Movie Madness

Sorry for the posting delay. I had to be into work at 7:00 am and I'm just now getting awake enough and out of meetings enough to post.

So today, I have a rant. Shocker, right? That "I" would have something to complain about? And this complaint is a two-parter.

Yesterday, I went to see The Final Destination in 3-D. For those of you who don't love the horror circuit, this is one of those more new-age versions of a slasher movie and I think there have been 3 other Final Destination movies prior to this one. So my first complaint is the upcharge for the 3-D glasses. They charge you $3.00 more and claim it's for the glasses, but you can't use the glasses again for another 3-D movie - even though it's the exact same glasses! Then, to add insult to injury (IMHO) they place these big bins outside the theatre for people to drop their glasses in to "recycle." Are you kidding me? The only thing recycling is the theatre's profit.

Now, understand that my main problem with this charge is the manner in which it's presented. If the charge was included in the cost of the actual ticket in order to cover the effects cost of 3-D effect, then I wouldn't complain. But to claim you're charging me for the same tool over and over and over again, but I'm not allowed to reuse it is just setting yourself up for this argument from customers over and over again.

Anyway, I will likely have 100 pair of 3-D glasses at my house before this new trend is over, because darn if I'm contributing more to their bottom line. Heck, the cost of popcorn alone probably paid their utility bill for the month.

Second complaint - why do some people think it is perfectly okay to bring a 4-year old to a slasher movie? Hello! Are you TRYING to breed the next biggest serial killer? Have you watched one too many episodes of Dexter and think you need one of your own?

Idiots.

Deadly DeLeon

Author Stephanie Adkins

The fabulous erotic romance author Stephanie Adkins is participating in a really fun contest this week, so to tell you all about it, here's Stephanie...




This Labor Day, September 7th, several authors from Liquid Silver Books and I will be hosting another blog tour for your viewing enjoyment. The theme this time is Lickable Laborers. Oh yes … that means we’ll have lots of hot pictures for you to drool over. Licking your computer screen is totally optional. LOL Since Labor Day is also the release date for my novella, Resisting Kane, I will be giving away a free copy to one lucky grand prize winner. He or she will also receive the following items from other LSB authors:

Wyoming Solace by Alanna Coca
$10 Meijer gift card from Jeanne St. James
Satisfy Me by Madison Scott
Illicit Hunger by Dee Carney
Furry, Fluffy & Wild from Celia Kyle
Once Bitten by Trina M Lee
Intimate Strangers by Gem Sivad
Of Flesh And Blood by Tina Holland
The Extremist by Juniper Bell
InDescent by K.Z. Snow

All you have to do to be entered in the drawing is leave a comment on every authors blog along the trail. The tour will start with Alanna Coca, who will leave a link to the next author on the tour (which will be me). I’ll post the next blog and so on and so on.

So mark your calendars! You sure don’t want to miss the eye candy! I look forward to seeing you there!

Stephanie Adkins
www.stephanieadkins.com

The Birds and the Bees

The other day I did something really stupid. I decided to take the boy – a curious nine year old – with me to my prenatal appointment. I figured since we’re mostly in the weighing and measuring the belly phase, it might be interesting for him to hear the baby’s heartbeat and check out all the pictures of new babies on the midwife’s walls. Big mistake. Did I mention he’s Mr. Curious?

So, as soon as we leave, we’re driving home and he asks – yep, you guessed it – how babies are made.

Doh! Why is it that even though every parent knows this is coming none of us are truly prepared to answer that question? I’d like to think I’ve been pretty open with the boy, and he has a basic knowledge of male and female anatomy and the fact that a stork does not, in fact, bring babies. But this time he wanted the whole story. He started asking detailed questions about how a woman could try to have a baby, how long you have to try, where the eggs come from, how many a woman has, where, exactly, in the body they go, how twins are made, etc.

I think I did a pretty good job explaining the scientific side of things, considering I was navigating the freeway at the time and didn’t have google handy. And he seemed pretty satisfied. He was quiet for a minute. Then the dreaded question…

“But how, exactly, does the sperm get from the man’s body to the woman’s?”

I’m really glad he was in the back seat so he didn’t see how red my face turned.

“Um, well, they have sex.” (For some reason that last word came out of me in a church-like whisper. I write romance. You’d think I could handle saying the word out loud. Apparently, not so much when in front of my kid.)

“Right. Kissing and stuff. But I don’t get how kissing makes the sperm come out.”

Oh boy. So, with beet-red cheeks, I launch into an explanation of the “and stuff” that goes along with the kissing part.

His response: “Whoa. Hold on. You mean the guy and girl, like, fuse together? Like conjoined twins or something?”

Me: “Uh… kinda? Not exactly… I mean, you’re not really stuck together so much as… well, it’s complicated…”
(Why on earth didn’t I buy him a book with nice little cartoon pictures like my mother did? I never until this moment realized how wise she was.)

