Project Mayhem Mission 7: Story Eternal

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Missions, Project Mayhem

Here’s another Project Mayhem mission that’s a little different. It’s fiction again, for one thing. It’s participation in another internet writing project, for another.

Story Eternal is a cooperative story written by the community. There are four separate stories, denoted as World One through World Four, all grown from the same opening. To participate, you choose the version that you would like to contribute to and submit your addition as a comment on the newest version. Then, they choose the submission that becomes the next installment of the story and repost it with the new segment included and the process begins again. Check the FAQ for more about how it works.

This week’s mission is to contribute a submission to Story Eternal, whichever version you like. It’s a 500 word limit (per Story Eternal’s guidelines).

To link, you can either set the URL to this mission’s location when you post your comment, or you can post a comment here linking to your comment there.

Deadline: Saturday 4 April 2009, 23:23:59

Go write.

Project Mayhem Mission 6: Expectations

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Missions, Project Mayhem

Thanks to Bra_Billie_Boy from The Phorum for the suggestion.

Standard rules apply: whatever form you like, 1000 word upper limit. The topic is:

Expectations

Ask Oxford defines an expectation as the “belief that something will happen or be the case” or “a thing that is expected to happen.”

Deadline: Saturday, 7 March 2009, 23:59:59

Let us know your a topic suggestions for Project Mayhem.

Project Mayhem “Baby Blues” Contest

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Baby Blues contest, Project Mayhem

H.P. Kang, in the throes of work stress, twenty-four hour morning sickness, and first trimester narcolepsy is running low on the energy to update regularly, so she’s decided to run a contest.

The Prize
A brand spanking new copy of The Cardigans - Super Extra Gravity delivered to your door via USPS or other applicable mail service.

The Rules
Submit your original story, poem, essay or article using the submission form in this post. (Submit here.)

Entries will be posted on The World According to Kang blog*, in the order they are received, a maximum of one per day** and beginning when the first entry is received.

The theme is “Baby Blues.”

Entries should be between 300 and 1000 words. (Except poems, which may be shorter.)

All entries must be received by 31 March 2009 23:23:59 EST.

You may enter as many times as you like, but each entry must be unique. (No resubmitting the same thing five times.) The sooner you get your entry in, the sooner it’s posted, and the longer readers have to vote for you. That’s intentional to encourage people to enter early, rather than wait for the deadline.

Winners will be determined by 15 April 2009 and notified via email by 18 April 2009.

Entries may not be re-posted elsewhere on the internet (including the author’s blog) until 1 June 2009. This shouldn’t be a great hardship, since “Baby Blues” isn’t exactly a topic with an expiration date.

The winner will be decided by a reader poll*** in the Phorum. (Vote here.)

You may change your vote as many times as you like until the polls close on 14 April 2009. You must register to vote. (Register here.)

Read the rest of this entry »

How to piss off High Priestess Kang…

Posted by High Priestess Kang as Blogging, T3h Intarweb

…or any other writer (legitimate or hack).

Again, I do not profess to be the next Vonnegut.  I maintain my earlier stated position that if I could write one sentence as powerful as anything written by Vonnegut, I could go to the grave with a smile on my face.

That said - it’s really challenging coming up with inventive ideas.  It’s somewhat draining trying to weave the tapestry of words into something remotely profound.  The writer knows when he or she is successful.  The writer feels it in his or her bones, gut and heart.  It doesn’t happen often, however, every now and then - you know you have created something so special and rare, it’s hard not to let your pride and your ego take over.

Up until this point, I have only been plagiarized once.  A local columnist asked me to write something about being Jewish in The South for a book she was working on.  She took my words, published them and did not credit me.  Nary a thank you.  I was invited to the book signing and fortunately did not attend, for I would have force fed her the book without the appropriate credit.  Yes.  In the event you are wondering, I’m still smarting over that - five years later.  It’s tasteless behaviour and demonstrates a complete lack of creativity and casts doubt upon everything written for you know, if someone had stolen your idea from you - from where else have they pillaged.

Sometimes, I hate the internet because it brings along surprises I don’t necessarily find amusing.

The thing eating at me today is so banal to others, I feel guilty whining about it.  But - it’s really grating on my soul and needs to be said.

