Maria Alexander News and Updates from TheHandlessPoet.com

View the rest of the photos at my Flickr account.

The manager was more than happy to share with me all her tales of ghostly encounters. Apparently Sylvia has company there at the inn: a little boy who bounces a red ball and an angry man on the third floor who yells at people. (Honestly, I had no idea my dad was haunting this place.)

I wandered upstairs to see what I could find. While I didn't see any ghosts per se, and none of the shots have the tell-tale orbs, I did feel slimed by the usual energy of people in a hotel. I've always found hotels -- even nice ones -- to be psychically nasty in many ways. The Frenchman didn't like the energy of the manager at all. He might have felt she was selling a story to promote her inn. This happens, of course, and people being the hysterical ninnies that they are, they'll supply plenty of tales about "supernatural" phenomena. But for me, if anything's going on, it usually sneaks up on me.

It didn't.

Our room was right off the courtyard, so we were treated to the very early morning sounds of the breakfast staff setting up. But we were both so tired we slept through most of it. They served an amazing breakfast of our choice from the menu for free. Yes, you read that right. Free breakfast at the Bella Maggiore, and that flimsy "continental" crap. The room rates are very reasonable, too, making this inn an appealing hideaway, ghosts or no.

See for yourself.

Labels: bella maggiore, ghosts, hauntings

I've hit my stride here at Uncle Walt's. My brain is flying from the pixie dust, yo.

The Frenchman left this morning before 5:00am to go to the East Coast. After he kissed me goodbye, I fell back asleep sometime after I heard the garage door close. I slept well, yes.

Now it's just me and the Kitten kickin' it at home. I bet as soon as I pick up my project again, my agent will have feedback. The irksome inevitability!

Meanwhile, I wrote to Carolyn See and told her how wonderful THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER YOU was. I also just received in the mail her daughter's book, PEONY IN LOVE, which I can't wait to read. However, I'm going to finish the Rita Williams memoir first.

I want to tell you all rumors I've heard here at Uncle Walt's, but that's enough for now.

Labels: Carolyn See, cats, Lisa See, Uncle Walt

I really enjoyed Season #1 of Heroes. I loved the idea of Stan Lee's universe interpolated as real-world events rather than a world one step aside with spandex and capes. I'm all about that -- the grumpier, unshaven version of fantasy.

But, man, does this season stink.

First, I want to kill Molly. The little girl who plays her looks like she's on the verge of giggling in every scene -- even when she's asleep, for fuck's sake. I want to remove that midget smirk with a frying pan. It kills every scene she's in.

Ditto for Micah. But he's probably just laughing at his own dialog.

And then there's the bickering between Mohinder and Matt. (Oh, how cute! The three M-skateers!) They sound like a couple of old biddies screetching melodramatically about who gets to scrub the pots. The dialog, the acting, everything just comes off like poo on the pavement.

Don't even get me started on the so-called Texan family "hiding out" in Southern California in a house that clearly no Kinko's flunky could ever afford with kids whose voices twang like Dolly Parton's bra strap. And what about the semi-incestuous thing Claire has for Flying Man #2? Anyone? And does anyone think they didn't meet under highly suspicious (or badly plotted) circumstances?

Also, someone tell me that Flying Man #1 doesn't really believe his brother is dead?!? I thought Flying Man #1 was the one who couldn't regenerate and therefore got blown to bits at some point in the season finale. I guess I gots me all those special hill-bilities confused, then, yep!

Of course, I totally bought Sylar crossing hundreds of miles in the wilderness with a wound that just made him stagger and gasp like an old man having a heart attack. Oh, yeah. Hit me again, Mr. Incredulous! I can't possibly go bust!

I like Hiro and Ando no matter what they do to them. So, that part doesn't suck too much. But I'm not sure they can keep with the truly terrible writing of this season.

Labels: heroes

I haven't been posting as much because I'm in the heat of writing a new book proposal but the last few days have just been something.

Last night, my favorite dog in the world passed away and I'm very sad. Her name was Loupa. She was a quarter wolf, the rest German Shepard and one other breed. She developed bone cancer at a frightening pace. By the time they found a lump and had it biopsied, it was Friday. My friends were just thinking they would take her to a specialist on Monday when on Saturday the lump swelled to an enormous size and they found numerous lumps all over her body. She could hardly walk, but my friends took her to her favorite park for one last visit. Then the vet came to their house and put her to sleep. I'm still pretty upset about this. She was 13 years old. Maybe it was just time to go.

In other news, I decided that I'd had it with the goofy cat litter box that The Frenchman chose for Robie. It's a roundish thing you rock back and forth, then all the way over, until a long scoop on the side fills up with the goods and you tip the box back to its starting position. In theory, you pull out the long scoop and dump what's inside. The problem is that it fills up with litter instead of just the goods and litter spills out of the front hole during the whole rocking business.

So, I bought Robie a brand new normal litter box but this time I decided to go back to those trackless silicon "pearls" and see if he's more successful with them that Cairo and Ophelia were. Well, I filled it up and I watched him climb inside...and he tried to eat the silicon pieces. I started yelling, pulling bits out of his mouth. Eventually he understood that this was not a snack, climbed inside and did was he was meant to do.

Oy.