Him: "Weird. I don’t get why anyone would want to do that."

You have no idea how glad I was to hear him say that. I did a big sigh of relief, thinking I had done my Mom duty, The Talk was over, we had both survived. (And I was pretty sure I deserved some Ben & Jerry’s for that!)

But no. It couldn’t be that easy.

I pull the car into our driveway, we get out, start walking up the front steps.
And The boy actually stops in his tracks. He glances down at my big belly. A look of total and complete horror comes over his face.

“Ohmigod! That means you had sex!!”

“Uh… kinda?”
And I’m ashamed to say that at that point I actually ran – yes, ran – into the house. Then ordered him a book from Amazon with lots of cartoon pictures.

Why do I have the feeling he’ll be playing this moment out in therapy for years to come?



~Trigger Happy Halliday

The Great Mouse Adventure

Imagine if you will being abruptly yanked from a deep slumber by louds thumps, thuds, and--even more dramatic, terrified screams and shrieks originating from somewhere in the other end of the house. This was the scenario that played out at my home in the wee hours of the morning several days ago. Eyes blurry from sleep, I managed to grab my baseball bat from its place bedside and threw open my bedroom door and made my way down the hallway, prepared to defend my hearth and home.

One of my daughters' bedroom lights was on and I cautiously pushed the door open and peeked inside. There, perched on a chair with a frying pan in one hand, holding the ends of a towel wrapped around her still wet from the shower body with the other hand, was my last born. And yes. She's blonde.

"Wh...wh?" I managed before she interrupted.

"There's a mouse in my room!" she yelled. "It almost ran across my feet! And it's HUGE!"

"A mouse?" I frowned wondering how a frying pan became the weapon of choice when battling a rodent and then winced, thinking of the cleanup involved in dispatching said rodent with said heavy skillet.

Or a baseball bat for that matter.

"Maybe even a rat! It was gigantic!" She went on.

I took a step back towards the door. I myself am no fan of mice, no matter how cute and adorable the animators with Disney or Pixar make them.

"Are you sure?" I inquired just about the time the vermin in question made a mad dash for my own feet. Both mother and daughter vacated the room in record time, slamming the door shut to prevent the mouse from escaping into the house.

I looked at my daughter with her wet hair and slipping towel and frying pan and began to laugh. And laugh.

"You're some 'bad ass' mouse hunter," I told her, wiping my eyes.

She was not amused.

I sent 'Mighty Mousette' as I'd dubbed her off to get some clothes on. It was just after four A.M. and both of us had to be at work early. I searched out some more suitable weaponry, including a broom and a tennis racket, and we prepared to defend our keep and vanquish the intruder. I instructed the other daughter (the one who'd worked until one and we'd woken up with our antics) to go get mouse traps while we planned a frontal assault on her sister's bedroom.

Unfortunately, this mouse proved to be rather resourceful. After leading us on a chase around the bedroom floor, the villain had the where-with-all to retreat into my daughter's closet. Now, if you know anything about a 19-year-old girl, you also know what her closet is typically like. Cluttered is way too mild a term. And point of fact, I wasn't about to go through everything in that closet piece by piece in order to find the clever critter who had retreated into the safety of the closet's clutter. No way, pilgrim.

With time ticking away, we had no alternative to set several traps, shut the door, and lure Mr. Mouse out into the open and into one of our traps. To be safe, I had set down sticky glue traps, plus some traditional mouse traps. A bit of mouse overkill, you say? You don't know this mouse.

And now for a bit of advice for mouse trap makers: Don't try to improve on the mouse trap, folks. Don't tamper with a design that works. Just give me a simple, easy to set, easy to bait mouse trap. Nothing fancy. Just functional.

It took me half an hour to get two of the new traps set.

The daughter and I left for work, secure in the knowledge that one of the four traps we'd set for the resident rodent would nab the trespasser.

The other daughter (the one with the bedroom next to the room occupied by Mr. Mouse) called my cell phone as I drove to work.

"It's scratching at the door," she said.

"What?"

"The mouse. I can hear it scratching at the bottom of the door," she told me.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Does it sound like it's dragging a trap around maybe?" After all. With four traps set in a modest sized bedroom, surely the mouse couldn't avoid them all.

"I don't think he's in a trap," she said. "I think he's trying to gnaw through the door."

And so it went throughout the day with my daughter giving various 'updates' on the scratching sounds coming from her sister's bedroom.

"Should we try to kill it?" she asked when her sister got home from work.

"Better wait for me," I advised, recalling her nearly naked sister poised on the desk chair with a frying pan at the ready.

I get off work and drive home. The other daughter has gone to work (lucky girl) so it's just Mighty Mousette and Mom to hunt down and eradicate the alien presence in our home.

