Up until about a year ago I would have been clear in my answer to that. I have some awesome online friends, and I have developed some very close relationships, but it was only when things got ugly that I started to realize I truly cared for them, and that there was no replay, backspace or reboot button I could push to make things right, or undo the things said and done on both sides.
That there is an actual real life person on the other end of this relationship, with very real feelings and emotions.

In my defense I grew up in a time when the greatest communication-over-distance device was a telephone and you had to talk to an actual person to get through to a number.

The only virtual world was television and of course your own imagination, and I have and always had a very good imagination. Even as a child I didn’t just have one imaginary friend, I had an entire zoo full of them and each had a name and I always knew exactly where they were at any given time of the day.

So it stands to reason when confronted with a disembodied text on what looks like a TV screen that somewhere in my very strange brain I associated online friends with imaginary friends.

It’s like that old joke “I love my computer, my friends live in it.”

I like to think that I’ve learnt a valuable lesson.... at least I hope I have, but I have to wonder if I’m the only insane living-brain-donor or if someone out there is imagining me sitting inside a hard drive whirring and chirping?

I'm beginning to think that after a certain age the human brain gets full up and everything new you put in it means that something already there has to be deleted.

I got myself a wordpress web/blog/site thing. (groan... whimper)

I should have learnt from this lj that when it comes to stuff like this I have the attention span of a flea with extreme ADD. Anyway I started trying to learn html, and then CSS, and for the most part it's really quite logical, just don't ask me to retain any of it.

I think my head wants to explode, I initially spent hours trying to decide what domain to use, what layout I want, what my writing blurbs are going to look like... I poked and prodded, I polished and buffed.

And then... I forgot it was there.

So in an effort to train myself into being a better blogger/journaler. I am going to try and write in this and the blog once a week.

Hey at least its writing of some sort. :D

I know I don't post a lot and when I do it's normally to have a moan, what better place to vent than here?

A few days ago my Daughter took her little son to my sister's place for a birthday party. The little guy is only 18 months old and he's a handful, so when my younger daughter offered to play with him and his cousin, Nik was relieved.
We are not sure when, but at some stage little Konky got tired of the games and left the play room, the lounge filled with adults is right next to it, so my daughter thought nothing of it, assuming that he was going to his mother. Sadly he did not, he went out the back door, out the gate, and took a 100 yard walk to the main road.

When Nik realized he was gone all hell broke loose, She, my sister and my son took off in different directions looking for him.
She found him cowering against a fence, hemmed in by a man I can only describe as a Guardian Angel. He was the only person on a busy street, who stopped his car, and tried to pick him up, and when that only frightened him more, he chased him off to the pavement and was about to phone the police when Nik found them.

The story ends well, and yes it's a lesson to all concerned, my sister has two small children and she will now be locking her gate as well as her doors, and my younger daughter now makes sure he does go to his mother or one of us when he leaves her.

But that is not my gripe... my question is... How the hell can anyone hoot and swerve past a toddler running on the road and not think to stop??? Are they insane? Do they really think that if they hoot he'll get off the road?

My God, he's a baby, you can see he's a baby, what on earth is so important that anyone can drive past that?

"I don't want to get involved? " How can anyone not get involved in saving the life of a child?

Is it just Germany? I mean I have come across the utter horror of people who don't like kids, I've even come across a few idiots that train their dogs to bite children...(Sadly I am not exaggerating.)

But I've always assumed you get idiots all over the world and that they are in the minority, I guess I've also learnt a hard lesson from this, mainly that out of all the people that drove past, and like I said its a busy road, only one person actually thought to stop, so its the good people that are in the minority, at least here in Germany.

There seems to be a sad new trend in the writing industry, one that I wish would stop before it really gets under way. Mainly leaving a book dangling on a cliff-hanger.
Originally I think the only person who did that was J.R.R.Tolkein, and that was only because it took him 15 years to write Lord Of The Rings.

To be clear, the cliff-hanging book is not to be confused with the Serial book. The serial book shares a common theme throughout all the books, and that theme does not get capped off until the very last story/book. However each individual book has a beginning, middle, and an end. The story line for that particular story is completed at the end of that book.

The cliff-hanger just ends, it’s like the writer decided, "that’s enough for this one boys and girls, you want to find out more you have to buy my next book in a years time!"

To me, it’s a cheap ploy to sell the next book. (Which I don’t, on principle.) There are at least five writers whose work I really, truly, enjoy, and who I now refuse to buy, for that reason.

Books may be cheap, but my money does not come easy. I worked bloody hard for my living, I refuse to throw it away on incomplete goods.

Another worrying new trend, is shoddy editing.
I admit when it comes to grammar and punctuation, I’m as clueless as a six year old, but the editing I’m talking about is not in the grammar, but in the story itself. A sure indication that either Beta-readers are becoming blind, or publishers are not using them any more.

I gave up reading for nearly a year so that I could complete my own work. Long story, but the short of it is… I’m a lazy cow. If I’m enjoying what I’m reading, then there really is no reason to go to all the trouble of writing. The fix is the same, with a whole bunch less work.
With my work now done, I’ve started the wondrous task of working my way through a massive TBR pile. So far, I’m six books in, and there is not one story, where I have not been yanked out of the visual zone by a glaring inconstancy, an annoying repetition, or just a plain anatomical impossibility.

Now nothing against the authors, I know its almost impossible to Beta your own work. Trust me, I’ve had my main character sit on her boyfriends LAMP, through every one of the 30 million times I read that part, and did not catch it.
But these are published books, some of them from best selling authors. Why were these works not Beta’d? Did the publishers think, “oh well no one will notice if there are a few oops’s.”?

