what do you read?

I've spent most of my life reading

I've been sick
in one manner or another
since the day I was born
so I've learned to while away the hours
by reading

I read all kinds of urban fantasy mostly
it contains all the best of fantasy,
romance, science fiction
historical fiction and mystery
that I need to keep me interested...

but lemme tell ya the problem
I've developed with that

the problem is..
that unless you have an urban fantasy reader
at your local library
who gets a voice in the kind of books they order
at said library
you spend a whole lotta time
looking for books by specific authors
and trying to convince someone to buy them
for the library

cos the other thing about urban fantasy
is that they are often written in series format
which means ya really ought to read #1
before you read # 9

capish?

the library rocks....
with all due respects to all those fantastic
writers that I enjoy reading so much
really...if I had to purchase all the books that
I read
I'd be livin on the streets...
prolly wouldn't hurt my waistline
but I don't like sleeping on the ground....

I also read blogs
my blog reading is responsible and responsive
to my urban fantasy tastes
in that
seems that every urban fantasy writer in the world
lives in the Pacific North West
and has their own blog

I just checked my library record...
and in 2008
I read 162 books from there...

that and kept down a full time job
that at least twice a year swells to
12 hour days for a at least
a month at a time
posted on all the freakin forums I belong to
the 3 blogs I write as often as I can
and increased I've my blog readin to the point
that I now use a reader to manage them

due to the weather...
I ended up with close to 3 weeks of
over the holiday season
without one freakin book to read

in the middle of January
the library
delivered 12
in the same week

seriously
all my holds came home to roost
in the same week

I need to be twins

so...what do you read?

Chapter 83

the sound: Bad to the Bone – George Thorogood, Legs - ZZTop, Frankenstein – Edgar Winter, Stanglehold – Ted Nugent

Robert and I arrived at the almost formal “celebration of life” on his dresser, wearing jeans and t-shirts. Robert’s t-shirt read “I’d rather have a sister in a whore house than a brother on a Honda”…classy. Mine read “titties and beer, come’eer come’eer” around a negative picture of Frank Zappa.

Everyone else there was dressed in suits and funeral wear.

As if our mode of dress didn’t set us apart from everyone else…the very fact that we were both higher than kites might have set some people off. I had developed a nervous tick that involved flipping my hair around like it was some kind of scarf or flag and Robert wiggled his lower jaw back and forth, left to right like it was about to wag off of the lower half of his face. This combined with the obvious marks on our arms when we belligerently took our jackets off with the intent of showing everyone our “dress shirts” left little or no question as to the depths we’d fallen too.

There wasn’t much chance that anyone could miss we were in trouble.

Gray and Rosie tried to get us out the door before anyone made comment, but Robert began to argue and I began to whine as only a pair of junkies can. I was carrying on about the lack of fairness and Robert was getting pretty heated and loud. We were quite the floor show so it was no small wonder that Mrs. K finally noticed us.

Mrs. K descended upon us from across the room…waving the ever present lace hankercheif as she demanded….”wot? wot? Wot is this ye’ll be doin now?”

She drew herself up and sucked in a massive breath and began a tirade the likes of I’ve never seen or heard since.

“How.dare.you?” she demanded scathingly…

”How.dare.you.show.your.dirty.drug.addled.selves.here.in.the. presence. of.all.these.good.people? “

“People that are friends and dignitaries that hae’ come all this way ta show the respect to me poor dead Daithi’s memory? How dare you even breath the air he canna breath...such a waste…the likes of you two? How dare ye foul beggars…”

Robert had the good grace to look sheepish in the face of his mother’s wrath.

Me?

I started to laugh.

Slowly, gradually building to something resembling the hysterical crescendo that that we all remember of the wicked witch of the east in the Wizard of Oz.

Right over the edge.

Chapter 82

I know, I know...it's been a while :)

the sound: Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit, Cowboy Junkies – Sweet Jane, Heroin – Velvet Underground

As Robert’s wounds healed, the two of us spiraled down a narrow path to our own personal and private hells…personal, private and together.

We ate together, when we ate. We fought with each other, when we fought. We slept together, when we slept. We plotted together when we plotted. And we fixed together when we got high. Neither often remembered to bathe and most often forgot to find clean clothes when we got up. We lived on caffeine, cigarettes and whatever we could get our hands on to get on the pitch.

As any junkie will tell you…getting “the pitch on” takes over your life. You never quite feel as good as you did in the beginning, so your life unravels around you and in no time at all…all you are concerned with is trying to get the right pitch on again.

You forget to eat, you forget to bathe, you forget to wash your clothes…all your time and energy is spent plotting the next hit, finding the money, finding the Greek, finding the works, finding.

In Robert’s case it was complicated by trying to keep what he was doing from his family.

Oft time family is not quite as stupid as you think and his was on to us in no time. Possibly it was the steady stream of people leaving the farm bearing goods that Robert had sold them or traded them in exchange for drugs. Possibly it was the ongoing presence of Gus and his evil looking cronies as Robert let them doctor their wares at the house for a “house cut”.

Robert, who’d made all his money running a motorcycle club that sold drugs and had kept them so successful by keeping such firm rules around not doing the product was pushin the pitch right through all the profit that he’d helped the club had make. He talked often of selling the farm and all of his motorcycles…he was his very own version of lets make a dope deal and often the men packed up their families and left simply because Robert had lost his sense of humor and the ability to love the brotherhood.

So possibly it was all the family of riders that slowly over time pulled up stakes and left the farm not wanting to watch what Robert was becoming that tipped his family off.

Rosie was particularly sad during that period…I don’t know if it was about her perception of waste, her belief that Robert had “done this” to me or if it was just her being tired of the lifestyle we were perpetrating….but she was noticeably sad while the rest of the family got mad.

Grey arrived on the doorstep one evening demanding that Robert and I attend a “celebration of life” that was happening in honour of Scurvy D’s birthday. Neither Robert nor myself were interested, both of us knowing that Mrs. K would be there…but in the end I guess we had no choice.

a little voice

there's a little voice
inside me
that says
over and over...

"I just wish this would all go away"

I do just wish it had never happened

but it did
and I can not retain my basic personal beliefs
if I do not fight
tooth and nail
for what I believe to be right
I can not live in a vacuum
nor can I stand by and watch the people
I care about
be set up for a fall as well....

the definition of friendship varies
dependent upon whom you ask...

at dictionary.com it is this:
Friend"ship\, n. [AS. fre['o]ndscipe. See Friend, and -ship.]

1. The state of being friends; friendly relation, or attachment, to a person, or between persons; affection arising from mutual esteem and good will; friendliness; amity; good will.

There is little friendship in the world. --Bacon.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity. --Rambler.

Preferred by friendship, and not chosen by sufficiency. --Spenser.

2. Kindly aid; help; assistance, [Obs.]

Some friendship will it [a hovel] lend you gainst the tempest. --Shak.

3. Aptness to unite; conformity; affinity; harmony; correspondence. [Obs.]

Those colors . . . have a friendship with each other. --Dryden.

the real definition of friendship for me involves love and respect and loyalty
it involves trust and faith and honor
it involves integrity and strength of character and confidence in someone
and it involves emotion
it's all of that and more

I've lost too many people that professed to be my friends
by breaches of any number (and/or all) of these items

Far too many
to not want to fight
for the one's I have left

Peace.