I changed out of my work uniform, donned hiking boots (don't judge me) and set several sticky traps outside the daughter's bedroom door in case the mouse made a mad dash for the exit when I opened the door.

I cracked the door open.

Nothing.

I go in.

And discover the *#@! mouse has chewed a quarter sized hole in the carpet behind the door in an attempt to escape! I also discover that one of the sticky traps has disappeared. Gone, baby, gone.

Puzzled, I cautiously begin to look through the room. I move the bed. Smack things around in the closet. No sticky trap.

I finally pull the bed into the middle of the room only to discover the sticky trap stuck to the bottom of a rug that was some distance away from the trap initially.

Damned glue trap.

And then I see both mousetraps have been sprung.

But no mouse.

Now I'm really mad.

So, I reset the traps and add another one for good measure. I shut the light off and close the door.

Five minutes later we hear a trap go off.

I slowly open the door and peek at the trap behind the door. Nothing. I look at the one in the corner. Still set.

I then poke my head over near the bedside table and look down at that trap and there he is sitting on top of the sprung mouse trap casually eating the bait. I bring my broom down on him. Bam! He scampers back to the safety of the closet.

Now this is really war!

I dig out two more mousetraps and set them, turn the light off, and close the door. No sooner had we returned to the other room than we hear a trap go off.

My daughter and I look at each other.

We return to the door of her room, slowly open the door, and peek in. And there he is. Caught in Trap Number 3. All the fight out of him. Permanently.

"He's disgusting!" my daughter shivers, and takes a picture with her phone to show friends.

We dispose of him appropriately (the neighbor's cat was thrilled) and went about the task of cleaning up the room and laundering bedding.

Today I went into the daughter's bedroom and my breath hitched when I noticed the other traps I'd left set had been sprung.

No. Couldn't be.

I went out and bought new, better traps (which means the old-fashioned ones) and set them to make sure we didn't have any additional 'lodgers' in residence.

This evening my daughter finally advised me she'd sprung the other traps by accident.

Good to know.

And that's the story of the Great Mouse Hunt. The downside is the time and energy wasted in eradicating the rodent.

The upside? My daughter finally cleaned out her closet.

Do you have any 'unwanted visitor' stories to share? Any critter phobias you experience? As Helen Keller put it, 'Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.'

I dunno. I think I could do 'nothing' for a change.

Best,

Bullet Hole Bacus

The Chicken Heart That Ate Girl Scout Camp & Other Tales of Woe...

"A woman in possession of a zombie story, will be in want of more
zombie stories..."

-Jane Austen

It's time for my annual Labor Day camping trip with my girl scout troop. This will be our 6th year of spending quality time together with monster mosquitos, wobbly canoes and rope burns as I spend my time teaching girls how to start really big fires and how to get burnt marshmallows out of their hair without screaming. Sigh. Has another year really gone by so quickly?

No one has more fun/screaming/trauma than us. No one. I've been with these kids since they were in kindergarten. Now they are in sixth grade. You know what that means...don't you?

THIS IS THE YEAR I'LL FINALLY BE ABLE TO TELL GHOST STORIES AROUND THE CAMPFIRE!!! Mwah! Hah! Hah!

I've been waiting seven years for this. Each year, my troop begs me to tell a scary story and each year I refuse, knowing that if I even begin the one about the hook scraping against the top of the car, I would spend both nights of that trip as a sleepless zombie with enough lanterns lit up to give the appearance of noon at the Equator.

This is a rite of passage. This is an important tradition.

And yet, my delight is somewhat dampened. I hate to admit this. But I only remember the one scary campfire story (the aforementioned hook story, naturalmente). Sad, isn't it?

Where did my memory go? I used to be full of bullsh...I mean tales of terror! I scared my sister so bad once with a vampire melodrama she had to sleep with a string of crucifixes around her neck for a month. They were made out of bendy straws and unfortunately after the first night, they looked like swastikas, causing our mom to ask her why she was afraid of Nazi's attacking in the night.

So why can't I remember all those deliciously terrifying, therapy-inducing campfire stories? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

Wasn't there one about the girl with a ribbon around her neck that kept her vagina from falling off or something? I vaguely recall the story of campers disappearing one-by-one every night...or was that Friday the 13th and Camp Crystal Lake?

I've tried the internet. Not good. I either get something so corny Barney would spit on it or bizarre porn. Neither really works for girls who have mastered sarcasm that would make the writers of The Office jealous, and who still believe if you kiss a guy you'll get pregnant.

Well, I'll figure something out. If you guys have anything, let me know. I'm getting kind of desperate...

