Essa Alroc's Blog, page 9

Dear Berlin…An Open Letter to my Home Town

I will admit, I always had city aspirations. I never intended to live with you until I died. In fact, as I recall, I stated I was planning on leaving you before the ink on my diploma was even dry. And I did. I haven’t visited you for fifteen years. Much like an elderly relative with dementia, I doubted you’d notice if I never came to visit.

When I was in you, I didn’t like you very much. My dad was a mean drunk and my mom was too busy working to support me and my brother to pay much attention to us when we were young. For that, I resented you. I resented you for the fact that I wasn’t born pretty or popular, even by small town standards. I resented the fact that you never accepted what I was.

In my town I was too rich to be cool by the poor kid’s standards and too poor to be cool by the rich kid’s standards. I was a perpetual fence sitter.

I was lonely a lot growing up and I blamed you. I blamed you for limiting my horizons. Let’s be honest. You were Berlin, New Hampshire. You weren’t really the kind of place where diversity and being different was embraced. The first gay person I ever met still has scars from your small mindedness.

But you were still mine. As much as I hated the people who lived in you, I still had some good times with you. I remember walking the Dead River Park after school. I remember hanging out at the train tracks. I remember catching my first fish in you and I remember scamming my first kiss in you. I remember getting picked on by my brother’s friends and I remember learning how to defend myself in you.

I remember falling in love in you. I remember the trail behind the high school where I used to smoke pot. I remember the Milan loop that I would bike every weekend just to say I did. I remember seeing my first moose. I remember the way my mom used to take us for ice cream at the Dairy Bar and then take us moose hunting after that.

She was seriously a kick ass mom.

And in your prime, I’m willing to wager, you were a kick ass city. You were my safe haven for awhile. When a kid was picking on me on the bus, I decided to start walking home.

That’s when I really got to know you and really got to know how beautiful you were. I remember your winding trails in the woods and the way I never wound up where I expected to when I walked you. I remember riding my bike in the same circle over, and over and over again but never getting bored. I remember what you used to be.

It bothers me to know that interlopers have taken you over.

I saw a story the other night about a stabbing that occurred on your use-to-be harmless streets. Those streets that gave me refuge when I was a lonely outcast have apparently turned into the crime ridden streets of a brown town.

I know a lot of people blame the prison for that. Did you know that when giving out welfare benefits the amount is decided by the population of that town? When prisons come in, the city adds in an allowance for inmates, regardless of the fact that they are ineligible for that assistance. A program like that will cause bottom suckers to flock to your shores.

But Berlin, you don’t have welfare recipients only to blame for your problems.

Seriously, every time I see a small town go to shit, I immediate see the middle class people of that small town bitch about those on welfare and how they’re ruining it for everyone. That is a cop out. If you really think your next door neighbor receiving food stamps is the reason that your town has gone to shit, you have a lot to learn about the world. And I’m pretty sure I can tell you why your town has gone to shit. Mainly, you stopped taking responsibility.

You’re too busy looking for someone to blame.

That solves nothing. If you want your main street back, you need to start having a main street that people want to visit.

Get your movie theaters back. Movies theaters are for everyone. They are humanities common denominator. Everyone is equal in a movie theater.

They make no one feel excluded because they aren’t pretty or athletic. Shit people, why do you think I can quote every single Eddie Murphy movie since he made the Golden Child? Movies are for everyone. You don’t need to be pretty or athletic to watch them. A movie theater is where most fat ugly kids (like me) learn about love and laughter. When a town loses its movie theater, it loses its heart.

Organize a neighborhood watch. Make these new meth heads that have taken up dealing on street corners afraid to go out at night. When it comes to crime, you need to draw a hard line. Otherwise, it becomes a plague, ripping through your town unchecked.

Stop letting drug stores buy out every fucking building on the main strip of town so they can leave them empty. You realize that business owners are required to talk to city hall before they start monopolizing the city, right?

Also, stop electing the most popular old dude as mayor. Do you all really want Berlin to be known as the place old people go to die?

You have natural resources. You have a beautiful river, some kick ass hiking trails and a great set up down town. This should be all you need to make your city work again. But you don’t because you let the same tired politicians run your city and you wait for ‘your turn’ on the council.

Here’s the thing. If you want to fix Berlin, “your turn” is NOW. You can’t fix it with a couple of Super Sundays or Tombolas. You can’t fix it with bake sales. You can only fix it by finding a way to encourage business owners to come back and show the criminals that this will NOT be their brown town to sell meth.

Berlin used to be my sanctuary. The people there weren’t great, but the land gave me a peace that I will never be able to replicate. You all have a choice. You can take back your city by creating new opportunities, thereby making a place that people will want to visit. Or you can sit the fuck around bitching about how all the people on welfare are taking your jobs.

The fact is, you have everything you need to be successful again Berlin. But most of you are too busy bitching about the problems to see the potential.

Look, I’m a city chick now. I have been since I was 19. I know I’m not a local anymore and that shouldn’t give me a say…but Berlin used to be my home. I hung at the Hutchins street park, stole my first kiss in Brookside, and learned how to hopscotch at Brown School. I know it’s sentimental, but I’d hate to see it fail.

Simply stated, current Berlin natives, get busy moving…or get busy finding a way to fix your fucked up town, because I’m tired of seeing the place I was born hanging on life support. Either kill it or let it go, but stop letting it dangle somewhere in the middle.