I’ll admit in the grand scheme of things, my opinion is not worth fly-snot, and that is as it should be. But I feel for the authors, it’s their reputation, their gifts, and hard work that is being somehow made less than the glory it would be. I now remember those stories for the faults in them, and not for the world, characters and settings, the writer worked so hard to create. And that is not as it should be.

Most writing rules are absolute rubbish and should be tossed out along with those dowdy, Agony Aunts, predicting blindness and hairy palms, but some basic foundational writing rules are set in stone, and shaking those pillars might just bring the whole world crashing down on us.

Whatever happened to good Television?

Where did all the really good show's go? Shows that made you think, or laugh, or sigh?

It's all either horrific murder and science or reality shows. I admit I enjoy the forensic science shows, but all the time? Constantly?

No, I like a change in diet every now and again.

I love the darker genre too, the weird, the interesting. Where did those go?

I do not enjoy reality shows, I have nothing against the people who do, but in my opinion I get enough reality in my job, kids and home life I really don't need more.

Whatever happened to escaping into another world? Of putting your feet up after a hard day, settling the kids into bed and snuggling with hubby on the couch, as you watch another episode of fantasy escapism at its finest?

Cancelled I guess.

The show's that are cancelled did not have bad ratings, they had millions of viewers, but they did not have top ratings.

Am I the only one that thinks that’s ridiculous?

Most of them did not make it past the first season. How can anyone know a show will flop or not in one short season, set in the midst of a months long writers strike?

Gone are the days when I would rush home, hurry the dinner, shoo the kids off and bounce into the chair eager for the next installment of a show I’d been waiting a whole week for.

Sadly I hardly watch TV these days, its mostly used for background noise. Only time I stare at the idiot box now is to watch a DVD.

I’m wondering just how many viewers have been lost, and I’m betting it’s more than the networks could ever imagine.

Bollocks to that, there is nothing lonely about writing, most of the time you have so many voices in your head you feel as if you are in a bus terminal with the hard of hearing, everyone is shouting!

But it makes me wonder where that came from and why? I suppose since most writers seclude themselves while creating, or do so in the middle of the night it must see like a lonely time. Then again the person that wrote that, probably did it way before internet.

I used to write alone, at night, and yes despite all the voices it sometimes did feel a little lonely, but now I've discovered that I can't concentrate unless I have the background noise of chat.

What point is there in trying to reach a goal when there is no one to chase you or challenge you? You can say, its for yourself, or that you can better concentrate, and that will probably work for some, but it does not work for me. I need someone looking over my shoulder, patting me on the back or smacking me on the back of the head.

Someone else once said its impossible to create in a vacuum. (Please don't make me got find out who!) And I have to agree with that.

Anyway I'm now a member of Romance Diva's and I'm totally enjoying the company of some wonderful writers, all of them extremely dedicated. My nights just got a lot noisier, but happier!

Somedays you are the dog, and somedays you are the tree. Hah well today I am the dog, got a good word count down despite it being a work day. Whoot on that.

I know I'm just filling space here, but I want to link this to my facebook and I need to post something to see if it works...

The full question there is, what should be considered art and what is just plain sick sensationalism posing as art?

I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on a few points here, that’s fine, these are just my opinions, and honestly, in the grand scheme of things, what do they really count? Diddly squat.

I recently joined a facebook group “Starving dogs is not art” Let me tell you, there are some seriously sick people in this world, and this dude has to be one of the worst. And by the sound of things he’s considered an artist for it.

Apparently , this man tied a sick street dog up, put some food for him just out of his reach and proceeded to watch the poor creature starve to death. There is a small disclaimer that states the societies outcry has been noted, and that the dog was actually allowed loose in the evenings.

Ok, well fine, so what? Does that make him not a sicko?

In my opinion, even the illusion of torturing a helpless animal, child, being or creature, is in no way, shape, or form, to ever be acceptable as anything other than what it is, sick and demented cruelty, and the people trying to pass that off as art should be locked up.

The same goes for the BODIES exhibition that’s touring the globe at the moment, and has been for a number of years.

I have to wonder just what future generations will think of us, when 2000 years along they dig that up. I’m thinking,they will not have the same respect that we have for the Egyptians.

And why should they, how can you respect a people that just take their dead, rip the skin off them and sit/stand/pose them naked, and without a shred of dignity, for people to walk around and glotzs at while eating chips and drinking cola. And just what does it say of us that we actually pay to go see that?

I’m sorry, its not art, it’s a human being, someone who loved and laughed and lived, someone who had family, parents, children and spouse. That skinless travesty, used to be a proud human being, and he/she deserves a lot more respect and dignity than that, even if he/she did donate their body to science. That is not science either, it's commercialism and it's really sad.

I’ll say this much, anyone of my kids or family tries to sell me to some freak side show? I’m so going to haunt their asses forever and then some!

I'm a little confused, why is it when you've got something to do that is dead easy and quick, you just suddenly can't seem to find the time to do it? Yet, if you know somethings going to be an up hill battle against marauding pigmy alien/predator hybrids, you find the time instantly?

I've pounded this story out of stone in places, literally did the whole chinese, water-on-stone-torture to create some of the chapters, and no matter how tired I was after a full day on my feet, I still found the time to write just a little bit more.
Now, I've got the next section already written in my notebooks, all I have to do is type it out... and I'm procrastinating like crazy.

Hmm I wonder if I Google it, would that be considered procrastination too, or could I self-con that to becoming research?