Someone else bogarted my ideas and metaphors.  Someone else is emulating me.  I don’t give a flying phuck if it is intentional or not.  I don’t give a flying phuck if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  My words, my ideas are mine.  Yes.  I realize I run the risk of having things taken from me by publishing - even on a blog - my thoughts.  But have one iota of decency and do not steal what is not yours for the taking.

As a megalomaniacal scribe, this not only makes me irate, but it leaves me feeling confused and violated.  As someone who lives in my brain, it makes me wonder how a self-described, “artist” can ethically take what doesn’t belong to him and use it to provide humour for others.

Influence is one thing.

Copying, pilfering, bogarting, plagiarizing, in any form or fashion, is phucking wrong.  More over, it speaks volumes about the character of the individual who is engaging in such a form of assbanditry.

I’m trying to let this go, yet it festers, gnaws and chews at me.  Confrontation is not an option since the thief is uncorked and thrives on negativity.  The only thing I can do is vent my spleen where I do and hope others respect that enough to leave me to my own devices and my words and thoughts to my own page.

:narrows eyes, sputters and spits:

Project Mayhem Mission 5: Reversal

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Missions, Project Mayhem

I hope H.P. Kang will forgive the presumption. I decided to take up the slack since she’s got enough to occupy her attention right now without trying to come up with Project Mayhem prompts too.

This week, standard rules apply. Write in whatever form you like, 1000 word upper limit, on the topic of:

Reversal

I thought I’d stick with the “re” theme we seem to have going on.

According to Ask Oxford, reversal means either “a change to an opposite direction, position, or course of action” or else “an adverse change of fortune.”

Deadline: Saturday, 28 February 2009, 23:59:59

(It’s a bit over a week, to leave a little wiggle room for anyone still catching up on the Fiction challenge.)

If you have an idea for a Project Mayhem mission, drop into The Phorum. We’ve got a suggestions discussion underway.

Le snooze

Posted by High Priestess Kang as Baby Blabber

How I managed to transition from heartburn laden insomniac to narcoleptic escapes me entirely.  Wait.  No it doesn’t.  I was simply, foolishly hoping that the first trimester sleepies were something others deal with.  Boy!  Was I wrong.

Now - instead of staying up all night with Ming, I’m spending every spare moment in bed, drooling on my pillow and wrapped up in layers of blankets (I still cannot control my body temperature to save my soul).

:headbob:

So, I’m behind on Project Mayhem by a week.  I’m certain I’m falling behind at work.  The only time I manage to speak with Dock is when I’m awake long enough to ask for something from the kitchen (being around food is enough to send me screaming for the toilet).  Joy!

If you need me, I’m in bed.  Best to text at this point.  Even Twitter requires too much energy.

Why living in Raleigh…

Posted by High Priestess Kang as Observations

…doesn’t always suck.

71 degrees on 08 February 2009.

(Photo snapped yesterday while rotting in traffic)

A uterus does not a stupid person make…

Posted by High Priestess Kang as Observations

Brilliant.  Sheer brilliance.

The rules according to Chickmovietopia
In movies like ‘Just Not That Into You,’ women are stupid, men are clods

The book “He’s Just Not That Into You” was already startlingly old-fashioned when it was published in 2004. From its firm belief that women should never ask men out to its even firmer belief that women are emotional, shoe-buying weepers and men are beer-drinking clods who can’t change (so stop nagging, ladies!), it applied the thinnest layer of “You go, girl!” pseudo-feminism to a bunch of ossified ideas about how the world works and became a best-seller.

And now, the ideas that already seemed tired in 2004 are resurfacing in 2009. Why don’t men call when they say they will? Why do men hate commitment? Why do women date jerks instead of nice guys?

Despite the fact that there are already so many movies about these very questions that you could watch one every night you spend home alone for the rest of your life and never run out, “He’s Just Not That Into You” — the movie — wants you to believe it will tell you the truth about what goes wrong in relationships.

And — maybe this is a spoiler? — the truth, according to the trailers, is that what goes wrong in relationships is that women are mind-bendingly stupid.

