I apparently missed all the radical cloud action Tuesday while I was having an MRI, which time I spent trying to decide what symbols to put in my Drawing I project, and what I might take to a Thanksgiving thing, if I went. I try not to whine on about the diabetes, because I’m determined that it should only make me feel bad physically and not attitudinally. But autumn is my season, and Halloween and Thanksgiving are–maybe were–my holidays. Also Memorial Day, but that isn’t really screwed up in the same way as Halloween and Thanksgiving, not being so much about candy and food in general.
I’m not a big candy eater, apart from the occasional PMS chocolate, or taffy. And I found both in quite delicious sugar free versions. (Although the sugar free salt-water taffy can not compete with the Laffy variety, nuh uh. It is actually good though, and not just meh, it’ll do. But there aren’t any sugar-free peanut butter kisses, or air heads, or any of the silly crap I normally indulge in this time of year. The idea of passing out candy I must not touch myself just bums me on a collosal scale. As for Thanksgiving? Its approach has made me realize I have to cooking identity anymore. Sure I can whip out a ham that falls apart at the approach of a fork, but baking has always been my thing. Like with the candy, my heart is not in baking pies and cobblers and jelly rolls and upside down cakes and puddings that I can’t have any of.
My non-dessert specialties are lasagna and chili, neither of which are all that appropriate for a Thanksgiving thing.
On a Thankful Thursday note, I am grateful for sugar-free Hershey’s Special Dark, and that the MRI is over. I wish I had seen the clouds. Yeah, there’s some self-pity going on.
Let’s ignore it and see if it goes away.
I bought a Nook Color, and I’ve been browsing the free books on Barnes and Noble’s site. It seems I have an inner agent…an underdeveloped inner agent, but she’s there, nonetheless, and I would like to find treasure in the self-published trash heap. This means sifting through a lot of trash. Some things that lure me to click through to the book description: the word dog or wolf in the title. Zombies. Lots of ratings (say more than 20) of three or more stars. A completely unexpected word in the title, case in point: Wendigo.
Things that just tick me off: When the wolf in the title is a werewolf. Vampires, period. How much self-pubbed vampire dreck does the world need? (In fairness, I am thoroughly sick of vampire non-dreck, and have been since Lestat became a rock star, barf.) A description that tells me nothing about what the book is about. A description with really atrocious lack of writing skills, by which I mean tense problems, grammar issues, spelling errors. When the author’s name is huge and the book title is small and unreadable on the cover thumbnail; if your name is Stephen King this works. If you’re Ann Smith, no. Actually I find it off-putting if I can’t see the title on the cover for any reason. I get that self-published authors can’t afford top-end graphic design, but making sure the title looks good should be a no-brainer. You collect enough of these strikes together in one place and it won’t matter if your book is Zombie Dogs in Wendigoland. I’m only human.
More tick-offs include when all the reviews say the same thing, which to nothing, and thus scream SOCK PUPPET. A couple of less-than-perfect reviews/ratings make the whole deal seem more legitimate to me.
Lots of these tales are really quite very much bad, but that’s ok. The people that wrote them don’t know they’re bad, and maybe someone else will like them. Meanwhile I will hunt on…in between school projects, one of which I should be working on right this second. ‘Til next time.