It's All About The Pineapple

"Would you like a pineapple for £1?"

This is what I have to ask every customer that I serve while I am at work. Only for this week, you understand. We have to 'upsell' a different product every week, and this week is the turn of the pineapple. Usually we roll our eyes when we find out what the product is, but for some reason this one makes me laugh. In fact, I laugh practically every time that I say it. Trouble is, the customers usually laugh right back (which in itself isn't actually a bad thing), but then decline the fabulous opportunity to buy some exotic fruit.

We had to upsell pineapples around a year ago too (obviously The People Upstairs - i.e. those who have no clue about what it is like to work with the general public -  have these upselling items on some sort of schedule), and they didn't sell very well then, either.

I usually buy whatever the current upsell is - sometimes more than one if it is something I will use - so I dutifully bought a pineapple yesterday. I'm not sure yet what to do with it. Sure, I could go the normal route and eat it, but the girls are coming over Friday night for an evening of drink and silliness, so the possibilities are endless.

Ok, maybe not endless, but last year, as coincidence would have it, the girls (and guys) came over for drinkies the same week we had pineapples for upselling too, and we did this:

*shifty*

Still, as much as pineapples make me giggle (for no specific reason), at least it's not as bad as last week, when we had crumpets. Now, for you to understand why crumpets were so bad, you need to know two things. One, for those of you not in the UK, crumpets are otherwise known as English muffins - you toast them and smother them in lovely, lovely butter. But the key reason why they were a bad upsell is point number two - in Britain, 'crumpet' is a slang word for sex. So every time I asked someone if they wanted any crumpets for £1, well... you can imagine. It should be noted, too, that the majority of our customers are men. Of a certain age. Really, the joke wore thin after the first ten minutes.

Next week it's 'Snickers'. 69p each, or two for £1. Oh, joy.

Image self-taken. Obviously. *snort*

December 22, 2012

Newsflash!!! 

The world didn't end!!

Now there's a surprise.

Image borrowed from here.

Serious Soapbox

This wasn't intended to be a blog post, merely a reply on one of my status updates on Facebook. Last night I posted a short statement on my Facebook page, which was as follows:

"Another senseless shooting spree at a primary school over the pond. Twenty-seven lives lost, eighteen of them little more than babies. Love & sympathy to all those affected by this atrocity. The lives lost is sickening enough, but one of the worst things is knowing that this will happen again, when another sicko decides it's time to go on a rampage. All the love, sympathy and prayers are not going to bring back those innocent victims. Cut the crap & stop the debate on whether it is your 'right' to own a firearm if you choose. Civilians shouldn't be allowed guns, end of debate. It won't stop this from happening again, but the risk will be greatly reduced, and if even one innocent child is saved by this, surely it is worth sacrificing the 'right' to own something that is lethal in the wrong hands."

I rarely post a serious status update. I rarely get on a soapbox and 'preach'. But when I got home yesterday, my FB feed was, understandably, full of status updates about what happened yesterday. While nearly every single status expressed shock, support and sympathy for the victims, the majority ALSO contained reasons why guns should or shouldn't be considered a constitutional 'right' to own or not.

I don't pretend to know the gun legislation of all (or any) countries, and I don't pretend to understand the ins and outs of the constitutional rights of American citizens. But what I DO understand is that FAR too many people start throwing political arguments around in the aftermaths of these horrible situations, and it makes my blood boil.

The thing that really got my back up was seeing x amount of people churning out the 'guns don't kill people, people do' argument (or various forms of it). I'm sorry, but no. You can play on words as much as you like, but while this sentiment is technically true, the simple fact is you can't shoot people unless you have a gun.

Sadly, we all know that this won't be the last time that something like this happens. And it's not restricted to America, it happens the world over. The inescapable truth is that while we all proclaim outrage and disgust whenever something like this occurs, we have become cynically desensitised to it. While we are fighting to keep our rights, we are forgetting the very real consequences of them.

The truth is that the majority of these tragedies occur when an unbalanced person loses control and proceeds to do something that would normally be as alien to them as it is to anyone else. It is also true that an inanimate object cannot be blamed, just the person who is wielding it.

But you cannot argue against logic. Twenty-seven people would not have been shot yesterday if guns were not so easily accessible. While everyone was debating their constitutional right to own a gun in America, somewhere in China a similar event unfolded. Another unbalanced person entered a school with an intent to hurt a large number of people, children included. This person, however, did not have a gun.  His intentions were clearly much the same as the shooter in Connecticut, but his choice of spreading chaos was to stab as many people as he could. This event was just as horrific as the shootings in Connecticut, but with one highly significant difference. There were no fatalities. More than twenty children (and one adult), will have nightmares for the rest of their lives probably, but they are alive. Not so those poor victims in Connecticut.

