December 2014 – A Talemaker’s Confession

Merry Christmas! We made it to another year. Woo hoo and junk! I hope your Christmas Day was bright and happy. I have to work on mine, but I’m working and a lot of people aren’t so there is that. I got my husband a bag full of popcorn for Christmas and he got me a couple of mermaid MtG cards. No our house wasn’t filled with material goods, but it wasn’t filled with drama either so we’re good.

Many many moons ago I met one of the voice actresses from Gem and the Holograms at a convention. This happened when Akashik was just getting started and I mistakingly thought promoting it would bring me copious amounts of readers in this tits and cape area. Ha ha! But anyway, I can’t remember if it was Britta Phillips I met, or if it was Samantha Newark. I think it was Britta Phillips, because she didn’t have a noticeable English accent… but I can’t remember.

She and I ended up communicating a bit after the con by email, and let me tell you. I thought she was the bee’s knees. She was intelligent and really knew how to hold a conversation. She didn’t live very far from me, and this is where I went wrong I guess. I mistakenly thought it was still the 1970’s or I was still Down South or something and began to offer her my help in my “will help my friends do anything” kind of way. I had a professional video camera at the time, and I could tell she didn’t have much money. I just knew, though, that all she had to do was get herself a Youtube channel going and put up a few videos. I was more than willing to help her do it, and considering the few times I entered amv music video competitions I had won nothing less than 3rd place, I figured she couldn’t go wrong with me making her free music videos.

So I pestered her about it. What was my angle? I wanted to make an amv using Gem & the Holograms, which had just been released on DVD that month. That’s all I wanted, was permission to use one of her songs. I was going to make my amv, have something with permission I could enter into a contest, and she was going to get free pr and a music video to boot.

She wrote me this gentle email explaining that she was broke and that she couldn’t afford my services.

I was more surprised than insulted. And, as always when I hit this cultural divide, I was confused that people can’t accept a gift for what it is and always have to put something as paltry as monetary value on a gesture from the heart. And… why is it that when someone offers you something for free you can’t take it anymore? That’s so rude.

I waited a few hours before responding to her. I shouldn’t have, because that afternoon my computer went boom and took everything with it that time. I lost her contact information so could never respond. To this day it probably looks like I cut contact on purpose. I’ve often thought of stalking her down and emailing her to say not so and apologize, but I’ve been given the impression that I wouldn’t be heard.

Anyway, I’m thinking of that today because I took a few minutes before starting today’s buckets of workload to watch Netflix a moment. I’d been putting off seeing the latest My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic movie because of the plotline but today I figured what the hell. I started it up. And after a few minutes, when my husband sat down to join me, I stopped it because he’s not even very far into Season 1. I couldn’t do that to him.

So here are my belated impressions on the movie so far:

1. Ugh. Pop music competitions. I hate that trope.
2. The animation has really improved. I want the 3D animation software they’re using. And yes, I could tell. But it looked great and I want it.
3. While I’m at it, I want their computers to run it cuz I’m sure mine isn’t powerful enough.
4. And the passwords to get into the system, please.
5. Gem and the Holograms.
6. Yes, that’s right. The opening was a very spiffy revision of Gem and the Holograms right down to the star over one eye. WHICH btw could be slanted as an Illuminati thing. OR could be a nod to KISS. But either way, I felt like it was a very super colored pony version of Gem and the Holograms. The bad guys, introduced before things even started, even reminded me of the Misfits.
7. ….
8. Yeah, I got nothing else.
Okay maybe something else:

Let me see. To the left is a group shot of Gem and the Holograms. So far I see Twilight Sparkle’s hair cut… Pinkie Pie’s hair cut… I can’t remember the show enough but with the cookie cutter way the corporate run media does things, I’m willing to bet we have our personality tropes in place as well. The same ones as our little Equestia Girl group shot to the right. Yes, Virginia, you can see a resemblance.

But that’s neither here nor there. I’m just amused. And…. going to work now. Ciao!

Today’s post starts with my usual fury at that goddamned Silhouette Cut-It-Yourself. It cut like a dream yesterday and the day before, completely behaved. I started to have hope again, and I sat down and put together a project for Etsy. Took me quite some time.

Now that the project is ready to go, the piece of shit is once again not cutting well. In fact, it has decided to take a turn for the worse. The track that guides the little blade back and forth keeps making grinding sounds, and every time it does that the cutting alignment falls off in funny ways. I’m back to wishing I could beat the company’s CEO with it. OMG I hate this defective little piece of shit.

I managed to get a new page for The Heavenly Bride done last night and up for the paying readers. If you’re a Cerberus Candidate, I encourage you to go see it if you haven’t already! This page happened after another script change. I added just a bit more detail for our main protagonist there, flying along. Being all… quiet… and stuff.

And don’t forget to give me comments on the website. Comments are like gold.

I got lucky with this page actually. On top of the cutter being a piece of shit, my computer is dying again. It let me print one final blue line and then bam. Whatever is wrong with it went further south and I can no longer print bluelines. Got lucky!

I’m just not sure what’s wrong with the computer to fix it. The problem gets worse daily, though. I have to reboot frequently. It gives me “out of memory” errors now. Maybe it’s the RAM, maybe it’s the motherboard. Thing is here, normally I’d say on the website ‘hey I need help’. I’m not doing that this time. I did mention the problem. I also mentioned how we as a family have been struggling a lot lately and I’ve decided to just let the computer die because it’s too costly to keep it up right now. Mind you, miracles can happen but right now my priorities are more in line with keeping the heat on and the house from being taken away. I’m not making much money anymore – not just because I’d backed off from things – and I dunno. You just get soul weary after a while, and tired of asking for help. And people get tired of hearing you ask for help. So, for now I’m letting things erode. If they go the way of Akashik, so be it for now.

Miracles do tend to happen around me, though. So although my lifelong instinct, born of poverty, is to go “waaah panic!” like I often do… I don’t want to right now. I’ll wait.

I have evil Christmas cards to send. I also decided this year’s Christmas presents would be the old-fashioned variety – homemade. I probably would have chosen homemade even if we did have money. When you get surrounded by materialism, selfishness, and commercialism the way mainstream media is doing by the bucket loads a little extra this year, you kind of end up going “bah, humbug.” So. Bah!

When I get the cards out to their chosen recipients, I might remember to share it here. Be prepared and dig your foxholes early.

Month: December 2014

Keep Calm and Twinkle On