Last year I went a bit insane. Just temporarily. Sort of. No, really. But it wasn't my fault!

I was driven mad by an evil genius. A winged evil genius. EVIL!!!!! And it's happening again.

Gee...isn't it cute?

NO!

THIS IS MORE LIKE IT! (link to artist)
It's not Woody, and maybe it's not even a winged demon/evil genius, but that tormenting Pilleated Bird brain Woodpecker is excellent at the full on crazy making mojo! {{{And he's hell on me grammar!}}}

Every morning at 6:30 AM I am awakened by BRRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP! on my roof, my chimney, my walls... Oh dear Goddess make it stop!! And then it sits up there laughing its little woodpecker laugh -- chuckchuckchuckchuckle -- until I throw stones at the roof and it flies away.
I nailed it once with a stone. Teehee. It was back ten minutes later with a vengeance.

The hubby put the grand kaibosh on me on the roof in a ghillie suit made of roofing tiles and armed with a laser sight rifle.

He also poo-pooed my c-4 idea. Sigh.
Oh, and it's apparently illegal. Meh. Whatever.
Uh-oh. The twitching is starting just thinking about him.
Usually I can get behind the Federal Migratory Bird Act. But not now. Oh no. This woodpecker must go down in flames.  Out of spite, the fecker would probably land on my roof and burn the monkey house down...  Maybe I'll install a water cannon on the roof.
I'm not going to kill it. Nope. But it won't ever come back to the Keep after I get done.   
Mwahahahahahaha...ack, cough, meh.
Sigh. Now I know how Poe felt. Tap. Tap, tap, tap, BRRRAAAAAAPPPPPPPP.
But I'll get you, my pretty. Oh yes, yes I will...

Wow. It's Tuesday. How'd that happen? I lost a day...or two.

Oh yeah...St. Pat's or as I affectionately call it : Stereotype Celebration Day, ate Sunday.  And then Monday was spent trying to figure out what happened. Well, and then Tuesday. Oi.

What a fine time I had on Saturday. Met up with old friends, toasted home with Jameson Irish Whiskey, got a tattoo... Holy Feck I got a tattoo. Hahahaha...sigh. The place was two doors down from the pub. Snerk.
In honour of my muse and namesake, I had 1780 tattooed on the outside of my shot-taking hand.
That's the year John Jameson (Saints preserve him...more than the whiskey already did), opened the Jameson Distillery in Ireland. So he was Scottish. So what? There's a whole kerfuffle over Bushmills versus Jameson. When I was growing up in Belfast, it was widely known that Bushmills wouldn't hire a catholic from a Republican area. So I won't drink the stuff.  But the jokes on me. The French own the distillery now. But Hubris tastes like Sweet, Sweet Uische Baithe.
I digress...

I GOT A FECKIN' TATTOO ON MY HAND? Oi. Cackle ™ My mom would be so proud.

Had to shave the monkey fur to get to the skin :

Now onto the good stuff!
THE WALKING DEAD!!!!! What an amazing season finale!  The Farm! The Herd! Rick going all Shane psycho and dictator man! Michone! Armless ghouls on a leash FTW! I can't wait to see what they do with her character.  I've enjoyed the divergence between the graphic novels and the television series. Hmmmm...will Lori and her baby die in season 3? I hope so. Snerk.  Herschel's character became so bad ass. What are your thoughts?

Speaking of graphic novels...
Mike showed me the new artwork for WEEKU. Looking good! We are going to try and get a partial layout set up sometime this week. I'm using a cool program for the layout...I love technology!
Any suggestions on what you (the graphic novelists in the crowd) use?

I've been thinking of tossing some more short story collections up on Amazon for Kindle. Formatting is such a pain in my big, monkey butt though! Ugh. I aslo have some fantastic ideas for short stories lately. But I must find time to get them written.

(Image lifted from here)

Tomorrow I go for another dead hobo graft. Weeeeeeeeeee. Dead hobo in my mouth! (Better than a live one I'd wager) 
I wonder if that's why I've been craving dumpster food lately? Or wearing newspaper pants?
Heh. Give me a quarter or I'll touch ya!