My city deserves better than that.

The Blame Game

One of my favorite groups of idiots is making the news again. In the recent tragic case of the Isla Vista killings, where psychotic virgin killer Elliot Rodger went on a rampage, the manosphere is popping up again and again. Some people are going as far as to blame them for creating a ‘male entitlement culture’.

In case you weren’t aware, Elliot Rodger decided to go on his killing spree because hot girls wouldn’t do him and he was upset that he was a 20-something virgin. Many people saw the misogynistic nature of these killings and started to point fingers at the one group that regularly touts their entitlement to sex; the manosphere.

For the first time ever, I’m going to go ahead and defend them. Yes, I know they are mostly a group of loud, disgruntled internet douchebags who cause more problems than they fix. What they aren’t is responsible for the deaths of those six people or the actions of Elliot Rodger.

You have the manosphere participants and pick-up artists everywhere claiming, not only did they not inspire these murders, they could have helped this guy;

“THIS is why we do what we do. TO PREVENT THIS SHIT!!! He should have gone to our website and got our personal dating coaching or purchased one of our products. IF ANYONE NEEDS HELP, CONTACT US! Don’t ‘suffer injustice.”

Let me explain something to every pick-up artist who thinks they could have helped this guy; first, all your products are scams. I think we all know that.

Second, if he hadn’t been upset about being a virgin, he would have been upset about something else. Even if some chick had decided to throw this guy one, this still would have happened. Only now we’d be watching a video and reading a manifesto on why he decided to murder his girlfriend (and probably her entire family) instead of 6 random people.

Last night, I sat down with a 6-pack and I started reading Elliot Rodger’s long, rambling manifesto. It was 141 pages long and filled with entitlement, inadequacy, paranoia and a shit load of rage. What did I learn from that manifesto? This cat was a ticking time bomb well before the manosphere ever existed.

Here are some things you should know about Elliot Rodger;

He thought he was destined to win the lottery and would regularly drive to Arizona to buy lottery tickets after meditating for days about winning.
When he was 12, he accidentally shoved a girl. She swore at him, like someone is apt to do after being shoved, and he stewed about that one curse word for 10 years, even going as far as to say she ruined his childhood.
He thought all women should be put in concentration camps and that sex should be outlawed.
He regularly pressured his mother to find and marry a rich man, as he felt entitled to money.
His parents had him in counseling and working with a life couch. He was prescribed an anti-psychotic he refused to take. He didn’t think anything was wrong with him except for the fact that he was a virgin. He did not seem to understand the he was mentally ill and that normal people didn’t think the same way as him.
He was a man who was completely out of touch with reality.

This was a man who refused to accept that there was anything wrong with him. He did nothing to improve his own life aside from buying himself expensive clothes. His parents gave him every advantage they could have and he still felt like he grew up ‘disadvantaged’. He was intensely jealous of other people’s success, to the point where he would physically attack them. He was a paranoid, violently emotional, overly sensitive entitled idiot with some serious delusions of grandeur.

This man had problems that no amount of getting laid could fix. He was a messed up, psychotic human being who became fixated on one group to hate. If it hadn’t been women, it would have been another group.

I don’t blame his parents. I don’t blame gun laws and I don’t blame the manosphere. I blame one person. I blame a mentally ill person who would not accept the fact that he was mentally ill. I blame a man who complained about how terrible his life was but did nothing to fix it.

I blame Elliot Rodger.

“Are You This Much of an (Insert Slur Here) In Real Life?”

I recently wrote a couple of offensive posts (shocker, right?) that have garnered a few email responses. One thing that I get allot in these emails is;

“Are you this much of a cunt in real life, or are you just hiding behind the internet?”

To be honest, it’s a little bit of both. Much like any other emotion, cuntiness is purely situational.

I don’t believe that anyone is a bitch 100% of the time. When I worked in insurance, I used to have to deal with this zoo owner whenever one of her employees got injured. Let me tell you straight off, she was a fucking bitch. Seriously, she was a nightmare of a human being and I used to dread contacting her. She was the type of person who could take the most innocuous question, and turn it into a personal attack. She couldn’t even make small talk without getting offended.

Me: It sure has been cold out lately.

Her: No it hasn’t. God, everyone in this state is such a pussy. You all bitch about the weather, and you have no idea what cold it really is. Jesus, you people are friggen useless. It’s like the air you breathe is wasted.

There were times I considered driving to this cunt’s house and slashing her tires. She ruined my day on a regular basis for about 6 months straight. Just saying her name to me, nearly five years later, is enough to make my hands clench into fists of rage and make me start grinding my teeth.

One day, I Googled her and I found some surprising information. She was a complete pushover when it came to animals. She even had a moose that she raised since it was a baby, staying up nights, feeding it with a bottle. There was a video of her on the internet singing that damn moose to sleep, I shit you not.

It occurred to me that as much as I thought she was a cunt, that moose probably thought she was the greatest person on the planet. While that thought didn’t stop me from wanting to slash her tires, it did stop me from assuming she was a cunt to everyone.

I admit I can be a bitch. Much like the zookeeper, I have my hot button issues. Just today, as I was driving through my neighborhood, a 12-year-old boy tried to stare me down after taking his sweet-assed time crossing the street.

