Poppy Z. Brite's Blog, page 76

Career Aptitude Test

I had a hard time finding one of these I could even complete -- most of them I looked at were illiterate, so corporate-oriented that I had no frame of reference for them, or both -- but here's one that amused me.


Career Inventory Test Results

Extroversion ||||||||| 30% Emotional Stability ||||||||| 23% Orderliness |||||| 20% Altruism |||||||||||| 36% Inquisitiveness |||||||||||||||||| 60%
You are an Architect, possible professions include - strategic planning, writer, staff development, lawyer, architect, software designer, financial analyst, college professor, photographer, logician, artist, systems analyst, neurologist, physicist, psychologist, research/development specialist, computer programmer, data base manager, chemist, biologist, investigator. Take Free Career Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

My father, who is a financial analyst and has despaired for years over my inability to handle more than the simplest concepts of finance, will be pleased to hear of this possible new career path. I do think I might have made a good lawyer. I can kind of see myself as Peter Boyle in Where The Buffalo Roam (probably not the most practical role model).

And Now For Sssssssomething Completely Different

For you fellow embracers of the serpent, I wanted to recommend a wonderful book I picked up last night, Good Snakekeeping: A Comprehensive Guide to All Things Serpentine by Philip Purser. This one is worthwhile even for pretty advanced snake people because, as you've probably noticed if you've read many, it's rare to find a snake-care book by someone who can actually write. Much of the lay material on the subject, while informative, tends to be written on the level of a book report by a fairly bright eighth-grader. Purser's descriptions and ability to communicate passion for snakes are far above average. The book also includes many beautiful snake photographs as well as useful ones of habitats, disease symptoms, and such.

I remain mystified, though, as to why every single snake book in the world says water snakes are bad-tempered and don't make good pets. My first several pet snakes were wild-caught northern water snakes from my uncle's farm in Kentucky, and they were among the gentlest, calmest, easiest-to-care-for snakes I've ever had. Granted, my cousins and I caught them as babies, but the literature makes them out to be well-nigh untamable, and that just wasn't the case with these.

Revised Resumé

You guys, I apologize. Until I reread last night's entry "Resumé" and some of the replies, I swear to God I didn't realize how strongly it came off as fishing for compliments of "Oh, but Poppy, you can write!" Thank you. I don't dispute that. Not that I think everything I've written is wonderful, but as far as one can objectively demonstrate an ability to write well, I think I've done so. Whether I can write right now -- as in just sitting down and banging it out (and please, please, please don't comment with any variation of "Of course you can!") -- and whether I can produce work that publishers want to buy are separate questions, but yeah, I know I can write. The problem* is that for about four years now I've wanted absolutely nothing to do with any aspect of professional writing or publishing, and I can't really explain why because whenever anybody tries to make me talk about it, I stick my fingers in my ears and go "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEEEEEEAAAAAAAR YOU!!!"

So yeah, I wasn't really looking for a new career, or a job, or even really a new purpose in life. I was just kind of poking fun at my "resumé," which really is pretty thin in the area of doing anything practical in the world.

*I don't actually feel this is a tremendous problem in my life, though some others do. I meant the problem with, you know, going back to my old career/life/self-definition.

Resumé

In response to Chris' advice that I need a new purpose in life, I compiled a list of things I am good, OK, and bad at.

GOOD:
Smoking pot
Reading Stephen King
Listening to Billy Joel
Taking care of cats
Occupying churches
Finding pills dropped on the floor

OK:
Gardening
Taking care of snakes

BAD:
Anything useful except as noted above

Not gonna lie, I'm having a hard time seeing a new career here.

Heauxly Hell

Yeah, OK, so sometimes making it to church at all involves showing up reeling with exhaustion, reeking of cannabis, with petechiae in the whites of your eyes and a hangover from the Very Bad Things you did the night before. What of it? That's one of the reasons I was willing to fight for Our Lady of Good Counsel: no one will look askance at me. Or my purple shirt, for that matter.

More on this later, maybe. Suffice it to say that I have not been behaving very well.

The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower

Just ordered three varieties of beet, red turnips, and an interesting kind of dill from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. That's where all my eggplants came from this year too. I'll be damned if I can get a picture to appear here, but if you want to see the season's first eggplant harvest, check this out.

Goodbye, troublesome cucumbers. I don't think I'm going to grow any of you at all next year. Maybe a few in containers so I can keep you under strict control, as I did the tomatoes this season.

My flowers are lush and add beauty to the neighborhood. I may be unsatisfactory in the eyes of many, including myself, but I can take a little pride in this.

