Chicks-n-Scratching

Archive for the ‘NEITH’ Category

Yesterday was my 14th wedding anniversary.

Fourteen years. Seriously? How the hell did that happen?

Anyway, it made me think a bit about love, marriage, life, and all that jazz. What is it about love and romance that makes me want to write it? Makes me want to live it?

I think it’s the hopefulness of it, the life-affirming idea that there is continuity, stability, acceptance. That we are each one of us a worthy and wonderful person, and that somewhere there are people who recognize that.

I am not an easy person. I’m bitchy, moody, stubborn. On the plus side, I’m smart – really smart – and often funny (in a snide, sarcastic way). I’m sure this is big news to all of you – because this kind of thing NEVER comes through in my posts or writing. [hey! you could sprain something rolling your eyes like that!]

But I think, at the core of it, this sums it up. I am a world class HOPEFUL romantic.

Tomorrow is Eliza Doolittle Day (I’m not making that up. It is.), which, naturally enough, made me think of My Fair Lady and Henry Higgins. Which, of course, made me think about the type of hero Henry Higgins is. Hence the post.

So, I don’t like Henry Higgins. I think he’s condescending, snide, irritating, and generally paternalistic. I just do not understand the appeal of Harry Higgins as romantic interest. But, clearly, someone does. And just as clearly, someone likes him. Which indicates that a good story can carry off even the most unlikely of character types.

I have to say that in this post I am likely to lose mucho cred as a writer of romance, but I cannot be swayed from my opinions on the matter of unlikeable heroes. I can’t get into a story where I find the hero to be, well, asshat-ish. I want to be clear here. Moments of asshattery are fine. Heroes and heroines both have them, and they make the characters human and help keep the tension going. And there’s a level of snide and a bit jerk-ish that I can go for. After all, I have serious bitch tendencies. And I might even be persuaded if the character starts off as an asshat but redeems themselves – though it would have to be a serious redemption. And we aren’t talking about the whole rape/forced seduction thing.

No, what we’re talking about here is sustained and continued asshattery of the personality and non-sexual kind. Like Henry Higgins, who never sees himself as anything but superior and righteous. Even in the end, his attitude toward Eliza is one of entitlement. He never shows Eliza any shred of respect or valuation of her as a person.

Another hero that just gets me is Heathcliffe. Y’all. The man is an ass – though granted Hinton is a bigger ass. Heathcliffe in the last half of the book particularly, is bitter, malicious, and abusive. He is never redeemed by word or deed. And, frankly, Catherine is a snobby twit. Um. Sorry. Did I just reveal that I, a romance writer, actually cannot stand Wuthering Heights? Yeah, I did. Oh, look! We got a WTF today anyway!

A great post on Smart Bitches captures for me the only saving of the asshat.  There must be redemption. I must see some smidge of non-asshattery. In fact, the hero must reveal his non-asshattery to the heroine. And there must be groveling. Much groveling. Which is why Darcy isn’t an asshat hero. He grovels well.

Do you agree? disagree? Have asshat candidates of your own? Share!

So, the WTF home edition inspired me to hunt about for some home decorating nightmares to share. I found one.  You know I love to share. Why should I hold all this suffering inside?

First, let me share with you a site dedicated to providing for your fugly decorating needs.

Now, on to the horror show.

I think might be the porn-star brothel of Vlad the Impaler. Just a thought. Pics are all from the same house.

This isn’t even all of them. I’m scared. Hold me.

Funnily enough, Cinco de Mayo is a much bigger holiday here in the States than it is in Mexico. You can thank Corona for that.

The holiday actually commemorates the unlikely victory of the Mexican army over the French in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Mexican Independence Day is actually September 16 – so Cinco de Mayo is not the Mexican equivalent of the 4th of July. In fact, it’s not even an “obligatory” holiday.

But that’s okay. We can still drink beer and eat tacos. I like tacos.

We’re doing replacement windows for our house. In the course of doing research (yes, I research everything. It’s an illness), I found some construction ideas and “improvements” that, at the very least, make me scratch my head. Okay, let’s be honest. These are definitely WTF.

First is the driveway from Hell.

Uh. Really? I think you need a winch attachment at the back of the garage to haul your car up that slope.

Or what about interior paint? Pink? Maybe a nice pattern? One of those faux jobs you see on HGTV?