I immediately pulled over, rolled down my window, and asked the little fucker what his problem was. He ran away and I had to resist the urge to chase him down. Not fucking around people, I came about 2 inches from kicking a 12-year-old’s ass today all because I didn’t like the way he looked at me.

If that isn’t being a cunt, I don’t know what is.

But I’m not always a cunt. In fact, most people who interact with me find me very pleasant, because I’m pretty laid back. I’m polite to service people, I give money to homeless people, and I only flip people off in traffic when it’s absolute necessary (like they just nearly killed me…or they have a Sarah Palin bumper sticker)

But no, I’m not a cunt all the time. I have situational cuntiness.

When someone contacts me in my personal space, like on my blog, and is rude, I am a cunt. When a man treats me like an idiot because I was born without testicles, I am a cunt.

When a child somehow thinks he’s tougher than me and can stare me down, even after I’ve generously decided to not run him over with my car for delaying my beer run, I am a cunt.

But no, rest assured, I am not this much of a cunt in real life. In fact, most times, I’m only a cunt for one childish reason.

Namely, you started it.

The 6 Month Review – Alternate Title – I Don’t Owe You Shit

Every six months, I pull together all my pen names and do an average ranking based on the reviews. I’m going to be honest with you all here; I don’t actually read the majority of my reviews. I really only look at my average ranking on Amazon when I’m trying to make business decisions.

Give me a break people, I write under three different pen names and Essa Alroc isn’t nearly close to being the most popular. I blog under Essa because she is the closest to being who I really am. I write other books in more popular genres and let those other two identities spend most of the money on bullshit. Between the three of us, our budget for candy apples and leather pants is ridiculous.

Always a wise investment…always.

Under all those pen names, nearly 200 people have given me opinions on my books, everywhere from 1 to 5 stars and I really don’t have time to read them all. I’m too busy actually writing books.

Here’s the thing…I don’t mind bad reviews. They roll right off my back. I don’t even mind reviews that trash me as a human being. I only get concerned when a rating dips below three stars, because that has the potential to impact my sales. When that happens I take a look at the reviews to see if there is a glaringly obvious problem with formatting or grammar. If so, I fix it. If not, I move on with my day. You can’t please everyone and to be honest, I’m not really the kind of person who worries too much about pleasing anyone.

But you know what annoys me? When someone posts an opinion that in any way, demands I do something. Let me give you a very generic example, rather than embarrassing the asshole by posting the review here.

“The author had a good book to start, but then decided to (insert complaint here – .i.e. mistook ‘woman’ for ‘women’/was insulting to religious people/talked about alpacas in an unflattering way). Because of that, I can’t endorse this writer’s novels until she (insert demand that I do something here).”

Here’s the thing reviewers; you can pan my writing. You can call me an idiot and say any number of unflattering things about me. Hell, you can set up a page that claims that I sexually molest dwarf hamsters for all I care.

What you don’t get to do is tell me what the fuck to do. No, I won’t revise my writing because you find it offensive. I won’t fix my novels to remove all the profanity and then send you a free copy to re-review. I certainly won’t apologize for anything I wrote, nor will I offer you any explanation for why I wrote it the way I did.

The indie publishing age has given birth to two very annoying things; authors that think they are better than they are and reviewers that think they are more powerful than they are.

The authors that think they’re better are kind of obvious. I’m talking about authors who write a 2400 word story rife with spelling errors, slap it up on Amazon, and expect to become millionaires. I don’t need to discuss those people because they know who they are and they will fail without the assistance of anyone else.

No, I think we need to talk about reviewers that have an over-developed sense of self-importance. Over the past few months, I have had reviewers from book blogs email me on a regular basis, requesting review copies.

I write a series and I once made the mistake of giving a part of that series away for free. As a result, I now have people who have book review blogs emailing me and demanding more copies for free.

Jesus fucking Christ people, not ONE of my books is priced at more than $2.99! If you like my writing, is it really asking that much for you to break a $5 to get the rest of the series? If you hate my writing, why the hell are you emailing me for more in the first place?

I get that you want to save money, but you need to understand that this is a lose/lose situation for me. If you like me and I give you a free copy of my book, I just lost an actual sale. If you hate me and I give you a free copy of my book, I just paid you to say shitty things about me.

Let me put it in a way everyone can understand.

There is a guy who just opened a business in town. If you give him $4, he will do one of three things;

Smile at you briefly
Ignore you entirely
Punch you in the nuts as hard as he can

You have no say over which one of those three things he will do. He might smile and tell all his friends about how you made him smile. Or he might punch you in the nuts, and then encourage all of his friends to punch you in the nuts as well.

Does that sound like a viable business model to you?

Indie publishing has given rise to that very business model. As a result, because I write indie (no real publisher in their right mind would pick me up) I regularly get emails from people who seem to think I owe them something. Some of these people have left me horrible reviews on the first two books in my series, and then expect me to give them a free copy of the third.

Now, I have an MBA that I earned through showing up in classes drunk, stoned or disinterested, but even I know that’s a terrible business plan.

When these people email me, I try to be cool. I give them a Smashwords discount code and thank them for their interest. Then, I go on about my day.

I have NEVER received a thank you for the books I’ve given away. In fact, I’ve had some people come back to me with the audacity to demand I send one of my books to them in a different format. You know what fuckers?

Beggars can’t be choosers.

