shishnit.org

Made the front page today. You can find it at www. the brandon gazette. com  (remove spaces of course)

Occasionally I purchase e-books online from individuals.  This is a bit of a dodgy practice.  I purchase things online a lot.  I buy from etsy, ebay, and sometimes some questionable places apparently.

7 day’s ago on 1 -20-10 I purchased an 11 piece e-book collection of Nicholas Sparks e-books from a seller on sell.com  YES, I said 7 day’s ago.  I never heard from the seller. I was specifically after a copy of “Dear John” and after 4 day’s I grew impatient and purchased an actual copy of the book.  In fact I’ve read it already in its entirety.  I paid $11 bucks to buy a copy from Target.  I was after a copy of it to read along with a co-worker.

7 days ago people!  A few day’s after I never heard from the seller, I contacted paypal of course and opened a dispute to get my money back.  It wasn’t a lot of money but it was the principal. I realize when you buy these types of things online you take a risk.  I took it…this time I felt I just lost out and would probably never see my money or my e-books.

Today I get the following email from the seller

Sorry for the delay, my nieces 14 day old baby girl died one week ago today and I just got back home last night to New York from Kansas.

Here you go and Thanks SO much!

** If I could achieve one thing, it would be that we were united as one people and never again divided by the color of our skin, nationality, religion or sexual orientation. **

Seriously?  Why is it every time a seller fails to be prompt (and really I would have been happy with 24-48 hours of response time but honestly I usually get a 1 hour response when I purchase e-books online because it’s a matter of simply sending an email with a link.  Which if you notice, she did…..7 day’s AFTER my purchase.  So for 7 day’s this woman ran a business and didn’t respond to a customer.  After I made the purchase I realized she had no feedback on the website.  

My immediate reaction was to write back to her and said “Really 7 days?  I don’t want the e-books because I wanted “Dear John” and have since purchased it in the store”.  But the more I thought about it….maybe….maybe I’ll write back to her in 7 day’s.  

Yes, some will say I’m heartless…after all a baby died.  However, I have no way of knowing if that’s the truth or just bad customer service. In today’s day and age I know no one who doesn’t check their email for 7 day’s.  Especially if you run an online business and you are the “seller”.  Either close your sells down or set up an automated email response telling people when to expect your return.  So now I have a “worthless to me” ebook download link.  So   I read Dear John via real book and loved it…until the last 20 pages and then I wanted to punch Mr. Sparks in the face.  And I mean it.

Don’t you love how she said to me all sarcastic like “thank you SO much”.  Really?  And her “if I could achieve one thing”….yah lady you’re failing miserably to be the change in the world you want to achieve” and it has nothing to do with the color of your skin (as I have no idea!) your nationality, your religion or your sexual orientation.  You failed because you’re a jerk and I have a big suspicion you are a liar.  

Also notice that no one in there did she apologize for her poor business practices, her lateness or any inconvenience her actions had on my life.  Well listen lady…I had a hangnail and wanted to read Dear John on my e-book reader but because of you I had to painfully hold a real book for hours upon hours.  

Oh and I know a 14 day old baby ….tugs at the heart strings don’t it?  I mean how can I be so heartless?  Perhaps years of being an online student where I’ve seen the same students claim their grandma has died over and over again forgetting I’ve been in a class with them before, just so they can get out of doing their teamwork.  Or maybe it’s because it’s a phantom 14 day old….or it could be because I just wanted a nice transaction and now this lady is dumping the guilt on me as if I did something to cause that baby to die because I actually expected her to provide the product I purchased.  Also, if I had a niece I would know how to spell the word “niece” I’m thinking.  I also know that this lady lives in Kansas from the extensive searches I did of her name on Google.  However she told me she got home to New York.

*sigh*  I think she needs to read some books, she might learn how to write a sentence.

 Updated 2-08-10 The link was never a good one… *sigh*

“She showed and taught me by example. The books she was reading were all over the house. Books by her reading chair. Books in the bathroom. Books on her bedside table. Books on the screen porch by the rocking chairs.” From here.

Maybe someday Keith will remember fondly all of his crazy mother’s books stacked and restacked and messy and glorious and oh so much a part of her world.  Yesterday I found a thrift store that sells books for 99 cents.  Good books..great titles…things that are still relevant.  I bought 10.  10!  That one find made my reading brain form into the curve of a smile.

Someone recently asked me about reviewing books.  Do I review the ones I don’t like? I don’t officially do that. I don’t write about books I can’t promote because just putting the book cover up there is publicity.  And I hardly feel that bashing an artist’s work is my objective.  However, from time to time I must speak up and THIS is still my personal blog.  I cannot promote a book when I can’t find anything worthwhile within. Nor can I when my stomach turns and I cannot even finish it!

“Her marriage challenged by an insane, irresistible love affair, Julie decides to leave town and immerse herself in a new obsession: butchery”.

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell

Ok that’s the blurb for the new book by Julia Powell called Cleaving.  I picked it up because I rather enjoyed Julie and Julia and this is NOT a full on review because guess what? I couldn’t read it.  Why? Because guess what? She’s a major trainwreck in this book.  The affair is her…she’s banging the hell out of someone else and her husband knows about it and she tells him and oh…”that’s just the way it is” is her attitude.  I didn’t buy the book, I read 40 plus pages of it and then skim read through the rest.