There will always be mentally ill people in the world. There will always be people who suddenly, sometimes without any kind of warning, lose control and temporarily become a killing machine. This will never be controlled. But we can at least attempt to control the weapon of choice that these people use during their flights of madness.

While everyone debates over whether they should have the right to own a gun or not, the consequences are buried beneath political rants. As I said in my original status update, cut the crap and end the debate. Civilians should not be able to own a gun. As a weapon, it is one of the most destructive. Take it out of their hands, and an unbalanced person has fewer options to spread their murderous intent. It will not STOP their murderous intent, but the consequences just might not be so severe, as the events in China yesterday clearly demonstrated.

There are those of you who will say that making guns illegal will not stop people from getting one, and you would be right. Making something illegal does not stop people from obtaining it. But it makes it much more difficult, and that is surely a very big step in the right direction.

Maybe once the debate for owning a gun has been removed, we can start to address the bigger problem which is, sadly, perhaps pushed to one side whenever these atrocities happen. While we keep debating over the gun issue, nothing is being done to address the very real underlying problem. Take away the gun part of the issue, and start focusing on the social problem instead. As a society, we have become far too blase about violence in general. We mouth platitudes and sympathy when things like this happen. We mouth them genuinely, but they are platitudes nonetheless.

We need more education and support in place for the mentally ill. There will always be people who slip through the net, but maybe, just maybe, we can help and support these people before they reach snapping point.

And when we can't? Maybe they will be unable to get hold of a gun, as the man in China couldn't. Maybe they will set out to kill as many people as they can, but will fail.

Cut the crap. End the debate. Guns DO kill people.

Summoning Some Silliness

So... I think I need to familiarise myself with my blog again, because, sadly, its been a long time since I've been here. I did a post before about how time seems to be stuck on fast forward the older you get, and LORDY, that was bang on. Where the heck does the time go? Christmas is a month away. A month. And I haven't blogged nearly as much as I wanted to this year.

I seem to have backed myself up against a wall though. Without intending to, this blog has tended to fall in the Nutty Category. Of course, by nature I am a bit of a loon, so this is not a complete surprise, but still... it can be a little daunting knowing that the majority of my followers (if indeed they are still around because I am a bad, bad, procrastinator) usually expect The Crazies when they read my posts. And sometimes, you know, The Crazies won't oblige me. It seems to me, in fact, that when I want a visit from The Crazies, they decide to stay away. This might be considered as helpful for many people, but for Yours Truly, it isn't really conductive to writing something in the Nutty Category.

The thing is, I rarely attempt to write anything amusing, but somehow that's usually how it ends up. When I don't think about it, the words flow through my fingers almost faster than I can type them. My funniest stories/blog posts were written at such a fast pace that it felt as if they wrote themselves. When I went back to read them before posting them, it was like reading something that somebody else wrote. That zone, that lovely state of writing without thinking about it, is a place I really want to establish again.

I've attempted to get back to this zone several times. When I ask for requests, the prompts usually force my brain into thinking of something, and then I tend to try using a slight twist on the request and see where The Crazies take me. This year has been a bit of a doozy for me, though. I've had a few health problems that have definitely set me behind on my goal to be Prolific Writer Of The Year.

It's quite possible that I can put my lack of motivation and general forgetfulness down to my usual procrastinating nature, but in reality these problems have been escalated due to the attack of shingles that I had back in April. While I  have recovered from this, the residual tiredness has not gone away. I am exhausted. Quite literally. I'm still taking a nap every day, seven months after the inital attack. Things that I plan to do are either forgotten about, or pushed to one side because I just don't have the energy to do them.

Thankfully I've still managed to work on my writing projects. Not as much as I would have liked, but enough to say that they are 'works in progress' without feeling that I am lying about it. My fantasy is slowly coming along, and as I've always known this project would take a long time to come together, I don't let it worry me that the word count isn't climbing too swiftly. My Cardiff Fairytales series is also coming along quite nicely. While I anxiously wait out the final few weeks in the sixteen week submission process for the first book, the second story is past the half way mark, and ideas for book three have been dutifully noted.

While I am happy that I'm managing to to mostly keep up with my writing projects, I'm a little sad that I've negelected this blog. I've had so much fun on here in the last couple of years, and I miss it.

So I'm sending out a plea to The Crazies... please come back!!

Image borrowed from here.

A Rambling Ramble

You know that saying, 'I came,I saw, I conquered.' Well I feel a little bit like that when it comes to this blog, only it's more a case of 'I came, I Felt A Bit Guilty, I Procrastinated.'