To date, not one single review I’ve gotten (and I’ve gotten reviews from the biggies) has changed my sales in any significant way. Hell, I have 28 excellent reviews on Strangely Sober and I barely sell four copies a week.

On the flip side, I have one book under a different pen name and it has one 1 star review. I average about 20 copies a day.

I don’t solicit reviews because I don’t even read reviews. I fell out of that habit in the first year of being an author, after garnering 4 of my absolute worst reviews on a free giveaway day. Trust me, I learned my lesson.

Yes, you are free to say whatever you want about me, but in no way am I required to pay you to say shitty things about me. If you want to insult me, I’m going to need you to pay for the pleasure.

I am sick to death of reviewers acting like they’re doing me the biggest favor in the world by considering reviewing my books when they can’t even be bothered to say thanks for the free fucking copy.

You know what? I don’t owe you shit. I write my books the way I want to because THEY ARE MY STORIES. They are not yours. Those are my characters that I created and I get to do whatever I want with them. You don’t get a say.

I will not apologize to you for the fact that you think I don’t like Christians, men, women, gays, Gary Busey, alpaca farmers or anything else. I’m not going to change my main character in a major novel because she doesn’t fit your personal tastes…because as far as I’m concerned, your personal tastes are shit anyway.

I’m not required to do anything for you and I don’t owe you shit.

As for free books, from here on out, I offer one. It’s called The Apology. I give it away because it’s a short novella that fully displays my writing style. If you can’t figure out if you like the way I write in 27,000 free words, there is absolutely no point in reading anything else I wrote, because you clearly don’t like me. That’s cool. We can move on from that. Leave your terrible review and let it go. Don’t email me for more of my books so you can insult me again.

I’m only a masochist in the bedroom people.

Reviewers, you are one single person. Your opinion is subjective, and judging from my sales, it does not make or break me. You do not have the power to make me change my writing style, my plotlines or my endings. You are one damn person running a blog that barely any paying customers read.

Let’s be honest. I’m pretty sure the majority of these people who write book blogs have not actually paid for a copy of a book in years, and are being read by people who don’t actually pay for books, because they are book bloggers as well.

If I really wanted to make money, I’d move into pirating instead. I always thought I made a kickass pirate.

Reviewers, you have an over-inflated sense of self importance. You seem to think that threats to one star me will make me do something for you. It won’t. Maybe other indies will kiss your ass but I won’t. If you want to leave a scathing review of one of my novels, you can go ahead and open your wallets to do it. I’m not going to be some dumb fuck who hands you the money to buy ammunition to shoot me with. Buy your own damn bullets.

I don’t read my reviews anymore because I don’t care about my reviews. Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one.

And I have no intention of paying you money to see yours.

 

10 Sure Signs You’re Going to Be Together Forever

I see stupid articles pop up on Twitter and Facebook all the time. “Sure signs that he’s into you” or ‘How to tell if your relationship is on the right track.”

Then, I go down to the listing and it gives helpful tips like;

He cares about your feelings.
He asks about your friends.
He tells you he misses you, even if you’ve only been apart a few hours.

To me, this list doesn’t sound like the traits of a man; they sound like the traits of an 85-year-old Jewish grandmother. I half expected to see ‘he makes a great Matzo Ball soup’ as number 4.

 

I know my boyfriend loves me because he made me this when I was sick but told me ‘time is the best doctor, Bubbala.’

The problem with the articles (besides the fact that they describe the ideal man as being a one dimensional caricature with no feelings or desires other than your happiness) is that they don’t really give you any factual evidence that their tips are true.

But I have some tips as well, and I think they might be a bit more spot on.

 

10 Sure Signs That You’re Friggen Stuck Together

 

10. Your finances are impossibly intertwined. Are you in your late 50s, married to someone for the past 26 years and living paycheck to paycheck? Yeah, you’re never getting divorced. You’re never getting divorced because you can’t afford it. Instead, lay back with your soul mate, relax and wait for the sweet, sweet grip of death.

9. The life insurance is too good to give up now. They have a $1 million policy with a double indemnity clause, a serious drinking habit and a raging case of diabetes. You’ve already put in 25 years. What’s 10 more when you could retire in style?

8. You’re in an extremely unbalanced codependent relationship. Are you a meth head dating your dealer? A nutjob dating your shrink? A hooker dating your pimp? Congrats. You’ve found your soul mate. If only we could all be so lucky.

7. You have a very unusual sexual fetish and a limited pool of attractive people to pick from. Let’s face facts. If you’re into dressing up as a giant beaver while an overweight man in a wet suit whacks you in the balls with a hammer, you probably don’t have a very large selection in the ‘common interests’ category on Match.com. Once you find one, hold onto that perv for dear life.

6. You are somehow physically attached to your significant other. Whether it’s some kind of conjoined twin birth defect, radiation accident, or weird human centipede experiment, you’re physically stuck together. I know it’s unlikely, but if we live in a world where someone could think of the movie “The Human Centipede” then we live in a world where someone will try to do it.

5. Your parents said you would never make it. Sure, they said it 20 years ago and you’ve been married to that high school sweetheart for years, but you’re too invested to back down now. The only way your getting divorced is if your parents admit they were wrong first, because you would rather die with someone you hate than live with your judgmental mom spitting out the phrase “I told you so.”