Insane irresistable love affair?  Now, I have a tainted past when it comes to marital problems. My ex-husband cheated on me with his first girlfriend swooping my then 8 year old son off to New York State from Florida after advising me that he was going down the street two blocks to get some dinner. In actuality my son dissapeared for 2 days with his father before I knew where either of them was.  21 days later my ex called asking me for money to feed same said child and returned home, kicked to the curb by his “insane irresistable love affair”.  So the topic of extramarital love affairs is something I don’t take lightly and the way this publisher is providing that above blurb peevs me and makes my skin crawl a bit. 

Now, let me admit this as I always have. I cheated on my first husband. A lot.  Both emotinally and physically (the a lot mostly emotionally with an online boy I called “him”) but it was after that 21 day debaucle and in my mind we were never a marital unit again. I could not trust him and I did not feel any bond with him, aside from our beautiful child.  I was a mess for a long long time over his and my “insane, irresistable love affairs” and it’s sad to me that we now live in a world where this stuff is exploited and used to sell books.  I love books but this issue saddens me.  The pages I read spoke about Julie getting text messages from her boyfriend (affair partner…not sure what she called him in the book) while sitting with her husband and how she felt them buzzing while husband was sitting there with her.  Disturbing at best.

Shame on you Hatchette Book Group for promoting this as lighthearted!  Marrital affairs are lighthearted?  Really?  And described as “hilarious and ferociously articulate” by Entertainment Weekly.  Again, really?  Marriages falling prey to cheating is hilarious?

I will never forget the pain caused by affairs.  If you’re the other woman, the woman, his woman, the one he won’t tell about, the online affair, the real affair, the emotional affair…AFFAIRS ARE NOT merely challenging, nor are they hilarious. If you’re the wife and he’s cheating chances are you’ll end up cheating back, becoming suicidal or at the very least be a train wreck for quite some time.  Nothing funny about any of those outcomes.  But hey I could be wrong, if you had someone cheat on you and you feel it’s hilarious or merely a challenge to your marriage feel free to contact me and set me straight.

disclaimer: I only read 40+ pages and skimmed this book but geesh….hated the entire premise because I couldn’t get past feeling for the “husband” being cheated on. 

p.s. personal disclaimer…”him” and I don’t speak any longer. I’m happily married these days, immensely happily married and to talk to “him” would be cheating….emotionally…but I still won’t do that to a husband who’s faithful to me.

Imagine beautiful words, imminently bountiful, all

The one’s I have read

While being sick

And while simply wanting a fresh loaf of bread

while drinking wine, coffee,

fleeing from something wicked

and divorcing myself of pain

rejoicing in love

gaining yet again and again

while

planning a purchase

buying a house

planning a wedding

building a home

birthing a child

breathing a new dream

coming together

shattering apart like a scream

when lonely, together and

yet again feeling alone

a page turned, a dog-ear

a traveling mercy, a glance

a memory, a gentle knowing look

curved and straight and crossed over

and under as I drink my tea

the luxury, the challenge

the ever present friendship,

not just a cold book

Imagine the sentences creeping out

From the woodwork

The curves in my brain

Coming and gathering

Humming once, yet again

Characters, plots and drivel

Of page upon page

On the ocean, in the forest

A princess, an imaginary stage

The kiss, the sleep, the drivel

The loss, and the gain

Coming back to visit me again and again

I’m in it, living with it, I am within it

Imagine the little ones I curled through my tongue

In whispers while waiting on diagnosis

recovering from operations

and lobotomies of the heart

with plots cemented,

I never did come undone

Nor did I even dare fall apart!

Imagine…yes imagine!

the ones recited to me when I was still very young

joining together with those gathered

in twenties, thirties and decades beyond,

The ones marching in sunlight

And those taken despite shaded by rain

In sickness, and health

In happiness and in pain

Lined up soldiers forming words

Stamping their directives like war games

Across every page

Characters created elsewhere

Just for….

for my own personal imaginary stage

Picture them, a billion images

Vital, viral and gore

Them

One by one

Crawling into the blankets

The sheets

Of my death bed

I really want for nothing more!

Imagine those

Lovingly gathered,

Remembered with bliss

Repeated, mattered, and sealed

With a literary kiss

The stories, their sentences

The that’s and the things that happened like this

Traveling across the miles of time

Stroking the moon, your moon and mine

The ones ingested in morning

And regurgitated back, endeared to me

By mid-afternoon

The ones I saved, rewritten

Painted on walls, left there with swoon

Those must be saved

For the wealth of visitors, one and then all

There’ll be no phone call to make

I will not be scared when

Happily ever after arrives

The sentences will re-warm me

I will not be alone

In “the end”

When its time for me to die

I’ll be covered in stories,

Warmed by the sweetest fairy tale

For all of those sentences

Will gather together

And forever remain

Bury me with pages, one from every nook

They will keep me, repeat to me

And remove from me all pain

Books have sustained me

Bled with me

Cried with me

Please bury them in my blankets

Sheet upon glorious well worn sheet

Please don’t send me away

With no literary relief

Stash them, and stow them

In each crevice galore

When you think you have brought enough

Please bring me some more!

         
The sentences will hug me, protect me

No lie

Bury me under words, counted in thousands times more

Please promise me

For then you have no reason to cry

As I will read through my death bed

And forever after find joy

And if you torch me

Like I say that you really should and you just must!

Add all of my pages, my books I adore

Burn us together, together forevermore

Then scatter us on beaches, on sand, and on the shore

Like the prettiest sea shells, turned dust unto dust

Note to Keith: Don’t forget to throw in the “leg” books…