Ok, so it's not remotely like the first phrase, but still. I can't believe we're midway through October,and this is only the first time I have sat down to blog. I was fully prepared to give the whole 'blog every day in October' thingy a decent attempt. I even had ideas for the requests that had already started to trickle in. But for some reason, whenever I make plans, everything goes 'tits up' (as we say in Cardiff).

Why is that? I mean, planning should mean that everything goes,well, to plan. Or at least more or less. But I am one of those people who seems to manage better when there is not a sign of a plan in sight.

The biggest thing that stuffed up my plan was the fact that my employers sold their shop, giving the staff less than two weeks' notice. The new owner took over our contracts on the 28th September. What we were hoping to be a smooth transition has turned out to be our worst nightmare. I won't get into details, but suffice to say that two of the fourteen staff members have already left, one has decided to retire early, and the rest of us are desperately seeking new employment. A time consuming, tedious, and often depressing turn of events, not least because there really aren't many jobs out there at the moment.

The smallest thing that has affected my good intentions (though it is just as annoying) is the fact that my laptop is dying. Again. I've actually lost count of how many laptops/computers have died on me in the last eight years. I could probably work it out if I thought about it, but it is too depressing to even make the effort. Once again, the soon-to-be fatal flaw is a wonky keyboard. When I say wonky, I mean that it is just not doing what it is supposed to do. So far it is just the space bar that is misbehaving (I have tried to catch all of the words that have been squashed together due to the space bar not working properly, but I'm sure I'll have missed a few). Actually, the 'b' isn't always showing either (added this bit on my read through, but only after spending a few seconds wondering what on earth I meant by 'log every day in October').

Granted, it's not as bad as when half the letters on my keyboard didn't work during the Boken Keboa era (nor nearly as funny), but it is just so time consuming trying to type, and having to pause and go back after almost every word. It's also terribly fwuztwatin (couldn't resist using probably my favourite ever made-up word from the Boken Keboa dictionary).

In between the big and the small things that have stuffed me up, there are the various bits in between. The usual, everyday things that mean I can't get as much access to the internet as I would like. Work, kids, life... that sort of thing. And of course, there is the anxiety that I can't quite manage to control over the fate of my novel submission. Almost seven weeks have passed since I hit 'send' (or, to be truthful, hit 'save draft' by mistake, then realised the next day that I'd messed up *shifty*), and I still have another nine weeks before I can chase up the publishers.

And I've procrastinated, obviously. Wouldn't be me if I didn't. (Ooh, the caps lock keeps sticking too, forgot to mention that. Half of this post would have been SHOUTING at you if I hadn't have used the backspace button so often [luckily that one is still working]).

Anyway, that's all I want to ramble about at the moment.There's only so much backspacing and deleting a girl can take...

Image borrowed from here. Incidentally, I love the fact that when I searched Google images for 'boken keboa', it knew EXACTLY what I was looking for. *snort*

Missing: Blogging Mojo!

You know, I wasn't really too worried at first when my Blogging Mojo went walkabout. I mean, it's not like it hasn't happened before. *shifty* But it's been three months - to the day!- since he blew in my ear and massaged my shoulders (for the clueless, my Writing/Blogging Mojo is a combination of Aragorn [the Viggo Mortensen version], Damon Salvatore, Dean Winchester, and Spartacus), and now I really need him to return as soon as possible.

Oi! Mojo! Break time is over!

To be fair, he hasn't been entirely absent. He pops up whenever he can *coughs* and has been very helpful when it came to working on my new chick-litty manuscript.  In fact, he's been particularly helpful when it comes to writing certain scenes (mostly the innuendo-y type scenes, obviously). I'm not finished by a long shot (and neither is he, hopefully), but I'm sure I can rely on him to continue his brand of encouragement.

But he needs to be thoroughly chastised for his neglect with the blog cheer leading. He hasn't waved his pom-poms at me for far too long. So I am cracking my whip and bringing him to attention.

To keep him poised, he needs a little encouragement of his own. Some incentive, you might say. I've tried the usual suspects - chocolate, champagne, feather boas, that sort of thing - but I think he's more in need of mental stimulation. With the October NaBloWriMo just around the corner (or, the October Marathon, as I like to call it), he's going to need more stimulation than ever. What better way to do that than firing some requests his way?

Or, to put it another way, I want to blog and I have no ideas. But that's not nearly as much fun as talking about mojos, feather boas and pom-poms...