4. YOU ARE BOTH THE KIND OF PEOPLE WHO WRITE IN CAPS LOCK. Sometimes, in the beautiful mysterious nature of life, two idiots fall in love. They might meet while waiting in line at the lotto machine at the store. They might bump hands at a Nickleback concert. They might wind up in the emergency room together after accidentally drinking bleach or wandering into traffic. The fact is, it is part of the cosmic architecture of the universe that idiots are drawn together. It’s god’s way of keeping them from dumbing down the gene pool with the ‘normals’.

3. You’ve only ever met on the internet. Reality just can’t compare with fantasy. Where else but on the internet can a 45-year-old convenience store cashier feel like he has a shot with a 22-year-old millionaire virgin? There is a reason situations like “Tall Hot Blonde” happen and that is human nature. We all want what is unattainable. Hell, that’s the basis of capitalism. As long as you two continue lying, and continue never meeting in person, you will be together forever or at least until one of you gets a virus.

2. You are just perfectly suited. And I don’t mean in a dorky ‘she laughs at all my jokes,’ kind of way. You’re a boy with mommy issues who needs constant validation. She’s a girl with daddy issues who needs a man to beat on. You guys were just plain meant to be.

1.  And the number 1 sure sign you’re going to be together forever? You’re not reading this, because you know that relationship problems can’t be fixed by the advice a lady whose only relationship advice qualification is she can afford to spend $29.99 a year maintaining a blog.

These stupid lists aren’t helping anyone. They’re insulting to men and I’m pretty sure the majority of them are being written by a bitter old cat lady who’s never had a partner inflicted orgasm.

I’m sorry, but no, I don’t thing men should completely change themselves to get with girls. If I wanted to date another chick, I’d go full on gay rather than just bi-curious.

What really gets me going is that the girls who write this shit are the same ones who bitch that there are no good men left. There are no good men left because they’ve limited themselves to a cardboard cutout version of what a man is supposed to be, as opposed to who he really is.

You know how you really know you’re supposed to be together? You just fucking know. Anyone who hasn’t felt that before is shaking their head in confusion, while anyone who has is nodding right along with me. When you feel that feeling, it’s like passing a million little ‘is your partner good for you tests’ all at once. There’s no test you need to take to prove it, or questionnaire you can read to verify it. Everything just clicks into place and you know.

So how do you know if your partner is right for you? You didn’t really feel the need to get a stranger’s opinion on that in the first place.

World’s Three Billionth, Five Hundred Twenty-Three Millionth Mom

Being a mom is a bit like being expected to pass college prep chemistry with no textbook. It’s impossible to learn, filled with a million variables and even the mildest mistake can cause catastrophic results.

I imagine being a dad is a lot like being expected to pass freshman art. You get credit just for showing up and even the most half assed effort gets praised.

I’m not saying dads are bad. I just think they don’t get the whole constant guilt thing. They don’t get how it is to be expected to act like the miracle of motherhood is all unicorns shitting skittles onto rainbows made of sunshine.

And if anyone ever tells me giving birth is magical again, some motherfucker is getting stabbed in the chest. You want to know what child birth is like?

Here’s what I got out of the experience.

I am not the world’s best mom. I’m somewhere between Mother Theresa and a mother cat that abandons her kittens on the railroad tracks. I raise my son the same way I run my life. I do what I can and I hope for the best.Am I a responsible soccer mom who is a member of the PTA? Hell no. As far as I’m concerned, when he’s at school, he’s society’s problem.

Do I occasionally pull him out of school so he can accompany me to an R rated movie? Absolutely. Though I have to say, the very definition of awkward is watching a plush toy simulate sex with a candy bar in front of your child.

I treat my son like a mini-adult because I fear him. I fear him because he is smarter than me.

Having a child is a bit like teaching a dog to talk, and then having that dog use his ability to talk to form high level, near socialist political opinions on current world issues that leave you stumped for an argument.

Pretty soon, he’ll be bigger than me too. My only consolation is that he needs me. My son is also incapable of working the washer or cooking a meal without stabbing himself, burning himself or flooding the kitchen.

It’s crazy how fast my kid changed from this approval radiating blob to a real person, with real opinions. It makes me realize he’s probably not going to need me forever.

I’m not the world’s best mother, by any standard definition. I let my kid play video games too long, and I forget to tell him to brush his teeth. I let him eat his dinner in front of the TV and I don’t involve him in clubs or activities.

But I know my son. I know he gets bored and frustrated during class, because the teacher moves too slowly for him. I know he gets upset when people expect him to be more mature than his age, just because he’s big. I know he’s an introvert, who prefers working on his computer as opposed to playing sports, because he’s good at computers. He wants to be a game developer someday.

I know he finds movies aimed at his age group condescending and ridiculous. He can MST3k a Disney movie like Joel Hodgson and he is utterly fascinated with documentaries.

He’s an atheist, despite the fact that I am not one. But his arguments for his beliefs are intelligent and he doesn’t condescend other people’s religious beliefs…at least not in front of them.

Somehow, this happy approving blob I created became a pretty cool person, with some pretty kick ass skills, who knows his way around a one liner and who is smart enough to know what a nerd I am when I sing along to Huey Lewis.

But is also nice enough to sing along with me.

I am a mediocre mom raising an incredible kid. I’ll never be the best, but at least I’m not the worst. Plus I’ve managed to keep a living being alive for 11 years and counting. The only living thing I’ve been able to grow that long before was bacteria.