In one trailer alone, Ginnifer Goodwin can’t get through a phone call without reading from a script and having her friend stand over her shoulder, and she still bungles it; Drew Barrymore doesn’t understand that being contacted on MySpace isn’t an intimate connection and has to be told by what appear to be her sassy gay friends (and seriously… there are still MySpace jokes?); Jennifer Aniston tells Ben Affleck to stop being nice to her unless they’re going to get married; Goodwin concludes that she hasn’t gotten a phone call because the guy “got hit by a cab”; and Barrymore seems flummoxed by newfangled technologies such as… text messaging.

For women who aren’t stupid — for women who don’t call in reinforcements to make phone calls, who know what MySpace and text messages are, and who don’t make up stories about taxi accidents to explain unreturned phone calls — it isn’t clear what, exactly, the movie has to offer. To them, it will be just another movie that comes from a strange land we will call Chickmovietopia, in which easy ideas about love replace the more complicated ones we know from real life.

What are the laws of Chickmovietopia?

Have your big moments on the sidewalk. If you think back on your most romantic moments, aside from smooches here and there while waiting for cabs, you will likely find that during most of the important ones, you were indoors. During the big confrontations, the big reconciliations, and the big love scenes, you are somewhere pedestrian — like the kitchen.

In Chickmovietopia, you will almost certainly be standing on the sidewalk (or possibly on the doorstep). Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks coming together in the park in “You’ve Got Mail”; Sandra Bullock running into Hugh Grant’s arms in “Two Weeks’ Notice”; and, perhaps most famously, Grant and Andie MacDowell at the end of “Four Weddings And A Funeral,” in which she manages to make the line “Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed” sound a bit more literally dunderheaded than the writer perhaps envisioned.

Self-awareness is universal. If you’ve ever seen Ethan Hawke’s portrayal of a sullen, self-absorbed jerk in “Reality Bites,” you know that he kind of nailed it: The casual meanness, the manipulation of sympathy, and the facial hair that says, “I will break your heart and stink up your apartment.” It’s an eerily accurate portrait of a particular kind of person, until the moment when he shows up — hey, on the sidewalk! — and explains to Winona Ryder his “planet of regret” for the way he’s treated her. In real life that guy does not do that. In Chickmovietopia, it might take him a long time, but he’ll get it eventually. See also: “Jerry Maguire.”

The theory of the emotional flip. In Chickmovietopia, the most important indicator that you will one day be deeply in love with someone is the strength of your instantaneous reaction to that person, whether it is positive or negative. An instant dislike — say, how obnoxious Meg Ryan finds Billy Crystal on their cross-country trip in “When Harry Met Sally” — is almost as good as an instant attraction. Because you can always flip the direction later.

In real life, the logical path is from disliking someone to disliking him either more or less. In Chickmovietopia, the logical path is from intense dislike to intense romantic love. Warning: Dramamine may be required for the abrupt changes of direction.

Women who have sex for fun are destined for pain. In real life, sex for fun can be either a bad idea or… you know, fun. But in Chickmovietopia, it is always, always, always a disaster, particularly for women. Take “The Devil Wears Prada,” where — in a development not present in the book — the heroine sleeps with a sexy fellow she doesn’t know well, only to learn the very next morning that he is plotting and scheming to do evil. This kind of aching regret while the sheets are still warm can certainly happen in real life, but it doesn’t have the utter inevitability it has in Chickmovietopia.

The curative powers of the makeover. In real life, the lesson you eventually learn about attractiveness is that you may not be as attached to physical perfection as you think, particularly once you face some facts about how many people are and are not physically perfect, and once you realize that a person who looked average yesterday looks a lot better today once he’s had a chance to charm you.

In Chickmovietopia, the lesson you eventually learn about attractiveness is that underneath it all, ugly people just need different clothes and contact lenses to become physically perfect, and then you can date them, so don’t give up until they’ve at least been to LensCrafters.

These are the rules of Chickmovietopia. Perhaps “He’s Just Not That Into You” will take place in that world; perhaps it will not. If you’re a woman, just hope you’re smart enough to figure it out.

The troll roll…

Posted by High Priestess Kang as Blogging, T3h Intarweb

…and the small price you pay for living out loud, in the eye of the public.

Our little troll has returned.  Singing the same song.  Dancing the same dance. What used to be somewhat alarming is now tedious.  What used to draw attention from others is now met with indifferent silence.

