The WRONG way: don't be my oranda (fish) Shenmi, who thought it a bright idea to eat an otocinclus catfish ("otto cat.") Because if you're Shenmi, you'll not be able to fit the spiny fucker down your greedy gullet, and your enormous human caretaker will have to stick tweezers down your throat and haul the fucking (dead) otto out, using a stick to break the finbones to ease the dragging process. FUCK, that sucked. Trust me, you don't want me tweezing fish out of your throat (the scale equivalent would be like Average Sized Human You throating a river trout.)
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 5:28 PM