To other mediocre moms out there, release your mother’s guilt and know that statistically, no matter how much you fuck up, at least you aren’t the worst mother in the world.

Now go celebrate by getting day drunk.

Essa on Poetry

I have had the same obnoxious pain in the ass contacting me by email for the past four weeks, demanding that I review her poetry book in exchange for a free copy.

Well, honey, here’s my review; You’re going to need to pay me to read it.

There is only one kind of poetry I like and that kind of poetry comes from music. Writing song lyrics is an incredibly complicated and incredibly admirable task. Rest assured music writers, I’m not talking about you when I talk about my deep hatred of poetry.

Not to stereotype, but I’m going to anyway. I’m talking to you pain in the ass early 20s girls who think you’re the next fucking Sylvia Plath because you wrote a non-rhyming poem about the breakup you had with the soul mate you’ve been seeing for six months.

How do I put this politely? Oh yeah, I don’t.

Get fucked.

Look, I’m going to give you a tip from my dad, that has served me well in life. “No one is crying themselves to sleep at night because you’re sad.”

I have no interest in reading about your angst, because half the time, your angst is fucking ridiculous. Most of these obnoxious poems cover the same 4 themes. Number 1, the boy you’re seeing is a jerk. Number 2, you don’t think you’re pretty. Number 3, you’re sad and you don‘t know why. Number 4: gee, this tree is pretty.

Welcome to life.

I don’t find poets deep at all. I think the majority of them are just lazy assholes who want to find a way to sound deep. They don’t have the intelligence or commitment to write non-fiction. They don’t have the creativity or commitment to write fiction.

So they write poems, they self publish them on Amazon, and then they get pissed when they aren’t commercial successes.

The ability to be a commercial success in poetry is rare. It’s not because the market is unfairly slanted against poets. It’s because most of those poets only write shit that applies to them, and then expects everyone else to slop it up like it’s 0 calorie chocolate.

I’ll be honest. I never understood a stanza of Sylvia Plath. I doubt it was because I lacked the intelligence. I’m pretty sure it was because that bitch was crazy. People who talk about how much they loved “The Bell Jar’ generally only say they did to sound smart.

Sylvia Plath was the “Emperors New Clothes” test on humanity. We failed. You wanna know why Sylvia Plath was so deep and special?

Because it’s easy to get famous when you off yourself young.

But seriously, poets stop. No one cares that you’re mad at your absentee dad or that your boyfriend of three months dumped you. The only person in your life who is interested in your feelings is your shrink, and that’s because you pay him $300 an hour.

Look, you wanna be a commercial success; you need to start writing what people want to read. On no! Not commercialism!

When people read, they want to learn something new, or be transported to a new place where they can forget about their problems for a while. That is not an unworthy goal.

You calling them shallow because they don’t want to read about your angsty teen years is just you being an asshole. Oh, and also, you are being shallow as well, because you only focus on your own problems in your damn stupid poetry.

Don’t send me messages saying, “it’s not about success for me. I just want to write.” If that was the truth, you would keep your obnoxious poems locked up in your stupid journal and you would stop emailing me to review them. You, 22 year old lady filled with the angst of a life barely lived, do not get to school me on being sensitive and understanding the bigger picture. Trust me, I got it down.

I know what it is to be a critical success and a commercial failure, and vice versa. I write under 3 pen names in 3 different genres. Generally, the genres I make the most money from aren’t the stories that I’m proud of, while the ones I get great reviews from make no money at all. That is the life of a real writer. You know, the kind of writer who makes her money selling her writing.

So I write to gain commercial success and follow up on my real loves afterwards. That doesn’t make me a sell out. It makes me a real author who knows what she needs to do to gain a following. Because the true value of writing isn’t about getting people to talk about how fucking deep you are.

It’s about entertainment, pure and simple. And I love to entertain.

You poets who email me, you aren’t entertainers. You just want to have your asses kissed while people talk about how deep and sensitive you are. You want everyone to tell you you’re brave for talking about your feelings.

Fuck your feelings. You’re not brave. You’re slapping stanzas of your shitty life together, hoping someone notices how sad you are so they will pay attention to you, while you fantasize about being the next Robert Frost. That isn’t brave. It’s 20-something bullshit.

I’m brave. I just wrote this incredibly offensive post, on a platform filled with most of the world’s poets, and I called you all assholes. This is not an anomaly for me. I start arguments relating to real problems. I don’t hold back, but I also don’t pull the pity card and talk about my bad childhood or my distant father. I don’t need sympathy reads, because I can get actual reads. I’m an entertainer.

Poets out there, stop focusing on your own self gratification if you want to be commercial successes. Accept the fact that no one really cares about your feelings. I’m telling you right now, just as an anonymous reader, the fact that your boyfriend broke up with you or you’re still angry about your mom’s divorce means shit to me. I am your audience.

En-ter-fucking-tain-me.

If you don’t know how to entertain, then let me say this straight up. Writing is NOT your calling.

As a writer, you are an entertainer. If people aren’t reading your books, that’s not because they’re stupid. It’s is because as a writer, no one cares how literary you are; you are expected to be an entertainer. Deal with it or find a new profession. Stop expecting the world to change just for you.

Now get to entertaining and stop filling my fucking inbox with your review requests.