It looks for all the world like the wall is being swarmed by hot pink caterpillars. EW.

And our last one for today. In this gem, we visit the bathroom. Which, sadly will probably live in my nightmares.I want you to think about what level that mirrored stuff is at.

Ah. Home Sweet Home.

Okay, this hit my WTF radar pretty hard this week.

Evidently Chachi does not love paying taxes (who does?!). And Chachi’s wife is beyond bizarre.

So here’s the scoop, as far as I can tell.

Scott Baio, of Joanie Loves Chachi/Happy Days and Charles in Charge fame (?!) complained about paying his taxes, saying “That should feed, house & provide medical for quite a few lazy non working people at my expense”  in a tweet. The blog Jezebel.com (gossip, fashion, etc.) poked some fun at him. Baio evidently can’t take the mild amusement of a gossip site, and has a freak out melt down in tweets. Followed by his wife, Renee, having a total WTF moment and saying on her facebook: “F***kYOU Jezebel.com web rag!!!! You bunch of FAR LEFT Lesbian shitasses!!!!!!! No wonder you’re all lesbos because what man in his right mind could put up with your cuntess? Scott Baio has more class in his piss than all of you all!!!”

Um. Really? Totally classy. Oh. And Renee later posted that some of her best friends are lesbians. But maybe they’re right wing lesbian non-shitasses. Which, you know, is way better. Also, is “cuntess” like countess, only for your lady-parts? Just wondering.

There’s a full run down of the whole thing is on Jezebel, but it’s also getting coverage from Gather.com and even ABC.

All I have to say here is that I don’t think Fonzie would think this is very cool. I know I don’t.

In this episode, we’re going with arts and crafts that result in a very strong WTF reaction from me.  Links may not be safe for work. Or sanity.

I have to admit, to begin, that what sparked this topic was a post at Romance Divas. The post linked to this teddy bear. Total squick. Ew.

The next few are from one of my fave WTF sites: Ugliest Tattoos. Because there is nothing like taking your WTFery and permanently inking it on your body. WIN! We’ll start by saying that tattoo artists should provide spell check. Really. And then there’s well… just… WTF?! The whole site is a laundry list of DON’T DO THAT!

This set is from Regretsy. The tagline here says it all: Where DIY Meets WTF. Again with the spelling. Come on, people. And back on the subject of dolls - or cats - or holy crap. I think my head exploded. And the art. Um. Okay, I can’t do more of that.

Last set. Almost done. This one is cakes, which I suppose I’m counting as crafts. You make cake, right? I love the Cake Wreck site. Holiday cakes, occasion cakes. You name it, people screw it up.

There. Now wasn’t that fun?

So, I promised something non-political this week. That’s hard, but I did promise. And I thought about doing spam again, mostly because I just cleaned 493 spam messages out of the inbox (and while I wish I was making that number up, I’m not). But we’ve done that.

So we’re doing something fun. You all get to WTF me.

I’m working on a WIP I’m calling, rather tongue-in-cheek, the mystery-were. It received this name because I’m not telling people what the beastie part of my were is. There are.. um.. aside from me, 4 people who know. I brainstormed the idea with two of them, and ran the first couple of thousand words through one of them. The fourth one is my BFF, so she knows eeeeeverything.

Anyway, here’s the deal. Willem, my were-dude, is Dutch. He was marooned on the Australia coast in the mid 1600s (no, really. I have back story and research that explains this. I DO.). In any case, he runs afoul of the locals and gets himself cursed into a were.

So here’s where it gets fun – guess. Guess what my mystery-were is. I will give you a hint – it isn’t anything inanimate (at one point, were-boomerang or were-Ayers-Rock were suggested). So, knowing that it is an actual beastie, and not something inanimate, what do you think my mystery-were is?

Who knows, I might even tell you if you guess correctly.

Nah.

Budget woes, oh budget woes. Yes, in this economy, everyone has them.  But, really, can we TRY to keep our priorities straight?