The Zombie Assassin Chickenheart

The Top Ten Rules of the Craig House

Okay, I’m not a big follower of the rules. Well, except when they’re my rules! Now, ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you I’m a tad of a rule bender, and rule tweaker. I was mostly born that way. I mean, when my mom told me that I had to clean my plate, I did. The fact that I cleaned it by scraping the peas and hominy-God I hated that stuff—to a nice, little hideaway behind the refrigerator, is just a little manipulation of the rule. When my editor tells me my books have to be 90,000 words or less, I simply delete spaces between the words. Hey, if he wants to fix it, that’s his business. When I handed him the manuscript it was only seven thousand over the word limit.

Nevertheless, we do have some Craig rules. Some of them came into being because of some extraordinary experiences. Others are just . . . well, normal household rules.


1) No snakes in the refrigerator.

The son was five and he found mama very negative about his recent barrage of pets. The three frogs he’d captured and stored in his toy box. The neighbor’s kitten he’d kidnapped and hidden in his sock drawer. But the one that incited the actual rule was when I opened the butter dish and found what suspiciously looked like a baby copperhead tucked behind the blue cheese. (Oh, no animals have been harmed by my son. There was the dead squirrel, but he picked that up off the side of our yard—road kill—right before he carried it to show our new neighbors.)

2) No Play Dough in the sugar canister.

Yes, I explained that this was the last pack of Play Dough I would buy if he lost the tops again and wasn’t able to seal the cans and stop the fun little entertainment from drying out. Well, guess what the sugar canister came with—a nice little seal top.

3) No whole eggs, shells still on, cooked in the microwave.

“Can I boil an egg in the microwave?” I was asked by my then seventeen year old son. YES, Seventeen!
“No. If you put a whole egg in the microwave, it will explode like a bomb in seconds.”
(Warning: Anything that blows up and fast sounds like a good thing to a seventeen year old.) “Holy crappers, Mom! You were right. That egg is plastered all over the microwave.”

4) No farting at the kitchen table.
This one is pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?

5) No condoms in the dryer for mom to find later.

“It was AIDs’ awareness day and they were passing them out at college and I forgot to take them out of my pocket.” Right, I bought that.

6) No running from mommy when I’m trying to snatch the dingle berry that is dangling from the fluffy hairs that surrounds your cute little bottom.

(This is not my son I’m referring to, just in case you thought it was. Or hubby. “Come on kitty, if you want to sleep with mama, the dingle berry has to go.”

7) No throwing up hairballs on the kitchen table when company is walking in the front door.

I think this is pretty self-explanatory as well.

8) No wearing boxers around the house that doesn’t have button front. Yes, mama thought you were cute when you were two and used to streak through house, but things change!”

9) If it smells funny, or taste funny, don’t, DO NOT, ask me to taste it or smell it.

“Sweetheart, this milk tastes bad, really sour, can you taste it?” Sweetheart, doesn’t like sour milk, I don’t even like milk period, why would I want to taste it if it’s bad?


10. No letting Junior’s pet rats loose in the bathroom when Grandma Ginger is visiting.

I think this is another one of those that should be self-explanatory. However, it might have been hubby who instigated this. What can I say, she’s his mother-in-law.

So...do you guys have rules at your house? What rules do you bend, break, use to your favor? What were the rules at your parents' house? Come on . . . share a little.

Talent.......But No Taste

I've been watching America's Got Talent, and I have to say that I'm a bit confused by many, many things. First of all, the judges are just weird. They dismiss people who have talent and put people through who don't but do something different. Well, who cares. My dog does things that are different - that doesn't mean someone's going to give me a million dollars. It almost seems like they're shooting for a variety show rather than a talent show because they're always saying things like "We already have 4 magicians and only 1 of you can go through." Really, why? If all 4 are fabulous, and the other acts are 60-year-old dancing grandmothers (yes, she made it through) or something equally as stupid, then please, please, please give me 4 magicians.

Now, the show is at the point where America's doing the voting, and even though I already knew that America had talent, but no taste, I still shake my head every year I watch reality shows. I mean really. Check out this YouTube video - this guy didn't make it through and he's fabulous and TOTALLY Vegas. I really liked him in the auditions, too. He auditioned as a singing group - he's the lead and his three best girlfriends were his backup. The judges basically told him that he was great but they weren't so he wasn't going to make it. The girlfriends asked if they would take him if the girlfriends quit, so that's what they did. How's that for friendship?! So he had to hire new backup singers in Vegas and had days to put together a good show and was still lightyears better than others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTsl8mMJMuc

The only think about these shows that saves me from running screaming into the street is that I know from past successes that the people who need to see the talent, do. Look at Daughtery or Jennifer Hudson. They didn't make it to the top on American Idol but it's hard to argue they aren't successful now. In fact, they're far bigger than a lot of the past Idol winners.

America, please remember, these are TALENT competitions. This isn't a vote for high school prom queen. Can you please leave your popularity vote off the shows.

Deadly DeLeon