 

 

***P.S. – Don’t bother contacting me for book reviews, period. I’m a novelist. That means I am your competition and I have nothing to gain from giving you a good review. Sounds mean? Welcome to life.

 

 

 

Essa and the Magic Easter Ganja

I am a prolific procrastinator. Case in point, last year I did all of my Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve…at 5 pm. I have seen the hell that is the holiday isles for last minute shoppers.

There are things I wish I could unsee.

So naturally, when I realized I had procrastinated right up to a major holiday yet again, I turned to drugs.

I put together my own spring mix. It’s one part Strawberry Kush and one part Skywalker. I choose the Strawberry k because it’s pink and pink is kind of an Easter color. I choose the Skywalker because Jedi is kind of a religion. With a mighty toke, I am on my way to go Easter shopping at Target.

Sorry Target.

Probably more weed…and some of those fucking Cadbury eggs. Like 7000

I choose a cart and magically get a non-squeaky one. As I walk, I admire the shiny floors…and plow my cart into a display of Hunger Games DVDs.

After a stoned apology, I am on my way. I remember to be more vigilant. It’s easy to get distracted by Target’s shiny floors. (Target, you may want to look into the liability of that. Seriously, shiny floors to stoners are like flames to moths. Someone is going to get hurt.)

I am in the grocery isle, trying to pick out a ham, but it is the hardest decision I will ever make. I suddenly feel like everything is riding on me choosing the right ham. I feel like everyone in the store is waiting for me to choose my ham. The pressure is too much.

“Would you all just give me a damn minute!” I realize that no one was looking at me until I shouted at them. Now, everyone is looking at me. Face red, I get ready to drop a random ham in my cart.

“Holy shit, when did I get so much stuff!” My cart is literally teaming. “And why do I need so many laxatives?”

“Excuse me,” an angry woman pushes past me and I realize that this is not my cart.

“Woops, sorry.” I find my cart and manage to make a few selections in the grocery isle without incident. But my trip isn’t over.

It is time to go to the very mouth of the abyss. The Holiday isle. After a bit of minor confusion that I blame on excessive floor shininess (seriously Target, look into that) I arrive at the Easter isle.

It is pure chaos. I abandon my cart outside and plunge in recklessly. People are everywhere and the shelves look like a grocery store from the Walking Dead.

Desperate to get my hands on anything, I turn towards the toys and immediately pick up a large, fluffy pink rabbit. I clutch onto it, despite the fact that my son is way too old, and probably a little too male, to want a fluffy pink rabbit. Then I realize I want it for myself. It’s so soft. I can’t stop petting it long enough to put it in my cart.

Until I realize I am absently sexually molesting a toy rabbit in front of a large group of children and again, this is not my cart.

With visions of a future on the sex offender’s registry, I plow forward bravely, snatching random things off the shelves. When I have enough items to make me feel like a good mother, I run out and dump them all in my cart.

“Motherfucker!” This is still not my cart. Shamefaced, I pull my items out and again find my cart. I make it through checkout relatively easily, thanks to a debit card, and I push my cart out the doors excitedly.

I can’t wait to get home and see what I got!

Boys Can Be Just as Bitchy

I watched Mean Girls the other day, because I am a huge fan of Lindsey Lohan’s boobs.

They’re like two perfect melons, sitting next to each other in a hammock

This time, I didn’t laugh as much. I actually got a little annoyed. Let me explain why.

You might not know this, but the movie was loosely based on a self-help/psychology style book called ‘Queen Bees and Wannabes.’ The purpose of the book is to examine how girls interact with each other, and how deep down we’re all catty backstabbing bitches. Allegedly, unlike men, we engage in psychological warfare in order to fit into our respective groups. Apparently, men are immune to this incredible phenomena.

You ever hear a guy say this?

I’ll never understand chicks. When girls are pissed, they start all this drama and the fight drags on forever. When guys are pissed, we just punch each other a few times and then we let it go.

Bullshit? This is Essa calling. We need to talk.

Boys can be just as bitchy as girls, both to their own gender and to the opposite sex.

As most of you probably know, I have an older brother. Much to his frustration, I mention him regularly in this blog. Today will be no different. Sorry, bro.

In high school, my brother was extremely popular and he had many attractive friends. One of those attractive friends had the hots for my extremely attractive best friend. They dated for a bit, but it didn’t work out because she was into someone else.

Instead of just ‘letting it go’, the guy started talking about her behind her back and got all his friends involved. He and his friends called her some incredibly unflattering names, spread rumors about her and even wrote an offensive song about her. As I recall, it was called ‘Cum Dumpster.”

Yeah, it was super clever in the way only high school boys can be.

All of the supposedly non-bitchy boys participated, despite the fact that she’d never done anything to them and was in no way anything like they described her. Even the guys who didn’t know her got involved. The only thing no one did was defend her.

Much to my eternal shame, not even I, the queen of clever one liners and scathing insults, helped. Anyone who tried suddenly became the target and I had been the target for so long, it was nice to get a break and be able to fit in.

In short, these ‘straight forward boys’ who are so very good at getting over things, at ‘letting it go’, were actually one of the bitchiest groups of mean girls I’ve ever met.

On the flip-side, around the same time, I fell for one of my brother’s hot friends. When our relationship (i.e. occasionally screwing in the back seat of his car) didn’t work out (because he was occasionally screwing other girls in that same back seat), I didn’t enlist the help of my friends to mock him and make his life hell. I didn’t spread rumors or write stupid songs about him.