Kittenpillars

In my compilation of tiny perfect things, I forgot this guy, a Southern Flannel Moth caterpillar (Megalopyge Opercularis). He and a few dozen of his fairly destructive but absolutely precious brothers and sisters were on my rose bushes last week -- they've all disappeared now, and the roses are recovering nicely.



See, marquisdd , I told you they looked like kittens! Just look at their little taaaaaiiiiiiiiils! (However, their spines are said to be poisonous, so do not stroke them no matter how adorable they are.)


In other news, I'm waving the white flag of surrender at those Mexican Sour Gherkin cucumbers, whose strangling vines produced two (2) tasty but minuscule fruits all summer. Gonna pull them down and plant ... I don't know. Beets, maybe. I love beets.

Whut

I don't go looking at Amazon reader reviews anymore, I swear I don't. Not even the ones for my more recent stuff, let alone the old books. But somebody asked me if the old books were on Kindle yet, and since I thought I had recently signed a contract to make them available as e-books, I went to Amazon to see if it had happened yet. It apparently hasn't, but lo, my searching eye happened upon this quote from a random Lost Souls review:

There are no characters that you love. I mean who? Steve and Ghost? Maybe you'll connect with those two beer drinking bisexual homophobes, if you like eighties grunge lit.

I don't think I could get upset about this even if I still had a deep emotional investment in my work, because it simply does not compute. I present it for your amusement. All I can say is, no matter what book you write, somebody out there (often multiple somebodies) will read a totally different one.

... Bisexual homophobes, though? Eighties grunge lit? Really? I didn't write that book, did I?

Tiny Perfect Things

Yesterday's funk has not dissipated, but I thought I would try to distract myself by taking pictures of tiny, perfect things in my house and (mostly) garden. Warning: many photos behind cut.




My new tricolored hognose snake, Koko, eating a pinky mouse. He's a tiny baby!



Koko, full and looking satisfied with himself.



Ziggy might be perfect, but he's definitely not tiny, and I am neither. Still couldn't resist posting this one.



Hibiscus blossom. I just planted the shrub this spring and it has exceeded my expectations.



Petunias. A very common flower that makes me unreasonably happy.



Viola. This seems to me the Platonic example of a Tiny Perfect Thing.



Padron peppers growing.



Lantanas. In New Orleans we call this color variety "Ham'n'Eggs."



"Ornamental" ahí peppers. Edible and tasty, but HOT.



Something that grabbed my attention at Home Depot and said "Grow me!" Labeled "Picasso Petunias."



Assassin bug on flowering fennel.



Purple basil.



Lizard on a variegated ginger leaf, giving me the side-eye.



A bee getting passionate with a passionflower.



A Ping Tung eggplant nearly ready for harvest.

It's Either Sadness or Euphoria

Summer, Highland Falls

They say that these are not the best of times
But they're the only times I've ever known
And I believe there is a time for meditation
In cathedrals of our own

Now, I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes
And I can only stand apart and sympathize
For we are always what our situations hand us
It's either sadness or euphoria

So we'll argue and we'll compromise
And realize that nothing's ever changed
For all our mutual experience,
Our separate conclusions are the same

Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity
Our reason coexists with our insanity
And though we choose between reality and madness
It's either sadness or euphoria

How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies
Perhaps we don't fulfill each other's fantasies
And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives,
With our respective similarities
It's either sadness or euphoria

- Billy Joel
I always remember the third line of that last verse as "And as we read between the pages of our lives..." Which I suppose is telling, or apt, or something. Anyway, I want the euphoria back, dammit. I guess it'll return eventually, but for now, it's the sadness. I want to talk about the reasons here. I do but I can't. There are people I can talk to, of course, Chris and a few good friends and even the nice lady who writes the prescriptions for my anti-crazy pills, but Chris is busy and unwell himself (bad toothache; having it pulled on Monday) and anyway he already knows all about it, and it's hard to go around talking to friends individually, saying the same shit over and over, and the nice lady charges $100 per session, and I'm inarticulate in person anyway. I wish I could just write it all down here. Sure, I could pour it onto the sympathetic violet-scented and tear-stained pages of a private journal or whatever (and I don't know where that even came from; my private notebook is a cheap one from Office Depot with a WHO DAT sticker on it, and, if anything, scented with bongwater since it went to Amsterdam with me). But some of y'all who comment here are among the smartest, kindest, most cogent, experienced, open-minded, flat-out wise people I've encountered anywhere, and I need your help on this. But I'm afraid of violating others' privacy, of hurting people I love dearly.

Shit.

Gendershit.

(Consider the above to be a state of mind, like "batshit" or "apeshit." I have officially gone gendershit.)

I better just go pay the nice lady $100, huh? And I probably shouldn't even post this. But I've tried to be honest with you guys over these past 7 (!!!) years, and, as they say, This Is Where Doc Is Now.