Anywho, despite my hit and miss record when it comes to requests, I'm giving it a shot for October, so I need thirty prompts. I realise there's thirty-one days in October, but the last day is traditionally reserved for reminiscing, so thirty is the amount of requests required (wow, a lot of 'r' words in that last sentence).

So... hit me...

Image borrowed from here.

My Auntie Is Giddy

As in oh my giddy auntie. As in oh my daisies. As in oops. As in *shifty*. As in any and all polite ways of saying the word that rhymes with 'duck'.

My bad. My very bad. My so bad that there should be a personalised definition of the phrase especially for me. It's been two months since I last blogged (I feel like I should have gone to confession to say that, even though I'm not a churchy person). Hmmph.

I'm in the throes of a deep bout of procrastination. Not only have I not blogged, but I haven't done much of anything else either. Except work, try to keep up with the housework (the keyword being 'try' there, because I'm pretty sure the housework is stomping way ahead of me in that particular race), and doing my best to not let the Shingles Beast get the better of me.

Technically I recovered from shingles about six weeks ago, but in reality I'm still feeling the effects of it. To say it knocked me for six would be an understatement. I'm one of the lucky ones; the pain 'only' lasted about a month. I can honestly say that I've never had pain that bad, and that includes childbirth, because childbirth never reduced me to tears (well, it did on my daughter, but that wasn't because of the actual pain, more because I was stressed). The nerve pain that I had with shingles was excruciating. But while that was bad enough, it's the lingering tiredness that I can't quite shake off that is debilitating. I find that I can't do as much as I used to do without feeling exhausted.

None of us are getting any younger, and sure, I can't do what I could do ten years ago, but I find that I haven't got the stamina to do what I was doing ten weeks ago. It's really odd how something as simple as the chicken pox virus can really send you body out of whack.

Anyway, moving on...

I'm gutted I failed the April A-Z. To make it worse, I only failed by three days. I manged to limmerick my way from A-W, then I ran out of steam. So close! Arghh!! I'm pretty sure this embarrassing failure has compounded to my avoidance of my poor, wee blog. In fact, my Writing Mojo is not only blushing, but refusing to have anything to do with me.

And it's not only my Writing Mojo who is shunning me either. My Editing Mojo has a distinct look of disdain on his face, while my Manuscript Read Through Mojo keeps looking at me as if I'd just crawled out from under a particularly nasty rock. Honestly, I'm surpised I'm still alive after all the Daggers of Doom glares that have come my way.

But it's not all bad! No! Indeed, there's been some good stuff in the last two months! While I am mortally ashamed of myself for not finishing a read through of a friend's manuscript, I did recieve her debut book through the post last week (which, by the way, was one of the only original manuscripts that I have ever managed to fulfil my read through promise with, even if I was late with it *shifty*). My good friend The Watery Tart (aka Tami Hart, aka Hart Johnson, aka Alyse Carlson), was officially a published author earlier this month. Yay! *sends subliminal 'go buy it' thoughts to the world at large*

It's very cool to own a book that was written by a friend. *nods* I haven't read it yet (well I have, in it's original form, but not in this form), but I did open the book and have a *squee* moment when I discovered that not only is it cool to have a published author for a friend, but it's also cool to recognise other friends in the acknowledgments. *squees again*

My friend on my bookshelf.  So to speak.

I also discovered a new obsession in the last two months. I finally got around to reading some books by an author who was recommended to me ages ago. Now, I'm a Book Slut and will read almost anything, but every now and again a series will come along that really grabs at me. This doesn't happen very often - I can name the  Harry Potter series, the Lord of the Rings series, and Salvatore's Dark Elf books as the only examples - but now I have another series to add to my elite list. Robin Hobbs books, specifically her books telling the story of FitzChivalry Farseer and his friends. Loved, loved, LOVED these books. Loved them so much, in fact, that my FanFic Mojo is currently emerging from exile, rubbing his hands together and seriously thinking of flexing his writing muscles.

Some new friends.

In other news, my newest additions to the family (two bearded dragons going by the names of Pinky and Perky), have been busy beardies indeed. Pinky has so far laid 50 eggs in the last two months - 21 in the first clutch, 29 in the second), and judging by her frantic digging, and overall scatty behaviour of the last couple of days, there's a third clutch on the way. So far none of the eggs have been viable, but it's still cool to say that I have dragon eggs in my house (that'll be the geek in me).

Lastly, there has also been two birthdays in the Smith household this month. The Hubby was [undisclosed age due to self-preservation] on June 11th, while my eldest child turned sixteen yesterday. If ever there was a reason to feel old, it's when your children are closer to the age of twenty than you are.


Oh my giddie auntie indeed.

All images self-taken.