Instead, I dropped the dude with one incredibly sweet head-butt to the face and actually let it go.

Ok, to be honest, I still occasionally masturbate to the memory of the way he dropped to the floor and started crying like baby, but I’d consider that more creepy than bitchy.

My point is “who’s the bitchy one, again?”

Guys participate in the mean girl mentality too. They find the weak guy in the herd and torture him endlessly. They bully him in the locker room, give him wedgies in the cafeteria, and talk about him behind his back. Boys have cliques. They have alpha males and beta males. Betas suck up to the alphas to fit in, and they are just as likely to participate in passive aggressive behavior as women.

Trust me, I was once the only female in a platoon of 25 men; guys can be cunts too.

They certainly don’t ‘just throw a few punches and let it go.’

They might do that with their best buddies, but they don’t do that in their cliques. The truth is, boys are just like girls when it comes to friends.

They have their best buddies, the guys they help move and have as the best men at their wedding, and they have their ‘kinda friends’. Those are the guys that they only sort of know, and pretend to like, while they talk about them behind their backs. Don’t try to deny it boys; I’ve seen it in action.

Girls do the same thing. We have the girls that we would defend to the death (like I should have done for my high school friend) and we have the ones that we sort of know, who we don’t feel that guilty about talking about.

It isn’t the mean girls mentality and it isn’t the mean boys mentality. It’s human nature. We all want to be at the top of the pack. Unfortunately, some of us believe that means climbing over a few people to get there. We ALL fall in line, because it’s easier to be liked by a group of people you hate than it is to be the target.

Along the way, we wind up betraying people we care about in order to make that happen.

Even 20 years later, I’m still ashamed of the way I acted when the mean boys were making fun of my friend. Sure, I never said anything about her, but I didn’t stop it and that was wrong. My inaction made it seem like it was ok, and it wasn’t.

To my BFF from high school, know that I’m sorry I fell into the ‘mean boys’ mentality all those years ago. I wasn’t the same girl then that I am now.

Time (and a few near death experiences) has a way of changing you into the kind of person who no longer cares about fitting into cliques. I only wish I could go back, but as who I am now, because I would gleefully headbutt every single one of those assholes in the face.

I guess time also has a way of making us all a little more straight forward, regardless of gender.

An Open Letter to My Landscapers

Living in an apartment comes with a couple of major benefits.

Benefit #1: I don’t have to do yard work.

Benefit #2: My yard work is done by a bunch of hot, sweaty, shirtless, muscular Hispanic men who have provided me with enough masturbation fodder to keep me aroused well into my 90s.

As much as I enjoy looking at them, I have to say, it’s pretty clear they have no idea what they’re doing. Not that I have a problem with stupid men. Hell, young, dumb and handsome is exactly how I like them. But I think a few tweaks to their work plan are in order, before my entire complex is consumed in dandelions and rose bushes that are nothing but thorns.

#1 – That thing your weed wacking is a sprinkler head.

No joke, I just watched a guy go to town on a sprinkler head with a high powered weed wacker for twenty minutes before realizing that the ‘weed’ was made of green plastic. On the upside, I now have a pretty new mini-fountain in my front yard. Hey, silver lining, right?

#2 – You just spent $40 in gas trying to move ONE leaf.

I know the term ‘leaf blower’ is confusing, because it indicates a singular leaf. However, the leaf blower is actually meant to be used on large quantities of leaves. Now, look around. What kind of trees do we have here? Palm trees. You know, the kind of tree that doesn’t drop leaves. Why the hell do you even have a leaf blower? I haven’t seen a leaf on the ground since 2009.

#3 – Just leaving the lawnmower on isn’t a clever tactic for hiding from work.

Trust me, I am the queen of avoiding doing work, and I know a thing or two about pretending to be busy when I’m not. When you sit in the shade for half an hour, with your lawnmower running but not moving while you play with your iPhone, everyone can tell you’re not doing anything.

A lawnmower makes a shitty prop, because it makes it clear to people that you aren’t working as soon as it’s not in motion. Here are some ideas for better props.

The weed wacker – One of my friends used to do this one when he was assigned yard work in the military. He would get a weed wacker, and then he would just walk around with it. Whenever anyone looked suspicious, he pretended he was cleaning it. In the entire 6 months he was on the yard work detail, he never turned the weed wacker on once…and Fort Huachuca was nearly overrun with weeds.
The clipboard – This was another tip from my friend. When you carry a clipboard, you always look like you’re doing something important. There is just something about a clipboard that gives you an air of authority. Plus, it’s lighter than a weed wacker.
The ‘arms crossed while watching another group of guys who are actually working’ pose – This one is good too, because again it gives you an air of authority, without you having to do one single thing. As an added bonus, most people will just assume you’re with the government, due to the lack of efficiency in 6 supervisors watching two guys do all the work.

Look, I want you guys to stay forever. You’re fun to look at and I don’t understand what you’re calling me when you yell at me in Spanish. But it’s only a matter of time before my landlord realizes you are all nothing but very dirty eye candy. When that happens, you’re going to get shown the door and I’m going to get a new crew of significantly less attractive rednecks.

Please don’t let that happen. What we have is special and I’d hate to lose it.