Maria Alexander News and Updates from TheHandlessPoet.com

I am once again having a yucky Halloween, thanks to The Frenchman. Please won't you drop a treat in my spider bag to offset the terrible trick he's played on me? Any sweet nothing will help.

Thank you. And have a wonderful Night of Nights!

So, I've been hitting the gym three times a week for a month now and I'm seeing a difference. The weight lifting classes are similar to circuit training -- constant motion, full body. I'm already having to increase the weight on the bars. I'm so stoked about this, you have no idea. I gained weight after the breakup but now I'm getting back into fighting shape. Speaking of which, I'm hoping to switch it up with some Everlast in the coming weeks. Ka-pow!

Tomorrow is the Night of Nights, a very powerful day in my life without fail. Uncle Walt goes utterly nuts for Halloween. I think I'll reprise my Madame Muffet -- that is, Miss Muffet all grown up and loving the spiders -- but with frilly PVC corset, stompy boots, stockings, cute spider pillbox hat and parasol. It's going to be entirely too much fun.

Last night, I went to see Clive Barker's MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN. Master Barker himself was there speaking before the show. I really liked the film and wish it had gotten proper distribution. It made a powerful statement about how great art brings us in contact with the deepest, ugliest truths. Bonuses included Brooke Shields as a bitchy art gallery owner and men suspended upside down. Yeah baby.

In other news, I'm dreaming some new dreams for my life. And it feels wonderful knowing I've got such great friends to support me. Thank you all.

You know, I'm not sure quite what I was thinking when I discovered Google had digitized works of my fiction and nonfiction with permission of the publishers but without my permission. I guess with the first piece, it was so small I didn't mind. But when it came to the second piece I was totally out to lunch.

Apparently the Author's Guild knew exactly what it was thinking. It said, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

The result is that we authors have won a $45 million class action lawsuit against Google for scanning books and putting them online. After May 5, 2009, I can make a claim for my stories that were digitized. I might have a whopping $150 coming to me that I know of. I'd better scan and look for more of my works.

And you should, too!

Mickey came to work last week as we celebrated our coworker's 20th anniversary with the company.

I turned into a 3 year old...



And another photo was snapped just after Mickey kissed me. I got all wobbly happy.

Pretty ridiculous, I tell you. But Mickey was so great. A lot of us grownups regressed a few decades. Damn you Uncle Walt for being so...enchanting! Bleh!

The face of a nutbar.



I mean, come the fuck ON. The "B" is even backwards. I don't see how anyone fell for this.

But then, there are people falling for Geezer & Dingbat. Why should I be surprised?

Erin of Shotgun Mary sweetly took my photo a couple of times last Friday night at the absinthe shindig at Hollywood Forever.

Check me out on her SmugMug. I'm on page 1 in the very tight pink cheongsam with black leather corset and dragon lady gloves. You can't see my magnificent mane of black hair that I planted on my head via a gorgeous fall, alas. It blends into the darkness. But, hey, I'm smiling in a photo! How crazy is that?

I wrote this poem almost five years ago, just before I went to France for the first time.

It's entirely too moving now because I "know" what they were hiding...

Last night I attended the Steve Allen Theater event at Hollywood Forever, where scads of finely clad Art Deco folk gathered to drink very expensive shots of absinthe in the cathedral, in the presence of myriad crypts and larger-than-life-size religious statues. The utterly adorable Janet Klein and her 1920s-style band sang old sweet but "naughty" tunes as we stood in vast lines for the green fairy. Although the lines were ridiculously long, I managed to have an amazing time with my friends, the Devi Ant and her husband Indiana Jones.

Lounging amongst the crypts with a glass of French absinthe in hand, I spoke to a friend of theirs who it turns out works for a labor union. I asked him, "Why is it that all of my friends are for Prop 2, but some of the major Democratic leaders are against it?" He explained that the bill itself was penned by right-wingers whose goal is not to save the chickens but to instead drive a wedge between environmentalists and labor, since a lot of jobs will be lost, he says, with this bill. "It's very clever," he said, shrugging. "It's already working."

So, I'm a bit torn on this issue. I very, very much want to speak for the animals who need to be treated humanely, but if this bill really was penned by conservative bastards to keep environmentalists and labor pitted against each other instead of creating unity -- which is a powerful thing -- then that's something that needs to be considered. I don't understand exactly how jobs will be lost. That warrants more research.

Oh, incidentally, parking at the event sucked butt if you wanted to park in the cemetery. I chose to park across the street from the cemetery. And on our way out, a couple of sweet guys with a golf cart who worked there gave me and my pals a lift to the front gate. Sweet! Because I'm tellin' ya, after all that dancing and gabbing, my toots were toast.

The other day, as I am wont to do, I was listening to the local classical music station and I heard Chopin's "Variations on La Ci Darem la Mano Op.2" based on Mozart's Don Giovanni. The piece is captivating with its fluid romanticism and immense complexity.

When it finished, the DJ intoned that Chopin had written it at the tender age of 17.

We certainly have a number of stupefying musical prodigies, but mostly they are performers, not composers. Not to downplay those gifts in the least, but composing is a whole tier above and beyond.

Then, as I was researching to see if in fact musical genius had fled the gene pool -- and I'm specifically referring to classical-style composition, which is alive and well -- I discovered Jay Greenberg. He's practically as competent and creative if not as sophisticated a composer as Hans Zimmer and Elliot Goldenthal.

Listening to him speak in interviews is quite poignant. He expresses the desire to learn about many other things -- not necessarily music. When the interviewer asks him what would make him happy, he replies, "What is happiness?" I wonder if he, like so many geniuses, suffers tremendous depression. It's heartbreaking to think so. Selfishly -- for myself and posterity -- I want him to write music for the rest of his life. I mean, isn't that what Franz Liszt, Camille Saint-Saëns and Samuel Barber wanted to do?

Yet here he is for now, a Mozart among men. If only he wasn't so alone.

Del tells me that they've recently added David Morrell to the table of contents of the anthology. This is shaping up to be a fantastic lineup.

Meanwhile, I received my check yesterday. Hurray for money!

So. A French writer wins the Nobel Prize. Again.

I love the description of the depth and breadth of international exposure this man. Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, has lived and breathed into his novels.

An American hasn't won since 1993. Could it be because we're a bunch of navel-gazing. TV-obsessed layabouts who can't be troubled to travel as far as the mailbox much less explore a European city? We can't say genre writers have never won. Doris Lessing took the prestigious award last year.

Anyway, that was my first observation. Any ideas?

Now that contracts are signed and delivered, I can announce that my story, "Though Thy Lips Are Pale," will be appearing in Dark Delicacies 3, which is rumored to feature such literary talents as Chuck Palahniuk, Heather Graham and Sherilyn Kenyon.

I wrote "Though Thy Lips Are Pale" when I was in France after we traveled through Brittany, past La Foret de Brocéliande, otherwise known as Paimpont Forest of Arthurian legend.

According to legend, bad things have happened in Paimpont.

According to my story, bad things definitely happened in Paimpont.

And there you have it.

At the behest of a very good friend, here I am trying out Ping.fm to see if it will make my life easier.

It might. You never know!

Dear Sarah Pants On Fire,

According to Factcheck.org, you told three times as many lies as Biden. That's 9 falsehoods to his 3.

As a former Pentecostal and member of the Assemblies of God church, I can safely say that your church teaches that it is a sin to lie and "bear false witness against your neighbor," which you did abundantly whenever you misrepresented Obama. But I guess it's okay to spread lies about your political opponents. Right?

Yours truly,

Someone Who Noticed