Can you believe this crap?? My muse is on strike!!I woke up this beautiful Sunday morning with full intentions of writing a bit of fun for Jamie’s new meme, Take This Tune. I have a story about would-be Bankrobbers (one of them is none other than your Thornie) floating around in my head to suit her “Outlaw” theme song this week, but when I checked my email I found this note from my muse: (my responses in italics and parentheses)

On Strike due to Unfair Labor Practices

To whom it may concern, (WTF?? “To whom it may concern? Who else would it concern but me? That lil bitch knows exactly who she’s writing to!)

You are hereby notified that I am on, and shall remain on strike until the following conditions are met:

1. Ice cream. Ever since you got back on Atkin’s we haven’t had any ice cream. Those so-called Atkin’s “candy bars” ain’t cutting it. (What is she talking about?? Ice cream? We hardly ever eat ice cream! And those Atkin’s Indulge bars are good! And since when does she say “ain’t”?)
2. I want a bath! Candles and essential oils and maybe get the GirlyBoi to wash our hair. (OMGods! She knows we don’t take a lot of baths in the Summer! It’s just too hot to soak in the tub, and a lukewarm or cool bath just isn’t the same. Although it is nice when the Girlyboi washes our hair.)
3. Take more pictures! We stopped just when we were getting good at it! (I want to take more photos too, I was having a blast with it. But that went kaput when the camera took a shit. It can’t be helped!)
4. Road Trip!!! (Oh, Muse… I know it’s been since forever since we took a road trip. It would be awesome to head up the coast to visit Susan in SLO, or Lill in Sacramento, or to hit the big Hiways and go see Shelly and Mr. Shelly in Texas. But even if we could scrape up gas and road food money, we can’t risk taking lil Golda that far- she’s all we’ve got!)
5. I want a new tattoo, or more work on our back piece! I’m not feeling like a “Phoenix Rising”! I feel like wet ashes! ( Well… we can’t get the back piece worked on right now, that would take more money than we can afford.)

If these demands are not met I will NEVER work again!! No more blog posts, no more painting or tattoos, no more collage or sculpture or, or, or… anything!!
Signed,
Your Muse

Oh she can be such a pain in the ass, sometimes! Doesn’t she realize that I’m just as bummed about that stuff? Well, here’s my response. It doesn’t sound to patronizing, does it? Ehhh… she’s not to bright; she’ll never notice as long as I placate her. I hope she’ll reply soon. Peace, out!

Dear Muse,
I know we’ve been working awfully hard lately, what with the microposts and eZine for BlogonSmog and all the housecleaning and sorting and setting up the new studio. Also money has been tight and we haven’t been able to get out and buy a new pair of shoes or even some $.99 store goodness. I’m sorry that I’ve been neglecting you. I’ll just have to come up with some fun for us that we can do on a tight budget.
So here is my counter offer:

1. I won’t do Ice Cream, but how does berries and cream sound?
2. Eda is coming to visit soon and I’m going to teach her how to tattoo. She’s such a great artist and craftsperson I’m sure she can handle some of the black linework on our left arm. So there it is, new tattoo coming soon.
3. Let’s paint our nails midnight blue and we’ll foil them to look like fireworks against the night sky. Won’t that be fun?
4. The moon is just past full. Want to dance naked tonight? We can build a fire in the brazier and howl to the Coyotes if you want, too.
5. And we can watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the original) and Big Fish again.

Sorry, Muse. That’s the best I can do right now. I miss you, I need you. Please come back to work.

Love, Thornie

Do you remember when those yellow, diamond shaped “yield” style signs stuck to the inside rear window of your car or truck were so popular? Back in the 80′s??

I had a kid of my own, but I got so sick of seeing those that read “Baby on Board”. I mean, did anyone really think that a sign like that would make a difference to a reckless driver?? Like, I’m an idjit hauling ass down the freeway in my Camaro, head banging music blaring, pounding the steering wheel at 120 MPH while weaving in and out of traffic and I see one of those signs. “Uh-Oh,” I think. “I’d better be more careful. That car has a baby in it”. Yeah…. right.
Anyway, when I saw one of those lil signs that read “Baby I’m Bored” it was all about was lick n stick that baby in the back window of my ’78 4×4 Bronco!

I’ve been thinking of that sign a lot lately.

Last week my stats climbed to almost 1000 uniques a day for several days. It was a real wake up call. The post that generated this sudden spike was one from 2 years ago. It was a piece of Thorneish foolishness entitled Humpday and Thursday Thirteen (or: Lesbian Lust) with a list of sexy women with a token male. So two things, (at least) are immediately obvious: 1) Real writing doesn’t generate traffic unless you are writing about How to Increase Your Traffic or How to Get Rich Quick and 2) The single one of my posts that has gotten a significant amount of traffic was from when I was posting simply “for fun and for free”.

I’m done trying to make money on my blog. That’s right. It has become an act of masturbation that doesn’t even feel good. Haaaaa Bwahahahaha…
I mean, there is no reason to masturbate if it’s not fun- if it doesn’t feel good- right??

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to blog anymore.

What it means is:

• I’m deleting my stat counter plugin (Thanks for this great idea, Shelly my sweet!)
• I’m deleting all the google adsense and affilliate links and pay per post crap from my sidebars, which will leave room for all my cool lil icons and witty quotes of old.
• It does mean I won’t be around quite as much; I have to make some money, so freaking fibromyalgia or not, I’m resurrecting A Hartjoy Design, my stained glass business. Be looking for postings of my auctions and sale items very soon.
• But it also means, I’ll be writing what I want to write when I want to write and saying fuck if I want to.

Peace, out!

So welcome to the ad hoc TT. Thirteen whatevers. Let’s have some fun and get to know each other a bit. Don’t forget to leave your link at the site and leave a comment here. Thorne loves TT-ers!

13 Reasons Thornie is Stressin’ the Blog Move

1) Finding a theme I love has taken countless hours.

2) Once I found the header image on this one, I loved it so much I didn’t care about functionality

3) Well, actually I thought I could tweak the functionality

4) CSS pretty much sux

5) They say that both math and language use the same hemisphere of the brain. I speak 3 languages. I suck at math. Code is like a new algebraic language.

6) Languages are best learned when you’re young.

7) I’m not young.

8) php may be great for running things, but it’s hell to figure out compared to good ol’ html.

9) The good news is: People in general at the wordpress.org forums are pretty helpful (as long as you’ve at least tried to search the answers to your questions, first)

10) I’m worried that my beloved my “lurkers” and feed readers might not find me.

11) I have to ask my lovely blogrollers to update me yet again!

12) There are sooo many broken images and links after the move.

13) There is a stray TT from February as the top post on this page. I have no idea why or how it got there. I hope this will replace it.

That’s my TT! Thanks for stopping by! I’m off to visit now!