Local example.  The county in which I live – Chesterfield, VA – has a major budget shortfall.  They are cutting funding for libraries, schools, and county services. Major cuts. At the same time, they are offering tax breaks to big developers to put in new retail and housing space – when we can’t fill the retail space we have currently and houses aren’t selling. WTF? Oh, and as an added bonus, they aren’t cutting in places that it makes sense to cut. Our county has 48 county employees who make over $150,000 per year. Compare that to Henrico, which has a similar tax base and similar school system, and is located just across the river.  They have 6 who make over $150,000 per year.  Why do we have so many? Cut THEIR pay. Don’t eliminate their jobs, but cut their pay. If we instituted a county-wide salary cap of, say, $148,000 with the exception of maybe the school superintendent (who, btw, is a whole other bucket of WTF. He gave himself a 58% pay increase last year in the school budget, and while the parents screamed, the county said fine) and the county superintendent, which we could cap at $200,000, we’d save enough to fund the libraries at their current level and make up about 80% of the budget short fall for the schools to bring them to current levels. If they don’t institute the proposed tax “incentives” to the developers, the revenue might actually pay for the proposed infrastructure expansion that will go along with the development. Though, frankly, I wish they’d shelve the development for at least 5 years – give our existing space a chance to fill up.

This is ridiculously short-sighted and profoundly disturbing. The county is effectively telling me, as a parent, that they don’t care about my child. They are cutting my child’s education budget and at the same time cutting funding to the other places I might go to make up the lack – libraries, community centers, county parks.  You know what, Chesterfield? That sucks.

There are similar cuts on the plate at the state level, but I’m not even going to get into what I think of the Virginia state budget and my extreme unhappiness with McDonnell’s asinine plans (you tell me – what sense does it make to eliminate a key revenue source at a time of serious budget shortfalls? Really?)

We aren’t the only ones. Kat talked about NJ libraries losing funding (good article here), and California is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

We all understand that the states, counties, the nation, need to tighten the collective belts. The problem is the priorities.  The only thing that Americans have to sell on the global market is service and innovation. We make almost nothing – our manufacturing is nearly nonexistent (in 1965, manufacturing accounted for 53% of the US economy, in 2004 only 9%).  That means that our brains our carrying us. We HAVE to invest in those brains – in education, in services that encourage learning, and in services that encourage strong service.  Our education system is sliding compared to other industrialized nations, and without the education, our young people will have nothing to offer on the global marketplace.  Far from cutting education and libraries, governments should be manning a push to increase the level of competency in our education system.  Cutting education and similar resources is the height of short-sightedness.

Instead, states should be cutting the fat in high-end salaries, in capital overhead (facilities, etc.), and similar places. And, yeah, I have to say that while I, personally, would love to have more money in pocket, I don’t think it’s the time for tax cuts or eliminating revenue streams or providing big tax incentives for new development projects. If you want to encourage development, offer a tax break for occupying space that has been empty for longer than 6 months. Offer tax breaks for rehabilitating and updating existing facilities. Offer tax breaks for rehabbing and/or occupying vacant homes, or provide tax incentives for buying foreclosures. THAT might actually help stabilize the real estate market.

What our politicians fail to comprehend is that real estate is in a  basic capitalist crisis here. We have a case where the supply of existing homes/retail space far exceeds the demand. Adding more supply is NOT going to help. All it will do is drive prices down further.  Instead, we need to decrease the supply, and the only way to do that is to NOT add more and make the existing supply more attractive. For people who theoretically should understand basic capitalist theory, a lot of politicians sure look like they don’t get it.

It’s simple.  We are a capitalist society.  We must offer something the market wants – and in the US it isn’t manufactured goods, it’s service and innovation.  And the supply must be appropriate for the market – which means we need an educated, innovative population. Cutting education and libraries and community centers is precisely counterproductive.  On the other hand, we need to balance supply and demand in real estate. That means NOT increasing the supply when there is already over-supply. Instead, we need to increase demand for the existing supply by changing incentives from new development to using existing development.

And, really, basic financial rules of the game wouldn’t go amiss. But that’s a whole other rant.]

Okay. I promise that next week I will find something non-political to discuss. I SWEAR. Though it might pain me to do so. lol

Sunday night, at around 10:45 Eastern time, the House passed the Health Care Overhaul bill.  It had some changes and amendments that make it a bit different from the Senate version passed last fall, so the Senate will still need to do their thing on those sections, but the underlying legislation is a done deal.  But what does it MEAN?