I recall, when first beginning to seriously internet, being deeply upset by this form of criticism and emotionally unhinged behaviour.  I wasn’t above calling Dock and crying, “Where do these people get off…?”  Then my outer shell hardened.  Now, the numpties, the nutters, the trolls and the rickets-laden failures are simply background noise.  Scream as they might for attention, they really don’t get very far in their quest for validation.

Ultimately, the truth speaks for itself.

Every blogger has a troll.  Every writer a critic.  Imagine how horrifying it would be if you had none.  As the old saying goes, “Bad publicity is better than no publicity” (or something to that effect).

As I grew up on the internets, I started to return the favor and engage in YCTAT.  I became pretty savvy at taking the piss out of the groaners.  I have also become marginally bored with that activity, too.  Now - I save my windups for instances most necessary - luring trolls into the afterlife of a forums graveyard, making people self-destruct with their own words.  Catty?  Perhaps.  But it’s a great way to avoid the noise.  And, more over, if you’re going to attempt to annoy me, why can’t I have a little fun returning the favour in kind.?.  The world is in dire need of less aural and verbal pollution.

But - really- even the High Priestess can’t do *that* forever.  She speaks her mind.  If you get hurt, well - maybe a little introspection on your own behalf might serve you well.  To quote Ming, from an earlier post, “It’s not the mirror’s fault the reflection is ugly.”  And I am your mirror.

No one is perfect.  No one behaves honourably all the time, either.  Certainly not me.  But I do take some well calculated risks to remind people of their proper position in life - not in mine.  Be it a stern warning, a diatribe or return trolling, you’ll get the message.  Even if it takes you several years and forums incarnations, right?

The internet can be fun.  It can also be littered with morons.  Make of it what you will, do what you must.  Just spare me the aggravation of having to listen to you sputter and spurt because you were rejected for behaviour deemed unfitting of an adult, ok.  A little more personal responsibility and a lot less self-serving works well for mostly everyone.

Failure to learn that simple lesson usually results in a verbal bitch slap of an unparalleled level from yours truly.  For that, is just part of my art, part of my craft and my commitment to the larger environment, the greater good.

Now that my bit has been said - I cannot help but wonder exactly how smug and self-righteous that sounds.  That wonderment lasts for a fleeting second, however.  There are shiny objects to distract me.

Wow…

Posted by High Priestess Kang as Personal

…it’s starting to sink in.  I’m pregnant!?!?

I’m going to try my best to withhold the expecting mommy spam from the written form of KangWorld.  I bought a journal to record my musings for baby.

That said - it’s really starting to sink in.  I feel like the cat that swallowed the canary, parading around with a giant, happy secret.  I also feel, physically, hellish.

Baby does not like:

• Texas brisket
• Butterscotch Krimpets (I finally found them in Raleigh and Baby says, “nooooooooo.”)
• Coffee
• Blueberries
• The smell of peanuts

Baby cannot get enough of bread, though.  Bread in any form has been my lifesaver, keeping me from running, screaming for the bathroom.  Potatoes, also, appear to be marginally safe for the belly.  I’m trying to force feed myself lots of little meals to keep me from feeling the urge to puke and/or die.  It’s not easy for a girl who usually forgets to eat until dinner.

Aside from that - all symptoms are normal.  Emotional, tired, hungry, queasy, not hungry, can’t sleep, achy, bloated, utterly absent-minded and forgetful, incredibly frisky (I now fully understand what it must be like to be a teenage boy), blah blah blah.

I had another long talk with Baby, reminding it of its sole responsibility and informing it that Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones is one of the best albums ever recorded.  We’ll see what Baby thinks about the latter in due time.

Emotionally - something very strange is happening.  As if someone pressed a button, I have become utterly ambivalent towards noisy bullshit.  *presto*  Most of the things that irritate the piss out of me don’t even register on the Kang radar.  This does not bode well for my writing but it does bode well for every other facet of my life.  I rather like that (save the writing bit).

So - moving on.  We had the name the Kanglet contest.  Contest closed.  Names divulged to phorum members (and nosy lurkers).  Next up - official OB/GYN appointment and gobbling of pre-natals vitamins (which, surprisingly enough, I can keep down without the need for loading up with food first).

After that…who knows?  I’m simply savoring every moment and living in the day - with no eye fixed on either the future or the past.  Quite lovely.