Here's a cage match question of the day :

VS.

Image copyright Marvel Comics

Chuck Norris vs. Captain Trips. Run with it.

Tonight is the season finale of THE RIVER.  I hope there are more zombies.

Ooooh.

Now that these shows are on hiatus maybe I can get some writing done!!!

Cheers. Ta. Squish squish and all that rot.

Until Thursday, I bid you Adoodoo.

Foinah

Welcome to Thursday. I must warn you...this post is being written while under the influence of pain meds. Weeeeeeeee.

Yesterday I had the joy of having a tooth extraction. Ordinarily I run screaming from any form of dental madness, but my stupid Irish teeth -- yes, I am a smoking Irish monkey TYVM -- finally got the best of me.  A broken crown, a gnarly abscess, and pain worse than childbirth made me pine for a decent sawbones. Rather than undergo another dreaded root canal I threw in the towel (soaked with Jamesons) and went and had that bad boy yanked.
Vicodin is lovely by the way. heh!
Anyhoo...here's the morbid part. I had to get a bone graft. So now I have a random corpse's bone fragment lodged in my mouth. Hmmmm. Because I'm a horror writer I of course went staright to the dark stuff.  Of course I did! Who did this bone belong to previously? A hobo? A poet? A serial killer from death row? So many options to choose from. If I start manifesting odd (well, odder) characteristics or cravings I'll write about it.
I have someone else's body part in me and I didn't even have to eat the person first. Cackle™

Speaking of zombies, how about that last episode of The Walking Dead? (Nice segue, eh?) By now all of you have seen the episode. If not, well, here's some spoilers.
How happy were you to see Shane finally get gutted? I cheered. Yes, yes I did. But the ominous portent from the previous episode and the zombie security guards with no bites --"Hmmmm, musta been scratched," said Rick -- really hit home with Shane's resurrection. This Sunday's finale is probably going to epically gross and tense.  It's been interesting to watch Rick slip deeper to the dark side. Man...he gutted Shane. Got all up close and personal. No more white hat for him. Dale's death was the beginning of the end for the group.
A moment of silence for Dale.

_________________ (and scene)




Poor guy. Oh well... Who's gonna get eaten next?

Man I love me some zombies!

I've been watching The River on ABC. Created by Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity), and
Michael R. Perry (American Gothic and Paranormal Activity 2),  it's a combo adventure/horror/lost footage mini series that focuses on the search for Emmet Cole -- a host of a wildlife adventure show that went missing in the Amazon.
 For those who haven't seen it, here's the link
The last episode was very zombie centric. Well done. Damn! Is that how the zombie apocalypse starts? Ook. Bleh.
Overall I've enjoyed the show so far. One criticism is the way everyone just seems to accept all the crap flung their way without freaking out. At first it was NO! NO! This is pointless. I don't want to be here. Let's go home and mope. Emmet's son, Lincoln, makes me crazy. Not in the good way, either. He's this annoying, skulky, emo bleh who does a 180 and the skeptic is full bore, hell bent on continuing the trip.
The Paranormal Activity style is ever present in the film work, and the writing (besides the obvious issues with how the characters have been developed) is pretty good. It's kept me hooked. So far the show has been creepy as hell!  The horror is well done, the mysticism and magic seems well researched, and the tension is well paced. After the season finale it will be interesting to see where the story arc goes next. The show has the feel of Lost in its first season -- when it was unique and cool...before that lame ass finale where I still don't know what happened and am pissed at all of the unanswered questions. Ugh. But I digress.

Watch the show. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

On the home front both of my children have reacquired the flu. Ah, parenthood. Diarrhea and vomit from a two year old and six year old (at the same time, mind you) is so much fun. Especially while looped on pain meds from a nasty dental surgery. No rest for the wicked. My poor wee ones.

Speaking of which, I just heard the joyous sounds of vomit via the baby monitor.
That's my cue. And queue.
Save yourselves! Run! RUN!!!!!!!