We’ve heard a lot of talk about costs to taxpayers, costs to consumers, benefits to individuals, concern for small businesses. Unfortunately, it’s hard for the average Joe (or Jane) to make any sense of such a huge, conflicting mass of information. The politics definitely get in the way of understanding in this case.

So, I thought I’d take a moment to give you some of the basics. Some good, some not so good, aspects of the health care reform legislation. I’ll tell you up front I think our health care system is broken, badly broken.  I’m not at all sure this legislation will “fix” or even “improve” health care overall. But since I’m not in the business of prognostication, I don’t expect to know if it will “fix” things. I’m willing to give it a chance.

So, here’s some basic info on what health care reform means for actual people.

What’s in the bill?

1. An individual mandate: all individuals must have insurance by 2014 or pay a $695 annual fine. This is like the mandatory car insurance thing – if you don’t have insurance, you pay the uninsured motorist fee, at least here in VA. Same deal. There are exceptions for the extremely poor.

2. Expands Medicaid for US citizens and legal immigrants; illegal immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid.

3. Closes the Medicare prescription plan “donut hole” by 2020.  If you aren’t familiar with this, the Medicare prescription plan covers costs of prescriptions up to a point, then cuts off until an out-of-pocket limit is reached, when the coverage kicks in again. The gap between the first limit and the out-of-pocket limit is referred to as the donut hole.

4. Requires that employers with more than 50 employees offer insurance to employees or face a fine of up to $2000 per employee per year. The fine is designed to offset government subsidies which will help employees pay for coverage.

5. Individuals and families making up to 400% of the US poverty level are eligible for graduated subsidies to help pay for insurance coverage. The current poverty line for a family of 4 is around $22,500. This means that subsidies would be available for families making up through around $90,000.

6. New health care “exchanges” are designed to create bigger risk pools and create competition for insurance policies.  The idea is that these exchanges will allow individuals more choice and will encourage competitive pricing by the insurers.

7. Starting in 2014, insurers will no longer be able to deny anyone based on preexisting conditions. Within 6 months of enactment, insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage to children based on preexisting conditions.

8. Parents will be able to carry their children on their insurance policies until age 26, provided those children do not have access to plans through their employer.

What’s NOT in the bill?

1. Government-run health care (aside from the changes to Medicare/Medicaid, which are existing programs). This plan does not put in place anything resembling the national health care plans of Europe, Canada, Costa Rica, or other similar plans.

2. Funding for abortion. The bill segregates tax payer money from private insurance. Subsidies from the US government cannot be used to pay for premiums that fund abortions.* No insurance plan will be required to provide abortion coverage.

3. Increased access for illegal immigrants.  Illegal immigrants will not be allowed to buy insurance on the exchanges, even if they use entirely their own money.  The exchanges are closed to illegal immigrants.

4. Universal prescription drug coverage. Nope. Not in there.

5. Reductions in premiums for existing insured. The vast majority of people who currently have insurance will not see a reduction in premiums. What you, theoretically, should see, is a reduction in increases.

*There is a separate Executive Order which allows for use of those funds to pay for abortion in the case of rape, incest, or for the health of the mother. This is the source of a significant firestorm. Pro-choice groups dislike it because it puts limits on abortion, Pro-life groups dislike it because it doesn’t ban all use of taxpayer funds for abortion. The order itself reflects existing law, so this is not anything new in the debate.

I hope that helps you get some of the idea about what is and is not in this bill.  In terms of cost, the estimated cost is around $940 billion over ten years, which is, theoretically, supposed to be paid for from three main sources. First, right now Medicaid/Medicare tax excludes unearned income. Starting in 2012 for families making more than $250,000/yr that will no longer be the case. Second, a tanning tax. No, I’m not making that up. There will be a 10% excise tax on tanning services. Third, an excise tax starting in 2018 on “Cadillac” plans – that is, plans that exceed $27,500 in cost each year for a family (this doesn’t include vision or dental benefits).

So that’s the basics. If you want more info, here are a few reference links: NPR’s Consumer’s Guide to HCR; The Examiner’s summary; MSNBC coverage; Wall Street Journal coverage; the CBS News breakdown; and the West Wing Report blog summary.  I’d have included a Fox link for contents of the bill, but I couldn’t find one. I found any number of articles on the political repercussions for the Dems having now passed it, but nothing on the actual contents of the bill.  If anyone finds a link for that, let me know and I’ll include it.