Monday, December 24, 2012

The Cold Virus of Doom OR I Have Been Sick

Last weekend the 'laws visited and I got a cold.  Coincidence?  I think not.  When Bevills get together, things happen.  For example, on Friday when they arrived, there was a mass shooting.  I'm not saying it was our fault, but hey, maybe it's a sign that Bevills shouldn't get together.  The last time, I think Princess Di died.  Think there was something on September 10th, too.  There ya go.  Definitive proof.
I was looking for a picture of a cold virus and got
distracted.
This is not a cold virus, but it should be.  Just
think how fun cold viruses would be if they
looked like this.  ("I got sinus problems and my nose
feels like it's going to implode, but hey, I got cheeze doodles.")
I hate friggin' colds.  This one was a nasty one.  (It was a solid 8 on my cold Richter scale.)  On Friday, I muttered the immortal words that spelled my doom.  I said to someone, "I'm lucky because I haven't had a cold for a long time."  I should have just shot myself in the foot after saying that, because I was asking for it.  I was slapping Karma in her silly face and saying, "I double-dawg dare ya, bee-yotch!"  Whereupon Karma laughed her ass off.
This is also not a cold virus, but where we
promised we would take Cressy.
(Only when she gets better.)
Just checking to see if you're really paying attention.
So yesterday Cressy, our eight-year-old daughter says, "My throat hurts."  Which means that Karma is still laughing, that fickle bitch.  Fortunately for me, I missed the 3 a.m. I-am-about-to-vomit-on-your-bed wake-up call.  HIM, the man to whom I'm married, had to man-up and take the call.  In fact, HIM has been manning up all week.  He's been doing laundry, dishes, and various and sundry stuff while I walked around like the fat zombie from The Walking Dead.  (They don't have many of them in the show, but they do have them.  Maybe all the fat people got eaten first.  Gross.  I icked myself out.  Another reason to lose weight.)  (I had a sudden mental image of a zombie trying to pick between a live skinny human and a live fat human.  You do the math.  It isn't pretty.)  (Wait, the point of the paragraph was to give HIM kudos for taking care of business but I got distracted...again.)
This was the best representation of Karma
that I could find.  Dilbert and Scott Adams rules.
Today, we all lay around, basically trying to get Cressy to sip more Gatorade.  I finally had to threaten her with "If you don't drink enough liquid, you will get dehydrated and you will have to go to the doctor, and the doctor will have to put an IV in you.  An IV involves getting a needle stuck in your hand."  (God, I'm evil, but she drank more liquid after that.)

In the meantime, B&fuckingNoble (sorry for the language but I'm incredibly pissed at them now) has been sitting in an imaginary world where they don't have to deal with indie authors who publish with them through pubit! or smashwords.  Apparently this is the world where they don't answer emails, they don't answer their phones, and they don't have voice mail.  Apparently they also don't train their customer service staff to deal with the authors that they encourage so virulently to publish with them.  I sold the majority of my work through B&fuckingNoble this year.  Probably over 60,000 sales and I'm so angry I want to jerk all my books off, but I don't want to lose my customer base there.  So I've concluded that B&fuckingNoble hates my guts and doesn't want to do business with me.  It probably doesn't help that I posted their email on my blog and encouraged fans to feel free and email them.  I don't know how many of you emailed publit@bn.com (whoops, did I do that?) but thank you for the support.  (Thank you!  No, THANK YOU!  You really, really like me.)  Maybe it will make a difference.  I'm not sure what to do next in relation to this perplexing situation.  I've written emails to the CEO and everyone else I can think of, and I've got nothing in response.  The B&fuckingNoble community board has dozens of complaints along a similar line and they're still doing nothing.  Clearly they're not interested in supporting the indie authors that they try so hard to bring in.  Bet they like the paycheck but hey, why bother supporting the author?

Okay, enough ranting.  No wait, one more picture.
Not an actual B&fuckingNoble coupon.
In other news, Moron Cat, AKA Megaroy AKA my daughter's cat, has cornered the mouse market in our house.  He goes into the garage and waits by the door until some dumb bastard of a mouse comes looking for something.  Then Moron Cat pounces, which means some of his synapses and dendrites are still operational.  Then he carries the mouse, still alive, into the house, where the humans are forced to hunt it down.  I'm still singing "The mice come out at night" to the tune of "The freaks come out at night."  (Sorry to those of you who know the song and who are now singing in their heads.  For all others, here's a link so you can be also so-inflicted:
There.  Try getting that out of your head.)

Lastly, happy holidays to all and to all a good night.  (Or whatever time it is where you're at.)

P.S.
This is what I think of December 21st, 2012:

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