Oh, one thing before I go...
Please stop sending me pics of midget clowns. No amount of alcohol or eye bleach can erase what I've seen!!!

Ta, darlings!
Send chocolate.

I realized that I still haven't ranted about a certain publishing house that I (in my opinion therefore considered freedom of speech -- nya nya) think is run by total douche canoes.

There has been quite the kerfuffle over at Dorchester Publishing/Leisure Books.

In 2009/2010 they apparently stopped paying their authors. How yucky is that?

Brian Keene, author of Ghoul and other spooky tales, took his fight to the web.
Read his blog for a great timeline and recap.
There is also an amazing post stream at Absolutewrite.com here. Apparently there's some hinky dink maneuvering and shenanigans by Dorchester owners to auction off rights to books that they don't actually own. Yeah. That's a sleazy thing to do.

I thought about submitting to Dorchester back in 2007. I'm so very glad that I didn't! My heart goes out to all of the authors fighting to get their rights reverted back.

This monkey has your back...it's not much in the grand scheme of things, but every little ounce of mojo helps.

Dear reader, if you see a title offered from Dorchester/Leisure... don't buy it. Send a message to this unethical publisher that you don't support the thieving of authors' hard work. 

Contact the company and ask why they are still selling books they don't own rights to.

Support these authors~ 

Off my soapbox.
Here's to you, dorkchester.

You've teed off a smoking monkey.

Oy! It's been forever since I posted a blog here.
Many apologies.
Walking pneumonia and The Walking Dead have taken a toll on my creativity lately.
And let me tell you that combing snot out of tangled monkey fur is time consuming!
TMI? Probably. Here's a stick to poke out your mind's eye. Snerk.
I did manage to do a guest blog post at Diane Dooley's blog about Women in Horror month. I enjoyed it! The funny thing is that I was so sick I actually don't remember writing it! Ha!
I had to go back and read what I sent her...apparently I do some of my best stream of consciousness with a high fever.

Walking pneumonia. Not fun. The Walking Dead? A guilty pleasure. Holy crap is that show totally Fecked in the head.  The second season has dragged a bit (budget cuts and no Durabont), but it's had its moments. Especially the last episode on Sunday night. Holy crud on a cracker.  I won't spoil it for you if you haven't been keeping up,  but I will say the group lost a little bit of their humanity. Ayup. Big time.

This sick monkey loves me some zombies.

(Pic borrowed from this blog --http://deathbysketches.blogspot.com/2010/08/marks-zombie-monkey.html)

Now...on to the Women in Horror month that was February. I missed most of it being inches from death -- oh, le sigh...whine, whine, whine -- but I wanted to mention one woman in horror that's done a fantastic job in 2011 and 2012 so far.

SERA GAMBLE. She's the executive producer (and writer) of Supernatural on the CW. I think she's done a great job with the show since she took over.  So kudos to you, Sera!

She was a finalist on Project Greenlight 2, and has been with Supernatural since the beginning. She stepped into Eric Kripke's shoes for season six and has continued to make the show both creepy and funny. Her IMDB page is a bit lacking, but here's a link to her wiki page :Everything Sera Gamble!

She gets a big monkey thumbs up from me.

Right. So there it is then.
Writing and coughing and writing some more, that's what I've been doing! The graphic novel is almost done. Yipee! I have some more shorts stories that are going up on Amazon soon. So buy them. Please. Monkey needs her starbucks.

Aren't I pleasant today? I've been informed that I'm a bit cross lately. Meh. Whatever. So I'm being cheery...just for you guys! Today only. Snark and sarcasm saved up for the next post where I will reveal a phobia of mine. It's wrong. So very wrong. And I know I'm going to hell for this fear, but hey...I can't help it.

Here's a preview : ACHONDROPLASIAPHOBIA.
Look it up. I've got delightfully dark and black humor stories saved up about my random encounters.

I'm a bad person. Heh.

Stay cheeky.

Foinah