And then this morning we were milling around the kitchen making breakfast when our house was surrounded by cops. Nice! Eventually, one came to the door. The Frenchman answered with Robie in hand. A blond female officer asked if we'd seen a black female around our house. "No, just you officers." The Frenchman was surely a sight in his robe, squeezing a kitten in one hand.

But last night -- although I slept badly for lots of reasons -- I had a very cool dream that foretold wonderful things to come. I'm a-hanging on to that one, monkey boy.

That was the subject line for the following email from a total stranger:

Hey,

I'm trying to find an agent for my memoir, //Title Deleted to Protect the Stupid and Rude//. Below are the particulars. I would appreciate any and all leads. Thanks!

~//Name Deleted//

And she follows this with a six-paragraph description of said memoir, and an alleged publishing credit.

Dear Stupid and Rude Author:

Here is how "a sister" gets published. She learns to write. And once she's learned how to write, she learns how to write a decent fucking query letter to agents and publishers, one that grabs them enough to want to read said memoir. This is HARD, I know. Tough shit. You'll probably also have to write a gripping summary. This, too, is HARD. Tough shit. She then takes the time to research who is looking for what and then only contacts those who seem like a good market for her work. "A sister" does not spam, hound or otherwise inappropriately contact strangers via email who have better things to do than pimp her lame ass when they should be doing their own writing. I hope you realize, "sister," that my respect for you is now somewhere fifty leagues deep in the annals of the Los Angeles sewer for this kind of contact. Even if I thought your email was clever and worthy -- which it isn't -- I'd delete your ass or, better yet, put it in the spam folder.

Now, "sister," get lost and go learn how to behave appropriately in the writing market. Have the decency and discipline to develop contacts who might actually pass on your work.

Sincerely,

Maria "Name's Not 'Hey' and I'm Not Your Sister" Alexander

Labels: rude people, spam, writing

We lost Robie last night. Again. We searched high and low, flushed toilets, opened food, called, meowed, purred, turned on his favorite obnoxious toy (a motion detection-enabled "crate" with a person inside screaming "Excuse me! Excuse me! WILL YOU LET ME OUT OF HERE!" as it rocks and shakes).

Nothing. Not a peep.

So, I broke down and cast a horary chart. I asked, "Where is Robie?"

The answer was very straightforward: The planet that ruled Robie was Jupiter, which was in Sagittarius in the 6th House. Sagittarius rules universities and law. The 6th House in horary, according to Anthony Louis, indicates the lost thing is "inside something" and "in a cupboard, closet, drawer or file cabinet" where one "works or does chores." And as the 6th House is what they call "cadent," it indicates that the missing item has "slipped behind" something.

I told The Frenchman that Robie had to be in his desk, or at the very least extremely close to it. The Frenchman looked at me dubiously, trudged back to his desk downstairs, and started reopening all of the drawers, checking the window sill behind the blinds by his chair, etc.

Nothing.

Depressed, we sat together on the floor by his desk, wondering what on earth could have happened to our now six-pound kitten, when The Frenchman leaned over and removed a plastic, lockable file container from the cubby under his desk drawers...

Guess who walked out from behind it?

(Incidentally, this is the second thing I've found for The Frenchman in as many weeks using horary.)

Labels: cats, horary

Am I the only girl who wants to lick his blade?

And then him?

And then do nasty things to him with (and without) the blade?

With Alan Rickman tied up on the side?

::wrings her hands together and hugs them to her cheek as she dreamily bats her eyelashes::

1. I'm drinking Cîroc vodka: chilled, neat.

2. I'm eating homemade cornbread that I just baked.

3. I just finished a HUGE writing project for the technology company in Pasadena. I have written copy for an entirely new website, promotional emails, interstitials, blog entries, a press release and promo tiles. I had less than three weeks to not only come up to speed on an entire industry I knew nothing about, but learn everything about a sort of product I had never known even existed before 9/11/07 and write all of these items in the mean time. My co-workers have been expressing their collective astonishment at how quickly I learned everything. There's still much more to learn, though. Oh, yes.

4. A whole lot of people told Cary Tennis on Salon to utterly and completely piss off. This has to be the worst piece of advice I've ever read in my life. Lie to your children to make them feel better! Yes, Cary, that's it. That's what adults should do. Lie. Pretend. The children will never know. There are, in fact, so many things wrong with this piece, I think this guy should be fired as a columnist. But I'm just a half-drunk, atheist-loving Francophile. What do I know?

5. A co-worker just loaned me If The Creek Don't Rise. Rita Williams is a friend of his. I'm looking forward to reading it very much.

6. The Frenchman and I are staying in a romantic, old-style Italian hotel in Ventura this weekend that just happens to be allegedly haunted by a dead prostitute as we visit Klaun and his wife out that direction.

Life has its good points at the moment.

Last night, the writing flew for a change. I'm just up to 33K, which makes me very happy.

In a few minutes I'll be on the Beeb again, shaking my fist in defiance as we discuss whether or not children should be raised in religious homes. Go to the website and click the "listen live" link. Or just subscribe to the WHYS podcast.

Labels: atheism, BBC

Is this not obvious suicide? and not "accidental death"? What the heck?

In other news, I drank some caffeine this morning. Whoo!

Labels: misleading news