BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Continued from $750.00 Later…

Now, at this particular juncture, I am certain that some of you – mostly the male readers, though not all I’m sure – are just dying to know about the hottie in the hooker shoes…

Well, you see, it’s like this… She was a Goth nurse for the RAF back in WWII. Yes… She was way ahead of her time as far as fashion trends go… But anyway, I had been dropped behind enemy lines. Problem is, they forgot to give me a parachute. Fortunately, I bounce.

I was on a mission to steal Hitler’s mustache. Unfortunately, there was an ambush and I was horribly wounded… The bouncing hadn’t helped, trust me. After crawling for 40 days and 40 nights through muddy trenches and seedy Schnitzel Dens, surviving on what little beer and potato salad I could manage to steal undetected, I finally gave in to exhaustion. When I eventually awoke, I was in a hospital bed and the first thing I saw was…

Okay, enough of that crap.

At any rate, we finished dinner while Joyce handled the crisis on the phone. The crisis being the $750.00. What about it? I’m not going to tell you yet.

So… Where was I? Oh yeah… So anyway, the next day, following more doctoring from Joyce, I was treated to a driving tour of Fort Hood by Butch (remember Butch, Joyce’s husband? Good…) who also happened to be my official “handler” for the weekend, and a guy who can fix up one hell of a breakfast. Let me tell ya’, Butch saw to it that I started the day out right, with everything from Santa Fe Omelets, to French Toast, Biscuits, Bacon, Sausage, and all the trimmings. In short, the rest of the country of Texas could take a few lessons from Butch where food is concerned.

Following the tour I did a meet and greet at the store proper. This is where I came face to face with “Bouncy Brandi” the perkiest non-blonde I’ve ever met. I had heard plenty about her already, especially her price tag – remember that phone call about the $750? But we’ll get to that eventually…

Later that evening we gathered at Lolly Central, out on the range, so to speak. Srsly. I kid you not, the directions to get to Lolly and her husband Doug’s house are, Take the highway, go over the river, through the woods, turn off onto the gravel road, then turn off onto the dirt road.

Not kidding.

So, anyhow, we had a BBQ that couldn’t be beat – Chicken, brisket, salmon, and all sorts of trimmings, along with beer. I met and had a chance to chat for a moment or two with Dr. Steven Farmer, the other author guest speaker for the event. Very nice guy with all kinds of interesting things to talk about. During all of this Joyce was still doctoring me with the “Skunk Jooce” and “Healer Tea.”

My buddy Althie, the crazy German woman of Texas, who has been promising me sauerbraten was there too. Guess what? She didn’t bring me any sauerbraten. But that’s okay. She’s been really busy, and she did the next best thing – she brought me the necessary pre-packaged fixin’s, straight from Germany, to prepare my own sauerbraten and Knödel. Just add beef. So, I’ll be whomping that up in the very near future…

But back to the hooker shoes…

During all of this, “Bouncy Brandi” leans over to me and says, “Just so you know, I was really nervous about meeting you. So… for you, $750.00…”

“What?” I asked.

“$750.00,” she replied, all matter-of-fact and businesslike.

Since her husband was sitting just across from me I said to him, “Dude… I think your wife just propositioned me.”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “She’s like that. No worries though, we need to finance a room addition so we could use the extra cash.”

“But… $750?” I asked.

Bouncy Brandi leaned over again and said, “Hey, I’m giving you a discount because you’re my second favorite author. Best $750.00 in Texas right here…”

That’s me, ya’know. Always second fiddle to someone.

I told her to let me think about it, because I really wasn’t sure what E K would think of me spending that much money on a perky Goth nurse from WWII.

“Okay,” she said. “But don’t wait too long, or the price goes up.”

…And not a lick of that has anything to do with why this particular entry is called, “Food. It’s Really Not That Hard…” To understand that, we have to jump into the wayback machine and set the dials to OstaraFest 2008…

To Be Continued in Lolly, Lolly, Lolly… coming March 30, 2011…

More to come…

Murv

What with this being Memorial Day and all, I thought I would blog on a subject over which I have been ruminating for a few weeks now.

Every year, both my publicist and I receive numerous requests for donations from events nationwide. A huge number of these events are Pagan Pride Day celebrations, some are gatherings with less global ties, some are “friends of library X” type of things, and still others are speculative fiction type conventions. Now, the donations solicited are customarily autographed copies of my books, for the express purpose of them being placed in raffles or to be used as door prizes. Usually this is done to A) Give attendees a shot at winning something nice and/or B) To raise money (in the case of raffles) to help finance the event.

Monthly, my publicist and I sort through these requests and cull out the obvious scams (yes, there are plenty of those), the places I have already sent donations more than once (sorry, but I have to be fair to everyone), and those who flat out demand a donation. Yes, believe it or not some of these people don’t politely ask for a donation, they actually send emails or letters which state things like “since we as a community support you by buying your books you owe it to us to donate to XYZ event” (that is paraphrased a bit, and actually even toned down, but you get the idea.) And, yes, I will readily admit that I take a dim view of this tactic, meaning, if you demand a donation from me I would suggest you not wait by the mailbox because you are just going to be disappointed.

Anyway, once we have the list pared down, we select events to which we will send a stack of autographed books. Unfortunately, yes, there has to be a selection process because as I have noted before, just because I wrote the books doesn’t mean I get unlimited free copies or something of that sort. I have to purchase the books I send out as donations, and contrary to popular belief I’m not made of money.

So, yearly I end up sending out several hundred dollars worth of books and spend a ton on postage/shipping to get them where they are going. I’m not complaining about that, I’m happy to do it. I am merely stating facts so that I can put this in perspective. Anyway, on with the story… Out of the 50 or so events to which I donate books each year, if five of them even bother to acknowledge receving the books, I am doing good. If one or two of them actually say “thank you,” then we are talking about a banner year.

No. I am NOT kidding about the above statistics.

Which brings me to Memorial Day. Over the past few years I have also donated boxes of books to groups who were ostensibly shipping items to deployed pagan soldiers. These groups requested books, etc, and I happily obliged. While I am wholly against the war, I am all about our troops, and will do whatever I can to support them. Anyway, the above “support groups” fell right into the same category as all the other events. Not a peep. Not even an acknowledgement of receipt.

So…After having met with a huge number of soldiers at Fort Hood earlier this year while at the Ostara Fest in Texas, I obtained the APO’s for two different Open Circle groups in Iraq. When I arrived home I boxed up books, along with a note, and shipped them DIRECTLY to these APO’s instead of through the support groups.

Guess what happened…

I received thank you’s. Not only did I receive thank you’s, but BOTH of these groups took the time to pass a card around and have EVERYONE sign it before mailing it to me. This is something that could have easily been done by email, but no, they took the time to individually sign and snail mail, from Iraq, thank you cards for the donated books.

So, I have to wonder about this…

On the one hand we have the groups here at home who sit on their asses, safe and secure, make demands of people they don’t even know, and then don’t even bother to drop a quick email thank you to that person who has sent a donation.

Then, on the other, we have the men and women who have been sent across the ocean, living in a big nasty sandbox, far away from their families, getting shot at and risking their lives on a daily basis, who make it a point to take the time to send a personal, signed, thank you card expressing their appreciation.

Can you guess which of the two made a positive impression on me?

Happy Memorial Day – especially to those of you in uniform who earned it.

More to come…

Murv