I am drained.

It is not because I’ve fought a cold all week, nor is it due to what had to have been one of the busiest Fridays I’ve spent at any job. No, it is this. This site. This ever-growing, always challenging, far-too-smart-to-be-left-alone (much like my German Shepherds, when they were puppies) community/blog/baby/project which I cannot abandon, no matter how many times it makes me cry, rant or mope. I did all of the above, btw. I cried when I re-read a certain infamously raw post about my past, because it is a trigger. I ranted right here, just a few posts below where you are now. And I moped, ohhhh did I mope.

I felt despair. I had been warned that at some point, this blog would grow so big that we would not be able to contain it, control it, corral it…keep it. The writing may have been on the wall, but it was not in our comment threads; some of our oldest readers, loyalists who had been with us forever, people we met online and then later IRL via meetups, whom we cherished…they no longer comment or visit us. They don’t want to be here and it breaks my heart; “that’s the price of success,” one of you told me. No, not that. I want it to always be like this, exactly as rare and wonderful and mutinous as this…

But for a good chunk of the afternoon, exhausted from moderating and well, caring, I gave up. I started to drink the rotten kool-aid and it upset my stomach and more important things, like that squishy mushy, weak, red thing in my chest. What was the point? The mean people who suck would win. And I for one would not welcome our new troll overlords.

I couldn’t take being 16 when I was 16, so feeling that morose, melancholy, weepy bleh-ness was extra untenable as a 32-year old. What did I do when I was that age and this miserable? Ah yes, THE SMITHS. Because as perverse as it reads, they cheer me, yes they do. Within seconds, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now wafted through noise-cancelling phones and by the second line, I was smiling for the first time all day. I smiled wider when I realized that I had “my song” and thus, my theme for Friday’s nanofiction orgy.

Write exactly 55 words about what makes you miserable, what feels like heaven, Caligula (my favorite despot!), How Soon is Now or anything else that the lyrics which are pasted below evoke. Hell, write about whatever you feel like burying or praising, just make sure you do and that you post your mistresspiece below, yes?

Yes.

Now that I am impossibly chipper (just listened to Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me!), I’m ready to go home. I hope I have yummy 55s to read when I get there. Continue reading →

When I’m not listening to Accuradio at work, the wee leetle iPod, it is on the shuffle. Like all other gadget-addicted fruit-lovers, I marvel at how the seemingly random is the utterly awesome, since I like every tune that gets served up, every time.

This, despite the fact that I am the one who chose to load all my favorite songs on to Suitable iPod in the first place, thus making me an ingrate for feeling so much wonder at what I, not shuffle, hath wrought. Maybe it’s the timing of it all, i.e. how the perfect song always seems to play at the exact moment it should? How else to explain why Depeche Mode’s “Master and Servant” blares when I’m reading about Dick Cheney and Dubya… 😉

Anyway, I’ve heard the song which inspires this week’s nanofiction orgy 2-3 times a day, every day this week thanks to shuffling. It’s one of my favorite joints of all time, in part because I sweat Natalie Merchant’s voice so so very much. So, since I already had mancandy on the brain and there is ALWAYS candy in my tummy, this week is dedicated to sweet stuff, which seems especially apposite when baskets everywhere are being filled with goodies which will make dentists rich in a few months.

Write about sugar, peeps, sour patch kids or that totem of my childhood which is pictured to the left, Cadbury fruit and nut. I’ve had everything from Hershey’s to handmade, exorbitantly-priced truffles and no chocolate is more delicious or makes me feel more loved; if it’s from England (where it tastes better!) I feel positively adored.

Write 55 words (exactly 55 words, no need to be Hemingway) inspired by the lyrics to “Candy Everybody Wants” or about your own sugar-fix in the comments below. If you are in a salty mood, disregard the weekly theme. We just want to read, so get typing. Continue reading →